


A Stagnation of Love (rewrite)

by Shinigamiinochi



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Bullying, Child Abuse, F/M, Incest, M/M, Suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-21
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2018-02-22 01:47:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 71
Words: 1,601,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2490005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shinigamiinochi/pseuds/Shinigamiinochi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Duo Maxwell has been stuck his entire life. With an abusive father, a mother who doesn't even realize he exists, severely bullied at school, and hiding his sexuality, he has given up all hope for a better life. When he falls in love with his bully's boyfriend, he needs to make a choice about his future. Will he continue to let himself be abused or will he fight back?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1 Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> As it says in the notes in the story, this is the fourth incarnation of this story. The first and second were completed a very long time ago. The third remains incomplete and can be found on my fanfiction.net page or adultfanfiction.net or gundam-wing-archive.net, all under the same name. Since it will forever remain incomplete, I probably won't be posting it here unless someone really wants me to.

A Stagnation of Love  
  
Author's Note: Well, here we are again, lol. This is the FOURTH incarnation of this story, but while rereading the first two chapters I wrote, I realized it wasn't right. It's my own fault, I can't write things from the point of view of young children, it never sounds authentic. I really don't like the first two chapters of this story for that reason, so I'm scrapping them and trying to introduce the themes of those chapters from the view of an older Duo. Hopefully this will be the last rewrite :v  
  
  
Chapter 1  
Part 1  
  
March 3, 2004  
  
  
    My name is Duo Maxwell. I'm thirteen years old. Not that it matters, Mrs. Khushrenada said that no one else is going to read this journal, just me. I don't get the point of this assignment if she's not even going to read it. I told her it would be like talking to myself, so it's pointless, but she insisted that I do it. She said that writing down all the things that make me sad and angry will help me after what happened. I know it won't, but it's either this or my English homework, and I've read _Tom Sawyer_ before. It's not a book I really want to read again. I'd rather write about this, even if it doesn't help.  
    I'm good at writing. I'm good at reading, too. Essays, book reports, critical reading. It's all I've ever been good at. I suck at every science I've ever taken. I can remember all the little rules and equations for math. History bores me. I'm too tone deaf to be any good at chorus or the other music classes. I don't care enough about gym to try and I'm not competitive like the other boys in my grade. I already know everything they teach in home ec. But I've always been good at words and understanding them. I started reading on my own before most of my classmates. I had to. My dad stopped reading to me when I was four, and I liked those stories too much to wait until first grade to be taught how to do it myself. I remembered the stories, I just had to figure out the words. And learning that I could make those words myself on paper had been even more magical than learning how to understand them.  
    I don't know what I should write about. Mrs. Khushrenada said to write about the stuff that makes me upset, so I guess I could write about my parents, or about Quatre. I don't want to write about him, but I guess that's the point.   
    I met Quatre my first day of school. I was tired because my parents kept me up all night with their fighting. I don't remember a day when they didn't fight, but some nights are worse than others. Sometimes they just bicker or snap at each other. Some nights, like that night, they scream and swear and throw things at each other. On really bad nights, they hit each other. Sometimes Dad throws Mom out of the house and she doesn't come back until the morning, or Mom scratches up his face. Lately, the last two years, it's gotten worse and worse. I know from the looks our neighbors give us the screaming annoys them, but because of my dad's job, they never say anything about it.  
    That night, they just screamed at each other a lot. I don't remember what it was about, my dad threw Mom out of the bedroom. That happens a lot, too. I thought that after hearing them scream at each other every night, it would stop bothering me, but I still haven't gotten used to it. It still wakes me up at night and it still frightens me. Dad probably threw her out because she didn't want him touching her. When I was younger, that confused me since she didn't kick up such a fuss during the day, just at night, but I think it means she doesn't like sleeping next to him or something. Whatever the reason, it always pisses my dad off even worse than if I break something.   
    Our house is small and old. There's only one bedroom, my parents' room. My room is the attic. When I told Quatre that, he said it was cool, like I lived in a secret room, and that I had the whole place to myself. He _would_ say that. To him, it was cool because even though he lived in a bigger house than me, he had six older sisters before they all left to go to college. When he was younger, there was no room in his house he could go to to get any privacy. But he was wrong. I never lived in a secret room because my dad always knows where to find me, and I can always hear them. I guess it would be worse if I had a room downstairs, but it doesn't matter. It isn't how loud they can scream, it's what they say and how they sound when they say it, and I can hear that just fine up here. I liked it better when I was little, and didn't understand what words like 'fuck', 'asshole', 'cunt', 'bitch', and 'bastard' meant. I liked it better when I didn't fully understand their hate for each other. When Quatre and I were in the fourth grade, an eighth grader had told us what all those words meant. Quatre had been appalled. I guess no one talks like that in his family. I was just sad.   
    Even if the shouting is louder downstairs, at least I would have a room with lights. There are no windows in an attic. There is no breeze or heat up here, either, just my mattress, a dresser for my clothes, and a single electrical outlet. The fan I plug into it during the summer doesn't make it any less hot, and even the old electric blanket Quatre gifted me with a couple years ago helps during the winter. I stopped being afraid of the dark up here when I was a kid,  but I still hate opening my eyes to that. I had a lamp up here once, by Dad broke it. I didn't see the point in finding another one.  
    Even when my parents eventually stopped screaming at each other, I had a hard time sleeping. It had been hot the night before, so we had kept our windows open. That morning, after Dad had gone to work, it had started to pour. Mom was already on her way to getting drunk and I had been too excited and focused on starting school that I forgot to close the windows. When Dad got home and saw that a bunch of our things had gotten soaked, he had gotten pissed. It doesn't take much to make him mad. If I just walk in my room when he has a hangover or has a bad day at work, he comes upstairs and strikes me. Sometimes, if he's just annoyed, it's just one punch. When he's in a truly bad mood, it's a lot more than that.     I have nightmares about hearing that stride, hearing his heavy footsteps walking up the stairs to the attic. I remember once, when I was really little, Mom, back before she had started to ignore me entirely, had told me to just stay out of his way. He got angry sometimes, she had said, and he couldn't control his anger anymore than a person could control feeling tired, so the best thing I could do, if I didn't want to get hit, was make sure I wasn't in the same room as him. I had tried, back then. I had tried so hard to not do things that angered him, to be a good son and stay out of his way.     But my mom's advice hadn't been so great. Dad would just find me. That day, when I forgot to close the windows, he found me and threw a chair at me. It hit me in the back and busted up my ribs, so I tossed and turned all the night, unable to get comfortable. I had realized, years ago, that hitting me and hurting me made him feel better. A lot of times, if he was just in a bad mood and it wasn't something serious, he would beat me and that would be it. He would be calmer afterwards. In a way, that makes it ok, I guess. It hurts, and I hate it when he gets like that, but then it's over and it isn't so bad. Sometimes, I wonder if I even deserve it. If I were better, smarter, less of a burden on my parents and their struggle just to make it through until Dad's next paycheck, maybe he wouldn't get angry so often.   
    But at the same time that I understand that, and as much as I don't want to make him angry like that for doing stupid shit, I don't feel right when he hits me. When I was a kid, it would make me sad and confused, but I accepted it because I loved him. I still do. But lately, every time he strikes me, I feel hate towards him, too. When I was a kid, I used to think that feeling confused and sad about my father was normal, that all kids felt that way towards their fathers, and that all the fighting my parents did was normal. But when I started to go to school, and I saw all the other kids with their parents, I realized that my family was strange. Some kids had it a lot better than me. Others, like Quatre, had it just as bad, but in different ways. I used to want to think that Quatre hated his parents, too, because that meant those feelings were ok, that I didn't need to feel guilty and that I'm a terrible son for feeling that hate. But now... now I don't want to. I want to believe that Quatre never felt things like that, even if I know it' a lie.  
    I've gone through what happened in my head a thousand times and I still don't understand why it happened. I don't know if I want to understand it. It's different than trying to understand why my parents hate me so much. I can kind of understand that. I'm nothing special. I'm not like those kids in the advanced classes that are probably going to go off to college, get great jobs, and help out their folks. I'm not smart. Being good at writing and reading means shit in the 'real world'. I'm old enough now to get that, and to know that one of the reasons why my dad works so hard that he has to come home late is because he has to support me.   
    And I know that my mom hates me because of what happened the day I was born. She told me once that I ruined her inside when I came out. I don't really know what that means exactly, only that when she gave birth to me, I hurt her, and she can never have anymore kids. It must be true. In our basement are all these things my parents had before I was born, pictures of when they were teenagers. Mom is so pretty in those pictures, and she is always smiling and happy. She doesn't smile anymore, and if she ever has, I don't remember. When Dad drinks, he tells me that they were both happy back then, until I came along.   
    She can never have someone better than me. I think about that, every time I fuck up, every time I get a bad grade on a test or break a dish because I'm clumsy or Dad hits me for disturbing him. I'll never be anything special, and my parents are stuck with me forever. But no matter how much I try, I can't seem to get any better for them.  
    I understand those things, but I don't understand why this happened. I hadn't been around other kids that much until that first day of school. I had hoped that I would make some friends, even just one. I had thought that it couldn't be any worse than being at home with Dad. I don't know why I thought that, like Dad was the only one who could hurt me.   
    I had never been more excited in my entire life than that morning, and I haven't been that excited since. I had spent the last three weeks scrounging for school supplies since I didn't have any money to buy anything and neither of my parents had bothered. They hadn't even talked to me about school, except for a month before when my dad had come home from work and gruffly told me I was going to school and getting out of his hair, finally.   
    I went door to door in our neighborhood, except for our one next door neighbor who has this big, vicious dog. I've avoided that house since the large mutt had tried to take a bit out of my face just walking past the yard it hadn't been chained up in. Most of them told me to go home and slammed the door in my face while others didn't even answer the door since the section of town we live in is so shitty, but some of them were willing to give me some composition notebooks and pencils even though I was too embarrassed to tell any of them why I needed those things. I hadn't known that the teachers just gave you that stuff. I found an old, black book bag that had been my dad's at some point and stuffed all of it in there.   
    My parents didn't say anything when I walked out the door that morning. Back then I had worried about it, that I had gotten the date or something else wrong. I had even been frightened that I would be punished later for leaving the house without their permission. Looking back, I know that they just didn't care. I was getting out of their sight for a few hours. Whether I made it to school or knew what I was doing didn't matter. I had been too scared, and too desperate to prove I could do it on my own, to ask them. Nausten is small enough that I knew where the school was, so I could at least get that far.   
    It takes me twenty minutes to walk to school every day. Not too bad, and I'd rather walk than take the bus. I like walking to school in the mornings, it's quiet, that special time of day when the only thing adults care about is getting coffee before work and most businesses aren't even open yet. I appreciate more now that I'm a teenager, but when I was a kid I liked it, too. It had been early enough in the fall that things were cold, but not miserable like they would be in December. The winter means ducking snow balls and trudging through the heavy wind in my thin jacket and even thinner pants.   
    But fall is pretty. Not so much where I live, but when you get further north where there are trees and well kept shrubs, all those colors made the walk well worth it. At the right time of fall, I even delay walking back home just to look up at the trees. I didn't delay that morning. I didn't want to start school as one of the only kids that was late. I didn't know what that punishment might be.   
    I hate the elementary school building. I've hated it since the first time I saw it. We used to have a middle school building, but it burned down long ago, before I was born, and the town decided it was too much fuss to rebuild it. Instead they crammed grades 5-8 in with K-4. Bullying and agitation between the younger kids and the older ones impatiently waiting for high school went way up, and classroom space went way down, but the town saved enough money to build a bigger boardwalk at the beach and whatever the hell else they did with that money, so what did they care? It was just the teachers and kids that suffered, one didn't have big enough salaries to matter and the other would grow out of it.   
    The elementary school is all white, aged, painted wood with old, stained windows that are covered up with construction paper from various school projects, mostly from the younger grades. I guess when they first built it, it had probably been nice looking, the white pristine and new. But now, decades later, that white could only be called that if you looked past it's the yellow as all that paint and wood had aged. The high schoolers are lucky. Their building is all brick and metal and doesn't come across as an overly ambitious shack.   
    The outside of the elementary school is better, though. The outside of the high school is almost entirely paved while the elementary has a lot more grass and flowers. We have a playground with a jungle gym and swings while the high school has a track and a couple of basketball courts. I even heard from the older kids that high schoolers don't get a recess, just a lunch. My first day of school, there were a bunch of kids my age playing on that jungle gym, but I didn't join them. I didn't know any of them or the kinds of games they were playing with their friends, and I didn't have any friends of my own to play with. Even after then, I only ever went on the jungle gym where no one else was. It was something I never grew out of, even after meeting Quatre.   
    The elementary school is divided in two, with the left section for the lower classman, grades K-3, and the right section for the upper classman, grades 4-8. There were even two separate entrances, with the grades listed in gold above the doorways. I walked through the right side door, a stone in the pit of my stomach.   
    I was nine years old when I went to public school for the first time, not five like all of my other classmates, or even four like the kids whose parents had been well off enough to send them to preschool. The year I should have gone to kindergarten had passed me by without me even knowing I should have started school. Neither of my parents had talked to me about it and they hadn't really seemed like they had cared a year later when one of my dad's coworkers had asked him why I wasn't in class like his son was.     My father had shrugged it off and said it was fine, there was nothing I was going to learn in kindergarten and it would just be a waste of his time and money. His friend had laughed and agreed with that, telling stories of the art projects his son had brought home and how much of a hassle it was using up his lunch hour to pick his son up from school. Beyond that, it had never come up. When I was supposed to enter the first grade, Dad lost my immunization records and refused to pay the fee to waive them. He spent a lot of nights on the phone with my doctor, yelling, and I don't really remember what came of that, only that by the time it had been resolved I had missed too many days of school to go.  
    I missed out going to the second grade because I had been laid out in the hospital for two months. Dad had been going through a lot of problems with his job, problems that he had taken home with him. He had been especially cagey those days and it hadn't taken much to get all of that rage directed at me. I don't really remember what I asked him thanks to the concussion he gave me. I just remember the look of anger that had come across his face, turning the father I had mostly loved back then into the monster I grew used to as I got older. I remember having screaming nightmares about that expression. I remember him yelling something at me, but most of all I remember how arm felt when he snapped it, and the sound my head made when he punched me in the temple and I hit a wall. That time he told the doctors that I got beaten up by an older kid.  
    Last year, I returned to the hospital, that time for a bad case of pneumonia. I got sick a lot when I was a kid, but that time had been terrible. I spent weeks in that hospital bed, coughing up what felt like gallons of fluid, too weak to do much but lay there. At least it had gotten me out of the house and away from my parents for awhile. The year I would have been in the fourth grade normally, my dad had been dead set on getting me into school and so was I. He wanted me out of the house and I wanted to meet people my own age.   
    When I heard from the school councilor that I would have to take a test to get into the fourth grade, or be sent to the first grade, I was mortified. I guess I just thought that I would be put in whatever grade all the other kids my age were in, I never thought that, because I had missed so many classes and skills I needed to get through the fourth grade, I would be held back. I didn't know what would be worse, to never go to school and be stuck at home like I had been, or to be held back, to be taking classes with six year olds instead of other nine years olds. I wanted to make friends, I wanted to be normal for just a few hours. I hadn't realized back then, the real extent that my father had screwed me.  
    That's why it hurts a bit now that I'm a teenager and I can look back and realize that the same man whose actions had kept me from going to school for three out of the four grades I had missed was responsible for getting me into the fourth grade. At nine years old I was pretty proficient at reading and writing. My father would bring me home books that were hand my downs from the people he worked with, and when he had the time during the weekends, he would take me with him to the library to check some out. I taught myself with those books, reading them over and over until even the bigger words became familiar to me. The test I had to take had a section on reading and I finished it quickly. It made me think that I might not have needed to go to those first three grades and I would be fine.   
    Then I saw the math parts. In reality, now that I'm in the seventh grade, all the things that had been in that test come second nature to me, but at the time my math skills had been as complex as counting on my fingers and knowing what all the different signs were from my books. I could handle 5+7 because I could count at least that high, and I knew my roman numerals from reading, but I hadn't the clue what 122+327 was, how to subtract 100 from 56, how to multiply, or how to divide things. Fractions and geometry were well beyond my scope of understanding at that time.   
    It had become a horrible nightmare for me. A month before I needed to be placed in my grade, I had trouble sleeping and constantly felt sick to my stomach. I wasn't so worried about having to go to the first grade anymore. I was scared that I would have to tell my father that I couldn't take the test. I imagined his anger, and even worse, I imagined his disappointment. The only thing worse than hearing that you're stupid for most of your life is knowing that you're stupid.   
    I finally got the courage one day to walk up to him with the test and tell him that I didn't understand any of the math. I had expected him to slap me or call me names, tell me that I was a moron and I deserved to be in the first grade. Instead he sighed in irritation and said, _"I guess it can't be helped."_ He spent weeks going over all of the math problems with me, over and over and over until I could do them myself. He lost his temper with me a few times, but he never hit me, just yelled. Honestly though, those times when my dad was helping me study are some of the happiest memories I have. Sitting at the kitchen table with him, listening to him explain things to me instead of yelling or ignoring me. When I got something wrong, he would get so annoyed, but when I got it right, he would smile and ruffle my hair or pat my shoulder. It made me feel a deep love for him.   
    I don't know what I had imagined the inside of the school to be like before I had taken my first steps inside. All I had known about school I had learned from watching television after my dad abandoned the tv set to go to work. Those tv shows had always depicted schools as this great, fun place to be, with bustling hallways full of kids smiling and laughing. That morning, the hallways full of colorful lockers and colorful posters had been empty. It had reminded me more of the hospital than the schools on TV.   
    I was well accustomed to the hospital. Most of the time, Dad ignored me after he hit me. When I had been really little and he had hit me, Mom had grudgingly taken care of it, but after awhile she had just let me take care of myself. But there had been a few times when he had hit me just a little bit too hard, or he had been too drunk to realize what he had been doing and had broken something and he had taken me to the hospital. Most of the time it was one of my arms. I used to find it so hard that when the doctors asked my father what had happened, he had lied about it. What he had done had never seemed like something he needed to hide. It had just been normal to me, but he would pull out these stories and excuses, so naturally that it would even make me doubt my own memories for a moment. I don't know if the doctors bought it each time it had happened, and sometimes it seemed like they were looking at my dad suspiciously, but they never said anything about it.   
    Beyond that, what I remember of the hospital was it's quiet, empty, white halls. That morning was like that. It seemed like all of the kids were out in the playground, or maybe already in the classrooms. I stood there in the empty hallway and realized that I had absolutely no idea where I was supposed to go. I stood there in the middle of the crossroads of four hallways and felt like a complete idiot before a man walked up to me. He was wearing a tie, so I guess he must have been a teacher.  
    "You lost?" he asked in a gruff voice that reminded me of my father first thing in the morning, like he wanted to be anywhere but there and talking to anyone else but knew that he had to.  
    I nodded, feeling incredibly shy and unsure.  
    "What grade?" he asked in that slightly irritated way.  
    "Fourth," I responded in a small voice, feeling like the pest my father always told me I was.  
    "Fourth grade classrooms are closed for flooding repairs," he said in that bored tone people get when they've said the same thing over and over, "All fourth grade classes are meeting in the first grade wing," he pointed to the hallway to our right, "straight down there, take a right past the double doors, your classroom will be there."  
    "Thank you," I murmured and went the way he had said.  
    I opened the double doors and walked right to another empty hallway. Again, it reminded me of the hospital, only much sadder because of all the color. It would have seemed more natural if those walls had been painted grey or white instead of the gaudy blue and yellow that I remember. I haven't gone to the kindergarten, first, and second grade section of the school since then, so I don't know if they're still that color.   
    Worse than the quiet had been when I finally did start to see kids. They were chatting with kids they already knew, and walked as calmly and naturally as could be into different rooms. I didn't know anyone. This was my first day, not theirs, all of them knew where to go. I felt like some alien creature walking in their midst. I had realized then that I really was the idiot that my father says I am. I didn't know what I was supposed to do. I had gotten to the school ok, but now what? Which classroom was mine? Did I need books? What was I supposed to be doing?   
    I was scared of talking to anyone, but I was more scared about missing my first class, so I walked up to the first teacher I saw in that hallway, a tall woman who was chatting with some other grown-ups. I waited patiently for them to walk away before going up to her. She was pretty in the way my mom had been in those photos in the basement, with a gentle smile, beautiful dark brown eyes, and long dark brown hair. She had a very feminine face, the kind I remember seeing in elves from the picture books I used to read when I was little. When she didn't notice me, I grabbed at her long skirt and very gently tugged on it.  
    It was the sort of thing my father would have struck me hard for, something he considered incredibly rude. It was one of the many things he couldn't stand, a child pestering an adult. I even flinched when those soft brown eyes fell on me, so sure she would yell at me like my father would, but she smiled at me and kneeled down so I didn't have to crane my neck to look at her.  
    "What is it, sweetie?" she asked, her tone genuine instead of hiding annoyance or forcing herself to sound nice like some of my neighbors did when they spoke to me.   
    I always hated it when they did that, taking that same tone with me that they would with their dogs. It always reminded me of how my dad looked at me, like I was too stupid to really understand. Mrs. Khushrenada never looked or spoke to me like that.  
    "I don't know where to go," I confessed and I remember feeling completely embarrassed at that point.  
    Her smile fell into a small frown.  
    "You're new here, aren't you? Didn't your parents tell you?" she asked.  
    I shook my head. She regained her smile quickly and took my hand into hers. I don't know why but that reminded me of how Dad's hand felt around mine when we were at the mall or crossing the street. Her hand completely dwarfed mine like his did, but her hand wasn't as big as his, and hers was soft where his was rough.  
    "What's your name?" she asked me.  
    "Duo Maxwell," I replied automatically in the same taught way all little kids do when a stranger asks for their name or age.  
    I had already been blushing in embarrassment from her holding my hand, something that if anyone else had done I would have felt insulted by at that age, but seemed to natural to her, but in saying my own name, I flushed a few shades darker. I don't think I've ever liked my name Both kids and adults always give me weird looks when I say it, like they don't believe me. I have no idea why parents picked that name instead of something normal like Robert or Matt.   
    But Mrs. Khushrenada didn't seem puzzled at my weird name, her smile brightening.  
    "Oh, you must be Nathan and Helen's son!" she exclaimed, "I was beginning to worry that they had decided to home school you and we'd never get to meet."      
    I felt my face go searing hot and I felt the urge to go hide under something. I don't really remember why I had gotten so embarrassed just because she recognized me. My dad was one of the only seven cops in Nausten, so practically everyone knew who he was. But Mrs. Khushrenada was one of the only people who knew my mother by name.   
    "Well, Duo Maxwell," she said to me in a voice as bright as her smile, "I'm Mrs. Une Khushrenada, but you can just call me Une. I'm your teacher this year, so we'll get to know each other well, ok?"  
    I'm sure I made some kind of surprised or dubious face when she told me to call her by her first name. That was something else that my father had taught me, and my breaking of that rule would have gotten me struck like all the others. Kids didn't call adults by their first names, it's rude and disrespectful. It just made me much more confused than it should have. I couldn't call my teacher by her first name because my dad would have been furious if he ever found out, and I couldn't call her by her last name because she didn't want me to.   
    At first I even thought she was trying to trick me. My dad used to do that, let me think it was ok to break a rule, but it was only a test, one he would punish me for if I failed. I eventually got over it. I have never called Mrs. Khushrenada by her first name and I never will.   
    "Thank you," I blurted out, my struggle to decide whose rules I should follow making me remember my manners.   
    She walked with me down the hallway, still holding my hand.  
    "I went to high school with your Daddy, Duo," Mrs. Khushrenada told me with a gentle smile.  
    I quickly forgot my fear in my interest. All I knew about my parents when they were younger had come from what I could find stored in our basement. They never talked about it, except for the things they yelled at each other or me. I had never met my grandparents. I don't even know if they're dead or alive some place, refusing to visit for some reason. Maybe they just lived too far away. Even if my parents were stuck in the same town they had grown up in, it didn't mean their parents were.  
    "You're handsome, just like him," my teacher continued as I gave her my full attention.  
    I looked down at the ground, not sure what I was supposed to say to that. No one had ever told me I looked anything like my dad before. I have the same pale skin my mom did, and her auburn straight hair. My dad's hair is dark brown, even darker than Mrs. Khushrenada, and both my father and my mother have grey eyes, although my dad's are much darker. My eyes are violet. When I had been much younger, I thought that made me a freak. I'm still not sure why I don't have grey eyes like I should, but I know it's because of some ancestors from both sides of my family, not because I'm strange or even because I'm not really their kid.  
    "He was so stubborn as a teenager and he was always getting into trouble," she chuckled, "I still can't believe he got into law enforcement and turned out to be good at it!"  
    I remember being surprised by that. Not to hear that my dad had been stubborn because he was, and not to hear he was good at his job. My father didn't earn a lot of money as a police officer, but he wasn't a beat cop or a grunt. By the time I should have started school, he had earned some sort of medal. I don't remember what it had been for, I had been too young to remember and my father hadn't gloated about it. It had gotten him free beer for a few months and a raise, which had gotten me a new pair of sneakers and my parents a new oven, as our old one had stopped doing anything giving out grey smoke and a foul order. Our new one hadn't been that great, but you could cook with it at least.   
    Since then, my father had gotten two more medals, one for breaking up a local drug ring and the other catching someone who had been hurting women in our town one summer. That had been all over the news for a week because stuff like that doesn't happen here that much. That last medal had made Dad angry. He had spent a lot of nights at his job, not coming home until the morning, and had expected a promotion for it. I guess he never got one because he had been especially furious for a month after that.   
    In all that time, I was stupid enough to cross his path just three times. The first time, he hit me in the cheek with his belt so hard my cheek turned a deep blue-black color that was a dark, blood red at the edges and the swelling didn't go down for days. The second time he hit me with Mom's iron and broke three of my ribs. I tried even harder to do everything he asked of me to the letter and otherwise find a dark hole to hide in until his mood passed. Mom didn't fight with him at all that month. The third time... well... the third time I ended up in the hospital and missed the second grade.   
    What surprised me was hearing that my father had been a trouble maker. I couldn't imagine my dad misbehaving. He punished me for every little rule I broke, and my father had a lot of rules. He was always so serious, I just couldn't see him as anything but that. At nine years, just imagining the looming, powerful man that was my father as a teenager at all had been impossible.  
    Mrs. Khushrenada let go of my hand as we walked into a classroom. It looked like all the other classrooms I had seen, only the kids running around in it were my age and the desks were smaller. Most of the kids' attention were focused on the front of the room where two kids were fighting. Well, that had been my impression at the time. But they hadn't been going at each other or arguing.   
    A girl with brown hair much lighter than Mrs. Khushrenada' was yelling at a boy with blonde hair that was paler than mine and brilliant blue-green eyes that were wide with fear. The girl had a jar of glue in her hand was approaching the boy with it as he tried to back away. He looked like he wanted to get as far away from her as possible but was too scared to make a sudden move. The whole scene was bizarre to me. The only 'girl' I really knew well was my mother, but I knew enough that boys weren't supposed to be scared of girls like that unless, according to my dad, you were a pussy or a fag. Back then, I hadn't known what cats had to do with it or what a fag was (and I wouldn't know the meaning of that word until last year), but I did understand that it was something embarrassing. And I had no idea what the girl was doing with the glue, but the fear on the boy's face bothered me a lot.   
    Mrs. Khushrenada quickly abandoned me to run over to them and stop whatever had been going on. Just like that, the mob of kids dispersed, but the noise didn't. I was used to loud noises and screaming at this point, but I still didn't like the mass of screaming, laughing, running kids in that classroom. All I could think of was that my father would never let me cause such chaos like that, and I had that feeling again, of being different, of not belonging there. Should I be like them, running around and causing a scene, chasing around a friend and screaming with glee?   
    The noise overwhelmed me and I nervously shuffled into a desk in the far corner. I felt very sad right then. I had wanted to make friends with someone here, but how could I? They all had their own friends, no one needed me. They had had four years with each other, four years I would never have. With all of the running and screaming, none of them came up to me and tried to talk to me. They ignored me like I was something vile and small. I felt very alone, although that wasn't anything new to me, I had just hoped it would be different at school. Nothing had changed. That was the worst part.   
    I had a thought then, a thought that was probably way out of scope of a fourth grader, but I had it none the less. Nothing was ever going to change. I was always going to be alone, just my parents and me. All these kids were just starting to go to school like I was, but they had had a head start on me anyway. I raised my head as I saw the boy and girl that had been fighting shuffling back to their own desks. The boy looked ashamed and the girl looked annoyed, though it should have been the other way around. The girl sat a few chairs ahead of me and whirled around to look at me, studying me like a child would with an insect they had caught in a glass jar. Like I was something gross and unwanted she had caught.   
    The girl was pretty, I guess. She wasn't pretty like how my mother had once been, or how Mrs. Khushrenada was, but the way that a doll was. Her light brown, almost dark blonde hair was too perfect, the curls not natural but obviously put there by a hair dresser or maybe her mother. Her pink dress was brand new and fair too neat for a child her age, not a single stain or fleck of dirt on it. She looked too perfect, too fake in some way, and the look she was giving me wasn't pretty at all. The dress didn't suit her. Her pretty, fake curls didn't suit her, or rather, knowing what I know now, maybe they did. I had to look down, away from her piercing blue eyes, and I fiddled with the pencils and paper I had pulled out of my father's book bag.  
    "Seats, now!" Mrs. Khushrenada said, not cruelly or harshly, but with enough power to her voice that all the other kids scrambled to their desks.  
    Again I was struck with that feeling that I was the only one missing something. All the other kids seemed to know what to do, probably the same things they had done their previous years, and sat quietly in their seats, although some looked like they were on the verge of exploding with energy. I didn't have that urge, and I certainly didn't have that energy. I just felt incredibly nervous and out of place, so I did what I had always been taught to do; I kept my head down and stayed quiet until my name was called, then I merely raised my hand like all the others. I didn't pay any attention to the names of my classmates.  
    Even though I was anxious about the other kids, I decided that the classes were fun. In some ways I miss it. Now that I'm in the seventh grade, we have to change classrooms and teachers every block. I miss just having Mrs. Khushrenada as my only teacher. That first day, we got to paint and learn how to write in long roman numberals, something that I never really picked up on. I never really understood the purpose of it, honestly. My parents didn't write like that, and Mrs. Khushrenada didn't either, and it's not something that I needed to know as I got older. My favorite time was, of course, reading time. I wasn't that great at painting. I wasn't terrible like some of my classmates were, but it was nothing special. Math was weird and I didn't really get it that well even after my dad's tutoring, even though Mrs. Khushrenada tried to engage us by using amusing scenarios for all the word problems.   
    But then we moved on to reading. I don't remember exactly what it was we had read, some short story. Mrs. Khushrenada had gone down the rows, making each of us read one paragraph of the story. A few of my classmates, the blue eyed girl included, struggled with a few of the words, but I didn't. The books I had to read at home had been just as hard, but I had learned those words out of necessity, and it had helped. Mrs. Khushrenada told me what a good reader I was, and I felt incredibly good about it. It had been the only time anyone had told me I was good at something since my father had told me 'good job' with a rare, soft smile when I had read our address from an envelope in the mail, or when I had gotten my sneakers tied without his help for the first time.   
    Mrs. Khushrenada' praise earned me a soft glare from the blue eyed girl who had stumbled through some of her words. That glare looked much more at home and natural on her than her curls or dress.   
    "Relena Elizabeth Dorlian!" Mrs. Khushrenada snapped at her.  
    The girl turned back around at that point and we returned to math. I forgot about it as we delved into more painful multiplication and division, at least until Mrs. Khushrenada got called away by another teacher. She shouted at us to mind ourselves and the second she left the room, the class devolved into chaos again. Everyone scrambled out of their seats and reformed their groups of friends, chatting loudly, chasing each other around the classroom, and drawing on the chalkboard. I thought briefly about walking up to one of those groups of kids and saying hi or something, but I was too scared. Instead, I looked at the window and watched some squirrels play out there. They reminded me of my classmates, mindlessly running around, but less loud.   
    I felt someone looking at me suddenly and looked away from the window. It was Relena, looking at me with the same intense expression she had earlier. It was a frightening look on the pretty girl. I don't know why, but she reminded me of my father, which was preposterous. But still, she scared me like he did when he was angry and I didn't like being under that creepy stare.   
    "Where are you from?" she finally broke her silence with a stern, demanding tone, crossing her arms over her chest in a pose that she was trying to make intimidating.  
    Although I didn't like her looking at me, and she weirded me out, in a way that pose was funny. She was the same size as me after all, but there was a hardness to her blue eyes that also made me feel wrong.  
    "Here," I said, confused by the question.  
    "Nu-uh," she said, poking me in the shoulder as I turned in my desk to look her in her creepy, ice-blue eyes, "You're a no good liar! I've lived here my whole life and I've never seen you! You're a liar!"  
    It shouldn't have hurt. I didn't know this girl, so why should it hurt me that she thought I was lying? My father called me  a liar all the time. Sometimes, when I told him about something interesting I had seen or heard about, he would call me a liar. Or just tell me to shut up and I would know that he didn't believe me. Kids are all liars, he would say gruffly. When I had, very proudly, told him about the first sentence I had been able to read on my own he had said, 'don't you fucking lie to my face.' That had hurt more than all the other times. He called me stupid, bastard, fucker, piece of shit, all things that hurt more than some girl I had just met accusing me of lying about something that didn't really matter, or make any sense to me.   
    But it did. It hurt because she was the very first person my age I had ever talked to and even though she knew nothing about me, she had immediately assumed the worst about me. And she had said it loud enough for the rest of the class to hear. did they all think I was a liar? That thought had made me feel ashamed, like her accusations were true. Even worse than feeling embarrassed or ashamed, I felt angry at that moment, more than I had ever had before in my short life.  
    I hated her then. I had never hated anyone before, not even my dad. I had felt sad about him hitting me and the yelling he and Mom did, but I had never felt anger and hate fill me like that before then. It was a terrible feeling. When she jabbed me in the shoulder, I wanted to punch her, like my dad had done to me hundreds of times. That frightened me. My father's anger had always scared me, so feeling it in me was terrible. Was this really how he felt all the time, I wondered. I felt sad for him, that he felt like that, when I didn't like feeling it myself. I didn't want to be that way, I didn't want to strike anyone. I had been too young then to put the feeling into words, but my rage repulsed me. I didn't want to be like my father.  
    I didn't hit her. I couldn't. Just the thought of it made my stomach feel like ice. I wanted to hit her, shove at her, scream at her, do _something_ , but I couldn't even move. It was just like how I felt when Dad punished me, like I was paralyzed. It was so stupid. My father was one thing. I knew what he was capable of, he was bigger than me, and if I talked back to him or tried to hit him, and the thought to strike my own father hadn't even entered my head back then, but Relena was little, so why couldn't I at least speak up, tell her to cut it out?  
    "I'm not a liar," was all I could say, in a weak, pathetic voice. I couldn't even look her in the eyes, "I've always lived here."  
    I thought about explaining it to her, that I had just been sick and hadn't been able to go to school until now, but my voice was stuck in my throat. My eyes darted to hers, but they were still hard. There was a kind of... excitement there now, a glee that I couldn't understand. Did she enjoy this? Why couldn't she just leave me alone?   
    "Yes you are!" she jeered, jabbing at me again with her finger, "You're a great, big liar! I never saw you at pre-school, kindergarten, or any of our other classes!"  
    I stared at her blankly. I think I had understood, at some level, that this really wasn't about her thinking I had just moved to Nausten and was pissed I was lying to her, but I had never really interacted with other kids before, and besides my father, I had certainly never been bullied before. The blonde boy who had been fighting with Relena earlier, and who had been watching us this whole time with a hesitant and guarded expression, walked up to us. Immediately, Relena's entire expression changed when she saw him. That coldness and glee remained, but there was also hate there. It startled me. I was used to seeing that on my dad's face when he was angry at me, but what had the boy done to her to have her not just dislike him, but hate him that much?  
    "Relena, stop it," he said, but his voice was terribly shy and even I could feel the fear there, "not everyone can afford pre-school, and there are kids here that never went to kindergarten with us. There are lots of other reasons why he didn't go to this school the last few years, it doesn't make him a liar," even though his voice was small, his tone was also terse and irritated, but when she glared at him, he just looked like he wished he had never stood up for me and wanted to melt back into the crowd.  
    "Shut up, Quatre," she snapped at him, "This isn't your business. Unless there's something else you want to say?"  
    The boy blushed darkly at her threat and backed off, not wanting to fight with her anymore than I had. I realized that no one else in that classroom was going to distract her, and in a moment all of her terrible attention was going to be on me. I managed to get two steps past her, but she noticed my feeble attempt at escape and grabbed my arm, shoving me back against my desk. I wanted to shout at her that she shoved like a boy, to see how she liked to be called names and embarrassed, but I was too scared of her. That other boy, Quatre, clearly was, so it felt natural to be scared of her, too.  
    "I am not done talking to you!" she yelled at me with a petulant pout, her blue eyes bright in a very frightening way.  
    I realized it then that she really was enjoying this. This was fun to her. Did my dad enjoy it, too, when he mocked me and hit me, when he hurt me? That thought was just too terrible for me. but in a way, Relena Dorlian _did_ remind me of my father, especially when he drank, which was frequently. Completely focused, irrational, and incapable of understanding. That comparison made me take a step back away from her and for the first time since she had accused me of lying, and with my ribs still throbbing from my dad's abuse the night before, I didn't feel like a coward for trying to get away from a nine year old girl. One of the very first lessons my father had unintentionally taught me was that sometimes being a coward and running away was safer and smarter than being brave.   
    "Well, where are you from? Answer me!" she demanded, her voice rising in part anger, part excitement.  
    "I'm telling the truth!" I protested.  
    I felt so frustrated, like nothing I said mattered, just like with my parents, and I realized I was on the verge of tears. I wasn't a liar, I _wasn't_ , but she didn't care. Why was she doing this, and why to me? She didn't really care where I was from, I don't even think she cared if I was lying, and I couldn't figure out why. I heard a few snickers from the crowd of kids that had formed around us and they felt like daggers in my chest. Was all this just one big joke?  
    "No, you're a liar, I know one when I see one and you _look_ like a liar, too!" she crowed, as though she had come to some brilliant conclusion that she was intensely proud of.   
    She suddenly shoved me against my desk again, but much harder. My sneakers slipped and I fell, hitting the back of my head on the hard desk, just bad enough to black out. It must not have been for very long, because when I opened them again, Mrs. Khushrenada still wasn't there and my classmates were still crowded around us, watching with great interest as Relena sat on the floor next to me in an oddly graceful and ladylike posture. She was nearly sitting on top of me and had a black marker in her hand. I had no idea where it had come from.  
    Relena grabbed my bangs and harshly tugged them away from my face. I smelled the strong stench of the marker and felt the wetness on my forehead as she wrote something there. I struggled against her, not knowing what was going on, but hating the sound of my classmates' laughter and the feel of her small hand pulling my hair. My vision finally cleared enough that I could see the crowd of kids. Some were giggling and watching Relena write on my face like it was the funniest thing they had seen. Others were just watching with a dull, non-expression, like they were sleepwalking, or they had seen this so often they were bored.   
    I had an epiphany then, a big thing for a nine year old. No one was going to help me. No one helps anyone, despite what I heard from adults, TV programs, and books. People might donate toys and food and money to 'those less fortunate,' but when someone right in front of them needed help, they never bothered. Even if the person knew you, they wouldn't help. I could be friends with all of those kids, and they would have kept staring and giggling. I understood that then and I understand it even better now that I'm a teenager.  
    When I had been a child and Dad had been hurting me real bad and had screamed for help, Mom never came to help me. She just stood and watched. She didn't even try. She doesn't do that much anymore, although her drinking has gotten a lot worse. When I got really scared of Dad's rage as a kid, I had tried to run from him a few times, before it had sunk in that I could never really get away from him. He would just catch me and hit me out on the lawn, the farthest I had ever gotten from him. My neighbors had never helped me. My cries had brought them out of their houses and peering out the windows, but all of them had just watched.  
    I had quickly learned as a child that asking for help was pointless. No one wanted to help, they just watched, some of them even liked it. If I screamed, no one would come to my aid, not even Mrs. Khushrenada. Asking for help just got you hurt worse. The way my classmates watched as Relena finished writing on my face reminded me of my neighbors watching my dad beat me in our front yard, or my mom watching as he struck me bloody with his belt. Those blank stares, like they were watching television, some of them excited, others dull, like it was a rerun to them.  
    But out of the sea of those blank and curious stares, I caught Quatre's blue-green eyes. His were different than everyone else's. He had that same look like he had seen this before, but his eyes weren't dull. They were bright with tears and fear, sympathy without pity, and most of all, empathy. I remembered how frightened he had acted around Relena and quickly realized she had done this to him, too.   
    That realization should have made me feel terrible, knowing that she had hurt him like this, but it didn't. It made me feel better, relieved. I hated myself for that, but it's the truth. It felt good knowing I wasn't the only one she had gone after.  
    "There!" Relena exclaimed, standing up and twirling the black marker in her pale hand like she thought she was some kind of artist, "Now everyone knows what a little liar you are!" she laughed. It was a horrible sound, shrill and mocking.   
    What had she done? I got to my feet like I had been shot, not wanting to give her the chance to do anything else. So what if she had done something terrible to my face, so what if everyone was laughing at me, I told myself. It was fine, I was fine. I felt the hot tears that I had been fighting to keep at bay finally burst out of me and stream down my cheeks. They only made her laugh harder. The only word I can really use for the expression on her face then is pride. I bolted, and unlike before, Relena didn't try to grab me. I ran out of the classroom as fast as I could, but the laughter just followed me.  
    In the hallway outside the classroom, I had no idea where I was going. All I cared about was finding a mirror so I could see what was written on my forehead, and getting as far away from everyone as I could, some place no one could gawk at me. Although I had no idea where I was going, I eventually found a set of bathrooms. They were easy to spot, the only ones in the hallway that weren't the typical amber-gold color of all the other wooden doors, but a gaudy blue and pink.   
    Maybe it had been for the benefit of the kindergarteners who couldn't read the words on the doors 'boys' and 'girls' just yet. But all of the kindergarteners had to be escorted to the bathrooms by an adult, so that didn't make any sense. Maybe the people who had been in charge of painting the school had gotten fanciful or bored, I don't know. I just know is that, even the first time I saw those doors, I thought they were ugly as hell. I only had to put up with those doors for this year, though, before moving on to the grades 4-8 section of the school where the bathroom doors and lockers are all painted the our town's colors; blue for the boys and grey for the girls.   
    In case anyone does read this stupid thing, and I don't see why anyone would, we have the stupidest mascot ever, a silver and blue nautilus. Whenever our high school football team goes against our neighboring town and rivals, the Brownstone Bears, the person wearing their mascot outfit does this crude skit of eating shellfish. Which is pretty accurate since we've never won against them once. Apparently. I've never actually been to any of the games and I probably never will. For one, I'm still not in high school and don't know anyone on the team, and two, it's the kind of social event that kids like aren't welcome at.  
    I went through the blue door. By some miracle, there were no other boys using the bathroom, I even checked all the stalls to make sure. I didn't want to talk to anyone, I didn't even want to see anyone. No one had been nice to me, or wanted to talk to me, just gawk or laugh. That isn't really fair, since Relena was the only one of my classmates that had actually spoken to me, but it was how I felt back then. And they had laughed. That was what hurt me the most, that laughter. I had been scared and humiliated, and it had been a big joke to everyone. If a person laughed at you when they were crying, I think it's a fair assumption they weren't going to try to be your friend after that. That realization brought fresh tears to my eyes.  
    I stood in front of one of the many small mirrors that was hanging over each little sink, all at convenient height for someone a bit smaller than me, and I pushed my chestnut bangs away from my face. The walls in the bathroom were an eerie white, but peppered with little handprints, each a different brilliant color, and the bathroom stalls were blue with little fish painted on them. The obviously cheerful colors and fish just made me feel worse as I stared at my wide eyed reflection. On my forehead, in letters so large and thick that even someone half blind could read them from several feet away, was the word "LIAR" written in black marker.   
    I sniffled, the sound echoing in the empty room, and a few more tears escaped my reddened eyes despite my trying very hard to hold them back. I don't know why seeing it shocked me so much. It was rather obvious and uncreative, but it was still so hateful. Seeing it there, and remembering the malice on the girl's face that had put it there, made something hot and painful burst in my chest. I couldn't keep my tears at bay anymore.  
    This wasn't how my first day of school was supposed to happen! I remember very clearly thinking that with a great deal of sadness. I was supposed to make friends, have fun, and all the other things that kids got to do in those television programs I had watched. School was supposed to be someplace I could go to, to get away from my problems at home. Instead, my problems had followed me here. If I had been old enough to get the bitter humor in that like I am now, I would have laughed through my tears in that bathroom. Relena hadn't hit me like Dad does, and she hadn't hurt me in that very special, vulnerable way he does, but she wanted to hurt me like he did. She had that same contempt for me that I just couldn't understand.   
    'Liar,' I read. It wasn't true, but that didn't matter. Anyone who saw it would believe it. I felt something swallow me up, some heavy emotion that made me want to leave the school right then and never come back. Now I can put it to words. Despair. Hopelessness. I had gone to school just wanting to get along with the other kids, to be like everyone else, but I would never be like them. Not anymore, Relena had seen to that, so had my father... all those missing years. Everyone would just remember me as the liar, the boy with the words on his forehead, the one who had cried because of one girl. I would always be a freak. Who would want to be friends with a liar?  
    I snatched a bar of soap from the sink I was standing in front of and started to scrub at my forehead viciously. It wouldn't really matter if I got it off, and I knew that. They would remember, and they would tell everyone else about it. I was the freak that had lied, the kid no one knew and no one wanted to know about. As I scrubbed at my forehead, I felt my tears come harder and faster down my face. I couldn't get them to stop. My forehead became bright red, but the black print didn't fade at all. When I saw that, I gave out a frustrated cry, throwing the soap angrily into the sink where it slid and fell on the floor.  
    Rage filled my stomach, that same anger I had felt at Relena before. It made my stomach hurt, but I didn't try to pick up the soap to continue my scrubbing. Even my tears were angry, but I also felt a deep sadness. My hands were covered in green soap suds and rubbed at my forehead with them. I didn't care that I was getting soap in my hair and eyes, making them burn with more than tears. I didn't even care that I was scrubbing my skin so hard that it was starting to speckle with blood. I could feel a tiny trickle of it go down my face but told myself it was just water.  
    Just as quickly as that anger and desperation had filled me, they left me. My hands fell down at my sides like I was a marionette whose strings had been slashed, the green suds tinged pink with blood. I just stood there in front of the mirror, crying and feeling like an absolute idiot. I didn't want to go back out there. I wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out again. Even with my long bangs, how could I possibly walk out of that bathroom with those letters on my skin? If it had been a TV show, Mrs. Khushrenada would have come bursting in and hugged me, maybe told me that everything was ok, she would make sure that Relena was punished for what she had done.  
    But she didn't. And somehow I knew she wasn't going to. After all, she might know my father and mother, but to her, I was a stranger, too. A freak. I could hear a few people walking by the bathroom out in the hall, but I felt completely alone. The quiet was terrible, like the quiet after my father beat me or when my parents stopped screaming. I looked at my reflection. I looked terrible and I didn't recognize myself, my violet eyes large, my bangs plastered to my blood speckled face. I started to scrub at it again, squeezing my eyes shut so I didn't have to look at myself, and the stinging pain from the soap was actually kind of comforting.   
    I didn't understand anything, why my parents fought so much, why my dad was always so angry, why Relena had done this to me, why my classmates had laughed at me, but pain I understood. I was used to it. I had another realization when I had looked at the word on my forehead. I would rather be hit than laughed at.  
    "You're not going to get it out that way," a small but mature and familiar voice said from behind me.  
    I opened my eyes and saw the blonde boy, Quatre, reflected in the mirror. I had been petrified at the thought ot someone coming into the bathroom and seeing me cry like this, but for some reason he didn't make me feel defensive or want to run away again. Unlike Relena's piercing gaze, his sea green eyes were soothing somehow. Maybe it was because he didn't seem to judge me, or because I knew that Relena had hurt him, too. Maybe it was because he seemed to be as lonely as I felt, or didn't have many friends, just like me. Or maybe it was just because he had been the only one of my classmates who hadn't smirked, giggled, or outright laughed at me.  
    I turned from the sink to look at him eye to eye. Although he didn't make me feel as self-conscious as the other kids in our class, I felt suspicious and couldn't figure out why he had come looking for me. He looked at my forehead in shock and I felt a surge of anger, bitterness, and sadness go through me. He understood what it felt like to be picked on by that girl, but he was still gawking at her handiwork. Had she sent him here to do something else  humiliating to me, or was he just here out of perverse curiosity?  
    "You hurt yourself," he said in a pinched, pained sort of tone.  
    All of my unjustified anger at him became shame. He hadn't been gawking at the word on my forehead. He had been looking at the blood, my handiwork, not hers. I shrugged off his concern.  
    "Doesn't hurt that badly," I murmured, still feeling embarrassed at judging him so quickly.  
    It wasn't a lie. What tiny amount of damage I had done to my skin stung more than it actually hurt. I was used to bruises and broken bones. This was nothing to me. I studied Quatre while he looked at my forehead, obviously more worried about the blood than I was. I hadn't realized it before, but while I was a bit thinner than Quatre was, he was a bit shorter, his blue-green eyes bigger and his skin paler. My hair was messy and a bit long at my shoulders from not getting it cut for awhile, while his was neat and short. He was dressed a lot more nicely than I was, so I was sure he lived in the north side of town where the families that made good money, or at least a lot more than mine did, lived.  
    I probably should have been just as angry at him as I was with Relena. She might have humiliated me in front of our entire class, and written on my forehead, but even though what she had done had seemed to upset him, he hadn't tried to stop her, just like everyone else. But I wasn't. Adults always say that when you see something bad happen, you should try to stop it. When you don't, they tend to get pissed at you, like you're just as bad as the person who did that bad thing to begin with. But it's really not that easy.  
    When I was eight, I had been walking around the neighborhood. My neighbor's crazy dog had gotten out and my other neighbor, Mr. D'Angelo, had let his terrier out to use the front yard. Mr. D'Angelo's dog and the crazy dog, Brutus, can't stand each other. Even though the terrier was much smaller, he went after Brutus. Brutus grabbed the terrier by the throat and whipped him around like a rag. I had watched the whole thing from across the street, not sure what I was supposed to do.  
    After Mr. D'Angelo had come back from the vet where his dog had died from it's injuries, he had screamed at me that I should have pulled the dogs apart before it had gotten serious. I know he only turned on me like that out of grief, and because he was too scared of Brutus' owner to try to sue him, but at eight years old I had felt awful, like his dog's death really had been my fault. AT the same time, I had also understood that if I had tried to separate the two fighting dogs, I would have gotten my hand bitten off at the very least, and there was little I could have done to restrain Brutus.   
    So I could hate Quatre for not trying to help me, but I understood it. Relena just would have gone after him, too, and I'm sure there was really nothing he could have done to stop her. I could have punched, and he could have, too, but neither of us had. Besides, and honestly this was much more important to me than him trying to stop the bully, and I would even go as far to say it had truly cemented our early friendship, he hadn't laughed.  
    "D... do you know how to get it out" I asked shyly, daring to let a little bit of hope in, that a veteran of our shared bully could help me.  
    He smiled at me and that painful anger and hopelessness tht had burst in my chest retreated a little bit. This whole time one of his hands had been behind his back and he revealed a bottle of something to me. Quatre approached me with it and a part of me was fearful, wondering if he was going to pull a prank on me after all, but his smile was so soft and friendly. I just couldn't bring myself to be distrustful of him. He was small and skittish, subdued and quiet, but he was also very likeable, non-threatening, safe. I just couldn't imagine him doing something cruel to me, unlike Relena who I hadn't liked the first time I had seen her threatening him with that bottle of glue.  
    I fell back into an old habit of mine, relating people to animals. I had always preferred animals to people since I was a toddler and I had come across a stray puppy during one of the walks my dad had taken with me at the beach. Those walks are some of the only good memories I have of my father, and that day was one of the best, a day he hadn't been angry with me. He had even let me play with the puppy for awhile. I had thought about asking him if we could have taken it home, but I had known he would say no and I hadn't wanted to make him angry. Quatre reminded me of that puppy, only he was like one that had been hit a few times too many but was still sweet. He never quite got rid of that quality as we got older.   
    "The soap here isn't strong enough to get rid of marker," he told me, "But this stuff works better. They keep it in the janitor's closet, but the janitor knows me, so he let me take it and didn't ask why. When Relena and I were in pre-school and kindergarten together, she'd stay up through naptime and draw on my face," he whispered, his face blushing an uncomplimentary red. With his pale skin, his blush made him look like a cherry.  
    "Why is she so mean?" I blurted out suddenly as he opened the bottle's lid, making him pause, and I couldn't keep my voice from wavering a little.   
    Quatre gave a little shrug, but I saw the same pain that had been in my voice on his face. It made his eyes, normally the same shade of sea glass that shops here sold to tourists in the summer, turn dark.  
    "I don't know," he admitted, "Our parents are friends and they've made us play together since we were babies, but she and her older brother have always been like this to me, even though their parents are really, really nice. It's just the way they are, I guess," he said in a pondering way, as though he was actually wondering about it.  
    "What are you doing?" I asked nervously as he walked over to the sink, grabbed some paper towels, and wetted them.  
    I didn't think he was going to prank me anymore, but I could smell the stuff in the bottle he had. It reminded me of the hospital and the things the doctors had done that they said would make me better, but had made me hurt a lot worse.  
    Quatre gave me that same soft smile and I instantly felt reassured. It was a stupid reaction, I know. I didn't know him and a smile didn't mean anything, but his just had that effect on me. I didn't want to believe that someone who was cruel like Relena was could smile like that.   
    "I need to clean the blood off first or putting this stuff on your skin will make it hurt more. It probably will anyway," he explained.  
    I felt... I don't know how to describe it. Warm inside, I guess, knowing that he even cared enough to not want to hurt me. He didn't know me anymore than I knew him, but he actually did seem to care, I couldn't understand that. But it still made me feel good. I had never met someone like him before, who wasn't just pretending to care because he needed to.  
    "Why'd you scrub so hard anyway?" he asked me as he gently wiped at my forehead with the paper towels, even taking the time to get the soap out of my bangs. The water stung, but it was pleasantly warm and the attention felt oddly good, like when my father took care of me when I had had pneumonia after I had been released from the hospital.    
    "I thought it would be like doing the dishes," I told him, "and if I just scrubbed hard enough, it would just come off."  
    I didn't tell him how frustrated I had been, how angry and unconcerned about hurting myself, that I would have scrubbed even harder than I had if it had gotten those words off. I didn't think that I needed to explain that to him. He giggled a little at my explanation. I grew to find that little laugh of his cute, but I rarely ever heard it from him.   
    "Well, you hurt yourself. Be more careful!" he scolded like he thought he was my mother, although my mother had never said something like that to me.  
    Be careful. My mother had stopped regarding my presence by then and what little advice she had ever had for me had waned. I told Quatre that once, that he acted more like my mother than my mother ever had. He had just smiled that warm, but mature smile of his and said that he was glad I had someone to mother me and he didn't mind. It had made me happy. I hadn't realized it when we first met, but that was how Quatre was, sweet and kind, but with a soul of someone four times his actual age. It made him mature and very responsible, a great adult, but a terrible child. This last month, I've wondered again and again if he had been different, less worldly, Relena's bullying might have rolled off him better, but it hurts thinking that.   
    Quatre started to put the cream from the bottle onto my forehead. It stung and made my skin tingle, and when he scrubbed at it with the paper towels, it hurt worse, but I didn't even squirm. He did that three more times before washing my forehead of the stuff. It smelled gross, like something an old person had to use. I eagerly, and scared, looked at myself in the mirror. My skin was still red, but the blood was all gone and, more importantly, the only evidence of the words that had been printed so clearly and boldly on my skin were a few black smudges here and there.   
    If I hadn't had the image of that word, LIAR, imprinted in my brain, I wouldn't have been able to tell anything had been written there at one point. And really, with my long bangs, even the black smudges were barely visible. I felt such relief, such happiness and gratitude that I hugged Quatre tightly with a little squeak. He didn't seem to mind my sudden exuberance and even hugged me back a little.  
    "All better now?" he asked as I let go of him.  
    I nodded excitedly.  
    "I thought I'd never get it off," I said and I couldn't help the tremor of fear that I had felt at that thought.  
    He giggled again, but this time it sort of sounded sad.  
    "It would have come off sooner or later," he assured me, "but probably not for weeks. It's easier this way," he shuffled his feet a little, looking up at me a bit shyly, "My name's Quatre Winner, by the way."  
    "Duo Maxwell," I said and for once, my name didn't bother me that much. He didn't even make fun of it.  
    "We should get back to class," Quatre said, suddenly realizing that we really shouldn't have been out of class, "If Mrs. Khushrenada finds out we left, she might call our parents," he warned.  
    I felt a little bit of fear at that, knowing how pissed my father would be if I got into trouble at my very first day here, but I had an even bigger fear.  
    "Even if they can't see it, they'll laugh at me," I murmured.  
    I didn't want to go back in there, I didn't want to hear that laughter and see the malice in that girl's eyes again. But then Quatre took his hand in mine and almost immediately I felt better, like just having one person who had helped me and hadn't made fun of me gave me a bit of courage.  
    "Yes they will," he said, his honestly a bit cruel, but I liked it a lot better than if he had lied to me, "but I won't."  
  
  
End Part 1  
  
Author's note 2: As you can see, I changed quite a bit and I hope it makes the story a better read. I've decided I'm going to stick with this story for as long as I can, see how far I can get before I move on to the next story. This story has collected dust for quite some time, lol.   
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
  
  
  



	2. Chapter 1 Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Continuation of chapter 1. Duo learns more about his new friend and his bully.

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 1   
Part 2  
  
  
March 3, 2004 (cont'd)  
  
  
    They did laugh. Well, they mostly snickered as Quatre and I walked back into the classroom, my face beet red with embarrassment, and I could see a few of them whispering to each other, and then giggling harder, and I could hear Relena's shrill crowing above all of the chuckles. It should have mortified me, but as I walked into the room, I suddenly realized that I didn't care. I had before but now, with Quatre literally walking by my side, and knowing that there was one person not laughing at me, it didn't bother me anymore. It did on some level. Deep down that laughter still hurt and mortified me, but not in any way that mattered, and not enough to make me bolt again.   
    Then Relena actually looked at me and saw that there weren't any marker marks on my forehead. A few kids continued to giggle, but she fell quiet. The sadistic glimmer and mirth that had been all over her face instantly disappeared and was replaced by a rage and icy hate that did not belong on any child's face. In that moment, it was like my father was glaring at me from the mask of someone else's face. It terrified me at the same time I felt some satisfaction that I had beaten her, thanks to my... my new friend. That realization was enough to warm the ice that Relena's glare had put around my heart. I had a friend. I expected her to try something as the two of us made our ways to our desks, but she just kept staring. Barely two minutes after we sat down, Mrs. Khushrenada came bustling back into the room, looking hurried and flustered.  
    "I am so sorry, class," she said and actually did manage to sound apologetic, "that took a bit longer than I thought it would," she glanced down at her watch and did a double take, "a _lot_ longer," she said with a sigh, "Well, time for lunch and recess, we'll just have to pick up our lesson when all of you get back-"  
    The rest of what our teacher had to say was drowned out by the cheering of my classmates. I had thought it was chaotic before, seeing them run around the classroom when Mrs. Khushrenada had been gone, but that was nothing compared to watching all of them scramble pulling their lunches out of their desks and running at full speed out of the door past our flustered teacher. It was like watching a stampede of wild horses. In mere seconds, the only people in the classroom were me, Mrs. Khushrenada, and Quatre. He made an immediate beeline for me and I felt this intense happiness burst inside of me. I think a part of me had been scared that while I now considered him my friend, he didn't feel the same way and had just wanted to be helpful before.  
    "Do you know where the cafeteria is?" he asked me and I realized that he even though he didn't recognize me from the previous years he had been at this school, he also wasn't assuming I was as clueless as I was.  
    "This is my first day at public school," I admitted in a shamed mutter, "I don't know where anything is."  
    I thought he might make fun of me for that, or make some kind of assumption why I hadn't gone before, but he took me by surprise again.  
    "Oh," he said simply, not losing his bright smile, "I'll have to show you around then."  
    I was stunned for a moment, but I quickly recovered and grabbed my book bag, following the other boy out of the classroom. I kept trying to see what I had always seen in other people in him. I felt like anyone else would have accused me of being retarded or something, so Quatre had to as well. But every time I expected him to judge me for something, he took me at face value. I didn't know how to handle that. I don't think I ever really learned how to take it beyond a simple realization I had that first day I had met him. When I had asked him why Relena was so mean, he had said that maybe it was just who she was, something that wasn't meant to be understood or changed. Maybe this was just how Quatre was, and it would be pointless for me to do anything but accept that.   
    The elementary school only has one cafeteria, this large open space filled with tables, snack and soda machines, various posters about nutrition and after school activities covering the mica flecked, tiled walls. It was much, much louder than our classroom. Teachers bustled about, breaking up fights and telling kids to 'use your inside voice'. But the second the teacher walked off to another problem, the yelling would just start up again. Thankfully, certain grades ate at certain times, so we just had to share the cafeteria with the third graders and not the upper grades.   
    Quatre found an empty table in the far corner of the room where few kids were. I sat down with him and looked around with interest. We were far away from the area where some kids were buying food, but I could still smell the intoxicating aroma of hamburgers and mac n' cheese. The kids in the tables next to us had been chatting friendly with each other until they had seen Quatre and I approach. I recognized most of them from our class and they went stony silent when we passed by them. I realized that they thought we were trying to sit at the same tables as them, and clearly didn't want us to. A few of them even started spreading their backpacks and lunch boxes on the empty seats to make sure we couldn't sit down. I wanted to scream at them that it was ok, I didn't want to sit with them, either.   
    Even as the other tables got crowded, no one tried to sit with us. I glanced at Quatre a few times and saw how happy he seemed as he pulled out his lunch from his lunch bag. Beyond that happiness, I saw painful relief. He wasn't just my only friend, I was his, and I wasn't the only reason why no one was sitting with us. That thought brought equal sadness and relief to me. I watched him as he ate a cheese and bologna sandwich and felt my own hunger.   
    "Where's your lunch?" he suddenly asked as though he realized I had been staring at his food and not him.  
    "I didn't bring anything," I admitted with a blush.   
    I didn't want to tell him that I hadn't really known what to expect from today, and I was so used to skipping meals at home that the thought to bring food hadn't occurred to me.   
    "Why don't you buy something?"  
    I blushed even harder.  
    "I don't have any money," I murmured.  
    "Your parents didn't give you any?" he asked, perplexed.  
    When I shook my head, he looked oddly horrified, like he couldn't imagine my parents sending me off to my very first day of school unprepared. I guess that sort of thing wouldn't fly at all at the Winner household. Quatre's parents were always prepared for everything, always leaving him anything he might need before they left for work, everything except for the time of day, or their attention. My problems at home were mostly because of my interaction with my father and my lack of interaction with my mother. Most of Quatre's problems were exclusively the latter.   
    Quatre dug around in his backpack and pulled out a fist of one dollar bills. He thrust them at me.  
    "Here, you can get whatever you like with this," he said.   
    I stared at the bills like they were some kind of monster I expected to come and bite me. I felt my face go red hot for some reason and I just didn't know what to say to him. No one had just offered money to me like that before. Quatre had absolutely no reason to buy my lunch for me, so I was at a loss of what to do.   
    "I can't pay you back," I started to protest.  
    I never had cash. Dad would sometimes give me a couple of bucks if he had change, but I would always use them to buy books or food that he had forgotten to buy. I knew that some kids got paid to do chores, but it wasn't like that at my house. I had to do those chores whether I got paid or not, and my parents never had spare money to give me. What money they had went to bills, food, and alcohol. Whenever I dared to ask my dad for some, his only response had always been 'what the hell does a kid like you need money for, buzz off.'  
    "I don't want you to pay me back," Quatre interrupted me, "I always pack my lunch anyway and I get paid allowance at the end of the week. This is just what's left of last month's."  
    That didn't make me feel any better, it made me feel worse. It didn't feel right to me, taking money from someone who was my friend (my only friend) and not giving it back. I was about to argue with him about it, to say to him that it was fine, I wasn't that hungry, but I saw this rare hardness in his eyes amidst the kindness and realized he would fight me on this. It was the only subject Quatre and I had consistently fought about in our friendship, him giving me money. The way he saw it, he never needed all of the money his parents gave him and I always needed more money, so the solution was simple. The way I saw it, I was accepting hand outs and it made me feel pathetic. I know he didn't mean for it to feel that way, but it just made me feel like shit.   
    I had just made this friend, and I was scared of losing him, even to something so petty as me not wanting to take his money, so I took the singles and got into line with the other kids to get my food. Everyone makes fun of school cafeteria food, and I'm sure it's nothing to get excited about, but meals at home consisted to food heated up out of a can or frozen dinners or cheap take out. I was used to greasy, bland, and generic food, so the food from the school cafeteria was probably better than the food I was getting at home. I was probably one of the only kids that was actually excited to see green vegetables and those little cups of fruit. Hamburgers were cheap and easy for us to buy, fruit wasn't. When I had been little, my dad would come home with a banana or orange for me as treats but they weren't things that he usually bought in bulk.   
    A few kids cut in front of me in line every now and then, but I didn't speak up against it. It was irritating, but I kept remembered Relena and how she had pushed me in the classroom. I just wanted to get through the rest of this day. I didn't want to fight with anyone or get bullied again, so I let them cut me. As I finally got to the front of the line, I saw that in addition to hamburgers, they were also serving a rich beef stew. The smell of it was overpowering, but not many kids were getting it, opting for the burgers or hot dogs. The person handing out the food even gave me a strange look when I asked for it excitedly.   
    Counting the money Quatre had given me carefully, I also got french fries, a fruit cup, a chocolate milk, and some peas, my favorite vegetable. The lunch lady asked me twice if I really wanted that. I guess she hadn't been getting many requests for stew and french fries, but it was the first time in my life that I had been able to choose my food for myself, and the only time I had been able to splurge on something I wanted. I couldn't think of a single reason why I shouldn't get what I wanted, it wasn't like anyone was there to tell me no.  
    I felt oddly giddy as I took my cafeteria tray packed with hot, fresh food and walked back towards our table. I couldn't remember the last time I had been this happy. I shouldn't have been. I had made a friend, and that was miraculous to me, but I had also made an enemy, and in my happiness I had forgotten that. In those brief moments, I had forgotten what it was like at home, that even in those moments when my dad was nice to me, I was always on my toes, waiting for the tide to change. This kind of happiness was new to me, and it was nice to have it, even if it didn't last very long.  
    On my trek across the cafeteria, someone bumped into me hard enough that I almost lost my balance. The person grabbed my tray to keep steady and an apology was already on my lips, even though they had been the ones to bump into me. Then I saw the hard blue eyes of the person glaring at me. It was strange, at the same time that the expression on that person's face was a glare, it wasn't precisely angry. It was more like they were trying to appear angry while lacking any real heat. But there was plenty of disgust and irritation there, and that was perfectly real.   
    "Watch where you're going, freak!" Relena snapped and I automatically flinched from her.  
    She let go of my tray and stormed off, but as she turned to go, I caught her smirking with satisfaction. I shrugged it off as her being smug about my flinch and continued on my way. I should have been more suspicious about it, but I had been young then and I hadn't really understood the level of contempt the girl had for me. I had, naively, thought that after her writing on my face and our removing it, she would leave me alone at least for a little while, or she would try something similar. I had already decided to try to not let her get to me, so I pushed her bumping into me out of my mind. But as I sat down, Quatre seemed much more subdued than before, and was studying me with a searching look. He was doing enough worrying for the both of us.  
    "What did she say to you?" he asked quietly.  
    I shrugged.  
    "Nothing, really," I assured him.  
    I dug my plastic spork into my bowl of stew, spearing a piece of beef with the pointy fork bit and gathering up some broth with the spoon bit of the bizarre utensil. I honestly didn't care about the taste. It was a hot meal, something I hadn't had in awhile. The past two weeks had been left over meals; salads that had been on the verge of spoiling that my mother had taken home from her waitressing jobs, cold pizza my dad had brought home from one of his many dinners out with his cop buddies, and cold tuna sandwiches.  
    "Don't eat that!" Quatre suddenly snapped at me.  
    Instinct from a lifetime of obeying orders often snapped at me like that made me drop my spoon. I looked at him in shock and then down at my food. I promptly fought the urge to throw up. I had been so eager to eat my lunch, one of the best ones I had had for awhile, I hadn't even really looked down at what it was I was eating. Writhing and squirming in my dark brown stew were a bunch of small, pink worms. Someone had just dumped them in there and I doubted that the lunch lady had mistaken them for noodles, which the stew didn't even have.  
    A part of my disgust came from knowing I had been mere seconds from eating the worms, but mostly it came from anger, I didn't need anyone to point out to me how the worms had gotten there, but I had never thought she would have sunk this low to humiliate me. Worse, I had been looking forward to this meal and she had ruined it, all for a disgusting prank. I wanted to scream. I wanted to walk right up to her and dump my food, worms and all, on her head.   
    "Relena," Quatre muttered and for the very first time, I heard real anger in his voice.  
    His anger shocked me a little simply because it didn't belong coming from the sweet, kind boy that had paid for my lunch and washed the marker off of my forehead. It was like hearing a lion's roar come from a house cat.   
    I looked down at my food again. There were just five worms that I could see squirming around in the broth. They seemed as eager to get out of the soupy mess as I wanted them to. Who knew when I was going to have such a big meal again? I could throw out the stew and just eat the rest of the food, I supposed, but I didn't want to. It was a waste of money and food. And I wanted it. It wasn't like she had dumped poison in there, what right did I have to throw good food away? More importantly, I didn't want Relena to win.   
    Despite my grimace as I did so, I carefully and gently picked out each worm from the bowl and placed them on an empty spot on my tray. They continued to wiggle around frantically, looking for cool dirt that wasn't there, I guess. I felt guilty, or at least sympathetic towards them. I guess that's strange, they were just worms, but Relena had intended for me to eat them. Like me, they hadn't done anything to deserve it. They were gross, and the thought of almost swallowing one of them made me gag, but I didn't want to kill them just because they were gross. Quatre watched all of this with confusion, obviously not understanding what I was thinking, then his face twisted into repulsion as I ate a spoonful of now worm free stew. It was delicious.  
    "That's gross," he said, opening his mouth and sticking out his tongue to demonstrate his disgust.  
    "It's tasty," I teased and ate another spoonful. I had no idea what worms tasted like, but I couldn't taste anything except for beef and broth, "It's perfectly good food, no reason to throw it out, and I can put the worms back in the dirt at recess."  
    Quatre's look of repulsion slowly turned into a soft smile as I explained. He looked... almost affectionate, even though we had only met a few hours ago.  
    "You're weird, Duo," he said, but he giggled as he said it, taking the hurt out of a word that would have been a biting insult from anyone else.  
    "Is that bad?" I asked shyly.  
    Although he had laughed about it, I was still incredibly nervous that what I had just done was really gross and strange. I worried that I had lost my only friend only an hour after making one. But I hadn't needed to worry, true to how he had always been up until then, Quatre smiled and nodded his head.  
    "Nah," he grinned, "I like weird."  
  
*****  
  
    Nothing else extraordinary happened during lunch. We were left alone, but the entire time I had the feeling that someone was watching me. It might have been in my head, but I was sure Relena was watching me, waiting for me to find her little surprise and scream or throw up or something else embarrassing. I almost looked around the room to try to see where she was, but I didn't want to give her even that much satisfaction. We ate quickly, I didn't want the worms to get dried out and die.  
    At recess, the horde of kids ran out into the play area behind the school, most of the kinds jumping on the swings or jungle gym. I went right for a bunch of bushes near the woods at the edge of the playground, far from the other kids, and put the worms in the soil under the bushes so birds would have a hard time seeing them. Unlike Quatre, I really didn't mind holding them with my bare hands that much, it had just been the idea of eating them alive that had grossed me out. I felt oddly smug at that moment. I had not only thwarted Relena's attempts to gross me out, I had managed to save the worms, too.  
    Quatre and I stayed at the edge of the woods, close enough that the teachers could see us, but as far away from Relena that we could get. She didn't bother us, staying on the swings with a couple other girls I assumed must be her friends. It would have been nice to play on the jungle gym, but both Name and I were paranoid about Relena, and we had plenty of fun by ourselves anyway.  
    We played silly kids games like rock, paper, scissors, climbed a few of the smaller trees, and drew in the soft dirt with sticks. I had never played with another kid before. It was nice, everything that I had hoped my first day of school would be. It's ironic. Relena had effectively destroyed any likelihood I would be friends with our other classmates by making me her target, but in doing so, she had pretty much thrown Quatre and I together. I like to think we would have been friends anyway, but I don't know.  
    I didn't feel as nervous and skittish out on the playground as I had in the classroom, even with Mrs. Khushrenada watching. I felt trapped in that room and I didn't trust my teacher to help me if Relena tried anything. At least out on the playground I had plenty of space to run from her, and I wasn't ashamed to say that that was exactly what I would do if she approached us, no matter who would make fun of me for it. I didn't want to interact with the bully at all at that point. She never did approach us, though, even when we shuffled back into the classroom. I didn't dare to hope that she might leave us alone, though.   
    To my reluctance, we dove right back into math after recess. Mrs. Khushrenada had us working on more complex division problems, something that made me very flustered. Even with what my dad had shown me, I struggled with it. There were just so many little tricks and methods Mrs. Khushrenada was showing us that were new to everyone, and I had just learned only the bare essentials that my classmates had been working on all last year. When Mrs. Khushrenada called me up to the board to work on a problem, I was so horrified I thought I was going to die. I got through half of the problem before I got stuck and all I could do was stare at the chalk marks I had made like an idiot.  
    Unsurprisingly, Relena's laugh was the first one I heard, but the others were quick to follow. I hurt just as much as when they had all laughed at me before. My hands shook and whatever chance I had had at remembering how to finish the problem was gone. My head was blank, all I could hear was the laughter and all I could think about was my embarrassment, and how stupid I felt. Mrs. Khushrenada snapped at my classmates not to laugh at me and they finally quieted, but it didn't make me feel any better. She and Quatre had been the only ones who hadn't laughed. Looking pained and sympathetic, she let me go back to my seat.  
    I sat through the rest of the math lesson feeling sick to my stomach and very sad. When we moved on to our vocabulary, I raised my hand and asked to use the bathroom. I couldn't afford to miss the math lesson, as much as I hated it, but there weren't any words on the vocabulary work sheets Mrs. Khushrenada had handed out that I didn't already know. I could tell that my teacher knew I didn't actually need to go to the bathroom, but she let me be excused anyway. I left the classroom and went to the same bathroom that I had that morning.  
    I had a cruel sense of deja vu and wondered if this was going to be a habit, running into the boys' bathroom whenever my class laughed at me like a gopher into its den to hide from predators. I had thought that having a friend would make it better, and it had, but it still hurt and had me almost in tears, but this time I was able to hold them in. Would I ever be like the other kids in my class and just blend in? Would I ever have a ton of friends I could play with, would I ever understand all those math problems like they did, would I ever understand why Relena hated me so much and why the other kids didn't care about what she did? Would I always be the freak?  
    I felt lost. The confusion about my isolation made the pain worse, and it would take me over a year of this to finally realize the truth. I could ace all of my math tests, I could talk to all of the kids in my class and try to get to know them. I could be charming and funny and smart, and find a way to fight back against Relena. None of it mattered and none of it would change anything. I was different and I would always be different, the kind of different that wasn't cool or rebellious. In the end, I would still be poorer than most of the kids I went to school with. I would still come to school in bruises, still not have anyone to pick me up after school or buy me the same new, fashionable clothes and toys my classmates had. I would never have anyone to pack my lunch for me, sign off on field trips, or pay to have me take an extracurricular activity. I could never be like them and I would never have what they had.  
    But I had Quatre. I might not have a ton of friends to hang out with like the other kids seemed to have, but I had one true friend. I had someone who smiled at me and actually meant it, who never made fun of me and liked that I was strange. As far as I was concerned, I would rather have Quatre as a friend than each of the kids that had laughed. I looked at my reflection in the mirror. My forehead wasn't red like it had been before and I wasn't as paled or wide eyed as I had been that morning. If I had to really analyze it, bullying and all, I was a lot happier now than I had been when I had walked into the school for the first time.   
    I heard the bathroom door open and after all that thinking about my new friend, I was sure it would be him again. But it wasn't. To my shock, Relena stood there in the mirror, the bright lights of the bathroom bringing out the gold in her light brown hair for the first time. I felt a shock of fear go through me and again thought about how ridiculous it was to be afraid of this girl. Being afraid of my father had become second nature for me. He was bigger and strong, and I knew the kind of damage he could do to me when he was angry, but being afraid of Relena made me feel pathetic. But the fear was just as real because, no matter what she did to me, I couldn't fight back against her. Boys didn't hit girls, so what could I do? And in a way, she was just as frightening as my father with that mix of intense malice and glee on her face.  
    I turned to look at her, feeling that sense of deja vu again, only instead of someone coming in here to help me, it was the person that had driven me to run in here to begin with. I suddenly felt very angry. Was there nowhere in the entire school I could go to get away from her?! What terrible thing had she followed me in here to do this time? She didn't even seem all that concerned that she had just walked into the boys' bathroom. She just strutted in like she didn't care, like she could do whatever she wanted, angered me.   
    I wish I had the courage to strike her, especially as I wondered if she had done stuff like this to Quatre. It was so ludicrous, I couldn't even protect myself from her, but I wanted to protect him. I thought of asking her why she hated me so much. Why me, out of all the other kids? And what was the point of it? But I realized that I didn't actually care. Quatre's family was well off, given his clothing, and they had been friends since they had been babies, but she still picked on him. And Quatre was so nice, her reasons for picking on him, no matter what they were, didn't make sense to me. I crossed my arms over my chest and glowered at her, trying to mimic the same look my dad had that scared me so badly, but I was sure I was sucking at it. It's awfully hard to look imposing when you're just a kid, even to other kids.  
    "You can't be in here," I said in what I hoped was a solid, authoritative  voice, "This is the boy's room. You're not a boy," I said obviously.  
    She smirked at me, intimidated one bit, and walked by me as though she were rubbing my face in her boldness. I felt the hair on the back of my neck rise up, the same way they did when my dad came home in a bad mood and I just knew something terrible was about to happen. I wanted to get out of there, but she was too close to the door and I didn't want to get near her. My head still ached a little from hitting the desk earlier when she had pushed me.  
    "How did you get rid of it?" she suddenly snapped at me, bewildering me until she looked at my forehead, "And how did you know about the worms?! I thought you might like them, since you're nothing but a worm yourself, but Quatre helped you, didn't he?! I guess it's true, scum sticks together!"  
    Oddly, her calling Quatre scum rankled me worse than her calling me a worm. He _wasn't_ scum, and I was about to protest that to her when it came to me that she wanted me to be flustered and defensive. She was trying to make me rat out Quatre, to betray him to her for helping me. Would she go after him for it? I imagined that she would, and even if she wouldn't, there was no way I was going to do that. Quatre was my friend, the only person in the world who _wanted_ to be my friend. I would never betray him, no matter the reason.  
    I shrugged.  
    "They were easy to spot," I lied, "It was just so obvious, I found them quickly."  
    Her pale face flushed red with anger and she looked like she wanted to scratch my face off in her rage.  
    "You have to realize that he'll never be friends with you," she sneered, her anger making her look like a snarling wolf, seeing through my deflection, "Even someone as terribly stupid as you has to know that. Quatre's rich! The Winner's are one of the richest families in town, along with mine, what does he need with poor trailer trash like you? He just feels sorry for you, but at the end of the day, he'll remember that you're trash and he's not. He'll dump you like spoiled fruit."  
    My heart twisted with anxiety. I knew it wasn't true, not really. Quatre would never be that cruel, he wasn't like _her_. But all the same, it hurt because there was a sliver of truth in it. I was dirt poor and Quatre was rich. I didn't know why he would want to be friends with me, especially someone that no one else liked. Did he pity me or was just friends with me because we were both being bullied? No, that didn't seem like the boy I had just been playing with. Maybe I just didn't want it to be true, because then I would have to admit to myself that Relena was right, that Quatre didn't really want to be friends with me. But even if it was just pity, I wanted to be his friend. He had been kind to me, and even someone who was just hanging around me for those reasons was better than being completely alone.  
    "I don't care," I told her sharply and honestly, "Even if he's using me, he's still nicer than you are."  
    I remembered everything she had done with me that day with vivid clarity, her attacks, her hatred, her confidence that she could do whatever she wanted and not get into trouble for it, but I was still incredibly unprepared when that rage on her face exploded and she suddenly grabbed at my hair, shoving my head into the poor of water that had collected in a clogged urinal. The water was just deep enough to submerge my face, making it impossible to breathe as she held my head down. The water lapped around my ears, making the sounds outside of the water muffled, like nothing was real except for that water and my inability to breathe. I tried to grab at the sides of the urinal so I could get the leverage to shove her back and get out of the water, but the sides were too slippery for me to get a good purchase on.  
    Panic filled me and only my desperate need to not drown, especially in something as pathetic as a urinal kept me from screaming in fear. But even in my panic, I couldn't believe that it was happening. Was she really going to kill me, all because I wouldn't betray Quatre and had told her that she wasn't nice? My lungs burning and my head buzzing with a thousand thoughts and feelings, none of them pleasant, I came to another epiphany. No one would care if I died. Relena probably wouldn't even get into trouble for it. My parents would probably thank her for doing them the service and freeing them of me after all this time. Quatre would care, but eventually he would get over it and realize he was better off without me, just like everyone in my life. How old I was didn't matter, that this wasn't fair didn't matter. I had never felt more useless than I did at that moment realizing that I couldn't think of a single reason why she shouldn't drown me other than I just didn't want to die.   
    "Drink it, drink it!" I heard her screaming like an animal through a world that made everything sound like my head was stuffed in a pillow.  
    I didn't want to give in to her. That's a stupid thing to say when my lungs were hurting and my head was swimming from a lack of oxygen I guess, but it didn't even have anything to do with not wanting to drink the dirty urinal water. I just didn't want to let her win. I didn't want to give her the satisfaction of surrendering to her. It was incredibly petty, and I knew if I gave in to that pettiness I was going to die. I probably will die because of that stubborn streak in me one day, either from fighting against people like Relena, or my father. I never won in my entire life, and just once I wanted to. But in the end, I was terrified and my chest hurt too much.   
    Just like I always did, I gave in. I drank in the foul tasting water in huge gulps, wanting to vomit from the bitter, flat, stagnant taste of it, but I almost cried in joy as I felt Relena let go of my head, letting me lurch out of the water. I coughed and gagged, taking in great, big breaths, the air tasting sweet and fresh and wonderful to me. I heard her laughter through the sound of my own heart pounding in my ears. It was like the sound of fingernails scraping against a chalkboard. I didn't even try to stand, my legs were still shaking, I just slumped against the wall gasping, my bangs stuck to my forehead, the front of my shirt sloshed with water. I wanted to cry so badly, but I just felt empty. What was the point, I asked myself, it wasn't like it would make a difference. I wouldn't be able to tell if they were tears at all or just more dirty water.  
    I was angry at what she had just done to me. How had she escalated from humiliating me in front of our entire class to trying to kill me in revenge? I tried to find the rage I had had earlier when she had walked into the bathroom, but it was mysteriously gone. I was starting to understand that there was just no winning against her. Even if I did hit her, I doubted she would stop. I was just trash, like she had said, a poor boy from the other side of town from her. She had more friends than I did, more money, nicer parents. She even had more anger and hate than I did. What could I possibly do?   
    I stayed there in the bathroom with my back against the cold tiled wall and just concentrated on getting air back into my burning lungs. My eyes were red and irritated from the water, my vision so blurry I might as well have been crying. I heard Relena leave and almost laughed at the pathetic image I had to have given her. I hoped she was happy with her handiwork. When I was absolutely sure she was gone and wasn't coming back, and I wasn't shaking so hard, I got up and stood at the sink. I didn't look at my reflection. The thought of doing so, at seeing what I looked like, repulsed me. I wrung out my shirt and hair as best I could, at least so I wasn't dripping water.   
    When I walked into the classroom, vocabulary had become geography. Mrs. Khushrenada had her back to the class, using a pointer to point at a poster of the United States map she had pulled down in front of the chalkboard. I was able to walk past her and sit down in my seat without her seeing how wet I was. She didn't seem to realize that my and Relena going to the bathroom at around the same time had been significant and I was actually relieved about that. My classmates did notice though and I heard a mixture of subdued giggles and snickers as I sat down. I felt defeated. Every giggle I heard, I wanted to punch something even more. My father was right. I was weak and pathetic and that's all I would ever be. I ignored my anger and just sat and stared blankly at the chalkboard instead until the sounds of mirth and mocking settled down.     Worried about what Quatre thought about all this, I glanced over at him. He was looking at me with an incredibly concerned expression, like he wanted to go over to me and ask if I was ok. I smiled at him even though it was the last thing I felt like doing. My friend smiled back at me and just like that, my own smile felt much more real. Just like that, my feelings of defeat vanished, and that itself felt like a kind of victory to me. Relena could hurt me. She could make me doubt myself. She could even, obviously, try to kill me, but she hadn't taken Quatre away from me.   
    The end of the school day was surreal for me. I shouldered my backpack and headed out to the parking lot with Quatre. He hadn't asked me about what had happened in the bathroom yet and I didn't volunteer the information. I was still too shook up by it. We watched Relena closely as she walked up to a sleek black car that had just pulled up the school, like a limo picking up a celebrity. From the opposite entrance of ours, where the older kids came out, a tall boy joined her getting into the car. He had the same blue eyes that Relena did, but his hair was dyed silver, pulled back into a lazy ponytail. He must be the brother Quatre told me about, I thought. He didn't have her too perfect appearance, his hair messy and his clothes just as lazily assembled as his hair, but there was no mistaking those hard blue eyes.  
    "That's Zechs Dorlian," Quatre informed me, "Stay far away from him. He's much worse than Relena. Lucy Stephen told me that last year he broke some kid from the lower grades' arm just for looking at him funny."  
    I looked at my friend in shock. It was almost impossible for me to believe there was someone out there worse than Relena, but I decided to trust Quatre. I wouldn't so much as look at Zechs Dorlian, I decided and hoped we never crossed paths. I didn't want to get my arm broken, both of them had already been broken enough already.     The school day really was over, I realized as I watched their car leave the parking lot along with a bunch of others. I didn't know if I should be happy or sad about that. On the one hand, I had survived the day and Relena couldn't do anything else to me. On the other hand, I would have to say goodbye to Quatre. And I would have to go back home. At least my father wouldn't be home until later, but that was little comfort to me at that moment. I was sure that, since Relena had said that Quatre's family was rich, his family would be picking him up from school, too, but he didn't even look for a car. He just kept walking past the parking lot and off of school grounds.   
    I followed my friend, even when he walked the opposite way that I lived, to the wealthier side of town. I was sure he knew that I didn't live this way, but I hoped that he also understood that I wanted to spend as much time with him as I could. Maybe he even realized that I was hesitant to go home, but I don't think so. During that walk to Quatre's house, passing beautiful house after beautiful house with rich, green lawns, swimming pools, and cars I didn't even see in my part of Nausten, I got a taste of my first real shame towards my own home and my own neighborhood. I was incredibly glad that I was following him and not the other way around. I didn't want him to see where I lived. I especially did not want him to meet my parents. What would he think of my gruff, cold father or my mother who even in those days had spent most of her life in a bottle?   
    Instead of mutts and large, aggressive dogs that I often saw with my neighbors walking our neighborhood, I saw people out walking tiny dogs that looked more like stuffed animals than actual dogs. They yapped at us as we walked by, their owners not bothered by their behavior one bit, but Quatre just calmly walked past them. They reminded me of Relena for a moment, well groomed, but with a nasty temperament. I love animals, but I didn't like those dogs at all and I still don't. I much preferred the feral cats that prowled our neighborhood. Like me, they were underfed and scruffy, but they weren't as mean as Brutus was. I talked to them a lot and was nice to them, giving them scraps of food when I could, and they had gotten used to me enough to let me pet them. I always wanted to take one of them home, but knew that I never could.  
    "Why don't your parents pick you up from school?" I asked as we walked.  
    Most of the kids that lived on this side of the town got picked up, while a lot of the kids on my side took either the school bus or the public one. It wasn't that long of a walk to this side of town from the school and I made the commute on foot to my house which was further, but it was long enough that it made it odd his parents hadn't been there.   
    "I'm a latch-key kid," Quatre told me.  
    I gave him a puzzled look. I had never heard that expression before.  
    "What's that?" I asked, tilting my head in confusion before my worries about him thinking I was stupid could stop me.  
    It was the sort of question my father would have made fun of me for, but Quatre didn't. He treated me like I had always wished my parents would when I had questions like that, answering my question with patience instead of irritation.  
    "It means that my parents aren't around much. My mom and dad run this big company, so they have a long commute. By the time I wake up to go to school, they're already gone, and by the time they get home, I'm asleep. I only really see them on the weekends, but they're always on the phone or running off to emergency meetings. I have six sisters, but they're all too old to really bother with me. They make dinner for me and help me with my homework, but most of the time they're out with friends. So I'm used to being on my own at home. Technically, my mother is just my step-mom. My real mom died when I was really little and my dad remarried. I guess my older sisters were really messed up about it, so they don't get along that well. I was too young to remember my real mother, but my new mom treats me like she treats my sisters anyway. So even when she is home, she talks mostly with my dad. I'm alone more than I see any of them. I have to unlock the door when I get home since I'm the first one home and make my lunches because my mom forgets stuff like that a lot," Quatre explained to me.   
    He sounded so sad as he said it. Sad, lonely, and abandoned. All the emotions I felt every day, whether it was from my mother's cold shoulder or my father's abrasiveness. I wanted to hug him so badly, but I didn't know if Quatre would appreciate it or if it would make him uncomfortable.  
    "I haven't seen my father in a week," he murmured so softly under his breath that I was sure that he hadn't meant for me to hear it.  
    I almost did hug him then, but settled for standing close to him, our hands almost touching. If I could go back in time to that moment, knowing what I do now, older and more self-aware and just more aware in general, I would tell him that I would never abandon him like his fucking family had. If he had been my brother, I wouldn't have made him feel lonely by getting caught up in only my own problems. Not now when I know better, after I learned that mistake the hard way. If he came back into my life, I would always protect him, no matter what happened to me or how much it hurt. He deserved that much from me. I would love him, and I always will.  
    But at nine years old, I didn't know what I know now at thirteen, and I didn't know how to be a real friend until I found myself alone again. Instead, I decided to share with him some things about my own family. It had only seemed fair.  
    "My dad's a cop," I told him, "and my mom waitresses at two different places. They're pretty busy at their jobs, and sometimes my dad doesn't come home, but I still see them a lot. But even though they're there, they don't talk to me that much. They ignore me most of the time. And I'm an only child, so it can get pretty lonely at times."  
    Quatre stopped walking and smiled at me, that smile full of both understanding and sadness. I looked at the house we had stopped at. It was huge! I remember thinking that I could understand how lonely it might be in a house that big, even if you had six sisters. I wanted to be jealous of Quatre. He had money and siblings and a big, beautiful house to live in, but I didn't. I had never thought a person with this kind of life would have any of my problems, but looking at his loneliness was like looking in a mirror.  
    He suddenly reached out his hand to me, his hand curled into a fist with his pinky extended.  
    "Do you know how to pinky swear?" he asked me, his eyes both soft and serious.  
    I shook my head. There was a lot I hadn't known back then. He gestured to his hand and I caught on to copy him, watching in fascination when he curled his pinky around mine. His finger felt soft and warm.  
    "Like this," he said and shook my hand a little with our pinkies linked, "Let's promise that no matter what happens we'll always be friends, we'll never abandon each other or be lonely."  
    An incredibly warmth and happiness filled my chest at that moment and I nodded eagerly.  
    "Ok," I agreed, "I promise."  
    It turned out to be a promise neither of us could keep, but for that moment I felt like I might die from the happiness I felt as we made that promise. We let go of each other's fingers and said goodbye. I watched him unlock the large gate in front of his house and disappear inside. The warmth inside of me turned to pain. I told myself that it was ok, I would be seeing him tomorrow, but it didn't help how I felt.  
    Walking back to the poor side of town was both terrible and long. It was like watching pristine paint peel away and reveal something ugly underneath. Mini mansions and manicured lawns melted away into convenience stores and homes badly in need of repair, pedigree dogs turned into mutts, and neighbors exchanging pleasantries became hardened teenagers with nothing more to do but smoke outside the bars they weren't allowed to go into and glare at anyone passing by them. Our house wasn't any better in reality, but it wasn't quite as rundown as some of the other buildings on our street. The paint was aged and some of the wood was rotten and needed to be replaced, but my dad wasn't apathetic like some of our neighbors. He kept up with what repairs he could on the weekends, complaining about it the whole time. The real problems our home had came from expenses and the way it looked. There was no reason to spend money and time on repainting it when the plumbing needed to be fixed.  
    My mother was sitting on our front step, already halfway into a bottle of wine at that point. It must have been a bad day. By the time I had reached the seventh grade this year, she had upgraded from wine to vodka. Her grey eyes were cloudy and bloodshot, the lines on her face showing. As the years went by, those lines would get deeper and more pronounced. Her drinking would get much more frequent and she would look a good ten years older than she was, at least.   
    "Hi, Mom, I'm back from school," I greeted in a soft voice, mindful of the headaches she was often plagued by.  
    My mother continued to look past me, like I didn't exist, and in her frequent drunk stupors, to her I didn't. I took the first few steps onto our porch, which needed quite a few boards replaced, and looked down at my mother. Standing above her like this made her seem so much smaller than me, even if that wasn't true. She looked older than she should, her face more worn than many of the mothers I had seen today picking up my classmates. But her chestnut hair was like mine and I recognized some of her features in my own face.   
    I felt the same strange mixture of feelings towards her that I did with my father. I hated that she wouldn't look at me and say hi back to me, ask me how my day was, acknowledge that I wasn't just an unwanted specter like how I imagined a normal mother would. But I also loved her. She was my mom and I loved her. I just wish I didn't have to hate her, too. But in that moment, I think I loved her more than I hated her. I felt a pain in my heart for her, and a great deal of guilt knowing I had put many of those stress lines on her face. I wanted to hug her then, but I didn't. It would be like hugging a corpse.   
    I carefully walked up onto the porch and walked into the house. It had been dark and cloudy out on the walk home, not the sort of clouds that meant rain, but there had been enough of them to keep the sun from shining, yet no one had turned on any lights in the house. I imagined Relena as she came home, running out of that sleek black car with her older brother and into her house, which I was positive was as big and beautiful and perfect as Quatre's was. Her mother would be there in the kitchen with some sort of snack for them, something she had no doubt made herself. She would ask her how her first day in the first grade was, her eyes as blue as her childrens' but lacking that hard edge to them.   
    I walked into my own kitchen. It was exactly the same as how it had been left that morning. Mom was supposed to have washed the dishes when she got home today, but they were still there, the small kitchen smelling of stagnant, dirty that water that for a moment reminded me of the urinal Relena had shoved my face into. The toaster was still plugged into the outlet, something else my mother had forgotten this morning. If Dad came home and saw that the kitchen was dirty like this, and the toaster still plugged in, wasting electricity, he would be pissed.   
    Replacing the image of Relena in my head, I thought of Quatre. I thought of him walking into his big, perfect house and making himself a snack in a kitchen as empty and dark as mine. No mother to make him snacks or ask how his day was. No mother to ignore him. No mother at all. In that moment, I had never felt more alone. I wiped furiously at my wet eyes, unplugged the toaster, and started washing the dishes.   
  
End Chapter 1  
  
I am now caught up rewriting all the material from the last version of this story, so look forward to some brand new stuff next chapter ^_^  
  
Thanks for reading~  
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
  


A Stagnation of Love  
  
Author's Note: Well, here we are again, lol. This is the FOURTH incarnation of this story, but while rereading the first two chapters I wrote, I realized it wasn't right. It's my own fault, I can't write things from the point of view of young children, it never sounds authentic. I really don't like the first two chapters of this story for that reason, so I'm scrapping them and trying to introduce the themes of those chapters from the view of an older Duo. Hopefully this will be the last rewrite :v  
  
  
Chapter 1  
Part 1  
  
March 3, 2004  
  
  
    My name is Duo Maxwell. I'm thirteen years old. Not that it matters, Mrs. Khushrenada said that no one else is going to read this journal, just me. I don't get the point of this assignment if she's not even going to read it. I told her it would be like talking to myself, so it's pointless, but she insisted that I do it. She said that writing down all the things that make me sad and angry will help me after what happened. I know it won't, but it's either this or my English homework, and I've read Tom Sawyer before. It's not a book I really want to read again. I'd rather write about this, even if it doesn't help.  
    I'm good at writing. I'm good at reading, too. Essays, book reports, critical reading. It's all I've ever been good at. I suck at every science I've ever taken. I can remember all the little rules and equations for math. History bores me. I'm too tone deaf to be any good at chorus or the other music classes. I don't care enough about gym to try and I'm not competitive like the other boys in my grade. I already know everything they teach in home ec. But I've always been good at words and understanding them. I started reading on my own before most of my classmates. I had to. My dad stopped reading to me when I was four, and I liked those stories too much to wait until first grade to be taught how to do it myself. I remembered the stories, I just had to figure out the words. And learning that I could make those words myself on paper had been even more magical than learning how to understand them.  
    I don't know what I should write about. Mrs. Khushrenada said to write about the stuff that makes me upset, so I guess I could write about my parents, or about Quatre. I don't want to write about him, but I guess that's the point.   
    I met Quatre my first day of school. I was tired because my parents kept me up all night with their fighting. I don't remember a day when they didn't fight, but some nights are worse than others. Sometimes they just bicker or snap at each other. Some nights, like that night, they scream and swear and throw things at each other. On really bad nights, they hit each other. Sometimes Dad throws Mom out of the house and she doesn't come back until the morning, or Mom scratches up his face. Lately, the last two years, it's gotten worse and worse. I know from the looks our neighbors give us the screaming annoys them, but because of my dad's job, they never say anything about it.  
    That night, they just screamed at each other a lot. I don't remember what it was about, my dad threw Mom out of the bedroom. That happens a lot, too. I thought that after hearing them scream at each other every night, it would stop bothering me, but I still haven't gotten used to it. It still wakes me up at night and it still frightens me. Dad probably threw her out because she didn't want him touching her. When I was younger, that confused me since she didn't kick up such a fuss during the day, just at night, but I think it means she doesn't like sleeping next to him or something. Whatever the reason, it always pisses my dad off even worse than if I break something.   
    Our house is small and old. There's only one bedroom, my parents' room. My room is the attic. When I told Quatre that, he said it was cool, like I lived in a secret room, and that I had the whole place to myself. He would say that. To him, it was cool because even though he lived in a bigger house than me, he had six older sisters before they all left to go to college. When he was younger, there was no room in his house he could go to to get any privacy. But he was wrong. I never lived in a secret room because my dad always knows where to find me, and I can always hear them. I guess it would be worse if I had a room downstairs, but it doesn't matter. It isn't how loud they can scream, it's what they say and how they sound when they say it, and I can hear that just fine up here. I liked it better when I was little, and didn't understand what words like 'fuck', 'asshole', 'cunt', 'bitch', and 'bastard' meant. I liked it better when I didn't fully understand their hate for each other. When Quatre and I were in the fourth grade, an eighth grader had told us what all those words meant. Quatre had been appalled. I guess no one talks like that in his family. I was just sad.   
    Even if the shouting is louder downstairs, at least I would have a room with lights. There are no windows in an attic. There is no breeze or heat up here, either, just my mattress, a dresser for my clothes, and a single electrical outlet. The fan I plug into it during the summer doesn't make it any less hot, and even the old electric blanket Quatre gifted me with a couple years ago helps during the winter. I stopped being afraid of the dark up here when I was a kid,  but I still hate opening my eyes to that. I had a lamp up here once, by Dad broke it. I didn't see the point in finding another one.  
    Even when my parents eventually stopped screaming at each other, I had a hard time sleeping. It had been hot the night before, so we had kept our windows open. That morning, after Dad had gone to work, it had started to pour. Mom was already on her way to getting drunk and I had been too excited and focused on starting school that I forgot to close the windows. When Dad got home and saw that a bunch of our things had gotten soaked, he had gotten pissed. It doesn't take much to make him mad. If I just walk in my room when he has a hangover or has a bad day at work, he comes upstairs and strikes me. Sometimes, if he's just annoyed, it's just one punch. When he's in a truly bad mood, it's a lot more than that.     I have nightmares about hearing that stride, hearing his heavy footsteps walking up the stairs to the attic. I remember once, when I was really little, Mom, back before she had started to ignore me entirely, had told me to just stay out of his way. He got angry sometimes, she had said, and he couldn't control his anger anymore than a person could control feeling tired, so the best thing I could do, if I didn't want to get hit, was make sure I wasn't in the same room as him. I had tried, back then. I had tried so hard to not do things that angered him, to be a good son and stay out of his way.     But my mom's advice hadn't been so great. Dad would just find me. That day, when I forgot to close the windows, he found me and threw a chair at me. It hit me in the back and busted up my ribs, so I tossed and turned all the night, unable to get comfortable. I had realized, years ago, that hitting me and hurting me made him feel better. A lot of times, if he was just in a bad mood and it wasn't something serious, he would beat me and that would be it. He would be calmer afterwards. In a way, that makes it ok, I guess. It hurts, and I hate it when he gets like that, but then it's over and it isn't so bad. Sometimes, I wonder if I even deserve it. If I were better, smarter, less of a burden on my parents and their struggle just to make it through until Dad's next paycheck, maybe he wouldn't get angry so often.   
    But at the same time that I understand that, and as much as I don't want to make him angry like that for doing stupid shit, I don't feel right when he hits me. When I was a kid, it would make me sad and confused, but I accepted it because I loved him. I still do. But lately, every time he strikes me, I feel hate towards him, too. When I was a kid, I used to think that feeling confused and sad about my father was normal, that all kids felt that way towards their fathers, and that all the fighting my parents did was normal. But when I started to go to school, and I saw all the other kids with their parents, I realized that my family was strange. Some kids had it a lot better than me. Others, like Quatre, had it just as bad, but in different ways. I used to want to think that Quatre hated his parents, too, because that meant those feelings were ok, that I didn't need to feel guilty and that I'm a terrible son for feeling that hate. But now... now I don't want to. I want to believe that Quatre never felt things like that, even if I know it' a lie.  
    I've gone through what happened in my head a thousand times and I still don't understand why it happened. I don't know if I want to understand it. It's different than trying to understand why my parents hate me so much. I can kind of understand that. I'm nothing special. I'm not like those kids in the advanced classes that are probably going to go off to college, get great jobs, and help out their folks. I'm not smart. Being good at writing and reading means shit in the 'real world'. I'm old enough now to get that, and to know that one of the reasons why my dad works so hard that he has to come home late is because he has to support me.   
    And I know that my mom hates me because of what happened the day I was born. She told me once that I ruined her inside when I came out. I don't really know what that means exactly, only that when she gave birth to me, I hurt her, and she can never have anymore kids. It must be true. In our basement are all these things my parents had before I was born, pictures of when they were teenagers. Mom is so pretty in those pictures, and she is always smiling and happy. She doesn't smile anymore, and if she ever has, I don't remember. When Dad drinks, he tells me that they were both happy back then, until I came along.   
    She can never have someone better than me. I think about that, every time I fuck up, every time I get a bad grade on a test or break a dish because I'm clumsy or Dad hits me for disturbing him. I'll never be anything special, and my parents are stuck with me forever. But no matter how much I try, I can't seem to get any better for them.  
    I understand those things, but I don't understand why this happened. I hadn't been around other kids that much until that first day of school. I had hoped that I would make some friends, even just one. I had thought that it couldn't be any worse than being at home with Dad. I don't know why I thought that, like Dad was the only one who could hurt me.   
    I had never been more excited in my entire life than that morning, and I haven't been that excited since. I had spent the last three weeks scrounging for school supplies since I didn't have any money to buy anything and neither of my parents had bothered. They hadn't even talked to me about school, except for a month before when my dad had come home from work and gruffly told me I was going to school and getting out of his hair, finally.   
    I went door to door in our neighborhood, except for our one next door neighbor who has this big, vicious dog. I've avoided that house since the large mutt had tried to take a bit out of my face just walking past the yard it hadn't been chained up in. Most of them told me to go home and slammed the door in my face while others didn't even answer the door since the section of town we live in is so shitty, but some of them were willing to give me some composition notebooks and pencils even though I was too embarrassed to tell any of them why I needed those things. I hadn't known that the teachers just gave you that stuff. I found an old, black book bag that had been my dad's at some point and stuffed all of it in there.   
    My parents didn't say anything when I walked out the door that morning. Back then I had worried about it, that I had gotten the date or something else wrong. I had even been frightened that I would be punished later for leaving the house without their permission. Looking back, I know that they just didn't care. I was getting out of their sight for a few hours. Whether I made it to school or knew what I was doing didn't matter. I had been too scared, and too desperate to prove I could do it on my own, to ask them. Nausten is small enough that I knew where the school was, so I could at least get that far.   
    It takes me twenty minutes to walk to school every day. Not too bad, and I'd rather walk than take the bus. I like walking to school in the mornings, it's quiet, that special time of day when the only thing adults care about is getting coffee before work and most businesses aren't even open yet. I appreciate more now that I'm a teenager, but when I was a kid I liked it, too. It had been early enough in the fall that things were cold, but not miserable like they would be in December. The winter means ducking snow balls and trudging through the heavy wind in my thin jacket and even thinner pants.   
    But fall is pretty. Not so much where I live, but when you get further north where there are trees and well kept shrubs, all those colors made the walk well worth it. At the right time of fall, I even delay walking back home just to look up at the trees. I didn't delay that morning. I didn't want to start school as one of the only kids that was late. I didn't know what that punishment might be.   
    I hate the elementary school building. I've hated it since the first time I saw it. We used to have a middle school building, but it burned down long ago, before I was born, and the town decided it was too much fuss to rebuild it. Instead they crammed grades 5-8 in with K-4. Bullying and agitation between the younger kids and the older ones impatiently waiting for high school went way up, and classroom space went way down, but the town saved enough money to build a bigger boardwalk at the beach and whatever the hell else they did with that money, so what did they care? It was just the teachers and kids that suffered, one didn't have big enough salaries to matter and the other would grow out of it.   
    The elementary school is all white, aged, painted wood with old, stained windows that are covered up with construction paper from various school projects, mostly from the younger grades. I guess when they first built it, it had probably been nice looking, the white pristine and new. But now, decades later, that white could only be called that if you looked past it's the yellow as all that paint and wood had aged. The high schoolers are lucky. Their building is all brick and metal and doesn't come across as an overly ambitious shack.   
    The outside of the elementary school is better, though. The outside of the high school is almost entirely paved while the elementary has a lot more grass and flowers. We have a playground with a jungle gym and swings while the high school has a track and a couple of basketball courts. I even heard from the older kids that high schoolers don't get a recess, just a lunch. My first day of school, there were a bunch of kids my age playing on that jungle gym, but I didn't join them. I didn't know any of them or the kinds of games they were playing with their friends, and I didn't have any friends of my own to play with. Even after then, I only ever went on the jungle gym where no one else was. It was something I never grew out of, even after meeting Quatre.   
    The elementary school is divided in two, with the left section for the lower classman, grades K-3, and the right section for the upper classman, grades 4-8. There were even two separate entrances, with the grades listed in gold above the doorways. I walked through the right side door, a stone in the pit of my stomach.   
    I was nine years old when I went to public school for the first time, not five like all of my other classmates, or even four like the kids whose parents had been well off enough to send them to preschool. The year I should have gone to kindergarten had passed me by without me even knowing I should have started school. Neither of my parents had talked to me about it and they hadn't really seemed like they had cared a year later when one of my dad's coworkers had asked him why I wasn't in class like his son was.     My father had shrugged it off and said it was fine, there was nothing I was going to learn in kindergarten and it would just be a waste of his time and money. His friend had laughed and agreed with that, telling stories of the art projects his son had brought home and how much of a hassle it was using up his lunch hour to pick his son up from school. Beyond that, it had never come up. When I was supposed to enter the first grade, Dad lost my immunization records and refused to pay the fee to waive them. He spent a lot of nights on the phone with my doctor, yelling, and I don't really remember what came of that, only that by the time it had been resolved I had missed too many days of school to go.  
    I missed out going to the second grade because I had been laid out in the hospital for two months. Dad had been going through a lot of problems with his job, problems that he had taken home with him. He had been especially cagey those days and it hadn't taken much to get all of that rage directed at me. I don't really remember what I asked him thanks to the concussion he gave me. I just remember the look of anger that had come across his face, turning the father I had mostly loved back then into the monster I grew used to as I got older. I remember having screaming nightmares about that expression. I remember him yelling something at me, but most of all I remember how arm felt when he snapped it, and the sound my head made when he punched me in the temple and I hit a wall. That time he told the doctors that I got beaten up by an older kid.  
    Last year, I returned to the hospital, that time for a bad case of pneumonia. I got sick a lot when I was a kid, but that time had been terrible. I spent weeks in that hospital bed, coughing up what felt like gallons of fluid, too weak to do much but lay there. At least it had gotten me out of the house and away from my parents for awhile. The year I would have been in the fourth grade normally, my dad had been dead set on getting me into school and so was I. He wanted me out of the house and I wanted to meet people my own age.   
    When I heard from the school councilor that I would have to take a test to get into the fourth grade, or be sent to the first grade, I was mortified. I guess I just thought that I would be put in whatever grade all the other kids my age were in, I never thought that, because I had missed so many classes and skills I needed to get through the fourth grade, I would be held back. I didn't know what would be worse, to never go to school and be stuck at home like I had been, or to be held back, to be taking classes with six year olds instead of other nine years olds. I wanted to make friends, I wanted to be normal for just a few hours. I hadn't realized back then, the real extent that my father had screwed me.  
    That's why it hurts a bit now that I'm a teenager and I can look back and realize that the same man whose actions had kept me from going to school for three out of the four grades I had missed was responsible for getting me into the fourth grade. At nine years old I was pretty proficient at reading and writing. My father would bring me home books that were hand my downs from the people he worked with, and when he had the time during the weekends, he would take me with him to the library to check some out. I taught myself with those books, reading them over and over until even the bigger words became familiar to me. The test I had to take had a section on reading and I finished it quickly. It made me think that I might not have needed to go to those first three grades and I would be fine.   
    Then I saw the math parts. In reality, now that I'm in the seventh grade, all the things that had been in that test come second nature to me, but at the time my math skills had been as complex as counting on my fingers and knowing what all the different signs were from my books. I could handle 5+7 because I could count at least that high, and I knew my roman numerals from reading, but I hadn't the clue what 122+327 was, how to subtract 100 from 56, how to multiply, or how to divide things. Fractions and geometry were well beyond my scope of understanding at that time.   
    It had become a horrible nightmare for me. A month before I needed to be placed in my grade, I had trouble sleeping and constantly felt sick to my stomach. I wasn't so worried about having to go to the first grade anymore. I was scared that I would have to tell my father that I couldn't take the test. I imagined his anger, and even worse, I imagined his disappointment. The only thing worse than hearing that you're stupid for most of your life is knowing that you're stupid.   
    I finally got the courage one day to walk up to him with the test and tell him that I didn't understand any of the math. I had expected him to slap me or call me names, tell me that I was a moron and I deserved to be in the first grade. Instead he sighed in irritation and said, "I guess it can't be helped." He spent weeks going over all of the math problems with me, over and over and over until I could do them myself. He lost his temper with me a few times, but he never hit me, just yelled. Honestly though, those times when my dad was helping me study are some of the happiest memories I have. Sitting at the kitchen table with him, listening to him explain things to me instead of yelling or ignoring me. When I got something wrong, he would get so annoyed, but when I got it right, he would smile and ruffle my hair or pat my shoulder. It made me feel a deep love for him.   
    I don't know what I had imagined the inside of the school to be like before I had taken my first steps inside. All I had known about school I had learned from watching television after my dad abandoned the tv set to go to work. Those tv shows had always depicted schools as this great, fun place to be, with bustling hallways full of kids smiling and laughing. That morning, the hallways full of colorful lockers and colorful posters had been empty. It had reminded me more of the hospital than the schools on TV.   
    I was well accustomed to the hospital. Most of the time, Dad ignored me after he hit me. When I had been really little and he had hit me, Mom had grudgingly taken care of it, but after awhile she had just let me take care of myself. But there had been a few times when he had hit me just a little bit too hard, or he had been too drunk to realize what he had been doing and had broken something and he had taken me to the hospital. Most of the time it was one of my arms. I used to find it so hard that when the doctors asked my father what had happened, he had lied about it. What he had done had never seemed like something he needed to hide. It had just been normal to me, but he would pull out these stories and excuses, so naturally that it would even make me doubt my own memories for a moment. I don't know if the doctors bought it each time it had happened, and sometimes it seemed like they were looking at my dad suspiciously, but they never said anything about it.   
    Beyond that, what I remember of the hospital was it's quiet, empty, white halls. That morning was like that. It seemed like all of the kids were out in the playground, or maybe already in the classrooms. I stood there in the empty hallway and realized that I had absolutely no idea where I was supposed to go. I stood there in the middle of the crossroads of four hallways and felt like a complete idiot before a man walked up to me. He was wearing a tie, so I guess he must have been a teacher.  
    "You lost?" he asked in a gruff voice that reminded me of my father first thing in the morning, like he wanted to be anywhere but there and talking to anyone else but knew that he had to.  
    I nodded, feeling incredibly shy and unsure.  
    "What grade?" he asked in that slightly irritated way.  
    "Fourth," I responded in a small voice, feeling like the pest my father always told me I was.  
    "Fourth grade classrooms are closed for flooding repairs," he said in that bored tone people get when they've said the same thing over and over, "All fourth grade classes are meeting in the first grade wing," he pointed to the hallway to our right, "straight down there, take a right past the double doors, your classroom will be there."  
    "Thank you," I murmured and went the way he had said.  
    I opened the double doors and walked right to another empty hallway. Again, it reminded me of the hospital, only much sadder because of all the color. It would have seemed more natural if those walls had been painted grey or white instead of the gaudy blue and yellow that I remember. I haven't gone to the kindergarten, first, and second grade section of the school since then, so I don't know if they're still that color.   
    Worse than the quiet had been when I finally did start to see kids. They were chatting with kids they already knew, and walked as calmly and naturally as could be into different rooms. I didn't know anyone. This was my first day, not theirs, all of them knew where to go. I felt like some alien creature walking in their midst. I had realized then that I really was the idiot that my father says I am. I didn't know what I was supposed to do. I had gotten to the school ok, but now what? Which classroom was mine? Did I need books? What was I supposed to be doing?   
    I was scared of talking to anyone, but I was more scared about missing my first class, so I walked up to the first teacher I saw in that hallway, a tall woman who was chatting with some other grown-ups. I waited patiently for them to walk away before going up to her. She was pretty in the way my mom had been in those photos in the basement, with a gentle smile, beautiful dark brown eyes, and long dark brown hair. She had a very feminine face, the kind I remember seeing in elves from the picture books I used to read when I was little. When she didn't notice me, I grabbed at her long skirt and very gently tugged on it.  
    It was the sort of thing my father would have struck me hard for, something he considered incredibly rude. It was one of the many things he couldn't stand, a child pestering an adult. I even flinched when those soft brown eyes fell on me, so sure she would yell at me like my father would, but she smiled at me and kneeled down so I didn't have to crane my neck to look at her.  
    "What is it, sweetie?" she asked, her tone genuine instead of hiding annoyance or forcing herself to sound nice like some of my neighbors did when they spoke to me.   
    I always hated it when they did that, taking that same tone with me that they would with their dogs. It always reminded me of how my dad looked at me, like I was too stupid to really understand. Mrs. Khushrenada never looked or spoke to me like that.  
    "I don't know where to go," I confessed and I remember feeling completely embarrassed at that point.  
    Her smile fell into a small frown.  
    "You're new here, aren't you? Didn't your parents tell you?" she asked.  
    I shook my head. She regained her smile quickly and took my hand into hers. I don't know why but that reminded me of how Dad's hand felt around mine when we were at the mall or crossing the street. Her hand completely dwarfed mine like his did, but her hand wasn't as big as his, and hers was soft where his was rough.  
    "What's your name?" she asked me.  
    "Duo Maxwell," I replied automatically in the same taught way all little kids do when a stranger asks for their name or age.  
    I had already been blushing in embarrassment from her holding my hand, something that if anyone else had done I would have felt insulted by at that age, but seemed to natural to her, but in saying my own name, I flushed a few shades darker. I don't think I've ever liked my name Both kids and adults always give me weird looks when I say it, like they don't believe me. I have no idea why parents picked that name instead of something normal like Robert or Matt.   
    But Mrs. Khushrenada didn't seem puzzled at my weird name, her smile brightening.  
    "Oh, you must be Nathan and Helen's son!" she exclaimed, "I was beginning to worry that they had decided to home school you and we'd never get to meet."      
    I felt my face go searing hot and I felt the urge to go hide under something. I don't really remember why I had gotten so embarrassed just because she recognized me. My dad was one of the only seven cops in Nausten, so practically everyone knew who he was. But Mrs. Khushrenada was one of the only people who knew my mother by name.   
    "Well, Duo Maxwell," she said to me in a voice as bright as her smile, "I'm Mrs. Une Khushrenada, but you can just call me Une. I'm your teacher this year, so we'll get to know each other well, ok?"  
    I'm sure I made some kind of surprised or dubious face when she told me to call her by her first name. That was something else that my father had taught me, and my breaking of that rule would have gotten me struck like all the others. Kids didn't call adults by their first names, it's rude and disrespectful. It just made me much more confused than it should have. I couldn't call my teacher by her first name because my dad would have been furious if he ever found out, and I couldn't call her by her last name because she didn't want me to.   
    At first I even thought she was trying to trick me. My dad used to do that, let me think it was ok to break a rule, but it was only a test, one he would punish me for if I failed. I eventually got over it. I have never called Mrs. Khushrenada by her first name and I never will.   
    "Thank you," I blurted out, my struggle to decide whose rules I should follow making me remember my manners.   
    She walked with me down the hallway, still holding my hand.  
    "I went to high school with your Daddy, Duo," Mrs. Khushrenada told me with a gentle smile.  
    I quickly forgot my fear in my interest. All I knew about my parents when they were younger had come from what I could find stored in our basement. They never talked about it, except for the things they yelled at each other or me. I had never met my grandparents. I don't even know if they're dead or alive some place, refusing to visit for some reason. Maybe they just lived too far away. Even if my parents were stuck in the same town they had grown up in, it didn't mean their parents were.  
    "You're handsome, just like him," my teacher continued as I gave her my full attention.  
    I looked down at the ground, not sure what I was supposed to say to that. No one had ever told me I looked anything like my dad before. I have the same pale skin my mom did, and her auburn straight hair. My dad's hair is dark brown, even darker than Mrs. Khushrenada, and both my father and my mother have grey eyes, although my dad's are much darker. My eyes are violet. When I had been much younger, I thought that made me a freak. I'm still not sure why I don't have grey eyes like I should, but I know it's because of some ancestors from both sides of my family, not because I'm strange or even because I'm not really their kid.  
    "He was so stubborn as a teenager and he was always getting into trouble," she chuckled, "I still can't believe he got into law enforcement and turned out to be good at it!"  
    I remember being surprised by that. Not to hear that my dad had been stubborn because he was, and not to hear he was good at his job. My father didn't earn a lot of money as a police officer, but he wasn't a beat cop or a grunt. By the time I should have started school, he had earned some sort of medal. I don't remember what it had been for, I had been too young to remember and my father hadn't gloated about it. It had gotten him free beer for a few months and a raise, which had gotten me a new pair of sneakers and my parents a new oven, as our old one had stopped doing anything giving out grey smoke and a foul order. Our new one hadn't been that great, but you could cook with it at least.   
    Since then, my father had gotten two more medals, one for breaking up a local drug ring and the other catching someone who had been hurting women in our town one summer. That had been all over the news for a week because stuff like that doesn't happen here that much. That last medal had made Dad angry. He had spent a lot of nights at his job, not coming home until the morning, and had expected a promotion for it. I guess he never got one because he had been especially furious for a month after that.   
    In all that time, I was stupid enough to cross his path just three times. The first time, he hit me in the cheek with his belt so hard my cheek turned a deep blue-black color that was a dark, blood red at the edges and the swelling didn't go down for days. The second time he hit me with Mom's iron and broke three of my ribs. I tried even harder to do everything he asked of me to the letter and otherwise find a dark hole to hide in until his mood passed. Mom didn't fight with him at all that month. The third time... well... the third time I ended up in the hospital and missed the second grade.   
    What surprised me was hearing that my father had been a trouble maker. I couldn't imagine my dad misbehaving. He punished me for every little rule I broke, and my father had a lot of rules. He was always so serious, I just couldn't see him as anything but that. At nine years, just imagining the looming, powerful man that was my father as a teenager at all had been impossible.  
    Mrs. Khushrenada let go of my hand as we walked into a classroom. It looked like all the other classrooms I had seen, only the kids running around in it were my age and the desks were smaller. Most of the kids' attention were focused on the front of the room where two kids were fighting. Well, that had been my impression at the time. But they hadn't been going at each other or arguing.   
    A girl with brown hair much lighter than Mrs. Khushrenada' was yelling at a boy with blonde hair that was paler than mine and brilliant blue-green eyes that were wide with fear. The girl had a jar of glue in her hand was approaching the boy with it as he tried to back away. He looked like he wanted to get as far away from her as possible but was too scared to make a sudden move. The whole scene was bizarre to me. The only 'girl' I really knew well was my mother, but I knew enough that boys weren't supposed to be scared of girls like that unless, according to my dad, you were a pussy or a fag. Back then, I hadn't known what cats had to do with it or what a fag was (and I wouldn't know the meaning of that word until last year), but I did understand that it was something embarrassing. And I had no idea what the girl was doing with the glue, but the fear on the boy's face bothered me a lot.   
    Mrs. Khushrenada quickly abandoned me to run over to them and stop whatever had been going on. Just like that, the mob of kids dispersed, but the noise didn't. I was used to loud noises and screaming at this point, but I still didn't like the mass of screaming, laughing, running kids in that classroom. All I could think of was that my father would never let me cause such chaos like that, and I had that feeling again, of being different, of not belonging there. Should I be like them, running around and causing a scene, chasing around a friend and screaming with glee?   
    The noise overwhelmed me and I nervously shuffled into a desk in the far corner. I felt very sad right then. I had wanted to make friends with someone here, but how could I? They all had their own friends, no one needed me. They had had four years with each other, four years I would never have. With all of the running and screaming, none of them came up to me and tried to talk to me. They ignored me like I was something vile and small. I felt very alone, although that wasn't anything new to me, I had just hoped it would be different at school. Nothing had changed. That was the worst part.   
    I had a thought then, a thought that was probably way out of scope of a fourth grader, but I had it none the less. Nothing was ever going to change. I was always going to be alone, just my parents and me. All these kids were just starting to go to school like I was, but they had had a head start on me anyway. I raised my head as I saw the boy and girl that had been fighting shuffling back to their own desks. The boy looked ashamed and the girl looked annoyed, though it should have been the other way around. The girl sat a few chairs ahead of me and whirled around to look at me, studying me like a child would with an insect they had caught in a glass jar. Like I was something gross and unwanted she had caught.   
    The girl was pretty, I guess. She wasn't pretty like how my mother had once been, or how Mrs. Khushrenada was, but the way that a doll was. Her light brown, almost dark blonde hair was too perfect, the curls not natural but obviously put there by a hair dresser or maybe her mother. Her pink dress was brand new and fair too neat for a child her age, not a single stain or fleck of dirt on it. She looked too perfect, too fake in some way, and the look she was giving me wasn't pretty at all. The dress didn't suit her. Her pretty, fake curls didn't suit her, or rather, knowing what I know now, maybe they did. I had to look down, away from her piercing blue eyes, and I fiddled with the pencils and paper I had pulled out of my father's book bag.  
    "Seats, now!" Mrs. Khushrenada said, not cruelly or harshly, but with enough power to her voice that all the other kids scrambled to their desks.  
    Again I was struck with that feeling that I was the only one missing something. All the other kids seemed to know what to do, probably the same things they had done their previous years, and sat quietly in their seats, although some looked like they were on the verge of exploding with energy. I didn't have that urge, and I certainly didn't have that energy. I just felt incredibly nervous and out of place, so I did what I had always been taught to do; I kept my head down and stayed quiet until my name was called, then I merely raised my hand like all the others. I didn't pay any attention to the names of my classmates.  
    Even though I was anxious about the other kids, I decided that the classes were fun. In some ways I miss it. Now that I'm in the seventh grade, we have to change classrooms and teachers every block. I miss just having Mrs. Khushrenada as my only teacher. That first day, we got to paint and learn how to write in long roman numberals, something that I never really picked up on. I never really understood the purpose of it, honestly. My parents didn't write like that, and Mrs. Khushrenada didn't either, and it's not something that I needed to know as I got older. My favorite time was, of course, reading time. I wasn't that great at painting. I wasn't terrible like some of my classmates were, but it was nothing special. Math was weird and I didn't really get it that well even after my dad's tutoring, even though Mrs. Khushrenada tried to engage us by using amusing scenarios for all the word problems.   
    But then we moved on to reading. I don't remember exactly what it was we had read, some short story. Mrs. Khushrenada had gone down the rows, making each of us read one paragraph of the story. A few of my classmates, the blue eyed girl included, struggled with a few of the words, but I didn't. The books I had to read at home had been just as hard, but I had learned those words out of necessity, and it had helped. Mrs. Khushrenada told me what a good reader I was, and I felt incredibly good about it. It had been the only time anyone had told me I was good at something since my father had told me 'good job' with a rare, soft smile when I had read our address from an envelope in the mail, or when I had gotten my sneakers tied without his help for the first time.   
    Mrs. Khushrenada' praise earned me a soft glare from the blue eyed girl who had stumbled through some of her words. That glare looked much more at home and natural on her than her curls or dress.   
    "Relena Elizabeth Dorlian!" Mrs. Khushrenada snapped at her.  
    The girl turned back around at that point and we returned to math. I forgot about it as we delved into more painful multiplication and division, at least until Mrs. Khushrenada got called away by another teacher. She shouted at us to mind ourselves and the second she left the room, the class devolved into chaos again. Everyone scrambled out of their seats and reformed their groups of friends, chatting loudly, chasing each other around the classroom, and drawing on the chalkboard. I thought briefly about walking up to one of those groups of kids and saying hi or something, but I was too scared. Instead, I looked at the window and watched some squirrels play out there. They reminded me of my classmates, mindlessly running around, but less loud.   
    I felt someone looking at me suddenly and looked away from the window. It was Relena, looking at me with the same intense expression she had earlier. It was a frightening look on the pretty girl. I don't know why, but she reminded me of my father, which was preposterous. But still, she scared me like he did when he was angry and I didn't like being under that creepy stare.   
    "Where are you from?" she finally broke her silence with a stern, demanding tone, crossing her arms over her chest in a pose that she was trying to make intimidating.  
    Although I didn't like her looking at me, and she weirded me out, in a way that pose was funny. She was the same size as me after all, but there was a hardness to her blue eyes that also made me feel wrong.  
    "Here," I said, confused by the question.  
    "Nu-uh," she said, poking me in the shoulder as I turned in my desk to look her in her creepy, ice-blue eyes, "You're a no good liar! I've lived here my whole life and I've never seen you! You're a liar!"  
    It shouldn't have hurt. I didn't know this girl, so why should it hurt me that she thought I was lying? My father called me  a liar all the time. Sometimes, when I told him about something interesting I had seen or heard about, he would call me a liar. Or just tell me to shut up and I would know that he didn't believe me. Kids are all liars, he would say gruffly. When I had, very proudly, told him about the first sentence I had been able to read on my own he had said, 'don't you fucking lie to my face.' That had hurt more than all the other times. He called me stupid, bastard, fucker, piece of shit, all things that hurt more than some girl I had just met accusing me of lying about something that didn't really matter, or make any sense to me.   
    But it did. It hurt because she was the very first person my age I had ever talked to and even though she knew nothing about me, she had immediately assumed the worst about me. And she had said it loud enough for the rest of the class to hear. did they all think I was a liar? That thought had made me feel ashamed, like her accusations were true. Even worse than feeling embarrassed or ashamed, I felt angry at that moment, more than I had ever had before in my short life.  
    I hated her then. I had never hated anyone before, not even my dad. I had felt sad about him hitting me and the yelling he and Mom did, but I had never felt anger and hate fill me like that before then. It was a terrible feeling. When she jabbed me in the shoulder, I wanted to punch her, like my dad had done to me hundreds of times. That frightened me. My father's anger had always scared me, so feeling it in me was terrible. Was this really how he felt all the time, I wondered. I felt sad for him, that he felt like that, when I didn't like feeling it myself. I didn't want to be that way, I didn't want to strike anyone. I had been too young then to put the feeling into words, but my rage repulsed me. I didn't want to be like my father.  
    I didn't hit her. I couldn't. Just the thought of it made my stomach feel like ice. I wanted to hit her, shove at her, scream at her, do something , but I couldn't even move. It was just like how I felt when Dad punished me, like I was paralyzed. It was so stupid. My father was one thing. I knew what he was capable of, he was bigger than me, and if I talked back to him or tried to hit him, and the thought to strike my own father hadn't even entered my head back then, but Relena was little, so why couldn't I at least speak up, tell her to cut it out?  
    "I'm not a liar," was all I could say, in a weak, pathetic voice. I couldn't even look her in the eyes, "I've always lived here."  
    I thought about explaining it to her, that I had just been sick and hadn't been able to go to school until now, but my voice was stuck in my throat. My eyes darted to hers, but they were still hard. There was a kind of... excitement there now, a glee that I couldn't understand. Did she enjoy this? Why couldn't she just leave me alone?   
    "Yes you are!" she jeered, jabbing at me again with her finger, "You're a great, big liar! I never saw you at pre-school, kindergarten, or any of our other classes!"  
    I stared at her blankly. I think I had understood, at some level, that this really wasn't about her thinking I had just moved to Nausten and was pissed I was lying to her, but I had never really interacted with other kids before, and besides my father, I had certainly never been bullied before. The blonde boy who had been fighting with Relena earlier, and who had been watching us this whole time with a hesitant and guarded expression, walked up to us. Immediately, Relena's entire expression changed when she saw him. That coldness and glee remained, but there was also hate there. It startled me. I was used to seeing that on my dad's face when he was angry at me, but what had the boy done to her to have her not just dislike him, but hate him that much?  
    "Relena, stop it," he said, but his voice was terribly shy and even I could feel the fear there, "not everyone can afford pre-school, and there are kids here that never went to kindergarten with us. There are lots of other reasons why he didn't go to this school the last few years, it doesn't make him a liar," even though his voice was small, his tone was also terse and irritated, but when she glared at him, he just looked like he wished he had never stood up for me and wanted to melt back into the crowd.  
    "Shut up, Quatre," she snapped at him, "This isn't your business. Unless there's something else you want to say?"  
    The boy blushed darkly at her threat and backed off, not wanting to fight with her anymore than I had. I realized that no one else in that classroom was going to distract her, and in a moment all of her terrible attention was going to be on me. I managed to get two steps past her, but she noticed my feeble attempt at escape and grabbed my arm, shoving me back against my desk. I wanted to shout at her that she shoved like a boy, to see how she liked to be called names and embarrassed, but I was too scared of her. That other boy, Quatre, clearly was, so it felt natural to be scared of her, too.  
    "I am not done talking to you!" she yelled at me with a petulant pout, her blue eyes bright in a very frightening way.  
    I realized it then that she really was enjoying this. This was fun to her. Did my dad enjoy it, too, when he mocked me and hit me, when he hurt me? That thought was just too terrible for me. but in a way, Relena Dorlian did remind me of my father, especially when he drank, which was frequently. Completely focused, irrational, and incapable of understanding. That comparison made me take a step back away from her and for the first time since she had accused me of lying, and with my ribs still throbbing from my dad's abuse the night before, I didn't feel like a coward for trying to get away from a nine year old girl. One of the very first lessons my father had unintentionally taught me was that sometimes being a coward and running away was safer and smarter than being brave.   
    "Well, where are you from? Answer me!" she demanded, her voice rising in part anger, part excitement.  
    "I'm telling the truth!" I protested.  
    I felt so frustrated, like nothing I said mattered, just like with my parents, and I realized I was on the verge of tears. I wasn't a liar, I wasn't, but she didn't care. Why was she doing this, and why to me? She didn't really care where I was from, I don't even think she cared if I was lying, and I couldn't figure out why. I heard a few snickers from the crowd of kids that had formed around us and they felt like daggers in my chest. Was all this just one big joke?  
    "No, you're a liar, I know one when I see one and you look like a liar, too!" she crowed, as though she had come to some brilliant conclusion that she was intensely proud of.   
    She suddenly shoved me against my desk again, but much harder. My sneakers slipped and I fell, hitting the back of my head on the hard desk, just bad enough to black out. It must not have been for very long, because when I opened them again, Mrs. Khushrenada still wasn't there and my classmates were still crowded around us, watching with great interest as Relena sat on the floor next to me in an oddly graceful and ladylike posture. She was nearly sitting on top of me and had a black marker in her hand. I had no idea where it had come from.  
    Relena grabbed my bangs and harshly tugged them away from my face. I smelled the strong stench of the marker and felt the wetness on my forehead as she wrote something there. I struggled against her, not knowing what was going on, but hating the sound of my classmates' laughter and the feel of her small hand pulling my hair. My vision finally cleared enough that I could see the crowd of kids. Some were giggling and watching Relena write on my face like it was the funniest thing they had seen. Others were just watching with a dull, non-expression, like they were sleepwalking, or they had seen this so often they were bored.   
    I had an epiphany then, a big thing for a nine year old. No one was going to help me. No one helps anyone, despite what I heard from adults, TV programs, and books. People might donate toys and food and money to 'those less fortunate,' but when someone right in front of them needed help, they never bothered. Even if the person knew you, they wouldn't help. I could be friends with all of those kids, and they would have kept staring and giggling. I understood that then and I understand it even better now that I'm a teenager.  
    When I had been a child and Dad had been hurting me real bad and had screamed for help, Mom never came to help me. She just stood and watched. She didn't even try. She doesn't do that much anymore, although her drinking has gotten a lot worse. When I got really scared of Dad's rage as a kid, I had tried to run from him a few times, before it had sunk in that I could never really get away from him. He would just catch me and hit me out on the lawn, the farthest I had ever gotten from him. My neighbors had never helped me. My cries had brought them out of their houses and peering out the windows, but all of them had just watched.  
    I had quickly learned as a child that asking for help was pointless. No one wanted to help, they just watched, some of them even liked it. If I screamed, no one would come to my aid, not even Mrs. Khushrenada. Asking for help just got you hurt worse. The way my classmates watched as Relena finished writing on my face reminded me of my neighbors watching my dad beat me in our front yard, or my mom watching as he struck me bloody with his belt. Those blank stares, like they were watching television, some of them excited, others dull, like it was a rerun to them.  
    But out of the sea of those blank and curious stares, I caught Quatre's blue-green eyes. His were different than everyone else's. He had that same look like he had seen this before, but his eyes weren't dull. They were bright with tears and fear, sympathy without pity, and most of all, empathy. I remembered how frightened he had acted around Relena and quickly realized she had done this to him, too.   
    That realization should have made me feel terrible, knowing that she had hurt him like this, but it didn't. It made me feel better, relieved. I hated myself for that, but it's the truth. It felt good knowing I wasn't the only one she had gone after.  
    "There!" Relena exclaimed, standing up and twirling the black marker in her pale hand like she thought she was some kind of artist, "Now everyone knows what a little liar you are!" she laughed. It was a horrible sound, shrill and mocking.   
    What had she done? I got to my feet like I had been shot, not wanting to give her the chance to do anything else. So what if she had done something terrible to my face, so what if everyone was laughing at me, I told myself. It was fine, I was fine. I felt the hot tears that I had been fighting to keep at bay finally burst out of me and stream down my cheeks. They only made her laugh harder. The only word I can really use for the expression on her face then is pride. I bolted, and unlike before, Relena didn't try to grab me. I ran out of the classroom as fast as I could, but the laughter just followed me.  
    In the hallway outside the classroom, I had no idea where I was going. All I cared about was finding a mirror so I could see what was written on my forehead, and getting as far away from everyone as I could, some place no one could gawk at me. Although I had no idea where I was going, I eventually found a set of bathrooms. They were easy to spot, the only ones in the hallway that weren't the typical amber-gold color of all the other wooden doors, but a gaudy blue and pink.   
    Maybe it had been for the benefit of the kindergarteners who couldn't read the words on the doors 'boys' and 'girls' just yet. But all of the kindergarteners had to be escorted to the bathrooms by an adult, so that didn't make any sense. Maybe the people who had been in charge of painting the school had gotten fanciful or bored, I don't know. I just know is that, even the first time I saw those doors, I thought they were ugly as hell. I only had to put up with those doors for this year, though, before moving on to the grades 4-8 section of the school where the bathroom doors and lockers are all painted the our town's colors; blue for the boys and grey for the girls.   
    In case anyone does read this stupid thing, and I don't see why anyone would, we have the stupidest mascot ever, a silver and blue nautilus. Whenever our high school football team goes against our neighboring town and rivals, the Brownstone Bears, the person wearing their mascot outfit does this crude skit of eating shellfish. Which is pretty accurate since we've never won against them once. Apparently. I've never actually been to any of the games and I probably never will. For one, I'm still not in high school and don't know anyone on the team, and two, it's the kind of social event that kids like aren't welcome at.  
    I went through the blue door. By some miracle, there were no other boys using the bathroom, I even checked all the stalls to make sure. I didn't want to talk to anyone, I didn't even want to see anyone. No one had been nice to me, or wanted to talk to me, just gawk or laugh. That isn't really fair, since Relena was the only one of my classmates that had actually spoken to me, but it was how I felt back then. And they had laughed. That was what hurt me the most, that laughter. I had been scared and humiliated, and it had been a big joke to everyone. If a person laughed at you when they were crying, I think it's a fair assumption they weren't going to try to be your friend after that. That realization brought fresh tears to my eyes.  
    I stood in front of one of the many small mirrors that was hanging over each little sink, all at convenient height for someone a bit smaller than me, and I pushed my chestnut bangs away from my face. The walls in the bathroom were an eerie white, but peppered with little handprints, each a different brilliant color, and the bathroom stalls were blue with little fish painted on them. The obviously cheerful colors and fish just made me feel worse as I stared at my wide eyed reflection. On my forehead, in letters so large and thick that even someone half blind could read them from several feet away, was the word "LIAR" written in black marker.   
    I sniffled, the sound echoing in the empty room, and a few more tears escaped my reddened eyes despite my trying very hard to hold them back. I don't know why seeing it shocked me so much. It was rather obvious and uncreative, but it was still so hateful. Seeing it there, and remembering the malice on the girl's face that had put it there, made something hot and painful burst in my chest. I couldn't keep my tears at bay anymore.  
    This wasn't how my first day of school was supposed to happen! I remember very clearly thinking that with a great deal of sadness. I was supposed to make friends, have fun, and all the other things that kids got to do in those television programs I had watched. School was supposed to be someplace I could go to, to get away from my problems at home. Instead, my problems had followed me here. If I had been old enough to get the bitter humor in that like I am now, I would have laughed through my tears in that bathroom. Relena hadn't hit me like Dad does, and she hadn't hurt me in that very special, vulnerable way he does, but she wanted to hurt me like he did. She had that same contempt for me that I just couldn't understand.   
    'Liar,' I read. It wasn't true, but that didn't matter. Anyone who saw it would believe it. I felt something swallow me up, some heavy emotion that made me want to leave the school right then and never come back. Now I can put it to words. Despair. Hopelessness. I had gone to school just wanting to get along with the other kids, to be like everyone else, but I would never be like them. Not anymore, Relena had seen to that, so had my father... all those missing years. Everyone would just remember me as the liar, the boy with the words on his forehead, the one who had cried because of one girl. I would always be a freak. Who would want to be friends with a liar?  
    I snatched a bar of soap from the sink I was standing in front of and started to scrub at my forehead viciously. It wouldn't really matter if I got it off, and I knew that. They would remember, and they would tell everyone else about it. I was the freak that had lied, the kid no one knew and no one wanted to know about. As I scrubbed at my forehead, I felt my tears come harder and faster down my face. I couldn't get them to stop. My forehead became bright red, but the black print didn't fade at all. When I saw that, I gave out a frustrated cry, throwing the soap angrily into the sink where it slid and fell on the floor.  
    Rage filled my stomach, that same anger I had felt at Relena before. It made my stomach hurt, but I didn't try to pick up the soap to continue my scrubbing. Even my tears were angry, but I also felt a deep sadness. My hands were covered in green soap suds and rubbed at my forehead with them. I didn't care that I was getting soap in my hair and eyes, making them burn with more than tears. I didn't even care that I was scrubbing my skin so hard that it was starting to speckle with blood. I could feel a tiny trickle of it go down my face but told myself it was just water.  
    Just as quickly as that anger and desperation had filled me, they left me. My hands fell down at my sides like I was a marionette whose strings had been slashed, the green suds tinged pink with blood. I just stood there in front of the mirror, crying and feeling like an absolute idiot. I didn't want to go back out there. I wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out again. Even with my long bangs, how could I possibly walk out of that bathroom with those letters on my skin? If it had been a TV show, Mrs. Khushrenada would have come bursting in and hugged me, maybe told me that everything was ok, she would make sure that Relena was punished for what she had done.  
    But she didn't. And somehow I knew she wasn't going to. After all, she might know my father and mother, but to her, I was a stranger, too. A freak. I could hear a few people walking by the bathroom out in the hall, but I felt completely alone. The quiet was terrible, like the quiet after my father beat me or when my parents stopped screaming. I looked at my reflection. I looked terrible and I didn't recognize myself, my violet eyes large, my bangs plastered to my blood speckled face. I started to scrub at it again, squeezing my eyes shut so I didn't have to look at myself, and the stinging pain from the soap was actually kind of comforting.   
    I didn't understand anything, why my parents fought so much, why my dad was always so angry, why Relena had done this to me, why my classmates had laughed at me, but pain I understood. I was used to it. I had another realization when I had looked at the word on my forehead. I would rather be hit than laughed at.  
    "You're not going to get it out that way," a small but mature and familiar voice said from behind me.  
    I opened my eyes and saw the blonde boy, Quatre, reflected in the mirror. I had been petrified at the thought ot someone coming into the bathroom and seeing me cry like this, but for some reason he didn't make me feel defensive or want to run away again. Unlike Relena's piercing gaze, his sea green eyes were soothing somehow. Maybe it was because he didn't seem to judge me, or because I knew that Relena had hurt him, too. Maybe it was because he seemed to be as lonely as I felt, or didn't have many friends, just like me. Or maybe it was just because he had been the only one of my classmates who hadn't smirked, giggled, or outright laughed at me.  
    I turned from the sink to look at him eye to eye. Although he didn't make me feel as self-conscious as the other kids in our class, I felt suspicious and couldn't figure out why he had come looking for me. He looked at my forehead in shock and I felt a surge of anger, bitterness, and sadness go through me. He understood what it felt like to be picked on by that girl, but he was still gawking at her handiwork. Had she sent him here to do something else  humiliating to me, or was he just here out of perverse curiosity?  
    "You hurt yourself," he said in a pinched, pained sort of tone.  
    All of my unjustified anger at him became shame. He hadn't been gawking at the word on my forehead. He had been looking at the blood, my handiwork, not hers. I shrugged off his concern.  
    "Doesn't hurt that badly," I murmured, still feeling embarrassed at judging him so quickly.  
    It wasn't a lie. What tiny amount of damage I had done to my skin stung more than it actually hurt. I was used to bruises and broken bones. This was nothing to me. I studied Quatre while he looked at my forehead, obviously more worried about the blood than I was. I hadn't realized it before, but while I was a bit thinner than Quatre was, he was a bit shorter, his blue-green eyes bigger and his skin paler. My hair was messy and a bit long at my shoulders from not getting it cut for awhile, while his was neat and short. He was dressed a lot more nicely than I was, so I was sure he lived in the north side of town where the families that made good money, or at least a lot more than mine did, lived.  
    I probably should have been just as angry at him as I was with Relena. She might have humiliated me in front of our entire class, and written on my forehead, but even though what she had done had seemed to upset him, he hadn't tried to stop her, just like everyone else. But I wasn't. Adults always say that when you see something bad happen, you should try to stop it. When you don't, they tend to get pissed at you, like you're just as bad as the person who did that bad thing to begin with. But it's really not that easy.  
    When I was eight, I had been walking around the neighborhood. My neighbor's crazy dog had gotten out and my other neighbor, Mr. D'Angelo, had let his terrier out to use the front yard. Mr. D'Angelo's dog and the crazy dog, Brutus, can't stand each other. Even though the terrier was much smaller, he went after Brutus. Brutus grabbed the terrier by the throat and whipped him around like a rag. I had watched the whole thing from across the street, not sure what I was supposed to do.  
    After Mr. D'Angelo had come back from the vet where his dog had died from it's injuries, he had screamed at me that I should have pulled the dogs apart before it had gotten serious. I know he only turned on me like that out of grief, and because he was too scared of Brutus' owner to try to sue him, but at eight years old I had felt awful, like his dog's death really had been my fault. AT the same time, I had also understood that if I had tried to separate the two fighting dogs, I would have gotten my hand bitten off at the very least, and there was little I could have done to restrain Brutus.   
    So I could hate Quatre for not trying to help me, but I understood it. Relena just would have gone after him, too, and I'm sure there was really nothing he could have done to stop her. I could have punched, and he could have, too, but neither of us had. Besides, and honestly this was much more important to me than him trying to stop the bully, and I would even go as far to say it had truly cemented our early friendship, he hadn't laughed.  
    "D... do you know how to get it out" I asked shyly, daring to let a little bit of hope in, that a veteran of our shared bully could help me.  
    He smiled at me and that painful anger and hopelessness tht had burst in my chest retreated a little bit. This whole time one of his hands had been behind his back and he revealed a bottle of something to me. Quatre approached me with it and a part of me was fearful, wondering if he was going to pull a prank on me after all, but his smile was so soft and friendly. I just couldn't bring myself to be distrustful of him. He was small and skittish, subdued and quiet, but he was also very likeable, non-threatening, safe. I just couldn't imagine him doing something cruel to me, unlike Relena who I hadn't liked the first time I had seen her threatening him with that bottle of glue.  
    I fell back into an old habit of mine, relating people to animals. I had always preferred animals to people since I was a toddler and I had come across a stray puppy during one of the walks my dad had taken with me at the beach. Those walks are some of the only good memories I have of my father, and that day was one of the best, a day he hadn't been angry with me. He had even let me play with the puppy for awhile. I had thought about asking him if we could have taken it home, but I had known he would say no and I hadn't wanted to make him angry. Quatre reminded me of that puppy, only he was like one that had been hit a few times too many but was still sweet. He never quite got rid of that quality as we got older.   
    "The soap here isn't strong enough to get rid of marker," he told me, "But this stuff works better. They keep it in the janitor's closet, but the janitor knows me, so he let me take it and didn't ask why. When Relena and I were in pre-school and kindergarten together, she'd stay up through naptime and draw on my face," he whispered, his face blushing an uncomplimentary red. With his pale skin, his blush made him look like a cherry.  
    "Why is she so mean?" I blurted out suddenly as he opened the bottle's lid, making him pause, and I couldn't keep my voice from wavering a little.   
    Quatre gave a little shrug, but I saw the same pain that had been in my voice on his face. It made his eyes, normally the same shade of sea glass that shops here sold to tourists in the summer, turn dark.  
    "I don't know," he admitted, "Our parents are friends and they've made us play together since we were babies, but she and her older brother have always been like this to me, even though their parents are really, really nice. It's just the way they are, I guess," he said in a pondering way, as though he was actually wondering about it.  
    "What are you doing?" I asked nervously as he walked over to the sink, grabbed some paper towels, and wetted them.  
    I didn't think he was going to prank me anymore, but I could smell the stuff in the bottle he had. It reminded me of the hospital and the things the doctors had done that they said would make me better, but had made me hurt a lot worse.  
    Quatre gave me that same soft smile and I instantly felt reassured. It was a stupid reaction, I know. I didn't know him and a smile didn't mean anything, but his just had that effect on me. I didn't want to believe that someone who was cruel like Relena was could smile like that.   
    "I need to clean the blood off first or putting this stuff on your skin will make it hurt more. It probably will anyway," he explained.  
    I felt... I don't know how to describe it. Warm inside, I guess, knowing that he even cared enough to not want to hurt me. He didn't know me anymore than I knew him, but he actually did seem to care, I couldn't understand that. But it still made me feel good. I had never met someone like him before, who wasn't just pretending to care because he needed to.  
    "Why'd you scrub so hard anyway?" he asked me as he gently wiped at my forehead with the paper towels, even taking the time to get the soap out of my bangs. The water stung, but it was pleasantly warm and the attention felt oddly good, like when my father took care of me when I had had pneumonia after I had been released from the hospital.    
    "I thought it would be like doing the dishes," I told him, "and if I just scrubbed hard enough, it would just come off."  
    I didn't tell him how frustrated I had been, how angry and unconcerned about hurting myself, that I would have scrubbed even harder than I had if it had gotten those words off. I didn't think that I needed to explain that to him. He giggled a little at my explanation. I grew to find that little laugh of his cute, but I rarely ever heard it from him.   
    "Well, you hurt yourself. Be more careful!" he scolded like he thought he was my mother, although my mother had never said something like that to me.  
    Be careful. My mother had stopped regarding my presence by then and what little advice she had ever had for me had waned. I told Quatre that once, that he acted more like my mother than my mother ever had. He had just smiled that warm, but mature smile of his and said that he was glad I had someone to mother me and he didn't mind. It had made me happy. I hadn't realized it when we first met, but that was how Quatre was, sweet and kind, but with a soul of someone four times his actual age. It made him mature and very responsible, a great adult, but a terrible child. This last month, I've wondered again and again if he had been different, less worldly, Relena's bullying might have rolled off him better, but it hurts thinking that.   
    Quatre started to put the cream from the bottle onto my forehead. It stung and made my skin tingle, and when he scrubbed at it with the paper towels, it hurt worse, but I didn't even squirm. He did that three more times before washing my forehead of the stuff. It smelled gross, like something an old person had to use. I eagerly, and scared, looked at myself in the mirror. My skin was still red, but the blood was all gone and, more importantly, the only evidence of the words that had been printed so clearly and boldly on my skin were a few black smudges here and there.   
    If I hadn't had the image of that word, LIAR, imprinted in my brain, I wouldn't have been able to tell anything had been written there at one point. And really, with my long bangs, even the black smudges were barely visible. I felt such relief, such happiness and gratitude that I hugged Quatre tightly with a little squeak. He didn't seem to mind my sudden exuberance and even hugged me back a little.  
    "All better now?" he asked as I let go of him.  
    I nodded excitedly.  
    "I thought I'd never get it off," I said and I couldn't help the tremor of fear that I had felt at that thought.  
    He giggled again, but this time it sort of sounded sad.  
    "It would have come off sooner or later," he assured me, "but probably not for weeks. It's easier this way," he shuffled his feet a little, looking up at me a bit shyly, "My name's Quatre Winner, by the way."  
    "Duo Maxwell," I said and for once, my name didn't bother me that much. He didn't even make fun of it.  
    "We should get back to class," Quatre said, suddenly realizing that we really shouldn't have been out of class, "If Mrs. Khushrenada finds out we left, she might call our parents," he warned.  
    I felt a little bit of fear at that, knowing how pissed my father would be if I got into trouble at my very first day here, but I had an even bigger fear.  
    "Even if they can't see it, they'll laugh at me," I murmured.  
    I didn't want to go back in there, I didn't want to hear that laughter and see the malice in that girl's eyes again. But then Quatre took his hand in mine and almost immediately I felt better, like just having one person who had helped me and hadn't made fun of me gave me a bit of courage.  
    "Yes they will," he said, his honestly a bit cruel, but I liked it a lot better than if he had lied to me, "but I won't."  
  
  
End Part 1  
  
Author's note 2: As you can see, I changed quite a bit and I hope it makes the story a better read. I've decided I'm going to stick with this story for as long as I can, see how far I can get before I move on to the next story. This story has collected dust for quite some time, lol.   
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
  
  
  



	3. Chapter 2 Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two years after the events of chapter 1, Duo becomes acquainted with Relena's older, and much more vicious brother, Zechs after he makes a grave mistake that sets Zechs' sights, and torment, on him.

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 2  
Part 1  
  
  
March 11, 2004  
  
  
    I forgot about this for a bit. I meant to write more in the morning, but Dad was on the warpath. He had twenty dollars missing from his wallet. He had probably just lost track of it when he had gotten smashed that night, but Mom had already been at work, so I had been his only target. I had tucked this journal under my mattress that night before going to bed, but as he had torn up my room looking for his money, he had almost discovered it. I don't know what my father might do if he ever caught me with this thing, if he'd just call me a pussy for keeping something as girly as a diary, regardless of the reason why I was keeping it, or if he'd be pissed about the things I was writing.  
    Luckily, his short temper had kept him from doing a thorough search. In his frustration, he had settled for taking all of the money that I had had in my wallet: the two fives and ten ones I had been meticulously saving from my jobs to pay for Quatre's birthday present. I shouldn't have been angry about it. Buying Quatre a present was useless, but I had decided to get in anyway, in case that he might... it might be able to reach him somehow.  
    It was stupid, twenty bucks was a lot of money for me, but I just couldn't spend it on anything else, just like the five dollars my father also took out of my wallet, stating it was a tax for lying and stealing from him, along with the black eye he had gifted me with. Quatre had given me that five dollar bill a month ago, on the last day I had seen him. It had been for lunch the next day, but it had just sat there, the very last thing I had from him, beyond my memory of his sad smile that day at the train station. Watching my dad storm back down the steps, I wish that I had spent it. I would have cried then, but I didn't think I was physically capable of crying anymore.  
    I thought about maybe hiding the journal in my locker at school, but I was too scared that Relena, Zechs, or one of their friends might get at it. After what they had done to Quatre, I couldn't bear that. So instead I pried up some of the loose boards in my room and made a little compartment to hide things. I stashed the CDs and Discman Quatre had given me, the only pic of the two of us I had , and a few of my favorite books in there, just in case my dad got one of his cruel streaks and decided to destroy my stuff. I had lost some library books and cassette tapes that way.  
    I just kind of forgot that this journal was in there with everything that's been going on at school lately. I almost flunked a big math test a few days ago, but Mrs. Sully had been sympathetic, I'm pretty sure she pitied me since she knew how close Quatre and I had been, and had let me take some one on one tutoring with her after school that week to make up for it. My dad had been too busy with work to figure out I hadn't been coming home right away, not that I thought he'd care so long as he hadn't heard about the failed test and my chores still got done. The school therapist, Mr. Schuller, had reminded me about the journal. I guess I can keep up with it. I still don't think it's going to fucking help but it's something to do at night. It's not like I'm sleeping.  
    Where was I the last time I wrote in this thing? Oh, right, the day I met Quatre. There's really not much to tell. I finished washing the dishes and cleaning the kitchen, and made some tuna casserole with what we had left of the canned tuna with breadcrumbs of what we had left of the white bread we'd been using to make tuna sandwiches. The bread was too stale to use for sandwiches anyway. I had seen Mom make this enough times that I could do it on my own, which was fortunate because I didn't think Mom was in shape to even care about food at that moment. I had dinner ready by the time Dad got home. As we ate, no one asked me how my first day of school had been, but Dad hadn't been in a bad mood, either, so I didn't care.  
    After dinner I did what little homework Mrs. Khushrenada had given us and went to bed. I should have been dreading the next school day given what Relena had done and felt some kind of fear about the bully, but as I dozed off it was my new friend and my excitement to see him again that had been on my mind.   
    Rinse and repeat. The next two years went exactly like that. Nothing changed, for better or worse for me through the fourth and fifth and first half of the sixth grade. My parents still drank, we were still poor, my dad was still abrasive and my mother still ignored my presence. I still sucked at math, Relena still made mine and Quatre's lives Hell, and I never did make anymore friends. I was still the freak, and Relena went out of her way to make sure I and the rest of our peers were reminded of that on a daily basis.  
    It wasn't all terrible, though. Quatre was still my best friend. He still smiled at me and laughed with me, that never changed. I still remained at the head of my English classes and I even won the school spelling bee in the fifth grade. It had made Relena's bullying worse for awhile, as well as the teasing from my classmates for being a 'nerd', and neither of my parents had given a shit, but I had gotten a cake from my then English teacher and a hug from Quatre, so I guess it had been worth it. Honestly, I didn't care that I had won and it didn't make me feel any smarter or better than I had before, but it had been fun.  
    The school finally finished repairs on the fourth and fifth grade classrooms that Summer, so we got to move into the wing for the older kids at the start of the fifth grade. It was nice to have bigger desks, but the biggest difference was that we shared the halls now with the older kids. Most importantly, we now shared the hall and several of our elective classes with Zechs Dorlian.  
    Relena's older brother reminded me a lot of the hardened teens that loitered in front of the convenience stores in my side of town. Teenagers with nothing better to do than to make everyone else's life miserable, defacing property, starting fights, and smoking. The only difference was that Zechs came from an upstanding family, his clothes were expensive and he had had everything handed to him in his life. None of that seemed to matter to him. Even in the seventh grade, Zechs was all hard edges, the sort of boy even the teachers stayed away from if they could. He was handsome, but never got asked out by any of the girls. He was too dangerous and frightening, his ugly personality nullifying his looks. He wasn't even that friendly with his own sister, but at the same time, it was known amongst my classmates that anyone who crossed Relena's path would get it twice as bad from her brother, so who knew what their relationship was really like.  
    As we entered the fifth grade, I took the advice Quatre had given me a year ago to heart. I stayed far, far, far away from Zechs. If I so much as saw a glance of his silver hair, I made sure to go the opposite way. Even still, it would have been easy for him to corner me, but for a year and a half, I never had a problem with him. I couldn't figure out why that was. He was a nightmare to Quatre and I am horribly ashamed to say this now, when Zechs started in with Relena terrorizing my best friend, I didn't do much to help him. Quatre had made me promise not to. He had said that I was insanely lucky that the imposing teenager left me alone, and I shouldn't do anything to change that.  
    My reasons for not trying to stop Zechs were partially because of that promise, but it was also because Zechs scared the hell out of me. The way he went after Quatre was just vicious, like a hyena after a baby gazelle. It was rarely ever physical. I think I saw Zechs hit him maybe four times that year. The teenager's tactics were more emotional and psychological, and more brutal than a simple punch.  
    Probably the mildest I saw him do was destroy the mp3 player Quatre's step-mother had given him for his birthday. He tripped him, pushed him, cut up his gym clothes, ripped out whole pages in his textbook, stole Quatre's cell phone, put lewd pictures in his locker, and one time he shoved so much cayenne pepper in Quatre's nose that he couldn't stop vomiting for hours and had to go to the hospital.  
    So I stayed away from it. And when Quatre came to me bruised and crying so hard I thought he would make himself sick, I held him tightly and told him everything would be ok. I lied to my best friend and I hated myself more than I ever had in my entire life. Every wound, every tear, I blamed myself for. But I still didn't try to stop it. What could I do, I asked myself. Zechs was bigger and stronger than I was. I had a hard enough time dealing with his little sister. If I fought back, he'd put me in the hospital at the very least. If I went to a teacher, they would just shrug it off and ignore me. Keeping myself safe and trying to comfort Quatre afterwards was all I could do. All of those arguments were entirely logical to me and I knew they weren't wrong, but it didn't stop the self-disgust I felt at my cowardice.   
    Quatre couldn't even get away from the bastard after school. It wasn't fair, but in that regard I had lucked out. Thanks to where I lived, even when Zechs started in on me in the sixth grade, I almost never saw him outside of school, unlike Quatre. I guess it's pointless to explain, since no one is going to read this, but Mrs. Khushrenada had told me to write about anything that upsets me and this contributed to something that upset me a lot.  
    Our town is, essentially, like a giant compass if you really look at where things are. Like most towns, the wealthy and the poor live on opposite ends from each other, with the middle class scattered on one end or the other depending on their jobs, either finances or location. The very center of town is made up of public buildings, the elementary and high schools, the town library, the town hall, the station my dad works at, the bigger, corporate built chain restaurants, the strip mall, and the hospital. The further north you go from the center, the nicer the homes and buildings get, and the further south you go, the worse everything gets.  
    Each part of town has its own landmarks and revenue draws. The rich folks to the north get the best of it, obviously. The local park, upscale restaurants, pubs, and the big mall are there. They also are the closest to the beach to the north west of town. If you own any of the restaurants or shops on the boardwalk or anywhere near the motel, you make bank in the summer. Summer tourism is big in our town thanks to that beach. Out-of-towners have to pay the town to use the beach, but even if you live way down south, you can still use the beach for free. There is even a bus stop a few blocks down from my house that takes me right to the beach in just twenty minutes.  
    My side of town isn't as lucky. We get the dives, the restaurants that are cheap, and I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I work at two of those cheap diners and they let me take home leftovers some nights. They do decently for themselves, but they aren't what you would call four or five star establishments. There are no malls or parks on my side of town. However, we have most of the bars, the only two strip joints in town, and the town dump which guarantees us weekly trash pick ups unlike the folks that live north and have to drive to the dump and pay for dump stickers on their cars. We also have the railroad which runs along the south west.   
    That railroad had always been a bittersweet thing in my mind. The railroad had brought with it corporate interest, jobs, factories, and a huge chunk of Nausten's profits. It had also brought with it pollution and a large amount of homeless folk that stowed away in the cars and jumped off at the station. Some of them found jobs in the factories and stayed, but most of them kept moving on. To the people who had worked at the factories and railroad for years, the vagrants were worse than illegal immigrants, and every year without fail a few of them would be assaulted or even turn up dead in some extreme cases.  
    Beyond that, most people didn't care about the air pollution from the factories or the noise pollution from the trains or the drug traffic that swept through with the railroad. Most of the people that lived in my side of town only cared about the jobs such places had brought, jobs that kept them from moving any further south. They were just like my dad, they wanted to make their money and be left alone. Once in a blue moon, some environmental group showed up to protest the industry down here, but they never lasted long. The railroad might not have been the best thing for us, but it was convenient. If you lived down here and worked the railroad ior in one of the factories, you didn't need to have a car, your job was either within walking distance or you could take one of the public buses for a five minute commute.  
    When I had been little, I had loved the train station. My father had taken me there a few times on weekends. He had packed us lunches and we had gone and sat on the grassy hill that overlooked the tracks. We had sat there, ate our sandwiches, mine almost always a peanut butter and jelly, watched the trains go by and tried to guess out loud what each car might be carrying. When I had gotten a bit older, I liked to go down to the dock where they unloaded the cargo and the workers disembarked on and watched the trains go past. I would stand there and pretend that I was the one moving, not the trains, moving far away from where I was.  
    Then I grew up and stopped going there. I looked at the railroad and surrounding factories with bitterness instead of joy because I knew, sooner or later, that was exactly where I was going to end up. I could imagine I was on those trains, going to some distant place, but that would never happen. I'm not special. I'm not a brainiac or a prodigy. I don't have any useful talents or skills. If I'm lucky, I'll end up like my dad, in a job I hate, in a house I'll never really own, always angry and miserable, barely able to pay the bills, but still _able_.   
     But I'll probably end up on that railroad or in one of those factories, making almost nothing, working myself into an early grave so I could scrape by in some shitty apartment. If I'm honest with myself, I know that's exactly where I'll end up, just another dead beat loser from the south end. I try not to think about that too much. And now, after Quatre decided to abandon me without so much as saying goodbye, I hate that train station more than I ever. Every time I hear the 'ding, ding' from the warning sign or the roar of the trains from my house, I feel sick.  
    That got away from me. Where was I? Oh, Quatre and Zechs. Yeah, I got lucky. I live far away from where Zechs does, so we only run into each other a handful of times outside of school. Quatre wasn't that fortunate. He, Zechs, and Relena all lived on the same street, so whenever he left the house, he knew that he was risking running into one of them someplace where there were no teachers watching. Not that they did much to stop them at school, but it was enough to give them limits, boundaries.   
    The Winners and Dorlians are old families around here, and had probably been here since the town had been founded. The Dorlians have been rich since before they ever migrated to this country hundreds of years back. They used that money to help their community whether it be giving to charity, the school systems, or give whatever funding the town needs. When our town library had burned down one unbearably dry summer, their money had single handedly seen it rebuilt, bigger and grander than before. They spent a couple million every summer during the 4th of July festival, making our quaint town as welcoming to tourists as possible. Relena and Zechs's parents are nothing like them, and I have no idea why their children turned out to be such monsters. They're nice people, the sort that throw bake sales and show up to every PTA meeting.   
    The Winners had been decently well off before they had become involved in a certain company that was responsible for the construction of our railroad. Over the generations they had become as wealthy as the Dorlians and had won contracts with a lot of the businesses that had set up their factories here. The two families, arguably the most influential if not the most wealthy, had become fast friends both socially and professionally, so Quatre had been subjected to the two siblings a lot more times than at school or random encounters. I honestly don't know how he found the strength to smile.   
    When I became twelve that year, just months before I began to share Quatre's nightmares of Zechs Dorlian, my dad decied that I was old enough that I needed to start helping the family out financially. He called it getting a job. I called it him heaping another chore on me. And really, that's all my jobs were, chores. Dad set me up with two of them and I hated them from day one. I'm sure everyone says that about their jobs, even well paying ones, but I hated _everything_ about them.  
    I fell into a routine that never seemed to end. I go to school from 8 am to 3 pm, rush over to the dive pizza joint I work at during the week days until 8:30 pm, run home and start on my homework, then repeat it all the next day. The only days I have off at that job are Wednesdays. The work is so boring, I find myself reciting math equations and vocab words I need to remember for my homework in my head. Because I'm under-aged, and getting paid under the table, all I can do is clean, wash dishes, and make pizza boxes. In just a week, I had started to hate the smell of pizza grease and frozen pepperoni.   
    The only good thing about it is my boss lets me take home pizza from the leftover dough for my dinner. Even after I got sick of eating pizza, friend food, and soda, I never get sick of having something to eat that isn't cold or almost stale, or when my father said we could save money and dinner the nights he and mom decide to have some, too. That was the first time in my life he had ever made me feel useful.   
    During the weekends, I work from 10am to 4pm both Saturday and Sunday at a diner basically doing the same work at the pizza joint; cleaning the tables, doing the dishes, making sure the tables were stocked with ketchup, tabasco sauce, napkins, clean silverware, ect. Dad wanted me to work longer hours there, plus additional hours at the pizza joint during the weekends, but both of my bosses refused, telling him that they weren't going to take hours away from their full time employees during peak hours like that. The only reason why I had gotten those jobs was because they had owed my dad some sort of favor, and I'm not entirely sure that favor was on the positive side of legal or at least ethical, so he wasn't going to put up a fuss about that. My bosses were clearly scared enough of my father and their 'favors' to not piss him off, but they could equally make trouble for him.  
    I only make eight bucks an hour, definitely not enough to survive on, but enough to help with our bills after our electric and oil got hiked significantly that year. We still scrape to make by, but as long as we aren't stupid about our finances, we do get by. Things got bad that year for everyone and they certainly haven't got any better. I don't know the specifics and economics just gives me a headache. I do know that our school librarian lost her job two years ago and they still haven't replaced her, just one of the many 'cutbacks' that the town went through. Right now the school library is staffed by volunteers, mostly parents.   
    Some of the upper middle class and upper class families were hit, something to do with stocks, and a few of them found their way towards our side of town, but families like the Dorlians and Winners remained rich and life continued on in our town. Like always, the art programs at our school and the high school suffered, but the football team got enough donations to get new uniforms and repairs done to their bus. The rich side of town still looked beautiful.   
    Meanwhile, two of our neighbors had to move out of their houses. They had both worked at the electric works on our side of town and had been working there for over thirty years, but they had gotten laid off in favor of two north enders that had only been there for ten. 'Connections' my father had grumbled, 'fuck experience and company loyalty, all those assholes care about are your connections.' I didn't know exactly what that meant, only that in listening to my dad talk about his own office politics, it was usually the north enders that had connections and the south enders didn't.   
    On our side of town, a whole lot of Hell got raised by those lay offs and some kids, probably the kids of those who got laid off, raided the north side of town and graffiti'd some truly nasty stuff on the houses of the two north enders that had gotten to keep their jobs. My dad was the one that got the call to arrest them. He had been in a foul mood when he had come home, and I can understand that. Being called in at three in the morning to arrest some teenagers was one thing, arresting some teenagers whose actions my father understood and sympathized with had been way out of his realm of priorities. I don't know if I really sympathize with those kids since they just slapped with some fines and community service work. I spent my first week of school that year with a sprained wrist and three broken ribs because of them.   
     Not much changed at home from the fourth grade to the fifth grade. I had hoped that going to school and getting out of my parents' way would have made them easier to live with, that by not being around to piss them off so much would have made them happier. All that changed was that my mother upgraded from the wine she had been drinking to vodka. A year later, she would start to drink whiskey, and I'm pretty sure she started to take drugs when I was halfway through the fifth grade. Her drunken stupors had started to take on this almost comatose look for her. She would stare off into space a lot, lost to the world. She still never looked happy about it, she never smiled when she was like it, so if she was on drugs, I couldn't figure out why. My Dad's temper had only gotten worse in that year and the amount of times he had hit me had escalated.   
    I got through all of it, though. Thanks to Quatre and my classes, I got through. Even Relena's bullying hadn't tempered our friendship or how much I relied on him to distract me from my problems. I hate that now, but it's true. I should have been there as the distraction for him, but it never seemed that way to me. I was always so consumed with depression over Relena, my parents, and how we were living. It seemed so rare those moments when I would stop and ask Quatre how things in his life were going. I had justified it back then, because if Quatre really needed me, he would seek me out. He would cry and hug me, or blurt out what the problem was. That was the sort of person he was, he wore everything on his sleeve, out in the open. That's how Relena and Zechs were so capable of tearing him apart so often, he didn't have the ability to hide anything from anyone. When it came to me, he had to pry my problems from me, and he was well aware of that. He always succeeded, but he was always alert with me, focused on the things that were making me upset.   
    We didn't hang out at each other's houses. I guess that's a really odd thing to admit. We were best of friends, and shared everything; our problems, our lunches, our dreams, our nightmares, even our bullies, but we never shared each other's home lives beyond talking about them. I was too ashamed of my house, where I lived, and especially my parents to ask him over. What would he think of the rotten porch steps? The rust on almost all of our faucets, along with the reversed water temperature controls in our shower and the kitchen light that flickered at random moments? What would he think about my parents' drinking habits, how much they yelled and cursed or, and I always blushed with shame thinking of this, what if he saw my father hit me?  
    Quatre already knew that my father beat me. There wasn't a single day that I come to school with a new bruise, a new broken arm, and new limp. He would always look at me with this expression that was half sad, half angry, but we never talked about it. We didn't need to talk about it. Quatre was smart enough to know that I was getting it at home by one of my parents, if not both, and he was also smart enough to know that I didn't want to talk about it. But that didn't mean that I wanted him to see it, either. He had enough problems at his own home, I had told myself, he didn't need to be worrying about mine as well. If I was having a problem, I would only talk about my injuries, how they hurt, or fights my dad and I had, but never about the actual hitting. I don't know why exactly, if it was just shame, or if I was scared to admit the problem out loud.   
    I had gotten old enough by that point that I had realized that my father's abuse was not normal. I'm sure there were other kids from homes like mine where their father, mother, sibling, or another family member was beating them, but I noticed all those other kids who didn't come to school bruised and hurting, whose parents picked them up from school with a hug or went to our school concerts, sports, and plays. My father's behavior was abnormal, and that only made it all the more painful for me. It made me wonder why he was like that, if it was something I had done wrong a very long time ago, if it was all my fault. Eventually, a big reason why I didn't talk to Quatre about it became my fear that Quatre would try to do something about it.   
    I don't mean that I was afraid Quatre would try to make my father stop. The idea of that was incredibly ludicrous. Quatre was tiny, my Dad wasn't. But what if he decided to tell another adult about? My father, the cop, wouldn't get into trouble, I was sure, but I would get into trouble, big trouble. And what if Dad did get into trouble? What if he got arrested? I hated that he hit me, but I still loved him, he was my father. I didn't want him to go to jail because I couldn't keep my mouth shut. The beatings hurt, but I had lived with them up until then. I could live with them longer.   
    Another big part of why I didn't want Quatre to come over was that I couldn't pinpoint the source of my father's anger. He hit my mother, too, even blamed her sometimes if I fucked up. What if he hit Quatre? The thought of that horrified me. I wanted to protect Quatre from all of the bad things. I couldn't protect him from Zechs or Relena, but I could protect him from my father.   
    I don't know why Quatre never invited me over to his house. At first I had thought that he might be ashamed of me. His proud father's only son's only friend, a loser from the south end who wore the same clothes three times a week, worked illegally to help support his family, and was a good for nothing in every way that counted. I only had those misconceptions for the first few months of our friendship. I quickly learned that Quatre just didn't see me that way. He liked me, for some reason I just couldn't fathom, and wasn't ashamed of that. Maybe he just hadn't wanted me to feel bad about where and how he lived, or maybe he was just as embarrassed by his parents as I was.   
    Sometimes I wonder if he saw his parents' neglect the same way I saw my father's abuse. The beatings and verbal abuse had been in my life for so long, I couldn't imagine my life without them. The pain and my father were tangled up in my mind, I couldn't have one without the other. Maybe Quatre couldn't imagine his life without that abandonment, without going home to a dark and silent house. I don't like thinking about that. I want to believe that Quatre had some kind of hope that his life would get better one day, even if I know now that that isn't true.   
    Quatre never caught up to me in terms of height. I got taller, though I was still averagely tall, and he barely did. He never stopped smiling, but I watched, helplessly, as the loneliness and abandonment he felt at home, and the bullying made that light in his eyes dull just a bit more every year we were friends. It matured him, like my own problems had matured me. Every time I realized that about him, I wanted to bash his parents' heads in for being so oblivious to their own child, but who was I to talk? I couldn't help Quatre and I couldn't help myself.   
    I hate that. I hate that I never had the strength to help him, when Quatre is the only reason why I survived this long. Him being my friend kept me happy, hopeful, and without him... I don't want to think about what I'll become without him. Nothing around here every changes. If it does change, it's always something worse, never better. Even when something better does happen, it never stays long. Every time I think I understand the world, every time I think I can understand my life and get used to it, something changes and I fall flat on my face.   
    I think Quatre felt the same way. Maybe that's the real reason why he left. It wasn't just the bullying, or that he was lonely, it was because as filthy rich as he was, Quatre was no different than I was. His entire future had been planned for him, not by fate but by his parents. All Quatre ever was in the eyes of his father was the next one in line, the son that would take over the business for him. I know that Quatre didn't want that anymore than I wanted to end up like my father, but just because you can see where your future is going to end up, it doesn't mean that you can change it.   
    Maybe Quatre decided he had to leave this place because he was smarter than me. He saw his fate and, like me, lost all hope. But unlike me, he wasn't willing to just accept that, to just stay stuck in one place for the rest of his life. Maybe he just didn't want things to change for the worse again. Or maybe Mrs. Khushrenada was right and my best friend had just been very sad and very unhappy. I hope that, wherever he ended up, he's finally happy.  
    My life took one of those changes in the second semester of our fifth grade, one of those changes for the worse that made me wonder if there was some sort of force out there that hated me. I'll always remember the date it happened. April 3rd, 2003. It was a Tuesday. Quatre had been planning to go to my job after school that day with me. He did that a lot, just chilled out with me during my shift. At first my boss had been irritated by it, but when he saw that it didn't affect my work any, he let Quatre stay. He would sit in one of the booths doing his homework or listening to music as I washed the dishes and cleaned the tables. When time came to fold the pizza boxes, he would come talk to me as I did it, and we would share my lunch break together. Some days, Quatre being there was the only thing that kept me sane in my boredom, and I like to think that he enjoyed being there instead of being alone at home.  
    That day had been a half day at work for me. One of my full time coworkers needed the extra shift that night, so my boss had agreed to let me out a bit early. My dad hadn't known and I had been looking forward to spending those hours with Quatre. We were going to go out and go to a restaurant. He had been saving up his allowance especially to take me out to some place he had found a few weeks back with one of his sisters and thought I would like it. I honestly didn't care what the food was like. It was free food and I could spend more time with him. But we never made it, I didn't even go to work that night.  
    But I'm getting ahead of myself. Quatre and I had almost all of our classes together, except for Math and English. I struggled my way through every math course I had ever taken, but I had just managed to not land myself in remedial math somehow. Quatre was a different story. He loved math. He loved equations and numbers and, unlike in our philosophy and English courses, there was always only the right answer. There was no ambivalence in math and he liked how black and white that was. He had taken to it like I had taken to English, another class we didn't take together. I had gotten into advanced placement English, and he had gotten into advanced placement Math.   
    So when it happened, I was completely alone, rushing my way to my own math class. I had been thinking about my math homework and how much I was looking forward to going out to eat with Quatre that night, so I can honestly say that the most of what happened was probably my fault. I was jostled out of my thoughts when someone pushed me. If I had been paying attention, I would have just evaded it and continued on my way, and maybe most of what had happened could have been avoided, but I hadn't. I barely had the time to react as someone grabbed me by my arm and pulled me out of the crowd of kids to a more secluded spot of the hallway near some lockers. I felt a chill seeing who it was that had grabbed me.  
    Relena. Just thinking about her now makes my skin prickle, but back then I had felt mostly angry that she was going to make me late for class, and wondering what she wanted to do to me this time. She hadn't really changed that much since the fourth grade, either. She had remained the same height as me, so she was actually taller than Quatre, but most importantly she had remained a bitch. And I was still scared of her. She still wore pink dresses that I thought didn't suit her at all, but her mother had long since given up curling her light brown hair. It was straight and free falling down her back that day. I was till haunted every time she did something to me or Quatre by the impulse to just punch her in her arrogant face.  
    But every time I thought about it, pushing her down and breaking that stuck up nose of hers, I felt a shiver of pleasure go through me. I had long ago lost count of the number of times she had shoved me around, taunted me, called me disgusting things, and tried to get me to eat even more disgusting things, and the idea that I could pay her back for all of those years without her being able to do much about it because at twelve years old, I was physically stronger than her, gave me this intense sense of power and control. Two things I have severely lacked since the day I was born. The fantasy of it made me feel good, but that pleasure terrified me. I would think 'is this how Dad feels when he hits me?' and that thought alone assured that I never could hit her.  
    I wish I had had the courage to hit her that day. Maybe then she would have kept her mouth shut. I didn't though. I had known that anything I did to her, she would eventually pay me back for, times five. If I hit her, all it would get me was an expulsion from school and a visit from her big brother. No matter what I did, I couldn't win, I had accepted that a long time ago. I think it was easier for me to accept than Quatre. As a child, he had been taught about things like fairness and that the bad guys always lose. So dealing with Relena, who he couldn't fight against, had probably rankled against those early taught lessons.   
    I had lived with my father and no one had ever told me that the world was supposed to be fair. If they had, I would have assumed they were lying to me. When you live with a man like my father, you learn that every day is just a series of battles. Some of them you might win, if you're fast enough or well behaved enough, but most of them you will lose and you have to learn to accept those loses or it'll just drive you crazy. Even if your day is filled by winning battles, if you go that whole day without getting hit or yelled at, or if you're stupid enough to try to make it stop, tomorrow would come. Tomorrow would come and you'd learn that none of yesterday means shit all and it just starts all over again. So what's the point of even trying for one day? It just makes you feel tired, and then they win anyway. I think that's something that took Quatre too long to learn, that expecting to win is the worst thing you can possibly do.  
    "I need to speak to you," she hissed at me lowly, not wanting the people around us to listen even as the bell rang, signaling the beginning of that block of classes and the throng of people thinned out.   
    I blinked stupidly at her. She had my immediate attention, even more than she usually did. This wasn't one of her usual games. She didn't have her intense focus and determination, but was fidgeting. There was a bright blush across her face and instead of staring me in the eyes, her eyes were everywhere else, as though she couldn't bear to look at me. She was embarrassed, I realized with shock, and anxious.   
    For the first time since she had started to bully me two years ago, I studied her, not like prey would study a predator, but I saw her as just a girl who wanted to tell me something. I wanted to be defensive, to see this as just another one of her tricks, but I couldn't. She didn't have it in her to fake this. She looked... _vulernable_ , the one thing that Relena Dorlian didn't have it in her to be.   
    I watched, perplexed, as she grasped the frilly, bottom hem of her top and fussed with it, like she was struggling with whatever she wanted to tell me. I wanted to tell her to hurry up and spit it out, but as much as I hated her, I just couldn't. I felt like I was seeing her for the first time, the real person behind the bully, like the girl that I had known since the fourth grade was just a mask. She had humiliated me, made Quatre and mine's lives at school terrible, but here I was feeling bad for her and I had no idea why.   
    "I... I like you," she murmured in a voice so small I could barely hear her above the chatter in the hallway.  
    "No you don't," I said in confusion.  
    How could she possibly say that she liked me? She obviously didn't like me at all. I remembered all the times she had looked at me with contempt or said something malicious. She flushed even darker and looked frustrated.  
    "This is stupid," she grumbled, "I never should have listened to Zechs..."  
    "What is it?" I suddenly blurted out and although I hadn't meant for it to come out that way, I couldn't stop the slightly harsh tone to my voice, so used to talking to her that way.      
    She flinched at the tone of my voice, as if I had just hit her, and I was filled with this sense of surrealism. It felt as if, for that one second, our roles had been reversed. Her blue eyes glanced shyly at mine for a moment, looking for something there. I doubt she saw anything but obliviousness and confusion. It seemed to make her more flustered and irritated.  
    "Dammit, I'm trying to say... to say... I really, really, really like you Duo," she ground out like just saying those words were physically taxing to her, like she was chewing on glass.  
    My eyes went wide and I stared at her like she was some kind of great white elk in my midst. Like she had gone insane. What was she... was she saying that she had a _crush_ on me?! But that wasn't possible, she hated me... didn't she? At that moment, I remembered a scene from an old television show I had watched years ago. It had been some flat, high school drama about a young boy, just a few years older than me if I remember correctly, lamenting about how this girl in his class was always picking on him. He had told his father this and his father had laughed and said something like 'oh, she probably just has a crush on you. Girls pick on boys that they like.' Was that what this was? Relena had been bullying me because she liked me? But that made no sense to me. I just could not conceive the idea... the mere possibility that she had any feelings towards me beyond hate and disgust.  
    "I... I don't understand," I said truthfully.  
    Relena huffed in angry frustration and before I could defend myself, she pressed her lips to mine.   
    I had never been kissed by a girl in all of my twelve years alive. I had never held hands or gone on a date. Hell, I had never had a crush on a single one of my female classmates. When I thought about my future, I never thought about a wife or girlfriend. I had known, even back then, that there was something wrong with me. Weren't boys my age supposed to at least start to be interested in girls? At the very least, if a girl as pretty as Relena, never mind our history with each other, had told me that she liked me, wasn't I supposed to feel flattered? But I didn't. I just felt weird, like it wasn't something that interested me and instead made me feel nervous, and it actually had nothing to do with her bullying me. I had always felt more comfortable about Quatre and my other male classmates than I did girls. I had just chalked it up to the whole boys versus girls, cooties, girls are icky mentality that most boys go through, but until that moment, girls hadn't felt icky to me.   
    Relena's lips on mine... they felt wrong. They made my stomach churn for some reason. A part of me was freaked out because of who she was, but most of me was freaked out because of what she was. I didn't like it. Every second her soft skin was against mine, I felt like my skin was tingling, and not in a good way. I wanted to shove her away and run. I wanted to be anywhere but there at that moment. But I didn't move away until she did, like I was frozen in place.  
    When she did move away, without even thinking about it, I grimaced and wiped at my lips. I knew the second that I did it what a huge mistake I had just made, but I couldn't help myself. That grimace had been as reflexive as a flinch if she had hit me. She looked at me again, her expression so full of hope and something that I couldn't place because I had never seen it before. Then she saw my disgust and that expression, which had been so soft and natural on her face, so welcome in comparison to how she usually looked, fell away and little by little, twisted into hate. It was an ugly thing to watch. I had thought the way she had looked at me all the time up until now had been hate, but those looks hadn't held a candle to this. It was loathing and worse, it was hurt. I had hurt her in that moment, a kind of hurt that was worse than anything she had ever done to me. When I saw tears in those hard blue eyes, I felt sick. What had I just done?  
    The sound of her hand hitting my face in a powerful slap was like a clap of lightning in the noisy hallway. I heard the noise around me go silent, but wasn't sure if it was in my head or if everyone around us was finally taking notice of us. Burning pain filled the right side of my face and I tasted blood, but I was used to both of those things. I wasn't used to the painful rage that was on Relena's face as tears dripped down her cheeks.  
    " _Faggot_ ," she hissed viciously at me with all of the anger of a viper before running off down the hall.   
    I caught sight of her best friend, Dorothy Catalonia, throwing an arm around her shoulders and comforting her, shooting me a heated glare. I ignored them both and the people around me that were staring like I was the most interesting thing they had seen in their entire lives.   
    I lightly touched my red hot cheek and looked down at my palm where a small amount of blood was smeared across my skin. One of her nails had caught me when she had slapped me and it had cut my cheek a little. The force of the blow had also split my lip. My dad had hit me in the face enough times that I was well used to the taste of blood and a pain much worse than what Relena's slap had done. But I wasn't used to how it had made me feel. I had never made her angry enough to actually strike me. I had never made anyone cry like that before... I had never hurt anyone like that before.  
    I should have felt smug about it, triumphant. How many times had she made Quatre or me cry? Who knew if she had done it to other kids. She was mean and cruel, and didn't care about anyone's feelings but her own. She had almost drowned me my first day of school. I should be happy that I had hurt her for once, if not for me then for Quatre. But I wasn't. I was miserable. I didn't want to be like her anymore than I wanted to be like my father.  
    I wiped the blood from my cheek and lips and hurried to my math class. My teacher lectured me on how tardy I was, which was very, and on any other day I would have been incredibly embarrassed. On that day, I couldn't have cared less. His voice washed over me like white noise as I walked past him and sat down at my desk. I was thoroughly useless the rest of that period. I kept going through what had just happened. It was just so crazy. It had happened to me personally, but I was still having trouble believing it. How could Relena Dorlian like _me_ of all people? Broke, dirty, stupid me? Had she liked me all the way back in the fourth grade and that was the reason why she had bullied me? I still didn't get it. Did girls really do stuff like that? I just couldn't believe that. Or had she just realized she liked me afterwards?  
    I replayed the entire thing in my head, her kiss, my reaction, her reaction to my reaction. Was there something I should have done differently? What were you supposed to do when a girl told you she liked you and kissed you? I could still feel her lips against mine, and I could still feel my complete disinterest and discomfort. Was there something wrong with me? I had never even thought about kissing girls. Was that normal? Obviously it wasn't, I told myself. How could I say that I was just too young, it was too soon, and that I would just grow into my attraction when a girl the same age as me had been interested in kissing me?  
     _Faggot_. She had called me that when she had seen my repulsion. I knew what that word meant. Faggots were boys that didn't like girls like they were supposed to. They were screwed up, freaks, and they liked kissing boys instead. I had always known that I was a freak, different from so many of my classmates, but was I... was I really a faggot? At that moment I had been self-aware enough to know that that was an impossible question for a twelve year old. It was probably an impossible question even if I had been older. What the hell did I know about sexuality, let alone my own? Sex hadn't even been on my mental radar, just one of those things I knew about, but had just labeled it as 'I'll worry about that when I'm older.'   
    But even if that was the case, I realized that my disinterest in _all_ girls was unusual. I had seen boys in my grade holding hands with girls. I'm sure sex hadn't been on their minds, either, but romance, dating, _liking_ had. Those thoughts had to have entered their heads. And if a girl had kissed them, especially a pretty girl like Relena, I'm sure that they would consider themselves lucky. I'm sure that none of them would have felt repulsed. Did that really mean I was a faggot?   
    I didn't even know what I was supposed to do if I was. It wasn't like I wanted to hold hands with any of the boys I knew either. I couldn't even begin to fathom what it would mean for me, well aware how my father, classmates, and most of the other people in my life felt about 'those' people. I was already a freak, did it matter that I was even more of one?   
    Eventually math period ended and I was even more confused than I had been at the start of it. I don't really remember being scared or repulsed by the possibility that Relena had been right, just very puzzled and worried. I filed it away in my head as something to worry about at some other point in my life, some point where it actually became a problem. I had other things to worry about.  
    I waited until all my other classmates had left to shoulder my backpack and leave the room. Zechs Dorlian was waiting for me, just like I knew he would be. He was leaning up against the lockers, arms crossed over his chest, his blue eyes glaring at me. He was wearing ripped blue jeans, the kind you could buy that way that probably cost just shy of a hundred dollars, black boots, and a very dark cranberry colored t-shirt with the name of some band on it, his long silver hair in a ponytail that was longer than mine.  
    I needed a hair cut, but I didn't have the money to get one or the skills to do it myself without the possibility of screwing up. My parents hadn't noticed how long my hair was getting either, and I wasn't going to bring the subject up with them, so I had just put it in a high ponytail and forgot about it.  
    Zechs was tall even for his age, more lanky than muscular but with a definite power in his arms. He used to be on the school boxing team before he had beat one of his teammates bloody during a boxing match. He scared the hell out of me, always had, and that had been before I had hurt his sister. Before, when I had just been 'Quatre's dorky friend,' he had looked at me like I was nothing more than an insect on his windshield, easily ignored and of no significance to him.   
    Now he looked at me like a wolf would at a terrified rabbit, his stare intense, angry and excited at the same time. Just like a scared rabbit, I could feel myself shake. He walked towards me and every instinct I had screamed at me to run, reminding me of everything this boy had done to my friend and Quatre hadn't pissed him off like I had. But I was paralyzed with terror. The only other person who had ever made me feel so tiny and scared was my father.   
    'He's going to disembowel me,' I remember thinking.  
    Not in the way that kids exaggerate an especially bad beating, I remember actually being overwhelmed with this terror and paranoid thought that the teenager was gong to rip my guts out.  
    "So," he said in this almost bored drawl, "you're the piece of shit that made my little sister cry," my stomach plummeted to my knees as he stood in front of me, his tone icy cold, "and here I was, being a nice guy and leaving the kid she liked alone. And this is how you repay me?"  
    He sighed, like just speaking to me was nothing more than a chore to him. Suddenly, with the lightning fast speed of a cat, he clutched my right ear and twisted. I cried out in pain, unable to do anything else, my backpack falling from my shoulder.  
    "Do you think my sister's pretty, Duo?" Zechs asked with a sort of banal innocence, like he wasn't causing me an excruciating amount of pain.   
    I tried to nod, but it hurt too much.  
    "Y-yes," I stammered.  
    His predatory grin widened, pleased with that answer.  
    "Do you think a lowly, useless piece of filth like you is too good for her?"  
    "No," I gasped out and almost cried with relief when he let go of my ear, letting me slump to my knees on the floor.  
    That relief turned to shock and pain as he drove his fist into my stomach. I don't know if I had bitten my tongue or if his punch had damaged something, but I was suddenly gasping for breath and hacking up blood. He didn't let me rest for more than a second, grasping my ponytail and pulling it upwards, nearly lifting me off my feet and worried he was going to pull my scalp off. I felt blood trickle down the side of my face as he twisted my hair and his grip tightened.  
    "Now, what sort of boy would be so repulsed by the kiss of a pretty girl like my sister?" he taunted, "What are you, a faggot?"  
    That word again, I was really starting to hate it and the superior look Zechs had when he said it. Before his blue eyes had been hard chips of ice, but as soon as he had started hurting me, they had lit up with perverse pleasure, which I found much more frightening. He gave my head a painful shake by my hair and I realized he wanted an answer.  
    "I don't know," I managed to say through bloody lips.  
    I thought about lying and telling him no, I wasn't a faggot, but I didn't know if he would believe that and what he would do if he thought I was lying.  
    " 'I don't know'," he repeated mockingly, "then why didn't you tell her that you liked her back?" he snarled, shaking me again, but I realized he wasn't really angry.  
    He was enjoying this.  
    "Because I don't!" I said truthfully.  
    At that point, I didn't think I was capable of lying convincingly.   
    "You don't like her," he sneered, "and what exactly are you going to do about it?"  
    I could feel the blood dripping down my face, staining my shirt. My ear and stomach throbbed harshly as I dangled there in his grip.  
    "I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry!" I cried, almost screaming.  
    "Good boy," he congratulated, "That wasn't so hard, was it?"  
    He slammed the side of my head into a locker and dropped me like so much dead weight. My world erupted into nothing more than gut wrenching pain and the metallic ringing of my head meeting the locker door. But through all of it I heard the brute speak again.  
    "I'm going to make your life a living hell."  
  
  
End Part 1  
  
Author's note:   
  
Also want to mention that this story is dedicated to my cousin and everyone else who has ever been bullied, including by their parents. My cousin was the smallest and youngest among 18 older brothers and was physically and emotionally abused by most of his brothers and his father. I started to write this story in the ninth grade to kind of purge all my darker memories of our childhood, watching him struggle with it. Fortunately, thanks to his best friend's mother, he was able to get away from that situation, but not all victims of bullying are that lucky. 


	4. Chapter 2 Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Relena and Zechs' bullying escalates, frustrated by Quatre's refusal to do anything about it, Duo tries to fight back.

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 2  
Part 2  
  
  
March 11, 2004 (continued)  
      
      
    And he did.   
    Even with the pain I was in, some part of me wanted to laugh. I remember how Relena had pushed me my first day of school, how my head had hit my desk and I had blacked out for a short amount of time. Like brother, like sister, but I didn't really feel like laughing. Thankfully, although Zechs had slammed my head into the locker harder than I had hit my head three years back, I fought not to black out and somehow managed it. I kept my eyes firmly closed for a long time as I laid on the floor.   
    Everything seemed to hurt. My head was obviously the worst, but my stomach was a close second. Just opening my eyes made my stomach roll and my head pound. The thought of throwing up on top of everything else made me focus on nothing else but my breathing. The taste of blood certainly wasn't helping. I became aware of a crowd forming around me, but I didn't care. Relena's bullying had gotten me used to people gawking at me long before Zechs. It was Quatre's voice that finally got me to open my eyes.  
    "Oh, my god, Duo!"  
    He was pushing through the crowd and knelt down to my level, looking positively frantic. The crowd started to disperse and I dimly realized it was lunch time. Food was the very last thing I cared about. Right then, the thought of eating at all again in my lifetime made me want to gag.  
    Quatre touched my head lightly, his hands shaking badly and I wondered how awful I looked.  
    "I'm ok," I murmured even though I felt far from it, "Zechs just-"  
    "I know," Quatre interrupted morosely, "Everyone is already talking about it."  
    I groaned at that more than the pain and I sat up, the world spinning like a top and Quatre, the natural nurse that he was, held my arm in case I fell over in my dizziness. I felt worse about hearing that than I had getting hit.  
    "What are people saying?" I asked, dreading his answer.  
    He hesitated, obviously not wanting to talk about it in the hallway.  
    "I don't care if anyone overhears, Quatre," I assured him, "but I need to know what they're saying."  
    It didn't matter who overheard us talking if people were already gossiping about it.  
    "Well..." Quatre fidgeted a little, "Dorothy has been telling people that Relena told you she liked you, and she kissed you but you turned her down. She's been saying to everyone that you... you must be gay, to not want to be with Relena. She said that Zechs was looking for you, that he was going to beat the sh-... beat you up."  
    For as long as I had known him, Quatre seemed incapable of swearing, and I would have laughed at his verbal stumble if I hadn't been so appalled. Bad enough that everyone in school was going to find out about that kiss, but that bitch Dorothy was actually telling people that I was probably gay? That was as bad as her saying that I definitely was, everyone was going to think that! I had always been an outsider, but this was different than being labeled as poor or awkward of being bullied. Everyone thinking I was gay was worse than everyone thinking I had killed someone.  
    "Is it true? Did Relena kiss you?" Quatre whispered like it was the worst thing that could have happened to me.  
    That made me smile as I leaned back against the lockers. For a moment, I had almost flown into a panic, worrying how my best friend, and the only person whose opinion I cared about, would take the news that I might be gay. But in true Quatre fashion, he wasn't even putting any speculation into that rumor. Knowing him, he was probably thinking that it was something that until I told him definitely yes or no, it wasn't even worth his time wondering about.  
    "Yeah," I confessed, "she said that she really liked me. Then she kissed me, just like that. She didn't even give me the time to tell her I don't like her back. I didn't like it," I murmured that part, still confused about my feelings, "and I guess she saw that because she slapped me."  
    I was honestly surprised that the story Dorothy had told everyone was the truth and she hadn't made up some lie, like I had been the one to kiss Relena to help her best friend save face, but the truth was bad enough, I guess. To my amusement, Quatre wrinkled his nose in the same revulsion I had felt. For the first time, I felt better about how I had acted. Maybe feeling grossed out by that kiss hadn't been because she was a girl but because she was a bully, so Quatre understood. Maybe I wasn't a fag and this was something only Quatre and I could understand.  
    "What did Zechs do to you?" he asked next in concern, looking at the blood that was no doubt smeared in my chestnut hair.  
    I told him about the fight and I didn't leave out any detail, not Zechs accusing me of being a fag or the last thing he had said to me. I hadn't thought it possible, but my best friend went even paler than he already was, his sea green eyes wide. He looked scared for me, and it was his fear that made me feel truly afraid.  
    "He's really going after you," he said in an awed tone.   
    "He's never done this to you?" I asked, getting more and more worried by the second.  
    Quatre shook his head.  
    "He's always picked on me from the first day we met, and Relena just followed his lead. He pulls cruel pranks on me, humiliates me, does everything he can think of to make my life miserable, but he has never gone after me like he just did to you. He's hit me a few times, and I know he beats up kids that piss him off, but he's never gone full out on me. At least not physically. This isn't good, Duo," he informed me in a dead serious voice, "Zechs is a terror when it _isn't_ personal. I... I don't know what to do to help..."  
    He sounded so hopeless and guilty, like Zechs targeting me was his fault and not my own and he should find some way to make it stop. I wanted to comfort him, tell him that if he couldn't save himself, how did he expect to be able to save me, and it was my own problem, but I knew it wouldn't make him feel any better. My friend looked at me like I was in line on my way to the gallows for my execution. Was it really that bad? I thought about how scared I felt when Zechs had slammed my head into the locker, how vicious and intense he had been. And I thought about how he was probably just getting started on me. I already missed just having Relena to deal with.  
    "I'll be fine," I lied to him.  
    Quatre had enough problems to worry about, he didn't need mine on top of them, but I could tell from his expression that he knew I was full of shit. I knew he wouldn't press it, though. It was one of those things we wouldn't talk about. What could he do about it anyway? He hadn't told any of our teachers about Zechs bullying him and he wasn't going to tell them about this either. Good. I didn't want him to.  
    There were only three possible outcomes for Quatre telling a teacher, the most likely one would be he would get ignored and nothing would come from it anyway. The second was that he _wouldn't_ get ignored, which would be a lot worse. Quatre was a Winner, so a teacher might pay attention to his problems the same way so many ignored Zechs and Relena. They might give Zechs detention or suspend him for a couple of days, a nice if pointless middle ground between doing nothing and pissing off the wrong parent. Or worst of all, option three, Zechs could be expelled. I didn't give that possibility much credence. If Zechs was going to get in trouble for beating up other kids, it would have happened already, but it was possible. If possibility number two happened, Zechs would beat the shit out of the both of us. If we got him expelled, he would kill us.  
    "We should get this cleaned out," Quatre said as he touched my bloody hair again, switching tracks.  
    I could appreciate that and it was something my friend did a lot. He couldn't stop Zechs from using me as his personal punching bag, so he would help me with the aftermath. He helped me to my feet, the world starting to become steady again. I almost told him I didn't want to go to the nurse, but saw he was walking in the other direction. We found ourselves in the boys' room and I wanted to laugh. It seemed like we always ended up there when things went bad.   
    I let Quatre play nurse as he carefully washed the blood out of my hair and off my skin. He even lifted up my shirt to look at where Zechs had punched me. My stomach was already starting to turn black and my ribs were tender as Quatre poked them, but neither of thought that they were broken. My ear was red and a little bit swollen, too, but it wasn't bleeding or bruised, so I didn't care. Quatre was more worried about the huge bruise on the side of my head from hitting the locker.   
    I didn't eat anything during lunch and Quatre didn't try to make me. I knew skipping meals wasn't a good idea. I was already skinny and I skipped a lot of meals at home, but even though I wasn't dizzy anymore, my stomach still hurt like hell and I was worried about vomiting. Neither Zechs nor Relena bothered us during lunch. That worried me immensely. Relena was sitting with Dorothy and a few other girls she was friendly with, probably gossiping about me and the kiss. In my mind, that's how I had started to think about the whole mess. 'THE KISS,' all capital letters. Zechs was sitting with a couple of other boys at a different table. I didn't know the other boys, they were all in Zechs's grade, but they seemed like the type I didn't want to be acquainted with.  
    Zechs and Relena's relationship is strange to me, but maybe that's because I don't have any siblings. They don't seem especially close. They never eat lunch together and I've never seen them really speak to each other or even make eye contact sometimes. Zechs acted like he was protective of her, and back then I had thought that was why he had attacked me so viciously, that he was just this stoic big brother that secretly had a soft spot for Relena. But now, a year later? I think that Zechs hadn't given a single, solitary shit about Relena.  
    Maybe he had listened to her when she had told him to stay away from me because of some kind of respect for her or he simply hadn't cared that much about me when he had Quatre to terrorize, but I don't believe he had cared at all that I had hurt her. I think he had just grasped on that as an excuse to attack me. To him, it was a game. He liked being vicious and messing with me. I don't even think Zechs likes Relena that much. Her tears mean as much to him as mine do.   
    At some point in my paranoid scrutiny of my two bullies during lunch, I had started to nod off, feeling drained by everything that had happened although we were only halfway through the school day. I was brutally awoken when Quatre slammed his thermos on the table. I shot awake like someone had shot a gun off in front of my face. He smiled apologetically at me, but honestly didn't seem all that sorry and I realized he had done it on purpose.   
    "You shouldn't fall asleep," he said worriedly, "I mean, if you might be concussed..."   
    "I am," I told him groggily as matter of fact, "I know what a concussion feels like."  
    Quatre's smile turned sad but he didn't say anything about it and I was glad. I dimly realized that he was right. I knew I had a concussion, even if it was a pretty minor one, falling asleep had been pretty stupid. I looked across the cafeteria again just to make sure Relena and Zechs hadn't moved. They hadn't. I peeked at my friend as he continued to eat his lunch, some sort of lentil soup with day old biscuits he had brought from home, and for that brief moment I saw him in the same situation I had just been in, dangling from Zechs's grip like a mouse in a cat's jaws.  
    Quatre had said that Zechs had never done anything like that to him and I decided to believe it. It made me feel incredibly relieved. I was glad that it had been me. It had hurt and it had terrified me, but I never wanted my best friend to know what it felt like. I could take it, and if Zechs could focus all that violence on me alone, I would take that and I would take it gladly. I just wished I could do more for him.  
    It's sick to remember now, but in a fucked up way, a part of me was glad Zechs had turned on me. That guilt I had felt, being the one immune from Zechs's bullying, was gone. Some part of me had wanted to share this with my friend, to really know what he had been going through all this time. I don't know if I had wanted to punish myself or if I had had that stupid and childish notion that if I experienced Quatre's pain, I could find a way to save him from it.   
    At recess, Quatre and I escaped to the wooded area on the edge of the playground like we always did. If we tried to go on the jungle gym, we would just get kicked off by the kids that always hung out there. The swings were even worse. They were prime real during recess and typically the older kids got them. Any little kids that tried to make a go for them got dragged off or worse. One poor, dumb kid in our grade dared to steal Zechs's swing once. He usually hid on the other side of school where no teachers were looking out to steal a smoke with some other older boys and look at skin mags, but no one messed with Zechs's swing, even when he wasn't using it.  
    That day he hadn't been all that interested in swinging, but it had been the _principle_ of the thing. He had promised the kid he wouldn't beat the snot out of him if he did exactly what he told him to. In this case, that was making the kid swing as high as he could, and then jump off the swing. The boy had ended up with a broken leg and Zechs had beaten him up anyway. No one had gone anywhere near Zechs's swing after that, not even one of the other eight graders.  
    Quatre and I had made due by making our own swings. I had gotten the rope from the dump and Quatre had collected bits of an old hammock he had found at his house, plus some sheets to make the seats. We tied them onto the sturdiest branch he could find last year. I don't know what's more amazing, that those swings actually worked or that they remained ours for a year and a half. The first time we had used them, I had thought about how nice they were and how I should get as much fun as I could that day, because I was so sure that the next day I would find them trashed, stolen, or being used by someone else, but that never happened. I threw them away this week. I don't need them anymore.  
    I made a beeline for them that day, and swinging lethargically back and forth with Quatre actually made my stomach feel better for some reason. I thought about the predicament I had found myself in with Zechs, Quatre's fear and his desire to make things better. Now that the pain was starting to feel less sharp, I discovered that my own fear was starting to feel less frantic. I was still scared of Zechs, but I think Quatre was still more frightened than I was. Now that my initial terror and shock were gone, I asked myself if it really mattered. Had Zechs done anything to me that my father hadn't done at some point? I was used to being used as a punching bag at home and I had hoped it would be different at school, but I could survive Zechs just like I had survived my father.  
    I was justifying it, trying to make it out into better than it was so I wouldn't have to feel terror again. Quatre had been right. Zechs Dorlian is a monster. In some ways, he's worse than my father and I never should have let my guard down, but I did. Our next block was gym, another subject I was pretty lackluster in, but Quatre was even worse than me.   
    I did ok in track, archery, badminton, tennis, basically anything were I didn't have to use brute strength for, of which I had none. I was decently fast. I wouldn't win any awards, but I could keep up with the group. I wasn't tall enough to be any good in basketball and too skinny to even consider playing football, and when we played softball, Quatre and I never got picked. My favorite events were when we had to go one on one, like in free badminton. Quatre and I could just volley the birdie back and forth all period.  
    Our school has this stupid policy that you can't wear your normal school clothes during gym. We didn't have uniforms or anything like that, but we had to wear shorts and t-shirts, and even if you wore sneakers normally, you had to wear different ones in gym. You also had to take showers afterwards. I honestly didn't mind that bit. At least at school, there was always hot water. We had these stalls, so there was privacy, but Quatre absolutely hated doing it. He was always paranoid that Zechs would do something when he was showering, so we would coordinate our showers, one in, one as look out. We knew the look out couldn't stop Zechs or one of the other boys if they tried something, but we could warn each other.  
    I slipped into one of the stalls, quickly dressed into my gym clothes, and stepped out into the gym. I put my school clothes and backpack on the bleachers with the rest of the lower classmen's. The upper classmen had lockers in the gym they could stash their stuff, but even though there were lockers to spare, it was some kind of unwritten rule that we weren't to use them. I took special care to put my sneakers under the rest of my things. They were the only pair I owned. My gym sneakers were actually one of Quatre's sister's who had close to my shoe size. They were shaped a little bit different than I was used to, but they fit. Still, I didn't really consider them mine, I was just glad I had a spare for gym. There's no way in hell my father would have bought me a second pair.  
    Just as I jumped off the bleacher, the back of my t-shirt was grasped by a now familiar hand and I was shoved into the wall. Faster than I could react, Zechs pulled my arms behind my back, holding both of my wrists in one hand. I could have elbowed him in that time, or slammed my head back into his and broken his nose, but that fear was back. I had stupidly assumed that after what he had done earlier, he would leave me alone for the rest of the day. I guess dealing with Relena for two years hadn't taught me anything. I did struggle against him a little out of instinct, but when he shoved me against the wall again, I immediately stopped, knowing how pointless it was.  
    "Hi there, faggot," the older boy jeered in the same ear he had grabbed before.  
    He put his other hand on the back of my head and ground my face into the wall. I squeezed my eyes shut as I felt the brick cut up my cheek.  
    "Zechs, please stop," Quatre pleaded.  
    I opened my eyes and saw him standing there, deathly pale and anxious. I wanted to hiss at him to shut up and disappear, but Zechs beat me to it.  
    "You going to stand up for the fairy? How sweet," the teenager sneered, then his gaze turned icy cold, "I suggest you fuck off, Winner, unless you want twice what he's going to get."  
    Quatre flashed me a look of pure guilt and seemed like he was about to cry, but he stayed silent and back off. Maybe some part of me, way deep down, had felt bitter that he wasn't trying to save me, but if it did, that part was tiny and mute. I was glad Quatre was backing off. I didn't want him to get hurt because of me.  
    "The boys and I have this wager going," the bully hissed in my ear, but loud enough that I didn't doubt everyone could hear him, "I say a pretty little queer like you can't possibly leave the house in the morning without a tiny, little red thong. My friends say it's a hot pink bikini."  
    I heard loud laughter and snickering from behind us, the voices both female and male and I realized that the whole class was watching this. My eyes widened in horror as it dawned on me what Zechs was about to do.  
    "Won't you settle our little bet, Duo?" he said in a tone of mock friendship.  
    "Please, don't," I begged with everything that I had, even when I knew it was pointless.  
    I felt his free hand slip into the back of my gym shorts, grab the waist band, and pull them down, just far enough that the entire crowd could see my underwear. My face felt like it was literally on fire and I squeezed my eyes shut as tears gathered in them. I refused to cry, even as my chest heaved. I had never felt so ashamed in my life. Relena writing 'liar' on my forehead in front of one single classroom had been nothing compared to this. I felt like I was going to throw up, like I should find some hole to crawl into and never emerge again.   
    "Aw, too bad," Zechs said in fake disappointment as he lamented my plain black boxer shorts, "Looks like _all_ of us were wrong. Not only are you a fag, you're a boring one. We're really going to have to do something about that, Duo."  
    The gymnasium erupted in uproarious laughter and cruel jabs about whether I really was gay and about my underwear, how I looked like I was going to cry, which I didn't doubt. I could feel myself shaking and the tears were becoming harder to keep back. I felt so... so overcome with useless rage and embarrassment. I hated myself for being weak, for letting this happen and for letting it bother me this much, I hated Zechs for doing it and I hated everyone else for laughing. Zechs had gotten exactly what he wanted and let go of my wrists, but it did little to comfort me.  
    The whole scene was broken up by our gym teacher's whistle. I turned and watched the class run over to him on the other side of the gym to start their warm up exercises. He didn't seem to notice Quatre and me in our little corner. Or more like he didn't want to notice us. I couldn't care less.   
    "Duo," I heard Quatre say in an almost whisper and glanced at him.  
    He had tears running down his cheeks, tears I had denied myself, and he looked like he might lose it at any moment. A part of me wanted him to go away, to leave me alone so I could cry and feel my shame in peace. But that's not what I really wanted... no, what I really needed. I needed my friend. I needed to know I wasn't alone. I gathered up all the strength I had left, which was very little, and shoved my tears deep down into my stomach. I pulled up my shorts and turned to smile at him like none of it had ever happened, never mind that there was blood trailing down my cheek, my eyes were wet, my skin was still scarlet red from embarrassment, and my wrists were bruised. It was what I wanted to believe, that it hadn't happened.   
    "Well, at least he didn't hit me again," I said with a cheer I didn't feel.  
    I don't know, even now, how I was able to smile then, how I was able to keep from crying or my voice cracking. Quatre had the most painful expression on his face. It was almost enough to destroy the brave facade I was trying to put on. For the very first time, I saw the same guilt on his face that I had felt every time Zechs had started in on him and I had done nothing. But it was more than that. A lot of people might read this and accuse me of being overly sensitive. They might say that boys got pantsed by older boys all the time, that it was cruel, but nothing to cry over. But that wasn't what had just happened. If Zechs had just run up to me in the hall and pulled my jeans down, it would have been embarrassing, but I would have handled it.  
    This had been different. I can't even really explain it well, the reason why it had shaken me, the mount of shame, not just embarrassment it had made me feel. It had been... menacing? I guess that's a good word for it. Zechs had questioned my sexuality, had announced it to the entire class. He had _checked_ my underwear, scrutinized it. He had exposed me, not just my underwear or my body, but something I was starting to feel self conscious about. A thing I hadn't even _thought_ about, someone I hated had brought to the surface. I felt as violated as if he had reached into my shorts and groped me.  
    Gay... fag... it was the absolute worst thing he could have accused me of being. If a single person in this school hadn't heard about my not wanting Relena to kiss me, they would surely hear about this. Everyone was going to watch me closely and wonder... is he really a fag? Most of them, the ones that knew what Zechs and Relena were like, would know they were just spreading that rumor to torment me, but some would think they were telling the truth. Even the ones that knew it was just gossip would follow Zechs's lead and treat me like I was gay, because it was fun to them, and it wasn't like I was their friend or anything.  
    But what hurt the most about those accusations was that I didn't know. If I had just known I wasn't gay, I could deny it or ignore it, and like so many things in elementary school, it might just get forgotten. Even if I had known that I was gay, I could just brush it off because Zechs was right, I was a fag. As long as no one knew that as fact, I could get past it. But I was twelve, not a child anymore and not a teenager. I didn't know anything about who or what I was at that age. And every time Zechs called me fairy or faggot or gay, I felt this great unknown. Every time, I asked myself 'well, am I?' It was that uncertainty, the anxiety that made it so bad.  
    Looking at Quatre's face, I knew he understood all of that. He understood why this had upset me so much more than being hit had. His tears were the same ones I had almost shed. Suddenly, my best and only friend hugged me tightly. I was still feeling emotionally sensitive, and a part of me wanted to push him away, but I couldn't. I didn't care if anyone saw us, and where they were grouped on the other side of the gym, I knew that they couldn't. Quatre's arms around me were exactly what I needed.  
    "I'm ok," I said and tried to believe it myself.  
    He let go of me and I pushed all of the rage I had felt down inside, where I hoped Quatre wouldn't be able to see it. We joined our classmates, our teacher snapping at us for being late, and I pointedly didn't look at either Zechs or Relena, though I could feel them staring at me.   
  
*****  
  
    "Good hustle, Maxwell," our gym teacher, Mr. Sturm, barked at me as we finished our last lap around the track.  
    Mr. Sturm was one of those teachers that seemed only suited for physical education and couldn't possibly hold a job in anything else. You know, those gym teachers that coached pretty much every school sports team, always could be seen with a whistle around their necks, and seemed physically incapable of speaking in anything beyond a bark, even when he was happy about something. I blushed a tiny bit at his praise. Mr. Sturm gave out compliments like a desert produces rain, he was capable of it, but hardly did, and he hardly ever had any time for a student that wasn't on one of his teams.   
    He was usually snapping at us underclassmen to run faster, hit harder, stop slacking, ect. I must have improved my track time enough for him to notice, not that I cared. I couldn't give a shit about sports and in reality, it was unwanted. I could feel Relena glaring at me the same way she always did when a teacher praised me or I spoke up in class. Her glares had become a lot worse since she had kissed me.  
    "Thanks," I murmured.  
    When we were far enough away from the man on our way to the showers, I heard Quatre snicker and I rolled my eyes at him.  
    "Maybe you should sign up for the track team," he teased.  
    Quatre was well aware that I considered sports to be pointless wastes of time, especially mine and that usually I didn't even try in gym class. I had only done better than usual today because I had hoped if I channeled my rage into some physical energy, it might just go away. It hadn't. I just felt angrier feeling Relena's glare. I hadn't asked for her to kiss me, I thought in frustration and tried to quell it.   
    "Yeah," I snorted bitterly, "because running slightly above average is going to get me real far in life."  
    I grabbed my school clothes from my pile on the bleachers, leaving my school sneakers and backpack there and head for the showers. I took my shower first, going as fast as I could, then acted as Quatre's look out. I was so sure that Zechs would try something when I had been in the shower, but I didn't even see a glimpse of him. That only scared me. I didn't think the older boy could resist pulling something shitty for more than five seconds. That feeling only intensified as I walked out of the locker room and neither of the two bullies were in sight. I sighed as I found my backpack again and dug my shoes out of the bleacher. When I wasn't prepared, Zechs and Relena showed up out of nowhere and when I was, they were nowhere to be seen.  
    I dropped my shoes on the ground and sat on the bleachers to put them on. Usually I just stood and slipped my foot into them quickly. I can't say why I sat down to do it that time, but in seconds I became relieved that I had. As I started to put my right sneaker on, something stabbed the heel of my foot viciously. I hissed and kicked the shoe off, cradling my injured foot in my lap. Blood was already starting to blossom through my sock.  
    "Are you ok?" Quatre asked in a panic.  
    "I don't know," I said honestly.  
    I couldn't figure out what had hurt me. Whatever it had been, it had stung like hell. Quatre studied my sneaker as I did the same to the bottom of my foot. There wasn't even a cut or hole in the bottom of my sock, and the wound itself was practically invisible. The bleeding was already starting to stop, but it was going to hurt walking on it for a bit. Quatre frowned as he pulled a large tack out of my shoe. It had once been silver but was now stained red. Someone had carefully taped it to the sole of my sneaker so the pointy end would stick straight up.  
    "Relena," he muttered angrily, "she used to do this to my shoes in kindergarten."  
    I blinked at him stupidly as he walked over to the trash can and angrily threw the tack into it like it had been in his shoe and not mine. I didn't even feel angry. I would later when it had the time to sink in, but at the moment I had just felt bewildered. I could see her putting a bug or glue or mud in my shoe, but she had never done anything like this before. She was escalating. Or maybe she wasn't, not entirely. Quatre had said she had done this same thing to him as a child, but she had never done it to me.  
    Had she been holding back all this time because she liked me? I hadn't seen her do anything like this to Quatre, either, so maybe she was pulling out old tricks in her rage. In that case, she really was escalating from how she had been treating us. And it was all my fault.  
    Quatre sat down next to me on the bleachers and rummaged through his book bag for something.  
    "Let me see your foot," he ordered when he finally found what he was looking for.  
    I pulled off my sock and rested my bleeding foot in his lap. He calmly washed the blood off with a bottle of water he had had in his pack and put a band aid on my heel.  
    "Feel better?" he asked.  
    I would have teased him a little, maybe said he should consider a career as a nurse, but I was still shocked by what had just happened. I guess what shocked me the most was that I was shocked at all at this point. Both Zechs and Relena had shown me they weren't going to pull their punches. Getting stabbed by a tack wasn't such a big deal compared to Zechs beating me, but it was the knowledge that Relena had snuck it into my shoe while I had been showering that really got to me. What else would she do if she got the chance. That thought startled me and, ignoring Quatre's question, began digging through my backpack.  
    I found what I was looking for immediately.  
    "Oh no," I moaned as I pulled out my history textbook.  
    Or more accurately, what was left of my history textbook. Quatre hissed in sympathy as he saw the extensive damage. It looked like someone had thrown it into a jet engine. That someone had painstakingly taken to it with what looked like a pair of shears. There were long cuts on the hardcover, and almost all the pages were cut up and slashed, all gathered up and jammed into the book so when I opened it, they fell out in a nest of paper.   
    "You can borrow mine next period," he said in a soft voice, putting a supportive hand on my shoulder.  
    I felt red hot rage boil in me at seeing my textbook. It wasn't fucking enough was it, that her brother had humiliated me, assaulted me, and she had put a tack in my shoe. No, she had to destroy the only way I was going to get through my class! I almost threw the book across the gym at that point and screamed. If Quatre hadn't been there, I think I might have. I don't know what was worse, the violence she had done to something that had been mine, or the consequences of it.   
    With gym ended, it was free reading period, but after that was our history class. I couldn't get through a single lesson without this textbook, and forget about doing the homework. Quatre and I sat right next to each other, so we could share his book, but the thought of that made me more angry.   
    "No," I snarled, "I'm just getting by in world history, if I skip my homework assignments because of this, I'm screwed. And I don't have the money to buy another one."  
    The school just gave us textbooks for free, but if you lost yours or it got ruined, they had to order more, and they made you pay for it. Our history textbook was 78 bucks. Relena had just destroyed more money than I saw in over a month.   
    "I can give you mine," Quatre offered, his voice small and concerned seeing me so angry, "I can skip a couple homework assignments while they order me another one. You know I can afford it-"  
    "No," I said again but this time I was sad and desperate on top of angry. I looked at him and something in my eyes made him flinch a little, "I am NOT going to let her win this time, Quatre, not over this."  
    I stuffed the remains of my textbook into my bag. Just then I looked up and saw Relena all the way on the other side of the gym by the girls' locker room. She had been watching us and when she saw the rage on my face, she smirked. There was so much smugness, so much malice in that smirk. I wanted to take the tack that Quatre had thrown out and jam it in her face. Instead, I boldly strode over to the line of lockers and found one that was open, the lock on it loose. I took it off and read the combination that had been written on a piece of tape on the back of it before peeling the tape off. I felt her eyes on me and wanted to smirk myself. Good, let her watch.   
    "What are you doing?" Quatre hissed at me, looking around anxiously.  
    "Making sure she can't fuck with my stuff ever again," I ground out.  
    I shoved my gym clothes and gym sneakers into the locker and looked over at Saren. That superior smirk was gone. In it's place was the same look of rage I had had before. Our places had switched. I saw intent in those hard blue eyes, but I didn't care. For the first time since the fourth grade, I felt like I had gained footing on her.   
    "Put your stuff in, too," I told Quatre.  
    I thought I could help him, too. It seemed like such a small thing, even then, just a way to keep Zechs and Relena from putting more booby-trap in our clothing and have them deface our things, but it was something. In reality, it was the only way I could fight against them. I had let her bully me for the past two years and hadn't done a single thing to stop her. This, as petty as it was, seemed important to me. To my dismay, Quatre shook his head.  
    "You shouldn't do this, Duo," he cautioned.  
    "Why?" I asked bitingly, "Because the upperclassmen will be pissed that I'm using their lockers? Who cares. I won't get into trouble about it and all they'll do is what Zechs intends to do to me anyway."  
    "No," he voice rose and he sounded frustrated all of a sudden.  
    Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Relena storm out of the gym. Good riddance. I turned my attention back to my friend and saw him pull his advanced mathematics textbook out of his pack. He flipped through the pages slowly, showing me page after page. In marker, there were things written on almost every page. 'Ugly' and 'die' were the tamest amongst them. I saw that damned f word written quite a few times. I guess Zechs had made the same accusations against Quatre that he had made against me. Not all of the words were written in the same marker and I realized that they had been written after a series of time, maybe even since the beginning of that semester. I reached out tentatively and touched one of the many 'die's that had been written across the equations.   
    "Why don't you replace it?" I asked sadly, each word and slur against my friend were like shards of glass in my heart.  
    "I did," Quatre admitted, "Relena started doing this to all my textbooks last year. I bought new ones at first, but she just kept doing it and Zechs came after me worse. When I stopped replacing them, things got a little bit better. If you do this, Duo, they'll just get back at you worse for fighting back, you have to realize that."  
    Then he pulled out his history homework. It had been given the same treatment that my book had and I couldn't help but feel that Relena had did that as revenge against me, not Quatre. I turned from him, closing and locking the locker with my things inside. I felt like this was less of a victory now, but I refused to back down.  
    "I know," I murmured, and I did, "but I can't just accept this."  
    I don't know why I couldn't. I had been letting this go on for years. I had let things like this go on at home for even longer. So why now, why did I have this sudden urge to try to stop it? Maybe that was the point. I had to let my dad bully me, I couldn't stop it, so all I could do was this. All I knew was that I had to try.  
    Quatre sighed and I knew that he thought I was an idiot. That was ok. I was an idiot, but I felt frustrated that he was so willing to let them do this to him, to write those things in his school books.  
    "What are you going to do about your history textbook?" he asked.  
    "Got any tape?" I replied and managed to quirk a small smile.  
  
*****  
  
    It took the entire free reading period and by the end of it, I was so frustrated I'm surprised I hadn't started crying or swearing, and that was probably only because I hadn't wanted to get kicked out of the school library, but I did it. As Quatre put his homework back together enough to copy it onto a fresh notebook page, I reconstructed my history text book as best I was able. I used up all of Quatre's tape and a roll of tape the librarian gave me, and the end result was the ugliest thing you could imagine, but I could physically read the pages. Putting them back in order had been the hard part. Quatre might have thought I was a moron for it, but he still smiled at me when I had finished.   
    As an added bonus, we managed to get to our history class on time. Relena was already there, looking smug again until I pulled the textbook I had reassembled out of my pack. As ugly as my book was, the expression on her face was a thousand times worse. I should have felt smug about it. I hadn't wanted her to win, and I repaired the damage she had done. But I saw that look of unadulterated rage on her face and felt a chill. I didn't feel like I had accomplished anything other than sign my own death warrant.   
    Our teacher was running late so our class lapsed into a laid back social environment within seconds. Quatre and I chatted about a movie he was looking forward to seeing and he might take me to if I had the time to next week. We did stuff like that every now and again. I used to feel terrible about now being able to pay for things like movies and Quatre paying my way, but he had simply said that he really wanted to go, just making me feel guilty about making him go by himself instead. Sometimes, the ruthless businessman his father wanted him to grow into shined through. As sweet as Quatre was, he could be a master manipulator when he wanted to be.  
    I didn't even see Relena walk up to my desk until Quatre went silent in mid sentence. I glared at her. I had known she would retaliate against me, but I had thought she would at least wait until after class or something.  
    "What?" I snapped at her, tired of all these games and just wanting this day to be over with.  
    I didn't see the pepper shaker she was clenching in a fist so tight it the plastic shaker was starting to crack, but Quatre did.  
    "Duo-" he started to warn, but it was too late.  
    All I saw was her enraged sneer and a cloud of black and grey as she lashed out with the shaker, pepper splashing into my eyes. Then, the worst pain I have ever felt filled my eyes and nose and pretty much every sense I had. I don't concretely remember what happened after that, just the hot haze of agony as my face felt like it had exploded. I think I might have screamed, or maybe that had just been Quatre and a few members of my class.  
    It wasn't like in the cartoons. I didn't sneeze uncontrollably and that was the end of it. I don't remember sneezing at all. I felt like clawing my eyes out of my head and was too scared to even open them. I remember being very afraid after the searing pain had subsided enough to have an intellectual thought that I was going to go blind. I felt tears gush down my cheeks like tiny waterfalls as my eyes tried to get the offending grains of pepper out, not realizing how useless it was to even try. My nose dripped, too, and felt like someone had shoved a hot poker into it. I barely regained enough of my dignity not to curl up into a ball on the floor screaming, but only barely.   
    "Relena!" I heard our teacher cry out.  
    "I am so sorry!" Relena exclaimed, sounding incredibly guilty and almost tearful, "I tripped on Duo's desk leg..."  
    She was an infuriatingly good actress and I knew that our teacher was going to believe her even if I couldn't see it. I felt Quatre grab my arm and wanted to cling to him in fear.  
    "Winner, take him to the nurse's office," our teacher said frantically.  
    Quatre didn't say a word, but led me out of the classroom.  
    "It's going to be ok, Duo," he said as soon as we were out of ear shot of our class, sounding as terrified as I felt.  
    I couldn't muster up the ability to respond to him, glad that he didn't ask me how I felt or if I was alright. Speech seemed impossible. I could taste the pepper in the back of my throat even though I hadn't swallowed any. I kept rubbing at my eyes. I felt the pepper grains in there, like the sand you get in your eyes when you first wake up, but bigger and awful. Quatre walked us as fast as he could, but little by little I felt the pain spread. I had no idea that pepper could cause that much agony, but it seemed to go all across my face until my entire head felt like it was on fire.   
    "Don't rub," Quatre insisted, his voice shaky, "You'll make it worse."  
    I almost quipped at him that there was no way this pain was going to get any worse, but I did as he said, keeping my hands at my sides even as I felt like my facial muscles were twitching. I felt like I was going to pass out and throw up all at once and every movement we made on the way to the nurse's office was torture. By the time we actually got there, I felt like my face was made of a mix of lava and stone and that if I took another step, I was going to die.   
    "What happened here?" I heard the nurse ask and had to wonder how I looked that she sounded so concerned.  
    "I got some pepper in my eyes," I croaked before Quatre could say anything.  
    I hated myself for it. This had all happened because I wanted to stand up to Relena, just once, even knowing that she or Zechs were going to retaliate. You'd think I'd be smarter, after everything Zechs had done to me, but apparently not. This was all my fault. But some part of me still ached in wanting to point the finger at her, and I didn't. Because what would be the point? No one would believe me, and if they did, they wouldn't care. All I kept thinking of was that I was an idiot, and that this could have been Quatre if Relena had really wanted to hurt me. Putting my things in a locker and taping up my books was so petty... how could I ever have felt that I had any control?  
    The nurse made a tsking noise.  
    "Sit him over here," she ordered my friend.  
    Quatre led me over to what I could only presume was one of the beds and sat me down on it.   
    "Does he need to go to the hospital?" he asked worriedly.   
    "Not at all," the nurse said and almost sounded bored.  
    Her nonchalance about the fact that my eyes felt like they were burning out of my skull actually made me feel a bit better.  
    "I just need to get the pepper out of his eyes and wash them out, he'll be able to go back to class as soon as I'm done."  
    I highly doubted that, but still didn't say anything. I didn't even care that they were talking over me. As long as this pain went away, they could do whatever they wanted.   
    "Tilt his head back," the nurse ordered and I felt Quatre do just that.  
    "This is going to feel a bit weird, Duo," Quatre warned me, "but it's just the eye wash station, ok? You're going to need to open your eyes though."  
    I nodded, but it was easier said than done. The second I tried to open them, all I saw was red and the burning got much more intense. I immediately shut them, then opened them again. It took me a few minutes to actually keep them open, but Quatre and the nurse were patient with me.   
    Then the nurse sprayed the water into my eyes and I felt like my whole body convulsed. I had thought that having cool water on my face with it burning like that would feel good, but it was such a shock, the difference in temperatures making me feel ill. I blinked as the water splashed in my eyes and felt the grains of pepper disappear little by little, along with some of the pain, but not all of it. I shivered as the water stopped, my shirt getting wet as it dripped down my neck.   
    "Is that milk?" Quatre asked incredulously.  
    "You're going to put milk in my eyes?" I asked in the same tone, balking and I started to lower my head.  
    "Keep still," the nurse scolded, "this will neutralize the burning."  
    The milk felt even worse than the water and every instinct I had was screaming at me to shut my eyes. But then, the second the milk actually hit my burning eyes, the pain vanished. It was like someone had waved a magic wand. I blinked and then looked at the nurse. She wasn't the same nurse I remembered from the last time I had been here. The last one had been a brunette, this one was a blonde.   
    "The pain is gone," I said in amazement.  
    She chuckled.  
    "Milk, especially whole milk, is always the best thing for a pepper burn," she told me.  
    I filed that information away in case Relena ever decided to shove pepper in my eyes again. Quatre gave me a relieved smile and handed me a wet washcloth. I wiped away the milk and water and blinked again, just to make sure my eyes didn't hurt or I wasn't impaired. They ached a little, but the pain was completely gone, I couldn't believe it.  
    "You ok to go back to class?" Quatre asked softly.  
    I nodded.  
    "I feel fine now," I said.  
    Quatre and I thanked the nurse and left. The whole thing had probably taken about fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, but it had felt a whole lot longer to me. This whole day had taken on a surreal, dreamlike quality in my mind. I feel like all of it couldn't have possibly happened; the kiss, Zechs beating me up, everything that had happened in gym, and now this. I felt like the universe hated me, like I was progressing through some sort of chaotic battlefield. I didn't want to go back to class. At that point, I was scared of what else might happen, but I knew I couldn't afford to miss a class. I wasn't as terrible in history as I was in math, but I was far from excelling in it.   
    "Are you sure you're ok?" Quatre asked as we walked down the hallway.  
    "I'm fine," I assured him, "my eyes and nose still kind of ache, but the pain's gone. That milk really did the trick," I laughed half heartedly, "I'll just have to be more alert next time."  
    "Duo," Quatre murmured sadly, "I'm sorry, I didn't see what she was holding fast enough..."  
    There was so many things I could have said to him then. I hadn't seen that pepper shaker in time either. I did this to myself. You had warned me that she would retaliate and I thought I could handle it. And a much more bitter thing. 'What would you have done if you _had_ had the chance to stop her from throwing that pepper in my face? You said yourself that it's foolish to fight against Relena and Zechs, they'll just escalate to prove how pointless it is. If you had stopped her, she just would have done something awful to you, too, so what exactly would you have done for me that you refuse to do for yourself?' I didn't say any of it. I smiled at him.  
    "It's fine," I said, "It only hurt for a little while, it's not a big deal."  
    I gave his hand a squeeze and walked into the classroom with him. It wasn't a big deal. Compared to everything else, having pepper thrown into my eyes wasn't that bad. I told myself that over and over, even if I just couldn't believe it.   
    The class went silent as Quatre and I walked in, even our teacher halted her lecture. I was sure that my eyes were red and they still felt a little bit irritated, but I pretended that everything was normal. Relena stood up from her desk when we approached.  
    "Duo, I'm so sorry," she said and smiled at me sweetly.  
    If I were a masochist, or an optimist, or just one of those people that chose to look at the world through rose tinted glasses, I would have chosen to believe that she really was sorry. Too bad I had been born a pessimist.   
    "It's ok, Relena, I know it was just an accident," I smiled back.  
    I wasn't as good an actor as she was, and I'm sure there was some malice in my voice, something only she and Quatre would be able to hear, but my reaction made her falter and it was enough for me. Our teacher dove right back into the lesson, probably content that it had all really just been an accident and everything was ok, or she just didn't care enough to make it an issue. I just wanted to forget about it. It had hurt like hell, and the rage that Relena had had when she had done it was frightening, but I shoved it to the back of my mind. I just needed to get through this horrible day. Just history then math then it was swim lessons then I could go out to dinner with Quatre. I desperately needed it.   
    I struggled through the lesson, partially because my mind was distracted between my thoughts and my eyes still being a bit irritated, so I was struggling not to rub at them, and partially because we had missed a large chunk of the class. I was happy when our teacher finally gave Relena our homework assignments to pass out. One period down, I thought, just a little bit longer. I watched as Relena marched right past Quatre and I to hand the homework sheets out to the kids behind us, then handed the remainders back to the teacher. The teacher didn't even notice that she had skipped us. I glared at the bully as she sat down in her seat with that damnable smug expression of hers.   
    I looked over at Quatre. He was chewing on his lip, the way he always did when Relena pulled this prank on us, but I could already see him submitting to it. We had gotten zeroes on homework assignments because of it before and I knew that if either of us raised a fuss about it, Relena would retaliate. But I couldn't afford to miss another homework assignment, I was already almost in the tank with this class and I needed every point to get a decent grade. Maybe if I waited until after class to ask our teacher for the sheets, Relena wouldn't find out about it until we had to hand them in tomorrow. That probably would have been the smartest thing to do, but like I've said before, I'm an idiot.   
    I don't know exactly why I did it. You would think that after the pepper I would have learned to keep my head down, but my rage had been steadily building during the day and it was getting ready to explode. I was just so sick of seeing my best friend being bullied and seeing Quatre so unwilling to do anything about it. I calmly walked up to the teacher's desk and grabbed two more homework sheets. Our teacher looked at me, perplexed, but kept going on about our homework.   
    As I walked back to my seat, Relena lashed out her leg and tripped me. I managed not to fall on my face by grabbing at the desks at either side of me, but it was a near thing. The whole class roared with laughter, even though it wasn't that funny, and our teacher yelled at everyone to be quiet. I looked back at Relena, expecting her to be smirking again, but she wasn't. She looked furious. I hurried back to my seat. Quatre looked at me like he wanted to scold me for doing that, but thankfully didn't say anything. I didn't need him to lecture me, I had figured out by that point that what I had done was beyond stupid.  
    When the period ended and our classmates started to filter out, I wasn't surprised when my teacher called me over to talk to me outside the classroom.  
    "How are your eyes, Duo?" she asked kindly.  
    I subconsciously rubbed at my right eye. It was the one that was giving me the most trouble, but it was mostly just raw and irritated.   
    "They feel a lot better," I confessed.  
    "I think you know why I asked you out here," she said.  
    I nodded. I liked Mrs. Kline. She, like most of our teachers, were oblivious to what was going on between me, Quatre, and Relena, and was kind of an airhead, always forgetting things, but she was nice and like Mrs. Khushrenada, she did try to connect with her students.  
    "My last test score," I murmured.  
    I had tried to study for my last history test. I had stayed up, drank lots of caffeine, and poured over my notes, but my parents' fighting had kept me from concentrating. By the time I had taken that damned test, I had been exhausted and couldn't remember anything that I had read the night before. I had gotten a D+ on it and it was a miracle that I had gotten that much.   
    "Duo, you have got to get your act together," she scolded but not cruelly, "I know you have a hard time and not just in my class, but I also know that you're engaged. There are a lot of students here that do as poorly as you, but they don't care. You do, and it hurts me to see you getting scores like that."  
    All I could do was nod. I couldn't tell her that she was wrong. I might be engaged, but it didn't matter. I was too stupid, I wasn't like Quatre or Relena or any of the other kids that got top grades. And even if I was, how could I do any better than I was when most of the time, I couldn't concentrate because of my parents or I was in too much pain to get any work done?   
    So I did what I did when all of my teachers pulled me aside like this, I lied and said that I had been slacking off lately, but I would do better. And I would every now and then, but eventually I would get stuck in the same cycle. Mrs. Kline bought it like she always did and bustled off to her next class. I walked back into the classroom to get my things and my stomach dropped. Relena had moved on from me and back to Quatre. She was standing at his desk with him sitting down, her hand clutching his blonde hair as she practically shoved a bowl of something in his face.   
    "Drink it, drink it!" she was practically screeching at him, but not so loud that anyone out in the hall could hear her.  
    I didn't need to look at what was in the bowl to know what it was. She had done this before, but not since we had been in the fourth grade and Quatre had accidentally dumped some paint on her new blouse. She had gotten a bowl full of water and had dumped paper and pencil shavings into it. She had called it her very special punishment soup. Back then, she had made him drink the entire thing until he had thrown up in front of everyone. I saw that he was starting to drink it like he had that time and something in me snapped.   
    Before I could stop myself, I strode up to her and grabbed the bowl from her. I felt something in me screaming at me to stop, that I was making everything worse again, but the rage in me was like steam, propelling me forward and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I dumped the entire bowl of 'soup' on Relena's head.   
    "Augh!" she screamed, just standing there with bits of paper and pencil shavings in her hair.  
    I didn't stick around for her to decide to do anything to us. I grabbed Quatre's hand and made a run for it. We made it all the way down the hall before I stopped. Quatre pulled his hand from my grip.  
    "That was the stupidest thing you have ever done!" he yelled at me, "She is going to kill you! Do you want her and Zechs to kill you?! What were you thinking?!"  
    I could have snapped at him that I had done what he was too chicken to do, protect him, and it was on my tongue, but I didn't have it in me to say that. I felt my anger sink back in me and I just felt depressed and dejected. I looked down at my hands, the same hands that had dumped that bowl on my bully. I didn't feel triumphant about it. I felt scared, and not because of Relena's retribution. I was scared of myself.  
    "I don't know," I murmured.  
    All the anger in Quatre deflated at that.  
    "I just don't know."  
  
  
End part 2  
  
Author's note: Originally this chapter was just going to be in two parts, but it just got too long, so I broke it in half. I'll be posting the third and final part of this chapter in a little while.   
  



	5. Chapter 2 Part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the wake of Duo's attempts to fight back against the bullying, Zechs crosses a line that frightens even Duo. After his very long and terrible day, Duo gets into a fight with his father that lands him in the hospital, reminding him that he has a much bigger and more awful bully to worry about at home.

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 2  
Part 3  
  
  
    I went through the rest of my school day waiting for an anvil to fall on my head. When we went to our lockers to pick up all the things we would need to do our homework that night, I stayed as close to Quatre as I physically could. Every time I heard a locker door slam, someone laugh, or something drop, I flinched like a soldier with shell shock syndrome. And every second that something _didn't_ happen, I felt worse. The worst moment, however, was when Quatre and I had to separate for our last class. At that point, I was more scared for him than myself. Relena and Zechs had barely messed with all day since they had been so focused on me, besides destroying his stuff and what Relena had done in our history class, but it still worried me having him out of my sight. It didn't really matter, there was nothing I could do to protect him, but I was still young then and had this stupid hope that being there with him mattered.   
    My last class was, unfortunately, math. I was spared Relena for that block, but not Zechs. He should have been taking the 8th grader mathematics course, but he had nearly failed math the previous year, so they had stuck him in the same class with us, and he was actually doing worse than me, which is saying something. I don't know if Zechs actually sucks at math or not. He was one of those kids Mrs. Kline had mentioned, someone who just didn't care about his grades. Usually he just barely skirted by, enough to graduate that year, but the older he got, the less that was true.   
    I had been waiting eagerly for our sixth year to be over so that we could advance to the seventh grade and Zechs to the ninth. That meant that we would have two whole years of peace from him as he went to the high school, but he robbed that from us. That year, Zechs would fail three of his classes and his parents would be called in to talk to his teachers. Normally, failing more than two of your classes meant you were immediately held back, otherwise you were forced to take summer classes, but Zechs was a Dorlian. No one wanted to piss off his wealthy and powerful parents and I think that one of the big reasons why Zechs had slacked off that year was because he thought he was untouchable.  
    Ironically, it was his own parents that Zechs hadn't accounted for. I could never blame them for how Zechs turned out, they were actually upstanding people that wanted the best for their kids. I mean, actually wanted the best, not just what a lot of parents thought was the best, catering to them and letting them get away with anything. When they had heard that Zechs had failed so many classes, and the principal had meekly suggested he go into remedial classes or do summer schooling, his father had put his foot down. According to the school gossip, which giving the circumstances I don't think is a lie, he had told the principal that Zechs was to retake the eighth grade until he got it right and learned how to play by the rules.   
    It sounds like a great story, the school bully finally getting what was coming to him, but as much as I could respect his parents for making that decision, all it did was hurt us underclassmen. We had been cheated out of one whole year of freedom. If I hadn't known better, I would have thought that Zechs had done it on purpose.   
    For me, Math was usually hell, but that period it was a thousand times worse. I was completely distracted trying to keep an eye on Zechs that I kept getting yelled at by our teacher for 'spacing out'. I was so sure that the older boy would do something horrible to me in the time that we were trapped in the same room with each other, and the fact that he never did made me more and more on edge. When the bell finally ran, I bolted from my seat and almost ran out of the room. I wasn't going to give him a chance to corner me. I walked as quickly as I could to find Quatre and get to the gymnasium as I could. I don't know why, how I could have been so stupid to think that neither Relena nor Zechs would try something in swim class, but I apparently was. I had thought that if I could at least get to the swimming pool without them catching us on the way there, it would be fine.  
    Swim class had become mandatory for grades four through six about eight years ago when a boy had drowned at the town pool. He hadn't known how to swim, he had just fallen into the pool and sank like a stone. Even though most of the people in Nausten know how to swim because for a lot of us, our local beach is the only way to keep cool in the summer, the town kind of freaked out over it and decided that ALL of the kids would learn how to swim. Only, instead of introducing the program to the younger kids, they decided that fourth grade was the best time to start for some reason. Starting in the spring, we had swim class after school every Tuesday for four weeks. My dad had griped about having to sign off on it because it took me away from work for an hour and I had known how to swim since I was eight years old.   
    I hated swim class because it didn't even get me away from Relena or Zechs for an hour. Relena obviously had to take the same class that we did and their parents had volunteered Zechs as a lifeguard's assistant for the class. I think they had hoped it might look good for him to do that or teach him some valuable lesson, hell if I know. All it did was make him more miserable to be around since he was stuck with us underclassmen instead of hanging out with the rest of his friends. All he did was the same thing he did at school, torment us or ignore us entirely. I'm sure if one of us did start to drown, he wouldn't give a shit.   
    We had to walk to the local pool for our lessons, which wasn't that bad since it was just a ten minute walk from school, but since I was on red alert for any signs of Relena and Zechs, it felt like the longest walk in my life. I didn't feel much better in the boys' locker room, rushing to put on my swim trunks and take the shower we were required to take before we got into the water. Three showers seemed so gratuitous to me, but whatever, a hot shower was a hot shower. Zechs ignored me in the locker room, too, he didn't even glare at me or glance my way, but I didn't dare to think that my luck was changing.  
    The first half of our class our teacher and lifeguard, which of course was Mr. Strum who couldn't bare to let anyone muscle in on his athletics territory, had us go through laps. Every class we had, we got taught a different technique. Last week was freestyle, this week was the butterfly stroke. I hadn't minded swim class in the fourth grade when it had all been techniques to not drown, but the more we took these classes the more I was under the suspicion that our teacher was just looking for volunteers to join the town's ever dwindling swim team. I liked the butterfly stroke a lot better than the back stroke when had learned our first week here this year. I hated that feeling of not knowing where I was going or if there was anything under me.  
    The last half of our classes was always free swim. Quatre and I usually kept to one corner of the pool, just floating and talking while Mr. Strum occasionally snapped at us and everyone else that wasn't taking that time to do laps. We all just ignored him anyway. Once free swim started, Quatre and floated over to that corner and for a few minutes, we were left alone. It was the best I had felt all day. Then, Quatre glanced over my shoulder and paled. I felt my heart sink. Was it too much to hope that I would be left alone for an entire hour?   
    "Beat it, Winner, fag and I need to have a little chat," Zechs said from behind me.  
    Quatre flashed me a look and for a horrified moment I thought he would actually disobey Zechs. Quatre had told me not to fight back and because I hadn't, this was happening, and now he was thinking about going back on his own good advice, for what? It irritated me. I wanted to yell at him to pick his priorities, either stay out of it or help, stop being so wishy washy about it, but I knew that that rage wasn't directed at him and that to say something like that would be unfair. He wanted to help, I knew that, the same way I always did when I saw him being bullied. We were both helpless, I was just too stupid to accept it. Quatre always was the smart one.   
    "Go, Quatre," I snapped at him and felt better when he did.  
    That made Zechs chuckle.  
    "At least someone here has brains," he jeered, "or maybe you don't. I thought we had an understanding here, Maxwell, and yet my sister tells me you've been a real pain in the ass. You make her feel unwanted, then you dump dirty water all over her. That wasn't very gentlemanly."  
    I dared to glance over at his sister. She was on the other side of the pool, watching us intently but not moving towards us. She was going to stay out of it, and just watched with that superior expression.   
    "You going to apologize, faggot," he asked with a bitingly cold tone, "or am I going to have to teach you another lesson about what happens to trash like you that think they're better than the rest of us?"  
    I stayed silent, just looking at him. I had apologized for hurting his sister because I had actually been sorry. I knew that I should apologize for this, too, because Zechs was going to beat the shit out of me if I didn't, but I didn't feel sorry. Relena had deserved it and no matter how much I tried to force the words from my lips, I just couldn't muster an apology for some reason. Zechs didn't give me a choice. He grabbed my hair in the same exact spot he had this morning and twisted it again, sending familiar pain shooting through my scalp.   
    More than pain, I felt weariness. I was tired of all of this, the bullying, the pain, the violence, and seeing my best friend, the most wonderful person I had ever met, cowed by this boy. I just wanted to go home and go to sleep and forget all of this. Zechs gave my hair another sharp tug.  
    "Well?" he snarled at me.  
    I was aware that some of the other kids were staring at us, but most purposefully weren't.  
    "I'm sorry," I finally gasped out, "I'm sorry."  
    He let go of my hair and I winced, my eyes watering.  
    "That's better," he said coldly, "but we really need to do something about that attitude of yours. I don't really believe you _are_ sorry, even if you say so," suddenly his entire expression brightened and that was worse somehow, "I know! Let's play a little game. The longer you can hold your breath, the more I'll believe you're not lying to me. If you can hold it a really, really long time, I'll be sure you're sincere and we won't have a problem. Yeah, let's try that."  
    I tried to back away from him, dread settling in my gut, but he still had a strong grip on my hair. I barely had the time to take a deep breath before he shoved my head under the water. The water we were standing in wasn't deep, but he was incredibly strong, too strong for me to simply stand up and escape the water. I flailed in his grip, my fingers scratching desperately at the side of the pool for purchase, but it was useless.   
    As my head was submerged in the water and I felt every frightened instinct to take a gasp of air that wasn't there, I flashed back to my first day in the fourth grade. Relena holding my head down in that urinal... unable to breathe, unable to do anything but what she wanted me to do. I hadn't felt this helpless since then and the realization that I had to put my entire life in the hands of a boy who didn't just hate me, but enjoyed hurting me, was terrifying. I cried in the water and scratched at his hand, but he didn't let go of my head. In his hands, I was nothing. I was less than nothing, and if I survived this, it would be because of a whim.   
    Seconds ticked by, then minutes. My lungs burned and my chest ached. Worse, I felt dizzy and lightheaded and it was getting harder to remember where I was and why I couldn't breathe. Every try to hold your breath for a long time? Your brain knows it needs oxygen, it's all you can think about. Trying not to breathe in that water was the hardest thing I had ever had to do. I remember thinking 'I'm going to die', just like I had when I was nine. Only this time it really was my fault. What had I been thinking? Fighting back against these two... and in such petty ways. What was the point of it? They would win. In the end they would always win.     And just like that, what little fight I had left in me vanished. It died in the way that especially powerful dreams did when you finally realized they would never come true, it went clawing and screaming, the scars it made angry and bitter. As I started to see grey, all I could feel was rage. Rage against my father and Relena and Zechs for always winning. Rage against my mother and my teachers for not caring or being outright blind. Rage against Quatre for never fighting back, for just taking it like I had been stupid to do. But most of all, I felt rage against myself for being so weak.   
    I finally took a breath and sucked in a huge mouthful of water. I don't know if I really had given up in that moment, if I had just not cared if I had drowned or not, or if I had just lost control over myself for a moment, but when I breathed water instead of air, my entire body panicked. My feet lashed out and met with the bottom of the pool and I suddenly found my head above water. Zechs had let me go. At some point, Zechs had stopped holding my head down and I hadn't even realized. And he had let me. He would have let me drown.   
    My hands found the edge of the pool and I weakly pulled myself up. I gasped for breath and violently threw up water over and over. Each breath I took after that felt like I was breathing in fire instead of air. I had no strength left and started to sink back down into the water when someone wrapped their arms around me and kept me above the water.   
    "Duo," I heard Quatre whisper and rest his forehead against mine.  
    It was the most wonderful thing in the world, his skin against mine, his arms holding me as I shook, my body starting to realize that it really could breathe again. My best friend's blue-green eyes were red from crying. I glanced over at Mr. Strum and for a brief second, I caught his gaze. I wish I hadn't. He just as quickly looked away and began yelling at two girls that were splashing at each other. He had seen. They had all seen. And no one had done anything to stop him. For the first time that day, I let myself cry freely. It didn't matter. No one could tell the difference between my tears and the pool water.  
  
*****  
  
    Quatre and I didn't go out to dinner. Looking back now, I really wish that we had, and not just because it would be another pleasant memory of him before he left my life a year later, but because I think I really had needed it and it would have prevented everything that happened that late afternoon. But we didn't. I was tired and depressed and, above all else, angry, and having a nice dinner was far from my mind. Almost drowning to death had robbed me of my appetite anyway. We didn't talk about it, any of it, not even the drowning. I was ok with that and I was grateful that he didn't ask me if I was ok. It would have been a stupid question.  
    I felt dejected and furious about everything. It was all I could do to not fall apart as I walked Quatre back to his house. He hugged me and said that he would see me tomorrow. I hugged him back, probably a bit too tightly. I didn't even feel happy that my school day was over, I just felt incredibly upset. I guess at that point I could have gone to the town park on my way home and just stayed there, maybe punched a tree or threw rocks in the pond until it was late enough to go home. I didn't forget that my parents thought I was at work, I just hadn't cared at that point. I guess I couldn't even call this day a bad one, or that I had zero luck. It was more like that day had been a string of shittier and shittier choices that I had made. Going home angry had been the worst one, even worse than standing up to Zechs.  
    If I had made a worse mistake than that, it had been walking into the house brooding the way I was after seeing my dad's car out front. I didn't even care about that, either. He came home early sometimes and I certainly hadn't expected him to be there now, but it was all over my head. All I kept thinking about was my anger, not even about the worst things, but the rage I felt over the little things, too, like my grades in history. Was this how my dad feels all the time? It was not a good feeling.  
    He was sitting at our kitchen table, flipping through what I assumed were bills. I didn't say hi to him. I was going to make a beeline for the fridge and see what we had left. We needed to get groceries, but we didn't have a lot of money right now. Dad's car had broken down a couple weeks ago and it had taken a hefty amount to fix, but it had been necessary. Every cent we had left that wasn't going to go to bills this month would have to go to food. I was supposed to go shopping tomorrow since I didn't have work. My parents were even out of alcohol, which was a lot more telling of our financial situation than us being out of food.   
    "Aren't you supposed to be at work?" he growled at me, not even really paying attention.  
    I was about to tell him the unfortunate truth, even knowing he would get pissy at me for it, when I saw the beer can in his hand. I froze, a nasty suspicion rising in my head. I strode over to the counter, each step bringing a new swell of anger in me as I tried to remember if Dad had saved a can or hid it some where, but I knew that he hadn't. My father was not the sort of man that would save alcohol for later. Which meant that the can was new.   
    I looked in the jar we had on the counter where my mother would drop her tips after she came home. Right now those tips and what little my dad had left in his checking account was our grocery money. Sure enough, money was missing from the jar, money that had already been light.   
    "I'm talking to you!" he snarled at me, rising from his chair and I just couldn't muster up the strength to care or even be afraid that he was probably preparing to unload on me.   
    I could hear the tension in his voice, and given that he had been going through bills, he was already probably in a mood. And I couldn't care. I threw open the fridge and my hands curled into fists. There on the first shelf was a case of beer and a couple bottles of vodka and that was pretty much all we had in there beyond a couple of chinese food boxes that were a week past being eatable, a bottle of water, a bottle of ketchup and a bottle of mustard, and the remnants of the pizza Dad had brought home from work three days ago. I slammed the refrigerator door shut and I felt this tidal wave of anger like I had never felt before hit me.  
    "Are you fucking kidding me?!" I yelled at him, "We needed that money to get food and you bought fucking _beer_ with it?! Are you a moron?! Now we're going to run out of food before you or mom gets paid again just so you can get drunk!"  
    I think at this point, deep in my head, there was a red warning light going off, telling me just how deeply I had fucked up. I heard Quatre's voice in my head asking me what I was doing and I don't know. I don't know why I snapped at that moment, if it was just the straw that had broke my back, or if I had been so depressed I had _wanted_ my father to strike me. If that had been the case, I should have just lied and said I skipped work or dropped a dish on the floor. Even when I saw my father grab an empty vodka bottle from our recycling bin by the fridge, I didn't run and just by the amount of rage that was in my father's face, I should have.   
    He struck me with it across my face. It made a dull 'thwack' sound as it hit me and by some miracle, it didn't break on my cheek.  
    "Who the fuck do you think you are that you can talk to your father that way?!" he roared at me and hit me with it again, this time on my back, between my shoulders.  
    This time the bottle did break and I felt glass puncture my skin. I cried out in shock and fell to the floor more from surprise at the pure power behind the blow than from the pain itself.  
    "I _work_ for my money, you pathetic little shit, and if I want to buy some fucking beer so I can have a goddamn drink when I come home, how is that any of your business?!" my father punctuated almost every word with another hit from the bottle.  
    I could feel the shards to glass dig into my skin with every strike. My arms, my shoulders, a few even buried themselves into my side. Blood soaked my shirt. It wasn't as bad as getting cut by a sharp knife or stabbed, but it stung like nothing else and the cuts were numerous. Still, I did nothing to defend myself, even as I cried from the attack. By the time he stopped and threw the bottle, or what was left of it, down in front of me, I was nearly laying on the floor, blood smeared over my arms and shirt, a small puddle of it on the floor.  
    "Clean that up and you can walk yourself to the damn clinic," he snarled as he tossed his empty can of beer into the recycling box and picked out another from the fridge, then strode into the living room to watch some television.  
    My body shook as I crouched there on the kitchen floor surrounded by blood and shards of glass, but it wasn't from pain. I could feel tears streaming down my face and before I could stop it, I was sobbing. I don't know how long it took for it to stop, but it felt like a long time. I started to stand up and gasped in pain as the shards that were embedded in my skin grated and dug themselves further in. I felt like I was going to throw up. I rubbed at my wet cheeks and only managed to smear blood over them. I sat there, lost as to what I was going to do. I probably would have stayed there for a long time, maybe until I passed out, if there hadn't been glass all over the floor.   
    Without standing, I grabbed the trash barrel near where I had fallen and began picking up the shards, one at a time, and throwing them in the barrel. I told myself that I was doing it this way because it just hurt too much to stand up and find the broom and dust pan, but that was a lie. I did it because I deserved it. Every one of those shards, I had deserved to be dug under my skin, to make me bleed. I had deserved every hit, ever screamed word, and I wanted to hurt myself more. And if one of those shards cut my fingers, I deserved that, too. You can call it feeling sorry for myself if you want, and that's close to the truth. The depression I felt was like a cloak made of iron draped over me. All I could was cry and think about how it was all my fault to begin with. I felt pathetic.  
    Eventually I picked myself off the floor and cleaned up the blood with our mop and some kitchen tiles. I probably hadn't done a very good job of it, but it was hard just standing. I put my back pack in my bedroom and took out my health insurance card. As I did I realized I didn't have a dime to spend on the co-pay and hoped that they wouldn't turn me away. I was covered in blood and glass, they really couldn't refuse to help me, could they? It was that or try to pick all the glass out of me myself and the mere thought of that almost had me heave. I certainly didn't have enough money for the bus, either, and I didn't even think they would let me on bleeding the way I was. I nearly collapsed again, just out of the hopelessness of it. I didn't even stop to ask myself why I wasn't angry at my father for doing that to me. I think that after everything that had happened that day, I was numb.   
    The pain was getting worse as my shock started to ease off, but I didn't feel any hurry to leave. I wasn't looking forward to the long walk to the clinic. I could go to the free clinic that was near where I lived, but even in my condition they wouldn't see me right away and I just didn't want to go through with that. I'd have to go to the hospital in the town center, the walk would be longer but I'd get better service and they might let me stay there awhile instead of kicking me out for the room. I took the time to put on a jacket. It wasn't cold out, but I didn't want people to see my blood stained clothes. I couldn't do anything about my jeans, but my shirt was the worst. Priorities, right?  
    I didn't see either of my parents as I left the house and began my long journey. Everything flowed right over my head, other people on the street, my pain, even my tears. What pride I had seemed gone for good. At that point, I was fully expecting to be hit by a car or something. No one really stopped me on the street to ask me if I was ok. It was almost six and everyone else but me was more concerned with leaving work to go home and get dinner. My concerns about our grocery money were a mile away.   
    I got halfway to the hospital when the pain finally started to get to me and I had to sit down. I found this nice bench outside a video store to sit on and almost blacked out right there. I looked down at my hands. There were a few cuts on them, none of them serious, and they weren't bleeding very badly anymore. None of the blood had seeped through my jacket yet, which was a good sign, but I was more worried about the glass in me. I think I must have dozed off a little, because I just remember blinking and seeing Quatre suddenly in front of me, like I had summoned him telepathically in my moment of need. He looked absolutely horrified as he took in what damage he could see. I was incredibly glad that I had put my jacket on. He couldn't see the glass.   
    "Oh my god, Duo, what happened," he said as he kneeled there in the grass, taking my hands in his.  
    It was then that I realized just how cold my hands were and I remembered the blood smeared across my cheeks.  
    "I need to go to the hospital," I simply said, feeling myself start to shake again, the feeling of the glass in me now that I was a bit more clear headed was horrible.   
    "Do you want me to call an ambulance?" Quatre asked, his voice starting to rise with panic.  
    I shook my head.  
    "No, but I'm bleeding and I have glass stuck in my skin," I admitted.  
    I didn't tell him much glass I had embedded in my skin, but he still paled.  
    "C'mon," he urged, helping me off the bench, "we can catch a bus."  
    He didn't ask me what happened or just how badly I was hurt, just put a hand against my back and kept me walking.  
    "Thanks, Quatre," I said meekly, not telling that his hand was on one of my puncture wounds.  
    "Don't mention it," he said with a half hearted smile.  
    The bus stop wasn't far from where I had collapsed, thankfully, and I managed to stay awake the rest of the trip. Quite a few people on the bus stared at me and I rubbed at the blood smeared on my cheek self consciously, but at least I didn't have to have Quatre drag me the rest of the way. The bus stopped right at the hospital and I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. Even if they made me wait awhile, Quatre was with me. I could get past this like I had every other thing life had thrown at me.   
    When we got to the reception desk to check in, while I was about to flash my insurance card and ask if I needed to go to the emergency room or urgent care or some other place, Quatre flashed his instead.  
    "Can you please tell Dr. Williams that Quatre Winner is here to see him, it's an emergency," he told the woman at the receptions desk.  
    She wrote down his name and he lead me away to the elevator.  
    "I have health insurance," I started to protest.  
    I didn't bother to tell him that it was pretty shitty health insurance and I couldn't even afford my co-pay right now, but he just shook his head.  
    "Mr. Williams is our family's doctor. He'll see us right away and be discrete."  
    "You're going to make your parents pay for it?" I asked incredulously.   
    "It's fine, Duo," he soothed, "Let me do this for you, ok?"  
    I sighed in defeat. I was too tired to argue with him and I just wanted this nightmare over with.   
    "What were you doing out there anyway?" I asked him as we got off at the third floor which read 'family practice' on the directory sheet.   
    "My parents changed our alarm code," he murmured, blushing, "They forgot to tell me about it, so I couldn't get into my house. I was just wandering around until one of my sisters got home."  
    As much as I was hurting, as angry and depressed as I was about everything, I ached for him. That one statement said a lot. His parents hadn't forgotten to tell him the pass code. They had forgotten _him_. If he hadn't been out there, I don't know what would have happened to me. He was always taking care of me and it seemed like I could never do a single thing to help him. I stopped in the middle of the hallway and hugged him tightly. It hurt like hell, but I didn't care right then. He hugged me back and it made me feel a little better.   
    I didn't volunteer what had happened to me. I didn't see the point. The second Quatre saw my injuries, he would piece together the truth himself and it would only upset him. He wouldn't understand that it was my fault and it wasn't any worse than any other beatings my father had given me, I had had a lot worse. He wouldn't even understand that, if this had happened on any other day, I might have been able to handle it on my own. He would see the glass and the blood and the cuts and he would freak out. We had never talked about my father's abuse, but that had never stopped Quatre from looking sad and upset about the wounds I got.  
    We walked into another reception area and I looked at the chairs like a dog might look at a steak. I hurt. I can't put it more plainly than that. My body was fully aware, even as I tried to ignore it, that there were things in it that did not belong and I was practically itching to get them out. Since I couldn't do that, the feeling of it was wigging me out, kind of like I was going in and out of shock. Being upright was not what I or my body wanted right then.  
    "Quatre Winner" my friend told the receptionist who smiled warmly at him.  
    "Yes, Dr. Williams said you'd be right up," she said, typing on the computer, "he said to go right in to examination room 3. He'll be a little late, though. You're lucky, he was almost on this way out the door."  
    "Thanks, Gail," Quatre said with a beaming smile and gestured to me.  
    "Do you come here a lot?" I asked him as we took the door next to the reception desk and walked down the hallway.  
    Quatre had seemed really friendly with the receptionist, like he knew her well, and he had gotten an appointment with his doctor mere minutes after showing up out of the blue. I knew that Quatre's family was rich, but even this was a bit much.  
    "Not really," he turned that smile on me, "but the staff here knows my family well. We all go here, including all six of my sisters, one of my uncles works in radiology and my parents donate a lot and throw a lot of charities for this hospital, so we get a lot of personalized service."  
    I almost shook my head in amazement at that. It must be nice to be loaded and to get care whenever you wanted. If I had gone to urgent care, I would have been waiting for an hour at least, even this late at night. The two of us walked into the third examination room and I sat up on the table in relief. I was so glad that my dad hadn't hit me on my legs. I felt dizzy enough thought that even if he had, I still would have sat down.  
    I glanced at myself in the reflection of the cabinets that held innumerous medical supplies and realized the reason why people had been starting at me had not been because of the blood on my cheek, which was just a faint smear, but the huge, black bruise that arched over my cheek, missing my eye by mere inches. The bruise from Zechs slamming my head against the locker had merged beautifully with the much darker one from my dad striking me with the vodka bottle. My eyes were still a little red from crying and the pepper and I could see the scratch on the opposite side of my face from Relena's nails. I looked like I had been in a truly epic fight, and I guess that I had. Fuck, had all that really happened today? Relena kissing me felt like it had happened a week ago.  
    "Won't your parents be mad?" I blurted out, "Using your health insurance card for this?"  
    "Don't worry about it," he assured me, "My parents don't really look at their bills that closely. They just pay whatever amount it says and the same thing goes for their health insurance summaries. It's not something they really worry about. They won't even notice," he paused for a moment.  
    I almost sighed. It _really_ must be nice. My dad scrutinized every bill like if he studied them for long enough, a number might change. It never did.  
    "Are you in a lot of pain?" Quatre suddenly asked me.  
    I thought about lying to him to placate his worry, but I nodded.  
    "A bit," I admitted and I could see that trying not to ask me what had happened was just killing him, but I appreciated his self control.  
    Someone knocked on the door and Quatre told them to come in. Dr. Williams was a short, middle aged man wearing a typical white coat and carrying a laptop. When the receptionist had said that he would be a little late, I had thought she had meant an hour, not twenty minutes.   
    "Now, Quatre," he said as he put his laptop down on the counter and opened it to what I presumed was Quatre's medical history, "what's the big emergency?"  
    "Actually, Doctor," my friend actually managed to sound contrite, "my friend is the one that needs care, not me."  
    Dr. Williams noticed me for the first time and eyed me suspiciously before regarding Quatre not with anger or frustration, but with just reluctance. I guess he was well aware who signed his paychecks, even if Quatre was just a kid.  
    "Quatre, you know full well that you can't use-"  
    "I know, I know," Quatre tried to placate him, "But Duo really needs help and you're the best doctor I know. I'll pay out of pocket if you're worried about my parents."  
    I stared at him in shock but Dr. Williams sighed and shook his head.  
    "That won't be necessary," he said and turned back to me," What is the problem?"  
    I was surprised that he didn't talk down to me as Quatre's obviously broke friend, but his tone was the same as when he had talked to my friend, both casual and respectful. Maybe he figured Quatre would be pissed if he was abrasive with me, or maybe he was one of those rare doctors that actually cared about treating people.  
    "I- I have some glass... stuck in my skin," I said as I struggled to take off my jacket.  
    It was a lot harder and more painful trying to get it off than it had been putting it on. My arms felt stiff and my hands, not wanting to cooperate, were still shaky. With a sad look in his eye, Quatre jumped off of his chair to help me, but the second it was off, he turned pale and horrified. Even the doctor seemed put off by my appearance. My arms were nothing but a mess of black bruises, cuts, puncture wounds, and faint smears of blood. There were cuts in the shoulders, back and left side of my t-shirt and I'm sure I was badly bruised those places, too. Honestly, it looked worse than it was. It was the bruises, not the cuts, that were hurting the worst at that point, although the cuts stung like hell. My father had focused on hitting me with the bits of the bottle that had remained intact. If he had been more concerned with hitting with the broken end, I would have gone to the emergency room in an ambulance, but I didn't expect Quatre to accept that argument.  
    "Oh, god, Duo," he gasped, "why didn't you tell me?"  
    I couldn't look at those sad, frantic eyes or I knew I would blurt out the truth, so I focused on Dr. Williams instead.  
    "I was making dinner but I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing," I lamented, "I tripped and fell on our box of recyclables. There were all these glass bottles. I probably could have picked out all the glass myself, but I was scared and my parents weren't home, so I didn't know what to do."  
    I had seen my dad lie about my injuries a thousand times, but it still shocked me how easily the lie came out of me. I watched as the doctor stared at my cuts, the shards of glass sticking out of me in some places, and the bruise on my face and I knew he didn't believe my story for a second. I knew Quatre sure as hell didn't. But to my vast relief, neither of them voiced the conclusion they had both come to.  
    "It's just as well that you didn't," Williams said, still looking at my wounds, "You might have hurt yourself further pulling these bigger ones out,"  
    Clearly deciding to just treat me instead of question me about the incident, Williams bustled about the room, gathering this and that. I watched him with paranoia. Even though I was no stranger to hospitals and doctors visits, I still hated them, especially shots. The doctor put a variety of bandages, cotton swabs, a bottle of some kind of fluid, tongs, scissors, and a petri dish on the tiny table next to where I was sitting. All of it made me nervous.  
    "Is it going to hurt?" I asked childishly.  
    "Taking the glass out is going to hurt considerably less than it did going in," Williams promised, "It will hurt a little, but you'll feel much better afterwards. I'd give you a painkiller but it's too wide of an area for a shot. This," he pointed to the bottle of liquid, "I'll put over the wounds after I get the glass out, it's an antiseptic and very mild painkiller."  
    "Ok," I said, secretly very happy he wasn't going to give me a shot. I'd rather the pain, honestly.  
    I flinched as he picked up the scissors and he noticed it.  
    "I need to cut your shirt off to get at your other wounds," he explained.  
    "But I can just take it off," I started to protest. I didn't know how to say that it was one of my only shirts, and even though it was all cut up now, I could sew it and clean it, without feeling pathetic about it.  
    "Duo, I will buy you another shirt," Quatre huffed in frustration, looking slightly angry as he looked at the damage on my arms, I knew he was going to be down right furious when he saw the rest of it, "I know it hurt taking your jacket off, it's going to be worse getting your shirt off."  
    I sighed heavily, but I let the doctor cut my shirt off of me. Just like I had predicted, when Quatre saw the wounds on my back, shoulders, and side, his face twisted in an anger that was totally out of character for him. If either of them had had a single doubt that my story wasn't true, they sure did now. With all the areas that the glass was stuck in, it was more likely that I had rolled in the shattered glass than fallen on it. I felt calm as Quatre's doctor picked up the tongs, but I had to squeeze my eyes shut as he pulled the first shard of glass, one of the big ones in my left arm, out of my flesh.  
    It did hurt, but it wasn't pain or how much it stung. It was that feeling of it being pulled out of me. It made me feel dizzy, even that 'plink' sound as the shard was dropped into the Petri dish made me want to hurl. And that was just one of the shards. When he plucked another one out of me, I squeezed my eyes shut harder and curled my hands into fists. If I had been alone, I would have cried. I felt all of my anger and fears and anxieties from that entire day boil in me and I hated my father then, truly hated him.  
    I opened my eyes as I felt Quatre hold my hand. All traces of anger were gone from his face. All I could see there was my friend who loved me and worried about me. I felt a deep love for him and also a deep sadness. I wanted to go to my parents and scream at them, 'is it really so hard?! Would it kill you to sit with me and hold my hand when I'm scared and in pain?! That's all I want, all I need!' But my parents weren't there, just Quatre.  
    "It's ok, Duo," he soothed, Everything's going to be ok. You can squeeze my hand if you want to, as hard as you need."  
    I did. A few times I probably squeezed his hand too much, but as small a thing as it was, it actually did help. By the time Dr. Williams got the last, tiny sliver of glass out of me, it was hours later and we were all tired. I was trembling from the experience and half asleep as I leaned against Quatre. The ones in my back had taken the most out of me and I felt incredibly relieved they were gone.  
    "There, that's the last one," the doctor said and I was amazed when he smiled at me.  
    I had expected him to be annoyed to be working so late because of someone that wasn't even his patient, but if he was he didn't show it.  
    "Thank you so much, Dr. Williams," I said earnestly but tiredly.  
    He chuckled.   
    "Well, we're not quite done yet," he pointed out, "I still need to get all this blood off of you and dress all these cuts. The worse ones will scar but none of them are deep enough to require stitches at least."      
    Thankfully, the doctor went quickly getting the blood off, covering my cuts with the antiseptic and bandaging them. The antiseptic burned like nothing else but it was still better than the feeling of the glass being pulled out, shard by shard. I looked like a war victim, especially my arms, but I felt mostly human again and less like a pin cushion full of shrapnel.  
    "Doctor, I know you don't work at urgent care or the emergency room, but would it be alright if we got a room?" Quatre asked, surprising both me and the doctor, "Just for a couple hours. Both of our parents won't be home until late, and I would feel better if Duo laid down for a little while before I walked him back home."  
    "That's not necessary," I protested, "I can make it back home ok."  
    "It is necessary," Quatre refuted, his voice still and very adult all of a sudden.  
    Our eyes met and I flushed a little. He knew my father had done this, and he knew that I was scared to go back home. I had tried my hardest not to let him see that, but somehow he had. Quatre was always so practical, and any practical person would have told me that hiding out in the hospital for an hour wasn't going to matter. I was going to have to go home and face my father eventually. But Quatre was actually going to help me to do just that.   
    Williams glanced at me and I must have looked like absolute shit because he nodded.  
    "I'll see if urgent care has any rooms available and get you some samples of antibiotic cream. You're going to need to apply it to your wounds twice a day. I expect you back here if any of them get infected," he lectured me and then bustled out.  
    "I sure hope you give him a tip or something for this," I muttered.  
    "Dr. Williams isn't just the family doctor," Quatre confessed with a soft smile, "he's an old family friend. He's also a very kind man. He volunteers at the free clinic a lot, so I don't think he minded that much."  
    "You're sure he won't get in trouble for this? Or you?" I prodded, suddenly feeling very guilty, "using your health insurance to help someone they've never met. I mean, isn't health insurance fraud illegal or something?"  
    "It's like I said," Quatre's all too familiar sad smile returned and I regretted bringing it up at all, "my parents won't even notice, like everything else when it comes to me. Even if they do notice that there's another hospital visit on their insurance, I'll just lie about it. They won't pry further and Dr. Williams is smart enough not to mention it. It'll be fine, Duo."  
    I dropped the subject, not because I accepted his answer but because I knew it was upsetting him. I felt like the worst friend in the world. He had helped me when I had been hurt and had no one to turn to, but I kept reminding him that all he had to go to home to was a quiet house. At last one of his sisters were home by now, but none of them wanted to talk to their baby brother when they had friends, boyfriends, homework and whatever else teenage girls worry about. It was nine at night. His parents should be home, worried sick wondering where their son was, but they were still at work. They didn't even call the house to check up on him. My own family was nothing to look at, and it was what had landed us here, but it still made me sad.  
    "I'm just glad I was able to help. I really wish you'd let me buy you a cell phone. I could have gotten you to the hospital sooner. Anything could have happened when you were passed out on that park bench! You don't have to do everything on your own all the time, ok?"  
    It wasn't his intention, but Quatre's kind words were daggers of guilt piercing my heart. It wasn't just that I felt guilty that I had relief so much on Quatre to help me, or that I felt I had taken advantage of his family's wealth even though I hadn't asked him to do any of this. I didn't even feel that guilty knowing that he was right, I had a huge problem relying on other people and even if I had a cell phone, I still wouldn't have called him for help. That I could ask my best friend to help me when I had been hurt and bleeding from more than just physical wounds hadn't occurred to me. I had immediately thought that I would somehow get to the hospital all under my own power.  
    It was just... what had I ever done to deserve a friend like Quatre? I felt so worthless all the time. I wasn't just a carbon copy kid from the south end, I was worse. Being bullied and being abused had shown me how out of place I was, how all I had to offer anyone was my services as a punching bag and the more I fought against that, the worse things got. I didn't deserve Quatre. He was kind and smart and wealthy. Next to him, I was a bug. Relena and Zechs understood that, so why couldn't he? Why did he like me? Why did he worry about me? Why couldn't he see that he was the one that didn't deserve to be bullied and be the one to fight? What right did I have to try to struggle against my situation when he wouldn't? It just made that bitterness and anger in me, both from my desperate need and inability to protect him, swell up to mammoth proportions.  
    Dr. Williams returned with the promised ointment and news that there was a bed available, but lectured us not to stay for long or our parents would be worried about that. In my head, I laughed . He was even nice enough to escort us to urgent care after Quatre helped me into my jacket so I wouldn't be walking around the hospital shirtless. As we were ushered into the room, which was just a single bed, we were given privacy although the nurse that showed us the room eyed Quatre and I curiously.  
    "You can go home, you know," I said to Quatre as I sat down on the edge of the bed and looked around at all the complicated medical equipment, "Your sisters are home by now and it's getting late."  
    Quatre pointedly closed the door and snorted at what I had said.  
    "I'm not leaving you here to walk home in the dark. You're probably still woozy anyway," he said and sat down in the chair by the hospital bed.  
    "I'm fine," I insisted, "I'm just going to sit around for a little bit then go home. You don't need to baby sit me."  
    "I'm staying," he said in that authoritative way he used every now and then, especially when I was being stubborn, like an adult talking to a child, and then he spoke in a very soft mutter, "I'd much rather stay with you than go home."  
    I didn't know whether to feel very sad at that confession or very happy.  
    "Lay down, Duo," he gained that adult voice back, the voice of his father.  
    "I'm not tired-" I lied.  
    " **Lay down**."  
    I huffed, but did so. There was just no arguing with him when he got this notion that something was good for me, even if I didn't want to do it, like him buying my school lunches.   
    I blacked out. There's no other way of saying it. The very second my head hit that pillow, I was gone. I was horizontal for the first time since early that morning without a blow being involved and my very, very long day had finally caught up with me. When I opened my eyes, the room was dark and I had trouble figuring out where I was and when. There was enough of a glow from the medical equipment for me to see Quatre. He was still there, sitting in the chair, and was watching me. It made me feel odd that he had been watching me sleep, but his face was drawn and tired and I didn't think he had been watching me so much as spacing out, deep in thought.  
    He must have turned the light off when I had fallen asleep. That annoyed me a bit. He knew that I hadn't wanted to stay here long and should have woken me up so he could go home, but he had turned off the light so I would sleep longer.  
    I sat up in bed and winced. I had been sleeping long enough for my bruises to turn from discomfort to severe ache and stiffness. My cuts didn't hurt as badly anymore, but that just made my bruises feel worse.  
    "What time is it?" I asked Quatre.  
    He got up, turned the light back on, and sat down again. He looked so tired and small in the bright hospital lighting, like a soldier waiting to be relieved. His expression was tight with anxiety and, for some reason, anger.  
    "12:03," he finally replied.  
    I stared at him with wide eyes.  
    "Twelve-," I sputtered, "Quatre, why didn't you wake me up?! Your parents have got to be home by now! They must be worried sick!"  
    "My cell phone hasn't rung at all," he said with an eerie calmness, "I haven't even gotten any texts from my sisters, either," he seemed strangely all right with the fact that no one in his family had realized he hadn't come home from school yet, "besides, you looked like you were sleeping really deeply, I didn't want to wake you up. I figured you'd sleep better here than at home."  
    I didn't tell him that he was right and sleeping in that hospital bed had been the best sleep I'd had since my father had spent two whole days out on a stakeout a few months ago. It took two people to scream at all hours of the night and morning. My house had been as quiet as a tomb with just my mother there.   
    "Will your father be angry at you?" he asked, but even the tone of his voice told me he knew the answer of that question.  
    I doubted that he would have let me sleep this long if he thought my father would punish me for it. His perceptiveness was creepy sometimes. He knew I wouldn't be in trouble and he knew my father was the one I was scared of, not my mother. And there was that look on his face again, an out of character expression, pensive and angry. I couldn't figure out what was bothering him so much. It wasn't his parents, that look had been slipping on and off of his face ever since the doctor had treated my wounds.  
    "Probably not," I admitted, "He doesn't care that much about what I do or where I am unless he needs me for something. I really pissed him off tonight, so the longer I stay away from him, the less upset he'll be. We don't fight that much, but when we do it takes him a long time to cool off."      
    For some reason, that only seemed to make my friend more upset. He stared at me, his eyes both stormy and like stone. When he finally spoke, that authoritative tone was back but it was tinged with anger and frustration now.  
    "I want you to tell someone about your dad, Duo," he said, his arms crossed over his chest defensively.  
    I opened my mouth to protest. He didn't understand, not at all! This was my father. How could I tell on him? And even if I did, he was a cop, he would never get into trouble. I didn't want him to go to jail, I just wanted him to stop hitting me all the time. But when he strikes me, it's out of anger, because of stress over his job or Mom or our finances, or it's because I did something bad or stupid, like telling him not to drink so much. Quatre just didn't understand that.  
    "Look at you," he snapped, "He's going to _kill_ you sooner or later!"  
    I don't know why, but at that moment all of the rage that I had felt that entire day exploded in me, like hot water through a cracking dam and nothing I did, no matter how much I tried to temper it, it wouldn't be stopped. Maybe it had been hearing Quatre say my father was going to kill me. He wouldn't do that, he loved me, I had thought back then. But some part of me had known, had feared that very thing. Hearing my fear come from my wise and unbiased friend was the last thing that I had wanted.   
    Maybe it was because, with that one statement, Quatre had destroyed our unspoken agreement not to talk about it just as surely as he had destroyed the denial I had spent twelve years erecting and put another huge dent in the armor around the fears and worst of the darkness in me, the armor that I called my father's love for me. Or maybe it had just been hearing him say I should tell someone. _Quatre_ , the same person that had told me never to fight against Relena and Zechs because it would only make things worse, was telling me to fight against the man that had bullied me my entire life. Relena and Zechs had always gone after him worse, so what I said to him then was inexcusable, but at the same time I couldn't understand it. Relena and Zechs were _nothing_ compared to my father. Why couldn't Quatre get that?!   
    I opened my mouth again and my father's voice came pouring out.  
    "Just like you've tried to stop Relena and Zechs?" I said to him coldly, my voice twisted into something ugly, full of spite and anger and all of it was directed at the only friend I had ever had.   
    I didn't even recognize my own voice, my own tone. I had become the one thing I had begun to fear I would one day become.  
    My words stripped that maturity from Quatre and he fell silent, his confidence and surety gone. He looked like a small defeated child.  
  
*****      
  
    I never should have said that to him. I had known how much Relena and Zechs tormented him, how it wore on him and he struggled with knowing he could do a single thing to fight back against them. I had no business rubbing his face in it. I let my anger, which had absolutely nothing to do with my best friend, overwhelm me and control me. I let it hurt someone I deeply cared about, just like my father. I will never forgive myself for saying those cruel things to him, when all he had tried to do was help me.  
    I wish I could write here that that was the end for us. Quatre finally woke up and saw what a shitty friend I really was and finally dumped me. He got a better friend, someone who appreciated him and could protect him. I wish I could write those things because it's exactly what he, and I, deserved. But I can't because that isn't what happened. We didn't talk about any of it after that, not my father's abuse or the horrible thing I had said. I walked him home in complete silence, too ashamed of myself and scared of what else my rage might make me say to speak. I didn't even have the guts to apologize to him for it. But the next day it was like none of it had happened. We just kept going like we always had.  
    I should have been a better friend to him. Maybe if I had, he would have gotten the strength to stay, or maybe it had been inevitable, I don't know. All I know is that I treated the one good thing in my life like shit. I got so wrapped up in my own pain, I never saw how deep his ran and goddamit, I should have! If I could do it all over again, I'd tell him how sorry I am, how I never deserved him and how much I love him. But I can't. The best thing in my life and I couldn't keep it. Now I have nothing, and that's exactly what I deserve.  
    I miss him. I miss him so much and it won't stop hurting. I keep praying to God, something I've never done in my entire life, for Quatre to come back, but he never does. He's never going to come back home. Nothing helps. Not even this fucking journal. Mrs. Khushrenada gave me this stupid thing and said it would help with the pain. Well it hasn't! Nothing is going to help, all it does is remind me of what a fuck up I am and how I don't deserve to have people like Quatre in my life!  
    Fuck this journal. Fuck Mrs. Khushrenada, fuck Quatre's stupid family. Fuck my parents. Fuck Relena and fuck Zechs and fuck this whole town.  
    I'm done. I don't want to talk about this anymore.   
  
  
End Chapter 2  
  
Author's note: Ugh, that was draining. Now I'm off to start chapter 3, thanks for reading ^_^  
  
  
  



	6. Chapter 3 Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quatre gets a new friend and helps Duo celebrate his birthday. In the wake of a humiliating prank, Duo tries to answer questions about his sexuality, only to discover his worst fears.

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 3  
Part 1  
  
  
April 3, 2004  
  
  
    I almost threw this out. I don't know why I didn't. I had no intention of writing in it anymore or even glancing at what I had written. I just wanted to forget everything, not relive it. But not even a week past since I shoved this journal in my secret place under the floor and I haven't looked at it since, before Mrs. Khushrenada demanded I write about what happened. I swear the woman is psychic, she knew I had stopped writing even though she had never seen my journal.  
    I punched Zechs today. I was walking out of my english class and he was there with the boys he was friendly with, or as close as a guy like him can get. He was talking about Quatre, saying these terrible and lewd things about him. Quatre isn't even around anymore and he still goes after him. It was a sucker punch, he didn't even see me before my fist connected with his face, but the way I see it, fair fighting doesn't amount to shit when your opponent is over a foot taller than you and never fights fair himself. I felt this intense satisfaction to see that smug face twist in pain. He even bit his tongue hard enough to bleed, which was a cherry on top of the whole thing. I would have hit him again while he had been stunned if a nearby teacher hadn't seen and pulled me away from him. It was also the only thing that saved me from a truly epic beating from Zechs and his friends.   
    The two of us got sent to the principal's office. Our parents were called. Zechs's mother and father showed up in record time and mine didn't show up at all. I didn't expect them to. It was in the middle of the day, they were both at work and weren't going to cut out early for my sake. The principal called Mrs. Khushrenada in from her classes. She had bounced around from class to class since I had met her in the fourth grade and she had somehow ended up as my homeroom teacher again this year. I guess the principal thought it was unfair having Zechs's folks there and not have an adult to speak for me or some shit.  
    To be fair, Mrs. Khushrenada did a bang up job of it, better than my own parents would have. I should have been at least suspended for striking a fellow student on school property. Mrs. and Mr. Dorlian were furious over the whole thing and there was some brief talk about expulsion, something that had been brought up by the principal to appease the Dorlians, but Mrs. Khushrenada was having _none_ of it. She pulled out all the water works on my behalf, but as soon as she mentioned I had been friends with Quatre, Zechs's parents had shared a sympathetic look and had dropped any mention of expulsion. I was angry that Mrs. Khushrenada had brought Quatre up, like the absence of my best friend in my life was some kind of get out of jail free card, but there was nothing I could do about it.   
    The Dorlians even asked the principal not to suspend me when Mrs. Khushrenada vowed to get me into counseling, especially when she told them I had been having a hard time dealing with what had happened. Zechs had been suitably pissed that I had essentially gotten away with sneak attacking him, but I felt a small sense of justice. In the face of everything, it was pretty pointless, but how many times had he gotten away with going after Quatre or myself? It was time he knew what that felt like, even if it didn't end up changing anything.   
    I was honestly surprised his parents had been that understanding, even without knowing exactly why I had punched their son, but they seemed like the sort whom sympathy and empathy came very naturally. Too bad they hadn't passed that trait to their kids. I could have told them what Relena and Zechs had done to Quatre, but what would be the point? It wasn't enough to make Quatre come back.  
    The principal had given me a choice: go to detention for a month and be suspended for two days or go to counseling. I didn't have to be a genius to know the kind of deal I was being offered and how lucky I was. I don't want to see the school guidance councilor, but my father would have been furious if I got suspended and detention. Mrs. Khushrenada had tacked on an additional clause to the deal. I had to start writing in my journal again and I had to talk about what had happened a month ago.  
    So here I am again. She thinks this will help me and I still think it's a load of shit, but it beats detention and it'll keep her off my back. She still promised me no one will read it, so I guess I could just lie, but I just know she'll see through that. She's just as perceptive as Quatre was.  
    Where do I start? Just what the hell am I supposed to write? Every time I think about it, my mind goes blank. How can I possibly put how I've felt this last month into words? It seems impossible. And every time I try to write about it, I feel like I'm betraying him all over again. Starting from the day it happened wouldn't be fair because it really didn't start then. Technically, it started the first day Relena and Zechs picked on Quatre, but specifically, it started on my thirteenth birthday and it started because of me. Me and a boy named Trowa Barton.   
    I woke up late for school. Most of the time, my biological clock is perfect, I don't typically need an alarm clock because I almost always seem to wake up exactly when I need to. That day had not been one of those times. I had stayed up late studying for a basic chemistry test and I was fighting off the tail end of a cold I had had earlier than week. I had been so tired and heavy headed that even my parents' fighting hadn't roused me. I was just late enough waking up that I had to skip breakfast. A terrific start to another shitty day. Usually Quatre and I met in front of the town hall, but chem was both of our first periods and knowing Quatre, he had gotten early start to study a bit more before class. He always was smarter than me.  
    Sure enough, I found my best friend at his locker. I had run fast enough to have made it to school before the period one bell had rung at least. My friend was starting intently at his locker, his blue-green eyes cloudy with anxiety, hurt, and repulsion and he was clutching his books tightly to his chest.  
    "Hi, Quatre," I greeted and was rewarded with his usual bright smile, but there were still shadows of emotions I didn't like on his face, "what's wrong?" I asked before he could greet me and try to distract me from whatever was obviously bothering him.  
    "What? It's nothing," he said, but his eyes very briefly glanced at his locker.  
    I raised an eyebrow at him. We had been friends for nearly four years and saw each other almost every single day, I knew the difference between one of his insignificant anxieties and when it was something bigger. And Quatre was well aware of how stubborn I could be. He sighed and opened his locker. Looking inside, at first I thought it was mud that had been smeared and caked all over the walls and on the inside of the door. Relena and Zechs had done that before to both of us. Last summer Zechs had used honey and peanut butter. I had opened my locker to a sea of ants. I still get grossed out thinking about it. I hadn't used my locker since until this spring. Mud was a juvenile trick for them, especially Zechs, but then I got a whiff of Quatre's locker and took several staggering steps back.   
    "Ugh! That's foul!" I exclaimed and held my nose in van to ward off the pungent stench of dog shit, or at least that's what I really, really, really hoped it was.  
    Quatre closed his locker again in a hurry, and I was very grateful.  
    "That's extreme, even for them," I muttered.  
    Those might have been my words, but I honestly wasn't that surprised. Lately, Relena and Zechs's stupid pranks and bullying had gotten worse, more hateful.  
    "I'm sorry," I murmured, guilt filling me with every moment I smelled that horrible aroma, "I'm so sorry, Quatre."  
    "This isn't your fault," he insisted.  
    "Yes it is."  
    I knew full well that this wasn't an attack against Quatre. It had been against me.  
    Ever since the day Relena had kissed me and I had not only rejected her, I had shown her that I was repulsed by her, her and her brother's bullying had escalated. The tactics they had used at first that I had been so stressed over; putting a tack in my shoe, beating me up, now seemed almost playful and harmless. At first they had nearly stopped going after Quatre and had only focused on me. Then, they had started on him again, worse than before, and they had made it abundantly clear to me they weren't doing it because of their past history with him. They were doing it because he was my friend, because I had fought back against them.   
    I hadn't done anything like that since. Whenever I felt the urge, the memory of almost being drowned by Zechs flashed in my head. I might have tried again despite that if it had just been me. But how could I, when every action I made affected my friend? If it weren't for me, they wouldn't have done this to his locker. I just imagined them, and I just knew it had been Zechs who had done this one and not his sister, taking the time to set all this up, how methodical it was. The amount of effort was disturbing, the _intent_ behind it.   
    "I need to wash it off," he said, his voice tight with worry and disgust, "It's already starting to dry..."  
    "Just get the janitor to do it," I said.  
    Quatre shook his head frantically.  
    "I don't want to bother him with it," he insisted, "It's gross and he shouldn't have to deal with something that isn't his fault."  
    "Don't be ridiculous," I snapped, "It's not your fault, either. You don't have the right tools, you don't even have gloves, and class is about to start. You going to miss the test because you don't want to bother to ask someone to do their job?"  
    He sighed and shot me an annoyed look but I could tell that he knew I was right.   
    "C'mon, we'll be late," he said as he shoved his books into his book bag, like it had been his idea all along.  
    I could tell that he was still upset about the whole thing and I didn't blame him. I affectionately bumped my shoulder with his, a weak substitute to hugging him in the crowded hallway.  
    "Just four more months, Quatre," I reminded him, "and then Zechs will go on to high school and we'll have a year away from him."  
    Quatre snorted at that even as I saw a glimmer of relief in his eyes.  
    "If we even survive four more months and he doesn't repeat another grade," he muttered unhappily, "and even then, it's just a year. Then we'll graduate and be in high school with him. Also we'll still have Relena."  
    I shrugged.   
    "A year is a long time," I said, "As far as I'm concerned, just a single day away from that asshole is worth it. Relena might be a bitch, but he's worse than she could ever hope to be."  
    We headed for our class together and right before we walked into the room, he stopped, making me stop with him.  
    "Happy birthday, Duo," he positively beamed at me, "Sorry, I got so distracted with my locker I almost forgot to say that."  
    I blinked at him like a confused owl.       
    "What? It's not my-" I paused.  
    It was my birthday. February 23rd. I was thirteen years old, finally a teenager. I had completely forgotten. I had known the date, but I had forgotten the significance. Who did that? Just forgot their own birthday? Apparently me. Quatre saw my expression and immediately lost his smile.  
    "Your parents forgot again, didn't they?" he asked softly.  
    That was my best friend, more concerned with my parents forgetting my birthday than me doing the same. It wasn't exactly shocking. They had forgotten my birthday last year, and the year before that. Or maybe they hadn't. Maybe they hadn't cared. They had forgotten my birthday before those times, but they had typically remembered a few days later. I had never really had a birthday party, at least not what regular kids would call one. My dad would buy me a cake and a present. Sometimes he would take me out to the movies or we'd all go out to a restaurant if we had the money. But lately, they had just done nothing. I wanted to be upset about it, but it was just one more thing in a long line of disappointments in my life.   
    "It's fine," I said, "I mean, I forgot about it, too, and it's not really important."  
    "Of course it's important," he scolded, "It's your birthday and they're your parents, they should remember," his expression softened a little, "You're working after school today, right?"  
    I nodded. I had work at the pizza joint all night.  
    "Mind if I hang out for a bit there?" he asked almost shyly.  
    "Sure, I'd like the company," I smiled.  
    My boss might be annoyed to have Quatre hanging around again, but he never said that he couldn't and I always enjoyed the company. Not much had changed for me in a year. I still had both of my jobs, but some of my responsibilities had chanted. I still had to make pizza boxes, which I didn't mind, and I still couldn't cook anything or wait on customers because I was still under aged, but my boss let me sweep the floor and keep all the food stations stocked. I even got to unload the delivery truck sometimes, so my days weren't as monotonous. Almost all of my paychecks were still going to my dad. I had grown a little over the summer but Quatre hadn't at all. He was pretty annoyed by it. My hair had gotten longer, too. Despite Zechs constantly pulling on it, I hadn't cut it and my hair reaches just below my shoulders now. Quatre knew how to braid from his sisters and showed me how to do it. It makes me look girlier, I guess, but it keeps it out of my face.   
    Zechs was always calling me a girl, but it never really bothered me enough to cut my hair off or stop braiding it. I told myself that it really didn't matter, Zechs was going to call me that whether I cut my hair or not and I had gotten used to having long hair. That was his recent thing, insinuating or outright saying that I was effeminate, a pansy, or a transsexual. I didn't play sports, wasn't strong, had long hair, and I had good grades in all of my writing and home economics courses. He often teased that I was more feminine than most queers and he felt offended I was wearing boys' clothes instead of a skirt.  
    Zechs still frequently called me Faggot. I think it's his favorite word or something. Also more crude things like fudge packer and pillow biter. After a year, that word should have stopped bothering me so much, especially since Relena and Zechs called Quatre that, too, but it hadn't. Every time I heard them call me a fag, it pierced my heart.  
    A year since that shit had started and I still couldn't figure it out. This year I found myself thinking about it more and more. My sexuality had nearly become an obsession for me. I found myself asking myself the same questions over and over. Am I straight? Am I normal, like everyone else and one day all of this shit would just go away, it would all just click into place for me? I still didn't like girls. I didn't even look at them like the other boys did, I just didn't care. I thought about sex because everyone was questioning my sexuality, but I never _really_ thought about it. I just couldn't see myself falling in love with a girl and having a kid like my parents, like it was normal to.  
    Was I gay? I had just as much confusion on that topic as I did towards my possible heterosexuality. I wasn't even normal in that area. I didn't _feel_ attracted to boys. I didn't have any urges to hold their hands or kiss them. All those stereotypes Zechs flung at me, I didn't fit into, either. Sure, I wasn't as masculine as he was, but I wasn't effeminate. I hated shopping, hated romance flicks and all that crap. If there was a gay culture, I felt no affinity towards it and that was worse somehow. Because if I knew I was gay, if I fit into those stereotypes, it would suck, but at least I would know my place.  
    Where did I fit? What was I supposed to do? I felt like I was stuck in this endless limbo. I had tried to do a search on homosexuality at the school library since we didn't have a computer at home, but the search was blocked. Was being gay so horrible that not even the school wanted us exposed to it? Last year in my World History class, I had to write a report on the Holocaust. I had to go on all these websites detailing the worst, darkest things humans had done to each other, there had even been these disgusting, graphic pictures. The school computers had let me look at that, but not even the most basic information on homosexuality.  
    I knew that a lot of people didn't like gays, they thought they were immoral, unnatural, and weird, and some religions were totally against them, but what was so awful about them? Seeing that 'website blocked due to inappropriate content' screen on the school computer, and not being able to find any books on the subject, terrified me. I was already an outcast, was there another thing, a much worse thing, wrong with me?  
    I couldn't even talk to anyone about my questions. I couldn't ask for help. Anyone I asked would automatically assume I was asking because I _was_ gay, or they would doubt and even at thirteen years old, I understood that that doubt would be a permanent thing. My mother would just tell me to stop bothering her, probably the most impartial party. My father would beat me. I had heard him rant about queers before and the things he had said had been harsh enough to keep me quiet. My teachers would tell me to go to the school counselor and the counselor would tell me to go a therapist or worse, want to talk to my parents about it.  
    I guess I could ask Mrs. Khushrenada. I had no idea where she stood on the subject, but she had always been kind and patient with me. But I don't think she would understand. She was married and tended to be a bit naive and optimistic.   
    And Quatre... I couldn't even _begin_ to consider talking to my best friend about this stuff. He wouldn't call me names or outwardly judge me. He would be supportive and understanding and that was exactly why I couldn't tell him. Even if it bothered him, disgusted him, he would keep it inside where I couldn't see and eventually, without even realizing it, I would lose my best friend. Quatre was all I had in the world. If I lost him, I would lose everything, even my life, as pathetic as it was.  
    What would it mean for my future, being gay? I had no clue. Was being gay something you could just stop? I didn't think so. If it were, why would anyone be gay? Why would anyone decide to deal with people hating you and thinking terrible things about you? I couldn't imagine myself marrying a girl, but at that point in my life, I had been just as incapable of seeing myself with another boy. Could I hide it? Did I even need to acknowledge it? Or would it destroy what little future I had? I was already poor and I would be for the rest of my life, so could being gay really make things worse? Would I even be denied what little work I might be able to find after I graduated high school because of it?  
    I didn't know what might be worse, being a homosexual and having urges towards other boys and being seen as a pervert, or _not_ having any urges at all. My inability to figure out if I was gay or straight haunted me because I couldn't make that choice because I didn't feel desire towards anyone. Would it always be like that? Would my sexuality be like everything else in my life and I was just... stuck in place? I didn't know if I wanted any of it; romance, kissing, sex, desire, love, dating... but I did know that I didn't want to be anymore of a freak than I already was.  
    Again, I could have talked to Quatre about it. We were the same age and he had never told me he liked any of the girls in our class. Maybe we were just late bloomers, or maybe he was just being private and there was a girl he secretly liked. I could have talked to him about it because him accusing me of being gay seemed worse than him thinking I was asexual, but I never did. Being gay was terrifying, being asexual was embarrassing. Looking back, I wish I had talked to him about all of it. Maybe if I had, he would have opened up to me about his own issues and I would have had the time to think of a way to help him or spotted the problem.   
    I found myself looking at boys more and more. I wasn't even aware that I was doing it. I would just suddenly realize that I was staring when I shouldn't have been. It wasn't like it was when I found myself staring at girls. With girls, I was just curious, staring at them and wondering just what it was about them I was supposed to attracted to, what I was supposed to be looking for. With the boys, it was like I was subconsciously doing it and it made me fearful. Was I looking because I liked them or was I looking because I had become so obsessed with trying to figure out if there was something there that I liked that girls didn't have?  
     I could see some boys as handsome, but hadn't I thought before that Relena was pretty? I didn't know, but I was making myself sick over thinking it all the time. Was I just repulsed by Relena? What did other girls have that she didn't? And why was I incapable of seeing that? I had to put a stop to the terrible swirl of thoughts that were battering around in my skull as our history teacher handed out our tests. I was quickly giving myself a headache and school had only just started.  
    For once I was actually happy to be taking a test, even if it was Asian History. It was keeping my mind off of things I just didn't want to think about anymore. At least Asian History was more interesting than American History. There were all kinds of bloody battles and power struggles. Last year had been European history which had been much more interesting, but taking US History in the fifth grade had practically bored me to tears. And I had sucked at it.   
    We hadn't even gotten to learn about the civil war or the war of independence, that was for the eighth graders. It had all been politics and treaties and remembering which president ratified what and who had belonged to which party. I had had the hardest time remembering dates and statistics for that stuff. I didn't even really get _why_ I needed to learn that crap. We just moved on to another subject the following year and I forgot everything I had learned anyway.   
    But for once, I hadn't approached this test with the same frustration that I usually did, probably because Quatre had spent that entire week helping me study. If it weren't for my best friend, I'd probably be in the same boat as Zechs. Quatre didn't think so. He always insisted that I was smarter than I thought I was and I would get along just fine without his help. All the same, I was glad that I had it.  
    I felt a deep sense of relief as I handed my test into the teacher. I didn't dare let myself succumb to hope, but with Quatre's help, I thought that I might just be able to pull my history grades up this semester. Now I just needed to do something about Math. Quatre couldn't do much to help me there since we were in different classes. He was still leagues above me in advanced placement and I was too embarrassed by my shitty test scores and how difficult it was for me to ask him.   
    All the same, I was eager when the bell finally rang. We had home economics next and we were learning how to make blueberry crisp from scratch. I liked cooking in that class because we got to eat whatever we made at the end of the period and at that point, I was starving.   
    Apparently, up until a few years ago, you had to learn how to do things like sew and stitch, but the school board eventually decided that that was all too old fashioned and had merged home ec with computer basics. Even though we had to use computers in our other classes, we had to learn how to speed type when our cooking lessons were done for the semester. I was going to miss it, mostly the free food.   
    I shoved my books into my book bag and followed Quatre out the door, my stomach already growling at the prospect of breakfast. Quatre turned to look at me as we walked out in the hallway.  
    "You'll help me, right?" he asked me sheepishly, his quick mind already on to our next class.  
    Quatre was better than me at pretty much everything except for cooking. He was fairly hopeless if he had to make anything other than sandwiches. His parents forgot to pack his lunches all the time, but no one had bothered to really teach him how to cook or bake. In the last few years, as things at home got worse, especially my mother's alcoholism, I'm typically the one making the dinners. My father isn't a picky eater, but I learned how to make the things he liked quickly. It's a cliche, the abusive man of the house beating on whoever was supposed to make his meals for not having them done on time, but my dad doesn't really care if dinner is ready when he gets home as long as it's something he likes. I've found over the years that making things for him, even things I don't like to eat, helps his mood towards me.   
    Quatre's plea made me smile, not because I felt any kind of superiority, but it made me feel good to have even one small thing I could help him with.  
    Suddenly, before I could warn him, Quatre walked right into someone that had been trying to get into the classroom we had just left. Quatre, obviously thinking that the person he had bumped into was Zechs, or that had just been conditioned into him by now, flinched. I recognized the person instantly.  
    Trowa Barton is in the same grade that Zechs is, but their paths seldom cross. They definitely aren't friends, at least. I may not have known if I was gay or not, but I could agree that Trowa was handsome with his cinnamon brown hair and green eyes that are even darker than mine are. He's pretty much the top dog in our school basket ball team, the sort of boy all the girls fawn over and idolize, but Trowa seemed to care more about basket ball and club activities than he did about girls.   
    Trowa is close with a lot of his teammates but while he seemed nice, he's also really quiet. If he isn't with his team mates, he seems to prefer solitude and always seems kind of panicked and shy when a girl approaches him. If it weren't for his good looks, athleticism, and the fact that he's one of the tallest kids in his grade, he'd probably be the sort of kid that never gets noticed. Because of him, we win games, and that had given him the same status of popularity that Relena and Zechs had, even if the Bartons are just a typical, middle class family, but I had never had any problems with Trowa. On the rare occasions that he did speak to me, which was about as rare as him speaking to anyone else, he hadn't exactly been overly friendly, but he hadn't been a jerk to me, either.   
    I watched in awe as my normally composed friend turned the brilliant color of a ripe tomato and gained all of the grace of a newborn deer.  
    "T-Trowa," Quatre stammered as though simple speech had suddenly deserted him, "I am so, so sorry!"  
    They were the same exact words he would only have spoken if he had bumped into Zechs, but he spoke them only with embarrassment and shyness, not fear with Trowa. It would have been outright bizarre if I hadn't witness this spectacle before. Sure enough, I looked at Trowa as he turned the exact shade of red that Quatre had, though it was less noticeable on Trowa's tanner skin. He rubbed nervously at the back of his head and seemed to lose all ability to speak coherently.   
    "It... it's ok," Trowa murmured shyly.  
    Feeling like a spectator, I watched as the two of them stumbled into a friendly, if awkward conversation.  
    "I saw your game Friday night," Quatre somehow managed to say without stuttering too badly, "that three pointer you made was really incredible. You've improved so much from last season and you were already so good."  
    I hadn't thought it possible, but the both of them flushed even darker at Quatre's praise.  
    "T-thank you," Trowa's speech became even more bumbling, "I've been training harder since you started coming to my games," I thought Quatre would literally combust at that statement, turning a red that was almost purple and a very strange and alien look coming into his eyes.  
    Even I blinked owlishly at the tall boy, his words bewildering me. Did Trowa mean that he had been training harder in that span of time, or did he mean he had started to train harder because of Quatre's presence? It had to be the former because I couldn't see why Quatre, the petit under classman that he happened to stop and talk to between classes every once in awhile, would spur him to improve his game anymore than his coach or his teammates would.   
    Really, watching the two of them interacting with each other was bewildering every time I saw it. Trowa was the only one besides me that Quatre talked to on a regular basis. They never seemed to talk about anything vastly important and they always acted so awkward at first, like they had to warm up to just talking to each other comfortably, like an old engine that hadn't been used in some time.   
    Quatre never acted scared of Trowa, despite the difference in their sizes, just unsure of himself. It was painful to watch, but once they got warmed up, they seemed to enjoy each other's small talk. At first I had thought that Trowa's shyness towards my friend was because he didn't want Zechs to see them talking and start bullying him, too, but Trowa didn't seem like that sort of person, and he was bigger than Zechs anyway. But he didn't do anything to intervene in the bullying, either.  
    The whole thing confused me. Quatre had never had any problems talking to me, and his behavior when around Trowa was just strange. No matter how many times I watched them, I couldn't figure it out. My friend just did not act like this, and I had never seen Trowa act like that around anyone either. I hadn't even known that Quatre had been going to Trowa's games. It wasn't something to be angry at him over, keeping that from me, I had just never seen my friend as the type that cared about sports and school spirit. He had never invited me to come along with him, but he knew that I didn't care about that stuff, so I couldn't be mad at him about that, either.  
    But when I watched the two of them together, bantering the way they were now, seeming so interested in what the other was saying even though none of it sounded very important to me, I felt jealous. I wasn't even sure why I felt that way exactly. I was Quatre's best friend, and it wasn't as though Quatre was replacing me or something. But when I saw them together, I knew there was something more there than two acquaintances chatting about the  weather, I just couldn't understand what that something was.  
It was different than what Quatre and I had, and it obviously affected him differently and made me feel more conscious of myself and my inadequacies.   
    I couldn't even begin to understand what was going on between the two of them, what Quatre liked about Trowa enough to talk to him, let alone my own screwed up feelings about it. Quatre liked someone other than me, I should have been happy and apart of me was.   
    "Oh, Trowa," a falsely sweet and familiar voice came from behind the tall boy, "You're always so charitable, giving trash the time of day, "Relena smiled girlishly at the older boy even as her cold, blue eyes regarded Quatre hatefully. She didn't so much as glance at me, recognizing that I was the outsider there, "but you really should be more cautious. If you aren't careful some of the fag might rub off on you. People already talk about the reason why the two of you are so _friendly_ with each other," she sneered and even her tone sounded sinister and hateful to me.   
    Trowa went white as a sheet and quickly pushed past her into the classroom. Quatre looked absolutely horrified as he watched the other boy's reaction. He looked as hurt as if Relena had plunged a knife into his gut, his blue-green eyes filling up with tears. I had never seen such a look of... heartbreak and shame on his face before and I almost punched Relena in the face. I didn't know exactly why what she had said had hurt him so much. It really wasn't anything different than she said to him all the time, but that it had been directed at Trowa seemed to have made all the difference in the world.   
    Relena flicked her long hair over her shoulder and continued on her way down the hallway, looking incredibly proud of herself. I glanced back at Quatre and saw that he was watching her, too. For the very first time in our friendship, there was pure, raw hatred on his face.  
  
*****  
  
    I tried to get Quatre to talk to me about it, but nothing would draw him out of his shell. For the rest of the school day, he was quiet, frighteningly so. I couldn't even get him to smile, something that had always come so naturally to him. It scared me, that I couldn't reach him or figure out what was hurting him so badly. Quatre always seemed to know what just to say to me to make me feel at least a little bit better. But as usual, I was bumbling and inadequate. I felt like a shitty friend. Even Relena's further attempts to mess with him seemed to not reach whatever place his mind was, must to her annoyance. I regretted not hitting her.   
    I went to work feeling incredibly depressed by the whole thing. I tried to push it out of my mind and concentrate on my work, as mindless as it was, but I kept seeing Quatre's horrified expression in my head and that hate he had directed at Relena's departing back. And I kept thinking of how disgusted I was in myself for being unable to make anything better. I was so useless...  
    "Duo," I stopped scrubbing at the current dish I was working on when one of our servers, Carol, called for me.  
    "What is it?" I asked her, barely even turning around to regard her. Carol has been working at this shitty restaurant since it had opened thirty years ago and in all of the time I had been working there, she had said maybe two words to me, the sort of woman that always had a gripe and nothing anyone did was ever good enough for her.   
    "Someone here for you," she grumbled and strode back out onto the floor.  
    Who the hell would be here for me, I thought, washing my hands to get the smell of dirty dish washer and pizza sauce off my skin.  
    I walked out onto the floor and was met by Quatre, wearing the same soft smile he always had when we were together.  
    "Hi, Duo," he practically beamed.  
    I blinked like an idiot at him. I hadn't forgotten our plans, but I honestly hadn't thought I would be seeing him tonight after what had happened. And he was smiling again, as if none of it had happened. I could almost pretend that it hadn't. Well, if Quatre wanted to pretend that everything was ok, I wasn't going to push him to be depressed and quiet again.   
    "Hi," I greeted, still surprised.  
    "It's almost time for your dinner break, right?" he asked.  
    I looked over at my boss who was going over some paperwork by the registers. He gave me a gruff nod.  
    "Take yer time," he said in that rough way of his that was constant no matter what he was feeling, his voice raw from years of heavy smoking, "It's dead in here anyway."  
    "Thanks, Sal," I said.  
    Sal could be an asshole sometimes, and he had some kind of problem with Quatre always showing up here for some reason, but he was a pretty nice guy otherwise. At least, he had never given me any grief. I think when my dad had forced me on him, my boss had thought I was just going to slack off, but when he saw I got my tasks done without a complaint, he had started to respect me a bit.   
    I followed Quatre to a booth way in the back of the restaurant where no one would be able to see us. I stopped when I saw the soft glow of candle light coming from the table. On it was a wrapped box and a cake with thirteen lit candles in it. It wasn't fancy, just a white frosted cake with green and blue edges, 'Happy 13th Birthday, Duo!' written with similar green and blue frosting.   
    "I know it isn't much," Quatre said sheepishly, "but it took awhile to get your present, I wanted to make sure you would like it. And I made the cake myself! Well, Jane told me what to do and how to make it," he babbled nervously, "I tried to make a marble cake, I know how much you like those, but it was just too hard, so I made it a two layer cake instead, white cake and chocolate cake. The frosting is butter cream, like you like."  
    He finally stopped rambling and peered at me through pale blonde bangs, trying to gauge my reaction. I felt like I was going to cry. Quatre had given me presents on my birthday before, but this was beyond... not even my parents had ever taken the time to bake me a cake before, or care if it was something I liked. I hugged Quatre tightly, startling him a little.  
    "Thank you so much, Quatre," my voice cracked a little, but I managed not to cry, "No one's done anything this nice before."  
    I felt intensely happy as he hugged me back.  
    "Happy birthday, Duo," I heard him say into my shoulder and I did feel a tear or two escape then.   
    He didn't say anything about my tears as he let me go and I was grateful. I wiped at them hastily, feeling stupid for crying over something like this. We sat down in the booth together and I blew out the candles on my cake. One of the servers came by our table with food that Quatre had obviously ordered ahead of time, lasagna for him, spaghetti and meatballs for me, plus fries, breadsticks, and salads for the both of us. Normally I would be annoyed at him spending so much money on me, but I ate it all happily, deciding to just let it go for today.   
    I was full by the time we got to the cake, but when I took my first bite, I found that I had plenty of appetite to spare. We must have sat there for hours, eating the cake Quatre had made and talking about nothing, but a pleasant nothing, yet Sal didn't come over once to tell me to go back to work. Suddenly, we were down to one slice of cake left and it was almost the end of my shift. I felt guilty about it, but only because Sal was being nice for once and I didn't want to take advantage of him like that. Still, this had probably been the nicest birthday I'd had.   
    "Open your present," my best friend urged excitedly.   
    I had to smile at his eagerness and did as I was ordered. I pulled out a black hoodie jacket with silver highlights and patters here and there on the sleeves, hem, and drawstrings. The inside of it was made of some incredibly soft material. It was thicker than the jacket I was wearing then because I hadn't had a new jacket in years and it was getting small on me.   
    "I got it a bit big," Quatre told me, "You've been growing lately and I wanted to get you something you could grow into. Do you like it?"  
    I hugged it to my chest. It was so soft and not some cheap knock off like my parents usually got me. I was scared to ask him how much it cost but decided that for once I wasn't going to make it an issue. I didn't care about fashion, though even to me the jacket looked nice, it would keep me warm and dry.   
    "I love it," I said honestly.   
    "The black and silver really bring out your eyes," he said with a soft, musing smile.  
    I felt my face go warm and felt shy all of a sudden. I had no clue why, but it made me feel pleased and embarrassed all at once, that praise. I didn't care about stuff like that, so why did it make me happy?   
    I ran to get my stuff and clock out as Quatre took care of the bill. Sal didn't yell at me about pretty much skipping all of the rest of my shift, so I guess it was ok with him, maybe because it was my birthday. I felt a pain in my chest realizing that my boss had known it was my birthday, but my parents hadn't. I shoved that thought away. I should be used to stuff like this by now. They didn't do it maliciously, they had just... forgotten. But that made it hurt even more. If they had ignored my birthday on purpose, at least I would matter enough to them that they would remember the date. I wasn't even an afterthought in their minds.   
    I put on my new jacket and met Quatre outside. We walked to his house like we always did and hugged before we parted. He said happy birthday to me again and I thanked him for all he had done again. I felt a rare happiness fill me up and resolved to not let it leave me until I went to sleep that night, no matter what happened between then and now. I decided to forget all about the shit in Quatre's locker and what Relena had said to him.  
    When I got home, my mother was in her bedroom already asleep and my father was sitting at the kitchen table, reading the newspaper.   
    "Hi, Dad," I said.  
    I waited for him to acknowledge what day it was, to do something to prove to me that it mattered at all to him. It was Quatre's fault for getting my hopes up when they had already been so little, but I was still happy that at least someone in my life gave a shit.  
    "Hi," he grunted, not so much as taking his eyes off what he was reading, "You need to take the garbage out tonight and your mother is making stew tomorrow, she left you a list of things to get at the supermarket after school."  
    "Ok," I said obediently.  
    Today must have been a good day, he hadn't even raised his voice at me. While he was distracted with his paper, I snuck the last piece of birthday cake into the freezer behind some bags of frozen vegetables. My parents wouldn't see it in there, so they wouldn't be able to steal it. I might have it for a snack tomorrow or maybe I would save it for a shitty day. My more important task done, I grabbed the garbage bags by the basement door and struggled to get them out on the curb. My father didn't say anything to me about my new jacket, but I was sure he hadn't noticed.   
  
*****  
  
    Three days later, I had already forgotten all about my parents forgetting my birthday, but not about Quatre and Trowa. Neither of them had spoken to each other since Relena had teased them for speaking to each other, but the avoidance was all one sided. Trowa had become a ninja, they didn't even seem to pass each other in the hall anymore. Quatre seemed so depressed, but I wasn't sure if it was over that or something else. Trowa quickly became one of those things we didn't talk about. If it was, it solidified my suspicions that the two of them were more than just acquaintances. I wanted to yell at Quatre that if he wanted to be friends with the upper classman, he should just ask him to hang out or something and fuck what Relena and Zechs did about it, but even if Quatre took my advice, he couldn't force Trowa to be friends with him if the tall boy was going to be chicken shit about his reputation. At least I didn't have to worry about those things with Quatre.   
    It was at the end of the school day. I didn't have work afterwards, and after discovering I had gotten a B on my history test, the best grade I had gotten in that class all year, I was in a good mood for once. Or at least I had been up until I opened my locker, and then promptly slammed it shut again. I stared at the outside of my locker door like if I glared at it long enough, what I had just seen would magically disappear that next time I opened it. I wished it had been shit.  
    "What's wrong?" Quatre asked me in concern when he saw my expression.  
    I felt too disgusted to tell him. Suddenly a hand slammed on the locker between the two of us, making violent, metallic sound that had both Quatre and I jumping. I looked up at Zechs's smirking face and wasn't at all surprised.  
    "What's the matter, Maxwell?" he jeered at me, "Don't you like the new decorations to your locker? I was up all night making them especially for you," he mock pouted when he saw that I closed my locker door, "What's the matter?" he flung the door open.  
    Again I caught a glimpse of what that asshole had taped to the inside of my locker and looked away. Zechs had made a collage out of some skin mag. Cut out pictures of naked women were spread out of the inside of the locker door and the walls, graphic shots of naked breasts and vaginas, something that I had never seen before. I gasped out in pain as the older boy grabbed my hair and held my head in place.  
    "You can't tell me this doesn't turn you on," he sneered, "C'mon, open your eyes, faggot!"  
    I did as he ordered me to, his lessons from a year ago permanently etched into my brain.   
    "Take a good, long look. You can't tell me that this actually repulses you. Look at all these gorgeous women," he tightened his grip even more and I tried to let the images he was forcing me to look at become a white haze, just looking threw them, "What sort of freak wouldn't be turned on by that?"  
    I heard harsh laughter from behind us.  
    "I don't know, Zechs, he doesn't look like he's enjoying it very much," one of his friends teased, "maybe you should make sure he's really enjoying himself and he isn't a fag after all."  
    "Good idea," Zechs laughed.  
    I felt his grip on my hair shift and his other hand grip at my shirt. Pure horror filled me as I realized he really _was_ going to check to see if I had a hard on. I had the same feeling of surrealness that I had had when he had pulled my pants down to check my underwear in gym class, like this couldn't possibly be happening.   
    I should have fought against him somehow, but I was just so frozen and sick to my stomach. I don't know what I was thinking then. I kept seeing those pictures he had put in my locker and this question repeated over and over in my head. Was I horrified because he was going to actually do something that repulsive... or was I horrified because I wasn't even slightly aroused or interested in those photos?  
    "Zechs," Quatre said coldly with a tinge of panic to his tone, but to me it was a voice from the heavens, "I just saw Mrs. Khushrenada coming down the hall."  
    "Shit," he grumbled and immediately released me. I felt like I was going to cry with joy.  
    His friends hurried to disperse, but Zechs shot me one last superior look.  
    "Don't even think about taking those down, got that, midget? I'll know if you do," and with that threat, he followed his friends down the hallway.   
    I didn't even need to look around the hall for Mrs. Khushrenada. I knew she had literary club duties and was on the other side of the school by now.  
    "Thank you," I whispered to Quatre and tried to regain control over myself, feeling a powerful mix of the remains of my fear and disgust coiling in my stomach.  
    He rubbed my back trying to comfort me.  
    "It's ok," he soothed, "Zechs is all hot air, he probably wouldn't have really done it."  
    I swallowed roughly and nodded, but I heard the doubt in his voice and I saw the fear in his eyes. He had almost been as scared as I had been. I didn't know what to do, how far I had come from him doing something that probably qualified as sexual harassment, if nothing else. Telling a teacher about it wouldn't do me any more good than telling one about the bullying would and that helplessness had me shaking. I hastily closed my locker door again. The worst thing about this was the sickness I felt. Was this repulsion from those photos or just from what Zechs had almost done?   
    I felt that insecurity again, that doubt about my sexuality. Zechs was an ass, but he had a point. Most boys, even at my age, would at least feel curious about those pictures, maybe enjoy looking at the breasts if nothing else. I hadn't just felt nothing. I had felt repulsed and disinterested. Had he been right about me all along?   
    "C-can I have a moment?" I begged Quatre.  
    To my relief, he didn't ask me why, he just nodded.  
    "I'll be out in the parking lot," he said and left me at my locker.  
    I waited for the amount of people in the hallway to diminish before I opened my locker again. I pulled all of the photos off of the locker walls and door and shoved them into my backpack. I suddenly didn't care if Zechs found out I had taken them down, all I could care about in that moment where the fearful questions swirling around in my brain. If I was lucky, I could sneak them back into my locker tomorrow morning and Zechs would never  
even know.  
  
*****  
  
    "I'm home!"'called as l walked into my house after walking Quatre to his.  
    No one answered me, but I hadn't expected anyone to. My dad was still had work so only my mother was home. I didn't see her when I walked through the kitchen. I immediately thought of  
the photos that were stashed in my book bag. I hoped, for once, that she was passed out in her bedroom. Even if she wasn't, she wasn't going to come looking for me. This was the best time to  
do this, if I could muster up the courage at all. I walked up the attic stairs as quietly as I could manage, feeling like an intruder in my own house. I felt more doubt about this, like worms in my  
stomach. What if my mother came looking for me for some reason? Or worse, I thought in horror, what if my father came home early?     But it was unavoidable. I _had_ to do this, I decided. I debated locking the attic door or pushing my dresser infant of the door, but decided to risk it. I would get in just as much trouble for locking the door any way.   
    I sat on my mattress and stared at my back pack like it was a demon in disguise. More doubts. Just what, exactly, was I supposed to do? Back at school, it had seemed so clear and obvious to me, here I felt confused and oblivious. It was so stupid. I was a teenager, not a child, but right then, I felt like one. This was something I needed to do, something normal that boys were _supposed_ to do, not some kind of Boogieman waiting to jump out and devour me. Or maybe it was.   
    I pulled out the nude photos from my backpack with trepidation instead of excitement. I had hoped that my revulsion at school had just been because of my shock and the knowledge that Zechs was fucking with me again, jeering and prodding at my sexuality. I had hoped desperately that once I had gotten home, to the privacy of my bedroom, I would feel something that any normal thirteen year old boy would towards those photos. But as I placed them down on the floor in front of me, I just felt scared and sick to my stomach.   
    I told myself that I was just over thinking things. Zechs just had me twisted in knots over this, so something that should be coming naturally to me was only making me anxious. But no matter how much I tried to calm myself and rationalize everything, I was still scared. I stared down at the photos intensely. I forced myself to study every last curve, every nipple, every sultry look, every breast, every inch of the naked women laid out in front of me.   
    They were all beautiful with flawless skin and what I was certain would be considered sexy bodies by any other boy. Boys my age... _normal_ boys... they would be turned on by this, they would be curious, they would want to look. I felt nothing. No, I felt worse than nothing. All of those women were supposed to be attractive to me and I wanted nothing to do with those images of their named bodies. I felt... not disgusted exactly, repulsed, like I wanted to look anywhere else.   
    I unzipped my jeans and pulled down my boxers to make absolutely sure, but my biggest fear was realized. My penis looked like it always had, limp and lifeless. Equal parts frustration, desperation, and anger consumed me. I stared at the photos even more intensely, trying to sear them into my head. I reached into my pants and wrapped my hand around my member. Some part of me asked me what I was doing, and I didn't have any kind of real answer. I moved my hand up and down myself, feeling incredibly awkward. I had never done anything remotely like that in my life. I knew how thanks to colorful euphemisms and lurid stories from upper classmen, but I had never had urges so I hadn't seen the point.   
    'Please, please, please!' I pleaded in frustration as I stroked myself.   
    I didn't want to be gay. I didn't want to be asexual. I just wanted to be straight and normal, just like everyone else for once in my life! But it was useless. It felt kind of good, in a mechanical sort of way, but whatever was supposed to happen in moments like that didn't. I didn't get an erection and that sick feeling in my stomach just grew. I let go of myself, my hand shaking a little. Hot tears spilled down my face. I heard my breath hitch and my chest felt like it was on fire. Why... why did this have to happen?! Why couldn't I like girls? Why did I have to be like this?!   
    I laid down on my side on my mattress and cried. I wanted to call Quatre and ask him what to do, but in reality it was the very last thing I wanted to do, to let my best friend to know about this. I wasn't straight. I couldn't deny that anymore. I didn't know what I was. Gay, asexual... no matter which it was, it wasn't anything I wanted. I felt lost and confused. But most of all, I felt completely alone.   
    I cried for hours. I cried until I could barely breathe, until my eyes were raw and red. I cried until I literally had not a single tear left to cry and I felt weak and hollow from all of it. I sat up, not because I wanted to, but because all that crying had made my throat hurt. I wish we had tea. Quatre always came to school with tea in his thermos, but my dad hated the stuff. All we had was beer, water, coffee, and kool aid, but it was better than nothing. I buttoned up my jeans, got to my feet and walked down the stairs with all of the energy of a zombie, my mind a thousand miles away.   
    I felt like I had just stumbled into this world of grey horror where nothing made sense and everything I had ever thought I had known about myself and the world had turned out to be a  
terrible lie. I felt numb and dead. Nothing mattered. But most of all, I felt shame. Was this my fault? How could I change this fate when I didn't have any hope of changing anything else in my  
pathetic life?  
           In the kitchen, I washed my hands and poured myself a glass of Kool aid. I drank it like I was dying of thirst. I felt dirty, and that I had touched myself for the first time was only one reason for it. Even though I had done this adult thing, I just felt like a child. I washed my glass and went to head back upstairs. I couldn't think about this anymore, it was almost literally tearing me up inside. It was making me sick, even worse than those photos had. At that point, I just wanted to do my homework and pretend none of it had ever happened, that nothing had changed. As l neared the bathroom, l heard loud, violent retching sounds coming from inside.  
         'Mom,' I realized. she had drank too much again.  
         But the sound was strange, muffled and strained and I realized that she wasn't vomiting into the toilet. I knocked on the door and immediately felt like an idiot. I didn't consider that the  
best thing for me to do was to just go back to my room. She wouldn't want my help any way, but listening to her vomiting, I felt worried. Even though she never talked to me or seemed to give a shit about me, she was my mother and I loved her. I didn't understand it any more than I understood how I could still love my father after everything he had done to me, but I did, and it  
always worried me when she got like this.  
    "Mom?" I called softly in case her head was hurting her.  
         It wasn't just hangovers, my mother got terrible headaches all the time. Dad often accused her of making excuses to not do anything, or called her pathetic whenever she claimed to have  
one, but Quatre said it was probably stress migraines and I agreed with him. When I didn't hear her respond, I risked opening the door. My mom was on the bathroom floor, laying on her side and  
clutching at her stomach. Her grey eyes were heavily bloodshot and clouded over with pain, sickness, and drunkenness. Her auburn hair was caked with vomit and sweat. There was a sizeable pool of vomit near her head on the floor and her face was red and covered with sweat. I kneeled down at her side and gently grasped her arm.  
    "Come on, Mom," I said in what I hoped was a soothing tone, "you can't fall asleep here. I'll help you get into bed. We don't have any ginger ale, but I think there's a can of coke in the fridge. It'll help settle your stomach."  
     I started to help her to her feet when she lashed out and shoved me away from her. I was completely unprepared for it, though I really shouldn't have been, and I slammed my head against the wall behind me. For a brief, disjointed, and frightening second as I looked at my mother's enraged face, she, my father, and Zechs all blurred together into the same person.  
         "I don't need your fucking help!" she shrieked at me, stumbling to her feet and almost falling down again, the most that she had said to me in long time, "I don't _**ever**_ want your help!"  
         She swayed on her feet before finally gripping the sink to steady herself. If her sudden rage hadn't been so frightening, it would have looked comical. Her reddened grey eyes, like hard  
stones, found mine, and the naked hatred there almost brought me to tears again. It drove the breath right out of me.  
        "You're so goddamn useless," she hissed at me like an angry cat, "What did I give up my body for?" she demanded me, like she believed I had some secret answer for her, "What did I give  
up my life for?!" she hastily looked away from me and down at the sink as though she couldn't even bare to look at me, not even relishing in the pain each, single one of her words gave me, like  
poisoned arrows directly shot through my heart, "If you had never been born, I wouldn't be stuck with that _bastard_ for the rest of my life!"  
     She pushed her mussed and wild hair out of her face and I saw she was crying hard. Every emotion she was feeling was etched on her tired and worn face and the knowledge that I had put that pain and frustration, anger and tiredness on that familiar face killed me. The hate in her eyes grew like a tidal wave, black and intense as she stared at me and I felt frozen by her emotions.   
    "I wish I had gotten that abortion your father," she spit out that word like it was a bitter poison, "had wanted me to get. He's right. I'm pathetic and I'm an idiot."  
    She swayed and stumbled past me, still more drunk than sober. I heard her move to the front door, opening it and slamming it closed so hard that the windows shook. I sat there on the bathroom floor, stunned and paralyzed. Her words rung in my head, screeching sirens.  
  
 _"What did I give up my life for?!"_  
  
    I looked down at my hands. The hands of a faggot. The hands of a loser. The hands of the baby that my mother had destroyed her body to bring into this world, the baby that had become this stupid, useless person. I felt incredibly ashamed. I felt like dying. What had my mother fought and suffered for? I didn't know. There was nothing about me that deserved her sacrifices. I wasn't doing anything with my life and I never would. I was stuck with my father because he was my father, and I loved him. My mother was stuck with him because of me, even though she clearly hated him.  
    All this time I had been feeling sorry for myself because I was being bullied and abused. I had felt sad for my mother because of her alcoholism, shitty job, and the constant fights my parents had, but I had never truly thought about their relationship. She couldn't even bare to be touched by him, but she was married to him. Because she had sacrificed for me. My father had wanted to end the mere possibility of me, and she had gone against him. She had given me life... why? Had she had some... some kind of hope about me? If she had, then I was a complete failure.   
    My father had wanted to end me. That knowledge made my hands shake. I shouldn't let me affect me that much, I knew that. I was well aware that my parents had gotten pregnant with me out of high school and the both of them had dropped out because of it. The only job my mother could get was as a waitress. My dad got his GED eventually and he had gotten a job as a cop thanks to a family friend, but I was sure that it wasn't what he had wanted as a teenager. I knew I made him angry a lot of times, but as a child, I had chosen to believe that deep down, my father still loved me. Taking me with him on car trips, taking me to the beach, the train yard, buying me new clothes... I had thought that those were signs that even through the blows, he loved me. I had been lying to myself.  
    I had destroyed their lives. Of course my father had wanted to abort me, he had never wanted me in the first place. I should find it miraculous that my mother _had_ wanted me, but it hurt. It hurt in ways I can't possibly describe in writing.   
    Learning that I wasn't straight, wasn't ever going to be normal or have some kind of normal life, had made me feel like the bottom had dropped out of my world. That hadn't held a candle to hearing those things from my mother. I felt worse than useless, worse than unloved. What I felt, there are no words in the human language for. I had always known, deep down, that I was an unwanted child, but to actually hear my mother say it... She had vouched for me once, she had wanted me once, at least enough to let me be born and not put me up for adoption, but now... now she wished that she hadn't. How could I possibly survive that?   
    'No one is ever going to love me.'  
    The thought hit me like a train, right in my chest. I actually gasped for breath, it shocked me so much. I stumbled to my feet, looking I'm sure very much like mother had. I felt bile in my mouth, but instead of rushing to the toilet to throw up, I nearly ran to the kitchen. I walked to the refrigerator like a drug addict would go to their drug of choice. My steps were born out pure, desperate need.   
    I flung open the freezer door and dug through the bags of ice and frozen vegetables until I found what I needed more than air. There, still sitting in the very back, was the piece of birthday cake Quatre had made for me three days ago.   
  
     _"Happy Birthday, Duo!"_  
  
    So real it might as well have been a hallucination instead of a memory, I saw my best friend's face. I saw his brilliant smile. That smile... a smile of friendship and love, a smile I had never seen from either of my parents and I knew, despite all of my childish dreams that I had tried to bury as I had gotten older, I would never see from them. Fresh, hot tears burst out of me and I started to sob in front of the freezer door. I had thought that I had been incapable of anymore tears, but I was wrong.   
  
  
End part 1  
  
Author's Note: Sorry for the delay. I'm preparing to go see my girlfriend in florida in a few days, so I've been busy with that.   
  
Thanks to those who took the time to review and thanks as always for reading <3


	7. Chapter 3 Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duo deals with the aftermath of what his mother told him. Duo confronts Quatre about his feelings for Trowa as Relena uses those same feelings to hurt Quatre, and confesses to him his own sexual issues.

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 3  
Part 2  
  
  
    Maybe if I had been a lot younger when my mother had said all that to me, or if I had been like one of those normal kids I went to school with, someone who lived under the assumption my parents loved me, had always loved me, and always would no matter what, I would have reacted differently than I did. Maybe I would have cried the rest of the night, barricaded myself in my room or ran away. But I didn't. My parents had hurt me before and said terrible things to me before, nothing as awful as what she had said to me then, but I had come to expect pain from them. I won't say I was used to it, because it hurt as badly as it ever had, but I was used to it happening.   
    So, instead of lashing out about being told I was an unwanted mistake and acting like a child about it, I chose the unhealthier option and acted like an adult, another thing I was used to by then. I cried for a little while in front of the freezer, thinking about Quatre and how at least there was one person in the world who saw me as something other than a burden that had been forced on them. Then I closed the freezer door and I buried all of my pain deep down inside where it could do the most damage.  
    I kept busy. It got close to the time when Dad would be coming home and Mom hadn't come back yet. I somehow knew she wouldn't be coming home that night. She does that from time to time even when she hasn't been fighting with anyone, just leaves the house and doesn't tell anyone where she's going. Sometimes it's only for a few hours, sometimes it's an entire day that she's gone. In that respect, my parents are alike. The only difference is that my dad disappears for longer, and more often.   
    I used to think that he just left on police business, and if he was gone for more than a day, he must be on a stakeout or something, but more often than not he comes home smelling of cigarettes and beer. My father doesn't smoke, but his cop buddies do and I can imagine them going to bars all night together. When I got old enough to understand such things, I began to wonder if my father is cheating on my mother. I'm not an idiot. I know my parents don't have sex, not for a lack of my father trying, and he frequently comes home late, smelling like perfume or just smelling different than he usually does.  
    My mother never asks him about it. She isn't stupid, either, and she smells it on him, too, but she never says anything about it and if it upsets her in anyway, she's never showed it. In turn, my father never seems all that concerned about where my mother disappears to every once in awhile. Sometimes to me, they seem like strangers that happen to share a house together. Although I had started to feel a lot like that, myself.  
    I decided to make dinner. If Mom didn't come back, it would be my responsibility and I would rather have it ready for when Dad came home. Having to order take out might send him from a neutral or good mood to an irritated one. If he was already in a bad mood, it wouldn't send him over the edge, but in the mood I was in, I didn't want to chance a bad run in with him. Besides, I had nothing better to do. I had homework, but not enough of it to keep me occupied the rest of the night, and I didn't want to start thinking and being alone in the house at that moment. I needed a distraction from my painful thoughts.  
    I opened the refrigerator door and saw in dismay just how little food we had. I was hoping to find some frozen dinners, pre-cooked meals, or even enough leftovers to make a stew with. Of course, there wasn't anything remotely like that in there and I didn't have the slightest clue what my mother had been planning to make. I considered just calling my father at work and asking him to pick up something on the way home, but I was sick of take out all the time and I didn't want to have to admit to him, or myself, that I couldn't find _something_ to make one meal with in the entire house.  
  
   _"You're so useless."_  
  
    I let my stubbornness get the best of me, a trait I had no doubt I had inherited from my father, and I started to pull things out of the refrigerator; lettuce, tomatoes, mushrooms, cheese, chopped onions, and carrots. There was barely anything to make a decent salad, but it would do. I rummaged through our cabinets and managed better; a package of bread crumbs, half a bottle of olive oil, powdered garlic, and an entire box of macaroni shells. How the pasta hadn't been eaten yet was a miracle. None of it was enough for a big meal, but there would be enough for two people. If my mother came home looking for food, she would have to figure something out for herself. Thinking that, for the first time since she had laid into me, I felt bitterness and anger at her instead of sadness and anger directed at myself.  
    Two months ago in Home Ec., we had learned how to make homemade mac and cheese and I still remembered enough to make do. I used the cheese we had and made a thick, rich cheese sauce to douse the noodles in after they had boiled. I had no idea what kind of cheese it was, there were a bunch of different ones wrapped up together, but when I melted it with some butter and mixed it with the one remaining egg we had and some flour, it smelled pretty good, so I guess it was the right kind of cheese. The garlic powder, rest of the butter I had melted, and the breadcrumbs would make due for a topping. Everything else I used for the salad, even cutting up the onion and two carrots. It wouldn't win any awards, but it was edible.  
    By the time my father stepped through the door, the mac and cheese was baking in the oven, and I had washed enough dishes that the kitchen looked clean, and I had even set the table. If Quatre had seen me at work, he would have laughed and said I was better at being an adult than most adults. That was probably true, but I had always sucked at being a kid and I never could back down from something I had started. Besides, I understood that while I might tell myself that I had made dinner to appease my father, I really hadn't done it for him. I had done it for myself, and I had to admit that a hot, home cooked meal, even if I had been the one bumbling through it, was the only bright spot on that whole beyond shitty day.  
    "Where's your mother?" my father asked me as he walked into the kitchen.  
    He had already taken off the suit jacket he was required to wear at work, it was slung over his arm, and he was working his tie loose, but his gun holster and badge were still on him. He hated that suit and it was always the first to come off when he got home, and the holster and badge would be the last, right before he changed his pants. I guess, if a normal, well adjusted person ever reads this, they would ask if I lived in fear of my father's gun, if I was terrified of him using it on me one day.  
    Truthfully, I have never thought about it that way. To me, my father's gun is a tool, an object he needs to do his job, no different than his badge. Yes, it's a weapon, but so are the knives in our kitchen. So are my father's hands. My father has never used his gun on me, not even in his worst furies, he hasn't even threatened me with it. He needs to keep it near him in case of emergencies, and keeps it in a drawer in his bedside table, but the drawer doesn't have a lock. My dad doesn't need a lock for his gun. I have attended enough anti-gun lectures at school, and just one lecture from my father about what would happen to me if I touched his gun.  
    When my father beats me, it's out of pure, uncontrollable rage. He doesn't think, or at least he doesn't seem to, he just strikes me or grabs something nearby to hit me with. I can't see him taking a moment to walk into his bedroom to grab a weapon he doesn't even need to harm me. Mostly, I choose to believe he would never shoot me. Even after hearing from my mother that my father had wanted to abort me, I choose to believe that. But in those dark moments, usually after a beating, when I see the real violence in him, I would think 'if he kills me, it'll be with his fist.'  
    As he took off his tie and tossed it onto the same chair he carelessly draped his jacket, I noticed how tired he looked. He often came home looking like that, tired and frustrated and angry. That night, he just looked tired, not in any sort of mood where I would need to be wary of him.  
    "I don't know," I answered honestly, "she left awhile ago."  
    There had been no real anger in his voice when he had asked me where she was, like there often was, just mild irritation and he simply snorted derisively at my answer, like he didn't care but was still annoyed at her disappearance. He noticed the salad I had put on the table in two bowls and the smell of the cheese, raising an eyebrow at both.   
    "You do all this?" he gestured to the food.  
    I shrugged. That was about our recent level of communication when he wasn't yelling at me or wanting me to do something. I couldn't even tell what his reaction was, if he found it surprising or if he couldn't have cared less, he just accepted it and went into his bedroom to change. He re-emerged when the timer on the oven went off. I put one half of the meal on one plate for each of us when it had cooled enough and we ate together in relative silence, but the silence wasn't bad. Neither of us are very sociable people to begin with and he was tired from work and I was depressed.   
    Sometimes, I wonder if I hadn't inherited that anti social trait, if my life would be better than it is now. Maybe not the stuff at home. I can't see how being more talkative and being better at being around people would help my father stop beating me or my mother stop hating me, but school was a different story. If I were more sociable, would Relena have still picked on me? Would the rest of my classmates treated me like the plague? If I had any kind of social skills like most kids seemed to have, maybe I could have just shrugged off Relena's bullying and tried to make more friends instead of letting it get to me the way it had. Maybe I would have more friends now and maybe Relena would have lost interest in me. I don't know, but I still feel cheated... lacking, simply because I don't know how to connect with people my own age. When I think about that, it seems like such an incredibly miracle I had Quatre for a friend at all.   
    My father made a noise of approval when he started to eat the baked mac and cheese, which was rare for him. Normally, I would have felt pride and happiness knowing I had done something right, but I didn't feel anything. The food tasted good and I hadn't screwed anything up, but I might as well have been chewing on sawdust for all that I noticed.   
    I spent the majority of the meal chewing and glancing over the table at the man that was my father. I had known him for all thirteen years of my life, but right then he was a stranger to me. He was this person that occupied the same spaces I did, at the same food I did, and spoke to me on occasion, but at that moment, I felt no real connection to him. That feeling would end up vanishing, little by little, but right then it was there, prominent but as alien as my father had suddenly become to me.  
    Who was he? This man had brought me into the world. He had, if only for a short period of time, loved my mother and made me, and he had wanted to unmake me, but beyond that, I knew almost nothing about him. Did he still wish that he had managed to convince my mother to abort me like she did or had he changed his mind? Did this man, eating with me at our kitchen table, hate me like my mother did, or was there something inside of him something tiny, that loved me if only because I was his? Did he feel love for me when he saw the things, like not being talkative and being stubborn, that were like him, the same way I felt love for him sometimes?   
    I didn't know the answers to any of those questions, but the most terrible thing for me was that I couldn't remember the last time my father had told me that he loved me. I was certain that he had when I had been little, but I couldn't remember when. That seemed tragic to me, that I couldn't remember something important like that, because I needed to remember. I wanted to remember how he had looked when he had said it. I wanted to remember how he had sounded. Because I needed to believe that it was true.   
  
*****  
  
    My mother reappeared at some point two days later. When I came home the next day, she had still been gone, longer than she had been before, although my father hadn't been overly concerned. I had begun to think something might have happened to her. She couldn't have had enough money on her to rent a room someplace, and she didn't have any friends that I knew of that she could stay with, so where could she be? It made me realize just what little I really know about my parents and their lives separate from me. But she showed up the next evening, before I could start to wonder if we should be looking for her and why she had decided to run away, if she was hurt or in trouble or if she had just decided to never come home again, but not before I had begun to believe she had run away not from home, but from me.  
    My mom didn't say a word about where she had gone or why. She didn't say anything about our fight, either, and I wasn't sure that I wanted her to. She just walked in right after Dad and I had finished dinner, poured herself some vodka, and disappeared into their bedroom without so much as looking at me. Three days after my mother had lashed out at me, I still hadn't told Quatre a word of it. I had thought that I would have. It seemed like too terrible of a thing to lock up inside of me, but that was exactly what I did. It was just like with finding out I wasn't straight. I was too embarrassed to admit those kinds of things to him. My only friend, the only person in the world who I knew actually cared for me, had problems of his own, I wasn't going to give him mine as well I told myself over and over.  
    I was thinking exactly that when Quatre and I were eating lunch together in the school cafeteria on that third day. While he was sneaking quick looks over at Trowa's table near ours, looking like he wanted to go over there and say something to him but too nervous to, I was thinking about my mother. We were both too consumed in our own problems to notice when Relena strode over to our table, not that it would have made a difference if we had. She snuck up behind Quatre and snatched his lunch bag while he was distracted, grabbing both of our attentions. She picked through his lunch almost gingerly, pulling out an apple, some pretzel sticks, a salad in a Tupperware bowl, and his usual thermos. She unscrewed the lid and took a sniff of what was inside, her face screwing up in fake disgust.   
    "Even your lunch is boring and bland, Winner," she sneered, "I almost feel bad for Maxwell. He might be worthless scum, but it must be terrible having such a flat, uninteresting friend like you. He and Trowa must be half asleep whenever they talk to you. Maybe that's why they're friendly towards you, for a sleep aid!"  
    I don't know who flushed darker, Quatre in humiliation or me in rage. I wanted to stand up for him, I wanted to so badly it burned in me, but I couldn't, not without consequences, and Relena knew I couldn't. I hated these games of hers. I hated that I couldn't even _try_ to protect my friend. She made a small, pleased noise when she took out the last item in Quatre's lunch bag: a cupcake.  
    "What on earth are you doing with _this_?!" she demanded, sounding angry and affronted by Quatre's choice of dessert, but that gleeful, sadistic glint was in her eyes.  
    She carefully unwrapped the cupcake and ate it in dainty bites as Quatre watched, as unable to do anything about it as me. She then picked up his thermos again with disdain.  
    "Anyone who drinks this disgusting swill doesn't deserve a dessert as sweet and delicious as that," she poured the tea all over Quatre's food, destroying anything that hadn't been wrapped up or in a container. It splashed all over the table and was probably spilling over the edge and onto Quatre's pants, but he didn't move, he knew that would just piss her off, "What sort of loser kid drinks _tea_ anyway? Did your grandmother make it for you?" she teased like it was the funniest thing ever, "Since we're friends, I bought you something _much_ better."  
    She showed Quatre what her other hand had been hiding behind her back this entire time: a bottle of whole percent chocolate milk.  
    "Relena, don't," I finally protested, my worries about retaliation long forgotten. This was crossing the line, even for her.  
    I might as well have said nothing at all. She unscrewed the lid and shoved the lip into his mouth.  
    "Drink it, drink _all_ of it," she demanded in an almost shriek. She made me think of a banshee or harpy, her pretty face turning ugly and monstrous.  
    I stood up from the table, watching in horror, my fists clenched and full of helplessness as my friend gulped down the drink. His face was pale and his eyes wide with fear as he did it, but there wasn't anything either of us could do.  
    Quatre was lactose intolerant. He wasn't so bad that he couldn't eat things you used milk to make like pastries or pancakes, but drinking milk made him terribly ill and cheese gave him stomachaches. All the milk he did use, like in his tea, was soy. I had known all that about just a week after I had made friends with him. Relena had known him longer than I had, and she had to know that. Why else would she make him drink milk? I saw red at that painful and terrible fact. She wanted to make him violently ill. But as angry as I was, I didn't try to stop her because I was afraid and I couldn't stand that. I was a weak coward who couldn't even protect the one thing I had, even when he was being hurt like this.  
    Relena made him drink the entire bottle and when he was done, he looked pale and green, already incredibly queasy. The mind is more powerful than the stomach, so even though Quatre's digestive system hadn't realized it was allergic to the drink, Quatre was well aware. He clutched at his stomach and I wondered if the milk was really giving him cramps so quickly. I moved to help him; I hadn't been able to stop Relena, but I could try to help my friend to a bathroom away from the cafeteria where everyone was starting at us, but Relena glared at me. She wasn't going to allow me to diminish Quatre's embarrassment, and I was sure that Zechs was around here somewhere.  
    All I could do was glare back at her, but it didn't matter anyway. Seconds later, Quatre pressed his hand to his mouth and then just as quickly drew it away as he vomited onto the tiled floor. From where I was, I could hear Quatre's strained sounds more than I could see it as he bent double, almost sticking his head between his legs. I never would have gotten him to a bathroom in time. The sudden smell of regurgitated milk and what little lunch he had eaten was incredibly strong and turned my own stomach.   
    Relena took one whiff of it and took a step back, her nose wrinkling in repulsion.  
    "Ugh! You're so disgusting, Quatre! I hope you're going to apologize to the poor janitor for that smell!" she pinched her nose shut.  
    I felt torn in half. A part of me, the stupid, stubborn part that could never figure out when it was beaten, wanted to bash Relena across the face with my lunch tray. The other part just wanted to help my friend, but I had no idea how. When he finally seemed to stop and lift his head, Quatre looked horribly pale, shaking and sick. I handed him one of my napkins, the only thing I could think to do, and gratefully cleaned off his face. He ignored Relena entirely and instead glanced around the cafeteria, looking for someone. I thought that he was looking Zechs with that scared look in his eyes, but then those blue-greens fell on Trowa and the fear turned to absolute horror.  
    Just like that, Quatre bolted from the cafeteria. I saw most of my classmates start to laugh, and I was sure Relena was laughing that ugly, satisfied laugh of hers, but I didn't even spare her a parting glance as I chased my best friend all the way into one of the boys' restrooms. He was already hunched over one of the toilets, puking again, although it didn't seem like much was coming up this time. I kneeled down on the floor with him and rubbed his back as he got it out of his system. His retching slowly turned into crying, at one point indistinguishable from each other, but I just kept rubbing his back, hoping it was helping in some way.  
    "Are you ok?" I asked stupidly, hoping it sounded more soothing than the ignorant question it sounded to me as Quatre's tears finally stopped.   
    "Really, I'm more embarrassed than anything," he confessed shyly, "My throat and stomach hurt and I still feel kind of sick, but it's not so bad."  
    He paused then, deep in thought, and he seemed to go paler, whatever he was thinking of disturbing him.   
    "I can get you a ginger ale," I suggested, "it might make you feel better."  
    He looked up at me with large, blue-green eyes and trembled a little. They were the frightened eyes of a child who didn't want to be separated from a parent in a strange place.   
    "N-no," he stammered, "I'll be fine. I just shouldn't eat anything too rich for the rest of the day."  
    That was what he said, but I heard what he didn't dare to say out loud. 'Don't leave me.' He didn't want me to leave him alone in the bathroom. I suppose that sounds strange and childish for a thirteen year old boy, but I understood it perfectly and I just nodded. I would stay with him all day if that was what he needed to feel better and in a way, I felt flattered that I was this source of strength for him. I could never understand why I was, what it was about me that he seemed to need, but I didn't need to understand it to give that to him.  
    "Trowa saw me..." he murmured and I wasn't sure it that was supposed to be a question or not, his tone was too strange for me to decipher.  
    'Why does it matter?' I wanted to ask, but I couldn't. It obviously did matter to Quatre a lot, even if I couldn't understand it, and I didn't want to hurt him anymore than he was. How Trowa saw him was obviously important to him.  
    Like someone had thrown a light switch, Quatre's lost and embarrassed expression turned to one of anger and absolute hate. It startled me so much I almost flinched from him. I had never seen such a look on his face before. I had not thought him capable of hating anyone or anything enough to look like that. If it had been anyone else, or me, it would have been normal, but on someone as sweet and shy as Quatre, it was frightening.  
    "I hate her," he hissed, "She did that so Trowa would see me do something so disgusting," he started to cry again, but his tears were silent and angry as they tracked down his face, "I hate her so much."  
    My friend seemed unable to really process his anger, like he didn't know what to do with it, his hands shaking. I continued to rub on his back, reminding my own scared child in my head that Quatre was not my father, he wasn't going to hit me just because he was mad, there was no reason to be wary of him. I don't know how long we stayed in the restroom, but finally Quatre settled down enough to stop crying and stand up. I had grabbed his book bag before I had chased after him and he collected it from where I had dropped it in the corner of the bathroom.   
    We didn't talk about his rage or his shame, but I kept close to him as we left our little sanctuary. We walked maybe twenty feet before nearly walking right into Trowa. I will admit that I felt a strong bitterness as I saw him. He was the reason for my friend's pain. What had happened had been terrible enough, but Quatre felt the worst of it because of Trowa being there. Hell, according to Quatre, it was because of Trowa that Relena had done it at all. I know it isn't fair, but for a moment, I hated him for his mere presence. I knew it wasn't really his fault, that in a way he was a victim, too, that Relena was trying to keep Trowa and Quatre from being friends, but I still felt an anger at him.  
    "Quatre," Trowa said, obviously startled at seeing him.  
    My friend instantly looked at the ground, unable to meet his eyes. His pale complexion turned even whiter and he seemed mortified. He murmured Trowa's name, but that seemed like the only thing he was capable of at that moment.  
    "Are... are you ok?" the taller boy asked shyly, looking away from Quatre as well.  
    Quatre nodded, still incapable of looking Trowa in the eye.  
    "I'm fine," he muttered and then finally, shyly, looked up at him, "I'm so sorry... you had to see that... it must have been really disgusting."  
    "No!" Trowa burst out, "No, it wasn't disgusting. You just got sick, it's natural. I'm sorry that happened to you. I... I didn't know you were lactose intolerant... But I'm glad you're feeling better now."  
    As he looked up at him, Quatre blushed darkly at Trowa's words. I watched the two of them with that bewildered feeling again. I felt my anger at Trowa vanish just watching them together. It was obvious, at least to me, that the older boy liked my friend even if they never really seemed to hang out together. I wanted to feel bitter and point out to Trowa that if he wanted to be friends with Quatre so badly, why didn't he make Relena stop, but that would just make me a hypocrite. As the two of them talked, words that went right over my head, Trowa started to blush, too. I almost shook my head in exasperation. Quatre never blushed. Before he had started talking to Trowa like this, I had never seen him blush before. So why... what was it about Trowa that made him...  
    And suddenly it hit me. It hit me with all of the force of getting struck in the face with a metal beam. Quatre liked Trowa. That realization echoed in my head over and over again. My friend had a crush on this other boy. Just like that, I felt like a childish idiot. Maybe I had been unable to see it until I had my own sexual identity crisis, or maybe for all maturity, I really am just a child about things, but it had been staring me in the face all that time. The stuttering, the blushing, the awkward conversations, that little smile Quatre would get when he talked about Trowa or when he finally got over enough of his shyness to talk to the other teenager normally... they were the ways a boy would shyly talk to a girl he liked if he lacked confidence.   
    At the same time I felt like a blind moron for not realizing it before, I also felt this incredulity. My best friend was gay? It seemed impossible to me. Here I had been, worrying about my own sexuality, and it had never occurred to me that Quatre might be having similar issues. It had never occurred to me because it had seemed about as unlikely as snow in July. What were the fucking odds that I would make friends with a boy who might have the same sexuality issues as me? That just couldn't happen in real life... could it?   
    Back then, I had found that possibility that the _both_ of us were gay to be ridiculous. Since then, I did some research on it. I couldn't look up homosexuality on the school computers, but in my attempts to I did come across an article. It really didn't have anything to do with homosexuality or help me to understand what was going on with me, but it did talk about how we can subconsciously make friends with people that have similarities with us, things that aren't obvious, but there's some kind of chemical connection happening. I don't know if I believe that, that Quatre and I became friends because of some chemical attraction, because we're both gay. I don't know what I think, if it's just some coincidence, or even as a child, I knew we were both different beyond just being social outcasts.   
    I would like to say that my epiphany gave me some kind of comfort, that figuring out that my friend had a crush on another boy was a solace towards my own problems, but it didn't. I felt just as lost as I had before. I still didn't know if I was gay or just... disinterested. I didn't know how Quatre would take it if I was the latter. I didn't even know if Quatre was aware of his feelings for Trowa or how he would react if I tried to ask him about it. The only thing my realization gave me was a sliver of hope that, if I tried to talk to him about my own issues, he might, _might_ be more ok with it. As I watched the two of them together, both blushing and awkward, I made a choice. I decided to accept the idea that Quatre knew about his feelings, why else would he be so bothered knowing Trowa had seemed him throw up?   
    And I decided to confront him about it.  
  
*****  
  
    Looking back at everything I've written, I guess that choice to talk to Quatre about his crush comes across as a pretty stupid idea. I stood a whole lot to lose if it went wrong, and little to gain if it went right. That was exactly what was on my mind when I finally said something to him about it after school the next day as I was walking him home. A smarter person would have just kept their trap shut about it and pretend like they hadn't realized anything. But as usual, I'm not smart, but I _am_ stubborn. And my obsession with my sexuality had gotten worse since I had discovered I couldn't get aroused by girls.   
    It wasn't like I thought that if I could just figure out what I was, I could fix everything else that was shitty about my life. I just couldn't stop thinking about it and it was driving me half crazy. It was like there was this big chalkboard in my head listing all the things I could be. Straight was crossed out and next to 'gay' and 'asexual' there was this huge question mark and I was frantic to erase that. And it wasn't like I thought that Quatre could help me do that, but I wanted so badly to talk to _someone_ about it. I just wasn't so sure that someone should be Quatre.  
    It was more than just trying to figure out my own problems. I didn't want to have this big secret between us. It was one thing not telling my best friend about my problems at home, and his problems at home as well. The way I saw it, this thing with Trowa shouldn't be a blind spot between us. Quatre thought he was hiding it from me, and he was wrong. I just wanted him to know that, and I wanted to find out exactly what those feelings were before I accidentally did something stupid about it.   
    I looked over at him as we walked. We had crossed paths with Trowa before we had left the school and they had chatted about some movie that was supposedly coming out that weekend that the both of them were fairly excited about. Quatre was still wearing this soft, tiny smile on his face that was kind of cute. I had felt oddly jealous as I had watched that smile as the two of them had talked. Jealousy and fear. Would I never feel the way that Quatre felt when he was with Trowa?   
    If only for that brief second, I wished with all my heart that I was gay. Better to like boys than to not like anyone, to never know what that kind of love feels like. It was a fleeting thought, but my feelings weren't so fleeting. I asked myself again what was wrong with me. I didn't know. I didn't know why I couldn't be attracted to other people, boy or girl, and I didn't know why this was such an obsession for me.   
    "So..." I paused, feeling a wave of fear and anxiety and wondering just what the hell I was doing, "Trowa seems nice," I said and immediately almost winced at how awkward that sounded.  
    Quatre, thankfully, didn't find anything odd about what I had said.  
    "He really is," he said enthusiastically, "He doesn't treat me like most upperclassmen do. He doesn't care that I'm younger or even about Relena and Zechs. He's quiet, but he actually has a really good sense of humor, too."  
    Quatre sounded so excited just talking about Trowa, I had to smile.  
    "You really like him," I summed up cautiously.  
    This time Quatre was the one to pause. He looked at me as though he were trying to assess something, probably trying to figure out how innocent that statement was. Again, I felt awkward. I didn't just want to blurt out 'I know you have a crush on him' but I didn't know how to ease into that, either.  
    "Y... yes," he said with some uncertainty, "I do like him. He could be a good friend."  
    I didn't buy that for a second, not with that cautious look he had and the slight blush on his fair face.   
    "Have you..." I squirmed, trying to find the right words to say even as this sounded incredibly dumb to me, "have you told him that you like him?"  
    He stopped walking entirely and looked at me with horror as it dawned on him that I wasn't talking about him wanting to be friends with Trowa.  
    "Duo," his voice shook as he spoke and he actually sounded slightly angry as well as flustered, "I'm not... I don't like Trowa like that! How can you think that?!"  
    I would have instantly backpedaled, making Quatre mad at me being the last thing I would ever want, but I heard the fear in his voice more than the anger.  
    "It's ok," I insisted, "It doesn't bother me or anything-"  
    "No," Quatre said forcefully, his hands curling into fists, "He's a friend, that's all, understand?!"  
    "Quatre, it's not a big deal," I protested, starting to feel alarmed at how scared he was. Had I made a mistake?  
    "I am not gay, Duo!" he actually snapped at me, his eyes filling with tears, "Don't you ever accuse me of... of _that_!"  
    "I've seen you with him," I pointed out, trying to talk him down from that frightening mix of terror and rage, something I had never ever seen in him before and never wanted to see again, and feeling so guilty, I wanted to just forget about this whole conversation, "You get so happy when you talk to him, and you're so awkward together. You're not like that with anyone else. Every time he compliments you, you blush, and when Relena tries to embarrass you in front of him, you get so upset, more upset than I've ever seen her make you. Do you really expect me to believe you're just friends with him?"  
    He went as white as a sheet, like all the blood had just been drained from him. Again, I felt a horrible guilt, realizing the fear and pain I was putting my friend through. I wondered if I was doing the right thing or if I was making a huge mistake. What if I had misread things and Quatre really wasn't gay? Or worse, what if I was right and he felt like I had betrayed him? What if this destroyed our friendship? I should just drop this, I thought, I should just laugh it off and never bring it up again, but I couldn't. I had opened my stupid mouth and I couldn't shut it.   
    "You're wrong!" he nearly screamed at me, "You're dead wrong, Duo! Don't you ever say things like that! There's no way I could like a boy like that!"  
    He was shaking and looked sick again. He was more frightened by what I had said than he was actually angry at me, but he was trying to pretend it was all anger. Was it really so terrible, what I was suggesting? To be gay... just accusing my best friend of that had made him act totally out of character like this. I looked down at the ground, feeling awkward and just about the worst friend there was.  
    "I guess I could be wrong," I admitted and when I saw him relax I felt a twisted storm of guilt and a fear as intense as his, but all I could be was honest, "but if I'm not... and I think I'm not... it really doesn't bother me. I'm not Zechs, Quatre, I'm not that ugly. Honestly, when I realized why you act differently around Trowa than you do around me, I felt kind of relieved," I rubbed nervously at the back of my head as Quatre stared at me in shock, "I know, I know, I'm an asshole for being relieved about something like this when it's hard and painful for you... but..." I swallowed roughly, "I... I don't know what I am. I don't know if I like boys or if I like nothing at all, but I know that I don't like girls. There's something... not normal about me, Zechs was right about that much, and I don't know what to do about it. I was too terrified to say anything to you about it until now," I laughed nervously, "I'm still kind of terrified, even if you have the same problem."  
    I watched my friend with the same intensity he had been watching me with while I had been accusing him of liking Trowa, and while Quatre had regained some color back as I had confessed to him, I could feel myself becoming pale and shaky. I watched for any indication he might be disgusted about what I had just said, or judging me in some way, but he only looked shocked and pained.   
    "Duo, that's..." he looked as uncomfortable about this conversation as I felt and that gave me some hope that this wouldn't end too badly, that I hadn't made a colossal mistake, "You can't make that kind of assumption about yourself just because you didn't like kissing Relena," he said, that pained tone still there along with some familiarity. Had he gone through something similar?  
    "That's not the reason," I protested, "Well, it's part of it, but-"  
    "Hold on," he stopped me, looking around the street, "We shouldn't talk about this here."  
    I nodded. There was no one on the street that we were on, but it was a very public road and this wasn't the sort of thing I wanted anyone but us hearing. It made me feel better just knowing that Quatre was willing to have this conversation with me and hadn't walked away at that point.   
    "C'mon," he took my hand and tugged me along.  
    Despite everything, that one little action made me stupidly happy. I had made him so upset earlier, but he was acting like it had never happened. He was more concerned about having this talk with me than the accusations I had made. Best of all, he didn't hate me yet. I let him lead me through the bushes on the side of the road and into a small wooded area that was pretty secluded. I could still see the street from where we were, but unless we started shouting, no one would hear us.   
    "You said this isn't about Relena," Quatre said as I leaned against a tree, "but you said yourself that you didn't like her kissing you. After everything she's done to you, even if you liked girls, I doubt you'd enjoy that. So what is this about?"  
    I felt my insides squirming again. It was one thing to decide to talk to Quatre about my problems, it was a whole other issue finding the courage to do so after all of my fears and anxieties.   
    "I don't want you to hate me," I murmured, "That's why I haven't told you. I was afraid you would be disgusted, or think I was a freak and not want to be friends anymore."  
    Quatre's entire face softened, losing his guarded expression. That pained look he had had grew and for one panicked moment, I thought he was going to hug me. I don't think I would have been able to handle that. As things were, I felt like I was on the very edge between having some tentative control over my emotions and breaking down into a crying fit. For what seemed like the thousandth time, I felt doubt and wished I had never brought this up. I didn't want to talk about it. I didn't want to feel this fear and self-disgust anymore, but it wasn't going to go away by just not talking about it, either.  
    "Duo," he said slowly, not like he was talking to a child, but weighing his words carefully, "How would you feel if I told you I was gay?"  
    I chewed on my lip as I considered what he was saying. My immediate reaction was to shout that I didn't care about stuff like that, but I saw how serious my friend was, and I knew this wasn't something I could brush off. How did I feel about Quatre possibly being gay, beyond wanting him to help with my own problems or even him might having a crush on Trowa? After finding out about that, I hadn't given it a whole lot of serious thought. But then again, I had never really given much thought to Quatre's sexuality at all, just my own.   
    I had never pictured him one day going out with some girl. Had that been because I hadn't wanted to think about something... someone taking my friend away from me, or was I even more childish than that?  
    I didn't know anything about Quatre's parents beyond the fact that they were more concerned with their careers than their children. I didn't know if they were like my father and looked down at homosexuals with disgust and that was a reason for Quatre's fears, or if he was just scared about anyone finding out about his feelings for Trowa. I didn't blame him for that fear, I had felt similar terror towards my own sexuality. I might be ignorant about things, but I understood enough about the world to know being gay was far from a glamorous thing, especially in a small, conservative town like ours.   
    But how did _I_ feel about Quatre's sexuality? Looking at him and thinking about him loving another boy, I didn't feel any sort of disgust towards him. I wasn't religious, but even if I was, I don't think I could have looked down at him. Maybe it was because I was going through the same problems, but I think it was because, when I looked at him, I didn't see a fag like I'm sure our classmates would, I just saw my best friend. I think that's truly what being gay is. It isn't the only thing that defines a person, although people treat it that way. And it isn't something disgusting.  
    Being gay was just a part of Quatre, a piece of who he was, and I couldn't think of taking that piece out of him any more than any other piece, like his love of math or his kindness. Most of all, I just didn't see how him being gay made him bad or any different, like someone who liked spicy foods when others didn't. Quatre was my best friend, and if he wanted to love someone of the same gender, how did that change things? I thought of my doubts about my parents' love for me and wondered how love could be bad. Wasn't it the thing everyone wanted, to be loved? In comparison to all the bad things, like my father's abuse and Quatre's parents' neglect, how was love, even if it was different, be bad?  
    These were adult thoughts for someone my age, I guess, but it was exactly how I felt, and even just realizing them helped me a lot in how I felt about my own sexual identity crisis. In the grand scheme of things, did it really matter that I didn't like girls? Liking them wouldn't change much, as far as I saw it. I was poor, strange, bullied, and had very little redeeming qualities, let alone interesting ones. I don't know what Relena had seen in me to want to kiss me, but I wasn't handsome like Zechs and Trowa were and I wasn't athletic. What sort of person, female or otherwise, would _want_ to date me? Relena was twisted, so her liking me didn't really help.  
    Being straight wasn't going to stop Relena and Zechs from bullying me. They were still going to pick on me and call me fag even if I had a girlfriend. It wouldn't make me any wealthier or any less of a social outcast. And if I was either gay or asexual, how would it make my life any worse? My parents already hated me. If Relena and Zechs found out about it, their abuse would get worse, but it was already bad to begin withy. My life wasn't going to change a whole lot as long as no one found out about it. How hard could it be to keep it a secret? If I was gay, I hadn't found anyone I liked so far and no one had truly figured it out yet.   
    None of these thoughts gave me any relief or happiness. I didn't want to live my life alone, hiding away a part of me like it was a filthy secret, but I didn't know what I wanted. To date a boy, fall in love, live together like a married couple would, only to be harassed and hated for it didn't appeal to me anymore than never finding out how love feels did. I might not look down at Quatre for his sexuality, but I didn't expect anyone but him to do the same for me.  I still felt scared and confused about all of this, but I also felt like, in realizing my acceptance of Quatre's sexual identity, I might be able to accept mine, too, even if it was far off in the future.  
    "I already said it doesn't bother me," I said with a shrug, "and that's the truth. You're my best friend, and you're the same person you've always been to me. It's not like you've changed, I was just too dumb to realize something about you. Even if I did like girls, I would never look down on you for liking boys."  
    He looked down at his feet, thinking about something for a long time before he looked up at me again.  
    "I do like Trowa," he admitted softly, as though he couldn't possibly say such a thing any louder than that, "I like him a lot. When I first met him, I was just a lame underclassmen and he was just this eighth grader that was popular and good at basketball, and really, really handsome. I've... worried about how I feel around other boys for awhile now. It wasn't just that I didn't like girls, I liked boys before I didn't like girls, but Trowa was the first person to make me really realize it wasn't a fluke. I've never been attracted to anyone like I am with him," he smiled and it was such a brilliant, lovely smile, it almost took my breath out of my lungs, the sort of smile you see on people when they talk about their girlfriends and boyfriends, a type of smile that, as cliche as it sounds, really does light up the room.  
    "Then we started talking to each other. I don't know how it happened and I don't remember who talked to who first, but I didn't just think he was cute and handsome, he was _nice_. He knew that Zechs was bullying me, but he still talked to me and he's never been mean to me. He's smart and funny when he opens up. Being around him makes me happy, Duo, so... stupidly happy. It's like how I feel when I hang out with you, but different. I want things I've never wanted before and he makes me feel better about all the crap in my life. But it's like you say, when Relena and Zechs embarrass me in front of him, it's hurts more than anything else they've ever done to me."  
    I didn't know how to comfort him as he confessed that, looking devastated and sad, no doubt remembering vomiting in front of Trowa, and that pained me. I felt envious of everything Quatre was saying to me. I wanted to know what it felt like, to have one, single person that could make you feel like that. But it was like everything else in my life, everything I saw that everyone else had and I never would. At the same time, I certainly didn't envy Quatre's pain. If this was what being gay truly was, maybe it would be better to be asexual, maybe better to never fall in love at all.   
    I didn't ask him if he had told Trowa about how he felt, or asked him out or any of that because they were all stupid questions. Of course he hadn't. Trowa was nice and he wasn't an asshole like Zechs, but that didn't mean that he would understand, or that he would accept Quatre, let alone if he felt the same. I wanted to believe that he did, that Trowa's shyness was the same as Quatre's, but I was biased. I felt like I should give him some sort of advice, to help him deal with his problem, but I felt incredibly ill equipped to tell him anything. Maybe if I had, I could have helped him, but even now I don't have a clue what was the right thing to say to him. In the end, he helped me a whole hell of a lot more than I could help him.  
    "I don't want this for you," he murmured suddenly, his blue green eyes were stormy as he looked at me, his pale face pinched with the same pain I had felt listening to him talk about Trowa, "I'd never want you to... to be like this, even if it made me feel better to have someone I can talk to about how I feel."  
    "It's lonely," I said, remembering how I had felt after my mother had told me I was unwanted, how I had wanted to talk to someone about it and about my confusion concerning my sexuality, but too afraid to say anything even to Quatre and how isolated and alone I had felt.   
    I hit the nail right on the head with those two small words. He stared at me in absolute shock, like he couldn't believe that I was real before his expression melted away into this incredibly powerful emotion. I realized that he felt the same exact thing I had felt, that isolation and absolute loneliness, all those fears and believing that no one would understand. In that moment, I felt a deep connection to him, more intense than I had ever felt with him before and looking at his face, I knew he felt it, too.   
    "It isn't just because of Relena?" he asked again, his voice weak and unsteady.  
    I shook my head.  
    "It was partly because of that," I confessed, "but even before that, I thought it was kind of weird that I don't like any of the girls in our school. I had thought that, at my age, even if I didn't want to date any of them, I should feel _some_ attraction. When Relena kissed me, I didn't feel anything at all. It just repulsed me. I thought... I had _hoped_ it was because I hate her, but I wasn't sure that was the real reason. But..." I squirmed, not wanting to tell him what had happened when I had taken those magazine spreads home, "when I looked at those naked pictures Zechs put in my locker... I didn't feel anything at all."  
    "That doesn't mean that you're gay," Quatre pointed out, but he sounded like he only half believed that.  
    "Maybe," I could admit that much at least.  
    I had been incredibly stressed when I had tried to masturbate to those pictures. I had tried so hard to find something arousing in them, even though it was my first time actually looking at a naked woman, but in reality I had been probably more focused on my fears of failure than actually enjoying what I was looking at. But how could I possibly relate to my best friend those fears, the desperation that I had looked at those pictures, and this feeling, so deeply rooted inside of me, that it had nothing to do with my fear or my age or anything else? That somewhere inside of me, the realization that I didn't like girls seemed right, as messed up as that was?   
    "I don't know if I'm gay," I murmured, "but I know I'm not straight. It just... doesn't feel right to me."  
    He nodded and that one, singular motion of his head almost drove me to tears. How was it possible that someone like me could end up so lucky to be friends with someone who could understand me like this, that wasn't judging me, but could actually sympathize with me?   
    "I didn't know what I was going to do," I heard myself say, like I was having some kind of out of body experience or someone had given me a truth serum, "I don't even know if I'm gay or if I'm never going to like anyone, regardless of gender, I still don't know what I'm going to do about it, or if Zechs and Relena or my father find out about it-"  
    "Duo," Quatre interrupted me with a soft smile, that same smile he always used to comfort me when I was upset and it wasn't until I saw it and realized my hands had started shaking that I understood how upset I was. He took a step towards me and grasped my hand in his, stopping it from trembling, "Believe me, I know how difficult it is, but I promise you, it'll turn out ok."  
    And just like that, for the first time since I had opened my locker to Zechs's latest prank, I thought it just might be. When Quatre told me, with a tone that said, regardless of his words, that he had been and was in the same dark place that I was in, that it was going to be ok, I believed him. I shouldn't have. I had always trusted him. After all the beatings my father had given me, after all of the harsh, terrible things my mother had said to me, after all of Relena and Zechs's bullying, and after all of the willfully oblivious people in my life, I still trusted so blindly.   
    I trusted him to tell me the truth after four years of friendship. So as mature as I saw myself, I never realized that he had been lying to me.  
  
*****  
  
    I guess what I just wrote sounds pretty terrible. It probably sounds like Quatre was totally bullshitting me, deceiving me. It wasn't like that, at least I refuse to believe he had said those things to hurt me in some way. Knowing him, the way Quatre had probably seen it was that I was suffering, in the same way he had no doubt suffered when he had first figured out he wasn't... quite normal, and no one had comforted him. Things weren't going to be alright because they had never become alright for him, but if he could make me believe that they would be, what was the harm?  
    It wasn't all Quatre's fault, either. I let him lie to me. I knew fully well that Quatre's acceptance of his homosexuality hadn't gotten better. When I had confronted him about it, he had been terrified, and when he talked about his crush on Trowa, he sounded so pained and sad. What, exactly, had gotten better for him? But I let him lie to me and I let myself believe the lie because it made me feel better, that idea that, eventually, all the shit that I was worrying about would amount to no big deal, even if the realist in me knew better.  
    If it weren't for those words and Quatre's support, I don't know what I would have done about the things I had learned about myself, but I do know he helped me more than anyone else ever could. Over the next two days, we met in secluded places, but never the same place, Quatre bringing food from home, and we just sat and talked. He listened to me talk about how scared I was, how desperate to be normal and how much I wanted to find someone like Trowa, to know what it was like to have a crush on someone, that I wanted to figure out who and what I really was and how frustrating not having any answers was. I didn't tell him about my mother had said and that I felt almost frantic to prove to myself that the reason why I wasn't attracted to anyone wasn't because love was something I would never experience in my life.   
    Quatre listened and then told me about his own experiences, which I will admit were more vast than my own. He told me about his suspicions of being... _different_ for the last year and a half. Like me, he had worried that he didn't seem to connect with girls or feel any attraction to them, but unlike me, he had started to realize that all the things normal boys went through at our age, starting to notice girls not as cootie factories but as something interesting and attractive, he was going through with boys. He was noticing boys, looking at hem with interest.   
    While our male classmates were becoming transfixed and obsessed with soft hands and breasts, my best friend had started to think about bigger, rougher hands and wide shoulders. It wasn't anything overtly sexual. Given a few more years and I'm sure it would have become that, but it was just a _notice_ , a fascination for him at that age. A fascination that drove home to me how strange I was, that I couldn't find one thing about just one other person that made me feel that way.  
    When it had dawned on him what these interests meant, he had become terrified, Quatre told me. As it turned out, his father was rather traditional and old-fashioned, and would no doubt greet Quatre's new found sexuality with the same intense level of disgust and disdain as my father would rage and repulsion. I don't know if that's necessarily true, but that was the picture Quatre painted for me in both the quavering tone his voice adopted as he spoke of the possibility of his parents finding out, and the almost obsessed fervor he spoke with when talking about hiding all this from them.     I understood what lay between the lines of that confession perfectly. His parents already barely spoke to him, he would never give them a reason to stop loving him entirely. In that moment, even before my best friend had abandoned me, I felt how cruel the world really was. Quatre and I were freaks. Normal kids are told that their parents will love them no matter what, that they just need to be themselves and they'll be accepted. None of that was true. Maybe most parents do love their kids, but not all of them do, like my parents. And maybe some parents love their kids no matter what, but a lot of them only love them if they fit into their idea of what their kid should be, like Quatre's.   
    The cruelty of it was that Quatre hadn't done anything wrong. In all aspects, he was the sort of kid that fathers like his, fathers that wanted the 'perfect child', prayed for and craved. Quatre was bright, interested in his education, well behaved and well mannered, and if his father paid more than two minutes attention to him, he would realize just how lucky he was to have him instead of a son like Zechs Dorlian. In all aspects, Quatre was everything his father had wanted, except for his sexuality, something he could never change.   
    It seemed like such a small thing to me, that that was the one thing that would take his parents' love from him. If it ever turned out that Trowa liked him, too, or he found some other boy that he liked and liked him back, he would have to make a choice between a boyfriend and his parents. I had no idea what he would choose if that happened. It was terrible, but I actually hoped Trowa didn't like Quatre and he wouldn't find anyone to date until he was much older and ready to deal with that choice. The way things were going for me, I would never need to make that choice, but if it _were_ me in his shoes... I wanted to think I would choose the person I loved over my parents. Any kind of love had to be better than the kind Quatre's had for him, and it was certainly better than how my parents treated me, but even as I thought that, I felt doubt. Even after learning that my parents wished I had never been born, I still felt love for them and I still wanted them to love me. I wasn't even sure, if I did at some point in my life want to date someone, if I could throw away that possibility so surely. And that just made me feel pathetic.  
      
End Part 2  
  
Author's Note: Before anyone bitches at me about this, I am well aware that asexuality does not mean not being in any romantic relationships, it simply means not having any desire or put any importance towards sex. Bare in mind that this entire story is from Duo's point of view and he has a lot of misconceptions about things.   
      
  
  
      
  
      
      
      
      
      
      
  



	8. Chapter 3 Part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duo tries to convince Quatre to tell Trowa that he loves him. Quatre invites Duo out to dinner with himself and Trowa, but Duo must deal with his drunk father first.

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 3  
Part 3  
  
  
  
  
    Now that I had learned how Quatre really felt about Trowa, every time I saw the two of them together, I wondered how I could have been so oblivious and stupid the very first time I had witnessed the two of them talking. Quatre had seemed a little bit bolder after confessing to me. It was like sharing this secret between us had given him some kind of confidence in himself and he stopped worrying so much about Relena and Trowa being embarrassed just to be seen with him. Trowa, to his credit, didn't seem to care all that much about Relena's attempt to humiliate Quatre in front of him.   
    I wondered if he really understood what was going on. The second Quatre had confirmed my suspicions that he liked Trowa a lot more than he would just a friend, I had gained a whole other suspicion. I remember Relena's smug look when she had made Quatre throw up, and I remembered how, that time and every time she had bullied him in front of Trowa, she would look for the upper classman, make sure he was watching. I had begun to wonder if she knew how Quatre felt, if she even just suspected that he loved the other boy, if there was something more sinister in all the times she called him a faggot.   
    Just the possibility that Relena could know that chilled me to the core. The bitch was in the unique position to do an incredible amount of damage to my best friend just be suspecting it. She could tell everyone that she knew for sure, and she could tell everyone who is was that Quatre had a crush on. Regardless of how Trowa felt, it would be devastating. If she was just doing it to mess with Quatre and try to keep him from making a second friend, that was just the usual shit from her. But if she knew that Quatre had a crush on Trowa, and she had done all those things to hurt him... I hated her more than I ever had for that.   
    If it was true, she was trying to hurt Quatre right in the one part of him that was the most vulnerable, the easiest and deepest to hurt. I wanted to believe that it wasn't true, that she couldn't possibly be that horrible and cruel, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought that it had to be true. She was like a hyena, cunning and relentless. Worse, it wasn't that she didn't give a shit about Quatre's feelings, she cared very much about them. She liked hurting us, so why wouldn't she go this far?   
    With those thoughts circling around in my head, every time I saw her, every time I heard her voice or her name was brought up, I felt this indescribable wave of rage in me. I had been feeling that anger more and more lately. It was like a sea of fire in my gut and every time I saw Relena Darlian's smile or heard her voice or that sinister, disgusting laugh of hers, that sea rose a bit more. It terrified me.   
    I had never been like this before I had met Relena. Or at least, that's what I told myself. I still remember how I was the night before I went to school for the first time, how eager and excited I had been just to meet other kids my age. My ribs had hurt and I was exhausted, but I hadn't been angry at my father for it, only focused on the possibility that I was going to make a new friend, that my life might get a bit better, before Relena had shown me how that reality was harsh and cold, not like the shows I saw on television.   
    Before, every time my father had hit me, I had felt so miserable, disappointed in myself that I wasn't good enough, that I was infuriating my father, making him angrier and more stressed. When he hit me, I didn't need him to tell me it was my fault, I just knew it and it would depress me. I still feel that way now, but lately when he strikes me, I feel this intense anger and hatred for him in my gut. I never used to hate my father before I met Relena. Sometimes I wonder if that's just a coincidence, if I grew into that hate or if she had brought out something horrible in me.  
    I love my Dad, even when he beats me and calls me useless, I still love him, but the older I get, the more polluted that love gets. When I think about that, I find myself wondering 'am I becoming him?' and that thought terrifies me. Is temper genetic? My father gave me the shape of his eyes and nose and mouth... did he give me his anger, too? Will this rage in me just keep getting worse until I lash out at someone the way he does?  
    I wanted to believe I could never do that. I couldn't hurt someone I loved. Just the thought of hitting Quatre just because I was frustrated made me feel sick, but I remembered how angry I had felt when I saw him not stand up for himself, and I remembered how I lashed out at him in the hospital because of that frustration. And then I asked myself exactly how that was any different from my father telling me I was worthless because I broke a dish or forgot to take the trash to the curb for the week. My stomach twisted at that realization, but it didn't stop the anger that was festering in me.   
    I tried not to think of those things. I tried to focus on the things that were good in my life, even if there weren't many. When I felt frustrated at things at school, I thought about Quatre and how he was always sticking by me no matter the stupid shit I did. When I felt sad about how my parents treated me, I would look at the last piece of birthday cake in the freezer and remember everything he had given me. And when I felt scared about my future, I would think about the secret talks we had had.  
    Thinking about him would make me feel better, for a time, but that anger was always there, simmering beneath the surface, threatening everything I wanted to be. Some nights after a beating, I would curl up on my mattress and chant in my head 'not like him, not like him' and cling to all of Quatre's patience and understanding and kindness, all of the traits I fought so hard to instill in myself. But in those moments, no matter how hard I remembered those good things, they wouldn't touch me and I could feel it all slipping away, like the good parts of me were grains of sugar I was hopelessly grasping at, and my father was the inevitable conclusion no matter how many of them I gathered.   
    The only times I didn't feel tortured by that was when I was with Quatre. The painful, almost ironic thing about our recent talks was that our moments together were getting spread farther and farther apart. I'm not trying to sound melodramatic, or make it seem like I'm this terrible person who only gives a shit about himself, or that, for all my instances that Quatre is the only good thing I had, how ready I was to chain him to me and make him as miserable as I was. Quatre and Trowa were spending more and more time together, and I was very happy about that. Do not, for a minute, think that I'm so selfish that I wasn't happy for him. But I also felt very sad. For a thirteen year old, that was, and is, confusing. I don't know, maybe when you're older it's something you can understand, but I don't think that I want to.   
    I think I've said it before, but I was never really afraid of losing Quatre to Trowa. Like the idiot that I am, I guess I just assumed he would always be there for me. Maybe that's where I really fucked up, thinking I didn't have to struggle to keep my best friend. So I wasn't really jealous of Trowa, but I did feel sad realizing that Quatre was growing without me, that I likely would never feel what he felt for our older classmate, and how inadequate I was. Trowa was quiet, but he wasn't an outcast like I was. If Quatre had only been interested in Trowa's friendship, I _would_ have been jealous because there was no way I could measure up. Oddly enough, it was because of Quatre's crush that never happened.  
    Mostly, when Quatre left me to go talk to Trowa, or he would tell me about going to his games, I would feel very lonely. It made me realize what little I had. Quatre was my only friend, but that fact had never really hit me until those moments, that when Quatre went off with Trowa, I had nothing else. It made me feel pathetic. Seeing them together, I realized that I was the true outcast, the true loser in our friendship. I was the one incapable of making friends, not Quatre. He might think he was the same, but he had made friends with Trowa easily, even if they were awkward. If Quatre put out the effort, he could have other friends. He would never be popular, he was too shy, and Relena was too popular for our classmates to want to cross, but he could make at least one or two other friends besides me.  
    That he didn't even try seemed worse to me than my being a social leper. I'd never know what my life at school would have been like if Relena hadn't started to pick on me, but for Nate, she really had stolen his social life from him. Or maybe his shyness was something else, maybe it was even because of his parents.  
    In any case, even though I felt sad, I never begrudged Quatre his budding friendship with the basketball player. For one, Trowa had no clue Quatre was sweet on him and it seemed to me that, with the possibility that Relena was wise to Quatre's feelings and how close they were getting, it was just a matter of time before Trowa figured it out. He was somehow even denser than I was, but how long would that last? For that matter, how long would their friendship last? How could I possibly be frustrated with their closeness when it might not even last for much longer?  
    Beyond that, Trowa made Quatre smile, really smile in a way that was somehow brighter than his usual ones, he made him happy, and that in turn made me happy. Like I said, it confused me. In equal parts, it made me miserable and at the same time, I felt protective of their relationship. I guess that sounds stupid saying it like that. Quatre couldn't even muster the courage to tell Trowa how he felt, and I wasn't entirely sure that was a bad thing since I didn't know the eight grader well enough yet, so it wasn't like they were dating.   
    Some idiotically unrealistic part of me held on to this one, singular, dream-like hope that one day Trowa would figure it out like I had on his own and would reciprocate, even as the realist in me informed the likelihood of Quatre getting a crush on one of the only other gay kids in school was as likely as me winning the lottery. That part of me pointed out that, with or without Quatre's terrible luck, the most likely scenario was that Relena would clue Trowa in and he would freak out. And I wasn't too young or oblivious to know that that would break Quatre's heart.   
    With that terrible thought in mind, I quickly became both a sort of guard dog and whipping boy for my best friend. I don't know if that was the right thing to do or if it might have been kinder in the long run for them to have gone their separate ways, even if that would have hurt Quatre. Whenever the two of them met in the halls and struck up a conversation, I would stand watch. Whether she really realized Quatre's true feelings or not, Relena seemed dead set on making Quatre's life hell in full view of Trowa. She hadn't done anything so awful as making him vomit in front of him again, and part of the reason for that was my constant interference.  
    Whenever I saw her striding over towards them, I made sure to always be in her way. I would bump into her, 'accidentally' trip her, spill soda on the floor, or just full out glare at her until she or Dorothy saw and decided I needed an attitude adjustment. One time I pretended I didn't see her and walked into her, dumping chocolate milk on the white dress she was wearing. That one worked pretty well. She was so enraged that I had ruined her clothes, she didn't give Quatre and Trowa another thought.  
    Unfortunately, Zechs also saw it and beat me up for it. Quatre figured out what I had been doing and freaked out about it, my assurances that it wasn't anything different than I got at home not helping one bit. But Relena and Zechs never figured out exactly what I had been up to. Thanks to a few of their 'pranks', I already had the reputation of a klutz and I let that work for me for once. I didn't stop looking out for them, even though Quatre demanded me to for my health. It made me feel better, to do just this one little thing to help him. I was a useless friend, but I could do at least that much for him.      
    One day Quatre wondered away from me when he saw his crush in the hallway to talk to him about one of his basketball matches. Like I always did, I stayed far away enough that neither of them would notice me, but close enough that I could keep an eye on them. Almost instantly, my best friend's face broke out into this brilliant smile the moment he started to talk to Trowa, a smile that seemed solely reserved for the other boy, and the taller teenager smiled back in turn, his more reserved and still pretty shy, but I never saw him smile like that around anyone else, either. I was too far away to see it, but I knew that both of them were blushing.   
    I suddenly felt this intense frustration watching the two of them. A part of me just wanted to smash their heads together or yell at Trowa that Quatre liked him and get this dance over with. That part of me, the angry part, pointed out to the rest of me how disgustingly pointless this whole thing was, that my best friend was setting himself up to get hurt by seeking Trowa out like this. Just what did Quatre want from all this? He smarter than I was, even if he could be a bit naive at times. He knew that the best he could hope for was a tentative friendship with the other boy. What he wanted, what he _really_ wanted, wasn't going to happen. So why bother with all this? It had to be painful for him, so I had a hard time understanding why he did it to himself. But at the same time, I _did_ understand. It made him happy, and Quatre wasn't a pessimist like I was, but that fact only made me constantly worry about him.   
    "It was soooo disgusting," a familiar, feminine voice made my hair stand up and I felt a chill go through me, "He threw up _everywhere_! I'm surprised that the cafeteria still doesn't reek!"  
     A laugh that I often heard in my nightmares rang out in the hallway around the corner from where I was standing and I felt something deep in me shake, not with fear, but with rage.  
    "And the second he saw that poor Trowa had seen him, he started to bawl and ran out of the room like a girl! Of course, if it had happened to me, I would have been too ashamed to stick around, too. I mean, really, he has no self control, he never has since we were kids, but I never thought he would just throw up like that."  
    My hands curled into fists and I felt that rage in me rise up, hot and bitter in my stomach and throat. It wasn't enough that she had embarrassed Quatre in front of someone he liked, she had to keep going over it, pecking at it like a vulture with a large, rotting carcass, and to lie about it, too, lying about what really happened and what _she_ had done...  
    "He's so pathetic," I heard Dorothy chime in with that airy, all too fake laugh of her own, "How on earth can you stand being friends with him?" she asked as though she truly pitied her best friend, and knowing the bitch, she probably did.  
    "Well," Relena said haughtily, "Quatre has never had any _real_ friends, even when we were little. If it weren't for our parents setting up play dates for us, he'd be worse than he is now. I mean, we're almost in high school and look at the trash he hangs out with! He's still the little cry baby he's always been, too. I just feel so sorry for him, I just have to stay friends with him and help him out every now and again. We have to do things we don't like doing sometimes to help people like him, even though I'm sad to say my friendship with him hasn't helped him grow up so far," she said in a suffering tone.  
    Something inside me broke and I could actually, literally feel a bit of the rage I had forced down inside me trickle out. Just a small part of it, but it took complete control over me. I didn't even have the chance to ask myself what it was I was doing before I was walking around the corner towards the voice that I hated so much. I saw her, dressed in a brand new, pink and cream blouse and an equally new pair of jeans that I had no doubt together cost more than I make in two months, standing with Dorothy and two girls that didn't usually hang out with her. They were looking up at her adoringly, like she was some kind of fucking saint, no doubt feeling blessed to just being talked to by the most popular girl in school, and nodding at her every word like it was gospel.   
    People say when they're really mad, they see red. I saw white. Just this brilliant white, like I had been staring at the sun for too long, and I felt so angry, I thought I was going to throw up. Her saying those things, those _lies_ wasn't anything worse than what she had done to Quatre and myself before. Those girls looking at her like that wasn't anything different than I had seen from our classmates before. They knew how horrible she was to the two of us, but she was rich and pretty and popular and that was all that mattered to them. That and that she only treated us like that, not them, and how fortunate that was. It wasn't anything different than any other day at this school, but for some reason I can't figure out, for that one moment, I lost control.  
    I strode up to her, past those two girls, grabbed her by her new, expensive blouse, and before she or Dorothy could do anything, I pinned her against the lockers. I didn't shove her. I didn't hit her. I could have and I don't know why I didn't, maybe I had just that little bit of self control left, I just pinned her there with one hand. For the first time since I had met her, I realized just how small Relena was. We were practically the same height, but that wouldn't last. She had already gone through a growth spurt and I wasn't anywhere near done with mine, I somehow knew that I would end up taller than her, although it might not be by much.   
    More importantly, for the first time in my life, I realized how strong I was. With just one hand on her, Relena couldn't move. If I wanted to strike her, there would be nothing she could do to defend herself against me. My father had always made me feel so small and weak, but I wasn't. Not here, in this school, among kids my own age. Physically, I was stronger than Relena and that had never dawned on me before. If I punched her now, punched her like my dad was always doing to me, would she stop hurting my best friend? If I broke her nose and some teeth, I thought with a kind of sick glee, she wouldn't be nearly so pretty anymore. Would she stop then?   
    I felt this... power then. A kind of almost hysterical joy realizing that I could do it, I could beat her up. I could take out all my rage on this one girl, I could hurt her and right then, I really wanted to. I wanted to just fall into that power and control and forget all my common sense, all my reasons why the thought of doing this had scared me before.   
    "Shut up," I growled at her, "just shut up and leave him alone."  
    When I had grabbed her, Relena had stared at me in shock, and that reaction had made me feel incredibly good, like I was getting one up on her for the first time, but now she smirked snidely at me and I felt all of that confidence melt away inside of me, but none of my rage.  
    "What exactly are you going to do, Maxwell?" she taunted me, not in the least bit scared of how close she was getting to me lashing out at her and I felt this absurd fear that she knew me better than I did, "Hit me? Prove to everyone that you really are trash and hit a defenseless girl for no reason?" she snidely batted her eyelashes at me and pretended to be frightened, a ridiculous motion considering how far from a defenseless girl she was and she knew it.   
    She wasn't scared of me. Through her sneer and through that fake fear, I saw hatred on her face, the same hatred I had put there when I had been repulsed by her kiss a year ago. She hated me. She hated that I had put my hands on her, that I had dared fight back against her, but she was far from scared I was going to hurt her. She still had the same amount of control over me that she always had since the fourth grade.   
    "No," she sneered, "you aren't going to do a thing to me. You're too _pathetic_ to hit anyone, even a girl! You're more pathetic than Quatre will ever be. You're not even man enough to defend your friend against someone who can't fight back."  
    Just like that, with those biting words, I felt my rage sink back down into my gut where I still felt it strongly, but it just left me feeling weak and useless and that strength I had so briefly felt vanished with it. She was right. I was too pathetic to stand up to her, I was too scared of myself to ever hit her, regardless if she was defenseless or not. She was a horrible person and I hated her for what she was doing to Quatre, but even to protect him, I could not strike her. I couldn't strike anyone, and that I had thought I could was laughable. I should have felt good about that, that I had some semblance of control over my actions and hadn't hit her, but I didn't. I felt weak and useless, a pathetic excuse for a human being. I didn't want to be violent like my father was, but this inability to stand up for the things I wanted to stand up for was worse than if I had gone off and punched her.   
    As I came back to myself, I realized that Dorothy had grabbed my arm and was trying to get me to let go of her friend, her pale blue eyes glaring holes in me for daring to lay hands on someone as esteemed as her best friend and the other two girls were staring at me with the kind of fear I had wanted to see on Relena's face, not theirs. I let go of Relena and pulled my arm from Dorothy's grip, her nails scratching me. Relena smirked at me and even though our eyes were level with each other, I knew she was looking down on me from a great height. She dusted off her shirt, like my hands touching her clothes had left some kind of invisible filth on them, flicked her long, light brown hair shoulder and strode off like nothing at all had happened.   
    I felt hollow.  
  
*****  
  
    I expected some kind of heavy retribution, if not from Relena, then from Zechs. He had beaten me up once for not showing an interest in his sister, and dozens of times before for the tiniest of infractions, so I was sure he was going to do something especially nasty for not only assaulting her, but having the gall to stick my neck out and fight against them, _me_ , a lonely worm that should be grateful to be allowed to live in their presence. For the next two days, I felt like there was an anvil hanging over my head and I was extra vigilant about Quatre, not wanting him to be collateral damage for my stupidity, but that anvil never fell. It made me incredibly paranoid, but Relena didn't so much as glare at me more than she usually did. It made me feel even smaller and weaker.  
    I didn't tell Quatre about what I had done. I probably should have. Our collective bullies often went after him if I did something to displease them, but the more time passed with no backlash, the more I assured myself that he didn't need to know. Mostly, I was too ashamed and frightened of myself and I didn't want him to find out how close I had come to being expelled.   
    It kept me up both of those nights and turned my stomach into a ball of constant anxiety, but I was able to keep Quatre from finding out that something big was bothering me and giving me nightmares. Usually he would have realized something was wrong in a heartbeat and confronted me about it, but he was too preoccupied with Trowa and whatever else was going on at home, plus the fact that our regional tests were coming up, to read between the lines.  
    February was unseasonably warm for us, enough so that Quatre and I often went to the small courtyard behind the town library to study. Regional testing was a big joke, at least that's how I saw it. It was supposed to be prep for the real tests like MCATs and SATs, a way for the school system, namely our teachers, to see who needed help and what subjects needed priority, but for those of us who actually had to take the stupid things, it was more like a competition between schools in the region. When we were all done, they would post our scores for everyone in the school to see and we would see where we ranked in the region.   
    I never understood what was the point of it, but Quatre said that schools that got better scores got better funding, more perks, while the worse schools, instead of trying to fix the problem, tried to push it under the rug so their funding wouldn't be effected. I had told him how stupid I thought that was, that wasn't the entire point of a school to educate kids? What exactly was the point of giving money to schools that were already doing just fine and ignoring schools with kids that obviously needed help? That concept seemed utterly ridiculous to me as one of those kids with less than stellar grades. I already felt like school was a huge waste of my time.  
    There were some things about school I liked. I liked meeting Quatre, and Mrs. Khushrenada wasn't bad. Some of the subjects were fun and I got to read books and learn things I wouldn't have otherwise, but placement tests were useless to kids like me. I wasn't going to college. The only future I had was here in Nausten, in a factory or some other position where my boss wouldn't give a fuck how well I had done on my SATs or that the best I could do in middle school was a C+ average.  
    It just felt like I was waiting, stuck in place like a fish trapped in stagnant water while all my classmates swam past me, leaving me behind. So hearing just how little my test scores mattered, how if I did a shitty job I would just get swept under the rug anyway, frustrated me. What was the point of anything? What was the point of studying for a test that was nothing more than a competition to see how well I could memorize useless facts?  
    It made me want to not even bother, to just drop out and try to figure out what the point of my life was, if there even was one. But I knew I could never do that. As much as my father called me stupid and useless, and as little interest he had shown in my grades, he would become enraged if I dropped out. I felt obligated not to, really. My mother had had to drop out because she had gotten pregnant and my father had been forced to take a full time job after my grandparents had kicked the both of them out of their homes. What right did I have to do the same by choice when they hadn't even had the chance? I would only feel guilty and ungrateful. My parents had sacrificed for something they hadn't even wanted, so I guess I could sacrifice for something I knew I would never get.  
    I also knew that if I did drop out, the one person who would be even more furious than my father would be Quatre. My best friend would _never_ accept it. He would drag me back to classes kicking and screaming if he had to, and he wouldn't care about my reasons for it. Quatre always childishly believed I had more choices for my life than I actually did, ever the optimist. And, honestly, I didn't really want to give up on school. I wasn't naive about it like Quatre was, I understood my chances.  
    I could save up every penny from now until I graduated when I turned eighteen and I still wouldn't have enough money for four full years of college, even the cheap state ones. And even if I could, how could I maintain two jobs like I was now and take college courses? Would I even be able to _get_ two jobs or even one? And what would it get me? A diploma from a third rate college. Who the hell would want to hire me? I'd still wouldn't be good enough to get decent grades and I wouldn't have Quatre around to tutor me.  
    I might be able to get financial aid, but a scholarship was out. They made scholarships for the special kids, the ones with great grades, the overachievers, the ones with gifts. They didn't make them for barely average kids like me. I didn't even know what I would want to major in, to study. I wasn't good at anything, I didn't have any skills that mattered. So what would be the point of leaving Nausten to go to school? I would just end up back here or someplace just like here. At least I knew Nausten, at least here I had some hope of seeing Quatre again after he graduated. He would come back here for the holidays. Better to use my money, if my dad ever stopped taking most of it, on a place to live when my parents kicked me out.  
    But my staying in middle school, and expecting to go to high school in two years, wasn't all just guilt or just spinning my wheels. There was a part of me that didn't really want to quit at it. I don't know if that part of me just wouldn't give up hope that I would get the chance to use my education for something, if I just didn't want to give up, or if I wanted to prove myself, if only I could figure out to whom. I still studied frantically for my math tests, I still felt anxious every time I got a quiz grade back, and if I laid up at night telling myself that it was all completely pointless, it was only after I had stayed up late finishing all of my homework. I had at least that going for me, I always got my work in on time. Even if the work itself was nothing to be proud of, even if I was sick with the flu or in the hospital with a broken arm, I made sure my work got turned in when it was supposed to.  
    So, even though I felt like it was all useless and my time would be better spent at work or even watching ducks at the park, there I was sitting in the courtyard with Quatre, staring at math equations until I felt like my eyes were going to bleed for the third day in a row. Quatre was flipping through some vocabulary index cards he had made. We were going to quiz each other before we went home. I was as good at vocabulary as Quatre was at math, but my best friend seemed to struggle remembering a lot of the words. It was too bad I couldn't get a job in reading, spelling, or vocab, then I would be all set.   
    An obnoxiously cheery sound came from Quatre's pocket and he, with all of the bored, almost mechanic motions of someone who had done an action so often it could qualify as a ritual, dug his cell phone out without even looking away from his index cards. Even when he glanced at the display, it was with this nonchalant, half minded look. Then he flipped open his phone and read what I knew had to be a text message and just like that, his bored expression melted away into a smile that I can describe as beatific, like something you would see in a classic piece of art.  
    I propped my head up in my hand as I watched him, my best friend's expression more fascinating to me than some math equations. No one needed to tell me who had texted him as I watched Quatre put his index cards on the ground and text back, his fingers flying over the keypad with as much agility as a fiddler's across violin strings. Any concern he had had about studying was long gone along with everything else in the world with the exception of whatever Trowa had texted him. Quatre's cheeks were flushed with excitement and a gun could have gone off right next to him, but he never would have noticed.  
    I wondered what it was like, to care about something, to love and feel that kind of excitement for something so much that the entire rest of the world just faded away around you. I almost wished I had something like that in my life, but at the same time, seeing Quatre like that made me sad because I was sure that feeling was wonderful, but what on earth did you do when that thing was gone? It seemed to me like finding a new food you fell in love with. At first, all you wanted was that food, but you couldn't eat it all the time and foods you used to like before seemed tasteless in comparison.  
    Quatre finished typing and sent his message, starting at the screen with a kind of scary concentration and chewing his lip anxiously, something he hardly ever did unless Trowa was concerned.  
    "Why don't you just tell him that you like him?" I asked.  
    It wasn't the first time I had asked him that question, but he always would just brush me off or act like it was an obvious question. And it was obvious, and I certainly understood  him being afraid of people finding out he was gay, but his answers never helped me to understand why he was hanging out with the older boy if he was never going to act on his crush on him. Quatre's head shot up and he looked at me like I had just asked him if he was sure he wasn't adopted or he was sure if his headache wasn't a sign he had brain cancer.  
    "I can't do that," he insisted with a tremble in his voice, shaking his head frantically, "Trowa doesn't like me like that, I know he doesn't. I mean... I read this article in a magazine once. How many people in the world do you think are gay, Duo?"  
    I shrugged. I had never really thought about it.  
    "Thirty?" I guessed, figuring that if homosexuality was such a big deal, such a threat to people, it had to be around that much, but I also sucked at statistics.  
    "Seven percent!" he exclaimed like it was this incredible, astounding thing, "Just seven! That means that there's a ninety-three percent chance that Trowa is straight! I'm probably the only homosexual in the entire school, maybe even the entire town!" his voice cracked with emotion just then and I felt startled, not by how passionate Quatre was talking about this, but the incredible loneliness I heard in his voice, a loneliness a whole lot worse than what I had thought was there.  
    "Trowa isn't like me," he murmured dejectedly, "And I don't need him to tell me that, I just know it. All the girls in his grade adore him, he could date any one of them if he wanted to. I used to hope that because he isn't dating any of them, that that meant he was... _different_. But when I actually got the guts to ask him why he didn't have a girlfriend, he just said it was because of basketball. He's starting to build up his skills and reputation, and he as a real good shot at going to a good college if he keeps at it. He doesn't want any distractions during the season, but when it ends and if he finds a girl he likes..." Quatre trailed off, looking absolutely miserable at that idea, "Besides, even if Trowa _is_ gay, there's no reason for me to think that he would want to date me. And he has his reputation to think of. I wouldn't blame him for pretending to be straight if it makes his life easier and gets him a future. If I tell him I like him, he'll just be disgusted and I'll have given up my secret for nothing, _worse_ than nothing."  
    I couldn't stand how pained my best friend looked as he spoke, like talking about these things were causing him actual, physical pain.  
    "He wouldn't tell anyone," I tried to assure him even though I was just guessing based on what little I knew about the upperclassman, "Trowa's not the kind of person who would spread that around."  
    My assurances seemed to do very little towards putting Quatre's mind at ease.  
    "I don't even think I would care that much if he did," he confessed softly, shocking me. The fear of being outed as a freak was a constant one in my mind, "I used to care. I used to be terrified that my father would find out, or Relena or Zechs or one of my sisters. But now, even though it still frightens me, it's not what I'm really scared of. Relena is already sure that I'm gay and Zechs already treats me like he knows. My father would just insist it was a bad rumor. I could scream at him with a megaphone that I'm a fag and he would just deny the whole thing. He would rather be ignorant than have to deal with it," he glanced at me shyly, "I was more afraid of losing you anyway and you're ok with it."  
    I smiled at him, feeling oddly sensitive that I was more important to him, or at least my view of him was, than his family. It wasn't an entirely pleasant feeling. It made all the ways I was failing him as a friend more painful, and it made me feel more protective of him, as well as make me feel that I had a huge responsibility to him, to keep his secrets and make sure he was happy.      
    "Now, what I fear the most is Trowa hating me," he said sadly, "If he is ever repulsed by me... I don't think I could handle it."  
    "But what different does that make?" I asked, perplexed.  
    Back then, it had been an innocent question that I had been confused about. Now, looking back and remembering my own words, I loathe myself for them. I want to scream at myself to shut up, shut up and just _listen_ to what he was saying.  
    I have always had an impeccable memory, if this journal is any indication. I can't remember math equations worth a damn, but I can remember conversations, exact words that were said and how they were said with perfect clarity, years after they had been said. Quatre called it my recording gift, I called it a useless skill. I wish I didn't have it. It makes recalling things for this journal easy, but when you don't want to remember something, some terrible thing that you did and you have a fucking tape recorder in your head that gleefully reminds you of it all and won't let you lie to yourself, it's like a curse.  
    I can remember everything that led up to that day at the train station, every single conversation we had up to the last time Quatre spoke to me. I can pinpoint, with horrible accuracy, every moment that I fucked up. In that moment, sitting in the library courtyard with him, Quatre told me all that I needed to hear to avoid what happened. Just one sentence and I focused on the wrong one. I asked a stupid question and all of my best friend's fears, his warning, like a fucking caution from the gods, went right over my stupid, ignorant head. It's terrible enough that when I remember it, when I realize just how thoroughly I let Quatre down, how completely I fucked up, I want to take a screwdriver to my skull, to either gouge out that part of my brain that lets me remember this shit or rip out all my inadequacies as a human being.   
    "You won't tell him you like him," I continued in my ignorance, "and you're sure he doesn't like you, so why does it matter if he hates you? Why even hang out with him and try to be friends? Even if he does want to be friends, he's going to find out you like him eventually, and he's going to high school next year. You'll barely see him at all for an entire year, and by the time we get to high school, he might not want to hang out with you anymore. Wont it be less painful to not be around him anymore, even if it's because he hates you, instead of spending all this time with him?"  
    Quatre looked down at the ground and I immediately wished I hadn't said those things, even if he was well aware of them and had thought of them himself, I wished I hadn't rubbed salt in his wounds like that. He didn't cry, not even silently, although I had wished he would. The sadness and depression I saw in him in that moment was too deep and powerful for tears. It was disturbingly adult, the kind of sadness that I was somehow aware that a person with a crush couldn't feel, only someone who was in love. And just then I knew this... thing, these feelings my best friend had were so much deeper than I had thought and they weren't just going to fade with time.  
    "You wouldn't understand," he murmured, and I didn't.  
    I didn't understand why Quatre would willingly put himself through that much pain, but I was then sure that I didn't _want_ to understand it. I had envied him for finding someone he liked, but if love could make a person that depressed with longing, I didn't want anything to do with it.  
    "I love Trowa," Quatre said with that soft, serene smile, somehow not losing an ounce of that sad expression either, "Just being around him makes me so happy. His smiles, his jokes, just hearing the sound of his voice, even when he isn't talking to me, makes me delirious. When I think about going to his games or I know I'm about to see him, my heart beats so fast I worry I might die. And when I see him and I know I'll never be able to kiss him or hold his hand, I just feel sad, like nothing in the world matters and I'll never feel a good feeling again. So yes, being around him hurts, it hurts more than I hope you'll know, but it also makes me feel happy like nothing else has in my entire life," he smiled at me and this time, it was the smile I was used to, "Don't worry about me, Duo, I'll be fine. I'm not delusional and I'm not lining myself up to being let down, I know Trowa will never like me like I want him to. But I still want to be friends with him, even if it's for a little while. I just... want to be close to him while I can."  
    Despite his assurances, I worried about Quatre. I worried about him a great deal, even more than I worried about my own lack of romance and interest in that sort of thing. I had known for awhile that my best friend was sad and lonely, and I had just accepted that as face because, well, wasn't I sad and lonely, too? I hadn't realized just how powerful Quatre's sadness was, and I hadn't realized how focused it was on just one thing. Worse, how Quatre had focused all those negative things on one _person_. How could I possibly _not_ worry about him?  
    "Just promise me one thing, Duo," Quatre urged and the desperation in his voice was disturbing to me, like he was asking me to donate one of my organs so he could live, "Promise me that if you find someone you love, you won't give up on them no matter how much it hurts you."  
    That promise alone should have clued me in that something was very wrong, something I wasn't seeing. I wanted to protest 'how can you make me promise something like that, to go after something that'll just hurt me, when you won't even do it for yourself?!'  
    But it didn't dawn on me that my best friend's desperation and this promise were troubling. I had thought he was just being emotional and didn't question where those emotions were coming from. For all I insist I'm mature and grown up, when it really matters, I'm just a child. So I didn't say anything and when he reached out his pinky to mine, I hooked it with my own. What damage would it do to make my friend happy? It wasn't like I loved anyone like he did, and in that moment, I was sure that I never would. Love wasn't meant for me, my parents had proved that. Quatre's love was all that I needed.  
    "I promise."  
  
*****  
  
    For awhile, I just assumed that Quatre's friendship with Trowa was this big, secret thing between them. Well, not secret exactly, as you would have to be completely blind not to see how close they were getting. But every time Quatre went off to talk to him, I just slunk behind. I had assumed, especially after I had figured out Quatre had a crush on him, that Quatre wouldn't get me involved and he just wanted to be alone with the other boy. I was fine with that. I guess I could have felt jealous about not being included, but Trowa wasn't my friend and I wasn't his, I don't even know if he would like me. He seemed like a really nice guy, but I didn't really know him. I could have tried, but I wasn't sure if Quatre wanted to expose the two of us to each other, and it wasn't like Trowa went out of his way to talk to me, either.  
    Mostly, I felt incredibly awkward around the older teenager. My best friend was in love with him and I was keeping it a secret. So I felt content to stay away from Trowa at the same time I felt entangled in their friendship, like I was caught in the crossfire. I had put my neck on the line for them again and again, always looking out for them, but neither of them were aware of that. So I was a bit surprised when Quatre called my house one Friday, just a couple of hours after school had let out.  
    My father and I had been fighting again. Big surprise there. He had wanted me to pull double shifts at work Saturday and Sunday to help pay the electric bill at the end of the month since the pizza place had taken me off my Friday shift that day. I informed him I needed to study for my nationals and what had begun as a rarely civilized conversation between us quickly turned into a screaming match thanks to my dad having been heavily drinking for the past couple of hours, his rage at my disobeying him, and my frustration to the point of tears that I couldn't even put this much effort into trying to get a decent grade and being unable to make him see reason. When the phone rang, he hadn't quite come to striking me yet, miraculously, but it was becoming a very close thing.   
    I hated it when my father drank like this. He wasn't one of those guys that's a perfect saint until he starts drinking, he's hot under the collar and stubborn when he's sober, too, but when he gets as drunk as he was that night, he becomes a monster. If he had been sober at that point, I might have gotten him to understand that I really needed to study, that it might even help my regular grades. He would have been annoyed that I was disobeying him and he might have even struck me, but he would have at least remembered that he gave a shit about me getting through high school enough to negotiate with me. At the very least, he wouldn't have looked at me with such naked hate when I told him no. Anger, yes, and I could somewhat deal with that anger since I was being disobedient, but not his hatred for me. That hurt a hell of a lot more.  
    When the phone rang and he turned away from me where we had been fighting in the kitchen, I was grateful just to not have that look directed at me anymore.  
    "Pick up the fucking phone," he snapped at me.  
    I felt that anger in me rise up almost like it had with Relena, and feeling incredibly spiteful and mad, and even petty, I let that anger take hold. I turned and began to walk to the steps that led up to my bedroom. Without any warning at all, something hit the back of my head, making sharp pain flare there, and I stumbled to my knees in shock.   
    "I SAID PICK UP THE FUCKING PHONE, YOU PIECE OF SHIT!" he roared at me and it still took me a minute to realize that he had just thrown the phone at my head with deadly aim for someone that inebriated.   
    I picked up the phone with shaking hands, glad that it was such a cheap, flimsy thing and not made of anything harder than crappy plastic. I was amazed it wasn't broken, still ringing away, although the battery cover had flown off and disappeared somewhere. One edge of the wireless phone was streaked with blood, but I was familiar enough with scalp wounds to know that wasn't anything to worry about.  
    I hit the power button in it and said 'hello?' into the receiver with a stammer. Smug that he had won again, my father strode back to the television. I wasn't sure which one of us was more childish.  
    "Hi, Duo," Quatre's voice was a freaking godsend and I was actually glad that my father had refused to answer the phone, not knowing what I would have told him about one of my friends calling the house.   
    "Hi," I said dumbly, feeling both happy that it was him on the phone and not a telemarketer or my dad's cop buddies, but also worried. Quatre never called me, he was always too worried about getting me in trouble.  
    I got up off the floor and walked up to my bedroom, my head wound forgotten for the moment.  
    "What's up?" I asked, shutting my door. I didn't want either of my parents to hear so I kept my voice down. As far as they knew, I didn't even have any friends and if this was something... sensitive that Quatre wanted to talk about, he didn't need any eavesdroppers. We both had enough problems.  
    There was such a long pause over the line that I almost demanded to know if he was hurt.  
    "Nothing much," Quatre said, sounding far too nervous for it to be candid, "Um... I need to ask you a favor. A really, really, _really_ big one."  
    "Ok," I said nonchalantly, but the way he was talking, I was getting more concerned by the second. Quatre never asked me for favors.  
    "Can you meet me someplace?"  
    "I can try. Where?" I didn't really care where, I was just happy to have a reason to get out of that fucking house and away from my father.   
    There was another lengthy pause and I was starting to feel frustrated. I couldn't think of a single thing he would ask me to do that would have him this on edge. After all these years, he had to know I would do anything he asked of me. Hell, if he asked me to steal something for him, I'd do it in a heartbeat, so what could be so terrible that he didn't even want to ask?   
    "Look, I know you'll say no, but this is incredibly important to me, you don't even know how much-" he began to stammer.  
    My head pounded where the phone had struck me and I distantly realized I could feel blood tracking down my neck.  
    "Just spit it out, Quatre," I said more brusquely than I had intended.  
    Instead of being hurt by my snapping at him, it finally stopped Quatre's pussy footing around the problem.  
    "Can you come to Trowa's game with me tonight?" he blurted out in a pleading tone.  
    Even though Quatre wasn't anywhere near me, I physically balked. My mind could not process what he had just asked me. I almost shot back that he was right, I _didn't_ want to go. Going to Trowa's games was his thing, not mine, and I hated watching stuff like that. But that might have just been the mood I was in.  
    "Why the hell do you want me to go with you to his game?" despite trying to control my bad mood, I couldn't stop being a bit short with him, "I thought you hang out with him after those things."      
    "I do and that's the problem," he sighed heavily, "I'm nervous."  
    "Quatre," I said sharply and felt like I was scolding him, "what are you talking about? You've been going to his games since the season started and how is it any different than when you talk to him at school? What exactly am I going to do there? I don't even like sports and Trowa barely knows me."  
    "He..." I could practically hear him squirm, "... he invited me out to dinner afterwards."  
    "Oh..." I said, my eyes going wide as a piece of the puzzle slid into place, "You mean... he asked you out on a date?" this time it was excitement and not frustration that I had to fight to keep Quatre from hearing.  
    "No, as a friend," he said sadly before gaining his nervous energy back again.  
    "Then what's the problem?" I was perplexed by this entire conversation we were having at that point, "Go hang out with him at some fast food place for a few hours, what's the big deal?"  
    "It... it'll be the first time we'll be alone together," he said hesitantly, "Besides talking to him at school or at one of his games, I never see him anywhere else. This will be the first time he's ever... you know... sought me out, actually said he _wants_ to hang out with just me. And I don't trust myself."  
    And suddenly I understood. Quatre was scared to be alone with Trowa. At school or at his games it was ok because they were always surrounded by our classmates and he was always worried that they even knew they were becoming friends, let along that he had feelings for Trowa. But if the two of them were alone together, did Quatre really think he couldn't control his behavior?   
    "It will be fine," I tried to assure him, "What do you think you're going to do, accost him? You said yourself that you could never tell him how you feel-"  
    "I might have decided that," he said painfully, "but if I'm alone with him... I'm worried that what I want... what I feel..." he struggled with his words in a way I had never seen or heard from him, who was always so much easier with his words than I was, "I'm scared that I'll do something and then he'll figure it out, or I won't be able to stop myself from telling him. I don't trust myself not to do something stupid, but I know you'll look out for me, you won't let me do something like that, and if you're with us, if anyone does see us, they won't... assume anything," his voice cracked with emotion, " _Please_ , Duo, I know it's so much to ask of you, but you're the only one I trust. You're the only person I know will protect me from myself."  
    It was an incredibly manipulative thing to say, and I wondered for only about a second if he had done that on purpose before deciding that it didn't really matter. I had already decided to help him before he had said it.   
    "Fine," I sighed, "I'll go, but you're paying for my dinner."  
    "Oh, thank you, Duo, of course," he said in a rush, his voice airy like he couldn't breathe.  
    "You put too much faith in me," I muttered, feeling responsibility weighing on me already.  
    "No, I don't," was all he softly said before hanging up on me, stopping any protests I could have about that faith.   
    I turned the phone off and rubbed tiredly at my forehead. I suddenly felt about five times older than I was. I wished it really had been a telemarketer that had called me and wondered what the hell I was going to do. What would Trowa think of me showing up with Quatre for the very first time? Probably nothing, he seemed kind of oblivious about a lot of things. I took a deep breath and told myself everything was going to be fine. I would watch a basketball game for the first time in my life and maybe that wouldn't suck as much as I thought it would, then I would go out for a free dinner. And maybe nothing would happen. Maybe I wouldn't let my friend down like I seemed to always do and it would just be a nice night. How worse could it be than staying here and dealing with the hurricane that my father was quickly becoming?  
    I needed fresh air. My head hurt worse then, but it had nothing to do with getting hit by the phone. I pulled off the clothes I had been wearing all day, and if I was being honest, the day before, too, and I realized that Quatre hadn't actually said _where_ they were going out to eat. I had just assumed it would be some fast food place because that's where I would go out to eat, but I didn't know if Trowa had the means to go out someplace nicer. Were they just going through a drive thru and were planning to eat in the car or was it going to be a sit down place, a place where there were actually waiters and my typical ratty jeans and a t-shirt would be frowned upon?   
    I shook my head at myself. Looking at my clean shirts, I felt unbelievably ridiculous. I didn't even know what Trowa liked to eat or really anything about him besides that he was quiet and good at basketball, but Quatre expected me to hang out with him for a few hours. I sighed again and put on a pair of jeans that didn't have any holes in them and a long sleeved shirt in case it was cold in the gym. It wasn't like I had anything nicer to wear anyway.   
    As I walked downstairs and hung the phone back up on its cradle, I realized how stupid I was being. I was over-thinking this whole thing and I wasn't the one who had a crush on Trowa. I wondered just how much of a wreck Quatre was right then. I almost managed to make it out the door without anyone realizing I was leaving. Almost.  
    "Where the fuck do you think _you're_ going?" my father sneered from the kitchen doorway, a fresh beer in hand.  
    "Nowhere," I growled at him and made a go for the door.  
    He had that mean look in his eyes that told me he was looking for an excuse to strike me. That was bad because, even though he usually didn't care where I went and I didn't have a curfew, he wasn't going to let me leave the house no matter what I said. But it was also good. It meant he wasn't quite yet in that horrible way he often was when he was drunk when he didn't _need_ a reason to beat the shit out of me, and if I managed to get outside, he wasn't going to fly into a rage and chase after me. Whenever his drunken moods went from mean to crazy rage, he didn't care how much damage he did or how saw him do it. It wasn't like our neighbors were going to call the cops on him.   
    "Get back here when I'm talking to you!" he snarled, slamming his beer can on the table next to the door, and grasped the back of my shirt just when I touched the door handle, pulling me back.  
    When I felt him grab my shirt, rage that was a disgusting mirror of my father's filled me and I shoved him away, something I never would have been able to do had he been sober and I only managed because I startled him.  
    "You're drunk," I snapped at him.  
    In my head, I had only said that in a last ditch attempt to diffuse the fight, to try to make him understand that he was acting crazy, but I was unable to stop the judgment, derision, and disgust in my tone. Pure, terrifying rage filled the face of the man that used to take me on walks and tell me bedtime stories. He didn't even yell at me, which was even more frightening. His right hand just balled into a fist and lashed out at me, but it was slower than usual and I managed to dodge it, realizing far too late that it had been a feint before his left hand clenched around my wrist like a bear trap.  
    "Let go!" I yelled at him powerlessly, trying to wrench my wrist out of his grip, but it was like trying to get bone from a stubborn dog.  
    That mean look on his face turned calculating and without so much as a single word, he twisted my wrist. I cried out as agony shot through my hand and arm. I pulled against him, desperate to free myself, but he kept twisting more and more, and it dawned on me, looking at his cold, hate filled expression, that he meant to break my arm simply out of spite. I was going to spend my night in the hospital instead of at a basketball game, and there was nothing I could do. I couldn't fight back against my father anymore than I could against Relena and Zechs, the result would be exactly the same. If I tried to kick him, and he would be expecting that even though I had never hit _him_ before, he wouldn't just break one arm.  
    He gave another twist of my wrist and I could literally feel the strain on my bones, I could eel how thin my wrist really was and how strong my father was. I clung to my anger at him and let it consume the fear I felt, knowing how much a broken wrist was going to hurt, and faster than my father could react, I kicked the open beer can on the table at him. He had been prepared for my kick, but not for a splash of beer in the face. He was slow to react to it in his alcohol stupor and let go of my wrist for no more than a second and a half, but I was reacting faster than him and it was plenty of time to slip my arm from his grip before he clench down again.  
    I flung the door open and ran out into the night, not even bothering to close the door behind me. I ran faster than I ever had, my heart pounding in my ears. I could barely see where I was running in the dark, even though it wasn't even seven yet and the street lights and neon signs lit up, my vision a haze of pain and panic. Could I hear footsteps behind me? Was he chasing me? I didn't dare look back.   
    I ran and ran, sure that at any moment I would feel that hand grab the back of my shirt again, but I never did. I ran until I felt like I was breathing fire into my lungs and my heart was going to explode. I stopped there on the sidewalk panting, and only then did I look behind me, but there was no one there. My wrist throbbed in agony as it lay limp at my side. He might not have succeeded in breaking it, but I wasn't going to be able to do anything useful with it for a long time.  
    I started to cry. I wasn't sure what it was exactly, my tiredness, my fear, the pain, or the sudden depression that swept over me, but I cried for a good fifteen minutes before I was able to stop it. I wiped at my face when I was done, my skin soaking wet. I felt hollowed out, but my crying fit was long gone. I walked again towards Quatre's house and hoped I didn't look anywhere near as shitty as I felt.   
  
End Part 3  
  
Author's Note: I am aware that this is a terrible place to end this part, but there will be no updates of this story until November. I am going to spend the rest of this month and all of October working on Beyond the Looking Glass, like I always do this time of year. November is National Novel Writing Month and I will be working on A Stagnation of Love during that time so updates will probably be more frequent.   
  
      
      
      
      
      
  



	9. Chapter 3 Part 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duo goes out to dinner with Quatre and Trowa, and gains a possible friend. Quatre finally stands up to Relena.

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 3   
Part 4  
  
  
    By the time I walked past the town hall towards Quatre's side of town, my wrist was a solid piece of iron dangling limp at my side. I had had breaks that had hurt less. It didn't ache, it throbbed. My lower arm and wrist were so stiff, I could barely move them and every time I flexed my fingers, it sent waves of pain through my wrist. I didn't need to look at it to know it was going to be swollen tomorrow. I should have been furious at my father for doing that, but after crying my heart out, it was hard to feel anything at all. I just felt numb to the whole thing, like I was living a rerun of my own fucking life. I was just relieved that he had busted up my left wrist instead of my right. At least I would be able to do my homework tomorrow.   
    Just thinking about what I was about to do filled me with dread. I was exhausted and depressed and all I wanted to do was sleep and hope that when I woke up, things would be better. Instead, I was going to a basketball game I didn't want to go to and out to a dinner that I really, really, _really_ didn't want to go to. As much as I loved Quatre, I hadn't been looking forward to this dinner with him and Trowa before my father had busted up my wrist. I certainly didn't feel up to it, and I definitely didn't feel like the sort of person Quatre should be putting all of his faith in. To say I felt inadequate at that point is an understatement.   
    Quatre was waiting for me near some shops on Main Street, a large street where most of the less designer businesses had set up shop in north Nausten. There was a pharmacy, a small, but upscale grocer's market, two restaurants I had zero hope of affording a meal in, a thrift shop that had dresses in the window that had probably cost half a grand brand new, and a liquor store that I was sure sold more wine than beer.  
    Quatre was wearing dark jeans that had to be new and a t-shirt depicting our basketball teams' mascot. I had never seen him wear anything athletic and he never really seemed like someone who had any kind of school spirit. I wondered if he always dressed like this for Trowa's games or if this was special. Although the clothes were casual, on Quatre they looked immaculate.  
    I had never had any respect for the Nausten Nautilus, but our blue and silver school colors really brought out the blue in Quatre's eyes and the gold in his hair. I didn't know how, but my best friend made that dorky t-shirt fashionable. In that moment, I thought Quatre was more beautiful than Relena could ever hope to be. Or maybe it was how his obvious nervous excitement lit up his whole face. He smiled brightly at me when he saw me. I could see the relief on his face under the neon red light from the liquor store's sign.   
    "Duo, you came!" he said happily.  
    "I said I would," I shrugged nonchalantly, not letting him see how his happiness to see me made me feel so much better. I was still tired and hurt, but I was glad I had come, if only to remember what it felt like to have someone smile at me instead of scowl.   
    "I know," he said shyly and his light blush was strangely enduring to me, "but I was worried you might have had second thoughts. I know this isn't something you want to do. Thank you so much, Duo, I really mean it."  
    "You're my friend," I murmured, feeling uncomfortable in the face of his gratitude just for showing up, "if you need me, I'm here."  
    "I have some water for you," he rooted around in the plastic bag he was carrying, "Trust me, you're going to need it. The gymnasium gets boiling hot during these games, especially during a big one like this. Here."  
    He handed me a bottle of water. It wasn't all that warm out, but after running all that time, the water was a pleasant sight. I could have drunk the whole thing right then and we weren't even at the game yet. Not thinking, I reached for the water with my left hand. As I clenched my fingers around the bottle, pure agony shot through my wrist. I hissed in pain and dropped the bottle. I grabbed at my wrist as it throbbed and shook a little. Quatre quickly snatched the bottle from the ground before it could roll away, his eyes wide with alarm.  
    "What's wrong?" he asked and I almost groaned at the panic in his voice. The last thing I wanted that night was for Quatre to be worried about me and start panicking.   
    "It's nothing," I tried to assure him, "I hurt my wrist a little while ago, I just forgot about it."  
    At that, Quatre immediately grabbed my left hand, pushed up my sleeve, and turned my hand over, examining it. I sighed. He always fussed like that whenever he found out I had some sort of injury. Quatre never seemed to understand that I was used to pain like this and, to me, it wasn't a big deal. Or maybe he did understand and it was that exact reason why he flew into a panic like this.  
    "It's bruised," he said with a frown.  
    I shrugged at that. It was dark enough now that, with the red glow from the liquor store, the bruises were only slightly visible. There was no way to tell what the real damage was. Quatre let go of my left hand only to grab my right, pulling me along as he walked.  
    "Come on, we can pick up some ointment and bandages from the pharmacy," he urged, tugging me across the street to where the more brightly lit pharmacy was.  
    "What?!" I stammered, "No, Quatre, it's fine, it's just bruises, and we'll be late for the game!"  
    My best friend completely ignored me, although I knew that he had heard me. He had quickly learned that when it came to my injuries, it was pointless to argue. If he intended to help me, he did just that and pretended he was deaf to all of my protests. I never knew what to feel when he was like this. I wasn't used to having anyone really... care for me like that. If he hurt me badly enough, my father would take care of me, some of my bittersweet memories of him lingered on the sweet side during those times when he had actually seemed to care about the pain he had caused. But Quatre was the only one that actually seemed... _offended_ and worried about my injuries. It was both nice and annoying. I was used to caring for myself with an injury like this and I didn't feel that I needed to be coddled, but it just meant that Quatre gave a shit about me, so I couldn't complain that much.   
    Just like Quatre had learned to not listen to my protests, I had learned to just go along with him when he was like this, so I let him pull me along and when he told me that he would be right back, disappearing into the pharmacy, I just sighed and stood there on the sidewalk. I thought about offering to pay for whatever it was he would end up buying, but I didn't bother. I didn't even want to do anything to my wrist and I knew I couldn't pay for it anyway.   
    To make myself feel marginally better, I told myself it was payment for him dragging me out to dinner and the game. At that point, I didn't know what I was dreading more, sitting on some hard bleachers watching a bunch of jocks chase after a ball as my classmates and various parents screamed in my ear when I could be reading or something constructive, or sitting in a restaurant watching my best friend stumble to make conversation with a boy I barely knew and had no clue if he would even like me or want me around, while watching Quatre's every word to protect him from himself.   
    At least at the restaurant there would be free food. I wasn't going to take it easy on my friend, either. I was going to order something that I could never possibly afford, maybe even more than one thing so I could take some home for tomorrow night's dinner. It was the only thing I was looking forward to.   
    Quatre didn't take long in the pharmacy, jogging out the door with a bag in hand.   
    "Ok," he said, slightly out of breath, "I got you an ice pack, some Tylenol, and this ointment the pharmacist said is really good for any swelling."  
    I almost rolled my eyes at him. Usually when I had an injury like this, I just took some pain meds and went to sleep. Quatre was going about it like a military operation. He dug out a tube of ointment and placed the bag on the ground. Taking my left hand again, he turned it over like before. This time he gave out a startled little gasp.   
    "Duo, you're wrist is completely _black_!" he almost yelled at me.  
    He wasn't exaggerating. Under the white lights of the pharmacy, the damage to my wrist was completely visible and I could see that it had already started to swell. The tattoo of bruises in the shape of my father's hand around my wrist was so black, it almost looked like it had been done in faded ink, the edges dark purple and red. The perfection of the shape of his palm and fingers would have been interesting if it wasn't on my throbbing, searing hot skin. I could remember how it felt having that large hand on me, like my arm was caught in a steel trap, those fingers digging into me and twisting. I wished I had a tan instead of my pale skin so those bruises hadn't looked so horrible.   
    Quatre cradled my hand so delicately, obviously scared of hurting me more, and it was a strange contrast to my memories of the last touch my wrist had received. He looked so distraught at my injury one minute, then cold the next. It was the same look he had had at the hospital that one time when he had realized that all my cuts and bruises, my father had put there. His eyes met mine for a moment and I was scared he would say something. He would tell me that I needed to tell someone about my father again, I thought, or lecture me about all the damage he would do to me next time. I was sure of it.   
    I didn't want him to. I didn't want the reminder of the same fear I lived in every time I heard my father raise his voice or every time I saw him open a can of beer. Sometimes, when I just hear that click of someone opening a can of soda or hear that low hiss of pressure and carbonation, I feel that fear, even though I know how stupid it is to be scared of such a thing.  
    To my surprise, he didn't say a thing. That cold look became sad, then he was putting ointment on the bruises, wordlessly. I didn't think it would really help. My dad was strong, frighteningly so at times, and the damage was deep, the amount of swelling already proved that, but I let him do it if it made him feel better. When he handed me the ice pack, I pressed it against my wrist even though I didn't want to. I hate ice packs. They make my skin clammy and numb, but I guess it was better than having my wrist swell up to elephant size. I even kept it pressed to my wrist the entire walk to school and during most of the game.  
  
*****  
  
    As I have stated several times by now, up until that point, I had never been to a basketball game before and I have not been to one since. Quatre had mentioned that this particular game was a big one, but I had had no idea that by 'big' he had meant that half the fucking town would be there. The school parking lot was completely full of cars by the time Quatre and I had gotten there and more people were filtering in to the gymnasium. It almost made me doubt going.   
    I never liked crowds and I especially didn't like being surrounded by people I was forced to go to school with. When Quatre had asked me to go to Trowa's game, I hadn't thought of the possibility that I might run into Relena, Dorothy, one of Zechs's friends, or worst of all, Zechs himself, and the thought of that settled into my stomach like a stone.   
    Despite the crowd, Quatre and I managed to sneak into the gymnasium easily and find open seats. Most of the parents were chatting up teachers that had shown up for the game and a lot of our classmates were buying snacks and drinks that were being sold right outside the gym. Coach Strum always had a fit if one of his students dared to bring food into his sacred gym, but I guess it was fine during game night. I had a few bucks in my pocket, but I was content to swallow a couple painkillers and sip at my water. Quatre had found us seats at the edge of the bleacher and he had, thoughtfully, sat next to me so I could have the end. I knew it was intentional, that he was thinking about how I hated being boxed in like that, and I appreciated it. This night was making me stressed out enough.  
    I felt weird, realizing that this was what Quatre did every game night, show up here amongst the crowd all by himself, just to watch his crush play. I didn't even know if Quatre enjoyed basketball. I had never really seen him this excited over something before, except for the few times I caught him texting Trowa or about to talk to him. It was odd to me, that this was a facet of my best friend's life that I had never been a part of until now and I still wasn't so sure if I was welcome in it or not.   
    Quatre flashed me a strange look, looking a bit startled, and I wondered with paranoia if he knew what I was thinking about.  
    "You have blood in your hair," he said with that mixture of alarm and sadness he often had when he noticed any kind of evidence of my father's abuse.  
    "Do I have time to wash it off?" I asked, not explaining what the blood was from or giving it any attention beyond that.   
    My headache was almost gone anyway and until that moment, I had forgotten all about my head wound, although that might be because of the painkillers I had taken. He nodded.  
    "The game doesn't start for another twenty-five minutes," he informed me.  
    I thought about just going into the locker room to get the blood out of my hair, but realized that the basketball team was probably in there. _That_ would have been embarrassing. The way my life was going, I needed as few humiliations as possible. I walked quickly back out of the gym and located the nearest bathroom, feeling fortunate that this thing was being held some place I knew so I didn't have to stop and ask for directions.  
    Being in the school late at night was strange, but I guess all kids feel like that during events like this one, like seeing a teacher outside of the classroom for the first time and realizing that this stern, knowledgeable person you spent half your day with to craft your future and make sure you didn't grow up to be some kind of uneducated, juvenile delinquent, was just a normal adult. The school was eerily quiet and dark, the hallway empty of any sign of life besides myself. The same school projects and banners advertising the game and our basketball team that had been there during the day decorated the walls. I could hear the loud noises coming from the gym, but they were so distant, it was like they were coming from another world. I couldn't decide if the lack of sound and people in that familiar hallway was relaxing or creepy.  
    The boys' bathroom was similarly empty, allowing me to inspect the back of my head in privacy. My chestnut hair in back, right above my ponytail, was indeed streaked with blood, but it was dry. If I had a darker shade of brown hair, I doubt Quatre would have noticed it at all. I felt around my scalp for the small wound the phone had made. It had already scabbed over, so I didn't worry about it any more than that. I had had a lot worse head wounds before.  
    Using only my right hand, I wet some paper towels and cleaned the dried blood from my hair. It came out easily. If only the steady throbbing of my wrist would go away as readily. The pills Quatre had bought for me were helping a little, but weren't stopping the small reminders my wrist was giving me every once in awhile that it was still hurting and damaged.  
    I rushed out of the bathroom, hoping that I wasn't late. I distantly wondered why I even cared if I was late for a game I didn't care about, but I didn't really know how these things went. Would I not be allowed in the gym if I was late? Would someone get annoyed by it? But really, it was because I had promised Quatre I would be there. I knew he only really cared about the dinner afterwards, but I had still promised him.  
    I was also kind of curious. Curious about what the big deal was with this game everyone else seemed to be going nuts over, and curious about what it was that Quatre saw Trowa doing during his sport that had so enticed him. As I all but ran back towards the gym, I almost walked right into Relena.  
    She was talking to Dorothy with her back to me. I couldn't hear what she was saying, mostly because of the white noise in my head from her sudden appearance. I wasn't really that surprised to see her there. She seemed like the type that would go to all of our school's big events, even if her brother didn't. I didn't have a single doubt that Relena Darlian had about as much school spirit as I did, but she liked people to think she did.   
    She had her light brown hair up in a casual braid for once and was wearing a gauzy white skirt that hung around her knees and the same team shirt that Quatre was wearing, only this one was that obnoxious shade of pink they had made the girl's version of the shirt. I never understood that, why someone had felt the need to make the girls' shirt pink instead of just making the regular silver and blue shirt in girl shirt sizes. Dorothy was wearing the same shirt and I thought that loud, pink color suited her even less than it did Relena.  
    Dorothy's blue eyes widened as she suddenly noticed me there, alerting her friend to my presence. Relena whirled, looking shocked to see me for some reason. I guess she had never thought I would go to one of these games. That made the two of us. My heart started to race. She got over her surprise quickly and glared at me. I looked down at the ground as I walked hurriedly past the two of them, hoping that if I looked scared or demure enough, they wouldn't bother with me. I just did not want to deal with Relena's shit that night. Seeing her made me feel tired, worn down, and hollow all over again.  
    To my surprise, I managed to get back to my seat without anything bad happening. I didn't even trip as I walked up the bleachers. The game still hadn't started. The cheerleading team, which was solely made up of the seventh and eighth grade gymnastics team, was doing some kind of routine in the middle of the court. In the time that I had been gone, Quatre had bought a large bag of freshly made popcorn and more bottles of water. I happily accepted one of them from him and grabbed a handful of popcorn when he offered the bag to me. It was hot, salty, and loaded with butter. My stomach reminded me that I hadn't fed it since lunch. I almost wished we were at dinner already.  
     _Almost._  
  
*****  
  
    The game hadn't sucked nearly as much as I had thought it was going to. My entire experience with watching sports before that night were snippets from the football games my father watched on television. Hulking men tackling each other over a ball while announcers blathered on and on about things any idiot could see with their eyes. Even when I had been a child, it had disinterested me to the point of boredom. I had just assumed that basketball would be the same: loud and boring.  
    The game _was_ loud. There was a lot of screaming, cheering, jeering, and taunting from both Nausten's side of the gym and the visiting team's. I didn't pay attention to which town they were from, but their mascot was an alligator, their colors white and green (1). The constant loud noises made me twitch as first, but as the game carried on, I found myself cheering a few times, each for Trowa. I couldn't argue that the upperclassman was very talented at his sport.  
    The game wasn't boring, I'll give it that. It wasn't like I became an instant fan or anything, and it still wasn't more to me than a bunch of guys chasing after a stupid ball, but it was more entertaining than football. There was no tackling or violence of any kind, just strategy, teamwork, and skill, something that Trowa seemed to have a lot of. Watching him, I could understand some of Quatre's fascination. In school, Trowa was just a shy, awkward, and quiet teenager with average grades. On the basketball court, he was a demi-god on the fast track to godly status. I never would have thought so looking at his lanky form, but Quatre's crush was both fast and agile, oddly graceful as he dived and weaved between players. He didn't hog the ball when he had it and all of his shots and passes were incredibly accurate. When I saw him nail two three pointers that won Nausten the game, even I had to cheer for him. Quatre was just beside himself. He screamed and cheered for the boy he loved, his face red with happy excitement and his blue-green eyes brighter than I had ever seen them before. Watching Trowa play, he came _alive_.   
    I could understand then, Trowa's choice to focus on his sport over something like a girlfriend. Maybe I was a bit biased, having never fallen in love or even gotten a crush, but he had a gift. If he kept at it like he was, he had a great shot at a good school, a bright future. That was a hell of a lot more than I could say.  
    Some of the crowd dispersed as the game ended, but a lot of people stayed behind to congratulate the players or talk with friends. It took Trowa awhile to get where we stood on the court, waiting for him to emerge from the locker room, with so many people chatting him up about his game play. But the second his eyes landed on Quatre, he pushed past them with a smile. It made me want to believe that he really did feel _something_ for my friend, but for all I knew he was just happy to see a friend and eager to get out of there and some food in his stomach. I imagined running all around the court was hungry work.   
    "Hey," he greeted Quatre.   
    He seemed in his element on the court, bolder and more forward than he was at school. Or maybe that was leftover adrenaline from the game. His dark hair was wet from a shower and he smelled nicely of clove soap or shampoo. He was wearing very dark, slim blue jeans and a long-sleeved, dark green shirt that matched his eyes. Like Quatre, his clothes suited his body perfectly, especially his long legs an arms. It also made him look very adult. Standing next to them, I felt dirty and underdressed. Watching them together made me feel completely out of place, a stranger latching on to them like some kind of parasite. I didn't belong there.   
    "You were amazing!" Quatre exclaimed breathlessly, "I can't believe you made those shots! All of that practice really helped."  
    Trowa nodded in agreement.  
    "I was sure I was going to hit the rim on that second one, though," he remarked, "it was lucky."  
    The tall teenager took his eyes off of Quatre for a mere second and realized that I existed.  
    "Ah... you're Duo, right?" he suddenly turned shy, like he usually was and if for that alone, I wished I had just gone back home after the game. I promised, I reminded myself for the fiftieth time.  
    "Hi," I muttered shyly, "Yeah, I'm Duo. I guess Quatre mentioned me."  
    Trowa stretched out his hand and I stared at it like an idiot for a moment before shaking it. I hadn't expected him to be so... formal and polite to me, so unlike the teenager that he was. His hand was bigger than mine, and darker. For a stupid moment, I thought of my father's hand, large and tanned, gripping my arm. I hadn't forgotten about my injury and was glad that I was wearing a long sleeved shirt. It was bad enough that Quatre knew my dad knocked me around, no way in hell was I letting Trowa see my bruises.  
    "Quatre's right," I said awkwardly, not really sure what to say to the boy my friend liked, "you're really talented. It must have taken a lot of practice to nail a shot like that."  
    Trowa blushed a little at my praise. He seemed just as unsure around me as I felt around him, which actually made me feel better.  
    "Th-thank you," he stammered, "Quatre said you aren't really into stuff like this."  
    I shrugged.  
    "I don't get out to social events like this," I confessed, "I work two jobs and have responsibilities at home. I also don't like crowds and all that shouting, and I'm not athletic at all, so I've stayed away before now. But it was fun watching you guys. You're a great team."  
    It was a cool thing watching Trowa as I spoke. He eased up and lost his nervousness, acting more natural like I had flipped some kind of switch. He nodded enthusiastically.  
    "I really don't like the crowds and noise, either," he said and I felt this odd sense of camaraderie with him that I had only ever felt with Quatre, "It used to give me headaches and make me so anxious I couldn't concentrate on the game. It got a lot worse when people started cheering for _me_."  
    He sounded so amazed at his popularity and I didn't blame him. If it had happened to me, I didn't know how I would be able to function.  
    "And now?" I asked, honestly interested to know how he dealt with his stardom.  
    "I liked basketball too much to just quit," he told me, "After awhile, it just became white noise to me. Every once in awhile, it bothers me, but I just focus on what I'm doing and try not to let it distract me."  
    I felt an instant respect for him. I wish I had something I felt that passionate about, something that I could just throw myself into with so much conviction that I refused to give it up, that everything around me just faded away. I envied him the ability to make all those cheers and screams white noise. I wished I could do that with my parents' fighting.  
    It suddenly dawned on me that, even if it was in a small way, Trowa and I had connected. I had thought myself incapable of connecting with anyone except for Quatre. Yet the two of us had just held an entire conversation and neither of us had tried to include Quatre in it. I felt panic then, worried that my friend was jealous or made at me for monopolizing Trowa when he was _Quatre's_ crush, but when I worriedly glanced at him, he was smiling at us, happy to see us getting along.  
    "Trowa... um... " Quatre stumbled over his words, "I-I hope you don't mind... I told Duo he could come with us out to dinner..."  
    Quatre looked so nervous as he spoke, I ached for him. I swore that Trowa actually looked _disappointed_ to hear that I was joining them. I wanted to believe that he had been looking forward to just going out with my friend, but maybe he was just annoyed that Quatre had brought his stupid friend along without asking and I was just misreading him. I watched my shorter friend stammer, trying to come up with some kind of lie as to _why_ I was coming out with them and obviously incredibly uncomfortable with lying to his crush.  
    "Quatre invited me to come see the game tonight. I skipped dinner to be here, so when Quatre told me you guys were going out afterwards, I sort of invited myself. Quatre just felt bad about me going without dinner, but if you don't want me tagging along, I can just go home and heat up some leftovers or something," I lied and almost winced at how pathetic that sounded.   
    I didn't mind lying for my best friend. Hell, I lied all the time, there was no reason for him to do something that made him so obviously uncomfortable. I hoped Trowa wouldn't order me to go home. I had promised Quatre that I'd go out with him to help and had just given myself an out.   
    And I didn't mention my other lie. If Trowa did tell me to leave, I wasn't going to go home and heat up some leftovers for dinner. What we were going to have tonight _was_ our leftovers, and after the fight my dad and I had had, he wasn't going to save me a damned thing. He would just throw out perfectly good food out of spite, he had done it plenty of times before. There would be no dinner waiting for me at home tonight.  
    I would have felt bad about not only lying to Trowa, but manipulating him to feeling bad for me, but I was there for Quatre, not him. Trowa instantly relaxed at my explanation and I wondered what his problem had been to begin with.  
    "It's ok," he said, "I don't mind you going to dinner with us."  
    Quatre shot me a grateful look while Trowa wasn't looking at him and I felt better about lying to his friend.  
    "W-where did you want to eat?" he asked the taller boy nervously, "It should be in walking distance, but Duo and I aren't picky."  
    Duo wasn't picky, I thought, because I was so hungry and so broke that I would eat rat meat so long as it was hot and free, an Quatre wasn't picky because he was more interested in Trowa than food. Before the eighth grader could respond to Quatre's question, I saw Relena push her way through the crowd towards us, Dorothy dutifully in tow. I felt my stomach drop like a piece of lead and, childishly, I wanted to yell at Trowa and Quatre to make a run for it, but that would have looked stupid and I doubted that Trowa was scared of her like we were.  
    "Trowa!" Relena exclaimed with a little wave, "There you are! Dorothy and I have been looking all over for you, the big star!"  
    She stepped right in front of Quatre like he didn't exist, separating the two of them. I wanted to snarl at her and scratch up that oh so perfect face of hers, maybe break her pert little nose or knock out a white tooth. Why couldn't she just leave us the hell alone? Couldn't she let Quatre have this one thing without trying to mess with him?  
    To my surprise, Trowa actually looked irritated at her presence and tensed up, right before every single emotion fled his face. It was like he had become a stone statue.  
    "I'm not a star," he said tersely, unable to keep his annoyance out of his voice, "The win was a team effort, as always."  
    "Nonsense," she looked up at him with an expression that I could only call demure. She seemed oblivious to his complete lack of interest in her and her company, or maybe she just didn't care. My bet was on the latter. Like me, she wasn't there for Trowa, she was there for Quatre, "everyone is talking about those amazing three pointers you made. I didn't see any of your _teammates_ make shots like those."  
    "If it weren't for my teammates, I never would have been open enough to make those shots," he snapped at her, his patience growing thin.  
    I probably should have been crafting up an escape plan, but I was fascinated watching the two of them volleying back and forth. Relena had that cruel glint in her eye and her words, while having a faux, vapid sweetness to them, like the way so many of Trowa's female fans spoke to him, were also snide. She was trying to make him think she was impressed with him, but he wasn't buying it. My respect for him grew a little. He might be awkward and shy and unwilling to really fight against her for Quatre's sake, but he wasn't an idiot and he wasn't falling for her bullshit, either.  
    His reaction to her was especially interesting to me. Until that night, Trowa had just been this shy, awkward person to me. That was all I had ever seen of him, and even when he had been comfortable talking to Quatre, he had still seemed so unsure of himself, but quite, nice, and polite, from what little interaction I had seen. When he had been talking to me before, he had relaxed a bit and acted companionable, laid back. But I had never seen him irritable and frustrated and almost angry until Relena had shown up.  
    "If you don't mind," Trowa someone managed to match Relena's snide tone, "Quatre, Duo, and I were going to dinner. I don't have all night to chat about the game. I still have homework to do and I'm tired from the game."  
    "Oh, I'm sure," she smirked, not deterred by his brush off.  
    Then it dawned on her what Trowa had just said and she shot double glares at Quatre and me. Then, no more than a second later, she regained her composure, her smile both superior and sinister. She directed that smile directly at Quatre.  
    "Winner, I didn't see you there," she lied sweetly, "How awfully _nice_ of you to offer to pay for the team's VIP's dinner. It's a bit strange, though. I could have sworn I saw you at every game this season, but you were never at any games last year, or any other year now that I think about it. I just assumed you don't like sports. And Trowa's the only player you've ever cheered for, isn't that right?"  
    Quatre went ghostly pale and even I was shocked at how forward the bitch was being. I couldn't think of a single thing to say to distract her. I felt frozen with horror, I couldn't even begin to guess how Quatre was feeling.  
    "I guess I can't really blame you," she continued cattily, "Trowa is an amazing player. But with you coming to all of his games, and your chatting him up every chance you get, everyone hardly sees him with his _real_ friends anymore. With your... 'reputation'... people are going to get the wrong idea if you aren't careful. I mean, it's a bit obscene for a boy to be trying so hard to spend so much time with another boy when they aren't even friends, don't you think so?"  
    Quatre looked like he was going to throw up. Before I could yell at her to just quit it already, her piercing gaze fell on me.  
    "And look, you even dragged poor Duo out of his cave. Or maybe he invited himself? I certainly hope he doesn't have a mind to get chummy with Trowa, too. It would be just terrible for your precious friendship to be broken up by something so petty as jealousy."  
    My hands curled into fists, making my wrist scream in pain, but I ignored it. Her insinuation was ridiculous but cruel and I hated that none of us could find the words to make her shut up. I watched with rage as she sidled up to Trowa, wrapping her arms around his and pressing herself against him. I couldn't bear to look at my best friend just then, to see how he felt by her bold move.  
    "I feel so sorry for you, Trowa," she said with concern that was as fake as everything else about her, "With Quatre constantly harassing you, it's no wonder all the girls in your grade haven't had the chance to approach you. Who knows what everyone is thinking is going on between you and someone as _strange_ as Winner."  
    Trowa blushed darkly, from her accusations or her body against his, I didn't know. I wanted to read his mind, to find out what he thought about all this. Did he enjoy having a pretty girl pressed up to him like that? Did he understand what she was insinuating? Did he believe her?  
    "Don't you feel bad, Quatre?" she sneered at him, "You don't want everyone to think that Trowa's a..." she paused but I could actually see _fag_ on her tongue and how much she wanted to say it, "... well, someone like _you_ , do you? Oh, I have a great idea!" her face lit up and my desire to punch her in that face returned stronger than ever, "Quatre can go take Duo to whatever greasy diner he can actually _afford_ , and Dorothy and I will take Trowa out someplace nice, someplace he deserves."  
    Her blue eyes seemed to burn into my best friend. Just looking at them made me feel cold.  
    "How about it, Quatre? Why don't you just go run off and save Trowa some humiliation?"  
    Her gaze was intense and sinister. I didn't need a single person to tell me that Relena wasn't asking Quatre to go off with me. She was threatening him... demanding him to not talk to Trowa anymore. She was doing what she always did, she was going after the only friend I had, making him miserable, and forcing him into a corner. And he would give in, because he always give in to her. In reality, although I was loathe to admit it, he didn't really have a choice. She had proven to me that she and her bastard of a brother could make our lives hell if we decided to fight back against them.  
    In that moment, I hated Relena more than I had ever hated her or any other person before. I wanted her to die. I wanted to throw her off a tall building and watch her become nothing more than a red smear on the ground. Why did she do these things? Why did she hate Quatre so much? She didn't like Trowa, she didn't even care that he existed, but she would gleefully use him to hurt Quatre as much as she could. And why? Because she enjoyed it. She would break my best friend's heart for a bit of entertainment.   
    "No."  
    I, along with Relena and Trowa, stared at Quatre in shock. My normally soft spoken and submissive friend was glaring at Saren, his sea green eyes bright with a fiery rage and a determination I had never seen in him before. No was the very last thing I would have ever, _ever_ thought I would hear him say to our bully.  
    "I won't go away," he said to her, his voice hard and mature, the voice of someone who would not back down no matter what was thrown at them, "I don't care what you think and I don't care what you say. Trowa _is_ my friend, unlike you, and if he doesn't want to be seen with me or want to have dinner with me, then I'll honor that. But that's up to him, not you. And for your information, I didn't offer to pay for Trowa's dinner because he won the game. _He_ invited _me_. If he wanted to hang out with you, he would have invited you to come with us. The only one who isn't wanted here is you."  
    Words cannot describe the sheer amount of rage that filled every inch of Relena's features. The air seemed to even grow hotter, looking at her fury. I felt frightened being that close to her and if she had taken a cat-like swipe at Quatre's face, I would have been the least surprised person there. But words also cannot describe the pride I felt for my friend at that moment.   
    I wanted to sweep him up in a tight hug and congratulate him on finally standing up for himself, at the same time that I felt an intense fear overtake me. Because I had learned my lesson about what happened to kids that angered Relena and Zechs. I had thought Quatre had learned that lesson, too, long before me. But I was just too happy to see him like that, taking control of his life, and again I envied his relationship with Trowa. He had found something to fight for, even more than his fear for his wellbeing. I wish I knew what that felt like. I wish I had that kind of strength.   
    Trowa finally came back to his senses and extracted his arm from Relena's tight grip, edging away from her like she had some contagious disease he desperately didn't want to catch.  
    "Like Quatre said," he murmured in that awkward way of his, yet his voice, while soft, was as firm as Quatre's, "We're friends and you aren't welcome at dinner with us. Just go away and leave us alone."  
    All of that fire in Relena's stare turned to the coldest, sharpest ice. It would have worried me, but then Quatre looked at Trowa and they smiled at each other. It was a soft smile on both of their faces, yet somehow brilliant and shinning. It was the sort of smile that two people gave each other when the rest of the world ceased to exist. Quatre looked so happy seeing Trowa stand up for him. It gave me hope that maybe all those things that he claimed were impossible, all the things that he craved more than anything else, could be possible after all.   
    If nothing else, I hoped that Trowa and Quatre could be good friends, that Trowa could keep making Quatre happy, even if they never ended up together. I hoped, at the very, very least, that one day Quatre would gain the courage to tell Trowa that he was gay, and that Trowa could accept him if not love him.   
    "A word of advice, Barton," Relena snapped at Trowa, her chilling demeanor enough to make me nearly shudder, "I suggest choosing your 'friends' with a bit more common sense. It would be a shame if those skills of yours should go to waste because of who you decide to hang with."  
    With that, she flipped her braid over her shoulder and strode off, Dorothy chasing after her wordlessly. I don't know which one of us was happiest to see her go. Probably Quatre. With her gone, his soft face lost it's fierceness, but he still seemed to glow, or maybe that was just my imagination.  
    "I am so, so sorry," he apologized to Trowa, "I keep making trouble for you-"  
    "It's not your fault, Quatre," the tall basketball player smiled at him and the smile made him look incredibly handsome, "Relena was the one making the trouble. Do you... do you still want to go to dinner?"  
    "Of course!" Quatre beamed at him, his fair face sporting a pretty blush. He really had the perfect skin for it and Trowa seemed to be very capable of bringing those blushes out in him.   
    Again I had that feeling that I was out of place, unwanted, unnecessary. The same I had been my whole life. But right then, it was ok. I was used to being unwanted and I liked seeing my usually sad and quiet friend so happy.  
  
*****  
  
    We ended up eating at Charlie's. It was a nice place, not too fancy for a couple of teenagers to afford a meal there, but they had great food and it was a much more formal place than anywhere I had eaten in. It made the places I worked at looked like complete dives, and I guess they were. I felt a bit self conscious at first, but the waitress that led us to our booth didn't even look twice at my worn jeans.   
    "Thanks for letting come out with you guys," I said as we sat down, Quatre and I taking one side of the booth and Trowa taking the other.   
    "It's no problem," Trowa insisted, "You're Quatre's best friend. The more the merrier, right?"  
    I managed a shy smile at him. I still wasn't really sure where I stood in their relationship. It was like Trowa said, I was Quatre's best friend, but he didn't know me beyond the rumors he heard at school and whatever Quatre had told him about me. I wondered what his opinion was of me. He had seemed ok earlier when we had talked, but Relena's... remarks had made me feel nervous again. A part of me wanted to lie and assure him that I wasn't a fag and him hanging out with us wasn't going to ruin his reputation, but I didn't want to bring the subject up again. I decided to just believe he wasn't going to be taken in by any of Relena's crap.  
    "Honestly," he said with a shyness that mirrored mine, "I should be the one thanking you and Quatre. Despite what Relena said, I don't actually have many friends. I've probably hung out with Quatre at school more than I have anyone else."  
    "Really?" I asked with wide eyes, "But you're so popular."  
    He chuckled and next to me, Quatre's face went bright red. I guess he liked it when Trowa laughed.  
    "I'm popular because I have talent and win games," he pointed out, "and I guess I'm kind of friendly with the guys on the team. We do hang out sometimes, but before I joined the team, I was too shy to make many friends and even now, I don't have many interests with them beyond basketball. I'm not that great at other sports. I'm pretty awful at football, even though I like watching it. I don't play video games and I don't go out to movies much, so there isn't much for me to talk about with my teammates outside of practice. I just tend to go along with what everyone else wants to do when I hang with them and pretend like I know what I'm doing."  
    I felt amazed with every word my classmate spoke. I had always felt like such an outsider, like such a... well, loser, because Quatre was my only friend. I had looked at Trowa and seen this popular guy who was just a bit socially awkward, I never would have imagined that he had the same problems as me. I guess you didn't have to be bullied to feel distanced from everyone else. Quatre and I got along so well, even though we were different and had different interests. I couldn't imagine pretending to get along with other people when there was absolutely nothing there that was relatable. I wondered what it was that he and Quatre talked about, if they liked similar things and that was why Trowa felt a connection with him.  
    We went quiet as our waitress, Beth, handed out our menus and took our drink orders. Quatre ordered a sweet tea, Trowa a coke, and I got a Shirley Temple. I remembered having had one when I was a kid. My dad had brought me some place, a restaurant or a bar. I had been very young, so I don't remember it well. I do remember that I had had a sip of his beer and hated it. He had laughed good naturedly and let me try a Shirley Temple. I had loved it, especially the cherry bobbing in it. I hadn't had one since and I wanted to see if I still liked them or if it was just the pleasantness of that memory, my daddy and I having a drink together before I had begun to be frightened of his choice of beverages.  
    "What do you like, then?" I asked once Beth had left.  
    Trowa blushed darkly as he looked at the menu.  
    "It's... it's stupid," he muttered.  
    "No it isn't!" Quatre protested, "I think it's great."  
    I hadn't thought it possible, but the older buy flushed even darker at Quatre's praise, which of course made me even more curious.   
    "It can't be that bad. I mean, all I do is read. I listen to music a little, I guess, but I've seen so few movies. I don't like sports at all, even if it was fun to see you play tonight, and I don't watch that much television, so pretty much everything our classmates talk about, I am clueless about. But books are the one thing I love more than anything else. I even like poetry and doing all those writing assignments in school, always have. In case Quatre hasn't told you already, I also like vocabulary and pretty much anything involving word play. So unless you like... I don't know, collecting scabs or eating hair, I'm probably not going to judge you for it."  
    I managed to get an earnest laugh out of him.  
    "No, it's nothing like that," he continued to chuckle and then looked at me warmly while he got himself under control again, "You know, all of my classmates believe all that stuff Relena and her brother say about you, that you're this strange, antisocial outcast who lives in a trailer and is some kind of terrible juvenile delinquent."  
    All I could do was blink at him about that. I had no idea what rumors there were about me floating around school. I could understand everyone believing I was strange and antisocial. I _was_ antisocial. I only had one friend because Quatre was the only person who had ever _tried_ to be my friend, and I just didn't trust my classmates. I was quiet and awkward and had very little social skills, so none of those things was ever going to endear me to other kids my age. I could even see the rumor that I lived in a trailer. It was no secret that I came from a poor family. I didn't wear new clothes and sometimes wore the same ones over and over because my mother frequently forgot to do the laundry. The other kids from my side of town no doubt recognized where I lived. It was a short leap for someone like Relena to change 'Duo is poor' to 'Duo doesn't even have a house'.   
    The rest was news to me. 'Juvenile delinquent,' huh? I guess my being quiet and poor and not having any friends except for Quatre might give the impression had some kind of attitude problem. A lot of people from where I lived were surly and basically the kind of kids nice, upstanding folks like the Parkers called 'bad seeds'. It came with the territory of being constantly poor and looked down on by other people for it. When you got beat up for smelling bad because you wore the same clothes or the gas company turned off your hot water, or the people that were supposed to be your friends, teachers, and role models told you that you were a loser, you not only started to believe them, you tended to lash out at them for it.   
    "But you're cool, Duo," I heard Trowa say, rousing me from my thoughts by shocking me again, "None of them know what they're talking about. You're down to earth and a nice guy."  
    This was also news to me and I would have thanked him for that news if I wasn't worried that it would make me look like an even bigger nerd than I had just confessed to be.  
    "I like animals," he finally came out with it, "I always have, since I was really little. Not just dogs, but all animals. When I was a kid, all I would do all day was watch nature documentaries. I would never watch cartoons or read comic books. For my birthday one year, my mom got me a subscription to National Geographic. I don't think I had ever been so excited. I always thought I would become a biologist or at least a cameraman for one of those documentary crews. I would always get really excited thinking about getting to travel the world and see all these different kinds of wildlife and places. I guess I gave up on that."  
    "Why?" Quatre asked sadly. I guess this was something they hadn't talked about.  
    Trowa shrugged.  
    "I realized that while I might love wildlife, I'm really good at basketball. Or rather, my dad realized it and went nuts. He told me that it was nice to want to be a photographer or a biologist, but basketball is more practical and I have a real good shot of making a career out of it if I stick with it."  
    "That's a terrible thing to say to a child!" Quatre exclaimed.  
    I wondered if he had ever shared some dream with his parents, if they had been supportive and he just didn't understand. I thought about my own father. I had never had any dreams to share with him and he didn't need that kind of fuel. He told me I was useless and a waste of space practically every day, he didn't need any dreams to destroy.   
    "Maybe," I said, "but your dad's right, it is more practical, if all you want to do is do something you're good at. Trying to become a biologist would probably take a lot of work, and there's no guarantee you would be good at it. But I don't think he should have deterred you entirely, either."  
    Again Trowa smiled at me and I felt this weird connection with him. I struggled to figure out what it was, why I suddenly felt comfortable around him when he had made me so nervous before. I opened up my menu and pretended to read through the various items. This particular subject we had suddenly found ourselves on reminded me of an argument Quatre and I had had last year.   
    Our school had had a spelling bee and Quatre had wanted me to join. He had said that I was a natural at that sort of thing, but I hadn't wanted to. I had told him I was too nervous of standing up in front of everyone like that, and I just didn't have the time to study words between my two jobs, but the real reason was that I was convinced I was not good enough to enter any kind of contest. My dad believed I was a failure and who was I to correct him? I wasn't good at anything. My grades were a joke. Why would a contest be any different? Why make a fool of myself when I was the last person who believed in my abilities?  
    But Quatre had believed in me. He had, eventually, bullied me into entering and I had actually won. It had been a close thing, but my love of vocabulary had gained me a stupid little trophy and a fifty dollar certificate to Rosalie's Burgers. Not too shabby of a prize considering how good those burgers were and all the times my dad kicked me out of the house without any dinner. That gift card had kept my stomach full for quite some time.   
    Then it hit me. I was having a friendly conversation with someone. I was connecting with someone, someone that was not Quatre. Was this what it was like? Gaining a friend? Quatre and I had become friends because of our shared problems. This was the first time I had actually gained one just by having a friendly chat. It was a very weird feeling, the realization that I was doing something normal.   
    "It's not a big deal," Trowa was telling Quatre as I zoned back in to the conversation, "I like basketball a lot, especially now that I've gotten really good at it. I still like animals and I would like to do something related to that, even if it's just a hobby. Basketball will get me into a good college, but it doesn't mean I can't study biology when I get there."  
    "I know," Quatre said with a soft smile, "I just think your father is being pushy. He should understand that there are other things you're interested in."  
    Their voices were so warm as they talked to each other. I could have faded away and I don't think either of them would have noticed. It wasn't a bad thing. Their friendship was solid and, I thought anyway, something special, or I might have just been reading into it too much, wanting to hope that my friend had a chance with the other boy. I reminded myself that I was supposed to be Quatre's filter that night and felt angry at myself for zoning out like I had. Not that he had done anything that a friend wouldn't do in front of another friend. I honestly had no clue why he had found it necessary to bring me along. He was doing perfectly fine. It wasn't like he was seconds away from blurting out 'I love you' to Trowa. And even if he was, how the hell was I going to stop him? Shove one of the little rolls of bread Beth had left at our table in his mouth?   
    I looked through the menu for real, knowing that our black haired waitress would be back to take our orders soon. Everything Charlie's served sounded delicious to me. Loaded baked potatoes with cheese, chives, and bacon. Salmon with a rosemary and lemon glaze. Italian flatbread covered in homemade tomato sauce, basil, and six different kinds of cheese. They were calling it pizza, but I worked at a pizza place and I could tell you that nothing like that had ever been made there. Even their breadsticks looked gold plated compared to the shit we served. And this wasn't even a five star restaurant.   
    Although I had what seemed like an endless amount of choices for my dinner, there was one thing that I wanted above all else. Steak. Specifically, their New York Style Ribeye. The thing looked huge and swathed in all kinds of spices. It even came with two side dishes. It was expensive at 25 bucks, something I could never be able to afford, not for a single meal, but Quatre had said I could order whatever I wanted, and I wanted this steak. I had never had any kind of steak before in my life beyond the so-called steak tips my mother bought for stew in the dead of winter. They certainly didn't look like that. It probably sounds silly, me so excited over food, but I couldn't help it. This was probably one of, if not the only, chances I would get to eat something like that.   
    I had my mind made it when I put the menu down and banged my left wrist against the edge of table. Agony flared up through my arm and I bit my tongue trying to keep from making any kind of noise. The ice pack had helped numb it and keep it from swelling up too badly, but it was still noticeably larger than my other wrist, yet in talking with Trowa and Quatre, I had somehow forgotten all about it. It wasn't a constant ache anymore, or at least not until the constant stream of Tylenol I had been taking wore off, but holding things was completely out of the question. Just trying to grip things turned my wrist into a bed of pain and my muscles would shake and twitch. With that reminder, I realized that if I really wanted to keep up this charade that I was completely fine in front of Trowa, I couldn't order any food that would require me to use my left hand to eat it. Which of course meant no steak.   
    This incredible depression filled me. Well, it was more like it struck me. I actually felt on a verge of tears, although I know that sounds pathetic. It wasn't about not being able to eat what I wanted, not really. It was just one more thing, one more disappointment in my life. My dad had busted up my wrist and taken this from me. And why? Because he had gotten drunk and had a petty, pointless argument with me. He had almost broken my arm, and I should have felt incredibly lucky that I had gotten away before he had, but I just felt... defeated. This was just one drop in the ocean that was the shit my father had put me through, the shit he made me feel every day.   
    The sadness and depression I felt then, remembering his hand on me, hurting me, and that dark smirk he had worn on his face when he had done it made the physical pain he had inflicted on me feel like nothing at all, no more than a paper cut. I didn't even hate him for it, not really. I just felt very sad. I had been chatting with Trowa like I was a normal person like him. I wasn't. His father had tried to discourage him from his dream for something practical. Mine had broken my left arm five times. Seeing my best friend talk to his crush with that warm and soft smile on his face just made my eyes wet and I very nearly stabbed myself with my fork to keep from thinking about those tears that wanted to come spilling out. I blinked them away as Beth returned to our table. I was being stupid again.  
    I ended up ordering the salmon, something that I had never tried before. I had had fish before, scrod and haddock. Dad would bring some home once in awhile and he would broil it in bread crumbs and lemon, but fish, especially salmon and swordfish, is just too expensive. The salmon was actually more expensive than the steak, 28 bucks. I substituted the rice pilaf that came with the meal for roasted vegetables. Beth gave me a strange look at my request. I guess not a lot of teenagers asked for vegetables, but I loved them. After some internal debate, I decided to keep the loaded baked potato and hoped I would be able to eat it with just one hand.  
    Trowa ordered some sort of grilled chicken with a salad and French fries. I had thought that Quatre would get one of their huge salads, but to my surprise, he ordered the steak that I had been coveting even though I knew he was not a huge fan of red meat. With our food ordered, the two of them launched into a lengthy debate about some movie that had come out lately that the both of them had seen. I hadn't, so I was content to just watch them bicker in a friendly way with each other. I had ceased to exist to them again and that was ok.  
    I wished that I had turned down Quatre's plea to join them tonight and just hadn't come at all. I was having a great time. I had maybe made a tentative friend, had been social with someone that wasn't Quatre for the first time _ever_ , I was out of my chaotic house for a little while, had been privileged to see Quatre stand up to Relena, was going to eat a good meal for once, and I was really seeing what Quatre and Trowa's relationship was like for the first time. But watching them together only made it clear to me that I should have told Quatre no.  
    My best friend hadn't trusted himself to be alone with the boy that he loved, but from what I was seeing, he was doing just fine. He hadn't needed me here and I felt like my attempt to help him was just hurting him. I had taken away a golden opportunity from him. If I hadn't shown up, who knew what would have happened. Maybe Quatre _would_ have slipped up and told Trowa how he felt. Maybe Trowa would have been ok with that. I would never know and worse, Quatre would never know. No matter how much sense I had, no matter how many statistics Quatre came up with, I just kept on hoping a miracle would happen, and knowing what I know now, I wish more than anything else that I could just go back in time and skip that dinner, no matter how happy it had made me at the time. But even then, I know it's just me hoping for miracles.  
    Stupid me.  
    "So, how long have you two been friends?" Trowa suddenly asked, rousing me from my regrets.  
    I took my first sip of the Shirley Temple our waitress had brought me. At that one sip, I remembered that day with my father, sitting on a high bar stool, drinking my very first carbonated drink as my father used one of his big hands to ruffle my hair instead of grabbing me or hitting me. We had both been smiling. I had loved him then, truly loved him, with no other feelings in between us. This Shirley Temple had a stronger taste than that one had and I wished I knew how to make one. They were delicious, or maybe I was just sentimental.  
    "Three and a half years?" Quatre looked at me for confirmation.  
    I nodded, fished the maraschino cherry from my drink, popped it in my mouth, and chewed on it happily.   
    "Yeah, it was on my first day of school that we became friends," I recalled.  
    Some days it felt like Quatre and I had been best friends for twenty years. Others, that first day of school was yesterday. It took Trowa a few seconds to do the math in his head.   
    "You started school in the fourth grade? Were you home schooled?" he asked me, perplexed.  
    "Not really... kind of..." I struggled, unable to tell him the truth, "It's a long story, but basically I was in and out of the hospital a lot as a kid. I just kept missing my chance to go until I was nine. My dad taught me a little, basic math skills mostly, but he and my mom were always so busy at work. I was lucky that I got to start in the fourth grade after missing so much."  
    "That must have been hard," Trowa sympathized, "My family moved around a lot when I was little, so I never made any friends until we settled here finally four years ago. Everywhere we went, I was always just the new kid. None of my classmates bothered talking to me because they didn't know me and we never stayed long anyway. It didn't help that every new place, I had to take placement tests and I didn't always end up in the same grade as everyone else my age or learn things that I understood. I can understand how much it must have sucked for you."  
    "Well, at least I got put in the right grade and at the beginning of the year," I pointed out, amazed to have met someone who got how lonely and out of place I had felt back then, a loneliness that had never gone away, "And I was born here. I'll probably die here. I've never even been outside of Nausten, so I can't imagine what it was like moving around all the time."  
    "Why were you always moving around?" Quatre asked. I guess this was a new subject for him, "Was you father in the military?"  
    "No, nothing like that," Trowa shook his head, "My parents were both circus performers, so were both sets of my grandparents. We would move to a town, do performances for awhile until our audience ran out, and then we would move on. Sometimes I got to stay a couple months in one place, and other times just a single week. It all depended on the cash flow."  
    Both Quatre and I gaped at him with wide eyes astonishment. Never in a million years would I have guessed that the quiet boy came from such a colorful background.  
    "That's amazing," I couldn't help exclaiming, "I would have loved to live with a circus! All those animals... did you guys have tigers and lions? We never get stuff like that around here. There's some stupid, ancient law that was made up centuries ago saying that only Nausten citizens can perform 'public arts' here, or some bullshit."  
    Trowa laughed at my excitement.  
    "It wasn't all that glamorous, trust me. We lived out of trailers, ate a lot of greasy, bland food, and there was always work to do. I was only ten when we stopped touring, so I never got to do any performing or heavy lifting. I mostly helped cook and keep everything clean. We did have big cats, though. They were my favorite part of the circus and I had always hoped that I could be one of the guys responsible for caring and training them one day. We had horses, bears, elephants, dogs, and a monkey, too."  
    I envied Trowa's childhood, to travel from place to place, to actually see a tiger or a bear in person, face to face, this exotic creature that someone like me had absolutely no hope of seeing except through the heavy glass of a zoo exhibit, a hundred feet away. He was right, his life at the circus hadn't been glamorous, but it was more than my life had ever been and ever would be. I would never see the rest of the world, it's _beauty_. Nausten was my world and I would die in it, and there was nothing beautiful about my life.  
    "Why did your family stop traveling?" Quatre asked.  
    The smile faded from Trowa's face and his expression turned sad and remorseful.  
    "During our last performance together as a troupe, someone in the audience shot a firecracker at one of our elephants. She panicked and stampeded. Something caught fire and it spread very quickly. No one died, but my father hurt his leg trying to get all the animals out of the way of the blaze. He and my mother had a double trapeze and high wire act. His injury made it impossible for him to perform or do any heavy labor, so my parents decided that the most reasonable thing for them to do would be to quit the circus and settle down someplace. My dad got into advertising and my mother used the skills she had learned at the circus to become a dancer and an actor," he smiled fondly at some unspoken memory, "she's a talented performer, no matter what craft she throws herself into."  
    "That's awful," Quatre sympathized, "but at least it worked out ok for your parents."  
    Trowa nodded, but there was something bitter in his gaze. I had seen that look in the mirror a hundred times, and I was a pro at seeing it in other peoples' faces. Trowa's, Quatre's... that look of unhappiness even though they were smiling. I knew without Trowa having said a single word about it, that it hadn't really worked out for his folks. They had given up their dream when they had had no choices left. I had never had a dream like that, nothing solid in my head, but all the same, I knew all about forgotten dreams, about giving up on things.   
    I wondered if Trowa's father was like mine and loathed his job, loathed that he had had a future stolen from him. At least his son hadn't been responsible for that fire. He couldn't resent him for it like my father resented me.   
    Our food came then, ceasing all talk as we dug into our respective meals. Although it hadn't been exactly what I had wanted, the salmon and everything it came with was delicious. If I were rich, I thought as I shoved forkful after forkful of the herb encrusted fish into my mouth, I would eat salmon every single week and would never grow tired of it. The vegetables, which were actually green beans, broccoli, those weird little corn things, and carrots, were fresh and even the baked potato was amazing. Next time I made some for dinner, I would have to remember to add cheese and bacon to them if we had any.   
    My stomach was usually happy with whatever I shoved into it, but when I tasted the fish, it seemed to open up into a bottomless pit. I put away all that food, plus two Shirley Temples, and I could have easily eaten more if it had been in front of me. I didn't know if it was because I had had so little to eat that day or if it was because of some weird upcoming growth spurt or just the occasion, but I felt like a glutton.  
    "So," Trowa said through a mouthful of chicken once we had eased out of our feeding frenzy mode and could actually speak to each other again, "How did you two become friends on the very first day of school?"  
    "Well..." I started and then looked at Quatre nervously. I had finished my food and Trowa was halfway through his, but my best friend was picking at his steak almost prissily, not really caring about it nearly as much as the salad he had gotten with it.  
    I didn't want to tell this story. It wasn't nearly as painful or sad as Trowa's story about the fire, but it felt too personal to me. I didn't want to relate to this boy that I was just starting to know, a boy that Quatre wanted to impress, that on that first day of school, Relena had accused me of being a liar and had written on my face in permanent marker. I didn't want to tell him that Quatre was the only person in that entire classroom who had given a shit, the only one that had wanted to help, and I certainly didn't want to tell him how low that one act had rendered me and _why_.  
    I could only see acceptance in Quatre's blue-green eyes. Whatever I decided to tell Trowa was fine with him. Of course it was, he was the hero of the story. He didn't have anything to be ashamed about.  
    "It's a long story," I concluded lamely.  
    "You have a lot of long stories," the taller boy chuckled again.  
    If anyone else had said that, I would have prickled and felt teased. Hell, if anyone else but Quatre or Trowa had said that, I _would_ have been teased, but his tone was so friendly and I quickly realized that he was just joking with me. I felt myself relax a little. I was over thinking things again.  
    "It's really not that interesting," I said, "It was my first day of school and Relena was picking on me because I was new and didn't have any friends. Quatre tried to get her to back off and we just kind of... clicked, I guess."  
    If that was a lie, it was surely one of omission since all of that had happened. If Trowa realized that there was a whole lot more to that story than what I was saying, he didn't mention it.   
    "Ugh," Quatre suddenly groaned and pushed his plate away, "I just cannot eat another bite," his eyes locked on me and he smirked a little, "Here, Duo, you can have the rest of this if you're still hungry."  
    The little manipulator reached over, grabbed my empty plate and practically shoved his in front of me. I narrowed my eyes at him, but he just kept smirking back at me. He had eaten half of the steak, if I was being generous, and I was. In reality it was probably just slightly more than a third, but he had cut up the rest of the steak into manageable, bite sized pieces, the whole thing. He gave me an innocent look and continued to finish off his salad with enthusiasm.  
    My dear friend was not fooling anyone with that look and his little plate switching maneuver. Or, well, he wasn't fooling _me_ any. Quatre was sweet and kind, but he was also smart, with all of the strategy and preparedness of a field commander. These traits made him a great manipulator and con artist if the mood struck him. He had ordered the damned steak because he had known it was what I really wanted, had spent the time that Trowa and I had been eating to cut it up for me, and deftly made sure I got it with his crush being unaware that I was too injured to cut up food.  
    If it hadn't been kind of sweet and nice of him, and if I hadn't wanted to taste that steak so much, I would have been pissed off at him coddling me like that. My emotions bounced back and forth between love and resentment for Quatre when he did stuff like this, but I couldn't even complain if I wanted to keep up his little charade, so I ignored his innocent look, speared a piece of steak on my fork, and popped it into my mouth.  
    Mere words cannot describe the sheer bliss of that first bite of steak. It was like butter. Butter and meat, combined in one mouth watering food. If I had been full to bursting, I wouldn't have been anymore. I was starting to believe that I had died tonight. I had gotten hit in the head with a rogue basketball, fallen from the bleachers and broken my neck. Now I was in heaven, I had thought to myself. That was the only logical explanation for this meal, for this friendship I had stumbled onto with Trowa, and the only explanation for how fucking happy I was, that nothing seriously wrong had happened. Relena had been vanquished, if only for the night, and I was happy. It couldn't be real.  
    Nothing bad happened at the end, either. We all finished our food, even got dessert (we shared this huge sundae thing that Beth recommended). I barely remembered what we talked about as we waited for the check. Something boring. Something pleasant. Quatre paid for the whole meal. Trowa started to complain about it, but I assured him that it was easier to convince a mountain to relocate than convince Quatre not to do something nice like that. I was sure that he could afford it.   
    "Maybe I'll see you around sometime," was the last thing that Quatre's crush said to me as we parted, spoken with a shy, but friendly smile. I felt amazed and had just nodded in agreement. Then it had just been Quatre and I as we walked to his house.   
    "How's the wrist?" he asked me when we stood in front of the fence in front of his mansion of a home.   
    I flexed it and winced.  
    "Still hurts," I said truthfully, "but not nearly as much as it did before."  
    "Good," he smiled warmly, "Just remember to keep it elevated and take more pain pills."  
    "'K," I planned to go to sleep as soon as I got back home and had no idea how I was going to keep it elevated since I automatically slept on either my side or my stomach, but I'd figure it out.  
    Suddenly, Quatre's sunny smile dissolved and he flung his arms around me in a crushing hug. I was glad that my father had messed up my wrist instead of my ribs. He just clung to me for several minutes before saying anything.  
    "Thank you, thank you so much for coming," he said.  
    I patted him awkwardly on the back.   
    "It's no big deal," I murmured, "not like I did anything special."  
    He let go of me, the shoulder of my shirt that he had pressed his face against was suspiciously wet, but I didn't say anything about that.  
    "Yes, you did," he gained his smile back, "I mean it, Duo, tonight was great. I wasn't nervous at all because of you, and Trowa really liked you."  
    I took his word for it as the expert to Trowa Barton. I guess we had sort of hit it off, or at least found some sort of friendly understanding. He wasn't a bad guy. He was fun to talk to when he wasn't too nervous to talk and decided to get out of his shell, and Quatre liked him.   
    "Ah... and is that good?" I asked uncertainly.  
    I was still new to this whole 'my best friend is in love' thing. I wasn't sure if his crush liking me was appreciated.  
    "Of course it is. I wanted you two to like each other. I like the both of you," he paused, uncertain of himself for some reason before saying, "Duo... thank you for having my back."  
    "Always," I promised vehemently.  
    I wished that that night would never end, but it did then. Quatre walked into his house, turning back to wave at me, then disappeared for the night.   
    Why did I write about that night in such detail? I was just going to write a little bit about it, but it ended up like this. I just couldn't stop myself. I didn't want to stop myself. It wasn't like it was anything important. I had dinner with my best friend and my best friend's crush. About the only thing that anyone needs to know about that is that Quatre made a fatal mistake. _I_ made a fatal mistake. I let him say no to Relena Darlian, and in the end, he paid for it. Mrs. Khushrenada told me to write about all the things that have happened to me that made me sad. That night doesn't make me sad.  
    I guess, if I had to state a reason why I wrote all those things about that night it's because I wanted to write about one moment in my life that went right.   
    Before it all went completely wrong.   
  
  
End Part 4  
  
Author's note: As it is now almost the end of November, I am going to start to upload all the of the progress I have made in Nanowrimo. Currently, I am on part 8 of this chapter, so it's going to take awhile to upload it all.    
  
(1) This is an in joke of sorts. In middle school and high school, my schools' mascot was a dragon and our colors were green and white. When I went to college, our mascot was an alligator and our colors were (shocker) green and white. What are the odds?


	10. Chapter 3 Part 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Relena gets Quatre back for standing up to her by using his feelings for Trowa against him in a deadly act of bullying. Can Duo stop it in time?

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 3  
Part 5  
  
  
    Trowa, Quatre, and I didn't get many chances to hang out together after that. Trowa had completely different classes and a different schedule than we did, plus his practices and games kept him busy. I didn't go to any more of his games, not because I hadn't enjoyed watching him play, but simply because I hoped that my tagging along with them that one time had given Quatre enough confidence to go out with him alone next time. So I stayed away from their dinners and meetings outside of school, beyond one time that they took me to a movie with them. In school I had tried to do the same, but the both of them included me into their talks and meetings like the third wheel that I was. I almost felt bad about it, but I also liked it.   
    I was still hesitant to call Trowa a friend. I knew a whole lot more about the boy, and I liked hanging out with him, but I just felt so weird about it. I think it was because I was helping keep this huge secret from him, and while Quatre was trying to keep that secret hushed, I wanted it out in the open. Sometimes just being around them made me feel like a pretzel being pulled in all these different directions. But I couldn't help but feel this camaraderie with the eighth grader.   
    He didn't like to flaunt that he was friends with Nate and I, but I couldn't blame him. We were tainted and he wasn't. Even if he had helped Quatre stand up to Relena at the basketball game, he was still scared of her, scared of what her rumors could do to his reputation. All the same, he was an easy guy to get along with and after being Relena's target for years, I sympathized with his efforts to stay out of her radar. I wished that she would just drop dead or go find some other targets and give my friend some space.  
    She didn't. If anything, I saw her more than usual, like she was shadowing us. Although that might just have been in my imagination. After Quatre had stood up to her at the basketball game, I had become hyper aware to her presence, and Zechs's. The fact that for almost a week, neither of them had done a single thing to us made me more frightened instead of relaxed. I knew that she was going to do something awful to Quatre, it was just a matter of when. Not that that did anything to prepare me for when she did.  
    We had two rounds of regional testing to do that week, Math and Sciences were on Friday and Reading Comprehension was on Tuesday. We would get our results back the following week, but by that Thursday, I was confident that I had done very well on the RC portion of the testing at least. I had been relieved when I had found out it would be on a Tuesday, giving Quatre and I plenty of more time to prepare for the Math and Sciences one, and giving me a reprieve of swim class. That was, until I was learned that swim class was being moved to Thursday because of the tests.   
    I hated my swimming lessons. Ever since Zechs had almost drowned me in the pool a year ago, I had learned to be very afraid of them. They took away time I could be working, were, in my humble opinion, totally useless, and between the two showers we had to take and our mingling with the upperclassmen in the pool, the lessons had taken on a nightmarish quality for me. I was on edge, always on the look out for something to go wrong. I never thought that the thing that was going to go wrong was going to happen before we even got to the pool.  
    We were all walking as a mass group towards the pool from school that day. Trowa got excused from all of his swimming classes that year, thanks to his basketball practices. Lucky him. I was sure he was a great swimmer, he had the long limbs and thin body for it. Quatre and I were trailing behind in the group like we always did. The both of us had found that when you were in the back, you didn't get noticed, while most of the kids that wanted to cause problems for us were at the head of the pack. We were halfway to the pool when we hit the major intersection of that part of town. Because Quatre and I were straggling, we missed the walk light while most of the group rushed ahead of us. I certainly didn't mind waiting for the light, it wasn't like I was in a hurry to get to the pool.   
    I never saw Relena walk up behind Quatre until I heard him cry out in pain. I whirled just in time to see her grabbing and twisting his hair from behind, Quatre unable to do anything to stop her unless he wanted hurt himself.  
    "Hi, Winner," she said with that fake, cheery tone that I had grown to hate, "It's been awhile, hasn't it? How have you been doing? I've been very worried about you. See, here I was being a good friend and taking it easy on you, warning you that hanging out with Barton isn't a very healthy thing for you, but I guess you must be losing your hearing because I could have sworn I've seen you talking with him every day this week. You _must_ be going deaf, it couldn't be that you're willingly ignoring a good friend's advice, that just _can't_ be true."  
    She twisted his hair harder and shoved him forward so hard, he almost tripped and fell in the street, regaining his balance at the very last second.  
    "I think you need to be taught some manners," her blue eyes narrowed as he stared at her, trying to gauge exactly what she was going to do, "I think you need to learn that you just can't go around ignoring friendly advice, not if you want to live a healthy and full life. Not to mention that you really hurt my feelings that night. I know that you didn't really mean it, you just didn't know any better, so here's what we're going to do."  
    She grabbed the back of Quatre's shirt and pushed him again. This time, he would have fallen right into the street where cars were passing us if she hadn't been holding his shirt.  
    "Relena," Quatre's voice was full of fear.  
    This wasn't just one of her stupid pranks. This wasn't putting tacks in his shoe or even forcing him to drink something he was allergic to. She was furious and what she was doing, just in fucking _jest_ was incredibly dangerous. I felt my heart start to race. The light on our side turned red just then and cars from the left of us turned into our street, whizzing past us. I envisioned myself pushing her in front of one of those cars.  
    "Because I'm such a nice person," she sneered, "I'm going to give you one, last chance to redeem yourself. You're going to prove to me that you understand what happens to people like you when they ignore friendly advice and start to think that they're just like everyone else. You're going to cross the street, right when I tell you to. If you listen, do as you're told, and make it to the other side, then I'll forgive you."  
    My heart pounded in my chest like a trapped, terrified bird in a cage.  
    "Relena, _stop_ ," I begged her.  
    She couldn't really be serious with this, she _couldn't_.  
    "Shut up," she snarled at me and immediately turned her attention back to Quatre, "You can say no, of course, just like you said no to me before, but I wouldn't recommend it. Not if you don't want to find all sorts of _nasty_ rumors flying around about Trowa's sexuality. I guarantee you, since you've been hanging around with him so much lately, they will be _very_ believable."  
    Every drop of color disappeared from Quatre's face. He looked like she had just eviscerated him and I was sure that he couldn't have looked any more sick than he did if she really _had_ spilled his guts on the ground. He didn't call her bluff, neither did I. We didn't need to because she was right. She didn't care about ruining Trowa's reputation. She would probably find it funny.   
    I could see the wheels turning in my best friend's head. I could see him blaming himself, _hating_ himself for doing this to the boy he loved. He had dared to stand up to Relena, he had dared to be friends with Trowa and Relena could so very easily use that friendship to hurt the both of them. Whatever strength Quatre had had that night at the game was long gone now.   
    The stop light had turned green again. Cars harmlessly passed by us on the side instead of in front of us. With horror, I watched some terrible emotion come over my friend, resignation and determination mixed together.  I saw what Relena had probably known ages ago. Quatre would do everything for Trowa. He would do anything to protect him.   
    "Quatre, no!" I yelled at him as he pulled his shirt from Relena's harpy grasp, turned and look out onto the street.  
    I didn't move to stop him. All I could do was yell at him. I was so **_fucking_** useless.  
    "C'mon, Quatre, this is stupid. You don't have to do this, just wait for the damned light!" I pleaded him, but he just kept staring ahead like he was sleepwalking. I turned to Relena, "Please don't do this. You _know_ he's sorry. He forgot himself and did something stupid, that's _all_. He could get hurt!"  
    I would have gotten down on my knees and kissed her shoes if it meant getting her to call this off. Pride was worthless to me, I would have degraded myself to a level that a maggot would have been repulsed by.  
    "If you don't shut up," she said with a sweet little smile that made me sick to my stomach, "I'll make him do it blindfolded all the way to the pool. You know that I can."  
    I promptly shut up. My heart was beating so fast, it was a wonder that I hadn't blacked out. I wanted to cry in hysterics. I couldn't do either. I had Quatre's back. That hadn't changed in less than a week. I might have been useless, a piece of shit masquerading as his friend, but I wouldn't leave him. I wouldn't so much as take my eyes off of him.  
    Relena placed her clawed hands on my friend's shoulders and leaned in to speak in his ear. They would have looked like close friends having a talk to anyone not close enough to hear what she was saying.  
    "When I say go, you'll walk and you'll keep walking until you reach the other side. If you stop or run or walk back here, consider our deal broken. But you won't do that, will you? You'll just keep walking when I tell you to, won't you?"  
    Her nails dug into his shoulders. I wanted to rip them off with pliers, one at a time.   
    "Yes."  
    Quatre's voice was startling and steady, like a gunshot. Relena's eyes fixed themselves on the stoplight, waiting, while Quatre's stared straight ahead at his goal. I felt myself start to shake and I couldn't understand how my friend was so still and calm. I felt like I was dreaming. Our side of the stop light turned red and a couple cars turned into the street. I was never happier that it was a weekday and there wasn't a whole lot of traffic.  
    "Go," Relena hissed at Quatre.  
    He took a step off of the curb and I almost screamed. I heard whispering behind me from other stragglers in our class. They might as well have not existed at all to me. My eyes were fixed on Quatre's back as he walked as a decent pace, not sedate, but not running either, as per Relena's orders. That one stretch of street seemed a thousand miles long. I couldn't imagine what was going through his head, how he could just walk like that, totally collected.  
   _'Walk with him,'_ a voice that was really just my own whispered at me inside of my head.   
    I should be out there, I realized. I should be walking with him. Relena hadn't said that he had to do it alone. I should be there, facing the same terror that he was, ready to push him out of the way if a car came too close to him. But I couldn't. I wasn't. I was a coward. Just the thought of walking out into traffic with him had me terrified and frozen to the spot. I wanted to kill myself as I stood there, letting my friend do this horrible thing. I didn't tell myself that there was nothing I could do, because there was, and I refused to make this any easier on me.   
    A black sedan sped past, mere inches from him, and the driver honked the horn loudly as my friend as it very nearly hit him. I cried out, but Quatre stood there, his hands starting to shake. I dared to take my eyes off of him, just in time to see a large truck driving down the other street.   
    'Please, please, please don't turn here. Just keep driving straight, don't turn right...' I begged the universe, God, anything that had the power to change the nightmare I saw coming.   
    But I knew that the truck was going to turn. It had the name of the grocery store that was further down this street painted on it's side.  
    "You'd better start moving, Winner!" Relena called to him cruelly.  
    Quatre's head whipped to the side and he saw the truck as it neared the stop light. He saw what I saw. The truck's right blinker flashed and it accelerated into the turn, going too fast for something that size down this street. I saw him notice it. And I saw him not move a single inch.  
    "He's frozen," I heard one of our classmates remark in fear, not that _they_ had anything to be afraid of.  
    They were wrong. He wasn't frozen. He wasn't paralyzed with fear. He had given up. If only for one second, standing in the middle of that street, halfway to safety, my best friend had resigned himself. To the truck heading his way, to his misery, to his guilt, to Relena. He just gave up.   
    I didn't think about it then. I didn't think about what dark and horrible place Quatre's mind was at in that moment that had just... shut down his heart, shut down all the things in a person that drove them to survive no matter what. I didn't think about anything at all. I ran. I ran faster than I ever had on the track at school. I ran harder than I ever had with my father chasing me. I ran and I tackled my best friend to the ground in a move that probably would have made Coach Strum gape.   
    I grabbed Quatre's head and forced it to the ground, surrounding his slightly smaller body with mine, using my superior weight to make him lay flat just as I felt the truck strike him. Or me. It was hard to tell in that moment beyond the screaming voice in my head that I was too late, Quatre was dead, I was dead, and we were about to be turned into street hamburger. I felt something tear up my back. I learned later that it was the truck's license plate. I didn't even have the time to thank any kind of deity that the vehicle that had nearly killed my friend was something that was high from the ground, high enough for two stupid ass teenagers to pass under as they lay flat on the ground.   
    The bottom of the truck was searing hot and I felt several metal _things_ scraping against my back, burning my skin with oil and grease. I couldn't breathe. The entire time, all I could hear was that screaming voice and my heart like thunder in my head. The truck had passed us by in less than half a second, but it had felt like a fucking hour to me as I hugged Quatre close, the warmth of his skin the only thing I could focus on without screaming out loud. Or maybe I had, it was all lost under the roaring sound of the truck.   
    When the truck passed by us and the driver slammed his vehicle to a stop, I was shaking so hard, I couldn't tell if it was me or the ground for awhile.   
    "Oh, God. Oh, God," I heard someone say. For a moment, I thought that I had. Later, I would realize that it had been the truck driver climbing down from his vehicle, thinking he had just run down two kids.  
    I pried myself off of Quatre slowly. It seemed impossible to move, like I had glued myself to him and just getting off of him with my trembling limbs was a trial. All of my muscles were still taut and aching. I could taste a revolting mixture of gasoline and blood in my throat.  
    "Quatre?!" I choked out with some effort.  
    He didn't answer me. He didn't so much as twitch. Had I been too late? I turned him over a little so I could see his face. His eyes were closed and his cheek was cut up and bloody from my pushing him to the ground, but I couldn't see any large head wounds. I shakily pressed my fingers against his throat, searching for a pulse. When I didn't immediately find one, I nearly panicked, but then I felt a heartbeat, sedate but strong. It was the most wonderful feeling in the world. Quatre was alive, just unconscious. I finished turning him over onto his back, furiously looking for any injuries. I had felt the truck hit him. I might have been panicking and terrified, but I was certain I had felt it or heard it.  
    He had scratches and cuts all over his arms from the pavement and one leg of his jeans were ripped to hell and stained with small patches of blood. Bruises were already forming on his pale skin. Both of our clothes were torn and bloody, although it would be hours before I realized my own injuries, and we were both filthy from the road. I thought that I might have just imagined the truck hitting Quatre until I saw his left arm.  
    When I had tackled my friend flat to the ground, I had been the most concerned about his head and back. What I had been thinking about couldn't be labeled as rational thought when I had seen that huge truck bearing down on him, but shattered skull and broken spine had been among those chaotic thoughts. I hadn't thought about his limbs.   
    The truck _had_ hit him. It's front bumper had struck his arm and broken it in two places. The bone was sticking out underneath his upper arm. If it had been anyone else, I would have thrown up, but it was _Quatre_. All that mattered was fixing it. All that mattered was hearing someone tell me that he was going to be fine, that I had gotten to him in time.  
    "I... Is he..?" I heard the truck driver more clearly this time.  
    I looked up at him. He was just some ordinary guy, older than my dad with grey in his dark hair, neither fat nor buff but still bigger than my father was.  
    "He's hurt," I said, my voice still sounding hoarse, "he needs a hospital."  
    "Are you ok?"   
    It was the first time I had thought about it. In some distant place where all my sanity had fled to, I realized that I hurt. I felt that tacky feeling of blood that I was familiar with gluing my tattered shirt to my back. My back was in agony. My ribs ached and my head pounded. My knees and lungs were on fire. None of it mattered to me. Unlike Quatre, nothing was broken or too damaged for me to stand. I nodded.  
    "I'll drive you two there," the truck driver said, almost eagerly. Maybe he actually felt like shit for almost killing us, or maybe he was hoping that if he was helpful, Quatre's parents wouldn't sue him.  
    What Relena and the rest of the gawkers were doing was lost on me. All that existed in my world was me, Quatre, and this man that could help my injured friend. I could have been furious at him. It was _his_ fucking truck that had hit Quatre. If he hadn't been driving that monster over the speed limit, and had better reflexes, he could have avoided hitting Quatre entirely. but if he had been driving any faster, the both of us would have been flattened. Besides, it wasn't his fault, not really. It was Relena's.  
    "Let me help you-," he started like he was going to grab Quatre.  
    I didn't need his help. Adrenaline like an electric shock was coursing through my blood. I could have run a marathon with energy to spare to swim a hundred laps. And I was determined to save Quatre. With no real consciousness of how much my body was hurting, I laid Quatre's injured arm over his stomach so it wouldn't move and I wouldn't do it any more damage, and I lifted my friend into my arms as I stood like I was holding a wet paper bag. The truck driver stared at me in astonishment and I had no clue why at the time.  
    Then we were moving. I would have ran to the passenger's side door of the truck if only my battered legs had been capable of it. Getting inside the truck and sitting down in the seat while carrying Quatre was a struggle I never want to relive. Frankly, I don't know how I managed it and probably could never do it again without that toxic mix of adrenaline and shock. I kept my friend cradled on my lap, which also wasn't that damned easy. I was taller than him, but not much. I would have put the seatbelt around us if I hadn't been so scared of hurting his arm.   
    The cab smelled thickly of stale chips, sickly sweet energy drinks, and cigarette smoke. It made me nauseous. When the driver blasted the heat on, directing the vents all on me, I almost yelled at him to shut it off, not understanding why he needed it on at all, or on me. It wasn't cold at all.   
    None of us spoke the entire ride to the hospital. I think that the truck driver was still too freaked out by what had happened. I was well beyond just freaked out at that stage. At some point during the ride, I can't recall exactly when, I realized that I was crying. I didn't look over at our driver. I didn't want to see his awkward concern or his fake kindness at finding a kid crying in his truck. My tears didn't make me feel better. I just felt like my insides were going to explode out of my skin at any moment.  
    By the time that we got to the hospital, most of my adrenaline was long gone. I was sleepwalking in a nightmare, ready to just give up and fall into blackness, the gentle rocking of the truck and the hot air not helping me to be alert and awake. The driver helped me out of the cab and I stumbled onto even ground. I was still shaky but I had managed to stop crying.  
    "Thanks for the ride," I muttered.   
    The driver looked at my awkwardly and asked me if I wanted help getting Quatre into the emergency room even more awkwardly.  
    "Just go away," I told him flatly. I was too tired and too scared to deal with him.  
    He didn't need to be told twice. The asshole, good intended or not, vanished and left me alone with my unconscious friend outside the hospital. Still, I was happy to see him go. I hadn't even taken down his license plate number or name. Oh, well, I thought. If Quatre's parents wanted to sue him, it wouldn't be that hard finding him and his beast of a truck.  
    I had never actually been to an emergency room when I hadn't been the one that had the emergency. It was a surreal experience. I didn't like being the worried part for once at all. I walked to the very first desk I saw. The receptionist's eyes went huge when she saw us.   
    "My friend..." I somehow managed to speak intelligibly although all I wanted to do was scream until all of this went away, "we were crossing the street... he got hit by a truck... his arm is broken..."  
    The receptionist didn't mince words with me. I guess a thirteen year old getting hit by a truck warranted immediate attention because she motioned or shouted at a passing orderly or nurse, or maybe she had done it via telepathy, it was all a blur at that point. The orderly disappeared for a moment, then re-emerged with a stretcher or gurney. I can never get those two straight. I let them take Quatre and watched, helpless, as they carted him off somewhere.  
    "Name?" the receptionist barked at me.  
    I blinked up at her like an owl. She might as well have spoken to me in French.  
    "Your friend's name, sweetie?" she said more kindly, her voice oozing sympathy.  
    "Quatre Winner," I croaked.  
    She wrote down the information on a clipboard that she must have pulled out of her ass.  
    "And yours?"  
    "Duo Maxwell."  
    At least I could remember our names. But I was fading fast. 'Shock,' some part of me supplied helpfully.  
    "And do you know his parents' phone numbers?" she continued.  
    I wracked my brain and found nothing. I was sure that I had known them at some point, but right then, standing in that white, hospital reception area, shaking and aching, I couldn't remember my own phone number. Panicking a little, I shook my head.   
    "That's ok, Duo," she assured me with a gentle smile. I was sure that they taught people like her that smile in their job training. I remember nurses smiling at me like that before, "I'm sure it will be in his medical file. Do you know if he's allergic to any medication?"  
    "I don't think so," I tried to be helpful, "He's lactose intolerant and his skin gets irritated if he eats blueberries, but I don't think he has problems with any meds."  
    "Good," she nodded and then paused. I got the sudden impression that she was stalling. At the time, I was certain that I had missed something, some scene or event that had happened before, but I couldn't figure out what it was.   
    When she couldn't figure out the next thing she was supposed to say and minutes passed, I was about to just walk off and leave her there, maybe find a nice, comfy hospital chair to pass out in until someone told me that Quatre was alright. Just as I had decided to do just that, a man strode out of the opposite double doors from where Quatre had disappeared into. He was wearing a long white coat, glasses, and holding a clipboard.   
    I had to assume he was a doctor between the coat and the attitude like he knew exactly where he was going, and it was somewhere very important. The doctor looked around the waiting room before noticing me and striding over. He was here for me. I was out of it, but I wasn't out of it enough to not realize what it was I was missing. The receptionist had called him. Was I getting kicked out of the ER because I wasn't related to Quatre? No, my frazzled brain pointed out, if I was getting kicked out, they wouldn't be sending a doctor to do it.  
    "Doctor," the receptionist stood back up from her chair, "This is the boy I called you about. He says his name is Duo."  
    "Thank you, Sarah," he said without so much as glancing at her. She was a footnote in his day.   
    "Hello, there, Duo," he greeted me like I had an appointment or something instead of just strolled in here with my bloody and battered best friend, "I'm Doctor Michells."  
    "Hi," I said dumbly, not sure why he was here.  
    "That was a very brave thing you did for your friend," he commented, raising a dark eyebrow when I shrugged him off.  
    "I just carried him in," I muttered.  
    His grey eyes glanced at my hands. They were cut and bloody and still trembling. I was starting to feel like a drug addict going through withdrawal with all this shaking that I couldn't control.   
    "Why don't you follow me, Duo?" he asked.  
    "Wait," I protested, "How is Quatre? Is he ok?"  
    He had to know. _Someone_ had to know. The doctor smiled at me and it kind of made me feel better even though he didn't really have any real information.  
    "Your friend is being looked after, I promise, but now I need to look after you, ok?"  
    I looked up at him, confused. Why did anyone need to take care of me? I wasn't the one that had gotten hit by the truck.   
    "Why, I'm not hurt," I snapped at him, "Quatre's the one that got hurt!"  
    The doctor glanced at the receptionist. I saw her mouth 'he's in shock' to him. It didn't mean anything to me. I just wanted to see my friend, awake and fine, and then to sleep, in that exact order. Nothing else meant anything.   
    "Alright," the doctor said, obviously appeasing me, "But I would still like to check you out, just to make sure. As soon as we're done with that, I'll take you to see your friend."  
    He gestured towards the door that he had just come out of. I didn't have any choice but to believe him. I didn't know how long it would take to fix Quatre's arm or anything else that was wrong with him, and I wasn't sure how much longer I could remain upright. I followed him to a small examination room. Everything looked... grey to me, but there wasn't even enough of me to feel worried about that. I sat up on the examination table and immediately almost fell off of it. The doctor placed a hand on my shoulder to steady me. When he was sure that I wasn't going to fall, he went to the thermostat, turning it up. I remember how the truck driver had blasted the heat in his cab and wondered why everyone seemed to be cold but me.  
    As he walked back towards me, I caught my reflection in one of the mirrored cabinets. I looked horrible. There wasn't an ounce of color in my face, my eyes red from crying and they were glassy. I didn't look like I was any more alive than a recent corpse.  
    "Can I call your parents?" he asked me as he took some instruments out of one of the drawers.   
    "No," I told him, "they're both at work. They won't come."  
    I didn't tell him that it didn't matter if they were at work or not. My parents wouldn't come anyway. I could just imagine what my father would say if I called him and told him that my friend was in the hospital.  
     _"You don't have any friends."_  
    I felt a warm wetness behind my eyes, but I was even too tired to acknowledge that, or the fact that I didn't want my father here anymore than he would want to be here.   
    "Tell me what happened to you and your friend," the doctor switched tracks on me.   
    It was getting hard for my brain to keep up, especially when he shined a light in my eyes. I blinked sluggishly at him before I remembered he had just asked me a question.   
    "We were walking to the pool for our swim class," I said slowly, realizing that I was talking weird and not sure why.  
    Doctor Michells pressed two fingers to the inside of my wrist and frowned.   
    "When we were crossing the street, a truck pulled into the street we were walking on. It was going too fast," I lied too easily, even in my tired stupor.   
    "Any troubles breathing?" the doctor suddenly asked. He really needed to stop doing that, it was getting harder and harder to follow him.   
    I shook my head and he seemed pleased with that answer. What the hell did my breathing have to do with anything?   
    "The truck almost hit Quatre," I continued, "I managed to push him to the ground before it did, but it still hit his arm pretty badly."  
    "That was quick thinking," he said in approval and then glanced at my torn up knees, wincing, "I take it that's what all these cuts and scrapes are from?"  
    I nodded and then quickly decided to answer him verbally from then on. Nodding made the room spin. There was something wrong with me, I suddenly realized, and some rational part of me decided to wake up and tell the rest of me that the doctor had known that all along and probably knew what that something was, even if he wasn't telling me.   
    "Did the truck hit you?"  
    "No-" I paused and realized that I wasn't so sure anymore. Everything seemed like a dream to me and I was having a hard time remembering certain things, while others, like the feeling of the truck passing over my back, Quatre's warmth in my arms, and my screaming terror as it felt it hit him, were painfully clear and sharp, "I don't think it did. The only thing that really hurts is my back."  
    At that, he quickly glanced at my back and when his face came back within my field of view, he was wincing again.  
    "Your knees are scraped raw, your elbows, too, and you have a fairly bad cut along your back along with scrapes and some first to low second degree burns, but it's hard for me to tell with your clothes in the way," he summed up my injuries. I hadn't even realized that my back had been burnt that badly, "would you mind taking them off so I can do a more thorough examination? You can say no and we'll wait until we can get a hold of your parents, but if you do say yes, I will still have a nurse present since you're a minor."  
    I shrugged. I didn't care. I was beyond caring. My parents were not going to be 'gotten a hold of' and I didn't want them to be. Things were simpler when my father wasn't involved. My clothes were ruined anyway and the blood on my shirt was starting to bug me.   
    With my consent given, Doctor Michells left the room briefly to grab a nurse. I looked at my reflection in the cabinets again. I somehow looked even worse than before and I wondered if the truck really _had_ hit me or maybe I had hurt myself worse when I had tackled Quatre to the pavement than I had originally thought. Not that I had thought about my injuries at all until then. I didn't even recognize myself, I was as white and pale as a human being could be. My eyes looked hollow and dead, but my face wasn't nearly as cut up and scraped as Quatre's had been. It could have been a lot worse, though.   
    My face could have been as burnt and raw as my back. I had tucked my head down against Quatre's at the very last moment, unthinkingly. I shuddered when I remembered how close the undercarriage of that truck had come to the back of my head. Instead, it had scraped and cut and burned my back. I couldn't complain about that trade, not the few cuts on my face or the pain in my back. At least I still had a head.  
    Doctor Michells returned quickly with a nurse in tow. She had red hair and was carrying a blanket for some reason. That's all I noticed and remembered about her. When she closed the door behind her, without thinking like the idiot that I was, I tried to pull my torn shirt off of me. My back had been hurt before. I had been cut, bruised, and battered. I had had broken ribs and limbs. All of that didn't hold a candle to the sheer agony that shot through my back when I tried to peel my shirt off of it. I didn't scream, but I came very close to it, managing to taper it off to an underwhelming, choked gasp.   
    "There's no need for that," the doctor scolded, irritated that I had hurt myself in my impatience.   
    The nurse put the blanket down on the spare chair and fetched a pair of scissors from a drawer, handing them to him. Cutting my shirt off of me turned out to be more difficult than I had thought it would be. Where I had been burnt and bled, the material of the shirt had very nearly merged with my flesh. Thankfully, this doctor was a gentle touch and patient, taking his time to slowly pull each scrap of bloodied and filthy cloth out of my various wounds. It still hurt like hell, but there was really nothing he could do about that beyond knocking me out while he did it. The nurse offered to hold my hand if it would make me feel better. I told her no, partially because I knew that it wouldn't and partially because I was afraid I would break her hand.  
    It actually felt really good not having anything touching and pulling at my back anymore. I wrinkled my nose at the smell coming from my shirt as the nurse bundled it up in a biohazard bag. The shirt had been almost soaked in gas and oil and blood. It took me a moment to realize that that smell was coming from me, too. The oil and gas was on my skin, too.  
    "Looks like the truck that hit you had a bit of a leak," the doctor confirmed for me, "You have a fair amount of oil in these cuts. They'll need to be flushed out before we put any salve on them. But that can wait until later."  
    He disappeared behind me again to do a more thorough investigation of my back. He hissed and made some sympathetic noises as he saw the extent of my injuries.  
    "You were lucky you weren't flayed," he muttered and I wondered if he had really meant for me to hear that, "You definitely have a couple of second degree burns here. I'll prescribe you some burn cream that should help them heal faster before you go home. That truck took off a good deal of skin from your back. Your parents will need to keep an eye out for any infections and help you to keep these wounds covered _always_. The only exception is when you bathe.   
    "You also have some deep cuts here. They aren't bleeding too badly, but a few will need stitches. I'll be able to tell how bad they are when we wash them out," he walked back where I could see him, "No sports," he told me sternly, "no gym, no running, for at _least_ a week. And when you sleep, try as hard as you can to sleep on your side or on your stomach if you can."  
    I nodded. It was all I was capable of. I was beginning to feel overwhelmed by all of this. My back was in agony, but the pain, like everything else, still felt very far away from me. The doctor started talking again, but it was all white noise. I was fading in a haze of pain and chaos. I wished that Quatre was there with me. He would tell me what was wrong. I jerked back to reality when the doctor pressed a hand against my right side, the side I had landed on partially.  
    "Your ribs aren't broken at least, just badly bruised," he remarked and then grabbed the scissors back from the nurse.  
    I had seconds to mourn my jeans before they were gone. I might have been able to patch the knees up, but the doctor hadn't even bothered to ask me if I didn't want them cut. He at least let me keep my boxers, the only article of clothing I had on that hadn't become mangled besides my socks and sneakers. I was grateful. I had enough sense left to know I did not want to be naked in front of these two adults, regardless of their profession. And it was around that time that I finally realized how incredibly _cold_ I was. I was freezing to my fucking _bones_. Was that why I was still shaking? But the room had to be sweltering at that point.  
    "Your knees aren't as bad as your back is, but they'll take a long time to heal," the doctor continued.  
    I barely noticed him. Or my knees. Or my back. Black spots were beginning to appear in my vision. Why was I here? I caught the doctor nodding to the nurse. With a soft, but concerned smile, she wrapped the blanket around me.   
  
*****  
  
    Shock sucks. I had always attributed it to something that happens to people going through real, violent trauma. Mothers who lost their children. Soldiers fighting a war. Kids that watched their parents be murdered right in front of them. I had never thought it would happen to me, and I certainly had never thought it would happen just from saving Quatre's life from almost getting mowed down by a truck, but apparently it's a common thing to experience when you're the most terrified that you've been in your whole life. Shock was the reason why I had kept shaking. It was the reason why everyone kept turning the heat up around me and it was the reason why that receptionist had called a triage doctor on me when my actual injuries hadn't been life threatening.   
    As it turns out, some people can actually die from shock if it isn't treated. Treatment being laying the person down with their legs up and making sure they stay warm since they're losing body heat. Doctor Michells couldn't have me lay down with my back the way that it was, so he had settled for keeping me warm and engaged for as long as he could while checking me for serious injuries. All in all, he had been a good doctor. I had certainly had worse.  
    All of this, at the time of my shocked state, had gone right over my head. Honestly, I had been lucky to have been able to string to words together with my frantic, muddled brain. No matter how hard my father had hit me, no matter what damage he had done, how many bones he had broken, I had never come that close to death before. I don't know exactly what had triggered my shock, seeing that truck come for me, or watching it head for Quatre.   
    The second that that nurse had wrapped the blanket around me, I had blacked out. No, blacked out is too kind of a phrase for what my mind had done when it had felt that warmth around me. It had just shut off. I fell and I fell hard into a place that was devoid of even dreams. When I finally came back into the living world, it was hours later and I was beyond disoriented. I didn't know where I was, when I was, or why I was.   
    I felt... better, sort of. At the very least I no longer felt like I had been turned into road kill and was only standing upright from sheer will power. I still felt shaky, but it was from a mixture of tiredness, confusion, pain, and a complete lack of energy instead of shock. I no longer felt cold and my confusion was from just waking up, not a lack of basic cognition.   
    I was lying in a hospital bed on my stomach, as per the doctor's orders, my back wrapped in bandages. From the feel of it, my knees were, too, and there was a band aid on the worst scrape on my cheek. I very carefully turned on my side and didn't feel any pain at all in my back. The doctor must have given me some sort of pain meds. Awesome. There was an IV in my arm, probably fluids. I slowly peeled the tape off holding the needle in place and pulled it out, wincing as I did it. It didn't hurt or anything, I just really hated needles, but I wasn't going to just stick it out in that hospital room all day. I had to find Quatre and I couldn't do that hooked up to an IV.  
    Someone had dressed me in a hospital gown, which was better than just wearing my boxer shorts, but the thought of wandering around in the flimsy gown wasn't very appealing. Thankfully someone had left clothes for me in the chair by my bed, including my sneakers and socks. Was this some kind of new hospital service, buy clothes for pathetic kids that ruined theirs? Not that I was complaining.   
    Moving like an old, arthritic man, and kind of feeling like one, too (I might have been pain free for the moment, but my body was still stiff and aware that it was injured), I got out of the bed and got dressed. The clothes had obviously been gifted from someone who didn't know my clothing size. The sweatpants fit ok, but the green, long sleeved shirt was a bit too big for me. I walked stiffly and slowly out into the hallway after I struggled to retie my sneakers.   
    The floor I had ended up on was not the floor I had started with, but I managed to find a nurses station easily. To my relief, one of the nurses was the redhead that had helped treat me. She smiled brightly when she saw me.   
    "Hello, there," she said, "Are you feeling better?"  
    I nodded.  
    "Do you know where Dr. Michells is?" I asked her, "I'd like to thank him for everything. And... uh... the clothes?"  
    "He said that you would be eager to check on your friend," she explained.  
    I felt myself blush a little at the doctor's 'good deed'. Maybe it really was a hospital service.   
    "Do you know which room Quatre Winner is in, then?" now that I had some sleep and medication in me, I was feeling slightly less panicked than I had before about my friend, and the nurse's demeanor helped, but I was still desperate to see for myself that he was ok.  
    The nurse nodded to the one that was sitting at the computer behind the desk.  
    "Before you see your friend, the doctor prescribed you some painkillers, antibiotics, and burn cream for you," she handed me the prescriptions, "you can get them filled out in the pharmacy downstairs before you leave or at your convenience, but Doctor Michells wanted you to take the painkillers before you go to bed tonight. He stitched up a couple of your cuts," she handed me a packet of paper as well, "these are instructions for taking care of them. If you have to take a shower or bath tonight, try your best to keep your back dry or covered."  
    "I don't have any money to pay for these," I looked morosely at the slips of paper she had given me. I didn't know much about the health insurance that I had, but I usually had to pay something for any medicine I got at a pharmacy.   
    "It's all covered," I was told.  
    I blinked at her.  
    "How do you know which insurance I have?" I asked, perplexed.   
    "We contacted your father. He gave his permission to treat you and gave us your insurance information. Your friend took care of the rest."  
    I stared at her in pure astonishment. I didn't know what was more amazing, that my father had actually taken that phone call, that he hadn't immediately hung up, or that Quatre was awake and paying my 'bill'. I wanted to be angry at him, taking care of me when he should be taking care of himself, but I was too happy that he wasn't dead or in a coma or something. I would worry about my Dad maybe being pissed at me when I got home later.   
    "Winner is in room 223," the other nurse intoned.   
    "Can I go see him?" I asked meekly.  
    "Of course, just sign this," the redheaded nurse handed me release papers. I guess blacking out had gotten me officially admitted. I signed it eagerly. I wanted to get Quatre and myself out of here as soon as possible.   
    "223 is down the hall," the other nurse pointed, "and to the right."  
    "Your friend can be discharged tonight, too," the redhead said pleasantly.  
    "He's ok, then?"  
    She nodded with a soft smile.  
    "His arm was broken and his shoulder and cheek were scraped up pretty badly. He had to have minor surgery for his arm and it's in a cast for the next six months, but he's lucky. He's young, so he shouldn't have problems if he lets it heal."  
    I felt like crying with pure relief. I hadn't fucked up too badly. I walked to Quatre's room with my packet of papers and prescriptions, almost limping. I really hoped the pills the doctor had prescribed would take away as much of the pain as whatever was in me right then.   
    I stopped as I stood outside of Quatre's room. I suddenly felt very nervous. What if his parents were there? What if they were pissed that I hadn't reacted faster? I knew that Quatre wouldn't be mad, but I had never met his folks before and I never wanted to meet them. After years of seeing them disappoint my best friend over and over and over again, I was already a bit biased about them, but it was more than that. They were the Winners, one of the richest families in Nausten, maybe even THE richest family in Nausten. Which probably isn't saying much in comparison to the rest of the country, but here in this town, that kind of wealth went a long way. And me? I was just some bug in their windshield. What would they say and do if they found out that someone like me was friends with their only son?  
    "Suck it up," I muttered to myself.  
    I might be broke and a piece of trash, but I was still Quatre's friend. And at least I hadn't made him feel like shit or locked him out of his own damned house. I knocked on the door.  
    "C'min," a thick voice told me.  
    My stomach dropped when I walked into that room and saw my friend. Quatre had never looked smaller than laying in that hospital bed. His thin arm was in a huge cast from his upper arm to almost his fingers. It seemed to completely dwarf him. He looked pale, although probably not any more pale than I still was, his cheek covered in a bandage. There were dark circles under his eyes and he looked sick. Although, if I had found myself in this place with a broken arm because some cunt had forced me to almost get hit by a goddamned truck, I would look sick, too.   
    His eyes brightened when he saw that it was me, but he still looked so tired, lost, and sad. There was a darkness to those eyes that hadn't been there before, a darkness that I didn't like.  
    "Quatre, I..." I stared to say.  
    'I'm sorry for not making her stop, I'm sorry for being such a weak piece of shit. I'm sorry for not being there for you. I'm sorry I broke your arm.'  
    "You saved my life."  
    I froze where I stood, just a foot into the room. He said it so matter of fact, like there was no doubt in his mind. I wonder what whoever had treated him had told him. It really hit me then. Even though I had been too late to act, I had saved him. Quatre was alive. Hurt, but alive. I had been late and cowardly, but I hadn't fucked up. I felt tears stream down my face, but that was ok. Quatre was the only person in the whole world who I could cry in front of. I walked over to his bed and sat down in the chair next to it. We were the only two in the room. Maybe his family had stepped out somewhere.  
    "I'm sorry, Quatre," I choked out without sobbing, "I didn't know what to do. I should have gone out there with you. I should have pushed you out of the way... I didn't even think to protect your arms... it's because of me that your arm got broken."  
    He snorted at me, a sound that I had never heard him make before.  
    "Shut up, Duo," he said, but it was affectionate and not unkindly, "You ran out in front of a goddamned truck to save me. You risked your _life_ for me. You could have been killed trying to save me! No one else did a thing, and no one else wanted to a thing to help me. No normal person _would_ have done a thing. I didn't even try to help myself. If I had known that you were going to do that, I would have..." he didn't finish that sentence and I wished that he would. I wanted to know why he had just stood there, watching that truck almost hit him. I wanted to know why he had given up like that.  
    "You got hurt and almost killed saving me and you're feeling bad that you didn't think to save my arm from breaking because you were too busy trying to save my stupid, foolish head. You frustrate me so much sometimes," he smiled at me, a warm, loving smile, but also a pained, bitter one.  
    I flushed. I didn't know what to say about that. I supposed that, in perspective, my guilt _was_ kind of stupid.  
    "You aren't super human, you know," he said softly and reached out with his good hand to clasp one of mine, "The cops were here a little while ago."  
    My eyes widened. I had figured that there would be an investigation. It wasn't every day that a Winner, let alone a thirteen year old, was nearly mowed down in front of his classmates, but I hadn't thought the police would show up that fast. I wondered if my father was a part of the investigation. Probably not, since his son was directly involved. The Nausten Police force was small, but they still had rules.  
    "They'll want to talk to you, too," he warned me, "especially if that truck driver doesn't report what happened. If they haven't talked to you already."  
    I had no clue if that driver was going to report anything. He had seemed like an ok guy, but that had just been my impression when I had been half out of my mind. He had also seemed quite eager to do whatever it took not to get into trouble. For all I knew, the only reason why he had stopped his truck at all was because he hadn't wanted to be implicated in a hit and run incident, and it wasn't like the cops wouldn't have been able to figure out that it had been him. How many trucks from that particular store could there be making deliveries at one time?  
    "They haven't," I confirmed and wasn't looking forward to sharing my side of the story.  
    "They talked to some of our classmates," he gave me a strange look, "They said that you shouldn't have been able to have reached me in time. They said that they had never seen anyone, including on any of our or the high school's sports teams, that had ever run so fast or tackled so hard. They said it was like a miracle."  
    My flush grew darker. I was no miracle.  
    "I had no choice but to be fast," I murmured, "You weren't moving out of the way. You were going to die. All I could do in time was run as fast as I could and push you under the truck. And I still almost didn't get to you in time."  
    I looked away from him, his intense, aquamarine gaze making me uncomfortable. He was looking at me in awe and I just couldn't handle that.  
    "I know you don't know it, and you'll refuse to believe me, but you are absolutely amazing, Duo. I don't deserve your friendship," he said sadly.  
    My own thought reflected back at me made me panic. He couldn't think that. He just _couldn't_. He was the amazing one. He was the one that deserved a better friend than me. Just knowing that he thought such a thing turned my stomach.  
    "Don't," I pleaded shyly, "please, just don't."  
    He flashed me an irritated look and I quickly changed subjects. I didn't want to know that the person whose friendship and approval I always tried to be worthy of thought so little of himself and far too much of me, just because I had saved his life  
    "One of the nurses told me we can both go home tonight. Are your parents picking you up soon or does your doctor need to do something else for your arm before you can go?" I asked, still on edge waiting for Quatre's mother and father to suddenly emerge.  
    "My arm is fine," he said, but looked at his cast morosely, "the impact broke it in two places, but my doctor is confident that it will be completely healed in six weeks, ten at the most. He prescribed me some pain meds to deal with any pain, but broken bones are easy to care for. I just have to keep the cast dry and not move my arm too much before the cast is removed."  
    At the time I had felt relieved to hear that. Now it just depresses me to think about, knowing that I never got to see that cast being taken off.  
    "My parents aren't coming to pick me up," he suddenly added like an after thought.  
    "What?" I was shocked. I knew that his parents were usually too busy for him, but he was in a hospital with a broken arm for fuck's sake!  
    "Don't worry about it. They're just busy at work," he tried to assure me, but it just came out sad and full of resignation, "Lily is going to take me home instead."  
    Lily was his second oldest sister. She was seventeen and had just gotten her driver's license a couple of months ago. She was always eager for an excuse to drive. I wanted to ask Quatre if _all_ of his sisters were going to get cars when they could legally drive, but I was kind of scared of the answer. At least his parents weren't completely abandoning him here like mine had.  
    "My nurse said that you were hurt when you pushed me down," my best friend said in concern.  
    "Not really," I half lied. In a way, Quatre had gotten off easier than me in the injuries department, at least in terms of how much it was going to bother and hinder him before it healed, I still didn't consider my fucked up back and knees to be a big deal. There were a hundred more horrible things that could have happened to us.  
    "Duo," Quatre gave me that authoritative tone of his that he often used when he realized that I was bullshitting him.  
    I sighed.  
    "I skinned my knees to hell. I'm probably lucky that I didn't fracture them with how hard I hit the ground. I managed to get both of us under the truck, but it was a close thing. The undercarriage of the truck was overheated and it burnt me a bit. It ripped up my back pretty good, too. The doctor that treated me said it almost flayed me, so there's something to feel lucky about."  
    Quatre paled and hissed in sympathy. I don't know why I told him that last part. He looked so guilty, like he had been the one to nearly skin my entire back off.  
    "I am so sorry," he said sincerely, "Duo, I mean it. When Relena made me do it, I never thought you would get hurt. If only I had gotten out of the way of that truck, you wouldn't have gotten injured so badly..."  
   _'Why didn't you?'_ I wanted to scream at him.  
    "But you're ok now?" he asked guiltily.  
    I shrugged.  
    "For now," I confessed, "I guess they gave me something when they were working on my back. I don't feel anything right now."  
    I didn't tell him about my stitches or how hard it was to move or the horrendous pain I had felt trying to just take my shirt off. I was sure that he would figure it out the next day at school when I had to struggle walking from class to class. That was something I really didn't want to think about. I would have o try my hardest to hide my injuries from Relena and Zechs. I really didn't need to give them something to hurt me with, and even with the painkillers coursing through me, I knew it wouldn't take much at all to hurt me. At least I had a doctor's note to get out of gym for awhile. Something good had come out of that shit show.   
    "What did you tell the police happened anyway?" I asked him.  
    I immediately wished that I hadn't when a deadened, emotionless look appeared in his usually expressive eyes.  
    "Exactly what everyone else told them," he said flatly and tiredly, "I stupidly tried to cross the street when the 'do not walk' sign was lit and when I saw the truck coming, I froze, but _you_ didn't."  
    Something tightened around my heart. I almost laughed, but it would have come out bitter, angry, and insane sounding. Some part of me, some foolish part, had thought that maybe, just maybe, Relena had gone too far this time. I had thought that there was no way she could walk away scott free after the...  
    The what? What had happened to us? What could I call it that made sense of something that still seemed so completely _insane_ to me? Accident? Harassment? Bullying? Attempted murder? I wanted to vehemently deny that last one, but how could I? What had Relena been trying to do? Frighten Quatre? Teach him a lesson? She had been well aware that he could have been hurt, could have _died_. And she had forced him out onto that street uncaringly.  
    Or had she? I didn't want to believe it, but the more I thought about it, the more of it that I remembered, the more that I thought that Relena had wanted him hurt. Would she have even been content if Quatre had gotten to the other side of the street untouched, or would she have been furious and tried to teach him another 'lesson'? A worse, more horrible thought entered my head. What if she was even angry that I had saved Quatre's life? No, no I couldn't believe that even Relena hated Quatre so much that she would want him dead. No one could be that ugly.  
    In all honesty, although I had hoped that this awful incident would stop Relena's bullying, that her goading my friend into the street would get her into enough trouble that we wouldn't have to see her for awhile, I was not at all surprised that our classmates had lied for her, whether out of admiration or fear. How could I have expected anything different from them? Who, but myself, would stick their neck out for Quatre? And hadn't he said that exact same thing to me?  
   _"No one else wanted to do a thing to help me."_  
    But still, it hurt hearing that even Quatre would lie about it. Had he had much of a choice, though? The word of Relena Darlian and a handful of our classmates against Quatre's. His word would go so far only until someone pointed out that he hated Relena and that Quatre had been on painkillers when he had spoken to the police. It didn't matter if anyone believed either of us. Nothing would happen to Relena, I was sure of that.  
    "You can tell them what you want," Quatre offered softly.  
    I could, of course. I could tell the truth. But who would care? It wouldn't change a thing. I was on painkillers, too. I had gone into shock. And I was just Quatre's stupid, worthless friend. The same person that Relena had named a liar all those years ago. If the cops asked me what had happened, I would tell them exactly what Quatre had. I would lie and pretend that I was telling the truth. The irony was laughable.  
    "So she gets away with it," I muttered angrily in the face of my logic, "She gets you hurt and she can just walk away, like always."  
    "Like always," Quatre agreed and looked away from me, his blue-green eyes dazed, deep in thought.  
    What would it take? How much pain and hurt did Relena Darlian have to cause before it stopped?  
    "She tried to kill you," I snapped at him more harshly than I had intended, "She was going to let you die!"  
    Quatre was silent. He didn't deny anything I had just said. That, more than anything else, chilled me to the deepest part of my heart. I had wanted him to come up with some... some reason or excuse as to why that wasn't true. He had known her longer than I had, and he could have used any logic to comfort me about it, but he hadn't. He knew what I had tried to deny. Relena was a monster and when she had forced him to walk out into that street, she had been trying to hurt him. Really, really hurt him. That she had done it because she had been angry wasn't a consolation any more than knowing that she had done it for fun.  
    "I am quite sure," he said with a bitter little smile, "that she'll kill me in the end."  
    That chill turned into a full blown nor'easter. Even now,  as I sit here on my mattress and write in this stupid journal, I feel cold remembering those words, remembering how he looked that night, his eyes far off and full of secret things, secret thoughts that I would never hear from him. I remember that look and I wish that I had understood back then what that look had meant. I wish that I had taken his words even more seriously than I had.  
    "I think I've known that for awhile," he mused, "I just don't know when exactly I realized it. I thought it was ok at first. I thought that if I kept my head low, I could survive it. I have you, I have a friend, and you've always been there for me since the day we met. A lot of days, I think I can do that, just take one day at a time, just let her do what she wants until she goes away for a little while. Then when I started hanging out with Trowa more, I thought I could be strong enough to get past it. But at some point, I realized that she will never leave me alone. No matter what I do, no matter how I act towards her, she'll never be happy until I'm dead. And now... now I don't know if I can take anymore of it."  
    That look was back in his eyes. Surrender. Resignation. Hopelessness. It was the same look he had had when he had almost let the truck run him over. Because that was exactly what had happened, no matter how much my mind screamed that that was a lie. Quatre, if only for a moment, had wanted that truck to hit him. And that terrified me.   
    I didn't even know what to say to him about it. I was frozen in shock with my revelation. I knew that he got depressed, especially lately when he thought about his feelings for Trowa. Hell, I got pretty damned depressed when I thought about my life, too. But I had never had a moment like that, a moment of total surrender. I think I could have tried to deal with his feelings if he had confessed all of that to me on a normal day.   
    But today hadn't been normal, and because of those feelings, he had had a weak moment. He had almost killed himself through inaction. What could I possibly say to him to make that better? He had always been the strong one of us, always the kind one, full of hope. I just couldn't deal with him so despondent and bitter. He wasn't ever supposed to look like that.   
    "We used to be friends, you know," Quatre said, like he hadn't just blown my world apart, "Relena and I. We were never close, and our friendship was kind of tentative even at the start. Our parents threw us together when we were toddlers and we would play together a lot. But the older we got, the more we grew apart. She got new friends and I didn't. Zechs was always teasing and bullying her at home, and she would take that out on me. By the time we were in the seconds grade together, we weren't friends anymore and every little thing I did, she seemed to loathe."  
    That was all news to me. I had know that Quatre and Relena's parents had made them hang out with each other when they had been little, but not that they actually used to be friends. I wasn't at all surprised to hear that Zechs had bullied his little sister. Seeing the two of them interact with each other, I had suspected that before. I could have felt sorry for her. It is hard enough dealing with that prick during school hours, I can't imagine being forced to live with him for your entire life.   
    So yes, at one point, I could have felt sorry for Relena. I could have sympathized with her and understood why she was such an insufferable bitch. But Relena wasn't just a person taking out her anger and frustrations at home on two people who were even more miserable and weaker than she was. She was exactly like her brother, a sadist, and some of the things she had done to Quatre and I were a whole lot worse than just bullying and harassment. How her brother treated her had added fuel to the fire, but it hadn't made her a monster, I was certain of that. She and Zechs were cut from the same, exact cloth.  
    "I was ok, at first," my friend told me, "I hated the bullying, and I resented her for everything that she did to me, but I was used to it. Even when she and Zechs started escalating, started being... _frightening_ , it was terrible enough, but now that she's targeting Trowa... targeting the person that I love... it's worse than ever. She isn't just trying to make me suffer or tear us apart. She's trying to ruin Trowa's life just for daring to be friends with me!"  
    His voice was twisted up with so many awful things. Hate, fear, bitterness, hopelessness. I couldn't bear lying to him. I didn't know how to make anything better for him, how to protect him and Trowa from all of this. And it scared me that the thing that he was upset about wasn't that Relena had tried to hurt or kill him, but that she had threatened Trowa's reputation. Did he care about his own welfare so little, or did he love Trowa so much? If that was what love was, if it could turn Quatre into the person laying on that hospital bed, in tears and full of dark sadness, then I was very glad that I had never experienced it because I wanted nothing to do with an emotion like that.  
    "Quatre, I know you don't want to hear this, and I don't want to argue about it after you've been hurt," I finally managed to say something and I hated how desperate and pleading my voice came out, "but you need to tell Trowa how you feel about him! Relena knows you're in love with him and she knows that he doesn't have a clue. That gives her power over the both of you! She's obviously quite happy to use it to hurt you and to threaten you to do shit like this!  
    "You almost died today just to keep her from starting some stupid rumors. Trowa should know what's going on, he deserves the right to be able to protect himself! If he knew, then Relena couldn't surprise him with it or use it against the two of you. The worst that happens is that he decides not to be friends with you anymore. I know that would hurt you, but then Relena wouldn't care about him anymore. He would be safe, and so would you! For all you know, Trowa could be ok with you being gay and he might find a way to combat rumors like that. I mean, he's popular, so rumors of him being gay could really hurt him and his sports career, but because he's popular, people might not want to believe them for that same reason, right? Keeping quiet about it to him is just going to make it easier for Relena to force you to hurt yourself again!"  
    I was almost panting from saying so much so vehemently, but I had meant every word of it. The entire situation was frustrating me, but it made me wonder. If I fell in love and I had to make a choice between how I felt and some logical situation that would make things better for the person I loved and myself, but it meant that I couldn't be with that person, what would I do? I didn't have any sort of answer because it was an impossible question for me to answer. How could I when Quatre was the closest person I had to loving someone?   
    "I can't!" Quatre cried out, fat, miserable tears streaming down his ghostly pale cheeks, "I'm not that strong, Duo. I'm shy and a coward, and no matter how much I know that I should just try to not be friends with him anymore, for both of our sakes', there's no way I can do that! And what if I tell him that I love him and he's ok with it? What if... what if he likes me, too?   
    "No matter what happens, no matter how he feel about it, I ruin his life! He either gets associated with being friends with a faggot or people find out that he's one and his career gets destroyed just because I opened my big, fat mouth! He deserves a normal life, and even just being friends with someone like me... Relena was right! I have no business being around him! And what if I tell him that I'm gay and he turns me down, or worse, he looks down on me for what I am? If Trowa ever hated me... if he ever looks at me like how Zechs and Relena look at me... it would be the death of me."  
    Quatre tried to wipe at his tears with his cast, scowling when he remembered that his arm was injured, and scrubbed furiously at his face with his good hand.   
    "I know," he said softly, visibly struggling to control his emotions, "I know what I should do, but I can't. I have thought about it until I've gotten headache after headache, and I can't compromise. I can't stay away from him and I can't tell him the truth. I'll just keep going in circles around him, I'll keep hurting myself, even if it isn't fair to him, either. That's the kind of terrible person I am, Duo. Even if I'm deluding myself, I just want to believe that someone can love me like that, the way that I want to be loved one day by someone. When I look at him, I think that he could be the one, and I know it's in my head, but pretending that that one day is possible... it makes me happy. I'm not stupid, I know how insane it sounds, but it does."  
    "It's not crazy," I murmured, looking down at my hands, "Wanting to be loved... doesn't make you a terrible person. I just want you to be loved for real, and not just in your head or in some distant future."  
    He smiled brilliantly at me, his eyes full of tears, and for a moment he was like how he used to be, before he fell in love. For that one moment, he was the boy I had become friends with in the fourth grade, sad and lonely, but still hopeful, still so happy just to be with me and unburdened with the knowledge of his future.   
    "When I was little," he told me with a deep sense of reminiscence, "and my father would be too busy to pick me up from school or my mother would forget it was my birthday because she had a meeting, and even my sisters didn't want anything to do with me and I would come home to a dark house every single day... I would dream about just running away from all. Every time Relena called me a loser or Zechs punched me, I would tell myself 'today is the day'. I would fantasize about skipping school and running home. No one would be there, just like always, and I would pack a suitcase full of my clothes and toys. Or maybe I wouldn't even go home. I would just run to the train station and wait for however long it took for the train would appear. I would pay for a ticket with whatever money was in my pocket and then... then I would just be _gone_. No one would ever be able to find me. I could go to some far off place, pick out a new name, and none of my problems would follow me. Some days, I would even run to the train station thinking that. But I never got on. I never took that step off the platform. Some days, I wish that I had.   
    "Then I met you, Duo," he smiled at me again, that soft, warm smile that I loved so much, "and every time I thought about that train platform, I would think 'I can't run away, I'll miss my best friend too much' and I knew that I just had to stay. Not because of my family or because of anything that I was afraid of, but because, for the first time in my life, I had a reason to stay here."  
    I felt myself crying at his words, at his sadness and loneliness, but also how much he loved me. He looked away from me for a second, and it was easy for me to imagine that he was visualizing that train station, the same one my father had used to take me to when I was a child. Then he looked back at me and that childish expression was gone and dead. That mature sadness and darkness that clouded his eyes so much in the recent year or two was back and I hated it for possessing him once more.   
    "If I did run away," he said wistfully, "If I said that I wanted to go on the train and go far away... would you come with me?"  
    I stared at him in shock. I thought that he was just kidding around, but his expression was deadly serious. He was asking me to run away with him.  
    "I know where my parents keep their emergency credit cards, and I know what all their passcodes are. No matter where we'd end up, we'd be set for a long time," he told me, the mature strategist in him emerging. He actually sounded excited at the thought of stealing some of his parents' money. Or maybe that was spite. "How about it, Duo? As soon as we're both healed, we could be out of this shitty town! You'd never have to worry about your grades or money ever again. We'd never have to take these regional tests or SAT's or any of that crap. You wouldn't have to half starve yourself or wear clothing with holes in the winter just to make it to your dad's next paycheck. You could quit those stupid jobs and do what _you_ want to do, instead of what your goddamned father wants you to do. He'd never strike you every again. He'd never yell at your or call you worthless ever again, your mother, too, and it would serve them right!   
    "Neither of us would get bullied again and me..." those blue-green eyes of his turned distant again as he thought of something that he wouldn't say, "I'd never have to come home to an empty house again. I'd never have to listen to my father lecture me about all the things I'll have to do to prepare for taking up the company after him, all the extra classes I'm going to have to take in high school, the grades I'll need to get, and the college I'll have to go to, when he knows... he's known for _years_ that I don't want to fill his shoes, I never have!   
    "And Trowa..." his voice softened almost to a whisper, "I'll leave him behind but... I'll never have to worry about him hating me, or me ruining his life..." Quatre looked up at me, his eyes soft and pleading, like a puppy's, "Would you come with me?"  
    I continued to stare at him. I had no words. How had he known all that about my parents? He knew that my father hit me, but I had never told him about my father's penchant for calling me worthless, or that my mother had. Had he just guessed that? Quatre was smart, could he really figure out where my insecurities about my self worth stemmed from?  
    I hadn't known about all the pressure his own father had been putting him under to succeed him in the company business. I had known that Quatre wanted nothing to do with his father's job. He wanted to study music and mathematics when he went to college, not business. I couldn't imagine dealing with that, having all that stress about getting perfect grades and being forced into classes I hated because of a man that was otherwise absent from my life. Quatre's father didn't know the first thing about him. Worse, it seemed like he didn't want to know. It wasn't like I had such a great future, either, but that was because I had no other choices. Quatre had such potential... he was so smart, he should be allowed to do what he wanted with that intellect, not thrust into some stifling office.  
    Quatre's proposal sounded wonderful to me. Leave Nausten with my best friend. Leave behind all of my stresses, all of my fears, and go someplace where I would be free, where I could do what I want and never be beaten, never be screamed at, never be told that I was an unwanted piece of shit. Just me and Quatre. We could take his parents' money and rent some place. I would be happy with a shitty apartment, and I was sure that Quatre would be able to bribe someone to rent to a couple of teenagers.   
    Neither of us needed much. All I wanted was to buy some books, maybe a TV, or even a typewriter. I had lately been reading up on poetry and flash fiction and kind of wanted to try my hand in it, even if I was sure I was going to fail miserably at both. We could probably make that money last awhile, even if we went out to dinner a few times and to the movies.   
    Just the thought of it made me almost cry. The freedom, the endless road of possibilities, all the things that I could do with just the two of us that I never would be able to now. Maybe we could even find a place that would be more accepting of Quatre in a more liberal state and he could forget all about Trowa.  
    Paradise. That's the word for all the things I was thinking of, but I had better ones. Utopia... and a dream. It was just as impossible as it was wonderful. We could find someone willing to rent an apartment to two thirteen year old runaways, yes. Money was the solution to almost any problem. But how long would that last? How long until the cops showed up to take us back to Nausten, kicking and screaming, either because Quatre's family was looking for him, or someone had found it odd that two thirteen year olds seemed to be living in a place without any adults? How long before our money ran out? Because no matter how careful we were, no matter how far we tried to stretch whatever sum of money Quatre planned to steal from his parents, it would run out eventually. And then where would we be? I didn't want to run away from the only home that I had ever known just to end up homeless. We were too young to get jobs, even just part time ones.  
    What would we do when we got older? How would we live? Would we be able to find decent jobs and if we did, we would be able to go to college? I hadn't been planning on it anyway, but how could Quatre want that for himself?  
    The thought of running away to someplace new, someplace that might be more open minded and away from my parents sounded wonderful in theory, but it also terrified me. I had never left Nausten. Everything I had ever known, everything I was familiar with and comfortable with was here. That wasn't something I was happy about.   
    I often felt like a cat trapped in a cage, unable to do anything or grow, but it was what I knew, and the unknown was just as terrifying to me as the thought that I would never leave that cage. How the hell could someone like me just pack up and move to some strange place? Could I even survive? What the hell did I know about the rest of the world? I couldn't even find most foreign countries on a map.  
    It was just as laughable considering finding a place that would accept Quatre... accept the both of us. Hatred wasn't just confined to Nausten, or even the state we lived in. It was everywhere. There was no place that would accept people for being different, and even if there was, how were we supposed to find it?   
    As for leaving my parents, well... There were times when I hated my father. There were times when I hated my mother, too, especially after she had told me that I had been unwanted. My father beat me and degraded me. He treated me like garbage. My mother ignored me most of the time, ignored that she even had a child, and the times that she didn't, she was even crueler than he was.   
    But even with all of that, even with all of the scars the both of them had inflicted on me, those that were actually on my skin and those that were on my heart... I still loved them. I loved them very deeply. And although I wanted to deny it so much, if I ran away from home, I would miss them terribly. I would miss the deep sound of my father's voice and his laugh when he watched something on television. I would miss feeling his hand on my forehead when I was sick and he was checking my temperature. I would miss looking at my mother and feeling this odd burst of warmth at how much she looked like me, the red in her hair.   
    I could never admit it, I could hardly understand it, but I didn't want to run away like that. Even though I knew that they wouldn't miss me. Hell, they might even be happy to see me gone. I still didn't want to turn my back on them. I couldn't tell Quatre any of that. He would think that I was messed up, wanting to be with people that hurt me. But they didn't always hurt me, and even when they did, I couldn't stop loving them. How could I possibly make anyone understand that?   
    I felt myself panicking, thinking all those things and realizing that quite some time had passed and I still hadn't answered Quatre's question. I could only imagine what I looked like, wide eyed and pale, staring at him like that.   
    "Duo, relax," he laughed, shocking me back into reality, "I'm just joking around. This pain medicine my doctor has me on has me a bit loopy. I wasn't being serious."  
    I could have believed that. I wasn't exactly feeling completely _there_ myself with whatever I was on, and I had certainly never heard him talk like that before. I could have written it all off as him just blowing off steam after Relena had gotten his arm broken. But then he smiled at me, but not a single part of that smile reached his sad and disappointed eyes, and I knew then that he was lying. He had meant every word and if I had said 'yes' in that moment, we would have gone together. But in my silence, that moment I had passed. I hadn't said a thing, but I might as well have told him flat out no.   
    Sitting in that hospital chair, looking at my pale and injured friend as he smiled at me and lied to me, his eyes pinched with pain, I never once, not for a single second, thought that when I turned him down in that moment, that he would decide to leave me here, alone. I had thought that by not telling him yes, that meant that he would stay and stick it all out with me. I was a selfish asshole, only thinking about my own fears, what I needed, and not all of the reasons why Quatre was so desperate to run away from his life.   
    Knowing what I know now... remembering that last day at the train station with him... if I could only go back in time, back to that moment, I wouldn't hesitate for a second. I would tell him yes. But I can't, and it's that thought that keeps me awake these nights, every night in the month since that Quatre's been gone from my life. That, and that last smile he had given me.   
    "Hey, you should sign my cast!" his smile was much more natural this time as he attempted to wave his cast at me in the sling it was in, "I'd rather that you be the first one to do it."  
    I raised an eyebrow at him, perfectly happy for the change of topic and putting our entire, bizarre conversation into the deep, dark corner of my brain I often put things that disturbed me.   
    "You got a pen?" I quipped.  
    "There should be one around here somewhere," he glanced around, "I thought I saw one of the nurses leave one..."  
    I reached over to loot around in his bedside table. I was doped up, but that didn't mean I wanted to move around unnecessarily. I wanted to avoid the pain that I felt earlier as much as possible, and I didn't want to let Quatre know just how bad my injury really was. I was lucky and found a pack of markers.  
    "Someone's kid must have left those there," Quatre remarked and then shot me a questioning look when I very deliberately pulled a dark blue one from the pack instead of a black one.  
    "I read in a book once that blue is the most soothing color," I teased, "and that's why they use blue a lot in hospitals and stuff. Maybe if your cast has blue on it, it'll heal faster."  
    He rolled his eyes at me.  
    "You're hilarious," he said dryly.   
    "I wonder why people started doing this," I muttered as I wrote on his cast, "It's kind of morbid, isn't it? Getting people that care about you to write their names on a wounded limb?"  
    "I imagine," Quatre remarked as he read what I was writing with an affectionate smile, "that it makes the person feel better. They can look at the thing that's hurting them and see how much people care about them. The more names that are on the cast, the more they're loved. It must be nice to have a cast so full of names, you wouldn't even be able to tell what color the plaster was, but it would be really terrible if, by the time the cast comes off, you didn't have any names at all."  
    I didn't like how sad my best friend sounded when he said that, but there was a soft light to his eyes when he finished reading what I wrote, so I hoped my name at least wouldn't make him feel bad when he looked at his broken arm.  
    'Get well soon, and remember not to scratch! -Duo'  
  
  
End Part 5


	11. Chapter 3 Part 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duo deals with the aftermath of Relena's deadly prank that had almost killed him and Quatre. Furious that Trowa won't stand up to her, he issues him an ultimatum behind Quatre's back.

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 3  
Part 6  
  
  
    Quatre and I passed the time waiting for his sister show up by playing tic, tack, toe on the underside of his cast with the different colored markers, bickering over who got which color at the start of each new game. It was nice to talk about something so utterly pointless and neither of us brought up what we had been talking about earlier. I would rather just forget it entirely myself, but I knew that as soon as I tried to sleep when I got home, it would be the only thing I could think about. Quatre won almost every game, but I didn't mind. It was nice just being with him after my scare of almost losing him.   
    One of our games was interrupted by a nurse bustling in to check on Quatre. She wasn't the same redhead that had assisted Doctor Michells, but she checked my bandages while I was it, pleased to see that they were still in place and clean looking. She gave us both a serving of pain pills, which I eagerly swallowed with the cup of water she had put on the bedside table before bustling out again. I had begun to feel the small aches and pains in my back that had told me the original painkillers the doctor had given me were threatening to wear off soon. Quatre's pills looked different than mine and I wondered if they were a larger dose. He stared at them for a moment before following my lead.   
    "Ugh," he made a face as he swallowed them, "Why do these things have to be so bitter?"  
    I couldn't help but laugh a little at his facial expression. I had gotten used to the taste of pain pills, but they were never something that I enjoyed taking.   
    "My dad told me once that the worse medicine tastes, the more you know it's working," I said cheekily.  
    "And did he have any words of wisdom as to why they make pills that you _have_ to take, like antibiotics, so big?" he grumbled.   
    "To torture you with?" I shrugged, "Just be glad you don't have a cold. That cherry cough syrup shit is foul."  
    He shuddered in memory. I guess he had been subjected to that stuff in the past, too.   
    "Well, I'd take nasty cough syrup and horse pills any day over that mist shit they made me breathe when I was stuck here for almost a month with pneumonia," I almost gagged remembering, "That stuff had smell foul and tasted worse and just breathing it in made me feel like I was suffocating. All it did was make me cough until I hacked up the crap that was in my lungs. There wasn't a single good thing about that stuff."  
    I had told Quatre all about the reasons why I hadn't entered the public school system until the fourth grade, including the bad bout of pneumonia I had gotten when I had been eight years old, preventing me from entering the third grade. I hadn't talked much about that time in the hospital, though, because I didn't like thinking about it. How lonely I had been, how my parents had seldom visited me due to their jobs.  
    I can't remember if my mother ever had, but I remember my father bringing me books to read and sitting with me during a few treatments. I think I would have gone insane with the solitude and fear of being in that hospital room, sick and weak and worrying that I was dying and no one was telling me the truth were it not for his visits and the nurses going out of their way to talk to me and play board games with me on the days that I was strong enough.  
    I would never tell Quatre this, but I don't like hospitals. I won't say that I hate them, but I've spent too many nights wracked with pain and sickness in them to not be frightened of them. I guess that's one of the reasons why Quatre being admitted there had freaked me out so much. If I had been older, an adult, maybe hospitals wouldn't bother me so much.   
    But the thing about being a kid stuck in a hospital to be treated is that no one really tells you what's going on, what's wrong with your, or they sugar coat it so much that they make it seem like they don't think your pain and discomfort is that big of a deal. They don't realize that when your body is _telling_ you there is something wrong, an adult telling you that you're fine or you will be fine like it's nothing isn't comforting.  
    I'm sure that all those doctors and nurses that had taken care of me as a child had thought that they were doing me a favor by not telling me what was really going on, that hearing that my arm was broken in three places or that I had internal bleeding would just frighten me. But not knowing the truth and fearing the worst, thinking I was going to die or lose a limb and worse, seeing all those adults around me as distrustful and outright _lying_ to me was what had frightened me.  
    There was no way that I could have told Quatre any of that. He was already so touchy about my dad hitting me all the time, knowing that I had spent so much time in the hospital that I had actually developed a fear of it would have just started an argument, which was the exact reason why I had never told him _how_ I had gotten pneumonia. The quick version being that my father had caught me rooting around in some of his and Mom's stuff in the basement when I really wasn't supposed to, and he had punched me so hard in the chest for it that he had broken one of my ribs, puncturing my right lung.   
    The puncture itself had been small and not that big of a deal, or it wouldn't have been if my dad hadn't waited a week to get it treated, but the infection that had been responsible for my pneumonia had been much worse. My lungs hadn't been able to cope with it very well at that point. Another story that my best friend really didn't need to know.   
    Quatre's phone suddenly vibrated where it had been placed on the bedside table. He made a grab for it, but it was too far for him to reach. I snagged it before he could try to roll over in bed to get closer to it. The phone had a crack over the front display, no doubt from the 'accident'. He shot me a grumpy look, but I just cheekily flipped his phone open and read the text message.   
   _'Just arrived, meet me at reception.'_  
    Great, his sister was here. Now we could get the hell out of this place. I handed him his phone.  
    "Time to go," I couldn't help but smile, even though I wasn't exactly looking forward to going home any more than I was looking forward to staying in that hospital room. I was trying not think about how angry my father probably was at me, between being called at work by the hospital and the fact that it was my turn to take out the garbage, and it was now very, very late.  
    "I suppose I'll have to get dressed," Quatre mused after reading his sister's text, not acting surprised at how curt the message was, and looked down at his hospital gown mournfully.  
    "Do you need help?" I asked.  
    He shook his head.   
    "Well, _probably_ ," he smirked as he sat up in bed and swung his legs to the opposite side that I was sitting next to. On the chair on that side were clothes similar to the ones I had been gifted with. I guess it really was a service, "but I need to get used to dressing myself with this arm."  
    He handed me his cell phone back and I slipped it into my pocket for safe keeping. A sudden thought came to me.  
    "Shit," I muttered.  
    "What is it?" Quatre paused in wrestling with the shirt he had been given.  
    "Our stuff..." I shook my head at myself.  
    I had been so worried about surviving our near death experience, I had completely forgotten about our things. Quatre had had his phone in his pocket, but he had dropped his backpack in the middle of the road. Who knew where his stuff was. I had dropped mine on the curb when I had ran out after him. Was it still there? Probably not. No, definitely not. Either someone had stolen it or Relena had tossed it. There was absolutely no way some good Samaritan had saved it for me, not with the bitch standing right there. If I was lucky, I would recover it to find something nasty inside, maybe my textbooks trashed. If not, it was floating in a sewer or in a dumpster. Fuck her. On top of _everything_ , she would not miss an opportunity to mess with me.   
    I rubbed tiredly at my eyes and felt fresh tears there. It wasn't a big deal, I told myself. It wasn't like I had had money in my bag. But in some ways, I had. All of my textbooks and homework assignments for the night had been in there. Plus the only calculator I owned and the study sheets Quatre had made for me to help me study for the regional tests. All of it, gone. I couldn't afford to buy a new textbook, let alone _all_ of them. I wouldn't even be able to finish my homework. My perfect streak, ruined.  
    "Maybe... maybe if I tell the principal what happened, he'll waive the textbook fee," I mused out loud.  
    "Don't be silly," Quatre scoffed, still trying to figure out how to unhook his sling so he get the shirt on without lifting his injured arm too much, "I'll buy you new books, a new calculator, too. The one you were using was outdated anyway."  
    "Quatre-" I started to protest and he glared at me.  
   _"Don't,"_ he actually sounded kind of angry, "You saved my life, the least I can do is buy you new textbooks. It's just money, Duo, and it will make me feel better. Now, if you want to be an idiot and think you need to repay me, help me unhook this stupid thing."  
    I eagerly stood up, wincing a little as I felt my back protest, but managed to make my way over to him. I undid the sling and very gently helped him lower his arm. I turned around when he started to undo the string holding his hospital gown closed with his good hand. I could hear him struggle and grunt and curse under his breath as he tried to dress himself, knowing how hard that was with a broken arm, but he managed it on his own, even if it took a great deal of time. Well, if his sister was annoyed that she had been waiting for us, she could suck it as far as I was concerned.   
    I turned back around when I felt him tug on the back of my shirt. I wondered if the hospital expected these clothes back or we got to keep them. Unless someone actually told me to give them back, I wasn't going to, I decided. I wasn't one to turn down free anything, especially clothes. I was in mourning for my jeans. I only had two pairs and the ones that the doctor had cut off of me had, unfortunately, been my less worn down ones. Maybe if I offered to do extra chores, my dad would buy me another pair, or I could find some at the thrift store that weren't too run down.  
    I helped Quatre re-attach his sling and hoped that one of his sisters would help him with it when he needed to change clothes or shower since he was having such a hard time with it, at least until he was able to move his arm a bit better.  
    "Will either of your parents pick you up if you call them?" Quatre asked me as he took his cell phone back and slipped it into the pocket of his hospital issue sweat pants.  
    I shrugged.  
    "My dad is the only one who has a car. He probably won't come, he might not even answer the phone this late at night," I said.  
    It depended on how many beers he had had by now, and just how angry he was at me.  
    "In that case, Lily will drive you home," he smiled at me like this was no big deal.  
    "She isn't going to want to do that," I pointed out, "I can make it home just fine on my own."  
    I didn't want to walk all the way back to my house. From the hospital, it was about an equal distance to Quatre's house as it was to mine, but just the thought of trudging in the dark with my back and knees the way they were made me feel drained. I was still getting over my shock, and hopped up on painkillers to boot. I would be lucky if I stepped into my house under my own power instead of blacking out in the street.   
    That would be hysterical. Duo survives getting almost hit by a truck only to get run over on the way home after collapsing in the middle of the damned road. It wasn't even that much of an exaggeration. I was so tired at that point, all I wanted to do was lie down in Quatre's hospital bed and let the blackness of sleep take me. At least I couldn't do my homework without my textbooks or I would be struggling to stay awake as soon as I got home.   
    "I don't care what she wants," Quatre said, "She's going to drive you home. It's 9:30 at night, you aren't going to go walking around in the dark where anyone could mug you or something."  
    "You'd have to have something to steal for that to happen," I rolled my eyes at him.  
    "And even if you're on pain pills, you still hurt your back. You'll only make your injuries worse and you are far too tired for that long trek," he pointedly ignored my comment, "She is _going_ to drive you home."  
    He trudged to the door and I noticed his limp for the first time. The deep scrapes from the pavement and his broken arm weren't the only thing that had been injured. I had to have bruised him pretty badly when I had tackled him and he was definitely favoring his side like I would have been if my back wasn't such a bigger problem. I snatched our prescriptions and followed him out.   
    "Should we get a wheelchair?" I asked him.  
    I didn't like watching how stiff he was as we walked out of his hospital room, but my concern only made him scoff at me.  
    "If _you_ can manage to walk, then I certainly can. I'm not the one with the injured back," he said almost snidely.  
    I wondered just how much information his doctor had told him, if he knew just how badly I was hurt. I didn't think so. I think that if he had known about the stitches, he would have insisted on getting a wheelchair for me. I think that he had thought that I had been exaggerating when I had said I had almost gotten flayed, and I was ok with that. He didn't need to know the truth. He signed himself out at the reception desk on our floor and got directed to the elevator that would bring us right to reception on the first where Quatre's sister was waiting for us.   
    Lily Winner was exceptionally pretty. She wasn't pretty in the way that Relena was with her straightened hair, manicured nails, and very feminine mannerisms, this girl was pretty on a bad day, without ever having to try. Her skin was as pale and perfect as Quatre's was and she had the same shade of blonde hair that was almost white, only hers was shoulder length and curly. Her eyes, a deep blue instead of blue-green, were perfectly almond shaped, her lips a shy shade of pink.   
    She looked like a super model, but one that would look less pretty with make-up on. She wasn't even wearing the pricey clothes that Relena liked. Instead of some lacey skirt or cardigan sweater, she was wearing very dark blue jeans that molded to her long, thin legs perfectly and a blue t-shirt with the logo of some rock band on it. If I had been any other boy, I would have fallen in love with her and her down to earth looks, again, I felt zero attraction to a girl I should have at least gotten a small crush on. When she saw us, she gave Quatre an irritated look, but under that, I thought I saw concern, but maybe I had only seen it because I had wanted it to be there.   
    "Dad is going to kill you," she ranted at her little brother, sounding very annoyed that she had to come all the way out there in the middle of the night, "What the heck were you doing running out in the middle of a busy street for?!"  
    I guessed that Quatre had already told her his abridged story of what happened, but he blushed darkly. I don't think he was in the habit of lying to his sisters.  
    "I didn't look where I was going," he muttered.  
    Lily sighed in exasperation.  
    "You had better enjoy the peace and quiet tonight," she warned snidely, "because tomorrow he is going to lecture you to hell and back about that. You really broke your arm, huh? Serves you right, doing something so stupid."  
    Quatre took all this like a champ, I thought. I wouldn't say that his older sister looked down on him, but they weren't exactly warm with each other, either. It seemed pretty typical with some siblings, I guess. Sometimes I resented being an only child.   
    "You the kid that pushed him out of the way?" those big blue eyes suddenly zeroed in on me.  
    I nodded shyly.  
    "His name is Duo, he's my friend," Quatre confirmed awkwardly. He obviously didn't talk to his siblings much, or rather they didn't talk to _him_ much and they were as unknowledgeable in his life and friendships as my parents were.   
    "Thanks for saving his life," she said seriously and reached out her hand to me.  
    "It-" I was about to say that it was no big deal, but even I knew that it had been, so I just nodded and shook her hand.   
    "You ready to go or what?" she asked Quatre impatiently.  
    "I have prescriptions," he started to say and I handed him his.  
    "Leave them on the kitchen counter and mom will take care of it before you go to school tomorrow... unless you're too hurt to go?" her annoyed tone melted into one that was very concerned as she studied him for a moment.  
    Quatre shook his head.  
    "My arm hurts a lot, but I can go," he confirmed.  
    "Then let's get out of here. I was in the middle of a very important phone call," she huffed in exasperation.  
    Quatre turned to me and mouthed 'boyfriend', rolling his eyes. A dorky little laugh exploded from me. I couldn't help it. I was so worn down by everything that had happened and that had struck me as stupidly funny for some reason. I blamed it on the medication.   
    "His name is Jeff!" she yelled at him, her pale face turning bright red and making her look kind of like a blonde strawberry.  
    One of the nurses at the reception desk, who wasn't the one that I remembered seeing when I had carried Quatre in hours ago, glared at us, doing that stupid finger to the lips thing.  
    "Really?" Quatre quipped dryly, "I thought it was 'studmuffin'."   
    She smacked him on the back of the head.  
    "Come on, you shit, some of us _have_ a life," she grumbled.  
    "Duo needs a ride home," my friend suddenly slid that in there like some kind of verbal ninja, "I told him you would drive him."  
    She glared at him, obviously annoyed that he had put words in her mouth like that.  
    "And why can't his parents pick him up?" her tone turned testy and I wondered if she really was this angry to have been dragged away from her boyfriend's phone call or if she was always like this.  
    "We tried to reach them," Quatre, the one that always seemed to have such a hard time with lying, did so like... well, _me_ , "but his mother works late and his father isn't picking up the phone. He probably fell asleep. He doesn't have anyone else he can call and he doesn't have money for a taxi or bus."  
    Those severe blue eyes softened as she looked at me, but only minutely.   
    "Where do you live?" she asked me.  
    "Granite Ave in South Nausten," Quatre answered for me.   
    Her eyes widened a little as she stared incredulously at her brother. I could already see the gears going in her head as she realized what section of town that I lived in. It was the same thing I saw happen every time I told someone where I lived, especially if they lived up North. She then glanced at me suspiciously and I knew exactly what she was thinking, that I was some kind of thug or degenerate because most of the people that _are_ thugs and degenerates in this town come from where I live.   
    South Nausten might as well be a different town from everywhere else. Only the people that live here seem to understand that where you live doesn't define who you are as a person. Just because you live North, it doesn't mean you're a good person, either, just look at Zechs Darlian.   
    "There is _no way_ I am going to South Nausten this late at night, Nathaniel," Lily exclaimed in an almost yell. At this rate we were going to get thrown out of the hospital, "I'm going to get car jacked-"  
    "Well, it's where Duo lives," Quatre's voice turned icy cold and sounded far older than he was, "so unless you want to leave him here for the night, I guess you'll just have to risk it, Lily."  
    She huffed.  
    " _ **Fine**_ ," she conceded angrily, "but if anything happens to me or my baby, it's all your fault."  
    She turned to storm out of reception, the two of us nipping at her heels, when she suddenly stopped and glanced back at him.  
    "You know," she said with a tone that I could only call serious and somber somehow, "you sound just like Dad when you talk like that."  
    Quatre looked down at the ground, suddenly very quiet and pensive at her statement, making me wonder what exactly was so awful about sounding like his father. We obediently followed her towards the exit and I finally remembered my manners.  
    "Um, thanks for driving me home. I really appreciate it."  
    Lily waved a hand at me like it wasn't a big deal when it had been just minutes before. I just barely remembered to grab my medications on our way past the pharmacy. They were already paid for, unlike Quatre's, so it only took a couple of minutes. Yet another thing to add to my ever growing list of things that I had, back then, intended to one day pay him back for. At least, that was what I told myself to assuage my guilt.   
    We drove in silence, Lily didn't even turn on the radio. I was the first one to break it, feeding my best friend's sister directions to my house. I was very happy that she didn't make any comments about anything on the way there, although I think she had wanted to, especially when we passed by a couple of abandoned apartment buildings all boarded up, some teens smoking pot standing in front of it. I saw her wrinkle her nose in the mirror, but she didn't say anything about them carrying out obvious illegal activity in broad... well night time, but still in public.   
    Frankly, I was used to it. It wasn't like my side of town was a crack den, but it was the place even people who lived up North often went to if they wanted to score things like marijuana. It was an easy money maker and so rampant that the cops almost turned a blind eye to it. Despite all the lectures I had heard in school about how horrible pot was, most of the stuff they told us was an obvious lie, and while it was illegal, it didn't hold a candle to what meth could do to a person.   
    If the police needed to make an arrest, they could just rustle up a dealer, easy, but they never charged them with much. It was a waste of their time. But for someone like Lily Winner, it was pretty shocking I guess. Personally, I didn't care about the flagrant pot smoking that went around in my side of town. I had no desire to try that crap, not with the way it smelled, and it was just another thing I wouldn't be able to buy anyway. It was just a stupid thing that older kids did, I didn't really understand it. I had thought about selling it once, when someone had approached me about it, but the guy's friend had just cuffed him upside the head and pointed out I was a cop's kid. I had forgotten about it since. I knew that Zechs smoked it, but how often, I had no clue, and he also smoked cigarettes. Finding someone to buy from for someone like him was probably easy.  
    And then, finally, we were outside of my house. I wondered what Quatre thought about my house, if he pitied me when he thought about his own huge home or if he just thought this was normal. At least my house didn't look as bad as one of the homes across the street that had trash in the front yard and no less than half of the wood of the house looked rotten. My house was just very small and, well, _quaint_ , but not dilapidated.   
    "I'll see you tomorrow," Quatre called out to me when I stepped out of the car. I nodded to him.  
    'Good luck,' I mouthed to him, thinking about what Lily had said about how angry and disappointed in him his father was. I knew all about disappointed fathers.  
    Quatre had been so subdued during the ride, but he smiled widely at me then and waved. Lily was all too happy to turn her car around and speed off. I wasn't all that sad to see her go. And then it was just me on what passed as my front lawn, looking at my house. My back throbbed dully in time with my fucked up knees. I didn't want to go in and I didn't want to keep standing there. I just wanted to fall onto my mattress for about a kajillion hours. I took a deep breath and walked into my house.  
    I half expected my father to be standing there at the door, waiting to scream at me, maybe sucker punch me, but I managed to walk in and close the door behind me, very quietly, unmolested. I couldn't even hear the television on, which could mean anything and nothing at all. I headed to the kitchen, wanting a drink of water and to wash my face in the sink before heading up to bed. I should also probably read the label on the pain pills the hospital had given me to see how often I could take them. I had just taken a dose, but my back was still aching.   
    I froze as I saw my father sitting at the kitchen table, reading through some bills. He didn't say anything at first and I thought that he didn't notice me there. Maybe, if I continued to be quiet, he wouldn't realize I was home, I thought. Fat chance of that happening. I took a single step into the kitchen and he looked up from what he had been reading, glancing at me with his dark grey eyes. He didn't _look_ mad, and I couldn't see a single beer can around, but that really meant nothing.   
    'Please, not my back,' I thought in insane desperation, 'if he hits me, just don't let it be my back.'  
    "The hospital called," he said very suddenly, looking back down at the bill in his hand, "something about you getting hit by a car?"  
    He sounded more curious than annoyed, even though he had gotten that call at work. I dared to hope that I could get past this ok and let go of the breath I had been holding in. I walked past him to put the bags of medicine and cream onto the kitchen counter.  
    "It was a truck," I clarified with my severely edited version of the story. He was going to hear about Quatre's version of it eventually, so I might as well keep it as close to that as possible, "and it didn't really hit me, it just almost did. I fell under it before it could hit me. The under carriage caught my back, so they kept me in the hospital for a bit to make sure it wasn't serious."  
    "And was it?" he asked, still not looking at me. He was being strangely calm.  
    "I had to get some stitches," I confessed, "and the truck was overheated, so I got burned. The doctor said they're second degree. He gave me some cream and medicine for it."  
    "That it?" he looked at the bags on the counter.  
    I nodded.  
    "Leave it there," he told me, "I want to see what the side effects are," his eyes finally met mine and he regarded me. Whatever he saw on my face made him frown, "Don't bother with the trash tonight, I'll get it. Just go to bed."  
    I couldn't help but blink at him like an idiot for a moment. He had been worried about me, it dawned on me. He had gotten that call from the hospital and instead of being annoyed, he had actually been worried. Not enough to drive to the hospital to check on me or try to pick me up, but a hell of a lot more worried than he usually seemed to me. That was the thing.   
    My father was often a closed book, so it was unfair to say that he never got worried when he hurt me, but he never showed it like he was now. Even knowing that I was more or less ok, he still looked concerned when he looked at me. I felt this intense burning of love for him then, something that was not all that rare for me, but it was hard sometimes, loving him. It wasn't that night. Even if it was just for that one day, my father had loved me and worried about me.   
    I walked to him and kissed his cheek.  
    "I love you, Dad," I told him softly, unable to stop the words from coming out.  
    He didn't repeat them back to me, but he carefully wound his arm around my waist and pulled me into a half-hug at his side, sure that he wasn't touching my back. That embrace, as careful as it was, was strong, but he didn't hurt me. It made me ache for a moment, the reminder of his strength, the reminder that he could love me with that strength or hurt me, and it made the hug a bittersweet thing, but it felt mostly sweet to me.  
    "Go on," he said and released me.   
    I poured myself a glass of water and walked up the steps to the attic, stopping in the bathroom only to splash some water on my face and brush my teeth. When I was in my bedroom, I gulped down the water like I was dying of thirst and laid down on my side on my mattress, not even bothering to take my clothes off. I was dead to the world the second my head touched my pillow.  
  
*****  
  
    I can still remember some of the nightmares that I had that night. One in particular. It would be the one that would haunt my sleep all the way up until we got our regional test scores back a week later. By then, I had an entirely new nightmare that replaced all of my other ones. I don't need a shrink to dissect the nightmare I had that night after saving Quatre from that truck.  
    I was back on that street corner, watching the truck approach my best friend. This time when I tried to run to save him, Zechs was there, grabbing me, holding me back. The truck wasn't just a truck. It had teeth like a crocodile and moved like a train on a straight track, or a battering ram. When it hit Quatre, it _pulverized_ him in a spray of blood. As I screamed, there was nothing left of him that could possibly be identified as human. As the truck got closer and closer to where I was, Zechs threw me out in front of it.   
    Although it had only been a dream, I can still remember the phantom pain of it hitting me, the thud it had made that was really just my memory of the sound the bumper had made hitting Quatre's arm. As the dream progressed in its horrible trek, I ended up in the hospital with Dr. Michells leaning over me. He told me that the truck had damaged my legs too severely to be saved and he was going to have to cut them both off. He reached for a rusty, dull saw and told me that I would never run again, that my parents would have to take care of me for the rest of their lives, their endless burden. As he was sawing my legs off, I saw Relena in the corner of the hospital room, laughing at me.   
    When I awoke that morning, for several minutes, I was positive that I couldn't walk and that the dream had been real. It had taken too long to realize that the agony I was feeling was my skinned knees and ripped up back, not the stumps of my legs. I think, if my back had been ok and I had been able to walk without searing pain, I would have thrown up with that nightmare still fresh in my head, but I hadn't and not wanting to clean up my own vomit, I had managed to hold it in somehow.   
    My walk down the steps was slow, lethargic, and stiff as I tried to do everything in my power to get my hurting legs to work and not aggravate my back any worse. How I managed to make it into the kitchen without blacking out is a mystery. I have never experienced agony like that in my life. Skinning and burns hurt like fucking hell. I would rather have all of my limbs broken. It's impossible not to use your back no matter what you're doing, and my knees just burned when I _wasn't_ using them. Worse, they itched. I knew that was a good thing, it meant that they were healing, but I couldn't even look at them, let alone scratch them.   
    Thankfully, I had woken up an hour before I usually did, so my slow walk to the kitchen didn't make me late for school. Looking back, I probably should have stayed home with the amount of pain I was in, but I told myself that if Quatre was well enough to go to school, I must be. My mother was still in bed and wouldn't get up for another hour to get ready for work, her bedroom door closed. I knew that my father would already be gone, he always was when I got up in the mornings.   
    In the kitchen, I found the bottle of pain pills the hospital had given me sitting on the kitchen table with a note and a package of bandages, the kind you could wrap fully around wounds.   
    'Take one every twelve hours with food. Keep your back and knees clean and covered. Use the cream after you bathe.'  
    I recognized my father's handwriting. His curt, but almost fussy note warmed me. I knew that it wouldn't last, but I was liking him worrying about me like that. I followed his instructions, heading right for the bathroom. Nothing about taking a shower and redressing my wounds had been easy that first time I tried doing it. The water was absolute torture and all I could really do was rinse off my knees and back. I threw out the old, sweaty, and blood stained bandages and lightly dabbed at my wet wounds with a towel. My knees weren't bleeding or anything, and neither was my back, but I still felt like I was going to be sick when I tried to bandage them. I didn't bother putting new bandaids on the cuts on my face and shoulder. My side was just one, single, black and purple bruise.   
    Putting on the burn cream was a struggle. I had to use the mirror to see where I needed to put it on and the image of my back almost did me in. To say it was messed up is being kind. I looked like someone had dragged me through a field of glass and jagged metal with my shirt off. I was sliced up and burned, the sutures very prominent. It would scar, but as bad as it looked, it really could have been worse, I knew that. After I was done with the cream, I bandaged my chest as best as I could, which was awkwardly, hoping I was covering my back adequately.   
    I wrapped a towel around myself, not even bothering with clean clothes yet. There was no one to see me walking around in a towel anyway. I made myself a simple breakfast, two slices of toast with butter and grape jelly and I scrambled up two eggs for some protein, washing the food, and my pills, down with some milk. My breakfast was just bland enough that it didn't upset my stomach. The pills that the doctor had prescribed me were not garden variety ibuprofen. By the time I finished my breakfast and made it back up to my room, the pain was starting to edge off. I just hoped they wouldn't make me loopy.   
    I fared a lot better than Quatre had the previous night dressing myself, not that that was saying much. It still took me three times longer than it usually did and every single time I stretched my arms to pull up my jeans or to thread them through a shirt, I was reminded of how much I did not want to do that. But I eventually got myself dressed well enough that no one would be able to tell that something was wrong with me. I looked around frustratingly for my books and backpack for awhile like I did every, single morning before remembering that I didn't _have_ any books anymore. At least it made getting ready for school simple.   
    School was a nightmare and by the time it was all over, I had wished that I had just stayed home after all. Hindsight and all that. Never mind the amount of pain that both Quatre and I had been under. Never mind having to explain to every single one of my teachers _why_ I didn't have my homework and why I needed to share a textbook with someone.   
    Never mind standing in the principal's office with Quatre hearing a lecture about how irresponsible we were and to always look both ways while crossing the street. Never mind having to see Relena when all I wanted to do was rip her face off with my fingernails, especially when she _kept_ messing with Quatre. I almost lost it when she knocked the papers he had been writing notes on 'accidentally' off his desk on the left side where he couldn't reach down and pick them up.   
    She very contritely, and very fake, in my opinion, apologized to him for it and picked them up for him with a snide little smile on her face. He had thanked her, his right hand clenching his pencil so tightly he had splintered it. At the end of that class, she had casually bumped into his cast, making Quatre hiss and gasp in pain. I don't know how he managed to stay so calm around her after what she had done to him.   
    But never mind any of that, what had made that day such a nightmare had been all of our other classmates. By that point, everyone in the whole fucking town 'knew' what had 'happened', or Nate and Relena's bullshit version of events anyway. Half of our classmates looked at us like we were total freaks and idiots, chuckling about how clumsy Quatre was, walking out on a red light like that. Others were amazed by us, me especially. Tales of my 'epic run' had floated around the school. I had somehow turned from awkward nerd to athlete by word of mouth alone.   
    It wasn't like I had gained fandom from it, more like I was the weirdo that could do something like that and still had zero interest in sports. Zechs especially enjoyed telling people that the reason I had been able to run so fast was like a mom being able to pull a car off her child, and that Quatre and I clearly were more than just 'friends'. The only good part about that was that no one seemed to be taking it seriously, even if people were laughing over it.  
    I hated all of it. The attention, the whispers, the wide eyed looks like we were limbless veterans returning from some war. I just wanted all of it to go away and forget it had happened. Every time someone came up to me and tried to engage me into telling the same story that they had probably heard half a dozen times by then, I just wanted to shove them away and tell them to leave me and Quatre the hell alone, but settled on just ignoring them and walking away myself. It really was not helping the rumors of me being some disgruntled, pissy, anti-social loner, but by the time lunch break _finally_ came around, I did not care one bit It was enough to make me scream, but it was during that period when Trowa learned what had really happened that my school day went to complete and total hell.      
    I don't know how I got past our final regional testing. Just like the first test, we got to skip half of the usual school day to take it, but I would have rather gone to my classes. My mind was in a billion places at once, and not a single one of them was in that classroom. My back ached terribly from sitting in the hard desk chair for so long, distracting me from things I typically struggled with on a good day. I couldn't focus and each math equation I finished seemed to spawn about ten more like some kind of algebraic hydra from hell. If I didn't get the lowest test scores in the entire state, it would be a miracle.   
    By the time that I handed my test in to Mrs. Khushrenada who was monitoring my group, I was so stressed that it seemed like if one more thing went wrong, I was going to either burst into tears or punch the next person that tried to talk to me. I was the very last person to hand my test in, and by that time, not even my homeroom teacher's smile made me feel any better. To make things worse, our 'groups' had been split up by last name alphabetical order. While normally this would be great, placing Quatre and I in the same group, we had been split up by one person. _One_ fucking person. Worse yet, Quatre had ended up in Relena's group. After almost killing him, I had become hyper aware of her presence near my best friend and the fact that she was in the same room with him while I wasn't, never mind that they were taking a test, chilled me to the bone. I was sure that the two of them, being as smart as they were, had finished their test long before I had. Who knew what she had done to him in that time?  
    If my back hadn't been hurting me, I would have ran out of that classroom. I found Quatre easily enough. He was standing by our lockers, waiting for me. He looked incredibly pale, his eyes hazy like he was struggling to stay awake, and those eyes were red rimmed, not from crying, but from pain and tiredness. He had looked the same this morning when he had met me in front of the school, only he looked a little bit worse. Nothing else seemed to be wrong with him at least. I didn't think that he had gotten much sleep the night before, I know that I didn't when I tried to sleep with a newly broken arm. But he still smiled brightly when he saw me approach.   
    "Hey," he greeted quietly.  
    "How did you do?" I asked.  
    "Ok, I think," he didn't seem to care much about the test. He didn't seem distracted by anything, just tired and not all together there. I wondered if it was really only his arm or if something else had happened.   
    I glanced down at it, as if I could ascertain how bad it was from just a look, and saw something new on his cast. This morning when I had seen him, Quatre had had a grand total of seven signatures on his cast, mine and all six of his signatures. The last time I had seen him, it had had nine. It had made me feel better about him going home to possibly get yelled at by his father for something that, in reality, had not been his fault. I was also pleased to have seen that his sister's had followed my idea of only signing Quatre's cast in neutral or soothing colors, mostly different shades of green and blue and purple. This new, red signature stood out on his cast like a green collar on a black cat. I gently grabbed his arm and turned it over so I could read it better, Quatre stiffening in trepidation. I soon understood why when I read what was written there in the bright red marker, my blood boiling with rage.  
    'Don't run in front of any more trucks, ok? Ha, ha'  
    I didn't even need to look at the signature to know that Relena had written that. Next to her name was an obnoxious heart.  
    "That fucking bitch," I heard myself hiss.  
    I couldn't believe her gall at the same time that I wasn't at all surprised by her signing his cast, a cast that Quatre only had to wear because of _her_ , and even teasing him with that stupid fake story, like she was rubbing it in his face that she had gotten away with it for however long Quatre ended up wearing that cast.   
    "Let it go, Duo," he urged tiredly, his voice flat and emotionless.  
    "But Quatre-" I started to protest, forgetting that we didn't exactly have a choice.   
    "It's just a cast," he pointed out, "in a month or so, it'll be gone and so will this," he scratched at what Relena had written with a fingernail, "it's not a big deal."  
    I fell silent, but inside I seethed about it. It wasn't really anything different than she had done before. It certainly wasn't anything like making him walk out into traffic, so why did it bother me so much? Even his blase attitude about it was nothing new, but it made me bristle with irritation. I was saved from saying something that only would have made Quatre frustrated with me by Trowa.   
    "Hi, Quatre," he said as he walked through the crowd of relieved seventh graders, "Hi, Duo. How did the test go?"  
    I wished I was in Trowa's grade, then I wouldn't have had to take that stupid test.   
    "It went fine," Quatre said, immediately brightening up at the sight of his crush.  
    I just shrugged. Quatre noticed it and reached out his good hand to pat my back in comfort, only to remember at the last minute not to touch me there.   
    "I wanted to talk to you earlier," Trowa said sheepishly to Quatre, rubbing the back of his head in a nervous gesture, "but with the test and all..."  
    His dark green eyes looked down at Quatre's cast and he looked very sad and upset all of a sudden.   
    "Does it hurt?" he asked somberly.  
    "A little," Quatre admitted, "It aches a lot, but I have some pills I can take. I've never had a broken arm before, I couldn't sleep at all last night."  
    He rubbed at his forehead with his good arm and just looked weary.   
    "How did it happen?" Trowa asked, though I was amazed that he hadn't heard the story by now.  
    I looked at Quatre, interested to see which variant of the story he would go with, but I already knew.   
    "It was stupid," he explained and I remembered that dinner the three of us had had together, how uncomfortable Quatre had been lying to Trowa about my involvement. Now he seemed ok with it and that really bothered me. It was like my friend had changed drastically in the course of twenty-four hours, "I walked right out in front of a truck. I hadn't been paying attention to what I was doing and ended up with a broken arm."  
    "Quatre..." the older boy was absolutely stricken, "That's horrible, you could have died! You're lucky you walked away with just a broken arm! You _have_ to be more careful!"  
    "I know," he flushed darkly, "I know I'm lucky. Duo saved my life, and he got hurt, too. If he hadn't been there, I don't think I would have survived."  
    Trowa looked at me and I saw this incredible, raw gratitude in his eyes that made me feel strange, like he was considering hugging me.  
    "You're ok?" I was surprised that when he asked me.  
    "Yeah, more or less," I admitted, "I messed up my back and my knees, but I'll heal."  
    "Thank you," he suddenly blurted out, like he couldn't stop himself, "for saving him. You're a good friend, you always look out for him."  
    Now I couldn't stop _myself_ from blushing.   
    "I did what anyone would do for their best friend," I murmured shyly.   
    I noticed how closely the taller boy was to Quatre in that moment. His arm was touching my friend's uninjured one and he looked reticent to move away from him at all. I looked at him suspiciously as he turned his attention back to our mutual friend. Was that all that was? Just one friend relieved that the other wasn't seriously hurt? Or was it more? Were my own hopes for them making me see things that just weren't there? But Trowa looked like there was more that he wanted to do, more that he wanted to say to Quatre. Was he just playing it cool in front of me, or was there more there that he wasn't showing either of us? Quatre seemed oblivious to it, just his usual happy self to be near the boy he loved, or maybe it was because there was nothing there _to_ see.  
    The lunch bell clanged, shocking all of us out of our individual thoughts.   
    "Oh joy, lunch time," I muttered, not the least bit hungry or wanting to deal with seeing Zechs or his cunt of a sister.   
    "Actually, I... I think I'm going to skip lunch," Quatre said meekly, "I'm not feeling well."  
    "Are you sure?" Trowa asked in concern, "Is there anything I can do?"  
    "I think I'm just going to lie down in the nurse's office until next period," Quatre said with a shake of his head, "My arm is really starting to hurt and I'm very tired."  
    "You look pale," Trowa said softly, placing a hand on his forehead, pushing his blonde bangs up.  
    Quatre closed his eyes in an expression that I can only describe as bliss. Seeing them like that... they just looked so tender, so affectionate... I had to keep reminding myself that they were just friends. I looked around frantically, hoping that no one was watching them, but there was no one in the hallway but us. Everyone else had rushed off to lunch. This would have just given credence to any rumors Relena might start that they were together. I felt uncomfortable just being there, knowing that what I was seeing wasn't really what I was seeing. Trowa was just worried, like any friend would be, like _I_ had worried about him, it didn't mean that he liked Quatre in the way that Quatre wanted him to...  
    "I'll be fine," Quatre assured him, opening his eyes finally, "I just need to lay down. You two can have lunch," he looked at me, "and I'll meet you next class?"  
    I almost rolled my eyes at him. He was not being sneaky at all. He wanted Trowa to stick by me to watch over me, to make sure that Zechs and Relena wouldn't hurt me. Like Trowa would be able to stop them if they tried something at lunch or recess.  
    "Sure."  
    I didn't point any of that out, I didn't want to remind him how pointless anything we tried to do to protect ourselves was. At least in the nurse's office, I wouldn't have to worry about him. Trowa patiently watched Quatre go, leaning against the locker nonchalantly, and made no move to go to the cafeteria with me. I was about to just leave him there when those eyes, so much like a cat's that I was surprised I hadn't noticed that about them before, landed on me again and he spoke.  
    "So... what really happened?" his voice wasn't harsh or accusing or even cold, but knowing and solid while staying low, in case anyone got too cold.  
    I stared up at him in shock. I had really thought that he had fallen for that bullshit story of Quatre's. Mostly, I was surprised to see this side of Trowa, so used to him being shy or conversational with myself and Quatre. This Trowa was... well not exactly scary, but I could tell that seeing Quatre with his arm all busted up and obviously in pain had angered him, but he had such a tight control over his emotions, not letting a single ounce of it out on me. I wasn't used to being around a man that was upset, but not enraged. I think I could have respected him then, if he were like that all of the time.   
    "How did you know?" I managed to ask.   
    "I haven't known him as long as you have," he crossed his arms over his chest, "and I'll probably never be as close as the two of you are, but I have spent enough time with him to know when he's lying to me. He does that a lot," I winced guiltily at that, knowing full well the sorts of things Quatre would need to lie to Trowa about, including that time at the basketball game, "and I don't mind about all that, since it's never been about anything too important, not like this. And I've seen what Relena does to him, how scared he gets. How was she involved in getting his arm broken?"  
    I was amazed at how well this boy could read my best friend. In some alternate reality where the things I hoped for were more than just day dreams and impossible fantasies, they were together and perfect for each other. It just made me ache inside and I don't know why. How could I possibly yearn for something that I had never even felt for a second?   
    "Relena was mad that he told her no that night I went to your game with him," I told him. I could have lied about it, I supposed, he. He didn't know _me_ well enough, but I wanted to tell the truth for once, or at least as much of it as I felt comfortable, "When we were about to cross to go to swimming lessons, she told him that she would forgive him for it if he walked across the street when she told him to and made it across."   
    "He wouldn't do that!" Trowa protested, "He might let her bully him, but he wouldn't risk his life just on her say so like that!"  
    "He did it for _you_ ," I snapped at him, "Relena told him that if he didn't do it, she was going to start rumors in school that you're gay and the two of you are together."  
    The eighth grader paled at my words.  
    "Quatre didn't want to involve you," I couldn't keep the anger out of my voice, "He decided that he owed it to you to protect you, _that's_ why he risked his life! She made him walk out when the cars were coming down the street. When he saw the truck coming at him, he stopped moving. I ran out and pulled him to the ground, but not fast enough to save his arm. That's what really happened, no matter what anyone else says."  
    "You really did save him," the awe in his voice frustrated me. What did it take to make people realize that what I had done was not extraordinary? I had been frightened, scared shitless, all I had wanted to do was save my only friend. That I had succeeded in doing so was luck.  
    "It's like I said," I repeated to him testily, "Quatre is my best friend. What I did is nothing more than anyone else would do for their best friend. I almost didn't make it anyway. If the truck driver hadn't already been slamming on his breaks, I wouldn't have made it in time. And even if I had, it would have shattered his arm instead of just fracturing it."  
    He shook his head at me and for a frightening moment, I was sure that he was going to argue with me about something that I really did not want to talk about. Then, his eyes and face changed. It was like a veil had been pulled down over him, a veil that was made of pure, unadulterated rage.   
    " That _bitch_ ," he hissed and stormed off, making a bee line for something.  
    I blinked at the spot where he had been standing in bewilderment. I had never heard him speak like that. For a moment, he had sounded like me. Then it dawned on me where he was headed.  
    "Trowa, _stop_!" I walked after him as quickly as my injuries would allow.  
    It was pretty pointless, Trowa had a much longer gait than I did and I would have had to run after him to catch up to him, and even then I had little hope of stopping him. His eyes had been filled with a one track determination. I swore at myself for ever telling him the truth. It was fine for him to be pissed at Relena for what she had done to Quatre, I was even happy that he had gotten that upset, but actually wanting to do something about it was another matter.   
    If he could do something about it or let her know that her spreading rumors about him didn't bother him, that would be wonderful and I sincerely hoped that that was what he had in mind. That was all that Quatre needed, Trowa standing up for him, giving him confidence and assuring him that he would fight for their friendship, that Quatre wasn't dragging him down into anything.  
    But I had no clue what the older teenager was thinking. It looked to me like he was just going off half cocked, letting his anger control him, just like I had let mine control me that one time. And where had that gotten me? If Trowa was just running off without any kind of plan, or some half assed idea that he could just threaten her and that would make _anything_ better, he was only going to get Quatre hurt worse. I would do anything to avoid that, whether it was ignoring Relena writing on Quatre's cast, or lying to the whole damned town.  
    I was out of luck that day. Before I could even form a plan to stop him, Trowa had run into Relena and Dorothy on their way to the cafeteria.  
    "We need to talk," was all that he said in a very cold and terse tone before grabbing Relena by the arm and pushing her towards the lockers.  
    Dorothy glared at me, affronted by her best friend being accosted, but she quickly realized that I was just as opposed to Trowa touching Relena as she was and turned her icy, blue eyed glare to him.  
    "Why, hello, Trowa. What did you need to speak to me about?" she asked sweetly, but with a knowing glint in her eye.  
    "This needs to stop," he snapped her, "and it needs to stop _now_."  
    "Whatever do you mean?" her voice was dripping with fake innocence, "What has you so upset?"  
    "I know what you did to Quatre!" he practically snarled at her, "He didn't just cross the street on a red light, you _made_ him! This... this bullshit between the two of you is going to stop! I don't care what you have against him, I don't care if he pissed you off or if you think this is fun, if this keeps up, you're going to _kill_ him! Is that what you want on your conscience? This stops here, Relena, it's already gone too far, you have to know that!"  
    Relena's expression turned sharp and her pale eyes darted to me. In that one second before she slipped that sugary sweet mask of hers back on, I saw her rage. She knew that I was the one that had told Trowa the truth about what had happened. I would have worried about what that look meant for me, but I was too scared about what this confrontation was going to cost Trowa and Quatre. I could take care of myself.  
    "Oh?" she smiled up at Trowa, "And what are you going to do if I say no? Are you going to beat me up? Make _me_ cross the street? You can't really make ultimatums like that when you have nothing to back them up with. That's why Quatre did what I asked him to. I didn't _make_ him do something foolish like that. He's as easy to read as an open book. All I had to do was say that I would tell everyone a few nasty things about you and he would have run _into_ that truck if I had asked, willingly. What an idiot," she smirked when Trowa's face turned dark red with anger at what she was saying.  
    I felt my own anger at hearing how amused she was that she could manipulate my friend like that, but it didn't hold a candle to Trowa's. She was manipulating him just as easily as she had Quatre, I realized.  
    "I mean it, Relena," he said sternly, the very image of a solid, immovable wall, "You don't scare me. I don't care about your pathetic rumors. Do you really think that I don't know that Quatre might be gay? You've been spreading _that_ rumor around for years, you can't surprise anyone with that anymore and no one is going to fall for you saying the same exact thing about me."  
    "I suppose that's true," Relena remarked thoughtfully, not at all put off by his declaration, "I doubt it would surprise many people to hear that you might be gay. But you're wrong if you think that no one would fall for a rumor like that. Big, tough athlete like you with no girlfriend who clearly likes to hang out with two fags and his own teammates instead of with his female admirers? Just look at you now. Here you are, as pissy as a wet cat over a rumor that I bullied Quatre into the street. It's almost like you're trying to protect your _boyfriend_.   
    "Don't tell me you're actually attracted to a freak like him? I thought that you would have more sense than that. Not much, I guess, considering how _obvious_ the two of you have been, attached at the hip and all. No, I don't think it's a stretch for many people to believe you two are together. Although," her mouth stretched into an ugly grin, "I can think of a few people who _would_ be surprised at a few rumors that Trowa Barton is a faggot. I'm sure your coach would be _very_ surprised at that news. Or perhaps your parents?"  
    Trowa turned absolutely, frighteningly white. As he stared at her... _through_ her, all of the anger in him seemed to evaporate. He just looked scared and defenseless, like a child that had just had their entire world ripped out under their feet.  
    "I read an interesting article a few days ago," the bitch continued, looking pleased at the reaction her threats had gotten, "It was all about this popular college football player. He was talented, the sort of athlete that really had a bright future ahead of him, you know? Then his coach heard from one of his other players that he had seen this boy making out with another boy in the showers. And just like that, this athlete was dropped from the team. His promising future, all gone, and just because of some nasty rumor! I can only imagine what Coach Strum will do if word gets to him that you and Winner are 'together'. Or what your teammates will do. I don't think any of them will want to be on the same team as you, or be in the shower room with you. They might get the impression that a pillow biter like you won't be able to keep his eyes, or his hands to himself. A rumor like that can destroy a team, and certain... opportunities.  
    "And your poor parents," she tisked with fake sympathy, "Your family is certainly well off enough to stay out of South Nausten, but not by much. The way that I heard it, neither of your parents even _went_ to college. I heard that they're putting a lot of pressure on you to go to a good school, and you'll need a scholarship to do that. They don't give full rides to queers, Barton. Won't your parents, especially your father, whom I've heard is _very_ traditionally minded, be so disappointed to learn that their only son chose perversion over his education and future?"  
    Trowa looked like she had very calmly thrust her hand into him and ripped out all of his organs, her words as effective on rendering him helpless and hollow as a surgeon's knife. I don't know what I expected him to do; punch her, call her a cunt, call her bluff, or tell her that _all_ of that had ceased to matter to him the second that she had endangered his friend's life.  
    I know which I had hoped he would do, and I know which _I_ would have done. If it had meant getting Relena to stop tormenting my best friend, I would have done all of them. To save Quatre, I would have told the whole world that I was everything she claimed and more. At least, that's what I wanted to believe, and I certainly wanted to believe that of Trowa, that he was that strong, that he cared about what happened to Quatre at _least_ that much and would stand up for him.   
    What I expected the least from him was exactly what Trowa did. With a look of hazed shock, sadness, and bitterness, that shy side of him came back, effectively killing the strong person that I had seen just minutes before. It was like she had drained out his very soul. Without uttering a single word, or so much as glancing at me, he turned around and left.  
    I don't know what I felt in that moment exactly. Shock and surprise are too weak of words. Horror is closer. Relena had said some pretty awful things to me and Quatre, but what she had just said to Trowa was cruel, precise, and brutal. How the hell had she known all that about his family? It was obviously true, given his expression, and I don't think that even Quatre had known what Trowa's father was like. How could she say those terrible things to him, to make him so frightened? But more than anything, when I watched Trowa's retreating back, I felt betrayed. It was stupid, I barely knew him and we were just barely friends, but he had given me hope.  
    Hope. I didn't feel that often and, for awhile, it had been a nice thing to feel. Here was this older boy, popular if quiet, and he liked my best friend. I had hoped that Trowa could be good for Quatre. I had hoped that he could give him confidence. I had hoped that he cared enough to stand up for him. Worst of all, I had hoped that he could protect him. But he hadn't. He had walked away. He was no different than me, incapable of protecting Quatre, weak and cowardly. I hated him for it.   
    I was furious at Relena for using Trowa's fears and dreams to hurt him and drive a wedge between him and Quatre, but that was absolutely nothing compared to the hatred and anger I felt in that moment towards the boy that Quatre said he loved more than anything, the boy that, for a few seconds, he had been willing to die to protect. And that person wasn't willing to withstand a few rumors to protect him back.  
    "What the hell is your problem?!" I snapped at Relena. I wasn't able to stop myself despite the knowledge that I was making things worse, "What business is it of yours who Quatre likes?! What right do you have o threaten to ruin their lives because you like picking on Quatre for some stupid, petty reason?!"  
    "Oh, relax, Maxwell," she flicked her long hair over her shoulder and somehow managed to look down her nose at me despite our equal height, "I'm doing them a _favor_."  
    "You tried to kill Quatre!" I snarled, "You can say that you didn't force him, but you now full well that you manipulated him! He almost died because you _knew_ he would walk out there if you threatened Trowa. That's no different from pushing him out into the fucking street! You aren't doing _anyone_ a favor, you're fucking with people because you enjoy it! All Quatre wanted was to be friends with him and you went out of your way to punish him for it!"  
    "Oh, give me a break," she rolled her eyes obnoxiously at me, "I haven't said a single lie to either of them, I'm just pointing out the truth since they refuse to see it. Do you think that Trowa will thank that queer for destroying his life when words gets out to his parents who it is he's been hanging out with? I can't wait until Quatre's father figures out what his precious son is _really_ like for himself!   
    "You can't possibly think that he has any future, and he wants to drag Trowa down with him! I was just trying to be nice and make him realize that and he spat in my face for it! Do you really think that, when the truth gets out about your little friend, anyone is going to care what happens to him? Do you think that anyone actually cares _now_ that he was stupid enough to get his arm broken for his disgusting perversion?"  
    I didn't know if the cunt actually believed the self righteous bullshit that she was spewing, but either way, it enraged me the same.  
    "You are so full of shit!" I yelled at her, ignoring the warning light going off in my head that I was going too far with this and I should just go to the cafeteria before I pissed her off too much, "You don't know _anything_. Quatre being gay is just a stupid rumor that you made up, and you have zero proof that Quatre and Trowa are anything but friends! Even if Quatre did love Trowa, that's not a perversion! This has nothing to do with keeping them apart for their own good, you're just being cruel for the sake of it! If they want to be friends, it's not up to you to decide if that's ok! Just leave them the hell alone!"  
    "Love?" she laughed like I had just told her a hilarious joke, "All two boys can have with each other is sex, _not_ love. Men can't get married to each other, they can't have children or a family, homosexuality is just a perversion of a _normal_ relationship. 'Liking' someone of the same sex... it's disgust and unnatural!" her pale eyes narrowed as she peered into me and suddenly I knew she wasn't thinking about Quatre and Trowa anymore, "Liking a girl, _that_ is what's natural, what's _proper_. I don't expect a diseased rat like you to understand, but the sooner Quatre realizes how filthy his obsessions, the happier he'll be."  
    My rage flared red hot. All of this... her violent attempts at splitting up Quatre and Trowa... that couldn't really be about that stupid kiss from a year ago, could it? Or maybe it was just a part of it... but I couldn't deny the equal rage in her eyes when she looked at me and talked about perversion. And I couldn't deny how sick it made me feel inside. She really did believe that I was gay, and she loathed me for it. Had Quatre getting almost killed been partially my fault?  
    "You're fucking insane," I hissed, "You can lie and rationalize to whoever you want, but you almost killed Quatre and it has nothing to do with him maybe being gay. You enjoy hurting us, you always have. You're just a twisted, horrible person, and you think that someone liking another person of the same sex is disgusting? You can't keep going after Quatre like this just because _I_ don't like you!" I took a few steps forward and getting in her furious face, not caring about my personal safety anymore, "You might hate gays, but the reality is that even if I'm straight, I will _never_ like you. How could anyone, boy or girl, love someone like you? You might be pretty, but whoever you are on the inside is ugly through and through!"  
    Her face twisted and any resemblance to a human being became monstrous with shocked fury. I didn't have the time to flinch away from her as she raked her nails across my face, extremely lucky she hadn't gotten one of my eyes. One of those pink nails caught a healing cut that I had gotten during the 'accident,' making blood pour down my cheek.   
    "Shut up!" she shrieked at me, "Who do you think you are?! You're _trash_ , **_garbage_**!" You should be grateful I give you the time of day! You think that you can say those things to me, you repulsive scum?!" before I could recover from her attack, she grabbed my hair and used all of her fury and weight to swing me into the lockers. A metal ring filled my head, erasing all intelligent thought.  
    "You're _disgusting_ , you and your faggot friend! The both of you should just do the world a favor and kill yourselves! Just die so the rest of us won't have to look at you anymore!"  
    Her hands twisted in my hair and she slammed me into the lockers again, this time getting me in my bruised shoulder. The pain made me gasp, but it also woke me up from my stupor. I dug in my feet and grabbed her wrists to keep her from throwing me around anymore.   
    "I wish that truck had flattened the both of you!" she screamed, becoming absolutely insane with anger at my daring to touch her.  
    "Get off of him!" I heard Trowa bellow and just like that, Relena let go of me, Trowa had grabbed her by the arm and pulled her away with brute strength. I wished that I was as big as he was.  
    He had come back for me. When, I wasn't sure. I had been so focused on Relena and her poisonous words that everything else had disappeared to me, even Dorothy. Relena was like a wild animal in his grasp, wrenching her arm out of his hand like his touch was that of a leper's. When she got loose, I saw that he had grabbed her so hard, his fingers had left red marks on her white skin. He had barely more control over himself than she had. I thought of my father for some reason.  
    The sound of Relena's open hand striking Trowa's face was like a gun shot in the quiet hallway. I flinched at the familiar sound, Trowa didn't. He just stared at her coolly and calmly, his eyes like green stones.  
    "Don't you _ever_ touch me," Relena said with a coldness that made Trowa's look temperate, but when she looked back at me, her glare threatened to turn burning hot with that rage again.   
    "We're going to miss lunch," Dorothy, who had been as quiet as a mouse this whole time, finally spoke, sounding incredibly bored with all of this.  
    Relena flicked her hair over her shoulder again, regaining her lost composure, and walked briskly away with Dorothy nipping at her heels like the pampered guard dog that she was. I began to move my hand to my face to wipe at the wetness on my cheek only to remember at the last minute that it was blood and I was only going to streak it across my face. I was already frazzled and my back was in complete agony, I didn't need to look like a serial killer as well. Instead I used my hand to touch my hair. She had pulled about half of it out of my ponytail.   
    As I pulled the my hair tie off, gathered up my hair, and secured the hair tie again, Trowa stared at my hair like he was in a day dream. I wanted to ask him what his problem was with my hair, it wasn't like it was the first time he had seen my ponytail. I tried my hardest not to let on how much pain I was in as I had lifted my arms to fix my hair. There wasn't anything I could do about it anyway. I had left my pills at home and it was too early to take some anyway. I didn't thank Trowa for pulling Relena off of me and diffusing the situation. I hadn't wanted him to come back.  
    "Are you insane?" he scolded me, his gaze softening back into the one I was accustomed to from him now that the two bitches had left the area, "You can't say things like that to her! The best thing to do is ignore her when she gets like that."  
    "Like you?" I snapped at him, "I guess it's easy when you can just walk away like you don't give a shit about anything."  
    He flinched, actually _flinched_ away from me. Later I would wonder if I was really that frightening when I was angry, or if he was just that much of a coward.  
    "You're just as bad as _she_ is," I accused, feeling my fury consume me and was thankful for it for once. It made my pain irrelevant, it made the hurt in his green eyes pointless, and my own guilt and feelings of inadequacy vanish in the face of how much I hated and resented this boy, "No, you're _ **worse**_. You call yourself his friend and you let her do those horrible things to Quatre! She almost gets him killed and you're lecturing me about standing up to her! Why don't you grow a fucking spine and stand up for your friend?! It's no wonder why you don't have any friends when you're such a pathetic coward!" was I even talking to him anymore, a part of me wondered then, or was I screaming at myself? "You don't deserve his-"  
   _'Love'_ I almost said, but my mouth hadn't quite gotten ahead of my brain yet.  
    "-friendship!" I strode up to him, grabbed him by his shirt and pulled him in close.   
    His eyes grew wide with fear. He thought I was going to punch him. Good, because that was exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to hit him until he bled, I wanted to break _his_ arm so he knew how it felt. I wanted to tell every single person in the entire town that he was a faggot. I wanted to destroy him, more than Relena ever could.   
    "Either help him," I hissed instead, "and actually _be_ his friend or stop being around him all together. You can't have it both ways, it isn't fair to him. He deserves a better friend than," _me_ "you."  
    I let go of his shirt and shoved him. My back was in searing pain. I let that pain fill me, let it fill my rage and let it soar to new heights. I didn't look back at him. I didn't want to see that stupid, scared expression of his anymore. I just kept walking and walking until I was running and felt something wet spread across my back.   
    I spun and slammed my fist into a nearby locker. The pain felt good. I punched it again and again and again until the skin of my knuckles split open and the locker was streaked with blood. I hit it again, creating a sizable dent in it. I only stopped hitting it when I felt my entire hand go numb. I stared at the large, bloody dent I had made, my hand falling to my side, dripping blood onto the linoleum floor. I panted, but I didn't cry. I didn't deserve that kind of release.   
  
  
End Part 6  
  
  
  
  
      
      
      
      
      
  



	12. Chapter 3 Part 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Relena finally crosses the line and Quatre leaves Duo alone to deal with the fallout

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 3  
Part 7  
  
  
    "What happened yesterday?" Quatre finally asked me the day after I had had my fight with Trowa.   
    I hadn't seen or spoken to the upperclassman since I had stormed away from him. Worse, neither had Trowa. He was avoiding Quatre. I had thought that he was just avoiding me, pissed that I had let off at him like that, but he hadn't made any attempt to talk to Quatre, either. I didn't know if that was a good thing or not. Was he staying away because I had hurt his feelings, because I had given him an ultimatum and he had chosen the cowardly option, or was it because of what Relena had said? Was he staying away to help Quatre, help himself, or was he just ashamed? And which reason did I wish was the actual one?   
    When Trowa didn't meet Quatre after recess and my friend had emerged from the nurse's office, he had looked so sad. He had looked like a puppy that had just woke up from a peaceful nap, only to get kicked in the face. And when Trowa hadn't shown up to talk to him after any of our other classes or after the school day was over, that sadness only deepened. I felt guilty about what I had said to his crush for the first time, if only because Quatre was suffering, but the more mature part of me that was sometimes cruelly logical thought that that was ok.   
    I don't mean that it was ok that Quatre was sad that the other boy suddenly wasn't talking to him, but maybe Trowa staying away from him would be a good thing. It would hurt Quatre for awhile, and if Quatre found out what I had said to him, he would be angry with me, but there was more good that would come from Trowa leaving Quatre alone than bad. Relena wouldn't be able to use Trowa to threaten Quatre with anymore. Quatre wouldn't feel constantly guilty and awful that he might let it slip that he liked the basketball player and that he might give Trowa a bad reputation just by being friends. And maybe the two of them going their separate ways now would save them heartache later.   
    Or maybe I had completely fucked things up when I had told the older boy to either man up or go the hell away. All I knew was that Trowa was hurting my best friend, even if he hadn't meant. Quatre was happy around him, but he was also miserable, so I felt conflicted. And I was well aware that what I had done was petty, I had lashed out at him for being unable to do what I was also unable to do, and I was still incredibly angry at him over it. Yeah, it made me a hypocrite, but I felt better without him around to fuel my rage. I just didn't know what to do anymore, what was the right thing to do for Quatre, if I had just made things worse or if he would get over it.   
    A part of me wished that Trowa would stay away forever. Our lives were shitty enough without him giving Relena fuel and while I hated him, I also liked him enough to not want his life ruined, even if I was so angry that I didn't want to see his face at the moment. But another part of me wished that he would see Quatre. I hated seeing my friend so depressed and confused and hurt, I would even go so far as saying that he felt a bit betrayed by Trowa's sudden distance. I wanted to see him happy again and I knew that Trowa could make him smile so easily. And if Trowa came back, wouldn't that mean that he had decided to fight for Quatre after all?   
    I had too much to worry about in my own life between the regional test scores, my grades, my father, my mother, Relena, and Zechs to be worrying about what was going on with Trowa. I hate myself for that now. I should have been more invested in what was happening in my best friend's life, at home and in school, and I should have done everything that I could to make it easier for him and Trowa. Again, hindsight. I should have lied when Trowa asked me what had really happened. I should have stopped him going after Relena, and I should have backed him up instead of flipping out on him. I should have done a lot of things that I hadn't. But at the time, despite everything Quatre had told me, despite all of the warnings I had gotten, I was still too stupid to pull my head out of my ass and see how much Trowa meant to Quatre, to see that I was losing him.   
    "I don't know," I lied to him, "We ended up not going to lunch together, so I don't know what's going on with him. He might just be busy, you know."  
    I lied to my best friend in the whole world. I had never done that. Actually looked him in the eye and lied as cleanly and neatly as I did to my doctors and teachers, lied about something that was actually important to him. I hated myself for it, but what was I going to do? Tell Quatre the truth? Tell him that I was a piece of shit that had driven his crush away from him? Tell him that Trowa had let him down when it mattered, that he had let Relena threaten him and hadn't even tried to protect him after she seemed to have zero problems with almost killing him?   
    No matter what I said to him, it was going to hurt him worse. And I couldn't do that. I couldn't see the pain in his eyes when I told him what really happened. At the end of it all, I was a coward. I don't know. Maybe if I had told him what Relena had said to Trowa, it might have made things better for him to know why Trowa didn't want to be around him anymore, or maybe it really would have made things so much worse. Although, I don't think anything could have made it worse.   
    Quatre glanced at the scratches on my face that Relena had given me, but just nodded and accepted my story. _Trusted_ me. I felt like he had ripped my guts out with that nod. After all, what reason did he have not to trust me? I had never lied to him like that before. So when I told him that Relena had scratched me as punishment for helping him and then I had gone to lunch without Trowa, he believed me. That he was still in pain from his arm and a bit distant because of the pain meds helped with my deception. I had stopped taking my own. My back was a total horror, and the pain was so bad I literally felt like slamming my head into a wall so I could just black out, but I clung to that pain.   
    I clung to it and lied to myself that it was my punishment for driving Trowa away, for being unable to save Quatre's arm, for ruining my parents' lives, for being slow and stupid and a coward. And if I wasn't sleeping at night, that was just a part of my punishment. I wasn't so stupid as to not keep my back clean and keep using the burn cream, but I took that bottle of pain meds and flushed them down the toilet. I didn't deserve relief.   
    The week passed slowly and tortuously. My knees were pretty much all healed except for the fact that they itched now and then. My back was healing, but slowly. I still couldn't go to gym class, big loss there, and there was still pain, but it was very bearable and I didn't have many sleepless nights after awhile. The day before the regional test results were posted, I got to use my gym period to go back to the hospital to get my stitches removed, the doctor praising that I was healing very well but there would be several scars on my back. I didn't care. It wasn't like I could see them.   
    I saw Trowa around the school sometimes, between classes and hanging out with his teammates. He seemed to be hanging out with them a lot more lately and I had to wonder if that was because he knew that Quatre was far too shy to approach him with the other boys around. I began to realize that Trowa wasn't just ignoring Quatre for a little while to give him time to make a decision, this was a permanent thing. He had made his choice. I had thought that that would make me happy, that this was the right choice. Quatre could move on, he could be _safer_.   
    But it didn't. Quatre was miserable and I was miserable watching him be miserable. And I hated Trowa even more for staying away. How stupid is that? I had been the one to tell him to go away and I was the one that regretted it that most. I wanted to take it back. I hated him for being a coward. I hated him for just walking away from my best friend like it was nothing, like it didn't even matter to him. Like it was easy. Maybe it had been. Maybe he had never cared that much for Quatre to begin with. Maybe I had only seen what I had wanted to see. It seemed like no matter what the guy did, I hated him for it. What was wrong with me? Was I really this kind of person, so filled with hate and bitterness that it was easy for me to find a target like that? I was supposed to be Quatre's best friend and I was taking all of this out on the boy he loved. I felt like the worst person alive.   
    I saw them fighting once. Quatre had gotten past his shyness enough to confront Trowa about why he wasn't around anymore. Trowa told him that it was a bad idea for them to be friends, and that he was just too busy with basketball to think about their friendship. He told him that when the season was over, they needed to talk about a few things, but that he just couldn't hang out with him anymore, and he shouldn't got to his games anymore, either. Quatre had asked him if it was because of something Relena had said to him. Trowa informed him that it wasn't, not really, that he had been thinking about their friendship for awhile now and had wanted to have this talk with him since that night we had gone to his game together. A talk about their future or, he subltly implied, the obvious lack of one.   
    When Trowa finally walked away, just leaving Quatre there, staring at the spot that he had vacated like he was frozen in time, I went to him and asked him what had happened at the game that I had known he had gone to the night before, just a small scrimmage Trowa's team had had with one of our neighboring towns'. Quatre, not meeting my eyes, had just muttered that nothing had happened, nothing at all, and I guessed that was the problem. I asked him if he was ok. He looked up at me at last and then had promptly burst into tears. I had never seen him like that, so open and raw, and it both shocked and frightened me.   
    I had held him, but I don't think that I had helped his overflowing emotions much. I asked him if he wanted me to talk to Trowa. I realized right then and there that if Quatre had asked me to, I would have begged Trowa to ignore what I had said to him, to be Quatre's friend again and not cared about the consequences. I don't think that they would have, but I would have let go of all my hatred for him for Quatre's sake. Quatre told me not to, though. He _pleaded_ to me not to talk to Trowa for him, to just leave him alone. Trowa had hurt him with his coldness, but he still loved him, still respected him. It made me feel like the biggest asshole on the planet.   
    It was at that time, holding Quatre in my arms and seeing him break down in the middle of the science hallway, that I realized that there was more going on in Quatre's life than I was seeing. I mean, I had always known that. We didn't talk about our home lives and the bare glimpses I got of his relationship with his family only told me that he was very unhappy, but not to what extent and not why. Whatever it was, it made the situation with Trowa all the worse, tangled up in things that he never talked to me about.   
    I wonder now, if I had forced him to talk to me about it, if I had been an actual friend to him instead of worrying about keeping my own secrets close to my chest, if I could have helped him. I guess I've probably written that before, several times by now, but what else do I have to think about beyond all the ways I've fucked up? I can't fix a damned thing, but it's all I can think about. All I can see are my failures, how Quatre walked through that last week of school like he was in a nightmare. He was so depressed and despondent, so distant from me, and I barely tried to snap him out of it.   
    By the time our regional test results were posted on the bulletin board in front of the school, by the parking lot where the buses would line up at the end of the day, it was too late to change a thing.   
  
April 13th, 2004  
  
    It took me five days to write all of that. And then it took me five days to pick up this journal again. I can't do it. I can't write about it. I tried every day this week. I would look at this composition notebook sitting on my desk in my bedroom and think about the words I would write. I thought about all the things that happened on that day, how sunny and bright and beautiful it had been, how all of my classmates had been too nervous about finding out their scores to pay attention in our classes, how agitated Quatre had seemed.   
    I had figured out for myself that it was partially the shit that was happening with Trowa, partially something that had happened between him and Relena on the way to school, and partially the pressure that his father was putting on him about his scores. I should have paid more attention to how he was that day, I should have asked him exactly what Relena had said to him, but I was too anxious about my own scores to have any other intelligent thought in my head.   
    I couldn't do it, though. I couldn't write those things. I just think about how it ended, how Quatre had looked at the train station that day, the sound of the train as it approached, his last smile to me before he turned and vanished from my sight forever. And then I can't write a thing. Yesterday, I thought about just coming out and writing it. One little sentence. What happened. A word, even. Just skip the reasons and write the facts. Then I had sat down on the floor of my room and cried. I hadn't thought that I had any more tears left to shed.   
    I have to keep progress reports with Mrs. Khushrenada. It's part of my condition for not being expelled since I hit Zechs, to let her know where I am with this stupid thing and that I'm actually doing it, even if she isn't reading it. She caught up with me yesterday, told me that I hadn't talked about the journal in awhile, if I was still writing about the truck accident. I told her I was past it. I told her what day I was on, what day I had been on for the past seven days. She had looked at me with pity when I told her that I couldn't get past it. I can't write about that day. She told me I have to. I told her I can't, that I don't want to think about it. I don't want to write about it, even if no one will read it.   
    I have thought about it every day since it happened and writing it won't help, it will only make it worse. I told her that, but she wouldn't listen. She pointed out to me, a bit sternly, that I can't just keep it bottled up inside, writing about it _will_ help me, and I don't really have a choice. I have to keep seeing the school psychologist and writing in this journal if I don't want to be expelled for punching Relena, and I have to keep up daily entries, talking about my shitty feelings, if I don't want to get expelled for punching Zechs. If it hadn't felt so fucking good both times, I would wish that I had kept my fists to myself if only to not have to do this.  
    Mrs. Khushrenada said I have until the 15th to finish writing about Quatre. I'm trying not to think about it as bearing my soul or some stupid shit like that. I'm certainly not thinking about it as helping myself. I don't care what anyone says, writing about it has only made it worse so far. Instead, the only way I can think about this, the only way I can actually do it is thinking about it as telling the truth, letting there be one actual, true account of what happened. Because I never told anyone what happened.   
    Everyone thinks that they know, but they don't. They just believe what Relena said the day the cops came to school, asking the people who were the last to see Quatre Winner before he ran out of the school parking lot. She told everyone who would listen to her that Nate had always been sad, always different, always depressed. It was really no wonder why he had run off. He was gay and weird and didn't really have any friends. He had just gotten fed up with it all. Or maybe it was the pain meds and his broken arm. After all, Quatre had wanted to be a musician and his doctor said that he couldn't, that the break would always impair him.   
    None of it is true. Quatre didn't run that day because he was a bit loopy, or he was depressed because of being gay, though I suppose that was a big part of it. He ran because of what _she_ did to him that afternoon, and I guess whatever she had said on the way to school. It was true that Quatre wanted to study music, and it was true that he had played violin in the school orchestra for a couple of years, and even that the double break to his arm and wrist wouldn't make him the best musician, but he had never been that interested in playing.   
    The violin was something that his mother had forced him into, because playing an instrument would look good on a college application, since, she had claimed 'playing a classical instrument shows discipline'. She didn't know that he had quit the orchestra last year and had never really enjoyed it. When he had told her his interest in music, she had thought that meant classical composition. Parents really don't know shit about their kids. What interested Quatre, what had interested him since his very first violin lesson, was how mathematics was used to make music.   
    "Mathematics," he had told me once when I had lamented my inability to understand my algebra homework, "are the building blocks of the universe. If God is real, He's a mathematician."   
    That something like an equation can translate into the world as music, this theme that both man and beast find beautiful, something to soothe the very soul, was incredible to him. He likened it to seeing God in a sunrise. He would go on about it for hours. With his intelligence, if he had kept at it, if he had bucked his parents' influence and gone to college to study math and art like he had wanted, he would have been a revolutionary, he would have done something amazing. I truly believe that. Sometimes, when I think about that, I feel so incredibly gifted to have met him, to have been his friend.  
    This will be my account of what really happened to my best friend. Everything I've written in here has been a testament to it, all the reasons why he felt the need to do what he did, everything that pushed him into that corner where he felt it was his only option. Or maybe none of it does. Maybe I just want there to be a reason and there isn't any at all. In any case, I made a decision last night. When I'm done writing about it in this thing, then I'm done. I'm never writing in here again. When I've written everything that I need to, I'm going to follow him. That's what I promised, isn't it? That I would always have his back? If only I had figured that out sooner. And if people read this and laugh at the things I've written, that's ok. At least I'll be with the only person who has ever given a shit about me. The only person that has ever believed in me, even if there is nothing in me to believe in, never was.   
    If someone does find this in my absence and reads it all the way through, please tell Relena Darlien this for me: Go to Hell. For what you did and continued to do to Quatre, to me, and to whatever kid you decide to replace us with, I hope you burn. I hope your entire world crumbles under your feet and you realize that you aren't any different than us, for all of your self righteous crap. If I weren't such a coward, I would burn it to the ground for you, but I can't seem to. I hope, if only for a day, that you meet someone like you and they show you what it feels like to be made to feel like nothing, like the way you made Quatre feel, and I hope that in that moment, you feel bad for what you did. I know you won't, but that's what I'll be hoping for, you malicious bitch.   
    The regional testing scores were posted on March 4th, 2004. They were tacked up on the bulletin board for everyone to see right before the seventh graders' lunch break. Quatre had been so distant the entire day, disheartened I guess I could call it. Even when he got called on during one of our morning classes, he had spoken like someone in a dream, forcing himself to speak. I was worried about him, but it never occurred to me to ask him what had happened on his way to school that morning. The closer we got to the lunch period, though, the more he seemed to come back to his usual self. He was anxious, just like I was, and agitated about something, but his worries about his test scores seemed to push back all the other crap in his head.   
    "Don't worry," he told me as we followed our class out into the parking lot, "I'm sure that you did great. I bet you did loads better than me in the first test, and we studied a lot for the second one. Even if you didn't do great on the second one, it isn't like these scores effect our grades. There's really no downside to getting a lesser score. They're just prepping for the tests we have to take in high school, colleges won't even look at them."  
    "I know," I said but I couldn't help my dejected tone.   
    I honestly didn't care that much that it didn't count. It counted to me. Just more proof of how dumb I was, and my father would not be pleased if I failed one of the tests after how many days of work I had taken off to study for them. Mostly, and this was pretty stupid, I didn't want my classmates to know just how much of a loser I was. Bad enough that I knew it myself.   
    It shouldn't have bothered me that much, everyone already thought that I was antisocial and stupid, just another stereotypical would be dead beat from South Nausten, and even if I aced both tests, they would continue to think that. But for some reason, I really hated that our scores were being ranked and posted for the whole damned school to see. It makes me laugh now that that was my biggest worry that day. Now it seems so petty. I don't even remember what my scores were. I can remember almost everything else about that day, but not that.   
    I knew something was wrong the second that we stepped outside of the school. At first, it was just a feeling, like a chill in the air. I felt like one of those water buffalo that go to get a drink of water. They can't see the crocodile in the water, but they just sense that there is something there, something that wants to eat them. Quatre seemed to sense it, too, his somber and apprehensive mood returning. I think the first time I realized that something was off with actual proof was the sheer amount of students clustered around the bulletin board. Only the seventh graders should have been there to check on their scores, but I saw kids that I recognized from the eighth grade classes, and even fifth and sixth graders, even though they had already had their lunch period and all of them should have been in class.   
    The first thing I thought of was a fire drill, but that was stupid. I hadn't heard the alarm go off and even if it had, we were supposed to meet in the field in front of the parking lot, a safe distance from the building in case of a fire or explosion or whatever. Everyone was standing in front of the bulletin board, staring at what was on their with rapt attention. Was there some event that had been posted there, I wondered.   
    But as we got closer to the throng of people, I saw that some were pointing and laughing, some looked disgusted, others were talking in hushed whispers. I felt this sudden sense of... _doom_ and my heart fell into my stomach.   
    "Oh, my god, she wasn't lying," I heard some girl say in a scandalized tone.  
    "I can't believe," another murmur.  
    "Disgusting," another.  
    "I could never tell," yet another.  
    "Do you think he is, too-"   
    "Do his parents know?"  
    "Ugh, I took a shower at the same time as him!"  
    They wouldn't stop. Then, a hush fell over the crowd. One by one, their heads turned and they saw Quatre and I standing there. Those eyes were accusing, wide, frightened, disgusted, humored, and some were even pitying. I felt like I had just been dropped into a horror movie and at any moment they were going to start pointing at us and accusing us of not being one of 'them'. Next to me, Quatre was shaking at their stares and I realized with a sickening feeling that those stares were not directed at me at all. They were all looking at Quatre.   
    I was ready to grab him, turn around and run back into the school, but Quatre took a step forward, like he was being pulled toward that bulletin board by some siren call. The entire crowd parted for him. Some would say it was like Moses parting the Red Sea, but it wasn't like that at all. They didn't part because of some power that Quatre had, or out of respect. They parted like they would for a leper, for someone that had a disease that they didn't want to touch. They moved to get away from him. I walked with him, his partner as he walked to the executioner's block.   
    Someone had pasted photocopied pages of writing all over the bulletin board, over all the test scores. There were about thirty pages in total. I forgot about Quatre for a moment and stood in front of the board, reading one of the pages. Whoever had made the photocopies had blown up the text so they were easy to read and I quickly recognized the hand writing. I had been seeing it for years. That feeling of dread in my stomach as exploded with each word I read and if I hadn't felt so paralyzed, I would have vomitted.  
  
   _'I saw him again today, walking past the library while Duo and I tried to find some research materials for our biology project. He was walking with some of his teammates, them chatting and him listening. He always listens. I would love to hear his voice some day. His friends were talking loudly enough to him that I was able to learn his name. Trowa. I wonder if he's the same Trowa that Chandra says is our school's 'rising basketball star'.'_  
  
 _'I wanted to say 'hello' to him today, but I just felt so shy. He's so handsome, and I'm sure he has a girlfriend, but I wanted to say hi all the same. I decided to risk it, I don't know why. I was feeling bolder than I usually was, so while Duo was talking with our history teacher, I walked up to him. I could never do this with him watching. If Duo ever found out how I felt, or what I am, I could never cope with that. I would rather anyone else in the entire world found out that I like other boys than him. What if he thinks that I'm so kind of pervert that's been interested in him all these years? What if he doesn't want to be friends anymore?_  
 _I bumped into Trowa and pretended that I didn't know where I was going. I felt so excited when he looked down at me. His eyes are so green, this dark, dark green that reminds me of evergreen trees. I thought he would yell at me for being so absent minded. I'm just a seventh grader, even one that nobody likes. But he didn't. He was so shy, stuttering and apologizing to me. This is dangerous. I shouldn't go looking for him anymore.'_  
  
 _'I saw a boy playing on the basketball court today from the homeroom window next to my desk. He was taller than the other boys and I don't remember seeing him before. Watching him play made me excited. I couldn't stop watching him, even when Mrs. Mallory yelled at me for not paying attention. He's so big and lanky, but he moves so fast! There is something about his shoulders and his hands that I can't stop admiring. There is something wrong with me. When did I get this way? When did I start looking at boys like this? I'm such a disgusting fool, but I want to see him again, just one more time, then I'll forget about it, I promise.'_  
      
   _'Dinner tonight went so well! All of my worries and fears were for nothing. Duo and Trowa got along so well! I think they could be friends if they just got out of their shells a bit around each other. Duo was in pain, but he seemed to be enjoying himself at dinner. I'm glad. I really wanted them to get along and I think Duo was able to gain another friend. That made me very happy. Even Relena trying to get Trowa away from me didn't ruin tonight. Best yet, Trowa still doesn't know. He hasn't guessed at all that the reason why we keep bumping into each other and why I go to his games is because I love him. I think things might work out._  
 _I know it's foolish of me, but I just can't stop wanting to be with him. Even Duo thinks I'm crazy. He thinks I should just forget about Trowa and he's right. He's always right. But I just can't stop myself. What would I do without my best friend? I hadn't any right to drag him along tonight. He has so many other things to worry about, and I keep dragging him into my problems. I don't know how he can stand being around me.'_  
  
 _'Stupid. Why am I so incredibly stupid?! I love him. I thought at first that it was just a silly crush. Trowa is handsome and kind and actually listens to me when I talk, unlike everyone else in my life besides Duo. He doesn't treat me like a worthless child or a nuisance or nothing more than an asset. I thought if I could be near him for a little while, I could get over this, but it's gotten worse. I actually love him. And every second I'm with him, my stupid heart hurts. What am I going to do? Oh, God, why? Why did you make me this way? I just want this to stop.'_  
  
    I blinked away tears as they dripped down my face at every word I read. As I turned to look at my best friend, his written words screaming in my head, all thirty plus pages of them, I saw Relena in the corner of my vision. She was standing away from the crowd, smiling that disgusting smile of hers. That _knowing_ smile. Unlike the others, she wasn't pushing through the throng to try to read what was on the bulletin board. She didn't need to. She had been the one to photocopy each one of those pages and tack them up there.   
    How. **_How?!_** How had that cunt gotten her hands on what was obvious Quatre's journal? I hadn't even known that my best friend kept one. I guess that's why I loathe writing in this thing so much, since a journal was what destroyed my best friend's life. Had Quatre been stupid enough to put that in his locker? No, no he wouldn't do that, not something that talked about his sexuality, not with how frightened he always was that someone would find out about his secret.   
    Had she broken into his house or something? I don't know. I don't know that anymore than I know _why_ he had felt the need to keep a journal in the first place. Maybe he was like Mrs. Khushrenada and thought that writing down his thoughts and feelings would help him in some way. I never got the chance to ask him.  
    Quatre's skin had gone the same sickly grey-white color of fresh ash. His eyes were wide and clear in the bright sun, like sea glass. He was so horrified by what was going on around him, he was actually shaking. I wanted to get him far away from the crowd, away from the snide remarks I heard people whispering that the both of us could clearly here, away from the hissed 'faggot's and crude remarks about Trowa and Quatre and even me, about if we had threesomes, about who fucked who, if Trowa was the fudgepacker and Quatre the pillowbiter or if it was the other way around, if Trowa really was gay, too, or if he just had a homo pining after him, if he knew, if I knew, if I was fucking Quatre.   
    It was endless, like clucking birds surrounding us. I felt like if I listened to those horrible, cruel, hateful things for much longer, I would go crazy and I wasn't the one whose journal had been exposed for every person in the school to see. I could even see some teachers now, milling about with the kids and teenagers, trying to see what was going on and doing absolutely nothing to stop it. Quatre just stood where he was, frozen stiff and looking like he was going to vomit right there in front of everyone. He looked like he was going to cry but didn't. His hands trembled and I saw the desire in his eyes to rip those pages off the bulletin board, but he knew like I did that that wouldn't make a single difference.   
    He turned then to look at the crowd behind us, to look at those staring faces. I thought that he would bolt, that he would run back into the school and try to find some safe place to hole up in until the school day was over and he could go home. But he didn't. He just stood there, his spooked eyes scanning the crowd. He was looking for Trowa, I realized. Even then, that was what he cared about.   
    Never mind that almost the whole school was out there, laughing and saying awful things about him, it was Trowa's reaction that he was frantic for. Even when his eyes met Relena's and her look of absolute triumph, he didn't seem to give her a second thought beyond a terrible kind of understanding, although he had probably known that she had been the one responsible just like I had.   
    Just by watching my best friend's expression, I knew the second that he had found Trowa in the crowd. His face turned dark red, but unlike all the other times when he looked at his crush, this time his blush was out of utter shame, not attraction. I looked in the direction of Quatre's gaze and located Trowa quickly. He wasn't far from us, just a few feet away, and had obviously been reading what was on the bulletin board. He had the same wide eyed, ashen look of horror that Quatre did.   
    He was standing alone in the crowd, the same sort of bubble of people back away from him that was formed around Quatre and myself. People were looking at him like they had already decided that he was a faggot as well. I felt sad for him then. I understood in that moment how Quatre had felt all those times he had claimed that he felt bad about associating with Trowa, that he was worried about pulling him down with him. Trowa had just been friends with Quatre, that was all, but everyone was looking at him with the same repulsion, pity, and nervousness that were in their eyes when they looked at me and Quatre. It wasn't fair. But I was honestly too worried about my friend to think much about Trowa.   
    Trowa looked like a man stuck in a dream, wondering how he had gotten stuck there, teetering precariously between numbness and complete disbelief. His dark green eyes were transfixed on the bulletin board an he looked like he both couldn't believe what he was reading and like he was looking for something in those photocopied words, something to tell him that this was all an elaborate prank at his expense, maybe, which of course that's exactly what it was, but not in the way that he wanted it to be.  
    Quatre approached him, taking tentative steps like Trowa was a deer that he dind't want to spook. The crowd parted for him, each pair of eyes watching the two of them like all of it was some great form of entertainment. I wanted to scream at all of them to go away.  
    "Trowa," my friend managed to say as he walked up to his crush.  
    The baseball player came out of his stupor and looked at Quatre with huge eyes, skittish and unnerved by the same boy he had been close friends with a week ago.  
    "Please," Quatre's voice shook, tears dripping down his cheeks and he reached one trembling hand out to the boy that he loved, "please, just let me explain..."  
    Trowa flinched from him. Actually _flinched_ from this short and slender thirteen year old like he was some kind of hulking monster.  
    "Poor Barton," I heard some asshole mutter loud enough for the three of us to easily hear him, "If it were me, I'd be too ashamed to show my face in public again."  
    "I'd _kill_ myself," someone else chimed in.  
    Trowa heard both of them and he looked at Quatre, horrified, like he was realizing what was happening for the first time. There was no reproach, hated, or disgust on his face, just horror, and that was so much worse somehow.  
    Before Quatre could say another thing to him, he whirled and pushed past the crowd and back into the school. He walked with the desperate, frightened swiftness of a man that suddenly realizes that his hair is on fire. When the school doors closed behind his retreating form, Quatre crumpled. Realizing that the upperclassman had abandoned him completely and wasn't coming back, and realizing the damage he had caused and only he knew what else, he sobbed into his hands. Someone behind me laughed and I whirled on them, an eighth grade girl.  
    "Shut the fuck up," I snarled at her and she stepped back, frightened of me. I was shorter than her and I had scared her. Good. I wanted her to be scared. I wanted _all_ of them to be scared.  
    I walked to him, reading to pull him into a tight hug and comfort him, or pull him away from the crowd, whatever it was that he needed from me and fuck everyone that stared at us, when Quatre stopped crying. I remember thinking at the time that it was like his cord had been cut. He didn't peter off or sniff like most people would have after a violent cry, he just _stopped_. He raised his head from his hands. His skin was red and streaked with tears, but his eyes were just _dead_. Up until the last time that I had seen him face to face, his eyes would never lose that horrible look.  
    There was something else there in his expression that frightened me very badly, something that I had seen once before. It only took a moment to realize what it was. It was the same look Quatre had had that day when he had stood, not moving, in front of the truck bearing down on him. It was the same look he had had when he had decided that he just couldn't take any more pain and wanted to give up. Only this time, I couldn't push him out of the way of it, that hopelessness and surrender.  
    Before I could say a single word to him, Quatre bolted. He ran past the crowd, past Relena, past the parking lot, moving to the West, faster than I had ever seen him run in our entire friendship. I stood there, staring at where he had been seconds before, staring like an idiot. I watched him run away amidst the laughter and jeers of our classmates. I thought I saw a teacher or two laughing as well, but that could easily have been my imagination. I was so shocked by what had just happened, _all_ of it, my entire world compressed to the memory of Quatre's dead, tear stained face.  
    It's stupid and childish, and I'm ashamed of it now, but for a moment I debated chasing after him. I thought to my self that he just needed time alone to pull himself together, but I vanquished that thought instantly and effortlessly. If there was ever a time that Quatre needed a friend, even if he had to settle for me, it was then. The reason that was really holding me back had seemed important at the time, but it never was, it couldn't hold a candle to the shit that Quatre was going through. It was the pre-algebra test I had to make up for during recess. If I left the school now, I thought, to chase after Quatre, I would never make it back in time and I really needed a decent grade on that test in order to pass my class that year.  
    I wish that I had taken after Quatre the second that he had started running. I'm faster than him, I could have caught up to him easily in a couple of minutes and dragged him back. And I wish that, if I had still hesitated, that I had just gone back into the school to take that make up test. It would have been better to have heard from someone else that Quatre had abandoned me instead of seeing that myself. I could deny it, I could tell myself that he's coming home. I could sleep at night.  
    But it didn't happen like that. After a few minutes debating what I should do, I nearly struck myself for what an ass I was. Some stupid test didn't matter as much as Quatre. I would catch him, I thought, and fuck school, I'd take him to some secluded place, maybe the beach or the courtyard behind the library, and we would talk. I'd hug him and let him cry for hours if that's what he needed. And when he was done talking and crying, somehow I would make him see that this wasn't the end of the world. I would make him see that there was no reason to get that look in his eyes ever again.  
    I took off after him like there were rabid dogs nipping at me. I didn't even stop to beat the shit out of Relena, or to so much as pettily shove her, I just ran. I realized, as I was chasing after him, how much I _needed_ to catch up to him, that this was dire, although I can't tell you I knew that. I also can't tell you how I knew that he would continue to run West, only that I was positive of it. I think that, subconsciously, I had known before I had even taken off running exactly where Quatre was going.  
    I ran harder and faster than I ever had in my life and I have never ran like that since. I don't need to anymore. I ran so long and so hard that my back should have felt like it was on fire with agony, but I didn't feel it or the ache in my legs or the burning in my lungs. It would be a very long time before I would feel anything. It didn't take long for me to see Quatre's back as he ran ahead of me, but no matter how fast I was, I wasn't fast enough to overtake his speed or tackle him. This wasn't like before, trying to beat out a truck to save his life. My luck had run out, Quatre had had too long of a running start.  
    I got closer to him when he almost ran right into some guy carrying some groceries. The man swore angrily at the both of us, but Quatre kept going like nothing had happened, so I did, too.  
    When I saw the entrance to the train yard, I knew that my hunch had been right. I felt no relief, though, because somewhere deep down inside, I suspected why he had gone there and I felt an intense fear, but not even that enabled me to make a close enough grab for the back of his shirt. Our tram system is old fashioned, you don't need to pay until you actually get on the train, so the two of us ran through the train station, ran past the security officers screaming at us that there was no running in the station, ran past the flower vendors and food vendors and newspaper vendors and one guy playing a beaten up guitar for enough change to ride the train.  
    Then we were on the train platform for the train that would head out of town, all the way past the town border to Petersburg, the third town up from us to the North, far enough away for Quatre to get a running start ahead of me, his family, Relena, Trowa, and every other person in this shitty town. If I let him and I didn't intend to. The train hadn't arrived yet, but I knew that it would at any second, I could hear it in the distance. I had mere minutes.   
    Was that why Quatre had run all this way? Had he made up his mind to leave? But he couldn't, I told myself, they would never let him on the train, _I_ would never let him! Only that wasn't true at all. I had little hope of stopping him. I couldn't even get on the train with him, to try to talk to him down. Quatre had cash in his pocket, he always did, and I didn't have a cent.   
    "Quatre!" I cried out in desperation.  
    To my happy shock, he stopped running and stood at the edge of the platform, in the red stripe that no one was allowed to stand on, right where I knew the train would stop when it finally reached us. I could see the faint smoke in the distance, above the trees. He was going to do it, I realized with horror and felt tears fall down my cheeks. I thought about what he had said to me in the hospital, how he had always wanted to do this, just go to the train station and run away from everything. But I had never thought that he would actually do it. I had never thought that he would leave me, but there he was, waiting for the train. Waiting to abandon me. My only friend. The only person in the world that had ever loved me, and he was going to leave me behind, just like my mother.  
    "Please, Quatre, please," I pleaded past a sob. I wanted him to turn around. I wanted him to look at me, _see_ me, see that I still cared about him.   
    In that moment, if he had offered me to come with him, I believe that I would have. I just wanted to be with him, I wanted to stay his friend, I didn't want to go back to that school with those hateful people. Quatre was all I had. My parents didn't want me. I might love them, but they didn't love me, not in the way that Quatre did. So how... how could he do this to me?   
    "Stop running," I begged him.   
    He turned and for a brief second, I was so sure that he was going to laugh at me, yell at me, tell me to leave him alone. For a second I forgot who my best friend was and all I could see was Relena's laughing face. He turned and he still had that look in his eyes, that dead look, but those aquamarine eyes were bright with tears. His cheeks were soaked with them, making mine seem small and irrelevant. He looked so miserable. He looked like his soul... that part of him that always tried to make me smile, the part that had made me a birthday cake and helped me study for my math tests, was gone.   
    It was like he was dead, his corpse just standing there, waiting for the rest of him to follow. I wanted to run to him and hug him tightly and never let him go, but there was also something about those eyes that frightened me very badly. I didn't feel like I was looking at my friend anymore. I felt completely helpless in the face of his obvious depression, his sadness. What did I say? What did I do to fix this? I was useless, a failure, I couldn't do anything right. So how could someone like me put the pieces of Quatre's heart back together? How could I make what Relena had done to him out of nothing more than spite and her petty amusement better? I had known him for four years, I knew him better than I had ever known anyone, but I didn't know that.  
    "Please," I whispered, my voice hoarse. I extended my hand out to him, shaking as terribly as it was, and hoping more than anything that he would take it, "Please come back to school with me."  
    He faltered at my words and doubt appeared in those beautiful eyes of his. He seemed to come back to himself for a second, but it wasn't long enough. The train suddenly appeared down the tracks, barreling towards us. And then Quatre smiled at me. He smiled like he always had, that special smile that had seemed like it was only for me. A beautiful, warm, kind thing that only he seemed capable of. The smile that I had loved, that had made my life seem better just having it directed at me.   
    He smiled at me and I thought he would take my hand then. I thought that he would take that step forward and I would hug him and we would walk back together. I was looking into his eyes, but it was his smile I was seeing. I didn't see how his eyes didn't change, and I didn't see him notice the train as it got closer, only feet away. I didn't notice as he took a step back, the middle of his feet balanced on the very edge of the platform.   
    Smiling at me and tears pouring out of his empty eyes, he stopped balancing on that edge. As I looked him in his sea green eyes, Quatre let himself fall backwards. I watched as that beautiful blue-green turned into a smear of red. I stood there on the platform, my hand still stupidly reaching out to him, reaching out to a ghost. I heard a shrill scream, but I'll never know if that was the sound of the breaks of the train, some unknown onlooker, or if it had been me, screaming uncontrollably.   
  
*****  
  
    I don't remember much that happened after that. Everything came to me in shades of white, grey, and occasionally red. My brain adamantly refused to believe anything that my eyes had told it, so it decided to wash everything out in white noise, even if that white noise was shrill and psychotic.   
    They say that when a mother watches her child die, she goes temporarily insane. Well, the same is apparently true for best friends as well. Watching Quatre die killed something inside of me and it has yet to come back. And watching the person that I cared about more than anything had driven my sanity right out of me, because the whole idea that Quatre would kill himself was insane. It wasn’t _real_.  
    Quatre Winner died on March 4th, 2004 (1). I don’t know the exact time. The police would rule it a simple suicide, but that was because they hadn’t known Quatre. They hadn’t been there when he had still been alive. Quatre hadn’t slit his wrists. He hadn’t jumped out in front of the train. He hadn’t laid down on the tracks. He had simply fallen backwards.  
    He had surrendered to gravity and let go of everything because of what Relena had done. There was more than just that that had made Quatre kill himself, but that had been the catalyst. That was what had made up his mind. The cops called it suicide. I called it murder. Relena might as well have pushed him in front of that train.  
    I stared numbly at the thick, red smear on the tracks as various employees fled like ants onto the platform, trying to make sense of the chaos and only adding to it. The train hadn’t even been going at full speed, the conductor had started to break to pull up to the platform. But that hadn’t mattered. The metal battering ram had been going fast enough to rip one, small, thirteen year old boy to pieces. The only kindness that fate did me that day as that I didn’t see the ruined wreck of Quatre’s body, or whatever had been left of it. I was rooted to the spot he had fallen from, like my knees had become a part of the red bricks and concrete I kneeled on. All I saw was that bloody streak across the tracks.  
    How? I asked myself that over and over again. It’s the same question that haunts my thoughts, my dreams. How could Quatre have done that? How could he have decided to take his life? This wasn’t some rash choice he had made just from being outted, he had been thinking about this, he had known where to run to and what to do when it had happened. How long had those thoughts been going through his head? Since Trowa had stopped talking to him? Since Relena had broken his arm? Since he had realized he was gay? Since we had met?  
    And how had I knot known? How had I not seen this? There had to have been something I missed, something I could have done or said to have stopped him from even thinking that that was an option! I had known that he was depressed, between dealing with being gay, the bullying at school, and his cold family life, but why hadn’t he talked to me about it?! Was I such a failure as a friend that I hadn’t seen that darkness in him, that he had rather kill himself than confide in me?  
    What hurt the worst was that he had left me behind. He had abandoned me. He had betrayed me. On the day that we had met, Quatre had hooked his pinky with mine and had promised me that we would always be friends. He had promised me that we would never abandon each other and I had promised him back. We had just been stupid kids, making a big, serious promise like that, but we had kept it for four long years.   
    We had always had each other’s back. Until now. Until that day at the train station. Quatre broke his promise to me. After everything, after knowing what he was abandoning me to, he had still left me behind. He had abandoned me to Relena and Zechs, to my father and mother, to loneliness, to _nothingness_. All without him there at my back like he had _promised_.  
    One of the employees that had come off the train grabbed my arm to pull me away. Maybe he had been trying to shield me from staying where my friend had committed suicide or maybe he thought I was going to try to kill myself, too. I bit him savagely on the hand, hard enough to draw blood and he went away. I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to stay there with Quatre, stay there until it was time for us to walk home together.  
    He had heard my voice. He had turned around on that platform and looked me in the eye. He had smiled at me like everything was going to be fine... and then he had killed himself. He could have taken my hand and walked with me back to school and killed himself some place private later. But he had let me watch the most important person in my life become nothing more than a red, gory smear on some train tracks.   
    The only person I had ever relied on, ever truly trusted, hadn’t even loved me enough to spare me that. What’s the most surprising is that it had surprised me at all. If it didn’t hurt so much, I would laugh at how stupid I am.   
    The people around me were disappearing and later I would realize that the train company employees were making them leave in anticipation for the police. I heard one woman mutter to someone asking if they had seen me push Quatre off the platform. If I had been there and not floating the grey haze that I was in, I might have screamed at her or tried to hit her, but I was gone, and quickly, so was she. Someone draped a jacket over me, but I never found out who. I wonder what the statistic is for people that have gone into shock twice in two weeks. Maybe I had broken some kind of record.   
    There were black spots intruding on my vision amidst the grey and white that my world had become. Those spots threatened to become black holes and swallow me alive, and I was all too happy to see me go down into them. Anywhere was better than where I was. Anywhere else was better than seeing Quatre’s very last smile or that streak of red. I kept seeing it in my head, that smile and the train colliding with his frail body. It hadn’t made a single sound. Not a thud, not a screech. Why was that so horrible to me?   
    The only thing keeping me from blacking out at that point had been the fact that my body didn’t quite know if it wanted to do that more or if it wanted to vomit. I was too shocked, too horrified to even do that much. All I could do was sit there on the cool platform, staring off into space like some inanimate object. My body was saved from either option when the cops finally showed up. I write ‘finally’, but I really have no idea when that was. I could have been sitting there for no more than twenty minutes, or it could have been hours.  
    There were two cops that showed up to investigate the call of a suicide. I didn’t see either of their faces. They were irrelevant to me. One of them said my name, just my first name. His voice sounded slightly familiar. I was sure that he worked with my father, but he wasn’t one of my father’s friends. All that meant was that he wasn’t going to talk to my dad about this. He placed his hand on my arm and faired better than the train employee. I didn’t feel like biting him. I didn’t feel anything anymore and didn’t even protest when he gentle grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet.   
    I didn’t know what to do. I was lost and as pliable as an infant, not sure if there was something I should be doing now. What does one say or think or feel or do when they just lost their best friend? No one had ever told me, so I didn’t know. I just let the cop lead me to the one of the benches on the platform closer to the building and even sat down on it when he told me to. It seemed easier that way, letting someone else worry about me. He draped the jacket back around me. I hadn’t realized that it had fallen when I had stood up.  
    His partner suddenly appeared and pressed a steaming mug into my hands. The second it touched my skin, I jolted, color returning to my vision for a moment, and I dropped it on the ground where it spilled. My hands shook and I felt a wetness on my cheeks. I heard myself apologize to him, but neither of the police officers seemed annoyed by it. I think that they had been expecting it. The other officer disappeared again and I curled my hands into fists, laying them on my lap. They thought I had dropped the mug because it had been hot, but while the heat had shocked my cold, clammy skin, it had been the smell of what the mug contained that had made me drop it. Jasmine tea. Quatre loves... _loved_ jasmine tea. Even with my hands curled up, I couldn’t stop them from shaking.   
    The familiar police officer asked me if I knew the kid that had jumped off the platform, if I knew why he had done it, what I had seen happen. I didn’t say a word. I just stared at the puddle of tea at my feet. The officer was very patient with me. I guess they had sent him because he had sensitivity training or something. Ten minutes later, his partner came back, this time with hot chocolate. I was able to hold it this time. I didn’t drink from it, my stomach hurt too much, but I liked the feeling of the painful heat in my hands. I willed that heat to travel up into the rest of me, because I felt horribly cold, colder than I had after almost getting hit by that truck.  
    It was another thirty minutes before I was able to answer their questions. Little by little, I felt pieces of me returning. The grey and white were slowly replaced by dull, muted colors. I shook and felt an intense chill, but no longer felt the threat of blacking out. I loathed them for taking that away from me. I wanted to retreat from reality, not remember it.   
    I told the police in a slow and flat voice that yes, I was Quatre’s friend. I told them his name and saw their surprise at his last name. I told them that I had followed him from school because he had ran and had been worried about him. I didn’t tell them about the bullying because, even in death, I would protect my best friend. I was sure that everyone would know, thanks to Relena, about what had happened at school, but not from me. No one would hear that Quatre had been gay from me.   
    It was when I had to tell them what had happened there at the train station that my emotionless tone faltered and I stuttered severely. But I still told it. Quatre smiling at me while he had cried, him falling back deliberately just as the train had been slowing down, the blood, the screaming. The familiar police officer took down my statement and said something about Quatre’s parents. He asked if there was a way he could contact my mother to get me home. I guess when you watch your friend kill himself, you get a free pass to get out of the rest of the school day. Or maybe it was so late that school was over.  
    I ignored him asking about my mother. I didn’t want to see her. I didn’t want to see her cold stare, how uncaring she was. I was holding on by my fingernails, through sheer force of will, and one look from her, or her outright ignoring me, would send me sailing over the edge. I didn’t want to go home, either. I didn’t want to go back to school, and I didn’t want to stay there at the train station. I wanted my best friend back, there was nothing else, and if I thought about that for too long, I was going to start crying again.   
    I asked him about my father instead, not because seeing him was going to make me feel any better, but because he would at least look at me with something other than contempt or outright hatred. Anger would be fine. Boredom would be fine. I would even happily take a beating from him. At least it would make him touch me, acknowledge that I was alive. And it was what I deserved. I didn’t have a scratch on me. Quatre had died because I hadn’t been paying attention. It was my job to protect him and I had been too worried about myself to really see him. I deserved every punch my father could deliver.  
    My dad was in charge of a stakeout in South Nausten, the officer said, something to do with rumors of a meth dealer hangout. He had no clue when he would be home. He said that I might be questioned again when I was feeling up to it. Even in my shocked state, I could read between the lines on that one. He thought that I was too freaked to be much help, that I might remember more details or be more reliable when I wasn’t mourning the loss of my friend. I can’t even call what I went through that day mourning, because I was trying so hard to be in denial, to just fade away. I just felt like I was dreaming the entire time. He put his hand on my forehead and flashed a penlight in my eyes for some strange reason. The officer left me to walk over to his partner and have a terse conversation with him. I heard them both say ‘hospital’ several times.   
    “We can’t just drop him off at some empty house. You know procedure, he can’t be alone!” his partner suddenly snapped loudly, “Besides, I don’t want Maxwell on my ass for not taking care of his kid when he’s acting like that!”  
    What was I acting like? What exactly was so awful about me that they wanted to dump me at the hospital?  
    “He’s responsive,” the other officer argued, “his pupils are normal and so is his temperature for what I can tell. He’s shaken up, but if it were me, I’d get better a lot faster at home than being poked and prodded at a hospital. After what he just went through, he needs to be with his family, some place familiar, not stuck with some strangers that will just forget about him as soon as they decide he doesn’t need medical attention.”  
    I didn’t need medical attention. The only thing that was hurt was my heart, and no doctor was going to fix that. I wanted to scream at them to let me go home. At least it wasn’t here. At least I couldn’t see Quatre’s blood mere feet away from me here. Why couldn’t they just let me go home?! I wasn’t going to kill myself, I felt like yelling, and there was absolutely nothing anyone could do to help me.  
    “My mom is home,” was what came out of my mouth instead.     Hearing my own voice shocked me. I hadn’t thought myself capable of speech, or to sound so frighteningly normal. I didn’t feel normal. I felt crazy. That I could lie so easily, like nothing at all had happened and I was fine was disgusting.  
    “She doesn’t have a car, so she can’t pick me up,” I told an ounce of truth in my cold, flat, and steady voice, “but she’s there.”      
    I wondered if they would even check. All they had to do was call my house phone or the place my mother worked at to know that she was there and not home, but when I looked at them, I knew that they wouldn’t. They wanted to get rid of me, not out of cruelty, but because the way I was was bothering them somehow. They were uncomfortable and pained just to talk to me. I imagined they weren’t looking forward to having to pay Quatre’s family a visit, either.  
    The two police officers traded some kind of private, nonverbal communication with each other and I understood just enough that I wasn’t going to a hospital. That was fine. I just wanted to be alone. What I would do when I got there was too far ahead for my brain to touch on, I just needed to keep moving and not think. The familiar officer touched my arm again and helped me to my feet. I followed the two of them off the platform and through the station. It was dead. There were another couple of police officers guarding the entrance, and when we walked past, they pulled some yellow crime tape over the entrance to the platform.   
    There was a small crowd of people outside, kept at bay by another couple of officers. I wondered if my father would be annoyed to have been kept out of the loop of this, if he would even know. Suicides weren’t his area, not since his promotion a long time ago. People would talk about the Winner’s only son killing himself for some time, but I doubted even then that my father would listen, or link me to it. He tended not to hear things that he didn’t care about if it didn’t involve him. The people in the crowd didn’t pay much attention to me. They were more interested in the boy that had died than the one that hadn’t. My two officers got me to their cruiser quickly and without incident.   
    They dropped me off at my house in short time. People, especially in my side of town, tend to move out of the way of police cruisers whether their lights are flashing or not.  
    "Hey," the familiar officer said as I got out of the car and reached his hand out to give me a card, "Give that to your father when he gets home. We'll be in touch if we need any more of your testimony," he told me and then, almost like it was an after thought, but a sincerity that wasn't forced, "I'm sorry about the loss of your friend, Duo."  
    The loss of your friend. That was right. I had lost Quatre. He was gone and he was never coming back. I was never going to see him again, I was never going to eat lunch with him, I was never going to walk home with him, I was never going to talk to him. Never, never, never. He was lost from my life. I had no one.  
    I couldn't handle those thoughts or that word, _lost_ , like I had misplaced my best friend, like I had turned my back on him and he had just gone missing, that he was somewhere, trying to find his way home but couldn't, all because I had turned my back to him. Quatre had betrayed me, but I had betrayed him first. I couldn't hate him for killing himself in front of me, it was all that I deserved for not helping him, for not having his back like I had promised.   
    I felt tears threaten me and knew that it was a very short distance from those tears to violently sobbing right there in front of my house, so I stiffly nodded to the police officer and walked to my front door, card in hand.   
    I could feel their eyes on me as I touched the doorknob, checking to see if I had been lying about my mother being home. For a moment, I thought that they would get out of their car and escort me in, but when I opened the door without a key, they seemed satisfied and drove off. They had more important things to worry about than my state of mind or lack of, namely consoling one of the richest and more powerful families in town and figuring out if Quatre's death really _had_ been a suicide, an accident, or if I was some kind of murderer.   
    The joke was on them. The lock on our front door was broken, had been for days. It was just one of a hundred things my father needed to fix around the house but didn't have the time or the money to do so. A broken lock was a lot more important to fix than a broken water heater or the black mold in the bathroom or the leaking dishwasher, but I didn't have the money or skill to fix it and Dad had been too busy at work. He kept saying that he would get to it Saturday or Sunday, so I guess we would survive two more days with a busted door. It wasn't like anything bad had happened so far.  
    Dad and I still used our keys when opening and closing the front door in case our nosey neighbors were watching, but even in South Nausten there weren't too many people stupid enough to break into a cop's home. That would be like an instant get into jail free card, or a death sentence since my father was armed. It wasn't like we had anything valuable to steal. The only people I could think of that would bother to break into our house would be those that hated my father for being a cop, or he had arrested them, their friend, or a family member, but they wouldn't exactly let a shitty, cheap lock deter them to begin with.  
    My house's silence, something I often loved coming home to, was chilling. The dishes from this morning were still stacked in the sink. Thinking at they had only been there since that morning seemed unreal to me, that that small amount of time had passed. That morning, the world had made sense. That morning, Quatre had been alive. I looked at the card in my hand. It was a business card for a psychiatrist specializing in trauma. I tore it into tiny pieces and dumped the pieces in the trash can.   
    I walked past the kitchen and up into the attic. I fell onto my mattress and closed my eyes. I saw the smear of blood on the tracks. I saw Quatre's smile. I saw his aquamarine eyes turn red.  
   _"You always have my back."_  
    Tears poured down my cheeks in a freaking torrent. It was like they had backed up in the time it had taken to get back home and now someone had opened a faucet in my face. I saw Quatre take a step back, his sneakers balanced precariously on the edge of the platform. I heard the rumble of the train getting closer and closer. I watched him fall.  
    A powerful sob escaped my throat. I pressed my face into my pillow but it didn't help. Just like that, my very tentative control snapped and I was sobbing uncontrollably into my already tear soaked pillow. Crying doesn't really describe it, but it's the only word I have. I sobbed and cried for what seemed like hours. I couldn't stop. I threw up, again and again, or I would have if my stomach hadn't been empty. My dry heaves became so violent that I spat out blood.  
    My tears and sobs wouldn't stop no matter how hard I tried to get them back under control. I remember actually frightening myself, thinking that they would never stop, that I would just cry myself to death, but I couldn't find a reason to stop crying, either. My best friend was dead and I didn't know how to deal with that.  
    Sheer agony filled my chest and my head as I cried and my memories of Quatre's death played themselves out over and over and over. It was too much for me and I eagerly sought that black hole in my head that I knew was still there. When I did, I tumbled inside of it quite happily and just let that blackness, that _nothingness_ take me.  
  
End Part 7  
  
      
      
      
  
  
(1) For those of you who have been actually reading this story, these dates don’t make any sense, since Duo started writing this journal on March 3rd. I decided to change the dates a bit, so Duo would actually start writing these journal entries in April, not March. I’m ignoring the problem for now because it isn’t entirely a huge deal.   
      
  



	13. Chapter 3 Part 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duo tries to deal with a life without Quatre and struggles to find a reason to continue on.

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 3  
Part 8  
  
  
    I dreamed. None of it was pleasant, unsurprisingly. I suppose that anyone that had lived through the two weeks that I just had would have suffered from nightmares, too. But those dreams were nothing like the ones I had had after my run in with the truck. Back then I had dreamed about the accident, but I had dreamed things differently.   
    I had dreamed that I had been too slow and the truck had hit Quatre. I had dreamed that I had failed and Quatre had died. This time I didn't need to dream anything different, I had already failed. I dreamed my memories in one big loop. In my sleep, I watched Quatre die over and over again. I watched him fall. I watched him surrender to gravity, to all of the shit in his life.  
    When I finally escaped my own personal hell and woke up, it was Saturday night. A day and a half had come and gone. My eyes were nearly encrusted shut with dried tears and sweat. My face felt filthy with the stuff. I felt burning hot, the kind of heat that makes you feel like you're suffocating and my head was pounding. My bladder was so swollen and pained that it was amazing I hadn't pissed myself while I had slept. I knew my body well enough to know I was horribly dehydrated, but I felt so sick that I didn't notice my empty stomach at least.   
    I felt like someone had tied my feet to someone's car and dragged me through a hot desert. I felt hollow, emotionally and physically. How many meals had I missed? How many hours? I had slept for so long, but my mental trauma and nightmares made me feel like I had been awake that whole time.  
    I didn't want to leave my bed. My nightmares were terrible, but I didn't want to be part of reality. But my bladder reminded me that if I didn't go to the bathroom in the next few minutes, something terrible was going to happen, so I struggled to my feet. Pain flared in my back, but it was as meaningless to me as my empty stomach. My head felt too heavy and stuffed with cotton for pain to get through. I found the stairs in the pitch dark that was my room and stumbled downstairs and to the bathroom like I was drugged. I walked into the wall a few times.   
    The house was quiet except for the sound of my father's snoring and I wondered if he had even realized that I hadn't left my bedroom at all since Friday. I wondered if he knew I was alive. Peeing at that point was both incredible and agonizing, but I managed even in my out of it state.   
    I then staggered back upstairs with every intention of laying down on my mattress and escaping the world again for a very long time, but I didn't even make it that far. Dizziness struck me like a plank of wood to the face. I'm not sure if I blacked out and fell to the floor or I laid down on it, but I was gone when my head hit the hard floor not even a full foot away from my mattress.   
    I woke up again Sunday afternoon. Well, I didn't so much wake up as I was woken up by my father kicking me in the side. I felt even worse than I had Saturday night. I was weak and that heat I had felt was most definitely a fever and not the weather. My bladder ached even though it was empty and I recognized the early signs of an incoming infection. My head felt so heavy that even my father's kick didn't hurt at all.  
    "Get the fuck up. Andre called. You haven't shown up for any of your shifts," he snarled at me.  
    Andre is my other boss. I was surprised that the hard ass hadn't called yesterday. I blinked up at my father, my tired and sick brain unable to follow what was happening with any kind of intelligence. I tried to at least sit up, but it just made me incredibly dizzy and fell back onto my side. At some point in my sleep I had ended up back on my mattress somehow. My pillow still felt damp and I wondered if it was all sweat or if I had been crying in my sleep. My eyes felt irritated so I might have. My tears seemed endless, even as dehydrated as I was.   
    "I said GET UP," my dad thought I was being a smartass and was getting furious.  
    He grabbed my arm, his other hand curling into a fist. I urged him, silently, to hit me until I was bloody and broken. I wanted to be mangled, just like Quatre was. I wanted to be in agony. But then he paused and actually looked at me in the light of the overhead light bulb I had helped my dad install awhile ago. He must have turned it on when he came up here.   
    "You didn't touch the food I left you last night," he said with a frown, letting go of my arm," Did you eat anything yesterday?"  
    I shook my head.  
    "Don't want food," I muttered in a raspy voice, "Stomach hurts."  
    The thought of food disgusted me and it had nothing to do with not having eaten in days or being sick.  
    "When did you last eat?" he continued to question me, being patient, his usually stern and intense gaze soft and caring.   
    He didn't act like that often, but he was capable of it. I didn't want him to be. I wanted him to be cruel. I wanted his hate, not his care. I struggled to answer his question. What day was it? Sunday? Had I eaten the day that Quatre had died?  
    "Friday morning," I finally remembered I had eaten breakfast before school that day. Toast and jam with water.  
    My father placed a hand on my forehead, feeling my obvious fever. His hand was so big and cool compared to my heated skin. It felt so good. He used to do that when I had been small. My eyes slid closed at the memory, the comfort at feeling my daddy's touch. He would put his hand on my forehead and brush back my long bangs. I would grab his hand with both of mine, loving and awed at how much bigger just one of his hands were. I heard his voice, but it only soothed me deeper into the darkness of sleep.  
  
*****  
  
    "Duo."  
    My father's voice woke me up again no more than an hour later, but it was long enough for me to dream. That time I dreamt about being in the hospital after my dad had beaten me with that empty vodka bottle, how Quatre had cared for me, been there for me, and for his care, I had snapped at him angrily. I had said something horrible to him. And he had kept on being my friend after that. But in the dream, when I had said that terrible thing to him, I hit him. I punched him in the face over and over, until his blue-green eyes turned blood red.  
    "Your stomach will feel better if you eat something," my father told me, placing a hand against my throbbing back and helping me sit up.  
    The world spun a few times before it righted itself again. There was a bowl of steaming soup next to me on the floor that I assumed he had made. I smelled vegetables and chicken. Normally, it would have smelled heavenly, but at that moment it smelled revolting. My stomach wanted nothing to do with it.  
    He handed me the bowl but I didn't feel the heat on my skin. I still felt cold. I didn't have a choice and some part of me knew that my father was right, I needed to eat something. I tried to drink from the bowl to see if my stomach would at least handle the broth, but my hands were shaking too badly. My dad took the bowl from me and lifted it, tilting a small amount of broth into my mouth.   
    My mind decided too many minutes had passed since it had last tortured me and gleefully supplied me an image of what Quatre's body might have looked like after the train had hit him, a bloody and mangled pile of gore, his limbs broken with bones jutting out, bone chips and red guts smeared across the track. The second the broth tried to slide down my throat, my stomach protested it's presence. I turned my head and vomited on the hard floor.  
    I expected my father to strike me or yell at me for throwing up, wasting food, and making a mess that he would need to clean up, but he didn't. He wiped off my face, gave me some water to drink that I had more success keeping down, and after a few minutes had passed, he tried to feed me more. I threw up again and he, with a patience and kindness that I hadn't seen from him since I had been a child, just repeated the whole process until, on the third try, I was able to keep down half a bowl of soup, including some of the vegetables and chicken, and half a bottle of water without puking.  
    He laid me back down on my mattress, pulling the sheets up and over me before starting to clean up my sick and disappearing down the steps for a few minutes. With food and water in me, I actually felt like a human being again. I didn't feel like I was just floating from one nightmare to the next. Even when I had been awake, I had just felt like I was stuck in a dream. The food in my stomach woke me up from my haze, but that didn't make me happy because it made me think. Quatre was dead. That hadn't changed in my sleep, so why would I want to be awake?  
    My father came back with a towel and a bottle of water, placing them next to my bed where I could reach. He put his hand on my forehead again, brushing my sweaty bangs away from my face.  
    "Get some rest," he said softly, his fingers lightly stroking my hair, "and make sure you drink the entire bottle. If you're feeling better later, I'll make you more soup."  
    I nodded, my eyelids starting to droop again.  
    "Thanks, Dad," I rasped and felt myself start to cry again, but my tears were silent this time. I let my father think they were from my fever.  
    He kissed my forehead and walked back downstairs, leaving my light on for me.  
      
*****  
  
    I slept the rest of Sunday away, waking up early Monday morning. I stayed awake just long enough to chew on some bland crackers that had magically appeared at my bedside while I had slept and guzzled down the entire bottle of water. Then, my most immediate needs taken care of, I dozed off again.  
    When I opened my eyes late Monday afternoon and realized that I had just missed half of the school day, I panicked a little. Ever since missing a year of school thanks to pneumonia, I had never missed school because of sickness. The only times that I had ever skipped out of a day of school was because I was in the hospital with something broken or I physically could not get out of bed. Although, I suppose the trauma of losing the only friend you have to the point of making yourself sick counts as that.   
    But at the time, all I could think of was all the classes I had missed, all the homework I was late on, how my grades were going to suffer. None of that really mattered, but I think my brain was actively trying to separate itself from everything I had seen and felt in the past three days. I struggled to my feet in my disgusting clothes that I had been wearing since Friday, my hair heavy with sweat and falling out of my ponytail, and I thought about calling Quatre, to tell him that I was sick and not to worry about me. He always worried about me. Then reality came crashing back into me and I sat down hard, like someone had shoved me. I couldn't even blame my fever. It was almost entirely gone by then.   
    I felt my tears start all over again and even though I was sick to death of them and I didn't want to cry anymore, I couldn't help it. They just poured out of me like pus out of an infected wound. I didn't sob violently that time and I managed to get my tears stopped quickly, but not before my cheeks were soaked again. I stood up again, my back, legs, and headache protesting at being vertical again, but even if I had no intention of going to school that day, I couldn't stand being on that mattress anymore.   
    It wasn't that I was tired of not doing anything, because I didn't care. I didn't care about anything, not sleeping, not being awake, not eating, not my aches, not my tears, _nothing_. Depression is worse than physical injury and I was deep in it. I just couldn't lie there and do nothing because I didn't feel like I could sleep for another second, and I didn't want to think. Also the smell of my old sweat was getting to me.   
    I grabbed a fresh shirt and pair of sweatpants from my dresser. I felt dizzy from laying down for three days, but I managed to get down the stairs and into the bathroom without falling over. Neither of my parents were home and wouldn't be for a couple of hours, so I took my sweet time in the bathroom relieving myself and taking a very, very long shower. Any other day, it would have been amazing, since my dad was always yelling at me not to waste the hot water.   
    I got dressed and suddenly found myself with nothing to do, or rather nothing I had the energy or care to do. Even reading didn't hold any excitement for me, so I walked into our living room and sat down in my dad's lounger. It smelled of him and very faintly of beer. I flipped on the television and tried to find the most mindless thing I could, something that I could pay attention to but wouldn't require me to think at all. I watched a nature documentary about foxes for a bit, but then it reminded me of Trowa, of him saying how much he loved animals and wanted to travel the world and I had to turn the station before my sudden anger made me throw the remote into the television set. Every talk show I found talked about runaway children or depression or bullying or something else that reminded me of Quatre.   
    I eventually found a station that was having some kind of stupid action movie marathon, the kinds with lots of explosions, girls with big breasts, and muscled heroes with machine guns, but not before I felt like my heart was being ripped out of my chest. Everything I did, everything I saw, everything I heard just reminded me of Quatre and what had happened. My failure. All the things that I could have done to stop him... I felt hollow and grey, like I wasn't real. Even breathing felt difficult and I was trying as hard as I could to deny the fact of what my life was going to be like without him, but I couldn't.   
    What was I without my best friend? Before him, I had been completely alone, my parents the only people in my life. Quatre had saved me from total loneliness. Being with him, being his friend had just as much made me the person I am now as my parents' influence. What little there was in my life that I enjoyed, that made me happy, it was because of him. But now he's gone. How was I supposed to live with that?   
    Did I even want to? It seemed like all I had left were my memories and my hatred. Every time I felt that pain, that emptiness in me, my very first reaction was to call Quatre and tell him about it. I think, by the time my father got home, I was so horribly lonely and depressed, I would have called Quatre's number just to hear his voice again. I would have told him about how much it hurt, watching him die, how colorless everything was to me, how bland and tasteless even the food I ate was without him with me, and I would have pretended that he was listening.   
    But I couldn't even do that much. Quatre had had his phone on him when that train had hit him. It was destroyed, too. His suicide had taken even that one, tiny, pathetic shred of comfort from me.   
    I spent the few hours until my dad came home staring blankly at the television set and alternatively crying. I didn't cry like I had Friday again and my fits of crying seemed to come and go randomly, like my sadness and depression were waves. Every time I thought I was coping, that I could survive it, they would swell again and drag me down. Thankfully when my father walked in, it was one of my better moments. I was actually watching the new action film at that point. Watching the wanton destruction on the screen suited my mood.   
    My father was always particular about his chair. Mom and I could use it when he wasn't home, but as soon as he was, we were expected to vacate it immediately. That time, he didn't say a thing or try to throw me bodily out of the chair when he came in and I was sitting in it. He sat on our old, beaten up couch that one set of my grandparents had given us and didn't so much as glare at me. If I hadn't felt so numb, it would have shocked me.   
    He was already out of his work clothes, his gun and holster discarded in his bedroom. He sat there without a word and watched the movie with me. Any other day, I would have been happy. It was nice to sit there with him, just be with him without any screaming or yelling or hitting or being scared of him. He didn't even have a beer in his hand, which was rare. But I was too sad to feel happy to spend time with my father. I was too sad to feel anything else. It was just seeping into me, soaking in to every joint, every inch of me.    
    The movie finally ended right before we normally had dinner. I heard my mother come in at some point, but had quickly heard their bedroom door shut. She hadn't come out since. She had one of her headaches again. Knowing that she wouldn't come out for several hours, maybe even for the rest of the night, I started to get up, but my father beat me to it. I was finally surprised by his behavior. He hated cooking and if Mom or I weren't around to do it, he would often just get take out or heat up some leftovers. Was he being nice to me because I was sick or did he know?   
    I didn't know what to think if he did know. My father could be cold and cruel and if he _did_ know that I had just lost my best friend and had decided not to say a word about it to me hurt me. While he was certainly capable of it, I didn't think that was the case. I hadn't said a word to him or my mother about it and I didn't intend to. It seemed too personal, too close to my heart to talk about to them. I guess that sounds odd, having something so personal I could tell my parents about it, but it was true.   
    They had hurt me so much, I just couldn't bear tell them. Either they wouldn't care, which I wouldn't have been able to cope with, the last coffin nail to my tentative control over myself, or they would try to comfort me, which would be worse. I was holding on by my fingernails, I didn't want comfort from two people that so seldom showed me any love at all.   
    How would they understand? They didn't even know that Quatre and I had been friends. Even if my dad was aware that Quatre Winner had killed himself and I had been there to see it, he didn't know that I had just lost my best friend, my only friend in the world. He didn't know that I felt like my soul had just been ripped from my body. He didn't know that I couldn't stop crying. He didn't know that every second that I was awake, I felt like throwing up. And he certainly didn't know that the only thing I wanted to do was grab the big butcher's knife from the kitchen, bring it to school, and gut Relena Darlien with it. Right before I took it to Trowa Barton.   
    The action movie marathon on the station that I was watching changed over to the news. I wasn't surprised to see that Quatre's suicide was the biggest story they had. Nausten isn't such a small town that everyone knows everyone's business or crimeless, but still, nothing super exciting happens here. A few drug busts, some thefts, nothing exceptionally newsworthy. But the thirteen year old heir to the Winner business throwing himself in front of a train was great entertainment, I suppose. Especially the _gay_ thirteen year old heir. While I had slept my life away, word of Quatre's sexuality had already made it to the cops. His parents, if they had even tried, had been too late to pay anyone off and that juicy little tidbit was apparently public knowledge now. There wasn't any mention of Trowa, though.   
    I guess my testimony, along with all of our classmates and whoever had been on that platform with us, had been enough for the police to label it a suicide. He had died instantly, the news report had said. There wasn't any footage or interviews with Quatre's family. I guess that kind of wealth could buy discretion and respect. I wondered how his sisters were handling it, if they were still going to school, hounded by their classmates.   
    I felt numb watching the reporter talk about the details of the suicide and it's 'impact on the stricken community'. Ha! I bet Nausten was real stricken. No one had cared when Quatre had been miserable and bullied, but now suddenly they gave a shit that he was dead? I didn't cry. It was strange, I had been crying all day thinking of these tiny, little moments Quatre and I had had, but I couldn't cry hearing about his death.  
    I turned off the television when the news report informed me that his funeral was going to be that weekend. I couldn't handle that. His funeral. Quatre's funeral. How could he possibly have a funeral? He wasn't even old enough to drive! The whole thing was so ridiculous to me and turned my stomach into a hot, upset knot.   
    "Dinner's ready," my father interrupted my dark thoughts.  
    I sat down at the dinner table as he served me waffles and bacon. My stomach churned at the smell of it. The syrup was too sugary, the smell of bacon too thick. I didn't want any of it. But the second I stuck a piece of waffle in my mouth, my stomach woke up and immediately got over it's nausea, reminding me that I hadn't eaten very much at all in days. I ate all of it and polished off seconds as well. I knew I was probably going to sick later, but at that moment, my stomach was pretty happy just to have _something_ in it.   
    I busied myself after dinner with cleaning my room, stripping the smelly sheets off my mattress and putting fresh ones on it and clearing away the plate of crackers and empty water bottles. When all that was done, I laid on my mattress with the light on, staring up at the ceiling. I had homework to do, I realized, but also realized that, even if I had had my school books with me, I had no intention of doing it. I just didn't care. It was the first time in my entire life that I purposively skipped doing my homework and wasn't worried to the point of fits. At some point I managed to fall asleep, but it wasn't for many hours and I dreamed heavily. My nightmares were there to stay.  
  
*****  
  
    I went back to school on Tuesday. I hadn't wanted to. I didn't want to face my classmates and teachers. I didn't want to see the pity and fake concern on their faces. I didn't want to see Trowa and I didn't want to see Relena. As far as I was concerned, they had killed Quatre, the two of them, and they had gotten off scott free for it. But what was I going to do about it? Kill them? I wanted to, just the thought of looking at either of them filled me with dull rage, but I knew that I wouldn't. It wouldn't bring Quatre back.   
    I didn't even care if my father would be pissed off by my hanging around the house when I wasn't even sick anymore, but I had nothing else to do. Might as well go to school, I decided, because it was better than staying home and staring up at my ceiling, hating myself.   
    I don't think I need to say it, but school was hell. It was the first day I had ever been surrounded by my peers without Quatre to shield me. I was unprepared for the amount of rage that was in me returning to the place that had broken the only person that had ever truly cared for me. I hated everyone. Every person that stared at me in the halls and whispered to their friends I wanted to hurt. My heart was a stone, a bleeding stone.   
    My life has become a shitty, lackluster clone of how my life once was, a mockery of it. That day, when I thought about all the things I had once thought made me miserable, I wondered why I had thought them to be that bad. I sat through my first class with Mrs. Khushrenada, her voice like white noise. Quatre's desk next to mine was empty, only it wasn't his anymore. They would get some other kid to sit there maybe or it would stay empty, but it would never be his again. I could feel Relena's stare from somewhere behind me and willed her away. Even my rage at her wasn't enough to bring me out of my depressed stupor.   
    I didn't take any notes and when Mrs. Khushrenada skipped over me when she handed out the homework, I didn't even notice. I felt like crying. I was a ghost. The bell rang, signaling the next period, but I didn't move. The idea of getting up and walking to my next class was nightmarish. What was I doing, just shuffling through the motions, like nothing had changed? Just like everyone else? It was like no one had noticed that Quatre had died, no one cared, and that was probably close to the truth. No one had ever cared.   
    Hands touched my knees and I blinked, bewildered, at Mrs. Khushrenada. She was kneeling in front of me, looking at me with such earnest sympathy that I felt sick.  
    "Oh, Duo," she said, tears in her eyes, and drew me into a hug.  
    I had never been hugged by a woman before, only ever Quatre. It was strange and oddly comforting, even though I told myself that this person was not my mother, even if she felt exactly like I had always imagined being hugged by my mother would feel like as a child.   
    "I am so sorry," her voice was thick and I realized that she was crying.  
    I felt my own tears start to drip down my face for about the millionth time in the last four days. When she finally let go of me, she cupped my face in her hands.  
    "How are you?" she asked me, looking at me with more kindness than my mother ever had.   
    I wiped at my face.  
    "I..."  
    'I'm not doing too well, all I have are nightmares, I don't know how to handle this, I need help, why would he kill himself, how am I supposed to live with myself?'  
    A thousand thoughts in my head, all clamoring for attention.  
    "I'm coping," I lied.  
    She smiled sadly at me and I wondered if she could see right through me, could see my tired eyes, if she could see my depression.   
    "If you need to talk about it, I will always be here for you," she promised me, "If you need _anything_. You know that don't you?"  
    I nodded half heartedly. There was nothing she could do to help me and she probably knew that. Her hands dropped to her lap and held mine in hers, giving them a gentle squeeze.  
    "The principle wants to see you," Mrs. Khushrenada told me, "but you don't have to if you're not up to it. He just wants to give you your backpack back and talk to you for a little bit. You're already excused from your next class, if that's what you want."  
    I shrugged. I didn't care one way or another. I might as well. At least I wouldn't run into Relena or Zechs in the principal's office.   
    "I guess," I said noncommittally.  
    She gave me one last, weak smile and let me on my way. I had never been in Principal Chandler's office before in my entire time at this school. I might not be the best student, but I stay out of trouble, or had before Quatre had decided to fall in front of a train. His secretary just waved me in, staring at me with this pitiful look that suddenly made me angry. When would people stop looking at me like that?  
    "Ah, Mr. Maxwell," the principal greeted me as I walked in.  
    I blinked at him stupidly for a second. I hadn't expected him to be so formal. I was just a 7th grader, and my dad was 'Mr. Maxwell', not me.   
    "I am very sorry for your loss," he said solemnly.   
    I was getting kind of tired of people saying that to me, but then he added, "Quatre was such a smart boy," and I just felt devastated all over again.   
    "Thank you," I murmured uneasily.  
    I suddenly felt the complete _unfairness_ of it as I stood there in the principal's office looking at this man dressed in the nice, but probably on the cheap side, suit in my cheaper jeans and t-shirt. Quatre had been smart, rich, nice, kind... he had been everything that I wasn't. But he had died and I was alive. Where was the justice in that? I should have been the one to kill myself, not Quatre. No one would miss me, mourn me, or ever say something like 'he was such a smart boy' with any kind of sincerity like that.       
    Principal Chandler stood from his desk and handed me my backpack.  
    "I believe that this belongs to you."  
    I took it back without much enthusiasm.  
    "If you need to talk to someone or if you are having any problems... adjusting, my door is always open," he advised me, "and you have the full support of our guidance counselor and therapist."  
    "I know," I said and just wanted to get out of that office. He was a nice enough man, but I knew I would never be coming back there with any of my problems.  
    "Very well, then," he said with a little frown like he wished that I had opened up to him. He probably wanted to cover his ass. I was really starting to wish that the adults at that school would stop looking at me like they were trying to assure themselves I wasn't going to slit my throat any time soon.  
    On my way out of the office, out in the main hallway, I nearly bumped into a man and woman that were trying to get into the office. When I actually looked up at their faces, my heart stopped. I recognized them at a mere glance, not because I had ever met them or seen their pictures, though. It was harder to tell with the man, but I had seen the shape of his nose and mouth for four long years and I would continue to see it in my dreams. And the more that I looked at him, the more traits I could see as traits Quatre would have grown into, if he had lived to grow into them.   
    I don't know exactly what I had expected Quatre's father to look like, but while he wasn't as tall as I had thought he would be, he was just as imposing as my best friend had led me to believe. My father was taller than him and would no doubt win in a fist fight, but Mr. Winner had the coldest, most intense and driven stare I had ever seen. I imagined that same man only ever interacting with Quatre to tell him that he had to get the _perfect_ grades and go to the _perfect_ college. I almost shuddered thinking of that cold, piercing stare directed at him. His sandy hair and brown eyes didn't make him look much like his only son, you had to really study his face to see it.  
    Quatre's mother on the other hand was a completely different story. My friend had clearly gotten most of his obvious features from her. While Quatre had been handsome, Mrs. Winner was _beautiful_. Not gorgeous, but beautiful. Her skin was pale and perfect and I could easily imagine his smile gracing her pale, pink lips. Her blonde hair was just a few shades from white, and naturally wavy. She wore her hair in the exact same way that I did, in a low ponytail.   
    She had his eyes. That made my heart ache with pain, seeing those green-blue eyes that I had thought I would never see again. Those eyes were the same shade as his had been. Those eyes had the same kindness and shyness in them. I couldn't bear to look at her.  
    I felt rage simmer dangerously in me at the sight of the two of them. These were Quatre's parents, the two people in his life that were just as responsible for his death as Relena, Trowa, and myself. For all I knew, they were more responsible. I remembered all the times he had gotten locked out or forgotten or had to go home to a dark house. I remembered all of the times that he had needed them and they hadn't been there for him, every single time. And I hated them. I would have been content to slide past them and never see them again after Mr. Winner said 'excuse me' in a slightly snide way, but then his wife took a good look at me and her eyes widened in shock.  
    "Oh!" she said in a near gasp, "You're that boy that saved Quatre's life."  
    Bitterness consumed me, turning that dull rage into something searing hot and out of control. Of course. I wasn't Quatre's friend to these people. I was just the boy that had saved him from getting by that truck. Saved him. Ha! That was fucking hysterical. What _exactly_ had I saved? Two weeks for him to feel agony at Trowa ignoring him and Relena destroying his life. I had saved his life so he could live just long enough to think he repulsed the boy that he loved, for me to push that same boy away from him, and for everyone in school to laugh and point fingers at him like he was some kind of monster, a freak.  
    For the first time, I wished that I had never ran out into that street after Quatre. I wished that I had let that truck hit him. Wouldn't that have been kinder to him? No... if I was making a wish then I wish that I had gone out into that street and stood with him. I wished that I had let that truck hit me, too, instead of being the one left behind.  
    I should have just muttered 'yeah, I'm him,' and pushed past them, or just ignored them entirely. But I didn't and looking back at it now, I regret it. At the time, I didn't feel sorry, but I did feel frightened. Of myself. I had so much anger and resentment twisted up inside of me. What amount of it that I had had before Quatre had taken his own life seemed so miniscule by comparison. I regret letting all of that hurt and rage take control of me, but I won't say that Quatre's parents hadn't deserved it. I was convinced... _am_ convinced that if they had been better parents, if they had given him something to come home to, he might have thought twice about killing himself. Looking at them, I just couldn't understand how they had made Quatre, who had been so smart and well-behaved, feel so unloved.  
    "Not well enough," I snapped bitterly at her, "He still killed himself, didn't he? I might as well have let that truck hit him for all the good I did for him. All I did was delay his death for a little while."  
    Quatre's mother damning eyes went perfectly wide and began to fill with tears. His father looked irritated that my words had upset his wife, but shook that expression off easily.  
    "There was nothing anyone could have done for him," Mr. Winner said sadly, "There must have been something very... very wrong with Quatre for him to have done that. He was sick and no one knew it. He didn't want anyone to help him," the man's eyes became distant and I wondered what he was thinking of.  
    Was it Quatre's suicide that made him sick and hopeless to his father? His depression? Or was it the mounting rumors that his only son had been a faggot? His words had meant to soothe me or himself, but his belief that there was no way that Quatre could have been helped enraged me. What did _he_ know about it?! He hadn't even known that there had been a problem... he hadn't even tried!  
    "You don't know a single fucking thing about your own son, do you?" I said bitterly, enjoying his and his wife's horrified expression far too much, "No one knew he was sick? All you had to do was just _look_ at him, just **_talk_** to him for one goddamned minute of your busy life to know that he was depressed! You still don't have a clue why he took his life, the real reason do you? You don't even know that Quatre and I were best friends," I felt hot tears drip down my face, my breath hitching in my throat, but I still couldn't stop myself, "You were **NEVER** there for him! He had to talk to _me_ about being gay and feeling lonely because he had to go home to an empty house every fucking day, because he never saw his parents anymore!   
    "You never gave him just one single moment of your lives, you love your jobs more than you loved him! What do you think he felt when he realized that, happy?! Even his sisters didn't talk to him most of the time! When he realized he was... he was different, he was frightened, he _needed_ you to tell him it was ok, not be worried that his own parents would love him less than they already did if he said anything.   
    "If you had just spoken to him once this week, or bothered to visit him in the hospital after he broke his goddamned _arm_ , you would have seen that he needed help," I glared at Quatre's father with the full weight of my rage although I was terrible out of breath and drained at that point and I wondered if I was really yelling at the couple in front of me or myself, "You might as well have killed him yourself," I hissed at him through my pants.  
    For a moment, the bastard's face went white as a sheet, then what I, a mere, thin, thirteen year old boy wearing thrift store jeans and dark circles under his eyes, was daring to say to him really filtered into his brain and he turned bright red with rage. We were a matching set. In that rage, I saw his love for his dead son and the enormity of his grief. He hadn't shown Quatre that love enough, but that didn't mean that he hadn't felt it.   
    Seemingly incapable of words, he raised his hand to strike me in his anger at my audacity. I willed him to do it. I wanted that man to strike me more than I had ever wanted my father to, because this was Quatre's dad, and as much as I hated him, I had had my own role in his son's death.   
    But he didn't. Something deflated his anger and temporary insanity, making him lower his hand. Maybe it was my own, naked grief. Maybe he saw the truth beyond my enraged ranting. Or maybe he had just had second thoughts about striking a crying thirteen year old.  
    "Duo," I heard the principal say from behind me and turned to look at him. I thought that I was in trouble for causing such a scene, but it was Mr. Winner that he was glaring cautiously at. I guess Principal Chandler didn't like adults almost hitting students in his office right in front of him, "Why don't you go to recess?"  
    It wasn't anywhere near time for seventh grade recess, but I could take a hint. I was in no shape for classes and he was giving me a free pass. I took it, squeezing past the Winners.  
    I took one look back at Mrs. Winner, and I will never, ever forget how she looked just then. She was _stricken_. Stricken with fear and horror and absolute grief. If her husband had refused to believe what I had screamed at him, she definitely hadn't. She had taken my poison filled words into her heart. I wonder, even now, what it was that had scared her so badly that day, the truth in my words, or me.  
    I might hate the Winner family for never treating Quatre right or loving him enough, and for letting all those bad feelings and secrets weigh him down to his death over the years, but they truly suffered from his death, more than I had ever, childishly, thought that they would. I had heard that a few of his sisters missed a whole week of school while another dropped out. Lily ran away from home a week after Quatre's funeral.   
    And Quatre's mother... she killed herself two weeks after Quatre had after swallowing two whole bottles of antidepressants. I heard from one person that Lily had found her in the bathtub that she had died in, and another that it was her husband, not that it makes a difference. I never found out if she had overdosed from the meds themselves or if she had drowned, there was so much misleading gossip about it.  
    A week after Mrs. Winner had committed suicide and two weeks after Lily had gone missing, Mr. Winner sold his entire business and he and what remained of his children left Nausten. I wonder if its that easy to leave behind bad memories. I don't think it is. I had killed Quatre, then I had killed his mother and destroyed his family.  
    My mother was right. I never should have been born.  
  
*****  
  
    I walked out to the playground, past it, into the little patch of woods that Quatre and I always went to when we went out to recess together. I found our swings and sat down in mine. I stared at his like if I looked at it hard enough, looked at it without blinking until my ears teared up and my vision became blurry, I could make him appear there. I could actually see it in my head, him sitting there, swinging lightly as he talked to me about something, a book he had read, Trowa, anything he could think about, smiling that smile of his.   
    "I miss you," I said out loud.  
    Sadness squeezed at my chest. I did miss him. I felt so alone, so... bereft. I don't have the right words for how it makes me feel still. But I missed him, I missed having someone to talk to.  
    "I wish you could tell me why," I whispered, "Why you did it, why you didn't just stop and _talk_ to me, talk to someone. Why, Quatre?! Why did you have to give up and leave me behind?"  
    I felt angry all of a sudden, angry at him, angry at his parents, angry at myself most of all. He knew how much I needed him, and he had looked me in the eye and ended it all. Sitting next to me on the swing, Quatre smiled at me sadly and reached out and touched my arm. My memories painted the feathery touch of his fingers on my skin and I shuddered. I had to close my eyes. It was too easy to imagine him there, to imagine that he was real.   
    Both recess blocks came and went as I was sitting there, but no one bothered me, not even Relena. I saw her from where I was, talking with a huddle of girls, including Dorothy, all of them laughing, smiling, and nodding to what she was saying. Relena herself had a sweet little smile on her face. I wanted to cut her face off. Did she feel anything about the fact that Quatre was dead thanks to her cruelty? Guilt? Loss? Regret? I didn't think she was careful of feeling any sort of human emotion besides rage and pettiness. She should be the one with a funeral scheduled in five days, the one with parents and siblings grieving over her.   
    I waited for all of my classmates to walk into the building when the bell rang before getting off my swing. I stared at Quatre's swing one last time. I remembered when we had put them up, how nice it was to have something of our own that we had made ourselves. I touched the rope that his was hanging by. I remembered hanging it and tying it for him, because he was scared of climbing trees.   
    I used the trunk of the tree for momentum and hoisted myself up on the branch. It was still sturdy and took my weight easily. I took my time untying the knots that felt like I had only tied them a few days ago. His swing crumpled to the ground and I jumped down after it. I was careful gathering the rope and folding it all up before putting it safely in my backpack. I didn't plan on ever going back to that place and I just couldn't leave it behind. I had no reason to visit those swings again.  
    I was willing to sit through the rest of my classes, even gym, through my recent haze, but instead got pulled into an assembly for two of my blocks. It wasn't just my grade, either, but all of the students got pulled from their classes. Principal Chandler stood center stage in our auditorium and talked about depression, suicide, Quatre, and a whole bunch things that I'm sure principals are required to talk about when one of their students decides to end their life, no matter the reason why. I could feel some people staring at where I was sitting during the assembly.   
    I left halfway through it, when one student in the lower grades asked if they were going to make a monument to Quatre, like the two plaques we had out front dedicated to students who had died in car wrecks or to cancer. Principal Chandler had informed her that it was under discussion with the school committee, but I knew that that just meant that they were going to bury the whole issue. They didn't give kids that killed themselves memorials, it kind of sends the wrong message. I just couldn't take it anymore after that, that entire day, having to be reminded of my best friend every second.   
    I didn't go to my last class, gym, and I skipped my swimming class, too. I seriously doubted that I would be missed. I was scared to cross the street where we had almost gotten killed by that truck, partially because it still frightened me to think about it sometimes, but I was also afraid of what I might do if I walked across that street on that day. I just went home and laid down on our shitty couch, thinking about the equally shitty emptiness in my stomach.  
  
*****  
  
    During one of our many failed and useless sessions, the school therapist told me that a loss like the one that I was facing never really goes away, that it will always hurt and make me sad, but that time would make that hurt less and less. Every day, she said, it would hurt me a little less. But that wasn't true. A month since Quatre's death and it still hurts just as much as that first day back at school, staring at his empty swing and imagining his empty touch. It hasn't gotten any better, not a centimeter of the empty hole in my heart has gotten any smaller or been filled by a single thing. A few days certainly hadn't made a damned difference.  
    By that Friday, nothing had gotten any better. Every day, both at school and at home, was a nightmare. Every second, I longed to see and talk to Quatre, and every second my depression grew like some sort of movie monster inside of me. With Quatre gone, nothing was the same. Everything seemed a bit blander, a bit more colorless, and nothing anyone did pulled me out of the downward spiral I was in.   
    Even my favorite books and favorite foods couldn't make me happy. My appetite and sleep habits never recovered. I slept in two to three hour bursts, my nightmares always wrestling me out of a deep sleep, and I ate like a bird. When everything tastes like cardboard and sand in your mouth, you stop having any enthusiasm for what you're chewing on. I ate because my body needed it and I couldn't get very much skinnier, but I had no interest in food anymore.  
    School didn't get any easier, either. All the things that had been important to me before; grades, literature, writing, spelling, not making an ass of myself or letting other people know how stupid I was, they didn't matter to me anymore. I hated everything in my daily life, especially my classmates and their petty, pointless lives. I thought about running away like Quatre had dreamed of doing. I thought about dropping out of school. I thought about putting my father's gun to my temple and pulling the trigger. I thought about that one a lot. But I didn't do any of it.  
    I stared to focus during class and do my homework again on Wednesday. I didn't know why. It wasn't like I had woken up out of my haze of sadness and bitterness, and it wasn't like I suddenly cared about school again, either, but I put the effort in for some reason. Maybe it was because Quatre had always been so adamant about not giving up on my education or maybe it was just because I needed something to do beyond feeling miserable all of the time.  
    I never returned to my swimming lessons, though. Surprisingly, I never got into trouble for that. I think that all of my teachers, especially Mrs. Khushrenada, were relieved I was doing my work and I hadn't just faded away at that point, that I was turning my homework in without any of them having to talk to me and deal with me personally. Half of my teachers didn't seem capable of handling me the way that I was, some because of the effort that would take, others because they just couldn't handle a depressed kid without crying themselves.  
    The other half were like Mrs. Khushrenada and took my consistent homework as a sign that I was getting through this. They would probably be a bit alarmed if they knew just how often I thought about blowing my brains out when I got home in their classes.  
    I didn't want Saturday to arrive. I didn't have work that day, and for the very first time, I wished that I did. I wanted something to take my mind off what day it was and washing dishes and folding pizza boxes was the best I had besides my meager homework. I wished that I had classes to go to or some chores that my father wanted me to do, but there was nothing. Saturday was Quatre's funeral.  
    I had decided, the very second that I had heard about it, that I didn't care if I got an invitation to it, I wasn't going to go. I couldn't bear just the thought of sitting amongst Quatre's family members and listening to someone who had never even known him talk about him. I didn't want to look at the empty casket because there hadn't been enough whole parts of him left to bury or have those people look at me with that disgusting mix of pity and curiosity. I especially didn't want to see Quatre's parents again. Still, I felt angry that they hadn't even tried to ask if I would go. I didn't know if they were being petty or they hadn't believed me when I had said that I had been his best friend.  
    I was on my way out of school on that Friday, distracted thinking about how I was going to spend my weekend, the very first weekend I would spend without my friend, when I heard Relena's voice for the first time in a week. She had completely ignored me since Quatre had died. I didn't know what to think about it. Was she going to leave me alone from now on, and if she did, why? Because Quatre was dead? Because it wasn't as entertaining, to just pick on me? Because she didn't think it would effect me anymore? Because she actually felt guilt over Quatre's death?   
    Or was she content, just for the meantime, with the damage that she had done? Or was I just so low on her radar at the moment? And did I even want her to stop tormenting me? Did I want Quatre's death to be the thing that, after all this time hoping and dreaming of, ended her bullying me? How could I possibly deserve this peace and quiet when Quatre never had, when her torment was exactly what I deserved? I didn't know, but the sound of her voice just then had the same effect to me as nails raking a chalkboard.  
    "Oh, of course I'm going!"   
    My hair stood on end and goosebumps raised on my skin from the mere sound of her voice. A part of me wanted to run from it as fast I could, the old, instinctive part of me that was frightened of her, but it was the part of me that was filled with rage and bitterness and loathing for her that I listened to. I walked towards that hateful sound, around the corner of the hallway until I could see her, the twisted, fucked up nucleus surrounded by Dorothy and her other 'friends', but I was far enough away that she didn't notice me yet.  
    "Mr. Winner asked me, personally, to come to Quatre's funeral," she was saying with a repulsive mix of fake somberness and self-importance, flicking her hair over her shoulder, a gesture I saw her do a lot when she was being social, "After all, Quatre and I knew each other since we were kids. I want to pay my respects to one of my dearest friends," she said with what sounded like deep sadness.  
    If I didn't know her so well, it would have actually sounded sincere. The group following her every word certainly fell for it.  
    "It's just so terrible!" a redheaded girl I had seen hanging out with Relena and Dorothy before but didn't know anything about placed her hand on Relena's arm in what was a soothing gesture, "I am so sorry you had to go through that, Relena. I still can't believe he killed himself like that!"  
    "Yes, it was devastating," she said and there were actually crocodile tears in her eyes, "I always knew that Quatre was... _troubled_ , his kind always are. I mean, a person would have to be troubled to like someone of the same sex and Quatre was obviously no different. But I never thought that he would do something so... so _horrible_ as take his own life just because he was ashamed of his own choices in life!   
    "I certainly hope that little prank didn't make things worse for him. I'm sure that the person that did it had the best intentions and just wanted get him to open his eyes and see how his... his _sickness_ was hurting his friends! I just wish that he would have come to me and told me about his problems. I'm sure that I could have helped him find a way to cure his affliction or at least find some professional help."  
    I don't know when I started to walk towards her, but suddenly I was mere feet away. Her back was to me, so she didn't see me approach, but the girls in front of her did, including Dorothy. The other girls shrank away at something that they saw on my face, perhaps my insanity or my cold, detachedness. Dorothy looked frightened herself. She could handle my anger with the same disdain that Relena always had for it, but I wasn't angry. I was beyond that. I felt a clear purpose, not rage. My heart was cold and hollow. I felt blank of humanity.   
    "Relena-" Dorothy tried, in vain, to warn her best friend.  
    Relena turned to see what the problem was, just in time for my fist to connect with the side of her face. She fell backwards on her ass and looked up at me with absolute shock and horror. It was the most reaction I had ever gotten from her before and it should have made me feel good, to look down at her like that, to actually have _her_ beneath _me_ for once, but I didn't even feel that much. I felt no satisfaction towards her fear of me at all. Her lip was split where I had hit her and blood slowly tracked down her chin. A drop of it fell on her perfectly white shirt. Watching it spread across the pristine fabric was fascinating. Her friends screamed and a few actually ran away while others stared at me with the expression that she had. I guess they thought I might hit them, too. I was considering it.   
    "You're so repulsive," I said with a cold smirk, my father's voice... Relena's voice coming from out of my mouth, "The world would be a better place if you had died instead of Quatre. Why don't you just kill yourself like he did and see how many people mourn over you, just how many people won't give a single solid shit that the mighty Relena Darlien is dead? Why don't you try and see how little you're really worth?"  
    She brought a shaking hand to her face, touching the bruise that was already starting to form there. I looked down at her with contempt and disgust. I thought, if only for a moment, I saw tears forming in her pale eyes, but that might have just been in my imagination. I turned and walked away from the group of my classmates, down the hallway, and out the door. I walked all the way home and it wouldn't be for days later that I felt any sort of regret about what I had done, or any fear of what I was capable of.   
    I walked into my kitchen to find my mother getting through a bottle of vodka and reading a battered book. Her eyes were completely red and the bottle was half empty already. She had obviously been at it for awhile. I threw my book bag down on the kitchen floor, the books making a loud slamming sound that jolted her out of her stupor. She glared at me with red hot contempt and anger.   
    "What the hell are you doing home?" she snarled at me in a badly slurring voice, heavily drunk, instead of looking through me like she so often did. She was in a foul mood. Good, so was I, "Shouldn't you be in school?!"  
    I felt disgust seeing how incredibly drunk she was at that hour. This was my mother, I thought, the woman that had given birth to me, falling into a bottle because she wasn't good for a single other thing. She didn't even know what time it was.   
    "Not that it matters," she laughed harshly and in the past, that disdainful laugh would have cut through me like a knife, but I didn't have enough of a heart left to cut anymore. It was all just scar tissue, "I bet your teachers won't even know you're gone with the grades you bring home," she laughed drunkenly again and took a long swig of her bottle, "You're beyond useless, aren't you?" her head slumped almost to the table as her glazed eyes stared at the liquid in the bottle, "Can't even... can't even... get through school... what the fuck is even the point of you going? Like anything useful is ever going to stay in that shit brain of yours... just a waste of everyone's time, that's what you are-"  
    I slammed my hands down on the table in front of her, startling her into almost spilling her vodka, but I grabbed the bottle from her and put it down on the counter next to me with the same force that I had hit the table with my palms. It was a wonder that the bottle hadn't broken. She looked up at me with the same horrified, frightened expression that Relena had. She thought I was going to hit her, I realized, just like _him_. She was expecting it out of me. What did she see when she looked at me, I wondered. Did she see him, the him that she had had sex with in high school, the him that she had loved once, or how he was now, a loser that liked to hit her?   
    "My best friend died last week," I told her with a steady calmness that would have frightened even Quatre if he had ever heard me speak like that. There was no emotion at all in my tone, just icy coldness. I bet that's what sociopaths sound like when they aren't trying to manipulate someone or pretend to be normal, "You don't even know who that is, do you?"  
    She didn't answer me. She just kept looking up at me like I was some kind of wild animal.  
    "You're so pathetic," I sneered at her, sounding horribly like my father, like I was channeling him, "Nothing more than a drunk and you call _me_ useless. You won't even remember any of this tomorrow morning. You'll just drink it all away, your entire life, just a bad, alcohol filled dream. All you can think about is yourself, you know that? Did it ever occur to you for one second of your pointless life that I don't want to be here with you anymore than you want me in your life? You didn't do me any favors by bringing me into this world," I swiped my long, wild bangs out of my eyes and felt a wetness on my cheeks that I hadn't realized was there, "I just want to be with Quatre," I felt my coldness crack along with my voice as grief suddenly filled every hole I had in my heart, every bit of emptiness.   
    I strode to the refrigerator, opened the freezer door so hard that it slammed into the wall and grabbed the bit of birthday cake that Quatre had made me that I had never eaten. I turned back and snagged the bottle of vodka, too. My mother was looking at me with complete fear and pain, tears as silent and unknown as mine tracking down her flushed face.   
    I had hurt her and I didn't care. Why should I give a shit when she had never cared about hurting me?  
  
  
End Part 8  
  
Author's Note: This was meant to be the last part of Chapter 3, but it ran a little too long (over 50 pages), so I decided to break it in half. The next part will definitely be the end of this chapter and then we will be entering another time jump. I will be taking a short break after I post the next part to get my notes for Chapter 4 together.   
  
      
  
  



	14. Chapter 3 Part 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duo has a run in with Trowa that will change his life forever, and spur him to a terrible decision.

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 3  
Part 9  
  
  
  
  
    It took me hours to walk to the train station, not because it was far from my house, which it wasn't, but because by the time I could hear the sound of the trains and see the building in the distance, I was shaking so badly that I had to sit down on a nearby bench. My stomach coiled at the mere thought of where I was going and every time I heard one of the trains go by, I thought I was going to vomit. It had been happening ever since that day, every time I saw or heard a train. I just remembered what Quatre did and felt sick. My hands would shake and my vision would become fuzzy. It was pathetic.   
    Wednesday night, I was jolted away by the sound of one of the trains going by South Nausten. It was a sound that I had lived with all of my life. Because of the factories, South Nausten had it's own train yard, but only workers could enter the yard since it was all cargo freight and incoming building materials for the construction companies. The trains themselves had a different sound to them than the ones that carried passengers to the Central Nausten train yard. It was that fact alone, that the train I was hearing was a cargo train and not one of the passenger trains that had killed Quatre, that let my heart slow down enough to fall back asleep that night.  
    I didn't want to go back to the train yard. I didn't want to go there and remember. But I _had_ to. I needed to talk to him. I needed to see him, and if there was anywhere in town where I could do that, it was at the place that he had died. I felt just as much of a pull to that place as I felt a repulsion.   
    Looking back on it now, it's amazing that I didn't run into a cop or some other adult concerned with a teenager walking around carrying a bottle of vodka, but I got to Central Nausten without anyone trying to apprehend me or steal the alcohol. When I got there, I dug through a trashcan and found a paper bag and used it to carry the bottle and cake.   
    The Central Nausten train station was always open. There had been a huge stink about that a few years ago, all about workers' rights and the cost of keeping the trains running all day and night, but since a few of the train lines went to the bigger cities in our state, hours away, and the stations they went to kept late hours and a few of them were twenty-four hour stations like ours. Our town was a perfect lay over for people traveling through the state and the revenue the train station and local businesses did with the people passing through was greater than the pain in the ass of keeping it staffed in the early hours of the morning, I guess.  
    The train station kept a skeleton crew past ten pm and even before then, the station didn't exactly crawl with security guards and staff. There was only one guard stationed at a time and he or she mostly just patrolled the inside of the station and platforms for people breaking safety codes or bums trying to steal from the vendors. Beyond that, no one really paid attention to anyone else. If you were quiet and not doing anything illegal, you were practically a ghost. Certainly no one paid attention to a scrawny teenager passing through the station. I guess in a bigger city, someone would have checked my paper bag for a bomb or gun or knife or something else dangerous, but not in Nausten. We had never had a bomb threat or a school shooting in our entire history.  
    Just thinking about walking out onto one of the platforms, not even the one that I had watched Quatre die from, sent me to the men's room to puke up my lunch. I felt so pathetic sitting there on the bathroom floor, clutching to the dirty toilet like a lifeline. This should be this hard, I thought, but it was. I was surrounded by that day, the worst day of my life, the day from all of my nightmares. Every sight and sound of that station had me trembling like a baby and I felt like I was going to start screaming at any minute. Only my stubbornness, determination, and love for Quatre kept me from leaving.  
    I couldn't make myself go out onto _that_ platform, though. I tried as hard as I could, but my legs froze and I couldn't make them move when I tried. All I got for my efforts was an upset stomach, headache, and blurry vision. I was sick of fighting myself, of feeling so frightened just by a _place_ , so I went out to a different platform. It was the next one down from the one I had chased Quatre to, for a south bound train that went to some small resort town named Havensforth. All I knew was that the place had two big lakes that drew in a lot of tourists looking to hunt and fish. There was no one out on the platform and I doubted that it would see much traffic, even on a Saturday. March wasn't exactly tourist season.  
    It wasn't nearly time yet, so I sat down on the bench, placing my bag next to me. I hadn't planned on going there so early, but really, where else did I have to go? What did I have left in my life that mattered at all? Why not just sit there on that bench and pass the hours away? It wasn't like anyone would be worried about me. By late that night, my mother would have forgotten what I had said to her, if she hadn't forgotten already, and my father would just be furious that I hadn't gone to work. I doubted that he would be worried, even if I had never run out like that before, and I doubted even more that he would come looking for me.  
    I passed the time sitting on that bench watching the people and trains pass me by. No one stopped to talk to me or even look at me funny. It got dark pretty fast and the platform became lit up by some old fashioned styled lanterns that actually made the area look quaint and pretty. It helped me to relax and forget where I was for some reason, maybe because that time of day had finally passed me by, or maybe just because the darkness made the platform look so different, but I eventually stopped shaking and feeling sick. I could barely even see the tracks in the dark.   
    I got hungry right around the time I would have come home for dinner after work if I had gone. Not surprising since all I had had for lunch was a salad, a roll, and water, and I had recently thrown that up. There wasn't anyone to buy me lunches anymore and I hadn't had much money to buy more than that. I tried to ignore my hunger, but I had absolutely nothing to distract myself with. I was beginning to wish that I had brought my backpack with me so I could have one of my textbooks to read.  
    The vendors were nearly closing up shop by the time that I decided it would probably be a good idea to eat something. I bought a plain bagel from one of the cheaper vendors with the last two dollars that I had, telling myself that it was ok to waste money on a small meal. It wasn't like I was going to need those two dollars. The bagel was slightly stale and I hadn't had the time, or the real ability to care, to toast and butter it before I ate it, but it was something in my stomach at least.  
    I slept at the station that night. When that stupid idea had entered my head Thursday during school, I hadn't really planned on camping out at the station like that, but dealing with Relena and my mother had driven me there for some reason. It was just as well. The station was just as good a place to spend the night as my bedroom. When I finally started to feel sleepy, I laid down on the bench and draped my jacket over me like a blanket. It wasn't too cold out, but it was windy. I tried not to think about the fact that it was the jacket that Quatre had given to me for my birthday.  
    Ironically, for the first time since he had died, I didn't have nightmares about Quatre's suicide. My dreams weren't exactly pleasant. I was sitting on the bench, watching the trains go by and Quatre was sitting on the bench next to me, whole and alive, not a speck of blood on him, drinking from a hot thermos of tea. I could smell the jasmine so strongly, even in my dream.   
    I kept trying to talk to him, to apologize for letting him down, but he was angry at me for letting him die and refused to speak to me. It wasn't a happy dream, but it wasn't a bad one, either. Even if he was mad at me, blaming me, it felt so good being there with him, feeling his presence at my side again. I didn't want to wake up from it, but I did when an early morning train passed by where I had been sleeping.  
    I felt wide awake immediately, my stomach demanding attention that it wasn't going to get. I sat up, put my jacket back on, and looked at the station clock. It was nine-thirty. I had almost missed my time. I must have slept deeply and well to have slept that late. That was good. At least I had had a nice sleep for once for this.   
    I grabbed my bag and jumped down from the platform onto the tracks. I wasn't worried about getting accidentally hit by a train, I would be able to hear one coming long before I would be in any danger, and I also knew that the train that had woken me up was the same line that had killed Quatre. It would be another hour before the next one came down that rail.   
    I walk down the tracks until I got to the right spot. They had cleaned off all of the blood and gore very thoroughly, but I still found the spot with ease. Streaks of blood or not, I dreamed about that place every night. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw that stretch of track. There wasn't a single person on the platform, which was another point in my favor. The platform was high up, but I still would get spotted and trying to explain why I was walking along the tracks would just make me sound crazy. I was... _am_ crazy, but that doesn't mean that I wanted other people to know it.  
    I found the right place, the exact spot where Quatre had fallen, the place where he had ended his life, and sat down there on the tracks. The metal and gravel were cold, but the knowledge of where it was that I was sitting, chilled me a hell of a lot more. If there was any truth to people having souls, was a piece of Quatre's still there on the tracks where his body had been pulverized? Was he haunting that stretch of track somehow, or had he moved on like so many people believe our souls do when we die? Was Quatre in Heaven, that 'better place' I heard about so much? Was he happy there, had he found the peace he had never found here? Or was he in Hell for taking his own life? Or was all of it just a big crock of horse shit?   
    I sat there on the tracks and tried to feel some glimmer, some faint spark of the person that had once been my best friend. His warmth, his smile, his kindness, his fears, his insecurities. I tried to feel Quatre, but all I felt was the cold and wind, the gray sky above me that was threatening rain but wouldn't deliver until the following day and the even grayer gravel that I was sitting on. I felt empty and alone there. I didn't feel any souls, anything human besides myself. I certainly didn't feel God as I sat where my friend had died.  
    I felt this sudden perverse, bitter urge to pray and ask God or whoever else might be listening what the point had been of Quatre's life, sadness and suffering, the pain he had felt that had led him to believe that death was the best answer for him. I wanted to ask why someone as kind as Quatre had been made to go through Hell while people like Relena and Zechs got to walk through life without a scratch. I wanted to ask if He really did hate fags, if He hated me and that was why my only friend was gone but I had been left behind. I wanted to ask Him why I had been born.  
    But I didn't pray. Because I was afraid of what the answer would be just as much as I was afraid that there wasn't going to be any answer at all. I had never been much for religion. I guess I'm just too much of a realist, I believe what I see and feel, and I have never seen or felt any proof that someone was watching over me. If some deity had made this world, that was great, but what did They have to do with me was how I thought about it. If there was a God, then He was just like my parents. He had created me, given me life, put me on this planet, but He didn't love or care for me any more than my mother or father did.  
    I wasn't one of those pathetic people that expected that, as long as I worshipped a God and praised Them and followed Their rules, then They would solve all of my problems, but if God was real and supposed to love me like how people said that my parents were supposed to love me, why did He stay silent while my father beat me, my mother ignored me when all I wanted from her was a shred of affection, and Relena made me feel like shit?  
    I wasn't looking to be led around by the hand by some all powerful being, I had always been rather independent and I could take care of myself, but all I wanted from God was some notion of comfort and understanding, to know that things would work out one day and that I had a shot at being loved by someone. Instead, He had taken my best friend from me, the one person in my life taht I had dared to depend on. What was the point of faith if it gave me no comfort or confidence, but only bitterness and the feeling that I had been abandoned? Hell, I got that at home and at school all the time. I didn't need a god to add to it.  
    I hadn't really thought all that much about an afterlife, either. I couldn't stop from dying and whatever would happen was going to, regardless of my faith. But ever since Quatre had died, I had been thinking about it constantly, what would happen to me after all the shitty mistakes that I had made and where Quatre might be. I guess it still doesn't make a difference, but it still consumed me, especially the idea that he was still _there_.  
    I thought about it all the time, that when I died, I could see him again. It was a deadly thought, full of stupid hope, and only made my life more unbearable. If there was no after life, then my loneliness didn't matter. But what if there was and Quatre was there, waiting for me? What if I could see him, be with him like before? Then what was I still doing here? Maybe this was limbo, a perpetual train station and I'm there, still on that platform.   
    Maybe I'm meant to get on that train, like Quatre did, but I'm too scared to and I just keep waiting for a different train that will never arrive for me, while Quatre got off his train and is wondering why I'm taking so long. I guess it was thoughts like those that got me to decide to go to the train station that day when Quatre's family were burying an empty box and pretending that they were burying him.  
    "Quatre," I said out loud and waited, listening for some kind of answer.  
    There was only silence. My friend wasn't there, he never had been. I felt a deep emptiness in my heart. I felt it so strongly then, that _I_ was the ghost, the one that was dead, and Quatre was the one alive somewhere else, on some other plane, while I haunted this place and everyone else as they waited for me to vanish and leave them in peace.  
    I took the cake out of the bag and placed it next to me, then I took out the vodka bottle. When this idea had originally came to me, I had planned to steal a bottle of wine from my parents if they had had any left. Wasn't wine what you were supposed to drink when you were celebrating or remembering someone, to honor them? That's how it was in the movies anyway. I wasn't even sure what I was drinking to, Quatre's spirit, my grief, his life, or the end of everything I had once known. One was as good as any.  
    I unscrewed the cap on the vodka bottle, took a sniff of the contents, and immediately wrinkled my nose. I was well accustomed to the heavy, unwanted stench of alcohol, but the knowledge that I was about to dump that poison in my body made that smell all the more revolting. Honestly, it scared me a little. It had frightened me all of my life seeing what alcohol did to my parents. They weren't exactly great people when they were sober, but when they were drunk, they became monsters.   
    How could I ever want to drink that shit when it was the reason for my father breaking my arm when I hadn't done anything wrong or for the horrible things that my mother said to me when she usually just ignored me? I had promised myself, long ago as a child, that I would never drink a single drop of the stuff, but I told myself then as I lifted the bottle to my lips that it was ok, it wasn't like I was going to live with it. I would never become my father.   
    I took three huge gulps from the bottle, like I was drinking soda or water instead of liquor, which in retrospect had not been a smart idea but I hadn't known what to expect. I had thought that I would just drink a bit of it quickly and that would be that. I was not expecting the complete lack of flavor from the vodka, or the intense burn as it shot down my throat. It was the most horrible thing I had ever tasted in my entire life, worse than cherry cough syrup any day. I immediately gagged and almost threw up the lot of it. I coughed and my eyes watered at the burning sensation that I had nothing to equate to.   
    I wiped at my lips, still gagging and stared at the bottle incredulously. Why the hell would anyone _want_ to drink that shit, especially my parents?! What was so great about that that they drank it like it was goddamned water?! I put the bottle down in repulsion and seriously considered just forcing myself to throw it up. If I had known that it was going to burn out my throat like that, I wouldn't have even bothered taking it from my mother.   
    But then, as I sat there, that burning feeling eased off. It didn't disappear entirely, but left a strange warmth that actually felt kind of good. The longer I sat there, the warmer that I felt. I kind of felt like I did when I was really tired, like my thoughts weren't as sharp and the cold air wasn't bothering me as much. I didn't feel great and there was still that awful non-taste in my mouth, but I found that I didn't really care about that anymore. When it came to me that I had been too focused on analyzing what the alcohol was doing to me that I had forgotten to check my time, even that didn't bother me as much as it should have.  
    10:03 am, I read on the station clock. Quatre's funeral had already started, I realized. I took another swig from the vodka bottle, a much smaller one, and this time it didn't taste quite as bad, but it was still horrible to me. If I had had any plans on leaving the station that morning, I would have assured myself that I was never going to touch that shit ever again, but it wasn't something that I had thought I needed to worry about again.   
    I poured the rest of the vodka onto the tracks. I had seen it in a movie once, someone pouring liquor on someone's grave like they could taste it. I didn't think that Quatre would appreciate me giving him vodka to drink, he would have rather I had poured tea or chai onto his grave, but it was the gesture, wasn't it? I took the lid off the container that my cake was in and looked at it for a moment. I didn't want to eat it. I didn't want to get rid of one of the only things I had of Quatre, but I did. I couldn't hold on to it forever. It was dry from having been in the freezer for so long, but it was still the most delicious thing I had eaten all week.   
    "I wish you were here," I said out loud, my voice tight and my heart heavy, "You should be _here_ , not... Why did you leave me?" my voice cracked and I felt myself being pulled down by a wave of guilt and sadness, "I'm sorry," I whispered, "I am so _sorry_... I let you down and I promised that I never would... How could I have done that? You were all that mattered to me... our friendship was the only actual important thing in my life, so why wasn't it enough for me to keep?" I rubbed tiredly at my eyes which were dryer than they should have been, "I loved you, Quatre. I still love you. Maybe... maybe it wasn't the kind of love you were looking for, the kind you had for Trowa, and maybe it wasn't as good as the love your father should have had for you, but why couldn't it have been enough? I would have stayed with you forever. No matter what Relena said or did, I would have stayed."  
    I wanted to cry. I wanted to just pour out my heart and all of the poison that was festering away inside of it. I think that, if I had been able to cry in that moment, I might have had a small of chance of letting go of all that hatred and bitterness and sadness. But I couldn't. For the first time since Quatre had died, even though I wanted to so badly, I couldn't cry. My tears had completely run out.       
    I could blame it on the alcohol, or at the wave of anger that accompanied my sadness, my equal anger at myself and Quatre, but I knew that it wasn't that. It was something else, something worse. I felt like the parts of me that were human, the parts that I had been with Quatre, the parts that were still a child, were dying and all I was anymore was something ugly. Something that was incapable of crying.   
    I stumbled to my feet, the world around me spinning for a second, and I, enraged, threw the vodka bottle as far as I could against the metal tracks. It exploded in a cloud of glass, the sound as angry as if I had screamed just then. I was lucky, as violent as my throw had been, that one of the glass shards hadn't cut me. I felt violently sick between the alcohol and my turbulent emotions, but I didn't throw up and suddenly, I was glad that I couldn't cry. I didn't want to cry anymore and me thinking it would bring me some kind of release was stupid. I just wanted to destroy everything. I wanted to destroy myself, just like Quatre had.   
    I heard the train's whistle from far away. It was approaching, but it was still a way's off. I looked at the station's clock again. 10:20. I had ten minutes before it would arrive. I thought the same exact thing then that I had when I had decided, for sure, to go there that day. It would be so easy, wouldn't it? I could just wait for the train to come, I could just stand there on that exact spot, the place where Quatre had made this same, exact decision. I could let the alcohol and my grief take control and forget about what it really meant, staying there on those tracks for another ten minutes. I could let gravity do it's thing, just like Quatre had, and go to the same place he had gone.   
    And it was easy. It was _simple_. I wouldn't have to think about my future, I wouldn't have to think about not being loved or being sad. I wouldn't have to think about my parents or my grades or my bullies or my guilt. In that moment, I truly understood, not why Quatre had taken his life, but the ease of which he had done it, how simple that decision had been for him. Life was hard and cruel, but not this. This was surrendering. This wasn't the struggle, it wasn't even a real action. It was just standing still and waiting for the inevitable to happen. After all, we all die, eventually.   
    So why wait? Why add more bad memories to my already overcrowded head? Why suffer when the end result was the same? I didn't want it anymore. I had meant what I had said to my mother the day before. All I wanted was to be with my best friend. Everything else had no meaning to me. So I stood there and waited. I watched the rising smoke from the train and heard it's heavy rumble as it came closer and closer to me. I felt it's power under my feet. I thought about how that stale, bland bagel was going to be my very last meal on this earth and bitter laugh escaped me. Then, as the gravel started to shift, I felt something besides sadness and anger. Fear.  
    What if I was wrong? What if there was no after life and Quatre wasn't waiting for me? What if _this_ was all there was, this shitty life, and the train approaching me would wipe out everything? What if getting hit by it hurt, or what if I was right, but there was a Hell, too, and that was where I would end up, in a place even worse than this one? My fear of the unknown and, I am kind of ashamed to admit, my fear of never seeing my parents again, as much as I didn't like them at the moment, and my fear of death consumed me.  
    When the train finally showed up in front of me, I was shocked back into reality, the warm fog that the alcohol had given me was long gone, and I bolted for the platform. It was strange, I had something coming for me that was much, much, much bigger than the truck that had nearly shaved my back off, but I didn't feel the horrible terror and panic that I had felt during that mad run, maybe because it was only my worthless life on the line this time. As my hands grabbed the edge of the platform in the knick of time, strong hands grabbed my arms and flung me up onto the platform with an impressive strength that made me feel like a rag doll being tossed around by a pit bull. The person covered me with their larger body uselessly as the train lumbered harmlessly past us.  
    I was pressed so tightly to the person's flat chest that I could feel his rapid heartbeat. It was actually going faster than mine was. My panic was already starting to ebb off and I wondered if that was because of my lightly drunk or buzzed or whatever you could call it state. Or maybe the prospect of my imminent death hadn't frightened me as much as it should have. I pushed at the person holding me until they finally relented and let me go. I stumbled to my feet and found myself looking at, not some random do-gooder, but Trowa Barton.  
    I hadn't seen Trowa since the day that he had completely and effortlessly broke Quatre's heart. I hadn't even really thought about him besides remembering what he had done and my fury at him, so consumed by my grief. He looked like shit. His face was as white as snow and his dark green eyes were huge as he stared at me, but that could have just been from watching me nearly end my life in the same messy way my friend had.   
    The ugly, black circles under his eyes, his uncharacteristically messy hair, and the worn expression on his face weren't however. He looked like he had had as much restful sleep as I had. _Good_. I hoped that he dreamt about what he had done as much as I dreamt about what I hadn't. I hoped that Quatre haunted him viciously in his dreams. That Trowa had the humanity to feel some kind of guilt about Quatre's suicide while Relena hadn't didn't matter one bit to me. I wanted him to suffer.   
    'Why did you save me?!' I wanted to demand him in rage, but I found that I was too furious at just seeing him there, knowing just who it was that had pulled me up.  
    It didn't matter anyway. By the time the train would have reached me, I would have gotten up onto the platform in time. Even if I had hesitated, Trowa wouldn't have saved my life, just a foot or leg. If I hadn't already been running for the platform, he would have been too late to save me anyway. Just like with everything else, I thought bitterly, he was useless.  
    "Are you fucking insane?!" he roared at me loudly, grabbing my shoulders so hard that he would leave bruises on them, "What the hell is wrong with you?! Quatre kills himself and you, what, decide it's the cool thing to do and try to follow him?! Do you think he would be happy with that?!!"  
    I wrenched myself out of his grip and glared at him harshly. My rage was a storm and I wanted to blow him away into it. I felt even more enraged at him than I ever had at Relena. I could be mad at her for exposing Quatre's secret in front of the entire school, but I had never expected anything better from the bitch. But Trowa... he had let the both of us down. And wasn't that the reason why Quatre had killed himself? Not because of Relena's cruel prank, but Trowa's reaction to it?  
    I shoved him hard. Then I just kept shoving him because it felt so good until his back hit one of the lamp posts and he winced. He didn't do anything to fight back, although he easily could have beaten the shit out of me or pushed me away. That only made me hate him more, that I was actively attacking him and he wouldn't hit me to defend himself. He was so pathetic.   
    "Shut up!" I snarled at him, "What the fuck do you know?! You don't know anything about Quatre, and you sure as hell don't know anything about me! If I want to kill myself, what right do you have to say anything about it?! Who do you think you are? You're just a guy that hung around him for awhile, he was a fucking pastime for you, that's _all_! He had a crappy life. I was the only person he had to rely on, which is the biggest damn joke that there is! None of his sisters or his parents ever paid any attention to him. All his dad did was throw a thousand things at him that Quatre never wanted and had all these expectations of him that he could never live up to.   
    "And when he figured out that he liked boys, and was terrified of what that meant, he had absolutely no one to talk to until I figured out he had a crush on you. He _loved_ you! He would have done anything for you if you had asked, and he was willing to suffer and push those feelings down just to be around you, for a glimmer of what he really wanted! He almost died just to protect you!   
    "But the second that you figured that out, you threw him away. When all he needed from you was understanding and acceptance, you made him feel like filth. Quatre didn't kill himself, _you_ did," I shoved him against the pole again, slamming his head into it, and I wondered why I wasn't crying when it felt like I was.  
    Trowa didn't wince this time. The pure agony in his eyes wasn't from my actions, just my words. I hadn't thought his eyes could get any wider, or his skin any paler, but it did. He looked down at me with such horror, I thought he was going to throw up. Tears that I couldn't shed filled his evergreen eyes.  
    "You're right," he said in a soft voice that was so full of grief and self-hatred that it would have driven most people to tears, "I was responsible for his death. I loved him!" Trowa suddenly burst out like he couldn't possibly contain those words inside of him anymore in a heart breaking sob, thick tears streaming down his face, "and I knew... I knew that he liked me back! I knew that for the longest time... and I never told him, never let him know that what he was feeling for me wasn't hopeless! I knew that it was making him miserable and I still didn't say it... I could have so many times. I could have stopped it all, him getting his arm broken and jumping in front of the train... but I couldn't tell him, I just _couldn't_!"  
    Now I was the one staring at him in horror, feeling like _I_ was going to vomit. All this time... all this time that Quatre had been hoping and loving him in silence, thinking Trowa was straight, miserable believing that he would hate him for his feelings, and not only had Trowa felt the same way, he had known?! I wanted to yell at him not to say this shit to me. It's too late, I wanted to accuse, you're always too fucking late.  
    "I should have told him the day that... the day that he died," Trowa looked down at his trembling hands, "I should have dragged him away from that mob and told him that it was ok..."  
    "But you didn't," I said with freezing hatred.  
    "I _couldn't_ ," he insisted, "Everyone was reading his thoughts and his feelings and making fun of him for being gay and I just _froze_. I was so scared of everyone saying those things about me, _looking_ at me with that disgust! I was terrified and I ran-"  
    I slapped him across the face even harder than I had punched Relena the day before. It stopped the awkward words from flowing out of his mouth and split his lip open.  
    "You're a fucking coward," I hissed at him, "and that's a thousand times worse than anything they accused Quatre of!"  
    He touched where I had hit him with one shaking hand, his eyes to the ground, refusing to look at me.  
    "I know," he whispered brokenly.  
    I wanted to scream at him that it didn't matter if he was aware of it and I didn't care if he felt sorry or guilty or whatever, I would never forgive him and I hoped that Quatre wouldn't, either. I wanted to keep hitting him until my wrists were too numb to manage it or his face was nothing more than the bloody smear that the train had made of Quatre's face. I wanted to push him in front of the next train that passed us by.  
    But like what typically happened when I had violent and angry impulses, I buried my instincts and desires deep inside. I buried them deep because that pain I saw in Trowa was the same that I had been feeling and seeing in the mirror for days. All of the guilt and sadness that I had in me, Trowa had, too. We both hated ourselves for what we had and hadn't done. We both missed Quatre. We were both broken. I didn't spare him my violence because I felt sympathy for him, I didn't even have any for myself. I only did it because I had just enough empathy to know that hitting Trowa would make him feel better, because he knew that he deserved it, and I didn't want him to feel better.   
    "It's my fault, too," I murmured instead of the hateful, hurtful things I wanted to hurl at him, "I was his best friend, his _only_ friend, besides you," I admitted grudgingly, "There were so many times he would say things that would frighten me, so many times that I would realize that he was so much sadder and more bitter about his life and his loneliness than he usually let on. But I never did anything to help him. I let myself believe that everything would work out eventually and I just turned my back to all of it.   
    "I knew his relationship with you was hurting him and I knew that being around you was making everything worse, that nothing good could come from it, especially after Relena had used you to almost get him killed. But I still did nothing about it. I should have tried harder to keep him away from you," my breath hitched and I tried to stop talking as I confessed things to him that I hadn't wanted anyone to know, but I couldn't help it, the words just kept slipping out of me, "I was his best friend," I whispered, "but I couldn't even stop him from falling. I just _watched_. I watched him die and I did nothing to stop it!"   
    Trowa moved away from the lamp post and stood in front of me, but I refused to look up at him. I had never wanted him to see me this weak and vulnerable.   
    "Do you really think that you could have stopped him from killing himself?" he asked me, his voice soft and kind and slightly incredulous.   
    His voice reminded me of Quatre's during those rare moments when we had spoken about my father's treatment of me and I tried to assure him that it was no big deal. Quatre would speak to me like that, so full of sympathy and understanding, but with just that slight tone that told me he thought I was being ridiculous. It made me miss him even more and I realized that I would never hear him talk to me like that again. All I would ever have left of that voice, that kind tone, was my memories. And hearing that similar tone came from Trowa only made me hate him more, because it wasn't good enough.  
    "I should have tried!" I screamed at him, my voice cracking and so strained and twisted that it sounded like I was crying, even though my eyes were still dry.  
    Trowa took another step forward and touched my cheek with his hand. I had never realized how big his hands were before then, or how gentle they could be. I wondered if he had ever touched Quatre like this and I hoped so. I didn't want to be the one he touched so kindly when those hands... that touch had been meant for my dead best friend. His touch repulsed me because it felt good. I didn't want him to touch me like that, but I couldn't move away because some part of me needed it and craved it. I wanted to lean into his touch and steal away all of that comfort that I didn't deserve and never should have been meant for me.  
    "No one tried to help him," I whispered, my voice rough with too much emotion, none of it I had wanted to expose to anyone, especially not to _him_ who only deserved my hatred, "Not a single person. His family, his teachers, all the kids that we go to school with and saw Relena bully him, _none_ of them did a single fucking thing to help him through it!"   
    I looked up into his green eyes and noticed for the first time that there was a little bit of gray in those eyes. I bet that Quatre had known.  
     "And I was one of those people!" my voice hitched again, and even though I wasn't sobbing, I felt like I was barely keeping it together. When was this going to stop hurting like this? "Do you have any idea how much knowing that hurts? Quatre was the only person in my life that cared about me, that loved me... Do you know how much it kills me, having to lump myself in with all those people that I hate for not doing _something_ for him?! So why am I here? He was always there for me... a lot of days, Quatre was the only reason I got the fuck out of bed! He sure as Hell was the only reason why I kept at school.   
    "No matter what awful thing Zechs and Relena did to me, he was there for me. He was always kinder and smarter and better than I could ever hope to be. So tell me why a useless piece of shit like me is here when he's dead! What is so fucking special about me that I get to keep on living and he doesn't?! Why should I even want to? I'm nothing but dumb, white trash! I'm angry all the time, I hurt _all_ the time, and all I want to do is beat you and Relena and Zechs and Quatre's entire family into a pulp. Quatre died and he took what little was _good_ about me with him. So you tell me, Trowa, why the hell shouldn't I kill myself now, before I destroy anything else around me?!"  
    Trowa's attractive green eyes narrowed into something hard and his face moved in close to mine. I thought he was going to spit at me or bite me in anger. Him kissing me was the very last thing I would have expected him to do, but that was what he did. His hand still cupping my cheek, he pressed his lips against mine.  
    I don't really know how to describe my second kiss accurately or how it made me feel. For half of it, all I could do was compare it to the disaster of Relena's kiss, how different they were. I didn't remember much about Relena's kiss beyond my repulsion of it, but even though I hated Trowa and his sudden move had startled me, I wasn't repulsed by it. Relena's kiss had been insistent and forceful, although it had been no more than her pressing her lips to mine. Trowa's was just as chaste, but it felt more intimate to me. Maybe because his was more welcome than hers, maybe because he was older, or maybe because he wasn't kissing me out of desperation, to prove something.  
    Trowa's kiss was shy and hesitant, the kiss of someone who wasn't entirely sure of what he was doing. It was awkward for both of us, me because I had never been kissed by a boy and I couldn't stand being near him without wanting to bash his head in, and him because he didn't love me.   
    I'm still not exactly sure why he kissed me that day, if he had just been lonely or he had thought I might like it and wanted to comfort me. Maybe he had just been using me to fill Quatre's place for a moment. Maybe I reminded him of the person we had lost. That was laughable, of course, Nate and I were nothing alike. But we were both pale, slender, short, and wide-eyed, and we had been friends. I just can't think of any other reasons why he would have done something like that.  
    Despite Trowa's shyness, and despite my complete lack of experience, the kiss wasn't unpleasant. Relena's lips had been full and tasted like the lip gloss she used, something waxy and fruity. I guess some guys might have liked that. Trowa's lips were smooth and shaped differently. I'm not quite sure how that made me feel, but it was good and some part of me enjoyed it. It excited me, the thought that I was kissing a boy instead of a girl. It felt... more _natural_ to me, even when the realization that I was being kissed by my best friend's crush made reality crash down on me. Even in my horror and anger at him for kissing me, it still made me feel warm. Or maybe that was just the alcohol, but I don't think so. Trowa's kiss made me feel a completely different kind of buzz.  
    No more than five seconds passed before what was actually happening destroyed the happiness I had felt, muddling it with bitterness and guilt. Trowa Barton was kissing me. The first thing I had felt beyond misery and loneliness in days and it was because of _him_. The boy that Quatre had loved, the boy he had bled for, cried for, and ultimately killed himself over was kissing _me_. It was wrong, so very wrong. I wasn't the one that Trowa loved and I sure as hell was not the person he should be kissing. That kiss had been meant for Quatre and I had stolen it from him. I know how crazy that sounds. Quatre was dead by his own choice, in reality he had thrown that kiss away, and even if he had lived, Trowa might have never gained the back bone to kiss him. But in that moment, I felt like I was betraying Quatre, stealing something precious and beautiful from him.  
    I had no business kissing a boy that I didn't love and didn't love me, and I certainly had no business enjoying it. It was Quatre's funeral, and I was using the boy he loved to comfort me. I felt like the lowest, sleaziest kind of scum there was. I felt pissed off at myself for desperately latching on to that comfort, and I felt pissed off at Trowa for offering to me.  
    Then, after probably no more than fifteen or twenty seconds, it was over. Trowa pulled away and left a cold, empty hole in my heart. It was tiny compared to the gaping chasm that Quatre's death had caused, not even worth hurting over, but I still felt it there. I felt alone and, stupidly, abandoned. There was something more that I wanted, something that made my first real kiss seem off and pale. It wouldn't be for weeks afterward that it would finally come to me _why_ that kiss seemed so off to someone who hadn't even been really kissed before.   
    Replaying it in my head over and over again, I realized that Trowa hadn't just felt awkward and shy, and he hadn't truly been kissing me to comfort me. When he had kissed me, he hadn't really been kissing _me_ at all. But it was still the best thing I had ever experienced as an adult in my entire life. And it wasn't even mine.  
    "Please," he whispered as he pulled away, his lips still so close to mine that as he spoke, they brushed against mine, the barest of touches like a feather and it made me shudder, "I know that you hate me and I know that I have absolutely no right to ask it of you," he rested his forehead against mine, his heat and smell suffocating me, smothering me, "but please don't kill yourself, Duo, not like Quatre.  
    "Relena and I have destroyed enough lives. We've caused enough death. If you took your life like he did... because of what I did to him... I couldn't handle that. I know what a shitty thing that is to say, and I don't expect you to live for someone you despise so much. But if... if you're really so lost that you need a reason to live, then live for Quatre. Live because that's what he would want you to do. Wherever he is now, Heaven or Limbo or wherever, he wouldn't want to watch you die because of him," he backed away from me a little and placed his hands on my shoulders like he thought if he could keep touching me, it would ground me, "I couldn't bear to watch his best friend kill himself, too. You're the... the last piece of the boy that I loved, Duo," he said miserably with a strained voice, "you're the only living part of him that I have left."  
    That sentiment made me snap, dragging me out of the stupor that kiss had put me in. The last living part of Quatre? I was nothing like that! We had been friends, but I was nothing like him, nothing that was a part of him. I had been the loser that Quatre had let attach to him like a parasite. I had only dragged him down, and let him down. There was nothing left of him here, and if there was, it sure wasn't me. Trowa was right, I hated him and I wasn't going to suddenly latch on to life because he wanted to use me to feel better!   
    I shoved him away from me and punched him in the exact spot that I had slapped him earlier which was already starting to bruise. I couldn't help it, I'm right handed and I wasn't exactly thinking about what I was doing, my fury warding off any sensible thoughts. My blow made him stumble back in shock, but to my disappointment, he regained his footing quickly and didn't come close to falling off the platform. I hoped my punch had hurt like hell.  
    "Quatre is dead," I said with cold ferocity, "He's dead and whatever is actually left of him that the train didn't shred into nothing is rotting in the ground. He doesn't know anything anymore. There isn't anything left of him, you'll never see him again, and he isn't watching anything from some better fucking place."  
    My words were incredibly cruel and even Trowa's pain as he looked at me then didn't satisfy me. I strode up to him, grabbed him by his shirt, and slammed him against the lamp post. I shouldn't have been able to manage it. Trowa is a good foot taller than I am, but somehow it was easy for me to toss him around like that. He wasn't trying to resist, but I wasn't exactly strong.  
    "I'm not Quatre," I growled at him, "He knew how much watching him die, trying to live without him was going to hurt me. No matter how depressed he was, he knew that at least one person was going to cry over him, but he still killed himself. If I die, whether I take my own life or not, no one is going to give a shit about it. I don't have a single person in my life anymore that is going to cry over me, so don't you fucking _dare_ tell me that you do!   
    "You didn't even care enough about Quatre to be his friend, and you think someone as pathetic as you is going to make _my_ life any better than you made his? What happiness being around you gave him, it's nothing compared to the pain you made him feel when you broke his heart!" I shoved him again, my anger at myself and him spilling out in waves. It was all I could not to punch him again, "You keep saying that you loved him, that that's a lie! You never even knew him! If it weren't for him, you never would have had that back bone to _talk_ to him, so I don't now why I was so shocked you wouldn't stand up for him!"   
    He was looking at me with that hurting, horrified expression again.  
    "You weren't our friend, you weren't his boyfriend. You were just the weak piece of shit that helped Relena _kill_ my best friend, so you're right about one thing and only one thing," I hissed at him, "You don't get to ask a single damned thing of me. So stay the fuck away from me. You want someone to kiss, take Relena's advice and find some pretty girl. You're already her prized puppet, so don't delude yourself into thinking you're anything better than that."  
    I turned and walked off the platform and through the station. I couldn't bear to look at him for another second. My anger was making me physically sick. My hands were shaking, my head was pounding, and I felt like I was going to retch at any second. I wanted to punch something nice and solid like a brick or concrete wall until I shattered my hand.      
    My brain was in a million places at once; thoughts of killing Relena, my guilt, my hatred of Trowa, my depression and failed suicide attempt, that kiss, all of my conflicting feelings. I felt like I was going crazy, and all because Trowa Barton had kissed me. I hated him, but I had certainly liked it, especially if I compared it to Relena kissing me a year ago.   
    Did that mean that I was gay? I didn't exactly have any desire to have sex with Trowa, but I was only thirteen, I barely knew what sex entailed, especially sex between two guys. The thought of him kissing me again was definitely not unpleasant, as confused as it made me. If he or any other boy had kissed me like that, I would have agonized over it. But at that point in my life, the fact that my sexuality had once consumed my thoughts and fears seemed like it had happened to someone else.   
    I was gay. I didn't even question it, I only felt cold acceptance about it. In that moment, my own sexuality, my own identity meant nothing to me. I didn't think for a second about what it was going to mean for me and my future. An hour ago, I hadn't had one before I had chickened out. I didn't think about how this same sexual identity had destroyed Quatre's life and gotten him killed. That would come much later.  
    I walked all the way back home on foot. I could have gone to work. I would be horribly late, but it would have kept me occupied and my father would be less angry over my being late than skipping both shifts all together. But the thought of standing in that kitchen, washing dishes or answering phone calls made me want to scream. I wasn't in any kind of mood to be pleasant to anyone.  
    On the way home, I could hear the sound of both of the town churches' bells ringing. It was twelve o'clock, Quatre's funeral was over. The churches always rang their bells after a funeral service, regardless of which church the deceased had gone to. I couldn't remember if Quatre's family had been Catholic, Protestant, or something else. Religion was one of those things we never talked about, though I guess it really isn't a popular subject for people our age.   
    If just one of the churches had rung it's bells, the sound would have been pretty or chilling, depending on who was listening, but together they sounded chaotic and clashing. The protestant church was newer than the Catholic one and didn't even have real bells, it was just a recording.  
    There was no one at home when I got there, but the lock was still broken. I didn't even bother with pretending to use my key to unlock it. I just walked inside. My back pack had migrated from the kitchen where I had thrown it the day before to the attic stairs. I could imagine my father coming home last night and getting pissed off finding my stuff in the kitchen like that. Had he wondered where I had gone, or had he not even noticed that I hadn't come home last night? I wondered where he was for about a second. Mom had work on Sundays, but Dad wasn't supposed to. That didn't mean that he hadn't been called in on an emergency or that he hadn't gone out to get groceries, maybe even the lock on the front door, or maybe he was just at a bar. It was a bit early for that, but I had no clue what he did when he wasn't here. And I found that, on that day, I really didn't care.  
    I grabbed my pack and went up into my room, carelessly throwing it into a corner. There were a dozen things I could do now that my big task was over, a dozen things I hadn't been planning on doing because, for the last couple of days, I had been planning my suicide. I could do my homework, clean that house, oil the hinges on the basement door so it would finally stop making that shrieking sound, mow the lawn, or I could just get a knife from the kitchen and slit my throat.   
    What exactly did a person do when they were supposed to be dead, but found their heart still beating? Nothing felt important or even worth my time. I felt listless, like I was just going through the motions for absolutely no reason at all, but I had felt like that every since Quatre had died. I thought about really killing myself for about as much as the time as I had wondered where my father was. It was funny, two hours ago I had sat on the train tracks, fully willing to let a train hit me, but then, sitting in my room, I felt as apathetic towards taking my own life as I did doing the dishes.   
    I hadn't been able to do it, anyway, I told myself. I had chickened out, so what was the point? But mostly it was just in the back of my mind. I hadn't decided to give up on it. All of my reasons for going to the train station were still there, none of them had gone away. I just had so much shit in my head.  
    I didn't do anything that I could have. My brain was too muddled, too busy screaming at me. My rage was still there, pumping adrenaline and hatred for everything into me. I laid down on my mattress, not even bothering to take off the clothes that I had been wearing since Friday, and closed my eyes. I felt so empty, just scraped clean after exploding at Brian, but it wasn't a good kind of emptiness. I tried to sleep, to silence the madness in my head, but I couldn't get my thoughts to shut down. After two hours of tossing and turning, I finally gave up the idea that I was going to get any kind of sleep shy of taking some of my mother's sleeping pills. I grabbed one of my books and tried to read but with similar results. My brain was in over-drive and I was thrumming with all this left over energy from my rage.  
    Trowa, Quatre, Relena, Zechs, my first real kiss, my sexuality, my guilt, my future, my suicide attempt... my thoughts were endless and frustrating. I felt this intense anxiety in my chest and I had the impulse to hit something just to work off whatever was wrong with me. I felt like I was going crazy. I probably was. So much had happened to me in so little time, I didn't have the ability to cope with it. I had no one to talk to about any of it, no way to just... move on.   
    And did I even want to? Hadn't that been one of the reasons why I had decided to kill myself, because the thought of continuing on like that was unbearable? I thought about going to the cemetery and finding Quatre’s gravestone so I could talk to him, but I didn’t want to. I didn't want to look at his headstone and pretend like I was doing anything more than talking to myself.  
    I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t even eat although I recognized my hunger, and just sitting around doing nothing while I was so wired was making things worse. I needed to let go of all my pent up energy, all of my chaotic thoughts. I wanted to be hollowed out and mindless. If I had had access to a punching bag, I would have whaled on it until my arms were so sore, I wouldn’t have been able to lift them. But I didn’t have anything like that to hit, so instead I went back downstairs, put my sneakers on again, left the house, and ran.  
    I ran South, as hard and as fast as my legs would let me. I ran away from all my thoughts and memories, all the bad things in me. I ran so long that everything else besides the burning in my lungs and the pain in my legs became nothing more important than white noise. I ran like all the things that had made me so angry were monsters chasing after me, and I suppose that they were. As I ran, I imagined that Quatre was there at my side, matching me step for step. He had always been a terrible runner and had never been able to keep up with me. When he had run track in gym, I had slowed my stride so we could run together, but in my imagination that day, he was just as fast as I was.  
    We ran together, side by side down my street. We ran past the train yard, past the liquor stores and video stores and adult stores and convenience stores, we ran past factory after factory, we ran even after my chest started to hurt and my head throbbed. I didn’t know if I could make it, but Quatre could run forever. Finally, we reached the town line and I turned around. I turned and ran back the way I had come, but Quatre didn’t. He kept running, straight out of Nausten.   
    In my imagination, he ran away, away from me, some place better. He didn’t kill himself. Quatre just ran away and left me behind. Somewhere, he was living the life that he had talked to me about once in the hospital, living off his parents’ stolen money. In my mind, he was happy and would find a boy better than someone who wouldn’t stand up for him but would kiss his pathetic best friend instead, a boy that would love him and never be too much of a coward to say it.  
    I ran back home alone and by the time I got to my house, it was dark out and I was in so much pain and I was breathing so hard, my heart beating so fast that it still surprises me that I didn’t throw up or just collapse. I didn’t stop or lay down, I just walked right into the bathroom, stripped out of my sweaty clothes and stepped into the shower, panting with burning lungs. The icy cold water that came out of the showerhead was both heavenly and excruciating. I hissed in pain when it hit my right hand and I felt a stinging pain there.      
    I looked at my hand and saw that my knuckles were caked in blood, but it was dried. I gently scrubbed the blood off with some soap and a washcloth. The knuckles on my right hand were black with bruises and skin over them was broken, but no longer bleeding. I must have punched Trowa a hell of a lot harder than I had thought I had.   
    It came back to me then, the feeling of my fist colliding with his face, that sensation of raw power meeting warm, yielding flesh. I remembered how wonderful it had felt hitting him and that look of pain on his face. That must be how my father feels every time he punches me, I thought. I gagged. My anger was fading away, back to cold emptiness, and now the memory of my rage and striking someone I had once been almost friends with just made me feel ill.  
    My hands trembled. I had hurt someone with them, _two_ people even. Maybe they had deserved it, I certainly thought so, but it had been _my_ hands that had done it. Just like my father. I shoved them under the flow of water so I wouldn't have to look at them anymore. Cut up and bruised, they didn't look anything like my hands to me.   
    This wasn't me. This had _never_ been me. I didn't take my anger out on people like that. That was my dad, but never _me_. What was I becoming, that I could so easily punch Relena and Trowa like that when before, when Quatre was alive, just the thought that I might be capable of that had horrified me? If Quatre could see me now, would he be as disgusted as I felt?  
    I had never really been a good person. I had had these violent thoughts for a long time, but I had never had the stomach to act on them. I had always been too frightened of becoming my father, of hurting people and liking it. Wasn't that exactly what had happened? It wasn't that I had punched Trowa and Relena, it wasn't even the overwhelming rage that the both of them had made me feel. My best friend had killed himself because of their actions. I don't think that anyone who cares as much for someone as I had about Quatre wouldn't feel like that in my situation. But I hadn't just hit them as some sort of release to my anger. I had liked it.  
    When my fist had connected to their faces, it had made me feel so good. Realizing that repulsed me. I didn't need alcohol to be like _him_. All I needed was this rage boiling inside of me. Once, I had almost hit Relena and I had thought that my inability to do so was cowardice. Now, I wish I had that cowardice back. Even after Quatre's death, I couldn't be the person that he had insisted that I was. I was nothing better, nothing more than my father's son.  
    I stayed under the icy cold spray of water for so long, my skin went numb and that felt good. I felt good not to feel anything, I just wished that I could make that numbness reach deep down inside of me. What was the point of this, I asked myself. What, exactly had been my reasons for not killing myself on those train tracks? Because I might not see Quatre in the afterlife? I couldn't see him now, so wasn't the chance that I could worth taking?   
    Because I would miss my parents? Maybe I would, but not nearly as much as I missed my only friend, and would they even miss me? Because I was scared of death? Of the pain of it? Would death really be any more terrible than what I was feeling now, this horrible emptiness, living each day feeling either sadness or anger, or more recently, fear?   
    The fear of what my anger was going to make me become, that one day as an adult, I would look into the mirror and see my father's face staring back at me, that I would never be able to escape all the parts of him that I hated no matter how far I ran from him, and not a single part of him that I loved would be there. Wouldn't it be better to end my life now before that happened, when I still had enough of Quatre left in my heart to feel this horrified at what I had done? What was the point of life if I could never feel happiness ever again?  
    I glanced at my father's shaver on the shower ledge and picked it up. I had never needed one, not yet anyway, but it was easy to figure out how to open it and take out the razor blade. I held it up to the light coming through the old, yellowed shower curtain. It gleamed silver, looking sharp even to my eyes. I tested it, it's sharpness and how it might feel by running it over the tip of my finger. It cut through the skin like it was butter. It was so sharp that it took a second for the cut to even hurt and the blood to well up out of it. Blood dripped down my finger. It looked so startling as it appeared suddenly, like magic on my pale skin, that bright color. The cut stung and I imagined how much it must hurt to cut deeper and wider.  
    My hand started to shake again as I realized how solid and _real_ my thoughts were and that I had just been standing there, thinking about cutting myself until I bled out. I quickly washed off the blade and put it back where it belonged. I turned up the water until it was nearly unbearably hot, but it didn't do anything to alleviate my chill. I stayed in there for a very long time, washing my hair and scrubbing every inch of my skin until I had nothing left to wash, then I just stood under the spray, feeling it's warmth so I couldn't feel anything else. The whole while, I pretended that I hadn't just been entertaining thoughts of suicide like it was a normal consideration.  
    The hot water quickly cooled to luke warm, then cold, but I still didn't leave. I was used to the cold and it didn't bother me as much as it should have. At least most of my angry energy was gone and my heart was back to a normal rate. I had been in the shower for hours when I heard someone come into the house. I hastily turned the water off as I recognized my father's gait as he walked into his bedroom right next to the bathroom. He was going to be pissed if he found out that I had been in the shower that long and had used up all the hot water, but thankfully he took his showers early in the morning.  
    I grabbed a fresh towel from the rack and dried myself off quickly. Normally I would have combed out my hair and redone my ponytail before getting dressed, but I knew my dad would want the bathroom as soon as he left the bedroom if he had been out drinking or at work. He was already bound to be angry at me for skipping work again and I just wanted to stay out of his way. Then it dawned on me that I hadn't brought any clean clothes into the bathroom with me and I swore at myself. I wasn't some kind of prude that running naked up to my room freaked me out and I wasn't such a neat freak that I couldn't see putting my dirty clothes back on as an option, but neither appealed to me. Wearing sweaty clothes that I hadn't changed in two days right after I had washed myself kind of defeated the point of showering and walking around in the nude, even if my father was the only one home, embarrassed me.  
    'And him finding your naked, dead body in the shower wouldn't have been?' I thought bitterly and wasn't even sure why I was bitter.  
    I wrapped the towel I had used to dry myself with around me, tossed my dirty clothes in the hamper, and left the bathroom, nearly bumping right into my father in the hallway. We kind of just stared at each other for a moment, me in wariness and him in bewilderment, an expression that I had never seen him wear before and I had no idea why he would look at me like that, like my mere presence was confusing to him. I quickly tried to gauge him, to see what sort of mood he was in, just how angry he was about me skipping work, if I was in for a hospital visit or just a black eye.  
    In the mood that I was in, I would have welcomed a beating from him. I certainly deserved it. But instincts born from thirteen years of dodging my father's assaults were more powerful than my recent yearning for justice and punishment and even though it was on the tip of my tongue to hurry up and apologize to him about missing work, to try to soften his anger before we came to blows, I kept silent. As I studied him, I realized how late it felt and that by the time he had come home, I would have been home from my shift if I had gone anyway. Unless one of my bosses told him that I hadn't shown up that day, he would never know. I would find out much later that Sal had recognized Quatre from all the times he had come to the restaurant to hang out with me. He had thought that I had been at the funeral and had given me a free pass. I don't know if Andre had the same reason, but neither of my bosses ever tattled on me. Of all the things to be lucky about.   
    My father continued to look at me with a weird expression. He didn't look confused anymore, that look had vanished very quickly, but it had been replaced with something else. I don't even know how to describe it. Awe? Frustration? He seemed shaken by something, but I knew better. Nothing could shake him, nothing ever had. It took me a moment to realize that he wasn't really staring at me but at my hair.   
    I wondered for a second if he was just very, very drunk and was staring off into space like my mother often did when she had been drinking for awhile. But even when my father had been drinking heavily, he never lost that sharp edge of his. He only got easier to piss off and senselessly meaner, but he never lost his concentration or that intensity of his that I often wondered was a part of his occupation or he had always been like that. But not even my mother looked like he did just then when she was out of it, because he wasn't just zoning out and looking through me. He was actually looking at and seeing my hair.  
    He was clearly drunk, there was no doubt of that, but not nearly as drunk as I had seen him before. The smell of beer on him was stronger than the smell of vodka probably still was on me, or I assumed because I couldn't tell. I was thankful for that because I didn't know if he would be furious at my drinking or just not care. It was not a problem that I was going to repeat, I already had the beginnings of a headache and my mouth tasted absolutely disgusting to me. But even so, his face wasn't flushed that much. There was another smell coming from his clothes that mingled with the beer: perfume.  
    My mother didn't really wear perfume and the perfume that she did wear once in awhile, usually to job interviews, smelled absolutely nothing like what I smelled on my father. It was a cloying smell, floral but not as strong as the one my mother used. It probably smelled nice when it wasn't mixed with the smell of beer. That wasn't the first time that I had smelled perfume on him and it wouldn't be the last.  
    I guess a lot of people would have gotten upset to learn that one of their parents was having an affair, but I didn't feel any kind of rage towards him for cheating on my mother. I just felt sad. My parents didn't exactly have a good marriage. My mother hated him and refused to even let him in the bedroom a lot of times. I didn't exactly go out of the way to listen for my parents having sex, but hearing some of the things that they had screamed at each other over the years, I don't think they had had sex since I had been born, and if they had, it was rare. Would my mother even care if she found out he was having sex with another woman? I wanted to believe that she would, or maybe she already did and that was why she was always so hostile towards him. Or maybe it was the other way around and he did that _because_ she was hostile.   
    I didn't even know if I could call it an affair. That kind of implied that there was some woman somewhere that loved my father, or at least liked him enough to want to have sex with him, didn't it? One, single woman. But that perfume never smelled the same. I wasn't exactly an expert in women, but I didn't think they changed perfume that drastically. I tried to imagine what my father might be doing that he was having sex with not just one woman, but a few different ones. Only one word came to mind: prostitution.  
    The image in my head of my father going to a whorehouse or picking up a prostitute from a street corner depressed me. I wanted to believe that he wasn't the sort of man to do something like that, but if he was the sort to cheat on his wife so blatantly, then why not with a hooker? That wasn't the only thought that upset me. We weren't exactly well off. 'Barely keeping head above water' certainly described our financial situation. We weren't exactly homeless or eating at soup kitchens, but we had to be painfully careful about our money.   
    I had gotten angry at my father once for spending our tight food budget on beer, how could I understand and cope with him spending money for sex? Or maybe he wasn't paying for it. He was a cop, one that could make a lot of trouble for a prostitute, one that might be persuaded to look the other way if she waived her fee. That that sort of scenario seemed a lot more plausible than him using money we didn't really have sickened me. The thought that my father was abusing his power, risking not only his job but could go to jail for it, just to get laid was terrible.   
    All boys see their fathers as heroes, I think, or at least look up to them, especially if they do a dangerous job like law enforcement or fire fighting. I might not have a great relationship with my father, but I had still been one of those boys. His beating me hadn't diminished that. What he was at work and what he was at home had always been separate to me. I told myself that it didn't matter. Our family had been broken for a very long time. But it still hurt. Looking at my father, smelling the perfume on him and knowing that he had gone out to fuck some strange woman against every oath he had ever made while I had been running with a ghost hurt me.  
    "Your hair..." he suddenly blurted out and reached one hand to touch a wet lock of my hair.  
    I flinched a little at his touch, so used to him pulling my hair to hurt me. But his touch was light as he let my chestnut hair fall through his fingertips almost tenderly, like it was something special instead of something he saw every day. Although, I realized, that was the first time I had walked around with my hair loose since it had gotten long enough for me to put up in a ponytail. The way he looked at it now, loose and clean from the shower, made me uncomfortable and I didn't know why. He just looked so... I would almost call it wide-eyed, like a mix of a little kid finding something wonderful and an adult reliving some pleasant memory he had never thought he would have again. He ha to have been a hell of a lot more drunk than I had thought he was, that was the only thing that would have made sense.  
    His expression hardened and he looked bitter suddenly, letting go of my hair.  
    "It's too damned long," he grumbled, like my hair offended him, "You need to cut it," he started to walk towards the kitchen and then said with a tone that I could only call wistful, "You look exactly like your mother used to when she was your age," and then he was gone.  
    I stared at his retreating back with wide eyes and I was sure an astonished expression. I touched my hair subconsciously for a second. I was used to him ragging at me about my hair to the point of verbal abuse. It was too long, it made me look like a girl or a fag or a dog, I needed to get my ponytail cut off. Of course he never gave me the money to get a hair cut, just harassed me about it. But he had never told me that my long hair made me look like my mother had.   
    And what had been that weird look he had given me when he had touched my hair? Had he been feeling guilty about what he had been doing today because I reminded him of Mom? Or had he just been remembering something, some pleasant memory from when he and Mom had liked each other, before I had come along and destroyed their lives?   
    I shook off the incredibly bizarre and awkward moment, never wanting to think about my dad touching my hair and looking at me like that again. It made me feel weird and I had no clue why, so I pretended like it had never happened, walking upstairs to my bedroom. I dressed in pajamas, combed my hair, and put it back up in its ponytail. I already felt better just to have it not loose anymore. When I went back downstairs, I could smell the light scent of soup coming from the kitchen, reminding me that I hadn't had a real meal since Thursday night. I didn't want to eat anything, but my stomach ached with the need to put _something_ into it.  
    In the kitchen, my father was stirring a pot of what looked like left over chicken soup. Without saying a word, we danced around each other, him preparing the soup, adding a few spices that we had to it to give new life to it, and me preparing the salad and setting the table. I only set two place settings. That late at night, if my mother hadn't made an appearance yet, then she was pulling a late shift and would miss dinner. I didn't exactly miss her.   
    My father handed me a bowl of steaming hot soup as I placed the salad on the table and I sat down with it. The soup had bits of chicken, potato, celery, and carrots in it and whatever else my father had put in it had made it taste pretty good. I was just happy to have something hot. I didn't bother with the bread, it looked chewier and staler than I wanted to deal with.   
    When my father returned to the table with his own full bowl and put a bottle of salad dressing on the table, I felt like he had punched me in the gut.  
    "W-what's that?" I stammered as I stared at the bottle.  
    It was Quatre's salad dressing. The same, exact dressing that he had loved to put on everything; salad, vegetables, bread, and even chicken. He had always brought it with him to school, too, and had let me use it when I had told him that I liked it, too. It really wasn't that strange to see it sitting on my dinner table at the same time that it was. They had it at all the grocery stores in town, even the smaller, family run ones. But the stuff was pricey, nothing that my parents would have bought. We always used the generic brand stuff.   
    My father shot me a strange look at my shock.  
    "There was a sale because they're discontinuing it," he said gruffly in a bored tone, "Your mother wanted to try it."  
    The sudden sadness that fell on me almost made me laugh. They were even taking one of Quatre's favorite things from me. How pathetic was I that I was getting depressed over a stupid salad dressing? But the thought that that might be the very last time I would get to taste it strangled my heart. I watched my father in a daze as he unscrewed the cap, ripped off the protective seal, poured some on his salad, screwed the cap back on, and handed it back to me. I felt like I was living in a nightmare and all I was doing was eating dinner.  
    I wanted to knock it out of his hand and scream. Was this going to be what my life was like from now on? Constant reminders of him? Would I always be tossed around like a rag doll by my emotions, thinking that things were going to be alright, that at least I was beginning to cope with his suicide, only to have this immense grief always lurking around the corner, ready to eat me alive? That idea, and the realness of it, horrified me so completely. Instead of letting it overwhelm me, I took the bottle from him and poured it on my own salad. I speared some lettuce and carrots with my fork harder than I had intended to and shoved it into my mouth.  
    With the very first taste, memories assaulted me with more cruelty and brutality than anything Relena or Zechs could think to do to me. All at once, more like powerful hallucinations than memories, I remembered each and ever time Quatre had shared his food with me. In my head, I saw him as I approached him every single day in the cafeteria, all those times when he had come into my work, all those times that we had met on the weekends.   
    In the course of just an instant, I saw it a thousand times. A thousand times that his eyes would light up when he saw me, like I was someone special, someone that mattered, and just my showing up could make him happy. A thousand times that he would share his food, all the things that he liked with me, simply because he cared about me. I saw it a thousand times in my head, a thousand of his smiles, that infuriatingly kind smile that he never seemed to show to anyone else. His generosity, his love, his patience and caring, his... his _light_ . I saw all of that just from one bite of something that he had once liked. Once.  
    And suddenly the world seemed so painful and tedious to me, so full of nothing. Each moment that passed me by seemed like forever, like I was trapped, stagnant in tar and everything was gray and agony. It wasn't just that I had no appetite anymore or nothing that I had cared about before mattered to me, it was worse than that. Even just the act of breathing seemed stressful and useless, and all I could think about was 'is this it?' Was this my life without Quatre, and the only time that I would feel anything at all besides rage would be these moments of pain, the only love and joy I could feel again be in these memories of him?   
    My desire to kill myself stopped being because I wanted to see Quatre. It stopped being because of him at all. I wanted... no, I needed to do it because I had lived thirteen years being unloved, being nothing and I had only survived them because of him. I don't care how jaded a person is, living without feeling is easy, but living without love is impossible. Just one year felt horrible to me, but fifty, sixty, or even seventy?   
    I couldn't bear the thought of living my life like that, without having someone in my life that would share their food with me, simply because they wanted to show me something that they loved. If that was what life was for me, being alone, just a body in a crowd, I didn't want it.  
    I hadn't cried all day. I hadn't been able to, even when realizing Quatre's funeral had began, or when the boy that should have been his boyfriend had kissed me, or when I had realized that I was gay, or even when I had realized that I was turning into my father. But then, sitting at that dinner table with my dad, tasting that damned salad dressing and remembering Quatre, remembering his absence, I cried like a fucking baby.   
    A single sob burst out of me and it was like the flood gates that I hadn't even known that I had burst open with it. Tears that I had assured myself that I would never cry again flowed down my face like twin waterfalls. I didn't know what was more embarrassing, that I was crying and sobbing in front of my father for what had to appear to him as no reason at all, or that after everything that had happened to me that day, it was just this normal, every day thing that had broken me.  
    I pressed my hands to my face to try to hide my tears, but it was a pretty pathetic gesture with the way that I was sobbing. I heard my father push his chair back and stand up from the table. He was either leaving me here to cry it out alone or he was going to hit me. My dad hated crying, it drove him crazy. If he did hit me for it, it wouldn't be nearly the first time, or even the twentieth, but I didn't even feel any fear about it. You ever get a pain so awful that you can't even feel any other hurts, like stubbing your toe after slamming your hand in a car door? My hear was exactly like that. Dad could have beat me right into a hospital bed and I would have felt it at all.  
    Suddenly, instead of his fist in my face, I felt his arms around me. For a moment, I thought that I was dreaming. I brought my hands away from my face and saw that he really was kneeling in front of me and hugging me tightly. His hands rubbed at my back, trying to comfort me, and it did feel good, even though he was holding me a bit too tightly.   
    I couldn't even remember the last time he had held me like this, not for a long time. The last time that I could actually remember it, concretely, was when I was really little. My mother had forgotten to turn the oven off and left a dirty pot in there. Me, at that age where children were always looking for ways to help their parents and get just a shred of approval, had thought that the oven had been cool and reached in to grab it to give to my dad as he washed the dishes.   
    Suffice to say, I burned myself really badly and I still have a slight scar on my right palm to prove it. I was careful, even back then, not to cry in front of my father, especially over something small, but the pain was so bad, I couldn't help myself. When he had seen what had happened to me, he had swept me up in his arms and rocked me, telling me that it was ok. It had felt so good, the pain hadn't even mattered. For all that my father had done to me, it still felt good, every single time he held me like that.   
    For some reason, some part of me always believed that he could make things better. He had even done that childish thing of kissing my palm and saying that would make the pain go away. The memory is bitter sweet, though, because it sparked off a huge fight between my parents that ended up with my father giving my mother a bloody nose and two cracked ribs. It had made me wish that I hadn't cried at all.  
    "Sssh, baby boy," he said, just as he had when I had been younger, "it's going to be ok. Everything is going to be ok, you don't need to cry."  
    His words only made me cry harder against his shoulder, but it only made him hold me tighter, like it would help. I didn't know how to feel. I felt love for him, for moments like these, as rare as they were, when he cared for me and acted like a father. I felt sadness that it wasn't enough to make me feel any better, that he couldn't just love me all the time like he was supposed to. And I felt a dark, bitter kind of humor at him comforting me and telling me that everything was going to be ok when he didn't even know why I was crying.   
    The most painful thing was that if my relationship with my father had been normal, the kind you see on television, the kind that most of my classmates have, he would have known why I was crying so hard. He would have known days ago and maybe, back then, he really could have made it just a little bit better. Just knowing that I wasn't alone, that someone still loved me, would have pulled me out of the dark tailspin I was in. But I was alone. I could cry in my father's arms as long and as hard as I wanted. As soon as I stopped, I would be alone again.   
    I don't know how long it took me to stop crying and my dad to stop hugging me. Long enough for the soup to go completely cold. He took our bowls to the stove, dumped the soup back into the pot, stirred it for a little while, and poured it back into the bowls. I ate it dutifully, just to have something to concentrate on besides the shit in my head. I don't even really remembering tasting it. I didn't dare to take another bite of my salad. My father didn't ask me why I had cried and I didn't talk about it. I just couldn't bring myself to talk to him about someone he had never even known existed.  
  
*****  
  
    I don't know what else to write about. There really isn't anything else, at least nothing that I haven't already written about. After I hit Relena, Mrs. Khushrenada decided that I needed to start to see the school counselor. I even went, but I never talked. There are just some things that you can't talk about to complete strangers. My depression, my rage, and how much I missed my best friend, not to even mention my horrible guilt and feelings of responsibility towards his death and my continuingly worsening nightmares were some of those things.   
    I told her that I wasn't really sleeping for more than five hours on a good night, two on a rocky one, and none at all on a bad one. I told her that I couldn't manage to sleep more than three hours at a time, and that was being generous, that I would wake up with my heart racing and I would have to get up and do something for a few hours before trying to sleep again.  
    I'm not stupid. I know what night terrors, insomnia, and sleep deprivation are and how they can fuck with a person, how they were just making my depression worse and that it was a never ending cycle. But when the counselor got a doctor to prescribe me sleeping pills, I just filled them and hid them in my room. I didn't take any, not even one. I kept looking at that bottle of white pills and thinking of Quatre's mother. How many pills had she taken to kill herself? How many would it take to end my whole life? What if it took the entire bottle? I didn't dare take just that one. I needed to save them, if I decided that was how I wanted to go.   
    The counselor eventually got fed up with my refusing to talk about Quatre and what I was really feeling and declared that I needed an outlet, some way to release al lthe negative feelings I have before I explode. She gave me this journal and told Mrs. Khushrenada to make sure that I was using it somehow. I don't believe that such an outlet exists. I think that the awful things in me can't ever really come out, be expunged somehow. I sure don't feel any better writing in this stupid thing, though it's been a great way to pass the time.   
    I had hoped that Mrs. Khushrenada and the counselor were right, that I would get to the end of this... this story, narrative, whatever you want to call it, and it would be like all this darkness was just pulled out of me, or at least silenced for awhile. If it was like that, I think I could have continued on, because I would have hope that it would get better. But it didn't help me at all. I know now that nothing will, not even time.  
    Then I beat up Zechs, punched him four times in the face until I broke his nose and then writing in this journal became a lot more than a suggestion. Zechs got me back, though, like I knew that he would, especially after I wasn't expelled and his parents went on easy on me because I was 'grieving.'   
    Sometimes I wish that I had looked those two people in the eye and told them what their children really were, that their daughter was a murderer and their son was a thug that should be locked up in jail, that I hadn't beaten Zechs because I was 'troubled' or 'sad,' but simply because I had wanted to and hadn't come up with a single reason not to anymore.  
    It had felt good, too, better than punching his sister had been. Maybe it was because he was bigger than me, more of a challenge to have tackled him and hit him the way that I had, or maybe it was because of all the times he had beaten me and Quatre up. I had realized, a long time ago, that even though he hadn't been at the front of the school with us that day, I was positive he had had a hand in outing Quatre. It had been bothering me, how Relena had gotten at Quatre's journal. The only thing that made any sense was that she had broken into the Winner home somehow. But I just couldn't see her doing that. Breaking in was more her brother's thing. The only other scenario that I could come up with was that one of Quatre's sisters was friends with Relena or Zechs, or had been intimidated by them. Neither was a pleasant thought.  
    When Zechs cornered me the next day after my near expulsion, I didn't even fight back. It would have been pointless to. I had been expecting some insidious form of payback, not him just walking up to me and punching me just like I had punched him. He gave me some bruises worthy of my father, a black eye, a probable cracked rib, and a broken nose. All things considered, I got off light. He probably would have done a lot worse if I had fought back or tried to hit him again.   
    He left me bleeding on the floor and I walked calmly to the nurse's office. I don't remember what lie I gave to the nurse, I had a million of them after thirteen years living with my father. I tripped and fell into a locker. I fell down some stairs. All terribly cliched, but effective when it came to bullshitting people.  
    There is nothing else. Nothing that I can write about that makes me happy, not even anything that makes me sad. There is just... nothing. What keeps me going these days, oddly, are thoughts of ending all of it. All this bullshit. Sometimes I just lay down on my mattress and think about how I'll do it for hours. I don't think about why I want to kill myself anymore, or even what, if anything, will come after I do it.   
    I don't think about what I'm leaving behind or if I'm going to go to Hell or if I'll see Quatre again. I just think of _how_. I think of those pills under my mattress, my father's razor blade, his gun, the rope we have in the basement, the train, a car, or even just goading Zechs on until he kills me in rage. It's strange, but thinking about these things comforts me. I would have thought that wanting to kill myself, thinking about my own death and about how much it's going to hurt would frighten me like it had when I had stood on the train tracks, but it doesn't at all anymore.   
    It's thinking about not ending my life that scares me so much now. I don't think that the pain of death can really match the pain I feel every single day, just waking up and realizing how empty my life is. I don't know exactly when I had finally decided to do it, when I had tasted Quatre's salad dressing for the last time, or at some point in writing all of this. Eventually, I stopped debating about it and just wondered when I could finally let all of it go. And it is a comfort, knowing I have a way out, knowing that I don't have to worry about my future anymore. At least I'll never really know just how much of a loser I am.   
    I've been waiting. Waiting to finish this journal, and waiting for the right time to kill myself. Sometimes I wake up in the early morning when it's still dark outside, my head fresh with my nightmares and my heart hammering in my chest so hard that I feel like I'm going to scream, and I think about just doing it. Running downstairs, grabbing my father's razor and just doing it right there.     But every single time, my fear stops me. Not my fear of dying, but my fear of my father walking in on me before I'm gone and stopping me. I'm afraid of him 'saving' me. So I've been waiting for the perfect time, a time when no one can possibly stop me from doing this, because I'm not so sure I'll be able to try it a second time.  
    I've thought about leaving a suicide note, but what's the point? People that do that just want to childishly hurt all the people that have hurt them, or stupidly think that their death is going to mean something, make something change. It never does. I could go on and on about how Relena and Zechs Darlian killed me and killed Quatre, how my mother's cruel words to me made me loose all faith in myself and my future, how my father's fist have injured more than just my body.   
    I could try and make people see how much Quatre suffered and how much the people in his life need to be punished for it, but I'm not naive. Quatre died and everyone in school knows why. They know what Relena did to him, and Relena certainly knows what she did to him, but not a single one of those people cares, not a single one of them has tried to change anything. Relena doesn't feel an inch of guilt for what she did and I doubt my parents will change after I'm dead, that they'll love me anymore. If anything, maybe my death will give them peace. I don't want to think that. I still love my parents, despite everything, but I know what my birth did to them. What it did to my mother. Besides, I think I've said all that I can here. I'll let this journal be my suicide note, if anyone ever reads it. But I don't expect anyone to give a shit about my death, not when no one cared about Quatre's.  
    I decided it will be today. May 1st, 2004. My dad will be out of the house until tomorrow morning. He said it's because of his job, maybe a stakeout or paperwork, or maybe he's just lying so he can go out and fuck some woman. I try to picture her in my head, pale and blonde like my mother, or maybe he doesn't want to remember her at all and the women he fucks look completely different. At least I'll never know that for sure, I'll never know the sort of man that my father really is.   
    I don't know what to write. I can't think of anything profound, even though it will be the last thing that anyone knows of me. I've read a thousand books, but not a single thing comes into my head. I guess all there is is the obvious. I loved Quatre. I love my parents, even though they only seldom showed any affection for me. For the very first time in my life, I want to believe in God, and I want to look him in the eye and ask him why. I want to ask Relena why she did everything that she did to us. And I want to ask this entire town why they let her do it. That's all I have left to write.  
  
  
  
*****  
      
(blood smears)  
  
    I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. I don't want to be forgiven by anyone. I just want... no, I need everyone to know how sorry I am.   
  
    I'm sorry, Dad. I don't mean to make you so mad all the time. I try to be good, I try to be better so you won't be so tired and frustrated, but I can never do anything right. I can't even be a son right. I'm sorry I made such a mess in the bathroom. I'm sorry you and Mom aren't happy.  
  
    I'm sorry, Mom. You're right, I never should have been born. You could have been happy, had a real family. You shouldn't have a husband that hits you and cheats on you. You shouldn't have a son that ruined you inside. I'm sorry I'm so useless, I can't even protect you or get you to stop drinking. I'm sorry you had to ruin your whole life for worthless trash like me.  
  
    I'm sorry, Quatre. I'm sorry for what I did to you most of all. You deserved a better friend than me, someone that could have made them stop. I'm sorry that I was too stupid to understand all those times you tried to tell me how you were feeling... no, I did understand them. I understood how depressed you were, how you wanted to escape from everything, but I chose to just ignore it. I ignored you when you needed me the most, just like my parents always do! I'm disgusting, absolute trash, and you deserved so much better than me. I wish that I could have been a stronger person, then you would still be alive.   
    But I understand it now, how you could do it. Maybe not why, not the real reasons why you felt like you had to, but I understand how easy it was for you to just let go of it all, to just surrender. It isn't hard at all once you realize that they're wrong. Nothing gets better. And it didn't hurt, not really. It stung at first, but then the stinging went away. I don't feel it at all anymore  
    it's warm and nice getting hard to hold this pencil  
  
    sorry mom a nd dad this is all I can do anymore  
  
    Im gonna see Quatre now  
  
  
    End Part 9  
  
    End Chapter 3  
  
  
    Author's Note: I want to thank everyone who has reviewed this story, it's helped me to push through some of the harder parts. I don't know when chapter 4 will make an appearance, and I'm sorry for leaving the story at the place that it is at the end of this chapter, but I need to take the time to make notes for chapter 4 and 5. I also want to take the time to do some minor edits to the novel I am trying to publish. My new year's resolution is to get that story out there ^_^  
      
      
      
  
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
  



	15. Chapter 4 Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More than a year after Quatre's death, Duo struggles with a life without him and finds himself in a strange friendship with Trowa.

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 4  
Part 1  
  
  
December 21st, 2007  
  
  
    Life is weird. I guess everyone has a moment where they have to realize that at some point, but it seems to happen to me over and over again. Weird is looking back at my life these last three years and realizing that not a single thing has changed, even though sometimes I like to tell myself that it has. Weird is finding myself doing things that I told myself, years back, I would never do again, or just plain never stop doing, like writing about my shitty life in a journal again, or caring about another person again. Yet here I am, with a fresh, clean journal that I just filched from my English classroom, writing about things that no one besides myself gives a shit about.   
    I don't even have a reason anymore. I just woke up this morning and thought about everything that happened this last week. Hell, I thought about everything that's happened since I last wrote in one of these and I wanted to write it all down. I can't say why, it didn't help me any last time, but I didn't see any point in ignoring the urge. It's not like I have anything better to do anymore, not after last week. I guess that sounds pathetic, but that's ok because it is.   
    Weird is the knowledge that the last time I wrote in any journal about my life, I was sitting on my bathroom floor, slicing my left wrist open with one of my father's razor blades, happy to end everything about my life. Now three years have gone by, how's that for anti-climatic?   
    I survived my second suicide attempt, obviously, since I'm not writing from beyond the grave. I'm such a fuck up, I couldn't even kill myself right. I thought I had done it all perfectly. I had waited until my father and mother were out of the house, found the newest, sharpest razor in the drawer my father stored his shaving tools, sat on the ice cold bathroom floor and just did it. I didn't even hesitate, I just raked the razor across both of my wrists and waited for myself to bleed out. Only I didn't.   
    Don't get me wrong, I lost a lot of blood, enough that I had needed a transfusion, but not enough to end my life. I can laugh about it now, how perfectly that failure describes me. I try and I try, but it's never good enough, I never get anywhere. Realizing it back then, waking up on that cold floor, it had just depressed me.   
    I had cut my wrists the wrong way. I hadn't even realized that there was a specific way you were supposed to do something like that. I had seen people do it in movies and on television, so I had just assumed that was the best way. It had never occurred to me that I should have done some research on the subject. Instead, I just _almost_ died.  
    It hadn't hurt, cutting my wrists. I mean, it kind of had, at first, just the act of cutting, but nearly bleeding out hadn't. In a way, it had almost been pleasant. The hard floor under me had been ice, but my blood had been obscenely warm. If I had been able to forget that that warmth had been coming from my life bleeding out of me, it would have been nice. Eventually, I had been so weak and faint, all those little things like worry and fear and sadness had just... disappeared from me. For the first time in the thirteen years of my life I had been... not happy, but empty, completely empty of everything, both good and bad. For a moment, I even forgot about Quatre.   
    I blacked out. I didn't see any beautiful, white lights or an angel beckoning me or some voice telling me it was or wasn't time for me to go. There had been only blackness and nothingness. Then, I woke up to my father lifting me up by the front of my ratty t-shirt and slapping me hard across the face. He had come home early, something I never would have predicted. I didn't have any doubts that I hadn't died, unless this is Hell, just more of the same shit I've lived in my entire life. But not even my father's blows or his screaming at me to get up and demanding to know what the hell I thought that I was doing as he had roughly and tightly wrapped my wrists up in towels had been enough to combat my blood loss and I had lost consciousness again.  
    I woke up again in the hospital to my father arguing heatedly with the doctor that had worked on me. My wrists had been bound and I had felt incredibly weak, and would for the next couple of days, even after I had gotten a second transfusion thanks to my dad. The doctor had been arguing to having a psychologist see me. I guess my father hadn't been able to excuse away my wounds like he could when he hit me. If I had just slashed one wrist, maybe he could have lied and said I had done it while cutting vegetables or something, but I had been careful to do both wrists.   
    My father had wanted nothing to do with getting me therapy. "All he needs," he had told the doctor angrily in a growling tone, "is time with his family. We'll sort it out, not some fucking quack that will just put bullshit ideas into his head."  
    I guess 'time with his family' just meant 'some sense beaten into him' because as soon as my father won that battle with the doctor and got me home, a beating was exactly what he gave me.   
    "What the _fuck_ is wrong with you?!" he had roared at me, "What the hell did you think you were doing, trying to kill yourself?! How pathetic are you?!"  
    He had screamed at me for a good ten minutes, calling me all sorts of names for my stupidity before plowing his fist into my gut. I was probably lucky I hadn't had a second trip to the hospital that day. On a normal day, I would have felt bitter and angry about him beating me when I was already hurt, even if I had been the one to hurt myself for once, but I was just so weak and so emotionally drained at that point that I hadn't cared. If anything, that beating had been a good thing.   
    While I'm sure this will sound terrible, every punch that my father had given me that day had made me happy, as happy as I was capable of feeling in my apathy. It was tiny, a one, single, good thing in the emptiness that my life had become, and I had probably clung to it for that reason alone. Because my father could have just not cared that I had tried to kill myself. He could have looked at me with the same kind of stare that my mother looked at me with and walked away. Instead, he had been enraged that his son had wanted to kill himself.   
    He had been mad that I was so weak to do something stupid like that, but he had cared enough to be angry about it. Knowing that he cared at least that much was confusing and painful and made me feel that weird burst of love I would feel for him when he showed that side of him, but the bruises he gave me that day only reminded me of how fleeting those feelings were.   
    "And clean up the goddamned mess that you made in the fucking bathroom!" had been my father's parting shot as he left me there on the kitchen floor with a bloody nose and a black eye.   
    When I managed to pick myself off the floor and go up to my room to nurse my wounds, I laid down and cried, because the pain meant that I was still alive. For a second, as I laid on my mattress mourning my failed suicide attempt, I saw Quatre sitting on the floor in front of me. He wasn't a mirage or a dream or a trick of the eye. He was as real as the walls of my room. He reached over and touched my hair like he would have done if he had been alive and had found me crying.  
    "Ssssh, it'll be alright," he had soothed, his voice as clear and real as my father's had been when he had screamed at me.  
    Then I blinked and he was gone, just a vapor. That second, I vowed to myself that I was done with crying. I would never shed a tear again. Not for Quatre, and especially not for myself. I spent the rest of my night scrubbing my dried blood off the bathroom floor until I pulled the stitches in my right wrist and had to take a break until the bleeding stopped.   
    It had felt so weird cleaning up my own blood, knowing that it had all come from _my_ body. I tried to tell myself that it was just a stain, like any other, but that only made me feel worse, like I was nothing but a stain, waiting to be scrubbed out. There was just so much of it, and it was so dark, almost black from drying on the hard floor of the bathroom for days. The feeling of it on my hands as I scrubbed at it with the bathroom sponge we used to clean the tub was revolting.   
    At some point, I had found the journal. I don't remember why I had taken it with me that day, or what had possessed me to write in it as I had lain there, dying. I don't remember shoving it behind the toilet, but there it was. Maybe I had had a single moment of clarity before I had blacked out, enough to know to hide it from my father. It was caked with blood on the later pages, for obvious reasons, and was pretty much a lost cause for writing anything else in it. It was disgusting to me, the dried blood brown and kind of looked like pudding or very dark and thick coffee stains, but I couldn't make myself throw it out. I tossed it in the secret compartment in the floor of my room and I haven't looked at it since.   
    I haven't thought about it since. Killing myself, I mean. At least, I haven't thought about with any kind of seriousness. I don't know precisely why. Before, ending everything, escaping all the pain and apathy I was feeling after Quatre committed suicide himself had been all I could think about. A future beyond that had seemed impossible. Now that I was faced with it, you would think that I would try to kill myself as soon as possible.   
    But I didn't. It wasn't because I had failed or I was suddenly scared of death or I had found something to live for. It was simply because I realized something as I had laid on that hospital bed, listening to my heart monitor. What was the point? My life had never had one, so why would my death? At some point, I had stopped believing that I would go to heaven and see my best friend again. So what was the point of ending anything? No one would mourn me.   
    But even more than that, I realized that I didn't deserve to die. Life was pain and that was exactly what I deserved. Why should I get any kind of relief when I had let down the only person in my life that had truly cared about me? The thought of trying to kill myself again suddenly felt selfish to me and I quickly lost all taste for it. But I guess that I never tried it again is more because my apathy grew after I survived slitting my wrists. It grew like a tidal wave in me until I even stopped caring about ending my life.  
    There is a word for what my life is now. Stagnant. It means when something has stopped or can't develop or advance, like when a river goes through a dry season and all these little pools form in the dirt. The water can't flow like it's supposed to, can't continue on to where it needs to go, and it becomes stale and foul. That's my life, my existence. Unmoving, unable to progress, just stopped where I am. Because nothing changes for me. Since the moment I watched Quatre fall in front of that train, nothing has changed at all. At least, nothing that I need to change.  
    I suppose in the last three years, things have changed a little. Tiny, unimportant things. When I turned fifteen last year, my dad decided I was old enough for a better job than waiting tables. Don't get me wrong, I didn't quit any of my shit jobs for something better, I just got a third, shittier job. Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, from 4, right after I leave school, to 9:30 at night, I work at the pizza joint. I'm allowed to work the ovens now, so I can actually make food, but I still have to wait tables, answer the phones, do the dishes, and make the pizza boxes, so it just feels like more of the same to me.   
    Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday I work at the diner, 3 to 8 on Wednesday, 9 to 3 Saturday and Sunday. Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday from 9 to 1, and Fridays from 5 to 11 I work at one of the factories in South Nausten unloading cargo brought in from the train yard. Just like my other two jobs, my dad got me that one. It's just as illegal as the others were when I was thirteen, especially my 9 to 1 shifts, and unloading freight is supposed to be a job for someone older than 17, but I guess my father has a deal with the manager of the factory just like my other bosses.   
    I make the equivalent of time and a half at the factory as I do at my other jobs, which would be a pretty sweet deal if my father didn't take all my earnings. The job itself is hard, I'm lifting and sorting through cargo meant for someone twice my size and by the time I go home, I'm so tired and sore from moving all that heavy shit around, I feel like a middle aged man instead of a teenager. The guys that I work with don't like me very much, because of my age, but it's a job and it helps pay the bills.   
    You would think that all that manual labor would have gotten me some muscle tone, but of course not, that would have been something good. Instead, I'm still the same averaged height, scrawny kid that I've always been. The only difference is that I get more back aches and random pains in my hips. It's not that big of a deal, though. I still don't sleep much these days, usually four hours at a time if I'm lucky and I do my homework during my breaks and in between shifts. What else do I have to occupy my time except for reading and work? It's not like I have a friend to hang out with anymore.  
    Well... I guess that's sort of a lie. Or it was. Remember how I said that life is weird? On the same day that I had vowed to never cry again, I had made myself another promise. I had promised that I would never again get close to anyone, I would never open my heart to a single person. Because Quatre's death hadn't hit me so hard due to my own miserable failings, but because I had loved him.   
    If we hadn't been friends, it wouldn't have hurt. If I hadn't had four years with him as my best friend, I never would have known what it was like to be truly happy, to have someone to rely on, only to have it all ripped away from me. If I had never met Quatre, I was certain that, no matter how much my life had sucked without him, I never would have tried to kill myself. I had thought that it would have been easy to keep a promise like that. I hadn't thought that I was capable of loving anything anymore.  
    But as it turns out, I'm as incapable of keeping a promise to myself as I was keeping one to Quatre. Emotions are tricky little shits and when they worm their way in, they're like parasites, making you do whatever they please, regardless of what you want. I hadn't been able to stop being friends with Quatre. I think that, even if I had tried to stay away from him, even if I had known how much it would hurt down the road, my loneliness would have drawn me to him no matter what. And I think that, when I had gotten that phone call last fall, even if I had known the heartache it ended up bringing me, I still would have answered that call.  
    It was the very first week of the tenth grade for me. I was sitting at my desk, trying to get my geometry homework done, a subject that, for once, wasn't frustrating me to the point of screaming, when my father walked in with the phone in hand. It was the same phone we'd had for the last five years and the dent from my father throwing it at the back of my head was still there. This time, he didn't throw it, he just handed it to me.  
    "You have a phone call, some kid," he said in that gruff way of his that told me he was irritated, but only mildly so. It was safe, for now.  
    I hesitated to take the phone out of pure confusion. There was not a single person that would be calling me, not anymore. Not even Zechs called me to harass me, something that he had done to Quatre before. At least we had thought it was Zechs, the caller had never said their name, but Quatre had insisted that he recognized his voice. My father looked equally confused at why anyone, my age or not, would be calling. He was distracted enough not to get angry at my taking so long to grab the phone.  
    "Hello?" I asked in bewilderment, expecting some kind of trick or something nasty. Why else would one of my classmates call me?  
    "Hey."  
    My eyes widened, staring at nothing in complete shock as Trowa Barton's voice filled my ear.  
    I hadn't heard from him for a year and a half, not since the day I had screamed at him at the train station. I had seen him, once in awhile, mostly at school, but neither of us had tried to talk to each other. What did we have to say to each other? All that we had in common anymore was not something that either of us wanted to talk about, so I was a bit mystified as to why Trowa was calling after not saying a word to me for more than a year.   
    I could never bury Quatre down deep inside of me, but I couldn't look at my memories of him for too long, either. The only way that I could continue to get out of bed every morning anymore was to not think about anything at all. Especially after the nightmares I continued to have. It was in me to just hang up on him, but I couldn't. Because although I would never admit it to anyone, and I had a hard time admitting it to myself, Trowa confused me and he conflicted me.   
    I still hate him. Now, I have only more and more reasons to hate him, but back then when he had called me that night, I had had plenty of reasons to hate and distrust him. He was still the boy that had gotten my only friend killed. He was still a coward and unwelcome in my life. But... but at the same time, I felt... I can't even describe it adequately. I liked him. I liked him enough to take his phone call without telling him to fuck off and cutting him off.   
    Trowa had been my first kiss. My very first, _real_ kiss, because I just can't think of that kiss Relena had given me as my first still, because of how I felt about her back then, the turmoil it had given me, and especially how I feel about her now. But Trowa, as much as I had and still do hate him, that kiss had been real to me. Even if he hadn't actually been kissing me.   
    When I thought about Trowa, I thought about him turning his back on Quatre the day that he had killed himself, and I thought about him telling me, in anguish, that he had liked him, too. But I also thought of that kiss, the feeling of his smooth lips on mine and the warmth they had given me, the feeling of his hand on my thin shoulder and the subtle, earthy smell of his deodorant. I thought about that night when the three of us had gone to dinner together, how shy but endearing he had been, how we had connected, how I had enjoyed just talking with him, how I had thought that he could be a friend for me, one that I desperately needed.   
    And I thought about all the times that he had made Quatre smile, made him laugh, made him _glow_ just by being around him. I could deny it all that I wanted to make it easier for me, but the truth was that for all the pain Trowa had made Quatre feel, he had also made my best friend feel deliriously happy. When it came to Trowa Barton, my brain just couldn't decide if I hated him or liked him, it couldn't just pick on one thing and just feel that one thing. My life would have been so much simpler if I had just decided to hate him and push him away. But hadn't been able to.  
    "Hey," I said back. It would be one of the worst decisions I had ever made, "What's up?"  
    A year and a half is a long time. I won't say that any of my anger at him had suddenly gone away during that time, but I found that I could hold a conversation with the upperclassman, especially over the phone, without eviscerating him like I had at the train station. My father went back downstairs and I was relieved. If I did end up yelling at Trowa, I didn't want him right next to me. It was weird enough talking to the first boy that had ever kissed me, and still confused me if only because it made me remember that I had liked it, in front of someone like my father that hated people like us.   
    "Do you want to go see a movie this Saturday?" Trowa asked me with just a small bit of that familiar shyness he used to talk to Quatre with, obviously unsure of himself, but not quite in the same way that he had been with the boy he had had a crush on.  
    His question only confused me further. If anyone had called me to ask that, I would have known that it was a prank, but with Trowa, I knew that he was being sincere. Not because we were on familiar terms, which we weren't. After I had hit him and he had kissed me and I had hit him again, I had absolutely no idea where we stood with each other. We weren't friends, but we weren't enemies, either. Begrudging acquaintances? Somehow that didn't quite touch on our complicated relationship. No, I trusted Trowa not to try shit with me simply because he didn't have that sort of thing in him. No matter how he had changed since Quatre's death, he wasn't cruel for the sake of cruelty like Zechs and Relena.  
    I could have demanded to know why he wanted to hang out with me all of a sudden. Did he want to hit me in revenge for my hitting him that time? Was he worried that I would tell his friends and teammates about him kissing me? If he had called me a few days after Quatre's funeral, I might have been paranoid that either of those things were the case, but more than a year later? Only two scenarios made any sense to me. Trowa either wanted to talk about Quatre, our one connection besides that kiss, or for some reason, he was actually lonely and I was the only one he could call. Maybe he had had a fight with his friends, I had no clue.  
    "Sure," I said instead of asking him anything, "if you're paying."  
    I told myself that it didn't really matter why Trowa Barton was seeking me out after all this time not saying shit to me. It wasn't like I had anything better to do that Saturday, I had that day off for once. I could tell myself that, that I was just bored and going to a movie wasn't something I could afford to do, but that was a lie. The truth was that I was lonely. Painfully, down to my very bones lonely.   
    I didn't want to acknowledge it at the time, but hearing Trowa's voice again, hearing him ask if I wanted to hang out, a thing that I hadn't done since Quatre's death, made something in my chest hurt, but it was a good hurt, a yearning. It was like using a muscle that I hadn't flexed in a long time, and I suppose that was exactly what it was.  
    I wanted to go, not because I had nothing to do but read, or even because I wanted to see a movie, but because I wanted to see _him_. If I'm being honest with myself, I wanted to do something with another human being, and I wanted to see that boy who had kissed me for a moment when I had been thirteen years old and hurting worse than I ever had in my life.  
    I knew that it was wrong. Trowa was a stranger to me. I hadn't known him that well to begin with, and after a year, after losing the boy that he had loved, even if he had been total shit at loving him, had changed him, like it had changed me. And Trowa was still Quatre's. I still hated him and held a small amount of affection for him, if any. I had no right to want to be around him when he was absolutely nothing to me, simply because I was tired of being depressed and alone.   
    I was a leech, using the person my best friend had loved to make myself feel better. Quatre had been dead for almost two years and I was still a disgusting excuse for a friend, and the longer that Quatre was dead, the deeper into filth I seemed to sink. But I couldn't help it. I had nothing. I barely had a heart anymore and from the moment I had heard Trowa's voice through that telephone, I remembered what it was like to feel something, to feel human.   
    I couldn't stay away from him no matter how guilty I felt about it. No matter how much I felt like I was cheating on and betraying my one, true friend. I just want that understood, that anything and everything that happened after that phone call was entirely my fault.   
    "Yeah, I'll pay," his deep voice informed me in a nonchalant way, but I could still hear that slight shyness in his tone and had to wonder if it was just because of his introverted personality or if he was a bit scared of me. If he was, I couldn't blame him, "Is five o'clock alright with you?"  
    I hadn't thought about it back then, why Trowa had chosen five o'clock to see the film, but it's obvious to me now. The theater wouldn't get busy until around seven, and very few of our classmates would go to see a movie on a Saturday night before nine. He could have just been uncomfortable in a crowd, or he might have had something to do later that night, but I know that wasn't the case.  
    Even that early on in our... hell, I don't know what the fuck to call the relationship we would eventually bungle our way into, I still can't really call us friends, but even that early on, Trowa hadn't wanted anyone that might know him to see him with me. He had been willing to stick his neck out for Quatre to a degree, to be seen hanging out with him, being friends with him, but he had never been willing to stick it out for me. Never for me.   
    That's obvious to me, who _would_ want to risk anything for someone like me? But just because it's obvious, just because I understand it, it doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt me every time I examine those memories.  
    "That's fine," I told him, "I'll meet you at the theater."  
    He didn't offer to drive me or even walk me there like Quatre would have. He didn't tell me the name of the movie or why, exactly, he had called _me_ instead of one of his teammates, but I found that I didn't really care that much. Not that that was anything new. I found that the more time passed with Quatre gone, the harder I was finding it to care about anything. I guess, beyond all my reasons and logic and excuses, that's why I kept hanging around Trowa, even when things went wrong between us. I was just too relieved  to know that I could still feel something.  
    Even when he hurt me, some part of me was still so happy that I wasn't so dead inside, I couldn't feel it. After Quatre, I had cockily believed that no one would be able to make me feel pain like that again. I never realized, through the whole fucked up mess, just how easily Trowa Barton could hurt me. Or that I would be the one to let him.   
  
*****  
  
    He wore a dark green shirt that suited his eyes as perfectly as his jeans suited his long legs, and a dark denim jacket. It's funny, I can remember exactly what Trowa had worn the day that he had invited me out to the movies on a whim. I can even remember how shy and awkward he had seemed as he had greeted me and that he hadn't just paid for my movie ticket, but some popcorn, soda, and peanut butter candy as well. But for the life of me, I still can't remember the name of the movie we had gone to see. It had been some sci fi, adventure epic, the kind of movie that had tons of explosions, special effects, very little intellectual plot, a busy, beautiful heroine, and a take-charge male lead.   
    It had been the sort of movie that I never would have chosen myself, but I had found it enjoyable enough. I have to admit, though, that I paid more attention to Trowa sitting next to me than I had the film. I had tried to puzzle him out, how I had found myself sitting next to the same boy I had punched a year ago. The longer we sat there in the half empty movie theater together, the more that I was convinced I had fallen into some kind of fever dream and was just hallucinating all of it.   
    That I enjoyed it, and that I blushed every time his hand brushed against mine to grab a handful of popcorn, also made me feel ashamed. It was a bittersweet moment for me. And when I figured out that that hand was brushing up against mine a bit too much to be an accident, I couldn't exactly ignore it, but I pretended to anyway because it didn't mean anything.   
    "Can..." he said to me at the end of the movie, standing outside the theater, rubbing his hands on his jeans in an incredibly shy and worried way that was endearing to me, "...can we do this again some time? Hang out, I mean. If you would want to..." his words were borderline babbling with anxiety.   
    We didn't talk about why he had called me. We didn't talk about Quatre. We didn't talk about me hitting him. In fact, we barely said anything at all to each other. I think that's a good thing, probably the only reason why we got through those hours without screaming at each other. It had been awkward to the point of agony and not entirely pleasant, but I found as I walked home that I felt... I wouldn't call it happy, I wouldn't even call it content. But my mood, though bemused, was lighter than it had been since the day that Quatre had almost gotten run over by that truck. That was more than I had had in a very long time. So when he asked me that, I shrugged nonchalantly and ignored how it made me feel entirely.  
    "Sure," I told him, but I was sure that it would never happen again.  
    Why would it? He hadn't seemed to really enjoy being around me. He hadn't talked at all to me and had seemed more like he was scared of me than he wanted to be around me. I just couldn't imagine why he wanted to hang out and had thought him asking me if we could do it again was just his way of being polite. So it rather shocked me when he called me next Saturday to go bowling, something that Quatre had loved to do, and again the Saturday after that to some local concert. I had only been familiar with the band because Quatre had listened to them on his mp3 player while studying with me. They weren't really the kind of music I liked, but they weren't bad.   
    Before I even realized what was happening, the two of us were hanging out together every single weekend, like clockwork. After that first time, Trowa started to warm up a little. Most of the time, he was still quiet. I would call him brooding, but that isn't quite right. He just wasn't social with me like it had been with Quatre, but the silences, little by little, became more companionable and less awkward, less like there was something he wanted to say to me but didn't dare and more like there was nothing that needed to be said between us.   
    Sometimes, he was like how he had been on the very first night I had officially met him after the only game I had ever watched him play. He would talk about what his life had been like back before his parents had settled down, how he missed the circus, how he didn't miss the traveling. He would talk about mundane things like the music he liked, a book he had recently finished, little things that meant little to him and less to me. Things that we couldn't fight over, couldn't get hurt about.  
    We never talked about Quatre. Trowa never brought him up and neither did I. It was like we had both wiped that day at the train station between us clean from both of our memories. He pretended to be fine. He wasn't. I'm not as stupid as people think I am, at least not when it comes to seeing when people are lying, even if they're not saying anything. Trowa acted the same as he always did around me, but that was only to hide the fact that he wasn't the same at all.   

I had lived with my father for too long to miss the darkness that was in him, the anger and bitterness simmering under the surface. It was the same anger and bitterness that was in me. It made some part of me to see it in someone else, to know just how much Quatre's death had hurt someone. Sometimes I would look at him and see myself peering back at me and I would hurt for him, and I would feel better at the same time just knowing that I wasn't alone. It was a fucked up feeling.   
    If I didn't blame Trowa so much for Quatre's suicide, I would have felt guilty about it. I wondered if his parents saw it, saw how that nice, shy boy that I had almost became friends with one night over dinner had rotted away. I wondered if they saw that he was quicker to frustration now, quicker to anger, how there always was a shadow in those handsome green eyes. I wondered if they saw that sometimes he just got so sad, so far away from everything living.   
    I knew in those moments that he was thinking of Quatre, thinking of what he had lost because of his own inaction. In those moments, I felt so close to him. I felt... affection for him. An affection that still frightens me because of how grotesque it is. But I never claimed to be a good person. The tragedy is that Trowa had been normal once, at least more normal than I could claim to be. He had been nice and shy and sweet in his way, mature and smart. But now? Now he isn't any better off than I am, just a miserable excuse for a person, grasping desperately on to _something_ , just to pretend that they aren't rotting, aren't stagnating.   
    I think I knew that entire time, somewhere deep down inside of myself, exactly why Trowa had sought me out, even if he had bumbled through it at first. Going to see some big, blockbuster film, going bowling, going to that concert... they were all things that Quatre and Trowa had done together. That night that we had all had dinner together, Trowa had confessed that the boys that he hung out with weren't really his friends and I think that's the truth. I think that when Quatre had killed himself, Trowa had lost the only person that he could really talk to, just like I had.  
    Quatre and I weren't that much alike, in truth. We had been best friends, but our personalities had always been vastly different and we had liked different things. So the idea that Trowa was attempting in a half assed kind of way to replace the boy that he had loved with me had always struck me as ridiculous, but it really wasn't. Maybe Quatre and I had had different tastes in music. Maybe we had had a different sense of humor and acted differently during the same situations, but that was all just surface stuff.   
    In reality, I was the only person in this entire, stupid town that Trowa could really talk to, not that he ever did. I was the only person who knew that he was gay and I was the only one that knew how he had felt about Quatre. I was the only person who knew the real reason why Trowa had changed, why he looked so sad sometimes. I felt an attraction to him because of that sadness, like he was a kindred spirit in a way, so maybe he felt the same way towards me.   
    I could accept that because I also understood that I was doing the same thing. Trowa reminded me of Quatre, the good and the bad. And it just felt so good to just have someone there to look at and know that he knew, he understood my sadness. And maybe that's fucked up, my replacing Quatre with the person that had gotten him killed, using his crush like that, but that's how I could keep being sort of friends with Trowa without going insane. It's sad if I think about it too much, that the only friend I can claim to have is just a ghost, a shade of what I once had. But I'm sure that Trowa can claim the very same thing.  
    I was aware of all of that by the time December 31st came around, but just because I was aware of how messed up our friendship was, and how hollow, when Trowa called me up to watch our town's New Year's fireworks display, I still agreed to go. New Year's is a big event for Nausten, in some ways bigger than the Fourth of July. The bars in South Nausten are always packed full every year and we set off this huge fireworks presentation from the beach.   
    Every New Year's Eve to New Year's Day, both of my parents disappear. My father isn't a social drinker, at least he isn't the type that would go out to a crowded bar to get drunk, so I know he probably just goes to one of his cop buddies' place. I have no idea where my mother goes, but it's a nice respite, knowing that I have 48 hours of an empty house with no screaming or swearing. Usually I just watch television and order pizza with the money my father leaves me. I hate crowds as much as he does, so until Trowa invited me to go, I hadn't seen the fireworks live since I had been five years old and my father had taken me.   
    That year, December 31st had fallen on a Sunday and I had been given work off both that day and Monday and we were still on our Winter vacation from school, so it had seemed like a better way to spend my free time than sitting at home. I felt a little thrill of excitement when I hung the phone up after Trowa's call. I had been feeling it more and more, each and ever time I saw the older boy. I don't really know how to describe it, or how to reason it.   
    It wasn't the excitement that I felt every time I had seen Quatre. Trowa and I would never click like Quatre and I had, but I felt... something when I was with him. And the more time I spent with him, the more that something grew. It wasn't love. I want anyone, if anyone, who reads this to understand that. I was not falling in love with Trowa. I didn't have a crush on him like Quatre did. There was no burning desire or passion for him in my heart. But I liked him, I liked him as much as I was capable of, and considering that I can't even claim that much for anyone else, that I live my life in fear that I'll never even feel that kind of attraction to anyone. it was a welcome feeling.   
    What I feel for Trowa will always be complicated and confusing to me. I'll never understand why I could be excited to see him, to just to be with him even if we didn't say much, when at the same time he made me feel like shit and like I wanted to hit him again, but I'll never understand how I can love my father so much it hurts, and hate him equally as much, either. Maybe it was just loneliness, maybe it was just my yearning to fall in love like Quatre had, even knowing what it had done to him. Maybe I really did have a crush on Trowa, a small one. I hope that's not the case, that that entire time, I had been attracted to the same boy that my best friend had. I just don't know why I felt that way around him.  
    I spent the time before I had agreed to meet Trowa making us some food for a picnic, nothing special, just some potato salad, sandwiches using the left over ham we had had for Christmas and just a few things here and there I found in the fridge that needed to be eaten soon; pudding, apple sauce, cranberry sauce, and yams that our neighbors had gifted us. I took the time to make the potato salad from scratch, and some sugar cookies as well.   
    My cooking would never win any awards but I like making things, it's soothing for some bizarre reason and helps pass the time. Sometimes my cooking dinner will put my father in a better mood than coming home to take out. Lately, my mother has been forgetting to make dinner more and more, which has been the subject of many of my parents' violent fights, and even when I cook, she skips meals a lot, leaving just my father and I to eat together.   
    I worry about it. I want to think she's eating at the diner she works at, but she never seems interested in food or anything else, really lately, beyond her drinking. As long as there's a bottle of whiskey at hand, she just keeps to herself. There have been times when I've seen her retreat into their bedroom with one of those bottles or disappear to the front porch and I've wanted to say something to her about it, to beg her to eat something or to slow down. But every time, I just remember the things she screamed at me when I was thirteen and I remember how much she hates me, how much whatever I have to say is unwanted.   
    I pushed those kinds of thoughts as far away from me as I could, storing the food in various Tupperware containers including an old tablecloth that I found stashed under the sink. I wanted to find a basket for cliche's sake, but we didn't have anything like that, so I just put all the containers in a plastic bag.   
    By the time I left the house, it was already dark out and people were walking about, on their ways to parties and bars or just walking home from work. It was unseasonably warm out for January so I took my time walking on foot towards the beach instead of taking the bus like I usually did. Since Nate had left me, I had started hanging out at the beach during the winter in between classes and work, and before school.   
    I just liked the... emptiness of it, that there were hardly any people around and all the noise that I could hear was the waves, wind, and birds. I liked sitting there in the sand or in one of the little benches and watch the waves come and go, just letting all the thoughts leak out of my head into nothing. It's the only place in this stupid town, besides the library, where I don't feel like I'm choking.   
    Trowa didn't ask me to meet him on the beach and I wasn't surprised. At school, even when we did cross paths, he never so much as glanced at me. He didn't need to lay down any ground rules for our friendship, I figured out all on my own that he didn't want people to know we were friends. It was bad enough that people still gossiped about him once in awhile.   
    A couple of people would suggest the possibility that he was gay, like they had the day that Quatre's journal had shown up on the school's message board, but mostly people seemed to think he was a victim to Quatre's affections, which I think, to Trowa at least, was much worse in some ways. But how long would it take people to think the worst of him again if he was seen with another faggot?   
    I won't lie and say that it didn't bother me. Sometimes I think about what would have happened between them if Quatre had lived. Would Trowa have eventually treated him like he treated me? Would he have acted like Quatre didn't exist at all, while spending his free time as his close friend or even boyfriend if they had ever worked up the courage to tell each other how they felt?   
    I'm glad that Quatre never lived to know that kind of pain, but I also don't think Trowa would have done that to him, not to Quatre. Not to the boy that he actually loved. I was a different story and while I understood it and I couldn't really hate Trowa for it, it hurt me deeper than I thought it would. I was his dirty little secret the entire time we hung out together and he was quite happy to keep me in that corner of his life.   
    In some ways, having that rumor that I was gay floating around was easier than what Trowa had to deal with. I already caught shit for my supposed sexuality. While I worry every, single day that someone, maybe even Zechs or Relena, will find out that that is exactly what I am, until it actually becomes fact, it's all the same. Trowa doesn't have to worry about being bullied over it, at least not until he does something to make people double think their assumption that he's straight.   
    But I pushed that hurt down deep, that I couldn't even wave hi to him in the hallways of our school, like I do with everything that hurts a bit too much. I pushed it down and I didn't get angry when he told me to meet him on the hill overlooking the beach, where no one would be that night and where no one would be able to see us. By the time I got there, Trowa was already there, sitting on the grass under a tree.   
    Despite the secrecy of the spot, it was a nice place to see the fireworks. No one was up there because there was plenty of room on the beach and it was warm enough for people to barbeque. Even up on the hill, I could smell the tantalizing aroma of cooking meat. Trowa was watching the various parties below on the beach, sipping from a can of soda. He looked up at me from where he sat as I approached and his green eyes, lit by the bonfire below, reminded me of some dark forest.   
    "Hi," he greeted, "Happy New Year's."  
    His ability to socialize with me without stammering or looking guilty or hesitant had greatly improved in the four months that we had been hanging out with each other.   
    "Happy New Year's," I echoed, "I don't know if you already ate, but I made some things to snack on if you're hungry."  
    "Sure," he said just a bit too quickly and there was the familiar gleam in his eyes that he got on the occasions that I shared something that I had cooked or baked with him.   
    Neither of Trowa's parents were very good at cooking. His family seemed to live on take out and frozen dinners. I suppose when you've lived most of your life in a place where you don't need to rely on your own shitty cooking skills, you don't learn how to do things like that. I think that the food I would make for him once in awhile was the most homemade food he had seen outside of holidays spent with his relatives.   
    Trowa always seemed happy when I gifted him with something, whether it was macaroni and cheese or a piece of cake, so I tried to do things like that for him as much as I could. Maybe I'm just that pathetic, but I liked the feeling of knowing that someone enjoyed my cooking or that someone liked anything I did for them at all. My dad seemed to appreciate the homemade food, but he seldom said anything to me about it.   
    Seeing Trowa light up like that, just come out of his shell and look like how he used to look like when he had been with Quatre made this weird emotion burst in my stomach. Whatever it was, it felt warm and bitter at the same time, but the warmth was stronger for once. As I laid out the tablecloth on the grass and handed Trowa the food to put down, I had a flash of deja vu.   
    Only it wasn't really deja vu, but a memory of when Quatre and I had gone on a picnic one Summer vacation when we had been twelve. In my mind, I saw his bright smile as I handed him the bowl of potato salad. In my mind, Trowa's eyes became blue-green instead of green as he looked up at me. If I squinted in the low light, I could see his cinnamon brown hair turn blonde. When his hand brushed against mine in taking the plate of cookies I had packed, I saw Quatre's pale hand, felt the ghost memory of his soft skin against mine.   
    I blinked and Quatre became Trowa again. My stomach twisted in agony, but I ignored it. In the three years since Quatre's death, I have become much better at handling these flashes of memory I get of those days when I had had a best friend, when I had been happy. A few months after his suicide, the mere remembrance of him, the things he had liked, the sound of his voice, the smell of the tea he had liked, used to send me into a black pit of despair and turn my stomach into a war zone that had me vomiting a few times.   
    By the time that Trowa and I had started to hang out, those memories still caused me pain, but it was like a knee-jerk reaction, like being shocked by lightning. It hurt and it unsettled my stomach, but I just rode through it until I could push that memory down into my guts. I did the same then on that hill. I forced the memory of that picnic down deep. I turned my head away from Trowa and saw Quatre sitting next to us on the grass, smiling up at me. Smiling, not out of any memory, but because he was happy that Trowa and I were sharing a meal together.  
    I'm not crazy, ok? I mean, I kind of am. But I'm not that kind of crazy. I'm not the kind of crazy that sees their dead best friend everywhere and thinks that they're really there, alive or as a ghost. I know that when I see Quatre, it's in my head. I picture him there because I want him to be there. Quatre is there because I need him, because whenever I was upset, he would always be there for me. Without him, I can't handle some things, so I put him there. I make myself see him.   
    I see him how he would have been had he lived, I see him doing things that he would do, like being happy that Trowa and I are getting along, even if I feel guilty about it. That's probably not much better than hallucinating him and thinking he's real, but it works. I get stressed and I see him, see him smiling or hugging me or touching my shoulder or hand and I feel better. I'm aware of how fucked up it is, but I don't care. And no different than my mother and her alcohol or my father and his rage, I can't seem to stop it. I guess addiction just runs in the family. I like to think that imagining my best friend is still there, comforting me, is more healthy than diving into a bottle or hitting things, but that's probably just wishful thinking.  
    Just like with my memory of him, I blinked and my vision of Quatre disappeared like smoke on the wind. He was there just long enough for me to feel better, like he was sharing the picnic with us, but not long enough that Trowa had any idea that I was seeing something that wasn't there.  
    "You didn't have to do all this," Trowa said to me as I sat down next to him.  
    "I thought it would be nice. It didn't take very much work and I didn't have anything else to do anyway, so it's not a big deal," I shrugged, hoping that it was dark enough out that he couldn't see the faint, happy blush I could feel warming my cheeks and that my nonchalant tone didn't sound as fake to him as I thought it did.   
    We fell into a companionable silence with each other as we ate, broken only occasionally as Trowa stopped eating to compliment my potato salad and cookies which of course only made my stupid blush worse. What the hell was wrong with me? I couldn't figure it out. Between the two of us, we finished off the food I had packed quickly and easily as the fireworks filled the sky. In truth, I hadn't brought that much beyond what I had made from scratch. My father would have been furious if I had used up all the ham, but if Trowa had wanted more, he hadn't complained.   
    "Have you picked your electives yet?" he asked me after finishing off the last cookie, those dark green eyes lit up by white, blue, and green fireworks shooting over the beach.   
    The new school semester was a safe topic between us. I was struck by a dark humor then, realizing that, just with Quatre, there were some things that we refused to talk about. But the knowledge that Quatre was one of those things just made me feel depressed again.  
    "I'm still trying to decide," I mumbled in embarrassment.   
    I was sure that Trowa had all his classes picked out weeks back. We needed to submit our class list that week, but I was still procrastinating. I wasn't really big on making choices about my future, even a short term future like next semester.   
    "I'd like to stick with Home Ec.," I confessed, "but I can already cook enough to get by, so that seems impractical. I'm not interested in any of the visual arts or music electives. I was thinking that maybe taking that intro to computer science class might be a good idea. It's something that I need to learn."  
    Trowa snorted.  
    "Duo, you've never taken a computer course before. I've seen you use a computer before, the most you can do is figure out how to search for things on the internet. You can't even type properly. Sure, that class can teach you a few things, but it's meant for Freshman, not Sophomores. To really learn anything that would be beneficial to you, you would need to keep taking computer science courses and you're already a year behind. Besides, you don't have a computer at home to practice on and you can't afford to buy one. A class like that would be useless to you. You might as well stick with something that you're good at," he pointed out.  
    His words were very matter of fact and logical. There wasn't any kind of spite to his tone or the kind of snide tone that my father got when he informed me, in great detail, of all the ways I was stupid and inferior to everyone else. What Trowa had said made complete sense to me. He was right, a computer course was worthless to me.   
    I had thought about taking it because my ability to operate a computer was pretty abysmal, but what would be the point? My parents were never going to get a computer and it wasn't like I was going to college, so knowing how to work one would be a useless skill. He was right, I knew that. But hearing him say those things, that I could barely use a computer as it was, and that I should stick to something that I was good at, implying where my father had never been so subtle that it was just something I couldn't do, that I would never be good at it, stung.   
    Trowa couldn't have known that my father said things like that to me all the time. He couldn't have known how he had struck a vulnerable place in me. He couldn't have known that he had hurt me saying something like that and I wasn't going to volunteer that kind of information. I didn't want him to know that I was so pointlessly sensitive.   
    "Yeah, you're right," I conceded and ached in silence, because he _was_ right, "Home ec. would probably be more interesting anyway."  
    "Coach Horner has been trying to get a hold of you again," Trowa said with a small, amused smile.  
    "Again?" I groaned in irritation.  
    Coach Horner was the high school's coach for... almost everything athletic, and like our middle school coach, he took his job just a bit too seriously. Ever since I had entered high school, he had been after me to join his track team. He, like everyone else in this stupid town, had heard about me saving Quatre from getting hit by that truck, how fast I had run.   
    Even though my time on the track during gym wasn't anything special, he was positive that I just wasn't trying hard enough and I had some kind of untapped potential that was his professional duty to unleash. Every single time he came to me, begging, to join the track team, I brushed him off to his disappointment, but he never stopped trying.   
    "I told him last time that I'm too busy after school to go to practices," I grumbled, "and I have no interest in running around in a loop for hours, but he never listens."  
    "He's stubborn," Trowa nodded, "and never takes no for an answer. You're going to bucking him for the rest of your high school years. Why don't you just try out for the team to appease him?"  
    "Because I have zero desire in track!" I said with a frustrated wave of my hands, "And you have no concept of how annoyingly stubborn that man is. At least you're on his basketball team, so he doesn't have to hound you every time he spots you!"  
    White fireworks shaped like stars lit up the sky and Trowa's face again. I saw the amused expression on that face fade into one that was somehow all at once flat and sad, a familiar shadow filling his evergreen eyes.   
    "I'm not on his basketball team," he said softly, his words almost swallowed up by the booming sounds from the fireworks.  
    "What?" I stared at him incredulously.  
    I was sure that I misheard him. The idea that he wasn't playing basketball anymore was akin to my not reading anymore, it just couldn't be possible.   
    "I quit," he confessed, taking another sip of his almost empty soda bottle, "right after 8th grade. I haven't touched a basketball since. Not for lack of Coach Horner's trying," he snorted but it was a harsh sound, devoid of any humor and completely overflowing with bitterness, anger, and depression.  
    I stared at him for a moment and felt an intense sadness for him so strong, I might have cried if I had just let myself. I didn't ask him why he had quit something he had had such a talent for, such a _future_ in and passion for. I didn't need to ask. I knew what his answer would be. He had quit because of Quatre.   
    He had stopped doing something that he had loved because he had lost someone he had loved. Maybe he had even stopped playing basketball because, in a way, it was the reason why Quatre had killed himself. Because in the end, Trowa had chosen his reputation and his sport over the boy that he had loved. Maybe he had stopped simply because it reminded him of Quatre, of all the times Quatre had watched him play. Or maybe he was just punishing himself for not being there when Quatre had needed him. No matter the exact reason, my heart ached for him. I had nothing like he had had, that talent, that drive, but I could imagine the kind of sorrow that had driven him to make that decision. I felt that sorrow every single day.  
    He glanced over at me and his expression softened. I knew that he was seeing understanding in my own expression, and the sadness that I couldn't manage to mask. That soft look in his eyes became warm as he realized that I knew exactly why he had quit basketball, that I understood why he had done it without him needing to say a thing.   
    Of course I understood, how could I not? I was the only person who knew how he had felt about Quatre. I was the only person in the entire world that could and would understand, just like Trowa was the only person in the world that understood my own sadness. I saw that understanding echoed back in those green eyes, in the warmth and relief and shock of that expression, like he was realizing it for the first time.   
    I felt his hand on mine, could feel his long fingers wrapping over my own as he gave them a gentle squeeze. It felt so good, just that touch. I couldn't remember the last time someone had touched my hand like that, or anywhere close to it. When he leaned in close to me, I didn't push him away. For that moment, I couldn't think of a single reason to. Then his lips were pressed against mine and I was glad that I hadn't found a reason.  
    Trowa's lips were as smooth and cool as they had been the first time that he had kissed me, but he wasn't quite as shy and awkward this time. He seemed... more confident, although still a bit unsure of himself. This time, I didn't just sit there, letting him kiss me because I was too shocked to do anything else.   
    I felt this warmth in my chest at his kiss, a kind of subtle electricity and found myself, to my shock, kissing him back. I had no clue what I was doing, but just moved my lips against his, hoping that I was doing the right thing. It seemed to be ok, because then Trowa was responding to it and I felt like he was swallowing my mouth whole, like he was smothering me, but I liked the smothering. I felt a jolt through my whole body when he curled his other hand around the back of my neck and continued kissing me, nipping my lips a little and even that was ok.   
    When we finally parted, I felt like my face was on fire and I couldn't breathe. I don't know how long we had sat there on my battered tablecloth kissing each other, but the fireworks had stopped and the only light was from the bonfire below. His eyes looked so dark and hazy in that light, so full of something I couldn't name, but it frightened me. Then he was kissing me again, harder and surer before and I was lost with what to do, because his insistence was scary to me, but I couldn't find the words to tell him to stop or slow down, either.   
    So I let him keep kissing me and tangle his hand in my hair. I even squeezed his hand back and grabbed at his arm with my other. I could feel the muscles moving under the skin, could feel how strong he was. I had that feeling again, like I was suffocating, like I was doing something that I shouldn't. But it was like an avalanche in me. I couldn't get it stopped any more than I could try to control it. All I could do was just let Trowa do what he wanted and hope it was right.   
    I couldn't decipher the look in his eyes as he looked at me. It was like he wanted to do something, or say something, but he just stood up and didn't try to kiss me again. A part of me wished that he would, but another big part was glad that he hadn't. I felt so incredibly wrong. It was one thing that he had kissed me when I had been thirteen. I had been so shocked back then and I had still punched him for it, even if I had kind of liked at the time.   
    But this... I felt like I had done something awful. I hadn't just let the boy that my best friend had loved kiss me, I had kissed him back. I couldn't even really reason out that feeling of _wrong_ from kissing him, if it was because I had kissed another boy or because it had been Trowa or because, even if I had liked the kissing, I still didn't feel anything for him besides a slight affection and friendship. My feelings were a swirling, contradicting mess inside of me and at that point, I wanted to shut them off completely. My lips ached.  
    I stood up and helped Trowa clear off the table cloth, folding it up and putting it back in the plastic bag while I tried to pretend that I wasn't still blushing like a girl.   
    "Want to do something tomorrow?" he asked me suddenly, and for once I was a lot more shy than he was, "I can take you out for something to eat or we can do something like this again."  
    I paused and stared at him with wide eyes like some kind of startled deer. It came on me suddenly, like he had punched me, that he wasn't asking if I wanted to hang out with him. I'm not quite sure how I knew, but I did, that he was asking me out on a date.  
    Like with so many things, we didn't talk about the kissing. Trowa didn't try to take it back or apologize for it. He didn't say that we were dating, that we were boyfriends, or ask me if I wanted to date him. I understood that, just like our friendship, it was something we were falling into. Only this was so much more dangerous than being tentative friends.   
    I don't think it hit me properly, what Trowa was asking of me, what he wanted. I never really thought 'this is my first boyfriend and I barely even have a crush on him.' If I had, I might have slept on it or told him no outright. What did I know about being a boyfriend? I didn't even really know how to kiss. I wasn't even sure if I wanted a boyfriend. Some part of me did, the part of me that was desperate for love, for normalcy.   
    But there was another part of me, the part that had led me to believe for a very long time, and if I'm honest, I still worry about it, that I'm asexual. It was that part that was screaming at me what a horrible idea it was dating Trowa. If only I had had the common fuck sense to listen to it.   
    "Sure," I said, my face beet red and my hands and stomach shaking, "I would like that."  
    It's a decision that I spend every day now regretting.  
  
End Part 1  
  
Author's Note: *flops* Yes, I have returned -_-  After spending a lot of time compiling notes for this story and editing my novel (still looking for beta readers), I am back writing ASOL. This part was kind of a challenge for me. I struggled with the decision to just have Duo summarize what happened with his attempted suicide and his friendship with Trowa, but it's pretty true to his character that he wouldn't go into detail about it. The time jump was also kind of difficult, but necessary.   
  
It dawned on me recently that I never put in warnings for this story. Is that something anyone wants or does everyone just not care this far into the story? (it would be located in chapter 1 tho)  
  
Thank you to everyone who has given me feedback ^_^  
      
      
      
  
      
      
      
      
      
      
  



	16. Chapter 4 Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Trowa and Duo continue to date, Trowa tries to become more intimate with Duo, something that Duo is not comfortable with. Duo's actions when Trowa becomes too forward with him brings out something ugly in Trowa.

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 4  
Part 2  
  
    Dating... romance... boyfriends... what the hell did someone like me know about those things? All I knew about being a couple came from watching movies and television shows, seeing my parents' failed marriage, and my classmates that had hooked up with each other, holding hands and making out in the school hallways until a teacher broke them up. I got that couples were supposed to hold hands and kiss, Trowa and I had already done that and those things were easy. I liked the holding hands bit, and I even liked it when Trowa kissed me, even if the fervor that he did it frightened me sometimes.   
    I can't even say why he scared me like that sometimes, he just did. Maybe because I didn't understand his passion. I didn't feel that way about him and sure, I knew he didn't feel that way about me, that when he was kissing me, it was Quatre's lips that he was imagining. I was just an avatar, a stand in for the boy he couldn't kiss, couldn't be with. It was there between us, this thing we would never talk about, this pain.   
    Sometimes Trowa would kiss me or say something to me and I would react, and he would just look at me in confusion or resentment and I knew that it wasn't something that Quatre would have done and it would draw Trowa out of his fantasies, this security blanket he had wrapped around himself to shelter him from the reality of who I really was.   
    That look, that disappointment, knowing that I couldn't even be what he pretended I was, was a poisoned dagger in my heart. And the more time that we spent with each other, the deeper that dagger buried into me. In some ways, knowing that Trowa was using me in that way, that I was just Quatre's ghost, made things easier. Because there were times when Trowa was kissing me like that, so full of desire and longing that it made me feel like he was trying to devour me, and I would wonder why.   
    Why me? It seemed like every time I caught my reflection in the mirror, I had to ask myself that. Trowa was tall, dark, and handsome, the kind of guy women write trashy romances and bad fanfiction about. I would have thought that his removal from the basketball team would have reduced the amount of girls vying for his attention, but the opposite had happened. Even people that hadn't known him in middle school had noticed his change from shy to brooding. Apparently, for teenaged girls at least, tall, dark, handsome, and brooding is the epitome of sexy. In the time that we had dated, I had lost count in the number of girls that had asked him out.  
    Trowa had turned all of them down. I don't know why. He had never come out to me, had only ever said that he had been in love with Quatre. For awhile, I was certain that he wasn't bisexual, if only because he seemed to have no issues kissing me and had never had an interest in all of those girls pining after him. In a way, his dating me, even outside of my revelation that he was only doing it because of my connection to Quatre, wasn't all that shocking. Being gay is a rather difficult thing to live with, for a multitude of different reasons.  
    Even skipping over all of my (and I'm sure thousands of other homosexuals go through it in their lifetimes) struggles just to identify myself _as_ gay, ignoring trying to hide it because of social stigma, and coming to the decision to act on it, what did a person do when they wanted to find someone of the same sex to be romantically involved with? Especially in a conservative town like ours? It's not like being straight. You can't just put a personal ad in the local newspaper or pick up someone at a bar. Nausten doesn't have a gay bar. Or a gay anything.  
    You can't even approach someone you know well. Even if you are positive that they both are like you and do like you, there's that fear that you're wrong. There isn't a tell with homosexuals or a secret handshake. There aren't even many dating sites on the internet that let gays join. I know, I tried to find some out of curiosity. So it wasn't like Trowa had a sea of choices in finding a boyfriend. He had lost something special and wonderful in Quatre, and not just because of his love for him. What were the odds, especially in a town like this, of him finding out that someone he _liked_ was also gay, and knowing with surety that he liked him back? Trowa and Quatre's odds had been astronomical if I thought about it too hard, and even knowing that, Trowa had walked away. It was like he had thrown away any chance of happiness in his life.   
    Enter me. I don't delude myself into thinking that I made Trowa happy. I know that I hadn't. I'm still not sure what had made Trowa kiss me that day. Some days, when I remember that kiss, I'm grateful for it. As upset and enraged and depressed as it had made me, it had answered a question that had been burning in me and torturing me for a long time. At the time, that question had been unimportant compared to the agony of Quatre's death, but I had survived. I had tried to kill myself and I had lived and I had decided to not bother trying for a third time. My feelings about my sexuality or lack of one had lain in wait to bite me in the ass later on.  
    The two kisses that I had gotten in my lifetime before Trowa and I had started dating had clarified things for me when pondering those same things for years had gotten me nowhere. I didn't like girls, but I did like boys. Or at least, I liked it when they kissed me. So at the same time I hated and resented Trowa for that kiss, I was grateful to him for that clarity.  
    But if I thought about it too hard, the memory of that kiss unnerved me. Not the kiss itself, but Trowa's reasoning for it. I had thought back then that he had done it because he had been desperate for some kind of intimacy, some comfort. Or perhaps he had done it out of fear of watching me nearly kill myself in the same exact manner that Quatre had.   
    If that latter reasoning were true, it would imply that he had cared for me back then, and if the former were true, it meant that all of his reasons for pushing Quatre away amount to nothing. And just the possibility of that is too horrifying for me to consider. Because there was no way in Hell that Trowa could have known that I'm gay. _I_ hadn't even really known at that point. A rumor is one thing, but... he had turned his back on my best friend to save his reputation, only to kiss me in a public place for some reason I can't be sure of. He had kissed someone who could have destroyed his life. Fuck, I might have done that anyway just because I had hated him.   
    But he had kissed me. After pushing away the person he truly loved in fear, he had kissed me. No matter how long I think about that, it makes no sense if he hadn't done it out of some kind of senseless, knee-jerk reaction. Unless he had truly believed that I was gay like him. But there was no way he could have. But the more I think about _that_ , the more fear worms into me and I start wondering if there might be something about me that just screams fag, something that Zechs had latched onto besides my rejecting his sister. Some days, I can truly hate Trowa for doing that to me, for making me wonder if this is going to follow me entire life. I think I can handle being gay. I'm not so sure I can handle not being able to hide it.   
    I guess I can understand Trowa kissing me if he had been desperate, and I guess I can understand him asking me out, because at this point he knew that I was like him and what other choice did he have? He could date me in secret and pretend to be straight, that was the easiest choice for him besides completely ignoring his sexuality. What I would never understand is if he had asked me out because of some kind of interest in _me_ personally.   
    Compared to a guy like Trowa Barton, what am I? Let's ignore the stigma against me at school for being the one that Relena and Zechs bully. Hell, let's even ignore the piss poor financial situation that my family lives in and where I live. What am I, outside of all that? I hadn't changed all that much since Trowa had first kissed me. I was skinny as a rail and pale. I had very little muscle tone to speak of and my cinnamon colored hair was a far cry from Quatre's white-gold hair color. I still hadn't cut it and my pony tail had gotten down past my shoulder blades. I didn't wash it as much as I should because my dad refused to let me shower more than three times a week and no more than ten minutes because our water bill was too high. Our heater was broken on and off again constantly anyway, so bathing in the winter was not something to look forward to.   
    My clothes were old and ratty and they got washed less than I did. I guess my eyes are pretty, Quatre certainly said they were and made me look handsome, but Trowa's eyes are a much more pleasing shade of green than my weird blue-violet eyes. I'm not smart. I'm not witty or even just slightly funny, what little humor I have is probably dark and I'm self-aware enough to know that I don't smile very much. What intimacy we had, I never initiated. I never had the money to take Trowa anywhere and while I can admit that I'm not ugly, despite what Quatre would insist, I'm not handsome, either.   
    So what was Trowa getting from dating me? _Me_ , not his fantasies, not the ghost that he imagined he was kissing, but me. Hell if I know. Some days I'm sure that it doesn't even matter who I am to him, like I don't even exist. I'm possessed by the ghost of my best friend and I can't even feel his warmth, all the things that I had loved about him. Everything good about me, about my life, comes from him while I'm just... empty.   
    But there are some days when Trowa kisses me and looks at me and I feel like he's seeing me and not just using me as some kind of conduit. Those days when I look at him and seeing him look back at me, I feel... I don't even know. Love? I'm not sure, still, after a year of us dating, that I loved him. But I cared for him in those moments, and I would feel as close to the happiness that I had felt when Quatre had been alive as I can. At least I can say, with honesty, that I care... _cared_ for Trowa more than anyone else in my life, besides Quatre.   
    I don't know how he felt for me. I want to think that he cared, at least a little bit, and at first, that was easier to delude myself into believing. Our dating wasn't much to write home about. We would meet when we could, before school, before my work shifts, after my shifts, and during my days off on the rare occasion that those happened. Our meeting places were always someplace where no one would see us and if Trowa took me out somewhere to eat, it wasn't in Nausten. I got used to it after awhile, being his dirty little secret, because he was also mine, although that decision had never been mine. He hadn't even asked.   
    It would have been a bigger pain in the ass if Trowa hadn't had a car, a perk to dating someone a year older than I was. That took the sting out of him smuggling me out of the town to eat in a neighboring one. If I looked outside the hurt and the secrecy, I liked those dates. I had never been outside of Nausten before in my life, and while none of the places that Trowa took me to were really exciting, besides the time he took me to a zoo in Hope, the only town near us that actually has an attraction like that, it was incredibly nice to be away from my home town for a little while.     Not that any of those towns were more liberal, it was just relaxing to have people look at me and not worry about what they were seeing. In those places, I wasn't a cop's kid, or a juvenile delinquent, or a fag, or white trash. I was just a teenager hanging out with a 'friend'. No one knew what that friend did when we left those public places and got me to some shaded, secluded area. No one saw when we held hands under the table or Trowa's hand would brush against mine a little too often, or how that hand would sometimes linger on my back when there was no one looking at us.   
    We didn't do much more than make out and touch like that. Even after we had been dating for six months. Even when Winter turned into Spring and Spring turned into Summer, the most we had done was kiss with our tongues and one time I let Trowa put his hands under my shirt to touch my bare chest. I can still remember that, how cool his hands had been and how warm they had made me feel. I remember holding my breath the entire time and I had had that feeling again, like I was going to suffocate.  
    It wasn't for a lack of Trowa's trying. I suppose it's kind of funny. He was the one who had the issues with his sexuality, although he was also the one who understood a hell lot more of his sexuality than I did mine. He was the one who was so desperate that no one find out that we were so much as friends. But Trowa was also the one who initiated those moments, he was the one that wanted to touch me more. I could see it in his eyes when he leaned in to kiss me, that desire, and I could feel it in his touches as they evolved from the feather-light ones of our earlier relationship to harder, more insistent ones.  
    Those things frightened me. _He_ frightened me, when he looked at me like that. I'm not a child. Hell, I had already turned sixteen by the time that we had started dating. For as long as I can remember, people, mostly Quatre, have been telling me how fucking mature I am. I told him once that for me, being an adult is easy. I've had to more or less take care of myself since I was a kid thanks to my parents' negligence. It's being a child that's hard for me, dealing with people treating me like I can't be responsible or trying to act my age. But for all of that, when it comes to things like this, things like romance and dating and having a boyfriend, being an adult... _sex_... I am nothing but a child.  
    Sex. I know less about sex than I ever have about dating. I've never had any interest in it and I still don't. I've never felt... felt that desire and curiosity that everyone else my age seems to have in spades. When it had finally filtered into my head that liking Trowa kissing me meant that I'm gay, I had felt relief. I had thought that some part of me was normal, at least in terms of wanting companionship. I obviously wasn't asexual, so it was just a matter of time for my body to catch up with my classmates'.   
    Only that had never happened. That desire that I saw in Trowa's eyes was never in my own. When he touched me roughly, or kissed me with that incredibly passion, a passion that I couldn't even fathom anyone directing towards me, or that time he had touched my chest, some part of me liked it. But mostly? I felt fear. Fear because I didn't even know if I wanted sex. Fear because... not only did I not know what gay sex entailed, I wasn't sure if I would ever want it, if it would hurt, if I would always be so... so empty of wants and desires and passion. I hated myself for it. I was a teenager, not a child. But sex is for adults, something that I never thought I would have to think about until I was an adult. Yet every time Trowa looked at me like that, I was reminded that I am an adult and it is time for me to grow up.   
    But that fear is there, _always_. I know it frustrates him. Trowa's older than I am and I knew what he wanted from me. I knew that he didn't just want kissing and going out to dinner. But I just kept biding my time with him, hoping he would never press the issue. I never wanted him to figure out that he was dating a child, one that just... couldn't give up and become an adult already.   
    The very first time that fear really came to a head was in early July. My early morning shift at the pizza place had been cancelled and I didn't have another shift until late that night at the factory. The last thing I wanted was to stay at home all day, so for the very first time, I initiated one of our dates and asked Trowa to meet me in the park.   
    The park itself was far from secluded, but it was bordered by a really thick woods and the only people that really went in there were the occasional bird watchers and joggers following the path. Walking around with my... fuck, even writing it is still weird. But walking around with my _boyfriend_ was a whole lot preferable to staying at home with my parents.   
    Things at home haven't gotten any better since the last time I wrote in a journal. They had just gotten worse. The local police department had gone through some large budget cuts that year and a few of my father's coworkers had been laid off. My dad hadn't lost his job, but his partner had, something that I had been pretty happy with at first, until I realized that my father's partner losing his job didn't mean I was going to see him any less. If anything, he seemed to hang out at our house even more and bully my father into going out drinking more than he already was.  
    As far as I'm concerned, losing his job couldn't have happened to a nicer person than Pat Donovan. Yes, I'm being sarcastic. Pat is older than my father, a friend to whatever member of the family had gotten Dad that job, something that Pat liked to hold over my father’s head whenever he wanted him to do something he didn’t want to do. Pat is just a worse version of my father; judgmental, quick to anger, hates and complains about pretty much everything, drinks beer and whiskey like his life depends on it, and is a complete and total piece of shit to his wife.  
    Or I assume he is, since whenever he hangs out at our place, whenever he talks about her, he just calls her ‘that miserable cunt’ or ‘cooze’. I wouldn’t put it past him to be beating her like Dad does to Mom. I had never met Mrs. Donovan personally, but Pat would often come around with cookies or cake or some other treat that she had made for me, so my opinion of her is already a tiny bit higher than the one I have of my mother. Maybe one day Pat and my dad will let me have some of the food she makes instead of eating it all themselves so I can see if she’s a decent cook.  
    Thankfully, Pat and Mrs. Donovan never had children. Given the choice things he has to say about kids and teenagers, and the snide, hostile looks he gives me whenever he visits, I’d say the no kids thing is his idea. Losing his job only made him worse around me, constantly throwing around remarks that my long hair makes me look like a ‘hippy faggot’ and that I’m lucky he isn’t my dad or he’d have kicked my ass raw until he had beaten my ‘no good, worthless, pussy attitude’ out of me before I had even seen double digits.  
    Once, while I had been making dinner for them, Pat had sneered and asked my dad what the point of keeping me around was since I only did things that a bitch could do without the benefit of fucking. My dad had just laughed and said that I was better at cooking and cleaning than my mother could ever hope to be. That my father found the disgusting things Pat said funny, especially _that_ , equating his son to nothing more than a more useless woman, hurt.   
    But Quatre had been alive back then and I had managed to sneak off to talk to him while my father and Pat had been eating. I never told Quatre about Pat, but just seeing him had made me feel better. Now that he’s dead, Pat’s bitter hostility has lost some of it’s bite. When his words and my father’s mirth start to hurt, I remember that last smile on Quatre’s face and how it had turned into a red smear when the train had hit him. No matter what is happening in my life, that memory always makes the hurt dim, because nothing can possibly hurt me more than that one moment had.  
    You would think that my father would have been grateful that he had gotten a pay cut instead of getting laid off, but seeing his friend and partner of fifteen years lose his job had thrown him into a frenzy. It had seemed like every single day for months, he would come home drunker than I had ever seen him before, ranting about the betrayal and unfairness of what had happened to Donovan, and practically itching for a fight. I was smart enough not to give him one and had stayed out of his way as much as I could, only getting myself hit on a couple of occasions and nothing more serious than some heavy bruising and a cracked, but not broken, arm.  
    However, there is one person in the world who hates Pat Donovan more than I do, and that's my mother. She was far from safe from his contempt and disgusting humor. Every filthy, inappropriate joke he told and every misogynistic rant he gave in her vicinity seemed like it was an attack on her, and it probably was. I have never seen anyone, with the exception of my father, who can get under her skin like Pat does.   
    So when she heard that he had been laid off, although she almost always stayed out of Dad's and my business, I wasn't surprised when she snidely told him, already well into a bottle of whiskey, that it 'serves the prick right.' I might have thought that, too, but at least I had the sense to never say it out loud.  
    That night, I had thought that he was going to beat her to death with the amount of rage those four little words evoked in him, that I would have to call the police on _him_ just to get him to stop. I hadn't been that frightened in a long time. I tell myself that he never would have done it. At the end, he had stopped himself, and I cling to the sureties that I've had since I was a child that my father didn't have it in him to go that far. But you know what, these days... especially after that night, I feel a bit more fear of him.  
    My mother spent an entire week in the hospital from that beating and when she came back, she never mentioned Pat again and neither did I. I was more careful around my father than I had ever been before, like he was a hive filled with the nastiest hornets imaginable. I spent a lot of time pulling double shifts, hiding in the library, and hanging out with Trowa. I never talked to him about my problems at home, partially because I was ashamed and partially because I was afraid of hat Trowa's reaction to it would be.  
    Beyond my father's ever escalating rage, and both his and my mother's ever growing alcoholism, his pay cut hurt us pretty badly. We were already budgeting and scrounging for every dollar, having that careful budget reduced even further only increased all of our stress levels, especially since the more stressed my father got over our finances, the more prone he was to take it out on one of us.    If it weren't for my and Mom's jobs, I don't even want to think about what would have happened to us. Dad gave me a small allowance, barely anything at all, just enough to buy lunch once in awhile, but I never spent it on anything. I was too scared to, because that tiny amount of money, squirreled away in the hole in the floor that I hide these journals is sometimes all I have when we run out of grocery money.  
    And sometimes the free food I get from the pizza place and diner after my shifts are over are the only meals we see if one of the other bills goes up too much, like our oil in the winter. Last month, our electric bill came up short and Mom had to sell the dryer because there was no way in hell that Dad was going to get rid of the TV. It's not that big of a deal, I guess. We have a clothes line and I'd rather have damp, cold clothes than no power. But there are days when it's cold out and I miss having shirts right from the dryer. In days like those, I just want to take a baseball bat to the damned television set.  
    My home life was a powder keg, ready to go off without any kind of warning, so even if I hadn't enjoyed my time with Trowa, it would have been easy to accept any invitations he had to go out. I think he had been a bit surprised to have _me_ call _him_ that day, but he had sounded eager over the phone, even for something as boring as a walk. It was wonderfully warm out, not bitingly hot or humid, but warm enough for me to put on the only cargo shorts that I own. I fussed with deciding what shirt I should wear, an old, powder green one or the deep blue one with silver wave designs on it that I had picked up that week at a bargain bin sale.   
    I paused, realizing that I was worrying over attire like a girl going on a date, which was half true, I guess. I didn't often care about what I wore when I went on those dates with Trowa for a number of reasons, the biggest being that clothes weren't really anything that I had ever worried over before. I wore what was clean and what was appropriate for the weather. I had so little clothes that it hardly mattered and even if I had wanted to dress nice for him, my apparel usually consisted of jeans and t-shirts.   
    If I did have anything nicer, I probably wouldn't wear it, partially not to rouse anyone's suspicions to suddenly be wearing nicer clothes and partially because I would be too nervous to. This will probably sound incredibly stupid, but if I thought about my clothing around Trowa at all, I dressed a bit down when I went to see him. I didn't want to send some kind of signal to him that that particular date was special or want... want him to have any kind of interest in _other things_ , so I dressed like I was just going to school.  
    I can't say what was different that day, why I suddenly wanted to look nice. I couldn't say why I suddenly felt... upbeat for once. Maybe it was the nice weather, maybe it was finding myself with time outside of work, maybe it was the thought of being able to get away from my parents for a little while. Or maybe it was because I was going to go see him. I don't know, but for the first time, I consciously decided to dress nice, or as nicely as someone like me can dress. I chose the blue and silver shirt because it was new and looked nicer than the faded green one. And because, I hate to admit, Quatre would have said that it brought out the violet in my eyes.  
    Sneaking out of the house was easy. It was something that I was quickly becoming a professional at, sneaking past my drunk father before he could notice me. I will always remember what he had done to me back when Quatre had wanted me to watch one of Trowa's games with him, how he had almost broken my arm for no reason at all. It was just simpler to never let him see me try to leave or walk past him or generally just never let him realize that I existed.  
    Sure enough, as I walked through the kitchen, I glanced into the living room doorway and saw my father sitting in his chair, watching a recap of a baseball game that had been on the previous night, nursing what looked like his third beer, and it was only noon. It made me wonder if this was all he did while I was at work and he wasn't, just sit in front of the TV and get drunk. I felt sad for him, then.   
    My life wasn't exactly great and exciting, but it was a nice day out and he didn't even give a shit, just continued on in his own, alcohol filled world. Maybe I was depressed, maybe my own world was filled with nothing but gray and bitter memories, but I never wanted to live like that. Like _him_ , only existing for the next swallow of beer, the next time he could release all of his bottled up anger.  
    I knew, just looking at him, like a rabbit looking at a dozing dog, that if he spotted me, a fight would occur and it would only happen because he was bored. Memories of that night he had pettily tried to break my wrist filled me and I became too scared to try the front door. I had a new method of sneaking out of the house in these desperate, frightful moments and I very carefully, very quietly, opened the door of my parents' bedroom, just enough to squeeze through, and just as quickly and silently, shut it behind me. My mother wasn't home, which made this my perfect escape, otherwise I went out the small windows in the basement that I could only fit through because I'm so skinny, and even then I sometimes take off a bit of skin.   
    I managed to open one of the windows, slip through it, and close it again without anyone, even one of our noisy neighbors, seeing me. My father had yet to realize what I was doing. I didn't want to think about what he would do to me if he caught me just going into their bedroom, let alone using it to get out of the house undetected. I wished, not for the first time, that I had a bedroom with windows.  
    The day was almost disgustingly nice out, one of those days where it seems like the sun will never set. It made me wish that I lived somewhere further South, some place that wasn't so cold and dreary all the time, but I suppose a part of the reason why a day like that puts me in such a good mood is it's rarity.   
    I walked sedately to the park, which wasn't as teeming with people as I had worried it would be. On a day like that, most people were probably at the beach. I was thankful about that. As much as I like the warm weather of Summer, the fact that school was out and we were more likely to run into classmates made these dates of ours difficult. It was stressful and frustrating, but I probably owed it for one of the things keeping Trowa from insisting we... 'advance' our strange relationship.  
    I walked along the jogger's path into the woods a good ways before I spotted Trowa, emboldened by not seeing anyone else in the woods with us. I wasn't surprised to see that he had beaten me there. His house was a lot closer to the park than mine and he hadn't needed to sneak out of his like a thief, like he was doing something wrong just wanting to leave the house on a nice day.  
    "Hi," I waved unnecessarily at him.  
    "Hey," he responded back, his customary greeting that always made me feel like he was talking to a casual friend instead of his boyfriend.  
    Trowa looked just as painfully handsome as he always did. He was wearing a grey, Henley shirt with the top two buttons undone, modestly teasing his lightly tanned chest, and a pair of dark blue, slim jeans that hugged his long legs. His light brown hair was slightly mussed like it always seemed to be. I could never get my own straight hair to do that without it looking unkempt and lazy. On Trowa, it looked fashionable.   
    Although I had a lot of... issues with my sex drive, I can admit that I found him attractive and I enjoyed looking at him, especially on a day like that when it was warm enough for him to wear a short sleeved shirt. I liked the shade of his skin and length of his arms and legs, though who knows why.   
    Trowa didn't have much muscle mass, not even as much as Zechs did, but there was a power to those limbs that if I thought about it, thought about how they were longer and stronger than my own, made my heart race just a little bit faster. And when he held my hand and I realized he could engulf all of my with his one hand, it made me bizarrely happy.  
    That lightly tanned face blushed in approval as he looked me over, my own face heating with embarrassment.  
    "You look nice," he said softly.  
    "Thanks," I said, tugging awkwardly at the hem of my new shirt in my shyness and glancing at the plastic bag he was carrying, but not saying anything about it.       
    We walked further into the woods together, not really talking about anything, just the kind of white noise that people made when they were enjoying each other's company. We talked about how hot it had been that week, school, television shows, and our jobs. Like my father had done for me, Trowa's father had gotten him his job at collision center business. Because he wasn't eighteen yet, there wasn't much he could do at a place like that beyond paint jobs, oil changes, and cleaning the place up, but the work was steady and more importantly, it paid more than minimum wage.   
    His dad was friends with the guy that ran the place and thought that the work would give his son some skills and money towards college or whatever else he expected Trowa to do when he graduated high school. He didn't know that Trowa was using that money to take me out on dates, though I guess the loss of that money wasn't the main thing his father would have been pissed about.   
    Trowa's father, at least to my knowledge, wasn't like mine. But he didn't need to knock Trowa around to get him to do what he wanted him to do. He was stern, with a heavy hand. I can still remember how Trowa had sounded when he had told Quatre and I that he wanted to study biology or get into photography so he could travel the world and study animals, but his father refused to accept it because it was impractical. All of that sad disappointment. I don't know if Trowa ever told him that he had quit basketball, but I imagine he must have. Something like that is hard to hide. I wonder just how terribly his father had taken that.  
    Like me, Trowa hated his job, but he was just as much under his father's thumb as I was mine, out of a mix of respect, fear of disappointment, and fear, so he worked hard at it. We traded stories about our coworkers as we walked and I had to admit that his story of one of the new mechanics accidentally getting pink paint all over their boss's equally new car trumped my story of a customer walking into the pizza place I worked at with, demanding to buy one of our gallon cans of tomato sauce because his dog got sprayed by a skunk.   
    "I saw _Transformers_ with my mother yesterday," Trowa told me when he finished with his work story.   
    "Oh?" I asked with probably more interest than I actually felt, "How was it?"  
    While I do enjoy movies, _Transformers_ is definitely not the sort that I'm interested in, regardless of the fact that pretty much every one of our classmates had seen it or were excited to see it that weekend.   
    "It was... ok," he shrugged, "Not great, but not awful. There was nothing about it that you would like, though."  
    It made me stupidly happy that he knew that I wouldn't like it for some reason.  
    "There really isn't anything out right now that you would like, but _Stardust_ comes out next month," he told me.  
    "What, you mean they made a movie adaptation?" I asked him incredulously, well aware of how wide my eyes were.  
    Trowa snorted in amusement.  
    "How can you not know that?" he chuckled, sending a little shiver down my spine, "You never pay attention to anything that's happening, even to the news, do you?"  
    "The news is depressing," I said in an expression that probably looked close to a pout, "and I don't watch commercials. I just mute them or go do something else until they're over."  
    I didn't tell him that I had stopped watching the local news the day that I had seen the report of Quatre's suicide, or that one of the reasons why I didn't watch it anymore was that my father always did after work and it was usually something that sent him into a worse mood.   
    "Well, yes, they made a movie adaptation," he told me with a smile like he thought my ignorance was endearing somehow instead of annoying, "Would you want to go see it?"  
    "Sure," I agreed a bit too quickly and realized that I was smiling a little bit before I could stop it, unable to not feel a small bit of excitement to go see an adaptation of a book I had read a bunch of times as a kid.  
    Suddenly Trowa had an arm in front of me, keeping me from walking forward and I worried that he had spotted someone. We hadn't really had any close calls so far in our relationship and I was at a loss of what to do if we ever had one.  
    "What's wr-" I started to say and he shushed me, his eyes fixed to some point ahead intently.  
    I followed where he was looking and saw two raccoons clinging to one of the trees, staring at us with beady, black eyes just as intensely as Trowa was staring at them. They didn't look nearly as big as the raccoons that visited our trashcans late at night and I wondered if they were cubs or the 'coons where I lived were just oversized.   
    I looked back at my boyfriend. He looked... enthralled by them, like he was seeing some rare and wonderful. That childlike expression of wonder turned his handsome face into something outright beautiful. I felt, for the first time in years, that I was seeing the real him. All those hard, bitter edges that had taken root in him after Quatre had died just melted away and I finally saw the boy that my best friend had fallen in love with. I wanted to take a picture of it, preserve that expression somehow.   
    "You've never seen raccoons before?" it was my turn to be incredulous, but I made sure to keep my voice down so I wouldn't spook the animals off.   
    Trowa shook his head.  
    "Never this close," he admitted.  
    I couldn't help a soft snort.  
    "You should come to my side of town when it gets dark, then. They're always rifling through our garbage and picking fights with the feral cats," I said, unimpressed with the animals.  
    I like animals, and I guess raccoons are cute, but I wasn't as interested with them as Trowa obviously was. I suddenly realized that at some point in his excitement after grabbing me, he had started to hold my hand, something that I was much more interested in. I didn't say anything about it or even clench my hand, more scared of spooking Trowa than the raccoons.   
    The 'coons finally decided that we weren't going to do anything and scampered up the tree, breaking the peaceful spell that had settled over Trowa. He continued to walk down the path, but didn't let go of my hand. I worried about someone seeing us like that for only a moment. My fear of being caught was absolutely nothing compared to his, so if he wanted to hold my hand, I wasn't going to complain. Things like that, holding hands, the light kisses that he would give me sometimes were things that I loved about our relationship. I just wish that it had been enough for him.  
    "I brought lunch if you're hungry," Trowa spoke up again after we had been walking for awhile, far enough that it was unlikely we were going to run into anyone else at that point, and gestured to the plastic bag he had been carrying.  
    "Sure, did you make it yourself?" I teased.  
    Let's just say that Trowa was never as capable as me when it came to cooking, so if he ever brought food, he had usually bought it somewhere.  
    "No," he grumbled, "my mother made it."  
    I almost laughed at him, but then I imagined what he had told his mother to get her to make two lunches. I thought about him telling her that he was going on a date with a girlfriend or just hanging out with a friend and any humor I had felt about his inability to make anything dried up. We abandoned the jogging trail then, pushing through the various bushes and other obstructions until we found the clearing.   
    I had found it when I had been younger, before I had even met Quatre. My father had been in one of his rages and I had somehow managed to escape the house before he turned his full attentions from Mom to me, but not before he had hit me in the back with the metal end of his belt three times, hard enough that it had ripped right through my shirt and slashed my back with the last hit. Later, when I returned to the house, I would struggle to take my shirt off and find bruises that were a disgusting mix of blood red, purple, and black.   
    I had walked to the park that day because my usual hideaway, the library, had been closed by then. I had walked through the woods, on and on, until I had stumbled upon this weird little clearing right in the middle of the untamed mess of briars, weeds, and gnarled trees. It had looked like something out of a fairy tale, just this clearing of soft green grass, the trees spaced just enough apart that you could see the sky, far enough away from the path that I'm not even sure if anyone else knows about it. While I'll always think of the library as my sanctuary, I like going to that clearing when it's warm out to just be by myself. It had quickly become the perfect place for Trowa and I see each other without being seen.   
    Trowa hadn't thought to bring a table cloth or blanket for us, but I didn't really care about getting grass stains on my clothes and the blanket of grass was thick and soft to sit on. Lunch turned out to be club sandwiches, mixed fruit, some kind of fruit punch in thermos' that had stayed cold despite our long walk, a bag of potato chips that we shared between us, and two slices of white cake with chocolate frosting that had obviously been purchased at a bakery, given that Trowa's parents were only slightly less useless at cooking than he was, and I really do mean slightly. But the meal was delicious all the same, and it was free, so I wasn't going to complain.  
    When I was done eating, I laid down on the grass, the spot we were in giving me a perfect view of the gap in the trees where I could see the sky. It was a deep, cornflower blue, the clouds floating above us, passing us by, were of the innocently white and fluffy variety. For only a second, I remembered the last time Quatre and I had been in that exact, same spot, so many Summers ago. I had brought some Cole slaw and fried potatoes that I had made from scratch because Quatre, despite his not liking fried foods, had told me once that he loved them and would never get tired of them. He had brought his tea and a checkered table cloth for our impromptu picnic.  
    We had sat there in the clearing together, eaten our food, and played that stupid 'that cloud looks like' game. I felt a dull ache in my chest as deep as the sky that had housed those clouds. Years after his death, every memory of Quatre that would flash through my head like that hurt. But the pain wasn't the sharp agony that it had been before and the same memory that would have driven me to tears and hysterical sobs left my eyes dry. Some would call it 'improvement'. I call it 'different,' because what people don't get is that change doesn't have anything to do with better or worse and just because I wasn't crying all the time anymore, it didn't mean that time had lessened the hurt. That ache in my heart might have been dull instead of sharp, but it still hurt like hell. I might not have cried, but I still felt like screaming.  
    I pretended like the flashback had never happened, stretching my arms up and laying the back of my head on my hands. The move made my shirt ride up, exposing a thin stripe of my stomach. I saw Trowa notice it, saw his expression go warm and fixated. I ignored it, closing my eyes like I could shut him out, shut out all of his desires and passion, just make that part of him that wanted to touch me in ways that I didn't want anyone, not even him, to touch me disappear forever.   
    When I felt his hand curving around my thigh, those long fingers gripping my flesh and coming dangerously close to a place no one but myself had ever touched, it was like someone had jabbed a stun baton into my crotch. My eyes shot open and I saw him looming over me and the look on his face made my breath catch in my throat.   
    His eyes were just... alive with _want_ and lust, this incredibly intense look that gave his entire being this immense energy that I can't describe. Looking up at him like that and knowing how much he wanted me should have made me feel amazing, that some part of me enticed this person who drawn so many girls to ask him out, but it didn't. That look... seeing all those emotions in him and how they drew him out of his quite and somber shell only served to make me feel dead inside. The things I felt seemed so pale and unimportant compared to his desire for me, this base emotion of his.   
    I should have told him to get off of me, that I didn't want it, but no words came to me. I felt paralyzed as he caressed the inside of my thigh. Even though I was wearing jeans, I could feel his fingers there as though I was naked. I felt this iron ball of fear in my gut, but I couldn't make myself do a thing that I wanted for some reason until that hand cupped my crotch and squeezed lightly and I watched, like some kind of trapped rabbit or deer, as his other hand started to unbutton my jeans and that fear tore out of me in a tidal wave of panic.  
    "Stop, Trowa," I ordered him and hated how weak and shaky my own voice sounded.  
    He ignored me, or he was too wrapped up in what he was doing to hear my tiny plea as he pulled the zipper of my jeans down.  
    "Please, you have to _stop_ ," I could hear how much I was panicking and my heart thudded painfully in my chest.   
    "Shhhh," he soothed, slipping his hand down the front of my jeans, "Just let me make you feel good."  
    In that moment, I felt trapped and lost. I should have hated him for making me feel that way, but I didn't. I hated myself. Here I was, in a place that most people my age dream about, being felt up by a man that I cared for, even if I couldn't claim to love him, who was incredibly handsome and popular despite his attempts not to be. I should have been happy. I should have been moaning with delight, telling him to go slow, or trying to kiss him. That's what a normal, gay person would be doing, right?   
    Instead, I felt terror and revulsion and helplessness. I felt vulnerable and I loathed myself for feeling that way. I was struck, like I often am, at how abnormal I am. I felt that fear again, that I would never be normal, that I would never feel the lust that Trowa was feeling, or even just the desire for more than just kissing. What the hell was wrong with me?   
    I wondered, then, what would happen if I couldn't get him to stop. Would he just keep going, or would he realize that I was being serious? He was bigger and stronger than I was. What could I do if I wanted him to stop and he refused to listen? I could not imagine, not even for a second, that he would willfully do something like that, just keep... touching me when I had told him no, he just wasn't that kind of person. But what did I know about _any_ kind of people? It only filled me with more and more panic, that if I just left this up to him, he might even have sex with me, regardless of how I felt about it.   
    Slowly, all of my fear and panic turned to anger and I can't even say why, if his ignoring me like that had really made me mad, or if it was just easier getting angry at him instead of dwelling on how weak and small and worthless his actions made me feel. I grabbed his wrist in a tight grip and forced his hand out of my pants, making his eyes go wide, seeing _me_ for the first time since he had touched my thigh.   
    "I said **stop it**!" I snarled at him.  
    It came to me then, how to make him stop and rethink what he had been about to do. I twisted his wrist, _hard_ , just like my father had twisted my wrist all those years ago, only not quite as viciously as he had. My father had taught me well, I thought bitterly. He hadn't taught me to read, but he had, unknowingly, taught me a hundred ways to hurt someone. And I had just done it to my boyfriend. Later, when I stopped to think about that afternoon, I would feel revulsion at myself, but right then I was glad for it, because he hissed in pain and backed right the fuck off of me.   
    I sat up the second that he wasn't on me anymore, desperate for some kind of control and breathing room. Trowa flexed his wrist, but I knew from experience that I hadn't twisted hard enough to do any lasting damage. His skin was a dark red from me grabbing him so hard, but I knew that it would fade.      
    'I'm sorry,' I thought to say and seeing him like that, looking at his wrist with this betrayed expression, I _was_ sorry, 'but I told you to stop and you didn't listen to me. I'm uncomfortable with you touching me like that. It scares me.'  
    I couldn't quite force myself to say those things, to admit to him how vulnerable I felt, to be that honest. Still, even if I couldn't admit to all that other stuff, I wanted to apologize for panicking and hurting his wrist. I opened my mouth to do just that, but swiftly closed it when I saw Trowa's expression suddenly change. His face just... _twisted_ into this look of anger and hostility.  
    He went from looking betrayed and disbelieving to pissed off, frustrated and bitter. He glanced at me, directing that hateful look right at me and looked away from him so quickly that I doubted he had seen me looking him. Just like that, I felt this intense resentment for him fill me. He was mad at me? Why? Because I hadn't let him do what he wanted? Because I had spurned his advances? Because I had fought back when he had ignored my pleas? Wasn't I the one who was supposed to be angry at him? Wasn't he the one who should be apologizing me?  
    I waited, hoping that he would. In my head, he would apologize for pushing me, I would apologize for twisting his wrist and being too nervous to let him touch me like that, we would talk it out, figure out what the problem was with both of us, and then everything would be ok. But that wasn't what happened. Instead of apologizing, Trowa stood up and started to clean up the leftovers, the entire time wearing that pissy expression on his face. I could have apologized then, and maybe it would have taken some of the sting of rejection from him, but I didn't feel like saying sorry anymore.  
    With a hand that wasn't nearly as steady as I had wanted it to be, I zipped and buttoned my jeans and rose, helping Trowa clean up. I would glance at him once in awhile, trying to understand his anger. I felt mad at him for it, but I also felt afraid. Not of him, not now that he was no longer on top of me, unzipping my jeans and trying to touch me. I wasn't scared of his anger in the way that most people probably think.  
    My father was a professional at beating the shit out of me and in a sick way, it was my normal. Brian was bigger than me, but not as big as my dad, and I was willing to bet that he was a novice at hitting people. No, his anger frightened me because I didn't know what it meant for us. I knew what Trowa wanted from me and that he had been patiently waiting for our relationship to get to that point, only to find us stuck. And now I had soundly rejected him, if only for a moment. Was he so angry at me over it that he might want to break up?   
    Our relationship wasn't the best. In fact, if I had taken a moment to really look at it, I would have to admit that we were kind of fucked up. But I liked being with him, and it beat the hell out of being alone again. I needed him. I can admit that to myself now. I didn't want him to break up with me, but I had no idea what to do or say to keep that from happening. Should I just... let him touch me, let him do those things I was so scared of to keep him from walking away from me?  
    But he didn't break up with me then or even address what I had done and how it had angered him. The both of us just... swept the whole damn thing under the rug. We didn't quite forget about it, he held on to his anger the rest of the day and I held on to my hurt. I just moved on like I always do, pretending like none of it mattered. I folded up the tablecloth for him and he took it from me without sneering or yelling at me, so I guess that was something.     Little by little, as he stashed the tablecloth back into the bag along with what little food we hadn't finished, that bitter rage on his face faded into something that was more like begrudging frustration. It was just as hard to take as his anger, but I hoped that meant he was getting over it. I wondered about that anger for a moment. I wondered what it was like to feel the things that he obviously did.   
    I wondered what lust felt like, to want a person, to want sex so badly that just being denied could actually made you mad about it. It made me glad that I had never felt anything even close to that my entire life, but only for a moment. It made me feel guilty, too. I felt like I had taken something away from him. I wondered, and not for the first time, just what the hell I was doing with this boy. What was the point of this relationship if I couldn't even lead it to its natural conclusion? Didn't all this just make me the ultimate cock tease, just stringing Trowa along, but never letting us get any further?   
    What right did I have to do that to him? Even though his lack of respect had hurt me and his desires had frightened me, I felt like I was the one entirely at fault. I thought about Quatre then, as the two of us walked back the way we had come. What would have happened if he had lived? What would he have done in my place? I tried to imagine him letting Trowa touch him like he had just touched me, but I couldn't do it.   
    In my head, Quatre would always be that thirteen year old boy. I couldn't imagine him at age fifteen or sixteen, and I sure as hell could not imagine him having sex or even contemplating having it. It made me feel like I was... perverting him, disrespecting him. What if he had lived and he had found out about this? Not my being with Trowa, but some other guy, what would he tell me to do? I couldn't imagine it, either. Even walking down that forest path, willing to see him like I often did when I was stressed, for once his image wouldn't come to me. Even my best friend wouldn't comfort me.   
    Like before on our way into the woods, I matched Trowa's pace as we walked. But this time, it wasn't out of hope that he might hold or touch my hand, or even because I just enjoyed walking next to him. I didn't want to walk behind or ahead of him because I didn't want him to think that I was avoiding him or running away from him, even if that was kind of what I felt like doing. He walked measurably slower than he had before and with his normally long gait, it had to be a conscious thing, but I couldn't think of a reason why he wanted to draw out this walk. He wasn't like me, he didn't have reasons to want to delay going home.  
    I kept catching him glancing at me out of the corner of my eye, like there was something that he desperately wanted to say to me. I didn't make a single sound, waiting for him to spit it out, but he never did. I dared a glance of my own and found him staring at the ground, looking frustrated, pensive, and annoyed at something. I wanted to yell at him, to demand that he tell me what was bothering him so much so I could change it, but I was too afraid of what the answer might be. I looked away, but stopped walking when he reached a hand out and touched my hair.   
    I completely froze. Trowa had touched my hair before, usually when he was kissing me, but this was different. For a very brief moment, no more than a flash, I remembered how my father had looked when he had drunkenly touched my hair that one time. The look on his face had been exactly like (violently scratched out)  
    I threw that thought away in repulsion so strong, I felt sick. I almost missed it when Trowa's long fingers picked a piece of a vibrantly green leaf out of my hair that had gotten stuck there. The move tugged on my hair a bit sharply, but the very tiny spark of pain helped me forget the wayward thought I had had. I expected Trowa to let go of my hair then and start walking again, but his expression suddenly went all intense, not with passion but with more frustration and he surprised me by grabbing my ponytail, his grip tight but not painful, and examined it like he had never seen it before with this weird look like my hair annoyed him somehow. I still didn't dare move, unsure of what he was doing and what the shadows in his eyes meant.  
    "When exactly are you going to get this cut off?" he asked me snidely.  
    I stared up at him with wide eyes, shocked by the immense contempt in his tone, directed entirely at me.  
    "W-what?" I stammered.  
    He hated how long my hair was? He would tease me about it sometimes, pull on it and ask me if I was trying to be a hippy, and I had always assumed that he didn't like it, but I had never realized that he... that he loathed my hair like that, not with that meanness.  
    "Your hair," he said slowly with an unbearably cruel sneer that made me think of Zechs and my father, a look that did not belong on Trowa Barton's shy, kind, and handsome face, a slowness that made me feel stupid, like an especially dim witted child, "What are you waiting for, someone to do it for you? For it to grow all the way down to your knees? Just cut it off already. That stupid ponytail makes you look like a fucking girl."  
    His words were glass shards in my heart, somehow bigger and sharper than the ones my father had put there with those very same words. I felt a hurt that I didn't understand, a wound that mystified me, all because he hated my long hair... no, it wasn't that. It was because, whether he was aware of it or not, Trowa had injured me in two places where I had been vulnerable for a long time, thinking I was stupid and... and calling me a girl.   
    A thousand thoughts exploded from those wounds in my heart and into my head. Did I really look like a girl, like they all said? Was my hair really too long? Should I get rid of it like my father and my boyfriend wanted me to? Would Trowa break up with me because of how much my hair had... had brought out this ugly hate in him?   
    And there, in the middle of that swirl of pathetic questions and useless fears was a single thought. Of course Trowa hated my hair. Quatre's hair had been short. He probably hated that  my hair is brown, too, and my eyes, because they aren't blue-green like Quatre's had been.  
    I felt this intense, painful anger flow into me, mingling with my hurt like pus in my blood. I hated him in that moment, really, truly hated him, and I can't honestly say why still. I've thought about it endlessly since then, but my emotions confuse me, just as they always have. Did I hate him for insulting me, for hating me for not being more like the person he really wanted? Or did I simply hate him because I liked him enough to want him to like me back, to actually be my boyfriend for real? Did I hate him for being incapable of loving me like everyone else or was the hate I was feeling all directed at myself for being incapable of being loved?  
    I pulled my ponytail from his grip brutally, not caring at the pain and glared at him, letting the pain and anger I was feeling out onto my face for once and not caring if he thought me pathetic and weak for it.  
    "Fuck you," I hissed at him and walked briskly past him, leaving him behind.  
    Before I put him fully to my back, I saw him go pale and his eyes go wide. Whether it was in the face of my words, my anger at him, or the evidence that he had hurt me and I had let him see that for the first time, I didn't know. He didn't call to me or chase after me and I don't know if that made the whole thing worse or better.  
    I clung to my anger all the way home, my fear of my father the only thing keeping me from slamming the front door behind me. I walked through the kitchen only to realize that he wasn't home and actually thought about going back to slam the door to see if it would make me feel better, but I knew that it wouldn't.   
    I found myself in the bathroom without making any conscious thought that I was going to go in there, and stared at myself in the mirror. I hated what I saw and that revulsion shocked me. I hated my skin, it was too pale and smooth. I hated my body, it was too lanky and thin. I hated my nose because it was just like my father's. I hated my eyes because they were my mother's eyes. My hands were too slender, too small while my fingers were too long. My shoulders weren't wide enough. I didn't have enough body hair. I wasn't masculine enough, wasn't tall enough or big enough. But most of all, I hated my hair. I hated the color of it. It wasn't a beautiful, shimmering blonde, it was brown, and didn't that just say it all? My hair was dirty. It was too long and ugly and _girly_.  
    Looking at myself in the mirror, I wanted to rip off my face and shave off my hair. I wanted to pull out my eyes and break my fingers off. I wanted to tear myself apart until there was noting left. Before I had even realized it was happening, my anger was just gone and in its place was this deep, dark depression. I have never liked my looks. Every time Quatre had said that I was handsome, I had scoffed at him, but I had never _hated_ myself before, at least not for the way I look. I had wanted to blame it on Trowa and what he had said, but that's neither fair nor true. His verbally attacking my hair had forced me to look at myself and realize it, but I knew that that hatred wasn't something new.  
    I pulled off my hair tie and let my hair fall down. It was almost perfectly straight, not a single curl to be seen, and the tips fell maybe an inch shy of my waist. Trowa was right, I thought in self-disgust and misery. I looked like a fucking girl. My hand shaking a little, I opened the top drawer next to the sink and found a pair of scissors.   
    I caught my reflection again and the sadness in my eyes felt like a punch to the gut. I could do it, I realized with a pain that confused me. For Trowa, I could cut it off. I could make myself look a little bit more like Quatre and make him happy, make him like me. I could erase this small, stupid part of myself easily. It was just hair, nothing important, nothing that anyone even liked.   
    I gathered my hair up in my left hand and pulled it away from my neck. I opened the scissors and put my hair between them, drawing the handles close until the blades were resting on my hair. Something inside of me quaked and I could feel myself getting angry again, this time at my hesitance and how much this was affecting me. What the fuck? Since when had my ponytail started to mean anything to me? And even if it had, why did it matter? When did anything I want, or anything that was ever a part of me, matter?  
    'It's just hair, it's just hair, I can do this,' I told myself.  
    I didn't stop to think about why I suddenly wanted to cut my hair off or why I wanted to do it for the boy that I was so angry at for hurting me. I never stopped to ask myself what the hell was wrong with me.  
    "Don't do it," Quatre said.  
    I lowered the scissors and looked over at him. He, or at least the Quatre that my mind painted there, was sitting on the edge of the sink, looking at me with familiar, sad eyes.   
    "Why not?" I snapped back and was shocked at how angry my voice came out, considering that I was just talking to myself and the empty air, "Why not just cut it all off? It's just stupid hair."  
    Quatre rested his chin on his hand and studied me in a way that made me feel uncomfortable. It was enough to make me worry about my sanity. I mean, I knew Quatre wasn't real, so why did I have these conversations with him like I was actually talking to him?  
    "Because it's a part of you. You've had that ponytail for so long now," he argued.  
    "So what?" I shot at him, "My father hates it, Trowa hates it. I don't even care about it that much, so what's the point in keeping it?"  
    "I like it, I've always liked it. Besides, your father has been telling you to get a hair cut for years now, but you've never even really thought about doing it. So why are you really doing this? Why _now_?"  
    His eyes were too piercing and I had to look away from him for a moment. He... _I_ was right, I realized. All these years, my father had been badgering and verbally abusing me to cut my ponytail off, so why now? Had what Trowa said been any worse than what my father said?   
    "It makes me look like a girl," I said softly, "It makes me look like..."  
     _'A faggot,'_ I would have said, but I didn't need to and I didn't want to say that word out loud. It wasn't even my thought really, it was my father's and Zechs'. Because being a faggot wasn't being gay, it wasn't just liking another boy. Being a faggot was just like being a girl, but worse, it was wanting to be a girl when you weren't. Boys that liked dolls and cooking and were good at cleaning or sewing were fags.   
    A boy with long hair that wasn't in a rock band or had some other macho quality to redeem him was surely a fag. No better than a girl... I didn't hate girls and I didn't believe that liking things that people like Zechs thought were feminine was bad, but I wasn't a girl and every time my father or his stupid partner or Zechs or Relena called me one, it made me feel like... like I wasn't even a person. Does that make any sense at all?   
    Quatre huffed in frustration, blowing his bangs out of his face. It was the same exact thing he had done when he was alive and we would argue about something. He suddenly felt too real to me, too much like this was really my best friend that I was talking to and not a figment of my overactive imagination. It hurt too much and I willed him away, but he refused to go like a particularly stubborn itch.   
    "You don't look like a girl at all," he said with a tone so soft and so sad that I wanted to cry and throw my arms around him, "and you won't look like a girl no matter what you do with your hair, You _know_ that. I've told you that before."  
    I blinked at him for a moment before I suddenly remembered that we had had this conversation already, almost word for word. I hadn't almost cut my hair off back then, but I had been upset because my father had been drunk and called me a cunt for my hair. Quatre had asked me if I would really cut my ponytail off because of my father. I had resoundly told him 'no, fuck him,' and Quatre had flashed me this weird little smile, like he had been proud of me or something.  
    Quatre... _this_ Quatre, not the real one, wasn't really my subconscious. I didn't believe that I don't look like a girl, that I'm not a fag in the way that my father means that word and I don't feel any kind of confidence in my looks and sexuality, but that never comes out in the way that I see Quatre. These conversations 'we' have don't come out of me trying to talk to myself. I see Quatre because I want to see him, and when I talk to him, it's my memory of him that's talking to me. I guess that's why I do it, because it comforts me and sometimes I can trick myself that it's really him that I'm talking to. Because while I feel nothing but doubt about the things that my father and Trowa had said to me, Quatre wouldn't. He would tell me that I'm handsome, that he likes my hair and to not dare cut it off because of someone else.  
    "Trowa-" I tried to argue with all my fears and my hurt and worries, but my voice sounded so weak.   
    It's hard to argue with yourself when you are telling yourself exactly what you want to hear.  
    "Duo," Quatre's tone was somewhere between exasperated and affectionate and sad again, "it's your hair, not his. If you want to keep it, then keep it. He had no right to say that to you. It's your choice, not his. He doesn't own you."  
    His words struck some kind of strange blow in me. Trowa didn't own me. Was that what he had been acting like? And had I responded to that? Did I want him to own me, or was I just so lonely that I would let him treat me like that just to keep him from abandoning me? Everyone turns their backs on me, but he hadn't. Not yet, anyway. Was I trying to stop that from happening, or was I so weak that I could just... surrender to what he wanted without a thought? I had said fuck you to my father, so why was it so hard for me to say fuck you to Trowa as well?   
    Thinking about it just made my head hurt. I felt like I was uncovering some incredibly ugly part of myself that had been hiding all this time. Quatre had always said I was a strong person and I had never been able to show him just how wrong he was. That the person who had just run home and almost cut their hair off because their boyfriend told them they should was the real me was pathetic and frightening. I didn't want to get rid of my pony tail. Maybe it really was just hair, and it would grow back, but Quatre was right. It was my hair and I liked having that stupid ponytail.   
    I almost jumped when Quatre reached across to me and lightly touched a strand of hair that had gotten loose from the hair tie I wore.  
    "Trowa's right, though," he said and my fucked up mind painted that light touch in my senses, a touch from something less than a ghost, "it _has_ gotten a bit long, don't you think?"  
    I pulled my hair over my shoulder to get a good look at it in the mirror. Quatre... my figment was right and so was Trowa. While not down to my waist, my ponytail was at chest level and had been getting heavy recently. It was just a bit longer than I wanted it to be, but I hadn't done anything about it.   
    "Yeah," I agreed, "I guess it has."  
    "If you're going to keep it that long, you should find a better way to keep it than in a pony tail," Quatre urged.   
    "What else is there besides a pony tail?" I asked him, even though I felt kind of stupid doing it.   
    I knew that he was right, keeping my thick hair in the pony tail was a pain, it snarled really easily. I would either have to keep shortening my hair or find a better way to keep it out of the way. Quatre got this far off look, like he was thinking of my question even when I already knew the answer.  
    "Jane braided her hair when it got too long," he offered.   
    It took me a few moments to remember which one of his sisters Jane was, but eventually she came to me. She had been the second youngest of Quatre's brood of sisters. I had met her once, although I can't remember when that had been anymore. Like all of the Winner siblings, she had been thin, pale, and very blonde, her eyes a light, crystal blue. She had stubbornly grown out her hair and at the time that I had met her, it had been down to her waist in a neat braid. I wondered if she still had that braid, wherever his family had moved to.  
    "I don't know how to French braid," I said in a frustration that had me wrinkling my nose, "and a braid's even worse than a pony tail."  
    Quatre huffed.  
    "I told you, your hair doesn't make you look like a girl. Who cares if you braid it? Your hair won't be in the way all the time, and you won't have to cut it," he glanced at the tips of my hair, "Although you should really take care of the split ends soon. And you don't have to learn how to French braid, you can just do a normal one. Why don't you try it?"  
    "Ok, ok," I muttered like he was being pushy and shook my head.  
    I took a deep breath, knowing that my imaginary friend was right about the split ends, too. If I fucked it up, well, I already got bullied, so what did it matter? And it was just a trim, not like loping the whole mess of it off. I put the scissors down and leaned down to wet my pony tail in the sink. I put my hair between my fingers until I had only about two to three inches of the tips then just cut them off. My hair fell in the sink and I was a bit impressed that I had both managed not to struggle with the decision to cut off that bit of it like I had with wanting to cut the whole thing off, like cleaving off some dead weight, and that I hadn't made a mess of it. I had to even it off here and there, but it didn't look bad.  
    That minor task down, I set to try to braiding the brown and red and gold strands. It was a hell of a lot harder than I had thought it would be and several times I had to stop and start over again. But the braiding itself wasn't all that complicated and I understood the basics of how to make a braid, my fingers were just unused to it and were clumsy. After the fifth try, I had a neat braid that wasn't that bad looking.   
    I glanced over to where Quatre had been sitting, but he was gone again. For that moment, I felt like a small weight had been lifted from my heart. I flicked my wet hair back over my shoulder and my newly cut hair fell between my shoulder blades, the tip of the braid resting against my butt. I found that I already liked the braid a lot more than I had my pony tail. I was shocked at how good it felt, feeling that familiar weight against my back and I wondered again how I could have almost cut it off.   
    I could hear my younger voice in my head, telling Quatre to fuck my father and I felt a bit spiteful, looking at my reflection then. Fuck Trowa, I thought to myself, not even needing Quatre to tell me that. If he didn't like my hair, he could find someone else to play boyfriends with. I cleaned up the hair from the sink, flushing it down the toilet and got ready for work, feeling like I had cut a lot more than just hair from me.   
  
  
End Part 2  
  
Author's Note: Sorry about the delay in this part, I was having some problems with the narrative in some parts and I moved back in with my parents six days ago, so it took me a bit to get everything unpacked and set up.   
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
  



	17. Chapter 4 Part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duo and Trowa return to school. Duo deals with the aftermath of their disastrous Summer date and realizes he will soon have to make a choice between what he wants and what Trowa wants, or risk losing him.

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 4  
Part 3  
  
  
    I didn't see or hear from Trowa for a month after that disastrous date. I was partially relieved, still too hurt and angry at him to want to see him, and apprehensive after he had tried to feel me up. But it also worried me a lot. After the first week of no phone calls from him, I had started to become anxious that Trowa had decided to break up with me and just hadn't informed me of that fact. After the second week, I became sure of it.  
    But then August swung around and my father was bellowing at me that I had a phone call. Trowa's voice on the other end was both wonderful and aggravating to me. I, apparently, can hold a grudge for a long time but don't have the spine to act on it. I didn't forgive him for verbally bullying me or for his unwanted advances, but hearing him on that phone had lifted some small darkness around my heart.  
    It still amazes me, the myriad tangle of emotions he had made me feel. What I felt for him was the closest thing to love I had ever had for someone who wasn't my parent. I felt attraction and affection for him, enough so that the thought of him breaking up with me made me feel panic. But he also brought out anger and hurt in me far too easily. Our relationship was at times endearing and the only good thing I had, and at others cold and frustrating and messed up. I wanted to believe that he felt something for me that was more than friendship at the same time that I didn't want to be any closer to him than I already was.  
    To say my feelings confused me is probably an understatement. I should have called the whole thing off then, but I couldn't. Being with him was all I had, he was the only color in my gray world and I needed him, no doubt more than he had ever needed me. So when he asked me to see that movie he had promised to take me to a month previous, I didn't even hesitate in telling him yes, even if he made me equally nervous and angry.  
    That date was, thankfully, uneventful compared to the past one. We met in the theater, Trowa buying me my ticket and some nachos and hot dogs to share between us. The movie was fun and entertaining, but I felt this twinge of anxiety running through me the entire time. I took me the first hour and a half of the film for me to realize what it was coming from. Trowa was being friendly and easy with me. He hadn't had a trace of the angry and frustrated attitude he had had the last time I had seen him, which I was grateful for. But not once during the movie did he try to hold my hand or even touch my leg with his.  
    I felt this wall between us, one that wasn't made of hard stone, but of soft glass that could easily be broken if either of us acknowledged it. I felt awkward and shy around him, like I had when we had first begun to be friends. That was exactly what it had felt like to me, that we had taken this huge step back and weren't boyfriends anymore, but just friends again. Was that what Trowa wanted? Was that what he had intended when he had asked me to the movies, not as a date, but just to hang out with a friend?  
    I realized then that that wasn't what I wanted. I didn't want to have sex with him, didn't want any of that kind of intimacy, but I didn't want to go back to being just friends with him, either. Was I really content to just... stay frozen the way we were, not progressing at all towards what Trowa wanted, but incapable of telling him that, incapable of admitting we shouldn't be _dating_ , even if I liked being around him? I could easily understand Trowa's frustration with me. Hell, I frustrated _myself_.  
    Trowa walked me halfway to my house, it being late enough at night that there weren't many people around. He was very quiet and I wanted to scream at him, to demand him to just tell me if he wanted to break up with me, but I couldn't force the words out. Then I didn't need to as he grabbed my wrist, his green eyes glancing to see if anyone could see us in the desolate alleyway we were in, and pressed a soft kiss to my cheek. I blushed happily in the dark where he couldn't see and dared to return an equally soft kiss to his lips that he just as happily accepted. I felt such an intense joy and relief that it was hard to breathe. I could just barely see his own smile and the relief in it was as good as an apology to me.  
    We went on a couple more dates that month, all of them similarly laid back. Trowa was almost sweet to me, moving at a pace that I was more comfortable with. We made out, held hands, talked, and just did things together. He didn't push me again, not like he had. We didn't talk about sex or what I had done to his wrist. That was our relationship in a nutshell, and in a way, that was comforting to me.  
    It reminded me so much of how my friendship had been with Quatre, how there were things we would never bring up. I suppose complacent is a better word to describe it than comfortable. I was content with that, it was better than thinking about all of the things that were wrong with us or all of the things that I was scared of. I even rewarded Trowa's patience, and catered to a small measure of my guilt by letting him slip a hand under my shirt one time when we had been making out. I guess that seems outright ridiculous, such a tiny thing. But it was a step more than what I had been letting him do, a sort of negotiation between what I was comfortable with and what he wanted.  
    If anyone reads this, they'll laugh at me, if they haven't already, but even just that scared me. As I had felt his hand trace across my skin, his fingers dangerously close to my nipples, but never really touching them as he laid his palm over my heart, my heart had beat erratically and I had almost panicked again. It was ridiculous, I wasn't some girl having her breasts touched, so why did that tiny bit of intimacy scare me?  
    And when that rough hand had moved down my chest and ribs to rest on my stomach and I had thought that all of my organs had turned to frantic butterflies and startled sparrows and my skin had turned to somehow both fiery and chilled electricity, I had looked up at him. I'll always remember it, how his handsome face had seemed so bright and alive with a joy that was almost endearingly childlike if not for the could of lust in his eyes. I had known in that moment that it had been the right thing to do, the right thing to give him and I can't even begin to say what it did to me to know that _I_ had given him that happiness. I couldn't have sex with him, but I could give him that much. Couldn't I?  
    For his part, Trowa kept his hand there on my stomach, never venturing any lower than that. Looking up at him, I had known that he desperately wanted to. But he hadn't. He had just rubbed the flat of my abdomen around my navel and kissed me deeply. I kissed him back eagerly, loving him a little for respecting my fears. I foolishly thought that it meant we were past what had happened before, that he understood why I was frightened and would wait. I childishly thought that, without even discussing it with him, and like I had forgotten that fervor of lust that had overtaken him that day in the park, that he _could_ wait.  
    The return of school was a blessing and a curse to me. A blessing because it helped pass the time, got me away from my father, reduced my work hours, and I could see Trowa more, if only at a distance. And it was a curse because it meant that my dates with Trowa were going to be sparse between having less time to schedule them and more of our classmates were back from family vacations.  
    The return of school was stressful for me. Even with my only sleeping four hours a night on average, it was hard to find time to finish my homework with the job hours I was keeping. Suddenly, I had to think about my poor grades and even poorer future again. It was my Junior year of high school and that terrified the ever loving shit out of me. Two more years before I left high school. Two more years before my father was no longer obligated to keep me around. Two more years before I would need to fend for myself with nothing more than a high school diploma, if I even managed to graduate.  
    My fear of intimacy with Trowa seemed so petty compared to my fears of ending up homeless if my parents kicked me to the curb when I turned eighteen. And what if they didn't? All that gave me was a roof over my head. There was a part of me that wanted to leave, wanted to get away from them at the same time that I felt lost without them. But whether they kicked me out or not, I felt like I had no future and soon, I would have to come to terms with that.  
    But, worst of all, the return of school meant the return of Relena and Zechs. I hadn't seen either motherfucker the entirety of our Summer vacation, which was plenty to keep me in a good mood. After I had broken Zechs's nose, the strange ceasefire they had given me had effectively ended. I'll never know exactly why they had stopped bullying me for that short time period, if they actually had some kind of twisted remorse about what they had done to Quatre, if bullying me just hadn't been as fun with me so deep into my grief that I didn't care, or what they had done had satisfied their bloodlust for awhile, but when I had attacked both Relena and Zechs, it had fueled their cruelty.   
    As time had passed, the Darlian siblings had only become more vicious towards me, some of the pranks and attacks against me almost obscene and violent. I think I made it worse with my recent... attitude problem. I still didn't really fight back against them, that lesson is too deeply ingrained in me now and I just don't see the point of it anymore, why I should have even a moment's worth of peace, but their maliciousness doesn't affect me like it once did, either.   
    I suppose, deep down, it does. The things they say and do hurt me and rip open these vulnerable soft spots in me. But I don't let them see that most of the time. It has nothing to do with spite or self-preservation, it's simply because I don't have it in me anymore. Quatre's death made Trowa bitter and hard, that softness, that shyness that he used to have only seldom showing when he couldn't help it. Well, Quatre's death had had the exact impact on me. Only I hadn't had much softness to me to begin with. Now? I'm just all hard edges. I can't remember how to be openly vulnerable and hurt. I don't know how to cry and let out all the bad stuff anymore.   
    I could do it before, thanks to Quatre. I had someone to cry to, someone who understood what I was going through. I don't have that anymore. I couldn't even begin to imagine, even after a year of dating him, telling Trowa about my bullying problems. Sure, he hated Relena and Zechs as much as I did and he went to the same school as us, he was well aware of what they were doing to me. But my bullies were on that invisible list of things we couldn't talk about, smack between Quatre and my various injuries he would 'notice'.   
    Trowa would never understand what it felt like to be bullied and tormented, how it felt to be picked on by two people that I would like nothing more than to strangle or beat to a pulp. You think that I forgot my rage, forgot that horrified look on Quatre's face when he saw his diary posted on the school bulletin board? Never. Never never never never.   
    From now until the last day of my life, I will always remember what they did to the only good thing that had ever happened to me. I will always remember the kind of monsters they are. I will never forget what they are inside. Cold blooded murderers, the both of them. And just punching the both of them had not done a thing to quell my desire to see them hanged for it.   
    I think about it sometimes, when I wake up from a nightmare of the memory of the worst day of my life. I wake seeing Quatre's sad smile and the splatter of blood from the train hitting his small body and I think about grabbing my father's gun from nightstand drawer in his bedroom and finding Relena and Zechs Darlian. I think about torturing them with it, shooting out their knee caps maybe. Or maybe I would just walk up to them and shoot them both in the head. The amount of satisfaction I feel when I indulge in that fantasy terrifies me some nights.   
    But I don't do it. I can't. I'm a coward and I could... could never do what they had done. The fantasy of it is blissful, but the reality only makes me feel cold. And what's the point? Quatre is dead. Maybe Relena and Zechs need to be punished for that, but killing them wouldn't be a punishment. Making them feel what I feel now... what Quatre felt right before he killed himself would. Death is too quick for the both of them.   
    I can't even bully them back. While I would love nothing more than to go after Relena and put her in a full body cast, I can't even manage that much. I had hit her out of pure rage and reflex, same with Zechs. I can't seem to dredge up those feelings anymore. My anger is too clouded with depression and I can't see the point in it. And really, I'm still more angry at myself than at them.   
    What they do to me is what I deserve, every bit of it. I bottle the hurt up inside and let them do those things to me and I think they sense it and it frustrates them. Those vulnerable spots in me are hidden behind a wall of grey and nothingness. While my nightmares and Trowa's coldness might be able to reach it, Relena and Zechs can't, not like it used to.   
    But that's not to say that it doesn't hurt or anger me or make me want to find a way to get them to stop, it just seems... faint compared to everything else in my life. If I'm afraid of them, then I'm terrified of my father. If they hurt me, my dreams and memories of Quatre tear me into shreds. If them calling me a faggot or a pussy or a cunt angers me, Trowa's looking through me or telling me that I look like a girl or trying to feel me up enraged me. So, I lived through the bullying like I was in a fog. I was still grateful not to have to deal with them in the Summer.   
    Coming back to school, back to _that_ was like a splash of ice water in my face and I'll admit that I felt a bit of fear walking through the high school's dark blue doors and through the main hallway of lockers for our grade, only to see Relena talking and laughing with Dorothy. I wasn't scared of what she would do to me when she saw me, I was scared of myself.   
    It was the same fear I had felt the previous semester, when Trowa and I had started to go out. I had been so high strung about our dating back then, and so sure that when those ice blue eyes, like chips of ice, fell on me, then she would _know_. There had to be something, some look that I had, that would tell her or Zechs or some other classmate that, not only was I gay, but I was dating Quatre's love interest.   
    It had been enough to make me feel sick. While I didn't have Trowa's terror of being outted, I did fear it. More than that, I feared people finding out _who_ I was dating because a lot of the time, I wondered about my sanity and my morals in dating him, too. Maybe I was a step in for Quatre for Trowa, but that did absolutely nothing to diminish my guilt.   
    But the days and then weeks and months had passed and no one had caught on that there was even a friendship between the two of us and that paranoia had faded. It should have faded all the way, but since Summer vacation had started, we had gotten closer and more intimate and that fear cropped up again once school had started.   
    I felt like everyone could tell that Trowa and were becoming more involved, delving deeper into the things that made people like us so hated in a town like ours. Every secret place that Trowa had touched me and kissed me felt like it was burning. I was very, very happy that Trowa was considerate enough, or paranoid enough, not to leave hickies on me. Now there was something I did _not_ want my father to find out. I don't think he would believe me if I told him I had a girlfriend. He would make me tell him her name and then beat the shit out of me for lying to him. And that was my best case scenario.   
    Just like before, all my paranoia was unfounded. Relena saw me and sneered at me before flicking her hair over her shoulder and resuming her talk with her best friend. I passed her without her trying to trip me or anything juvenile like that. Trowa and I walked by each other on our way to our respective homerooms. Although my heart sped up a little, we didn't so much as glance at each other. We were beyond discreet, we were like fucking undercover agents. We never stopped for a chat when we saw each other during school. We didn't nod to each other. We didn't look at each other. We didn't bump shoulders. We treated each other like we were strangers, just bodies in a crowd. For people like us, that's how we survived.   
    Sometimes I hurt with wanting to be like every other couple I saw in school. Standing in the dark corners of hallways where they hoped teachers wouldn't be able to see them or the bolder couples that didn't care if they got yelled at, holding hands, hugging, necking, making out, or just staring into each other's eyes in a way that was paradoxically sweet and sickeningly disgusting at the same time.   
    Of course, I guess actually _being_ in love would help. But I couldn't even risk just... brushing my hand against Trowa's in the hallway or meeting his gaze across a room. Maybe I wasn't in love, but there were times when I just felt so indescribably lonely or upset after Relena and Zechs had finished tormenting me that I wanted to seek out my boyfriend and let him touch me, let him kiss me and pretend that we were different than we were.   
    I wanted to pretend that I loved him deeply like that. I knew that if I could hold his hand in those moments, it would make me feel somewhat better. But I couldn't even have that. I really did feel like we were undercover agents, that during the day we were ghosts with each other, but at night we were something completely different. It made me feel so strange. I can't describe it well enough. I just knew that I hated it.   
    When I entered my homeroom, my stomach dropped. I saw a large group of our classmates, many of them that did not belong to our homeroom group, all clustered around the middle of the room. I knew right away what they were looking at and while in middle school, that knowledge would have made me feel dread, I only felt very tired and beaten. And my day had already started.   
    The group parted for me, some of them in fear, some of them in mirth. I heard more than one giggle. It was all white noise to me at that point. I managed to get about a five second look at what had caused the commotion before our homeroom teacher strode in to see why there were so many students in his room.   
    It was my desk everyone was gawking around, obviously. Of course it was. I remembered Relena's sneer and felt my hands curl into fists, realizing the purpose of it. Someone, again, obviously her, had taken something sharp to my desk. A knife, the edge of a screwdriver, it was hard to tell. But someone had violently scratched and carved into my desk various nasty, threatening, and vile things.   
    Faggot... cum slut... kill yourself... shit licker... trash... cunt... flamer... cocksucker... they just went on and on, getting more and more obscene. Looking at them, looking at how deep the marks were and how many words were there, I knew that it hadn't just been one person. My desk was _destroyed_ and it was just too easy to imagine Zechs and his asshole friends partaking in it with his sister and probably Dorothy, too.   
    I wouldn't be surprised if there was something equally nasty waiting for me inside the desk, too. Not that I would look, I had learned my lesson about my curiosity a long time ago. This was the third time since middle school that they had done this to one of my desks. I felt the crowd completely disperse as our teacher walked up to me like he was on a warpath.  
    "Duo Maxwell!" he bellowed at me as he got a good look at the remains of my desk, his face turning a very splendid shade of red and he jabbed a finger into my chest, "What the hell is wrong with you?! This is school property-" he was winding up for a very long and tiresome rant, I could sense it.  
    "That's right," I sneered coldly at him, "I carved 'fudge packer' into my _own_ desk."  
    All that red in his face drained away into pure white of embarrassment and just a bit of fear as he both realized how stupid his reaction had been and who it was he was talking to. I had to admit that that fear was kind of amusing to me, if only because I couldn't stand my homeroom teacher and his snide, uppity attitude towards me.  
    When I moved on from middle school into high school, I... well, I would say that I changed, but that's putting it mildly. People my age think that they're adults. They're older and wiser and get privileges they never would have dreamed of when they were younger. They act like they're different than how they were in 7th or 8th grade, like graduating from middle school turns you into this different person.   
    Well, it doesn't. Being handed the keys to a car or being able to see a rated R film doesn't magically turn you into an adult. Becoming a teenager sure as hell doesn't make you a different person. The kids I go to school with in high school are basically the same people I went to school with in middle school. The only real difference is that they do adult things and think that makes them mature. They make out with their girlfriends and boyfriends. The ones with well off parents drive to school instead of take the bus. Some of them smoke. Some of them talk back to teachers and other adults because I guess being a mature teenager makes them feel entitled to.   
    Me? When I walked into this high school for the first time, I became a different person, but not because I was suddenly an upper classman or some stupid shit like that. Middle school was like... a different life. Everything I had known and once cared for lay in that building, every memory I held close to me, whether it was a bitter one or a sweet one.  
    I had met Quatre there. I had met Relena and Zechs there. That building held my tears, happiness, anger, and blood. It was the place where I had realized that Quatre was in love with Trowa, the place that had taken everything away from the both of them. It was the place had become more of a comfort to me than my own home, and the place that held all my nightmares. And when I left it, I resolved to leave all of that behind, all of those terrible memories. I left behind Mrs. Khushrenada, the only teacher I had ever had that had actually given a shit about me. I left behind every person that had really known what I had been like as a child, how I had cared about my schoolwork, how I had tried my best to be quiet and well behaved, how easily Relena and Zechs had hurt me at times. I left them behind and buried them. I burned that child out of me because that wasn't who I was anymore.  
    My very first day of high school, Relena dumped spoiled milk on the teacher's desk and I got blamed for it. The teacher hadn't known me, but apparently my fake reputation of being a juvenile delinquent had carried over into high school somehow. And having my unusually long braid didn't help to not paint me as some kind of teenaged rebel. I bet if I had asked that teacher why they thought I had done it, what terrible things they had heard I had done, they would have come up blank. But I didn't. Nor did I try to correct anyone's assumptions of me, the way that some of the underclassmen would hurry out of my way if I looked like I was in a bad mood.  
    I developed, for a lack of a better word, an attitude problem. That first day of high school, as the teacher had yelled at me and Relena had smirked, no doubt expecting me to defend myself or break down, I had had a thought. If everyone thought I was a delinquent, then maybe I should just become one. If that was what everyone was going to think and gossip about me, just a bit of white trash from the South end, and nothing I could say or do would make a difference, no matter how hard I tried at school or how polite I was to my teachers, why not turn that into the truth? What difference would it make?  
    I don't go out of my way to make trouble. I don't spray paint graffiti or bully the younger kids or disrupt class. I haven't changed quite that much. But I reward the people who believe those stupid rumors. When my classmates look at me with fear or disgust or I heard them gossiping about me, I would glare at them and watch them turn pale, like they thought I was going to pull a knife on them. I'm sure my punching out the two richest kids in school had helped feed that fear. And when teacher's gave me attitude about something they thought I had done, I gave them twice as much attitude back. I acted like I had zero respect for them because they had at least that much for me. Suffice to say, I got sent to the principal a lot.   
    The principal and I have a... strained relationship. That first day of school when I got blamed for the spoiled milk? I got sent to him and he had asked me if I had done it. Very first person that had actually asked that question instead of immediately pointing their finger at me. I had rewarded that with honesty and had been shocked when he had believed me. Or at least he had believed me enough to send me back to my class without more than an 'adjust your attitude' lecture.   
    Since then, every time I was sent to him, he would ask me 'what is it you were supposed to have done now?' with a kind of bored, flat tone. My respect for him always has me telling him the truth. And he just sighs, lectures me about being so caustic or for talking back to my teachers and sends me on my way. It's been the subject of a few terse meetings between him and my teachers, no doubt frustrated that I haven't been at least suspended for my disrespectful attitude yet.   
    He's the only member of the school staff I have anything but bitterness for, although I know it frustrates him that I don't try to get along with my teachers or act like the 'good kid' he obviously has decided to see me as. My teachers can't seem to get him to think otherwise and I guess my homework percentage hasn't swayed him into thinking I'm just a delinquent loser like everyone else does.   
    Principal Stoan reminds me a bit of Mrs. Khushrenada like that, that just because I get my homework in on time and maintain a C+ average (barely), that means I have some kind of lukewarm potential. I don't know if he realizes that my attitude is just an act yet, but at least I haven't gotten suspended. That would... not fly so well with my father. But even my fear of him can't keep me from being abrasive to the people I cross paths with at this stupid school.  
    I stared my homeroom teacher down and knew that he would be reporting this little incident to the principal by the end of the day, probably as soon as our short homeroom period ended. By the way, that teacher that blamed me for the spoiled milk? This prick. We've been at each other's throats ever since. I could see him trying to reason through it, looking for some proof that I had done that to my desk, even if he knew I made perfect sense. That I had embarrassed him by pointing out, in front of a large portion of his students, that his knee jerk reaction had been stupid didn't help his pride.   
    "Take your seat," he snarled at me.   
    I couldn't have helped the snide smirk I threw at him if I had wanted to. After three years of this, this cold and hard act I threw on in front of other people was starting to not become an act at all. Sometimes I wonder if it ever had been or if this is just the person I am. Sometimes I wonder if this was always how things would have turned out if I had never met Quatre and he had made me a better person while I had known him. Had I always felt this anger and bitterness towards other people? I... can't remember.   
    I sat down like I had been planning on doing that to begin with, which I had, and rested my head on my hand, staring at the man with complete boredom. He strode back to the front of the room and the rest of the mass of students started to take their own seats. Relena sat in the row next to me, further up towards the front, saving me from having to look at her triumphant stare.   
    I had been at school for twenty minutes and I could already feel the beginnings of a truly bad headache brewing in my skull. I told myself that it was just frustration from my interactions with my teacher and it had nothing to do with the carvings in my desk that I was resting my elbow from. And if I didn't dare to look down at them, that was only because I didn't care about them, because they bored me, not because they hurt me in any way. Denial is the best self preservation tool there is.  
    Our homeroom teacher read the daily announcements to us, handed out our schedules, and sent us on our way, but not before throwing another bitter glare my way. I breezed right past him, pretending I couldn't even see him. I tried to put the entire thing out of my head, tried to ignore that every time I closed my eyes, I could see those words, like they were etched into my brain instead of my desk. It would be pointless to get worked up about it anyway, I knew from previous experience that my desk would be replaced by tomorrow and I only had that desk through homeroom and Biology, anyway.   
    But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't shake my bad mood through the rest of the day. My path with Zechs didn't cross until the lunch period, when I passed him on his way to the cafeteria. He was too busy talking to one of his friends, a dark skinned brunette named Bran Mueller that liked to wear sunglasses all the time, to notice me. Bran was shorter than Zechs, taller than me by just three inches, and was just as brutal as Zechs was. I stayed away from the lot of them.   
    I hoped that this year, I wouldn't be in any of the same classes with any of them and could minimize my exposure to Zechs. I had managed to get a single year free of him in middle school when he had finally graduated to high school and this should have been his last year with us, but as usual, the universe really doesn't like me. Zechs flunked out of three of his classes last year after a record round of playing hooky and not doing most of his homework and ended up in our grade.   
    If I had thought he had been bad before, ending up in the same grade as his sister had made him an absolute monster. I don't know who I felt worse for, myself and all the other people who had to deal with Zechs for another year, or his parents who had not really done anything wrong by him, but now had their nineteen year old son still being a Junior in high school. Being held back would have made a lot of kids rethink their priorities, but Zechs still had that superior attitude of his that made him just not give a shit about anything but slacking off, hanging out with his equally shitty friends, and beating up anyone who dared point out his problems. At least Relena got good grades.   
    She hadn't really tried anything besides the desk thing all day, either. She was too busy gossiping with the rest of the female population of the school about some new transfer student we were getting in a couple of months. He was supposedly some hotshot, star baseball player from some Southern state whose father was an award winning psychiatrist or something like that. It didn't hurt that, according the girls, who had looked him up on the internet through his previous school's yearbook, incredibly good looking. I could almost feel bad for the guy. The second he stepped into this school, he was going to get mobbed.   
    I took the lunch I had made for myself and went to the third floor of the school, sneaking past any teachers that might have yelled at me for not being in the cafeteria. The third floor of the high school was where all of the art rooms were; the photo lab, computer design lab, watercolors, and a few others. I could hear a few lectures going on, but got to the stairwell without being seen.     There was a little set of stairs next to the computer design lab that led up to a studio-type room. In previous years, painting classes and clubs used to meet up there. It was a really nice, cozy room that always managed to catch the right amount of light in the day time that you never needed to turn on the overhead lights. There were couches and chairs and even a table and a leftover radio from when the painting club had been doing projects on still-lifes.   
    Normally, there would be a class up there during that time of day for the underclassman, but no one uses it anymore since it came to light last year that the teacher in charge of the painting club had been taking one of his female students up there after school hours for a little... 'private lesson'. The teacher had been fired, the student transferred to a different school, and the room locked off so no one else could go up there for some alone time that wasn't so alone.   
    Which, of course, was exactly why I liked going up there. Not even teachers went up into that room anymore, just the janitors at the end of the day. And why would they? The door was kept locked. That thought almost made me laugh. Sure enough, when I got up to the door, it was locked tight like it always was. Of course, the lock itself was nothing special; it was an old turn style lock that had probably been purchased at the lowest cost to the school possible. There wasn't even a secondary lock or a deadbolt. The first time I had come up here, I had looked at it with disdain. Of course, this wasn't like the computer lab where there were things the school didn't want students to make off with.  
    I fished a pen out of my bag, unscrewed the top of it and took out the ink cartridge, feeding into the lock. The very first time I had attempted this, I had broken the cartridge and gotten ink all over my hands, but I was used to doing this now. It took a couple of tries, but with a few twists of the cartridge, I was able to get the door open and my pen put back together. One of my coworkers at the factory, Solo, is a convict out on probation for theft and car assault. Picking locks to him was like turning on a light switch for anyone else, and one day when some genius had locked the equipment room on us and had lost the key, he had shown me how to pick a door lock.   
    Picking the studio door was really the only time I had used that knowledge. I still hadn't figured out how to do the same thing to the front door of my house when my father locks me out, but Solo promised me that one day he would show me that, too. I had repaid him for his knowledge by making him some gingerbread cookies from scratch, his one weakness. He even teased that if I kept making sweets for him, he would teach me how to steal a car one day, but I recognized it for the joke that it was.   
    A lot of the guys that I work with at the factory don't like me very much. Half of them are like Solo and are working at the only place that would hire them straight out of prison or juvenile hall and refuse to speak to me because I'm a cop's kid. The other half just resent me because I'm too young to be doing that job and could be working at a grocery store or something, but my father had pulled strings for me. Solo is the only one there that not only will talk to me, but seems to enjoy my company. That my father is a police officer doesn't faze him that much. I think he realized early on that I'm not exactly the type to go running to daddy because of some off color jokes or because he had taught me a few... helpful skills.  
    The room was exactly like how I had left it on the last day of school. I debated sitting on the couch or the table to eat, but decided against both when I saw the thick beam of sunlight coming through the sky light. I dragged a few pillows onto the ground where the sun was hitting and sat down. Although it was only early September and Summer was still technically with us, it had been unseasonably cold the last couple of days and the sunlight was wonderfully warm. I wanted to pretend that I was a lizard and just lay down and bask in it. I have never liked the cold very much.   
    I was halfway into my chicken sandwich when the door opened behind me. I knew from the sound of the person's footsteps that it wasn't a teacher, but I didn't relax until I heard the door close again and lock.  
    "Up here again?" Trowa asked as he sat down next to me with his own brown paper bag in hand.  
    "Didn't feel like dealing with Zechs today," I confessed, "and it's too cold still to eat outside."  
    "You're going to get caught one of these days," he said, taking out various foodstuffs from his bag.  
    I just shrugged at him. I went up there a bit too much, that was true, but it was better than being in the loud cafeteria. I almost shot back that if he was that worried about getting caught, why join me at all, but I was happy that he did. He didn't do it that often, he was too cautious for that. I disappeared during lunch quite a bit, so our classmates were used to that, but if he started doing it, too, someone was bound to notice eventually. He usually met me there just once every two weeks, if that.   
    Trowa pulled something wrapped in tin foil out of his bag, opened it, and wrinkled his nose in distaste. I glanced at it and shook my head in amusement. It was another one of his mother's egg salad sandwiches. Trowa hated them and I didn't really blame him. She always used too much onions and mayonnaise, something that Trowa didn't like that much even in small doses, and not nearly enough eggs. She didn't even put any pepper or radishes in it like I did, though I could see a few pieces of chives sprinkled here and there.   
    I took a second sandwich out of my bag and gave it to him. He quirked an amused eyebrow at me, but took my sandwich, handing me his. His entire face lit up when he unwrapped it and saw that it was roast beef. I had taken some of my allowance money and bought some on the deli because they had had a sale, using half for the sandwich and half for another that I gave my father. I had packed it in his lunch yesterday and when he had come home last night, he had said 'thanks, kiddo.'   
    I wouldn't tell a single person how that light praise had made me feel stupidly warm and happy inside. Both my father and Trowa the roast beef sandwiches I make. I always make up for the cheap roast beef I have to buy by layering the sandwich with onions, sour cream, mayonnaise in my father's, horseradish if I can find any in our fridge, tomatoes, and just a little bit of lemon juice, pepper, and vinegar. I don't get to make them often, but it always puts both of them in a good mood. I had packed the extra sandwich that day in hopes that I would be able to see Trowa and give it to him. If not, I would just have it for dinner later.   
    "Thanks, Duo," my boyfriend said earnestly and took a huge bite out of the sandwich, making a content noise as he chewed on it.  
    "No problem," I tried as hard as I could, but I just couldn't manage to stop the sappy and moronic smile that broke out on my face.   
    I felt that same warmth in my chest, that same happiness over something so small and I wanted to slap myself for it. It was just a fucking sandwich. I mean, didn't everyone pack lunches for their boyfriends? It had just been a bit of luck that I had made it on a day that Trowa had wanted to seek me out anyway...  
    I took a bite of his egg salad sandwich and winced. Yeah, Mrs. Barton was not what one might call a good cook. Or even a mediocre one. There were maybe half of the eggs in it that you were supposed to use and way too much mayonnaise. There was a lot of onion in it, too, the same mistakes she made every single time, but I liked red onions, so I didn't mind that.   
    I dug a packet of pepper out of my backpack, a trophy from the pizza joint, and sprinkled it over the sandwich before taking another bite. It made it slightly better. It needed more chives, too. If I were any kind of picky eater, I would thrown the whole thing in the trash, but I'm not and was of the mind that any free food was good food.   
    Trowa made a face at me as I polished off the sandwich. I wasn't a fan of mayonnaise, either, especially not that much of it, but it was thick and filling on top of the chicken sandwich I had already eaten. I guzzled the entirety of the water bottle I had brought with me to get the taste of mayonnaise and onion out of my mouth and when Trowa handed me a couple of chocolate chip cookies from his lunch, I gladly ate those, too. They were store bought.   
    "You're like a bottomless pit," he said with an amused chuckle that was quite pleasant sounding, "Is there anything you won't eat?"  
    "Anchovies," I said, only partially joking, and shuddered.   
    The way things at home were going lately, I never really knew if there was going to be food in the fridge when I opened it, or that my dad would be in a sour enough mood to refuse to let me eat. As he was so fond of saying if he was drunk or in such a mood, 'Why the fuck should I just give you the food _my_ hard earned money bought me? What have you done for me lately that's so great?' So, I wasn't going to turn my nose up on anything that was given to me.   
    However, that being said, I am not so pathetic that I'll eat something as disgusting as anchovies. Not only are they oily and weird, they just... stare up at you. I'm not a bleeding heart vegetarian. I like animals. I'll be the first to try to pet a cat I see on the street and I'm not such a hard ass that I can't admit I feel a bit... sad when I see lost pet posters. I even feel bad for chickens and cows, but I still like eating meat. Still, the thought of what I'm eating looking up at me with dead, unseeing eyes freaks me out. Anchovies are definitely some of the only food I absolutely refuse to swallow. Even a half eaten burger fished out of someone's trash would be preferable.   
    "Can you stay for awhile?" I asked him timidly, "Or do you have to rush back to class? My Home Ec class is free reading period for the rest of week. Ms. Schbeiker had some kind of family emergency and they couldn't find a sub on short notice."  
    He smiled at me. The kind of soft and affectionate smile that reminded me why I liked spending time with him.  
    "I just have Gym. I can play hooky for a bit, it's only the first day of school, after all," he said and lightly touched my hand.  
    I felt guilty that I could convince to skip class so easily, but the twinge was small. Trowa was practically an adult now and could make his own choices. Plus, he was right, it was only gym and it was the first day of school. And he was a Senior. Teachers seemed to be of the opinion that when you became a Senior, anything wrong you did became not their problem anymore since you were going to graduate.   
    A sharp depression came over me at that thought. Trowa was a Senior. That meant that next year, he would be going off to college. Specifically, he would be going to the Carning Institute of Science in Hope. It was the closest college to us, and a fairly small one at that. It was a good school and while I have no doubt that Trowa could have gotten into a better one with his grades, his quitting basketball had kind of screwed his chances of getting into a really _great_ college. Carning was the best choice for him since it had the kinds of classes that he was interested in taking, whether his father approved or not, and it was close by enough that his parents wouldn't have to pay for meal plans or lodging for him. While they were much better off than my own fucked up family, they weren't rich and Trowa hadn't qualified for any scholarships.   
    Even though he wasn't going across the country for school and would be commuting to and from Nausten, I knew the reality of the situation. I was going to have the rest of my Junior year and the Summer with him, and then it would be an outright miracle if I would see him for more than a few days a year during holidays and the Summer. We didn't see each other that much as it was and while a part of me would be relieved, that part of me that was chicken shit and reared its ugly head whenever Trowa touched me someplace I wasn't comfortable with, mostly? I was going to miss him.   
    I was going to miss moments like this where we were just hanging out together, no pressure to do anything more than touch or kiss lightly, if we dared. I was going to miss talking with him. I was going to miss talking with _someone_ , because I knew that when Trowa left, that was it for me. There was no one else. Trowa was all I had. That I would end up back in the grey void that had nearly swallowed me whole after Quatre's death terrified me. Maybe I didn't want to be around people, to have the kind of connection I had once had with Quatre with anyone, and maybe I didn't even like anyone besides Trowa, but I hated being alone even more than I hated all the people I was forced to go to school with.  
    I laid down on the pillows, placing my hands on my stomach, and looked up through the sky light. It was truly a beautiful day out. The sky was cloudless and I could see blue for what seemed like an eternity, broken only by the occasional bird. I felt Trowa wrap his hand around mine and looked over at him. He was lying next to me on his side, staring at me with that heat in his eyes again. For once, I didn't feel fear of him. We were at school, there was no way he would try anything here, right?   
    Instead, for the first time, I just examined his face and didn't let my anxieties make me turn away from him or try to guard myself. That heated, lustful look made him look so... adult and handsome. I hadn't realized it before. I felt a strong affection for him then and a sort of pride. Even if I didn't love him and even if he didn't love me, he was still my boyfriend and I liked the thought of that. I rolled off the pillows and pressed myself against him, letting his arm curl around my back as I let my head rest against his chest.  
    We had never really... snuggled before, and I wasn't sure what had possessed me to take that step, there was just something about the combination of my full stomach, the pleasant warmth of where we were laying, and his expression that got to me. It somehow seemed more intimate to me than kissing or him putting his hand on my bare stomach. But I wasn't frightened of that kind of closeness.   
    It was nice, laying against him, feeling his heart beat. I had never done something like this before, had never gotten this physically close to another person before, not even Quatre. But it just felt so good to me, like some barrier in me was coming down for just a fraction of a second. It felt so good that when Trowa moved his body down mine until we were face to face and pressed his lips against my throat, I didn't even protest.   
    He had never kissed me there before, another first. I felt those cool lips move against my fragile skin and shivered when he nipped me a little, not even caring about the possibility that he might have left a mark. I felt his other hand caress my chest, those deft fingers daring to rub against one of my nipples through my shirt. I breathed sharply at the weird feeling of anyone touching me there, how sensitive it made my nipple feel. My heart fluttered and I could feel that familiar anxiety and fear cresting in me. But then that hand simply held mine again and I relaxed. Why did I like him holding my hand so much when I was so scared of him touching me other places? It made no sense to me.  
    I heard the sound of a zipper being pulled down suddenly and felt confused, because Trowa was definitely not touching my jeans. But then he was pressing his lips to mine and kissing me in this intense, forceful way that sent chills right threw me and that was all I could concentrate on. Right until I felt his grip on my hand become more purposeful and he slid it into his open jeans.   
    I blinked my eyes open, startled to feel the smooth material of his underwear and the smoldering look in his green eyes nearly knocked the breath right out of me.  
    "Trowa... what are you doing?" I could keep the fear out of my voice, "Stop..."  
    "Sssh," he soothed, his face flush with excitement, "I won't touch you... I'll be real slow, Duo, I promise..."  
    Before I could ask him what he was talking about, he had my hand under his briefs and he forced my fingers to close against his member. My eyes went huge, like an owl's as I realized what it was that I was grasping in my hand and I think I might have gasped and not in a good way. I jerked my hand away, but his grip on me was like iron and the reflex only had him giving out a soft, happy moan. I realized rather quickly why he was moaning and felt sick to my stomach.  
    He was... warm. Warmer than I had ever thought he would be. I had never touched an erect penis before. It was so strange. Hot and hard, but soft and wet. I know what pre-cum is, I had to go to the same sexual education classes as everyone else in my grade, but for some reason, feeling that wetness and fullness shocked me, just the idea that Trowa Barton was hard for _me_. His grip on my hand forced me to draw my fingers tighter around him. I could feel his heart beat. I could actually _feel_ it, through the veins in his penis. His heart was racing so fast. Or maybe that was my own thundering heart. It was so intense, that realization, so _intimate_ and made me feel raw with emotion. The emotional centers in my brain, however, could not decide to be more frightened or more in awe in that moment.   
    But just like all the last time that my boyfriend had tried to advance our relationship like this, the fear won out and I panicked. And isn't it just pathetic that all I could think about in that moment, besides how freaking fast my heart was pounding in my ears, was how inadequate I was. I had touched another boy's cock for the first time in my life.   
    It had not been... horrible. Frightening, yes, because of the things it might lead to. But it had also been interesting to me, and I had kind of liked how Trowa had felt in my hand. But the fear I felt wasn't just of sex. I was scared because after everything... after him kissing my neck, something that I had enjoyed, and after touching _him_ , I didn't feel anything. In my own jeans, my own dick was as flaccid as it had been my entire life. Touching him and feeling how hard he had been only made me remember the day that I had tried to jack off to pictures of naked women.   
    Well, I was very slowly coming to terms with the fact that I like guys. I was touching a guy in a very private place. So shouldn't that excite me... down there? Shouldn't I feel _something_? The fear that I might never know what it feels like to want, to feel myself grow hard like that and desire another boy like Trowa obviously did was overpowering me. But the fear that my boyfriend would realize how hollow I was, how much of a freak I was, was even worse.   
    "Dammit, Trowa, stop it!" I cried out, but there wasn't an inch of anger in my tone. Only fear and desperation and I hated myself for it.   
    I successfully managed to wrench my wrist out of his grasp and out of his pants and pushed away from him like my life depended on it. He stared at me in shock, that pleasing blush still on his face. He looked like I had effectively dumped ice water on him, or I had woken him up from a truly wonderful dream. And just like that, he exploded in this flurry of action, practically shoving me away, jumping to his feet, and running his fingers frantically threw his hair.  
    "What the fuck is wrong with you?!" he snarled at me, pacing like some kind of wild animal.  
    I flinched, the image he presented to me was a mirror reflection of my father when he got into one of his rages. The only thing that was missing was a beer bottle and broken furniture. I sat up quickly, ready to defend myself if I had to. I couldn't really imagine Trowa hurting me out of anger, the move was just reflex. Even so, the pure rage on his face scared me. I tried to recall what that same face had looked like before and how I had found it handsome, but in my panic, I couldn't remember it.   
    "Do you get off on this?!" he hissed at me, "Or is this a big joke to you?!"  
    "I am not getting off on anything!" I protested in desperation and almost cringed at just how literal that was, "Trowa, I can't-"  
    "Can't _**what**_?!" he roared and I was starting to get worried that someone could hear him, hoping that we were far away from any classrooms for our voices to carry. Well, his voice since he was the only one yelling.  
    He suddenly laughed and it was the most horrible sound I had heard, with the only exception of hearing the sound of Quatre's body hitting the train, which might have only been in my imagination.  
    "Can't let your boyfriend _touch_ you?! Am I repulsive to you or something?! Or are you planning to live your entire life a virgin?!" he strode up to me and for a moment I really did think he was going to strike me, he was that furious. I felt my eyes go wide with shock again and I pushed back from him, but didn't dare get to my feet, "You're sixteen years old, Duo! You aren't a child and you sure as hell some pure, blushing fourteen year old girl! You're nearly an adult! What exactly are you saving yourself for?" he asked me with this completely snide sneer that made my stomach curl, "Do you think you're some prime lay? You?! Do you think some knight on a white horse is going to come by and fuck a piece of white trash like you?! You're lucky you even _have_ anyone willing to nail someone as dull and unwanted as you, and you have the gall to act so superior?! What is so fucking special about you, Duo, that you think that you can do better than me?!"  
    He was like a hurricane of pure rage, hatred, and meanness and I really was surprised that he didn't start throwing things or hit me. He was unable to contain it anymore, or he had enough sense to realize that he was getting close to doing a lot more than yelling at me, and he stormed out of the room, slamming the door so hard that it actually rattled the walls a little. All I could do was stare after him in complete and total shock, unsure of what I had just seen. I was very distantly aware that I was shaking. I couldn't tell you what from. Fear, shock, or just plain _hurt_.  
    I wasn't angry at him for the things that he had said to me. I would be, the next day, but right then? I just felt like I had been blown apart and no one had bothered to put me back together. I can't even say what, exactly, had hurt me. I felt like a hit and run victim, one minute just walking along, totally unaware, and then next struck and left bleeding and broken.   
    I couldn't get my mind around what happened, his fury at me for not letting him do what he had wanted. I realized how complacent I had been. I had thought his not trying anything with me had meant that he understood not to push me. I could have laughed at how stupid I was. It wasn't like we had talked about it or I had admitted my shyness to him.   
    I guess I should have been angry. What he had done, making me touch him, was a bit... I wouldn't call it wrong, but disrespectful? I think I had understood what he had been trying to do, that he had thought it would have been easier for me to touch him instead of him touch me. I guess someone else would have found it sweet, but I didn't. I couldn't. All I could think of was his hand around mine, forcing me to touch him and how it had made me feel.   
    I tried, really, I did, but the rage wouldn't come. I played his words over and over in my head so many times that even if I didn't have this irritating, memory quirk, I would have remembered those exact words for the rest of my life. I relived that hurt, letting that knife stab into my heart over and over, and still, I didn't feel mad. I felt pain, I felt sadness, I felt depression, and yes, I did feel anger. But not at Trowa. At me.   
    He had tried to ease me into it and I had thrown it back in his face. And now... now Trowa thought that I didn't want to have sex with him because I thought I was better than he was? How could he think that? I should have felt betrayed at him calling me trash, but all I felt was that I had betrayed him. He had just wanted me to touch him and wasn't that my job in this stupid relationship? I was nothing but a cock tease. I deserved everything he had screamed at me.   
    He deserved better than me. He deserved someone who wasn't broken inside, someone who could love him and have sex with him without constantly pushing him away. He deserved Quatre. And he had gotten me. I wrapped my arms around my legs and buried my head in my knees. I was going to lose him. The only thing I had left before I would be completely alone again, and because of my fears and childishness, I was going to lose him. I couldn't hold on to Quatre because I had been selfish, and now I was going to lose Trowa.   
    I could stop it. If I had the courage and I wasn't sure that I did. I didn't want him to go. I remembered how good it had felt laying in his arms before things had gotten too intense for me. Why couldn't I have that? That was all I wanted, just to be close to someone who cared about me again. But I had pushed him away. What sort of person did something like that? I didn't want to be alone again. I didn't want to let Trowa or Quatre down. I didn't want to have sex just to keep him... but I couldn't have all of those things, could I?  
    In the warm sunlight, I trembled. I felt so cold and empty. I wanted him to come back and let me lay against him again, but I knew that he wouldn't. He probably would never come back again. I sure as hell didn't expect him to. It was what I deserved for stringing him along like this.   
    The next period came and went before I found the strength to stand back up. I cleaned up my mess and walked back down to my next class. I think my teacher yelled at me for being tardy. I didn't hear it. Zechs could have walked right up to me and punched me in the face and I wouldn't have felt it. There were so many thoughts and awful feelings swirling around in me, it's a miracle I didn't start screaming right there in class.   
    The more time passed, the worse I felt. Trowa's words and that enraged look on his face sunk deep into me and took root instead of dispersing with time. By the time school let out, I had a pounding headache, was so sick to my stomach that all it would have taken was a sight of a nearby toilet to get me to hurl, and a deep tangle of self-hatred and depression.   
    I couldn't even shake it off at work. I think Sal realized there was something wrong. For once, he refused to let me answer the phones, make the food, or interact with any customers, instead sticking me out back to do inventory. I must have looked especially pathetic and quite like a whipped dog because he told me to go home an hour before my shift ended and clapped me on the back on my way out. I barely noticed, I was so submerged in my fog of confusing thoughts and anxiety.   
    I went to the beach. Usually, a long walk down by the surf helped calm me down and I hoped that the peace and quiet would make me feel better, but it was too cold and I felt too tired and too down to feel any enjoyment there like I usually did, so I went home. I opened the door and almost tripped over an empty beer can. There was a trash bag with a rip in it by the door that it had obviously come out of. I nudged the bag with my foot and saw through the tear that nearly the whole thing was filled with beer cans. For some reason, that caused a wave of frustration and misery to swell up in me. I wanted to take that entire bag and just throw it's contents all over the stupid house.  
    "The toilet's clogged," my father said gruffly when I walked into the kitchen, "You'd better fix it before I need to use it."  
    The sight of him there, nursing another can of beer disgusted me. It actually repulsed me. I felt my depression squirm in me and I just couldn't handle it. I couldn't handle _him_ on top of everything else that I had had to deal with that day. I walked right past him and fished a bottle of water out of the fridge.   
    "And take the damned trash out," he barked at me, "It's overflowing. I give you a handful of things to do in this shit hole and you can't even get them done. I bust my ass all day to put food on this table and you can't even take out the goddamned-"  
    "Why don't you just _shut the **fuck** up_ already?!" I whirled and snarled at him.  
    My rage at him lasted all of a second before his cold, measured stare filtered into my head and I realized what I had just said to him. I was running as he stood up from the chair so fast that it fell over. I don't know why I bothered. I'm fast, but my father has a long stride, and he was too close to me for me to have any chance of outrunning him. Even if I had, there was nowhere for me to go. Every room in this house was a death trap waiting for me, and I knew that if I tried to make it to the front door, I would either trip over the trash bag or get caught opening the door.   
    But still, I ran. I think got five steps before I felt that strong, familiar hand grab and twist my braid, pulling me down like a crocodile with a grip on a zebra. It was a pure miracle that I didn't hit my head on the hard floor. Still, when I felt my shoulder blades impact on the hard surface, I felt the breath go out of me. I felt my hip hit something, though I don't know what. It felt like the edge of a wall or table.   
    "What the fuck did you just say to me, you piece of shit?!" he snarled at me.   
    I thought of Trowa. He had had the same look of hate and rage in his eyes for me, too. I wondered for a second what was so ugly, so horrible in me that made me so hateful.   
    I was expecting a punch, had braced myself for one, not for those large, rough hands of his to wrap around my throat and squeeze. I stared up at him, but I just couldn't handle looking into those grey eyes, like hard stones, glazed over from drink. Even though he was strangling the life out of me, I had to look away.     Somewhere far away from me, far away from my horror and betrayal, I realized that he was yelling something at me, but I couldn't hear him through the red haze. His breath washed over me, hot and thick with the smell of beer so potent, I thought I might throw up and die, choking on vomit. No, I thought as an entire half a minute passed, I was going to be strangled to death instead.   
    Terror consumed me and I kicked at him and clawed useless at his wrists and arms, the sound of my attempts to draw breath were terrible. Black spots were intruding on my vision. He had done a lot of things to me in anger, but never this. He was going to kill me, I realized with clarity. And suddenly, when I wanted them the most, all those thoughts about how he was my father, my daddy, and no matter how mad he got, no matter how drunk he got, he would never actually try to hurt me like this, abandoned me.  
    It's strange, three years before, I had tried to kill myself. But there I was, about to die, and not only was I fighting for life, I didn't think of Quatre once. Just when I thought I was going to black out, he let go of my neck. On pure instinct, I gasped frantically for breath. The feeling of air rushing down my throat was the most beautiful thing in the world. Through the hacking gasps and dry coughs, I heard my father say,   
    "You're not fucking worth it."  
    Then he got up and left me there, lying on the floor, breathing air through burning lungs. He probably wanted to return to his beer. I don't think he had his hands for more than a minute. It had felt like an hour.   
    When I had gotten enough air into me that had assured me that I wasn't going to die, but I probably wasn't going to be saying much for the rest of the night, I rolled onto my side, wincing in pain as my weight rested on my injured hip, and staggered to my feet like a zombie. The room swayed and I felt that urge to throw up again, but I was too scared that I might not be able to. My throat felt like a collapsed tube, even as I was breathing hard through it.  
    I staggered into the bathroom on legs that were more liquid than solid and threw on the light. I wish that I hadn't as my reflection greeted me. I was white as a sheet, my eyes red and irritated, but none of the blood vessels were broken, so I guess that, despite my fear, my father hadn't grabbed my throat as hard or as long as I had thought. That fact brought me zero comfort.   
    My neck looked especially wonderful, dark red and already starting to bruise black. The bruises formed the shape of my father's fingers. I could count them. I touched them lightly with my own fingers, seeing how much smaller my hands were still compared to his. It hurt, but the physical pain of what my father had just done in one of his common fits of rage, over something so small and insignificant, didn't even touch me. My heart hurt too much to feel anything else.   
   _"You're not fucking worth it."_  
    My breath hitched and I thought I might cry then, but the tears just wouldn't come. I wasn't worth it. I wasn't even worth killing. Or maybe I just wasn't worth his time. I felt that cold again, a chill deep inside and an emptiness that seemed to run right through every inch of me. What was I worth? Was I even worth Trowa's time, his effort for companionship? Was I worth the money that my parents spent on me, the time my teacher's spent on me?   
    In the mirror, my gaze became a glare. What is the point of you, I wanted to ask my reflection, just what is the fucking point of the air you breathe?   
     _"Do you think you're some prime lay? You?! Do you think some knight on a white horse is going to come by and fuck a piece of white trash like you?! You're lucky you even have anyone willing to nail someone as dull and unwanted as you, and you have the gall to act so superior?! What is so fucking special about you, Duo, that you think that you can do better than me?!"_  
    Trash. They thought I was trash. My father's voice in my head. Trowa's voice in my head.  
   _'You think you're anything special? Ha! Get something straight, Duo. The only reason why I send you to school is to get you out of my sight. You're trash and that's all you'll ever be, so get used to it."_  
 _"... a piece of white trash like you?!"_  
    I wondered which one hurt the most and which one hurt less.   
    "I know," I said to my reflection, "... I know."  
  
  
End Part 3  
  
I want to thank all of the lovely people on fictionpress, fanfiction.net, and archive of our own for their reviews. Because of you, this part got out a whooooole lot faster than it would have. I'm not saying I'm the kind of jerk author who holds stories hostage for reviews, but hearing from people who like this story makes me write faster, lol. You guys are awesome.  
  
Also, check my livejournal: thegrackelknows for more frequent updates. I'm going to be adding the GW version of things now. I also have a song list for this story if anyone is into this kind of thing.  
  
Still open for betas, if anyone is interested, even though every time I take one on, they disappear on me :\


	18. Chapter 4 Part 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Duo and Trowa finally talk about their intimacy issues, will Duo make a choice about their relationship that he'll regret?

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 4  
Part 4  
  
  
    That first week of September, I caught a glimpse of what the rest of my life is going to be like. I suppose that sounds pretty melodramatic. I mean, it isn't like I'm not accustomed to loneliness. I spent the first nine years of my life lonely, although not the kind of loneliness I had felt after Quatre's death. Back then, my father hadn't been as volatile and frightening as he is now and his presence had still been something of a comfort. And I had spent that year and a half after Quatre's suicide without a single person to help me through it.   
    But, and this is going to sound strange, that time had felt very different to me. I'm not even sure how. I was just so swallowed up in my misery of missing him. Sure, I had realized how terrible it was going to be not having a friend, not having a single person to talk to, but it had taken me months to actually feel that emptiness instead of the pain of missing _him_.  
    Then Trowa had called me out of the blue and had made me forget what it felt like, that nothingness. I mean, sure, we didn't really talk like Quatre and I had, but whenever I had felt stressed about my family or work or I had just wanted to get out of the house for a little while, he had been there. I had had something, one thing that, if I looked at my life and asked myself if there was a point to it, I could say yes, there's Trowa. He made me feel frightened and sad and frustrated, but he also made me happy sometimes. Maybe that sounds like a small thing, but what else did I hate to feel happy about? He made me smile. That seemed worth the fear and hurt.  
    The day following the fight we had had (if you could even really call that a fight), I got that taste of what things would be like without him. I half expected him to call me that previous night to inform me that we were through, that there was no way in Hell that he wanted a wishy-washy boyfriend, that he had meant every word he had said about me being trash, but he didn't. He didn't call me the next day or the day after that and I made no attempt to call him, either. We ignored each other in the hallway like we always had and sometimes it felt like nothing had changed. But I stopped going up to the studio.  
    He was probably so angry with me that he didn't want to see me, but I was paranoid that he did. In some stupid place in my head, I thought that we couldn't break up if he never actually said those words to me, and if we didn't talk to each other, it was no different than the weeks we had gone last semester without saying a word to each other. It didn't mean I would never see him again. Even if he didn't want to break up, and I couldn't understand why he wouldn't, I couldn't face him. I still hadn't managed to muster up any anger at him for the things that he had done and said to me, and I still felt like the entire thing was my fault. I just couldn't deal with my guilt and his rage at the time.  
    I could have resented him for taking my secret lunch spot away from me, but I couldn't find the energy to care about it at the same time that I was driving myself crazy with anxiety over Trowa, constantly turning my issues with sex and intensity around in my head, and wariness over what my father had done. He hadn't apologized to me for trying to strangle me, either, but I hadn't expected him to. I was actually kind of hoping he had been too drunk to remember. It must be nice. I could almost be tempted to drink my problems away, too. I certainly have enough of them...  
    I was just... tired. Really, down to my damned bones, tired. And not just emotionally, either. I haven't slept well since Quatre died, but after the night my father had choked me, it got worse. I kept having this nightmare. It was different than the one I have about Quatre; it was more muddled and felt a lot more like a typical dream. It was exactly the same, every time I had it.  
    I am lying on the floor of the train platform with someone on top of me. I can't see who it is and every single time, my dream self assumes it is my dad. Whoever it is is bigger than me and holds me down so I can't move. Then, he starts hitting me, over and over until every part of me is broken. Only it isn't my father, like it usually is when I have dreams of getting beaten to death, this time it's Trowa. And the second that I realize that, he has a knife and stabs me in my groin and makes that soft moan he had given out when he had made me touch him.  
    He keeps stabbing me and I gasp for air, only it's blood that I'm sucking in and I choke on it. Then, after this seems to go on for hours, he'll stop and say,  
    "Thanks, but I don't need you anymore," and he'll drag me to the train tracks and every single night, he throws me in front of the train.   
    Every time I had this nightmare, I would wake up panting and gasping like I couldn't breathe, shaking like some dumb kid that had just dreamed that they had gotten eaten by a monster. The third time I had had it, it had been exactly the same dream, the only different was that the person stabbing me and moaning and telling me that I wasn't needed anymore was my father. That time, I woke up with a chill so severe in my gut that I thought I was in shock.  
    But the worst was the thick taste of blood in my mouth and for a solid minute, I had seriously believed that my dream had been real. Then reality had returned and I had realized that I had bitten my tongue in my sleep, hard enough that it would hurt until later that morning. I ran into the bathroom to throw up and told myself that it was just from swallowing my own blood for who even knows how long. The next night, my dream murderer was Trowa again. I was relieved to see him on top of me and pushed away that other incredibly more fucked up dream to never think of it again.  
    By Friday night, I was completely sick of the nightmares and waking up in a cold sweat. I was managing about one to two hours of sleep at a time at that point and I, in my infinite wisdom, had decided that night that since I wasn't really sleeping anyway, I would just stay awake through the night for a little while and hope the dreams would just disappear. I managed two nights without sleep. I staved it off easily enough, reading into the small hours of the morning and then around four I would sneak out of the house and go to the beach. If you walked far enough down the beach, there is this sort of mound of rock and sand that had been formed by the elements so perfectly that it kind of looks like a manmade path or road.   
    The mound makes this long trail about five miles long from the surf right into the ocean. It was nearly shaped like a hill, flat enough to walk on, but it slowly lurched out of the water and then receded right back into it at the end. If you went at low tide, it ended at a ridge that you could sit on and almost have your feet touch the water, but at high tide, it sunk under the waves. I loved running the length of it during that time. It made me feel like I was running to meet the ocean; that if I just kept going, I could run into the sea and have it swallow me up.  
    Saturday and Sunday morning, I ran along that trail until the sun rose and I sat on that ridge and watched the sunset. I was all alone during that time; it was too cold for anyone but the most dedicated joggers to brave the beach. A couple times, I caught myself leaning towards the edge too far and attributed it to my tiredness. Those cold, icy waves really would swallow me whole. I doubted anyone would survive a five mile swim back to the shore in that weather. After watching the sun's reflection gleam off the water for a little while, I would walk home and make myself breakfast.  
    Sleep deprivation is a funny thing. Even though I've been accustomed to it since I was little, even before Quatre died and I started getting those horrible nightmares and restlessness, and my parents' fighting would keep me wide awake or out of anxiety of my father's bad moods or because he would sometimes drag me out of bed out of spite. But I've never gotten used to how it just destroys your sense of time. Sleep isn't just something your body needs; it's a marker of days and the passage of time. You fall asleep one day and wake up the next. It's like the human body's great reset button. Get rid of that, even for a short amount of time like, say, three days, and it starts to fuck with you. You forget what day it is, what time it is. Eventually you stop feeling how tired you are and just feel confusion, like someone spun you around so many times, you can't reorient yourself.  
    Sunday night, I was so exhausted and disoriented; I don't remember my first two work shifts at all. I was an anxious wreck, not eating, forgetting to drink even water, and forgetting _why_ I felt anxious about school the next day. I could remember my fight with Trowa, but I was in a haze and couldn't recall why that fight had anything to do with my stress. I remember going to the beach that morning, blinking at the sunrise and suddenly I was at the factory, throwing empty boxes into the bailer. I only know I went to my other jobs that day because I got paid for them. It's amazing I didn't lose my hand in the bailer at that point.   
    I certainly wasn't surprised when, in my tiredness, I raked a box cutter over my left hand when cutting up some cardboard boxes. I just stared down at the cut for a few minutes, watching the blood drip out of it and unable to comprehend why I was bleeding. The next thing I knew, Solo was wrapping my hand in a towel and yelling at me, telling me that I was a dumb shit for not paying attention to what I was doing.   
    The cut wasn't that bad, but my boss sent me home early anyway. I think how messed up I was had finally filtered into sleep deprived brain at that point, because the first thing I did when I got home was walk right up into my room and throw myself onto my bed. I think I was asleep before I even felt the mattress under me. The nightmare came back, but I slept deeper and longer than I had in a very long time, a grand total of six uninterrupted hours. I haven't slept that well since.   
    Monday night I got a call from my boss at the factory telling me to take a couple days off, fully paid for. Somehow Solo had convinced him that the reason why I had cut myself was that the retract switch on the old blade had jammed. I guess my boss was desperate to cover his ass since, if I insisted on filing a workplace injury report, it would get him into trouble for hiring someone under-aged to work there. I would have to bake Solo a pound of gingerbread cookies to pay him back for that one. While I didn't have much to do beyond work, I hated working at the factory and even just one day away from it was a blessing, let alone two.  
    I spent Monday night in the library courtyard reading and listening to music on the disc player Quatre had given me for my eleventh birthday. I didn't want to let my father know about the two days off, he would make me do chores or go on errands for him. I suppose that sounds incredibly lazy, but I was much happier reading in the lowly lit courtyard all by myself than busting my injured hand up weeding, looking over my father's car which was now dead in our driveway and had been all this week, or fixing the leak in kitchen sink.   
    I went home Tuesday after my shift at the diner with the exact intention of doing that again. I had rented out a bunch of Irish literature from the library and had finished a poetry collection from Keats Monday night. I wanted to grab _Dubliners_ before I snuck back out again and see if I could finish it that night, but the sound of Pat Donovan's voice when I walked through the front door stopped me cold.  
    "No fucking kidding?"  
    "Corroded to hell," my father's voice was gruff and thick, agitated, and it had that mean quality to it that told me that he was not only drunk, but pissed off enough that he was going to be quick to throw a punch if I dared to look at him oddly, "the whole goddamned battery. Fucking thing isn't even two years old and it's already gone to shit!"   
    "You should sue their asses," there was a pause and I knew that Pat was taking a drink.  
    My father snorted.  
    "Who the hell has the time or the money for that?" he growled, "All I know is the flaming car can't even get out of my damned driveway and now I need to pay for a new battery I shouldn't need."  
    There was another lengthy pause. I considered going back out the front door before either of them could spot me. A book wasn't worth a run in with Donovan or my father in the mood that he was in.   
    "Duo, get over here!" my father suddenly bellowed, somehow sounding irritated even though I hadn't said or done anything.   
    I flinched so hard that I hit the back of my head against the wall and was immediately glad that I was too far away from the kitchen for either of them to have seen that. Pat would have jeered at me and called me a pussy. I walked slowly and cautiously into the kitchen like I was walking into a den of tigers, not knowing if something was going to come hurling at my head, like a bottle or an insult. The two of them were sitting at the kitchen table on opposite ends of each other, a few empty, glass bottles sitting on the floor and the both of them had a half and two-thirds empty bottle in hand. They weren't quite as into it as I had feared, but it wouldn't matter with my father has pissed off as he was.   
    "Yeah?" I asked nervously.  
    "Go down to Neely's Auto Shop and get me a new battery," he barked at me.  
    "No-" 'way' was the first thing that popped into my head.  
    Neely's was where Trowa worked and he always had the night shift on Tuesday's, usually by himself as part of the skeleton crew. There was just no way I was going to risk running into him, especially when he might be all alone at the shop. But in a half a second, I saw exactly what would happen to me if I said no to my father. He would throw that almost empty beer bottle at me and beat the shit out of me as Pat watched and jeered. Hell, he would probably even join in.  
    "-problem," I said instead, my sanity returning to me.   
    While I didn't want to see Trowa, my fear of talking to him didn't trump the fear of my father.   
    "Yeah, shithead," Pat sneered at me with raw contempt, "Why don't you make yourself useful for once?"  
    My father snorted derisively.   
    "It's about all he's useful for."  
    That dream I had had with him in it, the one that I had resolved to never think about again, came to me and I had to turn away from the both of them quickly so they wouldn't see the hurt in my eyes. That it was the truth only made that hurt deeper.   
    "Uh... what kind of battery do you need?" I asked, my heart racing in my chest, worried that my father was going to get irritated with me.  
    Pat roared with laughter.  
    "You don't even know what kind of battery your father's car needs?! I bet he doesn't even know where the engine is!" he sobered and gave me this kind of mean leer, "But then again, I wouldn't expect a little pansy bitch like you to know anything about a car. I feel sorry for you, Nathan. No sports, doesn't know shit about cars... your only kid and he's turning more into a fag by the day."  
    At my sides, my hands curled into tight fists. I wanted to slam them into Pat's sleazy, smirking face. My stomach churned unpleasantly and I felt this thick, murky anxiety submerge me. It was so volatile that I really thought I was going to throw up. I didn't know what I felt more, the hurt or my rage. I wanted to scream at Donovan, 'At least I'm not so pathetic that I have to bum drinks off my friend because I lost my job. At least I have a damned job. At least I don't have to rely on a woman I have no respect for to pay the fucking bills. If you're such a great, macho _prick_ of a man, why don't you provide for your goddamned family instead of tormenting mine?!' But I valued my ability to breathe and walk at the same time too much to let a single one of those words leave my lips.  
    My father didn't say a single thing about what his friend had said to me. He didn't look amused by it, but he didn't bother trying to defend me, either. He just pointed to where there was a small pile of bills and a piece of paper on the kitchen counter. I went to it, happy to put Pat's obnoxious face to my back.   
    Why did it hurt so much? Why did I let that sexist, alcoholic pig get to me so much? And why did it bother me this badly when my father agreed with the awful things he said to me and Mom or never told him to cut it out? Pat was just a mean, vindictive bully, just like Zechs was, but his words still cut through me like a knife. They made my hands tremble and it didn't take me all that long to figure out that it was from fear, not anger. He frightened me. In some ways, he frightens me more than my father does, but I don't know why.  
    "Leave it on the kitchen table when you get home tonight," my father ordered me, "I'll switch it out tomorrow."  
    I didn't wait for any further instructions from him or insults from Pat. I grabbed the money and list of battery details and bolted out of there. I would find something else to read that night. But once I was actually free of the two of them, the second I reached the sidewalk, I found myself dragging my heels. The last thing that I had wanted that day was to go to the auto shop.   
    I didn't want to see Trowa and I sure as hell didn't want to talk to him. I was such a fucking coward. I had just been a second away from getting the shit beaten out of me by my father and I was more afraid of facing my boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend. Whatever the hell we were. But what other choice did I have?  
    I would do it as quickly as possible, I told myself as I walked through South Nausten to the town's center where the auto shop was, in and out, just grab the battery and head to the park or something. As drunk as my father had been at the house, I could probably get away with sneaking in before my shift would have ended. No problem. Heck, maybe Trowa wouldn't be there or there would be another customer. No way he would try to have it out with me around witnesses, right?   
    Then I was standing in front of Neely's and I felt my stomach drop. What the hell was wrong with me? It would have been so much easier if Trowa would just beat me up. I could handle that. But the thought of him being angry with me, disappointed with me, just turned my stomach. You would think that I would be as used to disappointing people as I was used to taking a beating. Standing there in front of the shop, hesitating like I was facing off against the maw of some drooling monster, I felt like the biggest wuss on the planet.  
    I stood there for a good five minutes, trying to think of a way out of the situation before I finally grew a pair and walked in, realizing that if I waited for much longer, they were going to close and then my father would kill me. A loud 'ding' sounded as I opened the door, making me flinch and I started to question my sanity. I was getting startled by a fucking door ringer. Why was this so hard? My stomach quivered like I had eaten a dozen live fish as I walked past aisles filled with bottles of oil and various car parts up to the only register in the place. To my immense relief, there was someone standing behind the desk that I didn't recognize.   
    "Hey there," he greeted pleasantly, but after years of working in the diner and pizza place, I easily recognized the irritated look in his eyes that came in all my coworkers' eyes whenever we got a customer so close to closing.  
    "I'm really sorry," I said immediately, not wanting to piss the poor guy off, "My dad sent me here pretty last minute. His car won't start and he needs this battery, but you guys are the only ones open this late," I handed him the piece of paper my father had given me and was gratified to see some of the annoyance leave his eyes, "Do you have one?"  
    The attendant was obviously a full timer and had probably worked there for years, long enough to put his frustration aside and be professional with me, even if I was a teenager. His brown eyes quickly scanned what my father had written down and he nodded.  
    "Yeah, we have this model. I'll have our back room associate grab it for you-," he started to say.  
    I didn't even have a moment to feel the dread in my gut, suspecting who it was that was working in the 'back room' that night before the door behind the register that read 'staff only' opened and Trowa himself walked out. He was wearing a paint stained white shirt and jeans that were in worse shape than mine were and there was a black smear of something across one of his cheeks - having obviously been working on someone's car back there - but he looked just as handsome as he always did. His hair was so mussed, it almost looked like he had just woken up and his attire made him seem so down to earth to me. I was overwhelmed for a second with the urge to kiss him right there in the shop, but my anxiety to see him curbed it.   
    "Rick, you didn't leave the keys in the office-," Trowa said with a slightly annoyed tone before his green eyes fell on me and went wide with shock.  
    "Trowa," Rick said with obvious relief, "You're a lifesaver, man; can you take care of this customer before you lock up? I really need to get going. I swear I'll make it up to you."  
    "No problem," my... whatever said just a bit too quickly and too eagerly, standing behind the register looking like he couldn't believe I was really there.  
    "Wait-" I tried to protest.   
    Bad enough that Trowa would be the one waiting on me, but there was just no way we were going to be alone in this shop together. But neither of them was listening to me.      
    "Thanks, man!" Rick dug a huge key ring out of his pocket and tossed it to Trowa.  
    He caught it deftly, stuffing them into his own pocket. Even when his coworker pushed past him and nearly ran out the door, his eyes didn't leave me. Then it was just the two of us in the entire place and we just stood there, staring at each other, words escaping the both of us. I didn't know whether to laugh at the situation or to cry. I actually considered running out the door the same way Rick had, but my fear of what my father would do to me trumped even my fear of what Trowa was going to say. He managed to get over his shock and found his voice a lot faster than me for once.  
    "Duo," he said in a tone that was so full of sadness and relief that I couldn't stand to hear it.  
    With that one word, all of that anger that I had tried to feel at him came to me so easily. I still felt hurt, but there was this icy layer on contempt on top of it. It had been a week since our fight, but I could still hear his voice in my head calling me trash and demeaning me with every word that he had spoken, boosted by my own feelings of inadequacy and guilt. I couldn't stand that same voice now sounding so soft and compassionate, to see those eyes seek me out with desperation.   
    I hated him for that.   
    I thrust the paper my father had given me at him before he had a chance to say anything else.  
    "I need this," I said to him with a coldness that shocked even me.   
    Trowa's eyes widened again and he looked almost as hurt as I felt, like I had hit him. He gingerly took the paper from me and read the information from it.  
    "I have one downstairs," he said meekly and I thought that he would just go get it, but he paused and glanced up at me, "Look, Duo, I-"  
    "I don't care," I snapped at him, "Just give me the damned battery."  
    He flinched from me and immediately went through the door behind him to get what I needed. I felt bad about snapping at him, but only for a moment. I think that he had hoped that I had come to his shop to talk to him and had just been using the battery as a smokescreen. In that instance before he had gone downstairs, he had looked so disappointed. It was in me to tell him to forget the whole thing. Obviously he felt bad about it, or he was that eager to talk to me. He definitely wasn't mad at me anymore, or if he was, he was willing to move past it. Was I?   
    I was... tired. Tired of being alone, tired of these moments we had where he was mad at me because I wouldn't put out and I was mad at him for being mad at me. I was tired of hurting, tired of always worrying about what my not wanting to be intimate with him meant about me. I didn't know what I want, only that I didn't want to talk about our hang ups and what he had screamed at me. I wanted to forget about it and just go back to how we had been at the beginning - holding hands and just grateful for the other's company. But I couldn't have that without doing what he wanted, too. That wasn't fair to him.   
    I knew, intellectually, why he wanted a relationship with me, what he was using me for. And I knew where he wanted such a relationship to go. I was scared of losing him. Logically, I knew what I had to do to keep him from breaking up with me. Because, really, what else was there about me that could keep him interested? He had said it himself. I was trash, uninteresting trash, and I should consider myself lucky for having him. I did. And he just wanted this one thing from me. So why? Why couldn't I give it to him? Why was I so frightened?   
    It was so tempting to tell him that I wasn't mad and to just push it all away. Maybe we could have what we had had before, after we had fought about this that time in the woods. He would be attentive and affectionate without pushing me, for a while. But I knew that it would always lead us back here. And I didn't want that.   
    I didn't know what the fuck I wanted anymore. Didn't want sex. Didn't want to break up. Didn't want to forgive him. Didn't want to fight. Maybe... maybe walking away from him was the right decision? But was I strong enough to do that?   
    I felt so ridiculous, standing there in the shop, waiting for him to come back. Hadn't I yelled at Quatre once for not walking away from this very same person? And yes, I know that him clinging to a boy he had thought he could never have is different than my clinging to that same boy just because I was lonely, but it was just so stupid to me that I was doing the same thing I had been so frustrated at Quatre with. I hadn't understood why he couldn't do what I had thought was obvious, and it wasn't the same because I didn't feel the kind of love that he had felt, but damn it, I couldn't do what I knew that I needed to do, either. I felt like a hypocrite and a pathetic piece of shit.   
    By the time Trowa came back from the stock room with the car battery in hand, I didn't know who I was angrier at. I kept waffling back and forth between not wanting to forgive him for all the things he had yelled at me and breaking it off with him for good, and telling him it wasn't a big deal and just... continuing on like we had been until the inevitable next time he tried to feel me up. And I was furious at my father for making me do this, but then I realized that if _he_ had gone to pick up the battery, Trowa would have waited on him.   
    Why did that send such a weird chill up my spine, the idea of my boyfriend and my father crossing paths? It made my stomach twist into complete knots of unease and it hadn't even happened. Or had it? Nausten isn't exactly a big town, and Trowa worked at a reputable auto shop. I was sure that he and my father had met at least once in the time that Trowa had worked there. You would think that that would make me feel better, that it had already happened and nothing bad had occurred, but it actually made me feel worse.   
    Trowa rang up the battery and I paid him, just wanting to get out of there as quickly as possible, but I wasn't that lucky.  
    "Duo," he said again with that soft, infuriating tone as he handed me my receipt, "Look, I'm..." he struggled with his words like he often seemed to do when he was upset or didn't want to say what he was going to say.  
    I usually found his verbal hang ups endearing, but watching him flounder with it now made me feel awkward.  
    "...I'm sorry," he finally got out, though it seemed to take a great deal out of him and he flushed darkly, "Those things that I said to you..."  
    "I don't want to talk about it," I said icily, "You said what you said, apologizing for it isn't going to take it back."  
    "I didn't mean any of it!" he protested and there was such  desperation in his voice that it made my heart clench.   
    I wondered where all my anger at him was suddenly coming from when at the moment that he had actually said those terrible things, I hadn't been able to feel it, and if I really couldn't forgive him or if it would just make walking away from him easier. Could I even do that at this point?   
    Trowa looked nervously up at the security camera that dangled from the ceiling above the cash register. I was sure that there was no sound on the cheap thing, but if anyone watched the tape, it would still looked suspicious. Of course that would be his first priority. I was stunned at the bitterness of that thought. I couldn't blame him for that, could I? Since when had I cared that he was so worried about being caught with me?   
    "Please," he begged, "Can't we just talk?"  
    I considered, very seriously, just grabbing the damned battery and walking out of the store, leaving him there - hurt and wondering if we were through. Wasn't that exactly what he had done to me? Not once, but twice? Wasn't it all that he deserved? But that wasn't fair. Did I even deserve my anger, when it was my fault that he had blown up on me to begin with? I hesitated and later, I would hate myself for that weakness, but I just couldn't walk away from him.   
    "Fine," I said in a considerately softer tone than I had taken with him that entire transaction.   
    His expression immediately brightened and I felt pathetic again, though I couldn't say why. Because I had given in to him so easily, or because I had held on to my bitterness as long as I had?   
    "Just give me a moment to lock up," he said and walked to the door to lock it.   
    I leaned against the cash register and watched him as he turned over the 'open' sign and closed the register.   
    "We can talk in here," he told me, opening the 'staff only' door.   
    "Are you allowed to take customers in there?" I asked in concern.  
    "No," he admitted sheepishly, "but I'm alone here tonight. No one will find out."  
    I looked up at the security camera. The last thing I needed was to get Trowa into trouble - or myself, for that matter. I could just imagine Trowa's boss accusing me of stealing something.   
    "No one will check the footage unless there's been an incident," he assured me.   
    I shrugged and followed him through the door. It wasn't like I had anywhere better to be. Trowa led me down a long ramp leading into the garage of the place. There was someone's pickup truck sitting in the bay that had a smashed up bumper and a broken left tail light, and several workstations with various tools strewn on them. There was some thick smell down there - a mix of oil, gasoline, paint, and rubber.   
    The place was so silent, it was almost creepy. Trowa put the ring of keys on one of the workstations and sat down on the pickup's bed, moving over for me but I didn't take him up on it. I didn't want to sit next to him just then. I felt almost vulnerable there in a place that he was obviously very comfortable in. This was his territory, I realized, something that I hadn't been in since the only time I had gone to one of his games. Every place we had been together had been neutral territory.   
    I felt something in the air... a kind of electricity, like something was different and something was going to happen. I didn't know what that something was at the time, but even before it did happen, I felt on edge, not quite scared, but just... twitchy. I stood in front of him, very happy to tower over him for once.   
    "What did you want to talk about?" I asked uneasily.       
    He had apologized to me, but I wasn't naive enough to take that apology as some kind of sign that things were ok between us. He had said that he wanted to talk. That could mean he just wanted to work through our issues, or it could mean that he had wanted the privacy to break up with me. He shifted awkwardly where he sat and I realized that he felt just as uneasy as I did, for the same exact reason.   
    He didn't know where we stood anymore than I did and that made me feel better, more like we were on even level with each other. He was nervous because he thought that I was too mad to want to see him. Maybe he was angry at me for always putting our relationship on ice, but he wanted it to continue. He didn't want to break up with me, I realized, not if there was a chance we could work through things.  
    "I'm sorry," he said again, "for what I said to you last week. I was..." he ran a hand through his messy hair and sighed heavily, "Fuck, but you frustrate me."  
    "I'm sorry," I blurted out and winced as my voice echoed in the wide, open room.   
    "Are you?" he asked softly, not jeering at me, but honestly wanting to know.  
    That bitterness in me tried to well up, that I even needed to apologize to him at all, but I forced it back down.   
    "I am," I said honestly, picking at the hem of my shirt, "I don't mean to frustrate you."  
    "And I didn't mean to say those things to you," he bulled forward, "I was angry and upset and frustrated. I just don't understand what the problem is with you!"  
    His voice twisted up with all those things that he had said he had felt and I immediately felt guilty.   
    "I want more than this," he continued, "I want to be closer to you."  
    "I... I know," I murmured.   
    "Then what is the issue?" he pressed, "Why do you keep pushing me away?"  
    "It makes me uncomfortable!" I confessed.  
    "Being close to me?" he frowned.  
    "Sex!" I snapped at him, not angrily but in exasperation.  
    He shook his head at me.  
    "Duo... goddamn it, but you aren't a kid!" he sounded almost angry and I remembered all the things that he had screamed at me, how I wasn't some blushing virgin and needed to grow up. I couldn't even say that he was wrong, "Are you just going to go through the rest of your life scared of sex? I know you're a virgin, but it's nothing to be frightened of!"  
    "I'm not scared of it," I said weakly, "I just... it just makes me feel uncomfortable."  
    "Are you gay?" he accused me suddenly, "Or is it all bullshit? Do you even _want_ a relationship?"  
    "Of course I do!" I protested, "I agreed to date you, didn't I? I want to be around you."  
    "But you don't want to have sex with me," he said bitterly, "Because you're _uncomfortable_. That's the whole point of being in a relationship, Duo. If you can't even... is there something _wrong_ with you?"  
    He stopped, maybe realizing how close he was getting to the things he had screamed at me before. And really, the things he was saying then were practically the same. The only thing different was the volume of his voice. He had no idea the effect that what he was saying was having on me. Was I gay? I... I still wasn't so sure, because he was right. What good was I to him if I couldn't have sex? And all because I had some hang ups. Of course he was right. I wasn't scared; I was uncomfortable. So what was the problem? If I couldn't have sex with him, didn't that confirm that I wasn't gay?   
    'Is there something wrong with you?' Didn't I ask myself that a thousand times every single day? I didn't want to confess it to him that there might really be something broken in me, that I felt no real urge to have sex ever. I didn't want to think of any of things that he was accusing me of out of frustration. I think I hated him a bit then, for making me feel as insecure as I did. When I had told Quatre, years ago, that I might be asexual, he had told me that there was nothing wrong with me, that I would figure this out eventually. But Trowa wasn't letting me wait, and why should he? I could feel myself shaking and I hated my boyfriend a little then, for not even trying to comfort me.   
    "If... if I can't have sex with you," I asked, refusing to let the fear show in my voice, "are you going to break up with me?"  
    He stared at me, silent and intense and a bit cold. I wanted him to go to me then and hold me and tell me that he cared about me. I wanted him to tell me that he would care for me whether I could give him sex or not. And every second that he didn't was a poisoned dagger in me.   
    "I don't see what the point in a relationship like that would be," he said icily.  
    I could feel something in me cracking. He was going to break up with me. Because I couldn't get over my discomfort, he was going to leave me behind.   
    "I don't know how to give you what you want," I heard myself say in a tiny, broken, desperate whisper.  
    I hadn't meant to say that. I had wanted to yell at him that he was being unfair and just... storm off. That was what I was supposed to do, wasn't it? I didn't want sex. Trowa wanted sex. One of us had to give or we had to break it off. I never should have said that to him, showed him that weakness in me. I didn't really want to surrender, did I?   
    Finally, he reached over and touched me, wrapping my trembling hand in one of his and pulling me over to him. Because he realized what he was doing to me, how his bitterness and frustration and doubts in me were making me break, hurting me so deeply inside that it frightened me? No, I think it was because he heard that surrender in my voice. He knew that he was winning and he could have what he wanted if he just gave me a little push. He could have backed off then and let me gather my strength and resolve back up, but he didn't. He was a lion with a wounded deer in his sight. He pushed.  
    "It doesn't hurt," he promised, "it really doesn't, Duo. You have no reason to feel uncomfortable. It's easy and it feels good. It's a bit scary at first, but then... it's the best feeling in the world."  
    He didn't even need to push that hard. I could feel those cracks in me widening. I wanted to ask him what his first time had been like and who it had been with. Some eager girl, a fan of his? Or had he somehow found another gay boy? Had he had the same confidence he was showing me then, or had he been scared like me? How did he know that it wouldn't hurt - how did he know that it would feel good?   
    I could have pushed him away and just walked out of there, but I felt frozen still, so very cold inside as some part of me realized what was going to happen but didn't have the courtesy to tell the rest of me. And when he rose and pressed his lips insistently to mine, he was so warm that I let him. When he led us to sit on the floor, I let him. I felt like a puppet, a toy that he could maneuver however he liked and I wouldn't so much as protest.  
    Where had all my strength and resolve gone? Where was the person who routinely told his teachers to fuck off? Where was the person that Quatre had always called mature and strong? Why did I suddenly feel like a little child following in his father's much bigger footsteps? And why, despite every voice in my head screaming at me to make him stop, couldn't I find my actual voice, couldn't wake up and tell him to stop? Because that's what it felt like, that I was sleepwalking in a fog.   
    "I'll make it feel good, I promise," he murmured against my neck, nipping my skin lightly with his teeth, "There's nothing for you to feel uncomfortable about."  
    His hands were busy as they slid under my shirt, traveling up my sides and rubbing against my chest. It was actually soothing and familiar at that point. I could feel myself relax as Trowa trailed these little kisses up my neck until he was thoroughly plundering my lips again. I even grabbed at his shoulders and kissed him back, enjoying the feeling of him like that, like he was exploring me, trying to use his warmth and intensity to forget what we had just been talking about.   
    It made him bolder and I gasped a little when his fingers suddenly touched one of my nipples. It was light at first, just a caress, but then he was pinching it, rolling the flesh between his fingers tips and I felt this weird burst of electricity go through me. It was a bizarre sensation and it took a good deal of control to keep from pushing him away from me. Then both of his hands slid back down my chest and I felt him working at the button on my jeans, getting it loose. I felt panic well up in me as I realized what he intended to do. That I didn't kick him was an amazing feat of restraint; instead, I lightly pushed at him until his mouth was off of mine.  
    "No..." I panted, "No, I can't... please don't make me-"  
    I couldn't do this. I couldn't have sex with him. My heart was like a jackhammer in my chest, screaming at me that his hand shouldn't be on the zipper of my jeans the way that it was, and I felt like I was going to vomit at how close I had come to letting him take me too far. His face, flushed from excitement, all at once turned hard and furious, his hands clenching at my jeans like he was going to rip them open.  
    "Goddamn it, Duo, stop being so fucking pathetic!" he snarled at me, "I said I'll make it feel good! If you keep being such a freaking cock tease, you can just go the hell home!"  
    My breath hitched and I knew that he wasn't just telling me to go home. If this didn't happen... and if it didn't happen right _then_ , then that would be it. I had pushed him to the end of his rope and he had pushed me to the edge of my boundaries. I didn't want to do it. I _couldn't_. I was terrified, absolutely terrified and I knew that he knew how frightened I was. But still, he was making me choose: Sex or loneliness. He was going to end it if I didn't... he knew that I didn't want to, so how could he do this to me?   
    I felt tears burning beneath my eyes, but refused to let them even show, let alone fall. I could do this. I could do this. Just this one little thing, then he would stay with me. I was going to throw up.   
    "Please don't do this," I begged him, my voice all rough and vulnerable, "I'll do anything else..."  
    His eyes were so hard and cold, nothing like the boy that I had known three years ago. Nothing like the boy that I had thought I had known.  
    "There's nothing else I want from you."  
    He started to stand up and I grabbed at him, wanting to plead that he not leave, but I still had that one ounce worth of pride left.  
    "Ok! Ok..." I breathed hard, feeling like I had the night that my father had nearly strangled me, like I just couldn't get air into my lungs.  
    With hands shaking so hard, I thought that I was having a seizure, I finished the job that he had started - unzipping my jeans. He was back, pressed flushed against me in a second, his eagerness softening his expression into one that was just as frightening to me as when he had been pissed. He swatted my hands away so he could pull my jeans down my hips. I shifted, lifting my lower body a little so he could get them fully off of me. He eyed my legs appreciatively and I flushed, feeling ridiculous  
    When he reached for my underwear, I almost flinched from him. It's funny, the entire time when I thought about having sex with him, I was just thinking about the actual act. The thought of being naked around another person for the first time in my entire life had never occurred to me and now that it had, I felt like I was going to die of embarrassment. But I was still scared of making him angry and disappointed, so I didn't say a word as he pulled down the grey briefs I was wearing.   
    And then there I was - sitting on the ice cold, cement floor of the auto shop garage wearing nothing but my socks and a long sleeved shirt, crossing my legs to best hide my groin, and wanting to find some discreet, little hole somewhere that I could crawl into to die from shame. I watched Trowa fold up my jeans and underwear and put them on the bed of the truck before returning to me. The fog in my head didn't want to lift as he put his hand on my knee, and I wasn't sure if I wanted it to lift because I was pretty sure that if it did, all I would feel was screaming anxiety. My heart hadn't raced so fast since Quatre had almost gotten hit by that truck.   
    Trowa trailed his hands over my bare legs and the heat in his eyes was more intense than ever before. He slid one hand down my stomach towards my crotch and I felt my stomach plummet to my knees. The fact that he was still fully dressed was making me feel incredibly self-conscious. That questing hand of his made its way between my legs and the feeling of his fingers on my cock was just too much for me. I squeezed my eyes shut and trembled harder, just wanting this whole thing over with.   
    I could feel those long fingers caressing a place that had never been touched like that before and even worse, I could feel that flesh not respond to it at all. Had he noticed yet, I wondered. I dared a glance at him, but he looked enthralled by what he was doing, excited just to touch me. Maybe when I was done being absolutely scared out of my mind, I would have the nerves left to feel flattered by that.   
    I think he expected me to have... some trouble down there with how nervous I was. In a way, feeling him start to stroke me _did_ feel good, but it was all sensation and something was disconnected. There was something missing entirely and my dick refused to harden even a little. Trowa started to lay me down on the ground and I had this moment of terror. I remember thinking 'this is it'. Then my back was touching the ground and I felt this startling pain there. I had completely forgotten about the bruises I had on my back and hip from a week ago. They were faded at that point, but they still ached. I hissed at the feeling and Trowa paused.  
    "What's wrong?" he asked, but his voice lacked all concern, just irritation.  
    "My back is bruised," I confessed.  
    He didn't ask why, though even now I have no clue if he knew what was going on with me at home, but he helped me back up.  
    "Here," he urged, "get on your knees, it'll make it easier."  
    I hadn't thought my face could get much redder, but it certainly felt like it had as I started to get on my knees. As I crouched there, out of the corner of my eye I saw him start to unbutton his own jeans.  
    "Wait," I protested and that rage flared in his eyes again.  
    He, in a move that seemed almost defiant and pissy to me, roughly pulled down his zipper.  
    "What?!" he snapped in exasperation, no doubt thinking that I was trying to back out of this again.  
    "Condoms," I said meekly  
    He sighed loudly.   
    "You've never had sex before and I haven't had it in awhile. It will be fine," he pulled his boxers down a little and I saw his cock, as hard as it could possibly be, jutting out from that gap in his clothing.   
    Although I was sure that he was completely average in size, in that moment, his penis looked huge to me and I felt my mouth go dry. That he wanted to... wanted to go 'bare back' was horrifying. Every sex education lesson I had ever taken screamed at me. I remembered wondering during those lessons how girls could be so stupid to let their boyfriends talk them into having unprotected sex, but I understood it then in the garage. I didn't want that angry gaze on me. I didn't want his scorn.   
    But I also wasn't stupid and, goddamn him, if he was going to do this to me, I wasn't going to risk getting some illness, too. Also, I will admit, I was scared to feel his cock go... go into me bare like that. It was too intimate, too weird. I was anxious enough without having to worry about all of that.  
    "I'll have sex with you, right here and now, but I want you to wear a condom. Please, Trowa, that's all I ask," I begged him and hoped that he wouldn't push the issue.  
    In the state that I was in, I was sure that he would win again if he really did push. He shot me a frustrated and annoyed glance and stood up, not so much as bothering to tuck himself back into his jeans. I prayed as hard as I could that he didn't have anything, that I could put this whole thing off for another day, but to my dismay, he just walked to where his jacket was slung over one of the chairs at a workstation and pulled out a wrapped condom.   
    That he had one did absolutely nothing to put my mind at ease. I just kept wondering why the hell he had that in his jacket pocket of all things. Had he just kept it on him on the off chance that I would let him have sex with me one day, or was he seeing someone besides me? Maybe that sounds like a paranoid leap of logic, but was it really? Maybe Trowa would be hard pressed to find a boyfriend in this town, but Quatre had been gay, and I was, more or less, gay, so maybe he had found someone else, someone who had been giving him what he needed.  
    Of course, if he had, it didn't make much sense that he was so desperate to do this with me. I didn't want to believe that he was the type of person to cheat, even if it would be almost understandable given what a shitty excuse for a boyfriend I was. But if you had asked me if Trowa was the sort of person capable of screaming at me or being as bitter and frustrated as he was at me, I would have said no way. For as long as I had known him, Trowa had seemed calm and collected. But time, and the death of someone you love, changes a person. I should know that.   
    And then there was my father. When I saw Trowa pull that condom out of his pocket, I couldn't help but think about all those times I had caught him coming home late, stinking of beer and perfume. I had long ago dropped all of the possibilities that my father _wasn't_ cheating on my mother. But then Trowa was sitting on the floor next to me, taking the condom out of its wrapper, and carefully rolling it on to himself and I pushed all thoughts of my father out of my head. It just made me feel weird.   
    "Happy?" Trowa asked, almost snidely, when he was done.   
    'No,' I nearly snapped back at him, but I just nodded and resumed getting into the position that he wanted me in.   
    I went on my knees and folded my arms in front of me, resting my head on them. It was the best I could do for feeling comfortable at all and I deeply wished that, if I had to go through with this for the sake of our relationship, we had a better place than the hard, dirty floor of Trowa's workplace to do it in. Hell, even on top of some blankets would have been nicer.   
    But as I felt him crouch behind me, so close to me that I could feel his heat on my naked skin, I realized that the cold and hardness of the floor didn't matter to me at all and a luxurious bed wouldn't have made a single, fucking scrap of difference to me. Everything I was feeling was terrible and I wanted it to be over, and he hadn't even started yet. I felt his hands, rough and cold, slide across my back, under my shirt, rubbing my bruised skin and I realized that he was trying to be comforting.   
    He probably felt how tense I was, but there was nothing for it. A back rub wasn't going to cure it and the second I felt his hand on my ass, all bets were off. It came to me then that I was too late. Even if I changed my mind, which seemed like a good idea to do at that point, it wasn't going to stop it. I was committed. He was excited, I could feel that in his touch, and I imagined that he was heaven, finally getting to have what he wanted, and I just didn't think me protesting things was going to matter.   
    My stomach tightened and churned violently as both of his hands kneaded by butt cheeks in what, to anyone else but me, would have been an erotic motion. I felt like I was going to start hyperventilating at any second. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. I wanted to make a run for it and never look back. And when one of his fingers very lightly touched that puckered hole, all I could hear in my head was my own frightened childish voice, screaming, 'Fuck, fuck, fuck, this can't be happening. Please, please, don't, I don't want this, I don't want this,' useless protests, over and over.   
    "Relax," Trowa scolded me, "I haven't done anything yet."  
    I didn't see why he should care how tense I was, but I took several, deep breaths of air anyway and pretended like I was trying to calm down. And yet that voice continued and my heart did something truly freaky in my chest. It was that day at the crosswalk all over again, watching that truck come barreling towards my immobile best friend. Only this time, it was entirely my fault and there was nothing I could do. That it was my virginity and sense of safety and comfort on the line instead of Quatre's life didn't make me feel that much better.   
    "I'm going to loosen you up," Trowa warned me, which was pretty fucking considerate of him, "You're going to feel pressure here, and it's going to feel weird, but it won't hurt."  
    I wanted to scream at him to just fuck me and get it over with, but that probably would have offended him. He was expecting that I was going to like it. I was fairly sure that I wasn't. I hadn't wanted to do it and he had pushed me into it. Didn't he get that I was doing this for him, that he was the one that was going to enjoy it and didn't fucking matter how it made me feel? I just nodded and hoped that he would hurry the hell up so I could get off the freezing floor.   
    I'm not a complete, helpless virgin, ok? The idea of sex... of being that vulnerable around another person, might scare me. It might make me feel uncomfortable. But that doesn't mean I don't know what sex is, I just had never had it before. I had never had anyone, boy or girl, see me half naked before or touch my ass or my dick. That didn't mean that I was clueless about where rod A was going to go into slot B. The sexual education classes that I had gone to were pretty blunt about what happens when a guy wants to stick his erect junk in a girl's vagina, how it should go and all that.   
    Sure, those classes had not informed us of what two guys need to do for the same result, since our school didn't want us to be privy to that kind of information, but come on. I had spent all of my high school years and the majority of my middle school ones getting slurs like 'fudge packer' and 'ass fairy' thrown at me. Do you really think that I couldn't figure out what those things meant? Or that in the case of rod A going into slot B, what slot B is on a man's body? The dick needs to go somewhere and that somewhere needs to be a hole. There are only two holes where the penis can go, so yes, I understand what gay sex entails.   
    But I don't, really. I've never had it. I don't know what it feels like to have someone's dick go... there. I didn't know if it really wouldn't hurt or if Trowa was bullshitting me. I mean, it must feel good if gay people did it, right? But when he slid a finger inside of me _there_ , it didn't feel good. Sure, it didn't hurt, but it just felt so... so freaking weird that I couldn't enjoy it. I almost wished that he had just shoved his dick in my mouth. I probably would have handled that better.   
    He slid his finger in and out of me a few times before I felt another digit join the first one and, just like he had warned me, I indeed did feel a pressure as those two fingers moved in me and then pulled those tight muscles apart. I just kept thinking, over and over again, that he was touching me in the worst place he could possibly be touching me in, how utterly embarrassing it was. I had thought that I wanted to find a nice, dark hole to crawl into before. Well, having my boyfriend's fingers in my ass was worse, and I knew that when he got his dick into me, it would be unbearable.   
    Trowa spent maybe a minute prepping me with his fingers. Not nearly long enough. Then I felt a thick, steady pressure against my anus and I knew that this was it, that the thing being pressed against me was the head of his cock. My breath came out in harsh pants and I almost groaned in pain when he grabbed my hips, his grip pressing down on my bruises, but in a way, that ache soothed me a little. It was a pain that I was used to at least.   
    "Just relax," I heard him repeat himself, "I'm going to push in. It'll feel uncomfortable, but once you get used to it, it'll feel amazing."  
    I nodded against my arms, still not looking at him. I couldn't look at him. I couldn't stand to see that flushed, aroused expression of his at that moment. So I just kept my eyes closed and my face pressed against my arms. Just let him do whatever he wants, I told myself, and then it will all be over. My heart wasn't just racing anymore. It was racing and pounding and screaming in me. That I didn't black out is amazing.   
    All my body wanted to do was lash out and kick him away, to bolt like some kind of frightened deer, and I was trying to convince the rest of me that it didn't need to do that. I think at some point, I realized I was having some sort of anxiety attack and it was taking all of my concentration not to let it overwhelm me.   
    Then Trowa pushed into me and I had to bite down on one of my arms to keep from screaming as I felt the latex encased member penetrate me with an ease that was almost insulting. It hurt. Oh god, it fucking _hurt_. I felt like I was being stabbed by something blunt, like his goddamned dick was ripping through me, although I knew intellectually that it wasn't really, that it would hurt a whole lot more if it was doing a lot of damage. The condom that Trowa had used was one of those lubed ones, which had to have made it go in me easier. But still, it burned and stung and it was easily the worst sensation I have ever had in my life. Worse than broken ribs, worse than a broken arm.   
    The asshole had lied to me. Or maybe he hadn't known. Or maybe it wasn't supposed to feel like this at all and one of us was doing something wrong. I don't know. All I knew was that it sure as hell didn't feel good. I stopped feeling the ache on my bruised hip and the icy ground digging into my knees. I just felt _him_ in me and wanted to take it all back. I wanted to scream at him to get the hell out of me, that I wanted my virginity back, I wanted it all back. I didn't want to know what this pain was, not because it hurt, but because of what it had meant. There was something wrong and this thing... this thing that was supposed to feel good was a lie. A dirty lie.   
    I had thought that that was it. He was in me, now I just needed to wait for... something to happen. I wasn't expecting it when he started to move. That pain that I was talking about? Forget it. It was nothing compared to how the rest of it felt. There was a fire in me and when he moved, I could feel it in my gut, like my insides were being pulled out of me. I bit my arm so hard that I tasted my blood in my mouth.   
    "You're so tight," Trowa pressed his chest against my back and panted in my ear, "God, Quatre, you feel so good..."  
    He kissed my bruised shoulders, the back of my neck, anywhere that he could reach. I felt tears gathering in my eyes and I almost laughed. I had almost forgotten. In all of my fear, I had forgotten the most important thing. I wasn't the one being fucked, Quatre was. Not me, never me. I wasn't there in that garage with Trowa, not really. That should have been a comfort, something that I could have clung to and told myself that it made it better, but it didn't.   
    The pain in my insides was nothing at all compared to the pain I felt in my heart just then. I didn't love this person, but... but Trowa was my boyfriend. He had taken my virginity and I had done this for _him_ goddamn it. I let him pretend I was someone else. I gave him that release... but hearing him say my best friend's name while he was fucking me ripped my guts right out of me. I felt cheap. I felt like a whore and in that moment? I _was_ a whore. His whore. Only instead of money, I was getting his companionship. For a bit of his time, to pretend that I wasn't alone, I let him fuck my friend's ghost.   
    I gasped, desperately trying to suck in air between the pain of his thrusts and the pain of his words. I could feel him speeding up, becoming more frantic. I think he mistook my gasp as one of pleasure. The sound of his hips hitting my skin made me feel so dirty. I bit myself so hard to keep those tears from falling that the wounds would scar. They would be a reminder to me later of what I had given up for this fucked up relationship. I felt him wrap one of his hands around my penis and flinched, finally opening my eyes. My vision was blurry. I told myself that it was just because I had had my face pressed to my arm so tightly.  
    "Don't," I begged and dared a glance back at him.  
    He looked... disappointed as he realized that I wasn't even the least bit hard still. Disappointed and frustrated and unhappy and, I realized, a bit repulsed. How could he look like that? I was giving him everything... _everything_ that I had left, all for him, so he could be happy. He had to be happy with this. He _had_ to be, or what meaning did any of this have?   
    He let go of my cock and I tore my gaze away from his, not wanting to see that terrible expression there. He kept going, though, not even slowing his thrusts until his nails were digging into my hips, drawing blood.   
    "Fuck!" he suddenly cried out and I felt his body shudder against mine, his hands grabbing me so hard that they would leave bruises on top of the ones that I already had.  
    He thrust into me in hard, trembling jerks three more times  before pulling out of me in a single, fluid motion. I could have cried with relief when I realized that he had finally reached orgasm. The second he let go of me and I couldn't feel him inside of me anymore, I rolled over onto my back away from him, still breathing hard and no longer giving a shit about the bruises on my back. I felt something drip out of me and worried that the condom had broken, but when I finally gained the strength to look at Trowa, I saw that the condom was still in tact.   
    I just studied him for a moment from my spot on the floor. He was sitting back, panting a lot harder than I was, a flush still over his tanned cheeks and looking like he had just run a marathon. His eyes were glazed over from his climax. It took him longer than me to gain his senses back and I watched him, feeling completely detached from the situation, as he carefully removed the condom from his now soft member. I felt bruised and dirty and as used and useless as that semen filled condom as he twisted it up so it wouldn't spill. He looked at me and his expression, instead of being full of gratitude or affection or even just tired from his exertion, was one of contempt and disgust. I felt like my chest was impaled by a thousand shards of steel. Those cold green eyes glanced down at my groin and I knew exactly what he was seeing, what he was thinking.  
    "What the hell is wrong with you?" he spat and stood up, walking towards the other end of the garage.  
    "I'm going to clean myself off, you can have the bathroom when I'm done," he said with the most condescending tone I had ever heard out of him.   
    He then proceeded to do just that, striding to a dingy white door near the ramp we had walked down earlier, what seemed like days ago.   
    "Fucking freak," I heard him mutter under his breath as he went.  
    I didn't think he had meant for me to hear that, but it didn't matter. It wasn't anything worse than he had called me before. The second he was out of my sight, I sat up quickly, my back, hips, and ass screaming at me in pain. I rested my forehead against my knees and started to laugh bitterly. A freak. Didn't that say it all? He wasn't gone for more than a second before all of my guilt and self-hatred settled back in me. What I had just done... let him do to me... hit me like a fucking truck. I had let him fuck me. I wasn't a virgin anymore. And I regretted all of it. What had I done? Just what in the hell had I done?  
    I stumbled onto my feet, my legs shaking like a new born calf's, and grabbed my clothing. I winced at the twinges of pain I felt in my abused ass as I pulled my underwear and jeans back on. I felt something wet between my ass cheeks, but I just didn't care at that point. I put my shoes back on and sat on the pick up truck's bed. Sitting hurt like hell, but in a way, I was starting to get used to the stringing sensation.   
    Trowa didn't stay in the bathroom long, but I waited for him to walk back up the ramp before I took my turn in the bathroom. I pulled my jeans and briefs down again. My underwear was stained with blood and sweat. There wasn't a lot of blood, just a few large spots, but the blood was dark and when I wiped myself with some toilet paper, there was blood on that, too. If I had had the energy to care, I would have worried that Trowa really had hurt me. He had been hurried and forceful and I wondered if he had even cared when he had seen blood on the condom. At that point, I was just too broken and tired and sick to my stomach to think about the pain I was feeling and the evidence of some injury.   
    I cleaned myself off and was gratified when no more blood came out. At least my jeans wouldn't stain. As clean as I was going to get without taking a shower, and hoping that I didn't smell too much like sex, I walked back up into the shop. Trowa wasn't there and I was glad. I couldn't face him. Not for myself and not for him and his anger that he hadn't been able to arouse me. I grabbed my father's battery and walked out the front door, finding it unlocked.   
    I didn't sleep for a single minute that entire night.   
  
  
End Part 4  
  
Author's Note: first off, I would like to again thank everyone who has reviewed and favorited this story. It always blows my mind that people read and actually like my stuff 0_0  
  
This part was some of the hardest writing I've done in a long time. I wrote the first 14 pages over the course of a week and kind of dragged my heels, not knowing how to approach the entire scene in the auto shop. Then Tuesday I just kind of sat down at my computer and turned out the last 20 pages. I don't know how I did it. It's probably going to seem rushed and I apologize for that, but I just couldn't agonize over it. It was hard enough writing that kind of rape scene and I don't think I did it justice, but Duo really isn't the sort of person to write about it in tons of detail.   
  
I also want to thank darkelf2x1 for betaing and editing this for me and finding all my stupid mistakes since I type faster than my brain can keep up :V


	19. Chapter 4 Part 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Trowa and Duo are almost discovered making out at school by some of Trowa's friends, Duo learns some very ugly truths about his boyfriend. Can they move on from it, or will it spell the end of their stormy relationship?

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 4  
Part 5  
  
  
    Regret is a stupid feeling. When you really think about it, regret is just about the most useless human emotion there is. Sure, it can teach you valuable things and show you which actions you should never, ever repeat. Like letting your boyfriend wear you down until you agree to do something for him that you were uncomfortable with to begin with. But honestly? What use is an emotion that you only feel _after_ you've already fucked up? Regret and I are old buddies, but it's never been the least bit helpful. It hadn't given me the wisdom to stop Quatre's suicide and it hadn't given me the strength to break up with Trowa before I had agreed to have sex with him.  
    I'm not dumb, ok? I may not be smart and I make a lot of dumb choices, but that doesn't mean that, after I make them, I can't look back at least some of them and see why I made them and what the flaws were. I know why I chose to give in to Trowa and, more importantly, I saw _how_ he had gotten me to do it. I had been lonely and depressed and panicking and, like one of those big predators he dreamed of studying one day, he had pushed me into a corner, into a choice that I hadn't wanted to make. To be with him in ever possible way, or in no way at all.   
    I'm not proud to admit that, at that point, my reasoning hadn't been logical. I had let my fear take control of me and Trowa had attacked me in every single place that I'm vulnerable. All of my insecurities, he had preyed on. Had that been intentional on his part, or just a coincidence? I don't, even now, want to believe that he's capable of that kind of cruelty. But we had known each other for three years. How _couldn't_ he have known how insecure I was, what buttons to push?  
    I had regretted that decision before he had even finished, maybe even before he had penetrated me. But taking it back then would have been pointless. Trowa was right about one thing: I'm not some blushing, virgin girl. My virginity, and now my lack of one, doesn't mean at thing to me. I don't feel some loss now that it's gone or like I'm tainted now. I just feel regret. Not because my virginity was some kind of shining, precious thing that I was saving for someone special.   
    But I still felt... I don't know... dirty? Ashamed? Because, whether he had done it intentionally or not, Trowa had manipulated me, and I had let him do it. And yes, I did feel dirty by the sex itself. I felt used. I felt like Trowa had injured me somehow, like he had betrayed me. I felt wounded by the whole thing at the same time that I knew I was being sensitive. It was just sex. I had sated an urge for someone I cared for. I had fulfilled a use. Wasn't that why we were dating, because we needed each other? So why did I feel so wrong afterwards?  
    I became incredibly depressed that night on the walk back to my house and would feel it hanging over me like a veil made of lead for days, unable to shake it off or ignore it. I was insanely glad when I walked into the kitchen and found that, despite all of the empty beer cans still on the table and large pile of dirty dishes in the sink, Pat was gone and my father was in bed. In the state that I was in, if either had so much as looked at me with their usual snide contempt, I don't think that I would have been able to bite down on my words like I was typically able to. Though I doubt that a beating would have made me feel any worse.   
    I dumped the car battery and change on the kitchen counter, went to my room to grab some night clothes, and headed back down into the bathroom. I was willing to risk waking someone up for a shower. I felt gross between the way my ass felt, how sweaty I was, and the grime on my hands and knees from the garage floor. I smelled like oil and gas, or maybe that was just in my head, but I couldn't stop smelling that disgusting mixture of the smells from the garage and sex.       
    When I started to take my clothes off, the large spot of blood on my underwear almost made me panic. I'm no stranger to injuries, but I had never been hurt _there_ before and I didn't know if I should be worried that I had bled that much. If I was hurt badly enough to need a doctor, what would I do? Just the thought of walking to the hospital and telling someone where I was hurt and why made me feel ill. And what would I tell my father? It was the sort of injury that, well, only one thing could really cause it. There was no lying about why my ass was bleeding.   
    Grimacing as I did it, I lubricated a finger with some soap and slid it inside of myself. I felt a sharp throb of pain, but it was mostly soreness. I was still loose from the sex, enough that getting a finger in was easy, and I almost laughed in relief when my finger came out bloodless. It still hurt, but it wasn't anything that needed attention. Although I wasn't looking forward to needing to go to the bathroom earlier. It felt weird enough, that feeling of looseness in a place that should not feel that way. I wondered how long that was going to last.   
    I threw my underwear in the bathroom trashcan and turned on the water in the shower. I looked back at the trash can and bit my lip, thinking about either of my parents finding them in there. I could probably lie and say that I had a cut on my ass from getting hurt at any one of my jobs, but I worried that my father would be able to tell that I was lying. He had that innate knack, either because he knew me so well or because he was a cop, but he absolutely hated lying, even more than the few times that I talked back to him, so I tried to avoid it. Worse than that, I thought about him or Pat teasing me, calling me a woman on her period or something equally embarrassing. I fished the briefs back out of the trash can and dropped them on the floor. I'd find a safer place to dispose of them later.   
    Never before had I ever felt so good just to get clean. It did little to help ease off the sting of what I had just done, but it made me feel physically better at any rate. I even gave myself an extra ten minutes, risking my father's ire and not even caring that the water had gone to barely luke warm. When I was done, as quietly as I could, I snuck into the kitchen and buried my soiled underwear deep enough into the full trash can that no one was going to see it. I made a mental note to take the trash out myself in the morning. My father's door was still closed, to my relief. He usually sleeps really deeply when he goes to bed smashed, which is more and more frequently lately, so the running water must have not woken him.   
    I had thought that, as exhausted I was from the sex and fear that had ridden me since I had come home from my other jobs, I would at least manage four hours of deep sleep, even if I had a nightmare or two. And given what my night had been like, I was expecting a nightmare or some really weird dreams. Instead, I laid on my bed, stared up at my ceiling and couldn't even get my eyes closed for more than a few minutes at a time. I was never so thankful for the little, battery operated lantern that Quatre had gotten for me the last Christmas we had spent together.   
    I hated sleeping in the pitch, black dark. I mean, I'm used to it, I spent all of my childhood sleeping in this window-less attic, and I'm not saying I'm scared of the dark. It just makes me feel disoriented, waking up to nothing. Before my father got me my clock, which also runs on batteries, I never knew what time it was when I woke up, and had hurt myself a couple of times trying to find the door to go downstairs. The lantern gave me just enough light to see the ceiling and walls without being too bright to let me sleep. And it didn't add to our electric bill, so I could run it all night.   
    The soft glow of it illuminated the ceiling of the attic, throwing shadows into weird shapes on it. I would pretend those shapes formed something until I was able to slip off into sleep; a dog, a ship, some snarling monster. The floor of my room is hard wood, but the walls and ceiling are this really cheap plaster that used to be white, but are yellowed with age. My dad talks about painting them, but I know that he never will. The kitchen needs painting long before the attic ever will. The dusky rose color of the walls down there are starting to look a bit brown, especially since a pipe burst last winter and flooded the kitchen. I really hoped that we wouldn't have a incident like that again, I didn't think we could afford it.   
    Even playing the shadow game couldn't get me to sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Trowa's angry face when he realized that I hadn't gotten hard or how he had looked when he had more or less informed me that if I didn't agree to have sex with him, we were through. Then I would open my eyes and stare at the ceiling some more. I just couldn't stop thinking about it, no matter how much I wanted to just forget about it. My feelings were such a confusing cluster fuck, I couldn't sort them out.   
    I was angry at Trowa for pushing me. I know that sounds like a contradiction since I was the one that had given in to him in the first place and I was the one that felt guilty about leading him on all the time, but I _was_ angry at him, whether it made sense or not. I was angry at myself for giving in, for not being able to give him what he wanted even at the end, and most of all, I was angry at myself for not being able to enjoy it.   
    Yes, I hadn't wanted to have sex to begin with, but shouldn't I have felt something when I had finally surrendered to it? Was Trowa right? Was I actually not gay? I also felt angry at him for lying to me. He had kept saying that it would feel good, that it wouldn't hurt, and both of those things were wrong. But had he really been lying, or was he just ignorant or was something wrong with me?  
    I felt ashamed for all of the reasons why I was angry; I felt ashamed that I was such a crappy boyfriend, I felt ashamed that I had made this choice and it hadn't even made Trowa happy. I felt ashamed that I had compromised with myself and now I felt all this regret. I felt ashamed that I still felt fear when I thought about sex, even though the unknown of it had been stripped from me.  
    I felt guilt. Out of all the things that I was feeling that night, I think that was the worst of it. I felt guilty because... because I had slept with the boy that Quatre had loved. How stupid was that? Quatre was dead, what did he care? But I had the same exact feeling that I had had when I had started to date Trowa, like I was cheating on my best friend. Only now it was about a thousand times worse. If Quatre could see me at that moment, would he have hated me for taking what should have been his? Taking it and twisting it into something bitter and terrible? I was sure that, if he had been in my place, having sex with Trowa, it would have been something special.       
    Maybe I was just biased and chose to see it like that, but I bet that, had Quatre been the one that Trowa had been dating, he wouldn't have brought him down to some dirty garage and fucked him on the cold, cement floor. I bet he wouldn't have called him a freak. Of course, Quatre probably would have liked the sex, so he wouldn't have had a reason to call him that.   
    And I felt guilty about how fucking bitter that thought made me feel. How sick was that? I was bitter that the guy I was dating, whom I didn't love even half as much as Quatre had, would have treated Quatre better. Quatre, who had killed himself because that same guy had hurt him. It was just this endless cycle inside of me, feeling guilty and bitter, and the bitterness fueling my guilt more and more. Was I jealous of Quatre, of the possibilities that he had had? How could I? I didn't love Trowa.   
    But then I would remember how they used to look at each other, talk to each other about nothing at all, bumble around like two newborn deer trying to walk, and how happy they had both looked even while stumbling. And then I thought about my own relationship with Trowa, how closed off we were, how we never really talked about anything important that needed to be said, how angry we got at each other and I just wanted to cry.   
    And I felt confused. Confused by those emotions and confused about where we were going to go from there on. Did we even have a future together? I had been sure, for awhile, that we didn't because of our age difference, but did we even have a short term future? Would Trowa want to continue on with our relationship after the disaster of that night, did I want to? I am a bit ashamed to admit that, at some point in the small hours of the morning, the thought of Trowa breaking up to me made me feel as much relief as it did panic. I didn't want to be alone, but... I felt worn down. Depressed and tired.   
    I was tired of him being angry at me, I was tired of feeling sad and bitter that I couldn't be what he wanted. I felt like I was on this rollercoaster that I couldn't get off of. I was used to not being happy since Quatre had died, but I couldn't seem to get used to the mire of up and down that my relationship with Trowa was putting me through. I didn't know what to do. I had thought, in that childish way of mine, that having sex with him would make me feel better, that if I could just clear that one hurdle for him, it would make things better. I had not thought for a single second that it would make it worse.   
    I was still as confused and conflicted as I had been from when we had first started dating. Another thing that had never come to me, and it should have, was the possibility that Trowa would want to have sex with me again. Why had I thought that I would just need to get it over with and then things would fall into place? I still didn't want to break up with him, but I didn't want to have sex with him again. I couldn't bear thinking of going through all that again. My fear of sex hadn't gotten better, it had gotten worse.   
    What was even more frightening than my sexual hang ups and not knowing if I physically _could_ get aroused, that I might actually be impotent or something was that the idea of breaking up with him was not as terrifying as it had once been. I still couldn't do it, but it was less of a knee-jerk reaction. I had somehow stopped thinking of how horribly lonely I would be again and more of how I might be able to live with it. I still cared for him, but that bitterness in me that he had put there when he had called me a freak seemed to be growing. I didn't know who to hate more for putting it there, him or me.   
    I should have called it off at that point. I think anyone else would have. How could you stay in a relationship with someone you were starting to seriously resent? But I kept remembering how it felt when he just touched my hair or kissed me gently, how warm my chest would get. I liked those things so much. And maybe... maybe the sex would get better? Maybe I would get used to it like I got used to my father hitting me. The thought of trying to do it again made me feel sick, and that should have been a sign of the kind of cliff edge I was standing on, but I still hadn't reached the point where I could make up my mind without being pushed into it.   
    I tossed and turned all night and early morning with those kinds of thoughts in my head. If Trowa didn't want to break up with me over my lackluster performance in bed, minus the bed part, what would I do the next time that he wanted to fuck? I think that I had gotten to the point where I couldn't tell him no anymore and that horrified me. I felt like he had raped me, like he had taken away even my ability to have an opinion on anything in our relationship. He had gotten me to consent once, so he could do it again and how I felt about it meant nothing.   
    My clock cheerfully informed me that four am had arrived and I got up to change my clothes and put on my sneakers. I left the house and ran all the way to the park, and then I just kept running along the jogging trail. It helped for a little while. I focused on where my next footstep was taking me, got lost in the sound of the birds waking up and the sight of the early sun streaming through the trees and not on why my heart was beating so fast, why my head hurt so much.   
    Somehow, I ran for an hour and a half before I realized how much I was hurting and had to slow down to a brisk jog. I started to turn around on the trail and head back. The last thing I needed was to let my emotional turmoil make me late for school and since I had skipped dinner the night before, I really need to get something in my stomach, even if it was just water and a piece of toast. Then I thought about school. I thought about walking through those front doors, about passing Relena in the hallway, and, horror of all horrors, I thought about facing Trowa. I thought about how he had seen me naked and how I had felt him inside of me. I thought about his angry glare and I thought about him wanting to talk about it, about him wanting to do it again.   
    I'm not proud to admit that at that point in my run, I had to find a bush to throw up behind. I told myself that it was just a combination of a lack of anything in me except for the water I had drank out of the bathroom faucet before leaving the house and my lack of sleep. I hadn't, after all, had much sleep at all that week between no sleep the night before and the sleep deprivation I had forced myself into during the weekend. I told myself that, but I didn't believe a word of it.   
    I didn't really feel like eating after throwing up on my run, but I still dared to take the time to run back home and make a quick breakfast of buttered toast and water and made my lunch. We barely had any food at all, but I managed to save two slices of bread, some turkey, shredded cheese, and a couple of leaves of lettuce for a half-assed sandwich. My father was awake and puttering around the kitchen, looking fit to throw things from an obvious hangover, so I worked quickly.   
    As I was stuffing my sandwich into a brown paper bag, he noticed the car battery on the counter and glanced at me. For a moment, I thought he was going to say I got the wrong one or something else to start a fight and I tensed, paper bag clenched in a death grip, ready to bolt if I had to, but he just took a swig of his coffee and pushed past me to go outside, no doubt to grab the day's newspaper. I grabbed my book bag from my room and left without so much as a terse word between us. I could almost believe that the day would turn out alright.   
    That feeling was bolstered when I managed to get through the entire day without a single run in with Relena. She and her gaggle of friends, or female admirers, sycophants, whatever you wanted to call them, were too busy assaulting the new addition to her class. I can't remember his first name, but his last name was Yani or Yuy or Yiomi, something oddly exotic like that. I remembered thinking that he must be a foreigner, despite the rumors about him, and was surprised to see that he while he have a fairly Asian look to him, his eyes were a deep blue, all for the two seconds I had glimpsed at him. He was in a couple of my classes, but anything Relena got worked up over, I didn't want any part of and just ignored the lot of them. All I knew was that, thanks to him, Relena wasn't paying any attention to me.   
    I wasn't naive enough to think that that would be permanent. There would be only two outcomes, like there always was. Relena would either grow bored with him and resume to tormenting me again or she would pull him into her fold and he would become one of my bullies. Either way, he was just another face in the crowd to me. I was too worked up into knots over Trowa to pay attention to anything else anyway.   
    I didn't see much of Trowa that day, either, and for some stupid reason, I just assumed that it was going to be like it was when I thought he hadn't wanted to see me and we would just avoid each other for a few days or maybe a week. Don't know why I thought that, it wasn't like we were fighting exactly. Or maybe we were. Hell if I even knew anymore. If that was what being in a relationship is like, I never want to date anyone else. I have some great memories of us, but really, the emotional tornado that was our relationship just fucking drained me. So I was a bit surprised when I ran into my boyfriend during my last period: gym. The very last place I would have thought I would end up seeing him.  
    I have probably written this before, but it bears repeating: I fucking hate gym. Hate it. I hated it back when Quatre was alive and I will probably hate it up until the day that I graduate. I am not lazy or fat or even uncoordinated. Sure, I'm not athletic by any means and I couldn't tell you the rules of football if my life depended on it, but I've been told that I am a fairly quick and agile person when I need to be. I enjoy running to some degree. But for me, gym is a nightmare, especially when we have team sports. I always seem to end up a target. And for some reason, as if having Zechs in my gym classes wasn't bad enough, I always end up on the opposite team to him. And boy, is Zechs a pro at turning every team activity into an all out war zone against underclassmen and people like me that are smaller than he is or he just plain doesn't like. He can turn a single game of tag football into full out assault. And I mean that literally.   
    I was having a perfectly neutral day until I walked into the gymnasium that afternoon and found, to my utmost horror, that we were playing dodge ball. Sometimes I think that gym class was thought up through an act of sadism. I get the need to make kids active, but really? I can understand track, football, baseball, yoga, and hell, I can even understand the stupid weight lifting classes and tennis. But fucking _dodge ball_? It was like an excuse for the bigger kids to beat the shit out of the younger or slighter ones without having to go to the principal's office for it. And our gym teacher, out of his infinite wisdom, never seemed to have a problem with us choosing our own teams.   
    By the end of the period, I felt like Zechs could have punch the shit out of me and it would hurt just as much as him lobbing those stupid, goddamned rubber balls at me like I was an especially pesky fly he was trying to flatten. And since we had to play to the end of the block, it didn't matter how many times I had been hit, as soon as one team was depleted, we got to play all over again. When the bell rang, my arms were almost entirely black and blue from using them to defend my face, which was miraculously untouched.   
    Even my legs and stomach had a few bruises. But somehow, that was ok over my getting punched? I didn't really see the difference. I was ready to take my obligatory shower and head off to the library to spend the next hour before my first shift started, and hopefully the hot water would soothe some of my soreness, when Coach Horner called out to me.   
    "Maxwell! Help Barton put the equipment away!" he bellowed from the other side of the gymnasium just as I was making my way to the shower room.  
    I spun and stared at him with wide eyes. Barton? He had to mean some other kid in my class, but there weren't any other Bartons that I knew of. Sure enough, when I glanced towards the equipment room past Horner's shoulder, Trowa was standing there, his arms full of the traffic cones that we had used to separate the two teams' playing fields. His face was completely neutral as he looked at me, almost bored. I couldn't tell if he was still mad at me with how good of an actor that he was.   
    I knew that I couldn't show that I was surprised to see him or apprehensive. I wouldn't give a single person even a shred of suspicion that we were anything more than passing acquaintances, so I shrugged and started to pick up the dodge balls strewn around the gymnasium. Trowa disappeared into the equipment room with the cones, but in my peripheral view, I saw him come back out to help me.   
    I felt completely tense, insanely worried that Zechs would make some snide remark to us as he strode past, no doubt on his way to share a smoke with his buddies outside the school, but he didn't even look at either of us. Trowa and I were on opposite ends of the gym, working towards each other, so we looked as distant and ambivalent towards each other as I did with all of my schoolmates. I didn't relax until the rest of the class filed out and Coach Horner disappeared into his office. By then, Trowa and I were standing mere feet apart, picking up the last of the large, rubber balls.   
    "What are you doing here?" I dared to ask him only when we were the only two people in the gymnasium within earshot.   
    I made sure to keep my tone flat and devoid of any accusation. Had he come here because he wanted to talk to me about the previous night? But that just sounded egotistical of me. He would never risk anyone catching on to our relationship just so he could talk to me. He could have called me at home if he had wanted a chat. But still, some part of me wished that his presence there was because he had been worried about me or that he was planning on apologizing for what he had done. But even then, somehow I knew that he wouldn't. I didn't even know if he felt sorry or if he felt he had done something wrong. Hell, I wasn't even entirely sure if he had.   
    "I'm Coach Horner's teacher's aid," he explained to me, taking the balls that I had collected to put in a sack, "Apparently that sort of thing looks good on a college application. I usually work with the class block before yours, but I just have a reading period this block for the next couple of days, so I switched classes."  
    He suddenly got this light, little blush on his cheeks and it didn't take much to put things together from that. He hadn't needed to change blocks, no matter what lie he had pulled out of his ass to tell Horner. He had switched because it was _my_ class. I felt a heat blossom on my cheeks and I was sure that I was blushing harder than he was, especially on my fair skin. I wondered if he had watched Zechs pelt dodge balls at me or if he had only shown up towards the end of class to help with the clean up. He had seen me being bullied before, so it wasn't a big deal, but it still embarrassed me.   
    "I need your help putting this stuff away, if you don't have anywhere to go right away?" he asked, those dark green eyes of his not meeting my own in shyness.  
    I almost rolled my eyes at him at his obvious ploy to get me alone. It wasn't like there was anyone near us to hear what we were saying anyway, but if it made him feel better, I wasn't going to say anything. I took the sack of dodge balls from him to maintain the illusion and followed him into the equipment closet. It was a musty room, completely cluttered with bins of different balls and gymnastics equipment everywhere. There was a huge, blue mat on the floor that covered most of the room and when Trowa closed the door behind him, it would have been completely dark if not for the little window letting in the afternoon light. It almost made Trowa's eyes seem to glow when I turned to look at him.  
    "Where do you want these?" I lifted up the sack I was carrying.  
    "There is fine," he pointed to one of the bins.  
    As I turned and dropped the sack where he had told me to, I felt him walk up behind me, so close that if I took a step back, I would collide into him and I could feel his body heat through the thin, old t-shirt I wore for gym. A chill shot through me as I realized just how close to me that he was and I couldn't help but remember the last time we had been that close, the heavy feel of his chest against my back, the sound of his hips hitting my bare skin as he had thrust into me. That chill wasn't from any kind of pleasure or even anticipation, but fear. I was scared of Trowa getting near me? When the hell had that happened and why? We had already done it, so what was there for me to feel nervous about anymore?  
    I turned around to... I don't know what. Tell him to back off? That was stupid and I would never admit to him that he made me wary. He would make fun of me, like he had before when I hadn't wanted to put out, or he would get angry and call me a child again. Maybe I had just intended to ask him if he was still angry with me for not enjoying the sex like he obviously had, but as soon as I turned to face him, he pressed his lips against mine.  
    Compared to what the sex had been like, that kiss was wonderful and warm and, best of all, familiar. I melted into it and responded when his kiss became long and slow, gentle but somehow insistent at the same time. I pressed myself to him and wasn't even ashamed of it, or how good it felt when he placed his strong hands on my shoulders, grasping them with a gentleness that had made his fucking seem even harsher and colder. I can only accurately describe our making out as tender.  
    Some part of me protested to the kiss, reminding me that I was supposed to be mad at him, even scared of him, that I was bitter and hurt and I had no business feeling any affection for the same boy that had bullied sex out of me the night before, but I ignored it. Kissing him, I wanted to cry and I felt some very unpleasant emotion constrict my chest.  
    Suddenly, I was very, achingly tired. I felt beaten and as worn thin as the shirt I was wearing. I didn't want to fight him anymore. I just couldn't do it, I didn't have the strength in me anymore for the constant battle with him. It seemed like all we had done lately was fight and make up, fight and make up. Between Trowa and my father, I couldn't deal with it anymore. What was even the fucking point? I never stood up for myself anyway. I never had the guts to tell Trowa that I was pissed off and hurt because of him. There wasn't even a point to that, either.   
    Why couldn't I just have those small, intimate moments when we were kissing? I liked those moments, they made me happy. Why couldn't I just have that with him? I just wanted to be happy again, to pretend like someone gave a shit about me again, but I just kept thinking about how Trowa had called out Quatre's name, even when he had been fucking me, and I reminded myself that it wasn't my happiness to feel.   
    No one gave a shit about me. That was just an illusion that I clung to, like the illusion that Trowa clung to, that he hadn't fucked up and gotten the boy the he had loved killed. But there was still this tiny part of myself that hoped and prayed that that wasn't true. Even after Trowa had called me Quatre, I still wanted to believe that he saw me, at least some of the time, that he cared about me, even just a little bit. While that, in itself, scared me, it was better than knowing that I really was just a shell to him, something that he could use and throw away if he wanted to. Because while I was using him, too, I _did_ care about him. I enjoyed being with him, when he wasn't being an ass to me, and I didn't have to pretend that he was someone else.   
    "Thank you for last night," Trowa said shyly when he pulled away from me, "I... it was amazing... I'm sorry, I should have said that then, I was just so frustrated that... I just don't understand..."  
    He got that look in his eyes again, the same one that he had gotten when he had belittled me until I had caved, and the same one he had had when he had realized that I wasn't aroused, like he was exasperated at me, like he thought that there was something wrong with me. I felt this hot burst of embarrassment and horror when I realized he was actually going to try to talk about my inability to get it up when he had liked it, enough to get off at any rate.   
    "Please, can we not talk about it?" I begged him desperately.  
    I didn't want him to realize just how fucked up I was, that he hadn't been the reason why I hadn't gotten an erection, that in my sixteen years of life, I had never had one. I thought that he was going to get angry at me again for brushing him off, but he must have not wanted to talk about it very much, either, because he shrugged and kissed me again, more interested in making out than in talking to me.   
    Hell, I was more interested in making out, too, but most guys would if the alternative was talking about the possibility that they were impotent. I became especially interested when one of Trowa's hands cupped the right side of my face and slowly slid down my neck. The slight caress pressed on the still healing bruises my father had put there, but the shiver that ran through me wasn't from pain.  
    Then it wasn't his hand on my neck but his lips, pressing against my damaged skin, kissing and lightly nipping me. I couldn't help the tiny, startled gasp that escaped from me. He didn't usually dare to kiss my neck, especially not that hard since it was such a noticeable and stereotypical place for hickies, but with my dark bruises there, no one was going to notice and I let myself enjoy the attention there without worry for once.   
    It hurt, but I didn't care. It felt too good, someone touching me like they actually cared. Why did I like that when I didn't like sex? I couldn't understand it. I felt a warm jolt when those hungry lips found their way between my neck and shoulder. When Trowa tugged on my shirt, leading me to lay down on the mat, I let him. My heart rate began to speed up, remembering what had happened the last time that he had gotten me on the ground, but I was on my back this time and for some stupid reason, that didn't frighten me as much. Just because he wasn't ordering me to get on my hands and knees again, it didn't mean that he didn't want to have sex again. But we were at school, it wasn't like he would dare try something, right?   
    Still, my heart thudded almost painfully in my chest as Trowa loomed over me, kissing me deeply and earnestly, and I felt his hand slide under my shirt. It was still neutral territory, nothing more than we had done before, so why did I feel so off kilter? Were things really so different just because we had had sex? And for that matter, why did I feel trepidation at all? I knew what sex was going to be like, I had gotten through it before, so there was no reason for me to be scared anymore. But I was and I didn't know how to conquer it. I might as well have never had agreed to have sex with Trowa in the first place for all of the good it had done.  
    I felt him fumble excitedly at the button and zipper to my jeans, but I didn't fight him. I didn't know what he intended, if he was really going to fuck me right there in the gym or if he still just wanted to fool around a little. It wasn't until I felt his hand slide under my underwear and wrap around my dick that the pure ridiculousness of what was happening hit me like a truck.   
    We were at school, messing around in a place that had the potential to be very public. We didn't have the key to this room and we couldn't lock the door like we had in the studio. _Anyone_ could just walk in and see what we were doing. Hell, Coach Horner was still around and soon, the various team sports would start. Someone was going to come in to get their equipment eventually, and here we were, lying on a mat, kissing, with Trowa's hand in my pants.   
    But what frightened me the most wasn't the possibility of being discovered, although that was pretty terrifying, it was that Trowa didn't seem to care. He was the one that was always so careful, he was the one that always seemed scared of someone finding out that he was gay, that we were even friends, let alone dating. He was the one that had thrown Quatre away because of his fucking reputation. But there he had gotten me into that equipment room so we could make out, not me.   
    Was he really that hard up, that desperate for sex that he would ignore the danger of doing this at school? I could almost laugh about it if it didn't scare me. I had thought that having sex with him would... would mellow him out a little, that he would be less eager, that it would sate something in him. Instead, it had seemed to make him bolder.   
    I jolted upright when I felt him start to stroke me, and when I realized just how exposed we were, but he still had a hand on my chest, under my shirt, and he pushed me back down. That one little motion of force only flamed the fire of fear in me, and it angered me a little. Really, it wasn't anything more, anything worse than how he had gotten me to agree to have sex with him. And it wasn't any different than the first time he had tried to ignore my protests, but it didn't bother me any less.   
    His hand on my cock, gently moving up and down it, felt so weird. He had touched me down there before, but I wasn't pushing him away this time, I wasn't sure if I could. Protesting against him feeling me up felt so petty and tiny compared to what I had let him take from me the night before. I had only touched myself that one time, but this felt much different. In a way, I guess it could have felt good. The longer I went without getting aroused, the harder he stroked me and it made my stomach feel hot.   
    But it wasn't enough to get me hard, and it just made me feel sick inside, how stressed I was between his attempts to make me feel good, his insistence on that, like he was trying to prove something to one of us or maybe both of us, and the possibility of being discovered. That sickness roared in me when his other hand left my chest to move down my back. My legs trembled a little when I felt that large hand slip down the back of my jeans, those long, strong fingers going between my ass cheeks. He must have thought that my shaking meant that I was enjoying what he was doing, because his grip tightened a little and I felt one of his fingers probe the flesh around the hole he had fucked the previous night.   
    I couldn't help the hiss I let out then as a jolt of pain shot through me down there. I was still unbelievably sore and I had to squirm away from that questing finger. I wasn't in any kind of shape for what he wanted, not the fingering and sure as hell not any kind of sex. I had to wonder, if he pushed me again, would I let him? Would I let him keep fucking me until I was bloody and damaged down there? Did I want this relationship that badly?   
    Suddenly, I heard voices, light and sounding far away, outside the door and I panicked. I don't know if I panicked for myself or for him, but I grabbed desperately at his hand and pried it off my still unresponsive member.   
    "Stop!" I urged and my voice didn't sound nearly as strong as I had wanted it to, it never did.   
    I could never understand why it was so damned hard to stand up to him. Trowa was only a year older, and nowhere near as imposing as my father, but every time I told him not to do something, my insides turned to water. I never wanted to upset him and that time wasn't any different. When his gaze turned angry, as it always did when I pushed him away, I wanted to find some place dark to crawl into. I never felt afraid of him, I just felt ashamed and inadequate. I was honestly more scared of the obvious, hard bulge in his jeans that I could feel pressed against my leg than him personally.  
    "What do you mean 'stop'?" he asked with a voice like ice, pulling his hand out of my grip like my touch was dirty to him, " ** _Now_** what the hell is wrong?! Am I not going slow enough for you, princess?!" he sneered, "What the fuck do you want from me-"  
    My face flushed red hot as he started to rant at me. He had been contrite moments ago, like he always was days after he would blow up at me. He was never sorry in the way that I wished that he would be. He never said that he would try not to do it again and he never seemed to care to actually fix things, but he did typically seem remorseful about the things that he said when he got mad at me. But then the second I pushed him away or told him no, his anger would come out like this.   
    Who was the real him anymore? The soft spoken boy that I had met three years ago, the sweet one that would kiss me like there was nothing else he cared for doing, or the one that was looked at me with hatred, all because he was hard up and I wouldn't let him have his way? Was the poorly tempered one just a frustrated part of himself that had been born some time after Quatre's death, or was that really how he was now, and nothing would bring that shy boy back? Did I really want to continue being with him if that latter person was all he was anymore?   
    "Hey, Trowa!" a call from mere feet away from the closed door made the both of us freeze.  
    Trowa's face went completely pale and the anger that had been etched across it drained away into terror. I had never seen his eyes go so wide before. I could have almost felt sorry for him, if my own heart weren't trying to burst out of my rib cage in my own fear.   
    "Fuck!" he swore under his breath and was on his feet in mere seconds.   
    "Are you sure that he's still here?" a second male voice asked.  
    My hands were moving before my brain kicked back in, pulling my shirt down and fumbling with shaking hands with my zipper. It kept getting caught on my underwear.   
    "Yeah," the original voice confirmed, "Coach said he didn't see him leave."  
    I finally got my jeans closed. My heart was racing so fast, vomiting seemed like a sure thing. How the fuck were we going to get by them? There was only one exit to the equipment room and they were standing right outside it. There was no way in hell we were going to be able to convince these boys that I was just helping Trowa put stuff away. School was long since over and the door was closed. Plus, even if I had righted my clothes, I couldn't do a thing about my blush. And what if Trowa couldn't hide his erection, if he still had one?   
    It wouldn't even matter. The two of us coming out of that tiny room was going to look suspicious, or at least get some nasty rumors started. Not like anyone needed an excuse to point the finger at me. People had been calling me a fag since I was twelve years old. Even if it was known throughout the school that it was just a rumor, it was one that was easy and fun to believe. After all, I had been Quatre's best friend. Trowa could have been any random boy and they would make the same accusations.   
    "Maybe he's getting the equipment for the football team together. Don't they meet in like, ten minutes?" a third voice piped in.  
    They were closer now and I could only imagine them walking towards our little hiding spot. I jumped to my feet, ready for who even knew what, and I turned to Trowa, hoping that he had some kind of plan. I watched in shock as he grabbed the ledge under the row of windows on the far side of the room, got one of them open, and squeezed through it, disappearing like some kind of ninja or ghost.   
    He left me. Trowa had left me behind. The ledge that he had used to escape was too tall for me to reach, he had barely managed to grab hold of it himself. That he had managed to lift his entire body up there would have been more impressive if he hadn't abandoned me to save his own ass. I didn't know if even could do the same. I wasn't as strong as he was and thanks to the amount of times I had had my arms broken, I never would be able to do something like that without an incredible amount of effort, if at all. It would be a moot point anyway. I wouldn't have the time to stack anything to reach that ledge.   
    I couldn't get over the fact that Trowa had done that to me. I think that I couldn't wrap my head around it was more shocking to me than what he had actually done. Hadn't he done the same thing to Quatre, turned his back on him to save face? Him not being there wasn't even going to save me from those boys finding me in there. The window was jarred open facing the outside instead of the inside, a pretty glaring statement that something or someone had gone out of it. I was still blushing, but from fear, and there was a me-sized indent on the mat on the floor. Even an idiot could put two and two together, it would just be a matter of figuring out who my 'partner' was. In essence, I was fucked. And, of course, hilariously, Trowa was the one who had fucked me.   
    I kept replaying it in my head, the sight of Trowa running off. He could have turned around and helped me through the window. It would have been a close call, but I'm fast. We could have gone out together. Instead, he had decided to not risk his precious hide for me. Or he had just not thought of me at all and had bolted like a frightened deer? I don't know which is worse.   
    I didn't spend more than a second cursing out my piece of shit boyfriend in my head, I couldn't afford the time. I frantically looked around for a place to at least hide, but there wasn't a closet or any place convenient that wouldn't take too much time to get to. The closest things to me were the mat, a low pommel horse, a wired cage full of soccer balls, and a balance beam.   
    The squeaking sound of someone turning the door knob on the only door in the room made my heart plummet into my intestines. I dropped to my knees and rolled off the mat, shoving myself under the pommel horse. I managed to hook the cage with my foot and push it so it created a barrier between me and the door. With instincts almost as old as I was, I curled myself into as small of a ball as I could. A smaller target, only instead of a punching bag, I was now just a visible target. If I hadn't been so senseless with panic, I would have given myself away by laughing. I never would have thought that all those years of hiding from my drunken father in whatever crevice of the house I could squeeze into would have come in handy in some other situation. If I got out of this, I would owe it to him. How fucked up was that?  
    With the cage full, they would have to walk around it and crouch to look under the horse in order to actually see me, which was entirely possible, actually. But then the door was opening and I had run out of time to find a better place to hide myself. There was a tiny gap in the cage where I could see what was going on at the doorway. Three boys, all of them in Trowa's grade, walked in. I recognized two of them as being his previous teammates, but I didn't know the third beyond that he was a senior.   
    "Hey, Barton!" one of them called out.  
    "You sure he's even in here?" the one that I didn't recognized asked with a bored tone.  
    "He's got to be," the first one responded.  
    I felt my hands shake when he walked into the room, towards where I was cowering. He stopped about two feet in front of me. I could see his legs there, feet incased in well worn, but expensive athletic sneakers. I suddenly realized how hard and fast that I was breathing and clamped both my hands across my mouth. My heart was a thundering locomotive.   
    For a moment, I realized how stupid I was being. It wasn't like they were going to be beat me. Although, if they thought for a second that I had been fooling around with another boy in there, they might. But it wasn't like I was hiding from my father, and really, if they found me under there, it would look even more suspicious.   
    All he had to do was glance over to where I was. The horse was a small space and it didn't hide me completely. He would no doubt see my sneakers or something and then it would all be over. Zechs would hear that I had been in there with someone and it would give him the fuel to make my life even more of a hell. Not that he needed a reason, but when Zechs Darlian was inspired, well, he got _creative_.   
    Why the hell wasn't this guy moving? Did he see me already? I couldn't take just watching his legs and wondering what the fuck he was doing and dared to lean forward to get a glimpse of him. Probably not the smartest move on my part, but that whole mess was driving me nuts. My heart practically stopped when I saw that he was looking up at the open window with an expression that was half confused, half suspicious, like he realized that there was something out of place, but couldn't figure out what it was.  
    Fuckfuckfuck. Had he already realized that something weird was going on? Those old instincts that had, so far, kept me from being discovered, almost got me caught just then. I was so used to dealing with my father, so used to having to either hide completely, or simply outrun him that I had the urge to dart past the boy and his friends. Of course, I wasn't trying to get away from them, I was trying to avoid detection all together. All I could do was stay where I was and mentally scream at them to go the fuck away.  
    "C'mon, he's not here," the third boy said in an annoyed tone of voice.  
    "Where the hell could he have gone?" the one closest to me grumbled, but I watched in complete and utter relief as he turned around and followed the other two back out the door, lazily not shutting it behind them.  
    I watched them from the open door and what little I could see through the cage until they disappeared across the gym. Even watching them go, I felt on edge. Anyone else could walk in. I felt so shaky and unsure of what to do. I couldn't just walk out of the room and run across the gym and hope no one would see me. I think that I might have stayed where I was for hours, even daring to miss work, if reality hadn't filtered into my adrenaline soaked brain.  
      
 _"Maybe he's getting the equipment for the football team together. Don't they meet in like, ten minutes?"_      
      
    "Fuck!" I hissed as I realized how lucky I had been and how, eventually, that luck was going to run out and someone would be coming into the equipment room to set things up for the football team's practice.  
    I got to my feet, feeling hollow and tired and, quite frankly, like a total idiot. How the hell was I going to get across the gymnasium, take a shower, and grab my stuff without being detected?   
    "Stop being so fucking stupid," I swore at myself as it came to me, like a slap across the face, that I was panicking over nothing.  
    Who the hell cared if I took a shower and got my things? That wasn't suspicious. Sure, it was after class and I wasn't on any sports team, but I could pull some lame excuse out of my ass. All I needed to worry about was getting out of the equipment room without being seen. How hard could that be?  
    As it turned out, not even remotely hard. And the ease of which I did it only made me feel like a bigger moron for panicking. As I crept to the open door and peered out of it, there was not a single person in the gym to see me. I didn't even run. I just walked out of there, bolder than I was actually feeling at that moment, and made my way into the locker room. I rushed through a shower, just enough that I got my fear-sweat off of me and wouldn't reek for work, grabbed my things and left without a single person so much as noticing my presence. I felt like the biggest loser on the planet.   
  
*****  
  
    It's probably a good thing that all of my bosses owe my father favors, or at least are friends with him or whatever the hell else is up with their relationships, because with how I was working those two weeks, I probably should have been fired. Between my bouts of insomnia and the two... no, technically three fights that Trowa and I had had in the last month, my head wasn't exactly focused on waiting tables and unloading cargo. I just kept replaying in my head the fact that Trowa had thrown me to the wolves. That neither of us had been caught doing something that no one with any common sense would risk doing was irrelevant. Was he even worried? Did he regret what he had done? Or did he just not give a fuck and was only relieved that his precious reputation was still in tact?  
    After screwing up two orders, Sal demoted me to dish duty, which did absolutely nothing to distract me from my runaway thoughts. My shift at the diner didn't fare much better, with the same results, although one glance at Andre told me that what he really wanted to do was send me home. I think that I was in some kind of luke warm version of shock where all I was capable of feeling was betrayal and disbelief. I don't know why it bothered me so much. Things hadn't exactly been wonderful between the two of us lately.   
    For some reason, my anger at him for doing that to me didn't even filter in until later that night at the factory. It was just we well. With the sudden rage that I felt, I probably would have broken some dishes. A lot of them. Instead, I had some nice crates to break open and throw around. By the time that my shift was over, I had busted up every one of my knuckles, somehow managed to bruise my arms even worse than they already were, cut myself in various places with the crowbar I was using no less than six times, and had apparently taught a couple of my coworkers some new swear words. My boss thought that I was a walking accident waiting to happen and Solo couldn't decide if he wanted to talk me through it or just laugh at me.   
    Either way, I was relieved to be leaving work and exhausted  from my anger. I was actually looking forward to going to sleep for once and was sure I would actually manage some. I didn't even want to make myself any food. Technically, all I _wanted_ was to slam my fist into Trowa's face before I exploded and did something stupider than just embarrassing myself at work.  
    The very last thing I expected to be greeting me when I got home was my father, wide awake at that hour, standing in the kitchen with phone in hand, and looking thoroughly pissed off.  
    "I don't give a fucking shit," he was yelling into the receiver, "if you don't stop calling here-"  
    His stony, grey eyes flickered to me and I knew that the only reason why I wasn't on the floor with a broken nose or a black eye was that whoever he was talking to would hear it. But when he saw me there and all that rage was suddenly focused on me, I thought that he might risk it anyway.  
    "This fucker has been calling every goddamned hour!" he roared at me, thrusting the phone at me like he was considering hitting me with it, "I have work in the morning, you piece of shit, and so does your mother! This isn't a fucking call center and if you don't deal with it, I'll haul him in for harassment, you got that?!"  
    I didn't need for him to say a single word more. There was only one person who would ever call my house looking for me, especially every hour. I felt an anger and frustration that easily rivaled my father's fill me. I wanted to throw the phone into the wall or just maliciously hang up on him and pull the phone cord out of the wall. Or just inform my father of where 'this fucker' was calling from and see if he really would arrest him for harassment.   
    "What?!" I snarled into the phone.  
    Some of the raw rage bled out of my father's expression and he almost looked amused that I was as pissed off at the caller as he was. There was a lengthy pause before Trowa spoke, long enough that I almost did hang up on him.  
    "You're home," he said simply.  
    I could imagine him calling up my house every hour trying to get a hold of me, but not knowing what time I got off of work, but too chicken shit to ask my dad. Or maybe he had and my father had pettily refused to tell him. It enraged me, that he had kept calling my house, getting my father more and more angry at _me_ , when Trowa had been the one to abandon me in the first place. I didn't even want to take his fucking phone call.  
    "No shit," I sneered.  
    "I'm-" he started to say.  
    I'll never know what exactly he had been intending to tell me, but if it was to apologize to me for throwing me to the wolves, I didn't want to hear it. Suddenly, I got a miserable, crystal clear image of what the rest of Trowa and mine's relationship was going to be like. He would try to push me into something that I didn't want to do or do something that I didn't like or I would do something that _he_ didn't like, we would fight about it and avoid each other for a little while until he would apologize or act contrite about it, we would fall back together again, not really resolving anything, and things would be nice for awhile until the next fight. And there would always be a next fight, I realized with absolute certainty. Because he kept pushing and I kept evading and accepting his half-hearted apologies, even when I didn't really forgive him.   
    Then, hearing his voice over the phone, ready to start the dance all over again, I didn't want to forgive him or so much as let him believe that I _could_ forgive him. Not because I was mad at him, and I was. Not because I didn't think he was really sorry, and I didn't. I somehow knew, just from the sound of his voice, that he was only sorry because I was upset, not because he had betrayed me. I was just tired of dealing with him. I was tired of being hurt and being forced to let go of that hurt for him. What was the fucking point? I knew that, if that sort of thing happened again, Trowa would bolt again. Him saying that he was sorry about it, just like every _other_ goddamned time he had apologized to me for something, didn't mean that he had any desire to change.   
    "What do you want?" I asked brusquely.  
    He paused again, unsure, I think, of my mood. He had probably thought that I would be understanding and I would forgive him outright, or I would be too desperate to move past the problem to be anything but meek, like always. And like always, he would bulldoze forward and I would get out of the way. I think that my anger and shortness with him was leaving him unbalanced. Good. Let _him_ be the unsure one for once.  
    "C... can we go out tomorrow...? We just have a half day, so I thought we could go out to lunch or something... Do you want to?" he suggested with a shyness that I usually found endearing, but right then, it only infuriated me because I couldn't tell if he was trying to manipulate me into pity, disarming me with fake meekness and acting contrite, or if he was genuine.   
    "No," I said coldly and with a great deal of finality.  
    Another pause. I could actually feel his shock over the phone line. I had never turned him down for a date before. In fact, with the exception of sex, I had never told him no about _anything_ , and since I had caved about that as well, I couldn't really say that I had ever denied him anything, now could I?  
    "Duo-" he started to plead.  
    " _No_ ," I repeated forcefully, feeling my rage rising, "You listen to me for once. What gives you the fucking right to call here, keep my parents up all goddamned night, and get _me_ into fucking trouble because _you_ want something?! This could have waited until tomorrow, you asshole, and you damned well know it! You don't get to harass me because you feel like you need something from me and get my parents pissed off at me for it! I don't owe you shit after what you just pulled! So no, I will not-" by some sort of miracle, and it was just that, because I sure as hell hadn't been thinking logically at that point in my angry tirade, what popped into my head then wasn't what came pouring out of my mouth and instead of 'go on a date with you', I said, "hang out with you!"  
    The more pissed off that I got, the more mellow my father seemed to get and after my rant, he actually looked impressed. He had never seen me act like that before and I didn't blame him, I wasn't sure where my behavior was coming from, either. I think that I was at least somewhat aware that my anger wasn't all stemming from what had happened in the equipment room, that a large portion of it was from the night before in the auto shop, all the rage I should have felt before, but had denied myself. I was surprised that Trowa didn't hang up on me and that, instead of not speaking for awhile again, he spoke as soon as I took a breath to try to calm myself down.  
    "We need to talk," he said curtly.  
    He sounded upset and nervous, but also a bit angry instead of shy. I guess he didn't like my yelling at him anymore than I liked it when he yelled at me.  
    "... I want to see you," he added then and there was this... this sad desperation to his voice.  
    It was the first time that he had ever said something like that to me, that he _wanted_. I think if he had just said that we needed to talk, I would have been able to maintain my pissed off attitude and could have hung up on him without an ounce of guilt. But that sadness in his voice just eviscerated me. I felt like he had stabbed me in the heart and all of my anger had poured out, leaving me, instead of relief, hollow and drained. I couldn't even fight him, couldn't even keep my goddamn rage. I was that pathetic. Hell, I didn't even feel annoyed at him for daring to be mad at me for telling him off.  
    "Fine," I conceded grudgingly.  
    "Where would you like to go?" he asked, his meekness slowly returning.  
    He didn't ask me that very often and on a normal day, it would have warmed me and made me feel affection for him, but I just couldn't find the energy to give a shit.  
    "I'll let you know tomorrow," it was impossible to keep the cold flatness out of my tone.  
    I hung up on him, not caring one bit if he had more to say and was relieved to hand the phone back to my father. I just couldn't do it anymore. I wanted to scream 'I give up, you win' at the world. I was just done, so thoroughly and completely _done_.  
    "Sorry," I murmured to my father and tensed, waiting for the blow, but too tired to really care beyond that.  
    It's funny. Trowa had driven me to a point in those last twenty-four hours that only my father and Quatre's death had ever brought me to. He had never struck me or physically hurt me if you overlooked the painful sex, and I didn't love him half as much as I had loved Quatre. And yet, I felt like my father could have beaten me to a bloody pulp just then and there was no way that I could have felt any worse. But he didn't hit me. He just flashed me a weird look and took the phone from me.  
    "Tell your stupid friend not to call here anymore," he cautioned, a threat of violence in his tone, as well as a bit of disbelief, like my having a friend was impossible to him.  
    Did I, though? I was starting to wonder just what it was about Trowa that I could call a friend, especially when I tried to compare him to Quatre. Or maybe I was just bitter. Could you really have a boyfriend that you didn't even call your friend? I used to, but lately it had seemed like all he did was hurt me. We didn't hang out, we went on dates. We didn't talk, we fought. I couldn't share anything with him and we had little in common besides our mutual pain.   
    It seemed like, the longer I was with Trowa, the less I wanted a boyfriend and the more I wanted a friend. Fuck, who was I kidding? Nothing at all had changed since I had started dating him, nothing had changed in three years. I didn't want a friend, I wanted _my_ friend back. Three years and that's all I have ever wanted. Nothing changes.   
    "He's just some jerk from school," I muttered and made my way upstairs to my room.  
    Although I was horribly  tired, after that phone call, I only managed three, restless, nightmare fueled hours. I dreamed of pushing Quatre in front of the train. I dreamt that Trowa had pushed him, then Relena, then my father. I dreamt of Trowa raping me. I dreamt of my father touching my hair, telling me that I look like my mother used to, then he dragged me, screaming, into Neely's auto shop garage.  
    I don't remember the rest of the dream, but I woke up with my heart pounding like a taiko drum and breathing so hard that my chest hurt. I couldn't manage to fall asleep after that. I would have gone out for a walk until school started, but even in my windowless room, I could hear rain pelting the roof. I wouldn't have minded running in the rain if it had been Summer, but even though it was still just September, it was chilly out. I had a foreboding feeling that Winter is going to be brutal this year with the constant cold fronts we were getting in the Fall.   
    I thought about going downstairs and putting the television on mute so I wouldn't wake my parents up, but I didn't feel like watching the kind of programming that would be on at four am, so I picked a random book from my bookcase and dug out the little CD player and headphones that I had stashed in the hole in the wall a few feet from my bed. I mostly used the little compartment I had made out of the loose floorboards to hide my journals and what little money I've been saving.   
    About a month ago, I found another spot in my room to hide things that I didn't want my father to take or destroy. A part of the wall by my bed got... damaged when my father had tried to kick me while wearing his steel toed boots. Knowing the kind of injury it would have caused from prior experience, I had managed to get out of the way and past him down the steps before he had cornered me, but the wall hadn't been so lucky.   
    His kick had punch a hole right through the plaster and had cracked some of the lath of boards under it just enough that it had been easy for me to finish the job. I cleared away the broken plaster and board and cleaned up all the dust and dirt and various insect leavings to make a little hidey hole for myself. It's not that big, about two feet tall and three feet across and put my laundry basket in front of it so no one would be able to notice it unless they were starting right at the wall. I put the jacket that Quatre had gotten me for my birthday in there, some of my favorite books and my small collection of CDs in there, too.   
    Well, ok, some of the CDs I have aren't really mine. I didn't steal them... exactly. It's just that they... the school, I mean, had waited awhile to take Quatre's stuff out of his locker. His parents hadn't requested any of it, so they had waited until after his funeral to do it. Out of respect or they had just forgotten, I don't know, but eventually, after the worst of my grief had left me enough for me to think intelligible thoughts beyond my pain, I had gone through the things that he had left behind and taken some stuff.   
    It's not stealing when you know that the person wouldn't have minded you having the stuff you took, or if you already knew the combination on the locker, right? It wasn't like Quatre kept a lot of crap in his locker, just some textbooks, school supplies like pencils and notebooks, his gym clothes, a bottle of water, and some CDs. If there was anything precious, anything that he had truly loved in that locker at all, it had been Quatre's music.   
    I had felt bad about taking it at first, but I knew that he would have wanted me to have it. His parents would have thrown them away or given them to his sisters, but Quatre had loved music, especially instrumental stuff like jazz and classical. I had a bunch of Beethoven, Mozart, and various folk music thanks to him. One of my favorite CDs to listen to at night is this Irish fiddle one he had.   
    Actually, all of my music collection was thanks to Quatre. I had offhandedly told him once that I liked older rock bands like The Rolling Stones and blues musicians like Muddy Waters and the very next day, he had placed five CDs that he had made himself in my hands, all a mix of rock and blues. Until then, I hadn't even owned a cassette. Then he had just kept making more CDs for me until I had told him that I didn't have anything to play them on, which had prompted him to buy me my disc player. I hadn't been able to tell him at the time that it was the nicest gift anyone had ever given me in my entire life. I guard that stupid thing like it's made of gold.   
    I laid down on my mattress, reading by the low light of my lantern, and listened to B.B King, Howlin' Wof, and Stevie Ray Vaughan for two solid hours before I heard screaming coming from downstairs. All things considered, I felt lucky to have had peace for that long.   
    "Going to work hung over again?! I hope they fire your ass, then you can become as big of a loser as that lazy pig you call a friend!" my mother was shrieking.  
    I barely heard a soft cry, a thud, and then a moment's worth of silence and knew that my father had just hit her. But it wasn't more than a minute before she started screaming at him again, his deeper voice joining hers in a fucked up duet. With slightly shaking hands, I changed my current CD to one that had some Rolling Stones and Blue Oyster Cult on it and switched tracks until I found the loudest song on there. I turned the volume up until all I could hear was the roaring shriek of the guitars and the mad pounding of drums and pressed the ear phones tight against my ears, drowning out the chaos that was going on downstairs.   
    It was dangerous. I wouldn't be able to hear my father coming if he decided to go for me next, but I just couldn't take that sound, not after the night that I had just had. Sometimes I think that, even after I've moved out of this house, when I'm in my thirties or forties, I'll still have nightmares about that noise. The screaming, the thud of a body hitting the wall... The only thing that saves my sanity is that I can't hear the sound of a fist impacting flesh from all the way up here. At least, not unless I'm the one getting hit.   
    I stayed like that for thirty minutes, as long as I dared, before turning the disc player off, reminding myself to hunt down some fresh batteries soon. When I pulled the ear phones off, everything was blissfully quiet. Not that that meant that things were better downstairs, but I needed to get ready for school. I didn't feel much relief that we only had a half school day because of teacher conferences, not knowing what it was I had to do after school. Because that morning, seeing Trowa wasn't something that I wanted to do or was looking forward to, it was a chore.   
    I dared the steps, so sure that my father would just be there, pissed off about the phone calls from last night all over again, but there was nothing blocking my path. When I passed by his bedroom, I heard the gut wrenching sound of my mother sobbing, the sound thick and muffled, like she was holding her nose shut. The bedroom door was slightly ajar and I braved her anger, peeking inside.   
    She was sitting on the bed, still wearing her nightgown even though she needed to be getting ready for work. The light blue fabric was stained red from the blood dripping from her nose. She had a tissue pressed against it, but it was completely bloody and she didn't seem concerned with getting a clean one, too involved with crying to care about stopping the blood flow. She looked so small and frail to me just then, her bare legs so thin, her face, so like mine if it weren't for the wear that decades of alcoholism had done to it. Her grey eyes were rimmed red and miserable, her long, chestnut hair a rat's nest of tangles.   
    I ached to comfort her, to throw my arms around her and tell her that everything was going to be ok. I wanted to give her something... anything... and just then, it didn't matter that she had never given me an ounce of comfort my entire life. She was my mother and she was hurting, and that made me hurt so deep down in me. That I couldn't, that I had absolutely nothing to offer her but more suffering and sorrow was one of the most horrible pains that I have ever felt.   
    Looking at her then, not as the mother that had neglected me for my entire life and told me that I had been unwanted, but simply as the woman who had brought me into the world, a woman that was sobbing like her own world was ending, what hurt Trowa had done to me seemed so insignificant. It made me feel petty and foolish and as worthless as she claimed that I was. It just about killed me to do it, but I walked past the bedroom as quietly as I could. If I couldn't help her, then I wasn't going to make her feel ashamed that I had seen her cry, either.   
    I couldn't keep my mind on my classes. I kept swinging between that vision of my mother, crying with a bloody nose, and my upcoming meeting with Trowa. Truthfully, I didn't want to see him. Seeing my mother like that that morning had just sucked all of my anger at him right out of me. I just felt very sad; for her, for me, and for Trowa, too. I didn't feel up to fighting with him or even yelling at him like I had over the phone. It had been so easy with my rage burning in me, but even though I still felt mad at him, I couldn't built up that anger into anything. But I didn't want to go hang out with him and talk about what had happened the day before, either.  
    What was there to say? Trowa had been willing to leave me behind to save his own ass. His reputation was more important to him than our relationship. But so what? I had known that since we had first started dating. If that weren't true, we wouldn't act like we were total strangers at school. I completely understood why he had abandoned me, things would be a lot harder for him if people found out that he was gay than it would be for me. So why did it bother me so much? Why did I feel so angry when I remembered him climbing through that window without so much as a look back at me?  
    I just couldn't see the point of talking it over with him. He would say all the things that I already knew. I would say that I understood and we would end up back on square one again. I would still be hurt and we would solve absolutely nothing, as always. Was that what I wanted, to keep on going knowing that he was going to continue to pressure me to have sex with him, only to not even have my goddamned back at the first sign of trouble? I could break up with him, I realized. I had an excuse now. I could tell him that it wasn't the fighting or my fears of sex, but that he had betrayed me. That sounds plausible, right?   
    But I still felt this nervousness in my gut, this intense uncertainty. I still didn't want to do it. What frightened me wasn't that I still wanted to date him, but the thought of what it was going to take to get me to the point where I could break it off with him. Would I ever get there? Was I just a chicken shit and I would have to drive him to that point instead? He had to be tired of me, he sure as hell didn't seem happy in this relationship.  
    But what if neither of us did? What if we stayed together for the rest of the year? The thought of that, of being with him and doing this over and over and over with him made me feel weary. You weren't supposed to feel that about someone you supposedly cared for, did you?  
    I spent my half day at school engaged in a messed up game of tug of war with myself, debating over and over if I should meet with Trowa like I had told him that I would or just blow him off. Neither prospect made me feel good. When the final bell rang, I decided what the hell. As long as I picked a place in town, I could just leave if he pissed me off. It wasn't like I had anything else to do. I didn't have any work for hours yet and I really didn't want to go home. So why not? At least, that was what I told myself. I think that I still held on to some childish hope that we could be ok, even though I knew deep down that we had never been 'ok' to begin with.  
    The light rain from that morning had turned into a monsoon-like downpour. The school parking lot looked more like a stream than flat pavement and even students that would usually linger to talk to friends were running towards cars and buses. The hood on my thin jacket wasn't going to save me from getting soaked to the bone and my father had taken the good umbrella to work, leaving just the smaller one for Mom, so I hadn't bothered to take one. I stood under the overhang by the school's entrance, watching my classmates evacuate the place and puddles turn into mini lakes.  
    In almost no time at all, I was the only person that I could see. All the buses and most of the cars were gone. With the teachers at their conferences, there wasn't going to be anyone else around for hours. I almost thought that Trowa had gone home, too, in light of the heavy rain, but then the doors behind me opened and he strode out, looking around to, no doubt, see if there would be anyone to see us. He only walked up to me when he noticed that it was just the two of us. He was wearing a thick raincoat and had a large, black umbrella in hand. He opened it and brought it over my head in a very gentlemanly gesture. It reminded me, a bit cruelly, of all the reasons why I was finding it so hard to end things with him.  
    "Where did you want to go?" he asked me without any other kind of greeting, his shy demeanor returning to him.  
    "The boardwalk?" I suggested.  
    It was a good, neutral place for us to talk or whatever Trowa had in mind. Public enough that he wouldn't dare to even try holding hands with me, but between the rain and the brisk, Fall weather, the boardwalk would be completely deserted save for some of the more desperate food vendors and restaurants. Besides, I knew a few places there where no one would see us.  
    "Sure," he agreed and stood next to me under his umbrella.  
    It was big enough for the both of us to comfortably stand under and not get wet, but we had to stay close enough for our shoulders to touch. I blushed warmly every time his brushed up against mine and loathed the stupid, shy reaction. I wished so strongly then that we were a normal couple, a couple that was socially accepted. Just two people who were in love and walking together in the rain. He would press his side against mine and I would cover his hand as it gripped the umbrella with my own. It would be close and intimate and wonderful.  
    But that would never be us. My heart ached and I longed for that so painfully. I hated the world then for destroying that desire for me, and I hated Trowa for not being the boy in my fantasy. Most of all, I hated myself for being gay and knowing that I would never have it, no matter who I was with.   
    We kept to back streets as we made our way towards the beach. Not that it really mattered. The sheet of rain was thick, making it difficult to see at all even if you dared to walk out in it. Trowa's umbrella was doing a commendable job of keeping my head dry, but there was nothing to be done for my sneakers and socks and the cuffs of my jeans. Every step was a small puddle and the bigger ones were nearly invisible. Central Nausten was a ghost town.  
    The same along the beach felt more like mud to walk on and the ocean looked violent as large waves struck the sand and rocky cliff face further to the south. We were on the opposite end of the beach from where I usually went running, so I couldn't see the mound that I liked to walk on, but I bet it was completely submerged. I wished that I had watched the weather forecast that morning , but just looking at those waves and the black sky, I knew that a big storm was coming, even if the wind hadn't picked up yet.  
    I led Trowa to a little shack that was beside the boardwalk on the beach. I call it a shack very loosely. The structure was literally nothing more than three walls and a tin, sheet roof. There were a couple of wooden benches far enough in the ten by twenty foot shack that they were only slightly wet from the rain. There weren't any windows or anything more of note about the place, a perfect hiding spot away from the storm and the boardwalk. In the Summer, the shack was used to sell shaved ice, but that season was long past.  
    "Do you want anything to eat?" Trowa asked me as I laid my jacket over one of the benches so I could sit on it without getting any wet spots on my jeans.  
    My stomach chose that moment to gurgle unhappily and I flushed darkly in embarrassment.  
    "Uh, yeah... I haven't eaten anything since lunch yesterday," I confessed sheepishly.  
    He smiled fondly at me, well used to my constantly skipping meals. That look made my insides warm and turn into mush. I might have been... not very pleased at him at that moment, but he was still so handsome when he wasn't mad at me. When he looked at me like that, like he cared, like he enjoyed being with me, I thought that I could love him. How could I possibly break up with him? Who else in all of Nausten, in all of the world, would ever look at me like that?  
    "You can get as much as you want," he offered.  
    I felt a bit guilty then. There I had been, angry at him, and as always, he was buying me lunch. No matter how poorly our relationship was going, no matter if we were fighting, he always did that without ever demanding that I pay for our dates for once. It made me feel like a colossal asshole.   
    "Could you get me a couple of hot dogs and a Mountain Dew? Oh, and some french fries?"  
    I could practically feel my stomach drooling at the mere thought of food.  
    "Sure," he said with a soft smile that sent this weird wave of both bewilderment and affection through me.  
    He was being so nice to me, so painfully nice. Did he know about my doubts, that I had been considering ending things with him and he was trying to manipulate me? No, I decided looking at his smile. He was being genuine. Was he trying to calm me so we wouldn't fight, or was he just honestly not mad at me anymore for me pushing him away again yesterday and yelling at him over the phone? Had he noticed my melancholy during our walk?  
    Then, before he left the shelter of the shack, he leaned over and kissed me gently on my forehead and I was lost. I watched him leave, my forehead tingling from the memory of his cool lips, and felt tears threaten my vision. I had to squeeze down on a black bruise on my arm to get them stopped. Have you ever been in pain for a really long time, like days or weeks or even longer, and suddenly have that pain go away in a single instance? It hurts. The absence of that pain actually hurts for a bit before your body gets used to it. What I felt then was just like that. I had been living with such fear and hate of him, of sex, of disappointing him, of compromise and loneliness as I longed in my head and heart for all the parts of our relationship that I liked while Trowa kept pushing me into things that scared me.  
    Those little things; holding hands and kissing and just being with each other, became more and more distant, always leading to the things that I was scared of. Then, suddenly, just as I was thinking that this relationship wasn't worth the hurt anymore, those things came back to me. A walk in the rain, his affectionate smile, a kiss. And it hurt. It should have felt good, and it did, but it only felt good under so many layers of pain. Pain... from getting something that I dared to want.  
    I wanted so little, yearned for barely anything anymore. I didn't dream. I didn't hope. Because life had taught me that I was never going to get anything that I really wanted, or I would and something or someone was just going to take it away. Dreaming could only harm me, so I had learned to stop doing it. So why... why did actually getting such a tiny thing hurt me so much?   
    I watched the rain and the waves as I waited for Trowa to come back, my thoughts so conflicted that I felt physically ill with them. Now that the worst of my anger and bitterness had abided, I tried to look at our relationship as clinically as I could. I know now, looking back, that I wasn't being clinical at all. I had been tainted by a moment of affection and my depression. I had gone from one end of the spectrum of my feelings for my boyfriend to the entire other end, from hating to caring, all because of a kiss. My weakness was pathetic, if I dared to analyze it. I can afford to now, but then, I just couldn't. I didn't dare even notice it.   
    But I told myself that I was being critical and unbiased, as stupid as that sounds. I told myself, like I always did, that the affection I felt for him, and the affection he seemed to feel for me, made all the other crap worthwhile. That kiss had been important to me. I guess a lot of people my age would have scoffed at it, just a chaste kiss on the forehead, but I liked it more than Trowa kissing me on the mouth because it wasn't a kiss of passion, it wasn't one that he was willing to give me because he was horny and he wanted it to lead somewhere. I wanted to believe that he had done it because he cared, that he liked something about me that was more than just as a stand in for Quatre. Don't laugh at me, I know it's stupid _now_ , I know that there was no way someone like him could find anything about me attractive or endearing beyond what he had needed to see. If he could only kiss me like that, then didn't that make all the fighting, the pushing, the bullshit between us worth it? Didn't mean that we had some kind of future?   
    I'm not some naive, air-headed girl, overfed on romantic nonsense thinking that love would conquer all, that being hurt was ok so long as Trowa claimed that he loved me. I wasn't delusional. But I also didn't want to be alone, and I didn't want to lose those happy moments. I wasn't willing to shrug off the pain that he had caused me and I knew that our relationship was still fucked up, but I chose to believe that staying with him was worth it.   
    In all of the time that I was with him, it didn't occur to me until now that all I was doing was settling. Just like I had caved in to Trowa's lust, I had caved in to _myself_ , to my own, damned loneliness, my weakness. How fucked up is that? I put a band-aid on the festering sores of our relationship. Is it really so surprising that it all went to shit so quickly?  
    Trowa came back with our food pretty quickly. I imagined that he hadn't had to wait in any lines. Usually the food vendors would just give you paper plates to put your food on, or a plastic tray if you bought enough, but whoever he had bought from had been considerate enough to put the hot dogs and french fries in Styrofoam, take out containers so nothing would get wet.   
    "Thanks," I said to him as I took my designated container and soda from him.  
    Those hot dogs looked like the best thing in the world to me. They were incredibly messy, piled on with mustard, ketchup, cheese, sweet relish, and diced onions. The first dog I finished so quickly in my ravenous hunger that at least half of it ended up in the container instead of my mouth, but I made quick work of the mess, using my fries to scoop it up. Trowa watched me eat in amusement, shaking his head at what I was sure was a total lack of manners. That or he just thought it was weird that I was that hungry and hadn't even said anything about it until he had offered me food. And there, naked under the amusement, was that affection again that made my stomach twist up and turn liquid all at the same time. But honestly, I was so used to being hungry that I don't think about it, or sometimes even notice it, until I go to eat something.   
    It's not like I'm homeless or some starving kid from a third world country. I get at least one meal a day, I just don't eat as much as I should. When you live hand to mouth like my family often does, unless Dad gets a bonus or there's nothing to fix around the house that week, eating three meals a day just seems like a waste of food and money. It doesn't even bother me usually, but put free food in front of me after skipping a few meals and my stomach becomes a gaping maw.   
    I took a sip of my Mountain Dew with a slight grimace. I'm not a big fan of the stuff. The flavor isn't so terrible, but there's this weird, cloying taste in it that makes my stomach hurt for some reason. I like it more than Pepsi and Coke, but that's not saying much. When I do have soda, I prefer the lemon-lime flavors or root beer or club soda. But I desperately needed caffeine for my work shifts later that day and Mountain Dew is loaded with that crap.   
    "I'm sorry that I got you into trouble last night," Trowa apologized when he finished his own meal of a loaded hamburger and fries.   
    I chewed thoughtfully on my last fry and took a final gulp from the soda before I said anything.  
    "He was pretty mad," I confessed, "but I got lucky and he didn't ground me or anything," 'or beat the shit out of me because of you,' "You just can't call my house anymore, ok? Ever."  
    The look on his face completely destroyed the peace I had been feeling, sitting there and eating with him. He looked put out at that bit of news, not quite angry, but definitely annoyed. Is it wrong that I was more worried about him spitefully calling my house and getting me into serious trouble with my father than I was about his feelings on the subject? Why did we have to talk about this anyway? Couldn't we just sit there and enjoy each other's company? Things had been easier and better before he had opened his mouth and I resented him a little for it. I didn't want to remember how angry I had been with him yesterday and exactly why he was apologizing to me.  
    "Sorry," he repeated but now his tone lacked much sincerity, "but I was desperate. I was worried about you, I needed to make sure that were ok after what happened."  
    "Don't you mean you needed to know if your reputation is still in tact?" I blurted out coolly and could have slapped myself for it.  
    What the hell was wrong with me? Why had I said that, when I had already decided to just let the whole mess go? Was I still bitter about it?  
    Trowa looked angry for a second and I didn't blame him. He was being nice to me and trying to patch things up after what he had done and I was throwing it in his face. Even when his anger died down, there was something in his frustrated expression, some coldness that greatly worried me. He hadn't looked like that since the night we had had sex.   
    "So what if I was worried about that?" he challenged angrily, "I'm not like you, Duo, I actually give a shit about what people think about me. I have friends, maybe not as much as I did when I was on the basketball team, but people don't call me fag and leave the room when I walk in it. I don't want that to change because a few of my friends found me..." he suddenly took a deep breath, obviously having been seconds away from saying something he would have regretted, "Maybe if you were more careful and cared more about what people think and say about you, you wouldn't have so much trouble with Zechs and Relena."  
    What the fuck was that supposed to mean? I was only getting bullied because... because what? I wasn't as cautious as him? Or was he insinuating that I acted gay? Was he harping on my hair again or was this something else that he disapproved of?  
    "Well you can relax," I snapped at him, feeling all of the anger that I had tried to let go of returning to me with an easiness that made me sick, "I didn't fucking out you. While you ran away and left me to deal with it on my own, I hid. None of your friends saw me or suspected anything. Your precious reputation is in tact."      
    He snorted and the way he did it, if a snort could have any kind of tone at all, made me think that he actually blamed _me_ for the whole thing. I wanted to leave, then. Just get up and walk out into the pouring rain and abandon him like he had abandoned me. I should have. That fucked up date had just showed me, with absolute clarity, what our relationship was. I had been having a nice time, warmed from how gentle and almost loving he was being, when in the course of one, single moment, it was shit again. Why was this so easy to break?  
    "What would you have done if they _had_ found me?" I asked him and the raw, overwhelming bitterness in my voice horrified me, "What would you have done to save your own skin? Lied about our relationship, tell them that we weren't doing anything in there at all, that you had thought that I was goddamned _girl_ when you haven't had a single girlfriend your whole life?!"  
    It felt disgustingly good, throwing back his insults that I looked like a girl in his face. But as I looked at him, something black passed in his eyes. He was looking down at the wet sand by his feet with this intense focus, this anger. But when I brought up his lack of hetero dating, his expression changed for a second. He looked like he wanted to say something to me, something that, I was sure, would have been incredibly harsh and cruel. But he looked... guilty for some reason and whatever it was didn't come out. That guilt made my guts twist in fear. I was sure, in that moment, that something was wrong, something more than I knew and that frightened me.  
    "What relationship?" he looked at me, his green eyes piercing and dark in the grey gloom of the day, his face contorted in an angry, vengeful sneer, "It isn't like we're fucking."  
    I felt like he had just shot me in the heart as he turned everything around on me and I felt a seed of doubt being planted in the wound. Did he really feel that way, that we didn't even have a relationship because, even after I had let him fuck me once, I had still pushed him away? Was that the real reason why he had left me behind in the equipment room, to punish me for telling him no again, or just because what we had wasn't important enough to risk himself for?   
    I stood up from the bench and almost did walk away. I wish that I had, that some common sense had entered my head. I wish that he had never kissed me that day, I wish that he had never polluted my heart with that one act of tenderness. Instead, I turned to him, my arms crossed over my chest defensively.  
    "What would you have done?" I repeated angrily, feeling like I was in those waves that I had been watching only minutes before, swept into chaos.  
    Trowa stood, too, his eyes like emerald ice as he looked at me, not as his boyfriend, but as some kind of pest.  
    "Whatever it took to save me from you," he said, "Do you really think that you're worth being ostracized over?"  
    His cruelty made a not too sane, bitter laugh explode from me, but as nuts as it sounded, it was still better than crying, which was my alternative at that point.   
    "And what exactly is that?" I accused him harshly, "Told them that I was the one who had come onto you? That I was _raping_ you?"  
    The rage in his eyes bled out of him, leaving only that flat coldness. Seeing it there made this deep sense of horrible foreboding fill me.  
    "Yes," he said in a as matter of fact, straightforward way as anyone could sound, leaving absolutely no doubt in me that he was being honest, "and they would have believed me."  
    I took a shaky step backwards away from him as my heart clenched. What was more horrible, I wondered, that classmates I hadn't even _met_ would easily believe me of raping someone bigger and stronger than myself, or that the boy that claimed to care about me, who kissed me and had had sex with me, could even more easily accuse me of that?   
    The same boy that knew that I was being bullied over those kinds of insinuations, that I was a fag, a pervert, and the same boy that knew how much I had suffered over the death of my best friend, who had killed himself for those same insinuations, the friend that he _claimed_ to have loved, could say something like that to me. He could destroy what little I had left, and he could do it _easily_. It was the thought of Quatre then that wrenched another bitter and hysterical laugh from me. A part of me was so happy then, so incredibly _relieved_ that Quatre had never lived to see this hideous side of his love. Or maybe this part only existed for me. I had to bite down on my tongue hard enough to make it bleed to keep Trowa from seeing the tears that wanted to grow in my eyes.  
    "I guess I shouldn't be surprised," I said snidely to hide how badly my hand was shaking as I used it to swipe my wet bangs out of my face, feeling Trowa's cruelty infect me like some sort of plague, "After all, Quatre wasn't worth you risking your reputation over, either, so why should I be?"  
    His eyes widened in pain at the reminder of what he had done three years ago and I relished in it. It made me feel sick later, but I fucking _relished_ his agony, which seemed to mock mine. I took a step forward, feeling bold in my anger and grief.  
    "It's a good thing that the two of you were never together," I sneered, "or you would have just accused him of raping you at the first sign of trouble. And that would have killed him-"  
    Trowa's look of complete fury was my only warning before he slammed his fist into the right side of my face. He hadn't pulled the blow, but had struck me as hard as he could in his rage. Pain exploded in my right cheek and I staggered backwards into the rain, but I didn't fall. He was strong, but not as strong as my father was and I was a veteran at knowing how to take hits. But the pain of it was nothing compared to my shock. He had hit me. Trowa had actually hit me. He strode up to me, getting right in my face and letting himself get soaked in the rain, too. I flinched from him, but managed to hide it by putting my hand over the right side of my face. My skin felt fiery hot and throbbed. Even my eye hurt even though he had missed it by all of an inch.   
    "Don't act so high and mighty," he hissed at me, "You were _never_ the one I wanted and don't you fucking forget that."  
    I looked up at him through my one, good eye and saw the contempt and absolute hatred for me there. I felt each and every one of those words. They weren't anything that I hadn't feared through our entire relationship, but to hear him actually say that to me, that I wasn't wanted... I almost laughed again. That was me in a nutshell. Never wanted, just used. Never the one loved, just the punching bag. I wanted to sob. I wanted to cry until my tears looked like the furious rain that was pelting me. I glanced down at the ground, unable to handle him hating me so much, but I could still feel his gaze, like he was looking at some disgusting insect.  
    "Why don't you just break up with me?" I asked in a heartbroken whisper, my voice full of agony and despair. I hadn't even known that I was capable of sounding like that after watching Quatre kill himself.  
    "I don't know," Trowa said flatly and shoved past me, walking back towards the boardwalk, his unfurled umbrella clutched tightly in his white knuckled grip.  
    He left me there alone in the rain as I stood there, pretending that the wetness on my cheeks were tears. The same tears that suddenly refused to come to me. The only comfort I had was the icy rain and the sound of the waves crashing against the shore. To me, it made the same sound of Trowa's fist hitting my face.   
  
End Part 5  
      
Author's note: Sorry about the long chapter, I wanted to stick to keep the entire fight together, so it dragged on for a bit. This chapter is very close to done. There will probably be 1-2 more parts and then I'll be moving on to chapter 5, which is going to be a bit of a doozy. I'll be writing up a warning about it when this chapter is over.  
  
Thank you, as always, to everyone who has commented, noted me, favorited, kudos'd, and bookmarked this story. It means to much to me ;_;  
  



	20. Chapter 4 Part 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After learning that Trowa has been keeping a painful secret from him, Duo tries to decide if he wants to stay with him or break up.

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 4  
Part 6  
  
  
    We didn't break up. Don't shake your head at me, ok? Hindsight is perfect and all that shit, but even after our latest, disastrous fight, even after I had something stupid and basically threw all his attempts at patching things up in his face, and even after Trowa had informed me that not only was he only using me and didn't want me, he would throw me under the bus again and again because I wasn't important enough, and then punched me when I had lashed out at him in anger, we didn't go our separate ways. I didn't know who was more of an idiot for putting up with the other at that point.   
    I wasn't even entirely sure how to feel about the fight, after I had trudged home, soaked to the bone, miserable, and finding that the worst of my anger at him was in some mystifying place that I couldn't access. I wished that I could stay pissed at him for telling me all that shit, it would have made things easier. But, as usual, my emotions were a wind storm, sending me from pissed to sad to guilty to ashamed in mere minutes.   
    I walked into my blessedly empty house and made a beeline for the shower. It was counterproductive, showering that early in the day when that night I was going to come home smelling like pizza sauce, cigarettes, sweat, and dust from the factory at the very least, but running water helps me think, whether its the ocean or a stream or a shower. I have no clue why, and it's not always a welcome thing if I'm depressed. But taking a hot shower, or a cold one if our water heater was acting up again, would make me feel better.   
    I shed my wet clothes in the bathroom, reminding myself to put them out on the clothes line before I left for work so they would _hopefully_ be dry by morning, and caught my reflection in the mirror. My cheek was already bruising a dark black, tinged red at the edges. Touching it or moving my mouth at all made it hurt like hell, but I was so used to getting hit that I didn't even notice it's presence that much. He had really hit me, I realized with dumb amazement. After all the times I had wondered if he would, all of our fights, that moment in the garage when he had realized that I hadn't gotten hard... but deep down, I had never actually believed that he would hit me. I couldn't imagine that the boy that Quatre had fallen in love with would do something like that, forgetting that the boy that I was dating wasn't that boy anymore.  
    I had felt angry about that punch at first. I suppose that seems strange, considering that I keep writing that I'm used to getting knocked around. But Trowa _isn't_ my father. I care about him, but I don't love him like I love my father. Trowa reminds me of him sometimes, how quickly he can lose his temper, but my dad has been knocking me around almost my whole life.   
    When I was little, I just took it for something that dads did, and even when I found out that that wasn't true, I just understood that it was something that _my_ father did and there was nothing that I could do to change it. He had a temper and no one was going to change that about him. I loved him, whether he hit me or not, because he was my father, so I just dealt with it. What choice did I have? I loved him, and still do, despite that. Did I hate him for it? Yeah, as much as I loath to admit that some part of me hates my dad. That's just the nature of our relationship. I hate him with all of my heart. And I love him with just as much of my heart as well.   
    But Trowa is different. I don't love him like that. I would like to say that I don't hate him like that and I don't, really. That's not to say that I don't hate him after everything he did to me during our relationship... but I'm getting ahead of myself here. The point was simple to me. I took those beatings from my father because I didn't have a choice, because of his power over me, because I am his son and he takes care of me and at least cares for me in his gruff way, and because I love him enough that my love can survive the physical abuse.   
    There was no reason for me to put up with it from my boyfriend. It frustrated me and depressed me, remembering him hitting me so easily. I was sick of being a punching bag for my father and Zechs. So yeah, I was pissed off at Trowa over it. What really got to me was the fact that he _knew_ that my father was beating on me. He had to know it.   
    Trowa was the only person who gave enough of a shit about me to notice my many bruises and injuries. Or maybe care was the wrong word. But he would have had to been dense and blind to not notice that. What did he think, that it was all from Zechs? I didn't buy that, not with the way that he had said that my father was an asshole. There had been guilt in his tone and I had understood that it had finally dawned on him what I had meant when I had said that he was getting me into trouble.   
    He knew about the physical abuse, just like Quatre had, but he never confronted me about it, never seemed to mind it. That should have relieved me, knowing that I would never have any awkward conversations with him like I had with Quatre, when he had gotten sick of saying nothing about my wounds and had tried to get me to tell on my father. But it bothered me. Although, given what he had said to me at the boardwalk, I guess it made sense. Quatre hadn't been physically abused and Quatre was the one he cared about, not me.   
    What bothered me more was my wondering if he had done it... if he had hit me because of that knowledge. Had he thought that I would tolerate it from him, simply because I was used to it? Because he thought that he would be able to get away with it, or had it just been an honest, angry reaction that he hadn't thought much about at the time? I wasn't about to become his punching bag, too and if he thought that I would... well, what the fuck would I do about it? After everything, I still hadn't made up my damned mind about whether I wanted to break up with him or not, let alone if I _would_.   
    When I was done being mad at him about the blow, and my anger over it had left me very quickly, I felt stupid for my anger. I was pissed at him for hitting me, but I didn't have anymore right to feel mad at him than I felt mad at my father. Just like my father, I had caused this. While I couldn't say that I had ruined Trowa's life like I had ruined my parents' life, or that I was directly responsible for his temper, in a way I kind of was. Because of me... because I hadn't been a real friend to Quatre, Quatre had taken his life.   
    And yes, I know that Trowa is just as much to blame for my best friend's death as I am, maybe even more so, and for that, I will always hate him, but he had to hate me for my part in it, too, didn't he? I had known how he felt about Quatre, how his own choices and the loss of someone he had loved had fucked him up, permanently. I knew that, knew how sensitive he was about it, and in a moment of anger, I had shoved his face in it.   
    I had reminded him of everything that he had lost. If someone had done the same to me, wouldn't I have taken a swing at that person, too? Fuck, I _had_ taken a swing at that person. Trowa. Three years ago, on the day of Quatre's funeral, I had slapped and punched the same person that I was mad at for hitting me. Couldn't you just call that payback? Karma? So why was I mad? Was I just a huge, immature hypocrite for my anger? How could I possibly stay angry with him with the memory of my fist striking his own, younger face? It was impossible.  
    I didn't know how to feel about him telling me that I wasn't the person he wanted, either. I felt sad and hurt and betrayed, but just like my anger, I didn't feel that those feelings were justified. I had known, from the moment that he had first kissed me, that he didn't loved me. Every date we had been on, ever time he had looked at me and kissed me and held my hand, I had suspected that I wasn't the one that he was doing those things with. I had known, even back then, that I was a shadow, a substitute. I had believed it. Him confirming that for me didn't change a damned thing. Even knowing it for sure didn't make it easier to break up with him, because it had been like that between us from day one. It just hurt a lot, knowing with absolute certainty, that he didn't care about me at all. It made me feel even more like a whore, letting a john fuck me so they could live out their fantasy. Worse, it made me feel like I wasn't even a human being. I was just an empty shell that Trowa could fill with all of his memories of Quatre.   
    If there was one thing about our fight that I actually felt I could be angry about, it was Trowa's admittance that he would scream rape if we were ever caught. I don't know why that hurt me that much, either, because he was right. I wasn't worth it. My reputation was already shit. After all, if he accused me of rape, everyone would believe it, even though he could easily overpower me, and didn't that say it all? That all of our classmates could easily find it more believable that I would have sexually assaulted my best friend's crush than Trowa was gay and trying to make excuses for it?   
    I wasn't worth ruining his life in this town, not to him and not to me. But it still made me angry to know that he would stoop that low, that he would readily betray and hurt me that much. He really didn't care about me. I was just a blow up doll to him, one that wouldn't even put out, so I was pretty worthless no matter which angle I looked at. I thought endlessly about the last thing that we had said to each other. He didn't love me and resented that I wouldn't have sex with him. He had to be pissed that I had brought Quatre up.   
    But when I had asked him why he wouldn't break up with me, all he had said was 'I don't know.' That meant that he had thought about it, too, didn't it? That wasn't surprising, either. But just like me, something kept him from doing it. He was just as confused as I was. So why were we still together? That would have been a perfect moment in our relationship for the both of us to just throw up our hands and walk away. But we hadn't. We had hurt each other and betrayed each other, but when we bumped into each other at the library two days later, it was like none of it mattered.  
    I won't say that things were magically fine between us, that it was like none of it had ever happened, because that would be bullshit. We didn't come to blows and we didn't scream at each other, which was something. I kind of wanted to hit him and I could tell just by looking at him that he wanted to walk right by me. I don't know if we didn't fight because we were at a public or if we just didn't have anymore fight left in us, but I was grateful.   
    The library is the only place in town that I can go to without having to worry about Relena or Zechs ambushing me. It's the only place where I can feel peace and sanctuary and I sure as hell was not going to get kicked out over a spat with my boyfriend. I can't say what Trowa was feeling or thinking to see me so soon after our fight. He just kind of glanced at me, looking annoyed and frustrated, but not angry. Then something in his expression changed and he looked down quickly.   
    He would do that for the rest of that week, look at me briefly and then look away. At first I thought that the mere sight of me angered him before I realized what that expression was. It wasn't anger, it was guilt. He was looking at the bruise on my face and regretting that he had hit me. That one expression, no matter how brief, soothed the last of my anger over him striking me. My father had never felt regret over anything he had done to me. I know that doesn't make it better, it doesn't change the fact that Trowa did hit me, but I chose to believe that he wouldn't do it again, or at least he didn't mean to.   
    "I'm going to pick up a pizza later," he had said to me in the library after noticing that there was no one close enough to hear us, "want to come along?"  
    I thought about blowing him off, but I guess I'm just a masochist. It's not like I'm an optimist, so there's no other reason I can think of for willingly sticking my hand in the fire over and over and over. I didn't want to see him again, to go eat with him, to be that close to him, not so soon after the things that he had said. But I didn't want to be alone even more. So I shrugged, checked out some books as he left the library, and then followed him out to his car after enough time had passed that no one would think we were leaving together.   
    The ride to the pizza place was terse. It occurred to me almost like an epiphany during that ride that, even if you took out Quatre's role in things, my sexual hesitance, and Trowa's issues with his sexuality, we were still shit for each other. Even this new Trowa, full of anger and bitterness and grief, was still just as shy and socially awkward as the old one had been. He was the kind of person who waited for someone else to talk first, the kind of person who hesitated, even when they needed to speak, and would hold off until they had to say something really important.   
    And I didn't like to talk about anything personal. I didn't like being noticed or letting anyone see what I was thinking and feeling. Not since Quatre. I was quite happy to not say anything and let people think that I was someone to be wary of. Together, we were a disaster, neither of us talkative or willing to deal with our issues. We wouldn't drag the other person out of their shell, we just catered to it. It was no wonder why we never solved anything our entire relationship, we were too much alike, too antisocial and bitter and too pathetic to risk anything.   
    I think I saw the future in that car ride. I saw where things between us would end. The things that we had said to each other at the boardwalk, and the things that we had never said to each other during our entire engagement with each other, would end up rotting us apart. We would keep withdrawing more and more into ourselves, pushing each other away in our own methods, mine quite literally and his by taking his anger out on me, until we stopped talking to each other entirely and just drifted apart. I wish it could have been like that. I wish that that vision of the future had been real and things hadn't happened in the way that they did.  
    Getting ahead of myself again. It's hard sometimes, writing in this journal about certain things. It's kind of like writing a story where you know exactly how its going to end and you just want to jump right to it. I guess that's because I don't want to write about what happened two weeks after that fight, because it still hurts just thinking about it, let alone writing it down. But I survived writing about Quatre, so writing about this should be no problem.   
    We did better after Trowa walked into the pizza parlor to grab our food. He drove out to the drive in theater in North Nausten, in some shady corner where we wouldn't be bothered, and we ate in silence. The place he had gotten the pizza from wasn't a dive like the one I worked at and the pizza was actually pretty good, although my stomach was in such knots just from sitting next to him that I barely noticed the taste at the time, other than it wasn't even a third as greasy as the shit I had to sell.   
    When we finished our food, we sat there, struggling for things to say to each other. We apologized for the wrong things, Trowa for hitting me, me for bringing up Quatre, neither one of us exactly honest or that much apologetic, secretly hating the other, but we apologized anyway. It was better than saying goodbye and I think we both realized that we needed to say it if we had any hope of staying together. He didn't apologize for any of the things that I wanted him to, and I didn't apologize for what I had accused him of. But it was something, I guess.   
    I don't think that either of us actually moved on from that fight. I won't say that it was the thing that ended up breaking us up, because it both was and wasn't, and I won't say that things got back to normal afterwards, because it didn't. It just kind of got worse, but at a snail's pace. There was this... this black pit between us all of a sudden. I had started to notice it the day that Trowa had convinced me to have sex with him and after the fight at the boardwalk, it had grown into a gaping chasm.   
    I don't know how long we might have kept that up, going out on dates while not talking, feeling bitter and confused and angry the way that we were, but something had to change or break. I just never thought that that something would be... fuck, I can't even write it without laughing. I guess I can see the ironic, fucked up humor of it now. I sure as hell hadn't been able to then.  
  
*****  
  
    I was having a shitty day before I even left the house for school that morning. You ever have one of those days that is so bad, so unlucky, that you actually fear for your life going outside? One of those days when you count yourself lucky to just not get hit by a bus? I was having one of those days. I suspected that it would be from the moment that I woke up with a screaming headache at five am. From that moment, it was just downhill.  
    My one, clean pair of jeans was missing a button. The shirt that I had been planning on wearing that day had a tear in it that had magically appeared since the last time I had worn it. I rushed to get into the shower before my father would need it, only to find that our archaic water heater was broken _again_ and only ice cold water was coming out. There was only a tiny sliver of soap left and I was too tired from tossing and turning all night, and in a foul mood already, to dare my father's anger if I used up too much of it, so I settled for using the lather from the cheap ass shampoo we had instead. I washed quickly, shivering by the time that I was done.  
    When I put on my socks, I realized that there was a huge hole in one of them. I threw them in the trash in disgust, only to dig them back out again. I never throw out clothes that have holes and rips in them because I can always use the material for something. That was probably where those socks had come from, I had forgotten to put them in my scrap pile and had accidentally put them back in the drawer. I combed my hair and when I went to fix my braid, the hair tie, my _last_ hair tie, by the way, snapped.  
    I was about ready to scream in pure frustration. I ignored my hair for the moment and ran out of the bathroom, almost colliding into my father.   
    "Watch where you're fucking going, you idiot," he growled at me.  
    Oh joy, _he_ was in a mood, too.  
    "Water heater's busted again," I warned him, keeping moving towards the steps so I would be a moving target if he started anything that early.  
    He glared at me like he thought the broken heater was my fault somehow. I wished that I had just let him find out about the arctic water on his own.  
    Upstairs, I dug out my sewing kit. Yes, I have a sewing kit, shut up. It has nothing to do with being gay or feminine or any of that crap. I don't care what anyone says about it, even Pat or my father, being able to sew is not only useful, it saves us money. I've taken enough home ec courses to know how to do it well and while my father uses it to attack me with, I've noticed that those insults magically disappear when he loses a button on his trousers or the comforter on their bed has a rip in it.  
    The fact is that, between getting roughed up by Zechs and my father, the hard labor I do at the factory, the food stains I often get at my other two jobs, how seldom laundry gets done, and how cheap and secondhand all of my clothes are, they take a pretty significant beating. Unlike kids from middle class and upper class families, I can't just ask my dad for new socks or a new shirt because mine has a rip in it. My getting clothing from him is contingent on a few factors; one, if it's a holiday or my birthday, two, his mood, and three, our finances. We could be having a good month money wise, but if he's in a bad mood, he'll just tell me that if I took better care of my things, I wouldn't need to bleed him dry, even if _he_ was the one to rip my clothing.  
    It's just easier to mend things than to beg for new clothes. A bunch of the blankets on my bed are ones that I made out of scraps, too. They're nothing pretty, but it helps in the winter, and it keeps me occupied in the dead of night when my nightmares and insomnia keep me up.  
    I dug around in my sewing kit for a new button for the jeans that I was wearing and sewed it on. I was able to find a thick piece of thread to tie up my hair, too. The socks and shirt would have to wait until later. I grabbed a different pair of socks, inspecting those ones for holes before putting them on, and ran back downstairs for breakfast. I was hoping for some scrambled eggs or something else a bit filling, only to find that my father hadn't gone grocery shopping the previous night like he had said that he would.   
    I had the choice of bread that was almost too stale to eat, butter, grape jelly, cereal, two eggs, oatmeal, ham, and a banana. I didn't touch the eggs of ham, my father would want those for his own breakfast and there wasn't enough for two people. I had been eating cereal for the last week and a half and just couldn't stomach it anymore. The oatmeal I wanted to save for when it was colder out, which narrowed my choices down to toast.  
    I put two slices of bread in the toaster and while I waited for our beat up, silver and rust colored toaster to do it's job, searched for something to wash it down with. There wasn't anymore orange juice or bottled water and hadn't been for days. I had really been looking forward to having juice for breakfast again. With a grimace, I poured myself a glass of tap water from the kitchen faucet, the sight of the cloudy water turning my stomach. I took an experimental sip and at the horrid taste of burnt pennies, I immediately spat it out into the sink.  
    I had been drinking that nasty water for three days straight, biding my time until grocery day, and every day that water had tasted worse and worse. Who even knew what crap was in it to make it taste like that, but I just couldn't force myself to drink it anymore. I took a second look through the fridge, hoping to find some secret treasure trove. A juice box, maybe, or a cup of water hiding in the back. But no. All I found was the last bit of milk, barely enough for a half a glass. I shook the container a little, verifying how little was in there. Dare I?  
    Normally, I wouldn't ever chance taking the last of anything out of the fridge unless it was something I knew that my father had no interest in. Normally, I would have noticed how low the milk was and shrug and drink some of the crappy tap water. But, as I should have made abundantly clear at this point, that was not a normal day. It was a particularly shitty day. In my defense, my dad doesn't usually use milk unless he's making something, which is rare because he hates cooking even omelets. My mother and I are the milk drinkers in the household, one thing that we have in common, while the only things that I had ever seen my father drink were his poisons of choice, water, and coffee, black.   
    I was sure that he would have coffee that morning, like he did every day. What I _didn't_ know was one of the reasons why my father was in such a bad mood that morning was that his precious coffee maker refused to turn on. I wasn't the only one having a shitty day. Honestly, I should have noticed it, since the machine was sitting unplugged on the kitchen counter and by that point, my father would have had it brewing. I cite my headache and remaining grogginess and that I was quickly getting late for school for my lapse in judgment. Or maybe I was just in one of those rare moods of frustration that I get in where I stop giving a shit about things like that.   
    My morning went from bad to abysmal shortly after that. I ate my toast with butter and jam at the kitchen table and drank the last of the milk. At some point when I had finished and had just been about to get up to do my dishes when my father came in to make his own breakfast. He opened the fridge, saw that the bottle of milk had migrated from the door to the trash can in the kitchen, and immediately lost his shit at me. He screamed at me about my gall at drinking the last of the milk and then slammed his fist into my stomach.  
    With that one, powerful punch, I was doubling over in agony and vomiting what I had just put into it. My father gave me a look of disgust, either at my throwing up or my stupidity or just how weak he thought I was, and stormed back out of the kitchen. When my guts were done spasming in pain, I took the time to clean up the mess that I had made. In a fit of anger, I almost just left it there for my father to clean up, but I knew that he wouldn't. He would just become enraged that I hadn't cleaned it and leave it there for me when I got home or make my mother clean up after me. And then beat the shit out of me later, of course. None of those options appealed to me. I easily decided that I would rather be late for school than have to deal with any of that later.   
    I went to school with an aching stomach, my throat burning with the taste of bile, my head absolutely pounding, and wanting to just stay home and scream. I had this looming feeling of doom, knowing that my bad day was not going to suddenly disappeared at school. I was really surprised to walk through the front door of the high school without stepping in a pot hole, getting hit by a car, or having a brick fall on my head.   
    I ended up being twenty minutes late and got yelled at by my homeroom teacher for a good five minutes. 'Brat' and 'juvenile delinquent' came up several times along with 'loser' and a few others. Everyone in that classroom was staring right at me, some of them giggling. Once upon a time, I would have felt incredibly embarrassed and would have wanted to find a hole to crawl into, but I was used to it by then. I just sat there, crossed my arms over my chest defensively and, without saying a word, glared at my teacher. After his rant was done, he looked unnerved by my silent stare and finally went away.  
    The first half of that day went pretty normally for me. Zechs caught me between my first and second periods by pulling me out of the middle of the hallway by my braid. He looted through my back pack, got pissed when he didn't find any money or a lunch and insisted that I paid a toll for it. The 'toll' was him ripping up my homework and smearing the front of my shirt with ketchup. I guess I should have counted myself lucky that he didn't beat me up. I was more upset about my homework than the ketchup. Zechs wouldn't let me clean it off or I would incur a worse punishment, but I was used to being made fun of and jeered at for looking like a slob, and I could just change shirts before work at home.   
    During third period, calculus 1, Dorothy put a millipede down the back of my soiled shirt. How she got one, I had no clue, but I was immediately glad that it wasn't something worse like a spider or a centipede as I felt it crawling across my bare back. If there is a person I hate more than Relena and Zechs, it would have to be Dorothy. Sure, the three boys that Zechs always hangs out with, Alex Williams, Bran Mueller, and Daniel Trant, are only a couple levels less worse than Zechs is himself, but they don't share Dorothy's creativity or sadistic streak. Or her outright hatred of me.   
    To her, I was a doll, something fun that she could stick needles into, but one that personally offended her as well. Part of that hatred came from me turning down her best friend, but I think there's more to it. I don't know if it's all because of Relena, or if she's just so homophobic that she can't stand the sight of me, but Dorothy hates me more than just a bully would her victim. Some days I think that she would happily stick a knife in my intestines and not feel an ounce of guilt for it.   
    To make things worse, somehow she ended up sitting right behind me in Calculus, the one class I have all year instead of for just one semester. Just like every other class, our seating was decided at random to keep friends apart and we couldn't change them, so I was stuck with the bitch until my senior year. She loved to torment me during class, from pulling my hair, to sticking gross things in my braid or down my shirt, to stabbing me with a sharpened pencil in the back of my neck.   
    Telling her to stop or telling the teacher would be pointless. Dorothy would just sneer at me and do something worse. My Calculus teacher would tell me to be a man about it and stop tattling on girls who were just 'teasing' me. Mrs. Harkins had nothing but disdain for me. She didn't outright hate me for my attitude like some of my teachers did. Her feelings about me were worse than that. I disgusted her, specifically the rumors that I was a faggot. She was seventy-two years old, should have retired ten years, ago, and had lost both her sense of smell and her hearing in her left ear.  She was also about as conservative as you could get. One of those older women who sneered at how short girls' skirts were nowadays and didn't socialize with anyone that wasn't upper middle class and white, preferably from an old family. She thought that girls like Relena walked on water like boys like me were maggots. If she had her way, every one of her students from my side of town would be instantly failed and kicked out of school. That math was my worst subject did not help me, I couldn't afford to do less than my absolute best in that class.   
    I waited until the end of class to shake out my shirt, satisfied when I saw the large, black bug curled up on the floor in a defensive maneuver. I thanked my luck that I'm not squeamish about insects and stuff like that. The last thing I needed was to freak out about a millipede and give people another reason to call me a girl. I even made sure that everyone else had left the classroom so no one else would see me do it. I wish that I hadn't. I wish that I had never minded the stupid millipede and just gone to lunch or to the bathroom to take care of it there. If I had, would I have remained blissfully ignorant? I doubt it. But at least I wouldn't have found out about it that day.       
    I hurriedly shoved my books in my bag and left the classroom. I walked towards the library, another thing that I regret now. If my stomach hadn't still been hurting, I would have gone to the cafeteria like everyone else, but even though I was hungry, I just didn't feel like eating. What would be the point of surrounding myself with my classmates when I could read a book in peaceful silence? If I had gone in the opposite direction like everyone else, I never would have noticed Trowa, but I did. That close to the lunch block, there weren't a whole lot of people in the hallway and I actually debated waving hello to him when I saw him lounging by some lockers, but it just wasn't worth the risk.  
    Then I had to ask myself _why_ he was just leaning against the row of lockers like he was waiting for someone. That was his lunch period, too. I slowed my gait out of curiosity. I was starting to think that he was just meeting with one of his friends, maybe one of the ones that had almost discovered us a couple weeks ago, when a girl walked up to him. I stopped walking without realizing it, thinking that she was just another one of his many admirers, trying to get a date with him, when she touched his arm. To my astonishment, instead of brushing her off like I had seen him do every single girl that had ever dared to talk to him, he smiled down at her.   
    Something inside of me went icy cold. I knew that smile. It was the same smile he gave me when he was being sweet to me. Soft, warm, affectionate. And he was looking at a girl that way. For just a moment, those dark green eyes of his darted along the hallway, as if checking to see if anyone was watching, which confused me. It wasn't in the way that he did when we were together, it was something different, not like he was wary of being seen, but the opposite. He wanted to be seen? That was bizarre. But then those eyes were looking fell on me and I watched all the color drain from his face. He looked shocked. He looked frightened. Just what the fuck was going on?   
    I should have just walked away then. Someone would see us looking at each other, it was too big of a risk just to sate my confusion. I could just ask him about it later... The girl tugged on Trowa's shirt, something that I couldn't imagine anyone would do to someone that they weren't close friends with, and she gained both mine and Trowa's instant attention.   
    She was a pretty girl, a stranger to me beyond knowing that she was in Trowa's grade. No, scratch that, she was beautiful. She was as pale as I was, with long red hair. Not that cherry red that a lot of teenage girls like to dye their hair, but a natural red head with hair that colored like fire, all dark reds and orange and gold. She was taller than I was by only a couple of inches and had this slim, long legged figure that probably had all the boys in their grade salivating over.   
    In my opinion, she was much prettier than Relena, with more natural looks that reminded me of Lily. But it hurt too much to think about her, and wonder where she was, if she was safe, if she had gone back home yet. Then I saw the girl's eyes and I felt like I was getting sucker-punched in the gut all over again. Her eyes were round, perfectly round and big, like a doll's. They were blue-green, a very _specific_ shade of blue-green. She had Quatre's eyes, I realized and felt this very intense sense of foreboding. She said something to him. I could have read her lips easily from where I was standing, but I was too focused on those eyes and the pit in my stomach at the way Trowa was looking at her. I felt this hot thing inside of me start to well up. It was like my anger, thick and nasty, but I wasn't angry. That was when my boyfriend leaned down and kissed her.  
    A knife stabbed my heart over and over and over. My stomach churned. My head exploded with pain. I didn't run away like some cheesy romantic film or soap opera. I just stood there in the hallway like an idiot, watching Trowa kiss some girl like all of the times that he had kissed me. Those cool lips pressed against hers, done in sheer pink lipstick. Her eyes closed like mine did sometimes when he kissed me, and a fine blush spread over her cheeks. Trowa still looked so pale, but he didn't look over at me when he kissed her. I was glad. I don't know what I would have done if he had glanced to me then.  
    I felt so cold. I felt... lost and alone and confused. Trowa was kissing a girl, and from the way that that girl was reacting to it, it was not the first time he had kissed her. Just... just what the fuck? He was cheating on me? And not even with a boy, but a girl? Would it have been more forgivable if she had been a boy? I suppose I could have understood it better if it was some boy who looked like Quatre, someone better looking and nicer than me, someone who could give him what he needed. But a girl? I was very certain that he wasn't bisexual, so what the hell was going on? What was I seeing?   
    I understood several things just then, with perfect clarity. I had no clue how long this had been going on for, how many times that he had kissed her, but I suddenly realized that I hadn't seen Trowa in the cafeteria for weeks. Was this what he had been doing? Kissing this girl during a time when people would be coming and going from their classes to the cafeteria? Because that was one of things that I had had an epiphany about. The way he had looked around the hallway before he had kissed her, the guilty expression he had had on his face that day at the boardwalk when I had accused him of never having a girlfriend... she was a smokescreen.     Who among Trowa's friends and classmates would dare accuse him of being a fag when he had a pretty girlfriend like that? All he had to do was insure that at least one person saw him kissing her on a regular business and he was free of suspicion no matter what he did. If we hadn't been dating, I might have even applauded him for it, for finding a sure fire way to look normal in front of everyone. It was a tactic that I had never considered myself.  
    But really, even if I had considered it, could I do that? Could I pretend to like some girl in my grade just so people would stop calling me a fag? I didn't think that something like that would ever work for me. For one, what girl would want to be seen dating me? Just because Relena had confessed to liking me once, it didn't mean that I was desirable.   
    I wasn't handsome and semi-popular like Trowa was. I was Zechs and Relena's verbal and mental punching bag, the resident faggot, poor, dirty, and a loser. Even if by some miracle I could find a girl to date, I didn't think that I could go through with it. I hadn't tried to kiss any girl after Relena, so as far as I knew, even that was beyond me. I didn't think that I could fake being into it like Trowa. Beyond that... I didn't think I could hurt anyone like that. My boyfriend, obviously, had no problems hurting both this girl and me.   
    And it did hurt. Even though I understood why Trowa was doing it, it hurt like hell. He was using her and he was using me. Did he feel anything at all? Did he even give a shit that he was cheating on me? I wanted to hate him so badly for it. I wanted to walk right up to him and hit him for kissing her. What made it really painful were those eyes of hers. If she had just had brown eyes or grey or even straight blue, it would have been more ok. But that girl... she looked more like Quatre than I ever would, minus the male part.   
    She had his eyes and she had his skin. Even her smile almost looked like his. She looked different enough from him that no one would be able to put two and two together, but to me, to anyone who had spent most of their time around Quatre, she looked too much like him. Trowa could have picked any goddamned girl in his grade to make out with, but he had chosen _her_ , she wasn't even a boy and he was still using her as a reminder. A reminder that was, obviously, better than me. I couldn't smile like that.   
    We sure as hell couldn't kiss or hold hands in public. What did that make me? Just the boy that he was seeing, to cater to his sexuality and not his heart. Just someone to get his rocks off with and I wasn't even that. So yes, I wanted to hate him for it, for all the pain and jealousy and guilt and feelings of inadequacy that I felt in that moment, watching them kiss each other, but I couldn't. Because that's what homosexuality is. It isn't perversion. It isn't filthy or wrong or sinful.   
    Homosexuality is pain. Being gay is watching the boy you care about locking lips with a girl and not even have the ability to yell at him for cheating on you. It's knowing that that boy knows you're right there, watching, and that you can't do a single fucking thing about it. It's not being able to hate him for cheating on you, because how could you hate someone for wanting to be normal? How can you hate someone that you care about, someone who used to be a friend, for wanting the very same thing you've wanted your entire life and actually has a shot of getting it? I didn't even have the luxury of that.   
    The two of them started to break apart, but then the girl grabbed the front of Trowa's shirt and pulled him down for another kiss, this one more heated than the one that he had given her. She liked him, I realized, a hell of a lot more than he liked her. I didn't know which of us to feel sorry for at that point. When they broke away again, the girl's eyes still closed in an expression of contentment, Trowa looked at me.   
    The guilt in his eyes didn't make me feel a single bit better. He mouthed 'talk later' at me. I wanted to flip him off. I snapped out of my shocked daze and hurried along my way to the library before they could kiss again. It wouldn't do to have all of his hard work to go to waste by someone seeing me looking at him like my heart had just broken. I wasn't even sure if that was the pain that I was feeling. I didn't love him enough for that, did I? Or was the pain in my chest just betrayal?   
    I sat down at one of the tables in the library without a single book to retreat into. I hung my head and hid my face in my hands, but I didn't cry. He wasn't worth it, I told myself, and my pain over it sure as hell wasn't worth breaking my vow to myself. I sat like that the entire lunch period and wondered when the hell that terrible day was going to be over.  
  
*****  
  
    I guess the universe decided that that little moment in the halls before lunch was horrible enough that it didn't need to fuck with me anymore for the rest of the school day because I didn't get suspended or lose any more of my homework or choke to death on the lasagna we made during home ec. Although Zechs did trip me right into the wall at gym while we ran laps, one of the only activities we could do with the string of on and off again thunderstorms we kept getting. But my collide into the stone wall was just as much my fault as it was his. I hadn't been paying much attention at all to what was I doing ever since lunch ended. My mind was focused on more turbulent thoughts than where Zechs was in relation to me and how many tomatoes one should use to make homemade sauce.   
    I didn't even think about Trowa's urge to talk later until gym class. I had no desire to talk to him. There was nothing he could possibly say to me that would make me feel better, like something better than trash. I felt like he had gutted me hollow. I had already been feeling lousy about all of our fighting, and then he had done _that_. It wasn't something that I was going to recover from. No one wanted me. My parents didn't want me, Quatre hadn't wanted me enough to stay with me, and now Trowa had not only confessed that he didn't want me, he was making out with some girl, two timing the both of us. At least I was aware of it. What's lower than trash, because that was exactly how I felt.   
    I skipped showering off after gym so I could leave right away, putting on an extra layer of deodorant and rinsing my hair in the sink. It would have to do. I didn't want to hang around for the school to get empty and have Trowa corner me. I didn't feel bad at all about leaving him behind, waiting for me or whatever he would end up doing. My bitterness and pain was overflowing. If he wanted to talk to someone, he could talk to his girlfriend. And didn't that word just make a new agony burst in me. Girlfriend. My boyfriend had a girlfriend.   
    Maybe he would break up with me now, unless this had been going on for longer than I thought that it did. If that was the case, why the hell were we together? I obviously wasn't satisfying any of his gay urges in the sex department. Of course, hadn't he said the same thing to me? If he didn't know what the point of me was, then how the fuck should I know?   
    I would like to say that the incident had helped to make up my mind about breaking up with him, but I can't. I didn't know how to feel about it, really, beyond the hurt. I didn't see how him having a girlfriend changed our relationship at all. It didn't make it better and it didn't make it worse. He probably could have pulled the wool over my eyes for awhile and I wouldn't have noticed anything different in our relationship. So to me, there wasn't any greater reason to break up with him than before, beyond the fact that he was cheating on me, sort of. I don't know if you can count making out with another person as cheating, can you?  
    When I left the school and started to walk home, the sky cleared enough that I didn't get rained on. I was foolish enough to take that as a sign that my horrible luck was over. Stupid me. My shitty day wasn't done with me quite yet. My walks home from school are not what anyone would call scenic, or even nice. The first half of South Nausten isn't so bad, I guess. That's where most of the businesses are and the nicer homes. But the other half... well, that's where things get dirtier and more dangerous.   
    While my house isn't really located in the worse parts of Nausten, it's kind of on the border between the condemned building and meth lab center of town, and the business area of South Nausten. From school, there are two ways to get to my street. The first is the long way, through the residential district. The second is a part of town that would make people like Relena turn white. There's this little side street that takes you to a street that my dad gets called to quite frequently, usually for drug busts and chop shop raids. It's the kind of place where people who don't live in the South go to if they want something a bit stronger than pot. It's also a great place to walk if you want to get mugged.  
    All that being said, that street takes a good twenty minutes off of my walk, so yes, I take it. I've never had many problems, between looking like a poor bum myself and who my father is, but I always feel the hair on the back of my neck stand up when I walk by there. This time was no different. I stepped out onto that derelict street and immediately felt on edge, like something bad was going to happen. Given how my day had been going, I almost took the long way around. I really didn't need to get shot.   
    It was my hunger that spurred me to take the shortcut. By that time, the pain in my gut had subsided enough for me to really feel all those missed meals. If I walked back the way I had come to take the longer route, I wasn't going to have the time to make myself anything before I had to start my first shift. I was halfway down the street when I realized that prickling feeling wasn't just paranoia this time. Someone was following me. Before I could freak out and start running, I glanced in a nearby convenience store window. The reflection revealed a very familiar, navy blue car tailing me. I fought the urge to throw a brick at it and just stopped walking. It pulled up along side me, stopped, and the driver's side window slid down. I wondered about my chances of outrunning the car if I suddenly made a go of it. Not good.  
    "Get in?" Trowa urged, his voice small and pleading, but I wasn't falling for that again. I didn't care if he felt guilty or upset or whatever, I wasn't going to let him lure me into a false sense of security.   
    "No," I said, refusing to look at him and pointed to an empty lot a few blocks up from us, "pull in there."  
    I thought that he might fight me about it and I finally dared a look at him. He looked guilty, alright, but also annoyed. He looked nervous, too, and I couldn't tell if it was because of the part of town we were in or he was nervous about being seen with me. He had probably never been this far into the South part of town before and was worried about being car jacked. Good, he should be. While his car wasn't exactly great, it ran. That was enough for the people that lived in that section to want to take it. To my relief, he didn't argue, but pulled ahead of me and into the lot.   
    I took my time walking to it, not wanting to have it out with him, especially out in the open like that. But that was why I hadn't wanted to get into the car with him. If we fought, I would be vulnerable. At least in the lot, he wouldn't try to draw attention to us and I could leave whenever I wanted.   
    The lot actually used to belong to a liquor store, but it burnt down a few years ago and they had just let the space go to hell. There were broken bottles, used cigarettes, condoms, and syringes littering the place. It was a popular location for drug deals and prostitutes to take their cheaper johns, or so I had heard. Given the trash 'evidence', I could believe it. Trowa was leaning against his car, waiting for me, when I walked past the wire fence to where he was. I looked around nervously to make sure that not too many people could see us. I wasn't scared of someone seeing the two of us together and thinking 'faggots'. I was scared of someone seeing us together and thinking 'drug deal'. That was the last thing I needed, a rumor that I was a drug addict. It was a lost cause, though. While I couldn't see anyone staring at us, I had the feeling like we were being watched. In a place like that, we probably were.   
    I leaned with my back against his car in a mirror of his own pose so I wouldn't have to face him eye to eye.   
    "I'm-" he started to apologize.  
    I was so sick of hearing him say that he was sorry after he had hurt me. Apologizing is great and all, but unless you change, unless you stop doing that thing that you claim you're sorry for, what's the point? And are you really actually sorry if you refuse to do that?  
    "Don't," I interrupted him, "Don't say it unless you really mean it."  
    He fell silent. Even though I had known that he wasn't actually apologetic, that while he was sorry for hurting me, he wasn't sorry for what he was doing with that girl, it still disappointed me.   
    "You two dating?" I asked  
    "Yes," he confirmed, stabbing that knife a bit deeper into me.  
    "How long?" I couldn't stop myself, even though I desperately wanted to.  
    "Since the first week of school," he said and actually sounded a little bit ashamed of himself.  
    The first week of school. This... whatever it was... had been going on for almost a month. I hadn't even noticed it until then. All that time that we had been going on dates, making out, being with each other... and he had been with someone else. A girl. I had let him fuck me and he had had a girlfriend. He hadn't even respected me just that tiny bit enough to tell me. I felt like he had lied to me that night he had finally managed to badger me into sex. I felt like I was going to be sick.   
    Neither of us spoke for a long time. My head was swarming with all these questions that I wanted to ask him, but I was terrified of his answers. I didn't know what to say to him. 'So which one of us is the other woman' didn't seem like an appropriate thing to ask, especially when I knew it would come out seething with bitterness and hatred. So I stayed silent, waiting for him to say _something_ in his defense. But he wouldn't.   
    We knew each other too well at that point, even though we never talked about anything personal. He knew that I had figured out what was going on with him and that girl, why he was doing it, so explaining was just a waste of words. It still would have been nice to hear him confirm it, to know that he wasn't bisexual and two timing us instead of just using the both of us. Honestly, I don't know which scenario is worse. I kicked at a broken bottle and watched it roll across the lot.  
    "Just say it," Trowa suddenly snapped in cold frustration.  
    See what I mean? He knew me well enough to know the one question that was foremost in my mind, right on the tip of my tongue, and the one that I dared not to ask.   
    "Have you fucked her yet?" I asked and was incredibly relieved that my voice came out with the same cold, detachment as his did.  
    "No," he said and had enough decency to blush at my question, but it was slight and barely noticeable, "But she wants to."  
    And didn't that just say everything? His words were an accusation. She wanted to. I didn't. She was eager and willing, not just to put up with having sex with him, but she actually _wanted_ to have sex with him. I couldn't even force myself to pretend to want it, or grudgingly let him have sex with me. Sure, she was the wrong gender, but she would let him stick his dick into her. Did she have any idea that he had no interest at all in her pussy or her breasts? Would she let him do her from behind, in her ass like he had done to me so he could pretend that he wasn't having sex with a girl? I rubbed at my forehead, trying to banish the horribly ugly and cruel thoughts. She wasn't the one that I hated.  
    "Will you have sex with her?" I asked bitingly.  
    He looked away from me and down at the asphalt in a steely, guilty silence. He didn't need to say anything, the answer was splashed all over his face. I stood up from my lean against his secondhand car and walked away, continuing towards my house. He didn't call out to me or try to follow me. He had said all that he had needed to say.   
    A dark cloud of depression followed me through all three of my work shifts. I somehow managed not to think about any of it as I worked, but the feeling remained. It was something like being pulled into muddy water. I didn't even feel like I had the right to feel that way. I had done this to myself. I couldn't blame Trowa for wanting someone who would actually have sex with him and not act so cagey and frightened when he initiated things, even if that someone was a girl.   
    All I did was remind him of all the things that weren't what he wanted. I was sure that when he looked into those large, aquamarine eyes, it was easier for him to pretend than when he was looking in my violet ones. I had agreed to be his boyfriend knowing what this relationship was, knowing who he really wanted. And when we had started to get more intimate, I had known what I couldn't give him. Even when I had tried, I had failed, just like at everything else in my life. I should have broken it off with him a long, long time ago, before it hurt.   
    That was where my head was the rest of the day. When I was opening cans of tomato sauce, I was thinking about how I had pushed my boyfriend into the arms of a woman because of my own inadequacies. When I was unloading cargo, I was thinking that I should be feeling sorry for him, not mad at him. I was thinking about all of the reasons why our relationship was a failure, all the reasons why we needed to stop. The hurt was getting to be too much, and the good moments too little. That we had lasted as long as we had was a miracle.   
    That night, I laid on my bed and thought about that. How _had_ we stayed together for so long? It mystified me. It had been so nice at first, just being with someone, having that someone look at me with something other than coldness. What frightened me was that even then, I wasn't ready to give it up. I wasn't ready to break up with Trowa and go back to nothingness.   
    I knew that I should, I knew that I had to. I mean, what was I going to do? Go out with dates with him one night, kiss him goodnight and know that he was leaving me to go have sex with someone? Could I do that? If I asked him not to, would he? I doubted it. And I didn't feel that it was fair to ask him to do that. Why should I ask him not to do something that he obviously needed when I couldn't give it to him? Was all that was keeping us together our mutual history and stubbornness?  
    Every bit of common sense that I possessed told me what I needed to do. But right when I thought that I could do it, all of my memories of the times that Trowa had made me happy assaulted me. My own mind was betraying me, reminding me of what it was like right after Quatre had killed himself, how lonely I had been, how gray everything had been. It reminded me of what it had felt like to lay in this very bed, in this very room, in this very house, with absolutely nothing but my books and the sound of my parents screaming at each other.   
    I didn't want to go back to that. I wanted to have one person by my side, helping me forward, even though the logical part of me knew that that person was slowly killing me inside. I didn't want to be alone. But I wanted to break up with him, I wanted that very badly. I didn't want to hurt anymore every time I thought of him, thought of how horrible we were together, how we were using each other, how seeing him now only reminded me of my own grief, my own guilt. I just wasn't capable of dealing with him hurting me anymore. It was so hard, just being with him, finding reasons to stay that made any kind of sense. I felt so tired of it. I rolled over on my side and looked at Quatre lying next to me. His aqua eyes seemed to glow in the dim light, so much like hers...  
    "Tell me what to do," I begged him.   
    The Quatre that I had known and loved as my best friend... would he have comforted me? Would he have told me to get out of this relationship no matter the cost? Of course, I thought bitterly, if he had lived, this never would have happened. I would still be a virgin and I would never know how any of this felt. I wouldn't know what true grief and pain and loneliness feel like. This Quatre wasn't even that Quatre, just a shadow of him, born from my neediness. In the face of my guilt, he couldn't be much of anything. He just smiled at me and touched my arm, then he was gone.  
    I felt betrayed all over again, which was stupid. Of course he wouldn't be able to give me any advice. He was just a ghost in my head. It was just as well. I felt disgusted at the notion of him finding out that the boy that he had loved was cheating on me.   
  
*****  
  
    Trowa and I saw each other one last time after that. It was that Saturday, the very last day of September. Both of my shifts at the factory Friday and Saturday had been cancelled thanks to a train derailment. You can't unload what you don't have, so I got at least two nights off while it was all sorted out. I sure wasn't complaining. I saw Trowa with his girlfriend more and more that week, necking the halls, holding hands, talking to each other. I guess now that I knew about it, he didn't have to restrict their public meetings. It must be nice.   
    I knew it, the very day after it had happened, when they had had sex with each other. Every time I saw one of her friends talking about Trowa to the redhead, she had blushed darkly and smiled prettily where she hadn't before. Trowa, on the other hand, seemed very tense and cagey. His friend ribbed him about his relationship, but he didn't blush. He seemed to go a bit pale, even from my brief glances at him. From his girlfriend's reaction, the sex had been good and it hadn't been awkward, but I don't think that Trowa had enjoyed it nearly as much as he had hoped that he would. Good. I bitterly and angrily hoped that he was suffering for it. And yet, while I can't say how I knew it, I knew that he would have sex with her again. I wasn't even sure if it was about satisfying an urge anymore or if it was just him keeping up the act of a heterosexual, teenaged boy.   
    When I passed him in the hallway Friday, he passed me a note to meet him after school. It was a bold move for him, but I guess he didn't have too much of a reason to worry about being pegged as a homosexual anymore, just for talking with me. He was still overly cautious, though, and we met in the upstairs computer lab that wasn't being used. He asked me if I wanted to meet for dinner on Saturday. I said that I wasn't sure. It was all I could do not to snidely ask him why he wasn't asking his girlfriend out for dinner, at least they could sit in a restaurant together.   
    I tried to leave and he grabbed my wrist to stop me. He pleaded and begged, saying that he wanted to spend some time with me. He made me feel weak and pathetic because I couldn't outright tell him no. There was a voice in my head screaming at me that this was a bad idea, that I should stay away from him, not go to some private place to eat when I was sure that he had more in mind. His hand was lingering on my wrist for too long, his fingers stroking my skin intimately. I wished that he really was bi and his girlfriend was enough for him.   
    Even then, knowing where we were headed and where my prudishness had brought us, I didn't want anything to do with sex, with what he wanted. I was getting tired of being the one that he wanted, just because I was the only gay boy he could date. I was tired of feeling like his sex doll, knowing that he didn't really want me, but he needed me anyway. But I couldn't ignore how his desperation made me feel. Being wanted, even if its just for a quick lay, is a powerful thing. If I listened to that tone as he begged me, focused on that desperate look in his eyes, I could lie to myself and say that he loved me. Like I said, weak and pathetic.  
    I gave him the address of an abandoned building that I knew of in my side of town. It was actually abandoned and the last time that I had snuck into it a few weeks ago, there hadn't been any squatters in it. He blanched, obviously not wanting to go back to South Nausten, but it was the best place to go for someone who didn't want to be seen.   
    I know what you're thinking. How stupid am I to take someone that wanted to have sex with me to some abandoned building, when I had no intention of letting him lay me? Well, I've always been my worst enemy and honestly? I had always been more scared of what I would let Trowa do than what he would do to me. If he tried anything, I would just tell him no, like always, we would fight and scream at each other, but we would have a few minutes of peace, a few minutes where he would buy me dinner and I could eat with him and pretend like it was back when we had first started dating.   
    So I told him where to go and said that I would think about meeting him there. If I didn't show up, he could just go home. He had looked angry at my flippant attitude, but I think he understood that it was the best that he was going to get from me and had gone away, leaving me wondering if I had lost my damned mind. Not that I had had much sanity left to lose. Saturday saw me sneaking into the abandoned building a full thirty minutes before I had agreed to meet Trowa, and I wasn't even sure why I was there. I guess that's kind of sad, that I had gotten to the point in our relationship where I didn't know why I was bothering anymore.  
    The house might have been nice once. It reminded me a bit of my own, if no one bothered to take care of it, and it had probably been built around the same time with similar architecture. I turned on my lantern so I could find someplace to sit. There was a glow from the neon lights coming from outside, but all the windows were boarded up, and I just didn't feel like stepping on a nail or someone's used needle. Someone had left a soiled, aging mattress on the floor that had once been a kitchen. When I sat on it, dust flew up everywhere. I tried not to think about the kinds of things that were in and on that mattress, namely human fluids and bugs, but it was more comfortable than sitting on the floor. That I couldn't tell if what I was smelling was old piss or just old age bothered me.  
    As I sat there, reading a book that I had brought with me, I wondered if I was punishing myself. What other reason could I have for keeping this going? I obviously hated myself and just wanted to suffer. I snorted in the silence of the house at my own melodrama. Of course I hated myself, what was there to like? I suppose, in a way, I really was punishing myself for what had happened to Quatre by dating the boy that he had loved. Every time we saw each other, I remembered my loss and it was kind of a poetic justice that Trowa was the one hurting me. But at this point, what would punish me more, staying with him or breaking up with him.  
    I rubbed at my face and decided that I was just overly tired. I hadn't exactly been sleeping well, even for me. That was why I had agreed to this stupid date, I decided. I was just sleep deprived and stressed from trying to decide what to do about this mess. I heard Trowa coming in the front door, rousing me from my thoughts, walking carefully and slowly towards the only source of light that I had brought. The powerful aroma of pizza assaulted me, but the not the cheap, noxious smell of the kind that I had worked with all day. I could smell fries, too. My stomach turned inside out, reminding me that it hadn't been fed since early that morning. I just hoped that Trowa would let me eat the food that he had brought before we fought.  
    In the light of my lantern, his green eyes were wide and shocked as he saw me sitting there.   
    "You're here," he said with surprise.  
    I eyed him for a moment. He hadn't thought that I was going to show up, but he had come anyway. I shrugged at him, trying to be as nonchalant as possible. He looked so shy as he approached me, I almost felt bad for him. For just a moment, I felt like ass. We were boyfriends and he had had to beg me just to hang out with him for dinner. But then I remembered why I was so upset and I pushed my sympathy for him away. Maybe I had done this to us, but he wasn't exactly a victim, either. At least he had someone, I thought angrily, maybe he didn't love her or even lust after her, but he could still talk to someone when we were fighting. I didn't even have that.  
    "This the only place you could find to sit down?" he asked me when he saw how shitty the mattress' condition was.  
    "Yep," I said curtly.  
    Let him stumble around the place looking for a chair or a sofa if he liked, it wasn't like they were going to be in any better shape. Despite his obvious disgust, he sat down next to me and handed me a container full of fries and an ice cold soda. A root beer this time. I eagerly accepted a slice of pizza from him and devoured it in about half a second. It was a meat lover's. It went like that for a little while, just the sound of the two of us chewing, the lantern lighting up the room pretty well.   
    I slowly realized that Trowa was getting closer to me. When he had sat down, he had been a couple of feet away from me, but after my third slice of pizza, our arms were touching. I almost brattily shifted over, away from him, but I liked the skin to skin contact too much. I forgot about that sometimes, when I was mad and hurting, how much I loved the feeling of his skin against mine, a simple touch, a reminder that I wasn't alone.   
    "I'm sorry," he blurted out as I took a bite out of a fresh slice.  
    I glared at him, realizing he had timed that for when I was eating so I couldn't cut him off again.  
    "I told you," I snapped after I had finished swallowing my mouthful, "don't say that shit unless you mean it."  
    "I do mean it," he said earnestly and I couldn't figure out if he really did or was manipulating me, "I'm sorry, ok? I didn't want you to get hurt."  
    "You're sorry that you got caught," I said, annoyed, "but you're not sorry that you're seeing her, are you?"  
    "You told me not to apologize for things that I'm not really sorry for," he snapped in exasperation, "You want the truth? Fine! No, I'm not sorry about... about dating Karen. You don't know what it's like, Duo, to not have people look at you like your a freak, to not wonder every time someone whispers when you walk by them if they're talking about you, if they're gossiping that you might be gay, just because you don't have a girlfriend, because you've turned down every girl that's ever tried to ask you out in the last four years?! I was tired of it, ok? And Karen's nice, she's not a bitch, and she genuinely wants to be with me, not just because I used to be some star basketball player.   
    "What do you want from me? You think that I don't want to be able to hold hands with you in public, at the very least? You think that it isn't painful for me, too? You won't even let me touch you anymore without pushing me away, so yeah, even though she's a girl, I like it sometimes. Is it so horrible to want to be _wanted_ by someone, even if they're the wrong gender?! I won't apologize for that. But I will apologize for hurting you. I didn't want you to know," he rubbed at his face, his tone softening, "The truth is, even if I make out with her and have sex with her... I... I like you better."  
    "Right," I snorted, not believing him for a second. Like me better than that pretty girl? The only thing that was more likeable than her was that I had a dick, "That's why you told me that you don't want me, right?"  
    Even in the dim light of the lantern, he looked pale and withdrawn at that memory.  
    "That's not t-... I never should have said that," he murmured remorsefully, "I like you, more than I will ever like her. I like kissing you more than I ever will her, even just being with you. I don't _want_ to have sex with her, I want to have it with you!"  
    He reached over and gently touched my cheek with his hand. After all of the fighting and pain and anger at each other, it felt wonderful. When he pulled me forward into a soft kiss, I didn't protest one bit. He curled his fingers around the back of my neck and kissed me like he wanted to suck every last breath out of me. I couldn't even tell if he was lying to me anymore, but right then, I didn't care if he was. Because he was right, it felt good to be wanted. Him saying that he liked me more, that he liked being with me, was the most amazing feeling. I was like an addict and I couldn't get enough of it.   
    When he shoved the pizza box off of the bed so he could lay the both of us down on that filthy mattress, his mouth still insistent on mine, his tongue smoothing over my lips, warning bells went off in my head. I ignored them, even when he pushed my legs apart so he could slide between them, as smooth as silk, or even when I felt his bulge pressing against me, as hard as a freaking rock. I knew what he wanted, what he was going to do, but for some reason, I didn't make a move to stop it.   
    I just wanted to forget. I wanted to forget about all the pain in my life and drown in him for a little while. I wanted to pretend that those kisses meant that he loved me. My hands found his chest in the dark, my fingers mesmerized with the feeling of his muscles through his thin shirt. He felt warm.   
    "Oh, God, Duo," he panted against my mouth and I felt his large hands slide down my back until he was squeezing my ass through my jeans, "I want you so much," and I could hear it in his voice, that desperation, that need. It frightened me just how much he wanted, "Please let me..."  
    Keeping one hand on my rear, another sneakily went to the front of my jeans, unzipping them. Just like it always had when Trowa got that far, fear slammed into me and rousted me from all the good things that he had made me feel. Memories like sharp shards of glass pierced me, all of them from the night that I had given him my virginity. I remembered the pain, the terror, and that look of repulsion that he had given me. That that Trowa and this one were the same person seemed impossible and I had to remind myself that they were. I had to remind myself that if I let him go any further, how I would feel afterwards, how it was going to hurt and make me miserable.   
    "No," I heard myself say and I pushed at him, "I'm not going to have sex with you."  
    To my dismay, that push made Trowa stop, but it wasn't enough to remove his hands from under my waist. He glared down at me in rage, but I could still feel his hardness and that neediness in his expression wasn't going away.   
    "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?!" he snarled at me, his grip on the front of my jeans tightening, "That's it? You're just going to push me away again?! What the hell is your problem?! You didn't have an issue with it that other time!"  
    I didn't point out to him that I _had_ had a problem with it that time and he goddamn well knew it.   
    "It means," I informed him icily, "that I've finally made a decision. I'm never going to have sex with you again. I don't want to and I'm not going to let you push me into it just because your girlfriend isn't good enough for you!"  
    I tried to get up, expecting Brian to just scream at me and walk away like he usually did when I told him no, but this time was different. He shoved me back down and planted his knee on one of my legs, pining me there, and grabbed my left wrist in an iron grip. I felt panic grip my heart as I realized that I couldn't move.   
    "This is all a game to you, isn't it?" he sneered at me, "You're doing this to me on purpose!" his hand pulled at my jeans and the spare button that I had sewed on there before finally popped off, leaving my jeans open, "Are you even gay, Duo? I don't think you are. I think that you're just trying to copy Quatre! He was always better than you could ever hope to be, if anyone had to have killed himself, it should have been you! Even when you're trying to be like him, you're nothing but a knock off! You can't even be a fag correctly!" he squeezed at my crotch and I felt his other hand go down the back of my jeans, far too close to the one place that I didn't want him to touch ever again, "But you know what? I don't give a fuck what you want! What about what I want?!"  
    I felt his fingers touch me down there and ground his bulge against me. I bucked against him, enraged at his insults and terrified of what he was doing, but he was too strong. I was helpless in the position that we were in to do anything to stop him.   
    "Stop squirming!" he hissed at me and started to twist my hips to get me onto my stomach, "If you would just lie still, this could be all over, ok? Just let me..."  
    There were tears in his eyes. Were they tears of frustration, anger, desperation, or did he realize that what he was doing was wrong, and he just couldn't stop himself? It didn't matter to me. Maybe at some point in my life, I'll be able to look back at that moment and feel sorry for him. I don't know what it's like to be in lust, to need to have sex. I don't know how difficult it was for him to always have me pushing him away.   
    I don't know the kind of anger and darkness he was feeling to drive him to that point, to accuse me of the things that he had accused me of, but I understood one thing. It didn't matter how Trowa felt about me personally. He was going to rape me and that he might feel bad about it later did nothing to stop my sudden flash of furious rage at him.   
    "Get the fuck off of me, you disgusting pig!" I screamed at him.  
    When he had started to turn me over, he had lifted up his leg, unpinning one of mine. It gave me just enough freedom to curl up my lower body and kick at him. I may not be strong, but I'm pretty flexible. I got him right in the throat. Where my words had failed, that kick succeeded. Choking and gasping as he lost the ability to breathe for all of a single second, Trowa reared off of me. I wasn't going to waste time then. I got to my feet and pushed at him with all of my strength, watching in satisfaction as he fell and nearly hit his head on a nearby window ledge.   
    It didn't take Trowa long to get his sense back. He took deep, gulping breaths and glared at me with a more hideous expression of anger and disbelief than he had ever thrown me, grabbing at his injured throat.  
    "Fucking bitch," he croaked and took a swing at me.  
    The last time Trowa had punched me, it had taken me completely by surprise because I had never thought him capable of hitting me. This time, I was expecting it. Trowa wasn't exactly a fighter, and he didn't hold a candlestick to my father.   
    The thing about my father is that he never broadcasts what he's about to do unless he is stinking drunk and in the middle of a rage. Otherwise, getting hit by him is like getting grabbed by a crocodile. You don't even see it before it's too late. My dad is like that. He can look totally relaxed one second, and the next you'll be on the floor with a black eye. I never know exactly if I'm safe when I'm around him. Sometimes I can tell just by looking at him that a beating is about to happen, but even then, I don't know exactly when or how.  
    Trowa, on the other hand, had no clue how to hit anyone. He reacted with his anger and literally nothing else. I knew the exact moment he decided to strike me because his entire body tensed and his right hand curled into a fist well before he raised his arm. Also, my dad is a lot faster than he was, even thought Trowa was lighter than him. It was an easy thing for me to duck under his blow and slam my own in his face. My dad had taught me that, too. In a fight, you don't waste time just looking at your opponent, or your victim. If you want to lay someone out, all you have to do is shock them or confuse them. All you really need is one opening. He has done the same thing to me a thousand times, daze me so I don't see the real blow, the one that usual knocks me unconscious. Police training at its finest, I guess.   
    I'll never be as strong as Trowa or my father, but I was flaming pissed at that point. I couldn't even pinpoint the exact thing that had made me snap, if it was him trying to rape me, his insults, or him trying to hit me again, but my punch sent his back slamming against the wall. The sound of it was oddly satisfying and I felt this disgusting pleasure when I heard the sound of my fist hitting his cheek. It reminded me of that day at the train station. My rage was just a drop in the ocean compared to what I had felt that day. A part of me hated how good hitting him had felt, but another part reveled in it.  
    "I am _not_ scared of you," I hissed at him, "I am not your punching bag and I sure as hell am not your fucking whore! I'm not some convenient hole for you to get your rocks off with. I'm sick of your shit. I am _done_ with all of this! I don't want to see your face or hear from you again, got it?! If you call my house or bother me at school, work, whatever the fuck, I'll make your life as much of a hell as you've made mine!"  
    I didn't wait to see what he would do, for some kind of confirmation about my breaking up with him. I snatched my lantern from the floor and left him there, in total darkness.   
      
*****  
  
    It hit me when I was about a mile away from my house. I had just broken up with Trowa. After all of my frustration trying to make a decision, I had done it in the heat of the moment. But by the time it hit me, my anger at him had diminished. Did I regret it? Did I suddenly have the urge to run to him and take it back? I think that a part of me did. I felt a deep sadness in me at the realization that I was suddenly single, but did I want to tell him that I hadn't meant it? No. At some point during the walk home, I think I came to terms with the fact that, even though I had been angry at the time, my actions hadn't been spur of the moment or impulsive. They had been brewing for a very long time. Trowa had just pushed the right buttons at the right time, and I was mostly relieved. I had just come close to being raped and beaten by my boyfriend. I'm not such a masochist to not realize that was the time to get the fuck out. I didn't care about Trowa's reasons, I only realized that I couldn't do it anymore. It hurt too much for me to even think about.   
    When I got home, my mother was in the kitchen eating a late dinner, but my father nowhere to be found. He was probably at a bar with Pat, I thought and wondered at the bitter anger that thought came with, shortly breaking through my depression. I trudged upstairs and threw myself down on my mattress, hugging one of my pillows to my chest. I buried my face in it, feeling the quiet of my bedroom like a grave.   
    I was alone again. I nearly laughed at that. Maybe that was my fate, to always lose the people that I cared about because of my own failings. I had lost Quatre by being a shitty friend and I had lost Trowa by being a shitty boyfriend. Who would I lose next? Was there even anyone else _to_ lose? Or had I lost everything when I had lost my best friend? That was the only reason why Trowa had given me the time of day, after all.   
    In that moment, laying there in my room, I missed him. It was stupid, I had just broken up with him not even an hour ago. What was there to miss? But I did. I saw my life unfolding before me. I saw a life of loneliness and emptiness and for the first time in three years, I thought about suicide. Not seriously, understand. It was just a thought, a single thought that I wished that I had succeeded when I had slit my wrists. I never would have known how hopeless everything was, what a coward I was.   
    I felt this empty pit in me where my was supposed to be. I desperately wanted someone to talk to, but there was no one. There was never going to be anyone again. Who the hell would want to be friends with me? I didn't deserve friends. I didn't deserve anything. I felt a poison in me, a poison of hate and fear and anger and loneliness and I desperately wanted to cry to let it out. I had promised myself that I never would again, but at that moment, I tried. I tried to force my tears out, to cry and sob, but to my fear and frustration, they wouldn't come. My eyes were empty. Familiar arms wrapped around me.  
    "Ssssh, Duo, it will be alright. You did the right thing, you know that," Quatre said in my ear.   
    I clutched desperately at his arms, pretending that I was doing a hell of a lot more than grabbing my own shirt and tried to use his voice to make the tears come. I had killed this boy that was comforting now, I told myself, and all I can do is pretend that he's still alive. But there was nothing. I couldn't even let those feelings go. I had to let them rot inside of me.  
  
*****  
  
    A loud noise woke me up. I don't even remember when I fell asleep, but when I did wake up, I felt like absolute road kill. My dinner, which had tasted great at the time, then tasted like what I imagined rotting meat must taste like. My body was twisted around and sore from sleeping weirdly. I wasn't even sure of how long I had slept. I had the impression of waking up a lot and if I had dreamed, I couldn't remember what about. My head pounded and half of my hair had escaped my braid, sticking up this way and that. The overhead light bulb was still on from when I had turned it on coming home and I swore at my stupidity. It was very early in the morning, only three am, and the sun wasn't even up yet. If my father saw that my light had been on for the most of the night, he would have killed me.   
    Another loud noise had me sitting up, my heart pounding in fear. It sounded like a crash, something metallic. At first I thought it was my father, throwing things around downstairs, but I was used to that kind of noise and this sounded different. I relaxed. The sound had come from our front yard, I realized. That spurred me into action, getting up and walking quickly, but quietly, towards the steps. If my father had been up all night drinking with Pat, he was going to be in a foul mood if anything woke him up. I heard the noise again, a bit softer that time, and recognized the sound of our metal trash bin outside rolling around on the cement sidewalk.   
    "Fucking raccoons," I swore under my breath.  
    Don't get me wrong, I like animals, but we have a lot of problems with possums, raccoons, squirrels, and stray dogs going through our trash. When I was little, I had thought that raccoons were neat and liked to watch them knock over our garbage can through the kitchen window. Then, when my dad saw me just watching it happen, he made me go out and chase them off and one of them had almost bit me. They kind of lost their appeal after that. There was some talk around town about giving us some poisoned traps to put in our garbage to get rid of the problem, but in the end, it was a South Nausten problem and it just got swept under the rug.   
    I grabbed a broom on my way out in case it really was a raccoon. If it was a dog, I wasn't going to bother with it. It wasn't worth getting my face ripped off. As I passed by my parents' bedroom, the door was wide open and I only saw my mother, sprawled out on their bed. Dad hadn't come home that night. He was probably at Pat's, sleeping off a hangover. I didn't feel angry at him for that, just relieved that I wouldn't need to worry about waking him up and I wouldn't have to deal with him for awhile.   
    Sure enough, our trash can was knocked over, but it was rolling back and forth thanks to a strong wind. The wind was probably what had knocked it over in the first place, I thought, and was about to go back inside when I heard a rustling inside of the trash can. Maybe the wind had knocked it over, but some animal was making use of the opportunity. I walked quietly over to the trash can, ready to hit it with the broom and send the pest running when I saw a tail poking out of the can.   
    It wasn't the thick, striped tail of a raccoon, or the long, hairless one of a possum or rat, or even bushy like a squirrel. It was thin, as small as a finger, and covered with mostly black fur except for about three inches on the tip which was stark white with grey spots on the white and a little bit on the black. It was a cat, probably a young one, maybe even a kitten from the size of the tail. I quietly placed the broom down on the ground and crouched down near the opening.   
    "Hey there," I cooed softly, hoping that I wouldn't startle it.  
    I wasn't even worried about it clawing me or biting me, but there was just... something in me that didn't want it to run off. I can't explain it. I hadn't had much experience with cats beyond Mrs. Liddle and her hoard of her feelings, being the town's 'crazy cat lady', and the times that I passed by the pet shop in Central Nausten and had seen some kittens in the window being advertised. I had always wanted a pet when I had been a kid, but with my father's hatred of animals, it had been another dream I had given up on.  
    To my surprise, a small kitten poked it's head out of our trash can and stared at me with large, gold eyes, like miniature moons. Any of the feral cats that I saw now and then on the street would have bolted or hissed in warning at me. This little thing mewed at me and walked, almost boldly, up to me. I felt this sense of wonder as it stared me down. I could tell, just by watching it's reaction to me, that it had had a proper home at one time. There was a little indent in it's neck that only happens on animals that had worn a collar for a long time.   
    I wondered what had happened to it, if it's owner had abandoned it for some reason or what. It couldn't have just run off if it's collar was gone. Whatever had happened, it must have been recently if it still wasn't skittish of humans and that indent was still there. The kitten had been pretty once. With the exception of it's tail and the white tip of it's right ear, it was a pure, sleek black. Or it would have been if it wasn't covered in dirt and it's coat wasn't so mussed. It was thin as a rail and looked like a runt. None of that mattered to me when I reached out my hand, daring a bite, and the cat nuzzled my fingers.   
    "Aren't you a cute thing," I continued to coo, not wanting to scare it, "Are you hungry? You're not going to find much food in there, I'm afraid."  
    It meowed at me, as if in agreement, and let me run my fingers down it's back. It gave this tiny, happy purr and I could actually feel my heart melt.   
    "I think I can find something for you to eat," I told it and looked around at my neighborhood nervously. There was no one to see me at that hour.  
    I can't tell you what possessed me to do it. It was stupid and childish and I couldn't stop myself. I gently picked the kitten up, my actions bolstered by it letting me do it without so much as a nip. It actually relaxed in my hands, giving credence to my theory that she was used to people. Against all of my better judgment, and memories of my father's rants about 'smelly pets', I picked up the broom and brought the cat inside.   
    Later, I would feel guilty, like the worst sort of person on the planet. I can't even lie and say that I had planned to just give her a bit of food and put her back outside. I think that, the second I had seen that kitten's curious face, I had known that I was going to keep her. My dad would kill her if he ever found out, I knew that, but no matter how much I told myself that I was risking her life, I couldn't force myself to let her go.   
    If I analyze it with enough self-awareness, I think that I needed her. I needed someone or something in my life to wake up to. I won't say that if that dumb cat hadn't come along, I would have offed myself, but I think that the second that she had purred at me, my heart had realized what it had been missing all those years after Quatre's death. Someone to look at me like that again... like I mattered, like I was _needed_. Like I wasn't just a resource.   
    I nervously checked on my mother when I got the kitten inside of the house. She was still sound asleep and, judging by the empty bottle on her nightstand, she would be for awhile. Even a meowing kitten wouldn't wake her. I dared to put the cat on the counter and rooted around in the fridge for something appropriate to feed a young feline. I came up with a bottle of water and some turkey that my father had just bought. It would have to do, until I bought some kitten food. I felt anxiety just then, suddenly realizing how stupid this was.   
    How the hell could I keep a cat? Even if, by some unholy miracle, I managed to keep her a secret from my parents, which seemed impossible, how could I possibly afford her? I had a little bit of money tucked away, but I was going to need food and litter and a collar and who even knew what else! I could afford a small bag of food, but how was I going to keep on feeding her? That wasn't fair to the cat, to keep her and not be able to take care of her. But when I glanced over at her and saw her looking around at her surroundings with huge, adorable eyes, I knew that I would try.  
    'If it gets to be too much, I'll give her to the adoption center,' I promised myself, 'or I'll find her a nice home.'  
    I put a small amount of the turkey in a bowl and put a little bit of water on it, mushing up the meat until it was soft for her, and then I poured some of the water into a separate bowl.  
    "I know it isn't much," I told her, "but I hope you like it."  
    She apparently did because she took to it like she had never eaten anything in her entire life. I felt a relief watching her wolf the turkey down. I didn't know what I would have done if she had dietary problems and refused to eat anything. At least I could hold her over with turkey and water before I needed to buy her actual cat food. What would I do if she didn't like the kind of food I got her? I pushed that worry away. One thing at a time, I told myself. For all I knew, Dad was going to find her and I would have to let her back outside to save her life.   
    I eyed her as she ate. She really was filthy. I hoped she didn't have fleas. I left her there on the counter for a moment to dig up a washcloth and towel from the bathroom. When I came back, she had finished both the turkey and the water and was looking like she wanted to jump down. I snatched her up and placed her in our sink.   
    "You're not going to like this," I warned her, "but I promise you'll feel much better after ok? So please don't claw my eyes out."  
    I used the little spray attachment we had on our sink to test the water. When I was sure that it was the right temperature, I doused the kitten with some gently. She didn't claw at me or try to get out of the sink, even when I put some liquid soap in the washcloth and cleaned off her fur. She just sat there, looking like a wet rat, and meowed pitifully, almost sounding like she was crying and pleading me to stop.   
    I was worried that the noise would wake my mother, but I didn't hear any sound from the bedroom, so I kept at it until I was satisfied that the kitten didn't have any bugs on her, as far as I could tell, and that she wasn't dirty anymore. The poor thing looked so miserable sitting in the deep sink, reduced to half her size by her wet fur, but perked up when I rubbed her fur dry with the towel and wrapped her up in it.   
    "See?" I soothed, "Now you're clean and as soon as your fur finishes drying, you'll feel great."  
    I carried her, wrapped up in the towel, to my bedroom and began to worry about exactly how I was going to pull the wool over my father's eyes. Cats smell. Not as much as rodents and wet dogs, but they do have a smell to them that is pretty recognizable. I could probably hide it with air fresheners and by keeping her contained in my bedroom, but even that seemed problematic. If I kept the door closed, she couldn't wander off and be discovered, but what about when Dad came into my room?   
    I would have to find a place to hide her and hope she wouldn't make herself known to him. What if she cried to be let out when I wasn't home? I could try to take her out when I was, but I didn't want her to remain an outdoor cat. There would be no one to let her in, and it would look suspicious if she stayed by the front door. Not to even mention that Winter was quickly approaching and I was terrified of her getting attacked by a dog...   
    And what about her going to the bathroom? Mrs. Liddle broke her arm once a few years back and my father had, grudgingly, made me take out her trash at her request. I can easily say that cat shit smells worse than dog shit. How was I going to hide that? I would have to clean her litterbox every day to keep the smell down. I didn't have the money to buy that litter that's supposed to keep things smelling fresh. I didn't even know how I was going to afford litter.   
    It all seemed so impossible to me, but I bulled forward. When I went up into my room and saw the little hole in the wall that I had made, a plan began to form in my head. Keeping my cat in my arms, I scrounged around for some things I could use to make her a bed. I removed my CDs from the shoebox I kept them in in the floor and filled it with the softest fabrics I had in my scrap pile, placing the kitten in the box.  
    "How's that? I know it'll be small when you get older, but is it ok for now?" I asked her, not feeling the least bit silly for talking to a cat.  
    I was pleased when she made a soft mrrr sound, kneaded a little at the cloth, and immediately curled up in the box to fall asleep. At least I could that much right.   
    "I guess that's a yes," I chuckled and was shocked by the sound.      
    I couldn't remember the last time that I had laughed at anything. I took the time while she was napping to clean out my hole in the wall. The opening itself wasn't that big, but the space in the hole would be big enough for her to go into without feeling claustrophobic. I put her and her bed in the hole, hoping she wouldn't feel scared in such a dark place, and made quick work of tacking up a piece of cloth in front of the hole.   
    The cloth was the same color as the wall, so it didn't look too noticeable, and it would give her a nice hiding place. I wished that I had the expertise to train her to go in there if my dad ever came upstairs. I laid down in my own bed, suddenly feeling very tired and drained, but I was shocked to find that the dark cloud of depression that had been hanging over my head since I had caught Trowa cheating, and had intensified when I had broken up with him, while not completely gone, had diminished to a tolerable level.   
    I woke up a couple hours later, surprised at hell that I had been able to go back to sleep. Usually nowadays, when I wake up, that's it, I can't fall asleep again. I must have been more tired than I had thought from the day before. I opened my eyes to find that my newly acquired kitten had migrated to my pillow and was curled up, asleep, close to my head. I felt this warmth in my chest looking at her tiny, napping form, and couldn't stop the smile as I petted her ears. Her gold slid open a tiny fraction and she yawned widely.   
    I won't say that I felt happy, or that she was some kind of replacement for Quatre. All I know is that in that moment when I saw her next to me, I felt more than I had in a long time. Since Quatre had died, I felt something positive that wasn't mixed up in something terrible. That one, blissful, peaceful moment was gone all to quickly when I heard the front door slam close and the heavy footsteps of my father go into the house moments before I heard something getting thrown.   
    "Fuckfuckfuck," I swore under my breath, getting to my feet and automatically putting on my jacket.  
    He sounded pissed at something. Or maybe he was still drunk from last night, I didn't know, but the sound of him swearing and carrying on down there was the clue for me to get up and bail. I scooped up my cat from my pillow. She gave this little huff that sounded a bit like a sigh. It would have been funny and cute if my heart hadn't been racing with terror.   
    "Sorry, little one," I tried to keep my voice steady, "but I think it's time for us to take a walk."  
    I felt oddly protective over a kitten that I just taken in a few hours ago, but I did. There was no way I was going to let my father find her and hurt her because he was in a mood. I carefully placed her in the pocket of my jacket. She fit in there perfectly, thanks to her diminutive size, and despite looking confused, she didn't try to crawl back out. I crept by the door, making sure not to give off so much as a single creak on the old floorboards to alert my father of my existence. I waited patiently, listening to his every move until I heard him go into the bathroom and shut the door with a bang.   
    I moved quickly down the stairs, past the bathroom and my parents' bedroom where my mother was now wide awake and looking like she was considering making hasty retreat as well, and to the front door. My sneakers were on my feet and tied in less than three seconds. When I was free and out of the door, I walked as quickly as I could without jostling my precious cargo and made my way to the beach.   
    It was low tide when I got there and the stone wall that framed the hill where those that had four wheel drive parked and a mile of the beach was far enough from the water that I could sit down in the sand and brace my back against it. My cat poked her head out of my pocket, sniffing at the sea air with great interest, but was content to stay in there with the cool wind, especially when I stroked her head. 6:30 am on a Sunday was prime time for joggers, so I wasn't exactly as alone on the beach as I had hoped, but it was too cold and early in the morning for a crowd.   
    One woman jogging by me gave me a weird, put out look and I realized that I probably looked a bit... scruffy still wearing the clothes that I had fallen asleep in and my hair a mess. I waited for her to pass, then undid my half unraveled braid, combed my hair with my fingers, and then bound it up again. I stayed there for several hours, just watching the waves and the sea gulls as they fought over some crabs, and didn't think about anything; not my father, not Quatre, and certainly not Trowa. At least until the stray thought popped into my head that I wondered what he was doing with his Sunday, making me scowl at myself.  
    Just as I was thinking about leaving so I could get home and get ready for my first shift of the day, I saw them walking towards me. Relena was easy to spot. I had spent the last seven years getting used to noticing the bitch out of a crowd of people, and her long, light brown hair and expensive, light blue dress that matched her eyes perfectly was like a warning light to me. I cursed myself for not leaving sooner. I could imagine her trying to hurt my cat to get at me and thought about different ways that I could get away from her, but I couldn't without walking past her.   
    The person that she was with was harder to pinpoint until they got closer and when they did, I grit my teeth. I had hated Heero Yuy from the first moment I had seen him. Ok, fine, that's not exactly true. The first time that I actually saw him was the day that he had transferred into our school, but I hadn't thought anything about him beyond 'transfer student' and the fact that he was already popular.   
    I might have felt a bit bitter at that. After all, I had been screwed over from my first day of school because Relena had accused me of lying. I had thought that it was because I was the new kid, but no one else in school had ever been treated like that. At most, my feelings towards him had been neutral, the same way they were to every other popular kid in my grade that I didn't interact with.   
    I was too busy dealing with my problems with Trowa to actually notice him, at least until he started hanging out with Saren. We had never really met face to face, and to his credit, it wasn't like he bullied me like Relena and Zechs did, but that didn't make him a good person. For one, he fell in with their crowd like he fucking belonged there. I saw him all the time with her and Dorothy, acting like they had been friends forever instead of just having met.   
    Then they started dating. Boy, was that no kind of shock to _anyone_. Heero is the kind of boy that someone like Relena can go for: rich, handsome, a bit of a bad boy but not too much, athletic, and with her same values. I'm mature enough to admit that I was a bit jealous of the two of them, Relena in particular. Why did she get a boyfriend, one that hung off of her every word like she was the fucking queen, when my relationship had turned to shit? It wasn't fair, but I didn't dwell on it. I had figured out that fairness and Relena Darlian did not go hand in hand at age nine. Why should this be any different?   
    I think what got to me about the two of them was that Heero makes her genuinely happy. I'm not saying that her bullying of me and her foul attitude have gone away, but when they're together and she smiles at him, it's not an act. I thought it was at first. Heero is the kind of boy that every girl fantasizes of, no matter what her type is.   
    He's not overly tall, only an inch or two taller than I am and I'm average height for a boy my age. He has a tan that's a shade darker than Trowa's (I heard he moved here from Florida, but I don't know if that's true. Why the hell would anyone move from a nice, warm state like that to a grey, cold place like this?) and his thick, chocolate brown hair is in this wild style that's a bit messy, but it makes him look more like some rocker than unkempt. He's not muscular and he doesn't have Zechs's wide shoulders, but he's fit and looks pretty strong for a baseball player.   
    Handsome face, deep voice, the kind of guy that even other boys can't hate. But the most striking the thing about him is his eyes. Yuy has this deep, deep blue shade of eye color that I've never seen on anyone I've ever met. It's smack in between azure and admiral blue. Go ahead, look it up. They're the shade of blue that I imagine the ocean must look like in tropical areas of the world where the sand is like silk instead of coarse like it is here.     

One look at those eyes, and I knew that Relena would make a go for him. But I never thought that she would actually be _serious_ about him, beyond snagging a guy that everyone else wanted, like a shiny toy that she wouldn't tolerate anyone to play with first. I couldn't stand him, and I especially couldn't stand him with _her_ , laughing at her cruel jokes, looking at her like she deserved any kind of happiness in her life. He made me think of Quatre and what she had done to him when he had dared to fall in love. I hated Heero for that.   
    They got close enough to see me and I placed my hand over my pocket so they wouldn't see my kitten. Heero's eyes were intense as he looked at me, like blue fire. He opened his mouth to say something, probably some comment about how grungy I looked. He _was_ Relena's boyfriend, after all. Just because he didn't know me, it didn't mean that he wasn't above slinging some insult. Or maybe he did know me and knew who I was to his girlfriend.  
    "Now, now, Heero," she cooed, "don't get too close to our resident faggot. He might bite and we'd waste this nice day taking you to get tested for diseases."  
    Those blue eyes went wide and he stared at me in shock before they narrowed in guarded suspicion. I was amazed that he didn't take a step back in revulsion.  
    "You have people like _that_ here?" he asked in disgust.  
    Relena laughed daintily and hooked her arm around his, drawing him away from me and closer to her.  
    "Don't worry," she soothed, sneering at me, "he's just useless trash from the South end and he's the only one in school. I'll make sure he doesn't bother you."  
    She pulled him away and they continued down the beach, but not before Heero looked back at me, looking at me curiously like a fucking exotic animal in a zoo. I guess he had never met a fag before.  
    Rage and hatred swirled in my gut for the both of them. I hoped that they got their eyes pecked out by sea gulls.   
  
  
  
End Chapter 4  
  
Oh my god. I didn't think I was ever going to finish this chapter *collapses*  
  
While Chapter 3 was difficult to write, this presented a whole new challenge for me in Duo and Trowa's relationship. Chapter 5 is also a struggle, but for different reasons. I hope you guys liked this chapter for what it was. Sorry about the long wait for these two parts. I'm almost done with the first part of Chapter 5, so there's that at least.   
  
Thank you again to everyone who has reviewed and favorited and bookmarked. I have only gotten this far because of you guys ;_;  
  
  



	21. Chapter 5 Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duo seeks help in taking care of his cat from his neighbor, who hates his father. Zechs manages to corner Duo and enlists Heero's help to try to cut Duo's hair.

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 5  
Part 1  
  
October 11, 2007  
  
    (shaky handwriting)  
  
    I need to write. I wasn't going to. I don't want (scratched out) anyone to read this. But I need to. I need to do something or I'll go insane. I think I'll go insane anyway. Every time I think of it, of what he did, I just want to vomit.   
  
    (large amount of text scribbled over)  
  
    (steadier handwriting)  
  
    Ok... ok... I think I have a better grip now. I think I can do this. I don't know where to start. I guess far away from this, right? That's what Mrs. Khushrenada told me when I had to write about Quatre. 'Start from the beginning, not the end. By the time you get to the end, you'll have a better handle on it.' Ha! That bullshit didn't help me when I was writing about Quatre. There's no way I'm going to get a better handle on this.   
    Deep breaths, that's what I need. And some water. At least my hands aren't shaking anymore. Alright, the beginning. What is the beginning of this mess?  
    I guess I should start from the day after I picked up my kitten out of our garbage can. I named her Pepper, by the way. She looked like a Pepper. Quatre would approve.   
    I had thought that the novelty of having a pet would wear off after a day or two and the frustration of taking care of her and hiding her would overwhelm me, but when I woke up Monday morning to Pepper batting at my bangs instead of sleeping in her shoebox like she was supposed to, I found the thought of getting out of bed to be less miserable than it usually was. She had done pretty well when I had been at work Sunday. She hadn't clawed up my room and, best of all, my dad hadn't found her, which gave me hope that I could pull this off. The worst she had done was somehow scatter my scraps of cloth all over the room and go to the bathroom in the corner which, given I hadn't provided her with an alternative yet, wasn't really her fault. I was going to have to figure out a bathroom solution for her and soon.  
    That 'soon' quickly became 'immediately' when I scouted my room that morning to find that, at some point in the night, she had peed in a few other places as well. I knew enough about cats to know that she wasn't so much looking for a place to piss as marking things, which I guess is expected in a new place. I didn't mind her peeing on the floor, desk, and chair, it wasn't too awful cleaning it, but I got worried when I smelled some in her shoebox. I had no clue how to get her to stop or if it was a bad sign. I knew almost nothing about keeping a pet.  
    'Wonder if the library has a book on training kittens,' I thought and mentally added 'cat literature' to my ever (depressingly) growing list of pet expenses.   
    It wasn't just the marking, I wanted to train her to go into her hidey hole if there was someone else in the room besides me. That would probably be impossible, even with a dog, but even getting her to sleep in her shoebox more often would make me feel better. Even though, I have to admit, I was starting to like her curled up on my pillow. I slept better Sunday than I had in a long time. When she was with me, I didn't think about Trowa.  
    I knew that I couldn't put off buying her things for much longer, but I also had no clue how I was going to afford just her food and litter. What about shots? Neutering? What if she was sick from being outside? The more I thought about it, the more I thought about finding her a better home. But when I looked into those big eyes, I couldn't do it. I couldn't stand to lose another thing that I cared for, it would kill me.  
    Watching Pepper roll around on my mattress, wrestling with one of my socks, I realized that if I really wanted to keep her and take care of her, I only had two real options, and neither of them were pleasant. I had gotten paid Friday and my check was still in my backpack, waiting to be cashed and given to my father. I could cash it and use it on Pepper, but even then I didn't think I could afford to get her seen by a vet. But I could afford her food and the other things that she needed. Of course, I would be too busy in the hospital to take care of her, so I easily nixed that plan. The second option was only slightly less unpleasant, but it was the only chance that I had.  
    I went to see Mrs. Liddle. Mrs. Liddle is... well, calling her a crazy cat lady is kind of mean. She isn't nuts, she just really loves animals, especially cats, and has a lot of them. She's just a bit... _eccentric_. According to Pat, that's what happens to women that don't use their pussy enough. It goes to disuse and it affects their brains. But of course, you can take _that_ with a grain of salt since _Pat's_ brain has gone to disuse, if he had ever had one to begin with.   
    Despite what my father and Pat and a lot of other people say about Mrs. Liddle, she isn't a bad person. People around town seem to equate having too many cats and being too old to do any repairs on her house as being nuts and a slob, but I've seen worse houses and I think collecting cats is a bit more sane than our other neighbor and his three pit bulls and two rottweilers, each with a worse, more rotten personality than the next. In my opinion, anyone that runs an animal shelter and adoption agency, without even getting paid for it, can't be a bad person.  
    That's not to say that I've ever sat down and had a chat with a woman before. I tried to steer clear of her, if only because she has a bit of a problem with my family. To be fair, it's deserved. Or at least her outright hatred of my father is. Her feelings for me and my mother run more to disdain because of our connection to my dad. He had never gotten along with her in the entire time we had lived on that street. He always had a complaint, from the smell of her trash, the amount of cats in her front yard, to her parking her car on the street a few times because one of her 'babies' had decided to lay out in her driveway. People aren't really allowed to park on the street, but it wasn't like her car had been blocking traffic or anything. I think he just hates her and likes to cause trouble for her.   
    Things came to a head between them a couple years ago when my father had called animal services on her and gotten them to take a bunch of her cats away. Since then, her contempt of him had turned into a full blown, enraged hatred so severe that I was surprised she hadn't assaulted him. I hadn't really understood how someone could react like that to a few cats, but since Pepper had come into my life, I got it suddenly. If someone took my kitten away, I would be devastated, and I wasn't the one who looked to my pets like they were my children.   
    All of my common sense told me that I was going to get no help from that woman. If she opened her door to me at all, it was only for the pleasure of slamming it in my face. But while she hated me, she also loved cats and might have some things she could throw my way, cheaper than a pet store. I worried that she might tell my father about my cat out of spite if I told her _why_ I wanted her help, but I didn't think that she would. She couldn't even stand the sight of him. The worst she could do, I assured myself, was not talk to me at all.  
    It was still desperation, and nothing else, that had me walking past the broken gate in front of her house that Monday morning before school and knocking on the door after trying to ring the bell proved that that was broken, too. A woman in her late sixties with greying, curly, brown hair and hazel eyes opened the door just a crack, glaring at me suspiciously.  
    "What do _you_ want?" she demanded in a curt, unfriendly tone.  
    "Uh... hi, Mrs. Liddle," I greeted with a stammer, "How are you this morning?"  
    "Just spit it out, Maxwell," she snapped at me coldly, "not all of us have all day to stand around and make small talk."  
    She looked like she was just going to slam her door in my face, like I feared that she would, when a sleek, white cat with a grey, diamond shaped mark on its forehead squeezed past Mrs. Liddle to try to rub up against my leg. I almost crouched down to pet it, but my common sense kicked in. I didn't think that the surly woman would appreciate me trying to touch one of her babies. My neighbor hastily picked up the feline like she thought that I was going to try to hurt it, and she probably did. The cat was unperturbed by her owner, just staring at me with huge, green-yellow eyes full of curiosity. I don't think that they had many visitors.   
    "If you're father sent you over here to make trouble for me again-" she started to threaten me, looking nervous and holding her cat to her chest like some kind of security blanket.  
    "No, nothing like that!" I assured her, deciding to cut out all the pleasantries and just cut to the chase, "The truth is that I'm kind of in a situation and you're the only person who can help me. See, I kind of... uh... 'acquired' a kitten yesterday."   
    I rubbed at the back of my head sheepishly, expecting her to tell me that I was full of shit, but she dropped her defensive posture as I rambled.  
    "She was a stray," I explained, "and I would really like to keep her, but I don't make a lot of money and my dad uses what little I do, so I have no clue how I'm going to take care of her. I really don't want to give her to a shelter, and I don't want my father to find out that I have her, so I thought maybe... maybe if you had a few things, like an extra litterbox and kitten food that you aren't using, I can do some chores for you as trade? I don't have a lot of money to pay you for them, but I can fix things or mow your lawn or whatever you need. I just really need for my father not to find out about it, not even that I was here."  
    I cringed at my own neediness, realizing how stupid I was, begging someone who loathed me for help. The woman hated my father, and she feared him, why the hell would she help me hide things from him and give me stuff out of the goodness of her heart? She studied me for a moment, no doubt trying to decide if I was feeding her shit, although who knew why she thought I would make up such a story. She seemed to decide that I was at least being truthful with her, because all of her coldness and distrust in me melted away and she even gave me a soft smile.  
    "No, we can't have that... your father finding out that you're keeping a cat in his house," she sneered at the mere mention of the man that had taken some of her cats away from her and pet the one that was in her arms, "Who knows what that lout would do," she thought for a second, "I _do_ have some dry, kitten food that I need taken off of my hands. I was fostering a kitten for the shelter, but he passed away."  
    "I'm so sorry," I said earnestly and just barely caught a flash of pleasant surprise in her gaze.  
    "Thank you," she murmured, "He was sick from the moment he came to us at the shelter. But all of my babies are grown, so I have no use for the food anymore."  
    That soft, almost sentimental look of hers turned shrewd.  
    "How capable are you at unclogging a sink?" she asked, "The sink in my kitchen won't drain every time I do the dishes and that damned drain snake I purchased won't do shit for it. Both hinges on my fence are rusted useless and it needs a new coat of paint. My yard could use a touch up as well," she looked out on her overgrown and weed-filled front yard, which wasn't all that big, which only made the problems with it look worse, "I had a young man from the shelter come out and do some weeding for me last year, but I can't afford that anymore. Between my work, taking care of my babies, the cost, and my arthritis, I can't take care of any of it myself."  
    "I can do all of that," I said eagerly, not able to put a lid on my sudden hope, "Our sink has the same problem, I think all these old houses were built the same. My dad showed me how to fix the problem a few years ago, and I certainly don't mind weeding and fixing your fence, too."  
    "Alright, Duo," her hazel eyes lit up and I realized that she was just as desperate for help as I was. You didn't end up on our side of town if you had the money to hire people to take care of your home, and Mrs. Liddle didn't have any family that I knew of to help her, either, "I'll tell you what. If you promise to have my gate fixed by the end of this week, I'll give you what I bought for Oliver, and if you swing by with your kitten some time this week, I'll take her in to get checked out by our vet as well."  
    My eyes widened in surprise. I had been expecting to barter for some cat food, I hadn't expected to win medical treatment as well.  
    "Are you sure?" I asked. I wasn't used to being lucky in anything, I couldn't afford not to look a gift horse in the mouth, "I... I can't afford to get her neutered or medication if there's something wrong with her..."  
    "Of course you can't," she tisked at me, "but a child needs proper care and I get free veterinary visits from my work at the shelter. If there's anything wrong with her, I expect you to do extra chores to pay for it. But I won't have you neglecting the poor dear because you don't know what you're doing."  
    "Absolutely not," I vowed, "If I get over my head, I'll find her a good home. I won't be irresponsible."      
    She nodded her approval and opened her door wider.  
    "Well, come inside. I have Oliver's things in the kitchen," she walked into her house and I followed her, but not before glancing down the block at my own house, making sure that there was no one watching us.  
    Mrs. Liddle's house was about the same size as ours, but it had a lot more stuff in it, making it look smaller. Despite the numerous cats I spotted, the home actually looked quite clean, with lots of shelves and furniture for the cats to lounge on. She, or someone she had paid, had obviously installed the shelves specifically for the cats, because there was nothing else of them. She put the white cat down as she led me into the kitchen and it wasted no time twining around my legs, obviously not having the same problems with me and my family that it's owner had. There was a strong, unmistakable odor of cat around the place, but it wasn't the disgusting, ill kept home that my father claimed that it was. Even if Mrs. Liddle was a cat hoarder, it was obvious that she cared about her babies a lot.   
    "Here," she said when we got to the kitchen and she pointed to a large, black trash bag.   
    I opened it and stared in shock at the bounty that she was given me. There was a large bag of barely used kitten food, a food dish, a litter box with a half empty bag of litter, a few toys, a jar of catnip, and a few other things that I had no clue their purpose, but I aimed to find out.   
    "This... this is too much," I insisted.  
    I had this sense of foreboding and I felt intensely nervous. You didn't get anything for nothing. Sure, I had offered to help her out around the house, but that seemed like nothing compared to her offering to do all this for me, for someone that she didn't even like. She could just give me a bag of food whenever I need it and I would have done the same amount of work, so why bother? I almost wanted to ask her what the catch was, even if I had no reason to actually suspect her of anything.   
    She snorted at my concerns.  
    "I can't do anything with it," she pointed out, which was completely logical. But I still couldn't shake the feeling that I should on alert, waiting for something bad to happen.   
    "But why?" I asked, glancing down at the white cat that was still trying to mold herself to my legs while two more cats, a tiger striped one and a black one that reminded me of Pepper tried to get my attention, one purring at me and the other meowing loudly as if asking who was I and why was I in its domain, "You don't even like me."  
    I was taken aback by the almost motherly smile she gave me.  
    "My babies like you," she nodded to the three cats swarming me, "so you can't be a bad person. Besides, I won't make your cat suffer because I can't stand the asshole you call a father."  
    I understood then that Mrs. Liddle still didn't know what to make of me. She didn't trust me and she wasn't necessarily doing me a favor. She didn't know enough about me beyond that I was my father's son and I needed her help to believe that I really was desperate. But she was willing to do _Pepper_ a favor, and that was good enough for me.  
    I promised her that I would bring my cat to her the next morning so she could be taken to the vet and that I would see to her fence and the sink before next week before thanking her profusely for her help and sneaking my newly acquired cat stuff back into the house. I spent what little time I had before I needed to leave for school setting it all up. I put litter in the litter box and stuck it in the corner between my desk and the wall where it wouldn't be seen, and where it would be far enough away from Pepper's hole in the wall that it wouldn't bother her.   
    Her new toys and food went into the hole, although I was sure that the toys were going to end up all over the room. I was just going to have to put them back in there every night and morning. I filled up her food dish, put clean water in the bowl I had been using for it, and placed both on the opposite end of the hole that her bed was in. I watched her nervously as she investigated the dry food, hoping that she would eat it. I mean, she had been eating out of our garbage, so maybe she wasn't going to be finicky, but I couldn't keep giving her lunch meat. To my relief, she took to the dry food quickly and ate it with relish, managing half of the bowl.   
    When she was done with her breakfast, I picked her up and kissed the top of her head.   
    "We'll be ok, Pepper," I told her and feeling like I was talking to myself, "Just be careful when I'm gone, ok?"  
    She meowed at me and I sighed, knowing that I couldn't put off going to school for any longer.   
    That whole school week, I felt like a nervous parent, going to work and leaving the new baby at home, only worse. I'm pretty sure that new fathers don't have to worry that the other occupants of their house are going to kill their child. But every day that I came home from school or work and found my cat in one piece, it bolstered my confidence that I could make things work. Pepper had taken to her new litter box and food like she had been using them her entire life. Monday after school, I found some books on raising cats at the library. Turns out that cats mark things when they're anxious about new surroundings and sure enough, after a couple of days, my cat stopped doing it to my furniture.   
    I still couldn't get her to sleep in her shoebox when I was sleeping, but when I wasn't laying down, she would take naps in it, so I guess that was a small victory. I'm getting ahead of myself again, though. Monday after school, I came home fully intending on spending my free time before my first work shift playing with my kitten, only to walk into the kitchen and find my father sitting at the table, nursing what looked like his fourth beer. I was in full yellow alert mode seeing him there, not only when he was supposed to be at work, but already getting drunk at three in the goddamned afternoon. The fixed glare on his face wasn't helping matters.  
    "You're home early," I remarked, trying to keep my voice as neutral as possible.  
    Not that it made any difference. He glared at me with rage like I had just accused him of playing hooky.   
    "What the fuck do you know about it, you piece of shit?!" he snarled at me and I instinctively took a step back, putting my hands up in a defensive posture.  
    "Nothing," I tried to soothe, wondering if I could possibly get up to my room to check on my cat without getting hit, "I didn't mean anything by it, I was just wondering if you got the day off or-"  
    Pure instinct saved me from getting smashed in the head by the half full beer bottle he whipped at my head. I sensed something hot and intense in the air, his rage turning the atmosphere electric, and I ducked and jumped backwards at the mere twitch of his arm. The bottle broke on the wall, splattering beer all over it and splashing on to me, wetting the front of my shirt with the pungent liquid.   
    "Who do you think you are, you smug bastard?! Get the hell out of my house!" he thundered at me.  
    I didn't wait around to try to figure out what his problem was. The second he started to get up from his chair, I bolted out of there. I loved Pepper, and I worried that he might find her in his rage, but it was much more likely that he would take all of that anger out on me at that point. I walked swiftly out of South Nausten, my heart racing with anxiety and adrenaline. I felt paranoid that my father was following me and glanced behind myself often, but he hadn't left the house after me.   
    I was smart enough to know that that hadn't just been one of his displays of random temper. He had been pissed by something and I was willing to bet that it was the reason why he had been home instead of working. Had his hours been cut? But I could have sworn that he had been getting ready for work that morning when I had left for school. So his captain must have sent him home. Why? Had he fucked up an assignment? More likely, I thought bitterly, he had been caught coming in drunk or with a hangover again. It had happened a few times in the last couple of months and my father always came home angry, acting like it was everyone's fault except for his.   
    "Fucking idiot," I muttered at myself and I really did feel angry at him.  
    What the hell was he thinking, risking getting his hours cut just so he could get drunk?! Was drinking really that important to him, that he would risk us losing a serious source of income? I couldn't even buy my cat vet care because he used my money to buy groceries, but there he was, getting drunk in the middle of the day. It frustrated me. Before I could even form a coherent thought about where I was walking, I found myself at the beach and sat down in the stand, laying my arms on my bent knees and dropping my head into them. I was still so high strung from him attacking me.   
    I felt hopeless, like a rat in a fucking trap. Things at home were never exactly great, but lately... lately there was just chaos. When I had been a kid, my dad had never gone to work drunk. _Never_. He wouldn't have dared, he had known how much we needed his job to survive. What the hell had changed between then and now? What would we do if they reduced his hours or, worst of all, he lost his job? We were barely scrimping by as it was.   
    A part of me wanted to run away, just shove what little I owned into a duffle bag and bolt. Run away from the hitting and the screaming and the hurt, away from worrying about the downward spiral both of my parents have me on. But what would I do if I did? I had nowhere to go, no money, I haven't even graduated from high school yet. And now I have Pepper. Every choice I have is a shitty one, so I might as well just stay where I am. It's all the same.   
    A sudden wet nose pressing against my cheek had me jolting out of my frustrated thoughts, my head shooting up to see a dog standing next to me, looking at me like I was its best friend in the entire world. Scratch that. A really BIG dog. About as big as a small pony, or at least that was my initial impression of the thing, although it's head only came up to my ribs. Still, it was the biggest dog I had seen in my life, even more impressive than my neighbor's rottweilers. When I first looked at it, I thought it was a freaking wolf before I realized that it was some kind of mix of Malamute and Husky. It was white and grey, with piercing yellow eyes, incredibly thick, lush fur, and paws that were bigger than my hands.   
    My initial reaction was to just be plain terrified. I have nothing against dogs, but the strays on my side of town aren't exactly sociable and I've never been around many of the friendly ones. Then that huge dog, which could have easily bitten my face off in one go, decided to happily lick my cheek instead. I almost dared to try to pet it, just so I could find out if that fur was as soft as my cat's, when I saw who was running up to us.  
    "Kanuck, _no_!" Heero Yuy ran across the sand like his life depended on it, sounding horrified.   
    I wondered who he was horrified at, his dog or me. Probably me. Wouldn't want trash like me to touch his precious dog. I felt like sneering at him when the dog, Kanuck, looked over at him and instead of going to him, looked back at me and wagged his tail. I wanted to point out to him that his dog obviously had no problems with me, but I just wanted to avoid Heero all together, especially when I saw Relena trailing after her boyfriend. Heero huffed in annoyance when his dog refused to budge and grabbed him by the collar, pulling it away from me.   
    "You really should put a leash on him, Heero, just look at the trash he digs up when he goes off on his own," she jeered at me, before getting a whiff of the alcohol on my shirt and wrinkling her nose in distaste at me, "Ugh! Getting sloshed this early in the day, Maxwell? Careful, no one around here likes a drunk faggot. I wouldn't want you to hit on the wrong the person! Of course, for someone like you, everyone is the wrong person, aren't they? It's really too bad we don't have any groups to help you with your _addictions_ , Fudge Packers Anonymous, perhaps?"  
    I felt my face go red hot with embarrassment at her insults and wondered at it. Why was I embarrassed at all? I was used to her saying shit like that to me for years now, so why did I suddenly want to find a nice, dark hole to crawl into the second she had accused me of being drunk? Because her stupid boyfriend was watching?  
    I glanced at him, waiting for him to say some snide, ugly thing to me to. He smirked at Relena's remarks, like he always did, but something else happened that was so quick, so fleeting, I had almost missed it. Relena sure had.   
    He had hesitated.   
  
*****  
  
    It was that one realization, that one image in my head that kept me wide awake Monday night. I wasn't thinking about my new kitten, who was curled up on my pillow again, or that I was going to be handing her off to Mrs. Liddle in the morning. I wasn't even thinking about my father's problems and my anxiety that he was going to fuck us over. I wasn't even thinking about Trowa. No, I was thinking about Yuy. I was thinking about how, for that second after Relena had finished insulting me, he hadn't laughed or snickered or even shot me a cruel, superior look. He had looked... I don't know, not blank exactly. It had happened too fast for me to get a read on him. All I knew was that he _had_ smirked, but it had taken him awhile, like he had suddenly remembered that he was supposed to find what Relena was saying to be amusing.  
    Did he? For the first time since the day that he had moved here, I found myself thinking about him with something more than outright contempt. Who was this guy? Had he just had an off moment, or was he just playing around with Relena? It wouldn't be the first time she had made a 'friend' who didn't really see eye to eye with her and her bitchiness. It didn't mean anything, just that they were willing to overlook their qualms about her bullying to be around someone as popular as her. Even if Heero didn't like how she treated me and some of the other kids in our school, he obviously liked her enough to overlook it.  
    And for that matter, why did I care what Yuy did? If he really hated gays, then he was an asshole, and if he didn't care either way but was acting like he hated them so that Relena would like him, well, he was still an asshole. In fact, he was a _bigger_ asshole, if that was the case. The only thing weird was why it mattered to me at all. He could jump in a lake filled with rabid, starved piranhas for all that I fucking cared about him and his cunt of a girlfriend.   
    I managed to put the whole thing out of my mind enough that I could fall asleep. The morning saw me bundling my kitten up in a blanket and debating how I was going to safely get her from my bedroom to Mrs. Liddle's house with no one seeing me. Downstairs, I could hear both of my parents puttering in the kitchen and I swore under my breath. How the hell was I going to get Pepper past them? I couldn't wait for them to go to work, that would make me late for school.   
    I hadn't needed to worry, though. It didn't take very long with the two of them in our small kitchen together to start up an argument. I didn't pay any attention to what they were screaming at each other, but listened to where their voices were coming from. I was listening so intently that I flinched when I heard one of them throw a plate. There wasn't any gasp of pain, so I didn't think that it had hit anything but a wall. I heard my mother scream at my father that he was a useless bastard and my father called her a stuck-up cunt before he stormed into the bathroom and slammed the door so hard that the walls of the house shook.   
    I held my precious bundle close to my chest and went down the steps as quickly and quietly as I could. I peeked around the corner of the hallway into the kitchen and saw with relief that my mother was fixing her morning coffee, her back to me, and muttering angrily under her breath. I snuck out the front door easily, wanting to punch the air with triumph.   
    Pepper started meowing in alarm when she saw that we were outside, but she wasn't a very loud cat, so I wasn't worried that my parents would hear her. She wormed her way out of the blanket and dug her claws into my shirt, continuing to meow as if she thought I was about to do something horrible to her. Maybe she thought that I was going to abandon her. I wondered if that was what had happened to her previous owner, if they had just let her out onto the street or something.   
    "Shhh," I tried to soothe her, petting her head, "We're just going to see a friend, ok?"  
    Pepper wasn't having any of it, looking around in alarm and continuing to meow in a way that was breaking my heart. Mrs. Liddle had a pleased look on her face when she opened the door to my knocking and saw what I was carrying.  
    "So tiny!" she cooed at Pepper, who looked at her with equal interest.   
    I kept her in my arms as we walked into my neighbor's house. A few of the cats hissed and looked pissy when they realized that a new cat was around, but most just looked curious. I guess they were used to having new arrivals. She shooed out the cats that were in the kitchen and closed the door on them.   
    "May I?" she asked, holding her hands out to hold my kitten.  
    I nodded and started to put Pepper in her hands when the cat meowed pitifully at me and dug her claws back into my shirt, not wanting to be separated.   
    "Hush," I pet under her chin, "Mrs. Liddle is a very nice lady and she's going to make sure that you're healthy, ok?"  
    I pried her claws off my shirt and gave her to my neighbor. Mrs. Liddle smiled pleasantly at me and then turned her full attention to my pet.   
    "Aren't you a pretty girl, and so well mannered," she cooed at Pepper who was looking pretty miserable at being handled, but didn't try to bite her, "What's her name?"  
    "Pepper," I answered.  
    "Cute," Mrs. Liddle murmured and gave the kitten a brief examination, "She looks a little bit underfed, but that's to be expected if she was a stray. Her coat is nice and clean. She looks happy with you, which is the most important thing, of course. You're doing a good job caring for her."  
    I blushed but I felt relieved at her praise. At least I wasn't a complete fuck up. I could take care of one cat.   
    "How long will you have her?" I asked nervously and wanted to slap myself for it.  
    I had had Pepper for three days. Three whole days. And already, I was getting attached to her. It was so stupid, she was just a cat, but I'm not so oblivious about the problems in my life to not realize that a large part of my attachment to her was my loneliness. Maybe she wasn't a human and she couldn't talk to me or hold me or smile at me, but she listened and she was there and she liked me. She was all I had and the thought of Mrs. Liddle taking her away from me scared me. I know how pathetic that sounds, but I've never claimed to be anything better, or even entirely sane.   
    "You can come by tomorrow after school," she told me to my relief, "If she needs to be spayed, I can set up a later appointment for her."  
    "Thank you," I said profusely, "I don't know how to repay you for taking care of her..."  
    "Just fix my fence, Duo," she said with an amused smile.  
    Pepper seemed to sense that I was leaving and started to meow loudly and frantically again.  
    "I'll be back tomorrow, I promise," I told her and kissed the top of her head, "You be a good girl for Mrs. Liddle and the vet, ok?"  
    Even though I told myself that I needed to do it, I walked out of that house feeling like I had just abandoned another friend. I wouldn't manage much sleep that night, but the absence of my cat's warmth by my face would only be part of the reason.   
    When you get bullied for your entire public school career, you tend to learn a few things, things are pretty necessary for your continued survival. Quatre had had two big rules; the first I had taken to heart and the second I had needed some cruel teachers to learn. The second rule was, of course, to never fight back. That was a rule that I wasn't likely to ever forget. But the first has gotten me out of some pretty deadly situations between myself and Zechs. Never, ever, ever go any place where there aren't any witnesses. And by witnesses, I of course mean teachers. Sure, no adults were ever going to do anything about Zechs or Relena, but if a teacher saw that things were getting a bit rough, they usually put a stop to it and the terrible twosome would usually let them. I think they just didn't want anyone to call their parents. Beyond that, they didn't give a shit if an adult caught them messing with me.  
    I'm usually pretty careful about where I go during school hours. I leave classrooms no more than a minute after my teacher does. I don't linger in the hallways. I spend no more than five minutes at my locker. I never eat my lunch outside, only ever in the locked studio or in the cafeteria. At the end of gym, I always make sure that I'm the only one in the showers, even if that means waiting until Zechs has already had his. My showers are always quick, just enough to get rid of the smell of sweat.   
    I had been doing these things since the day that Zechs had beat me up for turning down his sister. So I don't really have any excuse for what happened that day beyond that I was too busy worrying about my damned cat that I was on autopilot when I walked into the boy's shower room after gym class. I was thinking about what I would do if she were sick as I showered and what kinds of shots she might need as I dried myself off.   
    It finally dawned on me that I hadn't checked to see if anyone else was in the showers with me when I was pulling my jeans on and toweling my hair dry. By then, it was way too late. I felt Zechs behind me, almost by instinct, this large, hulking presence like a tiger. Before I could even start to consider the best way to get out of there, he had me cornered, slamming his hands against the lockers that I was standing near on either side of my body. The feeling of his body shoving me up against the lockers was sickening. I felt vulnerable without my shirt on, but I was just glad that I wasn't naked.   
    "Well, well," Zechs sneered, "aren't we looking pretty today? What do you think, Yuy? Doesn't he look even prettier than a girl like this? I can't figure it out."  
    I glanced behind him and saw that Heero Yuy was indeed standing there, along with Mueller, Trant, and Alex, all of my least favorite people, along with a few other boys in our class. I felt myself flush darkly seeing Heero there, studying me with this expressionless look as Zechs grabbed my arm and shoved me again, pinning me against the cold metal. I hated Yuy so much right then and I couldn't figure out why. He wasn't the one trapping me, but when he started to smirk, I wanted to fucking disembowel him. I felt so embarrassed and ashamed by him looking at me. I wanted to stab those perfect, pretty blue eyes of his right out of his skull.  
    "Must be the hair," he sneered at me, bringing my attention back to the fact that I hadn't had the chance to put my hair back  into my braid yet.   
    To my horror, Zechs ran his fingers through my wet hair, gathering a hank of it in his hand and smelling it. I wanted to throw up. I thought of my father touching my hair that one time and had this intense urge to wash it all over again, just to get the feeling of Zechs touching it out of it.   
    "You know," he jeered, "I think you're right. A boy having hair this pretty, even a faggot, just isn't fair to the girls, now is it, Maxwell?"  
    I wanted to tell him that if my braid made me a faggot, made me like a girl, then what did his own long hair make him? I wanted to go tell him to fuck himself, but before I could even try to put a stop to my temper, he was twisting my hair in my hands and slamming my head into the locker.  
    "I think we should do a public service," he said cruelly, "It's only too bad we can't invite the rest of the school to see it. We could call it 'de-maning the fairy' or something like that."  
    I heard Heero laugh at that, even though I sure as hell didn't find it funny. I glared at him and felt this horrible rage swell in me. What the hell was wrong with me? Why did his laughter make me madder than Zechs' harassment did? Alex met Zechs' eyes and some unspoken communication passed between them. Alex stepped forward and dug a pair of scissors out of his pocket, handing them to his ring leader. My heart dropped into my stomach as I realized that they had planned this all along. Zechs was going to cut my hair off. I found myself glancing at Heero, but to my surprise, he wasn't smirking anymore. It had just melted away and he looked a bit pale. I guess he hadn't been in on Zechs's real intentions. I hoped he got an eye full. I hoped he saw just who it was he was getting in with and I hoped it made him sick.   
    "Get off of me, you sick fuck!" I snarled at Zechs, twisting to hit him as he let go of my arm to take the scissors from Alex, but he just pinned my leg with his knee and gave me another harsh shove.  
    "Relax," he grinned and twisted my hair harder, "I'll try to get it as straight as I can. Although, I've never done this before, so no complaints, ok?"  
    I thrashed against him, but it was useless, I couldn't get the leverage to punch him. I thought of Trowa just then, how he had hated my hair, how he had almost got me to cut it and I felt this sick little feeling in my gut. What was he doing right then, I wondered, did he even miss me? Did he regret anything like I did?   
    "You know, on second thought," Zechs paused, "Yuy, since you're new here, why don't _you_ do the honors?"  
    I looked past Zechs and saw Heero standing there as his girlfriend's brother offered him the scissors. I saw him hesitate and look lost, like he was waiting for someone to tell him what to do. But when he reached out and took those scissors, my rage became a tidal wave. He didn't have to do it. He could have said no and walked away, but he hadn't. He was just like everyone else in Zechs and Relena's group, clamoring for praise like some fucking mutt. He didn't even know me. I had done _nothing_ to him, but it didn't matter. He would hurt me for a pat on the head.   
    Anger turning my guts into red-hot lead, I twisted my head around and savagely sunk my teeth into Zechs's arm, disappointed that I couldn't reach up to the hand holding my hair so I could take some fingers off, and biting him so hard that I drew blood. I was rewarded for my efforts and the gross taste of his blood in my mouth with a sharp yelp of pain and the feeling of his hand releasing me. I didn't waste any time, shoving into Zechs hard enough to make him step back into the bench behind him and making him fall over it.   
    My body was moving faster than my brain could catch up, which was a fortunate thing under the circumstances. I vaulted over the bench in my way, grabbing my backpack and shirt, shrugging it on as I went and ran at Heero. I felt Mueller make a grab for me as Zechs screamed slurs at me and scrambled to his feet, but I was too fast. I felt panic as I saw that Yuy wasn't at all startled at me running at him. He still had the scissors in his hand and for a moment, I thought he might try to cut me with them. That's what Zechs would have done. To my surprise, he moved to the side, letting me run past him and out the door of the shower room.  
    If dealing with Relena and Zechs had taught me two vital things, then living with my father had taught me one: always plan your escape. When my dad chased me down like Zechs and his fucked up friends were doing now, I knew that sometimes the most obvious exit could be my doom. I had learned, a long time ago, that easy did not equal surety. And I knew, the second I ran out of that locker room, hearing them racing after me, that if I went left to the exit door out of the gym and into the school, I would be fucked. I was faster than them, but not in the labyrinth of hallways and especially not when everyone was crowding in those hallways to leave the school.   
    I ran right, across the gymnasium, and into the equipment room. I only had one chance. My brain had finally caught up with my instincts and was screaming at me that what I was about to do was about the worst idea I had ever had and I was about to die. Oh well, what did I have to live for anyway? Sheer luck gave me a clear path to get close to that very same window that Trowa had escaped out of... oh fuck, it felt like years ago.   
    I had no hope of scaling up to that window, I wasn't tall enough, but I wasn't planning on climbing from the ground floor. I lunged with every ounce of strength that my legs had once I ran past the various cages of balls. I think it was at that point that I was the most frightened, not that I was trapping myself in that small room, but that I was going to miss and break a damned leg. Luck was on my side, or maybe just a decent aim, and my feet found the pommel horse. I used it to increase my momentum and in a move that I was sure made me look like a suicidal squirrel or a parkour enthusiast, I leapt for the window ledge.   
    That I didn't break my arm was a miracle, but my hands grabbed the ledge instead of slamming into the wall or the window and I pulled myself up. I could hear Zechs and his friends on my heels, swearing and screaming at me. Zechs was the one that I was worried about. He was the only one tall enough to reach me right then, but I still had seconds ahead of him. I slammed my shoulders into the window over and over, pulling a few muscles in the process, but the old, stubborn thing budged for me and I got it open enough to scramble under it.   
    I felt a shot of triumph as I felt grass on my hands and sunlight on my face, knowing that I was as good as free at that point. Zechs could climb up after me and one of his dumb friends could try the same thing that I did, or just stack something under the window to climb on, but not a single one of them would be able to get out like my scrawny ass had. Sometimes being skinny is a good thing. They would waste precious time getting the widow open wider. I would be long gone by then.  
    I was positive that they wouldn't keep chase, but I didn't stop running until I reached my side of town. My heart was hammering in my chest at that point and I felt so on edge that my skin was prickling. I came to a stop in front of convenience store and didn't even realize that I was laughing a bit crazily until an elderly man gave me a weird look and I promptly stopped. I walked the rest of the way to my street at a sedate pace, trying to get my heart rate and adrenaline back down, and only stopping for a couple of minutes to braid my hair, feeling incredibly self-conscious at the amount of people that had seen me with it down. I felt worn out and debated digging into my reserves of cash for something to drink with lots of caffeine, but I decided to just hope that some energy would come back to me by the time I had to go to my shift at the factory later on.  
    I didn't really feel all that bothered by what Zechs had nearly done to me now that it was all over with and I had escaped him. I guess that seems strange, I mean, he had almost cut my hair off as a joke. He had caressed my hair, and that had unsettled me, but was it really any worse than him pulling my pants down in the seventh grade to check my underwear? I didn't expect anything different from him, and while the feeling of his fingers in my loose hair had been creepy, it was nothing compared to how my father had made me feel doing the same thing.   
    If there was anything at all that bothered me about that little encounter, it was Heero's part in it. That I hated him more than Zechs didn't make any sense, but I couldn't deny the loathing that I felt for the boy. I would like to say that it was just because of the fact that he was Relena's boyfriend, but there was something else about him that offended me on some personal level. If he had just taken those scissors from Zechs, I would have been fine with that hate, but he had hesitated, just like before. And he could have stopped me from fleeing pretty easily, but he had let me go. I couldn't understand him. He bewildered me and I didn't like that feeling.   
    I pushed Yuy out of my mind as thoroughly as possible as I knocked on Mrs. Liddle's door. He was just an asshole, like the rest of them, nothing more. Just another wannabe kid, latching himself to the Parkers to rise up through our twisted, social hierarchy. Maybe he had never helped bully anyone before, but he obviously didn't have that much of a problem with it. He would get used to it and become a major thorn in my side, just like every other piece of shit that I went to school with. I wouldn't put in any hope that he would give me a free pass again and just felt grateful that he had obviously chickened out in trying to restrain me. It wasn't like he had done it out of the goodness of his heart. There hadn't been sympathy in those deep, blue eyes as I had rushed him, just nervousness and fear.   
    Mrs. Liddle was wearing a worn apron when she opened the door. It had little strawberries on it. For some reason, the sight of those tiny, cartoonishly depicted pieces of fruit almost had me burst out in hysterical laughter again. Maybe I was going nuts.  
    "Oh, great timing! The cookies just came out of the oven," she said with a bright smile and opened the door wide for me.  
    I stared at her in confusion for a moment, my frazzled brain unable to connect my arrival and cookies in any way that made sense, but I obediently walked into her home. Sure enough, I could smell the heavenly aroma of baking cookies coming from her kitchen and I followed her in there, closing the door behind me without being prompted.   
    There were a couple trays of what looked like chocolate chip and oatmeal cookies cooling on top of the stove. The smell of them hit me like a slap to the face. My mother, back before she had begun to drink herself to death and had actually made a mediocre effort at being a mother, when I had been no more than a toddler, had made me chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. At least, that's what I remembered. I remembered loving them, but I hadn't had them since.   
    There was some pleasant memory idling in the back of my head at that smell. It wasn't the same exact smell, obviously having been made by a different person, but it was close. I clawed at that memory, trying to bring it to the surface, but it was stuck there. I must have been too young. It was one of those memories that you think that you can get a hold of, this ghost of a thing that you are sure happened to you when you were really young, but if you actually try to look at it, it vanishes like vapor. It wasn't the first time that I had gotten a glimpse of that memory at the smell of fresh baked cookies, and I had tried my hardest to mimic the cookies that I vaguely remembered my mother making me, but I could never get it right.   
    Probably because they weren't real. A part of me was always sure that as a child, I had made up that memory, tried to give myself some pleasant remembrance of my mother when there was really nothing there. The only other memories I had of her that didn't involve her ignoring me or screaming at me were the rare times that she had advised me to stay away from my father, and her trying in vain to explain why he hit us. Her baking me cookies seems like a fantasy in comparison. When Mrs. Liddle handed me a plate with a couple of the cookies on it, I was sure that my wide eyed look was especially stupid.   
    "I hope that these are still your favorite," she said carelessly as she walked to the other door in the kitchen.  
    "They are," I confessed, mystified.  
    "There's some milk in the refrigerator," her tone was oddly pleasant, a far cry from how she had treated me the first time I had come over to her home, "Have as many as you want, I'll be right back."  
    She disappeared out the other door before I could formulate any of the questions that popped into my head into audible words. I stared down at the plate of cookies like they were some mythical beast that I wasn't sure was going to bite my head off or not. How the hell had she known that oatmeal chocolate chip are my favorite cookies? She hadn't even known me for a week! And why make them at all? She didn't know me or care for my family. I just couldn't imagine the cold woman who I had often seen glaring at my house when I took the trash out sometimes as someone who would bake cookies for me.   
    Unwanted, Trowa slipped into my thoughts. Ever since we had broken up, I had found that happening, memories, dreams, and thoughts of him sneaking into my head during weird moments, when all I wanted to do was pretend like our entire relationship had never happened. Standing in Mrs. Liddle's warm kitchen, I thought about all the things that I had done, and Trowa had gotten me to do, not because I had wanted to do them, but because of how lonely I was. Still am, really. Love might make people do stupid things, but I think loneliness is even more guilty of that. Loneliness had gotten me to let Trowa fuck me, maybe loneliness, desire for some human company, had gotten Mrs. Liddle to try to do something nice for me.   
    Or maybe she was just bored or was being polite. It really wasn't fair, I thought, to think that we had anything in common. Just because I was miserable because I had no friends and no one who loved me, it didn't mean that my neighbor felt the same way just because all she had for company was cats. Maybe she liked it that way. Maybe I was over thinking things. Maybe she had bumped into my mother at the grocery store years back and heard from her what kind of cookies that I had liked, or she was just nuts and had made a very lucky guess. Maybe she just liked baking things and was happy to finally have someone to bake for.   
    I took a bite out of one of the cookies and felt this wave of nostalgia come over me. Whether it was real or not, they tasted better than the ones in my memory and I found myself polishing off four of them and a glass of milk as well before Mrs. Liddle came back with Pepper in a cat carrier. I think some part of me had been paranoid about my kitten's absence. It sounds dumb now, but that part of me had been so sure that I would never see her again. It was all a trick, that part had screamed at me. Mrs. Liddle was going to hurt her or something was going to go wrong and it would be all my fault for deciding to keep the cat. I destroy everything that I touch.   
    But there she was, alive and well in the carrier as Mrs. Liddle placed it on the kitchen table, meowing frantically as she saw me. I guess she hadn't believed that she was going to see me again, either. I hurriedly undid the latch on the carrier and picked her out of it and into my arms like she was a baby in seconds. She let me pet her exposed stomach, chewing on my fingers a little.   
    "Hey, there, sweetheart," I crooned at her, leaning my head down and to my delight, she met me halfway with a little head butt, rubbing our foreheads together, "I hope you didn't give the nice doctor any trouble."  
    "None at all," my neighbor assured me, an amused smile on her face as she watched us, "She was a perfect angel. She just missed you a lot. She's quite attached to you."  
    I felt myself blush for some reason, even though I had already known that. It scared me a little, how happy Pepper was to see me again, and how distraught she had acted when she had realized that I was leaving her with my neighbor. She hadn't known me for that long, but she depended on me and I didn't like that. I didn't like having anyone's life and their happiness in my weak, fumbling hands, but I also couldn't deny that, for whatever reason, she needed me as much as I needed her. Or maybe I just chose to see it that way because I needed someone to need me, even if it was an animal.   
    "What did the doctor do to her?" I asked  
    "Tests, mostly," Mrs. Liddle confirmed, a sad tone to her voice, "She must have had a responsible owner in the past, before she ended up a stray. While she did need some vaccinations, she's very healthy for kitten that lived on the street, though that must have not been for long. She doesn't have any diseases or parasites and she was already spayed at some point. She's a bit under nourished, but that will take time. If you keep feeding her regularly, she'll be just fine. I'll give you some wet food to help enrich her diet as well."  
    "Thank God," I couldn't help sighing in utter relief.  
    I had been so sure in my pessimism that I was going to lose Pepper. How could I possibly keep her when I had lost everything else that had mattered to me? My father hadn't found her yet, and I hadn't killed her out of negligence, so surely the vet was going to find something wrong with her and need to put her down. I wouldn't even get the chance to say goodbye to her, just like Quatre. I could hardly believe that I had lucked out and she was perfectly healthy, it seemed like a trick to me.   
    "Thank you so much, for everything," I felt like all of my words were completely inadequate to articulate the amount of gratitude that I actually felt towards my neighbor for everything that she had done.  
    I nuzzled my kitten and kissed the top of her head, loving her soft little purr that she always gave when I did that.   
    "Everyone says that you're just like your father," Mrs. Liddle suddenly said.  
    I looked over at her in shock, expecting to find her glaring at me with such a statement, but she was still smiling at me, almost wistfully.  
    "But I think that everyone must not know you very well," she said softly, "Maybe you look a bit like him, when he was younger, but you're nothing like him. If anyone, you're just like how Helen was when she was your age, and I don't just mean how you look. She used to love animals, too," she reached over to pet Pepper's ear, ignoring my look of shock.  
    I didn't know what startled me more, to hear that my mother had loved anything at all, that we had something in common, or had rather, or that Mrs. Liddle had known my mother when she had been a teenager. I guess that shouldn't be so surprising, they had both lived in Nausten probably their entire lives, it made sense that they would bump into each other.   
    Hearing that my mother had loved animals like I did should have made me happy. It used to make me happy whenever anyone had told me that I looked like how she used to, that we had the same hair and skin and shape of our eyes. But this just made me sad. It was one more thing that I had taken from her. If I had never been born, would she have remained with my father, who refused to have any pets in the house, or would she have left him behind and found someone who treated her better, who loved her and didn't hit her and let her have all the animals that she wanted? Would she have been whole and had other children, children that were better than me, smarter and stronger and nicer and could take care of her? Would she still be happy, still be pretty, and never know what it felt like to sit in her bedroom in the early morning, crying with a broken nose? Would she never know what it was like to be an alcoholic waitress, living with two people that she had never wanted to begin with?   
    "People like your father..." Mrs. Liddle sounded almost as sad as I did when she spoke again, "Well, people like that happen when there's too much hate and not enough love in their lives. His father was the same way, hating animals as much as he hated people. But you and your mother are different. Hold on to that, Duo, never lose it and you'll never become your father."  
    She couldn't possibly know how much that one, small statement filled me with both horrible relief and sadness. I felt that desperation that I had felt seldom as a child, but more and more frequently as I had gotten older, the fear that I feel almost daily now, that I never become like my dad. Every time I lash out, whether it's hitting Trowa or Relena or Zechs, or just feeling hateful towards the world for everything bad that's happened to me in my life, I feel that one step closer to becoming what I fear.   
    It didn't used to be like that. When I was little, I had looked up to my father. Not the parts that made him angry and drink and hit, but the parts of him that would sometimes show that he cared for me, and the parts of him that would let him go into work every single day, even though he would complain about his job all the time, and risk his life. He would come home and tell me about a bad man he had arrested and the people he had saved and I had felt pride in him. At some point in my childhood, I had wanted to grow up to be like that, to help people, to be strong and brave and cool like that.   
    But as the years went by, those kind of stories dwindled. Instead of coming home, proud of his work, even though he was exhausted from it and sometimes frustrated, my father would only come home with stories of anger and anxiety, talking about the cock sucking coworkers that got promoted for the hard work that _he_ had done, or the perps that had gotten away because of lawyers or some shitty mistake, or getting reprimanded by his chief for breaking some small rule that he found arbitrary while trying to arrest someone. After awhile, he had stopped talking about his day at all and just came home drunk and angry about everything.   
    There was a part of me that still held on to how he used to be. I'm not saying that he was ever a great father, but he had seemed to try once. Maybe it's just the hazy memory of a child, but I remember him not hitting as much, I remember him being kinder and being more like a father instead of the brute that he is now. Maybe that's just an illusion and he was never like that, but I like to believe that he had been a better father to me at some point.   
    But now, mostly, I didn't want to be anything like him. That I was quick to anger like him frightened me, but I couldn't seem to stop it. I hated that I felt relief hearing just one person say that I wasn't like my father. It shouldn't be that way, and I felt like I was disrespecting him. But what was there to be proud about when I looked at him now? At either of my parents?   
    I suddenly couldn't bear to be around Mrs. Liddle anymore. I didn't want to know what my parents had been like before I had come around and destroyed their lives. I didn't want to know how much my neighbor hated my father and I didn't want her hate to justify my own. I bundled Pepper up in my coat so no one would see her when I went back to my house and took the cans of wet food that my neighbor offered to me.  
    "Thanks again, Mrs. Liddle, I'll come around tomorrow to start on your fence," I told her as I walked out her front door.  
    "Duo," I heard her call out to me and turned on her front yard to look at her, standing in the front doorway.  
    She looked so small and pale just then, her expression haggard and drawn, like she had just aged twenty years in the course of a few seconds.  
    "I'm so sorry," she said, her voice tight with incredible guilt.   
    I could only stare at her for a moment in bewilderment. What could she possibly have to be sorry about, especially where I was concerned. And that guilt on her face... I knew it wasn't from something small like judging me at first because of my father. Whatever this was... what ever slight she had thought that she had done to me, it haunted her. But before I could ask her why she was sorry, she had closed the door, leaving me standing there, holding my cat and feeling like I had just missed something terribly important.   
  
  
End Part 1


	22. Chapter 5 Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duo's father attacks him when Duo tries to stop him from hurting his mother after loving his job. Duo starts to wonder if Heero really is the bully that he seems to be after working with him on a school project. Solo offers Duo a job.

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 5  
Part 2  
  
    My life is a bit like a hurricane. Every time I end up in the eye, that moment when everything is calm and peaceful and I think that everything is going to be ok, I feel this sense of anxiety and foreboding, because I know that I'll pass out of that eye eventually and all the shit, all of the bad luck I've had, everything that I'm scared of, will come back. When I got Pepper back from Mrs. Liddle without any fuss, I was relieved, but I also felt afraid because I knew that something good like that couldn't happen without something bad on the horizon.   
    Most of the time the bad things come as a total shock to me. Quatre's suicide, my Mother's confession that I was almost aborted, meeting Relena, all of those things had come out of the blue for me and I had been completely unprepared for them. But sometimes, I get this feeling in my gut like a low electrical charge, this tense, anxious feeling that's like the feeling I get sometimes when I come home and just know that my father is in a bad mood, like I'm waiting for the blow to come before even seeing him.  
    I felt that way from the moment I came home with Pepper to the end of the next school day, a feeling like an anvil was about to drop on me and I was frantic to find where it was coming from so I could dive out of the way. When I walked home that Thursday and saw my father's car in the driveway when he should have still been at work, I felt my heart drop into my stomach. There was this little voice in the back of my head screaming at me to not go into that house, to just turn around and walk anywhere else, that something was very wrong. And like the idiot that I am, I ignored it.  
    I think it was that moment that I first realized that having a pet was going to end up being both a blessing and curse, that although I cherished Pepper's company, the responsibility of taking care of her was going to bite me in the ass as much as it was going to save me from my loneliness. Before she had come into my life, if I had come home to that feeling and seeing that my father was home, especially after he had thrown that bottle at my head the last time he had been sent home drunk from work, I probably would have heeded that little voice and gone to the beach or the library. But no, I walked into the house, not because I wasn't afraid of the kind of mood my father was in, but because I wanted to check on my cat.   
    " _ **What?**_ " I heard my mother shriek just as my hand closed on the door handle.   
    I froze, debating going inside. It was bad enough that my father had obviously been sent home or been given the day off, but if my mother had just come home from one of her shifts, she was going to whip his bad mood up into a frenzy. Despite all of my common sense, I opened the door. I can't even say that I was curious about what was going on. I had stopped being curious about stuff like that when I was a kid. But if my parents were fighting, I might be able to just sneak past them and up to my room. Or maybe I was just crazy.  
    "What the fuck do you mean that you lost your job?!" my mom was screaming as I closed the door and I winced at the sheer volume of her voice.   
    The entire neighborhood was going to hear them at this rate, and that was something I didn't want my father to figure out. He hated being embarrassed.   
    "You useless bastard! After all the chances they gave you! All you had to do was show up sober for once and you couldn't even do that!"  
    They were in the kitchen, the two of them squaring off like a pissed off mongoose and a cobra. No blows had been thrown yet, but their faces were both red and furious as they glared each other down.   
    "Shut up, you miserable cow!" my father snarled at her, "What the shit do you know?! You're so high and mighty, thinking you're better than me! At least I had a _real_ job! I'm not some drunk, sorry excuse for a waitress! The only reason why _you_ bring home any money at all is your boss likes how your tits look in your uniform, and you have the gall to lecture me about how I perform my job?!"  
    My mother's face twisted with sheer rage at my father's words and she shoved him. I flinched when I saw her do it, knowing exactly what was going to happen before it did.  
    "I never got fired from _my_ jobs for showing up drunk twice in one week!" she sneered at him, "Big, bad detective you are! I bet you're just as useless at the station as you are here! How the hell are we supposed to pay our bills now, Nathan?! Did you even think of that when you were sucking down another beer this morning?! No, of course not! How does it feel that even your sixteen year old son is more responsible than you?! You're so pathetic, just like your good for nothing father and that swine you call a friend-"  
    His hand striking her face made this incredibly loud cracking sound, almost like a gunshot. My mother's head flew back and almost hit the wall, a few drops of blood from her split lip splattering on the white, kitchen wall. He didn't even let her recover from it as he slammed his fist into her gut. My mother gave out this strangled sound that was a mix of a scream of pain and a gasp and crumpled to her knees on the floor. He kicked her, sending her crashing into the legs of the table.   
    His face was contorted and monstrous as he drew his boot clad foot back to kick her again, this time in the back. I ran into the kitchen to do... _something_. I remember thinking that he was going to kill her and nothing in the world was going to stop it. I had never seen the kind of rage in him that I saw that day, all of his frustration and anger at losing his job focused on my mother. Before I could reach them, he was dragging her up by her hair and punching her in the face, but I managed to grab his arm before he landed a second blow.  
    "Stop it!" I screamed at him, "Get off of her!"  
    He let go of her and turned on me in an instant like a rabid dog.  
    "Don't you fucking touch me, damned brat!" he snarled and punched me in the throat.  
    I had to let go of him as I suddenly found myself gagging and gasping for air. I could feel my throat spasming, my windpipe not knowing what to do with the sudden injury. It was only for a few seconds, but I panicked as I was unable to breathe and even when I did, every gasp of air was stinging pain. The first, small bit that I managed to suck in had me choking and coughing out blood. Before I could remember what was happening, I felt my father grab the back of my neck and hold me still like I was a damned animal. The next thing I felt was the full force of his boot stomping on the back of my right leg.   
    The pain was so horrible that I didn't even register that I was on the ground until later, when I woke up on the cold, kitchen floor. I think I might have screamed if I had had the air for it. To this day, I still don't know if it was the injury to my leg that had caused me to black out or if I had hit my head as I had fallen, only that one moment I had felt this incredible pain in the back of my leg and the next, I was laying on my side, my leg and throat throbbing in tandem with each other, and I staring dumbly underneath the kitchen cabinets.   
    I remember thinking, in a kind of pained shock, that it was awfully dirty under there and the next time that I vacuumed, I should move the cabinets to clean up all the dust and grime I had seen there. I didn't feel confused at all to find myself in the kitchen, which meant that I didn't have a concussion at least. The pain that I was feeling was a pretty good reminder of why I was laying there. What amazed me was that I didn't feel much worse than I had when I had blacked out with the exception of some fresh bruises on my arms and back. I guess my father had given up on me when he had realized that I was down for the count. He just hadn't enjoyed beating on someone who's unconscious, I suppose.   
    It took me awhile before I found the strength to roll over onto my back. Between my bad leg and how much my back ached, it hurt like hell, but there was nothing wrong with my left leg. I had no doubt that, given a little while longer, I would be able to crawl to my feet. Hopefully. I glanced next to me, under the table, half expecting to see my mother laying there, but there was nothing except for a small streak of blood. I wasn't even sure whose blood it was at that point. I could still taste the stuff in my mouth, thick and coppery. I hate that taste. I wondered if Mom was alive, if my father had come to his senses and taken her to the hospital.   
    Where I was laying, I could see out of one of the kitchen windows enough to know that it was dark out. I must have been knocked out for a few hours. I had probably missed at least my first work shift. I felt a momentary panic at that, remembering why I was on the floor in agony. My father had lost his job. My fears about his drinking getting him fired had come true. My mother was right, what the hell were we going to do about our bills now? Until my father found another job, or got his old one back, we would have to rely on my mother and myself to live on. And there I was, laying on the floor, missing out on making some money because my father had attacked me.   
    Not that it would make any difference, I quickly realized. I was in no shape to work that night at all, at any of my shifts. I didn't even know if I could stand, let alone wait tables, and the thought of working at my factory job just made me pale. One thing at a time, I told myself. First I needed to get up off the floor, then I could worry about my mother and our bills and my jobs, but not until I figured out how much my father had hurt me.  
    I took a deep breath to prepare myself for the inevitable climb to my feet. Big mistake. That one intake of breath reminded me of my wounded throat as pain shot through it and I coughed violently, spiting blood out of my mouth. After struggling to breath normally again for a few minutes, I took extra care to not take anything more than small, shallow breaths.   
    My journey to get vertical again was a slow, arduous one. That wasn't the first time that I had found myself in that sort of situation, although it was usually broken ribs that made it hard for me to get up after a beating. I was just glad that it had happened in the kitchen instead of in my room. There were more things in there to help me. I didn't even need to move to grab a chair and use it as leverage to sit up. I was extremely careful not to move my right leg, just using my upper body, so it didn't hurt too much. Getting to my feet minutes later was another story.   
    My first, jarring steps had me almost crumbling to the floor again. Quick thinking alone made me make another grab for the chair and I ended up sitting on it instead of falling. My right leg trembled at my efforts and my calf where my father had stepped on me throbbed like nothing else. But it definitely wasn't broken, it just hurt too much for me to try to move it. I lifted up my pant leg and winced at the sight of the injury. The entire back of my leg from almost my ankle to the back of my knee was dark, bloody red and black. It was pretty badly swollen, too.   
    I rubbed tiredly at my forehead, the thought of trying to walk upstairs daunting and exhausting.   
    "Fuck this," I muttered and stood up, putting as much weight on my left leg as I possibly could.  
    I hissed as pain coursed through my right leg, groaning with it, but I refused to let it drag me under a second time. I took a tentative step forward, towards the phone, and somehow managed a shuffling, heavy limp before my right leg caved and I had to grab the counter to keep upright. This was really going to suck. It was my concern for my mother and nothing else that got me to that damned phone when my entire body was screaming at me to just let it fall and stay there until the pain went away.   
    I shuffled along the edge of the counter, not daring to let go of it, until I was close enough to the phone to grab it and dialed the number for the nearest hospital. I navigated through their directory with practiced ease until a female nurse answered the line with "Emergency services, how may I direct your call?"  
    "Hi," I greeted and internally winced at how rough my voice sounded, "Do you a patient named Helen Maxwell there? She would have been recently admitted today. This is her son."  
    "Hold one moment," she said.  
    I waited patiently for her to check their records, worrying that she had gone off on her own, was at a different hospital, or who even knew what. I had this image of my father going off to bury the body and pushed it out of my head. There was no way he would have killed her. No way. I mean, sure, I worried about that whenever he got that angry, and he had certainly beaten both of us bloody before, but no matter my fears, I just couldn't admit to myself that he would go that far.   
    "Yes, a Helen Maxwell was admitted here two hours ago. She's in surgery right now, but I see here that your father admitted her. Did you want to speak to him?" she asked me.  
    "N-no," I stammered, "I just wanted to make sure that they made it there ok. Thanks," I quickly hung up the phone before she could ask me anything else.  
    There, I told myself, he _did_ take her to get medical help. Everything would be fine. The worst of my fears assuaged, I had to tackle my next biggest problem. Myself. I couldn't just stand there in the kitchen all night, so I decided to be daring and let go of the counter. My right leg wobbled a bit, but I was getting used to that and the pain as well and managed a slow, but steady limp up the stairs, using my left leg and the railing to get me there. I suppose I should consider myself lucky that I didn't fall down those steps and break my neck.   
    Pepper poked her head out of her hole in the wall as I came in and closed the door behind me. She meowed in greeting and trotted over to me, rubbing against my legs. Even though the pain was getting to be unbearable again, I scooped her up and hugged her to my chest.  
    "Hey, sweetie," I said tiredly, "Sucky day, huh?"  
    She myewed like she was agreeing with me and for some bizarre reason, it actually did make me feel a little bit better. My leg was starting to feel stiff, but I limped around the room, checking her litter box, food, and water bowls to make sure she wouldn't need anything before I gave up what little forward momentum that I had. I didn't so much as lay down on my mattress at that point as I slowly and carefully fell down on it. Pepper sat on my chest and batted at my bangs, wanting me to play with her.  
    "Sorry," I croaked through my abused throat, putting a hand on her and petting her soft fur as I closed my eyes, "In the morning, I promise."  
    Then I was gone again. It's probably sad that the most sleep I've gotten since Quatre died have been in moments when my body is in too much pain to want to be conscious. I slept in spurts that night, constantly waking up in pain from turning in my sleep for only a few minutes before slipping back under again. It was three AM by the time that I actually woke up long enough to realize that I should probably not keep drifting like that. While my body wanted the rest, I needed to take care of whatever injuries I had that I had neglected the day before.   
    Besides my leg, I wasn't that bad off, not like my mother was. My throat was killing me and I could still taste blood every time I tried to breathe, but my ribs didn't hurt and nothing was broken. Still, by three in the morning, my right leg was as stiff as a plank of wood. I didn't feel the searing, horrid pain of the day before, but it ached and throbbed unpleasantly, and when I finally stumbled out of bed, my limp was heavy and pronounced. The only real consolation I had was that I knew I was going to have no trouble being excused from gym that day. If I could even manage to get to school.  
    I struggled to put fresh food and water in Pepper's bowls and then staggered downstairs. My father was sprawled out in his bed without my mother. I didn't feel worried that she was still in the hospital (he had kicked her pretty hard after all), I felt relieved. As long as she was there, he couldn't hit her again. She was a hell of a lot safer than I was.   
    The kitchen was an absolute mess. There were plates with half eaten food on the counter and cans of beer on the table. It looked like he had helped himself to some of my mother's vodka as well. Feeling frustrated and depressed, I chucked the beer cans into the garbage and when I picked one up that was only half empty, I had the strong urge to dump it onto his sleeping face. I hoped that he would drown in it. Instead, I poured it out into the sink and chucked it into the garbage barrel with the rest of it.   
    I spent the next hour slowly cleaning the kitchen, as much as my leg would allow. I cleaned off the dishes, put what food could be salvaged into the refrigerator and angrily threw out what had gone bad from sitting out all night. I felt like screaming at him that unless he had plans of finding a job, and fast, he couldn't go wasting food like that.   
    For the hundredth time since I had come home the previous day, I wondered how we were going to get by now. Just how much could we stretch my and my mother's paychecks? Should I get a fourth job? I didn't have the time for that, unless I could find something that paid better than one of my other jobs. Not bloody likely. There just weren't enough hours in the day anymore. I was already stretching myself thin between trying to take care of Pepper and homework. And it still wasn't enough.   
    I supposed that I could pick up another job if I dropped out of school. Would my father make me do that? Was that what I wanted? I laughed bitterly in the quiet kitchen, my voice sounding strange. What difference did it make, I wondered. It wasn't like I was doing shit all with my education. I wasn't going to amount to anything. I might as well just give up like my father have. Drop out, get a shitty job, work myself into alcoholism. Wasn't like I had ever had a chance at a real future.  
    'Don't you dare, Duo!' Quatre's voice rang in my head.  
    That was right, I thought in exhaustion, he would never forgive me if I did that. And wasn't it stupid that I felt relief then, having an excuse not to give up on school? Wasn't it stupid that I actually wanted to keep going, even though there was no point? Even though it might actually be nice, not to have to deal with my classmates anymore?   
    I stumbled to the fridge, grabbed an ice pack out of the freezer, and stumbled into one of the kitchen chairs. I propped my right leg up on one of them, rolled up the leg of my pajama pants, and rested my wounded calf on the ice. I hissed at the burning sensation for a second, before that cold started to seep into my muscles and I felt some of the pain ease off into numbness. My leg was swollen even more than the day before.   
    I was going to have to take the bus to school, I realized with regret. I hated to spend money on something like that, but there was just no way I was going to manage to get all the way from my house to the school. I dropped my head to the table and groaned in frustration. That was my life at that moment. Frustrating. Painful. I wanted to give in to tears. I wanted to scream with all of my worries and anxieties. I wanted to punch my father in the face. I wanted to run away, like Quatre had planned on doing all those years ago.  
    I truly regretted it then, more than I ever had since he had first mentioned it to me. I should have gone with him. I shouldn't have chickened out. I should have told him yes and run away from it all. If I had, would he still be alive? Would we have managed to do the impossible and disappear from our families and survive together in some strange place, just the two of us? It was such a wonderful dream. I wanted to imagine it, to fall into that fantasy and never come back out of it, but I knew that if I indulged in it for even a second, it would make the life that I'm living now all the more grey and desolate, all the more terrible.   
    I sat there with my forehead pressed to the cool wood of our kitchen table and bit my tongue to keep the tears from coming. I felt so worthless then, and not just me. The world. My life. Existence. It all felt so meaningless when I compared it to what a struggle every day was. I didn't want to be alive. I didn't want to die, either. I didn't want anything at all. I was just... stuck in this stagnant place where nothing at all mattered to me.   
    Things had always been bad, but now with our financial future so uncertain, I felt like I was on that mound at the beach, standing at the end and staring down into the ocean. Only it wasn't just the ocean anymore, it was a black abyss, waiting to swallow me whole and sink me down into a darkness filled with monsters with sharp teeth and healthy appetites. Or maybe that came after. Maybe I'm confusing that day with that Sunday, the day that I saw my father for who he really is. (violently scratched out)  
    Too soon. I'm ahead of myself and I don't want to be. That abyss was waiting for me, though, always waiting, even though I denied it for so long. Too long, like denying my foot was caught in a bear trap until I saw the hunter's gun aimed for me. But that came later.   
    I wallowed in my misery for awhile before getting up off the chair, putting the ice pack back into the freezer, and limping to the bathroom. I only gave myself a brief glance in the mirror before getting into the shower. There was a dark bruise on the side of my cheek and my throat was a lovely shade of black. I would have to come up with one of my many lies, if anyone actually asked about it. I doubted that anyone would, though.  
    The cold shower was, for once, heavenly. It served to wake me out of my depressed, groggy, and pain induced stupor. I gulped down some of the icy water and it tasted equally wonderful and terrible as it slid down my injured throat. My father was still sleeping when I left the shower, so I rushed (well, in a hobbling way) back upstairs to get dressed and ready for school, then limped back down for a small breakfast of cereal and made my lunch. I even had the mind to swallow some pain pills with my food.  
    Taking the bus ended up being a good choice, despite the money that it had cost me. I had to walk down two streets and a couple of blocks to get to the bus stop and by that time, my leg felt hot and swollen like a football and my other leg and hip was starting to ache from the way that I was limping. But the bus ride served to ease the pain a little and the school day seemed just a bit less like a nightmare.   
    Now that I was at school, I felt incredibly vulnerable. Ever since Zechs had cornered me in the locker room, I had been severely careful in making sure that it would never happen again. I had managed not to so much as cross paths with the asshole since then, though I was sure he was eager for the chance to beat me up after escaping him. Just like with my father, there were only two things that could ever save me from getting hurt or threatened by him again: stealth, which I had succeeded at pretty well since the incident, and speed.   
    It was only my speed and agility that had seen me through with my hair and everything else in tact. Now I was a mess, limping and with a damaged wind pipe. I wasn't struggling to breathe anymore, but I could still feel that pain and the threat that if I took too deep a breath, my throat might close up again. If Zechs cornered me, I was shit out of luck.   
    But for the most part, I was left alone that day, free to limp from class to class. I suppose if some normal, well adjusted person ever reads this, they would ask why, at the very least, a teacher didn't ask me about my limp, why, if I came to school with new bruises and injuries, my parents were never called in for a conference or social services were never called.   
    There are a lot of reasons, I guess. For one, I've only ever witnessed social services being called on one of my classmates once. Sasha Williams, in the 8th grade. She had been a quiet, mousy girl who, like me, hadn't had any friends and came to school bruised if she showed up at all. She could have been pretty, if her nose hadn't been broken so many times. She had lived on my side of town, further South. The rumor was that her mother was a drug addict, some said a prostitute or a stripper.   
    What was clear was that someone, either her mother or her mother's boyfriend, was beating the shit out of her every day and unlike my father, her abuser had a thing for hitting her face, so it was a bit more noticeable than my father's penchant for going for places that were less obvious, like my stomach or ribs. Her various teachers had called social services a few times, when she came to school with missing teeth or a black eye, but nothing came of it until her mother's boyfriend knocked her up. Services just showed up at school one day and took her away and no one saw her at school or in town anymore.   
    There was a lot of speculation of what had happened to her, that she had been put into foster care, that her mother had beaten her to death, or even that she had run away. I thought about it once (just the once), calling Social Services and telling on my father. Why didn't I? Well, for one, the same reason my father has never gotten in trouble for it before: his job.   
    Losing his position on the force hadn't made my father any less of a cop, either. He was still close with the other town cops and people still feared or respected him enough to not want to cause trouble. He still knew quite a few dirty secrets, and he still knew people who would have his back. At least, that was my theory. Who was going to believe a loser like me that my father, who used to be in law enforcement, was beating me? Who the hell would care?   
    What would happen, I had asked myself, if I did call SS and they _did_ believe me? I would just be another Sasha. My father would go to jail and I would disappear, maybe get shoved into a foster family or one of those government run shelters. I didn't want that. I might hate what my father did, but I loved him and I didn't want to get him into trouble. I definitely didn't want to go to a shelter, all because I couldn't keep a secret. And my classmates and my teachers weren't the ones getting beaten, so why would they want to stick their necks out anyway?  
    So not only did no one try to find out if I was getting knocked around at home, I encouraged it and went out of my way to make sure no one asked those questions, and if they did, I always had the right answers. I used my reputation as a delinquent and a bullying victim for me. If I came to school beat up, my teachers just assumed that it was because of Zechs or I had picked a fight with someone. If anyone had an idea that it was my father doing it, they turned a blind eye to it.   
    That's exactly what happened when I limped to my Chemistry class that day, people ignored my obvious injury, or they snickered about how Zechs must have 'given it to him good'. I let them. I was in too much pain to care what their theories were. Chemistry was only my second class of the day, but by the time I got there, my leg was already throbbing unpleasantly.   
    As I hobbled into the classroom, I made up my mind that I was going to spend my lunch period getting a note from the nurse to excuse me from gym and then just go the hell home. I felt a twinge of depression then as I thought about playing with my kitten and remembered that my father was now unemployed. He could only be in two places by the end of my school day; looking for another job or getting drunk. Guess which one I was betting money on?   
    I felt bitterness towards him for more than just taking away what little financial security we had had. I had liked going home after school before I had to go to my first work shift because I knew that I would be alone. I didn't even have the surety of that anymore. I would have to go to the library from then on and not see Pepper until I got home and I hated that. It wouldn't be permanent, I told myself. Just until he stopped being so violent or until he found a job, then things would go back somewhat to normal.   
    I didn't even know what I was going to do about work. I couldn't afford to miss another day, but my leg could barely handle an hour of school, let alone what I would need for it to do through three shifts. Maybe I could just tie an ice pack to it, take as much painkillers as humanely possible, and hope for the best. I sunk into my seat with a heavy sigh, wincing as the metal chair dug into my abused leg muscles. I bit back a groan when I saw our teacher standing at the front of the room, a packet of paper in his hand.   
    I hate Chemistry class. Our teacher, Mr. Genero, isn't so bad compared to some of my other teachers. He neither hates nor likes me and is pretty ambivalent about all of his students and doesn't seem to have much passion for teaching at all. He just acted like his students, impatiently waiting for the bell to ring so he could get on with his life. That meant that I never got in trouble in his class for being late or Relena destroying my homework, but it also meant that she pretty much had free reign to mess with me without getting scolded by a teacher.   
    Chemistry itself is not a great subject for me. I did a lot better in my other science classes, especially biology and earth science. A lot of the kids in my class love Chemistry because you get to mix things and do cool experiments that make things explode or change colors and it sure beats listening to a lecture. But to me, Chemistry is just another math class. Worse, it's a math class with experiments and group projects, which means I have to be paired up with someone who never wants to be paired up with me.   
    To make things even worse, the work stations are these large, high tables, big enough for four people to sit at, but you have to sit on tall stools instead of chairs. Just the thought of climbing up on one of them made me wish I had just stayed home that morning. I listened with half an ear as Mr. Genero prattled on about the kind of experiment we were going to be doing as Relena, who had been crafty enough to sit behind me on the first day of school, pelted what felt like paper balls at the back of my head. Annoying as hell, but not harmful, at least. She was just warming up. I was only interested in who I was going to be paired with.  
    'Not Relena, not Relena, please, anyone but her,' I pleaded silently.  
    I haven't had the misfortune of being paired up with her yet, but Mr. Genero is always changing up the criteria of who our partners will be, so it's only a matter of time before that happens.   
    "Today you will be pairing up by your class ID," our teacher informed us with the same bored tone he seemed to always talk with, "The pairs are as follows: Abbot and Clemens, Darlian and Barns..."  
    I rubbed tired at my face as I waited for him to get to my name. Then, like a ray of doom, it came to me. School ID's are assigned based on the date when the ID was issued. The majority of my classmates got theirs when they entered either Kindergarten or the first grade, while I didn't get my ID until the fourth grade, so I had a much later number.   
    Nausten doesn't get a lot of new families moving here, so I've been stuck with pretty much the same kids since my first day of school, which meant that, in my grade, I had had the last ID number for awhile. Before Heero moved here, there had only been one other person in our grade whose family had moved here in the last couple of years, Becca Jackson, but she had transferred to a different science class a month ago. That left just one other person in my class that had an ID number after mine...  
    "Yuy and Maxwell," Genero announced, confirming my suspicions.  
    'Oh fuck no,' I almost groaned out loud.  
    Getting paired up with _him_ was nearly as bad as Relena. I definitely should have stayed home. Genero paused in his name calling, looking behind me.  
    "What is it, Yuy?" he asked, his tone turning from boredom to irritation at being interrupted.  
    I looked behind me. Heero was sitting across from Relena with his hand raised, his blue eyes stony with frustration.  
    "Can I get a different partner?" he said, almost in a demand.  
    I heard someone in the class snicker and someone else whisper something, probably that they pitied him or how understandable it was that he wouldn't want to be paired up with me. I felt the sting of that for a second. I wanted to point out that I sure as hell didn't want to be paired up with him, either.  
    "No, you may not," Genero snapped irritably, "Grow up, Yuy. I think you can suffer working with someone you don't like for all of forty-five minutes."  
    Heero flushed darkly with embarrassment and put his hand down. Relena looked like she wanted to claw the teacher's eyes out for daring to call out her boyfriend and immediately transferred all the hate in her gaze at me, like it was my fault somehow. I had the childish urge to sneer at her. Pissing her off was never a good idea, and with the painkillers that I had taken that morning starting to wear off already, I just wasn't in the mood to play her games, even for the joy of seeing her so enraged over something so tiny. I turned back around in my seat and accepted the packet of papers Mr. Genero handed me without a single complaint. Just get the experiment done, I told myself, it's just one class, then I'll get a different partner for the next one.  
    "Careful not to sit too close to it," Relena advised Heero in fake concern as he got out of his seat, "The faggot might rub off on you."  
    He looked uncomfortable for a moment before laughing a little at her bad joke.  
    "No chance of that," he promised her with a smirk and reached out to touch her hand.  
    It was such a small move, something that I had seen countless of other couples in our school do, but it made her blush a little. I wanted to gag. But then I just thought about that look of discomfort that he had had. What was that about? Was it the thought of having to sit near me, the thought of faggots at all, or did he just not like that word?   
    I watched Heero rush to beat me to the supplies that we were assigned, like he didn't even want me to touch them, with a deep scowl on his face. That expression just made him look a lot older and it didn't suit him at all. By the time I managed to get out of my seat and stagger towards one of the tables, Heero had already gotten there and was sitting in one of the stools, setting things up.     When he noticed that I was limping, I was sure that he would mess with me somehow, maybe tip the stool that I was heading for over or trip me or make some remark about how I had gotten hurt. Relena and Zechs would have gleefully insinuated that I was limping from getting gang fucked or something gross like that. But he didn't. He didn't even snicker at me as I struggled to get up onto the stool, almost slipping off of it when my leg decided that it had had as much abuse as it could stand for the day and buckled. He almost looked concerned to see me limping. I was positive that I was just seeing things until he said, "Are you alright?"  
    I gaped at him in total shock, wondering if I had just lost my mind, if I was hallucinating all of it, because there was just no way that Heero Yuy had asked me if I was ok. If he had, it had to be some kind of trick. But with him only a couple of feet away from me, there was no way I could mistake that worried look on his face. If he really was trying to trick me, and that was what it had to be, I couldn't tell what he was up to.   
    I quickly looked away from him. I couldn't take that expression, that look like he gave a shit, like it mattered to him that I was limping and hurt. It was painful, more painful than my leg injury was. 'Are you alright'. No one had asked me that since Quatre had decided to abandon me forever. No one had even looked at me like that since my father had held me as I had cried at our kitchen table. Not even Trowa. I couldn't handle Yuy of all people looking at me like that, even if it was a trick. It was worse than a beating, worse than any slur that Relena could hurl at me. I hated him so thoroughly for it. Who the hell was he to ask me something like that? He didn't even know me! He didn't fucking care, so why couldn't he just keep his mouth shut about it?  
    "I'm fine," I lied coldly, "Let's just hurry up and finish this and get out of each other's way, alright?"  
    In an instant, that concerned gaze melted away into a stony, superior glare that I was much more used to seeing from him.  
    "Fine with me," he said flatly, "I'll handle the equipment, you take the notes and make the chart. Your handwriting is neater than mine is."  
    Just like that, he disarmed me once again. How did he keep doing that, surprising me like that? I blinked in confusion at him, trying to remember if he had ever had any occasion to see my handwriting before, but I couldn't come up with any. That was the first time we had been paired up in any class, so how the hell did he know what my handwriting looked like? I just grunted at him in agreement. I didn't care what part of the experiment he wanted to do, so long as it got us far away from each other as soon as possible.  
    Although I'm loath to admit it, we made a decent team. In actuality, working with Heero was easier than working with most of my other Chemistry partners. He didn't make snide remarks or take my work from me or outright refuse to do any work. We didn't speak to each other, which was just fine by me, we just worked in silence, him performing the experiment and me filling out each result and statistics in a chart that I had made freehand on the back of one of the work sheets.   
    He had probably just been eager to get away from me as well, enough to cooperate with me, but it was better than having to struggle through one stupid assignment. Things were running smoothly until my leg started to cramp, and stupid me, too involved in charting our progress, I forgot about my injury. I unconsciously shifted my leg to stretch out the cramp and dropped my pencil as a tremor of agony shot up my leg. Before I could regain the sense to catch it, my pencil bounced off the edge of the table and fell to the floor.  
    "Oh, fuck," I swore as I watched it escape me.      
    That was my last pencil and I seriously doubted that Heero would lend me one if I asked, so I would have to get up and off the stool to retrieve it. Just by feeling the pain in my leg, I wasn't so sure I was going to manage that without causing some kind of scene, or being unable to get back _onto_ the stool.   
    I cursed my clumsiness over and over, bracing myself for the slide off of the stool when Heero beat me to it. I watched with that stupid, wide eyed expression of shock that I have that I'm sure makes me look like a stupid owl as he got off of his own stool, knelt down, and grabbed my pencil. I retained my shock as he sat back down and placed the pencil back in front of me.  
    "Here," he said softly and his tone alone told me that he hadn't just done it to get this over with quicker, because he thought I was slow.  
    He had done it because he knew that I _wasn't_ fine. He had known that I was in pain and that getting off that damned stool would have been an arduous process. Had he... had he done it to be nice? Or had my hesitation frustrated him?   
    "T-thank you," I stammered, not really caring if he had done it out of frustration.  
    Whether he had intended to or not, he had done something nice for me. He had helped me... and not because he wanted anything from me. I had forgotten what that felt like, just someone being kind to me for the sake of it, not because they wanted to have sex with me or because they felt like they had to. It made my chest hurt and I didn't know why.   
    "Hn," he grunted like it was no big deal.  
    He looked away from me, but not fast enough. In those couple of seconds before he turned his face from view, long enough that I knew that I hadn't imagined it, his thin lips moved into a soft, pleased, and gentle smile. I felt something in me freeze at the sight of it and that painful feeling in my chest grew. It was then that I realized that my face felt hot. I was blushing. What the fuck?   
    I hastily looked back down on my work and tried to focus on what I had been doing before I had dropped my pencil, but it was impossible. Unbidden and unwanted, the image of Heero's quick smile was burned into my head forever. I didn't know what disturbed me more, that memory or my reaction to it, but I felt weird. Embarrassed, confused, awkward.   
    I had no clue what was going on. I wanted to pretend that it had never happened, that it was just another trick, an illusion, anything than what it was. But I knew. I had seen him smirk and laugh and snicker and sneer and I knew that none of those expressions had come close to this. That little, almost non-existent smile had been a real one, not something forced. It had just happened, probably against his will and when I had seen it, I could see the handsomeness that had drawn Relena to him. Did he smile at her like that? And why did that thought feel so ugly to me?   
    I struggled to keep my mind on our experiment, but found my thoughts constantly wandering back to that smile. It was a puzzle that I had absolutely no hope of solving and I wasn't sure if I really wanted to. After all, what reason could Yuy possibly have had for smiling like that, all because I had said thank you to him instead of telling him to go fuck himself? For all I knew, he was thinking of some snide, nasty thing about me. It was easy to believe that, so why didn't I? Why did it bother me so much?   
    Some stupid part of me wanted to believe in that smile, that he wasn't the horrible person that I knew that he was, but I wasn't that naive. Heero wasn't a quick, soft smile. He wasn't someone who gave a shit about me or my gratitude. He was the boy that had almost cut my hair on Zechs's say-so. He was Relena Darlian's boyfriend, the boyfriend to the bitch that had killed my best friend. He was the same person that laughed when she called me trash and a faggot. He was the same person who sneered at me and pushed me around along with all of his other shitty friends.  
    That image of him in my head was bolstered when my elbow accidentally got too close to his while I was writing and he shifted further away from me, like my closeness repulsed him. I couldn't equate that with the same person who had just smiled at me, so I decided not to. I had been seeing things, or that smile had been at my expense. I pushed the whole thing out of my head and clung to hate of him. It frightened me a little, how it made me feel relieved.     I liked hating him. He was just another bully, just another nameless member of the crowd Relena dragged around with her to fuck with me, nothing else. I didn't want him to be anything else, I didn't want to believe in anyone else ever again when I knew better. I had had someone to believe in once and he had left me. I had dared to believe in Trowa and he had hurt me and betrayed me, too. No matter who I believed in, no matter who I decided to trust, they showed their true colors eventually. A smile didn't change the ugliness of the world I lived in. Because that smile made it worse, not better. I could handle someone hating me, I had lived with that my entire life. I couldn't handle someone choosing to hate me.  
    I shoved the whole thing out of my head as I suffered through the rest of the day. Heero turned in our experiment to the teacher and returned to his girlfriend's side, lamenting with her having to work with me. He told her that I smelled like garbage and they jeered at me together about how fags were supposed to be clean and prissy, not smell like a dumpster. I ignored the both of them, forcing my hatred of them down deep where it could simmer. Limping around for the rest of the day took too much out of me for my bitterness and anger to mean anything.   
    I spent my lunch in the library, not hungry and willing to lose myself in a book until the bell rang. The librarian even allowed me to get away with resting my leg on a chair. On my way to my next class, I passed by the nurse's office to grab a pass to get out of gym. The nurse hissed in sympathy when I showed her my swollen and bruised leg and it was pretty easy after that to get an ice pack and a pass from her. I used the ice pack through the rest of my classes until it finally got to room temperature, but it helped soothe some of the pain.   
    Already starting to forget my confusing and turbulent Chemistry class, I thought that I might just survive that day up until I passed Trowa in the hallway on my way to show my pass to Horner. I hadn't seen him since the night that I had broken up with him. To be honest, I had been avoiding him and I think he had been avoiding me to. He just walked right past me without a single look. Even when I dared to glance behind me, I didn't catch him noticing me at all, not even out of anger.   
    Watching him, for the first time in days, I realized how much I missed him. I was still pissed and bitter at him, but I felt this ache in my chest, this empty spot where he had once been. I had this urge to run up to him and kiss him one last time. It was stupid, and the desire wasn't that strong, but it was there. I missed kissing him. I missed having _someone_ , some connection to another person. I wish that I could say that I hadn't thought of him at all until that moment, but even in taking care of Pepper, he was always in the back of my mind. I guess all people who go through break ups go through that, but it was new to me. I didn't even love him, but I still missed him and resented him at the same time.  
    I spent the rest of the school day wallowing in my bitterness, hating everything. I could say that it was from the pain that I was in, a constant reminder of the problems I had at home and my recent financial anxieties, but that was just a small part of it. Seeing Trowa again had only served to remind me that I couldn't escape my loneliness. Three years and I still wasn't used to it. It ate at me like a cancer. Pepper helped, but not all the time and not completely.   
    If my relationship with Trowa had taught me one thing, it was how much I missed Quatre and how, for all my acting tough and all my attempts to seal my heart away, I needed someone. The only times in our relationship that I had actually been happy were those moments when we could talk to each other and hold each other, touch each other without it becoming too sexual. I needed that.   
    I needed someone to talk to, even if it was about nothing. I needed someone to hug me, to pat my arm, hold my hand. I loved Pepper and she kept me from going completely insane with loneliness, but she could only listen to me. She wasn't a person. I didn't even know what I wanted. Being with Trowa had taught me that I was probably never going to want anyone, not sexually at any rate. I felt a loss at that, but it was small. I hadn't enjoyed sex enough to want it, but I wanted to be normal.  
    I didn't want what I had had with Trowa again and I wasn't going to have that. That I had managed to hook up with probably the only other gay kid in all of Nausten had been a miracle. I just wanted a friend. That was as impossible as a boyfriend for someone like me. I didn't want to live my life alone. I didn't even like myself enough to want to be around me. I just felt like I was drifting in a void, waiting for something to change.   
    Despite all of my better judgment, I went to my work shifts. I didn't go because I knew how much we were going to need that money soon or even because my leg was feeling a little bit better, but simply because I was so sick of feeling sorry for myself and miserable and pathetic. I needed to occupy myself or I was going to get overwhelmed with my depression.   
    Unfortunately, working didn't do a lot to distract me from my problems. It helped keep my mind off the pain in my leg and even off all of the shit that was going on with my dad, but not other things. I guess that's not too surprising, given what a mind field my thoughts were lately. But the really fucked up thing was that when my mind wandered as I worked, it wasn't Trowa that it wandered to, like I was so certain that it would. I kept thinking about Heero and that damn smile of his.  
    Working at the diner and pizza place wasn't too bad. Sal was pretty understanding when he saw me trying to limp from table to table and put me at the register instead and even let me go sit down when my leg started to bother me too much. Sal is a nice guy and despite his gruff attitude, he isn't a terrible boss to work for, unlike Andre, who can be a bit immature and pissy. He didn't take my injury nearly as well as Sal did, informing me that if I couldn't keep up with my coworkers, he was going to take me off the schedule for that week. Still, it was a slow night and I found myself mostly in the kitchen instead of waiting on tables.   
    Working at the factory was another matter. I ended up wasting more money using the bus again, but even that small reprieve from standing didn't make my injury feel any better. We had just gotten a shipment of copper tubing, steel rods, and various brackets to send off to the steel works and were sorting through the boxes. It wasn't that difficult. The group that I typically work with set up a conveyor belt to send the boxes from the shipping yard portion of the factory to the truck bay, it was just a matter of separating the overweight cargo from the rest. The steel works would have to send their own truck to us for the bigger parts.   
    I knew that working at that place that night was a shitty idea when, after we had set up the belt, my leg started to cramp up. I stupidly ignored it until I lifted up my fourth crate full of steel piping and my leg buckled under me. I, thankfully, know enough about injuries and things falling to know that dropping something heavy like that is dangerous and can get me hurt worse than some pulled leg muscles and swelling. Instead of freaking out as I instantly realized I was going to go down with the box, I just let the dumb thing fall and fell backwards, away from it, and stayed exactly where I was as my leg muscles spasmed painfully, leaving me feeling exhausted and strained as I fought against the twitching limb. I guess I had hit my limit for the day.   
    Lorathe, my shift supervisor, had a few choice words for me when I informed him that I wouldn't be able to move cargo with the rest of my coworkers because of my injury. Spoken at great volume. Lorathe hasn't liked me from the moment I got that job and isn't exactly shy about letting me know that fact. But I didn't file an injury report, which saved him a lot of paperwork and time and money, so I wasn't sent home and instead he stuck me in his office to file paperwork. It was boring as all hell and the man's filing system, or as I like to call it: 'clutter', leaved a lot to be desired, but I got to sit down in a comfortable chair and was left alone until my lunch hour when Solo showed up with his own lunch.   
    "Mind if I eat up here?" he asked me as he walked through the office door.  
    "Not my office," I said with a nonchalant shrug, but was secretly happy with his company.  
    Solo is the closest person I've had to a friend since Quatre died and about the only thing about that damned job that makes it bearable. Why he likes talking to me, I have no clue, but he treats me like his dorky, kid brother sometimes, despite the fact that he's more than a decade older than me. I think we get along because neither of us is well liked by any of our coworkers. An ex-con and an ex-cop's kid. What a fucking pair we were.   
    He sat down in the chair across from the desk that I was sitting at and opened his lunch bag, pulling out a can of beer and a turkey sandwich. He tossed half of the sandwich at me and I accepted it without any protests. I had learned a long time ago that Solo was the kind of man that did whatever the hell he wanted and trying to tell him otherwise was just a waste of time.   
    "You look like shit," he said plainly as I took a bite of the sandwich. It was bland to the point of almost being tasteless, "How's the leg?"  
    "Shitty," I quipped.  
    "Want some?" he offered me his can of beer with a wry grin, not at the least bit concerned that he was offering alcohol to a minor, and while he was working, no less.  
    I shook my head at him and he pulled a can of soda out of his bag, sliding it over to me. I rolled my eyes at him. It was a long standing joke between us from the first moment he had offered a beer to me and I had turned him down. Someone my age, and someone like me who was obviously not some kind of goody two shoes, turning down beer had seemed ridiculous to him.   
    "He wants to fire you, you know," Solo informed me candidly as we ate, "He just hasn't found the right excuse yet."  
    I didn't have to ask him for clarification, I knew that he was talking about our boss. I snorted.  
    "I'm sure he thought I would have scrubbed out by now," I grumbled.  
    I knew exactly what Lorathe's problem was. He didn't like being ordered around by someone like my father, and he sure as hell didn't like employing a teenager to do a job like this. He had been expecting me to be lazy and to use that to fire me. But I wasn't and he couldn't, not without pissing off my dad. Leverage is a wonderful thing, I guess.   
    "This is your second job, isn't it?" Solo asked me, brushing his long, dark blonde bangs out of his face when a few of them escaped the bandana he had tied them back with.  
    I raised up three fingers, taking a sip of the soda, and he shook his head in amazement.  
    "You're gunna die an early age, kid," he muttered without any kind of amusement, "You're young, you should be going out with your friends, chasing after pussy, and getting into an asinine amount of trouble, not working your ass off for chump change."  
    "Don't have any friends, don't have a girlfriend," I said very carefully, "and I've never been much of a troublemaker. I get into enough trouble with my dad without having done anything wrong as it is. And the money I make might be shit, but it's better than nothing at all."  
    "Well, that's exactly my point," he drawled, taking another bite of his sandwich, "Handsome kid like you should have a girlfriend. Maybe if your dad weren't working you to the bone, you'd have the chance."  
    "I'm not handsome," I muttered, knowing he was just joking around, "There's no one at my school I like and I've never had many friends anyway, so I don't mind helping my family out."  
    "Not a single girl? Not even a little, tiny crush?" he teased me.  
    I realized the danger that I was in with this kind of subject and immediately felt uncomfortable. Despite that, I found myself thinking about it. Again, I mourned my complete lack of a sex drive. There wasn't a single person that I was even slightly attracted to or even someone that I wanted to be friends with. My mind strayed again, but it thought of Heero again instead of Trowa and I felt perplexed. What did Yuy have to do with anything when Trowa was the one that I was missing?      
    "You ok?" my coworker asked me.  
    I blinked over at him in surprise.  
    "Yeah, why?"  
    "You just got real red," he pointed to my face.  
    Confused, I touched my cheek and felt that it was indeed hot, but I couldn't figure out why. I didn't feel embarrassed by what we were talking about, so why was I blushing?  
    "Maybe I'm getting sick," I murmured under my breath.  
    Solo stopped eating to stare at me intently, like he was studying me for something. I felt a brief thrill of fear, worrying in paranoia that he suspected that there was another reason why I didn't have a girlfriend, but that was ridiculous. I had never given anyone any reason to suspect that I was gay and Solo wasn't the sort of person to worry about someone's sexuality outright. He dug around in his pocket and pulled out a card, looking at it for a minute before sliding it across the desk to me.  
    "Here."  
    I flipped it over and read the name of a construction company, quirking an eyebrow at him.   
    "If you insist on working yourself to death," Solo said gruffly, "I think you can do better than just waiting tables."  
    "I don't understand," I looked down at the business card again, recognizing the company as a pretty small one that had set up shop in South Nausten a few years ago.  
    "I think you do," he grinned at me, resting his cheek on his fist, "Lemme guess. I bet you work your ass off at your jobs, only to let your dad take every cent from you to do whatever he likes with it, right?"  
    I nodded and felt something ugly coil in my gut.   
    "My dad lost his job," I suddenly blurted out before I could stop myself, "His boss caught him coming in drunk again. Now it's just Mom and I paying the bills, I guess, until he can find something."  
    I couldn't get my mouth to stop moving, couldn't stop myself from telling Solo things that he hadn't even asked about, things that I was ashamed of. I'd say that I don't know why, but I do. How long had it been since I could really talk to someone and tell them about the things that I was anxious about? I could never talk to Trowa about them and even when Quatre had been alive, there had been so many things that I had never told him about. How long can a person stay silent and lonely before the right person comes along to open them up? I'm not saying that Solo was the right person, but my anxiety over my dad's recent loss of employment was like a burst pipe in me, filling me with ice water, and Solo was the first person that I had talked to since I had broken up with Trowa that was willing to listen to me. I couldn't help letting that ice water leak out a little bit before I exploded with it.   
    "I didn't mind," I told him, "giving Dad my paychecks because I was pretty sure that it was helping us pay our bills and buy groceries. But now... I'm worried that he's going to use that money to go out and get drunk with his stupid friends. I can't handle that-"  
    I bit my tongue before I could confess to how furious the thought of that made me. Maybe my jobs weren't as difficult and frustrating as my dad's had been, but goddamn it, I wasn't working for Dad to steal my money to buy beer and while I wish that I could just live in denial and say that wouldn't happen, I knew that it would. I remembered the argument that had landed me in the hospital with glass stuck all over my body. I remembered how my father had fucked over our grocery budget just so he could buy some beer. It hadn't been the last time that that had happened, and his drinking was getting a lot worse, so was Mom's.   
    How long before he let us go hungry so he could get wasted? How long before he let some of the bills go because he got thirsty? I wanted to cry. I think if Quatre had been the one that I was talking to, and not a coworker, I would have. I felt like Sisyphus, pushing my rock up the hill, working hard so my parents wouldn't have to worry about their bills so much, only to watch that rock fall back to the bottom on the other side and realize just how little that hard work meant in the end.   
    "I'm sorry," I muttered, "You don't need to know about all that."  
    I thought that he might call me a pussy for unloading on him, forgetting that Solo isn't Relena or Zechs or even my father. He just smirked at me without any kind of humor and I felt relieved that I didn't see any pity in his dark green eyes, just understanding. He took an apple pastry out of his bag, something that he had obviously bought at some convenience store, broke it in half and gave it to me. It tasted overly sweet and there was more jelly filling in it than apples, but I didn't mind.  
    "Hey, don't worry about it," he assured me, "I had a dad like that, too. One of the things that got me into stealing cars and selling pot was I was sick of him leeching off of me and just wanted to get away. But it doesn't have to be like that, Duo," he gestured to the card that he had given me, "You don't have to scrape by with minimum wage jobs. Those people pay a decent wage and the work's not bad."  
    "Why would they hire me?" I pointed out, "I'm not even seventeen yet, they couldn't hire me legally and no one ever expects a teenager to be a hard worker."  
    "But you are," Solo insisted, "I work with you, remember? You're not lazy, even if you're not as strong as the other guys here. As for legally, well," he scratched his chin in a sheepish gesture, "they have a few workers that aren't exactly on the right side of legal, if you know what I mean. Paying people under the table isn't something the owner is shy to. And they'll hire you because if you tell me you're interested, I'm going to vouch for you."  
    "You work for them?" I asked.  
    "Have since I got out. They were the only ones that would for awhile," he said and I caught the edge of bitterness on his words, "It's hard work, I won't lie, but it's better than unloading cargo. Sometimes you get to help tear down houses, put 'em up, or just do a painting job. And it pays better than this gig at your pay level."  
    I sighed.   
    "I don't have time for a fourth job, not with my schoolwork-" I started to protest.  
    "I'm not talking about a fourth job, kid," Solo rolled his eyes at me, "I'm talking about quitting one of your other jobs and taking this one on behind your father's back. You can give him what he thinks you're making at your old job and pocket the difference without him even knowing. You'll be more tired at the end of the day, but you'll have a bit of money to fall back on if you're dad fucks around on the bills."  
    I thought about that, about the likelihood if I could get away with a scheme like that. Did I want to risk it? It sounded like a better job to me than waiting tables, but I felt like it was a disaster waiting to happen. Making more money sounded like a dream come true, but what if I got caught working at a place like that when I wasn't supposed to? What if my dad caught me working there and that I had been hiding money from him? But on the other hand, I would have money for groceries if we fell short, and I could buy Pepper things instead of begging Mrs. Liddle for chores to do. It wouldn't be a complete solution for our financial problems, but it would be better than what I was making, a step in the right direction.   
    "Can I think about it?" I asked.  
    "Of course," Solo snorted and took another sip of his beer, "Not like there's an expiration date to this."  
    He finished off his beer and threw out the trash of our brief meal, our break time over.  
    "Thanks, Solo," I called out as he went to leave.  
    "Accept the offer, Duo," he waved with his back to me, "You're too young to be gettin' an ulcer already."  
    I shook my head at his candor and looked down at the business card again, but it didn't help me make up my mind and I slipped it into my pocket. At least I had something else to think about instead of Trowa, Heero, Relena, or my father.  
  
End Part 2  
  
Author's Note: I wasn't going to end this part here, since the next scene would have been the perfect way to end part 2, but things were getting too long, and while I had the first 20 pages of this finished over a week ago, I took a break to reread some earlier parts of this story. I didn't want to keep people waiting for me to get my ass in gear for the next scene, so I cut it short.   
  
  
  
      
      
      
      
      
      
  



	23. Chapter 5 Part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duo realizes he feels more for Heero than hate. Duo tells his father about his new job opportunity, but his father is far from happy about it.

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 5  
Part 3  
  
  
    My thoughts were like some kind of fucked up game of racquet ball all through the rest of my shift, the short bus ride, and painful walk home. It was just one of those days that seemed like it was never going to end and life was never going to stop throwing random shit at me to ponder over. I mulled over Solo's offer constantly. I pointed out to myself, again and again, how rare it was for an opportunity like that to just fall into my lap. Considering my shitty luck, I just had to go for it, didn't I?   
    There was more good about a job like that than bad. A better job, better pay, and I got to work with a guy that, for some bizarre reason, liked me. So why the hell not? But it was precisely because of my shitty luck that I was hesitant. It seemed too convenient, too lucky that right when I had been worrying about our finances, Solo had pulled a job for me out of thin air. It seemed like one of those things that was going to blow up in my face. Or I was just over-thinking a nice gesture from a coworker who was just trying to help me when he had seen that I was stressed.   
    As I walked into the house, I debated my options and decided that trying to hide this from my father was just not worth the extra cash in my pocket. While I would have loved to be able to save money for a crisis, the risk that my dad would find out that I had lied to him and quit a job that he had lined up for me was too big. I would discuss it with him first, I decided, and save myself a probable beating.   
    He might even be happy with me, I tried to think optimistically. Me having a better job might take some of the stress off of him while he looked for another job himself. I wanted to do that for him. I was still angry at him for doing something so stupid as going to work drunk and playing Russian roulette with our livelihood, but I knew that this was no picnic for him. My dad had gone from being just another teenager in high school to being a cop, all to support his family. He had never gone to college and had never finished his high school classes, technically. He had needed the help of a family friend just to get that job and now he was without. He had never actually had to go out into the workforce and rely on his skills before. I couldn't even begin to imagine the kind of stress that he was under, the fear and anxiety and sheer frustration. If I could give him just a little bit of breathing room, that would make him happy, wouldn't it?  
    The kitchen was destroyed again, the room little more than a clutter of beer cans and dirty dishes. I found my father asleep in his chair in the living room, the television set still on. He was wearing the same clothes I had seen him wearing that morning and staring at him there, a small mound of more beer cans and an empty bag of chips on the floor next to him, I felt furious. He had obviously not even left the house that day. There I was, contemplating taking on another job and he hadn't even gone out to look for another for himself.   
    Fighting every urge I had to do something petty like throw something at him, I managed to push down my rage for the moment. Nothing I did or said to him was going to make a difference and I had that feeling again, like I was helpless and stuck, waiting for the tide to come in. At that point, I was too tired to deal with him and his attempts to self-destruct, so I just turned off the tv and quietly made my way upstairs. I would clean the kitchen in the morning.  
    I refilled Pepper's food dish and grabbed some clean pajamas to take a shower. Before I walked into the bathroom, I glanced into my parent's room. The bed was still unmade and my mother was nowhere in sight. I worried about that, not trusting my father to tell me if there had been an complications at the hospital, but the nurse that I had talked to had said that she had had surgery, so maybe they were just keeping her for observation. It was a good thing, I reminded myself. She was probably happier there than she was here and she wasn't around to wind my father up again.  
    Shower done with and feeling a little bit like a person again, I played with my cat before laying down on my mattress, trying to go to sleep. It was the same, nightly battle that I have had almost every night since Quatre had killed himself. That night was especially bad, since my head was stuffed full of shit.   
    I thought about the job that Solo had offered me and what would happen if I got it. I was going to be turning seventeen in four months and I only had less than two years left of school before I graduated. If I kept at it, would I be able to survive on what I made with my factory job, that construction job, and one of my other part time jobs? I thought that working construction, building houses, going on location instead of working day after day in some factory or at the train yard was a lot better than what I had dreamed for myself. I won't lie and say that it was a dream job, but it was a possibility.   
    I thought about Trowa and how he had passed me by in the hallway without a single glance back at me. I hadn't been able to do that and I had been the one to break up with him. Had it really been so easy for him to move on? Was he still with that girl? Had he already found some other boy, maybe in a different town, to use for sex?   
    He was probably a hell of a lot happier without me, if he didn't even look like he missed me. That made me feel sad and some regret for how our relationship had gone, how it had ended. But I didn't feel any urge to try to get back together with him. I missed being with him, but at the same time, I felt relieved that I didn't have that stress anymore. I didn't have to worry about disappointing him anymore, and I didn't have to feel that guilt every single time that I had seen him, seen the person that I never should have gotten with in the first place because he wasn't mine to begin with.   
    I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to make all of my errant thoughts just shut the hell up so I could get a few hours of sleep. The second my eyes were closed, I saw Heero's pleased smile. Not Trowa's face or even my father's or my mother's, but my bully's. My brow furrowed in confusion. That smile... I had seen him smile before, usually with Relena, but that one that he had had when I had told him thank you... I hadn't seen that one before. I had never seen anyone smile at me or because of me like that, in this open and honest way, not since Quatre.   
    But Quatre's smile had been different. I had always thought that Quatre's smile had been beautiful, so soft and kind. But remembering Heero's own smile, as brief as it had been, had made me realize just how pale and sad Quatre's had been. It hadn't been bright or as happy as I had remembered it all of those years. There had always been this tinge of melancholy to it. Was I just remembering it that way now, or had it really been that way and I had been too blind to see it?   
    Heero's had made him look... I don't know. Handsome, I guess. I had always known that Yuy is handsome, I'm not freaking blind. He would have to be if Relena was interested in him. But this was different. I had never actually noticed just how attractive he looked until that moment. Hell, I had never noticed how attractive anyone was except for Trowa.   
    I had noticed Heero's good looks from the moment that I had met him, but no more than I knew that Relena was pretty. His dark hair made his eyes look like freaking beacons, but those eyes always looked hard and cold, like stone. When he had smiled, those eyes had been so bright and clear, like the ocean on a sunny day. I thought about the day that I had met Relena and how I had thought that her smile hadn't suited her, not until she had sneered cruelly at me and how that sneer had seemed more at home on her face. Heero was the same way. Those cold, apathetic stare of his didn't suit him at all, but that smile, that one moment of honesty from him, had seemed like the most natural thing in the world on him.   
    I opened my eyes and looked up at the ceiling, unable to get rid of that memory no matter how hard I tried to. I wondered if he smiled like that more, one of those full smiles that people get when they're truly happy, if that would make him look even more beautiful. I wanted to see that kind of smile on him, not his coldness. I didn't want to see that look on him anymore, it hurt. It was sad, now that I knew what he was capable of. I wanted him to smile like that at me...  
    I blinked in the dark of my room. What the hell? Where were these weird ass thoughts suddenly coming from? I touched my face and felt my flushed skin. I was blushing. Why was I blushing? It had happened before, when Solo had made me think of Heero for a reason that I still didn't understand. I didn't feel embarrassed by anything, and even when I did, I didn't usually blush, I just felt angry about things. So what was this?   
    And why did I only do it when I thought about that asshole? Because, let's be honest, just because he had a nice smile on the one, and only one, occasion he had smiled, it didn't make him any less of one. Quatre had been the blusher, he had had exactly the right kind of face and skin for it, especially when Trowa had been involved. Every time he had talked about him to me, his skin had flushed to a shade that I hadn't even thought possible.   
    My frown deepened and I pressed two fingers to my throat. My heart was racing. Was I actually getting sick? But it only did that when I thought about Heero. Because he made me feel anxious? No, that wasn't it. Relena and Zechs made me feel a lot more anxious than Heero did. He was a bully, but he didn't have their level of cruelty. Whatever this was, it wasn't anxiety or anger, it was something else. But what?  
    "Just being around him makes me so happy," Quatre had told me once, with one of his epic blushes, "His smiles, his jokes, just hearing the sound of his voice, even when he isn't talking to me, makes me delirious. When I think about going to his games or I know I'm about to see him, my heart beats so fast I worry I might die. And when I see him and I know I'll never be able to kiss him or hold his hand, I just feel sad, like nothing in the world matters and I'll never feel a good feeling again."  
    I sat up quickly, startled, as those words rang in my head. Pepper meowed at me as my movement woke her up. It couldn't be. There was just no fucking way. Experimentally, I thought of Heero again, not of his smile, but of all the times that we had passed in the hallway, that moment in the locker room when he had let me run by him, that time on the beach when his dog had run up to me. In my chest, my heart raced, faster and faster and more painful with each memory, each vision of Yuy's face.  
    "Fuck," I swore under my breath and got to my feet.  
    I paced around the room, like I thought I could get away from my traitorous feelings.  
    "Fuck, fuck, fuck," my voice rose.  
    My throat felt tight and tears threatened my vision. This couldn't be happening. This just... this couldn't! It wasn't even fucking possible! I pulled uselessly on my bangs, trying to deny it, trying to write it off as my tiredness or a hallucination or even a fever.  
    But I couldn't. A fever didn't touch on the heat that was on my face, or how much my heart hurt, or the fear that raced through me at the truth. I felt sick to my stomach and I wanted to tear out my hair, but I couldn't deny the sudden knowledge that came upon me as I remembered Quatre talking to me about how he had felt for Trowa, his words and the way that he had looked, that happy, but pained blush on his face.  
    I was in love with Heero Yuy. I had a crush. First time in all sixteen years of my miserable life. Years of waiting, of thinking that I was a freak, of wanting to know what it was like to love another person like Quatre had loved Trowa, years of mourning my deadened heart. And now it had finally happened. My heart had opened itself up, it had woken up like it had been in a coma all this time. I had a crush... and it was on someone that I hated, and someone that hated me even more than I hated them.   
    "Fuck!" I screamed and slammed my fist into the wall hard enough to leave a dent, not even caring if I woke up my father.  
    Pepper darted into her hole, frightened by my display of anger, but I barely noticed. I was in love with a bully... no, it was worse than that, so much worse. I was in love with Relena Darlian's boyfriend.   
    I laughed in hysterics at the recent proof of my horrible luck, tears streaming down my face. I had promised myself that I would never cry again, not after Quatre, and I couldn't even do that. I hadn't cried when I had lost my virginity, or when Trowa had cheated on me or said those painful things to me, I hadn't even cried when my father had lost his job, but I did then. All of my self control was for nothing, I couldn't stop it. It seemed so much worse to me than all of those things.   
    I had wanted this, falling love, being normal, feeling something other than hate. But I didn't want it. I didn't want _this_. I had thought, after seeing Quatre suffer being in love with Trowa, that maybe not feeling anything at all was better. Well, I hadn't just fallen in love with someone that I could be friends with, but could never possibly love me back. I had fallen in love with someone who was only too happy to hurt me. If Relena ever found out, she would laugh her ass off about it.   
    I fell back onto my mattress, my laughing dissolving into silent tears. My heart had betrayed me. I don't know why I expected anything different. Hadn't I learned by then that anything good in my life just gets taken away or turns to shit? I had wanted to know what love felt like. Well, I do now and I want nothing to do with it. Love isn't the wonderful thing that people write about in stories, it's stupid and it hurts.   
    From the moment that he had hooked up with Relena, Heero Yuy had just been another one of _them_ to me, just a nameless tormentor in Relena's little horde. But when he had smiled because I had thanked him, he had suddenly become human to me. I couldn't even hate him anymore, not really. He could be as cruel as he wanted, worse than Zechs and Relena put together, and my heart would still race just to be able to see him. How fucked up was that? What good was this kind of feeling? Love is agony and the only hate I could feel for Heero anymore was that he had made me feel it.   
  
*****  
  
    I don't know what I would have done if that sick little revelation had happened to me in the middle of the week. I had never been so happy to have it be the weekend. I couldn't face Heero. I felt Quatre's fear, for the very first time, of how I would act around the person that I had a crush on. Would he be able to tell? Was I going to blush like a fucking moron every time I saw him now? I felt disgusted in myself. I was so pathetic. I couldn't have fallen for Trowa, who at least liked boys? No, of course not. I hadn't even fallen for someone who was _just_ straight. As usual, I had hit a new time record for biggest fuck up and had fallen for a straight boy who hated my guts, was a homophobe, and had a girlfriend. A girlfriend who also hated me, was a homophobe, and had killed the only person in my life that had ever mattered to me. Go me.   
    I didn't sleep that night and I didn't really expect to. To say that I had had a bit of a shock is putting it mildly. I just laid there on my mattress, cursing myself and crying and hating everything and everyone as my bleeding, split knuckles scabbed over. Eventually my tears dried out, too. I felt even more pathetic, crying over a stupid crush. I was sure that gays experienced that feeling all the time, unless they were lucky enough to fall for someone like them, it wasn't like it was the end of the world.   
    But it was for me. I felt like a hope had just died and was rotting in my heart. The hope that, one day, I would experience love and be loved back in return. Hadn't I thought it once, on the day that my mother had told me that my father had wanted to abort me? 'No one is going to love me.' Boy, isn't that the truth. It had taken me all this time to find someone to like, and that like was so impossible that it isn't even worth debating. Would this be it? Was this my only chance at falling in love with someone? The likelihood of it happening again seemed so unlikely to me. Not that it mattered. Even if Heero were gay, why the hell would anyone at all want me? What was there in me to love? I don't deserve happiness. I destroy peoples' lives.   
    Pepper eventually decided that I wasn't so scary after all and came back out to lay with me. I picked her up and nuzzled her fur, my only source of comfort. I laid there until my clock gleefully informed me that it was six in the morning and it was time to get up. I felt exhausted, mentally and physically, like I had been hollowed out. I played with my kitten for a little while, cleaned out her litter box, and ventured downstairs for breakfast. To my relief, my father and his car keys were gone, although the mess that he had left in the kitchen and living room weren't. I hoped that he was going out to look for a new job and not just out with Pat.   
    I felt my anger simmer as I picked up all of his empty beer cans and dishes caked with filth, all of it dried on so it took me a good hour just to get them clean. What the hell was I worrying about a fruitless crush for when I had my father to worry about? I winced as I sat down at the now clean kitchen table, my leg throbbing. It wasn't as stiff as it had been the day before and I thought that I might actually survive my work shifts for the day. I pulled out the business card from my pocket and studied it again for awhile. I wondered if it was something that I could even do, or if I was going to end up fucking up at it like I seemed to do anything else.  
    I put the card back into my pocket and made myself breakfast. I decided that my problem wasn't that I had just discovered that I had a crush on Heero, but that I had too much time to sit around and angst over it. I just needed to keep myself busy and then I wouldn't have to think about it at all. So instead of sitting around and mulling over useless things, I made myself busy. I spent my morning scrubbing down the entire house; washing the floors, dusting, vacuuming, washing the windows, took out the trash, cleaning the toilet and sinks and bathtub. I even made my parents' bed when I ran out of things to do downstairs before moving up to my bedroom, vacuuming the steps on my way up. I moved things out of the way so I could clean my floor, pushing my mattress up against the wall. Pepper watched all of this with great interest, but when I turned the vacuum on, she darted into her hole, not liking the loud, clunking noise that old vacuum made. I didn't blame her, the stupid thing should have been put out of its misery years ago.   
    At some point during my obsessive cleaning, I heard the front door slam shut and immediately turned off the vacuum to listen. I hoped that it was my mother, coming home from the hospital, but then I heard a loud noise in the kitchen, like someone had hit or kicked something, and my dad cursing, although I couldn't quite make out what it was he was saying to himself. I couldn't tell if he was drunk or angry or both, which was a dangerous thing. I put aside my anger at the possibility that he might be drunk at freaking eleven in the morning for the sake of my welfare. It was better to err on the side of caution, so I didn't turn the vacuum on again in case he was drunk. The noise would piss him off.  
    As I wiped down my desk and put my mattress back onto the floor, I heard my father's swearing taper off and him moving into the living room. I released a breath that I hadn't even realized that I had been holding in relief. If he was indeed drunk, he was in a lazy drunk this time and not a rage. If it was the latter, he would be throwing things and bellowing for me, but if it was the former, he would just turn on the television and spend the rest of his stupor watching whatever sports game or match he could find. I quickly got dressed and put everything in my room back the way it had been, making as little noise as possible.  
    As quietly as I could, I brought the vacuum downstairs and put it back into the hallway closet. I was mere feet from the front door. I could just leave, I realized, and my father would probably never even realize that I had been there. It was hours yet before I needed to go to work, but staying at the house with my father there might be treacherous, the sanest thing I could do was go to the beach or the library, far away from him. Sure, the sanest thing, but as I've said before, I'm not exactly the sanest person around.   
    As I walked through the kitchen again, I noticed a pile of papers on the table that my father had obviously put there. They weren't any of my business, but I couldn't help glancing at them. They were job applications. He had actually gone out and looked for a job, I thought with relief. There were three of them; one was for a night watchman position for one of the nearby factories, another was for security for the big mall in North Nausten. That one had been ruthlessly torn up, I noticed with a wince.   
    The third one, sitting on the top of the pile and already half filled in, was for an open position at the steel works. I peeked into the living room and found my dad exactly where I knew he would be, in his chair, but to my surprise, he didn't have the television on. Even more surprising, although he did have a drunken flush over his cheeks, and there was a glass bottle of what looked like whiskey on the floor next to him, he didn't have any drink in his hand and the bottle looked pretty full. He was slumped in the chair, a hand on his face, pinching the bridge of his nose. His face was twisted up with weariness and exhaustion and, above all, frustration.  
    I tried to put myself in his place, how I would feel if I had lost the only job that I had ever had, a job that, as low paying as it had been, had made a respected member of the community. I tried to imagine what it would feel like, to go to those places on those job applications and interview for a job, to go from being a member of the town workforce to just a junk laborer, at the very best, because I knew that my father had too much pride to even consider being a mall cop or a night watchman unless he was completely desperate. Not that working at the steel plant was much better. I couldn't imagine how humbling that was, losing what little future you had in the course of one day, how embarrassed he must feel.   
    I felt ashamed of myself in that moment. I had been worrying about such juvenile things while my father had been putting aside his pride and hopes for settling for a shit job, just so he could pay our bills. I didn't even feel angry that he had gone out drinking afterwards, not with that worn look on his face. I wanted to go to him and hug him tightly and tell him that it would be ok, that I was proud of him, that I knew how painful all of this was, but I didn't dare. I couldn't even hug my father without worrying that he would break my jaw for it.   
    I slid my hand in my pocket and felt the construction company business card, cupping my hand around it. Maybe... maybe if I took it, depending on how much more money it gave us... maybe it would give us a tiny bit of breathing room, just enough for Dad to look a little bit harder and find a better job than a steel worker.   
    "Dad?" I called out to him softly, still not quite sure of his mood. I was used to gauging his anger, not his depression.  
    He lifted his head and looked over at me. His grey eyes were hard and cold and full of loathing, and bloodshot. I was already starting to doubt speaking to him, watching him carefully, waiting for the moment when he would stand up and come after me, but I bulled my way forward even when he didn't speak to me or acknowledge my presence with anything more than that icy glare.   
    "Um, I just wanted you to know," I stammered, "someone on Mr. Lorathe's crew offered me a job. He says it pays better than what I'm currently making at my other jobs. I thought it might be a good idea to take it, until you find something-"  
    I immediately stopped when that hard stare turned into a cruel sneer.  
    "Yeah? And what do you want from me?" he jeered, slowly standing up, "A pat on the head? You want me to be thankful and congratulate you?"  
    His words stung because there was some truth to that. I had felt kind of proud about getting offered that job, a chance to help my father out, and some part of me, the childish part that still wanted his approval about things, still wanted that pat on the head and wanted to make my father happy, hurt as he threw it back in my face.  
    "Are you mocking me?" he accused harshly, "Making fun of your loser of a father because you just got offered a job out of fucking thin air while I have to scrape and beg?!"  
    He swiped up the bottle of whiskey and took a swig from it, like some kind of automatic compulsion. He wiped his lips and screwed the cap back on, taking a step towards me. I, in just as much of an reflexive move, took a step back in fear from him, feeling one of the kitchen chairs at my back.  
    "No!" I protested while my instincts screamed at me to stop talking to him and just run, "I just wanted to help you and mom out-"  
    "We don't need your fucking help!" he snarled at me, "Useless piece of trash like you, why would we ever need your help?! If you dropped dead right now, we would get along just fine without you! Hell, we would be better off! So you can take your job that was just _offered_ to you, out of nowhere like you're so _fucking_ special, and shove it up your ass! You _and_ your mother! You're just like her, thinking you're better than me because I got fired... the both of you can just go to hell!" something truly ugly settled on his red face and he suddenly bellowed at me, "Get the fuck over here while I'm talking to you!"  
    I bolted. The look on his face was enough to convince me of the mood that he was in at that point, the kind of pain and damage that he wanted to do to me. I spun, my bad leg protesting, but not cramping up just yet. I grabbed the chair behind me and knocked it over, blocking his path to me. I only a second to wish that I had left the front door open to give me an escape. That had been sloppy. I was faster than my father, but I wasn't that fast, and I knew that I was not going to make it far before he caught up with me, especially with my injury. The basement door, however, was wide open and I ran to it. Behind me, slowly realizing that I was fleeing, my father let out an enraged noise that almost sounded like a roar. I could hear him chasing after me, could hear him tripping over the chair and throwing insults as he almost fell.   
    I almost made it completely down the basement steps before a mix of a loose floorboard and my leg finally seizing up on me did me in. I tripped and fell down the rest of the steps, thankfully only a few feet. I slammed my knee into the concrete floor, but through some miracle, I only bruised it and skinned it a tiny bit. That amount of pain was nothing compared to my fear of my father catching me and I rolled back to my feet, stumbling into the far, dark corner of the basement.   
    I heard my father pounding down the steps, not bothering to hit the light switch as he came down in his rage. It was the lack of light that would end up saving me. I dove behind a full body mirror that my parents had stored down there, wedging it up against the wall and curling up into a ball under it. I tucked my legs as far against my body as I could, hoping and praying that my father wouldn't be able to see my feet and thanking every deity that I could name that I wasn't as lanky as Trowa.   
    "Where the fuck are you?!" my father screamed as he got to the bottom of the stairs, missing the loose board somehow, "Huh, where the **_fuck_** are you?!"  
    I heard glass break as he rooted around for me, toppling over old furniture, but on the opposite side of the basement from where I was hiding. I felt myself shake with every noise that he made, every scream, every loud pant.  
    "Come out **_now_** , you piece of shit! Do you hear me?! I am your father and I am ordering you to come out right now! If you do, maybe I won't beat the crap out of you, but if you don't, if I find you," he laughed hoarsely, this coarse and horrible sound, "Even God won't help you if I do!"  
    I buried my face in my knees, biting down on the denim of my jeans in case my breathing was making any kind of noise. I knew this song and dance, his promises that if I did what I was told, then he wouldn't hurt me, and I knew that that promise was shit. I was going to make him work for it if he wanted to drag me out and send me to the same emergency room that he had sent my mother.   
    "Duo!" he roared in frustration and I heard something else shatter, "You think either of you could survive without me?! You and your mother! You wouldn't last a fucking **_second_** without me here, you little prick!"   
    Something large crashed to the ground and I heard him kick at it, splintering it. I heard him scream again and something crashed against the far wall from me. I felt something wet hit me and something else cut my neck. From the smell and explosion of glass shards, I realized it was the bottle of whiskey.  
    "Fine then, you useless fuck!" he laughed again, "You can stay down here in the dark for the last of your life for all I care. Ungrateful, faggoty brat! Stay down here and starve to death!"  
    He kicked something viciously, then stumbled back up the steps. The door slammed shut, making the walls and stairs shake and cutting off what little light I had had. I waited for the sound of him coming back for a second round, since he knew that I was trapped like a damned rat down there, but he didn't. He was too drunk to bother to search the entire basement for me. I had been saved by the basement clutter and my father's laziness. I could have laughed, but it only would have come out hysterically.   
    I took a shaky, deep breath instead and very, very carefully, crawled out from under the mirror. There were glass and wood shards all over the floor and I felt a few of them cut my knees, but not seriously. When I was sure that I found an area of the floor that was clean from debris, I stood up, cursing the fact that I was only wearing socks. Another thing that I should have done before confronting my father: put on my sneakers. You would think that after sixteen years of this shit, I would have gotten better at thinking ahead. I shuffled slowly forward to where I knew the steps were, keeping my feet flat on the ground so they were pushing the glass and splinters instead of pressing down on them. I still cut myself a few times and felt a few of the splinters dig into my feet, but I made it to the stairs without seriously hurting myself, beyond almost tripping over overturned pieces of furniture.   
    Our basement steps are a nightmare, the one thing that my dad never gets around to fixing, full of loose nails and floorboards. My trek up them was cautious and almost painfully slow. Every time a floorboard creaked loudly under my feet, I paused, shaking with terror that that noise was going to alert my father, but I couldn't hear him at all above me. I kept a tight, white-knuckled grip on the railing, just in case a step collapsed on me, and reached the door. I found the door knob in the dark and, steeling myself, I quietly turned it.  
    It was locked. The bastard had locked me in the basement. I felt my own fit of rage swell in me and I had to quell the urge to kick or punch the door down. That would bring him down on my head if nothing else would. I was locked in the dark in a basement full of broken glass, with no food or water or light or anything and there was no way in hell my father was going to let me out. I was trapped.  
    "Don't panic, don't panic," I chanted at myself, trying to calm my nerves, "It's not a big deal."  
    I took several more deep breaths and reason slowly started to leak through my fear. The lock on the basement door was old and rusted. It wouldn't take very much at all to pick it, all I needed was either something straight to fit through the side of the door and jimmy it open or a paper clip to work through the hole in the knob to undo the lock. Easy. I had an entire basement worth of crap, there had to be something like that down there. The hard part, I realized, was not going to be getting the door open, it was going to be sneaking past my father and out of the house. What if he was in the kitchen when I got the door open? There was no way that I was going to get past him.   
    "One thing at a time," I muttered to myself.  
    Being even more careful this time, partially because I didn't trust my luck and partially because I had already tripped on a floorboard once, I descended the steps. When I reached the bottom, I used my foot to find the little path I had made and made my way back to the mirror. I felt around the back of it for the wire that had let it hang from a wall once upon a time and unhooked it. It would do nicely and it was the best tool that I was going to find without risking hurting myself in the dark.   
    Solo had taught me well. Our archaic, shitty lock only took a few minutes of me manipulating the wire before I managed to get it unlocked again. I would have something more than a job proposal to thank him for when I saw him again. The easy part over, I took a deep breath, preparing myself for what I was going to do when I got that door open. I mulled over my options and hesitated, but I knew that if my father was in the kitchen, then I was screwed and there was absolutely nothing I would be able to do about it.   
    'Just do it,' I told myself and turned the knob with painful slowness and opened the door just a teeny, tiny crack, wincing at the squeak that damned door had always gave my entire life in that house. I peeked through the crack, fully expecting my father's enraged face to be there, but I could only see a sliver of the kitchen. I could hear the television very faintly, but I refused to let myself relax, even when I dared to open the door enough for me to slip through and didn't see my father anywhere.   
    I crept into the kitchen, feeling like an intruder in my own home. My heart was beating frantically and I could feel myself shaking again, but forced it to stop through sheer willpower. I might need a steady hand if my dad ended up not being where I thought he was. I moved along the far wall, slow and careful, until I could see into the living room. He was there, sitting in his chair with a beer in his hand. I felt this incredible tidal wave of rage fill me at the mere sight of him. He didn't even see me there, glaring at him. The chair was angled just enough that unless he turned his head, he wasn't going to notice if I slipped past him. Still, looking at him made me feel equal parts anger and terror.  
    I hated him right then. Truly hated my father. He was the reason why my heart felt like it was going to explode with fear, the reason why I had to sneak out of my house to avoid getting beaten. He was the reason why I even needed the same job that he had flipped out at me over. He was the reason why Mom was still in the hospital. I glanced over at the frying pan that was sitting innocently in the drying rack next to the sink. I had the sudden urge to grab it, sneak behind him, and hit him as hard as I could with it. I could knock him out with it, maybe even give him a concussion, and then I wouldn't have to sneak past him. I could get the upper hand, for the first time in my life, and show him how it felt to be hit.   
    But I wouldn't. I knew that, as scared and mad as I was, I couldn't hit him. I was so pathetic, I couldn't even hit the man that was always hitting me. Part of the reason was that, even with a weapon like that in hand, I was still frightened of him. But mostly, even through my hate and rage, I still loved him and I just couldn't see myself doing something like that. Instead, I slunk like a cat to the front door, adrenaline coursing through me, so sure that he was going to see me. My heart wouldn't stop racing the entire time that I slipped my sneakers on and quietly opened and closed the door.  
    Seeing the sky and the brilliant morning sun was like a miracle. I felt like I had just walked through a fucking war zone, and I guess that I had. I should have been covered in bruises and broken bones, but I had managed to get out of there unscathed for the most part, and I wasn't sure why and how. I wouldn't question a miracle though and started to walk north, my back twitching and itching, waiting to hear his bellowing voice or the sound of him running after me.   
    When I got as far away from my house as I dared, I found a bench and sat down to take a look at my feet. I had a couple of splinters that I had to pull out, and a few cuts from glass, but nothing that needed medical attention, so I put my shoes back on and kept walking. I didn't have my library card with me, or any money, so I walked to the beach. It was disgustingly nice out, one of those straggler Summer days that loiter around in the Fall for the sole purpose of getting your hopes up right before the pre-Winter chill settled in. The air was warm and there was this peaceful, light breeze. That bright sunlight seemed to mock me and my depression.   
    It was low tide when I walked onto the beach and the boardwalk and first mile of the beach was crowded with people desperate to get what use of the place they could before the warm weather left us for the next six months. Teenagers lingered on the boardwalk even at that hour and parents laid out on towels near the dunes, watching their kids as they played in the wet sand and small pools that the tide had left behind, digging around for crabs and making sandcastles that were just going to get washed away in an hour.   
    I resented all of them just for being near me. I wanted to be alone. I wanted to cry. I wanted... I wasn't even sure, but being surrounded by people with their families and friends only reminded me of how very alone I was. They were there to enjoy themselves, I was there because my father had hunted me like an animal, had wanted to hurt me just because I had unintentionally wounded his pride. I had tried to help and he had wanted to break me for it. I hated everything. I hated him for treating me like that. I hated Relena for taking away my only support. I hated Quatre for betraying me.   
    Most all, I hated myself for being weird and abnormal, for falling for a boy that I had every reason to hate instead of the one boy that might have been interested in me, for not protecting what I had, for not being strong enough to make my father stop, for always making him so angry, for not being able to protect my mother, for not being able to make any friends and keep them, for being gay, for always being weak and useless to everyone around me.  
    By the time that I reached the stone and sand mound on the beach, far away from the boardwalk and it's noise to where there were few, if any, people, I was in a black mood that threatened to pull me down like a riptide. I walked to the very end of the mound and sat down, looking into the water below. It was low and almost flat and just looked unnatural to me. I had the urge to pitch myself off of my perch and into those cold waters, but it was fleeting. I just stared down into them, my mind a hive of angry wasp-thoughts. I wanted to shut it all off. I wanted to sleep, really sleep, like how I used to, instead of the strained, nightmarish, insomniac way that I do now.   
    I don't know how long I sat there, my legs dangling over the edge and my hands lifeless in my lap, just staring at nothing and feeling like I was stuck in some dark void. I didn't even notice when someone's shadow fell over me.  
    "What the hell are _you_ doing here?" a very familiar and hated voice asked me in disdain.  
    I looked behind me and saw Heero standing there, his arms folded across his chest and glaring at me like I was the worst person in the world. My heart thumped painfully in my chest seeing him, but I couldn't decipher it. Was I excited to see him because I liked him? Was he making me anxious because I was afraid of my feelings for him? Did it hurt because of that icy glare? Or was it just out of hatred for him, for the person that had brought me more pain that I didn't need, more weakness? I looked back towards the water, ignoring him and hoping that he would just go the hell away. I was too tired and too stressed to deal with him and his shit, especially since Relena was probably in tow.   
    "Get out of here," I heard him snarl at me, "This is my spot!"  
    I heard myself laugh and to me, it sounded not altogether sane. I looked back at him again, my stare going as cold and hated as his.  
    "Your spot?" I sneered, "I've been coming to this beach since I was a toddler. _You_ just moved here, and I got here first. Why don't you go the fuck away?! Just because you're rich, it doesn't mean that you fucking own a public stretch of beach!"  
    His nostrils flared and he flushed from embarrassment.   
    "What are you doing here anyway?" he growled, gritting his teeth in frustration, "Don't you have anything better to do than stink up the place?"  
    I felt myself flush, feeling a stab of pain in my chest at his insult. I realized that I did stink, from the sweat of my fear, the mildew of the basement, and the whiskey that had splashed me. Why did it matter, I thought in anger at myself. I hated him! He was an asshole and even if I had a crush on him, it wasn't like I needed his approval, he was never going to like me. So why did it hurt so much when he said things like that?  
    "Don't you?" I shot back, feeling my rage starting to rise, "There's miles of beach for you to terrorize. I know that Relena's family has a stretch of private beach that they own, so why don't you go there so my stench doesn't bother you?"  
    That came out a bit more bitter than I had wanted it to.   
    "I'll go where I want to," he snapped and very pointedly sat down on the opposite edge of the mound.  
    There was a good couple feet between us, but he made a big show of scooting over to the far end. I wondered, if I moved closer to him, if he would let himself fall off just to get away from me. He sat stiffly, keeping his arms crossed over his chest, and looked as far from the bully that he was as possible. He looked like a child, pouting over not getting his way. It should have irritated me, but it amused me. I felt... lighter, I guess. It was cute, the way he looked just then and I cursed myself for being stupid.   
    I should leave, I realized. I should do what he said and just get up and go somewhere else. It was dangerous, being near him, and I didn't want to feel that way anymore, like I was shaking when I wasn't, like I... like I wanted things that I couldn't name, like I was hot when I wasn't. But I didn't. I couldn't. All of my common sense fled me with him there next to me and I couldn't find the resolve to get out of there. I told myself that it was just out of spite, because I didn't want him to think that he could just order me around. And he could. He wasn't that much bigger than me, but he was stronger, and all he had to do was beat me up or try to push me over the edge, but he didn't. He didn't even seem to realize that he could do that, something that Relena and Zechs would have done automatically.   
    It was a lie, though. I didn't stay to prove that I wouldn't be terrorized by him. I stayed because I wanted to be by him. I didn't understand my feelings, they baffled me, but I felt drawn to him for some reason. Being next to him, as pissy and irritating as he was, made me feel warm. It made me feel something besides depression, at the same time that it hurt me. I didn't understand how I could feel that way just by sitting near him. I was just beginning to understand how fucked up love is.   
    "Your town always like this?" he said suddenly after we had lapsed into several minutes of stony, grudging silence and he sounded like he wanted to be just about anywhere else, talking with anyone else.  
    "Like what?" I asked cautiously.  
    I had this surreal feeling then about who was talking to me and the situation that I was finding myself in. I wondered if I was dreaming all of this.   
    "Boring. And fucking cold," he grounded out, rubbing his arms.  
    I snorted.  
    "I don't know where you're from, but this is warm this time of year," I informed him with a bite to my voice, trying to sound like I didn't want to be speaking with him, either, "And Nausten is always boring. We're a small town, there isn't much to do here. If you're looking for entertainment, you're better off looking at Hope. I'm sure someone like you has a car."  
    And I bet his car was shiny new and cost more than my house did, I thought bitterly. Why the hell was I speaking to someone like him? I bet he thought that living in Nausten was horrible, just some back water town filled with hicks. I was surprised when he was silent for awhile and didn't rant about how much he hated this town.  
    "Florida," he said and for the first time, his voice didn't have any hate or resentment in it, but his tone was soft and I thought there was a bit of longing to it.  
    "Huh?" I asked stupidly, not understanding.  
    "You said that you don't know where I came from," he explained, and to my amazement, his voice remained soft and he didn't snap at me for asking a stupid question, "I moved here from Florida."  
    Despite myself, those feelings of hate and bitterness at him melted away and I felt myself drawn into the conversation. Later, I would realize that it was the first conversation like that that I had had since I had broken up with Trowa. But talking with Heero that day had, oddly, not felt anything like talking to Trowa, despite the fact that Heero and I hated each other and the conversation had been grudging at best. It had felt like talking to Quatre.   
    "Orlando?" I asked and despite myself, couldn't keep the interest out of my voice.   
    When I had been really little, back before I had stopped looking at my future with trepidation and could have hopes and dreams that didn't just make me sad with longing, I had dreamed of visiting Orlando one day. Not because of Disneyworld or anything like that, like most kids do. Even at a young age, I had understood just how poor my family was and Disneyworld and rollercoasters hadn't held much attraction for me.   
    Nausten, in case you haven't realized it yet, is not what I would call a warm and inviting place to live. While we do have some nice Summers, and Winters here aren't as bad as they are up North, our Winters are still long and even during the Spring, things can be chilly. I remember looking at pictures of Orlando when I had been young and being fascinated with it's palm trees and beaches with water that looked like sea glass and thinking that it must be a wonderful, warm place to live. I had wanted to know what it felt like to walk around in shorts all the time and be able to go to the beach and swim in that crystal water where you could see the bottom sand and never have to wonder if it was going to be warm enough.   
    "No," he confessed, "Boca Grande."  
    "Never heard of it."  
    "It's pretty far away from Orlando," he told me and this time I could definitely hear a longing and for that single moment, I saw a side to him that I wondered if Relena even knew about, a boy who was homesick, "It's on the lower West side of the state, on Gasparilla Island," my eyes went wide, trying to imagine what it would be like to live on an island, "It was small, smaller than Nausten, actually. But Boca Grande's economy is a lot better than Nausten's."  
    I imagined him growing up on some small island with white beaches, this peaceful, hot place that was never cold, never dull. It was no wonder why he was tanned, if I lived in a place like that, I would never go inside.   
    "Why in the hell would you move to a place like this, then?" I blurted out in confusion, "Did your parents piss off the wrong people or lose their jobs or something?"  
    I hadn't meant to say any of that, I had just been wondering out loud, but his open, honest face immediately turned back into stone and he looked angry and also guilty for some reason.  
    "That's not your fucking business," he snapped, "What would you know of it anyway? Relena told me about you and your family, how you're white trash and never going to leave Nausten. If your parents lost their jobs, no one would notice, there's no where for your family to go but up."  
    My temper flared. I remembered, not my father's fury or even my fear from that morning, but that image of him sitting in his chair, his back bent, his face weary, and I felt furious on his behalf. What right did someone like Yuy have to make jabs against my family? He was just a spoiled brat who would never know what it felt like to run out of food, to miss out on paying a bill, to have his power or heat shut off. He would never know what it was like to scrape by, to constantly worry money and what was happening in his parents' lives. My mom and dad worked their asses off to keep our house, and he thought it was funny to make fun of us?  
    "Yeah, you're right," I sneered, "I can't afford to look after an expensive, pampered mutt. Where is the bitch, anyway?"  
    His face went red hot at my jibe.  
    "Kanuck isn't a bitch," he snapped, "And my dog doesn't concern you. I came out here to be alone."  
    "I wasn't talking about your dog," I shot back.  
    His blush darkened as I saw true anger enter his expression.  
    "Don't you ever call her that!" he yelled and I tensed, waiting for him to hit me.  
    But he didn't. He didn't even stand up or push me.  
    "I can call the person who makes my life a living hell whatever I like," I said testily, still waiting for a blow.  
    But as he glared at me, little by little he deflated until he looked away.  
    "She doesn't need me to look after her," he muttered, but I couldn't tell if he was displeased about that or not.   
    I studied him while he wasn't looking at me, trying to understand him. Pretty much any guy would have beaten the shit out of me for calling their girlfriend a bitch and a mutt. But there I was, without a mark on me and I just didn't get it. He had gotten angry, but nearly as angry as he should have. I wondered if it was really because of what he had said, that Relena didn't need him looking after her. That was true, but she would have been pretty gleeful to hear that her boyfriend had beaten me up.  
    We fell into this awkward silence then, neither of us speaking to the other, but neither of us leaving, either. The silence was awkwardly broken after several minutes by Heero's growling stomach of all things. I couldn't help the brief, snort of a laugh that bubbled out of me and felt horrified when it did. Heero glanced at me, but didn't make fun of me or take offense by it.  
    "Any good places to eat around here?" he asked me gruffly, "That aren't those greasy stands on the boardwalk?"  
    I couldn't help raising an eyebrow at that. If Heero thought that the restaurants and food stands on the boardwalk were bad, I would have loved to see his reaction to the dives that I worked at.   
    "I don't know why I'm asking you," he amended with a sneer, "Not like you can eat at any decent restaurants."  
    It was meant to be an insult, even if his tone lacked the cruelty that I was used to. It felt like he was trying too hard to steer the conversation in a certain way, to be the bully that I was expecting out of him, but his jeer had lacked any kind of bite to it. I shrugged. I hated that I was poor, but I wasn't going to deny it.  
    "True," I confessed, "The nicest place that I've ever been was Charlie's and my friend paid for the meal."  
    "I've been there," he said, "Relena hated it."  
    She would, I thought bitterly. To me, a place like that was more than I could afford, but to Relena, it was too common. I had no doubt that she was used to five star restaurants and eating at places that required reservations or just throwing her name around would get her a table. A place like Charlie's that catered to families and teens wasn't good enough.   
    "It was nice," Heero admitted, to my surprise, "They have really great steaks."  
    We both froze as someone running with a black lab passed behind us, moving further down the beach, only relaxing when they were out of sight. I wondered at my skittishness. I could understand Heero not wanting to be seen with me, but it wasn't like we were doing anything bad. We weren't even having a friendly chat or anything, just both too stubborn to leave and not wanting to pass the time in complete silence. But when I looked back at our conversation, I realized in amazement that we had not only been talking for quite some time, despite the insults that we had thrown at each other, we hadn't been sniping the entire time. At some points, it had even been comfortable. I had even felt... happy? Content? I'm not sure there's a word for what I was feeling right then. At least until I realized that I really had no clue how long we had been talking for.  
    "What time is it?" I asked him.  
    "11:30," he told me, looking at his wrist watch, which looked remarkably affordable, something that any teenaged boy would wear, but probably wasn't  
    "Shit!" I swore and scrambled to my feet.  
    I had gotten so absorbed with talking to my crush slash bully that I hadn't kept my mind on the time. I had almost been late for work.   
    "Well, you can have _my_ spot to yourself," I said as I started to walk away.  
    "Hey!" he called and I looked back at him.   
    "Stay out of my spot," he smirked.  
    I felt myself flush again, but it wasn't out of anger. If I had seen that smirk, and just that smirk, I would have thought it cruel or mean or teasing, but his words weren't. There was no hate in those words, no anger that I had dared to be in Heero's 'territory.' It had almost sounded like he was teasing and joking around with me, even if I knew that he wasn't.   
    "Oh, fuck off," I tossed back at him as I turned away, puzzled by our entire exchange and unable to bring any heat to my own words.  
    I started to walk, but I couldn't help one last look back. Heero was no longer looking at me, but off to the side at nothing, his blue eyes clouded in some deep thought. He didn't look angry at me telling him to fuck off, and he didn't look happy that I was leaving. He looked troubled by some unknown thing, but I couldn't think of a single thing that someone like him would be troubled by.   
    I shook my head at myself and broke out into a run. As I ran towards the pizza restaurant that was my first shift, it came to me that I had just spent close to an hour talking to the boy that I loved over nothing. Small talk. The kind of talk that friends made when they were just comfortable with each other, even if we were far from that. This happy little bubble formed in my heart and I prodded and poked at it mercilessly, trying to get it to pop and go away. But it didn't. It stayed rooted there, like a parasite. I would end up playing that stupid conversation over and over and over in my head until the following day, when my father would replace it with a black glob of terror and disgust.  
  
*****  
  
    "How is it that," Solo said as he helped me lift a large box filled of packed ice and raw fish off the conveyor belt and into the grocery truck that was parked in the loading bay, "your leg isn't nearly as shitty today, and you look _worse_?"  
    I could only grunt for a second as we laid the crate down, my thin arms shaking with the weight.  
    "I didn't sleep last night," I admitted, "Insomnia."  
    He raised one gold eyebrow at that and we pushed the crate until it was snug against the others in the truck, turning to get at another one.  
    "You really need to take care of yourself, kid," he urged, sounding worried about me.  
    I couldn't help but think of Heero.  
   _"Are you alright?"_  
    I shook off the memory and focused on helping Solo with another crate of fish.  
    "I have problems sleeping, it's not like I have cancer," I grumbled.  
    I winced as we loaded the box, my arms starting to ache.  
    "Let's take a breather," Solo said, but I knew that it was for my benefit, "My back is starting to hurt."  
    I gratefully leaned against the truck, taking a moment to rest my arms and wishing that I was built more like Zechs instead of the scrawny mess that I was. Solo sat down on a nearby table and pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket. I watched as he took one out and rolled it between his fingers. I knew that he wouldn't light it, we weren't allowed to smoke while we were working, but it was like a compulsion with him. He would roll them and chew on them, but only light them when he was on break.   
    "Um, Solo, about that job you offered me," I said cautiously, immediately catching his attention, "Just how serious is it? I mean, if I take it, do I have to go to interviews, or did you mean that if I was interested, I could just have it?"  
    "I already told my boss that you were interested," he grinned, looking every bit like a mischievous fox.   
    "I told you that I didn't know if I was!" I protested.  
    He shrugged.  
    "Looked pretty interested to me, and it always helps to get the ball rolling. Boss says that if you're willing to work, and if you're as hard of a worker as I say, then the job is waiting for you. It'll be under the table, so if you slack off, he'll sack you quick, but he's willing to try you out."  
    I chewed on my lip. The job was waiting for me, all I had to do was give the word. I wondered at my luck again. I thought of my father, that weary look on his face, and I thought about how furious he had gotten when I had told him that I had opportunities. Just how angry would he be if he caught me at this job? I suddenly realized that I didn't even care about that anymore. I didn't care about getting caught or if he would approve. But I did care about the thought of him taking all of my money again, and what he might do with it. I cared about how he had chased after me, those awful things he had said in a fit of anger. I was working three jobs just to help him, and he didn't even give a shit.  
    Fuck him, I thought. Fuck him and his unemployment and his beer and his rage. Why the hell should I help him, make him feel less stressed when he didn't even appreciate it?   
    "Yeah, I'm willing, too," I told Solo with conviction.  
    His grin grew wider.  
    "Great! I'll tell them you'd like to start... uh..."  
    "Two weeks," I decided, "Just so I have the time to quit one of my other jobs."  
    "Sounds like a plan."  
    And it did. I flexed my arms, feeling some of the ache subsiding. Now I just needed to decide which job I was going to quit and how I was going to hide my new employment from my father.  
  
End Part 3  
  
Well, this part came out a lot faster than the last one, lol. Fair warning, the next chapter is the start of a darker turn for this story, but not an unexpected one.   
  
Thanks to everyone who has reviewed, as usual ^_^


	24. Chapter 5 Part 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duo discovers something that will change his relationship with his father forever.

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 5  
Part 4  
  
  
    I thought that things couldn't get any worse. At the very least, I thought that life was done throwing curve balls at me. After finding out that I liked Heero, that I really was a freak who could fall for another boy while still not wanting anything to do with sex, I thought that that was the most shocking thing that could happen to me in my life. Even if my father got worse, more violent and more chaotic, it wouldn't surprise me. Then Sunday came.  
    I should have known. No matter how shitty things get, they can always get worse. But I'm still having a hard time wrapping my mind around it. Here I am, sitting on a park bench with a curtain cord holding my jeans up, too scared shitless to go home and wondering about my own sanity. And I still feel like it's all just a nightmare that I'm having. I can't even deny the fact that the only reason why I'm writing this down when I really, really don't want to is it's something to do to keep me from making any decisions yet.  
    I feel like I'm going crazy. I'm shaking as I write this, but at this point, I just feel numb. I'm even frightened of writing about what happened on Sunday, even if I know that it won't make anything worse. I don't know if anything can make it worse. If this is a dream, I need to find a way to wake up, right now.  
    I'm stalling. I know that. I imagine that, if I were talking to a shrink instead of writing in this stupid journal, they would say that I'm avoiding what I need to write about because I think that if I don't write it down or say it out loud, then I can pretend like it never happened. Well, that's wrong. I can't deny it because I can't stop thinking about it. I haven't for a single second.  
    Okay, okay, Sunday. The day started out alright. I hadn't thought much about going home in the early hours of the morning after my shift at the factory. I wasn't scared of what my father might do to me or had even considered that maybe I should spend the night somewhere else, until my father cooled down. I knew two truths about my father and his drunken rages: one, if it was something that he was truly, truly enraged about, he was going to keep a grudge well after he had sobered up, and two, my father didn't just drink himself into some kind of anger stupor and that was the end of it. He would drink enough to nullify what little control he had over his anger, something would set off his rage, and then he would only drink harder, typically to the point of blacking out.  
    I was planning on that when I snuck into the house after work, that he would be blacked out and dead to the world. Even if I woke him up, I didn't think that he would be in any shape to do anything about it. I wished that my father's unemployment had some kind of silver lining to it, that our approaching money problems would get him to stop drinking like that as soon as his beer fund ran out. But I was quickly realizing his and my mother's priorities, that things like food and bills were actually second to their addiction and no amount of common sense was going to make them stop. If Dad ran out of beer, he was going to dip into our grocery budget to buy more, and when _that_ money ran out, Pat would just supply him with more, if he hadn't already done that. Nothing was going to change.  
    Sure enough, when I got into the house without making a single noise, I found my father in the same exact position that I had left him in: in his chair with the television on, dead asleep. He was even in the same clothes that he had had on when he had showed up yesterday. He had a can of beer cradled against one arm, tilted dangerously to the point of nearly spilling. It wouldn't be the first time that that had happened and usually I would sneak in there to get it from him before it happened, but at that point, I didn't give a shit if he woke up covered in the rank stuff. Let him clean up his own mess for once.  
    As I went up the stairs, I felt a strong disgust for him. I doubted that he had moved much while I had been gone beyond getting a refill and taking a piss. There were no more dirty dishes in the kitchen, which meant that he hadn't eaten anything. I wondered if he had even noticed that I had escaped from the basement, or if he had forgotten about me and would have left me there to rot all day and night. For just how long would he have forgotten about me in his alcoholism? Yesterday, today, until he needed to use the basement again or until the chores piled up?  
    That was both a curse and a blessing because I was sure that if he saw me tomorrow morning, he wouldn't even be angry with me about what had happened anymore. Unless he was significantly angry, he would just forget that it had ever happened. Don't get me wrong, he would remember what he had done. He might not remember _why_ and he would forget his anger, but he would remember enough to be pissy and grudging towards me, but not enough to hit me for leaving the basement. I hoped. I could never tell with him, but I wasn't going to avoid him forever on the chance that he was going to be angry.  
    My mother still wasn't home. That worried me just as much as my father's temper. It had been four days since my father had attacked her, how could she still be in the hospital? Just how badly had he hurt her? If she didn't come back home tomorrow, I decided, I was going to call the hospital and see what the hell was wrong. I had this horrible, paranoid feeling in my chest that she had died and everyone was lying to me.  
    Despite all of my worries, I slept pretty well and deeply, exhausted from my day and not having slept the night before. I usually toss and turn and wake up several times during the night before finally giving up trying to get any kind of prolonged sleep, but that morning I nodded off at two am and when I opened my eyes again, it was seven. I almost always have nightmares after my father and I fight like we had on Saturday, but my dreams were almost pleasant. I don't remember them well, but I remember that Heero was in them. What little I remember, we were walking down a street, not in Nausten, but somewhere warm with a cloudless sky above and palm trees around us. We weren't talking, but I felt peaceful. Waking up to reality felt harsh after that and I felt a sharp, biting pain in my chest, knowing that our little conversation on the beach had been a fluke. When I saw him again on Monday, I knew he would go back to hating my guts and laughing as Relena messed with me.  
    It was still too early for me to get ready for work, so I brushed Pepper's fur with one of the cat brushes that Mrs. Liddle had given me, getting rid of her shed fur. I tried to do it at every other day so she wouldn't get any hairballs and so far, it seemed to be working. My cat seemed to enjoy it and didn't squirm even when I brushed out her underbelly, kicking at the handle with her back legs playfully. Just being with her and playing with her put me in a good mood and I hoped that my morning was going to be immensely better than yesterday's.  
    I braved the kitchen downstairs for something to eat, catching my father on his way out the door. He was in a rush, gulping down the last of a mug of coffee before leaving. All evidence of last night's stupor was gone and he was wearing the same dark grey suit that he had worn for his job as a detective, but he was wearing a different tie without the gun holster and his badge, he looked less adult somehow, like someone my age, trying to pretend that he was a grownup.  
    I idly wondered what he would do with his gun now, if he was going to keep it just in case, like that stupid joke about guns and condoms (1), or if he would sell it. I hoped that he would, we needed the money more than we needed protection and it would make me feel better. While he had never so much as threatened me with the thing, I felt the same way about that gun that he might, better safe than sorry, although I was on the opposite end. Better not have that gun at all than one day learn that he was willing to use it on me or my mother.  
    There was only one reason why my father would be dressed up like that and rushing out the door early in the morning: he had a job interview. I felt a tiny bit of weight lifted off my shoulders at that and wondered which job it was for. I almost called out 'good luck' to him, but wisely kept silent. He hadn't noticed me at all on his way out and yesterday had taught me a valuable lesson, that even if I was trying to be supportive of him, it was just best not to even mention employment to my father.  
    I enjoyed the solitude of the morning without my parents there, frying a couple of eggs and making up a grocery list that I tacked on to the refrigerator door. I hoped that we would have the money to get half of the things that we needed. My mother had missed so many days of work and I had missed one myself. Things were not going to be very pretty for awhile, but I hoped that as soon as I took that construction job, I could hide some money from my father to buy what we needed.  
    The warm weather of Saturday bled into most of Sunday, before things cooled down that night. For a moment, I thought of Heero's comment about the weather and how miserable he was going to be in the next few months, but shook it off. So I had had a single, decent conversation with the guy, it didn't mean shit. I just had to keep reminding myself of that and stop thinking about him altogether.  
    I put in my two week's notice at the diner. Andre was less than thrilled until I pointed told him that my father needed me to help out at home and he could hire a full time worker for my shifts. He had never liked me very much, and had liked my father even less. Knowing him, he would employ some big-busted woman to do my work so he would at least have something pretty to look at. The man was a pig. It hadn't even been that hard to come to the decision. While I didn't like my job at Sal's Pizza any better, at least Sal wasn't an ass to me.  
    I left the factory at 1:15 am, incredibly sore and tired from unloading crates of cinderblocks for hours. I didn't think that my strained and aching arms could even lift one of our flimsy, kitchen chairs. It wasn't the first time that that had happened. I had hurt my back more times than I can remember at that damned job. I could understand Solo's worry and Lorathe's hesitance in hiring me. Sure, part of it was that he didn't like teenagers and another part was him not liking my dad, but I was a scrawny sixteen year old doing the work of a man like Solo and the other guys that worked there.  
    I could work hard all that I liked, but I just couldn't keep up with them physically. Solo was probably right, that I was going to work myself into an early grave, or at least I was going to fuck my body over in the long run if I kept working physical labor. Although, given the sheer amount of times that my father has broken my bones, some strained muscles were the least of my medical concerns.  
    All of the lights were on in the windows of my house as I walked up to it and I could hear Pat's obnoxiously loud, drunken laughter from the street, making my hair stand up in warning and distaste. I could smell cigarette smoke before I even got to the door and I could hear other people inside, too. It was a familiar smell, from back when my father and Pat had been partners and they would have poker nights with their fellow cops at our house. It seemed like whose house hosted them revolved every week and I always felt a sinking in my gut whenever our turn came around.  
    I was pretty much safe from my father's beatings during poker night, but not from his ire or his coworker's jokes. My dad always expected me to act as a waiter for them, serving drinks and cleaning up after them. They hadn't been around lately and I had hoped that when my father had gotten fired, I would never have to see his cop buddies again. None of them are as bad as Pat is, but together, they just weren't something that I want to deal with. And by that hour, they were sure to be well into their drinking.  
    I didn't really have much of a choice but to go inside, I had school in the morning, although I knew I wasn't going to be getting much sleep with those pricks there, I thought in anger. I wish that I had found a nice bench to sleep on instead of gone into that house that night, but in reality, I don't think that it would have made a difference. What my father did... well, it wasn't a matter of what he did. This wasn't like him locking me in the basement or beating me with a bottle. This was a matter of who he _was_ , a part of himself that hadn't come out yet, but I think had been there for a long time, and it wasn't going to go away in the course of one night.  
    The air in the house was slightly hazy from cigarette smoke and I wrinkled my nose in distaste at the knowledge that that smell would linger around my home for days. I could also smell the thick aroma of beer and cheese, even from the doorway and felt sick. My father was sitting at our kitchen table with Pat and four other men that I recognized from the force: McCullen, Jordan, Laramie, and Dermitt. McCullen was a veteran cop, like Pat, but Jordan had only joined up last year.  
    Laramie and Dermitt had gone through training with my father and acted like they were frat buddies instead of coworkers. Unlike my dad, Pat, Jordan, and McCullen, they happily called themselves bachelors and were always talking about their various lays. My mother called them good for nothing horndogs and male sluts, grown children that hadn't learned how to be adults yet. All five of them made me uneasy. They were playing poker, as usual, and all of them looked pretty sloshed at that point in their evening. Our sink was filled with dirty dishes and there were various empties stashed in the corner by our trash can.  
    "Oh, you cheating whoremonger!" Pat swore as Jordan showed them his hand.  
    "It's not cheating," Jordan said with an arrogant smirk, "just raw talent."  
    "Yeah, I know what _your_ talent is, boy-o," Pat put one hand to his crotch and mimed jerking off.  
    The four of them broke up in loud, almost violent laughter, the kind of laugh that only inebriated people can give out. I didn't get what was so funny about Pat's crudeness. My father was the only one not joining in on the twisted humor. He was sitting back in one of the chairs, the suit jacket that I had seen him wearing that morning thrown over the back of it and his tie dangling, undone from his collar, the two top buttons of his shirt open. He looked bored and almost annoyed by everything.  
    "Speaking of that, where's that nice piece of ass of yours, Maxwell?" Dermitt slurred heavily, making obscene groping mimes with his hands and almost knocking his beer bottle off the table, "I was hoping for a bit of eye candy tonight. Laramie's old lady is a total hag."  
    My right hand curled into a fist of it's own will at the remark about my mother. I thought about Heero and how angry he had gotten when I had called Relena a bitch. Most guys would have decked Dermitt for calling their wife a piece of ass, but my father didn't even look offended on her behalf.  
    "Out," he grumbled and I wondered if he even knew where she was.  
    "Damn," Dermitt shook his head, "Haven't seen Helen since a year after you guys got hitched. She was smokin' hot back then!"  
    "Yeah, back then!" Pat laughed in disdain, "Not so much anymore. Bitch really let herself go."  
    "What, she got fat?" Dermitt asked like it was some kind of travesty and while I certainly didn't like them talking about my mother like she was some kind of whore or a piece of meat to be valued, I had seen pictures of her before she had married my father and I had to agree that she had been gorgeous back then.  
    "Nah," Pat drawled, "She became a crazy, cock stabbing cooze who can't even hold her liquor. She hasn't been much to look at in a decade."  
    "What about your wife?" Laramie asked Pat before taking a long intake from his cigarette, "She usually starts nagging you to come home by now."  
    Pat snorted, this heavy, boarish sound.  
    "She wouldn't stop getting on my case about finding a job, and then she had the gall to get uppity with me for getting her to shut the fuck up about it, so I tossed her to the curb. Divorce'll be finalized in a month or so. Serves her right," he sneered, but there was a hardness to his eyes that told me that he was lying.  
    It didn't take a genius to translate what Pat wasn't saying. Pat had done to his wife the exact same thing that my father had done to my mother when she had yelled at him about losing his job and his wife had left him over it. Was that why Mom wasn't home? Was she leaving us? I didn't know how to feel about that. While I certainly wasn't close to my mother, I felt this weird fear about that thought. 'Leaving us.' Leaving me alone with my father, just the two of us. It wasn't a pleasant thought, but I think that if she decided to do that, a part of me would be happy for her to get out of this miserable family.  
    "Sorry, man," Jordan clapped Pat on the shoulder.  
    "Whatever," Pat grumbled angrily, "Stupid cunt is trying to take half of what I have, even though she hasn't earned a single cent of it! All because I hit her a little! Fucking women..." he pointed a finger at Laramie and Dermitt, "You two got the right idea. Pussy ain't good but for one thing: fucking. Must have been out of my mind marrying that two-bit whore. I'm better off without her, just wish I had figured that out before she decided to take her share out of my hide. It would have been cheaper paying for a whore for the past fifteen years."  
    Despite his obvious intoxication, Pat's eyes were sharp and like a jackal's as he suddenly noticed me standing there in the kitchen doorway.  
    "Speaking of pussy, look who finally turned up," he sneered at me in a way that had me turning red from a mix of embarrassment and anger that I tried to hide.  
    It was too late to try to sneak back out the way that I had come in, so I resigned myself to my fate.  
    "Hi, Dad," I mumbled as I walked into the kitchen.  
    My father's eyes were just as sharp as Pat's as he looked at me, even if they were glassy. I couldn't tell just how drunk it was, if he was just very drunk and could still be reasoned with or if he was severely drunk and I would need to start drafting up escape plans.  
    "Where the hell have you been?" he rasped, his voice heavy and thick.  
    Very drunk, I decided, but quickly entering into the severely drunk territory that my worst nightmares were made up of.  
    "Sorry," I said, somehow managing to keep my exasperation out of my tone, "I had work."  
    Which he knew, of course, and I didn't believe for a second that it had escaped him in his stupor. He was almost on the verge of trying to pick a fight. Those grey eyes narrowed at me, but he didn't move from the chair.  
    "Hey, brat," Pat waved his empty beer bottle at me and that stupid smirk still on his red face, "why don't you make yourself useful for once in your pathetic life and get me another, huh?"  
    I wanted to grab that bottle and break it over his head. I had to literally bite my tongue to keep myself from snapping at him that I would get him another alright, I would shove it right up his pompous ass. This was dangerous, I quickly realized. I was too tired to deal with my father and his 'friends' and I was instantly fearful that I was going to say the wrong thing and test my belief that my father wouldn't hit me in front of an audience.  
    "Sure," I said instead, snagging the empty bottle with a lot more force than I intended.  
    I refilled all of their drinks before my father could order me to do so, hoping that he hadn't contributed a cent to the stash of liquor that I saw in the refrigerator.  
    "Clean up this place," he barked at me, like the mess was somehow my fault, "and make us something to eat since your useless mother couldn't be bothered to come home again tonight."  
    I blinked stupidly for a moment at him. He wasn't the sort of guy who would babble complete nonsense while drunk, which meant my mom wasn't in the hospital anymore after all and he just hadn't bothered to tell me. But she had just had surgery, so where was she? At whatever place she went to when she disappeared sometimes? I felt my anger simmer again at my father's words. I wanted to say that I was tired and needed to get to sleep. Just because he didn't have a job, it didn't mean that the rest of us could lounge around the house all day. I wanted to say to him that he had no right to complain about my mother's absence since _he_ was the one who had hurt her in the first place and I hoped that she would leave him like Pat's wife had done. I wanted to tell him that it was nearly two in the damned morning and he could make his own food.  
    But of course I didn't say any of that because I had some small regard for my life. I just nodded at him and went to go see what we had to eat. Thankfully, the assholes that were in my house hadn't just loaded us up with alcohol that I was sure would keep my father occupied for the next few days, they had brought some snacks, too. I managed to find some ground beef that they had been using for burgers, bacon, a tiny bit of onion and garlic left over, cream cheese, sour cream, some fully stocked condiments including Worcestershire sauce from the burgers, ketchup, and mayonnaise, and an assortment of cheese. I set aside some mozzarella and cheddar and decided to just make them a dip.  
    As my father and his friends played their game and traded stories about cases they had had and girls that they had had sex with as loudly and profanely as they could, I cooked the beef and bacon, sautéed the onion and garlic, added everything together and put it in the oven before starting in on the mess in the kitchen. I collected all of the empties I found around the kitchen and took the trash to the curb, putting a fresh bag in the bin that would end up being full again by morning. By the time the dip was ready after 25 minutes, I had only managed to get about a third of the dishes done. Judging by the state of the cheese and sauce and condiments cemented onto the plates, our 'guests' had been there for awhile.  
    "Oh, man, that smells amazing!" Laramie said when I took the dip out of the oven.  
    I let it cool for a couple of minutes then placed it and a plate of nacho chips that I had found on the only empty spot I could find on the table. The obnoxious pigs wasted no time in digging into the dip and making content noises over it.  
    "This is better than anything my wife could hope to make," Jordan praised through mouth stuffed with cheese and nacho chips, "Your wife teach him how to do this?"  
    My father snorted, looking neither happy nor angry about my cooking skills getting praised.  
    "She's only barely useful in the kitchen," he said, "She can keep things from burning, but that's about it. When we first started to date, she was a pretty good cook, but lately her meals leave a lot to be desired."  
    It was the most that he had said all evening and for a moment, he seemed to come out of his stupor, only to quickly fall back into sullen silence. I gave him a new bottle of beer despite every warning in my head not to keep putting them in front of him and got rid of his empty one. He was really knocking him back and I tried not to wonder just how many of those empties that I had just taken out to the curb had been his.  
    "See, Maxwell," Pat laughed in between bites, and even though my back was to him, I could feel his terrible lewd and repulsive stare on me, "You don't need that bitch around, you just need this fag, he does all the housework anyway better than her. Hell, from the back, without that stupid braid, he looks exactly like Helen did when she was his age, to the fucking letter. His hair is exactly the same! Heck, he's hotter than my bitch ever was. Shouldn't be fuckin' allowed for a boy to look so pretty."  
    As I placed the bottle of beer in front of my father, I felt Pat's large, rough hand grab my ass through my jeans and squeeze hard. I bolted from that sleazy touch like a deer that had just been shot at, my hip bumping into the counter as I put my back to it and stared in shock at Pat. He and my father's other three men burst out in teasing laughter, like Pat had said some great joke or they thought my freaking out was hysterical. My buttock burned from where that piece of shit had touched me. Not a single one of them looked uncomfortable or disturbed that Pat had fondled me, even in ugly jest.  
    But it was the way that my father looked that chilled my blood to ice in my veins. He was staring at me, not in anger at Pat's remark that I looked like a girl or even that his friend had just sexually harassed his sixteen year old son, this look was something else. His grey eyes were clouded over by something more than just the booze and his gaze was intent, not even focusing on the game anymore. It was the same exact look he had given me that one time when I had been thirteen and he had caught me coming out of the shower with my hair down.  
    I remembered how he had smelled like some woman, how drunk he had been. He had touched my hair in amazement, like it was something precious, and then that look had come over him. A look that, I had thought years later, looked so much like Trowa's whenever he had touched me in a way that I hadn't liked... I cut that thought off viciously at the legs like I did every time I had it.  
    I was seeing things, I told myself, I was remembering things wrong. It didn't matter the reason, because it wasn't possible. He was my _father_ , not even a step-father or an adoptive father, he was the man that had brought me into this world and raised me for my entire life and he would never look at me like that. It wasn't even remotely possible. He was just drunk, very, very drunk. Hell, with Pat going on about how I looked exactly like my mother, that was probably who he was seeing, not me. I felt some of my fear ebb away at that realization, but not all of it. I turned and continued to wash the dishes, but my hands were shaking nervously and I could still feel him staring at my back as his friends continued to joke about my looks and how womanly I was.  
    Eventually the conversation moved on from their sexist, lewd comments and to sports and no one was more grateful for that boring topic than I was. I didn't even care anymore that my back was hurting and hands were getting gummy from washing grease and cheese off of things. It took me another twenty minutes to get all the dishes scrubbed clean and onto the drying rack and by that time, I was practically sleep walking, at this weird place of consciousness where half of me was trying to fall asleep in exhaustion and the other half was wired and wide awake, trying to sort through what had just happened at the same time that it was trying to ignore it. I wanted to go to bed if only to forget about the whole mess.  
    "I need to go to sleep," I finally told my father after I had washed the sink and my hands, "I have school tomorrow."  
    "Go, then," he snapped at me in irritation.  
    He looked angry about something and I really didn't think that it had anything to do with my asking to go to bed. But I was relieved to see that from him, it was a hell of a lot more normal than that other look. I didn't have to be told twice, I almost ran out of there and escaped to the sanctuary of my bedroom. I held no illusions that if my father or those other pricks wanted something from me, they wouldn't drag me out of bed, but until then, I wasn't going to stick around to be a source of amusement for the assholes.  
    I checked on Pepper first, always paranoid that one day I would come home to find her dead or that my father had thrown her out of the house, and smiled when I found her curled up, asleep, in her box. At least one of us would get a good night's rest. I changed into the ratty t-shirt and pajama pants that I wear when I sleep, mourning that I didn't have a chance to take a shower, but there was no way in hell that I was going to go back down there of my own, free will. I would have to take one in the morning and just deal with my sweat for the night... err, morning.  
    I laid down on my mattress and closed my eyes, trying to get some sleep. I couldn't even call it real sleep. At three in the morning and needing to wake up in three hours, it would be a nap if anything, but it would be better than nothing. But the sounds of loud laughter and occasional yelling kept me wide awake. I kept finding myself about to drift off, only to be brought wide awake with the reminder that they were still there. It was a hellish thing, getting that close to sleep, but my paranoia and fear of my father and his friends wouldn't let me rest.  
    It was four am when I heard Pat and the three others finally start to filter out of the house. I couldn't even imagine what our neighbors thought about the racket that they had made, but I knew that no one was going to complain about it. I didn't even care about how freaking late it was, or if my father was going to come in to demand I clean up whatever mess that they had left, I just rolled onto my side and squeezed my eyes shut, demanding that I finally fall asleep.  
    "Duo!" my father shouted from downstairs.  
    My eyes shot open and I immediately sat up, wide awake.  
    "Get down here!" he continued to shout.  
    I froze, not knowing what to do. I should go to him, I realized, he would have gotten pissed if I ignored him sober, let alone how he was in that moment, but I couldn't make myself move. I didn't want to go down there and see what he wanted. I thought about that look he had given me and shuddered where I sat. No, I really didn't want to go down there. I shook my head at myself as I heard him call for me again. I was being stupid. That look didn't mean anything! He was just drunk and being an asshole, like usual. But even with that logic, and knowing that I was going to get the shit beaten out of me, I couldn't make myself go downstairs.  
    "Duo, come down here right now, you piece of shit!" my father bellowed from the bottom of the steps.  
    I got out of bed, taking the extra minute to replace my pajama pants with jeans in case I had to make a run for it, and sat behind my desk, my back pressed against the wall, and hugged my knees to my chest. I could feel my heart racing with fear with each and every one of his heavy steps up to my room. I curled my hands into fists to keep them from shaking, making myself small like I thought that I could hide from him somehow. Later, when I thought about the whole mess, I would feel repulsed and angry at my father, but right then, I was just scared shitless. I was sore and tired and felt like I didn't have an ounce of energy to deal with a beating, either in trying to get away with him or trying to defend myself. I don't think that I was exactly thinking sanely at that point in my day, too focused on what I had seen on my father's face and not on his rage.  
    I jumped to my feet when my bedroom door slammed open and my father strode in, looking furious.  
    "You prick," he snarled, looking more like a wolverine than a human being, not even breaking his stride as he almost tripped over my mattress, not paying attention to what he was doing, "You answer me when I'm fucking calling for you, do you hear me?!"  
    His fist lashed out at me, but he was more drunk than I was tired and I was able to dodge it easily. I think that if my back hadn't been aching, if I hadn't been so exhausted and had been moving faster, I could have gotten away from him rather quickly, but he recovered from his aborted punch faster than I did and grabbed my wrist and the front of my jeans to keep me from dodging again, slamming me to the wall with his superior weight. I gasped out as pain shot through my wrist, but I knew that it wasn't broken, just a bad sprain.  
    I struggled, trying in vain to get away from him, the button to my jeans coming off as his grip twisted with my attempts to get away from him. It made this weird 'ting' noise as it hit the floor and I felt disturbed by it and the twin sound of the front of my jeans ripping open at the sheer strength of my father's hold on me for some reason. My dad let go of my damaged wrist to grab at my hair, wrapping some of my braid around his fist and slammed my head into the wall, getting more and more pissed off the more that I moved. The blow wasn't hard enough to give me a concussion, but I still felt dazed for a second, his hard grip making a bunch of my hair come out of my braid, the feeling of my loose hair falling felt strange to me.  
    My father, his face twisted in soundless rage, punched the right side of my face and my head slammed against the wall again. It was only my feelings of self preservation that kept me on my feet as pain burst in my cheek, the side and back of my head. I expected a second blow that never came, ready for him to just beat me to a bloody pulp as he often did when he got into these rages, his inhibitions long gone. But he just... stopped. He never stopped when he was on a roll. I dared to open my eyes through the soft haze of pain and saw him looming over me, his hand still clutching my torn jeans.  
    He had that look on his face. That heated, glazed over look that I was learning to hate with disgust. I couldn't deny it's presence, not there, right in front of me. It was Trowa's look. That look of lust he had given me that had always frightened me. A look of interest and desire. A look that I had seen on my father's face only that one time, three years ago, and a few times when I had been a child and too young to understand why he was looking at my mother that way. A look that had always seemed to spur a fight between them.  
    His heated, stony eyes roamed over my hair and traveled to down my stomach, to the torn gap in my jeans that he had made and that look intensified. A feeling of horror grew in me as I realized, really realized it as more than just some subconscious thing in the back of my head that I couldn't bear to look at. My father... he... he wanted to... with _me_.  
    The feeling of his hand letting go of my jeans, of it touching the bare skin that that tear in them had revealed, of those disturbingly familiar fingers tracing a line over my stomach and around my hip in this intimate, sexualized way had my heart pounding with terror adrenaline and my stomach heaved, wanting to retch in repulsion at the realization of _who_ was touching me like that. It wasn't Trowa. Wasn't some nameless boy or even a nameless girl. It was my dad.  
    Later, I would wonder if he was even seeing me or if he was seeing Mom, when she had been younger and had actually wanted him. I don't think it really matters. At the time, all I could feel was this bastard mix of rage and disgust. My father was looking at me with _lust_ , like I was some woman that he wanted to fuck. My own _father_. I couldn't get past that one thought. He was drunk, that tiny voice in my head reminded me and I didn't even care. I didn't care about his reasons or trying to justify that he was just too out of it to realize what he was doing. He was touching me like Pat had touched me, not as a joke, but with intent.  
    I don't know what I would have done if I hadn't thought of Trowa right then. Would I have just stayed there against that wall and let my father grope me like I was one of his whores? Would I have screamed and hit at him? Would I have tried to talk him out of whatever stupor he was in? Not one of booze, but of want. I don't know. But I do know that suddenly I thought of that time in the abandoned house, when Trowa had tried to rape me.  
    In complete, unthinking and unconscious reflex, I punched my father in the throat. Even though I hadn't had the leverage or anywhere near his strength to hit him very hard, he was as unprepared for it as Trowa had been when I had done that to him, and as unprepared as I had been when my dad had done it to me last week. He completely let of me and sagged, grasping at his throat and hacking for breath.  
    I didn't waste a second trying to hit him again or to see if he was going to be ok, I just ran, daring to grab my book bag on the way out in a move of sense that was pretty miraculous at the time. I think that I only did it because it was right in my path and some part of me knew that if I managed to run out that door, I might never come back through it again.  
    I almost fell down the steps as I reached them, tripping a little on my falling jeans, but I just pushed off on the railing and soared down them, pulling my jeans back up my narrow hips. I couldn't hear my father coming after me, but I shoved my feet into my sneakers in a panic and bolted out of the front door like I assumed that he was.  
    I ran hard and I ran fast down our street, running both from my father and my terror at what had just happened. Actually, I don't think that terror really comes close to describing how I felt. My father's touch still burned on my skin. I could still smell the booze on him, could still see him looking at me lustily, like I was attractive to him. I stopped running as I entered Central Nausten and threw up into a trash can on the sidewalk. I didn't have much in my stomach to throw up, but I couldn't get it stopped even when I started to dry heave.  
    My mind kept trying to dig up my memories, tried to work it over and figure out what the hell had happened, but I refused to let it. Later, I told myself, I would think later, when I was safe, when I could afford to stop. I paused to sit on a bench and opened my book bag, taking stock of what I had on me. Textbooks, my homework, pencils, pens, a calculator, this notebook, a thin hoodie jacket that I had stuffed in there days ago when the weather had become too warm to wear it. It wasn't so warm that day and I put it on, trying to hide my sleep shirt and wishing that I had somewhere that I could shower. I could smell fear, vomit, and sweat on me, but mostly, I wanted to scrub my father's touch off of me.  
    When my lungs stopped feeling like they were trying to crawl up my throat from how long I had been running, I got off the bench and settled for a light jog towards the school. It would be pointless going to the closed library at not even five am and I didn't feel like going to the beach. The sun wasn't up yet. I always found the beach to be rather creepy at night and I didn't want to run into anyone. I knew that there was no way I was going to see Heero that early in the day, but he seemed to like hanging out on the beach and I didn't want to risk it. I couldn't see him, not yet. I was feeling too weak, too vulnerable to deal with him or Relena or Zechs. Or maybe I was just scared that, in the nervous, anxious state that I was in, I was going to end up trying to drown myself.  
    It wasn't a bad thought. It wasn't even a matter of not having anything to live for anymore. It wasn't about my only friend being dead or having lost my first and only boyfriend or about being bullied and beaten and unloved. My father had just tried to molest me and who knew how far he would have taken that? For the first time in my life, when I thought about tomorrow, I wasn't met with sadness or grief or boredom or tiredness. That morning, when I thought about the future, I was scared. I didn't think that I could do it. Hell, I couldn't even think about what my father had done without wanting to start screaming or finding some dark hole to crawl into and cry with my fear.  
    It was worse than being beaten by him. Worse than being called useless or anything else that he had ever done to me. I couldn't understand it. I couldn't cope with this knowledge of what he wanted, what he felt in my head. So I pushed it all away in desperation for my own sanity and walked to the school. I was happy that it was too early in the morning for many people to see me. I was sure that I looked nuts with the swelling bruise on my cheek, my wild, unwashed hair, and holding up my torn jeans with one hand.  
    That early in the morning, the school was locked up, but that wasn't much of a problem. I didn't even need to pick any locks, I just found a window with a loose hinge and worked at it until I could slide it open. There wasn't even an alarm to worry about unless I tried to open one of the staff office doors, which I wasn't going to. It was a school, not a bank. Who the hell breaks into a school anyway? And it wasn't like I was worried about getting caught, I wasn't stealing or destroying school property. I was just a pathetic teenager, looking for a place to hide.  
    I found my homeroom classroom in the dark, the eerie quiet of the school was actually kind of soothing, such a disturbing contrast to the loud shouting and laughing from my father's poker game. The classroom was just barely illuminated by the early dawn light, letting me search for something to keep my jeans from falling down without having to turn the light on. The closest thing to a belt that I could find in the whole place was the cord to one of the window shades. The cord itself was thick and long enough to go through the belt loops in my jeans twice, so I was sure that it would hold. It was still obvious that the hem of them was torn, but there was nothing I could do about that.  
    I sat down at the closest desk I could find when I realized that I was swaying on my feet. I couldn't tell if it was exhaustion or shock. My terrified heart was starting to slow into just a haunted ache. I sat there in the dark and stared into nothing, feeling like I was hollow, a ghost.  
    It was a bit like how I had felt shortly after I had watched Quatre waste himself, that feeling like I was grabbing at pieces of myself as they tried to float away, trying to hold myself together and failing. What was I going to do? Just what the fuck was I going to do now? I felt wet tears trail down my cheeks and I let my head fall onto the desk, suddenly too tired to even keep my head up, let alone try to get my tears stopped.  
  
*****  
  
    I was startled awake by something slamming with a great deal of force mere inches from my head, the sound loud and sharp, like the cracking of a whip. I jolted upright, my confused mind trying to figure out where I was and when it was and what the hell was happening. My mind didn't spare me any comfort or give me the soothing option of denial. Everything that had happened since I had walked home from work flashed before me in horrid vividness.     It didn't take me long, even in the confused, tired state that I was, to realize that I was at school, still sitting in the desk, and that I had fallen asleep, probably as soon as my head had rested on that wonderful, flat surface. I didn't even remember dozing off and it took a moment for that to filter into my brain, even though I did remember some of my dreams. I didn't want to. They were disturbing and stilted, almost fever dreams. I dreamed of Trowa, all those times that we had kissed, all the times that he had come on to me, tried to have sex with me and I had pushed him away, all up until I had finally given it up to him. Only it hadn't been Trowa, it had been my father. Remembering that, my head still in that fuzzy way right after waking up from a dream that makes things confused and reality seem less real, I'm amazed I didn't retch again. Even my mind was betraying me.  
    The lights were on in the classroom, the sun shining through all the windows. I must have been extremely tired if I had slept through someone coming into the classroom and turning all the lights on. I looked behind me, trying to find the source of the impact that had ripped me out of sleep and saw Relena and Heero standing next to me, Heero with his arms crossed over his chest and glaring at me with this superior look on his face and Relena with a snide, satisfied smirk on hers, a ruler in her hand. Fucking great.       
    The universe really hates me. Dealing with them, especially dealing with Heero, was not what I wanted right after... after what had happened with my father. I wondered what they were doing at school that early, but it didn't take a genius to figure out why a couple would go to an empty classroom before anyone else would be there. My heart ached.  
    "What's the matter, Maxwell?" Relena sneered at me, eying my torn jeans with complete disgust, "Tired from a long night sucking cocks for some spare change?"  
    I flushed darkly in anger and stupidly pulled my shirt down to try to hide the rip in my jeans, still too much asleep to pretend to ignore her or to tell her to fuck off.  
    "Ugh!" Heero exclaimed and waved a hand in front of his face like he had just taken a whiff of something extremely foul, "Even his breath smells like cum!"  
    I had to look away from the both of them for a second as I felt tears prick at my eyes, but I managed to keep them from falling. Relena's words had absolutely no impact compared to Heero's. I felt like, with just that one sentence, he had gleefully ripped out my guts and stomped on them. He had eviscerated me with six, tiny words.  
    "Now, now, Heero," Relena said in a fake, soothing tone, "Duo can't help smelling like a five dollar whore. Even perverts have to be satisfied."  
    Heero laughed, this harsh, cruel sound that reminded me too much of Pat's laughter from earlier that morning. It ripped through me and filled me up with something ugly. I can't call it simple rage or disgust or even sadness, but it was a horrible feeling, almost as bad as realizing that my father wanted to fuck me. I glanced back at him and saw his sneer turn to something cold and almost angry.  
    "Get the fuck out of my seat, faggot," he snarled at me, "I don't want your stench all over my desk. Bad enough that I have to see you during class, I shouldn't have to look at you outside of it, too."  
    I didn't think that I could possibly turn anymore red than I did just then as I scrambled out of the desk chair like Heero had shot me. It really was his desk, I realized. Had I done that subconsciously? The both of them laughed at me as I grabbed my back pack and moved to my own desk. I debated just leaving the classroom altogether, but the clock above the teacher's desk told me that there was just a half an hour before our classmates would start filtering in. I had only managed, maybe, an hour of sleep and it just wasn't enough to care that Relena and Heero were there with me. If they wanted to make out or whatever, they could find another classroom.  
    Still, I couldn't stop another glance back at him, like a moth to a bug zapper, or an addict to a fix that they know will kill them eventually. Relena was saying something to him and he was smiling at her. It wasn't the one that I had seen from him before, that open and honest smile, but it was a warm one. I didn't know what I was expecting. It was the sort of smile that a boy would give the girl that he liked, that he was dating. Why did that bring me so much pain? He was an asshole, only slightly less of one than Relena was and that talk we had had on the beach meant nothing compared to him saying that I smelled like semen or all the other things that he did while we were at school.  
    He wasn't Trowa. He didn't even tolerate me. He hated me. I'm just the disgusting, smelly faggot to him, I told my stupid, traitorous heart. I knew that, I knew that whatever I wanted, and I still had no clue what that was because I sure as hell didn't want a relationship with anyone, let alone him, I could never have with him. Hell, I didn't even have a chance of being _friends_ with him. But I couldn't stop it, couldn't stop wanting and looking, even when it brought me nothing but hurt. I had such bigger and worse things to worry about, yet there I was, pining and letting my heart get more and more battered by him.  
    Using my left, uninjured hand, I pulled a book out of my bag. My right wrist was still throbbing angrily at it's injury and I hoped that I would have no surprise essays or quizzes that day. I could get away with writing with my left hand somewhat, but the writing would look like shit. I tried to spend the time before class would start reading, but the words just burned in my sight and I stopped trying after ten minutes when I had gotten three pages in and realized that I couldn't remember a single thing that I had read.  
    I dropped my book back into my bag and settled for looking out of the window. The sun was bright and the sky was a dark blue, I could hear birds chirping, no doubt looking for worms for their breakfasts. It was going to be a nice day out, I prophesized in disgust. I should have felt relieved, it would have sucked to have nowhere to go in the pouring rain, but in the mood that I was in, I wanted the weather to match. I vaguely realized that Relena and Heero had vacated the classroom, but I only had minutes of solitude before other classmates filtered in.  
    As my homeroom class began to fill out, just minutes before the start of school bell rang, I started to feel an awful headache start to build in my skull. It started just as an intense pressure and the more people that I saw in my vicinity, the more noise they made, the more that they smiled and laughed and talked, the more it built up until I heard this weird ringing in my ears. I couldn't blame it on my tiredness because I had lost a lot more sleep than that before and I had never experienced something like that. Maybe it was stress or maybe I was getting an aneurism. One can only hope. Then I wouldn't need to deal with any of my problems anymore.  
    "Havers has the flu, guys!" one of our classmates came running into the room to inform us and the mingling of teenagers cheered at their good luck.  
    Havers was our homeroom teacher and also my teacher for first block, Biology. It was kind of disgusting that my classmates were cheering that he was sick, but I didn't like the man very much myself and it meant that we would be unsupervised for homeroom and get a substitute who would probably just make us watch a movie or something for Biology. I could have cheered myself, if only out of relief. I didn't have the mind or energy left to focus on anything. I folded my arms and let my head fall onto them. I closed my eyes and didn't care that I was surrounded by the enemy, or what Relena and Heero might be doing or that I was probably going to be yelled at when the substitute came in. Sleep was like a magnet, drawing me closer and closer.  
    I don't even think that I was simply tired. I think that I was running away from everything, escaping the only way that I could. I knew, in the back of my head that by the time school ended, I would need to make a choice, and it wasn't any kind of choice that I wanted to face. I'm a chicken shit, through and through and I couldn't even so much as _look_ at the problem without needing to run away from it, screaming.  
    It was the bell announcing the end of first period and not the substitute teacher that woke me up. I opened my eyes to the darkened classroom, the television standing in front of Mr. Havers' desk a confirmation that we really had been treated to a movie, like a bunch of four year olds being babysat by cartoons while their parents tried not to deal with them. When someone flicked the light back on, I thought I had been shot in the face with a spear. My headache hadn't been soothed by my nap, but had only grown to epic proportions. I couldn't remember my dreams at all that time and really, really hoped that I didn't snore. That would have been embarrassing, but I was sure that I was not the only kid in the class that had dared to take a nap.  
    I raised my head, squinting in the light, unable to believe how lucky I was that I had gotten to sleep through an entire class without anyone or anything waking me up. I think I might have managed almost two hours. My eyes finally adjusted to both the pain throbbing in my head and the harsh lights of the classroom and I opened them from a squint to find an intruder on my desk.  
    I blinked stupidly at the sight of something wrapped in tin foil perched on the edge of the flat surface. How had it gotten there? I glanced around the room to find Relena. She was standing in the back of the room with Heero, Dorothy, and a couple of other teenagers that I recognized as a part of Relena's posse. They were chatting and not paying any attention to me for once. Was this another one of Relena's pranks? Had she snuck something nasty onto my desk while I had slept and the rest of the class had been watching the film in the dark?  
    I poked at the tin foil, but it didn't explode, so I dared to unwrap it. It was a rather innocent looking sandwich, but I wasn't fooled. It wouldn't be the first time that Relena and her friends had tried to put something nasty in my food, though actually gifting me with tainted food was a first for them. I peeled back one of the ends of white bread to see what was in it and felt my bewilderment grow. Not only was it white bread, it was a peanut butter and banana sandwich. My favorite sandwich. That was way too weird to be a coincidence, right? I mean, how many people can say that their favorite sandwich has bananas in it? I didn't even see anything illicit in it; no worms or insects or spiders or dog shit or tacks or pieces of glass. It was, as much as I could tell, an ordinary sandwich.  
    Who the hell would give me a sandwich? Who would even know that I was starving or what my favorite sandwich was? I took another look around the classroom at the few students that were straggling to get to their next class, trying to find the person that had done it, but really, who would give me _anything_?  
    I looked back at Heero, even though I scoffed at the idea that anyone in _that_ corner would do something like that. So when I found him glancing right back at me, my bewilderment evolved into complete confusion and almost shocked. He saw me looking at him and quickly looked away, going a bit red in the face, but I couldn't tell if he was embarrassed to be caught staring at me or if... if he realized that I suspected what he had done. Relena laughed prettily at his blush, obviously thinking that it was from something that she had said.  
    I looked back down at the sandwich in my hands. What. The. Fuck. There was just no way in hell that Yuy had... had given me a sandwich. That was bizarre. But who else in our class would have? Who else would look embarrassed like that? It had to be him. Even though I knew that it couldn't be, my heart told me that it had to be him, if only because I wanted it to be.  
    Ok, I told myself, so if Heero had left me a sandwich, there could only be two possible reasons. One, he had left something in it that would fuck me up, maybe some laxatives or something else that I wouldn't be able to see, something that had a taste that would be hidden by the bananas and the whole thing was just a messed coincidence. Or... or he felt bad for me? He had noticed that I skipped lunch a lot and had made me a sandwich? That didn't make any kind of sense. He hated me, why would he do something like that? Unless this was just a build up to some prank. Make Duo think he and Heero are suddenly friends and then mess with him? But that didn't make sense, either. The Heero that I knew wouldn't go that far, not to be around someone he couldn't stand.  
    I sniffed at the sandwich and suddenly realized that I didn't care if it was a prank or not. I took a big bite of it, almost moaning happily at the taste. I couldn't even remember the last time that Mom had bought bananas for me to make one of those sandwiches, but this one was heavenly. If there was anything bad in it, I couldn't taste it and I was just happy to have something in my stomach. Again, I puzzled over why Heero, and at that moment, I was absolutely sure that he had been the one to do this, would be nice to me. I remembered our talk on the beach, but I also remembered his cruel words from that morning.  
    I felt like they weren't even the same person, like he must have a twin brother, one that was capable of holding a decent conversation with me, one that could smile, and another that was only capable of sneers and hate. I felt a swelling of anger over him. If those two people were indeed the same boy, then Heero could do something nice for me like that, but he _chose_ to laugh at me with his bitch of a girlfriend. I hated him for that. Nothing about him made any kind of sense. But the thought of him making that sandwich for me made me pleased as I ate it and I hated myself for it.  
    'He hates me, he hates me,' I repeated to myself in my head over and over again.  
    I just wish that my idiotic heart would listen to me.  
  
*****  
  
    I'm pretty good at the whole denial game. Quatre's death had made me a master of it and dating Trowa had helped perfect that skill. It's really amazing how something horrible or shocking can happen to a person, and how efficient the human mind can be at not looking at that thing, how long that person can go with ignoring it and focusing on other things before it comes back to bite them in the ass.  
    I managed my denial game through my entire school day, before I left gym and had my own problem try to gnaw out my kidneys. I focused on mundane things; lessons, squirrels running around outside classroom windows, when would be the best time for me to go over to Mrs. Liddle that weekend to work on her shower drain, my new job, how the sun almost made Heero's hair reddish when we went outside during gym to play soccer on the field. Of course, that realization made me think about that weird sandwich thing again, another thing that I really didn't want to think about.  
    Nothing bad had happened to me from eating it and I almost wished that it had, if only to put my world right side up again. I was quickly getting sick of how off kilter that asshole had me, the way that my heart would jerk in my chest whenever he got too close to me, how hot my face felt if I managed to catch a glimpse of those blue eyes, how I became fascinated at the sight of his collarbone when the neck of his t-shirt dipped a bit too low. I was disgusting myself. Had Quatre felt this way? So completely unable to focus on anything when Trowa had been around? Flighty and shaky and sick in the stomach? I remembered how he would look whenever Trowa had given him the time of day, every time he would get a text message from him. I really hoped that I didn't look like that, ever.  
    But then school ended and something so small and unimportant like my crush on my bully became just that again. A darker shadow filled me up with anxiety and repulsion and not even thoughts of Heero could bring me back out of them. School was over, I realized as I dressed after my shower in the boy's locker room. I had nowhere to hide. For the first time, I had to face that choice that had been lingering in the back of my head. I checked my sneakers for surprises, slipped them on, and left the school.  
    But where was I going to go? Where did I have to go? I thought about this morning again. I don't think that I had actually stopped thinking about it, I had just stopped acknowledging it's presence in any kind of conscious way. But it had been there, waiting for me. I remembered my father pressing me against the wall of my bedroom. My wrist hadn't stopped throbbing since he had sprained it, the skin there a dark red with injury. I remembered his warm breath and the feeling of his hand curling around my bare hip. I remember how much that touch and the look in his eyes reminded me of the only other person in the world that had looked at me like that, like I was a piece of meat to be devoured.  
    I felt horror. I felt lost. What was I going to do? I couldn't stop thinking that, over and over again. My father wanted to have sex with me. I could say that it was just because of the alcohol, just because Pat had reminded him that I look like Mom and my Dad, for all of his faults, all of his beatings and swearing and coarseness at her, still wanted her, or at least the her that he had fallen in love with as a teenager. If he had loved her, or had just lusted after her.     No. I think, remembering all those times that he had come home smelling of perfume and looking frustrated, I think that my father had loved my mother back then. I think that the way that she is now, how she won't let him touch her, how she kicks him out of bed sometimes... I think that hurts him. Was that why he had looked at me like that? To remember her like she had been before I had ruined them? Did that really make it ok?  
    Because I could say that it was just because of that moment, but that was bullshit. He had looked at me like that before, and I had ignored it because I had been too young to want to understand it, because I had still in mind-destroying grief over Quatre, because, really, how can _anyone_ handle shit like this? What would happen the next time he got that drunk? Would he stumble into my bed? Would he feel me up when I was making dinner? That thought alone almost had me vomiting again as I walked out of the school and had to stop because I didn't know where I was going.  
    If any of that happened, how could I stop it? I could barely stop Trowa when he had tried to force me all those times, and my father made Trowa look like a fucking mouse. It wasn't just that he was bigger than me, or even stronger. He might not be a cop anymore, but he knew how to take someone down, how to subdue them. I was powerless, just as I have always been against him. If he wanted to have sex with me, all he had to do was hold me down. I rubbed at my bruised cheek with that thought, feeling my terror through my skin. My face was ice cold.  
    I could hear it, in the back of my head, like I had been hearing it all fucking morning. That sound that the button of my jeans had made as it had popped off and hit the floor. 'Ting'. Such a tiny sound, like a pin dropping, but it chilled me to the bone.  
    I found myself in the park all of a sudden. I don't remember walking there. I sat down on one of the benches and looked at nothing. I couldn't go home. How could I? He was there. Did he even remember what he had tried to do? Did he remember me punching him? Sixteen years and I had never hit him before. I hadn't even thought about it, and I'm glad that I hadn't. I don't think that I could have managed it otherwise, hitting my father.  
    I lowered my head and dug the heels of my palms against my closed eyes, trying to drive out the image of him in my head, drunk and full of lust. I wanted to scream, to deny that image. No, I couldn't go home. If I did... if he tried to... to do what he had tried to this morning again... that would be like sticking my own damned head in the bear trap, wouldn't it? No, I can't go home, not ever. But where can I go? What can I do? I don't have anyplace. I don't have any friends that I can stay with, no shelter I can hole up in. I have nothing and no one.  
    I wished for Quatre to come and comfort me, but my head was too frantic, too chaotic to summon him. I can't go home. 'Home'... have I ever really had one? I guess this park bench is as good as any home that I have ever had. It's nice and quiet here. Peaceful. I can see the sun and the grass and the trees. I just wish that there was someone else here besides me, someone that I could talk to.  
    Please... someone, anyone at all.  
    Tell me what to do.  
  
  
End Part 4  
      
(1) I'm sure that everyone and their mother knows this joke, but in case anyone doesn't, it goes like this: a gun is like a condom, better to have it and never need it than need it and not have it.  
  
Thank you everyone who has reviewed this thing, and of course those that have favorited and followed it. I hope that the recent... uh, plot line does not disturb anyone too much. It's been hinted at since chapter 3 and even though I don't have warnings of it listed, it's in the older versions of the story. I also really don't like listing warnings because spoilers. But yeah, if you really want to see where this particular chapter is going to go, look for the first posted draft on my page, it's a bit different than this version but the barebones skeleton is there.  
      
      
      
  



	25. Chapter 5 Part 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duo tries to decide if he is going to run away from home or not. Duo struggles dealing with his feelings for Heero when Heero continues to send him mixed signals.

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 5  
Part 5  
  
    October 12, 2007  
  
  
    I am a colossal idiot. I am, quite possible, the dumbest person on the planet. Why? Because I am that special kind of person that can stick their hand in the fire over and over and over again and never expect to get burnt, even though they do every time. I am the kind of person who can fall in love with someone who hates him, but never stop hoping for something impossible. And then when it bites me in the ass, I feel shocked about it. How stupid can you get?   
    I'm such a hypocrite. I told Quatre to stay away from Trowa because all that relationship was going to give him was pain and here I am, pining after a guy that hates my guts. No, it's worse than that. If he just hated me completely, like how Relena and Zechs do, then maybe I could move on. Maybe my deficient heart could finally give up and go back to imitating a stone. Instead, I get a guy who I can't fucking figure out, who isn't who he pretends to be half the time. He keeps feeding me these little bursts of hope, of pleasure, only to stab me in the heart later for them. Trowa was a prick to Quatre, but at least he tried to be friends with him and didn't play mind games with him.  
    I should back up. I suppose you are waiting for me to confess that I grew some brains after deciding not to risk going home again, that I went to Social Services and told them that my father was beating me and my mom and that he had tried to sexually assault me, that I had run away and I'm living in a shelter or on the street of some different town. Well, I wish I could tell you that, but see, look up there at the top of the page. I'm a motherfucking idiot. The best laid plans of mice and men and pathetic teenaged boys often go astray. Only my plans went astray because... I won't say that it was overconfidence or even that I thought that I could ignore things, or even that I had some kind of hope that things would get better. If anything, my plans went astray because of love and dependence. Maybe love can save, but in my experience, it kills more often than any other emotion.   
    My plan was simple and not all that well thought out, but what can you expect out of me when I was operating on less than three hours of sleep, experiencing some kind of stress induced anxiety attack, and what little stability that I had had in my life was slipping through my fingers? So I had decided not to go back home. Great. Then what? I couldn't just sit on a park bench for the rest of my life. What was I going to eat? What was I going to do when it rained or snowed or got so cold that the thin jacket I had on was little more than a wet t-shirt?  
    I was getting paid on Friday from all three of my jobs. While it wasn't exactly a ton of money, it would keep me fed. My only other problem was shelter and clothes. The shower that I had taken after gym had been a godsend, but my clothes smelled and I couldn't wear my pajama shirt and ripped jeans for my shifts. I could ask Andre and Sal for a new uniform shirt and pants, that was easy, but I couldn't wait until the end of the week to get a change of clothes. I could buy them at a thrift store with the money that I had saved up, but that was at home, in the secret compartment in the floor.   
    No matter what options I filtered through my head, it always seemed to go back to that. Going home. Everything I had was there. I couldn't do a single thing without my stuff. Even with the money that I had saved, I had nowhere to stay. I could sleep in the park, I guessed, but the warm front that we were having was not going to last for more than a day and the last thing that I wanted was to get picked up as a runaway. I needed food and water. I needed my clothes. I needed my CDs and the jacket that Quatre had given me. I needed my cat.   
    It was that last thought, more than any of the others, that had me uncurling from my pathetic position, my arms wrapped around my knees as I pressed them against my chest, and standing up, slinging my bag over my shoulder. What had I been thinking? Running away from home... there was no way that I could do that. I could live without my stuff, without my money. Hell, I could even eat food out of a trash can if I had to. I could survive. But Pepper couldn't. What would she do if I didn't come home? I had to feed her and clean up after her. I had to be there for her. If I didn't go back, she would starve, or my father would find her and put her back out on the street or kill her.   
    I couldn't do that to her. She was my responsibility, my... my friend. I wouldn't be like her last owner, I wouldn't abandon her. I knew what that felt like, to be left out in the cold by the people that were supposed to care about you. My fears about my father, my anxiety about going home and my own sense of well being... none of it mattered compared to the one entity in my life that was depending on me. I realized then that I would face the horror that my father had become to protect and take care of my cat, because I loved her. I needed her just as much as she needed me. I just hope that I'll never have to learn the consequences of that choice. But I wouldn't be my father, not in this.  
    Feeling like I was walking to the gallows, I made my way home. As I got to my side of town, I thought about finding some kind of weapon to defend myself with. Just because I was walking into the lion's den, it didn't mean that I had to go in there defenseless. But the thought of me defending against my father with a knife or something was so ludicrous. I just couldn't imagine myself hurting him, even knowing what he wanted.   
    The closer I got to my house, the faster and more erratic my heart beat became. I couldn't believe what I was doing, what I was willing to walk into, all for a cat. But at the same time, it didn't surprise me. I had screwed myself over for someone that I cared about before, why not again? I felt real anger at my father for doing this to me. He was taking everything from me, piece by piece, even when I thought that there was nothing left for him to take. I felt like a complete idiot, doing what I was doing when all common sense told me that I needed to do something about it, either run away forever or call someone to help me. Hell, I should have run away from home before this had even happened. The longer that I was with my father, the more that that was abundantly clear to me. The more I was realizing what a huge mistake I had made in not taking Quatre up on his offer to leave Nausten. But I had never had much faith in any kind of authority, having the same man that was hurting you being a cop kind of does that to a person.   
    I had nowhere to go, no one to rely on, so what else could I do but go back? Maybe... maybe I would be lucky and he would never try that again? But I think that it doesn't make a difference. Just knowing that that's in his head is enough to fuck me up inside. When I saw my house, my heart seemed to stop right in my chest. I almost expected him to be there, standing on our front lawn, waiting for me. To my surprise, not only was he not there, his car was gone. He wasn't even home. I almost fell to my knees on the sidewalk and wept with relief.  
    Even knowing that he couldn't be home, I entered the house silently and cautiously, waiting for something to happen. I felt like an intruder, like I was walking into some carefully laid snare or a cave that was going to collapse on me instead of the home that I had lived in since the day that I was born. It didn't feel like that anymore, a home. It was alien to me. My father had done that to me, had made me feel like a trapped animal. How long did I have before he came home? How long did I have before he tried to molest me again? Even in his absence, my hair was standing on end and I felt chilled, every nerve screaming at me to get out of there.   
    I knew that I would never use it against him, that even in my fear and hate of him, I could never bring myself to seriously hurt him, but I still dug a knife out of the cutlery drawer and held it tightly in my left, unhurt hand at my side, my hand shaking as I started towards my bedroom. For a moment, I startled when I saw someone laying on my parents' bed, but it was my mother. I forgot about my fear at the sight of her and walked into the bedroom, making sure not to make a single sound so I wouldn't wake her up.  
    She was laying on her back, one arm thrown over his stomach. I didn't recognize her clothes and they certainly weren't the ones that she usually wore when she slept. I could easily imagine her coming home and just passing out like that, but for once didn't look drunk and there was no sign of alcohol at all in the room. If she had blacked out, it was from pain. Her face was pinched from it, and deathly pale. I could see fading bruises all over her face and along her arms from being grabbed and hit. She had dark circles under her eyes and her chestnut hair was wet from a shower.   
    I had a dozen questions on the tip of my tongue. How long had she been in the hospital for? Where had she been for the last few days? What had Dad done to her when I had been unconscious? Just how badly was she still injured? This sense of surrealness came over me as I watched her sleep, me standing there in her bedroom holding a knife because her husband had tried to molest me. I wanted to blame her, to hate her for him. It was because of her that he looked at me like that, mistook me for her.     But I couldn't. He had hurt us both. I wondered what she would say if she found out what had happened the previous night? Would she have furious at him, disgusted? Would she not care at all or worse? Would she blame me for perverting her husband, or even say that it was what I deserved for ruining her life? How could I hate her when I was reason that she was with him... with the man that had beaten her to a pulp? And maybe she would be right. Maybe I did deserve this pain.  
    I brushed her hair out of her face, pulled the covers up around her, and left the bedroom. I felt guilty just then, at my inability to do anything, for myself and for her. I had only been thinking about my own problems, my own hesitance to try to stop my father. I didn't want to call social services on him because I didn't want him to get in trouble, and because I had felt for a very long time now that I deserved the things that he did to me. But what about Mom? Maybe I hated her for her neglect and verbal abuse, but didn't she deserve freedom from him?   
    I didn't know. My feelings were a knotted tangle. I loved her and didn't want her to get hurt, but I also hated her and felt a great deal of bitterness towards her. I wanted to help her, but some dark part of me wanted her hurt for all the things she had said to me, all the times that she had turned a blind eye when I had begged her for help. I glanced at the kitchen phone, trying to envision myself actually calling for help and what my mother's reaction would be if someone took my father away. Would she be grateful or would she hate me for embarrassing her and taking away a small part of financial security?   
    I noticed that the light on the answering machine was blinking and walked to it. It was probably just more debt collectors, asking for my dad. It wasn't like anyone else cared to call us. Still, I turned the volume down on the machine and played the message.  
    "Duo, this is Andre," my boss' gruff voice played, "I've been reviewing the schedules for this week and I need to reduce some hours. Unfortunately, I'll have to take you off your shifts this week since you're the only part timer I got right now and you're quitting soon anyway," I could almost picture the sneer on the man's hard, wrinkled face, "Call me Sunday and I'll let you know-"  
    I savagely punched the button to delete the message, imagining that I was punching him in the face instead. I pressed my head to the wall by the phone and laughed wryly.   
    "Fuck," I whispered to myself, "fuck."   
    I banged my head lightly against the wall. The prick had cut all my hours. Of course he had. I wasn't dumb enough to believe his shit excuse, either. He had cut my hours because I was quitting and he wanted to save some money. He figured he could last however long it was going to take to hire someone new and just get rid of me for the next two weeks. Fucking asshole. Yeah, he could last, but could I? Could my family if my father didn't get hired soon?   
    I stormed up to my room, still making as little noise as I could despite my anger and frustration. I felt like the whole world was out to get me and nothing was every going to go right again. What if the construction company decided not to hire me after all? I would be down a job and my father would find out that I had quit the diner. To say that he would be pissed was an understatement. What the hell was I going to do for two weeks? If he was home and found out I wasn't going to my shifts...   
    I maintained enough self control not to slam my bedroom door shut behind me. Pepper was there immediately and just seeing those yellow eyes staring up at me adoringly and that tiny, little meow of hers made a good deal of my rage flee me. She was the reason why I had gone back home, I reminded myself. She was the only reason. If I had had the courage to do that, then surely I had the courage to struggle through two weeks without my third paycheck.   
    Skipping meals seemed tiny in comparison to the measures I would have to take to make sure my dad didn't corner me again. I would have to come up with an excuse when my dad asked for my next paycheck. I could never lie to him, he always seemed to know when I lied and that pissed him off more than the truth did. Maybe I would just tell him that Andre had cut down my hours, he might buy that without too much fuss.   
    "Hey there, baby girl," I greeted and leaned down to pet her ears.  
    She head butted my hand affectionately, making me feel warm for the first time since I had left work that morning. I left her to stick the knife under my pillow and I went to work on those measures. The very first thing I did was get my jacket and change my clothes to a warmer shirt, new underwear, and my better pair of jeans. I dug out a duffle bag that I had found down in the basement once and stuff everything that I might need into it, if I needed to run. My favorite books, CDs, clothes, money, Pepper's wet food and a few of her toys. I really hoped that it wouldn't have to come to it, but if I had to run away from home, at least now I would be a little bit prepared.   
    Pepper watched all this with interest before becoming bored and walking over to the door to scratch on it.   
    "Want to go out?" I asked her.  
    My kitten wasn't some bored tom that frequently needed to be let out to roam, but she didn't like being cooped up in my bedroom all the time, either. I always felt horrible that she didn't even have more than a single room to explore, even if the attic wasn't some tiny closet, and I liked to take her on walks at least a few times a week to keep her from getting so bored that she would destroy things. She seemed to recognize the word 'walk' and meowed excitedly at me. I chuckled and looked at my clock, before remembering that I didn't even need to worry about what time it was. I had only had the factory shift and the diner that day and I didn't need to go to the factory until 9:30.   
    "Alright, just for a little while," I told her.  
    I put on my jacket and slipped my cat into one of the pockets. They were big enough for her to comfortably hide in and she seemed to enjoy curling up in there. I had no clue what I was going to do when she eventually got too big to fit into any of my pockets anymore. Put her on a leash? I don't think that she would appreciate that.   
    On my way out, I checked on my mother again, but she was still asleep. I left a couple bottles of water on her dresser so she wouldn't have to get up if she was still in too much pain. I'm a veteran when it comes to broken ribs and internal injuries and how much just trying to go from horizontal to vertical can suck. I headed to the beach. Like me, Pepper loved the beach, especially the sea gulls. While I would never let her try to chase after them, she was very interested in watching them. I was sure that she would be equally interested in the squirrels at the park, but I hadn't taken her there yet. A lot of people walked their dogs there and I was paranoid about her getting bitten.   
    It was high tide this time and when I sat down on the mound, I had to sit Indian style or my feet would have gotten wet dangling them off of it. The waves were pretty non-existent, though, so I wasn't concerned with getting wet. Pepper poked her head out of my pocket and looked around, her ears perked up playfully. I watched her for a moment, but she hadn't gotten bold enough to try to get out of my pocket.   
    "Nice day, huh, girl?" I pet her head and she purred in agreement.  
    Despite everything, despite my tiredness and frustration and fear, it was a nice day. Right then, I was just happy to be away from the house, away from my father, and sitting there with my cat. I tried to find a silver lining in everything. There was no way I could find anything good about what my father had tried to do, but at least I wouldn't have to go to the diner again. While I mourned the loss of money, for the first time in a very long time, I had a chunk of my after noon free. I could go to the library or try to take a nap or watch television if Dad still wasn't home. Hell, I could get my homework done before my factory shift. I was just starting to feel my spirits start to lift when I heard someone walk up behind me.   
    "You're in my spot again."  
    I looked behind me, anxious and excited at the same time and saw Heero behind me. I expected him to be sneering and those words to be accusing like they had been before, but they weren't. He almost sounded like he was teasing me, like this was some secret joke between us. I had that feeling again, like I was dreaming or I was looking at a doppelganger. It was like this morning had never happened, like Heero himself had forgotten the cruel things that he had said to me, or he expected me to. I was about to snap at him to fuck off, not able to handle the confusion that he gave me, when his monster of a dog trotted right up to me and before I had the chance to even flinch, the husky mix was licking my face with gusto, it's tail wagging furiously like we were long time friends.  
    "Dammit, Kanuck, quit it," Heero snapped at his dog and tugged on his leash.  
    Kanuck backed up from me and looked up at his owner with large, piercing, blue eyes. He whined at Heero like a four year old that had had a toy taken away.   
    "Oh, hush," my bully rolled his just as piercing eyes.  
    I had read once that pets tend to take after their owners, but I think that's bullshit. Kanuck was a hell of a lot friendlier and nicer than his master was. Even though he sat by Heero's side obediently, he stared at me with this warm expression on his canine face, practically wiggling with wanting to go up to me again, his tail still wagging.  
    "Should I start marking my territory?" Josh asked me and this time his voice was definitely teasing.  
    I couldn't figure him out, if he was teasing me maliciously, rubbing it in my face that he was going to keep invading my space and there was nothing that I could do to prevent it, or if it was good natured and he had some kind of split personality disorder.   
    "What do you want?" I barked at him, a middle ground between accepting his bizarre behavior and telling him to go fuck himself.  
    He looked at me weirdly, like I put him off balance with that remark.  
    "I want to sit there," he said simply, sounding defensive and short, closer to the tone that I was used from him.  
    "Free country," I grumbled.  
    He started towards me and so did his dog, the large animal nosing around my jacket before his owner could yell at him again. It took me too late to realize that the dog was smelling my cat and was trying to investigate where she was. Pepper suddenly hissed, louder than I thought was possible for her to, and took a swipe at Heero's pet, managing to nail a tiny scratch on his black nose. Kanuck yipped in startled fear and darted behind Heero's legs, cowering there like a bear had just attacked him instead of a hand-sized kitten. I was on my feet in an instant, putting a hand protectively over my cat and frightened that Yuy was going to try to take revenge on her, maybe kick her or grab her from me and throw her into the ocean. That's what Relena and Zechs would have done.  
    "I am so sorry!" I apologized, "She's never done that before-"  
    And I _was_ sorry. I might be angry at his owner, but Kanuck hadn't really done anything to deserve getting scratched, he had just been curious. Pepper didn't seem to realize the human danger that she was in and glared at Kanuck, her black and white ears drawn back and flat against her skull. She let out a low, warning sound from deep in her throat and I had no doubt that if Kanuck tried to get near her again, she would defend herself. I felt proud of her. My cat was a hell of a lot braver than I was. To my shock, instead of getting mad about it, Heero burst out laughing. It was this clear, deep sound, something that I had never seen him do before. It was the most beautiful sound that I had ever heard.  
    "It's alright," he assured me, "It's his own fault for being so nosey. About time he learned not to stick his muzzle where it doesn't belong."  
    Heero gave Kanuck's leash another little tug and the dog looked up at him with an expression that I can only call contrite and suffering. I had no idea that dogs could look like that, like a pouting child.   
    "I didn't know that you had a cat," Heero said awkwardly, running a hand through his thick, black hair and only making it look more wild.  
    I very nearly snapped at him that he didn't know anything about me because he wasn't my friend, he had no desire to be anything but an asshole to me, and decided that it was time to leave. My heart couldn't handle him, not the way that he was. It couldn't handle his bipolar behavior and his laugh and him trying to be social with me. I wasn't strong enough, not on that day, and I knew that if I tried to talk to him with anything more than bitterness, I was going to say something stupid. As he approached to sit down on the edge of the mound, I walked past him, avoiding making any kind of physical contact with him.  
    "You don't have to leave," he called after me, his tone irritated for some reason, like my leaving angered him or something.  
    Maybe he had just been planning some prank and I had ruined it for him. I wanted to quip at him that he didn't want someone whose breath smells like cum around.   
    "Yeah, I do," I grumbled at him and made my way down the beach.   
  
*****  
  
    It felt very strange just walking home from the beach around the same time that I would be heading to my first shift of the day. Having down time for almost two entire weeks was not something I was going to get used to anytime soon, but after coming to terms with the fact that my boss had fucked me over, I was actually looking forward to having a few hours to myself, especially when I got home and saw that my father still wasn't there.   
    I felt so burnt out, running on nothing more than fumes and my thoughts bouncing chaotically between my father and whatever the hell had been going on with Heero that afternoon. How could someone call them a faggot one moment and then joke with them the next? He had almost been... friendly? At the very least, he had tried to be social and I just couldn't deal with it. I couldn't deal with tempering what I wanted, in the deepest parts of my heart, if he were just a normal person that I saw everyday. But he wasn't. His cruelty was terrible to deal with, but these random moments when he was almost nice were worse. I craved those moments, but they were killing me. They were making me want things, the same things that had gotten Quatre killed.  
    My mother was still in bed, and if she hadn't moved to lying on her side and if one of the water bottles that I had left her hadn't been empty, I would have thought that she hadn't moved the entire time that I had been gone. She looked so frail and I realized, with a kind of small shock, that she had lost weight. I don't know why I hadn't realized that before, but it was obvious to me then that she was thinner and the lines on her face were more pronounced. She seemed to be wasting away in front of me, fading away into nothing.  
    I had a fantasy then, watching her from the bedroom doorway. It was powerful and pervasive. I imagined myself taking my mother far away from here, somewhere that my father would never be able to find. I imagined going far away from him and Heero and taking care of my mother all by myself, getting a job and treating her better than my father had, showing her that I'm not so useless after all, that I could love her, I could never hit her or yell at her or hurt her. I wasn't so sure that she deserved that, but in that moment, I wanted to.   
    I shook off the weird feeling and continued upstairs. When I got there, I changed into my night clothes, set my alarm, and fell onto my mattress. For once, I didn't struggle trying to fall asleep. Everything that had happened to me that day... Pat feeling me up, learning that my father was attracted to me, Heero tearing my heart out twice... I felt like I had just lived three days with no sleep in the course of only little more than twelve hours. The second my head hit my pillow, I was fucking gone.   
    I was woken up a mere three hours later by the sound of the front door slamming shut with a decent deal of force. If I dreamed at all, my memory of it was washed away by the shot of adrenaline that instantly had me wide awake. I found myself curled up into a ball on my side, my left hand wrapped around the handle of the knife under my pillow. I didn't know if I had grabbed at the knife from the sound or if I had slept like that, but given how shaky I felt and how alert I was, I had obviously slept on a hair trigger, subconsciously waiting for any signs that my father was home.   
    My heart slammed around in my chest unpleasantly as I heard him storm his way through the kitchen, flinching when he threw something and it shattered. I knew the kind of mood that he was in without hearing his cursing and I knew what came next, even before I heard those heavy footsteps on the stairs leading up to me. He was either too drunk or too pissed to care about reason, to care about anything but destroying something and which one it was didn't matter, they were pretty much the same with him.   
    There were only two outcomes to this. Either he was back to his old self and he was just going to beat the shit out of me merely because it was what he wanted to do, or this was the man that had cornered me last night and he was going to finish the job that he had started. I imagined him coming up here and pining me down, wanting me and that trickle of adrenaline because a river, coursing through me. My grip on the knife handle tightened and I felt myself trembling with fear.   
    I could stop him, I thought, whatever outcome he wanted, I could stop both of them, for the very first time in my life. I wasn't a scared child anymore, I was old enough to drive, almost old enough to go see a rated R film all by myself. And I was old enough to stand up to my father, to tell him to stop, and to make him stop if he refused. Wasn't I?      
    A single, solid kick from one of my father's heavy boots sent my door flying open. He hadn't even checked to see if the door had been locked, not that the wimpy lock on that door would have held against that kind of force. I let go of the knife and rolled to my feet, moving before he could even enter the room. The rage that my father was feeling wasn't twisted up in his face, but smoldering in his eyes and I recognized it all too readily as the state he would get into where he was barely able to control himself, but didn't care about logic. He wasn't mad at me, specifically, but that wasn't going to stop him from hurting me. I was used to that state, used to him hitting me without any reason at all, just to vent his frustration, but I was more worried about how he would vent it, with a beating or something else.   
    I managed to just barely avoid the first punch that he threw at me, darting to the side of it, but he wasn't nearly as drunk as I could have hoped he would be. He recovered from his miss and slammed his knee into my gut and when I doubled over in pain, that's when the real blows started. He sent me to the floor with a barrage of punches. I can't even remember exactly which blow did what, I only remember the bursts of pain along my face, chest, and side. Then I was on the ground and all I could do was curl up into as tight a ball as I could and tuck my head under my arms, making him hit my arms instead of my face.   
    My father's beating was wordless. He didn't scream at me or call me any names, he didn't rant about whatever had worked him up into such a frenzy. Not that he needed to. I had no doubt that he had been out on an interview that hadn't gone well or some job prospect had dried up. He was like a passing tornado, one minute there, in my face, hitting me and panting with violence. Then the next he was kicking at me almost half-heartedly and storming out of my bedroom, leaving me there to bleed on the floor.   
    I opened my right eye, the one that wasn't swollen half shut, and watched his booted feet as he walked down the steps. Usually, after he went after me like that, I would feel so angry, like my father had transferred some of his rage onto me through punches. I would feel the injustice of it and loath him for the bitterness and pain that I felt, wondering what I had done that was so horrible that he needed to do that to me. But this time, I didn't feel anger or pain or even weariness. I felt relief. Not that he was leaving, or that, through some miracle, he hadn't broken anything for once, but I was relieved for the beating itself.  
    I guess that sound sick, that I could be happy to get the crap beaten out of me for doing nothing wrong, but I did. I was relieved that he had chosen to go off on me instead of my mother, and I was relieved that he had hit me instead of trying to rape me. I felt the comfort of the familiar, like some great pressure was easing off of a deep wound somewhere inside of me. This was the father that I was used to, not the one from early that morning. I was hurt, but not in the way that I had worried myself sick about. The man that had just hit me was the one that had raised me, not the stranger wearing his skin.  
    But why? Why hadn't he tried to molest me like before? Had he not been drunk enough? Had that just been some freak thing from him? Or had I just imagined the entire thing? Had I, in my exhaustion, misread his expression? I felt comfort in those thoughts, a very dangerous kind of comfort. The comfort that people give themselves when they tell themselves that a potentially fatal event will be fine, that it could never happen to them. It made me feel better, relieved, and like some darkness had been leeched out of me. But all it was, was denial. It was a lie that I happily told myself because I couldn't bear to think of my father like that anymore, I couldn't bear face those memories anymore. So it felt good to look at them and think, no, I had imagined them.   
    I slowly picked myself up off of the floor after making sure that I didn't have any serious injuries. While I felt like I had just taken a tumble out of a moving car, it was not the worst beating that he had given me. It hadn't been one of his uncontrollable, drunken rages that usually resulted in a broken arm or rib. That being said, my face and arms felt like pounded hamburger and I could taste blood in my mouth. I rolled up one of the sleeves of my shirt and found a lovely patchwork of black and red bruises forming on my pale skin. It was going to look horrible and feel even worse by the next day.  
    I wiped at my throbbing nose and my hand came away bloody, but despite the pain, it wasn't broken or even swelling that much. It was the same story with my chest and side, agony without any damage that would require me to go to the hospital, work was just going to be painful that night. I looked around for Pepper, but I couldn't see her. All the noise that my father had made had probably scared her into her hole.  
    "Good girl," I mumbled and winced as just talking hurt my face, especially my left cheek and my lips. There was a ragged cut on my tongue from my biting it.   
    My arms shaking a little from the pain and remainder of adrenaline, I managed to strip out of my shirt and pants and got a better look at my father's handiwork. It wasn't anything new. Fresh, livid bruises merged with old, fading ones. There wasn't much of a spot on my arms or stomach that wasn't black and blue. My stomach hurt, but my face felt worse, and although there was a ringing in my ears, I didn't feel concussed. All in all, it could have been a lot worse.   
    As I put on the clothes that I had worn earlier, I heard the shower turn on downstairs. I guess he needed to wash the blood off his hands, I thought and finally felt a bit of that bitterness. I grabbed my duffle bag and started to unpack what I had just put in there, feeling like that had been hours ago. I had been foolish, I knew, thinking that I was preparing myself for running away. I didn't need to do that, I told myself, I could survive, continue on like I always had. It wasn't like I had anywhere to go.   
    I think that there was some things, some moments that only come around once, and when they pass, that's it. You can't go back and try again, you don't get a second chance. I think that I had my shot at running away from home once, that day when Quatre had broken his arm. And I think that, when it passed me by, that was it. That was my one and only shot at finding the courage and ability to actually do something about my life. I chickened out then and I keep chickening out now, keep coming up with excuses about why I can't, why I don't need to.   
    I don't have any friends begging me to do it anymore, so why bother? That's how I felt then, unpacking my clothes from the duffle bag and putting them back in the drawers of my dresser. I had no where to run to, this place is as good as any other. At least here, I can take care of Pepper and I can finish school. I had only wanted to run to keep my father from touching me again, but if that wasn't going to happen, there really wasn't a point.   
    I took the knife out from underneath my pillow and I felt just as silly for its presence as I had unpacking my things. I had never intended to use it on him and I don't think that I ever could. Even to save myself from being raped or beaten, I didn't have the courage. I felt so pathetic knowing that. I'm so weak, I don't even have the ability to defend myself. I shrugged my jacket back on and, knife in hand, I went down to the kitchen to put it back in the drawer.   
    I caught my reflection in the flat metal of the toaster and glared at myself. Hair mussed, face bruised, one eye half open, lip split in three places, and blood smeared under my nose, I looked like some kind of freak in the distorted reflection. Heero and Relena would agree with that assessment. I scowled as Heero intruded my thoughts again, refusing to feel even an ounce of any emotion besides hate for him to enter my heart. I soaked a washcloth and scrubbed the blood off of my face with it, not caring about how much it hurt anymore. I fixed my hair and debated what I was going to do now that my father was home and I still had some time before work.   
    How long before my father gained enough sense to realize that I was home when I shouldn't be? How long before he beat me up worse for that, too? I didn't want to stick around long enough for that, not even to make myself some dinner. I didn't even want to be there when he got out of the shower and I would have to look at him. It was getting harder and harder for me to do that. Ever since that morning, I was finding it actually painful to look at my father and see anything but that look, to feel anything but loathing for him. I hated that. I wanted it to be like it was sometimes, when he was nice to me and I felt loved, if only for a second. That I couldn't have that, that the longer he was in my life, the harder I had to try to feel love for him at all only made me hate him more.   
    With no real plan of what I was going to do, or enough energy left to care about my empty stomach, I grabbed a book from my room and left the house. I walked to the beach with the sense that I had been walking around in circles all day. From the factory to home to the park to school to home to the beach to home, back to the beach and then to the factory... I guess my life is just that, walking in circles. I could go anywhere, I could even take the bus to one of the neighboring towns, but I wouldn't. I just keep going to the same places and waiting for time to pass me by.   
    There was still some light out when I made it onto the beach, but it was fading fast. The sky was a beautiful mix of gold and lavender while the water was dark, a moody bluish black. There were only a few people milling about on the boardwalk, mostly couples that were watching the sunset. It was getting a bit chilly and I knew, after living in Nausten my whole life, that this would be the last warm day we were going to get for awhile. The cold air made my bruises ache, but at some point in my walk, the swelling around my other eye went down enough that I could see normally out of it. I mourned Summer's loss and thought about what I was going to do to prepare as I walked.   
    I will readily admit that I prefer the Spring and Summer over the winter. We aren't South enough for many heat waves, but Winters always hit us hard. I don't necessarily hate the cold and I like the snow, not to mention the vacations from school and therefore Relena and Zechs, but I'm not exactly well equipped for the cold. Winter jackets are expensive and I'm not relishing the fact that I'm going to have to buy one when things get too cold in just a few months. I'm also going to have to buy a thicker blanket for my bed. My old one has too many holes in it. My only hope is my mysterious new job and my father's continued ignorance about it.   
    All thoughts of my ever being cold again ceased as I approached the mound and saw, to my shock, that Heero was there. My face heated up and for a moment, I couldn't feel the cool breeze. I froze for a moment, unsure of what to do. I didn't see his dog anywhere and I couldn't figure out why he was still in that same, damned spot.   
    He was like a cancer, slowly taking over my life, inserting himself into the grey that I had become used to after Quatre's death, filling it with things I didn't want. He couldn't even leave me alone outside of school. He wasn't stalking me, I told myself, we just both liked the same spot on this beach, even if that's what it felt like. I should walk away and find another spot to sit and watch the sun set, I knew, but realized that I was walking towards him, like he was some bright flame or magnetic pole, drawing me in just to destroy me.  
    "What are you still doing here?" I couldn't help the accusation from slipping out, my voice cold and hard.  
    He turned to look at me and his eyes pushed the air right out of my lungs. I think that my idiotic heart might have even stopped for a moment, but those eyes were... they were beautiful. That deep, blue color of his reflected the red-gold of the sunset, all mixing together like some cosmic event. I could drown in them, so very easily, and lose myself forever. I wanted to do that, just drown and let him kill me, smother me up, and forget everything else that existed in the world. I lowered my head a bit, letting my bangs hide my expression so he couldn't see how shaken I was by his gaze, or the black eye.   
    "I like it here," he sneered, "Are you going to order me to leave?"  
    "I'm not like you," I snapped back at him, "I don't tell people where they can and can't hang out."  
    He looked flustered at that and didn't even say anything as I stubbornly sat on the opposite edge of the mound. He had a Styrofoam container on his lap and I could fell the fried scrod and french fries from where I was sitting. It made my stomach churn with hunger. It didn't occur to me until then that Relena might be with him, but she would never want to sit on the ground like we were, and she sure as hell wouldn't want to eat anything from the boardwalk. I wanted to ask him why he was always here without her, but it wasn't any of my business and I didn't really want to know anything about their love life.  
    We settled into an awkward silence as we watched the sun set, making me feel nervous. When I had gotten my fill of watching the explosion of colors across the sky line, I opened the book that I brought with me and tried to make Heero fade out into the background.   
    "You read a lot," his voice broke through my concentration, making me feel frustrated.  
    "Yeah, what of it?" I asked suspiciously, expecting him to make some jab about me being a nerd or a book worm.  
    "Nothing," he sighed instead and looked dejected.  
    Had he been trying to start up a conversation? I stared at the words on the page that I was reading in confusion. Why would he want to talk to me? Why couldn't he just be like everyone else and avoid me or harass me and make sense?  
    "I can't do that," he stumbled almost nervously, "Read frequently, I mean. I can do it for homework, but whenever I try to do it for fun, my brain wanders too much. I can't concentrate. You can focus really well."  
    I quirked an eyebrow at him at that. He was being so weird and I wondered if he was the sort of person that just really didn't like silence, so he had to fill the void with his own voice.   
    "It's not about focus," I told him, "I just like stories."  
    "Video games have stories," he pointed out, "So do television shows. What's the point of reading when you can just watch a movie?"  
    "You use more parts of your brain reading than you do watching TV," I argued heatedly, not out of offense, but interest, "Besides, there isn't much creativity in most of the main stream movies and television shows that I've seen. I don't know about games because we don't have a system or a computer at home, but most of the movie trailers and TV shows that I've seen have pretty similar plots and characters. Doesn't that get boring? And at least books don't have commercials."  
    To my surprise, he didn't jump at the chance to make fun of me for not owning a computer.  
    "You got me there," he said with this little ghost of a smile.  
    I returned to my book, but my attention was split between the words and covertly watching him. He fished a fry out of his container and bit it, making a dissatisfied face.  
    "Why does the food here suck so much?" he grumbled, "Even the fish doesn't taste fresh."  
    "We don't have a fishing industry here. If you don't like our food so much, then don't eat it," I shot back, annoyed that he was ripping on food when I hadn't even eaten since... fuck, I couldn't remember. My brain was still fumbling with lack of sleep.  
    "You eat it then," he retorted and tossed the container onto my lap.  
    I stared at him for a moment, waiting for the trick, but he only glared back at me like he was daring me to refuse the food or maybe he was expecting that. Well, fuck him, I was hungry. Even without a fork, I tore into the fish and chips, finishing it in seconds.   
    "You eat like a hyena," he remarked, but I couldn't tell if his expression was disgusted or amused.  
    I shoved the last piece of fish in my mouth and flipped him off. He laughed deeply, sending a pleasant chill down my spine and I felt my face flush. He shivered when a cold breeze hit us, but I was unfazed by it.  
    "Well, your food might suck and it's too bloody cold," he grumbled, "but I guess this place isn't all bad. At least you have a beach."  
    That was something that we could agree on. I brushed my bangs out of my face as another quick breeze pushed them into my eyes. We fell into another bought of silence, but this one felt less awkward to me. It hurt so much then, sitting by him, the taste of his food still on my tongue. For a moment, I thought that I could squint at our relationship and see us becoming friends. But that was just too fucked up for me to dwell on for more than two seconds. I couldn't help glancing at him out of the corner of my eye and felt startled when I caught him staring at me.  
    "Zechs do that to you?" he gestured to the large bruise on my cheek.  
    I rubbed at it self consciously, a thousand lies on my tongue. I had lied so much in my life that it came as a reflex, but looking at him then, I didn't want to lie. Worse, I realized something terrible about myself, about how I saw him, something painful. I could have told him to fuck off or that it wasn't any of his business, but I didn't. I trusted him, I realized with disgust. Not in the way that one trusts a friend, but I felt like I knew him enough to know that, if I told him the truth, it wouldn't come back to bite me in the ass.   
    I kept seeing that concern he had shown me the day he had seen me limping. And just now, when he had asked if Zechs had hit me, I could almost imagine that concern again. It was probably nothing more than good manners, but I don't think that I had imagined it.   
    Heero wasn't Relena. If he knew that my father had hit me, he wouldn't use it to torment me. He hated me for being gay, and he could be cruel, but he didn't really seem capable of the Darlians' sadistic torture. He was an asshole, but a pretty middling one, if I was being honest. Heero was right in that middle between Relena and my classmates that just plain avoided me. I trusted him to care about me enough not to gossip about getting hit, and I trusted him to hate me enough not to give a shit that I was being knocked around. At least not enough to do anything about it. He might even think that it was funny, and I could handle that. Or maybe I had finally reached a state in my life that I just didn't give a fuck who knew anymore.  
    "No. My father lost his job recently," I blurted out. Despite knowing that I didn't really care, my words just... slipped out without any conscious decision on my part, "and he gets frustrated sometimes trying to find decent work."  
    In the early evening light, I couldn't tell if the pale look that Heero had on his face after that remark was shock or disbelief or something different altogether. I wanted to smack myself for saying that. I had been thinking that I could, that it didn't matter, but it did. Seeing that expression on his face, I couldn't believe what I had just done. Was I nuts, or just sleep deprived?  
    "That's..." he struggled with his words before I could take it back and say that it was just a joke in poor taste, "Parents shouldn't take their problems out on their kids."  
    His words shot through me like daggers, ripping something in me. He wasn't condemning me for what I said, but that look on his face... Did he pity me? What the hell did he know about it? He wasn't my friend, he wasn't even a nice person and he was judging my family just because my dad hit me around a bit? He had no problems dating the bitch that treated me just as bad, worse, really, than my dad did, so what right did he have to pity me?! I couldn't even begin to understand the rage that washed over me at the sadness and shock in his voice, or the pain that his words filled me with. I didn't want that concern from him. Never him.   
    "A lot of people do things that they shouldn't do," I snapped at him, "I, for one, should not be hanging out with someone like you."  
    Heero's blue eyes went wide, either at my anger or my words. I stood, holding my book in a grip so tight that it's a wonder my fingers didn't leave a permanent crease in the soft cover. I grabbed the Styrofoam container to throw away and made to flee. This was a bad idea, I told myself, being near him. I understood, with absolute clarity, why Quatre had invited me to have dinner with him and Trowa all those years ago. I had thought it so ridiculous that he had thought that he would not be able to control himself about his crush, but he was right.   
    All these years, I've kept quiet about my father abusing me. I never even told Quatre, he had just guessed it. But in one moment, alone with the boy that I had a crush on, a boy that wasn't even a friend or sympathetic party, I had blabbed the truth. I wrote about how I felt on the matter, that it was simply an issue of not giving a fuck and the trust that it was irrelevant, but that's not exactly the truth. The truth is that, I think, a part of me wanted Heero to care. It wanted to see him be concerned. It wanted someone to give a shit. Well, Heero apparently did care and I hated him for it. So who was the bigger hypocrite here, him or me?   
    I started to storm off, hating myself for my weakness and hating him for not hating me enough, when he turned and grabbed my arm tightly. His grip was strong and made my bruises throb, but his touch was like ice and electricity. It tingled even through my shirt and I paled at the thought of what his bare touch might do to me. He could have had barely a hold on me at all and it would have been enough to restrain me. I couldn't move. I could barely breathe.   
    "What the hell does that mean?" he demanded.  
    I felt my anger swell at his touch and I trembled, hoping that he couldn't feel it.   
    "It means," I sneered at him, barely restraining from screaming at him to let me the hell go, "that I don't need to be talking to someone who laughs and makes fun of me in class but has no problem talking to me so long as no one is around to see him do it! It means that I don't need to have these fucked up, social excursions with someone who lives in a completely different world from me, someone who can _afford_ to be a hypocrite!"  
    Heero looked away from me and while it might have just been a trick of the dim light, fading into the darkness of night time, I thought that he looked ashamed.   
    "I... I'm not a hypocrite," he said softly, unsure of himself, "I'm just tired... I'm sick of acting like someone else."  
    "Who the fuck are you, then?!" I yelled at him, feeling my tightly wound control slipping away from me as I felt tears prick my eyes, but I absolutely refused to let him see me cry about something that he didn't even understand, "Who are you, Heero? You treat me like garbage when you're with your fucking girlfriend, but when you're here, you act like I don't disgust you! So who are you? Are you a loser like I am, or are you Relena's precious boyfriend, the person that sneers at me and calls me faggot right by her side?!"  
    His eyes were so intense as he looked at the sand, refusing to look at me and full of turmoil. He didn't say a word and that silence was worse than anything that he could have ever thought to say. In reality, it said it all perfectly to me. I understood him then with clarity. This was what he was. Maybe he wasn't a bully, not really. He was a coward. That was his true nature. Not cruelty, but the willingness to act cruel. He didn't even have the back bone to make a decision and follow through with what he claimed wasn't who he really was.   
    I wrenched my arm away from him, his touch, which had excited me minutes before, repulsed me. He was just like Trowa, I realized in disgust. He knew that what he did to me was wrong, but he had no desire to change it. He was happy being with Relena and her group. What reason did he have to be genuine when being this... this terrible person had given him everything a boy like him could possibly want? I wasn't a friend to him. I was just the boy that he talked to once in awhile so he could tell himself that he wasn't _really_ a bully.   
    "Don't worry about it," I said snidely, hiding my hurt behind my cruel tone, "Even if you don't, I have the balls to make the decision for you."  
    I turned my back on him, tears streaming down my cheeks, tears that I would make sure that he would never see. He wouldn't know why I was crying anyway.   
    "Don't show up here again," I demanded harshly, "Go find another place to stalk for a charity case to make you feel better about being an asshole."  
    He didn't try to follow me as I walked all the way down the beach, past the boardwalk, past the handful of beach houses. I didn't know if I was glad or hurt. At some point, I gave in to the tears and started to cry harder, but there was no one around to see me. I felt like I had with Trowa, when he had told me that I was never the one that he had wanted to be with, only worse. He had told me once that I wasn't worth it, not worth outting himself or trying to comfort. I wasn't worth anything to Heero, either, and I hated myself for not accepting that.   
    I was a cynic, made up of nothing but rough edges, so why? Why couldn't I just believe that Heero was nothing more than a dime a dozen asshole and turn my back on him? Why did he make me hurt like this? Why did he have to keep showing me these pieces of him that made me want more? I wiped angrily at my cheeks, but only felt more tears replace the ones that I swept away. I was so pathetic. Heero was probably thinking about what a freak I was, getting so upset just from him trying to be a little bit friendly with me, for being concerned that I had gotten hurt by my father.  
    I wasn't even so sure why I was crying anymore. It wasn't like I had lost anything. And maybe now I could go to the beach without worrying about bumping into him all the time. Wasn't that what I wanted, for him to leave me alone? But walking through the beach parking lot that night, I felt like I was rotting from the inside out.   
    When I had been a child, I had had dreams. There had been things that I had wanted, things that I had told myself that I would achieve when I grew up. But through the years, I had learned to beat them bloody and shove them into the dark recesses of my heart. It was easier that way. Sometimes, in a fit of depression, or maybe just to prove to myself how useless things like that were, or even to punish myself, I take them out again to look at what might have been if I had grown to be a better person, a smarter person, a stronger person. But those dreams just get quickly hidden away once more.  
    It's like that with Heero. He was a dream that I desperately wanted, something bright and beautiful and at the same time ugly and twisted that I could look at when I was feeling sad. Like the dream I had of my father and mother loving me. But just like that, I knew how stupid and useless it was. He was straight, upper middle class, handsome and well liked. He had a future. Fuck, he had a girlfriend, someone who could give him anything that he wanted! She could have sex with him, goddamn it! He could walk around with her on his arm and kiss her in public and people would say about what a beautiful couple they made.   
    She could give him everything that I couldn't. If he really loved her and they had any kind of future, she could give him a family. Even if I were a girl, I could never give him those things. It was best this way, I told myself. Do what Quatre was never able to do, before it kills you. Stay away from Heero Yuy. Don't talk to him. Don't hold a friendly conversation. Don't look at him and think about how beautiful his eyes are. Don't let him get even one more inch into your heart. I let everyone use me. I let Trowa fuck me and treat me like a stand-in and I let my father treat me like a punching bag. I was not going to let Heero to make him feel good about himself.   
    Fuck love anyway.   
  
End Part 5  
  
  
Author's note: ok, this part is a bit on the short side because the next string of events is going to be too long and I really want to keep them all in the same part. The next part will most likely be the last of this chapter, making this story almost halfway done ^_^  
      
      
      
      
  
      
      
  



	26. Chapter 5 Part 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A single, horrible event changes Duo's life forever. Will he be able to survive it? Does he even want to?

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 5  
Part 6  
  
  
October 25th, 2007  
  
  
    I remember reading a book that I had taken out of the library as a child. I don't exactly remember what it was about, only that it was the sort of book that, had I had responsible, engaged parents, they never would have let me read it at that age. But there was one line that stuck with me, latching onto me like a parasite or a bad smell or a ghost: We all create our own monsters. I don't know why I remember that when I can't remember the plot of the book or any of the characters. It was just that one line. It haunted me and creeped me out, although I don't know why.   
    As I got older, I remembered that line with a more jaded sense, believing it to be a crock of shit. After all, I hadn't created Zechs or Relena and, besides rejecting Relena's advances, I hadn't done a damned thing to either of them to justify their cruelty. Neither had Quatre. But now? Now I can believe in it. Because I hadn't understood until now. We all create our own monsters. But Relena and Zechs were never my monsters, they were Quatre's. There had been a much bigger and more terrible monster waiting for me in the dark of my own heart, and in the shadow of my life.   
    If I'm damned and dying, if I'm hurt and bleeding, it's my own fault and no one else's. I saw my monster out of the corner of my eye and I turned away from it. I ignored it, let it get close to me, the whole time denying that it existed. When it disemboweled me, in the end, I wasn't surprised. It ripped out my heart and ate it, and that's exactly what I deserve.  
    I think that the one thing you want the most is the thing that kills you in the end. I always thought that it was going to be my father's beatings or Relena and Zechs's bullying that did me in. But it isn't the pain or the anger or even the grey nothingness. It's love. Love kills everything. I spent my life searching for it, doing things that I never wanted to get a tiny taste of it. I waited and waited, but I was blindsided when it snuck up behind me and stabbed me in the gut. The worst thing is that it hasn't finished the job yet. There's still some of me left, lying and bleeding on the floor. Quite literally. I don't know how long it will take, but I think the thing that scares me is that I'll survive it. I don't want to survive anymore. I just want this to end.  
    It took me months to write about Quatre's death. Months to come to terms with it enough to write it down on paper. This took me eight days of struggling with the words, struggling with the decision to own up to it. I had thought that writing about Quatre would be the hardest thing I would ever face in my life, but even though I came around to it a lot faster this time, I think this is harder somehow. In all respects, it shouldn't be this simple to write what I'm about to. My hand isn't even shaking yet. But that doesn't mean that it's easy. There's a screaming voice in my head and a black hole in my heart, sucking in everything. I think writing about it is all that I have left of me. I killed everything else. Or maybe I just don't have the breath left to scream anymore.   
    Coping. I hate that word. In three years, I still haven't figured out how to do it. I don't know how to look at my memories and move on. I think that this is too big for any one person to swallow. Maybe that's what trauma really is, choking on something too big and dark and awful for you to digest. Eight days, and I already miss who I used to be. I miss my ignorance. I miss being a child and thinking that a hug from my parents would solve all my problems. I miss thinking that Relena was the worst thing in my life. I want that back. I want to remember Heero's eyes and be able to drown in them again. But I can't. There's too much black for that blue to reach me now.  
    October 17th was the day that my heart died, the very day that I let the monster in. I had six whole days living in blissful ignorance of what my shitty choices would cost me. My mother's injuries healed enough for her to return to work. My bruises faded until my father gave me new ones. He continued to go to job interviews all day and come home drunk, itching for a fight. Our savings got smaller and smaller, but my father always seemed to find a way to keep the fridge well stocked with beer and whiskey.   
    I came home one night, two days before it had happened, and heard Pat and my father's friends inside the house. The memory of what had happened the last time that they had all been together was fresh in my mind and, like the pathetic, little child that I am, I hid in the shadows at the side of the house and waited for them to leave and my father to go to bed before I quietly crept into the house. I tried to avoid my father and Pat as much as possible. I stayed away from the beach, too, just in case Heero didn't listen to me and kept stalking the mound. I couldn't help crossing paths with him at school, but I made damned sure that we would never be alone together again.   
    After a week had passed since my father had tried to feel me up, I had foolishly thought that I was getting a hand on things. He hadn't so much looked at me differently since that night, our interactions limited to him barking orders at me and beating me in his drunken fits of anger. The worst that he did to me was try to hit me with a frying pan one day after he had burned his breakfast. It was so easy to believe that things were like they had always been with him. He was more chaotic, more prone to those fits of his, and even my mother was very careful not to talk to him about finding a job.   
    But beyond that, things seemed normal. I should have been on alert. I should have run away. I should have told my mother what had happened. I know that she would never do anything about it, but I should have anyway. I should have done a lot of things, but I chose not to. I, instead, became entrenched in my feelings for Heero, trying to combat them and ignore them like I was ignoring the problem with my father. Who knows, maybe that will come back to bite me in the ass, too. Only the joke's on the universe. I don't think I have anymore blood left to bleed after this.  
    Why can I remember the things that I don't want to so vividly, but I have to struggle to hold on to the memories that I never want to forget? I have a hard time remembering moments with Quatre that I was happiest, tiny details that I know had made me smile once. But that night... I think I'll remember everything from that night until the day that I die. Everything that happened from the minute that I came home that night is etched into my brain with a knife. Can you go insane from a single memory?   
    I had a shorter shift at the factory that night and managed to get home right at midnight. My father's car was in our driveway, but he wasn't home. That made me more anxious than relieved. That late at night, it only meant that he was out with Pat. Sometimes I wonder why my father hangs out with that prick. Sure, they were friends and they had known each other longer than I had been alive, but their friendship was weird to me. Whenever I had hung out with Quatre, I had felt happy and, for a little while at least, I had felt like some of my stresses had been soothed.   
    But when my father and Pat went out drinking like they had that night, he always came home sullen, which would often lead to one of his drunken rages. He would be frustrated and depressed and bitter for reasons that I think I'll never know. Maybe it's just the alcohol itself or maybe Pat reminds him of times when things were better, like my mother does. No matter what the reason, he always comes back to us in a terrible mood and is quick to loose control. That night would prove to be the worst, or maybe that's just what I want to believe. It's easier believing that it was the drink and Pat's influence that made him... made him do what he did. It's harder believing that it was just my father.   
    My mother wasn't one to be outdone by my dad. I found her sitting at the kitchen table, the bottle of whiskey that she had been working on since the day before no more than a foot away from her head, and dead asleep, blacked out from overdrinking. Finding her like that was very common after she had come back from the hospital. She spent her days in a silent depression, moving about the house like a corpse, not saying a word, not looking anyone in the eye, and avoiding my father entirely. For nearly a week, I had been finding her asleep at the table or on the couch. If my father was in the kitchen, she would hole up in the bathroom or bedroom until he left. She didn't leave if I was around, though, so it was definitely him.   
    As I looked at her, her thin body slumped over and her face obscured from her loose, golden hair, I debated if I should leave her there or not. It couldn't be good for her and I worried that she might start puking and choke on it. At the very least, she should move to the couch. I prodded gently at her arm, more scared of her harming herself in her sleep than I was getting yelled at for once.  
    "Mom?" I called to her, shaking her gently, but she didn't stir even a little bit.  
    I sighed, wondering if I left her here, if my father would take her to bed or he would do the same thing, or worse. It was that thought, that if I left her in the path of the hurricane, she would get hurt again, that had me pushing the chair that she was sitting on away from the table, keeping one arm against her chest and shoulders so she wouldn't fall out of it. I slung one of her arms over my shoulders and hooked my arm under her knees. When I lifted her up, I was certain that she was going to wake up and freak out, but all she did was murmur something in her sleep that I couldn't make out and press herself to me, unconsciously making it much easier for me to pick her up.  
    I'm not exactly a big person, but neither is my mother. I have a few inches on her and she's thinner than I am, so while I couldn't carry her around like she was nothing more than a sack of potatoes, I didn't struggle too much getting her into her bed. It was better than the couch and I hoped that she was too out of it to notice the difference. I pulled the covers over her and got a large bowl from the kitchen to put on the floor next to her, and a towel from the bathroom to tuck by her head, just in case she ended up throwing up, which I was sure that she would. When I was done, this wave of memory washed over me. You know, those moments of nostalgia that you get when something reminds you of some scrap of your childhood.   
    I don't know why that particular moment was anything special, it wasn't like I hadn't tried to take care of my mother after one of her binges before, but for some reason, as I watched her sleep, the memory hit me all at once. It's the last memory I really have of my mother before she stopped acknowledging that I existed. I don't remember how young I was, maybe four or five. I woke up one morning with a raging fever and hadn't been able to stop throwing up.   
    My father had been running late for work and had hit me across the face for throwing up in the kitchen. Back then, him hitting me had been a much rarer occurrence, something that only came from moments when he was frustrated with me, personally. Back then, he never came home drunk and angry and full of rage, looking to beat me to a pulp. He would occasionally get drunk and hurt me badly, but it was usually after I had made too much noise or had broken something. Those few moments when he would go off unprovoked, which would increase as I got older, he would unload on my mother, but rarely me. I miss those times a lot. Back then... back then I loved both of my parents and the thought that I would grow to hate them was a completely alien thing.  
    Although remembering my father like that filled me with sadness and longing for a time when he had actually seemed to love me, it was the memory of my mother that made my heart ache. Eleven years ago, she had looked a lot more like the young version of her that I had seen in the photos in the basement. Her face had been smoother, her eyes clearer, and her chestnut hair straight and in a short braid. She had been angry with my father for hitting me when I had been sick and had yelled at him to just go to work and she would clean up after me. I remember how relieved she had looked when he had left, like a toxin had cleared from the air.   
    My mother had washed my face with a warm wash cloth, made me drink a glass of ginger ale, and carried me into the living room where she laid me down on the couch and put a blanket over me. Like I had just done for her, she had laid some towels out in case I needed to vomit again. I had been frightened, having not been that sick before, and had childishly thought that I was dying.   
     _"You'll be ok, Duo,"_ she had said to me, brushing my bangs from my face, _"Just sleep and everything will be better when you wake up."_  
    I had dozed off shortly after that, and when I had woken up again, I had found that my mother's words were true and I had felt a little bit better. I remember waking up sometime in the late evening, hours later, and seeing my mother curled up in my father's chair, mere feet from me. She had skipped work just to make sure that I was ok. Even then, before I learned how cruel she could be and to cherish moments like that, I wanted to hug her and tell her how much I loved her, how much better I felt just having her be there for me, watching out for me. I wish that I could do the same for her.  
    That would be the last time that my mother had ever done anything nice for me, beyond her rare advice to not cross my father. But still, even after everything that she had done to me, the memories of the moments when she had truly been my mom seemed more powerful than the moments when she had been a monster to me. I still want to make things right for her. I still want to find a way to right all the turmoil that I had caused in her life.   
    I know that, even if I was the one to make her into the person she is now, I shouldn't want that. I should be bitter and feel nothing but loathing for her and my father for hurting me. Why should I love her when she didn't love me? We had hurt each other, but I could manage at least that much affection for her, but she couldn't. But even knowing all of that, I can't help wanting to help her, and wanting to punish myself for ruining her life. Her telling me that I was unwanted and that my father had wanted to abort me is one of my most painful memories, but it also made me realize that, in a really fucked up way, I owe my life to her. It might not be any kind of life that I want, but because of her, I exist. Because of my mother, my father didn't get his way. And even though she loathed me for destroying her life and her body, she still took care of me and tolerated me in her home.   
    She had made that choice, despite all of the pain that I had caused her. That had to say something, didn't it? I imagine that, for a parent, it's easy to tolerate a child out of love, but it probably takes a much stronger person to tolerate someone when you resent them. She had done at least that much for me, but I couldn't do a single thing to repay her for it. How could I hate her for calling me useless when that's exactly what I am?   
    In a cloud of guilt, I showered and got ready for bed, feeding and playing with Pepper before I laid down on my mattress. It felt good, being able to go to bed hours before I usually did before I had lost my job and normally I would have spent that time finishing homework. It was also nice to be able to try to go to sleep without my dad around, putting me on edge. With just my mother and I in the house, there was nothing to stop me from falling asleep aside from my own poor mood. Even that only kept me awake for another half an hour, before the sound of Pepper's soft, sleeping purrs lulled the thoughts running rampant in my skull.   
  
*****  
  
    October 26th, 2007  
  
    This is ridiculous. _I'm_ ridiculous. I finished writing yesterday with my heart racing. I had to put this journal down and hold Pepper just to get it stopped, and even when I did, I felt like I was going to be sick, like I was going to start screaming and black out just from my terror. Terror of fucking what? My memories? What the hell is wrong with me? Something... something is broken inside of me and every time I remember, it rips me apart. I've gone insane, not even capable of thinking about something that shouldn't be as painful as watching Quatre die. But it is. Why is this so hard? Why can't I write about it? Why does the mere attempt at it make me tremble like some dumb, little kid?   
    Because... because I am. My father saw to that. He reverted me to a child. But I made this choice. I tried to shove it deep, down inside of me and ignore that it exists, but I can't. That's impossible. And if I don't talk about it... write about it... I think something bad will happen. I don't know how things could possibly get any worse, but I think that they can. I'm hanging on by my fingernails and I'm scared of what will happen from the second that I lose my grip. What else do I have? What else can I do?   
    If I don't write about what happened that night, it's like it never happened. I would like to write that that's what I want, but I don't. I can't. After all of the pain, all of the agony that it caused me, I can't handle it becoming a fevered dream. It happened. I wish that it hadn't, but it did and I want someone... no, I _need_ someone to know that it did, even though I know that if I dared to tell anyone beyond this journal about it, no one would believe me.   
    October 17th, 2007. I don't know what time it happened. Sometime before dawn, I think. Maybe only an hour after I fell asleep. Maybe minutes. You can never tell the time during a nightmare. I was sleeping pretty deeply for once, not even any sounds from downstairs disturbed me. But when I felt a very heavy weight settle on me, I was wide awake in an instant.   
    Maybe some part of me, subconsciously, understood what was happening, or maybe I had just been on edge for long, the instant that I woke up, without really knowing what was going on, I was lashing out at the person holding me down. I somehow managed a solid punch to my father's chin, but I was pinned down on my side and couldn't manage a second before he grabbed my arms.   
    "Get off of me!" I screamed at him and thrashed angrily against him, but I knew in that second of clarity that there was no way in hell that I was getting him off of me unless he wanted to. He was only straddling my waist, but it felt like I had a lion on top of me.  
    "Quit it," he barked at me, shoving my arms down at my sides.  
    His breath was putrid with alcohol, his clothes reeking of it. My terror of what was happening was a black pit in my chest, sucking in all of my sanity. All I cared about was getting him off of me somehow. I kicked at him wildly, but none of my blows were hitting him. In the low light of my lantern, I could see his face. Familiar and alien, his grey eyes glazed and intense at the same time. My continued attempts were only accomplishing to piss him off.  
    "I said, quit it!" he snapped and forced my wrists under me, driving his weight down on me so I couldn't move them in time.  
    He fumbled at his belt, that soft 'schlick' sound as he pulled it from the loops from his pants would haunt me for days. That sound was the only warning he gave me before he struck me across the face with it. Pain exploded from the lower right of my cheek, over my nose and dangerously close to my left eye. The shock of it had me still, like a lifeless doll. He had never done that, hit me in the face with his belt before. Other places, yeah, but never like that, not so viciously. Of course, he had never tried to rape me until a few days ago, either. The pain made me blind for a couple of minutes, but I could feel my father gripping my wrists and manhandling me onto my stomach. His grip was so tight, I could actually feel the strain on my bones. If I fought, I wondered in panic, would he break my arms just to get his way?  
    "Please, please, Dad," I begged and pleaded in a frantic scream, sounding more like a hunted and trapped animal than a person as I felt him shove his knee into the small of my back, keeping me pinned, and he wrapped his belt around my wrists tight enough to hurt, "Don't do this! I'll do anything! Please... please... stop!"  
    His hand, rough and big, covered my mouth, muffling my cries.   
    "Ssssh," he said in a slurring mockery of a soothing tone, "It's ok, kiddo. It'll feel good, I promise. It'll be over real quick, you'll see."  
     _"Ssh, Duo. It's alright, kiddo. I know getting shots is scary, but it'll hurt for a little while, then it'll be over real quick. There's nothing to be scared of."_  
    I felt his hand stroke my bangs in the ghost of a childish memory and my hot tears poured down his real hand as I sobbed into it.   
    "Don't scream, sweetheart," he murmured, his voice sounding so far away and barely like he was speaking English, "Don't scream, everything will be ok."  
    When was the last time that he had called me 'sweetheart' or 'kiddo'? When was the last time he had spoken so kindly to me? When was the last time he had talked like that... like he was my father? And why did he have to say those things then... at the one moment in my life that he was the least bit my dad? The shudder that went through me as I felt him snap the tie around my hair was more like a convulsion. He ran his hand through it, letting it fall through his fingers and I could feel them brushing along my scalp, that gentle touch. It reminded me of when he had ruffled my hair when I had been much younger. It made me feel sick, down in my guts.   
    His body shifted, his knee releasing me, but he didn't need to keep me pinned like that anymore. He straddled my hips again and I could feel him pressed against me. Even through the pants that he was wearing, I could feel how hard and excited he was. I felt that sense of surrealness again, like this couldn't be happening, this couldn't be my father on top of me, my father's erection that I was feeling pressed against my leg. I thrashed and screamed when he pulled my pants down around my thighs, pushing at my bindings so violently that the leather cut open my skin, but I didn't even care.   
    "Settle down," I heard him say in that infuriatingly calm and paternal town and he grabbed my bare hip with one hand, pulling me back against him.   
    I felt the naked head of his cock slip between me and press against me threateningly and I felt something inside of me snap, what little, tiny measure of control I had, that remaining part of myself that was sure that my father could never do it, he could never actually go this far. I screamed and cried in denial. Unable to do anything else to fight against him, I bit savagely at his palm, drawing blood, but he didn't so much as flinch. Was he so drunk that he couldn't feel the pain, or was he so aroused, so desperate that he didn't care? I could have thrown up then with the realization that this was going to happen. There was nothing I could do to stop him. My father was going to rape me. But I was too petrified to even vomit.   
    I braced myself, my teeth digging into my father's flesh. I braced myself for the horror of it, my revulsion, and the pain. I remembered how much sex with Trowa had hurt. I had thought that it was the worst pain that I had felt and ever would. That pain is laughable now. There is nothing, absolutely _nothing_ to compare my first time and my father's rape with. Trowa had used a lubed condom, and while he had been eager, he had still entered me with some slowness. And he hadn't been quite this... this big. My father shoved into me, dry and hard as steel. He was used to fucking women, not a boy.   
    I didn't even scream. I just kind of... choked. My vision turned into a haze of red as my father ripped into me. That's the only way that I can describe that pain. It felt like he had stabbed me with some blunt, metal object. But it wasn't an object. It was him, and I think that that knowledge drove me a little bit insane. The agony was immense, this hot thing shrieking through me and coiling in my gut. I could feel blood dripping down my legs from the injury, but even that was nothing compared to when he started to thrust in and out of me. I felt like he was tearing my insides into shreds and pulling them right out of me. I felt like he was killing me, and in a way, he was. The feeling of him pressing his face into my hair and his lips pressing a tender kiss on the back of my neck was repugnant.   
    "Helen," he cried into my skin, his voice full of sorrow and grief and yearning, but more than anything, it was full of love, a love that he had been denied for a very long time, "Oh God, I miss you so much..."  
    Something dark twisted in my gut as I heard him say that. If he hadn't had his hand over my mouth, I might have laughed in hurt hysterics. Of course, I thought crazily, this wasn't a rape at all, and how could I have ever thought that it would be? His thrusts became frantic, like a mating animal's, and his orgasm was violent, his fingers digging black bruises into my hip. Something went out of me as I felt his semen shoot inside of my body. Every ounce of fight that I had had minutes before left me, just like that.   
    "I love you, baby boy," he panted into my neck, so low that I barely heard him.  
    That twisting thing eviscerated me. It ripped out my heart. Helen. He had called out my mother's name while he had been fucking me. Just like Trowa... I wasn't any more than a means to an end. He wasn't raping his son, he was just using him to remember what it had been like to have sex with the woman that he had loved. But... but he had said that he loved me.   
    All I had wanted... my entire life, all I had ever wanted was to hear that. 'I love you.' When was the last time that my father had said that? Had he ever? I... I can't remember. I can't remember if anyone had ever actually said those words to me. All I ever wanted... Is this the only way that I can be loved by my father? By being fucked by him? Just like Trowa... that's all anyone wants from me. To hurt me. To violate me, no matter what I want. Trowa didn't even love me for it. But my father did. My father loved me for this.   
    'Is that so terrible?'  
    My father took his hand away from my mouth, but it didn't matter. I wasn't going to scream anymore. What would be the point? I was already dead. He had already torn my heart out. I didn't have the voice to scream anymore, nor the care to do so. It wasn't like anyone was going to save me anyway. No one cared about me. The only person who loved me anymore was the one hurting me. I buried my face into my pillow and let my torrent of tears soak into it as my father began to move inside of me again and I couldn't sobbing like I was five years old.   
    I couldn't bear it anymore. His thrusts, slower and more shallow this time, went on for eternity. The sounds of his pants were like shards of glass in my ears. I was sick. In the shredded mess of my heart, I was too sick to go on. Like the wounded beast that I was, I desperately clawed in my head, searching for that dark hole there that had grown the day that Quatre had killed himself. I felt betrayed by it, that it hadn't come for me the moment that I had realized what my father was going to do to me. It hurt too much, my body and my emotions. Every thought was torture and I couldn't do it anymore. I didn't want to feel him come in me anymore. I didn't want to smell his breath or feel his hands or breathe in my disgust and self-hatred anymore.   
    Right before my father spilled into me for the second time, I found that hole. It's presence frightened me, it's readiness to take me in. But it was still better than the abyss in my guts that my father had formed, that blackness that was filled with monsters and my own screams. I gladly sunk into the black hole and let it swallow me up. What little of me was left.  
  
*****  
  
    We create our own monsters. I created mine out of denial and hope and trust. I had thought that there was nothing in me left capable of trusting after Quatre had looked me in the eye and ended his life. I had forgotten that I had trusted long before I had met him. I had been betrayed all over again. I betrayed myself. I knew... three years ago, I saw something in my father's eye and I refused to acknowledge it. I dreamed of him doing this to me, and I pushed it down deep in me, ignoring it. Even when he showed me his true colors outright, I came back. _I came back_. I could have run away, could have escaped. I knew what was waiting for me, I knew that this could happen, and I came back anyway. Had I wanted this to happen? Had I wanted to punish myself? Or am I just an idiot? I did this to myself, not my father. I raped myself.  
    I sank into the black pitch in my head, that secret place that I can run to when my memories hurt too much. But even there, I can't seem to escape them. I sank and I dreamed. I looked over into that abyss under my feet and let myself fall forward. I surrendered to gravity and let it swallow me up. I sank down into black water, it's icy currents pulling me down like a familiar lover. Waves like rough hands, grabbing me and holding me down. As I gasped for air, I let that blackness fill my lungs until there was nothing. No light. No warmth. No color. Nothing. That was where I belonged, in the unmoving sea, trapped forever.   
    I drifted in that single dream for a long time. As terrible as it was, it was better than the reality that was waiting for me when I was done hiding from it. When I did come out of it, even for just a few minutes, I wasn't allowed the luxury of lying to myself that it had just been a horrible nightmare. I didn't even wake up confused and need to grasp for what had happened to me. My memories were there, waiting for me like a hungry crocodile, eager to take me down. I hurt too much for any kind of lie. My wrists felt like someone had tried to saw my hands off. My face ached. And my ass and back and abdomen were a horror show.   
    "Yes," the sound of my father's voice far too close to me had my heart slamming in my rib cage.  
    I trembled there in my bed and curled up into a tiny ball, waiting for that weight to settle on me again, waiting for the pain to start again.  
    "No," I heard his voice again and dared to open my eyes, trying to find him.  
    I didn't even think about getting away from him at that point. I wasn't even entirely sure that I was capable of standing up, but I still tracked him like a frightened rabbit, needing to know where the attack was going to come from. I looked behind me and finally found him standing behind me, in the doorway of my room. I didn't even have the strength to turn over in bed and I was scared to try it, but from where I was, I could see him talking on the phone.  
    "No," he repeated, "He's very sick, he won't be coming into school today. Yes, I'll make sure he gets his assignments. Thanks."  
    He hung up the phone and I quickly faced back in front of me, hoping that if he thought that I was still asleep, he would leave me alone. I felt very strange hearing him call me out from school. That wasn't like him. Even when he had broken my ribs, he had always made me go, unless I couldn't stand. Although, given the pain that I was in, I was sure that this qualified as one of those times. But he couldn't know that. I didn't know what to think, that he had done it out of some ulterior motive, or if he had done it to be nice after assaulting me.   
    I heard his footsteps behind me and I gripped my sheets tightly in fear, trying to keep from hyperventilating. 'Please,' I wanted to beg him, 'please don't do it anymore, I can't take it. It hurts too much.' I wondered if he had raped me when I had been sleeping and how many times he had done it. I wasn't sure that I would survive him raping me again, not in the state that I was in right then, emotionally and physically. I felt like a bomb had gone off down there and it was all I could do to not think about the fact that the dry, flaky substance caked on my thighs was my own blood and probably my father's cum, too. The second that _that_ nice little thought filtered into my brain, I felt bile rise in my throat.   
    I froze as my father crouched down behind me, waiting for a blow or for him to grab me. Instead, he kissed my cheek.  
    "Goodnight, Duo," he whispered to me affectionately, running his hands through my bangs.  
    Tears filled my eyes, blurring my vision. He hadn't said goodnight to me since I had been six years old. Some deep, dark part of my heart, a part that had always been there, a part that I hadn't tried to think about since I had been a child, bled. It was the part of me that had always wanted this, for my father to treat me like that, like he loved me. It felt like opening some ancient wound. It hurt and it felt good at the same time. I would hate myself so much afterwards, but in that moment, that part of me loved him for just that small part of affection that he had shown me in the aftermath of his violence.   
    I listened to his footsteps leaving my bedroom and walking down the steps, but I didn't feel an inch of relief. He was still there, I knew, far too near me. I couldn't handle it, the fear that I felt for the same man whose love and approval I had wanted every day of my life. I sat up sharply, twisting my body as much as my injuries would allow, and threw up on the floor what little was still in my stomach. I fell back onto my mattress and promptly fell back into blackness.   
  
*****  
  
    My second attempt at consciousness was a slow, lethargic thing. My concept of time was totally fucked and I didn't like how similar it was to my breakdown after Quatre's death. I think that, if my father had bothered to clean up after his handiwork, I could have just drifted in that state forever, but I felt disgusting enough that I couldn't fall back to sleep.  
     The last thing that I wanted to do was open my eyes. I just wanted to go away, forever. I couldn't face the screaming that was still there in my head. I didn't want to move. Didn't want to breathe. Didn't want to do anything. I think that I would have let myself starve in that bed if it meant not having to think. My cat had different plans for me, though. I finally opened my eyes when something soft and furry brushed against my cheek. Pepper stared down at me and rubbed the top of her head against my face again. My smile amazed me. I wouldn't have thought, hours ago, that I would be capable of smiling ever again. But looking into her large, yellow eyes, I couldn't help it.   
    I won't be so melodramatic to say that my kitten saved my life, but I think that she had. She pulled me out of the black pit that my heart had become, and even if my smile was a jaded, hurt-filled thing, it was better than I would have managed without her. She made me give a shit about something, made me feel something beyond my rage and horror.  
    "Hi, Princess," I murmured sleepily and picked her up, daring to roll onto my back so I could place her on my chest.  
    Her happy purr vibrated through my heart and before I could stop it, I was crying again. She let me clutch her against my neck like she was a stuffed animal and didn't struggle as I sobbed.   
    "I'm sorry," I gasped out, struggling for control over my emotions and knowing that I was probably scaring her, "I'm so sorry."  
    It took me awhile to get the tears to stop, but by the time that I did, I knew that it was time for me to leave the bed. It was a slow, arduous process. Every little movement hurt and I felt dizzy for some reason. I put Pepper on the floor and sedately sat up, then got on my knees, then finally stood. As I found myself upright again, I had to gasp in pain. My ass throbbed unpleasantly and my thighs felt absolutely disgusting. My father had done something with my pants, hopefully thrown them out, because I was never going to wear them again. I would even end up throwing out my night shirt, unable to stomach wearing it again. It looked like he had cleaned up my vomit, too.   
    I stood there in my bedroom on shaking legs, feeling like ten miles of bad road and tried to get my bearings. My clock gleefully told me that it was 4 pm, October 18th. I had slept for maybe more than twelve hours, or at least that's what it felt like. Now that that mystery was solved, I searched for the next thing that I needed to do. Everything felt daunting to me, even the idea that I desperately needed to go downstairs to clean myself.   
    'But what if he's down there?' I thought with childish fear.  
    I pushed it all away and focused on something else, something that wouldn't result in me screaming in terror. Pepper. I hadn't fed her that morning and while I had made my way to a standing position, she had wandered over to her food bowl, pawing at it.   
    "I know, I know," I mumbled at her and limped to her.   
    Feed the cat, that was simple and harmless enough. Trying my hardest not to bend or move my lower body at all, I found the bag of cat food in my desk drawer and dropped some into her bowl. Some of it fell on the floor around it, but I knew that she would make quick work of that. Her water dish was still half full, so I wouldn't have to worry about that in awhile. I walked back to my bed, making a mental list of things that I needed to take care of as I went.   
    Clean the bed. Clean myself. Eat something bland. Drink a lot of water. But after that, I came up with nothing and I didn't want that to happen. I needed to do things, anything at all. I hoped that my father had picked up my homework assignments. I hoped that he had gotten into a car wreck and would never come back home. I felt something wet track down my leg as I moved and refused to even acknowledge it. I looked down at my bed and my stomach recoiled from the sight.   
    There was a large, dark stain on my sheets. It looked wet and nasty. Semen and blood, my mind helpfully supplied. I swayed, my vision graying a little. That was my blood... and my father's cum on those sheets. It was the same blood and semen that was still on me. Still _in_ me. My heart raced and my mind buzzed with panic. It was all still inside of me. My hands shook. I could smell it, that revolting mix of violence and sex, somewhere that it had no business being. I panted, my breath coming out in frantic pants as the anxiety attack hit me. I needed to get rid of it. Now. Right fucking now. That smell... that disgusting smell... it wasn't just coming from the sheets, it was coming from _me_.   
    I ripped the sheets off my bed, even pillow covers, not caring about the pain from my movements. It needed to go away. Tears pouring down my cheeks and struggling to breathe, I rolled my stained sheets into a ball and limped downstairs. That was the worst part, getting down those steps. I was in such a frantic hurry to get rid of my sheets that I didn't take my time, and each step pulled on some injury inside of me. Through some miracle, I didn't black out from the pain or get dizzy enough to fall.   
    My concerns about walking around the house in nothing but a t-shirt that only barely covered my crotch were long gone. I think that, in that moment, I wouldn't have cared if the whole world had seen my blood streaked legs, so long as it was a means to an end of getting clean. It didn't matter anyway, it didn't look like anyone was home. Later, I would feel grateful for that. If I had ran into my father then... I threw my sheets into the trash barrel and escaped into the bathroom, flicking on the light switch.  
    The lights flashed on and I found myself face to face with my reflection. For a moment, I didn't recognize myself. I was a stranger, standing there in the familiar bathroom. A stranger that looked only a few moments away from death, white faced, big eyed, and bloody. My skin of my face was grey, the only color present coming from the dark circles under my eyes and the damage that my father's belt had done. A hideous bruise arched over my face, dark black and bloody red at the edges of it, evidence of bleeding under my skin.   
    I remembered the sound as it had cracked across my face, the pain, and how he had almost taken out my eye with it. The leather had made a cut over my nose and cheek. The cut was much smaller than the ones on my wrists, but blood had gushed and dried across my face, making me look like a murder victim. My wrists were worse. My thrashing had turned them completely black and my skin was not just torn and ripped from the belt, but I had rubbed them raw. I could feel the belt binding them, biting into them as I struggled and screamed and begged-  
    Bile and panic rose equally in my throat and I had to tear my eyes away from my reflection just to keep sane, to keep my memories from overwhelming me and dragging me down again, but I couldn't control the shaking in my hands. Just a memory, I told myself, it can't hurt me anymore, it's over with. But my body and my heart wouldn't listen to me. I could still feel it, the leather on my wrists, my father's hand across my mouth as he came inside of me...   
    Trembling like a strung out junkie, I stumbled to the toilet. I needed to be clean. I needed _it_ out me, the only way that I knew how. I sat down on the toilet, wincing as my back protested being in that position and clutching the bottom of my shirt in white-knuckled hands, I pushed my internal muscles.   
    Sheer agony ripped through my insides at just that tiny push and I gasped in pain, doubling over until my forehead was nearly resting on my knees. It was bad enough to make my vision swim, but I thankfully didn't black out. The stinging sensation that accompanied the pain reminded me a great deal of a bladder infection that I had had when I had been a kid. It had that same heavy feeling in my guts, that same heat and sickness, only the pain was much worse. Something trickled out of me and I grit my teeth as I tried to just ride out the wave of misery. I think that I lasted all of ten seconds like that before it got to be too much and I hastily stood up on unsteady legs.  
    I felt sick when I saw that the water in the bowl was red and I worried about what sort of injury my father had caused. The little bit of blood that had been in my underwear after Trowa had fucked me that one time was nothing compared to this, but what could I do about it? I wiped my tears off my face and cleaned myself off. The toilet paper came away stained with blood, and something else that was slimier. I pretended that it was just in my imagination and flushed the tissue down the toilet. Just that one act, and I felt like I was breathless and hollowed out. How much more could I take? I didn't want to find out. I didn't want to know what was going to happen to me when that thin thread that was my control and sanity finally snapped.   
    I shed my shirt and turned on the water of the shower, not even waiting for it to warm up a little bit before stepping into it. The icy water felt good on my numbing feelings. A bit of the fog that was trying to wrap around my brain eased and I felt a bit less like a walking corpse. I tilted my head back and let the water soak through my hair and wash away the fresh blood on my thighs. I wasted no time in soaping a clean washcloth scrubbing at my skin. It wasn't just between my legs. I felt filthy all over, like my skin was crawling with filth.   
    I washed the blood off my face and the mess off my legs and in between my buttocks, but it wasn't enough. I still felt like something gross was clinging to me like a veil. I scrubbed obsessively at my arms and chest, again and again, until my fingers ached. I looked down at my naked body, trying to find what it was that was causing that feeling and saw black bruises in the shape of fingers on my hips. I could still those fingers on me, squeezing me, controlling me...  
    The washcloth fell from my lax fingers as that memory swept over me, just a fragment of that morning's assault. Did I deserve this? Did I deserve to be raped and assaulted and beaten for everything that I had done? Was that why my father had done it? To punish me for destroying their lives? Did he hate me so much for being born that he could never forgive me for it, enough to stop hurting me? Was that all this was? Just another way for him to take all of his anger and hatred out on me? Was all of this my fault?   
    Why _didn't_ I deserve that pain? I had destroyed so many lives. My mother's. My father's. I hadn't been able to be a friend to Quatre. I had let him die. I had pushed Trowa away from him. I had killed him and destroyed any possible chance for the both of them. I had only ever brought Trowa misery. And because of my harsh words, I had killed Quatre's mother, too. No matter what I did, I only hurt people. I was worse than my father, worse than Relena, worse than Zechs. I was pathetic and I had no right to feel sorry for myself for being raped. It was what I deserved, a fitting punishment for all my failures, all my callousness, all my selfishness.   
    I don't know why, but I thought about Heero in that moment. I thought of his blue eyes and that honest smile of his and I felt a pain deep in me that I had never experienced before. It felt like rotting death, like I was shriveling into nothing. I loved him. Despite everything, I loved the fucking asshole. I didn't even have that right. I was filthy and tainted and loathsome. He might be a homophobic jerk, but he was still so much brighter and better than I ever would be. Especially now. I was a cancer, and I should be glad that I had thrown everyone away. I didn't have anything left to ruin. Maybe my father would even take away the part of me that was always hurting people. That was all I had left, that hope, and my useless feelings.  
    I screamed, my memories of Quatre's suicide and my father's assault flashing through my brain like the most fucked up movie imaginable. I couldn't stop that sound of helpless rage and sorrow from flowing out of me as I cried and slammed my fist into the shower wall, over and over again. I felt my skin tear from my violence, but my blinding rage refused to let that small pain in. It's a wonder that I didn't break my hand. I just kept punching until, all of a sudden, all of it left me and I crumpled to the floor of the shower, slumped there like a marionette that had lost it's strings.   
    I couldn't feel anything. The pain of my wounds, my anger at my father and myself, my grief and agony. It was all gone, ripped out. All I could feel was numbness. That was alright, though. I didn't want to feel anything anymore. I wanted to be blissfully empty of everything, even thought. I wanted someone to carve out my memories. I wanted it all to go away, even the good things, because they only reminded me of what I had lost. I closed my eyes, begging for sleep to come and wash it all away from me, but this time it didn't. My heart was like a jack hammer in my chest, my fear and anxiety worse than any insomnia. I couldn't find the hole in me, I couldn't find that wonderful oblivion. Now even my mind was punishing me.   
    It was hours before I found the ability to care enough to pick myself up, turn the icy water off and leave the shower. As I dried myself off, pulled my long hair into a lazy and messy ponytail, and walked out of the bathroom naked, I shook, but it wasn't from the cold that I had tortured my body with. I felt like I was having a seizure, like the whole world was shaking with me. I needed it to stop. How can you be numb and feel such pain at the same time?   
    I stumbled into the empty kitchen and found my way to the refrigerator. I needed to wash it away. The shower hadn't helped, but I knew something that would. Something that would take away my pain and my reality, something that would make the sleep come. I opened the fridge and found what I was looking for instantly: tucked behind a six-pack of beer, a gallon of milk, and some Chinese take out containers was a tall bottle of whiskey. It was about half empty already.   
    I didn't contemplate what I was about to do, the dangers of either of my parents getting mad at me for drinking their stuff, what I was going to put in my body, or my vow to never touch the stuff after I had drunk that little bit of vodka on the train tracks. I just grabbed the bottle, unscrewed the cap, and took a huge, lengthy swig from it, raw, gulping down the amber liquid like I was dying from poison and it was the antidote. I didn't notice the taste at all, but the burning fire that ran down my chilled throat was disgusting and I felt goose bumps being raised on my arms from it.     The first time I had drank that shit, it had warmed my stomach and felt kind of nice, even if the drunken feeling it had left me with and the taste of it had been awful. This time, though, it didn't feel warm. Maybe it was just from the sheer volume of the stuff I was drinking or the kind of alcohol that it was, but it didn't feel warm. It burned and stung. It felt like it was ripping a trail of fire down into me, not helping the cold and numbness, but mixing with it. That burning feeling reminded me of how it had felt when my father had shoved his cock into me and I had to drink more to stop that memory dead.  
    I didn't stop drinking until the very last drop fell from the mouth of the bottle into mine. I stared at the empty glass, but I didn't feel anything, neither remorse for what I had just done or mourning that there wasn't any left. I threw the bottle into the trash barrel so hard that it shattered and wiped at my mouth. I felt weird, swaying with something other than shock. My head was fuzzy and my stomach felt heavy, like it wanted to heave. I guess my body was fighting back at the unwanted intrusion of alcohol, even if my head couldn't. I just stood there for awhile, staring down at my hands. They didn't feel like they were mine. I felt disconnected from myself, like was floating in blackness again.  
    There was pain, but the whiskey had done its job of making me not care about it. It was distant from me, as numb as the rest of me. I must have stood there for awhile to have felt it's effects so harshly, but no one intruded on me. I don't know what I would have done if either of my parents had come home then and found me drunk and naked in the kitchen. Probably nothing at all. I had nothing left in me to care about something like that.  
    I walked up the stairs unsteadily. I had stopped shaking at some point, but my legs felt just as wrong as my hands, like someone else was controlling them and I was just hanging on for the ride. When I made it back to my bedroom, I shut the door behind me and, not even really thinking about what I was doing, fished out the sweatshirt jacket that Quatre had given me on my thirteenth birthday. I held it in my hands, hyper aware of it's softness, and clenched it tightly. What would he think of all this, I wondered, and almost burst out laughing at that thought. I didn't bother trying to imagine his ghost then, I knew that I wouldn't be able to make him appear. I wasn't even sure if I deserved his comfort.   
    It hit me then as a kind of horrible shock, that I hadn't seen my imaginary vision of Quatre in a long time. He hadn't come to comfort me after my rape or even after my father had tried to molest me. He had been suspiciously absent this entire time. Was that really how I felt, that I was such a miserable, sorry excuse for a person that I didn't deserve so much as a figment of my imagination to tell me that things were going to be ok? Was he gone for good?  
    It was too much, that thought. It was like I had killed him all over again. I hurriedly walked to my mattress and laid down on it, bare of any sheets and curled up into a tiny ball on it. I wrapped my sweatshirt around me like a blanket and covered my head with it. The darkness that it made around me was a welcome thing. I closed my eyes and let the alcohol and my stress pull me down into a dark sleep, filled with nightmares and awful things. My last thought was that I hoped that I died in my sleep.   
  
*****  
  
    I woke up with one of the worst headaches that I have ever had, a taste in my mouth like something had crawled in there in my sleep and had died, and a body that felt like it had turned into hard, agonizing rock. I groaned and rolled from laying on my back to on my side, coming eye to eye with Pepper. She headbutted my forehead and trotted over to her food bowl, batting at it and pointedly looking at me with a beseeching expression. The ringing sound the metal bowl made when she hit it with her claws was like a bell banging in my abused head.   
    I scrubbed at my encrusted eyes and looked over at my clock. It was five am, Friday the 19th. I nearly groaned again. I had slept away another day, but at least I hadn't missed another day of school. I laid there for a minute, trying to find enough ability to care to get up. I easily recognized the signs of depression, and I think I could have wallowed in it for several more days if I had been a different person. But I had realized something at a very early age that had always put things into perspective for me. Life has it's ups and downs no matter who you are, but life doesn't really give a shit if you're having a bad day or a bad life time. It will ultimately continue on no matter how much pain and suffering a person goes through.   
    Some people suffer more than others, just look at Quatre and Relena, but life isn't going to just stop because I get a bad grade or if my father raped me. No matter how much I wished that it would. So I was faced with three options: one, I could lie there on that mattress until someone dragged me out of it, two, I could get up and go to school and try to pretend like nothing had happened, or three, I could kill myself.   
    Not moving and letting my depression control me didn't really appeal me. Although I had done that for almost two days, and I had let it happen after Quatre's death, it really wasn't in my nature. My whole life, after something bad had happened with the exception of trying to kill myself three years ago, I had always picked myself up and moved on. I didn't consider it an issue of personal strength, it was just something that I did, because the alternative was kind of stupid.   
    The jury was out on the third option. I had failed killing myself twice already. I knew how to slice my wrists correctly now, but even in the misery that I was in, the thought of trying again wasn't anymore appealing than doing nothing. It wasn't that I wanted to live, not with what had just happened. The mere thought of trying to continue on, of living with my father, living with those memories, was too painful. I couldn't even come up with a reason why I should keep on living. My life was shit. I had no friends, no one who cared about me besides my cat, no future, and a past that I didn't want to face up to. Everything frightened me now, every second that I was still breathing. What if my father did that to me again? What if Heero somehow found out that I liked him? Worse, what if he found out that my father had fucked me and I hadn't done anything to stop it? That some disgusting part of me had liked him saying that he loved me, even at that huge cost?  
    The thought of returning to school after all of that had happened was daunting. I didn't know if I was going to be able to deal with the bullying, if I was going to break down again like I had the previous day. But I realized something as I laid there, looking at the wall and thinking about Zechs and Relena, all the things they might do to me and how I might still be too fragile to deal with it. Being raped by my father, being hurt and told that I was loved after doing something like that to me, had given me a kind of... not strength, really, because I was far from strong after that.   
    There were so many holes in me now that I felt like a block of Swiss cheese. It was more like there was a brick wall around my heart, refusing to let any more poison in. I felt like, after that experience, nothing in the entire world could touch me anymore. Anything that anyone did, I could just ask myself 'is it worse than the rape?' That kind of comparison made things easy. Being called fag didn't hold a candle to it. I could survive a single day at school, if that was what I decided to do. I didn't feel like killing myself just yet, so it seemed as good a thing to do as any.   
    I sat up and a wave of dizziness hit me, making me rest my forehead against my knees until it went away. My stomach angrily reminded me that I had no clue when it was I had last eaten anything. It was no wonder that I felt like shit, emotional turmoil not included. It had consumed almost half a bottle of whiskey on an empty stomach, and with no kind of tolerance. I would have cursed my stupidity if I hadn't been aware that it wouldn't have made any difference. In the state that I had been in, I don't think that I would have cared if I had realized that I hadn't eaten anything before doing that.   
    I won't say that I felt more together than I had the previous day, but waking up not covered in blood and other bodily fluids and reeking of sex and day old sweat helped me from swinging back into a panic attack. Even my anal injuries didn't feel as horrible, although they still ached and burned. I made a mental note not to eat anything solid for awhile, at least until the tears healed enough for infection not to be a concern. There was no way in hell that I was going to go to the hospital over this. It would just take time, I told myself. The bruises on my wrists, hips, and face, the tears inside of me, the cuts from the belt, my sore muscles, it would all just take time to heal, then it would be like nothing had ever happened.  
    I got out of bed and pretended like it was just any other school day. I fed Pepper and gave her some fresh water and made sure that all of my school supplies were in my back pack. I felt irritated that no one had woken me up yesterday or brought me my due homework. I hadn't been in the right mind to do it then, but I was sure that my father hadn't even bothered to pick it up. I wondered if he had called my bosses to excuse me from work or if I was going to get in trouble for skipping them for a day. If he had, he must have called Andre and figured out that I had quit. He hadn't come up here to beat the crap out of me so either he hadn't called at all, he didn't care, or Andre had lied about it. That seemed the most likely option. Andre only had everything to gain if my father didn't find out that I wasn't working for him anymore.   
    I pulled my jeans out of my closet and looked at them for a moment. I really didn't want to wear them. I couldn't say why, only that it didn't appeal to me at all. They were old and a bit tight on me and for some reason, they made me nervous. Instead I found a pair of sweatpants, a long sleeved shirt, and a thick hoodie jacket to go over the shirt. The jacket and sweatpants were a size too big and baggie on me, but I had bought them at a thrift store the previous week in preparation for the cold weather. They draped over my hands and feet and made me feel better. Safer. Hell if I know why. I combed my hair and pulled it up into a low pony tail that I hid under the sweatshirt, which made me feel even better.   
    I walked down the steps slowly, not because of my injuries, but purely out of caution. I could hear the shower going, but I had no idea who was in there. The thought of running into my father down there had my heart racing again. I felt so stupid, cowering on the stairs and listening for any noise like a skittish animal. This was my house and I wasn't a character in a slasher flick. There was no serial killer out to get me, no monster hiding around every corner. But that's what I felt like. I was on edge and frightened, the walls and corners of the house that I had lived in for seventeen years seemed so sinister to me.   
    There was no one in my parents' bedroom when I glanced into it, although the bed was made, and there was no one in the kitchen. I hoped that my mother was the one in the bathroom until I looked out our front door and saw that my father's car was still there. Just the sight of it made me feel sick, but I refused to let it get to me. Just another day, I told myself. I would have to see him again at some point. Unless I ran away right then, it was inevitable. But how could I handle that? Looking into the eyes of the man that had raped me? I wasn't so sure that I could, that it wouldn't drive me insane or I would try to hurt him. If I had only kept that knife under my pillow... but that thought made my nausea worse, that it was just another thing that I had damned myself with.  
    I could have left the house then, like I often fled during our worse fights, but some stubborn part of myself that wasn't quite broken yet had me walking into the kitchen. If I didn't get used to being around my father then, how would I ever? Besides, I needed something in my stomach if I was going to get through the day. There wasn't much to eat in the house again.   
    When I saw the alcohol in the fridge, my stomach recoiled, my body remembering that I had poisoned it not too long ago. It was a stupid thing for me to have done, but I didn't really feel the urge to keep drinking, thankfully. Although I hate to do it, I have to admit that I've been tempted to use alcohol to help me sleep again. It had worked perfectly well last time, hangover and gross feelings non withstanding, but it's a small temptation. As much as I want to escape my nightmares, the threat of becoming like my parents is too awful to me.   
    Through sheer luck, I found a can of vegetable soup broth in the pantry. It wasn't much, but my stomach could handle it and as cold inside as I still felt, a hot meal sounded great. I heated the soup up and sat at the table, drinking it with a spoon. I barely tasted the broth, but the heat from it has it pooled in my stomach was wonderful. Halfway through my meal, I heard the shower turn off and my father get out of the bathroom. I froze, my guts turning into stone inside of me and it's a wonder that I didn't throw up what I had just eaten.   
    I stayed there, still and scared, my hand shaking as I gripped the spoon. Hearing him move into his bedroom didn't make me feel any relief. He was going to be out soon and he would want his morning coffee. I couldn't be here when he did. For all my thoughts of being strong and facing him, I was a pathetic coward and I couldn't do it. Just from hearing him moving around, my body's instant reaction was to run away and cower someplace. It was completely ridiculous, but I couldn't help it. The fear that I felt was instinctual and overpowering.   
    I almost didn't eat the rest of the broth. I felt sick again, like my insides were trembling as badly as my hand, and what appetite that I had found was long gone, but I forced myself to finish it anyway, gulping down the still steaming soup as quickly as I could, burning my mouth a little. I wasn't fast enough though. Just as I was standing up to clean my dish, my father walked out of the bedroom. I all but ran for the sink, keeping my back to him. I couldn't look at him. I couldn't acknowledge him.   
    Tears pricked my eyes and I felt myself start to panic as he walked across the kitchen towards me. Would he apologize for what he had done? Would he make up excuses for it? I didn't think that I could take an apology. I might want it, crave it, some knowledge that he felt remorse for violating me, but at the same time, I didn't want to hear those words. I didn't even want to think about what he had done to me.   
    He was right there, at my back, and I froze. My heart lurched and pulsed violently and I felt a deep chill fill me. The spoon clattered in the bowl as my hands shook harder and harder. I looked down at it and saw that I was clutching the ceramic bowl so tightly that there was a crack in it. Then he was right there, directly behind me, so close that his chest was almost at my back. I felt bile in my throat. I could feel that chest pressed up against my back, his hands on my hips, squeezing me, using me like how I imagined he had used one of his whores...  
    "Move," he grumbled at me in a voice that clearly said that he was still half asleep.  
    Move? That was it? If I hadn't still been so frightened, I would have turned around to look at him. It was the sort of thing that he would have normally said to me. No apology, no excuses, not even a threat to not tell anyone. Just 'move', because I was in his way. This man behind me was my father, the one that I used to know, not the monster that had visited my bed. A horrific thought came to me then. What if he didn't remember what he had done to me?   
    What if he had been so thoroughly wasted that night that he didn't even remember that he had raped me? Was that even possible? He always remembered, no matter how drunk he had been, and I had very clearly heard him call my school. Had he done that while still drunk? I don't know which possibility is worse, that he didn't even remember ripping my life apart, or that he did and it didn't so much as bother him.   
    I moved slightly to the left at the order before it dawned on me what he wanted, that the coffee grounds was in the cabinet right next to my head and how close he was going to get to me in order to get them. He reached out his hand to open the cabinet and his arm brushed against mine. His scent filled me, his touch sent spikes through my nerve endings. My heart exploded in terror in my chest and my breath came out rapidly, uncontrollably. I saw nothing but red for a second, then I felt it. Him pushing into me, his cock thrusting inside of my body. That pain. That smell. The smell of blood and sex and violence and alcohol. I felt him in me, ripping me apart.   
    I couldn't breathe. Even when my vision finally cleared, I saw it in my head, his body moving against mine, that touch on my bare skin. I dropped the bowl into the sink, unable to handle the panic attack that took all of my sense away. I couldn't stay there. My fear was immense, all over a simple, unintentional touch. I was terrified by my own father. I ran out of there, hyperventilating and feeling like the world was collapsing around me, that my heart was a drum being played by someone on speed. My dad didn't even yell at me for possibly breaking the bowl.   
    I kept running, not even closing my bedroom my bedroom door, and in the blink of an eye, I suddenly found myself cowering under my desk, hugging my knees to my chest. I was going to suffocate. I was going to die because of my fearful memories. I stayed there in my dark corner and rode out the panic attack, not knowing what to do to come back to sanity.   
    Pepper trotted over to me and looked up at me in curiosity instead of fear. I scooped her up and hugged her to my frightened heart, resting my face against her soft fur. She struggled for a second, not liking how tightly that I was holding her, but after a few annoyed sounds, she settled in my grip.   
    'Duo,' I heard Quatre's voice in my head, 'You have to calm down. You're breathing too fast. Everything is going to be alright, you know that. Just one breath in, hold it, and then let it out.'  
    I wanted to laugh and demand to know where he had been when I had fucking needed him but I knew where he had been. It's hard to hold on to an imaginary friend when your head is so terrified that it can do little more than scream gibberish at you. I wanted to scream at him to go away and leave alone, but I really didn't. I knew he was just my own consciousness trying to help me through this anxiety, but I did what he said. I took a deep, shuddering breath in, held it for several seconds, and let it out slowly. I repeated it again and again until my heart slowed and calmed back into it's normal beat.   
    I let Pepper go finally. For her credit, she didn't take a swipe at me, but just shot me this irritated look and, tail high in the air, returned to her hole in the wall. I did laugh then, this ugly and twisted sound. I was so fucked up, running and hiding from nothing like a child. But I couldn't deny that this was real. I was so scared. Not just of my father, but of everything. I felt like he had opened a portal in my head and every fear that I had ever known was coming back to haunt me through that hole. Every noise, every smell, every movement startled me and scared me out of my wits. How was I supposed to survive this?  
    I didn't know. It wasn't exactly something that I could go to a doctor with. My father had broken me. Nothing was going to fix that. I just had to do the exact same thing that I had done after Quatre's death. I had to learn to live with whatever shards were left of me.   
  
*****  
  
    School was a nightmare. I was so high strung and hyper sensitive to everything that even someone standing slightly close to me had me shrinking away from them. My headache grew worse and worse as the day went on and my nerves felt frayed, like I was constantly in a state of adrenaline rush. At several points, I considered just walking out, unsure if I was going to last until 2pm feeling that way. I even ate in the studio for the first time since Trowa and I had had that fight up there, simply because I couldn't handle dealing with other people any longer. I had never felt so isolated, so alone in my life. Even after Quatre had died, Mrs. Khushrenada had always been trying to talk to me about it. But now, it wasn't just that no one would talk to me, just being around people hurt.  
    There was only one thing that helped me to keep my sanity and manage to stay through the entire day: Heero. For the first two periods, I ignored him as much as I could. We had most of the same classes together, so it wasn't exactly easy, but for once he and Relena weren't messing with me much. I kept a low profile, forcing my eyes not to glance at him. I had thought that I didn't want to see him, didn't even want to think about him without feeling the misery I had felt before, knowing the futility of my affection for him.   
    Even if he had been gay, who the hell would want me now? Like Trowa had told me once, I was no prize, and that was before my father had raped me. Now I was just this disgusting thing. No one was going to ever want anything to do with me if they found out about it. Heero finding out about it made me feel so ashamed, so it was just better to stay far away from him. I couldn't even handle the hatred and disgust that I felt for myself, I was sure that his would kill me.   
    But even knowing all of that, I found myself watching him after awhile, sneaking these little glances and feeling relief when I heard his voice. Being around him hurt, but it was a hurt that I was quickly becoming familiar with. It's a strange thing to admit, but he helped me more than anything else that day, because every other moment, I was that kid that had been assaulted by his own parent. I was the broken freak, tainted and unwanted. People might fake sympathy, but I knew the truth. No one wants to deal with someone like me. No one likes to think that a father could do that to their own offspring, so they would rather ignore someone like me. No one wanted to know.   
    But in those moments when I saw Heero, I wasn't that person. I was just a pathetic, little gay kid with a pointless crush. That was a lot more normal than the other things that I was, wasn't it? I was a cliche, just another teenager angsting for a love that they could never have, no different than any other loser that wanted to be with someone popular and attractive, gay or otherwise. That pain made me normal. Even if it hurt, it was exactly what I needed. I could hide in that pain and pretend like nothing else was different. I just wished that I could keep that pain afterwards, late at night when I had to go home and worry what the darkness of my room was going to hold for me.  
    Home Ec used to be my safe haven this year, the one class that I have that Relena, Zechs, and Heero aren't in. At least that was true until the start of this month, when Relena and Heero transferred into my class. Relena transferred first, although why I'm not sure. At the beginning of the year, she had been in Computer Programming with her brother. She had taken Home Ec before last year, so she didn't need to take the second course to fulfill the requirement, but she did need a computer elective.   
    So why change classes a month into the semester for a class that she didn't need or, I thought, even liked? The only thing that makes a bit of sense at all is that her brother had been in that class. Their relationship has always baffled me, but maybe that's because I'm an only child. Sometimes they seem close, sometimes Zechs acts protective of his younger sister, but a lot of times they seem to loathe each other. A lot of times, Relena doesn't seem to even want to be in the same room with him. I could imagine her, being the spoiled bitch that she is, getting into some squabble with her brother and switching classes just to spite him.   
    Heero was probably the reason why she hadn't transferred back by now. He had transferred himself out of some metal shop class a few days after Relena had shown up in my Home Ec class. The girls in my class had gushed about it, saying how romantic it was that Heero had changed classes just so he could be with his girlfriend. It made me gag. I wished that they had found some other class to be romantic in.   
    That class, we were making a vegetable lasagna, something that most of my classmates whined about. It was a rule that we had to trade a piece of our dishes with one of the other groups and at least try it, but not many people wanted to try a vegetarian meal. At least we got to keep the rest of what we made. I hadn't brought a lunch with me again. We had an odd number of people in our class, so I was the only one without a group. Our teacher had tried to put me into one, but I had said that I was fine working alone, and I was. It was easier than working with a partner and on that day, being alone was a blessing.   
    Cooking and baking has always been... I don't know. Therapeutic, I guess? I always feel calm when I'm making something, especially if there are a lot of steps to it. What I make, if it tastes good or if I fuck something up doesn't even matter, although I do feel a sense of accomplishment, that I can do something, even something that small, right. I just feel this stillness in me that I can never seem to find elsewhere. It's the only time where my mind doesn't wander, where my thoughts don't go someplace dark.  
    That was exactly what I needed that day: stillness. Heero and Relena's station was right next to mine. I had never actually eaten anything that they had made. A lot of times Relena would give it to someone else while our teacher wasn't looking, but even in the times that they had passed their food to me, I would just throw it out at the end of class. I couldn't risk the possibility that they would do something horrible to it, and even if they didn't, there was no way that I was going to eat anything that cunt made.   
    But when I started to boil the pasta and chop the vegetables, none of that mattered. It all just faded away. I fell into the rhythm of it. There's just something about cutting fresh fruit and vegetables that's very satisfying, the crisp sound. It was a welcome thing, to melt into that task, to smell the aroma of tomato sauce and cut vegetables instead of the ghost smells of sex and blood that I couldn't seem to get switched off. Even when our teacher walked around to give her remarks to our progress, telling me that I was doing a good job, I barely acknowledged her. There was only one thing that broke through that peaceful shell that I had built around myself to keep out all noise and chaos: Heero's laugh. My hand stilled halfway through chopping up a zucchini, my heart freezing at that sound.   
    "I feel sorry for the group that gets Duo's food," Relena was saying, her tone just as cruel as her boyfriend's laugh had been, a mock whisper that was anything but, "Who knows what sort of nasty things he does with his hands, and I don't remember seeing him wash them. They should just throw it out, anything that faggot makes will probably taste like shit and smell like cum anyway."  
    My hand shook as memory hit me like an electrical shock. The sound of my father panting. The agony of his penetration. The semen that had dripped out of me... I had to take a deep breath to keep from hyperventilating again. It was just a memory, just a memory, nothing more, just cruel whispers, just like _her_ , I chanted to myself, trying to calm down. I wouldn't fall apart. Not there, not in front of him.   
    Faggot. That's all she ever said, all she would ever harp on about. For whatever reason, hearing that from her then was more painful than it had ever been my entire life, even from the first time that Zechs had accused me of being one. She couldn't know how it tore at my heart, the reminder of what I was, and I refused to ever let her know. A boy that likes other boys. Had my father raped me for that reason, had he known what I was and thought that it would make it easier for me? Was it easier, because I liked guys instead of girls, and the entire reason why I had been unable to make it stop, the reason why I hadn't run away, was because I was a fag?   
    And why... why did I still like men? Why did I like Heero? All men did was hurt me. Heero, Trowa, my father. How could I possibly still be attracted to him after everything? Hadn't I been frightened and scarred enough to feel some aversion to it all? What the fuck was wrong with me, that I could still like him? I had never wanted anything to do with sex, and now I knew that I would never, ever want it, so why? Why was my heart so messed up? I felt like my father had reached into my chest and autopsied my heart, just ripped it open and peered inside. There was nothing in the world that was going to be able to put it back together again. Everything was hopeless.   
    I came back to myself realizing that I was gripping the handle of the knife so hard that my knuckles were white. I stared down at the blade. It was a large thing, made specifically for chopping, and not very sharp. But in that moment, I imagined walking over to Relena with that knife in hand and stabbing her in the gut with it. I imagined the wonderful sound her entrails would make when I twisted the blade and ripped her open. That single image sent a perverse thrill of pleasure through me. I wanted to do it. I wanted to stab her, kill her, watch her blue eyes go wide in shock and her already pale face turn white.  
    I dropped the knife like the handle had just become searing hot, horrified by own sick daydream. My heart craved violence, it craved hurting her. Was that what I was? Just a shadow of my father? It was happening. I was becoming more like him. I could feel that, his blood in my veins and I wanted to rip it all out until I couldn't think anymore. Even when I had dropped the knife, my hand had automatically curled into a fist, and it took every ounce of control that I possessed not to at least punch her, to vent some of my anger. My rage was a poison, coursing through me. As much as thinking of hurting someone made me feel good, I didn't want it. I didn't want to be this person.   
    Tears filled my eyes as I remembered how I used to be, when I had been younger, when Quatre had been my friend. Even then, when I had been quick to anger, it had never been like this. This blackness had never been there, inside of me. I had clung to his goodness, his kindness, and had wanted to be more like him. But now... now I knew that that was impossible. I couldn't escape who I was, where I had come from and I knew that the longer that I lived, the more like _him_ I was going to be.   
    A quick movement out in the corner of my vision had me thinking in a panic that Relena had somehow figured out that I had just been thinking about stabbing and punching her, or one of them had noticed that I was close to crying right there in the stupid class. I turned to look, just in time to catch Heero leaning over from where he was stirring their tomato sauce to press a kiss to Relena's pale lips.   
    A pain, completely unlike any of the others that I had felt since my father had assaulted me, burst in me like a piece of rotten fruit. I had seen them together, so many times. And each time, it had hurt me almost unbearably since I had figured out that I liked him, but I had never seen them kiss like that before. Heero looked so focused and intense, and Relena looked happy, her eyes sliding closed in contentment and a blush spreading across her cheeks. They looked like a fairy tale, the handsome prince chastely kissing the beautiful princess. It was too easy to see them like that, the picture perfect couple, and not as my bullies.   
    I have never felt so ugly, so tainted, and so unseemly as in that moment. I felt like such a freak... such a... such a fag. I was an unwanted thing, something to be sneered at. I stared at them, burning the image of them into my mind before I finally had to turn away. That was what I could never had, I reminded myself. For some reason that I can't comprehend, he loves her and wants to be with her, the very picture of normal. Compared to that, my love for him was hideous and I didn't even understand it.   
    I felt like my heart was getting ripped apart all over again. How was that possible? How did I have any parts of me left that weren't completely damaged? It was ludicrous. After what I had just gone through, something like that shouldn't have even touched me. So why did it hurt me so badly? I think I know, now. I think I understand why watching Heero kiss her hurt me as much as getting raped by my father did. I loved the both of them, even though I shouldn't, even though I knew that they were only going to hurt me. And my love, that bright and shining thing that Quatre had shown me, the thing that I had seen on my first day of school when my classmates' parents had picked them up, the thing that I had craved and seen as the solution to all of my problems, had betrayed me.  
    See, all the television shows and books and movies and poems have it wrong. Love isn't magical. It isn't beautiful. It isn't the thing that can save you or heal you when you need it. Love is poison. It seeps into you, deep inside where you have no hope of digging it out. Then, little by little, it slowly kills you. It makes you do things that you would never think of doing and it turns you into something else. It took me too long to realize that and now, I can't purge it from me.   
    I've learned that love is something that, if it's ever presented to you, you should turn away from it. My love for Quatre had me crying for days at his loss, and later had me slitting my wrists open. My love for Heero had made me weak to his bullying and had me agonizing over a thing that I could never have. My father's love for my mother had seen me raped, and his love for me through that act had left me clinging onto it, unable to fight against it.   
    But even though I understood all of that, I couldn't stop it. I couldn't stop loving Heero. He was no good for me, just like Trowa hadn't been any good for Quatre, and my father was even less so. But still, I loved them, despite the pain. Did that make me as bad as my father, loving someone who loathed me, desiring them instead of moving on, letting my heart become more and more twisted? Is that what had happened to him? Had wanting Mom driven him to this dark place where, like me, he was willing to grab any scrap of affection, even if that meant having sex with his son?   
    I'm not saying that I sympathize with what he did to me, but I think that I almost understand it. Maybe not his reasoning, but his feelings. The frustration, the burning ache, the anger. I felt all those things when I saw Heero kiss Relena. And I wondered if it was really so terrible, what my father wanted. I'm not wanted by anyone. Not Quatre. Not Trowa. Not Heero. Not my mother. But my father wanted me. I knew that he was just using me. He was like Brian, using me to feel better about himself. I was his punch bag and his sex doll, nothing more than that. But Trowa had walked away from me, because I hadn't been able to be a good enough doll for him. My father hadn't. And he had said that he loved me, not Mom, but _me_. Trowa hadn't even been able to do that much. Would I do the same for Heero? If he ever asked me to do something like that, would I jump at the chance like a slut, only for affection instead of sex?  
    It was wrong... it was so fucked up, my feelings. But I can't lie that I didn't have those thoughts. That I still don't have those thoughts. If love is a poison, it's still one that I need to live. I wondered just how much that I would endure for it, because really, I think that being wanted as punching bag by my father to vent both his lust and his anger, was sure as hell better than not being wanted at all.   
  
*****  
  
    That night, something strange happened. I had a dream. No, it wasn't a dream. But it was. It was impossible, and it felt like I was dreaming... at the same time that it felt like that I was wide awake. How something like that is possible, I don't know. There was someone in my room, in the corner where the light from my lantern wouldn't touch. That corner is usually all dark shadows, but there was someone standing there. I could see the outline of their shape and I knew that it was looking right at me. It was just... staring at me as I laid on my mattress.   
    The sight of it... and some part of me that the 'it' was really a man at the same time that it wasn't, that it was really a monster, terrified me. I couldn't look away from it, I couldn't even blink, but I felt a horror that I've never felt in my entire life. I couldn't breathe, and my heart was screaming where I couldn't. My breath was caught in my throat. All I could do was lay there and shake, feeling like a small child again in the presence of some boogieman.   
    Then it... he... took a step towards me and I think that I might have screamed, although I don't know if I had only screamed in the dream. I opened my eyes and found myself crouched under my desk, tears running down my face and my heart racing so fast that I felt sick from it. I had the scissors that I keep in my desk drawer clutched tightly in my hands, drawn out in front of me like I was warding something off. I don't remember getting them, or leaving my bed. But I remembered the man, I remembered that there was a monster in my room and it was coming for me. It was going to eat me.   
    I pressed myself hard against the back of the wall, my breaths coming out in frantic pants. It was there, in that corner, walking towards me. I was awake, my eyes were open, but I was still asleep. I was having a nightmare while I was awake and later, that would frighten me, but in that moment, all that mattered, all there was to be scared of, was the thing in the corner of my room.   
    Eventually, I started to wake up. It was the strangest experience that I've ever had. My eyes were wide open with fright, and there was adrenaline coursing through me, but I was trapped in this weird state, between being awake and asleep. I became more aware, like waking from a deep dream, and it was gradual, just like it would normally be. I was still very scared, still paranoid that there was something there in my room that wanted to hurt me, but minute by minute, that suggestion seemed sillier than frightening, and the thing that was starting to scare me wasn't the man in the room, but what the hell had just happened to me.  
    I felt like I had when I had been really little and I had had bad dreams about werewolves and the boogieman, being scared even while I was awake and having that fear fade, but still linger. I opened my hand around the handle of the scissors and saw that I had cracked the hard plastic. When my heart beat settled to merely agitated instead of full out terror, I crawled out from under the desk, but some strange part of me was still on edge, still tense and prickling with the fear that something was going to jump out from the shadows and gut me.   
    It took a lot of effort for me to reach up and put the scissors on the desk. I didn't want to part with what little bit of protection that I had, even if I knew that I was being ridiculous. I crawled back onto my mattress and wrapped my blankets around me tightly, shaking like a newborn foal. I pulled my pillow out from under me and hugged it tightly to me, wrapping my body around it like I thought that it could save me from the assault of hyperawareness that I was under. I could hear everything, the creak of a board, the sound of the wind and rain beating at the side of the house... it was all a source of horror for me.   
    I couldn't even close my eyes, not for a second. I was too afraid of what would be there, lurking in the dark behind my eyes. I heard another creak, coming from downstairs, and my entire body tensed. I was on high alert, listening for any evidence that my father was there, that he was going to come for me like he had before, but I couldn't uncurl myself from where I was. With every one of those noises, my heart jerked. I wanted to shut off, to die, if that's what it took to get this to stop. How could anyone be this frightened and not wish for death or sleep to take it all away?  
    When my door softly opened from behind me, I was in such a state of anxiety that the real proof of my fear, my father's footsteps behind me, couldn't make it worse. My mattress dipped as he sat down on it, but I didn't move, didn't try to run. He leaned down close and I curled up tighter, waiting for the horrid stench of his alcohol fueled breath to wash over me like it had the first time. It didn't. There was no beer on his breath or clothes at all.   
    Tears ran down my cheeks as he pushed me over onto my stomach, not as rough as he had before, but definitely not gently. I didn't protest. I didn't try to fight him. It was never about the alcohol, I realized. My father wanting to have sex with me had never been about him getting drunk. I had just wanted to believe that. That there were two sides to my father, the drunken monster and my gruff dad. But that wasn't true. Both of them were the monster, and he had only needed alcohol to vent his desires that first time, to get the courage for it. He didn't need it anymore. I realized something terrible that night, something more terrible than my father's soberness, more terrible than my strange nightmare. I realized a truth that was enough to break me apart all over again in those small hours of the morning.  
    It wasn't going to stop.  
  
  
End Chapter 5  
      
  
Author's Note: I apologize for the wait on this part. It was a very difficult part of the story to write, as I knew that it would be. It caused a few tears and quite a bit of frustration and stress, so it's a bit of a relief to get it out. Although I do write a lot of stories where the main character goes through sexual trauma, it's not something that I enjoy writing and with this story, it was a bit personal.   
  
Chapter 6, while having some dark scenes, is not going to have the same tone of this one (it will also probably be shorter), I promise, and is actually going to have some good things for once! So, I hope this chapter didn't scare anyone off ^_^  
  
Thanks to everyone to your kind reviews. It always overwhelms me to know that people are reading and enjoying this story : )  
  
  
  
      
      
  
      
      
  



	27. Chapter 6 Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duo's mother finds out about what his father has been doing to him. Heero tries to help Duo after Zechs pulls a horrible prank on him. Nearing the end of his rope, Duo finds his father's gun in his hands, but what will he do with it?

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 6  
Part 1  
  
  
November 15th, 2007  
  
  
    It didn't stop. The rapes, my inability to handle other people, my fear of my father, or my strange nightmares. But just like with everything else in my life, I learned to... not really cope with it, but keep going on in spite of it. I forced myself not to show anyone how anxious I was all the time, especially at school where I was surrounded by people. I tried to avoid my father as much as I could, even in my thoughts. I focused almost obsessively on other things; reading, my school work, my jobs. I started to write these short stories to try to vent the darkness that I felt. They were dark, violent, and twisted little things a lot of them, but even the ones that weren't didn't help very much, they just became something to keep my mind off of everything.  
    My father didn't rape me every night. Sometimes several days or even a week would pass me by before he assaulted me again. And sometimes, it didn't happen just at night, either. He seemed to get bolder and bolder with it. I impatiently waited for him to get bored with it, but that never happened like I had hoped. I had no clue what he was getting from it. He still hit me and my mom, so he wasn't venting out any aggression. Sometimes he wasn't drunk when it happened, but he often was.   
    I never got used to it, the rapes. They just carved a bigger and bigger hole in me. But, slowly, my body started to get used to it. I stopped hurting as much and bleeding as much as he entered me. But the emotional pain... it was like a wave carving away at a stone. I felt like every time, it took something from me. He was carving away pieces of me, leaving me feeling less devastated, but emptier and more numb.   
    Just like the assaults, I didn't have those strange nightmares but not really nightmares every night, either. Nor did I always have them right after a rape. They seemed to come at me in complete random, not sparsely, just enough to keep me off kilter. I kept experiencing these moments where I was awake, but I was still dreaming, and I felt filled with a terror that I can't begin to describe.   
    I kept waking up and finding myself in some strange place and unable to remember how I had gotten there. I would have these snippets of memory that were a part of my dreams, but I knew that they had to be true. It wasn't like sleep walking, it was something worse. I often found myself hunched under my desk like an animal. One time during an especially awful nightmare, I woke up in the hallway closet with the doors closed, clutching a knife. That terrified me worse than the dream, that I could go downstairs, dig a knife out of the kitchen drawer, and hide and not remember doing any of it.   
    But eventually, the blood on my sheets, the pain that I felt, becoming almost a complete insomniac because I was staying up late, listening to every sound with paranoia, trying to hear him coming up the stairs, all of it became as commonplace and normal to me as the bruises and broken bones had. It was just a different kind of abuse, a kind that I was struggling to learn how to hide, how to cope with.   
    My mother started to look at me strangely. I wondered if she knew or suspected what was going on. She never paid any attention to me, but just like I was, she was hyperaware of my father's presence and any changes in his mood. Had she noticed something that he had done or said that had made her realize what he had done to me? Or did she just understand that something was going on between us? If she did know, how did she feel about it? Was she angry at him? Angry at me? Did it make her feel better, knowing that I was getting what I deserved? Did it upset her, knowing that her husband was fucking her son, no matter her own feelings towards me?   
    If she knew, she wasn't doing anything about it. I chose to believe that she only suspected that something strange was going on, or if she had figured it out, she was like me and too scared of him to try to stop it. That was easier than believing that she knew and either didn't care or approved of it. She had never been a good mother to me, but I just couldn't handle believing that she hated me so much that she wouldn't even try to help me.   
    Not a day has gone by that I haven't thought about trying to stop him. I'm not a little kid anymore and as much as I tried to make myself believe that it wasn't any worse than the beatings, it was. It was taking a much larger toll one me, more than I can admit on paper, than getting knocked around does. I could get his gun from his bedroom and threaten him with it. I could call the police or social services. I could tell my teachers or, hell, I could tell Solo. He might actually care enough to listen to me. I wasn't completely helpless.  
    But I am. In all the ways that matter, I'm still that nine year old boy, walking home from school and terrified of going back home. That fear has only grown as I've gotten older. I'm overcome by it, every day that I walk home from work or school and never wanting to go there, like a piece of me is kicking and screaming and begging myself to never go back. It's easy to think that I can call the police on my father in the light of day, when I see my classmates and how abnormal my relationship with my dad has become.   
    But then it's night time again and I'm laying on my bed in a ball of terror, my heart racing and every sound coming from downstairs is like it's own nightmare. I remember what I am, a loser and weakling. I remember how easily my father had subdued me the first time and I think 'what's the point?' If I tell someone, they probably won't believe me. If I try to make him stop, he'll overpower me again and hurt me worse. Fighting back seems impossible. I've always been smaller than him, I've always been a child to him. That's my reality. It's a waking nightmare and no matter how much I want it to stop, I can't see the light through the darkness. I can't think of a single thing that I can do. What else is there but to endure it? All I can think about is my future, and for once, the prospect of my parents kicking me out as soon as I turn eighteen isn't the horrible thing that it once was. I tell myself over and over again that I just have to survive him for that long, then it will stop on its own.   
    Things haven't all been awful lately. I finally started my new job. Just like Solo had promised, the owner of the company, Mr. Leneski, was willing to give me a chance, despite my age and the fact that I couldn't legally operate most of the machinery the company used. He was a pretty nice guy, he reminded me of Sal a bit, kind of gruff and impatient at times, but he wasn't a sleaze like Andre was and was pretty understanding. He gave me seven days to prove to him that I wasn't a complete slacker.   
    I had worried at first that I was going to be given a lot of scut jobs, like maybe cleaning toilets, taking out the trash, or answering phones despite Solo's description of the job. The pay was nice, nothing to write home about, but more than I was making at my other jobs, and Mr. Leneski was willing to give me more hours if I worked out for him, but I really wasn't looking forward to being some kind of janitor. Thankfully, I spent that first week, after a day's worth of pep talks about what the project was going to entail, going out on site with Solo and few other guys to a home in North Nausten replacing some rotten slats in a porch.       
    Beyond walking Quatre to his house after school every day, I had never actually been to the North of this town. My father refused to let me go there. When I had been a kid, he had said that one end had no business showing up in the other, and that I would only embarrass us, but I think it was just a source of shame for him. He was always ranting about how everyone from North Nausten were crooks and cheats and smug pricks, looking down their noses at people like us that had to work hard to make a living. I think that he was just angry and spiteful about being as poor as we were and, like he always does, lashed out at what he thought was the 'real' problem.   
    After Relena had started to bully me, I just gained another reason to stay clear of that side of town. The home that we went to do maintenance on was on a different part of the North than Quatre's home. When I had gone down through that part of town, I had seen iron gates, driveways that were bigger than our entire property, and mansion-like homes that seemed as big as all the houses on my street put together and doubled. They had daunted me, like some fairy tale castle, this unobtainable thing that was totally alien to me. The people that lived in those places, minus my best friend of course, were from a different culture altogether.   
    The home that we worked on that week was a different beast from the homes of families like the Winner's and Darlian's. It was quaint, but very nice, especially compared to my own. It was just as unobtainable for someone like me, but more painfully so, because I could see myself being very happy in a two story home like that with well cut grass, a white picket fence out front, and a wrap around porch in back. They even had a porch swing, for fuck's sake! I could work myself to the bone for the rest of my life and I would never be able to step foot into a home like that. It really put my life in perspective for me, the kind of frustration and depression that my parents lived in, and what my future was going to be like.  
    Beyond looking at the home with jealousy and some bitterness,  the work we did there was oddly satisfying. I could vent all of my rage and sadness for a few hours a day, pulling up boards and hammering nails until I was covered in sweat from the labor and my hands were covered in cuts and bruises. When my boss saw that I was putting in as much effort as everyone else and was willing to keep at a job longer than a lot of his other employees, he agreed to keep me on. The work wasn't exactly glamorous. It was dirty and my muscles hurt like hell by the end of a lot of my days, and some of it, like painting and putting on coats of primer or sealant, were boring, but I found myself falling into the mindlessness of it all better than waiting tables and folding pizza boxes. I was able to focus on what I was doing without being assaulted by my thoughts.  
    After another week of painting houses and building a shed for this one guy, Mr. Leneski offered me more hours. At ten bucks an hour, I would have been an idiot not to have taken that offer up, and it wasn't rocket science figuring out which job that I was going to need to quit to make that happen. Still, it was a bittersweet thing giving Sal my two week's notice.   
    Working at the pizza place had been a shit job, but Sal had been nice to me and I had kind of felt like an ass, quitting two jobs in less than a month. Still, Sal paid me 5.90 an hour and the factory paid me eight. It was no contest. He even let me leave before those two weeks were up so I could start my extended hours at Leneski's sooner. My life felt so chaotic. For so long, things had remained the same and now things were changing on me and so few of them were good. That said, it was something of a relief that I wasn't going to come home smelling of pizza sauce anymore.      
    The only real regret was that I couldn't bring home left over pizza like I had been, but if my dad started to notice, I could just buy some with the extra money that I was making under his nose. It wasn't a huge windfall, but after getting my first paycheck from my new job, and being able to pocket that extra four bucks an hour, I could buy us some extra groceries for the first time. I just hope that I can keep on like that, without my father realizing that I've been hiding money from him. The money that I've been saving... hell if I know what I'll do with it, but it's nice to be able to say that if I need to, I can buy Pepper a new brush or a jacket for myself for the winter or some books.   
    I rearranged my work schedule pretty well; Monday through Friday, 4 pm to 9:30 pm I work at Leneski's and from 10 to 2 am I work at the factory. Saturdays I work at the factory from 4 pm to 1 am and Sundays I work from 9 am to 6 pm at Leneski's. That gives me enough time on Saturdays to do chores for Mrs. Liddle and whatever my dad wants me to do around the house and my homework on Sundays. Although I have a bit more time on my hands, the work is a lot harder and I find myself coming home a lot more worn down than before. But it's worth it. Just knowing that I won't have to rely on Mrs. Liddle, that I can help if we run out of grocery money is worth it. I worry about my dad finding out, but lately he's more concerned with where his next drink is coming from and going to job interviews than he is why we haven't run out of meals yet.   
    Things got a little bit better for a little while a couple of weeks ago. My dad finally got a job. He settled for one of the janitorial positions that he had sneered at and I can't even imagine what a miserable time he had been having trying to find something better only to end up at that job. His temper had been legendary for the duration of that job, which ended up only being a week. He claimed that he quit, but giving the mood that he had been in, I have no doubts that he had been fired. What for, I don't know, but in order to have been fired from a janitorial position of all things, it had to have either been his drinking or his temper. I'm betting the latter for once.   
    Despite the beatings that my mother and I had gotten from him during that week that he had been employed, and the screaming fights my parents had had over, literally, nothing, it could have been nice. I had felt less pressure to help provide for us and he had been at work from the time that I had gotten home from school to when I was going to bed in the small hours of the morning. The best part was that he had to work that weekend and on Sunday, I got several hours of utter peace. For the first time since the night that he had first raped me, I was able to stomach eating more than a bird's meal.   
    But when he was home, it was a nightmare. He drank even more than before and as soon as he came home at two in the morning, he was tense and agitated, looking to vent his frustrations. That week, he crawled into my bed every, single night. Those were the only times that he was as violent with me as he had been the first time, even though I hadn't tried to fight him. Not that he was much better after he had lost his job, it just meant that he was home more often and had more time to drink.   
    We played off each other. His stress made me more stressed myself. I started thinking about sleeping in the basement or on a park bench, but it was getting too cold out for that. The constant anxiety and sickness I felt from things at home had me losing hours of sleep. Some nights I didn't even bother to try to fall asleep. I just laid there with a book and waited for him. I didn't feel like eating anything and I frequently skipped meals because I couldn't even force myself to eat.   
    I looked bad enough after awhile that Solo asked me if I was alright multiple times, and never believed me when I told him that there was nothing wrong. But that was ok. He was the only one in my life that gave enough of a shit about me to ask that question. It was easy, only having to lie to one person. This Monday, three days ago, I finally managed to get some decent sleep. I stayed wide awake for a few hours like always, anxiously waiting for the sound of my father coming through the front door, but it never happened.   
    He didn't come home. Even as deeply as I slept for those few hours, I knew that he wasn't there when I woke up. That's the way that things have been lately. Even if he doesn't slam the door, even if I'm asleep, the second I hear the noise of that door closing, I become wide awake. It's like being jostled awake by a car alarm, I always wake up with my heart pounding. That morning was the first time since the assault that I had managed to sleep without him waking me up or having one of those weird nightmares. At some time in the early morning while I was waiting for him, my exhaustion caught up with me and I blacked out.   
    For the first time in a month, it was my alarm clock that woke me up instead of my terror. The relief that I felt was sickening, a tiny slice of normality. That sort of feeling was dangerous. My father not coming home at night wasn't anything to be happy about. It was a dangerous omen. If he isn't here, then he's with Pat, and the longer he's with that pig, the worse my father is when he comes home. It's like all the poison that's in Pat just seeps into him. It also meant that, when he did eventually decide to come home, he was going to be stinking drunk and I didn't have the energy to deal with that side of him that morning.  
    Although that dark cloud hung over my head, my morning was peaceful for awhile. I played with Pepper, cleaned her litter box, fed her, packed my book bag, and took a shower. I hurriedly got dressed in the bathroom and by the time that I left it, my mother was just starting to rise for the day. I would have felt more relaxed if she hadn't been there, but her silent presence made for better company than my father's.   
    In the kitchen, I took time to pack myself a lunch for once and hoped that Zechs wouldn't steal or crush it. I had just bought some fresh eggs the day before, so I made myself scrambled eggs and mixed in pieces of leftover bacon that my father had forgotten about, but not before making my mother an omelet. I didn't know what kind of mood she was in, if she would throw it at me or be too tired to make anything for herself.   
    I had discovered after all of these years that if I tried to offer her anything, even a home cooked meal while she was too busy to make anything, that it would only piss her off. The trick was to not be obvious about it, so I just placed the omelet on a dish on the table behind me as I made my own breakfast. Sure enough, I heard my mother shuffle into the kitchen, pause, and then disappear into the living room. When I looked over my shoulder, the plate was gone.   
    I felt my lips quirk into a rare smile. I didn't know if she liked my cooking, or if being given food by someone she loathed embarrassed her, but the same, childish part of me that killed me every time my father told me that he loved me after fucking me liked the idea that she felt grateful for that one, small gesture from me, even if she would never let me see that. I doubted that she did. She probably only ate my cooking out of pure hunger, but I still liked thinking that it was more than that. No matter her reason, it made me feel useful.  
    I finished my meal and went to the sink to wash my dishes. When I was halfway done, my mother suddenly appeared behind me and, without saying a single word, placed her dish next to the frying pan that I hadn't washed yet, then disappeared back into the bedroom to get dressed for her first shift. She didn't say 'thank you' to me. She never does. But she didn't get angry or throw me a disgusted look, either, and that was something, I guess.   
    Just as I was putting my mother's dish on the drying rack, the front door flew open with a fierce 'BANG' that rattled the walls of our house. I froze and struggled to breathe, my hands shaking so hard that it was fortunate that I had finished washing the dishes, or I would have broken something. I nearly jumped right out of my skin as my father slammed the door behind him and strode into the kitchen like a devil on a mission.   
    I glanced behind me and saw him there, standing there with the same clothes that he had left the house wearing yesterday, all wrinkled and stained. His face was red and his eyes were bloodshot. There was a light stubble on his face that made him look even more unkempt, but the thing that terrified me was his expression. Like a coiled up snake, frustration and desperation and, worst of all, lust was smoldering there in his eyes, like it had possessed him.   
    I knew that he wouldn't be able to contain it, just like I knew that I was his intended target. I understood what I had at age thirteen, that all those times that he had disappeared for a night, he had just been with some prostitute, venting that same frantic desire. Only I'm his whore now. And I come cheap. All he has to do is catch me.   
    I bolted. Or rather, I tried to. I'm quicker than my father, but there isn't a lot of space to move between the table and the wall going towards the attic steps, which was the only place that I could go to get away from him. I didn't want to get stuck in the basement again, not in the pitch dark with nowhere to hide, and I couldn't get around him to the front door. He was close enough to the front of the table that it was an easy thing for him to block my escape. The next thing I knew, he was grabbing the back of my shirt as I tried to squeeze past him and bodily threw me into the wall, pinning me down like I was nothing more than a bug to him.  
    I felt him bury his face in my hair, smelling my hair and neck with strange tenderness. With unsteady fingers, he swept my braid over my shoulder and his breath washed over the bare skin of the back of my neck, hot, heavy, and rank as he kissed me there. His hands were fumbling at our clothes, but he had my pants down in seconds. Then he was slamming into me in a kind of frenzied fervor like a man indulging in something that he needed but hadn't indulged in for a long time. I braced my arms on the wall and  buried my head in them, biting my skin at the pain and shame so hard that I could taste my blood.   
    I didn't bother to fight against it as he fucked me right there in the kitchen. In the state that he was in, I probably could have gotten away from him, but what would be the point? Even if I was able to get away from him half the time, he would still rape me that other half. What difference did it make? It was too much effort, too much of a struggle, and I just didn't care anymore. So I let him do what he did as my heart, my ugly, traitorous heart, waited eagerly for those brief, tiny moments when he would be kind. Those moments that he seemed to only be capable of when he was raping me.   
    The sounds of his panting and grunting in the otherwise silent kitchen were repulsive and I found my mind trying to wander away to some other place, some more pleasant fantasy, but the pain and those sounds kept drawing me back. My tears soaked into the sleeve of my shirt, but I refused to sob or make any kind of sound to show that I was in distress. I wouldn't let him have that much.   
    "Yes... yes... that's it, sweetheart... just a little bit more," he moaned into my neck, his lips oddly soft and gentle compared to what the rest of him was doing.  
    His strong fingers gripped at my hips, his nails scratching and cutting my skin as he came as hot and rank as his breath inside of me. My heart weeped poisonous affection as he called me sweetheart again, a thing that before all this had started, he had only called me when I had been a child. Then it was all over and he was gone like it had never happened for him, pulling out of me roughly and disappearing into the bathroom to clean himself off.   
    I barked a harsh and hoarse, and perhaps a bit crazy, sounding laugh into my arms before lifting up my head again. There would be no 'sorry' or even 'thank you' from him. He had come and I wasn't needed anymore, at least not until he got another hard on. I had thought of myself as one of his whores before, but the truth was much harsher than that. Whores get paid. I get used and discarded. A sex doll and a punching bag, that's what I am. At least whores get to just see it as a job, a profession. All I got were seconds, soft words that he said, a caress or a kiss that I can't even cherish coming from my father because they are entangled with memories of pain.   
    I wiped at my face, scrubbing proof of my tears off with my sleeve and started to pull up my pants. I flipped my hair over my shoulder and remembered how he had sniffed at it. The memory made me shiver. That was when I noticed her in the corner of my eye. My mother.  
    How long she had been standing there, watching, I had no clue. I hadn't heard the bedroom open, so she must have come out when my dad had still been going at it, the sounds of his pleasure masking any noise that she had made. Which of course meant that my father had to have had to push by her to get the bathroom. He hadn't even cared that she had seen, or maybe some drunken part of his mind was glad that she had, in bitter spite of her. I must have been quite a sight to her just then, standing there in the kitchen with reddened eyes, clutching my pants tightly in one hand, bruises on my bare hips and her husbands cum dripping down my legs.   
    She was staring at me in complete shock, but I couldn't tell if it was because she finally knew, finally understood what she had suspected, or if it was just seeing that sort of thing happening right in front of her. She looked so pale, even paler than when she had finally come home from the hospital and her light gray eyes were wide and round as she stared at me. Seeing her expression was when it really hit me, that she had watched my father having sex with me.   
    Words can't describe the sort of feelings that swept me away in that moment. People talk about moments in their lives when they were so embarrassed that they thought that they would die, but that doesn't even touch on what I felt. Embarrassment is too shy of a word. Shame comes close. Even horror doesn't really convey it. In that moment, I wanted to die and that's no hyperbole. If someone had handed me a gun right then, I think I might have blown my brains out just to stop the torrent of dark emotions running through me.       
    What I was completely unprepared for was when anger started to squeeze into my heart to overtake those feelings of mortification. Being embarrassed always makes me feel a bit bitter and angry. Every second that she stared at me like that, like I was some kind of freak of nature, made me feel more horrible, and angrier. I wanted her to stop. Just stop _looking_ at me. It reminded me of that day outside of school, when Quatre had begged for Trowa to listen to him. She reminded me of all of our classmates, staring at him, mocking him for his pain.   
    'What fucking right does she have to stare at me like that,' I remember thinking in spite, 'She's the reason why this happened to me, not anyone else, just _her_!'  
    I embraced that thought, as ugly as it was. That was right. This was all my mother's fault. She was the one that he wanted, not me, but she wasn't the one that he was pinning down at night, the one that he was hurting. She was too good for that. Even though she frequently kicked him out of bed and didn't have an ounce of love for him, even though she said nasty things to him when they fought and freaked out if he just tried to touch her arm or kiss her, he loved her more than he would ever love me. To him, trying to rape her was an unthinkable thing, but I was fair game.   
    She had found a way to get away with completely stopping sex with him and had gotten away with that. Why couldn't I find that same way? Why did I have to be this loathsome person, all because my mother hated my father? I was being raped because of my father's desperation, a desperation that she had caused. And she had just stood there, for who even knew how long, watching him do it. She hadn't tried to stop him. Hadn't even said a word. So what right did she have to look at me like that, like I was the one that had done something terrible?   
    I hated her then, truly hated her, even more than I did my dad. I know that's not fair. I know that I was just ashamed and angry at myself and horrified that she had seen something so disgusting. I was lashing out at her, thinking things that I didn't even really feel to try to hide how much I hated and blamed myself, but right then, that hatred that I felt for her was very real. It was stronger than how I had felt when she had told me that I was a mistake, even stronger than the day that I had told her that Quatre had died. It was too large for me to swallow and got stuck in my throat, this bitter, awful thing. Every second that she stood there and didn't say a word to me made it grow and try to choke me to death.   
    "What the fuck are you looking at?" I snapped at her, finishing the job of pulling up my pants and not caring that I was soiling them.  
    She still stood there, mute and fish eyed, looking me in the eye for the first time in weeks. My hands curled into fists and I could feel my nails digging cuts into my palms. Why didn't she leave? Why didn't she just go away and leave me alone like everyone else, like she had been doing my entire life?! The only reason why she had come into the kitchen at all... it wasn't to help me, it was probably just to get a drink, just like _him_. The both of them deserved each other.  
    "Just get some of your goddamned whiskey," I snarled at her in rage and the tears that gathered in my eyes felt distant from me, like they were happening to someone else, and completely out of place with my anger, "and drink away the fact that the man _you_ married can fuck his son just because he can't fuck a whore anymore, just like you drink away everything else!"  
    An intense pain came into her eyes then at my words. I guess she was sober enough to not like that accusation, the reminder of her alcoholism, but she still didn't budge. It was like she couldn't, like she didn't know what to do next. Tears streamed down my cheeks and I didn't even care. My hatred was gone. Something else was there now, something worse, something that threatened to drown me. I didn't care about my sorrow, about the black pit in me. I didn't care about anything at all anymore. I didn't even care that I was crying in front of the one person in my life that gave the least about any pain that I was feeling.  
    "Go the fuck away!" I sobbed angrily at her, "Just leave me the hell alone!"  
    Her eyes went impossibly wider in fear as I screamed at her and she bolted back into her bedroom like she would have if my father had been chasing her to beat her down. Had that been what she had thought? That I was going to hit her? Some part of me wanted to. It wanted to wipe that horrified look off of her face with my fists, it wanted to erase the agony in my chest and the shame that I was still feeling, even if there was no way that I could do something like that.  
    I ran upstairs, unmindful of the aches and bruises that my father had given me and took refuge in my bedroom. I didn't know what was worse, how embarrassed I still felt or how quickly my emotions had turned to rage, how easily it had been to consider striking my own mother. I felt like everything was slipping away from me. I felt like I was losing myself, that I was turning into a monster or beast and there was absolutely nothing I could to reclaim myself. Or maybe that's just who I really am, and I'm just finally becoming an adult. I don't want to believe that there's nothing I can do to change it, but maybe I'm just too weak and incapable.  
    I worried for a second what my mother was going to do now that she knew the truth, but I just remembered that expression on her face and I knew that she wasn't going to do anything about it. That was my only source of relief. I didn't think that I could take much more anxiety before I broke down completely. I pulled down my pants and underwear and grimaced at how messy they were. I wanted to throw them away, or better yet, burn them. But I couldn't keep throwing away clothes simply because they repulsed me, and I didn't have the time to clean them, either.   
    I tossed my soiled clothes into my hamper, vowing to wash everything in there twice if I needed to that week, cleaned myself off with a towel, and went in search of clean clothes as quickly as I could. I quickly discovered that I didn't have any clean underwear or sweatpants left. I had five minutes to get dressed and rush out of the house or I would be late for homeroom and I didn't even have any fucking underwear. It was just another straw on my already broken back and I gave out a cry of pure rage and frustration, kicking my hamper so hard that it crashed into the wall. Pepper, who had been eating at her bowl, darted into her hole and cowered there, frightened by the noise. I didn't even have the ability to comfort her.  
    I panted with my anger and felt this overwhelming urge to destroy everything in sight, to just rip up all my clothing and follow my cat's lead, to find some dark hole to crawl into until everything went away. If only I had that luxury. I again felt the cruelty of it all, that the world couldn't just stop for me, that it couldn't let me take a breath. No, I had to keep going on. My life was falling apart and I still had to worry about getting to class on time.  
    I took a couple of deep breaths, trying to calm myself before I had a full on panic attack, and searched through my closet. I hadn't been wearing my jeans at all lately, so they were all clean. I really didn't want to wear them. Wearing tight clothing or anything that conformed to my skin made me feel weird. Nervous and anxious. I don't know why, but I just feel better wearing baggy clothes still. But I didn't really have a choice that day. I pulled on the jeans and changed my shirt to something that was long enough to cover my butt and my crotch. It made me feel better. I told myself that that was because no one would be able to tell that I wasn't wearing underwear.  
    I felt on edge throughout most of the school day, but it was only partially because of what had happened at home. My mind kept wandering to it, turning it over and over, that expression on my mother's face. More than one teacher yelled at me for not paying attention, but the embarrassment of my classmates laughing at me for zoning out was absolutely nothing to me. I was used to that. But it was more than the morning that had me feeling like I was wired with nervous electricity.  
    I'm sure that I've mentioned this already, that sometimes bad days just come at me out of the blue, but other times, I can just sense that something terrible is about to happen. That day was the latter. From the moment that I walked into school, I just knew that something was going to happen at my expense. It was this electric charge in the air, warning me to keep an eye out for something. It didn't take me long to figure out what, or rather who, I needed to worry about. Every time I crossed paths with Zechs and his friends in the halls, I caught them glancing at me and laughing. They were planning something. I just wish that I had had some kind of warning about what it was before it had happened.  
    Or maybe it would have been one of those unavoidable things. Just another source of embarrassment for me that day, another straw on my back, trying to break me. Maybe the universe or God just hates me that much. Maybe I could have handled it better if it had happened on any other day, but I don't think so. I think some things are just hit you in this vulnerable place and nothing can prepare you for them.  
    It happened towards the end of the lunch block. I was walking to my locker to grab my books for the rest of the day, like I did every single day. On the outside, my locker didn't look like it had been tampered with. There was no graffiti on the outside of it, no sign that someone had gotten into it. Of course, there hardly ever was. I don't know how Zechs knew the combination to my lock, but he seemed to have no trouble in leaving me little 'presents', just like he had Quatre. I didn't bother asking for a new lock combination, that wasn't allowed in Zechs's fucked up little game. That was breaking the rules and it would come with a stiff penalty.  
    I opened my locker door and stared dumbly at something that I had definitely not put in there. It was a clear mason jar with a black lid and there was something in it, something liquid. I just kind of stared at it for a minute, unsure of what it was and why it was there. It wasn't one of his usual pranks, I had thought at first. Initially, when I picked it up and looked at it, I thought that it might be some kind of jelly or paste, or maybe something that he had cooked up in chemistry and if I shook it, it would blow up in my face. The substance was a milky white color and looked slimy and familiar, but I couldn't figure out what it was.   
    Braving a possible explosion or it being a kind of crude stink bomb, I unscrewed the lid on the jar and sniffed it. The aroma filled my head with the worst kind of memories and in my horror, I am almost dropped the jar. The knowledge of what I held in my hands filled me with revulsion and disbelief. It was semen. I knew it because the smell wafting from it was the same rank stench that I had smelled on my sheets after my father had raped me that first time. It was the same smell that he left on me and in me every time since then. Zechs had put an entire jar of the stuff in my locker. I was ready to toss it back into my locker and run as far away from it as I could when someone at my back stopped me and grabbed the jar full of fluid from me. I didn't even need to look back to know who it was.  
    "What's the matter, Maxwell?" Zechs Darlian hissed in my ear as he cornered me against my locker, "I thought you liked this sort of thing? I was up all night making it special, just for you, you know. Here, why don't you try some?"  
    Before I had the chance to duck or dodge or really register anything besides my disgust for him and trying to figure out if he was just fucking with me or if the stuff in the jar really was his, he dumped the jar over my head. Slimy cum poured down on me, into my hair, and dripped down my face. I could feel it there, on my skin. I could smell it, that heavy, nauseating stench of sex and violence and pain and filth and everything that had come to embody my nightmares and my life lately.   
    The panic attack was swift and overpowering. My heart screamed in my chest as memory after memory of my father fucking me hit me like a train. All I could smell was the semen pouring over me, all I could feel was sorrow and terror. I could feel him thrusting into me, I could feel his hands on me and his hot breath at the back of my neck. Too late I realized that I was shaking and hyperventilating. I saw Zechs, Trant, Mueller, and Alex all standing around me, laughing uncontrollably at the sight of me freaking out at their disgusting prank.   
    Past Zechs, I saw Heero. He was just standing there with the rest of the crowd, some laughing like my tormentors were, others looking in shock. Had he known? Had he helped them plan this? That thought was too much. I had this image in my head of him conspiring with Zechs, laughing about dumping semen on me, about how a fag like me would probably enjoy that. I felt sick, like I could vomit right there in the hallway. But Heero wasn't laughing. He was looking at me with wide, blue eyes in shock and... and disgust. Who wouldn't be disgusted at the sight of me? He hadn't known, but I bet he would be laughing about it with them later, when he was done being repulsed. Relena was there at his side, laughing, too, but just as disgusted.   
    Seeing them there, the perfect couple, mocking me and looking at me like I was a nasty little turd that they had found in their soup, it was too much for me. All of it was. I was already shaken up from everything that had happened that morning, all those little straws. I finally broke. I shoved past Zechs and he let me go. He had already had his source of amusement for the day. He had already won. I ran down the hall, not caring at the kind of image that I presented or who I ran into, and I didn't stop running until I was flinging open the door to the chemistry lab and slamming it shut behind me.  
    I made a beeline for the eye wash station and grabbed the nozzle attached to the long hose. I was about to spray my hair down when I remembered that it was still up in a braid. I fumbled stupidly with my hair tie, my hands trembling and forgetting that the mess was all over my hair. When my fingers touched the rank stuff, I pulled my hand away like it had burned me. The creamy mess was covering my hand. It was too easy to believe that it was really Zechs's, too easy seeing him jerking off into that jar.   
    The smell was like paint fumes to me. I know that sounds ridiculous, that semen doesn't have the strong of a smell, but I was hyper aware to it. To the smell, to the feel of it on me. An image wormed its way, unwanted, into my head and behind my eyes, the image of Zechs standing over me and ejaculating right in my face. Only my mind couldn't decide if it was Zechs or my father.  
    I retched into the sink and didn't stop until there wasn't a single thing left in my stomach. Throwing up and crying at the same time is actually a lot more difficult and painful than you would think. I didn't waste a second's thought on either, though. As soon as I was done throwing up and finishing the job of taking my hair tie off and my hair unraveled, I turned on the water, leaned my head into the sink, and soaked my hair with it. I scrubbed at my hair frantically, blindly trying to get all of it out with a kind of panicked fervor. I wanted to shave all of my hair off. I had the water running all of two minutes when I heard the door open behind me. I turned, not sure if I should be afraid that a class was coming in, or angry that it was Zechs and his cronies come to make fun of me, but it was worse than that.  
    Heero stood in the doorway, his face still pale for his skin tone and his blue eyes wide. He reminded me too much of my mother, watching some horrible, disgusting scene and just frozen in place, only when he looked at me, there was some guilt in his expression. Or maybe that was just in my head, maybe I just wanted to believe that he felt bad for what his friends had done to me.   
    In reality, it was probably just pity, just him being relieved that something like that would never happen to him. Look at the poor, miserable faggot. I could imagine him talking to Relena about it later, lamenting about how I only had myself to blame about this, really. If I didn't like guys, this wouldn't have happened. What was worse, pity or disgust? I didn't know, but I did know that he was the very last person in the world that I wanted to see me like that; hair wet and plastered to my skin, panting, smelling of semen and vomit and tears streaming down my face. My only consolation was that he might not realize that I was crying thanks to the water.   
    "Duo," Heero said and took a step into the room, his voice hoarse with confusion.  
    His expression became pained and he looked lost for what to do. It dawned on me then that he hadn't come in to bully me. He wanted to help me. He pitied me so much that he thought his help would actually be wanted, or maybe he just felt like shit for what happened and wanted to make himself feel better. His reasons didn't matter to me. I hated him. Just like I had felt that morning with my mother, I hated him more than I had ever hated anyone in my life, even my parents.   
    "Leave me alone," I hissed angrily at him, "Just go away and leave me alone!"  
    I didn't want him near me. I didn't want him to see me like this, crying and having an anxiety attack, covered in semen and feeling ashamed. Wasn't it enough that he was straight and I was gay? Wasn't it enough that he was rich and popular? Wasn't it enough that we would never even be friends, let alone what I wanted us to be? No, he had to see me at my lowest, he had to see the kind of person that I really was. But despite all of that, there he was, ignoring my demand and still walking forward, still lost, but still stubbornly _there_.   
    "Duo, I am so-" he started to say, putting his hands up in a defensive position.  
    I snapped. Rage boiled in me. I didn't want to see him. Not ever. Why couldn't he just let my heart die? Why couldn't he just be the prick that I wanted him to be and stop inserting himself into my feelings like this? Why did he have to be an asshole one moment and so nice to me the next? I didn't want to be confused. I wanted clarity. I wanted my life to make sense for once. I wanted him to go away forever. I reached out for the thing that was closest to me: a jar full of glass beakers, and I threw it at him, throwing my aim off enough to make sure that when it hit the wall behind him, he wouldn't get hurt by the glass as it shattered.   
    "Get the fuck out of here!" I screamed at him as fresh tears poured down my cheeks, "Who the hell wants you here?!"  
    Heero flinched at my throw and walked back out of the room, but not before hastily glancing back at me like he wanted to say something. He closed the door behind him, leaving me alone. I should have felt relieved that he had gone, but I didn't. I wished that he had stayed with me, helped me, comforted me. Even my own damned feelings didn't make any sense. I turned back to the eye station and continued washing out my hair, letting the water fall over me and down the back of my shirt as I sobbed violently. I skipped my class, partially because I was still too raw and ashamed, but mostly because I couldn't stop scrubbing at my hair and face, even when I knew that I had cleaned it all off. I was never going to feel clean again.  
  
*****  
  
    That night, I had one of those dreams again. I was awake, but dreaming that there was something in my room, something that was going to hurt me. I could see it watching me from that dark corner of my room, crouched there with glowing eyes, like some kind of beast or demon. I had that same feeling of absolute terror, the knowledge that I was being hunted, that it wanted to eat me and drag me into the darkness with it. I was as sure of that as anything in my life and just like every night that I had one of these weird nightmares, I found myself curled up into a tiny ball on my bed, panting with fear, and yearning for a weapon to defend myself.  
    I think that the wounds that my father had gifted me with that night had only fueled the nightmare and made it more real. After coming home late again, frustrated and angry at something, he had been like an animal, more brutal and vicious than he usually was. For the first time in weeks, he had torn me and made me bleed. Not nearly as much as that first time, but enough that even hours later, it ached. There were angry, black bruises on my wrists, hips, and thighs from him grabbing me too hard and, worst of all, bloody scratches from his nails on my lower back. I would notice them in the morning when I took my shirt off to take a shower, but even in my nightmare, I felt like I had been mauled by an animal.  
    As I laid there in the dark, feeling my terror in my chest and on the verge of screaming with it, a revelation came to me. It was such a simple thing, but obvious to me at the time. I knew why this was happening, why the thing in my room kept coming to me. I knew why I was so afraid and why I hadn't been able to scare it off yet. It was simple, really. For a monster like that, a knife was far too small. Of course it wouldn't be scared of such a thing. I needed a better weapon... a weapon that even a monster would be frightened of. In my half awake, half dreaming state, all of this made perfect sense to me and I didn't understand why I hadn't thought of it before.  
    Keeping one eye on the thing in my room, I got out of bed and walked down the steps. I suddenly found myself in my parents' room, without having any memory of how I got there. My father was on his back, one arm thrown over his chest, and snoring deeply. My mother was on her side, facing away from him, and curled up like I had just been. Even in sleep, she had made herself as small as possible to stay away from him. They were oblivious to me and I felt no fear at all that I would wake either of them up. I was more frightened of the monster upstairs than I was of either of them or their anger.  
    I opened the drawer on my father's bedside table and took out his gun. All my life, I had never touched it. I had barely even looked at it, always afraid of my father's wrath. I knew that it would be in there. He wasn't a cop anymore, but he would never let go of that gun, whether because it was still useful or it was something for him to remember. I knew that, just like how I knew that it was loaded. The safety was on, but it was always loaded. I remember my mother being upset about him keeping it loaded and in the house like that when I had been a kid. He had snidely asked her what the point was of an unloaded gun and that had been the end of the argument.   
    The gun felt both oddly heavy and strangely light in my hands as I held it. Too light for such a deadly thing, but it's heaviness spoke to me of how effective it would be to kill the monster. If there's any weapon in the world that can kill such a thing, I thought in my dreaming state, then it would be this gun. Without even thinking about what I was doing, I turned the safety off, looking at what I was holding with a kind of awe.  
    Just like that, I came awake like a shot. Fear still made my heart thump unpleasantly in my chest, but that clarity and surety that had had me invading my parents' bedroom in the middle of the night vanished. What the fuck was I doing? I remembered all my strange, nightmare thoughts, but they no longer made sense to me. The fear that I felt then was of how I could... not really sleep walk, but the action was the same. The fear quickly turned into the age old one of getting in trouble with my father. There I was, standing like a pale ghost, wearing only a long night shirt after my father had discarded my pants and blood dried on my thighs, not only in their bedroom, not only capable of waking the sleeping bear, but touching something that I was never, ever, ever allowed to touch.   
    My hands trembled, feeling the true weight of what I was holding. I should have put it back in the drawer and snuck out of the bedroom. That would have been the sane thing to do. Instead, I found myself glancing down at my father. He was sleeping so deeply, so peacefully for a man that had just viciously raped me hours before. Was this how he had slept the first time? How he slept every time? While I tossed and turned and had these horrible nightmares, while I struggled just to sleep for one solid hour every night without being woken up with a scream in my throat, he got to sleep like a baby.   
    I felt fear as I watched him sleep, the same fear that I had felt from the first time that he had assaulted me, but more than that, I felt sorrow and rage. This was what my life had become. I was scared all the time, and angry all the time. When was the last time that I had felt anything more than those things? Anything more than misery? And it wasn't going to stop. He was never going to stop. My life is now defined by those moments, either waiting for the rape or when it was actually happening. My life was ugly and twisted and disgusting. What was the point? Why was I even alive? I didn't want it. Not anymore. I couldn't do it. Everything was hideous to me.   
    I pressed the gun to my temple and curled my finger around the trigger. It would be easier this time. No doubts. No razors. No bleeding out slowly on the floor of the bathroom, only to wake up in a hospital bed with my father glaring down at me. Just a single bullet and that would be the end of it all. I would die. I would stop. The rapes would stop, the bullying, the fear, all of my self hatred. I could finally sleep, for the first time in three years. I wouldn't have to see Heero or Relena or Zechs ever again. I wouldn't see anything at all and, right then, it was all that I wanted. I wanted to close my eyes to it all forever. No more pain, no more struggle...  
    I looked down at my father and felt tears drip down my cheeks at the thought of ending my life, for real this time. I wasn't even scared of dying anymore. I wasn't scared of how easily I had come to that decision, either. I was just so tired. I didn't want to be scared of him anymore. I let my hatred of him fill me. It was easier than my love for him, so much easier.   
    The man sleeping so soundly on that bed had wanted to have sex with me for such a long time, I thought with angry bitterness. Three years, at the very least. For three years, he had wanted to fuck me, and for three years, he had stopped himself. I don't know how he had managed that, why it was that only last month he had finally lost control. But he had stopped himself from doing it for three damned years, he had had that self control.   
    I hated him then, not for his desires, not for using me, but for giving up on me. He had given in. Just two more years, that's all he had to have done! Just held it at bay for two more fucking years. He could have spared me all this pain and agony, but instead, he had given up so easily! He didn't even care for me that much, to not hurt me like that.   
    I came back to myself like I was waking up for a second time and discovered that I wasn't holding the gun to my own head anymore, but I had it trained with shockingly steady hands at my father's head, the muzzle of the gun so close to my father's closed right eye that it was almost touching his skin. My finger was still on the trigger. I could have squeezed it while in my trance and killed him without even knowing it.   
    I should have been shocked, and in a few minutes I would be, but right then I felt this steady, perfect calm fall over me. My hand didn't waver or tremble. I pressed down on the trigger, depressing it half way to its mark. It would be easy, even easier than shooting myself. Just half an inch, then that bullet would go right through his eye, right through his fucking brain and that would be it. Mom would never get beaten anymore. There would be no more drunken fights and screaming, no more rape, no more of his insults and hate. And wouldn't he deserve it? For everything that he had done? I had gone down into their bedroom to shoot a monster, and wasn't that exactly what I was doing?   
    My tears blurred my vision. I imagined myself going through with it. I imagined his face exploding in red and gore. I imagined my mother waking up with the shot and screaming. The fantasy was pleasant, like some kind of wet dream. I wanted to do it. I wanted to shoot him with his own gun. My finger clenched at the trigger, unable to depress it enough to set off the gun, but equally unable to let go of the gun.   
    I felt like there were two separate people in side of me, warring against each other; the person that was full of hatred for my rapist and would have gleefully fired that gun over and over and over again until there were no bullets remaining, and the part of me that was horrified at what I was doing, the part of me that knew that the face that I wanted to destroy wasn't just the man that was raping me. This was my dad. That face was the same one that had smiled at me as a child and kissed my forehead when I had been sick. How could I do it? How could I kill someone that I loved?  
    Am I a murderer, I thought then. I remembered that moment when I had broken down in front of him after Quatre's death. I remembered how I had sobbed and my father, completely unaware of why I was crying, had held me and had tried, in his own fumbling way, to comfort me. A killer... is that what I was? Not even a brute like him, not even someone who lashed out viciously at the people that I loved, but someone so full of loathing that I could take my own father's life?  
    My hands fell limp at my sides and all I could do was stand there in horror at what I had almost done. What I could have done. What I had _wanted_ to do. This wasn't me. That person holding the gun to my father's head had been a stranger and that person terrified me. What was I becoming to be able to do that? What was all the darkness in my life turning me into?   
    I put the safety back on the gun and returned it to the drawer. I left my parents' room and walked to the living room. I sat down on the couch and hugged my knees to my chest, staring at the darkness of the room, the nothingness of those shadows. I felt sickened and very frightened by everything. I felt like I was still dreaming, only it was a nightmare that I couldn't wake up from. Maybe that's what going insane feels like and that was what was happening to me.   
    I stayed like that the entire night, not thinking of anything, not even trying to sleep. I was blank. Even when I heard my parents waking up hours later, I didn't move. When I finally did, I felt cold and stiff, like a slab of rock. I can only call the state that I was in a daze. Nothing filtered in through the veil that I shrouded myself in. I walked from class to class that day, not paying attention to anything around me besides a single, pure thought that followed me around like a bad smell.  
    I should have pulled the trigger. Not when I had been aiming at my father, but at myself. I should have pulled the trigger then. I should have erased myself from the world, before I ever found out what I was capable of. Later, when I emerged from the hole in my head, I would curse myself out. I would throw up. I would punch a wall and call myself every bad name that I knew for what had nearly happened, but that wouldn't be until later that night. Until then, all I could do was mourn everything that I had always thought that I was. A loser, an idiot, a terrible friend... but this... I didn't know if I could accept this about myself.   
    Those feelings followed me around today as well. Disbelief. Hating myself for not being able to be a better person. Fear of my own body, my own feelings. I truly do feel like I'm going insane. I can't even try to fool myself into believing that it's because of my sleep deprivation and depression. I can't deny the rage that's in me, or how good it felt when I had hit Relena and Zechs. There is something ugly in me, and for all my attempts to cage it, it's growing. Sooner or later, it's going to devour me. What will happen to me when that occurs? Will I kill my father or my mother or even Relena or Zechs? It's not like the fantasy of shooting those two hasn't come to me before. Who am I? And why can't I be anyone else?  
    For the first time since I told Heero off, when school let out today, I walked to the beach. I can't say why. I had thought that I had been smart avoiding the beach, avoiding him whenever I could. Smarter than Quatre had been. But maybe it wasn't that. As I left the school and tried to think of how I wanted to spend my time before work, I realized something. I realized just how empty the last month of my life had become. I'm not just talking about the nightmares, the sleep deprivation, being love sick, or even the rapes.   
    Ever since my father had first assaulted me, I had stopped doing a lot of things. I don't go for runs anymore. I don't go to the beach. I don't go to the library as much as I used to. Even my cooking has been a rare thing outside making my dad dinner when he needs it. I read to pass the time, but I don't feel the excitement and the love for it that I once did. At some point, I had stopped doing the things that I used to enjoy, or I just plain stopped enjoying them. I came home, took care of Pepper, did my homework, and cowered in my room. Beyond that, it was just work and school and nothing else. I hadn't even listened to my music in weeks.   
    Even realizing all that, I felt no desire to stop and do something that I liked. I just... didn't care. That was as frightening as the realization of how close I had come to murdering my father. How could you just stop loving things? Enjoying the smallest things in life? The only time that I'm even happy anymore is when I'm playing with Pepper. Everything else is just a white wash. Is it depression, tiredness, or something else entirely? Am I truly changing, becoming this person that's blank of everything except for fear or anger?  
    I went to the beach partially because I had nowhere else to go and I didn't want to go home, and partially because I needed to. I needed something, anything, to feel something besides darkness. The beach was chilly as we started to get closer and closer to Winter. It wasn't quite so cold that I needed a winter jacket yet, but there was a cool wind coming off of the water, an omen for things to come. I was used to it. That's what Nausten is; long winters and short summers. Even during the spring, we have frequent cold fronts that make it feel like winter again.   
    I walked all the way to the mound and sat down on the edge. It was almost high tide and the waves were choppy. The water was black and the sky grey and cloudy, the kind of sky that threatens a storm but doesn't quite deliver. It suited my mood and that wasn't what I wanted. I had wanted it to be bright and blue, the sun beaming down and making me feel just a little bit of warmth for once, even if it was fake. I wanted it to be summer again. Things had been better then.   
    When I heard familiar footsteps approaching behind me, I almost screamed out in frustration and left right then. How the hell did he know that I was here every single time?! Was he fucking stalking me?! That was just my wishful thinking, I knew. That he came here to see me was a delusion that I couldn't afford to have. He just liked this spot. Someone like him, someone who didn't need a job or have a ton of chores could probably go to the beach every damned day. It must be nice. He sat down next to me without so much as a 'hi' or to ask me to leave or ask if he could sit. It rankled me, him walking around like he owned everything, like I even wanted him there.  
    "I thought I told you to fuck off," I snapped at him and felt my face flush despite myself, remembering the last time that we had been alone together, my shame still very fresh in my mind.  
    "I thought that you weren't the sort of person that tells people where they can and can't go?" he shot back sharply before his tone softened again, "Besides, maybe I don't want to listen to you. Maybe you need someone to talk to."  
    I couldn't help it. Even though his words made my heart hurt and ache for something that I had had once, but had lost, and even though I loathed him for reminding me of something that I didn't want to think about, I laughed.  
    "And you think that person is you?" I looked at him incredulously, but there was nothing in his expression that told me what the hell this boy was thinking and my mirth died in my throat.  
    Confusion doesn't even come close to what I felt as we awkwardly sat there, staring each other down. I realized that we weren't at opposite ends of the mound like usual, but he had sat closer to me this time. It made me feel very shy suddenly and I couldn't even hold on to my bitterness.   
    Those beautiful blue eyes of his glanced down and that soft, worried, but intense expression that he had had hardened. I looked where he was and saw that he was staring at the black bruises on my left wrist. My sleeve had pulled up and I hadn't been aware of it. I tugged it back down nervously and not sure why I felt so off balance. He always made me feel that way, but this time was worse. I felt very vulnerable and raw. There was a voice in my head chanting 'if only he knew' and it made me feel ill. If only he knew that I was letting my father fuck me. If only he knew that I had contemplated murder. If only he knew just what a freak I really was. My being gay didn't even come close to how fucked up I was and him finding out about those things was a new source of horror.   
    "Why don't you tell on him?" he asked, perplexed as his eyes found mine again.  
    I snorted.  
    "What difference would that make?" his naivety would have been charming if we were talking about anything else but my father's abuse.  
    Who was he, I wondered, that he could talk about that so boldly, just come out and talk about the same thing that Quatre hardly could? It just felt so strange to me, him stumbling into my problems when everyone else was all too happy to ignore them, even myself.  
    "It wouldn't make any difference if I told anyone," I pointed out, "No one would believe someone like me over my dad. Besides, I don't have anyone to tell anyway."  
    "What about your mother?" he asked, his brow furrowing.  
    I almost snorted in derision again.  
    "If you're asking if she hits me, too, no, she doesn't. And that's her only good quality. If you're asking if she'd do anything if I told her, that's a no, too. She hasn't done shit about anything in seventeen years," I said bitterly and wondered why I was being so honest with the one person that I didn't want to know these things.  
    "Even if I did, it doesn't really matter. Even if my father stopped, Zechs beats me up, too. You don't really seem all that concerned about getting _him_ to stop," I sneered at him.  
    Heero flushed darkly in guilt. I wished that he would stop doing that. I didn't want to know that he felt bad, I didn't want to know that there was someone in there besides the person that was mean to me that _could_ care, could feel badly about the things that he said and did and the people that hanged out with.   
    "Look, what happened before-" he started to say and I had to cut him off.  
    "Don't," I snapped at him, "I don't want to hear it. I don't care if you're sorry or if you had nothing to do with it and I don't want your fucking pity. If you had known what he was going to do, would you have tried to stop him? Told on him? Warned me?"  
    He looked away from me and said nothing, but he hadn't needed to. His silence and refusal to look me in the eye as he thought about that said everything.  
    "You're such a hypocrite," I shook my head, "You ask me why I don't do anything about my dad hitting me, but you're worse than me, aren't you? You don't like what Zechs does to people, it makes you uncomfortable, but you don't stop hanging out with him and you don't try to stop him. So stop acting like you don't get it and that feeling bad about it makes you a better person than him. It doesn't. It's because of people like you that he gets away with being a prick!"   
    My own rage surprised me for a moment, how quickly Heero had gotten to me. It seemed like no matter what I felt, when it concerned him, my feelings were always in the extreme. I could never be nonchalant around him. He flushed even darker, not liking me pointing out just how weak he was.   
    "Why do they hate you so much?" he asked, still not looking me in the eye, "Relena and Zechs... it's true that they pick on other people, but not like how they are with you. The things that they've said... they hate you more than anyone I've ever known has hated someone."  
    "I'm a faggot, remember?" I smirked darkly at him, catching a quick glance from him, "What's not to hate?"  
    "Are you really..." he murmured, almost to himself, "...gay?"  
    I felt frozen, completely incased in ice at his question. This is the sort of person that he is, I was just starting to realize. The sort of person who just blurts out questions like that so boldly and bumbles into things without worrying about the consequences. It was probably a good thing that he wasn't gay and interested in me. I over think every little thing and consequences are all that I worry about. How could two people that are like that possibly even get along as friends, let alone boyfriends? Hell, Trowa and I are both reserved, quiet, and worry about things like that and we had been awful together.   
    I didn't know how to answer that question. I didn't want to answer it. I'm an honest person. Between my father beating me every time he caught me in a lie and just being that sort of person, I'm not the sort to go around spewing lies and stories about things. It doesn't come naturally to me. Hiding my father's abuse and my own feelings are about as close to dishonesty as I come and I don't like pretending to be someone that I'm not. That seems exhausting and I have no idea how Heero can act around Relena's group when it makes him uncomfortable.   
    But no one had ever actually asked me if I was gay before. For the last four years, I had simply been told that I was a fag and any attempt that I could have made to protest that would have been ignored anyway. But how did I answer that question? My initial instinct was to be honest and say yes, I liked boys. But there was no way that I could say that. My life was hard enough without that rumor being thrown around. I wasn't sure how it could make things any worse than they already were, but they sure as hell were not going to make things better or easier.   
    People made fun of me and called me fag, but I knew that most of them didn't even believe it. Just how bad would the bullying get if I confirmed it? And I knew that if I did, it wouldn't just be Relena, Zechs, and their friends that I would have to worry about anymore. Everyone in the whole school would come after me about it. Worst of all, what if that lovely bit of news made it back to my father? But all of that meant nothing in comparison to Heero knowing. It was hard enough, knowing that he hated gays, that he hated me. If he knew that I was... was one of _them_ for certain... I couldn't take his contempt. I would do anything, absolutely anything, to keep him from knowing that I was gay. Even lying.  
    "No," I said, "I'm not."  
    It hurt me, saying that. It was the right thing to do, I knew, but it was a strange contradiction in me. I didn't want to tell him the truth, but I loved him and I didn't want to lie to him, either. He was the one person whose opinion of me mattered to me for whatever reason, and I didn't like lying to him about who I was.   
    "But they think that you are?" he pressed.  
    "Probably not," I admitted, "They just hate my guts. Relena always has, even when we were kids. It's just an easy rumor for them to spew. I've never had a girlfriend and then when they found out that Quatre was gay..."  
    I bit my tongue hard enough to draw blood. Where the hell had that come from? Why had I just confessed that to him out of the blue?   
    "Quatre?" he questioned and I really wanted to tell him to just forget it. The last thing that I needed that day was to retread ancient history.  
    "He was my friend," I heard myself say instead and I couldn't get the stream of words stopped, not understanding where all of this was coming from and why I was venting all of it to Heero when he was just curious, "He and Relena used to play together when they were little, but she bullied him even before I had met either of them. She's actually probably the reason why we became friends. She went after me the very first day of school that I had with them and Quatre helped me deal with it. He was one of Zechs's favorite targets, too."   
    "I don't think that I've met him," Heero pondered, completely unaware how he was ripping my heart open.  
    "He doesn't go here anymore," I snapped angrily, trying to think of anything else but Quatre so that I wouldn't end up crying in front of my crush again, but Heero was like a relentless bloodhound with his curiosity.   
    "What was he like?"  
    My heart was pierced, again and again, by memories that I hadn't let myself remember in years. I smiled sadly, unable to stop the expression.  
    "He was nice... and kind, and very smart. But he was also quiet and shy. He was my only friend, but we were close. Maybe at first he just hung around me because we had bullying in common, but I was the only friend that he had, too. I even named my cat because of him," I felt tears prick at my eyes and, embarrassed, I hastily wiped them away, "'Pepper'. That was the name he was going to give the dog that he was going to get as soon as he moved out and went to college or got a place of his own. His dad was allergic to animals, but Quatre had always wanted a dog."  
    I glanced over at Heero, scared that he was repulsed by my crying, but I found him smiling softly at me. That smile was almost as painful as my memories and my loss. It tore apart my heart at the same time that it filled me with all of these wonderful feelings and desires. It was like a drug to me. After so long of being in the dark, of feeling bitterness and anxiety and denying myself anything that felt remotely good, feeling love for him and that smile was painful and it was killing me, but I needed it.   
    "What happened? Did he move away?" Heero asked, just driving that spike deeper and deeper into me with his innocent and understandable questions.  
    I felt that rage again, boiling hot and searing in me.  
    "Why don't you ask your fucking girlfriend?" I snarled and stood, ready to bolt.  
    I couldn't handle it. I had so many things in my life that hurt, that frightened me and mauled me, I couldn't cope with thinking of that years old hurt of missing Quatre, of wanting him to come back, and my guilt of being unable to save him.   
    "Wait!" Heero fumbled and grabbed briefly at the bottom of my shirt. He hadn't even touched my skin, but I felt a jolt of electricity go through me, "You don't have to go. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you-"  
    I pulled my shirt from him.   
    "Let's get something straight," I said to him coldly, my voice flat and sharp as I tried to control my raging emotions, "You're wrong. I don't need anyone to talk to, and even if I did, it wouldn't be you. I don't know what the hell is wrong with you, why you would even want to talk to me or why you think that I would want to talk to you when you do the things that you do in school to me, but I want you to understand something right here and now. We are not friends. We are never going to be friends. You're a bully and I'm your victim, that's _all_ we are and that's all we are ever going to be! So stop trying to talk to me when no one else is around and stop acting like you give a shit when I'm upset! Stick with your sadistic friends and keep bullshitting them that you're just like them. That's what you're good at," unable to keep my anger under control, I started to walk away, "I had a friend once and now, I don't want another one. I don't need any friends," I muttered, "and I especially don't want one like you."  
    Just before I was too far away and the biting wind could steal his words away, I heard him call out to me one last time.  
    "That's not true."  
  
  
End Part 1  
  
VERY important author's note: First off, this chapter is going to be rather short. In fact, the next part will mark the end of chapter 6, but it is a very, very important part with an important plot development that actually isn't upsetting, lol.  
  
Anyway, IMPORTANT news (sorry for the caps, but I often get questions from readers that are answered in these notes, so I feel like no one reads them): In exactly 15 days, I will be moving myself, my stuff, and my cat across the country from Massachusetts to Florida so that I can move in with the woman that I love. Not only do I still need to pack and consolidate my life, the trip itself is going to be a lengthy one. I will be leaving Friday the 24th and arriving sometime early Sunday. What this means is that my writing might be affected. I don't know how much it will be, since I will be taking a week's vacation as soon as I get there and I will be going to a convention the next weekend, but there will probably be some kind of delay. I will probably be able to get the rest of chapter 6 out before the move, but in case I don't, don't fret. There is a reason for my absence.  
  
I want to thank everyone who reviewed and favorited, as usual. I'd say that I'm sad for making people cry with that last post, but, well, I was crying, too ^_^  
  



	28. Chapter 6 Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Suffering from sleep deprivation and depression, Duo makes a fatal mistake and not only comes out as gay in front of his classmates, but also confesses that he likes Heero. Will he be able to survive until the end of the day? And what will Heero do when he finds out about Duo's crush? Will he be the first one in line to hurt Duo?

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 6  
Part 2  
  
November 28, 2007  
  
  
    November 28th. I feel like I should mark that on a calendar with a highlighter or something. If I had a calendar. Usually, when I stop to write these journal entries, it's days or weeks or even months later during a bout of insomnia, when it's all I have to do or if there's something poisonous weighing me down that I need to vent. Tonight, for the very first time since Quatre's suicide, I came home and the first thing that I'm doing is writing this. Because, for the first time in a very, very long time, I'm... I'm happy.   
    That alone should be cause for celebration, shouldn't it? For the first time in over three years, I have this feeling in my chest, this lightness. I should be shouting for joy, right? It kind of demonstrates just how fucked up I am that I'm scared. I'm scared to be happy, how messed up is that? Pain is easy. I'm used to it. I'm used to soldiering on no matter what I feel, no matter how horrible my life gets. But what do you do when something good happens? What do you do when things turn around and suddenly, you're terrified that you're going to lose that light, whether it be through bad luck or fucking it up yourself?   
    Being happy is harder, maintaining that feeling is a hell of a lot more difficult than being depressed or angry. I don't know what to do with it. I don't know how to keep it. I'm lost and confused and I don't know how I got here. It wasn't supposed to be like this and I don't know if I should be worried that this is all some big, cosmic joke that's only purpose is to blow up in my face later. Quatre would say to just accept it and move on, to be happy while I can, but that's not in my nature. I can't help but worry and agonize over this, even while my heart is singing.   
    November 28th. It's the day that my life finished falling apart, and that it happened the way it did came as no real shock to me. It was inevitable and on that front, I'm scared because I don't know what tomorrow will bring, but it's a fear that I can understand and handle. What I can't understand is that... that November 28th is also the day that my life started to build itself back up again.  
    If anyone had told me that morning as I was walking to school that something good was going to happen to me at the end of it, I would have laughed in their faces. Life if weird like that. I'm still expecting to wake up and find that this entire day was a dream. Or at least, the last half of it. Today started out pretty typical for me. I didn't wake up as much as my alarm clock announced to me that it was time to stop trying to sleep and time to start getting ready for school.   
    I hadn't slept in two days. As bad as my sleep habits had gotten after my father had started raping me, after I had nearly shot him, it had gotten a whole lot worse. A part of it was my fear of what my nightmares would make me do, that one night I might come out of them and find that I had gone through with murdering him. But a big part was just an inability to settle my thoughts. My insomnia was almost complete, my daily sleep quota dropping from a tentative two to five hours to one to two hours every night, with the exception of a few days where I didn't sleep at all.  
    I know that something has to break. My grades are getting worse and I'm finding it hard to concentrate on anything. Even when I do sleep, I feel sick when I wake up, like I'm not resting at all. I've felt like I'm at the end of my rope these last two weeks, like I'm just in this waking nightmare that never stops. The only times I've managed to get any real sleep at all are when my father isn't home, but those times are rare now that he has a job again.  
    My father accepted a position working at the local steel mill just in the nick of time. I think he had been holding off on even applying to that place because of his pride, since it was one of the first applications that he had brought home after getting fired. I don't really blame him, only the truly desperate look for work there. It's hard, back breaking labor, with less pay than he had been making as a cop, and the people that worked there had to wear masks because of the fumes. But with only my mother and I employed, we had gotten far behind in all of our bills. When our electricity got turned off for two whole days, I guess he had finally decided that his pride wasn't so important.  
    My dad works longer days now than he had as a cop. 8am to 10pm Monday through Thursday. 56 hours a week. But just in order to make ends meet, he has to work that long. The only real respite I get from him now are when I'm at school or at work. I see him before I go to school in the morning and I usually find him in my bedroom an hour or two after I come home. He doesn't have to go out and meet Pat to get drunk now that he's bringing home paychecks again. He drinks more now. I hadn't even thought that possible, but it is. I'm amazed that he even has any liver left to destroy.   
    He's mad all the time now, too, frustrated from the number of hours that he works and we're still just as broke as ever, only barely able to pay our bills. Angry, frustrated, depressed, and drunk means that he needs to vent a lot more often, either with his fists or his dick. Worst of all, he doesn't even care about being discrete about it anymore. Ever since Mom saw him having sex with me that morning, he hasn't given one shit about trying to hide it from her. If he comes home or wakes up and he needs stress relief while I'm there, he'll take it, no matter what I'm doing or if she's around.   
    That morning was no different. He was already wide awake when I rolled out of my bed, watching the morning news with a scowl on his face. That scowl is becoming more and more of a permanent feature, deepening wrinkles on his brow. I had hoped that the news might be a distraction for him and that I could escape from the house to school unscathed, but he grabbed me just as I was about to leave the house. He bent me over the kitchen table and just kind of shoved into me. My mother closed their bedroom door so she wouldn't see it and ten minutes later, he was done, leaving me with bruises from the table and his hands, and some bite marks on the back of my neck and shoulders. He did that sometimes. Sometimes he was nice and acted like he loved me, that he was grateful and reliving some tender memory. But others, he was brutal and rough, animal-like, and would scratch and bite me in his lust, usually when he was angry drunk. It was like he wasn't even himself during those moments, but like he was possessed by some demon.  
    I'm getting used to it, though. In a way, I prefer it when he hurts me like that, when he treats me like I'm nothing more than a piece of meat. It's easier to take than his kisses and telling me how much he loves me. My heart can handle the violence, but not his love, if that's what it really is. Being loved that way is a kind of violence that I can't understand and can't cope with.   
    Already running late for school, I didn't have the luxury of changing my clothes, which was a definite oversight on my part. I'm not saying that if I had, what happened might not have, but it had definitely been a big mistake. I just wiped his gunk off of me with some paper towels, some blood mixed in with the semen, tossed it in the trash, and went on my way, my mind in tattered pieces from his assault. I probably should have taken a moment to collect myself, but I was so used to it at that point. Or maybe I was just so sleep deprived that I didn't even think that I needed that moment. I guess I was at that stage of insomnia where nothing really mattered to me.  
    This time of year is always strange to me. Thanksgiving was last week, so we got a five day vacation from school and finally came back today. Pretty much everyone, even our teachers, were in full holiday mode, chatting each other up about families that they had visited and the meals that they had eaten or how excited they were for the Christmas holiday that was readily approaching us. Even if I had had a friend to talk to about it, I wouldn't have much to say. Holidays, for me, aren't a joyous occasion. We can't afford some huge turkey with all the trimmings, although we do usually have turkey sandwiches and whatever our local grocery store has on sale.   
    This year I managed to slap together a halfway decent meal for my mother and I while my dad was working; a turkey pot pie with some various vegetables using ground turkey and an apple crisp for desert. I didn't even care about eating into my paychecks to get the ingredients for it. Even though my mother vacated into the living room to watch Thanksgiving movie specials and eat the dinner that I had made, leaving me to eat alone in the kitchen, it was still kind of nice.   
    We don't really have any family visit during the holidays, at least not that I know of. I know that I have grandparents somewhere, but they never visit or call, so I've never met them. The winter holiday season, to me, just meant a lot of time around my parents that I didn't want, loneliness, and envying what everyone else had that I would never know. Presents, big, home cooked meals, distant family and friends and parties, decorating, all that crap. We had a Christmas tree a few times when I was little, but it was fake and ended up getting mold on it and tossed out. My mother puts out some garland here and there, but nothing like the big, lighted spectacles that they put on in nicer neighborhoods.   
    The only nice, holiday memories that I have are from when I was very young and my parents actually tried to do something for the holidays and when Quatre had been alive. He had always made sure to do something nice for me around Christmas and some of my fondest memories are walking around the boardwalk with him on Christmas Eve, seeing all the decorations and getting free egg nog and candy canes from the Christmas Fair vendors. Since he died, I don't go out around December unless it's to go to work. Seeing the boardwalk all lit up in cheery lights and hearing people singing carols there off key hurts too much.  
    The day after Thanksgiving is a whole other affair. This year was no different as five am found me waiting in line at the mall to get some discounted winter wear. There wasn't a whole lot that I could afford, especially for a winter jacket, so I just bought a couple of cheap, thinner jackets that I could layer myself with and some boots with a coupon that Solo had given me for work. Construction work didn't stop in the winter, even if it snowed.   
    There was a very relaxed attitude among my morning classes that day as teachers returned back into the swing of classes. Our mid-semester finals are coming up next month, so most of my classes were just recaps of what we had previously learned this year and lectures on what the tests would entail. In Chemistry, we watched some film about molecules. I can't tell you anything more than that about it because two minutes after our teacher had turned the lights off, I had fallen asleep. No one seemed to notice and I woke up promptly when the lights got turned back on, so maybe I should plan for that when all of my classes devolve into holiday movie viewings the week before the winter break. It might be the only decent sleep that I get for a while.  
    I can blame what happened next on all sorts of things. My insomnia is at the top of the list, not only how rational thought had been difficult and slow for me that day, but how even more difficult it had been to control and hide my emotions. My quickness to anger lately is another thing to blame. My father would, naturally, be the key factor to all of it, the source of my anger, tiredness, and anxiety.   
    But mostly, I blame myself for my inability to keep my mouth shut, my stubborn personality, that thing that always kept me from doing what Quatre did best, just keeping my head down and walking away from a potentially disastrous situation, and for being too stupid to take five minutes out of my busy morning to change my clothes after my father had fucked me. I know that it was from sleep deprivation and not actually from not wanting to be late, something that was probably unavoidable, but I can still beat myself up for it at the end of the day.   
    My life fell into another level of chaos ten minutes before the post lunch period began. I suppose, if there is one bit that I'm grateful for in this whole mess, it's that it happened then and not at the beginning of lunch or the start of the day or, worst of all, during gym. I, at least, was given plenty of time to plan how to handle the fallout. Despite everything, I was pretty lucky that day that I didn't run into any of my... personal, little 'problems' before then. Heero, Relena, and Dorothy were as laid back and bored to be back at school as everyone else, keeping to their own group of friends.   
    I only had Zechs in two of my classes, so I barely saw him unless it was in the halls. Even though he had flunked out of graduating last year, he had already taken most of the classes that I was in, with the exception of the math class that we took together, but I sat in the front and he sat in the back corner, so I didn't even see him most of the time. Gym was the only class that I had to worry about him. His three cronies were in a few of my other classes, but they didn't come near me that day.   
    Nothing might have even happened if I had been paying attention to where I was walking in those last few minutes of lunch. I hadn't had much of an appetite lately, but I had forced myself to eat a school lunch of pasta and fruit salad. I was feeling sluggish and kind of out of it at that point and the only thing that I had found myself able to focus on was the route to my next class. Lucy wasn't even on my radar until I literally bumped into her.   
    It's a cliched tale, really. We were both turning the same corner of the hallway, walking in opposite directions. If I had been paying attention, I would have seen her just in time and darted to the side, but Dorothy was too stubborn to move out of the way. My book bag was secure over my shoulder, but our impact sent Dorothy's books flying. I almost grabbed them in reflex before I realized who it was and let them fall to the ground.   
    "Fucking _loser_ ," she hissed at me in fury as she bent down to grab at her things, "Why don't you watch where you're fucking walking, you useless faggot!"      
    I just watched her do it with this feeling of detachment, like I was watching something happening on television and it had no real connection to me personally. If I had been more aware, I would have spouted out an apology or just walked away before it could have escalated into anything else. But I was frozen until she stood back up and shoved me into the wall. She got in my face, her light blue eyes like chips of ice and her pretty face, like that of a porcelain doll's, contorted into a look of superior cruelty. Before she could lob any other insults at me, her nose wrinkled in distaste.   
    "Ugh!" she squeezed her nose shut between her fingers like she had smelled something especially rank and took a step back from me, "What is that smell?!"  
     Despite her look of repulsion, there was a sadistic spark of glee in her eyes that reminded me of her best friend, but worse, colder and crueler somehow. That was the thing about Dorothy, the thing that had probably made her gravitate towards Relena in the first place. She was just as bad as the other bitch, but she seemed to enjoy tormenting people even more than Relena did. Relena liked pushing people around. I imagined that it made her feel good, always being the one in control. Dorothy likes it, I think anyway, because she just enjoys hurting people. She always has this calm demeanor about her, like some ice queen, and she never really loses her temper like Relena does. In a way, she reminds me more of Zechs than Relena.   
    With that in mind, when she took a step toward me, I backed away until my back was against the wall, unsure of what she was going to do. She took another sniff at me and waved her hand in front of her nose.  
    "Oh god, it's _you_. You smell like an orgy, Maxwell!" she crowed.  
    Her words made a few people in the hallway stop and watch what was going on. I felt my face heat up in embarrassment and had to stop myself from taking a sniff at my clothes as I wondered if she could really smell sex on me. She probably could, but I couldn't let her know that her words had fazed me that much, even if I wanted nothing more than to slink away and take five showers to get the stench off of me.   
    "Just how many men was it this time, hm?" she jeered, "From the smell of you, you must have broken a new record. It's no wonder why you're so out of it," Dorothy suddenly pressed herself against me and my eyes went wide as she cornered me, molding herself against me in a way that had my stomach churning, "I know you're starving for cock, but that's no reason to not take care of yourself. It really is a shame," she cooed and I felt my heart start to race as I could feel her tits pressed against my chest and she ran one finger down my cheek, her nail like a talon, threatening to cut me, "You're white trash, but you're not that bad looking. If you weren't such a slut, I bet you could make a fair amount of money taking it up the ass. I could hook you up with some boys that would be willing to overlook your gender, if you're interested," her voice was a lion's purr, her eyes like a cat's that had spotted potential prey as I tried to push myself further back, away from her words and her body, "Unless, of course, you have such low standards that money doesn't even matter to you."  
    Those blue eyes of hers became excited as some thought came to her. I don't know why, at that point, I hadn't said anything to her, tried to get her to back down or just plain ran away from her almost sexual harassment, but I felt dazed and not from my lack of sleep anymore.   
    "I bet you and Winner made quite a pair," she sneered and her sudden change of topic practically eviscerated me right there, "Tell me, Maxwell, did you like him, too? Did you want to stick your cock up his ass, or was it the other way around? Did him liking Barton make you jealous? Oh!" her eyes widened a little as though some great revelation had come to her, "Or maybe he didn't like you at all! Maybe you thought you could get some money out of him if you sucked his dick, but he was too hard up over Trowa to even notice you! After all, Quatre was a fag, but coming from a family like his, I bet he had a lot higher standards than you do. Did you get mad and jealous of him and force yourself on him? Don't tell me that that was really why he killed himself, that you were just so repulsive that he couldn't stand being around you anymore, or maybe he was just tired of being molested by his 'best friend'."  
    Her words washed over me like an icy wave. All at once, I felt dizzy and cold, the kind of cold that makes you feel like you'll never feel warm again. My stomach churned and I felt nauseous. I knew that Dorothy was only saying those nasty things to hurt me, to be cruel, but that didn't make them hurt any less. 'Force yourself on him'... 'molested by his 'best friend.' Hearing those things rattled my entire self.   
    I wanted to scream that I would never do that I would never do that, rape my best friend. I would never rape anyone, especially not Quatre. The only reason why I smelled like an orgy was because my father had raped me. The only reason why I was so tired was because I knew what it felt like, to be held down and forced to have sex with someone that I would never want, to be used and hurt and violated by someone... someone that I was supposed to trust. Someone who was supposed to care for me. Someone who was supposed to love me and comfort me when I was upset, not be the one to... to do something like that to me.   
    How could I rape anyone? How could I hurt anyone like that? That one thought, of me doing that... doing that to the one person that had cared about me, who had been my torch in the dark for so many years, gutted me. It made me feel weak and hollow, but it didn't take long for that empty spot to turn to rage, just like it often does lately.   
    I was gay, so that made me a rapist? Was that true? My thoughts swirled in my head, not making any kind of sense, but only causing more turmoil in me. I liked boys, so does that mean that I liked Quatre? Had what I felt for him been more than friendship? Would I have, if he had lived long enough, done what my father had done to me? Would I have taken my frustrations out on him sexually, paid my father's violence back against my friend? Was that what is going to happen to me as I get older? Was that my future, the road that I was heading down as my life seemed to get darker and bleaker? She could never know just how badly her words wounded me, how I had already been questioning my sexuality, my being gay, and questioning my lack of desire my entire life. Questioning why I was such a freak. What did she know about it? Rape Quatre? How could I? How could I even have sex with anyone?   
    "Shut the fuck up!" I wanted to scream at her, "I never wanted him like that! I've never wanted anyone like that! The only person that I've ever wanted is Heero!"  
    Dorothy stepped back, away from me and stared at me in shock, those ice-blue eyes of hers wide in an expression that I had never seen before, like I had just spit on her or something. On her normally cool and perfect face, it would have been funny, if that expression hadn't been directed at me. I looked around the hallway and saw that every single person there, even the teachers, were staring at me with mixed expressions of horror, shock, and disgust. It was that moment that I realized that I had just shouted all of that out loud and not just in my head. No, not shouted. Screamed. At the top of my lungs. In a very crowded hallway. Right in front of Relena's best friend.   
    In moments like these, I think the only word that can possibly be uttered or thought by anyone is 'fuck'. In a single moment, with a single sentence, I had just outed myself in front of the entire school. Maybe you think that's being dramatic, but I knew, even then in my not altogether there state, that what had just happened was going to spread through the school like wild fire. I might as well have climbed on top of one of the tables at lunch with a megaphone and yelled 'I'm a fag'. It would have had the same, exact impact. Like I said, fuck. Just _fuck_.   
    Actually, I take it back. Saying to the whole school that I'm gay would have been a gentler blow. No, instead I had to break world records for the biggest fuck up in history and confess that, not only do I like other guys, not only am I exactly what my bullies had been accusing me of for years, I wanted to have sex with one of them. I was officially dead. The second that Heero, Relena, and Zechs heard of what I had just uttered, I was dead. Never mind worrying about my father going to far, never mind worrying about my future, this was the end. Zechs and Relena were going to kill me, or worse. I wasn't exactly clear on what that worse thing would be, but I was positive that, by the end of the day, I was going to find out.   
    I was lucky that by the time that I had figured that out, Dorothy was still processing what I had said. I was able to shove past her and make it to my classroom without anyone trying to stop me. I slid into my seat with no one the wiser, at least not yet. That period, to say that I didn't focus on the class is an understatement. I was just glad that no one could see that I was trembling as I sat there, suddenly faced with a brand new fear. What the hell had I just done? Anything else that was happening outside of that fear and bewilderment and my cursing myself out for running my mouth like that might as well have happened to someone else that day.  
    Four years. Four years I kept my sexuality, or my fears about my sexuality, a complete secret. Quatre had been the only one to ever know and that was only because I had come clean to him. If I hadn't, he might have never have found out, either. I had been so careful, never letting anything slip. Besides the rumors that Relena and her brother had spread, I had given no one any cause to suspect me of being gay. Even when I had been dating Trowa, no one had even wondered if we were friends, let alone boyfriends. How had this happened? How had I let it? It felt so surreal to me that for several minutes, I was so sure that I was having a nightmare.  
    Unsurprisingly, it was Quatre and Trowa that I thought of the most during that period, not even my bullies and what was bound to happen to me the very second that they cornered me. But it wasn't because of what Dorothy had said. It had absolutely nothing to do with her accusations of me and Quatre being more than friends, oddly enough. I thought about my relationship with Trowa and his constant fear of being discovered, how he had hid his own sexuality so well, even to the point of betraying Quatre to keep his secret. I had always hated him for it. The day that he had left me behind to save his own skin in the equipment room, I had cursed his fears, but that day, I got a little taste of them. I felt like the walls of that classroom were closing in on me and I couldn't breathe.   
    I won't ever forgive Trowa for throwing me under the bus, or for cheating on me towards the end of our relationship, but I could understand his fear. I could understand how it felt, having people looking at you and knowing what they were thinking, how they were judging you. I knew now how it felt to be a true outcast, to be truly hated, and to feel like your entire life was ending. And I had never had what Trowa had. I had never had any kind of popularity, any kind of reputation that could be labeled as a good one. I was going to lose a hell of a lot less than what he would have.   
    But still, in that moment, I would have given anything to get that small sliver of my life back, to just be the bullied loser and not the fag. Because I don't care what anyone says. Yes, there is a huge difference between a rumor and the truth. There is a difference between what people call you in jest and what they hiss in hatred behind your back. Maybe I hadn't lost a lot. I hadn't lost any friends or anything like that, but I had the understanding that my whole life was going to change. I didn't think I could withstand much more of that.  
    I thought about the day that Quatre had died, not his suicide in itself, but what had happened before. I remembered walking outside and seeing that crowd, hearing the things that our classmates had said about him. Quatre had felt this. This terror. This gaping chasm in front of him. I know that his decision to kill himself had been more than just the whole school finding out that he was gay, but I understood all of a sudden that it could have been enough. Seeing all those eyes on you, hating you, repulsed by you, even if those people had never been kind to you, it still hurt. He had decided to kill himself and had spared himself from ever having to worry about what came after, with living with that kind of hate. Maybe he had been the smart one.   
    I had never thought that about his actions before, but in a messed up way, maybe he had done the smart thing. Smarter than me, because instead of running home to kill myself or even just plain running away from everything, there I was, sitting in class, wondering what the hell it was that I was supposed to do now. In school, they teach you how to pass your finales, how the human body works, how to practice safe sex, how you should act in certain situations, like what to do if you find someone's wallet on the ground or find out your closest friend was stealing test answers. But they never tell you what to do when you become a total social leper, when everyone finds out that you are the thing that their parents warn them about, the thing that is the brunt of every dirty, mean joke they tell.   
    I had thought that that class was as hard as things were going to get, but they only got harder as the day went on. I was incredibly careful going from class to class, more careful than I have ever been in my life. I didn't linger when classes ended, but I made sure that I wasn't the first one out the door, either, leaving with the teacher. I didn't trust any adults to keep me safe, but I figured that no one was going to try anything if I stayed close to multiple teachers. I stayed away from my locker and the rest rooms, any place where someone might be able to corner me. I was still surprised that I managed to get through the rest of the second half of the day with no one trying to beat me up or do more than hiss something nasty under the breath.  
    I thought that I had been a social leper before. That's a joke now. It's almost literal. When I walked through the hallways, the crowd parted, like no one could bear the thought of me accidentally brushing up against them. Even classmates that had simply been nonchalant about me before threw me repulsed glares. Some of them even looked affronted, like they couldn't understand why I was being allowed to walk among them, the freak that I was. They stared at me openly, whispered things to their friends, or just called me faggot right to my face. I pushed past all of them and tried to ignore it. It wasn't easy. It had hurt before when it had just been Relena and Zechs's groups, but now even teachers looked at me with open contempt.   
    I got tripped and shoved. Things were thrown at me. And I knew that they were just getting started. But I hadn't run into Zechs yet and while you would think that would make me relieved, it really didn't. There was no reason that I could think of to why he wouldn't just find me in the hallway and tear into me, and his absence just made me paranoid. Maybe he would wait until gym, maybe when I was about to go into the showers, some time when I was vulnerable and in a place where no adults would feel compelled to stop him. Well, he would be waiting a long time for that because I had no intention of going to gym class that day.   
    I couldn't risk skipping my other classes, not with my declining grades, but no one would give a shit if I missed gym, least of all me. I could get a hefty head start to anyone looking to assault me as soon as school ended. I have no idea what I'm going to do after today, but I've been in 'one day at a time' mode for awhile now. When the bell rang, signaling the end of our second to last class, I bolted out the door and into the school parking lot.  
    For awhile, I was so sure that I had gotten away with it, that I could go hide at the library until I had to go to work and nothing bad would happen. I left the school property and took a right onto the street that would lead me in the direction of the library, feeling relieved. It didn't last long. The library isn't that far away from the school. It's right next to the baseball field, along a tiny, secluded avenue that goes past this quaint coffee shop. With school still in session and most adults at work, both the street and the parking lot were empty of anyone. It was right when I turned into that little avenue that I saw them standing ahead of me, blocking my path.  
    Relena, Trant, Heero, Alex, Mueller, Dorothy, and three others from their group, two of Zechs's friends and one of Relena's, were waiting for me on the road, spread out and just... waiting. I have no idea how they knew where I was going or that I was going to skip the last class, but there they were. Zechs, Dorothy, and their friends had smug and superior smirks on their faces when they saw me approach. That was the look of a clan of hyenas, knowing that their plan to corner the helpless gazelle had paid off. Mueller was twirling a bat in his hands, an excited gleam in his eye.   
    I tried not to think about what they were going to do to me in terms of life or death, or even how long my hospital visit was going to be, but I also knew that there would be no outrunning them. Mueller was on the baseball team with Heero and Alex was on the track team with Zechs. The two of them were probably as fast as I was and in the state that I was in, I wasn't so sure that I had the energy to out maneuver them. They would take me down, either with superior speed or just plain endurance. What I needed was a place to hide, but the only direction that I could go was behind me, further north. I couldn't make it past them to the library or even to my house, it was too far of a distance in the wrong direction.  
    The only ones that were looking at me different as I stood there, frozen in place with fear and resignation, were Relena and Heero. She looked pissed and sadistic. I knew then, although it wasn't often her style, that she was going to join in on the beating beyond her typical taunts. This wasn't just because I had confirmed what she had started saying about me, this was personal. I had confessed to liking her boyfriend and she was going to make me pay for that. I wondered if it was just her disgust, or if she felt slighted again, if she was remembering her adolescent crush on me and hating me for liking him instead of her. Or maybe that wasn't even on her radar. Maybe she just plain hated me.  
    Heero looked... intense. Focused and pale, like he was trapped in some horrible thought. He looked anxious and nervous and I wondered if he was uncomfortable with what they were going to do to me, or if he was simply disgusted to be there with me. I wondered what he thought about all this, about my confession. I was sure that disgust was only the barest of emotions. I wondered if he would deliver the first blow or if he just wanted nothing to do with me anymore.   
    I think that's what hurt the worst, that whatever little acquaintance and friendship that we had had, those companionable talks of ours and his recent... concern for me, all of that was dead now. I hadn't wanted it, but I _had_ , and I had ruined it. Just like everything else in my life, my true nature had come out and I had destroyed everything, even his ability to be around me. Now I wasn't the lonely, awkward kid anymore, I was just the fag that dared to have such a twisted desire over him. He probably wanted to scrub his brain clean knowing that. I would have done anything in the world for him not to have known. Had Quatre felt this way, faced with Trowa's reaction? This feeling of filth and betrayal, all leveled at himself?   
    Relena was the first one to break away from the pack and take a step towards me. The rest of them followed her, menacing in on me, closing in. My heart raced and screamed at me to run, to make a break for it, but I didn't move. What was the point? Either today or tomorrow or the next day... eventually they would get me. In that moment, I couldn't see the point of anything. I suppose it could have just been my tiredness, but I think it's more than that. I think that I had finally hit the wall of my life where it was just easy to stop and let that truck hit me finally. I just didn't care. I was frightened, but it was Heero's gaze that scared me, not the threat of violence. I wished, not for the first time, that I had squeezed that trigger and blown my brains out. It just seemed so much easier to let it all happen, to do like Quatre had and surrender to gravity, than to try to fight.  
    "What the matter, faggot?" Relena sneered at me, "Why do you have that scared look on your face? I hope you don't think that we're here because you finally came out of the closet," she laughed at that, a harsh sound that I was all too familiar with, "What a joke! We all knew that you were queer years ago, you think that that is any kind of shock to anyone? I'm actually relieved. For someone like you... someone who looks like you and acts like you to be straight, that would be a mockery to the rest of us! Even Quatre hid it better than you do!"  
    I felt my hands curl into fists at my sides, but I didn't say a word as her cruelty flowed out of her. I didn't question the truth of it, if she was right and I really did act and look gay, whatever that meant.  
    "Like I told you before," she flicked her hair over her shoulder, "You should have done the world a favor and let that truck kill you. But you couldn't do that could you? You couldn't just wilt in some corner, or get AIDS from one of your lays like all the other faggots, could you? Instead, you had to jerk off to poor Heero!" her expression quickly turned from smug to hate filled, twisting with rage, "What gives a lowly piece of trash like you the right to even _look_ at him, let alone let your filthy, unnatural mind fantasize about him like that?! You should be ashamed of yourself!"  
    "You really are pathetic, aren't you, Maxwell?" Zechs's laugh was an echo of his sister's, "You and Winner were quite a pair, the both of you didn't have the common sense to keep your heads down like queers like you deserve. You would have been better off sucking each other off. Don't you even have any consideration for Yuy? Now he has to go through life knowing that some lowly fag wanted to fuck him. Or maybe it's the other way around?" his snake eyes turned to Heero, who was looking more uncomfortable by the minute, his blush almost mirroring my own, "How about it, Yuy, you want to stick your dick up this little fairy's ass? That kind of thing sound appealing to you? I mean, with that long hair of his and that pale, soft skin, you could probably imagine that he's a girl, if you try hard enough."  
    "N-no," Heero forced out through gritted teeth.  
    "See?" Zechs crowed, his icy eyes falling back on me as I felt like my heart was being ripped out through my throat, "He doesn't want anything to do with you and can you really blame him? So what are we going to do now, Maxwell? Upstanding citizens like us, we can't just let little queer boys like yourself think that you have the right to look on someone normal like Heero like that. What you need is someone to set you on the right path of life, don't you think?" he turned back to Heero, confident, I think, that I wasn't going to suddenly run away from them, "You should be the one to start this party off. How about it, you want to teach the filth some manners?"  
    I looked to Heero. I don't know what I was hoping for from him. I felt like I was thirteen years old again, looking to Trowa and hoping that he would stand up to Relena for Quatre's sake, only to watch him walk away from her with his tail between his legs.   
    "No, thanks," Heero grimaced.  
    "Hey, I don't blame you," Mueller said in sympathy, "If it were me, I wouldn't want to touch the freak with my bare hands, either. Here," he tried to hand Heero his bat, "This should do the trick just fine."  
    Heero took a step back from Mueller, looking like he wanted to be anywhere but there.  
    "I'm good," he muttered and Mueller just shrugged.  
    "All the more fun for us," he grinned and handed the bat off to Zechs instead.  
    Zechs grinned back at his friend, the muscles in his arm flexing as he gripped the wooden bat. I understood then, quite clearly, that he was going to kill me, or at least come very close to it. I felt sick seeing how excited he was, his blood lust unleashed in full. I had always been frightened of him, especially since he had started bullying me when I had been twelve years old. I had always known the sort of person that he was, that he was a brute, someone who had no real regard for other people. The only difference between him and anyone else that killed for pleasure was that he hadn't been given permission, a reason. Well, he had it now. Who would blame him for killing someone like me? Would anyone even care? Even that wasn't enough to spur me into action as he took a step towards me. No one was more shocked than me when Heero suddenly walked quickly forward and grabbed Zechs's arm.  
    "Wait, maybe we shouldn't do this," he protested, his voice shaky.  
    That was when I realized that Heero was scared. He was as scared as I was and it wasn't his ass on the line. Was he just worried that he would get in trouble for taking part in this? I had never seen his tanned face look so pale, his eyes so wide and his hands almost shaking. Zechs glanced at him in irritation, like a bull at a fly that was bothering it.  
    "Getting cold feet?" he sneered at his sister's boyfriend, "Don't worry, Yuy. You just stick back like the little chicken shit that you are and let us do all the work. Like I said earlier, we'll take care of your little problem for you and you can say that you weren't even here."  
    For a moment, I felt ice cold and numb, a terrible thought rooting itself in my heart. What if Heero had instigated this? What if he had suggested it, asked for it, and really was just getting cold feet about it? I couldn't take that, the thought that the boy that I loved wanted to see me turned to paste, merely because I had a crush on him. The mere possibility of it hurt, but deep down, I refused to believe in it. Heero wouldn't do that... not him. Maybe he was a coward and a prick, but some part of me knew that he didn't have this in him.   
    Heero looked nervously around at his friends as Zechs pushed past him. His eyes darted this way and that and he looked like he had swallowed something extremely vile, unsure of what to do with it. Then, just as Zechs was getting close enough to me that I was going to have to make my own decision of what to do, flee or let myself be hit with that bat, Heero acted. He situated himself right between me and Zechs, the one thing that I never, in a million years, would have thought that he would do. I really did feel like I was watching the same thing play out from three years ago, only to watch the ending change right before my eyes.  
    "Don't," he begged Zechs, in a tone that I had never heard from him before, one of desperation, "Don't hurt him."  
    I don't know who looked more shocked at his words; me or Relena.  
    "What?!" Relena exclaimed in confusion, "What are you saying, Heero? Aren't you sick knowing that this perverted fag is masturbating over you at night?!"  
    "I..." he started to say, but the words caught in his throat.  
    He was the only thing standing between me and a truly epic beating, the only thing... protecting me? I wasn't sure if that was the right word for it. But I was sure that it wouldn't last. I was so sure that he would walk back past Zechs and abandon me. Just like everyone else. It was all that I could expect out of him. He was still, like a rock, as he studied his friends again. He glanced back at me and I felt a chill go through me when his pretty blue eyes clashed with mine. The expression there was strange. It was so filled with fear and uncertainty, so much so that I wanted to tell him that it was ok if he let them hurt me.   
    That sounds insane now, but I really did have that impulse. I didn't want him to be scared or look so off kilter, like his world was falling apart at the seams. Compared to everything he was, compared to everything he had, what was I? I was a worm, a maggot, _nothing_. He had no reason to want to protect me, even if he was against this kind of violence. Yet there he was, considering it. He looked back at Zechs for a moment, then turned towards me. Those eyes of his that had looked so scared were now so cold and hard. They were full of determination and purpose.   
    He had made a choice, I knew, although I didn't know what it was at the time. Whatever it was, that decision weighed heavily on him, like a condemned man deciding to accept his fate. I was so positive that he would have that bat in his hands, that he had decided to deliver the first blow after all, but he wasn't holding anything. Zechs looked coldly smug, though, and I was sure that he was thinking that he had pushed Heero into beating me up, that his resignation was in their favor. Of course it was, because that's what any sane person would choose.   
    As it turns out, I'm not the only insane person around here.  
    Heero grabbed my wrist hard, his fingers digging into the bruises there harshly and I'm sure now that that was on purpose, to make me wince and get them to think that he was going to hurt me.  
    "Run, _now_ ," he hissed at me, too low for any of his friends to hear.  
    I was too shocked to run, too busy trying to figure out if I had started to dream while I was awake. That can apparently happen, if you lose enough sleep. Heero didn't give me a choice, though, and that was probably what saved both of our asses as he pulled me along, breaking into a quick run. I had to run in order to keep him from pulling my arm off. After a few seconds, my higher brain function finally came back to me and I remembered what it was that we were running from and that time was kind of important.   
    We went a lot faster when I started to run with him instead of just being dragged along like a rag doll, although he didn't let go of my wrist even when I matched his pace. His hand was tight around me, hurting my deep bruises. It was hot, like a brand, but one that I was all too happy to have burned into my flesh. I felt like I had died and gone to heaven, just to have him touching me. The pain was inconsequential, the reason for our running irrelevant. Heero had saved me from his own friends. He had risked those friendships, his reputation, for _me_. I felt so happy that it couldn't possibly be real.  
    My mind kept circling in thoughts of Trowa and Quatre, how my best friend had never gotten to know that feeling, to have the person you loved sacrifice themselves for you, even if I was sure that Heero had done it out of pure moral principles. That didn't even matter to me. He had done the one that Trowa had never done for me or Quatre, the one thing that I had been so sure that no one would do for me. We were running together, linked by his hand, and nothing else in the world seemed to matter beyond the joy that threatened to burst in my chest. How long... how long had it been since I had felt something like that? Something so pure and wonderful?  
    Just like all the other times that I've felt something like that, it didn't last long. By the time we had miraculously passed by the center of town and had entered North Nausten without being caught, and I imagined that that was only due to Heero's friends hesitating over their shock, I had stopped thinking in terms of 'he protected me' and started thinking things like 'why would he do that' and 'is he insane' and 'what does he want from me?' Because why else would Heero Yuy have done something like that unless he wanted something?  
    I tried as hard as I could to get away from that thought. It was too jaded. _I_ was too jaded and I really didn't want to be that person just then. I wanted to be happy that he had done this and not think that there was some other motive behind it. But why? Why would he save me? Why, after every cruel thing he had let his friends do to me, why now did he stick up for me? Because he hadn't wanted to get his hands dirty, or did he actually care about my welfare for some bizarre reason? None of it made any sense to me and I couldn't even tell if that was because what he had done lacked any kind of sense or I was just that tired that I was having trouble reasoning things out.  
    The more that I thought about it, the more that I loathed him for what he had done. Don't get me wrong, I was grateful and it made me love him more than I ever had before, even though I had thought that impossible, but it just drove home to me what a hypocrite he was. He had never fit in with Relena and Zechs's group, he had just pretended. He had changed his colors when he hadn't been able to stand it anymore, but that just meant that he had been able to stand everything else, didn't it?   
    I found myself getting angry, but it didn't actually have anything to do with him taking so long to grow a spine. It had to do with me. I was angry at myself, because if it weren't for me and my addle brained confession, Heero never would have done that... I never would have put him into a position where he would have had to make that choice. Maybe he was an idiot and didn't realize what this was going to mean for him, just how badly he had just fucked himself over. Aligning himself with me, even just to soothe his conscience, was going to make him a target. Didn't he get that? Why the hell would he risk that for someone like me?   
    Heero navigated us through some side streets and through a couple of patches of bushes and trees, no doubt trying to make it hard for us to be followed even as he reduced our speed. I didn't see anyone following us yet, but I doubted that they would give up very easily. He tugged on my hand and had us duck under another tree, my wrist screaming in pain and I had had enough. I dug my heels into the grass and pulled my wrist back, yanking it out of his grip. Heero stopped and looked back at me with this adorable, bewildered expression on his face.  
    "What's wrong?" he asked in concern, which only made me more furious at him.  
    Where did that worry come from? Why did he give a single fuck about someone like me? After all this time, I couldn't understand him. Who was this person that had just risked everything for me?   
    "You!" I snapped at him angrily, "What the hell do you think you're doing?! Are you fucking insane?"  
    His brow furrowed, making him look puzzled.  
    "I'm helping you," he said like he was talking to a small child.  
    "But why?! Why would you do something that stupid?! Don't you get what they were going to do?!" I demanded in exasperation.  
    "Yes, they were going to hurt you," he looked down at the ground guiltily, "I... I couldn't let them do it."  
    "What do you care?" I jabbed a finger in his chest, "They've been hurting me since the day you moved here and you haven't given a flying fuck until now, so why even bother? They're going to kill you, you know that don't you? It doesn't matter that you're rich like they are or that you're dating Relena, the second they see you again, you're mincemeat. Only a total idiot wouldn't get that, so why save me?! Me, of all people! You have nothing to gain from this, and don't try to tell me that it was just because it was the right thing to do, because that's nuts! Guys like you do not just go around rescuing losers like me for the hell of it!"  
    "Then I guess I'm nuts," he murmured, "because that's exactly why I did it. I didn't want to see you hurt, not... not like that. All I could think about was stopping it, even if I'm aware of what Zechs is going to do to me for it. Instead of asking me why I'm bothering now, you should be asking why it's taken me so long to get my head out of my ass," his lips quirked into this weak but completely endearing smile, "It's like you've always said, I'm a pathetic, hypocritical coward. But some things... some things are even too much for someone like me to ignore. I had to do something for once, can't you understand that? I just wish that I had done something for you sooner."  
    I flushed darkly at his words. It was too easy to believe that he really did care about me, and that was way too dangerous for me. I couldn't handle getting hurt anymore than I already was, it wouldn't take much anymore for me to break. I almost wished that he had just let them beat the shit out of me, it would have been easier for me to take, but this... this was insane no matter what angle I looked at it with. But you want to know the really fucked up thing? I felt terrible because I felt like I had messed up his life, just like I had messed up so many peoples'. I know that it was his choice to do what he did, but I still felt that way, like anything bad that happened to him now was my fault.   
    "Look, just," I ran a nervous hand through my bangs, "Just go back to them and make up some story. I don't know, say that you were just so freaked out about getting caught and losing your shot of getting to play this spring and you panicked. I don't care, but stay far away from me and fix it before they-"  
    "I don't care about that!" he snapped at me, making me flinch at his sudden anger, "I don't care if they treat me like they've been treating you, maybe I deserve it for all the awful things I've been doing to you!" I felt trapped in his fiery blue eyes, but then all at once, that anger fled him and he just looked drained and hopeless, "Alright, that's a lie," he admitted, rubbing at the back of his neck, "I do care, I've always cared, that's why I... that's why I've always been such a spineless bastard to you, I didn't want them to do those things to me. I didn't want to be like you, so I joined in on it, but that doesn't mean that I liked it. I hated it, I always did. Now that I've turned my back on them, I don't want to do the same to you. I don't think that I can going back to being that asshole. I don't want to get hurt but... I don't want to be that person anymore, either," he looked at me through his long bangs almost shyly, "Is it true... Do you... do you like me?"  
    I had been expecting disgust or outright anger at a line like that, but he just looked nervous and unsure of himself. I blushed even worse as he turned tracks on me, my stressed brain unable to keep up with him. This incredible embarrassment hit me and I wanted to run away from him. I wanted to lie and say that it wasn't true, any of it. I wasn't a fag and I didn't want him. I wanted his friendship, I wanted... I wanted _this_ , the two of us talking honestly with each other, feeling like we were seeing each other for the first time. But how could I possibly have that if I lied to him now? My desires warred in me. I wanted to protect my heart, I wanted to feel happy, I wanted to be close to him, I wanted to solidify the barriers that I had raised up around my feelings.   
    "I..." my voice cracked, my throat suddenly very dry and I trembled, "That's... I... I mean... I'm gay, you get that, don't you?"  
    "Yes," and to my astonishment, he said it with a wry smirk instead of with any kind of harsh accusation, "I understand that."  
    "Well, I'm no different than any of those girls at school!" I blurted out awkwardly and cursed myself for being unable to say this with any kind of grace, saying such a stupid and embarrassing line like that.  
    Heero chuckled, making something inside of me shiver.  
    "No, I don't think you're anything like them at all," he said wryly.  
    My flush intensified. I hadn't even thought that possible. Was I going to spontaneously combust before making him understand?  
    "I just mean that... well... you're good looking. Every girl in the whole damned school likes you. You're attractive and even though you've been a dick to me most of the time, sometimes you haven't. You're the only person in this whole fucking town that's been willing to sit down with me and talk... the only person who's ever seemed worried about me. Who wouldn't like someone that did that? So yeah, I think you're handsome, but it doesn't mean I'm going to rape you or hit on you or something like that!"  
    I looked at him with huge, owl eyes in shock when, instead of leaving me there in fear or disgust or revulsion or even just an inability to deal with another boy liking him like that, he reached over and touched my arm in comfort.  
    "I don't think that about you," he said softly, "Even when Dorothy told me what you said... I would never think that you would do what they accused you of."  
    I tugged awkwardly at the hem of my shirt, feeling this white hot electricity go through me at his touch. I couldn't understand him anymore than I ever could. Everyone else hated me, loathed me, they would never be able to touch me like that, knowing what I was. So how could he? How could he stomach to be around me and why was he suddenly being so damned nice to me? No, not suddenly. He had acted like this before, I had just been unwilling to accept it.   
    "I like you," I whispered, "I... I don't mean just because I'm gay and you're attractive. I mean I like you... as someone to talk to, someone that I would want to be a friend with," despite myself and all of my desire to be cool and collected around this person, I felt tears prick traitorously at my eyes. I told myself that it was just because I was tired, but I knew that that wasn't the reason behind my emotions at all, "I never wanted you to find out about how I feel about you. I-it's not because I was worried that you would expose me to everyone else, I just... I just never wanted you to be disgusted of me."  
    I wiped furiously at my eyes, not wanting those tears to fall down my cheeks and felt my breath hitch and my heart twist in my chest when that hand of his left my arm and grasped my shoulder in a grip that wasn't meant to hurt me, but was comforting. I wasn't used to that, that kind of touch, the strength and solidity behind something that wasn't out of anger or just too rough that it ended up hurting me anyway.   
    "Hey," he soothed, "I'm not disgusted of you. I'm not angry that you like me, either. I never was, not even at first, not even when Relena told me for the first time that you were a... that you might be gay. I'm flattered."  
    "What?" I sputtered, "You're flattered?!"  
    He shrugged like it wasn't any kind of big deal.  
    "You said that I'm handsome, right, and that you like me just like all those girls like me, right? So why wouldn't I be flattered? And what you told Dorothy... that I'm the only person you've ever saw that way... that means that I'm special," he said in this teasing way that somehow brutally honest as well, "So yeah, I'm flattered to be the one guy that you think is attractive."  
    "But I'm gay!" I protested, "Any sane straight guy would hate to be liked by another guy! How can you stand to be talking with me, let alone want to save me from your friends, knowing what it's going to cost you? You can say that it was the right thing to do, but knowing and doing are two different things. We aren't even friends and you risked that much..."  
    "Because it _was_ the right thing to do," he insisted, "And those people... they aren't my friends. You need to get that. I know that I hurt you and you're confused, but I want you to understand something. Just because I hung around with them, don't think that I'm like them, that I think like them. I hurt you to fit in with them, but I don't actually believe in any of that crap, Duo! I don't think that you're nasty or a loser or trash just because you like men, so don't assume that I should consider that in my actions, that it has anything to do with why I helped you. You think that I wasn't aware of your sexuality this whole time, and I was just ignoring it when we talked? I don't care-"  
    The both of us flinched as someone walked by where we were 'hiding' and he grabbed my arm, pulling me behind the tree so we wouldn't be seen. I let him do it, my heart bursting with happiness at his instinctual protectiveness. We glanced at the sidewalk and the person just walked by our spot, some woman wearing expensive track pants and even more expensive shoes. It really drove home to me where I was, how out of place I felt in that side of town and who I was talking with. Our class difference was the least of my concerns about this whole thing, though.   
    The both of us breathed in relief seeing that it wasn't one of our pursuers, but Heero didn't look relieved.  
    "I want to talk to you about this," he said in frustration, "but we need to get moving. It won't take them too long to figure out which direction we went in. You need to get somewhere safe."  
    I snorted at that. What exactly was safe? Where could I go where Zechs and the others wouldn't find me? My house? How was that any different than getting beaten on them? Right then, even if I was confused and floundering to find some steady footing, I didn't want to go home. I didn't want to leave Heero. I can't really put the feeling to words. There was just this... this warmth in my chest being with him and talking with him for the first time like that. I was happy... but I was also scared that if I left him, this weird spell would be broken and things would go back to how they were before, like I was dreaming everything and fighting against waking up from it.  
    "Yeah, you have a place?" I asked with dry amusement.  
    "Yes, actually. My house. We can lay low there until they get bored of this," he proposed.  
    I blinked stupidly at him. Heero's house? Why did the thought of going there to hide out make me feel so off center, like I was invading some sacred territory, some place that I most definitely did not belong? Maybe because I didn't belong there in reality. Heero and I weren't even friends... or were we? I wasn't sure where I stood with him. He was being too nice to me and I didn't know how to respond to that niceness. Was he trying to make friends with me or did he just pity me? Which one did I want to be true? I could go home, I realized. I could risk getting caught by Zechs and Relena and just make my way home. Heero had done something kind for me, but that didn't have to mean anything more unless I wanted it to. We could just... go our separate ways from here and watch our own backs from now on, if he was really set on not going back to them.   
    "Your parents..." I tried to protest.  
    "Are really laid back, I promise," he said.  
    I chewed on my lip. I think I understood then that this was more than him just offering me a safe haven for a couple of hours. I don't know what he saw in me, why he cared at all what happened to me, but I was just starting to accept that it was more than just him wanting to do the right thing, that there was something about me that he liked and wanted to befriend. Honestly? I don't think I could have turned him down even if I had wanted to. He had told me once that I needed a friend and I had told him that I didn't need anyone.   
    He had accused me of lying and, even though I wish that weren't the case, he had been right. I was a liar. I needed someone. I had always needed someone. Quatre and Trowa... and now Heero. Even if all of my common sense screamed at me that it was a bad idea, I needed him to like me, to want to be around me. In isolation, I had been rotting away, dying. I needed a friend, even if that friend was the boy that I secretly loved. Heero might know that I was attracted to him, but I would never tell him that it was a lot more than that.  
    "Alright," I agreed, "but just for a little while."  
    His face bloomed into this brilliant smile that almost had me on my knees. He really was beautiful and I felt so fortunate that I was able to finally see that, through all of the ugliness he had shown me. We returned the street and he led the way, the both of us walking at a brisk pace, but not running just yet. We didn't have to walk for very long, the street that Heero lived on was just a couple streets from where we had stopped to have our little talk. To my relief, Heero's street wasn't one of those cluttered with mini mansions and castles, but just a quaint, peaceful little street with sprawling, manicured lawns, and simple, but decently sized, two story homes, complete with perfect, picket fences and gazebos and flower plots that belonged in some home and garden magazine.   
    Heero's house was... well, it was beautiful. Remember that house I talked about that was one of my first jobs with the construction company? It was like that. His house was just another two story, like the others on the street, but there was really nothing 'just' about it. It had various tones of grey with brick and dark grey shutters on it's many windows. Some of the windows were round instead of square and they, combined with the porch swing in front that spoke to me of some old, country house, and the immaculate, elegant garden in front, complete with a couple of cherry trees, reminded me of a fairy tale.   
    The drive way wasn't done in smooth asphalt like most of the other homes on the street, but with segmented, flat grey, white, and sandy stones. The walkway leading to the door was made of the same stones. They had a proper, two door garage and as we approached the walkway, I could glimpse a huge, wrap around porch and patio around the back. The walkway was lined with small, iron lantern lights that I imagined were almost mystical looking in the summer. There was a white, crosshatched lattice arch at the front of the walkway with some sort of flowers wrapped around it, growing on it. They were small and white and violet. The small roof over the doorway was supported with white pillars that reminded me of some of the older, colonial homes that I had seen on television.   
    The door was this deep, rich, reddish brown color that went wonderfully with the muted grey and white tones of the rest of the house. It had a large window pane of frosted glass on it. There were lilies etched into it. The left side of the house, viewable from further down the street, was solid brick and covered with creeping ivy, like some cottage in the middle of the woods. I could spot a brick chimney as well and imagined that a place like that had at least one fireplace, if not two or three. Just standing there on the front porch, I felt this overwhelming sense of peace and tranquility that I had never felt before and I envied Heero to be able to live in such a place. I also felt very ashamed of my own home. It had never felt quite as squalid to me as it did then.   
    I followed Heero inside, feeling so out of place that it isn't even slightly funny. I kicked my sneakers off where he did near the front rug and walked with him into the living room of the house. It was... well I've already said that it was beautiful, right? That pretty much describes the interior as well. The collection of loungers and sofas in that one room probably cost what my entire house cost. There indeed was a fireplace in there, done in dark stones, and a hanging chandelier-like light fixture, a sliding glass door leading out to the back porch, a large television set, paintings, lush rugs, and who the hell even knew else. But all of it wasn't over done and it wasn't boasting, just... I can't describe it.  
    There was a small, mahogany table standing against a wall under a large painting of a tranquil lake. On the table was a crystal vase filled with various flowers that had obviously been fresh cut from the garden outside. They filled the room with a fresh, floral scent that was very pleasant, especially compared to what my home smelled like. The interior was all done in more various tones of grey and cream, with some muted, earthy green tones here and there. It wasn't the luxurious place that I had imagined in my head when I had tried to envision where Heero and Relena lived. It was better than that. It was... relaxed and down to earth, a place that I could tell people lived in, if that makes any sense. From the moment that I stepped into that quaint and warm home, I didn't want to leave.   
    A sharp bark was the only warning either of us got as a grey blur burst into the room and tackled Heero, almost forcing him to the ground. His large husky got up on its hind legs, his front paws almost resting on Heero's shoulders, and he mercilessly lapped at his owner's face.  
    "Augh!" Heero pushed at his dog, "Kanuck, down, down! I've told you a million times, paws on the ground!"  
    The husky mix relented and dropped back on all fours, panting happily and doing this weird little dog dance of excitement. When he noticed me there, I worried that he might try to tackle me as well, but he simply kept shuffling in that hyper way and licked exuberantly at my hands like we were some long, lost friends or something. He whined at me when I just kind of stared down at him.  
    "C... can I pet him?" I asked Heero.  
    He laughed at me.  
    "Of course, he doesn't bite anyone, even the mailman."  
    That hadn't really been my worry to begin with. I reached down and scratched the top of the dog's head, the touch stilling his restless movements. His fur was so different from Pepper's, lush and thick instead of silky smooth. His large, triangular ears intrigued me and stroked them for a moment, Kanuck seeming to enjoy that. I suddenly realized that I was smiling just from interacting with the silly thing.  
    "Mom, you home?" Heero called out after tossing his book bag onto the steps leading upstairs as we passed it.  
    "In the kitchen!" a feminine voice called from one of the doorways leading out of the living room.  
    I automatically tensed and worried that Heero might get in trouble for letting a stranger into their home, even if I was a classmate. I was being stupid, I knew, but certain manners had been beaten into me from an early age and I didn't like going into unknown situations like that, especially when it involved angry adults. I didn't exactly have a lot of sets of parents for reference beyond my own. How would they react to me? Would they ignore me? Be annoyed that I was there? Distrust me because it was blatantly obvious between my secondhand clothes and overall worn appearance what side of town my family hailed from? Would they think that their son was slumming it by making friends with me?   
    I could have just stood there in the living room for hours with the dog, debating if I should follow Heero into the kitchen to say hi to his parents or not, my nervousness warring with my desire to be polite, not to even mention my curiosity to meet Heero's family. Oddly enough, it wasn't my manners or even Heero glancing back at me that spurred me forward, it was the smell wafting from the kitchen. The dueling scents of some kind of fish, a baked desert, and baking bread assaulted me, making my mouth water and my stomach clench. For the first time in a week, I felt my appetite return full force, demanding that I cater to it.   
    The Yuy's kitchen was large and open, bright thanks not to the artificial lighting, but a sky light on the ceiling. There were so many tools and gadgets that it reminded me of some of the cooking shows that I would watch when my father wasn't home to make fun of me for it. They had a gas stove and a huge microwave, brass cookware, one of those stand mixers that cost upwards of three hundred bucks, and even one of those double ovens that rich people have. A quick glance at them told me that Mrs. Yuy was making some kind of fruit crisp on the top one and what looked to be round bulbs of bread in the lower one.    
    In the middle of the cooking process that was the kitchen stood a woman that was a little bit shorter than Heero and I were and she turned to beam a sweet smile at the two of us when we entered. Heero's mom was beautiful. She looked like she was from some kind of Asian descent, probably Japanese if Heero's name was any indication. She didn't speak with any kind of accent and a few of her features appeared Latin, especially her tanned skin, which was the same shade as Heero's, so she was obviously American born. Unlike Heero, her hair was jet black and straight, tied back in a pony tail that hung almost to her waist, instead of dark brown and wild. Her eyes were black and shaped exotically, like almonds. As she moved expertly around the kitchen, her long hair danced with her slim and graceful figure.   
    "Hi, Mom," Heero greeted with a nod of his head.  
    "Hi, sweetie. Oh, who's this?" she addressed me, but her smile only grew.  
    I felt myself flush stupidly and almost fidgeted where I stood, feeling like I was a little kid again.  
    "Duo Maxwell, Ma'am," I bowed my head a little, not sure if she wanted me to shake her hand or something, but her hands were dirty with flour.  
    She brushed them off on her apron and flushed prettily, letting out a slight laugh.  
    "So polite," she teased me in wonder, making me blush harder.  
    I wasn't sure how to take that, if she was surprised that someone like me could be polite or if she was just surprised to have teenager be so formal. I wondered if any of the other classmates that Heero had brought home had called her 'ma'am'.   
    "Duo's a friend from school," Heero explained to her, "I told him that it would be alright if he hung out here for a few hours, if that's ok?"  
    "Of course it is, but I really wish you had given me some kind of warning, Heero," she chided, "I would have made you boys a snack. I'm afraid dinner won't be ready for a little while longer. Would you like to stay for a bit longer, Duo? I promise, my cooking hasn't killed anyone in quite some time."  
    Heero rolled his eyes at his mother's joke, but I was thrown for a loop by her offer. It was like something out of one of those old sixties television shows, but it was a totally alien situation for me. I had never been taken over to someone's house before. I had never been offered to stay for dinner, either and I felt really awkward being treated so nicely by this woman that was a total stranger to me.   
    "N-no," I stammered, feeling totally out of my depth at that point, "that's alright. I have somewhere I have to be in a few hours, but thank you for the offer."  
    "That's too bad," she said with a disappointed frown and I wondered why she cared, "Well, why don't the two of you go play video games or something and I'll make you some sandwiches at the very least."  
    "That's not necessary-" I started to protest, but Heero interrupted me.   
    "Sure. We'll be on the back porch," he didn't give me any room for argument, gently pushing on my back and leading me to yet another sliding glass door that led out to the immense porch, these ones in the kitchen. Kanuck loyally followed us.  
    'Property'. I had heard that people that lived up north had things like that. Ours was just consisted of the length of the drive way and maybe a couple feet in back of the house, so walking out onto that porch and seeing what laid beyond it for the first time was like a punch to the gut. They indeed had a patio where I imagined they would barbeque in the summer or throw parties or whatever it was that rich people do in their spare time outside. The ground was made of flat stones and there were various patio furniture laid out, complete with a table that had an umbrella over it. There were string lights overhead that I puzzled over, since they would have to be taken down before it snowed, and a large, state of the art grill. We didn't even have a grill.   
    Off to the right was another paved and flat area where I saw a wired fence around a pool. A freaking _pool_ , and an in ground one at that! We had a beach and a public pool, what did they need a private one for?! Beyond that, there was this huge area of just grass and a cluster of trees further back. The area led to a large hill and I wondered what it overlooked, if their property was even bigger than what I was seeing. I couldn't even imagine it, having this much space. Why would you need it? What would you even do with it? The lives of rich people were a mystery to me.   
    The porch itself seemed as big as my whole house. It wrapped around the back of it and had various chairs. There was another damned porch swing, but this one was bigger than the one in front. That one had been a two-seater and made of wood, this one could easily seat three people and had a metal frame with a lush cushion over it. Heero sat on one end and I sat on the other and Kanuck all too happily sat down between our legs, occasionally looking from one of us to the other with a loll of his tongue. It was more comfortable than my bed and I could imagine myself in total peace out there, just curled up on the swing and napping in the summer, a cool breeze ruffling my hair as crickets chirped in that wide plane of lush, green grass with only the moon as a night light. The fantasy pained me because I would never know that kind of peace.   
    "Your mom's really nice," I said to him as we sat there and watched some birds fly overhead.   
    "I guess she is," his voice was soft and I thought that there was some contentment in his tone. I wondered if he got that feeling of peace out here that I did, "What's your mom like?"  
    I couldn't help the wince at his question.  
    "She's..." I shrugged nonchalantly, "She and I don't really get along... or talk, for that matter. We've never been close, even when I was little. She works a lot and is kind of... cold, I guess. Distant. She doesn't get along with my dad, either. She just kind of ignores the both of us and goes on with her life. She just goes to work, comes home, eats by herself, and goes to bed. Because she's always working, she doesn't do a lot of housework. She used to cook when I was little and she was pretty good at it, but for some reason, it got worse as I got older, so now I do all of the cooking and most of the housework."  
    "I'm sorry, Duo," he apologized, looking pained at my description of my mother.  
    "Why?" I asked, bewildered, "It's not your fault, that's just the way she is."  
    "Still..." he sighed guiltily, "I forget sometimes how lucky I am to have the parents that I do. I guess everyone our age does until they realize that not all parents are like that. I've always taken them for granted. I even got mad at them when they moved us here. But even though they both have jobs, they've always been here for me. My mom always has dinner ready at five, my dad is always here on the weekends to help me with homework or toss the ball around. And you're right, my parents are both nice. They're patient and understanding and..."   
    He suddenly bit his lip and I knew exactly what he had been about to say. 'They don't hurt me.' I guess he had realized how rude that comment would have been, but I wouldn't have minded because it was the truth. Heero's parents were nice and normal, like Relena's were. They didn't beat him. They didn't rape him. He was allowed to be upset and show that he was upset. He could do his homework without the sound of screaming and he didn't have to worry about keeping the household running on his own when his father disappeared on benders for a few days.   
    I was jealous of that, of his home life, but I didn't hate him for it. It was the luck of the draw. I had understood that from a young age, that that was just the way that things were. My parents were lacking in comparison to a family like the Yuy's. Moping about it wasn't going to do a damned thing.   
    "My family is my family," I said simply, brushing off his guilt, "It might be different than yours, but it's the only one I have. I'm used to it being strange and... well... I won't say that I'm ok with it, but it is what it is."  
    I thought about Quatre's family then, how they had never hit him or told him that he was unwanted, but how they had hurt him all the same. Yes, Heero was lucky and I didn't even think he truly understood how lucky he was.   
    "What does your mom do for work?" I asked, desperately wanting to change the subject away from my miserable home life to his.  
    "Preschool teacher," Heero told me, "She works in Hope, actually. There weren't any openings for a teacher in the younger grades in Nausten."  
    I could easily imagine that kind, open woman as enjoying teaching little kids. I was sure that it was a lot more rewarding than teaching back talking teenagers.  
    "And your dad is some kind of therapist, isn't he? I heard some of our classmates saying that he won some award."  
    For a moment, Heero's lips quirked into a smile that I can only call proud as he thought about this father.  
    "Yeah, he did some work down in Florida with homeless kids. You know, counseling and trying to find them the right funding and placement. He even worked with the FBI and local police getting witnesses of violent crimes to talk. The state gave him an award for helping put kids in need in healthier homes and helping getting the ones that were in gangs or drug addicts stable jobs. But," he said sadly, "it was really hard for him and after he got that award, he retired to private practice. Now he just counsels people who can afford his services and have problems sleeping or some baggage they want off their chest. He's home a lot more than he used to be, so Mom and I can't complain."  
    My stomach twisted in anxiety at the sudden thought of my father. I couldn't talk about him the way that Heero just had, proud and full of love for the man. I did love my father, in my own twisted, dark way. But my thoughts of him now are too twisted up in fear and hate. Again, I felt jealous of the boy that I liked, of what he had and what I never would. I would never know what it felt like to be happy that my father was home more, to know that he would be there when I needed him, to have a dad that I could love like it was the most natural thing in the world. We fell into a peaceful silence with each other and I was just so happy to be there, sitting next to him in his home, no matter how surreal it was, no matter if I felt like I was dreaming the whole thing, that I would have been content to have stayed there until I had needed to go to work, but I knew that I couldn't.   
    "You said that you wanted to talk... about what happened," I said very cautiously, "You still haven't convinced me of why you did it, you know, why you bothered to help me at all. And you haven't explained why you've only ever been nice to me when your stupid girlfriend and your friends were around. If you're really not that type of person, why pretend in the first place? Why be friends with them?" I looked over at him, taking in his uncomfortable stance and pained expression and whispered, "Which one is the real one?"  
    He was silent for awhile, his hand dropping down to absentmindedly pet his dog like it was some kind of security blanket for him, but I was confident that he wasn't brushing off my concerns and patiently let him mull over his answer.  
    "That person you're talking about," he finally said, his tone soft and somber, "The one that was dating Relena Darlian and made friends with her friends... the person that called you a... " he struggled with the word, "a fag... the person that let them do all those terrible things to you..." his blue eyes found mine and they were piercing, "That person isn't me, Duo. It was never me."  
    "What does that mean?" I asked without any accusation, "You didn't even want to date her? Then why do all that? Why even extend that much effort? If you wanted to fit in, to be normal, you didn't have to align yourself with them to do it."  
    "No, I suppose not," he murmured, "but... it's more than that. I wasn't just trying to fit in... I was trying to hide. I... I understand what it's like to be scared of people finding out something about you, something that no one can accept. I know what it's like to try to hide that thing, at any cost. I know what it feels like... to think that the whole world hates you and wants you to disappear."  
    "I don't understand," I said in confusion.   
    Those blue eyes of his were filled with some deep angst, but even seeing that pain there, I wasn't prepared for what he said next.  
    "Duo," his next breath whooshed out of him in frustration, "I'm gay."  
    I stared at him in complete and utter shock for a moment, unable to believe in what he had just said. Heero was gay? How was that even possible? The more I thought about it, the more that it couldn't be. He was playing a joke on me, I thought. He had to be. This whole thing was just some new way to mess with me, to bully me about what I had just gone through, and as I started to accept that possibility, I felt myself starting to get angry from the hurt of it.  
    "This isn't some fucking joke-" I snarled at him.  
    "I'm not joking around!" he snapped right back at me, his anger efficiently defusing my own, "I'm not messing with you or trying to trick you or teasing you or any of that crap! I'm just as gay as you are! I like _guys_ , I have since I was eleven years old. It's the entire reason why we moved here in the first place, because my parents found out about it and were scared that I was going to get hurt."  
    It was difficult taking all of that in. Heero was gay and his parents even knew about it... I didn't know if that meant that they accepted his sexuality or just kind of ignored it, but I didn't think that he was lying to me. I realized that it had been stupid of me to think that he was just pulling one over on me. What sane person would do that, want someone to think that they were homosexual when they weren't, even for a joke? But I didn't know what to think of his confession. It didn't bring me any kind of elation knowing that we were both gay. It wasn't like I was thinking that he was suddenly going to kiss me and confess his love for me anymore than I would think that a straight boy would think that every straight girl liked him. But I felt... I guess if I had to describe it, it was the same feeling that I had had with Quatre. This feeling of kinship, of finding someone else in the world that might understand what it was I was going through.  
    "If that's true, if you're really gay... then why date Relena?" I demanded, "I've seen you kiss her! You didn't look like you were faking that."  
    Heero ran a hand through his dark hair.  
    "That was kind of the point," he said wryly, "and it wasn't like it was easy, ok? I'm not like you. I'm a coward, I always have been. I couldn't bear the thought of anyone thinking those things about me, that I'm a fag. I didn't want to be bullied like you were. The first day of school, when I saw how she and her friends treated you, and afterwards, when she introduced herself, I realized that it was the perfect cover for me. Who would ever suspect that the boyfriend of someone like her, a homophobe and a bully, would be gay himself? She was camouflage," he glanced over at me and then quickly looked down at the ground again in his shame.   
    I couldn't even imagine the amount of willpower he must have had to have even kissed Relena, to have disliked her and not even found her attractive. If nothing else, he was an amazing actor, but I thought of Trowa, what he had done to me towards the end of our relationship to blend in and realized that you didn't even really need to be a good actor to get away with something like that. People see what they want to. It hadn't taken much to even convince me that Heero was a homophobic prick like his girlfriend was, and that they had this great relationship. I wondered what kind of excuses he had come up with to make sure that he would never sleep with her, or if he had been like Trowa and so desperate for companionship that he would have faked his way through that, too.   
    "Every time I called you 'fag'," Heero whispered, "I felt like I was cutting my own heart out."  
    Just then, I remembered all those times that he had done that and those few moments when he had looked so uncomfortable about it. I had always assumed that he was uncomfortable around me, but now that I knew the truth, it seemed so blatantly obvious that he had been forcing himself to copy his 'friends'.  
    "Were you outed at your school like I was and that's why you moved?" I asked compassionately.  
    I could have hated him for bullying me, I guess, but I actually felt bad for him, hearing him talk about how hard it had been to call me those nasty names. In a way, he was being bullied, too, only no one had known about it. It had been his choice, but I could understand it, the fear and the need to protect yourself. And unlike Trowa, he hadn't needed to hurt anyone but himself to do it. I just couldn't imagine that kind of strength, to hide things that came so naturally to you so completely, all to blend in with the same people that hated you. What would that be like, to call your enemies your friend, to live in constant fear of one of them finding out the truth? How could I hate him, knowing that turmoil? How could I ever when, with every growing second that we spoke to each other, I was falling more and more in love with him, the real him?  
    "No, it never got that far," he confessed, "but I was afraid of it happening all the time. It dominated my life. I didn't dare to try to date. I was forcing myself, all the time, to flirt with the girls in my class, even though I never went far with them, just so no one would suspect. Then, a friend of mine was getting bullied. He wasn't gay or anything, it was over something else, but they hurt him so badly, over something that wasn't even that big of a deal. He was just different. My parents found out about what happened to him and they freaked. They knew that if people found out what I was, I would get a hell of a lot worse than he had, so they moved us here."  
    "But why here?" I puzzled, "Why not a more neutral place like Rhode Island or California? Nausten is really conservative, in case you haven't noticed."  
    He rubbed at his jeans, focusing on them like they were something fascinating.  
    "I... I had a really hard time after my friend was attacked," he murmured softly, "And then my parents had forced me to move. I felt so guilty all the time, for not protecting my friend, and then for disturbing my parents' lives. Because of me... because of my sexuality, the way I was born or however something like that happens, my father had to move his practice and my mother had to move away from her family. I hated myself for it. I became depressed, so my dad decided to move us here instead of a place like that. I've always been close to my grandparents on his side of the family from the time that I was a baby, especially my grandfather. They live in Hope and they offered us their home while my parents looked for work here. We lived with them for a month before I started school here."  
    It was like my own feelings, my own failings were coming out of his heart and mouth. Guilt... depression... that feeling like you were letting down the people that you cared about because you weren't good enough, weren't normal enough... I couldn't conceive that this boy, this seemingly normal boy from a good, upstanding family, was dealing with those same feelings. I reached over and squeezed his knee briefly. I wanted so badly to comfort him, but I didn't know how. I felt so poor at it. It had been years since I had even had anyone in my life that I had wanted to offer comfort to, and it had never been my strong suit. Despite that, he smiled at me and I thought maybe that I had done something right.  
    "I'm sorry, Heero," I told him, "I understand what that feels like. It sucks, being a burden to your family."  
    He nodded and lightly touched my shoulder in thanks.   
    "You know," I made up my mind in that moment, exactly what I wanted from that touch, "I like you. I don't just mean that you're attractive, you're a nice guy, when you're being yourself and not pretending to be some prick. I don't know if you asked me to come here just because you wanted to explain yourself, but... but if you wanted to be friends..." I stumbled over my words like a newborn foal that had just discovered its own legs, "I would like that a lot. But if you do try to be my friend, you can't pretend to be normal anymore. Even if no one finds out what we have in common... that won't matter.   
    "Aligning yourself with me is the same as committing social suicide. You can't have things both ways. If you want to go back to being their friend, I'll understand and I won't hate you for it, now that I know why you act like that, but you can't be my friend when they aren't looking. I couldn't handle that. It would be best for you if you acted like you still hate me. They might distrust you and make fun of you for awhile, but they won't hurt you. If you decide to be my friend, though, they will. They'll all come after you, especially Zechs. I don't want to be responsible for that. After everything you've done to protect yourself... you have a chance to be normal, you know. I'm not going to be the one to fuck that up for you."  
    He mulled that over, looking off into the distance at some invisible thing.  
    "All I wanted when I moved here was to hide and protect myself," he turned and smiled at me and I felt something inside of me heat at the sight of it, "But then I met you. I don't think that's what I want anymore. I quibbled with it this entire time. When I kept meeting you at the beach and when you told me what your father was like... that he was hurting you... and after that horrible thing that Zechs did to you that day when you yelled at me to leave you alone... I think I knew what it was that I wanted...no, what I needed to do. But I was still a coward, I couldn't make up my mind. Then when you confessed you were gay, you forced my hand. Like I said before, even if it got me in trouble, even if I had to come out of hiding, I couldn't let them hurt you. I was willing to sacrifice all that I've worked for with them to help you."  
    "Why?"  
    He gave this little snort of a laugh.  
    "I've always admired you, you know, from the moment that we first met," he confessed.  
    I gawked at him.  
    "What? You... you admire me? Why?! There's nothing about me..." I shook my head in denial.  
    "There is," he said softly, "Like I said, I'm a coward, but not you. I'm weak and I had to be friends with those assholes just to get by. But you... you never tried to be friends with them or suck up to them or try to hide what you are in order for them to think that you were normal."  
    "I hide all the time!" I protested, "That's all I do is hide what I am! The only reason why I blurted out that I was gay to Dorothy was that she was pissing me off and I slipped up!"  
    "No, that's different," he pointed out, "Not coming out and telling people that you're gay is a hell of a lot different than me pretending to be something that I'm not. Dating Relena, bullying you... you never did those things to fit in. When people called you fag, you didn't demand that they stop, you've never cowered and let your fear of what they are going to do to you make you do things that are against your nature. You're brutally honest, Duo and you're brave. I know you don't think that, but trust me, you are. You can be who you are, even if it has consequences and I admire that. I've wished, for awhile now, that I could be that way. I guess now I can, because I really don't want to be that fake person anymore."  
    The porch door from the kitchen opened and Mrs. Yuy came bustling out with a tray, making the both of us cut off our conversation.   
    "Here you boys are," she said with a sweet smile, placing the tray on the table near us, "Nothing special, just some cookies and BLT's."  
    There was also what looked to be a pitcher of iced tea on the tray and I marveled at the woman that had put it all together as just a 'snack'.   
    "You didn't have to do all this, Mom," Heero protested even as he handed me one of the sandwiches.  
    "Nonsense," she waved a hand at her son, "It isn't every day that you bring a friend over."  
    I quirked an eyebrow at him over that and he blushed.  
    "I never really had an occasion to bring my other friends over," he muttered in embarrassment.  
    I was quick to read between the lines on that one. He hadn't wanted Zechs and the others over at his house, violating his sanctuary, the place where he could be himself. Or maybe he had just not wanted his parents to know what kind of friends he had at school. I felt honored that I was one of the only ones that he had let into his world.  
    "You never did all this for Relena," he accused his mother and narrowed his eyes at her.  
    His mother's normally sweet expression turned both falsely innocent and sly and I realized that there was more that was going on between the two of them than I was allowed to see.   
    "I'm sure that your friend will enjoy my cooking a lot more than your... 'girlfriend' did," she said the word like it was somehow both dirty and like she was teasing him with it.  
    I wondered for the first time just how Heero's parents saw his girlfriend, if they understood why he had one if they knew that he was gay and disapproved of it. It made my view of them go up quite a bit, that they didn't like his attempts at playing straight while I'm sure that most parents would enjoy that, thinking that their queer son was changing his ways. I couldn't imagine what that would be like, to have someone that actually supported my sexuality.   
    "Thank you very much, Mrs. Yuy," I said politely.  
    "You're welcome, Duo," she beamed at me and disappeared back into the kitchen.  
    "So Relena doesn't like your mom's cooking?" I asked Heero.  
    He blushed even darker.   
    "She liked it just fine," he muttered defensively, "I didn't bring her over a lot, she usually wanted me to come to her house or for us to go out on dates. Plus, my mom doesn't really... get along with her, not even when we met. The first time my mother cooked dinner for the two of us, Relena told her what it waste it was for her to be in the kitchen, that with the kind of money that my dad makes, she doesn't even need to work and can just hire a housekeeper that can do the work better than her."  
    I winced. For someone like Relena, who probably did have housekeepers, a comment like that was probably very logical. She probably hadn't even realized that she had been disrespecting Mrs. Yuy by suggesting that her housekeeping skills were subpar and unnecessary, and double points against her for saying that her work was trivial.   
    "That was rude," I muttered.  
    "Yeah," Heero sighed.  
    We fell into a companionable silence as we ate the sandwiches and cookies. Kanuck was obviously well trained and didn't try to nab any of the food, but from time to time shot me a big-eyed, liquid stare. I hadn't had fresh lettuce and tomatoes in a very long time and found myself eating three of the five sandwiches that Mrs. Yuy had made for us. If he cared that I was eating most of it, Heero say a word about it. The cookies were homemade and freshly baked and although I had never had iced tea before, I found myself enjoying that, too. After finishing the meal, I actually felt like I might survive the end of the day. Somehow, even after everything that had happened, I didn't feel as horribly tired as I had before. I felt like I had been revitalized in that short period of time.   
    "I should probably get going," I told Heero, although it caused me almost physical pain to say it, wanting to stay there for as long as possible, "I have to be at work in a half an hour and I should probably go home first."  
    I had tried not to think about it, and neither Heero or his mother had said anything about it, but I was well aware that I did not smell great. Sweat from all that running had helped to hide the sex smell that had gotten me into this mess in the first place, but it wasn't anymore of a pleasing aroma than the other. I should really start carrying a clean set around with me.   
    "Alright," Heero said.  
    "Um... I would really like to hang out with you sometime... only if you wanted to," I stammered shyly.  
    "I would like that a lot," his smile had me feeling weak in the knees again.  
    Heero nabbed the tray and led me back into the kitchen, Kanuck following us like a permanent shadow.  
    "Oh, Dad, you're home," I heard Heero say as he stopped short in front of me.  
    I peered around him and saw a man standing next to Mrs. Yuy, a hand on her shoulder. I don't know what I had been expecting Heero's father to look like, but Mr. Yuy wasn't it. While my own father was tall and muscled, making him look imposing, Mr. Yuy was thin and lanky. He was only a couple feet taller than I was and where Heero was tanned, his dad was fair. However, while Heero had obviously gotten his skin tone from his mother, those brilliant blue eyes, dark brown hair, and handsome features of his were all his dad.   
    "Yup, Mrs. Benoit cancelled her session for this afternoon," Heero's father said in a light, laid back tone before noticing me standing behind his son.   
    Heero abandoned me to put the tray of dishes on the kitchen counter, giving his father an opening to step forward and reach out his hand to me.  
    "Hi there, you must be Duo. I'm Heero's father," he greeted.  
    I shook his hand, his grip firm, but not unnecessarily so.  
    "It's nice to meet you, sir," I said.  
    Just like his wife, Mr. Yuy seemed amused by my manners.   
    "What grade are you in, Duo?" he asked me.      
    "Oh, Heero and I are in the same class," I responded.  
    I felt something pushing against my leg and looked down to see Kanuck leaning against me. Seeing that he was caught, he whined up at me pitifully. I assumed that he just wanted attention and reached down to pat the top of his head.  
    "That mutt is spoiled," Mr. Yuy shook his head, "You let him get away with murder."  
    Heero just rolled his eyes at his father.  
    "Not my fault he likes him," he muttered.   
    "You're not leaving us already, are you, sweetie?" his mother piped in with an almost pout.   
    Sweetie. Something deep inside of me ached at that word. Surprisingly, I didn't think about my father and how he would call me that when he was using me. I actually thought about my own mother and how she never said things like that to me. I felt this yearning, looking at Heero's mom, and knew that I needed to get out of there quickly. That kind of situation, that feeling of family, was too dangerous.  
    "Sorry," I apologized, "I really have to get home, I can't stay for dinner."  
    "But he might come by this weekend to hang out, right?" Heero looked at my pointedly.  
    I felt like he had just sneakily entrapped me, and his whole damned family was in on it.  
    "Well... uh... I do have a job and homework, but I can come by before I start at 4 on Saturday, or I get off at 6 on Sunday," I mused.      
    A little voice in the back of my head said that I shouldn't, that I was getting myself in too deep, but I squashed it. I wanted to come back there, and I wanted to see Heero more, even if it hurt me. Besides, what else did I have? Staying home? The bright look that Heero flashed me then was all that I need to know that I would be visiting that weekend, no matter what. I will never know what it is that he likes about me, but I wasn't about to complain about it.   
    "Great!" Mrs. Yuy exclaimed, "Is there anything in particular that you like to eat?"  
    "Anything, really," I shrugged, "I like all kinds of food."  
    "I'll surprise you, then," she promised, "Oh! Speaking of food," she turned and pulled something out of the oven, "Since you can't eat with us, the least I can do is send you home with a little something. I hope you like clam chowder and peach crisp."  
    "You don't need to do that!" I protested, "The sandwiches were more than enough!"  
    "And yet I will anyway," she said cheekily, handing me a Tupperware container full of crisp and a bulb of bread filled with chowder and wrapped in foil, "Be careful with that so it doesn't break," she advised me, "I expect to get that container back when you visit this weekend," I was told with an equally cheeky wink.  
    "Thank you very much," I said, feeling overwhelmed by her kindness, "It smells amazing."  
    "I'll walk you home, ok?" Heero said as he put his coat back on.  
    "That's not necessary," I argued, knowing full well that he was offering it because he was worried that Zechs and his group might still be out there, waiting for me to show up, "I'm just going to take the bus."  
    "Nonsense. It's not that long of a walk and it's starting to get dark out. Kanuck needs to go on a walk anyway," he argued right back at me, not taking no for an answer.  
    "Fine," I sighed, "but you're being ridiculous and my house isn't exactly around here."  
    He ignored me, rummaging around in one of the kitchen drawers and pulling out a red leash. Kanuck barked excitedly when he saw it, his tail wagging furiously.   
    "Well, it was very nice to meet you, Duo," Mr. Yuy said with a soft smile, "You're welcome back here whenever you like."  
    "Thank you, sir," I waved back at him as Heero and I walked out the kitchen.  
    I was able to get a glance of him leaning over and kissing his wife on the side of her tanned neck, making her giggle like a teenager. I felt very sad seeing them like that. That was what love looked like, I thought. I wondered if my father and mother had ever been like that with each other, maybe before I had ever come along. Had I stolen that from them?  
    As we walked, we talked about stupid, mundane things; what winter was going to be like in Nausten, what baseball team Heero had played on before he had moved here, what Florida was like this time of year, a movie that Heero had seen recently, just unimportant things. It was nice, to be able to talk to him like that without the feeling like I was baring my soul. Kanuck was a good walking partner. He didn't bark at other dogs, try to chase squirrels, or pull on the leash at all.   
    "You don't really have to walk me all the way home, you know," I told him when we left north Nausten and entered the center of town, "I really doubt that they're out looking for me at this hour and it'll be a long walk back for you."  
    "Duo, it's fine," Heero said in exasperation, "I don't mind and it'll put my mind at ease knowing that they didn't ambush you or something."  
    "You do know where I live, don't you?" I asked suspiciously, wondering if he was even aware that there was a bad side of town and we were approaching it.  
    "Yeah, Relena's mentioned it," he nodded, "I don't care, ok? So what if you live in a bad part of town, that doesn't make you a bad person. It's not like you can choose where your family lives. I'm not that shallow to let it bother me like Relena and Zechs."  
    I couldn't help but sigh and keep moving. He might say that, but it was hard to swallow after seeing that house of his. How could I not be ashamed of my own and where I lived? All I could think about was Quatre and how, every day after school, I had walked him to his house, and calling that thing a mere house was laughable. I had never even offered to take him to mine and he had never asked about it. He had known where I lived, but he had just let it slide, either out of hesitation to go there or just understanding how embarrassed I was. But Heero wasn't like that. He didn't care that I lived on the poor side of town, and he didn't care that I was embarrassed, he was going to walk me home because that's what he wanted to do. Just great, I thought, he's as stubborn as I am, maybe even more.   
    To his credit, he really didn't seem bothered at all as we walked into south Nausten, even when passed by some condemned homes and even crossed a glamorous scene of an obvious drug deal going down. Heero didn't bat an eye at any of it, although his dog tensed when a huddle of teenagers outside of a liquor store watched us a little bit too closely. I recognized the look. They saw Heero's sneakers and jacket and jeans, all obviously high end, and were thinking of ambushing us. The large dog giving them the evil eye had made them think twice, though. Heero acted exactly the same as when we had been walking on his street, confident and nonchalant. I led him onto my street and stopped in front of my house.  
    "My house... it's..." I started to apologize.  
    Heero studied my house with the same intensity that I had his. I felt my cheeks flame as he took in the dead patches of grass, my father's ancient car, the flaking paint, and the broken slats on our own, tiny, five foot porch.   
    "Looks like you could use a new coat of paint," was all that he said and when I looked at him, he quirked a smile at me.  
    I couldn't help but smile back in gratitude for not looking repulsed at my meager home. A movement caught my eye and I glanced at the living room window. My father was standing there, a shadowed silhouette, no doubt wondering what was going on in front of his house. He had probably come home during his lunch hour. He really couldn't stand his coworkers, so it happened once in awhile. I turned away and ignored him. I didn't want him to intrude in my thoughts just yet. Just a little while longer, I pleaded the world, just let me pretend that he doesn't exist for a few more minutes.  
    "You might think that this makes me a jerk but, even though you went through a lot of crap today, I'm glad that it happened. It was nice, talking with you," he told me, his face going a bit red himself, "I'm going to hold you to what you said, about wanting to hang out. If you don't come over Sunday, I'm coming here and dragging you out kicking and screaming if I have to."  
    I laughed, trying to imagine Heero kicking down our door and doing just that. My laugh was rough and sounded so alien to me, but it felt so good just being able to do it.   
    "I don't think you'll have to," I told him.  
    "Well, have a nice night," he waved to me and began walking back the way he came.   
    Heero had to tug on Kanuck's leash to get him to move. The dog whined at his owner and looked back at me as if he was wondering why I wasn't coming with them.  
    "You, too," I waved back and walked into my house.  
    I expected my father to be right there in my face as I walked in the door, demanding to know who I was talking to, but he was weirdly absent. I ran upstairs and changed my clothes with this idiotic smile on my face. That entire day at work, well into the small hours of the morning, even on my way back home and knowing what would be waiting for me there, I didn't think about my father or the rapes at all. Even Solo noticed the difference and jokingly asked me if I had gotten a girlfriend or something. For the first time in years, I had something else to think about. Something better. A boy with blue eyes and a loving, normal family. A home, even if it wasn't mine. And a friend.   
    I just hope that I can keep this one.   
  
  
End Chapter 6  
  
Author's notes: Ugh, this part just about killed me in terms of length. When I first started it, I really thought it wasn't even going to end up being 30 pages, but then Duo and Heero just wouldn't shut up, lol. I hope that this chapter was ok for people. I rushed it a bit because of the trip, but I'm satisfied with it. This will be the last update until after I get settled, and even then, it might be awhile. The next chapter deals with some subject matter that I want to do some deep research on. It is also going to be... kind of a weird chapter, but not a bad one, I promise.   
  



	29. Chapter 7 Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duo and Heero deal with the fall out of Heero's decision to help Duo. When Zechs decides to punish Heero by going after Duo, will their friendship be able to survive?

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 7  
Part 1  
  
  
December 5th, 2007  
  
  
    Nine days. Nine, complete, solid days. That's how long it's been since I came out at school. That's how long it's been since Heero turned his back on his reputation and his friends for my sake. We've been friends for a week and two days, and every day since then, it's only felt stranger and stranger. I keep waiting for that moment. You know the one, the inevitable moment when something really great turns to shit and there's nothing that you can do to stop it. But that moment hasn't happened. Heero hasn't changed his mind or decided that I'm not the sort of person that he wants to be friends with. How that's possible, I don't know, because hell if I know what he and Quatre saw in me that made me someone that they would want to hang out with.   
    I keep waiting for him to wake up and realize what an idiot he was, but as much as he claims that he's a coward, he's pretty determined about all this. His parents haven't exactly figured out that I'm not the kind of person that their son should be hanging out with. I've met with them a few times now, and each time they've been very nice and pleasant to me, like they can't see the clothes that I'm wearing, my braid, or how I have to literally bite my tongue sometimes to keep from swearing in front of them.   
    But I'm getting ahead of myself, like I always do. I won't say that there weren't any bad points after I made friends with Heero, because that would be an outright lie. Things were plenty hard for the both of us. It was a toss up between which of us had a harder time when we came to school the next day. I got the worst of it, but I was also used to being bullied and Heero wasn't. Before I had ruined everything for him, he had been untouchable and it kind of rankles me that I'm more upset about that than he is. The treatment that I had gotten the day before had been nothing compared to the next day, when the rumor had finally completed its rounds and had had time to sink into everyone's brains. I didn't just have Relena and Zechs's group to worry about anymore, everyone hated me and was none too shy in showing and telling me that.   
    The verbal abuse was pretty bad. There were probably a lot of my classmates that weren't brave enough to start anything physical with me, but cussing me out, telling me that I should kill myself, how disgusting I was, or just plain lobbing crude, homophobic slurs at me when I passed by them was perfectly acceptable.   
    Even several of my teachers became very openly hostile towards me. They looked at me in open disgust, muttered 'fag' under their breaths, refused to call on me, and many couldn't make eye contact with me. The mildest reaction that I got from them was also the most infuriating to me; after my home economics class, my teacher pulled me aside and tried to lecture me on my 'life choices' and how selfish I was being, letting myself be led astray without even thinking of my family's feelings. I shot her a dirty look and pushed past her without a word. I let it all wash over me. As long as none of my teachers gave me poor grades because of my sexuality or tried to get me into trouble, it wasn't too different from them thinking that I was a delinquent anyway.  
    But among the insults and heated glares, there were those that were truly pissed off to find out that there was a homosexual walking around among them. I got tripped, spit on, my hair pulled on, punched three times (once in the side, once in the gut, and the third time someone managed a lucky shot to the side of my face), and my personal favorite was when someone threw a rock at me. Thankfully, that one didn't connect due to years of dodging things getting lobbed at me.   
    Through speed and caution alone, I got out more than a dozen fights on that first day. It's funny. I felt like my entire life, dealing with my father and the bullying that I've endured these last seven years was some kind of training for this shit. Maybe, if I had been new to it, it might have broken me, but it was just a more severe form of what I've been living with since I was nine years old. I knew all the tricks to get out of a fight, the signs of when something was going to fall on my head, which areas of the school to stay far away from. And when I did get cornered those few times when a punch managed to land, I had already learned from past experiences the wisdom of laying low and keeping my mouth shut.   
    I won't say that it wasn't painful, being treated like that, because it is, but anytime I found myself wanting to cry, I just remembered what it had felt like being raped by my father that first time. Nothing in the entire world, except for watching Quatre fall in front of that train, can compare to that pain. Everything else is laughable, a mosquito bite compared to a gaping wound. Having Heero's friendship was like a salve to all of it. I just had to tell myself that, as bad as things were, it had gained me something back and that's enough to make me feel better every single time.   
    So while I was engaged in warfare all day, I think that Heero had it worse than me. Word of what he had done had gotten around, too, although there was a great deal of rumor and speculation about what had actually happened and why. Stories ranged from the actual truth to outlandish tales of chase scenes that more belonged in action films than real life, stories of some big fist fight between Zechs and Heero (which was ridiculous since neither of them had any bruises), and even one that involved Relena dumping him because she couldn't stand the thought of her boyfriend being fantasized about by a queer.   
    Heero was painted as all sorts of things by our classmates, a fag sympathizer being one of the milder ones. I could only imagine the kinds of cold shoulders that he had gotten that morning, although the dirty looks that had been thrown at him had probably been more perplexed than heated. Hysterically, the general consensus seemed to be that his actions had come about, not because he had been uncomfortable with what they had been planning to do to me, but because of some huge fight that he had had with his girlfriend. The thought that he might actually be friendly with a homosexual and not be ok with beating the shit out of one seemed so impossible to them that they would rather believe that the whole mess was because he was being pissy with Relena.   
    So instead of our school ragging on him for supporting me, he was getting harassed for the most ridiculous things, like rumors of him cheating with ten other girls or making Relena do weird things or just being a general asshole to his girlfriend. Not to mention, of course, the stigma of siding with someone like me even for a second and turning his back on his friends. Hearing people talk about him like that, like he had betrayed his family or something and was guilty of being some kind of sleazy womanizer was surreal. Not quite as surreal as the truth, though, that he was gay.   
    As the day wore on, I just felt guiltier and guiltier about everything. I was relieved that no one was even speculating that he and I were friends, let alone his sexuality, but the things that people were saying about him and the dirty looks that all the girls in our classes were throwing at him tore at me. He was better than all of them and he didn't deserve those looks. Relena wouldn't even look at him. She was the image of an ice queen as she breezed past him in class and sat down at her desk, like he was a total stranger.   
    Heero looked uncomfortable with everything, unsure of what to do and how to act around the group of kids that he had been hanging with since the beginning of the year. When I was sure that no one was looking at either of us, not wanting to make things even worse than I already had, I flashed him what I hoped was a comforting look. To my relief, he smiled at me. It was like he was saying that he was ok, that everything was going to work out. It made me feel better.  
    Lunch was chaotic. I spent most of the morning dreading it, since it and gym would be my only periods where I would be truly vulnerable. If I had packed a lunch, I would have eagerly found someplace safe to eat, like the studio, but I hadn't. My father had been in a pissy mood that morning and I had rushed out of the house, unwilling to deal with him. I had some money in my pocket to buy food, but it was a large risk. I contemplated just skipping the meal and hiding in the library. It wasn't like I was starving. I skipped meals all the time and the food that Mrs. Yuy had given me the night before had not only been delicious, but filling. I can't say exactly why I didn't, beyond the knowledge that I couldn't skip lunch every day for the rest of my time here, but I'm actually glad that I went to the cafeteria that day.  
    It was easier than ever finding a place to sit. If I had had the perverse urge, I could have sat down at one of the more crowded tables and watched them scatter like flies. Instead, after getting a simple and cheap meal of chicken nuggets, tater tots, and chocolate milk, which was a much longer process than usual with people constantly cutting in front of me, and trying to either trip me or spit in my food as I passed them, I navigated to my usual, empty table in the back corner of the cafeteria. I ate like a zebra at a watering hole, constantly glancing around me to see if anyone was going to start something. I was sure that they would eventually and wanted to be prepared for it.  
    So I noticed pretty damned quickly when Heero walked out of the kitchen area with his own plate of food and instead of going to another empty table or to his friends' or mingling with others that might tolerate his presence, he made a beeline for me. I watched him with a perplexed, wide eyed expression that only got wider the closer he got and I realized that he really was walking towards me and not just in the same direction as me. The entire time, all I could think was 'what the hell is he doing' and I thought that my heart my actually stop when he was bold enough to sit down across the table from me, putting down his tray full of lasagna and green beans like it was some great burden. He had opted for some kind of juice instead of milk.   
    "Hi," he greeted me with a heavily worn voice, like that of a soldier that had seen too much combat, but he managed a brief smile at me.  
    "What the hell are you doing?" I demanded incredulously at his actions.  
    I looked around us and saw with a sinking heart that at all of the tables near us, conversation had turned to silence. Everywhere I looked, people were staring at us, some with curiosity, some with shock, and others with the same bewilderment that I felt.   
    "Eating lunch with a friend," Heero answered like it was completely obvious.  
    He poked at his lasagna with a plastic spork, spearing some of the thick, unappealing looking mass. There was more cheese than sauce or noodles, and it was so thick and stringy that it would need to be hacked at with a knife while the sauce was thin and watery. There was a very good reason why I had gotten chicken nuggets instead of the 'alternative'.   
    "Ugh, don't eat that," I looked at it with disgust, completely forgetting what I  as Heero valiantly tried to pull the forkful that he had away from the main body, but the food was far too stubborn for that.  
    "Oh?" he asked with an amused smirk, looking more refreshed somehow as he continuously stabbed at his 'meal', trying to dislodge a piece from the cheesy monstrosity, "This is any worse than what you have?"  
    "As a matter of fact, yes," I made another face, remembering the first time I had dared to try the school's version of lasagna, "At least I can recognize them as nuggets and not food attempting to become a sentient life form."  
    He burst out in this wry, little laugh, startling a few of the people watching us intently, and snagged one of the nuggets off of my tray, taking an experimental bite out of it.  
    "Ok, fine, you're right, it's not terrible," he conceded playfully and looked down at his own food with reproach, "Think they'll give me a refund?"   
    I snorted and smacked his hand away when he tried to steal one of my tater tots.  
    "You buy it, you eat it," I teased him back, popping a tot into my mouth.  
    It took me a moment to realize that his good natured joking around had soothed my fear. How did he manage to do that, just turn around my moods and make me feel better when I had every reason to be anxious? Even Quatre hadn't been able to do it as completely as this person.   
    "I told you not to hang around me while we're at school," I reminded him in a low voice so that no one would hear what we were talking about, not that it really mattered, I was sure that the people watching us talk so familiarly with each other were going to make up their own stories, "I can understand you not wanting to hang out with Relena and the rest anymore, but if you hang around me, you're going to get hurt. Everyone just thinks that you and Relena are fighting right now, but if you act friendly with me, they're going to think-"  
    "I don't care about all that," he interrupted me carelessly, taking a bite of his lasagna and grimacing at the taste, "It's like I told you yesterday, they were never my friends and I don't want to be that kind of person anymore. We're friends, aren't we? So why can't I have lunch with you? Why can't I hang out with you like we're just two, normal, teenagers? Why do I have to hide that I enjoy your company?"  
    A bitter pain ripped at my heart. I wanted to believe in what he was saying, that we were just two normal people, having lunch together. But I knew that that wasn't true.  
    "You know why," I murmured.  
    "Because you don't want me to get bullied," his blue eyes went hard and he looked annoyed for some reason.  
    "You told me yesterday that you did what you did because you didn't want me to get hurt," I said softly, "Well, I don't want you to get hurt, either. I'm used to this, you aren't. You don't understand what it's like..."  
    "I can look out after myself, Duo," Heero assured me, "Relena is already pissed at me for helping you, people are already gossiping about why I did it, what difference does it make if I hang out with you in public or not? Talking with you on the beach and pretending to loathe you here, I hated doing that. Yesterday, I promised that I was going to stop hiding. How can I do that if I'm pretending that the only real friend that I have doesn't exist? I'm not ashamed to be friends with you and I won't let them try to make me feel that way."  
    I thought of Trowa then. It was inevitable. These were the sorts of things that I had always wished that he would say, both about me and about Quatre. Before now... before becoming friends with Heero, I hadn't even realized the true depths of which that my ex-boyfriend had hurt me. Every time I had seen him during school and he had ignored me, and that time when he had left me to almost be discovered in that damned equipment room, I had told myself that it was only logical. Trowa had done what anyone would have done, to protect themselves, and that even if it hurt, I couldn't blame him for it.   
    It had taken finding someone who was willing to risk all of that, his reputation and his welfare, for me to realize that I _did_ blame Trowa. I always had. Heero was a coward and had lived that way all this time, hiding who he really was, but his deception didn't hold a candle to the lengths that Trowa had gone to. He hadn't even dared to be seen with me. Heero had said that he wasn't ashamed to be my friend. Maybe... maybe Trowa's reluctance to even let people know that we were friends was more than just his cowardice? What if he had been ashamed of me? Ashamed to be seen with the school loser? That hurt a lot worse than him just being scared.   
    Had he loathed me that much? Had he resented me so much so that he wouldn't have risked so much of an inch of himself? I guess I could understand. After all, what had I been to him? Had he ever even considered me to be a friend? I almost jumped out of my seat when I felt Heero wrap his hand around mine. I looked down and saw that I had been clenching my tray so tightly that I had somehow managed to crack the thick plastic. I let go of it like it had burned me, but the agony in my chest and the ache behind my eyes didn't lessen.   
    "Duo, what's wrong?" Heero asked and his voice was so soft, so warm, and so sincere that it was almost enough to have me spilling my guts about everything.   
    "I... I had this... well, I guess you could have called him a friend. We hung out once in awhile," I confessed as much as I was comfortable with, "He would call me up and we would go out to a movie or something. But when we were at school, he would always act like I didn't exist. We would never make eye contact and for all that anyone else knew, we barely knew each other. He didn't want his reputation to get hurt by me. He didn't want to get bullied and I respected that. I understood it and I thought that I was ok with it. Now I'm not so sure," I glanced up into Heero's stare, feeling myself blush at his worry and scrutiny, "I can understand him wanting to hide our friendship, because I know what it feels like to be bullied, to be harassed and tormented by people every day of my life and I don't want that for anyone.   
    "But even though I understand, it doesn't mean that I was ok with it. It hurt and I still resent him a lot for how he treated me. I don't want you to know what this feels like, I don't want you to get bullied, but... I just want you to know that I'm glad that you aren't ashamed of me... that you don't want to pretend we aren't friends. I don't think that I can have another friendship like that again. It was too painful. I know that it makes me an asshole, being relieved that you're willing to be hurt, and I'm a shitty friend for it, but if you did, I'm not so sure that I could keep from resenting you, too."  
    And I would do everything in my power to make sure that that never happened. There was no way that I was going to let my mistakes with Trowa ruin my friendship with Heero. Trowa had been a poor substitute for Quatre, and even calling him that made me feel guilty because he had been anything but. But Heero... Heero was so much more than that. He wasn't just a crush to me anymore, or even just the boy that I loved, we were friends now and even though not even a day had passed since we had become that to each other, I found myself valuing that friendship very deeply. Being Heero's friend made me happy, maybe even more than I've ever been my whole life. I didn't want to grow to loathe him like I had Trowa.   
    "He was never your friend," Heero said with such conviction, and such barely concealed anger that he startled me for a moment, "A person like that isn't even worth your time. You deserve a better a friend than that."  
    I stared at him in shock. How could he say a thing like that? Didn't he realize the sort of person I was? Didn't he know that there was nothing good about me that deserved anything? I almost instinctually dodged those words, knowing what I was, all those things that my father told me that I was, all the ways that I had failed myself and my friend, but I didn't. His words wormed their way inside of me and left me feeling confused. I wasn't sure how I felt. I didn't believe his sentiment, but he obviously did. His faith in me warmed me at the same time that it made my insides feel odd, like they were made of liquid.   
    I grunted noncommittally and pretended to focus on my meal and not the slow, content smile that grew on his face as he returned to his own. I even pretended not to notice when he finally succeeded in swiping one of my tater tots with a look of triumph. Whether it was from knowing that he had won our little argument or his food theft, I'll never know.  
  
*****  
  
    After being seen with me at lunch, the rumors flying around about Heero only got worse, much worse. Probably the most tame ones were speculation that Heero was only hanging out with me to hurt Relena. The worst one that I heard was that he was using me to hurt his girlfriend... but not my friendship. Was it really so hard for them to believe that the two of us might _actually_ be friends that it was more plausible that a boy that had been dating an attractive, popular girl was fucking the local queer just to mess with her? Of course, he actually was gay, but while I did hear a few people wondering about that, the typical assumption was far from that. To everyone, Heero was still just a gay lover, but not gay himself. I guess that sounds like splitting hairs, but I was relieved that it wasn't the latter. I didn't want Heero to get outed because of me.   
    It was surreal when Heero stuck to me like glue during gym class together. I know that I use that word a lot, but it's the only one I have to describe how it felt to suddenly have a friend again, and one that cared about watching my back. I hadn't had anyone to really talk to about anything since Quatre had died. Getting used to it was absolutely nothing like riding a bike. I was rusty at it and didn't really know how to act around Heero. I let him take the lead on almost all of our conversations, but I didn't want him to realize how shy I was, so I tried not to let him do all the talking. I watched his back just as much as he watched mine, keeping a constant eye on Zechs and his cronies.  
    The more Relena saw the two of us together, the more furious she looked, but her brother was another story. While Relena's friends looked pissed on her behalf, her brother just wore this cold, amused sneer when he saw Heero and I talking. It chilled me a lot more than Relena's anger. I knew that he was probably planning something, but the what, and who it was going to involve, eluded me. Not being alone anymore would offer me some protection, but not much. Zechs thought that he was untouchable and it was only a matter of time before he struck.   
    "What are you doing after school today?" Heero asked me as he volleyed a ball over the net at me.  
    I took my eye off of Zechs for a moment to volley it back. I wasn't very good at volleyball, but I was sure that Heero was with the almost bored way he volleyed my hits at him. Still, when he volleyed back, it was always slow and soft so I could hit it. I would have gotten pissed, thinking that he was pitying me and my lack of athletic abilities, but I didn't get that feeling from him. There was this sedate, relaxing feeling between the two of us as we played, things like points and winning didn't matter, we were just talking.   
    It also made it easier for us to dodge every time Zechs 'accidentally' spiked a ball at us from his own net a few feet away. Eventually, our teacher was going to make us pair off against the other teams and that sedate volleying was going to turn into something bloodier. I was just glad that we had gotten to pick our teammate this time and had tried not to be so surprised when Heero had immediately cornered me. I was distracted by Heero's question and almost missed hitting the ball, tapping it lightly with my wrist. Heero had to run up to the net to spike it back to me, giving me a good look at the dark mark on the right side of his jaw. It had been catching my attention that entire period, but I had been too scared to mention it.   
    "Zechs do that to you?" I finally asked as I hit the ball back.  
    This time it was Heero's turn to be startled and he missed the volley. He watched the ball roll to the wall behind us with a frustrated huff. Self-consciously, he rubbed at the black bruise.  
    "No," he told me, "Someone else did, a senior."  
    I didn't need him to tell me why he had gotten punched by an upperclassman. He had gone that entire morning without a single mark, then, some time after he had had lunch with me, he had gotten hit. Someone had obviously taken exception to who he had made friends with.   
    "Heero, I am so sorry," I tried to apologize solemnly, but my new friend cut me off.      
    "Don't," he demanded and turned to fetch the ball, "I told you, I'm fine and I can handle myself. This is mild compared to some of the things that you've gotten, so don't you dare apologize for something that is not your fault. Now," he served the ball back to me, "you didn't answer my question."  
    I felt a bit frustrated that he wouldn't even accept that all of this was my fault, but I didn't really feel like dragging us back into that topic.  
    "I dunno," I confessed, "I have a couple hours before I have to go to work. I usually hang out at the library for a bit before I go home to change my clothes."  
    "Why am I not surprised," he teased me good-naturedly.   
    I blushed as I remembered one of our early conversations on the beach and how I had admitted that I liked to read.   
    "Do you mind if I tag along?" he asked me and his tone suddenly got shy, like he was worried that I would tell him no.  
    I shrugged.  
    "If you want to. It's not like I'm doing anything exciting, it's just a nice, quiet place that I can read and not be bothered. But yeah, you can tag along," I thought that I would combust into flame when his expression immediately perked up at that, like I had granted him something special.  
    Something caught his eye and that happy look immediately vanished.  
    "Incoming," he warned me.  
    I instinctively ducked, missing the volleyball that whizzed over me by barely a second. I wasn't prepared for the sheer force that the thing had been thrown at me, though, and when the thing bounced off the wall, throttling towards me again, all I could do was jump back, out of it's way. My sneaker slid on the smooth floor of the gym and I landed so hard on my ass that a burst of pain shot through my lower back. I hissed with it and looked over at where Zechs had been volleying with Mueller, knowing full well where that careless shot had come from.   
    "Nice reflexes, Maxwell!" Zechs jeered at me.  
    "What a fucking klutz!" Mueller chimed in and the both of them laughed hysterically at me.   
    I climbed to my feet, my face beet red from embarrassment. I'm not even sure why I was so embarrassed just from falling on my ass, other than Heero had seen me do it. The boy in question was glaring full force at Zechs, his hands curled into tight fists. I could see the desire in his eyes to march over there and strike his former 'friend'. It was stupid and I was glad that he restrained himself, but it also warmed me to know that he cared that much about me.  
    "Are you ok?" he asked, ducking under the net to come to my side.  
    "Yeah, I'm not hurt," I told him, brushing the dirt off the back of my shorts, "Well, just my pride."  
    "Asshole," he hissed under his breath, glaring at Zechs again, "He could have knocked you out if that had hit you in the head."  
    "Not like he hasn't done it before," I shrugged.  
    Heero stared at me incredulously.  
    "What?" he asked in shock.  
    "It's not a big deal," I tried to assure him, "But he's sent me to the nurse's office a few times thanks to this period. One time we were doing softball practices. You know, batting and catching, and he hit a ball at me when my back was turned. He nailed me right in the back of my head. The ball was one of those cheap, thin plastic ones, not a real softball, so he didn't concuss me or anything, but I blacked out for a couple of hours."  
    "That's criminal," he said furiously, "He's a fucking animal. How can he get away with doing things like that?!"  
    I shrugged again.  
    "Like you said, he's an animal. Even the teachers are scared of him. Besides, he belongs to the richest family in town and I'm... well, no one is going to get him in trouble."  
    The bell rang and I sighed in relief. Relief that the school day was finally over. Relief that I could finally leave that school and not have to deal with pieces of shit like Zechs Darlian until tomorrow. Relief that Heero was still, more or less, unscathed. I felt a bit nostalgic as Heero and I went to the shower room, the both of us watching over the other's shower like how Quatre and I used to do.   
    "Still planning on coming over on Sunday?" Heero asked me as we exited the school, someone bumping into me so hard that I almost lost my book bag before we finally left the building.  
    "Definitely," I said and couldn't help smiling a little at the thought of getting to return to Heero's home and eating a meal with him and his parents, "Your folks really don't mind me eating over?"  
    "They wouldn't have offered if they did," he snorted, "They're just relieved that I've made a friend here."  
    I felt a deep relief as we walked onto the street that would lead us to the library and left school property. I'm not stupid enough to think that all of my problems would stay behind, but at least I wasn't forced to be around my classmates anymore.   
    "Should I bring something, like a dessert?" I asked nervously, unsure of what would be expected of me, "I can go home after work and whip something up-"  
    "You don't need to do that," he assured me, "My mother is going to make a ton of food. You don't need to do anything, just come and relax and get fed."      
    I turned to retort something cheeky at him when I saw Zechs approaching behind us from the entrance of the small side street.   
    "Fuck, run!" I yelled at Heero, already in motion.  
    But it was too late. As I turned towards the opposite end of the street, Mueller and Alex were already there, blocking it. The street was narrow and there was just no way in hell we were going to be able get past Zechs or his friends. I had let my guard down. Even knowing the stakes, even with what had almost happened the day before fresh in my head, I had allowed Heero's presence at my side to placate me. I had forgotten about the threat and now it was going to kick me in the ass. Heero moved closer to me, like he thought that he could protect me from them.   
    I don't know, maybe he did. He had no clue how strong and brutal Zechs was, even after hanging out with him all those months, he didn't know what I did and actually thought that he could make a difference. I knew that we were screwed and was just hoping that one of us could make it out of this without being hurt too badly, Heero thought that he could stand up to his ex-friend. That was the difference between us. He was thinking of ways that he could overpower all three of them and I was just glad that none of them had a bat with them this time. This was the second time that they had managed to ambush me on that street. I was going to have to find another route to the library.   
    "Well, well, well," Zechs jeered, looking highly amused by our united front, "What do we have here? Maxwell and Yuy, like two peas in a fucking pod," his cold leer at me made my heart feel like stone, "You get sick of my sister already, Yuy, and decide to go for some rough trade? Tell me, does he suck cock as well as everyone says and that's why you've completely lost your damned mind?"  
    Heero's hands curled into tight, white knuckled fists and he glared heatedly at Zechs, looking furious at his insult. While I was flattered and kind of amazed by his protectiveness, if he goaded Zechs or did something equally stupid, he was going to make things worse.  
    "Just get the hell out of here, Darlian," he snarled, "Why I did what I did, and why I've chosen to hang out with Duo is none of your damned business. I don't care what nasty, little rumors you and your thugs cook up. I'm not hanging out with you anymore and you can't intimidate me back into your fold-"  
    Zechs's outrageous laughter cut through Heero's words like a gunshot.  
    "Is that what you think?" he crowed, "That I'm going to scare you into dropping this little fairy, that I'm going to try to convince you to turn on your new 'friend'? That would be amusing, but given how quickly you turned on us, it wouldn't be much of a challenge. Quite frankly, I'm amazed you haven't tried crawling back already. What makes you think that I _want_ you back? I don't really give a shit who you hang out with, who you fuck, or why you're suddenly on team pro fag. You're just a pussy, Yuy. A yellow bellied pussy who would rather whimper in a corner than do what's needed to be done. If it weren't for the fact that you're still my sister's boyfriend, I would have beaten you into a bloody pulp long before now."  
    My new friend gritted his teeth and eyed the bigger bully. I could see the hate and the anger in his eyes and knew that, the longer that Zechs talked, the more likely Heero was going to do something stupid like rush him. I glanced back and saw that Alex and Mueller had closed in on us. I felt this surge of protectiveness all of a sudden and just like that, I knew how Heero was feeling, or at least some of what he was feeling. I didn't want him to get hurt and wondered what I could do to keep that from happening. I was no match for any of them one on one, let alone all three at a time, but maybe if I pissed them off enough, they would forget about Heero and focus on me.   
    "If that's what you want," Heero snarled, "Then you have my permission to go for it. Beat the crap out of me and then leave us in peace."  
    Zechs laughed again, like that was the funniest joke he had ever heard.  
    "Like I just said," he sneered, his light blue eyes like ice, "It isn't _you_ that I want."  
    Alex and Mueller lunged forward before either of us had a chance to wonder what Zechs had meant by that. Mueller hooked Heero's arms with his, restraining him as his friend watched for any signs that Heero might be able to get away from him. I knew that Heero wouldn't be able to. He was stronger than I was, but Mueller and Zechs had been on the wrestling team together before Zechs had gotten kicked out for not stopping when their coach had told him to. As far as I knew, Mueller was still on the team and while he wasn't as tall as Zechs was, Heero and I were no match for him. Even knowing that, I desperately tried to run to help him, imagining the two assholes unloading on him while he was being held down like that.   
    I didn't get very far. With lightning fast reflexes, Zechs grabbed my braid and dragged me backwards by it, making me gasp out in pain. A muscled arm wrapped around my neck, only barely not cutting off my air supply.  
    "Where do you think you're going, huh? I didn't give you permission to help him," Zechs hissed in my ear, the feeling of his hot breath washing over my skin repulsing me, "You know, I was really sad that you skipped out on our little 'date' yesterday. I was really going to mash you into little bits today, but then I got to thinking. That really wasn't your fault, now was it? I shouldn't blame you for Yuy's interference. He's the one that needs to be taught a lesson. But how could I accomplish that? What could I possibly do to him to teach him not to fuck with me? Then I started thinking, well, if he's so unconcerned about his welfare that he would do something so monumentally stupid, maybe he'll be more concerned with yours?"  
    "Let go of me, goddamit!" Heero thrashed in Mueller's grip, trying to shake him loose as it seemed to dawn on him what it was that Zechs was going to do.   
    Suddenly, I felt Zechs's teeth bite down on the same ear that he had been whispering in, so deep that I thought he was going to bite my damned ear off. I cried out at the pain and feeling of blood dripping down my neck, shocked by what he had done, the brutal nature of it. Zechs stopped just short of closing his teeth entirely and let me go. The wet feeling of his tongue swiping up the trail of blood was almost enough for me to vomit.   
    "You like that?" I could almost hear the leer in his voice.   
    "You're disgusting," I hissed at him, despite my good sense to keep my mouth shut.   
    Thankfully, instead of getting pissed, he laughed cruelly again. I have no idea why he did something so twisted, although it was probably just to get a rise out of Heero. Some part of me wanted accuse Zechs of hypocrisy, of biting me if he really did think that all fags like me had tainted blood, but I knew that he wasn't like his sister. Relena generally hated queers. Zechs just liked to use that to torment me. He pushed me away from him and punched his fist into the right side of my face. I was unprepared for the sudden, violent blow and fell to the ground. I could hear Heero screaming something, my name, I think, but I was too focused on trying to wrap my head around the pain in my eye and face and regain my sight to focus on him as well.   
    Without missing a beat, Zechs grabbed me by my hair and slammed my head against the brick wall of the alley, making white lights explode in my already deteriorating vision. The rough, sharp material cut open my skin and blood dripped down my cheek and neck, but I wasn't that worried about it. I knew a superficial wound when I felt it, but I was sure to everyone else, it looked horrible.   
    "Stop it! Goddamnit, just stop it, you motherfucking pieces of shit!" Heero was shrieking, "Duo!"  
    I wiped the blood out of my eye and looked over at him. My vision was blurry from pain and the multiple blows to my head. My right eye was already starting to swell shut. Heero was straining against Mueller, his face red from rage and he looked like he might consider chewing his own arms off just to get to me, like a wild animal in a trap. There was fear in his eyes, fear for me. Some part of me warmed that he was that concerned for me, but mostly, I didn't feel anger that Zechs was beating me up.   
    I didn't feel frightened about how far he would take it. I didn't even feel angry that he was using me to hurt Heero. As I felt my head throb and saw how frantic my friend was, mostly, I felt this serene peace. I know that sounds weird, but as Zechs beat me to a pulp, I felt my fears drain out of me. He wasn't going to hurt Heero, I knew, just me, and I could accept that. I could survive. As long as Heero walked out of this without a scrape, I could deal with everything else just fine.   
    "Shut up, Heero," I snapped at him as he continued to fight against his captors, "You're making things worse. Just stay quiet."  
    "That's right," Zechs said with a superior chuckle, "Listen to your little queer friend, Yuy and why don't you shut the fuck up? At least he's smart enough to know there isn't shit he can do about this," he accentuated his point by ramming his knee into my gut, "If you keep pissing me off, I'll break both of his fucking legs."   
    Heero's eyes locked onto my own as the bully continued beating on me, and for a little while, I couldn't look away from him. He stopped screaming and fighting and just went limp in Mueller's hold. My friend looked so pained and helpless, guilty at his inability to save me. I could understand that feeling, but I didn't have the ability to comfort him. It was all I could do to stay conscious.   
    The beating itself was brutal. It was like getting hit by my father when he was too drunk to really understand what he was doing. Each blow was powerful and vicious, like getting hit with a boulder. Or rather, after this went on for a solid twenty minutes, I felt like a tenderized piece of meat. The only consolation that I had was the Zechs wasn't trying to kill me or even hospitalize me. He didn't break my legs or arms like he had threatened Heero that he would. He didn't smash my head into anything again, either, but limited his blows to everywhere else.   
    He kicked at my back, punched my chest and sides repeatedly, pulled my hair, and stomped on my limbs. He nearly broke my nose with one hit and soon, all I could taste was blood. After twenty minutes of repeated punches and kicks, I felt like my guts were going to start oozing out of my mouth. I didn't try to get up, I just let him drag me around like a rag doll until he viciously kicked me in the ribs one last time and dropped me to the ground to stay there. I lied there quite happily, feeling the cool pavement under my bruised cheek. If Heero hadn't been there, I might have even blacked out.   
    "Oh my god," Zechs's laugh cut through me like a knife, his voice panting a little from all the effort he had just exerted, "Are you really crying?"  
    I frowned, my furrowing brow making me wince. My cheeks were wet, but that was from blood, not tears. It took me a bit too long to realize that he was talking to Heero, not me.   
    "You're such a pussy," his boot nudged me and I bit my tongue to keep from groaning as he hit one of my many bruises, "Even this faggot is more of a man than you are. Look at you, crying like a bitch. I haven't even fucking touched you! What the hell does my sister see in a weak, sniveling shit like you? She should be grateful that you left."  
    "I'm going to kill you," I heard Heero say in this frightening, icy cold voice that could easily rival Zechs's.  
    I opened my one good eye and glanced at where they were. Mueller had let go of Heero, who was glaring at Zechs, but they hadn't come to blows yet, as much as my friend looked like he wanted to. The older boy wasn't the least bit threatened by Heero's threat. He laughed and smacked Heero's shoulder in a mockingly friendly gesture.   
    "See ya around, Yuy," was all that the bully said between guffaws of laughter, his cronies following as he walked down the street.  
    Heero flinched but, miracle of miracles, he didn't go after him. Even with my blurry vision, I could see that that was all he wanted to do. I couldn't imagine the amount of self control he was displaying. He didn't move at all until all three of them were out of sight, then as soon as they were, like a switch had been thrown, he ran to me and fell down on his knees to hard that he had to have hurt himself.  
    "Oh God, Duo..." he said in this pained, horrible tone that I didn't like and reached out to me with shaking hands.  
    I remember thinking right then, as I pushed myself up with my aching arms, 'this isn't right.' Heero hadn't gotten hit, not even once, he shouldn't have a tone like that. A tone like he was falling to pieces. I was happy that he hadn't been hurt, but he had been. I didn't know how to soothe that hurt, but I did understand it. I understood because I had felt it before... I feel it every day of my life, when I remember things. The pain of letting down a friend... the guilt of being the one that wasn't hurt when you should have been... Being helpless to do a single thing... I know that agony. I didn't want him to feel those things. I would have taken a dozen more beatings like that to keep him from feeling it. We were both helpless and clueless. Just like Zechs had said, two peas in a pod, both of us in the dark.  
    "I couldn't do anything," he whispered and withdrew his hand without touching me. I wished that he hadn't. Right then, I would have liked his touch, even if it would have hurt me, "Not a single fucking thing... Duo, I am so sorry... I'm so _worthless_!"  
    "Stop it," I rasped through my split lips, my throat feeling like I had swallowed sandpaper, "There was nothing you could have done. They would have just beat the crap out of you, too."  
    He made this sad, horrified moan as I sat up and he got a better look at me.  
    "You're hurt... fuck, Duo, you're a mess," he finally did touch me then, laying one of his hands very carefully and gently on my back to give me some support as my muscles trembled.   
    I couldn't help it, I laughed.  
    "Yeah, I think you might be right," I pressed my hand against my side and gasped at the agony that that little touch caused, "Well, that's a miracle," I muttered to myself.  
    "What?" he asked in confusion.  
    I was finally able to look him in the eye and the fear and guilt that I saw there almost made me choke.  
    "My ribs," I told him, "Don't know how, but they're not broken just cracked."  
    While that was a source of relief for me, it only made Heero look more horrified for some reason.  
    "We need to get you to a hospital," he demanded, but I shook my head.  
    "Don't need one," I mumbled and tried to get to my feet to prove that to him.  
    My legs didn't want to cooperate with my willpower, though, and I just ended back on my knees as they buckled. They weren't really hurt, but they throbbed and didn't want to hold my weight that soon after the beating.  
    "Dammit, Duo!" Heero snapped at me, "He beat the shit out of you! You're fucking bleeding-"  
    "I cut my scalp on the brick," I interrupted him before he could become hysterical, "It's not that bad of a wound, it's just bleeding a lot. It doesn't even need stitches. I've had a lot worse, I promise. At least he just used his fists this time."  
    My words did little to calm him down. My mind started to clear from the smashing it had received enough for logical thought to occur. I wondered, when he was looking at me just then, if he was seeing that friend of his that he had said had gotten hurt badly. I wanted to hug him and tell him that it was ok, I was ok, this wasn't like that time and I could handle this, but I really didn't think that my body was up to hugging anything.   
    "Can you help me up?" I asked him instead, giving him some small way to help.  
    I knew from personal experience that even something little like that would make him feel a little bit better, and it really did help me to have someone to lean on as I made my way to my feet.   
    "I want you to see a doctor," my friend stubbornly demanded.   
    I waved off his concerns.  
    "Heero, you need to understand. This has happened before, more than once. If I go to the hospital, all they're going to do is try to give me painkillers that I can't afford and tell me that I need ice and rest, which I can get at home," I tried to assure him.  
    "What if something's broken?" he insisted, "Or you have a concussion? He hit you really hard."  
    "I don't have either. I know my body, alright? I hurt like hell, I won't lie about that, but it could have been a whole lot worse. I'll look like shit for awhile and I'll feel like shit for even longer, but you did the right thing. I told you to stop and you did," I knew that it was the right thing to tell him, even when he quickly looked away from me, the guilt as clear on his face as the color of his eyes.   
    "Even when I was trying, I couldn't stop them," he muttered, "You got beat up and it was all my fault. Because of me... because I betrayed them, they hurt you. You tried to warn me and I didn't listen. I thought that they would just try to hit me a little, but this... I am so, so sorry..."  
    I couldn't handle his misery or that look in his eye, like he had just stepped on a puppy. Who was I that he cared so much about me? Or maybe that was just his real nature, the sort of friend that would feel this badly about not being able to protect someone that they cared about.   
    "Oh shut up," I grumbled, "My getting beat up was not your fault. Hell, if it weren't for you, they would have done worse to me yesterday. As far as I'm concerned, thanks to you, I got off lightly. But if you're set on feeling guilty over something that isn't your fault, you can help me limp home."  
    "You're going to be stubborn about this doctor thing, aren't you?" he sighed.  
    "I don't want to hear that from you," I snorted.  
    Heero carried my backpack for me and wrapped a hand around my waist to help me start to walk forward. I could tell that he was trying to keep his arm loose so he wouldn't hurt my busted up ribs, but there really wasn't anything he could do to stop the pain. Still, after that beating, him touching me so gently and supporting me felt blissful. I guess I'm that sort of freak, someone who can feel good from something so simple right after getting pounded into dust. He let me lean on him completely for awhile, but as we passed through central Nausten and into my side of town, I finally regained the ability to limp on my own. I could tell that Heero didn't like it, but he let me have that small bit of pride.   
    "Can you promise me something?" I asked him.  
    He looked over at me and that guilt was still there, telling me that I was going to win this argument no matter his personal feelings.   
    "What?"  
    "Promise me that you won't retaliate against this."  
    "You've got to be kidding," Heero started to protest incredulously, " _Look_ at yourself! You can barely stand up, and all because I chose to hang out with that... that thug. Even if you don't blame me, which I don't understand because no matter what you say, it was because of my allegiance with him that brought this down on you, at least blame him! Are you really going to let him get away with this?"  
    "Yes," I snapped at him, "and so are you. Look, I get it. This is new to you, but I've been dealing with that prick for five damned years now. You don't think that I haven't wanted to take him down a peg or two, that I've never tried? When he first started in on me when I was twelve, Quatre warned me never to retaliate against Zechs or Relena, but I couldn't help myself. I knew what was right and what was wrong and I thought that I could make a difference. More than that, I wanted to protect my friend. And do you know what happened? I made it worse for the both of us! There is _nothing_ you can do, Heero! Zechs has been beating the shit out of me since then, regardless of your role in things, and he is going to keep doing so. But the more that I keep my head down and just let him do it, the less he feels like doing it. Can't you understand how incredibly stupid it is standing up to someone like him?"      
    "It isn't right," he muttered, "He hurt you, and now you just want me to roll over and do nothing."  
    "Whether it's right or it isn't is irrelevant," I told him, "This isn't a moral issue. This is an issue of survival. You know what he's like now. You know what the price is for trying to be my friend. If you won't stay away from me, will you please at least promise me to watch your back?"  
    He was silent for a long time as we walked at our slow pace, but even before we spoke, I knew that his feelings of guilt, that he owed me, would get him to agree with me. I nearly sighed in relief when he finally nodded.  
    "But who is going to watch yours?" he said out loud, although I don't think that he meant to.   
    "Just because you can't get back at him doesn't mean that we can't watch each other's backs," I pointed out, "We'll just have to look out for each other in ways that are a lot smarter than attacking him after the fact."  
    He fell silent for awhile and didn't say a word until we were standing in front of my house.  
    "I don't know how you've been able to live with this all this time," he said softly, "I've only been bullied for a day and I feel like I'm losing my mind."  
    "You camouflaged yourself for a reason," I shrugged, "I can't hate you for the way that you've been treating me because I can understand not wanting to be hurt like this. I never had the luxury of that, I was targeted from the first day I entered public school. And yeah, when it first happened, it hurt a lot and I didn't know if I was going to be able to handle it. But after awhile, you just learn ways to live with it. Having a friend helps. The hardest thing is to let it go, to let them do it to you. Sometimes surviving is the only way you can cope and, as much as you hate it, you have to ignore your pride."  
    He shook his head.  
    "How can you not understand how much I admire you?" he said in amazement, completely taking me by surprise.  
    "W-what? What is that supposed to mean?!" I sputtered, "Haven't you been listening? I'm nothing but a coward who can't even do what's right, all to save my own skin! You're the one that wants to stand up to Zechs! I think it's foolish, but you're a hell of a lot braver than I am! I'm willing to let him to do whatever he wants, even if it's nasty and degrading, just so I won't get hurt! I'm pathetic!"  
    "You're strong," he corrected in this soft, kind tone, "and you're a survivor. I don't know if I can be that strong."  
    I was completely at a loss for words. How could I make him understand the kind of terrible person that I was? How low I was? It seemed like no matter what I said, it just fueled these stupid ideas of his.   
    "Are you really going to be ok?" he asked me, glancing at my house.  
    "I'll be fine," I assured him, "The bleeding's stopped, I just need to lay down for a long while. You don't need to worry about me."  
    "Yes I do," he muttered under his breath and I knew that he hadn't meant for me to hear that.  
    We waved each other goodbye, although I could clearly see his reluctance to leave me alone. He was going to have to get used to it. I could also tell how naive that he was being. He was thinking that this beating... this little 'lesson' of Zechs's had been a one time thing. But I knew that, if we continued to be seen together at school, Zechs and his friends were going to keep coming after us. I walked into my house, finding it blessedly empty and made a beeline for the kitchen.   
    The first thing that I did was call up my bosses and tell them that I was too sick to work that day. It pained me to do so, since I didn't have any serious injuries, but it couldn't be helped. There was no way I was going to lift cargo in my state without making things worse and my eye was still swollen shut, which meant my depth perception was off. If I really had to, I could make do and compensate, but with the kind of work I do at my construction job, it was risky. Besides, if I showed up to work covered in bruises and favoring my ribs, people were going to ask questions that I was just not in the mood to answer.  
    My large task done, I limped upstairs to see if Pepper needed a refill on her food and water before going back downstairs again. My muscles were starting to scream at me and, now that my adrenaline from the fight was leaving me, I knew that a flat surface was in my immediate future, voluntary or otherwise. I worked quickly in the bathroom, washing the blood off my face and ear. The bite that Zechs had given me looked uglier than my other wounds, even my black eye, and I liberally swabbed it with alcohol so it wouldn't get infected. I tried not to remember how it had felt like, him savagely biting me like an animal marking its prey. I dug through the medicine cabinet and found a handful of different kinds of painkillers; regular acetaminophen, ibuprofen, naproxen, the painkiller that my mother took for her migraines, and the pills that she had been prescribed after her most recent stint in the hospital. I mulled over my choices and decided that I was in enough pain to warrant taking the stronger stuff, but I only took one of them, just in case it bowled me over.   
    I completed my first aid by completely using up the tube of anti-inflammatory, pain relief cream that we had on every bruise and swollen muscle that I could find. In the kitchen, I filled a plastic bag up with ice to make an ice pack and migrated to the couch in the living room. As much as I just wanted to crash in the laughable safety of my bedroom, my mattress was too flat. I gathered up the pillows on the couch and tucked them under my legs, head, and arms and hoped that would help at least a little bit. I rested the ice pack against my swollen eyelid and promptly blacked out.   
  
*****  
  
    A loud noise jostled me awake hours later, startling me so badly that I almost fell off the couch. For a few minutes, all I could do was stare into the dimly lit room, having no clue where I was. The pain in my limbs and face were a helpful reminder of why I wasn't lying down in my bed. I groaned and almost rubbed tiredly at my eyes before I remembered why I touching that part of my face was a bad idea. The sharp pain of my various injuries had eased into a much more annoying, aching throb. Worse, I was horribly stiff from not moving and it took way too much effort just to sit up. My head spun and thrummed unpleasantly, but I couldn't tell if it was from the beating or the medication that I had taken. A glance at the clock told me that it was nine at night. At least my mother's pills had taken me under long enough to get some decent rest, but my stomach was gleefully reminding me that among everything else, I hadn't had dinner yet. Thankfully, Zechs hadn't hit me in the mouth more than a couple of times, so I could probably stand to eat something.   
    Another loud noise, the sound of something being thrown into our kitchen sink, had me quickly swinging my legs over the side of the couch so I could move fast if I needed to. It hurt like hell, but my fearful instincts were a lot stronger than the pain. I looked at the clock in confusion, thinking that I must have read it wrong, but it really did say nine. My father would be at work for another hour, so who was throwing things around in the kitchen, unless he had gone home early for some reason? It had to be my mother, but she really wasn't the throwing and slamming sort of person. If she was in a bad mood, she would mostly brood and yell, but that was about it.   
    Curiosity overrode my caution and I slowly and stiffly got to my feet and walked into the kitchen. I walked in just in time to see my mother standing in front of the refrigerator, rummaging through it for something. She was still wearing her waitressing uniform, but her hair was coming out of her loose braid and there were dark, worn circles under her eyes. She paused in her rummaging to scratch viciously at her arm so hard that I was amazed she hadn't hurt herself. There were similar red marks on her pale skin and I wondered if she was sick, or if this was some new, anxious tic of hers.   
    I had noticed her scratching herself like that in the last few days. She had also been incredibly irritable, picking stupid fights with my father and I. I had just tried to ignore her. I was sure that something had happened at work that was stressing her out, but it seemed like it was more than that. It was like she was losing all of her sense of self-preservation. Even my father hitting her hadn't made her lose that irritability. She had also been getting her migraines a lot more, so seeing her face pinched in that familiar, pained expression wasn't surprising. I worried that those headaches might be a sign of something more, but I knew that I couldn't suggest that to her.   
    She suddenly slammed the refrigerator door shut and gave out this sound of incredible anger and frustration that was almost a scream, making me jump. Before I could entertain thoughts of returning back to the living room so I wouldn't get into a fight with her, she turned and saw me there.  
    "What the _fuck_ are you doing home?!" she snarled, her once pretty face contorting into a look that would have been more at home on a feral dog.  
    She took a swig of a bottle that she held in her hand. To my surprise, it wasn't vodka or whiskey or even a bottle of beer, but water. That explained her pissy attitude towards the fridge, she must have been out of alcohol. And actually, now that I was thinking about it, I hadn't seen her drink a single thing in about a week and a half. That was like the sighting of the preverbal white whale in my household. Maybe she had only been drinking when I hadn't been around or maybe she had been out for that long.     Neither of those things made sense to me since neither of my parents could stand being out of booze for more than a couple of minutes before they made their pilgrimage to the local liquor store. They had bought some more fairly recently, also, so in order for her to be out already, she must have been drinking even more. That made some sense to me. It might explain her behavior, if she was guzzling down alcohol like that. But I had been catching her up very late at night, like she couldn't sleep, and she never had a drink in hand. She would just pace, scratching herself, and yell at me for gawking at her.   
    "Don't you have a job?" she snapped at me, "The only thing that makes you living here bearable is that I don't have to look at you all day! Now you're skipping out on work, just like that bastard father of yours?! Why are all the men in this family so damned useless?!" she finally got a good look at me and laughed dryly at the bruises on my face, "And you got into another fight again! You're turning out real well, a regular thug, just like _him_! I suppose one day you'll come home and tell me that you've knocked up some tramp next!"  
    I don't know why exactly. Maybe it was the fact that my aches and hurts were making me a bit irritable myself. Maybe it was her comparing me to my father. Whatever the reason, right then, I got pissed and none of my good sense could stop me from letting it explode out of me. I strode up to her and got in her face, not even caring when she flinched and took a step back.  
    "You're one to fucking talk," I snarled right back at her, "At least I'm not so pathetic that I need to be drunk all the time just to get through life! What gives you the right to think that, just because you've had a bad day at work and can't drink yourself into a stupor for all five damned seconds that you have an excuse to be such a flaming bitch-"  
    She slapped me, hard across my face. I stared at her in wordless shock, not from the pain of the blow as it struck one of my worst bruises, but from the fact that she had been the one to do it. My mother had hit me. She _never_ hit me. It was one of her only redeeming qualities. She might say horrible things to me and push me, but she had never struck me in all of the almost seventeen years of my life. I wasn't the only one shocked by it. My mother's face went pale and her grey eyes went wide as she stared at the mark she had made on my cheek. She looked... shaken, a lot like how Heero had looked when he had watched Zechs beat me. Then the moment was gone and her face contorted back into one of rage.  
    "Why don't you just go and die like you were supposed to?!" she snapped but for some bizarre reason, completely unlike the things she had told me about how I had been unwanted, her words lacked any kind of actual heat, like it had been nothing more than a reflexive, defensive gesture for her.  
    She shoved past me and retreated into her bedroom, slamming the door so hard that it was a wonder she hadn't broken it. I touched my cheek where she had hit me very lightly, but it still made me wince in pain. What the hell had that been about? Was her testy attitude really because she was drinking more? But when I opened the fridge to get some water for myself, I saw that there were a couple of bottles of whisky in there, one of them unopened. The one that was had been pushed in the far back and had obviously not been touched in awhile.   
    This intense worry took over me. None of it made any sense; her behavior, her headaches, the scratching. I stopped thinking about her drinking more and started thinking about more insidious things. Things like liver disease, especially cirrhosis. Maybe that had been the real reason for her lengthy hospital stay and she was just hiding it from everyone. We didn't get along, and I'll never say that I necessarily like my mother, but the thought that she was sick, maybe even fatally, tore at me. I don't know why, but the thought that this was something that I could never talk to her about hurt me.     That, one day, I would come home and she wouldn't be there anymore and I would have never learned a single thing about the woman that had brought me into this world left me feeling a pain that I had tried to bury deep inside of me these last four years.   
  
End Part 1  
  
Author's Note: I have returned! The move and convention were largely successful, although it took me a long time to unpack, lol. I still can't believe I'm this far ahead into this story. Chapter 7 is kind of a weird one, also it's longer than Chapter 6, so please bare with me ^_^  
  
      
      
      
  



	30. Chapter 7 Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Heero breaks up with Relena, it will have repercussions for both Heero and Duo.

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 7  
Part 2  
  
  
December 16, 2007  
  
  
    I want to talk about forgiveness. I've never experienced it myself. Everyone that I might have wanted forgiveness from is either dead or I know never will. But it's something that people seem to talk about a lot. When I was little, I had thought that it was this powerful, cleansing thing, like being forgiven would make everything that was wrong better. I never went to church as a kid, so my grasp of religion had been pretty murky, but what little I had known about God had all come down to forgiveness. No matter what you did, so long as you were sorry and repented for what you had done, God would forgive you and it was like none of those bad things had happened.   
    God's forgiveness just washed you clean of all your sins. To me, that had been a magical concept. To be forgiven for everything that I had done wrong, for messing up my parents' lives and not being good enough, in trade just for being sorry about it, was the most wonderful thing. If a serial killer and rapist in jail could be forgiven just by converting to some religion and saying that he regretted all the people that he hurt and he could be forgiven, then couldn't God and my parents forgive me for what I had done? For all my failings?   
    But what the bible doesn't talk about when it talks about forgiveness is that, even if God forgives you and lets you into heaven, what about the people you hurt? As I got older and really started to think about these things, reading those passages didn't make me feel wonderment anymore. I felt a very strong sense of injustice. Why should a killer be allowed into heaven just by saying he was sorry, while the people that had loved his victims had to deal with the pain of loss every single day? Erasing someone's sins by forgiving them doesn't erase them at all. Rewarding someone for saying sorry after the fact is a crock of shit, as far as I'm concerned. If those people had really wanted forgiveness, had really wanted to go to heaven, couldn't they have not done that terrible thing to begin with?  
    Because you can forgive someone for hurting you, sure. Everyone seems to think that that's easy. Whenever I hear someone at school talk about a friend that hurt him or a boyfriend that cheated on them or a parent that grounded them from going to some big party, the responses of their friends and our teachers seem split between 'fuck them' and 'oh, just forgive them.' But it's not that easy. Even if you forgive someone, that hurt is still there. When you look at them, you still remember what they did and it doesn't matter how sorry they are because all you can think is 'if you're so sorry, why did you do this in the first place?'   
    Hate is a simple thing. Human beings remember things that have hurt them and they retain that information in order to keep from being hurt again. Because forgiving someone doesn't mean that they won't do it again. There are no guarantees of that. Faced with that kind of choice, getting hurt or holding on to hate, I think most people wouldn't be able to just forget what that person did to them. I think that, if the hurt is big enough, you just associate that person, their face and name and the sound of their voice, with hate and pain.   
    Even if you say 'I forgive you', can you really move on from those feelings? They're instinctual, like comfort food. A person associates that food with something good, and as soon as they smell it, they feel those good things, no matter the situation. Even if someone says that they're sorry, how can you just forgive and forget when every time you see them, you hurt? It's a pretty notion, to be able to forgive someone and all the hurt just goes away for both people, but the world doesn't work like that.   
    Why am I thinking of this now? Because there's someone I need to forgive and I don't think that I can do it. Does that make me a horrible person? Am I just too full of hate, too full of rage to be capable of forgiving anyone? Does that make me a hypocrite, to be unable to do the one thing that I crave? Or are some hurts just too big to forgive? I don't know what to do. I don't know if I should just let go of all these bad feelings, all these bad memories, and try to move forward, or if I'm just going to get hurt again, only worse this time because I'm letting hope in. I haven't hoped in a very long time and it hurts. I want to tell Heero, to ask him for advice, but there's no way I can do that. Not about this.  
    Ok, back up a bit. December 6th, Thursday, the day after Zechs had beat the shit out of me. It was just one of those days that seemed to never want to end, from the moment that I woke up. After that lovely little conversation with my mother, I made myself some dinner, tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich, stole another one of my mother's pain pills, refreshed my ice pack, and returned to the couch. I felt a little bit bad about abandoning Pepper for the night, but I still hurt too much to lie on a flat surface.   
    The medication helped me sleep hard and long without many dreams. I thought that I had dreamed that my father had come into the living room and raped me right there on the couch at some point in the early morning, but when I woke up in time to get ready for school, the 'evidence' was still there, so I guess it hadn't been a dream at all. It was kind of disconcerting, knowing that he had done that and I had practically slept through it, but it was one less bad memory in my head. If I didn't try to think about the one moment that I had been awake for, before the medicine had made me slip under again, I really could believe that it had just been a ghost of a dream.   
    I had a thought, just a brief whisper, as I woke up and realized what had happened. I thought about taking more of those pills, or maybe just some heavy duty sleeping pills every night. If I did that, would I be able to sleep through it every time that he crept into my bed? He obviously didn't care if I was awake or asleep for what he wanted. My consciousness... I didn't matter to him. I could be in a coma for all that he fucking cared. And it wouldn't it be nice? Just sleep through a rape, like it never happened. I could pretend that everything is normal again. I would never have to experience that pain and humiliation again. And I would be able to have a decent night's sleep again.  
    I discarded the thought quickly. While it was a pleasant idea, that was exactly the problem. It was too powerful of a feeling. But the very last thing that I needed was to get addicted to pills. Wouldn't that be hysterical? To go my whole life not getting addicted to the poison that my parents were addicted to, only to get pulled in by something different? I would prove my mother right, that I was just like my father. Booze, pills, anger, sex, drugs, food, what was the difference? Wasn't it all just the same bullshit? Maybe I couldn't do a damned thing about my rage, but I could do something about all the rest.   
    Thanks either to the medicine or the ice pack, or perhaps a bit of both, my swollen eye had opened a little bit during my sleep, just enough to see. When I went to the bathroom to shower and took a look at myself in the mirror over the sink, I could understand a bit of Heero's fussing the previous day. I really did look like shit. The bruises on my face were still dark and I had a pretty bad black eye. Not the worst that I've ever had, but I knew that I was going to look like half a panda for weeks. Well, unlike when my father hit me, at least if anyone asked why I looked beaten to hell, I could tell the truth for once.   
    The bruises on the rest of my body looked just as bad as the ones on my face, some of them worse, but the pain wasn't quite as bad as it had been the previous day. I cleaned myself off, made myself a quick, bland breakfast, and left for school. Despite the long sleep that I had had, I already felt exhausted and hoped that I could survive the day without a repeat of yesterday. I had no clue then that I was going to get my wish, but I'm not really sure still if it ended up being better, the same, or worse. I managed to get through my first two classes without anything truly horrible happening. I was gawked at and teased mercilessly because of my wounds, with several of my classmates jeering at me that Zechs had 'given it to that fag good'. It wasn't anything more than what I expected from them, though.   
    None of my teachers had seemed to care when I showed up to their class that day looking like hamburger meat, so I was a bit surprised when I was summoned to the principal's office, considering that I hadn't done anything wrong. I hadn't even given any of my teachers any lip that entire week. Since I had made friends with Heero, my mood in class has improved a bit and I've found that the attitude that my teachers give me doesn't piss me off as quickly. To my surprise, Principal Stoan had called me down personally after passing me in the hallway before homeroom and seeing my 'state'.   
    I've mentioned it before, but Principal Stoan isn't so bad. At least, he's better than most of the other adults I deal with at school. He isn't so ready to believe that I'm a juvenile delinquent just because most of my teachers think that I am and tries to be fair with me. I have no idea where he stands about my sexuality. It never came up during our little chat and he didn't offer me any sympathies about it, but he didn't antagonize me over it, either. He didn't offer any well meaning advice or tell me that I wasn't welcome in his school anymore. He seemed a little unsure of himself, maybe a little bit uncomfortable where he hadn't before, but that was ok. I could handle discomfort, hostility is harder.   
    I won't bore you with the details of what we talked about. He asked me who beat me up and while I could have spun some lie, this man had always been forthcoming to me, so I felt the need to repay him for it. I told him the truth, that I wasn't going to tell him who had done it. He tried to convince me, gave me the whole spiel about how it was the right thing to do, how he could protect me, how I shouldn't protect someone who would do something like that to me. Blah blah blah. I had heard it before. I told him that I wasn't protecting anyone but myself. I told him that any punishment he gave this person was only going to make it worse, not better and there was nothing he was going to say that could convince me to risk more bodily harm.   
    There was no justice anyway. I didn't tell him that part because I knew he would just send me to the school guidance councilor over it, but that's the truth. What could he possibly do to Zechs? Give him detention? Tell him to talk to the councilor? Expel him? As far as I'm concerned, Zechs deserves to be beaten up every day for the rest of his life, to be made as scared and pathetic as every person he's ever tormented. For everything that he's done to me and Quatre and Heero, he deserves a hell of a lot worse than expulsion. Kicking him out of school wasn't going to stop him from hurting someone else, so what would be the point?  
    By the time that I was let out of the principal's office, it was the beginning of lunch. I felt this little, out of place, burst of joy. Lunch time meant that I could be with Heero for a little while. And no matter how much I told myself that my feelings were stupid, I couldn't help but feel happy about that. I was one, big, walking bruise, and Heero had been shooting me guilty, apologetic looks all morning, but I didn't even feel it as I left the office and started my way towards the cafeteria.   
    As I passed by one of the empty classrooms, I heard Relena's voice coming from inside, high pitched in a furious shriek. It's funny, if her brother hadn't beaten the shit out of me, I would have been in the cafeteria already and I never would have happened on the little scene that I saw just then. The world has a pretty fucked up sense of humor sometimes.   
    "What do you mean you're breaking up with me?!" she was screaming in pure, unadulterated rage.  
    Now, at this point, every logical, reasonable part of me was telling me to just keep walking, that Relena and Heero's relationship was just that, _theirs_ and none of my business. Usually, I have no problem listening to that part of myself, it's gotten me out of some pretty awful shit before. This time, I couldn't stop my curiosity. It wasn't only that I was snooping for my own curiosity, I also remembered what I had told Heero yesterday, about watching each other's backs. If he really was breaking up with her, things could get really ugly.   
    "Exactly what I said," Heero's voice was remarkably calm, if worn. I wondered exactly how long they had been having this conversation for, he sounded like someone who was quickly becoming tired of trying to drill a point into someone, "I'm breaking up with you. I don't want to see you anymore."  
    I dared a peak into the classroom. Heero was standing feet away from Relena with his arm crossed defensively over his chest and looking very tired. His ex-girlfriend, on the other hand, was the picture of frustration and turmoil. She paced around, her face red and her blue eyes sharp with anger.  
    "You don't know what you're saying!" she screamed, "I won't let you break up with me! You're just confused-"  
    "I'm not confused," he cut in, "In fact, I'm thinking clearly for the first time since I moved here."  
    "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?! Why would you want to break up?! We were perfect together!" she ranted, "This is because of that faggot, isn't it?! Ever since you found out that he has a hard on for you, you've been acting strangely! Refusing to teach him a lesson, turning your back on your friends, hanging out with that little freak! I don't know what's been going on with you, it's like you've gone insane! I don't know what he told you about me-"  
    "This isn't about Duo," Heero sighed in exasperation, "It has nothing to do with him. I've been thinking about this for a long time, Relena, I just never had the courage to do it. You and I _aren't_ perfect, we never were. The fact is, I never liked you. I lied to you and I used you. When you said that you liked me, that you wanted to date me, I wasn't thinking about what a great couple we would make or how attractive you are, I was only thinking about how ideal it would be, being your boyfriend, the kind of status that it would give me. But I never liked you like that. Hell, I don't even like you as a friend."  
    "How can you say that?!" Relena burst into tears and some part of me ached for her, knowing what it felt like to love someone and not have them look at you the way that you wanted them to, but after everything that bitch had done to me, I refused to feel sympathy for her and pushed all those feelings aside, "You've found someone else, haven't you?! You're just like everyone's been saying, a womanizer and a cheat! How long has this been going on for?!"  
    "There is no one else," Heero said tiredly, "There never has been. This has nothing to do with me cheating on you or anything else. I just plain don't like you. You're cruel, a bully, and prejudiced. I've seen the way that you treat, not just Duo, but other people in our class. Hell, I've helped you treat them that way. I was able to ignore it, somehow, but I can't anymore. I don't want to be around you, even as a friend, not if I ever want to be able to live with myself.   
    "You asked me why I was hanging around with Duo, I think it's obvious. If you would take five seconds to forget about your misguided hate for him, you would see that he's a nice, honest person, someone who's worth being friends with. But instead, you would rather terrorize him. Who would want to date someone who sees the world like that? You might not be able to accept it, but it's over between us. I'm sick of it."  
    I winced as Relena slapped him so hard that she split his lip open.   
    "Don't give me that shit! You're just... just a fag lover! You're just as much of a freak as he is! Who would want to date someone as disgusting as you! Go and be friends with that queer! In a week you'll come back on your hands and knees _begging_ me to take you back!"  
    I took a step back away from the door as Heero stormed through it. In the classroom, I could hear Relena sobbing again. Heero blinked at me in confusion for a moment and I flushed darkly at being caught spying on them.  
    "I'm sorry," I apologized fearfully, "I shouldn't have listened in on that, I just didn't know if you were going to be ok."  
    He smiled weakly at me, the red mark on his face almost a twin to the one that my mother had given me.  
    "It's fine. It... it needed to be done. I should have done it awhile ago," he rubbed at the back of his head sheepishly, "I had no business dating her. I deserve everything she says and does to me for what I did. I used her and I hurt her. I know that you hate her for the things she's done, but that doesn't make it right, what I did."  
    "No," I agreed, "I might not like her personally, but that was still a shitty thing to do, pretending to like her and getting her hopes up. I won't say that she doesn't deserve it, but it was still cruel," he blushed guiltily at my words, "But at least you're taking a step in the right direction now."  
    "Yeah," he murmured, glancing back towards the classroom before starting to walk towards the cafeteria.  
    "They're going to make you pay for it, you know that right?" I pointed out to him.   
    He studied me and I was sure it was my bruises that he was really looking at.  
    "I'll survive," he said with a dry smile.   
    Despite his insistence, I went to lunch with a heavy heart. It wasn't just worry for my friend, the kind of repercussions he was going to get for breaking up with Relena, it was something more. It took the entire time walking to the cafeteria, finding a table, and taking the food that I had packed out of it's brown, paper bag to figure out what it was. Guilt. I felt guilty, not for being responsible for his getting bullied, but for his break up. I knew that it was stupid. Heero was gay and everything that he had told Relena was the truth. He wasn't attracted to her and he didn't even like her as a person. He had gotten himself into this mess and he had, admirably, gotten himself out of it on his own. It wasn't like I had forced him to break up with her. Hell, I hadn't forced him to alienate himself from their group to begin with, it had all been his own decision. So why did I feel like this, like it was my fault that Relena and Dorothy didn't show up to lunch that day, that Heero looked so miserable as he ate his own lunch?   
    Because wasn't it my fault? If it hadn't been for me blurting out the truth about my sexuality, Heero would never have tried to protect me. If not for me, he would probably still be dating Relena. But was that really something to feel badly about? Sure, Relena was miserable and Heero was feeling guilty, but he had made that bed, too. Just like he had said, he had had no business dating her and using her. Wasn't it a good thing for him to have come clean about it? I wasn't even sure what I felt guilty about anymore, I just didn't like feeling that it was all because of me that Heero's life had been disturbed.   
    Things escalated even more after that. Word that Heero had dumped Relena got around school pretty quickly and the general feeling of all our classmates was shock and outrage. If it hadn't been happening to someone that I cared about, I would have found it amusing. What is it about so-called 'popular' couples that makes everyone think that they have some stake in their relationship, that that relationship is their business at all? Some of the girls in our class were acting like they had been personally dumped by Heero. That any boy would break up with the rich and beautiful Relena Darlian was inconceivable to everyone except for me. He got more shit for that that day than saving me from Zechs.   
    Somehow, the rumor that he had left Relena for me or that he was gay didn't get started, for which I was very grateful. We were playing against other volleyball teams in gym that day and for once, it was Heero who was defending against getting hit instead of me. By the time it was over, the both of us were sweaty and pissed off. Heero is more athletic than me by a mile, so at least he hadn't actually gotten struck by a volleyball more than a couple times, and never in the face.   
    "You want to shower first?" I asked him as we headed to the locker room.   
    "No, you go, some hot water will probably help," he said, noting how stiffly I was walking.  
    My various aches and pains hadn't been bothering me overly much throughout the day, but trying to defend Heero from errant volleyballs had not helped my soreness at all. I gladly accepted first dibs on the shower, thoroughly washing my hair and skin free of sweat and dirt. I would have to make another ice pack as soon as I got home unless I wanted my eye to regress. When I got out of the shower and quickly dressed, I noticed that I was the only one in the locker room. Had I taken that long? But Heero wasn't there either. Worry pricked at me.   
    I left the locker room, expecting Heero to be right there by the bleachers, maybe talking to the gym teacher, but he was nowhere to be seen. The gym was completely empty, which was impossible at that time of day. There was always someone in there. People on teams, getting ready for their after school practices, people loitering and talking to their friends, _someone_. When I found Heero's backpack sitting next to mine on the bleachers where we had left them, this dark, foreboding feeling filled me. I knew, right then, that something terrible had happened.    
    I grabbed our things and ran out of the gym, looking for some sign where Heero might have gone, or where he might have been dragged off to. I didn't have to wait very long.  
    "Hey, come on, man, Zechs is beating the shit out of Yuy in the parking lot, I don't want to miss it!" I heard a boy say to his friend as the two of them ran past me.  
    "Seriously?!" his friend responded, sounding excited at the prospect of watching a fight.  
    "Yeah, he finally cornered him about what that asshole did to his sister. Now let's go before it's over!"  
    "Fuck," I swore under my breath and started running.  
    Just how long had this been going on for, the entire time that I had been in the shower? My heart pounded in my chest as I imagined my friend bloody and broken under Zechs Darlian's fists. And what the hell could I do about it? Grab a teacher? That would take time. And it wasn't like I could stop Zechs myself, but none of that seemed to matter as I ran frantically out of the school and onto the parking lot. It seemed like the whole damned school was out there, forming a large circle around what I was sure was the main attraction.   
    For a moment, I flashed to the day that Quatre had killed himself, how the entire school had flocked to the bulletin board to watch his embarrassment. Like a bunch of fucking wild dogs, eager for a scrap of meat. That day, I had been frozen with fear and hadn't been able to do anything. I didn't have that problem this time. Feeling my rage at everyone boiling inside of me, I didn't push it down, I let it fill me up and fuel me. I shoved at my classmates, pushing them aside as I made my way to the center of the brawl. And really, brawl isn't the right term for it. A fight would insinuate two parties attacking each other. This was nothing like that.  
    To Heero's credit, Zechs was sporting a few bruises on his face and neck, but they seemed like nothing compared to what the bully was doing to my friend. He had Heero by the shirt and was holding him almost off the ground. Heero only had an inch on me and Zechs towered over the both of us. It didn't matter how fast or strong Heero was, just like with everyone else, fighting against Zechs was a one sided match. I looked at Heero with horror, taking in the bruises on his face, the dirty imprint of a shoe on his shirt, his split lip and bloody nose. It was then that I realized that the mass of teenagers were chanting and cheering and goading Zechs on.   
    "Stop it!" I heard someone scream and it took me a moment to realize that it had been me.   
    Zechs had been in mid punch, his fist pulled back and he actually did pause. Those icy eyes glanced over at me and the sadistic, cruel smile that graced his lips chilled me to the core. He wore that smile as he slammed his fist into the left side of Heero's face and immediately cocked his fist back to hit him again. With a courage that I sure as hell didn't feel, I burst forward and grabbed at Zechs's arm, trying to keep that blow from landing. My actions were laughable. I was like a kitten trying to stop a crocodile. Zechs shoved me viciously, sending me flying to the ground on my back.   
    "You can relax now, Yuy," Zechs sneered at him, "The fairy is here to rescue you."  
    I'm not sure which of us cried out as the arrogant asshole punched Heero in the face again, letting him crumple to the ground, it might have been both of us. I struggled to my feet, unsure of what to do but still ready to try to defend Heero. I was too slow to do anything as Zechs stomped on Heero's stomach, then turned to me, a superior smirk on his face.  
    "I was done with him anyway," he breezed, laughing at my venomous glare and just like that, walked away from my friend.  
    The circle of people parted from him, letting him pass like he was some kind of fucking prince. About half of the mass left with him, their entertainment obviously over, but the over half stayed to gawk at the spectacle the two of us made. I don't know what possessed me, my fury becoming some living thing inside of me. I picked up a sizeable rock from the ground and advanced on them. It was incredibly satisfying to see the lot of them take a step away from me. I wanted to crow at them, call them all cowards for being scared of one, little queer.  
    "Get the fuck out of here!" I roared at them instead, drawing my hand back to let that rock fly if I had to.   
    They scattered like flies, believing that I really was going to start throwing rocks at them, or maybe I was just that scary in my enraged state. I'll never know if I would have really hurt my classmates like that. Giving in to my rage and hurting people isn't exactly something that I've done a lot, I've always been too scared. But I think that I might have, as angry as I was at that moment. With the spectators gone, the rock fell unused from my hand and I dropped to my knees on the ground by Heero.      
    "Oh, god, Heero," I said, pained by every injury that he had.  
    I reached out a shaking hand, almost touching his shoulder, and immediately drew it back, unsure of where he was and wasn't hurt. If I hadn't been so scared, I would have laughed. Wasn't this exactly what had happened yesterday, only Heero and I had switched roles somehow? Now I was the horrified friend, unsure of how to help. To my relief, Heero rolled onto his back and, very slowly, sat up.  
    "Ow," he muttered, one arm wrapped around his stomach and his other hand covering the left side of his face, "That really, really hurts. Fuck."  
    His voice was thick and nasally from his hurt nose, which was still steadily dripping blood. I imagined that this was the first time he had ever been hit by anyone.   
    "Where else did he hit you?" I asked, getting over my shock and the knowledgeable part of me that knew the kind of pain he was in taking over.  
    "Face, neck, arms and stomach, that's all," he informed me with a wince, "Mostly my face."  
    I could tell, even with his hand covering the side of his face. He was sporting some really nasty bruises that rivaled my own.   
    "Put your hand down and hold still," I ordered him.  
    He removed his hand without complaint and actually looked amused for a moment. I sure as hell wasn't feeling any kind of humor in all of this. The left side of his face was a solid, black bruise and he had a hell of a black eye on that side, the lid swollen shut just like mine had been.  
    "We're a matching set," he mused with a dry grin.   
    I rolled my eyes at him, but his ability to crack jokes after getting the crap beaten out of him was making me feel better.   
    "Quiet, this is going to hurt," I grumbled and touched his nose.  
    He flinched a little bit, but didn't complain as I examined his face.  
    "Well, your nose isn't broken at least," I murmured, handed him some tissues that I took out of my book bag and moved my half-assed examination down to his abdomen, making sure that he didn't have any broken ribs.  
    "You're a lot better at this than I was," Heero said guiltily after cleaning the blood off of his nose. "I didn't know what to do for you."  
    "Oh shut up," I muttered, pressing against his side and finding everything in tact to my satisfaction, "I get beaten up a lot, so I know what to look for. That's not exactly a good thing."  
    "Maybe, but you're a lot calmer than I was," he said mournfully, "and you got it worse than I did."  
    "Yeah, because threatening to throw rocks at people and charging at Darlian was really calm and collected," I muttered sarcastically.  
    "Why did you do that?" he asked, his bruised brow furrowing in confusion, "Yesterday you said that it was stupid to try to stop Zechs, to just let him do what he wanted. So why did you run at him like that?"  
    I looked down at the ground, remembering all the warnings that I had given him yesterday. He was right, of course, what I had done was stupid and pointless.  
    "I know what I said," I murmured, "but when I saw him hurting you... I just lost it."  
    "Hypocrite," he teased me good naturedly.  
    I glanced back up at him. His gaze was so warm and for a moment, I wondered if that panic that I had felt when I had seen him dangling from Zechs's grip, he had felt yesterday for me. That thought made me too happy and I had no right feeling that just then. I thought about apologizing to him. Apologizing for not being able to stop Zechs, about being so useless, but I knew that Heero wouldn't accept those apologies. In reality, I knew that there was absolutely nothing I could have done, just like I knew that there was nothing that Heero could have done for me the previous day. But that didn't stop me from feeling guilty. I guess I really am a hypocrite.  
    "Are you going to be alright?" I asked him seriously.  
    Heero nodded.  
    "Hurts like hell, but I think he let me off pretty lightly, considering," he said, rubbing at his swollen nose.  
    "Stop that," I scolded, "You should put some ice on your eye when you get home. And if you lay down, make sure you keep your head elevated."  
    "Yes, Dr. Maxwell," Heero smirked and struggled to his feet, wincing as the move hurt his stomach, "It will have to wait, though. I was thinking that we might go to the boardwalk today before you have to go to work."  
    "Are you nuts?" I asked incredulously, "You just broke up with your girlfriend, got the shit beaten out of you, and now you want to hang out on a cold beach?"  
    "Maybe I want to celebrate breaking up with Relena, and maybe I want to forget about Zechs trashing me today for a little while, because I'm sure this won't be the last time that he does it. Besides, I'm hungry and I'm sure you are, too. I'll treat you," he offered.  
    "If you're celebrating, shouldn't I be the one treating you?" I raised an eyebrow at him, "and you're the one who just got beat up."  
    "Semantics," he waved his hand half-heartedly at me, "Besides, your beating cancels mine out anyway, and I bet I have more money on me than you do."  
    "Well no shit," I snorted, "Fine, you buy us a snack and I'll buy you some ice for your eye, alright?"  
    "Deal," he agreed.  
    Heero took his book bag from me and started to walk, acting like his injuries were no big deal, but he kept one arm wrapped around his stomach for awhile and walked slowly and stiffly. We really were a matching set, I thought wryly. The cold, December air didn't really help, but at least it wasn't as cold as it had been last year at the beginning of Winter. That wasn't much of a relief either because it just meant that we were going to have a late spring. I decided not to tell Heero that as he huddled in his coat when we walked onto the boardwalk, looking miserable at the chilly air. He was going to hate it when winter really hit us.   
    We split up, him going to one of the food vendors and me going to the far end of the boardwalk. There were various machines at the end, set up specifically for the summer season when that area of the beach would be bustling. Vending machines, photo booths, arcade games, ice machines, all nestled between one of the shops that exclusively sold things that people stupidly forgot to bring to the beach like lotion, hats, sunglasses, and towels, and a carousel for little kids. I paid a dollar to get some ice out of one of the ice machines and wrapped it up in one of the free, plastic bags. I was walking back to the food vendor side of the boardwalk when someone came up on my bad side and shoved me hard into one of the photo booths.   
    I hit my head on the wall of the booth and grabbed desperately at the bench to keep from falling completely. Someone pushed their way into the booth with me and I heard the curtain being drawn closed. I fully expected to see Zechs leering down at me in that dim booth, it would surprised me one bit to know that he had followed Heero and I from school, but instead, it was his sister glaring at me, the glow from the booth's display giving her blue eyes a freakish tone. Those eyes were full of rage as she looked down at me, her hand clutching a can of something tightly in her fist.  
    "Just who the fuck do you think you are?" she hissed at me.  
    "What?" I blinked at her, unable to figure out what was going on.  
    "What makes a diseased rat like you think that you're better than me?!" she ranted, "What makes you think you even have the right to _speak_ to him, let alone have the gall to call yourself his friend?! How someone as low as you was able to brainwash him into hating me-"  
    "Look," I interrupted, feeling a bit frightened at her livid, intense expression, "I had nothing to do with Heero breaking up with you, that was his idea. I haven't _done_ anything to him!"  
    She laughed and it sounded a bit nuts to me.  
    "Bullshit!" she snarled, "I don't know what you said to him about me, what lies you've been spreading, but you have to know that it isn't going to work. Heero is just confused, thanks to you, but he'll come back as soon as he learns what you really are!"  
    "You're crazy," I couldn't stop myself from saying, "I haven't told him a single thing about you. I never needed to, he saw what you were like from day one."  
    "And you're a bug! A dirty, disgusting cockroach! Sooner or later, he'll see that and realize you aren't worth the air that you breathe! But I don't have that kind of time, so here is what you are going to do," she smirked in a cruel smile that was an awful lot like her brother's, "You're going to do what unnatural freaks like you do best. You're going to masturbate for the camera here," she looked over at the lens that was pointing right on the bench that I had fallen on, "and you're going to show him just how disgusting and loathsome you really are. When he sees it, just the mere thought of you will make him want to vomit!"  
    "There is no way in hell I'm doing that," I protested in shock at what she was trying to make me do.  
    Just what the hell was wrong with her? She had done a lot of sick things to me and Quatre, but this was more Zechs's style than hers. Had Heero breaking up with her really driven her nuts, or did she really believe that I was the reason for it and she wanted to punish me?   
    "Sure you will," she sneered and lifted the can that she was holding. It was bug spray, the heavy duty kind that you sprayed your kitchen with to get rid of ant and roach infestations, and she was aiming it right at my face, "If you don't, then I'll get rid of you another way. I'm sure this stuff gets rid of all kinds of vermin. If you don't masturbate, I'll spray this right down your throat. I'll make you fucking _choke_ on it."  
    I stared right into the hole of the spray can. I was well aware of what would happen if she sprayed it in my eyes or in my mouth. While it probably wouldn't kill me, I would have seizures and a hard time breathing and who knew what else to look forward to. She was certifiably insane... but remembering what she had done to my best friend, I wasn't all that surprised. He had embarrassed her and she had gotten his arm broken. The last time that I had fought back against her, she had thrown pepper into my eyes.   
    Looking into her heated glare, so full of hate and revulsion for me, I understood that it didn't really matter if I did what she had ordered me to do, not that that was even an option, for so many reasons, the threat of Heero seeing those photos was only one of the bigger ones. But even if I decided to do it, I knew that she was going to spray that shit in my face anyway. She wanted to do it and, quite frankly, I was amazed that that was all she intended to do. I remembered what I had learned so many years ago, that fighting back was useless, but now the alternative was just as bad as the punishment.   
    I dared getting a blast of pesticide in my face and lashed out with one of my legs, catching Relena in the gut and pushing her out of the photo booth. I had the advantage. Not only am I bit taller than her, she was arrogant in thinking that I would just meekly do what she wanted. She fell down with an outraged shriek, the can miraculously not going off. I tried to jump over her, but she grabbed my shirt and pulled me down. Pure instinct saved me from being immediately blinded as I was pushed to the ground and I heard the threatening hiss of the can spraying it's toxins at me. I ducked my head down as far as it could go and shielded my face as best I could.  
    "Fucking cockroach!" Relena screamed and raved at me, "Why don't you just die?! Huh?! Why can't you just fucking die like the bug you are?! Die! Die!"  
    That sound, like a hissing cat, seemed to go on forever, but I didn't move, even as the spray soaked my hair and trailed down my arms and neck. It had a sickening sweet aroma to it and it completely coated my hair, weighing it down and making it stick to my skin. I didn't even move when I heard the telltale sign that the can was empty. I heard her cry of her rage and that was the only warning I had before she threw the can at my head, as hard as she could. The metal can struck me and I felt a burst of pain, then a familiar liquid heat that told me that she had reopened the scalp wound that her brother had given me. The furious clicking of her heeled shoes on the wood of the boardwalk as she stormed away from me sounded like the nails of some clawed animal to me.  
    I stayed crouched there next to the photo booth, one arm thrown over my eyes for I don't even know how long. I was too scared to put my arm down. I could feel the chemicals and blood from my scalp wound dripping down my arm and hair. The smell of it was overwhelming and sickening, there wasn't a single thing that I could do until the mess dried if I didn't want to risk burning my eyes. After what might have been only five minutes or twenty, I heard someone running towards me. Before he said a single thing, I knew that it was Heero.   
    "Duo!" I heard him exclaim and fall to his knees next to me, "What happened?!"  
    I couldn't help it, I laughed.  
    "We have really got to stop hanging out like this," I said wryly.  
    I felt Heero put a hand on my back and immediately, just feeling that touch, I felt instantly better, like all of my anger and anxiety just melted away. He comforted me without saying a thing.   
    "Relena sprayed me with insecticide, it's all over my hair. I'm just trying not to get it into my eyes," I informed him.  
    "Fucking bitch," he swore under his breath and I almost laughed again, "Hold on, just stay like that."  
    I did what he said obediently as I felt him try to clean off the mess with what felt like napkins, probably ones that had come with whatever food he had ended up getting.   
    "Come on," he urged, wrapping one arm around my waist to help me to my feet, "We need to wash it off before you can open your eyes."  
    I felt myself flush darkly at the sensation of his arm cradling me. Then, it was over all too soon. I found my sure footing and he let go of my waist, but I could still feel it, lingering, making my heart explode right out of my chest. Even when he let go, he kept his hand on my back, guiding me. I felt disgustingly happy, when I should have felt displaced by the whole thing. But I had been dealing with Relena's cruelty for years. This feeling... this warmth was something new.   
    "Here, we're at the wash station. Can you bend your head down under the faucet?" he asked.  
    He didn't even need to lead me, I knew where he had taken me. There was a communal showering area for beach goers and right outside of it was this huge double station that basically just looked like a sink. It was made of peach and orange colored granite and had thick, silver faucets that were used during the summer to rinse off sand. I felt the edge of it with my hands and dipped my head into it, automatically untying my braid before Heero turned the water on. The stream that fell on me was powerful and icy cold and I couldn't help but flinch in shock.  
    "Sorry," Heero apologized guiltily.  
    "'s fine," I assured him, but it probably got lost in the sound of water pouring.  
    I honestly didn't care. At that point, a myriad of memories were assailing me, ghosts of other times that I had been in that situation. Quatre helping me wash the marker off my face on the day that we had met. Him helping me to the nurse after Relena had thrown pepper in my eyes. My washing his hair clean when Zechs dumped mud in it. All those times... would it ever end? That I only had a year and a half left at that school wasn't a consolation to me anymore. I wasn't so sure that Heero and I were going to last that long at this rate.   
    At least the insecticide wasn't anything like the semen that Zechs had dumped on me, it washed out pretty quickly. I wrung my hair out before lifting my head out of the sink so it wouldn't drip down my jacket and probed gently at my scalp wound. It felt tender and the wound was bigger, but I didn't think that Relena had done a lot of damage. I turned and saw Heero staring at me with this weird expression, a light blush on his cheeks.  
    "What's wrong?" I asked with confusion.  
    "I... uh... you're hair," he stammered, "You look really different when it's down. It startled me for a moment."  
    I felt myself blush in response and had no clue why I felt pleased all of a sudden. At the same time, his embarrassment made me feel uncomfortable. I don't like people staring at my hair. It reminds me too much of things that I can't think about. But for some reason, it wasn't so bad when Heero stared. I nervously brushed my long, wet bangs out of my face.  
    "This isn't the first time you've seen it down, you know," I pointed out.  
    "No, it isn't," he said sadly, losing some of his awkwardness. I felt bad. I hadn't wanted to remind him of the things that he had done when he had been bullying me, "I never would have done it you know... cut your hair... I... I just want you to know that."  
    He looked so embarrassed just then, I ached for him. But I wouldn't tell him to just forget about it, as much as I wanted to soothe him. What he had done... while it hadn't been as awful as what Relena and Zechs have done to me, I don't think it's a bad thing for Heero to look back at how he had acted and feel remorseful about it, so long as he had changed. I thought back to that day, how Zechs had held me down and tried to goad Heero into cutting my braid off, how he had hesitated and seemed so nervous. It made sense to me now, that reluctance.   
    "You let me escape, didn't you?" I asked him, "You let me run right past you. You could have grabbed me or caught up with me, but you just stepped aside and let me run."  
    Heero ran a hand through his thick, chocolate hair.  
    "I was too much of a coward to tell him no... letting you escape seemed the least that I could do for you," he murmured.  
    "Well, thank you," I said and gathered my wet hair back into its braid, "and thanks for getting the chemicals out of it."  
    "No problem," he said flippantly and hesitated for a moment, "Does it mean a lot to you... your hair?"  
    "Not really," I shrugged, "Well... I guess a little. I mean, it's mine, one of the few things that I have that's actually mine. If I lose my braid, I want it to be because I chose to cut it, not as some sick trophy for Zechs or because someone else decided I shouldn't have it. I don't know if that makes any sense."  
    "No, it does. I can't really relate. Anything I ever needed, my parents gave me. I've never really needed to fight to keep anything that I wanted, but I still understand it," he told me, "I guess that makes me sound privileged."  
    "You _are_ privileged," I pointed out, but not cruelly or with any anger or resentment, "But that's not a bad thing. Having parents that love you and want to give you things isn't bad," that last bit came out a bit bitter, even to my ears.   
    We fell quiet as we walked back to the photo booth. By some kind of miracle, no one, human or sea gull or feral dog, had stolen our food. It was cold by the time we found a bench to sit on to eat it, but it wasn't so bad.   
    "I've been thinking of something," Heero piped up after he finished with his cold burger, "Yesterday, you made me promise you something."  
    "Yeah, I did," I confirmed, finishing off my own hamburger.   
    "I think I've done a pretty good job of upholding it," he boasted.  
    "It's been one, stinking day," I rolled my eyes.  
    "Regardless, I hadn't tried to beat Zechs up all day long for what he did to you. And today, _I_ got the shit kicked out of me. I think that warrants me asking you for something," he reasoned.  
    "Your logic is flawed," I grumbled, "but sure, go right ahead."  
    "Would you be willing to spend the weekend over at my place?" he blurted out.  
    I stared at him. That had not been what I had been expecting.  
    "That's... I already said I was going to have dinner with you on Sunday," I reminded him.  
    "I know-" he began.  
    "And I have work all three days," I pointed out.  
    "I know-" he repeated.  
    "Besides, I've met your parents _once_. Why would they be ok with that? A strange kid crashing at their place even for one night? I'm sure that I would have overstayed my welcome by Saturday night," I protested, "I've never been over someone's house before to sleep over, I don't know what I'm supposed to do about that sort of thing! I have my cat to feed and all my work clothes are at home-"  
    I think it was around that point that I realized I was just pulling excuses out of my ass and while all of those excuses sound perfectly reasonable, I knew that they weren't real reasons at all. I was just scared.   
    "Duo," Heero interrupted sternly, "I know all that. First off, my parents won't care if you stay the weekend. They like you and they don't mind stuff like that. I know that you have work and you have to take care of your cat. I'm just suggesting that you pack your clothes and stuff and crash at my house instead of your own. You can drop by to feed your cat on the way to work, can't you?"  
    "Well, yeah, I can do that, but I work really, really late. Hell, on Friday you won't even see me after 3:30 until you get up on Saturday, so it's not like we can do anything together then! It's the same case on Saturday and on Sunday I don't get off until 6 at night," I said lamely.  
    "So?" Heero pressed, "You can come home with me on Friday and have an early dinner before you head off to work. And we'll have all Saturday morning and afternoon if you want to do something and Sunday for dinner. Look, I'm not asking you over for some big, weekend party or anything. I'm just offering you a place to relax for a few days. We can hang out, play video games, watch movies, whatever when you aren't working. We have a spare bedroom with it's own shower, anything you would need."  
    The desperation in his voice caught me off guard. Did he really want me to hang out with him that badly? Was he really that lonely?   
    "Why?" I asked in a small and insecure voice.  
    I looked over at him and caught something dark in his handsome, blue eyes, some turmoil that I couldn't figure out.  
    "Because I like hanging out with you," he said softly, "and because... with everything that's been happening lately, I think you need a place to get some peace and quiet. I just think that it would be nice, that's all."  
    'I think you need a place to get some peace and quiet.' Such an innocent thing for him to say. If that look hadn't come across his face, I might have even thought that he just meant a place to get away from my problems at school. But I still remembered how he had looked when I had told him that my father had hit me. And all the time that we had been eating, he had seemed distant, mulling over something. He had only looked that way after I had told him that his parents caring about him wasn't a bad thing. Was that what this was really about, him offering me a place to get away from my family? Or was I just reading into this too much because, when he said 'peace and quiet', I didn't think about putting Relena and Zechs out of my mind. I thought about getting away from my father.   
    "Alright," I said.  
    I decided it a bit rashly. I didn't think about all my excuses or how nervous or afraid I was to be spending my weekend with the boy that I secretly loved and his family. I thought about getting away from my own home. I thought about that quiet, warm house and I thought about how, past the fear, I really did want to do it. I wanted to spend time with Heero. And I wanted to pretend like all the shit in my life... all that darkness didn't exist for a little while. That wasn't such a bad thing, was it?   
    "Your parents won't be mad?" he asked me worriedly.  
    "Nah," I assured him, "They won't even notice that I'm gone."   
    'Unless my father needs to get laid,' I thought bitterly.  
    I wondered what he would actually do if he wanted sex and realized that I wasn't home. I pushed that thought as far away as possible. I didn't want to think about that shit when I was with Heero.   
    "I'm sorry, Duo," Heero said mournfully.  
    "Don't be," I shrugged, "at least I don't have be concerned with telling them where I am."  
    "But they're your parents," he argued, "They should be worried when you don't come home, they should actually notice that you're gone."  
    "In my household," I said before I thought about what I was saying, "not getting noticed is a good thing."  
    His expression twisted into something incredibly pained, almost akin to shock or horror.  
    "I'm sorry," I stammered, "I didn't mean to say that."  
    He reached over and held my hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. It's funny how something so simple, a little touch like that, can say everything that needs to be said, things that no words can actually express. I smiled at him and thought 'I could stay like this forever.' How was it possible that one person's sadness and pain at your situation can make you so happy? I only wished that I really could stay on that bench forever with him.  
    "I should get to work," I sighed, slipping my hand from his, "but I'll see you tomorrow and we can go to your house after school, alright?"  
    "It's a date," he said cheekily.  
    I flushed and it felt like my heart was going to stop right there in my chest. I knew that he was just being flippant, but it made me ache. I felt a sense of foreboding then for the upcoming weekend. Was this what it was going to be like, staying with Heero, this equal pain and contentment?   
    I wasn't so sure that I was going to survive it.   
  
  
End part 2  
  
Author's note: Sorry for the shortness of this chapter, but I needed to cut it off there ^_^  
  
Also sorry that very little happened in this part >.>  I promise that part 3 will (I hope anyway) be more exciting.   
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
  



	31. Chapter 7 Part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duo spends the weekend with Heero. Can he fit in with his new friend and his family while not letting them discover how bad things are for him at home?

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 7  
Part 3  
  
      
    Friday morning, I wasn't sure which I felt more: terror or excitement. I woke up early so I could pack the things that I would need for my weekend, refilled Pepper's bowls and apologized to her for leaving her alone for so long. She just gave me her usual wide eyed stare and ate energetically. I took my duffle to school instead of my book bag, not wanting to waste time going home after class to get it. The whole day, I was a nervous wreck, only barely able to focus on my classes. I kept thinking about this stupid 'sleepover' and worrying about needless things.   
    Would Heero's parents like me after being around me for so long, or would they think that their son had taken up with a juvenile delinquent? Would I say or do something stupid and alienate the only friend that I have? Or worse? Would I be able to handle being in close quarters with the boy that I loved or would I let it slip how I really felt about him? True, he knew that I was gay, but that was ok because he was, too. And he knew that I liked him, or at least found him attractive and he seemed to be handling that fine as well.   
    But he didn't know that this wasn't just my thinking that he was handsome. He didn't know that his friend was head over heels in love with him and I would rather that he didn't find out about that. Was this what Quatre had felt like that night that he had asked me to oversee his dinner with Trowa, this fear that he couldn't keep his emotions in check? I hadn't understood it back then. I had just thought that it was a matter of simply not saying those words, 'I love you.' I hadn't know what it felt like to be holding all these feelings inside, like they might come bursting out at any moment, until I had done something stupid and fallen in love myself.  
    Heero and I had a couple of close calls that day at school, but nothing like the last two days. We found that, if we were together, putting up a unified front, our classmates were more leery to fuck with us. Relena and Zechs not so much, but there was nothing we could do about them anyway. The worst was when Dorothy blindsided Heero and managed to cut his right cheek with her long nails, but besides being bloody, it was better than the rest of his bruises. Everything else was just heated, verbal abuse. He must have taken my advice to ice his black eye because, like mine, the swelling had gone down enough for him to open it.   
    It was even colder outside when school let out than it had been the previous day. I wouldn't have been surprised if we got a little bit of snow that weekend and I was sure that all of the ponds were going to ice over enough to go skating. Most of them were already looking a bit frosty and solid. I had taken to wearing a few layers already and I could see my breath in front of my face as I walked. I felt oddly happy seeing Heero's home again. I felt enthralled all over again at the decor and how homey it felt. Kanuck was right there at the door waiting for us and barked and danced around when Heero opened the door.  
    "Down!" he scolded the dog when it tried to bowl me over in it's attempt to lick my face.  
    Kanuck obeyed, but his tail was wagging so furiously, and he seemed so incapable of containing his happy energy, that his butt wiggled as he sat.   
    "Hi, Kanuck," I greeted the dog with a pet.  
    "In here, boys!" I heard Heero's mother call from the living room.   
    The malamute mix all too happily followed us as we walked into the living room. Heero's mother was sitting on the large couch that they had, reading some book. When she heard us come in, she immediately had a bright smile on her face, but when she put the book down and looked over at us, that smile faded into one of shock.  
    "Oh, Duo!" she exclaimed as she got to her feet and started to walk over to us.  
    It took me a moment to realize the reason for her reaction. Even though it still hurt a bit, I kept forgetting that my face was still heavily bruised and while my eye had finally managed to fully open, I was still sporting a pretty bad black eye.  
    "Mom," Heero warned.  
    For the first time, I wondered what had happened to him when he had gone home the previous day with his other set of bruises, just how badly his parents had freaked out. I felt guilty all over again for my role in things, that it was because of me their son had left the safety of his group and was now getting bullied. His mother completely ignored him and lightly touched my chin, moving my head to the side so she could see the worst of the damage. The intensity of her concern sent a chill through me at the same time that her touch made me blush darkly. Why was she so worried? Heero had almost gotten it as badly as me, and I wasn't her kid.   
    "You didn't tell me it was this bad!" she scolded Heero, finally letting go of me, "I really wish you would tell me who did this to the both of you, Heero!"  
    "We've already been through this," my friend said defensively, "There's nothing you can do about it."  
    "This isn't how we raised you," she snapped, "If someone is hurting you or your friend, you come forward about it! Nothing can be done by doing nothing!"  
    Seeing the righteous indignation in her eyes, and realizing where Heero's moral compass, the same one that had gotten him into this trouble, had come from, I swore to make sure to never mention Heero's previous treatment of me around his parents, even in jest. I couldn't imagine the kind of pain that it might cause them to know that their son had once been a bully.   
    "Mrs. Yuy," I interrupted, "Heero is right. Actually, I'm the one that told him not to do anything about it, so I'm the one that you should blame. But trust me, the people that did this to us, even if we told on them, nothing would happen to them. It would just make things a lot worse."  
    "They've done this to you before," she said sadly.  
    "Yes," I confirmed after hesitating a little, not sure how much was safe to tell her, "Many times."  
    "All the more reason for you boys to tell your principal about this!" she said sternly, "People like that deserve to be punished."  
    "I would," I confessed, "if I thought that it would do anything, but it won't. I've been with them since Elementary School, and they've been told on before, but it's never stuck. Even if it did, if we could prove who it was, the worst that would happen to them is expulsion, their families have the financial means to make sure it wouldn't go further than that. I know these kids, if they got thrown out, they would just retaliate even worse. Whether it's at school or not, it's the same. I'm just not brave enough to do the right thing here, and I made Heero promise not to as well. So if you're mad at either of us, be mad at me."  
    "You're plenty brave," Heero protested, "Being logical and knowing what to do to minimize being hurt doesn't make you a coward."  
    His mother sighed.  
    "I still think the two of you are being foolish, but I suppose there's nothing that I can say to convince you, is there?"  
    "Nope," my friend said.  
    "Even your father?" she pressed with a smirk.  
    Heero hesitated and I wondered what that was about.  
    "...No," he said reluctantly, "He already spent all night trying."  
    "Well, I suppose if you two want to eat before Duo has to go to work, I should get supper started," Mrs. Yuy said, leading us into the kitchen.  
    "Thank you very much for letting me stay the weekend, Ma'am," I thanked her, sitting down at the kitchen table with Heero.  
    "No trouble at all, Duo," she smiled at me and turned to the fridge, pulling out some things that she had obviously made beforehand, "And you really don't need to call me 'ma'am,' you know. We aren't so formal here. I hope you like beef stew, it seemed like good weather for it today."  
    "I love it," I assured her.  
    She put the stew to heat on the stove and placed what I assumed were biscuits in the oven to bake.   
    "What time do you have work, Duo?" she asked me.      
    "Four," I told her, "And... uh... I won't be back until really late. I hope that's ok, I don't want to wake anyone up..."  
    "That's fine. We'll keep the door unlocked for you and give you the security alarm code," she told me.  
     "What sort of job do you have that schedules a high schooler so late?" a voice came from through the doorway of what looked like the laundry room and Heero's father walked out, wiping his hands with a rag.  
    "Dad, you're home early," Heero said in surprise.  
    "I wanted to be here when you and Duo came home," he said, tucking the rag into his pocket and going to the kitchen sink to wash his hands, "since your friend had to leave before I barely had the chance to greet him last time. Besides, I wanted another crack at fixing the washing machine."  
    "I really wish you would just call a repair man," his wife scolded him, "We just moved here and it's under warranty, so there's no reason for you to be fiddling with it."  
    "It's the weekend," he pointed out to her, "Getting a repairman out here before Monday is going to be impossible. No reason why I can't have a go at it."  
    "Actually, there is a repair shop that will come out on Saturdays," I told him, "You just have to schedule before five today."  
    "Oh?" Mr. Yuy raised one eyebrow with interest and walked over to a white board that was hanging from the wall next to the sink that was covered in little notes like a reminder of a doctor's appointment and a grocery list, "Their name?"  
    "McKowski's Repair and Mend," I told him.  
    "Thank you," he wrote it down on the board with a blue marker.  
    "I'll look that number up," Mrs. Yuy said and left the kitchen.  
    "Now, then, where is it that you work, Duo?" Heero's father returned to his original train of thought.  
    I chewed on my lip, debating on what I would tell him. I hadn't even told Heero much about my working situation and the last thing I needed was his father causing waves because I was breaking labor laws. But his blue eyed stare was intense as he waited for my answer. He reminded me of my father in that respect, at least in the sober side of my father, how he could give me a look like that I would feel like he could see right through me.     Suddenly, the idea of lying to this man felt exhausting to me, not because I was sure that he would be able to tell that it was a lie, but I was just so sick of it. I was sick of the lies, of the excuses that I needed to give people. Even though I had only met him twice, I liked Heero's father. He seemed like a really straightforward person and I didn't think that I could lie too much to him.  
    "Well, I actually work two jobs," I confessed, glancing over at Mrs. Yuy as she bustled back in with a phone book in hand, "One is this construction business and the other is just working at the south train yard, unloading cargo. That shift starts pretty late at night, unfortunately."  
    "Two jobs at your age?" Mr. Yuy's brow furrowed in concern, "Do your parents know that you're working that much?"  
    "It's not a big deal," I tried to dissuade him, "I get all my homework done on time, so it doesn't interfere with my grades. Working was actually my father's idea."  
    "But you're just a teenager," he protested.  
    "Dad," Heero hissed at his father, looking just as uncomfortable with his father's interrogating me as I felt.  
    "It must put a lot of stress on you," Mr. Yuy continued, ignoring Heero, "I can respect your father wanting to teach you responsibility, but two jobs is a bit much."  
    "It's not that stressful," I responded, and it really wasn't, at least compared to what I was dealing with at home, working that much was actually a nice respite, "And that's not why my father insisted that I get a job," I looked down, unable to meet that stare anymore and fiddled with my jeans, "We've never had a lot of money, especially not lately. My father was without a job for awhile and it was just my mom and I making any kind of income. He found another job eventually, but he makes less than he did before and we fell really behind on our bills. We're still playing catch up. Besides, I like helping my family and falling behind on our bills effects me just as much as it does them. I don't mind working a lot of hours if it gives my parents more breathing room and it doesn't hurt my grades."  
    "I'm sorry, Duo," Mrs. Yuy said sadly and shot her husband an icy look that clearly demanded that he drop the subject.  
    Miraculously, he obeyed her. Heero gave me an apologetic look, but I smiled assuringly at him. I didn't resent his father for asking those kind of questions and my answers had obviously bothered him and his parents more than they did me.   
    "So, dear," she addressed me as she handed Mr. Yuy the phone book, "Has your family lived in Nausten for long?"  
    "Both of my parents grew up here," I told her, watching Heero's father take the kitchen phone out of the room.  
    "Oh, then you would know. Does Nausten have anything special during the winter season? Hope has a lot of winter festival activities and workshops, but I don't see a lot of those types of things here," she asked me.  
    "Yeah, Hope is more organized than we are and we don't really do a lot here. There's a Christmas fair going on this weekend, but it's mostly just a place for local businesses to advertise and people to sell crafts like handmade ornaments or coffee. All of the school's musical clubs and classes are going to put on a concert next week that's all just Christmas music and there will be a play put on by all the grades, but that's pretty much it. Oh, and the Darlians put on a big Christmas party on the boardwalk on Christmas Eve."  
    "Yes, we got invited to that," she nodded, "One of our neighbors mentioned that it used to be a lot grander in previous years with the Winners helping the Darlians host it, but they moved away."  
    I tried to swallow past the sudden icy lump in my throat, but it felt like swallowing a spiked tennis ball.  
    "Yeah, well, that was a long time ago," I muttered.  
    It had never really occurred to me while I had been going through my own momentous grief, that the Winners moving away would have an impact on anything or anyone else but me, but they had been as involved as the Darlians in planning town events. There were a lot of things, like the town carnival, that didn't happen anymore, since Mrs. Winner had pretty much spearheaded that event on her own, what with the town's law against outside performers and her organizing people in town that could put on a show like that. Without her, the effort had just... fallen apart.   
    I felt Heero's knee rest against my own and I looked over at him. He looked sympathetic and I guess it was pretty obvious that I was depressed over something. I had given him Quatre's name, and I had told him that his girlfriend had been responsible for his disappearance from my life, but I hadn't given him any more information than that. Had he asked her about it and had she given him all the gory details or was he clueless as to what I was thinking about?  
    "Have you ever gone to any of those events?" he asked me, desperately trying to steer the conversation to something more neutral.  
    "Not since I was a kid," I told him, "My father took me to the festival a couple times, but I haven't been back since."  
    "What does your family do for Christmas?" Heero's mother asked, moving to the oven when the timer pinged that the rolls were done, "Do you go away or stay here?"  
    "We don't do much. My family isn't religious and we don't have extended family nearby, so we stay put. My mom's a waitress and until recently, my dad used to be a cop, so the both of them would get roped into working extra hours during the holiday anyway. We don't even decorate that much. It's usually just a home cooked meal on Christmas night and that's it. I guess if I have a tradition at all, it's going to Miller's Pond on Christmas Eve," I said, fighting against getting trapped in some melancholy memory as I remembered that place.  
    "What's that?" Heero asked.  
    "You've been living here for two months and you don't know what Miller's Pond is?" I quirked an eyebrow up at him disbelievingly, "It's the biggest pond in town. It's just a couple of miles north of you. Every Christmas week, if it's cold enough, they string lights in all the trees around it and sell food there. There's ice skating, snowman and food competitions. The various church choirs sing carols there and all the food entered is free for people there to have. I like going skating there late at night when most everyone else has gone home and have whatever is left over."   
    I had gotten Quatre to come along with me one night, when we had been eleven. He had always been leery of going ice skating with me because he had really sucked at it, but he had just sat on the frozen ground and watched me skate, sipping hot cocoa. It had been nice, a definite improvement to just spending the night in my own, empty house and him in his.   
    "You should teach Heero how to skate when it gets cold enough, Duo," his mother urged as she took the biscuits out of the oven and checked the stew to see if it was hot enough to eat yet.  
    "You don't know how to skate?" I asked Heero, perplexed.  
    "I know how to roller skate," he grumbled, "But we didn't have any local ice rinks where we lived and I don't like hockey, so I never cared about learning."  
    "I can teach you," I offered, "It's really easy."  
    He balked for a moment, as if the thought of ice skating was daunting or unwanted to him, but some mysterious thought came to him and he smiled.  
    "I would like that," he said.  
    "What about you guys? Will you be going away for Christmas?" I asked.  
    "We'll be visiting Heero's grandparents nearby," she informed me, "You're welcome to join us, if your parents don't mind you spending Christmas away from them."  
    "T-that's," I sputtered, shocked by her invitation, "that's nice of you, but I would just be a stranger. Plus, I have work Christmas Eve and I need to start dinner before my parents get home on Christmas, but thank you."  
    "I see," she said, almost mournfully as she handed us bowls of stew and placed a basket full of the biscuits on the table along with two glasses of milk, "but you wouldn't be a stranger."  
    Before I could protest that, Mr. Yuy walked back into the room and hung the phone back up on it's cradle.  
    "They were all booked up for today," he told his wife, "but they can come out on Monday. I'll look at it again after dinner and see if I can least find where the problem is."  
    She sighed and handed him a bowl of stew on his way to the table.  
    "That darned thing," she grumbled, walking to the table with her own bowl, "Well, I guess it isn't the end of the world, I can put off doing the laundry for a while yet."  
    "What's wrong with it?" I asked.  
    "It leaks," Mr. Yuy said, snagging a biscuit from the basket, "no matter which cycle it's on. I've looked at the casing, but there aren't any cracks and I can't seem to find where the leak is coming from. I don't suppose you have any experience fixing washing machines, Duo?"   
    "No," I admitted a bit shyly, "I'm completely useless when it comes to helping fix things around the house. My dad tried to teach me how to help fix his car and our dryer when it kept turning itself off halfway through it's cycle, but he says I'm worthless for stuff like that and I'm completely unteachable."  
    "That's not very nice," Mrs. Inori scowled, "Your father needs to learn some patience."  
    "I'm not very good at fixing things around the house, either," her husband smiled at me, "It's nothing to be ashamed of. That whole macho nonsense, that all men need to be good at fixing mechanical things and heavy lifting is ridiculous. I'm sure you're good at a lot of other things and if your father can't see that, it's his loss."  
    "Not really," I murmured, pushing a piece of potato around with the spoon that I had been given, "I'm pretty average all around. There's not really something that I'm good at, like Heero is at baseball."  
    "That's not true," Heero piped in around a mouthful of biscuit, chewing and swallowing quickly, "You're a good runner, you've got the top scores in English out of our entire grade, and you're a good cook."  
    "W-what," I sputtered, "When have you ever tasted my cooking?"  
    "In home ec," he said.  
    "I thought Relena always throws my stuff out," I puzzled.  
    Heero blushed a little as his parents looked at him in surprise.  
    "She does, but I try to sneak a bit in under her nose when she isn't looking," he muttered shyly, but then instantly perked up, "and you're really good at it, better than she is. I know you have top grades in that class, too, so don't sell yourself short. Our teacher likes you, because you don't always follow the recipe and try new things."  
    "Relena throws your food away?" Mrs. Yuy asked, her voice dripping with disapproval.  
    "We... don't really get along with each other," I admitted diplomatically.  
    Mr. Yuy snorted.  
    "I don't think that girl gets along with anything," he muttered.  
    "Yes, well," Heero's mother shot him a look that I can only call smug, "anyone that can't get along with someone as nice as Duo obviously has a few screws loose. I'm glad you finally broke up with her."  
    Heero looked so embarrassed by his parents' behavior that I imagined he was looking for a hole to crawl into. While I knew that he regretted ever getting involved with her, their obvious dislike of his ex made me feel much better, and that they liked me made me feel this huge sense of relief.  
    "Speaking of home ec, have your grades gotten any better," Mr. Yuy asked Heero with that intense stare of his.  
    "No, Dad," my friend sighed heavily.  
    "Obviously, changing classes was a mistake, then. Maybe you should consider going back to metal work next semester, now that you aren't seeing that girl anymore," his father gave Heero this knowing look that I couldn't help trying to decipher.  
    I wondered if Heero had told his parents that he had only switched classes to be with Relena and that was why his father was criticizing him for it. But now that I thought about it... it didn't make a whole lot of sense, did it? It had before, when I had believed that Heero loved Relena, but he had just been pretending, so why would he have wanted to spend more time with her? There was this doubt in me that he had been telling me the truth, but it was fleeting, just a product of my constant insecurities and doubts.   
    If he hadn't transferred into my home ec class because of her, then why? Maybe she had just pressured him and he had felt that he had to do it in order to maintain the illusion of the loving boyfriend. That made a lot more sense.   
    "I'm fine where I am," he grumbled.  
    "Perhaps Duo can tutor you," his mother suggested with a cheekiness that I understood even less than that knowing look of his father's, "You could practice using our kitchen. I certainly wouldn't mind tasting Duo's cooking, and it would be nice to have your friends over here more. Who knows, if you learn to cook, maybe you can give me a day off from it once in awhile."  
    Heero blushed even darker at his mother's good natured teasing. The Yuys ' interactions with each other were a spectacle to me. I have some understanding on how normal and well adjusted families treat each other and act around each other, but I've never seen it in person. It was weird and alien, but also comforting. It was like a window into everything that I've been missing my entire life, that love and warmth and teasing. I couldn't be a part of it because they weren't my family, but I still liked watching them.   
    "Honey, you haven't touched your dinner," it took me a moment to realize that Mrs. Yuy was talking to me and not her son.  
    "R-right," I stammered, ignoring the sudden pain in my chest.  
    The stew was delicious and I think that I more inhaled it than just ate it.  
    "This is really good," I complimented Heero's mother after taking a bite out of one of the biscuits, "I can never get them flaky like this."  
    "Thank you, I'm glad you like it," she smiled brightly at me, "I use buttermilk and salted butter instead of shortening."  
    That made sense and I made sure to try that next time I made biscuits. I always used shortening because it was cheaper, but butter has a higher fat content, which is what you want to use if you want to make flaky dough. The rest of the dinner was just as pleasant. Mrs. Yuy talked about working as a teacher and asked me some innocuous questions about the town, my hobbies, and my classes. She also kept my bowl filled and I all too happily kept eating it as long as she kept supplying it. I couldn't remember the last time that I had eaten that much. When we were all done eating, Mr. Yuy excused himself to continue looking at the washing machine and Mrs. Yuy started on the dishes.   
    "I can help with that," I offered.  
    "Nonsense," she tried to shoo me away from the sink, "You're a guest, I'm not about to put you to work."  
    "It's the least that I can do after you've let me stay here for three whole days, and for making me dinner. Please?" I begged.  
    I already felt so strange, being accepted by these people that barely even knew me. Hell, even Heero barely knew me, but I was being allowed to stay there and eat their food. Helping out with a few chores was a small way for things to feel normal for me, like I was giving something back. Mrs. Yuy studied me for a moment and then conceded with a shrug.  
    "I suppose, if you really insist, I wouldn't mind some help drying the dishes," she said, but I could tell that she was hesitant to even have me do that much.  
    She showed me where the dish towels were and I went to work drying things while Heero wiped down the table. From where I was standing next to Heero's mother, I could see his father in the laundry room, working on the machine. He was elbow deep in the back of the thing and seemed to have found some part that was suspicious and was attempting to correct it. I turned back to my drying, taking one of the ceramic bowls that we had used from Mrs. Yuy. It was at that point that I heard Mr. Yuy turn on the washer to test it, and the tell tale sign of water gushing out onto the floor.  
    "Goddamn thing!" he swore at the washing machine, not out of rage like my father would have, but just frustration, and kicked lightly at it.  
    The sound of his raised voice and the metallic clang of his foot hitting the appliance sent me into a fear filled panic. In that moment, I went somewhere else. I wasn't in the Yuys  house anymore, but my own, and the man swearing wasn't Heero's father, but mine. The kick was more vicious and I knew that, within seconds, all that rage was going to be directed at me. It was just a single second that it lasted, but it was enough. I flinched harshly, forgetting where I was and that I was safe, and dropped the bowl that I had been drying. It shattered on the floor at my feet and the sound of it was enough to bring me out of the attack that I was having, but it did nothing to stop the fear that I felt. My memories all too gleefully told me what the punishment was for breaking things.   
    "Duo!" Mrs. Yuy exclaimed in shock, "Don't move!"  
    She turned off the faucet and ran to one of the closets in the kitchen. Not even a minute later, when she returned with a broom, I would realize that she had told me not to move so I wouldn't step on one of the shards, but my panicked mind painted over the sound of her voice with my father's, ordering me not to move or I would be punished worse. Mr. Yuy completely abandoned the washer and ran to me.  
    "I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry," I heard myself chanting, looking down at the broken bowl with fear coiling in my gut, mixed with shame at being so clumsy that I had done that, "I'll buy another one, I'll..."  
    "It's alright, Duo," Heero's father was saying and reached out to me.  
    My body flinched from him before common sense could override my fear that I was about to be struck, but the man only placed his hand, slowly and carefully, on my shoulder. I realized then that I was shaking a little.   
    "It's just a dish," he said in this soft, soothing tone that immediately pulled me out of the panic attack and back into reality, "It isn't what's important. Are you hurt? Did you cut yourself?"   
    I stepped back, letting Mrs. Yuy start to sweep up the mess that I had made and looked down at my feet.  
    "N-no," I said, unsure of myself.  
    "That's good," Mr. Yuy said with a relieved smile.  
    Now that my fear was ebbing, I felt incredibly embarrassed of myself and how I had reacted. What the fuck was wrong with me? Heero's parents should have been mad at me for breaking that dish and for being so damned clumsy and stupid.   
    "I'm sorry," I apologized again, calmer this time, "I didn't mean to do that..."  
    "It isn't a big deal," Mrs. Yuy assured me as she dumped the shards into the trash bin, "just so long as you aren't hurt."  
    I felt so unsure and shaky as she said that to me, like her words had hollowed me out. No one had ever said that to me in my entire life and I didn't know how to react to them. I caught Heero's father staring at me intently, those familiar blue eyes piercing right through me as he looked at me with an almost curious expression. I felt an entirely different sort of panic shoot through me. He had to have realized how abnormal my reaction to him yelling at the washing machine was. Was he wondering why I had gotten so scared? Did he suspect?  
    "Why don't you and Heero go upstairs?" he said instead of interrogating me like I feared that he was going to, "He can show you were you'll be sleeping tonight."  
    "Ok," I murmured, still feeling off kilter.  
    "This way," Heero led me out of the kitchen.  
    I grabbed my duffle bag and followed him into the foyer and up the stairs.   
    "Are you ok?" he asked me when we reached the top.  
    "I feel like an ass," I muttered, my face feeling like it was on fire.  
    "Don't be," he insisted, "You got startled, it happens. A broken dish isn't a big deal, it's not like we don't have more of them. It was just an accident."  
    His words made me feel a little bit better as I reminded myself that that was true. What was abnormal wasn't that no one had gotten mad at me for breaking something by accident, it was that my father would have beaten me for something like that. The Yuys weren't abnormal, _I_ was, my family was. It was hard to remember that sometimes, that the things that my father did to me were terrible and wrong. I had been living with it for so long that it was as normal as could be for me and everything in the Yuys home was strange.   
    "I shouldn't have been startled like that to begin with," I grumbled.  
    I looked at Heero and saw that he was holding things back, things that he wanted to say. He knew, I reminded myself, at least somewhat about the relationship that I had with my father. Did he realize that my reaction had been because of that? Would he tell his father what was going on? I didn't think that he would betray me like that, but it wasn't like I trusted him. I had lost the ability for that. I wondered, with a great deal of sadness, if I would ever be able to really trust another person again, or if my father and Quatre's death and every other shitty thing that had happened to me in my life had completely stolen that from me.   
    It wasn't like Heero had never given me a reason not to trust him. He had hurt me, more than most people simply because of my feelings for him, and he had the capacity to do a lot more damage. He held my heart in his hands and he didn't even realize it. That was my fault because, despite my cautious nature, I had placed it there. He had flipped sides like a coin, hiding himself and then turning on his friends for me. How long before he decided to change again and turn his back on me?   
    But even knowing all of that, some part of me truly believed that, if I was only a normal person, I could grow to trust the boy that I loved. I don't think that I can anymore. I had one of those moments when I truly hated my father and everything that he's ever done to me. Not only did he steal away my ability to trust in other people, he had turned me into this strange thing that couldn't even react normally to someone hitting a washing machine. I had embarrassed myself in front of Heero's parents and given them reason to worry about me, all because of what he had done.   
    For the first time, I truly mourned myself. I was so different, and so much had not only been taken from me, but denied me, because of my parents. How would I have turned out if I had been born to a normal family like Heero had, or if my father had never raped me or even just never raised a hand to me? Would I be a different and better person if my mother had loved me or never told me the truth about my birth? It hurt thinking about what might have been, the happiness that I could have had and I really needed to stop.  
    "My room's over here," Heero seemed to sense that I was upset and immediately changed subjects, continuing to lead me down the upstairs hallway.  
    The hallway was in tones of gold and sage, giving it an earthly feel. It was decorated similarly as the rest of the house, with a few paintings and family photos on the wall. On the far end of the hallway was a large window that overlooked the backyard and there was a small table there with a delicate looking vase filled with wildflowers. The hallway, as long as it was, only had five doors; one on our left ahead of us, one further past the stairs on the left, two on the right past the steps, and one on the far opposite end of the hallway. Even their fucking upstairs was bigger than my house was. Hell, the hallway was wide enough that I could live on the end of it by that window and feel comfortable.   
    I followed Heero through the single door on our left, which turned out to be his bedroom. The bedroom was about the size of my entire attic, but the comparison should end there. It was immaculately clean for a teenaged boy's bedroom, the full sized bed made neatly with an aquamarine comforter. The whole room was creamy blue with white accents that reminded me of the ocean. There were these large, door sized windows covered with white curtains, a couple of sandy colored bookcases, a dresser, a wardrobe with a small, oval mirror, two bedside tables, one of which held an alarm clock and a lamp.   
    The only clues of who lived in that room were the handful posters of baseball players and movie posters that I didn't recognize, as well as the desk, which was the only cluttered thing in the whole room. There were papers and books and pencils strewn all over it and Heero flushed when he saw me noticing it.   
    "I didn't have time to clean that before I left this morning," he muttered in embarrassment.  
    I couldn't help but laugh at that.  
    "It looks pretty clean to me," I said.  
    I almost remarked that he should see my room, but I never actually wanted him to, not with it's mattress lying on the floor, the scarred desk and the aged walls. I wouldn't exactly call my bedroom messy, I tried to keep it clean and orderly, but there just wasn't any place to put things. I didn't have a bedside table or a wardrobe or filing cabinet or anything like that. Just a hole in the wall and a hole in the floor to stash the things that were important to me. I wondered with embarrassment what Heero would think of the starkness of that room or my pile of scraps or the overflowing, cheap bookcase that used to belong to my mother.   
    Still blushing a little, Heero put his book bag down and led me back out of his bedroom to complete the tour of the second floor.  
    "My parents' bedroom is downstairs," he told me as he led me to the other door on the same side of the hallway as his room, "So is my father's office, so they won't come up here much. Here, this is the bathroom."  
    When he opened the door, I nearly laughed at him again. 'Bathroom' is what he said, but compared to mine, it looked like one of those spas that they advertised on television. For starters, my own bathroom is only big enough for two people, if one of them was in the shower at the time. His bathroom looked big enough to fit eight, not including the bath and shower. Yeah, that's right, the damned place had a separate bath from the shower. If Heero had told me that there were people in the world who weren't super rich who had something like that, I would have thought that he was joking.  
    The bathroom was done in various textures of sand and gold. There was a double sink with a huge mirror and two windows framing the bath. You could actually take a fucking bath in that place with the windows uncovered and no one would be able to see you. The bath itself was this huge, oddly shaped thing that could comfortably fit three people, set into the corner of the room. I can't really describe it properly, it almost looked like a jacuzzi, the actual bath made in white porcelain, but the bath was set almost into this pedestal or cabinet looking formation that was framed in amber gold granite and had wide ledges that you could easily sit on without getting wet. It looked like the sort of thing that you could lounge in for hours.   
    Don't get me wrong, the bathroom wasn't some swanky thing that you could imagine a celebrity having, I was just blown away by how nice it looked. The shower was just as impressive. It was just as big as the bath and made completely of frosted glass. I imagined myself trying to take a shower in it that night and couldn't do it. I was hit with this sensation... confusion, I guess. What was I doing there, where did I fit in with all of this?   
    "And this is the entertainment room," Heero, completely oblivious to my internally freaking out, led me out of the bathroom and into the room that was on the far end of the hallway.  
    I had no idea what he meant by that until he showed me in. The room had obviously been an extra bedroom when they had moved in, and it was the same size as Heero's room, but it had been converted into what looked like an extra living room. The walls had been made into book shelves that housed, not just books, but what looked like movies and games. There was a sofa, chairs, and coffee table surrounding a large television set and what looked to be several video game consoles. There was even a treadmill tucked away in one corner of the room.  
    "My mom won't let me have a television or game console in my bedroom, only my computer," Heero explained sheepishly, "She says that it would just distract me from doing my homework. If you want to play anything when you're over here, you're welcome to."  
    "I might take you up on that, I've never played anything more than a board game before," I admitted.   
    Heero shook his head at that, like it was some great tragedy. We left the entertainment room, passed by one of the doors, which Heero informed me was just another guest room, to the door that was right across from the bathroom and closer to the stairs.  
    "You can sleep in here," my friend told me and opened the door.  
    When I had been told that they had a guest room for me to crash in for the weekend, I had been envisioning something rather small, but cozy. Apparently, when the Yuys had moved into that house, it had boasted four bedrooms on the second floor and a master bedroom on the first. That seemed ridiculous to me, but the 'guest room' that Heero showed me was as big as his room, even if it wasn't as nicely furnished. There was a full bed, a desk, a dresser, closet, and a bed side table. Unlike Heero's rooms, the colors in this room were darker and more contemporary, mostly dark grey complimented with beige. The windows were smaller, but not by much. Hell, I would have been happy with a porthole sized window compared to my attic room.   
    "Is it ok?" Heero asked shyly.  
    "Yeah, it's great," I put my duffle bag in the corner of the room, "Thanks again for inviting me. I just need to change for work, then I'll be off. I'll see you tomorrow, though."  
    "Alright, have fun at work," he waved and left me alone to change.   
    I gave the room another once over, feeling so completely out of place, it isn't even funny. I walked to the bed and, even knowing that I didn't have a whole lot of time before work, I threw myself down on it. It was heavenly and soft, but weird. It's like... getting used to really cheap, bland soup. You eat that for most of your life and then you try soup from some fancy, pricey restaurant that has a ton of rich spices in it, and you don't like it. You know that it's supposed to taste better, and it does, but you're so used to shit that it tastes funny to you. I knew that that bed felt better than my own, but I was so used to my lumpy, flat mattress that it was hard to get used to a better one.   
    It was also a strange feeling just to be laying on a bed that wasn't mine. I've laid on things besides my mattress, of course, but mostly just hospital beds or couches. I had to keep reminding myself that even though that bed didn't belong to me, I was supposed to be laying down on it, so it was ok. I just couldn't equate the room that I was in as the room that I was going to be spending the next three days in. It was weird, but not a bad weird. I sighed and rolled off the bed, digging through my duffle for the work appropriate clothes that I had packed. I don't think I've ever wanted to go to work less as I did right then.   
    I dressed, combed my hair, and ran back downstairs. Mr. and Mrs. Yuy acted like the whole dish thing had never happened and I was all too happy to put it behind me as well. Mr. Yuy gave me the pass code to their security system and then I was out of there and on my way to the bus stop that would take me back to south Nausten.   
    Both of my shifts were long and boring, but I tackled each task with an energy that even Mr. Leneski applauded me for. I don't know what it was. Maybe the home cooked meal in my stomach, that I had had relatively good day if I didn't think about the dish incident, or that I had something to look forward to at the end of my shifts for the first time. Maybe it was odd and something that was kind of freaking me out, but I still felt this kind of happy anticipation. I found myself going over it in my head repeatedly all that night and early morning, 'I'm going home to Heero.'   
    That was a dangerous thought in how excited it made me. That house was not my home, but Heero was still there. My friend, my only friend, was there and I could be with him. And, a just as powerful thought: I wasn't going home to my father. He couldn't touch me when I was with the Yuys. He couldn't yell at me or hurt me. That night, when I would go to bed in that strange room, he wouldn't be able to crawl into my bed. That thought made me feel so happy that I was almost sick with it. If I thought about it too much, I knew that I would start to cry. A sanctuary, that was the right word for it. Heero had said that he had wanted to give me some peace and quiet, but he would never know just how right that phrase was for what he had given me. So I tried not to let my pessimistic side take hold for once and not think about how frightened I was about all the things that were changing in my life, and just tried to focus on the good things.   
    I stopped by my house on the way to my factory shift to take care of Pepper. Although time was short before my shift, I took the time to play with her and brush out her fur, hoping that she wouldn't be too pissed at me that I wouldn't be coming home that night. My last shift was even more boring and tiring than the first and by the end of it, all I wanted to do was lie down and sleep. My bruises were still healing and I felt sore and stiff after tossing boxes around for hours. When I left, I walked right past the bus stop and started to walk towards my house before I remembered where I was staying that night and had to turn around.   
    As I got off the bus on the north end and walked towards the Yuy home, I expected it to be like it always was for me going home to my own house after work, that everything would be pitch dark and I would have to stumble around some strange place on my way up to the guest room. To my surprise, even though it was after two in the morning, all those little lights on the walk way and the porch light had been turned on. And when I keyed in the security code and opened the door, the light in the foyer was on as well. I found a little post-it note on the table there while kicking off my boots.   
    'Duo, could you be a dear and switch off the lights when you come in? The light switch is right by the door. Thanks!' was written in fairly feminine looking writing.  
    They had left the lights on for me. I felt something painful quiver inside of me and had to wipe my eyes as I felt something wet there. I was just tired, I told myself, it was nothing. They were just being considerate, that was all. But as I locked the door and switched off the lights, I couldn't shake that pain, this strange, melancholy thing. I stuck the note in my pocket and, as quietly as I could, crept up the stairs and into the guest room that was mine. My duffle bag was exactly where I had left it, but someone had come into the room and turned down the sheets and closed the curtains on the blinds for me. I had that feeling again, that quiver, at the knowledge that all of that had been done for me.   
    I wanted to take a shower, but I also didn't want to wake up anyone that early in the morning, so I just put my pajamas on and laid down in bed. And stared up at the ceiling, wide awake.   
    "Fuck," I muttered an hour later, still awake, and rubbed at my eyes.  
    I almost laughed at myself. I had thought that things could be different there, that if I could only be in a nice, quiet place like that, a place away from the anxiety that my father gave me, I might be able to get a decent night's sleep for once. No such luck. I guess my insomnia is more deeply rooted in me, or maybe it was just because I was so unused to that room and that bed. I tossed and turned for another two hours, in that tired, hellish limbo that insomnia suffers are well acquainted with, before I gave up the ghost. I got up and walked carefully down the steps and into the living room.   
    I felt wrong walking around a place that I was a mere guest in at that hour, but I just couldn't keep lying there, looking up at a ceiling and agonizing over my sleeplessness. Everything felt so... alien there. I didn't even feel restless or uncomfortable, sleep was just this elusive thing. In the dark, I found the couch and laid down on it. It was a hell of a lot more comfortable than my own couch at home, but it still just felt like a couch. I curled up into a tight ball on the couch, trying to get comfortable and hoping that I would find sleep, if only for an hour. I didn't want Heero's parents see me walking around with raccoon eyes all day.   
    After about a half an hour later without even a slight doze, I opened my eyes at a strange clicking sound and saw a shape moving in the dark. For a moment, I thought that I was having one of my nightmares and that the thing was coming to get me. My heart hammered in my chest, but it didn't take me too long to figure out that that was just from my assumptions, and not the fear of the nightmare. I was still wide awake. Still, when that shape moved and I felt a wet nose nudging at my hand instead of claws raking at my flesh, I felt relieved.  
    "Kanuck," I sighed, my fears draining out of me, "Couldn't sleep either, boy?"  
    He laid his head on the couch right next to mine and whined, as if in sympathy. I reached out to pet the top of his head, feeling this strange, familiar comfort at the feeling of his fur.  
    "Want to keep me company until your owner wakes up?" I asked him.  
    He huffed happily and licked my face.  
    "Gross," I muttered, wiping the slobber off, but I let my arm drape down off the couch and rested my hand against his thick fur.  
    The dog moved his head off the couch and laid on the ground, seeming content to stay there with me.  
    "You're a good boy," I murmured and heard his tail whumping on the floor as he wagged it, "Don't tell Heero about this, ok? He'd just worry for no reason."  
    I closed my eyes and continued to pet the dog. It was soothing, the sound of his tail almost rhythmic.   
    "I don't know what I'm doing here," I muttered to him, or maybe just to the open air, "I don't belong here. I feel so out of place, like I'm an intruder. I'm not good enough, you know? But I want to be," I felt a tear track down my right cheek and ignored it, "I don't know how to be good enough for him. I wish that you could talk, so you could tell me," I slurred in my tiredness and opened my eyes to see Kanuck's own glittering at me in the darkness, "or maybe it's better that you can't. I can tell you that I love him and you're the only one in the world who can't go telling on me," I smirked to myself before I yawned and closed my eyes again.  
    "I just want this to last," I murmured, "Just a little bit longer, Kanuck. Can you help me do that? Help me to not fuck things up again."  
  
*****  
  
    "Duo, breakfast is ready," a somehow familiar, feminine voice roused me from sleep.  
    I felt incredibly disoriented. I wasn't on my bed and the woman that was waking me up was not my mother. I didn't even think that my mother was capable of speaking to anyone, let alone me, in that sweet and gentle tone. I opened my eyes to find Mrs. Yuy's deep black ones staring down at me.  
    "Good morning," she greeted cheerfully.   
    Memory flooded back to me. I remembered going downstairs to lay on the couch with Kanuck. I guessed that I must have fallen asleep for awhile, because golden, bright sunlight streamed through the windows instead of the dim light of early morning.  
    "'morning," I mumbled, still half asleep.  
    "Oh, I didn't wake you up too early did I?" she asked guiltily.  
    Even without knowing what time it was, I shook my head.  
    "Time?" I managed to get out, fighting to wake up and be more alert.  
    "Ten am," I was informed, "I would have woken you up sooner, but you looked pretty deeply asleep. Was the bed uncomfortable?"  
    "No," I sat up stiffly, "I just have problems sleeping sometimes."  
    Quite frankly, I was amazed that I had gotten as much sleep as I had.  
    "Well, if you're not still too tired, Mr. Yuy made waffles," she beamed at me.  
    I immediately perked up. I hadn't eaten anything since the stew from last night, so even though I was still sleepy, food sounded heavenly. I couldn't even remember the last time that I had had waffles. We don't own a waffle iron, so it must have been some time that Quatre had taken me out to breakfast. I could smell bacon in the air, too.  
    "I would love some," I managed a tired smile and stood up off the couch, following Heero's mother into the kitchen.  
    Mr. Yuy was cooking bacon at the stove top and Heero, looking a whole lot more awake than I felt, was setting the table.   
    "Good morning," the both of them greeted in unison.  
    "Morning," I waved.  
    "You're just in time," Heero's father took the stack of plates from his son and started to pile on waffles and bacon onto them.  
    He handed me one of the plates and I thanked him, sitting down at the table. To my surprise, not only were there waffles and bacon, there was whipped cream, syrup, scrambled eggs, and a bowl filled with fresh, cut up blueberries, strawberries, apples, and bananas. I all too happily spooned some of the fruit, cream, and syrup onto my waffles and put some of the eggs on a smaller plate for later.  
    "You guys always eat like this?" I teased Heero as he sat down next to me, placing a tall glass of orange juice in front of me.  
    "The weekends are the only time that we can eat breakfast as a family," he explained, "So, yeah, we usually eat like this on Saturdays and go out to eat on Sundays."  
    I shook my head. It must be nice, having that kind of structure, knowing what you were going to eat, knowing that your family was going to be there, to have some kind of schedule and being able to have faith in it. Compared to Heero's daily life, mine was pure chaos. The closest that I came to having a schedule was school and work, everything else was a whirlwind. I never knew, when I opened our refrigerator, what would be in there to eat. Even if something was there the day before, it didn't mean that my parents wouldn't selfishly take all of it, especially if my father had his 'friends' over. Every day is different for me, from my sleeping habits to my meals to my interactions with my parents. I yearned for the structure that Heero seemed to have, but I tried not to dwell too much on how vastly different my life was from his.   
    "So," Mr. Yuy said as he sat down at the table across from us, next to his wife, "what are you boys planning on doing today?"  
    I shrugged and looked at Heero. Saturdays before work, I usually did half of my homework and worked on chores for Mrs. Liddle and my father. If I was lucky, I could do a little bit of reading before I had to go to work or take a walk or even go to the library. I felt a familiar worry then as I looked at my friend. I was so... fucking boring. What the hell did Heero see in me? What would he do when he finally realized how few hobbies and interests I have?   
    "Well, I was thinking," Heero glanced over at me, "If you don't have work until four, I have varsity baseball try outs today at two. We could relax around here, maybe watch a movie until then and we can pick up some lunch after that before you have to work. Unless that sounds too boring and you'd just like to stay here? Try outs are only for an hour and I'll probably be done by two-thirty."  
    "I thought that try outs are next weekend?" his father asked.  
    "They changed the date. I found out about it yesterday," Heero turned to me again.  
    "N-no, I don't think that it would be boring, but isn't this a bit early for try outs? I thought that the baseball season doesn't start until spring?" I asked.  
    "The season doesn't start until April, yeah," he confirmed, "but varsity starts early practice. Most of the players on the varsity team are aiming to get recruited for college, so they're pretty dedicated. If I get on the team, I'll be in practice all through the winter."  
    "I don't think you need to worry about getting picked," his father said with a snort.  
    "You're really that good?" I looked to my friend with amazement.  
    Rumors about Heero's athletic prowess, especially with baseball, had been flying around before he had even officially moved here. I had no clue which rumors were true, but there didn't seem to be any doubt that he was very good. He had been called the star player of the previous varsity team that he had played on. Heero just blushed and shrugged.  
    "I'm ok," he muttered.  
    His father shook his head.   
    "You know full well that you are a lot better than 'ok'. I've told you before, you have the skill and discipline to go pro, if you want to," he said, taking a sip of his coffee.   
    "Is that what you want to do when you graduate?" I asked him.   
    Heero hesitated, pushing food around his plate.  
    "I... don't really know," he admitted, "I enjoy playing baseball because I'm good at it, but it's not something that I'm especially passionate about. I could go professional, and I would probably do alright, but I wouldn't be entirely broken up about it if I didn't, either. There's nothing that I'm crazy about, career wise. I don't really know what I want to do when I'm done with high school."  
    I had never met another person that was like me, that didn't know what they wanted to do with the rest of their lives, that didn't have any kind of passionate drive, a career that they could see themselves doing and loving. Now that I was a junior, it seemed like everyone else but me had a path. They had goals and dreams and I was the only one that was listless and confused and frightened about the future. It made me feel more like a freak than all those years of bullying. Hearing that hesitance from a boy that I had thought had everything in his life figured out, a boy that had this great, well off family and had once been the most popular boy in school, made me feel this deep connection with him. That we had something like that in common amazed me.   
    "You have all this year to think about it," Heero's father said kindly, "We'll support you, whatever you decide."  
    I thought mournfully of Trowa's father, how he had disapproved of Trowa's interests in wildlife photography and had wanted him to stick to his basketball career, merely because it was more 'reasonable'. My views of Heero's dad went way up at that one, little statement. I couldn't imagine having a parent that would support me, even if I chose something that they thought was stupid. I got the impression from the man that it didn't matter where Heero's life led him, he would still be proud of him. I wondered... if I did something important with my life, something special... if I got money somehow and was able to support my parents, would my father be proud of me then? Or was he simply incapable of holding me in any kind of esteem?  
    "What about you, Duo?" Mrs. Yuy chimed in, "What are your plans for after you graduate?"  
    I felt something bitter settle in the pit of my stomach and had to take a bite of waffle to smother it and give me a second to think of my answer.  
    "I don't really know yet," I answered truthfully.  
    I was pretty sure what the future held for me, but that didn't mean that I had any idea of what I was going to do when I graduated from high school. I hoped that I would still have both of my jobs by then, and some money saved up, enough to rent an apartment, although that was probably unlikely. Undoubtedly, the best option that I had was to take on another job and try to find someone to share a place with. The rest of breakfast was quiet and companionable and I was very happy to let the subject drop. The future was too terrifying of a prospect for me. I just wanted to enjoy moments like that weekend for as long as I could.  
    Heero beat me to the counter to set up the drying rack for the dishes, so I settled for helping clear the table. Thankfully, I didn't manage to break anything again.  
    "Duo, can I talk to you for a second?" Heero's father asked me when I finished stacking the dishes at the sink.  
    "Sure," I said, even as I felt a chill of foreboding.   
    I remembered the piercing, inquisitive look that he had given me yesterday, when I had freaked out and worried that he was going to ask me about it, but I followed him out of the kitchen and into the living room anyway, feeling like I was about to be scolded. My heart raced with paranoia.  
    "Will you be working late tonight as well?" he asked me instead, but I didn't feel much relief.   
    "Yes," I confirmed, "but I'll be out earlier tomorrow."  
    "What time?" he pressed.  
    I chewed on my tongue, but decided to be honest with him again.  
    "One," I admitted.  
    "That's awfully late," he frowned.  
    "I'm sorry if I woke anyone up last night," I said frantically, mistaking his tone, "I'll try to be quieter tonight, I promise."  
    "And what time did you come home last night?" he raised an eyebrow at my careless admission.  
    Fuck, busted.   
    "Two-thirty," I said, feeling awful when he looked shocked at that.  
    Mr. Yuy rubbed at his face, almost as if he were exasperated.  
    "That's illegal," he pointed out, "How old are you?"  
    "Sixteen," I confessed, "but I'll be seventeen in two months!"   
    "And it will still be illegal then," his expression was troubled, but his tone wasn't stern, making it hard for me to tell if he was about to yell at me for breaking the law or lecture me about doing something foolish, "My wife would tell me that it isn't any of my business, and I know that you are trying to help your family, but you're far too young to be working that hard! You're going to work yourself into an early grave with these kinds of hours."  
    "One of my coworkers says that," I said with a halfhearted smile, "but it really isn't that big of a deal, even if I'm not supposed to be working that late at my age. I don't need a lot of sleep and it's never been a problem. Quite frankly," I rubbed sheepishly at the back of my head, "I don't really have anything I'm good at like Heero. Working hard is all I've been able to do. And the money at that job is a lot better than what I was making when I was just bussing tables."  
    "Money is not more important than your health," he said sadly, "You might think that you have a handle on things, but this sort of thing can sneak up on you, trust me, I know. Just... think about it, alright? You're young and you have your entire life to be an adult, but you don't have much time left to be a kid. Take care of yourself and don't push yourself too hard. That's all I'm going to say about it," he held his hands up in surrender.  
    "Thank you, sir," I thanked him, not for his advice, but for his concern, and for letting the subject drop when he had had his say.  
    Just on time to miss out on that entire, somewhat embarrassing conversation, Heero walked out of the kitchen.  
    "Kitchen's clean," he told his father.  
    "Good. I have a couple of things that I need to get done in my office, so in case I don't see you before you go, good luck at your try outs, you're going to do great," he clapped Heero on the shoulder and turned his attention back to me, "And I'll see you tomorrow, Duo. We'll keep the light on for you again tonight."  
    "Thanks, Mr. Yuy," I felt relieved when he didn't press the issue of my coming home in the early morning and walked out of the living room down a hallway that I hadn't been in yet.   
    "Come on," Heero urged, "Why don't you take a shower and I'll show you how to work the gaming systems."  
    "Ok," I followed him upstairs, making a beeline to the guest room while he went to his own room to get dressed.  
    I grabbed a change of clothes from my duffle bag, as well as my shampoo, hair brush, and other various odds and ends that I had brought from home, and headed into the bathroom. Again, I felt amazed at the shower and bath. It was probably a good thing that I had work that weekend or I would have wanted to try that bath tub and probably have stayed in it until I had become soup. I decided on a typical shower instead, stripping and walking into the glass enclosed stall. The frosted glass was kind of weird. No one could see me from the outside of it beyond a dark shape, but the same was true of anyone on the other side of the glass. It made my hair stand on end for a few minutes, but I shook it off. I had locked the bathroom door anyway.  
    The shower controls were a bit different than my shower's at home as well. We had two knobs, hot and cold, and a little pin on the faucet that controlled whether it was on bath or shower, not that we ever used the bath one. The stopper on the drain had cracked so badly that it was impossible to take a bath in that damned thing. Our temperature controls were a bit... wonky, also. Not only did we never get hot water, per se, more like slightly warm or tepid, but sometimes the controls were swapped. As in, sometimes if you turned on the warm water, ice cold water came out and vice versa. Sometimes you could turn the knob and water wouldn't come out at all or it was brown. And the stream was completely unreliable. Sometimes it was too weak and sometimes too strong. My father said that our pipes were fucked up. I just think that that shower is possessed by a demon.  
    The upstairs shower at the Yuys had no such problems. It was just one dial, turn left for cold, turn right for heat, and had a small lever on the bottom that controlled the power and function of the spray. I turned the spray on to medium high and switched the water to hot. And hot water was exactly what I got. I think I might have moaned happily the second that the water hit my skin. The only time I got any kind of hot shower was after gym class, but even those showers were kind of shitty and the hot water only lasted for a few minutes.   
    This shower didn't have any problems with hot water. Though I usually rush through my showers, I will admit that I indulged a little bit. I braced myself on my arms, laying them crossed on the shower wall and hung my head down, just letting that hot stream fall down my neck and back. It felt like how I imagined a massage would.  
    "That's it," I groaned as steam filled the shower, "I've died and gone to heaven."  
    I took my sweet, damned time in that shower, spending several minutes just doing nothing and washing myself almost lethargically. I don't think I've ever been so clean in my damned life. When I finally got out of it, I felt relaxed and lazy, something pretty new to me. After combing my hair and brushing my teeth, I actually felt like a human being. Even my lack of sleep didn't faze me. I found Heero in the entertainment room, setting up one of the consoles. It looked a bit different than the others in that it was white, but I really couldn't tell the difference between them or what they were.   
    "I thought that we could play a game, unless you would like to do something else," he said a bit awkwardly, turning on the console and the television.  
    "This is fine," I assured him, "But don't expect me to be any good. I've never played a video game in my life."  
    He snorted.  
    "I'm not competitive, this is just for fun. You've really never played any video games before, not even on the computer?" he asked me.  
    "Well, not _never_ ," I confessed, "We got to play a few games for our mathematics classes in Elementary school. You know, those ones where you progress through the levels using algebra and stuff?"  
    "I don't really think those count," Heero said dourly, like that offended him for some reason.  
    "It's the closest I had to a video game," I shrugged, "And my dad took me to an arcade a couple of times when I was really little, but that's it. We don't have a computer at home or the money to buy even those little handheld game consoles."  
    "How do you get your homework done, then?" he asked, plopping a black controller in my hand, "I've seen you hand in graphs for Chemistry."  
    "It's called the library," I rolled my eyes at him, "It's this wonderful resource that has free books, desks, computers, and you can even print things out for just ten cents a go. It's truly a marvel of modern industry, you should try it some time."  
    "Har har," he grumbled, grabbing his own controller, only his was white and shaped like a stick while mine had to be held in both hands.  
    "Why does that look different than this one?" I puzzled, "And where are the cords?"  
    "It's a motion controller," he explained to me, "I thought you might be more comfortable with the regular controller. And recent console controllers are all wireless. We really need to get you out more."  
    His voice was teasing, but I wasn't quite sure if he wasn't actually serious or not. It's true that I'm not exactly worldly. I don't watch a huge amount of television and I never watch the news, but that's never bothered me. I don't think that I'm missing much. All the same, when he said 'we', I felt this odd warmth in me and hell if I knew why. The game that Heero picked turned out to be a simple racing game. It was rather colorful and cartoonish, not something that I would have imagined him playing, but the controls were easy enough for me to get the hang of, although it took a few rounds before I was even able to challenge Heero.   
    He was very patient, showing me which buttons did what and while neither of us were all that competitive, I found that I was enjoying myself as we played, a lot more than I thought that I would. I didn't even notice that, little by little, we had gotten closer and closer to each other on the couch until, during our last round, our arms touched. I couldn't help but blush as I realized that halfway through the game. I was so distracted by the feel of his arm against mine, even through our long sleeved shirts, that I should have easily lost, but for some reason, Heero did even worse than I did and seemed incapable of concentrating on the game.   
    We took a break from the game and Heero popped in a movie. It was a very silly, but colorful and endearing sci fi film about the kinds of things that all those sorts of movies seemed to be about. The world was going to be destroyed unless the male lead helped the female lead, who had incredible powers, and of course they did save it just seconds before the earth would have annihilated and fell in love with each other in the process. It was a dorky movie, with plenty of plot holes and odd, alien characters, but I found it enjoyable. The two of us had managed to shift away from each other and I was able to relax again somewhat, even if my heart was still racing from that mere proximity.   
    When the movie finished, it was time for Heero to go to his try out. I followed him into his bedroom where he fished his jacket out of his closet, as well as a baseball bat. It was very pale, almost white, with a black handle and looked fairly worn and well loved, but also well taken care of beyond it's obvious age. I had never actually seen a real, wooden, baseball bat before. When we played baseball in gym, they gave us these cheap, metal ones.   
    "Here," Heero handed it to me to hold when he saw me examining it.  
    "It's heavy," I remarked with surprise and it was.   
    I had been expecting some weight, but I couldn't imagine the kind of strain that it put on Heero to swing it.  
    "It's rock maple," he told me.  
    "Is that good?"  
    "It's more durable than other wood," Heero explained, "It isn't as flexible, which means that I can get bigger hits out of it. It's pretty dense, so it sucks at taking shots off the end, but I've always hit in the middle. It... used to be my grandfather's. He gave it to me the day that I got into junior league varsity. It's getting a bit worn, so I have to be careful. Maple's stronger than ash or birch, but a bad hit off the end can make them splinter."  
    "For someone who says that baseball isn't his passion," I teased, covering up my discomfort at holding something that was clearly important to him and handing it back to him hastily, "you sure do know a lot about it and like talking about it."  
    He shrugged.  
    "I like baseball," he admitted, "Like I said this morning, I'm good at it and it's satisfying doing something that I can excel in. I've been doing it for so long that going through the motions of it is comforting. Don't you have something like that?"  
    "Cooking, I guess," I told him, "Sometimes I just like make things just to make them and I guess it is comforting to me."  
    "You look content when you're in home ec," he said softly, "Like you're in your element and you're confident in what you're doing. You're like that when we run laps in gym, too, but you seem uncomfortable with the other activities."  
    I felt my cheeks heat knowing that he had been watching me intently enough to realize those things.   
    "I've never been very athletic, but I'm a decent runner. I've always enjoyed it," or I used to, I thought morosely, "But everything else... In case you haven't noticed, I'm not really all that graceful when it comes to sports. I've never been very interested in them, either. My dad watches football and hockey, so I at least know a little bit about those, but I've only been to one basketball game."  
    "Have you ever seen a baseball game before?" Heero asked me and then looked affronted when I shook my head, "Then I guess I'll have to try extra hard today to impress you."  
    I sputtered, but he didn't give me any time to be awkward or insist that he didn't need to do a thing for me. He wrapped the bat up in small duffle bag, slung it over his shoulder, and pulled me by my hand down the steps. His parents wished him good luck and then we were out the door. Even though I really didn't want that memory knocking around in my head, considering how quickly things had gone sour after the fact, I couldn't help remembering the night that Quatre had dragged me off to Trowa's game, how happy I had felt. Before I had become friends with Heero, that had been the last time I had felt that kind of happiness.   
    I really hoped that it wouldn't turn out to be a bad omen. I would do anything to keep history from repeating itself.  
  
End Part 3  
      
Author's Note: Well, I was going to try to fit the entire weekend into one part, but it got a bit long. I hope none of this is boring anyone, although this story isn't exactly actiony to begin with. Next part will probably be another long one as I struggle to get to this chapter's main plot.   
      
      
      
      
      
  
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
  



	32. Chapter 7 Part 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duo watches Heero's baseball try outs and teaches him how to ice skate.

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 7  
Part 4  
  
  
    Mr. Yuy had been right when he had said that Heero could go professional if he wanted to. Those weren't just the words of a proud parent who believed that their child was special and could accomplish anything. Heero was damned good and all those rumors about his skill hadn't been exaggerations at all. Watching the try outs was a lot different than going to see Trowa's basketball match. For one, it wasn't very crowded, the bleachers not even half full with parents that had just come to add moral support for their kid, and it wasn't very loud either, everyone trying to be quiet to let the players concentrate. Also, it wasn't actually a game. There were two events: batting and pitching. All the boys lined up for each and got ten tries, while Coach Horner wrote down their results on his clipboard.   
    None of the boys trying out were bad. They all seemed to be veteran players of the sport, marking the difference between try outs for the regular team and varsity, but none of them held a candle to Heero, and I'm not just saying that because I'm biased. He started out in the group that was pitching to the batting group. In a weird state of events, the boy that he ended up pitching against was none other than Alex Williams, as in the same Alex that hung out with Zechs. I felt a thrill of fear when he walked up to the plate, the same bat that Zechs had almost used on me the day that I had come out slung over his shoulder. I could easily imagine him striking the ball right at Heero or doing something equally immature.  
    But there was another part of me that felt afraid, a part of me that I hadn't even known existed until that moment. I was afraid because... I didn't want Alex to win. I wanted Heero to be victorious and get one up on the asshole. I felt adrenaline coursing through me as the two of them squared off, and I wasn't even the one facing him. When Alex sneered smugly at my friend, I secretly hoped that Heero would devastate him. I didn't even want Heero to hit him or anything, I just wanted him to show him how much better he was than him in every way.   
    I wasn't disappointed. My worries quickly vanished when Heero smirked at him, like he knew how out of his league Alex was, and then pitched the ball at him. I had never seen anyone throw anything like that before. Heero's aim and the movements of his arm and body were so exact and well practiced, but it was his eyes that got to me. They were so intense, the look of someone twice his age, so focused on one thing and when he let that ball go, there was this shine to those blue eyes, this look of happiness and satisfaction. My heart ached with desire for him and I felt this immense love and affection for him, so strong that I thought I would get sick with it.  
    That ball went at Alex like a freaking rocket. I could barely track it and our mutual bully didn't stand a chance. He swung his bat at the air, but was seconds too late to even come near it. The ball hit dead center in the catcher's mitt and Alex blinked in confusion, not at where the ball had gone, but at Heero, like he couldn't believe that the other boy had thrown it at that speed. I watched with excitement as Alex gritted his teeth and readied himself, obviously thinking that it had been a fluke, only for the same result to be repeated again and again and again. He didn't manage to hit a single one of Heero's pitches. I felt like I might burst out of my seat and cheer Heero's name.   
    "That's bullshit!" he yelled when Horner told him to go rejoin his group for the pitching practice, "That's not a legal pitch! Are you fucking blind, he's cheating!"  
    "That's it, Williams, get out of here!" Horner snarled right back at him, "No one likes a sore loser!"   
    Alex glared at Heero heatedly and for a scary moment, I thought that he was going to throw his bat at him, but he just stormed off the field and it didn't even matter to me that he was probably going to try to get back at either of us for that embarrassment. Heero looked over at me, his gaze not frightened of Alex's display of temper, but triumphant. I couldn't stop myself. I beamed at him and gave him a thumb's up. He blushed, rubbing sheepishly at the back of his head and smiled back at me. It was the most beautiful smile in the world. When Heero passed Horner to get ready for the batting portion of his try out, the coach thumped him on the shoulder and I knew right then that he was going to get on the team.   
    I understood then, as I waited for Heero to have his turn to bat, why Quatre had always gone to Trowa's basketball games, even though he had had no interest at all in sports. It hadn't just been about being able to see Trowa more. When I watched Heero play, watched him throw himself fully into something that he loved and excelled at, I felt this excitement knowing that I was seeing this entirely different side to him. He stood up at the plate, his hands clenched around the bat and each and every time he swung it, he did it like it was just another part of himself. The cracking noise that the bat made when it struck the ball all ten times was chilling, the power behind it as it sent the ball flying over the fence.   
    I knew then that this was all just a formality to him, going through the try outs. He and his parents had known that he would be getting on the team, I understood that from the first moment that he swung. It didn't matter how fast the pitch was, he knew exactly where the ball was going to go and when and how hard he would need to swing.   
    Seeing him there, in his element, this completely different person from the bully that I had known or even the person that described himself as a coward, I fell more and more in love with him, with every part of him, even the parts that I didn't know about yet. I wanted to find them all, discover them like a little kid finding some wonderful truth about the world. I was absolutely sure that Quatre had felt the same way when he had watched Trowa play, doing something that he had loved. It was an addicting, amazing feeling, watching the boy that I loved. Even the other boys trying out, the same kids that we went to school with and openly mocked him with hostility, watched him, not with jealousy or bitterness, but amazement. It was like they were watching a professional baseball game and all they could do was admire his skills, just like I was. It was incredible that, just by excelling at a sport, he could make them forget that he was an outcast.  
    But at the same time that I felt all those things for him, I also felt a deep sadness as I watched him play. I didn't have anything in my life like that. There wasn't some skill that I had that would let me excel in anything. More than that, I mourned the things that had died in me. While I didn't think that I had any extraordinary gift, Heero was right, I had enjoyed cooking and running. There had been times when running in the morning before school had been the only thing that had kept me sane. But now... I just didn't care. All I had that made me feel anything beyond sadness and fear anymore was Heero.   
    I didn't love anything anymore. My father had taken that from me. Or maybe I just use him as an excuse, to explain away why there's nothing in my life. Maybe I'm just this flat, boring person and, sooner or later, I would find myself not caring for Heero, just like everything else. When I think about running or cooking or even reading, how I used to love those things and enjoy them, I feel like I'm losing my humanity. That grey place in my head... I haven't been able to escape it after all of these years. It's just spread out into everything that I do, everything that once made me feel.   
    How long before it takes Heero as well? How long before he realizes what I am and abandons me like everyone else? Heero's world is filled with these amazing colors, with all this life and hope. I don't belong in that world. I can feel that. But like a fish dreaming of flying, I can't let it go. I know that our friendship won't go anywhere, just like I knew that my relationship with Trowa wasn't going to go anywhere, but I still cling to it anyway like some kind of parasite. I don't even know what I want. I'm so terrified of the things that I feel for him, and my sense of caution and self-perseverance tells me that I should stay away from him. But the rest of me wants it too much. I just want to be with him, even if I drag him down into the muck with me. That's the sort of horrible person that I am. I just hope that he never finds that out about me.  
      
*****  
  
    My morose mood threatened to follow me around, but I couldn't maintain it when Heero met with me at the bleachers with a triumphant smile on his face. His satisfied mood was contagious, bleeding into me and pushing away my sad thoughts for awhile. On our way to a seafood restaurant that was close by for lunch, he informed me that Coach Horner had told him that his getting onto the team was a done deal, not that either of us was surprised. Heero ordered a platter of various fried fish and scallops and fries for us to share and we talked about the try outs while we ate. I got Heero to talk to me a little about his old varsity team in Florida, steering the conversation away from me as much as possible.   
    I went right from the restaurant to the bus stop to go to work after we finished eating, congratulating Heero on showing up Alex. I felt even worse about going to work than I had the day before, even though I only had the one shift. For the first time in my life, I wanted to just not show up at work so I could do something that I wanted to do: hang out with my friend. Not that I ever would, but the desire was there. I berated myself for being greedy. This was the best weekend that I had had since Quatre had died. No, maybe even before that. I had eaten more food that day than I typically ever did, I was enjoying myself, and for a short while at least, I had been able to immerse myself in someone else's life and forget my own.   
    But the world goes on. What I was doing... well, it was a band-aid, wasn't it? I was putting a band-aid on a mortal wound and pretending like it was healed. When I was with Heero and his parents, it was so easy to pretend like nothing was wrong, that I was no one more than who they thought I was: Heero's friend. It was easy to pretend that that band-aid was holding and helping. But when I went to work, I remembered that it would have to end eventually. Sunday night was waiting for me and I would have to go back to my real home. Just the thought of it made me feel like I had swallowed barbed wire. Nothing ever lasts, only the terrible things.  
    I got back to the Yuy's home faster that night, at 1:15 in the morning. I switched off the lights, locked the door, and headed up into the guest room. This time, I swore to myself, I was going to make a serious effort in staying in that bedroom, if only because I didn't want my hosts to start thinking that there was something wrong with me. Always the lie, I guess. But it's what I'm good at. Maybe that's my true calling. Maybe I should start considering a long term career as a con artist.   
    I needn't have worried about falling asleep, I was dead to the world almost as soon as my head hit that pillow, either from pure exhaustion or I was finally getting used to being there. But my sleep was far from peaceful. Maybe it was my fears about the next night or maybe it was just a completely random occurrence, but I had one of those strange nightmares. Only this time, it was made a thousand times worse by my waking up in a place that my mind didn't immediately recognize.   
    I woke, as I always do when the nightmare hits me, in a dream state, my heart racing and actually tasting the fear like it was a real thing. I had escaped from my home, away from the monster, but it had finally tracked me down. It was waiting there for me, in the shadows of the new room, waiting to drag me down in the darkness where it could feast on me. Only there was no gun here to hold it at bay, no safe little alcove where it couldn't reach me. I staggered out of bed, my heart rate doing something freaky and I was shaking so hard, I felt like the world was shaking with me. I was vulnerable and it was going to find me. I was panting, on the verge of hyperventilating. I had to find a way to defend myself. A knife, a blunt object, something that would make me safe from it.   
    And suddenly I knew. I knew exactly what I needed that would stop the monster. That's the last thing that I remember about the nightmare, that knowledge. In a way, it was a lot like the night that I had almost shot my father, I had that same surety in my half asleep, half awake state, that belief that I had the answer, that something could save me. The next thing that I can remember that isn't just a confused jumble of terror is waking up standing in front of Heero's closed door, my hand reached out like I was about to knock on it.   
    My heart was still pounding away in my chest and I desperately took a few deep breaths, but it didn't help. I couldn't calm myself down and now I had a whole new fear to add to the mix of terrors on a war path through me. What the hell was the matter with me? I had almost knocked on Heero's door... or had I already? That I had done it in my sleep was no excuse, some logical part of me had walked from the guest room to his with this belief that I needed him, that he could help me. In my panic and my terror, my mind had gone to him. What would I have done if he had actually woken up? Just how did this all work? Did I have enough lucidity in these nightmare states that I would have told him why I was scared?  
    I pulled my hand away from the door like it had been burned. I screamed at myself to move, to walk away and back to the guest room as quickly as I could, but I didn't. I stood there, like I was frozen stiff because... because that need hadn't gone away just because I had woken up. My fear was still there, my loneliness, and that monster, while I was aware that it was illogical and who that monster really was, was still there in my head, a constant threat. I still wanted to talk to someone. I still needed to be with someone.   
    I could do it, I knew. I could walk into Heero's room and wake him up and beg him to talk to me. I didn't even want to talk about the things that were really bothering me, I just needed to hear someone's voice. We could talk about the fucking weather and it would have made me feel better. But I couldn't do that. As much as I needed him, I was too scared to take that extra step. Besides, he would know that there was something wrong with me, he would ask me questions that I wasn't so sure I had the strength to lie about.  
    "Duo, what's wrong?" I nearly jumped right out of my skin when Heero's voice came from right behind me, like I had summoned him with my turbulent thoughts.  
    Seeing him there, his blue eyes dark from the low lighting, was enough to drive a spike through my heart.  
    "I'm sorry," I apologized awkwardly, "I didn't mean to bother you, I'll... I'll just go back to my room."  
    I tried to walk past him, but he grabbed my wrist, keeping me from leaving. Goosebumps leapt up on my skin, his touch so real compared to my nightmares about my father. I didn't try to pull my arm away. I couldn't. I could barely breathe.  
    "I..." I started to say, a thousand thoughts in my head, warring for the right to be brought out of the dark and onto my tongue.  
    'I can't sleep.'  
    'I can't take my nightmares anymore.'  
    'I killed my best friend and his mother and destroyed the rest of his family's lives.'  
    'I love you so much that it hurts, and I just want it to stop but I don't know how.'  
    'I was raped by my father and now all I want is to destroy everything around me.'  
    'I shouldn't even be alive.'  
    'I want to die, but I would miss you too much.'  
    "I had a nightmare," I said lamely, "I don't think that I'm going to be able to get back to sleep. I have them a lot and it's rare that I can... afterwards."  
    I felt like a total, awkward moron even for even admitting that much. Heero didn't make fun of me for having that kind of issue at our age and his gaze actually softened into a sympathetic one.  
    "Would you like to sleep with me?" he asked suddenly.  
    My eyes went huge and my face lit on fire as I stared at him like a deer would stare at a car barreling towards it. My brain couldn't even cope with the words that had just come out of his mouth and the image that was dancing around in my exhausted head.  
    "U...uh, t-that's," I sputtered nonsensically.      
    For a moment, Heero looked confused about my reaction, then his own words seemed to dawn on him and he turned beat red.  
    "I-I didn't mean," he stumbled just as much as I did, "I wouldn't try anything funny or anything... I just meant..." he looked like he was going to run off to find some place to hide in his embarrassment or start banging his head against the wall, but little by little, regained his composure, "I only meant," he took a deep breath and rubbed at his face, unable to look at me, "When I was a kid and I had a nightmare, I was never able to fall back asleep unless my mom or dad slept with me. Having someone near me... it was comforting. Maybe, if we laid down together, you might be able to go back to sleep. It's too early in the morning for you to be awake."  
    I almost immediately burst out 'no thanks' and bolted out of there, but for some reason, I didn't. I actually found myself considering what he was saying. To lay down with him... to be next to him on the same bed... that idea was both wonderful and terrifying. Some part of me yearned for it, to be close to this person, but I was also scared of what might happen. Would I say or do something stupid, or would I just get hurt? There was this power to the thought and I suppose that's why I didn't immediately turn him down. A cruel voice in my head sadistically pointed out that this was no doubt going to be the only chance that I would ever have of being that close to Heero. And what if, while he was asleep and I was awake, we accidentally got too close and touched? Would that really be such an awful thing?  
    "I'm a bit too old for that," I murmured weakly.  
    "Look, I promise, I won't try anything," he vowed, "You can just consider it like a sleepover, only we'll be in the same bed. Only if you want to."  
    I dared a glance at him. His face was still bright red, still embarrassed by his suggestion. That was right, I reminded myself, it wasn't like we were just two normal, teenaged boys. In my own embarrassment, I had forgotten that we were both gay. Heero was obviously well aware of it, that I might be uncomfortable because I was thinking that he wanted to... But that was the furthest thing from my mind. I was only worried about my own desires, partially because Heero didn't really seem like the kind of person who would take advantage like that, and because I just couldn't see him being attracted to me. I wasn't anything that he wanted, and his insistence that he wouldn't try anything only bolstered that belief.   
    "I'm not worried about you trying anything," 'it's not you that I'm worried about', I thought bitterly, "I've just never... slept next to anyone before. It feels kind of weird. But... I would like to see... if it'll help," I managed to get out before I changed my mind.  
    "Ok," Heero smiled at me, "If you get uncomfortable or I hog all the covers or something, you can kick me and leave."  
    I nodded, feeling so incredibly awkward as he opened his bedroom door and I followed him inside. He took the first step, laying down on his bed like it was the most natural thing in the world and I supposed that it was. I stood there on the opposite side, feeling nervous and terrified and like my guts were going to jump right out of my mouth at any minute. He didn't urge me or anything, but was patient as I finally found the courage to lay down next to him and pull the covers up over me. I quickly rolled over onto my side with my back facing him. I found it easier to pretend that there was a lot more space between us than there was, but even then, my heart was pounding.  
    "Good night, Duo," I heard Heero say in a very cute, sleepy slur.  
    "Good night, Heero," I replied back, trying to keep any tremor out of my voice.  
    What proceeded was probably one of the worst night's sleep I've ever had. Oddly enough, it didn't take me long to doze off in Heero's bed. The bed wasn't all too different from the one in the guest room and I was somehow able to kid myself into believing that the boy that I had a massive crush on _wasn't_ mere inches away from me. It was actually a relief to slip off so quickly into sleep after the previous night of tossing and turning, but it didn't last long.   
    One minute, I was dead asleep, the next, I felt the bed shift and something... someone... was brushing up against me. I was awake in a second, this horrible panic and revulsion filling me. I almost lashed out as I was sure, absolutely, positively sure that the person in bed with me was my father. My eyes shot open wide and frightened in the dark and I clutched the strange pillow to my chest like a lifeline, my breath coming out in harsh pants and my heart like a fucking jackhammer in my chest. I fought against all my instincts to flee or cry with fear or hit the other person, trying to remember where I was and what was happening to me. When I finally did remember, all I felt was shame. I couldn't even share a bed with someone that was my friend without freaking out.  
    All Heero had done was shift in his sleep. His shoulder had brushed mine, barely, and I had reacted like there was a monster in my midst. But even then, I felt fear. I buried my head into Heero's pillow and let a few tears fall on it. The rest of the morning, until I woke up for work at 8 am, went like that. Every time that Heero moved, every time he mumbled in his sleep, every time I heard a creak or some small noise outside the bedroom, I awoke in an almost screaming panic, clutching that pillow so tightly, it's a miracle that I didn't tear it open. It was hellish, almost as bad as not being able to sleep at all, that constant waking in a state of fear.   
    But do you want to know the weird thing? Even though I was scared, even though every time the bed shifted, I remembered that nightmarish, horrible sensation of feeling my own mattress dip when my father leaned on it, and even though I hated myself for ever thinking about my father when I was with Heero... I didn't have any nightmares. Not a single one, strange or usual. And when I actually did sleep, at least until I got woken up again, it was deep. It was like, when I was asleep, I knew the truth that I couldn't wrap my head around when I was awake, that I was safe. I only wished that the rest of me could realize that, that the person sleeping there with me wasn't the monster that was terrorizing my life, but the one thing that was keeping me alive.      
    There's a point when a person's body or mind or both can't take a certain amount of pain or trauma or discomfort or exhaustion anymore and it just kind of shuts down. I'm well accustomed to this. It's the thing that let's me keep going on with a broken arm, or eat when I have no appetite and the mere thought of food makes me want to vomit. It's the same thing that kicked in at some point in the early hours of that morning and I finally found myself drifting off into an uninterrupted sleep, at least for a couple of hours. That, or I was finally getting accustomed to having Heero sleeping next to me.   
    I woke up at seven am, my internal alarm clock kicking my ass instead of a nightmare or a panic attack. I sat up in bed, a tiny bit of morning light showing through the curtains and felt completely strange, sitting in Heero's bed. I sat there and, instead of going to take a shower or going downstairs to see what I could have for breakfast, I sat up and looked down at my friend. Heero was curled up on his side, his back to me, one arm flung off the bed and his legs tangled in the sheets. His mouth was slightly open as he snored lightly, a tiny bit of drool present in the corner of his mouth. His hair, always so unruly, was a true mess, sticking up at angles that I hadn't thought physically possible. He was the most beautiful thing in the world.   
    I spent the next hour like that, just watching him sleep like some kind of creepy stalker. But it was so soothing, so peaceful, watching him do the thing that I couldn't. His sleep was deep and innocent. If he dreamt at all, I couldn't tell. I wished that I could sleep like that, just dead to the world, like a little kid. I felt that warmth in me, the warmth that was always there when I was near him, that love for him. As turbulent as my morning had been, I didn't want to leave that bed. I wanted to stay with him and be with him, even if it brought me restless sleep. But that was the one thing that I couldn't do.   
    When I knew that I couldn't put it off any longer, I left Heero's room and took a very quick shower, putting on my work uniform and went downstairs. I wasn't really sure what to do for breakfast, since it wasn't my house to be rifling around in and no one was up yet except for me and the dog, who followed me around the second that I reached the first floor. To my surprise, in the kitchen I found a plate of cornbread waiting for me and a note telling me to help myself to it, as well as to heat up some chili that was in the fridge. I was all too happy to oblige, putting a large helping of the stuff in a bowl and heating it in the microwave. The chili was absolutely delicious, teeming with different spices, but it had a slightly sweet taste instead of outrageously hot that went well with the bread. I knew without a doubt that it had come from Mrs. Yuy's side of the family and vowed to get the recipe from her some time.  
    Work went by a lot quicker than it the previous days. Solo, myself, and two other guys were sent out to the Red Barn Meats and Treats, a stupid name for a rather decent restaurant. It got it's name from the building that it was housed in, which used to be a large barn attached to an old, country home. One of those large houses that was meant to be occupied by an equally large family, back when Nausten had been a farming community in the 19th century, before the railroad came in. The farm had been sold to the restaurant's owner's great grandfather who had renovated the place and turned it into a cozy eatery, specializing in colonial decor and some really choice steaks, or so I'd heard since it was way too expensive for someone like me.  
    Unfortunately for the owner, but fortunately for the company that I worked for, some juvenile assholes had gone at the place after hours that weekend and had spray painted one entire side of the barn with some... rather lewd graffiti. Let's just say that the mildest thing depicted there had been a naked lady getting screwed by a steer and leave it at that, shall we? The owner had contracted my crew to come out and take care of the mess, which entailed stripping off the old paint and then a new paint job. It was a two day process and on that Sunday, Solo and I were on paint removal duty. It was long, painstaking work, but it passed the time really well. I knew that Monday would see me back at that barn with a paint brush in hand.  
    My team and I worked fast that day, and not just because we wanted the paint gone before the end of our shift. That morning was the coldest that it had been since February and the wind was biting and unpleasant, promising things that none of us wanted to consider. It was around three in the afternoon when the first snow flake drifted down onto my face. It was only December 9th, but it wasn't like it was the first snow fall that we had had since the fall. Still, I knew that this wasn't just one of the freak snow falls that we had had in October and November, this was the real deal.  
    The snow was light, but relentless as we worked, not quite a storm, but just a drifting, yet still enough to coat the ground in a light powder. I was more concerned with the cold wind than the snow, since I hadn't brought my winter gloves with me, just the work ones that had been provided. I had known that the snow had been coming, but I had still forgotten to pack them. It had been cold all that weekend and the ponds were starting to freeze over already, snow was just inevitable. Usually, I would think about the winter with dread, but as stupid as it sounds, all I could think about was my promise to teach Heero how to ice skate. It looked like that might happen a lot sooner than I had thought.  
    We finished an hour early, thankfully, and I was able to spend the last hour of my shift in the office by the heater, doing some filing work. I had mixed feelings as I got on the bus to go back to the Yuy's house. It was the last night that I would spend with them before the weekend was over and I would have to go back to my home, but I could also spend the entire night with Heero, until he had to go to bed. It wasn't like I was never going to see him or his family again, I reminded myself, it was just that the thought of seeing my parents again after three days of peace weighed on me heavily.   
    By the time I got off the bus and walked to the house, the snow had finally stopped, leaving not even an inch on the ground. I dusted the snow off my jacket and shoes before walking into the house and was greeted with the thick smell of beef and something sweet baking. Immediately, I felt better, relaxed and comforted. It hit me then, like a bolt of lightning, that somehow in the last couple of days, that smell of home cooking, the smell of the fresh flowers that Mrs. Yuy put in the vases around the house every day, had become the smell of home to me. I had come to expect it, the same as the smell of stale beer and mildew reminded me of my house and my parents. How could one smell be so inviting and the other so hostile?   
    "Welcome home, Duo," Mr. Yuy greeted me as I walked into the living room, completely unaware of how those words tore into me.  
    Kanuck had been laying at his feet as the man had read the newspaper and bounded over to me happily, remembering not to jump up on me. I petted him eagerly, missing my own furry animal.   
    "Thank you, sir."  
    I only barely managed not to remark 'it's good to be home.'  
    "Dinner will be ready in twenty minutes," he informed me, "Why don't you get out of those clothes and wash up?"  
    "Ok," I agreed.  
    I had already taken a shower that morning and I almost never took two showers in one day, to save on water, but I didn't have to worry about that there and I had to admit that a thought of a hot shower seemed heavenly. Besides, I reminded myself, I might as well take advantage of that shower while I could. And taking advantage is exactly what I did. I spent all of those twenty minutes in the shower, scrubbing my hair and basking under the spray of the hot water. When I was done, I pulled on the only clean clothes that I had left: sweatpants and a long sleeved hoodie shirt. It felt incredibly good to be wearing those loose fitting clothes after a long shift in jeans and uniform shirt.   
    When I went downstairs, I found that Mrs. Yuy had made us beef tips with white rice and broccoli, as well as an apple pie for dessert. I really hoped that all those full meals weren't going to spoil me when I had to go back to my usual eating schedule. I didn't really think that it was going to be a problem, though. I never seemed to have much of an appetite at home, but when I was at the Yuy's, I felt like my stomach was a bottomless pit.   
    "So, Duo," Mr. Yuy said just as we were starting on dessert, "Is there a time that you need to be home by tonight?"  
    "Not really," I shook my head, "As soon as you're sick of me, I guess."  
    "I don't think that's possible," Mrs. Yuy chuckled, "But you're welcome to stay here as late as you like. Mr. Yuy can give you a ride home-"  
    "That's not necessary," I protested, my stomach dropping at the thought of him seeing where I lived, "I can just take the bus."  
    "I'm not comfortable with you taking the bus late," Mrs. Yuy frowned, "This town might be small, but that doesn't mean that there isn't any crime. We're responsible for you while you're staying with us, it won't be any trouble for us to drive you home."  
    I imagined that both of Heero's parents would have a problem knowing that I often walked around south Nausten late at night, without much thought to my own personal safety.  
    "Actually," Heero chimed in, "I was thinking that I could go with you, just to make sure that you get home safely."  
    "I'm not sure..." Mrs. Yuy said hesitantly, obviously thinking that if it was unsafe for me, it would be unsafe for her child as well.  
    "Take Kanuck with you and I'm sure you'll be fine," Heero's father conceded, "Now, before either of you make plans for tonight, I want to make sure that your homework is done first."  
    "I have most of it done," Heero sighed in exasperation.  
    "Yes, but you've had the time to do it," his father pointed out, "Duo has been working all weekend."  
    "Actually, because I work a lot of hours, I do most of my homework during my breaks. I have everything except for one of my math worksheets to do," I told him.   
    "And don't forget that we have that big history test on Tuesday," Heero reminded me.  
    "Yeah," it was my turn to sigh, not having needed the reminder of that source of anxiety, "I'm going to have to do most of my studying tomorrow or I'm just going to forget everything again."  
    "I'll help you with your math if you help me study for that stupid spelling test," he offered.  
    "Deal," I agreed.  
    "Alright then, I guess I won't have to nag you tonight," Mr. Yuy smirked at his son who threw him a grumpy glare, "Just don't stay up too late playing games or whatever you decide to do."  
    "Actually," I interjected, "I was wondering if, after we finished our work, of course, Heero wouldn't mind me teaching him how to skate tonight. Most of the ponds are frozen over and it's not too cold out yet. That is, if you want to," I asked him.   
    "Of course," he blurted out, blushing for some strange reason, "I'd love to."  
    "That sounds like a nice idea," Mrs. Yuy said, "I was just out by the pond this afternoon. It looks pretty solid."  
    "Which one?" I asked, trying to remember if I saw a pond near their street.  
    "We actually have one out back," Heero informed me, "It's right past the hill that's behind the house. It's part of our property, so we wouldn't have to ask for permission to use it."  
    I had to shake my head in amazement at that. I hadn't even been aware that you could _own_ a pond.   
    "You two finish your homework," Mr. Yuy said as he started to collect our empty dishes, "We'll clean the dishes and I'll see if I can find the ice skates in storage."  
    That was right, I marveled at my own stupidity, I didn't have any skates with me, not that I needed my own just to teach Heero, but I would have liked to skate with him, instead of just instructing. Heero and I headed upstairs to get our homework done, camping in his bedroom. He let me take the desk as he helped me on my one, remaining math sheet. It was, thankfully, an assignment that I had a decent understanding of, so I didn't completely embarrass myself by cluing him in to what an idiot I was at the subject. There were a few equations that I had problems with, but Heero was surprisingly patient and actually pretty good at helping me understand what I was doing wrong.   
    When I was done with math, we tackled spelling. I hadn't even bothered to study for the spelling test, since that was never something I had any issues with, and Heero didn't seem to inept at it, either, but there were a few words that he was having trouble memorizing. We sat on his bed together and I threw out word definitions and had him spell them out loud to me, correcting him when he got a couple wrong.   
    I guess I'm weird, and probably the only person my age to think this, but it was really nice, doing our homework together. It didn't hurt that we were pretty close to each other on the edge of his bed. Even knowing that I was going to be going home that night, there was this cozy, warm feeling in my gut as we sat there together. We went on like that until he got all of them right for me three times.   
    "You know, you would make a really good teacher," he told me.  
    I snorted at that.  
    "I can't stand our classmates _now_ , what makes you think I'll be able to tolerate teaching a bunch of stuck up, asshole teenagers when I'm an adult? Besides, just because I'm good at English doesn't mean that I'll be a good teacher. I'm as dumb as a box of rocks in everything else," I muttered.  
    "Don't do that," he snapped at me, not harshly, but with a great deal of frustration.  
    "Do what?" I asked in bewilderment.  
    "Talk down about yourself like that. I hate it. Just because you're not... you're not a valedictorian or something, it doesn't mean that you're stupid! You're _not_ , no matter what anyone has made you think!"  
    "I have a consistent C average, and I only have that because I make sure to finish all of my homework and do all the extra credit assignments!" I argued, feeling angry and I didn't know why, "I've never been good at school, ever! So I can ace a spelling test or two, who cares? My history, science, and math grades are terrible and I've never gotten more than a 80 on any test in those subjects! If I'm not stupid, then what is it?!"  
    "You're dedicated," he shot right back at me, "and stubborn. Even if you think that you're dumb and you're only going to get a bad grade, you still do your homework and study. You care that you have a C average. If you have low grades, I'm sure it's because of things other than your intellect. I think you would be a good teacher because you're patient and you actually give a shit, despite what our teachers think about you."  
    I sighed, pretending like I thought he was being ridiculous, but his words burned in me. I didn't believe in them, but he did. He actually thought all those things about me and just knowing that almost had me in tears.   
    "Come on," I deflected, "If you want to go skating, we should do it now before it gets too late."  
    Heero looked exasperated for a moment, but didn't push the issue at least. I grabbed my jackets from my bedroom, putting them on as I followed Heero out. He pulled a winter jacket and mittens out of the closet by the front door of the house. He eyed the light jacket that I had on with distaste.  
    "Are you going to be warm enough?" he asked, "I have another jacket if you need it."  
    "No, I'm fine," I assured him, "I'm more used to the cold than you are."  
    He shrugged and we walked through the kitchen to the porch outside where two pairs of ice skates were waiting for us, as well as two, highly powered lanterns. The porch and patio were lit up by the string lights, but the sky was dark with clouds and I couldn't see the stars or the moon.   
    "These used to be my dad's when he was our age," Heero told me, handing me one of the pairs of skates, "Hopefully they fit."  
    "They'll do. I actually usually use my dad's old skates and they're huge on me, so I just wear lots of socks," I informed him.  
    We walked together across the field and up the hill, turning on one of the lanterns when it got too dark to see. It wasn't just a regular crank lantern, but one of those expensive ones that could light up a large room. The two of them would do nicely for lighting up the pond. The view at the top of the hill was beautiful, even with everything covered in a fine dusting of snow. On top of the hill sat a single tree, a massive magnolia that I imagined was gorgeous in the spring when it bloomed. It's shade almost covered the entire top of the hill. I fantasized the two of us going up there when it got warm again and having a picnic or something.   
    That would be my goal, I decided, the thing that I strived for. I would do everything that I could to make sure that our friendship survived the winter, long enough for that fantasy to come true. Such a tiny thing... I could do that much, couldn't I? The hill did indeed overlook a large pond and another field. As I looked around, I realized that we would have perfect privacy. I could see other homes from where we were, but unless they had a set of binoculars and were looking from a second story, we wouldn't be seen.   
    We walked down to the pond and Heero lit the second lantern, handing it to me to place on the opposite end from the one he was using. It lit up the whole area rather nicely, throwing long, moody shadows across the ice, but everything was visible. I approved of the way that the pond looked. I couldn't see any cracks or thin spots, not that that meant anything. I knew very well that ice can be deceptive. I had almost fallen through once, when I had been six years old. One Saturday in January, my father had taken me out skating.   
    He had tested the ice and it had seemed sturdy, but there are had been a soft pocket in one corner of Miller's Pond. He had told me to stay by the far end of the pond, but in my enjoyment for spending some time with my father, I had forgotten and migrated to the other end. If he hadn't been right at my heels, I would have gone right into the water. Instead, he had been fast, faster than I've ever seen him, and had seemed to grab me right out of the air as one of my skates had sunk into the weak ice.   
    The memory of him lifting me up and cradling me in his arms, demanding to know if I was alright, his heart racing in my ears as he pressed me to his chest, is one of those few, precious memories of him that I treasure. Or... I used to treasure. I suppose that I still do, but it hurts more now. I can't equate that man with the man that beats me and rapes me now. If I try, I feel like I'll go insane. It's easier to pretend that they're a different person, like he has multiple personalities. I just wish that there's some way to exorcise the one that hurts me and bring out the one that cared for me that day. Or maybe that part of him is dead. Maybe that part was just an illusion and it had never existed at all.  
    I sat down in the snowy grass and put on Mr. Yuy's skates. They actually fit pretty well. They were a bit too big for me, but better than my father's skates were.   
    "You know how to roller blade, right?" I asked Heero when we finished tying our skates.  
    "Yeah," he confirmed, "And I know the logistics of ice skating, but I've never done it before."  
    "Then this should be easy for you," I got to my feet, carefully balancing on the blade of the skate in the grass, "Skating is pretty simple when you get used to being on ice and finding your center of gravity."  
    I reached my hand down to help him get to his feet. He wobbled a bit, unused to balancing on skates, and nearly fell right there, but I grabbed at his jacket and helped him stay upright. He instinctively wrapped an arm around my waist so he wouldn't fall again and used my balance to find his own.  
    "This isn't so bad," he muttered.  
    I felt my face heat at the feeling of his body against my own, but I reminded myself that he was talking about balancing himself, not holding me.   
    "Can you take a few steps?" I asked.  
    He obliged, letting go of me hesitantly to try to find his own balance. He wobbled and almost fell again, but I kept a hand on his shoulder, ready to grab him before he fell if I needed to without offering him any support. Thankfully, the ground around the pond was pretty flat and he managed to find his balance pretty quickly.   
    "Ok, I'll test the ice before we go any further," I told him and started to move towards the ice.  
    "Wait, why do you have to do that?" he protested suddenly, his voice tight with stress, "I'm heavier than you are, I should be the one to try it."  
    "Not by that much," I argued. He was a mere inch taller than me, but I was thin, "Besides, I'm used to ice, I know what to look for and how it's supposed to feel. You've never skated before."  
    "I'm wearing warmer clothes than you are," he said stubbornly, "I would just feel more comfortable if I did it."  
    I bristled at that, easily reading into what he wasn't saying.  
    "You're also stronger than I am," I snapped, "and like you said, heavier. If I fall through, you can pull me up, easy, but if you fall through, I don't know if I'm going to be able to pull you up again! I'm not a fucking girl or some pathetic weakling that I need you to protect me!"  
    I knew, the second that those words had left my mouth, that I was being unfair and touchy. Heero couldn't possibly know that being coddled like that was a sore spot for me, but I couldn't stand him thinking and treating me that way. Not him.   
    "No," he said forcefully, "you're my friend and I just don't want to see you in danger."  
    I felt myself blush again and suddenly, the hurt that I had felt just vanished, making me feel like an idiot.  
    "You're my friend, too, you idiot," I muttered.  
    As I turned away from him, I caught his pleased expression. Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, I felt this sense of amazement at our relationship. I was always thinking that I wasn't good enough for him, to be his friend, so it always blew my mind when I realized that he actually really liked being around me and cherished our friendship like that. I always felt better when he called me his friend or made some kind of gestured that reassured me that he wasn't just hanging out with me to alleviate boredom. It just didn't occur to me that he might be the same way, the he liked knowing that I held him in high esteem.   
    I didn't wait to hear any of his arguments and took one, tentative step onto the ice. It felt pretty solid under my skate, so I carefully let my entire weight settle on it.  
    "Stay there," I ordered Heero, and stepped out further onto the ice.  
    "Be careful," he yelled out at me and I could hear the worry in his tone. It really shouldn't have made me feel as good as it did.  
    I skated around the pond, a little bit awkwardly at first since it had been several months since I had skated, but my body quickly remembered how. I tested the ice in various places, but only found one patch of thinner ice on the opposite side of the pond from where Heero was. It still supported my weight, and probably wouldn't be an issue, but it gave a little when I skated over to it.   
    "Stay away from that corner," I told Heero as I skated back over to him, "It's a bit touchy."  
    "A...alright," Heero said in a distracted way, like he was only half listening to me.  
    I realized then that he was staring at me, his eyes a bit wide, but he wasn't shocked. I couldn't quite place his expression.  
    "What's the matter?" I asked.  
    "You... you're pretty good at that," he gestured to my feet.  
    I felt embarrassed at his praise. Of course he was amazed, I thought, it was just something that he couldn't do, and while I wasn't exactly a professional skater, I knew my way around the ice enough not to fall on my ass if I didn't do anything wild.   
    "I've been skating since I was a kid," I told him, "every, single winter here. You'll get the hang of it, too," I reached my hand out to him as I lazily slid over to where he was standing by the bank, "Come on, try walking on the ice first before you try any skating, just so you can get a feel for it."  
    He took my hand and let me lead him out on the ice. At first, he was as graceful as a newborn deer, his legs wobbling and his feet unsteady. I think that he was mostly afraid of embarrassing himself by falling and not of the ice itself.  
    "Relax your legs," I chuckled, "If you stand like that, you're going to fall in an instant."  
    He shot me a grumpy look, but relaxed his legs, keeping a tight grip on me. We walked the ice together and it wasn't long before he became familiar with the feel of the ice, but I made sure to walk us around the safest edges of the pond before going any further.   
    "Ok, let's try gliding. Keep your hands on my arms and your feet flat," I warned him.  
    He swallowed nervously and placed his hands on my arms as we faced each other. I did all of the work, skating and gliding backwards so he could get an example of how to do it.   
    "Ready to try it on your own?" I asked.  
    "I wouldn't mind doing this for awhile," he said a bit cheekily, "but I think I can try it."  
    I rolled my eyes at him as he took his hands off me. For someone that had seemed so nervous of doing this at first, he jumped right into it, taking a few steps and gliding past me. He seemed alright at first, but lost his concentration and balance and fell on the ice.  
    "You ok?" I called out to him, my heart jumping in my chest as I watched him go down.  
    "Fine," he called back, "This isn't as easy as you make it look."  
    I stayed where I was, letting him get back onto his feet on his own and tried again. He fell a couple more times, but it wasn't all that long before he was skating from one end of the pond to the other. Little by little, he became bolder as he realized his limits and how to keep his balance. He didn't try any fancy moves, but just skated at a normal pace. I joined him when it looked like he was going to be able to keep upright and after just a few minutes, we were skating with each other. We passed each other and skated side by side, sometimes seeming to race one another.   
    Heero wore this small, handsome smile on his face each time he passed me. At one point, he even bravely grabbed one of my hands and used our momentum to change our positions, sending me shooting backwards and laughing at his antics. It was like we were dancing with each other. I loved every second of it and I would have done anything, sacrificed anything, to have never left that ice with him. I wanted to dance more, to move around him and feel the flow of that wind around me forever. But eventually, I slowed down my pace and skated closer to him.  
    "We should call it a night," I said mournfully, "It's getting cold."  
    "You're right," he agreed and it might have just been my imagination, but I thought that he sounded a bit sad.  
    We walked back into the house together, leaving the ice skates out on the porch and went into the kitchen. I closed the porch door behind me and turned, finding Heero staring at me again. I froze as he reached out and brushed my messy bangs away from my face after the wind outside had mussed them. It was such an intimate gesture and I felt my heart jump into my throat.   
    "Your face is red," he commented and broke the moment by poking my cheek with his finger, grinning, "and cold. You should have worn a scarf."  
    "Quit that," I playfully smacked his hand away from my face, "It's barely even winter yet, you're just soft from all that Florida sun."  
    He snorted and walked towards the refrigerator. I breathed in relief as he stepped out of my personal space, amazed that he hadn't realized how fast my heart had been going at his touch.   
    "Do you want some hot chocolate to warm you up?" he asked.  
    "Sure," I said, but then I noticed the time on the microwave with a wince. It was almost eleven, "Or maybe not. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to keep you up this late, and we have school tomorrow."  
    "It's fine," he said and dug out a few packets of hot chocolate mix anyway, "I can put them in some thermoses and we can drink them on the walk. Staying up a bit late won't kill me. I'm not the one that's been working into the small hours of the morning."  
    I pointedly ignored that comment in embarrassment. I had no idea what time Heero had been going to bed the last couple of nights, but I guess it had become apparent to him when I had been coming back from work. That or his father had told him, but I didn't think that he would do that.   
    "I'll pack my things up," I told Heero and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't keep a small note of sadness from my tone.  
    I went upstairs feeling like I was going to a guillotine. I told myself that I was being ridiculous and pathetic. This wasn't my home. These people weren't my family. I should feel incredibly grateful that they had let me stay over a single day, let alone three, and I had my own house to go back to. None of it helped me feel any better. I shoved all my things into the duffle bag and slung it over my shoulder. When I got back into the kitchen, Heero was just finishing putting whipped cream in both of the hot chocolates. Kanuck was there, sitting by his master's feet and he wagged his tail at me when he saw me.  
    "All set?" Heero asked, putting lids on the thermoses.  
    "I guess so," I said softly.  
    Heero clipped Kanuck's leash to his collar and we left the house together quietly. The two of us didn't talk much as we walked to my side of town, the both of us savoring our hot chocolate. Walking with him in the stillness of that cold night softened the blow of my returning home. It took us more than a half an hour to get there, but to me, it seemed like only scant minutes before we were standing in front of my house. By then, my drink was all gone, but the heat that it had left me in my stomach wasn't.   
    It's funny, Heero had walked me to my house before, but that night felt different to me. I felt like... with each step that we took together, my love for him was growing. It was a scary thing. I had never thought that this stony, shriveled heart of mine could feel anything like this. I had never thought that any person could feel this much, let alone me. But as frightening as it was, and as much as I worried about my ability to survive those feelings, it was also beautiful. I knew how dangerous it was, but I didn't want to give it up. Love was horrifying, but it was the best thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life. And it was the worst. It was unquantifiable in all the things that it made me feel, my inability to wrap my head around it.   
    What was more, being with him that night, I felt a strength that I had never felt before. I've always felt so weak, so inept at handling the things that life has thrown at me. I knew that the strength I was feeling wasn't my own. It was all his. Heero called himself a coward, but he had changed his life, something that I have never been able to do. I could feel it then, as we stood in front of my house, that solid presence, this person that, for all of his failings, for all of the hard choices he made, still had this surety that I would never have, this strength. But just by being near him, I was able to feel strong, too. With him, I felt like nothing could take me down again. Life could throw all it wanted at me, but I would move past it. For the first time in my life, I felt like that was possible. And for the first time since Quatre died, when I was with Heero, I felt human again. I felt like there was something in my life that mattered.   
    "Thank you for letting me stay over this weekend," I said to him, "I had a great time."  
    "Me, too," Heero smiled at me, "Thank you for teaching me how to skate. I would like to do that again... sometime."  
    I was about to tell him that I would really like the chance to skate with him again, too, when a movement in my parents' bedroom window caught my eye. I glanced over at it and saw the curtain move. I didn't see anything there in the dark, but I had the paranoid feeling that someone was watching me. At that hour, there was only one person that could be.   
    "I should go inside," I said lamely and tried to hand the thermos to Heero, "Here."  
    To my bewilderment, Heero, with an oddly melancholy look in his eye, placed his hand over mine and gently pushed it back.  
    "This weekend was fun," he said with that small, soft smile of his, "My parents liked having you around, too, even if we didn't get to see you as much as we would have liked. I just wanted to say that... if you wanted to, I would really like it if we could do this again. You could even come over next weekend if you like. Whenever you want to, really. You don't even have to ask, you can just show up or we could go to the movies or something," his voice was almost fumbling with his nervousness, but there was a strength there, too, a resolve.  
    I thought about what he was offering me, not that it required much thought at all. I was welcome back into his home, and just the thought that I might be able to spend another weekend with him and his family had me nearly jumping for joy.   
    "I would really like that," I smiled back at him, "I'll let you know if I can, alright?"  
    "Ok," his small smile grew into a full grin, "Then you can keep that thermos until next time, alright?"  
    "O-ok," I stammered and clutched the thermos, "Oh, um, and thank your parents for me?"  
    He nodded.  
    "Good night, Duo," he said softly, lightly touching me on the shoulder.  
    "Good night, Heero," I murmured back.  
    I quickly walked inside my house before that warm, almost endearing look of his could do me any damage. As I walked into the kitchen, I kept an eye out for my father, but I didn't see him and their bedroom door was tightly closed. My mother was asleep on the couch again, an new bruise on her neck and her bottle of pain pills clutched tightly in one hand. I threw a blanket over her before walking upstairs. After I fed my kitten and cleaned her litter box, I laid down on my mattress. It felt flat and lumpy, like I was sleeping on a plank of wood, but for once, I was asleep within minutes. That night, instead of monsters, I dreamt of ice and a warm hand covering mine in the dark.   
  
End Part 4  
  
Author's Note: Kind of another short part, but this seemed like the best place to end it.   
  
  
      
  



	33. Chapter 7 Part 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After failing a very important test because of his parents' constant fighting, Duo struggles to deal with Heero and his father's kindness towards him.

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 7  
Part 5  
  
  
    There is a very distinctive sound to the word 'fuck'. Actually, there is a distinctive sound to most swears, or at least when they are screamed at another person with the sort of hatred reserved especially for long time enemies or those with some kind of bigotry. It's a sound that is clear and obvious, everyone knows, whether they can actually hear it or not, what is being said. It's a sound that overrides all other sounds. That's something that's always perplexed me, that there are specific sounds that are so offensive, so different and frightening, that you can differentiate them from all others, no matter how loud or soft they are.   
    What do I mean, exactly? Well, here's a fun fact for example: did you know that, if two people are screaming obscenities at each other at three am, you can't block them out, even if you blast your cd player at max volume, headphones on and everything? I know, I've tried. But even the most obnoxiously loud rock anthem can't completely disguise that noise of hatred and animosity. But even knowing that, I always try to, and I always feel this frustration when it doesn't do me any good at all.  
    That's where Tuesday morning found me, sitting at my desk, my history textbook open and my notes strewn about, headphones in my ears, my music blasted so loudly that it's probably amazing that I haven't blown out my hearing. But I wasn't thinking about all the dates that I would need to memorize for the big, final history test that I would have later that day. I wasn't thinking about all the names and battles that were still alluding my grasp, like muddled grains of sand in my head that wouldn't come together no matter how many times I read the same chapters of text over and over and over and over again.   
    No, I was focused solely on the sounds coming from downstairs, and how it was quickly devolving from screams of 'you fucking cunt' and 'you perverted pig' to just plain, animalistic screams of rage and hatred. I knew from experience that, soon, the hitting and throwing things was going to start. It was four in the morning and the fight had started an entire hour before that. Of course, things hadn't exactly been quiet before then, either.  
    I had thought that I would just come home from work and stay up all morning studying for the test. It wouldn't be the first time that I had pulled an all nighter to get my work done. I should have known better, that I would have had better luck studying at the library or hell, even at the park. But at just past two am, I had little choice but to go home and do it. I was used to it, trying to study and do homework with the screaming fights that my parents had. That didn't make it any easier when they started up again that morning.   
    My mother, to the best of my knowledge, had started the fight. What it had actually been about, I have no clue, only that she had thrown the first insult. She had called him disgusting and loathsome, an animal that didn't deserve to eat at the table like a person. I had promptly slipped my headphones on at that point, knowing that this fight was either going to be very long, or painfully short. Their 'argument' lasted until around five am and ended with the sound of something crashing down in the kitchen, followed by the slamming of the front door.   
    I cautiously took my headphones off, just in time to hear heavy footsteps coming up the steps in a rapid pace, just short of a run. My immediate instinct was to find a place to hide, but I knew better by then. There would be no running and any place that I tried to hide in, he would find me. I felt tears gather in my eyes, but bit hard on my tongue to keep them from falling and to try to stop the panic attack that had me shaking in my chair.   
    The door slammed open, crashing against the wall and my father stood there in the door way, like the demon from so many of my nightmares. He was still wearing his work uniform, but it was heavily rumpled and even though he was several feet away from me, I could already smell the whiskey on him. His eyes had dark shadows under them and there were long, bloody scratches all over the right side of his face, made from long fingernails. My mother had gotten him good, more than once, it looked like. I just hoped that he hadn't gotten her worse. And I hoped that a quick beating was all that he had in mind for me, but as anyone reading these journals by now should now, hoping never really works out for me.     He stormed up to me, this intense fire in his eyes and I couldn't be sure if the red on his face was from his drunkenness or just pure rage. He grabbed me by my hair and pulled me out of my chair, throwing me to the ground. I stayed there, frozen and unable to stop trembling as I realized what he was going to do.   
    "Get on your fucking knees, NOW!" he roared at me, already taking off his belt.  
    Automatically, like the animal that he wanted me to be, I did as he said. There was some part of me that screamed at me to do something, to try to get away, to fight against him, but it was small and grew smaller each and every time he did this to me. Soon, would I just be dropping my pants every time he walked into the room? Offering to service him like this on my own? I braced my arms on the hard floor and rested my head in them, squeezing my eyes shut as tears fell. Just how far from humanity was my father going to take me before there wasn't anything of me left?   
    I cried out in pain when he entered me, partially because of how brutal he did it and partially because I hadn't had any interaction with the man, sexual or otherwise, since Friday morning. It had been a welcome vacation, but my body wasn't used to it again. I wasn't sure who was more of the animal that morning, me for letting him do this, or him, who fucked me in a way that I can't even call sex. It was more like he was beating me without his fists. He was wild and violent and I felt like he was trying to break me. Maybe that was exactly what he wanted. His large hands grabbed my arms so tight, it felt like he was going to rip them off, his nails scratching my skin open and I wondered if that was just because he was too into it, or if he was taking some kind of revenge for my mother scratching his face.   
    It seemed to go on forever, and with each minute, he only worked himself up to a worse and worse fervor. He wrapped my braid around his hand and used it for leverage, pulling my head out of the cradle of my arms and when he came, he grabbed at my hips so hard that his fingernails left bloody trails, raking my skin right open. When he pulled out of me, it hurt like hell, but there was this huge relief that came with it, like a bad cramp letting go.       
    He pushed me onto the floor like I was a dead weight and I made the mistake of looking back at him. Sometimes, when he finished with me, he would have this expression of satisfaction, relief, or even affection. Those times were both easier and harder for me to accept what he had just done. But that morning, the expression on his face, turning it hard and cruel, was revulsion. He looked angry and disgusted at me, like I was the one who had just done something wrong and not him. And had I? Was I the one at fault here? Did he loathe me for being in his life, for making him do these disgusting things?  
    The second that my father left, I started to sob. I couldn't help it, it just came bursting out of me. As I laid there on the floor, bleeding and crying, for some reason, I thought about the last time that I had spoken to Heero, how he had told me that I could come over to his house whenever I wanted to. The compulsion came on me as hard as my crying fit, the desire to get up and actually do it, walk all the way to the Yuy's home, knock on the door, and beg to stay there for a little while, at least until I was able to feel strong again, until I was able to build up my barriers against shit like this again.  
    I didn't, of course. That would be stupid, walking all the way to north Nausten at 5:30 in the morning and letting Heero's family see me like that. But it was a nice fantasy. I cried harshly for awhile, trying to get all of the poison out of my system, and when I finally didn't have the strength to cry anymore, I picked myself up, tugged my pants back on despite the blood, and limped downstairs. I didn't even feel any fear as I did so, that my father was down there and now that I had fulfilled one of his needs, he might want to take the rest of his rage out on me in a more typical way. I just felt very tired. Tired and emotionless, like he had ripped all my feelings right out of me. I went into the bathroom and took a quick shower, barely feeling the cold water that came out of the faucet. I washed the blood and semen and sweat off of me, and when I was done, I put some peroxide on the scratches on my arms and hips. The cuts weren't very deep, not with my father's short, blunt nails, but they were ragged and looked pretty awful for what they were.  
    I wrapped a towel around myself and threw my bloody pants into the washing machine, making a mental note to run a load whenever I had the moment. I was usually a lot more careful about hiding my stained clothing, but what was the fucking point anymore? What did I care if my mother saw the evidence of what her husband had done? It wasn't like she was going to do shit about it. At the very least, I didn't have to worry about hiding that anymore. I thought about making myself some breakfast, but I knew that I would just end up throwing it all up in a matter of minutes.   
    I went upstairs, got dressed, and tried to get some more studying done before I would have to go to school. I had to do it laying on my side because sitting hurt too much and even though I stared at my textbook for almost another hour, when it came time to leave for school, I felt like I had absorbed absolutely no information. It was all gone, muddled up in my head between my stress and my lack of sleep. When I tried to think about what I had read earlier that morning, all the things that I tried to memorize, all I could remember was my father screaming at my mother, calling her an ugly cunt. I wanted to bang my head against the floor in hopes that the exhausted fog in my head would clear and some kind of miracle would happen.   
    But then it was 6:30 and I knew that there was nothing for it, I was out of time. As they say, what will be will be. Of course, that wasn't much consolidation walking to class with no sleep, feeling like zombie road kill, and knowing that I would have to take a final, the deciding factor in whether I would pass History that semester, in just a couple of hours. Stress doesn't even cover what I felt that day. I had stayed up all night trying to study, and had very little to show for it. Not that I would have been able to sleep anyway, but I felt the wear from it very keenly. I spent every second between classes with my nose in my American History 2 text book, trying to cram facts into my skull at a frantic pace.   
    My history class was, thankfully, right after lunch, so even that period saw me sitting down at my usual table and pouring over worksheets and notes. I didn't even look up when Heero sat down across from me.  
    "You look like shit," he said bluntly.  
    I just grunted at him.   
    "You're as pale as a ghost and you look like a raccoon. Did you get any sleep at all?" his voice was like white noise washing over me, soothing and comforting, but also distracting because his was the one voice that I couldn't completely tune out.  
    "I'm fine," I muttered, trying to focus on the sentence that I was reading.  
    "Duo," he placed a hand on my text book and pushed it down, away from my face, instantly gaining my full attention, "I really don't think you're going to be any more prepared for this test in the next thirty minutes than you are now. Aren't you going to at least eat anything?"  
    "I'm not hungry," I sighed, but closed my textbook, knowing that he was right. I let my head fall onto the table with a soft 'thonk', "I'm screwed, aren't I?" I groaned.  
    "What's wrong?" he asked in concern, pushing his tray of food over to me like a gentle reprimand.  
    I stared at the food. I didn't want it at all, but I found myself fishing out a french fry just to appease him.   
    "I didn't get much studying done," I mumbled, trying to find the energy to care even a little about the food that I was chewing on, "My parents were fighting all morning. I couldn't sleep, either."  
    He winced in sympathy.   
    "I'm sorry. Look, I'm sure you'll do fine on the test, it's just the same stuff that we've been working on all semester. It's more important that you eat something, especially if you haven't had any sleep. I just wish that you had the time to lay down somewhere," he said mournfully.  
    Even with everything that I had gone through that morning, his concern for me actually got a small smile out of me. It continued to amaze me how, just by being around him, he made me feel better.  
    "I'm used to losing sleep," I said, "but I don't know what I'm going to do if I don't get a decent grade on this final."  
    Even after declaring that, I didn't pick up my textbook again, but spent the lunch period listening to Heero talk about how his baseball try outs had turned out, who would be on the team with him, and sharing half of his lunch. When the bell rang, signaling the end of the lunch period, my stomach cramped up with anxiety.  
    "Don't worry, you'll do fine," Heero tried to assure me.  
  
*****  
  
    But despite all of my friend's reassurances that I had done well, I didn't. I suppose that doesn't come as much of a shock, least of all to me. I couldn't concentrate on the questions. I don't know if it was just because I was so tired, or because of my anxiety, but it was like I was reading things in gibberish. Half of the questions I couldn't remember the answers to at all, my brain was so scrambled. I felt an intense failure when I was the last one to bring my test up. Even my teacher, Mrs. Kreskge, shared a knowing look with me. My grades in history were not the best, and never have been. I had a D+ average going into the final, which was worth a significant chunk of my grade, mostly thanks to shitty test scores. My homework average was the only thing keeping me afloat. If I didn't get at least a C on that final, and I knew immediately that I was going to be lucky if I didn't anything lower than a D, I was going to flunk the course. A course that I needed in order to graduate, and there was no way I was going to be able to go to summer school, not without my father flipping out at me about it.   
    I walked out of that classroom feeling like the most pathetic, stupid loser in the world. Not even Heero was able to cheer me up. After a few attempts, he surrendered to the fact that I was going to be miserable for quite some time, and that something huge was bothering me, and more or less let me sulk. He stayed close to me, though, and was very sympathetic. More than I deserved. When I bumped into Mrs. Kreskge after gym class ended and was told to follow her to her office, I felt like the world was going to come crashing down around my head. Heero, obviously committed to being the best friend anyone could ask for, patiently waited outside as I went to my sentence.  
    "I'm sure you know why I asked to see you, Duo," Mrs. Kreskge stated the moment that I closed the door behind me, pushing her glasses up her nose.  
    Like most of my teachers, she didn't have much of a soft spot for me, but tolerated me more than some. It wasn't my sexuality that she didn't like or even my attitude, she didn't like me because she saw mine and Relena's 'relationship' as a distraction to her classroom. I also don't think that she liked me much because of my father, who had been one of her students during his three year stint at this high school. I don't know exactly what he had done to rub her the wrong way, but I had heard, unsurprisingly, from other staff members that had known him back then that he had had a bit of an attitude problem.   
    To her credit, Mrs. Kreskge didn't really take it out on me, she just wasn't overly warm with me, either. Of course, she didn't seem to be especially warm with any of her students, so maybe I was wrong and that was just her personality.   
    "The test," I said mournfully, sitting down in one of the chairs in front of her desk.  
    I had been in that office a handful of times that semester, usually to get lectured either about my behavior or my poor grades. Like all of the teacher offices, it was small and cramped with filing cabinets, the walls decorated with maps and timelines of various points in history, like the students that came in there needed a reminder of which class they were getting scolded over.   
    "Yes, the test. I've had the chance to grade yours and I must say, I'm disappointed in you," her stare was cold and impersonal as she looked at me over her desk.   
    I couldn't help but flush at her words, embarrassed by my obvious failure. She slid my test back to me across the desk and when I picked it up and looked at it, I felt like ripping it to shreds. Something painful tightened around my heart and I felt this deep helplessness and anger.   
    "I expect better out of someone like you," she lectured me, "I've seen the work that you've done on some of your homework assignments. Now, either you've been copying someone else's work, which I do not believe to be the case, or you have been slacking greatly on your tests. You don't look well today, are things alright at home?"  
    I looked up from my test to blink at her in astonishment. She was the first teacher that had ever asked me that question and it threw me for a loop. Her expression was a bit softer as she studied me and I wondered what she suspected.   
    "Things... things are fine," I lied lamely and almost winced at how unconvincing my tone was, "I mean..." I struggled with myself, debating what I should say, my tired mind trying to find the right compromise between a truth that I couldn't tell and a lie that would be too obvious, "My parents have been a bit stressed lately, but..." I hung my head, unable to look at that piercing stare from the elderly woman, "My grades are my fault. I didn't study enough yesterday. I had a lot of problems remembering things... I'm sorry, this was the best that I could do."  
    "I doubt that," she sighed, "I am willing to offer you the chance to raise your grade. There's a make up test tomorrow after school, and if you can get a better grade on that, I am willing to strike this test off your average."  
    My eyes widened at her generosity. Make up tests were only usually given to students that were sick or had some disability during the test.   
    "T-thank you," I said earnestly, standing and clutching my test in a tight grip, "thank you so much."  
    "2pm sharp," she advised me, "and I suggest that between then and now, you develop better study habits, Mr. Maxwell."  
    "Yes, Ma'am," I nodded and hurriedly bustled out before she could take back her offer.  
    "How did it go?" Heero asked me when I walked out of the office.  
    "I don't want to talk about it," I told him tersely, walking right by him.  
    And I didn't. Yes, I was grateful that Mrs. Kreskge had given me a second chance. Most kids would be jumping for joy at that, but I wasn't. Being grateful was one thing, but I wasn't hopeful for any kind of miracle. So I had a second shot, great. How the hell was it going to be any better than my first?  
    "Duo!" Heero called to me, following me out to the parking lot.  
    All of the school buses had already left and there weren't many kids or teachers lingering out there. Good, because I didn't want to deal with anyone. I stopped as my friend reached out and grabbed my arm, stopping my escape.  
    "Hey, talk to me. What happened?" he asked.  
    I was so worked up, my anger making my heart pound unpleasantly and all I wanted to do was punch something. My immediate response was to tell him to fuck off and leave me alone to beat myself up over how stupid and useless I was in peace, but when I turned around, his expression was so worried, so open and honest, it deflated me. He let go of me and I sat down on the brick ledge that ran across under the overhang we were standing under.   
    "I got a D-," I muttered.  
    Heero winced.   
    "I'm sorry, Duo," he apologized.  
    "Well don't be!" I snapped at him, "It has nothing to do with you!"  
    I hated myself for saying something like that to the only friend that I had, but I couldn't stop the bitterness that was pouring out of me.  
    "Is there anything you can do to bring your grade up?" he ignored my testiness.   
    "Mrs. Kreskge is letting me take a make up exam," I told him tonelessly.  
    "Well, that's not so bad then is it?" he asked with a bright smile, "You'll do better next time, don't worry about it-"  
    "Stop it!" I snarled at him angrily, "Stop saying that shit! Stop... having this faith in me that I'm going to get a good grade or that I'm smart, that my grades aren't a reflection of who I really am! Just cut the shit, Heero! This is the reality! You think that if I could have gotten a better grade, I would have gotten a D-?! You think that I want to fail this class, that I'm just holding back?! No! I tried! I tried as hard as I could and I still fucked up! And tomorrow, I'm going to fuck up again! Hell, maybe I'll even get an F, because that's all I'm capable of! _Failing_. So stop saying that I can do better when I fucking _can't_! I'm a loser and I'm always going to be a loser!"  
    I hung my head and hid my face in my hands. I could feel tears pricking at my eyes, but I refused to let them fall, not in front of him. I was such a miserable excuse for a human being, too stupid to pass a test and too full of useless anger to be a good friend. I had yelled at Heero, and he hadn't deserved any of it. But instead of hitting me or telling me that he didn't want to be my friend anymore, which was exactly what _I_ deserved, he sat down next to me and put a hand on my knee.  
    "Duo," he needled softly, "Come on, tell me what's wrong, what's really wrong here. This isn't just about having to take the class over, is it? You can't really believe all of those things."  
    "Yes, I do," I muttered into my hands.  
    It took me a few minutes, but I raised my head and rubbed at my tired eyes, feeling incredibly worn.  
    "You know, when things got bad with the bullying, I thought about quitting school," I smirked bitterly, "I thought about it a _lot_ , especially when things got worse at home. School didn't mean anything to me. Graduating was worthless. I thought about just going to work somewhere, cutting all the bullshit and not having to deal with Relena or Zechs anymore. But I stayed. I thought it was because of Quatre, because I didn't want to let him down. And I thought that it was because I had nothing better to do, that I would just fail in getting a decent job anyway, or my father would flip out."  
    "But that's not the real reason, I know that now. I... I don't want to fail, Heero," I gripped at my braid as it fell over my shoulder, wringing it tightly, the pain oddly comforting, "I don't want to be like him. I... I can't be like him."  
    "Like who?" Heero asked, his tone infuriatingly soft and gentle, not pushing me, but listening intently.  
    "My dad," I managed with anguish, "I can't be like him. You know, he never graduated high school. My mom didn't, either. She got pregnant and then the both of them had to make ends meet all on their own. That's why, when he got fired, we had such a hard time. No one wants to hire a high school drop out. I don't want to be like that, I don't want to be just another Maxwell failure. Can't I do this one thing? Can't I prove to my parents that I can at least do this right? Why am I so stupid? Why can't I do better? This shouldn't be so hard, so why is it? Why am I such a constant fuck up?"  
    "Have you ever considered," my friend suggested instead of continuing to insist that I was wrong, "that the problem isn't yourself? Have you ever considered that the reason why your grades are low isn't because your... lacking in intelligence, but because your household environment is keeping you from concentrating on your work? If your parents are always fighting and yelling and are making it a volatile place for you, how can you possibly study? Maybe, instead of thinking things like 'I can't possibly do better than this', you should just try to study some place that's quieter and more structured?"  
    I looked over at him, meeting his blue gaze. He didn't mock me for the tears that were clearly in my eyes, but just gazed patiently back.   
    "I don't know," I muttered, "I've gone to the library to study before, but it never seems to help. They close early and the only time I really have anymore to get work done is at work or after it. And even if that were true, I should be able to work around it! If I were smart, like you say that I am, why should a little bit of noise matter?"  
    "It's not just a little bit of noise," he insisted, "Concentration is a big key to studying and memorizing information. Look, I'm not saying that I have all the answers here, but don't just give up! I know your parents are hard on you and it might seem like you don't have any options, but don't just accept that you can't do any better when you don't know that," he chewed on his lip a little, mulling something over, "I know that you have work, but I have a proposition."  
    "Actually," I lamented, "I'm going to have to take it off. I'll miss the money, but if I have any hope of passing this damned class, I'm going to need to take the time off tonight. Even if it doesn't do me any good at all."  
    "See?" he said with a smile, "That's what I love about you. Even if you say that there's no hope, you still put that kind of effort in. All I'm asking is that you take the next step and try things differently."  
    'That's what I love about you.'  
    I felt my face go about as red as a pepper and my heart stopped beating. That or it was beating so fast that I couldn't even feel it. I was going to combust. I was never going to breathe again. I-  
    "What's the proposition?" I somehow managed to speak as my brain took a speedy vacation from reality. I even managed to maintain my voice and not just squeak it out like some little kid.  
    "Study at my house," he offered, "Call your bosses and tell them you can't come in today, then meet me at home. I can help you study and you'll be someplace quiet. You can even use my computer. I have all my history notes in there. Who knows, they might be helpful."  
    "I couldn't-," I started to protest.  
    Just how much was I going to impose on him and his family? He wasn't even acting mad after I had yelled at him, instead he was offering me all that.   
    "You can and you will," he said firmly, "Just come meet me when you're ready. Just _try_ , alright? If it doesn't help at all, then I'll shut up about this and you'll at least have a bit of quiet before you go home tonight. Ok?"  
    "Fine," I sighed, "I'll try. But I still don't think that it's going to help me."  
    To my utter shock, he pulled me into a brief, but tight hug. All of the blood in my body made a dedicated journey to my head and I thought that I just might pop something.   
    "I know you don't believe me, but it _will_ be alright. Just... if you feel these things again, talk to me, ok? You don't have to go through this by yourself, you know. Maybe I don't understand everything, but I'm your friend and I can try to help you," he told me.  
    I had to stand up and sling my back pack over my shoulder to hide my utter happiness at that hug.  
    "I'll try to remember," I murmured, looking at the ground, but then shyly glanced at him again, "Heero, I'm... I'm sorry. I wasn't mad at you. I was mad at myself... and I took it out on you and that isn't ok."  
    "No," he touched my back lightly, "but I get it. Everyone gets mad and frustrated sometimes. I forgive you."  
    I managed a weak smile.  
    "Well, I think I'm done embarrassing myself enough for one day. I'll use the phone in the main office and meet you at your house then."  
    He hesitated for a moment, but then beamed at me.  
    "Yeah, I'll see you then," he said.  
  
*****  
  
    By the time I had called both of my bosses to cancel my shifts that day, I felt even more like an asshole, not less. After everything that Heero had done for me, I had snapped at him, just because I had gotten depressed and angry at myself. He hadn't even gotten upset about it. I felt a hell of a lot worse about yelling at him than I did skipping two shifts. That was at least necessary. Even if I didn't have any faith in my ability to pass that test, I had to agree with Heero that I had to try. I needed it, and not just because I had to pass the class. My self-confidence could really use a boost at that point.   
    It wasn't that long of a walk from the school to Heero's house, so I went on foot. It was cold again, the wind harsh and biting, but it wasn't snowing at least. I rang the doorbell and was surprised when, instead of Heero, his father answered the door, looking perplexed to see me there.  
    "Uh, hi, Mr. Yuy," I greeted him.   
    "Hello, Duo," the man said in confusion, "Did you forget something here Sunday?"  
    "No," I was getting more bewildered by the minute, "Heero asked me to come here so we could study together, didn't he tell you?"  
    Mr. Yuy's brow furrowed.  
    "When did he tell you that?" he asked.  
    "About twenty minutes ago, right after class. I thought that he would have told you if you're home. Didn't he come home yet?"   
    "No," he confessed, "Heero has his first varsity practice today, he texted me about it earlier. It's going to go on for a few hours and the coach is going to take the team out for dinner afterwards, so he won't be home for quite some time."  
    "Oh," I felt my heart drop into my stomach.  
    All sorts of terrible, paranoid thoughts screamed at me. Heero had lied to me. Ok, I could deal with that. It wasn't like I've been completely honest with him, I wasn't going to get pissy at him just for being dishonest. But why? Was this to get back at me for flipping out at him? But as far as pranks went, this was pretty lame. And he had seemed so honest when he had offered me a place to study for the evening, I just couldn't believe that he would give me that, knowing that I would just get turned away.   
    I tried to be logical about it. The fact was that Heero wasn't home and there was nothing that I could do about that. But it still hurt. He had given me an ounce of hope. I supposed that it wasn't really his fault that he didn't know how rare and precious that was. Still, I felt betrayed. I had needed him, and he had turned his back on me.   
    "I'm sorry," I forced a smile on my face, "We must have had a miscommunication. I'll just... uh... go home now."  
    I started to turn to walk away as fast as my feet could carry me, sadness wrestling with embarrassment, but I didn't even get to turn my back all the way to Heero's father before he spoke again.  
    "You can stay, if you like," he offered, "Heero isn't here, but it would just be you and me until the missus comes home at four. The house will be quiet, if you need to do your homework."  
    "No, it's ok," I protested, "I don't want to impose. I mean, I'm just Heero's friend, I can't force myself on you like that."  
    "Nonsense," he scoffed and moved from the door, opening it wide in invitation, "Come in and relax. You're always welcome here."  
    I twisted the strap of my book bag in both of my hands as I tried to decide, but it really wasn't much of a hard choice. I walked inside the house, feeling incredibly nervous, but the familiarity of the place helped to sooth a bit of that.   
    "Thank you very much, sir," I said as I took my sneakers off, "I promise, I won't bother you at all."  
    "It's fine," he smiled, "I'm just logging some of my notes on my office computer, nothing important. Why don't you use Heero's desk to study? His computer is just on sleep mode if you need that as well."  
    "Sure," I nodded, remembering what Heero had said about his notes, "Thank you again, so much."  
    "It's not a big deal," he started, but I shook my head at that.  
    "It really is," I insisted, "I don't know why he lied about not being here, but Heero offered to help me study for a make up test for the history final that we had today. I... I didn't do so well on it and I really need a decent grade, but my house is... well, it's not a great place to study right now, which is kind of why I did so horribly on the test, I guess. That, or I'm just that awful," I knew that I was rambling and that it was part from being nervous and part from my lack of sleep, but I couldn't get it stopped, "What I'm trying to say is, this means a lot to me."  
    To my relief, Heero's father chuckled.  
    "Well, then I am very glad that I could convince you to stay," he placed a hand on my shoulder and walked me to the steps, "Stay as long as you like. You can stay for dinner, too. Mrs. Yuy and I were just going to get Chinese since Heero isn't here, if you don't mind that."  
    "You don't need to feed me," I tried to protest, but he waved off my concerns.   
    "Just yell if you need anything," he said and walked into the living room.  
    I watched him go with this surreal feeling in my gut. Heero might have lied about being there, but he had still given me exactly what he said he would. I felt doubt about my suspicions, that he had done this maliciously, but I had no clue what he had been thinking, so I let it go. I went upstairs and realized with a sharp pang as I walked into Heero's room that that feeling I had had that weekend, that this was a strange place, was gone. I still felt out of place, but I felt this... I don't know, familiarity. I knew that painting, that vase, that bed. It wasn't home, but it was something. Something that I didn't have a word for. Comfort, I suppose comes close.  
    Even though it was familiar, I still sat down at Heero's desk feeling like an intruder. His desk was much cleaner than it had been when I had visited and I found ample space to put my text book and notes on. Heero's computer was a fairly expensive looking laptop and I spent a whole ten minutes staring at it's closed lid, debating whether I should use it or not. What if I broke it? I sighed at my own hesitance and opened it. Both Heero and his father had given me permission to use it, I would just be very, very careful with it.   
    A cheery, bright background greeted me as the computer switched itself on. There was no password and Heero's notes were already up. He must have been using them the last time he had been at the computer. I scanned through them and found with some surprise that they were a lot more thorough and neat than my own were and were going to be a lot more useful. I dove right into them, reading line after line. When I found an event that had a date, I repeated it to myself over and over and then forced myself to try to recall it after reading a few more lines.   
    When I got to the last page, I found with satisfaction that it was over an hour later. I had managed to get through all of his notes without being disturbed even once. Even better? I could remember at least half of the dates that I had read. It really hit me then, something that I hadn't really realized during my weekend there, just how quiet that house was. There was no screaming, no cars honking, no sounds of drunken parties or loud music being blared from any of the neighbors. There was total silence. It was... amazing.  
    I poured over everything, again and again, powering through my exhaustion with pure dedication. I used a blank notebook that I had in my bag to quiz myself on the things that had been in our collective notes, testing to see what I could remember and beating into my head what I was still shaky on. At some point, Mr. Yuy came into the room with a plate of various food; chicken fingers, egg rolls, lo mein, beef fried rice and a few things that I didn't recognize but ate anyway. I remember thanking him and him being amused that I didn't even raise my head from my textbook, but he quickly left me alone.   
    I didn't stop reading and taking in information even as I ate. I remember just thinking 'I have to do this, I can't fail, I have to keep at it' with a fervor that probably would have disturbed some people, if they had been watching me. Later, I would realize how stupid and a bit nuts I was being, but even as my tiredness hit me, I refused to acknowledge it. When my eyes started to droop, I pinched myself, hard, and kept staring at the computer screen.   
    I made it halfway through the food that Mr. Yuy had brought me before my sheer exhaustion finally pulled me under. I only know that because, when I felt someone shake my shoulder lightly, I opened my eyes to see the dish still sitting next to me, one of the chicken fingers two-thirds eaten.   
    "Duo," Heero's father had such a soothing tone, I wanted to just fall right back to sleep, "Come on, you can't sleep like this, you'll hurt your neck."  
    "Hm?" I muttered and slowly sat up, rubbing at my eyes.  
    I looked around, trying to piece together where I was and what was going on. It didn't take me long.  
    "Sorry," I mumbled, "I must have dozed off."  
    "It's fine," he chuckled, "but you look exhausted. Why don't you lie down for awhile?"  
    "I-I couldn't," I tried to protest, but it was hard when laying down was exactly what my body wanted me to do, "It's late and I have more work to do. I don't want you to fuss over me."  
    "It's only just turned 5," he soothed, "and you're not going to get much more studying done if you're too tired to keep your eyes open. Just a couple of hours and you'll do fine. You'll have to use Heero's bed, though. The guest room bed isn't made up anymore. We got the washing machine fixed and they're not dry yet."  
    "But Heero-" I started to protest again, feeling weird about using his bed when he wasn't even there.  
    "Won't care," his father assured me, "Now come on, you've been staring at this screen for too long."  
    He reached over and closed the laptop's lid. He gently touched my arm and led me to my feet. I was at the point of tiredness that I couldn't even find the words to say no anymore. I walked to Heero's bed, let his father pull the sheets down for me, and practically fell on it. I think that I would have fallen asleep right then and there if Mr. Yuy hadn't ruffled my hair. My eyes shot open and I stared up at him, startled.  
    "Rest, Duo," he urged, "and you'll feel better when you wake up."  
    I watched him leave and softly close the door behind him. The last thought that I had before I let sleep take me was a single, sorrowful question. When was the last time that my father had done that to me? Ruffled my hair? He had done it a lot when I had been a child, but lately... I couldn't remember. So many years... the last time I could remember him touching me so kindly, without sex or hitting being involved, was... when? When I had cried at the kitchen table and he had held me? Hadn't there been a time after that? Some time... in the last three and a half years that he had touched me so... paternally?   
    I think I might have cried a little, but if I did, it's just an impression I had. I slept for a long time, longer than I would have liked, but no one had decided to wake me up. My sleep was deep and uninterrupted by anything. The nervousness that I had felt the last time that I had slept in that bed was gone. Instead, I found it comforting. The pillows smelled like Heero and even after I had only slept in it once, I had gotten used to it somehow. It was ten o'clock when I woke up, almost five hours later, and I felt more refreshed than if I had slept for eight back home.   
    I slipped out of Heero's bed and opened up the computer again. It was late, but I wanted to make sure that I had retained at least some information, despite my lengthy nap. I mourned that loss of time, but Heero's father had been right, I wouldn't have been able to study well as tired as I had been. I quickly scanned over my friend's notes again and felt this incredibly relief when I was able to remember almost all of the important details on my own. I guess that sleep really had done my some good, the dates and names had stuck in my head, at least most of them, enough that I knew that I was going to get a better grade on the make up. That was something even rarer than hope: confidence.  
    I started to pack up my things when it dawned on me that Heero still wasn't there. That instantly worried me because Coach Horner never would have let his players stay out that late on a school night. Besides, being gone for seven hours for a practice seemed excessive. What if something had happened to him? What if Zechs had jumped him? Heero had a cell phone. If I could get the number off his parents, I could call him and make sure that he was ok. Of course, if he really hadn't come home, his parents had already tried that. I tried not to worry about it, for all I knew, Heero stayed out late all the time, and even if there was something wrong, there was absolutely nothing I could do that his parents couldn't.  
    I picked up the desk and looked around the room. The unmade bed made me feel guilty. I felt like all I was doing was using Heero and his family. What had I ever given back to them for all that they had done? I was so worthless, there was nothing that I could do. I migrated around the bedroom and picked things up; dirty clothes, pieces of paper, things that were obviously out of place, and busied myself with meticulously making the bed, but it didn't make me feel much better. I sighed, shouldered my back pack, and made my way downstairs. Despite my reassurances to myself, I decided to try to find Heero's father if he was still awake and ask him where Heero was.   
    That turned out to be completely unnecessary when I walked into the living room and found my missing friend laying on the couch, fast asleep. More guilt pricked at me as it dawned on me that he was sleeping down there because I had been in his bed and he hadn't wanted to wake me up. I walked over to him and kneeled down in front of him. The living room was dark, but the sky light was filled with stars and the half moon, giving me enough light to see his face.   
    Whatever doubts that I had had about him lying to me vanished. _This_ was who Heero was, not the bully that had quickly changed sides to help me, but this boy who, just to give his new friend the chance to sleep, had allowed himself to be kicked out of his own bedroom. I was sure at that moment that, whatever reason Heero had had to lie to me about being there that evening, it had been a good one and not one meant to hurt me.   
    Looking at him then, his handsome face smoothed out in sleep, his dark bangs obscuring one eye, I wanted to kiss him so badly. I had forgotten how good that felt, just kissing and touching and holding another person. As bad as my relationship had gotten with Trowa, that's the one thing that I miss. Some part of me wanted that so badly with Heero that it hurt. I leaned in close to him, Heero's smell, the same smell that had been on his sheets, was intoxicating and I could feel my heart race. I could do it, I knew. He was fast asleep. One little kiss, and he would never know.   
    "Thank you," I whispered to him softly and stood back up, my hands shaking with my poorly repressed need to touch him.  
    I took an afghan that was slung over one of the chairs and laid it over him before turning and walking out of the house, like a ghost in the night.   
  
*****  
  
    Heero and I didn't really talk about my going to his house the next day. I was too busy having a heart attack over the make up test and he was acting spacey, like there was something heavy on his mind. Honestly, I barely noticed it until after the fact, but whatever decision making process had him distracted, he had dealt with it by Thursday, so it barely made it past my radar on Wednesday.     Tuesday night, I went home, sneaked past my father, and went right to bed. Between him and my mother's continuous fighting, which would only get worse by the following week, I only managed another two hours, but that was ok. The make up test on Wednesday went a lot more smoothly for me with seven hours of sleep under my belt and the intense studying that I had done. I actually felt confident handing my test in, a rare feat. And when I got my grade back after class on Thursday, I felt another rare thing as I stared down at my test: shock.   
    "Well?" Heero asked me eagerly as we walked out of the classroom together.  
    "I..." I said in a bit of a daze, my mind still catching up to reality, "I got a B."  
    "That's great!" he exclaimed.  
    "I've never gotten a B in history before," I mused out loud.  
    I could still remember Mrs. Kreskge's satisfied smile as she had handed my test back to me. It still didn't feel real. Some part of me thought that it had to be a fluke, that the grade was wrong, but I knew that it wasn't. How the hell had I done that?  
    "I told you that you could do it if you just tried," Heero said a bit smugly, "You aren't as dumb as you think you are, you just need better study habits is all."  
    "Thank you," I said earnestly, some emotion nearly choking me as it filled my throat, "If you hadn't told me to come over on Tuesday... there's no way I would have passed this, let alone gotten a grade like this. I... there's nothing that I can do to repay you... I don't know what to say. You're the only person that's actually believed that I could do something like this... in a long time."  
    "You don't need to thank me," he said softly, "We're friends, this is what we do, we help each other out. I'd be a pretty shitty friend if I couldn't do that much for you. Don't worry about trying to pay me back, that's not why I did it. But I'm sure that something will come up that you'll help me with. You can help me study for the Spelling final that we have next week if you like."  
    "I would," I nodded eagerly, still overwhelmed with my gratitude.  
    "Look, Duo..." he glanced away from me nervously, "About Tuesday, when I invited you over..."  
    "You don't have to tell me," I insisted, partially because I was afraid of what he was going to say and partially because I just didn't care about his dishonesty anymore. It was a drop in the bucket, one, minor bad thing that he had done amidst all of the good and wonderful, "I know you went to your practice, it's not a big deal."  
    "It is," he lamented, "I didn't want to lie to you, but you were so distraught... I thought that I knew what you needed, but I knew that if you knew that I wasn't going to be there, you wouldn't go."  
    "That's not true," I protested his lie, but he shot me a knowing look.  
    "Really? It was hard for you just to agree to come over to study, would you really have gone to my house knowing that I wouldn't be there?" he pressed.  
    "No," I sighed, "I was ready to leave when your father told me that you weren't going to be home. I only ended up staying because he convinced me."  
    "I'll have to thank him, then," Heero said.  
    "Me, too. He didn't just let me stay, he gave me dinner and let me sleep in your bed... Sorry about putting you out, by the way," I apologized.  
    "No big deal," he laughed, "It's not like you're some stranger, and you've slept in it before. My parents were impressed that you cleaned my room and made the bed. You really didn't need to do that, you know."  
    I blushed and shrugged. I didn't try to explain that that was just the way that I had been raised and even if I hadn't been, I had felt guilty and had needed to do something for him, even if it had been small.  
    "Um, do you mind if I tag along with you when you go home?" I asked him, "I really wanted to thank your father in person. He was really nice to me."  
    I didn't mention the whole tucking me in thing, it was too personal for me.       
    "Ok. He won't be home, but we can swing by his office after school," Heero told me.  
    "That's ok!" I waved my hands frantically in dismissal, "I don't want to bother him while he's at work."  
    "It's fine," he said nonchalantly, "If he's with a patient, then we can just leave. Otherwise, he doesn't mind if I visit him."  
    And so, that's where Thursday afternoon found me, walking to Mr. Yuy's office with Heero. As it turned out, his practice was right in Nausten and his office was just a ten minute walk from the school. I had been imagining one of those small businesses that was a part of one of the strip malls in central Nausten, but his office was actually a part of one of the local health clinics, a much nicer and more professional area. It was fairly empty when we walked in, with only the receptionist around.   
    "Hi, Amy," Heero greeted her, "Is my dad free?"  
    "Hello, Heero," she smiled at him, "Yes, he just finished with a patient, you can go right in."  
    "Thanks," he nodded to her and led me out of the waiting room and down the hall, past a couple of doors to one that bore Mr. Yuy's name. Justin Yuy.   
    Heero reached out and knocked on the door.   
    "Come in!"   
    My friend practically pushed me into the office before I could have any more protests about doing this.  
    "Hey, Dad," Heero greeted.  
    Mr. Yuy's office was bigger than I had imagined that it would be, but pretty cozy. There were the typical framed certificates on the wall and couple of paintings of various scenery. There were a bunch of bookshelves packed with books on psychology, a few that looked pretty interesting that I wouldn't have minded to read. His desk was large and made of mahogany. He was seated at it, obviously using his computer when we entered.   
    "We aren't bothering you, are we?" I asked nervously.  
    "Duo wanted to talk to you about something," Heero interrupted me.  
    "Of course," his father smiled at me, the same, exact smile that Heero would have sometimes, "You aren't bothering me at all, what is it?"  
    I turned to look at my friend for guidance, but the sneaky, little fuck walked out of the office, closing the door behind him.   
    "I'm sorry that I missed saying good bye to you yesterday," Mr. Yuy walked from behind his desk, "but you really looked like you needed the rest. How did the test go?"  
    "Really, really well, actually," I told him, "I got a B."  
    "That's great, Duo," he smiled even brighter, "I'm glad."  
    "I wanted to thank you for letting me stay there to study," I rubbed sheepishly at my neck, "And for dinner and letting me sleep in Heero's bed... I really can't thank you enough for that. If there's anything I can do to repay you..."  
    "There's no need for that," he scoffed, "And you didn't need to clean Heero's room, either. You were a guest, I don't need to be repaid just for helping you find a quiet place to study."  
    "No, I did need to do that," I protested, "I felt like I was using you... and I was," I chewed on my lip, debating what I was about to say, but I felt like it needed to be said, "From the first time Heero invited me into your home, I felt happier there than I ever had in my own house. And this weekend, every time I came back after work... I felt like I was going home. I had no right to feel that way, but it's the first time I've ever felt it. Whenever I go back to my house, I call it home, but it hasn't felt that way, especially lately. It's just the house that I grew up in. Your home it's... it's peaceful and quiet, and your family is amazing. It isn't right that I keep wanting to stay just because it's better than my own when I don't belong there."  
    I looked down at the floor, feeling ashamed of myself.  
    "My parents fight all the time. Lately, it's been every single day. They scream and swear and throw things at each other... When I failed that test, Heero suggested that it wasn't because of me, but because I can't get my work done at home with all that going on. I hadn't wanted to believe that, but I guess it's true. I think that, when he offered for me to come over that day, I hadn't really believed that it was going to help. But I agreed to anyway, not because I really wanted a place a study, but because I needed to be some place quiet for awhile. I needed to get away, and it's wrong that I keep using you guys like that. So, I just wanted to say thanks, because of you, I was able to pass that test, but also sorry-"  
    My words were cut off when Mr. Yuy suddenly enveloped me in a gentle, but warm hug. It made me flinch for a moment, his movement taking me by surprise, but it felt good and I found myself melting into it.   
    "You don't need to apologize for that," he told me softly, "Don't ever apologize for taking advantage of something that's being offered to you, something that you need. I'm happy that we were able to give you a place to study, and I'm relieved that our home could be a sanctuary to you."  
    I felt a cold loss when he let go of me, but some of the warmth lingered in my chest at the memory of his arms around me, and his kind words. I watched as he returned to his desk and looked through his briefcase for something.  
    "There is something you can do to repay us," he told me, walking back to me with something clenched his hand.  
    He reached out and I took what was in his hand. The last thing that I expected to see being placed there was a key.  
    "What..." I asked, bewildered.  
    Mr. Yuy placed his hands on my shoulders and smiled at me.  
    "I have a favor to ask you. This is the spare key to our house. Whenever you feel like this... whenever you need a place to stay, if you're parents are fighting and you need some peace and quiet, or even if you just need to use one of our computers for your homework, come over and rest whenever you're able to. Even if Heero or even Mrs. Yuy and myself aren't home, you just come right over. You can eat our food, watch television, whatever you like. You are _always_ welcome in our home, Duo. Promise me that you'll at least consider it."  
    I looked up at him in shock for a moment, then down at the brass key in my hand. It felt like it weighed about a hundred times heavier than it had when he had first dropped it into my hand. What he was offering me was too much. His warm kindness was too much for me. I felt like I was either going to burst into tears or throw the key back at him and run. Who was I for him to be offering that sort of thing to? Why was he being so nice? I couldn't understand his actions.   
    "I-" I started to say, but the words got stuck in my throat.  
    I needed to say no. I was just Heero's friend, just some dumb kid that he had met and had taken home one day, like a lost puppy. I was no one special. How could I share their home when I didn't belong there? But... but I couldn't do it. I couldn't hand that key back at him. It wasn't just because that would be rude. There was something in me, something in my heart that couldn't let go of that key. It clung desperately to what he was offering. It recognized this gesture as this incredibly rare and beautiful thing, something that someone like me could never hope for.   
    That was dangerous. That kind of feeling didn't belong in me, that hope. Have you ever wanted something so badly, you feel like if you don't get it, you'll break? And have you ever known that it's something that you should never have? It hurts. Just the act of wanting it, let alone just getting it, hurts so badly. But you can't turn away from it. When you finally get it, you can't let go of it, even if you know that you should. Even if you know that you don't deserve it.  
    "I promise," I whispered and clutched the key so tightly in my hand that it's serrated edges cut into my skin.  
  
  
End Part 5  
  
Author's note: Writing this part kind of sucked me into this literary black hole that wouldn't release me until it had had it's way with me 0_o   I started to write this the day that I uploaded part 4 and got three pages into it, which is pretty typical for me. I tend to average 3-10 pages on the days that I try to get writing done. But yesterday, a writing vortex just consumed me and I ended up writing off and on all day. Somehow, I managed to spew out another twenty pages that day and completed this part today. So, if there are any errors in this part, blame my muse, who apparently decided to kick my ass yesterday. *dies a little*  
  
In all seriousness, I must reiterate that this chapter is going to be quite long and, while it is not as horribly dark as the fifth chapter was, it's a bit somber. Also, Duo's little rant about forgiveness is going to be explained in the next part. I was expecting to get to that in this part, but things ran on a bit long.   
      
  
      
  
  
      
      
      
      
  



	34. Chapter 7 Part 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heero gives Duo a christmas present. Duo is put in a tough spot when his mother asks him for his forgiveness.

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 7  
Part 6  
  
  
    That spare key quickly became one of my special treasures and I was more paranoid about it being lost or thrown out than anything else that I owned, with the exception of Quatre's CDs and the jacket that he had given me. I carried it with me everywhere and I found myself taking it out of my pocket or book bag to look at it once in awhile, unable to really believe in its realness.   
    Heero seemed especially eager that Friday in trying to convince me to stay the weekend again. He didn't need to try hard at all, I desperately wanted to do it, but my father roped me into coming home after school that day to mow the lawn. The best that I could do was promise my friend that I would spend my free time on Sunday with him, but his disappointed just tore at me. I resented my father for that, especially how smug and satisfied he had looked when he had told me to do it. I wondered at that. Him being vindictive was pretty typical when he was in a particular mood, but why? What had I done that he felt he needed to punish me for with something subtler than a beating?  
    I pushed it out of my mind and waited hopelessly for Sunday to arrive. My father didn't make it easy on me. As soon as I got home from work Friday night, he was on my ass to do chores around the house that he usually did on his days off. I was exhausted, but I obediently did the dishes, scrubbed the sink, and washed the kitchen floor before my mother walked out of the bedroom and walked towards the fridge. Her face was pinched with pain and, thinking about it, I realized that I hadn't seen her once in the last two weeks without that look on her face. Her headaches were definitely getting worse.   
    She shot my father and me a lethal glare and opened the fridge like she was angry at it, too. She had walked out of the bedroom with her mug, the same that she often used when she wasn't drinking whiskey right from the bottle, and I assumed that that was the entire reason why she had left her bedroom at all, that she needed a top off. I watched, perplexed, as she refilled her mug, not with any alcohol, but water. She took a sip from the mug, her face twisting into one of complete reluctance, like she was just forcing herself to drink the water and it tasted horribly bitter.   
    "There's no juice in here," she snapped at my father as he sat at the kitchen table, watching me scrub the inside of the microwave as he drank a beer, like I was some great entertainment, that damning, smug expression on his face, "Can't you at least do some goddamned food shopping if you're just going to lounge around here?!"  
    "You're one to talk," he sneered back at her, "Why can't you make yourself useful around here, bitch, and make dinner? Oh, that's right, I don't want to be fucking poisoned."      
    She turned from him, a look of complete hatred on her face, and chugged the last of the water from her mug, slamming it down on the counter. I calmly put away the cleaning supplies that I had been using, my body tense as I waited for the perfect moment to flee. I knew what was coming, and I didn't even need the uncomfortable aura in the air, like a thin veil of static, to warn me.  
    "Can't even make his own dinner," my mother muttered under her breath, "No wonder why you were fired. A pig in a uniform would have filled in your position just as well. They never would have even noticed the difference."  
    My father surged off his chair and threw his beer bottle at her. Showing the kind of reflexes that she normally never seemed to have, she ducked and cried out. I was already running for the stairs at that point. There was no way in hell I was going to get caught in that crossfire. I thought about trying to help her, but I all too keenly remembered what had happened the last time I had tried to get between them. I hadn't been able to stop him from beating on her that time, either. Besides, as I ran into my room, I didn't hear her crying out, just the two of them screaming at each other and things hitting one of the kitchen walls. I wasn't going to go through this, not that night. Fuck the both of them, I thought with anger. Fuck their constant fighting and their hatred for each other and whatever the hell was going on with my mother, I didn't have the ability to deal with it anymore.   
    I didn't really think about what I was doing, I just shoved what I would need for work and homework tomorrow into my backpack and slung it over my shoulder, not even caring to change out of my pajamas. It wasn't exactly hard sneaking out of the place. When I ran back downstairs, my mother and father were still screaming at each other. My father had my mother by the front of her shirt and there was already a dark bruise on her cheek. Glass littered the floor of the kitchen and my father's right foot was bloodied.   
    I froze for a moment, my father's back to me and thought about trying to help my mother, even knowing that my dad was going to beat the shit out of me if I tried to, but when he pulled her in by her shirt, she reached back and grabbed at the frying pan that I had put on the drying rack, swiping at him with it. I watched in horror as it nearly hit him right in the head, missing by scant inches. With a roar of rage, he tried to make another grab for her, but got hit by the pan in his hand that time. I ran for the door. I was too tired of all of this, all of the anger and constant battles, to be their collateral damage again.  
    I shoved my sneakers on my feet and escaped, unscathed, into the brisk, early morning air. I hopped on the first bus that I found and got off on the closest stop to Heero's house. I walked the rest of the way there and soon found myself standing on their front porch, staring at the closed door. It was four in the morning and I hadn't even thought about it when I had gotten onto that bus, where I was going and what I was doing. I had just fled there, the only place that I had to feel safe. I thought about turning around and walking to the park to find a nice bench to crash on, but it was too cold out for that. In my pocket, I clenched my hand around the spare key that Mr. Yuy had given me. He had said that I was always welcome, right, to go there whenever I needed a sanctuary? So... so they wouldn't get mad at me for showing up all of sudden, right? I gripped the key tight, so tight that I could feel my hand start to bleed.  
    So much warred inside of me as I stood there in the dark. My self-sufficient nature, that thing that always kept me from asking other people for help, that thing that would have me walking to the hospital on my own or try to refuse it every time Heero tried to offer me free food, battled fiercely with the part of me that desperately wanted help, wanted to walk into that house and lean, just a little bit, on someone stronger than I was. I didn't want to be helpless and weak or vulnerable, I couldn't be. But right then, I didn't want to be strong and independent, either. I was stuck in this nether space between the two, unable to stand up on my own and unable to reach out. I yearned for someone to tell me what to do.  
    I unlocked the door and walked inside, quickly entering the security code before it could go off. I immediately heard the clicking of Kanuck's nails on the hard floor as he came to investigate who had entered his domain.  
    "Hi, boy," I whispered, hoping that he wouldn't bark and wake anyone up.  
    He just wuffed softly and I felt his tongue lick at my hands. The dog followed me as I navigated the dark house until I found the couch in the living room. I shrugged off my jackets and all but fell onto the couch. Is it wrong that my thought when I laid down on that flat surface was 'home sweet home', and it wasn't with any kind of sarcasm or bitterness, but actually relief? To my pleasant surprise, it didn't take me long to fall asleep and while I did wake up a few times out of nervousness and once because I needed to use the bathroom, my sleep wasn't interrupted by any nightmares.  
    Being woken up by Heero calling my name five hours later was a pleasant experience. When I opened my eyes, the difference between waking up there and waking up in my own bedroom in my own home were so drastically different that it was almost like a physical shock. From the smell to that soft, gentle awakening... I wasn't jolted awake, and I had this pervasive feeling of comfort as I looked around the living room, sunlight beaming through the skylight. It was akin to spending hours out in a chilling snow storm, and then jumping into a hot shower. But the best thing was Heero, kneeling right in front of me and for a moment, all I could see was the blue of his eyes.   
    "Hey," he smiled at me, making me feel completely incapable of movement.  
    "Mmm," I mumbled and suddenly registered that, at some point in the morning, someone had put a blanket over me. I was all too happy to sink into it, relishing in the warmth of the house over how cold mine had been the previous night.  
    "Have a good sleep?" he asked and whatever response I might have sleepily been able churn out immediately fled my brain when he reached over and brushed my bangs out of my eyes.      
    I stared at him, wide eyed at the gesture, my heart suddenly racing. He blushed slightly and retracted his hand quickly. He seemed to blush a lot, I was noticing, but I couldn't recall him doing that before we had become friends.  
    "Sorry," he said sheepishly.   
    "Yeah, I slept well," I brushed off his weird behavior, "Sorry for crashing here, I just... this morning was kind of... rough at home."  
    "Don't mention it," he stood up, giving me room to sit up and get off the couch, "My dad said that he told you to come by whenever you like. He was glad that you decided to sleep here this morning. I was going to make some oatmeal. Would you like some?"  
    "Sure," I nodded, folding up the blanket and putting it back on the couch, "Are your parents going to be eating with us?"  
    "Oh, they're not here," he told me as we walked into the kitchen together, "My grandfather on my father's side fell off a ladder this morning."  
    "That's awful!" I exclaimed, "Is he ok?"  
    To my confusion, he laughed.  
    "Oh, he's fine, mostly, He bashed up his leg pretty good, but he didn't break it. My Nanna - er, grandmother called my dad to come over and try to convince him to go to the hospital. My grandfather is pretty stubborn. He's too old to be doing work on their house, but he still insists on doing things like cleaning out the gutters, which is how he got hurt. My parents just went there to talk some sense into him."  
    I shook my head at that, biting my tongue to keep from remarking that stubbornness must be a family trait. Not that I was anyone to talk. I set the table while Heero heated up the oatmeal, which turned out to have cinnamon and blueberries in it, and the two of us had a nice, quiet breakfast together.   
    "Do you have work again at four today?" he asked as he washed our dishes.  
    "Yeah," I confirmed, "but I don't have anywhere to be before then."  
    I felt a twinge of fear at the prospect of not going back home that day. I knew that my father had chores for me, and in the mood that he was in, if I didn't come back, he was going to get pissed. But even though that fear was instinctual, I realized something. It was a terrible thing, and incredibly dangerous, but I realized that I just didn't care. I didn't care about his anger and his punishment. I didn't want to go back home to... to _that_. Even though I knew that he was going to kill me for it, I just couldn't do it. The more that time went on, the more I was finding myself of incapable of dealing with all of it. I could blame Heero and the serenity of his home for making it harder on me to deal with my home life, but I had been feeling it for awhile. Tiredness. Apathy. That feeling that I was careening towards the edge of some great cliff. At that moment, I felt like it was only Heero's hand that was keeping me from falling into it.  
    "It's a bit warmer out today. Would you like to throw the ball around?" he asked me.  
    "Ball?" I asked in confusion.   
    "I mean play catch," he amended, "You could use my father's mitt."  
    "That's ok. I'm miserable at it," I told him.  
    "I could teach you how to play," he suggested, "since you taught me how to skate."  
    I hesitated. The thought of embarrassing myself in front of him made me shy, but he seemed so eager and I had to admit that I wanted to do things like that with him. I think that he could have asked me if I wanted to go rock climbing and I would have agreed just for the chance to spend more time with him. Besides, he had already seen me at my worst in gym class, how could throwing a ball around be any worse?   
    "Alright, just let me shower and get dressed first," I said and was rewarded with a beaming smile.  
    I took my back pack upstairs with me and showered and dressed, grabbing my jackets from the hallway closet where someone had hung them up. Outside, Heero was waiting for me with two mitts and a well used baseball. As promised, it was a little bit warmer out than it had been before, but not by much. Someone had swept all of the snow off of the patio and some of it had been cleared off of the grass right in front of it, giving us a nice area to play in, far enough from any windows. Not that I thought that I was that clumsy, but it was nice to know that I wouldn't have to worry about damaging anything.   
    Heero let me have the first throw, and I can admit that it was abysmal. While the ball easily reached him, to say that I missed him is a vast understatement. Aiming has never really been my strong suit.   
    "I'm sorry," I flushed darkly as he had to run to go get the ball before it completely disappeared into the snow, "I told you, I'm shit at stuff like this."  
    "That's ok," he chuckled, walking back towards me, "I think I can see what your problem is."  
    "You can?" I blinked stupidly at him.  
    "Yeah," he walked behind me and when I tried to turn to follow him, he grabbed at my shoulders, keeping my back facing him, "For starters, you're facing where you're aiming with your chest, which a huge no-no. Second, your right foot is forward when it should be your left. Here," he kept his hands on my shoulders and angled my body the way that he wanted.   
    I did as he said, moving my left foot out, but then his chest was suddenly right at my back and his hands were touching my arms and all coherent thought fled me like a frightened flock of birds.  
    "Good," his warm breath washed over my ear, making me shiver, "You should always have the person you're aiming for be at your left side, since you're right handed. Now," he placed the ball in my right hand and, gently grabbing my right wrist, manipulated my arm so it was drawn back, "You also didn't have your arm back enough. You should always bring the ball _behind_ your ear, and bend your elbow pointing backwards."  
    He let go of me, leaving me feeling overheated and shaky as he walked back where he had been standing before.  
    "Try it now," he called to me.  
    Still flustered from him touching me like that, still feeling his body heat mingling with mine, I threw, trying to keep the pose that he had put me in. The ball still missed it's target, but this time it had come a lot closer and Heero had been able to catch it.  
    "Better!" he complimented, "You're still a bit stiff, but if we keep practicing, you'll get the hang of it."  
    He threw the ball back at me. His pitch was nothing like the one that I had seen at try outs, for which I was grateful, and the throw was pretty casual. But I still reacted the same way I did when anyone threw something at me; I moved to the side and deflected it off my arm instead of catching it neatly in the mitt like Heero had done.   
    "Are you ok?" Heero became frantic when he saw the ball hit me, "I didn't hurt you, did I?"  
    "N-no," I rubbed at my arm. It ached a little, but it didn't really hurt, "I'm sorry, I'm awful at this..."  
    "You're not awful," he scolded, "You have really fast reflexes, actually, faster than a lot of the guys on my team, but you're just... reflecting wrong. I noticed that you do the same thing when we play dodge ball and sometimes volleyball, if the hit is too fast. You're panicking before the ball even reaches you. You just need to calm down, stand your ground, and use the mitt instead of your arm."  
    I decided not to tell him that the reason for those quick reflexes, and my reaction to his throw, that I was all too used to things getting thrown at me, things that, if I tried to catch most of those things with my hand, I would seriously injure myself. It's really not that easy to override 16 years of instinct. But I tried, and failed most of the time. An hour later, I was still pretty awful. My aim was getting a lot better, but I only managed to catch a handful of Heero's throws. Halfway through, I had gotten better in not moving, but it was still hard remembering to try to catch the ball instead of deflecting it. Even when I did remember, I often let the ball fall out of the mitt. It really wasn't as easy as he made it look.   
    "I'm so terrible at this," I sighed when we finally decided to take a break.  
    "I told you, you're not," Heero smiled, taking his father's mitt from me, "You're just not used to it, and you got pretty good at the end there. You'll do better next time. Come on, I think you need to relax a bit."  
    Next time. If he had been anyone else, any of the boys that had been forced to pair off with me in gym class every time we played softball, he would have never wanted to try to do that with me again. But this was Heero, and I didn't know if it was just because he was too stubborn to give up on me or he actually enjoyed this, but I found myself oddly looking forward to that 'next time', even if it meant continuing to embarrass myself.   
    "When did you first start playing baseball?" I asked Heero as we walked back into the house.  
    "You know, it's funny," he smiled in this sentimental, wistful way that made my heart flutter for a moment, "I remember the time that my father put a baseball in my hand for the very first time. I can remember what he was wearing, the feel and weight of the ball, but I can't remember when that actually was, how old I was or the month, only that it was spring time and it was hot and humid out. But I do remember that I was pretty young, maybe four or five. He taught me how to catch and throw, and when I was old enough, he taught me how to bat as well."  
    "So, is baseball like a family tradition or something on your father's side?" I remembered him saying that the bat that he had been using for years belonged to his grandfather.   
    "Well, I wouldn't call it a tradition, but my father and grandfather were really into it. My grandfather was a professional baseball player and while my father was never serious about it, he played on his school's various teams all through college. Even though he gave it up to pursue psychiatry, he taught me everything he knew. It just became this thing that was just for the two of us, you know?"  
    "Not really," I murmured and felt a very sharp pain in my chest. If I had been alone, I might have given in to it, but every time Heero saw me cry, the shame nearly killed me.  
    My friend stopped walking half way up the stairs and turned to look at me, his expression very somber.  
    "You and your dad... you don't have anything like that, do you?" he asked sadly.  
    I smiled, but it was bitter. Something special that me and my father shared? Discounting our recent relationship and our equal fits of rage, what did we have in common? He was athletic and I was a book worm. He liked working on cars and watching football and drinking with his friends. I was happy just burying myself in a book or listening to one of my blues CDs or cooking in quiet.   
    "My dad and I have never been..." I chewed on that thought, "close, I guess. We haven't always been at each other's throats or anything, but even though there are some moments that we had together that I cherish, there's nothing consistent. He would take me for drives or we would have picnics near the train station when I was really little, but the older that I got, the rarer those things became. When I was young, my dad worked a lot. When he was home, he was tired and stressed from his job and dealing with bills. A lot of the time, he just didn't have the patience for me or my mother. A good day for him was if he could come home, grab a beer and watch television while we left him alone, so long as there was dinner waiting for him."  
    "And when he did have time for me, we often didn't see eye to eye on anything," I sighed, remembering my sadness as a kid, always knowing how disappointed my father was that his only son didn't do anything that he liked, we couldn't even talk about sports, "I was just as much obsessed with books as I am now. I was always happy when he would take me to the library and I could sit there and read. I loved the quiet of the place, that smell that can only be from old books and printed paper, but my father was always bored and hated going there. After awhile, I would just feel guilty and go by myself."  
    "My father never understood why I liked places like that, why I preferred reading to watching a match with him or joining a sports team. He used to say that there was something wrong with me, that I had screw loose. He tried to teach me how to play football once, when I was little, but he just got frustrated at me when I couldn't throw the ball right, so he gave up. When he finally figured out that that wasn't going to change, that I wasn't going to wake up one morning and love sports or be interested in the things that he was, he just kind of gave up on trying to do things with me. He would still spend time with me, once in awhile, if the mood came upon him, but it was less often."  
    Heero looked like he had just kicked a puppy and someone was calling him out for it, or he had swallowed something excruciatingly bad.   
    "That... that's awful. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked, I'm an asshole. I didn't mean to make you sad," he apologized, looking away from me guiltily.   
    "Don't be," I managed to smile more honestly, "I _like_ hearing about your childhood and your relationship with your father. Just because I never had something like that with my own, it doesn't mean that yours is a bad thing. It's nice. And I do have some good memories from my childhood, things were just... complicated. My relationship with my parents is just different than yours."      
    We resumed walking up the stairs, but when we got to the second floor, my friend looked like he was chewing on something unpleasant.   
    "Was your father always... I mean, when did he..." he blurted out and then shook his head at himself, looking incredibly frustrated and embarrassed, "I'm sorry, that's really rude..."  
    I knew exactly the question that he was darting around, his curiosity and concern warring with his tact. I wasn't annoyed by it, it was an honest question and it wasn't like it was some huge secret that my father hit me. I had admitted that to him before, never thinking for a second that he would given a shit about it, let alone that we would become friends and it would matter. To his credit, he had obviously not told anyone about it, so what would be the harm in talking about something that we were both aware of, but just didn't acknowledge?   
    "I don't mind you asking things like that," I confessed to him, "It's really not that big of a deal and it's nothing that I'm embarrassed about. My dad's always had a short fuse, but I guess it's gotten a lot worse compared to when I was little. Back then, he was less stressed, so he would just smack me a bit if I misbehaved. He just gets really wound up over things, especially money, and he hates his new job, so it's easy to piss him off."  
    It felt kind of good, talking to Heero about those things. Quatre and I had only touched on it a handful of times, and it had always been Quatre who had brought it up, always after he had seen the after effects of a bad beating. We had never casually talked about it like this, mostly because I had worried that he would try to stop it.   
    "Don't talk about it like that," Heero looked devastated, "Don't talk about it like it's this... this tiny matter, like he's making you clean the gutters or something. Hitting someone because he's angry... especially his kid, is fucked up! People like that don't deserve to have children, they deserve to be locked up where they can't hurt anyone but themselves!"  
    I was taken aback by his passion as he spoke, how vehement and earnest he was. For a moment, I was afraid of the same thing that I had been afraid of when Quatre and I had talked about my father's abuse, that Heero was thinking about doing something about it, but if he did, there was nothing I could do to stop it at that point.   
    "It's not like I don't think that it's wrong," I shrugged, "Maybe when I was a kid, I thought it was normal, but when I got older, I figured out pretty quickly that my family is... not exactly functioning. It's just the way things are. My dad takes out his problems on my mother and me, we're poor, life sucks. Those are just facts that I have to live with. I can't change my father anymore than you can change Zechs. Even if I could get him to stop, it's nothing different than I'm getting at school, so what's the point?"  
    "The point is that you shouldn't have to deal with it from anyone," Heero argued, "You most definitely shouldn't have to deal with it from your father! Maybe Zechs is beating us up at school, but I can go home and put that behind me for awhile."  
    "What I'm trying to say is that, for me, it isn't a big deal. I've been living with this a lot longer than you have, and while it sucks, I'm used to it. Besides, I'll be eighteen in a year, I only need to worry about it until then," I pointed out.   
    He shook his head at me.   
    "It isn't right," he said stubbornly, but I could tell by his tone that he was going to drop it, at least for now.   
    We spent the rest of the time that I had before work playing video games together. Heero introduced me to some shooting games, but I found the racing game to be a lot more enjoyable, so we stuck with that for a couple of hours. It was oddly nice and relaxing, doing something rather mindless like that. I could almost forget why I had gone there and what was going to be waiting for me when I got home.  
    "Can you stay tonight?" Heero asked shyly when we were done playing.  
    "I..." I almost blurt out that it was fine, that I would be happy to stay, but my sense of self-preservation overrode my desires, "I probably shouldn't. I have a lot of chores to do at home. If I keep putting them off, my dad is going to get pissed."      
    I hated myself for saying that, for being so frightened of my father that I had to go running home when I really didn't want to.  
    "You know, if he ever... " he struggled with what he was trying to say, "If he tries to... you can stay here."  
    "I know," I smiled weakly at him, loathing him a little for giving me that kind of temptation, "and I'm grateful for that, but I have to go home sooner or later. There's no point in making him angry just because I don't want to be there. But I'll come over after work tomorrow."  
    "Hold that thought," he suddenly blurted out and all but ran out of the room.  
    I blinked in bewilderment at his quick exit, wondering if I had said something to piss him off, but he just as quickly came back in. He sat back down next to me on the couch and shoved a small box into my hands.  
    "Here. I was going to give it to you tomorrow, but since you're here, I might as well give it to you now," his voice was nervous, his speech quick and almost frantic.  
    I stared down at the box. It was plain and black, not wrapped or anything, but I felt weird just holding it.   
    "You... bought me something?" I asked in a small voice and felt my chest clench when he nodded.  
    Heero had bought me a gift? Why would he do something like that? No one had bought me anything since... since Quatre had died. Even Trowa had never actually gifted me with anything. My initial response was to give it back to him and insist that he take whatever it was back, but I couldn't make myself do it for some reason. A part of me was uncomfortable with the thought of my new friend buying anything for me, but another part was overjoyed to have something from him. I swayed back and forth between those two feelings, unsure of what to do.  
    "You don't need to buy me anything," I murmured lamely.  
    "This wasn't really about needing to," Heero smiled gently, "I wanted to, after you came over here to study that day."  
    "I already told you that forgive you for lying to me," I said, "I don't need a gift because of that."  
    "That's not the reason why I bought this," he told me, "I just thought that it would be useful."  
    "What is it?" I asked nervously, unable to think of a single thing that would be useful to me in that kind of context.  
    "Just open it, dummy," he laughed.  
    I sighed and lifted the lid on the box. When I saw what was inside, I just kind of stared at it in shock, like I thought that if I kept looking at it, it would change into something else.  
    "I can't take this!" I exclaimed and tried to give him back the box.  
    It was a cell phone. Not one of those horribly expensive smart phones or a blackberry, just a flip phone, but it was still expensive to me.   
    "Yes you can," he assured me.  
    "No, it's too much money. Look, I know that you get an allowance and all, but I can't accept this. I don't need a phone and I don't need you spending all kinds of money on me!" I argued vehemently.  
    Why would he do something like that? Spend all that money on _me_? Maybe money wasn't as sacred to him as it was to me, but that was no excuse for that! I felt relief when he took the box from me, but he took the phone out of it's case and shoved it into my hand.  
    "I'm not an idiot," he told me, his blue eyes hard and full of the stubbornness that I was coming to expect from him, "I know that you have a rough time at home, and when you agreed to come here to study, it was mostly because you didn't want to go back there and you needed to get away, to be around people besides your parents. And I know that it bothered you that I wasn't there, not just because I had lied to you.  
    "You're going to take this cell phone because the money I spent on it doesn't mean a single thing to me and just because you think that you don't need it or it makes you uncomfortable, that doesn't mean that it's some kind of chore to do nice things for you. I wanted you to have this, not as some kind of act of charity, but because I want you to _use_ it. I want you to call me, even if you can't come over, just because you need someone to talk to. I don't care if it's four in the morning. If you're upset or... or if your dad's hurting you and you need help, I want you to use this, ok?"      
    I looked from him, his blue eyes bright and earnest and full of emotion that I couldn't even begin to decode, and down at the phone. Such a little thing. For me, it was too much, and not just the cost. What he was offering me, it was just too much. But like that spare house key, I found myself reaching towards it, wanting it despite my better judgment. A link to Heero... another connection. I wanted that very badly. I wanted to be able to have something to look at and remember that I wasn't alone, that someone cared. Comparing that to my concerns about costs and getting gifts from someone that I was only just starting to get to know made me seem petty.   
    He reached over and closed my hand around the phone. For the very first time, with his hand wrapped around mine, I noticed just how pale and thin my wrist and fingers were compared to his.   
    "Look," he said in this soothing tone, "just take it. If it really bothers you, consider it a Christmas present."  
    That was right, it was near Christmas, wasn't it? That sort of thing had completely skipped my mind. I hadn't needed to think about buying or making anyone a present since Quatre had died.   
    "I can't get you anything..." I murmured in protest.   
    "You don't need to buy me anything," he smiled warmly at me, "I didn't buy you this just so you would give me something in return. But if you really want to, I'm sure you can think of something. Teach me some more ice skating moves or something, it doesn't have to be some flashy, expensive thing. I like just being able to spend time with you. Oh, that reminds me, I have one more thing."  
    He fished around in his pocket and brought out two little animal figures, attached to black cords. One was a dog that looked remarkably like Kanuck and, to my surprise, the cat looked an awful like Pepper.  
    "They're cell phone charms," he explained with this bright, excited smile, "The place that I bought the phone from said I could pick out one for free. I saw the cat and well, it looks a lot like your kitten, doesn't it?"      
    "Yeah," I said, still a bit amazed at the sheer coincidence of that, a set of charms that looked just like our respective pets.  
    I reached out and plucked the dog from his hand and tied it to my new cell phone.  
    "I thought you would want the cat?" Heero asked in confusion.  
    "The way I see it," I said very shyly, keeping my eyes fixed on the charm so I wouldn't have to see his expression, "you bought this for me to remember you by, right? Besides, I have your dog to thank for a lot of those times we met on the beach. Hell, the first time we properly met, your dog was the one who introduced himself to me first."  
    I dared a glance at him and found him blushing.  
    "Actually, I have a confession to make," Heero pulled the same move that I had, looking down at the cat charm, "A few of those times, I wasn't really walking my dog or even looking for a place to hang out. After awhile... well... I went to the beach hoping that I would run into you."  
    My heart did this weird, fluttering thing at his confession, like it might stop beating at any second. I watched with a great deal of satisfaction as he tied the cat to his own cell phone.  
    "Um, do I need to take this to a phone store to get it activated or something?" I asked him, finally accepting that the damned thing was actually going to become a fixture in my life.  
    "No, I took care of that," he informed me, "The phone number is in the box on a piece of paper. You're on our family plan, so don't worry about having to pay for anything."  
    "Heero!" I couldn't help but get flustered at that, "Do your parents know that? I can't make them pay-"  
    "It was their idea," he interrupted, "When I told my dad that I was thinking of getting you a phone so you could reach me more easily, he mentioned it. It's not much of an additional cost for them and they don't mind. Don't worry about it."  
    I sighed heavily. I had the distinct feeling that if I kept trying to protest against this, I was only going to lose.   
    "There's nothing I can say to convince you that you're doing too much for me, is there?" I muttered in resignation.  
    "Nope," Heero replied cheekily, "So deal with it."      
    "Fine," I sighed even more heavily, "But saying that I owe you one is an understatement at this point."  
    I tucked the phone in my pocket and the box into my book bag, then, feeling incredibly bold, hugged Heero briefly.  
    "Thank you, for everything," I said sincerely.  
    His face was beet red when I let go of him.  
    "I told you, it's no problem. But I expect you to use that!" he mock scolded.  
    "Yes, sir," I grinned and despite all my hesitance in finding myself a new cell phone owner, I vowed that I would.   
  
*****  
  
    I didn't actually touch my new cell phone all night. I was still trying to wrap my head around the fact that I _had_ a cell phone, something that I had always scoffed at and believed was pointless for me to have. Hell, it was mind boggling that I had someone to freaking call. Everything that had happened so far that day seemed to surreal to me. I just had to keep telling myself that something like that wasn't the big deal to Heero that it was to me, that he didn't need to scrimp and save for weeks to afford something like that. That didn't make the gesture any less for me, that he would want to spend his allowance on me, but it helped to lessen my guilt.   
    I kept the phone in my pocket while I was at work. We weren't allow phones while we were on the clock anyway, but I was too paranoid about it getting stolen to put it in my locker. I would have to guard it when I was at home, too. My father could never know that I had it. He wouldn't just destroy it out of pettiness, he hated the things. Just knowing that I had one would piss him off. When I took my lunch break, I took it out of my pocket finally and studied it, but I didn't try to use it. I had never used one before and I didn't want to break it, so I didn't want to even turn it on before I read the manual. I just examined it, seeing where all the buttons were on the outside of it. When I looked at the little husky hanging from it's cord, I felt this stupid sappiness fill me.  
    I felt exhausted as I walked home, despite the lengthy sleep I had had that morning. I felt like my day had been going on forever, between my parents' fight, the day that I had had with Heero, and work. What made me feel even more tired was knowing that I wasn't even remotely done with it. I was probably walking home to a trap and tried not to think about just how pissed my father was going to be when I got home. He had wanted me to unclog the kitchen drain, take out the trash, mow the lawn, wash his car, and clean the bathroom that morning and I hadn't done any of that. I could take care of the sink, trash, and bathroom before I went to bed, but the rest was going to have to wait until the sun came up. But I was going to make damned sure that I had everything done before I started my construction shift so I could head to Heero's right after.   
    To my utter relief, when I got home, my father was nowhere to be seen and my mother was asleep in their bed. At that hour, it could only mean one thing: he had gone off drinking with Pat and probably wouldn't be home until sometime late Sunday. That meant that I could go right to bed and just get up early in the morning to do my chores. He would never know the difference. It also meant that I could go to sleep and not have to worry about him being there.    
    The second I got upstairs to my bedroom, I stripped into my pajamas and pretty much fell onto my mattress. I wasn't prepared at all for this feeling of... dissatisfaction to fill me. Normally, I would be overjoyed that my father wasn't home and could enjoy just lying in the peace and quiet of my room. But that night, I felt... I don't know. Uncomfortable, I guess. Unsettled. It was like changing your pillows or waking up and finding your sheets twisted up. I had this sense that something wasn't right, something was off.   
    It took me several minutes to really figure out what it was. I didn't want my bed or my bedroom. I, whether it was my body's sense of comfort or just some kind of emotional attachment, wanted the couch that I had fallen asleep on that morning. It wanted a quiet living room with sun filtering in through a sun window. I wanted a light floral smell and a sense of familiarity and peace, not my dusty, attic room and my flat, old mattress. The room that I had slept in for almost seventeen years wasn't comforting to me anymore. The only thing that was, was the feeling of my kitten's warmth as she trotted out from her hole to lay on my pillow next to me. Everything else... well, it wasn't alien, but it wasn't right, either.  
    How could it be possible that the place that I had felt was alien to me had become my sanctuary, the place that I longed for instead of the place that had been my home my entire life? Had I really become used to that couch and that house so quickly? I didn't know, but just laying down in my bed made me feel restless, like I couldn't get comfortable. I had the sinking, terrible suspicion that it was going to be another night with no sleep for me.       
    A sudden, high pitched, chiming sound startled me. It was a completely different sound from my alarm clock and for a moment, I was baffled trying to figure out what it was until I realized that it was coming from where I had tossed my jeans. I reached out my hand and groped blindly for them in the dark of my room, fishing my cell phone out of the pocket when I found them. Sure enough, the display on the outside of the phone informed me that I had gotten two new text messages. I had had no idea that the phone had even been on and charged.   
    I flipped the phone open, expecting to find a text from Heero or an impersonal message from whatever carrier his parents used, but when I opened each message, which was actually pretty easy to figure out how, to my surprise, they were both from Heero's parents.   
    'Welcome home, Duo,' read the first, 'I hope you're enjoying your new phone and not staying up too late. Don't hesitate to call us if you need to. Put this number into your phone contacts so you can get a hold of me more easily. Heero's mother is going to text you hers as well. Have a nice night.'  
    I felt tears sting my eyes at Heero's father's message, but it was the text from his mother that finished the job, making them fall down my face.  
    'Duo, this is Mrs. Yuy. Don't forget to put my number into your new phone. If there's anything you would like for me to make for you tomorrow night, please don't hesitate to text or call me! Dinner will be ready when you get here. Good night, sweetie, pleasant dreams <3'  
    They had stayed up so late, just to make sure that I had their phone numbers... just to make sure that I could contact them if I ever needed to. I clutched the phone to my chest desperately as I cried into my pillow. It felt warm. 'Welcome home,' and 'good night'... I could almost feel Mr. Yuy ruffling my hair and pulling my covers over me, like he had before. Those messages... it was like... it was like I had a real family.  
  
*****  
  
    For once, my little crying fit didn't last for long and I chalked it up to just melancholy, or my being tired. I remembered when I vowed to never cry again after Quatre. After everything that's happened since then, that promise seems so laughable. I would love to be able to never cry over this shit, to never have things, both the things that make me feel awful and the things that make me feel wonderful like those text messages, bow me over. But I have no control over it. My emotions seem to be getting more volatile as I get older instead of less.   
    My prediction of my ability to sleep that morning came true. I laid on my mattress for a couple of hours, sometimes staring at the ceiling and loathing myself for being unable to drift off into even a nap, and sometimes staring at my phone, thinking about how I had come to have it, all these new changes in my life and how, even though they were undeniably for the better, they were just as violent and overwhelming as the bad changes.   
    I don't know if I can say that they're anymore welcome. I've lived a certain way for so long, I got used to things. It's been more than three years since Quatre passed. Almost four, really. In a way, I've gotten used to being alone. Trowa was a nice reprieve from that, but if I'm being completely honest with myself, compared to what I have with Heero, after all this time, I can finally see how lacking my relationship with him had been. I had done more than one thing that I now regret to keep him in my life out of loneliness, but now I have to ask myself, what exactly was Trowa doing for me? Keeping my feelings of isolation at bay, kissing me, just being with me?   
    But now, when I think about him, what comes to mind aren't those things. What immediately pops into my head are all the times that we fought, all the times that he made me feel like shit, trying to force me to do things that I didn't want to do. Making me have sex with him and when I didn't want to do that again, trying to rape me... Knowing now what's that like, to be raped by someone that you knew, someone you had once cared for, a part of me hates him. He never managed to do that, and I know it's just my father's abuse that has those feelings all twisted up, but I can't untangle them.  
    More than my sexual issues with my ex-boyfriend, I realize that Trowa wasn't just bad for me romantically, he was a pretty shitty friend. I had called him that because I hadn't had anyone else, but compared to Heero and Quatre, it's hard to even put him in that same category anymore. I had always been waiting on him, for his phone call, for his scraps of attention. All the times that we had gone out together, it had been on his terms.   
    We had never talked about anything serious. When he had known that I was sad, that something was upsetting me, he had just moved on and ignored it. At the time, I had thought that that was what I had needed, to ignore my problems, to have someone who could help me do that. I had forgotten what it felt like to have a friend, a real friend, to talk to me and try to make my feel better. I forgot what it felt like to feel sad and have someone who cared about me ask me what was wrong and hug me or talk me through those bad feelings.   
    I had become accustomed to loneliness. That sounds terrible, but it's just a fact. Even when Quatre had been alive, I had gotten used to being dependent only on myself. Do you know how hard it is to have someone in my life all of a sudden that I can rely on? And not just one person, but three? Three whole people who, not only told me that I was welcome in their lives and to go to them if I needed help, kept giving me things? Kept... kept trying to take care of me? For most people, that would be a wonderful thing, and it _is_ , but it's also weird and strange and not something that I can wrap my head around. How do you get used to something like that, to suddenly having a safety net when you've been in free fall for most of your life?  
    Those thoughts weighed me down and made it completely impossible for me to sleep. I gave up the ghost around four in the morning and decided that, if I was going to be miserable, I might as well get things done at the same time. I got up and went to work on my chores, cleaning the bathroom first and then making my way to the kitchen. By the time the sun started to rise at six, I had gotten all of the chores done inside of the house and made my way outside. Pat and my father had obviously either walked to whatever bar or bars they had hit last night, or taken Pat's car because my father's was still in the drive way.   
    I washed the car and quickly mowed the lawn with our little, hand mower. It didn't take a whole lot of time considering that we didn't have much of a lawn to mow. I couldn't even begin to imagine the kind of upkeep the Yuys had to do on their property, unless they hired someone for that. I was immensely relieved when I finished everything. Now, if my father threw a fit when I came home late that night, it wouldn't be because I disobeyed him. It's the little things that matter, right?  
    I ate a small breakfast, not really feeling like eating anything. I had that feeling you get when you know that all your body wants is to be horizontal, but I knew that even as tired as I was, it wouldn't really matter. I was thankful that I had a shift at my construction job that day instead of the factory work. The repetitive motion of unloading cargo would have made me feel even worse, but that day we were fixing someone's roof after it had started to leak from the most recent snow fall. It turned out that they actually had a large patch of rotten wood, which wasn't surprising given that it was an older home. Tearing out the rotten materials was exactly what I needed to feel more awake.   
    It decided to snow as I got on the bus after work and I couldn't help but swear under my breath. It hadn't even been that cold this morning, but the temperature had steadily dropped during the day. If I had known that it was going to snow, I wouldn't have bothered with mowing the lawn and washing the car, but at least I had gotten them done before it had gotten too cold. The wind picked up by the time I got to the north end of town and I huddled into my jacket, wishing that I had thought to bring my scarf. It wouldn't have made much of a difference, though. It was old and tattered, one of the many things that I needed to replace eventually.  
    Heero was waiting for me on their porch, wearing his own winter jacket.   
    "You're covered," he remarked with a small laugh, dusting the snow off my jacket as I tackled the small pile on my head.  
    "Yeah, it really started coming down when I got off the bus," I complained.  
    The snow fall was still nothing compared to some of the snow storms we got, but the flakes were thick and coming down fast. The fall would end up being short lived and done with in a few hours, thankfully. When we got all of the snow off of me, we went in. The heat in the house hit me in a pleasant wave. After walking outside in the 28 degree wind chill, I could have curled up right there in the foyer and been quite happy.  
    "You look awful," my friend suddenly observed as I took my shoes and jackets off, "You didn't get a lot of sleep last night again, didn't you?"  
    It wasn't really much of a question, I was sure that the lines under my eyes and my tired expression told him everything he needed to know.   
    "I actually didn't get any sleep," I confessed with a shrug, not seeing the point in lying about it.  
    "Your parents fighting again?" he guessed.  
    "No. My father wasn't home last night. I just couldn't get to sleep. I have some sort of insomnia. It happens to me every once in awhile," I told him.  
    "Maybe you should see a doctor," he frowned in concern, "if this is a reoccurring thing."  
    "No need," I brushed him off, "They'll just prescribe me with sleeping pills that I really don't want to take or give me useless advice like to drink tea before bed. It's been going on for years, it won't kill me."  
    Heero shot me a dubious look like he thought that I was full of shit, but he let it drop. His parents commented on my tiredness, too, but I managed to deflect their concerns in the same manor. We ate a hearty meal of steak, home made cole slaw, and green beans, with cup cakes for dessert. Mrs. Yuy just laughed in a conspiring way when I accused her of trying to make me fat. Heero and I spent the rest of the night together watching movies and finishing our respective homework. Monday would start our last week of school before winter break would start, which was a grand total of two weeks.   
    I look to the rest of the month with equal parts elation and terror. Cons: more time with my father, more spare time in general, the weather, more chores, Christmas, and oh yeah, my math final, which is the kind of stress that I really don't need at this point in my life. Pros: more time with Heero, Christmas, less time worrying about Relena and Zechs, and no more stress about homework until next semester. I don't know where I lean on the subject, but I have to admit that the prospect of being able to hang out at Heero's house without having to worry about school was a plus.   
    Walking home with Heero and Kanuck is quickly becoming one of my favorite things in the world. I can't even really describe it, there's just this feeling of... joy and contentment walking the streets with him and these moments where he says good night to me, like he really means it. That happiness is always cut short when I walk into my house, but that doesn't mean that I don't treasure it. I was incredibly tired when I came home last night, even though it was only 10:30, so I was very glad when my father didn't so much as give me an ugly look when I walked through the kitchen as he drank a cup of coffee, looking like miles of bad road. He didn't look drunk, but in the after effects of a rough weekend, nursing what I assumed was a particularly bad hangover. I crept past him silently, not even turning the light on at the steps in case he could see it. I would not give him a reason to fly into a rage, even over a headache.   
    Even so, I wasn't surprised at all when he crawled into my bed a couple of hours later while I struggled to sleep. It had been a couple of days, after all and while he had gone longer between these fucked up 'visits' to my bedroom, never on a weekend and never after going on a bender with his pals. Just like always after spending some quality time with Pat, my father was rough, but not like he had been the other day when he had scratched me, he just seemed frustrated and pissy. I just laid there and took it, careful not to make him angry or give any kind of emotional indication that what he was doing bothered me.   
    When he finally left me, feeling used and worn and like I either wanted to start crying or punching something, I laid there for a little while, so tired that I actually debated with myself about whether or not I was going to clean up after his mess, but the thought of having that nastiness in me disgusted me, so I got up and cleaned it all up with a towel that I threw angrily into my hamper. I missed Heero's home. I didn't want to fucking be _here_. I didn't want my parents. I didn't want my whole goddamned life.   
    I threw myself down onto my mattress and clutched my pillow to my chest, burying my head into it, but it just reminded me of how nice it had been to lay down on Heero's bed, the smell of him on his pillows and how it had felt when his father had ruffled my hair. I wanted to cry, to find a way to let out all my anger and melancholy, but I didn't have the strength anymore. I was too worn to do anything but lay there in the dark and close my eyes, hoping that sleep would take me as soon as possible so I didn't have to be there.   
    I actually started to drift off into some semblance of sleep, restlessly but still better than what had happened the previous morning, when I heard my bedroom door open. Immediately, and painfully, I was wide awake again, my heart pounding with fear adrenaline as I realized that he was coming back. I, oddly, hadn't heard his heavy footsteps on the stairs, but I knew that it was him, it had to be, there was no one else. I hadn't actually fallen fully asleep yet, so I knew that it had only been maybe ten minutes. Had he come back to fuck me again or was he going to hit me or do some other terrible thing to me? I felt someone kneeling on my mattress behind me and tensed to the point that I thought I was going to snap a muscle, I was strung so tightly.  
    "Duo?" my mother's voice was the very last thing that I had expected to hear.  
    At first, I hadn't even thought it was her. Her voice sounded wrong. It took me a few moments to realize why her voice sounded so off. She sounded worried, frantic, and desperate all at once. I had never heard her sound like that for my entire life. Hell, I can't even remember the last time she had come into my bedroom. Why the fuck was she there now? What did she want? To gloat? She had to know what had just happened, what her husband had just done. At the very least, she had to smell it, I knew that I could. Did she want to rub it in my face, tell me that I had gotten what I deserved?  
    "Oh god, Duo," her voice, usually so full of bitterness and contempt when she addressed me, was full of anguish.  
    When she touched me lightly on the shoulder, I flinched harshly from her, not wanting anyone to touch me, not that soon after... 'Go away', I wanted to scream at her, 'just go the fuck away and leave me alone.' But she didn't go away and my lack of responsiveness didn't seem to deter her at all. I felt her lie down behind me and wrap her arms around me, hugging me tightly. Like a wild animal, my initial instinct was to try to break free, but I was too shocked by her actions to do anything at all. She hadn't hugged me since I had been a toddler, and I'm not even sure if those memories are real. I couldn't even claim that she was drunk and doing things that she wasn't aware of because she absolutely did not act like this when she was intoxicated and I didn't smell even a drop of alcohol on her. To my ever continuing shock, she began to sob into my shoulder, her tears quickly soaking into my shirt.  
    "I'm so sorry," she cried, "I'm so sorry... I couldn't do anything.... I couldn't protect you... please, please forgive me... I'm too weak, I can't do a thing... I'm sorry..."  
    Her rant devolved into this jumble of nonsense words that I couldn't hear above her sobs. A storm of emotions assaulted me. Anger for what she was saying, as well as a great deal of bitterness. Was this all just because of her guilt? Because she knew that she should do something about her husband raping me, but didn't care to, so this was all she could do to feel better? Did she really think that I could forgive her for that, or were her words actually honest and heartfelt? Did she really loath herself for not being able to protect me?   
    I hated her for this, for having her arms around me and begging for some kind of absolution, absolution that I sure as hell had never been given by her. I hated her for disturbing me, for making my heart weak. Because as much as I loathed her and wanted her to leave me alone, some part of me ached as I felt her wrap herself around me. Some weak, vulnerable part of me that was still very much a child wanted to sink into her embrace, that part of a person that can feel comforted just from a single touch from their mother. That part of me, although it could not concretely remember that touch, knew it was her and wanted to seek out that affection.   
    But I didn't want it. I couldn't. How could I? After all this time... I was trying so hard to bury all this pain inside of myself, to move on and separate the rest of my life, my life at school, my life at work, my life with Heero, from the horrors that visited me when I was in my room at night. And now, my mother was trying to take that from me. I didn't want that from her. But I did. Oh, god, I wanted so badly to pretend that everything in the last sixteen years had never happened. I wanted to pretend that this woman, my mother, was what I had always wanted. But she wasn't. She could say that she was sorry and beg for forgiveness, but I had to remind myself that this was the same woman that hated me, the same person that had told me that she had never wanted me, that I had destroyed her life.   
    Anything she felt now, in the small hours of the morning, would fade like so much mist in the light of day. Maybe she could handle that, live with that, but I couldn't. I couldn't let her in, even for a second, or it would kill me when she ripped it back out of me. I could have yelled all those things at her, I wanted to, but I just closed my eyes. Her arms around me were comforting at the same time that they were damning and suddenly, I found it too tiring just to stay awake. I thought that I could hear her heartbeat, frantic but strong, and it was that sound that quickly lulled me into a deep sleep.  
  
*****  
  
    When I woke up this morning, I decided that it had just been a dream. A very weird dream. I had slept for a long time, for me, and I just chalked it all up to a long sleep after a bout of insomnia. It didn't matter if the spot next to me on the mattress was warm and still smelled like her, that was obviously just my imagination. It was just a stupid dream, created from my loneliness and my yearning to have the kind of relationship with my mother that Heero had with his. That was all. I got up, got dressed, and rooted around in my hiding spot in the floor for my secret stash of money.   
    There wasn't a whole lot in there. I was still pitching in for bills where I could, minus the money I had spent on getting some winter clothes and appropriate work clothes for my new job, minus having to buy some new textbooks after Relena had trashed a couple of mine again. But I still had a small, tidy sum left. I plucked a twenty out of the box I kept my money in and put it in my pocket. Pepper was getting low on food and I couldn't put off buying it anymore. I didn't have time to do any chores for Mrs. Liddle to exchange for more food, so I would just have to stop off at the pet store on my way to school. As much as I would love to do it after school, the threat that Zechs would steal my money was too great.   
    I filled Pepper's bowl with the rest of the food that I had left and went downstairs, planning to just eat some toast on the go so I could get to the pet store in time. To my shock, when I walked into the kitchen, my mother was there. It was only six thirty in the morning, there was no reason at all for her to be up, unless she was making herself breakfast. But I quickly noticed that she was cutting up a banana to put into a sandwich. She hated bananas.  
    "What are you doing?" I heard myself demand with an oddly defensive tone.  
    She whirled, obviously startled and as quickly as she glanced at me, she glanced away again, looking incredibly nervous and unsure of herself, like she was trying to complete some alien ritual.  
    "I... I thought that I would make you some lunch today," she said with this shyness that was completely out of character for her, "... since I got up early this morning..."  
    And just like that, all of the rage and bitterness and hatred that I had felt for her last night came flooding back to me, destroying my carefully constructed defenses and the delusion of a dream that I had wrapped around myself like a shield.  
    "Who the fuck asked you to do that?!" I yelled at her, making her flinch, "You can't just pretend to be my mother after sixteen _fucking_ years of acting like I don't exist and treating me like crap! I don't want your guilt or your affection or your making sacrifices for me when I know goddamned well that you hate me! You're just doing all of this to make yourself feel better, not because you give a shit about me!"  
    She looked so small as she backed up against the counter, shrinking away from me and looking so pale, her light grey eyes wide. But what angered me even more was seeing, not fear in her eyes, but guilt and hurt at my words. I fished out the twenty dollar bill from my pocket and slammed it down on the kitchen table.   
    "Do yourself a favor and go out and buy something to drink," I snarled, "and stop kidding yourself into thinking that anything you're doing right now is for my sake. We both know what you really love, and it isn't me!"   
    I stormed out of the house, not wanting to hear if she had any response to that. I slammed the door behind me as hard as I could, vindictively hoping that I woke up my father with all the noise. I made it an entire two blocks away from the house before I realized that I was crying.   
  
  
End Part 6  
  
Author's Note: Still plugging along with this chapter, which probably isn't even halfway done *sigh*.   
  
Thanks again to everyone who has read, especially to those that have reviewed and favorited or followed. As always, while I'll keep writing no matter how many reviews I get, they do give me the self confidence and inspiration to keep going at this rate ^_^  
  
      
  



	35. Chapter 7 Part 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duo tells Heero about losing interest in the things that he used to love. Heero tries to convince him to try out for the track team.

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 7  
Part 7  
  
December 20, 2007  
  
    Sometimes I wonder just how much my body can take, and how much damage I've already done to it. Let's be honest here, I don't exactly take care of myself. I don't sleep well or often, I don't eat three meals a day or as much as I know that I should, and a lot of times when I'm injured, I ignore it if I can. After all of the damage that my father and Zechs have done to me over the years, at what point do I stop healing? At what point is the damage permanent? I already have scars and random aches and pains from repeated breaks, especially my ribs and my left wrist.   
    I typically ignore these things as something I can't do anything about, but sometimes I worry about what is going to inevitably happen if I keep going on like this. Although lately, I've been more concerned about what's happening to my soul and personality than I've cared about my body. But now, as I sit in the emergency room of a cheap clinic with my mother with one of my broken ribs still healing, a concussion, black eye, and dislocated shoulder, I wonder if this is it. The moment where my body is just going to give in.   
    But the thing that really gets me, the thing that throws me for a loop, aren't the moments when I realize that I'm not thinking about my injuries at all as I sit here, waiting and writing this. I'm not even thinking how weird it is to be here with my mother instead of alone. I'm thinking about Heero, how much he would freak out if and when he finds out about this, and about a moment of clarity that I've had. Well, I don't know if realizing just how much of a fucking, disgusting coward you are is clarity, but who said that having your eyes yanked open through some stupid epiphany is supposed to be a good thing?  
    This week was one of those weeks that seemed to never want to end. I won't say that it was entirely terrible, because it wasn't. It's just that so much shit happened, by the time I got to... well, _now_ , I just kind of wanted to lay down in the road and go to sleep for about ten days. I kind of had the feeling it was going to be this way when I got to school after blowing up at my mother and remembered with equal horror and frustration that my math final was in three days. Remember all that stress I went through with history final? That was absolutely nothing compared to thinking about my Calculus exam.   
    My mind played a fucked up game of ping pong on my walk to school, bouncing from my mother's bizarre behavior to my academic troubles until was stomach was in absolute knots. Not to even mention that I needed to take a couple days off from work if I wanted any chance of passing. Even then, chances were small. Math is easily my worst subject and it didn't really matter what Heero said about having faith in me or the good grade that I had gotten on the history final. I had no faith in myself to pull off another miracle.   
    But maybe... maybe Heero would be ok with me studying at his place again, I thought hopefully. I really hated asking for favors like that, but it was important and he and his parents had said that it was ok for me to come over whenever I wanted. So maybe they wouldn't mind? Even if my father didn't come home until after ten, I would get a lot more done at their house than mine. That was really my only hope, and Heero had the top scores in Calculus, so maybe he could help me. It still wasn't really in my nature to ask for help, but I knew when to admit defeat.  
    "Hey," Heero greeted me when I walked into the home room, still a bit too early for most of our class to be there.  
    "Hey," I greeted back, taking my seat next to his.  
    "You look better than you did yesterday," he remarked, "Get some sleep?"  
    "Yeah, I slept pretty well," I grudgingly admitted, not really wanting to think about the fact that my mother had slept with me like I was a little kid, only I had never had that experience with her when I had been young.   
    For a moment, I really wanted to talk to him about what had happened. I wanted to talk to him about how confused I was over her sudden change, why she was acting so weird. But most of all, I wanted to ask him if he thought that I was in the right, deciding not to do as she had asked and offer her forgiveness. Should I push her away in anger like I had that morning, or should I take what she was offering without even questioning it? Was I being safe or was I being cruel? Was I petty or unable to move past our history?   
    Was I turning my back on something wonderful, an actual relationship with my mother, something that I would never get the chance to have again, or was I being smart in thinking that she was just going to hurt me again? Was I just incapable of forgiving her? But how could I possibly have that conversation with my friend when he didn't even know about the rest of it, why she was asking for forgiveness and what she had done to me? I needed to talk to someone, to work out all this shit in my head, but how could I when I would have to admit what I had been living with?   
    "We have our first game today after school," he interrupted my turbulent thoughts, "It's nothing much, just a warm up and doesn't actually count for anything since the season doesn't start until March, but my parents are going to come watch and I was wondering if you could, too, unless you have work..."  
    "I would like to," I chewed on my lip a little, "...but... well, we have that big math final in a couple of days and I'm really shaky on a lot of the subjects. I desperately need to hunker down and study. I was actually going to ask you if it would be ok if I came over after school today and tomorrow and you could help me with that, but if you're busy-"  
    "I'm not!" he blurted out, "I would be happy to help you study for it! The game is only a couple of hours, we can study after it's done, and I don't have anything to do after school tomorrow."  
    "Are you sure?" I pressed, "I don't want to keep you from your own studying."  
    "Absolutely," he nodded, "I'm not much of a tutor, but I'll help you with anything you're having trouble with."  
    I couldn't keep the relieved smile off of my face.  
    "Thank you so much. I'm sorry I'm such a pain," I tried to keep my voice steady so he wouldn't know just how grateful I was, how everything that he did for me made me almost break out in tears.  
    "Nonsense," he snorted, "you're never a pain. Although I might ask you to look over our final essay for English tonight. I have it mostly done, but I'm struggling with the concluding paragraph."  
    "Sure," I beamed at him, all too happy to be able to do something for him in return.  
    School that day passed by very slowly for the both of us. Biology and Chemistry were studying periods for our finals on Tuesday, same with Calculus. Everyone, even Relena and her group, were too busy fussing over their own exams to really bother us at lunch, so Heero and I were able to enjoy our meal in quiet for once. History was a boring affair as Mrs. Kreskge went over our test scores and gave us a little bit of free reign to study for our other classes.   
    Our English final was divided up into two, a spelling and grammar exam that we took that day and an essay that we had to write connecting a single theme of our choosing over all of our reading material for the semester. I had no trouble with the exam and my essay was already done, so that was another class down. I had an A+ going into the final, so it was really the only class besides gym that I was completely confident in. Our French final was over as well, so we were treated to some French film that didn't really interest me.  
    We also had our Home Ec final that day, which entitled us using what we had learned in the class to make a full meal from scratch of our choosing. I stuck with something that I hadn't made for our teacher yet, Mrs. Koch, who had been my Home Ec teacher all through high school. Greek salad, moussaka (although I had to replace the lamb that the recipe called for with beef), and a strawberry toffee tart for dessert. I had never made moussaka before, but it wasn't that difficult, the trick is just time management. Mrs. Koch praised my 'thinking outside of the box.'   
    I tried to brush off her compliments. After all, how many dishes of macaroni and cheese or spaghetti with tomato sauce or tuna casserole could you try before even a slight deviation could make you relieved for some originality? But when she offered to enroll me in her advanced cooking techniques class next semester, I eagerly jumped at the chance. At least I wasn't completely useless in all of my classes.   
    I felt bad for Heero, though. He hadn't had it easy in that class ever since he had broken up with Relena. Our pairs are pretty much set in stone, you can't just switch off with someone, otherwise I would be all too happy to have been his partner. Instead, he was stuck with his ex-girlfriend for what remained of the semester. To her credit, and kind of mind boggling considering the shit that she usually did to me, she didn't once try to sabotage any of Heero's assignments. They still shared a station together, they just didn't communicate at all. She worked in one corner and he worked in another. While Mrs. Koch didn't suggest that they find different partners, she at least had the common sense to grade their meals separately.   
    So during the final, Heero, like me, was all alone. However, unlike me, he didn't have anywhere near the epitude in cooking that he did in baseball. He was one of the spaghetti makers that I mentioned, but he chose it not because he was lazy, but because it was one of the few meals that he was decent at. Part of the problem was that Relena had done most of the work before, so he hadn't really known what he was doing with some of the more complex recipies.   
    "God, that was abysmal," he complained when we walked out of class together.  
    "It couldn't have been that bad. I mean, you didn't mistake corn oil for olive oil or sugar for salt or something like that, did you?" I teased him a little, remembering one unfortunate classmate of ours that had done both of those things.  
    "No," he admitted grudgingly, "but I got a C+ for a passable meal with zero originality. The bread that I tried to bake got burnt and the sauce was too bland."  
    "You just need more practice with it," I tried to assure him.  
    "We are officially even," he vowed, "If you hadn't given me those pointers yesterday, I don't think I would have passed. I mean, I know how to boil pasta, but when it comes to knowing what kind of spices to use and how to cut in, I was clueless."  
    "I'm glad that I could do something to repay you," I said very earnestly, "I was starting to feel completely useless."  
    He looked at me for a second, his ocean colored eyes boring into me.  
    "You could never be useless," he murmured softly and quickly looked away.   
    I knew then that if I really studied his face, I would find a blush there and suddenly, I didn't want to know if it was there or not. At the time, I wasn't really sure why, I just felt very odd with that knowledge in my head. I just moved on to my next class and put his comment and that feeling some place where I wouldn't have to acknowledge either of them.   
    Gym felt entirely pointless to me, even more than usual. We don't have finals in gym class, not since those stupid fitness exams in junior high. Instead, we did our typical stretches and listened to Coach Horner rant for ten minutes about that day's baseball game and how we should all be there to root for our school and school spirit and all that shit, ignoring the fact that it was just a small, warm up game. He then ranted for another ten minutes about the following day's track try outs, which were not as big of a deal as baseball, but were still pretty high up on the coach's belt.   
    Horner shot me a brief glance as he talked about the great runners that were in his class and that the track team needed more participants, but I didn't rise to the bait. You would think that after all these years, that stupid tale of my mad dash to save Quatre's life would have died out, but the man was stubborn as fuck. In his head, I was wasting my potential by not being on any sport's teams, even with my poor record in his class.   
    Honestly, I have never given the track team much thought beyond it being something that made Horner a pain in the ass to me. Beyond that, it was just one of those things that I knew that I would either suck at or not enjoy. Add in the fact that Zechs was on the track team every year, and it was not something that I wanted anything to do with. I was sure that he was going to try out for the team again this year and he would undeniably get in.   
    While Horner wasn't swayed by Zechs's family name, and Zechs was the slowest runner on the team, the same people tried out for the team every year and most of them got in. Unless someone new joined the team that was faster than him, he would get in. And, well... who would be brave enough to try for the track team if it risked booting Zechs? That would be akin to getting a large, bright, red target mark painted on your back. Zechs was already on the football and hockey teams, so you wouldn't think that he would care about something like track, but it was the principle of the thing. When he had gotten kicked off the wrestling team for being too rough with his opponent, that had been bad enough. All the same, it would have been nice to see Zechs not get what he wanted for a change.  
    After the school spirit lectures were over with, we were treated to a game of dodge ball, joy of all joys. Heero somehow had the good luck to be on Zechs's team, making him safe from the onslaught, but I wasn't so lucky. I resigned myself to my fate, ready to face a barrage of bruises, when my friend shot me an apologetic look and threw his ball at me. It was slow and light, nothing like what I had seem him be capable of with his throws, and I could have easily dodged it if I had wanted to. My initial instincts were to simply twist out of the way of it, but in that split second between his silent apology and his throw, I had understood exactly what he was doing and stood perfectly still, letting the ball hit me in the arm. He had that expression on his face again as he watched the ball hit me, like he had just kicked a defenseless puppy, but I smiled gratefully at him to show that I didn't feel an ounce of betrayal as I walked to the bleachers to sit down with the other 'losers'.   
    I didn't have to wait long for Heero to join me. He had always seemed so competitive when he had been friends with Relena's bunch, but I suppose that was just to keep up appearances. Other than that, and when he played baseball, the only other times I really saw him go all out athletically was when he was paired off against Zechs. Even though he knew enough not to retaliate against our bully, he couldn't seem to help himself from trying to one up him in sports. But when he was on Zechs's team, he didn't appear to have any drive at all. He barely even tried to dodge any of the balls that came at him and actually looked a bit relieved when he got knocked out, despite Zechs's cruel taunts that he guessed Heero wasn't the hot shit that Coach Horner thought that he was.   
    "I am so, so, so sorry," he pleaded desperately as he sat down next to me, "I just-"  
    "I know," I snorted derisively at his attempts to apologize, "You wanted to knock me out before Zechs and his lackeys could have a go at me, I get it. It was smart. Come on, you didn't even hit me hard."  
    "I should hope not," he muttered, still looking a bit ashamed of himself, "It still made me feel like shit, though."  
    I couldn't stop the smile that blossomed on my face, knowing that he was feeling badly over such a small, stupid thing like that.   
    "So, why was Coach Horner giving you the stink eye earlier?" Heero asked.  
    I sighed heavily, having hoped that he hadn't even noticed that.  
    "It's nothing, really," I assured him, "He heard that I'm a decent runner and has been hounding me to try out for the team ever since I entered high school. He has this stupid idea that despite my average run times in gym, I have some untapped potential or something."  
    "He's right," Heero said, "you _should_ try out for the team."  
    "What?" I blinked at him in astonishment, "Give me a break, you've seen me try to do anything athletic before. It never ends well."  
    "I've also seen you run before, when you really mean to. Usually away from me," he blushed guiltily, "But when you actually put your mind to it, you're pretty fast. What could it hurt to try out?"  
    "I'm not interested," I snapped, suddenly feeling defensive for some mysterious reason, "If I've ever run fast, it's to get away from something. It's not something that I want to hone into some kind of competitive skill. I don't enjoy it, so what would be the point?"  
    Bitterness ate at me. That was right, I didn't enjoy running anymore, did I? Maybe that was why I had gotten defensive, not wanting to be reminded that there was a time when, if I had just had a little bit of confidence in myself, maybe I would have tried out for the track team, just for the hell of it. Or maybe not, with Zechs on the team. And the idea of having people gawk at me turned my stomach, although not as much as the thought of failure did.   
    Or maybe I was defensive because of the knowledge that the only reason why Horner had gotten interested in my run times was because of the only times when I had ever been fast, when I had been running for my life or my friend's life. It was exactly like I had said to Heero. I'm a decent runner because I've been chased my entire life. I had to get good at it. What enjoyment was there for me to run for sport when I'm constantly running from my father and my bullies?   
    Even the things that I'm good at; cooking and running, are just reminders to me of the blank slate that I am. I'm good at running because I need to get away from things. I'm good at cooking because my dad makes me do it since my mother won't anymore. I enjoy reading because it takes my mind off of my own reality. What kind of pathetic person doesn't just _like_ something because they enjoy it? If you took my need to do all those things away, who am I? Just a big nothing, like my father has been saying since I've been a kid. A loser.   
    We fell into silence for the rest of the gym period as we cracked open our respective textbooks and did a little bit more studying while the dodge ball game went on until the end of class bell rang.  
    "I'm sorry," Heero called to me when I left the bleachers to go to the locker room, "I didn't mean to make you angry. It's none of my business, I'll just drop it."  
    "No, I'm sorry," I sighed, "I keep snapping at you just for having a simple conversation about something that I don't want to talk about. It's not your fault I have a shitty temper."  
    "Apology accepted," he said, following me into the locker room, "Although I don't think getting a slight attitude at me counts as having a shitty temper."  
    I showered first and hurriedly dressed while Heero took his. I had to remind myself that I wasn't going to work that day, that I was somehow counted in the throng of my classmates that were already rushing out of the locker room to walk to the baseball field. It reminded me of Trowa's game, that feeling of doing this incredibly normal thing that was, none the less, a completely not normal thing for me. But I was excited to see Heero play again and even more excited at the prospect of going home with him afterwards.   
    When Heero left the showers and met me by the lockers, the second that I got a good look at him, my jaw practically dropped. He was wearing his new, baseball uniform, and goddamn was he wearing it well. Like all of our sports teams, the baseball uniform was silver, white, and dark blue, our school colors. The lighter colors mixed with the blue brought out Heero's eyes amazingly well and combined with his dark hair, he looked like the damned outfit had been made just for him.  
    "Does this look ok?" he asked me, seeing my expression and picking at his shirt, looking for something that he thought I could see.  
    "Y...y..." I stammered like the stupid, love struck idiot that I was.  
    'You look so handsome I could die,' I thought lamely and tried to find my voice, but it was hard with my throat as dry as it was and my heart racing about a thousand beats per second.  
    "Y-yeah," I managed after coughing, "It looks good."  
    He smiled and I thought that my entire brain was going to explode right out of my ears.   
    "Come on," I said after only a little stutter, "You don't want to be late."  
    "Yeah," he walked out into the gym to grab his things.  
    'Don't stare, don't stare, don't stare,' I chanted to myself in my head as I followed him out, keeping my eyes anywhere but him in case he might notice that his body was exactly where my eyes wanted to be.  
    I had never, ever felt this way about anyone. I had thought that I was attracted to Trowa because he was handsome, but now, the thought of me being attracted to him is laughable. Even when I had thought that he was good looking, it had never been like this. I felt like I was physically ill, like I was possessed by some kind of demon. How the hell do people live like this? Being in love with someone and feeling like there's this fever raging through you and nothing in the world besides touching them and being around them can cure it? It's insanity.  
    "You didn't put your bat in your locker, did you?" I asked him as we walked out of the gym.  
    The mere thought of someone like Zechs being able to break into Heero's locker and steal or, I thought with horror, breaking his bat made my insides go cold and it wasn't even my bat.   
    "No, my dad has it," my friend said to my relief, "He's going to drop it off as soon as they get here."  
    When we got there the bleachers framing the field were already half full with our classmates and people from the competing team's home town, their red and gold shirts clashing with those wearing Nausten's colors. While baseball wasn't as popular with our school as football, in a small town like Nausten, any event, even a small game, drew everyone out. And it was Winter, the varsity pre-season games were the only thing to really watch as far as athletics went. I saw that a few parents and teachers were starting to arrive as well. There was no big fanfare, not like at the basketball game I had seen, and I could already tell that it was going to be a low key event.  
    "I'll look after your stuff," I told Heero, taking his book bag from him.  
    "Thanks!" he said in gratitude and ran to the pit where his teammates were starting to gather.  
    I found an empty row on the bleachers to sit down on and watched as the bases were dusted and the coaches from both teams rallied their troops, giving what looked like last minute inspirational speeches. As I was looking around, I spotted Relena and Dorothy sitting with a bunch of their friends on the far right, bottom bleacher, the two of them laughing about something. I didn't see Zechs and his friends there, which wasn't really surprising. They were probably off smoking or terrorizing someone. Baseball wasn't aggressive enough for them to be interested in it.   
    "Duo!" I looked over to the entrance door to the field at the sound of a familiar voice and saw Mr. and Mrs. Yuy walking to the bleachers, completely forgetting all about Relena's presence.  
    I waved at them, feeling happy just to see them. They both looked like they had come straight from work, dressed in more formal clothing, and I realized that this was the very first time I had seem Heero's mother outside of their home.   
    "Heero didn't tell us that you were going to be here!" Mrs. Yuy exclaimed.   
    "He only just mentioned it today," I told them, "I took off work today and tomorrow so I can study for my finals, so I had a bit of time to watch the game."  
    "Well, I am very glad that he could convince you to come," she smiled warmly at me.  
    To my relief, Mr. Yuy sat down to my left and his wife sandwiched me to my right. I hated being surrounded by people, it made me feel cagey and claustrophobic, but their presence was comforting, like a barrier.   
    "Not a bad turn out for a football and hockey town," Mr. Yuy noted.  
    "There isn't much going on today," I told him, "There's a big hockey game tomorrow and we had our last football game last week. Fall and winter sports are more popular around here, but the baseball games are usually packed, too."  
    "I would imagine that a town like this would come out for just about anything," he mused.   
    "Pretty much," I nodded, "And, um, Heero said I could study at his house tonight, I hope that's ok?"  
    "Of course!" Heero's mother said with her usual, happy demeanor, "We can order pizza and you two can study at your leisure. What kind do you like?"  
    "You don't need to go through any trouble," I waved my hands in dismissal, still nervous when they tried to do things like that for me, "I'll eat anything that you order."  
    "I didn't ask what you _would_ eat," she said in this almost scolding tone, "I asked what you like."  
    I blushed a little at her reprimand.  
    "Well... I really like vegetables on pizza, any kind, really. I'm not a big fan of pepperoni, meatballs, ham, or pineapple, but I'll eat it," I told them.  
    "The exact opposite of Heero, then," Mr. Yuy chuckled, "He always asks for the meat lover's ones when we order. He's not a big fan of things with lots of vegetables."  
    "I don't mind eating one with meat, if that's what he wants," I started to say, but Mrs. Yuy interrupted me.  
    "Nonsense. It won't kill him to try different things and something healthier will be good for him. Not that pizza is all that healthy, but the boy eats too much meat as it is. If you could get him to eat more vegetables, that would be great," she told me.  
    "And it's no bother at all for us to accommodate you for the evening, Duo, as we've said before," her husband chimed in, "I'm just glad to see that you kids are taking your studies so seriously. Heero barely used to study at all, he didn't seem nearly as interested in his grades as he has been lately."  
    "Really?" I raised an eyebrow in surprise at that, "But he doesn't seem like he's slacking off. He takes better notes than me and his grades are decent."  
    "Yes, his grades aren't bad," Heero's father confirmed, "and I don't mean to say that he slacks off a lot, but he's never had a lot of drive in school. Even before we moved here, he would only put in a very minimal effort into his school work and has been pretty apathetic about it. The interest for him just isn't there. When we first moved here, his grades dived, and I assumed that it was because he was trying to find his footing again. But lately, his grades haven't just gone back to normal, they've gotten better and he actually seems to care about studying and putting an effort into things. He wasn't like that until he befriended you."  
    Mr. Yuy gave me a very pointed look after that statement and I realized that he truly believed that I was the reason for Heero's change in behavior. Personally, I was completely baffled. I, obviously, had no point of reference for his study habits before we had become friends, but I could see why his grades might have gotten worse after coming here. I couldn't imagine how Heero had been feeling when he had first come here, the guilt knowing that he was responsible for uprooting his parents' lives, and how different our cold, quiet town was from where he had grown up. Add in his social problems and dating Relena, anyone would be in a funk.  
    I could even understand how his grades might have improved when he had broken it off with her, having one less thing to concern himself with. That made a lot more sense to me than my friendship having anything at all to do with it. But his new outlook on his education didn't make sense to me. What could have happened to him to have motivated him like that?   
    "He told me that he wanted to turn over a new leaf," I reasoned out loud, "That's why he broke up with Relena, so maybe that's the reason why he's trying harder in school."  
    "Maybe," Mr. Yuy said, but he didn't look at all convinced, "but don't sell yourself short, either. If your grades aren't the best, it isn't for a lack of trying. You genuinely care about how well you do in your classes and you're very hard working. If even an ounce of that has rubbed off on my son, I am very grateful."  
    My blush grew hotter at his praise and I focused my stare to the field where the players were taking their positions for the start of the game.  
    "I'm sure that whatever it is, it isn't because of me," I murmured.  
    The game started then and we fell quiet as a bunch of the other parents started cheering for their respective kids. Watching the try outs turned out to be very different than watching the actual game and Heero seemed a lot more into it. The game wasn't as highly charged or exciting as basketball, but I didn't enjoy it any less. Heero was completely in his element and I could tell from the beginning that we were going to win it. The other team wasn't awful, but they didn't have any hard hitters like Heero and a couple of the other boys on our team, and their pitcher made a few missteps early on. The game itself seemed very laid back, nothing more than a warm up and when the other team did lose, they lost pretty gracefully and didn't seem to care since nothing was on the line. I was eager to see what the game would look like when the season officially started.    
    At the end of the game, as Heero's parents and I left the bleachers to find him and go back to their house, I suddenly felt my hair stand up. You know that feeling you get when you just know that someone is staring at you or talking about you behind your back? I had that in spades. I glanced behind me and saw Relena standing at the opposite end of the bleachers, glaring at me with open hatred so heated and so powerful that it was amazing she hadn't set me on fire with it. She looked like she was contemplating ripping my eyes out with her nails.   
    It took me a moment to realize why she was looking at me like that. She had obviously seen me sitting with Heero's parents and I had to wonder what kind of message that sent to her. She knew that her ex and I were friends, but I can't imagine what she thought seeing me getting chummy with his family. To add more fuel to the fire, if the way that they talked about her was any indication, Heero's parents did not like Relena and hadn't been very warm to her while they had been dating.   
    They hadn't even looked at her once during the game or gone over to say hi to her at least. She obviously took exception to that and blamed me for it for some reason. Of course, she seemed to blame their entire breakup on our sudden friendship, so who the hell knew what the crazy bitch was thinking. I just hoped that one day she would wake up and realize that it was her own personality that had destroyed their relationship. Well, maybe not their romantic relationship, but it had certainly been the culprit of Heero's decision to break all ties with her.   
    I ignored her, knowing that she wasn't so bold or stupid to try something in front of Mr. and Mrs. Yuy, and met with Heero as he came out from the pit. Congratulations were thrown around, then the two of us were being ushered into Mr. Yuy's car. Heero seemed to be one of the only players going home with his parents, most of the rest on his team were piling into Coach Horner's beat up van.  
    "Where are they going?" I asked him.  
    "Celebration dinner," he told me, "Apparently Horner always takes his team out to dinner after they win."  
    "Don't you want to go?" I questioned, a bit puzzled.  
    "No," he muttered, "I think I've had enough of the coach for the day."  
    "He pushing you too hard?" Mr. Yuy chimed in as he started the car.  
    "Nothing like that. He's just very annoying and doesn't understand what 'no' means," Heero griped.  
    Mr. and Mrs. Yuy shared a confused look, but didn't ask him what that meant. I felt this immense happiness when we got back to their house. Heero's bedroom was a welcome sight and I tried to not think about how easy it would be to stay there forever and never go home again. I didn't even want to go home that night. I didn't want to deal with my mother or my father. They were like two extremes to me, and just thinking about all the things that their recent changes had made me feel threatened to tear me apart. If it weren't for Pepper, I think that at that point, I wouldn't go back home for a very long time, at least until my father dragged me back, for as long as the Yuys would have me.   
    "You were great out there today," I told Heero as we set up for our study session in his bedroom.  
    "Thanks," he smiled and then fell silent, like something was weighing on his mind. I waited patiently for him to decide to voice it or not, "You were right about Horner, by the way."  
    "Oh?" I couldn't figure out what he was talking about.  
    "He really wants you to join his track team. He tried to talk me into convincing you," he told me.  
    I felt a flare of irritation at the man. He really just didn't know when to fucking give up, did he?  
    "He had no right to do that," I said angrily, "If I don't want to join his stupid team, that's my decision, it has nothing to do with you."  
    "He's persistent, I'll give him that," Heero mused, "Irritating and rude, but persistent."  
    "Is that why you didn't want to go to dinner with them?" I asked.  
    "Partially," he admitted, "But mostly, I promised that I would help you study and I'd rather eat dinner with you than them anyway."  
    He grabbed his Calculus textbook and his notebook and sat next to me on the corner of his bed.  
    "Look, I know you don't want to talk about this, and if I piss you off, you can just tell me to fuck off about it, but maybe Coach Horner is right. I don't mean for harassing you, or because you might be an asset to one of his teams, but you keep saying that you suck at sports and that isn't completely true. You're a good runner and I don't think that you hate it as much as you say you do. I just think that, if you're not completely disinterested, you shouldn't let Zechs intimidate you or not bother trying because you think you can't cut it."  
    "I don't hate it," I murmured, feeling my stomach tensing.   
    He was right that I didn't want to talk about it, and some part of me wanted to snap at him again to just drop it, but I knew that that wasn't fair. He meant well and had no clue what the problem was, only that there was one.   
    "Actually, running used to be one of the things that I liked, when I didn't have to do it to get away from my dad or Zechs. When I didn't want to be home or I couldn't sleep, or just because I wanted to, I would go jogging in the park or at the beach to clear my head. It always made me feel a little bit better," I told him.  
    "What happened?" Heero asked in a very somber tone.   
    "I..." I looked down at my hands and suddenly felt very... not sad really, more like despondent, "Have you ever loved something a lot... a kind of food or song or... or an activity... and then just woke up one day and realized that you don't love it anymore? Like all the joy that you once felt in doing it has been sucked out of you, and it's not like you like it less, you just feel so... so nonchalant about it that it's like someone took it from you? And you can't even find the energy to make yourself do it just for the heck of it, like it's suddenly this heavy thing that's just a chore?"  
    "No," I looked up as Heero wrapped his hand around mine, squeezing it very gently, "What you're talking about... that's called depression, Duo. Is that really how you feel about running now?"  
    Depression. It's funny, I've know that I've been depressed for awhile now. I lost the only friend that I ever had and suddenly, the world became this bleak, nothing place. I knew that, but for some reason, I had never connected my sudden loss of interest with running, cooking, and reading with it. Had I just been incapable of putting a word to what my father's rapes had done to me? Why had it been easier to understand what Quatre's death had done, that immense wave of sadness, and not what being violated by the man that had raised me had?   
    "Yes," I whispered, "For a while now, and not just with running. I used to cook a lot, for no other reason than just because I enjoyed it. But lately, even though I still cook, it's just another chore that I have to do around the house. The weird thing is, I feel like it's still there sometimes, but like I can't reach it. I'll be making something new and I'll almost feel like it did before, but it's still muted. I don't know what's wrong. I don't know how to... how to like those things again."  
    "Maybe you should talk to someone about it," he suggested, still not letting go of my hand, "I mean not just me, but a professional. Depression isn't some easy thing to handle, it's a big deal. If you really are depressed, you should see a psychologist. It might even just be physiological. Either way, there are medications that you can take to help."  
    "I couldn't," I smiled wryly, "My insurance would never cover something like that, and there's no way my dad would sign off on it. He would just say that I was being pathetic and to grow up. Besides, it's not like I don't have the energy to get out of bed or I'm cutting myself or something. I just feel this... this disconnect from things sometimes. I mean, everyone feels sad once in awhile, right? I just don't know how to switch it off when I want to."  
    "I'm no expert, but I think that you need to try out for track," he told me, "or at least, you need to start going running again, even if you don't feel like it. It would help your self-esteem, and I think that trying to do the things that you used to like will help, even if it's just a little."  
    "I don't know," I murmured, "I don't think that it will make any kind of difference. As for track, there's a lot more reasons why I shouldn't go for it, even if I _did_ have some kind of interest in joining the team. If I get on the team and Zechs doesn't, he'll kill me for one. Two, I have zero time to be on any kind of team or club. Three, maybe I'm not slow, but I'm not as good as you and Horner think that I am. I'm certainly not good enough to race anyone on a team."  
    "How do you know if you won't even try?" my friend pressed, "There's no penalty if you don't get in, and I think that you would. You're faster than Zechs is, I've seen you outrun him and half of his goons many times. Maybe you aren't the fastest kid in school, and so what? All you need is practice and I think that just getting in would do you some good."  
    I snorted.  
    "I've had all the practice that I can take," I said with a bit more bitterness than I had intended, thinking about all the times that I had been forced to outrun bullies and my father in order to save myself.  
    "I suppose so," he admitted, "As for the rest, well... Zechs wants to beat the both of us up on a regular basis, I don't think that you should let the risk of pissing him off keep you from trying out for track. Wouldn't it be worth it just to one up _him_ for once?"  
    "As much as I would love to piss him off, I don't want you to get hurt because of it," I said, but I had to admit to myself that Heero had a point.  
    Zechs already hated both of our guts. Ever since we had become friends, he had upped his game. Pissing him off would just mean that we would have to be extra careful not to be caught by him, but I wasn't sure that I was willing to risk it over something so trivial as getting on the track team.  
    "You don't have to protect me," he insisted, "I know I'm new to this whole bullying thing, but you don't need to worry about me all the time. If he retaliates harder, then we'll just have to evade him harder, that's all. As for not having enough time after school, you'll only have to worry about that if you make the team, right? But maybe, even if you don't, you should consider taking some time off of work, even if it's just a single day a week?"  
    "Don't be ridiculous," I protested, "I can't take a whole day off just for some stupid sport."  
    "I'm not talking about sports," Heero said firmly before softening his tone, "I'm talking about you being overworked. You said that it doesn't stress you out, but I don't think that's true. I think worrying about helping your family and not having the time to study stresses you out plenty. I mean, just look at what happened today, you had to take off work so you could study for your math final. Doesn't that tell you that your work schedule is interfering with your grades? Whenever you get back from your Sunday shift, you always look so worn out. I'm worried about you and so are my parents. Working these kinds of hours aren't good for you! You need a day to just... relax and not have to worry about these things!"  
    "What do you expect me to do?" I demanded, "Sure, a day off sounds great, and maybe I am a little bit stressed between things at home and working double shifts five days a week and school, but so what if I am? It's not that big of a deal, and I've been handling it just fine. I can't risk losing that kind of money! My family-"  
    "Should learn how to take care of themselves," Heero shot back at me, "They're adults, and what are they going to do when you graduate and go off to college? Eventually, they'll have to stand on their own without you helping them out, so what difference does it make if you take a single day off now?"  
    I blinked at him in astonishment. In all this time... all these years that I had been working to help my parents pay the bills, that had never once occurred to me, that soon, my mom and dad wouldn't have me around to help them at all. What would happen when I turned eighteen? I've tried so hard my entire life to not think about my future as an adult. Every possibility is bleak and pathetic.     But no matter what happens to me, whether my father kicks me out himself or I run away, I'm not staying at home when I become an adult. My parents will have no legal reason to put up with me anymore, and I've always thought that it would be a good thing for them, to have one less mouth to feed. But they were struggling with bills now, what was going to happen when I was no longer helping out? Heero didn't know that I had no plans to go to college, and he didn't know that I was using the money from my paychecks to try to save for a place to live, but he was right.   
    It really didn't make a huge difference if I lessened my work hours in the long run. A day's worth of pay was not going to make a difference in my life when I became independent. It was a weird feeling, seeing that for the first time, that for all my frantic desperation about my work, I had this leeway, not because I was making a lot, but because it was just a drop in the bucket. My sense of responsibility warred with that logic, demanding that I keep going at it, keep working as much as I could to make ends meet.     But there was another part of me that was separate from the both of them, something that I had only just become aware of. The part of me that wanted to just say 'fuck it' and throw away all of my responsibilities and just do what I wanted to do. Tell my dad to fuck off and quit all of my jobs just so I could... I could hang out with my friend like a normal person instead of scheduling these moments between my work shifts. I wanted that... but I could never have that, could I? Even if Heero made sense, that responsible part of me was too deeply ingrained in me for me to just abandon it.   
    "Tell you what," Heero gave my hand one, last squeeze before letting go, "Why don't the two of us go running tomorrow morning. I'll get up early and meet you at the park at 6:30 before school as a kind of warm up. If you still don't feel like trying out for the team, I'll never bring it up again. Deal?"  
    "Deal," I said with a soft smile.  
    I was kind of amazed at how easy it was for me to agree to that. I still didn't think that trying out for track was a good idea, but I enjoyed the thought of going running with Heero. It was the first time in a long time that I thought about running and felt happy about it instead of sad. I had never even gone running with Quatre, it had never been his thing. The only times that I had were when I had fantasized him after his death.   
    We cracked open our textbooks and fell into silence as we studied. I poured over my notes for Calculus and read the chapters over and over again, but I quickly felt like the only thing that I was succeeding in doing was giving myself a headache. All the functions and equations seemed to be melting together into one, incoherent mess in my skull and every time I thought I had something memorized and understood, I would return back to it to find that it was all gibberish to me again. With a heavy, frustrated sigh, I slammed my text book closed and pressed my face into my hands.   
    "What's wrong?" Heero asked in concern.  
    "This is pointless," I said angrily into my hands, "I can read this shit for days before the test, but I'm not going to remember any of it! We've been doing these equations since September, and it's still nonsense to me! I'm too fucking stupid to get any better at it-"  
    "Don't say that!" he snapped at me and when I raised my head up to look at him, his blue eyes were fiery, "I hate it when you call yourself stupid. I told you before, you're not! Now, what is the problem?"  
    " _I'm_ the problem!" I snapped in irritation, at myself, not him, "I've never been good at math my entire life. I've always been behind every one else and I can never catch up. Quatre tried teaching me, too, and he helped me for a bit, but in the seven years that I've been in school, I've never gotten any better at this!"  
    "You started school when you were nine?" Heero frowned.  
    That was right, I realized, he didn't know anything about that. Sometimes, this friendship of ours seems so raw and new, like there are all these things that I need to learn and know about him. But there are times, and lately, these times are becoming more and more prominent, that I feel like I've known him my entire life. I've shared so much of myself with him, more than I've shared with anyone before, that I feel like he knows everything about me and I forget about all the things about my life and my past that he isn't aware of.  
    "Yeah," I told him, "I skipped the first few grades. It was just a lot of little things. My dad forgot one year, then he misplaced my health forms another. When I was eight, I caught pneumonia really badly and was stuck in the hospital for the first couple of weeks, long enough that everyone thought it would just be better if I didn't go that year. Somehow I managed to get into the right grade when it was eventually time, but my dad had to brush me up on the math portions of the placement tests and even then I didn't do that well."  
    "Didn't your parents try to home school you?" Heero looked perplexed by all of this.   
    "They never had the time," I pointed out, "Making sure that I was up to date on my studies wasn't really a priority for them."      
    He shook his head in amazement at that.   
    "Well, if that's the case, it's no wonder why you're having a hard time in some subjects," he said.  
    "Not really," I argued, "It doesn't explain why I can't get things like this," I gestured to my text book, "I just don't understand it. Skipping a few years of basic math is one thing, but that was a long time ago!"  
    "You lost three years of learning basic math skills," he argued right back at me, "Learning those things when you're young is important, it ingrains things into you. It's like learning a foreign language. People who try to teach themselves Spanish as adults will _never_ be as proficient as people that learned when they were children. I don't think just taking classes is going to help you get better at these things. You need a tutor or some extra lessons or something, but that doesn't make you stupid. If anyone is stupid, it's your parents for not understanding that holding you back those years hurt your education."  
    He was so logical. Every single thing he said made perfect sense to me. It was all so irrefutable. So why did I have such a hard time believing it? Why was there still this voice inside of my head that was telling me that it was utter nonsense, that it didn't matter what Heero said, I was stupid and unteachable and useless and all the other things that my father had accused me of my entire life? It wasn't like I wanted to believe it, right?   
    "Ok," my friend said and dug around in his book bag for a set of index cards that he thrust into my hand, "Don't believe me, I'll just have to prove it to you. Let's take this slowly, we have two days for you to get this down so we don't need to rush into it. Let's start with the vocabulary. You're good at that stuff. When you have that down, I'll make up some equations for you to work through."  
    "Alright," I said with a little half hearted shrug, "but don't expect much."  
    He just smiled at me, like he had this secret that only he knew. Despite my own feelings towards my failings and ability to pass the math final, the rest of the night was oddly relaxing. We sat on his bed as he quizzed me on terms like 'absolute convergence' and 'Newton's Method' over and over again until, after about an hour of that, I thought that I wasn't going to be able to think about anything else ever again. Even though it wasn't an activity that I would have chosen, it was still nice, being with him and after awhile, some of his stubborn confidence seemed to rub off on me.  
    Around five, we stopped to eat the pizza that Heero's mother brought up to us. To my surprise, his parents really had ordered a veggie's lover.  
    "Really, vegetables?" Heero complained to his mother.   
    "It was what Duo wanted to eat," she said cheekily before vanishing back downstairs.  
    I felt guilty about that, making him eat something that he obviously didn't want to, but he just raised an eyebrow at me and took a slice from the box.  
    "I never pegged you as a health nut," he remarked, taking a bite of pizza.  
    "I'm not," I assured him, snagging a piece that had plenty of onions, broccoli, peppers, and tomatoes on it, "I just like vegetables. And I really don't think that putting them on something that's loaded with cheese counts as a health food."  
    Despite Heero's preference, we managed to finish off the entire pizza in record time and then we went back to our studying. While he polished up on his remaining finals, I took a look at his essay for English. His writing wasn't bad, his grammar was nearly perfect and he understood essay format and structure, but I could definitely see some areas where he could use improvement. I pointed them out and gave him some tips for his conclusion paragraph, relieved that he didn't bite my head off for it.  
    "Also, you're using the wrong format for your citations," I told him when I was finished, "and these two sources are articles. They don't need to be underlined, just put them in italics."  
    "Oh yeah," he murmured and marked down my suggestions on the hard copy of his essay, "You're really good at remembering all these stupid, little rules."  
    "I've been reading since I was very little," I shrugged, "so stuff like this sticks in my head pretty easily. I've always had an affinity for words and literature."  
    "But you don't think that not getting into math when you were just as young, learning things like how to add and subtract and multiplication tables from just as an early age, didn't mess you up?" he pointed out, "Math really isn't any different than reading. Sure, maybe you don't have an affinity with it like you do reading, but it would come a bit easier to you. And you are good with some of it. I've seen you cook in Home Ec, you don't even need to think twice when you're measuring out ingredients do you?"  
    "I guess not," I admitted, "Fractions aren't so bad. It's one of the few things in math that I can do pretty easily in my head."  
    "It comes second nature to you because you learned how to cook when you were a kid," he said, "It's the same with anything else. Not being good with equations does not make you stupid, you just need to have more patience with yourself."  
    There was that logic again, and that confidence in me. Where the hell did it come from? Why could this person, who had only known me for such a short time, believe that I could do these things when I couldn't? Was it because I knew myself better than he did, or was he seeing something that I was incapable of? I didn't know what to think. It would be easy to believe him, at the same time that it was impossible. What did he know? I had been failing and falling short my entire life. After sixteen years of not being good enough, how did anyone expect me to change? But there was this kernel of me that clung to his words, wishing that they were true.   
    I didn't say any of that, though, since Heero apparently had a bug up his ass about my looking down on myself for some reason. We dove right back into my math studies, him quizzing me on the terms on his index cards. I was surprised that I was able to remember most of them after our dinner break, and even more surprised when remembering those terms actually did help a little when we got around to trying some equations.   
    We spent a few hours working the same twenty equations and formulas over and over and over. I fucked them up a lot and I often felt so frustrated that I just wanted to quit, angry that it was so difficult to me, but Heero just kept at it, patiently explaining to me what I was doing wrong and how to fix things. Usually when a teacher tried to help me, I felt so self-conscious, I just shut down and anything they said became like white noise. It was different with him. I didn't feel like he was judging me. He was just a friend who wanted to help me, even if that meant dragging me along and that was ok for some reason. He was the very last person in the world that I wanted to figure out how dumb I really am, but the more that we studied, the less uncomfortable I became with him tutoring me.  
    "Maybe you're the one that should be a teacher," I teased him when it was time for us to stop and for me to go home.  
    After several hours of studying, I felt... not really more confident, but the thought that I was going to have to take this final in a couple of days no longer had me tied in anxious knots. If I felt stressed about it, it was lighter and more like I was a bit nervous than I was terrified.   
    "You're the only person that I have any desire to teach anything to," he scoffed, "I wouldn't have the patience for it. Now, let's get you home, unless you've changed your mind about not sleeping over here? You could just feed your cat and come back, you know."  
    He sounded so hopeful that it actually pained me to deny him anything.  
    "I really shouldn't," I said mournfully, "I have to buy more food for her at the convenience store after I grab some money from my room, feed her, change her litter box and play with her... And you don't need to keep walking me home. I walk home late all the time by myself, it's not that dangerous. You have to be sick of doing it by now."  
    "Nope, I like walking you home," he said cryptically without giving me any kind of reason, grabbing his jacket from the closet.  
    It was another quiet and calm, if cold, night walking home with Heero and his dog. Although I wasn't exactly looking forward to being back home again, the prospect of facing either of my parents didn't horrify me as much as it did that morning. Just like always, being around my new friend made me feel lighter and less burdened, if only for a little while.   
    Is it weird that, when I walked into my house, it was my mother that I dreaded seeing more than my father for once? Her weird behavior was still fresh in my mind and I just didn't want to deal with it that night. The time since I had left the house that morning in anger hadn't gifted me with any kind of clarity about why she was acting that way, or why she had been acting strange for weeks now. I just couldn't handle anymore surprises in my life.  
    Thankfully, as I walked up to my room, I didn't see either of my parents. It was only ten at night though, so my father was just making his way home and my mother was probably asleep. I was about to grab some more money from my stash to go get Pepper some food when I immediately noticed that there was something off about my bedroom. That morning, my chair had been pulled out from my desk. Now it was pushed back in again.  
    I walked to my desk, puzzling over it, and saw a twenty dollar bill innocently sitting there with a post-it note on it. It didn't take a genius to figure out that it was the same, exact bill that I had thrown on the table in my rage at my mother. It was dog-eared in the same, top, right corner that mine had been. Childish pettiness made me almost toss it, note and all without reading it, and going for my stash, but I was too frugal to toss money, even in spite. I picked up the note and glanced at it, expecting a scathing message after the cruel things that I had said that morning and finding something infinitely worse.  
    'I'm sorry,' was written on the note in my mother's handwriting.  
    Fury filled me at those two, simple words. I crumpled the note into a ball in my fist and pulled my hand back, ready to throw it into my trash can, out of sight and out of mind, rendering her words exactly what they were: garbage.   
    But my arm froze as I cocked it in mid air, unable to move more than an inch. I couldn't do it. My arm fell limp at my side and I uncurled my fist. The balled up note fell back onto the desk. Very carefully and gingerly, like I was working with something as fragile as wet tissue, I painstakingly flattened and smoothed out the note. Even now creased and wrinkled, I could read the words there clearly still. I picked the paper up again cautiously, like it might burn me at any moment, and placed it in the top drawer of my desk.   
    I shoved the twenty into my pocket and left the house for the cat food, but all I thought about the entire walk there and back were those words, 'I'm sorry'. All at once, I felt very angry, very happy, and very sad and I don't know why. Or maybe I do and I just don't want to think about it. But that did nothing to stop me from wishing that my mother wouldn't find her way back into my bed that morning and it did nothing to stop me from hoping that I would never, ever hear those hateful words from her again.   
  
End Part 7  
  
Author's Note: Mostly just dialogue again, but the next part will have a lot more action, I promise.   
  



	36. Chapter 7 Part 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duo tries out for the track team and takes his math final.

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 7  
Part 8  
  
  
    It took the entire time writing that for me to finally be seen by a doctor. I'm used to being patient in waiting rooms while I'm injured, but my mother was antsy and nervous, either from my presence or her guilt, I wasn't sure. She kept distracting me and made the wait seem three times as long. She never asked me what I was writing, but I could tell that she was curious. I'm just grateful that my left shoulder was dislocated instead of my right, it would have been a really boring wait.   
    I somehow managed to get the same ER doc that I had gotten from breaking my rib. I gave him some bullshit reason for my injuries, a better one than I had come up with the previous time, but I knew that he wasn't buying it, even with my mother backing me up. He gave her this little, disapproving glare that was somehow humorous to me, and lectured me about concussions, limited use of my left shoulder, and how I really needed to start to take care of myself. He also checked my rib and was pleased with it's state of healing, which was an immense relief to me. I guess I haven't reached that end of the line quite yet.   
    There wasn't much that he could do for my injuries. My shoulder joint was forced back into place, my arm put into a sling, I was given pain medication and ice for my eye and shoulder, then left alone. The doctor wanted to keep me overnight to make sure that I kept my shoulder immobilized and that there were no complications from my concussion. I was just fine with that, and so was my mother. Neither of us wanted to go home right away, not after what had happened.  
    So, here I am in a typical situation, sitting in a hospital bed and I can't even go to sleep. Is it stupid that all I can think about right now is whether or not I should tell Heero where I am? I'll probably be ok to go to school today, but he's going to flip when he sees my new black eye and my arm in this sling. But I just can't bring myself to call him at 2 am to tell him that I'm hurt again. He'll freak out and come over here as fast as he can, and what will I tell him? When I got my broken rib, he was outright horrified and it had been almost impossible trying to convince him not to do anything about it. He's my best friend, but sometimes his concern is too overwhelming for me to handle. I can barely handle dealing with my mother right now, let alone him.   
    So where did I leave off? Oh, right, Monday night. My hope that my mother would stay away from me that night came to fruition. By some kind of miracle, I didn't see either of my parents all of that night or morning. I set my alarm for five am so I could wake up early enough to eat breakfast and take a shower before meeting Heero and tried to fall asleep, but my body or brain or whatever it was decided that let me toss and turn for thirty minutes. There was no real reason for it, which happens more than I would like, I wasn't especially restless, I just couldn't sleep.   
    I got up, looked over my Calculus notes for a couple more hours, and then tried to go to sleep again with more success that time. I managed a whole four hours of uninterrupted, deep sleep before my alarm woke me up. I had one of those ancient dreams that likes to come and torment me when I least expect it to. Not the ones of my father raping me, these are much older. It was the one where I'm running to save Quatre from the truck, only this time, no matter how fast I run, I can't get to him in time.   
    Usually in this dream, the truck hits me, too and damages me in some way or Relena pushes me in front of it, but this time it was different. This time, the truck missed me and I turned to find Heero looking at me with disappointment. In the dream, I tried to explain to him that it wasn't my fault, that I had tried to save Quatre, but he just shook his head and walked away. I ran after him, but he disappeared into nothing. Maybe one day, I'll have a nice dream again, instead of these fucked up nightmares that touch a bit too close to reality.  
    Despite the dream, I didn't toss and turn much, so it left me feeling pretty well rested. That I was going to go running with Heero didn't hurt putting a little bit of bounce in my step. I had no clue if forcing myself to go running was going to help my depression at all, but spending time with my friend was definitely not a bad thing. I showered, dressed in loose, cotton pants and a long sleeved shirt, ate a breakfast of oatmeal, milk, and a banana, tended to Pepper's needs, and left the house right at 6 am.   
    Heero couldn't have picked a better morning during the Winter for running. It wasn't too cold, the sky was clear and blue, and there was barely any wind for once. I only wore one of my jackets that morning, knowing that I was going to get too hot while running if I wore both. I stopped by the school to drop off my bag before heading over to the park, storing it in my locker and knowing that it was safe in there that early in the morning. I was still a little bit early when I got to the park, but to my surprise, Heero was already waiting for me there.  
    "Good morning," he greeted.  
    "'Morning," I said back.  
    "You ready for this?" he asked, actually sounding a little bit guilty.  
    "It's just a run," I scoffed, not wanting him to think for a single second that he had forced me into this, "Just because I haven't done it for awhile doesn't mean that I'm out of shape."  
    He smiled at me and took the lead at a leisurely pace at first. While it was certainly true that I hadn't gone jogging in awhile, it was just like ice skating. My body had never really forgotten how and it was easy for me to keep pace with Heero when I fell into that rhythm. When he saw that I was keeping up with him without much effort, he increased his own pace and, steadily, we found a speed that suited the both of us.   
    It was kind of strange at first, not just because I hadn't done it for awhile, but because I had never actually run with anyone before. I was faster than Heero was, but he wasn't as slow as Quatre, so I didn't have to force myself down into an uncomfortable stride. After awhile of adjusting my pace, something just kind of clicked into place and it began to feel like the most natural thing in the world. We ran, side by side, into the wooded path together. We were the only two there and the only sounds that I could hear were from the wind blowing through the trees and the sweet sympathy of various bird songs. I could feel the familiar sensation of my braid brushing against the back of my neck and this feeling like I was passing the world by, just running right through it with the boy that I loved, like nothing could touch me.  
    And just like that, it was like some terrible, heavy tarp was being drawn from me. The joy that I had always felt when running before, that sense of freedom and just forcing out all my stress through the motions of my body, was _there_. I felt peaceful and happy. I felt like I had before, when I used to run and pretend that Quatre was running with me. I tried to conjure him again, like I used to when I wanted to be comforted, when I wanted to be with someone, but he wouldn't come.   
    I couldn't imagine Quatre there, running with us like I used to. I almost felt a panic, thinking like I had before, when I had realized that I hadn't fantasized him in a long time, that I wasn't able to find that comfort anymore. But then I realized that my inability to conjure up the one thing that had comforted me these last three years wasn't because I couldn't find that comfort. For once, it was because I didn't need to be comforted. I didn't need a figment of my imagination. It was just Heero and I there, on that path, and that was ok. That was wonderful.   
    For the first time in three years, I didn't need the Quatre that lived in my head. A part of me felt pure terror from that knowledge, but another part felt this intense relief and freedom. I didn't know what to feel. I felt like I was betraying Quatre all over again. His death had been my fault and there I was, discarding him. But as much as thinking about him and pretending that he was still alive had brought me comfort, it had also been very painful. Not needing to imagine him anymore didn't make his death any less horrible for me, but knowing that it was Heero's presence that made me feel at peace and not a ghost... something _real_ , made me feel happy for some reason.  
    I could still do it, I realized as we circled back towards the park with such relief that I almost cried. I could still feel happy. I could still enjoy things. I had forgotten how, or it had been locked up behind my misery, but it hadn't been stolen from me like I had thought that it had. I had just needed Heero to drag it back out again. Little by little, he was bringing me back from the brink of nothing. I just couldn't seem to make up my mind if that was a good thing or not, if I wanted to come back or if things would be better if I would just let oblivion claim me. It would hurt less, letting that nothing take the last shards of me. But that morning, I reveled in feelings that I had thought had been ripped out of me for good.  
    When we got back to the entrance of the park, Heero was panting slightly, but I was feeling pretty good. I hadn't even known that it was possible for my body to actually physically miss the exercise of running, but it felt amazing to fall back into those old patterns. Heero had been right about my needing to just get out and force myself to do these things, I just had refused to believe him.    
    "I'm going to try out for the track team today," I said with a very rare boldness that was completely out of character for me.  
    "Really?" my friend asked in shock.  
    I nodded. I can't say why, exactly, but at that moment, I knew that I had to do it. Maybe I had gotten a little bit of confidence, regaining my enjoyment for running, or maybe I was that eager to compete against Zechs and prove to him and his lot that I could be just as good as them at something. Maybe I just wanted Heero to be proud of me for once, instead of the other way around. I don't know, it was only a feeling, but it seemed like the right thing to do all of a sudden.  
    "That's great!" Heero exclaimed, "I'll be there, rooting for you."  
    "You don't have to do that," I said shyly, feeling my face go red hot.  
    "Of course I do," he smiled at me, "You're my friend, and it's the least I can do after you went to my try outs and our first game. Even if your cheering section won't be as big as Zechs's, it'll be more sincere."  
    I managed a small smile at that. For a moment, I felt doubt about what I was going to do. Years of bullying reminded me of what a terrible idea this was. If Zechs and his goons found out that I was going to try out against him, they were going to slaughter me, and not even God could help me if I actually got onto the team. But I can't deny that there was a part of me that felt some excitement, some desire to do my best and beat him. It was the same part of me that had tried to rebel against him and Relena when I had been younger, against all of Quatre's warnings not to. I had thought that that part of me had died after Zechs had almost drowned me in retaliation, but I guess that day was a day for bringing things back from the dead.  
    I only hoped that Quatre was wrong for once and what I was about to do wasn't going to get Heero and I killed. But even that terrible fear wasn't enough to keep me from doing it. I can at least blame that on Heero. If there is one thing that I can't survive, it isn't Zechs's bullying, it's Heero being disappointed in me.  
  
*****  
  
    Coach Horner was beside himself when he saw me add my name to the try out sheet for track before our gym class started.  
    "Finally caved, huh?" he practically bellowed at me with pride, like he had been instrumental in my signing up for try outs.  
    I almost flinched at the sheer volume of the man's voice, having hoped to add my name to the roster as discreetly as possible.  
    "Just thought I'd give it a shot," I muttered with a heavy sigh.  
    "That's the spirit!" he clapped me on the shoulder, "No backing out, ey?"  
    His behavior was almost enough to make me erase my name out of pure spite. If Heero hadn't been the one to talk me into it in the first place, I probably would have as I wondered about my own sanity. I turned from him and met Relena's glare from across the gym. She had that look again, like she was fantasizing about ripping my eyes out with her nails. All I could think was 'fuck' as I knew _why_ she was glaring at me. I tried to walk discreetly to the boys' locker room so I could change into my gym uniform, but Relena somehow made sure that our paths would cross. As I tried to walk past her, she grabbed my arm in a death grip.  
    "If you know what's good for you," she hissed at me, "You'll walk right back over there and erase your name."  
    "Excuse me?" I played dumb, wondering if there was any way to dislodge myself from her grip without causing an incident.  
    "You heard me," she snarled, "You aren't going to compete against my brother. What do you think a pathetic, clumsy loser like you is going to do anyway? Why don't you save yourself some time and us the sight of you making a mockery of a sport and go back to your hole?"  
    I angrily yanked my arm out from her grip and quickly lost control over myself, doing that suicidal thing that I tend to do in situations where I should just shut up and crawl away, and opened my stupid mouth.  
    "What are you so worried about?" I said coldly, "All your brother has to do is be faster than I am. That should be no problem for a big, tough athlete like him, right?"  
    Her expression was shocked for a moment, like she couldn't believe that I had had the audacity to say that, before it melted into this hateful, enraged glare. I got out of there and disappeared into the locker room before she could do anything to me. It was a dubious sanctuary. She had, after all, gone after me into the boys' bathroom on the day that we had met, but she was older now and the locker room was almost full of our classmates at that point. She wouldn't cause a scene or be known as the girl that so boldly went into the boys' locker room. As I hurriedly went in, I almost collided with Heero who had been loitering in the doorway, watching the two of us. To my surprise, when I looked back at Relena, I expected her to be glaring at him or say something cruel, but she only looked startled and uncomfortable to see him there and even quicker than I had, turned and walked towards the girls' locker room like she was running away from him. Weird.  
    "What did she want?" Heero asked a bit tersely.  
    "To discourage me from trying out for track," I said plainly and walked past him to my locker.  
    "You didn't let her get to you, did you?" my friend asked me worriedly, almost panicked and I wondered why my doing this was so important to him.  
    I suppose that I could have told him no. It was on my mind, which was still far from made up on the subject. It wasn't just fear of Relena and Zechs, it went a lot deeper than that. Going to school with them had taught me to never raise my head any further than they would allow, to never be noticed. I was a maggot and I belonged in the dirt. If I ever tried to leave, the birds would peck at me. And dirt was all that I had ever deserved, my father had taught me that much. I couldn't do anything. I was worthless and weak, and I would fail in anything that I tried, so why even bother trying? It felt unnatural to me to try to do any better, to try out and pit my own skills against those of my classmates. Failing was all that I could possibly do.   
    But it was Heero again that kept me from quitting. Compared to the hope in those blue eyes, compared to the knowledge of how disappointed he would be in me if I quit, Relena threatening me was nothing. My fear of failure was nothing. I think that I would do just about anything for him to be proud of me, even cut off my own tongue.   
    "No," I gave him a half-hearted smile, "I said I would do it. Besides, I've been dealing with her threats since we were kids."  
    But that resolve did absolutely nothing to make me feel better when we neared the end of the gym period and Coach Horner interrupted a game of basketball to remind us of the track try outs and how we should all go to cheer for our classmates. The reminder of what I was going to be doing after class had me in fits. I felt like my stomach was trying to crawl it's way out of my throat.  
    "Oh, fuck, what am I doing," I wrung my braid in my hands and felt like I was going to throw up, "This is crazy."  
    "Hey, it's ok," Heero put a hand on my shoulder.  
    "No, it isn't!" I exclaimed, throwing up my hands, "I can't believe that I let you talk me into doing this! I'm going to make a complete ass out of myself and... and, I don't know, fall on my face or something! It's inevitable!"  
    "You aren't going to make an ass of yourself," he soothed and lightly tugged on my hair to get me to look at him, "There's no way you'll be anything other than amazing. Don't even focus on anyone else when you get out there. You don't have anything to prove to any of them. Just run like you have something to run for."  
    I stared at him, his soft smile and his bright eyes, so full of confidence in me. He actually believed every word that he said, that I was going to be amazing. I understood, in that moment as he looked at me, and I didn't want to. I felt very frightened all of a sudden and wanted to argue that he was wrong, so very wrong, but I couldn't. As much as my sudden epiphany was unwanted, there was another part of me that craved that confidence of his. I wanted to believe in everything that he believed. I wanted to be the person that he saw when he looked at me, even more than I had wanted to be the child that my parents had wanted. I had been unable to be that child for them, no matter how hard I had tried to change myself. What could I possibly do to make sure that I didn't let Heero down, too?  
    I still felt like I was going to jump out of my skin when the bell rang for the end of the school day. I felt exactly like I had when I had let Quatre talk me into entering the spelling bee in the fifth grade, only at least that was something that I had _known_ that I was good at. I tried to push my anxiety out of my head for a little while as Heero and I headed for the showers, but I just felt like my stomach was filled with those classic and cliched butterflies.   
    Heero took his shower first as I patiently waited by the locker room door for him.  
    "Your turn," he urged when he came out, his hair wet and wearing his regular clothes.  
    "Pretty stupid," I muttered, "Taking a shower when I'm just going to put my gym clothes back on for the try outs."  
    He shrugged in agreement, but taking a shower after gym was a requirement, so my logic was pretty irrelevant. I was headed to the changing area when I spotted Pete Clark, Trant's younger brother, approaching Heero. I felt my hair bristle, certain that he was going to start trouble, but he made a determined beeline for my friend.  
    "Yuy," he said gruffly and it was the irritation in his voice, like he wanted to be anywhere but there, that made him seem credible, "Horner wants to talk to you."  
    Heero glanced at me and I knew exactly what he was thinking. He couldn't really ignore his coach, not when it probably had something to do with his baseball team, but if he wasn't there to watch my back when I showered, Zechs was probably going to do something to me, and if I waited for him to come back, I was going to be late for try outs and probably disqualified.   
    "Go," I urged him, "I can take care of myself."  
    "Are you sure?" he asked me, ignoring Clark's growing impatience.  
    "Yeah, I'll see you out on the field, ok?" I was ready to actually push him when he still looked hesitant, clearly worried about me, but he finally took the hint and walked off with Pete.  
    Now, I know what you're thinking. After all these years, you would think that I would be able to smell a trap coming from a mile away. And I can. Pete's timing was a little bit too good to be a coincidence, but there was still a big possibility that he had been telling the truth. Even if he hadn't been, if Zechs wanted to ambush me in the locker room, I just couldn't see how Heero's presence was going to help me beyond warning me ahead of time. So, highly cautious and on alert for everything, I got undressed, put my clothes on the nearby bench, and took my shower as quickly as humanely possible. When I got out, I was far from surprised to find my clothes and gym sneakers gone, but still dismayed.   
    Dressed in only a shitty, school towel and my hair down, I felt incredibly self conscious as I snuck to my locker, but there was thankfully no one else in the locker room. I found my locker door wide open and felt my heart sink into my stomach. By some kind of miracle of kindness, my regular clothes were still there and my backpack was untouched, but my other pair of sneakers were gone. Someone had stolen my shoes. Two guesses as to who and both would be right on the money. I dressed, combed my hair, and began my manhunt for my missing sneakers, but I was positive that they were long gone.   
    Frustration mounted in me as I realized that the tryouts were only a couple of minutes away. Even if the shoenapper had put them someplace where I would eventually be able to find them, there was no way I was going to make it in time. I should have been relieved. I had an excuse to get out of doing something that I hadn't completely wanted to do in the first place, but I wasn't. I was pissed off. Maybe I had been nervous about trying out for track, but dammit, I had somehow found the resolve to do it and some part of me had wanted to at least try. Hoping was against my nature, but I still walked out of the locker room, praying that I would find my sneakers in the gym somewhere and I might be able to make it to the try outs if I ran. I was thoroughly unsurprised when I saw that the only two people left in the gym were Relena and Dorothy, sitting on the bleachers and talking about their upcoming winter vacation.  
    "Where are they?" I snapped at Relena.  
    "What on earth are you talking about?" she asked me with wide eyed, fake innocence as she and her friend stood up.  
    "My shoes," I gritted out, "I know that you took them. Where are they?"  
    "Oh, is that what they were?" she said in equally fake shock, putting a hand in front of her mouth to hide her superior smirk, "As old and ratty as they were, I mistook them for cheap kindling. I'm terribly sorry."  
    She patted me on the shoulder as though she were sympathetic and I couldn't help but flinch from her, not wanting her to so much as touch me. Dorothy laughed cruelly at my reaction and the two of them walked past me, leaving me there in the gym. As Relena walked by me, flicking her long hair over her shoulder, I smelled the very faint aroma of smoke. Then it hit me. 'Cheap kindling.' The fucking bitch had thrown my shoes into the school incinerator. It hadn't been enough for her to just hide them on me. She had destroyed the only sneakers that I had owned, all to make absolutely sure that I couldn't race against her brother. She had even taken my socks, the sadistic cunt.   
    I sat down on the bleachers, suddenly feeling like I had this huge weight in my gut and I couldn't possibly stand up anymore. I hung my head and gripped at my bangs hard enough for it to hurt. It's probably stupid that I wasn't thinking about how I was going to get home with no shoes, or how I was going to be able to afford, not only one pair, but two. No, I was thinking about the try outs. I was thinking about having to forfeit and all the things that Relena and Zechs had taken from me over the years. I guess this was pretty small and insignificant compared to what they had done to Quatre, but it hurt.   
    For once in my life, I had wanted something. I had wanted to be something more than I was, if only for a few minutes. I had wanted to try to be good at something... and they had taken it away from me like everything else. All so Zechs could get on the team. They had stolen it so easily and all I could do was just accept it. What else could I do? It was just like Relena had said. I was a pathetic, clumsy loser anyway. I would have just embarrassed myself in front of Heero if I had tried out, and all I could was continue to be a loser.   
    No. I lifted my head up again as a steely, cold resolve suddenly came over me. No, I thought over and over again, she wasn't going to win this one. There was something that I could do. I could still race, even without my shoes. I could show the bitch that no matter what she did to me, no matter how much she tormented me and Heero and no matter what new, terrible, horrible thing she threw at me, I would always be here. If she wanted to get rid of me, she was going to have to kill me herself and if she wanted to push me back down into my place, she was going to have to do a hell of a lot better than burning my shoes.  
    Fueled by anger and pure, intense stubbornness, I gathered my things and, barefoot, I ran to the track field. Every one else trying out for the team were already on the track and there were only a few people on the bleachers to watch. I easily spotted Heero there and he waved cheerfully at me. Relena and Dorothy were on the opposite end from him and when she saw me approach, Relena's face twisted into one of both fury and bewilderment.   
    "You're late!" Horner barked at me and I secretly wondered if he had been waiting for me since it was the past the time that they were supposed to start, "And what the hell are you doing barefoot?! You can't run like that, Maxwell!"  
    "Sorry," I apologized sheepishly, trying to ignore how the staring from my classmates was making my stomach churn, "I misplaced my shoes, but I can still run, it's no problem."  
    The coach looked dubious at that, but he just shrugged.  
    "They're your feet," he grumbled, "and there are no do-overs for try outs."  
    "I know," I told him.  
    Horner shook his head at my obvious stupidity, still looking hesitant at having me race, but gestured to one of the lanes on the track for me to stand.  
    There were fifteen people, including myself and Zechs, trying out for the team and only eight lanes, so we got split off into two groups. By some kind of luck, the kind that seriously makes me think that the universe has it out for me, I not only got put into the same group as Zechs, but was put into the lane next to his. He glared coldly at me when he took his place next to me.   
    "Big mistake, Maxwell," he sneered at me, "Why don't you go home with the rest of the losers before you embarrass yourself?"  
    Fear lanced through my gut at his stare, but I tried hard just to ignore him. I had come all that way and I wasn't going to let him rankle me before the race even started. Horner came around to lecture us that we would be the first group and the rules that we needed to abide by in running, how he wouldn't tolerate any horseplay, to keep by our lanes and get off the track as soon as we had finished our third loop.   
    As he walked off to give the same speech to the second group, a quick movement in the corner of my eye startled me. I stumbled backwards just in time to miss Zechs's foot as he stomped it down where my left, bare foot would have been. The impact would have been strong enough to have broken my toes, at the very least, and it had only been my quick instincts that had saved me from injury, even as the pavement took a layer of skin off the bottom of my foot.   
    "Sorry about that," Zechs grinned cruelly at me.  
    I very carefully walked back into place, but didn't take my eyes off of him in case he tried anything else. The pavement of the track under my feet was icy cold and I knew just by feeling it that it was going to tear up the bottom of my feet when I started running. That alone was enough to make me wonder if it was such a good idea, but I refused to quit. I had spent my entire time in public school keeping my head down, terrified of standing out in case I would get punished for it, but not that day. I think I understood then that if I backed down that time, that would be it for me. I would never be able to stand back up again.   
    "Duo!" I heard Heero calling my name from the bleachers and looked over at him, just in time to see him take off his own sneakers, tie the laces together, and throw them towards me.   
    I ran out of line to catch them and beamed up at my friend, waving to him in thanks. He looked incredibly pleased with himself while Relena looked like she was going to scream. And the look on Zechs's face when I put Heero's shoes on was well worth just being there to see it, like he had just eaten something sour. Heero's shoes were actually pretty close in size to my own, just a bit too wide, but I sure as hell wasn't going to complain.  
    "We done?" Horner asked dryly, quirking one eyebrow at Heero and mine's antics.  
    "Yup," I quipped back and walked back into my lane.  
    As I got into position at Horner's command, I suddenly realized that every, single ounce of my anxiety had vanished. I didn't feel afraid anymore about fucking up. I wasn't even scared of Zechs. All I felt was this blissfully warm and content sensation in my chest as I replayed Heero throwing me his shoes over and over again in my head. My love for him filled me up in a way that my fears could never compete with and right then, as I heard him cheering for me amidst the other cheers, I didn't even care how well I did. I could have come in dead last and I would have been just as happy as if I had been the fastest one there.   
    Horner blew his whistle, signaling the beginning of the race. Almost immediately, Zechs's leg stretched out, preparing to trip me as I pushed off from our start position, but I was ready for it. I quickly darted over his leg and fell into a steady run. He easily got ahead of me and I let him think that he had slowed me down. I kept up a pace that was comfortable and wouldn't strain me too much without giving the other runners too much ground on me. This was what I was used to, just jogging at an even pace for a long period of time, but I knew that it wasn't going to let me get a decent time.  
    I knew that I could beat Zechs easily, but while that was a great perk, it wasn't my goal. I wanted to prove to everyone; my classmates, Zechs, Relena, Heero... _myself_ , that I could do this, that I could do my best and where I fell compared to others. I needed to know who was right, my fears and my father, or my hopes and Heero. Was I a loser or could I do something like this? Could I compete and actually succeed in something? Was my friend right and all I needed was self confidence, or was the man that raised me right in believing that I was useless and would never accomplish anything?   
    I wasn't sure which I wanted to be true. On the one hand, I wanted to believe that I could be more than just another south end loser. I wanted to believe that I could be good enough for Heero, to be his friend and not just someone he was dragging along. But on the other, I was terrified to know that I had been lied to my entire life, that I had believed everything that my father and Relena had said, that I was pathetic. I didn't want to know that I could have done more with myself, that I had been dragging _myself_ down. More than anything, I didn't want to believe that my father had crippled me like that, and I sure as hell didn't want to know if it had been on purpose.  
    I kept my even pace up until the last full lap. I was right behind Zechs, just in eighth place. I was going to have to pick up speed and maintain it the full lap if I wanted to get ahead of him. But how? The only times that I had ever gone faster than I was running at that point were when I was being chased and when I had needed to save Quatre, out of pure necessity. The latter had been a very short, but incredibly fast burst of speed, and the former had been more sustained, but almost as hard to maintain.   
     _"Just run like you have something to run for,"_ Heero had said to me. But what did I have to run for? I could run like that to escape danger or to save someone that I loved, but I wasn't in that kind of situation. I thought about the fear that I always felt in those situations, the fear of getting caught and knowing that a beating was happening, but it wouldn't come to me and I didn't want to hold on to something so dark just to try to win a race. I thought about the day that I had saved Quatre, the day that Horner's weird obsession with the rumors of my speed had started. I thought about the terror that I had felt, fearing that I was going to be too late. But that hadn't been the only reason why I had been able to run like that. Above the fear, there had been a feeling of love for my best friend and an incredible drive to protect him and shelter him at that moment, when I had been unable to do so for all of our friendship.   
    'Heero,' I remember thinking very clearly. If I had anything to run for, instead of something to run from, it was him. It was because of him that I was running at all. He had pushed me and convinced me to do it. Hell, he had pushed me to get a decent grade on my history test and he was pushing me to study for my math final. If it weren't for him, I would still be in that dark place that my father and Quatre's death had dragged me into. Any happiness I feel is because he cares about me. He believes in me. He believed that I could do well in the race.   
    So I imagined that it was him that I was running to. Not to save Quatre and not to run from my father, but to Heero, to protect him like I had failed to protect the only other friend that I had had. And just like that, I felt it. That burning fire that had filled me the day that I had almost gotten killed by that truck, that drive to throw away all of my conceptions about what I couldn't do and only focus on what needed to be done, to hell with my limitations. I burst forward, past Zechs, and caught his face twisting into an expression of anger and frustration, knowing that he was running as fast as he could, having used up most of his energy in the first two laps, and even if he hadn't, he wouldn't be able to seriously compete with me anyway.  
    For a moment as I passed, not only him, but a couple of the other boys in front of me, I seriously worried that I wasn't going to be able to maintain that speed, but I let it all flow out of me. It didn't matter, I told myself. The pain in my legs and my chest didn't matter. My fear of failure didn't matter. All that mattered was the feeling of my feet hitting the ground and the wind flowing past me. I fell into this head space where no one else existed, not even the other runners, and all that I cared about was putting another step forward, and then another. By the time that I passed Horner to complete the last lap, my whole body was burning with strain and I was panting so hard that I had to stop and stand there in the grass to the side of the track with a few of my classmates to catch my breath, but I barely even felt it.   
    I ended up being in a very close second place in my group. I can't even begin to describe the amount of satisfaction it gave me. I hadn't fucked up. I hadn't embarrassed myself in front of Heero. My passing the try out was just perk, as far as I was concerned.   
    "Great job out there, Maxwell," Horner clapped me on the shoulder, "I told you that if you would just apply yourself, you could get on the team no problem."  
    I just nodded absently at him, not having the heart to tell him that I hadn't really done this to get onto the team and was still kind of on the fence about it. I walked over the bleachers as the second group started their run and sat down next to Heero.  
    "That was amazing," he gushed and I was glad that my face was already red from exertion or my blush would have been epic, "I had no idea that you could run that fast!"  
    "I don't usually," I murmured, "I just got a bit into it."  
    He dug a water bottle out of his bag and handed it to me. I all too happily drank half of it in one gulp.  
    "Thanks," I gasped out and wiped my lips, "and thanks for the sneakers, too."  
    I took his sneakers off and gave them back to him.  
    "Zechs took yours?" he asked.  
    "Relena burned them," I corrected.  
    "Fucking bitch. But you decided to race anyway," he pressed.  
    "I was committed," I said glibly, not wanting him to know how I had come to that decision, "and it's not like it would have been the only time I've run on pavement. I'm more concerned about how I'm going to replace them."  
    "We can stop at the mall after this and I'll buy you a pair," Heero offered, "In the meantime, you can wear my gym shoes."  
    "I-I have some money at home," I mumbled, a bit blown away by his continuous generosity.  
    "It's fine," he waved me off, "I have a credit card and as long as you don't get hundred dollar shoes, I don't mind. I'm the reason why your sneakers got destroyed anyway, because I convinced you to run against Zechs."  
    "That was my decision," I argued, "and if it weren't for you, I never would have even tried to do this, so that kind of cancels out losing my shoes. You can't just keep buying things for me-"  
    "You're going to tell me what I can do with my money?" he quirked an eyebrow at me.  
    "No," I backpedaled, "but..."  
    "Then what's the big deal?" he asked, a bit cheekily, "You work hard for your money, you shouldn't have to throw it away because Relena's a cunt to you. Besides, I've seen your sneakers. It's about time you got new ones."  
    I flushed darkly. He had me there. Both of my pairs of sneakers had been years old, too tight, and falling apart. But sneakers are expensive, so I kept putting off buying new ones.  
    "Fine," I said in exasperation, "But I think you're an idiot for spending so much money on me."  
    "I'm ok with that," he grinned, "At least now, if you decide to join track, you'll have some decent sneakers to run in."  
    I couldn't say anything to that. I still hadn't really decided what I was going to do if... when I got on the team. The second group finished with their race and sat down on the bleachers with the rest of us. After scribbling some things down on his clipboard, Horner walked to the bleachers to address the runners.   
    "These are the results from your races," he bellowed like he was in a stadium instead of on a flat field, talking to little over two dozen students, "Those with the seven best times have been accepted onto the team. If anyone wishes to drop out of the team, the next best time will be accepted. Now, from fastest to slowest," he began to call out the names.      
    I don't know why, since I had been watching the second race, but I was still a bit startled when my name was called third. It still wasn't registering, I guess, that I wasn't counted among those that hadn't made the cut. I was too used to it and it still felt incredibly weird, but when Heero gave me a bright smile, I felt my insides be reduced to a pleased mush. The feeling faded when Horner read off Zechs's name in the eighth slot. He hadn't made it.   
    At first, I felt a chill of foreboding, but that quickly melted away into one closer to triumphant spite. I can't even remember the last time that anyone had told the asshole 'no' and I had to look over at him to see how he was taking the news. I know that's petty, but after five years of abuse from him, I think I'm allowed a bit of pettiness, even if I knew that his anger could only mean pain for me. Sure enough, when I glanced at him, I found him glaring at me in rage, promising death. It wasn't like I had boosted him from his slot, I had been in third, not seventh, but I kind of had. All but one of the boys that had gotten onto the team had been on it before. If I hadn't made the cut, there would have been room for him.   
    Oddly enough, Zechs's anger didn't terrify me for once. Maybe I was still in shock about how well I had done that I just didn't care about his retribution, or maybe I was confident that I could evade it, or maybe after all this time, I've started to become suicidal, but instead of being scared of him and trying to find a way out, I found myself seriously considering whether or not I wanted to join the team.   
    If I didn't, Zechs would get back on the team and while he would beat the shit out of me for daring to race against him, it wouldn't be nearly as bad as getting him kicked off. I didn't think that Heero would be too disappointed in me if I didn't join. I had, after all, tried and succeeded and for me, that was a pretty huge deal. I still didn't have the time for an after school activity and I'm not a competitive person. Being on any kind of sports team was not exactly high up on my life of priorities. But the idea of joining the track team was not a wholly bad thought to me. I would have the satisfaction of taking away something that Zechs wanted, but although you would think that that would be my number one reason for wanting to do it, it actually was the least important thing compared to all the others.  
    Heero had mentioned that I could take time off work for track and the more I thought about it, the more the idea of limiting my work hours appealed to me. I'm not lazy and I knew why I needed those hours. I had meant it when I had told Heero that working long hours wasn't a big deal to me, but it had also been kind of a lie. Becoming friends with Heero had shown me a few hard truths that I had been trying to deny. For one, I realized the toll that working two jobs was putting on me. For the longest time, all I had had in my life was work, school, and going home to utter shit. Repeat, repeat, repeat. There had been nothing else.   
    And until now, that had suited me. I had needed to work two to three jobs to save money, but also because I had needed something to do to keep my mind off of things. I had nothing to do, no one to talk to, nowhere to be, so why not throw myself into work? It was better than being home and staring at the walls or listening to my parents fight. But now... I had Heero. I had a friend that I wanted to be with. For the first time in my life, I didn't want to spend all of my time busting my ass.   
    For the first time, even though it made me feel guilty as all hell, I wanted to just be a teenager and slack off a bit. I wanted to focus on my homework and be able to spend a day with my friend, instead of having to rush off to work. My conscience nagged at me that I had responsibilities, but was taking one or two days off from work really such a terrible thing? My father would think that it was, but I could make sure that he never found out about it, and in that moment, I didn't feel any desire to do something that he wanted me to do. If I was being honest with myself, he was the reason that I had those jobs and as I sat there next to Heero, I could only feel bitterness for my father. He had raised me to believe that I was worthless beyond helping out the family and there Heero was, trying to pound into my head that that wasn't true.   
    I wasn't sure who to believe anymore, but I felt angry at my dad for all the things that he had said to me. Maybe it was just misplaced anger for abusing me, but I didn't want his voice in my head anymore, telling me that I was never going to amount to anything. I didn't want that fear that it was true. Maybe it was, I don't know, all I knew was that believing in Heero had pulled me out of the pit of despair that my father had thrown me into. I wanted to be on the track team, I wanted to have something in my life that mattered, even if it was only to me, and I wanted to do something that I enjoyed.   
    Even if it was fleeting, how could those feelings be wrong? It probably says quite a lot about how pathetic I am that I even needed to overanalyze such a simple decision as 'should I join a team or not'. Any other kid my age would have just shrugged and said 'sure, why not?' It only drove home to me how strange and broken I was, that I felt bad about wanting something, that I actually felt like I didn't deserve it.   
    "For those seven who have made the team," Coach Horner continued after prattling off the times of those that hadn't made the cut, the number of people on the stands quickly dwindling as those that hadn't made it left dejectedly with their friends, "I will be mailing all of this information to your home addresses, but there is a thirty dollar fee for your uniforms that is to be paid by March 1st, which is also the date of our first practice as a team. The sooner I get this money, the more time we will have to fix any sizing issues. I know that this is a long way away, but the purpose of having early try outs is for all of you to practice on your own. I expect all of you to improve on these times by Spring. Our practices will be held every Tuesday from 2:30 to 3:30 and once the race season starts in April, you will be looking at a meet every Saturday for two months. If any of your parents would like to offer their cars for carpooling to these meets, volunteers are greatly appreciated."  
    His grand speech done, people abandoned the bleachers, eager to get out of there, and congratulating those that had done well. I got down off the bleachers carefully so I wouldn't accidentally cut my feet on aged metal. Wouldn't that have been a wonderful end to that kind of weird day?   
    "What are you going to do?" Heero asked me.  
    "Well," I rubbed at the back of my head, "I guess I have plenty of time to scrounge up thirty dollars."  
    "That's great," his smile widened into an exuberant grin, "You decide that it's worth it to finally put Zechs in his place?" he asked slyly.   
    I couldn't help but smile a little at that. It was ironic, being friends with Heero made me feel like I could almost have the courage to stand up to that asshole. In the past, hurting him and Relena had been all that I could think of, the desire to make them feel everything that they had made me feel. But ever since I had become friends with Heero, I discovered that I didn't care about that so much anymore.   
    "Actually, it had nothing to do with him," I confessed, "I just... wanted to do it."  
    "I'm glad," his smile lost some of it's energy and became something softer and calmer, "If you need the money-"  
    "Don't even!" I interrupted him, "You might be ok with throwing money away, but it makes me uncomfortable. I can come up with it on my own."  
    "If that's what you want," he said simply, completely unapologetic, "but I'm still buying your shoes today, whether you'd like me to or not."  
    I huffed about that, but I knew that he was right. I didn't like him spending money on me, I hadn't even liked it when Quatre had done it with my penny pinching nature, but it wasn't like I could forbid him from doing it.   
    "At least you have awhile to decide what you're going to do about work," he pointed out as we started to walk back towards the school.  
    "Well... I've been thinking lately about what you and your dad said, about me overworking myself... and I guess you're right, I do need to take some time off once in awhile. But you need to understand, I've been working like this for a long time and I've always thought that it was what I needed to do, to help out my parents and be dutiful and everything, so it's not exactly easy for me to make that kind of decision, even if I do think that you're right," I explained.  
    "How long have you been working?" Heero asked me.  
    "My dad got me my first jobs when I was twelve, although those were just washing dishes and cleaning tables," I told him.  
    "That's-" he started to say in alarm.  
    "I know, I know," I interrupted him, "Illegal. Your father already lectured me about being under-aged for the jobs that I'm doing now."  
    "Actually, while that's true and I think it sucks that you had to work at that age," he said vehemently, "I was going to say that it's cruel to put someone who isn't even a teenager through that kind of stress... to give them that kind of responsibility. But I think that's even more of a reason for you to take it easy. You've been working for your family's sake for four years of your life and you aren't even a legal adult yet. Maybe it's what you're used to, but that isn't ok! You shouldn't be responsible for your parents' inability to support themselves."  
    How could I possibly explain to him my guilt, feeling responsible for that inability, all because they had decided to keep me when they had been only a little older than I am now? That if they hadn't had a kid, they wouldn't be poor and struggling to pay bills? But that didn't make him any less right, either.   
    "I know," I confessed, "but that doesn't make it any easier for me to stop doing something that I've been doing for that long. But you're right, so..." I took a deep breath, trying to loosen the knot in my stomach, "so I think I'm going to ask for some time off, starting next week, even though track hasn't started yet. I was thinking of taking my first shift on Tuesdays and my single shift on Saturdays off. And... and maybe we could hang out on Saturdays?" I asked shyly.  
    "I would really like that," Heero smiled, "and I think it's a good idea. It won't kill you to relax a little."  
    I almost quipped at him 'relaxation? What's that?' but I was worried that he might realize that I wasn't entirely joking. I followed him back into the gym's locker room to grab his shoes and we took the bus to the mall after he texted his father that we were going to be later coming home than he had thought. Sneaker shopping with Heero actually wasn't bad once I got over the fact that he was going to be paying for it. It still dug at me, both my pride and my guilt, but I was starting to get used to him doing whatever he wanted.  
    The mall normally would not have been that crowded on a week day, but the holidays were in full swing and the place was packed with panicked, last minute shoppers. It made me feel incredibly glad that I didn't need to bother with that shit. Thankfully, I'm not picky about the clothes that I wear and I'm even less picky about my sneakers, so I just picked out some that had the least offensive colors and were comfortable. I tried to go for some of the bargain and clearance pairs, but Heero glared at me, forced me to sit down in one of the chairs, and started to bring up shoes to me, so I wouldn't know how much they cost.   
    It was annoying at first, making me feel like I was being coddled like a child, but I have to admit that the two pairs of sneakers that I walked out of the store with were a lot nicer and more comfortable than what I would have picked if I had been more budget conscious. Heero even refused to let me know how much they cost, the asshole, and I say that with a great deal of affection.   
    "Do you know what you're going to be working around Christmas?" my friend asked me as we walked towards his house after finally escaping from the masses, "You aren't going to be doing any shifts on the day, are you?"  
    "Actually, no," I confessed, "Back when I used to work at a diner and a restaurant, I had to because a lot of the full timers had to take off, but the two jobs that I have now are taking off for Christmas and the day after. I have my regular shift on the 23rd, and a day shift on the 24th. Then it's back to my regular schedule on the 27th."  
    "In that case, my parents and I have been talking about asking you over for Christmas dinner. I mean, not actually a Christmas dinner, since we're going over to my grandparents' place that day, but kind of like one, just not on the day," Heero rambled, "That is, only if you would want to. You said that your family doesn't really do stuff like that, so I thought it might be nice, unless you think it's stupid-"  
    "It sounds nice," I put him out of his misery, finding his blushing and stammered words both endearing and worrisome, "I can come over this Sunday for dinner, and I'll bring a dish, too, maybe a dessert or something."  
    "Great!" was all that he managed to say, still looking embarrassed by his verbal fumble.   
    The rest of the night was very... nice. Heero and I did more studying and, even more miraculous than my making the track team, I actually felt confident that I wasn't going to fail my math final. Heero's dad even gave me some pointers and a little pep talk about just doing my best. We ate a home cooked meal of pot roast with various vegetables and an apple cake for dessert while we talked about my try outs, the upcoming holiday, and Sunday dinner. Heero's parents offered to take me with them to his grandparents again, but I declined like last time. I was starting to feel more used to them and their kindness towards me, but that was a bit too much for me to deal with.  
    Heero walked me home, as usual, and I felt in incredibly high spirits for me. I had had a great day, more or less, even with the whole shoe stealing incident and the knowledge that Zechs was going to kill me the following day, but that wasn't anything too different. I promised Heero that I would hang out with him for a little bit the next day and went inside of my home. I felt like some wayward child, bouncing between two homes. It was kind of frightening how, the more time that I spent at Heero's house, the less welcoming my own house felt to me.   
    I felt like there was a whole other side of me that was drifting away from the rest of me, like I was becoming this entirely different person. Only I think that I'm starting to like this other person. He has friends, people that care about him, and can accomplish things that I had never dreamed possible for myself. This other person was better than I was, clearly, even if it was only by a matter of degrees. I wanted to become him, completely and forever, but at the end of the day, no matter how much I had enjoyed my time with Heero and his family, I was only reminded of who I really am.  
    Walking into my house that night, I felt... disassociated with everything else that had happened that day. The happiness that I had felt buried itself into my memories, just out of reach, as the familiarity of my surroundings brought out that bleak depression that had been living in for the last three years. Our rusted sink, the kitchen chair with half of one leg missing, the cheap plates sitting on the aged drying rack, the smell of beer and the disgusting smell of dirty water that no one had bothered to drain out of the sink since that morning were like bad memories, and it was like coming home. I felt split in half between myself, between my happiness and all of the dark things that lived in my head.   
    I like to think that the person that I am when I'm with Heero is a better me, but when I'm at home again, all I can think is that that person is a lie, just someone that I am pretending to be so that my best friend will never see more than mere glimpses of the real 'me'.   
  
*****  
      
    I would like to say that my good luck or fortune or whatever from Tuesday had carried over into Wednesday, and I suppose that a little bit of it had, but, well... I guess the jury is still out about whether I can count it as somewhat good or not as bad as it could have been. It was a pretty normal day up until our math final started. Heero and I made a dedicated effort to stay as far away from Zechs and his friends as physically possible. That sounds a whole lot easier than it ended up being. Staying out of Zechs's way on a normal day is taxing enough, considering that we have a couple of classes together, but staying hidden when he was actually on the hunt for me? If Heero hadn't been watching my back the entire day, I never would have made it through the day without some major injury. I almost felt bad that my friend had to become my bodyguard, but I just reminded myself that it was all his fault that I had ever decided to do something to piss our bully off in the first place.  
    The both of us arrived later than we would have to school that morning and made sure to shadow our teachers. I knew that that would only work for so long. I was dreading lunch and gym, the two periods when we would be the most vulnerable. The studio was a possibility for lunch, but gym was a loss. Heero looking out for me when I was showering wasn't going to help, but unless I skipped gym every single day for the rest of my life, I couldn't think of any way to fully protect myself.  
    Well, I would have been dreading those periods anyway, but I was too busy dreading my math final. I wasn't the nervous wreck that I would have been if Heero hadn't helped me study for it, but I was still worried. A person can only have so many nightmares about horrible disasters happening while taking a test before they start to bleed into reality. It's funny, my fears of the test and my fears of Zechs were separate at that point in my day. It had never occurred to me that both problems would find a way to mesh. That was probably because, even though Zechs was in the same math class that I was, his seat was so far away from mine that I hadn't thought that he wouldn't be a problem.   
    What, or rather _who_ , I didn't take into account was Dorothy. I probably should have, given her sadistic streak and the fact that, while she might not be Zechs's friend, Relena had it just as much out for me as her brother did. I was just too worried about the final and I had assumed that everyone else would be, too. When Mrs. Harkins handed out our tests, I just fell into this zone of concentration where nothing else in the world mattered but the paper on my desk. I got about ten questions in when I heard a strange noise behind me. You know when you're concentrating on something and some little thing happens, something out of place? You notice it, but not enough to actually stop what you're doing and think about it. That noise was like that. It was out of place and if I hadn't been preoccupied, I would have worried about it, but it was irrelevant to me at that point.   
    It was the smell that followed the sound that grabbed my attention. Cigarette smoke doesn't really belong in a classroom, but more than that, the smell of tobacco smoke has always made me immediately think of Pat. It didn't take me very long at all to realize that the smell was coming from directly behind me, that Dorothy had lit up one of her cigarettes. I knew that she smoked, but not as much as Zechs did, and she wasn't the sort of delinquent that would try to smoke in class. But the only thing worse than Mrs. Harkins' hearing was her sense of smell, which was pretty much gone. It wouldn't be the first time that someone in our class had gotten away with smoking.   
    I ignored it at first. What did I care if Dorothy wanted to smoke in class? I just hoped that she wouldn't set off the smoke detector. That's when I felt it. A searing heat at the back of my neck, and then a steady pressure, followed by terrible pain. I flinched and had to keep myself from turning in my seat to see what Dorothy was doing. Mrs. Harkins' hearing and smell might be shit, but there was nothing wrong with her vision and if she saw me looking back, she would accuse me of cheating. There was no way in hell the bitch was going to get me an incomplete on that final.   
    I knew exactly what she was doing. I've been burned before, by various things, and that wasn't the first time that someone had burned me with a cigarette before. Pat had done it as a joke once on the back of my arm when he had been drunk and my father had left the living room to use the bathroom. I clenched my fists and gritted my teeth as Dorothy stubbornly refused to take her cigarette off of the back of my neck for several seconds, but I was used to pain. I could endure it. I just as stubbornly returned to my test, hoping that she would stop when she didn't get any kind of reaction from me.  
    She didn't. For fifteen minutes that felt like a fucking hour, she repeatedly pressed her lit cigarette to the back of my neck, anywhere the she could reach that wasn't covered by my hair or my shirt. Thankfully, I was wearing a long sleeved shirt, so she couldn't get at my arms, but what she was doing was painful enough. The more that I ignored her, the more she went at me with that damned thing. After the first five minutes, I had bit my tongue bloody trying not to make a noise, and after the first ten, my hands began to shake. After fifteen, when she finally fucking _stopped_ , my eyes were watering so badly that I was having trouble reading my test.  
    People say that burns are the most painful injury that you can get. What they don't tell you is that the worst part isn't the pain. Sure, the pain is bad and it lingers like a bad smell long after the injury happens, but that isn't what gets to you. It's the feeling of your flesh being seared away and the _smell_ of it, of burning skin and hair. When you realize that that smell is coming from you, it messes with you. My stomach churned at that smell, my memories gleefully reminding me of all the times that I had smelled that before, and made it hard for me to concentrate.   
    Even when she finally relented, I felt the burning pains from the wounds that she had made. If I wasn't already so used to dealing with injuries and managing pain, it might have distracted me too much, but I spitefully refused to let her bullying affect me, not after all of the studying that I had done and all the hard work that Heero and I had put into trying to get me a passing grade. I worked through it just like I did a broken arm or a concussion and felt incredibly relieved when Dorothy got up to pass her test in. As she walked past me again to grab her things, I caught her superior look and had to fight not to glare at her. I was sure that later, she was going to gloat to Relena how she had gotten me good.  
    I was able to concentrate a lot better with her gone, thankfully, since it was taking every ounce of my attention just to make it through the test. I managed to finish it before the period ended, something that never happened to me, and decided to take that as a good sign. Heero was waiting for me out by the lockers, having been one of the first ones to finish.   
    "How was it?" he asked me as we walked to the cafeteria together.  
    "Not as terrible as I thought it was going to be," I admitted, "There were a few questions that stumped me, but I don't think that I failed at any rate."  
    Heero snorted.  
    "You could set your sights a bit higher than 'at least I didn't fail.' After all the work you put into your studying, I think you could at least hope for a C or B," he said dryly.  
    "Yeah, well, with grades like mine, I'm not holding my breath. But it would be nice not to have to worry about taking Calculus 1 over again," I, unthinkingly, rubbed at the back of my head sheepishly.  
    Stinging pain shot through my skin as my fingers accidentally brushed against my burns and hissed, withdrawing my hand quickly.  
    "What's wrong?" Heero asked in alarm.  
    I ignored him for a moment and gently probed the wounds. My skin felt horribly hot there and I easily counted at least four burns.   
    "I'm going to need to stop at the nurse's office for some burn cream before we get lunch," I told him, changing direction.  
    I was hoping that he would head off to lunch and not read into what I had said, but I knew that he wouldn't. I would have lied about it and just claimed a headache if he hadn't seen my reaction to the pain. Besides, he was going to see them sooner or later, so what would the point be in lying to him?  
    "Burn cream? What the hell happened?" he demanded.  
    "It's nothing," I tried to assure him, "Dorothy just burned me on the back of my neck during the test. I should put something on it so it doesn't get infected, and maybe take something for the pain."  
    "Duo, _wait_ ," he grabbed my wrist to stop me from continuing walking and pulled me back towards him.   
    I let him do it, patiently waiting as he swept my braid to the side and looked at the damage. I really wished that we could skip this part, the part where he freaked out over something that was not a big deal.  
    "Oh, god," he hissed in sympathy when he saw the damage, "Fuck, Duo, she... that cunt! She should be locked up! Does it hurt a lot? You should go to the hospital... you need to tell the principal-"  
    I turned, mostly so he wouldn't have to look at the burns anymore, and put a hand on his arm.  
    "Heero, it's ok," I tried to calm him, "It isn't anything different than they've done to me before. Yes, it looks nasty and yes, it hurts, but I can treat it myself. My dad's burned me before, so I know how to take care of it-"  
    The words were out of my mouth before I really took a moment to think about what I was saying. I had just wanted to make him feel better, to get him to understand that it was not a huge problem, that I was used to that kind of pain. Instead, his eyes widened and he looked at me in horror.  
    "Your dad..." he looked so shell shocked at the implication.  
    Starting to feel frustrated, I rolled up my left sleeve and showed him a burn scar on the underside of my arm. It was long and ugly looking, but it had looked a hell of a lot worse than when I had first gotten it. And it had hurt a hell of a lot worse than it had ever looked. Heero took my arm and drew it out, examining the mark.  
    "Your dad did this?" he whispered in shock, his eyes completely fixed on every inch of the rough looking skin.  
    I had shown him the mark to make him feel better, not worse, to make him see that it wasn't so bad.   
    "It was just an accident," I said defensively, remembering that day a little bit too vividly, "He was stressed because of work and he had been drinking. I had washed the kitchen floor earlier and had missed a spot that was still wet when he got home. He slipped on it and got mad. I was making dinner at the time and I had the stove on. When he gets drunk, he just... he forgets himself, you know? He grabbed my arm and pushed it down on the stove. He didn't know that it was hot, and he didn't realize it until... until later," my voice trailed off, unable to continue any further.  
    I pulled my arm out of Heero's hands and kept walking, rubbing at the scar. It was such a pretty story. Yes, my father had just not realized that I had been cooking food on the stove. Yes, he had been very drunk at the time and had let his anger control him. Only I had left out the part where he had punched me a couple of times and left me there on the kitchen floor, sobbing in pain, or the part where I had dragged myself to the hospital at ten years old, in such horrible agony that I had believed that I was going to lose my arm. And I left out the part where I wondered, even after all those years, if my father had truly not known that the stove had been hot. I wondered if it had really been an accident, or if he had known, and he had done it deliberately. I had told Heero that he hadn't because it's what I like to believe, because the alternative is just too painful.  
    "Christ, Duo. I'm sorry," Heero apologized when I finally stopped right outside the nurse's office.  
    I wasn't quite sure if he was saying sorry for pushing me or for what my father had done to me, but I had the feeling that it was the latter.   
    "You have nothing to be sorry for," I murmured, scolding myself internally for ever bringing any of it up, "Like I said, it was an accident, that's all."  
    I knew right away that he didn't believe that, but he didn't understand. He didn't know anything about my father, so how could he possibly understand?   
    "Does you father get drunk like that a lot?" he asked softly, his tone somehow comforting.  
    I shrugged at first, really not wanting to talk about my father's drinking habits with the boy that I loved, and whose opinion of me meant the world to me. I couldn't stand the thought of him looking down on me for how my parents acted. If I told him the truth, would he be ashamed to be my friend? Would he even think that I was like that, too?   
    "He..." I started, trying to find a way to both not lie and to soften the truth at the same time, "My parents haven't had the greatest lives. They both work hard and have nothing to show for it. So yeah, they drink... probably more than they should. Hell, pretty much all the parents from my side of town drink! It doesn't _mean_ anything."  
    I almost cringed at how defensive and bitter I sounded.   
    "They're alcoholics," he summed up easily and neatly, in a way that I never could have.  
    It was a fact, and I knew that. I had known it for most of my life. So why was it so hard to say out loud? Why was it so hard to cop to the fact that my parents were heavy drinkers that couldn't control themselves?   
    "So what if they are?!" I snapped at him, feeling angry, but not at him, and then quickly looked down at my feet, "Lots of people are, it doesn't make them bad people!"  
    Why the hell was I defending my parents? After everything that they had done to me, after everything that their drinking problems had taken away, why was I trying to make light of it like that? Maybe I was just trying to defend myself and my guilt, or maybe the truth just hurt too much. Maybe being an alcoholic doesn't make you a bad person, but my parents weren't like Heero's. As much as I couldn't admit to it, my mother and father weren't what anyone would call good people. I loved them, but... but even that felt wrong to do, more and more often lately.   
    "I'm not judging you," Heero's kind and gentle words had me looking over at him again, "I'm just... sorry that you have to live with that."  
    Just like that, all those prickly feelings in my gut went away and I started to feel like an ass for snapping at him again. It wasn't Heero's fault that my family was broken.   
    "No, I'm sorry," I rubbed tiredly at my face, "I didn't want you to know about it, but I shouldn't have assumed that you were going to look down on me for it."  
    But I had. I had thought that about him, just like everyone else, and once again, he had ended up surprising me. I had confessed that my parents had a drinking problem and he still wasn't giving me that look like he suddenly realized that I was scum and was questioning ever getting involved with me. The look that I'm constantly waiting for.   
    "I wouldn't do that," he assured me, "but if you ever want to talk about it, you know where I am."  
    "Thank you, Heero," I smiled at him.  
    I felt this incredible warmth fill me at his offer and it completely washed away everything else inside of me. My insecurities were just that, I realized. He didn't look down on me because of my parents, and I should have known that he wasn't the sort of person that would do that to me, but it was so deeply ingrained in me, that my living situation was abnormal, that people thought that I was delinquent because of where I lived... And while that was true, and Relena and her lot had certainly bullied me enough times about it, the person that was the most ashamed of my family was... well, me. I say things like 'it's not a big deal' to down play it, and most of the time it isn't, because it's normal to me. But I can't talk to anyone about my parents because when I think about it, I just feel ashamed.   
    But when I talk to Heero about it, he just has this way of making all those bad feelings vanish for awhile. Just knowing that he can take me at face value and not lump me in with my parents' mistakes makes me feel this incredible relief. He's the most wonderful person in the world and the more time that I spend with him... the more that I fall in love with him, the more I ask myself what I've done to deserve a person like that in my life at all.   
  
End Part 8  
  



	37. Chapter 7 Part 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When his father breaks one of his ribs, Duo must rely on Heero to get him help. But what will he do when Heero finds out that Duo's father was the one that hurt him so badly?

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 7  
Part 9  
  
  
    Heero didn't ask about anymore questions about my parents' drinking. I was grateful since I apparently can't hold my tongue around him, even when it concerns things that I've had no problems not telling anyone about for my entire life. I even managed to get some burn cream from the nurse without needing to tell her the truth about why I needed it. Heero and I were extra careful after that in watching out for each other. After my trip to the nurse's office, we hurriedly got our lunches and ate in the studio.   
    We talked about just about anything except for my parents; the test, the holiday season, baseball, skating, what movies we liked the most. It turned out to be a lot nicer than eating in the cafeteria would have been. I even managed to keep my mind off of the last time Trowa and I had eaten lunch up there. For about five minutes. My mind, a bit sadistically, supplied me with the mental image of what it might be like to have a picnic with Heero, maybe on that hill behind his house, which of course only led me to all the times that Trowa and I had eaten together in some excluded spot. Which of course only led me to ending my friendship with Heero like I had ended my relationship with Trowa. Sometimes I'm a real glutton for pain.  
    Thankfully in gym, we were playing one on one badminton again, so there was little chance for interaction between us and Zechs. We took very short showers, one of us going in while most of our classmates were taking theirs. We didn't linger long after class. We spent my time before work jogging in the park and just walking through central Nausten, looking at the various Christmas displays. Then it was off to work, which ended up being more boring than usual. There was only one small order to do, re-bricking someone's chimney, so I got to stay behind and organize paperwork for hours. Solo wasn't there, having either called out because of some illness or he was taking an early holiday.   
    So I wasn't so surprised when I rushed home to feed Pepper and found a message on our answering machine from my boss saying that my shift at the factory had been cancelled as I was annoyed. Because I'm only sixteen, there are certain conditions that my boss laid out with my father in order for me to be employed there. The big one was that I had to have a partner to watch what I was doing. More often than not, the person ended up being Solo, partially because we got along so well and partially because he seemed to be the only one that I worked with that was willing to hold some brat's hand.   
    I guess it had just been easier to tell me to not come in than scrounge up someone to supervise me. Or my frugal boss was cutting hours for the holiday season, which also would not have surprised me. It was annoying since I was planning on cutting my hours soon, but there really wasn't anything that I could do about it. It's strange, in the past it would have caused me anxiety, not just annoyance. It was equally strange that I was actually kind of relieved to not have to go to work that night, and that I was looking forward to not needing to do any studying or homework.   
    In the past, I would spend that time fretting over my grades or feeling bored. I had finished with all of my finals and all that was really left was seeing what my final grades were the next day. But for the first time, while I was anxious to see what I had gotten on my Calculus test, I wasn't worried about failing. That was a weird feeling in itself. But I was also looking forward to not having to worry about my finals or studying or trying to make time to do my homework in the small hours of the morning or on my lunch break. For the first time in a long time, I was actually looking forward to my break from school.   
    I felt... tired, I guess. I just don't mean from a lack of sleep, or that I felt overworked, because I didn't. This was different. After everything that's happened to me this year; breaking up with Trowa, falling in love with Heero, being raped by my father... add in my stress with school, Relena, Zechs, my mother's recent behavior, and my jobs, and there have been moments when I've felt that like all I can possibly do is lay down on the floor and scream. It hasn't been all bad, of course. Things have happened lately that have felt more than I could ever deserve, but more and more lately, it's been like there's just too much shit in my head. For once, I was looking forward to not having to do anything. But then again, for the first time since Quatre had died, I didn't feel lonely, either.  
    I went home to a blissfully empty home that night. It was still a couple minutes before my father would get off of his shift, but it might be awhile still before he actually came home. If tradition persisted, that close to the holidays, Pat or some of his coworkers might have roped him into a night out drinking, despite the fact that he was working the next day. Even after getting fired for pulling shit like that, my father hadn't seemed to learn his lesson. My mother wasn't home either, but that could mean anything between the bar she was working at having longer hours for the holiday to she was out on her own kind of bender.   
    The house was dark and quiet, almost heavenly so. Even the sound of my neighbors' feuding dogs couldn't take that away from me. I felt a small bit of frustration as I turned the light on in the kitchen to find that the place was trashed, and that frustration only grew as the time passed and my father didn't come home. I was happy that he wasn't there, but angry that he was getting wasted. I didn't understand it. I should be used to it by now, but it just makes me feel angrier and angrier lately, maybe because I was talking to Heero about it.   
    I was tired of it. Not just my parents' alcoholism, but how it made me feel, the shame and the anger. Some part of me wondered if, if it weren't for the constant drinking, my parents might be more like Heero's, but I didn't think that that was true. I had liked to believe that when I was younger, that the drinking made my parents into the monsters that they were, but now that I'm older, I understand that it's the way that my parents are that make them drink, not the other way around.   
    I didn't feel especially tired for once, so I busied myself with mindless tasks. I played with Pepper, tidied my room, and checked how much money I had in my stash. It wasn't out of any kind of paranoia, it was just that... Heero and his parents had done so much for me lately. Too much. Things that I could never, ever pay them back for. But the more that Heero and I hung out, especially in public, watching all the shoppers coming and going, the more that I felt the burning need to gift them with _something_. But what the hell did you give people that not only have given you so much, but had plenty of money to throw around? I was so pathetic that I couldn't even buy presents for people that had been nice to me.  
    I sighed, the amount of money that I had depressing me, and tucked it back into it's hidey hole. I sorted through my pile of scraps and dared a glance at my laundry basket. It was predictably full and I really didn't feel like putting off doing it until the weekend. I grabbed the basket and headed downstairs into the laundry room, a claustrophobic room that smells like dust and bleach, only to find a pile of my father's work clothes sitting on top of the washing machine in a total disarray.   
    I knew for a fact that he hadn't just dumped them there with the intention that he was going to get to them this weekend. I don't think that the man has ever done laundry for a single day of his life. He had left them there for me to do. That isn't anything new, but for some reason, that night it angered me. You know, my whole life, I've thought about myself as a burden to my parents and nothing else. But remembering what Heero had said the other day, about what my parents are going to do when I become a legal adult and won't be around to help them pay the bills anymore, I've started to actually realize all the responsibilities that I have at home.  
    I do the laundry. I clean the house. I mow the lawn. I cook all of the meals that don't come out of a can or a box out of the freezer or a take out container. Yes, my father does chores and he works hard. Yes, my mother works long hours and will occasionally do her or my father's laundry if she needs to. But when it comes to things like making sure there's food or precooked meals for them when I'm working, or the dishes are done, or the trash gets taken out on time, it seems like that always falls on me. What are they going to do when I'm not there to do those things? What is my father going to do when there isn't someone home to wash his clothes because mom has a double shift, and what is my mother going to do the next time the washer leaks and dad isn't there or he's too drunk to give a shit?   
    A part of me worried about leaving them, but another part of me hated them for making me the responsible one. It had always been that way, but after over a decade of looking after them like I'm the adult, I don't want to do that anymore. I'm tired. I want to be the teenager for once. I want to be able to go hang out with my friend and not have to worry if my dad is going to have clean clothes for work that week or if my mother is going to be able to have a hot meal.   
    Quatre had told me once that I'm too mature and I had responded that I don't know how to be a kid, that being an adult comes naturally to me, but that doesn't mean that I want to be that way. I had never thought about it much, but when I go over to Heero's house and I see that his parents already have dinner on the stove and Heero can just start his homework or watch television and not have to concern himself with things that he _has_ to do... I get jealous sometimes. It's hard for me to admit... too hard, really, which is the entire problem... but sometimes... sometimes I want someone to take care of _me_ for once.   
    Maybe that's selfish. Maybe after everything that I've put my parents through, I don't deserve that. Maybe I can't even ask for that because I'm one of the few people my age that actually _can_ take care of myself... but that doesn't stop me from wanting it. It didn't stop me from loathing my father a little that night, or from loathing myself a lot as I put my own laundry to the side and started a load of my father's clothing, partially because he would need some clean clothes soon and partially because if I didn't, he would punish me for it. Feeling down, not quite depressed but getting close to it, I worked on cleaning the kitchen and the living room. By the time I finished everything, my father's shirts and pants were done drying in front of the space heater and they were ready to be ironed.   
    I set up the ironing board in the kitchen since it had the most open space and I wouldn't be in my father's way if he came home and wanted to watch television. I was only on his third pair of pants when I heard his car pull into the driveway. I sincerely hoped that he would just fall asleep in front of the TV and leave me alone. I really hate ironing things, I find it tedious, but when the door opened behind me and I heard him walk in, that heavy clunk of his boots that never fails to send chills up my spine these days, I kept my head down and focused on the sight of the iron soothing out wrinkles on one of his work shirts.   
    I put the shirt on a hanger, hanging it from one of the key rings on the wall, and moved on to another pair of slacks, making myself appear as busy as possible. I could smell him when he walked into the kitchen, that heavy stench of booze and smoke that could have only come from a night out with Pat. He walked up behind me and I froze, my back stiffening from how close he was to me. I could almost feel his breath on my skin and the phantom touch of his hands on me. Even though he hadn't touched me at all, I felt sick to my stomach.   
    He lingered there behind me for several minutes, just watching me, and I had to resume what I was doing with shaking hands, wishing that he would just go away and stop acting like that. But when he did finally move, I didn't feel any relief at all. I heard him walk to the refrigerator, the clink of a glass bottle, and the scrape of the legs of a chair as he pulled it away from the table and sat down on it. When he didn't say anything for some time, I stupidly dared a glance behind me, wishing that I had put the ironing board someplace where it would have let me keep an eye on him. He was slouched in the chair, sipping from a bottle of beer, and looking at me with eyes that were already deeply glassy and out of it. Yet there was this fierceness and intensity in his stare that I immediately didn't like and had to focus on my ironing or I would go nuts with fear.  
    "Christ, _look_ at you," he suddenly said with a deep contempt and disgust that had me flinching at the mere sound of, "Even your mother doesn't iron as well as you do. Can't play sports, but you're a better housewife than your own damned mother. Could you be a bigger pussy?"  
    I almost blurted out that the only reason why I was ironing anything was that he was incapable of doing it himself, but I physically bit my tongue, not wanting to piss him off in the caustic mood that he was obviously in. But that did nothing to soothe the hurt that his words caused. I heard him stand back up from the chair and walk towards me, the sound of it scraping my guts hollow of even my anger.  
    "This is all you're good for, isn't it?" he sneered from directly behind me, "Ironing, cleaning, cooking, taking care of a man. Fuck, you should have been born a girl. Maybe if you had, you wouldn't be such a dickless loser."  
    Tears pricked my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. Not in front of him. I wouldn't let him know how much he was hurting me, how much his opinion of me actually mattered. Still, I almost cried out in pure terror when he grabbed the back of my jeans and pulled me away from the ironing board, petrified that he was going to rape me right then and there.   
    "Even from the back, you look like a cunt," for a moment, I thought that I was hearing Pat's words in my father's voice, "If I didn't know any better, I would have no clue at all that you were born a boy," I breathed in sharply when he grabbed my right buttock, not in a grope, not in the way that Pat had, but harshly, accusingly, like he would grab my arm when he was pissed off, "Even this has no right belonging on a man!" he snarled, grabbing me so hard there that I would get bruises, "When you were born, they should have just cut your junk right off of you, it would have suited you better!"  
    As odd as it sounds now, it wasn't what he was saying that made the rage flow back into me like water out of a broken dam, it was his tone. When he said those awful things, it wasn't in the tone that he usually used with me, but the one he took when my mom was pissing him off, that condescending tone each and ever time he called her a bitch. Was that what he was seeing just then, not me, but her? Was that really how he thought of me, that I was so... so feminine to him, so emasculate, that I was no different from Mom?   
    "I'm not your wife!" I yelled at him, whirling and shoving at him so hard that he stumbled back into the table.   
    For all of the times that Zechs had called me a faggot or a bitch or made some sort of insinuation that I was really a girl... for all the times that Pat had said those same exact things... even with that time that Trowa had said that my hair made me look like a girl... no one ever made me feel more like that was true than my father. But it wasn't true, goddammit! Being good at cooking and having long hair didn't make me feminine, did it? Being fucked by my father didn't make me a girl, right? That old doubt came back as strongly as my anger at my father.    
    It was that doubt that caused me to hesitate as I watched my father bump into the table and fury come into his eyes when I should have been shocked at my actions and ready to run. I had never done something like that before to him. I had never actively tried to fight back against anything that he had done to me, even a little bit. I'm still not quite sure why I did it, why it was that moment that broke me. My father gained his footing and was coming for me before I could try to get out of that situation. There was nowhere to go to get away from him. The ironing board was in my way behind me. When he swung at me, I froze, taking the blow to the right side of my face, the violence behind it sending me to my knees.  
    "You fucking _miserable_ piece of _shit_!" he roared senselessly and tried to kick at me.  
    I dove out of the way and stumbled to my feet, his boot passing by me by mere centimeters. As I tried to get back up, he grabbed the iron's cord and ripped it out of the wall, turning it into a whip as he managed to pull it free. The cord struck me right where he had punched me, the metal prong cutting open my cheek. Before I could even register the fact that he had hit me with it, he had wrapped the cord around his hand and swung the iron at me. There was no way in hell that I was fast enough to get away from it and the heavy, metal thing struck me on my left side.  
    I yelped in pain and fell to the ground again as I felt the iron strike my ribs and felt something inside of me shift with a crunching sound that might have just been in my head. Broken bones are weird. When they happen, the feeling of it is unmistakable, a sensation that can't possibly be anything else. I knew that my father had broken at least one of my ribs with that initial blow the second that it had happened.   
    "Who the hell do you think you are, you pansy fag?!" my father was still screaming as he descended on me, the handle of the iron gripped tightly in his hand.  
    I curled into a tight ball as he hit me with the iron over and over and over, covering my head so he couldn't bash me with it. One blow from that thing and a concussion would be the least of my worries. I cried out each time he hit me, the strikes heavy and brutal. I could feel the heat of the iron on my skin, not lingering long enough to burn me, but the threat was there, like Dorothy's smoldering cigarettes. He hit me again and again on my right side and I could feel a wetness there, under my shirt as the tip of the iron ripped my skin open. He nailed me once in the shoulder, but somehow, miraculously, didn't break my arm.   
    I flinched so hard when he threw the iron down on the floor next to me that agony ripped through my side, warning me not to move around too much. I had no clue what my ribs were doing at that point, if I was getting dangerously close to piercing something or not. I felt tears tracking down my face from the pain of the break, but didn't mind them. My tears were nothing compared to the fear I felt as blood made my shirt stick to my wounds. I could feel it soaking into my pants, too. I stayed as still as a stone as my father stepped over me like I was nothing more than a pile of trash and walked over to the table and then back to me. I felt something cold and liquid being poured over my head. At the strong smell of alcohol, I dared to peak up at him over the arm that I had over my face and looked up at his face, twisted in pure hatred.  
    "What? You're going to cry now?" he said aghast, like my tears were offensive to him, "You're going to fucking _cry_ like a damned, little baby?!"  
    I quickly tucked my head into my arms again as he threw his bottle of beer at me. It hit the floor, a mere foot away from my head and shattered icy, glass shards on me, almost like a winter rain. If I hadn't covered myself, I had no doubt at all that it would have taken out one or both of my eyes.   
    "I'm done with you," he snapped, "I'm so ashamed of you, I can't even mention your fucking name around my friends. If I had known that _this_ was what I was getting to get when I knocked up your whore of a mother, I would have left the two of you to fend for yourselves! You should count yourself lucky that I don't do just that! Instead, all I get from you is _shit_! Why don't you do me the favor of just crawling away to die like the worthless little maggot that you are?!"  
    When he finally stopped screaming at me to storm off into the living room, my tears weren't from the physical pain of my injuries anymore. I lifted my head back up and stared at the open door of the living room like a wounded deer, waiting for the predator to come back to finish it off. I didn't so much as blink until I heard the television go on. I slowly and carefully tried to sit up, gasping in pain when I had that horrible shifting feeling in my side again. To say that I was in pain is putting it rather mildly. I felt like I was a slab of beef that had just been tenderized with a medal mallet. I couldn't stop shaking and I wasn't sure if that was from shock or my injuries.   
    'Hospital,' I remember thinking as I dragged myself up onto my feet with help from the kitchen table.  
    My injuries weren't terrible. It wasn't like I was going to bleed to death, but I had at least one broken rib and my shirt felt soaked through with blood. If I was lucky, I was looking at no athletic activity for a couple of weeks. If I wasn't: surgery and stitches, if my rib was in danger of piercing anything important, like my lung. It wasn't so bad, I told myself even as the entire right side of my upper body throbbed and screamed in pain when I slowly walked towards the door. I could walk pretty well, I just couldn't do it _quickly_.  
    I managed to get the door without incident, somehow, but as I shoved my feet into my sneakers, I felt more blood drip down into my pants and gasped at the shot of agony that went through me. I could feel some on my face, too, but kept from wiping at it. I didn't want to know how deep that cut was, either. It's times like that that I'm really glad that I have my insurance information memorized, because I had a sneaking suspicion that I wasn't going to be too successful making it up the stairs to get my wallet. I thought about putting my jacket on for about a second, but that hit to my shoulder had left my arm useless for the time being and it was going to hurt too much trying. I would rather be cold than risk blacking out.   
    That was my ultimate goal at that point. Not ruminating at what my father had done and said to me. Not worrying about the damage to my body or how I was going to go to school in the morning. Make it to the hospital without fainting. I could do that, right? It's fucking routine at this point. The night outside was predictably biting cold, but that was good. It would help me to stay awake. The first few steps outside my house were the worst. I'm well accustomed to broken ribs and how hard it is to breathe when you have them. Every breath was torture and pain, and walking around so soon after getting injured was making things worse, but it was all I could do to just keep walking forward.   
    I'm sure that I'm making it sound a lot easier than it actually was. I kept my left arm wrapped against my side and after two blocks, I could feel the bloody patch on my shirt start to harden with the cold. It was getting harder to breathe, my breath shallow and my lungs hurting. The cold made everything harder, but while it hurt, I could draw a deep breath if I had to, which meant that I hadn't punctured anything yet. It was hard to, though, and dangerous. I made it another couple of blocks before my vision started to grey and I found myself struggling for my next breath. I stumbled my way to a nearby bench, almost falling to my knees before I managed a desperate grab of it and slid down onto it.   
    "I can't do this," I gasped out to myself.  
     I felt pathetic just admitting that to myself. How many times had I been hurt so much worse than that, and had succeeded in dragging myself to the hospital? But my body wouldn't listen to my logic as it shook there on the bench. Maybe it was the blood loss, but I suddenly realized that unless I found a bus, I wasn't going to make it to the hospital without blacking out or hurting myself worse. And I seriously doubted that I was going to get a ride when I had no money on me.   
    The thought of trying to walk the rest of the distance in my state was terrible, not as faint and dizzy as I felt, with my side throbbing with heat and pain. I wasn't going to make it, I knew, but maybe I wouldn't have to? I dug around in my pocket and found the one thing that I had available to me: my cell phone. Through some miracle, I had put it in my left pocket and it had escaped any damage. I flipped it open and stared at Heero's number, my finger hovering over the call button.   
    Could I? Dare I? If Heero saw me like this... but he had said to call him if I needed him, if there was an emergency. What was more emergent than me bleeding on a public bench with a broken rib and no money? He would freak, but... I needed him. I can admit that now. In that moment, I needed him so badly that I could have cried. Even if it was just to hear his voice, to hear someone that cared for me and didn't loathe me, that was enough. I put the call through and waited, hunched over and trying not to be, shallowly sucking air in more than I was actually breathing. I could feel fresh blood seeping into my shirt from where my hand was pressed against it.   
    "...'lo?" Heero's voice came through the phone, adorably sleepy and confused.  
    I all too easily could imagine him laying in his bed, his brown hair mussed and his blue eyes only half open. I felt my heart ache, stronger and more painful than my injuries. For a moment, I couldn't breathe and I wasn't so sure if that was because of my broken rib.   
    "Hello?" my friend repeated, more clearly this time, but I still couldn't speak.   
    There was a pause over the line and I wondered if he was listening to my awkward breathing, thinking it was some asshole prankster. Why couldn't I talk? Why did everything hurt so much all of a sudden?  
    "Duo? Duo, are you alright?" his voice was rising in a panic.  
    It took me a moment to realize that during that pause, he had been looking at his caller ID.  
    "H-Heero..." I choked out in a dry gasp, pain searing through my side and lungs, "I... I..."  
    Tears streamed down my face. I felt incredibly embarrassed, knowing that he could hear me, but I couldn't stop crying all of a sudden.  
    "...help..." I breathed too deeply as I tried to get words to form through the red haze in my head and a searing pain shot through my chest, no air at all coming into my lungs for a second, "...I'm hurt... I need... hospital..."  
    I had to stop talking as breathing suddenly became extremely difficult. I should have just texted him, I realized. Talking coherently was impossible with how hard it was to breathe, but I didn't think that that would have woken him up. I gasped a few short, shallow breaths, trying to calm myself enough to get out what I needed to say, but Heero had gotten the message just fine.  
    "Where are you?" he asked, his voice clear and strong, as awake as if I hadn't just roused him.  
    I didn't even need to glance around to catch the street name, I knew exactly where I was.  
    "Ash Street," I rasped, "Next to Billards... on a bench..."  
    That was all that he needed.  
    "I'm coming to get you. Stay exactly where you are! Do _not_ move, alright?!" he demanded and I could hear him moving around from over the phone.  
    "Your parents... don't..." I tried to adjust my breathing, to get used to taking shallow breaths like I usually did when my ribs were broken, but between the cold air and my crying, it was too hard.  
    "Just me," he said in a panic and I wondered if he was scared that I might leave where I was if I thought that he was getting his parents. In the shape that I was in, while I didn't want Mr. and Mrs. Yuy to know about this, I didn't think that I was going to get far, "Just me, ok, Duo? So stay where you are!"  
    There was a long silence then and I feared that he had hung up on me. I don't know why, but the thought that he had left me alone terrified me all of a sudden.  
    "Heero?!" I cried out, desperate to not be shut out, to not be left sitting in the dark and silence with only my pain and my thoughts which, if I'm being honest, were not all that sane and collected at that point.  
    "Hey, I'm here," his voice came back, this soothing melody that was keeping my panic at bay, "I'm right here."  
    "Don't... don't leave..." I begged.  
    I felt ashamed of myself, even then, at that fear that was in my voice. I was being childish and illogical. It wasn't like I had a gaping wound in my chest and it wasn't like I was dying or I had to stay awake, but I was suddenly very afraid of being alone. I didn't want to think about the things that I so often thought about right after my father had attacked me. I didn't want to think about the terrible things that he had said. I didn't want to think about the fact that it was my dad that had done this to me. And I didn't want to think about my fears that this time, I wasn't going to get better, that the pain and my shortness of breath was permanent. I didn't want to think about how dark it was where I was sitting, how cold, how I couldn't stop shaking and I could feel this sharpness in my side that was probably just in my head.  
    "I'm not going anywhere," he promised and I could hear him closing a car door and the start of an engine, "Just ten minutes and I'll be there. So, my parents were watching the news tonight and there was a story on this guy that thought that he wasn't supposed to water his Christmas tree, and kept the lights that he put on it on for a week straight. It caught on fire and almost burned down his entire house while he was at work. They interviewed him and he said that the tree must have been 'defective.' Can you imagine anyone being that stupid?"   
    Heero prattled on like that his entire drive to my end of town. His words, banal and trivial, washed over me like a warm bath. If I hadn't been in such pain, I might have let them lull me to sleep. He talked about nothing; things that he had seen on television, what his grandparents were going to have at their Christmas dinner, stupid things that his dog had done that day, just an endless flow of words. He didn't ask me anything or try to engage me in a conversation, obviously having realized that I was having trouble breathing, but he didn't let the silence creep back in.   
    It didn't feel like any time had passed at all when a car pulled to the curb right in front of where I was sitting, but both of my hands had gone numb, especially the one holding my phone. If I was still bleeding, I had lost the sensation to feel it at least. Heero got out of the car and practically ran to me.  
    "Duo, gods," he looked frantic as he got a good look at me in the headlights of the car, "Fuck, you're bleeding!" his eyes darted from my face to my side where there was a very noticeable patch of blood, and to my hand that was still clamped over where I thought the cut was, blood staining my fingers, and he immediately went white as a shit, "Fuck... fuck..." it seemed to be the only word that he was capable of right then.  
    A thousand different things to say popped into my head. I almost asked him if his parents knew that he was driving, but that sounded stupid when I remembered that we were the same age and, unlike me, Heero probably had his driving permit. I almost told him that everything was ok, that it wasn't a big deal, and not to worry, but considering that I had called him out there so late to help me get to the hospital, that would have been bad.  
    "It's not as bad as it looks," I managed slowly, my breathing getting a little bit better after sitting for so long, "The... bleeding's slowed... I have a broken rib, but I don't... think I've punctured... anything."  
    He was incredibly patient, waiting for me to get the words out.  
    "What's wrong with your breathing?" he asked and I could actually see him trying to get his panic under control.  
    "Broken rib... hurts to breathe... can't take deep breaths because of the... pain and... might puncture my lung... need an X-Ray," I told him.  
    "You're shaking," he suddenly realized and took off his jacket to wrap loosely around me.  
    I gladly took it. It was warm from his body heat and was such a shock compared to the cold air that I had gotten used to.  
    "Hurt my arm... didn't want to risk trying to... to put my coat on..." I tried to explain, "Just... cold... maybe from the blood loss, too."  
    "Any other injuries I need to worry about?" he asked me and I knew that he was going half crazy with not knowing what the hell had happened to me.  
    "No," I told him, "Bruised a lot... some cuts... nothing too serious, I just couldn't... I couldn't make it by myself... too cold, too hard to breathe..."  
    "It's alright," that soothing tone of his was back as I started to panic out of guilt of bringing him out of his warm bed, just to help me in my incapability, "Don't worry about it, let's just get you in the car."  
    He moved so I could wrap my left arm around his shoulders and used him as leverage to get back onto my feet. Very, very lightly, Heero wrapped one arm around my waist, mindful of my right side, and helped me walk to his car. He had thoughtfully parked so the passenger side was facing the curb, so I didn't have very long to walk. I really didn't need his help after getting off the bench, but I liked having his arm around me, and didn't have the heart to tell him that him holding me like that was hurting me more than it was helping me. He was trying, even if he didn't know what to do. He opened the car door for me and I slid inside. I tried very hard not to show how much sitting back down hurt me, but I couldn't help my gasp of pain as my insides shifted in the new position.  
    "Are you ok?!" Heero's panic was immediately back and I could actually see the fear on his face, worrying that I had hurt myself internally.  
    "Fine," I gasped, "Just don't want to do that a lot."  
    He chewed on his lip, but eventually decided that even if I had hurt myself, there wasn't a single thing that he could do about it, and got into the driver's side. He hadn't even turned the car off when he had gotten out to get me and it was pleasantly warm inside. I could have drifted off right then and there, but as Heero put the car back into drive, he sped out onto the street, driving cautiously, but fast enough to jar me and make me worry about him getting pulled over. Speeding was only one thing, he was also driving too late for someone his age and I couldn't put my seat belt on.   
    "Slow down," I ordered, "I'm not dying, no reason for you to get into an accident."  
    He looked sheepish, but obeyed, slowing down to the speed limit.   
    "You ok?" he asked fearfully, glancing at me briefly before returning his eyes back to the road, "Is there anything that I can do for you? You look... pale."  
    I had the distinct feeling that he had been about to say 'like shit' and despite everything, despite what had just happened and my pain, I had to smirk.   
    "You're doing exactly what I need," I said wryly, "I'm fine... just... hurts... nothing you can do about that... I'll be ok, Heero... just... need to know where the rib is... if it's a clean break or if it's... pressing against something it shouldn't be... probably need stitches for this cut, too."  
    "You're sure it's broken?" he asked.   
    "Positive," I sighed, "Not the first time I've gotten a broken rib. Know what it feels like. No way it couldn't have broken... and this pain when I breathe..."  
    His eyes were intense as he looked out the windshield and I knew it was just killing him not to ask me what had happened, but by some kind of miracle, he didn't.   
    "We'll be there in just a few minutes," he said unnecessarily, more to himself than to me, "Everything will be fine."  
    He reached over to turn the heat up even further and I could have cried at how good it felt. I could already feel sensation returning to my fingers and carefully probed at the wet spot on my shirt and pants. The blood wasn't gushing out like it had been, but it hadn't stopped yet, either. I was starting to seriously think that I was going to need stitches. The cut wasn't big, but it had injured me worse than I had initially thought.   
    "Thank you," I said to Heero, "for coming out here so late... Sorry I woke you... you were the only... only one I could ask for help... only one I could rely on..."  
    Heero blushed, looking embarrassed and pleased at the same time.  
    "Any time," he told me, "I told you. Any time that you need me, I'll be there. That's what friends are for, right?"  
    'Yes,' I almost said, 'but I haven't had a friend for a very long time. I didn't dare hope that you would actually come running like this... not for me.'  
    I didn't know how to express that feeling that I had for him just then, the gratitude and the love I felt. That was exactly what had happened. I had called him, needing help, and he had come running, no questions asked. What could you possibly say to thank someone like that?  
    "I'm glad you called me," he confessed and then bumbled through his words as he realized how that sounded, "Uh, I mean... I don't mean that I'm glad you were hurt, I mean... I'm just glad that you asked me for help, that you felt that you could... I'll shut up now."  
    "I understand," I assured him with a soft smile, "You can do that to me, too, you know? I'm not good for much. I can't drive and I'm not much use for anything, but if you ever need help..."  
    "In a heart beat," he vowed, glancing at me again, his blue eyes warm.   
    "Don't tell your parents?" I urged him, "Please... I don't want them to know..."  
    But then we were there at the hospital and before I could get that promise out of him or he could ask what it was that I didn't want them to know, he was parking in the emergency lot and helping me out of the car.   
    "I can get a wheelchair," he started to say, but I shook my head.  
    "Walking isn't too bad," I told him, "Hurts more when I sit... things pressing against my ribs..."  
    He accepted that pretty easily, all things considered, and let me slowly and carefully walk into the emergency waiting room without much assistance, just placing a hand against my back to steady me. Then the rest of it was just routine for me. I gave the nurse at the front desk my name, insurance information, and a list of my injuries and we were told that a doctor would 'get to you immediately.' Heero looked far from happy about that as we found a couple of empty seats in the waiting room.  
    "They can't see you now?" he asked heatedly, glancing nervously down at the bloody patch on my clothes.  
    "My injuries aren't that severe," I pointed out.  
    He liked that answer even less and looked ready to argue the point with me, the nurse, and anyone else telling him otherwise, but simply slumped in his seat, looking irritated. I guess he realized that it was kind of pointless to argue, since that wasn't going to make me get care any faster and it was just pointless in general to argue with someone that was in pain and only able to throw together short sentences. Truth be told, despite Heero's worries, I had been injured a lot worse in the past and the waiting room wasn't all that busy for that close to the holidays. There's nothing like Christmas to make people depressed and stupid.   
    A nurse came to us just a minute after sitting down to give me some gauze to press against my side to try to stop the bleeding and a vow that it wouldn't be too long of a wait before she hurried off on some other task. 'Not long' ended up being a mere ten minutes, a ridiculous wait to Heero, whom I was sure had never been in the emergency ward of a hospital in his life, but like a blink in the eye for me. A different nurse came out and ushered us into a hospital room where she checked my pupils, took my blood pressure, temperature, and heart rate to make sure that nothing was seriously wrong with me.   
    "Dr. Yeung will be with you shortly," she smiled at me before leaving Heero and I alone.  
    "You doing alright?" my friend asked me.  
    I nodded absently, still pressing the gauze to my side. It was stained with blood almost all the way through at that point, but the bleeding was lethargic and light red.   
    "Do you want me to wait outside when the doctor comes?" Heero asked.  
    I stared at him and my words escaped me again. My childish fear of being alone warred with my common sense. This wasn't his problem. He had done enough for me already. Besides, while I didn't think that Heero was squeamish, sticking with me while the doctor did... whatever he would need to do wasn't anyone's idea of a fun time. Why was I so hesitant for him to leave me? Why did it even matter? He was just going to be outside the door.  
    "I'll stay," he smiled softly as he took the decision out of my hands.  
    Even though it made me feel pathetic, a wave of relief washed over me. I wanted to believe that I was just in shock, but if I was, it was different from all the other times I had been. This was more like an emotional shock. I just felt incapable of doing anything or saying anything. I wanted to close my eyes and make everything go away. It was like I had suddenly lost the strength to deal with things and I didn't know why. Heero didn't say much after that. He just sat in one of the chairs and looked troubled. I couldn't even begin to wonder what he was thinking over so hard. I was relieved when the door opened after not a long wait and a middle aged, Asian looking man walked through.  
    "Duo Maxwell?" he said a bit unnecessarily.  
    "That's me," I said, happy that my voice didn't sound quite as bad as it had when I had called Heero.  
    "And you are?" the doctor addressed Heero.  
    "My friend. He can stay," I said cautiously, hoping that the man wouldn't press the issue.  
    "Alright, then. I'm Dr. Yeung," he closed the door behind himself, looking down at a handheld computer instead of at me, "Now then, it says here that you have several contusions on your right arm and side, a few lacerations on this same arm and side, and what you believe is a broken rib, as well as trouble breathing. Is all this correct?"  
    "Yes," I felt immediately at ease with his no-nonsense demeanor. That was usually a good sign that I could get in and out of that place with minimal fuss.   
    The doctor finally looked up from his computer at me and frowned. He sat down in the stool that was right next to the counter full of medical supplies and slid over to sit in front of me, examining the bloody areas of my shirt, namely the one at my side and one of the bigger ones that was on my right arm.   
    "And how did this happen, exactly?" he asked as he rolled up my right sleeve, the sight of the black and red bruises there making him frown even more.  
    For a terrifying minute, not a thing came to me. Not a single thought, just this white noise in my head. I couldn't think of a lie, something plausible to explain away my injuries. Heero was looking at me with the same, exact expression that the doctor was, like he was going to demand that he wanted to know what had happened, too, and I just couldn't think of anything but the truth.  
    "Accident," I finally managed, "I was ironing. Cord wrapped... around my leg... I tripped, hit something. Might have been the kitchen table. Fell on the iron on my side."  
    Sometimes, the best lies are the ones that are the closest to the truth. The doctor looked dubious at my story, but just probed at the cut on my cheek.  
    "There seems to be a lot of these accidents in your medical history," he said dryly as he examined me, but didn't say more than that on the subject.  
    Heero looked... upset and I knew exactly what he was thinking. He didn't buy my lie for a single second, and why should he? He knew about my father and his... temperment. Even if I really had just fell, he would no doubt assume that my father was responsible. I blushed at his searing expression, like an accusation. I felt so ashamed that he knew that I was lying out of my ass.  
    "I'm going to schedule you for an x-ray immediately to make sure that you don't have any internal damage," Dr. Yeung told me, fishing out a pair of scissors from a drawer, "but I don't believe that you've punctured anything. First, I want to take a look at your lacerations. I don't want you to move your arms too much until I know what the state of your ribs are, so I'm going to have to cut your shirt off of you."  
    I opened my mouth to protest that, incredibly embarrassed that I was going to be half naked in front of Heero, but this intense sense of deja vu swept over me. This felt exactly like the time that Quatre had helped me get to the hospital after my father had beat me with that bottle. I sincerely doubted I was going to be more successful getting my way about this than I had back then. I closed my mouth and let the doctor cut my shirt off, mourning my shirt. At least I didn't have to lose my pants as well.   
    Heero hissed in sympathy when he saw the damage. My right arm was peppered with bruises and small cuts. There was a pretty bad cut across my arm, but the worst was obviously the gash at my side. I clenched my teeth as the doctor touched the skin around the wound, making it bleed again.   
    "This is going to need stitches," he noted, "but your other wounds are superficial. You can wait to get in contact with your parents if you want them here for this, but there's a high risk of infection with a wound like this, it really should be taken care of immediately."  
    "That's fine," I told him, "I've gotten stitches before and I can't get in contact with them right now."  
    That technically wasn't a lie. My mother was still at work and my father was probably deep in a drunken sleep at that time.   
    "Alright," Dr. Yeung collected everything he would need to tend to my wounds, setting it up next to the table that I was sitting on.  
    The doctor was methodical and all business as he cleaned the blood off of me, bandaging my cheek and the cuts on my arm. I tensed when I saw him prepare a syringe, even though I had known that it was coming.   
    "I'm just going to give you a local anesthetic," he warned me, "It will numb the area, so you won't feel any pain while I'm stitching the wound closed."      
    "Ok," I mumbled, squeezing my hands into fists to prepare for it.  
    I almost jumped when Heero suddenly appeared at my left side and wrapped his hand around mine.   
    "You don't have to," I said very shyly, "I'm ok."  
    "I want to," he smiled softly at me, "Just squeeze my hand if you need to."  
    I felt like my face was going to combust, but opened my hand to entwine my fingers with his. It felt so bizarrely intimate, but only because of my... feelings for him. I realized that if Quatre had been the one to offer his hand to me, I never would have felt awkward about it. But I liked Heero and the feeling of his hand in mine was both wonderful and frightening. Still, it _did_ comfort me, and when the doctor started to apply the stitches, even though all I could feel was a gentle pressure, I still squeezed his hand tightly, focusing on the warmth of his skin instead of the weird sensation.  
    "You should pick up some antibiotic cream for your lacerations," Yeung told me, typing something into his computer as he finished sealing up my side, "and you are to keep an eye out for any signs of infection, especially in that wound, and come straight back here if it gets infected or starts bleeding again. Also, you can shower, but keep your stitches from getting wet. How soon you can have them removed is entirely up to you. I highly suggest that you abstain from any physical activity that will stress your side. Ideally, they should be ready to come out in just five days. I'll schedule you to come in one week from today, just to be sure. Now," he put the computer back down and pressed his stethoscope to my chest, "let's hear your lungs. Take as deep of a breath as you can."  
    Heero kept a firm grip on my hand as I tried to do what the doctor wanted. It hurt like hell and I had to struggle not to cough as Yeung listened to my lungs and had me take a couple more deep breaths. It was like trying to blow up a balloon after running a marathon and swallowing shards of glass.  
    "I don't hear any fluid," Yeung noted with a pleased air, "and you seem to be able to breathe quite deeply, just not without effort and pain. I don't believe that your rib, if it truly is broken, has shifted out of place any, but I still want to err on the side of caution. There is an opening in the x-ray lab in ten minutes," he grabbed his computer again, probably to add me to the schedule, "If there are no complications, you'll be alright to go home tonight. However, if the rib is out of place or there are any shards of bone that are in danger of puncturing your lungs, we'll have to get you into surgery immediately. The x-ray lab is-"  
    "I know where it is," I butted in.  
    The doctor shot me an irritated look and I wondered if it was because I had interrupted him or he was annoyed that I had needed so many x-rays in the past that I had memorized the place.  
    "I will find you some clean clothes, then," he said and briskly walked out of the room, no doubt glad to be rid of someone like me.  
    Then I was alone with Heero and I had to self-consciously wrap my arms around myself, wishing that I could just put on one of the hospital gowns. I know that I was being stupid. We were both guys and it wasn't like I was much to look at. But that was entirely the point. I was thin and pale and there were a few scars on my body that I never wanted Heero to see, especially the large one on my back. Thankfully, he hadn't looked at my back yet, but I still felt very nervous. Before I could dwell on those feelings for very long, a nurse strode in with some new clothes, a cheap buttoned down top that they obviously gave out to people with injuries that prevented them from raising their arms, and a pair of cotton pants.   
    Heero gave me some privacy as I changed, folding my jeans up to take with me. I was never going to get all of the blood out of them, but I could still wear them. I was very glad that the room didn't have a mirror. I didn't want to look at myself just then, bruised to hell, my face cut, and huge bandages covering the lacerations on my side and arm. I met Heero outside the room and led him to the elevator. On our way up to the fifth floor where the radiology and x-ray labs were, he was perfectly silent, staring at the floor and looking like he was brooding over something.  
    The silence between us made me anxious. For the first time since I had dragged him into this, I worried for our friendship. I had given him a very serious look into what my life was really like. Hospital visits and stress. Was he rethinking being my friend? Was he starting to realize what a loser I was? But I couldn't think about it too hard, or I started to feel like I was going to panic. I needed him too much. I had done exactly what I had warned myself not to do and had gotten too deep, too tangled in him. And what I had feared would happen had happened. I was too attached. I was relying on another person again, the worst thing that I could possibly do.  
    At least getting the x-ray done didn't take too long. I got to go right in when I got there. They showed Heero an examination room that he could wait in while they were doing the test and dragged me off, making me take off my shirt for it before taking me back to the examination room to await my fate. My friend stood up quickly from his chair when the lab tech led me in, shutting the door behind me.  
    "How was it?" he asked me and I felt this intense relief at the break of silence.   
    "Fine," I shrugged, "It's not like x-rays hurt. They said they'll have the results in about twenty minutes."  
    I sat down in one of the chairs across from him and winced. The pain really wasn't getting any better, but at least I was getting more used to it.   
    "Maybe you should stay standing up," he fretted, "In case there's something wrong."  
    "I doubt there is," I told him, "I can usually tell."  
    "You've gotten broken ribs a lot before, haven't you," he accused, not really a question.  
    "Yeah," I admitted, not wanting to lie to him, "It's not a big deal. They're easier to deal with than a broken arm, unless they pierce something."          
    He fell quiet for a moment and got that brooding look on his face again. I hated that look. I didn't want him to be thinking about this with that pinched expression.  
    "You haven't asked me what happened yet," I murmured, not really wanting to discuss this with him, but his continued silence scared me.  
    "If I did, would you tell me the truth?" he snapped angrily at me, "Or would you just tell me that you fell?"  
    I wrapped my arms around myself defensively without even realizing that I was doing it. If he had asked, would I have been honest with him? I wasn't sure. Lying about my injuries was second nature, and I didn't want him to know about what happened. It just seemed easier to make up some story that he could swallow that was anything but the truth. But... but this was Heero, not some doctor. My friend. The person that I loved. I didn't think that I could lie to him. No... it's more than that. I think that he's the one person in the world that I _can_ tell the truth to.  
    "No," I hung my head and said very quietly, "I... I wouldn't lie to you," I rubbed tiredly at my eyes, suddenly aching to just close my eyes and black out, "I'm just... I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I got you into this. You shouldn't have to... have to see me like this. This wasn't your problem and I just dragged you into it like some selfish asshole..."  
    When I looked up, Heero looked aghast and alarmed and I wondered what it was that I had said that had disturbed him so much. He hurriedly stood up, brought his chair closer to mine right in front of me, and sat back down in it, our knees no more than a foot apart.   
    "I am _not_ mad at you," he said fiercely, "Ok, Duo? I'm not mad and you didn't just... _drag_ me into this. You're my friend and you were hurt and needed help. I'm glad that you called me, like I said before. I'm not angry, I'm _scared_. Just look at you! Someone beat you to hell and you're acting like nothing at all happened! I'm frustrated because you act like this _is_ an every day occurrence that you're in the hospital with a broken rib and having to get stitches, and it terrifies me to know that you're acting like this because this is an every day occurrence! But what's even worse is that you won't talk about it. I haven't asked what happened because you haven't said what happened! Of course I want to know, but I think that you won't say because you know that you don't need to say anything!"   
    His eyes went as hard as stone as he looked at me, but not out of cruelty, just resolve.  
    "Your father did this to you, didn't he?" his tone was an accusation, but just like before, it wasn't really a question.  
    I had to look away from him as his statement burned into me. My arms tightened around me and I didn't even care that I was hurting myself.  
    "Yes," I muttered, not really seeing the point in lying.  
    "I'm calling the police," he announced brusquely and stood up.  
    I panicked. There is really no other word for what happened next. In a split second, my mind supplied me with what would happen if he did that. I could actually see it in my head, him calling the cops and telling them that my father had beaten me. It would be the same old story that I had debated with myself for years. There could only be two outcomes, either they would arrest my father and put him away for who knew how long, or they would side with him. Maybe he wasn't a cop anymore, but he had been, and he still had plenty of close friends on the force.   
    He would be let go, but everyone would talk. He would take that out on me, but that wasn't even the worse part. Everyone would whisper and wonder if he really had done it. It would ruin him. Even if no one gave a shit about what happened to a nothing like me, people love gossip, especially if it's about an ex-cop beating on his wife and kid. He might even lose his job. I couldn't do that to him. No matter how I felt about him lately, no matter the awful things he's done to me, I couldn't hurt my father like that. And anything that happened to him would just hurt my mother, too.  
    "No!" I cried out, bursting out of my chair and grabbing at Heero's shirt, trying to keep him from moving, "You can't!"   
    "Look at what he did to you!" Heero yelled at me, looking angry at either my grab or my demands, "He deserves prison for this! How can you possibly be alright with him... with him putting his fists on you like that?!"  
    "You can't call the cops!" I stubbornly refused to let go of his shirt as I became frantic and hysterical, "If you do... I'll... I'll lie! I'll say you made it up and it was just an accident... or someone else did it!"  
    He stopped moving and turned to look at me. I quickly let go of his shirt, expecting anger from him, but he just looked very sad and very frustrated.  
    "You would lie to keep someone who beats you out of jail?" he asked in irritation, "You'll just let him keep hurting you?"  
    "He's my dad!" I yelled, "How can you not understand that?!"  
     The look on Heero's face softened to only sadness, tearing at my heart. I would have rather that he be mad with me.  
    "Because my father doesn't hit me," he said softly.  
    I took a few shaky steps back and when I felt the chair at the back of my legs, I sat down in it heavily. He would have caused me less pain if he had just belted me in the face. I felt tears pour down my face and it was that feeling that had me pressing my face into my hands and sobbing. That was right, I thought to myself. Of course Heero wouldn't understand. His family was perfect. His father loved him and would never raise more than his voice to him. But mine... mine could beat me with an iron and not even say 'sorry' afterwards. Did he hate me that much? Didn't he love me at all?   
    "Oh god, Duo," I heard Heero say with great pain and the next thing I knew, he was holding me, wrapping his arms around me with great care, more care than I deserved, "I am so sorry, that was a horrible thing to say..."  
    My fingers clutched my hair tightly and I shook my head violently, not sure if I was denying his apology or my tears. It hurt so much to cry, but it hurt even more to be held by the boy that I loved. He had more care for me than my parents ever had, and it all seemed so effortless for him.   
    "You can't... can't tell anyone," I gasped, each sobbing breath feeling like I was breathing in razor blades, "Not anyone! Not even your parents! Please... please, Heero... you _can't_!"   
    He stopped rubbing my back and very gently placed his hands on my shoulders, drawing me out of his embrace to look me in the eye. His blue eyes were like steel, yet somehow kind, too. He looked haunted by what I was asking him and I remembered that strong moral code that his family seemed to have, the same code that had caused him to finally stop being friends with Zechs. What I was asking him to do, to just turn a blind eye to something that he so strongly believed was wrong, to make him an accomplice, not only to my lies, but to my father's abuse, was hurting him. My guilt could have torn me to shreds.  
    "I won't tell anyone about it," he promised me, but I could tell just from looking at him that it had cost him a great deal to get those words out, "if, and only if, you tell me what happened tonight, and I mean _everything_. No lies, no excuses. Just the truth."  
    A negotiation. I wiped at my eyes, getting rid of my tears as I thought about it. I could handle a trade like that, couldn't I? But if I told Heero the truth, he might still go to the police with what I had told him, and use those details against me. Could I trust him? Trust isn't exactly something that I'm capable of. I couldn't trust my dad or my mom. I couldn't trust any of the people that I went to school with. In the end, I hadn't even been able to trust the only friend that I had had. How could I possibly trust a boy that I had only known for a few months? One that had hurt me so badly and, unknown to him, still hurt me? After what my father had done to me, how could I trust _anyone_ ever again?   
    But when I looked at him that night, really looked at him, I realized something. It was the most frightening thing that I had felt since my father had raped me. It was a terrible thing that made me feel weak and helpless and I would have done anything to take it back. But right then, as my friend looked at me so earnestly, so full of fear and pain and desire to help me and, above all, kindness, I knew the truth. I'm just not so sure yet if that's a good thing or a bad thing, or if it's going to bite me in the ass later on. Maybe I couldn't trust anyone anymore but, little by little, whether I wanted to or not, I was starting to trust Heero.   
    So I told him. I told him every sordid, terrible, embarrassing detail of my night, from getting home and finding the kitchen a mess to my escape out the door while my father went to watch television. I told him every word that my father had said to me, his words burned into my head. I told him about how angry I got and how I had pushed him. I even told him how my father had poured his beer on me and thrown his bottle on the ground. I told him about how I had cried and how my dad had mocked me. Hell, I even told him about my father grabbing my ass. The only thing that I didn't tell him was the fear that I had felt, that he was going to rape me there in the kitchen.   
    By the end of it, I was crying again, silently this time, and Heero looked pale and sick. Through my shameful, little tale, I had watched him go from angry to full on rage to horror to looking like he was going to vomit. I guess just knowing that my father hits me didn't really hold a candle to hearing about it. When I finished, he was holding one of my hands and looking miserable. I felt so embarrassed by all of it, especially crying in front of him again. I was terrified that he would say that my father was right, that I was a pansy. I think that, if even a portion of him had agreed with anything that my father had said to me, he would have broken my heart in a way that I would never recover from it. Instead, he actually looked a bit green by it all.   
    "How..." he whispered hoarsely with that horrified look on his face when I was finally done talking, "... how can you defend someone like that? How can you not want to make him stop... or at the very least see that he's punished for hurting you like that?"  
    "He was drunk," I protested, even as a part of me accused me of bullshit, "Drunker than usual, really. He didn't mean any of it, he was just angry. He... he says shit like that sometimes, when he's out of it. He doesn't mean it."  
    Nonsense words. I couldn't even lie to myself that it was the truth. Because that was exactly what I was doing. I wasn't trying to convince my friend that my father wasn't that kind of person, I was trying to convince myself in desperation. My father didn't really think those things... and he certainly never would have beaten me like that had he been sober... Great, except I knew that it was just me, grasping at straws. How many times had he called me a girl when he had been sober? How many times had he hit me without a single drop of alcohol involved?  
    "I don't care if he had consumed a whole, fucking distillery!" Heero yelled at me, "There is _no_ excuse for saying those things! He beat you with a fucking _iron_ , Duo, not even his fists! And you're sitting here, telling me that he didn't mean to? What difference does it make if he meant to or not?! He still did it, no matter his intentions, and he's going to do it again! Are you really going to tell me that you aren't going to go to the police after this?"  
    I shook my head, only barely managing not to tell him that I've gotten worse from my father.  
    "I can't," I said in a weak, wavering voice that I hated, trying not to cry anymore, "Please, I just can't."  
    "How is that fair?" he continued to press, gripping my hand like he was afraid to let go of it, "You won't get him into trouble because you love him, but that's clearly not stopping him from hurting you! And what about me? Don't my feelings get any consideration? You're asking me not to say anything while my best friend gets the shit beaten out of him and is left bleeding and broken on a bench!"  
    My heart trembled at the fear in his voice and the warmth around my hand. His feelings... his feelings had all of the consideration in the world to me, but not with this. Why couldn't he understand that this was between my father and I, no one else should have ever gotten involved.   
    "How is it any different than my asking you to do nothing while Zechs wails on me?" I asked in a small voice, "Or you turning your back to me when Relena and the others were bullying me when you were friends with them? How is this any different at all?"  
    I hated myself for the agony in his eyes as he remembered what he used to be like, but it didn't deter him.  
    "Because I can stop this!" he said vehemently, "And he's your _father_. You shouldn't have to put up with this shit from anyone, but least of all him! Maybe I can't stop Zechs from picking on either of us, but your father is a grown man, and he's responsible for you. I'd throw Zechs and Relena in jail, too, if I could, but I can't. I don't know if I... if I have the strength to keep quiet when I know what you have to deal with at home. Maybe you do, but I care about you... too much sometimes, and letting your father hurt you... not just physically but all that shit he said... that's wrong and it makes feel sick inside!"  
    "All I'm asking," I said softly, "is for you to not tell anyone, just like with Zechs. Please, Heero. You're the only one I've ever told about this... you're the only one that I've ever trusted this much. I'm begging you, do this one thing for me and I'll never ask you for anything ever again. I know it's a lot, and I'm a piece of shit for even asking you to turn your back on what you believe is right or wrong, but this is my _family_ and this is the only way that I know how to cope with things! If my father goes to jail, I won't be able to live with myself, and if he doesn't, it doesn't matter who told on him, he's going to blame me. No matter what I do, nothing is going to get better. Don't you see that?"  
    I hated pulling the guilt card on him like that, but it wasn't like I had done it on purpose. It was just a simple fact. Anything that Heero chose to do now, it was going to come back to me, for better or worse. And I could actually see him weighing those choices with that understanding. He opened his mouth to say something, but quickly closed it and let go of my hand when the door to the room opened and one of the lab techs walked in with an envelope.   
    "Sorry this took so long," she apologized with a bright smile, oblivious to the tense air of the room, "Let's take a look at your results, shall we?"  
    As she busied herself putting my x-rays on the screen and turning the light on to illuminate them, I scrubbed at my eyes to make sure that no one would be able to tell that I had been crying.   
    "You have a broken rib on your right side, the fifth to be exact," she pointed to the rib on the x-ray and I could very clearly see the break that she was talking about, "Also, your fourth and sixth ribs are heavily cracked, but neither of them have a break, so that's fortunate. Given the amount of chest injuries in your medical history, it's rather a miracle that they didn't break. While you're young, this many injuries has no doubt weakened your ribs to the point where it won't take much force to break them anymore.   
    "Of course, we would need to run more tests to verify that, but I highly suggest that you take more care in the future. If you continue have breaks, even a single (1) one like this, it will lead to severe complications when you get older. You're very fortunate with this break. Even though it went all the way through the bone, your rib hasn't shifted at all and you aren't in any danger of having it shift if you keep from physical activities, especially lifting, or putting a lot of pressure on it.   
    "Because it's still in place, your healing time should be minimal," she informed me, "I'm sure this is old hat for you at this point, but you're looking at six weeks before it is fully healed. Take ibuprofen for the pain, ice the area, get lots of rest, and do breathing exercises. Coughing or taking hourly deep breaths will suffice to prevent pneumonia, but if you're having too hard of a time breathing deep with the pain, your doctor can prescribe you a stronger painkiller."  
    I nodded at the tech's instructions, having heard it at least a dozen times before, but I still took her advice about pneumonia to heart. I've gotten it three times in my life and I'm pretty keen about never getting it again.   
    It was only four am when we finally left the hospital to walk to Heero's car, but I was so exhausted and worn down that I felt like it had been days since my father had attacked me. All I wanted to do when I got home was crash, but I was trying very hard not to think about going back home. More than anything, I didn't want to go back there. I didn't want to face him. I was thankful for the distraction of my injuries, and even my fight with Heero, because I hadn't actually had to think about what my father had done at all.   
    Oddly, him beating on me with an iron wasn't what hurt. It had been what he had said to me. It really wasn't anything worse than what he had said before, but for some reason, it had wormed its way inside of me. It had been his tone, that hatred for me that tore me up. If I had to face him in the state that I was in just then, in pain, so tired that I felt like I was sleepwalking, I knew that something in me was going to break. I was scared, and it had nothing to do with fearing another beating. I was scared of his words, actually terrified of going home and having to hear him tear into me again.   
    How pathetic am I? How many times has my father unloaded on me, both verbally and physically, and how many times have I never had a problem with doing what needed to be done? I take care of myself, it's what I've been doing since I was just a kid. But that night, I couldn't do it. I had reached out to Heero and had leaned on him so hard. Where was my self reliance all of a sudden? Why was I so clingy and frightened of my own shadow? I should be scared of being around my friend, now that he knew just how violent my father was, now that he knew the truth, but I was more scared of him leaving me to fend for myself. Suddenly, for the first time in my life, I wasn't so confident that I could. Worst of all, I have no idea why I felt like that.   
    "Thanks again for everything," I said to Heero as he unlocked his car, "I'm sorry for being such a pain in the ass."  
    It was the best I could do to apologize, not just for dragging him out of bed in the early hours of the morning, but for everything else. Crying in front of him. Causing him so much stress. Forcing him to make a promise with me that he hadn't wanted to make.   
    "You aren't a pain in the ass," he assured me with a sigh, "And I told you, I'm glad that I could help you. I just think you're being an idiot, but obviously there's nothing that I can say to get you to change your mind."  
    He was interrupted by a cheery chime and took his phone out of his pocket. It made me feel stupidly happy to see that the cat charm that he had bought was still dangling from it. He looked at his message, a mildly annoyed expression on his face and texted something back to the person.  
    "Who was that from?" I asked, even though it was really none of my business.  
    "My dad," he said nonchalantly.  
    "You aren't in trouble, are you?" my stomach clenched in guilt, imagining his parents freaking out, finding him gone, "They weren't worried?"  
    "No," he got a message back, read it, and started typing again, "I told them where I was."  
    That guilt quickly turned to anxiety.  
    "When?"   
    "While you were getting your x-ray," he responded.   
    In other words, before our fight and before I had made him promise not to tell anyone.  
    "What... what did you tell them?" I asked nervously.  
    Heero was silent for a second and I immediately feared the worst.  
    "As much of the truth as I could," he admitted as he met my gaze, sounding sad before he looked back down at his messages, "I don't make a habit of lying to my parents."  
    My guilt felt like it was trying to disembowel me at that. What right did I have to feel anxious that he had told his parents? He had this great relationship with them where he could actually talk to them and be honest with them, and there I was, hoping that I had messed with that. I was such an asshole, I couldn't understand why he wanted to be my friend at all.   
    "But," he sighed again, "I knew that you were... uncomfortable with them knowing, so I just told them that you had a small accident. I didn't know what else to say. They know that I took you to the hospital and that we're both ok, that's all."  
    "Thank you," I said with relief, "and I'm really sorry. I made you lie to your parents..."  
    "You haven't made me do anything," Heero put his phone back into pocket and smiled at me softly, but his expression was pinched with something that I couldn't name, "I made you a promise, even if it's one that I don't necessarily agree with, you didn't twist my arm."  
    That didn't really make me feel any better, but I dropped it. The subject was becoming too uncomfortable, too painful for me and I was just too tired to keep my mouth from running off and telling him things that I just plain did not want him to know.   
    "I know it's really late- err, early," I said shyly, "and school is just in a few hours, but I'm still feeling a bit lightheaded. Could you do me a huge favor and drive me home?"  
    Not that it really made any kind of difference where I went. I knew right then that I wasn't going to get any sleep when I got home, even though I wouldn't have to wake up for school for another almost three hours. My chest was hurting like hell and just knowing that my father was there was going to keep me wide awake, but Heero didn't have to know that.  
    "No," he said with this firmness in his tone that wasn't angry or cruel, "I can't, because you're coming home with me."  
    I just kind of blinked at him for a second.  
    "W-what... what are you talking about? There's no reason-" I started to protest.  
    "There is plenty of reason," he snapped irritably, "Namely, your father tried to kill you."  
    "No, he just-" I tried to interject, but my friend wasn't having any of my denial, apparently.  
    "And I am not letting my best friend go back there, especially not if his father is still angry. What if he hits you and does more damage, or dislodges your broken rib? I'm not going to stay by my phone, terrified that I'm going to get another call from you or find out that you're back in the hospital after the fact, and I'm sure as hell not going to willfully send you back there, not today at any rate."  
    I swallowed and felt how dry my throat was. I had that feeling again, that warmth in chest that hurt even worse than my broken rib. That Heero was so vehement about protecting me bowled me over, but more than that, he had called me his best friend again. I know, it doesn't mean much when you're someone's only friend, but it did to me. It just drove home to me that I wasn't some passing interest for him, he actually did care about me.   
    "Look," he said in a softer tone, "I'm not going to say something callous like you owe me for making that promise to you, but please. You asked me for a favor, so let me ask one, too. Come home with me. Just rest there, let us take care of you for a little while, until I'm sure you aren't going to keel over or something, and you can go home tonight. Please?"  
    I sighed. I wouldn't tell him, but that please would have been enough to have made me agree to just about anything. And it helped that hadn't wanted to go home to begin with.   
    "Alright," I conceded, opening the passenger side door and sliding in.  
    Heero had this triumphant, little smile on his face when he sat in the driver's side and turned on the car.  
    "Oh, and you're not going to school today, either," he said, almost like it was a passing thought.  
    "Hey!" I protested in irritation, "I'm not your kid and that's going too far!"  
    "I don't think it's going far enough," he shot back, "You just got stitches and you're in pain. You haven't gotten any sleep and you look like you're about to faint. We have two more days of school before the winter break, there is absolutely no reason for you to go to school today, and I don't really want to have to watch you struggle through the day, especially not with Zechs out for you."  
    "My test results," I tried to persuade him, but even I could hear how weak my voice was.  
    "I will pick them up from your teachers and bring them home," Heero said, a little bit too pleased with himself, I thought, "And my parents have already agreed to call the school on your behalf."  
    "Goddamit, Heero!" I swore, angry that he had made all these decisions for me before even having this conversation, "You had no idea if I was going to say yes to any of this! What if I had said no and you had already dragged your parents into it?!"  
    "I would have brought you home kicking and screaming if I had to," he said cheekily.  
    "That's called kidnapping," I grumbled.  
    "Well, that's your opinion," he smirked and pulled the car out of the hospital parking lot.  
    I glared at him, but despite my irritation at the liberties that he had taken, I was both warmed at his concern and relieved.   
    "You're an asshole," I accused, but it had no heat to it at all.     In fact, I had to fight to keep it from sounding affectionate. I closed my eyes and, for a moment, I thought that I might actually fall asleep right there that I was so tired and so comfortable. It wasn't that the car was comfortable, just being right next to him. Even when I felt like he was driving me insane, I still loved him for it.   
    "I love you, too," Heero replied sarcastically.  
    I knew, even when he said it, that he was just responding to my calling him an asshole. Joking around, throwing insults at each other, these are things that normal teenagers do. I knew that. But at that moment, his words so closely mirrored my thoughts, and they were exactly what my heart yearned and dreamed of hearing, even if I knew it was just a stupid, desperate fantasy of something that I was pretty sure that I couldn't handle anyway. (violently crossed out) ~~And even if he did, I could never~~  
    In that moment, my mind horribly removed his sarcastic tone from that comment and I found myself unable to breathe, my breath hitching in my chest. I don't know if you've ever had a broken rib before, but it just that one misstep in breathing fucking hurt. I coughed and gasp for air as my body gleefully reminded me that breathing was neither of our friends.   
    "Are you ok?" Heero demanded, staring at me like he thought that I was dying and maybe he should pull the car over.  
    "Eyes... " I gasped, "...road."  
    He made an exasperated, but turned his gaze back to where it was supposed to be.   
    "I just... breathed wrong..." I explained, trying to get my breathing under control.  
    "And you thought that you were going to school today?" he quirked one eyebrow, "Never mind gym, you look like a strong wind is going to blow you over."  
    "I'll be fine," I assured him, "and I don't care what you say, I'm going to work today. I still haven't talked to my bosses about reducing my shifts and one of my coworkers has been out sick, so they'll pitch a fit if I skip out."  
    "No way, Duo," Heero argued as he pulled in to his street, "There is no way in hell that you're going to be capable of-"  
    "I'm not a complete masochist or an idiot," I snapped at him and forced myself to calm down before I had another breathing fit, "I'm going to ask if there's any work I can do sitting down. There's usually filing and paperwork to do, so if they're willing to put me on that, I can do that. If not, of course I'm going to take the shift off. Not only am I going to screw up my rib doing my usual work, I work with other people and I can get someone hurt."  
    All arguing stopped as Heero pulled the car into their garage. I had no idea just how much money his family had, but I was still surprised to see that there was just one other car in there, and it was just as modest as the one that Heero had been driving. Their garage was a three door, so when I had first seen it, I had assumed that they had three cars, but the third spot was filled with various boxes, tools, a refrigerator, pool toys, and yard equipment. I guessed that the car that Heero had taken didn't belong to him after all.   
    Not that he needed a car, but a lot of my classmates that lived in the north end of town got their own cars when they got their licenses, even if they were just hand me downs from their older siblings. We couldn't afford to get a car for my mother, who had to take the bus to get to her jobs, so it made me feel a little bit bitter that kids my age, most of which didn't work at all, were given cars just so they didn't have to take public transport.   
    The inside door of the Yuys' garage led us into the washing room and then the kitchen. Because it was so early in the morning, I had expected to just be ushered into the guest room while Heero went to his own room to try to get sleep before school, but to my surprise, both of his parents were up and apparently waiting for us in the kitchen, drinking cups of coffee. My guilt grew. When was I going to stop bothering and disturbing these peoples' lives? I almost immediately apologized to the both of them for having them being awake at that hour, and for whatever worry they had felt for their son, but wasn't given the chance. As we walked in, Heero's mother was in a mid pace, she and her husband talking about something heatedly, something that they immediately dropped when they saw us.  
    "Oh my god, Duo, are you alright?!" Mrs. Yuy looked frantic when she saw me and I didn't know if that was because she knew that we had just come from the hospital or because of the noticeable bandage on my face.  
    "I'm fine," I tried to assure her when she strode up to me, looking like she was actually going to hug me or throw some kind of panicked fit, just barely restraining herself, "I just have some cuts and bruises, and one of my ribs is broken."  
    I am apparently terrible at getting people to believe that I'm fine and that my injuries are no big deal, because she looked even worse, practically horrified at that news. Still, I felt warmed at her concern. I wasn't her child, there was no reason at all for her to care that I was hurt, and the fact that she was baffled me, but I happily embraced it. It wasn't like I had a mother that would care, so why not?  
    "You broke a rib?! That's awful!" she exclaimed, "Heero, you let him walk around without a jacket in this weather with a broken rib? It's no wonder why he's breathing like that."  
    I blinked in shock as I realized that both of his parents had realized something small like a change in my breathing, but with the careful way that I was doing it, I guessed it was kind of obvious that there was something wrong.  
    "I didn't let him do anything," my friend grumbled, "He had a hard time wearing one with his injuries, so he didn't bother with one."  
    "What on earth happened?" she demanded to know.  
    I looked over at Heero, hoping for some further back up, but he had his back to me as he put the car keys on the key rack. I wasn't dumb enough to believe that that hadn't been on purpose.   
    "An accident," I said, suddenly feeling very weary and not wanting to discuss this.   
    I didn't think that telling my kitchen story to these two was going to cut it. But right then, I was far too tired to come up with a better lie. Even so, I felt so happy to be there, it was like the last few hours had only been a bad dream that I had had. Even my pain wasn't bothering me so much anymore.  
    "An accident?" Heero's father questioned, and I knew right then that if I had any trouble, it was going to be from him and his damnable perceptiveness, "What kind of accident? Heero said that you needed to have stitches-"  
    "Duo is really tired," my friend finally intercepted on my behalf, coming to my rescue even though I really didn't deserve it, "He's had a really long, hard morning and he hasn't gotten any sleep at all. Do you mind if I just take him upstairs so he can get some rest? And if we have any ibuprofen, his rib is bothering him a lot."  
    Heero really could be incredibly manipulative when he put his mind to it, but it had the desired effect. Both of his parents looked instantly concerned.  
    "Oh, of course! There are some pills in the bathroom upstairs. Is there anything else that you need?" Mrs. Yuy asked me.  
    "I don't suppose you have medical tape and bandages, about this big," I demonstrated the size that I needed with my hands, "or antibiotic cream?"  
    I really hated asking for things, but I knew that we were out of the bandages that I needed at home and I was paranoid about getting any of my cuts infected.  
    "I'll make a stop at the pharmacy to get some," Mr. Yuy said.  
    "That's ok, you don't have to," I protested, feeling bad that there I was, a guest in their home, and I was making them run errands for me.  
    "No trouble," he said with this soft smile that reminded me too much of Heero, "You're hurt. Just relax."  
    "I already made the guest bed up for you," Mrs. Yuy smiled kindly at me and placed her hand on my shoulder, almost making me cry for reasons that I chalked up to my tiredness, "and you can stay here for as long as you like until you feel better."  
     "I..." I stopped when I felt tears in my eyes.  
   _"Fuck, you should have been born a girl. Maybe if you had, you wouldn't be such a dickless loser... You fucking miserable piece of shit!"_ I heard in my head.  
    I hastily rubbed at my tears, pretending that I was just sleepily rubbing my eyes so no one would tell that I was crying. I couldn't handle it. If I even tried to think about my father right then... think about him while Mrs. Yuy was looking at me like that, I was going to lose it and start sobbing right there in their kitchen. My father was right. I really was a dickless loser, crying because I was upset at being yelled at, and letting the kindness of my friend and his family bring me to tears.   
    "Thank you," was all I could manage.   
    "Come on," Heero urged softly, his voice almost a whisper, his hand on my back.   
    He, at least, wasn't fooled. He knew that I was on the verge of tears. I let him lead me up to the guest bedroom, feeling like I was sleepwalking. I think that I all too happily could have slept on the bathroom floor at that point. As promised, the bed in the guest room was made and had been turned down for me. I could imagine Heero's sweet mother doing it, fussing and worrying about what was going on with us. The walk up the stairs had aggravated my injuries and by the time we got to the room, I was winded and all I wanted to do was face plant into that bed. But when I went to go sit on it, this wave of pure agony shot through my right side, making me gasp and wrap an arm around my ribs.  
    "Are you alright?" Heero asked, immediately by my side.  
    "Just jostled them a bit," I managed, waiting for the pain to subside into something manageable.   
    It was then that I realized that my best friend had his hand on my knee and was rubbing it gently. It was oddly comforting and soothing and I found that it made the pain ease a bit more quickly. But when his father walked into the room, he took his hand away like he had been burned, or like he had done something wrong, and got back to his feet.   
    "Here," his father said, handing me a glass of water and a couple of pills.   
    I was very happy to take them, gulping down the water like I was dying of thirst. I wasn't prepared for Mr. Yuy placing his hand on my forehead, pushing my bangs up a little bit. I typically would have flinched if someone had done that to me so suddenly, but I just blinked at him in confusion, my frazzled mind working about three steps behind everyone else's.   
    "You look very pale," he noted in that soft tone he and Heero took when they were concerned about something, "but I don't think that you have a fever. Would you mind me taking a look at your bandages? I'm not a doctor, but I just want to make sure everything is ok before you go to sleep."  
    I couldn't think of a single reason to tell him no, so I obediently lifted my shirt up just enough so he could see the large bandage covering my stitches. He winced in sympathy when he saw the size of it.  
    "It's shallow," I told him, "but long. I probably would have been ok without stitches, the doctor was just being cautious."  
    Mr. Yuy looked like there were a thousand questions that he wanted to ask me and I hoped that he would never get the chance to ask any of them.   
    "I'm going to call your school in a couple of hours," he told me instead, "I don't imagine that they'll kick up too much of a fuss, this close to vacation. Is there anyone else you need for me to call for you?"  
    He left that question very open ended, but I knew that by someone, he meant my parents. He looked sad when I shook my head, confirming my suspicions.   
    "If there's anything you need," Heero's father said in a very solid, no nonsense tone, "anything at all, you can just call for Heero's mother or myself, alright?"  
    I nodded.   
    "Alright, let's get you to bed," he said and helped me lay down.  
    Normally, I would be annoyed by being coddled like that, but it felt nice, and it actually was a help since I hadn't tried laying down at all yet. But once my head hit that pillow, I was practically half asleep. And by the time I heard the door close, my eyes were closed and I could feel myself drifting into nothingness. A nothingness that was interrupted by the feel of fingers brushing through my bangs.   
    At first, I was so sure that it was Heero's father, but somehow, some part of me knew that it was my friend's hand, my friend's touch. I recognized his smell and his body warmth as it lingered on my skin. I told myself later that it was just a dream, one of the first pleasant ones that I've had in a very long time, but that's a lie. The moment that I felt his fingers in my hair, the moment that I realized that it was him, I was wide awake. I felt frightened, and not because someone was touching me while they thought that I was sleeping, but simply because it was him, and a touch from Heero was the most frightening thing in the world.   
    "Sweet dreams, Duo," I heard him whisper and then felt something very soft, something that couldn't possibly be a hand or finger, brush itself against my forehead.  
    That brush was so faint, so feather light that it was like the whisper of butterfly wings. It's easy for me to say that it was a dream, but I know that it wasn't because that touch burned me. My breath caught in my throat at the realization of what it was and I made sure to keep my eyes closed, to not move a single muscle, until I heard him leave and close the door behind him. I opened my eyes in the dark of the room and felt a tear drip down my face.   
    "I love you," I said to no one in a whisper as light as that brush.  
    I closed my eyes again, trying to remember what Heero's kiss had felt like, and fell into a dreamless sleep.   
  
  
End Part 9  
  
(1) She is not referring to Duo only breaking one rib. A single break is when a bone is broken all the way through the bone in only one area, without compound fracture or a green stick fracture.   
  
Author's Note (IMPORTANT): Ugh, I thought that I was never going to finish this part, and on time, too! But Shii, you might be asking yourself, why is this part so long, and what do you mean by 'on time'? Well, veteran's of my writing will remember this, but for those who are just finding these things that I call stories, I have a little tradition. See, I'm a horror nut, I live and breathe for the stuff, and I have a horror story called 'Beyond the Looking Glass.' In the spirit of Halloween, every October, I stop what I'm doing and dedicate the month to working on that story. So, I decided to keep writing this part for as long as I could this month before I had to deviate to another story.  
  
Also, for those that don't know, November is Nanowrimo, or National Novel Writing Month. I have participated in this event since 2007 and will do so this year as well. However, I have chosen A Stagnation of Love as my entry this year, so you'll only have to wait a month for the next update. I hope this 47 page part will suffice until then ^_^  
      
      
      
  



	38. Chapter 7 Part 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duo recuperates at the Yuys and spends some time with Heero's parents. Duo finds out his grade of his math test. Duo and Heero discuss Duo's self-confidence issues and Heero's opinion of his father.

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 7  
Part 10  
  
  
    I don't know if it was from the quiet, calm environment, how incredibly exhausted and stressed that I had been, or simply because I had temporarily lost the ability to deal with anything anymore, but I slept longer than I had in a very, very long time. Seven hours. A full night's sleep for someone my age. What's even more amazing is that I slept deeply, and more importantly, _dreamlessly_. At least, if I had dreamed, I don't remember it, which is a blessing.   
    Even more incredible than that? I distinctly remembering coming to at some point. I know that wasn't a dream because I could feel my injuries throbbing and actually had the distant thought that maybe I should get up and take some more pain pills. Only, I immediately drifted off again, sleep pulling me under like a rip tide. That never happens to me. When I wake up, that's it, I'm awake, and nothing I can do will get me to sleep again. When I finally returned to the land of the living, it was eleven in the morning and I felt like I had just awoken from a coma.   
    I'm not quite sure what woke me, either the pain that I felt in my side or the intense need to pee. It surely wasn't any noises because the Yuy home had remained as still as a tomb that entire time. As I awoke in that dimly lit, familiar room, I had that sense of peace again, that feeling like I was safe, if only for the moment. I even almost forgot about the reason _why_ I was sleeping in the Yuys' guest bedroom, at least until I tried to roll onto my side and the move pulled at my stitches. The sharp, biting pain brought everything back into crystal clear focus as I wrapped an arm around my waist and hissed.  
    Like the pain that I was feeling, some of those memories weren't so bad, definitely not among the worst that I had experienced in my life time. Some of them were even pleasant. Even though Heero and I had fought over my decisions concerning my father, he had still come running to my aid. He could have just walked out when he had gotten frustrated at me, but he had stayed. It still makes me feel warm in my gut when I think about that. It's been so long since I've had anyone that I can really depend on... I'm not really sure how to react to it, what I should do to keep from fucking this up like I had fucked things up with Quatre.   
    But I also remembered all the other things, the things that I really didn't want to. The things that my father had said to me, and the things that I had admitted to Heero. I have never told anyone as much as I told him in the last few days and I'm still not exactly sure how he had gotten me to spill my guts like that. I felt ashamed and embarrassed knowing that he knew what my father had done. But the thing that I felt the most ashamed about was the promise that I had bartered out of him. Heero was my best friend, my only friend, and really the only person that really knew me when you got right down to it. And I had forced him to agree to something that he thought was wrong. I was never going to get over that guilt.  
    But at the same time, it felt wonderful just knowing that he knew, and that he had agreed to not get my father into trouble. That makes me a horrible person, I know, but I've never opened up to anyone like I have him and the fact that I actually have someone now that I can talk to about these things is... well, it's still difficult for me to believe. Someone in this world has my back. How can I possibly cope with that fact?   
    I've always been alone, I've always depended on myself when it's come down to problems with my family. I don't know how to rely on other people, how to ask for help. But that morning, I had and the world hadn't exploded. I had felt so weak for not being able to be independent through the whole mess, but Heero had made me feel like maybe that was alright, that as long as he was there to let me lean on, I could survive that way. But what am I going to do when he finally realizes that I'm not worth his time? How can I possibly rely on the one person that I know is going to wake up one day and see that I'm nothing but garbage?   
    I pushed those thoughts away from me, as far as I could. I knew that my friendship with Heero was both steel and wet paper, both strong and fragile. We had become close in such a short period of time, for reasons that I still don't quite understand, but every time I think about how much I love him, how much I need him, how much this friendship means to me, I remind myself of all the relationships I've failed at, all the people that I've ruined and hurt, and I remember how I don't deserve any of this.   
    I can try as hard as I can to keep him near me, but if he ever figures out what I really am... what I did to Quatre, how I screwed up my relationship with Trowa, how I ruined my parents' lives, and the things that I let my father do to me... if he ever realized all those things, he would be disgusted. But I can't think about those things, even if they're inevitable. We're friends now. That's more than I ever could have wished or hoped for. Isn't that enough? There was a tiny voice in the back of my head screaming that I should get out before I hurt him and let him down, just like everyone else, but when I remembered Heero's lips on my forehead, his hand covering mine, and his soft, gentle smile, that voice was all too easy to ignore. I guess I'm still the same, selfish prick that I've always been.  
    Instead of my anxious, turbulent thoughts, I focused on the much easier task of getting up for the day. Even though I would never admit it to anyone, I was actually very glad that Heero had gotten his parents to get me out of school for the day. I felt like road kill and that was with a full morning's sleep under my belt. My telling Heero that I could function at school had been pure bluster. Beyond that, it felt incredibly good knowing that I wouldn't have to see Relena and Zechs until the next day. I had five hours until work, my father was at his job, so when I did go home, I wouldn't have to see him, and I had nothing that I needed to do before then. Even factoring in my injuries, I was feeling pretty good for once.  
    The first thing that I noticed after the pain diminished enough for me to let go of my side was that there was a tall glass of water and two white pills sitting on the bedside table that, as tired as I had been at the time, I knew for a fact hadn't been there before I had blacked out. The thought that Heero's parents had been coming into the room to check up on me was both weird and endearing. It always took me aback a bit when I would catch them doing things like that, things that I could easily imagine them doing for their son and things that my parents seldom had done for me. It made me feel warm inside, both happy and sad, but it also confused me.     Every time they did something nice for me, all I could think was how I was coming to love them and their little family, and how much I didn't belong. I found the nice things that they did for me strange. Didn't that say it all? It was obviously normal for them, and they didn't mind going out of their way to do it with minimal fuss, but to me, it was this huge deal. The more time that I spent around Heero's family, the more I realized just how broken my own was. So while I loved being there and having them care for me, it also hurt. Because no matter how I felt, I wasn't part of their family, I was just a guest.   
    I sat up very slowly, wincing as my side throbbed. While my stitched up wound was easily the most painful, my other injuries had become worse as I had slept. Well, probably not worse, but now that I had gotten some sleep and my adrenaline and shock were long gone, I was noticing them more. The other gashes that the iron had given me burned like fire and my arm felt like this solid piece of stone, stiff and aching from the multiple contusions that I had. My chest hurt like hell, I felt like there was some entity sitting on my ribs, but I was getting used to taking shorter breaths, which helped with the pain a little.   
    I lifted the sheets off of me and swung my legs over the bed, getting to my feet even more lethargically than I had sitting up. To my relief, the room didn't swim and I didn't have much trouble standing beyond feeling sore. I quickly noticed that my bloody jeans had disappeared and hoped that they hadn't been thrown out. Even though my bladder felt like it was going to explode, I drank the entire glass of water and took the pain pills before heading to the bathroom. As I washed my hands after relieving myself, I glanced at my reflection. My hair was a mess and I still looked pretty pale, but I didn't look like a member of the walking dead, so that was something.   
    I used my fingers to comb through my hair, braiding it quickly, and wished that I had a set of clean clothes. There was a box of gauze and a tube of ointment on the bathroom counter that had been laid out for me, but I wanted to wait until the pain pills kicked in before I tried to shower and rewrap my bandages. The very first thing that I did after making myself feel a little bit more human was use my cell phone to call my two bosses and tell them about my limited mobility.   
    Lorathe was annoyed, but I had known that the asshole would be and I had to fight for a good ten minutes to get him not to cancel my shift again. I somehow managed to convince him that I would be just as useful helping him with his paper work as I would be unloading cargo, although I got the impression that he would have been much happier not having me show up at all. Mr. Leneski was much easier to convince, he even offered to have me stay in his office and work on reports when I told him that I didn't want to skip my shift.   
    After that was done, I was at a bit of a loss at what to do. I didn't want to go home, although I knew that I would need to before work to change my clothes and take care of my cat, but with Heero at school, I felt off balance in a house that wasn't mine. I had no homework, nowhere to really be. Would his parents get annoyed if I puttered around in the house, maybe borrowed one of Heero's books to read? My stomach suddenly growled so loudly that it actually startled me and I would have blushed if anyone else had been in the bathroom to hear it. My body, apparently, had solved that little conundrum for me. I had lost quite a bit of blood that morning, not enough to get a transfusion, but enough to make me a feel a bit weak. I couldn't afford to skip a meal and I didn't really want to.   
    I hate to say it, but I was kind of getting accustomed to the idea that I was going to get fed every time that I was over Heero's house. It made me feel like a louse, expecting something out of them, but I knew that I wasn't going to be able to leave without Heero's mother at the very least trying to shove some filling meal down my throat and right then, that thought was downright heavenly. At the very least, I could ask her to let me heat up a can of soup since I had no clue what food I had at home at that moment.   
    It still made me feel like a freeloader, but I knew that even if I had said no, Mrs. Yuy was going to make sure that I had something for breakfast. Heck, she probably wasn't going to let me leave until she was absolutely sure that I wasn't going to keel over. I just hoped that I wasn't going to get assaulted with questions while my friend wasn't there to distract his parents. As I walked downstairs, I could hear the faint sound of a television on in the living room and immediately when I took that last step off the staircase, Kanuck was there, wuffing softly and wagging his tail at me.  
    "Hi, boy," I greeted him with a pet on the top of his head.  
    The dog lolled his tongue at me and was all too happy to follow as I walked into the living room. Mrs. Yuy was there by herself, watching some news segment and drinking a cup of tea. She was wearing a dark, golden yellow and orange sweater that complemented her skin tone well and had her black hair pulled up in a ponytail again. It made her look very young, especially if I compared her to my mother, but I realized that it really had nothing to do with what she was wearing or how she did her hair. It was her face, devoid of stress lines and the wear that alcoholism had done to my own mother. But even more than that, it was the look in her dark eyes, the vitality she had around her. Mrs. Yuy would never have the worn, hollow look in those eyes that my mother had in her own. She could have been twenty years older than my mother and still looked younger than she did.   
    Mrs. Yuy heard the clicking of Kanuck's nails on the hard floor and turned where she sat on their couch. When she saw me, her face broke out into this beaming smile that put the summery colors on her sweater to shame.   
    "Duo, you're awake!" she exclaimed, sounding pleased, "How did you sleep?"  
    "Really well," I told her, "Thank you very much."  
    "How are you feeling?" she asked, putting her tea cup on the table that was closest to her and standing to approach me.  
    For a moment I was fascinated with that damned tea cup. It was clearly made of china or some other fragile, yet beautiful material, pure white with patterns of blue and red on it. It was pretty, but looked so delicate. I was willing to bet that it cost the entirety of one of my paychecks.   
    "Better," I assured her, "Sleep was exactly what I needed."  
    "I'm glad to hear it. Your rib isn't bothering you too much? If those pills aren't helping with the pain, maybe you should see a doctor about getting a prescription," she fussed.  
    "No, over the counter pain medication is fine," I told her, "I have a bit of a tolerance for them, but my rib isn't bothering me that much."  
    "That's good," she said and actually did look relieved to hear that I wasn't in agonizing pain, "Will you let Mr. Yuy look at your stitches when he gets home? Just to put our minds at ease that you don't have an infection."  
    The strange request made me pause. I almost told her that it wasn't necessary, this was old hat to me and I knew exactly the kind of signs to look out for, but I had the common sense not to tell her something like that. It wouldn't really hurt to have Mr. Yuy look at my injuries, I supposed, so I nodded.  
    "I don't mind," I said cautiously, "I didn't know that he knew a lot about medicine. Did he have to go through some training when he studied psychology?"  
    "Psychiatry, actually," her tone turned softer and she had this affectionate look on her face as she talked about her husband, "He had to take some basic medical courses to get his degrees, so he knows a little. Enough to know which medicines to prescribe and the signs of certain ailments, but that's about it. For awhile, his father had hoped that Justin would try to become a doctor like his grandfather, but he was always more interested in therapy than physical medicine."  
    "Why?" I couldn't help but ask, "Because it pays better?"  
    Mrs. Yuy chuckled at my question.  
    "No, Justin was never really interested in something like that," she admitted.   
    That blew me away for a moment before I remembered that, just because I was broke and stress over money was always a constant anxiety for me, it didn't mean that everyone else had to worry about it that much.  
    "At first it was just an interest. I think everyone who finds a career that they're happy in are like that. He took a lot of psychology courses in college and did quite well in them. He found human behavior to be fascinating and quickly figured out what he wanted to study. But when he sat in on some support groups for one of those classes... well... I suppose he thought that helping people who had no idea how to make their lives any better, people that were desperate and medicine couldn't help them, became very important to him," she mused.   
    It dawned on me as a kind of shock to realize that all of that was a completely alien concept to me. I mean, I knew that some people were like that. Some people just knew what they wanted to do with their lives. They felt a calling. Some people just had very specific gifts or talents or drives, while others had goals, a need to help others. I was aware of that, but I had never felt those things. I didn't have a talent like Trowa, or an intense interest like Quatre. And I certainly had never felt a need to get into a field that would allow me to help others like Mr. Yuy had. I am a selfish person. I wallow in my own pain and misery and seldom even think about other people, let alone let them into my life or think about anyone else's pain.   
    I guess living a solitary life could excuse me of that. I've never been social, and most of the people in my life didn't need anything from me. But when I thought about my future, I have only ever thought about what I can do to suit myself. I had never thought about helping others through some career. Of course, most of those kinds of jobs required going to college anyway, so maybe it was stupid to feel guilty about that, but I did. I felt no better than the people that I felt bitterness for because they had never tried to help me. I felt self-centered, focused only on the tiny sphere around me.   
    I know very little about the world outside of this shitty little town, let alone outside of this country and even being that self-aware, I don't feel the need to go out into the world and help people, do some volunteer work or anything like that. Does that make me a horrible person that I don't really care about other people that might be worse off than me? Am I so full of hate and bitterness for people that I'm content to only live for myself? And though it all, I felt even more guilt thinking about my own parents. Had they had interests, careers that they had been gunning for, a calling, and I had ruined all of it for them? Could they have been where Mr. and Mrs. Yuy were now, happy in their lives, if I had never come around and fucked things up? Had I stolen their dreams from them?   
    "Are you alright?" Mrs. Yuy frowned in concern and I could only imagine what she was seeing on my face from what I was thinking of, "You look pale."  
    Her concern, as wonderful as it was, felt like an arrow had been shot through my heart. I didn't deserve it. The pain in my right side only reminded me of that.   
    "I'm fine," I tried to assure her, attempting to smile and failing miserably, "This morning was just very... taxing."  
    That was stating it lightly, although my wounds were only a small part of the tiredness that I was feeling. It was my guilt and depression that were making me feel exhausted, my memories of all the things that my father had accused of me, knowing what he really thought about me, my own doubts, and my guilt over dragging Heero and his family through the shit hole that were my own problems. I knew that they were being nice to me and were eager to help, but they didn't understand. They didn't know what was really going on or how I felt about it, how I felt torn in two between gratitude and hating myself.   
    "Of course. I made some vegetable soup this morning," Heero's mother smiled at me, "Why don't we have some? Something hot will do you a world of good."  
    Despite everything, I found myself smiling at that. I could feel sorry for myself all that I wanted, but here these people were, opening their home to me without a second thought. As much as I thought that I didn't deserve it, I still had it and just having this person smiling at me and offering me so much, it _did_ make me feel better.  
    "That sounds amazing," I said, my empty stomach agreeing with me.  
    I viciously shoved at my depressed feelings and thoughts and tried to follow her into the kitchen.  
    "Oh, no," she stopped me, "You go sit down on the couch and watch some television. I'll bring you some. Is milk alright?"  
    I almost protested her waiting on me hand and foot like that, but I just didn't have the energy or the current state of mind to fight a losing battle. I nodded and did what I was told, sitting down on the couch. My side throbbed at the sudden change of posture, but the medicine was finally starting to kick in and the pain was quickly becoming bearable. As Heero's mother puttered around in the kitchen, I tried to watch the news. I didn't want to change the station if that was what Mrs. Yuy had wanted to watch, I wasn't that much of a rude house guest, but when the newscaster moved on from talking about some huge, upcoming trial of man who had escaped a murder charge only to get charged this year of more crimes to a shorter, 'smaller' story of a father who had murdered his infant son with a tire iron, I couldn't take it anymore (1).   
    I flipped through the stations, past trashy talk shows, children's cartoons, and football rerun games, wishing that I was reading or even listening to some music instead. It's not that I hate television and movies, but at that hour of the day, it was all garbage anyway, especially the horde of christmas movies. I remembered watching a few of the animated ones when I had been little, but now that I'm older, hearing about the miracle of the birth of Jesus from a talking animal was not very appealing. I couldn't stand Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, either. I mean, Rudolph being different than all the other reindeer is only tolerated when his difference proves to be a benefit to his community. What kind of bullshit is that for a children's movie?   
    I would have just given up at that point, but the Yuys had a much better cable selection than we did and I stumbled upon an entire channel full of cooking shows. This particular one was showing the audience how to garnish certain holiday desserts, something that I had yet to learn from home ec. I was especially fascinated with how the host, a slightly overweight woman in her 60s, used a paring knife to turn various fruits into flowers. I had never seen that done before and while I was sure that it did absolutely nothing to make the food more edible, I wanted to try it.   
    By the time Mrs. Yuy returned with a tray of milk and steaming bowls of soup as well as a couple of biscuits, the show had turned to another that was demonstrating how to make the 'perfect' eggnog custard. I was watching with such rapt attention that I didn't even notice her sitting down next to me until she placed a bowl of soup on the table next to me. I had never even thought to use eggnog as a custard, or to pair it with a flaky crust to make it almost pie-like. I wondered if Heero liked eggnog  and would want to try it if I made it for him.   
    I still hadn't decided on what I was going to gift him and his family with for the holiday. I didn't have the money to buy them anything special, but I had a ton of scrap material to make something with. I had been turning around in my head the idea of knitting Heero some gloves or a scarf. I could do that much. Of course, he could just as easily buy a scarf, so why would he want something that I had made? But it was all that I could really do, besides make some desserts to bring over for Christmas dinner, which also had some appeal.   
    "Sorry," I apologized when I noticed Mrs. Yuy sitting down next to me, "I can change the channel back-"  
    "Nonsense," she waved away my concern, "It was all bad news anyway. I just didn't think that someone your age would be interested in a show like this. There's quite a few movie and sports channels that we have if that would be more interesting to you."  
    "Not really," I admitted, blushing a little at being caught watching a cooking show.   
    If my father had found me watching this sort of thing, he would have hit me and called me a girl or pansy again. His words from that morning rang in my ears and in my shame, I actually contemplated quickly changing the channel to something else, something that he would have wanted to watch. But Mrs. Yuy didn't act like it was scornful, a sixteen year old boy watching a cooking show, just that she hadn't expected it. I was so used to being ragged on over my lack of masculinity that I actually felt embarrassed for being interested in baking. I knew that I shouldn't be. Heero clearly had no issue with my enjoying these sorts of things, and he was just as gay as I was, but as masculine as any of the straight boys in our class.   
    "Sports kind of bore me," I told her, "I don't really like television in general. My dad hogs the television at home and we don't have a lot of channels to watch anyway, so I'm out of the habit of doing it. And the news is just depressing. But I enjoy cooking and there's a few things on here that I would like to try."  
    To my relief, Mrs. Yuy didn't make fun of me for my interests or scorn me for them, not that I thought that the sweet woman would, but I was too used to be made fun of for my being a decent cook that it was my automatic reaction.  
    "I really don't like to watch the news myself," she admitted to me like it was some great secret between the two of us, "But Justin is very worldly conscious and I do admit that I like to be informed of some things. But some of the things that people do to each other," she shook her head in amazement, "Not watching a lot of television isn't a bad thing. We tried to make sure that Heero didn't get hooked on it and was more active as a child, but he still watches it more than I would like. It's a good thing to have interests like cooking and don't you ever let anyone tell you that you shouldn't."  
    Her words made me smile, blowing away my self-conscious feelings. Here was someone, I realized, that wouldn't make fun of me for the things that I enjoyed and didn't really care about how it might look. Of course, she didn't know that I was gay, but she wasn't judging me, which was a far cry from what I had come to expect from the other adults in my life.   
    "Eat your soup before it gets cold," she scolded lightly when she saw that I still hadn't eaten anything.  
    "Yes, ma'am," I said seriously and blew on the hot bowl of soup to cool it down.  
    We ate in companionable silence as we watched the host of the show demonstrate how to make a pie crust that was both 'flaky and firm'. The soup was delicious, full of carrots, celery, potatoes, onions, and beans, and I found myself quickly finishing off the bowl and getting another from Mrs. Yuy. It felt oddly nice sitting there with her. It was friendly and soothing and it wasn't long before my anxiety about being around Heero's parents without him there went away. While his father was perceptive and just as blunt as Heero was, his mother was calming and quiet, ready with a soft smile and had a fussing, caring nature, like the mothers that I had seen on television as a child. When she talked to me, she asked me mundane things about my parents and growing up in our small town, but nothing that put me on the defensive or reminded me of things that I didn't want to talk about.  
    I imagined that that could get annoying for someone like Heero, who seemed pretty stubborn and independent, but I had never been fussed over by anyone but Quatre, certainly not my own mother, and it was nice. There were times when it hurt, because it was too easy to imagine her as my own mother and too painful to know that that would never be true, but right then, that kind of personality was exactly what I needed. It soothed the part of me that accused me of being weak and incapable of taking care of myself anymore. Because I could pretend that I was still strong and independent, it was just that I didn't want to be. Mostly, it was just nice to be around an adult that wasn't screaming at me.  
    Two bowls of soup, a biscuit, and two glasses of milk later, I was full and still had no desire at all to move from that couch. I felt disgustingly lazy, which rankled the part of me that likes to stay active, but it was nice for a change. I didn't have any chores to do, homework that needed to be done, anyone screaming at me to do pointless things, or even a job to go to for another few hours. I had been fed and gotten a good sleep. Even though I was injured and felt lousy, things were a far cry better than how they were usually at home. I kind of just wanted to curl up on that couch and do nothing at all, like some contented feline.   
    Eventually the cooking program turned over to another bit of food programming, but this one was on how to make winter cocktails. Watching the host line up various bottles of liquor, I could only think about my parents, how my father had looked earlier that morning as he had swung the iron down on me, his face twisted with a drunken rage. Mrs. Yuy must have noticed my sudden discomfort because she changed the station without asking if I wanted to keep watching it. She settled on some 3d animated Christmas film that looked really weird to me, even though it had only just started.   
    "Is this alright?" she asked me and I shrugged.  
    "I've never seen this before," I told her.  
    Her dark eyes widened a little.  
    "Really?" she asked in slight surprise, "This was Heero's favorite when he was a child. It plays quite frequently during this time of year."  
    "I don't watch a lot of Christmas movies," I confessed a bit sheepishly, wondering if Heero's family was religious, "The holiday doesn't mean a whole lot for my family. We're pretty non-religious and even when I was little, we didn't do much to celebrate. I've seen a couple of the classic Christmas films. Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, stuff like that, but I didn't like them very much."  
    "We aren't terribly religious, either," I was told, but Mrs. Yuy looked a little bit guilty at that admission, "My family is Catholic, but Justin's side of the family are fairly laid back when it comes to religion. He's Protestant, and he does have faith, but he isn't outspoken about it. Christmas for us is more of a family tradition than a religious holiday. In any case, this movie doesn't have any religious overtones, you might enjoy it."  
    It was better than turning the news back on, so I decided to give it a shot. It was a pretty weird movie, a kind of mash up between Christmas and Halloween of all things (2), but it was actually very enjoyable and creative. I could see why Heero liked it, and I have to admit to feeling a bit happy to be sharing a piece of his childhood, even if he wasn't there to watch it with us. During the commercial breaks, Mrs. Yuy cleaned up the dishes, scolding me when I tried to help her. Kanuck was pretty well trained. While we had been eating, he had laid down a ways from us, but with the food cleaned up, he boldly planted himself at my side and laid his head in my lap. I was happy to pet him through the rest of the movie as he stared up at me like I was his savior. I imagined that it was a bit lonely for him when Heero was at school. Towards the end of the movie, the front door opened and Mr. Yuy walked in carrying a paper sack a gallon of milk.  
    "Hello, dear," Mrs. Yuy greeted him.  
    "Hi, honey," he walked over to her and kissed her on the cheek, "Good morning, Duo. You sleep well?"  
    "Like the dead," I admitted.  
    He chuckled and migrated to the kitchen to put away the things that he had just bought, but to my pleasant surprise, when he was done, he sat down on the couch next to me to watch the rest of the film with us. It was incredibly weird. Sitting there with Heero's mother on my right side and his father on my left, it felt homey. It felt like how I had always imagined what a normal family was like, just two parents with their kid watching television together. My family never sat together like this, let alone watched anything together. My parents always hated what the other was watching, even back when they had been able to at least tolerate each other in the same room.  
    I had to remind myself, several times, that this was not my family. These two people, as much as they did for me, as much as they seemed to care, where not my mother or my father. I wanted them to be, but they never would be. This home, this situation belonged to Heero, I was just being given a taste of it. It hurt knowing that, understanding that this was something that I would never really have. It only reminded me of how much my parents hated each other, how much they hated me, and how broken we were. But it also made me feel undeniably happy for that brief time when the three of us were on that couch together.   
    The movie ended at two and Mrs. Yuy left us for the kitchen, probably to make a snack for Heero when he got home. I got a little thrill of excitement from that thought. It was the same feeling that I got every day as I walked to school and thought 'I'm going to see Heero.' It was a bit sad and pathetic, getting excited at the thought of just seeing him, but I couldn't help it. Mr. Yuy stood up from the couch and I moved to do so as well when a sharp pain shot through my side. I had almost forgotten about my wound and had stupidly stood up too fast, pulling on my stitches again. I grabbed at my side and winced.  
    "Are you alright?" Mr. Yuy asked in concern, his tone almost alarmed by my show of pain.   
    I nodded, suddenly feeling winded just from that tiny reminder of my injuries.   
    "I keep forgetting," I admitted which made him frown, although I didn't have a clue why.      
    "Have you checked your stitches yet today?" he asked me.  
    I shook my head, feeling a bit stupid about it. I knew from first hand experience how bad things can get when a stitched wound gets infected. I really should have changed my bandages as soon as I had gotten up.   
    "Do you mind if I take a look at them?" Mr. Yuy asked, "Just to assuage my worry."  
    I have to admit that I hesitated for a moment, even though I had told his wife earlier that it was fine. It would be easier having someone else look at them instead of having to use a mirror, but I felt a bit leery suddenly having him look at them. Would he know just from seeing them what they had been caused by? Just how knowledgeable was he about injuries?   
    I certainly knew enough about them to know that the bruising around my cuts and the hemorrhaging from under my skin was from a strong, blunt blow, and the ragged cuts were from getting struck by something pointed, but not sharp. Would he know that? Had Heero come up with some story about how I had gotten hurt and his father would talk to me about it? I was also worried about him seeing my other scars, the scars from the surgeries that I've had on my ribs mostly. Would he ask about them?  
    "I don't mind," I said after a moment, daring to risk Heero's father finding out something that Heero knew anyway.  
    Although, it was quite different if his parents found out that I was being abused, wasn't it? I couldn't bully them and force them to stay silent about it. And an adult coming forward with that kind of information would be a lot more credible than my teenaged friend. But I took the risk anyway, following the man to the upstairs bathroom. I lifted up the side of my shirt for him as he washed his hands. I was immediately glad that he couldn't see all of the bruises on my arm, because when he saw the thick bandages on my side and the black and red bruises surrounding them, he looked like he had swallowed something terribly bitter.  
    Very carefully and gingerly, he peeled the tape off of the largest bandage and removed the gauze. I winced again as it pulled on my wound a little bit, but there wasn't as much blood on the gauze as I had feared. Mr. Yuy hissed in sympathy when he saw the gash. In the very well lit bathroom, it looked pretty terrible. There was a little bit of dried blood smeared over the stitches, I guess I must have pulled them in my sleep, and the skin there looked pale where it wasn't bruised, unnaturally so. He took his time taking the other bandages off, revealing the smaller cuts, and seeing the damage in full gave him a pinched expression.  
    'He's going to ask me how it happened,' I thought in horror.  
    That would be the next thing that came out of his mouth, I just knew it. And what was I going to say? What lie was I going to give? It might have just been how off balance I was feeling, having my friend's father poke and prod me in their bathroom, but I suddenly was very sure that I would be incapable of lying to this man. Nothing was coming to me, but more than that, I just didn't think that I was capable of it. He threw me off balance even more when he turned to the sink, wet a washcloth, and cleaned the blood off of my skin with a gentleness that was completely alien to me.  
    "How is the pain?" he was what he asked me instead of demanding to know how I had hurt myself.  
    "It's manageable," I told him after my senses returned to me, "It mostly hurts when I stand up or sit down, but the pain medicine is working pretty well."  
    "Good," he nodded, tossing the washcloth into the sink and picking up the antibacterial ointment, "These stitches were very neatly done. The wound looks a lot worse than it actually is, and it'll scar, but I don't think it will take too long to heal. This is going to sting."  
    But I already knew that and didn't so much as wince when he spread it on my cuts.   
    "You aren't working today, are you?" his tone was a bit stern and I could only imagine him taking it with Heero when he tried to skip out on his homework or missed doing a chore.   
    That tone made me feel better for some reason and the thought of Heero being scolded amused me. That tone made you want to listen and do whatever the man was asking, a lot like my father's own 'you had better listen to me' tone, but not out of fear like my father. Mr. Yuy didn't need to scream or belittle or threaten to get someone to pay attention to him. He could achieve what my father couldn't, to be both calm and commanding. When my father scolds me, even if he isn't yelling, there is always a bit of anger simmering under the surface.   
    "Yes," I confessed, "but I'm just doing paperwork, nothing strenuous."  
    Mr. Yuy sighed but let the matter drop.   
    "Don't push yourself too hard," he advised me as he began to put clean gauze on the gash, "There is absolutely no need for it. Your Winter break is coming soon and you don't have any more school work to worry about. It's your vacation, you should enjoy it."  
    "Actually, I'm going to ask my bosses to reduce my hours soon," I told him with a slight blush.  
    "Oh?" he smiled at me in approval, "That's great, Duo. With all the hard work you've been doing, you deserve a break."  
    That only made me flush darker. It was weird being told that by an adult. My father thought that I wasn't doing enough, and here was someone else saying that I worked too much, someone who knew that I was trying to help my family. Heero said that it wasn't my responsibility to do that and his father thought I was wearing myself out. Maybe they were right. Maybe I was biting off more than I could chew.   
    I had always trusted my father with the work that he had given me, for him to know my limits. But that had vanished the day that he had taken all of my trust in him away and now that I was looking back on everything, that trust seemed so foolish. I had, like most children, trusted my father to know what was best for me, to know what I was capable of and how far he could push me, not just with getting me work, but with his beatings. And he had raped me and broken me.   
    While there was a part of me that still thought that he had only been doing what he had needed to do for our family by getting me all of those jobs, that part was so small now. Now there was another, more prominent part of me that wondered if it was only out of selfishness, that he had been trying to punish me out of bitterness, hurt me by forcing me to work because he hated his own job. Was my father really that petty? Did he really loath me that much, or had he just wanted me out of his way as much as possible?   
    I guess his reasoning doesn't really matter. It doesn't change anything, but those possibilities still made me feel hurt. I had to remind myself that, whether he had done it selfishly or to help us out financially, either way he had used me. Suddenly, I was glad that Heero had convinced me to reduce my hours. Maybe I'm a bit petty, too, but right then, I didn't care about any of it. I didn't care about helping my parents or being a good son or even trying to make as much money as I could. I was tired. Hanging out with Heero had shown me how nice it could be, to not have to do anything, to just be with another person, watch movies with them, play video games with them. To not have to rush from one job to the next until I was so tired and sore, I could barely think.  
    "It was Heero's idea, actually," I told his father a bit sheepishly, "He convinced me that I'm working too much."  
    "My son does have some good ideas sometimes," Mr. Yuy mused, his smile growing, "Speaking of my son," he said as we heard the front door close.  
    That thrill of excitement was back, full force.   
    "All done," Mr. Yuy finished bandaging one of the smaller cuts and let me pull my shirt back down, "Now, then, I want you to go straight home if the pain gets too bad or that big gash starts bleeding at all, do you understand?"  
    "Yes, sir," I nodded.  
    "Good boy," he said endearingly, which made my chest feel warm and this strange emotion that I can't really describe worm its way inside of me.  
    He ruffled my hair as he walked to the steps and that feeling in my chest started to hurt. I wished, certainly not for the first time, that I could stay there forever and never have to go home again. I followed him back downstairs and found Mrs. Yuy in the foyer, talking with Heero with her arms crossed over her chest, looking a bit put out. Her expression didn't worry me, I was too busy dealing with my sudden feelings of joy seeing my best friend. It was stupid, but some part of me felt like I hadn't seen him for days. I felt so clingy and I'm not really the sort of the person that's like that.   
    I was again blown away by how handsome he looked. His black hair was a little bit messier than it usually was and his blue eyes were intense for some reason. I quickly saw the reason for his mother's stern gaze: a large bruise on the side of his face. It was recent, just starting to turn black. I was sure that Zechs had done that to him while he had been in school, but the bruise was larger and darker than the ones that Zechs usually left with his fist. He must have used something else and I was incredibly worried that it had been a blunt object and Heero was hurt a lot worse than I was noticing.   
    "You're late," Mrs. Yuy scolded and behind her stern look, I could easily see her concern mirroring mine.  
    Heero didn't look the least bit concerned with his mother's accusation, his eyes stormy with some emotion. I thought that it might be anger, and anger was certainly there, but it was more than that.   
    "I had to pick up Duo's test results, you know that," he said in exasperation, "The teacher was with another student, so I had to wait a little while."  
    "And it has nothing to do with that huge bruise on your face?" Mr. Yuy pressed.   
    Heero hesitated for a moment. Just a moment, barely even a second, but enough time to tell me that he was hiding something, something that he was not going to tell his parents and maybe not even me, and that his father had hit the issue right on the nose.  
    "No, just some kids bullying me," he muttered, "I've had worse."  
    His parents shared a worried look, but Heero was clearly done talking about the bruise on his face.  
    "Here," he handed me a large envelope, "All your tests are there."  
    I didn't mind him using me as a smokescreen against his parents' questions, especially not after he had done the same thing on my behalf earlier that morning, and took the envelope.  
    "Thanks, Heero," I tucked it under my arm, fully intending on looking at it later at home, where no one could see my embarrassment and frustration.  
    "No problem," he smiled warmly at me and while it wasn't enough to take away whatever strange emotion that I had seen in his eyes, it soothed most of it, "How are you feeling?"  
    "Much better. I'm so sorry about bothering you last night..." I tried to apologize, but Mr. Yuy interrupted me with a short, incredulous bark of laughter.  
    "Duo, I don't think that asking for help when you're bleeding and in so much pain that you can't make it to the hospital on your own can be called 'bothering'."  
    "My dad's right," Heero said, "I already told you that I was really glad that you called me this morning. You weren't bothering me at all. I don't care how early in the morning it is, even if it's in the middle of a blizzard, if you need me, you call me, got it?"  
    Blushing again, I nodded and even though I still felt guilty about the whole mess, that nod made that intense emotion fade away a little more.  
    "Why don't the two of you go play some video games before Duo goes to work," his father gestured towards the stairs, "But I still expect you to help me shovel the walkway when he's gone and I want to see the grades you got on your finals."  
    "Yes, sir," Heero said, but when he walked past his parents, he rolled his eyes.  
    I tried very hard not to smirk at that. There was a time, when I was younger, that my father had been a regular grade nazi. If I got anything lower than a B my first few years at public school, it would have earned me a beating and accusation that I was stupid and worthless. He had never really helped me study or anything, but had been on my case if I didn't live up to his standards. But by the time I had graduated middle school, my father had ceased to care. I haven't shown him a report card or test for years.   
    A part of me is happy for that, but another part was saddened. If I did especially well in one subject, I wanted to tell my parents, to prove to them that I wasn't the fuck up that they were sure that I was. But I knew that if I did, they would just mock me for thinking that a single decent grade made me smart. No matter what I did, I couldn't win.  
    "Zechs did that to you, didn't he?" I asked Heero as we walked up the steps, out of earshot from his parents.  
    "Just another bully," he said darkly and I wondered what that was supposed to mean, what had happened to him.  
    "It's my fault," I muttered, "because I wasn't there today."  
    I knew that there was absolutely nothing that I could do if Heero had been cornered by Zechs and his thug friends, but to some extent, I had noticed that the bullying had lessened while we were together. Not from Zechs, but our other classmates. I was nothing to look at, but one on two were not good odds for anyone, and we could watch each other's backs so we weren't taken by surprise. To my shock, Heero grabbed me by the arms very firmly. He looked frantic and guilty for some bizarre reason again.  
    "No!" he said vehemently, "This is not your fault! I did something very stupid to the wrong person and this was the result."  
    I stared at him in worry. What could he have possibly done to piss someone off like that, and the way that he said it made it sound like he had done it on purpose.  
    "What did you do?" I asked.  
    Heero let go of me and looked away.  
    "Someone said something terrible about you," he admitted, not sounding contrite at all, but hesitant, "and I took offense to it and hit them."  
    My eyes widened in shock, unable to believe that he would have hit a classmate after all of my warnings to him not to fight back. And not even in self defense, but just because someone had been bad mouthing me?  
    "What are you talking about?!" I demanded, "People talk shit about me all the time, you can't just go around punching people for it! You had to have known that they were going to hit you back!"  
    His hands curled into his fists, his blue eyes still not meeting mine.  
    "I can't do anything about what people say behind our backs, but some people," he looked up at me briefly and there was such anger on his face that I felt breathless, "some people don't deserve to go around saying disgusting shit, simply because they think that they can get away with it! Yes, it was stupid, but you're my friend and there was no way in hell I was going to let that go. I don't regret what I did, or the fact that I got punched for it."  
    He had gotten hit because... because he had been defending me... because he cared for me so much that he had felt the need to hit someone... for _me_. My heart swelled with love for him just then and I felt tears gather in my eyes. No one had ever done that for me... defended my honor like that, actually gotten enraged on my behalf. Not even Quatre.   
    Before my brain could catch up with my heart and stop myself, I was hugging him tightly. The move hurt my side, but I didn't even care, even when my head reminded me _who_ I was making bodily contact with. My heart raced. It felt so good. So... so incredibly good, my arms around him. I can't even describe it. I could have gotten struck by lightning right then and died a very happy person.   
    "Thank you," I whispered before untangling myself from him, incredibly embarrassed by the rare display of affection.  
    Guilt hit me like a truck. There I was in that beautiful house, surrounded by those wonderful people, and I could almost see my rot eating away at everything. My uselessness, my selfishness, all of my fears... I loved Heero so much, more than I could stand, more than I knew with absolute certainty I would ever love anyone ever again. So why... why am I such a fucking coward?  
    Heero's eyes were wide and his face was dark red. I think he was a bit speechless from either my gratitude or my hug.  
    "Y-you're welcome," he stammered and tried to collect himself, "You don't deserve to have those things said about you," he murmured very shyly before clearing his throat and speaking again in a normal tone, "Come on."  
    We went into the gaming room together and sat down on the couch.   
    "Do you mind if we don't play and just sit here for a little while?" I asked him.  
    "That's fine," his warm smile was back.   
    I thought about him kissing my forehead that morning for some reason and thought that I might just die from internal heat combustion.  
    "I... I want to apologize again for this morning..." I looked down in shame, "for forcing you to make that promise..."  
    "You have nothing to apologize for-" Heero said adamantly, but I wasn't having any of it.  
    "Yes I do!" I snapped, "I made you agree to something that you obviously don't agree with, all because I'm weak and a coward! I made you comprise on something that you believe is wrong, just because we're friends and I took advantage of you."  
    "Duo, you can't _make_ me do anything," he argued right back at me.  
    "Maybe," I conceded, "but I shouldn't have put you on the spot to begin with. These... these are my problems and I never should have dragged you into them. I feel awful about even asking you to keep silent and lie about this..."  
    "You shouldn't," he said softly and placed his hand over mine. Just that one touch along was enough to steal my words from me, "Look, I know how you feel about all this, but you're dead wrong. First off, these aren't just _your_ problems. You're my friend, and if someone is hurting you, even if it's your parents, then it's my problem, too. You didn't force me to make that promise, I made it because I chose to, you didn't twist my arm. You're right about one thing, I'm not happy about making that promise. I feel... I feel like I'm betraying you, just letting your father hurt you..."  
    "That's not true!" I protested, "If I hadn't asked you not to, I know that you would have gone to the police about it-"  
    "I would have!" he hissed, "And I still will the second you tell me to. I care about you, Duo. This... this is fucked up. But you're my friend. You trust me. I don't want to go behind your back. You say that you're a coward and weak, but that's not true. I'm the one who's weak. I can't do anything that will make you hate me, even getting your father arrested. To keep being friends with you, I would make that sort of promise. I'm the one at fault here, _I'm_ the coward, not you."  
    "I don't think you're a coward," I told him in a soft voice, curling my fingers around his, "and I don't blame you for anything. I asked for this... and even if you did go to the police, I wouldn't hate you. I could never hate you. Even when you were bullying me, and I thought that I hated you as much as I did Zechs... even then, there was some part of me that couldn't really hate you. I still felt..." I chewed nervously on my the inside of my mouth for a moment, "I still felt drawn to you. When you talked to me on the beach, even though I was mad that you were being so two faced, I still enjoyed those times. If you told the police about my father, I wouldn't hate you. I would be hurt, but I wouldn't hate you."  
    "I don't want to hurt you anymore than I want to do something that will make you loath me, so if it's all the same to you, I would rather keep my promise," he smiled weakly at me, "but only if you keep your promise that you'll ask me for help whenever you need it, ok?"  
    It seemed like such a small thing to ask in comparison to my asking him to forsake his morals and do something that obviously made him feel guilty.   
    "I will," I told him.  
    If Heero could do something that he hated for me, I could get past my hang ups about asking for help.   
    "So, what did you get on your Calculus test?" he nodded at the envelope that he had given me, eager to change the subject.  
    I looked down at the envelope in my lap like it was a poisonous snake.  
    "I'm kind of afraid to know," I laughed darkly, trying to write it off as a joke that it really wasn't.   
    "Open it," he urged, "You studied so hard for that test, it can't be anything bad."  
    "That's why I'm scared to look at it," I muttered, "If it's terrible, then it's really because I'm too stupid to learn this stuff, even with all that studying."      
    "And if it's good," he argued sternly, "then all those other grades weren't because you're dumb and there is no reason why you can't keep getting good grades. And it means that I won't let you put yourself down ever again. Come on, you have to look at it at some point."  
    I sighed heavily. I knew that I had to look at my test scores at some point, but I really didn't want to do it in front of him. I didn't want to know the truth. I didn't want to know for a fact that my father had been right my entire life and I was stupid, incapable of doing anything. I didn't want to know that Heero was wrong, that all of his confidence in me was wrong, and that all that studying we had done together was for nothing. I didn't want to know that I was a failure and even more undeserving of being his friend.   
    And at the same time, some small part of me was hoping that it was a bad grade. Because if it was, that was normal. Nothing had changed. If it was, my father hadn't been lying to me all these years just to put me down, he had seen how useless I was and was trying to get me to see it, too. That part of me wanted to childishly believe that, even as the rest of me desperately wanted to believe the opposite. Because if my father was full of shit about my intellect and self worth, then couldn't he be wrong about everything else that he had spewed at me in hate?   
    I opened the envelope and pulled out my tests anyway, because I couldn't deny Heero anything, even at the chance that it was going to thoroughly embarrass me. I flipped through the other finals, seeing that they were pretty much what I had expected them to be, before finding my calculus test. I stared at it for awhile, unsure that I was really seeing it, but the mark on it was unmistakable. Heero saw my reaction and frowned, peering over my shoulder at it until he saw the B+ marked on the top in dark, red ink, that frown breaking out into a sunny smile.  
    "See, I told you," he said smugly, hitting me lightly on the shoulder.  
    "I don't believe it," I murmured and I didn't.   
    I felt like I was in shock. I hadn't gotten a B on a math test since... fuck, since my classes had moved away from long division and multiplication. Hell, not even a B-. And I had never had as much trouble trying to understand my assignments like I have this year in Calculus. So how the hell had I managed a B+? It had to be a mistake... but I knew that it wasn't. Mrs. Harkins hated my guts. If she gave me a B, it was only because I had earned a B.   
    "I told you that you were capable of it," Heero told me.  
    I shook my head.  
    "If it weren't for you helping me study-" I protested weakly.  
    "Bullshit," he rebutted, not losing his smile, "Maybe I helped you get better study habits, but the rest was you. I've told you again and again and again, and I'll keep telling you until it soaks into that thick skull of yours: You. Are. Not. Stupid. You are smarter than you think that you are. You've just needed the right environment to concentrate in, some place where people aren't screaming at you."  
    I shrugged, but didn't really deny that.  
    "I always just believed that I was stupid because that's what everyone told me," I murmured, "Quatre was really the only one who ever said anything different. I guess... after awhile, I just assumed that they were right, that my grades meant that I was dumber than everyone else."  
    "You just needed some quiet and a little bit of self-confidence. More than anything else, you need to stop listening to what your father tells you," he insisted.  
    I blinked at him in shock. I had told him about my father beating me, but never about the things that he had been saying about me my entire life. How the hell had he guessed that so many of my confidence issues stemmed from what my father thought about me? My friend put his hand over mine again and squeezed it.  
    "I know that he's your father, and you care about him, but you have to realize that he isn't a good person, and he sure as hell is not right about this. He says shit like that to you to bring you down to his level, not because there's an ounce of truth in anything that he says. You told me that he never finished high school, right? Well, you've already accomplished more than he did when he was your age. You're making your way through school, you're smart and you try hard. You're going to graduate and not make the same mistakes that he did and that makes him jealous, so he takes out all his frustrations on you. Don't you dare believe a single word he says about how good you are, Duo, because even if you love him, he's still full of shit," Heero ranted angrily.  
    Was that really true? Was my father just angry because I was doing something that he hadn't been able to do? Was he taking his anger out on me because, not only had I ruined his chances at graduating high school and going on to college, I hadn't dropped out yet like he had? Was he just lashing out at me, or did he really believe that I was stupid? I suppose that it didn't really matter if he truly believed that or not.   
    He had hurt me, saying those things, especially when I had been a child. I had believed everything he had ever said. He was my dad, he knew me better than I ever could know myself, so if he said I wasn't good enough, then I wasn't. But he was wrong. He had always been wrong, and if he had done that on purpose to drag me down or he really believed in my worthlessness, it was irrelevant.  
    "I don't know how to thank you," I whispered, "If you hadn't let me study here... if you hadn't helped me out and told me that I could do better, I know that I wouldn't have. I... It's been a really long time... since anyone's believed in me like that."  
    Heero's smile was almost enough to have me in tears.  
    "Anytime. Just promise me that you'll listen to me from now on, ok?" he teased, but I knew that he meant it.  
    "Absolutely," I managed a smile of my own, "I like what you have to say better anyway."  
    And I knew that I was capable of it. It was so stupid, but I felt like I could believe anything that Heero told me, even if he told me that hippos could fly. He could tell me that the moon was an egg in the sky and I would just nod like I had as a child whenever my father had imparted some great piece of wisdom to me. When had my friend replaced my father in my heart? When had he become this solid, unmovable pillar to me, the one that I trusted more than anyone else? It wasn't just that I no longer trusted my father or that Heero had done so much for me, it was more than that.   
    Because I loved him. And because, when I looked at him, I saw how much he cared about me. I couldn't remember the last time that I had looked in my father's eyes and seen love there. Real love, and not the scraps of affection that he gave me when he was fucking me.   
    "I should go," I said shyly, gathering up my test papers, "I have work in an hour and I really need to check on Pepper."  
    I felt foolishly guilty when Heero frowned at that.  
    "I really wish that you wouldn't go to work today," he said, "You're still recovering."  
    "It doesn't hurt as much as it did this morning," I told him, "And there isn't much of a difference between me sitting around my house doing nothing and me doing paperwork. At least I'll get paid for it."  
    "You could stay here," Heero offered desperately, "We could hang out and you could sleep over. You know my parents don't mind."  
    Looking at him, I realized that it wasn't that he was worried about me wearing myself out at work. He didn't want me to go home. He was actually scared about it.  
    "Hey, I'll be alright," I promised him.  
    Heero looked away from me, but I grabbed his hand, forcing his attention.  
    "I mean it," I said sternly, "I'll take care of myself. And if I get into trouble, I'll call you right away, I _promise_. I'll run right here. But I can't stay here. I have to look after my cat, and as much as your parents have been kind to me, I don't think they would appreciate me crashing here indefinitely. You'll see me tomorrow anyway, right?"  
    "...right," he said hesitantly, but I knew that it was the best that I was going to get out of him.  
    I stood and left the room with him, feeling like I was kicking a puppy as he looked at me with guilt, like he thought that he was letting me walk right into the lion's jaws and I supposed that that was exactly how he felt. I couldn't imagine what it was like for him, knowing that I was going back to my abusive father and being unable to stop me. But what could I do? I hated myself for making him feel that way. I was a horrible friend and too much of a coward to do what he wanted me to do to get away from my father. My own emotions were a mess, pulling me in so many different directions. Downstairs, we found Heero's mother in the kitchen, fussing over a slow cooker, and his father in the laundry room, putting a load in the washing machine.  
    "Duo's leaving to go to work," Heero announced to them.   
    Both of his parents stopped what they were doing, his father walking into the kitchen to say good bye to me.  
    "So soon?" his mother frowned, "Are you sure that you wouldn't rather stay? You still look a bit peaked."  
    I felt like screaming at that point, not because I felt like I was being coddled, but because staying was _exactly_ what I wanted to do, and couldn't.  
    "Yeah, I have a few things that I need to do at home before I go to work, and I really need the money," I said, thinking about my hopes of putting together some decent Christmas presents for them.  
    "Well, if you must," she said, but I could tell that she was worried.  
    "Um, before I go, do you know where my jeans went?" I asked her.  
    "We're going to clean them," Heero's father told me, "You can have them back the next time that you visit."  
    "Thank you," I said, a bit blown away that they would do that for me, and turned to Heero, "I'll see you tomorrow at school, then."  
    He just nodded, still having that pinched, guilty look that I really hated, but managed a smile anyway.  
    "I'll walk you out," Mr. Yuy said and I followed him to the door.   
    As I opened the door, he lightly grabbed on the back of my shirt to keep me from escaping. I felt a small burst of fear, not of him hurting me, but that this was going to be the moment when he demanded that I tell the truth about what had happened to me.  
    "Here," he said instead, surprising me again when he opened the hall closet and took out a jacket, handing it to me, "It snowed this morning and it's still pretty nippy out there."  
    "I couldn't," I held my hands out in front of me, but he just shoved the jacket at me with a smile that reminded me too much of Heero.  
    "Nonsense, you'll take it. It's far too cold for you to be walking around with just a long sleeved shirt on, especially with your injuries. You can give it back to Heero tomorrow, it's one of his. Besides, if I let you out of here without a jacket on, the missus would kill me."  
    I remembered Mrs. Yuy scolding Heero earlier that morning about letting me walk around without a jacket and blushed a little.  
    "Thanks," I said in gratitude as I shrugged it on.  
    I opened the door and was about to leave when Mr. Yuy added,  
    "Duo."  
    It was his tone that stopped me cold where I stood. Gone was the light, almost teasing tone and in its place was a somber, almost sad one. I turned to look at him and saw the same pinched, worried expression on his face that his son had had when I had walked out of the kitchen.  
    "If you ever need help again... like you did this morning when you called Heero... you know where we are. You know you have a place here where you'll be safe, don't you?" he said and it wasn't a question.  
    This strange feeling settled in my stomach like a lead weight. Gratitude, fear, sadness, joy, desire, desperation, it was all of that and more. He knew, I realized in horror. He knew exactly how I had gotten these wounds without Heero saying anything to him. I nodded, feeling off balance and shocked, at the same time that I felt relief. I was welcome there. If I was hurt or scared of my father, I had somewhere to run to.   
    "I know," I whispered and left the warm house, walking out into the windy and chilly winter air.  
    Sanctuary, that's the word for it, isn't it? But as much as I yearned for it, as much as I wanted to just accept what Mr. Yuy had offered me, to stay there for as long as I wanted, someplace safe from my home, I had to pull myself away. I couldn't lean on them like that. Even so, I walked to my house with a small, happy smile on my face.  
  
End Part 10  
      
(1) For those of you who don't remember 2007 all too well, what Duo is talking about here is OJ Simpson getting arrested for various charges, including kidnapping and armed robbery. In 2008, he would be sentenced to 33 years in jail. As Duo says, he doesn't watch the news a lot and he isn't all that socially conscience, so it isn't all that significant to him.   
      
(2) Yes, they are watching Nightmare Before Christmas.   
  
Author's Note: Yup, ASOL is back. Sorry for the delay. I've been posting this story on fanfiction.net but waited posting it here until I had gotten 50k. Since it's only half way through November right now, I'm going to continue with the project. When I first started, I decided that I was going to try really hard to get 60k, in hopes that I could get past all of chapter 7 and start on chapter 8 (the best chapter in my opinion). Well, it's the 16th and I'm at 52k, so I'm upping that goal to 100k (yes, I am freaking insane, but I want to try this). Wish me luck! Because I've been writing so fast, you guys have three part updates to look forward to. I'm going to bang those out today ^_^  
  



	39. Chapter 7 Part 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duo discovers the reason for his mother's strange behavior. Duo must make a choice between saving himself from harm or taking the fall for his mother's actions and risking the incredible wrath of his father. Will he risk his life for the woman that has caused him nothing but pain? How will he handle the realization that, in his rage, his father is capable of killing one of them?

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 7  
Part 11  
  
  
    It's such a weird feeling, realizing that all of that happened yesterday and not days ago. It's not even that so much happened between then and now, but I guess that's not exactly true. A lot _did_ happen, at least to me. Enough that, the thought that a little more than twelve hours ago, I was watching a children's movie with my best friend's mother, just seems insane to me. And if anyone had told me then that the morning would see me back in the emergency room, this time with my mother and not Heero, I would have accused them of lying. Yet here I am.   
    The rest of my day was mostly uneventful. I went home, not feeling frightened because my father was at work, and found that someone had cleaned the house. Rather, someone had cleaned up the mess that my father and I had made that morning. The iron and ironing board were back in the closet. My father's shirts were gone, probably put away in the closet. But the weirdest thing was that someone had cleaned my blood off the floor. There was no way in hell that my father would have done something like that. He always left whatever mess he had made, clutter or the aftermath of a bleeding, especially lately. In his mind, it was my mess, not his, so why should he be responsible for cleaning it? Besides, he would have been too drunk to care, and too much in a rush in the morning to get to work to bother.  
    It had to have been my mother, I realized, but that was almost as strange as the thought that my father might have cleaned up the mess for once. She was just as unlikely to clean up after me, and was certainly not in a habit of doing it unless my father forced her to, so I couldn't imagine her taking the time to do it, but the evidence was right in front of me. She had even done the dishes and taken out of the trash, something that she hadn't done in years. I stared at the disturbingly clean kitchen for a few minutes before I decided that I didn't care about her motivations and went upstairs to my bedroom. Pepper was right there at the door when I opened it, twining around my legs and meowing pitifully. I didn't know if it was simply because she was hungry or she was getting sick of me disappearing on her.   
    "Sorry, girl," I apologized, scooping her up and nuzzling her.  
    I carried her in one hand as I refilled her food and water dishes, emptied her litter box, and cleaned my room. I had a bit of time left over before I would need to go to work, so I brushed out her coat and played with her for a little while before leaving. She meowed at me sadly when I closed the door behind me and it was too easy to imagine that she was pleading with me to not leave her alone again.   
    That sound stabbed me right in the heart, but there was nothing that I could do. I vowed that as soon as Winter vacation started, I would take her out on walks and play with her more often. I wondered if it would even be alright if I brought her with me when I went to Heero's house. His parents obviously had nothing against animals and it wouldn't hurt to ask. Work was abysmally boring. I was basically just double checking billing reports for five and a half hours.   
    The only things that made that tolerable was the heater and Solo coming in to pester me whenever he was in the office. Most of us like to eat on site, but he even came back to have lunch with me. I was happy to see him and with how much energy he had, I was sure that his absence had had nothing to do with any sickness. He asked me why I was hurt and I spun some lie about falling on a patch of black ice. He scolded me about being clumsy for a few minutes, which only made me feel relieved that he had bought it.  
    My rib and side started to really bother me around eight, enough that I was finding myself taking a number of breaks from my work and popping some pills to make the deep aches go away. I can't say that I was really tired since I had gotten so much sleep and wasn't doing much in the way of hard labor, but I felt a fatigue that often comes over me when I'm hurt. I really didn't want to go to my shift at the factory later. My boss was going to scream about how he couldn't keep making concessions for me, even though we both knew that he wasn't going to fire me, and give me the shittiest kind of desk work imaginable. I would never end up actually going to my second shift that night, but I'm not sure still if that was a good thing or a bad thing.  
    It was probably a good thing, now that I have the hindsight to actually look back on it. I hadn't thought of it that way at the time, as my mother had dragged me into the car with blood dripping down my face. I kept thinking that I should have gone straight to the factory after my first shit had finished and then none of it would have happened. But I think... no, I am fairly certain that if I had done that, I would have come home in the small hours of the morning to find my mother dead.   
    There's still some part of me that screams against that. I think that there will always be a part of me that refuses to believe that my father is capable of killing either of us, but yesterday... yesterday I think that I believed it quite easily. I believe that, if I hadn't gone home that day, my father would have killed my mother in rage and it was only my intervention that stopped that from happening. A dislocated shoulder, black eye, and a concussion don't really come close in comparison to saving my mother. And if I hadn't gone home right then, I never would have found out what I did. That alone, I think anyway, was worth the price that I paid.  
    It came down to a simple choice, one that I've faced before and had had no idea at the time that it would be anything different: to go to the factory or to go home and check on Pepper, maybe get a snack if I had the time. I usually didn't have much time since I only get thirty minutes between my two shifts. By the time I get home, I usually have twenty minutes to play with Pepper and feed her, but more importantly, only twenty minutes before my father gets off his own shift. I had already fed Pepper, so that wasn't a necessity, but I decided to go home anyway. It was the sad, little meow that she had given me before I had left that had made that decision for me. I felt guilty about not spending enough time with her lately and I didn't think that my boss would be mad about me being a few minutes late since I was just doing paperwork. What I didn't know was that, thanks to the upcoming holiday, my father was going to get off early from his work. If I had, I might have skipped out on going home.  
    The lights were on when I got there, telling me that my mother was home, but that was alright. I felt so weird being around her lately after she had told me that she was sorry. She was getting moodier and moodier and while she hadn't spoken to me since then, keeping her distance, I caught her looking at me sometimes. Her behavior was so strange, it was making me uncomfortable. A dark thought kept coming to me, that my mother was being nice to me because of that time when she had gone to the hospital and disappeared.   
    Maybe the doctors had found something. Maybe she was dying and was trying to make nice because of some religious belief or maybe she had a brain tumor, one of those that happens in the part of the brain that turns people into a vastly different person than they had been. It just felt like some other, completely separate person had taken over my mother's body. She seemed to tolerate my presence more some days, and others avoided me like I had the plague. Which you would think was similar to how she's always been, but she wasn't. Before she had avoided because she couldn't stand to see me. Now, it was like she couldn't face me.   
    I walked through the front door and kicked off my snow covered shoes. It had indeed snowed while I had been sleeping that morning and no one had bothered to shovel our driveway. I mentally added it to my list of chores to do the next day. My mother was at the sink when I came into the kitchen and at the sound of running water, I assumed that she was doing the dishes before it dawned on me that there had been no dirty dishes when I had left for work earlier. Even if she had just finished eating something, it was unlike her to do the dishes right away unless Dad was in a mood.   
    That was when I noticed the line of liquor bottles and beer cans sitting next to her on the counter. That, in itself, wasn't all that shocking. I was well used to seeing a conga line of the things in the rare moments when she decided to clean their bedroom. It was the number of them that got my attention. There were two tall bottles of vodka, about ten minis, two bottles of whisky, five cans of beer, and two six packs of beer. That would have been alarming enough if they had all been empties; drinking that much liquor would make someone's liver explode.   
    But they _weren't_ all empty. Only the smaller vodka bottles and one of the big ones was, and I had rooted through the refrigerator earlier to make myself a roast beef sandwich to take for lunch, so I knew that that was exactly the amount of alcohol that I had seen in there. If any of those bottles were emptied, it had to have been recently. I could not imagine my mother, as much as I had seen her chug the shit in the past, drinking an entire bottle of vodka and then some in the course of less than an hour. Besides, even if she was on a spectacular bender, the beer was my father's and he would kill her if she tried to drink even half of one. She hated the taste of it anyway.       
    Suddenly, the sound of flowing water stopped and my mother placed another large vodka bottle on the counter, this one also empty. I watched, feeling like I was in the middle of some especially strange dream or trance, as my mother picked up another one of the larger vodka bottles, twisted off the cap, and poured its contents into the sink. My eyes went wide as I watched her, unable to comprehend what it was that she was doing. I just watched, completely frozen, as she emptied the bottle, put it down, and picked up another, repeating the action.   
    It took me the entire time that she dumped out that bottle for the facts to come to me. She was throwing out her alcohol. No, not just hers, because my father drank the whisky and vodka, too, and I had the horrible premonition that she was going to throw out his beer as well. It wasn't horror that filled me at that realization. That would come later. It was pure bewilderment. What the hell was she doing? And why was she doing it? The idea of body snatchers and brain tumors came back to me. It wasn't until she had finished dumping out all of the big bottles of vodka and started working on the whiskey that an epiphany hit me like a fucking punch to the face.  
    Her moodiness. The constant headaches that she was getting. Her insomnia and always scratching herself. Her drinking water with a grimace on her face. How I hadn't seen her drinking any alcohol in weeks... it wasn't because she had been drinking in secret. And those headaches of hers and her mounting irritability were not just because of daily stress. They were symptoms of withdrawal. My mother had quit, or was rather trying to quit, drinking.   
    I spent several minutes trying to wrap my head around that. I tried to deny it. It seemed like a dream, something that couldn't possibly be real, but the evidence was right in front of me. I had spent sixteen years watching my parents drink themselves to death and not once had the possibility that, one day, one of them might give it up come to me. I hadn't thought it possible for them to. They had never seemed to care about the damage that their alcoholism caused, either to their lifestyles, to our family, or even to their bodies. Their addiction was their livelihoods. They seemed to only go on from day to day for their next drink. My father had lost his job for it and while my mother's drinking hadn't gotten her fired, it had taken it's toll on her.   
    Why? What had changed recently that would make her do something so drastic? It was like she had snapped and gone temporarily insane. It was one thing if she was throwing out her own alcohol to keep away temptation, but she was throwing out my father's as well in some grand gesture, which was the same as committing suicide. For what reason did she want, not just herself, but my father to change as well? Had she finally gotten sick of what it was doing to her? Did she foolishly think that my father would change if they both gave up drinking? Was her alcoholism making her ill or had she just become so ashamed of her addiction that she was willing to go through all of this?   
    It didn't matter to me, I realized. Her reasoning was completely irrelevant to me, all that mattered were her actions. Because people say things like 'this is bad for me' and 'I should stop' and 'just this last time', but they're just words, just platitudes to make themselves feel better as they smoke and drank and lied and stole or whatever it was they knew that they shouldn't be doing. But in the end, almost all of those people went right back to what they had been doing, promising themselves that they would change next time, only that next time never really came.   
    But my mother wasn't making some half assed pledge to never drink again. To my knowledge, this had been going on for a few weeks now, and there she was, pouring out all the alcohol that we had in the house. That wasn't some empty gesture. Actions are everything. Whatever this was, she had to mean it if she was going this far. Knowing that, seeing her there, dumping bottle after bottle into the sink with this fevered, intense expression on her face like she was possessed by some demon, I felt undeniably happy.   
    I felt happy for her, not myself. Because unlike my father, my mother had never lashed out at me while she had been drunk. Her quitting drinking wasn't going to make her stop hating me or suddenly, magically, change her personality. But I still felt fucking overjoyed, even if there was a bitter part of myself that knew that it wouldn't last, just knowing that she was willing to try. I knew that there was absolutely nothing that I could do to help make things easy for her, but I wanted to. I wanted to tell her that, even if she failed and went back to drinking, I was still proud of her for realizing what she was doing to herself, and that she needed to stop. I wanted to tell her that I thought that she was stronger than my father ever could hope to be.   
    I snapped out of my shocked and amazed stupor the second that my mother had finished with the bottles of vodka and whiskey and moved on to my father's beer. I watched in horror as she popped the tab on one, poured the amber liquid into the sink, and threw the empty can into the trash with a look of triumph, disgust, and bitter smugness all rolled into one. Then she grabbed another can and began to repeat the process, popping the tab and tilting the can over the sink. It would have been the same if I had watched her take my father's gun out of his bedside table, take off the safety, and hold it to her head with the full intention of pulling the trigger.   
    "Stop it!" I screamed at her and finally moved, grabbing at her arm to keep her from finishing the job.  
    Images of my father's rages flew through my head, all those times when he had beaten the shit out of us over absolutely nothing. What would he do when he had a legitimate reason to get pissed at her about?   
    "Get off of me!" she snarled like a rabid dog and flung me off of her, "This is all _your_ fault anyway, so just get the fuck away from me!"  
    Guilt filled every inch of me, flowing into me like an icy winter and for a moment, all I could do was stand there, feeling like she had just stabbed me in the gut. All my strength left me in that instant. I had always know, you know? Even when I had been little, and I had constantly asked myself why my parents got so mean when they drank, why they needed that stuff so much, I had always known, deep down, that I was the reason. When I had been a kid and I had been confused about why my father changed while he drank, or why my mother would drink until she passed out right at the kitchen table, I had thought 'I'm the reason why they drink.'   
    If I had never been born, would my father have turned to alcohol to tolerate the stresses of his job? If I hadn't ruined her life, would my mother have felt the need to disappear into a bottle to forget that she had a son that she never wanted, a husband that she outright hated, and was forced to work dead end jobs instead of have a career? I had believed these things, that if my parents had a drinking problem, then I was the one to blame. What right did I have to complain about their addictions when I was the cause of it? But I had never actually known until right that moment, as my mother's light grey eyes bore fiery holes in me and she glared at me with such open contempt. If it weren't for me, she wouldn't have to go through withdrawal. If it weren't for me, she wouldn't need to throw out all the alcohol in the house. Anything that happened from then on was all of my fault.   
    It was in me to leave her there and let her finish the job as I wallowed in my own misery and guilt, but then she was resuming tossing out my father's beer and I couldn't afford to do that. Not if I had any chance of my mother surviving the night. I grabbed at her arm again and was more successful this time wrenching the beer can out of her hand.  
    "It might be my fault," I snapped at her, "but if you do this, he is going kill-"  
    The front door swung open and a very familiar pair of boots crossed the threshold into the house. As cold as I had felt when my mother had accused me of causing her alcoholism, it was absolutely nothing compared to the stark terror that I felt right then. My mother must have felt it, too, because her face went white as snow and her eyes widened almost impossibly. She looked like she might actually become sick with fear as my father strode through that front door and into the kitchen, barely taking a single minute to take off his coat and hang it up in the hallway closet.   
    I have no idea what she had been thinking when she had decided to toss out all the booze. I don't know what had prompted her to go from just drinking water and ignoring the alcohol so readily at hand to angrily tossing all of it. And I sure as fuck don't know what kind of messed up logic had gotten into her head when she had decided that throwing out my father's stash as well as hers was anything _but_ a terrible idea. I mean, what did she think would happen when he got home and found the refrigerator empty? Did she think that he would thank her? Did she think that there was any way that this would end without her bloody and half dead on the floor? At first, I had just thought that she was being suicidal, but that look of shocked terror on her face... I don't think that she had been thinking about the consequences at all.   
    My father paused as he walked into the kitchen, taking in the scene. I watched him carefully, but my mother turned away from him, her wide eyes focused on the interior of the sink. Her hands gripped the front edge of it and I could see them shaking. I saw that look in my father's eyes that he had so often gotten back when he had been a cop. I remembered how he had come home with that look, that look of need that hadn't yet had anything to do with me, how he would open the refrigerator door with such force and grab the first beer of the evening. That had always been his ritual. Come home, take off his coat, suck down a beer like he was dying of thirst.   
    Only now those eyes were fixed on the two of us with confusion. Confusion that, as he looked at what was going on in his kitchen, was quickly turning to fury. There was no way to cover this up, I realized in horror. Even if my father hadn't come home early and I had managed to get my mother to stop. Even if I had somehow managed to hide the empties from him and put the remainder of his beer back in the fridge before he had gotten home, he would have known. Even with all the hard liquor mysteriously gone, my father tallied his beer with as much dedication as a banker.   
    He would know if only one was missing. It would only be a matter of time, and by that I mean maybe ten minutes, if we were lucky. But we didn't even have the luxury of that long. Even someone with a few of their marbles missing could have put together the visual cues. There my mother and I were at the sink, surrounded by empty bottles and me, stupidly, with one of his opened beers in my hand. I felt like a thief that had been caught with my hand in a cash register drawer.   
    "What the **_fuck_** is this?!" he roared at us and strode forward.   
    I had the common sense to put the can of beer on the counter and back away from the sink. It's funny, almost ironic, but if it had been me pouring out his drinks instead of my mother, I could have gotten away in the moment. That terrible, frightening moment when he approached the sink and picked up the empty bottle of whiskey, examining it. I would have had the satisfaction of spiting him _and_ escaped what was going to happen, at least until I had to go home later.  
    It was my mother that fucked me over. In that instance when I thought about how I was faster than my father, how I could use his position to dart around him and to the front door, I remembered that I wasn't the guilty party. My mother was. That, in itself, was irrelevant. The point was that I was fast and agile and already prepared to flee. My mother wasn't. I could get away while my father had his back to me, but she just stood there like a statue, looking at him with paralyzed fear. I couldn't leave her behind to face him alone, I just couldn't. She would, I thought bitterly, in a heartbeat, leave me to fend for myself, but I wouldn't do that.   
    So I didn't move as I watched the nightmare play out. I held no illusions that I could stop my father if he decided to go after my mother, but I wasn't going to leave her alone to defend herself again him, either. What would happen, I asked myself, if he really did go after her? Was I just going to let it happen, knowing that I was not going to be able to get her away from him? Was I willing to call the police if it got to that? Did I really believe that my father was capable of killing either of us?   
    If you had asked me that question a year ago, I would have answered 'no' in aghast. Of course my father wasn't capable of killing anyone, especially not his family. Sure, he was caustic and his temper was immense, especially if he had been drinking. And yes, he had beaten the both of us pretty severely before. I've bled until I'd needed two transfusions. I've had both of my arms broken and every rib broken several times over. One time, he hit me in the head so hard that I was laid up in bed for two days. But kill me or my mother? He would never do something like that, on purpose or not. He would stop himself. Surely, he would stop.   
    But right then, standing in that kitchen and watching him look at those empty bottles, his grip on the whiskey bottle so tight that I could actually see it starting to crack, I had to answer 'yes.' Because when I thought about it, logic defeated my love for him. It defeated all the things that I had believed as a child, how I had thought that my father cared for me, at least enough to not permanently injure me or kill me. My logic was simple. A year ago, if anyone had asked me if my father was capable of raping anyone, I would have laughed. If anyone had asked if he was capable of raping _me_ , I would have struck them.   
    Yet here I am, with a thousand, screaming memories in my head. If my father was capable of that, when I had been so sure that he never could, why not murder? There was still that childish voice in my head screaming that he was my daddy and there was no way in hell that he would go that far, but that logic silenced it, because as desperately as I tried, I couldn't come up with anything to make that reason go away.   
    What was really terrifying was my father's tone. It was low and full of rage, but also stonily cold and tightly controlled, the way that he would get when he was truly, incredibly angry, but he wasn't drunk. That may sound strange, that I was more frightened of my father walking in on us like that completely sober instead of drunk, but I was. Because when he was drunk, he got angry very easily. At that point, he would have attacked both of us, let out his rage, and then gone away.   
    But when he gets that angry when he's sober... well, it isn't about letting go of his anger and then stumbling away to pass out or watch television. It was about punishing whatever and whoever had pissed him off. When he was drunk, he was unreasonable, but when he was sober, he was cruel and precise. I would have rather he had been so drunk, even just breathing would have set him off, because he would have just hit us for the sake of hitting us and been done with it. But he was perfectly sober, and perfectly capable of analyzing the situation, which was only making his rage more pronounced.  
    "Who the hell do you think you are?!" he snarled, his dark grey eyes darting from me to my mother, "Huh?! What the fuck is wrong with you?! You think you can just come in here and throw out _my_ property?! What the _fuck_ gives you the right?! Do you know what I have to put up with, every, single, goddamned day so I can come home and have a drink to relax after all the _shit_?! Well, DO YOU?!"  
    His hand suddenly shot out and he grabbed my mother by her chestnut hair, shaking her and making her cry out in pain.  
    "So what, you thought that this would be funny? A nice, little joke to play on me? Well, I hope the both of you had plenty of laughs over this, because when I'm through with you, you'll be too busy breathing through a tube to be able to laugh!"   
    He gave her another hard shake and I actually saw a tiny bit of blood dripping down her temple. I felt frozen, unsure if I should try to pry his fingers loose from her hair or if my interfering was going to make things a thousand times worse.  
    "Why don't you tell me, sweetheart," he cooed at my mother in that faux, sweet tone he would use with her when he was being condescending that would always drive me nuts, "which one of you fucking pieces of shit got this bright, little idea and maybe, just maybe, I won't break your jaw."  
    She looked up at him, her eyes wide and terrified. That look was like a punch to my gut. I don't know why, she had looked at him like that before, but right then, it got to me. It was the look that a rat would get when it was caught in a trap, or an antelope that had just been dragged down by a lioness. It was this helpless look of horror, and it did not belong on my mother's face. It didn't belong on _anyone's_ face. In that moment, I felt true disgust and hatred towards my father. I understood suddenly, when I had never understood it before like that, why Heero was so worked up about my father hitting me. People shouldn't look like that. No one should know this kind of fear, not in any kind of civilized society that wasn't dog eat fucking dog. And my father, _especially_ my father, should never make anyone feel that way.   
    "I did," I said boldly before my mother could confess.  
    I didn't think about my own sense of self-preservation as I spoke up. I didn't even feel afraid. That would come seconds later, but not right then when I made up my mind to take the fall for my mother. I could only see the terror on her own face and know that I had to do something to protect her. Even if it meant screwing myself over.   
    Those light grey eyes of hers fell on me and she looked at me with complete and total shock, unable to believe that I had thrown myself into the lion's jaws for her. That look made it all worth it, in my opinion. My mother was looking at me for once, without hate or contempt. She looking at me like she thought that I had lost my mind, but there was something else behind all of that. It was shock, but not just because I had confessed to something that I hadn't done, it was more than that.   
    It was like she was seeing me for the first time in sixteen years, not as the good for nothing son that she had ignored, but _me_ , and realizing that I was an actual, living, human being. And behind all that, there was a spark of warmth in her shocked gaze and I chose to imagine that that was gratitude, even if I was sure that she would never admit to it. That was fine. That expression was enough for me.   
    "What?" my father hissed at me, tossing my mother aside like a piece of garbage as he approached me, "What did you just fucking say, you little prick?"  
    I could have stopped at that point. My role in everything was done. I had spared my mother, at least for the moment, and I was confident that I might be able to survive what was going to come. I just needed an opening, an opportunity to escape before my father hurt me too much for that to be impossible. I know, I know, that kind of thinking is stupid. I was well aware that I was fucked, but I just couldn't bear to think 'he's going to kill me.' Even if I had opened up the opportunity to flee by absolving my mother of guilt, I knew that my father could just as quickly turn on her again. I wasn't going to be running away from this.   
    Still, I could have kept my mouth shut at that point. But if you've really been reading this from the beginning, you'll know that I can seldom keep my stupid mouth shut when I should. I don't even know why, if I was just thinking that I was already fucked, so I might as well chew into my father a little or if I thought that pissing him off even more was going to get things over quickly. Maybe I'm still a bit suicidal or maybe my mouth just ran off ahead of me, it's impossible to say.   
    "I should have done it years ago," I said and my voice was so eerily calm and solid, not even trembling a little, that I scared myself, "then you never would have gotten fired from your job in the first place. I'm so sick of all of the drinking that you do. Mom was right. You've let it become the most important thing, until you couldn't even hold down a single job. I have to work three, shitty jobs and Mom has to work two just for us to keep up with our finances and you had to fuck it all up by going to work drunk? Mom might not be much better than you, but at least she's never been suspended or fired like you have!   
    "I'm so tired of coming home and finding you wasted or that you not coming home at all, knowing that you're off on some bender with Donovan! You aren't a kid anymore, Dad, you can't keep doing this shit! I can't be responsible for everything around here anymore! What are you going to do when I graduate? Or if you get fired again? I can't stand it that you expect me to be the adult around here while you're getting sloshed every goddamned night, and then have the nerve to say that I don't pull my weight around here, or that I'm some pansy loser when the reality is you're just hateful and immature and petty, while I'm the only one around here that works to keep to this place clean, who makes sure that there's actual _food_ in the fridge instead of this crap, the one who cooks all your fucking meals, not that you care! So I'm getting rid of all of it. If you're not even going to act like a parent and pretend that you're still seventeen years old and don't have responsibilities, then I'll take responsibility for you! This bullshit is going to stop, _now_ -"  
    No matter what happened after that, I want it to be known how good that felt, to rant at my father. I was well aware that I was committing an even worse suicide than my mother had when she had started all of this, but I very suddenly did not care. So much rage that I had been holding onto for so many years came pouring out of me as I began to scream at him. It didn't go away entirely. People think that anger is a boil and in order to get rid of it, you just need to find a way to drain it. Well, they're wrong. True anger is like any other addiction. Once you let it in, it's a part of you forever and there is nothing you can do to get rid of it, but you can feed it once in awhile, and it'll leave you for a time.   
    It was Heero that I thought of as I was yelling at my dad. That might sound weird, but it's the truth. I thought about all the things that he had said to me, his disdain of my father and his insistence that he was full of crap, that he was just trying to hurt me to drag me down, that parents should never treat their children this way. Above all else, I thought about how he believed in me, how this boy that I had just met had more faith in me, more affection for me, than my own parents did. I thought about his glowing confidence that I could do better, be better, and it was my father who was the loser, not me.   
    And I thought about what was going to happen to me now, if my father really did kill me. Heero would be upset. I wished that I could call him and tell him goodbye, to not to worry about me, that I had loved him and I didn't even regret the possibility of my death, not because I was depressed and wanted my life to end but that, for the first time in my life, I didn't have a regret in my head. I didn't even think of Quatre or Trowa or being born. I just thought about how I had been given the chance to get to know Heero and his family, to feel like a person again, and how wonderful that had been.  
    My father lashed out with the empty bottle of whiskey, too fast for me to protect myself, catching me in the right side of my face. The bottle shattered on impact, the glass scratching open my cheek, and shards flew everywhere. Somehow, my eye didn't get cut by any of them. Then my father's fist was mashing into my left eye and it became too hard to think about anything else but the exploding pain in my face.   
    That's the last thing that I remember with any kind of clarity, thanks to the concussion. The rest is hazy, and I can kind of remember things, but I can't be sure. He hit me three more times in that same exact spot, making me feel like he had taken out my goddamned eye, and then I was suddenly on the floor, but I can't remember if those hits had happened before or after I had fallen. I heard him screaming something at me, but it's all a red haze, words yelled through a filter.   
    His foot, still wearing his work boots, slammed into my stomach and I coughed up blood as I tried to scream in pain. Through everything, I kept thinking 'please, not my chest, anything but my chest', but barely remembering to protect it with my still healing rib. I somehow managed to cross my arms over my chest to deflect any blows that he might attempt, but hell if I know how through the chaos. I felt him looming over me and hitting me in the face again and again. My lip split and burned. My nose ached and gushed blood down my face. It's a miracle by itself that it didn't break.   
    My father grabbed me by my braid and dragged me to my feet. I cried out at the pain, thinking that my mother wasn't going to be the only one bleeding from her scalp, then my thoughts became scattered again as he punched me with all of the force of a battering ram right in my stomach again. I threw up my meager lunch on the floor as my insides seized up from the attack, but for some reason, I didn't taste bile. I tasted blood. The impact of the blow sent my back slamming into the edge of the table. The pain was intense and I struggled to stay on my feet from the agony in my back muscles, but I hadn't needed to. My father kept my hair in his tight fist, throwing me around like I was nothing more than a rag doll.  
    "Nathan, stop it! Let him go!" my mother shrieked and threw herself at him.      
    She latched onto his arm as he cocked his fist back to strike me again, but it only made him more enraged.  
    "Fuck off, you stupid cunt!" he snarled at her and slapped her across her face, kicking at her until she was flung away from him.  
    I tried to say something. I don't know what. 'Dad, please stop,' came to mind, maybe even 'I'm sorry', but nothing came out. My father's face was twisted into this bastard mix of sadistic glee and fury as he threw me by my hair into the wall. That image of him will be burned into my head until the day that I die. I heard a terrible crack as my shoulder collided with the little shelf that hangs above the microwave where we keep the spices. They clattered to the floor, but I was too busy screaming in pain to notice at the time. As agony shot through my shoulder, I thought that he had broken my shoulder or arm, but the pain was different.  
    'Dislocated,' I remember thinking.  
    That would be the last somewhat coherent thought that I would have until later, in the early hours of the morning. My father twisted his hand in my hair and the next thing that I knew, he was shoving my head into the edge of the table. My head cracked and I saw muted tones and white and red as my temple met with that edge, the skin there tearing wide open and my father finally, _finally_ let go of my hair, letting me fall to the ground. I hit my head again on the way down, but I barely even felt it past the screaming pain in my temple.   
    Things go weird after that, disjointed. Blood poured from the fresh gash in my head into my rapidly swelling eye and I had to close it. I felt a kick at my back and the sensation of being lifted, but not by my hair this time, but the front of my shirt. My arm hung limply at my side and my shoulder felt like completely wrong. I think I said something. I think I begged my father to stop, but my words came out through bloodied lips, the sound bubbling and rough. If I managed to say anything, it was swiftly answered by another punch to my face, my right cheek that time. I only know that because there's a huge bruise there now. Looking at it reminds me of the bruise that Heero had. It's the same size and everything and the thought of us having a matching set is almost enough to make me laugh in my exhausted, drugged state.   
    Then I was falling to the floor again and there was no force on earth that could get me to stop my fall. I at least managed to fall on my right shoulder instead of my left. I felt a slight pain where my stitches were and would learn later at the hospital that I had pulled them a bit, but it was a hell of a lot better than the agony that I would have felt falling on my dislocated shoulder. Drowning in various pains, my concussion making my skull feel like it was full of angry hornets, I expected a blow that didn't come.   
    Instead, I heard this weird, metallic, blunt sound. It reminded me of someone striking some enormous gong. I couldn't place the sound at all and it was that confusion that had me opening my eyes, well, eye, even though I really didn't want to. I saw my father laying next to me on the floor, his eyes closed and blood pouring from his head. That bewildered me like nothing else and for a moment, I actually felt like I was having some kind of twisted nightmare. I was on the ground with the head wound, not my father. I couldn't equate that image, why he would be bleeding, why I was even alive at that point.   
    I felt like pounded hamburger, but I hadn't broken any bones yet. I could even still breathe, even if I kept tasting blood. I glanced up and saw my mother standing over my father's prone body, holding a frying pan in both of her hands, like one would a baseball bat. Heero's image flashed through my mind for a second, one of my memories from his baseball game. I have no clue why, but if I hadn't been so winded, I would have laughed hysterically. The frying pan had blood streaked on the bottom edge of it, but it took me awhile to connect that blood to my father's head wound.  
    My mother was panting hard as she stood there, staring down at my father with such intense hatred. Her hair had escaped from it's ponytail and was flying everywhere. Her grey eyes were alive and full of fire. She was holding the handle of the frying pan so hard that the muscles in her arms were corded. She looked like some warrior goddess, maybe even a Valkyrie, all she was missing was the flaming sword and a breast plate. She had never looked more beautiful. As she stared at my father's unconscious form in contempt, she spit at him and lowered the frying pan, dropping it right there on the floor. She rummaged through his pocket for a moment, taking out his car keys and shoving them into the pocket of her jeans.  
    Her cold gaze turned to me then and for a moment, I seriously thought she was going to spit on me, too, and leave me there, bloody and unsure that I was even going to be able to get back to my feet. But that bitter gaze just melted away at the sight of me, turning to one of sadness and worry. It almost reminded me of how Heero had looked when he had found me that morning, fuck that seems like weeks ago now, only the shock that he had had was gone from my mother's face. She was too used to seeing me battered.   
    There was only a tired acceptance and I actually found that refreshing. I didn't need to lie to her. I knew that she didn't pity me and that I wouldn't have to worry about her going to the cops. She knew the score, she had lived through it just as much as I had. That was what I needed right then, someone that understood me, someone I wouldn't need to be strong and composed in front of.   
    "Duo," she breathed out and kneeled down, mindful of the broken glass, "Come on, we have to go."  
    She had never spoken to me like that. So softly, so full of concern. I could have cried. I felt like I was dreaming, that my mother had been replaced by the one that I had always wanted as a child. Only that wasn't quite right. She was still her. That tiredness that she always had, the weary look in her eyes was still there, and I saw how she fumbled in trying to reach out to me with that worry, to care for me, like she didn't quite know how. She probably didn't. She hadn't taken care of my injuries since I had turned eight.   
    While she didn't know what to say to me or how to comfort me through my pain, she was a veteran in knowing how to roll with the punches and what to do to limit physical pain. She leaned down and, so gently I almost _did_ cry, slung my good arm over her shoulders. She was very patient, letting me use her to literally drag myself to my feet, wrapping an arm around my waist so I could lean on her and use her like a crutch. My attempt to get upright were far from graceful. There was so much wrong with me that I was having a hard time figuring out what did and did not hurt, which part of me was safe to put weight on and where I was still functional and mobile.   
    I gasped and cried out as my body screamed with pain, but my mother knew what Heero, had he been the one to find me like that, would have never understood, that sometimes you just have to move through the pain. Time was of the essence. Yes, my father was pretty much out, but I wasn't discounting his ability to come to and go after us again. I understood all of that perfectly well and tried as hard as I could to ignore the agony that I was in. When everything hurts, you just stop caring about the little things, like how my rib ached and every step felt like something was ripping through me. I even ignored the blood dripping down both sides of my face.  
    It was awkward trying to get to the door. I'm taller and heavier than my mother is, but you wouldn't have known that with the way that she was handling my leaning on her. When I dared to look at her, her face was twisted with determination as we moved slowly. We paused at the door. I was almost remorseful that I had taken the time to take off Heero's jacket when I had entered the house, but decided through the haze of adrenaline that if I hadn't, it would have gotten ruined with blood anyway. I was in no shape to try to put a jacket on, so I sufficed for shoving my feet into my sneakers. My legs didn't want to work at first, and I worried that I hadn't noticed some injury to them, but I think it was just muscle aches.  
    I had to lean against the door as my mother put on her own shoes and grabbed her purse from the closet, not putting on a jacket herself, either because it slipped her mind or because she didn't want to waste the time. The outside air was horribly cold and I shivered with it at the same time that some part of me couldn't feel it at all. My mother helped me over to my father's car, unlocking the passenger side and helping me into the seat. I was having a serious case of deja vu at that point, remembering Heero helping me into his car that morning.   
    My sliding onto the seat was even less graceful and more painful than that time. I was trying so hard not to jar my left arm and make the injury worse, but there was little that I could do. I thought about trying to get the joint back into the socket on my own. I've had to do that a few times. But I was well aware of what could go wrong if I fucked it up and my hands were less than steady at that point. If I was going to the hospital anyway, it would be better just to wait for the doctor to do it.   
    My mother got into the car and turned the key in the ignition. The car made a low, guttural sound and stubbornly refused to start. I almost laughed in near hysteria at the thought that we were going to have to walk to the emergency room. I wondered how Heero would take it if I called him and told him that I was already in trouble again? The thought of my mother meeting him was weird, but the image of his exasperation was funny for some reason, even if I knew that exasperation was _not_ going to be his reaction if he saw me right then in my mangled state.   
    "Fucking, _useless_ , piece of shit!" my mother hissed lowly at the car and turned the key again.  
    The car sputtered once more, but didn't do more than that. My mother's eyes were bright with desperation and for the first time, I noticed that her hands were shaking. I had the impulse to reach over to her and hold her hand, but she was too far away for me to reach with my right hand. I thought that her eyes were bright with something else entirely, something wet, but I couldn't blame her. I felt like we had just been through a fucking war.   
    I thought about Heero again, my mind eagerly going to things that were a lot more comforting than my memories of my father beating the shit out of me. What if the car wouldn't start? Would I really not call him to spare him from worrying and seeing me like this?  
    No, I easily thought. I had promised him that I would call him if I needed help and I would keep that promise. He had done so much for me, I could do that much. Thankfully, it ended up not coming to that. On the third try, my father's car seemed to realize that we were serious about this and cut the shit. It roared to life, sounding about as enthusiastic about this as I was, but it turned on just the same. My mother cranked up the heat in the car, though we wouldn't get much during that trip to the hospital, and peeled out of the driveway, not giving a single fuck for the speed limit.   
    I spent all of one second wondering if my mother had a driver's license before coming to the conclusion that it really didn't matter. No cop was going to give us a ticket. We spent the drive in total silence. Truthfully, we wouldn't say a single word to each other during that entire excursion, both of us too nervous and awkward around each other to try for conversation.   
    The adrenaline was starting to wear off, which really sucked, because then I could feel all of the things that I hadn't before. Like the scratches on my face, my swollen eye, and my aching back. Or how my face felt like mashed hamburger meat or the horrible headache pounding in my skull. Or, best of all, the little shards of glass that were sticking out of both of my arms. I must have landed on them when I had fallen and not even noticed them. They weren't nearly as bad as the time that Quatre had dragged me to the hospital after my father had beaten me with a vodka bottle, but they stung like hell.  
    Oddly enough, I was feeling a bit better when we arrived at the emergency room, enough that I was able to walk under my own power, just very, very slowly. I felt weak and tired, but the shock was starting to wear off, enough for me to not need to lean on my mother anymore. My mother went to the front desk to give my information while I found someplace in the busy waiting room to sit down. Just that one act seemed to wipe out what little energy that I had left. If my mother hadn't returned with a nurse, I would have gladly blacked out, even knowing that I had a concussion.  
    My mother had a pinched look when she sat down next to me and I quickly found out why. Unlike when I had been there with Heero, they were understaffed and there would be no doctor to look at me for some time since my injuries weren't life threatening. I wouldn't have cared if not for my dislocated shoulder, which felt weird and uncomfortable. The nurse gave me an ice pack for my shoulder as well as a sling to keep it from moving so it wouldn't become too swollen before the doctor could set it, but it was the anti-inflammatory pain pills that she presented me with that I was the most grateful for.  
    The nurse asked me a few questions; what was my name, how old was I, what did I have for breakfast, shit like that so she could figure out how bad my concussion was. The answer was a probable 'mild' concussion. I was a bit confused and groggy, and my head hurt like hell, but I didn't have any memory loss, which probably meant I wasn't bleeding into my brain. The doctor would ask me the same questions later and decide that I wouldn't need a CT scan, thankfully. I managed to get a legal pad of paper from her and a pen and then she went away.   
    I kept myself awake by writing and, occasionally when I got to something that I was uncomfortable with, doodling in the margins. My mother and I didn't talk at all the entire time and I was glad for that. She read a magazine, neither of us paying any attention to the television where other people in the waiting room were watching. It would be more than an hour before I would get seen by a doctor, but even though this sounds weird to admit, I barely noticed the time at all. I think I was just too out of it, trying _not_ to think about what had just happened, both my mom's quitting cold turkey and what my father had done.   
    I mean, what were we going to do now? Go back home? Where _he_ was? I held no illusions that we wouldn't need to do that eventually, but I sure as hell wasn't looking forward to it. As furious as he had been when he had been beating the fucking shit out of me, he was going to be positively enraged when he came to and realized that Mom had, not only knocked him out, but stolen his car. Would he come back to his senses and realize why it had been necessary or would he take it out on her?   
    I had this incredibly weird, indescribable feeling when I realized that I didn't _have_ to go home with my mother. Sure, I desperately needed a change of clothes and a shower, but I had a sanctuary now. I could call Heero and ask him to pick me up from the hospital. I could go home, to his home, and besides my clothes, I could take a shower there. I could sleep there for a little while and go to school from there with Heero. I could hide out there until my father went to work and then go back home to take care of Pepper. That I had that kind of option at all was just strange to me. For once, my guilt about using Heero's family and home didn't so much as rear it's head. I think, at that point, between my pain and my twisted up feelings, I was done with thinking for the night... morning, whatever time it was then.  
    Finally, it was my turn to be seen. A young, black haired nurse with glasses came to escort my mother and I into one of the hospital rooms. I sat on the examination table and it wasn't long at all before the door opened again, and to my surprise, Dr. Yeung walked in.   
    "Mr. Maxwell," he said drolly, looking somewhat amused and annoyed to see me again, "It seems you can't even go twenty-four hours without having an 'accident'. What is it this time?"  
    "My son got into an altercation with one of his classmates," my mother butted in, her voice quite calm.  
    Dr. Yeung raised an eyebrow at that, clearly not buying that story anymore than he had the one that I had told him that morning... er, yesterday. I wondered if my mother remembered that she was sporting a dark bruise of her own on her face and had blood at her hairline.   
    "I see," he said with a bored air, "I hope you will report the matter to the police. Your son's... 'friend' went a bit far, don't you think?"  
    "Of course," my mom said like the professional liar that my father had turned her into.  
    "Let's take a look then," the doctor stood in front of me to examine the mess that was my face.  
    He asked me those annoying questions as he poked and prodded the various head and face injuries that I had, namely the gash that was the source of my concussion.   
    "Is it going to need stitches?" I asked warily.  
    I'm going to blame my concussion and the pain medication for this, but my immediate thought at the possibility of my getting stitches again was 'but Heero isn't here to hold my hand.' Could I have gotten more childish? Also, in a strange fit of vanity, I worried that the doctor was going to need to shave some of my hair off. I was enough of a freak to not need to be partially bald in a prominent area of my head.  
    "It's stopped bleeding," Yeung noted, "and it doesn't look especially deep. Butterfly bandages will suffice. All of your other facial injuries are superficial as well."  
    I breathed in relief.   
    "Now for the heart of the matter," the doctor murmured and moved to examine my very obviously dislocated shoulder.  
    I thought that I would scream if I had to lose another shirt because of an injury, and was incredibly glad that I was still wearing one my winter work shirts, which was a button up. My mother helped me removed it so the doctor could get at my shoulder. It didn't look all that bad from the front, but I knew that I had to have a bad bruise where I had hit the shelf.   
    "There is some swelling," Yeung said, "but it looks like the ice and medication have kept it to a minimum. I'm going to give you an local anesthetic and maneuver the joint back into place."  
    That was the only warning that I was given before the doctor prepared the syringe and jabbed it into my shoulder. It didn't hurt so much as it startled me. Concussions always make time progress oddly for me, usually making things seem quicker than they actually are or I'll zone out and miss things. Yeung waited for the drugs to take effect before carefully feeling my shoulder and, with practiced hands, moved everything back into place. There was a sickening 'crack' sound again and I felt the pain of it even with the anesthetic, but I didn't make a sound, which disturbed the doctor, although he didn't comment on it.   
    "According to your chart, you've gone through this numerous times before," he said in disapproval, "So I don't need to tell you that just because your shoulder is realigned that that means you'll be using it any time soon."  
    I nodded, but what I felt was sorrow, bitterness, and more than a little bit of frustration. Just like that, there went my plans to knit Heero anything. I wasn't even so sure that I was going to be able to bake things only using my right arm. I could figure out how to do a lot of things one handed, I was used to improvising with injuries, but some things couldn't be helped. Again, my father and his fits of rage had fucked me over, but I was not going to cry about it. I refused. I would just have to find some other way of getting Heero a gift.  
    "I am going to put your shoulder in an immobilizer, which you must wear for a week. After that, you can just wear a sling, but I highly recommend that you wear both for the first week so you aren't tempted to try to use your arm too much and stress your ligaments. I am going to schedule you for two x-rays as soon as possible; one for your shoulder and one for your rib to make sure that you didn't do any further damage to it."  
    I managed not to blush in embarrassment at that light reprimand. I didn't think that my father had hurt my rib, but it was hard to tell since I had been so focused on my shoulder and head injuries that the pain in my chest was irrelevant. The doctor put my shoulder in the immobilizer, this disgustingly cheerful, bright blue material that had a strap that wrapped around my chest and a sleeve that went around my shoulder and upper arm, making it nearly impossible for me to move my arm in any way that would hurt my shoulder more.   
    My two biggest injuries more or less taken care of, the doctor checked the rest of me. He cleaned the blood off of my face, bandaged the cuts on my cheek and the gash by my temple, checked the swelling bruise on my back and the horrid, huge, black one on my stomach. I was given a fresh bag of ice for my eye, but there wasn't much he could do for my other injuries besides tell me to buy some anti-inflammatory cream for the bruises. He also checked the stitched gash on my side, noting with dry humor that really wasn't funny at all how fortunate I was that my injuries were 'well balanced' instead of all on one side. My older injuries were pronounced clean and looking well and then dressed with clean bandages.  
    "Keep icing your shoulder and your eye until the swelling goes down," Dr. Yeung told me as my mother helped me put my shirt back on and he sat down on a nearby stool to type something in on the small laptop that he carried, "Whatever ointment you're using for your stitches you can use for your head wound. Check for any signs of infection for a few days. Once your shoulder is healed, you should start doing daily exercises to strengthen your muscles again. Now, I've scheduled you for X-Rays in an hour. I want to keep you until morning to make sure that your symptoms from your concussion haven't worsened. You can sleep here, but your mother will need to wake you every one to two hours. I am clearing you to go to school today, but _no_ strenuous activity of any kind. Between your stitches, head wound, your shoulder, and your broken rib, even light exercise will only do you further harm," he lectured me in an annoyed tone.  
    "Thank you, Doctor," my mother said.   
    Dismissed and too busy for pleasantries, the doctor bustled out of my hospital room to get to his next patient. I was glad. He was a good doctor. He was perceptive and didn't fuss at the same time that he wasn't dismissive, but I was quickly losing the ability to stay upright and deal with other people. The same black haired nurse that I had seen earlier came into the examination room and lead us to a larger one with a bed. It looked so wonderful that I could have cried.   
  
*****  
  
    I'm glad that I asked for this whole legal pad, because I would have run out of paper in the hospital, even if Heero gave me a weird look for writing during lunch and I had to threaten him not to try to read over my shoulder. Let's see, what was the last thing that I wrote about before I blacked out... Oh, right. With an hour until my X-rays, sleep was all that I could think about. I took off my shoes and very carefully and very slowly, I laid down on my right side. My rib and other wounds on that side protested, but I knew that I was supposed to put some weight on my rib and there was no way I was going to be able to sleep if I so much as touched my left shoulder. My mother continued her silence, but pulled the covers up over me. I had that weird, awkward feeling again. Bitterness mixed with affection. Love mingled with anger.   
    Then I was gone. I think it took all of two minutes from the time that I had laid down to the time that I had fallen asleep. The human body can take a lot of punishment, and I've been injured worse than I was today, but I had apparently hit my limit. Dr. Yeung was confident that, given time, I would heal, but I wasn't so sure. It seemed like too much, like the universe was just throwing one thing after another at me and not giving me the time to adjust to anything. That my body was done being able to bounce back from these beatings was only just one of my many fears, but it was a serious one. I dreamt that my father had found us. He burst into the hospital room and shot my mother and I in the head. I dreamt of Heero asking me why he would ever want to be with a rag doll like me. I dreamt of him kissing me, then he threw me to the ground and changed into my father, raping me over and over again.  
    Just as promised, my mother woke me up an hour later so we could go to the radiation lab to get my X-rays done. I was groggy from the lack of sleep and my strange, constantly morphing dreams and just followed her there like a zombie, not caring if my hair was messy from laying down or that I looked like I was deeply drugged. The tests felt like they took forever, but then I was back in my room and nothing else mattered but that I hurl myself into unconsciousness again.  
    I don't remember those early hours of the morning very well at all, not after I fell asleep for that first time. I think that Dr. Yeung came back into my room to discuss my test results with my mother, I remember hearing his voice, but not the words that he was saying. I have a vague notion of my mother waking me up, dark rings under his eyes and an impressive bruise on her face, her lip split in a mirror image to my own, but the blood on her face and hair was gone. I remember her saying something to me, asking me the same kind of questions that the nurse and Dr. Yeung had to make sure that I didn't have any memory issues, and then she told me, in this kind sweet tone that reminded me, not of her at all, but of Mrs. Yuy, to go back to sleep. I really hoped that I hadn't called her that.   
    I woke up for real, feeling oddly well rested and a bit out of it, around six am, my internal clock not letting me sleep any longer than that. My mother was asleep in the chair next to the bed, her face looking haggard. I couldn't imagine that she had gotten much sleep and sure enough, when I made a small noise of pain as I sat up in bed, she blinked reddened eyes at me. I think that she had been crying while I had slept. She gave me a weak, faint smile when she saw that I was awake.  
    "Your X-rays are clear," she told me, obviously fumbling with something to say to me, "The doctor said that your shoulder is back in place and your rib wasn't damaged any further."  
    "Good," I murmured, all that I was capable of still half asleep as I was.  
    "Will..." my mother started and then hesitated, looking away from me very shyly as she tried to have a conversation with me awkwardly, "...will you be going to school today?"  
    "Yeah," I told her, feeling just as awkward and having a very hard time dealing with the fact that we were having a civilized discussion, "We're just going to be watching Christmas movies and junk, but I would like to go."  
    "You should," she met my eyes again and nodded, "And I know that you're hurting and tired, but you should go to work today. It... it would be better..."  
    She didn't say it, but I knew what the rest of that sentence was. 'It would be better if you didn't come home.' It reminded me of all the times as a child that my mother had warned me not to cross my father, to never mouth off to him or make too much noise around him, to just stay out of his way. But those words weren't delivered in the same cold tone that she had used back then. It was a warning delivered with worry, not just caution. She was actually worried that I would get hurt again.   
    Everything felt so surreal. Was this person sitting next to me, who had stayed by my bedside and gotten me to the hospital really the same woman that I had been living with these last sixteen years? Was she really the same person that had told me that I was useless, that I was the reason for her drinking, that I had been a mistake? It didn't seem possible. This couldn't be my mother. But it was, and I was having a hard time dealing with that, with her drastic changes. It wasn't just the alcohol, it was something else.  
    Nonetheless, I couldn't agree with her more on the sentiment that I should stay away from home, at least until I gave my father the time to cool off. I doubted that time would do me much good, but I was more concerned with letting my injuries heal for a day or two than if the time would calm his rage. If it weren't for Pepper, I wondered if I would be asking myself right now if I ever want to go home at all. If it weren't for my recent friendship with Heero, I probably wouldn't even be thinking about it at all.  
    When it came to my father, nothing had really changed. Even though he could have done a lot more damage to me had my mother not intervened in time, he hadn't, so why did this recent beating frighten me so much? Because I had realized that he could have killed me? But that only changed how I saw him, not how he acted. It wasn't even that much of a revelation, I think somewhere deep inside of me, I had always been afraid of him going that far. I had just told myself that he never would because of my love for him. It's easy to be in denial about the people that you trust, but him raping me had started to pull the wool off of my eyes. Heero's reaction to my father's abuse had just finished the job.  
    If I had realized just how little control that my father really had over his baser instincts before I had ever met Heero, would I be thinking of running away from home right now? I hate to say it, but probably not. I would have stuck with my father and tried to fall back into that state of denial because I had nowhere to go, no one to turn to. But that wasn't true anymore. I could stay at the Yuys home for as long as I wanted, until my father figured out where I was and dragged me back home or until Heero's parents got sick of me. Hell, if it weren't for Pepper, I could probably get away with spending all of Winter break there.   
    The idea of spending that much time away from my father was both awful and wonderful. I had an escape, a place where I could hide from him. But even through everything, all the shit that he's put me through in my life, and I want you to understand how much I hate myself for this, I still love him. That love is muddled and tainted and bitter, but it's still there. He's still my father and I'm still his child. That love keeps me from telling on him, and it makes me loath myself whenever I think about how much I hate him, how much I want to get away from him. The parts of me that have been with me since I was little and haven't faded as I've gotten older accuse me of being a terrible son. That's nothing new, either.  
    I don't know what to do. That one day my father might actually kill me is frightening, but I can't run away, cat or no cat. I'm weak and a coward, no matter what Heero says. I just feel confused and stuck in place, both with my relationship with my father and in my relationship with Heero. All I knew right then, with my mother's warning hanging in the air, was that I was far too tired and in too much pain to make these kinds of decisions for myself.       
    But I didn't need to. It was gravity again, that overwhelming force that had resulted in Quatre's death. Just as it always was, it's so easy to just close my eyes and let it do it's job, to let me fall. It was easy to blind myself and fall back into my father's jaws, because that's how it had always been. I knew that I would eventually go back and let myself get beaten and raped again. It was all that I knew, to let things happen and pick up the pieces afterwards. Changing course, fighting against gravity, was just too hard. I knew before I even started that I was going to lose.  
    "I have someplace that I can stay tonight," I told my mother, who looked relieved by that, "But... but what about you?"  
    She smiled very faintly at me.  
    "I know a place where I can stay for a little while," she confessed and I thought about all of the times that she had disappeared for days, wondering if this place was where she disappeared to, "You don't need to worry about me. Do you need anything from home? Your book bag?"  
    I shook my head. While I would have loved to have been able to take a shower and change my clothes before school, that was impossible and it wasn't like it would be the first time that I went to school wearing dirty clothes anyway. Thankfully, no blood had gotten on my shirt. I got out of bed, putting on my sneakers and smoothing out the wrinkles on my shirt. I felt horrible. It wasn't even the pain in my shoulder and my head that got me, it was all the little things, all of the bruises on my face and the repeated blows to my stomach. Even though I hadn't eaten since yesterday, I had zero desire to do more than drink some water.   
    I tried not to show that things like simple standing and walking were proving difficult, so it was kind of annoying that the thing that defeated me was my goddamned hair. It was almost as bad as my mother's, so I, unthinkingly, pulled the elastic off my braid and tried to fix it before I remembered that I couldn't use my left arm. I got as far as combing my hair straight with my fingers before I remembered that little fact. Ever try to put braid your hair with only one hand? It's really not possible.   
    "Let me," my mother offered and stood behind me.   
    There was that awkward feeling again, that feeling that I didn't know how to react to her, like she was a complete and total stranger to me, only it was worse than that. But I still handed her my hair elastic and let her fix my braid. The feeling of her fingers in my hair sent this small chill through me. It wasn't a bad feeling, it just drove home the fact that this woman hadn't ever touched me like that. The closest came to that morning when she had crawled into bed with me, crying.   
    "Thanks," I murmured, not just meaning helping me with my hair.  
    I think that she got that, because she went silent and seemed taken aback. She hid it by going to get her purse and let me lead us out of the hospital room. My mother took care of discharging me and setting up a follow up appointment a few weeks from then, then we had a simple, cheap breakfast  at the little cafe that the hospital had. It was oddly companionable, even though we didn't talk to each other. My mother had a bagel and I settled for some fruit and yogurt, all that my stomach could handle and even that was a bit much. The school was close to the hospital, so we parted ways there, my mother taking the car and I continuing on foot. I felt a spike of fear watching her drive off.   
    I had completely forgotten that we had taken my father's car to get there. I hoped that she was taking it back in time for him to get to work, because not having it would piss him off even if he could just take the bus, at the same time that I didn't want her going back home while he was there anymore than she had wanted me to. I hoped that she just threw the keys into the house and left before he even realized that she was there, but she probably needed to grab her work uniform. Would I go home that afternoon and find her as a bloody smear or would everything turn out alright? He might not know that my mother had been the one to throw the alcohol out, but he had to realize that she was the one that had hit him on the head. Anxiety turned my insides into a war zone.   
    I felt like a mummy as I shuffled into my homeroom and sat down at my desk. It was still pretty early yet and very few of my classmates were there, thankfully, but I could feel their stares on me. I was sure that I looked just lovely with bruises all over my face, my eye swollen shut, my arm in a sling and my head bandaged, but they quickly lost interest in me, used to seeing me like that. Maybe I should have just skipped school. It wasn't like I needed to go there. I could have gone to Heero's house and laid down on their couch or something. I had their house key in my pocket along with my cell phone. Laying down sounded heavenly compared to going through my daily classes, even if we had no work to do. I silently prayed to whatever deity was willing to listen to me that Zechs and Relena didn't start anything with me. I didn't think I could survive it.  
    "What the hell?!" despite his shocked, aghast tone, Heero's voice was like an angel from the heaven's.  
    I forgot about my injuries and almost smiled before my split lip reminded me that smiling was not on that day's agenda.  
    "Hi," I said meekly.  
    Heero sat down in the desk across from mine and just stared at me for a moment.  
    "What the fuck happened to you?" he demanded, his blue eyes narrowing as he looked at me, but I knew that he wasn't pissed at me but whoever had hurt me.   
    I tried to shrug, and I do mean _tried_. Do you know how hard it is to convey a shrug when you can only move one shoulder?  
    "I'm ok. It looks a lot worse than it actually is," I tried to assure him, but I really had no idea what I looked like.  
    "It's barely even been twenty-four hours since the last time!" he hiss whispered at me, his gaze suddenly turning cold, "What was his reason _this_ time?"  
    I wish that I knew the words to ease his anger, knowing that it was just going to lead to his feeling guilty that there was nothing that he could do for me. I didn't want to tell him about what had happened, about how scared I had been that I was going to die.   
    "It's complicated," I said weakly.  
    That only seemed to piss him off more, but how could I tell him that I had taken the fall for something that my mother had done because I had been afraid for her life?   
    "Damn it, Duo," he said, but now his voice was full of more grief than anger, "Is your rib alright?"  
    I nodded and felt such relief that I could at least assure him of that.   
    "Are _you_ alright?" he asked in a softer tone.      
    I blinked at him stupidly for a moment, his concern making me feel very warm. I still wasn't used to it, but it was easier to accept from him than my mother, which was kind of fucked up if you considered our history before we became friends. I nearly blurted out that yes, I was fine, but that was such an outrageous lie, I couldn't do it. I didn't want to lie to him anymore than I already was and right then, no, I was far from fine.  
    "Not really," I admitted in a quiet murmur, "Things got... pretty bad last night. He hurt my shoulder and my head. I still feel a bit fuzzy. They gave me some pain medication at the hospital, but it's starting to wear off," I had to stop myself from self-consciously rubbing at my shoulder as I felt the persistent ache there, starting to build from a light annoyance to a deeper, fuller pain, "I really hate imposing on you, but... would it be alright if I spent the night at your house? I just really don't want to go home tonight-"  
    I decided right then as I was asking that even if he said no, I would find someplace else to crash, even if I had to go to a shelter. Now that my pain wasn't overwhelming me and my head was starting to clear, I was realizing how tired I was. More than that, I was remembering last night with the kind of clarity that I couldn't afford to have. I remembered how frightened I was as I fell to the floor, the feeling of my father's fists as he had pounded my face, his look of rage and my feeling like I was no more than a rag doll or a punching bag. I wasn't ready to go back to that just yet.   
    "Of course," Heero cut me off quickly and could tell how relieved he was that I wasn't going home, "You're always welcome, you know that. You aren't going to go to work tonight are you?"  
    "No," I said, feeling guilty and trying to hide it, "I think I'm going to call out."  
    Even though Heero smiled and looked so happy at that news, I felt ashamed of myself. I didn't feel ashamed because I was calling out sick again or that I couldn't force myself to go to work with my injuries. I felt ashamed because neither of those were the actual reasons why I suddenly wanted to cut out work. I came to that decision simply because I didn't want to go. I wanted to hang out with Heero and relax instead of doing anything that could remotely be considered work. I was so tired, and I knew that a large part of that was because of my injuries, but not all of it. It was my heart that was the most tired. Was it really so terrible, my wanting to take a day off work just to be with my friend? It felt like it to me. I had skipped out on one of my shifts yesterday and there I was, happily deciding to do it again.   
    Not only did it make me feel lazy, foolish, and immature, it was dangerous. Not just because I needed the money, but I might get fired. Mr. Leneski had been pretty nice and lenient about my absences, but Mr. Lorathe was always looking for an excuse to can me. And if he did fire me, it wouldn't take long at all for my father to figure out that fact. But I chose to risk it. It was a big risk, but I just hoped that Lorathe's hatred of me was smaller than his fear of my dad.   
    "I just need to stop by my house after school," I told him.  
    "Are you sure that's wise?" he frowned.  
    "My dad will be at work," I assured my friend, "But I've been wearing this," I gestured to my clothing, "since yesterday. I need to grab some clothes and take care of my cat."  
    Guilt stabbed at me. I was the worst pet owner in the world. With all the time that I had been spending at Heero's lately, she had been cooped up in my room all by herself. I was diligent in making sure that she had food and water and that her litter box was clean, but she was lonely and attached to my hip when I was there. At the rate that I was going, she would be better off with a different owner. Was I being selfish and irresponsible with her? Should I give her to Mrs. Liddle if things were going to be like this? But I was just as much attached to her as she was to me. Maybe it was selfish, but I just couldn't give her up, even if I was doing a terrible job of taking care of her.  
    "I'll come with you," Heero insisted, "just in case there's any trouble."  
    "No," I shook my head, "that really isn't necessary. My father works from eight to ten, the house is going to be empty and I'm not going to linger for long. I'll just meet you at your house when I'm done."  
    Heero looked far from happy about that, but there really wasn't anything that I could do about it. I guess it wouldn't be a huge deal to have him walk me to my house. With the exception of yesterday, he had done it every single day that I had been at his house. He knew that I was poor and that my home was shitty, but the thought of having him actually going into my house with me had my stomach dropping to my knees. Just the mere thought of him seeing how I lived made me want to die with shame.   
    I know that Heero would never, ever judge me for how my house looks, he's not that kind of person, but he's also the one person in the entire world whose opinion of me I cherish the most. I don't want him to co-exist in the place that holds so many bad memories for me. I don't want that house to taint him, or risk for a second that he would be embarrassed for me. But there was another reason why I didn't want him coming around my house. Well, a couple of reasons, but they really boiled down to the same thing: my father.   
    Just like I had told Heero, I was sure that my father was not going to be home by the time I got out of school, but even though I was sure, I couldn't be absolutely, a hundred percent positive. Sometimes he liked to go home for his lunch hour, or maybe he had gotten the day off for the holidays or had switched shifts with someone. It was highly unlikely that he wouldn't be there, but not outright impossible. Even if he wasn't home, our neighbors are a bunch of fucking busybodies. If they saw Heero going into my house or even just loitering in front of it in the middle of the day, my father was going to find out about it, and my neighbors don't even like him or talk to him that much. They just like causing problems. And what if he was there? I sure as hell did not want Heero meeting him. Just trying to imagine what such a meeting would be like almost sent me into a fit of anxiety over a simple 'what if'.   
    For one, Heero hated my father. I didn't really blame him for that, all he knew about the man was that he was beating the shit out of me. But for some strange reason, even though my best friend had managed to fool literally everyone into thinking that he was someone that he wasn't from the time that he had moved here, he was a shitty liar. Maybe it was only because I knew him better now, or maybe he really had changed a lot since he had decided to drop the act, but it seemed like every emotion he had was written right on his face. Maybe it was something that he had to force, hiding those things, and he didn't see a point to it anymore. I highly doubted that he would hide his hatred in front of my father, and that would only get him into trouble.  
    My father was the other half of that problem. He loathed people from the north side of town, the richer they were, the more that hatred grew. He hadn't even liked it when he had needed to go there when he had been a cop and had always forbade me from going there myself. If he found out that I was friends with the Yuys, he would be pissed and no doubt drop the ultimatum that I never see Heero again, which would only cause me more problems because that is one order from my father that I will never obey. The only likely outcome from the two of them meeting would be my father hitting my friend.  
    So it was just for the best that I kept the two of them as far apart as possible. Oddly, if you had asked me just a week ago if that extended also to my mother, I would have said yes. While my mother didn't have some petty grudge against upper middle class families like my father, she has never been someone that I've been proud of or would want Heero to meet until today. Even today, I'm leery of it, but she's changed so much. I really have no idea what to expect from her anymore. She's like a stranger that I'm living with, but one that's been nicer to me in the last twenty-four hours than she has been my entire life.   
    So I suppose the answer to that question is just 'maybe.' Some part of me is still ashamed of her, of her choices and the things that she's done. And I still don't trust her. I want to. Isn't that fucked up? I want to trust my mother, that she will stay away from the bottle and continue to try to change, for whatever reason she's doing it for. I want to, so badly, be able to rely on her and think about her without bitterness. But I can't. That thing that's broken in me won't let me. Because even though her pouring out all that alcohol was this huge gesture, even though I'm proud of her for doing that and wanting to get rid of that poison in her life, I don't believe that she will be able to do it.   
    I'll support her, but too much of me believes that she's going to slip up and go back to it, that it's allure to cure all the problems in her life will be too much. Frankly, after everything that my parents and my friends have done to me, I'm still amazed that I've found myself able to trust Heero. But I can't do the same with my mother. I just know that, at some point, she is going to hurt me again. Asking for forgiveness, saving me from my father... those were such huge things, but they were only huge because I have come to literally expect nothing from her, so of course even a little thing is going to become overblown.   
    I hate that about myself. I hate that I can't move on past this, that I can't be the sort of person that forgives people that have hurt me, that I can't trust my own mother when she's making a genuine effort. I'm just as bad as my parents are. No matter what Heero believes, I'm not a good person. I'm not even a decent one. I've let too much anger and darkness in. My feelings are disgusting and loathsome, but how can you stop something that has become so much a part of you?   
    In reality, my mother is so much braver and better than I could ever hope to be. She's trying to be better. I'm not even doing that much. I've come to accept that I will never be a good person, that I will never be like Quatre, that I will always be full of rage and hate like my dad. I tell myself 'there's nothing that I can do to change', but if my mother can stop drinking, why can't I stop being so angry all the time? Obviously, it's because I'm weak and pitiful. Because it's easier hating someone than it is forgetting the times that they've hurt you. I've hurt my mother a lot, but she still helped me yesterday. What does that say about me?  
  
End Part 11  
  
Author's note: And thus the mystery of what is going on with Duo's mother is revealed. Chapter 7 is drawing to a close. I don't know how many more parts there are going to be, since there's a few big scenes coming up. 


	40. Chapter 7 Part 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duo spends the night at Heero's house. Duo discovers that Wren has played a terrible prank on him that all of their classmates participate in, causing him to have a panic attack at school. Will Heero be able to help him through his depression or is the straw that will break the camel's back?

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 7  
Part 12  
  
  
December 24th, 2007  
  
  
    11:53 pm. Seven minutes until Christmas. You know, I've never really thought much about this holiday, especially how other people look at it. For me, it's just time off from school and work, and a day away from my father. I don't pay much attention to Christmas music, although I will admit that some of the decorations are pretty (just not that stupid, inflatable Santas, uck), and I liked all the free food that you can get on the Boardwalk for the occasion, but other than that, it really doesn't hold much meaning for me. I haven't taken much time to think about how everyone else sees it.   
    I don't mind the consumerism, or even the religious aspects of it, but the spiritual parts. How some people, no matter what their faith actually is, truly believe that Christmas is the time where miracles happen. For some, that does take a very religious significance, but for others, that just means that Christmas is the one time of the year where people are nice to each other and go out of their way to help one another. If that isn't a miracle, I don't know what is. But I've never actually believed in any of that. I've always thought that it was sentimental and people were all too happy to overlook the truth.   
    Like how more people kill themselves during the holidays than any other time of the year. Or how many people commit acts of violence, theft, or even murder in the name of gift shopping. When you actually look at those statistics, it's hard to believe that Christmas is the time of giving and miracles. It just looks like more of the same, wrapped up to look prettier than it is. But tonight... tonight maybe I can believe that I'm just jaded. Tonight, I think I want to believe in miracles. Not the big ones, like a virgin giving birth to God or Santa visiting the houses of _every_ good boy and girl. No, I want to believe in the small ones like a father getting home in time for Christmas day despite all the odds, or my mother getting me to start to believe in her, again, despite all the odds. Because miracles aren't this big show from God and heaven. They're the little things like that. They're things that you always thought were impossible, suddenly happening before your eyes. I think that I can believe in that.  
    The rest of the school day that Thursday was blissfully boring. We watched movies in all of our classes, even Home Ec, and Heero helped me get to class to class, fussing over me even when it was unnecessary. A part of me really hated it. I didn't feel like I should be coddled over. I had taken care of myself through most of my life and it wasn't like my injuries were life threatening. But mostly, it was nice. If I could ignore the part of me that was desperately self-sufficient and independent, the part that made it so hard for me to rely on other people, it reminded me that I had someone in my life that _wanted_ to fuss over me.   
    Maybe I didn't need his help, but in a way, I did. I needed someone who cared about me and worried when he saw that I was injured. It amazed me sometimes that I even had someone like that, and that someone was Heero. So I let him fuss and I indulged in it, as annoying as it was at times. At lunch, even though I told him numerous times that I wasn't the least bit hungry, he bought me what the cafeteria was passing off as chicken soup, some bread, milk, and a fruit cup.   
    Despite how my stomach was still protesting the damage that had been done to it, I ate all of it, partially because I hated wasting money, even if it wasn't my own, and because Heero was the one giving it to me. He seemed to settle down a little when he saw that I was putting some food in me. Then he dragged me off to the nurse's office for a note to get out of gym and some pain pills since I hadn't taken any since the hospital and my head was hurting so much that I just wanted to decapitate myself. It had gotten so bad in third period that I had laid my head down on my desk, squeezed my eyes shut, and hadn't opened them again until the teacher turned the lights back on when the movie had finished. To say that that had worried my friend is an understatement.  
    The pills didn't completely get rid of my headache, nothing really could. It was easily the worst pain that I was having, although my shoulder was throbbing pretty spectacularly at that point. I was ignoring the pain from the multiple bruises on my face and the pain in my back, but they were not completely forgotten. I had to keep reminding myself not to scratch at the little cuts on my arms because they itched like hell. In gym class, while everyone else played indoor basketball, I sat on the bleachers and read. I was halfway through _Wide Sargasso Sea_ which, despite being rather short, was very interesting. My copy was still at home, but the school library had one to borrow.  
    Surprisingly, no one really bothered us that day. Sure, there were the usual taunts and Heero got shoved in the hall a few time, but he made sure that no one so much as brushed up against me, actually glaring at anyone who got too close. I wondered if he had always had this protective streak in him or if this was something new from finding out about my father. In a stroke of fortune, Zechs and his thugs weren't at school. This didn't really surprise me, he often cut class and it being so close to Winter break, he was probably too busy causing havoc somewhere else to be bothered with school. I felt relieved to know that he would probably not show up the next day, either.  
    Relena didn't do more than glare venomously at me, either. She and her friends were too busy talking about what they were doing over the holidays and who they were going to take to the Winter Fling on Friday night. The Winter Fling is a stupid dance that the school puts on every year around this time. I've never gone to it (what would be the fucking point), but from my understanding, it was just a bunch of people awkwardly moving around to pop music favorites and drinking watered down punch. However, if you were a popular girl, you had to go, and you had to have someone take you.   
    Relena being, well, herself, pretty and the richest girl in town, had a fair amount of suitors now that she and Heero had broken up. Normally, she loved playing this game. She was like a contented cat with a collection of mice to terrorize. She would string several of the boys that had asked her along, even though it was clear that she knew exactly who was going to take her, until she had wrung as much misery and anxiety from the boys that she could. She seemed to find it amusing. But this year, even I could tell that her heart wasn't in it.   
    When her friends asked her who was taking her, instead of coyly saying that she hadn't quite made up her mind yet, Relena had replied, with a great deal of boredom, that Troy Applebaum was. Troy being the most sought after boy in our school now that Heero was officially a social leper. What is amazing about that is that Heero still got a ridiculous amount of girls daring to risk social fallout by asking him. My friend was a real gentleman, letting each of them down softly by saying that he was flattered, but he had plans and wasn't going to the dance that night. How the hell he managed to do that without pissing any of them off, I don't know and I really wish that I had had that skill when Relena had kissed me.  
    You would think that Relena, being the jilted lover that she was and not knowing that her ex was gay, would have flaunted her going out with Troy in front of Heero, but she seemed completely disinterested in the whole thing. I would never tell him, but I caught her staring at him several times with this pain in her eyes. She might put up a brave, cold front around him, but their breakup had hurt her more than I had ever thought that it would.   
    I tried to feel glad about that. After all the pain that she had caused Quatre and I, she deserved a bit of pain. But I couldn't, because I knew exactly what it felt like to love someone that much and have them not stand the sight of you. That's not fair, I know. Heero had just been acting, and I know now that he doesn't loath me. Far from it, actually, and while I'm too much of a coward to have our relationship be anything more than it is, I'm closer to him now than she ever was. But for a long time, I really did believe that he had hated me and that had already done the damage of tearing me up inside. Some days, I still remember that pain and feel incredibly blessed just knowing that none of it was real. Everything else after that is a bonus that I don't deserve.  
    Heero's fussing got worse as we left school and it dawned on him for the first time that I wasn't wearing a jacket. He tried to give me his, but I negotiated by taking the bus to my end of town. I was planning on doing that anyway since I didn't want to waste the time walking all the way there and I was still too winded for that kind of trek in the cold, but I let him believe that he had won. I breathed in relief when I got to my house and found that my father's car wasn't there.   
    I don't know what I was expecting when I walked into the house that afternoon. I hadn't expected my mother to have stayed long after dropping off the car, but there was still this intense fear in the back of my head that I was going to walk through that door and find her bloody body there or something equally horrible. There was, thankfully, no one at all there and what I did find couldn't have been any worse than coming home to find a murder had taken place, but the state of the kitchen was still a surprise. It looked like a tornado had paid us a visit.  
    The frying pan and streaks of blood were still on the floor, not shockingly, and the floor was equally littered with the little, cheap bottles of spices that had gotten knocked off the shelf and shards of glass from the whiskey bottle. But now, added to them, were shards from a couple of broken plates and glasses and some dish rags. There was a jar of jelly that was opened and spilled all over the counter. The gallon of milk was overturned, opened, and spilled all over the floor. The door to the refrigerator was also wide open and the thought of all the food that had just spoiled had me cringing. But, of course, the remaining alcohol was back inside of it, a few cans of beer mysteriously (or not so mysteriously) missing.   
    The most shocking thing of all was the kitchen table that had been flipped over and one chair that had been flung across the room. One of the legs had come off and another was very clearly splintered. The very first thought in my head was that my mother had gone home that morning and my father had attacked her. Completely ignoring the mess, I went to the house phone and dialed my mother's work number.  
    "Yeah?" a gruff voice answered.   
    "Hi, is Helen in today?" I asked, my hand clutching the headset so tightly that I was actually hurting my hand as I waited for her boss to tell me no and send me spiraling into panic.  
    "She's waiting a table," the man snapped at me, "What d'ya want?"  
    "N-nothing," I stammered, but the relief that I felt just then was so powerful that I could have hugged the prick, "Thanks."  
    I cut off the call and almost put the phone back on the hook before I somehow remembered that I needed to call out for work. I dialed Leneski's number first, since he would be easier to deal with. I told him, mournfully, that my injuries from the previous day were really bothering me and how sorry I was that I didn't think that I could work. To my continued relief, he didn't seem all that bothered, just told me to get better and not worry about it, if I needed the extra hours, to let him know when I was feeling up to it and he would see what he could do.  
    Lorathe was, of course, another matter. He swore and yelled and lectured me about how lazy I was, how he didn't care if I had gotten shot, I had responsibilities. I let him rant. He really didn't hold a candle to the abusive things that my father and mother would say when they were mad, he was just a lot of hot wind. I hung up when he was finally finished laying into me, but he hadn't said that I was fired, so that was something. I looked around at the mess in the kitchen, deciding that my father must have done it out of anger when he had come to that morning, like a little kid throwing an epic temper tantrum. I thought about cleaning it up, just like I always did when my father made a mess. It was my responsibility, making sure that the house was clean, and if he came home that night to find it still a mess, he was going to be pissed.   
    But then I heard Heero's voice in my head, telling me that it was not my responsibility to take care of my parents. I felt this little wave of anger and bitterness as I looked at the destruction that my father had caused. Why should I clean it up? Because he would get mad? He was always angry, and he was already pissed at me from that morning, so did it really make a difference? Because it was my responsibility? But why? Why did it have to be mine? I didn't make the mess, _he_ did. I didn't even have the ability to really clean because _he_ had beaten me up.   
    The part of me that had always been dutiful, had always done what I've been told, wailed that I needed to, no one else was going to do it. But it was like a compulsion, like locking the bathroom door when no one is home. A habit. Maybe, just for once, my father could see what he had done. It wouldn't solve anything, but that one time, I didn't want to clean up his mess. I didn't want to be the responsible adult, even if it was going to enrage him. The thought of that usually sent me into fits of fear, but not that day. I think I was running out of the ability to care. It wasn't like I could flip the table back over anyway, I told myself.   
    The most I did was close the refrigerator door, but the rest I ignored and walked upstairs to my bedroom. Pepper ran out of her hole and meowed frantically at me. I picked her up and cooed at her, settling her down. I went through the motions, refilling her food and water and cleaning up after her. I wished that I could just take her with me to Heero's house, but that would have been rude. I played with her for a little while, feeling terrible about leaving her again, and then I packed some things into my book bag. My copy of _Wide Sargasso Sea_ , pajamas, Heero's jacket that his parents had lent me, a change of clothes, my phone charger, and when I went downstairs, some toiletries, including my shampoo. I planned to take a nice, long, hot shower that night.   
    In a moment of insight, I wrote my cell phone number on a post-it note that I labeled 'emergencies' and stuck it in my mother's bed side table. I knew that she would see it and my father wouldn't because, to my knowledge, he never looked through her things and her pills for her headaches were in that same drawer. I worried that giving either of my parents that number wasn't smart, but what harm would it do? And I liked the idea that, if my mother ran into trouble, she could call me. I didn't think that she would, but it made me feel better to just have that option.  
    Then I was gone, already feeling excited and happy that I was going to be spending the night with Heero again, which was a very strange feeling as I walked past the destroyed kitchen. But I put it out of my mind. It was behind me, and maybe I would have to pay for it later, but not that night. That night, I was safe and far away from my father. As I walked to the bus stop, it began to snow. I had forgotten to take my gloves, but that was alright. It was cold, but not incredibly so.   
    The sky was grey and dreary as I walked up the street to the Yuys' home and the little lanterns lining the walkway were on, although they were quickly becoming covered with snow. The lattice was bare of it's flowers, someone having trimmed the vines down, but the walkway had been very recently shoveled by someone and I was able to walk to the door in my sneakers with no trouble. The lights by the front door were on and the door was unlocked. From the moment that I opened the door and walked into the foyer, I could smell something delicious cooking. Compared to how I had felt when I had walked into my own house, it felt like coming home. A voice warned me about how dangerous thoughts like those were, but I ignored it for once.  
    "Duo, is that you?" Mrs. Yuy's voice came from the kitchen and I had to smile, even if it made my lip sting and the bruises on my cheeks ache.  
    She stuck her head out of the kitchen door way as I walked out of the foyer, taking off my snow covered shoes and putting Heero's jacket in the closet. She had a big, sunny smile on her face as she saw me, but it quickly devolved into a look of shock as she gasped. For a moment, I couldn't figure out why she looked like that, thinking that maybe the door hadn't closed all the way or something, before I remembered what I looked like.   
    "Oh, my god, Duo!" she rushed out of the kitchen towards me.  
    "Mom, I already told you," Heero's exasperated voice floated out of the kitchen and he and his father walked out to greet us.   
    Mrs. Yuy gently touched my face, turning it up towards the light so she could properly see the damage and making noises in sympathy. I imagined that it looked pretty extensive and almost wished that I had looked at myself in the mirror before then.  
    "You said that he got into a fight at school," she scolded her son and let go of me, looking like she wanted to hug me or something, "not that he was assaulted! I hope that you told the principal about it this time! This has gone on for far too long!"  
    I glanced over at Mr. Yuy and found him frowning, that same expression on his face that he had had the previous day when he had been examining the gash on my side, like he had swallowed something rotten. Heero just looked embarrassed, either for my sake or because he had been forced to lie to his parents again.  
    "It wasn't on school property," I corrected, the closest that I could come to the truth, "And it was mostly my fault. I knew that this person was in a bad mood, but I was upset and said a lot of things that I knew was going to make them even angrier. I knew that they were going to hit me for it, but I couldn't stop myself."  
    "It was most certainly not your fault," Heero's father interrupted and if his tone wasn't so tightly controlled, I would have thought that he was angry, "Hitting someone... assaulting them simply because they said some things that you didn't like is something that only a child would do. No adult should act like that, whether they're eighteen or fifty. Speaking your mind isn't a crime. Whoever did that to you should, at the very least, be ashamed of themselves if not brought up on charges. I wish that you would respect yourself more and turn this person in. If someone is hurting you, no matter their age, sex, if they're close to you or complete strangers, you owe it to yourself to defend yourself, no matter what you need to do. No one can help you unless you want help. If anyone at all is causing you harm, even if they aren't hitting you, you don't owe them anything, Duo, you know that, right?"  
    My stomach twisted unpleasantly with every word. I'm not dense, I knew that Heero's dad knew what had happened to me, just like he had the last time, just like how I knew that he meant everything that he was telling me. I suddenly felt violently ill, to the point where I thought that I was going to throw up right there between the foyer and the living room. I saw where Heero got it, his passion and anger when we talked about my father. I half expected him to shoot his father some look, either out of annoyance for the lecture or embarrassment for getting caught in a lie, but he just kept looking at me and I realized that he believed everything that his father had said.  
  _"No one can help you unless you want help."_  
    In my head, I saw my father's angry face as he had picked up the empty bottle of whiskey. I saw myself decide to take the fall for my mother instead of run away. And I saw the look of rage... no, the look of hatred on my dad's face as he had swung that bottle at me. I had ignored it, actually ignored it, but then... in my head... I remembered the thing that I had dreamed about in the hospital, the thing that made me want to cry and scream, made me wish that my father had done a better job of bashing my head in so I could forget about it. How that look of hatred had changed as he had started to pummel me. It had changed into a sadistic, almost gleeful sneer. He had enjoyed it.   
    No! Some part of me screamed in denial. He had just been angry, that's why he had hit me, that was the entire reason. There was no way that he could have actually liked almost killing me.  
    'But he did,' I thought in horror and sorrow, 'He was smiling.'  
   _"You don't owe them anything, Duo, you know that, right?"_  
    I thought about how my mother had pulled me up off the floor and brought me to the hospital. I thought about how she had lied to the doctor and then the two of us had just left like nothing had happened. I remembered her look of terror that she had maintained right up until she had decided to hit my father with that frying pan. She had been so scared... we both had, but the idea that we should call the police and report my father hadn't crossed either of our lips that entire time.   
    I didn't owe my father anything, especially not the safety to continue hurting my mother and myself. A lovely thought. I just wish that I could believe it. I think that, maybe, a part of me does. That's the part that made Mr. Yuy's words rattle me so badly. That part knew that I had come close to being seriously, perhaps permanently injured that night, maybe even killed, and compared to that, my feelings that I owed my parents my life, that I had to be dutiful to make it up to them for all the shit that I had caused them, was childish.   
    But the rest of me still protested. It fed me memories of all of the times that my father had come home tired and frustrated, every time I had caught my mother crying, every time that I had fucked up. They were my parents and even if they didn't like me, they still cared for me. I wasn't homeless because of them. I had caused them so much pain, and if my father had to be angry enough to strike me, wasn't that my fault? Didn't I deserve that for everything that I've done to him and my mother, and everything that I had done to Quatre and Trowa as well?   
   _"If someone is hurting you-"_  
    I realized that my right arm was trembling and had to force it stop. He didn't know, I told myself. Heero's father... he thought that he knew, but he _didn't_. He just... didn't understand, just like Heero. That thought gave me some measure of comfort, but for some reason, it also left a bad taste in my mouth.   
    "I-I'm sorry," I stammered.   
    "What are you apologizing for?" Mr. Yuy asked in confusion, his brow furrowed.  
    I didn't know. I have no idea why I blurted that out all of a sudden.  
    "For being a coward," I muttered, "I'm not brave enough to try to get anyone into trouble, and I asked Heero not to tell either, so he has to deal with all of this..."  
    My friend looked startled at that and I wondered which bothered him more, his inability to get Zechs to stop bullying the two of us, or the promise that I had forced him to make regarding my father. Mr. Yuy placed his hand on my right shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze.   
    "There is no shame in being afraid," he told me in this soft, gentle tone that almost had me crying with all of the things that I yearned for right then, all of his kindness and even that one, small touch, but it wasn't him that I craved them from, "But if you ever need anything, or if something's going on and you need to ask for help, we're always here, ok?"  
    I tried to tell him how much I appreciated it, their opening their home to me, just knowing that they wanted to help even though they didn't entirely know what was going on, but words were impossible right then. I just nodded and rubbed tiredly at my eyes, wiping away my tears before they could fall and everyone could see them.   
    Heero's mother looked truly disturbed by what was happening, almost frantic and unsure what to do. I don't know if she knows what Heero does and what his father obviously suspects, but she definitely does now. I was afraid that she was going to ask her husband what was going on, but she put her hand on my upper back and rubbed, that one motion somehow making me feel much better.  
    "You must be hungry," she mothered, steering me towards the kitchen, "I have some vegetable soup left over that I've been saving for you. Would you like me to heat you up some?"  
    "Yes, please," I said, grateful for her getting me out of that incredibly awkward conversation.  
    She sat me down at the kitchen table, dropping my backpack next to me and she went to the fridge to get out the soup. Heero sat down across from me and flashed me an apologetic look, no doubt for his father disturbing me like that. I smiled at him. It wasn't anyone's fault but my own that his father had even felt the need to say those things. Besides, even though I still felt bothered by it, his assurance that they would help me if I ever needed it made me feel good.  
    "Now, Duo," Mrs. Yuy said as she heated up the soup on the stove, "We have some steaks and some fresh salmon for dinner tonight. Do you have any preference?"  
    Both of those sounded amazing and my stomach growled in response. It seemed that my stomach was willing to forget it's lack of appetite and injury for the sake of a good meal.   
    "Either are good," I told her, "We almost never have fish, it's too expensive, especially salmon. I haven't had steak in a really long time, either."  
    "I'll surprise you, then," she said with a cheeky wink and returned to heating up the soup.  
    "How's the shoulder?" Heero asked me as we waited.      
    "Not bad," I said and it wasn't really a lie, compared to the pain that I had felt when it had first happened, the ache that I was feeling was manageable, especially with pain medication, "I'll probably take some more ibuprofen soon, but the pain isn't awful."  
    "Do you want to lay down after you eat?" he asked worriedly, "You've had a really long day, and your broken rib must be bothering you, too."  
    "No," I said dismissively, not wanting to spend the day that I had with him sleeping, even if I did feel a bit winded from everything, "I'm fine. It's not like I'm running around or something and I'm not that tired."  
    "We have some ice packs in the fridge if you want some on your eye," he offered.  
    I had the thought then that Heero was an almost perfect melding of his parents: he had the perceptiveness and passion of his father and the good natured fussing and laid back attitude of his mother. That almost made me laugh and I couldn't help but smile affectionately at him.  
    "That would help a lot, thanks."  
    Heero and I ate our soup together, although I was sure that he would have wanted something else for his post school snack. Mr. Yuy walked into the kitchen wearing a heavy winter jacket and snow pants, carrying a hefty looking shovel.  
    "Mind heating some of that up for me in a bit?" he asked his wife, nodding his head towards the pot of soup.  
    "You aren't going out there to shovel the patio and the porch are you?" she asked him with a frown.  
    "Yup," he responded a bit cheekily.  
    "I told you it's ridiculous," she scolded, "It's just going to keep snowing! Even if you're leery of shoveling after it's all piled up, why not just let it all melt in the spring? We won't be needing the patio for awhile and if Heero and Duo want to go to the pond, well, that's what snow boots are for! Just because you aren't an old man yet, it doesn't mean that you won't hurt your back!"  
    Mr. Yuy grinned at her and pressed a quick kiss to her cheek, ignoring her concerns.  
    "Love you, dear," he quipped and walked to the back door, slipping on some snow boots.  
    His wife huffed, watching him go out the door with her arms crossed over her chest, but the affectionate smile on her face destroyed it. Outside, even though it wasn't even five yet, the sky was getting darker and the snow that was falling was getting thicker. I was with Mr. Yuy on the subject of shoveling. I hated doing it myself, and we only had our tiny lawn and driveway to worry about, but it was aggravating putting the work in and knowing that more snow was only a day or two away. But if you just left it there for too long, it would ice up and become an even bigger pain to shovel later on. I don't think that Heero's mother realized just how far away Spring was or that, when it came, it wasn't going to get hot enough to melt _all_ of the snow for some time.   
    "This is perfect ice skating weather," Heero noted as he finished his soup and looked out of the window to their backyard.   
    I nodded. It really was perfect sort of weather for any kind of winter activity, be it ice skating, sledding, snowball fights, building snowmen or skiing. It wasn't cold enough out yet for it to be painful to be outside for long periods of time, but cold enough for all the ponds to be iced over. The snow was fluffy instead of mushy and there was little wind. I felt excitement for a moment, thinking about Heero and I going out to the pond. Then the ache in my shoulder came back full force, as if it was some sentient thing all too happy to cruelly remind me that I couldn't do that.   
    "I'm sorry, Duo," Heero caught me looking with irritation at my arm in its sling, sounding so guilty for just mentioning ice skating, like he had been the one to injure me, "I wasn't even thinking..."  
    "It's alright," I smiled at him, telling myself how stupid it was to feel low about this when we would have plenty of opportunity to skate when my shoulder wasn't so fucked up, "I could probably skate with my shoulder like this, but I'm too scared of falling and making it worse."  
    Heero fell silent again, looking out of the window. I could see his father out there, shoveling right outside the door and trying to make a path down to the patio, shoring up the snow on the porch. I finished my soup and accepted a chocolate chip cookie from Heero's mother who joined us at the table for a moment, enjoying a cookie herself. They were piping hot and had just come out of the oven.   
    "Is it ever going to _stop_ snowing?" Heero suddenly griped, "It's been going on for weeks now."  
    I laughed almost violently at that, glad that I hadn't been drinking or eating, causing Heero and Mrs. Yuy to stare at me. It was true that it had been snowing pretty steadily since the start of December, starting on and off, and more continuously this week, but we hadn't really had any of the bigger storms that I was waiting for yet.   
    "You know that this is only December, right?" I teased him, "This isn't Florida. December is just when the snow starts going. You still have two more months of winter to look forward to, and we still get some snow here and there in March, sometimes in April, though not always. Also, December is the mildest month here. Things really start to get shitty around mid-January, and February is pretty awful."  
    Heero stared at me incredulously with this look of doom that almost had me laughing at him again. His mother looked shocked by this bit of information as well, so I guess she must have grown up in Florida or some other southern place. I wondered if Mr. Yuy was more used to this, because he didn't seem very put out by the snow and while his wife seemed more lazy about taking care of it, he understood about basic maintenance of it. Had he grown up around here, since his parents lived so close by, or had they just moved here afterwards? (1)   
    After the two of them recovered from their shock, Heero dragged me upstairs. The rest of the day and night that I spent there passed a lot more pleasantly than how it had started. I went to the guest bathroom to put my toiletries in there. It wasn't really necessary since I was only staying the night, but I liked how it made me feel. I also took the time to take care of my various injuries, checking what needed to be checked and putting ointment on all of the cuts. I held off on putting clean bandages and band-aids on. I would take care of that after I had a shower later on.   
    I tossed the rest of my things into the guest bedroom and found Heero waiting in the hallway for me, an ice pack in hand. I pressed it to my swollen eye, hoping that it would help the swelling go down enough for me to see a little the next day, and followed him into the entertainment room. It was impossible for me to play video games. I wasn't that great at them to begin with, although Heero insisted that I was taking to them pretty well for someone that had never played before, but with my eye swollen shut, my field of view was fucked up, and there was no way I could use any of the controllers well enough with just one hand.   
    I didn't feel as mournful about that as I had about us not being able to go ice skating together, so I was content to watch Heero play. He chose things that were interesting to watch, games that actually had a story and plot to them. Mostly, I was very happy to be sitting there next to him, so close that our arms were almost touching, and watching him as he played with this intense, focused look on his face. Then we moved on to watch a movie and Heero even let me pick which one, although I really hadn't seen any of the films that were in his collection.   
    It was this really wonderful Spanish film about a girl who lives in Spain in the forties during the Francoist era and discovers a fantasy world while a real world rebellion is going on around her (2). I only picked it out because I had never seen a foreign film before and Heero said that he thought that I would enjoy it. I felt incredibly happy that he was right, that he knew me at least that well while Trowa, who had dated me for months, had frequently dragged me off to see films that I hadn’t enjoyed that much. Just going to the movies with him had been nice, and there had been a few that I had really liked, but I had often wondered if he had just taken me to movies that _he_ had been wanting to see, or if he hadn’t realized the sorts of things that I had liked.   
    Right as the movie was ending, Heero’s mother called us down for dinner. It was still snowing hard outside and the wind was starting to pick up a bit, but I saw through the kitchen windows that Mr. Yuy had made a lot of progress in creating a path down the porch and patio. He was watching the news as the two of us walked down the steps, enjoying a steaming cup of coffee. I looked at him, sitting in his lounger and drinking from a porcelain mug and the image of him there overlaid with one of my memories of my father, sitting in his own chair drinking a beer and watching a football game. The contrast, and the similarities as few as they were, was so strange to me that for a moment, I felt dizzy.   
    I realized then that in all the times that I had been over there, I had never seen either of Heero’s parents drink anything alcoholic, not even so much as a glass of wine. I wondered if they had anything like that in the house, if they just drank sparingly or not at all. The thought that they didn’t relieved me. I know fully well that people can drink and not go overboard about it like my parents, but it still made me feel better. Mr. Yuy glanced over at us and turned off the television, getting up to join us for dinner.   
    I was struck again with the knowledge that he was not my father. The two of them couldn’t be less alike if they tried. It wasn’t some great epiphany, but I wondered if that was the reason why I could relax around him so easily, why I didn’t feel even a little bit nervous around him was because he didn’t remind me of my father in any way. I remembered when I was a kid, how I had assumed that all fathers were like mine, strict and ready with a fist if they got out of line.   
    Then I had gone to school for the first time and saw that other dads, most of them anyway, were nothing like mine. But I had never really spent a great deal of time with other dads before, had never seen what they were like beyond what I saw in television and movies. It only drove home to me how flawed my father was, all the ways that he seemed incapable to be. It made me feel like I had been slighted by fate, and that really wasn’t fair. Hadn’t I told Heero that my father was my father and there was nothing that anyone could about that? Besides, my dad was doing the best that he could with the shitty hand that he had been dealt... wasn’t he?  
    For some reason, I thought about my mother and what she might be doing right at that moment. Was she still ok? There I was, about to sit down to dinner with this wonderful family and I had no idea where she was going to go for the night, if she had lied to me and gone home and was hurt right now. I thought about checking on her, but I knew that I was being stupid and paranoid. She was still at work anyway, she was _fine_.  
    The table was already fully set when the three of us walked into the kitchen and Mrs. Yuy was heaping food onto plates. She shooed me away when I tried to help her and I sat down across from Heero. Mr. Yuy poured everyone glasses of milk and sat at the head of the table. Already on the table were bowls of green beans and rolls. When Mrs. Yuy brought us our plates and Heero and I saw that they were loaded with steak _and_ salmon, even my friend looked amazed.  
    “Jeez, Mom, I don’t think you made enough food. I thought Thanksgiving was last month,” he said sarcastically.  
    “Har har,” she rolled her eyes at him, “Since Duo said he hasn’t had either in awhile, I thought it might be nice for us to have some surf and turf, a bit of everything. You can consider this a celebration for the both of you getting good grades this semester,” I don’t know who blushed harder at that, Heero or myself, “and now Duo can have plenty of leftovers to take home with him, so he can have a nice dinner if he decides to eat at home tomorrow.”  
    “Actually,” I said with embarrassment, “If I take any food home, my dad will just eat it before anyone else gets to it.”  
    “Even if you ask him not to?” Mrs. Yuy asked with a frown.  
    ‘Especially if I ask him not to,’ I thought bitterly of some of my father’s more childish traits, but I didn’t dare say that and just nodded.  
    Mr. Yuy paused in cutting up his steak, a frown just like his wife’s on his face and the two of them shared a secretive look across the table. I wondered exactly what it was that I had just said that had bothered them so much.  
    “In that case,” Heero’s mother smiled at me, “I’ll just save the leftovers for you here whenever you decide to come over for dinner again. Or you can stop by here on your way to work, if you have some way to heat things up on your breaks.”  
    When was she going to stop being so nice to me and giving me things?   
    “Thank you very much,” I said and began to cut up my food to hide how overwhelmed her generosity had made me feel.   
    Everyone fell silent as we ate. To say that the meal was delicious is a bland understatement. The steak was juicy and tender, the last time that I had had steak that was even remotely like it was that that time that Quatre had taken Trowa and me out to dinner the night of Trowa’s game. I tasted pepper, salt, garlic, onion, some very tangy marinade and a hint of apples. The salmon was just as amazing. It had been sprinkled with lemon and pepper, but it didn’t overwhelm the taste of the fish at all. I think I put away an entire steak and half a pound of fish, plus two helpings of rolls and green beans. By the time that I was done, I felt like a total glutton.  
    “That was amazing,” I told Heero’s mother, who burst into a happy, preening smile at the compliment.   
    “I have some homemade pudding chilling in the fridge,” she told me.  
    “God, Mom,” Heero interrupted with a groan, looking just as full as I was, “Are you trying to kill us?”  
    “Feel free to have some later tonight if you like,” she ignored him.  
    I nodded, sure that I would be up for dessert later. I tried to help with the dishes, but I was shooed away by both of Heero’s parents, although Heero got roped into drying them. I migrated upstairs to the bathroom so I could take a shower. I felt like I hadn’t washed in days and hoped that I didn’t smell too bad. I undressed and took off my old bandages. The cut at my temple looked raw and gross, but there wasn’t any signs of pus or undue redness and swelling, so that was something. I placed some plastic over my stitched wound and held it in place with medical tape so I wouldn’t get it wet.   
    When the hot water first hit my skin, I thought that I could die right then, and that would be just fine. Sure, the spray of water made the wounds on my face sting like hell, but I just didn’t care. It felt so good, that heat on my skin, the feeling of dirt and sweat being washed away. I just stood there for awhile, letting it wash over me, already feeling so much better and I hadn’t started to wash anything yet. When I did, I was very slow, careful of my injuries and struggling a little to do things with just one hand, especially my hair. But I managed and when I finally did finish, I left the shower feeling ten pounds lighter and significantly more human.   
    I ignored my reflection as I stood in front of the bathroom mirror to comb my hair, which took forever, deciding that I didn’t want to know what I looked like after all. I re-bandaged myself, which actually wasn’t that difficult with my shoulder injury. I could still use my hand, I just couldn’t lift my arm past a certain point. The biggest problem that I was having was dealing with my hair. I’ve faced that problem before with the amount of times that I’ve hurt one of my arms, but not a lot, and most of those times had been when hair had been short enough to get away with not putting it up at all.  
    It didn’t used to be a big deal for me. I had only started to put my hair up to get it out of my face. But after my father had touched my hair that one time... I had begun to feel self conscious about it. Not enough to cut it, but enough that I didn’t like walking around with it down. It was just too long for me to stand letting it loose for long periods of time, it always got in my way and people would give me weird looks if they saw me walking around like that, not to even mention that if I showed up at school like that, Zechs would go after me for it. And if I wore it down around the house or in a pony taillike my mother did...  
    I didn’t want to think about that. I would just have to get used to having it down. It wasn’t like I could ask my mother to put it up every time I had to comb my hair, which wasn’t every day since wearing it in a braid keeps it from snarling and going everywhere, but it would be another week or two before I could use my arm at all and a couple weeks after that before my shoulder would really be healed. Worrying about what my hair looked like was pretty low on my list of priorities.  
    Getting dressed was another problem. I have button up shirts that I can wear to work, so that isn’t the issue, but almost none for pajamas. The top that I had brought with me to the Yuys sure wasn’t, but I was used to trying to put them on with an injury, I just had to be very, very careful. Getting that stupid immobilizer on was a struggle, too, but I had worn them before. That done, I squirmed my way into the shirt, manipulating my left arm with my right hand instead of trying to move it on my own to minimize aggravating my shoulder. It hurt, but I managed to get it on, which made me feel a bit less pathetic.  
    I tossed my dirty clothes in my back pack in the guest room, dug out my book, and went to go find Heero. I found him in his bedroom, sitting at his desk and watching something on his computer. From the sound of it, it was a video of a basketball game. I thought about going back to the guest room and reading in there since he was obviously busy doing something, but I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted to be with him, even if we weren’t doing something together. I chastised myself about it, just because I was staying over, it didn’t mean that I had to be attached to his hip the whole time. I felt so disgustingly clingy. I probably would have snuck away just then if he hadn’t suddenly noticed that I was stupidly standing there in the doorway.  
    “Hey,” I greeted.  
    I expected him to at least wave back at me, but he just kind of stared at me, his beautiful, blue eyes wide in shock.   
    “What’s wrong?” I asked in paranoia, I couldn’t imagine that my face had gotten any worse in the last hour.  
    “Your... your hair is down,” he said with a mystified tone, like it was this incredible thing.  
    I raised an eyebrow at that. Did he think that I had just forgotten to put it up? Did he think that it looked weird? Too girly?   
    “You’ve seen it down before,” I reminded him and tugged self-consciously at a lock of my hair.  
    I realized something just then, something that I am not terribly proud of. I realized that Heero could very easily accomplish what Trowa had been unable to do: if Heero told me that he didn’t like how long my hair was, right that very second, I would find the closest pair of scissors and cut the entire mass off where I stood. I wouldn’t want to, but I would do it anyway. Is that love, I wondered, that kind of mindless devotion to a single person and what they did and did not like? It was fucked up.  
    “Y-yeah, I know,” he stammered, “It... it looks really nice. Long hair really suits you.”  
    I flushed bright red at the compliment. He liked my hair? In that case, I would grow it longer, if that was what he liked. I could have stabbed myself for my stupid, love-sick thoughts. Why did he like my hair anyway? It wasn’t pretty like Relena’s honey color was, or shimmering like Quatre’s had been. It was that weird shade of brown that wasn't a dark mahogany or a coppery red, just medium toned chestnut, a boring color. Besides, my hair was far from masculine, everyone said so, so how could Heero like it if he was gay? Trowa sure as hell hadn’t. But even though I didn’t like my hair, I still felt flattered that Heero said that he did, whether it was true or not.  
    “Thanks,” I squirmed a little where I stood, wrapping the lock that I had been tugging on around my finger without realizing that I was doing it in my nervousness, “I only kept it down because I can’t put it back up in a braid until my shoulder is healed enough.”  
    “I can put it up for you if you want,” Heero offered shyly.  
    The thought of him touching my hair had me blushing even more darkly and I had no idea why. There was nothing really intimate about it, even Zechs had touched my hair. But there was just something about him touching my hair that had my heart beating just a little bit too fast.   
    “Sure,” I said a bit hesitantly, but somehow managed to keep my voice from breaking or stammering.   
    He stood as I walked into the room and I turned around so he could get at the back of my head. I could feel his heat at my back and could have fallen backwards into it. As he began to gather up my hair, his fingers brushed against the back of my neck and I very nearly shuddered at the little, electric thrill of pleasure that went through me. It wasn’t even enough to call a caress, but there was something very wonderful about it. It was just the back of my neck, but it felt like more than that to me. A place that no one else had touched like that. I wished that he would touch it again and cursed myself for an idiot. My heart ached with want and it took every ounce of willpower that I had to beat it back down.   
    “You can make it really tight,” I told him, again amazed that my voice wasn’t wavering, “then it won’t come apart in my sleep and you won’t have to do this again.”  
    “Alright,” he murmured and he began to braid it, a little bit clumsily at first, but he quickly got the hang of it, and twisted the band around the mass tight like I had asked him to, “But, you know, I really don’t mind doing this if you need me to every day.”  
    His voice was as warm as his body felt and I hurt with what he was offering, how intimate he sounded just then. I was struck by this weird image from a movie that I had seen years ago, a single scene. A woman had been dressing up for a night out with her husband and had turned her back to him, the back of her dress open, and asked him to zip up her dress for her. Such a simple, normal thing, but the scene had been sensual and that was exactly how I felt just then as Heero had been forming plaits with my hair. Then I felt him let go of my hair and like melting snow, that feeling was gone.  
    “There, all done,” he said, letting me turn around.  
    When I looked at him, he was probably as red as I was and then there was an entirely different emotion in my heart, a heavy one that I was well accustomed to. Guilt.   
    “So, does it pass your inspection?” he asked with a shy smile.  
    “Y-yeah,” I stammered as I reached back to touch my new braid, faltering, “Thanks. Um... d-do you mind if I hang out in here? If you’re busy...”  
    “Of course you can,” he said just a bit too exuberantly, “I wasn’t doing anything important. You can lay down on my bed and read if you want.”  
    That sounded like just about the most perfect thing in the world.   
    “Thanks,” I repeated and did just that, carefully laying down on his comfortable, familiar bed so I wouldn’t jar my shoulder.   
    Heero returned to his laptop and, for a time, we were content with the space between us. But I quickly began to notice that Heero was sneaking glances over at me, even though I pretended that I was completely engaged with my reading. Kanuck trotted into the room at some point and placed his head on the bed next to me, whining softly. I placed my hand on his head as I read and he seemed to settle happily from that.   
    Thirty minutes later, Heero stood up from his desk and walked over to the bed with his computer, sitting down on the opposite side next to me. I kept my eyes glued to the page that I was on, but I felt my face heat up again at our close proximity. I think that if he had chosen to lay down next to me instead of sit cross legged, my heart would have exploded. He didn’t say anything about his choice to abandon his desk, he just kept watching the game that he had been viewing before.   
    After awhile, I forgot all about how nervous I was to be next to him like that and suddenly felt at peace. I felt happier just being there with him and not saying anything than I had ever been with Trowa. If I wanted to, I could have closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep right there. It was a drastic contrast to how I had felt the one time that I had slept in the same bed with him, how I had been unable to sleep and feeling terrified. Was it because I loved him more than I had back then? Or was it because I trust him so much now?   
    I didn’t think about my father, about him touching me, while I was on the bed with Heero. I didn’t feel nervous or scared or anxious at all. I know, there had been a time when I had vehemently thought that my father would never, ever be capable of even thinking about me sexually, let alone going ahead and raping me, but this was different. There was not a single doubt in my head that Josh would never do something so horrible to anyone, no matter how he felt about them. I realized, with an aching relief and love, that he would never so much as strike me. Not ever. That epiphany was striking, and it really shouldn’t have been.  
    It didn’t take me long to finish my book. It was a pretty fast and easy read, despite it’s really dark and heavy subject matter (3). I closed the book and put it on Heero’s bedside table, turning to him to find that he was done with his game as well.  
    “How do you feel about stand up comedy?” he asked me with a smile.  
    For a moment, I just kind of stared at him before I realized that he was asking me if I wanted to watch some.   
    “I don’t know, I’ve never seen any,” I admitted.   
    This only bolstered him, like a little kid showing a relative a toy that they liked for the first time and I watched in fascination as he scored the internet for a comedy special to watch. I’m not some caveman, alright? Just because I don’t own a computer or have much hands on experience with them, it doesn’t mean that I’m not aware of what you can do with one, but I’ve never actually been to any of those video streaming sites. It was interesting and kind of neat that anything you wanted to see, you could find in those places. I had, for example, never realized that the internet is a hot bed for people to post weird, cute, and funny videos of their pets and it was pretty amusing to see that most of those videos were of cats.  
    I decided that stand up comedy is ok, but not something that I would seek out on my own. I don’t have a great sense of humor and almost all of the pop culture references that the performer had went right over my head. Heero seemed to realize that when I didn’t laugh and just kind of looked confused. He was nice enough to pause the video each time and explain all of them to me, but some of them still confused me. I still have no clue why the song ‘Chocolate Rain’ is supposed to be funny or what ‘now you’re thinking with portals’ means, but I understood that I was out of the loop in a lot of those types of things.   
    After the special was over, Heero showed me a few other videos, some amusing and others just interesting until we heard a knock on the door.  
    “Yeah?” he called out.  
    Mrs. Yuy opened the door and walked in carrying a small tray. I sat up, stupidly feeling like I had been caught red-handed at something for some reason, my rib protesting the move. Oddly, she looked amused to see us both on the bed together, or maybe it was from my strange embarrassment.  
    “Your father and I are going to go to bed soon,” she announced, placing the tray on Heero’s desk, “so I thought I would bring you boys up your desserts before then. You can stay up a bit later tonight, but not too late, alright? It’s still a school night, even if tomorrow is your last day of the semester, and Duo has had a very long day.”  
    I looked over at the digital clock that was on the bedside table and saw with shock that it was already past nine-thirty. I hadn’t noticed how late it was at all.  
    “Yes, Mom,” Heero said dutifully.  
    “Good night, Duo,” she smiled at me and leaned down to kiss my forehead by my bandaged temple, “It was very nice having you over today.”  
    It was a move that was so much like the mothers that I had seen on television, kissing one of their children’s hurts. It warmed me at the same time that I felt a deep melancholy. No one had kissed me like that before, not my own mother. Hell, not even Brian had ever kissed me someplace other than on my lips or my neck. He had never so much as pecked me on the cheek, kissed me in any way that hadn’t been passionate or sexual. Why did that bother me so much?   
    “Thanks for everything, Mrs. Yuy,” I told her.  
    She smiled brightly at that and smoothed my bangs out of my face.  
    “Good night, Heero,” she said to my friend.  
    “’night, Mom,” he said simply.  
    She went back out the door without kissing her son good night like she had me, keeping it open this time. I guess Heero had outgrown things like that. Things that I had never had the chance to outgrow. Had he found his mother doing that to me odd? Would he think that _I_ was odd having enjoyed it instead of being embarrassed by it? Should I be embarrassed? I guess getting kissed by your friend’s mom was a bit strange, but I didn’t feel that way. It wasn’t like she was someone that I didn’t know. I felt like Heero’s parents had done more for me and spent more time around me than most parents did their son’s friends. I shouldn’t feel like this, but when I’m with them, they feel like more than just that to me.   
    I swung my legs over the bed, sitting on the edge of it and getting ready to stand up when Heero stopped me, already on his own feet and walking towards the desk by the time I had slowly managed to change position.  
    “Stay right there,” he said and handed me a small bowl of pudding and a spoon.  
    The pudding cup looked incredibly fancy, especially for someone like me that had only ever eaten pudding out of one of those little plastic cups you just buy from the grocery store. Sure, I’ve made pudding for Home Ec before, but not chocolate pudding, mostly just fig, rice, and tapioca. This pudding was obviously home made and had been served up cold in a small, beautiful glass bowl with equally home made whipped cream on top. It looked like it would be a crime to eat it, but that sure didn’t stop me. The dessert, like everything that Heero’s mother made, was perfect, rich, smooth, and creamy. I wondered if she had taken classes to get that good or if it was some sort innate talent, perhaps passed down from one of her parents.   
    “It’s late,” Heero said when we had finished eating, “We should probably get to sleep.”  
    “Yeah,” I replied and just then realized that I was exhausted.   
    We said our good nights to each other and I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth and take some more pain pills. I knew from the moment that I laid down in the guest bed that sleep was going to be a struggle. I had slept quite a lot the last two days, a whopping more than ten hours total instead of my usual 8 to 10, so my sleep schedule was all kinds of messed up, which seems kind of silly, I guess, since I had slept like a normal teenager for once.   
    Not to mention the various pains that I was feeling and the anxiety. I was worried about my mother, worried about my father and his anger, worried about my feelings for Heero, worried about my injuries, worried about my cat, and worried about my jobs. That would be enough to keep anyone awake. So I was a bit surprised that it only took me an hour to fall asleep, even though I couldn’t toss or turn or find a comfortable position to lay down in that wasn’t hurting me.   
    My dreams were strange and I, thankfully, don’t remember them very well. I remember that Heero, my father, and my mother were in them, and I have the feeling that they were unpleasant, but the content eludes me. I woke up after a solid five hours of sleep, not because of my insomnia, but from the sound of my cell phone vibrating where I had put it on the bedside table. I kind of just blinked blearily at it for a moment, unable to understand what was happening.   
    Even when I started to wake up and was able to think more coherently, it only made me more confused. The only people that had my phone number were the Yuys, so why would they be calling me at five in the morning at all, let alone when I was sleeping at their house? Then I remembered that I had left my phone number in my mother’s drawer and immediately grabbed the phone, answering the call in fear that she was in trouble.  
    “Hello?” I croaked, my voice rough from sleep.  
    There wasn’t any answer at first, but there was a dial tone, and I thought that I could hear someone breathing.       
    “Hello?” I asked again, starting to get annoyed.   
    “Uhhhhn,” a voice moaned through the phone, “Yeah, that’s right, suck on it, ohhhhh, you’re so good at this...”  
    I almost dropped the phone as the person panted and groaned obscenely in my ear. They kept going at it, like they were having sex or jerking off or something equally lewd, but I barely heard it past the first thirty seconds. Instead, I was hearing my father panting behind me, his voice in my ear as he moaned, his hot breath dancing over my skin as he thrust into me again and again, his voice, the same voice of the man that had raised me, twisted and perverted with lust.   
    “Leave me the fuck alone!” I yelled into the phone, not even really realizing what I was doing, and closed it.  
    Then I was scrambling out of bed and running into the bathroom, just in time to vomit into the toilet violently. Memories that I had spent so long pushing deep down inside of me with obsessive dedication slapped me in the face, exposing themselves like raw tendons. I didn’t have a lot to throw up, but it seemed like I couldn’t stop. I retched until there was nothing left to come up, then I just kind of dry heaved for awhile. When I was finally done, I clutched at the toilet and sagged there, sobbing. I wasn’t sure exactly why I was crying. It wasn’t like what had just happened had shocked me. It was the kind of cruel prank that I was used to from my peers, and it wasn’t like my memories of being raped were anything new.   
    I just didn’t understand it. Why couldn’t I get used to this? It seemed like every time I thought I had a handle on what was happening to me, it got dragged back out into the light and I felt like I had the night that I had first gotten raped. I felt like I was being scraped raw with each one of those disgusting pants and lewd words. I wanted to claw my skin off and bash my head into the wall until the bits of brain containing those terrible memories oozed out of me. I wanted to scream. When I was done crying and freaking out like a little kid, I pulled myself up off the floor, feeling weak and scattered. I took a long drink from the faucet to get the taste of bile out of my mouth, flushed the toilet, and walked back to the guest room.   
    I sat back down on the bed and shook. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. It was just a stupid, pathetic prank, why was I letting it get to me like this? But that was just it. I hadn’t _let_ it do anything. It was like just hearing that fake, lust filled tone had flipped some switch of horror in me. I hadn’t been able to defend myself against it at all. My father had broken me apart and I was never going to get put back together again. I understand that now. This was always going to happen, any time that I was reminded of what he had done, of how filthy I was. I was going to keep falling apart, for the rest of my life.   
    I felt so weak, so torn apart and again, I felt like the lowest person on the planet. I didn’t deserve to be Heero’s friend, let alone to have a crush on him, but I was too much of a coward to distance myself from him, even if I was terrified that he was going to find out about all of this... I could have cried some more, but I just didn’t see the point in it. It wasn’t making me feel any better. Instead, I flipped open my phone and tried to see where that call had come from. My caller ID was unhelpful, only telling me that the number was from a private caller. No shit. Not that it really mattered, it could be anyone from school.   
    I furrowed my brow in confusion and closed my phone again. That someone had prank called my phone wasn’t that surprising, what was surprising was that they had been _able_ to call my cell phone. Only four people knew the number, so how the hell had anyone from school gotten it? I hadn’t recognized the caller’s voice. It definitely hadn’t been Zechs or any of his friends. I rubbed at my head, which was already starting to ache. I had only just woken up and it was shaping out to be a really shitty day. A gentle knock on the door that I had forgotten to close in my haste almost made me jump. When I saw Heero standing there looking concerned, I had the sudden, childish impulse to ask for a hug.  
    “Are you ok?” he asked softly, walking into the room cautiously, like he was worried that he might spook me.  
    I must have woken him up at some point with my fit, although I don’t know if he had heard me yell, throw up, or cry. I really hope that, if he had, he had been too half asleep to remember it. I could only imagine what I looked like as he had knocked on the door, my eyes red, looking down at my cell phone dejectedly.   
    “Just a stupid, prank phone call,” I told him and somehow managed a smile, but it was very weak and fake.  
    Heero frowned at that, but instead of asking me what the prank caller had said, he walked up to me and said “Come on,” then grabbed my wrist and pulled me to my feet. I let him drag me out of the room, down the stairs and into the kitchen, perplexed at what he was doing.  
    “Sit,” he commanded, gesturing at the table.  
    Ever obedient, I sat and he turned to rifle through the cabinets, but I couldn’t see what he was gathering from where I was.  
    “Ever since I was a little kid, whenever I was upset about something, even if it was something that was my own fault, like Dad grounding me for breaking the front window with a baseball after he told me not to practice so close to the house, or something big, like when I first told my parents that my best friend was being bullied and I didn’t know what to do about it,” Heero said as he continued to mess around with various things, getting bowls out of the cupboards and milk out of the fridge, “my mother would always sit me down at our kitchen table and make me a bowl of cream of wheat. I never really asked her why cream of wheat, I guess it didn’t really matter what it was,” he chuckled, placing one of the bowls in the microwave and turning around to face me as it cooked, “It just became a tradition. We would eat it together and talk about what it was that had upset me. It would always make me feel better.”  
    The microwave dinged and Heero took the bowl out, now steaming, replacing it with the second one.  
    “Cooking isn’t exactly one of my strong suits, in case you didn’t notice,” he said a bit cheekily and almost got me to laugh as I remembered some of his issues in Home Ec, “but my mother taught me how to make it like she does. It’s not from scratch like hers, it’s the instant stuff, but I figure it’s just as good.”  
    When the second bowl was done, he brought them both over to the table and poured us some water. I took a sniff and almost hummed at the heavenly aroma coming from the creamy substance.   
    “I’ve always loved cream of wheat,” I confessed, “It’s cheap, so it’s not that hard to convince my father to buy it and easy to make. I have it all the time during the winter.”  
    “Let me know how I did compared to yours, then,” he smiled.  
    I found myself smiling, too, quickly forgetting about what I had been so upset about earlier. Right then, it was just him and me, enjoying breakfast together. It’s strange how something so simple can make all the bad shit in my head go away for a little while. I spooned some of the mixture into my mouth and made an approving sound at the taste.   
    “This is delicious!” I exclaimed, taking another bite and finding a raisin that time, “What’s in it?”  
    “Cinnamon, raisins, nutmeg, milk, sugar, and brown sugar,” he informed me, his smile growing to beaming, obviously happy at my compliments, “What do you put in yours?”  
    “Well,” I said in between bites, “I use cinnamon, milk, and sugar, too. I’ve never thought to put nutmeg and brown sugar into it, and I usually use sweet fruits instead of raisins. Peaches, blueberries, and strawberries mostly. I also like to put a bit of vanilla and honey into it.”  
    “I’d like to try it some time,” he said a bit shyly and I immediately made up my mind that the next time I spent a morning there, I was going to make some cream of wheat for him.   
    We fell into silence for a few minutes as the two of us ate our breakfast and little by little, I felt my melancholy leave me.  
    “Do you want to talk about it?” my friend suddenly asked.  
    I thought about telling him about the lewd call, but I was too embarrassed talking to him about those kinds of things. He had seen Zechs dump semen on me, and having someone mime sex at me over the phone wasn’t worse than that, but I still felt ashamed. And he wouldn’t understand why it bothered me so much, not really. He didn’t know how sex had always been this strange, alien thing to me. Trowa had started the job of turning it into a subject of horror for me, and my father had quite poignantly finished it. If I had had a chance of having a normal outlook on it, or even a normal sex life like every other man on the planet, it was long gone now, and I was never going to get it back.   
    “Not really,” I confessed, “I would just rather forget about it, if you don’t mind. I just... wasn’t expecting it, but it isn’t a big deal, I just let it get to me, I guess.”  
    And that was the truth, a single obscene phone call was _not_ the big deal that I had turned it into. If I had been anyone else, they would have been momentarily appalled, but would have been able to move on from it, so why shouldn’t I?  
    “Alright,” he said, and just like that, it was dropped. I could have kissed him.  
    We finished our cream of wheat, chatting about banal things until I was finally able to put the entire incident out of my head. Talking to Heero was like the best kind of therapy. Maybe I wasn’t dealing with things, just putting them off until I was alone and they would come rushing back to eviscerate me, but being anxious over them wasn’t exactly helping, either.   
    “Morning, boys,” Mr. Yuy greeted us as he and Heero’s mom came into the kitchen around six-thirty, a newspaper tucked under his arm.  
    Heero and I both said ‘morning’ at the same time. Mr. Yuy, looking more awake than most people had any business being at that hour, started to make coffee while his wife still looked like she was sleep walking. Heero’s father was already dressed for the day, wearing a smart, but casual suit that I didn’t want to know the cost. Mrs. Yuy probably didn’t have any work that day, since it was so close to Christmas and she taught younger kids. She was still dressed in a cheery, purple bathrobe and her eyes were half-lidded, but her hair was combed and in a perfect, low pony tail. It was a weird contrast.  
    “How are you today, Duo?” she asked, managing a sleepy smile, “Feeling any better?”  
    “A little,” I admitted, because I couldn’t really have felt any worse than I had yesterday when my father had attacked me, “The sleep really helped.”  
    “That’s good,” she beamed and then went in search of her own caffeine.   
    To my surprise, she didn’t have any of the coffee that her husband was brewing, but made herself some tea. I guess she didn’t like coffee. She almost immediately perked up when she started to drink it. I don’t know what kind of blend it was, but it smelled spicy and enchanting, a far cry from the blander, instant Earl Grey that my mother drank in the mornings once in awhile.     She was drinking it more recently, I had noticed, instead of her usual shot of whiskey mixed in coffee (cream with two sugars) and hoped that that trend continued. Mrs. Yuy wasn’t using any instant tea bags, though. She had a little jar of leaves that she had scooped out of. I imagined that hers had cost a bit more than a couple of dollars and wondered what it tasted like.   
    “I take it you boys have already had your breakfast?” Mrs. Yuy shot her son a knowing look at the sight of the bowls in front of us.  
    “Yeah,” Heero muttered, blushing a little in embarrassment.  
    “Don’t tease him, honey,” his father scolded gently, putting a bit of cream into his coffee, but no sugar, before taking a sip of it.  
    I puzzled over the exchange, but didn’t ask. It reeked of something private that was not any of my business. Mr. Yuy sat at the table with us, opening the newspaper that he had brought in with him while his wife leaned against the kitchen counter to drink her tea, but he didn’t seem to be paying too much attention to what he was reading.  
    “So, Duo,” he said in a casual drawl, “will you be staying over with us again tonight?”  
    He said it in such a light and carefree way that I knew he wouldn’t mind at all if I had said yes. I thought about it for a few minutes. Did I want to stay over for another day? That was a stupid question, of course I did. But should I? If it wasn’t safe to go home yet, then it probably never was, and of course I knew that it wasn’t. My home was never really safe. But how long could I stay away? Would I make things worse or better the longer that I avoided my father? Would he just forget being angry with me? Or was I fueling his rage by not coming home? Was he pissed that I hadn’t cleaned up the kitchen? Was he worried that I had never come home from the hospital?       
    What about my mother? Had she gone home yet? Was she ok? Had she cleaned up his mess and taken care of his meals or left him to fend for himself? And what about Pepper? She had to be terribly lonely, cooped up in that room all by herself. I missed her. If there was one thing that I missed about sleeping at home, it was the feel of her fur against my cheek, her little, soft purrs the best thing to a lullaby or white noise that I had. I knew, just thinking about her, that I wouldn’t be staying at the Yuys. My sense of responsibility was too strong, both to take care of her and my need to check on my parents.   
    Sometimes, I feel like _I’m_ the parent, and I suppose anyone that’s reading this will think me insane or incredibly foolish, actually caring about how my father was doing after what he had done to me, but I did. Even though I hated it when he hurt me, I still worried about him. That’s love, I guess. I didn’t get to choose to fall in love with Heero and lose my goddamn mind every time he walked into the room, and I sure as hell didn’t get a choice in loving my father. Just how much more does he need to break me before I lose that affection for him, or am I stuck with it forever? I don’t want to be. I think that, if nothing else, is the thing that’s changed. Before, I would think about hating him and loath myself for feeling that way. But now, I think about loving him and I just don’t want to anymore. I want to hate him, and I can’t stand that I have so much love for him left in me.   
    “I don’t think so,” I said and felt terrible when Heero frowned in disappointment, but it didn’t change my mind, “I would really like to, and I’m grateful for your hospitality, but there are some things that I need to do at home, and my cat probably thinks that I’ve abandoned her. It would be best if I went home tonight.”  
    “I understand,” Mr. Yuy said, “but let us know if you change your mind, alright?”  
    I nodded and halfway hoped that I would change my mind by the end of the day, but I had the feeling that I wouldn’t. Heero and I got ready for school and headed out together when the time came. His house is closer to school than mine is, so we got to take our time, which ended up being a good thing. As I brushed my teeth in the bathroom, my phone rang. I paused, letting it ring again, and spit out the toothpaste that was in my mouth.   
    I dug the phone out of my pocket and just looked at it. Again, the display said ‘private caller’ and I felt dread settle in my stomach. It rang and rang and I felt sicker with each ring, but felt too frightened to answer it. It finally stopped and I nearly breathed in relief at that, not wanting to hear that disgusting voice again, but then my phone chimed, indicating a voice mail. That masochistic part of myself that I can’t seem to stop had me flipping my phone open and, against all good, common sense, I listened to it.  
    “Ohhhh, Duo,” it was a different voice this time and I easily recognized it as Zechs’s own, hateful voice, but it was in the same, fake lustful tone as the last caller’s, “Your mouth is so hot. Every time I see it, I just want to cream all over it. You’re such a tease, I just want to thrust my cock right between those soft, silky lips of yours and taint your throat with my sperm. What do you say? Won’t you soothe my pain? I’m so excited just from imagining your tongue on my dick. I bet you’ve been fantasizing about tasting my spunk again. Is that how you cleaned it up last time? Did you save it and drink it all up? I can give you more, you don’t need to be so shy-”  
    My stomach recoiled and I deleted the message, my hands shaking. I almost vomited again and only managed not to from sheer force of will. I wanted to throw the phone across the bathroom or kick it. What the hell was going on?! How the fuck had Zechs gotten my phone number? And those things that he had said... But I couldn’t think about them or I really was going to throw up again. I felt like I was going to cry, but it was the thought of Heero hearing me that kept me from doing it. I didn’t want him to know about this, that Zechs had called me or the horrible things that he had said. I would die from shame if he heard that message.   
    It was the thought of Heero that had me putting my phone back in my pocket and rinsing my mouth out with water, hurrying to get ready to leave. ‘It’s just a prank,’ I told myself over and over again, ‘Just words. It doesn’t mean anything at all, just his usual shit.’ I told myself that it was the fact that Zechs had gotten my phone number somehow that was bothering me, even though that was a lie. It was the things that he had said that had shaken me to the core, his accusations. He had talked about me like... like I was some kind of slut. Wasn’t I? Letting my father fuck me... didn’t that make me a slut? Or was I just a whore?   
    I clenched my nails down into my arm, over the cuts that the glass had made, making a couple of them start to bleed. The pain cut through the haze of misery, but only just barely. I couldn’t do this. If I kept thinking about it, I was going to break down and I would not do that in the Yuys’ bathroom. I rubbed at my eyes to make sure that not a single tear had escaped, and then left the bathroom. When I finished getting ready and went downstairs to leave with Heero, just the sight of him almost had me screaming everything that had just happened. I didn’t want him to know, but at the same time, I wanted his comfort, that unique ability of his to make me feel better. But as we walked to school together, I did start to feel better anyway.   
    It dawned on me that this was the first time Heero and I had ever actually walked to school together. It was cold out, but everything was covered in this pristine, perfect blanket of snow. It was the sort of scene that lovers would hold hands to if it had been a romantic film, and the mere thought of Heero and I holding hands while out on a walk made me so happy that thoughts of those obscene phone calls were far away. For those few moments, nothing could touch me. At least until we arrived at school.  
    Usually, I get to school fairly early, sooner than Heero and most of our other classmates do. That morning when we walked into our homeroom, more than half of the class was already there. When I got treated to a handful of snickers and disgusted looks, more than even was typical nowadays that everyone knew for a fact that I was a faggot, I knew that something was up. Something ‘special.’ I half expected Relena to be there amongst the other girls that were sneaking these snide, harsh glances at me, but only found her sitting with Dorothy and glaring at me when I walked in. I thought that it was a part of it until I realized that she was glaring at me because I had very obviously arrived at school with Heero.  
    At first, I hoped that whatever was going on would cool off as the day progressed, but it got worse. I caught people laughing behind my back and whispering to their friends, staring at me in a way that was putting me off edge. Whatever was going on, it was directed solely at me and not Heero, but he was far from oblivious. During Calculus, he kept looking at me and shooting me confused glances, silently asking me what the hell was going on, but I could only shrug. I was positive that this had something to do with the prank phone calls, but I couldn’t string them together. Zechs was suspiciously absent again, but whatever was happening, it had his fucking name written all over it. The fact that Alex, Mueller, and Trant _were_ in class only convinced me of it. If they were there on the last day of school, it was because they wanted to witness their handiwork. And probably tell Zechs all about it.   
    I became absolutely convinced of this when, after Calculus ended, a boy that I didn’t even know came up to me with a leer in his eyes just as our teacher walked out and I was standing up from my desk.  
    “Hey, Maxwell, I’ve got a Christmas present for ya,” he grinned and grabbed his crotch.   
    I just kind of gaped at him for a moment. It was the kind of stupid joke that I had gotten used to, but there was this feeling of intent behind it this time, like seeing an inside joke that you aren’t party to. He and the rest of the class burst into laughter at it, leaving me feeling wounded and confused. Worst of all, Heero had seen all of it. I saw him storming up to the boy with murder in his eyes, his hands curled into fists. I quickly walked out of the classroom, pushing and shoving at people that were in my way and in no hurry to get out of my way. My less than graceful exit worked wonders in getting Heero to follow me instead of beating the asshole up.  
    “What the hell,” he grabbed at my wrist, stopping me in the hallway and I let him, “Duo, what the fuck is going on?!”  
    “I don’t know!” I snapped at him.  
    I forced myself to take a few, deep breaths, but they came out fast and I worried that I might start hyperventilating. I felt like everyone in the whole damned school was looking at me in that way that my father looked at me that so often sent me into a screaming panic. That look that made my skin crawl and I just wanted to peel every inch of it off with a jagged blade. Suddenly Heero’s hand was on back, rubbing it soothingly. Such a little thing, but it eased away my impending panic attack.  
    “Hey, it’s alright, we’ll figure this out,” he said softly in that way that always made me feel better.  
    A group of girls passing us in the hallway shot us disgusted looks as they saw Heero rubbing my back. I recognized quite a few of them as girls that ran in Relena’s circle and knew, with a sinking stomach, that this would be repeated back to her immediately.  
    “Ewww,” a petit blonde opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue in repulsion, “Why are faggots so _gross_? Isn’t there some law against public indecency?”  
    It was the first time that I had ever heard one of our classmates directly accuse Heero of being homosexual just by being friends with me and I felt horrified by it, the thing that I had been fearing ever since he had decided to befriend me. I expected Heero to be equally horrified, knowing all that he had done to make sure he would never be outted, but instead, he hilariously glared at the girls and flipped them off. Almost all of them gaped in shock at that and they hurried off, whispering harshly about how rude my friend was. In spite of everything, I burst out laughing.  
    “I can’t believe that you just did that!” I gasped with laughter, “Flipped off a bunch of girls!”  
    Heero smiled, looking a bit smug.  
    “Yeah, well, they weren’t being very ladylike, so I didn’t see a point in being a gentleman,” he said haughtily.  
    I felt a little bit better as we walked to the cafeteria together. Not completely ok, but when more and more people made obscene remarks under their breath towards me, I wasn’t as shocked as I had been. Heero claimed our table and I got in line to buy my lunch. I caught a few more dirty looks thrown my way and a sudden twinge of curiosity hit me. Against all known sanity, I dug my phone out of my pocket and checked to see if I had any other voice mails waiting for me, maybe some kind of clue as to what cruel joke had been played on me behind my back.  
    47 messages. I had _forty-seven_ fucking messages. Thirty-two text messages and fifteen voice mails. What. The. Fuck. That panic attack? I could feel it start to come back. I suppose that the smart thing at that point would have been to delete everything. I mean, curiosity killed the cat, right? But it was like I was in a trance. I just couldn’t stop myself from scrolling through those text messages. I really wish that I hadn’t.   
    I didn’t read all of the messages, ok? I’m not _that_ self-sacrificing. And I deleted all of the voice mails because I just couldn’t deal with listening to them. If I had to hear Zechs pant at me like that again, I was going to lose it. But I did look through about half of them.   
     _‘Is your asshole loose like a pussy?’_ read one. There were actually quite a few that speculated how my private parts were more like a woman’s than a man’s and how ‘eager’ the person was to see them.  
   _‘How much would a threesome cost?’_ read another and _‘Five dollars to swallow my dick. A real bargain!’_ There seemed to be a lot of messages offering to pay me for different ‘services’, like my phone number was some kind of fucked up, sex hotline.   
   _‘I’ll bet your mouth is as messy and wet as a well fucked whore. I can’t wait to find out.’_ was the last one that I was able to read before I felt so ill that I had to stop. Suddenly, I didn‘t want lunch. I wanted to run off and cry in the bathroom like I had when I was nine years old, finding myself bullied for the first time.   
    What was going on? What was this? Why did every asshole in school suddenly have my phone number and what was with these messages? I could understand my number getting passed around and suddenly finding a bunch of messages calling me a faggot, but these were graphically sexual. I heard a burst of laughter from one of the lunch tables near the line and looked over to see a group of boys bunched together, reading one of the school newspapers. They were pointing at something and laughing and I caught a couple of them looking over at me with mirth in their eyes. I had an idea of what was going on, and I didn’t like it one bit.   
    “Hi, there, Maxwell,” Mueller’s voice hissed in my ear and I felt himself press his front against my back before I could flinch away from him. I hadn’t even heard him cut his way to where I was in line, “I heard you’re hungry from something more than a cheap, school lunch. Why don’t we find someplace private and I’ll satisfy your hunger for you, what do you say? I’ll fill you up so much that you’ll be snorting my cum out of your nose all day, satisfy you better than any other man. S+M, oral, anal, I can think of all sorts of ways that we can have fun,” he grabbed my hips tightly and I almost screamed as I started to panic, unable to breathe, “I’ll pay top dollar for it, too-”  
    I pulled away from him, him laughing harshly at his horrible joke, and fled the cafeteria, snatching up the school newspaper from the group of boys as they loudly protested my theft. I wasn’t really thinking at that point, beyond just needing to get away from everyone and find someplace quiet, panicking that I couldn’t breathe and feeling everyone’s eyes on me. I found myself in the school library, hyperventilating, my panic attack growing to epic proportions. I hadn’t had one so bad since my father had first raped me and it was memories of that night that were assailing me.   
    I ran into one of the private reading rooms, ignoring the librarian scolding me for running, and pushed myself into a corner on the ground where no one would be able to see me. I took deep, frantic breaths, but nothing was really helping. Everything looked grey to me and I had that feeling in the back of my throat that warned me that I was on the verge of throwing up. Despite all of that, I opened the school newspaper and looked desperately for a sign of what I knew had to be in there.   
    It didn’t take me long to find it, and when I did, I was far from surprised. No, it was horror that I was feeling as I looked at the back of the paper in the last few pages. Like most school newspapers, ours was written by the newspaper club, a kind of experiment for students who were interested in journalism. There was a section for local sports, club activities, concerts, and general news like if the cafeteria was changing its menu and such. Since this was the last newspaper of the semester and it being so close to Christmas, this one was extra long, but I wasn’t interested in Christmas church services and secret santas. I was interested in the last section.  
    In the back of our school newspaper is a kind of ad section. Students can advertise tutoring services, if a club or band was looking for new members, if they were looking for volunteers to put together refreshments and setting up for a dance, shit like that. What I was looking for was at the very top of this section. There, someone had posted a candid photo of me that someone, probably one of Zechs’s friends, had taken without me even noticing.   
    I was outside somewhere, looking off to the side at something. I looked distracted and I easily imagined that the person had taken the picture while I was talking to Heero at some point. The picture alone made me feel violated, partially because I have never really liked my looks and partially because I didn’t like the idea that someone had spied on me like that without me even realizing it. But how I felt about that picture was nothing compared to the ‘ad’ right under it. In almost comically huge, bold letters read:   
  
**LOCAL CUM SLUT SUCKS DICKS FOR FREE. CAN SWALLOW TWO AT A TIME. INTERESED? INQUIRE HERE: 207-213-1206** (4)  
      
    The paper fell from my fingers. I couldn’t believe it. I was far from surprised, but at the same time, I couldn’t believe it. I felt like someone had stabbed me in the gut with a meat hook and just ripped out all of my insides. I don’t even know why I felt that way. This was far from the worst thing that Zechs had done to me, and I knew for a fact that it was Zechs. Even if he hadn’t been at school for two days, he had done it. He might have gotten someone, or everyone, on the newspaper committee to publish that ad, but he had been the mastermind. It was exactly the kind of cruel joke that only he could pull off so brilliantly.  
    But _how_? How the fuck had that asshole gotten my phone number? Suddenly, the memory of the day that Quatre had committed suicide flashed in my head. Hadn’t I wondered something like that back then, how Relena had gotten a hand on Quatre’s notebook to post all those copies of it on the bulletin board? Sure, both Relena and Zechs had made a habit of getting into our lockers, but Quatre hadn’t kept his diary in his locker, he wouldn’t have been that stupid, and I sure wasn’t stupid enough to leave my cell phone in my locker.       
    Hadn’t I thought back then about the possibility that Zechs had been the one to steal Quatre’s notebook, that he was a much more likely culprit than his sister, and that he might have even broken into Quatre’s room to do it? I don’t know how he could have, but I wouldn’t have put it past him to try something like that. And it would be a lot easier to steal from me than it would have from Quatre. But I don’t keep my cell phone in my house, I _always_ have it on me.  
    ‘No, not always,’ I realized, feeling more and more horror as the minutes passed.  
    Gym class. I can’t have my cell phone on me during gym. Not only is it not allowed, it could fall out of my pocket and break. If there’s one thing that I carry around with me all the time that I actually cherish, it’s my cell phone, especially the little dog charm attached to it that looks like Kanuck. During gym, I put it in my bag, which I put on the bleachers like everyone else does. Anyone could easily go through my bag while I’m showering, or Heero’s. How easy would it be to get our phone numbers that way?   
    I could feel myself shaking again and there was a tightness in my head, like a stress headache, but worse. I picked up the paper again, studying the ad, studying my face and the distracted expression that I had. I looked like the fool that I was, blissfully unaware of what was about to happen to me. Rage swelled up in me and I ripped the newspaper apart, pretending that it was Zechs and the entire newspaper committee and myself that I was destroying. I angrily flung the scraps of paper away from me, but I didn’t feel any better. As good as it had felt to tear up the picture of my face, it was fleeting.  
    I looked at my phone, like I needed to clarify that this was, indeed, happening and not just some nightmare or delusion. I had four new voice mails and ten text messages. I let a tiny scream of frustration out and reared back my hand to throw the cell phone into the wall. I wanted to smash it, to destroy all evidence of those calls, those words, those horrible voices. All of that hatred and lewdness and perversion. I wanted to smash it into little shards, the knowledge of how much everyone loathed me, how much fun they had hurting me and tearing me down. I was a person, for fuck’s sake! I was just like everyone else! Just because I was strange and different, did that really mean that I wasn’t a human being, that I was just a thing, a toy that they all could punch and beat on for the sake of a terrible joke?!  
    Hot tears poured down my face and I lowered my arm before I could throw the phone. I clenched it tightly and wrapped my good arm around my knees. It wasn’t my phone’s fault, it was mine. If there was anything that needed to be destroyed, it was me. Heero had given it to me as a gift and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t break it, even if it would give me some measure of peace. I felt like it had been perverted, that act of kindness. Zechs had taken something that had been mine, something that I could look at and feel so grateful and happy about, this thing that didn’t just remind me that Heero was my friend, but was my one connection to him when I wasn’t with him, my way to ask him for help. And Zechs had filled it with obscenities.  
    I pressed my face against my knees and sobbed into them. I felt so worthless and dirty, guilty, somehow, of everything that those messages accused me of. Cum slut. Whore. Dick swallower. Faggot. I hated Zechs, but I hated myself so much more. If I weren’t those things, I thought in depression, they would never make fun of me for them. I’m worthless. My father fucks me and comes in me like I’m a cheap prostitute. Zechs dumps semen on me. Trowa fucked me on a dirty garage floor and I had to beg him just to put a condom on, but hell, he probably could have gotten away with fucking me bareback if he had pushed a little harder. Or he could have just raped me. Why not? Isn’t that all that I’m worth? A quick fuck and a dirty look. That ad might as well be true. Sucks dicks for free. Sure. Just force me down, or tell me that I’m loved and I’ll spread my legs for you, free of charge.   
    “Duo...” I heard Heero’s voice, soft and gentle, right in front of me.  
    I didn’t want him to see me like this. I didn’t want him to see me at all. _Why are you friends with me?_ I wanted to ask him. _Can’t you see how ugly and disgusting I am?_ But still, his voice was like a siren, beckoning me and I had to raise my head from my miserable position to look at him. Warm blue eyes, filled with frantic sadness and concern were the first things that I saw, then his arms wrapped around me and hugged me tightly. It hurt, I think he forgot about my injuries, but I didn’t care. The hurt was good. His embrace was good. I sobbed again into his shirt, but this time my tears were because he was comforting me. It was like crying out poison instead of falling into it.   
    He felt so warm and he smelled good, like coconut and the spray of the ocean. I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to curl up in his arms like a little child, like I had always dreamt of doing with my parents when I had been sad about something. Little by little, the feeling of his skin against mine washed away a good portion of my depression, like waves washing rocks further up a beach, not eroding it completely, but taking away the biting sting of the worst of it. I felt his fingers stroking my neck. I wanted to tell him that I loved him. I wanted to beg him not to be disgusted by me.   
    It felt like hours before I managed to get my tears under control, but he didn’t stop holding me until they stopped completely, and even then, he was smiling at me slightly, trying to be comforting while I could see the empathy and hurt for me in his eyes. He handed me a kleenex and I tried to wipe all of the tears off of my face. Now that I was done crying and felt a little bit better, I felt like a loser that he had to have seen me like that. Between my tears, red eyes, cheeks, and nose and my remaining bruises, I was sure that I looked horrible. I didn’t even want to know what my swollen eye looked like. It hurt like hell trying to wipe my tears from it when it had only opened up about an inch from yesterday.   
    “How did you find me?” I asked in a hoarse voice.  
    “When you didn’t come back to the table, I figured something happened,” he informed me, his fingers lightly stroking the skin along my right hand in a soothing motion, “I made someone tell me about the ad.”  
    His voice went cold and hard for a second when he said that and I felt stupidly happy at the thought that he had threatened or even hit someone on my behalf. I shouldn’t have felt that way, he could have gotten into trouble for it, but it was still a nice thought.  
    “I figured that if you had found out about it, you would go some place comforting. The library was the first place that I looked,” he confessed.  
    There was that burst of happiness again from the knowledge that he knew me that well.   
    “I... What am I supposed to do now?” I asked him in a miserable, lost whisper.  
    Yes, what did one do when the entire school was sending them sexual propositions in the form of spam? What did you do when every time you so much as glanced at your phone, you fell into a panic attack and wave of depression so strong that you felt the urge to kill yourself? Heero stopped stroking my hand and gently pried my fingers open, taking my cell phone from me. I let him, feeling some of the heavy burden around my heart easing just by not having to touch that phone. He flipped it open and, even though it was the last thing that I ever wanted him to see, I let him look through the messages, his expression darkening as he read them. I didn’t even want to know what the new ones said.  
    “You are going to ignore every single one of these assholes and you are going to let me have this so you aren’t tempted to read this trash anymore,” he told me, lightly scolding me for giving in to my masochistic nature, “and I am going to delete all of this filth and any others that come through. Then, as soon as school lets out, you and I are going to go to the store where I bought this and make them change your phone number so you won’t have to deal with any of this shit anymore.”  
    “You... you can do that?” I sniffed and rubbed at my slightly swollen nose, which of course only made it hurt more.   
    “Of course you can,” he smiled sadly at me, “So don’t cry, ok? I’ll fix this, and we’ll find a way to keep them from getting your phone number again.”  
    I nodded, too overwhelmed by his kindness to do much more than that.   
    “Are you ok to go to class? We have five minutes before it starts,” he asked me and I realized that, if I said no, he would have sat there with me for the rest of the day if that’s what I needed to feel alright again.  
    I think I had scared him a little with how violently and harshly I had been crying, how absolutely my depression had swept me up. If he had only known what I had been thinking... I think he would have done just about anything that I had asked him to in those moments, just to assure himself that he was helping me. What had I done to deserve such a person? How could this boy possibly be the same one that had called me a smelly faggot? Those memories of how he used to be seem like nothing more than bad dreams now, or perhaps hallucinations.   
    I nodded again. School was halfway over, and then I wouldn’t have to deal with any of this again, at least not for a few weeks. I was incredibly relieved that it was the last day of the semester and this hadn’t happened during finals. I would have been too much of a wreck to focus on anything. I could survive for a few more classes. Heero stood up, putting my phone in his pocket, and he helped me to my feet. He cleaned up the mess that I had made of the newspaper and spitefully tossed the scraps into the trash bin on our way out of the library.   
    When we walked into History together, there were plenty of snickers. It was very obvious to everyone that I had been crying, and while that would have normally bothered me, I just didn’t care anymore. I felt like, now that my phone was with Heero, the problem was out of my hands. Heero would take care of everything, I trusted him that much to believe that. The laughter and jeers went right through me and just like Heero had told me to, I ignored all of it. Right until our English class.   
    “Duo Maxwell to the Principal’s office,” the loud speaker suddenly came on halfway through the movie that we were being subjected to, “Duo Maxwell to the Principal’s office.”  
    The class made that stupid ‘ooooo’ jeering noise that kids make when someone gets summoned to the principal’s office or gets scolded by a teacher. Heero looked over at me with this worried expression and I had this sense of doom. I knew exactly why I was being summoned to the principal’s office. Fuck, I just wanted that school day to end already. I got up from my seat, grabbed my book bag in case this ‘meeting’ was going to take all period, and walked to the principal’s office, feeling like a prisoner marching off to the warden’s office to learn about their execution date.  
    I was not in the least bit surprised when I walked into Principal Stoan’s office and found him sitting behind his desk with two chairs in front of it, one of them occupied by Mr. Freidman. Mr. Freidman is a tall, scarecrow thin teacher with a stupid goatee, rapidly balding black hair, a gaunt face, and wire framed glasses. He teaches all of the journalism and photography classes and supervises the journalism clubs, including, shocker, the newspaper committee. He glared at me sourly when I walked in. I guess he had seen what his students had published in the newspaper and did not approve of it. And he obviously blamed me for it. Wonderful.  
    “Great,” he said snidely, “Now we can start.”  
    Principal Stoan sighed in aggravation and I relaxed a little. At least this wasn’t going to be a witch hunt.   
    “Mr. Freidman,” he said wearily, looking like he was sick of dealing with the teacher already, “I am well aware that you are upset-”  
    “Upset?!” the other man roared, getting to his feet in his ire, “Upset doesn’t even cover this! Eight years, Stoan, _eight years_ I have been monitoring the school newspapers and this is the first time, the first goddamn time, there has been anything like... like this abomination!”  
    He whipped a rolled up copy of the school newspaper from his back pocket and threw it down on the principal’s desk.  
    “This is absolutely disgusting! I am not going to stand for these hooligans making a mockery of this newspaper!” he ranted.  
    “Which is exactly why all of the students in your club are being investigated,” Mr. Stoan said with boredom, “to discover who was and who was not responsible for this prank.”  
    “And you!” Freidman suddenly shrieked, pointing a finger at me, “This is all _your_ fault to begin with! Did you think it was funny, you and your punk friends, to put something so... so pornographic where every student would be able to see it?! Well you have a sick sense of humor, Mister! Your parents should be sickened to know what kind of son they’ve raised!”  
    “I sure didn’t find it very funny,” I grumbled angrily, “I kind of missed the punch line when it was me that they were accusing of being a whore.”  
    Seeing Freidman turn bright red was the only enjoyment that I was getting out of this unpleasant meeting. Why did all of my teachers seem to think that my being a ‘juvenile delinquent’ meant that I would keep making _myself_ the butt of the joke? Who the hell would do that?   
    “I don’t think that Duo had anything to do with this,” Mr. Stoan said logically, “besides being the victim of a very cruel prank.”  
    I could have shook his hand.   
    “I don’t care if he did it himself or if it was at his expense!” Freidman continued to yell, “What gives you the right to get the school involved in your personal problems, huh?! As far as I’m concerned, you’re just as guilty as the little assholes that wrote that ad! If you hadn’t dealt with it before now, this never would have happened! You should be expelled right along with them for instigating this kind of behavior!”   
    I looked at him incredulously.   
    “You think that I twisted their arms and made them do this because I’m too lazy to stop a bunch of bullies? Are you freaking high?” I asked, completely baffled by his logic, a logic that, I’m sure, a few other members of the faculty shared.  
    “You fucking punk!” he turned to Stoan who was looking like he was getting the biggest migraine on the planet, “ _This_ is what I’m talking about! How can you condone having a student like this at this school?! This might just be a public institution, but he has caused more class disruption amongst his peers than anyone else in this entire school and you haven’t done a single thing about it! I want to see some discipline, I want him expelled!”  
    Even though he wasn’t making even a lick of sense, just a pissed off man taking his feelings of spite and frustration out on the nearest target, I felt that sense of dread again. Expulsion. That was just what I needed. Just following in my father’s footsteps again. Only dropping out of school was better than being kicked out, wasn’t it? I felt like I was cursed.   
    “Yes, yes,” Stoan waved his hand, “I heard you the first couple of times. I will deal with the issue promptly.”  
    My stomach sank right to my knees. I prayed that this entire day was just a dream and I was still sleeping in Heero’s home. I would wake up in a few minutes and laugh about it.   
    “You’d better,” Freidman pointed a finger at Stoan, “or mark my words, this or something worse is going to happen again!”  
    He stormed out of the Principal’s office, almost bumping into my bad shoulder. I don’t know if he had tried to do it maliciously, seeing that my left arm was in a sling, or if he had just been pissy and not realized that my shoulder was hurt, but I saw him coming and quickly moved out of the way. Stoan sighed in relief when the teacher was gone. I could agree with that. I was very glad that I had never had Freidman as a teacher and now, I will make sure that I never do.  
    “Sit down, Duo,” the principal gestured to one of the chairs.  
    He didn’t sound angry, which was good, but he didn’t really sound entirely kind, either, so I couldn’t read him. Still, at least he wasn't screaming at me that all of this was my fault. I suppose I could understand where Freidman was coming from. The newspaper was obviously something important to him and it was because of me that it had been tainted by something disgusting. Bad enough the crude language that had been used, but all of the teachers knew that I was gay, which made the ad about a thousand times worse than had it happened to a girl.   
    The people that had done it had used the paper to mess with me, but it wasn’t like there was anything I could do to stop people from doing it, so what did he want from me? A written apology? Did I really deserve to be expelled for something that other kids had done? I sat down in the left chair and bounced my leg up and down, waiting for Stoan to tell me what his verdict was going to be.  
    “Do you know who did this, Duo?” he asked me after several, agonizing minutes of silence.  
    “Yes,” I said truthfully.  
    “And will you make this easier for me and tell me who came up with this brilliant plan?” he said dryly.  
    “No,” I admitted.  
    He sighed in exasperation, looking far from surprised, and rubbed at his forehead.  
    “Am I going to be expelled?” it was my turn to ask.  
    “If I threatened you with it, would you tell me who wrote up that article?” he challenged.  
    “No,” I said truthfully.  
    “Then no, I am not going to expel you,” he sighed again, “Although I’m tempted to suspend you or give you detention for all the headaches you’ve given me these last few years, but I don’t suppose that is going to help, either, is it?”  
    I shook my head.   
    “Can you at least tell me why?” he implored me, his tone softening a little, “We’ve known each other for three years now and you have been in my office a ridiculous amount of times for someone who has never been so much as suspended before. We go through this dance every time. One of my teachers says that you’re behaving poorly in their classes, that you’re a troublemaker. I sit down with you for a talk and I find out it’s because of another student that you refuse to name. No one gets disciplined and I know that in a day or two, you will be right back here again and I have to listen to _another_ teacher complain that I’m not doing anything to punish you. Frankly, I’m getting very sick of it. I know that someone is bullying you. It’s my job to make this person stop, but you won’t let me do my job. At the very least, after all these years, do me the courtesy of enlightening me on your reasoning for wanting to continue this cycle.”  
    I couldn’t help but flush a little bit, feeling at least a tiny bit guilty for making his job harder. It wasn’t his fault that Zechs and Relena were pricks and that, in reality, there wasn’t much that he could do to stop them. I often wondered about my reasoning as well. When I was in Middle school and Quatre was still alive, I never told anyone because I was afraid of retaliation. Quatre would get hurt and Zechs would freaking kill me. And I knew that my principal then would never expel either of them, so why did it matter? They would just say that it was harmless teasing or that I was making it up, because they didn’t want to bother the Darlians.  
    Principal Stoan was different, though. I don’t know if he would expel either of them. He was hard to read sometimes. He didn’t seem to dislike me or think I was a liar, and he could be strict with kids that broke the rules. He especially seemed to dislike bullies or anyone who tried to intimidate students from coming forward when someone had done something wrong. But I didn’t know if he would be as strict with the Darlians or go more lenient on them because of their parents.   
    But lately, my reasons had changed. I grew up and realized a vital fact of the universe. Or at least a vital fact of my life. As Zechs and Relena escalated, I had realized that their retaliation, short of killing me, probably wouldn’t be anything worse than all the shit that they do to me now. And they definitely can’t do anything worse to me than my father already has. And now that Heero is involved, well, I care more about him being free of Zechs than I care about saving my own skin. So why, you ask. Why couldn’t I tell on at least Zechs if I didn’t care about him beating me to a pulp for it? Well, it boils down to this one, single epiphany.  
    “It doesn’t really matter if I tell you or not, there’s no point, either way,” I told Principal Stoan.  
    He looked perplexed by that and I struggled to elaborate on what I had come to understand.  
    “I mean, if I do tell on these people, and they do get into trouble or expelled, they’ll retaliate. I’ll get beat up worse and they won’t really stop anyway, so my telling on them is irrelevant. And if I don’t tell on them, it’s just going to continue for another year and a half, so either way, it all amounts to the same thing,” I explained, “But really, even if they get into trouble and even if they stopped completely, it _still_ doesn’t matter.”  
    “Why do you think that it doesn’t matter?” he asked me sadly.  
    He sounded so much like the school therapist that Mrs. Khushrenada had forced me to see after Quatre’s suicide that I just wanted to stand up and walk out of the office, but I didn’t.  
    “I know it doesn’t matter,” I corrected and smiled bitterly, “because everyone in this school, well, with the exception of one person anyway, hates me. I’m not exactly what you would call popular, or well liked, or even ‘put up with’.”  
    Mr. Stoan’s expression turned pained and I knew that he was thinking about all the things that his faculty and staff had probably said about me when they had learned about my coming out, and how often all of my teachers pointed the finger at me when their class was disrupted and a prank was pulled on me.  
    “Today, when everyone read that ad in the newspaper, everyone in this school just ran with it,” I pointed out, “And not just people in my grade, either. _Everyone_ thought it was funny and I’m sure that it was to them. So you can expel the people who wrote and published that ad if you want to. You could expel all the people that I point my finger at for having bullied me. It isn’t going to change anything. If you really want something to change and for me to stop being bullied, you’d have to expel almost every single student in this school.   
    “It really comes down to either me or them. Expelling some of the worst offenders is nothing different than treating a symptom over a disease, it’s just going to keep going on. So, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll keep quiet for the next year and a half until it stops being your problem, but I’ll tell you right now that even when I graduate, I’ll still be dealing with this shit, probably for the rest of my life. That’s just a fact and there isn’t a damned thing you or I can do to change it.”  
    The principal was struck silent by my little speech, looking across his desk at me with this vaguely haunted expression. I hated that what I was saying had that kind of impact on him, but he had asked for the truth and I had given him exactly what he had asked for. I suppose, if I really thought about it, I could extend those words to my father. I could run away from home, run far away from him and never see him again. But I would remember what he had done. It is going to be with me for the rest of my life, every memory, every nightmare. I know that now.   
    What’s the point of fighting back, of risking your life and spending all the energy and time, when it doesn’t make anything better? Just what is the fucking point, please tell me, because I can’t see it anymore. I can’t see Quatre’s dream of a better town, a better life like I had once when I was younger. It’s all blurred out and grey, the details are lost. That dream was always way beyond me anyway. Like I’ve said, multiple times now, I had my shot once, but I chose to wake up. I chose to bury my head in the sand and stay in my stagnant waters. I let the stream dry up, I let Quatre and myself down, and now this is all I can do. There is nothing else anymore.  
    “If you aren’t going to punish me,” I said and couldn’t keep the bleak, depressed tone out of my voice no matter how hard I tried to sound neutral, “Can I go to my class now? I’ll try not to cause any more problems for you until the end of the day.”  
    He nodded, but his mind was clearly elsewhere, no doubt thinking about what I had told him and seeming disturbed by it.  
    “Have a merry Christmas, Mr. Stoan,” I said as an after thought, because I didn’t hold any ill will for the man, if anything he was one of the few decent adults that I’ve met in my life.  
    His head shot up and he looked startled by that, hell if I know why. He had to have heard about a hundred people say that to him that week.  
    “M-merry Christmas, Duo,” he echoed back and looked like there was something else that he wanted to say to me, but I didn’t give him the chance, hurrying out the office door.   
  
  
End Part 12  
      
  
(1) If this was some terrible soap opera, it would turn out that Heero's father is really Duo's father, too. While that would be an amusing twist in another story, rest assured that is not going to happen here. Justin's parents living near Nausten is not significant to anything in terms of major plot points, that thought just amused me as I was writing this.   
  
(2) They were watching _Pan’s Labyrinth_ , which everyone in the world should be required to see. It’s the kind of movie that would really appeal to Duo, since he prefers artsy, intellectual films.  
  
(3) It’s really not relevant to the plot (besides some comparison to Duo’s life), but here is the plot of _Wide Sargasso Sea_ in a nut shell: a creole woman is arranged to be married to an Englishman and is taken from her home in Jamaica to live with him in Britain. He even changes her name to help erase more of her creole roots. While there, between finding herself in a land where she doesn’t fit in anywhere, a culture she is unfamiliar with, and her husband’s unfaithfulness, she becomes paranoid. Frustrated with her, he locks her away in their attic, visiting her less and less while he pursues another woman. She descends into madness and the story ends with her setting fire to the attic and killing herself as she accepts her ‘fate’. While there are some parallels to Duo’s problems there, mostly the dark themes appeal to him, lol.   
  
(4) Duo never actually comes out and says where Nausten is, but there are certain hints about which state he lives in, like the kind of climate and the fact that they are coastal. But his area code is the best way to figure that out if one was truly interested. His phone number itself is a kind of personal, inside joke. With the exception of his area code, Duo’s phone number references a favorite game of mine (silent hill) and my favorite gundam wing pairings. It was really just something to amuse myself with while I was writing this plot line that was really bothering me.   
  
Author’s Note: Ugh. This part turned out way longer and much more depressing than it was supposed to. See, most of these scenes where Duo is hanging out at Heero’s house were originally meant to just be a couple sentences long. Just Duo briefly summing up a couple things and then moving on to the next scene. But every time I get Heero and Duo together, they end up having these meaningful moments that need to be detailed. Stupid characters, never following the damned script *grumble grumble* 


	41. Chapter 7 Part 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heero and Duo go to fix Duo's phone. Duo tells Heero about his mother's attempts to quit drinking and how he can't trust her. At home, Duo's father tempts his mother to drink. Will she be strong enough or will she let Duo down again?

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 7  
Part 13  
  
  
    I was already late to Home Ec by the time I got out of the principal’s office. Just like all my other classes, we were being forced to watch some stupid Christmas film, this time it was some classic animated feature that I had no intention on actually watching. It didn’t really look like anyone in the class was really watching the film, everyone was just kind of sitting around the cooking stations, chatting and eating the Christmas cookies that our teacher had brought in for us.   
    I found Heero sitting at what was typically my station, two plates of cookies in front of him. I felt warmed that he had been thoughtful enough to get a plate for me and it lifted my spirits enough that I thought that I might actually survive until the next block, if nothing else happened to me, that was. As I passed him to sit down next to him, I snagged one of the sugar cookies. If there was one thing that I desperately needed after the horrible day that I was having, it was a pick me up in the form of a sugar explosion.  
    “Well?” he pressed after I had made it halfway through the candy cane shaped cookie, “What did Principal Stoan want with you?”  
    I took my time chewing and finishing off the cookie, glad that they were obviously homemade and not store bought, and reached out to steal another. Heero sighed and pushed the second plate over to me, trying to be patient. I almost teased him that I hadn’t had any lunch, after all, but that would just make him feel bad. I tried to decide what I was going to tell him about my little meeting with the principal. I didn’t really want to talk about it. I was grateful that I wasn’t being punished, but I was feeling down that the punishment had even been suggested. Again I wondered if maybe Freidman was right and I deserved some kind of discipline for not taking care of my bullies before they had used the school newspaper just to play a vicious prank on me. Was it really all my fault, for being unable to handle a bunch of kids my own age?   
    I know that I was being ridiculous, but everything that had happened that week was pulling me down into a mire of depression and dark thoughts. I was tired of the constant push and pull in my life. I had had such a nice time sleeping over at Heero’s house, I wanted to keep that feeling. But it seemed like the universe was hell bent on reminding me that happiness is fleeting and I didn’t deserve to feel such a thing.   
    But at the same time, even though I was feeling sad, I couldn’t hang on to the panic and anxiety that I had been feeling ever since I had started to get those phone calls. Even the things that I had told Stoan seemed to fade away as I sat next to Heero. Just by being next to him, I felt better. When I was with him, I didn’t think about all the nasty things that everyone had told me and texted me. I didn’t think about Freidman saying that I should be expelled. And I didn’t think about my break down in the library, how I had truly believed, and still kind of do, that those things were true.   
    I couldn’t. With him sitting there, looking at me imploringly, his blue eyes almost glowing in the dark room, all I could think about were all the ways that he had come through for me today. He had pulled me out of my depressive spiral twice and had been kind and supportive, getting angry on my behalf and assuring me that he would fix things. How could anyone wallow in misery for long when they had a friend like that?  
    “Mr. Freidman wanted Stoan to expel me for messing with his precious paper,” I told Heero, grabbing another cookie and accepting a glass of water from him.  
    “What?!” Heero hissed, aghast.  
    I suppose, in his worldview, teachers don’t go around pointing the finger at victims. I don’t know if I can be called a victim, but even I found Freidman’s accusations a bit childish.  
    “Stoan didn’t...” Heero looked horrified.  
    I shook my head.  
    “He’s not so bad,” I soothed him, “He knows that Freidman was just shooting his mouth off. He just wanted to know who had put the newspaper committee up to it.”  
    “Did you tell him?” he asked me, not really needing to ask me who I thought it was.  
    I shook my head.  
    “Duo, maybe... maybe you should,” he suggested cautiously.  
    I knew that this was something that we were never going to see eye to eye on. He understood how dangerous Zechs was, and he understood that it was unlikely that he would get in trouble for the things that he did, same with Relena, but like his parents, he also believed that I should try to do more to stand up for myself, not because of results, but out of some kind misguided hope that I would... I don’t know, gain some self-confidence or just for the principle of the thing.   
    I don’t think that Heero really thought that it would solve anything, he just hated not being able to do anything about it. I thought about telling him the same exact thing that I had told Stoan, about how pointless telling on my bullies would be, because no matter what I did, I would always have bullies. There would always be someone to kick me down and show me how useless I am, so what is the point of fighting back?   
    I wondered if Quatre had come to understand that, that it wasn’t just because he was scared of things escalating by trying to stand up to Zechs, that he had just come to the conclusion that even if Zechs stopped, someone would just take his place. Had that been one of the reasons why he had killed himself? Had he looked to his future and seen how bleak it was, that because he was gay, he would never really be free to be himself without someone there to kick him back down into the muck?   
    “If I told on Zechs, he would only do something much worse to me, you know that,” I pointed out, “What he did was awful, and I won’t say that it didn’t hurt me, you saw...” I swallowed roughly, “... you saw how I reacted to it. But telling on him isn’t going to make it stop. And maybe he started it, but he wasn’t the only person involved. So he wrote up an ad, so what? You know, he only left me one voice mail. _One_. If it had ended there, it would have sucked, but that would be the end of it. But it _wasn’t_. Everyone else decided to join in on the fun. Don’t you get it? This wasn’t just him. As far as I’m concerned, everyone who called me or left me one of those messages is just as bad as he is. Zechs isn’t the only one bullying me, Heero, this whole fucking school is. Do you want me to tell on all of them, too? It’s an endless battle and it’s never going to stop as long as one person thinks that I’m trash and that makes this ok.”  
    “I’m sorry,” Heero murmured and he had that look again, like he had swallowed a lemon.  
    I smiled at him.  
    “Hey, it’s fine. I’ve been dealing with this for a very long time, remember? Longer than you have. It hurts, but I’m used to it. Besides, as long as we’re friends, I think I can survive a bit of bullying. If it weren’t for you, I’d probably still be in hiding somewhere,” I told him, trying to sooth the turbulent look in his eyes.  
    He smiled back, a bit weakly.   
    “I’m sorry that all this happened to you,” he said, “You don’t deserve this shit.”  
    I wasn’t so sure about that, but I liked that he thought so.  
    “I’m just...” I sighed heavily and rested my cheek on my fist, ignoring how that made my bruises ache, “...having a really shitty week.”  
    Heero laughed uproariously, gaining the attention of a bunch of our classmates, but they quickly turned away when they saw it was us.  
    “That is the biggest understatement that I have ever heard in my entire life,” he said, his eyes alive with mirth.  
    I had to find the humor in that, too, or I think I would have gone a little bit insane. The rest of the school day wasn’t so bad, I guess, all things considered. Heero hung around me like my own, personal, shadow guard. Several times, one of our classmates would try to come up to me, no doubt to make fun of me for the ad, but Heero was always there, stepping in front of them. Most of them would go away, seeing that cold, intense stare of his, daring them to try to do anything to me.   
    Not all of them backed down immediately, and he almost got into a few fights, but it was different than calling my cell phone. Even though I had gotten probably a hundred texts that day, face to face, not nearly as many people wanted to step out of their anonymity, and even fewer wanted to risk Heero’s fist in their face. There were a couple that were bold enough to call his bluff, and one that got a lovely bruise for it. I won’t say that it felt amazing, having my friend fighting for me, but it was kind of worth it to see the asshole fall on his rear in front of a bunch of his friends.   
    I had never seen this particular protective streak from Heero before, but I guess he had assigned himself as my personal body guard after seeing me crying in the library, a task that he took very seriously. I did have a couple of guys successfully come up to me to throw a few lewd suggestions around, Trent being one of them, but I tried to let it wash over me. Then school was over and no one was happier than I was. It didn’t matter anymore, I told myself. Heero was going to take care of the phone problem and my time around my classmates, with the exception of bumping into them around town, was about to be severely diminished.  
    “Do you think we can get this done before I have to go to work?” I asked my friend as we walked to the local strip mall to have my phone number changed.   
    “Probably,” Heero said, “Something like this won’t take long, but the store might be busy because of the holidays. I’ll try to get you to work on time, although I don’t think you should be going.”  
    I couldn’t help but sigh at that.   
    “I’ve missed a lot of work lately,” I complained.  
    “And there’s a good reason for that,” he snapped, looking at my left arm in it’s sling.  
    “The reason is irrelevant,” I argued, “I can at least do paperwork, and I need the money. If I keep taking off days like this, I’m going to get fired.”  
    He had this look on his face at that that he tried terribly hard to hide from me, but I caught it anyway. That look said, very clearly, that he did not think my getting fired would be a bad thing at all. I knew how he felt about my hours and holding two jobs, but even though I had agreed to cut my hours, I just couldn’t agree with him that it would be best if I quit entirely. I needed income and if I quit, my father would probably, literally kill me. I don’t think that I can take many more assaults at the rate that I’m going.     When I stopped to think about those things, I felt a bit amazed. If someone had tried to talk me into quitting a month ago, I would have ranted about my responsibilities and how it wasn’t fair that my father and mother work so hard while I didn’t just because I was sixteen and still going through high school. I still believe those things, but they’re so diminished. My sense of responsibility and my work-a-holic nature is... I don’t know if it’s fading or just derailed, but I don’t feel those needs as much anymore.   
    I guess I had Heero to thank for that. Work isn’t something that I need to do because I have nothing else in my life anymore, and what I do have now, it... it feels more important than my jobs to me. Even if it isn’t more important, it makes work feel more and more like a chore I’m being forced to do lately. True to Heero’s warning, the store that he took me to, which exclusively sold cell phones and phone services, was busy with people trying to buy things for the holiday, mostly the newest models of cell phones. We probably would have been stuck there for hours if the place didn’t have a desk specifically for customer service.   
    “Hi,” Heero greeted the girl behind the desk, who looked rather disgruntled from a rude customer that pushed his way past us, grumbling about something, but when my friend flashed her a charming and handsome smile, her demeanor instantly changed.  
    “Hello, how may I help you today?” she smiled brightly at him.  
    From behind him, I shook my head. For someone who supposedly had zero interest in girls, he sure did know how to manipulate them. It was no wonder how he had gotten through a relationship with Relena without her ever realizing that he was gay. That smile alone could bring any girl to her knees, or any gay boy for that matter. Still, I had been friends with him long enough to know how fake that smile was. Well, not fake necessarily, but more like a mask that he whipped out when he needed it. I had seen his real, genuine smiles and they were so much more beautiful than that one.   
    “Good,” he responded, “I bought my friend,” he gestured to me, “this cell phone a little while ago, but someone has been harassing him. We need to get the phone number changed, would that be possible?”  
    “No problem at all,” she assured us, not so much as batting an eye or asking any of the questions that I had assumed the store would at our request, “Can I have the name on the account?”  
    Heero answered all of her questions and gave her my phone number. She asked me if I wanted to pick out a new number myself and I told her no, I didn’t care what the number was. Then that was it, I was given my new number and we left. I think it took her about ten minutes to change the damn thing. Not exactly the hassle that I had been dreading.  
    “That... wasn’t so bad,” I admitted as Heero handed me back my phone.  
    “Told you,” he beamed in one of those honest smiles of his that I love, just looking so proud of himself that he had solved the problem for me.  
    I flipped my phone open, that pessimistic part of me so sure that something would still be wrong. But though I looked hard for them, I couldn’t find a single record of the hostile messages that I had been getting. Heero really had diligently deleted all of them. I breathed heavily in relief and felt something sting my eyes.  
    “Hey,” Heero saw that I was struggling and placed a hand on my good shoulder, “everything’s alright now.”  
    “I don’t know how to thank you,” I whispered, “For everything you’ve done for me...”  
    He stopped, right there on the sidewalk, completely ignoring the other shoppers that cursed at him for blocking traffic, and pulled me into a brief, but earnest hug.  
    “You don’t need to thank me for a single thing,” he assured me, “Look, I know that you’re used to these kinds of things and I understand why you don’t want to tell on Zechs, but that doesn’t mean that you just have to take the abuse, there are ways that you can fight back and protect yourself.”  
    I looked down at the phone in my hands. I felt like I had gained something back, something precious and it wasn’t just the phone. For the first time since Zechs had first started to bully me, I felt like I had gotten one step ahead of him, even if it was just a tiny one. I had never really thought about my issues with bullying in those terms since I had tried, in vain, to fight back against Relena and Zechs when I had been younger. Then they had punished me for it and I had just stopped even trying to bounce back from their numerous ‘pranks.’ I just kind of let them happen.   
    Somewhere inside of me, I had missed those fleeting moments when I had gotten back at Relena. Taping my books back together, dumping the disgusting ‘soup’ she was trying to make Quatre drink on her... petty things, but they had made me feel better and had helped a great deal in not letting her get to me. When I had stopped, fearing for my and Quatre’s lives, I had felt like I had lost the war forever. But Heero was right. Just because I believed it pointless to try to get Zechs to stop, did it really mean that I had to keep on letting these things happen and not at least try to defend myself? Changing my phone number was such a little thing, but if it hadn’t been for Heero, I wouldn’t have even thought about it. I probably would have just tried to ignore the messages or stopped using the phone altogether. It had never even dawned on me that I could take measures to protect myself.  
    “From now, always keep it on you,” my friend advised, “When we’re in gym, we can put our phones in the lockers. Zechs and the others won’t be able to sneak into the locker room while we’re doing our activities, not without Horner or one of us noticing. And when it’s time to shower, one person can keep the phones on them. Zechs can still steal them off of us, but at least he won‘t be able to blind side us anymore.”  
    I nodded and stuck my phone back into my pocket. I let myself relax with his plan. It was really the best that we could do, besides just not taking our phones to school anymore, and even if Zechs got either of our phone numbers again, at least now I knew that I could change the number pretty easily.  
    “Are you sure that you don’t want to sleep over again?” Heero suddenly asked me, “You can go to work, but if you need somewhere to crash afterwards...”  
    “No, it’s ok. I really need to go home today. I want to check up on Pepper and my mother,” I said before I remembered that Heero had no clue what was going on with my mom.  
    “Your mother? I thought the two of you don’t speak to each other,” he quirked an eyebrow at me.  
    “It’s...” I chewed on my lip, trying to find the best way to say it, “It’s complicated. Really complicated. Things have been a bit... different between us lately. I don’t know if I’d say that they’re better, but she hasn’t been ignoring me so much anymore.”  
    “That’s great,” he said brightly.  
    I shrugged, still not sure how I felt about it exactly.  
    “It’s not great?” he asked, sounding about as confused as I was.  
    I stopped walking, lost in thought. Of course it was great, wasn’t it? Things as they were now were a hell of a lot better than they had been between us. Even though we had little to say to each other, and I knew that things were strained, at least she wasn’t screaming at me or glaring at me anymore.  
    “It is,” I admitted, but I still sounded more dejected than I had wanted to, “She’s decided to quit drinking.”  
    “Duo, that’s amazing,” Heero practically beamed at me, but his smile quickly fell when he saw that he was more enthusiastic than I was, “Why aren’t you happy about that?”  
    “I am,” I insisted, kicking at a small pile of snow that had built up on the sidewalk, “I really am. All of my life, both of my parents have been heavy drinkers and I’ve had to watch them do all these asinine things and ruin their lives because of it. Ever since I was little, I dreamed about them quitting drinking. Even if they don’t change, even if they’re hostile to me, I could at least be happy for them for making a positive change in their lives. So I am happy for her. I was ecstatic when I figured out that she hasn’t had a drink in weeks. But...”  
    “But what?” he pressed.  
    I rubbed at my left arm, feeling the hem of the immobilizer even through my jacket.   
    “But the more I think about how happy I am that she’s quitting, the more I think about how maybe I shouldn’t be,” I murmured.   
    My friend looked utterly bewildered by that statement and I really didn’t blame him. I confused myself most days.  
    “You have to understand, my parents...” I sighed, not really sure how to say what I was going to say without coming off as a complete asshole, “... my parents aren’t exactly... strong willed people. My dad is stubborn, yeah, I’ve never seen him back down from anything, and I’ve seen my mother go through a lot of crap. She has two incredibly shitty jobs that barely pay anything, one of her bosses pretty much sees her as nothing but tits in a skirt, and she gets to come home to my father every day.   
    “But when it comes to making sacrifices and being responsible... I haven’t seen a lot of that from either of them. Awhile back, after my father got a pay cut and we fell behind on bills, we knew we had to cut back on things. My parents had to sell a few appliances that we didn’t really need and the one thing that they would constantly fight about was the television. My mother wanted to sell it since it was in pretty good condition at the time and it was something that we could have easily lived without, but my father absolutely refused. They would have these hour long screaming matches about it, but he never budged.   
    “Logic didn’t matter to him, that we desperately needed the money didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he wanted the television and whatever he wanted to happen, that was the fucking law. So the television stayed and we sold our dryer instead. I have to use a space heater to dry my clothes in the winter because my father didn’t want to part with a freaking _convenience_. And I’ve witnessed the both of them skip meals and use our grocery money just to buy booze! It’s always seemed like that’s the only thing in the world that matters to them.   
    “And it’s not like they drink a lot because it’s fun and they’re social drinkers. They do it because they’re stressed and have shitty lives and the alcohol makes them feel better. So every time I think about my mom wanting to quit, no matter how much I want to trust that she’ll be able to do it, that she can be strong and do what needs to be done, I know that she’s going to drink again. It’s just a matter of time. Because in the last sixteen years, that’s been the most important thing to her. Because there is absolutely nothing else in her life to replace it that actually matters to her.   
    “Because... because even if she stops drinking, all the other crap that she has to deal with isn’t going away any time soon. Drink or not drink, she’s still going to be married to a man that she hates, stuck in jobs that make her anxious and angry, with no career, no friends, and nothing else to take her mind off things. So as much as I want to be happy about it, I just can’t believe that she’s going to be successful. All it’s going to take is one bad day, one reminder of where she is in life and she’s going to take that drink and be back at square one again.”  
    I panted, suddenly realized that I had been ranting, just spewing out all of this shit that I had built up in my head, and Heero was rubbing soothingly on my back.   
    “People change, Duo,” he told me in this comforting, kind voice that made me just want to wrap my arms around him and never let go, “You may not know why your mother is suddenly deciding to this, but she obviously thinks that this change is important and the right thing to do. You don’t know for sure that she is going to slip. And even if she does, a lot of people that try to fight their addictions slip up on the way to abstinence, even the ones that are successful. It doesn’t mean that she’ll go back to the way that she was before. Why can’t you just trust her that she’s stronger than you think she is?”  
    I leaned back against one of the single trees that were planted on the sidewalk, needing something to support me. Trust her? How could I possibly do that? I thought about just telling Heero to drop it and walking away. I didn’t want to talk about these things. In order for him to understand, to really understand how I felt, I would have to tell him things that I never wanted him to know, things that might make him ashamed of me.  
    “I don’t think that I’ll ever really be able to trust her,” I murmured, “Not after some of the things that she’s done and hasn’t done. But it really isn’t about trust.”  
    “Then what is it about?” Heero asked me softly.  
    I rubbed at my unswollen eye, not feeling any tears there, just a great deal of tiredness.  
    “Has anyone ever said anything to you or done anything to you, something so awful that it’s burned into your memory and you know that you will never, ever forget it? Something that you know you’ll never be able to forgive them for, even if they apologize, even if they say that they’re sorry and they really mean it?” I asked him.  
    “Yes,” he murmured in this haunted tone, his eyes gaining this far off look and I knew that he was remembering whatever that awful thing was.  
    I ached for him and I wanted to desperately know who had hurt him so badly, but I didn’t ask. I knew that Heero is the sort of person who, if he wants to tell you something, he will, and if he doesn’t, if he isn’t ready or if it’s something he never wants to admit to, he just won’t.   
    “So, you can’t trust your mother because of this thing that she did to you?” he asked when he came back to himself.  
    I hesitated, then nodded.   
    “I can’t forgive her,” I murmured, “Even if she’s sorry... no, I know she doesn’t remember even saying it to me, and she’s never mentioned it since... and I’ve tried to tell myself that that makes it ok. If she doesn’t remember, then maybe it was a lie, maybe she didn’t mean it. But I don’t believe that, no matter how much I wish that I could.”  
    “What did she say to you?” he pried, but his tone was still gentle and safe and I knew right then that I was going to tell him.  
    I don’t know, maybe I needed to tell _someone_. I had kept this memory close to my heart for almost four years, maybe it was time to lance it out. I held no illusions that it was going to help me in any way, relieve some of the pain that the memory still causes me, but all the same, I knew that I wasn’t going to back away from it. I looked around us to make sure that our conversation was going to stay private, but the few people that were on the street were too busy with the holiday mayhem to care what two teenagers were talking about, and with how grey the sky was, I knew that it was going to snow again, so it wasn’t likely that there was going to be any foot traffic any time soon.   
    “My mom has always hated me,” I said and as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I saw Heero open his to protest that and swiftly interrupted him, “She _has_. I’m not being melodramatic, alright? Hell, she’s told me that she’s hated me more than once. That’s just the way that things are. It’s something that a lot of people don’t understand, that just because you give birth to someone, it doesn’t mean that you’re automatically entitled to love it or even like it. I knew from when I was little that my mother doesn’t like me, that she resents me. I don’t remember how old I was when she told me, or maybe dad told me, or maybe it was just something that I overheard them fighting about, but because of me, my mother can’t have anymore children.”  
    “She’s barren?” Heero asked.  
    I shrugged.  
    “I don’t know, I just know that something went wrong when she was giving birth. She got damaged and now... she either can’t get pregnant or it’ll be dangerous for her if she tries to. I’m all she has,” I said bitterly, “and she’s never been happy about that. Every mistake I’ve ever made, any time that I’ve fallen short, I’ve seen her looking at me with scorn and I know that she’s thinking that she wishes that I was better and how she’ll never have another chance, maybe with someone that she actually loves. Because she sure as hell doesn’t love my dad.   
    “I figured that out a long time ago, too, that the only reason why the two of them are together at all is because he knocked her up. I don’t know, maybe they loved each other at the time, or maybe they were just two stupid kids, fooling around and not being careful, but whatever affection she might have felt for him then, it was long gone by the time I became old enough to get stuff like that. So I can’t even really blame her for not liking me. It hurts, sure, she’s my mother and as much as I hate her sometimes, I still love her and she can’t even do that much for me. But I get it. If I was saddled with some guy that I loathed, I’d hate the person that was responsible for that,” I muttered a bit bitterly.  
    “You are _not_ responsible for your mother’s problems!” Heero snapped at me and I looked over at him in shock, “You aren’t responsible for their financial problems and you sure as hell aren’t responsible for whatever the hell your father’s problem is, either! How can you think something like that?”  
    “How isn’t it true?” I countered, “Before I came along, my parents had a shot at graduating high school. If it weren’t for me, who knows what they could be doing? Instead, they were forced to stay together because of me, they had to drop out of school, they had to provide for a child when they were around the same age that we are.”  
    He grabbed my good arm, his eyes so intense that they were like fiery sapphires.  
    “Duo, I want you to listen to me and I want this to somehow get through that thick skull of yours. You are _not_ going to feel guilty about your parents’ lives, not _any_ of it. I don’t care what they told you, what mean things they’ve made you believe, but you are not the cause of their problems. Yes, if you hadn’t been born, they might have better lives. Or they might not. Maybe they would have ended up dropping out anyway or ending up in dead end jobs or dropping out of college. You don’t know that their lives would have been better, or if they would have gotten married and ended up being miserable anyway. Even if that isn’t true, it _still_ isn’t your fault because not you, not anybody, asks to be born!”  
    I tried to protest, but Heero took a page from my book and refused to let me get a word in.  
    “No, I don’t care about your reasoning,” he said heatedly, “Listen to me, because I am obviously far more intelligent than both of your parents if they believe the same bullshit that they’ve obviously led _you_ to believe. You are not the reason why your parents are unhappy. You are not the reason why your parents are broke. And you sure as hell are not the reason why your mother can’t have more children. It is THEIR faults. Do you understand me?”  
    I just blinked, unable to form any kind of response to that as, for the first time in my entire almost seventeen years of life, I felt doubt. But that was ok, because Heero hadn’t really expected me to say anything.  
    “I’ll prove it to you,” he insisted, “Now, what did your mother say to you that you can‘t forgive?”  
    I tried to speak, but my mouth was suddenly so dry that absolutely nothing came out and I had to swallow several times.  
    “She...” I took a moment to form my thoughts, but it was really hard after he had said such a thing to me.  
    He was going to prove to me that all of the things that I had believed since I was a little kid were wrong? How did he think he was going to accomplish that? He didn’t understand anything, he didn’t understand the kind of guilt that I had lived with my entire life, the knowledge that I had ruined my parents’ lives. How could it not be my fault? They certainly believed so and they were the adults, they were the ones that had lived through it. How could Heero, who was the same age as me, to claim to know more than they did?   
    “I was thirteen,” I finally said, “I had just come home from a really, spectacularly shitty day at school, you know?” he nodded and I let him fill in the blanks there, not wanting to discuss with him the incredible shame I had felt that day as I had tried to masturbate to photos of naked women and had failed horribly, “My mother was in the bathroom, vomiting. That wasn’t so strange. I found her like that a lot. That was the difference between her and my dad, they’re both heavy drinkers, but my mother always tends to overdue it so much that she makes herself sick.  
    “Normally, I would just leave her alone. She can’t stand to be around me on a normal day, let alone when she’s drunk and sick. I don’t know why I didn’t that day. I heard her throwing up and knew she hadn’t made it to the toilet on time and just thought that I wanted to help her, even when I knew that she didn’t want my help. I think maybe, after the day that I had just had, I had wanted to do something good, or maybe I was just looking for some kind of human contact. Or maybe I had _wanted_ her to blow up at me, I don’t really remember. All I remember is being worried about her and trying to help.  
    “And sure enough, when I tried to get her up off the bathroom floor, she lashed out at me for it. I can’t really blame her for that, either. If I was throwing up all over the place, I wouldn’t want someone to see me like that. And she was drunk, really, really drunk, so I know that I shouldn’t take anything that she said or did to heart...”   
    I fell silent for a moment because deep down inside, that was bullshit. My mother could have been doped to the gills and what she had said to me still would have hurt, I still would feel bitterness at her for saying those things to me. Because if she said them, even when she was inebriated, it meant that it was the truth, and she believed in them. That, or she had just wanted to hurt me and had found the one thing that she knew would hurt me the most. Which is worse, I wonder. Truth or intent?  
    “ “You’re so goddamn useless,”” I quoted, remembering what she had said to me, her tone and the hatred in her eyes, with perfection, a perfection that I’ve always wished would just go away, “ “What did I give up my body for? What did I give up my life for?! If you had never been born, I wouldn’t be stuck with that _bastard_ for the rest of my life! I wish I had gotten that abortion your father had wanted me to get. He’s right. I’m pathetic and I’m an idiot.””  
    After I had finished getting those words out, I slumped limply against the tree, like I was a puppet that had had it’s strings cut, and that was exactly what I felt like. I remembered the rest of it, too, even if I wouldn’t tell Heero. I remembered the pain that I had felt, the betrayal, rocked to my core at the knowledge of just how unwanted I was and had been, that my father had not wanted me to the point where he hadn’t even wanted me to be _born_. And I remembered the thought that I had had immediately afterwards, the thought that has been plaguing me all these years, the constant sword through my heart.  
    ‘No one is ever going to love me.’  
    I realized that I was crying. Not crying like I had in the library, but silently. I didn’t care if anyone saw them. Right then, I didn’t care about anything at all, even if I was going to be late for work or if Heero thought that I was some whiny crybaby for getting upset at something that a senseless drunk had said to me.  
    Through these years since that thought, it’s continued to haunt me. When Quatre committed suicide right in front of me, even knowing that I was watching, those words were there. When Trowa had convinced me to have sex with him and later confirmed that he had never wanted me, those words were there. When my father had raped me and kissed me gently afterwards, those words were there. Always there, in my head. They were the driving force behind my suicide attempt, not because I missed Quatre, but because of my terror that _this_ would be my life, that I would never find another friend, not a single person that would ever love me. But... they weren’t true, were they? Heero cared about me... didn’t he?  
    Warm, familiar arms wrapped me into a tight, painful hug.  
    “Oh, Duo,” Heero whispered, his voice filled with pain, “I am so sorry.”  
    I felt him stroking the back of my head and I pressed my face into his shoulder. I felt this deep, aching pain in my chest. It was the pain that one feels after they let go of a hurt that they’ve been feeling for a long time. Four years, and I had never told a soul. Four years and I had never once sought any form of comfort for the truth that I had been told, not even from Quatre. Not even from myself. I had thought, in my pessimism, that Heero wouldn’t understand, that he would think that I was making a big deal out of nothing, that all of the pain I had been feeling from those words couldn’t be validated, that that hurt... that _I_ didn’t matter. But there we were, hugging in the middle of the street, Heero’s voice filled with, not just sympathy, but actual empathy.  
    “No one should ever be told that by anyone, especially not their mother,” he said and let go of me.  
    I let him, although all I wanted to do was cling to him like an octopus. The one person who loved me.   
    “You aren’t useless,” he grabbed me by my good arm, squeezing me tightly in exactly the way that I needed, “You could _never_ be useless. If your parents don’t see that, then they’re blind and arrogant. They dropped out of high school, does that make them useless? So they had assumptions about the kind of person they wanted you to be and you turned out differently. So what? Parents always have dreams about their children, but when their kids don’t fit into that perfect mold, it’s the parents that are the ones that have to change, not their children! If they can’t do that, if they can’t see how great you are, how smart you are, how talented you are, even if it isn’t in the area that they wanted you to be, then _they’re_ the ones who are deficient, not you!”  
    I had never thought about things in the way that he was painting them. ‘Not good enough.’ ‘Not smart enough.’ ‘Too small.’ ‘Not masculine enough.’ ‘Not good at sports.’ ‘Too stupid.’ ‘Too weak.’ I’ve always thought of myself in those terms because that’s how my parents have always seemed to see me. Was their inability to love me for who I actually am really an inability on their part and not mine? The idea was strange, but it sung to my pragmatic side, the side of me that said, yes, this makes more sense than my self-hating beliefs. Because hadn’t I tried to change?   
    Hadn’t I tried to be the child that my parents had wanted? Hadn’t I tried to be smarter, to like the things that my father liked, tried to not be a burden? I had tried to change, but had my parents ever tried to see me for who I really am? I didn’t know, but from where I was standing, if they had, they hadn’t tried very hard. Maybe it was like Heero said and they were just incapable of it. Maybe they were the faulty ones and I wasn’t. Ever try to change your view of something, a view you’ve had your entire life?   
    Like a racist who suddenly figures out that the stereotypes that they’ve believed in aren’t true and they’ve been an asshole for most of their life. Even when you know that, change is hard. The human mind isn’t wired for it, it stubbornly clings to what it thinks it knows and tries to reject anything that says otherwise. That’s what my brain was doing just then, trying to reject Heero’s logic and cling to what it had believed it’s entire existence. It tried to tell me that Heero was wrong and my parents were right, that they had lived with me for all of my life and Heero hadn’t even known me for a year, so obviously they saw my faults while he couldn’t. But my logical nature wouldn’t let that go, and neither would all of my fears that my parents were right. Because even if I had believed in them, it hadn’t meant that I wanted to. But Heero wasn’t through with me yet.  
    “Even if your parents had doubts about giving birth to you, even if your father really had wanted your mother to get an abortion, she had no right to tell you that you were unwanted just to hurt you. But see, that only means that I’m right, that any problems they’ve had are their faults, not yours,” he insisted.  
    “W-what?” I stammered, failing to find his logic that time.  
    How did anything that my mother had screamed at me that day add up to ‘not my fault’? Everything she had said had made it clear to me that it was! Her blaming me only showed me more clearly how my birth had fucked up their lives, and now Heero was saying that it was proof of the opposite?  
    “Your parents are no different than any other person on this planet. If their lives suck, it’s because of the choices that _they_ made, and you have yet to tell me anything of the contrary. Their putting that blame at your feet is only them being childish and selfish, choosing to blame someone who is innocent of anything because they can’t own up to their failings. You didn’t ask to be born. You didn’t ask them or make them choose to have you. Because everything they did that led them to where they are now was a choice that they made.   
    “They chose to have unprotected sex, knowing the risk. They chose to not get an abortion or put you up for adoption. If they had qualms about getting an abortion, they could have very easily done that and gone on with their lives. But no, they _chose_ to raise you. I don’t know why, exactly, they dropped out of high school, if it was because they needed that time to work and get money or what, but there are government programs that could have helped them stay in school _and_ get the finances they needed to care for you if they had just bothered to ask. Not every pregnant mother drops out of high school. And if they really hated each other, there was no need for them to get married. It’s not a crime in this country to have a child and be an unwed mother. If your father really didn’t want anything to do with raising a child, he could have just disappeared.   
    “But that’s not what happened. They chose this life, Duo. They might tell themselves that it’s all your fault, but it’s not. It’s theirs. If they really hate things that much, they could change. Either of them could just disappear. They could get their GED’s, take night classes, something to further their education and get better jobs. If they’re unwilling to do that, there are other ways they can get more money. Stop drinking, figure out what they can give up to better budget, do _something_. But they’ve chosen to wallow in their misery and pull you down with them,” he ranted, sounding even more upset by all of this than he was making me.  
    “I... I never thought of any of that,” I reluctantly admitted.  
    Why had those thoughts never occurred to me? Because there wasn’t anything that Heero was telling me that I could refute. I had been blaming myself for everything, but he was right. I hadn’t asked my parents to have me and raise me. I hadn’t asked them to drop out of school for my sake. They had done those things and blamed me for them. They had let me believe, when I had just been a child, that I had destroyed their lives. But they had chosen, for whatever reason, to keep me. I was grateful for that, but why did that mean that I had to shoulder this guilt for them?   
    I thought about how my father had acted when he had gotten fired from his job as a cop. He hadn’t blamed himself and tried to change. He hadn’t realized that his drinking was destroying his life and he needed to stop and fix the things that were wrong. He had come home, gotten into a fight with my mother over it, and blamed his chief for firing him. Because to him, his drinking wasn’t the problem, it was everyone else. And for days, had he tried to find another job? No, he had just squandered what little money we had saved to go out and get drunk with his friends. It was like Heero had said. He hadn’t tried to change, he had just ignored his problems and been content to complain, but stay where he was. I had always believed that I had driven my parents to be alcoholics, but wasn’t that just another choice that they had made?   
    “Your mother _is_ trying to change,” Heero calmed down a little and smiled at me warmly, seeming to read my thoughts, “Her quitting drinking is a step in the right direction, you know that. What she said was horrible, and her being drunk is no excuse, and I don’t blame you for not being able to trust her intentions, but maybe she’s finally woken up and realized what a terrible mother she’s been.”  
    I highly doubted that that was the reason why she was deciding not to drink anymore. After everything she had said and done to me, I seemed to be the least reason for her to change. If I was, then how was I supposed to look back on her actions and behavior my entire life? Was I supposed to think of that person as some alter ego of hers? Which mother was the real one, the one that had told me that she wished that she had gotten that abortion, or the one that had apologized to me in tears and gotten me to the hospital? Which one was I supposed to believe in, to trust? The part of her that wanted change, or the part of her that just wanted to sink into a bottle?  
    “Maybe,” I muttered indecisively, “but...” I chewed on my bottom lip, almost hard enough to draw blood.  
    I remembered the day that she had caught my father raping me in the kitchen, her look of horror. I remembered how she had just stood there, frozen like a statue and hadn’t done a single thing to stop him, even when he had pushed past her when he had finished. She hadn’t apologized then. She hadn’t said a word to me or tried to comfort me. She had just watched. And I thought about all the times that she had called me useless, all the times that she had told me that I was just like _him_ , the time that she had slapped me, all the times that I had needed her and she had drunk herself into a stupor so she could ignore my father beating me into a pulp, or how I had told her that my best friend had died and she hadn’t said anything about it at all. Yes, it was a good thing that my mother was quitting drinking. It was wonderful, in fact. But did that really change anything between us? Did it change how she felt about me or how bitter my love for her had become?  
    “What if I can’t forgive her?” I asked Heero timidly, “Before I even knew that she was deciding to stop drinking, she apologized to me and asked me to forgive her. But I couldn’t. I love her, but I still couldn’t forgive her for what she had said to me. What if she never does touch the bottle again and I still can’t forgive her? Does that make me a bad person, someone even worse than she is?”  
    ‘Yes,’ my mind supplied a bit sadistically.   
    Heero let go of my arm and caressed my bruised cheek. It was the most intimate gesture that he had shown me since he had kissed my forehead when he had thought that I had been sleeping. I wanted to close my eyes and lean into that touch, but friends don’t do things like that.  
    “No,” he said with conviction, “No, it doesn’t make you a bad person. Forgiving someone who has hurt you badly doesn’t make you a good person, either. It’s understandable, Duo. Forgiveness doesn’t have anything to do with how much you love a person, it can just help you to move on. But if you find that you can’t do that, it doesn’t mean that you have to turn your back on her or even that you blame her. All forgiveness means is that you’re found the ability to stop feeling resentment towards a person’s actions, that you can pardon them for them, not that you love them or can live with them or accept what they did to you. But I think that you’re being too hard on yourself.”  
    I shot him a confused look and he elaborated.  
    “She’s only given up drinking very recently, just a couple of weeks. That’s not a long time. You have no idea what to expect from her. She could have a personality change, or she can still be the same, neglectful mother that you’ve known. You don’t know if she’s going to pick up the bottle again, if she’s going to hurt you again, or if she’s going to do a complete 180. You’re only just starting to learn how to live with this new person. I think you want to forgive her, because there’s hope that the two of you can have a relationship, but you’ve only known how she’s been in the past, that’s your only frame of reference, so you’re basting all of your reactions off those memories of her.   
    “How can you forgive her in that case? But you’re blaming yourself for not being able to, like it’s some huge disability. All I’m saying is hold off on thinking about forgiving her. Don’t be so harsh to yourself if you think you can’t. Wait and see what happens, see if she changes, and if she does, ask yourself then if you can forgive her. And if you still can’t, no matter if she has changed or not, if she’s gone back to drinking or not, no, it doesn’t make you a bad person and you aren’t somehow... more lacking than other people who could. You’re you and I can’t even imagine what it’s been like to live with someone who has hurt you like that. I wish you would forgive her for your sake, but that’s up to you. In any case, I think you need to talk to her about all of this, especially what she said to you back then.”  
    “I- I can’t!” I protested, thinking about talking to my mother about her verbal attack with horror.  
    “Why not?” he challenged, “You might be surprised about what she says. You’re not going to be able to move on from it until you two sit down and have a serious discussion about it.”  
    “Because for one, she probably doesn’t even remember saying those things! She was incredibly wasted at the time. And even if she does, I can’t believe that she didn’t mean those things,” I said.  
    “You’re scared that she’s going to confirm it,” he summed up sadly.  
    “Yeah, I guess,” I squirmed, “And what if she just has worse things to say now that she’s sober?”  
    I didn’t want to learn anything else about my birth. Just learning that I had almost been aborted was more than enough for me, thanks.  
    “I think you’re going to have to talk to her about it sooner or later,” Heero insisted, “Whether it’s now or twenty years from now. This is so painful for you, it’s going to come out eventually, whether you want it to or not. Maybe talking to you about these things will be what she needs to have conviction to keep to her sobriety.”  
    I highly doubted all of that. I felt pretty incapable of being a source of strength for anyone, let alone my mother.   
  
*****  
  
    Shocker: I was late for work. Not by a huge amount. After Heero and I had finished our little ‘talk’, he put me on a bus going south after extracting a promise from me that I would call if I ran into trouble at home and that, no matter what happened, I would come by his house the next day so we could hang out before I had to go to work at four. I ended up only being fifteen minutes late to work, but I had never been more than a couple minutes late for my construction job before and I apologized profusely to Leneski, who didn’t seem like he cared that much. If I had been working a project, he would have chewed me out a little, he assured me, since I couldn’t drive, it would have held up the rest of the crew, but since I was still on paperwork duty, it wasn’t that big of a deal.  
    The rest of my coworkers were already out on a job when I came in, so I dug into my paperwork right away, or at least I tried to. My head was swimming every since Heero and I had parted ways. Everything that he had said to me was bouncing around in my head, making me feel like it was going to overflow out of my ears. And he had had a lot to say. I tried to focus on my work, but it seemed impossible when all I could think about was his beliefs about my parents, that they had been full of shit and that my assumption that their living situation was my fault was a bold faced lie. I wasn’t entirely sure that that was right, and I know that it’s mostly because I was stubbornly holding on to what I had believed about myself.   
    I have always had a very poor opinion of myself, and all of my failings seemed to reflect that. But Heero didn’t believe so. He said that I was being too hard on myself. Was he right? Did I just have self-confidence issues with nothing really concrete to back it up, or was he wrong either because he didn’t know me as well as he did or he was blinded by his feelings for me? I didn’t know what to believe anymore. I liked how Heero’s view of me made me feel, but it just made me terrified of letting him down. He didn’t know how I had failed Quatre and Trowa, he didn’t know the truth about my father. Would his opinion of me change if he did? How couldn’t it?  
    “Hey, there, Braid-boy,” I heard Solo call for me an hour after my shift had started.  
    I looked up from the paperwork that I was more or less neglecting and saw him leaning against the open door. He had taken his jacket off and the red, cheap, cable knit sweater he was wearing was an eerie splash of color in the teal and grey office. His heavy brown boots were tracking rapidly melting snow and his blonde hair was equally wet with the stuff.      
    “Don’t call me that,” I complained, but I was very happy to see him.  
    He ignored me and sat down across the desk from me.  
    “Hope you don’t me sharing your heater,” he drawled, placing a steaming mug of coffee on the desk.      
    That was about the only perk of being stuck doing paperwork, there was a heater right in the office that made it rather cozy.  
    “Feel free,” I said, “but what are you doing back here so soon? I thought you guys were replacing some shutters on a house.”  
    “We were,” Solo explained, “until it started to snow and the boss man called us back in. Doesn’t want anyone falling and hurting themselves this close to Christmas. Speaking of hurting one’s self, what the fuck happened to you? Last time I saw you, you were favoring your side a little, and now your arm’s in a sling. You that accident prone?”  
    He knew full well that my injuries were no accident, not with the mash of bruises all over my face.   
    “I got into an argument,” I said dryly.  
    Solo was probably the only person in the entire town that I could tell the truth to and wouldn’t flip out. He knew the score. Sure enough, he just snorted at my explanation and that was all that needed to be said about it.  
    “Spending Christmas with a... what did you do to your arm?” he asked.  
    “It’s just dislocated,” I informed him.  
    “ ‘Just’,” he mocked, “Well, spending the holidays with a dislocated shoulder sucks. How are you going to wrap any presents?”  
    If someone else had said that to me, it would have been a serious concern, but I knew he was saying a bit snidely and could appreciate the humor. When you’re poor and working your ass off through the holiday season, something like perfectly wrapping a present or worrying about getting the hottest new toy for your kid or even decorating is the least of your problems.   
    “You’ll still get your gingerbread men,” I assured him.  
    “Oh please,” he waved his hand at me in dismissal, “That isn’t important. I can survive without some damned cookies.”  
    “You’ll get them,” I repeated a bit forcefully, “It’s not like I have a horde of friends and family members to gift things to and cooking is the one thing that I _can_ do. I should be able to make the cookies with just one hand. They might not turn out perfect, but they’ll be edible.”  
    He shook his head at me.  
    “Fine, in that case, you have to accept this,” he grinned and all but tossed a thick, wrapped package at me.  
    It landed on the desk with a ‘thunk’ and slid right in front of me. I just kind of stared at it.  
    “Uhhh, what’s this?” I poked at it with a finger.      
    “It’s called a present, dumb ass,” he sneered.  
    “’K, what’s it doing here?” I teased him.  
    “Oh, just open it, and don’t tell me you ain’t gunna accept it because I can’t do anything with it and if you’re gunna be bustin’ your ass making me cookies with a messed up shoulder, then I’m giving you something in return,” he said and his tone told me that there would be no arguing with him.  
    Solo was like me, he hated owing people things and he especially didn’t like being given gifts when he knew that he didn’t have anything to repay the person with. So even though I felt kind of weird getting a present from a coworker, I opened it and pulled out three books. The first two were rather hefty collections of various novels by Neil Gaiman, whose writing I liked a lot, and the third was a collection of urban poetry.   
    Not many people know that I like poetry, well, the kind that isn’t just about flowers and how pretty nature is, but the grittier stuff. It’s not something that I want getting around, what with my already sordid reputation. In fact, I think only Heero and Solo know about it, and that’s only because they’ve caught me reading it before. I’m especially fond of Martin Espada, whose writing is far from feminine or sentimental, but you say ‘poetry’ and that’s all anyone thinks about.   
    “T-thank you,” I sputtered, “but Solo, this must have cost you a lot of money...”  
    “Not really,” he confessed, “The Gaiman ones I found at a yard sale and the poetry I bought off a clearance rack at the bookstore. I take it you like them?”  
    “Yes!” I exclaimed, “All of the Gaiman books that I’ve read, I’ve just borrowed from the library, I don’t own any.”  
    “Good,” Solo seemed satisfied with that, “and now for an added bonus,” he placed a sealed thermos on the desk, “You and I are going to share some egg nog, because it’s the holidays and you look like you could use a pick me up.”  
    “It isn’t spiked, is it?” I asked wearily.  
    Although Solo knew that I don’t drink, he tended to mix his coffee and fruit punch with something ‘extra special.’      
    “You wound me,” he said with shock, “Nah, this is pure. I bought it this morning at the boardwalk. It’s really thick, but it’s good.”  
    He grabbed two disposable cups from the water cooler and we both had some of the egg nog. He was right, it was incredibly thick, more like a milk shake than egg nog, but it was good. As Solo ate his lunch, sharing half of his turkey sandwich with me because I hadn’t brought anything, I thumbed through one of the Gaiman collections, but I still couldn’t keep my mind focused. Now my thoughts were continuously bouncing back and forth to what Heero had said to me earlier about trusting my mother and what I was going to do for him for Christmas.  
    “Alright, what’s bugging you?” Solo suddenly asked as he poured himself another cup of egg nog.   
    I looked up from the book, pulled out of a muddled thought.  
    “Huh?” I asked intelligently.  
    “You’ve looked like you’re day dreaming since I came in here. What’s got your mind in a knot?” he prodded.  
    I closed the book and sighed. A knot was a very good description of how my mind felt.   
    “It’s complicated,” I said and could have slapped myself.  
    I kept saying that for everything lately. ‘It’s complicated.’ But wasn’t it?   
    “Then un-complicate it,” he digged, “Use small words.”  
    There was really nothing that he could do to help me through it, but Solo was even more stubborn than Heero. If he smelled something interesting, he wouldn’t stop going at it until he was satisfied.  
    “What do you do when you’ve believed something about yourself your entire life, something everyone you knew told you was true, but then someone you really trust tells you it’s all a crock of shit?” I asked him.       
    Solo paused in taking a bite of his sandwich and put it down, a very serious look coming over him.  
    “Well, that’s easy,” he said, “You believe in whichever version of yourself makes you the happiest.”  
    I blinked at him. Was it really that simple? To just believe what you wanted to believe, no matter what anyone thought of you?   
    “But what if it’s wrong?” I argued, “What if you’re choosing to believe in something that isn’t even true, just because it makes you feel better? Isn’t that just being in denial?”  
    “Depends,” he shrugged, “If the person telling you that you’re wrong about yourself has got some kind of reasoning for it and it makes sense to you, you kind of have to believe it, don’t you? And if they don’t, they’re just buttering you up, then yeah, it would be kind of stupid to believe them. But if you’ve two different people sayin’ two different things about you and there’s evidence to both sides, why would you choose the one that makes you feel like shit?”  
    I knew that he had a point, it was the same logic that had been rattling in my head for the last hour. My parents thought that I was worthless and the source of their problems, Heero didn’t. On the one hand, they had known me for my entire life, but on the other, they weren’t exactly pragmatic, reasoning people. Both of my parents often did things in the heat of the moment, so what if all of the shit that they had heaped on me was like Heero said, and they only said those things to hurt me?   
    My father had always called me stupid, had many times said that I would end up just like him, a high school drop out. But I hadn’t dropped out yet, and hadn’t Heero proven that I wasn’t stupid by helping me with my finals? That was already one thing that my father had been wrong about, one thing that he had gotten me to believe. Was he wrong about everything else? Was Heero right and all of my guilt, all of my self-depreciating thoughts just holding me down when I had no right to feel that way?  
    “Personally, I’m with your friend on this,” Solo said suddenly, a little bit too perceptively.  
    “What?” my eyes went wide.  
    Was I really that easy to read?   
    “You’re talkin’ about how your parents see you, versus how a friend sees you, right?” he asked without really needing to hear my answer, “It’s not that hard to figure out. At least, not if you’ve ever met your father before.”  
    “You’ve met my dad?” I asked in confusion.  
    I had known Solo for years and he had never told me that he knew my dad, only that he knew that he had been a cop, which pretty much everyone else knew anyway.  
    “You know,” Solo said with a smirk, putting his feet up on the desk, “he arrested me once.”  
    I gaped at him. I knew that he had a rather... colored past with selling pot and jacking cars, and my father had been a cop for sixteen years, so it really wasn’t all that surprising that he might have arrested my coworker before, but for some reason, it shocked me that the two of them had even met. It was like the melding of two worlds that I never expected to meet.   
    “You never said-” I started to say.  
    “At first I wasn’t sure that you were his kid,” he admitted, “When you started working here, you were just ‘the kid’ to me. When Willis said your dad was a cop, I thought it was a bit suspicious ‘cuz you look a little bit like him. Not a slitting image or nothing, just similar. Then when I learned what your last name was and you mentioned that he had gotten fired, it was easy to put the pieces together after that. I didn’t say anything ‘cuz that’s not exactly something you bring up in every day conversation, ya know?”  
    I nodded numbly.   
    “And actually, he arrested me twice. The first time was when I was fourteen, that was for aggravated assault. I’d already been in and out of juvie for little things the last three years, mostly getting into fights, destruction of public property, joy riding, shit like that,” he told me, “But the aggravated assault was a big one.”  
    “What happened?” I dared to ask.   
    I had known from the moment that I had met Solo that he wasn’t a saint. He tended to do what he wanted to do, no matter the consequences and he had a vengeful streak. Not the kind of anger problems that my father had, but if he felt slighted, he did something about it. I couldn’t imagine him going around beating up people just for daring to look at him like Zechs did, but I didn’t really know what Solo had been like as a teenager. I just didn’t want to associate the thug that Zechs was with someone that I was on friendly terms with, it didn’t fit with the guy that let me share his lunch and talked to me like I wasn’t some dumb kid.  
    “My mother had left home by the time that I was ten,” he explained, “so at that point, it was just me, my loser of a father, and my big sister. Well, she wasn’t that much older than I was, just beat me by a year and she sure as hell didn’t act like my older sibling. I tended to look out for her more than she had ever looked out for me. So when I caught my dad, drunk off his ass, trying to ‘touch’ her, you know, not like how a father is supposed to touch his teenage daughter, I decided that what he needed was some manners.”  
    A chill shot through me at his words. _“Not like how a father is supposed to touch his teenage daughter.”_ I felt frightened suddenly, although I can’t tell you why. It wasn’t like I thought, just because Solo had once caught his father try to have sex with his sister, it meant that he could see the same thing in me, but I felt oddly disturbed hearing that.   
    “I took a rolling pin out of the kitchen and hit him until it broke. Then I kept punching him until the cops showed up. I never did find out who called them, either our neighbors or my sister. It was your dad and that Irish partner of his. They hauled me off my dad and roughed me up a bit, even though I didn’t resist any of it. When I threatened to tell on them for it, that Irish bastard just laughed at me and slugged me again, right in the gut. Your dad, on the other hand, was cold as ice. He said no one was going to care if they were a little rough with a juvie loser like me, let alone believe some stoned punk who had attacked his father right in front of his sister. The two ounces of pot they found in my pocket hadn’t exactly helped things.   
    “And he was right. I complained to the other cops when I was brought in, and to the civil lawyer that I was given, free of charge. The cops told me to shut up and the lawyer told me that no judge was going to take me at my word with my history of assaults. I didn’t even bring it up in court, not after my sister took the stand and said that I had attacked my father unprovoked. Seemed kind of pointless when even the person you were trying to save decided it was easier to point the finger at ya. I got six months for the pot and a year for the assault. When I got out, I never went back home again. I just crashed at a friend’s house until I was old enough to get a job,” he finished.  
    That coldness in my gut grew into a glacier and I had to look away from him out of shame.   
    “I’m so sorry,” I tried to apologize.  
    “Hey, ain’t your fault your dad’s a prick,” Solo interrupted with a reassuring smile, “I’m just glad that he wasn’t the one to pick me up for car theft seven years ago.”  
    “He’s just...” I said weakly, but I couldn’t find the words.  
    Just what? I asked myself. He just has a temper? He was probably just stressed out? What excuse was there for a cop beating on a teenaged kid, just because he could get away with it? The child in me that had always been proud of my father’s work protested that he would never do such a thing, but the rest of me, the parts that were aching because of the beatings that he had given me, the parts that remembered what it felt like to be forced down and violated by him knew that he was fully capable of doing something like that. Pat doubly so.   
    “No, he’s a prick,” Solo repeated, “or are you going to tell me that those love taps on your face are from falling down the stairs repeatedly?”  
    I flushed darkly at the accusation.   
    “Did... did you ever see your father again after that?” I asked hesitantly, “Or your sister? Did you even try?”  
    “Of course not,” my coworker snorted, “Why would I want to look up the people that had sold me out?”  
    “You don’t miss them?” I pressed, thinking of all of my own doubts and reasons why I hadn’t done what Solo had had the courage to do.  
    “I miss my sister,” he admitted, “Despite what she did, she wasn’t a bad sort. Timid, but nice enough. I’ll never forgive her for lying about what happened, but I don’t outright hate her for it. My dad on the other hand... well, bad enough he hit us now and again and drove my mother out of our lives, and never missed an opportunity to make me feel like trash, but after I saw him with his hand up my sister’s skirt...” he shook his head, his eyes gaining this haunted expression that I had never seen from him before, “I don’t ever want to see that rapist filth again. I just hope that my sister got out before he ever did anything more to her. But I’ll tell you this much, kiddo, getting out of there was the best decision that I have ever made in my life after a long string of shitty decisions. I’ve been a lot better off without my father, I wish that I had run out at the same time that my mother had.”  
    He left his sordid story at that, but left hanging in the air a question that might have just been in my own head, but I didn’t think so. ‘I got out,’ the question seemed to be, ‘so why haven’t you, Duo?’  
    “Now, I don’t know what your father says to you,” Solo quickly switched tracks, “I don’t know what he’s gotten you to believe about yourself, and I don’t know what your friend said to you, but whatever it was, if he thinks that your father is full of shit, his opinion is probably the right one. Your father might have known you your whole life, but that doesn’t make him an expert on who you are, you get me? If he makes you feel like garbage, then he’s wrong, and if your friend’s opinion of you makes you happy, then _he’s_ the one whose right.”  
    “But how can he be?” I murmured, “I’ve only known him for a few months... even if I want to believe him, even if he makes perfect sense, I’m still worried that my father is right. I’m still having a hard time believing that Heero is right, just because I want him to be.”  
    “It’s hard,” Solo agreed with a slight nod, “It took me years to realize that when my father called me a loser, even if he was right, he wasn’t saying it because of what he saw in me, it just made him feel better about how much of a loser _he_ was. Look,” he leaned in close across the desk and I met his eyes again, “you need to understand something. I remember how it was when I was younger, thinkin’ my parents walked on water and everything they said was the gospel truth, but it ain’t. Just because you're the kid and they’re the adults, it doesn’t mean that they’re right and you’re wrong. All adults are, are overgrown kids that don’t have their parents around anymore to tell them to cut the shit. That’s _all._ You’ll see when you’re older, being a grown up really doesn’t amount to anything.  
    “You asked me what to do, so here’s my advice and you can take it or leave it. Listen to your friend. Obviously you think he might have something to what he believes if you’re this conflicted about things. If you like what he says, then believe it, because your father has his head up his ass and what he thinks is probably exactly what your friend told you: bullshit.”  
    “But how?” I asked him desperately, “How am I supposed to believe that my father is wrong when it doesn’t feel right to ignore the things that he and my mother have told me my entire life? How do you just forget about things like that?”  
    “Easy,” he assured me, “People do it all the time. How do you think that so many people in the world have come to believe in God? It’s called faith, believing in something until it becomes a fact for you and no one can tell you otherwise. Believe until it feels right to you. Every time your dad tells you that you’re worthless or dumb or trash or whatever it is that he says, and every time your head tries to tell you the same damned thing, you just tell yourself that the both of you are wrong. You keep telling yourself that until it becomes second nature to you.   
    “It’s not easy. Like I said, it took me years, but you just got to consciously decide on who _you_ are and believe in that, not what other people are telling you. You think that your father knows best because he knows you the best, but that’s a lie right there because no one knows you better than you do. Look at who you are and what you can do. If you still think that he’s right after that, then there’s really nothing I can say to help you. But personally, from what _I_ know of you, I can say that whatever he’s told you, if it makes you feel like you’re worthless, it’s not the truth. You’re a good kid and if he can’t see that, then he really _is_ a prick,” he took a long swig from his coffee and looked at his watch, “But that’s all the insight and wisdom that I have for today, it’s way past the time that I should have been off my break.”  
    He stood, leaving the rest of the egg nog for me. I felt a little bit guilty that I had kept him for so long, but I didn’t regret our conversation.  
    “Solo,” I called after him and he turned back towards me, “Thank you... for the present and for the talk. It really did help.”  
    And it did. Maybe not completely, but he had given me a lot to think about, and a little bit of hope that, not only was Heero right about me, that I could move away from my own depression and self-hatred. There was still a lot clinging to me, and a lot of it, I knew, was not going to go away. There are reasons why I hate myself, things I’ve done and haven’t done that I regret, but if Solo could move past his father’s opinions of him and regain some self-confidence and faith in himself, then couldn’t I do the same thing eventually?  
    “Glad to hear it,” he grinned at me and gave me a fake salute, “See ya tomorrow, Braid-boy, and you’d better have those cookies with ya.”  
    I snorted at that, but nodded. The rest of my shift passed rather quickly after that. Although I was far from focused on what I was doing, I managed to get the paperwork done. I could feel a pounding headache beginning to form from all of the thoughts I was trying _not_ to focus on. Outside, it was bitterly cold, but at least it stopped snowing long enough for me to get to the factory before it started up again. I had my mittens on me, but they only provided a very slight warmth. I was reminded again that I really needed to buy warmer clothes, but I stubbornly kept putting it off because I didn’t want to pay the expense, and it wasn’t like I was freezing to death or anything.   
    I debated stopping at home between jobs since I hadn’t had the time to do that after school, but decided not to. Pepper would have enough food until I got home in the early hours and while I knew that facing my father was inevitable, there was nothing wrong about putting it off for a few more hours, was there? I thought that Lorathe would give me another lecture as I walked into his office to get my assignment and wasn’t really sure how much more stress I could take at that point of the day, but he merely shot me several, venomous glares and gave me the most boring, aggravating filing job he could find. I just smiled at him and thanked him before sitting down at a desk to work and was rewarded by seeing him flush with anger. Hey, I never said that I’m not petty, ok?   
    I managed to get out of there at midnight, or rather, Lorathe kicked me out at that time, claiming that he had no more work for me to do. I think I had pissed him off when I managed to finish the work that he had given me early and just wanted me out of his face. I almost asked him if he was going to give me a full night’s pay or stiff me for the two hours because he was too lazy to give me another task, but I decided that I really didn’t care. I decided to be optimistic for once and count myself lucky that I could go home two hours early. I won’t say that I was looking forward to it. Two extra hours with my father, who was probably going to be pissed that I was home early, and who knew what kind of reception he was going to give me.   
    Worst case scenario, he was still furious from the other day and my not coming home had pissed him off even more, in which case I could look forward to another beating and maybe even a third trip to the hospital. Well, I suppose the absolute worst case was me dying from my injuries, but I was trying very hard not to think in those kinds of terms. Best case scenario, he didn’t come home at all. Anything between those two things was also fine, I supposed, but I wasn’t sure if I had the strength left to deal with another one of his rages.  
    So I was incredibly relieved when I trudged my way through the snow to my house and found that the driveway was empty. The snow was piling up where my father’s car should be, but there was a noticeable dip telling me that he had been home and taken the car out somewhere. Probably to a bar. I could have cried from happiness. I really hoped that he didn’t expect me to shovel the driveway for him in the morning, because there was no way in hell I was going to manage that with my shoulder.   
    I almost slipped on the way into the house. Our front light had been broken for awhile and my dad hadn’t tried to fix it yet, plus it looked like he hadn’t put any snow melt down. That would have been a wonderful thing, my having to go to the hospital not because of another beating, but because I had slipped and fallen on my shoulder or bad side. I managed to regain my balance somehow and make it the rest of the way to the door in one piece.  
    The inside of the house was almost as cold as the outside was. The heat has never worked very well, making winters pretty miserable for us, but it was pretty bad that night. Either no one had turned it on or it was broken. If I slept there that night, I would have to grab some extra blankets or I was going to have a really awful night. I wasn’t the only one. When I walked into the kitchen, I saw my mother there at the sink, washing dishes from their dinner, and wearing what looked like two sweaters and some sweatpants along with her slippers. The kitchen looked a hell of a lot better than the last time I had seen it. The mess on the floor had been swept clean and the table had been righted again.  
    My mother heard me come in and turned to me. Her thin lips turned up into a small, shy smile and for a very strange moment, I thought of Mrs. Inori greeting me when I walked through the door, smiling brightly. That was the sort of expression that my mother had tried for, but she seemed to lose it halfway through and quickly turned around shyly, not knowing what to say. That was alright. That one, little smile was more than she ever had for me and it warmed me up better than a cup of hot chocolate. She really was changing, I realized, or at least she was putting the effort in.  
    I decided that this was a good of a time as any to start on Solo’s gingerbread cookies, so I bustled around the kitchen grabbing the things that I needed; butter, brown sugar, molasses, an egg, water, flour, ginger, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg, plus the ingredients to make the frosting. I had been gathering and hoarding the ingredients for awhile, spending a small chunk of my savings, and I had been worried that I would come home to find something missing, but it was all there, even the egg, even if it was the only one left.   
    As I got everything set up to make the cookies, I kept an eye on my mother to make sure that she was ok. There were a lot of dishes piled up, probably from the time that the both of us hadn’t been home, and she was washing them very slowly. The reason for that was no doubt the black bruise in the shape of a hand on her right wrist that was making it awkward for her to wash things. Along with that, there were a few fresh bruises on her face and neck, but I couldn’t see any further injuries than those, thankfully.   
    I was having a hard time, myself. I was partially making Solo his cookies because I wanted to give him something for being so friendly to me, and after the pep talk he had given me and giving me those books, I knew that I had to do something nice for him. But I was also doing it to test how well I could bake things from scratch without moving my left shoulder. Even though it was still very early after the injury and I couldn’t do much with it, I could move my left hand a little without compromising my shoulder. If I could make something as simple as cookies without too much trouble, then I wanted to see what that would allow me to do for the Yuys when I had dinner with them on Sunday.   
    All that being said, I probably wouldn’t have been able to make the batter without the little, electric hand mixer that we have. It made it much easier to cream and beat all the ingredients without needing to stir much. That was the easy part, then the batter went into the fridge to solidify for thirty minutes. My mother was still doing dishes at that point and struggling to get what looked like cheese and grease off one stubborn plate. I saw her struggling with it, switching her grip to her bad hand so she could scrub with her stronger one and knew what was going to happen the second I saw her hand waver.  
    “Dammit!” she exclaimed as her grip weakened and suddenly the plate flew out of her hand.  
    It would have crashed to the floor had I not been watching her, but I was used to wrist injuries myself and had been expecting it. I managed to snag it as it fell in the air before it could shatter on the floor.   
    “Thank you,” she breathed in relief when she saw that I had caught it and returned it to the sink.  
    “Here,” I gently pried the sponge from her fingers, “I’ll wash, you dry.”  
    She smiled at me again and this time the smile was much stronger, much more natural. I felt this indescribable happiness as we worked together, like how I imagined Heero and his mother did when he helped her with dishes. More than that, her smile had been full of gratitude. I felt like I had done something truly right, not just to me, but to her. In reality, I was only marginally better than her at washing the dishes with my shoulder, but holding the bowl while creaming the batter had taught me how to hold things without involving my shoulder at all and we were able to get most of the dishes done pretty quickly after that, I just had to pay attention to what I was doing with my left arm.   
    “Thank you,” she repeated as we neared finishing the mess, “...for what you did before, I mean.”  
    I realized that she was talking about taking the fall for her, not the dishes and felt my face warm a little. I almost protested it, saying that it wasn’t a big deal, but it was. It was especially a big deal to her. I don’t really know what she thought about me. The things she said when she was angry were one thing, but I can’t be sure if those were her honest thoughts or not, but my self-sacrificing actions had seemed to surprise her. She had never thought that anyone would do something like that for her, let alone me, and I think I might have shamed her a little.  
    “I’m just glad that he didn’t hurt you too badly,” I said softly, not really knowing what to say to her gratitude.   
    Even that took her aback a bit as she looked at me in surprise, but gained her smile again. It amazed me how that one look of softness and affection completely transformed her face from weary and cold to actually quite lovely. I felt like I was seeing a glimpse of the girl that she had been before she had married my father. I finished the last dish, handing it to my mother to dry, and returned to my baking. Rolling the dough proved, just as I knew that it would, to be the hard part. I couldn’t do it as neatly as I wanted, and it took longer than I had hoped it would, but I felt a sense of accomplishment when I got it flat enough to cut gingerbread men out of. We didn’t have any cookie cutters, but the design was simple enough to cut out of the dough with a knife.   
    I repeated the process until all the dough was gone, filling two cookie sheets with little, gingerbread men and stuck them in the oven. I had made a double recipe, one to keep at home and the other to go to Solo, in hopes that my father wouldn’t steal what I had intended for my coworker. I was just setting the little egg timer that we had for the cookies while my mother washed the sink when the front door swung open. I had been so optimistic when I had seen my father’s car gone. I had thought, as late as it was, he had to be at a bar and would no doubt go home with Pat or wherever the hell he crashed on the nights that he didn’t come home. But of course not, I’m never that lucky.   
    My mom froze where she was at the sink, like she had sensed that there was a tiger in the room. I realized, with a bit of almost dark humor, that we had twin expressions of fear on our faces. I had a terrible case of deja vu as my father strode into the kitchen, my memories replaying what had happened the last time that my mother and I were in this situation. In a way it was the same, I had the instinct to flee, but I didn’t. After what my mother had done for me, possibly even had saved my life, I would never leave her alone with him again if I could help it.   
    I kept my back to him as I, very slowly, cleaned up the slight mess that I had made while baking, pretending that I was busy while I was really just keeping an eye on him and my mother. I had no clue what I was going to do if they came to blows. Was I as brave as my mother was? Could I attack my father to save her? I think that I could. For the first time in my life, I think I could actually stand up to him if it meant stopping him from hurting her. I half expected him to make a beeline for me and just start wailing on me, so I was a bit surprised when he walked right past me to the sink.   
    I tensed and grabbed the rolling pin in my hand, the back of my neck prickling as I watched him, ready to do _something_. He was carrying a heavy bag in one hand and a case of beer in the other. I didn’t like not knowing what was in the bag, if he could use it as a weapon or not, and similarly did not like that I could not judge his mood. He had a fairly normal expression on his face and did not seem chaotically drunk at least, but that didn’t mean much. When my father pulled something out of the bag, I actually tightened my grip on the rolling pin. I suddenly realized just how outmatched I was.   
    I mean, I’m just shy of five foot seven and my dad is six foot four and outweighs me by about eighty pounds, he could overpower me on a good day. But with a dislocated shoulder and a broken rib? He could probably knock me out with a single punch. But I couldn’t just stand there and do nothing. Hell, my mother is smaller than me and she had still knocked him out. Suddenly, he took what was in his hand and slammed it on the counter next to my mother. It was a bottle of whiskey, which wasn’t that surprising. What did surprise me was that it was the brand that my mother liked to drink, not my father’s. He never went out and got her booze, only his.   
    My mother jumped right in the air at the sound of the bottle hitting the counter. With the force that he had used just to put the bottle down, I expected to see my father enraged about something, but it was more terrible than that. He was smirking at her, his grin sadistic and pleased by her fear. It sickened me. His gaze hinted at some secret knowledge and I realized that he couldn’t have gotten across the message ‘here, I bought this for you’ more clearly if he had said it out loud.   
    That’s when it hit me. He _knew_. He knew about everything. He knew about my mother trying to quit drinking and that she had been the one to throw his liquor out. Hell, I was willing to bet that he had known that right when he had caught her at the sink that day. I don’t know that for certain, but at the same time, I just do. That expression told me that as plain as day. The way he had spoken to her, so snidely, asking who had done it. And he had known that I was covering for her, but he had beaten me anyway. Although, that was probably just for lying and the things that I had said and not my involvement in her ‘crime’. But there was a part of me that seriously believed he would have beaten me even if I hadn’t ranted at him, just to be cruel. I didn’t want to believe that, but the thought was there in my head, something that was impossible _not_ to think about. Just like how I had realized that he had bought that whiskey for her. He knew that she wanted to quit, and he had gone out and bought her a bottle, to fucking torture her with.  
    And torture is exactly the right word for what he was doing. She looked at that bottle like it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen in her life, and the most horrible. I have never seen anyone with that kind of expression on their face, equal parts desire and repulsion, like that bottle was some demon that had come to offer her everything that she had ever wanted, but at the price of her own soul. Watching her battle with it was a terrible thing and I hated my father for it. Knowing that someone is trying to quit an addiction is one thing, but actually watching them trying to fight it... I couldn’t imagine how painful it was for her.   
    “Go right ahead,” my father said snidely as he put his case of beer in the fridge, taking a can out for himself, “You can have the whole thing, consider it a Christmas present.”  
    I stared at him incredulously. I know that he can be cruel, especially when he’s drunk, but I had seldom ever seen him act like this when he was sober and unprovoked. What the hell was his problem? Why was he doing this to her? I glanced back at my mother and saw her staring, transfixed, at the bottom of the sink like there was no other place she could possible look. Her hands were gripping the sides of it, her knuckles white from her tight grip, and her hands were trembling with suppressed need. It was as if she had to force her hands to hold on to something or she would immediately grab the one thing in the room that she didn’t want to touch. But it wasn’t just her hands, the more time that bottle spent next to her, the more the rest of her body shook.   
    “N-no, thank you,” her voice trembled as badly as her hands, “I’m not thirsty, you can have it.”  
    Instead of getting angry about her refusal, my father’s lips pulled back into a sneer. He stepped right behind her and put his hand on her shaking arm, making her tense up. He ran his hand down her arm slowly in a gesture that, had they been any other couple, would have seemed intimate and loving, but my father somehow turned it into something ugly and repulsive, a thinly veiled threat. It reminded me of the way that he would touch me during sex sometimes and I immediately felt sick to my stomach watching him.  
    “Who the fuck do you think you’re kidding?” he asked her in a hateful, superior tone, giving out a short, mocking laugh, “You’re a drunk, a _loser_ , just like me, just like your kid.”  
    My mother’s eyes darted to me and she looked so horrified to see me there, like she had forgotten that I was watching all of this. Maybe she had. I hated how ashamed she looked and remembered how I had felt when she had watched my father rape me, that feeling of disgust in myself, of someone seeing me in such a weak and vulnerable state. I also remembered what Heero had said that afternoon, how I could be a source of strength for her. I wanted to believe that so badly. I wanted to believe that I could help her, that I could be the reason why she stayed away from that bottle of whiskey, but I felt so incapable of that. What was I to her? It was like my father said, we were both losers, neither of us were strong people and I was just the reminder of all of her failures. How could I possibly help her?  
    “No matter how long until your next drink,” he leaned in and hissed in her ear, “a year, a month, a day, that’s _all_ you’ll ever be. Don’t kid yourself into thinking that a couple of weeks staying away from the stuff makes you any better. You’re just a hypocrite.”  
    Tears dripped down my mother’s face at his accusation and he laughed again, like the sight of her crying was some great joke, taking his beer and walking into the living room, his work finished for the day. I wanted to follow him in there and strike him for daring to say that to her, but the damage had already been done. My mother, crying silently, looked over at the bottle of whiskey and this time, there was more desire for it than hatred. She looked at it with relief, like it was a long lost friend that had finally come back to her. She looked at it like she was dying of dehydration and it was the only possible thing that would satisfy her thirst, and I’m sure that’s entirely accurate.  
    She picked up the bottle, staring at it longingly, her hand on the cap. There was a deep misery in her eyes, like a fire that she wanted desperately to put out and she knew exactly the cure for it. I knew right then that she was going to drink it. I didn’t hate her for that, it was just a revelation. It was like I had said to Heero, it wasn’t that my mother was weak, it was just that she had a lot of stress and misery in her life. Sooner or later, something would come along and remind her of that, something that she couldn’t cope with, something like my father calling her a drunk and a loser, and she would turn to the one thing that she always did that made her feel better. It was like gravity, and as Quatre had shown me, everyone succumbs to it eventually.  
    She looked over at me, that shameful expression still there and I wondered if I hadn’t been there, if she would have taken that sip already. I had to look away from her, not out of shame or even anger knowing how vulnerable she and her will was. I just felt very sad, for me and for her. I had hoped... when Heero had talked about her changing for the better, and when I thought that, maybe, just maybe, we could have some kind of positive relationship instead of treating each other as either strangers or with hostility, I had hoped that it could all work out. But seeing her looking at that bottle with such desperate hunger, and hearing the sound of her unscrewing the cap, I just remembered what I had told Heero.  
   _“Why can’t you just trust her?”_  
    I had told him that it wasn’t really about trust, it wasn’t about believing in her. It was about all the times that she had hurt me, it was about moments like this one where I had dared to hope in something better, and she had only hurt me again. It was inevitable, and I’m just so tired of being hurt. I didn’t even blame her for that, but it was a simple fact that it did hurt, knowing that she was going to take that drink. Knowing that I would never be the thing that she would quit for.   
    The sound of liquid being poured out into the sink was like lightning right through me. I might have jumped at the startling sound, I don’t remember. But I do remember looking back at her and seeing her there at the sink, pouring that bottle of whiskey down the drain, shaking so hard that it almost looked like she was having a seizure, her face contorted into one of both hatred and conviction. As the last drop fell from that bottle, her eyes following it desperately, but never losing that look of pure _surety_ in what she was doing, she looked over at me. Her grey eyes were brighter and more alive than I had ever seen them in my life, and that surety grew when she saw me, like I was some kind of proof that she had just done the right thing.  
    “I will do whatever it takes to prove to you that I am going to change,” her voice shook as she spoke, her tone rough like her throat was sore, but that voice was also somehow strong and full of passion, “Whatever it takes, Duo, I’ll prove to you that I can be stronger than him.”  
    She wiped at her face with one hand and with the other, threw the empty bottle into the trash can, where I could hear it shatter.   
  
  
End Part 13  
  
Author's Note: I debated if I was going to end this part here or not because there really isn't a whole lot left of Chapter 7, but it felt right. Also apologies for the incoming spam, but I was holding off on posting here until I finished Nanowrimo. Now that it's over, I have five parts to post. I'm going to try to get them all up today ^_^


	42. Chapter 7 Part 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heero and Duo go sledding. Duo comes home to some troubling news from his mother.

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 7  
Part 14  
  
  
    One thing that I will always regret is that I didn’t tell my mother how proud I was of her for not taking that drink. At first, I was just too shocked to say anything at all. It wasn’t just that she had turned down alcohol, that wasn’t the thing that shook me to my core. Sure, it was impressive of her and enough of a reason for me to be proud of her, but it was what she had said to me that got to me. She had looked me right in the eye and told me that she wanted to prove to me that she could change. Prove to _me_. That... that my opinion actually mattered to her. That I mattered to her at all was enough to surprise me, but that passion in her eyes... her dedication...   
    When Heero had suggested that I be a pillar of support to my mother, I had found it laughable, but she had seen me watching her struggle with temptation and she had managed to beat it. Because of me? I couldn’t equate that with what I knew about her. Even if we were on better terms, she still didn’t care about me like that. I had believed that, maybe because I had needed to. But the evidence that she _did_ care, she cared very much, had slapped me in the face. How I saw her... my believing in her... it actually mattered to her, and I had no clue why.   
    I was too busy puzzling over that, trying to figure out why she had said what she had, why she needed to prove herself to me, prove that... that she could change that I lost my chance to let her know how proud I was of her, that I already thought that she was strong for tossing that bottle out instead of succumbing to her addiction. After tossing out that bottle, my mother didn’t loiter in the kitchen. Tears still in her eyes, her face looking haggard and exhausted like she had just gone through some harrowing battle, she hurriedly put on her shoes and coat and left the house.   
    She wouldn’t be back before I went to bed that morning. I’m ashamed of it now, but the first thought that came into my head later when I wondered where she had gone was ‘she’s probably at a bar right now or somewhere else to get wasted.’ It wasn’t a conscious thought. It was just the automatic, almost reflexive thought that I would always have when my mother would disappear, and lately those moments when she would seemed to be happening more and more, only never for the length of time that she used to.  
    Instead of days, I would find her leaving the house for a few hours and mysteriously showing up again, no clues as to where she had gone. Sometimes it seemed like she was leaving the house the same time every day, but it had taken me awhile to even realize it since I’m often at work when she’s home. It was only on the weekends at the beginning that I even noticed her doing it. But once I started to notice it, I began to realize that it really was about the same time, while other times it was when she seemed to get her headaches. I had assumed that she was either getting drunk or going to get some medicine, but now that I knew that she was trying to quit drinking, it puzzles me even more.   
    I immediately hated myself for thinking that she was going to a bar after she had said that to me and discarded the thought like it was trash. She just needed to get out of the house for awhile, I reasoned, after what my dad had said to her, she just needed some fresh air. But still, I worried. She had rushed out of the house with that look of determination and I knew that wherever she had gone, she had gone there with a purpose. It bothered me, but I would just have to trust that wherever she was going, alcohol wasn’t involved. I just wish that it was easier for me to trust. Even with what she had said, trust isn’t something that’s easy for me nowadays.  
    My father seemed content with the pound of flesh that he had gotten from my mother’s pain. The bastard, for once, did not bother me for most of the morning, at least until I tried to go to bed, only to have him shortly climb into it with me. Before then, I was left alone. He sat in front of his precious television and drank his even more precious beer. He didn’t have work in the morning, so he could afford to stay up late. I hoped that he would sleep in so I could sneak away to Heero’s house without any confrontations from him.   
    I busied myself in the kitchen with frosting the gingerbread men as they came out of the oven. I didn’t put a lot of frosting on, gingerbread cookies aren’t ones that you should drown in frosting, I just outlined them in white frosting and made buttons and facial expressions. Then I put them in an airtight cake container and stuck them in the oven to sit until I took them in the morning. I was hoping that if I hid them in there, my dad wouldn’t find them and I could give half to the Yuys and half to Solo, perhaps leaving a couple for my parents.   
    That task done, I went upstairs to tend to Pepper. After I had fed her and played with her, I struggled into my pajamas and laid down in bed, my kitten laying on my stomach and the book of poetry that Solo had given me balanced on my chest as I read from it. I was really too tired to do much else, and I had a big day, so I only read a couple of pages before trying to drift off to sleep.   
    I managed about two hours before I felt myself being manhandled onto my stomach. It had felt so long since the last time my father had had me, even though that wasn't accurate at all, that it startled me, like I had forgotten somehow the one thing that I can never, ever forget. Terror exploded into me and I almost smashed my elbow into his face before I stopped myself, reminding myself that wasn't part of this. Fighting back wouldn't keep it from happening and my father wouldn't tolerate it.  
    'Just lie here and keep still,' I told myself even as I felt tears gather in my eyes and breath hitch in a near panic as my pants were pulled down, 'Just let him do what he's come here to do and then it will all be over, like a bad dream.'  
    But it wasn't a bad dream, not even one of those weird ones that I still get from time to time. It was all horribly real, just like it always was, the feeling of him pushing his way inside of me, the sharp bite of pain, his hands on my skin, his hot breath reeking of beer washing over me, the sounds of his passion, moans and short grunts. His weight bore down on me, bringing alive pains as he pressed down on my injuries. That weight pinned my shoulder down against the mattress. The immobilizer helped, but I could still feel a solid, throbbing pain in my shoulder from how heavy he was and my rib protested quite loudly from the strain.  
    I got through it by thinking of Heero, of reminding myself over and over and over that soon, I would see him and for a little while, I wouldn't think of this. I focused on my memory of his clear, blue eyes and handsome face, but most of all his kind smile and how he smelled. He smelled like the shampoo that he used, coconut and sea salt, not like beer, the cheap cigarettes that Pat smokes, and sweat.   
    The universe did me a kindness for once and my father finished quickly. He must have been pretty hard up for it because he had built up into a fervor and lasted only a few minutes, but was either too drunk or too tired for a second go and stumbled back down the stairs. A part of me just wanted to lay there and cry, now that he was gone and I had that luxury. But his junk was still in me and I wanted it gone, and my heart was racing like a jack hammer, making staying still a near torture.   
    So I forced myself out of bed, wincing a little at the soreness in my ass and shoulder. My shoulder actually hurt worse, throbbing and feeling hot under the immobilizer. An ice pack was in my immediate future, but cleanliness was integral for my continued sanity. I left my pants behind, grabbing a change of clothes, and walked jarringly down the steps. As I reached the bathroom door, I could hear my father snoring in his bedroom and felt a burst of red, hot rage in my chest at him.   
    I remembered the night that I had held the gun to his head and, for a moment, wondered what my life might be like now if I had pulled the trigger. I knew that I never could, but for that brief moment, I wished that I had at the same time that I was glad that I hadn't. I was glad because I didn't want to be a murderer and as much as I hate him, I don't want to kill my father, not really. He's made me into a lot of things, but I refuse to let him make me into that. But also, I'm glad because I would probably have ended up in jail and I never would have become friends with Heero. That alone is enough to be happy for.   
    I glanced over through the dark of the kitchen and saw a telltale lump on the couch in the living room, which could only be my mother, sleeping. I felt relief knowing that she was home, but also embarrassment at the possibility that she knew what my father had just done. I didn't think that she did. He hadn't been loud and she was pretty still. That, or she was just pretending to be asleep because she didn't want to deal with the horror of it all. I wouldn't blame her if that was the case. The shame of her seeing me like that, dressed only in my pajama top with semen and a tiny bit of blood dripping down my thighs had me hurrying into the sanctuary of the bathroom. This was what she felt earlier, I thought, when she had seen me watching her struggle with that bottle, the shame of it.  
    I had been planning on taking a shower when I had gotten to Heero's. This might sound a bit... selfish and elitist of me, but I just don't like taking showers at home anymore. I've lived with that shower my entire life, but after becoming accustomed to using the upstairs bathroom lately, I've grown to hate my own. It isn't just because the upstairs one is nicer, ok? I haven't just gotten a taste of how the other half lives and started to resent my own humble home.   
    I mean, part of it was that. I like how big it is. I like the bright lighting and the smooth stone walls instead of cracked, aged linoleum and a tattered shower curtain that should have been replaced years ago. I especially like the steaming, hot water that comes out of the shower head, instead of struggling with our antiquated dials in hope for one, short burst of warmth. But it's the smell that I've come to hate. That slight smell of mildew and rust and the combined scents of the cheap, generic soaps and shampoos that my family uses. There's some other scent underneath it all, one I can't put my finger on that might just be in my head or a mix of all of those things, but whatever it is, I can't stand it. That smell has always been there, I know, but lately, I can't stomach using the shower anymore than I can stand sleeping on my own mattress. It's not a matter of comfort, there's just something underlying it all that makes me uneasy, sickens me.   
    Smell or no smell though, I couldn't wait until I went over to Heero's to take a shower. Waiting aside, there was no way in hell I was going over there smelling as I was. Just the thought had my stomach rolling in disgust. So I turned the water on, took my shirt off, and stepped into my grody, ancient shower, weird smell and all. There was actually some warm water for a few minutes, but it brought me no pleasure at all. There was something very off putting about feeling it, like how a puddle of water can feel warm on a summer's day when you know that it should feel cool. The words brackish and stagnant come to mind.   
    That water made me feel dirty, although I know it's probably all just in my head. Even if it was, I felt disgusting and wished that I had some hot water to sear my skin right off, to burn away all of the sweat and filth that was on me. Instead, I settled for turning the cold water all the way up, pretending that the painful, burning cold was heat. I washed my hair with the shampoo that I hated and washed my body with the soap and it's smell that I couldn't stand until I was shaking from the paralyzing cold and had to turn the water off. The rough, thread worn towel that I used to dry myself off with didn't help with the chill at all.   
    I got dressed and combed my hair one handed. I felt this stupid, giddy happiness at the thought that I was going to have to ask Heero to do my braid for me again. My love sick feelings are enough to repulse me some days. I had chosen to put on a hoodie shirt for the day, so I could just pull up the hood and no one would even notice that my hair was down, instantly making me feel better. In the mean time, I tucked it under the shirt, glad that it was out of the way. Both of my parents were still asleep when I left the bathroom, and if things had been like they had been before, I would have reveled in the solitude. But they weren't and as weird as it is to write this, I desperately wished that my mother was awake. I didn't want to be alone all of a sudden. I wanted to be with someone, someone that I could talk to.   
    It came to me then that, although I never actually would out of pure shame, my mother was the only person in the entire world that I could talk to about my father. I could tell her how he made me feel when he did this to me, this feeling that I had to rip my skin right off of me or I would never feel clean again. I haven't felt clean since the very first time he put his hands on me, when I first realized that he wanted to fuck me. No matter how many showers I take, no matter how hard I scrub myself, I never feel clean anymore. There's always this layer of grime on me that never goes away.  
    I wanted to tell her that, and about my horrible nightmares and the terror that I feel every time he walks into the room. How sometimes I can feel him inside of me at random parts of my day, even when I'm at school, and I can smell his breath just from a single reminder of the rapes. But mostly? I just wanted someone there, to touch someone, to lean against them as hard as I could and maybe ask them to wrap their arms around me. Hell, I just wanted to be around someone. The loneliness that I was feeling was terrible, this thick isolation. It was like an emptiness in my chest, a hole, and the more I thought about it, the less that I could stand it.  
    I could have gone to the Yuys at that point, as tired as I was, but it was just shy of five am and even though I knew that they wouldn't be mad at me, I just couldn't risk waking anyone up because I had a sudden brush with monophobia. I went back upstairs and found my cat, still hiding in her home in the wall from her fear of my father. I held her to my chest and let her dig her claws into my shirt, her purring the closest thing to comfort that I was going to get. One hand cradling her, I grabbed one of my notebooks from my book case, the one that I write all my recipes down on, gathered up all of the money that I had in the shoebox in the floor, and sat down at my desk, unwilling to sit down on my mattress. I could still smell him on it.  
    I had been thinking long and hard about what I was going to do for Christmas dinner on Sunday. I had made up my mind that no matter if I couldn't use my left arm much or even if I had no money at all, I was going to do _something_ to repay Heero and his parents for everything that they had done. I knew that baking some cookies was never going to be enough after they had let me use their home and had been so kind to basically a stranger, not even to mention all of the amazing things that Heero has done to me, but I also knew that I had very little to offer them.   
    Baking, at that point, was all that I could manage, it would have to suffice and I had already made up my mind that I was going to do an assortment of things. I mean, if I couldn't buy them nice things, I had to go big on this, right? Making some chocolate chip cookies was not sufficient enough of a gift in my mind. Ever since the possibility of baking the Yuys something had popped into my head, even before I had given up on my idea of knitting, I had been collecting dessert recipes. I had even written down that recipe for egg nog custard that I had seen on the cooking show.   
    I looked through them all and picked out the ones that I thought they would like and I would be able to pull off in the time that I had. Then, with a heavy heart, I counted up the money that I had saved to see what I could actually _afford_ to make. There wasn't much there, to be honest. I had stopped doing chores for Mrs. Liddle between her not being able to come up with much more for me to do and a lack of time. She had insisted that I could still have Pepper's food, but I hated taking hand outs from her and had just been buying what my cat needed myself.   
    Now that my father was getting pay checks, our bills weren't too horrible, but I was still paying out of pocket for a few things. His car had needed repairs again, our cable bill and heating bill went up, and the washing machine had broken, so I had pitched in here and there. My father was under the impression that I had taken on more shifts and I let him believe that, bitterly thinking that if he didn't spend so much time out with Pat and stayed sober for a decent amount of time, he would easily realize that my work schedule hadn't changed and I had actually been home a few times when I should have been at work thanks to injuries and hours being cut.   
    I wondered if he had even realized that I hadn't come home the two times he had hospitalized me. My father might be a drunk, but he's not stupid. Even though he spends a large portion of his nights in a bottle, he's pretty damned perceptive even when he's drunk and when he's sober, it's almost impossible to fool him at anything. He had to have realized that I was either in the hospital or hiding out someplace and just didn't care enough to get pissed about it. That, or he _was_ pissed about it and just hadn't done anything about it yet.   
    In any case, he hadn't figured out yet that the money that I was giving him to pay for bills was coming out of the extra bit of pay that I was getting from my construction job, so the savings I had left was getting a bit... lean. I wasn't panicked about it yet, although I kept thinking about how I had wanted to save up for when I graduated high school with a great deal of guilt. But the more that I thought about it, the more depressingly foolish that plan seemed. It felt like the more that I tried to prepare for the future, the more life threw obstacles in my way.   
    Every time I tried to save money, my father demanded more from me or Pepper needed something or I needed more clothes or something in the house broke. It was never ending. How had I ever hoped to save money towards an apartment when ninety percent of my paychecks are ripped right out of my hands before I can even pocket them? It felt so hopeless to me. If I tried to think about my future, I felt this crushing fear that I was going to end up even worse than my father. At least he had a job and a roof over his head. What was I going to do when he kicked me out and I ended up on the street?   
    I pushed those thoughts down for the time being. I was still in my junior year of high school, only sixteen. I had another year and a half before I needed to worry about not having a home, and there really wasn't a thing that I could do to stop my father from taking my money for bills. I could work more, but I hadn't changed my mind about cutting my hours. I just told myself that that extra money wasn't going to be enough anyway, so if I was going to live the rest of my life scrimping and saving, why shouldn't I do what Mr. Yuy had suggested and spend the rest of my time as a kid, enjoying what little moments I had left before I had to worry about things like this?   
    At seven am, I was finally starting to feel better, my mind on baking and Heero instead of my father. I headed downstairs and checked on the cookies that I had stored in the oven. To my ultimate relief, they were all accounted for, though I had no doubts that if they had been there around lunch time, my father would have stolen some. I took out four cookies, two for each of my parents, wrapped them up and put them on the counter for them.   
    I made myself some cream of wheat because it was chilly out and we didn't have much else for breakfast. And, if I'm being completely honest with myself, it was kind of becoming a comfort food for me. It ended up being a rather bland meal since we were out of brown sugar, honey, vanilla, and any fruit that I could add to it, but I found a little box of raisins in the cupboard and added them to it, thinking of my friend with an affectionate smile. As I was finished eating, my mother walked into the kitchen still half asleep, rubbing her eye tiredly, and her blonde hair askew.   
    "What time is it?" she asked through a wide yawn.  
    "7:30," I told her, "You have some time."  
    She had work at the diner from nine to two, then had to work a double at the bar. It was like that every holiday season for her. She probably wouldn't even get Christmas day off. She shuffled off to the bathroom to comb her hair and whatever else she did in the mornings and I started the coffee for her. When she came out, looking much more awake, she smiled at me.  
    "Thanks," she said gratefully, accepting a mug of the stuff from me.  
    I had this homey, wonderful feeling when she took the coffee and blew some steam off of it. It was the same feeling that I would have when I watched Heero's parents dance around each other in the kitchen or talk about yard work and chores that needed to be done, this feeling of family and cooperation. It was a feeling that I could really get used to.   
    "I made some gingerbread cookies," I pointed to the ones that I had saved for my parents, "You can take them for a snack today if you like."  
    Her eyes widened in surprise.  
    "That... was really thoughtful of you," she said shyly and I felt myself flush a little at the praise, as timid as it was.  
    She saw the cake box that I was using to store the rest of the cookies in and watched as I fished my two fall jackets out of the hall closet.  
    "Where are you going?" she asked me, not in accusation, but in actual curiosity.  
    "To a friend's house before I have to go to work," I replied honestly.  
    "Will you be home at all before then?" she asked.  
    "Just to change into my work clothes," I glanced at their bedroom where my father was still sleeping.  
    My mother caught the look and seemed relieved. She understood, loud and clear, that I wanted to stay away from him as much as possible that day.   
    "I'm sure he'll be gone by then," she assured me with a slightly bitter tone.  
    It was his day off, after all, and I took solace in the fact that he would be out with his friends. I just hoped that he wouldn't bring any of them home with him. I wasn't as sure as she was that he would be gone by the time I went back home around three, since the driveway still needed shoveling and he liked to sleep in on Saturdays, but I hoped that he would be. I just wanted a day with no fights, no hitting, no screaming. Was that really so much to ask for?  
    Eager to leave, I grabbed the cake box and slipped my sneakers on, wishing for about the hundredth time that I had the money to get snow boots. I had had to pay for the construction boots that I wore. Leneski had given me a half off voucher to get them, but they were the steel toed kind that were not just expensive, they also did not do well in the snow. They were water proof, but were far from warm, and my old snow boots had officially become too small for me to wear at all. But all of the snow boots that I had seen in the shops so far started at fifty bucks just for the water proof ones, and soared towards seventy and eighty for the ones that actually had good traction on the ice and snow and were warm. Besides, at that time of year, they were probably all gone anyway.  
    "Have fun with your friend," my mother said to me as I was leaving, her tone sounding a bit unsure of herself, but more confident than it usually had been when she tried to speak to me.  
    I nodded to her, almost wishing her to have a good day at work, but it would have come out sounding ingenuous considering that I knew how much she hated her jobs. Outside, it wasn't snowing, but it was bitterly cold. My mittens felt entirely worn and useless against the wind and I wished that I had a scarf and an actual winter jacket instead of just layers. All I could really do was put my hood up and hide my mouth and nose under my jackets as I walked to the bus stop. I felt incredibly lazy, taking the bus when I could just walk, but the cold convinced me that the bus fare was worth it.   
    The walkway up to the Yuys' front door was, once again, fairly well shoveled and given how early in the morning it was still, Heero's father must have done it. The door was unlocked and the second I stepped into the foyer, I felt I was going to die from pure bliss from the warmth. Kanuck ran at me, barking happily, but skidded to a stop without actually jumping on me, wagging his tail furiously.  
    "Hi, boy," I petted his ears.  
    The large dog waited with a patience that was kind of amusing as I took off my sneakers and two jackets, hanging them on the coat rack by the door, then followed me as I walked further into the house.  
    "Duo, is that you?" I heard Heero's mother call from inside of the kitchen.   
    "Yes, Ma'am," I called back.  
    "What did I tell you about calling me that?" she scolded as I walked into the kitchen, but she looked amused.  
    She looked incredibly homey as she stirred what looked like some kind of thick dough in a large, glass bowl, dressed in a cheerful Christmas apron with holly and berries on it.   
    "You just missed Justin," she told me as she kept stirring, "He left not ten minutes before you walked through the door."  
    "But it's Saturday," I said in confusion, "I thought he doesn't work on the weekends."  
    "Oh, he doesn't. He needed to pick up a few things," she explained, "His mother called him earlier to tell him that two of his cousins that they thought couldn't make it this Christmas are going to show up after all, so he needed to get them some last minute gifts," she rolled her eyes, telling me that these particular cousins had a habit of doing that, "And the turkey we ordered for dinner tomorrow is finally ready. You would think that, with Thanksgiving over and done with, we could just pick up a turkey at a butchers, but of course not. I suppose, although ham is more traditional, plenty of people eat turkey for Christmas dinner as well. I hope you like turkey, Justin's parents will be serving ham, so I thought something different would be better. Although, you might be sick of it so close after Thanksgiving..."  
    "I like turkey," I assured her, "and we didn't have a lot of turkey for Thanksgiving. It's too expensive and we don't really celebrate it anyway. I've never had ham before," I said hastily when Mrs. Yuy looked saddened to know that my family didn't do Thanksgiving, "so turkey is fine."  
    "Alright. You're looking a bit better today," she remarked while studying my face, "Not quite as pale. How's your shoulder?"  
    "I jarred it this morning," I said, my memories of how I actually had hurt it threatening to intrude on my idyllic little world, but I refused to let them, "so it's aching a bit, but otherwise it hasn't been too bad."  
    "Why don't you grab an ice pack out of the freezer," she offered.  
    "What are you making?" I asked as I did just that, fishing out an ice pack from under an assortment of frozen food and ice trays.  
    I slipped the ice pack under my shirt and pressed it to my shoulder, almost sighing at the feeling of the cold against my slightly swollen skin.  
    "Mantecados," I was told, "and I also have the dough for two dozen polovorones in the fridge as well. I've been at it for awhile. That's the key to a successful Christmas, Duo, getting up very early in the morning every day, otherwise nothing at all gets done," she winked at me.  
    I just kind of stared blankly, having no idea at all what those were. She caught my look and laughed a little, but it wasn't mockingly.  
    "Mantecados and polovorones are Spanish cookies. It's a family tradition to have them for Christmas. Manetcados are a type of crumble cake made with anise, powdered sugar, egg yolks, and cinnamon with just a dash of lemon, very soft and sugary. Polovorones are an almond cookie. They are also rather soft and crumbly, but have a very rich flavor to them," she took pity on me and explained, "I always make all of the dough for my Christmas cookies ahead of time so I can bake them before we leave for Christmas day, that way they will be nice and fresh. Usually we go to my father's house for the holiday, since he lives in Tampa, and Justin's parents fly down to spend the holiday with all of us.  Usually my father is too stubborn to go anywhere, but with all of us having moved up here, I managed to convince him to come have dinner with us. He loves these cookies, but with my mother having passed a few years ago, I'm the only one that will make them for him."  
    "I'm sorry," I said in sympathy.  
    "It's alright," she smiled sadly, "She was very sick. I'm just glad that we lived nearby so she could say goodbye to her grandchild."  
    It was such a typical statement, and there were no hidden motives or feelings in her words, but I still felt very sad. I wondered if Heero thought of that when he felt guilt over his family moving across the country and leaving his grandfather alone. At least they had moved after his grandmother had died.   
    "Would you like me to save a couple of these for you after I make them? I promise, they might have a different flavor, but they are quite good," she asked me, her smile brightening a little.  
    "I would love to," I nodded, "I love trying new things. And about that... I was thinking of baking some desserts for dinner on Sunday, so you don't need to bake anything."  
    "Oh, Duo," she looked both touched and put out by that, "you don't need to do anything for us-"  
    "I want to," I assured her, "Your family has done so much for me, I want to do something nice for all of you. And I would really like to share something from me after all the wonderful meals you've made for me."  
    Heero's mother put the bowl down to press her hands against my cheeks in a gesture that made me feel warmed in a way that I had only ever felt around her and Heero's father, in those rare moments when they actually seemed to treat me like I was a part of their family.  
    "You're such a sweet boy," she said softly, "and we would love to try some of your cooking, or anything else you gift us with. But you must know, Duo, that what we do for you, we don't do it expecting anything back. You are Heero's friend, but I think you also need looking after sometimes. Justin and I certainly don't mind doing that, and opening our house to you is a small thing. I know that things in your home aren't very... peaceful, so we're happy to be able to give you that much. You're so kind and polite, and you're really helping Heero through a very difficult time in his life, so, if anything, we feel that we owe you. It's never any bother for us."  
    I didn't know what to say to that. No one had ever called me 'sweet' before and it certainly wasn't something that I would describe myself as. I knew that Heero was going through a hard time, it couldn't be easy moving so far away, to a place that was so vastly different from your home, all because your parents were worried about you. And he had adopted this radically difficult persona just to hide the fact that he's gay, doing things that he had hated just to achieve that.   
    I didn't really see how I was helping him through all of that. Even though he knew that I was gay, too, it wasn't something that we talked about. But the thing is, I don't think Heero ever really struggled with his sexuality. I think that he is just fine with the fact that he's abnormal and likes other boys, it's how other people treat him that he has a problem with. I sure as hell wasn't good support for that. I have nothing but problems with my sexuality and being bullied about it is the one thing that kind of feels normal for me. But then again, Heero's mother knew him better than I did, so if she said that I was helping him, I hoped that was the truth. I liked the thought that I was doing something for him after all that he had done for me, even if I couldn't see it.  
    "Speaking of Heero, why don't you go wake him up?" Mrs. Yuy said when she moved her hands away from my face, although I could still feel the warmth there.   
    "He isn't up yet?" I asked, not really knowing what his normal schedule was and it wasn't like I had told him what time I would be showing up.  
    "He usually sleeps late on Saturdays, especially since this is the first day of winter break," she said.  
    "I should let him sleep then," at least one of us would get some.  
    "Nonsense, he's had plenty of sleep," she laughed, "He's terrible to get up in the mornings. He'd sleep forever if we let him. I'd even tell you to dump a bucket of ice water on him, but I don't think that you would go for that."  
    I shook my head. I've had my dad do that to me before, or physically kick me off my bed if he was in a certain mood, and would not do that to anyone, even as a joke. It felt weird, almost wrong going into Heero's room while he was sleeping. Even Kanuck stayed quiet as we crept inside together. The shade on one of the windows was wide open, sunlight heroically streaming through despite the grey clouds in the sky, but Heero was sleeping right through it.  
    He was on his back, sheets wrapped around his waist like a snake, one arm thrown carelessly back against his pillows and other laying on his chest. His hair was pure chaos, mussed and sticking up at some very strange angles. He was the most beautiful thing that I have ever seen in my entire life. I could have stood there for hours, just watching him sleep, studying his lax face, vulnerable and unaware. I reached out my hand, feeling it tremble. I wanted to smooth those dark bangs out of his eyes. I bet that they felt exceptionally soft.   
    I remembered how he had kissed my forehead when he had thought that I had been sleeping. Did I dare to do something like that? If I did, it would be the only chance that I would ever get to kiss him, to feel his skin under my lips and suddenly, when I had never had that kind of desire to do that to anyone, I really wanted to. I wanted to know what that would feel like. He wouldn't know, I told myself. Unlike I had been, he was very clearly asleep. But the mere possibility that he wasn't, that he would know, terrified me. It was more than that, though. I was much more terrified of how it would feel, of what it would do to me.   
    I reached over and shyly touched his shoulder, shaking him a little.  
    "Heero?" I called out to him.   
    His brow furrowed a little and he made a small, indecipherable sound. I shook harder.  
    "Heero, it's time to get up," I said softly, not wanting to be too mean when I was already pulling him out of a sound sleep.  
    He groaned and rolled over onto his side, facing away from me. His pajama shirt rode up as he did it, treating me to the lovely sight of his lean, tanned back. That feeling that I needed to touch him returned powerfully. It was actually painful trying not to pay any attention to it.   
    "Not now, Mom," he mumbled in his half-sleep.   
    I couldn't help but chuckle. He sounded like such a child, it was endearing.  
    "Come on, your mother wants you up," I prodded at his shoulder again.   
    Heero's back suddenly stiffened and he turned back around quickly to look at me with wide eyes.  
    "Duo?" he finally seemed to realize that I wasn't his mother and looked appalled, pulling up his sheets like he was worried that he might be naked, "H-how long have you been here?" he stuttered, his face bright red.  
    I almost laughed at his reaction, but decided that that was a bit too cruel after rousing him like I had.  
    "Not long," I said honestly, "and I wanted you to sleep, but your mother insisted that I come wake you up."  
    "Of course she did," he grumbled to himself, but sat up straighter, "Well you can tell her that I'm up now. I'll be down in twenty minutes."  
    "Alright," I took pity on him walked out with the dog, giving him some privacy to do whatever he needed to wake up.  
    In the kitchen, Mrs. Yuy had finished with the dough and was cleaning up.  
    "He's awake," I told her.  
    "Did he get out of the bed or just tell you that he was getting up," she asked with a raised eyebrow.  
    "He said he would be down in twenty minutes," I said awkwardly, wondering if he had just ended up going back to sleep, "I didn't wait and see, he seemed a bit embarrassed."  
    "Oh, I'm sure he did," she chuckled cryptically, "Why don't you watch some television while you wait for him to come down? Unless you would like some breakfast?"  
    "No, thank you. I ate before I came over," I told her.  
    Kanuck followed me into the living room like I was his best friend in the entire world and laid down at my feet while I flipped through television channels. I have no idea why that dumb dog likes me so much, maybe he just smells my cat on me. There wasn't much to watch at just shy of nine am, so I found a documentary on New Years' celebrations around the world and settled on that. Mrs. Yuy finished what she was doing in the kitchen and sat down on the couch next to me with a cup of tea. It felt so incredibly normal and I realized that it was.   
    I was getting used to these sorts of things, expecting her to do things like that. Even the smell of her tea had become this familiar thing. Little by little, I was moving away from feeling like a stranger, feeling like I didn't belong and the house and it's occupants were these alien things in my life. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or something that's going to bite me in the ass later, but I needed it that morning. I needed to forget about things for awhile and just be a part of something normal, instead of chaos and fear.   
    It was thirty-five minutes later, not twenty, when Heero finally graced us with his presence. He was still dressed in his pajamas, but his hair was combed and he looked much more awake.   
    "Finally up?" his mother chided, taking a sip of her tea.   
    Heero crossed his arms over his chest, looking annoyed at her for some reason.  
    "Yes, and next time maybe you could wake me up instead of making my friend do it," he said a bit grumpily, actually sounding angry about something.  
    "Oh? I didn't realize that having Duo wake you up was so terrible. Although I did notice that you sure woke up faster with him doing it than me," she said with this cheeky little smile that I would have found amusing if I wasn't so confused, "But I believe you told him twenty minutes. You aren't dressed and it doesn't take you a half an hour to comb your hair, so what on earth were you doing that took you so long?" she asked, but her tone wasn't a question, it was mischievous, like she knew exactly what he had been doing and was teasing him about it.  
    To my continued bewilderment, my best friend flushed darkly and looked embarrassed.  
    "I had to take care of something," he said lowly, quickly averting his eyes from both of us.   
    "Of course you did," she smirked knowingly.  
    I gave up trying to figure out what was going on between the two of them. I assumed that Heero had taken the time to look more presentable, maybe brush his teeth, and had been embarrassed that I had seen him asleep. It was still weird that he was getting that worked up about it, but I just shrugged it off.   
    Heero was saved from his mother's teasing when the phone rang. She hurried into the kitchen to answer it and my friend took her place on the sofa.  
    "You look like shit," he said rather bluntly as he looked at me.  
    "Um, thanks?" I quirked an eyebrow at that, not really sure what he was referring to.  
    "Did you get any sleep at all?" he accused and I felt some relief that it had nothing to do with my still bruised face, but the obvious circles under my eyes.  
    "Two hours," I admitted.  
    Heero shook his head at me.  
    "Not able to sleep or..." he guessed.  
    "I actually didn't have a lot of trouble falling asleep, but my dad woke me up," I told him, not really seeing the point in lying.  
    He looked annoyed at that, but didn't say anything, probably too busy thinking that my father was a prick, not that he really needed any extra reasons to be thinking that.   
    "And your hair is down again," he noted, "Did you want me to fix it for you?"  
    "Yes, please," I said a bit too quickly and eagerly, but if Heero noticed, he didn't say.  
    I turned around, putting my back to him, and felt disgustingly happy as my friend pulled my hair loose from my hoodie and put it back up into it's braid.  
    "Thanks," I said in gratitude and Heero looked very pleased with himself.  
    "Well, I'm going to make myself some breakfast," he stood up and started to walk towards the kitchen, "Do you want anything?"  
    "Nah, I had breakfast," I said.  
    I almost followed him into the kitchen as a kind of reflex, not wanting to be away from him, but I realized at the last minute that it would make me look like some kind of stalker and stayed put, watching the rest of the documentary without actually focusing on it. A sweet smell came from the kitchen and Heero returned to the couch with a plate of waffles, a few strips of bacon, and a couple of mugs of hot chocolate. Despite my insistence that I didn't need anything, he shoved the drink into my hands and somehow managed through some sort of magic means to get me to eat one of the waffles and a strip of bacon as he switched the television to some crime drama program.   
    I wasn't all that interested in the programming, which is probably why it happened. Or, at least that's what I tell myself. One minute I was watching a pair of detectives banter about a murdered widow, feeling full and content and lazy, and the next I was waking up, slouched over on the couch, completely leaning on Heero with his arm against my cheek. I practically jolted away from him, my face turning red hot from embarrassment as I realized that I had been sleeping against him for more than just a few minutes.  
    "Oh, god, I am so, so, sorry," I apologized, rubbing the sleep from my eyes and trying to hide how hard I was blushing.  
    Heero chuckled, this deep throated sound that sent this weird tingle through me.  
    "It's alright," he assured me, "You needed the sleep and it's not like you're heavy."  
    When I dared to glance at him, I saw that, despite his words, he was blushing a little, too. I could have hit myself for my stupidity, or found a nice hole to hide in. I already make things difficult for him, all because I'm a selfish coward, and then I have to go and practically lay on top of him. Still, I had to admit that it had felt nice in those few seconds where I had woken up and before I freaked out. He had felt warm and comfortable and if I thought about it too hard, I could have easily fallen back asleep like that. But he was my friend, not my pillow.  
    "How long?" I asked him.  
    "It's almost one," he told me.  
    I had been sleeping on him for four, damned hours.  
    "Jeez, Heero, why didn't you just toss me off of you?" I demanded, feeling more embarrassed by the minute.  
    "You were sleeping pretty deeply," he blushed even darker for some reason, "and you've been through a lot lately. I figured it was good for you and it didn't bother me. At least you don't look like a complete zombie anymore."  
    I didn't feel like one, either. I felt bad that I had come to hang out with him and had only just managed to sleep on top of him so far, but he was right. I had needed the sleep and, if I was being truthful, needed some more. It was ridiculous, it wasn't like I hadn't been sleeping lately. In fact, I had gotten more sleep that week than I usually do, but so much shit had happened, I felt exhausted. What made me feel even more tired was the realization that I was never going to sleep as well as I did when I was at Heero's home at my own. It seemed like there was just something in the air there that brought my insomnia out full force. It wasn't like being around Heero cured it, I still had moments when I had a hard time sleeping, but at least no one was waking me up when I finally managed it.   
    It would probably happen again in the next few days, with my father off for the next three days. I had no doubt that he would disappear Christmas Eve night and not be back until late Christmas night, maybe early the day after like always, but it was not knowing where he was, not knowing when he would come home that would keep me up. Or maybe it was just my bedroom. Maybe sleeping on that mattress had become an impossibility for me.   
    Even when I sleep now, I wake up feeling like I'm worn out, like my nightmares are taking all of my energy. Just thinking about that, about trying to sleep there makes me feel dreary. I know that it's probably just in my head, but I never feel like the way that I do when I wake up in the Yuys' guest bedroom or even on their couch. If I really take the time to think about it, and I try not to, I haven't slept like that since Quatre died.  
    "Why don't you sleep over here Sunday?" Heero offered, obviously seeing how tired I still was, "You can go to work straight from here in the morning. And you can crash here while we're away on Christmas if you want to. Dad gave you the key to the place and my parents don't mind."  
    "Really?" I asked in a soft, amazed tone.  
    "Of course," he smiled, "I know you're not really doing anything for the day, so if you just want to relax here, it's alright with us."  
    "My dad usually goes out drinking Christmas Eve and doesn't come back for a few days," I admitted, "but..."  
    I didn't want to confess how I had been feeling lately about my house, how unwelcome I felt there, how I was starting to hate things about it that I had always been fine with, like the smell of the shower, how cold it was even with the heat on, the creaking sound that the attic stairs made, the feel of my mattress under the weight of my body... What would Heero think if I told him those things?   
    "You can keep Kanuck company," he teased, "Did you want to try to sleep until you have to go to work? I don't mind..."  
    "No, I'd rather hang out with you," I said shyly.  
    "In that case, why don't we go out back, there's something I want to show you," he beamed at me.  
    I wasn't all that eager to go back out into the cold when it was so nice and cozy in the house, but I just couldn't say no to that smile. I went to the coat rack to grab my things and met Heero in the kitchen. He was already bundled up in one of his winter coats, a hat, mittens and a scarf and gave me a strange look when he saw that I had my sneakers with me. I pointedly ignored him, sticking the ice pack that I had been using for my shoulder back into the freezer.  
    "Oh, Duo, you didn't come over here just wearing that, did you?" Mrs. Yuy asked, aghast, as she walked into the kitchen behind me, her arms full of wrapped gifts.   
    I blushed in embarrassment again, wondering if my complexion was ever going to go back to normal at that rate.  
    "It's fine," I assured her, "I'm used to the cold, and I'm trying to save up for some better gloves and a jacket."  
    "Nonsense, I can't possibly let you walk around in the snow without even a proper coat on!" she frowned, "Heero, get him your spare coat and gloves, would you? Oh, and those boots that you barely wear anymore."  
    Heero looked chastised by the light reprimand, but went to go grab what she had asked for. I almost protested, but with the stern look on his mother's face, I didn't dare. She looked personally offended that I was walking around in the snow wearing just sneakers.   
    "You really need to take better care of yourself," she scolded me when Heero came back with the winter clothing, helping me into his jacket which, I had to admit, was much warmer than my two fall ones, "You're still injured and if you go running around in this weather, you're going to make yourself sick!"  
    I gave her a sheepish smile and tolerated her fussing over me with grace for once, even accepting the gloves and scarf that Heero gave me. His boots were a pretty good fit, maybe just a little bit small, but a lot better than my sneakers were in the snow.   
    "Now, you boys have fun. Your father and I are wrapping presents in the basement, so no peeking," she waggled a finger at Heero who just rolled his eyes at her.  
    "Stay," he told Kanuck as he opened the door to go outside.  
    The dog whined pitifully at him, wanting to go outside with us, but obediently sat at the threshold, giving me a sad expression as I closed the door behind myself.   
    "He can't come out with us?" I asked, feeling bad for the canine.  
    "Don't let him get to you," Heero advised, "He's worse than a four year old. If I bring him with us, he'll just get in the way and get his fur soaked. I love him, but wet dog is not exactly a great smell. Wait here."  
    He trudged through snow that was already almost up to our knees to get to the shed where the snow hadn't been shoveled yet. Heero used his foot to moved the snow by the door so he could get inside of it and disappeared inside for a moment before emerging again with a large, inflatable raft like the kind that people use in their pools.  
    "Sledding?" I quirked an eyebrow at him.  
    "Yup!" he said a bit excitedly, his blue eyes bright and his cheeks red from the cold, "I've never gone before. I thought we could try it. We have a ton of hills out back, but with your shoulder, I thought we could just go down one of the smaller ones."  
    "It should be fine," I told him, "and the snow is wet enough that it'll go down really well."  
    "Great."  
    He looked so happy to be able to just try sledding that I wouldn't have told him no even if my shoulder had been an issue. In all honesty, I hadn't gone sledding at all since Quatre had died. I had decided that it really wasn't as fun as it would be without another person anyway, and Quatre had been the one with the sled. Heero led us out past the path that his father had so diligently kept up with to a hill that was, as promised, big enough for us to sled on, but barely steep at all. It was a bit of a hike in the deep snow, but I've seen winters where it's been well past my knees, so it didn't bother me nearly as much as Heero, who I could hear grumbling under his breath by the time we got to the top.  
    "You want to go first?" I asked him.  
    "First? We're going to go together. The raft is big enough," he pointed out.   
    I found myself blushing again. Fuck, would it ever stop? All I do is get embarrassed around him over the stupidest things.   
    "We'll go down faster," I warned him and not really sure why I was trying to talk him out of it.  
    It wasn't like the idea of being on the raft with him was anything but pleasant.   
    "It'll be ok," he wrongly assumed that I was worried about my injuries, "I'll sit behind you and make sure you don't fall off."  
    Which of course only made me turn redder.  
    "O-ok," I mumbled and sat down on the front of the raft.  
    Even with the warning, I was completely unprepared when he sat behind me, so close that his chest was almost touching my back. For a moment, I felt this intense fear. It wasn't of him. It wasn't that I was afraid that he would feel how fast my heart was beating and ask me why. It wasn't even that I was afraid of how intimate this was, even when it was something pretty innocuous. I was scared that I was going to have a panic attack, because any time I had one, it was my father's chest against my back that I remembered. It had happened before, when Heero and I had shared his bed that one time. I had panicked, so full of anxiety... but my fear wasn't of freaking out over Heero's proximity itself, I was simply afraid of having that reaction to him at all.   
    As embarrassed as I was about my feelings for him, and my shyness, and any time he did anything that would make my heart race, comparing him to my father, even in a moment of mindless panic, was more than I could bare. It would be the most shameful thing in the world. My frightened, broken mind putting the kindest, nicest, and most wonderful person that I have ever met in the same space as my dad would kill me. I think that, if I ever find out that my father has done that to me, it would finish the job of breaking me entirely.  
    But it didn't happen. He even wrapped his arms around my waist as he prepared to launch us down the hill, merely to keep me safe and still, and if anything in the world would have sparked one of those attacks, it would be that, but it didn't. I felt embarrassed and like I was going to die with how fiery hot both my heart and my face got, but it was a good kind of embarrassed. I didn't think of my father at all as my best friend pressed himself against me and pushed off on the snow. I only thought about how much I loved him, how good that touch felt and how terrifying, simply because it was him.   
    He was so warm as the icy wind hit us. The only fear that I felt was from my own feelings for him. I wanted to wrap myself around him and never let go. His touch was the first one that I had felt in a long time that didn't make me feel dirty or used or like trash or hurt in some way. It was just a touch, this normal, human thing. I wanted to feel that way forever.   
    "That was great," he grinned when we got to the bottom of the hill and stood up from the raft.  
    Even though I was sure that I was still blushing, I had to smile back.  
    "Yeah," I agreed.  
    "Want to go again?" he asked me.  
    How could I refuse?  
    "Of course."  
  
*****  
  
    We spent the rest of our time together that day sledding down the hill until we were both hungry and retired back into the house. Our lunch was tomato soup with this weird bread that had rosemary and cheese in it that tasted amazing when I dunked it in the soup. Mrs. Yuy tried to get me to take Heero's jacket and boots, but I assured her that I would be fine. I left for my house at three, thoughts of what my father had done that morning the furthest thing from my mind.   
    If I thought about him at all, it was with relief when my house came into my sight and I saw that his car was gone. I hoped that he had started his holiday 'vacation' early. I was surprised when I got to the door and found it unlocked, thinking that maybe he had forgotten to lock it, but that wasn't like him, even when he wasn't sober and surely he had to be at three in the afternoon. I was further shocked when I walked through the door and found my mother sitting at the kitchen table, drinking a steaming mug of coffee and filling out some kind of form.  
    "Mom, you're home," I said stupidly, "Are you ok?"  
    Her head shot up from where she had been reading whatever was on the paper and she gave me a small smile. She didn't look like she was hurt, but I couldn't think of why else she would be home when she was supposed to be at the bar.      
    "Yes, I'm alright," she assured me.  
    "Did something happen at work?" I asked, getting more concerned by the minute.   
    "I..." she looked away for a moment, seeming nervous and maybe a little bit ashamed, "... I quit."  
    The very first thing that went through my head was the memory of my father and my mother fighting, my mother screaming at him that he had gotten fired for being drunk on the job. I ignored it, though, because this was entirely different. If my mother had confessed that she had gotten fired for being drunk, I would have expected that. That would have been normal, especially after my father. But if there was one thing that I could say positive about my mother's drinking habits, beyond the fact that she had only hit me that one time, it was that while she was irresponsible with the number of times she drank and the severity of it, I had never once seen her go to work smashed, a fact that she had rubbed in my father's face when he had gotten fired. It was just about the one responsible thing she had done.  
    But this... getting fired was one thing, even getting laid off. I could understand those things. My mother was just a waitress, things like seniority didn't really matter with her job. Besides, while the boss at the diner that she worked at was mostly just a jerk, her boss at the bar was a sleazy asshole who I could totally see canning her for someone younger and prettier. He was the sort of man who only hired good looking women and claimed they brought in customers while he got away with coping a feel from time to time because everyone on his staff needed the work too badly. I had never met him personally, but my mother and father have gotten into enough fights about it that I feel like I have. That was my second thought, that maybe he had tried something with her and she had quit.   
    I could understand that, too. Hell, I could understand it and agree with it. We needed the money, especially the kind of money that my mother could make in her holiday hours and tips. She didn't get as much as the other waitresses at the bar who were younger and had a friendlier demeanor, but she still took home a decent amount. But if you had asked if I thought that that was worth her dealing with sexual harassment or even assault, what kind of asshole would say yes to something like that? Even if she wasn't my mother, I would say hell no, get out of that job. We might need the money, but never that badly. I didn't think so, anyway. I just couldn't think of any other scenario than something intolerable had happened to her that afternoon, or she was lying, that she had gotten fired and was just too ashamed to admit to it. My mother, for all of her faults, is too responsible about her jobs to just quit on a whim.  
    "W-why?" I asked in shock, trying not to think about how I had been preparing myself to tell Lorathe about cutting my hours that very day or how I had been saving up my money to buy winter clothes that I wasn't going to be able to afford now with this loss of income, "Did something happen at work?"  
    I don't know if I was more dismayed when she shook her head or relieved. I didn't want anything to happen to her like that, I didn't want her to know what it felt like to have an unwanted hand to touch you, to grab you or caress you, how horrible it was and how dirty it made you feel, like a stain that you can never get off of your skin no matter how many times you scrub at it. Although, she had been married to a man that she had hated for half of her life, so maybe she did know what that felt like, if they hadn't stopped having sex before then or if my father had forced her like he had forced me.   
    I didn't want to think about that. For one, I didn't want to know that my mother had been raped. Maybe we haven't gotten along very well until recently, but I wouldn't wish that on anyone, not even someone like Relena. But for another, and very selfish reason, I didn't want to know that my father had raped my mother because it meant that that had always been an option for him. She was the one that he really wanted, so if he had done it once, why not do it again? Why target me at all unless he couldn't do it with her?   
    The only thing that has sustained me through all of this, as horrible as it is, is the belief that he can't rape her, the belief that she is the one person that he loves too much to hurt like that. I know, that doesn't make much sense, he hurts her all the time, but I have to believe that because the alternative is too awful. If I believe that he had that option and chose to rape me anyway... it would make me go insane. It's hard enough and it's hurts enough to believe that he can't do that to her, that he loves her so much more than he ever will me, seeing how horribly he treats her.   
    "No, I..." she started to explain, but her voice wavered.  
    She looked fearful for a moment and I was temporarily confused, wondering if she really was lying about quitting or if something terrible really had happened to her and she didn't want to say it. Then she glanced at me and I realized that it was me that she was frightened of. That was a blow to the gut. There I was, standing by her while she was sitting down and if I had been my father, it would have made her a very easy target if what she had to say would piss me off. I felt incredibly hurt by that, that after everything that had happened between us, she still thought that I was capable of being like him, of hitting her.   
    But when I thought about that for more than just the second that it had taken for that hurt to take root, the hurt started to diminish. I realized, looking at her expression as she looked up at me, that yes, she was frightened of me, but she was also ashamed of that fear and I began to feel a bit ashamed of my hurt. It was like when I had flinched from Mr. Yuy that time after breaking one of their plates. I hadn't actually believed that he was going to hit me, but years of getting struck for something like that had left a mark just as permanent as the ones that my father had left me because of the sexual abuse.   
    My mother was the same. On the surface, she no longer believed that I was going to strike her, but below that, deep down where pain truly lives, she was still afraid. And she, just like myself, would always be afraid, not just of me, but of any man that towered over her like that. I did the only thing that I could think of to help get rid of that fear. I walked around to the other side of the table and sat down across from her. I was close enough that I could touch her if I tried to, but I wasn't looming above her anymore. She gave this incredibly relieved and grateful smile and I knew that it had been the right choice. The rest of the hurt that I had been feeling vanished like smoke.  
    "I just... couldn't work there anymore," she said simply.  
    I tried very hard not to let my anxieties and my impatience show and tried instead to be understanding, hoping that her reasoning was more than just her being frustrated at work. I almost snapped at her that all of us hated our jobs, but I didn't have the luxury to walk out on one of mine just because I was tired of it. That would have been something that my father would have done, and just the knowledge of that made it easy to stop.  
    "Why not?" I asked her, gently trying to pry the information from her, piece by piece.  
    She looked down at where my right hand was resting on the table. I thought that she was shyly avoiding the question, thinking that I wasn't going to like her answer, when she reached over and, to my confusion, took my hand in hers. She seemed to be fascinated by it for a moment, like she had never seen my hand in her entire life. It was bigger than hers, but not by much, not like my father's were. The top of my hand was smooth and pale, the same exact shade as hers were instead of the slightly darker, tanned shade of my father's and my nails were a lot cleaner than his were, especially lately with his new job, but my palm and fingertips were starting to get rough like his from my factory and construction jobs.     She finished her perusal and curled her own slender, pale hand around mine, her long fingers wrapping around my knuckles and her thumb cradling my palm, rubbing against it softly. It reminded me of Mrs. Yuy hugging me. It was a soft, but intimate and entirely welcome touch, as powerful as a kiss or tight hug, but also tentative and so very fragile.   
    "I promised you that I would do whatever it took to get you to believe in me," she finally spoke, her voice steadier and there was this small, but affectionate smile on her face as she continued to look at my hand, her grey eyes only occasionally meeting mine, "I know that you don't trust me or believe that I can do this."  
    I opened my mouth to protest that, even if it was the truth.  
    "No, it's ok," she interrupted, looking at me for a moment painfully, but still with that smile, "I wouldn't trust me, either," she whispered, like it was a secret, "I know you think that I'm going to slip up, that I'm going... going to backpedal. I think that, too. But I meant what I said... about proving to you that I'm stronger than... than he is," she looked down again and whispered a bit harshly, "I can't do that if I work at that place. Surrounded by all that booze... and all of the wait staff get free drinks..." she swallowed roughly and just for a moment, I got a peek into the horrible battle she had been waging with herself ever since she had started to cut out liquor cold turkey, "It's been so tempting, every day, to just..."   
    I shifted my hand in her grasp and wrapped it around hers, giving her a gentle, comforting squeeze and was rewarded by a brighter, grateful smile.  
    "I can't do it," she admitted sadly, "I thought that I could, if I was just stronger, if I could avoid the temptation. I thought it would be easier. I thought that I could just stick it out like any other person could, but... when I think about slipping up, about how much I want just that one drink when I clock out every day... and I think about you being disappointed in me, I can't take that risk. I just... I can't anymore..."  
    Her words dissolved and she looked like she was about to cry. I felt completely floored by her words and her trembling voice, how much it meant to her that she didn't let me down. Had she always cared that much about my opinion of her but it hadn't been strong enough for her to quit until now, or had she just realized it when she had gotten sober enough? And why? Why did I matter at all? Why was she suddenly able to smile at me like this, to care about me like this? She was right, I didn't trust her, but that ran so much deeper than my not trusting her to quit drinking, and I think she knew that.   
    I loved her so much in that moment, her strength and her weakness. Even if I didn't fully understand it, she had made such a decision for me. She had decided to do something so drastic as to quit a job that she had had for the last seventeen years, just because it was too big of a risk to her sobriety. All because she wanted to prove herself to me.  
    "You're right," I told her, "I don't trust you, but... but I want you to know that it's hard for me... I _want_ to trust you, it's just been so long, it isn't easy. And even though I don't, I'm still very proud of you."  
    She looked up at me with an expression that was partial shock and partial... Fuck even now, just writing this down, I can feel these stupid tears in my eyes, this feeling choking my chest. But damn it, when she looked at me then, there was love, actual love for me in her eyes. If I hadn't felt so shaken by that, by the miracle of it's existence, I would have sobbed in pure relief, pure amazement. She squeezed my hand back and didn't share my problem with her emotions. Silent tears of her own relief poured down her cheeks.  
    "Thank you, Duo," she whispered, her voice thick and almost rough, "I promise, I'll try even harder... and I won't stop trying until you do trust me. I'll do whatever it takes for you to believe in me. And don't worry about the money, alright? I don't want you to think you need to be responsible for this," she smoothed the paper that she had been writing on with her other hand and for the first time, I saw that it was a job application, "a friend of mine found another waitressing job for me. It... it probably won't tip as well as the bar, but everything will work out, I promise."  
  
End Part 14  
  
  
  



	43. Chapter 7 Part 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duo has Christmas dinner with Heero and his family.

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 7  
Part 15  
  
  
      
    I couldn't stop thinking about it. Even when I was telling Lorathe that I wanted Tuesdays and Saturdays off as soon as the holiday season came to a close, and he was yelling at me that I was suddenly springing this on him last minute (which I wasn't), I wasn't thinking about his ire or how probably all of my coworkers could hear what was being screamed at me, even Solo. I wasn't even thinking about how I needed to go to the twenty-four hour mart when I got off work and stay up for most of the night so I could get some baking done. No, I was thinking about my mother and what she had said to me that day. I thought about the love in her eyes, how I had always thought how impossible that was, how I was trying to find the fault in it, trying to reason it away and couldn't in the face of it's realness.  
    My mother, even if it was just a small, small shard of her, even if it was recent and even if it was only because I had told her that I was proud of her, loved me. The thing that I had desperately yearned for my entire life... the thing that I dreamed about, cried about, and had desperately tried to find in other people had been right there on her face. I had it... and I didn't know what to do with it. You probably think that's funny, don't you? Here I have been writing in these damned journals for years about my fears and depression about being unloved and my mother was giving a piece of what I needed to me, and I was unsure. I was hesitant.   
    All that time. Almost seventeen years of my life. I wondered for the first thirteen 'do my parents love me'. And for the last four, I have been so sure that the answer to that question is 'no.' Hell, the knowledge that I had been unwanted came from my mother's own lips. But that look on her face hadn't been a mirage. Some part of her... cared for me. It had to be recent. It had be because I was supporting her, but just that it was there was strange enough. Maybe after all of these years of wanting some kind of affection from someone, anyone, has made me barren inside. Maybe I don't know _how_ to love anyone anymore.   
    Wouldn't that be funny? There I was, wanting to know why my parents can't love me back and I don't even know how to feel when one of them does. Maybe their inability got transferred to me. Maybe the black hole in my heart swallowed up too much of me. I just... don't know what to do or what I feel anymore. But I do know that that night, I had a revelation. It was a pretty huge one and I found my thoughts tangled up in it for days. The revelation was that, little by little, I was starting to believe. I was starting to believe that maybe... just maybe... my mother could love me enough to actually quit drinking.  
    Stupid, I know. One moment of love for me didn't really stand up to sixteen years of loathing me, and it especially didn't stand up to sixteen years of loving a bottle more than me. I had told her once that I knew what she loved the most, and that was the truth. She had taken to the bottle like a new mother to an infant while she had all too happily ignored me, what I had needed and wanted from her, all the times that I had been in pain. I didn't know who would win in the end, me or the liquor, but for the first time since I had caught her pouring out all of their alcohol into the sink, I felt like I was a contender. I was starting to believe that maybe, just maybe, I was enough for her.   
    All of that might just be wishful thinking on my part, my desperation for her love that I'm willing to overlook my own caution and surety that she was going to go back to the neglectful woman that I have lived with my entire life. But the more that I thought about that possibility, the more that I thought that maybe it was ok. And maybe _that_ was just Solo's influence, his advice that I should believe in the things that make me happy, not the things that make me feel like shit. Even if the love that my mother felt for me now is fleeting and she returns to the bottle, if she remembers how much she had hated me before and how much the alcohol had helped her more than I, in my childish attempts, had, that wasn't what I wanted to believe. I wanted to believe that she would be successful, because she loved me. Even if that was foolish, why couldn't I believe in that, simply because it made me happy?  
    As it turns out, I'm not very good at optimism. Deciding to believe in the things that make me happy might sound like a healthy thing on paper, but I've always believed in what I can observe, what I see right in front of me, no matter how it makes me feel. So even though I chose to believe in my mother, when I saw the thing glaring me in the face, I felt my fears come back full force, like a punch. That thing was coming home after grabbing the remaining ingredients I would need from the market and finding my mother there by the doorway, just taking off her jacket. If that wasn't bad enough, she startled when I opened the door, like she had been caught doing something wrong. Her smile and timid greeting made my suspicion lessen a bit, and it was easy to believe that she had only jumped because she had thought that I was my father, whose car was un-surprisingly missing again, but I couldn't ignore my doubts.  
    It was 12:45 in the morning, I having been let out of work early again, but even if my mother hadn't just quit her job that afternoon, she still would have gotten home from it over an hour ago and would have been crashed in bed, especially with my father gone. She took whatever chance she got to be alone in bed, otherwise she would try to go for the couch, but either way, whether she had work or not, even if she was awake at that hour, there was nowhere she could have gone so late. The only places that were open were strip joints, which she wouldn't go to, twenty-four fast food places or grocery stores, but she didn't have anything in her hand that suggested she had gotten something to eat, or, my traitorous mind snidely told me, a bar.   
    Where had she gone? Why had she been there? She had promised to quit drinking, so she couldn't possibly have gone out to a bar, especially so soon after vowing she would renew my confidence in her... could she have? My logic warred with my feelings, my pessimism with my newly sought after optimism. I wanted to believe that there was some other reason for her to be out so late, but I couldn't think of anything. My suspicions wouldn't die and it was only my desperation to believe that she wouldn't let me down that had me ignoring the most obvious, glaring possibility that she had caved and gone out for a drink. That she didn't look drunk didn't mean anything at all. And she smelled, faintly but the smell was still there, of cigarettes. My mother doesn't smoke, but after a shift at the bar, she always comes home smelling like that.  
    I tried as hard as I could to ignore it. I tried to lose myself in baking, like I'm often able to do. And I did have a lot of work to do if I wanted everything to be ready for Sunday's dinner. With my father gone and my mother have gone to bed after a shower and some tea that I brewed her, the house was quiet, almost disturbingly so, making my baking go a lot more smoothly and without the anxiety that would be there if he had been.   
    It's strange, I've come to really enjoy how quiet and peaceful the Yuys' home is. It isn't just the home, but also the neighborhood. It always seems so quiet there, far removed from the barking dogs, screaming, drunken or high neighbors that we have, and the cars that race down our street, music blaring at all hours of the day and night. The first time I stayed over there, it bothered me, but it's grown on me now. When I'm there, it feels like I can breathe, this tight feeling that I always have in my chest, a feeling that I had never even realized was there until recently, eases off.   
    I've come to hate the noise of home, the orchestra of pointless chaos. So you would think that I would love it when it's quiet like this, when our neighbors are actually shutting the fuck up, there is no traffic at all, and my father isn't home but you would be wrong. The quiet here is as loud and stifling as the screaming. It's eerie, like something you would see in some old, atmospheric horror movie, one with ghosts and gothic mansions. It's a stillness, a deadness that I can't stand, like a tomb where you don't dare so much as breathe. I wished that I had a stereo so I could play my blues music, or even a radio to fill the silence with, but that would just disturb my mother.  
    My shoulder was feeling much better by that point and, desperate to keep my mind from going to places that I didn't want to think about, I dove into my baking with a fervor. I had decided that, instead of just making a lot of one thing, I would make an assortment. It was a lot more work, but I hoped that it would pay off. I made all of the cookie dough at the same time, filling every bowl that we had with half recipes of the stuff, deciding to bake them all at once when I got home from work since, according to Solo, Leneski was going to let us go early and I wanted them to be fresh. Most of the recipes had the cookies baking at the same temperature or close to it, so I could do that fairly quickly.  
    I would end up making sugar cookies shaped like candy canes and frosted with white frosting and red sugar, molasses cookies, chocolate crinkles, and peanut butter cookies with chocolate kisses on top. I had wanted to make cream cookies in the shape of wreaths and buckeyes, which were nothing more than peanut butter balls dipped in chocolate, but I would have needed to use my left arm too much for those and nixed them.   
    My other two desserts I made and baked that morning because they required too much work to put off until after work and I wanted to get to dinner on time. I had found a recipe for mini pies, about the size of my fist, and made a dozen: four apple, four pecan, and four pumpkin, one each for everyone. Those took the most work and time, but they looked great when they came out of the oven, almost like something that you would see in a home magazine, so it was worth it.   
    The last thing I had debated on, partially because it was also a lot of work and something that I had zero experience with, but decided that I really couldn't say no to a traditional yule log for a Christmas dinner. I had never made one before or even eaten one, but when I had used Heero's computer to look up pictures of them online out of curiosity and seen what some people could do to them to garnish them, how neat they looked, I just had to try it. I really hoped that Heero and his parents liked chocolate.   
    I went a little bit overboard making it look professional and like an actual log. I used a fork to make lines in the chocolate, making it look a lot like bark, actually, and then used a mix of cocoa powder, dark chocolate, and milk chocolate to give it a more life like tone. Powdered sugar sprinkled over the top of it became snow and I used some mint leaves and cherries that I cut into garnished flowers to look like holly and red flowers. By the time that I had gotten all of the dough and frosting ready, the yule log was in the refrigerator, and the pies were cooling on the stove, my shoulder was screaming at me and I felt exhausted. Still, I had worked tirelessly on my presents and felt like I had done the best job that I possibly could with what little I had to offer.   
    It was five in the morning by the time that I collapsed onto my mattress and I was incredibly grateful that I didn't have to get up for work until eight. I was going to look like a raccoon again, but at least it was because I had been baking instead of because of panic attacks and nightmares or my insomnia. I think with how tired I was, I would have fallen asleep as soon as my head had hit the pillow if it weren't for my smelling sex and sweat in my mattress.   
    I know that it was just in my head... well, probably in my head, but it was enough to keep me from nodding off for a solid thirty minutes, maybe even enough to have kept me up all night if Pepper hadn't laid down on my pillow, right next to my head the way that she liked doing. I thought about just doing what my mother often did and sleeping on the couch. Surely the smell couldn't follow me all the way down there. But I couldn't take Pepper with me and between my guilt for always leaving her alone and my need to be with someone or something, I stayed where I was, my thoughts churning sickeningly between my mother and my father, like hope and fucking despair.   
    It was Pepper's purring and the thought of seeing Heero again the following day that lulled me asleep. Although I had had issues sleeping at first, when I had actually managed it, I slept deeply and dreamlessly for once, not waking until my alarm woke me at eight am sharp. I actually groaned as it roused me, not wanting to get up at all. I managed to drag myself out of bed thanks to my alarm being halfway across the room and got ready for the day. I refilled Pepper's food and water since I was fairly sure that I would end up sleeping over at the Inoris again. There was nothing entirely vital to go home to, besides my cat, and I had this feeling that if Heero asked me not to go home, I would probably cave. It was getting harder and harder to tell him no about anything lately.  
    I didn't have a whole lot of time before work, so I just ate a couple pieces of toast and rushed to get dressed. My mother was already gone, off to her shift at the diner and my father still wasn't home, probably off on his holiday 'vacation' already. I debated taking a shower, but between my mother having taken one recently before I had gotten up, taking what little warm water there was, the knowledge that it would mean I would be wet and walking around in what would turn out to be almost polar weather, not being able to put my hair down, and the fact that I was going to the Yuys' that night, I just didn't feel like it.   
    What little time I had left before work, I got everything ready for that night so I could just come home, put the cookies in the oven, and leave, and I admit that I was a bit excited already as I left to go to work. It was more than just knowing that I was going to hang out with Heero and his family again. As much as I can say that I really don't care about things like holidays, I found that I was eager to have something like Christmas dinner, even if I was a bit anxious, not knowing what to expect.   
    I mean, it probably wasn't any different from all the other times that I had had dinner at Heero's house, but I hadn't sat down to have Christmas dinner with my own family since I had been very young. Even back then, it hadn't been anything special, but at least my parents had tried. I think it had mostly been my mother, my father had never seemed into it and he and my mother would fight constantly during those times, so I don't have many fond memories of it. Of course, this was back before they were drinking as heavily as they would years later, and even before they would get into screaming matches just by looking at each other. As time passed, even my mother seemed to lose all interest in the holiday and those dinners just stopped.   
    I coasted through work that day, still on paperwork duty and I was already sick of my shoulder injury, annoyed that it would still be at least a week before I could try to move it. It was horribly cold and windy outside, so Leneski had his crew doing inventory and small things around the shop, saying he wasn't some kind of Ebenezer to make them go out and work in the freezing cold two days before Christmas. I was never more thankful for the office heater as I was that night. Solo stopped by to keep me company during his lunch hour, shrugging off a few coworkers that offered to take him out to the nearby bistro.   
    We didn't talk about anything heavy like we had before, of which I was abundantly thankful. That was the last thing I needed, to have more shit in my head. We mostly ate in silence or talked about the weather and how we both thought that this winter was going to be long or how much we thought the Darlians were spending on the town Christmas festival at the boardwalk _this_ year. It seemed like every year it got more extravagant, but it wasn't like anyone could complain since they had plenty of money and were paying for it out of pocket instead of the town.  
    "If they were really charitable," Solo grumbled at me as he finished his coffee, "they would be a bit more modest and give some of that dough to hard working pricks like me and you."  
    I laughed at that, imagining Relena's reaction if her parents gave out their Christmas festival money to someone like me.   
    "Well, they _do_ have a lot of charity work that they do," I pointed out, "They stock up all the soup kitchens and shelters for the holidays, and the food at the festival is free for everyone."  
    He shrugged it off, looking annoyed, but I knew that it was typical, south Nausten bitterness. The Darlians were nice and far from stuck up like their children were, but when you live on the shit end of town and have to work your ass off just to pay the bills, you have to resent the richer families, whether you agree that they're nice people or not. I was too busy hating their children to really care about the Darlians and their sizable assets.   
    Leneski let us out at 4:30 instead of 6, to my great relief, and I put the paperwork away, putting my jackets on with some effort as my shoulder and rib protested after sitting in a chair for so long.   
    "You are not seriously going out there wearing that?" Solo raised one gold eyebrow at my attire.  
    I sighed in exasperation. Why did everyone have a problem with what I was wearing? Sure, my jackets were a bit thin to be wearing at that time of year, even layered together, and I didn't have a hat or scarf with the strong wind, but it wasn't like I was trudging through Antarctica. It wasn't even snowing out.   
    "I'm fine," I insisted, but when I took off my work boots and put my sneakers on, he looked like he was going to throw a fit, "I just haven't gotten around to buying winter clothes yet."  
    And who even knew when I would now that my mother had quit one of her jobs. Even if she did immediately get a new job, she wouldn't get paid for two more weeks. She had said not to worry about the money, but how couldn't I?   
    "Duo, it's winter _now_ ," Solo said in equal exasperation, like I was some dumb child that needed to be taught about such things, "If you need the money-"  
    "NO," I protested loudly, sick of getting hand outs from people because I was incapable to buying things for myself, "It's fine. It's not like this is the first winter I've ever gone through."  
    He looked dubious, but I got out the door without him doing something stupid, like giving me his own coat. Honestly, he was right and I was immediately reminded that I kind of did need an actual winter coat that fit me when I walked out the door and felt like I was being maliciously punched in the face by a fist made of ice and wind. I pulled my jackets up to my nose and trudged home, my socks quickly getting wet as I had to step through some piles of snow that had been pushed around by the violent wind, but home was close enough that I just couldn't justify paying a bus fare.   
    My mother was suspiciously missing when I got home, and so was my father, but that was less suspicious. I told myself that she might have just pulled a double shift at the diner, which was completely possible. She might have even volunteered for one to offset quitting her other job. Yes, that was very plausible and made complete sense to me. But there was still that doubt and feeling of unease in the back of my mind, this burning need to know where she was, to make sure that she wasn't drinking.  
    I ignored those feelings and worked quickly in the kitchen. I put the cookies in the oven, prepared the frosting for the sugar cookies, and tried to find ways to transport everything. The pies went into the picnic basket that we had and the yule log went into the cake box. While the cookies were still baking, I went upstairs to change out of my work clothes and into a more comfortable pair of pants.   
    I fished out a dark red sweater that I don't really wear a lot because it's rather old. The bottom of it and the very edge of the sleeves are rather tattered and it isn't as loose as I like anymore. But it still basically fit me and actually was loose around my waist, if not my shoulders. I must have lost weight since the last time I had worn it, but also grown a little. Most importantly, it looked nice with my eyes, hair, and complexion, something that I haven't really paid attention to since the one time I had dressed up nicely for Trowa.   
    I had felt weird about it back then, but when I thought about Heero maybe noticing, I blushed as dark as a strawberry and knew that I would wear it, even if he noticed that it had seen better days. I felt ashamed that I didn't have any nicer clothes, embarrassed that I was so affected by thinking about Heero's approval, and guilt because I felt like I shouldn't dress nicely for him at all, that I was teasing him. But the sweater stayed and I changed my socks into black ones that would look nice with the dark pants that I had chosen, tossing my wet, white ones into my pile of dirty clothes.   
    I stayed in the bathroom, staring at my reflection, for longer than I should have, feeling like some prissy, preening girl and cursing myself for getting worked up over a freaking dinner. It wasn't like I had never done this before, so why was I in knots to look nice? Still, I hated how my hair looked and I especially hated how poor I looked, wearing what was probably the nicest thing that I owned and still looking like I had pulled the clothes out of a thrift store bin. I was saved from my self-depreciation and near anxiety attack by the oven timer.   
    Rushing out of the bathroom, I took out the cookies to cool, which didn't take very long with how freaking cold it was in the house. When they were cool enough, I frosted the sugar cookies and put them all on the biggest plate that I could find, putting seran wrap on top of them. The yule log and cookies when into a large plastic bag with handles so I could carry everything on one arm, the cake box sturdy enough that the weight of the cookies wouldn't cave it in.   
    I was incredibly glad for the bus service as I left my house, picnic basket and bag on one arm, my backpack slung over my good shoulder, and an old scarf that was about as thick as a sheet of paper wrapped around my mouth. I might as well had not taken the time to fish that out of the hall closet because it did absolutely nothing against the wind anyway, but I hoped that Heero's mother would be appeased if she saw that I had something more on than I had last time. Without the bus, it would have been hell trudging through the wind with my arm full of food.  
    The last few times that I had been to the Yuys' during the night time, I hadn't really paid attention to what their street and the outside of their home looked like, but as I stepped off the bus and walked to their street, I took a moment to stop and admire the Christmas decorations. Unlike the gaudy cardboard cutouts of candy canes and Santa Clauses or the obscene snowmen that I saw every day on my street, Birch Street was conservatively decorated with different, but traditional displays of lights, wreaths, holly, and it seemed like each house had at least one snowman dressed in a hat and scarf in front of their house.  
    Heero's home didn't have a snowman in front of it, but it was just as beautifully decorated. They had forgone multi-colored lights for the typical, golden colored ones. They covered the bushes and trees on their property, as well as some holly garland that was wrapped around the pillars and railing of the porch and front doorway. The walkway lights were all lit up, casting long shadows on the snow and the lattice was draped in an elegant net of lights. Along the overhang edges of the home hung more gold lights that were shaped like icicles and the trim was lined with larger lights perfectly, almost like the house had come like that. There was a large wreath on their door that I had barely noticed the last few times that I been there, and fake candles in their windows. It looked beautiful, like something out of a fairy tale.   
    The door was open and as I walked into the foyer, I could already smell the turkey cooking, along with several other, tantalizing smells. Christmas music was playing on the stereo in the living room, none of the pop trash that I heard playing at work or at the grocery store that I had shopped at that morning, but the classical and older stuff, along with a few jazz renditions. It was oddly soothing. There was a roaring fire going in there, too, I could hear it crackling, the warmth of the house making me realize just how cold it really was outside. Compared to how my house had felt, it hadn't been that bad, but I was suddenly sure that if Heero had stepped foot in my house that morning, he would have called it unbearable.   
    I had the sudden urge as I walked towards the living room where I could see Heero and his father sitting on the couch together, watching some program showcasing outlandish Christmas displays and having a passionate discussion about a neighbor that they had had in Florida to call out 'I'm home', but that was a bit too painful and too embarrassing. Kanuck did plenty to announce my arrival, barking cheerfully and trotting over to me from where he had been laying at Heero's feet, walking around me in circles when he saw that I wasn't going to pet him between my burden and arm in its sling.  
    "Duo!" Heero exclaimed, scrambling off of the couch and rushing over to me, "You're early!"  
    He was wearing a navy blue sweater with white and red tree and reindeer patterns on it in a vaguely Norwegian style, a pair of coal grey pants, and cheerfully red socks that had holy print on them. I loved him so much right then, the color of his sweater bringing out the deep blue of his eyes and his hair meticulously combed, but still looking wild somehow.   
    "I got out of work early," I told him when I regained the ability to speak after pretty much ogling him, "Sorry, I should have called-"  
    "Nonsense," he assured me, "Dinner is almost ready, the turkey just needs a little bit more time."  
    "Heero, don't just let Duo stand there carrying all of that," his father scolded from behind him, "His arm must be tired from coming all this way. Help him take it to the kitchen."  
    "Right, sorry," he flushed darkly, moving to take some of my load from me.  
    "It's ok," I insisted, "It's not that heavy-"  
    "Too late," he said cheekily, taking, not just one thing, but everything that I was carrying as I glared at him.  
    I followed him into the kitchen, creating a kind of train between the four of us, including the dog.  
    "Oh, Duo, you're here," Mrs. Yuy said with delight, standing by the oven wearing her Christmas apron over a red and white sweater that had the same diamond pattern on it as her husband's white and green one, a red bow with little bells on it tying off her pony tail, and wearing a long, flowing white skirt with a dark green trim.   
    "Hi, Mrs. Yuy," I greeted, "I brought the desserts."  
    Heero put my bags on the table and I unpacked them, Heero and his parents looking at the bounty that I had brought with expressions of amazement.  
    "Duo... this is amazing..." Heero said when he took a peek inside of the cake box.  
    "You didn't make all of this yourself, did you?" his mother took a look at the yule log that I had made as well, seeming impressed and a bit astonished at the detail that I had put into it.  
    "This looks better than any of the ones that were in the holiday craft show," Mr. Yuy marveled at the chocolate dessert as well.   
    I nodded, feeling incredibly pleased at the praise, even if I didn't know if they would taste alright. At least they looked good.   
    "It wasn't that difficult," I said, my pride warring with my shyness, "The garnish was a bit tricky because I've never tried it before, but I was really careful to get it right. I hope it tastes ok, I've never made a yule log before."  
    "You must have been up all night making all of this," Heero commented, that look of endearing amazement still on his face as he studied the tiny pies that I had made with their criss-crossed crusts, "You didn't need to go through all of this trouble..."  
    "No trouble," I said hastily, neither confirming or denying his suspicions, not wanting to admit the amount of effort that I had really put into trying to make everything look perfect, "I didn't have a lot of money to buy anyone anything," I admitted in embarrassment, "This was all that I could to thank you all for everything..."  
    "That was so thoughtful of you," Mrs. Yuy smiled at me, "You must have worked very hard for this. We're flattered, and I'm sure that everything is going to taste delicious."  
    'Not as flattered as I am for everything that you've given me,' I thought, but didn't say it out loud.  
    No matter how much Heero and his family might appreciate the desserts that I had made, it couldn't come close to the gratitude that I had for them. Mrs. Yuy put the pies on top of the oven so they would get warmed, the cookies went on the counter, and the yule log in the refrigerator so the cream in it would stay cool, then we were all evicted from the kitchen so Heero's mother could finish getting dinner ready. I went back to the foyer to hang up my scarf and wet mittens. Heero suddenly appeared and helped me get my jackets off.  
    "You look nice," he said, his cheeks faintly red.  
    "Y-you do, too," I stuttered, unable to look him in the eye.  
    It was stupid, but I found that I was able to take his praise over my baking a lot easier than him telling me that I looked good. I wanted to believe that it was just empty sentiment, given that what I was wearing didn't look anywhere near as nice as what he was, but he wasn't the sort of person to say something like that and not mean it.   
    "You must be cold," he said awkwardly, "We have a fire going..."  
    I followed him into the living room and sat in one of the chairs that was near the fireplace. I can't even describe how amazing the warmth of that fire felt. I immediately fell in love with that fireplace, wishing we could have something like that in my home so it wouldn't be so freaking cold all the time. I felt so cozy as it warmed the rest of the chill off of me, feeling finally returning to my cheeks and nose, that I was struck with this intense laziness. I didn't want to move for the rest of my life. I just wanted to sit there in front of the fire forever.   
    I probably could have just dozed off like that, the sound of the fire crackling, a soft, slow rendition of Silent Night playing on the radio, Heero and his father talking in low tones next to me if his mother hadn't loudly announced from the kitchen twenty minutes later that the turkey was finally done. The lighting in the kitchen had been dimmed, giving it a very formal, but homey feel, two red candles had been lit on the kitchen table which was decorated with a holly green table cloth and what I imagined were china plates or something else that was equally elegant.   
    As I sat down and looked at the silverware that was actually, you know, _silver_ ware and napkins that were cloth instead of paper and contained in actual napkin rings, a thing that I had never seen before in my life, the candles giving off a very mellow and spicy aroma, I felt completely out of place. But when Mr. Yuy started to lay out the dishes filled with food, and handed one to me with a soft smile like I was just one of the family, I also felt like I belonged there. It was a weird duality. He put a plate filled with just about everything in front of me and I saw that someone had cut up the turkey for me. A part of me was embarrassed because I probably could have managed doing that myself, but I was more touched that they had thought to do that for me.  
    There was an incredibly amount of food, not in quantity, but just in the different choices of food. Turkey, squash, mashed potatoes, popovers, beans, broccoli, two different kinds of gravy and stuffing, steamed carrots, salad, mushroom soup, and cranberry sauce. I felt like I could have lasted an entire week on the leftovers alone, but I didn't really feel guilty, already planning on asking Mrs. Yuy if I could take some of it home to my mother. And yes, everything was amazing. I might not have a very refined pallet,  and can choke down fast food chicken nuggets just as well as I can a twenty dollar steak, but it was delicious and readily told Heero's mother so.   
    Dinner was a lengthy affair, not the sort of meals that I was used to. Mr. Yuy started it off by saying grace and for a moment, I panicked, unsure of what to do, but when I looked over at my friend for guidance, I realized that they didn't actually expect me to join in. We spent just as much time talking to each other as we did eating and I found it a very pleasant experience, a lot more casual than I had been expecting. After we finished eating, all of us incredibly full, we retired back into the living room for awhile. Mr. Yuy stoked the fire back to life and Mrs. Yuy served Heero and her husband coffee while she made herself some tea while Heero found a Christmas movie for us to watch together. When told that the coffee was decaffeinated, I tried some. It was hazelnut, I was told, and the taste was very pleasant. I decided that I liked it a lot, especially with some cream mixed in. By the time the movie ended, we were relaxed and finally had room for dessert but I was a bit baffled when, instead of going back into the kitchen, Mr. Yuy went to the Christmas tree that was in the corner of the room.  
    "We have a little Christmas tradition in our family," Heero's mother told me with a warm smile, "After we eat dinner, we open presents. As much as Heero always complained about that as a child."  
    Heero rolled his eyes at her.  
    "We are going to open ours when we go to our relatives in a couple of days," Mrs. Yuy informed me, "But since we probably won't be seeing you on Christmas day, we thought it would be nice to give you your presents tonight."  
    "Presents?" I asked in bewilderment, having no clue what she was talking about until Mr. Yuy finished his rooting around under their large and wonderfully decorated, natural tree and handed me two wrapped packages.  
    I just kind of stared at them for a couple of minutes, not knowing how to handle their reality, like they were some strange objects that were going to bite me. They were both boxes, one fairly flat but large, wrapped in shiny, silver paper with blue ornaments detailed on it, the wrapping so perfect that it looked like a machine had done it. The second wasn't wrapped as neatly, the red paper with it's green trees having a few awkward creases in it and the green bow askew, but the person that had wrapped it had made a good try at it. It was smaller, about the size and width of thick hard cover book.   
    "I... I don't understand..." I said in confusion, a rather sizeable lump in my throat, "You didn't need to get me anything... you've already given me so much..."  
    "It isn't anything extravagant," Mr. Yuy assured me, reclaiming his place on the couch with the rest of his family, "just a little something that we thought you could use. I know that you think that we do a lot for you, Duo, but we're happy to. Letting you stay here isn't much at all. Mariela and I wanted to give you something, because you're a great kid and we know that it's hard for you, making money and saving up for the things that you need."  
    I could feel my face heat up and felt embarrassed that I was blushing over such a little thing, but I was overwhelmed. I had already considered everything that they had already done for me, opening their house to me, cooking meals for me, paying for my phone service, and all of the kindness that they constantly showed me to be presents. Now they were giving me more? No one had even given me a Christmas present since Quatre had passed. I didn't know what to do, how to accept it. It was bad enough that I already felt woefully inadequate with what little I had gifted them with, even if it was something truly small, like cheap socks, it was too much already.  
    "But..." I started to protest, but no words came.  
    I knew that there was nothing that I could say to get them to take it back, and some part of me didn't want them to. At the same time that I was overwhelmed and a bit ashamed of their generosity, I also felt incredibly grateful and warm at their thoughtfulness, even if I could never pay them back. My hands seemed to move on their own accord as I opened the larger package first. A plain, white box greeted me, completely innocuous compared to what was inside when I took the lid off. There were four things inside: a thick knit cap that was the same shade of blue-violet that my eyes were and three pairs of jeans, two of them different shades of blue and one pair was black, but each looked expensive and durable, they probably cost three times more than any that I had ever owned.  
    "I hope you like them," Mrs. Yuy said, still with that pleased smile, "I guessed at your size, so if they don't fit, we can exchange them. And now you'll have a hat so I don't have to worry about you walking around in this weather with barely any clothes on."  
    "They're nice," I murmured, touching the dark blue pair. They felt very thick and soft, "but you didn't need to do this... I have a couple pairs of jeans..."  
    She snorted in a very unladylike way.  
    "Yes, I've seen the jeans you wear," she said, not in a mocking way, but I could tell that she wasn't very impressed with my clothing, "They're about two years too old for you in size and look like they should have been thrown out last year. They don't look remotely comfortable and have so many holes in them, it's a wonder that they haven't fallen completely apart by now."  
    I flushed even darker at her assessment of my jeans, but she was right. As cheap as my jeans were, I couldn't bring myself to buy new ones just because they were a little short and had rips in them. I had just kept mending them as best I could and kept wearing them, too stubborn to save to buy new ones when there were other things that I needed.   
    "Besides," her husband informed me, "we had to throw out the one pair that you had that were bloodstained. The stains had soaked in for too long and with how tattered they already were, we decided that it would be better just buying you new jeans than trying to mend those."  
    "I..." I wanted to protest that I could have fixed them myself, but I knew that wasn't true and touched my new jeans again. They were the nicest pants that I had ever owned, even without my trying them on yet, "Thank you," I said earnestly instead of insisting that they take them back or that I didn't need them, "really, thank you so much."  
    My eyes felt wet, but there was no way in hell I was going to let anyone catch me crying over having received new clothes.   
    "The other present is from me," Heero confessed, turning almost as red as I was.  
    "You said that the phone was my Christmas gift," I accused, feeling a bit annoyed that he had gotten me anything.  
    "A part of it," he said smugly, "This is the other part."  
    "I didn't get you anything," I muttered self-consciously.  
    Heero snorted in a way that was cutely similar to his mother.  
    "You spent all night and probably a good chunk of the morning baking for us and putting more effort into making those desserts than I did walking into a store and picking something out for you, so don't even start. Just open it."  
    I wanted to point out he had done a hell of a lot more for me lately than just walking into a damned store, but I was not going to win against his stubbornness, so I didn't even bother trying. I just sighed in a very put upon way and opened the green and red package. I opened the black box that was inside and was greeted with a strange device that I had never seen before. It was sleek and black, about the size of a paperback novel. For a moment, I felt this horrible drop in my stomach, thinking that Heero had gone out and bought me a tablet or computer or something equally expensive, but it didn't look like that.   
    There was a single button on the front of it while the rest looked like some kind of screen, making it seem like a tablet at a glance, but the screen was all wrong. It wasn't a smooth surface display like my phone, but a dark, dark grey that was smooth and reminded me almost of some kind of breeding between a chalkboard and a monitor screen. Also in the box was a power cord and a very nice looking pen. At least, that's what I thought it was, but when I picked it up and looked at the tip, I realized that it was a stylus of some kind, like the ones that I saw some of our classmates using on their tablets and phones, only the shaft of the stylus was thicker, like an old styled fountain pen.   
    "It's an e-writer (1)," Heero explained when he saw my confusion, "You write on the screen with the stylus and it turns whatever you write into a text document. If you want to save it to a computer, all you need to do is insert an sd card or a flash drive there," he pointed to two slots on the side of the device, "and move the files. I thought that, since you're always writing in those notebooks of yours, you might want to make copies, in case you ever lose one or they get destroyed. Your handwriting is a lot faster than your typing, so I just thought that this would be a great way to save things. It could even replace your notebooks if you wanted. Also, that stylus is a pen, too, on the other end, so you can use it when you write in your notebooks. You're always writing with those crappy, fifty cent pens and I see you tossing them after only a day or two all the time."  
    Sure enough, when I unscrewed the other end of it, which looked like the cap of a pen, there was a fountain pen on the end of it, one of those old fashioned ones with the metal tips. It wasn't a cheap one, either. I nearly paled thinking about how much the pen alone must have cost him. The whole set up couldn't have been more than a tablet, but it had probably cost more than my phone.     More than that, I was incredibly touched by his gift. I hadn't even realized that he had noticed how much I wrote, not just in these journals, but the short stories that I worked in when I was bored. He had noticed and seen this device and thought of me. That alone was a gift. I felt like my heart was going to explode with love for him.  
    "God, Heero... this is..." I nearly choked on my words, "It's amazing, thank you."  
    "You're very welcome," he blushed so hard that it looked like he was going to break something.  
    His parents looked incredibly amused by all of this, hell if I know why.  
    "You'll show me how it works?" I asked him and he nodded, flashing me a beautiful smile that seemed a bit relieved to me.   
    He had truly been nervous about giving me that gift, I realized and it was that that helped soothe my own nervousness at having received something so pricey. My approval had made him happy and his happiness could soothe away any of my misgivings or feelings of inadequacy.   
    "Now that Duo has opened his gifts," Heero's father took pity on our awkward fumbling, standing up from the couch, "I say we have some of Duo's amazing desserts."  
    I placed my gifts on a nearby table, still in slight shock that they were mine at all, and walked side by side with my friend into the kitchen.  
    "Thank you," I said again in a soft whisper.  
    He smiled at me, this one much softer and more endearing, and very briefly squeezed my hand, sending a pleasurable shock of electricity through me. Dessert was just as pleasant as dinner had been, if more embarrassing since Heero and his parents praised me every time they tried something new. I felt this intense relief when I tried the things that I had made myself and found that they had turned out alright. I didn't really think that they were as incredible as Heero's parents insisted that they were, but maybe I'm just biased?   
    By the time that everyone was full enough to put away the leftovers, I felt like I had eaten more food than a person had any right to. I wished that I could go jogging in the morning to make up for it, but the roads were just too icy.   
    "Are you planning on staying the night?" Heero asked, just a bit too eagerly, as we cleared the table of dirty dishes.  
    "Yeah. My dad isn't going to be home tonight, but I would rather stay here for tonight, if that's ok?" I asked timidly.  
    "Of course it is," Mr. Yuy told me, "Why don't you go upstairs and take a shower, we can handle the dishes."  
    "Are you sure?" I asked shyly, wanting to help clean the mess that I had made.  
    "You two can put the dishes away when they're done drying," he compromised.  
    It was better than nothing, so I took all of my things upstairs, stashed them in the guest bedroom and went into the shower. Heero was really patient waiting for his turn, even giving me the time to brush my teeth and was nice enough to put my hair up for me before he took his own shower. While he did that, I turned down the guest bed and plugged in both my new e-writer and my phone in to charge. I had another construction shift in the morning and I wanted to try to get a decent amount of sleep for once. I thought that I would be able to. I tried on my new jeans and was happy to see that they fit me perfectly. I decided that I would keep the old pair that I had left for work. These were too nice to risk getting paint and grease on them.  
    Heero finished his shower and came to collect me so we could go downstairs to put the dishes away. He looked so incredibly handsome with his hair wet. The water weighed it down for once, making it look a little bit longer than it actually was. It was so dark with the water that it almost looked black. Putting the dishes away didn't take up much of our time. I fished another ice pack out of the freezer for my shoulder and told Heero's parents thanks and good night while the two of them sat in front of the still crackling fire together.  
    Heero and I spent the rest of the night before we headed off to bed trying out my e-writer. He showed me how to make new files and how to transfer them and all the other little features that the thing had. I decided that it probably wasn't going to replace my journals. I'm a bit stubborn in my ways, in case you can't tell that from reading these entries, and I like writing things on paper, but I liked the idea of transferring all my journals and other stuff I've written onto it. Oddly enough, the pen was my favorite thing. I liked how smooth it was compared to the cheap pens and pencils that I normally used. It helped my handwriting flow better and I've been using it ever since.   
    "Will I be seeing you tomorrow?" he asked me when it got late enough for us to go to bed.  
    "I don't know," I admitted, "I'm probably going to be getting out of work early again, but I was thinking of making my mother a nice dinner. She has a double shift and won't be home until eight, so she'll be too tired and I'd like her to eat something better than canned soup."  
    "You fuss over her a lot," he noted.  
    "I do?" I asked in surprise.  
    I didn't really think that wanting my mother to have a nice meal after the week that she had had was 'fussing', but I guess maybe it's weird for someone my age to worry about things like that.  
    "Yeah. You worry about your parents a lot, what they're doing, if they're eating, or if they're stressed, more than they deserve. You act like _they're_ the ones that need taking care of half the time," he pointed out.  
    "Is that a bad thing?" I asked, but the affectionate smile that he had on his face, like he thought I was cute, was all the answer that I really needed.  
    "No. It means that you're responsible," he said, "and you care about your parents a lot. You're not the hard ass that everyone thinks you are."  
    I blushed darkly, but I was secretly pleased that he didn't see me like everyone else did, that he didn't make the same mistake in thinking that just because I was quiet, anti-social, and got easily frustrated, that meant that I was some kind of delinquent.   
    "I'll text you if I decide to come over, but otherwise, I'll try to see you the day after Christmas, or Christmas night, ok?" I conceded.  
    "You'd better," he teased.  
    We said good night to each other and I settled into the guest room bed for some of the best sleep that I have had in the last four years.   
  
End Part 15  
  
(1) I made this up, but if there is a device like this in the world, please someone tell me. I'm always looking for ways to transcribe my notebook writings into digital format instead of manually typing them all up, but I tried an app that was supposed to help do that and it was more trouble than it was worth -_-


	44. Chapter 7 Part 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duo decides to follow his mother to see where she goes at night and makes quite a few shocking discoveries.

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 7  
Part 16  
  
  
  
    I woke up a few times in the early morning because my shoulder and rib decided to bother me, but I was used to that and was able to fall back asleep almost as quickly as I had been woken up. I dreamt about Quatre. A lot. Most of the dreams were little more than memories that I have of him, but for the first time since he had died, not a single one of those dreams were nightmares, or even unpleasant. I didn't dream about watching him die. I didn't dream about what Relena and Zechs and Trowa had done to him. I didn't even dream about the truck hitting him or me letting him down.   
    I dreamt about the times that I had been happiest with him. I dreamt about hanging out at our spot behind the library, a spot that I had only had a small handful of chances to show Heero. I dreamt about him gifting me with those CDs. I dreamt of us walking along the boardwalk, eating ice cream together. I dreamt of the last birthday that I had had when he had been alive, of turning thirteen and him giving me the sweatshirt that I could no longer fit into, but still kept. I dreamt of his bright, almost childlike smile and his large, clear, green-blue eyes as he had wished me a happy birthday and us eating cake.   
    When I woke up, I had tears in my eyes and I'm not ashamed to say that I kept crying a little as I laid there on my side, my tears soaking into a pillow that wasn't mine. My tears were sad and painful, but, and this might sound a bit odd, they were good tears. The pain that I felt was a good pain, a pain that came from remembering the first friend that I had ever had, the best thing that had ever happened to me before Heero had saved me the day that I had come out. And the pain was from the joy of being able to remember him that way, to remember him without all the blood and horror that my dreams of him had become. It felt like rediscovering an old friend, like some part of me was reminding myself that not all my memories of the past are as dark and terrifying as the ones that seem to constantly haunt me.  
    I'm not sure exactly what it was that had caused me to dream of him like that. Maybe it was the present that Josh had given me, maybe it was because of all of the people that were telling me that my parents were wrong about me, something that Quatre had told me constantly, but I hadn't been ready to believe. Maybe it was just time for me to miss him in a way that wouldn't reduce me into a sobbing, suicidal mess. Maybe I was finally able to grieve for him in an adult way, without that black hole in my heart. I don't know, but those memories made me feel good and the tears and sobs made me feel good, too, in a very strange way.   
    I had brought a change of work clothes with me, so I didn't bother to go home before I went to work. I had breakfast with the Yuys, omelets this time, Mrs. Yuy gave me some leftovers from that night to take home, and then Heero and his father walked me to the bus, wishing me a merry Christmas. I wore my new hat as I left the house and I had to admit, it made the walk from the bus stop to my work place a lot more bearable.   
    Work was... interesting. I can't really call it work since there was such a laid back atmosphere, everyone too eager over the fact that it was Christmas Eve to do much but stand around and socialize. Almost everyone brought in something to eat, mostly cookies and cakes, even the dreaded fruitcake, and Mr. Leneski ordered everyone pizza for their breaks along with a wide variety of soda. It was basically just a day long office party and I felt bad that I hadn't thought to bring anything, but I hadn't really been expecting it. When Solo scolded me for trying to do paperwork on Christmas Eve, I found myself dragged into the socialization, although Solo was really the only person that I worked with that I was comfortable talking to.  
    When I left work, again at 4:30, I had a bounty of food between the food from the night before and the leftover pizza that Leneski had let us take home. I had enough for more than a couple of dinners and lunches, especially if my father didn't come home until after the holiday. I opted to walk home again instead of taking the bus. The wind had died down, but now there were large snow flakes floating lazily to the ground. I doubted that it would amount to much unless it really picked up, but it gave the day, already starting to turn dark, a very tranquil air.   
    I was sure that central and north Nausten were incredibly busy between the Christmas Festival at the boardwalk and people rushing around to do any last minute shopping before everything closed down, but my end of town was completely empty, except for the bars that I passed on my way home. Those, of course, were completely packed of people looking to get wasted on half off shots. I was suddenly incredibly glad that my mother wasn't in one of those bars that night, dealing with rowdy crowds. On my street, our neighbor with the loud, attack dogs was having some kind of party. Men loitered outside the small home, drinking, swearing, and laughing, loud music filled and destroyed the quiet that I had been enjoying. Everyone was a bit too wasted at just five pm, but 'tis the season, I guess.  
    Beer cans and bottles littered the tiny, unkempt lawn and I was positive that some of the scantily clad women that were coming and going from that house were either prostitutes or the kind of loose women that didn't care who they were with so long as they were being given free booze and food. As I walked up to my house, someone from the mob outside the home catcalled to me, either having only seen me from the back and thinking that I was a girl, or too drunk to care. In their pen, I could see the dogs pacing and barking furiously at the various people that had dared to intrude on their domain.   
    Panic filled me as the catcaller suddenly lurched forward and, being egged on by his 'buddies' started to come across the street towards me. It didn't matter if it was just some drunken joke or not, it wasn't a joke to the catcaller, he had intent in his eyes. I frantically unlocked my door, disappeared inside, and locked it behind me. As I heard people laughing across the street, I wished that we had a better lock. It was freezing cold in the house, but I didn't dare touch the heater. With the cost of gas and oil as it was, I wasn't going to incur my father's wrath when I was the only one in the house, as much as I wanted to get the house warm for when my mother came home at eight.   
    I hung up my jackets, scarf, and my new hat to dry in the hall closet, getting a weird rush of happiness seeing that green hat there, put all of the food on the kitchen counter, and ran upstairs to hide my gifts. My jeans went into the closet and my e-writer into the hole in the floor because I was terrified of my father finding it and breaking it in one of his rages. I put on the warmest pair of pants that I owned and a sweatshirt before the cold could get unbearable, wondering if I should put my hat and gloves back on at that rate. I spent the time that I had alone playing with my cat, reading, and trying out the e-writer, starting to transcribe my short stories on to it. I was in a good mood for once, so I just didn't have the stomach to try to input any of my old journals. I didn't want those kinds of memories bouncing around in my head.   
    When it got close to eight, I started to heat up the food from my feast at Heero's and stuck the rest in the fridge. My mother was prompt, walking through our front door at 8:30. I could still hear the party going on across the street and the barking dogs, only getting louder the later that it went on.   
    "Hi," I greeted her as she came into the kitchen, putting on some coffee for her when she wanted it.  
    She was frowning, her brow creased in that way when she had one of her headaches, and she looked irritated for a moment that I had spoken to her, but with some effort, she smiled at me tiredly.   
    "Hi, Duo," she said with some tightness in her voice.  
    A part of me was hurt, hoping that we could maintain the friendliness we had managed with each other lately, but I realized that her irritation had absolutely nothing to do with me, but with her withdrawal symptoms and having come off a double shift. I wouldn't be in a good mood, either.   
    "I have some dinner on," I told her in as low and least grating a tone as I could manage as she shrugged off her coat and hung it in the hall, "Just leftovers, but there are a lot of it if you want them. And some coffee as well."  
    Again, I could see her visibly fighting with her irritation, trying not to snap from her headache and whatever other symptoms she was feeling. I could see that hunger in her eyes, the need to go right to the fridge and search for the most immediate source of relief, both from her cravings and her obviously stressful day, but when I mentioned coffee, she smiled with relief. It was an excuse for her, I suppose, a way to temper her addiction to have something else to drink. Besides, hot coffee on a night like that probably sounded better than a shot of whiskey.  
    "Thank you, Duo," she managed and walked with a very tired and heavy gait to her bedroom to change out of her work uniform.   
    While she undressed, I went to the bathroom and fished out two pills of the medication she used for her headaches, putting them on the kitchen table and pouring her a mug of coffee. When she left the bedroom again, now wearing a far more comfortable sweater and pants, she made a beeline for it, swallowing the pills and taking a large gulp of the steaming hot coffee. When she sat down at the table, it was more like she fell down in the chair and rubbed at her forehead, looking especially pained.   
    I filled a dish with a little bit of everything that Mrs. Yuy had given me and put it in front of her, letting her decide what she wanted to eat and trying to make things as easy on her as possible. She looked exhausted and worn out, her face haggard and her eyes red, not from crying, but just from strain. For awhile, I ate and she just took sips from the coffee, seeming like solid food was the last thing that she wanted. But when she took an experimental bite of the turkey, she snapped out of her funk a little bit and practically shoveled the food down.   
    She didn't ask me where the food had come from or where I had spent the night and I was a bit relieved at that. I suppose it's no big secret, but I felt weird about telling either of my parents about staying at Heero's home, like it was this deeply personal thing. When I saw that my mother was finished with her meal, I took the dishes to the sink and offered her some more coffee, but she turned it down.  
    "Could I have some water instead?" she asked me and I was all too happy to pour her a glass, "I'm going to lay down for awhile," I was told in a rough voice as she took the water from me and walked towards her bedroom.  
    "Alright, call me if you need anything," I said softly.  
    She nodded, almost absentmindedly, and retreated into her bedroom, closing the door behind her. I was worried about her, but her behavior was far from shocking. I had found a couple of books at the town library on quitting alcohol after I had found out that my mother was quitting cold turkey and had diligently read through one of them, so I was aware that even though my mother was through detoxing after two weeks sober, she was still adjusting to living without drinking and would be irritable and have her bad days for awhile, although nothing like what she must have gone through in the first few days.   
    Recently, I had found myself trying to pin point the exact date that she had quit drinking, wondering which fights she had had with my father, which times she had blown up at me, had been because of the drinking or had been because of the detoxing. And what had been the catalyst? What had happened in the last two weeks that had made her decide to quit? There were just too many variables, I decided, to really answer any of those questions. My mother's personality while drunk seemed rather consistent with her personality when quitting cold turkey. It was impossible to differentiate her being irritable because she was jonesing for a drink and hyper sensitive to things from her just having a bad day. I suppose it said something that she was having a mix of both that night, but hadn't taken it out on me when she easily could have. She was making an effort and I loved her for that.   
    I cleaned up what little mess there was in the kitchen, went upstairs to grab the book of poetry that Solo had gifted me with, and sat down on the couch in the living room with it. I decided to stay close to where my mother was sleeping, just in case she did need me, whether it be more pills or water. It would be two hours before she even came out of the bedroom, looking like she hadn't slept for so much as five minutes. I expected her to stagger off to the bathroom, but to my confusion, she went to the front door, not even noticing that I was sitting there on the couch, in full view of her.  
    My confusion turned into full fledged bewilderment when I heard her open the hall closet for her coat and then the front door. Actually, bewilderment didn't come close to what I was feeling. I realized that it was around this time that she had been going off to... well, wherever she had been and paranoia settled in my gut. Where could she possibly be going at that hour? It was Christmas Eve at almost eleven at night, almost nothing was going to be open. Except for bars. Again, that fear hit me, that she was hiding something, that she was going out drinking or doing something else that she was ashamed of. I know that's stupid, I didn't tell her where I went when I left the house and she was probably doing something completely innocent, but as I've said before, trust does not come easy for me, especially when it involves my parents. I tend to just assume the worst, even when it doesn't make sense.   
    I sat there in the living room for a few minutes, feeling my anxiety try to kick my ass while I tried to figure out what to do about it, if I should confront her or just let it go, and where she might be going. Suddenly, I couldn't take it anymore. Maybe it was just my paranoia and pessimism, but I think I did what I did because I did want to trust her. I wanted to show myself that things weren't as bad as I thought they were. Or maybe I was just plain curious. Whatever the reason, I put my book down and went to the door, putting on my jackets, sneakers, hat, gloves, and scarf.   
    Trailing my mother was easy, even with the falling snow, which had begun to pick up a bit. She was oblivious to everything around her, even when I got onto the bus after her and sat a few rows behind her. It was like she was answering some siren call and everything else was irrelevant, making me feel even more afraid of what I was going to find on this trip. It was about five minutes in when I began to doubt what I was doing. I was spying on my mother. What I would find out aside, I was butting my head into something that was none of my business. I think at that point, realizing what I was doing, I would have stayed on that bus until it went around back to my end of town if my mother hadn't suddenly gotten off at one of the central Nausten stops. I followed her off almost like I was the one in the trance.  
    I don't know what I had been expecting, but her walking into the town hall was not one of them. Perplexed, I understood that I had already passed the point of no return and if I really wanted to know what she had been doing for all of these nights, I might as well just finish things. The town hall was almost completely dark as I followed her inside a couple of minutes after. My mother went around the back, using a side entrance that looked like it would be locked like the rest of the building, but my mother seemed to know that it wouldn't be.  
    I didn't even need to follow her as I went inside, I could hear someone talking down the long hallway and a light on in one of the rooms. I half expected it to be just some private hangout, maybe a party going on or something of that nature. I walked into the room and saw that it was one of the large meeting rooms that the town used to conduct business, this wide, open space with a stage and a large bulletin board to announce events that the town was putting on. Only that night, the board had been pushed to a corner of the stage and the floor had been filled with metal, folding chairs, only a third of which were being used.   
    My mother sat down at the edge of an empty row, looking somehow both nervous and relieved to be there at the same time. I copied her move, sitting in the very back row where no one else was and feeling like an intruder. Soon, everyone would look back at me and point a finger, declaring me to be the outsider. Truthfully, everyone there looked like that they knew each other and not just in the way that people in a small town know each other. Everyone there belonged and they knew that they belonged. Everyone but me. I sunk low into my seat, hoping fearfully that no one would notice the one teenaged boy among a bunch of adults.  
    There was a speaker up on the stage, not using the microphone because he really didn't need to, a stick thin man with an equally thin beard and spectacles. When he saw my mother sit down, he paused in the story that he was relating to the group to smile at her.  
    "I see a few new faces here tonight," he addressed the room again, "and some very familiar ones."  
    From where I was, I could see my mother shifting anxiously and realized that this change in subject was because of her.  
    "The holidays can be a very joyous time," the speaker said, his voice loud and clean for someone so small, "but they can also be very difficult for us, can't they?"  
    There was a soft murmur of consent from the 'audience'.   
    "Christmas Eve. Where so many are with their families or out at parties tonight, I am sure that all of you have chosen to come here for the same reason that I have," he declared, "The holidays are a time for family and friends, but for those like us, they can also bring about temptation. And I am sure that, tonight, each and every one of you has felt that temptation to join in on these... merry get togethers, but there is no reason to feel ashamed for wanting to let go, to revel in the season and forget about your promises to yourself."  
    Almost every head amongst the crowd nodded and just like that, I realized where I was and cursed myself for being a complete and total idiot, and an asshole to boot. It was a group for people that were trying to quit drinking, a more unofficial group than AA or something like that. My mother hadn't been going out to bars, she had gone out to talk to other people like her to help her keep from straying, people that understood what she was going through.   
    "But instead, you have chosen to come here, to remind yourselves of that promise and why you have all chosen to join this group. Since we have a few new people here tonight, I would like to ask a few of you to talk about why you, personally, are here," his dark eyes looked at my mother, "Helen, I know you just came in out of the cold, but could you talk about what you told the group last week? I think many people here would be able to relate to it."  
    She paused, looking hesitant and tired, but nodded after a couple of minutes. I should leave, I realized. This was something private, something that she was obviously only comfortable sharing with other addict sufferers, something that she didn't want to say around me. But I couldn't move. I felt frozen as she stood from her seat and walked up to the stage.   
    "My..." she started to say, her voice barely loud enough to be heard by anyone and sounding so shy, so nervous.  
    She looked so small up there in her coat, her braided, chestnut hair mussed from the wind.  
    "My name is Helen," she said in a stronger voice after taking a minute to compose herself, her tone proud and confident as she looked at the people listening to her, "and I haven't had a drop of alcohol in forty-three days."  
    The mixed greetings that rose from the audience went right over my head as I stared at her in shock. Forty-three days? She had stopped drinking almost two months ago, not two weeks ago? It had really been that long? I felt completely floored by that information, my mind whirling with it. I tried to put that in the right time line. Forty-three days. She had stopped drinking on November 12th. Why? Why was that date important? What had happened on that day that could have possibly...   
    And then it came to me and I nearly jumped right out of my seat in a mixture of horror, amazement, love, and nausea. November 12th, that would have been ten days before Thanksgiving. Normally, it would have just been another day to me, if something terrible hadn't happened. If I hadn't written about it, thought about it endlessly. I have a good memory for dates, certain ones at least, and that day was a day that I am going to remember for some time.   
    It was the day that Zechs had dumped that jar of semen on me, the day that Heero had seen me cry as I had tried to get it all out of my hair. The day before I tried to shoot my father in the head. It had also been the day that my mother had seen him rape me in the kitchen as she had stood there, not saying a single word and I had accused her of drinking away all of her problems.   
    "I am here tonight," my mother continued, "for the same reason why I have come here every night this week... because I have been tempted. Tempted to drink and... tempted to break the promise that I made to myself... and to my son."  
    I swallowed roughly, an intense pain squeezing my chest.   
    "I'm not a social drinker," she said, "I didn't feel the need to drink tonight because of the festivities, but because I had a bad day at work. My hours were long and hard. I was yelled at by customers because their burgers were overcooked or they thought that their husbands or boyfriends had been checking me out. I saw someone pass by with a case of beer in their hand and I wanted to just run up to them and take one of those bottles and drink every last drop so badly that my hands shook and I broke the plates that I had been carrying. My boss screamed at me for ten minutes and the first customer that I had after that threw up on me," she ran a shaking hand through her hair, "As soon as my shift ended, I wanted to take what little tips that I had gotten and find the nearest bar stay there until I had used up every, last bill.   
    "And that's my day, every single day since I decided to quit. Every day, I want a drink so badly that I feel physically ill and I want to throw things at the first person to dare try to speak to me, but I _haven't_. The first couple of weeks were the worst. The first night after I put the bottle down for the first time in eighteen years was hell. I sweated so much that I thought I was sick and my skin smelled like it was rotting. I couldn't sleep without the booze and even when I could, it was never for more than an hour or two at a time. Even when I finished detoxing and I found that I could sleep, I had terrible nightmares.   
    "And the irritability..." she chuckled self-depreciatingly, "I'm still struggle with that one, but those first few weeks, all I wanted was to tear someone's head off. I hated everything and everyone and I hated myself for choosing to quit drinking. Every sip of water or coffee or juice that I had was rancid in my mouth. I was so sure that I wouldn't be able to do it, that I had to take a drink or I would die. I had to do it, just so I could tolerate getting up every, single morning, or to quite the screaming headaches that I still get.  
    "But I haven't," she repeated insistently, more like she was trying to remind herself of that instead of anyone listening, "I haven't so much as taken a sip of the stuff. Not because I don't want to, because I do. Every day, it's all I can think about, losing myself in a bottle. But I can't. I can't let myself do it, no matter how much I want to. I started drinking when I was sixteen years old. I was a social drinker back then, only drinking at parties or if my friends had managed to score a beer or two from their parents' fridge. But soon I started to drink just to forget the things about me and my life that I couldn't live with.  
    "I drank to forget that I was married to a man that I hate and so I could sleep next to him at night, forgetting that he was even there. I drank to forget that I had a child that I thought that I hadn't wanted."  
    Her words burned in me, especially that part. It was nothing more than what I had always suspected about her drinking, but the words that she had used... She had only 'thought' that she hadn't wanted me? What was that supposed to mean?  
    "I even drank to forget that I can no longer have any children," thick tears ran down her pale cheeks, "I can't even enjoy sex ever again," she whispered painfully.  
    I felt like I had been slapped. I had known that she couldn't have children, but I had never known that she couldn't have sex itself. What did she mean that she couldn't enjoy it? Did it hurt her or could she just not feel it? I felt a terrible sadness for her. I had never enjoyed sex, but the way she had said that, with such hopeless wanting, I knew that she once had. And now, because of me, because of my birth, she couldn't even have that. Even if she found someone else besides my father, she could never have a normal relationship with anyone.   
    Maybe it was narcissistic of me, but I felt this deep connection with her just then. It wasn't the same, and it wasn't fair of me to compare my problems with hers. I didn't enjoy sex and couldn't have a real relationship with anyone because there was something wrong with me, something in my head or my body that just shut down when someone tried to touch me, my mother couldn't enjoy sex because of some injury. I wanted nothing to do with intimacy, but she did and couldn't. I felt like the universe had played some huge, ironic joke on us. I wished, more than anything right then, that I could trade places with her, that I could right that wrong.   
    I wanted to give her my physical health in trade for her broken body. If one of us could never have a normal relationship, why not me? Why did my mother have to suffer, too, when sex was something that she actually wanted? Was that the only thing stopping her from doing what my father did, from cheating on him? Was that the reason why my father didn't have sex with her, why he needed me?   
    "None of that has changed," I pulled myself out of my thoughts when she had composed herself enough to continue, "I am still reminded of these things every day, but I can't drink to forget anymore. Life has hurt me in more ways than I can say, but my drinking has hurt my child more... more than I can ever admit."  
    I could feel myself start crying along with her, my tears silent and painful as she spoke with a deep guilt and shame about all of the things that we had never talked about. I hadn't even known that she felt that shame, that she cared about how much she had hurt me, but she spoke with an agony and self-hatred that I had never heard from her before in my life.  
    "I took out all of my problems on an innocent child," she said angrily, "Worse, I turned my back on him. Even when I found out the true damage that my negligence had cost him... I turned my back on him."  
    My stomach clenched in agony and I wanted so badly to scream at her to stop, to not say these things or run out of the room, but I couldn't. I was paralyzed by her words.  
    "All I can do now," she almost cried out, her voice full of both sorrow and desperation, "is try to protect him and do right by him. To be the mother that I was supposed to be. Drink didn't stop me from being his mother, _I_ did that, but I had let the drinking be my excuse. That's why I can put the bottle down now and keep it down. Any time I'm tempted, I think about him, I see..." she stopped, biting whatever she had been about to say off and seeming to realize that she had come close to admitting something to the group that she couldn't, "I see his face," she amended, "and know that drinking... drinking is absolutely nothing compared to him and what I need to do. I came here tonight because I almost shamed myself again. I was tempted, but he reminded me again why drinking is no longer an option for me. As long as I have that reason... that promise, I know I can walk away from that temptation. My son needs me. My addiction doesn't."  
    She fell silent, her cheeks soaked with tears and I could hear a couple of the other people watching her struggling with tears of their own. She walked, weary and looking defeated somehow, down the stage steps and back to her seat.   
    "Thank you, Helen," the speaker of the group said softly, looking a bit affected by her testimony himself.  
    I got up and walked out of the room, unable to handle all of my emotions and unwilling to risk someone seeing me crying in the back. I had been unprepared for all of it, the things that she had never been able to say to me. Her guilt and shame, her desire to protect me... I didn't know what to do with that knowledge or my tears. I felt like I was dreaming all of it, because the mother that I had known my entire life could not possibly be the woman up on that stage, saying all of those things with such twisted pain. All of my life, I had not seen an inkling of those things in her and now that I knew that they were there, I felt like the rug had been pulled out from under my feet, like everything that I had ever known from my childhood was a complete lie.  
    I didn't leave entirely, although I wanted to. I was too overwhelmed by everything, by the evidence of my mother's love for me, that I truly was the reason why she had quit drinking and that she felt actual _remorse_ for how she had treated me, but I couldn't leave things where they were. I could stay silent and pretend like I hadn't heard her say all of that. I realized that it wasn't enough for me to simply know those things. I heard Heero's voice in my head, pleading that I needed to talk to my mother and suddenly, I knew that he was right. It had been almost seventeen years, but I needed to talk to her.  
    My tears felt like chips of ice on my face when I got outside and I pulled my hat down past my ears to protect them from the wind, which wasn't all that bad, but my hair was quickly becoming wet with the thick snowflakes that were pelting me and my two jackets did nothing to keep me from shivering. I stood outside the building, leaning against a brick wall, and waited. My mother didn't stay much longer after I had left, I guess she had either gotten what she had needed from that meeting or she had had enough emotional turmoil for the night. I could relate. Her reddened eyes matched mine. When she saw me there in the poorly lit parking lot, she froze, her grey eyes widening in shock, like she thought that I was some kind of ghost.  
    "Duo, what... what are you doing here?" her voice quavered, "Were you... you didn't listen did you?"  
    I didn't have any words for her and it wasn't really a question that needed answering, unlike the thousands that were buzzing around in my head at that moment. I knew that she could see that I had been crying just as easily as I could her and I thought that it was rather obvious that I had peeked in on her speech. I didn't say anything at all. What I wanted to convey to her then was beyond words. I walked up to her and wrapped my good arm around her shoulders, pulling her into a tight hug. For a moment, she flinched and stiffened against me, but it was brief and after that moment, she melted into my arms, hugging me back just as tightly. My tears started up again and I cried like a child against her shoulder.   
    "I am so, _so_ sorry," she cried, sobbing almost as hard as I was and I could feel her stroking my head over the knit cap, "I need you to know how much I mean that. I am so sorry for everything that I've ever done... for letting him do those... those horrible things to you. I knew that it was going on, I _knew_ what he was doing when he left the bed at night... and I did nothing at all! I just decided to drink the memories away instead of even trying to help you. It was so much easier to pretend that it wasn't happening, that I was dreaming things, while all that time, you were hurt. Even now... even when I stopped drinking... I'm too much of a coward to try to stop him," she said angrily, but I could hear the fear in her voice of him, the fear that the both of us had lived with for the last seventeen years.  
    She pulled away from me a little, my arm still wrapped around her, and wiped my tears off of my cheek. It was such a motherly gesture, something that I would have accepted from Mrs. Yuy, but was so alien and strange from my own mother.  
    "I did exactly what you told me to do," she said through her own tears, "I tried to pretend that none of it had ever happened."  
    "When did I say that?" I asked in confusion, not able to remember in that moment when I had ever said such a thing to her.  
    "When you were thirteen. You told me... you told me that your best friend had died..." she whispered.  
    An entire different kind of pain shot through me as the memory came to me. I remembered standing in our kitchen, plotting my first suicide attempt and finding my mother there, drunk as a skunk at 2:30 in the afternoon. She had excused me of cutting school, of being so useless that none of my teachers would even realize that I wasn't there. She had called me a waste of time. I remembered the intense anger I had felt, the bitterness and sorrow in my heart.   
    There I was, mourning the only person who had cared about me and planning to end my life the same way that he had because I just couldn't take the loss of it all anymore, and she was so wasted she didn't even know what time it was. I had lashed out at her, wanting so desperately to hurt someone as badly as I was hurt.   
Thinking that she was so drunk that she would probably forget it all anyway, I had told her that Quatre had died. I had accused her of not even knowing him, of not knowing who my best friend was. Then I had called her a pathetic drunk who wouldn't even remember anything that I said in the morning. I had told her that her life was just a bad, alcohol filled dream, those had been my exact words. I had told her that I hadn't wanted to be there with her anymore than she had wanted me in her life and that I wanted to be with Quatre.   
    Until this moment, we had never spoken of it and I had always assumed that she really had forgotten about it. But she hadn't. She had kept quiet about it, but she had remembered all the hurtful things that she had said to me and all of the equally hurtful things that I had hurled back at her. She even remembered me telling her about Quatre's death. I should have been mad at her for that, for never trying to comfort me when I had obviously been having a hard time with it. Even my dad had done that much. But for some reason, the fact that she remembered came as a relief to me.   
    "I should have done something," she whispered painfully, "the very second that I knew what he was doing to you... and I should have done something for you back then when you were so sad and angry... but I'm exactly what you said. Pathetic. A drunk. I should have comforted you and held you like this back then, and instead I just drank until I couldn't think at all. You didn't deserve that, Duo. You didn't deserve any of the shit that I did to you. I wasn't just a terrible mother, I was a shitty excuse for a human being."  
    I wanted to tell her no, that I understood and had never actually thought that about her, but that would have been a lie. No matter what her reasons had been, even if I could understand that she had been miserable and bitter and her irritability had partially been the alcohol abuse, she had still hurt me. She had hurt me cruelly and maliciously and she had known exactly what she had been doing. Just how many other things did she remember saying to me when she had been drunk? How many other things did she recall turning her back on? I suddenly needed to know. I needed to know what she had forgotten and what she had just decided to ignore.   
    "We need to talk," I said simply, my arm falling from her shoulders.  
    She looked frightened for a moment, but I understood that it was a fear of herself, of facing the things that she had done as an alcoholic and not of me. I thought that she might bolt like a skittish doe in the face of it, but she once again showed me that she was capable of strength and nodded in agreement.   
    "It's not as chilly out now," she said and I noted that the wind had indeed died down, "we can walk home together."  
    We walked together back onto the main street, side by side and I felt like some distance between us had been breached.   
    "I don't blame you for Dad," I told her as we walked under the golden lamp light, her grey eyes wide with surprise, like she had thought me incapable of that, her sin far too severe for me not to, "for not stopping him, I mean. I understand how scary he is. It's not like I can stop him, either," I murmured.  
    Some part of me wanted to scream at her 'but that doesn't mean that you couldn't have at least tried! It doesn't mean that you couldn't have cared that he was raping me!' Not only would that be cruel, it wasn't the truth. I knew at that point that she cared. She had quit drinking, eventually, because of it, and she had felt ashamed for her inaction. It wasn't a matter of her being indifferent or even wanting me to suffer like I had believed. She just... hadn't known what to do. It had been too terrible of a thing for her to deal with. Some horrors are too much, I understand that.   
    That didn't mean that it doesn't still hurt, knowing that she chose to do nothing at first. She hadn't even come to me, to try to comfort me. I understood that, too. She had probably been too frightened to face it, and she had probably believed that I would throw it back in her face. And really, what could you do to comfort someone who had just been raped by their father? I remembered what Solo had said as I looked at my mother, about how adults are just big kids and I felt that that was the truth. When I looked at her just then, I didn't see a woman of thirty-three. I saw a seventeen year old girl who had gotten too old, too scared, and too worn down by life. And it was like I had told her, I couldn't stop my father, either. Besides killing him or calling the cops on him, what could she have done about it anyway?  
    "You asked me for forgiveness once," I reminded her, "I... I didn't have an answer then, but I have one now."  
    She watched me desperately, literally holding her breath as I composed my words carefully before I spoke again. It had taken me a long time to come to this conclusion and I needed to get it right.  
    "I will never forgive you for your neglect," I told her with honesty, "and I'll never forgive you for all those terrible things that you said to me when you were drunk, even if you're sorry for them now."  
    She went as white as a sheet, almost recoiling away from me. She looked like I had just punched her, or ripped her very world away from her. I saw crystal tears forming in her stony eyes and hastily rushed to get to my point before they could fall.  
    "Four years ago, you told me something... You were sick and I tried to help you and you lashed out at me. You said that you and Dad had never wanted me, do you remember that?" I asked her.  
    Still pale and now looking even more horrified, she shook her head.  
    "N-no, I don't," she gained this far off look as she tried to pull out the memories that were probably too drowned in drink for her to fully recall.   
    I could see that on her face, a brief recognition, but confusion, like she could remember snippets of it, but couldn't be sure if they had actually happened or if she had imagined it.   
    "You said that it was my fault that you got stuck married to Dad," I whispered hoarsely, really not wanting to remember this again, but the memory came to me easily anyway, the things that she had said, the contempt and hatred for me in her bloodshot eyes, "You said that Dad wanted to abort me, but you wouldn't do it, and," my voice cracked as I choked on the words, "you said that you regret that."  
    It shouldn't have been at all possible, but my mother turned even more pale and more horrified, like I had just told her she had stepped on a puppy or drowned a toddler. She really hadn't remember, I realized. She remembered that she had snapped at me, perhaps, but not that she had said those exact words. I wasn't sure how that made me feel. A part of me was relieved and another part was angry. Angry because I had obsessed over it for four years of my life, and she didn't even remember. Relieved because she had never known just how much she had hurt me.  
    "I... I said that?" she asked, aghast at her own actions.  
    "I always thought that you hated me so much," I could feel myself crying again and really wished that I could just turn it off, I had to look away from her and at the ground in hopes that she wouldn't see it, "You always seemed to, like you couldn't stand having me around and you loathed me just for existing. So when you said that I should have been aborted..."      
    "No!" she exclaimed in denial, grabbing my face in her hands and forcing me to look at her, "No," she said softer, her eyes studying my face and my expression of misery, "I... I never should have said that... and it isn't true, it wasn't like that... I never hated you, not even when I found out that I was pregnant and I was so frightened. Even when I wanted to, even if I disliked you and the choices that I had made, I never hated you. You... you were my child and I did such horrible things to you, but those were my failings. You were never responsible for them, no matter what I said. I only said them... because it made me feel better to try to believe it wasn't my fault. But I never truly believed that. Your father and I... we were so young and so stupid. His father was the one that told him to get the abortion.   
    "Such a horrible man," she spit out in that tone that she seemed to reserve only for my father, "And your father, I'm sad to say, inherited most of his cruelness. He told Nathan that if he had a child, he would never support him and he would end up homeless. Your father tried to bully me into it, but I couldn't. I told him that it was my family's religion, that abortion was a sin, but that was only part of it. I didn't want to go through with it. I couldn't... I couldn't get rid of my child before he had even been born. I was starting to hate your father, even back then, but I still didn't want to do something so terrible. If I ever did regret it, it was only for a second, and only because I am a weak and awful person. I don't wish that I had gone through with it. Ever. If I told you that, it was just an angry lie."      
    Something deep inside of me, something very old that I hadn't even realized was there until it was gone, released. Thick tears poured down my face as I felt like, for the first time in years, I could breathe again, like some ancient well of poison had been removed. I didn't know what to think or say as the memory that I had held with such revulsion shattered and was replaced by this wonderful, shining one. She loved me, I realized. She actually did love me. She didn't regret my birth, even if she might hold some resentment towards me. It was just like Heero had said, it wasn't my fault. My mother had chosen me in the end. No matter the pain that she had caused me, no matter the things that she had said, what she was saying now was the irrefutable truth and there was not an ounce of hatred in her eyes when she looked at me.  
    "I... I know now that it's a lie," I choked out and she looked so relieved before I spoke again, "but I still can't forgive you for hurting me like that. I know that you were terribly drunk, and you were angry and saying things that you didn't mean... but you only did that just to hurt me for no reason at all. And all those times that Dad hurt me and you did nothing... I can't forgive you for that."  
    Her expression fell and she looked so hurt again, like I had ripped the guts right out of her.   
    "But," I continued frantically, grabbing at her hand, "I love you. I always have and I always will. You're my mother, that's never going to change. I might not be able to forgive you, but I don't hate you. I just... I want to move past all of it and I..." I looked away from her in shame, "I always wanted to protect you," I whispered, "but I never could. I hate myself for that, for not being able to stop him from hurting you, so I understand why you never did anything. I wish that you had, and it hurts that you never told me that you loved me or even gave me a hint that you cared, but I would be a hypocrite if I said that I hated you for it."  
    A soft smile smoothed away some of the pain on her face, but not all of it. She wrapped her arms around me again, hugging me tightly.  
    "You're such a good boy," she murmured into my shoulder and when she pulled back, she was crying again, too, "I never realized it. I didn't even know you, but I decided to see you just like I saw your father. I only ever saw what I wanted to see, all the things that made it easier to turn my back on you, and none of them were even true. For all of my and your father's attempts to turn you into a monster like us, you've always been such a good boy, always trying to take care of me. I just chose not to see it and when I did, I decided that you had to be mocking me, even when I knew that you were just trying to help."  
    She let go of me and wiped at her eyes, trying to hide her overwhelming emotions futilely. When she finally composed herself, she grabbed me by the shoulders, her grip on my right shoulder was tight but she was more careful with my left.  
    "You are the best thing that I have ever done with my life," she said with such passion that I felt breathless, "I've spent all of your life trying to destroy you, and after all of that, you still love me?" she shook her head and grabbed my good wrist, "I need to show you something."  
    She led me over to a bench on the street that we had stopped on, no more than a couple blocks from where we had started walking. She sat down next to me, her hand still clenching my wrist.  
    "There are things that you need to know," she insisted, "Things that... your father and I never told you and we should have, things about how we met... how you were born."  
    I stayed perfectly quiet and still as she spoke, feeling like if I moved so much as an inch, she would decide to stop and I so desperately wanted to hear this from her if it could answer some of the burning questions that I've had since I was little.  
    "First off, your father and I, well," she looked down at the ground, blushing a little, a faraway expression on her face as she became lost in her memories, "Nathan and I were never really... sweethearts or anything. I was sixteen when he asked me out. He said that he had a bit of a torch for me and I thought, why not go out with him. He was handsome and so charming back then, I would have been a fool not to try. Six months later we were at a huge party together," her blush darkened and I realized the sort of party that she was talking about, the sort that is put on by students instead of the school, the sort where there are no adult chaperones.  
    "We drank rather heavily," she told me with shame, "enough that when we... when we had sex," the words came out small and barely audible, like she couldn't even handle that one, three letter word. I almost wanted to tell her that it was ok, I was sixteen and had lost my own virginity, so it wasn't like I was some innocent kid that didn't know what sex was, "that we didn't have any condoms didn't seem like a big deal at the time. And it wasn't, not until I started putting on weight and getting sick every morning."      
    I pulled my wrist out of her grip and wrapped my hand around hers, trying to show her that I didn't feel ashamed of her, that I understood.  
    "I really didn't know if I was going to keep the baby... you... at first," she admitted, "An abortion never entered my mind until Nathan had brought it up, but I had considered going through with it and putting you up for adoption. I was only seventeen, I didn't even know what I wanted to do with my future and then I was pregnant... I was terrified of anyone finding out, of being _that_ girl, an unwed, teenaged, foolish mother. If I'm being honest, it wasn't even until Nathan's father demanded we get an abortion before anyone besides our parents found out that I made up my mind that I wanted to keep my child."  
    "What about your parents and Dad's mom?" I asked, "What did they say you should do?"  
    "Nathan's mother was gone by then," she told me, "She had left his father when he had was twelve. My family is Catholic, not fanatically so, but you couldn't even bring up the subject of abortion around my father. He was so ashamed of me when he found out that I was pregnant, but he insisted that I keep the baby, said it was my responsibility whether I liked it or not," she said bitterly, but then her expression quickly changed to affection, "But my mother... she was so excited at the thought of having a grandchild.   
    "My parents fought on the subject constantly. My father didn't want the scandal, wanted to send me away to relatives, and my mother was just eager to welcome the child into our family. They separated a couple months after I told them that I was going to marry Nathan and keep the baby. My mother insisted that wasn't the reason, and it was true that they had been having problems before then, but that was probably the last straw. My father left and never spoke to me again. My mother stayed, though," she dug around in her purse until she found her wallet, pulling out something from one of the protective sleeves and handing it to me, "she took this."  
    Looking down at it, tears turned my vision blurry. It was a photograph of my mother when she was my age. She was wearing what looked like a hospital gown, her face exhausted, like she had ran a marathon and there were heavy bags under her eyes. Her chestnut hair was done up in a high ponytail so it would stay out of her face. In her arms, she held a sleeping baby that looked no more than a few hours old, maybe a day, wrapped in a blue blanket. The baby was obviously me, although it was hard to tell at that age. My mother's expression spoke of weariness and some pain, but amazingly, also pride and satisfaction.   
    But there was more than just that. She was looking down at me in the picture and had this... this little smile on her face. It was a smile full of love and tenderness, the smile that only a mother could have. A smile that I had never seen on her face before. That picture made me hurt in ways that I can't express so simply in words. It was mixed up, both dark and bittersweet. If I tried to compare the woman that I knew with the girl in the photograph, there was no resemblance at all. It was like looking a complete stranger, yet there was a deep warmth in my chest as I looked at that face, that smile, a warmth that could only be love.   
    Who was that woman in the photo, the one that was looking at her newborn baby with such happiness? Where had she gone? Where she had been my entire life? And why had she abandoned me and let this... this cold stranger replace her? Would she ever come back? What had happened to my mother that had made it so impossible for her to look at me in that way?   
    Looking at that photo, I knew the truth were my mother's words would always give me doubt. My mother had loved me, loved me as much as any other mother had loved their baby, as much as Mrs. Yuy had loved Heero. Maybe she had never stopped loving me and had just... been unable or unwilling to show it. I didn't know what to think, how to see this woman who had I always seen so clearly before. Just a bitter woman with regrets. Now she was this enigma whose basic feelings and motivations baffled me. I had never known her at all. And everything that I had thought that I knew about her had either turned out to be a lie or a grand exaggeration.  
    "This is the person that I always wanted to be," my mother murmured, lightly tracing her fingers over my infant face in the photo, a soft, fond smile stretching her lips as she remembered, "I wanted so much to be my mother. I had thought that, when I became a mom, I would love my baby unconditionally and always be there for him. I would always make the right choices and show him every day that he was loved, no matter where he came from."  
    I wanted to scream, to rip up the photo and find something satisfying to punch. Instead, I cradled the photograph in my hand like it was made of wet tissue paper.  
    "Then why..." I rasped, "Why couldn't you have loved me like that?"  
    I had had a dream as a child. A dream of a loving family. A kind mother. A supportive father. And some mysterious force had taken all of that from me. I had been robbed and given something sour, something grey and diluted. All I could ask of God, the universe, and my mother was why. The death of those possibilities, the death of the possible future of that sleeping baby in the photograph was a razor in my heart, tearing everything to pieces. My mother looked devastated by my question, filled with guilt and shame and loss, but I didn't have the strength to comfort her. I didn't even know how to try when there was nothing that could comfort myself.  
    "Who are you?" I whispered harshly as I looked back down at the photo, "I don't know you."  
    My mother gave out this strange, tiny gasp that was almost impossible to hear, just this tiny inhalation of shocked breath, like I had stabbed her in the gut.  
    "Because," she finally answered me in a pained voice, reaching over to take the photo from me and tuck it back into her wallet, "I made nothing but the wrong choices. I tried so hard to love you," she whispered heartbrokenly, "but when it came to showing you that love, to... to feeling love for you without bitterness or resentment or sadness... I couldn't do it. I was weak and cowardly. At first, it was easy. Every time you smiled and laughed, I would feel this joy, and it didn't matter to me that your father absolutely refused to help me care for you when you cried in the middle of the night. It didn't matter that he had no patience in the rare moments that he would, that we were struggling just to get you new diapers and all the other things that you needed. It didn't even matter to me at first when he got angry at me all the time over nothing or that I had take on dead-end jobs.   
    "I thought that loving you would be enough. Nathan would get a promotion and he'd go back to the way that he used to be once he made more money and was less stressed, when we had been dating. I would get my GED somehow and get out of waitressing. I just had to wait, and things would get better. But they never did," she squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed at the bridge of her nose over some memory, "Nathan got worse and worse. I ignored it, hoping that he would... but I didn't realize until it was too late that the charming boy that I had made a child with was just a ruse. The man that screamed at us and hit us and tried to make me do things that I didn't want to do... _that_ was the real man that I had married and he was never going to get any better, he was never going to learn to control his temper.   
    "It became so hard to keep... to keep loving you," she whispered, her face full of misery, "I always would, but... but not the way that I should have, not the way that you deserved. It was too hard to watch you grow and see all the ways that you looked like him. It became too easy to drink myself asleep at night, it made everything else seem less painful. It helped me to forget why I was frustrated and stressed and bitter all the time. And I began to resent you whenever Nathan would hit me because of something that you had done, or because our bills were too high because we had another mouth to feed. It wasn't your fault, but it was so much easier to make myself believe that it was.   
    "And as you got older, it became harder and harder just to be around you, because... because you remind me so much of my mother," she admitted, more tears tracking down her cheeks.  
    "My grandmother?" I asked in confusion, wondering what I could possibly have in common with the woman that I had never met, and why that bothered my mother so much.  
    "You have her eyes," she smiled warmly and ran the back of her fingers down my cheek briefly, "She was so much like you, too, very quiet, but strong."      
    Something dark came across her face and her hand dropped away from my cheek.  
    "She saw who your father really was long before I did," she said sadly, "My mother was so supportive when I told her that I wanted to keep my baby, but she always disagreed with my choice to marry Nathan. She knew when he started to get abusive, too, and begged me to get away from him. I wish that I had listened to her, but I had thought that I knew what was best, that my mother just didn't understand how things were. The few times that they met, she never hid how she felt about him, how much she loathed him, that she wanted nothing more than for me to divorce him.  
    "But he got his revenge on her for that," she chuckled with dark bitterness, "He forbid her to ever see you and I was too frightened of him to go behind his back about it."  
    Well, that certainly explained why I had never met any of my grandparents. I had a newfound reason to be bitter at my father. He had kept me from having any other family except for my parents, all because he had been vindictive towards my grandmother and had wanted to 'punish' her.   
    "But what about now?" I asked her, "Even if it's just a phone call..."  
    That depressed look in my mother's eye told me that I had said the wrong thing.  
    "She died when you were ten," she said softly and I squeezed her hand in sympathy, feeling the loss of a woman that I had never even known very keenly, along with rage at my father for taking the chance to meet my grandmother away from me forever, simply because of his pettiness, "Cancer. I never..." she choked on her words, crying softly with grief, "I never got to see her in the end. Your father refused to let me visit her in the hospital. He always had some excuse for it, until he stopped caring and just told me flat out that I wasn't going to take the five hour trip to see her. Every time I tried, we would fight about it, but he always won in the end."  
    I was sure that he did, no doubt with his fists. What the fuck was wrong with him? Why would he do that to his wife, keep her from seeing her dying mother? But the more that I tried to believe that he would never do something so terrible, the more I remembered how stubborn and childish he could be in his tantrums, how he had nearly broken my arm when I had tried to leave the house when he had told me no, how he would beat me simply because he needed to take out his anger on someone, and it wasn't so hard to believe at all.   
    "She died all alone," my mother murmured, "and now, every time I look at you, I see her."  
    "I'm so sorry, Mom," I said, feeling a deep sorrow.  
    I wanted to apologize for doing that to her, of reminder her of her loss, but it wasn't like I could change the color of my eyes or my personality. Maybe it would be best for her if I mimicked our previous relationship and stayed as much out of her way as possible if just looking at me was causing her that much pain.  
    "No, you don't need to apologize," she assured me, regaining her smile a little bit, "Not all of my memories of her are sad. It helps some days, remembering her. You have her kindness, too, Duo, and her love of reading. When I'm not too drunk to not remember those things, I feel blessed that you're here to remind me of her. It's the closest that I can come to grieving for her, even though it's been almost seven years now."  
    "Time doesn't heal everything," I murmured and thought of Quatre, about my dreams of him that morning, how happy I had felt to be able to remember him without the horror. I knew exactly how my mother felt.   
    "I will always love you," she promised me, "Just like I will always love my mother. Even if memories of the two of you make me sad or angry, I still love you. I want you to know that, Duo. I'm trying as hard as I can to make up for all the crap that I've put you through because of my callousness. I'm not the only one in pain. I just... I need to remember that. I need to remember how to be a mother and not take things out on you. Do you think... do you think that you could help me do that?"  
    "I can try," I said hesitantly, not really sure that I was up for that kind of job, not just because I felt inadequate or I felt that it shouldn't be my responsibility at all, but I was always so quick to put myself down, just like Heero had accused me of.   
    It was easier to believe in the crap that she spewed at me, that I was useless and unwanted, than it was to believe in her sentiments that I was kind or good, that she loved me. Those things would take time and I wasn't so sure that I was the right person to tell her when she being hard on me.   
    "I want to give you something," she said, "A Christmas present."  
    She reached behind her neck, unlatching a fine, gold chain that I hadn't even noticed her wearing, and pulled a locket from underneath her clothes, handing it to me. I held it delicately like it was something precious, and that was exactly what it was. This was the first time she had ever given me a present and it was obviously something that she treasured. The gold jewelry, and even I could tell that it was real gold and not just plated, even if it was probably a low karat,  felt warm from her wearing it, like it was something alive.   
    The locket was oval shaped and very simple, but beautiful looking in design. The edge of it had a flower and ivy etching around it, leaving the center of it unmarked, like the flowers were framing it. Very carefully, I popped open the latch and saw that there was a picture on the right side of the locket. It was a photograph of my mother as a child, her chestnut hair longer than it was now and wearing a pretty, white dress. Holding her was a woman that I could only assume was my grandmother. My mother was right, I decided as I looked at her, she had my eyes, and the same shade of chestnut red hair that my mother and I shared. She had a Mona Lisa smile on her face as she posed with her daughter, her hair up in a French braid. Her eyes looked very kind and she shared my mother's nose and bone structure.    
    "It used to be my mother's," she explained to me, "It had a picture of her and her mother in it until she gave it to me on my wedding day. I've kept it on me ever since, so it... so I would never lose it."  
    I had a bad taste in my mouth as I realized that what she really had been frightened of wasn't losing the locket, but that my father would either destroy it during one of his rages if he found it, or sold it when he realized that it was real gold.  
    "I... I can't take this, Mom. This was your mother's and she gave it to you to keep," I protested.  
    I felt wrong just holding it, probably one of the few things that my mother had to remember my grandmother and tried to hand it back to her, but she closed my hand over it.  
    "You will take it," she said forcefully, "I have other photos of her and things that she gave to me in her will. This was meant to be given away. My mother's mother gave to her, she gave it to me, and now I'm giving it to you, to choose what you'll do with it. Our family has never had a lot of money, but this locket was never sold. It's one of the only things that my grandmother refused to sell, even when times were bad. It's the only thing that I have to give to you."  
    I looked down at the locket, seeing it's age for the first time. I felt incredibly self-conscious just holding it, not only because of it's monetary worth, but because of it's sentimental one. I had never really had a concept of family growing up, at least not one beyond the small one that we had. I hadn't known anything about my grandparents, where they had come from, I hadn't had anything at all to connect me to my heritage until that moment. I had never really realized how... lost that had made me feel until I had gotten a piece of it, this glimpse into the past. I carefully and reverently put the locket in my top jacket pocket, making my mother smile with relief.  
    "Thank you, Mom, I promise I'll never lose it," I vowed.  
    She squeezed my hand, looking just overwhelmed as I felt by passing down the piece of jewelry to me. I wondered if she had been planning on giving that to me all along, even before, when she had resented me, or if this had been a spur of the moment decision for her. I decided that I didn't care, even if it had been spontaneous, it didn't take away what I felt about her giving me one of the most treasured things that she owned. Actions speak louder than words, I've always believed that.   
    "Your hands are like ice," my mother suddenly frowned and I remembered just how cold I was, somehow forgetting that in the course of our discussion, "We should go home."      
    We got off of the bench and resumed our walk together, this time in peaceful silence. I still had a thousand questions in my head. I was still confused and a bit hurt by everything, but I felt like some of the wounds that I had had for years were starting to finally scar up. I felt... I guess lighter is the right word, relieved and, while not unburdened, it was definitely less. Heero had been right again, I realized in amazement, talking to my mother _had_ helped, and there was still so much more that I wanted to say to her.  
    "Why Duo?" I blurted out as we got to our street, "Did you or Dad pick that name out?"  
    "I did," she confessed, "I loved music when I was a child, especially duets. Your father didn't like it at first, but I managed to convince him when I pointed out that his mother's family came from Italy a few generations back."  
    I greedily accepted yet another, small piece of family history, hoping that some day, if I got enough of those pieces, I could put them all together. I wondered what my other grandmother had been like. If my grandfather had really been as terrible as my mother had said, she must have been a strong woman to have left him, or maybe she had just been selfish, leaving her son behind as well. And I wondered just how many of my father's issues and... less than stellar traits were because of genetics, his father's influence growing up, or just his own personality.   
    "It means two', right?" I murmured.  
    As much as I appreciated my mother giving me a name as a reminder of my ancestry, and after some musical term that she had enjoyed, I still felt sore about that one. Duo, it sounded so strange and abnormal. Duet was even worse. It sounded so feminine and I could see why my father had a problem with it. I had thought about that a lot as a child, why my parents would have given me such a weird name and my mother's reasons for it didn't help that much.  
    "Actually," my mother corrected me with a soft smile and entwined her first finger with mine, "Duo means a pair or couple, two things that are intertwined together, like two musicians in perfect harmony. When I finally came to terms with that fact that I was pregnant, that's how I felt, that the two of us were connected.  When you were born and I saw that you had so many of my features, I just knew that that was what I wanted to name you."  
    I could feel myself start to tear up again as I realized, once again, how wrong I had been about my mother, even about my name, for my entire life. I had thought that my name was an insult when she had only ever had good intentions for calling me that. What other things had gotten wrong in my life? What other things had I beaten myself over with, that I had merely misunderstood?  
    "I like it," I told her with a faint smile.  
    When we got inside of our house, even though it was late and we were both exhausted from our emotional discussions, I made her some tea and myself some hot chocolate and we sat down at the kitchen table together. We continued to talk for hours, thankfully not about anything else that would make us cry or have a fight, just little things, barely more than small talk. She told me more about her family and her childhood. She got me to talk about Quatre, not about how he had died, but our becoming friends and what he had been like. I talked about Solo and work and my new friend, although not any of the details of how we had become friends or my feelings for him. I was opening up to her, but I would never be _that_ open with anyone but Heero.   
    As my mother did a bit of opening up herself, telling me about what her work was like, her coworkers, and even how she had come to join that group of recovering alcoholics, I had a thought that made everything feel so surreal to me, like I really was dreaming. It was that I had lived with this woman for seventeen years, but for the very first time, I was getting to know her. And for the first time, I was letting her get to know me.   
  
  
End chapter 7  
  
  
Author's Note: Oh my fucking god. I seriously thought that this chapter was never going to end. I knew that, given the subject matter, it was going to be long, but so much ended up getting added. Even the ending discussion between Duo and his mother ended up being much longer than I had thought it would be. I hope it came across as organic, because it was not easy to write.   
  
All that being said, Chapter 8 is going to be a monster. This chapter really has nothing on it. Eight is really the bulk and meat of the story and has a lot of integral scenes in it, so it feels so weird (in a good way) that I am finally going to get to write on it. 

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 7  
Part 15  
  
  
      
    I couldn't stop thinking about it. Even when I was telling Lorathe that I wanted Tuesdays and Saturdays off as soon as the holiday season came to a close, and he was yelling at me that I was suddenly springing this on him last minute (which I wasn't), I wasn't thinking about his ire or how probably all of my coworkers could hear what was being screamed at me, even Solo. I wasn't even thinking about how I needed to go to the twenty-four hour mart when I got off work and stay up for most of the night so I could get some baking done. No, I was thinking about my mother and what she had said to me that day. I thought about the love in her eyes, how I had always thought how impossible that was, how I was trying to find the fault in it, trying to reason it away and couldn't in the face of it's realness.  
    My mother, even if it was just a small, small shard of her, even if it was recent and even if it was only because I had told her that I was proud of her, loved me. The thing that I had desperately yearned for my entire life... the thing that I dreamed about, cried about, and had desperately tried to find in other people had been right there on her face. I had it... and I didn't know what to do with it. You probably think that's funny, don't you? Here I have been writing in these damned journals for years about my fears and depression about being unloved and my mother was giving a piece of what I needed to me, and I was unsure. I was hesitant.   
    All that time. Almost seventeen years of my life. I wondered for the first thirteen 'do my parents love me'. And for the last four, I have been so sure that the answer to that question is 'no.' Hell, the knowledge that I had been unwanted came from my mother's own lips. But that look on her face hadn't been a mirage. Some part of her... cared for me. It had to be recent. It had be because I was supporting her, but just that it was there was strange enough. Maybe after all of these years of wanting some kind of affection from someone, anyone, has made me barren inside. Maybe I don't know how to love anyone anymore.   
    Wouldn't that be funny? There I was, wanting to know why my parents can't love me back and I don't even know how to feel when one of them does. Maybe their inability got transferred to me. Maybe the black hole in my heart swallowed up too much of me. I just... don't know what to do or what I feel anymore. But I do know that that night, I had a revelation. It was a pretty huge one and I found my thoughts tangled up in it for days. The revelation was that, little by little, I was starting to believe. I was starting to believe that maybe... just maybe... my mother could love me enough to actually quit drinking.  
    Stupid, I know. One moment of love for me didn't really stand up to sixteen years of loathing me, and it especially didn't stand up to sixteen years of loving a bottle more than me. I had told her once that I knew what she loved the most, and that was the truth. She had taken to the bottle like a new mother to an infant while she had all too happily ignored me, what I had needed and wanted from her, all the times that I had been in pain. I didn't know who would win in the end, me or the liquor, but for the first time since I had caught her pouring out all of their alcohol into the sink, I felt like I was a contender. I was starting to believe that maybe, just maybe, I was enough for her.   
    All of that might just be wishful thinking on my part, my desperation for her love that I'm willing to overlook my own caution and surety that she was going to go back to the neglectful woman that I have lived with my entire life. But the more that I thought about that possibility, the more that I thought that maybe it was ok. And maybe that was just Solo's influence, his advice that I should believe in the things that make me happy, not the things that make me feel like shit. Even if the love that my mother felt for me now is fleeting and she returns to the bottle, if she remembers how much she had hated me before and how much the alcohol had helped her more than I, in my childish attempts, had, that wasn't what I wanted to believe. I wanted to believe that she would be successful, because she loved me. Even if that was foolish, why couldn't I believe in that, simply because it made me happy?  
    As it turns out, I'm not very good at optimism. Deciding to believe in the things that make me happy might sound like a healthy thing on paper, but I've always believed in what I can observe, what I see right in front of me, no matter how it makes me feel. So even though I chose to believe in my mother, when I saw the thing glaring me in the face, I felt my fears come back full force, like a punch. That thing was coming home after grabbing the remaining ingredients I would need from the market and finding my mother there by the doorway, just taking off her jacket. If that wasn't bad enough, she startled when I opened the door, like she had been caught doing something wrong. Her smile and timid greeting made my suspicion lessen a bit, and it was easy to believe that she had only jumped because she had thought that I was my father, whose car was un-surprisingly missing again, but I couldn't ignore my doubts.  
    It was 12:45 in the morning, I having been let out of work early again, but even if my mother hadn't just quit her job that afternoon, she still would have gotten home from it over an hour ago and would have been crashed in bed, especially with my father gone. She took whatever chance she got to be alone in bed, otherwise she would try to go for the couch, but either way, whether she had work or not, even if she was awake at that hour, there was nowhere she could have gone so late. The only places that were open were strip joints, which she wouldn't go to, twenty-four fast food places or grocery stores, but she didn't have anything in her hand that suggested she had gotten something to eat, or, my traitorous mind snidely told me, a bar.   
    Where had she gone? Why had she been there? She had promised to quit drinking, so she couldn't possibly have gone out to a bar, especially so soon after vowing she would renew my confidence in her... could she have? My logic warred with my feelings, my pessimism with my newly sought after optimism. I wanted to believe that there was some other reason for her to be out so late, but I couldn't think of anything. My suspicions wouldn't die and it was only my desperation to believe that she wouldn't let me down that had me ignoring the most obvious, glaring possibility that she had caved and gone out for a drink. That she didn't look drunk didn't mean anything at all. And she smelled, faintly but the smell was still there, of cigarettes. My mother doesn't smoke, but after a shift at the bar, she always comes home smelling like that.  
    I tried as hard as I could to ignore it. I tried to lose myself in baking, like I'm often able to do. And I did have a lot of work to do if I wanted everything to be ready for Sunday's dinner. With my father gone and my mother have gone to bed after a shower and some tea that I brewed her, the house was quiet, almost disturbingly so, making my baking go a lot more smoothly and without the anxiety that would be there if he had been.   
    It's strange, I've come to really enjoy how quiet and peaceful the Yuys' home is. It isn't just the home, but also the neighborhood. It always seems so quiet there, far removed from the barking dogs, screaming, drunken or high neighbors that we have, and the cars that race down our street, music blaring at all hours of the day and night. The first time I stayed over there, it bothered me, but it's grown on me now. When I'm there, it feels like I can breathe, this tight feeling that I always have in my chest, a feeling that I had never even realized was there until recently, eases off.   
    I've come to hate the noise of home, the orchestra of pointless chaos. So you would think that I would love it when it's quiet like this, when our neighbors are actually shutting the fuck up, there is no traffic at all, and my father isn't home but you would be wrong. The quiet here is as loud and stifling as the screaming. It's eerie, like something you would see in some old, atmospheric horror movie, one with ghosts and gothic mansions. It's a stillness, a deadness that I can't stand, like a tomb where you don't dare so much as breathe. I wished that I had a stereo so I could play my blues music, or even a radio to fill the silence with, but that would just disturb my mother.  
    My shoulder was feeling much better by that point and, desperate to keep my mind from going to places that I didn't want to think about, I dove into my baking with a fervor. I had decided that, instead of just making a lot of one thing, I would make an assortment. It was a lot more work, but I hoped that it would pay off. I made all of the cookie dough at the same time, filling every bowl that we had with half recipes of the stuff, deciding to bake them all at once when I got home from work since, according to Solo, Leneski was going to let us go early and I wanted them to be fresh. Most of the recipes had the cookies baking at the same temperature or close to it, so I could do that fairly quickly.  
    I would end up making sugar cookies shaped like candy canes and frosted with white frosting and red sugar, molasses cookies, chocolate crinkles, and peanut butter cookies with chocolate kisses on top. I had wanted to make cream cookies in the shape of wreaths and buckeyes, which were nothing more than peanut butter balls dipped in chocolate, but I would have needed to use my left arm too much for those and nixed them.   
    My other two desserts I made and baked that morning because they required too much work to put off until after work and I wanted to get to dinner on time. I had found a recipe for mini pies, about the size of my fist, and made a dozen: four apple, four pecan, and four pumpkin, one each for everyone. Those took the most work and time, but they looked great when they came out of the oven, almost like something that you would see in a home magazine, so it was worth it.   
    The last thing I had debated on, partially because it was also a lot of work and something that I had zero experience with, but decided that I really couldn't say no to a traditional yule log for a Christmas dinner. I had never made one before or even eaten one, but when I had used Heero's computer to look up pictures of them online out of curiosity and seen what some people could do to them to garnish them, how neat they looked, I just had to try it. I really hoped that Heero and his parents liked chocolate.   
    I went a little bit overboard making it look professional and like an actual log. I used a fork to make lines in the chocolate, making it look a lot like bark, actually, and then used a mix of cocoa powder, dark chocolate, and milk chocolate to give it a more life like tone. Powdered sugar sprinkled over the top of it became snow and I used some mint leaves and cherries that I cut into garnished flowers to look like holly and red flowers. By the time that I had gotten all of the dough and frosting ready, the yule log was in the refrigerator, and the pies were cooling on the stove, my shoulder was screaming at me and I felt exhausted. Still, I had worked tirelessly on my presents and felt like I had done the best job that I possibly could with what little I had to offer.   
    It was five in the morning by the time that I collapsed onto my mattress and I was incredibly grateful that I didn't have to get up for work until eight. I was going to look like a raccoon again, but at least it was because I had been baking instead of because of panic attacks and nightmares or my insomnia. I think with how tired I was, I would have fallen asleep as soon as my head had hit the pillow if it weren't for my smelling sex and sweat in my mattress.   
    I know that it was just in my head... well, probably in my head, but it was enough to keep me from nodding off for a solid thirty minutes, maybe even enough to have kept me up all night if Pepper hadn't laid down on my pillow, right next to my head the way that she liked doing. I thought about just doing what my mother often did and sleeping on the couch. Surely the smell couldn't follow me all the way down there. But I couldn't take Pepper with me and between my guilt for always leaving her alone and my need to be with someone or something, I stayed where I was, my thoughts churning sickeningly between my mother and my father, like hope and fucking despair.   
    It was Pepper's purring and the thought of seeing Heero again the following day that lulled me asleep. Although I had had issues sleeping at first, when I had actually managed it, I slept deeply and dreamlessly for once, not waking until my alarm woke me at eight am sharp. I actually groaned as it roused me, not wanting to get up at all. I managed to drag myself out of bed thanks to my alarm being halfway across the room and got ready for the day. I refilled Pepper's food and water since I was fairly sure that I would end up sleeping over at the Inoris again. There was nothing entirely vital to go home to, besides my cat, and I had this feeling that if Heero asked me not to go home, I would probably cave. It was getting harder and harder to tell him no about anything lately.  
    I didn't have a whole lot of time before work, so I just ate a couple pieces of toast and rushed to get dressed. My mother was already gone, off to her shift at the diner and my father still wasn't home, probably off on his holiday 'vacation' already. I debated taking a shower, but between my mother having taken one recently before I had gotten up, taking what little warm water there was, the knowledge that it would mean I would be wet and walking around in what would turn out to be almost polar weather, not being able to put my hair down, and the fact that I was going to the Yuys' that night, I just didn't feel like it.   
    What little time I had left before work, I got everything ready for that night so I could just come home, put the cookies in the oven, and leave, and I admit that I was a bit excited already as I left to go to work. It was more than just knowing that I was going to hang out with Heero and his family again. As much as I can say that I really don't care about things like holidays, I found that I was eager to have something like Christmas dinner, even if I was a bit anxious, not knowing what to expect.   
    I mean, it probably wasn't any different from all the other times that I had had dinner at Heero's house, but I hadn't sat down to have Christmas dinner with my own family since I had been very young. Even back then, it hadn't been anything special, but at least my parents had tried. I think it had mostly been my mother, my father had never seemed into it and he and my mother would fight constantly during those times, so I don't have many fond memories of it. Of course, this was back before they were drinking as heavily as they would years later, and even before they would get into screaming matches just by looking at each other. As time passed, even my mother seemed to lose all interest in the holiday and those dinners just stopped.   
    I coasted through work that day, still on paperwork duty and I was already sick of my shoulder injury, annoyed that it would still be at least a week before I could try to move it. It was horribly cold and windy outside, so Leneski had his crew doing inventory and small things around the shop, saying he wasn't some kind of Ebenezer to make them go out and work in the freezing cold two days before Christmas. I was never more thankful for the office heater as I was that night. Solo stopped by to keep me company during his lunch hour, shrugging off a few coworkers that offered to take him out to the nearby bistro.   
    We didn't talk about anything heavy like we had before, of which I was abundantly thankful. That was the last thing I needed, to have more shit in my head. We mostly ate in silence or talked about the weather and how we both thought that this winter was going to be long or how much we thought the Darlians were spending on the town Christmas festival at the boardwalk this year. It seemed like every year it got more extravagant, but it wasn't like anyone could complain since they had plenty of money and were paying for it out of pocket instead of the town.  
    "If they were really charitable," Solo grumbled at me as he finished his coffee, "they would be a bit more modest and give some of that dough to hard working pricks like me and you."  
    I laughed at that, imagining Relena's reaction if her parents gave out their Christmas festival money to someone like me.   
    "Well, they do have a lot of charity work that they do," I pointed out, "They stock up all the soup kitchens and shelters for the holidays, and the food at the festival is free for everyone."  
    He shrugged it off, looking annoyed, but I knew that it was typical, south Nausten bitterness. The Darlians were nice and far from stuck up like their children were, but when you live on the shit end of town and have to work your ass off just to pay the bills, you have to resent the richer families, whether you agree that they're nice people or not. I was too busy hating their children to really care about the Darlians and their sizable assets.   
    Leneski let us out at 4:30 instead of 6, to my great relief, and I put the paperwork away, putting my jackets on with some effort as my shoulder and rib protested after sitting in a chair for so long.   
    "You are not seriously going out there wearing that?" Solo raised one gold eyebrow at my attire.  
    I sighed in exasperation. Why did everyone have a problem with what I was wearing? Sure, my jackets were a bit thin to be wearing at that time of year, even layered together, and I didn't have a hat or scarf with the strong wind, but it wasn't like I was trudging through Antarctica. It wasn't even snowing out.   
    "I'm fine," I insisted, but when I took off my work boots and put my sneakers on, he looked like he was going to throw a fit, "I just haven't gotten around to buying winter clothes yet."  
    And who even knew when I would now that my mother had quit one of her jobs. Even if she did immediately get a new job, she wouldn't get paid for two more weeks. She had said not to worry about the money, but how couldn't I?   
    "Duo, it's winter now," Solo said in equal exasperation, like I was some dumb child that needed to be taught about such things, "If you need the money-"  
    "NO," I protested loudly, sick of getting hand outs from people because I was incapable to buying things for myself, "It's fine. It's not like this is the first winter I've ever gone through."  
    He looked dubious, but I got out the door without him doing something stupid, like giving me his own coat. Honestly, he was right and I was immediately reminded that I kind of did need an actual winter coat that fit me when I walked out the door and felt like I was being maliciously punched in the face by a fist made of ice and wind. I pulled my jackets up to my nose and trudged home, my socks quickly getting wet as I had to step through some piles of snow that had been pushed around by the violent wind, but home was close enough that I just couldn't justify paying a bus fare.   
    My mother was suspiciously missing when I got home, and so was my father, but that was less suspicious. I told myself that she might have just pulled a double shift at the diner, which was completely possible. She might have even volunteered for one to offset quitting her other job. Yes, that was very plausible and made complete sense to me. But there was still that doubt and feeling of unease in the back of my mind, this burning need to know where she was, to make sure that she wasn't drinking.  
    I ignored those feelings and worked quickly in the kitchen. I put the cookies in the oven, prepared the frosting for the sugar cookies, and tried to find ways to transport everything. The pies went into the picnic basket that we had and the yule log went into the cake box. While the cookies were still baking, I went upstairs to change out of my work clothes and into a more comfortable pair of pants.   
    I fished out a dark red sweater that I don't really wear a lot because it's rather old. The bottom of it and the very edge of the sleeves are rather tattered and it isn't as loose as I like anymore. But it still basically fit me and actually was loose around my waist, if not my shoulders. I must have lost weight since the last time I had worn it, but also grown a little. Most importantly, it looked nice with my eyes, hair, and complexion, something that I haven't really paid attention to since the one time I had dressed up nicely for Trowa.   
    I had felt weird about it back then, but when I thought about Heero maybe noticing, I blushed as dark as a strawberry and knew that I would wear it, even if he noticed that it had seen better days. I felt ashamed that I didn't have any nicer clothes, embarrassed that I was so affected by thinking about Heero's approval, and guilt because I felt like I shouldn't dress nicely for him at all, that I was teasing him. But the sweater stayed and I changed my socks into black ones that would look nice with the dark pants that I had chosen, tossing my wet, white ones into my pile of dirty clothes.   
    I stayed in the bathroom, staring at my reflection, for longer than I should have, feeling like some prissy, preening girl and cursing myself for getting worked up over a freaking dinner. It wasn't like I had never done this before, so why was I in knots to look nice? Still, I hated how my hair looked and I especially hated how poor I looked, wearing what was probably the nicest thing that I owned and still looking like I had pulled the clothes out of a thrift store bin. I was saved from my self-depreciation and near anxiety attack by the oven timer.   
    Rushing out of the bathroom, I took out the cookies to cool, which didn't take very long with how freaking cold it was in the house. When they were cool enough, I frosted the sugar cookies and put them all on the biggest plate that I could find, putting seran wrap on top of them. The yule log and cookies when into a large plastic bag with handles so I could carry everything on one arm, the cake box sturdy enough that the weight of the cookies wouldn't cave it in.   
    I was incredibly glad for the bus service as I left my house, picnic basket and bag on one arm, my backpack slung over my good shoulder, and an old scarf that was about as thick as a sheet of paper wrapped around my mouth. I might as well had not taken the time to fish that out of the hall closet because it did absolutely nothing against the wind anyway, but I hoped that Heero's mother would be appeased if she saw that I had something more on than I had last time. Without the bus, it would have been hell trudging through the wind with my arm full of food.  
    The last few times that I had been to the Yuys' during the night time, I hadn't really paid attention to what their street and the outside of their home looked like, but as I stepped off the bus and walked to their street, I took a moment to stop and admire the Christmas decorations. Unlike the gaudy cardboard cutouts of candy canes and Santa Clauses or the obscene snowmen that I saw every day on my street, Birch Street was conservatively decorated with different, but traditional displays of lights, wreaths, holly, and it seemed like each house had at least one snowman dressed in a hat and scarf in front of their house.  
    Heero's home didn't have a snowman in front of it, but it was just as beautifully decorated. They had forgone multi-colored lights for the typical, golden colored ones. They covered the bushes and trees on their property, as well as some holly garland that was wrapped around the pillars and railing of the porch and front doorway. The walkway lights were all lit up, casting long shadows on the snow and the lattice was draped in an elegant net of lights. Along the overhang edges of the home hung more gold lights that were shaped like icicles and the trim was lined with larger lights perfectly, almost like the house had come like that. There was a large wreath on their door that I had barely noticed the last few times that I been there, and fake candles in their windows. It looked beautiful, like something out of a fairy tale.   
    The door was open and as I walked into the foyer, I could already smell the turkey cooking, along with several other, tantalizing smells. Christmas music was playing on the stereo in the living room, none of the pop trash that I heard playing at work or at the grocery store that I had shopped at that morning, but the classical and older stuff, along with a few jazz renditions. It was oddly soothing. There was a roaring fire going in there, too, I could hear it crackling, the warmth of the house making me realize just how cold it really was outside. Compared to how my house had felt, it hadn't been that bad, but I was suddenly sure that if Heero had stepped foot in my house that morning, he would have called it unbearable.   
    I had the sudden urge as I walked towards the living room where I could see Heero and his father sitting on the couch together, watching some program showcasing outlandish Christmas displays and having a passionate discussion about a neighbor that they had had in Florida to call out 'I'm home', but that was a bit too painful and too embarrassing. Kanuck did plenty to announce my arrival, barking cheerfully and trotting over to me from where he had been laying at Heero's feet, walking around me in circles when he saw that I wasn't going to pet him between my burden and arm in its sling.  
    "Duo!" Heero exclaimed, scrambling off of the couch and rushing over to me, "You're early!"  
    He was wearing a navy blue sweater with white and red tree and reindeer patterns on it in a vaguely Norwegian style, a pair of coal grey pants, and cheerfully red socks that had holy print on them. I loved him so much right then, the color of his sweater bringing out the deep blue of his eyes and his hair meticulously combed, but still looking wild somehow.   
    "I got out of work early," I told him when I regained the ability to speak after pretty much ogling him, "Sorry, I should have called-"  
    "Nonsense," he assured me, "Dinner is almost ready, the turkey just needs a little bit more time."  
    "Heero, don't just let Duo stand there carrying all of that," his father scolded from behind him, "His arm must be tired from coming all this way. Help him take it to the kitchen."  
    "Right, sorry," he flushed darkly, moving to take some of my load from me.  
    "It's ok," I insisted, "It's not that heavy-"  
    "Too late," he said cheekily, taking, not just one thing, but everything that I was carrying as I glared at him.  
    I followed him into the kitchen, creating a kind of train between the four of us, including the dog.  
    "Oh, Duo, you're here," Mrs. Yuy said with delight, standing by the oven wearing her Christmas apron over a red and white sweater that had the same diamond pattern on it as her husband's white and green one, a red bow with little bells on it tying off her pony tail, and wearing a long, flowing white skirt with a dark green trim.   
    "Hi, Mrs. Yuy," I greeted, "I brought the desserts."  
    Heero put my bags on the table and I unpacked them, Heero and his parents looking at the bounty that I had brought with expressions of amazement.  
    "Duo... this is amazing..." Heero said when he took a peek inside of the cake box.  
    "You didn't make all of this yourself, did you?" his mother took a look at the yule log that I had made as well, seeming impressed and a bit astonished at the detail that I had put into it.  
    "This looks better than any of the ones that were in the holiday craft show," Mr. Yuy marveled at the chocolate dessert as well.   
    I nodded, feeling incredibly pleased at the praise, even if I didn't know if they would taste alright. At least they looked good.   
    "It wasn't that difficult," I said, my pride warring with my shyness, "The garnish was a bit tricky because I've never tried it before, but I was really careful to get it right. I hope it tastes ok, I've never made a yule log before."  
    "You must have been up all night making all of this," Heero commented, that look of endearing amazement still on his face as he studied the tiny pies that I had made with their criss-crossed crusts, "You didn't need to go through all of this trouble..."  
    "No trouble," I said hastily, neither confirming or denying his suspicions, not wanting to admit the amount of effort that I had really put into trying to make everything look perfect, "I didn't have a lot of money to buy anyone anything," I admitted in embarrassment, "This was all that I could to thank you all for everything..."  
    "That was so thoughtful of you," Mrs. Yuy smiled at me, "You must have worked very hard for this. We're flattered, and I'm sure that everything is going to taste delicious."  
    'Not as flattered as I am for everything that you've given me,' I thought, but didn't say it out loud.  
    No matter how much Heero and his family might appreciate the desserts that I had made, it couldn't come close to the gratitude that I had for them. Mrs. Yuy put the pies on top of the oven so they would get warmed, the cookies went on the counter, and the yule log in the refrigerator so the cream in it would stay cool, then we were all evicted from the kitchen so Heero's mother could finish getting dinner ready. I went back to the foyer to hang up my scarf and wet mittens. Heero suddenly appeared and helped me get my jackets off.  
    "You look nice," he said, his cheeks faintly red.  
    "Y-you do, too," I stuttered, unable to look him in the eye.  
    It was stupid, but I found that I was able to take his praise over my baking a lot easier than him telling me that I looked good. I wanted to believe that it was just empty sentiment, given that what I was wearing didn't look anywhere near as nice as what he was, but he wasn't the sort of person to say something like that and not mean it.   
    "You must be cold," he said awkwardly, "We have a fire going..."  
    I followed him into the living room and sat in one of the chairs that was near the fireplace. I can't even describe how amazing the warmth of that fire felt. I immediately fell in love with that fireplace, wishing we could have something like that in my home so it wouldn't be so freaking cold all the time. I felt so cozy as it warmed the rest of the chill off of me, feeling finally returning to my cheeks and nose, that I was struck with this intense laziness. I didn't want to move for the rest of my life. I just wanted to sit there in front of the fire forever.   
    I probably could have just dozed off like that, the sound of the fire crackling, a soft, slow rendition of Silent Night playing on the radio, Heero and his father talking in low tones next to me if his mother hadn't loudly announced from the kitchen twenty minutes later that the turkey was finally done. The lighting in the kitchen had been dimmed, giving it a very formal, but homey feel, two red candles had been lit on the kitchen table which was decorated with a holly green table cloth and what I imagined were china plates or something else that was equally elegant.   
    As I sat down and looked at the silverware that was actually, you know, silver ware and napkins that were cloth instead of paper and contained in actual napkin rings, a thing that I had never seen before in my life, the candles giving off a very mellow and spicy aroma, I felt completely out of place. But when Mr. Yuy started to lay out the dishes filled with food, and handed one to me with a soft smile like I was just one of the family, I also felt like I belonged there. It was a weird duality. He put a plate filled with just about everything in front of me and I saw that someone had cut up the turkey for me. A part of me was embarrassed because I probably could have managed doing that myself, but I was more touched that they had thought to do that for me.  
    There was an incredibly amount of food, not in quantity, but just in the different choices of food. Turkey, squash, mashed potatoes, popovers, beans, broccoli, two different kinds of gravy and stuffing, steamed carrots, salad, mushroom soup, and cranberry sauce. I felt like I could have lasted an entire week on the leftovers alone, but I didn't really feel guilty, already planning on asking Mrs. Yuy if I could take some of it home to my mother. And yes, everything was amazing. I might not have a very refined pallet,  and can choke down fast food chicken nuggets just as well as I can a twenty dollar steak, but it was delicious and readily told Heero's mother so.   
    Dinner was a lengthy affair, not the sort of meals that I was used to. Mr. Yuy started it off by saying grace and for a moment, I panicked, unsure of what to do, but when I looked over at my friend for guidance, I realized that they didn't actually expect me to join in. We spent just as much time talking to each other as we did eating and I found it a very pleasant experience, a lot more casual than I had been expecting. After we finished eating, all of us incredibly full, we retired back into the living room for awhile. Mr. Yuy stoked the fire back to life and Mrs. Yuy served Heero and her husband coffee while she made herself some tea while Heero found a Christmas movie for us to watch together. When told that the coffee was decaffeinated, I tried some. It was hazelnut, I was told, and the taste was very pleasant. I decided that I liked it a lot, especially with some cream mixed in. By the time the movie ended, we were relaxed and finally had room for dessert but I was a bit baffled when, instead of going back into the kitchen, Mr. Yuy went to the Christmas tree that was in the corner of the room.  
    "We have a little Christmas tradition in our family," Heero's mother told me with a warm smile, "After we eat dinner, we open presents. As much as Heero always complained about that as a child."  
    Heero rolled his eyes at her.  
    "We are going to open ours when we go to our relatives in a couple of days," Mrs. Yuy informed me, "But since we probably won't be seeing you on Christmas day, we thought it would be nice to give you your presents tonight."  
    "Presents?" I asked in bewilderment, having no clue what she was talking about until Mr. Yuy finished his rooting around under their large and wonderfully decorated, natural tree and handed me two wrapped packages.  
    I just kind of stared at them for a couple of minutes, not knowing how to handle their reality, like they were some strange objects that were going to bite me. They were both boxes, one fairly flat but large, wrapped in shiny, silver paper with blue ornaments detailed on it, the wrapping so perfect that it looked like a machine had done it. The second wasn't wrapped as neatly, the red paper with it's green trees having a few awkward creases in it and the green bow askew, but the person that had wrapped it had made a good try at it. It was smaller, about the size and width of thick hard cover book.   
    "I... I don't understand..." I said in confusion, a rather sizeable lump in my throat, "You didn't need to get me anything... you've already given me so much..."  
    "It isn't anything extravagant," Mr. Yuy assured me, reclaiming his place on the couch with the rest of his family, "just a little something that we thought you could use. I know that you think that we do a lot for you, Duo, but we're happy to. Letting you stay here isn't much at all. Mariela and I wanted to give you something, because you're a great kid and we know that it's hard for you, making money and saving up for the things that you need."  
    I could feel my face heat up and felt embarrassed that I was blushing over such a little thing, but I was overwhelmed. I had already considered everything that they had already done for me, opening their house to me, cooking meals for me, paying for my phone service, and all of the kindness that they constantly showed me to be presents. Now they were giving me more? No one had even given me a Christmas present since Quatre had passed. I didn't know what to do, how to accept it. It was bad enough that I already felt woefully inadequate with what little I had gifted them with, even if it was something truly small, like cheap socks, it was too much already.  
    "But..." I started to protest, but no words came.  
    I knew that there was nothing that I could say to get them to take it back, and some part of me didn't want them to. At the same time that I was overwhelmed and a bit ashamed of their generosity, I also felt incredibly grateful and warm at their thoughtfulness, even if I could never pay them back. My hands seemed to move on their own accord as I opened the larger package first. A plain, white box greeted me, completely innocuous compared to what was inside when I took the lid off. There were four things inside: a thick knit cap that was the same shade of blue-violet that my eyes were and three pairs of jeans, two of them different shades of blue and one pair was black, but each looked expensive and durable, they probably cost three times more than any that I had ever owned.  
    "I hope you like them," Mrs. Yuy said, still with that pleased smile, "I guessed at your size, so if they don't fit, we can exchange them. And now you'll have a hat so I don't have to worry about you walking around in this weather with barely any clothes on."  
    "They're nice," I murmured, touching the dark blue pair. They felt very thick and soft, "but you didn't need to do this... I have a couple pairs of jeans..."  
    She snorted in a very unladylike way.  
    "Yes, I've seen the jeans you wear," she said, not in a mocking way, but I could tell that she wasn't very impressed with my clothing, "They're about two years too old for you in size and look like they should have been thrown out last year. They don't look remotely comfortable and have so many holes in them, it's a wonder that they haven't fallen completely apart by now."  
    I flushed even darker at her assessment of my jeans, but she was right. As cheap as my jeans were, I couldn't bring myself to buy new ones just because they were a little short and had rips in them. I had just kept mending them as best I could and kept wearing them, too stubborn to save to buy new ones when there were other things that I needed.   
    "Besides," her husband informed me, "we had to throw out the one pair that you had that were bloodstained. The stains had soaked in for too long and with how tattered they already were, we decided that it would be better just buying you new jeans than trying to mend those."  
    "I..." I wanted to protest that I could have fixed them myself, but I knew that wasn't true and touched my new jeans again. They were the nicest pants that I had ever owned, even without my trying them on yet, "Thank you," I said earnestly instead of insisting that they take them back or that I didn't need them, "really, thank you so much."  
    My eyes felt wet, but there was no way in hell I was going to let anyone catch me crying over having received new clothes.   
    "The other present is from me," Heero confessed, turning almost as red as I was.  
    "You said that the phone was my Christmas gift," I accused, feeling a bit annoyed that he had gotten me anything.  
    "A part of it," he said smugly, "This is the other part."  
    "I didn't get you anything," I muttered self-consciously.  
    Heero snorted in a way that was cutely similar to his mother.  
    "You spent all night and probably a good chunk of the morning baking for us and putting more effort into making those desserts than I did walking into a store and picking something out for you, so don't even start. Just open it."  
    I wanted to point out he had done a hell of a lot more for me lately than just walking into a damned store, but I was not going to win against his stubbornness, so I didn't even bother trying. I just sighed in a very put upon way and opened the green and red package. I opened the black box that was inside and was greeted with a strange device that I had never seen before. It was sleek and black, about the size of a paperback novel. For a moment, I felt this horrible drop in my stomach, thinking that Heero had gone out and bought me a tablet or computer or something equally expensive, but it didn't look like that.   
    There was a single button on the front of it while the rest looked like some kind of screen, making it seem like a tablet at a glance, but the screen was all wrong. It wasn't a smooth surface display like my phone, but a dark, dark grey that was smooth and reminded me almost of some kind of breeding between a chalkboard and a monitor screen. Also in the box was a power cord and a very nice looking pen. At least, that's what I thought it was, but when I picked it up and looked at the tip, I realized that it was a stylus of some kind, like the ones that I saw some of our classmates using on their tablets and phones, only the shaft of the stylus was thicker, like an old styled fountain pen.   
    "It's an e-writer (1)," Heero explained when he saw my confusion, "You write on the screen with the stylus and it turns whatever you write into a text document. If you want to save it to a computer, all you need to do is insert an sd card or a flash drive there," he pointed to two slots on the side of the device, "and move the files. I thought that, since you're always writing in those notebooks of yours, you might want to make copies, in case you ever lose one or they get destroyed. Your handwriting is a lot faster than your typing, so I just thought that this would be a great way to save things. It could even replace your notebooks if you wanted. Also, that stylus is a pen, too, on the other end, so you can use it when you write in your notebooks. You're always writing with those crappy, fifty cent pens and I see you tossing them after only a day or two all the time."  
    Sure enough, when I unscrewed the other end of it, which looked like the cap of a pen, there was a fountain pen on the end of it, one of those old fashioned ones with the metal tips. It wasn't a cheap one, either. I nearly paled thinking about how much the pen alone must have cost him. The whole set up couldn't have been more than a tablet, but it had probably cost more than my phone.     More than that, I was incredibly touched by his gift. I hadn't even realized that he had noticed how much I wrote, not just in these journals, but the short stories that I worked in when I was bored. He had noticed and seen this device and thought of me. That alone was a gift. I felt like my heart was going to explode with love for him.  
    "God, Heero... this is..." I nearly choked on my words, "It's amazing, thank you."  
    "You're very welcome," he blushed so hard that it looked like he was going to break something.  
    His parents looked incredibly amused by all of this, hell if I know why.  
    "You'll show me how it works?" I asked him and he nodded, flashing me a beautiful smile that seemed a bit relieved to me.   
    He had truly been nervous about giving me that gift, I realized and it was that that helped soothe my own nervousness at having received something so pricey. My approval had made him happy and his happiness could soothe away any of my misgivings or feelings of inadequacy.   
    "Now that Duo has opened his gifts," Heero's father took pity on our awkward fumbling, standing up from the couch, "I say we have some of Duo's amazing desserts."  
    I placed my gifts on a nearby table, still in slight shock that they were mine at all, and walked side by side with my friend into the kitchen.  
    "Thank you," I said again in a soft whisper.  
    He smiled at me, this one much softer and more endearing, and very briefly squeezed my hand, sending a pleasurable shock of electricity through me. Dessert was just as pleasant as dinner had been, if more embarrassing since Heero and his parents praised me every time they tried something new. I felt this intense relief when I tried the things that I had made myself and found that they had turned out alright. I didn't really think that they were as incredible as Heero's parents insisted that they were, but maybe I'm just biased?   
    By the time that everyone was full enough to put away the leftovers, I felt like I had eaten more food than a person had any right to. I wished that I could go jogging in the morning to make up for it, but the roads were just too icy.   
    "Are you planning on staying the night?" Heero asked, just a bit too eagerly, as we cleared the table of dirty dishes.  
    "Yeah. My dad isn't going to be home tonight, but I would rather stay here for tonight, if that's ok?" I asked timidly.  
    "Of course it is," Mr. Yuy told me, "Why don't you go upstairs and take a shower, we can handle the dishes."  
    "Are you sure?" I asked shyly, wanting to help clean the mess that I had made.  
    "You two can put the dishes away when they're done drying," he compromised.  
    It was better than nothing, so I took all of my things upstairs, stashed them in the guest bedroom and went into the shower. Heero was really patient waiting for his turn, even giving me the time to brush my teeth and was nice enough to put my hair up for me before he took his own shower. While he did that, I turned down the guest bed and plugged in both my new e-writer and my phone in to charge. I had another construction shift in the morning and I wanted to try to get a decent amount of sleep for once. I thought that I would be able to. I tried on my new jeans and was happy to see that they fit me perfectly. I decided that I would keep the old pair that I had left for work. These were too nice to risk getting paint and grease on them.  
    Heero finished his shower and came to collect me so we could go downstairs to put the dishes away. He looked so incredibly handsome with his hair wet. The water weighed it down for once, making it look a little bit longer than it actually was. It was so dark with the water that it almost looked black. Putting the dishes away didn't take up much of our time. I fished another ice pack out of the freezer for my shoulder and told Heero's parents thanks and good night while the two of them sat in front of the still crackling fire together.  
    Heero and I spent the rest of the night before we headed off to bed trying out my e-writer. He showed me how to make new files and how to transfer them and all the other little features that the thing had. I decided that it probably wasn't going to replace my journals. I'm a bit stubborn in my ways, in case you can't tell that from reading these entries, and I like writing things on paper, but I liked the idea of transferring all my journals and other stuff I've written onto it. Oddly enough, the pen was my favorite thing. I liked how smooth it was compared to the cheap pens and pencils that I normally used. It helped my handwriting flow better and I've been using it ever since.   
    "Will I be seeing you tomorrow?" he asked me when it got late enough for us to go to bed.  
    "I don't know," I admitted, "I'm probably going to be getting out of work early again, but I was thinking of making my mother a nice dinner. She has a double shift and won't be home until eight, so she'll be too tired and I'd like her to eat something better than canned soup."  
    "You fuss over her a lot," he noted.  
    "I do?" I asked in surprise.  
    I didn't really think that wanting my mother to have a nice meal after the week that she had had was 'fussing', but I guess maybe it's weird for someone my age to worry about things like that.  
    "Yeah. You worry about your parents a lot, what they're doing, if they're eating, or if they're stressed, more than they deserve. You act like they're the ones that need taking care of half the time," he pointed out.  
    "Is that a bad thing?" I asked, but the affectionate smile that he had on his face, like he thought I was cute, was all the answer that I really needed.  
    "No. It means that you're responsible," he said, "and you care about your parents a lot. You're not the hard ass that everyone thinks you are."  
    I blushed darkly, but I was secretly pleased that he didn't see me like everyone else did, that he didn't make the same mistake in thinking that just because I was quiet, anti-social, and got easily frustrated, that meant that I was some kind of delinquent.   
    "I'll text you if I decide to come over, but otherwise, I'll try to see you the day after Christmas, or Christmas night, ok?" I conceded.  
    "You'd better," he teased.  
    We said good night to each other and I settled into the guest room bed for some of the best sleep that I have had in the last four years.   
  
End Part 15  
  
(1) I made this up, but if there is a device like this in the world, please someone tell me. I'm always looking for ways to transcribe my notebook writings into digital format instead of manually typing them all up, but I tried an app that was supposed to help do that and it was more trouble than it was worth -_-


	45. Chapter 8 Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After his father finds out that Duo has been keeping a pet, Duo must find a way to keep Pepper safe, even if it means giving her away forever.

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 8  
Part 1  
  
  
    February 27th, 2008  
  
  
    Happy fucking New Year. 2008. Also known as the year when I lost my goddamned mind. That came out a bit bitter, didn't it? I didn't really mean it to. Or maybe I did. Honestly, I don't really know what I'm feeling right now. Joy. Terror. Hate. Guilt. Sadness. Amazement. It's hard to pick one. I don't even know how the hell I got here. This isn't something that I ever thought would actually _happen_. Stupid me. I don't know what to do, either. What are you supposed to do when you get something that you've wanted for so long, something that you would have killed for, but something that you know that you can't possibly keep because it isn't _yours_.     

Because I know myself too well and I know that no matter how much I want it, no matter how much I need it or how I had never thought in a million years that I would get it, I know that, in the end, I'm just going to fuck it up beyond repair. So why even bother reaching for it? I think that, if it were just myself, my own heart, on the line, this would be easier. I could say no, to save my own heart. But it isn't just mine. How can I say no when I'm going to break someone else's heart, someone that I truly love, and how can I say yes when I know where this road is going to lead us? When I know just how much I'm going to hurt him? And hurt is the only thing that I can ever possibly give him.  
    Dammit, I did it again. I'm always jumping ahead. Ok, rewind. I haven't written a journal entry in two months because from Christmas to the end of January, nothing much really happened that was worth writing about. The holidays came and went. I stayed at Heero's house during Christmas, even after they left for his grandparents'. I spent the time playing with Kanuck, watching stupid Christmas movies, and starting to transcribe these journal entries onto my e-writer. They invited me over for New Year's Eve, too. Mr. Yuy and Heero swept all of the snow off the patio and they set up some of their patio chairs so we could watch the fireworks.   
    Normally, I don't hold something like New Year's in high regard. I guess you could say I'm the Scrooge equivalent of the dubious holiday. New Year's is all about turning over a new leaf, hoping for the best out of the upcoming year, and trying to change things that you don't like about yourself. When the only thing that really changes out your 'new year' is things getting shittier while everything else stays exactly the same, you stop believing in all that new year crap. But this year... this year it felt like everything had changed by January 1st.   
    Sure, a lot of it was bad. My father was sexually abusing me, everyone at school knew that I was gay, and my father had been fired. But all of that was old hat by the holiday. The good things seemed to outweigh the bad, between my friendship with Heero and all the good that had brought and my ever growing relationship with my mother, not to even mention her sobriety which, to my knowledge, has still been a success. There have been some hard days on both of us, days we've gotten into screaming fights with each other, but we've always made up and, so far, she hasn't lapsed back to either alcoholism or her neglect.  
    The reason why I haven't written anything on this month, either, is actually because of what happened on January 28th. I didn't want the Christmas holiday to end, very first time in my life. I just wanted to be stuck in this frozen bit of time forever. But the universe really doesn't care about such things and time just keeps marching on, no matter what anyone wants. My father returned home some time early morning on the 26th. My mother started her new waitressing job shortly after that, which was a relief because her change of employment didn't affect our finances that much, but it also meant that we spent much less time together. And I had to return to school, back to homework, tests, and, worst of all, my classmates. Just about the only good thing about school is that I'm taking a few classes that I'm interested in this semester. Heero and I helped work on each other's schedules for days during the Winter break. Maybe it was a bit juvenile of us, but we had a few required subjects, like a science, english literature, math, history, and of course stupid gym, so we tried to pick the same classes so we would at least suffer through them together.  
    We both picked Marine Biology as our science because neither of us really cared for any of the chemistry courses. Math wasn't really an issue because Calculus 1 was a year long course, not half a year. For history, I voted for Post-Colonial History over American History 2, because I knew that was going to be boring as hell while Heero didn't care either way. The only other class that we managed to have together, despite our attempts, was Gym. Because of my test scores, I was able to get into the advanced placement levels for English, which I decided to take advantage of and sign up for 19th Century Literature while Heero was stuck taking English 3 with most of our other classmates.  
    Then there were the electives, which weren't so easy to sort out. I wanted to stick with Heero, partially because I was as clingy as a leech and partially because I didn't like the idea of not being around him in case someone started shit. But Heero wanted to try Spanish 1, which I had gone through in my Freshman year, and Photography. I almost tried to take photo with him, but he convinced me that I should take Computer Science, since I was shit with computers and should at least learn the basics, or so he had insisted. As for his Spanish block, there was a course on short stories that was happening at the same time, which I was pretty excited about.  
    It was our sixth block that gave us the most trouble. Well, it gave me the most trouble. I had been accepted into advanced placement Home Economics, and I desperately wanted to take it, but Heero hadn't had the grades for it. I had thought about dropping it so we could have that period together and he had practically flipped out at me, telling me that there was no way in hell I was missing that class because of him. I actually felt relieved and he hadn't needed to try so hard to convince me. Even if he could have made it in, I knew that he hated cooking, not because he didn't find it enjoyable, but because he sucked at it. He was happier taking the metal shop class for the same period.  
    One serious perk of my schedule was that I only had Zechs in two of my classes, Computer Science and Gym. The less time I spent around the prick, the better. Heero had gotten lucky, too, he just had him in Metal Shop. He would have had him in English 3, but Zechs had flunked his final for English 2 and had to repeat it. I was pretty convinced that the asshole was never going to graduate high school at the rate that he was going. It would serve him right. Relena and Dorothy, on the other hand, were in most classes with at least one of us, but I had survived without Heero for a long time and dealt with those two, I would survive another semester.   
    Nothing much different happened for the first two weeks of January. I enjoyed my new work schedule, having Tuesdays and Saturdays off. My finances suffered and for awhile, I was incredibly anxious that I wasn't going to be able to continue saving up for things, but those two days ended up not hurting my paychecks too much and I got to spend those days with Heero, so that anxiety quickly faded. I spent more and more nights at his house and the time away from my father, reducing the nights where he could corner me, only did me good.   
    Winter kicked in full blast only a week into January and I knew just from the number of storms that we got that it was going to be a long winter and we would probably get snow fall well into March, maybe even April. It was easy using the weather as an excuse not to go home. My father finally turned the heat on when the temperatures inside the house plummeted into the thirties and even he got uncomfortable sleeping in it. I survived by sleeping with more blankets and sleeping with sweatshirts on. I was constantly worried about my cat and what the cold was doing to her, especially the first day that my father tried to turn on the heat and nothing happened. I don't even want to think about how much that cost us to fix. If the cold was bothering Pepper, she didn't let on much about it, she just spent more time sleeping and snuggling with me at night.      
    My dislocated shoulder got me out of shoveling snow, but only for so long. Instead, my father sent me on more errands and gave me more chores that I could do, almost as if he was plotting to exhaust me and keep me busy. Still, I could have jumped with joy the day that I went back to the hospital and my shoulder was announced healed enough that I could use it again. No more slings or immobilizers for me. Even shoveling snow wasn't so bad now that I wasn't handicapped.   
    So I had been in a pretty good mood for most of that week. It hadn't snowed, the wind had died down a little, and I had finished every, single chore that my father had thrust at me. It was weird, every time he got on my case about whether I had done something or not, he had seemed to get angrier to learn that I had done it. I couldn't figure him out. He also seemed to have very little patience for me at all lately, like I was pissing him off, but I couldn't figure out why that was.   
    It wasn't just that he was in a mood, it was about me, because even though he delighted in being cruel to my mother about her sobriety, their fighting had lessened. It seemed that no longer getting drunk had made my mother remember when to not open her mouth around him. She got herself out of a lot more tough spots with him than she had when she had been drinking. But he kept trying to start fights with me, and the moments when he would come after me for no apparent reason were growing. Thankfully, I had managed to stay out of the hospital, only gaining a few bruises and cuts here and there, but no more dislocated joints or broken bones.   
    I knew that there was something wrong, something that was making him angry, but I stupidly didn't feel anything foreboding about his behavior, and I certainly didn't connect it with anything that I could change. I don't know why I didn't see the signs that my father was building up to something, it wouldn't be the first time he held a grudge about something for a long time, only to let it all explode out at once. But when I got out of work at 2am that Tuesday morning, I think I did sense that something was going to happen, like there was something needling me, that feeling you get in the back of your head when you forget something or realize that there is something off.  
    In reality, I should have known that something bad was going to happen. Hadn't the universe taught me, again and again and again, to be worried when things were going too well? By that time, I should have constantly been looking over my shoulder, waiting for _something_ to fuck with me. That feeling only intensified when I came home to an empty house. Both of my parents being missing was just too odd for me not to be feeling incredibly anxious. If it had been a weekend, I could have chalked up my father's disappearing act to him going out with Pat, but it was the beginning of the week and at that hour, he should be either passed out in his chair or the bedroom. My mother being gone was doubly worrying.   
    Ever since I had figured out where she was sneaking off to at night, she had made it a habit to tell me when she was going to her meetings or if she was going on a walk. Instead of being paranoid that she was just lying so I wouldn't follow her again, I realized that she had figured out how worried I had been and was trying to soothe my anxieties. She would usually leave me a note in my bedroom or tell me if she was heading out, even if I was busy doing my homework and that went a long way in my quest to trust her.   
    But there was no note that morning. Besides that, I didn't know how long those meetings lasted as the hours seemed rather flexible, but I doubted they would be going on that late. If I had come home to seeing some evidence of a struggle in the kitchen or bedroom, that would have been understandable. It wouldn't be the first or last time that my mother had fled after my father had attacked her, but both rooms were clean and orderly. Perplexed and with fear coiling in my gut, I walked upstairs to my room.   
    The second warning that I got that something was wrong was the sight of my bedroom door, wide open. I always keep it closed, so Pepper won't go wandering around the house. It being open wasn't really that alarming, my dad would occasionally snoop around my room, but in the winter, even he would try to keep the door closed because there was a draft. My stomach clenched anxiously as I walked through the door, ready for something to leap out at me, but that little bit of fear and my thought that I was about to get blindsided with a punch were really nothing compared to what I saw.  
    My room was destroyed. Now, I don't mean that there were some clothes on the floor or it was in general disarray. No. I mean that it was _trashed_. Yes, most of my clothes were on the floor, but that was just the start. Two of my dresser drawers were wide open and empty while the other two had been pulled completely free and had been dumped onto the floor, clothes and all. The shower rod in the little niche corner of my room where I hung my clothes and dared to call my closet had been pulled right out of the wall. My bookcase had been flipped completely over and my books were just all over the place. A couple, thin paper backs had been ripped completely in half while a few hard covers had had their pages torn from them.  
    My mattress and desk had been moved, shoved to opposite corners of the room and I could see deep grooves in the floor from the sheer violence and strength that my desk had been pushed. Like my dressed, the drawers had been pulled free. The cheap calculator that I had was crushed, my tin of pencils thrown and the pencils were just all over the place. My desk chair was on it's side and that it didn't have a leg missing like the kitchen chair was a miracle. All of those things were terrible, and I was already mourning the loss of a handful of my books, but none of it held a candle to what I saw in the middle of my room.  
    The little compartment that I had made in the floor had been pried open with such force that the boards had splintered. I walked over to it on shaking legs, falling to my knees in front of it. I didn't want to see. I didn't want to know. But I had to. All around the middle of the room, shards of the only CDs that I had owned, the ones that Quatre had made for me and the ones that I had taken out of his locker were scattered like shrapnel from a bomb explosion. My journals had likewise been thrown, but were in fine condition otherwise.   
    My CD player, the one that Quatre had bought for me when I had told him that I didn't have anything to play my CDs on and one of the few things that I had left that he had given me, was in pieces where my bed should have been. I felt this white noise in my head and chest as I found the little box that I keep my money in on the floor next to the journals. I knew right then, even through the haze of fear and anxiety, what I was going to find. My heart pounding painfully, I opened the lid and found that it was completely empty. The box fell from my numb fingers.  
    It was all gone. Every cent that I owned. Someone had taken all of it. Oh, who the fuck was I kidding? I had known the very second that I had walked into the room and found it like that that my father had been the one to do it. He had gotten into a rage, a spectacular one, and in the process of destroying my things, had found my secret stash. No, I realized, as I looked around with horror, this damage was too deliberate. He had been looking for something. Maybe he had even been looking for the money that he had eventually found. Had he suspected that I was keeping cash from him? Had he even found out that I had quit two of my jobs?  
    I felt like curling into a ball and crying. I had been saving up that money for so long... not only was it gone, but I was never going to get anywhere near that amount for a very long time, and if my father really had found out about my new job, then that would be never. I would never be able to afford buying myself winter clothes now. I couldn't even feed Pepper.  
    It was that thought that brought me out of the haze and right into the realm of terror, adrenaline coursing through every inch of me. Pepper. My cat. If my father had come up here and thrown everything around... I got to my feet and looked around frantically. I had missed it before when I had walked in, but from where I was in the middle of the room, I saw Pepper's litter box by the desk, tipped over, litter spilled all over the floor in the corner. Her bag of cat food had been ripped open as well, brown kibbles mingling with the grey litter.   
    But where was Pepper? The most horrible images filled my head. Pepper, crushed under a boot, Pepper with her neck broken. He wouldn't... he couldn't! Tears streamed down my face as I looked for any sign that Pepper was either dead of alive, a drop of blood, anything, but I couldn't find any trace of her. I looked to where the hole was in the wall, fully expecting the curtain that I had made there to be torn open, but to my surprise, it was exactly where it should be. Hope, more painful than anything else that I had been feeling, filled me. Maybe... maybe my father had missed the hole and Pepper had hid from him? Maybe he hadn't been able to find her...  
    "Pepper?" I called, kneeling in front of the hole and taking down the curtain.  
    There was no response, not so much as a meow, but I refused to let that deter me. I looked inside of the hole, slipping one shoulder through it so I could see into the corners. Pepper's box where she slept was untouched, so were her toys, but I didn't see her. Her black fur would be hard to see in the dark space, I thought in desperation. I was just about to go get a flash light when I saw the reflection of twin, wide eyes staring at me from the far corner. I almost sobbed with pure happiness as I saw my kitten cowering there defensively, looking terrified. She hissed when she saw me looking at her, scared out of her mind and I really didn't blame her.  
    "It's alright, sweetie," I cooed, "Everything is ok."  
    This did nothing to soothe her and she hissed again, this harsh, low sound that turned into a growl when I reached for her. I wished that I didn't have to, that I could just coax her out and not frighten her more, but I didn't have the luxury of time. There was no telling when my father would be back from wherever he had gone and I had to get Pepper far away from there before that happened.   
    "Sorry," I apologized to her as I grabbed her.  
    She bit at my hand angrily, her little fangs doing only a small amount of damage as they pierced my skin. I let her bite, pulling her out of the hole and cradling her to my chest. I couldn't stop crying as I felt her warm body against my shirt. Warm and alive, but I knew that it had been close. If I had been lucky, I would have come home to find that he had just tossed her out of the house, but if he had been angry enough to do all of that to my bedroom, I knew, without any kind of doubt, that he would have killed her.   
    "I'm sorry," I sobbed as I pet the silky fur on her back, "I am so, so sorry!"  
    Pepper seemed to realize that it was me and stopped biting me. When I heard her purr and rub her cheek against my hand to comfort herself, I only cried harder. I felt like the biggest asshole in the world. I had taken her in and cared for her, but I had also put her in horrible danger. She could have died a terrible death because of me, because of my father's pettiness and cruelty. Which of us was the bigger monster, my father for hating animals so much that he would have no problem with killing a defenseless kitten or at least hurting her before he made her homeless again, or me for loving her and putting her life on the line, just because I was too weak to hand her off to someone else?  
    "Ok, ok," I muttered to myself as my relief began to ebb away into panic again.  
    Enough was enough, I thought with a heart heavy with sorrow. This was too close of a call. I'm not a big believer in second chances, so when one is so obviously presented to me, I'm not one to quibble. I could sigh and think 'wow that was close' and try to find a way to hide Pepper better, but I knew when I was beaten. My father had found the litter box and her food, he knew that I was keeping a cat up here. It would only be a matter of time before he found her and there was no way in hell I was ever going to let that happen. Even if I had to say good bye to her forever.  
    Crying at the thought that that day might be the very last day I ever saw my cat again, I cradled her against my neck, trying to remember how good it felt to feel her purr, to hear her tiny heart beating. I felt like she was being ripped away from me, one of the few things that I had to comfort myself. My father was taking everything away from me. My money, my sanity, and now one of the few things that I loved. Pepper had been there for me when I had broken up with Trowa, when I had fallen in love with Heero, and when my father had first raped me. She was always there when I needed her, and it hurt more than I can say to know that she would no longer be there, but I needed to be there for her for once.   
    My hands trembling and terrified that I was going to hear the front door open at any moment, I dug my phone out of my pocket, suddenly terribly glad that I hadn't stopped by the house that day to drop off my back pack. I had my e-writer in there, along with a few other things that had survived the tornado of destruction. I dialed Heero's number from memory, barely even thinking as my fingers moved and I waited. I heard an answer after the fifth ring, almost before the call would have ended.  
    "'lo?" Heero said, his voice rough and heavy from sleep, "Duo, is that you?"  
    Who else would be calling him at almost three in the morning? I felt a flash of guilt for waking him and pestering him, but I needed him too much.  
    "Heero, I need help," I said desperately, trying to keep him from knowing that I was crying.   
    I heard a rustling sound over the line and I knew that he had pushed the covers on his bed aside and was sitting up on the edge of it.  
    "Are you hurt?" he demanded, suddenly sounding very awake and anxious.  
    I also knew that, if I told him yes, he would be in one of his parents' cars in a matter of minutes. Through my fear and guilt, I felt a hot burst of love for him.  
    "No, I... I need someplace to go," I almost felt like an ass for again using him for sanctuary, but then Pepper rubbed her head against my neck and I reminded myself that this wasn't for me, it was for her.  
    "Come over," he said hastily, "The door will be unlocked. Or do you want me to pick you up?"  
    "No, I can walk," his voice was making me feel steadier, more logical and less like I was going to fly into a mindless panic, "I-I have my cat with me!" I blurted out in warning, unsure if I would be welcome if I was bringing my pet, too.   
    "That's fine, my parents won't mind. Call me if you run into trouble," he ordered.  
    "Thank you," I couldn't help the brief sob that broke free, "Thank you so much, I'll be there in twenty minutes."  
    "Be safe," he urged.  
    I couldn't promise that I could, not if my father came home before I left, so I just hung up. Then, I was moving and moving fast. I put Pepper on the top of my desk so I could have use of both of my hands. She meowed pitifully at me, probably still frightened and trusting me to protect her. Which of course only made me feel like shit again. I ran downstairs to grab a handful of plastic bags and quickly ran back up to my room.   
    I started to shove anything that I could salvage into them; toys, the box lined with cloth that I had made for Pepper's bed, her remaining litter and food that hadn't been scattered around on the floor, her food dish that had somehow, miraculously not been broken like everything else, and her litter box, thankful that I could use my left arm again or there was no way in hell I was going to be able to carry everything. Thankfully, the litter box that Mrs. Liddle had given me had a cover with a handle, which helped to carry the bags once I emptied the tray out. I grabbed a small blanket from the floor, stuffed what I could into my back pack, wrapped Pepper in the blanket, both to keep her warm and hidden, as well to keep her from panicking when she realized that we were going outside.  
    I felt incredible relief when I managed to get out the door with still no sign of my father, but it was brief. I was still paranoid that he would catch up with me somehow and find me with my cat. Beyond that, I felt grief and every time Pepper made a noise, that grief and feeling of loss and depression grew until it threatened to swallow me hole. I also felt worried about my mother. What if she had tried to stop my father from destroying my room and he had put her in the hospital again? But I couldn't deal with that on top of everything else and vowed that as soon as I got Pepper to safety.  
    It was a long walk to Heero's house. The streets of central and north Nausten were almost completely empty at that hour, but every time that a car passed me, my heart would scream in fear and I was sure that it was my father. It never was, though, and by the time I saw the welcome house, I was exhausted from sheer adrenaline rush. Pepper constantly meowed, but at least she didn't struggle or try to escape from the blanket, one of my arms wrapped around it and pressing it to my chest, hoping that it would help keep her warm, but also for my comfort as well.   
    During my walk, I had managed to get some of my rampant feelings under control, at least enough that I stopped crying. But when I saw that the walkway and front door lights had been turned on for me, I almost started again. As promised, the front door was open for me and the warmth of the house had me shivering. I had been in such a frantic, stressed state during my walk that the freezing cold of the early morning hadn't even entered into my consciousness, but now that I had reached my destination, I actually realized how cold I was. I had forgotten my mittens and hat. Not just Heero, but both of his parents were waiting for me inside. I wanted to yell at him for bothering them with this, but decided that it really didn't matter.   
    "Duo!" Heero's mother exclaimed when she saw me, immediately taking me by the arm and pulling me further inside the house, her dark eyes examining every inch of me that they could take in for any injuries, "Are you alright?"  
    "I'm fine," I insisted, but didn't really blame either of his parents for looking worried since every time this happened, I was hurt in some way.  
    "Come on," Heero's father took charge, placing a hand on my back and steering me into the kitchen as soon as I had my sneakers off.  
    I was grateful for him and his calm, steady demeanor. I still felt like I was going off of the deep end, like there was this screaming voice in my head and my heart rate would just not calm down, but Mr. Yuy was this soothing presence, seeming to know what to do and how to take care of things where I just felt lost. He sat me down in one of the kitchen chairs while Heero sat next to me, putting a hand on my arm. It was only then that I realize that I hadn't bothered to put my jackets back on and I was shaking, my hands so pale and they almost looked blue. I was incredibly glad that Mrs. Yuy didn't choose to scold me or freak out that I had been walking around in twenty degree weather in only a long sleeved shirt. I didn't have the mind to deal with that at the moment.  
    "Why don't you make Duo some hot chocolate," Justin advised his wife, "He looks like he could use something hot."  
    She nodded, flashing me a warm smile, obviously grateful to have some way to help me.   
    "Now," Mr. Yuy knelt down and put a hand on my knee, "what's wrong, Duo? What happened?"  
    For a couple minutes, I was silent. I didn't know how to express what had just happened or why I had felt the need to flee my home in the early morning hours like that.   
    "My... my father," I stammered, partially from the cold and partially because I was still far from calm.   
    "Take a deep breath," Heero's father soothed.  
    I stopped and did as he said, surprised to find that it actually did help to get my nerves sorted. I looked over at my friend and saw that he had the same look on his face that his father did, worried, but patient.  
    "My dad knows about Pepper," I told him, my voice cracking with emotion.  
    Heero was the only one that I had ever told about my dad not allowing pets. I had never told him about my fears that one day he would find her and kill her, but he knew my father's... anger problems and understood what I meant, why I had fled in an instant. His blue eyes widened and glanced at the bundle that I was holding.  
    "Is she alright?" he asked in sympathy and looked relieved when I nodded.  
    "He didn't find her," I told him, "I... I got her out before he could."  
    "I take it Pepper is your cat?" his father asked, "And your father didn't know that you were keeping her?"  
    I nodded. A soft myew came from the blanket that I was holding, my cat recognizing her name. I could feel her starting to squirm, not wanting to be in the blanket any longer. I looked around for Kanuck, unsure about how the dog would react if I unbundled her.  
    "I put the dog in my dad's study," Heero assured me, "She can come out."  
    I carefully unfolded the blanket, pulling Pepper from it. I was afraid that she would bolt at first, finding herself in a strange place surrounded by strange people, but she just sat sprawled on my lap, looking around her with eyes shaped like marbles. She turned her head, looking up at me, and meowed, like she was asking me what was going on. I stroked her head and she settled a little, deciding that weird things were going on, but it would be alright so long as I was holding her. Her faith in me had my insides clenching again.  
    "Oh, what a cutie!" Mrs. Yuy gushed as she put a steaming mug of hot chocolate in front of me, heaped with whipped cream, "Can I pet her?"  
    "Just a little," I nodded, "She doesn't get out much and she was terrified when I came home today."  
    Heero's mother gently reached out and pet Pepper under the chin. I was pleased when my cat eyed her warily, but didn't try to bite her. She closed her eyes, looking happy at the attention she was getting instead of being stressed.   
    "Your father wouldn't have hurt her, would he?" she asked me, a worried look on her face.  
    I nodded and Heero's parents shared a bothered look with each other, like they had suspected that, but had hoped that they were wrong. I guess if I had fled to their home with my cat, the reason was rather obvious.   
    "He hates pets," I confessed, mindlessly stroking my hand down Pepper's back, "especially cats. He thinks they're vermin. If he had actually found her, he would have... he would have tried to hurt her. Maybe he would have just put her outside or brought her to a shelter, but he probably would have killed her."  
    Mrs. Yuy gasped at that. I pegged her as an animal lover with the way her eyes had lit up when she had seen my kitten, and the thought that anyone, especially my father, could kill a cat just because it was in his home did not sit well with her. I took a sip from the hot chocolate that she had made me, the liquid like the most pleasing kind of fire as it went into me.  
    "I never should have taken her in," I said mournfully, my eyes filling up with tears again, "It was so _stupid_ of me! I knew what my father might do to her if he ever found out, but I did it anyway. I always wanted a pet, and she was a stray. I couldn't just leave her out there. I thought about giving her to someone, but I just... fell in love with her so quickly, I couldn't do it. I risked her life, all because I liked having her around."  
    "That doesn't make you a bad person," Mr. Yuy said, giving my knee a gentle squeeze, "It's understandable. Lots of people form deep connections with their pets. I'm sure she feels a connection with you, as well."  
    "I thought that I could take care of her," I murmured, "I've had her for months and my dad never suspected... I came so close to losing her."      
    "Don't worry about it," Heero rubbed my arm with his hand in an attempt to comfort me, "We'll think of something. Your dad won't hurt her."  
    I smiled sadly at him and shook my head, feeling a tear escaping my iron clad control.  
    "It doesn't matter," I told him, "He knows about her now, there's no way she'll be safe if I take her back home. She can't... she can't be with me anymore," I wiped the tear angrily away, my grief coming back to me full force, "Even if she could somehow... he... he trashed my room," I ran my hand through my bangs with stress, barely even realizing that I was doing it or how haggard and anxious that I looked, "He took my savings," I whispered, still having a hard time coping with that fact, " _All_ of it. I don't have a single cent left! I can't take care of her anymore! I can't even buy her food!"  
    Pepper meowed at me again, butting her head against my fingers as she heard the distress in my voice, but her affection only made me feel a hundred times worse.  
    "I have to give her to someone... someone that can take care of her," I said with anguish, "I can't risk her life because I'm selfish. I have to give her up to make sure that she'll be safe."  
    I thought about doing that, about handing her over to the local shelter or to Mrs. Liddle, to someone who would give her a new name, and this weird pain ripped right through my heart. It was like the pain that I had felt when I had finally come to terms with the fact that Quatre was never going to be in my life anymore, not quite as intense and insane, but it had that same, destructive bite to it. I hid my face in my hands, trying to get a hold of myself, to not fall apart and cry in front of Heero and his family, but it was hard.   
    You would think that, after losing so much, this would be easy at this point. Pepper was just a cat, not a friend like Heero, not a boyfriend like Trowa, and certainly not my best friend, whose death still haunts me. But knowing that she would no longer be in my life was killing me inside. I felt like a failure, like I couldn't keep a single good thing around me. Sooner or later, I was going to lose Heero as well.   
    "Sssh," Justin soothed and, to my shock, he wrapped his arms around me, hugging me tightly, cat and all, "It's just like Heero said, we'll figure something out, Duo, you don't have to do that."  
    "No," I pulled myself out of his arms, although I didn't want to, and rubbed at my face to make sure that he couldn't see any wetness there, "It's fine," I smiled at him and it was one of the most painful things that I've ever done, trying to smile like it was no big deal with I felt like sadness was literally crushing my heart, "I... I have this neighbor... she runs the shelter and has a ton of cats, she'll find a good home for her."  
    I curled my hand around my kitten, petting her stomach with my fingers. I realized that I couldn't hold her in my hand anymore like I had been able to when I had first found her. She was several months old now, still a kitten, but getting bigger. That pain in my chest grew when I thought that I would never see her get any bigger. I would never see her become an adult. I almost lost it for a second time at that.   
    "It's for the best," I heard myself say and wondered how I was even able to sound that put together, where these words were coming from, "Even when I had money, I could only just barely care for her. I had to keep her cooped up in my room all the time because I was so scared of my father finding her. She barely had anything to explore, and between my jobs and school and hanging out here, I was hardly there to be with her. This is a good thing. Now, I can find her a real home, with people that can take better care of her. She'll be happier with someone else anyway-"  
    My voice cracked and I just couldn't do it. How could I possibly lie to myself that this was a good thing, that I was doing the best thing possible for Pepper when my heart was breaking? I was so tired of losing everything. I couldn't be strong about it anymore. I felt like every time I lost something, even if it was something small, a hole was being punched in me. How long before there are too many and I fall apart completely?  
    " _Duo_ ," Mr. Yuy said firmly, squeezing my knee to get my attention, but there was a quality to his tone that told me that I had bothered him.  
    I looked up saw all of them staring at me, Heero looking like he wanted to go out and murder someone and his mother looking like she was about to start crying.   
    "You don't need to give Pepper away," Heero's father repeated, his expression a mix of his son's and wife's, both sad and intense, "Pepper can stay here."  
    I blinked at him in shock, his words pulling me out of my downward spiral. Leave Pepper with Heero and his family? It had never even occurred to me to suggest something like that. Even if it had, I never would have come out and asked, not with everything else this family was doing for me. I couldn't. And I couldn't dare to hope of a solution like that.   
    "I... I could never ask-" I started to protest, even though my heart wasn't really in it.  
    Deep down, I was jumping for joy, clinging to a possibility that wouldn't see me losing my cat forever, but the more cynical parts of myself were protesting, insisting that there had to be a condition, a price. Something like this couldn't be given to me for free, the world was too dark to work like that. But if there was one thing that Heero's family had proved to me, it was that, even if it was rare, people _could_ be kind.   
    "I know that you would never ask," Mr. Yuy smiled in amusement, "which is why I'm offering this to you."  
    "She's my responsibility," my resolve was weakening by the second and even my words were sounding pathetic.  
    "Yes, and like I told Heero when he was a kid and begged me to buy him a puppy, she will continue to be your responsibility. It will be up to you to play with her, clean her litter box, and make sure her food bowl isn't empty. Things will go on exactly like they were before," he bargained, "the only difference will be that she'll be living here instead of at your house."  
    It sounded too good to be true and I hesitated, waiting for some kind of catch to this, one that I knew wouldn't come. I looked down at my cat and saw her looking up at me in that adoring way that she does. Like she trusts me. Who am I to trust? I'm no one. All I did for her was bring her in from the street and I claimed responsibility for her. But I _was_ responsible. How could I let my guilt and these self-conscious feelings I have about taking so much from the Yuys when Pepper was relying on me to take care of her? What if she ended up with another family that would just abandon her or hurt her? Like my family has done to me? This wasn't about me, this was about her and making sure that she was safe and cared for.  
    "She'll have more room here to explore," Justin continued, little by little hacking away at my doubts, "and you won't have to constantly worry about her getting hurt. Kanuck is very good with other animals, even cats, he won't attack her. Even if he becomes a problem, we can keep him downstairs and Pepper can have the upstairs. I'm sure she'll like it here. And you're here a lot, more, I think, than you are at home lately. She'll get to see you more. You can stop by here on your way to work or spend the night whenever you want, just like always. If she ever gets sick or needs medical treatment, we have vet insurance, we can just put her on our plan and she'll be covered. All I ask is that you clean up after her and give her whatever attention she needs. That sounds like a fair trade, doesn't it?"  
    He knew that he had me. I mean, what could I possibly say, no, thanks, I'd rather never see her again? I nodded, my throat feeling tight.   
    "I... I don't know what to say," I whispered, "You keep doing all these things for me and I'm such a nuisance."  
    "Nonsense," he scoffed, "You're never a nuisance. You didn't really think that we would let you lose your cat, did you?"  
    I barked out a harsh laugh at that, but there was little humor in it and I felt a tear track down the right side of my face.  
    "I... I'll find a way to pay for her food and litter and everything else," I said desperately, "I can't pay for it right away, but I'll think of something. I'll take on another job, or..."  
    I swallowed, realizing that I was on the verge of crying again.    
    "You will do no such thing," Mrs. Yuy butted in, "We will gladly pay for your kitten's food and you will not worry about it for a second more. You already work yourself too hard."  
    Heero and his father nodded in agreement.  
    "Duo, everything is going to be fine," my best friend told me softly, "Pepper will be safe here, so you don't need to worry about her anymore. It's not a big deal, we get lots of discounts because of the pet care program that we have Kanuck on. Trust me," he said with a smirk, "that dog eats a lot more than your cat does and he's much more of a hassle. Taking care of Pepper will be easy compared to him."  
    I managed a smile at him and was surprised that I could manage it. My tension and panic was easing off, leaving me feeling hollow and drained.   
    "Thank you," I said to all three of them, "You don't even know what this means to me."  
    "It's no problem," Josh's father assured me, patting my knee and standing up, "Now, why don't you finish your hot chocolate and head on to bed?"  
    "I should go home," I argued and wasn't really sure why I was putting effort into it when I felt like lying down right there in the kitchen and blacking out, "My room is a mess, it's going to take hours to clean it..."  
    "Which is why you aren't going to do it now," Mr. Yuy didn't miss a beat and I knew with surety that I was never going to win an argument against the man, "You're tired and only have a few hours before school, so you're going to go right to bed while you can. Your room will still be there when school lets out."  
    I acquiesced again. I hadn't wanted to go home anyway and he had seen that. We didn't speak about my fears of my father and what might be waiting for me if he was home. A beating was the least of my worries if he knew about Pepper _and_ all of the money and the new job that I had been hiding from him. I could feel it in the air, that it was on everyone's mind, but no one would say it. It didn't need being said, but no one was going to let me go home to that any time soon.   
    I thought about having to go back and start cleaning my room. I thought about the destroyed CD player, books, and CDs, about having to sweep it all up like so much garbage and felt my stomach sink. No, I really couldn't deal with that, not on zero sleep and so emotionally compromised to begin with. So I did what I was told and sat there at the kitchen table with Heero and my cat while Heero's parents took my things upstairs. I drank my hot chocolate, still feeling chilled and shaky, but at that point I didn't know if it was from the cold or from the shock of everything.   
    "Heero, why don't you let Duo have some of your pajamas, you're about the same size," Mrs. Yuy said when she came back downstairs, "And Duo, leave your clothes in the hamper in the bathroom and I'll wash them for you before you go to school tomorrow."  
    "Thank you," I said in amazement.   
    I was still wearing my work clothes of jeans and a button up shirt and didn't really have a problem with wearing them to bed and school. I wore dirty clothes all the time because we only did laundry once every two weeks, but my shirt was covered in dust from the factory and I had to admit that having it cleaned sounded great.  
    "You should really leave a change of clothes here," Heero noted.  
    For a moment, I thought that he was teasing me about my staying over all the time, but when I looked at him, I saw that he was completely being serious about it. Mrs. Yuy took the mug from me when she saw that I was all done with my drink and she and Heero led me upstairs. Pepper looked around with wide eyes during the trek, having no clue what was going on, but didn't seem like she was freaking out yet.   
    "We put a heated blanket on your bed," Heero's father said as he walked out of the guest bedroom, "so if you get cold during the night, there's a dial on the hem you can switch on. Just be careful to remember to turn it off when you're done using it."  
    I nodded, trying to hide how overwhelmed and warm I felt when he had said 'your bed', like I really was living there and I wasn't just a guest anymore. Heero and I said good night to his parents, me thanking them again for their generosity in caring for both me and my cat, and they left us to retire to their bedroom. Heero found some pajamas for me that were a little bit too wide in the shoulder, but otherwise fit pretty well. Then he vanished to go back to bed himself. I felt incredibly weird standing there in the guest bedroom, still holding my cat in my hands. That morning had taken a pretty surreal turn, but it had ended far better than I had thought it would when I had escaped from my house.  
    "Well, girl, this is going to be your home from now on," I told her as I placed her on one of the bed pillows, "so I really hope you like it. Just don't shred anything or pee on anything. Be well behaved for the Yuys and don't let the dog bother you, alright?"      
    She looked around the bed, fascinated by it, and meowed up at me. I chose to take that as a 'yes'. When I saw her lay down on the pillow after softly kneading it for a few seconds, I felt relieved, thinking that this might just work out after all. As I took off my shirt to change into Heero's pajamas, I took a moment to lightly touch the locket that I had been wearing under the shirt. Feeling the warm metal made feel a little better, although it didn't take much of the sting out of the destruction of my stuff.   
    When my mother had first given it to me, I had debated with myself on what to do with it. My first instinct was to hide it under the floor as it seemed the safest place if I didn't want my father or Zechs or Relena to break it. But just stashing it in there had felt wrong to me, so under my shirt it had gone. Boy, was I glad that I hadn't put it in that secret compartment. It was bad enough that I was devastated from what my father had done, my mother didn't need to be heartbroken as well.   
    I emptied my pockets before taking my pants off and noticed that the outer display of my phone was flashing at me, indicating that I had missed a call at some point. I frowned at it, that prank that Zechs had pulled with the school newspaper had made me paranoid about getting calls at weird hours, especially when I knew that it couldn't possibly be Heero. Or maybe it had been. I turn my phone on silent when I'm at work since we aren't even supposed to have them on us and I hadn't checked my phone since I left my first shift. Heero could have called me shortly after that and I wouldn't have known. I was in such a panic when I had called him that it wouldn't have surprised me if I hadn't noticed the missed call notification.  
    I opened my phone and saw that I had a grand total of four missed calls and a voice mail. It was from a number that I didn't recognize, which only made me more nervous. That was just what I needed right then, I thought angrily, more stupid, childish pranks. I closed the phone and put it on the night stand, not wanting to deal with that shit. I just didn't have the energy left to handle any more bad news. I finished dressing in the loose pajama pants that Heero had given me, which were just a little too big at the waist because I'm skinnier than he is, but they had a draw string on them and the difference wasn't too bad. I tossed my work clothes into the hamper and went about setting up everything that Pepper would need.   
    The litter box was refilled and put in the far corner of the room, what food that I had been able to salvage went into her bowl, and I grabbed a small bowl from the kitchen to use as her water dish, at least until I could replace the old one that had shattered. At least I assumed that's what happened to it because I hadn't seen it, but there had been so many shards of _things_ around my room that it had been impossible to tell what most of them were. That only reminded me of what was waiting for me when I would get home that day and I sat on the bed, pressing my face into my hands, and felt so weary and worn that I could cry again.  
    What the hell was I going to do, I asked myself. More importantly, what was my father going to do when he caught up with me? I saw the path of destruction that had become my room in my head and shuddered, imagining the wrath that had led to that directed at me. If he had really found out about both Pepper and the lies that I had been telling about work, then he might actually, _literally_ kill me. There are two things that my father cannot stand: back talk and lying. Did I even dare to show my face at home again? Even if I survived his anger, I would have to come clean about work. He was just going to keep taking my money and I should be thankful if that was the least that he would do.  
    I could stay away from home for a pretty long time, I realized. Now that Pepper was going to stay with the Yuys, I didn't need to rush home to feed her anymore. I could stay with Heero and his family for awhile, I would only need to grab my work boots and some clothes after school, but that would be ok with my father at work all day. Just how long could I not go home and get away with it? A couple of days? A week? How long before my father decided to go looking for me? Would he even notice that I was gone? Would he be happy if he thought that I had run away? Or would he be pissed and try to find me? Would he take it out on my mother?   
    It was that thought that made me decide that I wasn't going to be able to just run away, even if my father didn't give a shit that I wasn't around. I'm not so sure that I have the courage to decide to actually run away from home. I couldn't ask Heero's parents to shelter me just because I'm scared of my father and I have no idea how to survive on my own, but there was no way that I was just going to abandon my mother to him. I would call her tomorrow, I decided, when she was at work and let her know that I was going to be staying with the Yuys for a few days and hopefully by then, my father would be calm enough not to beat me into a bloody pulp and let me talk to him rationally.  
    Even that thought had my heart racing in my chest, just the mere thought of having to face him eventually and I had to force my heart rate to return to normal. I lifted my head out of my hands and found that Pepper had migrated from the pillow to being curled up against my leg. I smiled down at her and stroked her ears. I felt another flood of relief and gratitude towards Heero and his parents for allowing her to keep her in my life. I kept telling myself that she was just a cat, but I knew that that didn't mean anything when it came to how I cared about her.   
    "Three days," I murmured as I picked her up and laid down on the bed, holding her to my chest, "Or until Mom says it's ok to come home."  
    Pepper meowed at me, as if in agreement. I glanced over at my phone, the light still blinking since I hadn't listened to the voicemail yet. I wondered if my father had come home yet. I wondered where he had gone. Probably for a drink if he was working off his anger, or to take my mother to the emergency room if she had interrupted him. I wondered how he had found out that I had been withholding cash from him. Had he found Pepper's things and torn apart the room looking for her, only to find my secret compartment, or was it the other way around? Had one of my bosses blabbed? I couldn't see Leneski doing that, I didn't even think that he knew my father. Lorathe would, but what did he have to tell besides my cutting my hours?   
    "Oh, fuck it," I grumbled and reached over for my phone, queuing the voicemail.   
    "Duo," my mother's voice was welcoming compared to what I had been dreading, "Duo, honey, don't come home after work. Go to your friend's house, just... just don't come home, it isn't safe," she warned me, her voice heavy and panting, her words hasty, like she was being rushed before she hung up the line.  
    I looked at the time and saw that she had started calling me around eleven pm and left the message thirty minutes after that. All sorts of scenarios presented themselves to me, but the one that made the most sense, or at least the one that gave me the most peace of mind, was that my mother must have fled the house when my father had started to trash my room, had found a pay phone and called my cell phone number. She hadn't sounded like she was in pain, so I chose to believe that she was fine, wherever she was and she had gotten out of the house in time.   
    I put my phone back on the side table and turned off the lights. It felt so weird laying there with my cat, like the two places that I considered home were merging together. Maybe it was Pepper being there or maybe I was just so exhausted from the adrenaline rush, but I crashed hard. I think I was asleep about two minutes after I turned the lights off and I didn't wake up at all until Heero came in to gently rouse me.   
    "Duo," his voice was the thing that woke me, but it was his light touch on my shoulder that had me blinking my eyes open at him.  
    "Mmm?" I mumbled, confused for a moment, not about where I was since I was more than well used to waking up there at that point, but why Heero was there.  
    "It's time to get up," he said softly, "Mom made pancakes if you want some."  
    It took me a second to get my bearings. I had rolled onto my side in my sleep and Pepper was curled up by my head, looking up at Heero with curiosity. Someone must have come into the room while I had been sleeping, because there were covers tucked around me and I hadn't pulled them up before I had blacked out.  
    "What time is it?" I asked, still confused since I was usually able to wake myself up without the need of an alarm clock well in time for school.  
    "Seven," I was told and that was enough to wake me right up.  
    I felt mortified as I sat up in bed, tossing the sheets aside. I usually got up around five or six, depending on how well I could manage to sleep, but after years of public school, waking up in the morning was deeply ingrained in me, yet I had been so tired that I had overslept. It had only been for less than four hours, but I still felt embarrassed that I might have missed school if not for Heero.  
    "You have plenty of time to get ready," he assured me, "I'll tell Mom to put the pancakes on while you get dressed. She washed your clothes," he gestured to the folded pile that had been put on the desk, "If you want to brush your teeth, I have an extra toothbrush in the bathroom and there's deodorant under the sink."  
    I knew all of this, of course, after finding myself sleeping over at his house without much warning several times, and he knew that I knew that, but his voice and the nonsense talk helped to wake me up further.   
    "Sure, thanks," I said, "I'll be down in a couple of minutes."  
    He nodded and glanced down at Pepper, who was still staring at him with wide, yellow eyes. Very nervously and slowly, like he had never seen a cat in his life, he reached out to her. I think he expected her to try to bite him, but he dared to pet the top of her head. When she closed her eyes and reached her head up to nuzzle her nose against his fingers, his face opened up with this bright, amazed smile, making him look like a little kid. It was incredibly beautiful, that innocent wonder, all just from getting to pet a kitten.   
    "Good girl," I cooed when Heero left, kissing the top of her head.  
    I got dressed, put Heero's pajamas in the hamper, and headed downstairs. As promised, I could smell pancakes and bacon cooking and when I walked into the kitchen, there was a stack of them on a plate waiting for me.  
    "Good morning, Duo," Mrs. Yuy greeted from where she stood over a griddle, "Will those be enough for you? I can put more on."  
    "This is plenty," I assured her and sat down at the table with Heero.       
    Kanuck moved from his spot by Heero to me, sniffing excitedly at my hands. I realized that he was smelling Pepper and expertly dodged his attempts to lick my hands.  
    "Quit it," Heero scolded his dog, who walked slowly back to his owner's side, tail down and properly chastised.   
    I practically inhaled the breakfast, along with a glass of orange juice, partially because I didn't want us to be late and partially because I hadn't eaten anything in almost twelve hours.   
    "Is there anything that your cat needs from the pet store?" Mrs. Yuy asked me, "Justin can pick it up on his way home from work."  
    "Well, she's almost out of food," I said as I finished the last of the pancakes on my plate, "and my father broke her water dish, but she has enough litter for now. I can text him the kind of food she eats."  
    "Sure," she said and collected our dishes so she could wash them.  
    "Um, I hate to ask," I said hesitantly, "You've already done so much..." 'more than I ever thought anyone would,' I thought, "but would it be alright if I stayed here for a couple of nights?"  
    "Of course you can!" Heero's mother scoffed like I had asked something ridiculous, "It will probably help your kitten get used to being here."  
    There was that, too. I still had no idea how Pepper was going to handle the change of scenery, if it was going to stress her out or if she would be happy having so many rooms to explore.  
    "If she pees or scratches on anything, I'll pay for the damage," I blurted out, even though I had no clue at all how I would pay for something like that, especially with some of the expensive furniture they had.  
    "Don't worry about that," Mrs. Yuy soothed, "I'm sure she'll be fine, and it isn't like Kanuck hasn't ruined a rug or too since he was a puppy."  
    Kanuck seemed to realize that she was saying something bad about him and whined. Heero and I rushed back upstairs to brush our teeth and then we were out the door, but not before his mother forced another one of Heero's jackets and scarves on me. Outside, the sky was snow free, but windy.   
    "So, you're just going to come home with me today?" Heero asked me as we walked, sounding a bit happy about that.  
    "I need to stop at home first, but that shouldn't take long," I said and watched that carefree expression turn into a serious frown.  
    "I don't know if that's such a good idea," he cautioned, no doubt thinking about what my father might do if he was home.  
    "It'll be fine," I assured him, "My dad works until ten, you know that."  
    "And I also know that he sometimes goes home for lunch," my friend argued heatedly.  
    "Not at 2:30 in the afternoon. Ok, look, how about this. Why don't we go there together? You can stand outside and if I don't come back out for awhile or you hear yelling, then that means I'm in trouble. I just need to grab some clothes, so it shouldn't take me more than five minutes, and if my father's car is there, I won't go in at all," I bargained.  
    I felt uncomfortable about that. It was incredibly likely that my father was going to be home at that hour, but someone was bound to notice Heero standing outside of my house in the middle of the day and wonder what it was we were doing running in and out like that. If my neighbors were normal people, like Heero's neighbors seem to be, it would be no problem. But I just knew that the noisy asshole across the street was going to make some comment about a strange boy that he had never seen around my home to someone, perhaps about how two teenaged boys were clearly up to no good, sneaking around like that, and that would get back to my father.       
    Maybe I'm just being paranoid and stupid, and even if my neighbors were bored enough to talk about something that like, it didn't mean that my father would hear about it or even get mad, but he might and that was the only reason that I needed to be wary about it. But my suggestion relieved Heero and I decided that that was worth the risk. It startled me sometimes, just how much my friend hates my father and worries about what he'll do to me, but I suppose it's not so surprising given what I've told him and the injuries that he's seen.  
    "Ok, sounds like a plan," he agreed.   
    As we walked to school, I began to formulate a plan in my head. Unlock door, leave Mom a note in her drawer, go into room, stuff clothes into back pack... But that was as far as my plan got. I kept hitting a snag whenever I actually thought about walking back up into my room and seeing the wreckage. The shards of CD and CD player all over the floor. The torn books. The toppled over book case. The deep depression that had only touched me last night tried to bowl me over.   
    All of my music was gone, all of those CDs that Quatre had spent hours putting together for me, all gone. All I had left now from him was my sweatshirt. I thought about my father prying open the compartment and finding those CDs. In my head, I saw him maliciously breaking every one of them and tossing their remains to the floor, like he so often did to my heart. He had no clue what they meant to me. If he did, would he regret what he had done? Would he say that he was sorry? Would he remember holding me four years ago at the kitchen table as I had wept without even knowing why I had been crying? Or would he just call me a pussy for it and not regret anything?  
    "What's wrong?" Heero suddenly asked.  
    "W-what do you mean?" I stammered, blinking at him in confusion, "There's nothing wrong."  
    "Yes there is," he insisted, "You have that look that you get when you're thinking of something that's upsetting you or you're getting depressed."  
    I stared at him incredulously for a moment. I couldn't believe that he knew me that well that he could recognize a look like that. That was the danger of getting close to someone, I thought, he knew me too well after being friends for just over two months, he could almost read my mind, at least when it came to my moods. I'd always thought that I was good at keeping things inside, so how the hell did he do that?  
    "It's nothing," I told him, but he flashed me a glare that clearly said 'don't bullshit me' and I knew that I wasn't going to get off that easily. I sighed, "It really isn't. It's just... when I said that my father trashed my room, I really meant it. He broke some things... sentimental things, that's all. I'm still trying to wrap my head around it, I guess."  
    "What sorts of things?" he pressed in a gentle tone, his hand brushing against mine very lightly and I couldn't tell if he had done it on purpose or not.  
    "A couple books, my calculator..." I swallowed roughly, not wanting to continue, "A... a CD player that Quatre had given me and some CDs that he burned for me," I managed to confess, "When I told him that I didn't have any way to listen to music, he downloaded all these songs that he knew that I liked. He must have spent hours... days, even, doing that for me. No one had ever done something that nice for me before. And a few of those CDs were his," my voice came out angry for a moment before I wrangled it back under my tight control, "I got them from his locker after he..." my throat constricted, "...after he left."  
    I couldn't do it still, I realized. I couldn't come clean to Heero about what had happened to Quatre. It was stupid, just a matter of public record. He could ask any single person in town and they would tell him, so why couldn't I? Why, after four years, was this still so damned hard? I almost flinched when Heero grabbed my hand, squeezing it. When I looked at him, his blue eyes were intense, filled with a mix of sympathy and anger on my behalf. It took some of the terrible bite out of my sadness.  
    "Of course that's a big deal," he said and I could have cried that he thought so, where other people might call me a child for mourning something like burned CDs while my father had taken all of my money, "Maybe I can help. I can't replace everything that your father broke completely, but if you tell me which CDs were destroyed and what the burned ones had on them, I can make copies for you."  
    "Y... you can do that?" I asked in a choked whisper, trying very hard not to show just how much his offer had touched me, but when he smiled at me, I knew that he had figured that much out.  
    "It's easy," he assured me, "I already have a bunch of blank CDs that I haven't used. I can probably even find some songs that you might like and didn't have on them. And I'll replace your CD player, too."  
    "Don't you dare," I cautioned, "You do way too much for me already!"  
    "Clearly not enough," he teased, "if I can still get this kind of reaction out of you. It's not like you can stop me from gifting you with things."  
    "Jerk," I muttered, but my voice was tight with emotion, completely taking the sting out of the insult.  
    "Yup, that's me," he grinned at me and squeezed my hand again, "And to pay for this gift, you are not going to say that you don't deserve it, you are not going to try to pay me back, you are not going to say it's too much. Consider that my payment."  
    I sighed again. Heavily.  
    "Fine," I grumbled, "Like you said, I can't stop you from stupidly spending money on me and it's not like I can pay you back any other way."  
    "How much money exactly did your father take from you?" my friend asked, his frown returning.  
    "I'm not telling you that," I said stubbornly.  
    "Why not?"  
    "Because then you'll try to replace _that_ as well," I shot back.  
    Heero chuckled.   
    "Caught red handed," he murmured.   
    I rolled my eyes at him.  
    "But seriously, Duo, if you need anything that you were going to buy with that money, just let us know. Or if there's anything else that he destroyed that we can replace," he urged.  
    "What are you, my sugar daddy?" I quipped even as my chest clenched at his kindness.  
    "I'm your friend," he corrected, "And I don't have to worry about money. I do, however, have to worry about getting that depressed look off your face whenever I see it."  
    I felt my face flame bright red and really hoped that my skin would settle down by the time that we got to school. I didn't respond to him, but I did squeeze his hand as a sign of gratitude before I pulled mine from his. I hoped that he understood just how much I appreciated everything that he was offering me and, more than any of the things that he could buy for me, his friendship most of all. When I dared to glance over at him and saw him looking away from me with this soft, handsome smile on his face, I knew that he had.   
  
  
  
End Part 1  
  
  
Author's Note: Whelp, Nanowrimo is officially over. My initial goal was to try to hit 70,000 words this year and I hit 120,221, so I am pretty satisfied with that. I was averaging 4k a day at the end there, which to me kind of sums up the magic that is Nanowrimo. I started on November 1st with the general feeling that there was no way in hell I had the energy to do it this year and I ended up pulling a few 10k days in there -_- This has been the best year I've done and I hit my secondary goal of finishing Chapter 7. I don't really want to take a writing break this year, though, so hopefully updates will continue to be fairly regular.   
  



	46. Chapter 8 Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duo has a nasty run in with his father while doing an errand for Heero's father. When Duo's father orders him to never see Josh again, Duo must make a choice: his heart or his well being.

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 8   
Part 2  
  
  
  
     The world is a pretty funny place. Sometimes, you think something is going turn out terribly and it does and you curse yourself a fool for having seen it coming and not being able to prevent it or protect yourself. Then, sometimes things turn out perfectly ok. But sometimes there are these random moments in your life where things turn out ok, and it's the thing that you thought was no big deal, this innocent, innocuous thing, that fucks you over. In those moments, don't you just feel like the universe or God is pulling some kind of terrible joke on you? I sure do.   
    That Tuesday was one of those days. When Heero and I left school and began the trek towards my house, my only thought was 'he's going to be there.' Because I'm a pessimist, remember? I thought, sure, now that Heero is going with me and I've just spent the entire school day reassuring both him and myself that absolutely nothing bad is going to happen when we get to my house, something has got to happen. It just seemed like one of those sureties in my life. My father was going to be home and he was going to be pissed and my best friend slash crush was going to witness all of it. As if my life wasn't fucked up enough.  
    So no one was more surprised than me when we got there and my father's car wasn't there in our tiny, cracked driveway.   
    "Please stay out here and wait for me?" I begged Heero when it seemed like he was going to try to go inside with me.  
    "There's nothing to be ashamed of," he huffed in frustration.  
    "Please," I repeated, a bit ashamed to give him my best desperate look, knowing that I was manipulating him and his feelings for me a bit, but he caved with a sigh.  
    I was equally sure that when I went into the house, I would find my father there anyway. Maybe he would be hiding behind the door or in my room and would punch me as soon as I walked through. Maybe he had known that I would show up right after school and had hidden his car down the street where I wouldn't look for it. I had no idea where the threat was going to come from, but I was positive that it was going to come from somewhere in that house.   
    Only it didn't. The house was empty, as it was supposed to be, and I was able to go about my business in peace. I wrote my mother a note, telling her that I was going to stay at Heero's for a few days, to call my cell phone if she needed to reach me, and to not worry about me. My bedroom looked exactly how I had left it that morning, in shambles. I could feel depression starting to creep in as I got my second look at the destruction, but I didn't have the time to mourn over my possessions. Heero was waiting for me.  
    'Just grab your clothes and go,' I thought to myself, 'It's just stuff, just things, that's all. It doesn't mean anything. Heero is going to help replace some of it and the rest I can live without. I'll find some way to replace the money, just focus on what you came here to do.'  
    Nice words, but not so easy to do. I found my eyes wandering to the middle of the room where the shattered remains of my CD player lay and almost began to cry again. More than that, I felt rage. What right did he have to do this to me? What terrible thing had I done to him that made me deserve this? I had lied to him, fine, that had been wrong, but I had only done it to protect myself and protect my cat! After all the hard work that I did at my jobs, didn't I deserve to keep at least some of the money that I made? Why did he think that he had the right to any of it? Because I was his child? His property? Because I slept under his roof and ate his food? And that made it alright for him to treat me like this?   
    It hurt more than I can say, wondering if that's exactly how he saw me. Not a person. Not his child, but a thing that he owned and could use. Maybe that made it easier for him to hurt me and rape me. It wasn't a person that he was doing that to, just a piece of property. Or maybe he didn't think that at all. Maybe he didn't need a reason to treat me the way he does. Maybe he just does it because it suits him, a grown child doing what he wants because there's no one around to tell him that he can't. I shook those thoughts off before they could drag me down like a pack of wild dogs and started to pick up the clothes that I needed off the floor and stuffing them into my book bag. I had to fight hard against the urge to start picking things up as I left my room, only taking the barest of what I needed. I snagged my boots on the way out of the house and locked up behind me.  
    "Everything ok?" Heero asked me.  
    "Yeah, like I said," but I was a bit amazed at that myself.  
    I felt in incredibly high spirits when we walked into his house together, despite everything that had happened that morning. I felt like I was in the middle of the hurricane, that the storm would catch up to me eventually, but not at that moment. In that moment, I was safe and happy, my cat was safe, and I was somewhere that people cared for me, where they greeted me when I came through the door instead of throwing things at me, where my presence was met with joy and a home cooked meal instead of loathing and barked demands.   
    It was a bit weird, going upstairs to check up on my cat instead of needing to rush home to do it. I was still getting used to not having any work on Tuesdays, getting to spend the day with Heero, and now I was going to have to get used to this, too. While I had been at school, I feared how my cat was taking her new surroundings. I wasn't just afraid that she was going to be stressed and destroy everything, but that she would feel confined to the guest bedroom like she had been in the attic. I had left the bedroom door open in hopes that she would explore and figure out that she had various rooms she could go in, but I had still worried that she might be too frightened and confused to do more than lay on the bed.  
    So when I found her on the top of the stairs, meowing happily at me, it was a huge relief. I picked her up to kiss the top of her head and she purred, but didn't seem all that stressed. Maybe she was happy to be out of the attic, as familiar as it was. Maybe on some level, she understood that she was safer where she was. When I went into the guest bedroom, I found that half of her food was eaten, another huge relief, and she hadn't destroyed anything. Some of her toys had been moved around, so I assumed that she had been playing. At least she could bat her mice around instead of just mostly chewing on them in the wall space.  
    Mrs. Yuy was just walking through the door when Heero and I got into the kitchen. For once, I was able to make _them_ a snack, which went a little ways in making me feel less guilty that I was crashing there. They had the ingredients to make chocolate chip cookies from scratch and it made me happy to both bake for them and do something calming. Heero watched me bustle about his kitchen like it was the most fascinating thing in the world, which of course only made me blush, especially when he tried them and declared that they were some of the best chocolate chip cookies he's ever had.  
    "The wind's died down a bit," Heero said as I wrapped up the remaining cookies for us to have after dinner, "Want to go skating before it gets dark?"  
    "Sure," I smiled eagerly.      
    We had had to hold off on trying to skate until after my shoulder and rib had gotten better, but once they had, it had become a regular activity for us and one that, I'll admit, I've come to enjoy a lot. Heero practiced by himself for awhile and he's gotten pretty good for someone that had never tried it before I had come along. It had sort of become 'our' thing. His parents never joined in with us and we had the pond all to ourselves. I always felt this immense sense of peace when I was out there with him, like no one else in the world existed.   
    "Homework, Heero," his mother scolded lightly, "I don't want you to slack off just because Duo is here."  
    "Actually," he muttered, "I'll get it done _because_ he's here."  
    That made me smirk. It was true that often when I was over at his place, I made sure we got our work done, no matter how much he wanted to do something else. No matter what has changed in my life, I'll always be on point when it comes to something that needs to be done like chores or my homework. It's not that I love homework, because I hate it as much as Heero does, or that I'm some overachiever, it's just been ingrained in me that you don't put off work, ever. Besides, my grades have never been great and getting a good homework average has helped to keep me afloat.   
    Heero was a good sport about me being a hard taskmaster when it came to forcing him to do homework together, but even if he wasn't, I wouldn't feel any guilt at all about bossing him around like that. It's one of the few things that I can be assertive about. And ever since his parents had told me that they believed I'm responsible for Heero's improving grades, I've taken that very seriously. If I can do one thing for him, I would be happy. Even if he won't thank me for making him do his homework when he wants to play a new video game first.   
    "Oh, don't worry," I assured her, "I'll make sure we get everything done tonight."  
    We shared a conspiratory grin and Heero rolled his eyes in exasperation at us, but Heero and I were allowed to go skating "just for an hour." This turned out to be the perfect amount of time, because when Heero's watch beeped for us to go back inside, the wind suddenly picked up again. I could have tolerated it, but the wind chill was too much for him. As we came back inside, Mr. Yuy was just coming into the kitchen, hauling in bags of groceries.  
    "Just in time," his wife praised, helping him to unload the bags, "I wanted to start the pasta for the macaroni and cheese just about now."  
    "Hi, Mr. Yuy," I greeted him.  
    "Hello, Duo. I have your cat's food and a new dish for her water," he told me, separating the bag from the others.   
    "Thank you so much," I said in sincere gratitude, taking the heavy bag from him and putting it by the stairs to be taken up later.   
    The four of us moved around the kitchen like a well oiled machine; Mrs. Yuy gathered the ingredients that she needed to make dinner with, putting a pot of water to boil, Heero set the table, and Mr. Yuy and I put the rest of the groceries away. Once the noodles were in the pot, Heero's mother started the cheese sauce. She went to the fridge, looked in it for something and frowned.  
    "Did you get the milk?" she asked her husband.  
    Mr. Yuy stopped rearranging their pantry for a moment to think about it.  
    "Dammit," he muttered, "I knew I forgot something."  
    His wife looked more amused by this than annoyed.   
    "I'll go back out," he sighed and started to walk towards the kitchen doorway.  
    "I can go," I offered.  
    "You don't need to do that, Duo, it's a quick drive to the grocery store," he assured me.  
    "I don't mind," I argued, "You just got home from work, and there's a convenience store just a five minute walk from here that would be faster. It won't take me long."  
    "That's very kind of you," he smiled affectionately at me and dug a five dollar bill out of his pocket, handing it over to me, "If you insist..."  
    I took the bill from him before he could change his mind. I think he understood that I wanted to do it as a kind of way to pay them back for letting me stay there, even if it was a tiny thing, and I don't think that he had been very eager to go back out into the cold anyway.   
    "Take one of Heero's jackets," Mrs. Yuy called after me as I left the kitchen, "and a scarf!"  
    I waved back at her, doing what I was told and even grabbing a pair of gloves from their closet just so she would feel better. Never in a million years would I have thought that doing a five minute errand for Heero's parents would be the thing that screwed me over, but it was. If I hadn't opened my mouth, everything would have turned out fine, at least for that day, but it isn't like I had some kind of warning that just going out to get a gallon of milk was going to turn into a disaster, so I think I can be forgiven.   
    At five pm, even the small convenience store that I went to was fairly busy. People were just getting off of work and stopping by to grab a quick dinner or groceries that they needed. The wait in line almost made the shorter trip not worth it, but the milk was cheaper than it would have been at the grocery store. I wondered if Mr. Yuy knew that and made a mental note to tell him, not that the dollar and a half difference was really hurting their family much. Now that I think about it, I never did tell him that.  
    I might have gotten out of there just fine at that point. I hadn't been paying much attention to anyone around me, and everyone else was too lost in their own worlds to pay much attention to me. I got up to the counter, paid for the milk, took my change, and started to leave. Of all the things in the world, it was the gloves that fucked me over. Specifically, the right one. I had held the milk in my left hand and taken the right off to put in the jacket pocket while I had been in line, the heat from the oven and case that held food items like hot dogs and burritos making my hands sweat.   
    "Hey, kid, you dropped something," someone from behind me in line called just as I was about to leave.  
    I turned and saw that a middle aged man was holding the damnable glove. I took it from him, thanking him, and that was when I noticed my father by the refrigerator cases, holding what looked like a wrapped tuna sandwich in his hand and deliberating between it and one of the egg and ham ones. I felt completely cold all over, like I was back outside, but worse. My stomach dropped to my knees and I felt sick. I felt like I had stumbled into a nightmare while I had been wide awake. What the hell was he doing there? Had he come looking for me, I wondered in extreme paranoia.   
    But that was stupid, there was no way that he could have known I would be going to that convenience store, and when. He was there on one of his breaks, I realized, getting something to eat, that was all. Why he had chosen that convenience store instead of one closer to work, I didn't know. Maybe because things were known to be cheaper there or maybe he had been doing some errand on that part of town. All I knew was that the man that I had been trying to avoid, and had been so confident that I would be able to, was right there. Worse, he had glanced over at the man that had called out to me and saw me. I watched as those steel grey eyes of his went from surprise to hardened coldness as he put the sandwiches back in the case and took a step towards me.   
    If I had stayed right where I was, I might have been ok. My father hates being embarrassed and making a scene in front of other people. Surrounded by other shoppers, he might have just yelled at me a little and that would have been it. But I panicked. Terrified that he had seen me and thinking of what he might do to me, I quickly left the convenience store and headed back towards the Yuys' house. I think I was in some mild form of shock, feeling like this wasn't happening and actually feeling betrayed that I had seen him in north Nausten, like he had invaded my territory and my sense of calm.   
    My first instinct when I got out the door was to just make a run for it since I could easily outrun him, but I didn't trust the few patches of ice on the sidewalk. Wouldn't that be hysterical if I ended up in the hospital from a fall instead of a beating? Ironically, no one would believe me if I tried to tell them that. I only hoped that my father wouldn't be stupid enough to try to hit me while I was on the street, or that I had gotten enough of a head start from him. But hope aside, I think that I knew exactly what was going to happen from the moment that I had spotted him in that convenience store.  
    I made it three blocks. I probably could have made it further, but then I realized that I, like a child, had been walking as quickly as I could back to Heero's house. My sanctuary. Like a little kid, I had been thinking that I would be perfectly safe if I could just get to it before my father caught up with me, if he was even following me. But then common sense flooded back. If my father really was following me, and I was too scared to look behind me to check, then he was going to figure out where I was going, where Heero lived.   
    It wasn't really that big of a deal. My father could very easily find out who I had been hanging around with and where my one and only friend lived. And even if he did know, what did I think he was going to do about it? Make trouble for Heero's parents? Why would he even care? But the thought of leading my father to their doorstep, to that other life that I had been living, to the place that was as close to a home as I had ever had, horrified me. So instead, I migrated my way towards the closest bus stop that I could think of. If my father was just on his break, he wouldn't risk being late by stalking me onto a bus, at least I hoped that he wouldn't, and even if he did, I was still willing to bet that he wouldn't do anything to me in front of other people.  
    I didn't even make it halfway to the bus stop before a familiar, strong hand grabbed me by the back of the jacket and practically threw me into an empty alley between the post office and a consignment shop. My sneaker hit a patch of ice and I fell hard, almost right onto the sharp corner of a nearby dumpster. The milk went flying to the ground, the cap cracking and milk spilling everywhere. Before I could register that I had even fallen, that hand grabbed me by the arm and hauled me up. Face to face, my father's expression was one of dark rage. Trying to run from him had probably only made things worse. I didn't feel any better that he was sober. My father can be plenty unreasonable and crazy without alcohol, if he gets angry enough, and he was plenty angry right then.  
    "Where is it?!" he snarled at me, pinning me to the brick wall by the front of the jacket.  
    Even just holding me with one hand, there was no way that I could escape his grip.  
    "What?" I asked in confusion.  
    "That filthy, mangy animal that you've been keeping in _my_ house!" he shook me, making me hit my head on the wall, "Where the hell did you hide it?!"  
    My blood went cold. So he _had_ known about Pepper. And he hadn't given up trying to find her, even after he had torn my room apart. Looking at him then, his eyes full of hatred and rage and disgust, I knew without any kind of doubts in my mind that had he found her that night, he would have killed her, like one might kill a diseased rat that they had seen scurrying across their kitchen floor. Never before, even when I had made it to the Yuys that morning, had I felt such an incredibly relief that I had gotten her out of that house. It made me feel weak and dizzy and I had to keep reminding myself 'she's safe, she's safe, I finally did something right.'   
    "I got rid of it!" I exclaimed, not really a lie, "It's not there anymore-"  
    He let go of the jacket and slapped me hard across the face. I lurched to the side with the blow, tasting blood as my lip split open. Before I had the chance to think beyond the sharp pain on my cheek and mouth, he pinned me to the wall again, his arm pressed threateningly against my throat.   
    "Where do you think you get off, huh?!" he snarled at me, his breath hot and unpleasant as it washed over my face, "Bringing that disgusting thing into my home?! Hiding it from me, like all the other lies! The animal, the money, quitting your fucking jobs! You're nothing but a two-faced liar, a piece of scum to lie to your own father's face!"  
    For some reason, I flashed to my first day of school, of Relena writing 'liar' on my face in permanent marker and my crying about it, insisting that I wasn't a liar. I felt that pain again at my father's accusation. I wanted to protest that it wasn't true, I wasn't a liar, I was a good boy. But that thought was from a child, and it wasn't the truth. I _am_ a liar. I hadn't been back then, when I had been nine years old, but I certainly had become one. My father had turned me into one. I lie about everything now. My jobs, the beatings, the rapes, the extra money. I've had to lie, just to survive living with him. I was lying to Heero, the one person that I've never wanted to lie to, because I can't bear him ever knowing what my father really does to me.  
    "Did you think that I would never find out?!" he sneered at me and shoved his arm further against my throat. For a moment, I was terrified, truly terrified, that he was going to choke me to death, or maybe snap my neck like I had thought he would do to my cat, "Did you think that I would never speak to Andre again and find out that you don't work for him or Sal anymore?! After busting my ass getting you those jobs, you just up and quit for a better job, so you can hide money right under my damned nose?! Do you think I'm a mother fucking idiot, that I can't tell when you're hiding something from me, when you're laughing at me behind my back?! Well, you're not getting a single, red cent from me from now on!"  
    He was screaming and I hoped that he would keep ranting, that someone might hear him and come see what the fuss was about, but when I glanced at the opening of the alley, I couldn't see anyone walking on the street at all, only cars going past. Even if I did, I doubted anyone was going to stop what was happening. My father moved his arm away from my throat and I desperately took a deep breath of air, but it was immediately driven from my lungs as he drove his fist into my gut. All the air that I had came out in a single, gasping breath as I gagged and coughed at the powerful blow. He grabbed me by the jacket again and pinned me down, far from done with me.  
    "Well, I'm not stupid, you two faced punk! I know that you haven't been coming home at night! Where have you been slinking off to like some filthy rat, huh?! Have any more jobs that you've decided to hide from us?! Where the _fuck_ have you been?!" he roared in my face, "and what the hell have you been doing?!"  
    He said it like it was some extreme accusation, like he thought that I really was going behind his back and doing something shameful. Why did he even care, I thought. Why did he care what I did at all? He never seemed to care before, if I didn't come home at night.  
    'But he wasn't fucking me back then,' I thought bitterly.  
    Was that it? Did my disappearing acts just piss him off because I wasn't there for him to mount like a two dollar whore? Or did he just feel slighted, knowing that I had somewhere to go to at night? Was this just another thing that he wanted to take from me to make himself feel better?  
    "I've been with a friend!" I gasped out.  
    "You don't _have_ any fucking friends!" he mocked snidely and grabbed at the hair on the right side of my head, twisting it until I cried out in pain, "Tell me the truth!"  
    "I do have a friend!" I yelled, squirming and trying to get out from under his grip, but it was impossible, "He lets me stay the night at his house whenever I want to!"  
    I hated myself then for admitting that to my father. He had no right to know about my personal life. He sure as hell had never had any interest in it when I had been growing up. If it weren't for him, I wouldn't even need to go over Heero's all the time! I hated that I was so weak, so frightened of my father that the truth would just come out of me like that, but there was no way that I was going to give up Heero's name. No matter what my father did to me, I wouldn't betray him. If my father found out where I had been staying, it wasn't going to come from my mouth.  
    "Who?! That rich fuck that you've been hanging around?!" my father snarled, spitting it out like just mentioning Heero was this foul tasting thing that he wanted out of his mouth.  
    Everything around me went cold. Or maybe it was everything in me. My father knew about Heero. How? How had he found out? In reality, that wasn't that hard to believe. Everyone at school knew that Heero and I are close friends, and my father used to be a detective. It wasn't like I had gone to great lengths to hide our friendship. But there was something about knowing that my father had found out about us that didn't sit well with me. I felt like he had been stalking me, peering into things that were very private, where he was unwanted. I felt like he was violating me all over again.   
    "Do you really think that he's friends with you?" my father laughed harshly, mocking me with just that one sound that made me feel like a shy child again under his derisive stare, "Someone as well off and liked as him? What on earth do you think he could possibly see in trash like you? He's just using you, you moron! While you simper and trail after him like a loyal mutt, he's laughing at you behind your back! Look at the pathetic piece of garbage, how easily it can be bought! What did you think? That he could buy you a few nice things and that means that he likes you? Just how stupid and naive are you? All you are is an embarrassment to this family!"  
    He shoved me and I almost fell over another patch of ice. He looked annoyed that I hadn't and I realized that that had been his intention, to make me fall. I am ashamed of this more than I am of anything else that happened that day, or anything else that's happened to me in a long time, but those words made a doubt worm its way into my heart. My father has a way of doing that to me, making me doubt things that I've believed in. It was only for a second, a single second's worth of weakness, but I doubted Heero's friendship. Was my father right, the vulnerable, childish part of me wondered.   
    Was he right that Heero was just slumming with me, making fun of me and using me? Was he only friends with me because I was the only one who knew his secret, the only other gay kid that he knew? Did he think me funny and pathetic for trailing after him? After all, what did I have to offer someone like him? Heero was funny and smart and handsome and before he had fucked up his social life, he had been well liked. He had a family and a dog and talent and a future. What did I have? What was I to him?   
    It didn't take all too long for my sanity to return to me. I remembered all the things that he had done for me, all the times that he had held me as I had cried, sitting by my bedside in the hospital, demanding that I tell on my father, him buying me all those things, kissing me on the forehead... and I hated myself for ever doubting him. How could I ever doubt the same boy who had hugged me when I had been crying my heart out in the school library over the man that had called me worthless every day for my entire life, the same man whose rare acts of affection towards me seemed to tire him out more than his rages and beatings? Did he even love anyone, did he even know what that emotion was? Did he even understand what true friendship was, was he just putting me down for having a friend or did he really believe that I was being made fun of?   
    And suddenly I knew that it didn't matter. It didn't matter if Heero sincerely cared for me or if he was just stringing me along, even though I knew that that wasn't the case. Because I loved him. I loved him more than anyone else, even my father. If I could withstand beatings and rapes for him, then what could I endure for Heero's sake? What hurts could I wade through, just for the chance to hear his voice, to feel the warmth that he gave me every time he was kind to me?  
    "You're not going to hang out with him anymore," my father snapped at me, "Your responsibilities are to _this_ family. You can keep your fucking job, but you're going to give me every one of your pay checks from now on and you are going to stay away from that punk, do you understand?!"  
    That childish voice wailed 'yes' in fear, 'yes' it would stay away from Heero, whatever my father said. It could be a good boy, it could do what it's father said, just like always.  
    "No," I said, glaring at my father with a hardened expression that was probably just like the one he had just then.  
    My father's hand released the jacket again, falling limply away. The shocked expression he had right then almost made me smile. Just that one look was worth anything that he might do to me. I had never told him no before like that, so calmly and with such surety. I'm actually surprised that he didn't immediately belt me, too surprised that I was telling him no to know what to do, at least for the moment. I took advantage of it, even if there was a little voice inside of me head screaming at me to abort, to not say another word. It was like that moment in the kitchen, ranting at him after telling him that I had been the one to throw out his beer. I couldn't stop myself. I hate to admit it, but my father and I aren't that dissimilar in some aspects, like our inability to control ourselves when we get mad enough. And him accusing Heero of using me had gotten me plenty mad once I had pulled my head out of my ass.  
    "I'm _not_ going to stop hanging out with him just because you don't like him!" I yelled at him, letting my anger fuel me past my common sense and self-preservation, "Heero's family actually _likes_ me, no matter if you say that there's nothing in me to like! There's something there that _they_ do. They're nice to me, they care about me, and I'm not going to let you take my friendship with him away like you have everything else-"  
    His face contorted with rage and he slammed his fist into the left side of my face, catching me on the cheek and jaw. I nearly bit off a chunk of my tongue and I could taste blood again, but this time from my gums. Normally, that would have been enough to shut me up, but not then. He thought that beating me would get me to say that I was sorry for talking back to him, but it only enraged me further. He seemed so pathetic to me then, a grown adult beating on a teenaged boy because he didn't like what he had to say. I laughed. I couldn't help it. It just burst right out of me.  
    "If Heero's parents offered it to me," I hissed at him, this black emotion coming over me, this intense desire to hurt him in all of the ways that he had hurt me. It was an ugly feeling that made me feel sick, "if they ever offered me to stay with them forever, I would take it in a _heart beat_. I would never come home again! Who the hell wants to be part of our fucked up family anyway? I'm not the one who's an embarrassment to us! You are! You want to know why I quit those two jobs so I could take on one that pays better, all in order to hide some money? You want to know why I've been lying to you about it, keeping money from you? It isn't because you're too irresponsible to use that money for something that we need, like bills and it's not because I wanted to use it on something impractical. I'm not like you, I had no intention of using it just to get wasted when my family can barely make it through the winter! I was saving money so I can get as far away from you as I possibly can! Not my family, not Mom, just _you_!"  
    My father's face continued to contort, moving past just anger or rage and into something much uglier.  
    "Shut," he began to snarl, grabbing my hair again and twisting it, "the fuck up, you miserable shit!"  
    What happened next is confusing and garbled in my memories, but I'll try my best and only tell the facts, what I'm sure actually happened. One minute my father was screaming at me and pulling at my hair. The next, he was pushing my head down. My first impression was that he had slipped on the same patch of ice that I had. Maybe that's the truth, and maybe it's not. Maybe he had done it on purpose. Some part of me believes that he did, while another wants to believe that it was all an accident.   
    My head collided with the edge of the dumpster. At least, I think it did. It could have been the wall. All I knew was that something hit my head and hit it hard. My whole skull felt like it was vibrating for a second, like I had been struck with a damned battering ram. Everything became very... confused. I'm sure that it was the dumpster because I felt something tear at the skin of my left temple and there was this metallic ringing noise in my ears. My thoughts jumbled around and became nonsensical. I didn't black out because I could still hear my father screaming at me, but there was this... red haze surrounding my head and for a moment, I could both see and not see, like information was getting lost somewhere.  
    "I am your father," my father was screaming, but his words were coming to me slowly through that haze, almost nonsensical at first, like I could hear him but not understand him, "and I don't give a single, solitary shit if you like that or not! You'll listen to me and do what I'm fucking telling you to do! If I tell you to not see that brat again, you'll drop him like a maggoty piece of bread. If I tell you to jump off a pier, you'll FUCKING do it, do you understand, you prick?!"  
    I was on the ground, I realized, like I had just crumpled there, sitting on my legs. My head was still ringing, but every second that ringing was leaving me and pain was replacing it, the most terrible, heavy, sharp pain that I have felt, even worse than my last concussion. I felt something hot and thick dripping down the side of my head. I was sure that it was blood, but with the agony that I felt in my skull, it might as well have been my brains leaking out of me. That's what it felt like, that my brain had been liquefied. The pain was so intense that that was the only thing that I could think about. I felt sick to my stomach and like I might scream or pass out right there, like there was a ball of barbed wire in my skull, ripping me apart. I felt like I was on a boat in a turbulent sea, not even the ground under me was steady.  
    My hand fumbled at the side of my face until I felt it, a cut. Even in my incredibly confused and concussed state, I could tell that it wasn't too bad, most of the pain wasn't coming from it, but from inside of me. I pressed my hand against it and I tried to keep the blood in me, but it gushed out between my fingers. My father kept screaming, but at that point, whatever he was saying was white noise. He might as well have been speaking in another language. With my other hand, I reached out for the dumpster. There was a streak of blood trailing down the green, dirty metal.  
    'My blood,' I realized and felt so sick that I might throw up.  
    My vision was double and it took me three tries just to find the edge of it. When I pulled myself up, my legs shook and for a moment, I wasn't so sure where the ground was. My stomach lurched and I gagged. My vision wavered unsteadily, just keeping my eyes open hurt and made me nauseous. My father grabbed my arm and I thought that he was trying to keep me steady, but when I looked at him, he was furious. He had asked me something, I realized, but I didn't have the words. He was going to hurt me more. He had scrambled my brains, but that wasn't enough. I hadn't seen him that crazily angry since Mom had poured out his beer.   
    'Is he going to kill me this time?' I wondered.  
    Maybe it was just the concussion, but I didn't feel the terror that I felt before at that thought. That would come later. My only, actual thought was that I really needed to get back to Heero. He was probably already worried about why it was taking me so long to get milk.  
    'Did they start dinner without me?'   
    Such a stupid thought when I was bleeding a river out of my head and could barely tell up from down, but that's the thought that came to me, and it was that thought that had me trying to pull my arm from my father's grip, but his hand was tight around me. I saw his other hand tighten into a fist, his eyes piercing with intent. I knew right then that with the fog that I was thinking through, there was no way that I was going to be able to dodge in time.   
    Laughter exploded from the mouth of the alley, sending icy needles through my brain, but I wasn't in so much pain that I couldn't spot an opportunity. Right there, on the street but no more than twenty feet from us, a young couple in their twenties, the girl with long, golden blonde hair and wearing a red and green scarf that hurt me just to look at it and a much taller, dark haired man were laughing and holding hands. I worried that they would walk right past us and I would lose my chance, but like a miracle, they stopped, in full view of me and my father. All they would need to do was turn and they would see us, a bloodied teenager being held down by a furious man.  
    My father paused, his fist frozen as he had pulled it back to hit me. He was calculating the odds, trying to decide if hitting me was worth the possibility of these two strangers causing a fuss over it. It was a fifty-fifty chance that they would. Not everyone, in fact very few people, wants to get involved with something like this. But that hesitation was all that I needed. I pulled at my arm again and this time managed to get it free.  
    I ran. Even though every single step felt like my skull was getting hit by a sledgehammer, I just kept running. I pushed past the couple, ignoring their indignation as I nearly collided with them, and ran towards home. At least, that was the thought in my head at the time, 'go home', only it was Heero's home that I was thinking about, not mine. I pulled the hood of the jacket up over my head so no one that I passed would see that I was bleeding. I didn't want the trouble any more than my father did. I was incredibly glad that the sun had set hours ago, because every headlight that flashed across my vision, every neon light, every lamp post was like an arrow being shot right through my head.   
    I'd had worse concussions before, but not many. My vision didn't want to right itself and the confusion that I was feeling kept lingering. It wasn't so bad that I thought that I would actually vomit, and I was aware that the dizziness and confusion were going to fade, it was the pain that almost had me on my knees. I suppose I have my father, ironically, to thank for making it back to the Yuys' house at all. If it hadn't been my terror of him and his fist, I would have just laid down in that alley until the pounding in my skull had stopped.      
    I made it two whole blocks before it finally dawned on me that my father wasn't chasing me, and also that I should probably stop running since the motion of it could not be good for my head injury and I was going to hit a patch of ice sooner or later with my luck. The last thing I needed was another blow to the head. I slowed my pace, still walking fast, but not quite jogging. I just wanted to get home, assess the damage that my father had done, and lay down, maybe take some pills for the headache. I think I thought that, if I went too slowly, I wasn't going to make it at all. I could feel myself shaking and some part of me understood that it wasn't at all from the cold.  
    By the time I walked back into Heero's house, though not before I made absolutely sure that I wasn't being trailed, the worst of my confusion was ebbing off, leaving me feeling like I had just woken up from some dream and incredibly groggy, but I could think again at some limited capacity, although I was still dizzy and feeling sick. And the pain was getting worse by the second. The lights in the house were mercifully dim compared to lights on the street. I took off the jacket, wincing as I finally felt the blow to my stomach that my father had given me and hung it up in the closet. I could hear everyone in the kitchen, no doubt either eating or getting ready to eat. The smell of the macaroni and cheese was thick, but it did nothing to help my nausea.   
    I almost tried to go to the bathroom upstairs, but I knew that the stairs would do me in. Just what I didn't need, falling down some steps. Instead, I migrated into the downstairs bathroom, which was decorated almost exactly like the one upstairs. I made the mistake of switching on the lights and I almost cried out in pain as it felt like twin spears were being thrust into my eyes. I dimmed the lights to a tolerable level, low enough that I wouldn't go insane and bright enough that I could see my reflection in the mirror.   
    It wasn't pretty at all. My skin was the color of milk, the only color from the blood on the left side of my face, my bloody split lip, and the reddened skin where my father had struck me. It was better than a black eye at least. But it was the place where my head had struck the edge of the dumpster that made me want to throw up. The collision with the hard, flat metal had left a large, black and blood red bruise on the left side of my head and the edge had sliced right through my skin from just a few inches away from my eye all the way across my temple. It was no longer gushing blood, but the bleeding was still steady, if sluggish.   
    The cut was shallow, and I was still confident that it wouldn't need stitches, but that wasn't the problem. The problem was that my skin hadn't just been cut, but almost peeled, and there was a flap of skin just hanging there, the origin of most of the blood smeared over my temple and dripping down my jaw. It wasn't as bad as I'm making it sound, it just shocked me. The worst was that I couldn't leave it like that. Not only did it look gross, it wasn't like the skin was just going to heal like that. Unless I wanted to go to a hospital, and I really didn't, I was going to have to fix it myself. Especially if I didn't want Heero to fuss over me. If I could just get the bleeding to stop and get rid of that extra bit of skin, I could slap a bandage on it and just tell them that I had bumped my head a little. No one would have to know how badly I was hurt or even that I had a concussion.  
    I know what you're thinking, that I was being completely ridiculous, thinking that no one would notice my acting weirdly or that I could act normally with a head trauma, but I wasn't exactly thinking clearly at that point. All I could do was try to keep going on, do what I needed to do, and pretend like what had happened hadn't. I didn't even want to think about it. It wasn't anything more than what my father had done to me before, but he had never been so brazen.   
    Sure, he had chased me out of the house before and hit me on our front lawn, but that was different. Not one of our neighbors cared enough to call the cops on him, and he had never hit me _severely_ outside of our home. Most people would have seen that and thought that I deserved it. Just a punk getting punished by his dad. Of course, most of our neighbors were also assholes, so you can take that with a grain of salt. Certainly not one of them cared enough about me to have the cops show up on our street, especially not the same cops that played poker at my house with my father.   
    But this... he had hit me in public. Maybe the alley hadn't been in the middle of the damned road, but public enough that anyone could have seen him screaming and hitting me. He had always been careful. Even if he didn't care if he hit me in the face, he had made sure that no third parties had ever seen _him_ hitting me. But that night, he hadn't cared. He had been so angry, sober, but far from in control. And that was the thing that terrified me, that he was so out of control that he hadn't even cared if anyone had seen him. I kept remembering him cocking his fist back and hesitating, that far off look in his eyes as he weighed how big the risk was. In the past, he never would have gone after me outside like that, and even if he had, if he had ever been so close to being seen, he would have immediately put his fist down. But not that night. That night, his rage had almost won over his common sense.   
    "Duo?" I heard Heero calling for me and froze.  
    They knew that I was there, they had to have heard the door open. Could I hide the damage before they figured out where I was? I don't know why I panicked right then. It wasn't like they had never seen me hurt before, and it wasn't like I would be very successful in hiding a wound that big along with my concussion symptoms, but it was suddenly very important to me that they didn't find me in that bathroom, blood all over my face. I didn't want them to see me like that. I didn't want them to ask what had happened to me. I didn't want to remember my father slamming my head into that dumpster, because I can rely on that hazy memory and try to believe that it was just an accident, that he had slipped, but deep down I knew that that was just my denial talking. He had done it and he had seen the after math and hadn't cared. All that had mattered to him was punishing me for talking back.  
    I opened one of the drawers next to the sink, rummaging through it frantically, and managed to find bandages, some anitbacterial ointment, and a small pair of scissors that would work just fine cutting the skin off. I didn't answer Heero, I didn't want him to see me there with skin hanging off of me and blood everywhere. He would freak out, but more than that, he would be disgusted and if I saw that on his face, it would kill me. I closed the drain in the sink and filled the basin with water. My stomach tensing and my vision turning grey from what I was going to do, I swayed on my feet. That time in the hospital after I had saved Quatre's life flashed in my head. The doctor telling me that I had almost been flayed... a dizzy wave hit me and I almost puked out my guts right there.  
    'Just do it, you fucking pathetic coward,' I thought angrily.  
    I washed my hands quickly and grabbed at the flap of skin, pulling it away from my face until I could clearly see where the skin was connected. Wanting to scream, I began to cut it away. To my surprise, it didn't hurt nearly as much as I thought that it would, but it was just skin, I wasn't cutting through nerves. Still, it stung from me pulling on it, and just the sight of it was enough to make me gag. I like to think that I have a pretty strong constitution. I've walked to the hospital with bone sticking out of my skin from a broken arm before, but there was just something so sickening and terrible about cutting through my own skin. Or maybe that was part of the concussion, too.  
    I felt such huge relief when I got all of the loose skin off and flushed it down the toilet. Fresh, thick blood poured from the wound and the area looked raw and angry red, but I knew from looking at it that the bleeding would stop soon. I dipped a wash cloth into the water, feeling like a shit for using it and getting it covered in my blood, but I had nothing else that I could use. I didn't even think about what I was going to do with the cloth afterwards, and how impossible it was going to be to make Heero and his parents believe that I wasn't hurt as soon as they saw the amount of blood on it. That alone told me how far gone I was at that point. It might have just been the head injury, but I think I was in shock as well, between the half-assed self-care and the violence.   
    "Duo?" I heard Heero right outside the door, "Are you alright?"  
    "I-I'm fine, I'll be out in a minute," I stammered and winced at how shaky my voice sounded.  
    I wouldn't have believed me and Heero sure as hell didn't. I saw him stride into the bathroom from his reflection in the mirror and cursed myself as I realized that I hadn't closed the door behind me.  
    "What's-" he started to say, but then he got a look at me as I turned to him, "Oh, god, Duo!"  
    I nearly hissed at him to keep his voice down. It was bad enough that he was freaking out, just over a little bit of blood, I didn't need his mother to see and think that I needed to go to the hospital. But then he was there by my side, his face pale and his eyes wide with fear and I couldn't say anything to him. I just felt guilty. I was worrying him again, hurting him, because I was incapable of stopping my father from hitting me. The blood on my face was all my fault for talking back to him, but Heero wouldn't understand that, he would just feel guilty and horrified that I had been hurt and there was nothing that he could do.   
    "What the hell happened?" he said in a bare whisper as he grabbed at the washcloth.  
    "It's just a cut," I tried to soothe him, but he gasped when he managed to get the cloth from me.   
    "That's a lot more than a cut!" he snapped at me.  
    I almost snapped right back at him that he was overreacting, but then I saw the washcloth. I had been expecting a few spots of blood, but the blue cloth had been turned a dark red, soaked with the stuff. I guess the cut had been worse than I had thought.   
    "I'm fine," I started to insist when I noticed that his parents were standing in the doorway.  
    I almost groaned as I realized the three ring circus that this was going to become. I nearly wished that I was back at my house, where I could tend to my injuries in peace. Don't get me wrong, later I would remember all of this and feel happy that they cared so much about me, but at that moment, I was just too tired to deal with everyone panicking over me.   
    "Duo, what on earth happened... you're bleeding!" Mrs. Yuy looked like she was going to start to cry and I didn't know what to do.  
    "I... I fell," I lied and saw Heero's face go hard as a rock, not believing me at all, "I just hit my head, that's all."  
    I didn't elaborate for him. He could believe what he wanted, that Zechs or my father had done it, but I wasn't going to tell him what really happened, not with his parents there.  
    He dropped the washcloth in the sink. My blood billowed out of it like flowers. I remember thinking that it was kind of pretty, if I didn't think of it as my blood and knew that I was losing it.   
    "We have to get you to the hospital," my friend fussed, taking me by my arm, "It'll be ok-"  
    It was too much like my father grabbing my arm as Heero tried to lead me out of the bathroom and I had to pull my arm out of his grip.  
    "No!" I protested, his panic making _me_ panic, "I don't need to. Please, Heero, I'm fine, I'm really fine! It's just a little bit of blood!"  
    "A little..." Heero said aghast before blowing up at me, "Dammit, Duo, have you taken a look at yourself?!"  
    "Stand back," his father pushed his way past his wife and his son, easily taking control of the situation like a general, "Give him some room to breathe, Heero."  
    Heero hesitated, looking afraid and it took me a moment to realize that it wasn't his dad that was scaring him, but me. He was actually frightened for me and I wondered if this was just... some kind of emotional back up from all the other times that he had seen me hurt and I had managed to talk him down, or if I really did look that terrible.  
    "Come on, Heero," his father said more gently, "You're scaring him."  
    It was entirely manipulative on his part, and I saw that he really had said that on purpose, to get his son out of the way, but it had the intended result. Heero looked both alarmed that he really was scaring me, although I chalked it up more to confused panic than actual fear of him and his intense concern, and hesitant to leave me. It was his mother that pulled him away and Heero, thankfully, let her. Then Mr. Yuy was standing in front of me and the other two just kind of faded into the background. I didn't have the mental capacity to deal with more than one person at a time.   
    Justin looked from my exposed wound to the bloody wash cloth, his mouth set in a grim, serious line that belied his soothing words to his son.  
    "I'm so, so sorry," I apologized, mistaking his expression for anger that I had destroyed one of their wash cloths, "I should have used toilet paper or a paper towel-"  
    "It's fine, Duo," he said softly, clearly not caring one bit about the washcloth, it was the blood that had bothered him, "Cloth is better for a wound like this."  
    He started to reach for my face and then paused when I tensed, flashing for a moment to my father slapping me. I'm proud to say that I didn't flinch, but I think my expression did something weird, because Heero's father looked very unsure, almost disturbed before he regained his calm composure.  
    "May I?" he asked me, gesturing to my head.   
    Not really seeing a way around it, but trusting him, I nodded tiredly. He lightly took my bruised chin in his hand and tilted my head towards the light so he could see the injury.   
    "This is more than just a bump," he mused, "What did you hit?"  
    "The edge of a dumpster," I admitted and he hissed in sympathy.  
    "Are you in a lot of pain?" he asked me, "I have some antiseptic that will numb the area a little for a time."  
    "Not too much," I would hate my face feeling numb more than I would the stinging from the wound, and it wasn't my face that was hurting me the most, "My head hurts and it stings, but it's manageable."  
    The headache was severely less manageable, but I didn't tell him that.   
    "The bleeding is stopping," Mr. Yuy said with the same level of relief that I felt, "and the cut itself doesn't look deep enough to need stitches, so there's that. It would probably be a good idea to get some, it's a bit more than just a paper cut, but..."  
    "Please," I begged him, feeling ashamed of myself for doing it, but unable to stop the fear that I felt, "I don't want to go to hospital. I... I don't want all that..."  
    "Fuss?" he finished for me and I relaxed that he, unlike Heero, wasn't immediately insisting that I should be dragged off to the emergency room, "I understand. I'm not a big fan of hospitals, either. Taking care of yourself at home is a lot more comforting, but hospitals are sometimes necessary, even when you're sure that you can take care of yourself, Duo. Just let me decide if it isn't needed or not, alright?"  
    I sighed, but nodded, although I still felt comforted that he understood that I really didn't want to go and wasn't merely being stubborn. And I wasn't, really. Sure, I didn't want to go because of the hassle when I honestly didn't think that I needed it, and I was sick of going to that place, but it was more than that. I've probably mentioned this before, but I just... really don't like hospitals. It isn't some kind of screaming phobia, ok? It's just that I feel like I've spent half of my life in a hospital waiting room, in some kind of pain. That's all the place means to me. Pain and fear. After Quatre got hit by that truck, my fear and anxiety of the place just got worse.   
    "This is going to need some serious antibacterial disinfectant," Mr. Yuy noted as he looked at the raw area of flesh where I had cut the skin off, "Dumpsters aren't exactly clean, even the outsides of them."  
    He frowned suddenly and tilted my head more, looking at my eyes.   
    "I think you have an concussion," he with serious concern, "Your left pupil is bigger than your right is."  
    "I know," I sighed again.  
    I had hoped to hide the concussion from everyone, but that would have probably been impossible even if he hadn't noticed that my eyes were fucked up.  
    "Duo, you should have told me!" Heero's father scolded, "You could have serious head trauma, especially if you've had other concussions before!"  
    I had already heard this spiel from a hundred doctors. The more concussions I had, the more likely I was going to get another one, even over a smaller blow, and the bigger the risk was going to be. And it was true that I've gotten quite a few of them in my lifetime, but besides a few severe headaches, I haven't experienced any long term side effects from them. I glanced over Heero, who was still standing in the door way. He had his arms crossed over his chest and looked like he had just swallowed a cat. When was I going to stop making him so frantic with worry over me? As good as it felt to have someone who cared, it made me feel worse that he was afraid that I might... I don't know, slip in a coma one day or something.  
    "This one isn't that bad," I assured his father, "My head hurts a lot, especially around bright lights, it's hard to think, and I feel dizzy, but I've had worse ones before."  
    Both Heero and his father only looked more worried at that.  
    "Please," I begged again, "I know my own head, I know when I'm hurt enough to need a doctor."  
    "How can I trust you to tell me when you do," Mr. Yuy accused, "when you tried to hide this from me?"  
    If he wanted me to feel ashamed for hiding the head trauma from them, I wasn't going to. If they had never found out about the extent of the injury, they wouldn't be so anxious right now, and it wasn't like I couldn't take care of myself.  
    "Did you black out when you hit your head?" Justin bulled forward, finally letting go of my face, "Experience any memory loss? Nausea?"  
    "I'm still kind of sick to my stomach," I admitted, "but I'm starting to feel better now, less shaky. No loss of consciousness or memory loss exactly. My memories are a little fuzzy, but if I have any memory loss, it was only for a second. I remember hitting my head and I remember walking back here."  
    Mr. Yuy ran his hand through his bangs, the same gesture that Heero would have when he was trying to come to a decision about something serious.  
    "It doesn't sound like you have any symptoms of a severe concussion, but I'm not a medical doctor," he sighed in frustration.  
    He looked down and suddenly, his expression softened. I realized that he was looking at my hands, which were still shaking a little, and blushed.   
    "Alright," he conceded in a much gentler tone, "it's highly unlikely that you need a doctor-"  
    "Dad!" Heero started to protest, his blue eyes looking over at me like he thought that I would keel over at any minute.  
    " _But_ ," his father interrupted him, "you must absolutely tell me if any of your symptoms get worse or there any changes."  
    "Yes, sir," I conceded tiredly.  
    "And we're going to keep a watch on you tonight," he added, "You'll have to sleep in two hour shifts, just for tonight."  
    "I know the drill," I murmured and reached up to rub at my forehead before I remembered that I really didn't want to touch any of that area.   
    "Come on, sit down and let's get that cut taken care of before you fall over," he said very kindly, placing his hands on my shoulders and moving me over to the toilet.  
    I obediently sat and nearly fell over as the room spun. It was the feeling of Justin's hand on my forehead that centered me. His skin felt wonderfully warm and felt more real than the porcelain that I was sitting on.   
    "Steady there," he said in this soothing tone that I could have fallen asleep to right there, "Are you positive that you don't want to see a doctor, Duo? We'll pay for any expenses, you know that. You might be hurt worse than you realize."  
    "No," I started to shake my head, then remembered that sudden movement was bad, "I'm fine, it's just the blood loss and dizziness. My head just... really, really hurts, but I'm not going to black out."  
    Heero's dad didn't look at all convinced of that, but didn't push the hospital issue. For once, I was going to win and I think he got that.   
    "Heero, would you go my bathroom?" he asked his son, "There's a bottle of hydrogen peroxide in there."  
    My friend disappeared from the doorway, overly eager to do something to help. I half suspected that his father had asked him to get it to give me a breather from that intense, overprotective stare, but I was too busy being amazed that there was another bathroom on that floor to comment on it. I mean, seriously, how many bathrooms do you need for a family of three? Mr. Yuy dug out a small, plastic tub from under the sink and filled it with warm water, wetting a fresh washcloth and handing me a second one to press against my wound to help soak up the blood that hadn't dried yet.  
    "Having any double vision?" I was asked as he knelt in front of me and started to clean the blood off of my skin, making my head throb harder as he pressed against bruises, but if felt good to get the drying blood off of me.  
    "At first," I admitted, keeping the washcloth to my head until he took it away from me, "but it passed pretty quickly."  
    Mr. Yuy nodded, looking relieved at that. Another good sign that I didn't need a doctor. I almost blurted out right then that one time my father had hit me in the head so hard, I had been unconscious for three days and lost my memory of the previous five for over a week. I still have a hard time remembering that period of my life, besides the horrible head pain and waking up in the hospital with no idea how I had gotten there. But good sense prevailed and I kept quiet. At the time, it had seemed like something that I had needed to tell Heero's father to assure him that this was really not that bad compared to other blows in the head that I had taken, but I guess I can chalk that up to the concussion as well.  
    Heero was quick to return with the peroxide and after he handed it to his father, he fidgeted by the doorway. Justin grabbed some cotton swabs from the drawers and realized that his son was standing there still, shooting him an exasperated look.  
    "Heero, why don't you see what your mother is doing?" he offered, but it was really more of an order.  
    I hadn't even realized that Mrs. Yuy had left us and wondered if I was missing time or I just hadn't noticed. Heero looked unsure, not wanting me out of his sight, but like me, the urge to obey his father was too strong and he left. I hate myself for it, but I was immensely relieved to see him go. I couldn't take him looking at me like that, like it was his fault somehow and he thought that I was going to die, right there in his bathroom.  
    "There," Mr. Yuy said as he knelt in front of me again, medical supplies in hand, "now you can focus on you like you should be instead of feeling guilty about him."  
    I stared at him, amazed that he was so perceptive that he had picked up on that. He chuckled at my expression.  
    "It's very touching," he noted as he unscrewed the cap on the peroxide bottle, "The two of you care about each other a lot, and that's good. But you have enough problems of your own to be dealing with his, too. I think it's in your nature to take on everything at once, but there are just some things that you can't take care on your own, Duo, and there are some things that are not your responsibility to take care of, let alone worry about. Worrying about Heero's feelings and overprotective... issues should not be your main concern when you have a concussion."  
    I flushed darkly at his assessment and nodded sheepishly.   
    "Thank you," I murmured, feeling weird about thanking him for making my best friend go away, but it was just as good for Heero as it was for myself.  
    "This is going to-" he began to warn me when he soaked a cotton swab in the peroxide.  
    "Sting like hell," I finished, "I know."  
    Mr. Yuy looked like he didn't know whether to be amused or bothered that I was that accustomed to the stuff. He pressed the swab to my wound and it did sting like fuck, but I was used to it and didn't so much as wince. The stinging was nothing compared to my headache anyway and the wound was already burning from my cutting the loose skin from it.  
    "I guess you're used to this," he murmured when he saw that I was unaffected by the horrible stinging, but he definitely looked bothered that time.  
    Heero's father was quick and clinical in cleaning and bandaging the wound, reminding me a little bit of Doctor Yeung in that respect. It was rather soothing, having someone who both seemed to know what they were doing and wasn't fussing over me, while still obviously caring that I was hurt. I could see why he was such a good psychiatrist, he just exuded this sense of control and empathy.   
    When he was done putting a large bandage over the bruised and raw area of my head, my hands had stopped shaking and I was feeling better just having the blood off my skin and knowing that all that could be done to take care of the injury had been. Even my dizziness and disorientation seemed to be easing off and was starting to wonder if my concussion wasn't as bad as I had thought that it was. So I was shocked when I stood up and felt everything kind of... shift. Up became down and my head swam. A horrible, screaming pain shot through my brain and I felt like the floor itself had suddenly slanted under my feet. I think I actually groaned and I did a lot more than just sway. I might have fallen if Mr. Yuy hadn't been right there, grabbing my arm and placing a hand on my back to keep me steady.  
    "Whoa, there," he said in surprise, having been almost as unprepared for my near face plant as I had been, "Let's take it easy, shall we?"  
    "I'm sorry," I blurted out even as I grabbed at him to keep myself steady, "I just got dizzy."  
    He seemed dubious of that and I worried that he was already rethinking taking me to the hospital anyway.  
    "Let's find a place for you to sit down, then," he said instead and steered me out of the bathroom, still keeping one hand on my arm and another on my back.  
    Heero and his mother had been busy while Justin had been taking care of me. All of the lights had been turned off, but someone had lit a fire in the fireplace, filling the living room with a soft, but abundant light that didn't hurt my head in the way that artificial light would have. The room was nice and warm from it, making me realize how cold I had been, either from being outside or from shock. Blankets and pillows had been piled up on the couch. As I walked to it, I saw my book bag there along with a table setting on the coffee table near the couch, a plate of macaroni and cheese and a glass of water, along with two very lovely looking white pills on the place mat.   
    Heero was stoking the fire with the air of someone who knows that they're doing something pointless, but needs to do _something_ or they'll go nuts. His mother was fussing with the blankets, and looked up when we came in, wringing her hands in an anxious way.  
    "Is everything all right?" she asked her husband, her dark eyes fixed on me.  
    "As fine as they can be," Justin said and I wasn't sure if he was quipping or making some offhanded remark about me being too stubborn to see a doctor, "I put some disinfectant on Duo's cut, but I'm going to monitor him tonight to make sure that that blow to the head didn't do any serious damage."  
    Mrs. Yuy looked relieved at that and smiled warmly at me.  
    "I thought it might be best if you slept down here tonight. You'll be close to the bathroom if you need it, and the kitchen if you need ice or anything else," she told me.  
    "Thank you, that's a good idea," I said, not mentioning that it was a good idea because I wasn't so sure I would be able to get up and down the steps without hurting myself, but she probably understood that.  
    "I brought your stuff down," Heero finished messing with the fire, still looking nervous and unsure of himself, "just in case you want to do your homework. I know you probably aren't feeling up to it..."  
    "I can write your teachers a note if you're in too much pain to do the work," his father offered.  
    I almost shook my head before remembering that I shouldn't do that, especially not when I was standing.  
    "No, I think I'll be able to do it. I'll try, at least," I told him, trying not to think about doing my math assignments with my headache.   
    As I walked forward, another wave of pain hit me. I sat down a bit too quickly onto the couch, the agony trying to pull me under, and that only made a dizzy spell hit. I rested my head in my hands and tried to ride it out, the thick smell of the hot cheese making my nausea worse. When both the pain and dizziness passed, I looked up from my hands, feeling weary and drained, and into Mrs. Yuy's eyes. She had somehow teleported in front of me on her knees, her hands on mine. There was this depth of sympathy in those eyes that I couldn't handle.   
    "Is there anything that I can get you that will make you feel better?" she asked kindly.  
    "No, thank you," I murmured, not thinking of a single thing that could help.  
    "If you don't feel like eating, I can save this for later," she patted my knee and rose, about to take the bowl of pasta.  
    "I'll try to eat it," I promised and she left it alone.  
    "I'll get you some," she told Heero.  
    "Thanks, Mom," Heero said as he sat down next to me.  
    I felt even guiltier as I realized that they hadn't eaten their dinner yet. They had been waiting for me to come back.  
    "I'm sorry," I blurted out at a sudden thought to Heero's father as he took one of the chairs next to the couch, "I bought the milk, but I... I dropped it."  
    "Don't worry about it," he smiled softly, "We had enough milk for dinner tonight. I'll just go out and buy another in the morning."  
    He brushed it off like it was nothing, the very last thing on his mind and of course it was. Because that was normal, wasn't it? Three dollars worth of milk doesn't mean a lot to anyone, especially compared to dealing with someone with head trauma. Of course he would care more about me than something he could just go out and buy more of. Even a family that didn't make anything near the Yuys' income wouldn't give two shits over something like that. Any sane family, anyway. If I had wasted a gallon of milk, or anything else, really, my father would have given me a black eye, because I had wasted _his_ precious money.   
    The pain tightened around my brain like a damned vice, although sitting down helped immensely with my dizziness. The most important thing in the entire world suddenly became taking the pain pills that had been laid out for me, even though I knew they weren't going to help a whole lot.  
    "Those are pretty strong," Mr. Yuy warned me when I picked up the two pills, "They need to be taken with food, but if you don't feel like eating, we have some Motrin you can have."  
    "I think I'll be ok," I said, but really wasn't sure.      
    Worried that I was going to end up throwing up right there in their living room, I decided to risk it and picked up the bowl of pasta. My stomach rolled at the thought of putting anything in it, and when I put it in my mouth, I barely tasted it at all at first. But it was hot and didn't taste like the blood that I had been tasting in the last hour. After the first couple of bites stayed down, I took the pills with some water. They were horribly bitter, which only meant that they really were strong.   
    Justin got up and left the room for the kitchen when he saw that I had swallowed the pills, leaving Heero and I alone to eat our dinner. I assumed that his parents were eating in the kitchen, at least I hoped that they were. I only managed half of the bowl that Mrs. Yuy had put out for me before my stomach rebelled, strongly, and my nausea was too bad for me to manage another bite.   
    "Do you want to talk about it?" Heero asked, still working on his own bowl.  
    His gaze was piercing and intense, the fire turning his blue eyes to golden, red sapphires, like the ocean waves crashing with some inferno. For a moment, I drowned in it. I wanted to chalk that up to the head trauma, too, but I knew that it wasn't. It was just him. Him and my stupid heart.   
    "Not really," I murmured and took a long sip from the glass of water, "It was just an accident."  
    It wasn't really a lie, I wasn't a hundred percent sure that it _hadn't_ been an accident, but it was a lie. I knew that it was.  
    "You can drop the act," he said a bit coldly, but not cruelly, "I'm not an idiot. You aren't clumsy. Everyone thinks you are because that's what you want them to believe. It makes it easier to lie away the bruises. But I've seen you on the ice and I've seen you walking around through the snow. You never fall. You've seen _me_ fall on my ass plenty of times because I've never walked on black ice before, but you certainly have. There is no way in hell that I am going to believe that you slipped and fell on the edge of a dumpster. Even if you had slipped, it's not like there's metal dumpsters all over the place. Besides, I know a beating when I see one."  
    I went pale as it dawned on me for the first time since I had come back to the house just how fucking stupid I am. I had only been thinking about the wound on the left side of my head. I had completely forgotten about my father striking my face, since it seemed rather trivial compared to my concussion, but it really wasn't when I was trying to make Heero and his parents believe that I had merely fallen. A dumpster can't slap you and split your lip open. It can't leave a bruise in the shape of fingers on your skin. No one had believed my story, but no one had informed me of that. They had done the equivalent of nodding at the idiot that I was and moving on. Everyone except for Heero.  
    "Was it Zechs?" he demanded to know.  
    I wished that it had been, I could have handled it better, and Heero would have handled it better, too. If Zechs had been the one to hurt me that badly, he wouldn't have felt honor bound to not go to the cops over it.  
    "Just drop it, please," I begged him, but it only made him angrier.  
    "Your dad, then," he said pissily and I quickly looked away from him, realizing that my reaction had been enough for him to find out the truth, "Let me guess, you ran into him, he got pissed about nothing, and went off on you. Are you ready to go to the cops now, Duo? Look at you! He almost caved your head in!"  
    "Please," I rubbed wearily at my forehead, looking down at the lush carpet under my feet, "please, Heero, I'm begging you. I'm too tired and my head hurts too much for this. If you want to hash it out tomorrow, go right ahead. But right now, I... I can't do this."  
    My headache felt like a drill in my head, trying to obliterate everything. I wanted to curl up into a little ball and just scream it all out and make myself black out, but I couldn't even do that much. If I had to fight with my best friend on top of everything else, I was going to lose. I don't mean that he would manage to convince me to tell on my father, I would just lose what little control I had over my emotions and say something that I would regret later. To my amazement, Heero's expression softened with worry and guilt.  
    "I'm sorry," he apologized to me, actually sounding like he was ashamed with himself, "You're right, you don't need this right now. I'm just so worried about you! It just seems like, every time you aren't with me, that asshole is hurting you. I never know if I'm going to get a call from you that you're in the hospital again. You're never safe and there's nothing that I can do about it. I hate what he does to you, and I hate that you don't speak up about it."  
    "I'm fine," I smiled back at him, "Really, I am."  
    And I would be after a couple of days and a decent night's sleep.  
    "You're always fine," he murmured sadly.   
    I blushed as I realized that that was the thing that I always told him when I was hurt or depressed or anxious. "I'm fine." But I never really was, was I? I hadn't been fine since... actually, I never have been fine, now that I think about it. I didn't have any kind of retort to that and was saved from needing one by Heero's parents returning to collect our dishes. I thought that Mrs. Yuy might scold me for not eating all of my food, but she beamed at me when she saw that I had at least eaten some and bustled back out with the dishes.   
    "How are you feeling?" Heero's father asked me, "Headache any worse? Any trouble staying awake?"  
    "About the same," I confessed, "I'm tired, but I think I can stay awake awhile longer."  
    "Good. We're going to do this in shifts," he informed me, "Two hours asleep, two awake, and someone will be here with you to help keep you awake. I know it's a bit jarring, but that way we can make sure you're alright and you'll get some sleep."  
    "I'm sorry," I said shamefully, "Because of me, no one is going to get any decent sleep tonight..."  
    "Nonsense," he smiled, "It's not your fault. Besides, Mariela will get plenty of sleep. Heero and I will be staying up with you. Will you be alright taking the first shift?" he asked his son, "You'll need to stay up with Duo until one am, then you can go to sleep."  
    "Sure, I don't mind staying up," Heero said.  
    "Alright, this is how we are going to do this. Duo, do you think you can stay up until at least nine?" I was asked, "You can take your first nap then until eleven."  
    It was only just turning seven, which meant I would have to fight against sleep for another two hours, but as much as I wanted to just close my eyes and escape from the throbbing, heavy pain in my skull, that wasn't so bad.  
    "I'll manage," I nodded, "I'd like to get my homework done soon anyway, while I can still manage it."  
    "Good idea. You have your watch?" he asked Heero.  
    "Yes, Father," my friend said automatically, already fiddling with it to set the necessary alarms.  
    "I'll head to bed then," Justin told the both of us, "But both of you, if anything goes wrong, if Duo won't wake up or his headache gets worse, you wake me up, I don't care what the hour is."  
    Heero and I nodded.  
    "Yes, sir," I said, making him smile and ruffle my hair as he passed us to go into his bedroom.  
    "I thought that we could start with Calculus first," Heero said as he handed me a calculator, baffling me for a moment before I remembered that I didn't have one anymore, "Get it out of the way before you get too tired to deal with it."  
    I felt a sharp twinge of pain in my head, like just the thought of doing my Calculus homework was painful.  
    "Alright," I sighed and rummaged through my backpack for my textbook and worksheets, even though all I wanted to do was lie down on that lovely couch and sleep.   
    It was going to be a long, fucking night.   
  
  
End Part 2  
  
Author's Notes: As always, thank you to everyone who has taken the time to leave a review <3


	47. Chapter 8 Part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heero and his father help Duo deal with his concussion.

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 8  
Part 3  
  
  
    Trying to get my homework done was a lot harder than I had thought that it was going to be. I was completely incapable of focusing on anything. It wasn't that there were a lot of thoughts in my head or anything, my attention span was just shot to hell thanks to the head trauma and I would find my thoughts wandering off, unprovoked. Calculus and History were the worst. I found myself re-reading the same scrap of information about a hundred times and not retaining any of it. Heero was my savior, dragging me through all of our Calculus assignment and never getting impatient with me, no matter how slow we had to go. We only managed to get through a little more than half of all of our assignments, thanks to my slow, mental capabilities before Heero's watch went off at nine.  
    "Time for bed," he smiled at me, closing his Marine Biology text book, right after we had finished the assigned reading.  
    "I can stay up for a little longer," I argued, "I still have to write an outline for my short stories class and I have some reading and a worksheet to do for 19th Century Literature, and you have some assignments in Spanish, Photo, and English, don't you?"  
    "Yes," he said placidly, almost like he was speaking to a child, "and I will do them while you are sleeping. You can finish the rest of your homework the next time you get up, not that you need to. You told me that you had that outline mostly done in class and you already finished your reading. Even if you don't get that worksheet done, it's not due until Thursday, right? You need sleep a lot more than to finish this, now come on."  
    I sighed, hating the feeling of leaving work unfinished, but I knew that he was right. I just didn't think that, as tired as I was, I was going to be able to sleep.   
    "Is there anything that you need before you lay down?" he asked me, "Water, bathroom, more pain meds?"  
    He knew that it was too early for me to take more pills, but he was still nervous about my head injury and I didn't really blame him for that. It still felt like a bomb had gone off in my skull. I almost asked him for Pepper, but I didn't want to seem like a child.  
    "No, but could you turn around so I can put my pajamas on?" I asked, thankful that he had been thoughtful enough to bring them down with my backpack.  
    "Sure," it might have just been the light of the fire, but it looked like he was blushing as he stood and turned his back to me.  
    It's so stupid, but I was nervous getting undressed near him, even when he wasn't looking at me. We were both boys and it wasn't like no one had seen me naked before. Well, almost naked. I hadn't taken my shirt off when Trowa and I had had sex, but that wasn't something that I wanted to think about. Ever again. Not just the sex, but that he had seen me without my pants on. Isn't that ridiculous? I was just as bothered by that as I was by the sex itself. What the hell is wrong with me, that just the thought of someone seeing me without my clothes on is enough to nearly send me into one of my panic attacks?  
    It was even harder with Heero, because of my feelings for him. If he would to turn around and glance at me with so much as my shirt off, I think I would die from embarrassment. It only drove home to me that I could never have a normal relationship with anyone. Never mind the damage that my father had done to me, or even what Trowa had done to me. Never mind my inability to get it up or my complete disconnect with my body, my disinterest with sex, and my intimacy issues. How could I ever expect anyone to want me like that when my own body disgusts me? How can I hope to have a relationship with any man when just taking off my shirt shames me?  
    But Heero didn't turn around. I hastily changed my clothes, not even standing up to do it, since I was sure that that would give me another dizzy spell, and ignored the dark bruise on my stomach where my father had punched me. I told Heero to turn around when I was done, but still blushed when he did.   
    "Lay down," he told me, sitting back down in his chair.  
    "I'm not going to be able to sleep, you know," I cautioned him, "Not for awhile."  
    I didn't need to remind him about my insomnia, or how hard it was to sleep when your brain was in screaming pain.   
    "Try," he urged me, "Just two hours."  
    I sighed again, but did as he asked as he set his watch for eleven. Laying down, even just the short distance between my sitting and the surface of the couch, felt like I was falling. The feeling persisted even when I was laying flat, like I was falling through the world. It wasn't a feeling that I particularly enjoyed, but it didn't make me feel sick to my stomach like spinning would. I pulled the blankets up around me and closed my eyes. The feeling was easier to handle when I couldn't see that I was perfectly still. I prepared myself for a long two hours, so certain that I wasn't going to be able to fall asleep that early, exhausted or not.   
    So I was abundantly surprised when it took me only a few minutes to doze off. It wasn't how bone achingly tired I was. It wasn't my headache. It wasn't the adrenaline crash. It wasn't even how quiet the house was, quite the opposite, in fact. It was the sounds. The sound of Heero's breathing, of him turning the pages of his textbooks, of the scratching of the pen he was using as he filled out his homework. It was the sound of him humming under his breath, the sort of thing that he does when he's concentrating on something, but doesn't realize that he's doing it. It was the crackling of the fire, a sharp, but peaceful sound that contrasted so beautifully to the howling of the wind outside as it struck the sides of the house. Those are the sounds of peace, I think, the best lullaby in the world.  
    I slept deeply and didn't dream during that first shift. Still, when Heero's watch went off at eleven pm, I had a sense that I hadn't slept long enough, even before I remembered that it would have only been two hours. Sometimes, the body knows these things, it has a feeling that something is off and it knows the difference between too little sleep and too much sleep, even before you have the chance to feel tired. I had a moment when I was blinking my eyes open, not knowing where the hell I was or what was going on, that I nearly just closed my eyes and fell back to sleep. I might have, forgetting that I really had to wake up, if Heero hadn't suddenly been in my sight, reaching over to brush my bangs out of my face.  
    "Duo, you awake?" he asked in a soft tone.   
    It came back to me, why I needed to wake up and why my friend looked so worried. It must have not been easy on him, I realized, waking me up and wondering if I would or not, what he was supposed to do if he couldn't rouse me.  
    "Barely," I mumbled and forced my eyes to stay open through sheer force of will.  
    I carefully pushed the blankets down far enough that I could sit up, feeling a bit irritated when another dizzy spell hit me. The nap hadn't done much for my symptoms or my tiredness.  
    "How are you feeling?" Heero asked.  
    "Tired," I fought hard against a yawn, "Head still hurts."  
    "It's still too early for you to take more pills," he said mournfully, but still looked relieved that it hadn't been difficult to wake me up, "Is there anything else that would help with the pain? Food, maybe?"  
    "Actually, that would just make it worse," I told him, "but could I have some water?"  
    He was all too happy to go pour me an icy, cold glass of the stuff and watched me as I slowly drank all of it, my mouth and throat feeling like I had swallowed sandpaper. When I was done with it, I tried to rub at my forehead, feeling the pain swelling in there, and stopped when my fingers met the bandage. I felt horribly groggy, like I was trapped in some kind of limbo between awake and asleep.  
    "Just two hours," Heero soothed, "Then you can go back to sleep. What will help you stay awake? Homework?"  
    "I don't think I can manage the rest of it tonight," I admitted, but not feeling all too beat up about it. Heero had been right, I had gotten done the stuff that actually needed to get done, so there was no need to stress about it, "Not coherently, anyway."  
    "Alright. I can grab a book for you," he offered, but I gently shook my head.  
    "My eyes hurt too much from the headache, I can't focus on the words," I said with regret, just trying to read my textbooks had made my eyes ache.   
    "I can turn the television on, if you want," he suggested.  
    "No thanks," I cringed at the mere thought of the noise and obnoxious light of a television set, even a nice, high definition one that was in their living room, "The sound makes my head feel like it's ripping apart."  
    He gave me a sympathetic look.  
    "My voice doesn't make your head hurt... does it?" he lowered his voice self-consciously.  
    "No," I smiled softly at him, "You voice is fine. It's nice, actually."  
    The words came out of me before I could stop them. Even in the low light of the fire, I could see Heero's blush at my compliment and swore at myself in my head for saying something like that, even if it was the truth.       
    "Do you mind if I read to you?" he asked me with a shyness that I found completely endearing.  
    As he asked me that, his eyes nervously darted to the floor, like he was so anxious, he couldn't bear to look at me. It made my heart feel like it was going to melt.  
    "S-sure," I stammered, "I have a book in my bag."  
    He rifled through my bag and found my copy of _The Eyre Affair_. Ever since I had finished the collection of Gaiman that Solo had given me, I had been on a bit of a fantasy kick. I bent my legs and pulled them back so Heero could sit on the other end of the couch. I rearranged the pillows so I could sit up while still leaning against my end of the couch, handing him one to do the same. Even with that, my feet were still pressed against the side of Heero's leg. I debated moving my legs to the edge of the couch and sitting up fully like he was to give him more room, but if my invasion of his personal space bothered him, he didn't say, and I certainly didn't mind it. It was nice, that kind of closeness and camaraderie.   
    "Thanks, Heero," I said to him as he opened the book to the scrap of paper that I had used as a bookmark.  
    "No problem," he murmured and his blush darkened considerably.  
    "What's wrong?" I blurted out before I could stop myself.  
    "Huh?" he blinked at me in confusion.  
    I could have slapped myself just then. Why the hell had I opened my mouth? I had noticed it a long time ago. Of course I had, I'm not as stupid and oblivious as everyone thinks I am. When my best friend blushes at weird moments like that, I'm obviously going to take note of it. I just couldn't figure out _why_ he reacted in that way. I've been noticing a lot lately. How he looks at me when he thinks that no one is watching him. How worried he gets when I'm hurt or upset. How happy he gets when I think to call him. That little smile he has when I say hi to him every morning at school.   
    I know why he does those things, at least I'm pretty sure of it, but the blushing thing puzzled me. But I've never told him about my theory, or asked him about his reactions to things before. It was like Quatre knowing that I was getting beaten at home. It was something that we would never talk about. I could talk to Heero about a lot of things, just not that. I didn't dare. I was too frightened of what he might say, what might come from it. It was infinitely more terrifying than admitting to Quatre that my father was hitting me. Hell, it was the most terrifying thing in the whole world. The fear that I had of my father killing me didn't even touch on this. So why the hell had I suddenly asked him about the blushing? I thought about taking it back, but I knew that it was too late. If I asked him to forget about it or tell him that it was nothing, he would press until he got the truth from me.  
    "You're blushing," I clarified, "Did I say something wrong?"      
    "It's just... the way you said my name," he mumbled, clearly embarrassed.  
    That only puzzled me even more. I couldn't see how saying his name would embarrass him. Did he hate his name or something? Did he think it was too foreign?  
    "Do you not like it when I call you that?" I asked, "Or am I not saying it correctly?"  
    I had a very limited knowledge of Asian cultures, how to pronounce words and names. What little I did know came from books I had read and movies that I had watched, so who even knew if I was saying his name correctly. I said it the same way that his parents did, and even if I had said it wrong, that wouldn't account for the blushing, but I suddenly felt very awkward, like I had done something wrong.  
    "No!" he blurted out defensively, "It's not that. Actually, that's exactly how it's supposed to be pronounced, it's just... Well, _no one_ gets it right. Just you. Everyone calls me Heero," he pronounced his name with a straight 'r' sound instead of the mix of 'l' and 'r' that I and his parents used and a shortening of the double e's, like he was saying 'hero', something that I noticed our classmates did, "You... you were the first person that I've ever met that says it right. Even my grandparents mess it up from time to time."      
    Now it was my turn to flush and get embarrassed. I hadn't even really thought about how I had been pronouncing his name. How long had I been doing that, and I hadn't even known that it was such a strange thing to him? I didn't even know if it was a good thing or not, if he got annoyed that people were saying it wrong or glad because it was more Americanized.   
    "I'm sorry," I apologized, "I didn't know. I can say it the other way-"  
    "It's fine," he insisted, looking pained for some reason, "No, it's more than fine. I... I like it when you call me that. Like it's a nickname," he muttered with shyness, "I always used to think that it was silly, that it didn't suit me at all because I had been named after my mother's mother's grandfather and that side of the family is Japanese even though it's pretty diluted at this point. When I was little, I used to hate it because people would treat me like a foreigner even though I was born in America and both my mother and myself don't have that many Asian features. I don't even speak Japanese. But I've always liked it when you call me that, it sounds nice when you say it."  
    I felt like I was going to combust with pleasure at his almost whispered words, that I had a special connection with him and he actually enjoyed it. And the way that he had confessed it, with such poorly held meaning, with such affection for me... I almost blurted out right then that I loved his name, it was the most beautiful name in the entire world as far as I was concerned.  
    "I like your name," Heero murmured, unable to look at me when he said it.  
    "It's..." I almost said 'dumb', feeling just as embarrassed as he was before I remembered the talk that I had with my mother about it. I didn't think that it was so stupid anymore, "...weird."  
    "It suits you," he finally looked at me and smiled, "It's different. There are dozens of Michaels, Stevens, Pauls, and Wills in our class alone, but your name is unique. You're the only Duo. And it has a nice ring to it, too."  
    'Yup, that's me,' I nearly drawled out with bitterness, 'Fucking unique.'  
    But I was too flattered to snap back at him, my heart beating too fast at his compliments to be cynical. That stupid voice in my head was chanting giddily 'Heero likes my name,' like the lovesick teenager that I was. The two of us, blushing like a couple of idiots, let the conversation drop and he began to read to me.   
    " 'My mother was called Wednesday but was born on a Sunday --I don't know why-- and my father had no name at all,'" Heero started to read where I told him to, "'his identity and existence had been scrubbed by the ChronoGuard after he went rogue. To all intents and purposes he didn't exist at all. It didn't matter. He was always Dad to me..."  
    I was a little less than halfway through the book already, far enough that Heero was thoroughly confused about what was going on in it. He easily could have just read to me, but it pleased me when he would stop reading a line and ask me questions. I don't know if he really was interested in the book or just trying to keep me awake, but it made me happy to share something with him. After awhile, he got the gist of the novel and continued on, filling the silence with his smooth and enchanting voice.   
    I had meant it when I had told him that his voice didn't make my head hurt. It was deep and melodic, like listening to one of the jazz musicians that I like. He was a good reader, too, he knew where to inflect and had a nice rhythm to his reading. I think that I, all too easily, could have just closed my eyes and drifted off to the sound of it. But I didn't want to. I wanted to keep listening to that voice, I wanted to stay right where I was, his words blanketing me like a sort of peaceful cocoon forever. He read to me for the entire two hours, his voice never wavering or getting rough. It felt more like minutes to me, I felt like I could have sat there for the entire night and wouldn't have gotten sick of it. But then his watch beeped at us and I knew, with a heavy heart, that that was the end of that. It was stupid, feeling depressed about something like that when I was sure that Heero would read to me again if I asked him to, but it just felt like... like a special occasion or something, like our friendship had progressed another step forward.  
    "Time for another nap," he gave me this soft and lovely smile, but under it, I could see a sadness that was like my own.  
    For whatever reason, he had enjoyed reading to me as much as I had listening to him.   
    "You're going to bed soon, right?" I asked as he put my makeshift bookmark into it's new home towards the end of the book.  
    "Another couple of hours," he stood up, letting me lay down and stretch my legs, "You won't see me until the morning."  
    "Thank you for staying up with me," I told him, "and for reading to me."  
    "It wasn't any problem," he assured me, "You sure that you're alright? Your head doesn't hurt any worse? No new symptoms?"  
    "Nope," I said truthfully, "Actually, it hurts a little less. Not by enough to matter, but it's starting to edge off."  
    "That's good," his smile was overflowing with relief, "My dad will get you some more pain medication when he wakes you up. You'll feel better in the morning, ok?"  
    I knew that that wasn't necessarily the case. My headaches when I got concussions tended to last for days, but I nodded anyway.  
    "Good night, Heero," I said and then proceeded to turn as red as a strawberry when he took the time to pull the blankets up over me.  
    "Good night, Duo."  
  
*****  
  
    Just like the first time, I fell into an easy doze mere minutes after Heero had tucked me in and didn't so much as twitch until I felt someone lightly shaking me.  
    "Time to wake up," a soothing voice broke through my mostly still asleep brain, "Come on, Duo."  
    That voice, which was familiar, was tinged with slight worry. That, more than the sound, was more familiar, although there wasn't something quite right about it.  
    "'m 'wake, Heero," I mumbled, "Gimme 'minute."  
    "Heero went to bed over an hour ago," that voice chuckled, "but I'll believe you if you can open your eyes for more than a couple of seconds."  
    I blinked my eyes open in surprise, realizing that the reason why I had thought that the voice sounded wrong was that Mr. Yuy was the one waking me up, not Heero. Sure enough, when I turned my head, I saw him sitting in the same chair that his son had been a few hours ago, still dressed in his pajamas and holding a steaming mug of something. From the smell, it was coffee. I could really use some of that, I thought to myself, or at least the caffeine. I felt like absolute shit, but I was used to that from years of insomnia and being woken up like that. My body knew that it wasn't getting the kind of sleep that it wanted and was throwing a temper tantrum. I sat up slowly and was pleased when I didn't feel dizzy from the maneuver.   
    "What time is it?" I asked, still trying to get my bearings and completely forgetting how many times I had been woken up.  
    "Three," I was informed, "How's your head?"  
    'Like someone drilled a hole in it and threw a bomb in there,' I almost snapped, feeling testy between the pain and tiredness.   
    That wasn't very far from the truth. At some point during my sleep, my headache had gotten worse. Not enough to worry me, but enough to make thinking more of a chore than it should have been. I could feel it pounding away under my skull, a hyperactive sledgehammer.  
    "Hurts," I confessed, "but I'm not dizzy anymore."  
    Mr. Yuy's smile grew at that news.  
    "Here," he said, handing me two, familiar, white pills and a glass of water, "these might help."  
    "I don't suppose I could have some of that?" I eyed his mug of coffee.  
    "Not on your life," he snorted good naturedly, "You might want it now, but in two hours, when the caffeine is making you bounce off the walls, you'll thank me."  
    "I'm sorry," I apologized to him, knowing that I was just repeating myself, but it needed to be said, "if it weren't for me, you'd be in bed right now."  
    "I'm where I need to be," his smile softened and turned into an affectionate one that almost brought me to my knees along with those words.  
    He watched me with satisfaction as I swallowed the pills and drank the entire glass of water.   
    "You're going to hate me for this, but I need to shine this," he warned me, taking a small penlight from his pocket, "in your eyes."  
    I eyed that light warily, knowing full well what was going to happen if he did that.  
    "Only for a second," he promised, "I just want to check your pupils."  
    "Alright," I sighed, resigning myself to my fate.  
    I steeled myself for it, but still gritted my teeth in agony when the light hit my pupils, sending sharp, intense pain through my head in short bursts, like gunfire.  
    "Sorry," he apologized and quickly flicked the light off, but the pain lingered like an aftershock, "Your pupils are still uneven," Justin's voice was tinged with worry, but he knew that that didn't mean much, my vision was going to be a bit wonky for another day at least.  
    "Do you mind if I check your cut?" he asked me and I shook my head, relieved that I could do that again without the world flipping around me.   
    I had to swing my legs over the edge of the couch and sit up for him to have access to the left side of my head, although I kept my nest of blankets in tact around me. I winced as he pulled the bandage off and it tugged on my raw skin. Mr. Yuy made a concerned noise as he examined the wound under the penlight, careful to shine it up high, not that anything could be more painful than it being shot directly into my eyes.  
    "There's some pus here," he frowned, "Just in the cut, thankfully, not on the scrape, and only a little bit. Stay right here, I want to flush it out and put more ointment on it."  
    I did as I was asked, not surprised at all that the wound was infected, I just hoped that it wouldn't get any worse. It felt awful having it exposed. Not the cut, but the raw part where the skin had come off. It felt incredibly sensitive and stung worse than any of my other injuries. Heero's father came back with an army of supplies; a towel, gauze, a fresh bandage, a bowl of warm water, the tube of ointment, and what looked like an eyedropper, but clearly wasn't. I recognized it as the instrument that had been used on me before in the hospital when I had debris or pus in a wound.   
    "You just had that lying around?" I raised one eyebrow at him, wondering the likelihood of someone in their family needing something like that enough to keep it.  
    "It's for Kanuck," he smiled apologetically, "He got some glass stuck in his paw a year back and the vet gave it to us to clean it out if it got infected. It's happened a few times before, so I decided to keep it. Sorry, it's may not be meant for humans, but it's the best thing that we have to for this."  
    I shrugged, not offended in the least.  
    "Whatever works," I said offhandedly.  
    I stayed as still as I could as he worked. The water that he used to flush out the cut had salt in it, making it sting like hell, but it was still better than peroxide.   
    "At the risk of sounding like a broken record," Justin said as he put more ointment on my cut, "you know that you can come to me if you're ever in any trouble, don't you, Duo?"  
    "I... I'm not in any trouble," I swallowed roughly, knowing full well that that wasn't going to convince him of anything.  
    "I know it's difficult to talk about," he told me cautiously, "and you think that this is something that you have to deal with all on your own, but it isn't. It's alright to ask for help when you need it."  
    I glanced at him for a moment, filled with this strange emotion. Perplexity. I couldn't... fathom this man. This person who, at times, reminded me of my best friend, and at others, reminded me of my own father. Who was he? Why was he so kind, and so perceptive all at the same time? Why did I sometimes feel like he could look right through me, like I have no secrets at all from him? What made him such a good father... no, such a good man, and my father so terrible? And why did he care about me at all?       
    As I looked at him, his achingly familiar blue eyes piercing into me like he was some kind of seer, this terrible urge took control of me. At that moment, I wanted to tell him everything. I wanted to tell him about Relena and Zechs, my guilt over Quatre's death, how I felt like I deserved everything bad that happened to me because of it, the rapes, the beatings, my father demanding that I never come back here again. But I didn't. For once, it had nothing to do with not wanting to get my father in trouble, I just couldn't bear it if Heero's father became disgusted in me.   
    "Do you think that I need help?" I murmured.  
    "I think you're trying very hard to handle a situation that very few people could," he said diplomatically, "and I think you're very strong willed and think that no one else can help you. But I also think that you're scared and aren't sure what to do."  
    I felt something prick my eyes at his assessment, but refused to give it any thought.  
    "I mean it," he told me earnestly, "If there is someone hurting you, we can help. If you decide that you want to go to the police, we have your back and we'll help you any way that we can."  
    I was silent for a few minutes as I mulled that over. I had no doubt that he was telling the truth. If I went to the police about my father, Heero and his family would help me do that. As nice as that was, it was also terrifying. I felt like I did on the day that Heero had decided to be friends with me publicly, to share Zechs's torment with me. On the one hand, it was wonderful knowing that someone had my back, and on the other, it was horrible knowing that I was hurting someone dear to me. If I went to the police and nothing came of it, it wouldn't just hurt me, it would hurt them as well. How could I cope with that?  
    "You know about my father, don't you?" I said so softly, it was almost a whisper.  
    "Yes," Justin said, and I was far from shocked, having known what his answer was going to be as soon as I had asked, "I've known for awhile."      
    I didn't ask him how. I didn't need to. Heero's father was a smart man, and he had known that I was getting hurt more often than just at school. I wondered if Heero might have even told him, but he had promised that he wouldn't and he was the only person in the entire world whose word I believed in.   
    "I... I can't..." was all I could say and left it at that.  
    I felt myself flush with shame. I wondered what Mr. Yuy thought of me just then, my inability to go to the cops with what my father was doing. I wondered if he was judging me, if he thought that I was a coward. He wouldn't be wrong if he did. I _am_ a coward, through and through. I know what I should do about my father, but I can't. Just the thought of it makes my guts twist. I'm the worst sort of person, one that won't even defend himself or help his own mother. But even right then, in front of a man that I respected, all I could think was 'I don't deserve to be helped' and 'but I love him.' Isn't that sick? After everything that my father's done, to me and to my mom, after everything he's said and hurt me with, even with all the rage and hatred I feel for him, there is still a part of me that loves him deeply. Maybe I'm crazy, maybe there's something broken in me that's been like that since I was a kid, but I just can't bring myself to even stand up to him, let alone get him arrested.   
    To my intense shock, Mr. Yuy didn't call me a coward or pathetic or weak. He smiled at me reassuringly and put his hand on my shoulder.  
    "I understand," he assured me, "It's hard believing that the people we love are capable of hurting us. It's even harder to hurt them back, especially when they frighten us. Love and fear aren't mutually exclusive, but loving someone doesn't mean that it's your job to let them get away with such violence. Anyone who is capable of doing this to you," he brushed his fingers over the new bandage on my face, "anyone who thinks that he has the right to put his hands on you like that doesn't deserve to be protected."  
    Something inside of me trembled and just as I was about to burst into tears, he backed off. I'll always be grateful to him for that, for understanding how close he was to making me lose control over myself and how much I couldn't stand that.  
    "When I said that we will help you, I don't just mean going to the police. If there's anything that you need, whether it be a ride to the hospital or shelter, or even if you just need to talk to someone about this, I want you to come to us. But Duo, if you think that your life is in danger, even for a second, you must tell someone, do you understand?" he demanded in a no nonsense voice, looking me straight in the eye as he finished up with his first aid.  
    I nodded, even though it was a lie. I had already passed that point, hadn't I? While I didn't believe that my father would outright kill me, not consciously, I was still terrified that the day would come when he would lose complete control over himself. I had long since gotten rid of my denial and belief that my father wasn't capable of doing such a thing. My trust in him, what little had been there, the trust that he would always stop himself, was long dead.   
    "I got all of the pus out," he told me as he sat back down in the chair next to the couch, easily switching tracks like we hadn't just been talking about my father beating the shit out of me, "but the wound is inflamed. If you notice any more pus there, you have to go to the hospital, no arguments."  
    I nodded again and lightly touched the skin around the bandage. It felt warmer than it should, but not by much. I hoped that the infection would go away without needing to see a doctor, but I also knew that an infection in a wound like that was not something that I wanted to risk. Justin spied my book sitting on the coffee table and picked it up, reading the summary on the back.   
    I felt a bit amazed by him. He had found out that my father was abusing me, had known about it for awhile, but he hadn't called the cops or demand that I do so. Some people would think that he was being callous, not wanting to get involved with this, but I knew that wasn't the case. He cared very much and I knew that if I gave the word, he would have my father arrested in a heart beat. But he was choosing to put faith in me, make this my decision at the same time that he wasn't turning a blind eye to it.   
    I didn't know how to take that. It was something of a relief, him knowing the truth and not freaking out over it like Heero did. He seemed to understand something where my best friend couldn't, that my father going to jail was the last thing that I wanted to happen, that it would hurt me just as much as getting hit, and no one was going to force me to tell on him. Maybe it came from his job as a psychiatrist, but Justin seemed to understand that he might scare me away if he insisted on going to the police. I wasn't sure what his game was, exactly, if he was going to keep trying to convince me, but him taking it so calmly reassured me that he really was someone that I could come and talk to about it. I wondered if he would take the same attitude about the sex stuff as well, but in reality, even if I told them about it, would that change anything? Unless I told the police, I didn't think that any of them _could_ do anything, and there was no way in hell I was going to tell anyone something so disgusting, especially not the people whose respect I craved.  
    "How can you stand having me around Heero?" I asked in a soft, perplexed tone.  
    "You think you're a bad influence on him?" Mr. Yuy's tone was calm, neither accusing me of being right or shocked that I would think something like that.  
    "I'm not the sort of person that any parent would want their son hanging around with," I argued, my voice angry and a bit bitter, "I'm broke and about as far from the right side of the tracks as you can get. My parents are alcoholics and I let my dad beat on me. Worse, I've made Heero an accomplice to all of it and because he's friends with me, he gets bullied at school. I've made him promise to turn a blind eye to everything and he's gotten a reputation for hanging out with a good for nothing punk. How can you possibly be ok with that?"  
    "That's a fairly loaded question," Justin smiled, but it was sad and heavy, with little joy in it, "I don't know how other people see you, or Heero for being friends with you, but if they really do think that you're a punk, or there's something wrong with you because of where you come from, then no one really knows you. I will admit that, when I figured out that you come from a... well, a home like yours, I had doubts about Heero becoming friends with you."  
    "Then-" I started to demand.  
    "But not for the reasons that you think," he interrupted me, reaching over to pat my hand, "I had my doubts because I knew that if the two of you became close friends and Heero found out that you were in trouble, it would only be painful for him."  
    "Then why? Why let us be friends, why not just tell him not to see me anymore if you know that I've been hurting him?" I asked in a harsh whisper, but it wasn't Heero and his father that I was thinking about. My father's ultimatum burned in my head, more painful than any headache.  
    Justin snorted at that.  
    "For one, if I told Heero not to be friends with you, not only do I not have any right to do that, he would just keep hanging out with you anyway. For another, well... How can I possibly be upset at my son for being exactly the kind of person that I hoped I would raise him to be? For caring about other people, not judging them, helping someone who needs his help, no matter how difficult it is? I can't. Heero has become exactly the kind of man that any parent would hope for, and I have you to thank for that. Besides, I would be a hypocrite for telling Heero to walk away just because I'm worried he might get hurt when I want to help you myself."  
    I flushed darkly, trying to find the words to argue what I felt in my heart, that I was absolutely no good for Heero and I didn't want to see him hurt because I was too much of a coward to help myself, but they just wouldn't come to me.       
    "Frankly," Mr. Yuy continued, squeezing my hand gently, "I think that the two of you are good for each other. You always sell yourself short, but if Heero is hurt, it's only because he cares about you. Mariela and I do, too. I wish that you would ask us for help, but I'm not going to take away a dear friend from _either_ of you as some kind of punishment. So I don't want to hear anymore talk about how you're a bad influence on my son. You aren't. From where I'm standing, you've only been a good thing for him."      
    I looked down at the floor, embarrassed by the compliment and unsure if that was the truth, but I sincerely hoped that it was. I just had a hard time seeing any of the good that I had done for Heero, only the bad. But I liked believing that his father knew him better than I did, so if he said that I was good for Heero, that must be the truth. It was easier than knowing that I needed him too much and was too much of a coward to walk away from him.  
    I only had an hour and a half until my next 'nap' this time, but even though Justin and I had been talking for awhile, the time moved incredibly slowly compared to the time that I had spent with Heero. There wasn't much that I could do to keep myself awake. I did some more of my homework, or tried to, but I didn't make it more than ten minutes before my headache bothered me too much and had to put it away again. I didn't ask Mr. Yuy to read to me. It felt too much like a personal thing that Heero and I had shared, something that I could never possibly share with anyone else, like ice skating.   
    We spent the rest of the shift talking about nothing. Or rather, Heero's father talked and I listened. It was one of the few things that I was still fully capable of at that hour and didn't hurt my head too much. Like Heero, Justin had a very soothing voice, low and silky. When 4:30 finally came, I laid back down on the couch happily, feeling exhausted despite having been sleeping on and off, and knowing that I only had little more than two hours to get some rest before school.  
    My previous naps with Heero watching over me had been mostly pleasant. If I dreamed, I didn't remember it. But that last time, I certainly did and I remember each vivid, horrible moment of it. Maybe it was because I was aware that Heero wasn't there, or maybe it had just been time for it, my brain deciding that I had enough rest and it was due time to torture me. I was at the train station, because of course I was, the place that my mind often takes me during those nightmares. I was on the same platform where I had watched Quatre end his life, only I wasn't alone. There was an impossibly long line of people standing in front of me.   
    What disturbed me the most about this nightmare were the details, the _realness_ of the things that I saw, but worst of all, how I recognized every person in that line. They were all of my classmates, Dorothy, Mueller, Relena, Zechs, Alex, and Trant included. Mrs. Khushrenada was there, so were all of the rest of my teachers that I had ever had. The driver of the truck that had hit Quatre and I was there. Quatre's entire family was there, even Lily. The two cops that had found me at the platform, the doctors that had cared for me during my emergency room visits, my bosses, my coworkers, Solo, my mother and father, Trowa, Heero's parents, my neighbors, Mrs. Liddle, they were all waiting in line to have their turn in front of me. And there, at the back of the line with my father sandwiched between them like a barrier between the then and the now were Quatre and Heero. The two people that I had hurt the most.  
    I was on my knees on the platform, just like I had been that day after Quatre had fallen in front of the train in a splatter of blood and gore. I wasn't being held down by anything, but I had that feeling that you often get in dreams where I just _knew_ without even trying that I would not be able to move if I tried to. Each and every person in my line held the same thing in their hand. It looked like a vegetable peeler, those ones with the jagged edges, gleaming silver in the terribly bright and insultingly cheerful sunlight that had been present that day.   
    One by one, every single person there came up to me and used the peeler to strip a piece of my skin off of my body. I felt the pain of it in that weird, dreaming way, knowing that the pain was there without actually feeling the sensation. But mostly, I remember how it felt. Like my entire self was being peeled away, strip by strip of flesh. I begged and pleaded with my tormentors to stop, but they did their duty with neither hesitation nor glee, like a machine doing what it was made to do. When it came to be Quatre's turn, I began to cry. I told him that I was sorry for what I had done to him, but it made no difference. Not condemning me, which made it worse somehow, he leaned down and raked the peeler over my neck, taking the last piece of skin off of it.  
    There was only two areas of my body that had any skin left, my lower lip and my genitals. The rest was raw and open and bleeding. Pus bubbled out of my skinless flesh, only it wasn't pus at all, it was semen. I could smell it, the smell of cum mingling with the smell of my decaying body. Then it was my father's turn. He was different than the others. When he peeled the skin off my lip, he was grinning. I pleaded with him, just like all the others, but he just smirked at me coldly and cruelly and said "do as you're told." When he was done, he forced my bleeding mouth onto his cock, something that he, thankfully, had yet to do to me in reality. Only in the dream, his cock wasn't flesh, it was a knife and it ripped my tongue in half.   
    Heero was the last one. I didn't beg him not to hurt me. I understood in the dream that, even if I had had the tongue to do it, I didn't deserve that. He looked down at me with pure repulsion, like a shit covered cockroach.   
    "How could you ever think that I could be in love with something as disgusting as you?" he asked me.  
    There is some mercy in the world. I woke up before Heero finished the job of flaying me alive, but not before those words seared themselves into my head. There is some mercy, but not nearly enough, it seems. I woke up remembering every horrible detail and wondering what the hell was wrong with me, that I could have come up with something like that, even just to torture myself. I didn't wake up screaming or feeling sick to my stomach, but with a deep, dark depression filling me. I felt filthy, the kind of filthy that I feel after my father rapes me, like all of the soap and steel wool in the world won't be enough to make me clean again, to get so much as a fleck of that dirt off of my soul.  
    I might have wallowed in it, let my mood and that nightmare pull me into a rip tide so violent, I wouldn't be able to fight my way out of it for days. I could have thought about that dream, about the semen leaking out of me, like all of the times that my father has climaxed in me, it had seeped into my blood, or that look that Heero had given me at the end of it. I might have even had the urge to kill myself. I still get them, from time to time, not as strong as the ones that had led me to almost letting the train hit me, or cutting my wrists in my bathroom, or standing in my father's room with his gun to my head, but they're there. They come and go like a weak addiction, a single thought that I should just end things, but I'm able to ignore it. That's probably what would have happened if I hadn't opened my eyes that morning and seen, very clearly in the light of the morning sun coming through the open windows in the living room, a pair of familiar, round, golden eyes staring at me.  
    "Pepper?" I murmured in surprise.  
    She meowed at me and sniffed at my hair with fascination before trying to chew on my bangs.  
    "How did you get down here?" I wondered out loud.  
    "She must have come downstairs looking for you at some point," Heero's voice startled me enough to force me fully awake. If I hadn't still been laying down, I might have jumped.  
    I sat up to take in my surroundings. I was still on the couch in the living room and I don't know why that took me by surprise just then, but it did. I could smell the faint aroma of someone cooking an egg and some bacon in the kitchen. Heero was sitting in the same chair that he had been that night, and even though he had done the same thing for hours, I felt weird with the knowledge that he had been watching me sleep.   
    His dog was laying over his feet, watching Pepper with intense curiosity, but to my relief, he didn't come over to sniff at her. Pepper, for her part, was watching him warily, but she wasn't growling or even puffing up in his presence. As I looked at my best friend, him wearing a sleepy expression and his pajamas, my dream version of him came to me. I think, if he had merely been some monstrous form of himself, I could have handled that. But no, he had looked exactly like how he did sitting there next to me in real life, only full of contempt and disgust for me. I shuddered harshly, although I can't say if it was from that image, or what my father had done to me in my dream.  
    "Are you alright?" Heero asked me in concern.  
    "Bad dream," I murmured truthfully, picking up Pepper and cradling her to my chest, "What time is it?"  
    "6:30," he informed me, "How's the head?"  
    "Still hurts," I admitted, "But not as badly as last night. My dizziness and nausea are gone, but my vision is still a bit wonky."  
    That wasn't strictly true. Technically there wasn't anything at all wrong with my eyes. It was more the information between them and my brain was slightly... delayed. I'd experienced that before with concussions, so it wasn't a big deal to correct for that weird, cerebral lag, but it was also pretty annoying.   
    "Do you think you're ok to go to school today?" Heero asked worriedly.  
    I almost teased him that he was becoming an overprotective, mother hen, but it was endearing and helping me a great deal to shake that dream image of him from my thoughts.   
    "Yeah, I'll be fine," I told him, not talking about how tired I felt or my continued light sensitivity.  
    "My mom's making breakfast," he told me, "Anything you want?"  
    "I think I can eat," I said, "but only something bland."  
    "I'll let her know," he stood up and disappeared into the kitchen, his dog following him.  
    I got off the couch, managing to do it with no dizzy spells and folded up the blankets that I had used. I rushed upstairs with Pepper, daring the steps and didn't so much as stumble, letting me know more than anything else that I could manage going about my day as usual. I had gotten lucky that my concussion hadn't been any worse and I knew that, I just didn't have to let Heero and his parents figure that out. I fed my cat, leaving her upstairs, and redid my thoroughly mussed hair and washed my face, but left getting dressed and all that junk for after breakfast.   
    I didn't turn on the bathroom lights, not wanting that unpleasant experience just yet, but I still got a glance of myself in the mirror. Even in the low lighting, I could tell that I was pale and tired looking, and that the skin around the bandage was red and inflamed, but only mildly so. All things being equal, it should have been a lot worse. I had been lucky that the edge of that dumpster hadn't taken my fucking eye out. Downstairs in the kitchen, Heero and his mother were already eating their breakfasts: omelets, bacon, and sausage. Just the smell of the sausage almost made me feel ill again, but my stomach settled when I saw that the plate that had been left out for me was filled with just scrambled eggs and toast, not a single piece of meat to be found.   
    "Duo, good morning!" Mrs. Yuy got up to hug me tightly.  
    I was taken aback by her exuberance for a second, but then shyly hugged her back. She let go of me and held me by the shoulders at arms length so she could study my face.  
    "You look much better than you did yesterday," she told me and I had to take her word for it since I could barely remember anything through the panic and pain I had been in, "How are you feeling?"  
    "A little bit better," I admitted.  
    "Good. If there's anything you need, please let me know. Justin's doing some work in his study, but he would like to check your wound before you go to school," she said.  
    "Alright," I conceded.  
    I sat down at the table and worked on my breakfast. I didn't taste much, just like last night, but I appreciated how hot it was and how it filled up by stomach. I wondered if the diluted taste was another symptom of my head trauma, which had happened before, or if I was so tired that everything in the world was coming to me through a filter. The on and off naps that I had taken, while necessary, had temporary fucked up my internal clock and I felt a little bit off balance.   
    Upstairs, I got dressed and brushed my teeth, about to go back downstairs when Justin found me. We went through the same song and dance that we had last night, him asking me to describe my symptoms and him checking my cut. He declared it still slightly infected, but getting better, put some more ointment on it and clean bandage.  
    "I want you to check on this frequently," he told me, "Infections can be insidious. And take these," he handed me two more pain pills along with the tube of ointment, "with your lunch today."  
    I nodded and stuck them in my pocket. Heero was already downstairs when I walked down there, dressed to leave.   
    "Hold on!" Heero's mother called out to us and nearly ran out of the kitchen just as I was putting on my sneakers.  
    She thrust a brown paper bag into my hands.  
    "What's this?" I asked, raising one eyebrow.  
    "Lunch," she said boldly, taking me by surprise, "I heard it on good authority that peanut butter and banana sandwiches are your favorite."  
    I kind of just blinked for a second, blown away by the fact that she had taken the time to make me a lunch, before what she was saying filtered into my abused brain. There was really only one person in the world who could possibly know me well enough to tell Mrs. Yuy something like that. I looked over at Heero and found that he was looking at the ground, a slight blush on his cheeks and I only felt even more perplexed.   
    Knowing my favorite kind of sandwich was not the sort of thing that anyone needed to be embarrassed about. At least it wasn't until I remembered that I had never told Heero that. Then I remembered something else, a certain morning, months ago, when I had been having the third worst day of my life, the day that I had found out that my father had wanted to fuck me, and I had found a sandwich on my desk. I had assumed that Heero had done it at the time, if for no other reason than that was what I wanted to believe, and because he had glanced over at me when I had unwrapped it.     But I had been so distraught over the turmoil in my home life that I had pushed it out of my head. Now, I was sure of the truth. I didn't know what was more startling, that he had dared to break his cover to do something nice for me, for someone who couldn't stand him, or that at that point in our relationship, he had known that much about me. Even while he had been pretending to hate me, he had noticed the kind of sandwich that I liked, and not just liked, but the one that I liked the most. What else had he noticed? I felt this pleasing warmth in my chest at the thought of him covertly watching me and taking note of things about me. I guess a lot of people would have been weirded out or even think that they were being stalked, but I just felt so happy knowing that, even back then, he had liked me. Hell if I knew why, but he had.  
    "Thanks," I told his mother.  
    "You're welcome," she beamed at me, "You two have a nice day at school."  
    We nodded at her, although neither of us could remember the last time we had had a nice day at that place, and left. It was rather brisk outside, but the wind was minimal and the sky was clear, so at least I wouldn't have to worry about snow.   
    "Are you going to stay the night again?" Heero asked me as we walked together.  
    I almost immediately said 'of course', because it was what I wanted to say, but I took a moment to mull that over. Originally, it had been my plan to stay away from home to stay away from my father until he hopefully mellowed, but yesterday had shot that idea to hell. I remembered my father's ultimatum, and the rage in his eyes when I had told him no. Suddenly, I had no idea what I was going to do. I felt just as strongly that I wouldn't stay away from Heero as I had when I had defied my father, but the reality of the situation in the light of day was like a blow to the face.  
    I could tell my father no, I could keep on like I had, spending nights over at Heero's house, but I was uniquely aware that this would have severe consequences now. It wasn't like I could just sneak off in the night and not expect my father to find out. That would work sometimes, but it just as often wouldn't. What would he do to me if I did that? Just how angry would he get? I realized right then that I would withstand a lot just to be able to continue to be around Heero. I would take all sorts of physical abuse and take on my father's rage for him. But how badly would it go? How long before my father became fed up and did something extreme? Just how much was I going to risk?   
    'Everything,' I thought.   
    Because the question really was moot, wasn't it? I couldn't stop going to Heero's house because Pepper was there. And I couldn't stop seeing Heero or his parents because I didn't think that I could survive that. I could survive my father's beatings, I had been doing that for seventeen years, but going back to living my life alone... I had seen what that life held for me and I wanted nothing to do with it. Even if things were different now, even if my mother and I were building a healthier relationship, staying away from Heero would make the world go grey again. I could survive just about anything that my father threw at me, but not that. I'm not strong enough.  
    "No, I don't think so," I said with a heavy sigh.  
    As much as I wanted to stay the night with him again, I understood that if I wanted to get through this, I was going to have to be crafty and decide which battles to wage. Going back there so soon after my father had nearly caved my head in was too big of a risk. Besides, I didn't think his temper was going to wane any time soon and I still had to clean up my bedroom.   
    "Are you ready to talk about what happened last night now?" he demanded.  
    "You said that we could talk about it in the morning," he clarified when I looked at him with surprise, "Well, it's morning now."  
    "There's nothing to tell," I insisted stubbornly.  
    "How about how he was even around to attack you," Heero proved that he was just as stubborn as I was, "Or how you hit your head, or any of it?"  
    I sighed again.  
    "Like I said, there isn't much to tell. We ran into each other at the convenience store. He was on his break and was getting a snack. He followed me outside and we fought. He was pissed about me lying to him about Pepper and the money that I've been hiding from him. I mouthed off to him about it and he hit me a couple of times. Next thing I knew, my head was hitting the dumpster. He yelled at me some more and I ran off, end of story. I don't remember how I hit my head exactly. He had grabbed me, but there was ice everywhere. He might have done it on purpose or one of us might have slipped. For all I know, it could have just been an awful accident."  
    I didn't tell him about how sure I was that it had been anything but an accident. I didn't tell him about my father's order to never hang out with him again either, because I knew exactly what he would say. His own personal feelings wouldn't even matter to him, he would say that my well being wasn't worth risking, that maybe I should do what he had ordered if it meant not getting another beating. He would be completely logical about it, I was sure, but also full of shit. He cared about me, more than he should, and it would hurt him for me to suddenly try to not be friends with him. That alone was the only reason I needed not to do it. And if not knowing what I was risking just to hang out with him could give him any peace of mind, of course I would hide it from him.  
    "Bullshit," my friend suddenly declared and I was so startled that I almost stopped walking right there.  
    "I'm not lying-" I started to protest.  
    "No, but you're covering for him again," he snapped angrily at me, "So let me get this straight. The two of you were fighting and you hit your head on the dumpster somehow. You don't remember and it might have just been an accident. Fine. But you sliced your head open, bled all over the place, and he yelled at you some more? He didn't try to help you or apologize or even just ask if you were ok?"  
    "N-no," I muttered and realized that I, myself, had not really thought of that, of my father's instant reaction to seeing me get hurt.  
    Even if he had done it on purpose, I thought with something akin to dull, mundane horror, he had seen me. He had seen the cut and the blood gushing down the side of my face. Worse, he had seen the skin that had come off and how close the cut had come to my eye. He hadn't stopped, he hadn't been shocked, he had just kept screaming at me. It wasn't that he hadn't been sorry. He had just not cared at all.  
    "So what difference does it make whether he did it to you or if you just fell?" Heero accused harshly, "You're making excuses for him, but the truth is that he's a piece of shit, even if he hadn't hit you. That you were hiding things from him was just _his_ excuse. That's the person who you're protecting, not the person that hits you, but the one that didn't even care that you might need medical attention! And you want me to turn a blind eye to that."  
    Guilt tore through me like a rabid, wild dog. I knew that he was right, at least on a logical level. My father wasn't just someone who lost their temper once in awhile. Through the years, he had become crueler and less in control of himself. More and more, he had drifted away from us. Those moments of kindness that he had shown me as a child, the times when he had truly cared for me were waning, becoming sparser as he got older and his alcoholism worsened, but even I knew that his drinking was just a symptom of whatever was wrong with him.   
    He didn't deserve being protected for everything that he had done to me and my mother. And Heero didn't deserve what I had asked of him, to watch the after effects of my father's rages and emotional abuse. But none of that stopped me from loving him. None of it made trying to stop him any easier. Every time that I thought about it, I just remembered how he had held me while I had cried after Quatre's death, or the little things that he did that made me believe, if only for a moment, that he actually did care about me.   
    Just a week before he had given me that concussion, he had bought me a couple of books that he thought I would like from a book fair, not because of any special occasion, but just because I hadn't had a chance to go because of work and the fair only lasted for three days. Every time I thought about going to the police, about doing the right thing, my mind would just get caught up. I would just get tangled up in all those memories of the moments when he wasn't cruel. I know that how petty and tiny those moments are, how they didn't change a single damned thing about how he treats me all the other times, but I can't get past them.  
     I thought about how I had doubted Heero in that alley when my father had accused him of just using me. What right had I had to even think that about him? This amazing person that was always sticking up for me and staying by my side through the shit that was my life. How could I have dared to think, even for a moment, that he was anything but sincere? It wasn't just my father who was getting worse. I was. Just by being around him, he was poisoning me more and more with his hatred and pessimism and pettiness. Someone like me didn't deserve a friend like Heero.   
    "I'm sorry," I whispered and I was, because I was weak and even though I knew exactly what I needed to do, I also knew that I wouldn't do it.  
    Instead of lashing out at me, calling me an asshole or pathetic like my father would have done, Heero flashed me a weak, apologetic smile for again pushing me and punched me lightly on the shoulder, showing me that it was alright. Even if he thought I was the most frustrating person on the planet, we were still friends and he would always keep the promise that I had forced out of him.  
    But for the first time since I had made him make it, I wished that he wouldn't.   
  
  
End Part 3


	48. Chapter 8 Part 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heero and Duo's mother surprise Duo with birthday presents. Duo decides to tell Heero about Quatre's death, but worries that the truth of his guilt might destroy their friendship.

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 8  
Part 4  
  
  
    I'd love to be able to say that I have absolutely nothing to write about from the last three weeks after my father had assaulted me in that alley, that nothing even remotely important or troubling had happened to me up 'til now. I'd like to write that I was entirely successful in living my double life, that I was able to sneak off to Heero's without my father ever finding out, that we never came to blows on that very subject, but that would be a lie. If anything is the truth, I haven't written anything lately because I've had too much on my mind to write even a single sentence. We got into a fight that very morning, after I had come home from work. Well, I say a fight, but it was pretty one sided. I didn't get any sleep before school the next day between nursing a cracked rib, a black eye, and about two dozen bruises on top of trying to clean up my room.  
    The beating wasn't so bad, in reality. It had been savage, but quick. I didn't have to go to the hospital at least, and my father didn't hit me in the head, so I didn't have to worry about my head trauma. It was cleaning my room that gutted me. I had to force myself, actually _force_ myself to throw out the things that had been destroyed. I tried to lie to myself and think that I could fix the books and my CD player, but I knew that all of it was a lost cause. Even so, tossing the player and the CDs made me feel like something was stabbing me right in the heart. I felt like I was betraying Quatre all over again, like I was spitting in his face.   
    It got worse as the weeks passed. I tried to restrict myself from hanging out at Heero's, but I quickly realized that that was just impossible. I'm not even talking about the sheer amount of times that I couldn't stand being at home or the times that I needed to run somewhere to escape my father, it just became impossible to say no to Heero when he asked me if I would stay over at his place. It was too easy to say yes. I never wanted to go home, I wanted to be with him, I wanted to be a part of his family. So even though I knew that I had to lessen my nights with him, I was doing the opposite and staying there more and more and more. Sometimes, I wouldn't come home for a couple of days, which made my father enraged during the few times that he had noticed it. Even after he had beaten me half a dozen times for it in just over a week, I couldn't stop myself. I just rode through it and tried to get myself out of those situations as quickly as possible. I wonder if my father realized that when I escaped the house during those beatings, it was always that Yuys that I was going to.  
    It was by some miracle that I never had any of bones broken or had gotten a concussion during that time. I had ended up in the hospital three times, but the damage had never been as long lasting as a broken arm. I did my best to not let Heero or his parents get wise to what was happening at home, that I had a way to stop these attacks and refused to do it. When Heero would ask me if it was ok for me to stay over, or if I was hanging out with him at his place and he would ask me if I needed to go home for the night, I would always tell him that it was fine, I could hang out with him for as long as he wanted me to. No, my father didn't mind, he didn't even notice. It was the one thing that I could lie to him about and not feel guilty.   
    I was so busy floundering in trying to deal with this issue with my father and his increasing violence that what time of the year it was completely escaped my mind until around February 10th when little red and pink paper hearts started to decorate the walls of our school. The middle of February always serves to make me horribly depressed, but I actually hadn't been in a bad mood until that point. I blame Heero for that. I was too busy feeling anxious about the future to worry about the past, at least until I was reminded of the date.   
    At first, the decorations escaped my notice until our homeroom teacher started talking about the Valentine's Day Dance the following week. Valentine's Day. What a crock of shit. I've loathed the holiday since I was twelve years old, when I started to question my sexuality. As I've gotten older, I've only hated it more. I mean, what reason did I have to enjoy the holiday? For four years since I had become old enough to even think of things like crushes, kissing, and holding hands, I hadn't felt even a twinge of affection for anyone, not even a tiny crush or a vague interest. Before Trowa had kissed me on that train platform out of grief and desperation, I had feared that I might be asexual. Hell, I still fear it considering that I've never had so much as a wet dream or even a ghost of an erection before.   
    Four years, I've seen people fall in love, break up, and fall in love again. All of my classmates, adults on the street during holidays like Valentine's Day and Christmas, holding hands and kissing. I'd seen what love looks like and, when I had been much younger, I had just thought 'eventually.' But for four years, it had never happened to me. I had looked at myself and wondered, 'what's wrong with me?' What was missing and broken inside of me that I can't even get a hint of that feeling? Was I cursed to never find one person that I could fall in love with, was it biological, emotional, psychological? Was it not my fate or was something distorted in me?  
    My heart felt wilted and grey, shriveled and empty. I had wanted a piece of what everyone else had so badly, and every year that went by that I never experienced it, I hated and feared myself more and more. The only person that had even come close had been Trowa, but I had never loved him. Not really. Not like how Quatre had. I had found him attractive and I had enjoyed spending time with him, but when I compared breaking up with him to the possibility of never seeing Heero again... well, there isn't any kind of comparison, is there? One is a regret and the other is gut wrenching agony, like getting heart burn over having it forcibly ripped out of your chest.  
    Then one day, Heero Yuy had smiled at me and I had become completely and totally lost. I had also learned something about love, something that Quatre had known but I hadn't been able to truly understand until I had fallen in love myself. Have you ever wondered why they call it that? 'Falling' in love? Not 'becoming' in love or even 'stumbling' into love, but falling? Because that's what it is. It's a violent, chaotic thing, like suddenly finding that the ground beneath your feet has disappeared. No control, no choices. It just _happens_ and you have absolutely no say in the matter. The thing that I understood at the moment when I had realized that I had fallen in love is that love can be the most wonderful thing in the world. It can lift you out of the darkness and heal your very soul. And it can be the most terrible thing in the world, the thing that can tear your heart apart and make you feel like nothing will ever be good or beautiful again.  
    Loving Heero is like that. One second, I feel as high as a fucking cloud, and just knowing that I'm capable of loving someone is a miracle. But it's also a curse, because in the next, all I'll feel is pain. A pain that nothing else has ever made me feel. This pain is unique and special. It doesn't just hurt, it's frightening. And even though I've finally experienced it, I still feel like an outsider, like I'm different from everyone else. Not only because I've fallen for another boy, but because I don't know what to do about this love. I feel like I can't act. I feel like it's completely unwanted, this poisonous thing, at the same time that I desperately want to reach for it, and I have absolutely no frame of reference for how to act even if I did to decide to do something with it.  
    So even though I should have felt happy, seeing my very first Valentine's Day where I actually understood what the fuck the holiday is about, it only reminded me that I had love in reach, and I still didn't dare grab it. My fears and my desires are a tangled mess and I can't sort them out for the life of me. It isn't just the holiday, seeing all these happy couples and feeling so lonely and empty and _alien_. There is another reason for my dark depression around this time of the year. Well, two reasons, really.   
    The first is kind of stupid, but it was my birthday. February 23rd. I was going to be seventeen years old. Big deal, right? My birthdays have never been what you would call happy affairs. Even back when I had been little and my parents had made some kind of effort, they had always treated it with some bitterness, not that I ever blamed them for that. As the years had passed, they had stopped bothering all together and I had stopped caring. Don't get me wrong, the first time that my parents had seemed to have forgotten my birthday, I had felt sad and unloved, but it was just a drop in the bucket to everything else.  
    The only birthday that I've ever had where I was actually happy was my thirteenth and I had spent it at work with Quatre, sharing some greasy pasta and a homemade cake. Since then, I try to ignore my birthdays all together. They just remind me of what I've lost. I don't have anyone in my life that cares that I'm even alive, I had thought these last four years, so why should I care? It's like New Years. Just another marking of the passage of time.   
    The second reason why this time of year is the worst for me is related to the first. Because of Quatre, because of the one joyful birthday that I had had. See, Quatre died on March 4th, not even two weeks after my birthday. Since it happened, every time mid February comes around, I find myself in a deep, inescapable black pit of despair, depression, and just a general feeling of both rage and hopelessness. I've found that I can't even think about him during the first week of March at all. On the fourth, I just kind of ignore it.   
    Maybe that's insensitive. Quatre had been my first friend, my best friend, and I couldn't even think about him on the anniversary of his death. But I can't, it hurts too much. Instead, I do it on my birthday. Does that sound weird? Why then, you're probably asking. It's simple, at least for me. Because my birthday was the very last day that I felt happy, the last day before everything fell apart. It was the last time that I really had with my friend, before the walls started to close in around us. Before I became aware of Trowa and my own, crippling sexual issues. Before Relena started to use Trowa to get to Quatre. Before I started to fear for him, both his life and his heart. On that day, it had been like always. Just me and my friend, enjoying our time together. It's the closest day that I can get to his death and remember how much I had loved him without falling completely apart.  
    I guess it's a bit morbid, that I celebrate my dead friend instead of my birthday, but until I met Heero and my mother had quit drinking, I had never found my birth to be anything to be celebrated. So I haven't for the past three years. Instead, I have a different tradition. I go to the little courtyard behind the library, that secret place that he and I used to hang out together, the place that holds more of my pleasant memories of him than any other. I wallow in him, read his favorite book, play his favorite music, drink his favorite tea if I have the money to buy it, and try to remember the good things.   
    It never really works out like that. No matter how hard I try during these moments, I can only remember him crying, how heartbroken he was over Trowa, my betrayal, my letting him down, and the sight of him smiling at me one last time before he fell off of the train platform. I never cry. My depression and my grief are always too deep and dark for that kind of release. I don't try to talk to him, either. Not anymore. I can pretend that he's with me, imagine him sitting on the bench with me like he used to, but I can't talk to him. I see people doing that at the graves of the people that they loved and for some reason, I can't. I tried once, the first year anniversary of his death, but I felt so stupid. It didn't feel like I was talking to him. It felt like I was talking at nothing, and that realization only made his absence worse, more horrifying.  
    That's the sort of mood that February 22nd saw me in. Depressed, grieving, anxious, and just in a general foul mood. Heero had noticed it several times in the last two weeks, but whenever he had asked me what was wrong, I couldn't tell him. How could I tell him that I was nearing the fourth anniversary of the death of my friend and after four years, I still wasn't over the loss of him? Four years, and I had thought that time would make it better. But it hasn't. It's only made that pain go deeper into me, where I can hide it from everyone else, but feel it like a parasite. Like a gaping hole in me.   
    I wasn't the only one acting weird lately, either. I wasn't too involved in my misery to completely notice that Heero was acting strangely. Not in any outlandish way, at least, not in a way that someone who _wasn't_ madly in love with him would notice, but I certainly did. He wasn't moping about anything like I was, nor did he have a short fuse, but ever since Valentine's Day had hit us, he had been acting... different. Distracted. Distant. Like there was something incredibly heavy on his mind and he couldn't reason it out no matter how hard he tried.   
    I had caught him quite a few times not paying attention in class or staring off into space. He hadn't looked like someone who was bored or daydreaming. Quite the opposite. He had looked like there was one thing that he was intensely focused on and nothing else mattered to him. Worse, I would find him staring at me at odd times or he would start a conversation with me, then peter off, like he had lost his train of thought or thought that what he had been about to say was too stupid to finish.   
    Whatever it was, he wasn't interested in talking to me about it, so I had let it drop for awhile. Until, that was, he had continued asking me what my own mood was about and I had asked him, almost snappishly, what his weird behavior was about. He had shut up pretty quickly and flushed darker than I had ever seen him blush. Neither of us had pushed after that, but I kept my eye on him, trying to figure things out on my own. I began to wonder if he was trying to tell me that he didn't want to be friends with me anymore, but I shook that off quickly, writing it off as just an insecurity of mine. Mostly because I couldn't bear to deal with something like that.  
    My birthday this year fell, luckily, on a Saturday and Friday already saw me making plans in my head about what I was going to do that day. Would I be able to sneak out of the house without my father questioning where I was going? He was doing that a lot lately, for obvious reasons. One of the only reasons why I had been so lucky in dealing with him and not ending up a mangled wreck was our schedules. I could hide out at Heero's on Tuesdays and in between my work shifts, but the weekends were tricky. That I had Tuesdays and Saturdays off is pretty much the only thing he hasn't found out about yet and I don't know what I would do if he did.   
    I've been careful, more or less. Sleeping over at Heero's is always dangerous, but if I get home around the time that my father thinks I'm coming home from work, he never suspects where I've been all day. Saturday mornings he usually overloads me with chores to do and I have no doubt that he's either punishing me or keeping me from seeing my friend. The parallels that I can make here between my father's behavior and a jealous boyfriend are too disgusting for me to contemplate on, but I swear, that's how he's been acting, like my being friends with Heero is cheating on our family.   
    He seems angry that I have a friend at all and sometimes I wonder if it doesn't even matter who Heero is, if my father would be just as pissed if Heero's family was as poor as ours is. He seemed almost... snide when he had accused me of having no friends, like he thought that that was the greatest thing ever, and enraged when that had turned out to be false. Had it made him feel better about himself, I would think hurtfully, that I was such a loser, so alone and isolated, or did he not even understand his feelings himself?   
    I knew that I was tempting the storm. Every time my father caught me sneaking off to Heero's for the night, his rage grew and the damage he tried to do to me became more and more frightening. I've only been lucky so far because of his work schedule and being incredibly cautious, always keeping an exit to my back if I can help it. If I was even a little bit slower, I have no doubt the sort of violence he would have done to me. Some days, I don't even dare sleep, so sure that he's going to come into my room, screaming and fists flying. I feel like I'm constantly in a combat zone now, huddled on my bed, wearing my day clothes instead of my pajamas in case I need to make a getaway. My insomnia and those weird dreams of mine have gotten worse, but I wouldn't trade Heero for a little bit of peace of mind.   
    It wasn't just because of how much I need him and love him, a part of it was quite petty. I just didn't want my father to win. I didn't want him and his selfish behavior to completely control my life. It was that, more than anything, that was fuelling his rages. Not just that I was hanging out with Heero, but that he had given me an order and I wasn't following it. My mother was my savior just as much as my agility and sixth sense to danger was. I, stupidly, hadn't told her what the bug up my father's ass was, but one night when I had decided to stay over at Heero's and my father, enraged, had demanded to know where I was, she had covered for me.   
    When I had found out about that, I had come clean about it and we had had a very long talk about things. The first thing she had said was 'well, maybe you should stop hanging around him.' I think that some of the despair that I had felt just then had shown on my face, because she had held my hand and never mentioned that again. She had only begged that I be careful, and not even that I could promise her. I think she thought that I was willfully putting myself in harm's way, committing a sort of suicide by friendship, and I don't know, I guess I sort of was, in the way that I wouldn't bend no matter what my father would threaten me with. She understood, though, that nothing she could say to me would get me to change my mind and began to run as much interference between my father and myself as she could.  
    Ironically, when I actually did need to go out and do something that wasn't Heero related, all of this tended to bite me right in the ass. Every time I had to pull an extra shift or go grocery shopping or get some medicine for my mother's headaches, suddenly I was going off to see 'that piece of shit' and my father would come after me, no matter how logical I was about it. I had gotten beaten a handful of times for stuff like that and I started to wonder if my father was just using it as an excuse and he knew fully well that I wasn't doing anything, he just wanted to hit me. Lately, his rages and his temper have just been insane. It seems like _everything_ , even just my mother and I breathing can get him going.   
    His rage wasn't just at me, either. My mother constantly got caught up in it. Her sobriety had helped her hold her tongue and navigate away from any arguments about my father's drinking and other habits that had usually set her off, but it had done absolutely nothing to stop my father from starting fights with her. Actually, her continued success at not touching alcohol had fueled his rage. At first, her attempts at quitting had amused him. He had bullied her about it, insisting that she would never be successful.  
    I think that he had really believed everything that he had told her, every insult during that period, that she was a loser, that she was going to fail, that she was kidding herself in thinking that she was anything but a drunk. I think he had thought along the same lines that I had, but his reasons were uglier than my not being able to trust her, that given a week or two, she would be back on the bottle and he would make fun of her for it, but everything would be right in his narrow minded, ugly world again.   
    Only that didn't happen. A month went by. Then another. My mother kept going to those meetings and she stayed true to her promise to me. She hadn't had so much of a sip of beer or wine and she kept far away from bars and other places where alcohol was readily available. She wouldn't even buy my father's beer when she went shopping, he had to do it himself, not to punish him, but simply because she was frightened to go into a liquor store, what temptation might do to her.   
    My mother's sobriety had stopped being a source of childish amusement for my father. Instead, he had first become bitter about it, finding new ways to put her down and make her feel like shit. He reminded me of the things that Relena and Zechs had done to me and Quatre to make us feel that way, the tactics were alarmingly similar. Then, that irritation had become anger. Every time he watched her make herself a cup of tea or coffee, this black emotion would come into his eyes. Hatred. He hated her for not drinking. During one of their screaming arguments, he accused her of looking down on him, mocking him, and I wondered if that was really what it was about, if he felt that she was rubbing it in his face.   
    The thing was, even if he felt that way, he didn't seem to want to go down the same road as her. I could understand his anger if he had tried to quit and had failed, but he wasn't interested in it at all. But my mother's choice to do so seemed to genuinely disgust and enrage him. I suppose, in his mind, she thought that she was better than him for it. She was trying to pull herself out of the black hole that was their lives while my father was the sort that preferred to brood about it. He would complain about how shitty his life was and point the finger at her and me, economics, and the rich fucks that lived on the other side of town, but he would never try to fix things himself. Heero told me once that my father was happy in his misery and I wonder if, on some level, that's true.   
    No matter his reason, both my mother and I understood that we were now living with a bomb on a wire trigger, one that would go off if we acted or stayed perfectly still. So when I thought about my birthday plans the day before and realized that I might have a hard time just leaving the house that day thanks to my father's temper tantrums, it was my mother that I went to. I probably should have planned for this days ago, but between just not wanting to think about it and changing my plans at the last minute thanks to a stray thought, I had kept putting it off.   
    Friday morning at six, my mother and I had the kitchen to ourselves. My father wouldn't wake for an hour, so I made my lunch and brewed my mother some coffee. She looked terrible. Not only had her shift the previous night run late thanks to a call out, my father had gotten into another fight with her that had ended with a black eye and some fresh, black bruises on her neck and the left side of her jaw. She looked very weary that morning and I knew that she had spent another night on the couch. She accepted the mug of coffee with a tight smile, like it was a gift from the gods.   
    "Mom," I decided that if I was going to approach the subject, it would have to be right then while my father was still asleep, "Can I ask you a favor?"  
    "Sure, Sweetheart," she said pleasantly after taking a few sips of the coffee.  
    Even though it had been almost two months since our talk and since then our relationship had flourished from awkward to tentatively close, the moments when she called me things like that made me feel ridiculously warm and happy. We still had our strained moments, but it had become very easy for both of us to deal with them. For the first time in my life, I felt like I actually had a mother, the kind that I often saw picking up my classmates from school, someone like Mrs. Yuy. I almost asked her for a little bit of money since I needed to get something for the next day and, thanks to my father, didn't have a penny. But I couldn't do that to her just because spending money hadn't been in my original plans.   
    "I have something to do all day tomorrow," I told her, "and I would rather not have Dad finding out about it."  
    Unlike my father, my mother knew that I take Tuesdays and Saturdays off of work. I had thought that she would be upset about that, with her working seven days a week, but she had never lectured me about it.  
    "Are you going to hang out with that boy?" she frowned.  
    To my knowledge, my mother had nothing against Heero, but even though she hadn't suggested that I not be friends with him again, she was always nervous when I told her that I was going to hang out with him.   
    "It's not that," I told her, "It's just something that I need to do. It's important."  
    "You can't wait until 3:30?" she asked, which was the time that I usually went to hang with Heero while my father just thought that I was going to work.  
    I shook my head. I probably could have waited until then to do what I wanted to, but I wanted the sunlight and that wouldn't leave me much time before the sun would set.   
    "Will you be coming back home tomorrow night?" she asked worriedly.  
    "I... I don't know," I said truthfully.  
    I had absolutely no idea what was going to happen the next day. Heero hadn't asked me to stay the night on Saturday, but I couldn't rule it out, or my ability to tell him no. Not on that day. I already felt emotionally vulnerable, and after mourning Quatre, I was going to be even worse. If Heero asked me to stay with him, I didn't think that I was going to have the right frame of mind to tell him no.   
    "Alright," my mother sighed, but managed a tight smile, "I'll take care of it."  
    "I don't need you to cover for me," I insisted, "I don't want you to get hurt, just... it might be better if you stayed away from him tomorrow when he realized that I'm gone."  
    She waved away my concerns.  
    "I can take care of myself," she assured me, even though we both knew that that was bullshit, "I'll think of something to tell him."  
    "Thanks, Mom," I hugged her, surprising her a little.  
    Although our relationship had healed quite a bit, displays of affection like that were still hard for both of us, not just with each other, but in general. Quatre had liked to hug, I remembered, and something tore through my heart, something sharp and grating. I felt tears prick my eyes, but I wouldn't let them fall. Not yet. I tried not to think about how Quatre's hugs had been some of the first ones I had ever had, how he used to grab me so tightly. Before Heero, he had been the only person that I had ever felt comfortable being touched by. If I thought about it too much, I could feel his phantom embrace around me and I knew that I really would start sobbing.   
    The rest of the day wasn't much easier. When you've lived in one small town your entire life, _everything_ is teeming with memories from your childhood. It's inescapable. While I can more or less push down these memories into a subconscious territory, that close to Quatre's anniversary, I was being assaulted with them. Everywhere and everything reminded me of him, both the good and the bad. It was like that every year and it seemed like every anniversary, I remembered something different, but no less heart wrenching.   
    But this year was different. This year I had Heero. And while that, in itself, served to remind me of the friendship that I had lost, it helped to soothe away some of the loneliness and emptiness that often came with that time of year. Still, school that day was miserable for me. I was thankful that Quatre had never gone to high school with me or even just walking through the door would have been a punch to the gut. But all of our classmates had been there the day that he had killed himself and their faces made me feel equal parts rage and soul sucking depression. When Relena's face was one of the first that I saw that morning, I wanted to vomit. Or throw something at her.  
    "Well, you look miserable," Heero said as I walked into homeroom.  
    He was early for once and we were, thankfully, the only two people in there. I just sighed at him and sat heavily into my desk chair. Even just seeing him there reminded me of all the times that Quatre would show up early to class so we could hang out in the homeroom and talk.  
    "So, does this mood that you've been in lately have anything to do with your birthday tomorrow?" he asked boldly.  
    I blinked at him in astonishment. How the hell had he figured that out? I hadn't even told him when my birthday was.  
    "Ok, how did you know that?" I demanded.  
    "There's this wonderful thing called the internet," he said a bit smugly, "You should try it some time. The school has a data base of all the students that go here, including their birthdays."  
    "That's cheating," I complained, but secretly applauded his ingenuity.  
    He had to have known that I wouldn't tell him when my birthday was, so he wouldn't get me anything, that or he had just wanted to surprise me. Sure enough, he rooted around in his book bag for a second and then pulled out a little card and a wrapped package that was just shy of a foot wide. The wrapping was just like the Christmas present he had given me, the effort was there, but the skill was not.   
    "Happy birthday, Duo," he beamed at me, "Well, day before your birthday, but I didn't know if I'm going to see you tomorrow, so I figured that this was as good a time as any."  
    "You didn't have to do this," I said as I took the items from him, but still felt pleased that he had been so thoughtful.  
    "Of course I did," he said petulantly.  
    I opened the card first, expecting just a greeting card and instead finding a rather pricey gift card to the local bookstore.  
    "My mom says it lacks originality to get people gift cards," Heero said sheepishly, "but I don't know what books you've already read."  
    "This is too much," I said, but it was a bit insincere considering the excitement in my voice, "This is great, Heero, thank you so much."  
    He blushed a little at that.  
    "You're welcome. That other present is just a small something," he mumbled.  
    I almost protested that the gift card was more than enough, especially considering that I had no money of my own anymore to buy new books, but I had learned through Christmas that arguing with my best friend about giving gifts was completely pointless.  
    'Quatre was the same way,' I thought sadly.   
    Giving me things was just about the only thing that he had ever been stubborn about, unlike Heero. In reality, my two friends had very little in common. Quatre had been soft spoken and shy, Heero passionate and single minded. The only thing that they really had in common at all besides living on the rich side of town was me. I pushed the depressing thought away and opened the package to find a high quality, blue hand mixer, complete with various attachments, even a whisk. While someone else might have felt disappointed, or maybe even insulted, I was just as excited over the device as I had been the gift card.  
    "How did you find it?" I asked in amazement, quickly noticing that it was the exact hand mixer that I had seen in one of the cooking shows that I had watched at his house and had coveted.  
    I suppose it's kind of silly, me lusting over a kitchen device, but we haven't had a hand mixer since my father threw my mother's ancient one into the kitchen wall several years back. When you cook and bake as much as I do, appliances are akin to new sports equipment to a jock. Heero had even gotten it in my favorite color, I realized with affection.  
    "I had to order it from a catalogue," he looked incredibly proud of himself that he had gotten this right, and I was too shy to tell him that he had gotten it perfectly right, "The mall had one like it, but it didn't have any of the attachments, it was mostly for cookie batter, and it only came in white."  
    I had to stand up and hug him, which was a bit awkward with him sitting at his desk, and I was blushing like mad when I let go of him, but that was ok. He was blushing pretty fiercely, too.  
    "Thank you so much," I told him.  
    "I-it's no problem," he stammered for a moment, "I'm glad you like them," he paused and then said daringly, "I'm just happy that I managed to put a smile on your face finally. You haven't smiled in over a week."  
    I sat back down at my desk, tucking my gifts into my book bag and hoping that no one would steal them during the day. I hadn't realized that he had been so in tune with my bad mood to have noticed something like that.   
    "There... hasn't been a whole lot to smile about lately," I murmured.  
    And boy wasn't that the truth? It was hard enough dealing with the anniversary of Quatre's suicide, but having to deal with my father's recent, almost crazy behavior on top of that was making it very hard for me to feel anything but sad lately, sad and tired. It was only when I was with Heero that I felt like there was anything that could lift the dark mood that I was in, but I knew that, eventually, a couple weeks from now, it would pass. Heero immediately took it the wrong way, obviously thinking that some new, horrible thing had happened to me, and looked alarmed.  
    "Do you want to talk about it?" he asked in a soft tone that told me he was already starting to worry and become paranoid.  
    Anxiety gripped my heart. I had been waiting for this, a way to approach the subject with him and he had given me the perfect opening, but I still hesitated. I really didn't want to discuss this with him, had been putting it off ever since the idea had popped into my head, but at the same time, I really _did_ want to talk about it. Not just because I had some vague idea that it might be good for me, like how Mrs. Khushrenada had kept telling me that I needed to talk to someone about it, something that I have never done these last four years, but it wasn't just that.   
    It was about the fact that, except for myself and Relena and her nasty, little gang, no one else knew the truth. And I didn't want that. For Quatre, I needed someone else to know, to understand what had happened. Even if it meant Heero hating me for it. I had thought about this for days, mulling and agonizing over it. I had only told Heero the barest amount about my deceased friend and nothing more. I've always been petrified of him knowing about my role in Quatre's death, how I had pushed his crush away cruelly, how I had ignored all the signs that Quatre was having a hard time dealing with things, how I had been unable to stop Relena from getting to him. All of the ways that I had failed him as a friend when I had owed him so much more. I couldn't bear Heero knowing.   
    But that wasn't fair to Quatre's memory and I think that, after all of these years, I was _finally_ ready to tell someone, anyone, about the truth. I think that I really needed to, or it was going to be a cancer on my heart for the rest of my life. It probably was still going to be, but I knew that I needed to try to do something about it. I knew that it was time. That dream that I had had about Quatre, the one where I had only remembered the pleasant things instead of the terrible, had told me that I was ready. But that didn't mean that this was in any way easy.  
    "A part of it is my birthday," I confessed, "I've never really celebrated it much, so I've never really cared. My parents tend to forget about it entirely, so I've just let it pass me by."  
    "I'm sorry," he frowned, "That's not fair, for them to forget about your birthday. It should be something important to you and your family."  
    I shrugged, but felt that little, sharp pain that I feel every year that my parents haven't celebrated it, or just downright forgotten about it. I know I shouldn't feel that way anymore. I'm seventeen, I'm almost an adult, something like a missed birthday is not a big deal. But it still hurts, knowing that I mean that little to them. _Meant_. At least I can't say that about my mother anymore, but that's little comfort when I remember all those years when I was younger and more emotionally vulnerable, and not hearing so much as a 'happy birthday' from them.  
    "But my birthday isn't a big part of why I've been... sad lately," I swallowed roughly, realizing that I was quickly passing the point of no return, but in a rare fit of courage, bulled forward, "There's something that I have to do tomorrow. Something that has absolutely nothing to do with my birthday. It's something that is going to upset me a lot and make me depressed, but it's something that I have to do and I've been doing at this time of year for awhile now. I... I usually do it alone. Not just because I haven't had a friend in a long time, but because it's very, very personal. But I don't want to do it alone this year. I don't even know if I'm strong enough, so... so I wanted to ask you if you would go with me."  
    "Absolutely," Heero said with passion that Quatre had lacked, but only in his mellow, but just as sincere way, like there was no where else in the world that he could think of rather being and knowing him, he probably was thinking that, "You know I'll be there for you, whatever you need."  
    "It's not just for moral support," I told him, "Although there is that. I want you to be a part of this, and you deserve to be a part of it."  
    Maybe it was just my sickening infatuation with him talking, but I didn't think it was. Heero was my best friend, and Quatre's death had touched me, shaped me, and wounded me in ways that nothing in my childhood ever had. He had shared quite a few things with me and he deserved to know about this, even if his opinion of me afterwards wasn't so shiny anymore. Maybe if he did know about Quatre, he would understand why I had such a low opinion of myself and why I believed so strongly that there was nothing to be done about Relena and Zechs.   
    At the very least, he deserved to know what sins the girl that he had once called girlfriend had done, how bad her cruelty could get when she really worked up a hatred like she might do to him, and he certainly deserved to know about the sins that _I_ had committed. Again, for about the hundredth time since I had thought to ask Heero to come with me, I wondered about my sanity. I was risking a friendship, the only one that I had, one that I needed more than I needed air, all to unload a secret that I had been keeping successfully for years. Was I nuts?  
    'I thought the same thing when I asked Quatre if he loved Trowa,' I remembered, 'That I could fuck up our friendship forever. But I didn't, everything was ok and we helped each other. He even said once that he didn't know what how he would have coped without being able to tell someone about his sexuality, that I was the only one he could talk to and it had helped him. At least for awhile.'  
    'But Heero isn't Quatre,' a ghost thought popped into my head.  
    'No,' I agreed with myself, 'but he's just as kind. Maybe he'll be able to forgive me, or at least look the other way about this like he does with Dad. Maybe things will be alright with this, too.'  
    I think I realized that I didn't really have a choice. I didn't want to risk my friendship, but some part of me felt like this was the right thing to do. I won't say that it was a risk that I was willing to take, because it scared the ever loving crap out of me, but I knew, even through my fears, that I was going to do it. Maybe I'm just insane.  
    "When tomorrow?" he asked me, his voice full of this intense dedication that made me nervous when I realized that the second that I had told him that this thing was going to upset me, he would have been there whether I had ask him to come or not.  
    "It'd be best if I came in the early morning," I told him, "but we don't have to go until noon. I need the light, but we should see if the day is going to warm up at all."  
    Fat chance of that happening. In mid February, the weather had been as icy and unwelcoming as it had been in January, the only difference being that we had only had two snow storms so far this month. Temperatures ranged from ten to thirty degrees, although we had a couple of days where it hit 42 and 46. Everything had turned to ice and even my bedroom with the heat going felt like a fucking ice box. Yet another reason for spending the nights at Heero's. At least I didn't have to wake up shivering and feeling sick, but my house had always been that way.  
    "Oh," I added shyly, "and is it alright if I stop by your place after school today? I need to ask your parents for a favor."  
    "Of course you can," he said with a snort, "You don't have to ask that."  
    I knew that, but I hated asking for favors from his parents. They had already done so much, it made me feel like a total heel, like I was using them, even if they didn't mind it. And so, that afternoon saw me going together with Heero back to his house, which wasn't all that different from usual. He would often come by after school to check up on Pepper, so when he walked through the door with Heero, Mrs. Yuy just flashed him a pleased smile and greeted the both of us. She had just come back from shopping after work herself and we stopped to help her put groceries away.  
    "Do you want a snack before you go to work, dear?" she asked when we finished.  
    In the past, I would have thought that she was talking to Heero, not me, and been confused, but I was used to her terms of endearments, even if they still made me feel stupidly happy.  
    "No, thank you," I told her, "I'm not that hungry."  
    "Can you stay for a little bit?" she asked, "Justin had a cancellation, so he should be home in a few minutes. He would want to say hi to you."  
    "Sure," I nodded.  
    The Yuys' house was closer to a bus stop than my own was and I had just enough change in my pocket for one trip, so I wouldn't risk being late. I went upstairs to refill my cat's water and food dishes and scoop out her litter box. By the time I brought the trash downstairs to toss into the garbage in the laundry room, Mr. Yuy was home, taking off his jacket in the foyer.   
    "Hello, Duo," he greeted me with that soft, easy smile that he had, "Almost off to work?"  
    "Almost," I confirmed, "Um..." I looked down at the floor nervously, already feeling guilty, "I need to ask a favor..."  
    "Did you need some money?" he asked me with a knowing gleam in his blue eyes.  
    My head shot up and I stared at him in shock.  
    "How did you know that?!" I asked, aghast, wondering seriously for a crazy moment if he really _could_ read my mind.  
    "Because you look like you just swallowed a rather large and unpleasant toad," he chuckled, "Which means, of course, that whatever you want to ask of me is embarrassing to you, which usually means money."  
    I flushed darkly. I had only asked him for money a couple of times, just fives and tens, mostly so I could take the bus to go to work and buy a meal on my break, but every time had probably been like pulling teeth to him. I couldn't help it. I absolutely hated asking for money from anyone. It was too deeply ingrained in me, pride and not relying on others, along with feeling bad that I was asking someone that had not only given me far too much and had no problems at all giving me more, but didn't owe me a damned thing.   
    "How much do you need?" he asked with an ease that I couldn't possibly have in this sort of situation.  
    He said it so nonchalantly, not asking what I needed the money for so he could turn me down if he thought it was something silly, he didn't care. I needed money and he had plenty, that was how he saw it. Or maybe he just understood me too well, that I would never ask him for such a thing unless I was desperate.  
    "Thirty-five," I said and winced.  
    That was easily more than twice what I had ever asked him for before. Him giving me a ten spot was easy, but there was no way he was going to give me that much money. I wouldn't have even asked if I hadn't needed it so much. I watched in total shock as, without so much as a raised eyebrow, he took his wallet out of his back pocket and fished out, not thirty-five like I had asked for, but two twenties.   
    "That's too much," I protested weakly, seeing that he had a few tens and fives there.  
    "It's fine," he assured me and practically forced the bills into my hand, "You can keep the change, too. Use it to get yourself some dinner tonight. You're too skinny," he scolded good naturedly and I thought of how his wife was always saying that to me, that I was so thin that she had to keep feeding me or I might blow away.  
    "I... Thank you," I said earnestly, "I'll pay you back somehow."      
    He snorted, not in a cruel way, knowing that I couldn't do something like that without hiding money from my father again, but like he found the idea of my needing to pay him back not only ridiculous, but almost offensive.  
    "If you really want to pay me back," he said slyly, "you can come over for dinner tomorrow."  
    "How is that paying you back?" I asked in exasperation, knowing full well that he was pulling my leg.  
    "Because I would like you to," he ruffled my hair as he walked past me, "So that's what I'm asking from you. Mariela and I would appreciate it."  
    I almost asked him _why_ my coming over for dinner on Saturday was a big deal at all, but it wasn't like he was asking me to do anything that I hadn't intended on doing to begin with, so I just nodded and tucked the two twenties away into my own, depressingly empty wallet. It was more money that I had even seen in a month and I had gotten it so easily, it made me feel weird. I was still marveling how he hadn't so much as blinked about the amount and I realized that, to a guy like him, forty bucks was pocket change.   
    I wondered just how much money I could ask of him before he told me no. Fifty? A hundred? I really didn't like thinking that I had that kind of financial well. I understood, with something akin to horror, that if I asked for Heero's father for money to help keep our heat turned on or a new winter jacket, he might actually hand something that outlandish over to me without a second thought. That disturbed me a great deal. I wondered, with a great deal of perversity, what my father would say if I mentioned such a source of money. Would he bitterly and pettily still demand that I stay away from the Yuys, too proud to want a hand out, or would he order me to leech them as dry as I could for our own benefit? I didn't know which possibility disgusted me more.  
    But as I headed off to work after saying good bye to Heero and his parents, I began to doubt my promise of having dinner with them the next day. I had thought that it was something that I would need to do, a place to hide when I was at my lowest, which I would surely be after what I was going to do. But then I started to wonder if it was such a good idea. I was going to be a mess, I always am afterwards, and I didn't want Heero or his parents to see me like that. It was already too late, I realized.   
    Not only had I made that promise, Heero was coming with me. If there was anyone in the world who I could handle seeing me fall apart, it was him, while at the same time, it made me feel disgusted in myself. But I knew that, in the end, my need for comfort was going to outweigh my need to not get embarrassed. I suddenly wondered what Quatre would think if he could see me right then, debating grieving alone like I did every year, just because I didn't want the people that I cared about seeing me that vulnerable. He would say that I was an idiot, I realized with a slight smile. He would tell me that the people that love you are exactly the people to cry in front of.   
    For a moment, I enjoyed the vision in my head of him cuffing me and calling me a masochistic moron for even _thinking_ of not letting Heero join me tomorrow, but then it quickly dissolved into memories of all of the moments when _I_ had been the only one that Quatre could cry to. I tried to feel rage about that, especially directed towards Quatre's family, but it was more of a sad feeling than it used to be. I was still angry with them for all of the ways that they had let him down, but mostly I just felt depressed for Quatre's father. He had lost so much because of his bad decisions: his only son, one of his daughters, and his wife. He had paid for his mistakes more than the rest of us.   
    I was in a dark mood by the time that I had gotten to Leneski's, wondering for the first time in a year what had happened to the Winners, if Lily had found her way home again, if Mr. Winner had gotten re-married, if he had moved on from Quatre's suicide or if he was like me, unable to let go of the past. Was he still as miserable as I was? Had he even killed himself out of guilt and grief like Quatre's step-mother had? I probably would have wallowed in those thoughts for the rest of my shift, if not for the rest of my day, but halfway through my shift, as we finished our assignment and went back to the shop, I was surprised with a cake and a gift certificate to the mall by my boss and coworkers.   
    I knew that Leneski had my birth date on file, and I knew that he would go out and buy a cake and have everyone scrape together some money for one of his workers' birthdays, but it had never occurred to me that one day, it would be my turn. None of my other bosses had done something nice for me like that. When I tried to thank everyone, my boss chuckled at me.  
    "Turning seventeen is a hell of a lot more important than turning thirty-five or fifty. You can drive a car, see a rated R film without sneaking in, and even apply to donate your body to science when you die. Seventeen is the last year you're officially still a kid and can mess up, so don't waste it, ok?" he advised me.  
    I hadn't really thought about it, that my birthday had any kind of significance since I had been ignoring it for so long. I certainly hadn't given it any thought when I had turned sixteen. Getting a driver's permit wasn't something that I could do, unlike all the other kids in my grade who had gotten stupidly excited this year and last. For one, I didn't have a car and there was no way in hell my father was ever going to let me drive his. Hell, he didn't even let my mom drive it.   
    Two, you need a parent's signature just to go for the test, so that was another thing that was never going to happen since my mom and I hadn't been speaking still back then. Three, I also needed to prove that I was a US citizen and a resident of the state, which needed things like birth certificates that I would need to ask my father for. But the biggest thing had been the cost. In order to take the test, I would need to go to driver's school and pass, which was a ridiculous amount of money, and then pay the fees to get the permit. So I hadn't really given a shit that I had become old enough to learn how to drive. In all likelihood, besides using a driver's license as an ID, I would never need one. If I got a job in town, I could just take the bus and save money on getting a car, insurance, and gas.   
    But turning seventeen was different. Leneski had pointed out that I only had one year before I would become a legal adult. "Don't waste it," he had said jokingly, but I didn't find anything very humorous about it. One year and I would become an adult. One year and I would be done with public high school. One year and my father would no longer be required to legally care for me. He could do whatever he wanted, including kicking me out of his house with nothing but the clothes on my back. That knowledge was both equally terrifying and exhilarating to me.   
    Before this year, I only could have said that the idea of my becoming an adult was frightening. Becoming eighteen only meant that I would become homeless and would need to find some way to get shelter and a job that paid well enough to keep that shelter, as well as keep me fed. There was literally nothing else for me. I had no one in my life, no skills, no kind of calling, and no money to continue my education or even just get some shitty motel room for awhile. Hell, I'd become homeless at the start of my second semester at high school if my father didn't wait until the end of the year.   
    But so much as changed in my life now. While the idea of losing my home still frightens me, there is also a part of me that thinks that that won't be so bad anymore. I wouldn't have to put up with my father again. No more beatings. No more insults and making me feel like shit. No more of him slipping into bed with me in the early morning hours. It would be done with, _all_ of it. That alone made homelessness seem infinitely less horrifying. That thought also made me realize something that was kind of an epiphany, even if it was a terrible one: I would rather be homeless than put up with my father's abuse anymore.  
    Where had that resolve been when I had been unable to run away before? Why couldn't I have felt this way back then?! Because, I realize now with a dark feeling in my chest, I didn't know what it was like, what it was really like, to be fucked by him almost every night. I didn't know how something like that can rip and tear and shatter a person's heart until there are only scraps left. I didn't know how sickening and how awful it makes me feel. And even knowing that, all the reasons for my not leaving are still there. The knowledge that I don't know if I can take care of myself, worrying about Pepper, not wanting to leave my family. But now I realize that it wasn't worth it. The cost that I had paid for staying has become too high.  
    Of course, now I also know that if I had run away, my father would have just found me and brought me back, not because he cared, but because he had me exactly where he wanted me. He would see me running away as slighting him. When I thought about that, I would feel this intense fear in me. What if he didn't kick me out when I turned eighteen? What if he decided that he wanted to chain me to him for his rest of his life? Just how far did I need to run to get away from him? As far as I need to. Even if I needed to run away to a different state.  
    But the irony of that is, even though I understand now that I can't keep on like this, that being homeless might actually be a _good_ thing for me, I can't runaway. All of the good things in my life right now have freed me from that grey place, but at the same time, they've shackled me down. I can't leave my mother now that we finally have a relationship. And I sure as hell can't leave Heero. But would I really be leaving him? I have no idea what Heero plans for his future, but I'm sure that he'll be going off to college next year.   
    I might only have a year and a half with him before he leaves my life forever. Oh, I know that he would keep in touch, but the fact remains that wherever he's going, I can't follow him. He has opportunities that I can never have and I have to accept that. I just don't know how I'm going to cope without him, and isn't that pathetic? I've lived a great deal of my life alone, I'm used to it. So why does the thought of living without my best friend cripple me so much? This wasn't like Quatre. It wasn't like Heero was going to die and I was never going to see him again. He was just going to... move on without me.   
    Fuck, now I'm crying. See how pathetic I am? I should be grateful for all the good things in my life, because with the exception of my father's sexual abuse, things _have_ gotten a little better, but here I am moping about something that isn't going to happen for another year. I should be feeling more optimistic about my future because of these changes, not less. True, having Heero in my life means that losing him is going to hurt me more than having no friends did, but it made the possibility of my father kicking me out less hopeless.  
    Sure, all the money that I've been saving up for that possibility is now long gone, and I'm sickened to say that a good portion of it has probably added to my father's liver deterioration, but it hadn't been enough to get a place to live with anyway. The money, while I mourn it's loss, wasn't a very good safety net, but I have others now. I have my mother, who is only slightly less broke than I am, and I know that she would never be able to support me, but she was a good enough reason to stick around in Nausten. Who knows, maybe one day, if I got a good enough job, I could convince her to move in an apartment together. Maybe we could help support each other and, best of all, I could get her away from my father.  
    A pipe dream, I know. I don't know if my mother has the resolve and courage to leave my father, either just physically or divorce him. She sure loathes him enough to do it, but he also frightens her, and with good reason. But if her quitting drinking has taught me anything, it's that for all of her flaws, she can also be quite strong. I know that it's just a dream, one that I've had for a very long time of being my mother's savior, but I still like how it feels, the possibility of that kind of future for us.   
    And then there's my biggest security net of all: Heero's parents. If you had asked me months ago if I thought that if I turned up on their doorstep with nowhere else to go, homeless and without any money, if they would take me in, I would laugh. But now I know that they would. Even if I was legally an adult, they would want to help. I could keep at least my construction job, keep the money from that to help pay for an apartment and look for a few other jobs, Pepper could keep a roof over her head, and I could stay afloat for awhile until I had the means to care for myself.   
    That was an infinitely more hopeful future than just losing my home and my family. In the past, there was no way in hell I would even ask the Yuys for something like that, to just leech off of them. And yeah, it would make me feel like some kind of parasite, but I could deal with that. I won't be my father, I won't put my pride before asking for help, help that I knew was so readily available. I've seen what pride can turn a person into, how it can make you so bitter and ugly inside, full of nothing but resentment and hatred for everyone else. Maybe I inherited my anger from him, either through genetics or cause and effect, but I was not going to become him like that.  
    I pushed the tangle of chaotic and depressing thoughts out of my head, telling myself that I had an entire year before I needed to worry about any of it, and enjoyed my cake with my coworkers. When I got home after my second shift, both of my parents were asleep, my mother having taken the couch again. I decided to head to bed immediately, wanting to get up before my dad did in the morning, and hoping that he wouldn't be up for one of his early morning 'excursions'. He didn't come into my room that day, but I didn't get any sleep.   
    I kept thinking about what I was going to do that morning, what I was going to subject Heero to, and Quatre. I thought about Quatre a lot. My tired mind bounced frantically from the good and the bad. I remembered the last moments that I had had with him, his sunny smile, how his entire face had lit up whenever he had talked about Trowa, all the times he had helped me when Relena or Zechs had been bullying me. And I thought about the look in his eyes when we had been in the hospital after getting hit by the truck, how hopeless and _distant_ he had seemed. I think, even then, he had been thinking about killing himself, but I guess I'll never know.   
    I wondered if he would like Heero and decided that he really would. He would say that our friendship was good for me and that, despite the rough start that Heero had had when he had first moved here, he was a nice guy. I wondered, if Quatre hadn't killed himself, if I would have still made friends with Heero. That tangled up my thoughts for a solid hour, trying to trace back all of the reasons why Heero had become friends with me. I would have fallen for him, no matter if Quatre had been there or not. In fact, my friend probably would have noticed Heero's effect on me long before I had. It's easier seeing love, I think, when it's not happening to you.  
    My friendship with Heero had all started because of my confession to Dorothy. Would that have happened if Quatre had still been there? It was hard to know. If Quatre had still been alive, would I have decided to stay in Nausten after finding out that my dad wanted to fuck me? I don't think so. I think, at that point, I would have run away with Quatre like he had said that he wanted to, but maybe I would have stayed. It hurt too much, thinking of dealing with my father's sexual abuse and trying to hide it from Quatre. It was hard enough with Heero, not telling him the truth.   
    Of course, if Quatre hadn't killed himself, I never would have gone out with Trowa. I never would have had sex with him. I never would have tried to kill myself or become the sad and bitter person that I am now. Sure, I would still have an attitude problem, but I would have grown into a different person than I turned out to be. Probably a better person. No, definitely a better person. But if Quatre being alive meant that I had never become friends with Heero... It's sick and terrible and I hate myself for it, but honestly? I don't know which I would prefer. Quatre is dead and I'm treasuring what I have with Heero more than I am wishing that he were alive. I'm a disgusting, horrible human being. And in a few hours, I was going to let Heero see that rancid part of my soul.   
    I rolled over onto my side and curled up into a tight ball. My stomach hurt like hell from pure anxiety and self-loathing. I was not the least bit surprised when five am came around and I was still wide awake. My overactive brain aside, I had been having a lot of trouble sleeping in my house lately, especially with Pepper gone. It was weird, it seemed like the more like home the Yuys' house felt, the less mine did, like there was some transference of energy there, like, little by little, I was moving from one place to the other.     Nothing in my house felt right anymore, not the sounds or the smells or even how I felt. It probably sounds a bit melodramatic and sensational, but in a way, I feel like my home has become a haunted house. Haunted not by spirits, but by a malevolent air, a shadow full of malice. Or maybe that air has always been there and it took being around a normal family and normal home for me to see it, like someone who lives in smog their entire lives never smells it until they get a whiff of clean air.  
    I heard some noises in the kitchen and thought that my mother must be up, making herself a pot of coffee. She got insomnia, too, at times. I don't know if it's from her stress headaches, anxiety, or some after effect of sobriety, but when it hits us both, we sometimes take walks or will talk in the living room. I decided that, if my mother was up, I might as well get up, too. It wasn't like I was going to be able to sleep any more than I had been the last few hours.   
    I pulled on some warm clothes and almost stashed a clean pair to put in my backpack on the off chance that I would end up sleeping over at Heero's before I remembered that I had left three changes of clothes there already because it had seemed pointless bringing them home. At the rate that I was going, I was going to have more of my things there than here. I already had an extra toothbrush and comb, the only things that I needed to bring was my homework and the money that Justin had given me.   
    As I opened my bedroom door, a wonderfully sweet smell hit me. At first I thought it was a new kind of coffee or maybe my mother had bought a cinnamon roll from the grocery store and was heating it up for breakfast, but I knew the scent of baking cookies when I smelled it, it has a very distinctive aroma, and there was something achingly familiar about this specific smell, but I couldn't figure out what it was. Extremely confused, I walked downstairs to the kitchen. I couldn't think of a single reason why my mother would be baking cookies at five-thirty in the morning.   
    Hell, I couldn't think of a single reason why she would be baking at _all_. I don't think she had used the oven for anything more than heating up frozen food since I was in the single digits. But there she was standing in front of the stove, taking a tray of cookies out of the oven and wearing an apron. I couldn't remember the last time I had seen her wearing an apron, either.   
    "Good morning, Duo," she greeted me, looking a lot more chipper than I felt, the mug of coffee sitting on the counter was no doubt the reason, "I didn't wake you, did I?"  
    "No, I couldn't sleep. What are the cookies for?" I asked, thinking that she had probably baked them for one of her meetings or something like that, but she surprised me.  
    "Happy birthday," she said very shyly, a faint blush on her pale cheeks, looking embarrassed suddenly, putting one of the cookies on a napkin and handing it to me. It was still too hot to eat, but the smell of it was enticing and kept needling at me, this familiar smell that was trying to bring some memory forth, "I'm sorry, I didn't have any ingredients to make a cake and I couldn't find my recipe for marble cake."  
    I felt floored, unable to speak for a moment. How many years had it been since she had done anything at all for me on my birthday? I honestly couldn't remember. I don't know why I had thought that she would forget it again this year, it had just seemed like a normal thing. Even if we had this growing relationship, the possibility that she would remember and actually _do_ something for it had never occurred to me. She had even remembered the kind of cake that I liked the most, even if she hadn't been able to make it.  
    "T-that's alright," I stammered, just barely holding myself back from adding 'just you remembering my birthday at all is enough', "These look great."  
    "They used to be your favorite," she said softly, still shy from her efforts to give me something sweet for my birthday, "I hope you still like them."  
    I looked down at the cookie that I held in my hand and saw in shock that it was chocolate chip oatmeal.   
   _"I hope that these are still your favorite."_  
    That's what Mrs. Liddle had said to me when she had made me these same kinds of cookies. I remembered it so clearly, standing in her kitchen and having that ghost of a memory of my mother making me them when I had been no older than a toddler, a memory that I had been so certain was false because I had been too young back then and there was no way that my mother had done something like that for me.   
    But she had. Knowing what I do now about her, it didn't seem so impossible. And there was something inside of me that was screaming that yes, this was familiar. I knew this smell. I had had these cookies before. That was incredible enough, but it didn't just mean that once, my mother had been nice enough to make cookies for me, it meant something much stranger. Mrs. Liddle had known that these were my favorite. How? She had known what my mother had been like as a child, too. But I was certain that I had never met her beyond a few glances across the street before I had knocked on her door. So how could she have known?   
    I blew on the cookie and took a bite of it. When I had tasted my neighbor's cookies, I had thought that they were delicious, but there was something about them that wasn't right. Now I knew what that was. Mrs. Liddle had come close to my mother's recipe, but they hadn't been the same. Close enough to flare a shade of a memory, but not close enough to be the real thing. I knew just from a taste the key differences, that my mother's had nutmeg and more cinnamon while Mrs. Liddle's had had vanilla in them. The second I tasted that cookie, that vague memory that had eluded me in Mrs. Liddle's kitchen came back to me in a rush. It wasn't anything concrete, I had indeed been too young, but a voice, my mother's voice, flooded my head.  
   _"Baby, please don't cry. Don't make any noise and I'll make you something nice, alright? That's a good boy. See? It isn't bleeding too much. Yes, I know your nose hurts. I'll bake those cookies that you love, that will make it feel better. There's no need to scream anymore."_  
    "You used to make these for me when I was really little," I said in amazement and she smiled, happy that I remembered.  
    "It's been so long," she admitted, "Are they alright?"  
    "They're perfect, Mom, thank you," I hugged her tightly.  
    She put some on a plate and we sat at the table together to share them. Cookies was probably not something that either of us should be eating for breakfast, but they were hot and delicious.  
    "I wish that you had told me that you were making them," I told her in between bites of my third cookie, "Heero gave me a hand mixer for my birthday, it would have made making these easier."  
    "That was awfully nice of him," she said, looking surprised although I couldn't tell if it was from knowing that my friend had given me a gift or because a mixer wasn't exactly a typical present, "That's a bit of a strange gift, though."  
    "Not really," I defended him, "He knows that I bake and cook a lot, and mixing things by hand all the time is a hassle."  
    "Speaking of presents, I got you something," she said, "Stay right there."  
    She got up and disappeared into the basement. I stared after her, feeling like I had fallen into some alternate dimension or something. She re-emerged with a brightly wrapped box that was a bout two and a half feet long. The wrapping reminded me of Heero's, askew, but well intentioned.   
    "Mom, you didn't need to get me anything," I insisted as she handed it to me, "I know that money is tight-"  
    "No, I did," she said sadly and ran her hand through my bangs and over the top of my head, "All those years that I just... drank your birthday away... I didn't even say 'happy birthday' to you, just nothing. Some years I noticed it, and I did it deliberately because I didn't want to care, and others I didn't even realize what the date was. That was cruel. You didn't deserve any of that," she kissed the top of my head and my chest clenched, my eyes feeling suspiciously wet, "I wish that I could take it all back, but this is all that I can do."  
    She sat back down next to me and I didn't really know what to say to her. 'It's alright' certainly wasn't it, because it wasn't. 'I forgive you' wasn't right, either, because I wasn't so sure that I did. But just like I had told her on Christmas Eve, whether I forgave her or not, I loved her and while she couldn't change the past, she could change the present and she was definitely making an effort, I had to give her that, so I didn't say anything at all. I unwrapped the paper and found a box that proudly said 'Mercury 5217 Ceramic Space Heater.'   
    "I know how cold it gets in your room at night, I thought this might help. It isn't one of the nicer ones," she said with deep embarrassment at not being able to afford something that was top of the line, "It won't heat the whole attic, but if you put it near your bed, it should do the trick."  
    It might have not been some top of the line, hundred dollar space heater, but it wasn't some twenty dollar appliance, either. I thought about her saving up for who knew how long for it, hiding her tips from my father, risking exactly what I had risked, all so I could be warmer at night, and almost let me pent up tears fall.   
    "Oh, Mom, it's great," I put my present on the table and hugged her again, "Thank you so much."  
    She hugged me back, seeming pleased with herself that she had gotten it right.   
    "Just be careful that your father doesn't find it," she warned me without really needing to when we parted, "It's very energy efficient, so if you only run it while you're sleeping, he shouldn't notice anything. Make sure you keep it hidden when you aren't using it."  
    I nodded, already deciding that it was going to go right into the hole in the wall, the only hiding place that I had left that my father hadn't taken from me. I went upstairs to do just that and brought the new mixer down to the kitchen where my mother gushed over it and put it in the cabinet where we kept the other cooking appliances. There was a moment when she looked at it and paled with shock and I worried that she realized just how much the thing had cost and was going to make an issue of it, but she thankfully let it go. I was glad that Heero had gifted me with a kitchen appliance and not another pricey electronic like the e-writer because my father wouldn't even notice the new mixer, let alone care about it.   
    The both of us still had some time before we needed to leave the house, her to work and me to Heero's, so I made us some pancakes and we ate together, talking about my classes and whether we thought we were going to get a warm day any time soon.   
    "I should get going," I told my mother when the kitchen clock informed me that it was seven, although it wasn't because I really needed to be anywhere that early, I was just paranoid that my father was going to get up to use the bathroom and see me. I didn't want him to get so much as a glance before I left.   
    "Call me if you decide to sleep over, will you?" my mother said worriedly, handing me the rest of the cookies that she had put in a Tupperware container.  
    "I will," I promised, vowing to do that anyway, even if I didn't stay over, just to make sure that she was ok after she told my father that I was gone.  
    "Have a nice day, dear," she helped me with my coat at the door.  
    "I will," I said, although I was far from certain that I was going to have anything like that with what I was going to do come noontime.   
    I took a deep breath and braced myself as I walked out the door, getting slammed in the face with a sudden, icy gust of wind. I already felt like I was going to be sick.   
      
  
End Part 4  
  
Author's Note: I was really hoping that I could cram Duo's entire birthday into one part, but alas, it got too long. Because I do not think that I will be able to get the next part out in the next three days, I just want to say Merry Festivmas (and possibly Happy New Year if it takes me that long) and thank you for the reviews. They are the only thing that lifts my spirits ^_^  
  
  



	49. Chapter 8 Part 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duo tells Heero about what happened to Quatre, but Heero has a secret of his very own.

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 8  
Part 5  
  
  
    The entire walk to Heero's house, I felt like I had swallowed a heavy, metal ball. One covered in spikes. Even though I tried not to remember what day it was, and what that day had come to mean to me, it seemed like my body remembered it just fine. I can't really call it a panic attack, even though my heart was beating just a bit too fast and I felt like I was going to throw up my breakfast because beyond that, I was in control and wasn't hyperventilating. But I felt overrun with anxiety between memories of the last day that I had seen Quatre alive and the knowledge that I was going to expose Heero to that terrible memory.  
    The weather was completely unsympathetic to my mental agony. The violent, harsh wind was like being pelted with an icy fist as I walked. The only mercy was that it wasn't snowing, but the wind alone was enough to have me shaking with the chill. I nearly chuckled out loud at the thought that I might not have to worry about going on my little excursion later on, the weather might make it too unpleasant to manage. Wouldn't that be wonderful? There I was, worrying and frantic about maybe destroying my friendship with Heero, and mourning Quatre, and I might have to put it off for another day anyway.  
    Except I knew that I wouldn't. I didn't care if there was a blizzard or a freaking tornado touched down right in Nausten, I was going. Heero might not want to come with me in this weather, but somehow I knew that he would. Just like me, he was committed, because _I_ was committed. I tucked my face as far down into my jacket as I could and braved the wind, but my skin was red and irritated by the time that I had gotten to the house, the thin scarf that I had wrapped around my mouth doing absolutely nothing except for keeping my lips from getting chafed. The front door was unlocked and when I took my first steps in, the heat was so pleasant that I could have melted into a puddle right there. It wasn't more than a couple of minutes that I was sweating and eagerly pulling off my jackets, scarf, hat, and mittens, kicking my sneakers off to rest of the door. I barely made any noise, not sure who would be up at eight in the morning, but Mrs. Yuy poked her head out of the kitchen.  
    "Good morning, Duo!" she said with her usual bright smile and more exuberant energy than anyone had the right to have that early in the morning.  
    "Good morning, Mrs. Yuy," I greeted, still shaking a little as my body acclimated from the extreme temperature differences.   
    "You look frozen," she sympathized, walking out of the kitchen and sandwiching my icy cold hands between her soft and warm ones, "You didn't walk all that way on foot in this wind chill, did you?"  
    "Didn't want to waste any money on the bus," I gave her a sheepish smile, "and I would have been waiting at the stop for awhile anyway."  
    She frowned, shooting me a scolding glance, but her expression quickly softened.  
    "Well, why don't you head upstairs and take a nice, hot shower? Heero will sleep for a couple more hours. I can make you some breakfast when you get out, if you like?" she asked, letting go of my hands when they had warmed up enough.  
    "A shower sounds great," I said with a sigh of relief, "I just ate, though."  
    "Some hot chocolate, then," she suggested and I nodded gratefully, "I'll tell Justin to stop tinkering around with the boiler in the basement, then, so you don't get any nasty surprises."  
    I went upstairs, the thought of a hot shower about the best thing in the world, and found Pepper sitting in the hallway, trying to find the source of my voice. She made an eager chirping sound at me, letting me pick her up and kiss the top of her head.  
    "Did you miss me?" I asked her and was rewarded with her rubbing her soft head against my nose.  
    I went into the guest bedroom to make sure that she had everything that she needed and then sequestered myself in the bathroom. I spent almost an hour in there washing myself, lounging in the steaming water, and combing my hair, not in any rush and feeling stupidly happy that I was there. Even if my father would beat the shit out of me over it later, for the moment, I was safe. I had no right to feel happy on the day that I was mourning the death of my best friend. He had died because of my negligence and I had destroyed his family, yet there I was, enjoying a hot shower and being around the family of my other friend. But I couldn't help it. Happiness, it turns out, is just like sadness. You can't stop it when it happens to you, no matter how much you wish you could.  
    Downstairs in the kitchen, Mrs. Yuy had put out a mug of hot chocolate topped with whipped cream for me, which I gladly drank. I could hear her in the laundry room, messing around with the dryer. As I drank, I stood in front of the glass, sliding doors that led out to the backyard and looked out at the wide expanse of snow covered hills, icicles dangling off the edge of the roof so long that I would get hit in the head if I walked through the door. To my surprise, the dark grey, unwelcoming sky that had plagued me my entire walk there was starting to clear, greyish, dark blue peeking out from the clouds to let some sun onto the mounds of snow. Even more amazing, I could no longer hear the wind ramming itself against the house and according to the little thermometer that was mounted on one of the kitchen windows, it was 34 degrees outside. It had been 25 when I had left my house.   
    "It just might be a pleasant day after all," Mr. Yuy noted as he stood behind me, looking at the thermometer himself, "According to the Weather Channel, we're supposed to be getting a mild temperature spike this afternoon, high of 40 if we're lucky."  
    "That would be nice," I sighed, washing out my now empty mug of hot chocolate in the sink, "but I won't get my hopes up."  
    "Spring has to come at some time," he said optimistically and I had to snort at that.  
    "Two more months, maybe," I muttered and he laughed at that.  
    "Everything has it's time," he told me wisely, "and I'm sure we'll have some warm days in the next two months."  
    I nodded, but his words made me feel like I had been punched in the gut. 'Everything has it's time.' Everything ends. I know that he had just meant the seasons, but I thought about everything else. I thought about the ending of the first friendship that I had ever had, and I thought about my friendship with Heero that would also, one day, end. Honestly, I was shocked that it had lasted as long as it had, but I had always known that, one way or another, it would end just like Quatre and mine's had. For all I knew, it could be today.  
    "So, Heero told me that the two of you had an errand to run today. He said that it was something very important to you. Can I ask what it is?" he asked me as he started to make an omelet for himself, not out of suspicion, but just basic curiosity.  
    "I'd rather not talk about it," I murmured, "It's... personal."      
    He looked at me and for a moment, his gaze turned deep and sad. I think, just from my tone, he could tell that it wasn't just personal, it was painful, not that I was really trying all that hard to hide my somber mood. It was just so tiring, and pointless, really. Every time something came along to cheer me up, I would quickly feel melancholy again. It was inevitable, like the death of friendships and the changing of seasons and I was used to it after four years. Sometimes, it was a relief not to hide it from everyone else.   
    "I understand," he assured me, "but this isn't something that will land either of you in trouble, is it?"  
    "No, nothing like that," I told him and saw some of his worry abate.   
    "Well, Heero probably won't be up for another hour," he said, glancing at the clock, which read 9:32, "so you have a few choices to occupy yourself with before then. You can relax until he gets up, I'm sure he wouldn't mind you playing some of his video games, or you can help me with some chores I need to do."  
    "I don't mind helping out," I said, eager to repay some of my enormous debt to him.  
    "How did I know that you were going to say that?" he chuckled, "Alright, first thing I need help with is clearing off all the icicles off of the house and shed before they get too heavy. Then I need to get some more firewood, clean all the drains in the house to make sure that ice isn't building up in any of them, and caulk the basement doors. You alright with all of that? None of it should take very long."  
    "Sure. I don't know how to chop firewood, but I can try," I said a bit nervously, realizing that he meant he needed to get the wood himself, not just buy it at the grocery store, which was what most people did, but with all the trees in their backyard, the Yuys probably didn't need to spend money on wood.  
    "Oh, I wouldn't ask you to do anything so dangerous," he said, "but I would like some help lugging the wood back."  
    "Ok," I agreed.  
    "Alright, go find a winter jacket and boots in the closet. Oh, and some thick gloves, you'll need them," he advised.  
    By the time I did as he asked, he was already dressed in his own winter wear and waiting for me at the porch door, holding two, heavy, metal shovels. He gave me one of them and lead us outside where we started to knock the icicles off of the edge of the roof. We didn't talk much while we worked and you would think that the manual labor would have given me too much time to think and feel miserable, but it actually was a great distraction. The day was indeed warming up, at least compared to what had greeted me that morning, and the wind was starting to die down, making working out in the cold tolerable. While we didn't hold many conversations, Justin filled the silence of the morning by playing music off of his cell phone.   
    To my pleasant surprise, he choose soft, soothing jazz songs and I even recognized a few of them off of the CDs that Heero had made for me. When a few played that I remembered Quatre liking and had been on the CDs that I had gotten out of his locker, I didn't feel sad. It reminded me of the times when we would listen to his music behind the library, how nice it had been. Those times came the closest to peace that I had ever felt back then and I was happy to remember them. That music calmed my fraught nerves.   
    Working with Heero's father didn't really feel like a chore at all. He didn't constantly scold and yell at me that I was doing something wrong like my father did, he just left me alone or would hold a conversation with me. When I advised him that he should make a daily effort of cleaning off the ice until Spring came so he wouldn't have any problems with his shingles or gutters, he didn't yell at me to mind my own business or ask me what a kid like me could know, but actually listened and agreed with me. We finished with the icicles rather quickly and Justin went to the shed to toss the shovels into it once the ice was cleared from around the door, emerging with a rather new looking axe and two pieces of thick cloth that had handles on them.   
    "It's a bit of a walk," he told me as he handed me one of the cloths, "About two miles for the trees that I would like to cut. You up for it?"  
    "Yep," I quipped and followed him out into their backyard.  
    I almost asked him just how much land they owned, because it seemed to go on forever. We passed their swimming pool, hills and plains that would have been flat if not for the icy snow. I saw several different kinds of trees on their property, mostly cherry, magnolias, birch, firs, oak, and maple, plus a few I didn't recognize. I was sure that some of them weren't native and had been planted there by previous owners of the land, but I was sure it was all going to look beautiful come spring.   
    "I thought that oak is the best kind of wood for fires?" I asked as we passed by a smattering of sturdy oak trees that were nestled by the pond where Heero and I had been ice skating.  
    "Typically, yes," he informed me, "However, firewood really needs to be cut several months to a year before it can used. It needs to get dried out, otherwise the moisture in it won't allow it to burn efficiently. Unfortunately, we moved here pretty late in the Summer, so I didn't have time to do much prep for the winter. I'm more used to longer winters than Mariela and Heero, but it's been a long time since I moved to Florida, so I underestimated how much we would need. Oak is the best kind of firewood to use because it burns so hot and also slow, but it's too hard to ignite when it hasn't been seasoned. The same goes for maple and birch."  
    I listened with rapt attention while we walked, not because I ever thought that I would be needing firewood, but I like learning things, probably why I like reading so much, and Justin was patient and accommodating when I asked him things. My father would usually just get annoyed if I asked him too many questions and tell me that if I wasn't so stupid, I would already know those things, or 'who the fuck cares'. It was refreshing.  
    "Here we are," Mr. Yuy said when we walked up a narrow slope of hard packed snow and came across another clutch of trees, these ones fir.  
    "Fir is better unseasoned than oak?" I asked him curiously.  
    "Fir and pine are called softwoods," he told me, going from tree to tree, looking for something specific, "They season faster than hardwoods like oak. They are also easy to chop and ignite. They don't burn as hot or as long as hardwoods, but they're the best thing when you don't have the luxury of time. Pine and fir also spark a lot, which can choke up the chimney quicker than hardwoods, so it's not the best to use long term. I like to use fir wood because we have more of them on our property than the pine and it doesn't create as much ash."  
    "Why didn't you chop one of the fir trees by the pond?" I asked, perplexed, "They were a lot closer."  
    "Those trees were very healthy," he explained, "and they do more for the soil and water in that area than they would for a fire, so it's best to leave them be. Hah!"  
    He apparently found what he had been looking for, a rather short fir tree that looked like it had seen better days. It wasn't necessarily withered, but it was scraggly and old looking. The recent, harsh winds had stripped quite a few branches off of it and it looked diseased on its north facing side.   
    "Wouldn't you get better wood if you used one of the healthy ones?" I questioned, looking at the tree dubiously.      
    "No," he told me as he took the blade cover off of the ax, "and it's always best to let healthy trees keep growing. Might as well knock off a tree like this that might just spread disease to the healthy ones anyway. Now, stand back."  
    I stood away from him so he wouldn't have to worry about me while he was swinging the ax and watched him work. He had obviously done this a hundred times before. He chopped the tree down swiftly and, just like he had said, it hadn't taken him much effort between the kind of tree that it was and it's age. Also, because it wasn't all that tall, only about twelve or thirteen feet, it went down easily. It didn't have many branches left to remove, so he was able to chop it up quickly.   
    We loaded up the wood in the cloths, which Justin helpfully told me were called totes, even though they didn't look at all like tote bags to me, and walked back to the house. There was a wood pile on the far side of the back of the house. Mr. Yuy dusted the snow off of the top of it and rearranged the wood on it so the new wood was on the bottom and what remained of the old stuff was on top.   
    "Two down, two more to go," he told me with a bright smile and I couldn't help but smile back.  
    I had a hard time believing it, but the entire time that we had been out there doing chores, I had barely spared my grief a second's thought. What I hadn't managed to accomplish with reading, homework, cooking, or working, my best friend's father had managed with some chores. I know that he hadn't done it on purpose, but I'm still grateful to him for that.   
    "At least we don't need to stay out here anymore," Justin said as we went up the porch and through the sliding door, "You aren't too cold, are you?"  
    "No, the wind died down, so it wasn't so bad," I said.  
    Heero was up and waiting for us in the kitchen, already dressed and looking pretty awake. For a moment, I was frozen, stunned, taking in his good looks as he stood there in his slim, black jeans and a dark blue sweater, his blue eyes looking even more intense an smoldering between his tanned skin, dark brown hair falling in his eyes, and his clothes. It was ridiculous, I had just seen him the previous day, but I kept having these moments when I would really see him, see how handsome he was and feel floored by it. In those moments, I truly understood how Quatre had felt every time he had seen Trowa walk into the room, how just a curve of the shoulder or a flash of the eyes could make your heart stop and your mouth go dry.  
    "Dad," Heero said in exasperation as his father and I took our coats off, "Duo did not come here for you to put him to work!"  
    "Are you kidding?" Justin jokingly scoffed before I could set Heero straight that I had volunteered, "He does a better job than you do, and without a single complaint. I might have to hire him full time."  
    Heero grumpily glared at his father, but Justin ruffled my hair affectionately and I realized, with intense happiness and a rare kind of pride, that he was being completely sincere.   
    "Did you want to finish helping me?" Mr. Yuy asked, "Or did you want to go do something with Heero?"  
    "I'd like to finish," I said a bit shyly, knowing that he was giving me an out and that it wasn't really normal for someone my age to _want_ to do chores, let alone for someone else's family, but I had enjoyed working with him and it made me feel better about being a leech.  
    "What time did you need to do that thing?" my friend asked me, looking a bit bothered and I wondered if he was annoyed that I wanted to help his father because he wanted to hang out and was looking for an excuse out of it.  
    I looked at the clock and saw that it was just five minutes until eleven. Justin and I had been out there longer than I had thought.  
    "I don't need to be anywhere at a specific time," I told him, "I would like to go around noon though while it's bright out. This... will probably take awhile."  
    Heero looked to his father who shrugged.  
    "It shouldn't take us an hour just to finish these," Justin assured me.  
    "Fine," Heero sighed, "I'll help, too."  
    "Oh, you're actually going to volunteer to do chores?" his father teased him, "And not complain for once? To what do I owe this great honor?"  
    My friend simultaneously glared at his father and turned red.  
    "You don't have to help if you don't want to," I told him, even though I was amused by how easily his father could annoy him.  
    "I'll help," Heero repeated stubbornly.  
    "Alright, first we'll caulk the basement doors and then we'll work on the sinks," Justin laid out his orders like a general going into battle, "With three people, this shouldn't take long at all."  
    We followed him downstairs to the basement, a place in the house that even after several months of hanging out there, I had never seen. Now, when Mr. Yuy had said 'basement', I had been thinking of something like my own: dark, dusty, dank, and cluttered with stuff that couldn't really be put anywhere else. Well, just like everything else in their home, the Yuys' basement was absolutely nothing like mine, surprise. For one, it was massive, easily three or four times the size of my basement. Two, it looked like just a full sized version of the gaming room that Heero had upstairs.  
    The first that struck me about it, besides it's size, was how clean and nice it looked. Instead of hard, cold, concrete, the floor was covered with a plush carpet. Instead of being stuffed full of old furniture and various odds and ends, there was a U shaped couch, _another_ large screen television set, a pool table, not a toy one, either, but one of those heavy, solid ones that you can find in actual pool halls, what looked like a basketball game from some arcade, a stationary bike, a table and a set of chairs, and several bookcases filled with books lining the walls.   
    Understand, none of these things were cluttered, everything was very neat and tidy, the place so big that all the basement needed was some walls sectioning off each area and it could have been an entire apartment. The only thing that it was missing was a fucking kitchen. There was even a goddamned bathroom! That made four that I just knew about! My father would have looked at this house with disgust and envy. I was just amazed and felt an incredibly respect for Heero's family that they had done this well for themselves. If the Yuys' home looked like this, I wondered what the Darlians' looked like. I didn't even want to think about it.  
    There were three doors in the basement: a single door that led to some stairs and double hatch doors that opened to the left side of the house, and two, double sliding doors like the ones that went to the porch in the kitchen. The first opened to the patio to the left of the porch stairs and to the right of the wood pile. I would have noticed it if not for the pile of snow stacked in front of it. The last set of doors led out directly to the pool area. Completely covered in snow still, it wasn't much to look at, but I could imagine what it would look like in the summer.   
    Justin spent some time teaching Heero how to use the caulk gun on the gaps between the siding of the doors, but I didn't need any instruction. I had done jobs like this hundreds of times. I even knew that the kind of caulk that we were using was silicone. We each took a door, myself working on the poolside one, and I quickly saw why this was necessary. The previous owners had caulked them before and had done them pretty well, well enough that when Justin had no doubt checked the doors in the fall, they had looked fine. But they were starting to crack, letting in a draft of freezing air. After we were done putting a new layer of silicone down to seal up the draft, we migrated upstairs to the kitchen.  
    "Cleaning the drains will only take a couple of minutes," Heero's father promised us, "then you two can be off. It's easy."  
    Mrs. Yuy walked into the kitchen to start some tea, watching us with amusement. Her husband dug through the kitchen cabinets until he found a bottle of white vinegar and a box of baking soda.  
    "Half a cup of baking soda followed by half a cup of vinegar. After that sits for ten minutes, you flush it out with boiling water," he told us, "Now, the only drains I'm going to bother with today are the sinks, don't mess with the showers yet. We'll do six: the bathroom in the basement, upstairs, mine, the hall bathroom, the kitchen, and the laundry room. Heero, you can take mine and the basement, Duo, you do the one upstairs and the hall. I'll hit the other two."  
    "Giving the troops their marching orders, General?" Mariela quipped with an affection, mirthful smile.  
    "Yes, Ma'am," Justin quipped right back and the two of them shared a brief, but sweet peck on the lips.  
    Heero rolled his eyes at this, but I could tell that his parents' antics amused him more than it embarrassed him. Heero measured out the ingredients that we needed for our last chore and the three of us went our separate ways. Just as promised, it took us only a few minutes to dump the stuff down the drain and then get some boiling water to finish the job. It was only 11:40 when we finished. Heero met me as I was coming down the steps.  
    "All set?" he asked.  
    "Yep, mission accomplished," I gave him the thumbs up.  
    "Want to head out?"  
    "We better," I confirmed, then paused, "Heero... thank you for doing this with me."  
    "Of course," he said softly, blushing just a little bit, but it did nothing to take away from the surety in his eyes, "Just tell me whatever you need, ok?"  
    I nodded, but no words were on my tongue. I wanted to say 'just stick by me,' but I needed so much more than that from him, and I couldn't ask for any of it. Doing chores with him and his father had given me a brief levity from my heavy emotions, but now that we were about to go, it all came back to me in a rush. The guilt, the fear, the hopelessness, the sadness, the grief. It was too much for me to carry and I actually felt like I couldn't so much as stand with it.   
    "You boys leaving?" Mrs. Yuy called from the living room.  
    "Yeah," Heero said as we approached.  
    She was knitting something with cream colored yarn, her cup of tea put aside and only half drunk. She put her knitting down so she could look back at us from where she was sitting on the couch.  
    "Duo, you'll stay for dinner tonight, won't you?" she asked me and there was something in her expression that seemed incredibly hopeful, almost desperate and hell if I knew why at the time.  
    Even if I hadn't wanted to stay, I couldn't say no to an expression like that from her.  
    "Sure," I promised and she smiled softly at me.  
    "Good," she said in relief, "You two be careful, alright? I want you back here before it gets dark. Bundle up and if you're staying outside, if it gets too cold, come right home, understand me?"  
    "Yes, Mom," Heero said dutifully, but he glanced at me and I understood that he wouldn't be doing anything that day unless it was what I wanted, what I needed from him.  
    We did bundle up, just like she had told us to, with boots, jackets, scarves, hats, and gloves, although the temperature had risen to 39 outside already. As we took our first steps outside, I felt this crushing horror inside of my chest. I didn't want to go. I didn't want to do this. I wanted to stay in Heero's house and watch movies and play games with him. I didn't want to risk everything. I didn't want to _remember_.  
    'But I have to,' I berated myself, 'How _can't_ I?'  
    Even with that thought, I could feel my heart sinking into my stomach. Anxiety can be a very physical, terrible thing when it wants to be. It swallowed me up on that walk to the point were I could feel my heart hammering in my chest and I felt like so much of the brush of the wind would send me behind the bushes to throw up. I nearly jumped when we exited Heero's street and I felt his hand wrap around mine, clumsy with our gloves on, but I could still feel his warmth through the cloth.  
    "Hey, it's alright," he tried to soothe me and I could only imagine how pale I was, how sickly I looked, "We can turn back, we don't have to do this."  
    His face was so pleasantly soft, his expression supportive and his eyes brilliant in the light of the early afternoon. And suddenly, I knew that this was the right thing to do. It might lose me our friendship, but something came to me just then. It was the talk that I had had with Heero's father about how he could never tell Heero not to be friends with me, because Heero was growing up to be exactly the man that his parents had hoped that he would be. And I knew that the person that would be strong enough to do this, to tell Heero about the darkness in their past, who could own up to those things instead of constantly running away from them, _that_ was the person that I wanted him to see me as.   
    Not the coward, not the boy that had turned his back on his friend and had held this secret for so long, but the person that had not spent a single day since then not regretting what he had done and not done, the person that desperately wished they could set things right. If I couldn't be that person right then, I knew that I never would be. I had asked myself what he sees in me, what good there is in me, and how I can ever hope to be good enough for him, and I know that if there's any hope for me to ever be more than the weak person that I've become, I had to do this.  
    "No," I shook my head, "I need to do this."  
    And not just because it was what I needed to do, but because it was Quatre's day, the one day when I _had_ to remember what had happened.   
    "Alright," Heero said gently and let go of my hand, but it still felt warm from him.  
    We were silent as we walked out of north Nausten and into central, but that was ok. I felt the same, strong companionship with him that I always do when we walk together, like the silence is just as valuable as any words that we might say to each other.   
    "When is your birthday?" I suddenly blurted out as we walked into the business portion of central.   
    It suddenly became very important to me that I knew this information. Maybe because I needed to hear his voice, or maybe because he knew that much about me. I felt this dawning fear that I might have missed it. Just how terrible of a friend could I be? I felt like that would set a new record.   
    "Maybe I should make you figure it out like I did," he teased me, but easily relented, "June 25th."  
    "You're younger than me?" I blinked at him in astonishment.  
    "You only beat me by four months," he chuckled, "Why is that so surprising?"  
    "I dunno," I shrugged, "You always just seemed older for some reason."  
    I really did have no clue why. It wasn't like he oozed maturity. He wasn't immature, either, although he could have his moments, he just seemed so... put together, I guess? Like he always knew what to do and say to make me feel better. It wasn't like he looked older, either. He only had an inch on me and while I was skinnier than he was, he had a slim body type, not as muscular as Zechs, but built for sports that focused on speed and agility, like baseball, track, or soccer while our bully was built for football and hockey. Heero had stronger arms than Trowa had, but Trowa's legs had definitely been longer. And yet, there was something about Heero's personality that had always made me think that he could be a year older than the rest of our class and I wouldn't be surprised.  
    We fell silent again as we walked by a flower shop and I led him inside. He looked startled for a moment, obviously confused about what we were doing going into a place like that and I realized that I had forgotten to tell him that I needed to get something before our trip.   
    "This won't take long," was all that I could say to him, because it felt like my throat was in a stranglehold.  
    I've never bought Quatre flowers before, not until that day. It sure was a day for firsts. There were a few different flower shops on that stretch of street alone, but this was one of the bigger, more popular ones because their flower arrangements were very professionally done, but not too expensive. I wasn't there for a previously crafted arrangement, though. I strode up confidently to the front counter where a middle aged woman was reading a magazine with a bored air. There were only a couple other people in the shop: a young man in his twenties brooding over different arrangements of roses and an elderly man sifting through a wide assortment of brightly colored daisies. The clerk looked up at me, not looking much less bored at having a customer. I was sure that she was used to having people looking to place custom orders, but I still felt a bit like a fish out of water.  
    "Can you make a custom bouquet for me?" I asked her.  
    "Sure," god, even her voice was bored, but at least she put her magazine away, "What's the occasion?"  
    'Remorse,' I almost said.  
    "Actually, I was looking for an arrangement of three different flowers. Zinnias, geraniums, and edelweiss," I told her.  
    Finally, I got a reaction out of her. She blinked over at me in a sort of mild amazement, like she just couldn't imagine what I was hoping to achieve there.  
    "That's a strange arrangement," she lifted an eyebrow, making me blush slightly in embarrassment, "Well, we got some zinnias and geraniums, but we don't carry edelweiss here. In fact, you're not going to have much luck finding that in most places."  
    My stomach sank. I had been afraid of this. Edelweiss was not what you would call an 'in demand' flower. It was rare, mostly just grew on mountains, and it was out of season. Only some specialty stores would probably carry it, but I had hoped that I might get lucky. I had a fall back plan if none of the shops had it in stock, but I was really hoping that I would find it.   
    "Do you know of any places in town that might have it?" I asked desperately, "Even just a guess?"  
    "Look, kid," she drawled, sounding slightly annoyed, "if you're looking for a white flower, we've got a ton of white roses, daisies, orchids, hyacinths, peonies, lilacs, and even chrysanthemums, we just don't have edelweiss."  
    "Sorry, it has to be those," I shook my head.  
    At my side, Heero watched us with an incredibly perplexed look and I felt kind of bad for him.  
    "Well, Lucy's Garden three blocks up might have it," I was informed reluctantly, "They have a lot of weird flowers; naked man orchids, dancing girls, passion flowers, junk like that. If anyone in this town has edelweiss, they do."  
    "Thanks," I said profusely and quickly walked out, ignoring the clerk's irritation that I wasn't going to buy anything.  
    "What was that about?" Heero asked me when we were back on the street, "What's edelweiss?"  
    "It's a white, fluffy mountain flower," I told him simply, navigating my way to Lucy's Garden.  
    "Okaaaaay," my friend drawled, "but why is it so important?"  
    I stayed silent, not really knowing how to voice how important this was to me, and he accepted that for the time being, not pressing or asking me why I needed the flowers. Lucy's Garden was a much smaller shop, but just as advertised, they had a ton of flowers that the main stream shops would never sell. It was kind of a New Age type store. There were lots of crystals and little statues of fairies and stuff like that along with the typical roses, daisies, and tulips. The place was practically empty, but at least the clerk seemed nicer. She was younger, probably in her thirties, with long, auburn hair and crystals dangling from her ears. She was watering some ivy that was wrapped around a tall, porcelain stand holding some strange, silver ball and smiled brightly at us when we entered.  
    "Good afternoon!" she greeted.  
    She reminded me of Heero's mother and I had to smile back at her.  
    "Hi. I was wondering if you had any edelweiss," I said.  
    I felt my stomach drop again as she put down her watering can and her eyes rolled up in that universal expression of 'I'm thinking', but then she smiled again.  
    "You know, I think we do, hold on a sec," she disappeared into what looked like a refrigerator, but was probably just where they kept the flowers that they didn't have on the floor.  
    To my incredibly relief, she re-emerged not three minutes later.  
    "Yup," she told me cheerfully, "We got about twenty of them. Not really a big seller unless it's Valentine's Day, and even then only certain people will buy them (2)."  
    "Great," I relaxed, "And do you also do custom arrangements?"  
    "Sure do!" she confirmed.  
    I happily told her what I needed and unlike the other clerk, she didn't bat an eye at the flowers that I was putting together. She brought out the edelweiss, which were just as weird and fluffy as the book that I had read about them in had claimed, as well as some violet geraniums and a mix of red and pink zinnias. The overall look of the bouquet was disturbingly bright and cheery for what I intended them for. I had a feeling that, if I had told the first clerk that they were for someone who had died, she would have been offended and tried to steer me to the funeral lilies. But that was ok. Quatre would have liked the bright colors a lot more than that plain, white lilies.   
    "You must miss your friend very much," the shopkeeper told me in a much more somber tone.  
    I was startled for a moment before I realized that, in a store like that, it was her business to know what flowers meant. Instead of feeling put out that she had unknowingly stuck her nose into something that I was struggling with, I felt a bit flattered at her sentiment.   
    "Thank you," I murmured.  
    "Well, I hope these help," she gave me a much softer, sympathetic smile.  
    I realized, with relief, that she at least didn't know that the flowers were for a dead friend instead of an estranged one. The arrangement actually came to thirty dollars, cheaper than I had thought that they would, and I pocketed the extra ten that remained from the money that Mr. Yuy had given me. Heero and I left the shop and I took him towards the west.   
    "That doesn't look like any arrangement I've seen in the store before," Heero commented after looking at the bouquet for several minutes, "but it's very beautiful. Why did you need to get those exact flowers?"  
    His curiosity was practically burning in his eyes at this point and I took pity on him.  
    "It's not just that they look pretty, although there is that," I confessed, "But all flowers have a certain meaning. You know, like how roses mean love and daisies mean innocence."  
    "And what do these mean?" he asked me.   
    "Edelweiss means devotion, geraniums are for true friendship, and..." I had touched each flower as I explained their meaning, but I paused when I got to the last flower, something solid and sharp stuck in my throat, "and zinnias for thinking of absent friends."  
    Fat, cold tears pricked at my eyes. I felt one of them fall before I could get them back under control. Heero put a hand on my back and rubbed slowly, daring someone on the street seeing us and wondering what the hell was going on. Even through the jacket that I was wearing, that touch soothed me.  
    "Those are for Quatre, aren't they?" he asked, his eyes bright with interest, "You're visiting him today, wherever he is, right?"  
    His words pierced right through me, sharper than any sword, right into that aching, bleeding wound in my heart that had never really healed. He was so insightful, just like his father, only he was making the same mistake that the clerk had made. He thought that I was just going to go visit a friend that wasn't around anymore. He thought that he was finally going to meet the friend that I only ever talked about rarely, and with sadness, not that I was taking him to meet his ghost.   
    "Yeah," I murmured sadly, "We're going to go see Quatre."  
    We continued to walk west for some time, far past the park, further than I had come in a very long time. Heero shot me a questioning look when we passed bus stop after bus stop, no doubt thinking that we would take one out of town, maybe to Hope or some other neighboring city, but I couldn't answer his questions. He would figure things out soon anyway. When we passed by the train station, I almost started to scream. For a moment, I thought that I had before I realized that I was only screaming in my head. I hadn't come by that way since I had tried to kill myself the same way that Quatre had. I hadn't dared.  
    It was too painful, hearing those trains going by and thinking 'is that it, is that the train that splattered him all over the tracks?' Going by it then was visceral, like a hand reaching into my body and just _squeezing_ my insides. I held my breath, I trembled, I almost puked, and my vision around the edges turned grey, like it had before. The early signs of shock before it actually is shock. Heero grabbed my hand again, looking terrified to see me shaken up, but I just walked faster, trying to get us past the train station, and only when it was far behind us was I able to breathe. But the terror that I felt in my chest didn't stop. I didn't feel like I had so much as moved past it as I had only put it to my back. Ever turn your back on a snarling dog or something that you think is a monster or ghost or demon? You don't feel relief, you only feel exposed. It was like that.  
    More and more questions burned in my friend's stare, but I couldn't answer any of them. No longer because I didn't dare, but I simply couldn't speak. Every step closer that we took, I felt that horror grow. I could see it in my head, Quatre falling off the platform, the train impacting his small, fragile body, and the blood, oh, my god, the blood had just been _everywhere_. It was in me to turn around right then, to tell Heero that I was sorry, but I was too frightened and I just couldn't do this, but then we were there. Nausten Memorial Cemetery. Where the Winners had buried their only son. We stopped walking in front of the huge, iron gate that separates the cemetery from the rest of the street, although I'm not sure who stopped whom. Heero stared at the gate, then at me, then back at the gate, all of the color draining from his face as he finally got it. He knew.  
    I've never visited Quatre's grave. In the four years since his suicide, I haven't so much as walked by the place. Call me disrespectful, call me a coward, but I just couldn't do it. As much as I say that I've come to terms with the fact that the first friend I had had has died and he's never coming back, there will always be a part of me that can't believe it, that finds his death to be a travesty, a crime against the very laws of nature. I told myself that his grave is just an empty place, just a slab of stone that his parents bought so the rest of the world would know of their loss, but it's not just that.   
    For a very long time, I've believed that if I have to go there, if I have to look at that headstone that bears his name and see the date of his death, see the last thing that his parents ever bought him, surrounded by all the other dead, I would truly go mad. I've stayed away for my sanity, because it was so much easier imagining him near me, talking to me, comforting me, without seeing that burial plot. Because I never, ever want to associate my best friend, who always burned like the sun next to me, with cold dirt, silence, and decay.   
    Heero was the one who came back to himself first, and he was the one, not me, who pulled us both forward. He grabbed me by the wrist and gently led me inside of the cemetery, but that was as far as he walked. He didn't know the layout of the cemetery, didn't know where to go. Even though I had never been there myself, I knew where Quatre's must be. I tried not to think about it, 'I'm going to Quatre's grave,' because that was too much for me to bear. Instead I just thought of it as following the grave rows, just putting one foot in front of the other.   
    The cemetery was nice, I suppose, for what it was. It was neatly kept, the snow all cleared away, some graves overflowing with flowers and wreaths and cards and candles. But it was too neat for me, too tidy and cared for. That isn't what death is. Death isn't order, it's chaos. It's violence and fear and weakness. It's the one thing that you have always known being ripped away from you. It's the biggest rape of all and that cemetery with it's perfect little rows of tombstones and it's brick pathways and black, iron gates felt like a mockery.  
    "I wish that you had told me that we were coming here," Heero murmured, finally finding his voice, but he sounded so distant, like he was almost in as much shock as I was, "I would have brought some flowers, too."  
    His words hurt for some reason, but only because he was so completely sincere. If he had known that I was taking him to Quatre's grave, he would have brought flowers out of respect. Who else in this town would have done that for Quatre? Heero hadn't even known him, and he still respected him more than anyone else in this fucking shit hole. I would have answered him, I would have said thank you until I had cried for being so wonderful, always so wonderful, but I wasn't capable of words. Not yet anyway.   
    I found Quatre's grave easily, just as I knew that I would. All of the older families, like the Winners and the Darlians, have sprawling areas cordoned off, many of the graves outlandish in the strange way that rich people will display their loved ones, like it's some kind of fucked up contest. I found Quatre's grave at the end, second to last, with his step-mother's after his. For a moment, seeing hers was more of a shock than his. I don't know why. Her death burned in my conscience, too, but I had forgotten that she, of course, would be buried with all of the other Winners, only remembering Quatre's feelings towards her, how alienated and distant he had felt around her, how hurt that she had looked so much like his real mother...  
    Quatre's tombstone wasn't as fussy as some as his ancestors', and for that I was grateful. It wasn't some huge statue of an angel or his likeness, but a slab of black onyx, flecked with gold and silver quartz. It would have been beautiful if it had belonged to anyone else. The grave lay under a large, pink trumpet tree. I was sure that the placement of his grave had been quite intentional on his father's part. Quatre would have been buried in the early spring, when the lush, pink flowers on the tree were just starting to come back to life. By the summer, the tree would have been beautiful and full of life. In the winter, the tree was stark and gnarled, it's branches twisted from the cruel winter. It looked like something out of a gothic horror film, a haunted, sinister tree. I felt like it was mocking me.  
    I pulled my wrist from Heero's grasp and walked towards the grave. It looked so innocuous, so free of sin or guilt. Just a bit of stone, shoved into the dirt. It would be there long after everyone that Nate had known had died. Would I be buried in this cemetery, too, I wondered. What would my tombstone be, a mound of rocks? One of the thin, worn slabs that I had seen on our way in that merely had the person's name and the date of their death, not so much as a single sentiment else from someone that might have known them? I wondered what Quatre's coffin had looked like.   
    I fell to my knees in front of the grave, unable to stand any longer. Although the snow had been shoveled away, the ground was still hard and unyielding, like the stone that I was kneeling in front of. I placed the flowers that I had bought at the foot of the gravestone. They really were disgustingly cheery. There were no other flowers at the grave, just mine. And of course there weren't. There was no one else left in this town that would put flowers at Quatre Winner's grave.   
    Tears poured down my face and I thought, 'here I am, I'm kneeling right above his empty coffin, and that's all that's here. That's all that's left of him. A box of rotting wood and the pathetic excuse of a best friend.' I took off my glove and reached out to touch the gravestone. It felt like touching ice. I tried to read what was inscribed there, but I couldn't see anything through my tears. At least I wasn't sobbing.   
    I felt more than saw Heero kneeling down next to me. Compared to the ground and the air and how I felt, he was like a furnace. He wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me against him. I didn't fight him. I cried silent tears against the side of his chest, just melting into him and suddenly, I truly understood why I had never gone there before then. Because before then, I would have gone alone.   
    "He isn't really buried here, you know," I finally said and was amazed at just how steady and emotionless my voice was, "There wasn't anything left of him to bury. Why do people do that? Why spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on a box just to bury? Does it make them feel better to pretend that they're burying their loved one? Don't they realize how stupid it is, burying a box with nothing in it?"  
    'It's such a waste,' I thought and almost exploded into a new round of tears.  
    Quatre and I... our lives... _such a waste_. Isn't that what Relena and Zechs would say?  
    "Come on," Heero urged, tugging at my wrist again and standing up so I had no choice at all but to stand with him, "This ground is completely frozen, it's too cold for this."  
    He pulled me over to a bench back on the brick pathway in front of the graves and sat us down together. Even from the bench, I could still see Quatre's slab. As my tears dried, I could almost make out his name carved expertly into it. I could feel myself start to come back, little by little, sense starting to match my violent emotions, step by step. I held no illusions at all that my tears and grief were done, but I welcomed myself back from my shock.   
    "Can you talk about it?" Heero asked in that soft, patient tone of his that he shared with his father, his right hand squeezing tightly on my left and I realized that at some point, he had taken his glove off. His skin felt warm and welcome against my chilled hand.   
    "I think I have to," I murmured, wiping the remains of my tears off my face, "You know that's why I brought you with me, right?"  
    "No," he corrected me, "You brought me here because you needed me to be with you. But I'll listen if you want to talk about him."  
    I didn't know whether I wanted to kiss him for understanding me so completely or start crying again.   
    "It'll be long," I warned him, "and it won't be pleasant."  
    "This is the only place that I need to be," he said.  
    "I did some things... terrible things... you might hate me if you knew..." I continued, my voice cracking with the weight of my emotions.  
    "I might," he confirmed, "but I won't. Whatever you did, I know it isn't terrible enough for me to hate you."  
    "How can you possibly know that?!" I demanded, my anger flaring up for a moment.  
    "Because I know you," he insisted, "and I know that you're not capable of doing anything that would require me to hate you for. So unless you drowned some puppies or ran over some little old ladies that you haven't told me about, hating you just isn't possible."      
    I felt an odd mix of exasperation and affection for him just then, that he could really believe something like that, and intense hope that he was right. That he loved me so stupidly, so blindly that there was little I could do to make him loathe me. Oh god, how I wished that he were right.   
    "I'm going to cry," I said in desperation, the last thing that I could think of to warn him away from this.   
    "You can use my scarf for a tissue if you need to," Heero, with that damned, soft smile of his, actually unwrapped his scarf from around his neck and handed it to me.   
    Looking down at his scarf, a harsh, hysterical bark of laughter escaped me. I wrapped my free hand around the scarf and had the urge to smell it, to smell him on it. I clutched at it like it was a security blanket, and right then, that was exactly what it was.  
    "I don't even know where to begin," I confessed.  
    "Take your time," he said gently, "We have hours, just go slowly."  
    He had no idea what he was in for, I realized, and almost laughed again. I pitied him. I took a moment to compose my thoughts and memories. I had a lot of them. All of those little moments in time that had seemed so small and unimportant at the time, but they had all added up to one moment, one choice of Quatre's that had ripped my entire world apart. Looking at that gravestone in front of us, after about a good ten minutes, I finally found the ability to talk again.  
    "I already told you how Quatre and I became friends," I started (3), "didn't I?"  
    "You told me you met on your first day of school when you were nine," he confirmed, "He helped you when Relena was bullying you and he was being bullied by her, too. When you said that people found out that he was gay and he doesn't go to school here anymore, and Relena had something to do with it... I just thought that you meant that he ran away, not that... that he was dead. Relena... she didn't have anything to do with _that_... did she?"  
    He looked like he really didn't want to know as he looked at Quatre's tombstone and it would have been so easy to placate him, to lie to him, but I would never lie about this, not _ever_.  
    "Yeah," I muttered, "She had a whole hell of a lot to do about this," Heero stared at me in disbelief and I felt angry for a moment, thinking that he was just like everyone else, willing to look away from the truth, thinking that I was just lying, but then I remembered who he was and what he was really like and realized that he just didn't want to believe it, but that didn't mean that he was choosing not to, "but so did I."  
    The two of us fell perfectly quiet. I looked down at the bricks under my feet, following their neat little lines until I was able to compose myself.  
    "He did ask me to run away once," I murmured, hating to admit this, but knowing that it was a part of everything, "He said that he knew where his parents' credit cards were, that we could just get on a train and go far away from Nausten, from Relena, Zechs, my dad, all of it. His parents were rich, almost as rich as the Darlians, and we could find some place where our parents would never find us. Not a day has gone by since he died that I don't wish that I had told him yes that day."  
    "Why didn't you?" Heero asked in soft, low tone, sounding genuinely confused.  
    I imagined that, in his eyes, if his father had been beating on him, he would have given anything for a chance to get away. But that was alright, because he didn't get it. People that have perfect families like his never do understand why people like me don't just run off, and they probably never will.   
    "I didn't think that he was serious!" I insisted, "He was in a pretty low place at the time and he sounded like he was just joking..." my voice trailed off and I shook my head, "No, no that's not true. I knew that he was serious, even then, but I couldn't do it. It sounded like a fantasy, something that little kids come up with when they're mad at their parents. I knew that it would never work. We were both just thirteen, what did we know about living on our own? How long could we make the money last before his parents cancelled the cards and what would we do when we were penniless? I had never left Nausten in my life and he wanted me to go live with him in some strange place. And I loved my parents too much back then to just up and leave them. I know you don't understand that, but as shitty as they were to me, I loved them. And by the time I realized all of that, Quatre was taking it back as a joke anyway and he never asked me again.   
    "The real reason, though, is that I was a coward, too scared to do something so extreme. I wish that I had just taken that chance. Maybe he would still be alive now. Even after he told me that he was sure that Relena was going to kill him in the end... I still didn't go with him. He had frightened me so badly when he had said that, and I was still too selfish and scared to help him get away! So he stayed and I stayed and now he's dead."  
    "She... she didn't really..." Heero looked a bit green as he listened to me, coming to the worst possible conclusion.   
    "No," I told him, not to comfort, but so he would get the facts straight, "she didn't murder at him. At least, not like how you're thinking. She didn't have to. The bitch is cunning. Why should she have to dirty her hands shooting a person in the head when she can just as easily and manipulatively place the gun in their hands so they can do it themselves," I spat out angrily, "Maybe she didn't slit his throat or hold a gun to his head, but she still killed him. And I helped."  
    "Duo," Heero started to protest, unwilling to believe that I had anything to do with my friend's demise, I was sure, but he really had no clue the sort of things that I or Relena were capable of.   
    "Please," I begged him, wanting so badly to believe in his view that I was a good person, so badly that I was even willing to stop my narrative if he kept this up, "Just let me."  
    He obediently fell quiet again, but his gaze was intense. I couldn't have asked for a more avid listener.  
    "I don't really know why we became friends," I continued, "Besides being bullied and not having stellar home lives, we didn't have that much in common. He was a lot smarter than me, rich, sweet, soft spoken, and he loved math. We were both really lonely as kids, though, so maybe it was that. His parents never hit him, but they were never around. They were always too busy to spare any time for their youngest child, and he had a ton of sisters that had better things to do than hang out with their baby brother. I was his only friend, although that was probably Relena's doing.   
    "But even though our personalities were so different, we were close. In the four years that we were friends, we were all that each other had. I would have done anything for him. He helped me out of some really fucked up shit and if it weren't for him, I would have gone through it all alone. At first, Quatre was the one that Relena and Zechs went after the worst. They were fucking _vicious_ to him and I never found out exactly why, he would never talk about their history together. Zechs left me alone entirely for three years," at this I paused for a moment, debating whether or not I wanted to tell Heero about his girlfriend having a crush on me, kissing me, and my rejection of her, of all the crap that that one, enormous fuck up of mine had caused for both Quatre and myself, how I had only made things worse for him, but I really didn't want Heero to know about that. It was too embarrassing.   
    "It was even worse for him because, not only had the both of them known him and played with him when he was really young, they lived incredibly close to each other. He ran into them all the time outside of school while I hardly ever did. Between always dealing with them, his sexuality, and how things were at home, he should have been a wreck, but somehow, he was always smiling, even when I knew that he was having a hard time.   
    "Quatre was so strong, stronger than I could be when things got hard," I whispered painfully, "and I used him to make myself feel better about my own problems. I never asked about his and we almost never talked about what was going on for us at home. I just used his friendship as a distraction because it made me feel better about my shitty life. Some friend, huh? I was so busy wrapped up in my own problems that I never tried to make him feel better about his, even when I knew that he was feeling down. But he always seemed to know when I was sad or upset or angry, and he always seemed to know what to say or do to make my feel better. I made myself feel better about using him by thinking that if he _really_ needed me, he would just say so because he was much more open than me about his feelings. What a croc of shit. That's how one sided our friendship was," I laughed darkly, "but he never complained.  
    "I'll never know what he got out of our friendship," I murmured with remorse, "I couldn't even protect him from anything or make him feel better. The bullying got worse and worse as we got older and it matured him. Every year, he looked older and older, more tired, a little less bright, like it was wearing him down. And I did nothing about it. He was the only reason why I survived to high school, and I was so weak that I couldn't do the same for him. All I wanted to do was protect him from Relena and Zechs, but I was too weak. I only tried to make it stop once, and it wasn't enough. All I ever did our entire friendship was fail him," I spat out bitterly.  
    "What did you do?" Heero asked patiently, incredibly tolerant of my ramblings.  
    This had all seemed so much easier in my head before, but when I actually had to sit down and _say_ what had happened to Quatre, I found that my thoughts were chaotic, coming out in this jumbled mess.  
    "He tried to tell me not to fight back, that it would just make things worse, but I didn't listen. I thought that I was being smart, that I just needed to fight back a little," I sneered at myself, "I thought that, if anything bad happened, it couldn't be any worse than what they were already doing. I thought that I could actually _accomplish_ something, but what the fuck did I know? If I had known that they would go after Quatre, too..." I swallowed roughly, "God, I was so stupid back then. Relena had put a tack in my sneaker during gym and ripped up one of my textbooks. I was so fed up by then, knowing that she was getting worse. I thought 'this needs to stop' and I thought that if I could just keep from them getting to our things, that would be a step in the right direction. I hid my things in one of the gym lockers and taped my textbook back together. Relena was livid when she realized what I had done. I had felt so _smug_ , thinking that I had won, that I had stood up to her, but..."  
    "She retaliated," Heero finished wearily.  
    "Zechs, too," I added.  
    "What did they do to you and Quatre?" he asked me.  
     "They taught me to never stand up to them again, that neither of them could be fucked with by a worm like me," I answered angrily, "and they dragged Quatre right into it. Relena threw pepper in my eyes and then she made Quatre drink this nasty shit, water and pencil shavings and paper, and who knows what else. I tried to stop her and got it all over her. Then when we were in swim class later that day, Zechs almost drowned me in the pool."  
    "Christ," Heero swore, his eyes going wide, "God, Duo, he tried to drown you?! Why wasn't he expelled?!"  
    "You have no idea what he's capable of," I told him in a flat tone, "What he can do when he's being really vindictive or worse, angry. He didn't get expelled because anyone who saw it didn't want to cause someone like that problems and I sure as hell wasn't going to tell on him. He had almost drowned me because of a taped up text book and accidentally dumping some filthy water on his sister. What do you think he would have done to me... done to _Quatre_ if I told a teacher on him? Don't you get it yet? That's why I told you that you can't fight against him! You can't even stand up to them! Even if you're careful, sooner or later they get you. Even Quatre tried to stand up to Relena once, and it got him a fucking broken arm."  
    My throat closed up as I remembered that day, the terror I had felt and the feeling of that oily, hot under carriage of the truck scraping over my back.   
    "He was always smarter than me, but even he forgot the rules," I murmured, "and I couldn't protect him from that, either. I couldn't do anything then and I still can't now. And when he dared to tell me that I should tell someone about my Dad, I threw it in his face that he never stood up to his own bullies. I was his only friend, and I made him feel like shit about how hard of a time he was having, just because I was feeling defensive! He was sitting besides my hospital bed after dragging me there himself, he cared about me and was worried about me, and I snapped at him, made him feel like shit. I was the worst friend he could have ended up with."  
    "Duo-" Heero began to protest, looking pained, but I wouldn't let him.  
    "No, I _was_ ," I snapped, "I was never there for him. _That_ ," I pointed a finger at his tombstone, "That is all the proof that anyone needs to know that I was a shitty friend! I should have been someone that he could depend on, like he had been for me, I knew what a hard time he was having and I never did anything to help him!" I closed my eyes and ran my hands over my face, trying to get the image of that grave out of my head, the final evidence of the worst mistakes I have made my entire life, my most ultimate failure, "After that, things only got worse for him. Zechs and Relena became more vicious to Quatre, just to get at me.   
    "No matter what I did, no matter how I tried to help for our entire friendship, I only made things worse," I dropped my hands from my face, suddenly feeling very tired and wishing that I could just get this whole confession over with, running my fingers through my long bangs in frustration, "Then he met Trowa and everything just went to total shit."  
    I had debated long and hard about using Trowa's actual name when telling Heero about him. It had seemed almost like a betrayal, considering the steps that my ex had taken to hide his sexuality. But then I remembered what he had done, both to Quatre and to myself and decided that I didn't owe him a damned thing. Besides, even though there was only one Trowa in our school, I also knew that out of all the other kids in our school, Heero was the one person who wouldn't make trouble for someone trying to hide the fact that they were gay. Even if he didn't understand what that was like, he would have been respectful about it.   
    Besides, I realized with a kind of mild shock, this would be the last semester that Trowa had at our school.   
    "Was he a part of Zechs's group?" Heero asked me.  
    "No, it wasn't like that. Trowa was just this upperclassman that Quatre got a crush on... no," I amended, remembering with vivid, terrible quality how my best friend had acted around the older boy, "No, it was more like he was head over heels in love with him. I don't know how long that had been going on for, but I figured it out when we in the seventh grade. It took me a stupidly long time to realize that he liked him. I had just thought that when he talked to him and blushed and babbled, he was just shy because Trowa was older and popular. He was the VIP on the basketball team back then, so I just assumed that Quatre was intimidated by him."  
    "Basketball really isn't my thing," Heero admitted, "but I've seen a couple of their games and I don't think that there's anyone named Trowa on the team."  
    "He quit," I said brusquely, but I felt another guilty pain in my chest.  
    Thinking about Trowa's aborted career in basketball was still painful. I just couldn't imagine someone like Trowa or Heero, people that had talent like that, quitting, but I could understand grief, the things that it can do to a person, how it can change them. I had barely seen Trowa at all since our falling out, partially because we weren't in any of the same classes, but mostly because I hadn't wanted to see him. My life was hard enough, I didn't need a constant reminder of what a fuck up I am, how I destroy people and relationships so easily. So why did it hurt so much to think that in just a few months time, I would never see him again? Wouldn't that be a good thing?   
    I wondered what he was going to do after he graduated, if he was still planning on going to a local college to study biology, if he had been accepted. If I went to his graduation, would he read too much into it? He was, after all, the only senior that I even knew. But why did I even want to go? What did it matter to me anymore? Because, I realized, no matter how much he had changed, no matter how much he had hurt me, Trowa was still the boy that Quatre had loved and there was some part of me that wanted him to be happy.   
    Even though Trowa had been just as responsible as me for Quatre's death, I wanted him to go on, to do the things that Quatre would never be able to do: graduate high school, go to college, find someone to love that could actually love him back. Not just because, even if I still hated him a little, I still kind of cared about him, but because Quatre would have cared. Seeing Trowa get that far in life would have made him happy, even if he couldn't follow him.   
    Thick tears ran down my face as I thought about how Quatre couldn't do any of those things. He had been so smart and he had had so many opportunities for the future with his interests and money. He could have done anything at all. But he never would. He would never do anything now. He would never get any taller, any older, he would never fall in love again, he would never smile again, he would never be anything but a thirteen year old, seventh grader. I wiped angrily at my face, clearing away my tears. It was far too early to fall apart, not when I still had so much to tell Heero.  
    "Quatre wasn't exactly discreet with his crush, either," I continued, ignoring my friend's look of concern when he caught me crying without knowing why, "He would always find excuses to bump into him in the hallway, and he went to every one of Trowa's games, even though he had never had any interest in sports before. I have no clue why I didn't notice it before I did. I knew that he was acting weird around him, but I stupidly just thought he was trying to be friends with him. I was so fucking oblivious. But Relena sure as hell wasn't. She figured out that Quatre liked Trowa a lot sooner than I had."  
    "She knew that Quatre was gay?" Heero's brow furrowed, looking incredibly worried at that news for some reason.  
    I almost said that it was ok, Relena couldn't hurt Quatre anymore with that bit of information, but that definitely would have made my tears come back.  
    "I don't know if she knew before Trowa came along," I said, "Zechs and their lot were always calling us fags, but it was mostly just name calling, and because Quatre was short, slender, and had this really pretty, blonde hair. Zechs called him a girl even more than he did me, which is saying something. So I never read anything into it until Relena started to bully Quatre about Trowa. I don't know, maybe she had only suspected him being gay before then, or maybe she had known and just hadn't cared to torment him with it until he had dared to fall in love with someone. I could never tell if she was actually offended by his sexuality or if it had just been like a new, shiny toy for her, a way to really hurt Quatre.   
    "It was partially her cruel behavior towards him whenever she caught him and Trowa hanging around each other that clued me in that there was something going on. She kept insinuating in front of Trowa what Quatre wanted to do with him, and Quatre would become so frightened. It's a wonder that she didn't just come right out and tell Trowa that Quatre was a fag and wanted to rape him, but I think she enjoyed the game too much to scare Trowa off right at the beginning. Every time she came between them," I murmured sadly, "every time she opened her mouth to Trowa, she broke Quatre's heart, and I was too stupid to realize _why_."  
    "Things were hard enough for him back then. Trowa was the first and only person he had ever fallen for, he had told me at least that much. He never knew how to handle it. Bad enough that he was gay, but he was trying to be friendly with this boy that everyone in school liked, and it was hard enough for him just to try to be friends with him. Whenever Trowa was around him, Quatre seemed so happy. Happier than I'd ever seen him, actually. When Trowa was there, he wasn't sad about his absent parents or that he was bullied. But when he was gone, especially if Relena had chased him away, he would get so depressed. I knew that something was wrong, but I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to make it better. I should have, I was his best friend, but I floundered trying to make things better.  
    "There were a lot of moments that year where I would catch him just being so quiet and somber, like absolutely nothing could make the sun shine for him again. Like he was starting to realize just how awful the world really is and didn't know how to cope with it. But through all of it, he was still there to try to cheer _me_ up when I was upset about my father or Zechs. I'll always hate myself for that, for failing him when he never did for me. If I had been more attentive, if I had been a better friend, then he would still be-" I started to come apart again and pulled myself back together through sheer will power.   
    It was too soon, I told myself, I could lament about my guilt and weakness after I had gotten the whole story out.  
    "Relena didn't even just hurt him or embarrass him," I continued, "She _changed_ him. Before he met Trowa, it didn't matter what Relena and Zechs did to Quatre, he was always the same person that I had met when we were nine: sweet, gentle, kind, and soft spoken. When they picked on him, he would get scared and frustrated at times, and he would get so nervous around the two of them. But when Relena started to go after him over Trowa, when she embarrassed him in front of him, he would look at her with such _hate_ in his eyes, and such anger. I had never seen him look at anyone like that during our entire friendship. I hadn't even thought him capable of hating anyone until then."  
    "What about Trowa?" Heero asked me, "What did he do about it? He did realize that Quatre was getting bullied because he was hanging around him, didn't he?"  
    "Of course he knew," I scoffed, "It was pretty obvious to everyone. He was..." I struggled, trying to find the right words to describe what Trowa had been like back then without adding my current opinion of him after having dated him for nearly a year, "It was complicated," I sighed, "At first, he seemed just as nervous when Relena caught them interacting with each other. He didn't really seem to care about other people seeing them on friendly terms, and he didn't seem all that worried about her trying to bully him since he was an upperclassman and well liked, he was just... shy, I guess, and didn't want to make waves. He had his reputation to think about, and his athletic career.  
    "To his credit, he didn't distance himself from Quatre when Relena started attacking him, but he never did shit to help him, either," I couldn't keep the anger and resentment out of my voice, "He did even less than I did to help Quatre, and I'll always hate him for that. I had hoped that he would stand up to Relena, tell her to leave him alone, but he always backed down from her. It was ok to hang out with a social pariah, but the second Relena got him involved, he couldn't get further away. He liked Quatre and they were friendly with each other, but not enough to make things better.  
    "I know that makes me sound like a hypocrite, and I am, but even before things got really bad, I disliked him a little, just for hanging around my best friend, but not seeming like he cared about the bullying, like as long as it didn't back lash on him, he could ignore it. When I finally figured out that Quatre _liked_ him, I couldn't believe it. It had seemed impossible at the time. There I was, already questioning my own sexuality and almost positive at that point that I wasn't straight, and now my best friend liked another boy. It didn't seem real to me, like it was some cosmic joke that the _both_ of us would turn out gay."  
    "When did you first think that you were... different?" Heero asked me, derailing me a bit, but that was alright. I was happy to be distracted from what I had been talking about.  
    "Mmm... I guess I didn't really start to notice that something was wrong until I was twelve. I mean, I had wondered before then why I had never had a crush on anyone, but it was until the sixth grade that I really started to worry about it," I told him, grimacing as I thought about the prank that Zechs had pulled, putting those naked photos in my locker, yet another thing that I was never going to tell my friend about, "All of our classmates were either talking about girls and boys or actually dating at that point, but Quatre and I had never looked twice at any girl. And I started to realize that, even though I was worried about it, I didn't have that much interest in girls at all.  
    "It wasn't that I was interested in boys either at that age, but girls made me uncomfortable if I thought about them romantically. Maybe because I wasn't close to any girls, and maybe because of Relena, but I felt more comfortable around boys. I wasn't too young to think that maybe I might be gay, but I had hoped that I was just a late bloomer, that I would meet some girl when I was a teenager and fall in love. It wasn't until the next year that I really started to consider that that might not happen. I mean, I was thirteen years old and I didn't even like to look at girls at all? That had seemed suspicious to me. Even when I got my first kiss from a boy at that age and had enjoyed it, I still doubted myself. I still do from time to time, but at least I know for a fact now that I'm never going to be straight. How about you?" I asked, "How old were you when you realized that you were gay?"  
    He paused to think about it.  
    "I think I was ten when I really started to think about it," he told me, "There was this new kid in our class. He wasn't really much to look at, kind of shy and boring. But when he smiled, it just lit up his entire face and made him look so handsome. I remember thinking 'he has a beautiful smile.' Then I realized that that wasn't exactly something that a boy should think about another boy. After that, the signs only got clearer."  
    He had this wistful smile on his face as he remembered something and I suddenly felt this hot flash of jealousy as I wondered if he was remembering an old boyfriend, maybe someone that he had left behind in Florida. Someone more attractive and nicer than me. I hated myself for that. There I was, in a graveyard, talking about the death of my friend and my guilt, and I was feeling jealous because of a boyfriend that might not even exist. Heero's admission only drove home to me that I really was out of my league with him. When he spoke of his sexuality, it was with surety. I only felt confusion and alienation for mine. And he had been ten when he had figured things out, Quatre had said that he had been younger, too. I guess I really am a late bloomer.  
    "Well, after I figured out that Quatre had a crush on Trowa, I decided that I had to tell him that I knew," I said.  
    Heero shot me an incredulous look, like he thought that I must have been crazy and I had to agree with him there.  
    "Yeah, yeah, it was not the smartest idea that I had ever had, but that's what I decided. He, understandably, did not take me telling him that I knew that he was gay all that well at first," I winced, "I could have easily lost my friendship with him right then, but we sorted it out somehow. I told him that I might be gay, too, and even I wasn't, that _he_ was wouldn't bother me. We talked about it a lot, our issues with our sexuality, and Trowa. But I never truly understood what he was going through, the sadness that he was feeling and the kind of pain that he was willing to put up with, just so he could be around Trowa. At least... I didn't back then. I was totally clueless about the agony that he was living with.  
    "It wasn't that long after I had confronted Quatre about Trowa that things got really bad. Besides listening whenever Quatre needed to talk about Trowa, I stayed away from them when they were hanging out as much as possible. I looked out for them, and distracted Relena so they could be by themselves, and that worked for awhile," I explained.  
    "You distracted her?" Heero asked, quirking one brown eyebrow at my statement.  
    "I pissed her off so she would be too busy dealing with me to even question where Quatre was," I admitted.  
    "And you say that you were a bad friend to him?" he shook his head in amazement.  
    "I was," I insisted with frustration, "Have you not been listening?!"  
    "So far, you haven't said a single thing that's convinced me that you were even a little bit guilty in... whatever happened to him. And whatever tiny guilt you might have in not being able to help him, which I think is bullshit, by the way, you've made up for by being a true friend to him," he argued.  
    I scoffed, ready to protest, but he wasn't done with me.  
    "I've been where he was," Heero said angrily, "Knowing that I was gay and absolutely terrified of anyone finding out. I know what it's like to fall in love with someone and know that you will probably _never_ be able to be with them, to hold them, to kiss them, just to tell them that you love them because, even if they reciprocated, even if they were willing to take that chance with you, it would just mean that not only are you taking a huge risk that people will find out that you're gay, you're putting _him_ in danger, too! I know what it's like to feel guilty for even trying to be friends with someone that you love, because just that might put the spotlight on him. And I know what it's like to want so desperately to have someone, _anyone_ to talk to about it, not just someone who is sympathetic, but someone who understands what it's like to be different and scared. I'm sure that you just being there and talking him through it, just _listening_ meant the absolute world to him!"  
    To my shock, his words made me sob and my tears started all over again. No one had ever said that me, not even Quatre, that I had done something right, that I had been some sort of pillar of strength for my friend during a hard time in his life, even if it hadn't been enough. No one had ever said that I had helped him, done anything but failed him. I hid my face in my hands, embarrassed to be crying over something that actually made me feel good, like a cramp finally letting go, a pain that had been a constant for the past four years easing just a little bit, but Heero pulled my hands down and wiped my face with his scarf, not condemning me for crying.  
    "You say that you didn't help him enough with his problems," he said in this soft and soothing tone, "You say that you weren't a good enough friend to him, but that's crap. You were the only one that was doing anything to help him through it. You just told me that you didn't understand what he was going through, so how can you blame yourself? Christ, Duo, you were thirteen years old! No one is supposed to know how to heal someone else's mental wounds at fucking thirteen! You were both just kids, no one expected you to be his therapist or his bodyguard! That wasn't your responsibility, to protect him from everything bad in the world. He wouldn't have expected that from you, so how can you feel like you should have done more for him?  
    "You say that you didn't do anything to help him, but I think that just being there for him was more than anyone else did. If he was having problems with depression, his parents were the ones that should have been there for him! You didn't know how to help, that doesn't mean that you did _nothing_. And as much as you're blaming yourself, what about him? Did he do anything to help you?" he demanded.  
    "I... what?" I blinked stupidly at him, "I wasn't the one who needed-"  
    "No?" he interrupted, his expression hard with frustration, "Your father was beating on you, your mother barely acknowledged your existence, you believed that your own family didn't love or want you, you were being bullied at school just as badly as he was, and you were trying to deal with your own issues with being gay. So tell me, what did he do to help you through all of that? Did he urge you to talk to him about it? Did he listen to you when you did? Did he try to get you to tell an adult about Relena or Zechs or your father after that one time he suggested it? Did he ever stand up to Relena or Zechs and try to find a way to get them to lay off you? Did he notice that you were struggling with your own issues and confront you about _any_ of them the way that you did with him when you realized that he was gay?"  
    "He... he was there when I needed him," I argued, but my voice came out small and weak and I swallowed roughly, this painful feeling in my throat.  
    But what I was thinking of right then were all the times that Quatre had seen me beaten to hell and knew that my father had done it, but hadn't talked to me about it, avoiding the issue like some sort of unspoken agreement between us because that was what I wanted. And I thought about all the times that Zechs had hurt me and Quatre had seen it, but done nothing but look guilty, just like how I had when it had been his turn.   
    "He knew that I didn't want to talk about my father," I insisted, "That was what I wanted, that's... that's why we never talked about it."  
    My words fell flat as I suddenly realized that I wasn't trying to convince Heero at all of something that I had believed for so long. I was trying to convince myself. I thought about how Heero had found out about my father's abuse and his promise not to tell anyone. I hadn't needed to make Quatre promise, I had just known that he wouldn't, just like how I had known that we wouldn't talk about it. But Heero... even after he had made that promise, every time he had seen me beaten and hurt and depressed by it, he was always asking me 'do you want to talk about it'. I hadn't even realized until we had become such good friends just how powerful and healing those words were. Just to be able to talk to _someone_ about what was going on.  
    "Yes, that's what you wanted," Heero said as if he could read my mind, "and that's what he wanted, too, I think, but that's not what you needed, Duo. You needed to talk to someone, too, just like he did. But he wasn't there for you-"  
    "Yes, he was!" I yelled, tears in my eyes and I shook my head, not wanting to believe what he was saying, "Quatre was always there for me! He was the only person that ever was! He was all that I had!"  
    "But he should have done more for you," he said in that soft and somehow sad tone of his, "If you really believe that you should have done more to help him, then you have to admit to yourself that he is just as guilty of that sin. Friendship is a two way street, Duo. I'm not saying that he was a bad person, or even a bad friend to you. He was just a kid, too, and I'm sure that he had no idea what to do to help you, but don't say that you were a bad friend just because you didn't know how to help him either. You were there for him, too. As much as you needed that from him, as much as you loved him for it and appreciated him, don't you think that he felt the same way about you? Don't you think that he thought you were a good friend, just for being there for him?"  
    I rubbed at my eyes, trying to hide how much his logic was shocking me. All these years of feeling guilty for not standing up for Quatre, for not knowing how to handle his problems and I had never really thought about how Quatre had thought about me. I had been sure that he wouldn't blame me for not helping him, but only because that was the way that he was. He never seemed to blame me for any of my failings. But I had never really stopped to think about what that really meant, that he didn't see my failings at all, that he had just been grateful for my presence in his life.  
    "You appointed yourself his bodyguard," Heero continued, "all so he could spend some time with the boy that he loved, even at the expense of your own welfare. You told me what Relena and Zechs do to people who get in their way and stand up to them, but you did just that, all for Quatre. If that doesn't make a good friend, then what does, Duo?"  
    "Stop," I said desperately, unable to take his kindness.  
    He should hate me, he needed to hate me as much as I have hated myself for all of these years because it _was_ my fault. Maybe I had been young and put too much responsibility on my shoulders, maybe it was understandable that I didn't know how to help Quatre, but that didn't mean that his death wasn't because of me!   
    "You don't know," I stammered, "You don't understand what I did!"  
    "Then tell me," Heero grabbed my hands and squeezed them, "Tell me and let me decide for myself if you're actually guilty of _anything_."  
    It took me a long time to compose myself. My mind kept going over everything that he had just said, trying to find the flaw, trying to find where he was wrong, because he _had_ to be wrong.  
    'Just like he was wrong about everything else?' some traitorous, alien voice piped up in my head, a voice that sounded startlingly like Quatre's voice, the one that I had always imagined when I had been stressed after his death, 'Like when he said that you weren't dumb, that your father was full of shit, or like when he said that talking to Mom about the time she had told me about almost aborting me would make things better? Had he been wrong all those times, too?'  
    Shut up, I wanted to hiss at it even though, deep down inside, I knew that that voice was right. The part of myself that had known that I was at fault for not standing up for Quatre, for not knowing what to say or do to make his life better, was stubborn and as pervasive as the parts of me that had always believed my father when he had called me stupid. Perhaps even more so. Heero was so patient, waiting for me to continue talking as two sides of myself warred. There was that stubborn side that could never believe him, no matter how logical he was being simply because, for all of that logic, I still felt guilty and I still hated myself.   
    But there was another part of me that wanted to believe him, just like all those other times. Because I was tired. I was so, so tired of it all. Of those nightmares about Quatre, of feeling guilty, of hating myself, of being the monster. Heero had said that I had just been a kid, neither a bad person nor a good person, but just a kid, and a good friend. I wanted so badly to believe that. If not for my peace of mind, if not for putting down the sword that I had been stabbing myself with for all these years, but for Quatre. Because I wanted to believe that I had brought him some happiness during our friendship, even if it hadn't been enough to save his life.  
    "Before Quatre... before he... he died," I choked out the word and cursed myself. How the fuck was I going to get through this when I could barely even own up to the fact that he was dead, a fact that was abundantly clear given that we were sitting not ten feet from his fucking grave? "I had only really hung out with Trowa once. I stayed away from him only partially because I considered him to be Quatre's business and not mine, but mostly I had a hard time understanding why my best friend was choosing to hang around Trowa when it was only going to hurt him in the long run.  
    "I asked him why he would do that to himself once, what the point was of him hanging around him when there was no chance of him being happy. He told me, 'just being around him makes me happy,' and that he just wanted to be close to him for as long as he could. He said that he wasn't even worried about Relena telling everyone in school that he was gay or even his parents finding out.     "The only thing that he was frightened of, well and truly frightened of, was Trowa hating him or being repulsed by him, he could survive anything else. So no matter how painful it got for him, he could never let him find out that he liked him," I shook my head mournfully, remembering the pain and the terror in Quatre's voice when he had told me that, "I should have listened to him, I should have been worried about what he might do... the kind of damage it would do to him if that ever happened... but I didn't. I was his best friend and I couldn't even listen to him when he was telling me something that important! I only asked him what difference it made and he said 'you wouldn't understand' and he was right. I didn't understand any of it until it was too late to do any good for him.  
    "He became so terrified of Trowa ever finding out about his feelings for him that he started to lose confidence in hanging out with him alone. He thought that his feelings would overpower him and he would let it slip if it was just the two of them alone, so when Trowa invited him out to dinner after one of his games, Quatre begged me to come along with them," I said.  
    "Quatre must have trusted you a lot," Heero mused and I couldn't tell if that was for my benefit or not, "to ask you to do something like that."   
_" **Please** , Duo, I know it's so much to ask of you, but you're the only one I trust. You're the only person I know will protect me from myself."_  
    "He did," I murmured, "Hell if I know why, but he actually thought that I could help him. And how could I say no to him when he was asking me for that kind of favor? After all the times that I had let him down, how could I say no?"  
    "That must have been awkward for you," Heero noted, "and for Trowa, too. Why did he ask Quatre out to dinner anyway? Just an after game celebration type thing?"  
    "That's what I thought back then, that Trowa was just being nice to Quatre since he was going to his game, but it was more than that," I squirmed awkwardly, fiddling with my braid that was draped over my shoulder before I could stop the nervous tick, not comfortable with this bit of information, "Trowa liked Quatre, too. Like Quatre liked him, you know?"  
    "Trowa was into him?" Heero asked with the same kind of surprise that I had felt when Trowa had told me that, only missing my horror and incredibly rage.  
    "Yeah, in a big way," I admitted, "He told me the day that they buried Quatre. That whole time that they had been hanging out, they had been sweet on each other and Quatre never knew."  
    "That's so..." Heero paused, seeming at a loss for words as he grasped the pain of that kind of situation, "so sad. Neither of them knew that they other one liked them? It must have been terrible for Trowa to find out that Quatre liked him afterwards and he missed his chance."  
    "No," my voice turned into ice as I remembered that day at the train station when I had almost killed myself, only ending up getting kissed by Trowa Barton and punching him, "Trowa knew that Quatre liked him, but he was always too chicken shit to do anything about it. Quatre was the only one that was in the dark about it. Instead, Trowa just hung around him like a puppy. The both of them were idiots."  
    I couldn't keep the anger out of my voice and Heero's expression quickly changed to one of exasperation and frustration. I was glad to see that Trowa's carelessness with my best friend's feelings wasn't just upsetting to me alone.  
    "It really wasn't so bad, having dinner with them," I had to admit, "The game was kind of fun, although it really wasn't my thing, and I got a free meal out of it. And I got to see Quatre stand up to Relena for the first time since we had met."  
    That instantly caught my friend's attention.  
    "He stood up to her?" he asked in shock, "After he told you not to? Why?"  
    "She crossed the line for him," I speculated, not really sure exactly what had been going on in his head that night, but I remembered how pissed he had been at her, "So stupid, after all the shit that she had done to him, all the times that she had publicly humiliated him and made him throw up or cry or called him a faggot or destroyed his things, and the thing that made him finally say no to her was her ordering him to go home so _she_ could take Trowa out to dinner. He didn't say anything when she insinuated that he was only taking Trowa out for dinner because he liked him, or even that he was going to destroy Trowa's reputation if he kept hanging around with him, but when she told him to run off like he was some bothersome mutt, he said no to her for the very first time. Not only that, he actually told her that _she_ was the one that Trowa didn't want around, not him.  
    "I don't know which one of us was more stupid, him for doing that or me for being happy to see him finally stand up to her about something. I shouldn't have been. I knew that Relena was going to lash back at him for it and whatever it was, it was going to be bad, but I had never seen him care about something so much as he did being with Trowa. If I knew then what I know now," I shook my head, feeling haunted by my own memories, "I never would have let him say those things to her."  
    "That's why he..." Heero glanced at Quatre's headstone, "Just because he told her no?"  
    His voice was so incredulous and of course it was. Even if he had chummed around with Relena's group, he still didn't know just how vicious and terrible the bitch could be. He couldn't believe that his ex was capable of being that petty.  
    "I don't know for absolutely sure," I confessed, "Maybe she would have done exactly what she did eventually. Maybe that night just sped up something that she had already been planning. All I know is that the was the last time that the both of us were really happy together, before things went to total shit. And we did have fun at that dinner. Trowa was nice and I could see why Quatre was so taken with him. I wasn't really needed there, and I still wish that he had had the balls to go alone. Maybe something _would_ have happened between them, maybe it would have changed things.   
    "But I still had a good time with them, even thinking that. Quatre thanked me after it was all done for being there for him, even though I hadn't done a damned thing but eat some free food and chat Trowa up. I promised him that I would always have his back," I said painfully, "but it didn't take very long for me to break that promise. Just as long as it took Relena to punish Quatre for standing up to her. The three of us never hung out together again after that dinner. Quatre got his confidence back and didn't need me anymore to chaperone him and I preferred to leave the two of them alone, even though they tried to include me in their conversations from time to time.   
    "Quatre and I got stupid after a few days passed and Relena didn't do a thing to either of us. We let down our guards when we shouldn't have, and when we started to take our regional testing that week, Relena just became this background problem. I just... kind of forgot to look out for her. I forgot to watch Quatre's back. Because of me, because I was wrapped up in other things, he got his arm broken. Worse, he realized just why he couldn't fight back against her and even worse than that, because I couldn't stop it, he gave up hope that anything was going to get better for him."  
    "How did he break his arm?" my friend asked patiently when I paused for some time, not really wanting to talk about this part.  
    My fingers fussed with the fringe on Heero's scarf. I couldn't bear my memories of that day, of everything that had happened on that walk to the swimming pool. On the one hand, it was the only time that I had managed to actually _stop_ one of Relena's 'pranks', if I can even call what she did that. But I can't even claim that, now can I? I had saved Quatre from getting killed, but not from getting seriously hurt. I had been too late to stop it entirely and the damage, the _real_ damage to Quatre's heart had been done.   
    "Relena made him walk across the street on a green light," I said as tonelessly as I could manage, "She told him that if he didn't, or if tried to run back to the sidewalk or stop, she would tell the entire school that Trowa was gay."  
    "Oh god," Heero gasped as he realized the implications of what I was telling, "How... how could she do that?!"  
    "I tried to stop him from doing it," I said with self-contempt, ignoring his shock, "The second she said that she was going to go after Trowa, Quatre looked so horrible, so full of guilt, and I knew right then that he was going to do it. I should have tackled him, tied him down, _something_ , but I just fucking froze. I tried to plead with him, but he just kept walking. I even tried to plead with Relena. I would have done absolutely anything to get her to take it back, even take his place, but she just told me that if I tried to stop it, she would make it worse, and I knew that she would. Even still, I should have done something to save him! I should have been there with him, walking by his side so I could push him out of the way if  a car came, but I was so scared. I couldn't move. But the worst part was when he _did_ get hit. He didn't freeze like I did, he just... gave up. In that moment when he saw that he was going to get hit, he lost all hope. And I don't think he ever got it back after that, after knowing that Relena could use Trowa to get to him, that he was putting the boy that he loved in danger just by trying to be friends with him. He was never the same after that. He might have broken his arm, but it was his broken heart that needed fixing."  
    "Fuck," Heero swore, "She got him hit by a damned car?! And nothing happened to her?"  
    "Why would it?" I snorted, "By the time I got to see him in the hospital, he had already lied to the police about what had happened. So had Relena and everyone else that had seen it. They all said that Quatre had stupidly crossed on the green light on his own, that he had done it to himself, even Quatre. Thick as thieves, all of them. What was I going to do? Be the only person that told the truth? Who the fuck was going to believe me when even Quatre wouldn't accuse her?"  
    "But why?!" my friend demanded to know, "Why, after she had done that to him, would he protect her?!"  
    "Because what good would it do?" I asked him tiredly, "Relena would just say that he was embarrassed about doing something so stupid and was trying to blame someone that he was notoriously not friendly with when it had just been an accident. The rest of our class that had seen it would just side with her and it would make Quatre look like a liar. Worse, she would know that he had told on her and she would go through with her threat to label Trowa as a fag. No matter how much I had wanted him to do the right thing and tell the truth, there was really no way he would have won.  
    "That's when he told me that he was certain that Relena was going to kill him in the end, and when he asked me to run away with him, when he was in the hospital with his arm in a cast. Fuck, the way that he looked, so pale and small. I'd never seen him so depressed and sad and hopeless before. His parents couldn't even be bothered to pick him up, he had to call his goddamned sister for a ride home! And nothing I did, nothing that I said could make him feel any better. It was like he thought that the entire world was abandoning him. I begged him to tell Trowa how he felt so he could protect himself, so _Quatre_ could protect himself, but I couldn't convince him to do it, he was willing to put his own, goddamned life on the line because he didn't want to be away from Trowa!       
    "Worst of all, he hated himself so much for it. He told me that no matter the outcome of telling him the truth, he was going to ruin Trowa's life. Do know what that's like? What it feels like to know that you're only going to hurt someone that you love that much? I sure as hell didn't, not back then. I didn't see how low it brought him, how dark his thoughts and feelings were. I saw his depression and I worried about him, but I had no clue what to do, what the best thing would be. I just kept thinking that I needed to get him away from Trowa and Relena, that the two of them were killing him, but I had no idea how true that was.  
    "And I was killing him, too," tears started to fill my eyes again, but I stopped caring if they fell or not, "Do you know what he said to me when he asked me to run away? He said that he always used to fantasize about doing, just getting on the train and getting as far away from his parents and Relena and Zechs as possible. Do you know why he never did when things were getting bad? He told me that it was because he would miss his best friend too much. _Me_. I was what was keeping him from saving himself! If I hadn't been holding him back, or if I had just agreed to go with him, he could have gotten away from all of it before he had ever met Trowa! He would still be alive!"  
    "I don't think that's true," Heero argued, "A lot of kids who have trouble at home and school and are depressed like Quatre was say that they'll run away, but very few of them ever do. Running away from everything you've known, even if what you've known sucks, is frightening and only a few that are really desperate do it. Quatre didn't meet you until he was nine, but he never ran away before that. Maybe he had been too young, but maybe he had just been too frightened and talked a big game about running away. And if you were really the only thing that was keeping him in Nausten, why didn't he ask you to run away with him before then? He knew what your home life was like, so why did it take him so long to ask you that if he had been thinking about it for so long? The way you talk about it, it doesn't sound like he tried very hard to convince you.   
    "I don't think it's was a matter of him wanting you to run away with him. I think that he needed _you_ to convince him to run away, that if you were with him, he thought that he could finally go through with it. I think that, even if you had said yes, he would have needed someone there to convince him to do it. He felt so attached to Trowa that he wouldn't let him go, even to keep Trowa's life and reputation in tact. That doesn't strike me as the kind of person who would have been able to run away from him. I think, even if you had said yes, he wouldn't have been able to. That wasn't your fault, Duo. You weren't the only reason he had to stay. If his staying doomed him, that was on his head, not yours."  
    I chewed on that for a few minutes. It was not something that was easy for me to believe. Had Quatre really needed me that badly? I didn't want to believe it, that if I had said yes, my friend would have been relying on me to drag him out of Nausten, that he had been too frightened to do it on his own. I had always been the one needing him, always the weak one. How could it possibly be true? Quatre had seen first hand how crazy Relena was. He had been the one to ask _me_ to run away. I had always thought that it was my fault, that if I had just run away with him... so how could it be possible that Quatre had lacked the courage to do it?  
    But that wasn't really fair, was it? There I was, staying with a father who beat and raped me on a regular basis because I was too stupid and cowardly to run away. I, more than most, could understand how easy it is to just do nothing and let things happen to you. I didn't want to believe that Quatre had been like that, too, but what if Heero was right? What if it hadn't mattered what I had done, what if Quatre would have decided to stay anyway? What if it hadn't been my fault and he would have just gotten my hopes up, but in the end, stayed anyway? Heero's words, the possibility that they might be true, made me resent Quatre a little. I remembered how he had begged me to come out with him and Trowa, how my being there had made him confident. It gave credence to the possibility that he had needed me to run away, too, and that made me feel cheated. How could he have possibly thought that I could be strong enough to save him from himself?  
    "Do you really think that it wasn't my fault that he didn't get out of there?" I murmured.  
    "I do," Heero confirmed, rubbing my arm in an attempt to comfort me, "and I think that running away wouldn't have helped him much anyway. I don't know what he was feeling, what all of his issues were, but I really don't think that running away from them would have made him feel better in the end."  
    My heart ached as that shard of guilt, mingled with so many others, eased. I thought about my own depression, my own issues, and I knew that Heero was right. Even if I had run away with Quatre, it all would have come back to us eventually. I felt the same doubts that I had back then in the hospital room, how unlikely it was that running away was going to be anything but a temporary fix, that sooner or later we would have to go back home anyway. If I had said yes, even if we had both gone, it would have just delayed the inevitable. I understood that at seventeen when I had been incapable of it at thirteen. Or maybe Heero just made that much sense.  
    "Did Trowa know that Relena had gotten him hurt?" Heero asked me, "or did he believe what she had told the police?"  
    "He knew that Relena and the rest were full of shit," I recalled, "but he pretended that he believed them, at least around Quatre. But he told me that he knew that Quatre was lying to him about it and got the full story from me, which probably hadn't been the smartest move on my part. I thought that he would just shrug it off like everyone else. Even then, I had no idea what he felt for Quatre. And I had no idea how angry and guilty he would feel when I told him that _he_ was the reason why Quatre had gotten hurt in the first place. I sure as hell didn't think that he would be pissed enough and stupid enough to go after Relena about it."  
    That surprised Heero just as much as it had surprised me at the time, but his expression quickly smoothed out into one of understanding.  
    "If someone had hurt someone that I had loved like that, I would have wanted to hunt them down, too," he murmured.  
    "Yeah?" I bit out angrily, remembering what had come after that little conversation with Trowa, our mutual fuck up, "Well don't go feeling sorry for the prick. He might have loved Quatre, but he hadn't loved him nearly enough as his precious reputation."  
    The bitterness and loathing that I still felt for the person that I had once dated amazed me for a moment. I couldn't understand how I had been able to put these feelings aside long enough to be with him like that, before I remembered exactly what Quatre's death had done to me. For a moment, I had almost forgot about the crushing loneliness and depression.  
    "He confronted her alright," I grounded out, "He told her that he knew _exactly_ what she had done to Quatre and ordered her to stop bullying him. I don't think anyone had ordered her to do anything in her entire life. I remember feeling terrified of what she was going to do to him and my best friend, but also really happy that Trowa seemed to care about Quatre so much that he was willing to stand up for him. That's all I wanted, for someone to protect Quatre, for the boy that he loved to do right by him, to do the right thing where I was too chicken shit to.   
    "But Trowa was never that person. I might be weak and cowardly, but Trowa was so much worse. All Relena had to do was threaten to tell everyone that he was gay. She pointed out what it would do to his basketball career if his coach found out about it and what his parents would think of him and he turned tail and ran like a scared, little bitch. Quatre's fucking _life_ was on the line, Relena was holding his heart out in her hands to play with, and Trowa cared more about what people would think of him than he did the boy that he supposedly liked! I hated him so much for that. I know that's not fair, I wasn't standing up for my friend either, but for a moment, I had put all of my hope in him. I was just as bad as he was, but that didn't make me hate him any less."  
    "Oh, Duo, that's not true," Heero soothed, "Maybe you couldn't make her stop, but you never turned your back on Quatre. You were there for him when he needed you to be, you cared for him when Relena had hurt him. And you never let Relena threaten you away from him. Trowa made his choice and it's completely understandable for you to be angry at him for ignoring Quatre when he needed help. You couldn't have stopped Relena, you didn't have that kind of power, but Trowa did. _He_ was the blackmail that she was using against your friend and he had all of the power to take that out of her hands. Without him, she couldn't make Quatre do anything like that again, but he was too scared of being outed to do the right thing. Tell me, now that you've been outed yourself and knowing how people have treated you, if that's what it would have took to get Relena to lose that power over Quatre, would you have stood up to her?"  
    Thick, hot tears poured down my cheeks and breath hitched as I cried.  
    "Yes," I sobbed, "I would have done anything... _anything_ to have saved him from her."      
    "See?" Heero said softly, rubbing his hand against my back as I frantically wiped at my face, "Don't say that you were as bad as him. Maybe he was frightened, I know how he must have felt. I sure as hell made some piss poor choices just so I could hide what I really am. But I also know what it's like to try to balance trying to have a good reputation, to be popular and well liked, against someone else's welfare."  
    "You didn't let them hurt me like that," I managed through my tears, remembering the day that I had outed myself, how Heero had finally distanced himself from his 'friends' and the charade he had made for himself when he had seen how Zechs and the others were going to hurt me.  
    "No," I felt him tug lightly on my braid. It felt good and it helped me to regain control over myself, "I didn't. I was scared, just like Trowa was, but when I realized just how dangerous Zechs was, how he was willing to seriously injure you, how could I possibly think that my goddamn reputation was more important than making sure that you were safe? I should have helped you long before that, but I didn't realize just how horrible things really were between you and them. You have nothing to be ashamed of, not like Trowa does. You would have helped Quatre if you knew how-"  
    "But I didn't just _not_ help!" I yelled and lost control all over again, squeezing my eyes shut to try to keep my violent tears from dripping down my face, "I made everything worse! I tore them apart! It was all my fault! I betrayed my best friend, I broke his heart!"  
    "Tell me what happened to him," Heero urged me gently, "Please, you aren't making any sense-"  
    I shook my head, this crushing anxiety filling me and tearing me apart as I thought about what I had yelled at Trowa that day, what it had done to Quatre, all the damage that I had done.  
    "Oh god," the words ripped right out of me as I felt this wave of horror and guilt and remorse take hold of me, my voice filled with this terrible grief, "I can't do this."  
    I doubled over, wrapping my arms around my head and pressing my face against my knees. I cried harshly into them, sobs wracking my chest and making it hard to breathe. I had known that this was going to be hard for me, but I had never imagined just how hard it was. It was so stupid, I had gone through this before. I had written down all about Quatre's suicide. So why was talking about it so impossible? Why did I feel like I had that day as I watched him throw his life away, like that black hole in my heart was going to gobble me up again? It was only the feeling of Heero's hand on my back, still rubbing insistently, trying to comfort, that kept me rooted in reality and not in the rotting stink of my memories.   
    "Oh, Duo..." he cooed mournfully, "Haven't you ever talked to anyone about these things before?"  
    "How could I?!" I cried out and lifted my head from my arms.  
    There was some quality to my expression, or maybe it was just seeing my cheeks completely drenched with tears or the pain that I was sure in my eyes, that made Heero flinch.   
    "That's all anyone wanted me to do!" I practically screamed at him, "Any time they thought I was having a problem, they would make me go to the fucking school therapist about it! But how could I ever tell anyone what I was feeling?! That the only reason why the only friend that I had ever had was dead was because I had hurt him, because I had pushed him into a corner and I hadn't been able to pull him back out of it?!"  
    "Sssh," Heero soothed.  
    He wrapped his arm around my waist and drew me against him. Even though my heart raced from feeling him against me like that, so intimate, I let him shelter me like that. It felt so good, so warm, and so loving, I couldn't bear it.  
    "Lead me through it," he said gently, "As slowly as you need to. It will be alright, Duo. You need to get this out."  
    He reminded me of his father, saying things like that. But I knew that he was right. These secrets were a poison in me. They were killing me. Not in any kind of physical way, but they were rotting me from the inside out. I held no illusions that just talking to Heero was going to exorcise them, but this was my one chance to come clean, to try to lance the wound.   
    "I..." I choked and swallowed through the painful ball that had taken root in my throat, "I told Trowa that he was worse than Relena for not standing up to Quatre. I told him that he didn't deserve his friendship. I told him... I told him to actually be his friend or to stay away from him entirely. I never thought... I didn't think that he would actually listen to me..."  
    My tears wouldn't stop at this point, like there was a broken faucet in my face. I rested my forehead against my palm, feeling weary down to the bone. I half expected Heero to yell at me, to demand why I would do something like that, knowing how much Quatre wanted Trowa around him, why I would drive a wedge between them like that, but he didn't say anything. His arm remained tight around me and I wondered if it wasn't just as a source of comfort, but in case I tried to bolt. There was a thought. But I was in too deep at that point.  
    "He stayed away," I whispered painfully, "Trowa just started... ignoring Quatre, like he didn't even know him. Quatre became so... so sad and distant. He thought that he had done something and Trowa didn't want to be friends anymore. His depression grew and he would barely talk anymore. He would just brood and look at Trowa with this pained expression. And I couldn't tell him the truth, that I had done something that I had had no right at all to do, because I was a coward. Quatre felt like Trowa had abandoned him, when in reality, I had betrayed him. I had known how much Quatre cared about him, how happy he got when Trowa was with him, and I had spat on all of it with that stupid ultimatum. I had just wanted him to stay away from my friend and I hadn't taken so much as a second to think about how that would make Quatre feel.  
    "I didn't know how to fix it. I didn't even know if I could. All I knew was that my best friend was suffering because of something that I had decided to do, because I had needed to vent my rage at someone and Trowa had become my target. Even if I told him the truth, that wouldn't make Trowa come back. Quatre would only hate me, and he might come to loathe Trowa, too, if he found out about him turning his back on him. like that. Quatre only got worse and worse. I never saw him smile again after Trowa had stopped talking to him, not until the day that he had died. I only caught them together once before then. They were fighting in the hallway and Trowa told him to stay away from his games, too, that them being friends was a bad idea. Then he just walked away and when I asked Quatre if he was ok, he started to cry. That entire time, up until he died, he was so raw and melancholy, like he was always just on the verge of tears. I knew that something was horribly wrong, but when I tried to fix it, he just ordered me not to, to leave Trowa alone, to _respect_ what he wanted.  
    "I know it wasn't just me, what I did. I know that there was more going on in Quatre's head than just Trowa not talking to him. But goddamnit, I made it worse! I made him feel all those terrible things, so when the bottom dropped out, that was where his heart was, in the muck that _I_ had created. It was like he was sleepwalking in some terrible place that he couldn't escape from, like I had brought him to the edge of some cliff. Then Relena had to come along and push him right off of it," I spat out with a great deal of bitterness and anger.  
    "Quatre died the day that we got our regional testing scores back. He came to school despondent and more depressed than ever. I never found out why, what had happened to him that morning, only that Relena had said something to him on the way to school, but he adamantly refused to say what it had been. I thought that maybe she had teased him about Trowa ignoring him or something. I should have tried harder, maybe I would have gotten some clue as to what was going on with him enough to have stopped it. Instead, I was too busy worrying over some stupid, irrelevant test scores," I bit down on my tongue to try to temper my rage at myself and my ignorance of what had been happening in Quatre's life.  
    "I knew that something was wrong the second we went outside to go look at our scores on the school bulletin board. _Everyone_ was out there, not just our grade, but nearly the whole damned school, and even a bunch of teachers. They were all just gathered around the bulletin board, reading something and either laughing about it or looking horrified or disgusted about it. Then a bunch of them started _staring_ at us, mostly Quatre, and I knew, I fucking _knew_ that Relena or one of hers had done something at his expense. I just didn't know how bad it really was at the time, not until we got close enough to see what it was. I wish that I hadn't let Quatre see it. I wish that I had just grabbed him and made a run for it.  
    "Someone, I'm sure you could guess who, had gotten their hands on a journal that Quatre had kept somehow and had photocopied a bunch of it and posted it on that board. They were all about Trowa, about meeting him, falling in love with him... and everyone in the entire, damned school had seen all of his thoughts and emotions poured out on those pages, like some fucked up tabloid. Everyone around us was reading them and making these horrible, hateful comments about it, like it was some great, sick kind of entertainment for them. When Quatre figured out what was going on... god, it was like the color just drained out of him right there. I didn't blame him. Some of the things that our classmates said... the things that they accused him of, I had no idea how _awful_ and repulsive people could be until then.  
    "Quatre just stood there for the longest time, frozen like he had been when Relena had gotten him out onto the road. He looked like he seriously thought he was just having a nightmare. I should have dragged him out of there at that point, but I was almost as horrified as he was. Maybe I could have saved him if I had gotten him somewhere else, but then everything just went to shit. He noticed Trowa there, watching all of it with this pretty similar look on his face as people stared at him like he was an attraction at a freak show. Quatre tried to call out to him, begged him to let him explain, and that asshole... he _flinched_ from him, like he was something terrible!   
    "Then I heard someone say that if they had been in Trowa's shoes, they would kill themselves. I'll always remember that. Quatre and Trowa heard it, too, and Trowa looked so horrified, like he was finally getting that the whole thing was about _him_. Then he bolted back into the school. Just like that. Quatre was on the verge of tears, hurt and begging for him, and he just turned around and left him there to deal with it," I didn't bother trying to control the rage in my voice that time. I remembered it too vividly, the agony on Quatre's face as Trowa had turned his back on him, "Quatre started crying right there. I think he realized that Trowa wasn't coming back, or maybe he realized that the prank hadn't just destroyed his own reputation, but might destroy Trowa's as well."  
    "Then he just kind of... snapped. While everyone around us was laughing at him, he went completely still. He looked..." I choked on my words, my memories assaulting me like they were living things, gnawing away at my head, "he looked dead. There were no emotions at all in his eyes. It was the same exact look he had gotten when he had frozen in the middle of the road. He was giving up, and that scared the ever loving hell out of me. Then he bolted, just like Trowa had, without saying a single word. Only he didn't run back into the school, but away from it.   
    "I watched him run away like an idiot. At first I was just shocked by everything, I couldn't move. Then, when I thought about going after him, I hesitated. I'll always hate myself for it, because if I had gone after him right away, I would have caught up with him easily. I let him get a head start on me, I couldn't _stop_ him in time. And why? Because for a moment, I didn't want to leave the school," I said hatefully, "I didn't want to be absent from any of my classes because I had too many absences already. My best friend's entire world was crumbling around him, and I was worried about a fucking _grade_.  
    "It didn't take too long for me to pull my head out of my ass and run after him. Long enough that I couldn't quite catch up to him, but I could see where he was running to. I don't know how he managed to run all the way to the train station, Quatre was never a good runner. Adrenaline, I guess, or maybe just outright determination. When I realized that he was going to the station, I became terrified. I thought that he was trying to run away, that he was going to leave me behind and get on a train if I didn't make him stop. I chased him right through the station to one of the platforms. The train wasn't even there yet, but it was just minutes away, so I screamed at him. He stopped and I thought, that's it, I got him. I felt relieved, stupidly thinking that I could talk him down from whatever reason he had had for bolting like that.   
    "When he turned to face me, it was one of the worst things that I've ever seen in my entire life. He had been crying that entire time that he had been running, but that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was looking at him and the person that had always had a sunny smile for me, the person that had always been so kind and full of life that had become my best friend... that person was gone. When Trowa had run away from him, he had ripped Quatre's heart right out of his chest. I begged him to come back to school with me. I don't know why I said that. I should have begged him to take me with him, for us to run away together, instead I had begged him to go back to the heartache that he had just left behind him. I _never_ did the right thing!"  
    My throat seized as my brain all too gleefully provided me with memories of what had happened next and I began to cry harshly again. It was like those days after Quatre's death all over again, crying over and over and wondering if it would ever stop. Heero twisted on the bench so he could wrap his other arm around me and pulled me against his chest. I melted against him, letting my head lay over where his heart was and I pretended like I could hear it beating, even through the thick jacket that he had on.   
    "The train was arriving at the station," I somehow managed to sob out, crying thick, sloppy tears into his jacket as his hand stroked over my hair, "Then Quatre smiled at me... smiled like how he used to smile before all this _shit_ had happened to us, like everything was alright in the world. For that moment, I thought that it was going to be. I thought he was coming back to himself and realizing that not everything was lost. I was still there for him and we would fix things somehow. I was looking right at him when he took a step back and... and..." my voice did something strange, sounding like I was being strangled and I wondered if I was even going to be able to say it, but then the words were being ripped right out of me, "he let himself fall right in front of the train."  
    "Oh my god," Heero gasped out, his arms convulsing around me, hugging me tighter to him like he thought that I was in danger from my own memories, and maybe I was.  
    I felt him lay his head on top of mine and that was good. I felt like he was the only thing keeping me from completely losing it as I remembered, just as clearly as if it had happened minutes ago instead of four years ago.   
    "The train hit him," I said in a harsh whisper, "and there was all this blood just... just everywhere. He looked at me and smiled and then he killed himself, right there in front of me..."  
    "Duo," Heero cried out, his embrace becoming so tight that it was hurting me, but I didn't really care.  
    There was so much pain in both of our voices and I think it was that, more than anything else, that allowed me to finally let go of all of my control. I cried for a very long time, my sobs loud and chaotic and my tears nearly endless. My crying was like it had been when I had finally realized that Quatre was indeed dead, like I wasn't crying at all, but screaming out at the world in rage and grief. Only back then, my sorrow had caught in my throat and almost choked me before it went back down into my chest. I had pushed it all back down where it had lived for the past four years.   
    But this... this was like throwing up some terrible sickness. I worried that I might choke on it again, that it was too much. Too much pain and horror had accumulated in my gut and no amount of crying would ever get it out. But this time was different. This felt... right. It wasn't nearly as terrifying back then and this time, I knew that it would pass. I knew that there was something on the other side of it, waiting for me. So I burrowed myself in the comfort of Heero's arms and wept. I cried for my best friend, I cried for his family, I cried for Trowa, and I cried for myself, for all the days of loneliness and grief that had passed me by without my ever letting any of it go. And Heero held me tightly and touched me and comforted me in ways that hurt, but it was a good hurt.   
    I could tell you that it was just telling the truth for the first time that had allowed me to cry like that, but that would be a lie. It was Heero. For the very first time since that horrible, nightmarish day, someone was there for me. Ever since Quatre had killed himself, I had never had any support. There had never been anyone there for me to hold me and tell me that it was going to be alright. My father's one attempt at blind comfort had only put a small bandage on a gaping wound, and that wound had only gotten bigger since then.   
    I untangled myself from my friend when my crying fit finally started to end, my sobbing petering off into small gasps for air. I should have felt incredibly ashamed of myself for letting him see me in such a state, but for some reason, I didn't feel nearly as embarrassed as I would have had he been anyone else. I would have thought that I would have felt worse _because_ I loved him and never wanted him to see me so out of control, but at the same time, I trusted him with my feelings. God, I trusted him with all of my heart, more than I ever had Quatre. Heero was the only one who could get me to cry like that, so honestly.   
    "I'm so sorry, Duo," he said mournfully as I used his scarf to clean my face and he resumed stroking my back, "That... that must have been so awful..."  
    I was unable to take the pain and sympathy in his eyes for me, it would make me start crying again and now that I had gotten it out of my system, I wasn't in any shape for more tears. I looked down at the bricks again. They were very well maintained, but one of them had a crack in it.   
    "I couldn't understand," I whispered hoarsely, "why he would do that. How could he have done that to himself? To us? To _me_? How could he just stand there in front of me, smile like nothing was wrong, and end his life? How could he leave me all alone to deal with his death, to deal with life without him?!"  
    And just like that, even though I had thought I was done, I was crying again. I didn't sob, not like before, I was done with that part of it, but my eyes exploded again with fresh wetness as my heart twisted with memories of loneliness, of wanting to die, of being so angry with my friend and hating myself for that anger.   
    "He was always the strong one," I wrapped my arms around my stomach, feeling a deep pain there from anxiety, "I was the weak one. I was the one that always needed him, more than he had ever needed me. I was the one that could never have any friends besides him, he was the one that could tolerate the bullying, turn the other cheek and act like it was nothing. He was the one who had a future and was kind and gentle and tolerant. He wasn't the one who was filled with anger and resentment and hate! So how could I have been the one to survive?! I was the weaker one, _I_ should have died, not him!"  
    Heero grabbed me hard by my shoulders, twisting me around so I was forced to look at him, and gave me a little shake.  
    "Don't you ever, _**ever**_ say that again, do you hear me?! No one should ever kill themselves! You have _every right_ to be alive! You are not less than he was! You don't deserve death more than he did! This isn't some kind of... kind of trade off! Your life is yours, it's important, so don't you ever say to me that you think you should have died instead of him, not ever! Just because someone has money or a marketable talent or is nicer or kinder, it does not give them more of a right to live than you!"  
    One of us was trembling as he screamed at me, but I wasn't sure which. His words rendered me absolutely speechless, both what he was saying, destroying the thing that I had believed for most of my life, and the pure passion in his voice, his desperation to make me believe him. As his ranting subsided, his grip on my shoulders loosened and some of the anger left him, but none of that fiery passion and determination.  
    "You weren't the weak one, Duo," he told me, his expression full of love for me that stripped me raw, and he placed his hands on my cheeks, the warmth of them like fire, "You are the strongest person that I've ever known. _You_ were the strong one. Quatre was the one that was weak."  
    "How can you say that?!" I exploded at him, pulling away from his hands and feeling outraged that he could insult my dead friend that way, "I told you everything! I told you how I failed him, I told you all the mistakes I made and how much I needed him, how I let my anger control me! How can you possibly say that he was the weak one?!"  
    "You didn't try to kill yourself!" he snapped back at me.  
    "No?" I snarled at him.  
    A warning bell went off in my head, begging me not to do this, but I didn't listen. I was in too deep for caution to have any effect. I hiked up the sleeve on my left arm, and thrust my wrist at him so he could see the livid, thick, red scar that remained of my suicide attempt. It wasn't some thin, barely there thing. I had pressed down so hard with my father's razor, so desperate to end everything, that the scar was gaping and puckered, the evidence of what I had done so obvious that it was sickening after the fact. Heero certainly thought so. He grabbed at my wrist, staring at the wound with nausea, and shook.  
    "Oh Duo," he moaned with horror, "Why? How could you..."  
    "I tried to kill myself twice after Quatre died," I told him coldly, but inside, I was remembering laying on the bathroom floor as my blood poured out of me, crying and wishing that when it was all over, I would see Quatre again, "The first time was on the day of his funeral. I stood on the same train tracks that he died on and waited for the train to hit me, just like him. Only I chickened out at the last moment. I _tried_ after that. I went through every day, every useless, boring motion without him. Without _anyone_ , until I couldn't take it anymore. So I took a razor blade and slit my wrists in the bathroom. Only I did it wrong. I lived. Quatre was even better than me at dying," I spat out.  
    "Why did I do it? Because I had no one! Quatre was it, he was all that I had! Without him, there was no one who loved me, and I sincerely believed that there never would be anyone for my entire life. How could I do it, Heero? Every day was horrible. Every day there was a memory of him, of what it had been like to have a true friend, someone who cared. Every day was grey and long and torture. Nothing was the same, nothing had an ounce of color or life. I couldn't sleep without dreaming about him dying. So how could I go on for another ten years, let alone a life time, without ever feeling loved again? How, Heero?" I demanded, quickly losing my anger as my vision blurred with tears, "I couldn't find the answer! I wasn't strong enough. All I could think about was making the pain stop."  
    "Duo," he whispered, his own tears trailing down his cheeks, his voice choked with pain for me, and he pressed his forehead against mine, "Please, I'm begging you, don't ever do that again. If you're having problems, if you're sad and lonely, please talk to me, to anyone. If you... if you hurt yourself like this again, I don't know what I would do..."  
    My heart clenched and I felt so horribly selfish, so monstrous for making him hurt before I remembered that I didn't think that way anymore. With Heero as my friend, suicide was the very last thing on my mind. I closed my eyes for a moment, just reveling in the feeling of his hair brushing against my skin, the warmth of him pressed against me. How could I possibly want to die when I could feel this? And for the first time since I had woken up in that hospital, my wrists stitched back together, I was so deliriously happy that I had failed, that I was still alive to experience these things.   
    "I don't want to kill myself anymore," I promised him, "I won't ever do it, Heero, I mean it. I was in a really terrible place back then. Things are different now."  
    He took a shuddering breath of relief, lifting his head away from mine.   
    "You survived," he told me, "and he didn't."  
    "I didn't fail because I had doubts," I argued, "This wasn't some... some kind of cry for help. There was no one to help me. I wanted to die. The only reason why I didn't was because my father found me, and because I didn't know how to cut my wrists the right way. Don't you see? I _was_ the weak one. I gave up, too."  
    He shook his head, still not believing me and making me feel like I was arguing with a brick wall. How did he still not understand?  
    "How can you possibly think that Quatre was the weak one knowing that I tried to kill myself, too?!" I snapped at him in frustration, "How can you-"  
    The fury came back into Heero's eyes at full force and the words dried right on my tongue at his rage and how hurt he looked.  
    "Because if I had had you in my life, I never would have given up!" he screamed and I might have instinctively flinched from him if he hadn't been crying as well, turning his anger into something that was sad to see, not frightening, "I would have been strong for you! If you were there, if you needed me to be your friend, I _could_ be strong, I could withstand anything! I never would hurt you like that, no matter how lost I feel, no matter how sad! I would never, _ever_ leave you behind to deal with things alone!   
    "Quatre wasn't strong, he was selfish. He only thought about his own pain, he didn't even try to talk to anyone about it, even for the sake of the people that loved him! He knew that it would hurt you, and not only did he still kill himself, he did it while you were there, watching him! What friend does that, Duo?! You say that you betrayed him by pushing Trowa away, by not being able to get him to step away from the edge of that platform, but that's not betrayal. You were thirteen years old and you had no clue that he would do that. You made a mistake, you didn't betray him.   
    "No, what's betrayal is looking into the eyes of someone that loves you, someone who is begging you to come back with them, someone who wants to help, and murdering yourself right in front of them like that! You didn't fail him. You did the best that you could under the circumstances. He never talked to you, he never said that he needed help. He made a shitty choice and gave up on everything! He let all the bad shit in his life get to him and left behind his _best friend_ to deal with the fallout like a coward! You didn't leave him. Even when you decided to kill yourself, you didn't leave someone behind like that.   
    "You say that he was stronger because he was more tolerant of the bad things, because he retained his kindness even when he was being bullied with such hate. But that's not tolerance, Duo, that's giving up. He could face the bullying with a smile because he had already accepted that it was going to happen to him and he didn't care anymore. He didn't care if it was right or wrong, he just gave up on anything better. You say that you were weak for being angry about it, for not being able to turn away from it, but that's how you're supposed to feel when someone is hurting you!   
    "It _isn't_ fair and it _isn't_ right and you are never supposed to accept that it is! You tried to fight back, you're still trying, you still want to, you just don't know how! So yes, you were _always_ the strong one. He was the one that was weak, he was the one that was lost and confused and hurting. Just because he seemed more put together, the one with the future, that does not mean that it was true. And it was not your fault that he killed himself. It wasn't your responsibility to monitor him and analyze all of his behaviors. You _didn't know_. His family should have known long before you, and he should have asked for help if he was having problems. I'm not saying that that he deserved to die for being weak, but you can't blame yourself for his bad choices, either. It was on his head, on everyone's. You did what any good friend would have done, Duo. This wasn't your fault."  
    A single, violent sob burst from me before I could stop it. I squeezed my eyes closed as his words assaulted me, covering my eyes with my hands that quickly became soaked. When he told me that he never would have given up on me, my heart blossomed with a love so intense for him that I felt the keen desire to kiss him and confess every feeling that I had ever had for him. But when he called Quatre a coward for leaving me behind, when he accused him of betraying me, I felt an ancient pain bubble up. A pain that I had denied for the last four years. The pain that I had felt whenever I remembered that last smile that Quatre had given me before he had let himself become nothing more than a bloody smear.  
    The pain was hate and resentment. I had begged Quatre to come back to school with me and he had smiled at me before he had killed himself. Right in front of me. Everything that Heero had just said about betrayal, I had felt when the shock had cleared enough to process it. Quatre had left me. Worse, he had let me watch him die. He had known what he was doing, how much it would haunt me for the rest of my life. He could have come back with me and killed himself later, but I had thought that maybe he had been afraid. Afraid that I might convince him not to do it. Afraid that he would lose his courage.   
    It had been like Heero had said earlier, how Quatre had needed me to get him to run away before he could do it himself. Maybe he had been planning to kill himself for awhile before then, but he hadn't had the courage to do it, and maybe on that day, he had known that he would chicken out if I was there. Maybe he had been too frightened to step back, knowing that it would be his only chance to go through with it. He had decided that my horror was worth it. All of the pain and anguish and sorrow that I had been feeling was because he had decided that. In the moment when I had realized that, I had certainly felt betrayed. And I had hated him for it. But Quatre was dead and that was a terrible thing, so how could I hate him? Instead, I had hated myself for being such a terrible friend, for resenting him when he had made the ultimate sacrifice.  
    Only I was seventeen now and I had mourned him for a long time. Long enough to distance myself from the brunt of the horror and look objectively at my own grief and Quatre's actions. I knew that Heero was right when I looked at what I had told him through his eyes instead of mine. Quatre had hurt me. He had chosen to hurt me. No matter if I thought that it was an insult to his memory or inappropriate, I resented him. I had been resenting him this entire time, but I had refused to let myself acknowledge it. But worst of all? Instead of letting myself have the right to hate him, to know that he had betrayed me and let that help heal me from all of this, I had chosen instead to think that Quatre hadn't betrayed me at all. I had thought for four long years that Quatre would never hurt me unless I had deserved it.   
    See, he hadn't stabbed me in the back, he had been punishing me for doing something terrible to him. His smile hadn't been friendly, but accusing. I had let him down, that smile had said in my mind, I had betrayed him, so to pay for that, I got to watch him die. Once that idea had wormed its way into my head, it had never left me. A part of me had believed that Quatre's death was my fault simply because I have always felt inadequate. But a very large part of me also believed that because of that thought, the surety that Quatre wasn't capable of hurting me unless I had hurt him, first. So of course it had be my fault.  
    Suddenly realizing that it wasn't, that Heero was right and, in all reality, unless Quatre had actually told me that he was depressed and thinking of suicide, there wasn't much that I could have done to save him either right then or later, when he would undoubtedly have tried again, was infinitely more painful than realizing that I wasn't as dumb as my father had led me to believe or that I wasn't unwanted like my mother had told me. Some beliefs are hard to let go. Others are easy, but the process of letting them go, while it should be a relief to purge such dark and twisted feelings, is like evisceration. The knowledge that I had lived with such guilt, not because it was real but because I wanted to punish myself, was like that. It was pure agony.   
    "It's alright," Heero soothed, wrapping his arms around me again like it was the most natural thing in the world for him, "You were alone for a long time, but you don't have to go through this by yourself anymore."  
    'Four years,' I thought with some bitterness, 'I didn't have a single friend or anyone to talk to for four years. Quatre did that to me, he left me to face that. If you hadn't come along, what would I be now? How empty would my life be?'  
    "I'm so sorry," I told him, wrangling for control over my intense emotions.  
    I wasn't even sure what I was apologizing for. Crying all over him? Getting mad at him when he had been right? Being stubborn? He let go of me again, but squeezed my hand. His hand should have been cold without wearing gloves for so long, but his skin only felt blissfully warm to me.  
    "You don't have to apologize," he assured me, "I understand what you're going through."  
    At first, I thought that he was just placating me. 'I understand' was something that the school therapist had often told me and I had loathed him for it because he had only said it to try to comfort me, but I had known that he really didn't. But Heero... when I looked at him and I saw a deep pain in his own eyes, I realized that he actually did understand. He looked away from me, some dark emotion overwhelming him for a second, before his eyes found me again. The grief there, so much like my own, paralyzed me.  
    "My best friend died last June," he told me in a small, sad voice, "A year before I moved here. He was the reason why my parents eventually decided that we needed to move."  
    I remembered how Heero had told me that a friend of his back home had been bullied and that had been the catalyst for his move.   
    "He... did he... kill himself?" I asked with horror.  
    The thought that Heero and I had this in common was no sense of comfort for me. While it was kind of nice, knowing that he understood my pain where few others could, I didn't want to visit that agony on anyone, let alone someone that I deeply cared about.  
    "No," Heero said, "He was killed."  
    I pulled my hand out from under his so I could return the favor, linking our fingers together and giving him a reassuring squeeze while my heart ached with turmoil for him.   
    "I... I didn't have a childhood like yours," he said, sounding guilty like my shitty life made his shameful somehow, "My dad already had a great career by the time that they decided to have a kid. I grew up in a nice neighborhood and went to a really good school. I had a lot of friends growing up, not like what you had with Quatre, nothing that meaningful, but kids that I would hang with and I could play with. Between being on the baseball team and my dad being in the news a lot because of his awards, I was somewhat popular. I didn't have anyone that I could really call a best friend, though, until Wufei's family moved to our neighborhood when I was twelve.   
    "The community was mostly white and Latino, predominantly catholic, but not really as conservative as it is here. Still, Wufei and his family were never really accepted the entire time that they lived there. They had moved from China and Wufei was the only Asian that had ever gone to our school. No one knew that I was part Japanese, and my mother's latino roots are much more prominent, so that's all that anyone would see when they looked at our family. He got picked on a lot for that alone, but he made it worse by not backing down when he got teased and being a bit arrogant about his culture. He shouldn't have had to be ashamed of who he was and where he came from, and he was proud of it. No matter how bad things got for him, he never tried to hide in the background or show any weakness to the people that were bullying him. He had more of a spine than I ever did," he murmured sadly.       
    "Every time I suggested that he keep his head down, he would make me feel ashamed. He always believed the best in himself, that if our classmates saw how strong he was, they would eventually come to respect him. I couldn't even come out as gay, I was too scared of what my peers would think of me, but Wufei never hid from anything. I would stand up for him from time to time, and I got beat up now and then for it, but I was too much of a coward to do more than that."  
    "Wufei was also a bit bullheaded," Heero confessed, "He was well spoken and intelligent, but ridiculously stubborn. He loved to read and study, especially science, but all anyone else ever saw when they looked at him was his arrogant attitude and the slant of his eyes (4). When he got beat up and his clothes stolen, he would always just shrug it off. He knew how to defend himself, but he never did. He always said that what his bullies did was dishonorable and he wouldn't lower himself to that.   
    "It was usually the same group of boys. They were a lot like Zechs and his friends, thugs just looking for someone vulnerable to hurt. The principal never did anything because Wufei refused to accuse anyone. It used to drive me insane, but I couldn't stop them, either. I pointed the finger at them once, just once. They got suspended for a week, came back, and broke Wufei's wrist and a couple of his ribs. They gave me a black eye and a broken nose. My parents begged me to tell them what was going on, but I was too scared at that point.  
    "My parents started to get scared, too. My dad figured out that Wufei was being bullied and kept lecturing me that I needed to tell someone. They knew that I was gay at that point and were worried that if anyone at school found out, things would escalate. I wish that I had listened to them. If I hadn't let my fear control me and keep me from doing the right thing, Wufei might still be alive, or they might have kept going after him anyway, even if they had gotten expelled."  
    "Did Wufei know about your sexuality?" I asked him.  
    "Yeah," he said, "It was difficult for him at first. He wasn't uncomfortable around me or anything, he had just never met someone that he had known was gay before. His culture speaks out against things that go against tradition, but at the same time, his family wasn't that strict and were fairly progressive. He told me that I was his friend and he didn't think that there was anything unnatural about my liking other boys.   
    "I think he understood that it wasn't a choice and he couldn't ask me to stop being a homosexual anymore than I could ask him to stop being Taoist. It took him awhile to get used to it, but he was very understanding. That was the kind of person that he was. While he had his prejudices, he was also very logical. He firmly believed in not judging people for their innate behavior, even people like the assholes that were terrorizing him at school."  
    He swallowed roughly, his blue eyes going dark with some terrible memory and I wondered if my own eyes had done that when I had been talking about Quatre's suicide.  
    "Whenever I was feeling down because of my sexuality, he would cheer me up, even if he had issues with it. He would tell me to just take things one day at a time, that every dark cloud lifts sooner or later, you just have to be patient. I think he really believed that, if he just took things one day at a time, one day the bullying would stop. I knew that it hurt him, that it frustrated him and made him angry to be treated that way, but he was so optimistic. Only his dark clouds never got to lift."  
    His tears, as silent as my own, made me want to bundle him up in my arms and shelter him from everything, even his own memories. Was that how he had felt when I had spilled out my own anguish? Like his own heart was being ripped out, too, simply because the person that you loved was in pain? I pressed my side against his as much as I could, trying to offer some kind of comfort. He gave my fingers a squeeze and pressed his leg against mine, showing me without words that he appreciated it.   
    "One day in early June after I came home from a game, my parents were both in the kitchen. They looked worn and somber and my mother had been crying. At first I thought that it was my grandfather. Ever since my grandmother died, he never takes care of himself and my mother always has to bully him just to take his meds every day.   
    "But it wasn't. It was Wufei. His mother had called mine after his body had been found. She had worried that they had gotten me, too, but I wasn't there when he... when they killed him," he murmured regretfully, "They made sure of that. They jumped him when he was coming home from the dojo (5) that he trained at. They beat him to death. His nose and several of his teeth were shattered, his jaw dislocated, both of his arms were broken, and his skull had been cracked. But it was the broken ribs that had killed him. A shard of one had puncture his lung and he had drowned in his own blood. Even when he had been unable to breathe, the three of them had just kept hitting him.  
    "I never found out why they had done it, what had made them go that far, or why he hadn't been able to defend himself against them, but I don't think there was a reason. Thugs like them and Zechs don't need an excuse to be monsters, they just are. The cops came shortly after my parents told me what had happened to ask me some questions. I gave them some names, but only two of them actually got put away for it. 'Involuntary manslaughter,'" he laughed bitterly, "Can you believe that bullshit? And they only got caught because they found Wufei's blood on their clothes. They didn't get enough evidence on the third one to do anything to him, and his friends never gave him up.   
    "I took the rest of the school year off and quit the baseball team. I kind of fell apart after Wufei's funeral. His parents never blamed me, even when I told them that I should have told on those kids long before then, but I still hated myself. I thought that his death was completely my fault. If the cops had come to charge  as an accessory, I would have gone without a fight. My dad tried to get me to understand that, even if I had told on them, even if they had gotten expelled, unless the police had gotten involved, they probably would have killed Wufei anyway, and maybe me, too, for tattling on them. But it took a long time for it to stick."  
    "How did you go on?" I asked him, thinking about how hard it had been for me.  
    "For awhile, I didn't," he confessed, "My parents didn't want me to go back to that school in the fall. They were concerned that it would be too hard for me, and they were afraid that that other boy might go after me for telling on his friends, especially if it ever came out that I was gay. They were scared that what had happened to Wufei was going to happen to me if I wasn't careful and I was, too, but I had friends still and I didn't want to uproot my family just because I was having problems. I told them that I was fine, that I was ready to go back.  
    "It was all a lie, though. I was miserable and grieving and going back there made it worse. Every time I saw that one boy's face, I saw what he had helped do to my best friend and I wanted to return the favor. I wanted to _kill_ him. Wufei would have scolded me for that, but I hated him so much. I fell apart only a month after going back. I stopped doing my homework and I spent most of my time locked away in bedroom, not talking to anyone. My dad and I went shopping together one weekend around Thanksgiving and we passed by a cologne counter that had all these samples. One of them smelled like the incense that Wufei would burn when we hung out at his house, all sage or sandalwood or something like that. I just started sobbing right there in the store.   
    "My dad pulled me out of school. I took some make up work so I could get credit for that semester, but come Christmas, my parents moved us into my dad's parents' home. I hated it at first, I hated that my parents had made that kind of decision for me. I didn't want to move away from the place that I had grown up, to an entirely different state in a different part of the country. I told myself that I would miss my friends, but I didn't. We had been friendly, but never as close as I had been with Wufei. He had been the only friend of mine that I could actually talk about my sexuality to, the only one that had been there for me through the worst times. I didn't miss any of them even a sixth as much as I had him.  
    "I told myself that I resented my parents for completely changing our lives like that, but that was a lie, too. I hated myself for not being able to keep it together, for them feeling the need to abandon their jobs for me. But in reality, it had been the best thing for me. I didn't have to go to the school again, I didn't have to be reminded of what had happened every two seconds, and I got to be with my family for awhile.   
    "I got home schooled for a semester, but mostly I spent my free time with my grandparents. They helped me deal with my grief a lot. I talked about Wufei and what it was like without him, how even the smallest thing seemed impossible to live with and my grandfather told me something that really stuck with me. It helped me to realize that I couldn't spend my entire life in mourning, I couldn't keep running away from things. If it weren't for them, I don't know if I would have been able to go to school this fall. As much as I'm not proud of the choices that I made when I did, creating this fake persona and dating Relena, I could have just as well wallowed in my pain for a very long time before being able to deal with a public school again."  
    "What did he tell you?" I asked, amazed at the support that Heero had had through his family, how they hadn't pressured him to go on like everything was ok.  
    I wondered what might have happened if I had had that kind of support, if I had taken the time to breathe after Quatre's death instead of soldiering on like I always do.   
    "He told me that losing someone you love, grief, _true_ grief doesn't just mean having to say goodbye to someone that you think you can't live without. It's not about all just sadness and remorse and the gaping hole that they leave behind. Once you mourn them, he told me, once you remember all the joy that they brought you and you grieve, knowing that no one will ever be able to fill their place in that same, exact way, there is another thing that you must do or you'll never move on. You have to accept a world that doesn't have them in it anymore. You have to accept it like you did the first time that you met that person, not with sadness or loss, but with the joy of something new, with knowing that there is so much happiness out there, if you're willing to take the chance to find it. You have to do all of that, while never forgetting about them, never forgetting all of the wonderful things that they made you feel."  
    I looked down at our entwined hands. If I had given up... if I had succeeded in killing myself, I would not be there then, feeling his smooth skin against my own. I would never know what it feels like to hold hands with the person that you love the most, or how wonderful it feels to know their comfort, their arms around you, that they care for you so much, they would do anything to wash your pain away.   
    I looked up at Quatre's headstone. The sun was beginning to set in the distance, we had been out there in the cold, talking for hours, and the sunset was arching gold in the sky, casting long shadows at our feet from the gravestones and trees. Accept a world without Quatre, accept as I had the moment that I had become friends with him, how happy I had been to know that he liked me, that he wanted to spend time with me? I didn't know if I could do that. But hadn't I already? Wasn't I already in the process of moving on, looking to my future, not with bleakness, but with some hope? Didn't I, when I thought of that future, see not loneliness and emptiness from the lack of Quatre in my life, but Heero, his family, and my mother? If accepting that world meant letting go of my pain and horror over Quatre's death, wasn't I ready for that?  
    "I... I think I'm ready to do that," I told Heero and he rewarded me with a bright, beautiful smile.  
    I stood, but didn't want to let go of his hand. I never wanted to let go of it, and he came with me. I walked over to Quatre's grave, the dark headstone decorated with exuberantly bright flowers at its base. For four years, I had been mourning him. I had had all that time to say goodbye to him, to grieve him. It was time.   
    "I loved you," I said to the grave and reached out smooth my hand over the top edge of it, pretending that I was caressing his hand instead of the cold stone, "I am so grateful for everything that you ever did for me and I'm sorry that I wasn't able to help you the way that you deserved," fresh tears trailed down my cheeks, but that was ok. They were small and cool, the last ones that I would shed that night, "Goodbye," I whispered.  
    I had never gotten to say that to him. He had never given me that chance, the chance to say 'thank you' and 'goodbye'. Even when I had imagined him by my side, I had never said it. But when I did, I felt some enormous weight lifted from around my heart, like a lock being undone.   
    "Come on," Heero urged softly, "It's getting dark."  
    We walked away from the grave, but I had to dare one last glance back at it. I saw Quatre there, sitting on the top of it and leaning back casually like he often would the bench behind the library. Only it wasn't him as I always had imagined him, not the him that had died at thirteen. This Quatre was the Quatre that would have been had he lived, taller and older, but still short and slender, his golden hair cut short and his eyes still large and wide, the same shade of green-blue that I remembered. He smiled at me, that bright, wonderful smile that had always been there to make me feel better when I had been sad, and he waved at me. I nearly waved back at him, but then he was gone, disappearing into the fading sunlight like that's all he had been, just another ray of light fighting against the intruding night.   
    I looked back ahead of me as Heero and I walked out of the cemetery. I should have felt sad as I understood that I was never going to be able to imagine him again, not with the kind of the solidity that I had. My mind wasn't going to let me see him with that kind of realness that I once had. But I didn't. As I had watched him disappear like that, I had felt relief. No more punishing myself. No more living in the past. I didn't need to anymore. If I heard Quatre's voice in my head again, if I remembered him or spoke to him, it wasn't going to be because I needed to.   
    No more ghosts.   
      
  
End Part 5  
  
  
"Hello, goodbye, and hello  
I've met you and I'm going to say goodbye to you now  
Hello, goodbye, and hello  
And to this world without you, I'm going to say hello  
  
Back then when I didn't know what a real goodbye meant  
I kept on searching for you with my crumbling heart  
There were so many things I wanted to tell you if only they would reach you  
I vow to be by your side  
And to make you constantly smile with all of my feelings  
  
Hello, goodbye, and hello  
I've met you and I'm going to say goodbye to you now  
Hello, goodbye, and hello  
And to this world without you, I'm going to say hello  
  
Our memories together and your warmth make up the string leading me to you  
But I can't find you even when I followed that string, that fact was the only thing I found  
I thought the wish I didn't want to lose was the star farthest away  
Though the sky stretches out endlessly, just like tomorrow  
I still want to reach out my hands  
  
Hello, goodbye, and hello  
I will never forget you  
Hello, goodbye, and hello  
And I'm going to keep walking on this road  
On this journey, starting from the moment I fell in love with you  
  
Hello, goodbye, and hello  
I've met you and I'm going to say goodbye to you now  
Hello, goodbye, and hello  
And to this world without you, I'm going to say hello"  
  
\- Hello Goodbye & Hello by Anri Kumaki  
  
About this song, sometimes I have a moment where I'll hear a song and go 'oh my god, this works with this scene perfectly'. I had a moment like that with Under the Water by the Pretty Reckless (which everyone should listen to) and certainly with this song. This is the ending song to a quirky little anime film called 'Children Who Chase Lost Voices', which is all about accepting the death of a loved one. I found this song to be especially poignant for this story because, not only does it talk about the death of a loved one with the strength to move on afterwards, it perfectly voices Heero's grandfather's sentiment that grieving isn't just about loss, it's about learning to greet and accept a new world that just doesn't have that person in it anymore.   
  
Other songs that really spoke to me when I was writing about Quatre's suicide in chapter 3 were Against All Odds (Phil Collins), Gravity (John Mayer), and Sideways (Citizen Cope). And by 'spoke to me', I mean they came on while I was writing and I cried like a dork.   
      
(1) A blurb about Heero and Duo's birth dates. Yes, they are deliberate. Duo is February 23rd, which makes him a Pisces. I chose Pisces because water is a huge symbol in this story and also because of personality traits. Pisces are sensitive, compassionate, kind, selfless, unworldly, intuitive, minimalist in terms of living and property, and sympathetic, but they are also escapists, secretive, vague, weak-willed, and easily led, which sums Duo up to a t. Heero's birth date is June 25th, making him a Cancer, another water sign. Cancers are emotional, loving, shrewd, cautious, protective, intuitive, imaginative, and sympathetic, but also changeable, moody, overemotional, touchy, clingy, and unable to let go of things, which also sums Heero up pretty well. For those that are knowledgeable on this stuff, you also know that Cancers and Pisces are incredibly compatible as lovers. They're both water signs and share some similar traits. They are both emotional types, so they communicate rather well and have a rather idealistic connection. Cancers nurture and are very good at providing structure for their partners, and Pisces live for human connections. So yeah, I didn't just pull their birthdays out of my ass, it was pretty intentional, lol.   
  
(2) Edelweiss would traditionally be given to a loved one to show devotion to that person. While it is usually a flower used between romantic couples, it can also be given to friends who share a deep bond. Duo's purchasing these flowers is basically his way of saying to Quatre that, even after four years, he is still close to his heart and he is always thinking about him.   
  
(3) I have struggled with this story for many years now in terms of how to structure it. Quatre's suicide was planned since the second re-write, but I was unsure of how to start this story, either at Duo's childhood like I ended up doing, or further along his time line. A friend of mine suggested the latter because, according to her, it takes too long to build up the main drama in the story. If I took this route, the first three chapters would have never happened and what exactly happened to Nate would have been a mystery until this point where Duo is rehashing things to Heero. However, I really wanted to do the former. Is it the long way around and did I run the risk of boring readers with the slow progression that is the first third of this story? Yes. But I also feel that readers get a better feeling for Duo as a character when you see him grow up, see how he has changed, and see how his loss has shaped him. Without this, I feel like you lose a sense of why Duo is who he is and why he does and thinks the things he does if you aren't aware of how and why Quatre died and everything else that happens during this period of his life. So yeah, sorry if this part ended up being a huge rehash for people, but his going through this with Heero IS important.   
  
(4) I get a lot of comments from people saying that they hate the I killed Quatre off because he's their favorite character on the show. Well, it's Wufei fans' time now. I'm just going to come out and say it, out of the five pilots, Wufei and Quatre are my least favorites canonically. I don't dislike them, I just like Trowa, Heero, and Duo a lot more. I find their back stories and personalities to be more interesting to me. The only time I really engaged with Quatre's character was during the plot involving the death of his father and his resulting insanity. As for Wufei, while I like his back story, I find his personality to be really grating and irritating on the show. The only times I found him likeable is when he had another character to bounce off of (mostly Sally and Treize, I feel that their level headedness is a good foil for Wufei's ideology).  
  
All that being said, I didn't cast Quatre and Wufei into death roles maliciously. Quatre was always slated to die in this story as Duo's best friend and Wufei's role in this reboot is a lot more flattering than who he used to be in earlier incarnations. Originally, after Quatre's death, Duo befriended him because Wufei was also an outcast as a way to stave off his loneliness. However, Wufei wanted to be more popular and outed Duo when he accidentally told Wufei that he is gay and in love with Heero so he would get an in with Relena's group. But when I rewrote this story, I decided that not only was that waaaaaay too out of character for him, it was out of character for Duo to make friends with someone like that. To be fair, although Wufei in this current edition doesn't actually show up, his death and friendship with Heero shaped a lot of Heero's actions and personality, so I feel his role is a lot more vital than it used to be. Also bear in mind that I adore Trowa and I still made him an asshole in this story, so no one is really safe :P   
  
(5) I am aware that dojos are for Japanese based martial arts, in Heero's community, Wufei would not have had a lot of choices for places to practice his martial arts.  
  
Author's Note: I am terribly sorry for this part and it's... girth. When I sat down to write this graveyard scene, I knew that it was going to be long, but I had no idea that it was going to end up like this. A lot needed to be said and I'm sorry if this came across as a mere rehashing of chapter 3, but certain things needed to be said for later scenes and I am not the kind of writer that just writes 'and then he told him everything', or at least I try not to be unless it warrants it. This was quite difficult to write for obvious reasons and I'm worried that it came out rushed or unbelievable, but it is what it is. Duo still has a lot of issues with some things, but I'm glad to have him resolve some of his major misconceptions and angst concerning a huge trauma from his childhood.   
  
Next part will be a turning point in the plot of this story, so hopefully that will be something to look forward to ^_^  
  
Thank you so much everyone for the wonderful reviews <3  
  
A bit of additional news (sorry this author's note is so long): After many years of saying I was never going to, I have gotten a twitter. It's under the same name that I use for everything (shinigamiinochi) and I will be using it mostly for updates on writing and promoting my book when it is ready to publish. Speaking of which, I have decided to go ahead and publish it through kindle, even though I don't have an editor.   
  
About the book: I need to think up some marketing ideas, but for right now, all I have is word of mouth. The book is done and all I'm waiting on right now is someone to do the cover art. I'll be advertising a bit for it when it gets officially published, but I can say that it is a fantasy erotica featuring homosexuality, some fetish stuff (bondage, anthro characters, stuff like that, nothing too extreme), angst (my specialty, lol), and fairy tales. It is about 250 pages long and I will be charging around 2 to 4 dollars for digital. If it sells well, I might consider print, but that is very pricey. If anyone has any ideas of how to market for something like this, advice is highly valued. 


	50. Chapter 8 Part 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heero has something incredibly important to tell Duo and makes him face a choice, but will Duo be able to decide when no matter what he chooses, he's going to hurt his best friend?

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 8  
Part 6  
  
      
    I felt worn down to absolutely nothing as Heero and I made the trek back to his house, like all of my insides had been scraped out of me. I was incredibly glad that I didn't have work that day because, honestly? I didn't think that I would be able to manage it as I was. It wasn't even that I was numb, which can happen to me after being stressed and anxious for so long, or having the amount of emotional turmoil that I had just gone through. It was the opposite. I felt overly sensitive to everything. I felt tired with my feelings, barely able to keep putting one foot in front of the other, and all I wanted to do was crash. But I wasn't weary. I was sad, but not depressed, and even the sadness was alright. I felt... I won't say good, but a lot better than I had when I had entered the cemetery that afternoon.   
    Heero looked almost as tired and drained as I did and I couldn't imagine how he had felt, baring a part of his soul to me. I was still reeling with the knowledge that we had this huge thing in common, that he understood the loss that I had felt when Quatre had died. I had always understood, if not condoned, the actions that he had took when he had moved here, lying about who he was and befriending Relena. But I had always kind of resented it, not in any intense way, just understanding that he had had a weak moment and made some bad decisions.   
    But now that I knew what had happened to his friend, the terror that Heero had lived with thinking that the same might happen to him if anyone found out that he was gay, that resentment was long gone. While I couldn't understand the kind of strength of will it had taken him to become a bully, to look the other way when his 'friends' had tormented kids like me, I could certainly understand that kind of fear. I had felt it, too, after Quatre had gotten hit by the truck. I had wondered when my turn would come, when Relena would decide to step up her game and come after me, maybe even try to kill me, too. But then Quatre had died and I just hadn't cared anymore. Maybe that was still waiting for me, but I have Heero at my back now. With him as my friend, even Zechs doesn't frighten me as much as he used to. At least, not with my own welfare. Now I'm terrified of what he might do to my friend.  
    I did a lot better going by the train station the second time than I had the first. Heero expected me to have another near panic attack and put a hand on my back, which was nice, but it turned out to be unnecessary. I didn't hyperventilate, my heart didn't race, and I didn't feel that weird screaming in the back of my head. I felt nervous and anxious, like I was walking past a sleeping bear and I think that, no matter how much time passes, I will always feel that anxiety. Some things, some memories, leave a permanent scar and that will just be one of them. But in talking to Heero and being able to say goodbye to Quatre, that blind panic and horror that I felt when I thought about the train station had passed, like a bad gall stone.   
    I felt like something had been exorcised from me. It had left it's mark on me, which is inevitable for something that traumatic, but the worst of it, the true pain and darkness of it, had left me. Passing that train station without those feelings made me so relieved, I could have started to cry again. It was like finally seeing the light at the end of some long, dark, sinister tunnel. The sun was completely gone by the time we got back to Heero's house and his parents had left the front door lights on for us. Heero paused before opening the front door, getting a good look at my face. Something that he saw there worried him and he lightly touched my hand. We had put our gloves back on and I mourned the loss of feeling his skin against mine.  
    "Stay tonight," he urged.  
    It wasn't a question and it certainly wasn't something that he felt the need to ask. He had seen my break down, he had seen what it had took for me just to talk about Quatre's death and my guilt, the evisceration of ripping the truth out of me. He knew how raw I was right then and what I needed. I needed some place to lick my wounds, to rest and build my walls back up, things that I couldn't do in my own home.   
    I thought about going back to my house with horror. I thought about going home to my father. Maybe he would be pissed at me for not being around that morning, maybe not, it didn't really matter because angry or not, drunk or not, I couldn't deal with him. I thought about him yelling at me, calling me worthless, hitting me, maybe fucking me, and I felt what little strength that I had left leave me completely. He could break me so easily, just with a scornful look.   
    I didn't have the fortitude to mask my feelings, to put up a shield against him. And, god forbid, if he actually touched me, stuck his cock in me, treated me like his ten cent whore that night, I was too terrified to think of what might happen, what it would do to me. Suddenly, the notion of leaving the Yuys' house that night was the most impossible thing in the world. I needed to put this day behind me before I could do anything, I needed to be with the people that cared and understood me, even if I had to risk my father's fury the next day. Because the next day I could handle it.  
    I simply nodded to Heero. He didn't look relieved or even surprised that I was agreeing with him so easily. He had known that I would, that I needed taking care of and that I didn't have the ability to be strong at that moment. We walked into the house together and I was assaulted by the smell of cooking meat and potatoes. My stomach suddenly woke up screaming, reminding me that I hadn't eaten anything in almost twelve hours. I was glad to see that I at least had an appetite despite my emotional exhaustion.   
    "You're finally home!" Heero's mother greeted us at the door, her smile exuberant, but it quickly shriveled up when she got a good look at us.   
    I was sure that we were quite a sight. I had no idea what I looked like, but I bet that I looked worn. Heero looked tired himself, his eyes red from crying and if he looked like that, I had to look outright terrible and obvious that I had been crying, too.   
    "Mom, Duo is going to stay the night," Heero told her before she could ask either of us what was wrong.  
    "That's great," she regained her smile, but it was tempered compared to the first one, clouded with her concern.  
    She reached over and her fingers lightly caressed my cheek, her expression smoothing into one full of affection and motherly worry that almost had me in tears again.  
    "Why don't the two of you go wash up?" she said softly, "Dinner is just about ready."  
    "Alright," Heero nodded and all but dragged me up the steps.  
    Pepper was waiting for us on the steps and I swept her up, nuzzling her soft fur. She immediately began to purr and the sound helped soothe me. Heero and I took turns in the upstairs bathroom, washing our faces. I really did look awful, like I had been crying for hours, which I had, and washing my face only marginally helped, but it made me feel better.   
    After I was done washing my face, I went back into the guest bedroom so I could call my mother, remembering my promise to her that I would call her if I was staying over at Heero's. I got one of her coworkers, sounding bored and tired before my mother's voice came over the line.  
    "Hi, sweetie," she said, her voice sounding just as tired.  
    "Hi, Mom, I'm just checking up. Did everything turn out ok this morning?" I asked, dreading the answer, but since she actually came in for work, it couldn't have been too bad.   
    "Not as well as I had hoped," she admitted and her voice sounded strained.  
    Worry flared up in me and I nearly demanded to know what my father had done, but hoped that it had just been a bad fight and not anything physical. Suddenly, I didn't care about how emotional and drained I was. All I cared about was my mother's welfare. She had stuck up for me when she hadn't needed to and I refused to be responsible for her getting hurt just because I didn't want to go home.  
    "Do you want me to come home when I'm supposed to? I was going to stay the night here, but if he's angry..."  
    I had promised Heero that I would stay over, but that promise didn't mean anything to me if my mother was going to suffer for it.  
    "No," she said quickly, sounding guilty for some reason, "No, if you're having a good time, there's no need to rush home. It's probably best if you stay there for the night anyway."  
    Anxiety coiled in my stomach. That meant that father really was being pissy and my coming home that morning after I he thought that I was returning from work was not going to make things any better for either of us, even though I was well aware that it was just delaying the inevitable.  
    "You'll stay away if he tries anything, won't you?" I begged.  
    "Of course," she promised, but I got the feeling that she was only promising it to soothe me, "Did you have a nice birthday, Duo? That boy and his family... they're taking care of you, aren't they?"  
    It was such a motherly thing to ask that for a moment, I could only flush and feel pleased with her concern.   
    "Yeah," I said and couldn't keep the happiness from my voice, "I had a really nice day."  
    While expunging some of the black parts of my soul to Heero hadn't been an entirely enjoyable experience, I _had_ had a nice day. Doing chores with Heero and Justin, Heero helping me through some of my issues, the concern and love he had shown me, it made all the bad parts seem lesser.   
    "I'm glad," she said and she really did sound like she was.  
    When I finished with my phone call, Heero had already gone downstairs, I could hear him and his father talking from the living room, their voices carrying vaguely on the stairs. I started to go down, but paused when I could finally make out their words.  
    "Are you sure you're alright?" his father was saying softly, the same concern in his voice that had been in his mother's eyes when she had seen us at the door.  
    "Dad, it's been more than a year," Heero was assuring him, "I'm not... I'm not 'alright' but I'm doing a lot better than I was, aren't I?"  
    "Yes, you're doing a lot better. I'm so proud of you, you know that, don't you? You're putting your life back together," and I really could hear the pride in his tone, I could almost imagine Justin putting a hand on his son's shoulder the way that I had often seen on television shows when a father was having a heart to heart with his child.  
    "I didn't make the right choices at first," Heero said mournfully, "I'm sorry I never listened to you and Mom. You were right, I knew that, I just..."  
    "Oh you listened," his father chuckled, "It just took you awhile for our words to get through that thick skull of yours. And I'm glad that you told Duo about Wufei. He _should_ know about it, but more than that, it's good that you finally have someone your age that you can talk to about it."  
    "Duo has helped me a lot to deal with it," my friend admitted, "He... he was very supportive when I was telling him about it today. He's always so understanding."  
    I took a few careful steps back upstairs until I couldn't make out what they were saying anymore. I felt guilty for eavesdropping on something so incredibly personal, but Heero's words rang in my ears. 'Duo has helped me a lot to deal with it.' Had I? It didn't feel like it to me, especially when I tried to compare what little I had done for him with everything that he had done for me. He had just sat with me for hours in the cold, listening to my guilt and holding me while I had cried. What had I done for him but hold his hand and listen to him?   
    But when I thought about it, what more had I wanted him from him than that when I had brought him to that cemetery? To listen to me and hold my hand as I had cried and he had done all that and more. So maybe, just by my being there and trying to comfort him, it had been enough for him, too. I hoped that it was true. I wanted that, to make things better for him, to help him and be there for him whenever he needed someone to talk to. It certainly wasn't something that he would lie to his father about.  
    I waited for the sounds of their voices to fade before I went down there, finding that the both of them had moved into the kitchen. I had regained enough of myself that the smell of cooked meat was making my mouth water. In the kitchen, the lights were turned down and candles were lit on the table. Heero was helping set it as his father laid out a plate for everyone heaped with thick, tenderloin steaks, fully loaded baked potatoes and roasted green beans. Besides the candles, the table was made out with a nice, lush, red table cloth, reminding me of how it had looked during Christmas.  
    "What's all this for?" I asked, perplexed.  
    Mrs. Yuy's smile was as bright as the sun as she ushered me over to the table and drew out a chair for me.  
    "Happy birthday, Sweetheart," she said and gave me a brief peck of a kiss on the cheek.  
    I flushed and realized that I had been set up. Heero's parents begging me to come over for dinner with such desperation... they had been planning on surprising me and I had been so swept up in my misery that I had completely forgotten about my birthday, even after my mother had given me a present. I guess I had thought that the festivities were over since only my mother and Heero cared enough to do anything for it and his parents didn't know what date my birthday was.  
    "You told them," I accused Heero as I sat down across from him.  
    "Yup," he said totally unapologetically, taking a sip of water.  
    "And we're very glad that he did," Justin chuckled as he poured some red wine for himself and his wife, "We would have felt terrible if we had missed your birthday, Duo."  
    "You didn't have to do anything for it," I murmured shyly, "But thank you, this is nice."  
    "You're very welcome," he gave me a soft smile, "I hope this helps make up for the rest of the day."  
    That was the most that he came to acknowledging that Heero and I had gone out and done something that had obviously been distressing for the both of us. Heero had informed his father that he had told me about his friend, but I was confident that he hadn't said anything about what I had dragged him off to do. Heero wouldn't do that. I cut into the steak, marveling at how thick it was and the sheer amount of marbling on the inside of the medium rare cooked meat. (1)  
    "What kind of steak is this?" I asked Heero's father.  
    "Wagyu," he told me, "I think you'll like it, it's very tender."  
    I stared at him in shock and he chuckled again.  
    "I can't-" I started to say before realizing that it was kind of stupid protesting a meal that was already cooked, even if it was an incredibly expensive one.  
    "Of course you will," he chided.  
    "It really wasn't that much," Mrs. Yuy tried to soothe me, "We get them from time to time for special occasions and that's exactly what this is. You've had such a hard time lately, we wanted to do something special."  
    "Money isn't everything, Duo," her husband said, "There's nothing wrong with you letting us treat you to things like this once in awhile. Consider it a thank you for putting up with our son on a daily basis."  
    Heero shot his father a put upon look, but it barely registered to me. 'Money isn't everything.' I'd heard that sentiment since I was a little kid, usually in the form of some morality tale or teacher pep talk. But there wasn't a single person in my family that believed such a thing. To my parents, money, and the absence of it, especially towards the end of the month, _was_ everything.  
    I suppose that sentiment had rubbed off on me in a big way. I felt guilty when people spent any on me, and pained when I lost my own. I busted my ass for it, and while it wasn't the biggest amount of stress in my life, it was certainly one of the bigger ones. Some cynical part of me wanted to think that of course Heero's father could say that money isn't everything, he could afford to. Literally. But I also understood what he meant.   
    It wasn't just that he could afford to buy a nice house like the one that I was having dinner in, or the two cars that they owned, or that he never knew what it was like to not eat for two days because your father hadn't been paid yet, or what it was like to do your homework with a flashlight because the electric bill hadn't been paid in over three months. For Justin Yuy, using that money to give someone you cared about something nice was much more important than hoarding it.   
    "Thank you," I said profusely, "I really appreciate it, even if I don't think I really deserve this."  
    "Well, you do," Mariela insisted.  
    I cut up the steak and began to demolish it, trying not to think about the fact that I was consuming the equivalent of half a month's worth of our grocery budget in one sitting. Despite my hesitance and how I felt about the expense, the meat really was amazing. I won't say that it was worth whatever price they had paid for it, but it was so tender that it was almost obscene, more like eating butter, and the taste itself was so rich, I nearly didn't have room for anything else. I probably wouldn't have if I weren't a teenaged boy, but as I've said before, my stomach can be a bottomless pit when the occasion calls for it, and boy did this call for it.   
    "Ugh, I'll never eat again," I sighed in contentment when I finished everything that was on my plate.  
    "I hope that's not true," Mrs. Yuy laughed, "and you at least saved _some_ room for dessert."  
    I blinked in astonishment at that, amazed that she had made something for dessert on top of everything else. I had just been planning on eating more of my mother's cookies. But then she excused herself from the table, disappeared into the laundry room, and after a few minutes, re-emerged with a lit birthday cake that she had been hiding. It was a beautiful cake and just from the looks of it, she had either made it herself or ordered it from a bakery because it definitely wasn't grocery store bought. It was mostly white, but the flowery, swirled edges of it were blue and the writing on it was green. 'Happy 17th Birthday Duo,' it read.   
    I couldn't help but remember the very last time anyone had gotten me a birthday cake, how proud Quatre had been when he had given it to me. I could even remember how it tasted, how perfect it had been. I felt tears fall down my cheeks. Not a lot, it wasn't the kind of legendary crying that I had done in the cemetery, but it was enough to embarrass me. I wasn't crying because I was sad, though. I should have been. In the past, that memory has been a source of bitter sweetness for me, but there was none of that this time. I was crying because I was happy. Because for the first time in four years, someone had cared enough to get me a birthday cake. I was happy because, there with Heero and his parents, I felt like I was a part of a family, that I belonged.   
    "I'm sorry," I apologized, wiping the tears off my face.  
    "It's alright," Justin assured me, placing a hand on my shoulder, the same gesture that I had imagined him doing to Heero earlier, "Blow out the candles and make a wish."  
    I stared at the lit candles, the flames dancing in front of me, and tried to think of something to wish for. But strangely, I couldn't think of something that I wanted enough to actually hope for. I had my best friend, I had my mother back, I was getting better grades in school, and I was happier than I have been my entire life, even when Quatre was still around. As for everything else, well, I wasn't much for wishing anyway. And even if I was, it wasn't hope and superstition that had gotten me Heero's friendship. So when I blew out the candles, I wished for the one thing that I had no control over, the one thing I could I wish for that might actually happen. 'I wish for Heero to find true happiness,' I thought, 'even if it hurts me.'  
    The candles blown out, Mrs. Yuy started to cut each of us a slice. To my surprise, I saw that the cake was marble and I shot Heero a suspicious look. There was no way that he could have known that I like marble cake. I had never told him that it was my favorite flavor of cake, so how could he? But I remembered how he had figured out my favorite sandwich and began to outright wonder if he had been stalking me or something. Sure enough, he looked incredibly guilty without actually looking at all contrite.  
    "Ok, how?" I demanded while his parents looked perplexed.  
    "Part luck, part deduction," he admitted, "When we had to make a cake from scratch in Home Ec, you made marble even though we had the ingredients to make any other cake. And when we had that Christmas party in English, you got disappointed that the marble cupcakes got all taken before you had a chance to get any and you had to take yellow or chocolate instead. I didn't know if it was the kind of cake that you would prefer, but I figured it was a good bet."  
    I shook my head ruefully.  
    "You should be a detective," I mused, "Yes, marble is my favorite kind of cake. Although angel food and coffee cake come close."  
    Heero grinned at getting it right and even though we were all pretty full, we demolished our slices of cake quickly. The frosting was also real butter cream just like I liked, but I chalked that one up as coincidence. I started to collect my dishes to help clear the table, but Heero's father shot me a look that had me sitting back down.  
    "We're not _quite_ finished yet," he told me, taking my plate from me, "and I don't want to hear anything from you about how we didn't have to, alright?"  
    Confused, I sat back down and nodded against my will as Mrs. Yuy disappeared back into the laundry room, coming back out with a yellow and blue wrapped box. I almost protested anyway. The steaks were more than enough, but I had said that I wouldn't complain, so I didn't, just taking the box from her and starting to unwrap it. I was dreading some outlandish gift after the expensive meal, but was pleasantly surprised to find two pairs of winter pajamas and a scarf.   
    The pajamas, two sets of long sleeved shirts and pants made of thick, soft cotton that were infinitely warmer than the thin, ratty ones that I had been wearing, were welcome enough. But the scarf was a beautiful thing, hand knitted with thick, white yarn that had hints of gold and silver in the thread. I recognized the material as the same that Mrs. Yuy had been using when I had seen her knitting and realized that she had made the scarf herself. That warmed me more than any other gift that she possibly could have bought for me.  
    "Just something small," she told me, "It's been far too cold lately for you to be walking around with that thin scarf of yours, and those pajamas wouldn't keep a mouse warm."  
    "Thank you so much," I said a bit hoarsely, feeling like I might cry again for about the hundredth time that day.      
    Instead, I walked to Heero's mother and hugged her tightly.  
    "Thank you," I couldn't help but repeat myself, "This was so thoughtful.  
    "You're welcome, Duo," she said, pleased.  
    I gave Justin a brief hug as well and he clapped me on the back.  
    "Why don't the two of you go upstairs and relax?" he offered, "We can both take care of the dishes."  
    "Are you sure?" I asked.  
    "Of course," he nodded towards the steps, "Go on, the both of you have had a long day. Besides, we have a very simple rule in our family. No one ever does the dishes on their birthday."  
    I thought that he was just joking, but Heero dragged me up the steps while his parents started cleaning up. I changed into my new pajamas (which were incredibly comfortable and warm) and even though I could have just fallen face first onto the guest bedroom bed and blacked out, I found myself doing my homework in Heero's bedroom.   
    He had dressed for bed, too, and looked as worn out as I did still, but sat as his desk to get some work done while I took his bed. It always made me feel kind of weird to be sitting where Heero usually slept, but it had long since stopped making me nervous and more just... conscious that I was in his personal space. Rather, he was _letting_ me into his personal space. I don't really think about it much, but it struck me then that I wasn't just letting down my walls and letting Heero in, he was doing it, too. Letting me stay at his house. Telling me about Wufei. Doing homework together in his bedroom. Helping his father with chores. Celebrating my birthday with them. I was invading his life, worming my way into it, little by little, and Heero was easing me into it. And I liked it. I should feel worried, terrified even, but the thought that I was so involved with him and his personal life out of school made me so stupidly happy.  
    I finished working on my homework around nine. I wasn't really done with it, I was just too tired to do any more of it coherently. As I was leaving Heero's room, my arms full of books, he stopped me by placing a hand on my back.  
    "Are you alright?" he asked me in that soft tone of his that always seemed to ooze concern and affection, "I mean... after what we did today? If you needed to talk more..."  
    I smiled at him and found that it was an easy thing to do with him touching me like that and offering me comfort. He was such a kind person and for that moment, it seemed completely impossible that he had been the same boy that had helped Relena and Zechs terrorize me.   
    "I'm alright," I assured him, "Maybe not completely... I don't think I'll ever be completely ok after what happened, but it's lighter, you know? When I used to think about Quatre after he died, it was always ugly. I cared about him, I loved him, but I couldn't think of any of those pleasant memories. I only thought about watching him die, and trying to survive without him. That hurt is still there, but it's better. It's enough. Thank you so much, Heero. If it weren't for you, it would still be ugly and I don't want to carry that around anymore. I want to remember the friend that I had, not that empty grave, you know?"  
    "I do," his smile softened even more into one over brimming with love and to my amazement, and perhaps a little bit of horror, he stroked a hand over my hair and kissed my forehead. He immediately realized what he had just done and flushed bright red, looking shocked by his own actions, but he managed a shyer, sheepish smile, "and thank you, for listening to me talk about Wufei. You helped me a lot, too."  
    I still couldn't see how I had helped him as much as he had helped me, but I was still so taken aback by his bold kiss that all I could do was nod.   
    "You know," he murmured shyly, "I was thinking... and please don't take this the wrong way... but would you like to sleep with me tonight?"  
    Despite him asking me not to take it the wrong way, that was immediately where my mind went. I blushed even darker than him and kind of sputtered for a moment, not knowing how to respond to that. Even though I loved him and the thought of kissing him might actually make me explode, the thought of having sex with him was pure terror, a nightmare of biblical proportions.  
    "I just mean," he thankfully didn't see where my thoughts had gone or he might have combusted, "We talked about some... terrible things today. I don't know about you, but I won't be sleeping well tonight, even if I am tired. I was just thinking... sometimes just having someone there... it helps. If you think you'll have any nightmares, or if you just don't want to be alone, you can sleep in my bed. Or even if you just want to sleep in the same room, we have a cot. Just... just if you think it'll help you sleep."  
    As he talked, his face got redder and redder, but I relaxed, realizing that he wasn't coming on to me or asking me to do anything that was out of the ordinary. He was just a concerned friend, offering me a bit of comfort.   
    "Actually," I said very meekly, "I'd like that. Sharing a bed with you, I mean. We've done it before, so a cot would be kind of silly."  
    Heero looked relieved, but I wasn't so sure that it would help. I knew that I would be having a hard time sleeping as well. I wasn't afraid of having some terrible nightmare. I think that I might actually be able to escape them after putting Quatre's ghost to rest, at least the ones about watching him die, failing him, but I was sure that I was going to dream of him and that I would be restless, even as tired as I was. I didn't think that just having someone near me was going to help. It might make it worse, maybe make me dream about my father, which was something that I definitely didn't need, but I realized that I really _didn't_ want to be alone. If nothing else, being around Heero made me calm and I enjoyed just being near him. I was still nervous about sleeping next to him because of my feelings for him, but I didn't think that I would have the same adverse reaction to his presence as I had the first time that I had tried it.  
    "Is it alright if I bring Pepper in?" I asked him, "She's not a pest to sleep with, she'll just lay on a pillow, and I'm worried that she might kick up a fuss if she knows I'm in here."  
    I was sure that my cat was plenty used to my not being around all the time, but if she knew that I was near and she couldn't get to me, I had no clue what she would do. She might not be bothered or she might claw at the door and cry a lot for all I knew.  
    "That's fine," Heero told me, "I don't mind. Kanuck used to sleep in the bed with me all the time when he was a puppy. I only kicked him out because he got too big and still thought he was tiny."  
    I chuckled at that, imagining the huge dog trying to cuddle with his owner and almost crushing him. I retrieved my cat from the gaming room where she had chased one of her toys into and brought her back into Heero's room with me, although not before plugging my phone into the charger in the guest bedroom. Heero already had the covers on his bed pulled back when I got back. Pepper must have been in his bedroom before, because she wasn't overly curious when I placed her on the pillow on the side of the bed that I had slept on the last time, closest to the door.       
    Even though we had done it before, it still felt weird laying down next to him in bed. I worried that he would see how bright red my face was or hear how fast my heart was beating and had to lay on my side, facing away from him. It was so stupid, I don't know why something as simple as sharing a bed with him made me feel like I was going to explode. It's not like I thought he was going to feel me up in my sleep or something, there was just something intimate about it, feeling his body heat against my back, the sounds of him shifting to get comfortable.  
    At first I thought that I was just not going to be able to sleep, not with him so close to me. It wasn't like the first time when I had been scared because I didn't like _anyone_ being that close to me on a bed. I was just highly tuned to him and over thinking his closeness. But then, he stopped fidgeting and I heard him snoring softly beside me. I felt myself relax and I don't know if it was just the fact that he had fallen asleep or if that sound was soothing. It was, kind of like how I find Pepper's purring to be soothing.   
    It wasn't long after that that I dozed off myself, lulled to sleep by the sound of him. I woke up a couple of times in the night to him shifting in his sleep, mostly when his arm would brush up against my back or when his hip bumped mine when he was turning over. If it had been anyone else's body making contact with mine, I would have shot awake and right into a panic attack, but I merely was aware of it, registered that it was just Heero, and fell right back to sleep.   
    Even with those brief moments, it was one of the best sleeps that I have ever had in my life. I did dream a little, but there were no nightmares. My dreams were filled with Heero, Quatre, Trowa, and myself, all hanging out together at various places that Quatre and I had hung out, sharing food and talking happily like normal friends. There was someone else there with us, too. I think it was Wufei, but since I didn't know what he looked like, I only understood the concept of his presence. I didn't even have to get up at any point to walk around restlessly and when I did wake up for the day, it was right on time for work.   
    I felt like I was doing something wrong as I snuck out of bed in the morning without waking my friend. But it was eight on a Sunday morning and he was sleeping soundly still, it felt even worse to wake him just so I could say goodbye. I studied him for a moment as I got up with Pepper in my hands. He was laying on his back, his hair so mussed that it almost completely covered his eyes and stuck up at almost impossible angles.   
    His night shirt had pushed up in his sleep and the hem of his pants were sloping at a downward angle, giving me a view of that part of the body right above the crotch. He was tan down there, too, I saw. If his pants had slipped down just a centimeter more, maybe even a millimeter, I would have been able to see his pubic hair. That thought had me blushing and there was this weird tingling feeling in my stomach that I had never felt before. I tried to push it away, not knowing what the hell it was or why I felt so weird. It wasn't like I didn't know what pubic hair looked like, so why did Heero's have any affect on me at all?  
    I pulled myself away from the sight that my best friend made and rushed through a quick shower. Downstairs I was treated to a cinnamon roll that Heero's mother had picked up from a nearby bakery.   
    "There's two steaks still left in the freezer," she told me when I was done eating, "and left over cake for you to pick up when you leave work tonight."  
    "That's alright," I began to protest.   
    "I'm sure your mother would like a nice meal tonight," Mrs. Yuy said with a smile that was a little bit _too_ innocent and was anything but.  
    "Alright," I conceded with a sigh, but she knew that she had me.  
    For someone so sweet and nice, she sure knew how to be manipulative. It reminded me of Quatre a bit, how innocent he could seem in one moment and in the next, be playing me like a flute. So, that night after I finished my shift at Leneski's found me making the trek back to the Yuys' house to pick up the food and feed my cat. I didn't stay long and I felt a little bit sad having to tell Heero and his parents that I couldn't stay for dinner, but the longer that I prolonged going home, the worse things were going to be for me.  
    Through some miracle, my father was busy working on the heater which was making this god awful sputtering noise when he turned it on, so he didn't see me slink through the door. I stashed the remains of the cake in the empty bread box and the steaks went into the freezer under a bag of frozen carrots in hopes that my father wouldn't see either and steal them. I had debated giving one to him and had decided that I would, even if he might get pissed off wondering where I had gotten it, but I wanted to make sure that I saved one for my mother.   
    I was just closing the freezer door when I felt him come up behind me, this icy, tingling feeling on the back of my neck that was kind of like passing the train station that afternoon, that sensation that there was some terrible, snarling beast at my back. I turned and was met with his fist slamming into my left eye. White sparks shot through my vision and I hit my head against the refrigerator, thankful that it was plastic instead of stainless steel.  
    "Where the FUCK have you been?!" he screamed at me and punched me again, this time on the right side of my face, catching me in the mouth, "Huh?! I told you time and time again to stay away from that prick and you go crawling back to him! Did you think that I wouldn't know, that I wouldn't find out?!"  
    Blood flooded my mouth and dripped down my chin. He hit me again, the nose this time, not hard enough to break it, but hard enough for blood to pour out of it.   
    "Dad," I tried to speak, my words contorted through a mouthful of blood that bubbled out between my lips.   
    All I could taste was copper, like I someone had shoved a fistful of old pennies in my mouth.  
    "Shut up!" he roared and grabbed me by the front of my shirt, pinning me to the fridge. I heard my mother run in from the living room and hoped that she had the sense to make herself scarce when she saw what was happening, "What is it going to take, you piece of shit, for you to listen?! I am your goddamned father and you'll do as I say!"  
    "Nathan, stop it!" my mother screamed at him.  
    He glared at her, the full brunt of his rage focused right at her and even though I was swallowing blood, I was more frightened that he was going to strike her.  
    "I'll hit my damned son if I want to," he sneered at her, "He needs to learn some fucking manners, so if you don't want to learn something yourself, bitch, I suggest you mind your own business."  
    My eyes met with my mother's and I pleaded silently to her to leave, to get out of there before she got hurt, too. To my immense relief, she walked backwards, not taking her eyes off of me or leaving the room, her expression full of guilt, but she backed off. I shot her a grateful look before my father's knee got me in the gut and I crumpled to the floor.   
    "What do you have to say to me, asshole?" he growled at me.  
    "Sorry, sir," I choked out as more blood dripped into my mouth from my nose.  
    "'Sorry'," he spat out mockingly, "I'll tell you when you will be sorry. Keep pulling this shit, and I'll _really_ give you something to worry about! Now get your worthless self up and fix up dinner. If it's not done when I come back up here or if I see a single drop of blood on this floor, I'll make you regret you ever met that brat."  
    He stormed back down into the basement, slamming the door so hard behind him that one of the frying pans hanging from a hook by the door clattered to the ground. My mother was by my side in an instant, helping me into one of the chairs and running to get some tissue for my swelling and bleeding face.   
     "Thanks," I told her as she handed me an entire box of the stuff and spat out the remaining blood in my mouth into some.  
    "Are you alright?" she asked me, his voice tight with worry, placing a hand against my back.  
    It reminded me of when Heero had had his hand on my back the previous day. Fuck, but that felt like weeks ago all of a sudden.   
    "Yeah," I gave her a small smile, even though my dad had split my lip open with the blow to the mouth that he had given me.  
    And the thing is, I _was_ alright. Sure, my face felt like tenderized beef and the taste of blood made me feel sick to my stomach, but I had gotten away with sleeping over at Heero's with nothing more than a few blows to the face and a knee to the stomach. It could have been so much worse. I bet if my father hadn't been busy with the heater and he had been drunk, it would have been a lot worse. I had had a sense not to mouth off to him, which had helped a little.   
    "I'll start dinner," she said and busied herself with that.  
    I nearly told her about the steaks, but some petty part of myself didn't want to gift my father with that, not after he had just beaten me. Maybe not at all. I had wanted to do something nice for him, even with the way that he had been treating me lately, but seeing his face contorted with rage and the feeling of him hitting me and calling my mother a bitch, I asked myself why I wanted to give him _anything_.   
    My mother hurried with dinner, which turned out to be sloppy joes, not wanting my father to find out that she was doing dinner instead of me like he had ordered. I kept half an eye on her as I cleaned the blood off of my face. My nose was what hurt the worst, but it definitely wasn't broken, just swollen. My eye was swelling, too, but it hadn't closed shut, so that was something. I felt around my mouth for any broken or loose teeth, but to my relief, all of my teeth seemed alright. I already was missing two molars and a cuspid thanks to my dad, I didn't need to be losing anymore if I wanted to keep being able to eat normally. It wasn't like I could afford the dental work.   
    When my face was clean, I bent down to clean up the blood that I had gotten on the floor, still paying half attention to what my mother was doing. Just as she was finishing browning the hamburger meat and draining the fat into the sink, I had finished cleaning everything up and was debating putting some ice on my nose or taking some painkillers. My mother added in some chopped onions, salt, pepper, ketchup, and chili powder to the mix along with some water. It was the same recipe that she used to make since I was a kid and I couldn't help but interject, even if she might get annoyed by my back seat cooking.  
    "You should add some garlic, brown sugar, tabasco, and worcestershire sauce in there. Oh, and green peppers and dry mustard if we have any. I think I saw half of a green pepper left in the bottom of the vegetable drawer, but I don't think we have red peppers or dry mustard," I told her.  
    I half expected her to tell me that her recipe was just fine, but actually smiled at me.  
    "Do you mind measuring them out?" she asked.  
    "Sure," I went to the refrigerator and dug around for what I needed.  
    I felt a bit frustrated when I couldn't find the mustard, red pepper, or Worcestershire sauce that I had wanted to use, and we only had garlic powder. If I had been cooking at the Yuys, I thought, they would have all those things at hand, but I was lucky that we even had an onion and half of a green pepper. My mother stepped away from the stove as I chopped up the pepper and added the extra ingredients to the mix.   
    "You really have a talent for this," she watched me with a soft, affectionate smile that warmed me.  
    "Not really," I shrugged, feeling a little self-conscious from her praise, "I've just had practice."  
    "Nonsense," she urged, "I know talent when I see it. My mother had the gift, too. It's not just practice or even a skill. My mother used to say that it's like chemistry, a science. Some of it you can teach yourself, but for other people, it's an art. For her it was like that. She loved it, and she always came alive when she was cooking, like she knew exactly what every recipe needed to make it better, even if she wasn't working with an actual recipe. She tried to teach it to me but," she shrugged, "I had no flair for it. I can follow a recipe, but when I'm on my own, things end up in disaster."  
    She gathered up some of the meat with the spoon that I had been stirring the mix with and tasted it.  
    "Mmm," she said with pleasure, making me blush at the compliment, "You'll never need to worry about marrying a girl that knows how to cook. At least someone in this family has a gift. Your grandmother would be pleased to have another cook in the family. I should find her recipe book and have you look at it. I put it down in the basement ages ago."  
    I blushed for a whole slew of reasons. It was nearly on the tip of my tongue that I didn't need to worry about marrying _period_ , but that was something that I was **_never_** going to confess to my mother. She had come from a Catholic family, so I doubted that she would be very happy to find out that I'm a homosexual and after all this time, finally getting her love back, I wasn't going to do anything to risk it.   
    I felt a bit overwhelmed about her insistence that my cooking ability was some kind of gift or talent. I had never seen it that way. Cooking just interested me, so I had studied on it and practiced it, that was all. But the idea that I actually had a _gift_ of all things, and that my grandmother would have been proud of me, made my heart swell. I didn't really believe it, I sure didn't feel talented when I cooked and I was sure that my mother just thought that because she struggled with cooking, but it still made me feel happy for a moment that she thought highly of me. That was more than enough to give my confidence a little boost. The only time in the past, before she had stopped drinking, that she had made any comment about my cooking skills was just once when I had looked happy that my father had approved of something that I had made. 'What are _you_ so happy about? So you can cook as good as girl or a pansy. Is that what you're proud of? Next you'll be wanting to learn how to sew and ask to wear my dresses.'   
    I felt a small stab of pain at that memory and had to remind myself that she wasn't like that anymore, and she had been incredibly drunk at the time. The entire time that she had been complimenting me, she hadn't once mentioned that my cooking skill was feminine, that I had no right to cook like that because I was a boy. She had just been angry, I thought, because I had done something better than her and had drunkenly lashed out at me.   
    We didn't have any buns to use for the meal, but I found some slices of white bread left and had a sloppy joe prepared for my father when he came upstairs. He sat down at the table and glared at me when I put the plate in front of him as well as a beer, ice cold from the fridge. He glared at me the whole time that he took a bite from his dinner and a swig from the can, even while I was making my mother her own sandwich.  
    "Your face is disgusting," he sneered at me, "Get the fuck out here, I don't want to look at it while I'm eating."  
    I didn't argue with him, how could I? Even though it hurt, him saying those things, at least it would get me away from him. I turned the stove off and quickly snagged an ice pack from the freezer. My mother hurriedly spooned some meat into the remaining two slices of bread for me to take upstairs to eat.  
    "Hey, I didn't say that he could have any," my father snarled at her, making the both of us flinch, "I don't give out my food to mouthy, misbehaving brats. If he wants any fucking food from me from now on, he'd better learn to mind me."  
    My mother shot me an apologetic look, but I just shrugged. It wouldn't be the first time that my father refused to give me any food. I went right upstairs, not wanting to risk another beating. Despite everything, I had gotten off lightly and I was well aware of that. My father had been angry, but not out of control, just spiteful. I would have to be very careful around him in the next few days. Just because he had hit beaten me once, it didn't mean that he wouldn't be in the mood for a few more 'lessons'. And no, him almost breaking my nose did not deter me from spending time with Heero. He could have broken my arms and I still wouldn't have stayed away.   
    I sat at my desk and dug out what homework I had left, as well as the remaining cookies that my mother had made me the day before, incredibly grateful that I could put _something_ in my stomach. I wouldn't eat them just yet, my mouth hurt too much. Hell, my whole face was throbbing with an unpleasant heat and that heavy feeling that swelling brings. I focused on icing my nose and my eye, not really caring about my swollen lip just yet. I could still taste some blood in my nose and mouth, but I knew that the bleeding had stopped. I tried to breathe through my nose and found that it was completely impossible.   
    I felt depression try to sink it's sharp claws into my heart. It was cold in the attic, and dark despite the light that I had on at my desk. It was just a little, pathetic lamp that did nothing more than light the desk, but threw shadows all around me. I hadn't felt that lonely since I had broken up with Trowa, Pepper's absence hitting me hard. I suddenly wished with a desire so painful that it made my insides feel like a gaping hole that I hadn't come back there. I wished that I had stayed with Heero. Then I could see out of my eye and breathe through my nose and my mouth wouldn't feel it was stuffed with cotton. I could be having a nice dinner right then. I could be warm and have my cat and my best friend instead of doing homework in that dank, lonely room where all I could hear was the wind howling outside, ramming itself against the shitty walls of that shitty house.   
    If my father hadn't given me a black eye that night, I think that I might have cried a little. But the pain and swelling reminded me that tears were not a good idea and I clamped down on them, trying to put all of my attention into my work. When I heard footsteps on the stairs, I tensed, my heart beating like a jack hammer in my chest. My dad had finished dinner and was coming upstairs to hurt me some more, now that his hunger was sated and he had the fuel to really let me have it. Or maybe he wanted some dessert. Maybe he just wanted what all married men want. First a home cooked meal, then a fuck. That's what all good girls do for their men, right?  
    My own thoughts repulsed me to the point where I felt nauseous, but then I realized that the footsteps were too light to be his and relaxed. He might slip into my bed with me later, but for right then, I was still safe. But my thoughts still haunted me. Is that what I really thought about myself? That I was more of my father's wife than his son? But why not? Hadn't my own father bullied me many times about how domestic I was, how I was the one who cleaned and cooked and did everything that a homemaker would do around the house?   
    So why not with the rapes, too? After all, the man of the house had to get sex from one of his women, and it sure wasn't my mother, so it might as well be me. The only thing that I didn't do for him that a stereotypical homemaker would is give him kids. And thank god for that. With that horrible thought buzzing around in my skull, I was never more thankful that I had been born a boy. It wasn't like my father was careful. I had no idea if he would be if I was a girl, or if he would have raped me a lot sooner. It all depended on which repulsed him more: fucking his child or fucking a boy.   
    My thoughts oozed bitterness and pain. I might not think of myself that way, but maybe he did and that was just as terrible. And in a way, I guess I did see myself as nothing more than his bitch. I tried so hard to remember all of the assurances that Heero had given me, that my caring for my family, cooking meals for them, making sure things were tidy, vacuuming, dusting, cleaning the windows, going grocery shopping, all of those things that my father made fun of me for didn't make me a girl, it just made me someone who got things done, someone who cared for their parents.   
    But it was so hard when I thought about him crawling into my bed and thinking that he had gotten used to the idea of raping his son. Because I didn't even try to fight him, I just tolerated it in horrified silence. I took care of him more than my mother did, in _all_ the ways that a stay at home wife might care for her hard working husband. I had stopped fighting him after the first time. I just laid there and took it. I cooked his meals and let him fuck me, let him beat on me. If he thought of me that way, as his easy lay, the one that he could go to for a quick fuck, then what did that make me? What did that make him? And what would Heero think if he knew that I just laid there and did nothing while my own father was taking me up the ass, like it was some kind of pre-agreed arrangement between us?  
    I shoved the unpleasant thoughts far away from me as my mother came through my bedroom door, not wanting her to see how upset I was, and just tried to think about the positive things. I thought about the nice night that I had had with Heero and how school was just the next day. It would be a welcome distraction, but even that thought was dark in my head. A distraction. It used to be that I enjoyed going to school. Not dealing with Relena and Zechs, but just going to my classes, learning things, getting an education.     But now, it's just a welcome place because there I don't have to think. There I don't have to remember what things at home are like. Heero is there and when I'm with him, I don't think about that shit. I wished it was more. Well, if I'm being honest with myself, it was always a distraction, wasn't it? Even when I was just starting to go, it wasn't just going to school or even going to see Quatre, it was a place where I could get away from my father. I hate that. When I thought about it just then, I felt this incredible yearning to just be a normal teenager like most of the boys that I go to school with. I wanted to just go to school instead of hide in it. I wanted to not need a hiding place at all.   
    I pushed my depression away as much as I could, almost growling at my moodiness in frustration as my mother walked quietly to my desk. She put a plate full of sloppy joe mix, two slices of bread, and a glass of water in front of me and put a finger to her lips, a glimmer in her grey eyes at having snuck up there without being noticed. I smiled gratefully at her and mouthed thank you. She smiled back and kissed the top of my head before just as quietly sneaking back downstairs. The kiss and the gift of food, a huge risk if my father realized what she had done, cleared away my somber mood a lot better than I could.  
      
*****  
  
    Through some kind of miracle of fortune, my father didn't find out that my mother had snuck me some food and I didn't see him much for the next couple of days. I passed by him on my way home from work early Tuesday morning, but he looked exhausted from his shift and didn't so much as grunt at me. Things returned to normal more or less on Monday. Well, at least my moodiness over Quatre's anniversary did. I hadn't gotten much sleep that morning, but I didn't feel nearly as depressed as I walked to school as I had after my father had hit me.   
    My face, while not looking the worst that it had, was a sight. I had a serious black eye and black and purple bruising around my nose, jaw and the corner of my mouth where my lip was split. Heero looked like he was going to throw a fit when he saw me, but heroically bit his tongue. He was getting a lot better at that. For as stubborn as he was, he was pretty good at doing what I asked him to not do, like not ratting out my father and not standing up to Zechs.   
    For the most part, he tried to ignore both Zechs and Relena. Zechs because wherever the asshole went, trouble quickly followed and Relena... well, she was harder to avoid because she was in a bunch of our classes, Dorothy, too, but I think he avoided her more because he was ashamed of how he had conducted himself around her. He might hate her for bullying me and being a homophobe, but he also felt rotten for leading her on and breaking up with her, while still not telling her the full truth of why he had broken up with her. She still thinks that it was my fault, of course, that I had tainted her boyfriend somehow and convinced him to dump her.   
    I've caught her staring at him sometimes with this sadness and pain that I hadn't even thought her capable of, but other times with such hatred and loathing that her dislike of Quatre hadn't even come close. For all of her faults and twisted personality, she really had liked him and I think Heero knows that. He can't outright hate her like I do because he feels guilty. No matter who Relena is, what he had done was pretty shitty, even I can admit that, and I think he would have reacted that way no matter who she had been.   
    But after our little heart to heart in the cemetery where I had told him all the terrible things that Relena had done to Quatre and myself, Heero changed his attitude towards her pretty drastically. We were sitting in homeroom Monday morning, him talking about a movie he would like to take me to that Saturday, all while pretending my bruises weren't bothering him, and me listening like I didn't notice that he was bothered when Relena walked in. Heero immediately stopped chatting and _glared_ at her. And not just glared, but actually looked repulsed by her.   
    I was shocked, never having seen such an expression of disgust and reproach from him before, but that was nothing compared to Relena's reaction. She actually flinched, so taken aback by him. Shock came upon her pretty, perfect face for a second, a rare feat for her, before her expression hardened and she glared right back at him. It wasn't just for show, either. She actually looked furious that he dared to look at her like that. She promptly looked away from him, her head held high as it usually was, flicked her hair over her shoulder and marched with Dorothy to their seats. She ignored the both of us for the rest of the day while her best friend looked at us with icy coldness. I could easily imagine that the creepy bitch wanted to rip my friend's eyes out of his skull with her long nails.  
    While Heero regarded Relena with that same repulsed look every time he saw her throughout the day, Zechs he looked at with only poorly concealed fury and a hatred that made what he suddenly felt for Relena seem timid. I could understand why he hated his ex. I had told him that she had pushed someone to suicide just for the crime of being gay. Even if Quatre hadn't been my friend, and even if Heero hadn't been gay himself, that would have disgusted him. I had certainly felt disgust and betrayal that she had never been punished for it.   
    But I hadn't told him that Zechs had had anything to do with Quatre's suicide. Sure, his involvement was obvious since he had tormented Quatre just as much as his sister had, but I hadn't said that he had been a part of that final prank of theirs, even though I was damned sure that he had been, and it had been Relena who had gotten Quatre's arm broken and had used Trowa against him. So I couldn't figure out why he would be so angry towards him.  
    It wasn't just his attitude towards Relena and Zechs, either. Heero was still acting weird whenever he was around me. Distant. Shy. Like his head was in the clouds, busy thinking over something and when I called him on it, he would look so embarrassed and would start blushing like mad. But he would never tell me what it was, just that it was nothing.   
    And I kept catching him looking at me when he thought I couldn't notice. He had done that all Saturday when we had been doing homework together. And in the few moments I had seen him on Sunday and through most of the day Monday, he kept starting conversations with me, only to stop mid-sentence and nothing I could do or say would dislodge the rest of it. It was like he wanted to tell me something, but something was holding him back. It was beginning to drive me crazy.   
    "If you keep looking at him like that," I warned him as we sat down at the cafeteria for lunch, "he's going to take it as a personal challenge."  
    Heero pulled his spiteful gaze from our Zechs who was harassing a freshman not all that far from where we were sitting at our otherwise empty table.  
    "Sorry," he muttered and somehow didn't sound contrite at all, but he ignored our mutual bully and began to focus on eating his lunch.  
    "What is going on with you lately?" I dared to ask, "Is something wrong? Did Zechs do something?"  
    "You mean besides try to drown my best friend?" he shot back at me with short temper.  
    Ah. I had forgotten that I had told him about that. I supposed he had every right to change his attitude towards Zechs after hearing just how crazy he was, but I had expected him to be more frightened of him, not be infuriated.  
    "I told you that story to point out _why_ it's a shitty idea to do things like glare and talk back to him," I reminded him.  
    "Sorry," he repeated, "and no, it doesn't have anything to do with him or Relena. Duo, I..." he hesitated, his face turning red and he looked down at his food, refusing to look at me.  
    He faltered for a moment, getting that look in his eye that I was becoming familiar with, the look of someone deep in some troubling thought. I prepared myself for him to come out with it, hoping that it wasn't anything too terrible.   
    "Never mind," he finally said, "It's nothing."  
    I felt like screaming at him in frustration. Is that what it's like being friends with me, I wondered, every time he asked me if something was bothering me when it obviously was and I blew him off?  
    "You can tell me," I urged him after taking a moment to calm myself, "You know that, right? We've shared a lot of personal stuff lately. No matter what you have to tell me, I can keep a secret and I won't judge you."  
    He ran a hand through his thick hair, obviously debating what he was about to say to me and looking like he would rather stick his hand in a blender than have this conversation with me. When he looked across the table at me, his expression was so painfully shy that I wanted to tell him to forget about it, he didn't need to say anything.  
    "It's... it's not like you telling me about Quatre," he finally spoke, "It's nothing _bad._ I just... it's hard for me. Actually, in a way, it's even harder than telling you about Wufei," he took a deep breath, "It's... kind of like when you asked me to tag along with you to the cemetery. There's something that I need to do... no, there's something that I need to talk to you about. Something serious. It's been bugging me for a long time and I need to get it out before I do something stupid about it. You're the only one that I've... " he bit off his words and for some reason looked startled before continuing on, "You're the only one I can talk to about this. I'd like it if you could, and if you don't ask any questions about it before then."  
    "Sure thing," I smiled at him, reaching across the table to briefly squeeze his hand. It wasn't something that I would have had the courage to do before, but lately I was feeling a lot bolder about being affectionate around him, especially after what we had done together on Saturday, "You can tell me anything and I'll listen, just tell me where and when."  
    He managed a small smile, still looking nervous and, I was alarmed to see, actually scared.   
    "Thank you," he said softly, "Could we go to that place behind the library that you like to go to tomorrow? Neutral ground and all that."  
    "Alright," I agreed.  
    Of course, I would have agreed if he had wanted to go talk in a dumpster. Not only was I eager to pay him back for helping me through some of my issues Saturday, he was my best friend and no matter what he needed to talk out, I would listen, just like I had said.  
    "And Duo... what I need to talk about..." he had to look away from me again, "... Even if you think that I'm a fool and an ass... I'll always want to be friends with you, ok?"  
    "Of course," I frowned, completely confused at that point, "Heero, I meant it when I said that I wouldn't judge you. You didn't judge me for anything that I told you about Quatre."  
    "You didn't do anything wrong," he murmured, almost as though he were talking to himself.  
    He dropped the subject and I let him out of courtesy of all the times he had let _me_ drop an uncomfortable subject, even though I wanted to pry him a little bit more about what was bothering him. It could wait until tomorrow. We finished our lunch in companionable silence, then headed off to our history class together. We had to split up for the next two blocks. Usually, I missed him a lot during the classes that we didn't have together. It was so stupid, we were just out of each other's hair for a few hours, not days.   
    But I still missed him terribly and thought about him at random moments during my classes. If someone was bullying me or the teacher did something amusing, I would find my eyes searching for Heero, only to remember that he wasn't there. Love can be a really stupid thing sometimes. Home Ec kept me busy that day. That week we were diving into the troublesome world of perfect soufflé making, something that I was struggling with, but according to my teacher, that was understandable.   
    The trouble was timing and perfecting each step, of which there were many, and if one thing went wrong, it fucked the entire dish over, even just mixing the ingredients into the incorrect consistency. But I hadn't wanted to take the advanced class to make something easy like brownies or tomato sauce. That day we were tackling double baked, garlic soufflés, which was probably not the best introduction into the dish, and about half of the class ended up with either sub-par results or complete failures ranging from food that was burnt, flat, bland, or they fell apart when taking them out of the dish. I was one of the fortunate few that actually managed to make a passable soufflé, but it had taken an intense amount of concentration and attention to detail and it was far from perfect. It was something that was going to take a lot of practice.   
    Seeing Heero outside my 19th Century Literature class, waiting for me so we could walk together to Gym like always, made me feel so stupidly happy that I wanted to slap myself. I was turning into a regular sap lately and I had no idea how to make it stop. We chatted about our classes as we walked, me talking about how challenging my Home Ec course was this semester and him admitting that he was enjoying Metal Shop a lot more than he ever had Home Ec. I was enraptured as he discussed their latest project, which turned out to be coffee tables of all things, and wasn't really paying attention to anything around us, an amateur mistake. Although, honestly, he could have been detailing to me a grocery list and he would have gotten my full attention.  
    Someone suddenly pushed me from behind with such a great deal of force that in the moment that it happened, I wondered if I had gotten struck with a bat or someone in the AV club had been running with the projector and had collided into me. My nose and eye burst in sharp, searing pain as I collided into some lockers, practically bouncing off of them. I had no idea if the ringing in my ears was from that or the pain. I nearly doubled over and fell, so taken by surprise. I could feel blood dripping down my nose again and it throbbed unpleasantly.  
    "Nice face lift, faggot," Zechs's voice behind me was as unwelcome as an especially loud and wet fart, or perhaps sharp nails across a chalkboard.  
    Heero was immediately at my side, grabbing the back of my shirt and pulling me upright in case the asshole wanted to fight us and we would need to make a quick getaway. I turned to look at Zechs, not wanting him in my blind spot and found him grinning in triumph at me.   
    "I think it looks a lot better as it is now than it usually does," he sneered, "You should keep it this way. I'd be glad to help."  
    Alex and Trant, standing behind their leader, laughed at his insults like he was an A level standup comedian. Heero's face contorted into a look of pure rage. I don't know if it was what Zechs had said or the sight of blood on my face, but before I could properly assess the situation, he was growling at him and taking a threatening step forward, his hands curled into fists. When I saw the pure intent in his eyes, I grabbed hastily at his arm, pulling him backwards.  
    "Heero, _don't_ ," I snapped at him, trying to diffuse the situation as quickly as possible before Heero made it a thousand times worse.  
    "Yeah, Yuy," Zechs turned his jeering to my friend, looking down at Heero with contempt, "Listen to your little faggot girlfriend. You always were a pussy."  
    Heero grit his teeth and I saw how much he wanted to slam his fist into Zechs's nose. I hadn't seen him that furious in a long time, but I refused to let go of him. He glanced back at me as if he were begging me to let him do it, but I just hardened my expression at him, telling him without words that if he did it, I was going to be thoroughly pissed at him. He looked away from me, but his stiff posture loosened and all of the fight just went out of him. He glared down at the floor, hanging his head, but I could see his right hand, still curled into a fist, trembling with desire.  
    I had only just let go of his arm when Zechs walked right up to Heero and punched him hard in the gut. I cried out in protest, but anything that I did would have been useless anyway. Heero doubled over, gasping and choking in pain and I knew that pain well.   
    "See?" Zechs grabbed Heero by the bangs, pulling him back up and close to him so he could mock whisper in his ear, "You'll always be a spineless pussy. I'm not sure whose the woman in your little relationship," he leered over at me, "Or maybe you both are. Tell me, how do you decide whose going to man up and stick his dick in the other's ass? A coin flip?"  
    Alex and Trant laughed uproariously along with several people that were watching us in the hallway. Zechs's icy blue eyes seared into me, daring me to do anything. Speak. Throw a punch. Give him a dirty look. He would love that, for me to give him a reason to savage me. He didn't need one, of course, but that was part of the game. I refused to play with him, though and looked away from his gaze, not daring to so much as breathe too hard. He let go of Heero's hair and shoved him away from him. He walked away laughing with his cronies and the hallway began to disperse again.   
    "Are you alright?" I asked Heero as he wrapped one arm around his stomach and glared heatedly at Zechs's retreating back.  
    "I should be asking you that," his gaze softened a little as he looked at my face, but there was still a steely glint in his eyes and great deal of frustration and guilt, "Your nose..."  
    I wondered if he was thinking about Wufei and how he hadn't been able to help him, either. Christ, did he think about that every time he saw Zechs beat me up? Did he stay awake at night, frightened that one day his mother was going to get a call about me as well? It was no wonder why he was always so anxious and over protective when he saw Zechs messing with me or the bruises that my father gave me. It was a wonder that he didn't have an ulcer, worrying that I was going to die, too, all because he couldn't protect me.   
    As much as I had agonized over not being able to help Quatre, at least he hadn't been outright murdered. And there was nothing at all that I could say to my friend to assure him that it wasn't going to happen to me, that he would never have to live through that painful nightmare again. Because I could say that there was no way that Zechs or my father would go that far, but that would be a lie. My father was out of control on a good day and was becoming more and more frightening to me, the levels of violence that he was escalating to. Zechs was perfectly capable of killing someone. I'm not saying that he ever has, although if I find out one day that he did, it wouldn't shock me. You can see it in his eyes. Not the desire to kill, but a complete lack of empathy for any human being. He didn't care. I would even wager a bet that if any of his friends, his sister, or even his parents died tomorrow, he wouldn't shed a tear over them.   
    So why was I still alive? Hell, why was Heero, who had broke his sister's heart? Because as violent as Zechs was, as crazy and cruel, where would the fun of killing either of us be for him? Sure, he might get a momentary thrill out of going that far, but then the game would end and he would have to find some other prey to torment. It was much more entertaining to him to make our lives a living hell, so there was no need for him to escalate that much. Zechs was more of a sadist than a killer, as long as he could keep hurting us, that was enough.   
    "I think it's ok," I gingerly touched my nose and winced at the pulsating pain there, feeling fresh blood trickle down it, "It's not broken at least."  
    "Here," Heero dug around in his backpack, his wince a mirror of mine as he agitated his injured stomach, and handed me a little packet of tissues.  
    "Thanks," I said and tried to get the bleeding to stop.  
    With the amount of times that I've gotten a bloody nose, I should really start carrying tissues around with me, too, but I never really think about it. That was Heero, prepared for anything.   
    "Do you need to go to the nurse?" he asked worriedly.  
    "Nah," I assured him, "I'll put some ice on it when school's over. Nothing else a nurse can do for it. You?"  
    He grimaced and put a hand on his abused stomach.  
    "No," he confessed, "Hurts like hell and I feel like I'm going to throw up, but I'll live."  
    I cleaned the blood off of my face and chucked the used tissues in a nearby trashcan. And that was my day Monday in a nutshell. And the majority of my Tuesday, as well. I was a lot more careful after Zechs had shoved me into the lockers and Heero and I managed to dodge him and his pack of wolves for the next two days. I managed to do the same with my father, although more because he didn't come home Monday night or Tuesday morning.   
    I spent the early hours of Tuesday doing my homework and counting down the hours until I would see Heero again. Tuesdays have become my holy grail, what I imagine Friday and Saturday are for most people. The one time when I could spend as much time with Heero as I wanted and didn't have to worry about my father because he just thought that I was at work. Heero's request that he talk to me in private kept me awake for awhile. I'm not a terribly curious or nosy person, and it was mostly his behavior and not his request that had me burning to know what was going on with him.  
    The immediate thought in my head that morning was that he didn't want to be friends with me anymore. Don't shake your head at me, ok? I know how stupid that sounds. After spilling our guts to each other and all the other crap that we had gone through, not to mention Heero being the type of person who wears everything on his sleeve, well, I knew that that wasn't it. He would have given me some sort of clue that he didn't want to hang around with me before then, but that was just where my head went.   
    It was the one thing that I was the most afraid of, so it took me a few moments to realize how dumb that was. He had been embarrassed when he had asked me to go with him to the library and nervous, but he had said that it wasn't bad, so it couldn't possibly be that. But what else could he possibly have to tell me? Some other dark secret from his past, perhaps? I didn't know, but I was worried, unable to figure out what could be going on with my friend to make him act so strangely.  
    When I saw him that Tuesday morning at school, my worry only escalated. He looked pale and withdrawn, like he hadn't gotten a wink of sleep. He was distracted all day, constantly getting yelled at by his teachers when they called on him to answer a question and he had no idea what they were talking about. At lunch, he wouldn't eat anything, just saying that his stomach was upset, but I could recognize the clear signs of high anxiety and knew that it wasn't just a normal stomachache.   
    I almost told him that maybe we should call the whole thing off if it was stressing him out this much. But I knew quite well that sometimes the best thing you can possibly do is flush the poison out as quickly as possible. Obviously Heero had been holding this back for awhile and talking about it could only make him feel better. It probably wasn't even as big of a deal as he was making it, just like how I had been frightened that telling him about Quatre would destroy our friendship. At least, that's what I believed at the time.   
    "So..." I dared as the two of us stretched for gym class, "Did you want to get something to eat before we head over to the library, or is your stomach still upset?"  
    He winced, still looking as pale and anxious as he had been all day.  
    "I don't think food is such a good idea right now," he admitted.  
    "I can make you something when we get to your house afterwards," I offered.  
    But that only made him look more pained for some reason.  
    "If you still want to hang out after," he murmured.  
    I stared at him, completely perplexed by that, but our teacher was blowing his whistle to start our activity before I could ask him what that meant. Why would he think that I wouldn't want to hang out with him? He had said that what he wanted to talk to me about wasn't anything bad, so why was he suddenly acting like it was this terrible thing, horrible enough that I wouldn't even want to have dinner with him and his family?   
    Now _I_ was feeling anxious. I thought about the possibility of him wanting to break off our friendship again. But he had said 'if you still want to', meaning that it was my decision, not his. Which could only mean that he thought that what he was going to tell me might make me mad at him or embarrassed. But he had told me about Wufei and all of his guilt towards his friends death. What could have been even worse than that for him to think that I would be ashamed with him?  
    But I did what he asked of me. It was the least I could do. He seldom ever asked me for anything, while it seemed like I was doing it all the time. I kept quiet and I just tried to be there for him like he had been there for me. I didn't ask him any questions as school let out and we walked to the library together. We made a brief stop along the way, a bakery that was between the school and the public library. Well, I say stop, but I really pretty much dragged Heero along. Although Heero claimed that he had no appetite, I insisted that he get a coffee and an oatmeal cookie. I told him it was to keep his energy up if this was going to be an especially long talk, which he had no idea if it would be or not, but it was actually because oatmeal was one of his comfort foods and I knew that and the coffee would make him feel better. And he was nice enough to get me a french vanilla coffee and croissant as well.   
    Our post-school snack in hand, we walked the rest of the way to the back of the library. The little courtyard behind it was really for library patrons, but it was an easy thing to pick the lock to the ancient, iron fence that surrounded it. I had been doing it for years and half the time it wasn't locked anyway. Heero wouldn't even let me go that far until he peaked into the courtyard and saw that no one was there. I wasn't surprised. Sure, in the spring and summer, the courtyard would have a few people out there, reading and socializing. But it was still winter and even though it was the warmest it had been in months (a whopping 50 degrees that day with not even a hint of wind chill), there was some snow on the ground and no one was going to want to sit on the icy, stone benches when they could be inside the warm library.  
    We found a bench that wasn't either covered in snow, ice, or bird shit and sat down together. I took a sip of my coffee, savoring the sweet caffeine, but Heero just kind of cupped his in his hands and stared at it, looking lost. I stayed silent, letting him sort out and collect his thoughts, knowing that feeling rather well.   
    "Sometimes..." he started sounding so unsure, like a little kid trying to tell his father that he had just broken a window, "sometimes you just _know_ something or feel something that's so absolute, so powerful that there's just no doubt in your mind, right? Like you know what's going on and it's as obvious as a gaping wound and nothing that anyone else can tell you can deter you. But suddenly, when you have to actually talk to someone about it, all these doubts and insecurities pop up and you don't even know where to begin or if you're coming off as an asshole or if you're making the wrong choice."  
    I was well aware that he was rambling, his words awkward and almost procrastinating, but I just nodded, letting him work his way through it. Still, in my guts, I felt this sense of foreboding and really, really hoped that I was wrong.   
    "So even though you're positive of the truth and it should be the easiest thing in the world... I mean, it's a fact, so you just have to say it right?" he continued to blather on, "But it comes time to do that and it's hardest damned thing."  
    He paused and then suddenly burst out laughing self-depreciatively.  
    "You're so much more eloquent than I am," he shook his head with amazement.  
    "Huh?" I blinked at him in surprise, "I'm not eloquent..."  
    "Yes, you are," he insisted, smiling at me with such strong affection that I felt breathless just looking at it, "Even when you're as confused and lost as I am right now, you just... you can express yourself and what you're feeling so perfectly... I don't have that," he said with frustration, "I've never been good at shit like this."  
    He ran a hand through his chocolate hair, actually looking annoyed at his admission that he wasn't very good with words.  
    "Christ," he muttered angrily, "I stayed up all night, thinking about what I was going to say, coming up with this grand speech. I practiced it for hours so I wouldn't fuck it up, but now I'm here with you and I can't remember a damned word of it. I've even thought about backing out of it. I've tried to do that for weeks now, but every time I see you, I just can't. So, you know what? Fuck it. If I can't be eloquent about this or poetic, then I'm just going to be blunt and say it."  
    He put his coffee down on the ground next to him and turned to face me. He plucked my own cup from my hands and did the same to it. My eyes went wide like an owl's when he held my hands, his grip gentle, but his expression was pinched and frightened. He looked like he might throw up.  
    "Duo, I..." his voice was rough, but his blue eyes were bright with this intense, passionate fire that frightened me with it's vitality, "I like you."  
    My heart dropped into my stomach, which felt like a ball of ice all of a sudden, and then _I_ was the one that felt like I was going to throw up. I opened my mouth, to say what, I have no idea. It wasn't something that I could protest. It wasn't like I could say 'no, you don't' or 'you're mistaken' because I know what hidden love looks like. I live with it every fucking day. And even if I didn't, who was I to tell him what he felt, especially when he looked like that as he said it?  
    "I don't just mean as a friend," he said in a rush, mistakenly thinking that I was misunderstanding him, "I mean I..." he turned very shy, but still didn't tear his eyes away from mine, although I wished that he would. His sincerity was painful to me, "I like you a lot. I have for a long time now, I've just been too much of a coward to tell you."  
    "I know," I murmured.   
    It was his turn to stare at me in shock, his eyes almost comically wide, but there was absolutely nothing funny in the look of betrayal and fear that he was giving me.  
    "You... you did?" he sputtered.  
    "Yeah," I rubbed at the back of my head, looking away from him and feeling so ashamed of myself.  
    "How... how long?" he asked in a frightened whisper, like he couldn't believe that I had figured him out.  
    "A few months," I winced at that admission.  
    "How?" he demanded.  
    "I'm not oblivious," I said, glancing back at him, "I know I'm not terribly great at reading people and some things go right over my head, but I know the signs when someone is into me."  
    "But you never said..." his voice trailed off and I could see him going over his memories, trying to find some indicator that I had known about his crush.  
    I pulled my hand from his grip and fussed with my shirt. I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization of how surreal this was. Sure, I had known that Heero liked me. I had suspected it even before he had kissed me on the forehead that one time. All the times that he had blushed around me, how passionate he got, how protective... and then after the kiss, it just became more and more obvious, to the point that I felt like I had when I had figured out that Quatre liked Trowa, wondering how I could be so fucking blind. Because it's easier to see those signs when you recognize them in yourself.   
    I just couldn't believe that we were actually there, talking about his feelings. He had confessed to me! I had been dreading it, worried that he might one day, but I had never thought that that day would come so soon. I resented him a little for his confession. I hadn't wanted to hear it, because once I did, I couldn't pretend to ignore his feelings anymore. I just wanted to be friends with him, best friends, that's all. Why couldn't I have that? Why couldn't that have been enough for the both of us? Friends was simple and uncomplicated. Friends didn't expect things from me, things that I could never give. Friends didn't resent me for being inadequate. Friends I could at least understand. But this? Falling in love with me? Wanting me? I couldn't wrap my head around something like that.  
    "I was scared," I murmured, "No... I _am_ scared. At first I thought that I might just be reading into things too much, and then even when I was sure, when you didn't tell me, I thought that things were fine the way that they were. I didn't see the point in telling you that I knew. I thought if you weren't saying anything, there was a reason and if I brought it up, it would ruin things. And... and I just couldn't understand how or why you could feel those things for me, I mean..." I brought my hand up and felt self-consciously at my bruised face, not realizing that I was doing it at first, and felt a deep shame at my appearance, my bruised and mangled face, my ugliness, "I just don't understand how you could be attracted to me, let alone like me..."      
    "Are you joking?" Heero asked in exasperation and grabbed my hand pulling it away from my face, "Duo, look at me."  
    I didn't want to, but I couldn't deny him anything. I shyly and nervously met his eyes and the overflowing desire, affection, and... and _love_ there was like getting hit in the face all over again. No, it was so much stronger and deadlier than any blow my father could ever hope to give.   
    "How could I not fall for you?" he demanded, wrapping both of his hands around mine, "You're handsome, strong, stubborn, smart, resilient, and creative. No matter how much life tears away at you, you just keep going! You act like such a hard ass most of the time, like nothing bothers you, but you feel so much! I've admired you longer than we've even been friends. You've got the most beautiful eyes I've ever seen-"  
    "Stop it!" I snapped at him, tearing my hands away from him again and looking down at the ground, "Stop saying those things!"  
    There were tears in my eyes because everything he was saying was wrong. All of his reasons for loving me were lies and that made his love for me a lie and that vulnerable, weak part of myself that had fallen for him and had been so happy when I had realized that he liked me too, even if I was too scared to do anything about it, was bleeding and broken. I wasn't that person. The person that he loved was someone else, someone that he had made up in his head.  
    Heero grabbed my face with one hand, careful not to put pressure on any of my bruises, and forced me to look at him again.  
    "I'm in love with you," he said with such conviction that I could feel myself trembling with it, " _You_ , not anyone else. Do you understand? You can deny it all you want, but this is how I feel for you and no matter how much you look down on yourself, you can't change that."  
    I pulled away from him and stood to me feet. I paced away from the bench, debating just running out of there and going to hide some place. Some place that wasn't his house or mine, somewhere he would never find me. Which was of course impossible. Heero could find me anywhere. All of the secret places that I liked to go... this courtyard, the mound at the beach, the jogging path, the library... he knew all of them. He was so far into me, into my heart, that I would never be able to dig him out with any implement. And right then, feeling those eyes directed on me and no one else, all of that intense affection and focus, I felt more scared than I ever have in my life. Even more frightened than when my father had raped me for the first time.  
    "Why?!" I screamed at him, "Why are you telling me this now?! Why not when you first realized you liked me? Why at all?!"  
    How long ago had he first become attracted to me? When we started to talk at the beach? When we first became friends? When we started to really get to know each other? _When_? I don't believe in love in first sight or any of that bullshit, so there had to be a moment, maybe a moment like my own, when he had realized that he was attracted to me. Had it been before or after my father had raped me? Suddenly, that was the most important and awful thought in my head. If he had loved me even back then... oh, how I wished he would have told me. I wished that I could have had his love before love became the thing that killed me.   
    And suddenly, I wished more than anything that Heero had been in my life before Trowa had come along and showed me how fucked up a relationship can be, how fucked up _I_ am, and that things like love and boyfriends are completely impossible for me. I wished, if only for a little while, that I could be happy to know that someone liked me and had hope that I could have a normal relationship. But I'm too old now. I know too much, about myself and the world.   
    Heero grabbed my shoulders to stop me from constantly trying to move away from him. I hadn't even realized that I was doing that, I had only thought that I had gotten off the bench because my sudden nervous energy was driving me mad.   
    "I told you," he said kindly, "I'm done running away. That's all I did before I became friends with you. I ran away from my pain, from Wufei, from my sexuality... I am done with all of that. It took me this long to get my courage, to realize that I needed to tell you or it would drive me insane."  
    I shook my head at that, but not because I didn't believe him. I knew that it was the truth. Heero was trying to be a better person, to be honest to himself and everyone else and to stop trying to be something that he wasn't. I only shook my head because I was thinking of my own feelings, how I had kept my own confession to him bottled up out of terror, truly believing that I could never, ever tell him, even if he liked me back, but how some days just trying to keep that secret inside had made me feel crazy.   
    "What do you want from me?" I asked in a hoarse, desperate whisper.  
    "Nothing that you don't want to give," he said softly and I felt tears start to drip from my eyes.  
    He was so kind and gentle, everything that I wasn't. There he was, spilling his heart to me, but he wasn't asking anything from me. He wasn't demanding that I tell him how I felt about him or asking me out on a date. He was simply informing me that he was in love with me because he thought that it was the right thing to do, that I needed to know. And there was a part of me... most of me, really, that just wanted to say 'ok' and leave it at that. Never tell him how I felt. Just let him dangle there, wishing for more, but thinking that I just didn't feel anything more than friendship. Would that destroy us? Would he come to resent me? I didn't know, but that part of me was willing to risk it because the alternative surely would ruin our friendship. Of that I was certain.  
    "I'm not going to lie to you," he told me, reaching his hand up to wipe the tears from my face with his gentle fingers, "If you would let me take you out on a date sometime, it would make me the happiest person on the planet. But if that's not what you want, if you feel absolutely nothing for me at all, just tell me and I'll drop it. That'll be it."  
    "Really?" I asked, "Just like that? You can be friends with someone you're in love with, but isn't even interested in you? Someone that you know is physically attracted to you, but not in love with you?"  
    "Yes," he said and the plainness of that response and how quickly he answered, like there wasn't a doubt in his head about it, completely shocked me, "Duo, you're my best friend. I loved Wufei and I'll always miss him, but I was never as close to him as I am to you. I've told you things that I've never told anyone else, and that wasn't just because I'm in love with you. We have something special and I'm not going to fuck that up by creeping you out or insisting that we try a relationship _just_ because we both happen to be gay or because I want it that badly. If you tell me that you just want to remain friends, then that's that. I'll never even mention my feelings again because no matter how attracted I am to you, no matter how much more I want from you, you're my friend first and foremost. I won't hurt you like that and just being with you is more than enough for me."  
    Oh, god, the things he was saying to me. Things that I would have ripped my lungs out to have heard him say. He really did love me, sincerely and honestly and passionately. I didn't understand it. Couldn't hope to understand it. I didn't see a single thing that he saw in me, but his feelings were real and I was drowning in them. I nearly blurted out, 'I love you!' at him and it was only my fear of losing him that kept me silent. But right then, the love for him that I had felt yesterday seemed so small and silly compared to the burst of it that bloomed in my heart right then.   
    "I..." I started and then failed.  
    What could I say? The truth? A lie? Tell him that I just wanted to be friends or that I wanted more. So much more. I wanted _everything_. What was the truth? And what did I want? I didn't know. That was the thing. I loved him, I felt more for him than I've felt about anything in my entire life, so how could I not know? But I didn't. When I thought about what I wanted from him, I felt only confusion. And I felt lost, so very lost. So I did the only thing that I could right then. I couldn't lie, not to him, not when he was bearing his soul to me. I would rather rip me own right out of me than lie to him at that moment, show him that much disrespect. So I told the truth. Well, as much of the truth as I could.   
    "I... don't know what to say," I said honestly, probably the most honest thing that I could come up with, "Do you need me to answer right now?"  
    "Of course not," he told me, but looked bewildered, "But, Duo, you don't need to worry. I'm not going to be mad if you tell me you just want to be friends. You don't need to just... keep me hanging if you think that's what it will take for us to keep being friends."  
    "It's not that," I assured him, "I just... I have a lot to think about. Can you give me some time? Just... just a day, then I'll have an answer for you."  
    "Sure," he said, but still looked puzzled.  
    I didn't really blame him. He wasn't asking me for any kind of commitment. He was just asking if I felt that way about him. It wasn't something that I should need to think about very hard, just a yes or no answer. But when has anything ever been that simple for me?  
    "Am I..." I swallowed roughly, "I-is it still alright if I come over to your place tonight? If you'd rather me not be there... I can stay out of your way, you won't even know I'm there if you don't want to be around me."  
    I bit my tongue as I realized that I was right on the verge of begging him to let me stay, because I had nowhere else to go. I didn't want to go home, and if he told me that he needed some time away from me, it would absolutely kill me. If I suspected, even for a second, that I had upset him, hurt him, or even made him angry with me by rebuking his feelings, I would break apart. I was already about to start crying again, just from the mere possibility of it. I was the worst sort of person. I would just hurt him, I thought with sudden clarity, because this is the sort of friend that I am. I always hurt the people that love me, I always destroy the good things around me.  
    Heero looked at me very sadly and, to my surprise, wrapped his arms around me in a tight hug.  
    "Of course you can come over," he said, his voice filled with pain and it took me a moment to realize that that pain wasn't because of my refusal to answer him, but because I had honestly thought I wouldn't be allowed into his home and that he might be upset at me, "You're _always_ welcome. I told you, no matter what, you're my friend. I'm not mad, I'm not hurt. Honestly, after some of the things that I was afraid you might do, just telling me that you need some time was more than I could ever hope for."  
    I breathed deep with relief, feeling some great anxiety in my chest let go. He wasn't hurt. At least not yet. I hadn't fucked things up for now. We were still friends. I wrapped my arms around him loosely and hid my face against his shoulder. It felt good. Better than I deserved. We pulled apart and Heero looked like there was something else that he wanted to say to me, but he just gave me a small smile.  
    "Let's go home," he said and suddenly looked very tired.  
    I didn't really blame him for that, either. If I had just confessed to someone that I loved them, someone whom I didn't know liked me back, I would be a bit emotionally drained. I nodded to him, at a loss for words. We picked up our food and left the courtyard, starting the walk home. That walk was very awkward and I think that Heero felt it, too. We were quiet, but there was some strange energy in the air around us. I didn't really know where we stood with each other. Knowing that your best friend is in love with you is kind of a weird thing. That I liked him back was irrelevant.   
    I was still confused by his feelings, even if I accepted them, and for all of Heero's assurances that nothing would change between us, we were still nervous around each other. Him, I think, because he was struggling with how to act around me and me because I didn't know how to react. There was obviously more that he wanted to say, but I think he was worried that he had overwhelmed me and I just had too many thoughts buzzing around my head. I felt that I should say more, too, say something to get us back on track, but I had no idea what that something was.   
    It wasn't entirely bad. We were uncomfortable and learning how to deal with this new twist in our friendship, but it wasn't like we were angry at each other or hurt. It would just take some time to adjust, I think. I kept trying to untangle my own thoughts as we walked in silence, trying to figure out what to do. I had asked him for a day's worth of time to come up with an answer, but I felt unprepared for any kind of decision making. Hell, I had been dealing with this for months now, constantly at war with myself between my desires, what my darkest, deepest heart wanted and what I needed. Heero's love or his friendship. Because I was positive that I couldn't have both of them.   
    "So," Heero suddenly blurted out, startling me, "your first track practice is March 1st, right? How long do you think it will take Lewellan to scrub out?"  
    A short laugh burst out of me, mostly out of relief to hear him talking to me than anything else. It hit me then that Heero was right. Nothing had really changed between us. He was still my friend, even with his feelings for me out in the open. He was still the same person that I could always rely on, always trust and that was never going to change.   
    "I'll give him a month," I said after some thought.  
    "That long?" my friend asked in surprise, "I'd say he's off the team in a day, if he can even be bothered to show up to practice. Charlie Pensle is in my English 3 class and he used to be on the hockey team with him. A decent athlete, but he only cares about the actual competitions and never the practices. He almost got kicked off of track last year because he only showed up for two practices the whole damned season. I'm not sure if he just doesn't give a crap or he's just lazy."      
    We continued to chat about who might scrub out of the track team by our first competition the whole way home. I was so relieved, I didn't care how mindless the topic was or that it just amounted to nothing but gossiping. When we got to his house, I found that my coffee cup was empty, but I couldn't for the life of me remember drinking it.   
    "Hey," Heero grabbed my arm and pulled me back when I tried to open his front door, "We're ok... aren't we? You don't feel awkward around me because of what I told you, do you? You know that I would never try anything or push you into anything?"  
    "Of course not," I scoffed.  
    Heero forcing himself on me, being weirded out that he was attracted to me, or just trying to kiss me were so far below my radar, I hadn't given them the slightest thought. You would think that I would be worried about that. Trowa had been a pro at getting me to do things that I didn't want to do and doing whatever he wanted, whether it was getting me to have sex or kissing me out of the blue, even when he knew that I had been uncomfortable. But Heero wasn't like that. Without knowing a thing about what he was like romantically, I knew that he wouldn't be like that. While Trowa and I had been friends, he hadn't respected me very much.   
    "Look, it's not you," I told him, "If I'm feeling awkward or distant, it's not because I know that you like me. I've known for months, remember? It doesn't bother me. You know that I think you're attractive, you knew that before we even became friends. It's just... it's me. I don't know where I stand in all of this and I'm just trying to figure it out, that's all. I told you, just give me time and I'll be alright. There's no need to be weird around me."      
    He smiled with relief and let go of my arm, blushing a little as if he suddenly realized that he had grabbed it. We went inside together, sat down at the kitchen table to eat our pastries, and started our homework in his room, stopping to eat dinner at five and then continuing our work again. It was almost disturbingly normal if I stopped to think about what had happened earlier. Heero had told me that he was in love with me and our world just continues on like its nothing.   
    But it wasn't nothing at all. If I could focus on my homework, act normal around Heero's parents, and eat dinner with an appetite, it was only because I was extending an obscene amount of energy into _not_ thinking about Heero's confession. But then homework was done and it was time to shower and go to bed and then there was nothing I could do _but_ think about it.   
    If some normal, well adjusted person is reading these journals, they're probably wondering what the hell my problem is. I've spent years writing these entries, detailing how much I've wanted someone to love and care about me, how much it hurts that I believed that my parents don't, and how strange and abnormal I've felt when I've looked around myself and seen how easily everyone around me can love and fall in love and be loved, while I've never found it for myself, like I'm some kind of freak. Then I finally fall love with someone, and find out that I'm loved in return. That should make me happy, shouldn't it? Especially because the person that I love is another guy. I should be over the fucking moon. I mean, what are the freaking chances that someone like me can even find that person, and to have them reciprocate? It's just like finding out that Quatre was gay. What are the odds?  
    I should be happy. I should be relieved. I should be gushing to Heero about how much I love him. I've spent months writing about my feelings for him, how overwhelming it is, how it feels like my heart is going to explode with it sometimes, and how much I need him in my life. So I should be overjoyed that he loves me, too. But I'm not. And I am. Which is exactly the problem. Of course I'm happy that he loves me. When I think about it, I have a hard time believing it. I have a hard time believing that _anyone_ can love me.  
    I mean, look at me. No matter what Heero says, I'm nothing to write home about. I'm poor, insecure, weak, cowardly, I have zero self-esteem, no real skills, I suck at math and science, and I really suck at being social. I've had two friends in my entire life. I've never been in a healthy, romantic relationship before. I'm awkward and quiet. I don't have a great sense of humor. Just on a physical level, I'm average. I'm pale and while I might not be short or outright ugly, I am sure as hell not 'handsome'. I have more baggage than an entire airport luggage line, insomnia, and intimacy issues that make it impossible for me to get close to anyone. My body is worn and unhealthy thanks to a life time of physical abuse and I'm a bitter, cynical piece of shit.   
    And those are just the things that are apparent to Heero. He doesn't know about my dating my dead friend's crush. He doesn't know about letting Trowa fuck me or how I completely destroyed our relationship by being aloof, closed off, and distant, how I drove him half insane and led him on for months. Heero doesn't know about the rapes, and fuck, if I think about _that_ for a second, I might throw up. How the hell can you tell the boy that you love that if he gets into a relationship with you, he'll have to share you with your father, that he's just getting second hand merchandise? And that's even _if_ I can have sex with Heero at some point.  
    The more I thought about it laying in that bed and staring up at the ceiling, the more sick, horrified, and frightened that I felt. It only became more and more apparent to me that I could never be in a relationship with Heero. If I did, I would just be cheating on him because I still wouldn't be able to make my father stop. And all of the issues that I had had while I had been dating Trowa were still there. Heero isn't Trowa, I know that. He didn't want to just use me for sex while he was thinking about someone else. He actually loved me, he wasn't just pretending for convenience.   
    He wouldn't force me to have sex with him. He wouldn't tell me that he had never really wanted me or belittle me in the crushing ways that Trowa had. But that didn't make things any better. They made them worse. Because my sexual issues with Trowa hadn't just been about not being in love with him. I was as incapable of having sex with Heero as I was with my ex. I couldn't even think about trying to have sex with him, not without feeling like my stomach was trying to rip itself into shreds. I loved Heero. I couldn't bare the thought that I would end things like I had Trowa. I didn't want to grow to resent him for wanting sexual things from me. I didn't want to become anxious and fearful at his mere touch. I love it when Heero touches me. To lose all of that... it would just kill me.   
    The thing is, it's harder because I love him, not because I don't. If I went into a relationship with him, I would want to give him everything. Forget bullying me into sex, he wouldn't need to. All he would need to do is say 'I want to have sex with you' and I would give him everything. Even the things that I didn't want to give. To keep Heero, I would rip my soul out and spit on it. And that was incredibly dangerous. And that was the least of my worries. Because if it was just a matter of me growing a spine and having sex when I wasn't into it, I would have jumped at the chance in a heartbeat.  
    But what about all the other issues? What would happen if Heero ever learned that I can't get it up? That I didn't like being with him sexually? He would get mad, like Trowa did, and that was totally understandable. Infinitely worse, he would be hurt and think that I didn't find him attractive. There was no way I could do that to him. No matter which angle I went at the possibility of us getting together at, it ended in disaster. How couldn't it? I couldn't give him what he wanted. I couldn't be the boyfriend that he wanted me to be. I couldn't commit to him. I couldn't be sexy for him. Hell, we wouldn't even be able to see much of each other once he went off to college, so what would even be the point of trying? I don't care what anyone says, long distance relationships don't work. They especially don't work when one half of the couple doesn't even have a computer.  
    Heero deserved more than that. He deserved a boyfriend who could give him the world, who would be hot for him and help him through whatever shit came his way. He deserved someone beautiful and strong and special. Someone who was not me. Because our relationship can only go one way: to ruin. My relationship with Trowa had taught me that much about myself. I destroy things. And I didn't want to destroy Heero. I _couldn't_. I can't bare to be a bad memory for him, all because I'm too weak and needy.   
    And I _am_ weak. Because that night, as I laid there and thought about the thousands of ways this is going to go wrong, I couldn't help but think of the impossible. What if went right? Never in the world are there more damning words. I knew that my getting romantically involved with him was never going to work. I'm too dysfunctional, there's too much broken in me and I love him too much to drag him down.  
    Or so I thought. Because as awful as my romance with Trowa went, it wasn't _all_ bad. Yes, we grew to loathe each other. Yes, he tried to rape me. Yes, we were both completely miserable at the end. But there are memories of him that I still cherish, moments when I had been happy and it was those moments that had kept me from breaking up with him even when I knew that things were going to shit. Him kissing me gently and tenderly. Us holding hands while we were at the movie theater. Him smiling at me as we ate a picnic dinner in some secret place and him reaching over to wipe a bit of food that I had gotten on the corner of my mouth. Laying down together, his skin against mine. Answering the phone and knowing that it was him. Hearing him say 'I want to see you.'  
    I had been miserable and sad and hurting, yes. But not all the time. Sometimes it had been good, sometimes it had been the most wonderful thing that I had ever felt, even through my fears and anxieties. And there will always be a part of me that wants that back so much that it's a hole inside of me, this gaping maw of desire that never goes away.   
    When I thought about doing those things with Heero that night, my heart overflowed with so many things that I can't even accurately describe them. I thought about holding hands with Heero as we walked down the beach together. I thought pressing my lips to his or him pressing his against mine. I thought about him gazing across a table at me at some restaurant or taking me to the movies and feeling his leg pressed against mine. I thought about us laying together on the hill behind his house, watching the stars, our fingers linked. And then he would rise above me and kiss me even more tenderly than Trowa could ever have hoped to kiss me, because when Heero kissed me, he was kissing _me_. Only me. And when he looked at me, the affection there was mine and not for a dead boy.   
    I thought about those things and felt such love inside of me that I felt sick with it, like there was something wrong and no person could possibly feel that much love for one person. And I felt that tingling in my stomach again, mingled with some deep, primal desire. A voice that screamed 'yes, I want that, give it to me _now_.' I couldn't imagine anything else, any other possible future than the inevitability of that moment, of kissing Heero Yuy under the stars, of his hands running along my skin and drowning in the blue of his eyes.   
    So then I thought about actually going through with it. I thought about telling him that I loved him, had loved him for months, and I would do anything at all for him, I would die happily tomorrow just to have the _chance_ to be with him. And then I thought about doing that, of having those wonderful moments with him right before it turned to shit. Because it would. That was inevitable for me. How could I do that? Never mind how it would destroy me, never mind how it could be as painful as losing Quatre for me, how could I do that to him? How could I give him hope... make him believe that he was getting what he wanted and not tell him how broken I am? Not give him a clue that this relationship is doomed? How could I hurt him like that? How could I break his heart?  
    It was around four in the morning when I had an epiphany. I was fucked. More specifically, Heero was fucked. No matter what I did, no matter which avenue I went down or how careful I was, I was going to break his heart. Whether I dated him and he would have to break up with me or I with him because I had ruined things or I had to lie to him and tell him no, he didn't have a chance with me at all, I was going to hurt him. And I hated myself, truly hated myself for that. I didn't want to hurt Heero. I wanted to make him happy. After everything that he had done for me, how could I possibly hurt him like that?  
    But those were my choices. Hurt him now and maybe, hopefully, he would get over it and we could still have a friendship. Or make him happy for a little while until he realized what a shitty person I really am and hurt him later. How the hell do you make a choice like that? I realized then, for the very first time, the true pain and agony that Quatre must have gone through in his final days, how he must have angsted over his choice to not tell Trowa about his feelings.   
    At least I didn't have to worry about ruining Heero's reputation. At least I knew that Heero liked me. But what must Quatre have felt when he thought about hurting Trowa with his feelings? I'll never condone it, but I got a little bit closer to understanding why he had killed himself that night. What would he say to me if he knew that I was facing a similar agony, the knowledge that I could hurt him or I could hurt myself, that I was actually considering being selfish and putting myself above the feelings of the person that I loved because I wanted so badly to take a chance with him? Quatre had always had such a great advice, had always known what to say to me to help me make up my mind about things, but what could he have possibly said to me to help me with this heap of blackness?  
    A memory flashed in my head, as bright and sudden as the flash of a camera. Quatre and I talking in the courtyard, him looking at me with this bleak and desperate expression, his face full of mental pain and his large eyes full of tiredness.   
_"Just promise me one thing, Duo. Promise me that if you find someone you love, you won't give up on them no matter how much it hurts you."_  
    The memory startled me so bad with it's suddenness and it's potency that I had to sit up in bed, Pepper making a disgruntled sound as I disturbed her where she lay on my pillow. That promise... I had forgotten all about it. Even though I had written about it years back, I still forgotten making that promise to my friend. Probably because, even though it had been my last, serious promise to my dead friend, I hadn't taken it seriously at the time. I had thought that I didn't need to worry about a promise like that because I was never going to fall in love with anyone.  
    But the joke was on me, apparently. I had found someone that I loved and there I was, debating on giving up on him. Just like Quatre had given up on Trowa. The only real difference is that Heero was asking for this, asking for _me_ and I was still preparing to say no. Quatre hadn't even had the chance to get this far, he had never gotten to know the joy of hearing the person you love say that they love you, too. And instead of dealing with that, instead of facing a world where Trowa hated him, a world where he had hurt the one that he loved, Quatre had chosen death.   
    I wasn't so deep down the rabbit hole that I would consider such an option. Heero had made it clear to me that I had his friendship no matter what and as long as I had even a taste of that, suicide was as far from my mind as homicide. But wasn't I about to make the same choice that Quatre had? Wasn't I preparing to throw it all away out of fear, while still clinging to what I could have had if I had only been brave? He had chosen to believe that Trowa could never have feelings for him, so it was better to say nothing, even though he was still trying to be friends with him, and I was doing the same. Too scared to tell Heero that I loved him, but also too scared to distance myself from him in the first place.   
    I was going to break that promise, all for Heero's sake. That was what I was trying to get the courage to do, wasn't it? To betray Quatre, to go back on that vow. What does it matter, I asked myself. So what if I had promised him? Quatre was dead, what would he care if I broke some stupid promise that I had made to him four years ago? He wouldn't even know. I could do whatever the hell I wanted.   
    But I could still remember the look on his face. He had been so sad. Had he been thinking of killing himself even then? So sad, so yearning for what he believed he would never have. And yet, he hadn't been thinking of himself and his own pain in that moment. He had been thinking of me, desperate to assure himself that at least one of us would be happy, that one of us would have the chance that he had never had. Always thinking of me...   
    Was I really capable of doing that to him? To his memory? To throw away a chance that he would have killed for, simply because I was terrified, because I was sure of some future event that hadn't even happened yet? Ensuring that I was going to hurt Heero because I _might_ hurt him later? Even if I was positive that this relationship wouldn't last... but Quatre had been so sure, too, and he had never known that Trowa had loved him as well... Although Trowa had been too cowardly himself to be with Quatre.  
    But Heero wasn't. Heero wasn't a coward at all. He had given up his peaceful lie to be friends with me. And he had confessed his feelings for me, reaching out for something that many boys in our position would have flinched from, not wanting to risk someone finding out that they had a boyfriend. He had always been scared of coming out of the closet, but there he was, wanting to be with me. Was I really thinking of turning him down when he was willing to risk it all? Even if he wanted to keep it under wraps like Trowa had, he _was_ taking a huge risk. It just made me feel like an even worse coward. I felt like I was spitting in the face of not only Heero, but Quatre as well. And in the face of my thirteen year old self, who had so often been exasperated with Quatre's decisions concerning Trowa. Now I understood how painful it was, how impossible.  
    I rolled out of bed with a huff of frustration. I had been lying there, thinking about things for five damned hours and I was no closer to coming to any kind of conclusion. It was getting to the point where flipping a coin would be better. I half wished that I could go back to the day before and tell Heero that I couldn't listen to what he had to say. Like that would have made any difference. Whether I had been aware of it or not, he had been in love with me, he had been suffering.   
    Another epiphany hit me, and this one was quite unwelcome. Heero was in pain, suffering through the same love pangs that I had been, wanting and not daring to reach for what he wanted. And I was the only one with the power to end that suffering. I was the only one in the entire universe that could give him what he wanted, what he dreamed of. I didn't want that power, I didn't want that responsibility! To hold the happiness of my best friend in my hands like a cat with a mouse and make these kinds of choices! But what I wanted didn't matter. I had it and I had a decision to make. But how? How the hell could I make it? What was I supposed to do?   
    I got up and left the guest bedroom. There was no way in hell I was going to get any sleep unless someone knocked me out or I took a sleeping pill. What was really getting to me was that I had absolutely no one that I could talk to, no one that I could rant at to get all of this poison out of me. It was like my father feeling me up all over again. I couldn't talk to my mother or Solo about being a fag. The only sympathetic people that I could possibly discuss this with were Heero and his parents. Heero was off the table for obvious reasons, but how could I talk to his parents about all these mixed up feelings that I was having? They knew that Heero was gay, but I didn't know if they knew how he felt about me. How would they react if they did know? Worse, if they knew that I liked their son and didn't want to tell him, would they be angry with me? Could they be impartial at all? I had no other friends, no one that could give me any advice. I was all alone in this.      
    I wandered aimlessly to the steps. My head was pounding angrily and I could feel tiredness weighing me down in a way that wasn't just from sleeplessness. I felt like I was drowning. I couldn't sort out that tangle. I just kept coming back to the same two thoughts: I want Heero and I can't hurt Heero. As I descended the stairs, taking care in the darkness of the house, I suddenly felt very angry. Could I not have just one thing that I wanted?! Did the universe have to take _everything_ from me?! I had been happy, hadn't I?! Maybe I didn't have what I had wanted from the moment that I had realized that I was in love with Heero, but I had his friendship and that had been enough for me! I could have suffered in silence and still been happy with that, but no, the world had to find ways to rip that from me, as well!  
     I felt like I was going to start crying and bit savagely down on my split lip, tasting just a tiny bit of blood. I could cry later, when I had made up my mind and either ripped out Heero's heart, as well as my own, or when the anxiety of trying to keep a relationship with him and the fear of failure overwhelmed me, but I would not cry like a little kid just because I thought that the universe was 'unfair'. Fuck, I had learned that when I had been nine years old, watching my classmates interacting with their parents, coming to school with hundred dollar sneakers and socializing with their horde of friends. Of course the universe wasn't bloody fair. The universe didn't owe me jack shit.   
    I paused on the steps as I saw a light on in the living room, the dimness of it had to be just a single, small, table lamp. It wasn't like Mr. Yuy to forget to turn off a light before going to bed. Who could possibly be awake at four am besides an insomniac like me? My heart clenched when I finished my journey down the couple remaining stairs and saw Heero sitting on the couch in the living room. He was staring ahead at one of the paintings on the wall, this one a beautiful, idyllic painting of an Irish countryside in the rain, lush green grass and ivy along a red brick half wall, a slight iridescence coming off the light raindrops.   
    I could tell just by looking at him that he wasn't studying the art. He had that far off look in his eyes again, the look of someone deep in thought. The dark circles under his eyes had deepened. He looked over at me as I approached him, looking surprised for a moment to see me, but then some acknowledgement came across him and he looked guilty.  
    "Couldn't sleep?" he asked softly.  
    He probably thought that that was his fault, I realized, that his confession had kept me awake. Well, he wasn't wrong, but it was my fault if anything. If I had been a normal, gay teenager, I would have jumped at his confession. He would be sleeping soundly knowing that his feelings were returned, instead of down here, worrying that he had fucked things up with me. His sleeplessness was more my fault than mine was his.  
    "No," I confirmed.  
    "Me neither," he smiled, but it was small and tired.  
    I sat down in his father's arm chair near him, studying him. He was the picture of teenaged angst, his face drawn, his hair wild and tossed from rolling around in bed, and a pained look in his eyes. It felt wrong calling him that, calling _us_ that. Just two, angsty teenagers, bemoaning the pains of unrequited love. My pain... his pain felt deeper than that to me. But maybe that was because I'm just a teenager. I sure as hell didn't feel like some Romeo and Juliet type, oh woe is me. I didn't feel like the entire world was ending just because I wouldn't get the guy that I wanted, whining about the unfairness of the world. I just felt very sad and very tired. I just wanted to do right by him, to make the one person that really mattered to me happy, like he makes me happy. Was that really such a terrible thing?   
    I hadn't even really thought much about the fact that we were both guys in all of this. Christ, we really were fucked, weren't we? I had only been thinking about what a shitty person I was to get involved with, my failings and how I would only drag him down. I hadn't thought about how I was going to wade into a secret romance again, how much it had hurt the first time with Trowa ignoring me and pretending that he didn't even know me. Not to even mention the fear that we would get found out, that I would be the reason for his reputation getting shot to hell.  
    It would be easier than the first time, I realized. Heero was already ostracized at school. Our classmates already thought he was weird for hanging out with a queer and the odd accusation that he was, too, flew around. He could at least hang out with me at school and we could go out on dates, we just couldn't do anything that would make us look like a couple. Still, I ached for a place where I could be open with him, at least hold his hand in public. But if I decided to date him, I would still be putting him at risk all the time, just like with Trowa. I was already out, so I didn't care, but Heero did. It seemed like for every reason I could think of to take this chance, there was another to bite me in the ass. No matter what I chose, I felt like a selfish prick.   
    "You frighten me so much," I murmured, but in the still quiet of the house, my voice might as well have been a scream to him.  
    His eyes went wide and he looked absolutely terrible, like I had told him that he had run over my cat or something.  
    "Duo, I-" he started to say, but I wouldn't let him get that far.  
    "No, please, just listen," I begged and took a deep breath, trying to collect the buzzing bees that were my thoughts.   
    He fell silent, but his eyes were still big and alarmed, and he looked vaguely ill.  
    "I'm not... I'm not good at these types of things," I admitted to him, "Relationships, I mean. I've never been good at them. I don't know the right things to say or do, how to be romantic, and I outright suck at intimacy. I..." I hesitated, wondering if I really was going to confess this to him, but I knew that I had to. He had to understand what he was getting into, "I had a boyfriend once. We broke up pretty recently, I guess. At the beginning of last semester. Well, I broke up with him," I bit my lip sharply again as I realized that I was starting to ramble to procrastinate and didn't want to admit more than I had to, "Things got... really bad between us. I did some things that I'm not proud of, and he was kind of an asshole to me towards the end.   
    "We were never all that hot and heavy to begin with, but we were friends and by the time I got the balls to call it off, we hated each other. Do you know what's that like? Being in a relationship and knowing that you fucked things up beyond repair? That the person that used to go on dates with you, hold your hand and kissed you, actually _hates_ you because of the shitty choices that you made?"  
    "No," he said sadly, his eyes so full of sympathy for me, even though I was confessing to have been the guilty one, "I've never been in a relationship like that."  
    "Well, it sucks," I bit out and felt my tears again, but I still refused them, "I completely ruined things and not just for myself. And I don't want that to happen between us. I _can't_ let that happen!"  
    "It won't," Heero tried to assure me.  
    "This friendship is the most important thing to the world to me," my voice hitched and I realized that, for all of my attempts at self control, the crying was happening and there was nothing that I could do to get it stopped, "Do you get that? This friendship is _everything_ to me. There isn't anything that I wouldn't give up to keep it, _anything_. Even..." I rested my wounded eye against the palm of my hand, feeling the wetness of my tears and the throbbing of my bruised eye, but the pain felt good, this solid, real thing to distract me from the horrible wave of sadness and _loss_ that I was feeling, "even giving up a relationship with you. I couldn't withstand waking up one day and realizing that I've ruined everything, that you hate me or that we can't go back to what we have now. Nothing else matters!"  
    Heero was up like a shot, grabbing my wrist and pulling me onto the couch with him.   
    "Duo, listen to me," he said in this hard, powerful voice even as he was wiping my tears away, "You can't know what the future holds. _No one_ can. You won't make the same mistake with us. I'm not your ex, you won't ruin anything."  
    "Yes I will," I said with a sad smile, "It's what I do. I always mess things up."  
    "No, you don't," he insisted and then paused for a moment, "Do you have feelings for me?" he asked point blank.  
    "Yes," I choked out in a bare whisper, "I have for a long time now."  
    I didn't think about denying it, or even hesitating to think about all the reasons why I shouldn't. He had asked me so bluntly and I knew right then, with just him and me and that still quiet, that I was incapable of lying to him on that morning. He cupped my face in his hands and it felt so good, better than the pain ever could. His eyes were shimmering with love and excitement and pure _joy_ as I told him that, like the most beautiful sapphires. I closed my eyes and just wanted to stay like that forever.  
    "Do you remember what I said to you when you told me that you were worried that I might hate you if you told me what happened to Quatre?" I heard him ask as he slipped his warm hands down my cold and aching face.   
    I opened my eyes and that look of love and happiness was still on his face. For a moment, even though I was crying and feeling so upset, I also felt joy because, even if it was only for a second, I had made him happy. I shook my head. It's funny. I can remember conversations that I've had years ago, word for word, but I couldn't remember a single thing right then as I basked in the warmth of his expression.  
    "I told you that you aren't _capable_ of doing anything that I could hate you for," he reminded me, "That's as true now as it was then. You aren't capable of doing anything that will make me loathe you like that, or make me want to stop being friends with you," his expression returned to stony seriousness, "I'm going to make you a promise, right here and now, alright?"  
    I nodded, unable to speak. I just wanted to fall into him, to feel his body against mine and know that he was sure, he was positive that these things were true. He loved me and no matter how much I fucked things up, he would continue to love me. Even if I knew that that wasn't true.   
    "I promise you, if we give this thing a try and it goes south, no matter how it fails, no matter if one of us seriously screws it up, you will always be my best friend," he vowed, "This friendship means the world to me, too, Duo, and I'm not going to lose it, not ever. And there is no way in hell I would ever take it away from you. I just... I want the chance to see if we could be more, if we could be something truly special. Don't you want that, too?"  
    "The risk..." I shook my head, his promises be damned, "It's too high..."  
    "Alright," he said a bit sternly, "It's high. But I want you to do something for me. Do this one thing and I'll never mention any of this again. You and I can just be friends and I'll be happy with that, because I'll know that it never would have worked out anyway."  
    "Do what?" I asked, my brow furrowed in perplexity, not being able to think of a single thing that would assure him of that.  
    "Let me kiss you," he said and a jolt of equal fear and excitement went through me.  
    "One kiss," he said quickly, no doubt thinking that I was about to flee like a skittish deer, and he was probably right, "That's all. No tongue, no funny stuff, just a kiss. If we can't even handle one kiss... if it's rubbish and we don't have any chemistry at all, then dating would be useless anyway."  
    My heart was like a jackhammer in my throat. A kiss. From Heero. I would die. My heart screamed 'hell yes, please, kiss me,' but my fearful and logical brain screamed 'hell no, if he does that, I'll never be handle this, it will kill me'. And it would. If I kissed Heero and it was wonderful and I still shut him down, then it would absolutely kill me. I couldn't go back to pretending that we were just friends. I would always remember that kiss and it would haunt me for the rest of my life, what could have been between us.   
    "O-ok," I stammered instead.  
    My brain seemed to be taking a temporary vacation as my heart took full control for the first time in... well, a very long time. Thankfully, Heero didn't immediately look like he had just won the lottery or had won some much sought after prize. If he had, he probably would have scared me right out the door. Although he certainly looked excited, he also looked almost as scared as I was, his expression full of trepidation. That helped me to relax, seeing that he was taking this seriously. This wasn't making out, this was a test, and if it went wrong, if it wasn't everything that he hoped for, he would throw in the towel.   
    He pushed himself a little closer to me. Not so close that I would feel trapped, just close enough that I was at hand's reach. His knee brushed up against mine and stayed there, pressed against me. He placed a hand on my arm and studied me, making sure that I was ok with this so far, that I wasn't having second doubts. Which of course I was, but I think that's understandable under the circumstances. I wasn't doubting it so much that I had left yet. He started to bring his head in closer to mine and I felt myself start to tremble. He felt it, too, and frowned.  
    "I'm not a good kisser," I blurted out, "A-at least I don't... I don't think so, he never said I was and I've never really kissed anyone else, so I don't know-"  
    Words spilled out of me like mouth diarrhea as I felt the beginning of panic try to take hold, but Heero smiled softly at me and the wave halted it's steady rise.  
    "That's ok, I have no idea if I am, either," he said, "So no pressure."  
    He leaned in even further, his face no more than a foot from mine and I flinched away from him in fear.  
    "I-I can't," I protested and hated myself for it.  
    What the fuck was wrong with me? It was just a kiss!   
    "Sssh," he soothed and rubbed my arm, "You don't need to be scared, it's going to be fine. If you don't want to do this, just tell me and we won't, ok? The second you stay stop, that's it, no questions asked."  
    Him rubbing my arm was such a familiar thing that he would do when I was upset that I could feel my heart start to slow. But it was his words that almost completely eased the fear in me. It was him saying that it was up to me, that he would stop if I wanted that had me nodding for him to continue. No one had ever told me that before, that they would stop. Trowa had never asked for permission to kiss me. Relena had just surprised me with hers. No one had ever... given me that much of control over a moment of intimacy. I had always just gone along for the ride, hoping that it would feel good and it wouldn't hurt. But I completely believed and trusted Heero when he said that he would stop. I had the power here, it was all in my hands. How did he keep doing that? Just... making me fall in love with him over and over again?  
    Heero resumed moving closer to me and then it was too late to back out, he was kissing me. Oh god, how to even describe this. Kissing Heero wasn't anything like kissing Trowa. There isn't even a comparison. It's like... like drinking ice water straight from some pure, mountain stream versus drinking a soda. I had always liked Trowa's kisses. I had thought that they were great. He was always so bold, always took the lead, and I had liked the smooth coolness of his lips. I had even liked how forceful they were sometimes, how he could pour his passion right into me, even if it frightened me.  
    Heero wasn't like that. He didn't just press his lips to mine and kiss me like he wanted to eat me. He was... slow and gentle. Tender like I had imagined in my faintest daydreams that he would be. He was as scared and nervous about this as I was, not demanding. But he wasn't meek, either. He didn't kiss like he was scared and thought that this was foolish. He kissed me like he wanted to savor the one chance at this that he had. And he didn't just kiss me. That had been Trowa's goal, a kiss. Heero _explored_. His hand came up to cup my bruised cheek, his long fingers slipping around my ear and into my hair.   
    His lips slowly and lightly brushed against mine. They were dry from his anxiety, but they were soft instead of smooth, warm instead of cool. When I felt them touch mine, a bolt of electricity went through me, mingling with the icy fear in my gut. He stayed still for a moment at that first contact. To feel me, maybe, or just to see if I would retract. I didn't. For the first time since he had suggested this, I didn't want him to stop. I would have thrown a fit if he had. Then he was moving his lips against mine, pressing them against my mouth and curling his hand around the back of my head.      
    I felt him open his lips a little and something snapped in me. I had typically taken a submissive role with Trowa, letting him kiss me and occasionally kissing him back, but when I felt Heero start to move his lips like that, I eagerly began to kiss him. I felt the curve of his lips with mine, my own hand coming up to grip his arm, feeling the _realness_ of him. I let him draw my upper lip into his mouth a little, slipping it back out, and I did the same to him. It was just for a moment, just one, single kiss, but I fell in love with his lips, the shape and the taste of them.   
    True to his word, he didn't use his tongue like Trowa would sometimes, but he didn't need to. His mouth and his lips were as agile and questing as fingers as they traced my own. Without my ex's need to be fast and passionate, I could feel Heero's desire, could feel, not the need to consume, but the need touch me. To learn the feel of my lips and the taste of my skin. Every second that passed with feeling those lips on mine, his fingers burrowed in my hair and his knee pressing more insistently against me I could feel that tingling in my gut again. An electrical storm. Or perhaps like I had swallowed a million butterflies.  
    It was amazing and beautiful. For the very first time in my entire life, I _wanted_. I have no concept how long we sat there on the couch, kissing and drowning in each other. It could have been seconds. It could have been an hour. I only know that I didn't want to stop, that taste and smell of him were making me needy and dizzy, like the room was spinning and that was ok. When he finally slipped his hand from me and slowly, _reluctantly_ moved his mouth away from mine, we were both breathing a little hard. His lips were red and wet when I looked at them and I felt this incredibly amazement that I had done that.   
    "Christ," he gasped out and I felt this swelling of pride that it had been my kiss that could evoke such a reaction from him.  
    "That... that was amazing," I said with wonder, touching my lips with my fingertips. They felt swollen.  
    And I _was_ in wonder. I had never felt that way. Not ever, in my entire life. I can't even put it to words. It was more than feeling loved. More than just... kissing my best friend and crush. It was this beautiful thing that I couldn't bare to analyze too deeply. A thing that was ours and ours alone. I would spend the entire day at school daydreaming about it and when I finally was able to fall asleep again, I would dream about it. I would dream about falling into him and how his skin had tasted.   
    Heero closed his eyes and rested his forehead against mine and I could feel it through him, his desire, how he didn't want to break this physical contact between us so soon. He wanted to kiss me again with such ferocity that I could actually _feel_ it. And, I realized with shock, I wanted it that badly, too.   
    "Please," he begged me, trembling like I had been, but with desire instead of fear, "don't ask me to stop this."  
    And I couldn't. I realized that with a small bit of horror, but for all of my logic, all of my insistence that I was going to fuck this up, I couldn't do it. I couldn't say no to him and I couldn't say no to myself. How can you stop something that feels so right, so perfect, so natural, like breathing in air? It was like gravity. Like Quatre falling in front of that train. Like me letting my father hit me. It was just so easy to close my eyes and let it happen. And such agony to try to fight against it. And I couldn't fight it. I was too small in the face of this overwhelming force. I never stood a chance.  
    "Promise me," I said breathlessly, closing my own eyes, the feeling of his hair tickling my face, "Promise me you won't let me ruin this and I won't ask you to stop."  
    "I promise," he said easily, his voice so pleased and happy that I wondered, only for a second, how it possibly _could_ go wrong.   
    When I opened my eyes and we parted, some bit of sanity returned to me. I still remembered the kiss, the desire, that feeling of rightness, but some of my fear returned as well, the bliss of the moment slowly fading. I was still sure that this relationship is going to fail. It wasn't just because of Trowa and my history, but everything else. I had been hearing all of my life about homosexuals, about their promiscuity, the perversion of their relationships, and how only heterosexual couples can form healthy, long lasting bonds.   
    I wasn't so sure of the truth of that, but my fear didn't care about the truth. It only reminded me of how quickly my last relationship had failed, how Trowa had cheated on me, the lack of guilt that he had had, how he hadn't stopped even when I had found out about it.   
    "One date," Heero urged me, "That's all I'm asking for, ok? Wherever you want to go, whenever you want to go, whatever you want to do, just give us this chance and I promise, we'll make this work."  
    "Alright," I told him.   
    He leaned in again, but this time he pressed his lips to my forehead and I melted against him. The first kiss had been wonderful and intense and passionate. This one was only full of love and affection.  
    'Heero isn't like Trowa,' I can think, but what do I know? I might have been in a relationship once, but in reality, this was new to me. Heero was my first, real boyfriend. He was the one that I loved. This was the relationship that I wanted... no, _needed_ to work. This one was for real. Maybe I'm crazy for telling him yes. Maybe it's doomed from the start. But right now, when I think of the future, I don't think of that. I try not to. All I can think about is his lips on me, him loving me, and me loving him. That's all I want. It's all that I've ever wanted and I can't believe that it's actually happening to me.  
    Oh god, if you're real, please, let me keep this one thing.  
  
  
  
End Part 6  
  
(1) You can genuinely tell the quality of a steak by it's marbling, which is the visible amount of fat between the muscle fibers on the inside of the meat. The more marbling, the better and the more tender the meat. Wagyu steaks are pretty much the best you can get and thus, are pretty pricey. While the Yuy family isn't as rich as the Darlians by a long shot, they can splurge for them in special occasions.   
  
Author's Note: FINALLY. *dissolves into tears* It took a long time, but I finally got to the beginning of Duo and Heero's relationship. I feel like I haven't gotten to write about two people being romantically involved in years, between the time it took for this story and The Road to Kindness not being there quite yet. But it made me disgustingly happy to write this entire part, lol. Now Duo's little freak out at the beginning of this chapter in part one should make some sense.  
  
In case it has not become apparent, each chapter of this story mainly focuses on a certain relationship of Duo's(typically a change in that relationship). 1 is Relena, 2 is Zechs, 3 is Quatre, 4 is Trowa, 5 is Duo's father, 6 is Heero's friendship, and 7 was Duo's mother. I can now say without any spoilers that chapter 8 is primarily devoted to Duo and Heero's romantic relationship, wherever that might lead them, which is why it's so freaking big.  
  
Also, sorry about the length of this part. I thought about cutting it in half, but I decided to just keep it all together.   
  
As always, thank you everyone for the reviews! This part took a lot out of me (along with the previous part) so I'm going to take a couple of days off from writing to get some housework and job hunting things done, then I'll be right back on track.   
  
And once again, I have a twitter now where I'm posting writing goals and such (same name as always).   
  
  
  
  



	51. Chapter 8 Part 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duo helps Heero through a cruel prank. Duo talks with his mother about their financial struggles. Duo finally agrees to go on a date with Heero.

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 8  
Part 7  
  
  
    March 9, 2008  
  
  
    Heero and I didn't even bother trying to go back to sleep after our little talk, obviously. I knew for a fact that there was no way in hell I was getting any sleep. Just the talk alone... all the things that he had said and had made me think about, made me _feel_ were enough to make me feel like I was going to go insane if I put too much thought into them. And then there was that kiss... it was all that I could think about. I kept reliving it over and over again, the feeling of his lips against mine, how he had somehow been both sweet and intense, how enthralled he had been after, like I had given him something precious instead of the other way around. No, sleep would have been impossible.   
    I suppose Heero felt the same way, because he didn't try to go back to bed, either. We went into the kitchen so we wouldn't risk waking up his parents, and talked. Not about what had just happened between us, not about the kiss, or even dating. I could have kissed him again for that, for not pushing me or trying to get me to decide on where and when I wanted to go out on our trial date. He, very delicately and patiently, backed off and let me breathe, let me take in this terrifying and wonderful change in our relationship without any kind of fuss, only reminding me why I was so in love with him to begin with.   
    He talked about baseball and the things that he wanted to do when Spring eventually came, movies that he liked, musicians that he thought that I would enjoy, the sort of banal topics that we had talked about before. It was that familiarity that kept me from going off the deep end and kept my thoughts in safe territory. As he chatted, I made us breakfast: an omelet roll with bacon, chives, green onion, mushrooms, and cheddar cheese. It helped me a great deal to keep my hands busy, although it wasn't a terribly difficult thing to make. As I cooked and he talked, I would notice once in awhile, out of the corner of my eye, that he would stare at me with this goofy smile on his face.   
    It was so beautifully endearing, and I knew that he was thinking about our kiss and what fear that I had been feeling was beginning to fade in the wake of that smile. I dared to think that I had made the right decision. Maybe our relationship was doomed to fail, but for that moment, I had made him happy. _I_ was the reason why that smile was on his face and the feeling that that gave me was so powerful, I almost cried. I hadn't thought myself capable of making anyone happy, let alone give them that look of bliss.   
    It all felt so... strange to me. I had gone through this before, it wasn't like Heero was my first boyfriend, but this was so different. Everything was different, which was frightening, but at the same time, it was also like nothing had changed, which was a soothing relief to me. Every time I would think about that kiss and my heart would begin to spiral out of control into anxiety and horror, I would look at him or he would say something to me and it would really hit me that he was the same person that he had always been. He was the same boy that I could trust and rely on for anything, the same person that I did my homework with and would walk me home.   
    Nothing had changed between us. The only difference was that our feelings were out in the open. For the very first time in our friendship, we truly understood each other and were moving on with that knowledge. I felt deeper entangled with him than I ever had before, and yes, that was scary, but it also made me disgustingly happy. That thought, as I took the omelet out of the oven and scraped it out of the pan to roll and cut into slices (1), made me smile. We sat down to eat together, Heero talking about how much he liked the food and how he had never seen an omelet roll before. I was grateful for the safe topic and gave him a few tips on how to make one if he or his mother ever wanted one.   
    "Why, when I have you?" he quipped.  
    I knew that he was just joking, but as he said it, he gave me this soft, affectionate smile that made my heart burst. I almost told him that I would make him anything that he wanted, be at his beck and call if he would smile like that at me every time. We sat there, just slowly eating and talking for an hour before his parents shuffled in at six. His mother looked like she was sleep walking as she started up the coffee, but his father was almost disturbingly awake and alert for having just woken up.   
    As I watched them navigate around each other, saying good morning to us, getting the morning paper and coffee and gushing about the fact that I had made them breakfast, they reminded me a bit of Heero and myself. When I look at him sometimes, I think: there's no way this is going to work. We're so different, we barely have anything in common, how can we possibly date and be interested in each other? I think, if we hadn't become such good friends first before confessing to each other, I would have scared myself right out of a relationship. But I knew, just from being friends with him, that our differences didn't distant us from each other, it was the opposite. And I was far from disinterested in him just because he wasn't an avid reader like I was or was a sucky cook or didn't like blues music.  
    We were like his parents. Two people that, on the outside, seemed so different that they couldn't possibly get along. Mariela was bright and bubbly, a great cook who loved tea, hand crafts, and struggled to keep to a schedule, even just waking up in the morning. Justin, on the other hand, was cool and collected, liked documentaries, the news even when it was sad, was methodical and liked order, and always seemed like everything, even his hair, was never out of place. But they worked together so well and had created this wonderful family. Together, they were great parents, knowing when to be strict and when to be kind, when order was needed and spontaneity was desired.   
    Seeing them together, I desperately hoped and craved that Heero and I could be like that, that we could mesh together so well and never become tired with each other, even when we clashed, even knowing how different we are. Because we aren't completely different at all. We've both lost and hurt, we've both felt displaced and alienated. We both can be patient with each other and look past the things that frustrate us, like how stubborn we both are, or that I'm self-sacrificing and Heero can't let anything go. Hell, even my shitty sleep schedule and his grumpiness in the morning.   
    I was incredibly paranoid when Heero's parents came in. Some stupid part of myself screamed that they were going to figure out that Heero and I were now seeing each other, that all they had to do was look at either of our faces and they would suddenly demand to know what we thought we were doing. I didn't even know how I would take it if they did. And how would they take it? That question drove me nuts that morning. How would Mrs. and Mr. Yuy take us dating? Should we come clean about it or was it a good idea to keep it a secret from them?   
    Just because they were ok with us being friends and knew that we are both gay, it doesn't mean that they would be alright with the two of us becoming romantically involved, especially in their own home. Would they think that we were... doing _things_ when we were hanging out alone together? Of course we weren't, our relationship was too new for anything like that, thank god, but that seemed like a normal parent reaction. And don't even get me started on how relieved I was that I wouldn't have to worry about the sex stuff for awhile. Heero wouldn't even expect me to be ready for it, so I had this wonderful grace period.  
    But Heero's parents seemed oblivious as they ate their breakfast with us. It wasn't like Heero and I were throwing puppy dog looks of love at each other or acting in any way that something had changed. But even if they had gotten a hint that we were together, they didn't show it. The rest of my day was more or less normal and I craved that. It helped me to gain perspective, to start labeling myself, not as Heero's friend, but his boyfriend. Fuck, that was so weird. We walked to school together and sat down in our desks at homeroom like we always did and it would have been so easy to write off what had happened that morning as a dream if it hadn't felt so incredibly real.   
    I kept finding myself looking over at Heero when he wasn't looking and having this surreal, warm feeling in my stomach. It had been hard enough before when I had been trying to deny my feelings, but now that Heero knew about them, it was like the dam had broken and all of my love for him was spilling out. When our classmates started to filter in, I became paranoid that I wouldn't be able to hide it, that anyone would look at me and just know that I was giving my best friend mooneyes. Then I was stricken with fear that Heero would get caught, too, that he would sneak those same glances at me and someone would see him.   
    That was something that I could never allow to happen. It was one thing that everyone in school knew that I had a crush on him, it was even one thing that everyone, or at least the vast majority, still thought that Heero was straight, he just had horrible taste in friends. But if they knew that we were dating? It wouldn't even just be a case of outing Heero. No, it would be worse than that. They wouldn't accuse him of being a fag and falling for his friend. They would accuse _me_ of perverting him. Heero hadn't been hiding his sexuality, I had infected someone who had been straight, like I had some kind of contagion. And if I could infect Heero, who would be next?   
    That was just what I needed, to incite a fucking riot or panic or to have everyone around me consider me a threat to their own sexuality. Even if they didn't really believe that, I could easily see that happening. All it would take was one asshole that actually thought that and that they would be doing the entire community a favor by taking me out. But that didn't happen. Unlike with Heero's parents, I knew that if a single person realized that Heero and I were suddenly more than just friends, it would spread through the school like wild fire. So I could rest easy to know that the both of us could keep it under wraps enough to get through the school day.   
    The day progressed normally, or at least as normally as it could be for either of us. I made another soufflé in my cooking class, a dessert one this time, Heero and I had a surprise quiz in history that I was actually prepared for surprisingly. Zechs crossed paths with us on our way to lunch and dumped a bottle of urine all over Heero. Thankfully, he was wearing a jacket over his clothes so while the nasty stuff got in his hair and made him reek almost as bad as if he had gotten nailed by a skunk, it didn't get on his jeans or his shirt.   
    I ignored all the laughter, all the stupid juvenile jokes, and the looks of pity as I dragged him to the home ec classroom, which I knew would be empty at that time. Heero looked like a wet cat, his hair stuck to his face, and just as miserable as one. I had never seen him like that before, looking so depressed, upset, and disgusted, like he was going to cry. My heart ached for him, knowing exactly what he was feeling and wishing that I could wash away the hurt as easily as I could wash away the urine.   
    "Take your jacket off," I advised him as I locked the door behind us, not wanting anyone to intrude even if it got me in trouble, "and toss it in the sink."  
    He looked at his soaked jacket with such revulsion, like he didn't even want to touch it, but walked to the sink. I followed him and made to grab the back of it so I could help him, seeing how hesitant he was.  
    "Duo, you don't-" he began to protest.  
    "Just let me help you," I scolded and pulled his jacket off of him.  
    "I'm sorry," he muttered and looked so ashamed of himself that he was getting grossed out while I was acting nonchalant about the whole thing.  
    "It's alright," I assured him, "I get it, it's nasty."  
    He still looked embarrassed as I tossed his jacket into the sink and ran some water over it.   
    "I'm sorry, I should have been watching out for him," I apologized and began to rummage around in the various cabinets around the room for what I needed.  
    "It's not your fault," he murmured, "I wasn't paying attention, either."  
    He watched me with that pathetic, sad look on his face as I found a bottle of vinegar, some lemon juice, and a cheap bottle of shampoo and conditioner that was stocked by the eyewash station for reasons that I have no clue.   
    "Stick your head under the water for a little bit," I ordered him, leading him over to another sink station, "Water isn't going to do anything for the smell, but at least it will rinse it out."  
    I turned on the hot water tap for him and he leaned his head down like I had asked.   
    "Zechs' done this to you before, hasn't he?" Heero asked with some suspicion.  
    "Loads of times," I admitted as I began to wash his jacket with the vinegar, "He used to put shit in my locker and in my shoes, too. Oh, and one time he got one of his friends to puke on me."  
    I couldn't help looking repulsed as I remembered _that_ lovely prank. Heero finished rinsing out his hair and turned off the water, looking at me with those sad eyes of his, but this time it was for me and not himself. I would have called it pity, but it was deeper than that.   
    "At least pee is better than semen," I smiled at him, trying to make him feel better, but he only looked worse.  
    "I should have done more for you when I saw him do that," he mourned and I was taken aback by how upset he sounded, "I didn't do anything to help you after he did something so cruel!"  
    "I wouldn't let you," I reminded him.  
    I let his jacket sit in the water and vinegar and turned to tell him about the lemon juice when I really got a good look at him. His eyes were red. He had been crying when his head had been under the water.   
    "Hey," I said softly, my heart wrenching and I had to remind myself that Heero wasn't Quatre.   
    Heero had never been picked on like this. He took getting hit and being made fun of so well, I sometimes forgot that the really nasty the stuff, getting pee dumped on him, being treated like he was no better than an insect, being hated that much was new to him. He hadn't developed the thick skin that Quatre and I had yet. I had no idea how to comfort him, so I thought back to all those times as a kid that I had struggled to deal with this, what I had always wanted someone to do to make me feel better, and the only thing that _had_ made me feel better when Quatre had offered it. I drew him into a hug.  
    "Duo, don't," Heero tried to pull away, but his attempts were weak and I knew from experience that he didn't really want me to stop, "You'll get pee on you."  
    "I don't mind," I told him and only hugged him tighter, knowing that we had gotten most of it and even if we hadn't, I didn't care.  
    I breathed in relief when I felt his arms come up around me and he hugged me back so tight that it hurt a little. We stayed like that for a few minutes and when we pulled away, I saw that Heero had cried a little again.   
    "I'm sorry," he said, wiping at his eyes, "I can't seem to get a hold of myself."  
    "You don't need to be embarrassed," I told him, but he shook his head at me.  
    "You always have it so together," he said, "and here I am crying over a little bit of pee."  
    "Heero, I do _not_ have it together. You've seen me fall apart over getting some prank phone calls and semen getting dumped on me! Besides, Zechs and Relena have been doing this shit to me for eight years, I'm just more used to it. _You're_ the one who is always telling me that I shouldn't be ashamed when it gets to me. There's no reason for you to be embarrassed. You're the one who told me that it was natural for me to be upset by this shit, remember? You've been there for me every time I've had a hard time dealing with the bullying, so let me be there for you, too, ok? You don't have to be the tough guy all the time."  
    He smiled at me, some of that shame disappearing from his eyes, but at the same time, he looked upset about something.  
    "What's wrong?" I asked worriedly.  
    "I have this problem," he lifted his hand up to rub at the back of his head in a sheepish gesture, but still seemed squeamish at touching his hair and let his hand drop, "Here you are, being so collected and kind and sexy. I want to kiss you, and I smell like a damned urinal."  
    His tone was half joking, but the look in his blue eyes was anything but. His words sent this burst of heat running through me. 'Sexy'. No one had ever called me that before and I felt like just hearing that from him had ripped the words right out of me. I could have written it off as him teasing me, but I could see the desire clearly on his face. He really did want, desperately, to kiss me and was frustrated that he couldn't. Hearing that from him, I wanted to kiss him, too, and unlike him, I had no problems at all with the smell. I leaned in, startling him at my closeness, and pressed my lips against his.   
    This kiss was nothing like the first one that we had shared. I was too nervous, my face flaming bright red at my forwardness and feeling terribly shy. Strangely enough, if he had been anyone else, I wouldn't have been able to overcome my shyness to do that, but if he had been anyone else, I wouldn't have been overcome with my desire to kiss them anyway. I could only be that bold with him, that... spontaneous. The kiss was quick, over far too soon, and lacked much of the heat of our first one. It was little more than just a press of the lips, but I still felt that warmth in my gut from it, this tender affection for him. To my surprise, even though it was only our second kiss, his lips felt delightfully familiar against mine, the sensation of them brushing against mine both comforting and earth shattering.   
    When I pulled away from him, he had the same look of amazement that he had the first time, and a love that almost had me on my knees. He looked almost as shocked as I felt by my initiating like that. I realized that I had never done anything like that with Trowa. He had always been the one to kiss _me_ , and I was never more happy for that than I was at that moment, that I could share something like that with Heero and Heero alone.   
    "I... I shouldn't have done that," I stammered, tugging on my braid in a nervous gesture without meaning a single word of what I was saying, "I mean, we're at school and all."  
    "I'm glad you did," he told me softly, "Thank you, Duo."  
    I felt like I was going to combust, like I had broken some barrier that I had put up myself and felt a bit shocked at my own actions. There I had been, thinking about what a bad idea it was for us to date because we might get caught and I had kissed him at school. I realized then, with something akin to terror, that I had no self-control around him.   
    With Trowa it had been so easy. The biggest risk we had ever taken was that moment in the equipment room, and I had known the entire time that it was a stupid idea. But this... I had kissed him without a thought, because he had looked sad and had wanted and needed that from me. I hadn't thought about someone seeing us through the small window on the door or that someone who had a key, like my teacher, might find us. I had only thought about how much I had wanted to kiss him and had done it. I felt like some kind of addict, unable to control my impulses. That I didn't regret it at all was even more frightening.  
    "We don't have a lot of time," I said in a rush, eager to deflect the conversation back onto safe ground before my face could get any more red and led him back over to the sink, "I want to try to get the smell out before your next class."  
    "Whatever you say, boss," he smirked and I felt relieved that he was in a much better mood.  
    I never wanted to see him like that again, crying and miserable and feeling ashamed of himself. Was this what it felt like for him when he saw me upset? This gnawing, terrible pain in the chest? The urge to wrap the other up in a blanket and shelter him from all the bad things? It was no wonder why he went nuts when he saw Zechs do something mean to me.   
    "Lean your head down so I won't get any of this in your eyes," I warned him as I unscrewed the cap on the lemon juice bottle.  
    I felt a bit humbled when he did as I asked him to without seeming nervous that I was about to dump lemon juice on him.  
    "That stuff will take care of the smell?" was all he asked.  
    "It usually does. It's shit for your hair, though, strips all the oil right out of it, which is why I need the conditioner," I informed him, "Now close your eyes and I'll try to be quick."  
    I sprinkled the lemon juice into his hair, using my fingers to work it into the thick, chocolate locks, then I massaged in the conditioner, hoping that it didn't fuck with his hair. I'd had that happened a few times to me when Zechs dumped something rank like piss or vomit or rancid milk on my head and I loved Heero's hair too much to want to ruin it. It was so wild and uncontrollable, dark and rich, as stubborn as he was and I found that I was enjoying myself as I massaged creamy conditioner into his scalp.  
    "You're good at that," he murmured and the pleasure in his voice had me blushing all over again.  
    "Shit," I muttered as the bell rang and made quick work of rinsing the soap out of his hair.   
    He lifted his head from the sink and a ran his fingers through his wet hair, taking a whiff of the digits.  
    "Smells like lavender," he grinned in triumph.  
    For some reason, I thought about the first day that Quatre and I had met, how he had helped me get the marker off my forehead, that feeling of gratitude that I had had and I knew that Heero was feeling it right then, that relief to know that someone had fixed things.   
    "Your jacket probably isn't going to dry for a long time," I cautioned him as I fished it out of the sink, "It doesn't smell anymore, but you should have your mom wash it anyway."  
    "Thanks," he breathed, wringing the water out of it, "You're amazing, you know that?"  
    I snorted, but felt pleased at his praise. If it hadn't been for that kiss, it would have just been a normal day for us. I couldn't even call it a shitty one. Sure, Heero had gotten upset, but the memory of washing his hair for him and comforting him is one that I'll always keep close to my heart, so I can't call it bad. And Zechs didn't try anything else that day. He didn't even get mad when Heero showed up to gym class no longer smelling of piss. He tossed around a lot of cruel jokes about Heero being a public latrine, but that was the extent of it. Heero, for his part, took the verbal abuse pretty well. There was no way at all to tell that Zechs had upset him with his prank, but I knew better.  
    As we walked to his house together, I thought about telling his parents about what had happened. I know, I know, I'm a hypocrite and the last person on the planet that should be thinking about doing something like that with all the secrets that _I_ keep, but I couldn't help but worry about my friend. This wasn't like him getting punched in the face, he seemed to have little problem with a violent act like that. This though... this had been malicious and disgusting, something that I don't think he had thought would happen to him.   
    Some part of me knew that he wasn't going to tell his parents why his jacket was soaked and I wondered if I should. If his parents could help him through this... But as someone who had been dealing with bullying for most of my life in one form or another, I also knew that if Heero had no intention of telling his parents about this, I certainly had no right to. How could I ask him to keep quiet about my father and Zechs and not be able to do the same for him? If he was feeling embarrassed, I wasn't going to tattle on him. Besides, I had told him time after time not to make waves, and if he told his mother and father that he had had pee thrown on him, they were going to demand he name the person that had done it. He might not cave in to the pressure, but I didn't want to put him in that situation to begin with. If he wanted to sweep it under the rug and pretend like it had never happened, then I would help him do just that.  
    I fed my cat, ate a snack that Mrs. Yuy had made for us, and ran off to work. When I went home Thursday morning after my factory shift, I prepared myself for another beating for spending Tuesday night at Heero's. Tuesdays, unlike Saturdays, were easier to get away with, since my father thought that I was at work until one and he was typically in bed by then. But not always. And then there were the nights when he would go into my room. But sometimes he never found out that I had never gone home, I just had no idea when I was coming home what I was walking into. Thankfully, his car wasn't in the drive and my mother was sound asleep, alone, in their bed. He hadn't come home again.  
    It struck me at that moment just how much had changed in the last few years, just in how I felt about my father. I used to worry when he or my mother didn't come home. I would stay up wondering where he was, if he was safe, if he was with a woman, cheating on my mother, or crashed on Pat's couch, sleeping off a night of drinking. I used to feel sad for him when I thought about that and angry that he might be having an affair.   
    Now when I come home and see that he isn't there, I just feel relief. It's like this big ball of anxiety loosens in my chest, or some iron ball chained to my leg and weighing me down is released. I don't care what he's doing, why he can't come home or if he just chooses not to. If he's been drinking, it's not like that's anything new. And if he's with a woman, it isn't even that I don't care anymore. If anything, that's a relief, because if he's having an affair with some girl, it just means that he isn't fucking me. I don't worry about him. I know he'll come home eventually and some part of me always hopes that he doesn't. Things are better when he isn't here. Mom and I aren't scared all the time, we don't have to talk softly and monitor his every movement, his every mood.  
    These are things that I can't talk to Heero about because I know that he would never understand. He doesn't have to be scared of his father. He isn't highly tuned to his every action, his very _breath_. When he hears his front door open, his heart doesn't jump. The creaking of the floorboards doesn't make him feel sick with fear at night and if his father has a glass of wine, he doesn't have to watch his drinking, count how much he's had and wonder what each drop might bring.   
    I love my father just as much as Heero loves his, but that hasn't stopped me from hating him, as much as I've tried. As time goes by, it only gets worse, my feelings only become more mixed up. I'm grateful for the moments when he isn't here to remind me of that, when I can just forget that my own father is the biggest monster in my life. I suppose that's the biggest change from now and when I was a child. When I was young and I was just beginning to realize that I loathed my father, I hated myself for that loathing. Now I'm seventeen years old and it isn't my resentment and rage towards him that I hate. It's my love.   
    I made myself a quick snack of a grilled cheese sandwich and went up to my bedroom with it so I could work on my homework. As usual, my Calculus homework took me the longest to do, but thanks to Heero and his father's tutoring, I wasn't having the horrible time of it that I had in the past. They were both so patient with me and had taught me a lot of things that I hadn't understood from class, so I can do it comfortably on my own now, but I've come to accept that I'm never going to be good at math or science. I'm just not hardwired for it.  
    I got dressed into my pajamas and pulled my space heater out of it's hidey hole. My mother's present really was a god send and helped with the chill in the attic. I let the area near my bed warm up enough that it was tolerable before slipping underneath my blankets. I should have been able to fall asleep pretty quickly. The house was dead quiet, my father wasn't there to make me feel frightened of my own shadow, my homework was done, and I was exhausted from not sleeping the day before. But as I laid there on my side, staring at the muted, red light on the heater to indicate that it was turned on, sleep was the furthest thing from my mind.   
    I suddenly felt overwhelmed by everything that had happened in the last couple of days. I felt like I had lost my damned mind, ignored all common sense, and the thought of _tomorrow_ was both joyous and terrible. I had no clue what I was doing. I felt like I was stuck in a tornado with no hope of getting out of it. Everything kept changing around me and I didn't know what to hold on to. The closest thing to what I was experiencing was being raped by my father, that feeling of chaos, like everything was being ripped apart. I was scared shitless.   
    I thought about it so long and so hard that if it hadn't been so early in the damned morning, I might have considered calling Heero and telling him that I couldn't do this, I couldn't date him. But I doubted that I would have gone through with it. As scared as I was, as sure that I was that I was making a mistake, I kept seeing Heero's face, that expression of intense happiness. I couldn't take that away from him.   
    The part of me that desperately needed this relationship clung to that expression, using it as a shield to keep the more rational parts of me from taking control. Everything would work out, it said, so long as Heero was happy. That I had no control over my emotions for him didn't matter. That I was lost and drowning didn't matter. He was the only thing that mattered. I went over everything in my head, grabbing at those moments when I had thought that maybe, just maybe, I could do this. His confession to me, mine to him, and that first kiss. Fuck, that kiss.  
    It played over again and again and again behind my eyes, him leaning forward, his lips on me, stealing away my breath, his fingers in my hair, the expression on his face... I kept getting caught on that. There was something about it, some quality that kept getting stuck in my thoughts, like a piece of food that gets trapped between your teeth. It took me the third time around the memory before it struck me like a bolt of lightning.  
    He had been kissing me. _Me_. All of that attention, all of that wonder and intimacy and tenderness... it had been for me. Warm tears burst from my eyes as I remember the warmth on Heero's face, the love shining there. That kiss had been for me and no one else. All of his feelings... he hadn't once been thinking about some other person. I wasn't a replacement or an avatar like I had been for Trowa and am for my father. When Heero looked at me, I was the only person that he saw. All that time... my father pretending that I was a younger form of my mother... Trowa pretending that I was Quatre, telling me that he had never wanted me, kissing me when he had really been kissing a ghost...   
    A sob tore out of me and I wrapped my arms around my pillow, burying my face in it. No one had ever looked at me the way that Heero had. No one... no one had ever loved me like he had. He loved me and only me. I cried harder, but they weren't from sadness. They were from pure relief, amazement, love, and a bit of fear. I felt terrified all over again. I had never done this before. Being with Trowa, that had been like... like a trial run, like _practice_ compared to what things were like Heero. Everything that I had felt for my ex, for his touch and the scraps of affection that he had tossed me were _nothing_. How could I cope with this? How could I possibly survive these feelings, this intensity? It felt like it was killing me.  
    But I realized something else as I laid there in the dark. I realized why I was so scared, and why all of this felt so strange for me. What I was feeling, what I was going through... it was normality. For the first time, I was going through something that was _normal_. This... this is what people go through all the time. Falling in love with someone. Dating. Being in a relationship. That thing that I saw in everyone else, that I had never seen in me, that I had lamented and screamed about, sought after for so many years and thought myself a strange, abnormal _freak_ for not being able to have... I was feeling it for the first time.   
    And it hurt. It was the most beautiful hurt in the world. For the first time since Heero had kissed me, I was relieved that I hadn't told him no. I was over the moon with happiness that I hadn't let my fears take this from me. Hell, I was relieved that I could feel it at all. So many years of never feeling anything... of living in that grey part of my head that was so full of nothingness... now it felt like color was bleeding back into my world, but brighter than it had ever been. Colors like out of some psychedelic drug trip. Fear and elation had me equally in their grips and were tugging me back and forth. But that was ok.   
    I didn't think about how scary it was not knowing how to deal with things. I didn't think about how I was going to fuck this all up. Instead, I found my thoughts straying to seeing Heero again at school and that made me smile. I thought about getting to kiss him again. I thought about the date that we were supposed to have, how he had asked me to choose and for the first time since he had told me that, I wasn't too scared to acknowledge it. I was actually _excited_. I had never felt that way about Trowa, equally frightened and exhilarated.   
    I fell asleep with that thought buzzing around my head. I dreamt very little, and what I did was pleasant. I didn't get nearly as much sleep as I would have liked, but it was better than nothing. As I woke up on my old, beat up mattress, my blankets still wrapped around me like I cocoon, a stray thought passed through my head like a car traveling at high speed: I have a boyfriend. A thought that would have made me feel nervous and unbalanced instead made me feel giddy and elated, like some dorky teenager right out of a romantic sitcom. I rolled out of bed with a blush on my face and what I was sure was a stupid expression. I felt like, no matter what terrible things that the day brought, if I could go to bed the next morning and still be able to say that Heero was my boyfriend, everything would be alright.   
    To be able to start my day like that was definitely a welcome change. I even managed to make a decent, if bland, meal out of what little we had left in means of food, scrambled eggs and toast. We only had a single egg left and the bread was pretty stale, so I didn't feel guilty about using it up. If I left it for another day, it would probably start to get moldy.   
    "Sorry," I told my mother when she sat down at the table while I finishing cooking the egg, "There isn't much left to eat."  
    "I know," she said with a slight wince, "Your father and I don't get paid until Friday and most of it is going to the bills this week."  
    It was my turn to wince. I really hated the end of the month. I never knew what our finances were going to be like and the bills sent my father into an epically foul mood.   
    "I don't think that we'll have enough to cover electric this month..." she murmured, a dark shadow over her eyes and I don't think that she had meant to let me hear her.  
    "Didn't we come up short last month, too?" I asked worriedly, my stomach twisting in a knot.   
    It wasn't the first time that we had come up short and I doubted that we were the electric company's favorite customers. They had shut off our power before, but usually in the spring when my father was less concerned about it. But winter was still in full force in late February and it wasn't getting all that warm. We had been using the heat more than the previous year with all the cold fronts and a good portion of all of our finances had gone to keeping up repairs on the boiler.   
    "Don't worry," she smiled at me, but her smile was worn and forced, "We'll think of something. We always do. We might have to skip a few meals, but we'll make do. It's too bad you aren't working at Sal's anymore. Some free pizza would really come in handy."  
    "Sorry," I murmured, rubbing at my arm and feeling guilty, but she brushed me off.  
    "Don't be," she assured me, "You're making more money now, you made the right decision. I'll see what our grocery budget is like on Friday and see if there are any sales during the weekend."  
    "Maybe I should ask for my Tuesday and Saturday shifts back..." I chewed on my bottom lip, "I only asked for them off because I got on the track team at school. Practices are on Saturdays and I thought it would be alright to take an additional day off, that it wouldn't make much of a difference, but it isn't a big deal if I drop out. I'll lose my uniform fee, but it wasn't that much..."  
    "Don't you dare, Duo," she scolded me, "You never told me that you made a team," she hesitated, blushing a little and I knew that she was thinking about all of the reasons why I wouldn't have shared that with her, that I hadn't had much reason to until recently, "I'm proud of you," she smiled at me, "so don't you dare quit just because we're having money problems. You're still young and you work too much as it is. Just don't tell your father, alright?"  
    I nodded. I had kept quiet about track partially because I didn't want my father to know that I had taken Saturdays off of work for it. But I honestly had no clue how he would take it. Would he only care about the loss of money? Would he think that track was stupid? Or would he be relieved that his pansy of a son was taking _some_ kind of sport, had some sort of athletic ability? As much as I craved his praise, I couldn't risk his scorn. So many times in the past, I had been proud about something, and so many times he had made me feel like shit for that pride.   
    Got a B on a math test? Should have been an A. Got into advanced English? Where the fuck is that going to get you in life? Won the spelling bee? Only five year olds give a shit about a spelling bee. What are you, some kind of snot nosed nerd? It was better just to not say anything at all to him about it. I was never good enough for him anyway.   
    "Water's gone up, too," my mother mused as I put half of the scrambled eggs on one plate and the other half on another for her, "Oil as well. We're behind on the oil. Not as much as much as electric, but we've been running the heat so much... I suppose we could let water go for a little while... and the phone as well..."  
    Her words made me feel very tired and a bit depressed. It seemed like ever since my father had gotten fired, we hadn't been able to keep our heads above water. Pay off one bill, get behind on everything else. I thought about Heero's family, about how the heat was always on in their home when I was there, all the televisions that they owned, the premium channels that they got, and how easily Heero's father just gave me money out of his wallet. For the first time, I thought about telling him about our money troubles, just how deep in debt we were getting, and asking him for help.     My pride almost flared up, but then I looked at my mother. As she mumbled about our finances and the bills that were coming due in just a few days, her head was hung, her forehead resting on her hand as she stared blankly at the surface of her coffee, the lines on her face and the bags under her eyes so pronounced that they made her look ancient, years of stress and drinking having taken a permanent toll on her. Compared to her tiredness, her anxiety over money and seeing her so worn down, being too proud to ask for money seemed so petty of me.   
    But it wasn't up to me, now was it? It wasn't even up to my mother. Because I could see this all playing out in my head. Asking Mr. Yuy to help my family get out of this hole, at least so our power would stay on for a little while longer, so we wouldn't have to cut corners and start looking around the house for more appliances that we didn't need so much that we could sell or services like the phone that we could do without. I knew that he would be happy to help. He might have a lecture about my family needing to be more responsible and try to come up with a more permanent solution for our problems, but he would still help.   
    Then I saw myself trying to give that money to my father, how he would might be impressed with the sudden windfall at first, but then he would start to ask where it had come from. And what else could I do but tell the truth when he might think that I had stolen it? He would sneer at hearing that Mr. Yuy had just given it to me and say that he wasn't a fucking charity case and tell me to tell Heero's dad to shove his money up his ass. He knew how desperate we were, but unlike me, he didn't give a shit about my mother's stress or even his own. He was too prideful to accept money from someone like Justin. He would rather spite himself than accept a hand out. I hated him for that, for not sucking it up and do what needed to be done. But what could I possibly do? Pay the bills behind his back?   
    "Here," I told my mother softly and tried to hand her a plate of eggs and toast.  
    The amount of eggs on the plate looked pretty pathetic, but I didn't have anything else to offer her for breakfast. We were out of milk, eggs, and even butter.  
    "Oh no, you have it," she urged, pushing the plate back at me.   
    "Mom," I began to argue.  
    "You're still growing," she frowned, "and you're thin enough as it is. This is all I need for breakfast," she lifted her coffee mug.  
    She wasn't any less skinny than I was and she knew it. I also sincerely doubted, with my inconsistent diet, that I was going to do much more growing at all. Heero probably would, but he hadn't been skipping days worth of meals his entire life. I had been told by doctors frequently that even if I didn't have a history of broken bones, my calcium, vitamin d, c, and iron levels were shit enough to be messing with my bones and who knows what else. I had gained some weight from all the meals that I was getting at the Yuys', but it would take awhile to undo years of both eating not as much as I should have been, and eating fairly shitty food.   
    It's not like I'm some starved Ethopian kid, but I've come to accept that my bone density and nutrient levels are fucked. I can put on weight, but some things aren't going to get fixed. A childhood filled with greasy, cheap food and sometimes only one meal a day will do that to a kid. It wasn't just a lack of food, either. I had skipped meals because I had been depressed, not wanting to add to our money problems or because I just hadn't cared. Sometimes my father hadn't let me eat and sometimes I just got so frustrated and sick of eating cold pizza and soup out of a can that I just decided not to bother. Sometimes I had just been in so much pain, mental and physical, that the thought of eating had sickened me.   
    But I _was_ getting better about the eating thing. Taking home ec and learning about nutrition and what I was doing to myself had made me realize that I needed to be more responsible. I had learned how to cook and make better meals out of very little. Cooking itself had become a comfort to me and while we never had a lot of ingredients to make things, I had become more used to cooking things instead of letting my dad buy us take out from some dive. It was part of why I had wanted to learn how to cook to begin with, that and because of the praise that my father used to give me when I surprised him with a hot meal when he came home from work.  
    "At least have some toast," I begged, "I toasted all the bread we had left since it's so old, and we have some grape jam left."  
    "Alright," she conceded, I think realizing that I would fight her on this.  
    I took the other half of the eggs from her and traded her a couple slices of toast. I scooped my eggs onto a piece of toast and washed it down with some water from the sink. It wasn't exactly appetizing. The eggs and toast were too bland to wash out the metallic taste of the water, but at least the water was icy cold. We weren't getting any other kind of water out of the pipes lately, which made showers an adventure.   
    "If you're too busy to go grocery shopping this weekend, I can do it Sunday," I offered as I took our dishes to the sink to wash them, "Just leave me the money, list, and coupons and I can go there after work."  
    "Thank you, Duo," she gave me a tired, but grateful smile that took a little bit of the stress off of her face, "Are you going to be gone all day Saturday again? Your father had some chores that he wanted you to do."  
    Of course he did, I thought bitterly.   
    "Saturday is my first track practice," I told her, "And I was going to hang out with Heero after that. I don't know if I'm going to sleep over, but probably. If you can find out what he wants me to do, I can get up early and get it all done before I go."  
    "I'll see what I could do," she said a bit slyly and I felt amused that we had gone from barely being able to tolerate each other to helping each other sneak around my father.   
    I made a mental note to ask the Yuys to let me take home some food for my parents that weekend if we weren't going to be able to get any groceries until Sunday night. It was only Thursday and to say that pickings were slim is an understatement. The cans of beer in the refrigerator, the only beverage that we had left besides the brackish water from the tap, mocked me. I wanted to yell at my father that we couldn't survive on beer, stale bread, and cold, cheap pizza from their dinner a few nights ago. But I knew where that road led to and it just wasn't worth letting out steam.   
    The day was a bit warmer out and I really hoped that the weather would keep to Saturday morning. While I was sure that, even if the track was covered in ice, practice would go on, I really didn't relish having to be out in thirty degree weather for however long these things would go on for. I caught Heero at his locker as I came in, one of the very rare and few times that he got to school before me. He looked tired as he fumbled with the lock, glaring at it like it had just offended his mother.   
    "Stupid, motherfucking..." he muttered under his breath.  
    I had to bite my tongue not to laugh. Heero is nowhere near as trash-mouthed as I am, but he's certainly capable of it when he's in a mood.  
    "Morning," I greeted.  
    He immediately corrected his slouching posture and stopped glaring at the lock to smile brightly at me, his mood doing a complete one-eighty just from my saying hi to him.  
    "Morning" he echoed.  
    "Are you doing ok?" I asked him, remembering what had happened the previous day.  
    The memory of his tears had my guts clenching again, but I didn't see any of that shame and repulsion on his face that morning.  
    "A lot better, thanks to you," his words made me blush a little, "Now, if I could just get this damned thing open... I think it's jammed."  
    He tugged on the lock, but it didn't budge at all no matter how hard he pulled on it.  
    "Let me," I gently pushed him out of the way, "You aren't going to get it open by swearing at it."  
    He chuckled as I worked on his lock. If push came to shove, I knew how to easily pick a locker lock. It was one of the tricks that Solo had taught me and had proved necessary when Zechs switched locks on me now and then. I twisted the dial to Heero's locker combination, the both of us knowing each others' after watching us do it so many times, and because sometimes we would ask the other to go get something from it if we forgot something and were too busy.   
    I don't even know why I bother to lock my locker anymore. It's not like I keep anything in there that I can afford to lose since Zechs apparently knows how to get around a lock as well as me. Probably just to keep the assholes that _don't_ know how to pick a lock out. I finished twisting the dial, then slammed the lock up and back down. It popped open easily.   
    "You cheated," Heero grumbled, but there was a wry smirk on his lips.  
    "Haven't had any coffee yet this morning, have you?" I teased, handing him the open lock.  
    "We can't all be disgustingly awake and capable at the crack of dawn," he quipped, opening his locker to drop off his books for his afternoon classes and then locked it closed again.  
    I didn't bother with my own locker, I seldom do unless I know that I don't need my books or don't feel like lugging around what feels like a hundred pounds on my back. That morning, I didn't care if I had a set of weights in that back pack, I wanted nothing to do with my locker. Ever since the semen incident, I was wary of the thing and for once, I was in a good mood and didn't want it ruined by a possible prank.   
    "Um, so, I have my first track practice Saturday morning and I was thinking, you know, about the date..." I stumbled over my words and my heart raced a little, not from excitement, but from how nervous I was.  
    It was so stupid. We were officially dating and Heero was the one that had said that he wanted to take me out for a date. 'One date' he had said. A trial to see if we could do this, like the kiss that we had had. Only it wasn't really a trial. He had phrased it that way to soften things for me, a promise that I could still back out if I started to get second thoughts or things got too intense. But for him, it was a dream, a chance to go on a date with me, to have one moment as a 'couple'. He would have done whatever it had took to have gotten me to agree and that made me feel bad. All he wanted was to take me out, to do things as boyfriends, and I was making it hard for him.   
    I couldn't even come out and say 'it isn't just one date', because I wasn't thinking that, either. No matter how shitty a date went between us, I wasn't going to call it quits unless he wanted to. But I felt so awkward right then. It was like I was asking _him_ out on a date instead of the other way around, something that I had never done in my life. I marveled at his courage, what it must have taken him not only to confess that he likes me, but that he wanted to go out together. His balls were infinitely bigger than mine, that's for sure.   
    "Can you... did you want to go out somewhere that night?" I asked very shyly.  
    "Of course!" he blurted out, making the both of us blush with his eagerness, "Sorry," he said sheepishly, keeping his voice down just in case there was someone in ear shot that we couldn't see, "Yes, I would love to go out Saturday with you. What would you like to do?"  
    "I... I don't know exactly," I admitted, rubbing at the back of my neck, "This is kind of new for me."  
    "Well, was there any place that you went with your ex that you liked?" he asked me, "Or any place that you don't want to go to because of him?"  
    I hadn't really thought about that, that any of the places that Trowa and I had gone to might be off limits because it would remind me of him. I wondered if Heero had ever gone through a painful break up or had dated a lot before me that he would think about that. I'm not exactly a jealous person and I've never understood the impulse. I understood that Heero had had a life before me and I sure as hell wouldn't have expected him to never have dated someone before, but it still made me feel weird. Not with jealousy but with feelings of inadequacy. I would have rather that I was his first boyfriend so I didn't have to measure up to anyone. I am positive that I would lose.   
    "We didn't do a whole lot of actual dating," I admitted, not really liking talking about my relationship with Trowa.  
    Heero raised an eyebrow at that and I suppose it was a weird admission, that we had been dating without actually _dating_ and I had to remind myself that he had never met Trowa Barton or had any idea what our relationship had been like.  
    "He was always worried that people would find out that he was gay," I elaborated, "He didn't even want people to know that we were friends because of all the rumors flying around about me. After everyone found out that Quatre was gay, people stopped just _saying_ that I was a fag and started assuming that I might actually be one by association. My ex was sure that would happen to him, too, so he tried to keep anyone from seeing us together. When we were at school together, he wouldn't even look at me or say hi. He wasn't cruel about it, he just made sure that to everyone else, we were strangers."  
    "He sounds like an asshole," Heero muttered as we walked into our empty homeroom.  
    "Can you really blame him?" I asked, "With the way that people around here treat gays, can you really fault him for doing whatever it took to keep his reputation in tact?"  
    "Yes," my boyfriend said with incredible bluntness, "I can. I don't care that he wanted to remain anonymous or that he was scared of coming out. If he was that worried about it, he had no business dating another guy at all. Unless he was prepared to risk that, he shouldn't have dated you. He put you in just as much risk as he put himself in. Pretending that he didn't know you _was_ cruel. He was happy to live a double life while you were getting bullied so he could have the best of both worlds without supporting you at all. Anyone that could treat you like that... hurt you like that is an asshole."  
    I knew that he was thinking about himself as he said that, as well as my ex, and he sounded so angry about it. Hell, he was taking it worse than I ever had. I should have assured him that it wasn't that big of a deal, that it hadn't hurt me at all even when it had, but I was so stupidly happy to hear those words from him, to see him get so upset that someone had hurt my feelings. Some part of me wanted to point out that we were doing the same thing, hiding in plain sight, but I realized that that wasn't true at all.  
    It wasn't Trowa not wanting people to know that we were dating that had hurt me in the end. It wasn't him not wanting to hold my hand or kiss me in public. I could understand those things. I'm a survivor, I get that you need to do things that you don't want to do to just make it through the end of the day and I will never hate Trowa for that. It was everything else that had felt so cruel to me, that had made me resent him. Acting like he didn't even know me, pretending that we weren't friends, driving me two towns over just to have fucking dinner with me. All the subterfuge, all the lies, all the time that he had seen me being bullied and wouldn't even have my back. Leaving me behind in that equipment room and telling me that he would scream rape if it meant saving his own ass.  
    I thought about telling Heero about all of that, of pouring out the poison in my heart, but it was too much. I didn't even want to remember those days, the depression that I had felt when I thought about our relationship, how hopeless I had felt, how I had felt like filthy used goods, the fucking _mistress_ as he had dated a girl behind my back. I realized right then that I didn't want to tell Heero because it didn't matter anymore. Heero would never do that to me. _Never_. No matter how shitty our relationship might get, no matter how much he might hurt me, he would not do that to me.   
    Heero wouldn't pretend to be straight and fuck some girl while he was feeling me up, all for the sake of appearances. He had already gone that route, he had had Relena and he had given her up. He wouldn't pretend that he didn't even know me while he was kissing me when no one was looking. He didn't give a shit that people knew that we were best friends. I didn't care if he wanted to keep our relationship under wraps. Hell, _I_ wanted to keep it under wraps because I was scared of what might happen to him if people knew that, not only is Heero gay, but also dating _me_ of all people. Fuck, that they would all think that he had dumped Relena for me! That would be like painting a giant target sign on his forehead and I didn't want that to happen.  
    So I was perfectly fine with us dating in secret, but if Heero tried to pretend that we weren't friends... I couldn't handle that. It was such a strange thought, with how pessimistic I am, but that was when I look at Heero and think about the only other boyfriend I've ever had, I think: Heero would never treat me like that, and I fall in love with him even more. Because he wouldn't. I trusted him with my heart, more than I ever could Trowa.  
    "We did go out and do things," I told him, "He just didn't want anyone that knew us to see us together. We'd have picnics someplace secluded or go to movie when it wasn't crowded. He took me out to dinner a bunch of times, but outside of Nausten where no one knew us and we could pretend that we were just friends. Sometimes he would get the food and we would eat in his car."  
    Heero shook his head at that.  
    "I hate to say it, and I'm sad that you broke up with someone that you cared about, but he sounds like he was a shitty boyfriend," he said.  
    I felt secretly pleased that he thought that about Trowa. All this time, as much as I had hated what Trowa had done to me, I had always felt like it had been my entire fault. Logically, I know that's not true. While I was just as much of a shitty boyfriend, I had led him on and bottled everything up inside and had never been able to give Trowa what he had wanted, did that really mean that I had deserved how he had treated me? I had never known if I could even truly resent him, if I had that right after everything that I had done. Heero didn't know about those things, but even he thought that I had been poorly treated and that did wonders for my self-esteem on the subject.  
    "So basically," Heero summed up, "You haven't actually been on a _real_ date before?"  
    "I guess not," I admitted, "Even when we did go out to eat together, we never really talked much and I just kind of felt like he was a friend that was dragging me along with him. He would pay for the meal because I couldn't and we'd talk about safe subjects that normal friends would talk about, if anything, and then we would leave. It felt no different than going out to eat with Quatre, just minus the closeness."  
    "Good," Heero said with a grin and I realized that he was happy that my first date would be with _him_ , "I'll have to do something really special with you, then. A real date... let's see..." he thought for a few minutes as I just kind of stared at him as I realized that I really _didn't_ have a single clue as to what a real date would be like, "Dinner and a movie is traditional, but boring and cliched. And you said that the two of you used to do that, so that's out. Have you ever played miniature golf?"  
    "What's that?" I blinked at him, which only made him grin wider.  
    "I'll take that as a no, then. Awesome. There's this place in Nasket that has a course and there's a really great Italian place just three blocks from it. My parents took me there this summer," he told me.  
    I had no idea what miniature golf was or if I would like it, nor had I ever been to Nasket. I knew that it was a forty-five minute bus ride from Nausten and was known for it's salt water taffy and homemade soft-serve ice cream shops, making it a huge tourist spot during the summer, but that was the extent of my knowledge.   
    "That's a bit far, though," I argued, "The bus almost takes an hour..."  
    Heero snorted.  
    "We're not taking a bus," he said a bit haughtily, "I'm going to borrow my dad's car. He won't mind."  
    I nearly asked what he would tell his father about _why_ he needed the car, but I just assumed that he would tell him that we were going to hang out. It wasn't so strange that he might take me someplace just to have fun without rousing suspicion.   
    "So did you want to?" he asked me, "I promise, I'll pay for everything."  
    His voice was pleading, so desperate and excite. If he hadn't been asking me out on a date, he would have been like a kid asking his parent for a coveted toy. But behind all of that, I saw fear in his eyes. The fear that I was going to turn him down. How could I possibly say no?  
    "Sure," I told him and got the privilege of watching his entire face lighting up with pure happiness, "This restaurant... there isn't a dress code or anything, is there?"  
    "It's not fancy," he told me and I relaxed. I wouldn't know what to do in some five star joint anyway, "I mean, it's nice, but not a place that you would have to make reservations to or anything. Jeans and a sweater would be just fine."  
    "Ok, I'll come over as soon as practice is over," I told him.   
    "You know I'm going to watch your practice, right?" he said in a teasing tone, but I understood right away that he wasn't joking.  
    "What?" I sputtered, "You don't need to do that!"  
    "You went to my try outs," he pointed out.  
    "And you went to mine!" I shot back, "I doubt we're doing anything exciting on the first day."  
    "But I like watching you run," he smiled at me, which of course made me blush like a weirdo.  
    "It's a free country," I murmured, "You can watch if you want."  
    His smile turned endearing at my embarrassment. Through the rest of the day, he was practically insufferable. He was in this incredibly good mood and nothing that anyone did or said to him made any difference. If this was how he acted just from getting one date from me, how would he react, I wondered, if I told him that I would love to go on more?   
    Was that what I wanted, I asked myself as I continued on with my day. If this date went really well, did I want to fall into a long term relationship with him? Did I want to court him, go out on dinners and whatever else couples did until he didn't want me anymore? Could I sacrifice and do whatever he wanted out of me, just like Trowa? Or did I want to give him this one moment of happiness and then end it before I got too deep? Before Heero got too attached to this idea of us as a couple.  
    The logical part of me, the part where my fear lived, the fear of what the future held and failing him said yes, let him down gently before you both get hurt so bad that you'll never recover from it. Because right now it's just a bad cut. Later, it will be so much worse. Later, it will make the both of you bleed and it will _never_ scar over.   
    But I remembered the two kisses that we had shared. I remembered how happy Heero had looked when I had agreed to trying this, when I had agreed to go on a date with him. I didn't want to stop this. Not really. I didn't want to hurt him and I didn't want what had happened between Trowa and myself to happen to us, but I also couldn't stop wanting him. It was so stupid. I had been a pragmatist and pessimist for my entire life, and now, when I was risking everything in my heart, I was trying to be an optimist. I don't even know _how_ to be an optimist. But I'm a weak coward, and no matter how much I know what I _should_ do, I just... I couldn't.   
    I knew right then that, if this date really did go well, it would be my undoing.   
  
  
End part 7  
  
(1) Omelet rolls, while not true omelets, are made with the same ingredients as traditional omelets, but you bake them in the oven in a pan, then roll the dough and cut it into slices like you would a yule log or jelly roll. It's easier to make than several omelets if you're cooking for a group of people.   
  
Author's Note: I want to apologize for taking so long to get back into writing this. I took a day off, like I always do, but one day quickly became three. During that time, I went through some... issues. I had the worst bought of anxiety and depression that I've ever had and had a very hard time dealing with it. I had a lot of trouble sleeping and had some bouts of crying and harmful thoughts. No, I'm not suicidal (I don't believe in it), but it was a really difficult time for me. I realized some things about myself and the way that I'm living right now that troubled me a great deal, partially because I'm unemployed and partially because I suffer from a lot of self-esteem issues and an anxiety disorder. The shitty thing about creative types is that, for many of us, the thing that makes us creative also makes us susceptible to personality disorders and emotional issues. I'm feeling a lot better now, but at the time, I just didn't have my head together enough to write anything and even when I started to, I was worried that my mood was going to bleed over into my writing. It was only until a couple of days ago that I was in the right mood to even start this part.   
  
But enough about my personal problems, time for some review response!   
  
Guest Shin: I didn't want to drag things out between Heero and Duo like they are in TRTK. It was really just a matter of time before Heero grew a set, lol. And yes, just because they're together, it in no way means that things are going to be smooth for them. Duo is hiding a lot from Heero and has a lot of issues with sex and his body that Heero isn't aware of. This isn't really a spoiler, so I'll come out and say it: Heero's parents are totally aware that Heero has a crush on Duo. They've been aware of it long before Duo has. There are subtle hints of it in previous chapters, like both of his parents teasing him about things and Duo not understanding why Heero is getting so embarrassed, or Heero's mother leaving the bedroom door open when they're in there together. As for Duo fighting back against his father, well, his plate is kind of full dealing with his relationship issues with Heero. He still has a lot of self-esteem problems to work through before he'll get the courage to deal with his father.   
  
Thank you to everyone who reviewed and said that they liked the last part. It sure was fun to write, and a relief to progress their relationship forward.   
  
  
  



	52. Chapter 8 Part 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duo's boss discusses his future with their company. Duo and Heero go jogging together to prepare him for his first track practice.

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 8  
Part 8  
  
  
    I had agreed to our date so easily that morning at school that I suppose I had made it seem like an offhanded matter, but my stomach was in absolute knots for the rest of the day. It was just like Heero had said to me, that this would be my first _real_ date, but I hadn't really thought about that until after I had agreed to go to Nasket with him. It was kind of like a slap to the face, realizing that I had zero clue what I was doing and what was going to happen on Saturday. The dates that I had gone on with Trowa really weren't a good reference point for this.   
    I was torn tortuously between being terrified that the date would fail and hoping that it would, that I would have some kind of excuse to stop this. But I really didn't want it to. I didn't want Heero to realize that this was all a huge mistake, but I felt inadequate every time I thought about the date. What if I made an ass of myself? What if Heero realized how boring I am? How would this date be different than all of the times that we had hung out together? What the hell was I going to wear? And what if I was horribly bad at miniature golf? I had no clue what that was, but I had never played any kind of golf before, I was going to suck at it.   
    It was stupid, I know. One of the great things of falling in love with your best friend is that you never have to go through that awkward part of dating that I've heard about, that 'getting to know you' stage. Heero and I had hung out before, so this shouldn't be such a big deal, but I was driving myself crazy with all of my worries and doubts. I barely paid attention to my classes, even when Coach Horner gathered myself and my teammates at the beginning of gym to talk to us about our first practice on Saturday. He didn't really tell us anything important, just the time we were going to meet, that we would be doing some running practices at the track behind the school and that all of our uniforms had come in. Nothing that I really needed to pay attention to. As soon as he was done blathering with us, I wandered back to Heero to do our warm up exercises.  
    "Having second thoughts?" he asked me.  
    For a moment, I startled, wondering if he could read my thoughts about the whole dating thing before I figured out that he was talking about track, not our fledgling relationship. I almost, automatically, said yes, because in the past, I definitely would have been. I had never been a part of any real group activity before, let alone something athletic. Just like the whole dating thing, I didn't know what to expect. I wasn't exactly looking forward to being on a team. It wasn't like I was going to get along with any of the other boys. Worst of all, Alex and some of his and Zechs's friends were on the team and I just knew that they were going to mess with me.      
    But you want to know the strange thing? While if Heero had asked me when I had first gotten on to the team if I was having second thoughts, I would have shouted 'yes!' But right then, just a couple of days before our first practice, I wasn't having any at all. Maybe I had just gotten used to the idea of doing this, as crazy as it was. Maybe I was even looking forward to it. Maybe it was because, compared to the terror of dating my best friend, just being on the track team was barely on my radar, or maybe, after all of this time with Heero constantly telling me that I'm amazing and far from the loser that I've always seen myself as, it was starting to sink in.       
    Or maybe it was just the look in my mother's eye when I had told her that I had gotten onto the team. She had looked so proud of me... how could any of my petty worries mean anything when I had two people in my life that believed in me that much? Even if I didn't believe in myself, I believed in them, and that was good enough, wasn't it? So I shook my head and with a little, wry smile, I told Heero 'nah' and he grinned back at me, looking relieved. He had, after all, been the one to convince me to try out for track.   
    "Have you done any running this winter?" he asked me.  
    'Kind of,' I very nearly blurted out, 'If you can count running away from my father as practicing.'  
    But I didn't really think that running through my house and out the door or diving through an open window could really be considered to be training for track, so I shook my head again.  
    "It's been too icy," I pointed out, "I'm going to be rusty as hell."  
    It was only pretty recently that it had started to get warm enough out to keep ice off the sidewalks. The weather has been pretty chaotic, as cold as fuck in the mornings and then decently warm in the afternoons. Once and awhile we would get a brief snow, but it melted quickly. I'm not a big fan of this time of year, when there's water freaking everywhere and you can never tell what sort of day you're going to get.   
    "We should go to the park tomorrow morning before school," he offered, "Just to get some practice in before Saturday. It hasn't snowed for a few days, so the path should be clear."  
    "Alright," I easily agreed, remembering the last time that we had gone jogging together and how much I had enjoyed it, "Is six too early for you?"  
    "No, six is fine," he nodded, "We can run for an hour or so and pick up some breakfast on our way to school."  
    I almost quipped 'consider it a date' and would have, but it only made my stomach tighten again.  
    "In fact, we should make a habit of going running in the mornings," he said, "Just doing once a week practices isn't going to do much."  
    "You sure you're ok with that?" I asked him, knowing full well that he was not as graceful at waking up early as I was, "You don't need to go running with me."  
    "I like to," he insisted, "It's enjoyable. Besides, varsity will be starting up in a month, some extra exercise won't hurt me."  
    "Ok, then. Six it is," I smiled at him as we broke up for our day's activity, which turned out to be stupid weight training of all things.  
    I made my usual trip with Heero to his house after school for a snack and to take care of my cat. The snack turned out to be raspberry squares and I even found a chicken casserole that Mrs. Yuy must have made that morning with a note telling me to take it for my dinner. I felt disgustingly spoiled, but took the food anyway, leaving her a thank you note on their fridge. I had also been left some money so I could take the bus to work. As I went to Leneski's with my dinner in a plastic bag and change in my pocket, it struck me that this was probably what it was like to have normal parents, what someone like Heero was used to.   
    The entire bus ride back to the south end of town, I wondered over that. It seemed like the more time I was spending around Heero, the more I was becoming integrated with his family. Some of the things that his parents did for me still amazed me and I constantly wondered if that was just the kind of people that they are, that I could have been any dumb kid in my situation and they would have done this much to help, or if it was more personal than that. It seemed to me like, lately, I was moving on past just being Heero's friend and actually being a member of their family. Had they intended this, wanted this, and were trying to make me feel more welcome, or was this just in their nature and they recognized that I wasn't going anywhere any time soon?   
    I had that dual feeling that I often get of worrying about all of that and feeling happy about it. I certainly wasn't their child, but they treated me like I was half of the time, or maybe a nephew that they were hosting. It was more than just 'you can stay here if you need a place'. They cooked me meals, gave me money, helped take care of my damned cat, and even asked for help doing things around the house. That last bit was the most important in my eyes. Sure, the whole gifting thing might amaze most people and those people might think that that was the proof that Heero's parents cared about me and were letting me be a part of their family, but for me it was the chores. Because I might be far removed from etiquette and manners that normal families might use, but I know enough that you don't ask a house guest to help you clean out the gutters.   
    My head was in the clouds as I got off the bus and walked the four blocks to work. Solo wasn't there yet, along with half of the guys that I work on location with, so I took my time putting the food in the fridge and my uniform for my factory shift in my locker. I keep my uniform for my construction job, including my boots, at Heero's now and just change there, but change into my other uniform in the factory bathroom so I won't have to stop at home to do it. I was just putting the lock back onto my locker (it was nice to have a locker that no one would break into for a change) when Solo popped his head into the locker room looking for me.  
    "Hey, Duo," he greeted, still in his leather jacket and worn jeans, "boss needs to see you."  
    I froze as I closed the lock and I felt my stomach drop to my damn knees. Leneski wanted to see me, personally? He _never_ wanted to see me. The only time he ever needed to 'see' any of his employees was if they had done something he had to ream them out over, had to lay one of them off, cut their hours, or fire them. None of these things were what I would call good news for me. And I knew that I hadn't done anything for him to lecture me about because my working habits haven't changed since day one. I needed the job too much to risk doing anything that would get me fired, even showing up to work late enough to warrant a warning or forgetting my uniform.   
    "Did he say why?" I asked as anxiety ripped my guts to shreds.  
    In my head, a voice was screaming 'fired' over and over again.   
    "Nah," Solo said nonchalantly, but his brow furrowed with worry as he came to the same possible conclusion that I had, "But I'm sure it's nothing, Duo. He likes you and your work, he's never had a single complaint, you know that."  
    I nodded and walked out of the locker room towards Leneski's office, but I felt numb and far from reassured. In the time that it took me to walk from the locker room to the office, I went from being very stressed and anxious to being a nervous wreck, my heart beating too fast and my hands shaking a little. I wondered if this was how my father had felt when he had been fired, only he had been in a much worse situation. Same job for more than ten years and no secondary income. This feeling like the ground beneath your feet is dropping out and there is nothing you can do to stop it. Or maybe he had felt more angry than frightened.  
    What the hell was I going to do if I lost this job? With our finances the way that they are, I wouldn't just be screwing over myself, but my entire family. So much depended on the better wage that I had been making there. And if my dad found out... fuck, but after what he had done just finding out that I had quit two of my other jobs for this one, what would he do if I were actually fired? And I had hoped... I had hoped that I could have this to fall back on after I graduated and found myself homeless. I had thought that I could be hired on full time like Solo, but of course something as fortunate as that wouldn't happen to me.   
    I knocked on the closed door to the office, stupidly and childishly hoping that my boss had stepped out and that might delay things for a little while, like that would actually work.  
    "Come in," Leneski's familiar voice came from the office and, feeling like I was walking to the butcher's block, I walked inside.  
    Leneski's Construction and Maintenance did a great business in Nausten, especially south since they are fairly priced compared to their competition, but you wouldn't really know it from their building. It was a small, humble place and Leneski's office wasn't really much to look at. Just a couple of desks for him and his secretary, who happened to be his older daughter, a single window that looked out at the side parking lot where the work vans were parked, a couple of filing cabinets and some computers that looked like they had been purchased in the early nineties. It looked like the office of some tiny, start up business, not a family business that could compete against some of the regional corporations that had shops in town.   
    Leneski himself was not an impressive guy. At 52, his hair was already almost entirely grey and he had a wealth of wrinkles on his face, but the kind that a man gets from a life of smiling and laughing, not stress like my father was already starting to get, and rather common, dark brown eyes. He was shorter than my father and Heero's and was in that middle ground between lanky and heavy set, his health pretty damned good for a guy his age that smoked and ate more fast food than he should.   
    His daughter, a twenty-six year old brunette that looked more like her father than her tall, redheaded mom, was a college drop out that had decided to go work for the family instead of try to go back. Two out of four of Leneski's sons worked with me, one of the other two at college and the youngest went to school with me. His daughter wasn't at her desk as I came in and shut the door behind me, thankfully, and Leneski looked pretty laid back as he sat behind his desk, shuffling through some paperwork.   
    "Duo, come in," he told me unnecessarily as he smiled that easy smile of his at me, "Please, take a seat."  
    His friendly demeanor did absolutely nothing to make me feel better. It suddenly dawned on me that I had never been fired before. I sat in the chair that was in front of his desk, feeling like I was at the principal's office and was about to get lectured. I felt incredibly nervous and awkward as I sat there, wondering if I should ask him what this was about or just start pleading with him not to sack me right away. I stayed quiet, trying not to fidget or bounce my leg up and down like I do sometimes when I'm nervous. Leneski regarded me, folding his fingers together and flexing them.  
    "You know," he began, his tone not giving a single thing away, "when Solo first referred you to me, I really didn't want to hire you."  
    I could have groaned at the sharp pain that stabbed at my guts. Here it was, I thought. If he was firing me, he would tell me that his initial instincts were right and I just wasn't working out, and if he was laying me off, he would bemoan about what a good employee I had been, but I was still the youngest guy on his crew, I was just a teenager and didn't have a family to take care of, and the last one that he had hired to boot. It wasn't personal, he would say, he would wish that he could keep me, but times are tough and all that shit.  
    "This isn't a job for teenagers," my boss told me very bluntly, "This isn't like working at a grocery store check out or cleaning out a fitting room where you can stand around and chat up your buddies and still expect enough of a wage to see a movie on the weekends. It's hard labor, it's dangerous, and requires a certain level of attention and dedication. In my experience, most teenagers just want to coast through a job because a job at fifteen, sixteen, or seventeen ain't a career. High school, socializing, sports, those are their careers. Kids your age don't have the mind set for construction work. It might pay better, but it's just not worth it to them.   
    "So when Solo told me he had a sixteen year old kid that needed a job... _needed_ mind you, not wanted, I was leery. I thought that you would quit after a couple of weeks once you realized the work that this job involves. But Solo is one of my best employees, despite his record, so I decided to trust his judgment. I figured, I had the space to fill, you're off the books so it wouldn't cost me much, and if you scrubbed out, I could probably get someone else pretty quick," he laid his hands over his stomach and leaned back in his chair, his brown eyes both warm and piercing, "But I never thought that you would turn out to be the hardest damned worker that I've ever had."  
    I blinked at him, a bit confused about where he was going with all of this. If that was really the truth, if he really did think that I was a hard worker, then he wouldn't be firing me, would he? Unless it wasn't about my conduct as a worker. Maybe he was finally having second thoughts about hiring someone too young to legally do some of the work that he gave me.   
    "You're almost always here on time," he praised, "And you might call out sometimes, but you've never just not shown up or cut out early. You're half the size of every guy on the crew, but you take on every job I throw at you and never complain, never tell me you can't do the same work as then and volunteer for jobs that even my veterans can't stand. You're polite, smart, do your work, and learn things quickly," he sat up and put his elbows on his desk, "Now, I know you're in your junior year of high school and kids your age, all they can think about is how long they've got before they can jump ship and get the hell out of this town. I knew when I hired you that I'd only get you for a year, year and a half tops and I'm fine with that. Like I said, it ain't too hard to find a guy to fill in your position if you gotta leave, but let me just ask. What do you plan to do when you graduate in a year, Duo?"  
    At this point I was completely and totally lost as to why he had summon me in there and I was feeling a bit embarrassed by his compliments, unsure of how to answer that question. I guess that I didn't really have much of an answer because I still had no clue what I was going to do when I graduated. I could have given some bullshit response about how it was too soon for me to know or I would get back to him on that, but he hadn't fired me yet and I decided to just be honest about it.  
    "I'm not really sure," I admitted, "I don't have the money to go off to college, even a tech school, and I don't have any kind of career that's calling my name. I guess I'll just be staying in Nausten and trying to get decent work so I can afford an apartment or something. Maybe if I make enough, I can save to go to school, but that'll take a long time. I was hoping that I could keep this job, and I would be incredibly grateful if you'd keep me, but if you need to hire someone full time that has more experience, someone older that you can hire officially, I won't put up a fight. You've been good to me and I appreciate you letting me work here, I understand how things are."  
    And I really did. My boss didn't know how things were for me, he didn't know how much my family was struggling or that I had been relying on this job after I graduated. All he knew was that I was a good worker, but still young, not like the other guys on the crew where this was their damned career. I wouldn't have expected him to give me preferential treatment over some guy in his forties that had just gotten sacked or needed this for his second job because the job market was shit and bills were getting higher.   
    I understood that it didn't matter one bit that I needed money, needed a job, needed to be able to find myself a place to live in a year or I was going to be out on the street. All any potential employer was going to see was eighteen years old, only high school educated, with no extraordinary talents. To his credit, Leneski looked sympathetic to my problems instead of bored or dubious. I know that some people, if I had said all that to them, would have said that I was just a melodramatic teenager or claim to have worse issues.   
    "You're right," he told me with a small smile, "I do need to fulfill this position full time. While you've been a great help, your hours are still more limited than I would like, especially with you taking Tuesdays off. Sanford's been talking about getting off the crew and working limited jobs or just taking the office his work. He's too old be going up a ladder every day anyway. Last thing I need is for his back problems to get him hurt lifting something or, god forbid, him falling off a roof. I would love to have him in here helping me shuffle papers or just sending him out on the painting jobs, but that means that I need an able bodied, full time employee more than ever within a year, maybe a little more if he can hold out. I need someone reliable who can pull his own weight and I won't have to worry about retiring or quitting on me."  
    "I understand," I repeated with a heavy sigh, hanging my head and looking at my lax hands that were resting on my lap.  
    Anxiety filled me as I waited for the ax to fall. It wasn't such a big deal, I tried to tell myself. I'd have to take on a few extra jobs like before to make up for the loss of money, and if I was careful, I might be able to make the same as I was making at this job without my father ever realizing that I had been laid off. I wouldn't get Tuesdays off anymore, and I'd have to work Saturdays again, too, but I could still go to my track meets and practices with the right schedule. But I still felt that crushing weight on my chest knowing that I had had this great job and couldn't have held on to it, that I was going to lose those days away from work, the time that I got to spend with Heero.   
    "So, how would you like to have it?" Leneski suddenly asked me.  
    My head shot up and I stared across the desk at him. For a moment, I could not comprehend for the life of me what he was asking. Have what? The bad news? The knowledge that I was out of a job? Then, in a rush of bewilderment and shock, I realized what he was saying.  
    "T-the full time job?" I stammered.  
    "Yes, that," he smirked, looking amused and maybe a bit proud of himself.  
    "I... I couldn't possibly," I began to protest even as a voice in my head was screaming that I would be an idiot to not immediately say yes, "I mean I'm still in school for another year..."  
    "Oh, I don't mean right away," he explained, "Like I said, I can wait a little while. But the way I see it, it would be a good fit for both of us. I need someone I can rely on, and you sure have proven that you're that. You've already got the training, I would just need to hire you on officially. And you're planning on staying local and need a full time job if you want to save up for a place. It seems like this is a win, win situation for the both of us. I won't lie, this isn't the best job out there. There's some benefits, but not much. You'll get a pretty basic and cheap health insurance package and a few vacation days, but nothing grand. And you'll be making more money than you are now, but you'll also need to put in more hours."  
    "How much do you need?" I asked him even though I decided right then and there that if I got this job, I'd work a hundred hours a damned week if he wanted me to.  
    "Forty hours minimum," he said with a wince, like he thought that was going to make me turn him down, "If business goes the way it has been, probably fifty to sixty depending on the work. I know that seems a lot compared to the thirty you work now, but I can start you off at fourteen an hour. How does that sound to you?"  
    "Great!" I blurted out, my mind spinning at that amount of money, more than I've ever made in my life and not caring that it still wasn't amazing, it would be enough for one person to live on if I was smart with my money and, best of all as far as I was concerned, I could afford to quit my factory job.  
    I blushed hard at how eager I was coming across, which made Leneski laugh.  
    "Well, I'm glad that we're on the same page," he grinned and it made me feel better that he _did_ look a little relieved, "Now, I can keep you at your current wage and hours until you graduate and sign you on right away. There's a ton of forms to fill out and you'll have to get some certificated training on the equipment, but I'll be able to send you out on more jobs when I don't have to worry about people putting up a stink about your age."  
    "I don't know what to say," I managed to get out, even though my throat felt like it was trying to close up, "Thank you so much-"  
    He waved my gratitude away.  
    "You're actually doing me a huge favor," he told me, "Now I don't have to spend a whole lot of time and money looking for a new employee, which is more of a pain in the ass than you might think."  
    He stood and I understood that that was it, we were done with the conversation. I still had a hundred questions about why he would want me permanently on his pay roll, some dumb, broke kid, and what would be different, what responsibilities that I was going to have, but that was a year away and I was just so relieved not to have gotten fired, let alone getting a fucking _job_ , a real one. It seemed so unreal to me, that I would be given this huge break.   
    "Thank you, sir," I repeated myself, standing and reaching my hand over the desk for him to shake.  
    Leneski looked amused as he shook my hand, like he thought that I was being silly. I left his office with him shaking his head at the stupid smile on my face. It's funny, as I went on with my group to go fix a roof on the north side of town, all I could think about was telling this piece of news to someone, and how excited I was. I should have been excited to tell my mother, to let her know that if things really went bad, at least I had the chance at taking care of myself and perhaps her as well. But I wasn't. The only person that I was thinking about was Heero and the thought that he would be proud of me made my heart swell.   
  
*****  
  
    I kept my promotion to myself from my parents, at least for the time being. My father was awake and in a foul mood when I got up for my run with Heero, which wasn't a rare thing, but he was usually in a better mood on Fridays since it was the end of his work week. I honestly didn't know if I would ever let that bit of information slip to him, how he would react. I extremely doubted that it would make him the least bit happy to know that his teenaged son already had a full time job lined up after his struggle to find one. Even just the fact that I was in a good mood might set him off.   
    A disturbing thought came to me as I rushed out of the house before he could pay the least bit attention to me. What if he found that I was going to be making some decent money and let me keep on living with them and took my pay for himself? I needed a place to stay before I could afford to get an apartment, but the thought of staying at home was not a pleasant one. In the past, before things had gotten this bad, I would have shrugged it off and not cared, choosing to think that I was helping my family and at least I would have food and a roof over my head. But now, I couldn't stand that possibility. Something had changed in me and now I'm actually looking forward to getting kicked out by my father. It stopped being 'but I'll be homeless' and started being 'at least I won't be here anymore'. I don't know when that happened exactly, when being away from my dad became more of a relief and less of a bad thing.   
    Legally, I know he can't just force me to stay and take my money. I'd be eighteen and legally free of him. I could just run away or go stay at the Yuys' for awhile. But when did legality mean jack shit to my father? Even when he had been a cop, he had abused the law, if Solo was to be believed, and I sure did believe him. He had roughed up the people he had arrested, beaten his family, raped me, and who even knew what else. If he had paid for the women that he had been sleeping with, that was another law broken. And what about the jobs that he had gotten for me? Had my bosses _merely_ owed him a favor, or had it been more sinister than that? Extortion? Threats? Blackmail? None of my bosses had ever seemed especially happy with my father. Andre and my boss at the factory almost seemed to loathe him.   
    He couldn't legally keep me home and I _could_ just run away, but he could find me. He could threaten me. He could force me to do pretty much whatever he wanted because, even at eighteen years old, still as a legal adult, he was still my father. He was still bigger and stronger than I would ever be and, I wondered with horror, if he ordered me to do something, would I have the strength to tell him no? My entire life, I haven't been able to disobey him, with the exception of staying friends with Heero, so what would it matter how old I am? It was disgustingly plausible that, after he got enraged that I had this job, he would decide to profit from it.   
    I pushed the thought away as I put my sneakers on and ran out the door. Another year, I told myself, there was no reason to worry about any of it until then. I had enough problems in the present to be worrying about the future. Just focus on surviving the rest of the year, I told myself, and face these problems when they come up. Just keep moving, for as long as you can. Story of my life. It was freezing cold as I jogged to the park, wanting to warm up a little and forgoing the bus. I couldn't tell if it was just the morning or if it was going to be one of those disgustingly cold days, but there was little wind, so fuck if I was going to call off our run because of a little chill in the air.   
    Heero was waiting for me at the park entrance, dressed in a heavy jacket and gloves, his cheeks red and looking fairly miserable. I felt incredibly happy to see him and his own expression brightened when he saw me, but he raised a scornful eyebrow at my own thin jacket.   
    "That's not going to do you any good," I gestured to his heavier, winter coat, "You're going to want to lose it as soon as we get warmed up."      
    "Fat chance," he shivered and I didn't know if it was for dramatic effect or he really was that cold.  
    We didn't make much small talk, the both of us eager to start and wanting to get warm, so we began our run right away. I was rusty as hell, but it felt good as we started with a light jog and slowly built to a steady run. I might be rusty from not having run long distances since the fall, but I wasn't out of shape. Just like the first time that we had run together, at first Heero and I kept up with each other. Running was obviously not his specialty, but Heero was an athlete through and through and knew how to run. But as we built up speed, I had to consciously tone my pace down, realizing that I could out run him if I didn't pay attention.   
    Sure enough, as we ran the path through the park and the woods, Heero got hot enough that he had to shuck out of his jacket, leaving just his sweater and gloves on and shook his head at me as I grinned. We did a few laps around the park before finally calling it quits after an hour at it. We ended up by some benches in front of one of the water fountains, Heero panting while I was just breathing hard, the both us a bit red in the face.  
    "I really needed that," I said, "Almost forgot how much I enjoy running."  
    "I don't think you'll have any trouble tomorrow," Heero panted with a small smile, "You sure know how to pace yourself."  
    He went to the fountain and took a quick drink from it, looking a bit amazed that water was even coming out and nothing was frozen. I wiped my wild bangs from my eyes, feeling that they were a bit sweaty, but not too bad.   
    "Want to hit Lanie's Bakery for a coffee? We still have a bit before school and I could use something hot," I confessed.  
    I had purposively dressed in lighter clothing knowing that the run was going to keep me plenty warm, but that didn't mean that I couldn't feel the cold air on my face.   
    "Hold up a sec," he said, wiping the water from his lips, "There's just one thing that I need to do first."  
    He looked around us, but the park was empty and had been empty the entire time we had been there, the two of us the only people apparently crazy enough to run in that weather. Then, he leaned in and gave me an earnest, but quick kiss on the lips. Suddenly, I couldn't feel the cold at all. All I could feel was how hot my face was. His lips had felt a little wet from his drink and chapped with how dry the air was. Heero looked so pleased with himself as he pulled away, his blue eyes brighter and more alive than the morning sky. He brushed the hair from my face, his cloth covered fingers feeling strange, but only because I wanted to feel his skin instead of his gloves.   
    "I've wanted to do that since the first time I saw you run," he confessed and I could see the desire in his eyes, the attraction as he looked at my face, seeing something there that he liked.  
    I blushed even hotter and that amorous spark in his eyes grew. For a moment, but only a moment, I felt the same fear that I had felt when I had been with Trowa, knowing that he was lusting for me and being overwhelmed by that passion, a passion that I had never felt in my life. But unlike Trowa, Heero knew when to back off. Miraculously, even though he looked like he wanted to do and say more to me, perhaps kiss the breath right out of me, he tempered himself. With the kind of self control that my ex had never possessed, he drew himself away from me and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear.   
    Then that was it. He turned to leave the park like it was no big deal at all and I followed him, feeling so relieved. More than just relief, I felt love and _trust_ for him. He had felt aroused for me, for reasons that I will never understand, and as alone as we had been, he could have done more. He could have pushed. But he _hadn't._ He had either realized that it would have been inappropriate or he had noticed that I was getting uncomfortable and, wondrously, he had put the brakes on himself. I had never seen anyone do that before, put my feelings ahead of their own on such a physical level. And he hadn't made me feel like he was doing me a favor or he would expect something in return later. He had just done it instinctively.  
    I was struck, realizing all of that, with the reminder that Heero wasn't Trowa, that I needed to stop comparing him to the one other boyfriend that I had ever had or, worse, my father, but it was difficult because he was so different. All my reference points were useless with him. He knocked me off my feet in the strangest of moments and that should have terrified me, but it only made me love him more. And sure, I _was_ scared that I didn't know what to expect from him, but given what Trowa had gotten me used to, not expecting those things from him, knowing that Heero might actually not pull the same crap with me was such an enormous relief.  
    I didn't know how to tell him or show him that I appreciated both the small kiss and his respect, so I settled on giving his hand a squeeze and smiling at him when he looked at me. He smiled back and I knew that he understood how grateful I was, leaving things at that. Then we were back to being best friends again, just the same two people that had been for the past few months like we hadn't just kissed in the park or shared an intimate moment. We stopped by the bakery to get our coffee and some bagels, eating right there in one of the tables inside of the shop before rushing off to school.     As I sat down in homeroom with him and thought about our morning together, I wondered how our date the next day could possibly be anything but a success. Sometimes, because of how intense my feelings are for him and how intense _he_ is, things are hard with Heero. But they're also so easy. I don't have to hide from him, I don't have to brood or try to be someone that I'm not. He just draws me out from behind my walls and I can't help but act naturally around him. I mean, what we had done that morning, wasn't that pretty much what regular people did on dates? An activity, a kiss, a shared meal? I had no idea how going out with him on Saturday was going to be any different, how it could be anything worse.   
    I managed to keep my nerves from going haywire through the rest of Friday and well into Saturday. Anytime I started to think about my upcoming date, I distracted myself with wondering what my first track practice was going to be like and, like a cat with a shoe lace, my mind went for it. Work was a welcome distraction, too. I hadn't told Solo what my meeting with our boss had been about and he was chomping at the bit like a little kid on the day before Christmas trying to figure it out.   
    I could have shown mercy on him, I suppose, but there was some pessimistic, superstitious part of me that was worried that the more people that I told about it, the less likely it was going to happen. Besides, while I was sure that Solo would be fine with it, I just didn't want word to get around with my other coworkers. If the other part timers learned that I had gotten a full time position when I didn't have the seniority that they did, they would be pissed. Of course, if any of them had been good at their jobs, they would have gotten it instead of me, but I sure as hell wasn't going to point that out to any of them.   
    The one damper on my day was going home at 1:30 am and finding my father's car in the driveway. I had really been hoping that, it being the weekend, he would have gone out to a bar or crashed at Pat's or wherever the hell he goes when he isn't home, but no such luck. Worse, the engine was still warm. I could feel the heat radiating from the hood of the car as I passed it. The car always had a tendency to overheat, even if my dad was just making a five minute trip to the grocery store and makes this god awful noise nowadays. It probably should have been put out of its misery ages ago, but my father is as stubborn about his car as he is about the damned television set. We don't need the stupid thing and the cost of keeping it operational is money we could easily be using for bills, but he still insists on using it even though there's a goddamned bus stop just a ten minute walk from the house.   
    The warmth coming from the car made my stomach twist in trepidation. It meant that my father had come home within the hour, and absolutely nothing good could come from that. It meant that he had been out drinking all night again and that he was possibly still awake. Coupled with the mood that he had been in that morning and I really didn't want to go into the house. I didn't have to, I realized as I stood there in our pitiful, cracked driveway. I could go back the way that I had come and crash at Heero's house. I didn't even need to tell anymore, I had the key and a bunch of my clothes were there. I was going to go there in the morning anyway, so why the hell not? I had done it a dozen times before, just snuck in during the small hours of the morning like a delinquent kid or a bad roommate.   
    I shook my head at myself, at my cowardice and stepped inside of my house. Crashing at the Yuys' because my father had threatened me or tried to hurt me was one thing. If I started running off to Heero's every time I might have to see my father, well... it was a slippery slope to just running away from home entirely, wasn't it? The house was completely dark as I went inside. That could be good in that it meant that my father had gone to bed or it could be bad in that he was so drunk that he didn't care about turning on the light.   
    I navigated my way through the kitchen in the dark until I found the light switch for the little light over the stove instead of the overhead lights and flicked them on. The kitchen was immaculate, giving credence to my theory that my father had just gotten home, and their bedroom door was closed. My father rarely did that, but my mother did, so he hadn't stumbled in there yet. A post it note on the fridge gained my attention away from trying to figure out my father's whereabouts. I squinted at it and saw that it was a list of chores. Dust the house, clean the stove, wash the windows, unclog the bathroom drain, and do the laundry, only there was a little check mark next to that one.   
    My father wasn't one to leave me notes, which meant that my mother had managed to get my list of chores out of him. I smiled at her thoughtfulness as I pulled the note off the fridge, curious about the check mark. I went into the living room to see if my mother had left the clothes in there for me to wash and finally located my dad. He was passed out on the couch, in the kind of deep sleep that only children and drunks can manage. He must have gone in there as soon as he had gotten home, too intoxicated to do anything else. That was a huge relief. When he got that amount of wasted, it usually meant that he would sleep away the morning and, if he was _really_ drunk, a chunk of the afternoon.  
    He might actually be that drunk, I thought with distaste as I spotted a glass bottle of whiskey laying on the floor next to him. He must have dropped it because there was a puddle of liquor seeped into the carpet that was already a lost cause for various stains, most of them alcohol. He was still wearing his work clothes, I realized, even his boots. I thought about taking them off for him, but decided not to. It wasn't worth the risk of waking him up. I crept by him and into our tiny laundry room where I found a stack of clean clothes, neatly folded, on top of the washing machine. They were cold and a tiny bit damp, but not actually wet, not surprising given the weather and our lack of a dryer. My mother must have used the space heater to try to dry them. I felt myself smiling again, realizing that she had taken the time to do the laundry so I wouldn't have to, something that was going to save me a whole lot of time in the morning. I really couldn't wait until summer when it would be warm enough out to dry the clothes outside. She had even washed my dirty clothes, not just hers and my father's.   
    That still left me with a chunk of things to do before I could go to Heero's in the morning. I had a choice, I realized. I could head right up to bed like I had planned so I could get up to do the chores or I could just forgo sleep and do it right now. I looked down distrustfully at my father. If he caught me before I left, he would give me more to do, even things that he had just pulled out of his ass in order to keep me at home. He would most likely sleep for a long time since it was his day off and he was trashed, giving me plenty of time to take a nap and do everything that I needed to do. But what if he didn't? My father was great at doing things just to spite me.   
    The risk was too great, I decided. I couldn't miss my first practice and I wanted to do a quick jog before then and eat a decent breakfast. Practice was from nine to eleven, so I should probably be up by seven anyway. It just wasn't enough time to get some sleep _and_ do my chores, and I would rather show up at Heero's place exhausted than not show up at all because of my father. I wasn't worried about missing our date since my dad still thought that I worked Saturdays, but I really didn't want to stick around the house for my entire morning.   
    I would have rather started in on the chores when I had some sunlight to work with, but the stove light would have to do for the kitchen work. I was as quiet as I could be. The stove wasn't too bad and washing the windows and unclogging the drain took barely any time at all, it was the dusting that took up the most time. But I was able to get it all done in just a few hours. I finished at five with plenty of time to plan for that evening and get over to Heero's house. I went upstairs and looked around for anything that I might need to take with me, debating if I was going to end up spending the night there or not. Of course I wanted to, it's all I want to do lately, be with Heero and his family.   
    But I thought about how weary my mother had looked when we had been talking about the bills piling up and I knew that it wasn't just because she was working hard and was worrying about money. I thought about what was happening at home while I was sleeping over at Heero's house, what my mother was dealing with from my father when he found out that I wasn't at home again and I felt guilty. It really wouldn't kill me to spend a Saturday at home, and I was going to be with Heero for most of the day anyway. _And_ it might spare me a beating, which would spare my boyfriend from feeling bad about it.   
    That put a little damper on my mood, deciding that I wasn't going to spend the night for once, but that was ok. I would have plenty of chances to stay over and I could help my mother with whatever she needed, if there were more chores to do while she was busy at work or making the budget or going grocery shopping like I had said that I would. I could bring home something for dinner from the Yuys, if they let me, and make my parents a nice dinner. Who knew, maybe it would put my father in a good mood. Or it might put him in a worse mood if he figured out where the sudden food came from, but I would risk that.   
    I would just have to stay strong when Heero asked me to stay, which was a challenge in itself, which of course only reminded me about our date and made me feel anxious again. Never mind worrying about sleeping over or not, I just wanted to survive this date with my dignity in tact. I opted to keep my school books and homework at home to have an excuse not to stay and focused on what I was going to wear that day. I shucked out of my work uniform, tossing it into the empty hamper, and found a comfortable pair of pants and long sleeved shirt that I could wear to track practice and for the very first time since all of this had started, I wondered what the track uniforms would look like.   
    I had never seen our track team in action before and I really hoped they didn't look as ugly as the football jerseys that I saw Zechs in from time to time. Like all of our sports teams, they were our school colors: silver and grey, but a darker grey than the basketball uniforms were and that particular shade was not at all flattering with the shade of blue that had been chosen, which completely covered the shoulders of the uniform as well as the player number and bottom of the shirt. The huge, cartoonish nautilus that was on their helmets and chest did not help.   
    After I dressed myself, I stared at the clothes hanging in my makeshift closet and felt this air of doom take hold on me. I almost felt like I had before I had gone to have Christmas dinner with Heero, staring at my small array of clothing options and realizing that I was pretty much fucked. Only this was about a thousand times worse. I felt like a girl spending days trying to find the right dress with the right hair with the right shoes, which did nothing to help my confidence as I stood there for, I shit you not, an entire forty minutes trying to decide what I was going to take with me to wear for our date.  
    Heero had said that the restaurant wasn't dressy, but it wasn't a dive, either. Even if it was, this was my first date with _Heero_ that we were talking about! There was no way in hell I was going to turn up in something that I would just wear to school. I wanted to look nice for him. I wanted him to look at me and get that spark in his eyes, that desire. I didn't want to lead him on or give him ideas, but I wanted him to not be embarrassed to be seen with me in a nice place and, quite frankly, I didn't have a whole lot of clothing that would accomplish that. Of course, I didn't really have the body to accomplish any of that, either, and for the millionth time, I wondered why he was attracted to me. I was too skinny, too awkward, too plain...  
    I shook my head, ridding myself of the thought. It didn't matter that I didn't understand it, I reminded myself. The fact was that Heero _did_ want to date me and I couldn't look like the white trash that I was. No jeans with holes in the knees or oil stains. No ripped shirts. No clothing that was way too loose because the tight stuff made me feel uncomfortable. And nothing that was so old that it barely fit me anymore, either.   
    I sighed and began to push clothing around, looking for something that wasn't completely awful. I was never more thankful for the jeans that Mr. and Mrs. Yuy had given me for Christmas as I was in that moment. They were certainly the nicest articles of clothing that I owned, so it was easy to just pick out the right color and not have to worry about the pants. I choose the darker blue color instead of the black and then puzzled over the top. I remembered what Heero had said about wearing a sweater and decided that that was probably a good idea, although I didn't have very many of them that weren't well on their way to getting added to my scrap pile.   
    After some internal debate and feeling completely ridiculous at fussing over a fucking _sweater_ for one, single date, I decided on a sweater that I hadn't worn in well over a year and had very nearly gotten rid of over the one that I had worn at Christmas. It was an off white color with small flecks of gold in the thread that were barely even noticeable unless you were really looking at them. I only chose it because it looked nice with the dark blue jeans and it didn't have any holes in it. My father had picked it up at a flea market for five bucks, which was pretty damned cheap for a sweater that was in fairly good condition.   
    It had been one of those rare moments when he had done something nice for me, although off handedly since my dad had been trying to haggle down the price of a gun cleaning kit, but the seller wouldn't let it go for the price that my father wanted. My father had finally relented on the price, but only if he could have a few other things that the seller wasn't having much luck in getting rid of to sweeten the deal. It was still a nice thing for him to have done, since he could have just grabbed something else for himself or a dress for my mother, but had gotten the sweater because I didn't have many. It wasn't a color that I especially liked, however, even if it didn't look half bad with my violet eyes and pale skin, and when I first tried it on, it was far too big on me.  
    But that had been a couple of years ago, when I had been shorter and skinnier than I am now. As I wrote before, I've gained a bit of weight recently, enough that the damned thing actually fit. Sure, it was loose at the waist and the sleeves were still a couple inches too long, ending at my knuckles instead of my wrists, but the rest fit perfectly. It would have to do, I told myself and folded the clothes, stashing them into my book bag. I double checked that everything was as clean as I could possibly make it and that my father was still fast asleep before fleeing the house.      
    I managed to get to Heero's home at a little before 6:30, deciding to walk all the way there instead of take the bus. It was warmer than it had been the day before, and I wasn't in any kind of rush, so I didn't want to waste the money. The door was unlocked and I just walked in, shocked to find Heero and his parents standing by the stairs, him arguing with his father about something. I wasn't surprised that they two of them were fighting. They had a great relationship, but I'm well aware that they don't agree and tolerate each other every second of every day. I was just surprised to see Heero up at that hour, and looking so wide awake to boot.   
    "It _isn't_ like that, Dad!" Heero was saying, hands on his hips and his face bright red, but I wasn't sure if it was in embarrassment or anger.  
    "No?" Justin asked.  
    While his son was passionate, Mr. Yuy was the perfect image of cool immovability. His eyes were hard, accusing, and his arms were crossed over his chest.  
    "No!" Heero insisted, "And don't you dare mention that to him, either! It's not anyone's business anyway!"  
    "Heero, I have known you all of your life and I know when you're hiding something," Justin countered, not even seeming that mad about his son's subterfuge, "I was also there when you brought this all up _months_ ago, so don't try to tell me that this isn't something unusual for you. I'm not an idiot and neither is your mother. We just want you to be safe and happy, you know that. There's no need to lie about it just so you can get out of this conversation."  
    "That isn't the reason why!" Heero argued heatedly, "There is absolutely nothing going on-"  
    Mrs. Yuy, who had been watching her son and husband fighting with odd amusement, noticed that I was standing in their doorway and cleared her throat loudly, obviously not wanting me to hear what was being fought about and really, it wasn't any of my business. Heero saw that they were no longer alone and turned even redder, clearly embarrassed this time, and fell silent.   
    "Uhhh, good morning," I said shyly, suddenly feeling like I had done something wrong or eavesdropped on them talking about me or something.  
    Just like that, the situation was diffused. Heero looked away from his father and Justin dropped his arms, relaxing his stance and that hard look in his eyes was long gone.  
    "Good morning, Duo," he smiled at me easily and I felt myself start to relax as well, no longer feeling like a bumbling intruder.  
    "'morning," Heero mumbled, his tone as shy as me and I wondered why he was that embarrassed, just because I had caught him arguing with his dad.  
    "Why are you up so early?" I asked, trying to steer him away from whatever scene I had just walked in on.  
    It seemed to work. Heero managed a smile that was a bit sheepish, but he didn't look so off kilter anymore.  
    "I thought you might want to go for a run before practice today," he told me, "Horner will probably have you running laps all practice for placement. He'll have you do some pre-running exercises, but you probably want to get warmed up before that."  
    "Placement?" I asked, puzzled.  
    Hadn't I already done that by making it on the team?  
    "There are different events in track," Heero told me, "Hurdles, jumping, throwing, stuff like that. Even just running comes in different meters. There's sprinting, which is up to four hundred meters, and long which can be around ten-thousand or more. You guys have a small team, so coach is probably going to assign everyone to two or three events each. Most schools have eight person teams for sprinting and long alone, but I don't think Nausten competes in the bigger competitions."      
    I made a face at that. I hadn't realized that track would involve more than just running laps. It was nothing that I was going to quit over, but what if I wasn't good enough to compete in any of the other events? I was a good runner, I can admit that, but throwing? Jumping?   
    "You'll do fine," Heero assured me, obviously seeing that I was feeling self conscious.  
    "Heero is right," Justin put his hand on my shoulder and his confident smile immediately made me feel better, "You made it onto the team, you have what it takes. Just try your best and everything will work out. I remember when Heero tried out for varsity for the first time and he was sure that everyone else was going to make it in, that he was going to mess up, and he ended up the highest hitter out of all of his peers."  
    Heero rolled his eyes at that, but he didn't argue it.   
    "Well, why don't you boys go jogging now if you want to go and I'll have breakfast for you when you come back," his mother chimed in with a bright smile.  
    "Thanks, Mom," Heero said as he dragged me upstairs.   
    I took care of Pepper while my boyfriend got dressed in appropriate attire for a jog and then we were off. This time, we ran through his neighborhood and into the woods that ran through the far north of the town. It wasn't as well looked after as the park, but there was a bike trail that we took. It was nice and secluded, a little stream trailing all through it. I could imagine the thick, green moss that would be there when the snow was all gone come summer and the wild flowers that must grow on the sides of the path. The path was uneven and there were a few fallen trees in our way, but we jumped over the ones that were low enough to the ground and went around others, trying not to let the roadblocks slow down our gait, but it was impossible in some areas. Heero almost took a tumble once, so I slowed down our pace.  
    "You're pretty good at that," he praised as we jumped over another fallen tree, him nearly falling again as his left foot almost didn't clear the obstacle.  
    "What, jumping over things?" I quirked an eyebrow at him, "And if this trail is too tough, we can just turn back around. I don't want you hurting yourself."  
    "Anticipating," he elaborated, "You might not be a great jumper, but you know when to jump and how hard you need to push off. I wouldn't be surprised if Horner assigns you hurdles or something like it. And no, we can run for a bit longer. I'm just not as graceful as you are."  
    I snorted at that. 'Graceful.' I sure as hell wasn't that.   
    "You're a lot more awake than I thought you'd be at this hour," I commented, noting that he was keeping up with me fairly well, "I take it you had coffee before I showed up?"  
    "Two cups," he admitted with a slight grin, "Which you look like you need."  
    "Huh?" I blinked at him unintelligently.  
    "You look like you didn't sleep at all this morning," he said, almost in rebuke.  
    "That's because I didn't," I said honestly.  
    He shot me a look, one of those long suffering, exasperated looks of his that made me feel like a little kid getting scolded by a parent.  
    "Duo," he complained, "you have got to stop doing that, it's incredibly bad for you."  
    "I know," I cut in before he could start ranting, only narrowly avoiding a rock on the path, "But sometimes my dad keeps me up or I'm too busy with things or my insomnia kicks in. I don't always have a choice."  
    "And this time?" he asked me, "Was it your father again?"  
    I felt this sudden and terrible pain in my head as I realized how vastly different what I had meant when I had mentioned my father keeping me up at night was from what Heero had meant. I was thinking of his nightly visits and Heero was thinking about my parents fighting or my father dragging me out of bed because he was pissed off. I don't know why that got to me just then, but it felt surreal, this huge secret that I was keeping from him. Heero knew so much about me, more than anyone else, but he still was completely in the dark about this and, in that moment, it felt completely wrong to me.  
    "Not exactly," I admitted, perhaps being a bit too truthful with him to make up for the lie of omission that I made every day, "He was passed out drunk by the time I got home, but there were a bunch of chores that he wanted me to do this morning, so I just decided to stay awake and do them before he got up."  
    He shook his head at me at the same time that he looked incredibly sad, almost pitying.   
    "You have got to take better care of yourself," he scolded, "It's bad enough that you work ridiculous hours and don't always eat like you should, you shouldn't be skipping sleep just because of your father."  
    I felt a spark of annoyance at him. His overprotective nature grates me sometimes. I mean, I take decent care of myself, don't I? Sure, I don't eat enough, but sometimes I don't have the means to, or I just forget or don't have any appetite and I was getting better at that. And sure, not sleeping wasn't healthy, but it couldn't be helped with my insomnia. I had survived most of my life without any mothering, I sure didn't need him to be doing it.   
    'This is what it's going to be like dating an overprotective worrywart,' I thought.  
    That should have bothered me. I don't like being babied. I'm fairy independent and I'm just not used to people worrying about me like the way he does. It should have pissed me off and made me think that he thought that I needed protecting, needed someone to hold my hand and take care of me because I was incapable of it.     But you know what? Yes, it annoyed me. I might not have dated around a lot, but I understand that no one is perfect and everyone does something that will annoy someone that they're close to, whether they're friends, family, or romantically involved. If Heero's overprotective nature was something that was going to annoy me in the long run, that was fine. Out of all the flaws that a person can have, I can live with that one. He doesn't hit me, he isn't standoffish or argumentative or petty or possessive, at least not that I've seen. And as much as it rubs me the wrong way, sometimes being fussed over by him isn't so bad. Sometimes it's actually nice.  
    "Don't worry," I assured him, "I'm going to take a nap after track. You don't need me being a zombie tonight."  
    That made him relax, but I had to wonder, if I kept up with this... if I decided that I would keep dating him after tonight, would this become a fight between us or could I learn to let go once in awhile if he could learn that this is just the way that I am and not to smother me with this anxieties? I suppose it's a stupid thing to worry about when you don't even have much confidence that a relationship is going to last. I was worrying about something far off in the future when I was still debating with myself about whether tonight was going to be our first date or our last.   
    I felt a tiny bit resentful of him just then for putting all of the decisions on _my_ shoulders. This was his relationship, too, but he was letting me call all the shots. I know that isn't fair. He hadn't done it because he wanted me to take all the responsibility, he had done it because he knew exactly what he wanted and I didn't. _I_ was being the indecisive one, not him, I was the one who was weak and cowardly and he hadn't wanted to scare me off. I just didn't want to be the reason for his unhappiness. It would have been so much easier if he had just ordered me to date him instead of asking. I can follow orders, I'm pretty good at that. But when it comes to making life decisions for myself, all I can do is doubt and over think every little thing instead of having confidence in my choices.  
    "So what were you and your dad arguing about?" I changed the subject as we started to jog back the way we had come, eager to steer the conversation away from me and my lack of sleep.  
    "It's..." he hesitated and to my amazement, his face looked red, but I didn't think that it was from the run, "It's nothing you need to worry about. My dad was just... he was asking me something that wasn't any of his business."  
    "Alright," I said, deciding to let it go even though I still felt bothered by it, taking Heero's word that it had nothing to do with me.  
    We jogged back to the house together and found that breakfast was laid out for us, Heero's parents having already eaten, I assumed. I could hear them talking in the basement, arguing rather loudly over something. I couldn't make out what they were saying, only that their voices were rising and they were definitely fighting. Not like how my parents would fight. There was no screaming, no throwing things, just a discussion where one clearly was not agreeing with the other. It shouldn't have bothered me, but I felt a jolt of fear and worry, my stomach twisting with anxiety as I listened to the sound of their voices.  
    It wasn't right, some childish voice inside of me said, they weren't like my parents, they weren't supposed to fight. I knew that the fear that I was feeling was stupid, that it was just some knee-jerk reaction to hearing two adults arguing, something that my parents had taught me to be afraid of, but I couldn't shake the uncomfortable feeling, or the memories of all the fights my parents had had, how I would curl up under a blanket when I was a kid, my hands pressed against my ears as I tried to not listen to all the 'fuck you' and 'you cunt' and 'I'm going to kill you' and everything else.  
    "It's alright," Heero's voice shook me out of my memories.  
    I blinked at him, suddenly finding him standing right next to me, holding my hand tightly and his gaze full of that sad concern for me. My other hand was trembling a little. I hadn't even noticed. I felt like some kind of nut job, getting worked up over my boyfriend's parents have an _argument_ of all things, not even a proper fight, but Heero wasn't looking at me like that and it made me feel better. At least he didn't think I was completely crazy.  
    "Are... are you sure?" I asked stupidly and wondered what I would do if he said no, go break them up? Break up _what_ exactly?   
    "They fight sometimes," he shrugged, giving me this small smile that instantly soothed me, "All parents do, but it's never over anything serious. Come on, lets eat before the food gets cold."  
    He dragged me over to the kitchen table and we sat down together. He seemed so incredibly unconcerned with his parents fighting that it helped me push it out of my mind. They were _his_ parents and he knew them more than I ever could, so if he thought that this was normal, then it was. What was I even scared of? That they were going to become like my parents? This was nothing at all like how my mom and dad behaved when they had an argument. Their arguments could be labeled as an assault if a cop was ever called on them, Heero's parents sounded like they were just bickering. And my parents didn't give a shit if they woke up the entire neighborhood with their fighting. Heero's had gone downstairs so we wouldn't hear them.  
    From inside the kitchen, I couldn't even hear them anymore, so I filled one of the empty plates with freshly cut fruit, toast, bacon, and scrambled eggs and didn't think about anything else but filling my empty stomach. Heero poured us some orange juice and halfway through our breakfast, his mother came into the kitchen. I kind of froze and for a moment, I didn't see her. I saw my own mother standing in our kitchen after one of her fights with dad, surrounded by broken dishes, crying softly with blood smeared across her cheek from a bloody nose and looking so desolate and hopeless. But then Mrs. Yuy smiled at me and that image melted away so easily. There were no bruises on her face, no blood, not even a tear, and she didn't look upset at all. There wasn't a single, weary shadow behind her eyes.  
    "How's breakfast?" she asked me with that open and honest smile that she always seems to have, a smile devoid of tiredness and pain, a smile that my mother could never accomplish.  
    "It's great, thank you," I said and what worry that I had still had about hearing her fighting vanished.  
    'They aren't my parents,' I reminded myself over and over, 'They're never going to be like that.'  
    "Do you two need a lift to the school?" Justin asked as he walked in shortly after Mariela did, not looking upset or like there was anything wrong as well, "We can come watch you, Duo, if you want. I know it's just a practice, but parents often watch the track events, especially at the beginning of the season."  
    Something clenched around my heart at that. 'Parents', like they were mine, just parents that were interested in watching their child compete. Like they cared. It was such a weird thought, them cheering me on like I really was their kid. It was one of those good hurts again.  
    "N-no, that's alright," I stammered, looking down at my almost empty plate of food, too shy to look at either of them, "It's just a practice. But... but if you don't mind coming to one of the meets, I would really like that."  
    I was blushing hard, feeling like my face was on fire just for asking that, but it was what I wanted. My own parents never would, my father because he didn't care and my mother because she was too busy. And it shouldn't matter to me. I didn't even care about sports. But there was something very... I don't know, special or endearing about the thought of Heero's parents coming to watch me run. I wanted them to be there. Maybe they weren't my parents, but they _did_ care for me for some bizarre reason and, in some ways, they had been more my parents lately than my own had been for most of my life. It would be embarrassing if I sucked in front of them, but I realized that I could handle that.   
    I hoped that they didn't realize how important it was to me. It was embarrassing and I almost didn't ask, wouldn't have been quite that bold in the past, but Mariela's smile softened and I knew that they had figured it out, that this wasn't just some off handed thing.   
    "Of course, we would love to watch you run," she said, which of course only made me blush harder.  
    "You two had better get going if you're walking," Justin pointed out.  
    I looked at the kitchen clock, thinking that it was still only about eight and saw with alarm that it was 8:30 already.  
    "Sh-" I started to swear before remembering that Heero's parents were right there in the room and had to amend myself, "shoot."  
    Neither of Heero's parents were fooled by my self-censorship and his mother chuckled, not offended. I shoveled the rest of the food in my mouth and gulped down what little orange juice was left in my glass, Heero doing the same. We were both already dressed and ready, so we just hurriedly brushed our teeth and ran out the door.  
    "Good luck, Duo!" Mrs. Yuy yelled out to me.  
    "Thank you!" I called back, suddenly getting the feeling that I was going to need it.  
  
End Part 8  
  
Author's Note: Already hip deep in the next part. I was really hoping to at least have Duo's first track practice in this part, but things never work out the way that I intend them, lol.   
  
Thank you everyone for the kind words of support. I am feeling better and I'm hoping that things will turn around once I get a job. Thank you to those that tried to help and thank you to everyone who has favorited and followed and reviewed this story. It means so much to me ;_;


	53. Chapter 8 Part 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At track practice, Duo has a run in with Alex that makes him wonder if he should break up with Heero

A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 8  
Part 9  
  
  
  
    That feeling wasn't entirely wrong. Practice was... a strange affair for me. Despite my panic, we got there fairly early. Early enough, at least, for me to collect my uniform from Horner out on the field and get changed in the gym locker room without running into many of my teammates. The uniforms were a hell of a lot better than the football ones, that was for sure. The shirts were long sleeved and predominately a nice, cobalt blue color with silver accents and details. It had the name of our school on it and what I assumed was my number, but there wasn't a single nautilus on it. The track pants were the same silver color that the shirt's accents were, with a single blue stripe running down the outer sides. Horner informed me that these were just the uniforms for the cold weather, he would order our spring uniforms when it got warmer. It wasn't freezing that day, but that didn't mean that I wanted to run around in a t-shirt and shorts.   
    I joined the couple of my teammates that had also been early on the bleachers by the track as the rest of the group filtered in one at a time. I made an effort not to sit on the other set of bleachers where Heero was sitting with a couple of parents, even though I wanted to. Like it or not, I was going to have to get used to my teammates. Although, as everyone arrived and sat down together, chatting and socializing with each other, it seemed pointless. Everyone knew each other well on the team, they had done this before and even if they didn't, most of them were friends anyway. Everyone knew me, too, but they knew _of_ me, which was infinitely worse.   
    They sat a distance away from me, some of them wary of me, others clearly annoyed that I was a part of their team. Alex, when he arrived, shot me snide little glances. I tried to ignore the looks and kept to my own corner of the bleachers. You would think that, after eight years of being socially ostracized, I would have gotten used to being treated like a leper. But this wasn't school. For the first time, I was being forced to interact with these boys outside of school, as a team, and I don't know why I ever would have thought that it would be different. Still, it hurt. I don't know which hurt worse, the ones that outright hated me or the ones that were uncomfortable around me.  
    I suddenly wondered what the hell I was doing there. I wasn't a part of this, not like they were. They had history, skill, and most of them had been friends and on athletic teams together since elementary school. Hell, even the infamous Charlie Pensle had shown up. I sure as hell didn't feel like I was part of a team. I felt like I had for most of my life, that it was _them_ and _me_ , two halves and the two could never mingle. Even though Heero was a mere few feet away from me, I felt horribly alone, like I had after Quatre had died. For the first time in months, that grey, empty place touched me and I hated that. I wanted to walk right up to Horner and tell him that I had made a mistake, that I didn't belong on his team and I wanted to quit. But then the coach himself was walking up to us, clipboard in hand and the talking died down.  
    "I see that all of you are here. Great," he bellowed in that gruff, no-nonsense way of his that almost made it seem like he was being sarcastic, "Since we don't have a whole lot of time for what I want done today, we'll get right to it. Most of you have been through this half a dozen times by now, but for those of you who are new or still half asleep," he glared at Charlie who threw up his hands defensively, "here is a refresher. Today we work on placements. I will be putting all of you through the paces and deciding which events you will be best suited for. It will be the same as last year, with the hammer and javelin throw being cancelled due to the danger of the events."  
    There was a collective groan amongst my teammates, but they quit when the coach shot them a stern look.  
    "There are four main events: running, jumping, relays, and throws. Everyone is required to do a running event, including relays obviously, but only three of you will be in jumping and throws each. As usual, if there is an event you wish to participate in over another, I'll take it into consideration, but unless you perform well in your event, I _will_ be reassigning you to another. First today, I will be pairing you up with a teammate and run you at 60 and 1,500 meter laps. Based on your performance, you will be placed in one of three running events: sprinting, middle, or long. Those that wish to compete in jumping will be next, first the hurdles, then long, triple, and followed by pole. Last we will do throw placing. Shot puts will go first, followed by discus.   
    "Now, when I call your name, take a lane on the track with your partner. This is _not_ a competition. I don't care which of you finishes the meter first or how well you do. This is only to see what your strengths are and which events you will be placed in. I don't want any hot dogging or horseplay, is that understood?"  
    "Yes, sir," my six teammates chorused, but I noted that Alex had a smirk on his face.  
    I was sure that, to someone like him, _everything_ was a competition. I hoped that he got paired up with Charlie, who looked like he was just as competitive, but Charlie got called up with Ben Strattenbrough as the first group. We watched as they did their sixty meter first, then the fifteen-hundred. Heero had claimed that Charlie was a talented athlete, but he didn't seem to have much affinity for running. He was definitely fast, easily beating Ben out in the sixty meter, but was far behind him after they hit a hundred and fifty. He had little concept of conserving energy while Ben was much slower than him, but constant.  
    It was interesting to me, how different everyone on the team was and how they ran. A couple of my teammates were seniors and, according to what I had heard them talking about, had been on the track team since elementary school. That seemed rather obvious between their current run times and how they had performed during try outs. The both of them were pretty fast and had a lot of stamina and I was really glad that they weren't among the boys that would often bully and chase after me. It was probably a good thing that they had been paired up together, or they would have made some of the rest of us look awful like they did the sophomore that was part of their group thanks to the odd number of us. My fear of being the outsider on the team faded as I watched them. So what if I didn't belong? This wasn't like football or soccer or any other team sport. I didn't have to rely on any of them. I only had to rely on myself, just like always, and that suited me. Nothing was going to get fucked up because everyone on the team didn't like me.   
    "Last group," Horner announced and I immediately felt my stomach fall to my knees as I realized that the only two left were myself and Alex.  
    What were the fucking odds, I thought with bitterness, that I would have to race against the one person on this team that I wanted nothing at all to do with? Alex turned to look back at me, shooting me a triumphant grin like he had had something to do with this and all of my anxieties that I was going to fuck up, that I wasn't going to be good enough for this team came back to me. I was going to make an ass of myself in front of Heero and Alex would gloat.  
    I shook my head at myself and stood up, walking down the bleachers to the track. No, I _wasn't_ going to make an ass of myself. I had run against Zechs and I had beaten him, that had been the hard part. I was already on the team, and even if Alex did better than me, that was fine. Like Horner had said, this wasn't a competition, and as long as I did my best and didn't let Alex get to me, what did it matter? Not exactly easier done than said, considering that I was sure that he was going to try something to fuck me up. And I remembered what he had been like when he had been competing against Heero to get onto varsity, how angry he had gotten when Heero had struck him out. What would he do if I ran better than he did?   
    Ancient advice from Quatre filtered came to me. Keep your head down. Don't talk back. Just let them do what they want. I pushed it all away. Maybe in the past I would have flubbed this and let Alex do better than me, but not now. I had too much to prove to myself and my boyfriend. I wanted to be like Heero, I wanted to get back at Alex for everything that he had done to me, even if it meant just being faster than he was. If there was pay back for that, then fine. I hadn't let my fear of Zechs stop me and Alex wasn't going to stop me this time, either.  
    "What do you think you're doing, faggot?" Williams hissed at me as we walked to our lanes, leaning in close to make it look like we were just having a friendly conversation, "Do you really think you can compete with me? You just got lucky that you got allowed on, but you know you don't belong here. Why don't you just go back home to your trailer before you break a nail?"  
    "If I don't belong here," I glared at him, knowing that I was letting him get to me, but I didn't really care at that point, "then you have nothing to worry about."  
    He snorted at me and took his place in the lane next to mine. I wished that he had taken one further away so I wouldn't have to worry about him tripping me, but I wasn't going to let him know that he was getting to me by suddenly changing lanes.  
    "No funny business, understand me, Williams?" Horner snapped at him, but there was a look of worry in his eyes.  
    Horner, like all the teachers in my school, was well aware that I get bullied by Alex and his lot and while he seemed to have no problem with that during school, he seemed to want to keep it out of his extracurricular activities. I suppose in his view, it offended his athletic moral code or something.  
    "Don't worry, Coach," Alex sneered, "I'm not going to do anything but show this little girl how real men run."  
    "That's enough," Horner snapped at him, "Cut the shit and take your positions."  
    We fell into place, but Alex still had that stupid grin, like he thought that this was going to be amusing. If nothing else, I wanted to wipe that smirk right off, I wanted to show him that I wasn't the weak little pansy that he and his friends called me. Maybe he was bigger than me and maybe he was stronger, but that didn't make him better than me. Even if he beat me, I would make sure that I made him work for his victory. I channeled into that well of fear and rage and love that had let me save Quatre's life, that had gotten me onto this team in the first place. A well that runs so deep through me, I don't know where it ends or where it begins, a well that my father and Alex and his stupid friends had started digging so long ago.   
    'Sixty meters,' I thought with an intensity and focus that might have frightened me if I had stopped to think about it, 'Just go as fast as you can for sixty meters, just like when dad's chasing you. Run like there's something right behind you and don't stop, don't slow down, because if you do, it's going to catch you.'  
    I could do that. I _had_ done that. My father had been training me for a moment like this my entire life, even if he wasn't aware of it, and I was going to use it to _my_ advantage for once, not just for my safety. When Horner blew his whistle, I was on edge, waiting for it, and sprung forward not even a second after I heard it. Alex was right at my heels, just like he always was when he was chasing after me. But that was ok, because for the first time since I had shown up at this practice, I was confident that I could keep ahead of him. I had been thinking about how I couldn't possibly compete with him, but that was wrong. I _wasn't_ competing with him. This had nothing to do with track, nothing to do with beating him. This was about staying in front of him, running away, not letting him catch me, and I had done that hundreds of times before. I could do it now, too.  
    It was a close sprint. Alex is fast, a lot faster than Zechs and Bran are, and he was right behind me the whole way. But it wasn't quite good enough, just like always. Like every time they went after me, I kept just far enough ahead of him that he couldn't touch me. How had he thought that he could be faster than me, I wondered with bewilderment as I finished the sixty meter, when he hadn't been able to during school or even when we had been trying out? Hadn't he realized that I wasn't going to fuck around? That my running away from him when he wanted to beat me up wasn't some kind of fluke? It was just like his tryouts against Heero, I realized. He underestimated us just because we weren't like him and fed into Zechs's bullshit that because Heero was a coward and I was a faggot, that meant we were trash and couldn't possibly compete with him.  
    Horner looked a little bit impressed as he wrote down our times on his clipboard and gave us a couple minutes of break time before starting our next run. I breathed heavily, my heart pounding in my chest as I stood there on the track, worrying for a moment that I might have pushed myself too hard and wouldn't have the energy for the second, longer run, but I knew my limitations. I dared a glance over at Alex and found him also panting and glaring at me like he wanted to rip my liver out with his bare hands. His eyes were full of rage and disgust and disbelief and, most of all, embarrassment. I understood that, if Horner and the couple of parents hadn't been there, he would have belted me one as hard as he could.   
    "Now for the fifteen-hundred," our coach ordered us when we had both caught our breath, "Take your places."  
    We returned to the white starting line and this time when I looked at Alex, he was staring intently ahead, his face tight with determination and anger. That confident smirk of his was long gone, but now he was taking things seriously. I hadn't seen his long run before and had no clue how either of us would fare. I know that I have stamina, but enough to keep up with Alex? It didn't matter, I thought. I had beat him in the sprint, that was enough for me. I had shown him that I wasn't the weak little faggot that he took me for, not in this sport.  
    Horner blew his whistle again and this time, it was Alex who was off like a shot, easily running past me. That was alright. I was slightly winded from exerting myself in the sprint and let him pull far ahead of me. I could hear cheering and booing coming from the bleachers, Alex's friends cheering him on while no one cheered for me. That was ok, too. I knew that Heero was there, watching me and hoping that I would beat Alex's ass again. I fell into a steady pace, something that I was comfortable with and wasn't putting too much strain on me.   
    Alex stayed way out in front of me until about five hundred meters, then I began to close the gap as his burst of speed winded down, having stupidly tired himself out before he had even reached the halfway mark. He still had some energy in him, but by the seven-hundredth mark, I had closed most of the distance. By the thousandth, we were neck and neck, and by eleven-hundred, I had passed him. Another hundred meters after that, I was pretty far ahead of him as he began to lag. I knew that he wasn't going to be able to catch up with me. I was still going steady and Alex was struggling to just to not lose any more ground.   
    Horner had this weird expression on his face as I passed him, half surprised, half pleased for some reason. I suppose that, if someone was going to outrun one of his veteran athletes, he was happy it was someone on the team.   
    "Not bad, Maxwell," he complimented me, making some notes down on his clipboard, "But you need to watch your stride, it's too long. Tighten it up. I also want you to do some sprint training. You're damned fast, but you could improve your stamina at that speed a bit. You have a great response time to the whistle, so we won't have to work on that at all. Your stamina over all is fairly good, but I think you can improve with more practice. I'm going to put you down for the two hundred meter and the ten-thousand. I think those will be very doable for you after you train up a bit. That sound fair?"  
    "Yes, sir," I nodded.   
    Ten-thousand meters seemed a bit much for me, but if he thought it was possible for me, I would trust his judgment.  
    "Williams," he turned to Alex, who was panting a lot harder than I was and glaring at me like a wet cat, like he wanted to rip my eyes out and shove them down my throat or something, "I'll say the same thing that I told you last year: you're plenty fast, but you need to work on your pace. You start out too aggressively and don't know when to conserve your energy! I told you last year to practice on that and I had hoped that you would improve by now, but obviously you haven't worked on it at all since then. Until you do, I'm keeping you in the sixty and hundred sprints. I expect you to make up for it in the other events."  
    "Yes, Coach," he ground out between clenched teeth, looking both angry at being lectured and embarrassed.  
    We went back to the bleachers as Horner and a bunch of student aids began to set up for the hurdle event. Alex's friends clapped him one the back in support and glared heatedly at me, like it was exclusively my fault that he hadn't done as well as he should have, like I had done something wrong. I suppose I had. I had dared to actually try to do my best instead of stick my head back in the dirt. Of course, if I hadn't intended on doing that, I wouldn't have tried out for track to begin with. I ignored them, proud of myself for once, both for doing well and for not letting them get to me. I wasn't worried that they were going to do anything to me, not now at least. But I would have to watch my back for awhile.   
    I had expected that, their scorn and anger. They had been fine with me being on the team, but only because they had expected, and no doubt relished, that I was going to fully embarrass myself and quit. What I hadn't expected was for one of the seniors to look over at me, not with irritation, but with a tiny bit of surprise and respect. I didn't know him, he wasn't part of Zechs's crowd, and given Horner's praise of him and the intensity of which he had run, I was willing to bet that this more than just an extra-curricular activity to him. I didn't dare to think that I had an ally in that corner, but he wasn't looking at me with disgust and disdain anymore, so I would take what I could get.  
    I sat down at the far end of the bleachers as Horner called us alphabetically to hear which events we wanted to try out for. I tried not to, as hard as I possibly could, but it like a siren call as I turned my head to glance at where Heero was. He was texting intently on his phone, but quickly noticed that I was looking at him. He grinned at me and flashed me a thumbs up. There was such... pride in his eyes, it made me blush and I can't accurately describe what it did to me, knowing that my boyfriend was proud of me. I smiled back at him and wished that I could communicate how glad I was that he had decided to come watch me. I had thought that having him be there, watching me, would make me fuck up and feel self-conscious, but the opposite had happened. Knowing that he was there had made me want to try harder, like I really had something to prove.  
    "Maxwell!" Horner called for me, "Your turn."  
    For a second, and thankfully only a second so no one realized it, I completely forgot what it was that I was supposed to be doing.  
    "Uhh," I said unintelligibly before my brain removed itself from whatever place it goes to when Heero is involved and came back to reality, "I'll just try for hurdles."  
    "Alright," he made a note on his clipboard and I was realized that he didn't seem all that put out about my refusal to try any of the jumping or throwing events.  
    "What's the matter, Maxwell?" Alex sneered, "We were all looking forward to finding out once and for all which throws worse, girls or faggots."  
    "Zip it, Williams!" Horner snapped at him, "One more time and I'm sending you home!"  
    Alex put up his hands in mock surrender, but a few other boys snickered, obviously thinking he was hysterical. I pointedly ignored them. Horner moved on to the rest of the group and I worried that I might get put up against Alex again during hurdles, but he only wanted the high jump, pole jump, and discus throw. Most of the other boys wanted the throwing events and the pole jump as well, leaving just me and two others with the hurdles.   
    Horner called the three of us up to the track to take our places.  
    "This isn't a race," he informed us, "While your speed is a factor, how well you clear each hurdle is more important, so take your time and try not to hurt yourself. You'll just be going for 400 meters this time to start with."  
    I felt like that tiny speech was made for my benefit, although one of the other boys, another Junior and one of Alex's friends, looked almost as anxious as I felt and I didn't think that he had tried out for this event before. The third boy was one of the seniors and he looked pretty confident.   
    Horner blew his whistle and we were off. Doing hurdles was a hell of a lot different than just running the track. For one, I was much less confident, and it took a lot more energy. I tried not to focus too much on the boys that were on the track with me, even when they pulled out in front of me, and just focused on what I was doing. I was a lot slower than them, and I was sure that I was going fall flat on my face, but I remembered what Heero had said about how I was good at anticipating things. That was the trick, I realized, not being fast, but clearing each hurdle and tried to switch my mindset over to that instead of merely speed and stamina.  
    The other two boys were a lot faster than I was. This was obviously the senior's event and he cleared each hurdle like he had done it a thousand times. Alex's friend, on the other hand, while he tackled each with speed, didn't jump as accurately. His food hit the top of the hurdles a bunch of times. He never fell, but he did stagger quite a lot. I also noticed that he hesitated for too long before each jump and then as soon as he was over one, he would try to make up for that loss of speed instead of staying constant.   
    I wasn't a complete stranger to something like this. I'm used to having obstacles in my way when my dad is chasing me, needing to leap over fallen chairs and other furniture or through windows, but I wasn't used to how winded this made me feel. Still, even though I was slower at it, I didn't hit any of the hurdles like Alex's friend did and I didn't have to slow down, either. I wasn't really happy with my performance as I finished the meter and regrouped with the others to get our results from Horner, but I hadn't completely embarrassed myself, which was something.   
    "Smith, great as usual," Horner praised the senior with a great deal of familiarity, "I'm putting you in the three-thousand and hundred as usual. Clemmons, you need to work on your jump. It's sloppy and until you learn how to clear the hurdles, I can't put you out in the meets. I'm putting you in the sixty meter, but I want you to focus less on how fast you're going and more on clearing, got it?"  
    "Yes, sir," he mumbled, looking a bit embarrassed.  
    "Maxwell," the coach finished with me, "Not bad for a beginner, but your speed could use a lot of work. Your jump is fine and you cleared every hurdle, but now you need to up your pace. I want to work with you on improving your stamina as well. I'm putting you down for the 110 and 400 meters. Think you can handle that?"  
    "Yes, sir," I told him and didn't think it would be much of a problem if I practiced it.  
    I didn't like the hurdles as much as running, but it was better than trying any of the jumping or throwing events and I was fairly confident that I could get better at it. I sat back down on the bleachers and watched the jumping and throwing events. It was pretty boring and I wished that I could just go back to Heero's now that I had done what I needed to do. The pole jumps and high jumps looked fun, but everyone except for me had been trying out for them and only about half of them were actually good at them. Alex completely flubbed his jumps, but made up for it in the throwing events, which I wasn't that surprised about. He had a really strong arm, and I speak from experience on that, having been hit by him enough times, but he isn't agile enough to do the difficult jumps or land well from them.   
    Horner gave the events to those that did well and moved on to giving us a summary of what we were going to practice on that season, handing out some print outs that he had made of our meet and practice schedules and going over some of the exercises he wanted us to do at home, all of them pretty doable. Then, miracle of all miracles, we were free. I could have screamed with relief, completely exhausted after running so much and getting no sleep. If I hadn't had a nice, warm bed at Heero's house to collapse into, I might have fallen asleep right there on the freezing cold, metal bleachers. My teammates ran to the locker room to shower, which sounded like an amazing idea, but I waited for Heero as he ran over to me.      
    "You're incredible!" he gushed at me and shoved a bottle of water at me, "Here, you look like you could use this."  
    "No, _you're_ incredible," I said as I downed half of it right there, feeling like I could have kissed him for thinking about me to get some water.   
    "I mean it, that was amazing. You did even better than you did during tryouts," his blush made my face turn as red as a raspberry, embarrassed but secretly happy that he thought that about me, "Alex looked so furious!"  
    Until he had said it, I hadn't felt that I had done anything even slightly remarkable, but I supposed he was right. I had beaten Alex twice, which was a victory onto itself, and even Horner hadn't had many complaints about my performance. Maybe I could do this after all.  
    "Maxwell!" I heard my coach call out to me as he strode up to us, "Glad you showed up today," he said, somehow not making that sound like he was accusing me of something, "You should have been on this team your Freshman year, but I'm glad you're on it now," he thrust another piece of paper at me that I had little choice but to accept, "I run the cross-country team in the fall. I want you on that one, as well. It's an eight mile run through different terrains and I think you'd be perfect for it."  
    "Thank you, sir," I said, a bit blown away that he was still trying to sign me up for things, "I'll think about it."  
    "You'd better do a lot more than just think about it," he said gruffly, but there was little heat to it.  
    I was relieved when he walked away, going over to harass some of the parents. It was a bit too much for me in one day. Track and my upcoming date were literally the only things that I had the mental capacity to think on at that point.  
    "I'm going to go take a quick shower," I thrust my thumb in the direction of the locker room, "Just to get some of this sweat off of me, I stink."  
    "I'll come with you," he said in a rush, his eyes darting distrustfully to the door leading into the gymnasium, "To watch your back."  
    "Good idea," I nodded.   
    Just because Zechs wasn't around, it didn't mean that I couldn't get ambushed in the locker room. With how pissed Alex had been, he was probably eager to get back at me, and the last thing I wanted was to go to our date tonight with a black eye. We walked into the locker room together and found about half of the team just milling around, chatting while the rest were showering. They fell dead silent when we walked in, some of them giving Heero weird looks, no doubt wondering what he was doing there. I wanted to yell at them that he wouldn't need to be there at all if they didn't act like animals around me.   
    "Hey," Alex stepped forward, blocking us and folding his arms over his chest, "Who said that _you_ could come in here? This locker room is for boys _only_. We don't want to shower with any faggots. It might give you ideas."  
    "Oh, give me a break," Heero snapped, suddenly getting angry, "He showers in here after gym every, single day. And he's on your team! He can shower just like any one of you!"  
    "Shut up, fag-lover," Alex sneered at him, "No one was talking to you. And he's only here because Coach lost his damned mind, it doesn't mean that I have to put up with it!"  
    "Heero, just drop it," I sighed, not wanting this to escalate to anything, especially when it wasn't even a big deal, "Let's just go."  
    "Yeah, _Heero_ ," Alex jeered, "Why don't you just toddle off with your little girlfriend?"  
    Heero narrowed his eyes at him, all cold, icy blue and I became frightened that this really was going to come to blows.   
    "No," he said just as coldly as his stare, "You're going to let him shower. Or do I need to bring Horner in on this? Tell him that his team can't even get along for five minutes unsupervised?"  
    "Jesus, you really are a coward!" Alex laughed in amazement, "You're going to go run crying to Daddy because of the mean kids?"  
    "Yes," my boyfriend said bluntly, not back down and amazing Alex and everyone else, even me.  
    Zechs would have called his bluff and beaten him up anyway, not really caring if Heero told on him and I knew that it _would_ have been a bluff if Zechs had been involved.   
    "Whatever," our bully snapped angrily, proving that he wasn't Zechs in the least, "The little pansy can shower, but if he tries anything-"  
    "What, you're scared of him?" Heero jeered at him, "You've been calling him a girl this entire practice, but you're scared that you can't defend yourself?"  
    "Give me a break," Alex shot back, "Who could be afraid of a limp-wristed little fairy like him?"  
    But as I looked at my teammates, looked at Alex, I realized that they were. Behind the anger and contempt and disgust, there was a tiny bit of fear in their eyes. They really were uncomfortable with me showering around them, even though I had been doing so for years. I felt my previous good mood evaporate into nothing. I felt hurt and very sad, even though I should have expected nothing else from them. Each and every one of them truly believed that I was capable of it, of raping and molesting another boy. We might run together, be a team, compete together, but in the back of their minds, that's all I would be. An ass raping faggot. I remembered what Trowa had told me what seemed like years ago but had only been months. That he would accuse me of rape if we were ever caught. And everyone would believe him.   
    I was allowed to walk past Alex and his friends and find a shower stall without incident, but it didn't feel like a victory to me. I felt ashamed. I felt like I was going to throw up. It wasn't anything new, I told myself as I undressed in the stall, putting my clothes on the shelf where they wouldn't get wet. I had always known that while Zechs might go after me and say those horrible things just to hurt me, a lot of the others that bullied me actually believed all that crap. But that did nothing to make me feel better. None of them knew a single thing about me, but they could judge me like that, all because they knew that I was gay.   
    It made me feel so hopeless. Was this what I was going to face for the rest of my life? This scorn and bigotry? Was this what I was exposing Heero to by being his friend, by dating him? I had been lucky, in retrospect, that word of my sexuality hadn't spread more than it had. I was sure that a bunch of parents knew. My teachers sure did. But for whatever reason, even though Nausten is small and people love to gossip here, none of my coworkers, parents, or my bosses had heard the rumors. Or if they had, they had decided it was just that, a rumor. How long before that changed? How long before the word got out and _everyone_ began to treat me like this?  
    How long before Leneski or Lorathe found out? Would I get fired? Would I lose what little hope I had of staying employed after graduation? How long before my father got word that all the kids in town at least _thought_ that his son was a faggot? How long before he started to wonder if it was true? Or my mother? But worst of all, how long could Heero and I keep seeing each other before someone started to ask questions, before that taint began to grow on him as well? How could he possibly want to risk this, just for _me_?!   
    In the time that it took me to shower, I came close to deciding to just break up with Heero. This was too terrible, too cruel of a fate to put on him. He might be leaving Nausten to go to college, but he still had over a year here. How would he take it if we got caught together, if people found out that he's gay, too? Fuck, how would his parents take it? A horrible thought came to me as I quickly put some cheap shampoo in my hair. Heero's parents had moved them because they had wanted to spare him from shit like this, because they had been afraid for him. What if they found out that I was getting bullied because of my sexuality, or that we were dating and might get caught? Would they move again? Would they pack up everything and disappear from my life?  
    This horrible pain ripped through my chest and I felt tears pour down my cheeks. I couldn't lie to myself that it was just water from the shower. Tears are a funny thing like that. You can always tell the difference. If Heero and his family moved away, I... I don't know what I would do. What was the point without him? What was the point of anything at all? I rinsed the shampoo from my hair and scrubbed at my face with my hands. If Heero left me here, all alone again... I couldn't survive that. I couldn't go back to the way things were before I had met him, that emptiness. I would rather die. Maybe I could have gone on before, but now that I know what it's like to be in love with someone, to have someone that loves you back, not just him but his parents as well...   
    I had been in stagnation for so long, stuck in the grey mire of loneliness and depression before Heero had come along and propelled me forward into something beautiful and wonderful. I can never go back now. Anything would be better than being alone again, even breaking his heart. I'll tell him, I decided as I turned off the water and dried myself off with one of the thin, scratchy towels that the school stocked in the locker room. I'll tell him that I can't do this. I'll call off our date and this relationship and we can go back to being friends. He'll be safe, his parents won't ever have to know, and everything will go back to the way that it was. Our hearts might break, but he would be safe and I could live with that, couldn't I?   
    I dressed back into my clothes, hastily put my hair back up without combing it with more than my fingers, and left the stall. I couldn't hear any other showers going and the room seemed to be deserted, thankfully. Either I had taken longer than I thought that I had or they had left, not wanting to be around me. I felt that hurt again, but it seemed so small and pathetic now that I had something in my heart that hurt a hell of a lot worse. Heero was still outside my stall, keeping watch like some ever present guard dog. He smiled when he saw me, making something in my heart ache.  
    "Ready to go home?" he asked.  
    I froze, his words ringing in my head. 'Go home.' If he moved away... or worse, if he hated me if word about our dating got out, I wouldn't have a home anymore, would I? I had to do this, I told myself, I had to break up with him. It was the only way that I could keep him in my life. But as I looked into his blue eyes, suddenly just those words 'I want to break up' seemed so impossible. I'm so selfish, I can't even do something that I know is for the best for him, even if it hurts the both of us. But I needed him too much and I just couldn't risk losing him and making him feel the same pain that I had felt when I had come out, even for a chance to be his boyfriend.       
    I nodded and we left the locker room together for the walk back to his house. I told myself that I didn't tell him about wanting to break up because I couldn't do that to him at that moment, not when someone else might see it. But that was a lie. I felt like I had after he had told me that he liked me. Completely conflicted and feeling like, no matter what I chose to do, I was ruining his life, the one person that I truly loved. Every choice seemed like the wrong one and I felt lost and floundering for what to do. I could wait, I thought. I had promised him a date and I would give him that. After that, I could break it off easier. Couldn't I?   
    But then Heero would glance over at me or smile at me as we walked and I remembered the kisses, the light touches, the pure happiness that I felt every time I thought of him as my boyfriend.   
Was I really strong enough to push away from him? But was I strong enough to put him in harm's way for my feelings either? By the time we got back to his place, I felt hollowed out and far too tired to be thinking on these heavy things. I felt like such a child, like there was no way anyone could expect me to make these kinds of decisions on my own. But I had to. If I tried to talk to Heero about them, he would just try to reassure me and it would work. But he is too optimistic, too hopeful, he doesn't get how the world works, how it can rip everything good right out of you and leave you with nothing. I never want him to figure that out, especially because of me.  
    Heero's mother was vacuuming the hallway between the stairs and the kitchen when we walked through the front door, but turned it off when she saw us.   
    "So how did it go?" she asked us eagerly, as we walked through the door, her smile wide and happy to see us.  
    It struck me like a physical blow right then that if things did get bad for Heero and his parents, I would lose more than him and the security of his home. I would never see Justin or Mariela again. I would never get to talk to her about cooking ever again. I would never see that smile. Devastated didn't even come close to what I was feeling.   
    "It went fine," I said very simply, my mind anywhere else but on track practice, "I got put into sprint, long distance, and two hurdle events."  
    "It went a lot better than fine," Heero scoffed, "He was amazing, Mom! He beat out one of his teammates who has been on the team for years _twice_ , and he cleared all of the hurdles even though it was his first time. Coach Horner even said that he had potential."  
    I blushed, realizing that with how damned loud the man is, of course everyone had heard what he had said to me.   
    "That's great, Duo," Mrs. Yuy gushed and pulled me in for a tight, honest hug, "I just knew that you would do well! I can't wait to see your first meet!"  
    She pulled away and her eyes and expression were shining with pride. Pride for _me_. Her hands felt so warm on my shoulders, so real. Everything about her felt so real, even her praise and for a moment, I wanted to hug her back just as tightly, to forget about everything that I had thought and felt since I had gone into that locker room.  
    It was like getting doused in the face with ice water, like I was at last waking up. This was Heero's mother, the woman who had been a pillar of support for me through some pretty dark times, although I was sure that she hadn't realized that. What had I been thinking? That Heero's parents would just steal him away in the middle of the night and they would all disappear? They wouldn't do that to me, not them. I still felt my doubt, that fear that I was ruining everything and that I was going to destroy Heero's life, but the cloud of anxiety and fear lifted from me a little.   
    I had no control over Heero's life, I realized. Every time I had these fears and I rushed to make a decision about them, that wasn't fair to him. I had been treating him like a child, like someone who can't make choices for themselves. But he had chosen me. He had chosen to date me, even knowing that he was risking everyone finding out about his sexuality. Shouldn't I respect that? If he was willing to take that risk, then who was I to say that he was wrong and needed protecting. But he didn't understand what he was actually risking, how painful it is!  
    'Doesn't he?' an errant thought popped into my head, 'He isn't an idiot, he sees how you're treated, he gets it.'  
    But did he? Love sure as hell didn't let _me_ make rational decisions. I rubbed at my forehead, feeling a pretty spectacular headache start to brew in there. What should I do? What was right, my fear of being left behind or my selfish desire to reach for that shining thing that I had always believed was unreachable? Should I take the decision out of Heero's hands and end it before things got out of my control, as they so often do for me, or trust in him, trust in his family, and trust that, if things did go bad, Heero was prepared for them?   
    "You look pale, sweetheart," Mariela frowned and placed a hand on my forehead, "Why don't I make you something to eat? I'm sure you're starving after all that running."  
    I _was_ hungry, but food was the very least thing wrong with me at that point.   
    "Actually, I didn't get any sleep this morning. I was just going to lay down, if that's alright?" I asked.  
    At that moment with all of my insecurities and doubts and fears swirling around in my head, I felt more tired and drained than I had any right to be. I felt like I hadn't slept for several days, that just the act of standing up was beyond me.   
    "Of course," her expression softened into one of concern and she rubbed at my back in a way that almost made everything better, "Rest for as long as you need to. I'll let Justin know not to make much noise when he does the housework today."  
    "Thank you," I smiled weakly at her, finally finding the ability to do so.  
    I took to the stairs wearily, feeling like I was braving a mountain and found my tiredness ridiculous. I had skipped a single night's sleep hundreds of times, so why was this hitting me so hard? How many hours had I slept for the previous morning? Alarmingly, I couldn't remember. I suddenly felt Heero's hand on my back and glanced back at him. That same look of concern that his mother had had was all over his face.  
    "Are you alright?" he asked kindly, "You've been quiet ever since after practice. Is it because of Alex?"  
    That was a bit of a silly question, I felt, given that Alex, Zechs, and about a dozen other boys did that to me all the time and he knew it. The incident hadn't even come to blows, which such incidents often did, and the things that he had said hadn't been anything new or terribly original. I shook my head.  
    "I'm just really tired," I told him, which was at least half of the truth, "I think I might have pushed myself too hard. I'll feel better after a nap."  
    "Alright," he said, but didn't look all that convinced, "We can postpone the date if you're not feeling well..."  
    He looked so dejected as he said that. He was trying hard to hide it, to not let me see how much he had been looking forward to this, but I knew him too well and could read him like one of my books. I could only imagine what he was thinking. Unlike me, he was only looking forward to our night out and he was probably relieved that it was going to happen, that he would get at least that much from me. But there he was, giving me a way out of it. If I had been having any second thoughts, I could have jumped at it and said that that would be a good idea.   
    In truth, I still felt torn, and that feeling was making that headache blossom into a sharp pounding, but how could I do that to him? How could I let him down like that? He had pushed down his own feelings and offered me a way to back out gracefully and I loved him too much for that to hurt him in such a horribly callous way.       
    "No!" I protested quickly, almost desperately, "No, I'm not feeling sick or anything, just a bit worn out. When did you want to go tonight?"  
    His look eased into one of pure relief.  
    "Well, the mini golf place doesn't close until nine and the restaurant doesn't close until eleven, so there's no rush," he told me.  
    We reached the top of the stairs and Pepper was immediately there, pacing around my legs and meowing to be picked up.  
    "Wake me up at five, then?" I asked him.  
    Five hours of sleep would be plenty to function on, and I didn't want to rush him by waking up any later than that.  
    "Sure," he smiled at me, one of those soft, affectionate smiles of his that always makes me feel like everything will be ok.  
    Looking at that smile, I wondered how I could ever break up with him, for any reason at all. It just melted all of my defenses, all of my carefully constructed logic.   
    "Have a nice nap," he called out to me as I picked Pepper up and walked into the guest bedroom.  
    "Thanks," I called back and shut the door behind me.  
    I put Pepper on the bed and quickly put on my pajamas before collapsing into the bed. I can't even tell you how good it felt, that familiar bed. Hell, just laying down felt amazing. It should have taken me a long while to fall asleep. It usually does when I have so much shit floating around in my head. But one moment I was just closing my eyes and the next, what seemed like no more than a blink of an eye later, someone was quietly calling my name.   
    I couldn't even remember if I had pulled the covers up over me, but I must have, because everything from my mouth down was cocooned in them as I laid there on my side, my right hand the only other thing that had escaped them as it lay limp next to the pillow. I opened my eyes and the very first thing I saw were Heero's beautiful, dark blue eyes, just about the best thing that I could have woken up to. He was kneeling by the bed, watching me and that he might have been for awhile was at the same time endearing and uncomfortable for me. I had caught my father doing the same thing once in awhile, watching me sleep, just staring at me in this strange, unsettling way.   
    I hated that comparison and forced myself to drop it. Heero wasn't my dad. He had been watching me sleep because he loves me and it wasn't like I hadn't watched him the times that I had caught him sleeping. When my dad stared at me in those moments, it was like he was looking right through me to something else. Something that only he could see. When Heero stared at me, he was staring at _me_. My best friend and boyfriend smiled lovingly at me when he saw that I was awake.  
    "Hi," he said and reached out to brush my hair away from my face.  
    Any feelings of awkwardness completely vanished at the sound of his voice and I felt nothing but affection for him.  
    "Mmm, hi," I mumbled sleepily, smiling softly back at him, "Time to wake up?"  
    "Yeah," he said, "It's five."  
    He paused for a moment and then, his hand still on my forehead, pushing my bangs back, he leaned it and softly kissed the bridge of my nose between my eyes. No one had ever kissed me there, or so tenderly, and it felt so good that I closed my eyes and could have easily fallen back asleep.   
    "Sorry," he murmured, his lips brushing against my skin and not sounding sorry at all, "But you're just so beautiful."  
    I felt my face go red hot and I just kind of stared at him with embarrassingly wide eyes. Normally I would have protested him saying something so incredibly ridiculous, but I was still half asleep and all I could do was gape as his words rang in my head. Later I wondered if he had done that on purpose, craftily telling me something like that when he knew I would be able to argue. I certainly wouldn't put it past him.  
    "Shower's free if you want to take one before we go," he told me after he pulled away and stood up, faint blush on his cheeks and his eyes a little bit too bright, "I already took mine while you were sleeping. No rush or anything."  
    "Alright," I murmured, a shower, a proper one and not the half-assed, rushed one that I had taken after practice sounding magnificent.  
    He left me to sit up in bed and rub tiredly at my eyes. I felt oddly well rested compared to how I had felt before I had more or less blacked out. Everything that had happened that morning seemed like it had happened days ago and came back to me in tiny droplets. I remembered my little freak out in the shower and coming to the conclusion that I needed to break up with Heero with mild horror. I won't say that I was so far removed from those bleak and depressing thoughts that I didn't feel some fear when I remembered them, or that some part of me didn't want to go screaming back into that frame of mind, that I had to protect Heero from me, that I had to do whatever it took to keep him near me, but the sheer panic that I had felt then was gone.  
    What the hell was wrong with me? I mean, seriously, what the _hell_? I had had one thought, one single, terrible fear that I would fuck things up badly enough that Heero's parents would feel the need to move away again and I had freaked out. I suppose it's understandable. I've always been prone to pessimism, and given why Heero had moved here in the first place, wasn't it likely that they might do it again if they were worried about him? But even so, I had geared myself up for that possibility like it was going to happen and had been prepared to take measures to protect myself. I had been fully ready to break up with Heero, after all this effort talking myself into giving this relationship a shot, all over a single moment of anxiety.  
    Was it plausible that that might happen? Of course it was, but it didn't mean that it was going to. I could chalk it up to my tiredness. Think what you want, sleep deprivation can really fuck with you. I hadn't missed enough sleep to think that it had messed with my head, but maybe I was wrong, or maybe my anxiety had just had some really shitty timing. But as I sat there on the edge of the bed and remembered that terror and surety, it felt like I had had a moment of temporary insanity. How could I possibly break up with Heero just because I was afraid of him moving away if people found out that he was gay? How could I possibly think that his parents would do that to me, even if they didn't know that we were dating?       
    I hung my head in my hands. I could chalk it up to a lack of sleep, sure, and that probably had something to do with how quickly I had flown off the handle, but it wasn't the real reason. I was a mess, and I had been ever since Heero had told me that he liked me. I was frightened and weak and vulnerable and scared shitless of what this relationship was going to do to me. I kept bouncing from searching for a reason to call it quits and feeling completely incapable of it. I couldn't keep doing this, I knew that. I either had to call off this date right then and now and never look back, or actually commit to this relationship, no matter my fears. Anything less wasn't fair to Heero.   
    Pepper climbed into my lap, having decided that if I was going to hang around in bed, I might as well give her some attention. She meowed and nudged at my hand, almost like she was begging me to pet her. I picked her up and held her in front of my face, her not looking the least bit displeased with this.  
    "Too late to back out, isn't it?" I asked her.  
    She meowed again, like she was agreeing with me, and touched her nose to mine for a second. I buried my face in her fur, the feeling of it comforting.  
    "Like I could really do that anyway," I murmured.  
    I almost laughed at myself. That says it all, doesn't it? Even if I had let myself be carried away by my fear again, even if I had a completely logical and sound reason for wanting to break up with Heero, that I had actually thought that I could say those words to him, that I could just walk away and go back to being friends was hysterically naive of me. I put my cat down, grabbed the clothes that I brought to wear for our night out, and locked myself in the bathroom. I splashed some water on my face to try to wake up further and quickly jumped into the shower.  
    I washed more thoroughly than I ever had in my life, scrubbing my skin and hair almost neurotically, and then did it over a second time just to make sure that I was clean and smelled more like shampoo and soap than anything else. I got out, dried myself, and combed my hair until it was perfectly straight and silky. I automatically put it up in it's usual braid and frowned at my reflection in the mirror. It didn't look right. No, it didn't look good enough. I wasn't going to go hang out with Heero behind the library or at the beach or during school. I wasn't his friend tonight, I was his _boyfriend_ , his date. And I sure as hell didn't look the part, as clean and neat as I was.  
    With frustration, I tugged my hair tie off, unwound my hair, and studied my reflection again. Having my hair down looked even worse. It looked girly. I pushed my bangs back and tugged at my length of hair, but nothing looked right. And really, what could I do with it? French braids, the only other braids that I knew, were even worse than my regular one, so were buns and any other way that I could put my hair up. I could put it up in a pony tail, but I have so much hair now that it would just get in my way. In that moment, as I glared at my plain reflection in the mirror, I wish that I would just cut the mass off. I was sure that boys with short hair had better options, like using hair gel or whatever. It would certainly make things easier.  
    "You're being ridiculous," I scowled at myself.  
    And I really was. Hell, I had _just_ seen Heero. I went to school with him every day, slept over at his house. He knows what I look like and he, for some twisted reason, thinks that I'm 'beautiful'. So who was I trying to impress here? He didn't care how I wore my hair or if it was perfectly combed. He just wanted my company and he already thought that I was handsome, so it wasn't like my appearance was going to sweep him off of his feet. But I wanted it to. I had never really dressed up and fussed over myself like this for Trowa, but I cared what Heero saw in me. I wanted him to be proud and attracted and I had no clue how to do those things. This was not a territory that I had any kind of training or experience in.  
    In more frustration and defeat than anything else, I combed my hair again and settled for putting it back up in a neater, tighter braid, which looked a bit more formal than normally loose and quick one that I always go for. I applied deodorant, the closest thing to cologne that I had, and put my sweater and jeans on. They had looked nicer than any of the other clothes that I owned that morning, but standing in front of that mirror, they looked so plain and underwhelming. I felt like tearing my hair out as I looked at myself and wondered what the hell it was that Heero saw in me. The jeans might look nice with the sweater and the sweater might go well with my eyes, but I felt like a little kid playing dress up, trying to be something that he wasn't and failing miserably.   
    "This is as good as it gets," I told myself in what was supposed to give me a little bit of motivation and out of that bathroom, but it just left me feeling depressed and inadequate.  
    Not for the first time, I felt jealous of Relena. If not for her gender and personality, she would have been the perfect person for Heero. Pretty, smart, popular, wealthy. I bet when they had gone out on dates, she had put on an expensive dress and done her hair up in curls or something, maybe put on some perfume that was worth more than one of my paychecks. The sort of person that he deserved, if she hadn't been a total bitch.   
    Instead, he had chosen me and, really, was I any better for him than she had been? At least I had the right equipment, I supposed, even though I was incapable of using it, and we got along well. But there was so much that I couldn't do for him, so much that I would never be good at. I could never put on a suit and eat with him at some fancy restaurant or go dancing with him or be anything more than, well, _me_. I left the bathroom feeling dejected and, while not in one of my full depressive moods, heading my way there when I bumped quite literally into Heero.      
    "Sorry-" I began to apologize, but then I got a look at him and all coherent words fled me like a flock of spooked birds.  
    He had been getting dressed, too, but his effort was a lot more fruitful than mine had been. He had ignored his own advice to bring a sweater and gone with a long sleeved, button down shirt that was a dark, deep blue color, contrasting beautifully to the white slacks that wore. He also had a black jacket slung over one shoulder, a dressy one and not one of his wind breakers or winter coats. Those three articles of clothing looked like they each cost more than every single piece of clothing that I and my parents had collectively owned, and they probably did.   
    Like me, Heero had obsessively attempted to comb his hair to little success, but it's typical wildness only added to the whole image, like he had done it on purpose instead of being defeated by how thick it was. He looked like a professional model for men's clothing, everything fitting so perfectly, like it had been tailored for him, making him look like every straight female and gay male's wet dream. If I had such things, that image of him that night would have easily joined them.   
    "You... you look so handsome," I blurted out, unable to stop myself.  
    Heero flushed dark red at my compliment.  
    "Thanks," he said shyly, rubbing at the back of his neck, "You do, too."  
    "No, I don't," I muttered, looking down at the floor, and tugged at the bottom of my sweater self-consciously.  
    "Yes, you really do," he insisted and the sincerity in his voice made me lift my eyes from the floor and back to him again, "Look, I..." he paused and seemed as unsure of himself as I was, "Thank you for doing this."      
    It was his turn to look away from me as he floundered with his words, but he reached over and held my hand in his, almost like he was afraid that I might walk away from him.   
    "You didn't have to agree to go out with me," he said in this soft, almost guilty tone, "But I really appreciate that you did... that you're giving me the chance... I know how hard this is... how scary... So I just want you to know that it means the world to me, us... going out on this date."  
    "I _wanted_ to do this," I assured him and if I hadn't been completely sure that breaking up with him would have been a mistake, I sure as hell believed it now, "I like you... a _lot_. If I wasn't such a coward..."  
    "Don't say that," he protested, "You aren't a coward. This isn't easy and I know your last relationship was a bad one. There's nothing wrong about being cautious. I would be, too, if I didn't want to be with you so badly."  
    My heart thudded painfully in my chest.  
    "I... I want that, too," I whispered.  
    I wanted it too much. So much that... even when I was trying so hard to focus on his needs and his wants and his pain, I kept chickening out on doing what I thought was the right thing. Because I wanted too much.   
    "I promise this doesn't have to be anything more than you want it to be," he vowed.  
    His assurances made me smile. I had agreed to this date and stuck with it because of him, because this was what he wanted. That's how I had chosen to think of it, that I had to do this to make him happy, but that was only half true. He wasn't the only one that wanted this and maybe it was time that I started acting like it.  
    "This _is_ what I want," I told him and I somehow managed to make my smile more confident and less half-hearted, "Come on, you promised me one date and you'd better deliver. No backing out, right?"  
    I felt a stab of guilt at that. I had come so close to doing just that so many times... and there he was, starting to back track because he was worried that I was feeling uncomfortable. I had pushed all my desires aside, like I always do, and let my fear take the reins. I should have been overjoyed about going out with him, that I was getting something that I hadn't even been able to dream about, and all I had been thinking about was the bad, that it was a mistake before it had even begun. If Quatre had been there, he would have slapped me for being a moron, for over thinking something that was painfully simple. I loved Heero and he loved me. Going out with him should be the most natural thing in the world and I was already preparing myself for it's failure.  
    "No, sir," Heero said with a cheeky smile, "Oh, and dinner won't be for a little while. Did you want to eat a snack before we go?"  
    "No, I'm good," I told him and wondered why he looked relieved at that.  
    We walked downstairs together, him slipping into the kitchen to grab the car keys as I got the jackets out of the hall closet. It took me a minute to suddenly realize as he came back out of the kitchen not making a single sound that he was trying to sneak out of the house.   
    "I thought you had your parents' permission to take the car," I noted in confusion, not wanting him to get in trouble for driving if he wasn't allowed to.  
    "I got permission this morning," he said in a hushed tone as he tried to usher me towards the door and put on his winter jacket at the same time, "but I really don't want-"  
    "Trying to sneak out, huh?" I heard Mariela's voice, thick with a teasing and amused tone, from behind Heero.  
    "-to deal with _that_ ," he sighed heavily, only making me more bewildered.  
    He turned and I saw his mother there with her arms crossed over her chest, regarding her son with both mirth and suspicion, but when she saw the both of us entirely, including what we were wearing, her eyes widened.  
    "Oh, you two look so nice!" she gushed, making the both of us blush a little, "What's the occasion?"  
    I understood then why Heero was in such a hurry to leave. He had told his parents that we were going to hang out, but it probably looked a bit suspicious dressed as we were.   
    "I told you, we're just going mini golfing and to dinner," Heero said in a very put upon way, "It's not like we're wearing suits and ties."  
    "That's all, huh?" she lifted one black eyebrow.  
    Heero fidgeted under her unrelenting stare and I felt a thrill of fear that this was it, she had figured things out and we were screwed.  
    "Well, don't stay out too late," she lectured instead of accusing us of anything, "It might not be a school night, but Duo still has work in the morning."  
    "Right," Heero nodded, looking so relieved that he probably would have agreed to anything.   
    "Will you be staying over tonight, Duo?" she asked me, steering the conversation over to something a lot safer and less nerve wracking for the both of us.  
    "No, not tonight," I told her, ignoring Heero's look of disappointment, "But... well... I have a favor that I need to ask..."  
    I squirmed, hating that I was even asking for this, but my own discomfort meant little when I remembered how stressed my mother had looked when she had talked about waiting to go grocery shopping.  
    "Did you need money for tonight?" she asked me with complete ease, which only made me feel worse.  
    "No, nothing like that," I told her, remembering Heero's assurance that he would pay for everything, "The thing is..." I rubbed awkwardly at the back of my neck, trying to word things in the least pathetic way possible, "Things haven't been so great lately for us... I mean financially. A bunch of our bills have gone up and my mom hasn't even had the money or the time to go grocery shopping. I can probably go for her tomorrow, but I still don't know what our budget is going to look like. I know it's really rude and presumptuous, but I was wondering if I could bring some food home tonight for dinner and breakfast tomorrow, just to tide my parents over until I can go to the store tomorrow night. Soup or something."  
    "Of course, sweetheart," she smiled softly at me, "I'll make something nice and you can grab it on your way home."  
    "Thank you," I breathed with relief.  
    "You don't need to thank me," she reached out and patted my cheek lightly, "and you aren't being rude. I'm glad that you asked, but I really wish that you had told me that you don't have a lot of food at home sooner, we could have bought some groceries."  
    I shrugged shyly.  
    "I'm not exactly proud of it," I murmured truthfully, "It's not the first time that it's happened and we've always made do. And if my dad found out that I was asking, he'd be pretty pissed."  
    The sad look that she gave me just then was painful, almost too much for me to take. It was a mix of pity and worry and I just knew that she was trying to calculate just how long I had been going with little food in the house, that if she had known, she would have forced me to come over for dinner more often that week.  
    "You make sure you buy him a nice, big dinner tonight," she scolded her son, "He's far too skinny as it is."  
    I flushed darkly, but Heero looked amused, giving his mother a mock salute.  
    "Will do," he smirked and I wondered if he was finding my embarrassment amusing.   
    "Oh, and one more thing," that sly smile came back to her face and she grabbed her son by the shirt sleeve, pulling him in close.  
    For a moment, I thought that she was going to hug him for some reason, but she leaned in and whispered something in his ear. Whatever it was, Heero turned absolutely bright red and his eyes went almost comically wide with horror, a complete contrast to the grin on his mother's face when she saw his expression, a grin that I can only call naughty, or perhaps even perverse.  
    "Mom!" Heero choked out, looking completely scandalized and horrified, like his mother had just told him a dirty story from her teenaged years or something, "It isn't like that!"  
    He looked like he wanted to find the nearest dark hole to crawl into, an expression that very rarely ever came on to him, which of course made me even more curious about what it was that she had said to him. She just kept smirking at him with quite a lot of triumph and kissed him on the cheek.  
    "You have a good time, Duo," she told me and walked back towards her bedroom, the expression on her face every bit like the cat that had caught the canary.  
    "What was that-" I began to ask.  
    "Don't," he groaned, hiding his face in his hand, "Please, if you care about me, just don't ask."  
    I let it drop, not quite sure if I found their entire exchange amusing, even if I didn't know the reason why, or I should feel bad for him.   
  
  
End Part 9  
  
Author's Note: Sorry about the delay in this. I was recently hired for a job that is, I will be honest here, about the worst job possible for someone like me. I've only just gone through orientation and it is already making me incredibly stressed and dubious that I am going to last long at it. It has also forced me to drastically alter my schedule. For some reason, these last few days ever since I agreed to an interview for this job, I've been feeling incredibly tired and drained, unable to do much writing at all. I'm applying to more places in the hopes that I will get hired by some place better and less stressful, because this job is not at all healthy for me, lol. I also really wanted to include the date in this part, but it ran over thirty pages, so it will have to be in part ten.   
  
I've gotten a lot of questions about this lately, enough that I am going to address it here instead of in individual responses. The question has been: do Heero's parents know that he likes Duo? This isn't a spoiler, so I'll say it bluntly: hell yes they do. Some of you might have picked up on some subtle scenes that were supposed to highlight this, but now I'm worried that they might have been too subtle. But there are definite moments when Heero's parents have teased him about something or done something that might seem odd, like his mother keeping Heero's bedroom door open when they're in there together and teasing him for being embarrassed when Duo went to wake him up. Because this story is from Duo's point of view, he has no clue what's going on. This is something that's going to be addressed in Heero's POV epilogue, but they've known that he has a thing for Duo a lot longer than Duo knew. And yes, this issue is a part of what they were arguing about, Heero arguing with his father, and Heero and Mariela's exchange at the end of this part. Duo just tends to be a bit oblivious, lol.   
  
  
  
   
  
  
  
  
      
      
  
  



	54. Chapter 8 Part 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heero and Duo go on their first date

  
A Stagnation of Love  
Chapter 8  
Part 10  
  
  
      
    Heero and I managed to escape his house and pile into the same car that he had picked me up in that one time without any further interruptions somehow and then we were off. It was awkward for awhile. I was still nervous about the whole thing and Heero was still incredibly embarrassed about whatever his mother had whispered to him, his blush not receding much even as we left Nausten. I really didn't know what to expect from this date with Heero. I didn't know how it was going to be any different from what we usually did, but it was obviously going to be and I found that a little bit off putting.  
    I found myself falling back on my one, single frame of reference: the dates that Trowa had taken me to. I knew that I shouldn't, that Heero was nothing like Trowa, he had proven that to me over and over, even boldly stating it himself a few times, so I shouldn't expect anything like that. But there was still a frightened and anxious part of my brain that was scared that this would end up being like on of those times. We would barely speak, he would act distant around me, trying to play up the illusion that we were only luke warm friends, but as soon as we were alone, he would try something, something that I wasn't comfortable with and would have to pretend that I was if I wanted to keep dating him.   
    The mere prospect that that was what my evening was going to be like with Heero horrified me. I didn't want to go through that again. For him, I would, but that doesn't mean that I was looking forward to it. Heero would never do that to me, I could tell myself, but that didn't soothe my fears. I hadn't thought that the shy boy that I had met when I had been thirteen would have treated me the way that he had, either. That's not at all fair, I know that. It wasn't like Trowa had magically changed his entire personality overnight and it had come as a huge shock that he put me at arm's length. A lot had changed in three years, things that I didn't even know about, and how could anyone remain the same after knowing that someone that they had loved had killed themselves because of you? It had changed the both of us, and I had been just as distant with him, just as cold and bitter. But did that really mean that I should have been ok with everything that he had done to me?   
    What would I do, I wondered, if Heero started to do those things? If he started to get bolder? If he started to pressure me for more? Not sex, I might not be well versed in dating practices, but even I knew that it was too soon for that. But touching, fondling, heavy petting, stuff that normal couples did but scared me just as much as sex did. I could tell myself that I could put up with it for him, but it wasn't just something that I could go along with just for his sake. If he didn't think that I was into it, into _him_ , it would hurt him. It would disgust him, just like it had the day that I had had sex with Trowa and he had realized that I hadn't gotten hard.   
    What if Heero copped a feel on this date? What would be worse, the distance, the illusion, or him thinking that I would be ok with that? It just reminded me of all the reasons why I had thought that this was a bad idea. It wasn't fair to Heero. It was me leading another boy on again and I hated myself for it, for not being the person that he deserved. I could put up with anything for him, but how could I pretend to be into the other intimate stuff when just the thought of doing it still made my stomach squirm? I kept thinking that actually being attracted to Heero would make it easier, but in some ways, it just made it harder.   
    Liking him, finding him attractive and still feeling uncomfortable with intimacy just drove home to me what a freak I am. I wanted so badly to be normal. I wanted to _want_ him, but this thing that's broken in me beyond repair won't let me. I shouldn't feel nervous about him wanting more, I should want that, too, but he had fallen for damaged merchandise. He just hasn't realized it yet. I couldn't stand my own thoughts and doubts and insecurities, worried that if I dwelled on them for too long, I would seriously start thinking about breaking up with Heero. Not that that would lead anywhere. As the universe had already made pretty clear to me, actually looking my boyfriend in the eye and telling him that I couldn't be with him, for reasons that I could never discuss with him, was impossible for me, but that didn't mean that I enjoyed where my thoughts were leading me to.   
    I switched the car radio on for a distraction and raised an eyebrow at him when classical music came through the speakers. Heero has a pretty eclectic taste in music, but classical was not something that he enjoyed. He liked pop, metal, and some latin music that he attributed to his mother's father's influence. Yet another thing on an abundant list that we didn't have in common. We met in the middle on rock music, but he mostly tolerated the other music that I liked, although he did admit that he liked some of the jazz music. Neither one of us have much of an interest in classical stuff. Don't get me wrong, some of it is really pretty to listen to, but most of it is kind of stuffy to me. I'd take a blues guitar over a symphony any day.      
    "Hey, it's my dad's car, not mine," he said defensively and reached over to change the station to something that we would both enjoy.  
    A song that we both loved came on and I felt myself relax a little. Just take things as they come, I reminded myself. I had no idea what was going to happen and I was just going to make myself insane about worrying over everything. Heero seemed to be settling down after his embarrassment as well and began to hum along as he left the back roads and got onto the highway. He had a nice voice to listen to and it reminded me a little of a large cat, purring. I couldn't carry a tune myself, even if it was just humming, so I was content to listen to him.   
    There was a bit of traffic on the high way at that hour, but it didn't take us too long to get to Nasket. The town reminded me a bit of Nausten; small and right on the coast, bordered by beaches  with little else to see. Only Nasket was a bit bigger and seemed to do a bigger business in fishing and tourism. There seemed to be dozens of shops and restaurants along the wharf area that we were driving through, all of them advertising 'the freshest fish' and souvenirs, although a few of them looked closed down since it really wasn't tourist season.   
    We drove for a little while, leaving the cluttered shopping area for another street that was much more sparse. It looked like a kind of entertainment district. There were a couple of family friendly restaurants, an entire building advertising moon walks, an ice cream shop, an arcade, and the mini golf course where Heero parked the car. I saw with some relief that, while there were some other cars at the place, they were few. I didn't really know what to expect, but at least it wouldn't be crowded and I was hoping that, with the risk of being spotted at a minimum, Heero wouldn't feel the same need to be aloof around me that Trowa had.   
    I had heard of miniature golf before, but not in any kind of context that had given me much information about it beyond that it wasn't a real sport, bared little resemblance to real golf, and was more of a little kid thing. So I had worried that we might get some weird looks, a couple of teenaged boys going to a kid's event in the evening when it was already dark, but as we got out of the car, I saw that the place was well lit and while I did see a family with kids leaving through the parking lot, I also saw a group of kids our age going in, so I guessed that it wasn't so strange.  
    The mini golf course had some kind of jungle theme going for it, pictures of a parrot mascot everywhere and when we walked in, I could hear the kind of jungle sounds music you might find on a nature CD along with whales and crickets. Everything was brightly colored and cartoonish, from the posters advising participants of safety rules, to the signs for the bathrooms, and even the fake foliage planted here and there on the sides of the walkway. We got in line behind the teenagers that had come in before us to pay for the course and for a moment, I was paranoid that they might be from our school, but I didn't recognize any of them and from their familiarity with the person at the counter, they had to be local. I told myself to relax and stop freaking out over anything, but with my bad luck, it had seemed all too plausible that we might run into someone that knew us or even Zechs and his friends, I thought with horror. That would really be a great way to start the night off.   
    Of course, I pointed out to myself, even if that did happen, it didn't mean that anyone would think that our being there was strange. We were just two friends hanging out on a Saturday night. That was perfectly normal. And we were wearing our jackets, so very few people would be able to even tell that we were dressed up. Still, I didn't dare so much as think 'nothing bad is going to happen' to make myself feel better because that seemed like inviting trouble.   
    The teenagers finished chatting with the girl at the counter, who must have been their friend with their easy banter and it was our turn. She didn't bat an eye when Heero said it was just the two of us and he was told that it would be eight dollars each for the eighteen holes. I was shocked about that, dreading how much this date was going to cost him and expecting easily twice that. We were then informed with a bored inflection that we could choose what color our balls would be, I thought to tell them apart at first, but when I saw the almost ridiculous variety, like a pack of crayons, I realized that it was more out of the whimsy of the thing.     Heero chose a blue violet color and I choose navy blue, the nicest color out of a mass of neons. We were then given our clubs and were allowed onto the course. The clubs were shockingly light, more like sticks than sporting equipment, and the same with the balls. I thought that it must be so the kids could handle them, but I saw behind the counter that there were smaller ones for children. As we stepped through the fence that separated the outer area to the inner courses, I was struck with amazement at the intricacy of how the place was laid out. There were little rivers and waterfalls running throughout the place and I could see various obstacles ranging from snake shaped ladders to caves to monkey windmills and hills. It was rather amusing and I could see the appeal that most kids would have with that kind of place.   
    The first course was incredibly simple, just a flat of what looked like green felt bordered by raised up bricks so no balls could fall in the water and the hole for the ball to go into. I supposed that the courses were done in order of difficulty, but even so, I found it daunting. I hadn't so much as watched a game of regular golf before and I was still terrified of making an ass of myself in front of Heero. For all of my thoughts that it might be better if this date failed and we went back to the way that things used to be between us, that wasn't what I really wanted.   
    Heero watching me at track had helped a little with my self-esteem, but I've never been great at handling embarrassment. You would think that, after all these years of dealing with it every day, I would be, but it still makes me feel physically ill every time it happens, and that's just in front of a bunch of classmates that I hate. If I embarrassed myself in front of the one person whose view of me I cared about, that would be devastating.   
    "I don't know how to play," I told him unnecessarily since he already knew that.  
    "It's not difficult," he said, "You're just tapping the ball with the club towards the hole. It's mostly all about aiming and hitting the ball with the right amount of force, especially on an easy course like this."  
    "I'm probably going to suck at it," I muttered and hated how whiny I felt.      
    "That's alright," he smiled at me, "This isn't about competition, it's just fun. And I really suck at it, too."  
    I sincerely doubted that he sucked at anything even remotely athletic and raised a dubious eyebrow at him, thinking he was just placating me so I wouldn't feel bad.  
    "Here, I'll go first so you can see how to do it," he offered.  
    He placed his ball on the front of the green, took his stance, and hit the ball. It went in an almost straight, perfect line to the hole and I thought for sure that he had nailed it, but he had hit it a little too hard and the ball bounced back out.  
    "Damn it," he muttered, "I always do that. See? I'm not that great at it, either."  
    I bit back a chuckle at his frustration, but I instantly felt better about my own inadequacies. I take it for granted sometimes that I'm not the only one who isn't good at some things, so used to being bullied about it, but what had made Heero good at baseball had made him bad at miniature golf. He was used to swinging a bat, not tempering himself. I went next, putting my blue ball down and trying to copy Heero's posture as best that I could.  
    "Hold on a sec," he said and suddenly, he was there right behind me, so close that I could almost feel his body heat through my jacket.  
    My heart leapt up into my throat as I felt him reach around and place his hands over mine. I nervously looked around us and even though there wasn't anyone that was close enough to us to see what Heero was doing, and even though he really wasn't doing anything that he wouldn't have done back when we had just been friends, I was torn between being excited to feel him touching me again and anxious that we were in a public place.   
    I almost laughed at myself. I had been so scared that Heero would act like Trowa had on this date, that he would shy away from me entirely around people, and _I_ was the one freaking out over being seen. Could I be a bigger hypocrite? That it was Heero that I was worried about and not myself didn't make me any different from Trowa as far as I was concerned. The only thing that did was that I wasn't pushing Heero away or telling him not to get that close, half because I couldn't, I was frozen where I was, trying not to let him know how much his mere proximity effects me, and half because I just didn't want to. Even if I did, he might take it the wrong way and feel hurt.  
    "Like this," he told me in a soft tone and moved my fingers on the club to a position that he was more satisfied with.  
    He's just trying to help, I told myself, he doesn't mean anything by it. But when he let go of my hands and stepped back, his face was a little bit warm, not from embarrassment, but something else all together and I wondered if he had just used my shitty posture as an excuse to touch me.   
    "T-thanks," I stammered and took my shot, trying to ignore how hot my hands still felt.  
    By some kind of miracle, my ball traveled the few feet to the hole, fell in, and stayed in. Sure, it was a course designed so that any child could sink that shot, but I was still amazed that I had managed it while my boyfriend hadn't. Heero took his turn, getting his ball in the second time and marked our scores on the little sheet of paper that he had been given when he had paid. We moved slowly through the rest of the course, taking our time since there was no one behind us and the group of teenagers were far ahead. Neither of us was even a little bit competitive, and it was like Heero had said, this was just for fun.   
    We chatted as we played, marveling at some of the obstacles, and it soon became absolutely apparent to me that all my fears that going out on a date with Heero was going to be like dating Trowa were ridiculous. Heero wasn't distant at all, in fact it was the opposite. It seemed like he was taking any excuse to touch me and be affectionate. Not kissing or anything too forward, and nothing that would have made it obvious that we were together, but little things. Touching my hand as he walked past me, squeezing my shoulder, brushing his fingers against mine when he handed my ball back to me, just tiny moments of touch that made me feel hopelessly happy.   
    Because that was the point. I had never asked Trowa for open displays of affection. Even if I hadn't been gay and such displays would be like inviting an assault, I wasn't that kind of person. When it comes to intimacy, I'm too shy to be overly public about it. But all the same, all those moments when he had been so cold and distant to me, barely talking or even looking at me had hurt. It had made me doubt that he had feelings for me at all, even just friendly ones. It had made me feel like he was just putting up with me out of convenience, which had turned out to be true, but that doesn't mean that I wanted him to so blatantly shove that fact in my face over and over again.  
    Heero wasn't like that. He showed me, again and again, that we weren't just here as friends, that he liked my being there and wanted me there with each of those touches, but never in a way that made me feel uncomfortable or put either of us in danger. With Trowa as my only example, I hadn't even considered that there was some halfway point we could have reached, that we could have been both discreet and still do something as a couple together. It was more than just wonderful to me.   
    As for our playing itself, neither of us got much better after the first couple of holes. Heero hit the ball too hard more than half of the time and my aim was just horrible. We weren't ever going to be able to compete in professional mini golf, that was for sure, but it was entertaining and I found myself easily enjoying it, even if I sucked. Things got progressively harder around the seventh hole when those little brick barriers around the green went away and it became a struggle for both of us to keep our balls where they were supposed to go. It was only inevitable that one of us would miscalculate and lose our ball, and of course that person would end up being me.   
    "Shit," I swore as I hit my ball right off the green and into the little river at hole twelve while trying to get it up onto the snake ladder that led to the platform that the hole was on.  
    I was lucky, I suppose, that it had only gone into the river, which had barely any current let alone enough of one that would move the ball and not down one of the waterfalls or some other inaccessible place, but the ball was still too far away from us for me to fish it out with the club. I was starting to wonder if the cashier would give me a new one if I asked when Heero decided to take matters into his own hands.  
    "I'll get it," he said and started to untie his shoes.  
    "What?" I squawked unintelligently at him, thinking he was just joking until I saw him remove his socks and shoes and roll up his pants and sleeves so they wouldn't get wet, "Heero, it's fine, you can't-"  
    But he completely ignored me and stepped into the water. A bark of laughter escaped me at the ridiculousness of what he was doing, even as he shivered a little as he waded out into the little more than ankle high water. There he was, in expensive slacks, walking through icy cold, probably dirty, water just to get a damned golf ball for me. Half of me wanted to scream at him that he was an idiot while the other felt so warmed that he would do something like that for me, and all over a silly game.   
    "I can't believe you just did that," I said, but I was still laughing and Heero was looking triumphant as he fished my ball out and made his way back to me.   
    "Your ball, my good sir," he said with a cheeky grin, handing it to me.  
    "My hero," I said dryly, shaking my head at him, "That water must have been freezing."  
    "It wasn't that bad," he insisted, taking off his jacket to use it as a towel to dry off his feet before putting jacket, socks, and shoes back on.  
    "Says the one who can't stand the cold," I teased, not believing him one bit.   
    We continued on with our game and, thankfully, didn't have any more lost ball incidents, although Heero hit his right into a bush on hole sixteen. When Heero added up all of our points at the end, he told me that it was a tie and I tried to call his bluff, thinking about the statistical improbability of the whole thing and he was just catering to my ego, or lack of one. But when I demanded to see the score card, I saw with amazement that we really _had_ tied through sheer luck. The scores themselves were not very flattering, but one of us wasn't so much as a single point off from the other. I wanted to keep my ball as a souvenir from the best date that I had ever been on. Maybe it was premature to think that before we had even gone out to dinner, but it was the best already, a far cry from any of the others that Trowa had taken me on.   
    The last hole, however, was actually a tube that collected all of the balls so no one could steal any. So Heero let me keep the scorecard instead. I didn't tell him about that 'best date' stuff, or that I wanted a souvenir from my time with him even though I'm not much for material possessions or sentimentality with all the things that I've lost in my life thanks to my father's rampages, but I think Heero guessed it from how disappointed I was to learn that I couldn't retrieve my ball. The scorecard would end up going right into the drawer in the bedside table in the guest room because I didn't want to risk it getting destroyed.  
    It was actually a nice night out for once, not too chilly or windy and not a single cloud in the sky, no moon, but a ton of stars, so we decided to leave the car and walk the few blocks to the restaurant. Just as promised, it was this little Italian place named Prima's that was right on the water front, complete with an area for outside dining that overlooked the beach. I felt mournful when I saw it that, while warmer than it had been the previous month, it was still far too cold to eat out there. All of the tables and chairs were empty, but the restaurant still had the string of lights that framed the place on and I imagined that it was a popular spot for couples during the spring and summer.  
    Prima's wasn't as fancy as some places, I supposed, but it was easily the nicest restaurant that I had ever eaten at, given that the second nicest was Charlie's, which was little more than a family burger joint. It wasn't the sort of place that you needed reservations to and it was affordable, but it was beautiful inside, all the tables covered in white, satin cloths with a low lit lantern hanging above or, for some of the tables, a lit candle. The music was as low as the lighting instead of blaring like in some places, the singing soft and sweet, although I couldn't make out the words, just the sound of the voice and violins. There was even a fireplace by the bar that was lit. I could smell the sweet, intoxicating aromas of garlic, tomatoes, and a thousand different kinds of herbs and spices, my stomach almost cannibalizing itself as I remembered that I hadn't eaten since early that morning.   
    I took off my coat the second that we got inside, but still felt incredibly underdressed and like I was the very last person that belonged there. As we approached the front of the restaurant so we could be seated, I had to remind myself a thousand times that it was ok, I wasn't wearing one of my ratty t-shirts, my hair was clean, and I certainly didn't smell. I had bathed, my clothes were decent, and I was with Heero. If I was out of my league, that was alright because he _did_ belong there and he wouldn't let me make an ass of myself.  
    We followed the hostess to the doubles section of the restaurant, but when she tried to seat us at one of the booths, Heero asked for a table. I nearly protested when she brought us to one of the candle lit tables, having thought that those were reserved for couples, but Heero just thanked her and if she thought that it was strange, she didn't say. Maybe it was just because there weren't many people there or she thought that he just liked where the table was, right next to the window where we could look out onto the ocean and the clear, night sky. She gave us the menus, took our drink orders, Heero asking for a non-alcoholic red wine and myself a raspberry, Italian cream soda, and then went away.   
    I slung my jacket around the back of my chair and looked around the area that we were seated in. To my ultimate relief, I saw that there was no on in our section beyond a young couple in their twenties that were so engrossed with each other, Heero and I could have started making out right there and they wouldn't have so much as blinked. I could see the outdoor eating area from where we were and how calm the ocean was that night, how easy it was to see the stars' reflections on the black water.   
    "This place is beautiful," I remarked.  
    "Yeah, it is," Heero agreed, but he was looking at me and not outside at the window, which made me blush even though I knew that it didn't mean anything, "It's too bad that Nausten doesn't have a place like this."  
    "Yeah we do," I pointed out, "There's a ton of nice restaurants in the north shopping district."  
    "Yeah, I know, Relena took me to a few of them," he said and I could just barely detect a bit of bitterness in his voice as he reminisced on his ex, "And they're nice, but they're also ridiculously expensive and stuffy, and few of them have a view like this. I didn't want to take you to any of them."  
    I looked away from him, feeling embarrassed. I didn't feel any resentment towards him, because I knew that it was the truth. Someone like me could never go to some five star restaurant and expect to be served, I would stick out like a raccoon at a pedigree dog show. I didn't even own a tie and the last thing that I would have wanted was for Heero to be ashamed of me. I probably wouldn't be let through the door anyway. Those types of places' dress code don't accept jeans and a sweater.   
    "Not like that!" Heero said desperately and when I looked back up at him, he looked panicked that he might have hurt my feelings, "I just mean that I know how uncomfortable you would be in a place like that and I didn't want that. I wanted you to relax and have a nice time, not feel self-conscious and like you didn't belong. Besides, if I had taken you, you would have been disrespected and then I would have had to punch someone and that would have made for a really shitty first date," he managed to win a shocked, little burst of laughter out of me and smiled, "I like this place a lot better anyway. The view is nicer, the staff isn't snotty, and I like the food a lot more.   
    "I... I never really enjoyed any of the dates that I went on with Relena," he confessed awkwardly, "It wasn't just that I didn't really like her or that I had to pretend to be in love with her or even her personality. She just had all these impossibly high expectations. I couldn't blame her for it, her family is filthy rich and she's just used to certain things. My family might be able to afford nice things, but we're practically destitute compared to how the Darlians live. I could afford to take her out to fancy restaurants and things like that, but it made me feel weird. It was never anything that I was used to. My parents can afford it, but we never go out to those kinds of places or go to lavish events. Before I started dating Relena, we went to a high class restaurant _once_ and that was when my father got his psychiatry award. I'm much more comfortable in a laid back place like this and I thought that you would be, too."  
    "I am, too," I confessed, not telling him that this place was nicer than any other place that I had been to, "I wouldn't even know how to act in a place like that."  
    "You shouldn't have to," he insisted, "I wanted us to have a nice, companionable meal together, not be judged for our clothes and behavior."   
    "Didn't you ever take her any place that you wanted to go?" I asked.  
    "A couple of times," I was told, "But she never seemed to enjoy herself that much if we went to a baseball game or a restaurant that I liked. Even if the food was great or it was something that I really enjoyed, she would have a complaint about everything and make me regret taking her. So I just stopped and let her choose what we did and where we went. It was easier that way and she thought that I was just being romantic by insisting that she pick. I..." he moved his hand across the table to where mine was and brushed his fingers lightly against mine, a subtle gesture that was both discreet and intimate.  
    "... I've always been more comfortable with you," he admitted very shyly, "Not just because we're both gay, but... you aren't pushy or demanding. It didn't matter to you where we went or what we did and that's what a date should be about. Not the event, but doing it together. Relena never understood that. I feel like I can be myself around you because you actually like who I really am, not just because I'm good at baseball or that I'm attractive. I don't have to be confident or jump through hoops when we're together. Everything just comes naturally and I think that's the most important thing. Not passion or the fact that I would do anything for you, but that it seems so easy. We could be watching a movie at my house and I would be just as happy as I am right now."  
    I felt a dark blush overcome me as he spoke. He was happy... I had actually made him happy. He had told me that he loved me, that he thought that I was beautiful and strong, but he had never said those things to me before, that he could be himself around me. I realized that it was the same for me. When I was with him, even during something like this where I felt so awkward and off balance, I still didn't feel any pressure to build a wall around myself, to hide myself away from him. I've spent my life hiding from everyone, trying to protect my heart and pretending that I'm not as vulnerable as I really am, but Heero is the only person that I've really been open with.   
    Even with Quatre, I hid a lot from him. Heero knows more about me than anyone else, and he accepts all of those things. He was right, I realized, that the most important thing wasn't that we were crazy for each other, but that we meshed so well. We didn't need pretenses or to pretend for each other. Maybe a large part of that was that we were friends before we were boyfriends, but I think it's more than that. Maybe we really are just that compatible or maybe it's our personalities, but we understand each other without half trying.   
    "Me, too," I told him with a soft smile, hooking my middle finger around his, "I'm happy no matter what we do, but I'm glad you took me out tonight. I've never gotten to do these things before and I'm glad that I got to do them with you."  
    We both fell silent and quickly removed our hands from on top of the table to resting on our laps as we saw our waitress approach us with our drinks. I took a tentative sip of mine, which turned out to be sweet, but not overly so. We were asked what we would like to order and I took the time while Heero was ordering to glance at the menu, which was actually quite extensive. Heero decided on a shrimp linguini dish while I eventually settled for lamb in a garlic marinara sauce because I had never had lamb before and this seemed like a night for firsts.  
    "So, you're having fun tonight?" Heero asked me when the server had left with our menus, taking a small sip from his wine.   
    "Yes, thank you so much for taking me," I said to him, "and for putting up with my pussy footing over the whole thing. I'm having a great time."  
    "Hey, it's no problem," he assured me, "I was really nervous, too. I didn't want you to feel pressured or to have a terrible time tonight."  
    "So, did your parents take you to mini golf and those kinds of places a lot as a kid?" I asked him.       
    "Yeah, there were a ton of places like them where we used to live," he told me with a great deal of fondness in his tone, "Not just mini golf, but a lot of tourist attractions, zoos, play parks, all sorts of places. My dad would take me out every weekend to some place, sometimes just the two of us. Even now that I'm older, we still try to go out and do things together once in awhile."  
    "That sounds nice," I smiled, but I wasn't all that surprised.  
    Mr. Yuy seemed like the kind of dad that would spend time with his son not out of some kind of parental obligation, but because he genuinely liked being with him. Heero opened his mouth to say something, but whatever it was, he looked incredibly uncomfortable and quickly closed his mouth again.   
    "I'm not made of glass, you know," I said and it didn't take a genius to figure out that whatever he had been about to say, he had stopped because he had worried that it might offend me or that he was being rude, "You can ask me whatever you want. If it isn't something that I'm comfortable with answering, then I won't, but you don't need to hold back just because you're worried it might upset me."  
    "Alright," he conceded, "Did you ever do anything like that with your parents?"  
    Even though I had assured him that he could ask me anything, I immediately wished that I hadn't, and I felt somewhat annoyed, almost bitter, that he had asked that question. But that wasn't his fault. I just didn't want to think about my childhood. Not so much the beatings and verbal abuse and how both of my parents had treated me like shit, like a parasite that they were forced to take care of. No, those things are easy to remember. It's everything else.     It's just easier, you know? To remember the bad times, because things are still bad. It's easier to remember how my father had hit me and told me that I was nothing because it makes it easier to deal with my loathing for him. But the other things... the good things, the times when he had been nice to me were so much more complicated. I didn't want to remember how much I did, and still do, love him, how I had looked up to him, how I had loved spending time with him, no matter what we did.   
    It's harder to remember how those feelings had diminished, how he had almost snuffed them out with his violence and callousness. But not entirely. Because that's the worse part. For all of my father's attempts, there are still parts of me that care about him and feel happy when he does a nice thing for me or gives me some of his time. When I feel that love for him, it's so much harder to accept, not only my anger at him or even all of the ways that his treatment of me has changed me, but how he can do those things to me. How he can beat me bloody and force himself on me without ever acknowledging what he's doing, like he's sleepwalking.   
    "My mother wouldn't," I told him, deciding to answer the question, even if it hurt me, "Sometimes she would come with us when we would go out someplace, but only a couple of times. She was always so busy with work. When I was little, she would always just be too tired, but when I got older, she never wanted to be around me or my father. Even when we did go out, it wasn't any place like this. My dad would take me on car rides or walks on the beach. Sometimes we would sit on the hill by the train yard with a packed lunch and watch the trains come and go. Even back then, we didn't have much money, so we couldn't go to many places. But I was happy, you know, just that he wanted to spend some time with me."  
    I swallowed roughly, feeling this sudden pain in my chest as I suddenly realized just how much I missed my childhood. How much I missed those times with my father. Not only that, I suddenly wished, with all of my heart, that he would go back to the way that he was. Things weren't so bad back then. He didn't hit so hard, didn't drink so hard, didn't hate me so much. Back then, it had actually seemed like he was trying to be a father. He actually seemed like he cared about trying. Then, little by little, that person died and everything that was bad in him got so much worse.   
    "I'm sorry," Heero apologized, looking like absolute shit, "I didn't mean to make you upset."  
    I shook my head and took another sip of my drink, trying to keep it together.      
    "It's fine. They're good memories," I insisted, "I like remembering them."  
    "You did get out of Nausten once in awhile when you were a kid?" he asked me.  
    "Nope," I said, "Until my previous boyfriend came along, I had never left town before."  
    Heero's blue eyes went wide with surprise.  
    "Seriously?" he gaped, "Jeez. Well, we have to fix that, get you out of there more so you can see what it's like. Nausten is just one, tiny town, there are so many great things to see not all that far away from us. Nausten isn't the entire world, you know."  
    I almost felt he was scolding me and I didn't blame him. There really wasn't any good excuse for me staying in my home town all the time. I could say that I never had the time or the money, but that was a lie. It was partially because it was kind of comforting, never leaving the place that I've always known, even just to take a jog or the bus to the next town over, but the other was just thinking 'what's the point?'   
    "Sometimes it feels like it is," I murmured, looking downcast into my cheerfully red and white drink, "Sometimes it feels like Nausten stretches out forever, it just changes it's name sometimes. All the people and the places are exactly the same, so it doesn't matter if I go out and explore, if I move away or go some place far away from there. It's all the same shit in the end."  
    "It really isn't," Heero protested, "Duo, you don't know because you've been stuck there for all of your life, but not every town is like Nausten, and not every person is like the assholes that treat us like shit. There's so much to see and do, so many people that are completely different. People that are like us."  
    I supposed that that was true. After all, if _everyone_ was like Relena and Zechs and my father, then I never would have met Heero or his parents. But they seemed so rare, and it seemed so impossible that I would ever meet anyone else like them, just more bullies.   
    "You'll understand when you go off to college next year," he promised, "There _are_ places in the world that are better, places where you'll be accepted, you just have to find them and not give up."  
    "Yeah," I murmured, neither confirming or denying anything and busying myself with buttering a piece of bread that our server had left at the table so Heero wouldn't catch on to my dejected tone.  
    I couldn't tell him about my plans for the future. I didn't dare. Heero is a dyed in the wool optimist. He always believes that I can do all these things... that I'm better than I really am and there will always be a part of me that never wants to prove him wrong. How could I possibly tell him that I have no intention of going to college after high school? That I had every intention of starting work and getting an apartment, and even just going to a trade school if I could ever afford it was as close to a dream as I've gotten in years? He would flip his shit and try to convince me that I was college material and when I tell him that my potential is only a part of it, that money is the other issue, he would get that sad look on his face that devastates me every time, that look where he just wants to fix everything and he knows that he can't.   
    Still, I wondered just how much of that future came from me being completely logical and realistic, and how much I've used my belief that every other place would just be more of the same shit anyway as an excuse to stay. No point even trying to see what my options were for a further education, I would just get turned down, and even if I did, what did it matter? I would fail and just get bullied and harassed anywhere else. At least I knew Nausten. It was shit that I understood and knew how to survive. But in reality, was I just scared of failure? Am I just a tiny fish in an equally tiny pond, too frightened to see what things are like in the big, scary ocean? Am I nothing more than a carbon copy of my father, deciding to stay in this dead end, to complain and struggle and wither and die instead of trying something different?   
    "I'm sorry," I blurted out, flushing and looking down at my silverware, "I'm really boring. I've never gone anywhere or done anything even remotely interesting for my entire life. If it weren't for my ex, I never even would have left my home town until now."  
    Him telling me that he enjoyed dating me much more than he had Relena had done wonders for my self-esteem, but there was still a part of me that would always wonder if I could ever hope to measure up to her, to be the person that Heero really wanted. Every time he would compliment me, it was hard for me to take. I wasn't just ordinary or unremarkable, I'm boring and completely uninteresting. Heero could entertain me for hours about what it had been like to live in Florida, be a mvp, all the things that he had done as a kid that I had never done, but I had nothing. I had lived my life in an isolated bubble, this grey miasma of nothing and I couldn't think of anything about me that would keep him interested in me.   
    "You're far from boring," he scoffed, "And you don't need to have a ton of interesting stories or be a thrill a minute for me to like you and want to be around you. Relena and her family have gone on cruises all over the world and I found her and the things that she would talk about to be about as exciting as watching paint dry. Who you are is a lot more interesting to me than any place you've gone, Duo."  
    I felt incredibly pleased at that, shy from his praise, but I managed a shy, happy smile, realizing that he wasn't just giving me a line, but he really felt that way. I opened my mouth to tell him that, to let him know how much I loved him for being the only person in my entire life to actually tell me something like that, that the person that I am actually matters to him, that he didn't want me to change, that I wasn't just a flat bit of nothing to him, something inadequate and trivial, but then our waitress came back with our food, interrupting our conversation. It didn't matter, I realized. Heero knew.  
    The food was delicious, by the way, and it made the food that I had had at Charlie's years ago seem like something out of a greasy spoon. The lamb and sauce was incredibly rich. I can't say that I prefer lamb over beef after trying it, but it was definitely something that I wished I could have more often. Even the vegetables, of which there were practically a mountain of them, were amazingly fresh and tasted great mixed with the sauce. We divided our dishes in half and let the other taste ours and Heero's was just as incredible, especially the shrimp, another thing that I had never had before. He let me try some of his wine, too, and I had to admit that it complimented what we had chosen, but I preferred what I was drinking.   
    We talked only a little as we ate, too focused on our meals, and the things that we talked about were pretty banal and safe. Our food, the restaurant's chosen decor, if I was interested in cross-country or not. It might not have been anything important, but it was companionable and I enjoyed it more than I could ever say, just eating dinner with him and talking, great food and watching his blue eyes from across the table. Even though it was getting late, when our server came back with dessert menus, we ordered a slice of cheesecake and tiramisu to split between us, which turned out to be just as delicious as everything else that we had eaten.   
    "Did you want to get your mother anything to go? A piece of cake or something?" Heero asked me when we had finished with our desserts.  
    I felt briefly amused that he had asked if I wanted to bring my mother anything and not my father, but also warmed that he knew that much about me, that I would feel compelled to gift her with something nice.  
    "If you don't mind?" I asked him.  
    "Of course not," he smiled.  
    When our server came back to collect our dessert dishes, he ordered a slice of tiramisu to go, as well as our bill. When she delivered both, I demanded to see how much it was, but the cheeky asshole refused. Just glancing at it, writing down a tip amount and putting his credit card in the folder for her to collect.  
    "Jerk," I muttered at him when she walked away, but he just grinned in triumph at me.   
    "I don't see how it makes any difference how much it cost," he logically pointed out, "since even if you had money, I wouldn't let you pay for it. That would just be bad manners."  
    I rolled my eyes at him. I wanted to say that I wanted to go dutch with him, which seemed only fair, but we both knew that I didn't have the means no matter what it had cost, and I was sure that it hadn't been cheap. When his credit card was returned to him, we grabbed our coats and left, full and content.   
    "Thank you," I said, fidgeting with the bottom of my sweater as we walked through the parking lot, "For paying and getting me to do this. I had a great time tonight."  
    "I'm glad," he smiled softly in that way that always makes my heart flutter.  
    When we got to the car, he lightly grabbed my arm to keep me from walking to the passenger side. He took the take out container holding the cake and placed it on the trunk of the car, out of harm's way, and took both of my hands in his. In that single moment, with his warm hands holding mine, I didn't worry about anyone seeing us and thinking it strange that two teenaged boys were holding hands.   
    "So tell me..." he said in a low and very nervous voice that I was only used to hearing from him when he was asking something serious of me, something that he thought I was going to say no to, "... do I stand a chance?"  
    My breath caught in my throat at his question. That was right, I reminded myself. This wasn't _just_ our first date. This was the trial run that he had proposed because I had been too chicken shit about just flat out agreeing to a relationship. Now that date was coming to a close and he still didn't know where he stood with me. Just because I had admitted to having a good time with him, it didn't mean that I was agreeing to continue seeing him. There he was again, I thought, giving me an out. Not pushing me or assuming things like Trowa had, but gently leading me along carefully because he was just as worried about me as he was about his own feelings.   
    I could so very easily tell him no, I realized. I had been agonizing over this for days, wondering over and over again what I should do, if it might be safer for both of us to just call it quits. And there he was, giving me the means to do so. We could go back to being friends and sure, it would be awkward and painful for awhile, but we might get over it, at least in appearances. I wouldn't have to be so scared anymore of failure, or worse. But do you want to know something really weird? Even though I had been feeling so terrified for all of those days and hours and minutes leading up to this date... in that parking lot with him, looking into his pained and anxious eyes, I didn't feel that fear. It had fled, if only for a little while, and all I felt was love for him. I looked down at the ground, too nervous myself to look at him anymore, the warmth of his skin like a brand on my hands.  
    "You're the only one who ever has," I murmured very shyly, my heart racing in my chest as I admitted that.  
    Heero let go of my hands and I quickly looked back at him, worried that I might have said something wrong, but there was this intense expression on his face that made me breathless all over again. It was passion and love and wonderment, like he couldn't believe that I was real. I felt his hand on my left arm and he turned to see if anyone was watching us, but he had parked far from the entrance of the restaurant and there was no one else but us in parking lot. Even if there was, it was fairly dark where we were, so I didn't feel any anxiety at all when he leaned in close and kissed me.  
    It was like that first kiss all over again. Deep, sensual, intimate, and amazing, his mouth exploring my own like it was something fascinating that he couldn't get enough of. His lips were insistent without crossing that stupid line in my head that always made my fear rear up when Trowa went too far without being anything placating or calming. His kiss swept me up and built up this heat in me that I can't really explain, making me want things that I don't even know what they are. But even through it all, he didn't touch me or feel me up or try anything more than that kiss, somehow understanding, when Trowa never had, how to push me without breaking me.   
    The kiss lasted mere minutes, but just like before, it felt like so much longer than that and when we parted, my lips felt swollen and warm again. He smiled at me and gave me one last kiss on the lips, a brief, chaste one and squeezed my arm a little. We got into the car together, but he didn't put the key in the ignition just yet. He reached over and held my hand in his and for a moment, this terrifying second in time, I flashed to the time that Trowa had held my hand like that, only to lead it into his pants, forcing me to hold his cock. It was like all those moments when I remember my father forcing himself on me, how I can feel everything that had happened like it was happening right then, how I can smell his breath and feel that terror. I could feel the fear that I had felt back then when I had realized that Trowa had wanted me to touch him, and I could even feel his penis in my hand, warm and soft and strange.   
    In the entirety of that second, I didn't once think that Heero would do something like that, something so violating, not him. But my heart still pounded with fear and I felt that worry that things were going to get out of control and take a turn into territory that I couldn't handle, a place where Heero would do something that was probably normal for couples, but would make him resent me because I couldn't deal with it like a normal human being. Then he raised my hand to his lips and lightly kissed my knuckles.   
    "Thank you," he said to me with a soft smile on his lips.  
    "For what?" I asked in confusion, feeling incredibly guilty for my horrible thoughts.  
    "For what you said," he told me, "and for giving us a chance."  
    I shrugged awkwardly.  
    "There's nothing to thank me for," I murmured, blushing a little, "You know that I like you. I never should have strung you along to begin with."  
    "Yes there is," he insisted, "I knew from the start that, just because you like me, that's no guarantee that you would agree to a relationship. You've been hurt before, pretty badly I think, and I don't want you to worry that that might happen again. I don't want to be another bad memory."  
    "You could never be that," I assured him and I knew that it was the truth.   
    Even if our relationship ended because I had fucked everything up, and even if he grew to hate me, he would never be like Trowa. I had too many good memories of him for that to ever happen.  
    "You could never hurt me like he did," I said.  
    "I won't," he promised me, without even knowing exactly what it was that had happened and I didn't elaborate.  
    I wanted so badly to put Trowa and everything that he had said and done during our short relationship as far behind me as possible so I could move on with Heero, so I could stop comparing the two of them and remembering how everything went to shit, but I don't think that it's that simple. The only things that I really knew about relationships, I had learned from Trowa, my parents, and seeing Heero with Relena, and only one of those was a _homosexual_ relationship. I could tell myself that my dating Heero was completely different, but it was those differences that kept blindsiding me.   
    Every time Heero did something that Trowa never had, or did it better, or _didn't_ do something, it amazed me and put me off balance. Because I had to wonder what was different between the two of them. Was it simply because of their personalities? Was it because Heero lacked the bitterness of our shared history? Or was it simply because he actually loved me? The weird thing was, as much as Trowa had hurt me, he hadn't hurt me as much as he could have if I had truly loved him. But Heero could. That was the thing, wasn't it? Heero wouldn't hurt me like that, but he could, and he could do it quite seriously without even half trying.   
    That was all I could think about through the entire drive back to Heero's house, what a dangerous thing I was doing by dating him. I've survived for so long by closing off my heart, and there I was, daring the risk of opening it up. But what choice do I have? It isn't a choice at all, because that's what he does to me. He makes me vulnerable. Every moment that I'm with him, he drags me down deeper. He makes me feel things that I never thought that I would ever feel. He makes me weak. And there's a warning bell going off in my head, screaming at me that I can't do this, I can't live with this weakness. Because if he hurts me, if he takes all of this away from me, it'll rip me to shreds.   
    Normally, these kinds of thoughts would make me run and hide so fast, no one on Earth could hope to find me. All I've done for my entire life is build walls up around me to keep everyone out. And it's done me pretty well, really. Without those walls, dealing with Relena, Zechs, my father, Quatre's death, Trowa's betrayals, and how my mother used to be would be impossible. I'd never find the ability to get out of bed every day, Pepper or not. No, without those walls, I probably would have killed myself long before Quatre had.   
    But that night, sitting next to Heero in the car as he hummed along to a song that I didn't know on the radio, I wondered if that was really how I wanted to live the rest of my life. This... self-defense mechanism of mine had helped me, yes, but it had also damaged me. I've been protected, but until Heero came into my life, I wasn't happy. Even my friendship with Quatre paled in comparison to this. Knowing what this feels like, being with him, thinking about how things used to be is stifling.   
    I had hardened my heart and turned into someone capable of moving on past all the pain and bullying, but it wasn't just the hurt. I haven't let anything into my heart for the last four years. Not pain, but not happiness, either. No joy, no growth, nothing at all. I put my heart into stasis and the only thing that's grown in there is the same hate and anger and bitterness that's been there since I watched my best friend kill himself. Nothing else. I had tried to move on, tried to make something for myself. I had told myself that not killing myself, taking in my cat, going to school every day, these were signs that I was putting the past behind me. But that's the biggest lie there is. Until I met Heero, I hadn't moved on from anything. I had just rotted in it.  
    Before we became friends... before he moved here, was there a single day that I hadn't obsessed over the past? Quatre's death, my depression, the bullying, the abuse... it was all that I ever really thought about for so long. I had pushed away the mere _possibility_ of ever letting anyone else in. Dating Trowa had only solidified my belief that it was the right thing to do. 'See?' my heart had told me towards the end of our fucked up relationship, 'This is what happens when try to be around someone, try to let them be a part of your life. They just kill you.'   
    I haven't even moved on from him. Not really. I broke up with him, but I never spoke to him again. I've barely even seen him in the halls at school. I just broke it off and evicted him from my life, but I never moved on from what he had done. I had just accepted the fact that I would never be truly happy, that no one could make me feel that way again after Quatre. But maybe I'm the one who is incapable of making myself happy and not other people. Maybe Relena helped to isolate me from everyone, but I had done it just as much as she had. If I had never met Heero, I would still be that way.   
    Compared to that loneliness, that nothing, was being vulnerable really so bad? I had thought about it as opening my fragile heart to hurt, but wasn't I also opening it up to everything else, all the things that I've denied myself? Love, friendship, happiness... If I had to live a life of never being hurt, but without those things, was that what I wanted? If you had asked me four years ago, I would have said yes. Quatre's death had fucked me up more than I can ever express on these pages. And it had hurt me because of how close that I had been to him, so it had only seemed natural to never be close to anyone again, so if they left, it wouldn't matter.   
    But at the same time, I had tried to kill myself because I had accepted the idea that I would never find happiness again. Now I had and it was scaring me. Didn't that just make me a huge hypocrite? I can't have it both ways, I know that. Heero makes me happy and he can hurt me like no one else ever has. I can either live with that or I could go back to the way things were before and I think that that scares me more than the possibility of me getting hurt. I think that trying to live like that now, after finding out what love feels like, would kill me more than anything Heero could possibly do to me. If I can feel like this... feel loved, then maybe... maybe being vulnerable isn't such a terrible thing.  
    My head was swimming and I didn't even know how I felt about things by the time we got there. I tried to hide it as Heero pulled the car into the drive way and parked instead of pulling into the garage and turned to me.   
    "We'll just pop in, grab the food, and then I'll drive you home... unless you've changed your mind and want to stay for the night?" he asked, looking a bit hopeful.  
    I would have done just about anything to get that desperate look off of his face, but I shook my head.   
    "I would love to," I admitted, "but I should go home. If my dad has anymore chores for me to do, I want to get them done before work tomorrow. And if I go home soon, I can get dinner ready for my mother before she gets home from work. But I can come over Monday, if that's alright. It'll be early in the morning, though."  
    "That's fine," he said, "At least I'll know you're there and we can have breakfast together."  
    'At least I'll know you're there,' seemed like such an odd comment to make at first before I realized that what he had really meant was 'at least I'll know you'll be safe.' I felt annoyed at that for a second, defensive, but I knew that I had absolutely no right to be. I couldn't blame Heero for feeling relief knowing that I would be at his house, and not where my father could hurt me, and could only imagine the stress that he went through every time he knew that I was home.   
    His house was mostly dark when we walked in, only a few table lamps lit and I imagined that his parents had either gone out themselves or had retired for the night. It seemed a bit early to be going to sleep on a Saturday night, but maybe they had something to do in the morning or were just watching television in their bedroom. Kanuck was immediately there at the door and danced around us when we walked in, but didn't bark. Heero and I walked into the kitchen where I found a small gold mine of food waiting for me; lasagna and some kind of casserole as well as a couple of plastic bags filled with canned soup, pasta, rice, vegetables, and boxed meals that were both nutritious and quick to make. Not so much that my father would find it suspicious if the food appeared after I had gone grocery shopping, but certainly more than I had asked for.  
    "I hope you don't mind us being presumptuous," Justin's deep voice came from the kitchen doorway.    
    He was standing there, studying me like he was trying to figure out how I was taking the gift of food, or maybe it was for something else that I didn't see.  
    "Not at all," I insisted, "I asked, but... this is so much..."  
    "It's just what we had in the pantry," he assured me, "We weren't planning on using any of it until we need to go shopping. Mariela wanted to do more, but I didn't want to get you into trouble."  
    "Thank you very much," I said whole heartedly, "My mother will be relieved. Now we won't have as much strain on our budget this much."  
    "I'm glad," he smiled softly at me before looking at his son, "Did you two have a nice time tonight?"  
    For some bizarre reason, Heero blushed darkly and looked embarrassed, not meeting his father's gaze which suddenly seemed very piercing, somewhere between suspicion and accusation, and he just nodded.  
    "It was a lot of fun," I said for him, "I didn't think mini golf would be that entertaining, and the food was amazing."  
    Justin was back to studying me for a moment, but he seemed almost... relieved. But that had to just be my imagination.  
    "Good," he said and then turned to Heero once again, "Take Kanuck out to do his business before you drive Duo home, then I want to talk to you when you get back."  
    Kanuck looked up at his owner and wuffed softly as if in agreement that he needed to go.  
    "Alright," he murmured and hurriedly led his dog out of the kitchen to the backyard, taking some plastic bags with him to clean up after his pet.  
    "He isn't in trouble, is he?" I asked and then bit my tongue as punishment for asking something that was not any of my business.  
    To my relief, Mr. Yuy chuckled.  
    "No, nothing like that, just a talk. I really am glad that you two had fun tonight. You should go out and do things together more often," he said.  
    "I hope to," I confessed, "It's been months since I've gone out and really done anything."  
    His expression turned sad at that and he dug around in his pocket for something, trying to hand it to me when he found it. I saw with horror that it was a fifty dollar bill.  
    "Here, Mariela and I wanted you to have this," he said.  
    "I can't possibly-" I began to protest.  
    "I know that you hate handouts, but I want you to take it," he said very insistently, "and I want you to hide it from your father. You can do whatever you like with it, but I would like for you to hang on to it in case you ever run into this situation again where you need money for food and don't have any."  
    I felt a bit embarrassed at that and if anyone else had said that to me, I would have wondered if it was a subtle insult towards my family's financial situation, but he didn't mean it like that. I knew that he and Heero's mother were just worried about me and this would make them a little bit less worried.  
    "It's too much," I murmured and hated how whiny I felt.  
    He snorted.  
    "If I thought that you would accept it, I would give you a lot more than that. But if your father would have thrown a fit over some food, I won't get you into trouble by helping you with your family's finances, either. Just... please, Duo, the next time you're in trouble like that, take care of yourself. Even if it means using this money or coming over here for some food, don't ever be too embarrassed to just _ask_ for something that you need, and don't skip meals, either. It isn't good for you and it bothers us a lot that you're willing to put up with that. You should be coming to us because you're having trouble, not just because you want to do something nice for your mother. So please, take the money, it will make all of us feel better."  
    I reached out a little, then retracted my hand like I thought that the money was going to bite me before finally grabbing it and putting it in my pocket.  
    "Thank you," I murmured shyly, unable to look at him.   
    "No, thank you," he said, giving my shoulder a brief squeeze.  
    Heero came back in with his dog right then, who was hyper after being outside, and I was grateful for the distraction from my embarrassing conversation.   
    "Ready to go?" he asked me.  
    "Yup," I confirmed, gathering up the food.  
    "Good night, Duo," Mr. Yuy called as Heero rushed me back out the door.  
    "Good night, sir," I called back.  
  
*****  
  
    Even though he shot me a very concerned look over it, I managed to convince Heero to drop me off a block away from my house instead of right in front of it. I could only imagine what he was thinking, but it was probably fairly close to the truth, that I didn't want my father to see the car, or that I wanted to make sure that my father didn't see me. Both were pretty much true. My father thought that I was still at work, and if he was home and saw me, he would flip out. I could probably come up with some pretty lie about getting out of work early and that the food was just leftovers from a party so long as he didn't get a good look at the food itself. If I didn't have things that needed to be refrigerated, I might have even taken a walk around for a few hours until I could go home. But what I couldn't lie my way past, either to my father or to my neighbors, was being dropped off in what was probably a hundred-thousand dollar car.   
    But in the end, I shouldn't have worried. It was a Saturday night, after all, and while that didn't make it a sure thing, my father's own shitty, rust bucket of a car was missing from the driveway. This only made me feel wary instead of relieved, though, because it meant that if he did come home that morning, he was going to be as drunk as a skunk. More than that, I had had a nice day. I mean, a really _nice_ day, if you didn't look too closely at my panic attack earlier that morning. But everything else had been amazing, and at the ripe age of seventeen, life has taught me not to trust nice days. Sooner or later, the shit comes back and typically, the nicer the days, the worse the bad ones after it.   
    My mother wasn't back from her shift yet, so I let myself into the dark house and went about putting the food away, hiding a lot of it in the basement pantry where my father wouldn't find it until he went down there to get something and hiding the lasagna in the back of the fridge, and began to heat up the casserole (it turned out to be chicken) in the oven. I begged the gods of the universe and luck and anything else that I could think of that if my father came home hungry, he would be too drunk to ask where the dinner had come from and would just eat it without complaint.  
    That done, I brought my homework downstairs and laid it out on the kitchen table, then started to do whatever housework that I could find. I had gotten all of my chores done for the day, but I didn't want there to be a single thing that my father could think of for me to do the next day, not even a fleck of dust for him to complain about. I vacuumed the entire downstairs and my bedroom before my mother came in. She looked like she had just come off of a three day shift instead of a single and when I told her that I had dinner all ready for her, she didn't ask me how I could have possibly strung something together when we didn't have so much as a grain of rice in the house, but looked at me like I was an angel sent to her from God Himself.   
    She ate some of the casserole as I washed the counters in the kitchen before sitting down with her. We talked about our days, how miserable hers was, although she tried not to make it sound that way, and what I had done since escaping the house that morning. My version was severely abridged. I told her about doing well during track practice and going out to dinner with Heero, but little else. If she realized that I wasn't telling her everything, she didn't mention it. She was more interested in my athletic activities anyway than where I had gone for dinner.   
    "Let me know when your meets are and I'll try to go to one," she insisted, her grey eyes brighter than they had been for a long time and I realized with this fuzzy feeling in my chest that she actually _did_ want to go and not just out of a sense of obligation.  
    "You don't need to do that, Mom," I told her, "I know how busy you are and it's not that big of a deal."  
    "Of course it is," she said, "and I want to."  
    She finished eating and went straight to bed after I insisted that she let me do her dishes. When that was done and the bedroom door was closed, I sat down at the table to do a little homework. I wanted to get at least something done before my father came home and thought that I had at least an hour before I could go hide up in my room. The kitchen with it's tiny windows, overhead lights, and the smell of hot food was a much more welcoming place to work than the dark and musty attic.   
    Despite telling myself to be careful of my time and try to keep an ear out for my father's car, I quickly became swallowed up in my Creative Writing homework. We had to write a short story of not more than twenty pages using the themes that the class had picked out, which had been 'falling', 'flying', and 'dolphins' thanks to the boys wanting to write disaster stories and the girls wanting to write something more fantastical. One of the only classes that I was actually excited about, I had been working on what I was going to write in my head since Friday. I had eventually decided on telling the story of a small swift that suddenly finds itself falling out of the air and through the ocean, not knowing if it is going to drown or what it will find when it eventually stops falling.   
    As I began to write, even just the first few lines, I fell into that weird place in my head that I think all people that write recreationally have. It's this... gaping cavern full of words and emotions and ideas that just drag you under if you dare to wander too far in. Which is of course exactly what happened to me. Before much time had passed at all, I found that the first eight pages were already done and the swift was nearing the end of it's descent.   
    It took me awhile to figure out when I wanted to reveal the reason for it's falling, that it's last tail feather had been stolen by a larger gull, and how it was going to end. I'll admit that I tend to write rather... pessimistic stories. Shocking, I know. I won't say that I always kill off my characters, because I often don't, but I tend to end things with finality and few happy endings. When this idea had entered my head on Friday, I had thought of ending it rather simply with the swift merely drowning or being eaten by some aquatic predator, perhaps becoming trapped in a trench since that seemed like the only likely outcome of such a story.  
    But that night, I didn't think about the bird's predicament, about the loss of it's feather or the feeling of sinking into blackness even as I was describing it on paper. I thought about Heero, about the feeling of his lips against mine, his hand on my arm, and the sight of his blue eyes from across the table, the flame of the candle reflected in them. That blue, I thought, would be the same blue as the ocean that the swift was falling through, only becoming darker the deeper that it went. Suddenly, the ending that I had already started to craft in the last pages of my notebook seemed incredibly wrong, almost like a betrayal, if a writer can really betray his own creations.   
    With a little growl of frustration, I violently crossed out what I had written on the tenth and beginning of the eleventh page and started to write something else. I didn't want to write something fatalistic for once. I wanted the swift to reach the bottom of the ocean and come out on the other side of the world, not drown in some black, icy crevice. I became so involved in crafting this ending that I never heard the guttural noise that my father's car always makes, or even the sound of him opening and then slamming with a bit too much force the car door closed. So when I heard the door directly behind me open, I froze right where I sat, shocked at the mental vortex that I had become trapped in for the last couple of hours.   
    The hair on the back of my neck prickled as I listened to my father taking his shoes and jacket off in the hall. My back stiffened when I heard him stride over to where I was, my guts turning to ice and my right hand shaking a little. I waited for the blow, waited for the screaming, for the feeling of his unwanted breath ghosting over my skin and curled my hand into a fist so he wouldn't be able to see my weakness. Not that it mattered. He would just need to look at my face to see how frightened I was. He didn't stop, though. He walked right past me to the fridge, like I didn't even exist.   
    His face was a common picture to me. His hair was messy, his cheeks red, and his eyes were glazed with heavy alcoholism. Exactly how much was hard to tell and I felt a momentary burst of anger knowing that he had been driving around like that. I pushed it down, reminding myself of how dangerous those feelings were. I wondered if it was at all possible to sneak upstairs without him seeing me, but if he saw me trying to leave, he would think that I was only leaving because he was there. Of course that was completely the truth, but it might set him off. It was best not to risk it.  
    "There's some dinner on the stove," I told him as he opened the fridge, looking for something.  
    Maybe if I was as quiet and nice as possible, he would eat his food and leave me alone.   
    "I know that," he sneered at me, looking at me with such raw contempt, I thought for a moment that he might spit at me, which certainly would not be a first, "I'm not blind, you idiot."  
    He dug out a can of beer, popped the lid, and took a lengthy sip, all the while not taking his eyes off of me like I was this disgusting maggot he had found crawling on the floor, debating how best to squash me. Silly me, I thought to myself in just as equal disgust to his, I had thought actually thought that he had gone to the fridge for something to eat.   
    I looked away from him and down at my notebook, not wanting him to see that disgust or to think that my staring at him was some kind of challenge that he needed to take care of. He made this small, mocking snort that was obviously meant for me and placed his can of beer on the table so he could grab a plate from the cabinet. I breathed in relief as I realized that he meant to take some of the food after all and would no doubt take it into the living room to eat and watch something on the television, away from me. I would just need to ignore him and wait it out and maybe I would be able to get out there in peace.  
    I tried to focus back on my writing while also keeping a sense of awareness to what my father was doing, but I had no expectations that I was going to write anything more that night. It would be impossible now with him there. My father is the worst kind of writer's block there is. When he's around, any kind of creativity that I can muster just... shrivels up and dries out. Instead, I read over what I had written for anything that I wanted to change or correct. As I got back to the ending where the swift found itself emerging on the surface of the water, seeing a sky that it never thought that it would see again, I smiled.   
    Heero would like this story, I realized. I had seen enough of the kinds of books that he read and the movies that he watched to get a feel of the kinds of stories that he enjoyed and he would like this one. But if I had killed the swift, he probably wouldn't have liked it that much. He could appreciate a sad ending as well as anyone else, but he preferred the more hopeful ones. Was that the reason why I had re-written it, I wondered, because he wouldn't have liked it? No, I thought, it was more than that. This ending just felt right to me.  
    But I still thought about him reading it and getting that look on his face that he gets when he's enjoying something. I was too shy to ask him to read it, but I knew that he would. He was always trying to read my shit, and always disappointed that I wouldn't, too nervous that it would be embarrassing. That made me feel stupidly happy, thinking about him reading anything that I had written and liking it. Maybe, sometime in the future, I might actually gain the backbone to show him one of my short stories.   
    Of course, now that I was thinking about him, I couldn't help but remember our date again. Being with him, talking with him, kissing him... I had never thought that I would get to feel anything that... wonderful in my entire life. I felt incredibly happy just with those memories, of remembering how _right_ it had all been. Suddenly, the thought that I could have chickened out on the whole thing seemed like the worst betrayal possible. He had asked me if he stood a chance with me and I knew that, no matter how scared I had been, the answer would always be yes. I wanted to go on more dates with him, I wanted to feel these things again. I wanted to be with him for every second of every day for the rest of my life. I wanted to spend the rest of my time kissing him and holding hands with him and listening to the sound of his voice.  
    I was somewhat aware that my thoughts had put a probably stupid smile on my face. That insipid kind of smile that only people stupidly in love with someone and are thinking about them can have. Some people even call it 'dreamy' for some reason. In the coarse of only a couple of minutes while my father was dishing out the casserole onto a plate and grabbing his beer, I had somehow managed to forget what over a decade of lessons had taught me, that I was not in a safe place. I might have been aware of my thoughts and dumb expression, but I wasn't aware that my father had suddenly walked around behind me or when his leg, with the kind of lightning quickness that always shocks me when he's at that level of drunkenness, lashed out and hooked itself on the leg of the chair that I was sitting on.   
    All I was aware of was that one moment I was sitting and the next I was falling, like gravity had shifted on me without any kind of warning at all. I slammed my head into the linoleum floor and felt my breath rush out of my lungs, my back and head screaming in pain at the unexpected abuse. I looked up into the hateful, enraged face of my father as he looked right back down at me and I thought about him spitting on me again.  
    "Just what is there in your shitty, miserable life for you to smile about, huh?!" he snarled at me.   
    He slammed his foot into the side of my cheek, forcing my head to the side, and kept it there with a good deal of weight, grinding my face like Pat would grind out a cigarette butt. I was frightened that he wouldn't let up, that he would bear down even more and actually break something, but I let him do it, hoping that he would see that I wasn't fighting back and would leave me alone. Miraculously, he did, lifting his foot off of me.   
    "Fucking useless piece of garbage," I heard him grumble, then he was gone into the living room.  
    I didn't take a single breath until I heard his weight settling in his chair and the television being turned on. I slowly rolled to my side and sat up, my head swimming, but not concussed at least. I winced as the swimming melted away into a sharp throbbing and felt at the back of my head. My fingers came away slightly bloody from falling on the floor, but I was otherwise unhurt from that lovely little encounter. Minus the pain in my ass and back. I chuckled lowly as I sat there on the kitchen floor and it took me a good couple of minutes to realize what I was finding funny.   
    Then it hit me. Normally in this sort of situation, when my father laid in to me and reminded me of my, as he said 'shitty life', I would feel depressed and despondent. My father's anger would bleed into me, replacing any good thing that I had been feeling. But I didn't feel that way at that moment. I didn't feel angry or sad or upset at what he had done or said. That happiness that had gotten me into the trouble in the first place was still there. Not even my father could take it away from me.  
  
End part 10  
  
Author's Note: This part took waaaaay too long to finish, but I had a few spells of depression again that knocked the wind out of my sails a couple of days. I have another job interview to go to tomorrow, so I'm feeling a little better. I've also been moody lately about the state of my novel. My girlfriend is always so busy, so even though she offered to draw my cover, I can't rely on her. My choices are basically to pay someone to make it for me (what I would like to do) or to make one of my own using a free to use or stock photo (what I can afford but have no experience doing). I have no clue at all what to do about it, but if I get this job tomorrow, I might start scouting around for someone to commission. While stock photos are cheap, I don't trust them. Thank you to everyone's words about the job that I hate. I actually ended up quitting because, not only was the work terrible, but the pay ended up being awful, too. They were commission based and if you didn't make any sales, you would get 400 dollars a week. While that sounds really great, they also wanted us six days a week, ten hours a day minimum, not including the hour drive to get to the office. For those of you who don't like math, that's like 6.33 an hour if you don't make commission, so it just wasn't worth it to me.   
  
  



	55. Chapter 8 Part 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Relena threatens Duo to give up his friendship with Heero. Heero doesn't want to hide their relationship at school, but Duo worries that it is going to make Heero a target.

A Stagnation of Love

Chapter 8

Part 11

 

 

          Remember what I said about good days, and how they always seem to be followed up by shitty ones, and the better the day, the worse the bad ones tend to be? Well, this week has been a weird flux of ups and downs, moments when I've felt like I was about to scream and cry, but others, like Heero and mine's first date, where I was so happy, I thought that it couldn't be real, that nothing that good could possibly be happening to me. But Monday was a bit of a shit storm. Not as bad as I had feared things would be, given how great my Saturday had been, but it had seemed like one of those days that just didn't want to end and the universe seemed to have some kind of perverse glee in throwing shit in my way.

          The nap that I had taken that Saturday marked the last real sleep that I would get until the following Saturday morning. After my father had knocked me on my ass, I had fled to my bedroom to try to get some sleep, only to be hit by a legendary bout of insomnia. There really wasn't much of a reason for it. While I did find myself going through everything that had happened on Saturday in my head, it wasn't with any kind of stress. I just felt content to replay those happier memories in my head. But still, even though I didn't feel restless or anxious and wasn't in any kind of pain or stress, sleep eluded me. I think I managed about forty-five minutes between all the tossing and turning and abruptly waking up for no reason that I did.

          I gave up at around six in the morning and decided to get an early start to the day. Tiredness hung on me like a bad odor, but I took a shower, the cold water helping to make me feel more alert, and managed to start breakfast without rousing my father. He had fallen asleep while still in his chair in the living room and I didn't even dare to go in there to shut the television off. The groceries that Heero's parents had given me were a complete godsend that morning. My mother hadn't given me the budget or grocery list yet, so that would wait until I came home from work. I helped myself to a packet of instant oatmeal, cutting up a banana that had been among the gifted food to add to the mix, a nicer breakfast than I had had all week.

          I worked on my homework a bit more until my mother woke up and I pried the grocery list off of her. Our budget was even more pathetic than I had feared that it would be, but I would make it work. With some sacrifices, sales, and coupons, I've made miracles happen before, we would just have to make due with some... creative meals for another couple of weeks. Through a completely different kind of miracle, my father was still asleep when I left the house for work at eight thirty. I envied him that luxury, that he could go out and get himself wasted and be able to sleep so deeply.

          I spent my work day pulling out rotten boards from someone's deck in the north end. We were just ten minutes away from Heero's neighborhood and I found myself constantly thinking about him, our date, the kiss in the parking lot, and even wondering if, had I agreed to sleep over at his place instead of my own, I would have slept better. It worried me a little, that I might be coming so dependent on him and his home that it was spoiling me. I already hated taking showers at home and would often have my meals there instead of at my place.

          I could say that it was better for my parents, that it made no sense for me to eat our food when I was getting free meals somewhere else, but while that was a perk, that was all it was. The real reason was that I hated eating at my house. The cheap and often bland, greasy food was one thing. I was used to that, having lived that way for my entire life. I'm even used to the small amounts or not eating at all so my parents would have more if we were running low on something. But sitting in the cold, quiet kitchen alone, eating soup from a can or days old pizza or a frozen dinner somehow made the food taste worse, like the atmosphere had stolen the flavor right out of everything. I rarely have an appetite anymore when I'm home and have to force myself to eat anything. Every room in this place has a memory that turns my appetite sour and twists my stomach into a knot, whether it's the beer stains in the living room or remembering how my father had raped me in front of my mother in that kitchen, it's like my body remembers even when I try to block it out of my mind.

          You see, it's the smell. I can push those memories away from me so I can try to function like a normal human being, but it's the fucking smells that always bring things back no matter what defenses I raise against them. The smell of beer, of mildew, of sweat, of sex, of blood. Everything reminds me of my father's sexual assaults. All it takes is a whiff of that dusty, mildewy smell that's everywhere in our house, or the smell of the cheap beer that my father drinks to make me want to vomit. And it's not just this house, it's anywhere that has those smells. I start to shake and I feel like my guts are trying to crawl up my damned throat.

          But there's nothing like that at Heero's house, not a single reminder of those things. Their house smells completely different. There's no dust, no mildew, no faint scent of cigarettes from when my father is coming home from a bar or being with Pat, no smell of booze at all. It takes me right out of that black hole in my head and it's so much easier there to forget about all those bad things. When I'm with Heero, I don't have to feel scared or sick or anxious like I do everywhere else. I'm not so naive to think that he can keep me safe, but when we're together or when I'm with his parents, I _do_ feel safe. Maybe that's foolish, but I think that's why I can sleep better there than I can here, that false security, the complete separation from all of those nightmares and bad memories.

          It's not like I don't get insomnia and nightmares (even those weird ones) when I'm there, because I do and frequently, but whatever reason there is for my sleeping disorders, it's not because of that place and even when I can't fall asleep there... I don't know, it doesn't weigh on me so heavily for some reason. Anyway, that's where my head was all the time during work and grocery shopping, bouncing between feeling giddy about Saturday and feeling terrible that I couldn't deal with my problems on my own, that I needed to escape someplace just to function, that I felt like my life in my own house was degrading into this never ending nightmare that was trying to eat me.

          Had things always been this bad since my father had first raped me, or were they getting progressively worse? But why would they? I have good things in my life now when I didn't back then, so why do I feel like everything is deteriorating? Why does dealing with this feel like it's getting more and more impossible when I should be used to it by now? Why won't my skin thicken instead of just tearing and bleeding over and over, more and more easily? It made me feel like I should pull away from Heero, stop going over there so much. What if I really was using him as a security blanket and relying on him and his parents was keeping me from learning how to survive at home?

          I don't know the answer. I only know that I feel more and more miserable when I'm in this house now. It's like those scenes from horror movies when a family moves into a place that's haunted or cursed. Everything seems so ominous and dark and wrong. And I know that what's wrong isn't the house, it's _me._ There's something haunted in me and I don't know how to fix it, how to go back to the way that I used to be. How to not lean on my boyfriend so hard, because I'm afraid that one day, I might break him and he'll resent me for it.        

          I wasn't remotely surprised when I went to lay down that night and found that I was just as incapable of falling asleep as I had been the night before. I managed almost an hour again before the sound of the attic stairs creaking had me shooting wide awake, like someone had just given me a shot of adrenaline. I froze as I heard my bedroom door opening and something in my chest almost had me screaming. But, just like I did every night that this occurs, I stayed silent as I felt that familiar weight settle on top of me, and hands that I've known since childhood were manhandling me into whatever position he wanted. It was one of those times when he wasn't rough or violent or drunk. I didn't smell any alcohol at all on him and he was gentle with me, almost tender in that way that he had been the first time, after I had stopped fighting him.

          When he came in me with this strained sigh that was almost one of relief and I felt him bury his face in my hair, he whispered that he loved me like he does sometimes, although I can never tell if he's saying it to me or to some memory of my mother when she had been my age. It shouldn't matter, I guess, but hearing those words from him, even if they're a lie, even if they're to someone else, even if it's just in the heat of the moment, it rips apart the walls around my heart like a tornado and hits that very vulnerable place that I never seem to be able to protect when he does these things to me. That childish part of myself that always wonders if this is so bad, so long as I can hear those words from him. I kept the tears back until he cleaned himself off, pulled his pants back up, and left, but only just barely.

          After that, sleep was impossible and I knew it. I had this sickly, prickly feeling in my stomach that wouldn't go away, like I had eaten something rotten and my insides were still trying to decide if they should try to digest it anyway or do away with it. I got up, cleaning myself off as best that I could with an old towel that I threw in the hamper. I had long since stopped throwing out towels and sheets that were stained with cum or blood if he got too rough with me. It seemed like a waste after awhile and I had cleaned that shit off of me so many times that, while I still felt repulsed by those towels after I washed them, I wasn't so disgusted that I couldn't use them again.

          I made a beeline for the bathroom when I got downstairs and promptly threw up in the toilet. I hadn't really needed to, I had only been feeling slightly nauseous, but throwing up had made me feel a little bit better. I was incredibly grateful that I had just gone grocery shopping, because there was a gallon of water in the fridge to wash my mouth out with and I wouldn't have to use the brackish tap water. I settled into the couch in the living room because it was the room in the house that I could deal with the most. My father hasn't fucked me in there yet. I turned the little lamp on in there and read for a couple of hours, the only activity that I had the mental capacity for at that point.

          Around five, even reading seemed like a futile exercise. I was in that strange level of tiredness that people get when they usually start to feel dizzy, distracted, and struggle to keep their eyes open and know that if they don't head to bed, they're going to black out if they're sitting in a chair. Only when you have insomnia, you don't get the satisfaction of droopy eyes, only the rest of those symptoms while you're technically wide awake. I couldn't concentrate even on reading and knew that being sedentary was making me feel worse.

          It was still rather dark out, but I put a light jacket on and my sneakers and left my house to go for a run. I thought about calling Heero and asking him if he wanted to meet me somewhere, which told me more than anything else about the mental state, or lack thereof, that I was in. It was five in the damned morning, even if he would have been happy to go running with me, there was no way I was going to wake him up that early. Just because I was suffering with sleep deprivation, it didn't mean that I had to make him suffer, too, even if I wanted more than anything to see him again. It had only been a day that I hadn't seen him, but I felt like it had been a week. It made me feel stupid, like some love sick puppy that couldn't go five seconds without seeing my boyfriend, but I guess that's exactly what I am, as pathetic as that truth is.

          The cool air of the early morning helped to make me feel a little bit better, and the exercise of running helped even more. Without Heero there to temper me, I went all out, running as fast and hard as my body would let me through south Nausten, past the train yard and factories and steel works that my father worked at, taking several side streets and connecting alleys until I hit the town border where I turned around and went back the way that I had come. I ran until I was sweating, even with the slightly chilly air, until the sun started to weakly rise and my legs were screaming at me that I was pushing them too hard. I ignored them, and my lungs, too, when they started to burn. It was a good kind of pain and it took my mind off of things that I didn't want it to be on in the first place.

          When I got back to my house, I took a quick, five minute shower, the water like a sheet of ice running over me and making me shiver, but it served to make me feel a little bit more awake, enough that I thought I wouldn't be a total zombie for the school day. It got the smell of sex off of me, even if I didn't feel especially clean. I left for school soon after that, even if it was a little bit earlier than usual, partially because I was hoping that Heero would come to school early as well and partially because I was in that state of tiredness that sitting around doing nothing was driving me insane.

          There's something really wonderful... almost magical about going into the school in the early morning hours, when there's no one there but me and the janitorial staff, maybe a couple of really dedicated teachers making a beeline for the teacher's lounge and a cup of coffee. Everything is so still and quiet with none of my classmates there, this kind of forced peace, like the eye of a hurricane. You know that soon, everything is going to be chaos again, but for a moment, it's just you and the silence, like the world has been put on pause just for you.

          I can appreciate those moments and enjoy the atmosphere when I'm by myself, or if it's just Josh and myself. There are no bullies trying to corner us, no classmates throwing us dirty looks, no teachers eying me with distaste and distrust. It drives home to me that I don't hate school. In fact, if it weren't for the people that I was forced to share that building with, I would like it a great deal.

          I went to my locker, deciding to risk it for the day and was rewarded, and relieved, to find that it hadn't been tampered with in any way since the last time I had used it. I put the textbooks that I would need after lunch inside and was just closing and locking the door when I felt someone walk up behind me. What happened next can, I feel, only be blamed on my sleep deprivation because instead of tensing and preparing for some blow or cruel trick like I usually do, I actually relaxed. My tired brain didn't go into flight mode but thought that the person behind me had to be Heero, because who else could possibly be there that early but him?

          So when I turned around and found, not my boyfriend, but Relena fucking Darlian glaring at me in that hateful way of hers that she reserves only for me and, maybe, shit covered blow flies, to say that I was startled is putting it rather mildly. With barely any sleep in the last three days, my reaction time was absolutely pitiful. When Relena shoved me hard into my locker with violent force, my brain was still too busy trying to figure out _why_ she was there to take any evasive maneuvers.

          She grabbed me by the front of my jacket and slammed me into the metal surface of the lockers, her icy blue eyes on fire with anger. I could have pushed her away, but I was slow on the uptake and my confusion was making me even slower. We weren't in the fourth grade anymore and had stopped being the same height and build years ago. Puberty had finally decided to pay me more than a glance and I had a few inches on her and while I might be skinny, I wasn't weak. You can't lug around heavy cargo and do maintenance work without building up some muscle. While I'll probably always be lanky and slim, and her brother was more than capable of pushing me around, Relena was still a seventeen year old girl of average height and build, who had never lifted a finger for her entire life. But that didn't make her any less terrifying when she was this full of rage.

          "Who the hell do you think you are?" she hissed at me, sounding an awful like a pissed off cat, "Just who the hell do you think you are?! You think you're so crafty, don't you? That you can just do whatever you want with Heero... with _my_ boyfriend and I would never figure it out! Well, I know what you're doing! I've _always_ known!"

          Her fingernails dug into my jacket like claws as she became more and more infuriated as she spoke, but it was her words that terrified me infinitely more than the fury that was etched all over her face. Relena knew about me and Heero? But how was that possible? We had just gone on one, damned date! Had we been that obvious during school? Had someone spotted us Saturday night? If they had, then Heero was in a world of trouble, and all because of me. I had destroyed his life by deciding to go on that date and I was sure that Relena would be all too happy to drag the both of us through the mud for it.

          "I don't know how you did it," she snarled at me, "what you did to turn him against me, but don't you think for a single fucking _second_ that I'm going to take it lying down! You might be as slimy and underhanded as a snake, but it's only a matter of time before Heero sees what you _really_ are, you realize that, don't you?! It must have been great fun for you... _perverting_ him like that, getting him to dump me and say those horrible things to me, all so you could laugh behind my back!" she slammed me against the locker again, but I was so bewildered that I barely felt it, "What gave you the right, you disgusting piece of shit, huh?! I love him!"

          I watched in shock as she began to sob, tears pouring down her pale, porcelain face like waterfalls.

          "You... you think that I got Heero to dump you... to get back at you?" I asked in amazement.

          A part of me felt relieved, realizing that I had jumped to conclusions and the bitch didn't suspect anything between Heero and myself at all, but mostly I was amazed at the depths of crazy behavior. She really thought that _I_ was the reason why her boyfriend had dumped her and all of their friends so suddenly, that I had manipulated him and played some sort of terrible trick on him to get him over to my 'side', like I had brainwashed him or something. Was she so delusional that she actually believed something like that, or so desperate to believe that it hadn't been her fault and she could honestly get Heero back as soon as he came to his senses? If she was reacting like this just by watching us hang out together at school for a few months, how would she react if she ever found out that we were seeing each other romantically, that Heero was in love with me?

          "Not that I could expect _you_ to understand," she laughed this dry, terrible, almost hysterical laugh, "What could a faggot like you understand about loving someone?! What it's like to fall in love?! But if you have any decency at all, you would drop this... this _charade_ of yours and give him back to me! Don't you understand? I love Heero, we belong together! If you could understand that, even a little, you'd stop this, instead of destroying what we had! Just because all you can have is... is unnatural affection, it doesn't give you the right to drag him down with you! You have to give him back... if you don't... I'll... I'll make your life a living hell!"

          Those words, nearly the same ones that Zechs had said to me when I had been much younger and he had taken his revenge for turning down his sister's advances, would have been chilling if she had said them with any kind of anger. While her voice was full of hatred and repulsion towards me, her words dissolved into a fit of sobs and almost violent crying that would have twisted anyone's heart. Her eyes squeezed shut, her breath hitching, and her cheeks soaked wet with tears, she was a picture of misery, one that I had seen in the mirror myself a few times.

          A part of my heart went out to her. I had never seen her like this, so raw and emotional, in such obvious pain. I hadn't even thought her capable of such things. I know what it feels like to love someone, really love someone, and lose them. I know what it feels like to watch them with someone else, knowing that you can't even speak to them or share a single part of your life with them. I know what it's like to fuck up and not know what to do to fix it, feeling like your heart is tearing to shreds.

          But that part of me, which was only a very tiny part to begin with, shriveled into nothing as I reminded myself that Relena was the reason why I had lost someone that I had loved, not because of mistakes like her, not because they had hated me or even just wanted to be away from me, but because _she_ had taken them away from me. She had taken Quatre away from me. And unlike her, that was no delusion. Probably for the first time in her whole fucking life, she might understand how that feels and while I might have felt some sympathy for the cunt at one point in my life, I felt none for her in that moment.

          And why should I? She could cry and sob all she wanted, but the boy that she loved was still there. She could look at him and see that he was happy, she had at least that luxury. I didn't even have that much. Neither did Quatre. Anger ripped through me like a shotgun blast and I shoved her harshly away from me. She stumbled back, her eyes wide with shock, obviously not having thought that I would do that. Maybe she had thought that she could manipulate me with her tears, not that I thought that her feelings weren't genuine, but it would be just like her to think that she could get her way by acting like that. Her shock only made me angrier and I let it feed me, like a fire in my gut.

          "Good," I sneered at her, letting that cruel hatred that I had always loathed and feared about myself come out for once instead of shoving it back down inside, "I hope you love him with all your twisted, black heart," I shoved her again, right into a row of lockers on the other side of the hallway and pinned her there.

          I was a lot more successful than she had been and I felt this sickening sense of satisfaction in my stomach when a bit of fear entered her eyes. I had done something like this before to her and she had laughed me off as something pitiful. But not this time. This time she didn't have her friends around her. This time she saw something on my face that she didn't like at all and I realized that it was intention. Before, I had backed off, knowing that I couldn't do it, I couldn't hurt her even if I wanted to. But I wasn't that person anymore. While my actions and my feelings might sicken me, there's something ugly inside of me and ever since Quatre died, it's been a little bit easier every day to live with it. To let it consume me. Anger, hatred, the need to do violence, call it what you will. I've lived with it for so long, terrified that it means that I'm turning into my father and I've fought against it, kept it at bay since I had first felt it before I had even become a teenager. I couldn't raise my hand or my voice to anyone, I had thought. I knew how it felt to be hit and harmed, how terrible it was, so how could I do it to anyone else?

          Then I had watched my best friend kill himself because of other peoples' cruelty and suddenly, it had just become easier for me to strike someone, and so much harder for me to keep those feelings in check. I would hate myself for it later, and the pure intensity of it would frighten me, but right then, I was glad for it, because it had scared her. I realized that she was scared of me then like she hadn't before because before we had both known that I wouldn't do anything. But right then, even I wasn't so sure that I wasn't going to.

          "I hope it kills you every time that you see us together," I snapped at her and there was a hideousness in me just then, this dark, bitter feeling that wanted to tell her that I was seeing her ex-boyfriend, that he had told me that he loved me and had kissed me and held my hand and told me that he liked me more than he ever had her.

          Caution be damned, I wanted to rub her perfect, pretty face in it and I hated myself for that. Not for wanting to hurt her, but for wanting to use something that had been beautiful to me just to get back at her. I could never do that. No matter how much I hated her or how desperate I was to get one up on her for once, I would never, ever use my relationship with Heero like that. I would rather rip my own eyes right out of my head than ever reduce the love that I had for him, and the love that he miraculously shared with me, just to get revenge on Relena.

          "I hope it tears your guts right out of you," I continued to growl at her, almost on the verge of screaming at her, "so _you_ can know how it feels to have someone you love taken from you."

          My hurt and my rage boiled and crested in me and I could suddenly feel the same urge that I had had shortly after Quatre had died, the same urge that had made me punch both Zechs and Relena. This bitch had gotten my best friend killed and she was begging me to do something for her? After everything she had done to me and Quatre, everything that her brother had done to Heero, she had the gall to ask and demand anything from me? Her audacity infuriated me and I only just barely managed to keep from hitting her somehow.

          I can't tell you how, but I regained at least a small measure of my self control, which is pretty remarkable given how irritable and pissy I was from lack of sleep, even without the turbulent things that she usually makes me feel on a good day. Relena, however, had no such self control and with a startling scream of rage, she lashed out at me, raking her nails across my cheek. I let go of her shirt and stumbled backwards in shock, not that I was surprised by her striking me given how enraged I had just made her, just the suddenness of it. I clutched at my cheek, already feeling warm blood there.

          "Fucking _freak_!" she shrieked at me and swung at me again, but I was prepared for her this time and dodged it, which only served to anger her more, "You're nothing more than a nasty, perverted _fag_ and he's going to realize that, what a loser you are, and how foolish he's been! Do you really think that someone like him would _ever_ want anything to do with a piece of filth like you?! You're just a curiosity to him, something to cure his boredom with, but he'll get tired of you soon, it's only inevitable!"

          With that, looking like she was still considering attacking me further, she stormed past me, shoving me out of her way even though she could have easily gone around me. I didn't pay attention to where she was going, I didn't really care. A part of me, a very small part, felt triumphant that I had managed to get under her skin, but the rest of me just felt sick. Really, really sick. I had that weak, dizzy feeling you get when you haven't eaten for awhile or are just starting to get the flu, but it had nothing to do with my tiredness or any possibility of being physically ill. It was her words and my actions that were making me feel like I was going to throw up.

          She hadn't said anything that I haven't thought myself ever since the day that he had saved me from the mob after I had come out, but that was why it hit me so hard. Had I ever thought that someone like Heero Yuy would want anything to do with a loser like myself? Of course not. We've been friends for months now, have been dating for two weeks, and it still amazes me that Heero not only puts up with me, but actually _likes_ me and enjoys spending time with me. And of course, it only seemed inevitable that one day he would come to his senses and see the kind of person that I am, see that he can do so much better than me. It's a fear that I live with every single day. Only a matter of time before he realizes that I'm a pitiful, rage filled person. A person who is cheating on him with his own damned father. How disgusting can you get?

          What would he say, I wondered, if he knew that I had shoved his ex-girlfriend against the wall like some kind of thug, if he knew that I had wanted so badly to hit her? Would he be horrified? Disgusted? Repulsed to know the kind of violence and anger that lives in me? Why not? I disgust myself. So many years, I've lived in terror that one day, all of my father's faults and weaknesses would become mine, that I would stop fighting against this... ugly rage and desire to hurt the people around me and just give in to it. I already had a little, hadn't I? I had hit Relena and Zechs, broken his nose, and I had almost shot my father in the head while he had been sleeping. I am the lowest sort of person that is, someone who can't even fight against their lesser nature.

          Once upon a time, I had tried so hard to be like Quatre, to forgive, to ignore these feelings. What changed? Why has it become so hard to control my temper, to stop being so hateful? I feel like there's something broken in me that I can't contain this darkness and bitterness. There are some days when I just hate everything and everyone and want to lash out at someone. That I haven't is something of a miracle, but I can _feel_ it, how capable I am of doing that, how easy it would be. Relena might be nuts and delusional, thinking that Heero would want to go back to her, but she was also right. It is only a matter of time before he sees those things in me and realizes what a mistake he's made. I've known that for a long time now and all common sense tells me that, for both of our sakes, the safest option would be to cut ties with him. But if going on that date had taught me anything, it's that I'm weaker than I ever thought that I was.

          Even to save him, and even myself from being hurt, I can't find the strength to do it. I need him. He makes me feel normal. He makes me feel like I _could_ be strong enough to be a better person. He believes in me, one of the only people that ever has, and it's like a drug. It's an addiction to me. My father has his booze and his rages, but I have love. I attach myself to it like a blood sucking leech and I can't let go. Without it, what am I? What do I have beyond him and his care for me? I'm no better than my father is, I just like to tell myself I am, but I'm the same. He can't stop drinking and I can't stop being with Heero, even if it drags him down with me.

          I went to my homeroom class feeling depressed and like what little energy I had had that morning had completely dissipated. Just the thought of getting through the school day, let alone the rest of my day, seemed utterly impossible. My hopeless feelings of self-hatred were an iron ball and chain that I was lugging around with me and I just didn't have the ability to deal with any of it. I got some paper towels out of the classroom dispenser and used them to get the blood off of my face. The scratch had already stopped bleeding, but it was pretty deep considering that it was just from Relena's nails. She had seriously tried to hurt me and I was just lucky that she hadn't been aiming for my eye.

          I sat down at my desk and let my head fall against my arms heavily. I closed my eyes and prayed that sleep would come, even just for a minute or two, even though I knew that it wouldn't. There's always this sense of fear when I get into these insomnia spells and I wonder just how long they'll last. The longest I've had one for was a week, not that I didn't sleep for a week, but I only managed an hour every other day, not enough to really operate on. Every time it last for more than two days, I worry that it _won't_ end, that I'll never be able to actually get a decent sleep again.

          I've never been a great sleeper. When you live with a man like my father, deep sleep is a very rare thing, between just always being on edge and _needing_ to be on edge, not even to mention the nightmares that he would give me as a child. But I had never really had spells of sleeplessness like this until Quatre had died. I would sometimes be in too much pain or too stressed to sleep, but never for more than a night, and never without a reason.

          Then I had watched my best friend take his life and the horrible, endless string of anxiety and nightmares had taken root. You would think that, after four years, I would have gotten used to them or they would have faded, but they never did. The insomnia that I had felt in the weeks after that terrible moment of my life sure as hell hadn't, either. It had only gotten worse after my father had raped me and the nightmares had turned into something disturbing and invasive, like he had raped my head, too. The spells come more frequently lately and while I've gotten used to going a night or two without much sleep, it's not something that I would enjoy. Not only that, even when I'm able to sleep, it's never for long, mostly in four to five hour bursts instead of the seven that I used to manage. I should probably be on some kind of medication or see a therapist, but the one frightens me, what with my family history of addictions, and the other wouldn't be very effective since there are just some things that I can never tell anyone. It's kind of hard to get treatment for a wound that you deny even exists.

          I heard someone come into the classroom and tensed, thinking that it was Relena deciding that she wanted round two, but when I lifted up my head, I saw that it was Heero, coming in at his usual time. Even through my lousy mood, I felt a burst of happiness just to see him. That's what he does to me, the reason why I can't break up with him, why I need him in my life so badly. No matter what I'm feeling, just by seeing him, it's like he can clear away all the bad shit in my head. When he smiles at me, talks to me, touches me, nothing else matters. All my anxieties seem so little and petty.

          "Morning," he said to me, way too chipper as far as I was concerned, and I raised my hand in greeting, unable to muster that kind of energy without at least a cup of coffee, which I was sure that he had had that morning if he was that awake.         

          He paused as he walked to his desk, getting a good look at me.

          "Duo, your face-" he started to say in shock, seeing the scratches.

          "Relena," I explained, self-consciously running the back of my knuckles against the wounds, feeling the ragged edges of my skin and the dried blood as well as a light stinging pain from my touch.

          His blue eyes narrowed with anger and he shook his head.

          "Fucking bitch," he muttered, but then his gaze softened to one of concern, "You alright?"

          "Yeah, I guess," I said a bit half-heartedly, not wanting to think about what Relena and I had fought about, let alone, god forbid, tell Heero about it. There was nothing he could do about it anyway, and if he found out that his ex had attacked me _because_ of him, he would just feel guilty when it was far from his fault, "she just scratched me a little, that's all."

          He frowned again, not looking convinced at all and I wondered if my depression was written all over my face or something.

          "How long has it been since you've gotten a decent night's sleep?" he asked me bluntly.

          I blinked at him stupidly, shocked that he could tell something like that from a look. But then again, I was sure that I looked like shit and Heero is well aware of my sleeping problems.

          "Saturday," I confessed dryly, "when I took that nap at your house."

          "Jesus, Duo, you've gone without sleep for almost forty-eight hours?!" he said in shocked exasperation.

          "Not _no_ sleep," I told him, "I got a little less than an hour Sunday morning and today."

          He ran his hand through his messy hair, looking amazed, probably that I considered less than an hour any kind of sleep.

          "You need to see a doctor about this," he insisted heatedly and it wasn't the first time that he had said that about my sleeping problems.

          "It's not that bad," I shook off his concern, "It comes and goes. My health insurance is shit anyway and I can't afford to see a doctor just because I have problems sleeping."

          "You have chronic insomnia," he argued, "That's a serious medical problem, you just can't keep ignoring it! At least let me get you some sleeping pills-"

          "I don't want any goddamn pills!" I snapped at him irritably.

          Hurt flashed across Heero's face. It was only for a second, but it made me feel like the biggest asshole on the planet.

          "I... I'm sorry," I apologized, rubbing the back of my hand across my eyes, "I didn't mean to snap like that."

          To my surprise, instead of being bitter about it or brushing me off, he smiled at me and squeezed my shoulder.

          "It's alright, you're allowed to be a little bit irritable when you're this tired," he said kindly, not an ounce of that hurt left on his face.

          "I just don't want to start taking something like sleeping pills, I don't want to become chemically dependent on them," I told him stubbornly, not telling him the depths of my fears, that the last thing I needed on top of all my other problems was to become a drug addict, to become chemically dependent like my parents had, "I'm fine, really. This will pass just like it always does."

          "Well, at least you'll be staying at my house after work," he said, leaning against his desk in this laid back posture that made my attraction for him flare up for a reason that I can't begin to comprehend, "Maybe you'll get some better sleep there."

          "Oh..." I did that stupid blinking thing again, "... right. I forgot."

          That I was sleeping over at Heero's place had completely slipped my mind for some reason. It wasn't something that I would forget, I usually would count the hours until I would get to go over to his house. I guessed that I was even more tired than I had realized. I felt another burst of happiness, and quite a lot of relief, like this weight had been taken off of my shoulders just knowing that I wouldn't be going home after work in the morning. The thought that I might actually get some sleep, even just enough to get the weary feeling out of my eyes and make the dull throbbing in my head go away, made me want to cheer. Hell, even if I still didn't get any sleep, at least I wouldn't have to go home.

          "And you should stay over tomorrow as well," he said very boldly as he sat down at his desk.

          I almost laughed at his near order and the almost arrogant way he had said it. Sometimes he annoyed me when he got like that, so insistent and stubborn, it made me feel like he thought that he knew what was best for me, but I didn't mind it at all right then. Maybe because he was right this time or maybe just because I wanted to stay over anyway.

          "Ok," I conceded and he stared at me for a moment like he had thought that I was going to put up a fight about it, but then looked pleased that I hadn't.

          "Your cheek is bleeding," he warned me, frowning again.

          I pressed the paper towel to my face again and sure enough, there were fresh spots of blood when I looked at it. Not a lot, but more than just a drop or two. The cunt had really gotten me good with those long, manicured nails of hers.

          "You should have that looked at," he nagged, "At least get it cleaned."

          I felt slightly annoyed at his overprotective attitude, but I brushed it off and decided to be amused instead at the thought that Relena would think he was saying that her nails weren't clean. She was petty enough to read into a comment like that.

          "I'll see the nurse after homeroom," I told him and he backed off, appeased.

          I kept my word, too. I made a beeline right for the nurse's office as soon as we were released from the dullness that always is homeroom. Nurse Swanson, the only nurse that actually works at our school, was as quick and nonchalant about my injuries as she was every time I went there, whether it was from a bloody nose or Zechs giving me cracked ribs, it was pretty much all the same to her. She had been doing her job for thirty years and I was sure that she had seen her fair share of bullying, or maybe she had always been that unsympathetic.

          I could say that it bothered me, but it really didn't. Compared to my other teachers who gave me the cold shoulder or were repulsed by me or distrusted me or even had no problems letting me know to my face that they didn't like me because I was gay and, they thought anyway, a trouble maker, the school nurse not caring to report my injuries was more of a relief than a problem. I could go to her if I needed medical aid and not worry about having to deal with her causing trouble and she did not seem to care one way or the other about my reputation.

          Just like all of the other times that I had gone to her with some injury, she didn't ask me how I could have possibly gotten those deep scratches on my face or lecture me to tell someone about it. She just cleaned the area, slathered some ointment on the wounds that stung like shit, covered them with a bandage in case they started to bleed again, and sent me on my way. I was in and out of there so fast that I was able to get to my first class on time without any fuss at all. When Heero and I walked into our marine biology class and I saw Relena already there at her seat, I fully expected her to either glare heatedly at me or sneer in triumph at the large bandage on my face. However, she didn't do either. She stoutly ignored the both of us like we weren't even there for some reason.

          She acted that way through the entire class and calculus as well, not so much as making eye contact with either of us. I could live with that. I didn't have much of an appetite, but I was still relieved when the bell rang signaling the end of class and the beginning of the lunch period. It was beginning to be a struggle just to get through each block. I felt incapable of dealing with my classmates and even just trying to pay attention in class and not let my mind wander was taking a lot out of me.

          Sleep deprivation isn't just about feeling tired and not having energy. I couldn't focus on anything and my thoughts kept drifting off into this nothing void. I kept thinking that I just needed to make it to lunch, then my day would be halfway done. I had no clue that it was really just beginning and by the end of the day, Relena scratching my face would be the least of my worries. Heero needed to talk to Mrs. Harkins about an extra credit assignment, so I stayed behind waiting for him until the class emptied out, everyone eager to get to the cafeteria.

          I was interested in the extra credit as well, but seeing as Mrs. Harkins can't stand me, Heero seemed the better candidate to talk to her about it. I wandered to the back of the room, looking at some anti-drug posters that seem to be in every single room in this school and let the conversation that Heero and our teacher was having wash over me like white noise until it suddenly took a strange turn.

          "It'll be due at the end of the week at the very latest, no exceptions," she was saying.

          "Yes, Ma'am," Heero said dutifully and respectfully, a big reason why I had asked him to ask her because it was a tone that I just couldn't manage with the woman anymore, not with the snide way that she always spoke to me.

          "Heero, is everything alright with you?" she asked after hesitating for a few moments, her professional tone smoothing out into one of concern.

          "Yes, everything's great," he said with the same confusion that I felt listening to them.

          "I know things have changed a lot for you lately. You've... changed a lot these last few months. I just want to make sure that you're alright," she said kindly.

          It dawned on me, with some anger and bitterness, what problems she thought that Heero had. Because while my sexuality disgusts her, she has no real problem with Heero. She, like most of our teachers, knew him from the first impressions he had made here, as a popular but polite boy that ran in the same circles as Zechs Darlian without any of his disciplinary or behavioral problems and dating a nice, sweet girl like Relena. A boy from a good family with a great athletic record that everyone seemed to like. But recently, he bewildered her. She couldn't seem to get why he would drop all of his friends and take up with a heathen like me. Which is understandable, I guess, but what irked me was that she would rather assume that something was wrong with him than he had made friends with an outcast and therefore had become one himself.

          "I'm fine," Heero told her with slight annoyance, clearly trying to stay polite while talking to her like he had been taught from childhood.

          "Because if something's going on, something at home or if you're depressed or... or in a bad situation, there's no shame in talking about it," she told him, "Dropping all your friends so suddenly and taking up with..." she cut herself off, perhaps realizing that what she had just been about to say would have been in poor taste or at the very least inappropriate for a teacher, "Well, falling into a bad crowd, these are very clear warning signs to all of us. We have a very good psychiatrist here-"

          Beyond the hurt and the anger and the bitterness, I felt simply amazed that she was talking to him about this when I was _right there_ in the room with her. But that pretty much sums up how most adults that know that I'm gay treat me nowadays. Either I'm invisible because they don't want to deal with me or my feelings just don't matter. I'm less than human to some of them, after all. Not all, thankfully, but to a collective few like Harkins, I'm at the same level as some gunk that gets caught under the bottom of their shoe that can't be quite identified.

          What I can't understand is why moments like this, when I'm treated like I can't hear the shit coming out of someone's mouth about me, makes me feel betrayed. I should be used to it by now, and it's not like they've ever treated me with much respect. Hell, besides the principal, Mrs. Daniels is the only teacher I've ever had that has. Realizing that, I miss her a lot. Her kind smile, how she would look at me and actually see me, how she would treat me like everyone else. Even if she had never done anything about Relena or Zechs either, she had cared and that had meant so much to me. I just hadn't realized it until I had left her behind.

          "I don't need a damned psychiatrist," Heero snapped at her, suddenly losing all of his manners in the wake of his anger, "and I don't need anyone's help because there is nothing wrong with me! And I sure as hell haven't fallen in with the 'wrong crowd'. You don't even know him, so why don't you just keep your ignorant opinions to yourself!"

          I couldn't help but turn and glance over at them, seeing first hand just how angry my friend was getting.

          Mrs. Harkins looked taken aback by his outburst for a moment, then glared coldly at him, a bit of that disgust that she had held for me clearly in her eyes.

          "This is how teenagers talk to adults these days, I suppose," she said with an angry huff, "to be rude to someone who is looking out for their best interests."

          "You have no clue what my best interests even are," he growled and I could tell that there was more that he wanted to say to her, perhaps call her, but those manners of his had a tight control over his mouth.

          Our teacher grabbed her things in a rush, clearly not wanting to be near the any of us any longer.

          "Fine then, you obviously think that you know better than I do," she said with a chilly tone, "but I highly suggest that you watch your back, Mr. Yuy. It's only a matter of time before your... ' _friend'_ decides to... " she did that thing again, like she was biting her tongue from saying something rather repulsive, "... take advantage of you," her eyes, as cold and sharp and impersonal as an eagle's swept over him, from head to foot, like she was trying to see something, get some kind of clue or evidence of what she was accusing me of, "If he hasn't already."  
          With that, she stormed out of the classroom, but I barely noticed. I was too busy feeling completely and utterly horrified. It wasn't the first time, and it sure as hell won't be the last time, that anyone has accused me of raping, or wanting to rape someone just because I'm a faggot. I'll never understand that, why being gay is synonymous to some people with sexual assault and child rape, but it's something that I've come to expect, even if it makes no sense at all to me. It's always hurt, that insinuation, that just because I like men, that means that I'm fully capable of forcing myself on someone. It hurt the very first time that Zechs accused me of it, it hurt when Trowa said that he would be willing to use that ignorance to save his own ass, and it hurts even more now that I am actually dating someone that I love.

          Of course it hurts, that's a given. It's not just because it makes me realize how little the people that I've gone to school with for years actually know me, it's deeper. Recently, that accusation eviscerates me right down to the bone. Harkins isn't the first one to say that I'm going to rape to Heero, although most of the time it's said as a joke and not with the seriousness that she did, but every time I hear it, I feel like I'm going to be sick. I'm not a psychiatrist, but I don't need to be one to know why I feel that way. Before it had simply been a matter of betrayal that anyone could think that about me. Now it's because I know what it feels like, to be raped, to be abused by someone who was never supposed to even _think_ about you like that. I know what it's like to be violated, how it destroys you from the inside out and that someone in my community can joke about something like that makes me feel like I'm going to vomit. And that someone could think that I would do that to my best friend... to Quatre or to Heero...

          That's not the only thing, either. The only reason for my horror. Because as much as what my father does to me kills me, I still have that fear inside of me, that fear that one day, I'm going to become him. That fear isn't just about becoming an alcoholic or being so consumed with rage that I take it out on the people that I love or even growing up to being a loser in a dead end job in a town that I hate. I hear all those people joking that I'm likely to rape someone in the gym showers or that I might try molesting Heero and as ridiculous as those claims are, as much as I know that the idea that all homosexuals are rapists is bullshit, some tiny, fear drenched part of me wonders if it's true. It might not be true for all gays, but what about me?

          What if whatever is in my father that makes him do those things to me isn't just because he's sexually frustrated or he misses being with my mother? What if it's genetic? What if it's in me? I know how stupid that sounds. I hate myself just for wanting to hit someone, how could I possibly have it in me to force myself on anyone? Hell, I don't even _have_ a sex drive. I've never had an erection, have never successfully masturbated, and just the thought of having sex with anyone, even Heero, makes me feel ill, like my skin is crawling, so the idea that I could rape someone is ludicrous. But there will always be that tiny part of me, wondering if I could. Maybe I'll grow into it, like I grew into this rage inside of me. Maybe it's there in my genes, just waiting for the right moment to lay me low.

          I can say that it will never happen, but I bet if someone had asked my father if he was capable of something like that ten years ago, he would have hit them for such a disgusting question. Sometimes I even wonder if he knows now why he does the things that he does to me. He never talks about it, never acknowledges that he fucks me. It's like a kind of insanity, this thing that he needs to do, but the second it's over, it doesn't even enter his mind. I'm sure that suits him just fine. He doesn't have to feel guilt or try to stop himself, just like with his drinking. I wonder if he even acknowledged it before, when I first started to notice this behavior, his strange looks, touching my hair, back when he had been fighting against it or maybe the fighting had just been a subconscious thing and that's why he had succumbed so easily.

          I shook myself out of those thoughts. I didn't want to have them. It was too soon after feeling my father's touch, him violating me and I couldn't handle it. I kept seeing it in my head, myself doing those things to the boy that I loved and I wanted to find the nearest sharp object so I could peel my skin off, or maybe cut my dick off to eliminate the chance of me doing something like that. It wasn't like I was using it for anything other than pissing anyway, which is a whole other thing to loathe about myself that I just couldn't stand thinking about on top of everything else.

          I walked over to Heero, who was still standing in place, his hands curled into shaking fists and his face pinched with rage over what Mrs. Haskins had said to him. I hadn't seen him that furious in awhile and I marveled at his self-control. If someone had accused him of the same things in front of me, I'm almost completely sure that I would have taken a swing at them and he didn't have my mental drawbacks on the subject. As I approached him, I expected my survival instinct to kick in and start screaming at me, the instinct I always get when I'm around someone who is angry and that childish part of myself feels afraid that I'm going to get hit even when I know that they aren't angry with me. It's the same instinct that rears it's ugly head when I hear anyone arguing heatedly, this stupid anxiety that makes me want to cower even when it has nothing to do with me. To be my amazement, I didn't feel that way towards Heero. He was obviously enraged, but not for a single second did I feel scared that he would hit me for any reason. Love blossomed in my chest just realizing that. Of all the people in the world, he's the one that I trust the most, the only one that I will never be scared of. That alone is enough of a reason for me to fall madly in love with him.

          "It's alright," I told him in what I hoped was a soothing tone, daring to put a hand on his arm.

          He didn't so much as flinch, rewarding me for my trust in him. He even relaxed his fists, although anger was still clear in his eyes.

          "It isn't," he snapped, but not at me, he was still looking at the spot that Mrs. Harkins had vacated, "She had no right to say any of that. Not even behind my back. She doesn't know a single thing about you! And she's a _teacher_! How can she say such... such horrible things! Who the hell does she think she is?!"

          He was so mad that he almost sounded like he was senselessly rambling.

          "A very closed minded, old fashioned person," I answered, "It doesn't have anything to do with logic or knowledge, Heero, you know that. You could quote hundreds of statistics and facts about homosexuality and point out to her that I've never done anything remotely like what she's accusing me of and it wouldn't matter. People are going to believe whatever they want, you can't change someone's mind if they don't want you to. She's always going to hate me and feel repulsed by me, no matter who I really am."

          "You deserve better than that," he said sadly, "You're a wonderful person and even if she can't see that, that doesn't give her a right to say those things right in front of you. If she can't pull her head out of her ass, then she should just keep her opinions to herself."

          I almost chuckled at that and was again bowled over at how different we are, not even just different but polar opposites. At times, Heero can be just as pragmatic as I am, but on the whole, he is a total idealist. He thinks that the world and everyone in it should act a certain way and he gets angry when it doesn't, like when he sees the way that I'm treated. He gets offended on my behalf and whenever I try to brush it off as 'it is the way it is', his immediate response is always 'well, it shouldn't be.' It's equal parts frustrating and endearing.

          "Yeah, well, she'd treat you like that if she knew that you're gay, too," I pointed out, "She can say what she likes. It doesn't make it true, you know that, don't you?"

          I couldn't help the spark of fear that went through me, even though I knew that I was being ridiculous. Of course Heero didn't think that I was capable of doing that to him, taking advantage. He was gay, too, and that accusation was just as much thrown at him as it was at me, but I still felt this irrational worry. I never wanted him to be scared of me, not about anything, whether it was my problems with anger and violence or even some terrible rumor.

          "Of course not," he said softly.

          He reached over and took my hand in his. He meant for it to be a gesture of comfort and affection, but I reacted badly, pulling my hand away like his touch was burning me and stepping away from him, my eyes wide with shock and fear.

          "Don't do that!" I snapped at him and while it hurt me to see pain flash across his face, I didn't regret my actions, "Someone is going to see us!"

          I looked to the open door that we were standing right in front of and at the crowd of people, both classmates and teachers, making their way to the cafeteria. It didn't look like anyone had seen the brief moment when Heero had been holding my hand and looking at me so tenderly, but it was impossible to tell. There were too many people and the moment had passed too quickly. Someone could have, quite easily and clearly, and Heero had been totally oblivious to what a public place we were in.

          "So what?" he asked testily, "We aren't doing anything wrong. Who cares if I touch your hand?"

          "Are you fucking joking?!" I nearly sputtered and tried to keep my voice down, really not wanting to have this kind of conversation where we were and the only thing that was saving us  from being overheard was all the loud talking and happy screaming coming from the hallway. People could see us arguing, but they wouldn't be able to hear us unless they walked into the classroom, "The whole freaking _town_ would care if just one person saw us holding hands! Did you just forget what Mrs. Harkins said to you? What do you think would happen if even a single person found out that we're together?! Do you think that they'd pat you on the back and say 'hey, congrats on dating the local faggot'?! Do you want them to accuse you of being fudge-packing, boy rapist, too?!"

          I was aware that I was on the verge of some kind of angry panic attack, but I didn't care beyond just keeping a tight control over the volume of my voice, if not the things that I was saying. I was just so taken aback by him, by his boldness and what little situational awareness he had. He had just complained about our teacher accusing me of those things, but he had no sense of protecting himself against that? He was the same person that had hid his true nature from everyone to keep this very thing from happening, and there he was, not even realizing how dangerous his actions were! If I had even _thought_ about holding Trowa's hand in public, he would have punched my lights out!

          "Duo-" Heero started to say and I could see his frustration and that he was going to argue this with me and I refused to stand for it.

          "No," I snapped at him again, "How can you not get this? You can't do things like this, not if you want to stay in the closet! I know it's hard, but you have to pretend that we're still just friends. If anyone even suspects that we're seeing each other, everyone will start believing it! They'll all find out that you're gay and nothing you do will be able to convince them otherwise, don't you understand?! You think things are bad now? They'll be a thousand times worse if that happens! You won't just be a fag lover, you'll _be_ a fag, and everything they do to me, they'll do to you!"

          "Yeah, and?" he asked me flippantly, crossing his arms over his chest and staring at me in defiance.

          I stared right back at him in astonishment, looking at him like was some kind of alien creature that I had no hope of ever comprehending.

          "'And'?" I echoed numbly, not quite understanding what he was saying and thinking that he really _didn't_ get what the problem was, but no one could possibly be that thick.

          He huffed with frustration and strode over to the door, slamming it shut, and walked back to me. The sound of the door slamming closed made me jump, but no one in the hall seemed to notice. It rewarded us some privacy, but not much considering that there was small window in the door. Still, it was better than nothing, I supposed. Heero stood in front of me, still with that angry and defiant look on his face.

          "Do you remember what I told you after we became friends and you wanted to hide that from everyone so I wouldn't be bullied?" he asked me, his body rigid with tension.

          I shook my head, unable to come up with any words.

          "I told you that I'm not ashamed to hang out with you and I'm not ashamed to be dating you, either," he said a bit forcefully, "I'm not going to act like I am just so I can be safe while you're getting the brunt of all this shit. That isn't what being in a relationship is."

          "This isn't about being ashamed!" I tried to argue even as I felt this intense warmth in me at his words, that he wanted to share my pain and that he didn't feel ashamed of me.

          "Isn't it?" he shot right back at me and took a deep breath, his tone smoothing out a little, "I'm not your ex. I barely know anything about him, but I do know that I never want to be like him. I don't want to comfortably hide how I feel about you when you don't even have that luxury, all because I don't want people to look down on me. They already do just because we're friends, so how would this be any worse? And even if it is, I don't care. I can't stand seeing what they do to you and knowing that we're the same, but I'm safe. Do you know what that feels like? Wanting to protect you, but putting my own fears ahead of the person that I care about?

          "I never stayed in the closet because I was ashamed of my sexuality, Duo," he pointed out, "I stayed because I was afraid for my well being. But how can I keep that fear when you're living it's reality? But mostly, I can't pretend that I don't care about you that way. I don't want to temper myself and hide behind a lie. I want to be able to hold hands with you like every other couple can. I know we can never have what they have. We can't be that open and vulnerable without repercussions, but I still want to be able to call you my boyfriend out loud. I want to be able to take you out to dinner or to a movie and not have to insist that we're only friends."

          He reached out and grabbed my hand again, this time tighter. I tried to pull away from him like before in a knee-jerk reaction, but he refused to let me go this time.

          "I _love_ you," he said with such earnest passion that my heart fucking _burned_ with it, "I don't care what the town thinks or what anyone does to me for daring to love you, but I do care what _you_ think. I don't want you to doubt me, not even for a second. I don't want you to feel like I'm ashamed of you or that I'm anything like that asshole that you used to date, too scared of outing myself to help you when you need it, willing to throw you under the bus while I get out scott free. That's not who I am and that's not what I want this relationship to be. I want to be your boyfriend. I want everyone to know that."

          "They'll hurt you," I whispered in agony, thinking about what Zechs and Relena would do if they found out that not only is Heero gay, but he was with me of all people.

          "They already have," he said solemnly, "Every time they go after you for being gay, they hurt me, too. They already bully me for being your friend, let them bully me for loving you, too, it's only fair. I'm not afraid of the bullying anymore, Duo. I'm afraid of losing you by letting you doubt me."

          "You won't," I insisted, "I know that you aren't ashamed of me, you don't have to out yourself to prove it! Do you really think that I want you to put yourself in harm's way for me?"

          "No, but maybe I want to. Maybe I need to prove this to myself, that I can do right by you, that I won't make the same mistakes that your ex did. My fears of that happening are a hell of a lot worse than being afraid of some beatings. Besides," he smiled softly at me, lessening his grip on my hand without letting it go, his touch pleasant, almost like a caress, "I like holding your hand."

          "You're crazy," I muttered, but it was only to hide the small smile that I couldn't seem to get rid of.

          "They say that love can do that to a person," he chuckled, "Come on, if we don't hurry, they'll run out of meatballs and I bet you didn't bring any lunch today."

          "Didn't feel like it," I admitted, blushing a little as I realized that he knew me that well that I wouldn't bring lunch when I was sleep deprived.

          "I'll pay," he told me in a way that would broker no argument.

          The cafeteria was full to the brim by the time that we got there, although our table was empty, just as it always was. Even when the place was swamped and people had to cram in to the tables, no one sat at ours. No one wanted to take a seat at the fag table. I really can't wait for spring when they open the outer doors and we're allowed to eat out on the field, but it was still covered in snow at that point, so Heero and I were stuck inside with the rest of our wonderful classmates.

          Heero slipped me a five dollar bill and I braved the long line for my lunch. Mondays and Fridays are the worst days to get a school lunch. Friday is pizza, burgers and fries day while Mondays they serve either spaghetti or, my personal favorite, meatball subs. While the rest of the meals are pretty... well, gross, especially the meatloaf, turkey pies, and the lasagna should actually be considered a sentient life form, the meatballs subs are pretty damned good for a cafeteria meal. Nothing to write home about, maybe, but they're edible and filling and come with a cup of decently fresh fruit. The money awarded me a carton of milk, a salad, and the dessert of the day, which turned out to be a vanilla pudding cup, not a bad meal for five bucks. I might not have much of an appetite, but I wasn't going to turn my nose up at free food.

          Heero was well into his own lunch by the time that I sat down with my loaded tray, a tuna sandwich, yogurt, some carrot sticks, and homemade oatmeal cookies. He slipped one of them onto my tray as I poked my meatball sub with a fork to get all of it into the bun.

          "Thanks," I gave him a small smile and took a bite out of the sub.

          "At least you're eating like a normal person and not a bird today," he quipped.

          I childishly stuck my tongue out at him. As I was about to take another bite, he reached over and wrapped his fingers around my left hand. I paused, a thrill of panic shooting through me and I found his eyes with my own, looking at me intently as though he were asking me for my permission. I wanted to scream at him to stop, that he didn't know what he was doing, but I didn't. He did know. This was what he had decided, right? And even though everything in my head was screaming at me about how dangerous this was, I was happy. I was so overjoyed, I could have cried.         Because even if I thought that he was being foolish, Heero had decided that this was what he wanted, not to hide, not to lie or pretend, but to just do what he wanted, to be who he had always really been without flinching away. To love me, even when it wasn't convenient. Something that Trowa had never had the desire, or courage, to do. In that moment, I thought it was hysterical that Heero calls himself a coward when he's the bravest man that I've ever known.

          "Are you sure?" I asked him very shyly.

          He smiled reassuringly at me.

          "More sure about this than I have been about almost anything else," he confessed.

          I smiled back at him and curled my fingers around his. If he could do this, then I could, too. His courage could make me brave. I would do exactly what he had decided to, to stand by him and protect him from everything that I could, to fight for this relationship of ours, even if it hurt me in the end.

          "Thank you," I murmured, realizing fully well that he was doing this for me, for us, exposing himself in that way.

          A part of me was terrified that I was dooming him to some horrible fate. Wasn't this why I had almost broken up with him on Saturday, to spare him from ruining his reputation, all because of me? But this was his choice, and who was I to be so arrogant as to say that it was wrong or he was mistaken? I couldn't make decisions for him, I know that. If this was what he wanted, then I would follow him like the loyal dog that I am. I would follow him through anything, for as long as I could, and I would do anything that he wanted, even if I was scared of the cost.

          I suddenly heard the boys at the table behind us fall silent and I knew, without having to turn around, that they were staring at us, perhaps glaring. We were being discreet, especially compared to other couples, but they could clearly see that we were holding hands. Or maybe it was the tender, affectionate way that Heero was looking at me. I couldn't tell. I could only feel hateful eyes on us. But I didn't pull my hand away and neither did Heero. 'I can do this', I told myself, even as I could feel myself tremble a little with fear. Heero felt it too and gripped my hand tighter, helping me through it. It wasn't going to be ok, I knew, but I could still face it like I had faced everything else, couldn't I? Because even if I was frightened, I was also happy that Heero continued to hold my hand, continued to meet my gaze without looking away in shame or shyness like Trowa had done.

          You know, I didn't realize it until that moment in the cafeteria, just how much Trowa's secrecy had hurt me. I understood what Heero had told me before, about how this had everything to do with shame, and he was right. Trowa hadn't just cheated on me and hid his relationship with me to blend in and keep from being bullied. He had done it because he had been ashamed. Ashamed of me, our relationship, his sexuality, and even his feelings for Quatre. It had taken me years to realize it, but that was the real reason why he had never confessed his feelings to my best friend and why he had turned away from him the day that he had killed himself. He had been ashamed of something that I found beautiful.

          I felt sorry for him. To go through your life and feel that much shame towards something that you could never change, something that made you _you_ , that had to be a kind of hell, didn't it? But I also hated him for it. He had been ashamed of us and in treating me the way he had, hiding us, pretending, lying, and betraying me, he had made me feel ashamed, too, I just hadn't consciously realized it. I had looked at our relationship as something that maybe should be a secret, not because I cared what other people thought of me, but because some part of me felt that I was doing something wrong. Only the wrongness wasn't just that he had been my best friend's crush, or even that I didn't love him like I was supposed to, but the secrecy itself had felt so wrong to me. Subconsciously I had thought that, if he felt the need to hide us, then there was a good reason for that. If he was ashamed of me, then maybe he should be.

          I realized that day in the cafeteria that I didn't want that with Heero. Even if it painted targets on our backs, I didn't want our relationship in the shadows because Heero is right. He isn't Trowa and I never want him to be. I love him too much to reduce him to how Trowa had made me feel, like a whore that you go to when your wife is asleep in bed, a secret affair that you need to sate some hidden part of yourself, a thing that you need to be ashamed of. Because I will never be ashamed of Heero, no matter what happens, no matter how this relationship ends.

          And he's right about something else. Even if it gets me killed, even if Relena comes after me over it, I want them all to know. Not out of some sort of pettiness. I just want them to know how wrong they all are. About homosexuality. About me. Or maybe it's simpler than that. Maybe it's just like Heero said and I like holding his hand. I just hope that doing so won't get either of us killed.

 

 

End Part 11

 

Author's Note (important): These apologies are getting old, but I once again must say that I am sorry to everyone who has been waiting for an update. I put this part on hold for a few days so I could work on publishing my very first novel. Yup, after four years, I finally did it, the fairy tale based, gay erotica that I was working on has been published as an e-book on Amazon. It is called 'A Stray Cat in Faerie Tale Land' and it is on sale for a buck. To those interested in reading it, I can't post a link here but you can find it very easily by typing that title in the Amazon search. It's the only item called that, so it comes up right away. Or I can link it in an email. I would highly appreciate anyone buying a copy, since no one has yet, and if you do, to write a review, which would help sales a lot. If you have any questions about the book and what it contains, you can PM or email me and I'd be all too happy to talk about it. Even if no one buys it, I'm really proud to have published something. It took me a long time just to get the courage to do it.

 

Another piece of real life news: after being unemployed the last six months, I have decided to move back to the boston area. While I will miss Florida and my girlfriend, I can't deny that I am having a lot of problems right now with depression and feeling like a useless leech. So I am returning to my homeland in hopes that I can get a good job and move back in with my best friend. I will be in a really bad mood for quite some time, what with moving back in with my parents and niece and will lose all the quiet and privacy that I have had here. That being said, I am still going to try to keep this word count up, so updates shouldn't suffer too much, I hope.


	56. Chapter 8 Part 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duo and Heero deal with the backlash of outing their relationship. Duo starts to worry that their dating is a mistake and he is going to get Heero hurt. Duo still can't sleep until Heero proposes a solution.

A Stagnation of Love

Chapter 8

Part 12

If you're expecting me to tell you that everything turned out ok, that Heero and mine's actions in the school cafeteria that day didn't have any huge repercussions, then you're a biggest fool than I am, which is a pretty considerable one. If I have any good news at all about the whole thing, it's that we managed to get out of the cafeteria alive.

Gossip is a funny thing. It moves like a living thing, like a virus that infects people faster and more efficiently than even a cold or the flu. If you're in the right situation, you can actually watch it and chart it like any other living organism. We were in such a situation as we sat at our table, ate our lunch, our fingers still linked together, and tried in vain to ignore what was happening around us.

The table behind ours was patient zero, but it didn't take more than a few minutes before it began to spread to the others. The easy, loud chatter died into harsh whispers or even complete silence and I felt this sickening sensation in my stomach as I knew without a single doubt that nearly every person in that cafeteria was staring at us. The look in Heero's eyes as he watched what was happening was all the proof of that that I needed. For all of his insistence that he wasn't worried about being bullied if he came out with me, he wasn't an idiot, either. With great caution, he rushed to finish his lunch before leading us out the room, not wanting to be either the first ones out or the last, giving someone the chance to corner us.

That didn't stop a group of boys from trailing us as we went to our lockers to collect our books for the second half of the day. They weren't even among the group of boys that would often hang out with Zechs, just a bunch of punk assholes that had taken offense to seeing the resident faggot holding hands with someone that, until recently, had been a member of the 'normal' tribe. However, whatever they had been intending to do to us, they appeared to be rather spineless and when a bunch of teachers loitered outside the classroom door right next to our row of lockers, chatting before the lunch period was over, they chickened out and didn't go through with it.

They just hung back several feet from us, leaning against the wall and poorly pretending that they were doing the same as the teachers, just there to chat. I was far from fooled, though, and kept an eye on them as I switched out my text books. They weren't even good at acting like they weren't up to no good, constantly glancing at us as they talked about nothing, their expressions colder than they had any right to be for such a casual conversation. I tensed and tried to keep my eyes straight forward while relying only on my peripheral vision to make sure that not a single one of them moved.

"It's alright," Heero told me in a low tone, too low for those assholes to be able to hear him and placed a comforting hand on the small of my back, "I saw Mr. Miller and a few others go into the classroom. They won't try anything in front of a teacher."

He had guessed the same thing that I had, that this group wasn't like Zechs, who was bold enough to mess with us around adults and wouldn't get into trouble over it. But that did little to comfort me when I glanced over at them and saw that they had stopped putting up the illusion that they were just loitering there. They saw Heero's hand on my back and had fallen silent, openly glaring at the two of us with repulsion.

That should have been enough to make me want to pull away from him, to try to pretend that the touch had been nothing more than friendly contact, but I suddenly didn't want to. Their looks of disgust at a gesture that had been calming and welcome to me made me feel bitter. If they didn't like what they were seeing, I thought angrily, then they shouldn't look at us at all. Besides, if it hadn't been apparent with our hand holding in the cafeteria that we were more than friends, it probably was with that gesture and the way that Heero's hand was lingering there, like he didn't want to be the one to break the contact, and neither did I. I reminded myself that we weren't hiding this and that it was fine if they stared, but I had spent so much time trying to stick to the shadows that suddenly finding myself in the spotlight had my hair raised on end.

I irritably stuffed my textbooks into my back pack and followed Heero into our post-colonial history class. Just like he had said, a bunch of our classmates and our teacher were already in there, awarding us some small measure of security. But when we walked in, I suddenly found every eye save our teacher's on us and this chilling silence fell over the room. Those eyes were full of hate and disgust. I felt like I had come out of the closet for a second time, only this time those stares were on my boyfriend, too. While several people had viewed him with repulsion after he had befriended me, it hadn't been anything like this.

I wasn't surprised to find that most of those stares were directed at him this time and not me. I had always been a social outcast, the kind of person that no one else that I went to school with wanted anything to do with. When I came out, no one had been especially surprised, having heard rumors about my sexuality for years. Heero was different. Heero had been one of them. Not just another member of the flock, but a high ranking member of the hierarchy. Relena Darlian's boyfriend, a member of Zechs's inner circle, the son of an award winning psychologist, and a renowned athlete to boot.

Him coming out as gay wasn't just a shock, it was a betrayal. It was _heresy_. In their cozy, little world, boys like Heero Yuy were _not_ fags. Just the fact that he had hid it from them, pretending to be one of their own, and dared to make friends with them was going to paint a brilliant, red bulls eye on his chest. Some would accuse me of perverting him, somehow turning him to my side and I knew that I was going to get a great deal of backlash from this, but I could handle that. I could handle the fear and the paranoia that was going to come from such an idea. But what I couldn't handle was the hatred that was going to be directed at the boy that I loved, the sort of accusations and rage that were going to be thrown at him. I felt a huge surge of doubt just then at what we were doing, that bringing out relationship out into the open was anything but incredibly foolish.

The rest of the school day was absolutely hellish. That block was bad enough, really. Although no one dared to do anything too vicious during class, I received various notes passed to me ranging from crude drawings that I assumed were supposed to be depicting sex acts between myself and Heero, stick figure renditions of us being tortured in hell, and suggestions of what the two of us should do with the rest of our lives. I think the mildest one just told me to kill myself. I couldn't not accept the notes because if Miller saw any of what was going on, _I_ was going to get blamed for it, but I stopped reading the fucking things after the tenth such note, just opting to tear them up. I'm sure that, with the sour look on his face throughout class, Heero had received his fair share as well.

I was poked with sharp pencils, had rude hand motions gestured at me, and my hair was pulled. I felt the person sitting behind me spit at me a couple of times and it would end up not being the last time that day that someone would do that. I was used to things like that by then, but the sheer volume of the bullying was staggering. Just getting through that period made me feel drained, but it became infinitely worse when it was over. It was lucky that all of this had started after lunch and not before it, so I was spared having to deal with Zechs until gym class, but Heero wasn't that lucky. Not only did we not have a class together until the final period, he had Zechs in his next class _and_ it was metal shop. The thought of what that asshole could do to my boyfriend surrounded by tools and sharp objects terrified me.

"You can always skip," I told him nervously as we left our history class, "I mean, it's just metal shop and you haven't missed any classes this semester. No one will even care."

"I'll be fine," he tried to assure me, "You worry too much."

"And you don't worry enough," I snapped back, a common argument between us, "You know Zechs is going to try something. You need to be on the defensive."

"I can't avoid him forever," he pointed out and I had to concede on that point, "I'll be careful, though, I promise."

"You'd better," I said sternly, "You have no idea what that asshole is capable of-"

My words were cut short as someone shoved me from behind and I hit the wall hard, but I barely felt the pain from the impact compared to a sharp, stinging pain in the small of my back, like the feeling you get when you step on a splinter, but worse. I winced and felt around at my back, thinking I might have just hit something when I had hit the wall. I was expecting a bruise, but when my fingers came in contact with something small, thin, and metal protruding through my shirt, buried in my skin, my eyes widened in shock. Someone had just fucking stabbed me.

"What's the matter, Maxwell?" a boy that I didn't recognize walked past me, sneering at me and Heero, "I thought that you liked little pricks," he shot Heero a superior look and he and a couple of his friends walked by us, laughing at the lame joke.

"Are you alright?" my boyfriend asked me in alarm.

He could see how shocked I was and that I was in pain, but he couldn't see the thing that was stuck in my back.

"Motherfucker," I muttered through clenched teeth, grabbed the metal thing and pulled it out of me, wincing again in pain as I felt it move out of my skin.

Heero stared at what I was holding with the same kind of horror that I had felt when I had realized that someone had stabbed me as I uncurled my fist, revealing what looked like a large hat pin. Two-thirds of it was bloody, showing just how deeply the asshole had stabbed me with it.

"Oh god," Heero breathed, trying to reach for the back of my shirt so he could see the damage and I could tell that he was on the verge of panicking.

"It's not bad," I assured him, "It doesn't even need a band-aid, it just startled me."

He studied my face, looking for some sign that I wasn't being truthful and when he didn't find any, he frowned angrily, glaring at where the boys had departed to.

"Those pieces of shit," he growled and looked like he was considering following them.

"Don't," I begged, grabbing his arm and not caring how that might look to the crowd that was watching all of this, it was too late for that anyway, "They aren't worth it and it doesn't even hurt, really."

And it didn't. Stepping on a tack would have hurt a hell of a lot worse, I was just amazed at how bold the attack had been, that they had done something so underhanded instead of the typical beating and name calling.

"You're sure you're ok?" he asked insistently.

I nodded. I couldn't even feel the wound anymore.

"Maybe I should walk you to your class," he said with some anxiety.

I rolled my eyes. Him being with me hadn't stopped me from getting assaulted by a damned hat pin, and I was a lot more worried about him than myself, but I didn't say that to him. Even if I thought that he was being ridiculous, his concern was kind of sweet.

"Alright," I agreed, but not without a put-upon sigh, dumping the bloody pin in a nearby trash can.

The rest of my day was worse than getting stabbed in the back with a pin. Not because anyone did something to me that was any worse than that, although I did have a few... incidents of almost getting beaten up and various classmates deciding that I needed to be reminded of my place in the world, it was being away from Heero that bothered me the most. If I couldn't see him, I couldn't keep an eye on him and it was driving me crazy with worry, not knowing if he was alright. I was extremely careful myself as I went from home ec to 19th century literature, making sure that I was never anywhere alone, that there were always a minimum of two adults. I didn't even go to the bathroom, opting to wait until school ended. I hoped that Heero was that smart, too, that these last few months had taught him how to survive.

Relena and Dorothy are in my literature class. Why either of them would ever be interested in that class is beyond me, and I sure as hell didn't want them there, but there really wasn't a whole lot of great choices for that block. I expected one or both of them to start something with me the second that I walked into that room, teacher be damned. So I was incredibly surprised when, not only was the worst thing they did to me the entire period just give me dirty looks, it was Dorothy and not Relena who looked like she wanted to murder me. Relena did glare at me, and there was more hatred in those eyes for me than anyone had had for me in my entire life, which is pretty damned considerable. But it was somewhat tempered by something else. Confusion.

It was understandable. Just that morning, she had accused me of stealing her boyfriend, of poisoning him against her and now she had just found out that it was so much worse than that. What had she thought when she had first heard that we were romantically involved? That it couldn't possibly be true? That Heero had gone temporarily insane? That the boy she loved had become the thing that she hated and loathed more than anything else in the world? Did she still think that she could get him back from me, or had this bit of news make her realize that that was impossible, that she was trying to get back someone who could never like her the way that she wanted? Did she even want him back at all? Was she going over their entire relationship, re-evaluating it and trying to see if there were any clues that Heero had been gay? Or was she stubbornly clinging to her delusion that all of this was my fault and Heero was just... confused?

I could almost feel sorry for her, if she had been anyone else but Relena. The girl had the worst luck in her crushes, falling for not one, but two homosexuals. It was a weird thing to realize that, for all the ways that she was superior to me, in looks, popularity, grades, wealth, and family, I had done better than her in this one area. I had fallen in love with someone, and through some sort of miracle or freak coincidence, he had turned out to be both gay and liked me back. Meanwhile, Relena was chased after by a vast majority of the male student body _and_ she was straight. Common sense dictated that she could have anyone, but not the people that she kept falling for. It was too sad for me to feel pettily happy about, and I hated her too much to feel any sympathy for her, either.

I wasn't stupid enough to actually believe that I had gotten off when I walked out of that classroom towards the gymnasium without having any kind of run in with Relena and her friends. She might be confused and probably hurting and bewildered, but that hate was still there and it was very real. She was going to get her pound of flesh from me and Heero, it was only a matter of time. I rushed to gym class, not wanting to give her or Dorothy the chance to corner me if they did decide to do something, but mostly I was just eager to see Heero. My nerves were on edge with the knowledge that Zechs surely didn't have any of Relena's... self-control or hesitance or whatever it was. So when I spotted my boyfriend approaching the gymnasium door, I felt so incredibly relieved to see him there instead of in the nurse's office or even the hospital.

"Hey!" I called out to him.

He turned and smiled at me, waving a hand in return, but my relief and happy smile quickly faded when I got a good look at him. His face was a mess. Almost the entire right side of his face was just one, massive, black and purple bruise. His nose was swollen, although it didn't look broken, there were several tiny cuts on both sides of his face and a large scrape at his bruised, right temple. His right eye was blackened, though not swollen shut at least.

"Oh, god," I whispered in horror.

I reached out my hand to touch his face, to feel the realness of what my foolishness had brought him, but quickly retracted my hand before I could touch him, not because we were in a very public place, but because I just couldn't bear it. Heero caught my hand halfway back and squeezed it.

"It's not nearly as bad as it looks," he tried to assure me, giving me a dry grin, but the effect was ruined as his smile pulled on his badly split lip and he grimaced.

I flinched at his touch, pulling my hand almost violently out of his and shook my head. I didn't need to ask what had happened. I knew. Zechs or one of his thug friends, it didn't matter who had beaten Heero up, it was all the same. And really, they hadn't done it to him, _I_ had. I had known the cost of dating him, of making the both of us vulnerable, and I had reached for it anyway. I had known what Zechs was going to do to him if he ever found out that the two of us were together, but I had let him talk me into leaving the shadows, exposing our relationship. I had gotten him assaulted, all because I had wanted to believe in him, believe in us, believe that we could have a slice of what normal people have. I had forgotten my place. Worse, I had put Heero in the lion's mouth for some stupid desires. All the pain that he was feeling was _my_ fault.

"This can't happen," I whispered, feeling like my heart was breaking, and I took a step back away from him.

"Duo-" Heero began to say in alarm, seeing something on my face that he clearly didn't like.

I shook my head again and pulled away from him further. He was right, I realized. It wasn't as bad as it looked and that was the point. This was just the tip of the iceberg, a mere taste to what Zechs was going to do to him the next time. Unless I fixed this. Unless I took it back somehow. I could bear the brunt of whatever Zechs wanted to do to us for daring to flaunt ourselves, but not Heero. Never Heero.

"You have to take it back," I told him frantically, almost rambling in my anxiety, "You have to tell Zechs that it isn't true, that we aren't together!"

"I'm not going to do that," he snapped at me, "A few bruises isn't a big deal-"

"No!" I snapped right back at him, incredibly frustrated that he didn't understand how important this was, how dangerous the path that he was treading was on, "No, goddamn it! You can't take this! He's not going to stop, it's only going to get worse, believe me, I know! You have to renounce me, make him believe that we're just friends! Tell him that it was all joke! Tell him that you were just curious, that... that you wanted to experiment, but it grossed you out and you're over it now!"

It hurt me so much to say those things, even knowing that they weren't true, and I knew that it was unlikely to get Zechs to stop. He would call Heero's bluff, or he just wouldn't care at all and would keep coming after him. I knew that, just like I had known for all of these years that trying to deny to Zechs that I was a fag was pointless, but I didn't care. I just kept seeing Heero's abused face and seeing in my head Zechs's fist hitting that face that I loved so much over and over and over again, him accusing him of all the things that he had accused me of over the years. Of being a fudge packer. Of wanting to rape the rest of the boys in our class. Of molesting little kids. Of having AIDS. And all I kept thinking was that there had to be a way to fix this. There had to be something that I could do to make things right again because _I_ was the one that had fucked them up in the first place. I had to save Heero, no matter what it took...

Heero suddenly grabbed me hard by my shoulders, keeping me from dancing away from his touch again.

"Duo, _stop it_ ," he said with such force and passion that I froze, "I'm not grossed out by this, far from it, and you sure as hell are not an experiment that I'm conducting just because I'm bored or think you're easy or I'm curious or _any_ of the bullshit that's going through your head right now."

My throat went dry. I didn't believe those things. I was just telling him to say them to save his own skin... wasn't I?

"I... I know that," I said, but I sounded so unsure of myself that I was amazing even me, "I know it isn't like that."

"Do you?" he asked me in a softer tone, "Do you really?"

I swallowed hard and looked away from him. I felt uncertainty like a chain wrapped around my heart. Where the hell was all of this coming from? I knew that Heero loved me. I knew that this was real to him, so why did just saying those things out loud hurt so much? Maybe... maybe some insecure part of myself had considered them as possibilities. Maybe I'm so unsure of _why_ he's interested in me that it didn't seem impossible that he was just with me because there was no one else, because he was lonely and just wanted to date me because I was gay, too. Maybe I had even wondered if, knowing that I had dated before and with some of the twisted rumors flying around about me, that I would be an easy lay.

I had thought those things in some of my weaker moments... but did I believe them? Of course I didn't. It seemed like the second that I did have one of those thoughts, I would catch a look from him, or he would hold my hand or kiss me or say or do one of those sweet, endearing things of his and I knew that my insecurities were complete and total bullshit. Heero loves me. I can't understand it, but even if I thought that he didn't, I know that he isn't the type of person to use me like that. It's just... it's so hard sometimes. It's hard to believe that Heero isn't my father or Trowa, that he isn't just going to get what he wants from me, use me to fill some... basic urge and knowing that I could be anyone else to him. It's hard for me to accept sometimes that he's with me because he wants to be with _me_.

But that doesn't mean that I believe that he's that kind of person, because he isn't. It was like he had said to me that morning, he wasn't my ex and he was never going to be like him. Those bruises on his face were there, not because I had fucked up like my fears had been screaming at me, but because Heero loves me and isn't ashamed of that. Because of his choices and what _he_ wanted, not just me.

"Yes," I looked him straight in the eye and managed to speak with a great deal more conviction than before, "I know that."

Heero smiled at me in pure relief and I felt like a total asshole for making him doubt me for even a second. For making him think that _I_ was in doubt.

"Good," he said, "because none of those things are true and I'm not going to lie to anyone, even Zechs Darlian, just to get him to stop picking on me."

My heart swelled, but I still felt fear as I examined every bruise, every cut on that familiar, tanned skin.

"This isn't just some... some _teasing_ , Heero," I said softly, still trying to make him understand, "I don't want you to get hurt... I don't mind you lying about our relationship if it gets him to stop! We both know that it's a lie, so what difference does it make?"

As flattered as I was that he was willing to put himself in harm's way like that, I needed to make him understand what it was doing to me, seeing him get beat up all for holding my damned hand and that he was stubbornly not conceding that I was right was beginning to frustrate me.

"I don't care," he insisted, making me want to scream at him, "This is the same treatment that you've been getting for years. You've survived it, so why does it bother you so much that it's happening to me, too?"

 _Because I almost didn't survive it. Because I know how it feels,_ I thought, although I didn't say it out loud, _Because you're so much better than I am, you don't deserve to be treated this way!_

"You're such a fucking idiot!" I snarled at him and if I'm being completely honest with myself, what I was feeling right then was more fear than just frustration at not getting my way.

I pushed him away, not very hard, but enough to get him to let go of me and stormed away.

"Duo!" he called after me, but he might as well have been yelling at a deaf person.

I quickened my pace, not wanting him to catch up to me, wanting him to just leave me alone, for _everyone_ to leave me alone. I strode down a small hallway next to the gym that led to a set of bathrooms and the entrance to the science wing, but I wasn't heading for the bathrooms. I had no idea where I was going or what I was doing. I could feel tears pricking at my eyes, making my vision blurry, but there was no one in the hallway to see them, so I paid them no mind.

I just needed to get away from everything. From Heero's bruises, from my self-hatred, from Zechs and Relena and my father and that voice in my head screaming that this is what I get for trying to be happy, for daring to reach for something that I want, and another voice gleefully telling me that all of this was my fault. I might try to think otherwise, that this had been Heero's decision, but in reality, just like with everything else shitty that has happened to me in my life, this is my fault, what I deserve. I was destroying Heero's life and he was letting me do it. And for what?

An iron grip enclosed around my wrist and jerked me back. I didn't fight against it, knowing through touch, through instinct, and through some siren call in my heart that it was Heero. I let him pull me back because the only other action would be to punch him just to try to get away from him, something that I would never be capable of doing, even if I felt a bit like a trapped animal, wanting to escape, but caught in that firm grip. I half expected him to yell at me for continuously running away from him, or claim that I was being overly emotional or ridiculous, or even just try to calm me down, but he didn't need any words to get through to me.

In one, smooth motion, Heero tugged on my wrist, wrapped an arm around my lower back and pulled me flush against him. I could feel every inch of his body against mine, his long leg and firm chest pressed against me. I felt this... this strange sensation that I don't quite know how to describe. It was this warmth and tingling in my gut that felt like a strange cross of heat and electricity, but at the same time was tight, like anxiety, a burning need for something that I didn't even know what it was, a kind of energy. Whatever it was, it made my chest feel tight as well, like I couldn't breathe even though I could and my mind felt... foggy, I suppose is the right word for it. I've never felt that way in my entire life and I struggled to find the word for it. I felt that I knew what it was, intellectually even if not through any kind of personal experience.

Then Heero, without uttering a single word, was kissing me hard and passionately right there in the hallway in that way that always sweeps me up and consumes me. A marching band could have entered that hallway and I wouldn't have even noticed. Our lips danced against each other and for the first time, he was bold enough to trace my lips with his tongue. I didn't feel any fear or hesitance for once, opening my mouth a little so I could taste him. He still tasted a little like tuna and carrots, not a very pleasant taste, but right then I thought that it was the best taste in the world.

The kiss was over all too quickly, but I didn't have the urge to evade him anymore, or even to cry. Crying and guilt were the very last things on my mind at all. As Heero pulled away from me, the word for that prickling feeling in my gut finally came to me. Desire. I had felt very real, sexual arousal and yearning... _attraction_ for the first time in my life. It had only been a tingling, a fraction's worth of passion, but it had been there and it had been mine. I felt too amazed... too relieved to care for the moment about what we had been arguing about. It hadn't been enough to give me an erection, even a small one, but it was the closest that I've ever gotten to feeling excited like that. I hadn't even thought myself capable, but in that second when Heero had pushed himself against me and taken control, I had felt it as solid and real as a heartbeat.

"You alright now?" he asked me, sounding a bit breathless, "Or are you going to make me chase you some more?"  
I shook my head in a kind of daze.

"N-no," I stammered even as a part of me wondered if letting him chase after me would be such a bad thing, "No, I'm fine now."

"Ok," he said, "Do you want to talk about it?"

"I just..." I ran a hand through my bangs and realized how stupid I must look, blushing darkly the way that I was, "I wish you would understand how dangerous this is going to be, what you're getting into!"

"I _do_ understand," he insisted, "I know that you think that I don't because I've never been through it before, but I do understand. I've seen what Zechs does to you, remember? I get it. But I just don't care. I'm willing to put up with it and you need to accept that."

I sighed.

"How can I?" I argued, "You said it yourself. You've never been through this, you don't know how it feels. How can I possibly accept that you're willing to deal with it when you have choices that I've never had? Don't you think that, if I could, I would take back everyone finding out that I'm gay? You have that luxury. It's going to be hard enough for a lot of people to believe that you've... jumped ship. You have a chance to defend yourself and you don't even want to take it."

"I don't want to defend myself," he said heatedly, "I already told you my reasons for not staying in the closet."

"They might be your reasons now, but you don't know if you'll come to regret it," I pointed out, "A week, a month from now, what if you want to take it all back? You won't be able to. But right now, you can do that. You can at least _try_. Why would you be willing to risk that?"

"Because I know that I won't regret it," he told me, "This is what I want, Duo. Even if it's hard, even if it's painful further down the road. Even if you don't agree with it, can you at least trust my decision, trust that I know what I'm doing?"

I chewed on my lip. My guilt reared up again, reminding me that none of this would even be happening if not for me. But Heero wasn't seeing it like that. The only person who was blaming me was myself. Even if things went bad, would he even resent me? He was right, I knew, this was his choice and if I couldn't talk him out of it, maybe I was blowing my role in things out of proportion. Maybe it was like it had been with Quatre and I was feeling guilty over something that I had never had any control over to begin with. And even if all of this was my fault, even if I felt guilty over it, Heero wasn't giving me a way to fix things. Stubborn idiot that he was.

"I... I can try," I finally conceded.

He gave me another relieved smile and briefly squeezed my hand.

"Why..." I called out as he turned and started to walk back towards the gym, "Why did you do that?"

I couldn't stop myself from touching my lips, remembering the passion that he had kissed me with.

"It stopped you from trying to run away didn't it?" he teased me, but then his features softened into something more affectionate, and more concerned, "You looked like you needed it."

That made me blush darker. I had, I realized. I had needed a reminder of why we were risking so much, and something to calm me, soothe me in a way that only Heero can somehow manage when I let the worst in me overwhelm me.

"I did," I murmured and looked away from him shyly, "And I did like it, but you probably shouldn't do that again... here, I mean."

He laughed and it sounded a bit nervous.

"Yeah," he admitted wryly, "I wasn't really thinking when I did that. Holding hands is fine, but that was a bit much."

He could at least admit to that much, I thought with relief. Even a much less... steamy kiss would even be forbidden at school, if we didn't want to get lynched. Thankfully, it didn't seem like anyone had seen our little... intimate moment. Wouldn't that have made Relena flip her shit?

"We should get to class," he said, regaining his composure, "We're already late."

We started to walk back together, side by side, and I smiled a little when I felt his fingers brushing against mine. To anyone else, it would have just looked like we were standing too close, but I alone knew that it was completely deliberate.

"It will be ok," he told me softly and I was too warmed by his touch and his words to feel ridiculous that he was the one saying that when he was the one with the bruises.

One of the great things about being a social leper for most of your life is that when you have a very heated, and very public, argument with your boyfriend, you get to skip all that nasty embarrassment stuff. That several of our classmates had seen Heero and I fighting was completely irrelevant to me compared to my shame at having made an ass of myself in front of him. Rumors of our relationship spread twice as fast as people could now attest that, yes, we were a couple and no, that hand holding thing in the cafeteria had not just been a fluke or that we had just gotten together that day. Anyone that had seen that fight would have clearly discovered that we had been hiding this, at least for a little while.

It might surprise some people to know that, well, I really didn't care. It was only a matter of time before the rumor spread as fact anyway and it didn't change anything. It riled our classmates up even more, but it was the last period of the day and all I cared about was surviving through that last forty-five minute block. I could deal with the rest of the week as it came. Or rather, thirty minute block since Heero and I were that late to class. It hadn't seemed like we had been arguing for that long, but I was so tired that a cow could have flown past my head and I wasn't likely to notice.

As it turned out, our tardiness was a good thing. Sure, Coach Horner, who is a stickler for these kinds of things, yelled his head off at us about it, which I suppose was supposed to embarrass us but really didn't have the desired effect. We were the only ones in the locker room to change and while everyone else was playing dodge ball, a favorite among our classmates, we were 'punished' by being forced to run laps around the gym. If only Horner knew that he had just saved our asses from the rest of the class by segregating us like that. And by the time he told us to stop running, the locker room was empty again, so we got off free from any more bullying. The worst that Zechs could do was smirk when he saw the bruises on Heero's face, which made me want to put some on his, but we were saved from having to be anywhere near him unsupervised. When we were done showering at the end of class and Heero and I were leaving the gym, I half expected Zechs to be waiting for us out in the hallways, but it wasn't any kind of relief to not see him all the way out of the school. It only worried me more, because I knew that he was out there, somewhere, waiting for us. It would be like before. He would be waiting on some street or alley between here and Heero's house, a place where no one that might actually try to stop him would see what he was going to do, him and his shitty friends. Perhaps with the same baseball bat that he hadn't gotten to use after Heero had saved my ass last time.

"We should take the bus to your place," I told Heero as we stepped outside of the school, "It's not going to be safe on foot."

Even if we stuck to fairly public streets, it was too big of a risk.

"I know," Heero agreed, probably remembering that day as well as I was, "I texted my father an hour ago asking if he'll pick us up. He should be here soon."

Relief swept over me at the same time that I felt a bit stupid for not having thought of that. I forgot that we weren't alone in this. Unlike myself, Heero could actually rely on his parents. But at the same time that I was relieved, I felt this intense fear gnaw at me, a very familiar fear at that. When his parents saw his bruises, would he tell them what had happened? Would they want to pull him out of school? Move away again? Would they be angry at me? I knew, logically, how silly that fear was. Even Heero didn't think it was my fault and I couldn't imagine either of his parents thinking that, but I couldn't stop feeling anxious as the two of us stood by the front entrance of the school, waiting for Mr. Yuy to come pick us up.

I was running on empty at that point with everything that had happened since I had last gotten some decent sleep and felt a little bit like I was walking through a fog, the things that I was feeling seeming distant, like I wasn't all together _there_ , but I still felt a jolt of panic when I saw that familiar car pull up, like I was about to get yelled at. The car stopped in front of us and Heero and I got into the back together. Justin had obviously come from work, he was wearing a nice, but casual suit. He turned and smiled at me, soothing some of my anxieties. In that moment, I couldn't imagine that man getting angry at me over this. He had never raised his voice to me in the entire time that I'd known him, no matter what stupid shit I'd done.

"Hello, Duo," he said brightly.  
"Hello, Mr. Yuy," I greeted back and took my seat.

"Thank for picking us up, Dad," Heero said as he buckled his seat belt, "I'm sorry I pulled you out of work."

"That's fine, Heero," his father said, turning to look at him, "But why-"

My boyfriend shrunk down in his seat a little as his father finally got a good look at him and that smile completely disappeared. His dark, blue eyes widened in shock, his face turning pale.

"Heero, what the hell happened-" Justin started to demand.

"I'll tell you later," Heero vowed.

"Yes, you will," his father said sternly, his eyes narrowing at his son, "I mean it, Heero."

My friend just nodded, looking a bit shy and sheepish at his father's authoritative tone. I felt my stomach plummet to my knees. Heero was going to tell. There was no way he was going to lie to his father, and even if he was willing to, his dad wasn't going to let him get away with anything but the complete truth. His mother was probably going to flip out over his injuries, too, then they would both know that the entire school knows that Heero is gay. And Heero would have to tell them _how_ everyone had found out. They were going to find out that we're dating. They were going to find out that I was the entire reason why Heero had gotten beaten out, that he was in danger because of me.

I spent the entire eight minute car ride dancing between being on the verge of crying, throwing up, and having a panic attack as my traitorous mind supplied me with worst case scenarios, Heero's parents hating me, loathing me, telling me to never see their son again or moving away from here. I knew that I was being silly, that they wouldn't react that way, but my tired brain could only think of the terrible things and it made it so difficult for me to believe that everything was going to be ok. Nothing was ever ok, not for me. There was going to be a fallout from this, I just knew it.

I was a nervous wreck by the time that we got to their house and Justin ushered us out of his car. To my ultimate relief, their other car was gone. Mrs. Yuy wasn't home, which gave me one less person to make me feel guilty enough to rip my own intestines out. I could deal with all of this after I got some sleep, that was all, I told myself. I was having a hard time because of my insomnia, not because I was having some sort of emotional crises. I tried to tell myself that, even if Heero's parents did get mad at me, I wouldn't even see them until tomorrow. Maybe they would cool off by then.

'Or maybe they'll be so angry that they won't let me stay after work. Maybe they'll find some way to lock me out, even though I have the key,' I thought and immediately felt like slapping myself.

That wouldn't happen. They wouldn't do that to me... would they? My paranoia and pessimism were in full force, but I busied myself to seeing whatever Pepper needed, refilling her water and food dishes and spending a couple minutes to play with her, not having much time before work. I dressed into my uniform and rushed downstairs, finding a snack of carrot cake waiting for me and I ate a slice with Heero. Just as I was finishing, Justin strode in with a tube of antibacterial ointment that he tossed at Heero.

"Put that on those scratches," he said, pulling an ice pack from the freezer to hand him as well, "They don't look too bad, but better safe than sorry."

"You don't need to miss work because of me," Heero grumbled even as he did as he was told, "I can take care of a few bruises."

"Thanks, boss," Justin quipped dryly, "but I'm not sticking around here because of you. Duo, I can drive you to work if you like," he offered me, "I know it's just a short bus ride, but I don't mind."

I blushed a little at his concern. He obviously knew that something was up, not that it was all that hard to figure out. I thought about acquiescing to his offer, but I felt too guilty about troubling him after he had left work just to pick him up. Also, I really didn't want him to see where I worked. He already seemed to take offense to me overworking myself, I didn't want him to know that I was working a job that someone my age wasn't qualified to do in case he caused problems for my boss.

"That's alright," I assured him, "I can just take the bus."

"At least let me walk you to the bus station," he said stubbornly, reminding me of his son just a little too much.

I glanced at Heero and found him shooting me a worried, pleading look. For once, his concern was understandable. While I sincerely doubted that Zechs and his friends were staking out the bus stops, I couldn't put it past him, either. It seemed like an incredibly stupid risk for me to take, walking to the bus stop all by myself. Zechs was incredibly bold about what he did in front of adults, but I didn't think that even he was stupid enough to try something with Mr. Yuy escorting me.

"Alright," I agreed and both Justin and Heero relaxed.

"You're still going to crash here after work, right?" Heero asked.

"Yeah," I confirmed.

"I'll see you tomorrow morning, then," he smiled warmly at me. It made my heart melt and I had to try very hard not to look like a dork in front of his father.

It felt very weird walking to the bus stop with Mr. Yuy instead of Heero. I felt kind of stupid, like a little kid that needed a chaperone, but I reminded myself of what might be waiting for me and then I didn't feel stupid at all.

"I'm glad you're sleeping here," Justin said after we walked for a few minutes in silence, "You look very tired. Did your parents keep you up last night again?"

I blushed and couldn't decide if he was just making small talk or was fishing for information in his concern. I had gotten a glimpse of myself in the mirror when I had been changing and brushing out my hair, so I wasn't surprised that he had noticed how exhausted that I looked. It hadn't been a pretty sight between the scratches on my face and the worn, pinched looked around my eyes.

"Just a little bit of insomnia," I told him, making sure not to mention that I hadn't really slept in days.

If I admitted to that, he would probably have the same reaction as his son and insist that I see a doctor or try to get me to take a sleeping pill. I suddenly wondered if there would ever come a time in my life when I would be able to be completely honest with people, when I would never need to rely on a lie or an admission of the truth just to get through the damned day. Probably never, the way that my life is going. That made sadness well up in me, which I chalked up to my sleep deprivation. There should be some rule that if your mental capacities are diluted from insomnia, you shouldn't have to deal with a lack of emotional inhibitions on top of everything else.

"Does it have anything to do with Heero asking me to pick the two of you up today?" he asked me softly.

His sudden breaching of the topic threw me for a loop. I felt ridiculous that I was having such a hard time keeping up with the people around me when I was only on day two of no sleep. I used to be able to deal with this with so much more ease. Of course, back then no one had given a shit about me and my social interaction with anyone had been rather limited. It was hard, not just keeping up with people switching conversational tracks with me, but also remembering all the things that I wasn't supposed to say and admit to, which things that I needed to come clean about without someone getting suspicious and which things needed to stay in the dark.

"No, I just couldn't sleep," I said simply.

"Can you tell me what's going on? This isn't the first time that Heero has come home with bruises and I know that the two of you are having a hard time at school, but this is the first time he's ever seen the need to ask me to pick the both of you up, so obviously this is serious," he said, his blue eyes intense, but out of concern more than anything else.

I bit my lip, hard, not know how to respond to that. My heart thumped unpleasantly in my chest at his question. There was no way that I could tell him the truth, either that Heero had come out or that we were dating. He wasn't my father and I didn't have the right to divulge Heero's secrets, even if he was probably going to tell them anyway. I was too scared of what might happen if I did anyway, so I shook my head, staring at the ground as we walked.

"No... but it's all my fault," I murmured, guilt rearing it's ugly head again and ripping it's claws through my heart.

"I'm sure that's not true-" Justin said softly, with confidence that I sure as hell didn't deserve.

"It is," I snapped and bit my lip again, trying to keep my irritability and other emotions under control, "Heero will tell you as much."

Or maybe he wouldn't, I had no clue. Heero didn't seem to think that this was my fault and even if he did, it really wasn't like him to blame me, so he would probably omit that little piece of information, which only made me feel worse instead of better.

"Were you the one that hit him?" Mr. Yuy suddenly asked me.

I looked over at him in absolute horror, not caring one bit that his voice lacked any real accusation or coldness towards me, but he had asked that in his same soft, concerned tone. I knew once again that I was being stupid, that my thoughts were running ahead of me, but I felt this incredible hurt that Heero's father would think that. That he could think that I was even capable of hurting his son horrified me down to the bone before I could realize that he didn't, that that hadn't been the point of his question at all.

"N-no!" I sputtered, "No! I would never hurt him like that, no matter what!"

My chest felt cold and my throat dry as my malicious and sadistic thoughts supplied the terrible image of me punching that handsome and open face in the way that Zechs had undoubtedly done. Just the suggestion of it made me feel ill.

"Then how can you feel that it's your fault?" Justin asked, oblivious to my horror or just ignoring it for the moment, "You weren't the one to do that to him, Duo. You just said it yourself. You would never hurt him, so there's no reason for you to think that it was your fault. No matter what happened, no matter what reason there is for it, you are not responsible for the actions of other people. The ones that hurt him are the ones responsible, do you understand that?"

Relief made my legs feel weak and boneless as common sense finally found me. Of course Justin had never believed that I would do something like that, no more than Heero would have. The only one that constantly worries that I might be capable of it is me. I mulled over his words for a second. I supposed they made sense. Maybe it was because of me that Heero had come out, but he was just as responsible for that as I was, since it had been his decision. And Justin was right. I was the reason for it, but I hadn't forced Zechs to assault him and, really, despite the severity of it, it wasn't any worse than he did to us on a regular basis. So why did I feel this gnawing sensation in my gut, this belief that I had fucked up? Hadn't I already accepted the fact that Heero would have done this without my consent anyway? Hadn't I already realized that what my boyfriend decided to do was beyond my control?

Hell, even if we hadn't gotten together, those rumors of _why_ Heero had befriended me had been flying around. Surely it would have only been a matter of time before Heero had been outed since he didn't seem all that interested in hiding it anymore. So what was wrong with me that I could so easily blame myself when common sense had already told me that this was Heero's decision and not my own?

"I understand," I murmured, "So why do I feel so guilty about it?"

I stopped walking as I felt Mr. Yuy's hand on my back, this light pressure that was somehow comforting. When I looked over at him, he was smiling at me and I truly realized just how stupid I was. He had only ever been a stable and soothing presence to me for so long, how could I ever think that he would be less than that, even when it was Heero that was hurt this time instead of me?

"Because you care a lot about Heero," he said, "You hurt when he's hurt and I think it's in your nature to feel guilty about the bad things that happen to the people that you love, because you always want to make things better, to fix things. But, Duo, you need to understand and accept that you can't make some things better. There isn't a solution to every problem and a lot of things are completely out of your control. I know that's frightening, but sometimes all you can is just keep moving forward and protect _yourself_. Protecting Heero isn't your responsibility and while it's never easy for a parent to admit this, Heero is perfectly capable of taking care of himself. It doesn't do anyone any good for you to blame yourself for him getting beaten up. I might not know the reason why it happened, but I do know it wasn't on your shoulders to prevent. And no matter what happened, no matter what he tells me, I'm not going to hate you for it."

His gaze was so kind, so understanding, like he could see inside of my head and every thought that I was having. I didn't deserve him. Maybe he was right and I was placing blame in the wrong place, but there was still some part of me that felt like I deserved to be blamed, logic or not, for being incapable of protecting the one person that I loved, just like I had been incapable of protecting Quatre all those years ago.

"Even if I made things difficult for him?" I asked, feeling tears pricking at my eyes, but not enough to fall, thankfully, "Even if I ruined his life?"

To my surprise, instead of demanding to know what I did, Justin chuckled.

"I'm fairly certain that you're not capable of that," he said in a lighthearted tone, "Even if Heero is having a hard time now because of the bullying, you've far from ruined his life. If anything, being friends with you has made him happier than I've seen him in a very long time, even before Wufei was killed. Heero... the only one that is being hard on you for the changes he's been going through lately is yourself, Duo. Heero isn't bothered by any of it. If anything, I think he's relieved."

"Relieved?" I asked incredulously.

"Yes," Justin confirmed, "When he was socially accepted, he was far from happy. Dating that girl and pretending to be someone that he is far from actually being did nothing for him but make him miserable. If having to deal with some... closed minded peers is the price that he has to pay to feel comfortable in his own skin again, he's willing to pay it. I won't say that things have been easy for him, or for you for that matter, but if you were to ask him if he would like to go back to the way things were, or continue on the path he's on now, I'm confident that he would tell you exactly what I have, that he's content and he would rather stay friends with you and deal with a few bullies than go back to how they were before he met you. So there is no reason to feel guilty about anything. It might not seem like it now, but things will work out. Just trust his decisions and stop carrying the weight of the entire world on your shoulders."

I opened my mouth to protest that, that he couldn't possibly know what Heero is thinking and feeling and that he didn't know what happened, but he stubbornly pushed at my back and steered me forward until we were walking again. I wasn't able to get another word in until we had arrived at the bus stop, which was thankfully empty. I hadn't caught a single glimpse of anyone from my school during our trek there, although that certainly didn't mean that we hadn't been watched and some ambush called off.

"Well, here we are," Justin announced and shoved a five dollar bill into my pocket before I could stop him, "I expect you to take the bus back here after work, as well, understood? You really shouldn't be walking all this way in the dark to begin with. Unless you want me to pick you up?"

"No, sir, I'll take the bus," I promised, "It should be fine."

"I'm not stupid, you know," he told me, "You and Heero might not say it, but I know that someone threatened you."

He held his hand up as I tried to defend us, to explain why we wouldn't say who and I fell silent, letting him finish.

"I know you won't tell me who it is and I know that, even though I have every intention on having a long talk with Heero about it, neither of you are going to tell me, so I'm not going to harass you about it. But I don't want either of you to be in danger, so even if you won't name this person to try to protect yourselves, I want you to call me if you need anything, even if you just need me to pick you up from work. Can you do at least that much and put my nerves at ease?" he asked me, a tiny bit of desperation in his voice.

"Yes, sir," I nodded, smiling a bit sheepishly.

The bus pulled up then and he patted me lightly on the shoulder.

"Don't work yourself too hard, ok? You look like you might keel over," he said in this tone that made it hard for me to tell if he was joking or not, "and take care of yourself, stay safe. I'll keep the door unlocked for you."

"Thank you, Mr. Yuy," I waved to him as I boarded the bus, feeling strangely pleased and wondering if this was what it was like, to have a parent that cared for you.

I just had to keep reminding myself that, as much as he cared for me and as much as he tried to take care of me, Justin Yuy was _not_ my father.

I managed to pull my head out of my ass enough to get through work, but only barely. There comes a time during every bout of sleep deprivation when every flat surface you see seems to mock you. Every desk, every box, every bench, every bit of flooring was calling my name, making me feel infinitely more tired than I actually was. The fact that I knew that even answering that siren call wasn't going to do shit to help me was torturous.

My shift at Leneski's wasn't so bad. We were expecting to get another snow fall the next day, so our boss didn't want us starting any projects in case it ended up being worse than the forecast was telling us. Our crew was split up on different jobs around the shop, doing paperwork and other office tasks, cleaning equipment, and doing a few repairs here and there. Solo, myself, and a couple other guys were tasked with doing inventory and the two of us were sent out to various stores to restock materials that we were nearly out of or needed to be replaced, so that wasn't so bad. Keeping busy helped me a lot to stay focused and alert.

Solo didn't even remark on my obvious tiredness until I picked out the wrong shade of paint. Twice. According to him, I looked like 'real shit' and he jokingly scolded that I shouldn't stay out all night partying. I flipped him off, which just made him laugh and needle me some more. Then he bought me one of those gross and far too sugary energy drinks, but it got me through the rest of my day. By the time that I had finished the damn thing and walked to the factory with Solo, my heart was doing something unpleasant and my head was killing me, but at least I didn't feel like slamming my head into the wall until I could black out anymore.

My factory shift, despite the caffeine coursing through my bloodstream, was more difficult because of the monotonous and repetitive work unloading freight. On top of that, I was extending way too much energy moving shit around. As anyone who drinks a lot of that crap can attest to, energy drink does not equal wakefulness. I could still feel that I needed sleep and my mind was in some kind of distant fog as I worked, it just helped to take the edge off. It did not help me that much in staying focused.

I did ok for the first few hours of my shift, but then I started making some stupid ass mistakes. Like not paying attention to what I was doing and lifting a box that was far too heavy for me the wrong way. Something like that on a job like that can easily spell disaster, so it's a good thing that the worst I got for my stupidity was pulled muscles in my right shoulder and arm. Painful, but it happens to me every so often, though usually from continuous strain and not from negligence.

Then I accidentally switched some paperwork for two shipments and Lorathe blew up at me over it. While it had been a really stupid mistake and a waste of time, it definitely wasn't something to scream at me over, especially not for a solid seven minutes. Solo was the very last person to make waves, given how much he needed that job and how difficult it was for an ex-con to find work anywhere, but even he felt the need to step in and tell our boss that he was being an ass, although not in those exact words.

Never was I so fucking happy when it got to be one-thirty and I could go the fuck home. I didn't even correct myself that 'home' was not the Yuy house, I just thought, thank god, time to go home. I dragged my sore, miserable, and drained ass onto the bus stop a few blocks from the factory and was so out of it by that point that I nearly missed the stop near Birch Street. Heero's bear of a dog was there to great me as I went inside of the house and I gave him a couple of minutes worth of attention before trudging up the steps to the guest room.

I debated taking a shower before heading off to bed and decided to put it off until right before school. What I needed was sleep, not cleanliness, and I only had five hours, at the very most, before I needed to get up for school. If I could manage half of that, I would be content. Pepper was fast asleep when I went into the bedroom to change into my pajamas, curled up on her usual pillow. I envied her. I slid into bed, pulled the covers up around me, and closed my eyes the second that my head hit the pillow. It felt so good, just to be lying down and have my eyes closed. I just hoped that my bout with insomnia was over now that I was in a quiet and soothing place instead of my bedroom.

Ten minutes passed. With a small grunt of irritation, I rolled onto my right side, trying to get comfortable, but the injury to my right side flared up and the unpleasant, throbbing ache had me rolling onto my opposite side. Another ten minutes passed me by and I pressed my face into Pepper's fur, feeling how silky it was and her familiar smell was something of a comfort. I stretched out my legs, fussed with the covers and the pillow, all while stubbornly keeping my eyes closed. Twenty minutes became thirty, then forty, then an hour. I tried every position imaginable, turning from side to side, curling one arm under the pillow, then over the covers, stretching one leg out until it was dangling over the edge of the bed, on my stomach on my back...

I opened my eyes as I settled for laying on my back and looked up at the ceiling. I felt as awake as I had all day, my head pounding heavily in time with my shoulder and arm.

"You have got to be fucking kidding me," I hissed under my breath in pure frustration.

I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream. I wanted to throw a temper tantrum the likes of which no toddler could possibly compete with, all over the unfairness of everything, of my body's betrayal to not let me get some goddamned rest. My eyes burned with tiredness and I had this unpleasant feeling in my gut that I always get when my insomnia gets this bad. But there was nothing for it. Even though my mind was blank of anxious thoughts for once, which is a rarity, and even though I was so exhausted that I could have slept on a freaking pile of gravel, it eluded me.

I angrily threw the covers off of me and got to my feet. Years of dealing with this problem had taught me that trying to force sleep to come was going to do me no good at all and was only going to prolong my insomnia, so I grabbed a book from my book bag and stalked downstairs. I gave up on even the mere idea that I was going to get any sleep, not willing to get my hopes up and set out to just make myself busy until I needed to get ready for school, all while trying not to wake up anyone.

Kanuck bounded over to me when he saw me come down the stairs. I took a moment to pet him, happy that I didn't have to be alone, even if my only company was the dog. He followed me as I walked into the living room, turned one of the small lamps on, and sat down on the couch to read. I knew that even reading was going to be a lost cause. It was too difficult to concentrate at that stage and the words were blurry when I looked at them. I found myself reading the same sentences over and over again, my mind not comprehending what the words meant.

Experience told me that school was not going to be fun that week and I wasn't going to retain anything. Usually that would be a disaster and one of the reasons for my shitty grades in the past, but I could use Heero's notes for my homework if I needed them. I was just glad that I had gotten all of my homework out of the way during my breaks, because I sure as hell wasn't capable of it at four in the morning, going on a steady forty-eight hours plus with no more than an hour's worth of sleep.

I wondered how long it would be before I started to see shit, another thing that I've experienced a lot before during these bouts. That's another thing that they don't tell you about real sleep deprivation, that it isn't feeling tired and being distracted and addled brained that you need to worry about. It's the microsleeps and the hallucinations that really start to fuck with you. I don't mean holding conversations with people that only live in my head or dozing off in the middle of class. I just see things that aren't there, like shadows or objects, or I mistake one thing for something completely different. Nothing serious, just weird, and I barely notice it at the time.

It's the same thing with the microsleeps. Now, you would think that if your brain is shutting itself off for seconds to minutes at a time to compensate for not sleeping for days, it would have the common courtesy to just let you sleep like normal, but of course not. It isn't even like I black out in class, it feels more like my mind has wandered off some place. I don't even notice it when it happens and I'm sure that it happened in school all week without me realizing it. It probably just looked like I was staring off into space or had closed my eyes for a minute. I doubt even Heero would have noticed that anything was wrong.

Maybe I should have taken up Heero's offer for a sleeping pill, I wondered as I stared at the page that I had been 'reading', not even seeing the words anymore. It couldn't be any worse than this was, my mind scattered, all of my senses dulled, and feeling like I was traversing some alien landscape that was low on oxygen, could it? But even while dealing with insomnia, I couldn't do that, start taking drugs. Besides, I had done a hell of a lot worse than two days with no sleep before. I had survived it then and I would survive it now.

I put my book down on the table, giving up on it entirely, and went into the kitchen, Heero's dog following me eagerly again. I seriously debated brewing myself a cup of coffee. If I was going to be wide awake, I might as well get some caffeine in me, right? But I felt like that wasn't a good idea and that if I was going to opt for one addictive drug over the other, I might as well wait to drink some until school started, when I would actually need it. Instead, I brewed some of Mrs. Yuy's tea. Blue valerian (1). I found it way in the back of the cabinet that the rest of her tea is in and it looked like she didn't drink it much, so I didn't feel guilty about brewing a cup.

The tea had a very nice, earthly smell to it that I liked, but when I took a sip of it while it was still piping hot, I made a face. The stuff was incredibly bitter, almost undrinkable, but some honey quickly fixed that little problem. I sat at the kitchen table, taking a few more sips of the beverage, and staring off into space, my mind wandering to nowhere, the aching in my stomach and head making me want to try to lay down again. I could only tolerate that for a few more minutes before I migrated back into the living room. I turned on the television, putting it on mute, and tried to find something that I could watch with no sound, perhaps something with a lot of bright colors or explosions or anything really that would take my mind off of how miserable and irritable I was. But of course all I found at that hour of the morning were a lot of stupid infomercials.

I watched one for what was being called a 'miracle cleaning product' because it was better than a talk show or the infomercial about men's hair growth products, and drank the tea. Oddly enough, the drink _was_ helping. Not so much with my insomnia, but I quickly found myself settling down, the tea calming me of my nervous energy and frustration. My stomachache and headache began to fade until the worst of my pains came from my muscle injury and the burning of my tired eyes as they tracked the flashing images on the screen. They might as well have been flashes of lighting or an obnoxious camera for all of the attention that I was paying to them.

"Duo? What are you doing?" I heard Heero's sleepy voice come from behind me.

I blinked, confused about what was going on. For a surreal moment, I thought that I had fallen asleep and was dreaming. I was so positively sure of it because my taxed brain could not comprehend why I was hearing my boyfriend's voice, and why Kanuck was suddenly gone when he had been sitting over my feet a second ago. Only I'm pretty sure that you can't feel tired in a dream. I turned to the origin of the voice and completely expected to find nothing, that it really was a dream or maybe one of those hallucinations and was surprised to actually see Heero there, standing behind me. He was squinting at me, still more asleep than awake, and his hair was a complete, adorable mess. Even through my exhaustion, I felt an attraction towards him.

I glanced at the clock on the wall and saw with shock that it was a good twenty minutes since I had last registered the time. I had been staring off into nothing for twenty minutes and I hadn't even realized it. I was further gone than I had thought.

"Can't sleep," I muttered.

"Still?" he asked in shock, looking a bit more awake with that confession, "Did you manage any at all?"

I shook my head, which turned out to be a mistake because the motion made me dizzy.

"Oh, Duo," he said sadly.

At the time, it didn't really register that he was sad because he was worried about me. I was in that weird point of sleep deprivation where most things, ordinary things, especially dealing with other people, was just confusing and difficult, my brain trying to catch up to things that usually come completely second nature. All I could think was that Heero was upset and I needed to make it better, but I had no clue how. That he was sad because I couldn't sleep was obvious to me, but I couldn't link the cause with the effect, I couldn't realize that fixing the one would fix the other. That's where my head was at, in that confusing, lethargic place where things make sense and don't at the same time. So when Heero reached out his hand, I took it, not because I'd usually go along with anything he wanted, it was just a reaction. I let him pull me to my feet. If I had had all of my faculties in order, I would have felt like he was treating me like a child, but that was probably how he should have been treating me, it made things easier for me whether he knew it or not.

"Come on," he urged, "You still have two hours left, you need to try to get some sleep."

He tugged on my hand and I followed him up the steps. Again, what he was saying would usually have made me protest. I knew that I wasn't going to be able to sleep, I had already tried that. But Heero could have been leading me to an active volcano and I would have happily followed him right up until he shoved me into a pool of lava I was so far gone. On some level, I had assumed that he was just going to take me back to the guest room, so when we ended up in _his_ bedroom, I finally came back to myself enough to balk.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"I think a change of scenery might help," he suggested, "so I want you to try laying down with me for a bit. You slept fine the other times and it can't hurt, can it?"

I tried to find some ulterior motive in what he was saying. It was the sort of thing that Trowa would have suggested, and it would have led to something that he would have wanted and I hadn't, but I just wasn't mentally capable anymore of reasoning that one out. I just came up with a great, big, blank space in my head. Of course what Heero was saying made sense. We had only slept in the same bed a couple of times, but I felt at ease with him now that it wasn't a big deal and he was right, it couldn't hurt. But I suddenly felt very fearful of laying down with him. I didn't have any of my usual inhibitions and self-control. What if I did something stupid? What if he tried something? I was sure that he wouldn't, but what if he did? I could barely hold a conversation, I didn't have the ability to deal with something like that.

"I don't think that would be a good idea," I said out loud without having actually realized that I was speaking.

"Why?" Heero asked.

The words dried up in my mouth. I couldn't possibly tell him why I thought that. How could I tell him that he scares the hell out of me, all of the things that he makes me feel, all of the things that I both want and don't want from him, that I'm terrified that if he pushes, I'll give because of those emotions? He holds my heart in his hands and I'll do anything for him, no matter how much I don't want to. That's a toxic combination. I had caved for Trowa. I had done things that I'm not proud of and, quite frankly, am disgusted at myself for, all because I hadn't wanted to be alone. What would I do for Heero because I loved him? He wouldn't even know that he was hurting me, either, I'd never let him know.

On a normal day, it surely wouldn't be a big deal. We were best friends on top of everything and us sharing a bed wasn't a problem. But I was too tired, too weak, too vulnerable to deal with it that morning. I just had this sensation that it was a bad idea, that I was going to do something wrong without realizing it, or say something. Something that I should never say. What if I let my father's abuse slip, or why Trowa and I had really broken up?

"I promise that I won't try anything," my boyfriend vowed in a soft, serious tone.

For a terrifying moment, I was so sure that I had said all of that out loud and I went pale before realizing that if I had, Heero would have had a much more extreme reaction. He had just guessed the reason why I was leery to share a bed with him. After all, we hadn't done that since we had started dating. Shame filled me as a bit more of my usual self came filtering back. What the hell was I thinking? Heero wouldn't take advantage of me because we were in the same bed, he wasn't like that! He isn't like Trowa. How many times do I have to tell myself that before I finally accept it? Heero isn't Trowa. He was just trying to help me, not cop a feel.

"I-I'm sorry!" I blurted out a bit too loudly, "I didn't mean... I don't really think that you would do something like that..."

To my relief, he smiled at me, not offended at all.

"I know you didn't, I just don't want you to feel nervous for any reason. Just because we're dating, it doesn't mean that I think that I have the right to do that without asking you first," he reached out and touched my cheek, cupping his hand against my skin and I closed my eyes, leaning into it, unable to stop myself at how good that mere touch felt, "You aren't ready for that," I opened my eyes and the love and understanding that were in his own made me feel dizzy again, but this time, it had nothing to do with my tiredness, "and I'm not ready for it, either. That's a fourth date kind of thing," he joked, but even in the state that I was in, I knew that he really wasn't joking.

I don't really know the rules of dating, less so between two guys, but I suppose it was normal to hold off on more... intimate things until later in the relationship. We had only been on one date, after all, but I was so used to all of my ex's attempts, both honest and manipulative, to engage in those kinds of activities, whether it had been mere groping or trying to get me to have sex with him, that it felt so weird having this mutual agreement between us. I was too used to being pressured and feeling inadequate for pulling away that it was so strange knowing that Heero had no desire to push me and didn't even care about talking about the subject.

He understood without any frustration, any loathing, any accusations and was taking his time. I could never tell him what that meant to me, how all of the things he does, intentional or otherwise, has given me something that I've never had with anyone, that with him and him alone, I can feel safe. I can trust him.

"I'm not going to be able to sleep," I complained, my last ditch effort and a pretty weak one at that, "I'm just going to toss and turn and keep you awake. You might as well get some more sleep for all the good that it's going to do me."

"Maybe," he smiled affectionately at me and dropped his hand away from my face to touch my wrist again, "but you can at least try. Even if either of us can't sleep, it would be nice just being with you. If you're not going to sleep, I can at least keep you company, can't I?"

I flushed and I knew that he had me from the second that he said that it would be nice being with me. Being that close to him, even if I couldn't sleep, just having him there... yes, it would be a lot nicer than just sitting downstairs, staring at a television screen in the dark by myself with only the dog for company.

"A...alright," I agreed, still feeling some trepidation, but I realized that most of it was from my exhaustion and not based on anything real.

Heero laid down on the side that he would always take when we shared a bed together, leaving me the side closest to the door. I wondered if he did that on purpose, to not make me feel trapped or if he just liked that side for some reason. He lifted the covers for me and for a second, but only a second, I considered backing out. I might have if that bed and the notion of laying down next to him hadn't felt so damned inviting. I laid down next to him as Kanuck took his usual spot on the floor next to the bed, looking up at us in that forlorn way that only dogs can manage.

I curled up on my side, facing away from my boyfriend as he pulled the covers up around us, my face feeling red hot for some stupid reason. I could feel his body heat at my back, this comforting presence, but it wasn't like he was touching me. Just as I thought that, I felt him move a bit closer to me.

"Do you mind if I touch you?" I heard him ask.

My heart froze in my chest and all of those fears that I had felt before that I had found ridiculous reared their ugly heads. My body stiffened and if I hadn't been in such shock, I might have rolled right back out of the bed. My anxiety must have shown on my face, because when I looked back at him, Heero looked a bit horrified at his own words.

"No, I don't mean like that!" he protested, "I just mean... can I put my arm around you? Nothing more than that."

Relief flooded me. Compared to what I had stupidly thought he had been asking me, just holding me didn't seem so bad. I could deal with that, couldn't I? It was just a normal couples thing, right?

"Ok," I nodded shyly.

He moved in closer, his chest almost pressed against my back, and threw his right arm over my waist, but nothing more than that. I could feel his breath slightly tickling my neck, something that would have thrown me into a full blown panic if it had been anyone else, but I didn't feel threatened by either the slight weight on me or that warm breath.

"This... feels nice," I murmured.

And it did. This was something that I had never done with Trowa. We had made out, held hands, and laid down together, but never with this much intimacy, this... closeness. Feeling him so close to me, holding me and snuggling against me in a way that only a couple would felt incredibly good. It was comforting, which was strange in itself. Something like this should have reminded me of my father, should have made me feel terrified, but I felt soothed instead. Heero made a sleepy noise of consent and contentment, which only made it seem all the more natural.

I closed my eyes, hoping that he had been right and being with him, or just being on a different yet familiar bed, would help me to sleep. My body felt heavy, my head buzzing like I was coming down from a caffeine high, but to my incredible frustration, sleep still eluded me. Still, Heero had been right about one thing: it was a hell of a lot nicer snuggling with him than wandering around the house. Even if laying there felt like a mockery, it was pleasant.

About ten minutes later, my boyfriend began snoring softly. Far from annoyed or jealous, I couldn't help smiling affectionately at how easy it was for him to fall back asleep. I opened my eyes and turned very carefully in his embrace so I wouldn't wake him, wanting to look at him. Sure enough, Heero was dead to the world, his messy bangs over his eyes and his face relaxed in sleep. I reached out and, very lightly, ran my fingers over his tanned cheek, mindful of his bruises. He was so handsome and beautiful, even in sleep. No, especially in sleep. I was blind to his injuries. They did nothing to detract from his beauty. Just watching him made me feel relaxed and calm, like I might be able to follow him if I would just close my eyes again.

Suddenly, I needed to be closer to him. I wanted to fall into the warmth of his body and let his snores reverberate right through me, the same way that Pepper's purring always does. I moved as close to him as I dared and pressed my face against his shoulder, letting my head rest there. He smelled as good as he always did and the softness of skin and the cotton of his pajama top was as good as any pillow. In his sleep, his arm twitched and closed around me, not tightly, but it wasn't like I wanted to get away.

I can honestly say that I have never felt so comfortable in my entire life than I did that morning laying against him. I could hear his heart beat and for a long while, it was all that I could focus on, that steady rhythm. I wasn't even aware of when my eyes closed again or when thirty minutes later, sleep, that cruel, but infuriatingly necessary whore, finally took me as I was lulled by that beat and the sound of Heero's deep breathing.

End Part 12

(1) Valerian teas are very strong, herbal teas that can be used to relax anxiety and treat insomnia. It's bitter, so Heero's mother only uses it when she's had a stressful day and doesn't drink it for flavor, which is why it was way in the back of the cabinet

Author's Note: Since I will be moving next week, there probably won't be any updates for awhile. I need to start going through all my stuff and packing. On top of that, my computer won't get back to me for twelve days. I'll still be writing, but by hand, so there won't be any updates until late March, sorry .


	57. Chapter 8 Part 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duo still struggles with his insomnia. Zechs crosses a huge line that will change Heero and Duo's lives forever. Worried that their relationship is a mistake and he doesn't deserve Heero, Duo finally comes clean about that anger and violence that he feels.

A Stagnation of Love

Chapter 8

Part 13

 

 

          I can’t recall ever sleeping that deeply in such a short span of time in my life. I didn’t dream or toss and turn or have any real concept that I had fallen asleep until someone shook me awake two hours later. It was more like I had fainted than I had fallen asleep. I don’t know if my brain had finally fried after not having any real sleep for so long or if it was just sharing the bed with Heero, but I have a very strong feeling that it was the latter. I didn’t wake up frustrated or in any kind of pain like I had the last couple of days, either. I hadn’t slept more than those two hours, but I felt oddly rested and comfortable, almost peaceful even as I was being rudely roused from the black nothingness of sleep.

          “Duo, come on, it’s time to get up,” I heard Heero’s very familiar voice through the fog of sleep, but for some reason, even his words couldn’t reach me.

          I usually have absolutely no trouble at all getting up when I need to. Most of the time, I don’t even need to set an alarm, my brain just seems to know when I need to get up. While I’m perfectly capable of feeling tired, I don’t need things like caffeine to get going in the morning, only to give me a bit more energy. But that morning, it was like I was stuck in sleep mode and couldn’t get out of it. No, it was more like I felt no sense of urgency to wake whatsoever. I opened my eyes a little, saw Heero there, kneeling by my side of the bed, his hand on my shoulder, and I only registered his presence as a comforting one and not that he was trying to wake me. I closed my eyes and probably would have fallen right back to sleep if my boyfriend weren’t so persistent.

          “I’m sorry, Duo, but we’re going to be late if you don’t get up,” he actually did sound remorseful as he shook my shoulder gently again.

          A bit of the sleepy fog around my brain dissipated. Late? Late for what? It was difficult to come up with the answer. While I certainly felt better than I had before Heero had gotten me to lie down with him, two hours really isn’t enough when you haven’t slept for two days. I was still sleep deprived and my brain was still having a hard time catching up with the rest of the world, but I didn’t feel like ramming my head into a wall until I blacked out anymore at least.

          I thought frantically even as I fought to keep my eyes from slipping closed again, sleep calling me like the worst sort of siren. What time was it? Hell, what _day_ was it? How long it took me to come up with the answer to either question should have scared me, but then it dawned on me. School. Heero was talking about school.

          “Wha’s time ‘s it?” I mumbled, my words coming through a mouth that felt like it was stuffed with cotton and I probably looked really stupid lying there covered with his comforter and looking at him with half-lidded eyes, even if I was starting to feel more awake.

          Heero smiled softly at me, his expression full of love and affection for me, and he reached out to brush my bangs away from my face. I blinked at him, feeling my face go warm and my heart started to race in my chest as it dawned on me just how close his face was to mine.

          “Six-thirty,” he told me, “I wanted to let you sleep for longer, but I figured that you would get mad if I let you be late and you probably want to take a shower,” he suddenly frowned, looking concerned, “You were sleeping so deeply… I’ve been trying to get you to wake up for the last ten minutes, but you wouldn’t wake up.”

          I flushed a little darker at that, imagining him shaking me and getting more and more worried when I wouldn’t respond. That was something that he would do, but he’s used to me waking up at the drop of a pin, not sleeping like I’m in a coma, so of course it had bothered him to see me that tired. His hand smoothed over my face, his frown growing more severe, but I couldn’t help closing my eyes, this time enjoying his touch more than falling back to sleep.

          “You don’t look well,” he said worriedly, “If you’re too tired to go to school, I’m sure my father wouldn’t mind calling out for you. You can go back to sleep if you want to.”

          His tone was full of regret, almost guilt, and I knew what he was thinking. He was beating himself up for having woken me up at all. He was thinking that he should have just let me continue sleeping, even if it meant missing school. I would have been pissed, of course, so I knew that he had made the right choice. As tired as I still was, I wouldn’t have thanked him for taking that decision away from me, but he only saw how out of it I was and his protective nature had flared up, demanding that he take care of me. I didn’t know whether to be flattered or annoyed.

          “No,” I mumbled, struggling to get the words to come out of my mouth as they slowly filtered into my head like drops of water coming out of a tap that wouldn’t completely close, and forced my eyes open through sheer force of will to get him to believe that I was ok, “No, ‘m ‘k. Jus’ gimme a minute.”

          I rubbed at my eyes with one balled up fist, hard, but it didn’t do a damned thing to make me feel more alert.

          “Alright,” Heero didn’t look the least bit convinced, but he backed off at least, for which I was grateful, although he might have just been thinking that I was going to fall back to sleep anyway.

          He leaned in and pressed a quick kick to my lips before standing back up. It was a brief, chaste thing, but it woke me up better than any alarm clock, and in a much more pleasing way, too.

          “I’ll start the shower for you,” he said, smiling in that half amused, half endeared way of his.

          “Thanks,” I told him, but when he walked out of the bedroom, it took every bit of what little concentration I had to not just simply close my eyes and drift back off.

          What the hell was wrong with me? I had never had this kind of trouble waking up before. But as I lay there, I couldn’t deny that I didn’t want to leave that cocoon of blankets. I felt blissfully warm, and the sheets smelled like Heero. Why would I want to venture out into the cold world, to go back to school where I was going to get my ass beaten at the very least, when I could stay in that bed and fall back into a peaceful sleep, something that I couldn’t hope to get even without my insomnia? If only I was that irresponsible.

I quickly sat up in bed to keep me from falling back asleep and immediately regretted it. I had completely forgotten about my injury from the day before and it screamed to life at my hasty movement, forcing a groan out of me as I felt how stiff I was. Everything from my hips to my back to my shoulders and even the back of my neck ached like hell. I could even feel my muscles shaking a little and the pain was enough to make my head ache as well. I was used to that kind of pain with the jobs that I have, and it wasn’t the first time that I had pulled muscles from labor, it was just shocking because, when I had just woken up, I hadn’t noticed the pain at all.

          I tumbled out of bed with all the quickness and grace of an old man, the muscle aches making movement difficult and my sleep deprivation making me clumsy. I was suddenly very grateful that I didn’t have track practice until Saturday because, on that day, I was completely incapable of any, real, physical activity. I didn’t even know if I was going to make it through gym, not to even mention work that night. I heard the water turn on in the bathroom and forced myself to go into the guest room to grab some clothes for the day.

          Pepper was right at the door when I walked through, meowing at me insistently and I felt like a total asshole as I realized that we had closed the door on her when I had gone to sleep in Heero’s room.

          “Sorry, girl,” I murmured and she looked even further put out when I didn’t try to pick her up like I usually do, not wanting to hurt myself further.

          I grabbed the first clean clothes from the closet that I saw, not looking or even caring what they were and then disappeared into the bathroom. Heero had turned the water to hot and there was a fine steam already gathering, but I still managed to catch a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror and winced. He had said that I didn’t look well, which was rather kind of him. What I looked like was shit that had been run over by a tractor.

          I was deathly pale, making the red scratches on my cheek stand out like a beacon. My eyes were lifeless and blood shot and the lines and shadows under them were so thick, I looked a bit like someone with cancer or maybe a drug addict. I dug around in the drawers for some eye drops, but I doubted that they would make me look much better. Again, I wondered at my wisdom of not taking a sleeping pill, but shook it off. Maybe my insomnia bout was over. I had, after all, slept for two hours straight. Even if it wasn’t, I would be fine. I always am. It wasn’t like I was trying to win any beauty pageants.

          I undid my braid and stepped into the shower. The second the hot water hit my skin, I moaned with pleasure. I let it pelt my sore back, the heat making my muscles feel a bit better already, the sensation helping me wake up a bit more. It was like a switch had been thrown in my head. I still felt sleepy, but I became more aware of the world around me, enough to get a sense of urgency. As soon as my back started to loosen up, I hurried through the rest of the shower, although I took the time to wash my hair as well as I could.

I’ll be the first to admit that I might have a little issue with cleanliness, at least when it comes to my body. You have to understand, I didn’t used to take a shower a day like I’ve been lately. Between the water bill and how shitty our plumbing is, I neither wanted to nor was I allowed to. It’s not like a dirt cloud would follow me whenever I went, but over the years I’ve gotten really self-conscious about being dirty and people calling me smelly or garbage because my clothes didn’t get washed for weeks or my hair was greasy. So being able to not just shower whenever I want at the Yuys’, but being allowed to shower for as long as I want has made me a bit neurotic.

Or maybe it’s because, no matter how much I wash myself, I can still smell it on my skin. Sex. _Him._ I could say that it’s been like that ever since Dorothy could smell it on me, but it’s always been like that. Since the first moment he forced himself on me, the very first time that I tried scrub him off and out of me, I’ve been unable to get rid of that smell. It’s like it’s a part of me now. It follows me wherever I go, it clings to my fucking skin. All I can do to feel a little bit better is to make sure that I’m clean, even when I know that I’m not.

I pushed the unwanted thoughts away from me. I couldn’t think about my father, not when I was so tired and raw. So my mind wandered to Heero instead, as it so often does, like from the negative side of a battery to the positive. I thought about sharing a bed with him, how wonderful it had felt even though I had been too out of it to really appreciate it. It had been warm and nice and peaceful. I vaguely remembered falling asleep to the beat of his heart and felt myself blush, right there in the shower, remember his arm wrapped around me. Would he want to do that again? Even though I was still a little bit scared of that kind of closeness with him, I would probably die from happiness if he did. I had never known that something so simple could feel so good, just being with someone like that. I guess that’s what mushy, romantic types call ‘cuddling’. I could get used to that if it was anything like what it had been like that morning.

The thick aroma of eggs and bacon welcomed me when I finished dressing for the day and left the bathroom. Although I had thought that I had no appetite at all, my stomach roared at me, reminding me that it existed. I couldn’t remember if I had had anything to eat after lunch the previous day, although that could just be because trying to remember anything at that point was hard. One step at a time had become my world. As I walked down the steps, I saw that it was snowing through one of the windows in the living room.

          “Great,” I grumbled, only vaguely remembering that snow had been forecasted, but not remembering where or when I had heard that.

          Although I was much more used to the snow than Heero and his family are, it didn’t mean that, by March, it was any more welcome to me. It was partially my irritability, but I was also sick of the cold and the snow and the ice that would no doubt plague us on and off for the rest of the month. I just wanted it to be spring. I wanted it to be warm.

          The whole family was in the kitchen, Heero and Mr. Yuy sitting at the table as Mrs. Yuy finished making what looked like French toast.

          “Good morning, Duo,” she beamed at me with her usual, sunny demeanor.

          “Morning,” I greeted tiredly.

          She frowned at me when she got a good look at me.

          “Oh, Duo, you look awful,” she fussed, placing a hand on my forehead in that way that mothers do to check for fevers, “Do you feel ill?”

          “I’m fine,” I tried to assure her, even though I was well aware of what I looked like, “I’m just tired.”

          “Didn’t you get any sleep last night?” Justin asked me, his look of concern a mirror to his wife’s.

          “He only got two hours,” Heero answered for me.

          I could have smacked him for that when both of his parents looked even more alarmed, feeling like he had just ratted me out.

          “Oh, dear,” his mother exclaimed, “Justin told me that you’ve been having a hard time sleeping lately, but I didn’t think it was that bad. We can take you to a doctor if you need, sweetheart, it wouldn’t be any trouble.”

          Why the hell did everyone want me to see a goddamned doctor, I wanted to scream. It was just a little bout of insomnia, not a gaping chest wound! I didn’t have the ability to deal with anyone’s concerns over me. I felt like I had been assuring people that I was fine for weeks, everything just looping together like a CD put on repeat and the right thing to say to Heero’s mother just escaped me. The very last person that I would have expected to pull my ass out of the fire was the same damned person that had put me in it in the first place.

          “It took him awhile, but he _did_ get some sleep,” my boyfriend informed his parents, “You know how late he works. I’m sure he’ll get plenty of sleep if he goes to bed at a decent hour tonight. And he’s going to be staying here, so he won’t have anything to keep him awake.”

          On any normal day, I would have felt annoyed at him for speaking for me and making all my decisions for me like that, but honestly? I obviously didn’t have the mental capacity for such things at that point and him taking control was exactly what I needed. I couldn’t trust my own judgement and at the rate that I was going, Heero knew what he was doing infinitely more than I did. I was just amazed that he didn’t gloat to me that he had been right that morning, that he _could_ get me to sleep. I was too busy being shocked over his admission that I was staying over that night to get worked up over his gall anyway.

          I almost protested it right then and there, nearly said that I hadn’t agreed to that, and how could I possibly go to sleep at ‘a decent hour’ when I had work, but hesitated, unsure of even those thoughts, or maybe it was just that my entire world was so lagged, so sluggish that just talking was taking an extra few seconds to wrap my head around. Whatever the reason, I was glad for it because if I had said those things, I would have looked like a flaming idiot and I’m sure that both of Heero’s parents, maybe even Heero himself, would have insisted on taking me to a doctor anyway.

          I kind of stared at Heero for a moment, not understanding what was going on, when it suddenly came to me, a rare moment of insight when all other thought had seemed to abandon me for some other, distant shore. Today was Tuesday. I didn’t have work that day. And I _had_ agreed with Heero that I would stay over the previous day. That alone scared me a little bit, that I had so easily forgotten it that quickly. I felt this intense relief that I didn’t have to worry about work, that I could rest my back, and my head, that day. And hell, Heero was probably right. I had slept pretty damned well in bed with him, I could probably manage to finally get some decent sleep if I went to bed as soon as my homework was finished.

I could have cried with relief at that thought alone, let alone knowing that I would be spending the day and night with the Yuys. Heck, that had probably saved me from my father. Not that I would have been guaranteed a beating if I had gone home that night, but I didn’t want to think about what would have happened if he had tried to start something with me in the state that I was in, with my limited ability to control myself. Or even what being touched by him would have done to me. I had the irrational fear that if I had to endure… _that_ again before I got a full night’s sleep, it would trigger my insomnia again, like he could erase what good Heero had just done for me.

“Y-yeah,” I stammered, forcing myself to speak because my just standing there, silent, as Mr. and Mrs. Yuy regarded me had to look weird and troubling to them, “If that’s ok?”

“Of course it is,” Mariela scoffed, “I’m glad you’re coming over. I’ll make something nice for dinner, alright?”

Despite everything, my tiredness, my remaining anxiety and guilt from what had happened the previous day that I just couldn’t seem to shake, my errant and completely unwanted thoughts about my father, I smiled at her. That was Heero’s mother in a complete nutshell. No matter what terrible and nightmarish thing was happening, she thought that as long as everyone had a filling, home cooked meal, everything would turn out alright. And the thing was, it usually _did_ make me feel better. Even if I had no appetite, just having something that she had made for me, and sharing it with Heero and his family, seemed to lessen all the bad shit somehow.

“Thank you,” I said sincerely.

We sat down to eat breakfast together and even though I still really didn’t feel like eating, I let Mariela ply me with double helpings of toast, bacon, and orange juice. I felt like I was sleep walking right through it, but if anyone noticed that my movements were purely mechanical, no one said anything.

It would be a feeling that I would be unable to shake through the entire day, this drowsy, heavy feeling all through my body like I was still sleeping. No matter what I did, I just couldn’t fully wake up. It was like my body was trying to shut down and the only thing that was keeping me from just falling down to the ground and blacking out for several hours was whatever it was in my head that causes my insomnia. I couldn’t focus on anything and even the threat that school brought seemed distant and unimportant somehow. I rushed through the rest of my early morning after breakfast, but it still took me twice as long as it usually did. I kept repacking my backpack and it was only on the third time that I even realized what I was doing. I got halfway down the steps with it before I remembered to brush my teeth and hair. I was unsteady on my feet and constantly bumped into things. During my second trip down the steps, I almost tripped and fell.

As Heero and I walked to school, I felt like I was trudging through some kind of thick molasses. Even walking had become a chore. I was aware that my heart was beating just a little bit too fast for such a leisurely activity and that buzzing in my head was back. What little good that two-hour nap had done me seemed to be fading already.

“Are you going to be ok?” Heero suddenly asked me when we were only half way to the school.

I looked over at him and blinked stupidly, like some sort of dim-witted owl. I hadn’t even been aware that he had been staring at me for who even knew how long. I suppose my… problems were rather apparent to him, and probably everyone else, even if I was too slow to realize that. That I couldn’t hide my tiredness like I can everything else annoyed me in a very irrational way. I looked away from him and down at the ground, which was just starting to get a light, dusty covering of snow. I suddenly felt angry with myself for not being able to keep it together. Heero’s face was still bruised and cut and he was carrying on like nothing at all had happened to him, but I could barely function just from not sleeping for a few days. It made me feel like an ass. And yes, I’m aware of how stupid this makes me sound. I get beaten up all the time and it isn’t a big deal to me, so I was being a bit of a hypocrite, but I couldn’t help feeling that way.

“Who knows?” I muttered irritably and could actually feel Heero tense beside me.

It came to me then that he might feel that my hostility was directed at him for asking such a question and that my response had come out a bit… snappish, but I couldn’t think of a way to tell him that my attitude had nothing to do with him. Even such a little thing had become impossible, so I figured that the best thing to do would be to just shut up and not say anything else. It was the half-assed, almost crazy logic of an insomniac and later that week, when I got my goddamned common sense back, I would hate myself for it.

Any normal person probably would have distanced themselves from me at that point, either out of hurt that I kept snapping at them, or anger, but Heero is far from an ordinary person. He always somehow seems to know when to back off and when it’s ok, or even necessary to push. If he was hurt by my brusqueness, it wasn’t enough for him to stay out of my way or even start a fight about it. Or maybe I was the one feeling overly sensitive. It’s funny how in most other things, my brain was being sluggish, but when it came to my stupid feelings and ridiculous thoughts, it was in hyper drive. I kept thinking that he was annoyed with me for brushing off his concerns. He sure didn’t try to say anything else to me during our walk.

What if he really was mad? My brain ran with that thought and mixed with the guilt that I had felt from yesterday and somehow came up with the thought ‘what if he wants to take it back?’ I don’t mean our entire relationship, I wasn’t that far gone. But what if he wanted to take back what he had said yesterday, that he didn’t care if everyone knew about us? That he liked holding my hand in public? Was he annoyed enough with me to not want that? Of course these thoughts were completely ridiculous, but how they made me feel was very real. I should have been relieved at the possibility. I had spent most of the previous day trying to get him to agree to take it back in a very public way and had been frustrated when he had refused to do so. So why did that possibility make me feel so hurt? Why, all of a sudden, was it something that I desperately hoped he wouldn’t even consider?

Somehow, in the five minutes it took for these thoughts to form to arriving at the school, they stopped being random, crazy thoughts of fear and started to take on a realness that came from absolutely nowhere. It stopped being ‘but what if he does this’ to ‘he’s going to do this.’ The possibility that he was annoyed at me became ‘he’s disgusted with me.’ I have no idea where it all came from. My tiredness mating with my irrational fears and anxieties, I guess. But some part of me became convinced that he was angry and wanted to distance himself from me, all because I felt guilty that I had been short with him and our continued silence. I should not be allowed to think or feel anything when I’m battling insomnia, I act like a goddamned lunatic.

 So my boyfriend shocked me when, instead of going off to his locker by himself as soon as we walked into the school, he leaned in close to me, right in front of a teacher and a small handful of our classmates that were also arriving early, and brushed the snow off of my hair, his blue eyes full of tenderness for me. My heart jolted in my chest like something had just shocked me. He wasn’t mad at all, I realized my stupidity, because my snapping at him had been over nothing. It _was_ nothing, but I had blown it completely out of proportion for absolutely no reason at all.

“I think we should do something today after school,” he suggested, “I know that we have homework and you should try to go to bed on the early side, but I think you need to relax a little. Maybe we could go out to lunch somewhere or something.”

“Out to lunch…” I repeated, still a bit shocked, “Like… to hang out, or…”

“More like a second date,” he said with a soft smile, “Although not as nice as our first one, I was just thinking we could get something light at Charlie’s, maybe a burger, just to unwind for a little while before we go home. Would you like that?”

A second date… I felt so overwhelmed by that, and for once it had nothing to do with my sleep deprivation. That I even had a chance to go on a second date with him seemed so incredibly… so amazing and wonderful. Suddenly, I felt that we were boyfriends even more than I ever had previously. We were _dating_. I don’t know why that came as such a shock, but it just felt so much realer to me, him asking me to go out to lunch with him than it had when he had taken me out to dinner. This casual thing that we had done before, only now it wasn’t casual at all because we were together. It was different, our connection, and it made the things that we did together different. It was like sharing a bed with him. Something that we had done before, but now it was so much more intense, more meaningful because we were boyfriends.

“I… I would,” I told him and felt myself blush a little.

“Great!” he beamed at me and resumed walking, like he hadn’t just pulled the rug out from under my feet again.

I followed him to his locker like a lost puppy.

“Heero…” I said when we stopped in front of the lockers, looking away from him out of shame as I spoke, “I… I’m sorry for snapping at you. I didn’t mean it. I don’t mean to be so irritable and keep being so short with you like that… I just…”

“Hey,” he cooed softly, placing his hand on my shoulder and gaining my gaze again, “It’s alright, Duo. I understand. You’re exhausted, you’re allowed to be a bit irritable. I know your temper is a bit short right now, I don’t take it personally at all.”

He was so amazing, I thought as I looked into those deep eyes full of love for me. I didn’t deserve him, his understanding or his concern. I was an asshole that couldn’t keep my feelings in check, that kept getting into stupid arguments with him and getting annoyed when he was just trying to be nice to me. Why couldn’t he see what an awful person I was like everyone else could? Why didn’t he blame me when I fucked up and hurt his feelings? I felt my eyes start to mist over with tears, overwhelmed by his affection for me and his forgiveness. When I realized that I was beginning to cry, and right in front of Heero, at _school_ for Christ’s sake, I dug the palms of my hands into my eyes in absolute horror. How much lower could I possibly sink?

“Fuck, what the hell is wrong with me,” I growled at myself, hating the feeling of wetness against my cold skin and desperately wishing for my self-control back.

To my continued surprised, instead of being embarrassed by me or feeling awkward to watch me cry over nothing, Heero chuckled and rubbed at my back.

“You’re just tired,” he assured me in that soft, caring tone of his, “Everything will be alright when you get some decent sleep.”

It was more his soothing touch than his assurances that got my tears stopped and I dropped my hands from my face.

“I don’t understand how you can put up with me,” I said mournfully, my throat suddenly feeling very dry.

To my continued amazement, he smiled warmly at me.

“You make it easy,” he joked, but as light hearted as his tone was, his expression was completely serious, absent of any teasing and full of only love, making me flush like the idiot that I was.

 

*****

 

The rest of the day was easier somehow. Don’t get me wrong, we had to deal with the same shit that we had gotten the previous day. Obscene notes, gestures, and comments. People trying to corner us so they could rough us up. Insinuations about what we did together, _why_ we were together. Tacks in chairs, disgusting things put into our bags and hair when we weren’t paying attention. Dirty, hateful looks. Shoving and spitting. But I found it easier to deal with all of that than I had my own feelings that morning. I know that sounds strange, but it’s the truth. I could handle the hate, the ostracizing, it was a lot harder to deal with feeling like I was falling apart emotionally, that I was acting like an ass in front of my boyfriend by not being able to keep things together just because I couldn’t sleep.

Heero got ribbed about his bruises through all of the classes that we had together and, in reality, he got the brunt of the abuse. He was fresh meat, after all, while I had been getting this shit for months, so our classmates were like a dog with a new chew toy. I stayed as close to him as I could, not that there was much that I could do about anything. Just like the day before, I was a nervous wreck when we had to part for our afternoon classes and no amount of assurance that Heero could give me that he would be fine without me made me feel any better.

My mind was on my boyfriend when I left advanced home economics that day, not on myself, which is probably to blame for what happened next. Or maybe it was my tiredness, making me drop my guard as I became incredibly distracted and absent minded. I kept thinking about what Zechs must be doing to Heero when they had metal shop together, what he would do to punish him for avoiding him after school yesterday. I wasn’t thinking about what he was going to do to _me,_ or even that I should be on the lookout as I walked to my literature course. I didn’t even notice when someone started walking right behind me, or even when he was joined by several other people. Something like that would have made my hair stand on end normally, whether it was innocent or not, and this was far from innocent, but I didn't even sense that anything was wrong right up until someone grabbed both of my arms from behind and dragged me into an empty classroom.

I might have been handicapped by my insomnia, but I knew who it was that had grabbed me. I would know that grip, that brutal, unflinching force anywhere, how easily it was for them to toss me around like I was no more than a child, or perhaps a ragdoll caught in the jaws of a rottweiler. There is no one else in my life that reminds me of my father as much as Zechs Darlian does, not even Trowa came close in his worst tempers. As he forced me into the classroom, he shoved me forward with both ease and strength, right into desk. His push was so strong, and I was so stupidly unprepared for it, that I almost fell right over it, only managing to grab it and steady myself through reflex. I cried out, mostly in surprise but not without some pain, as my hip collided with the edge of it and I felt the breath knocked right out of me. There would be a huge, black bruise there the next time I checked, relatively minor compared to what the asshole really wanted to do to me.

A small group of people filtered into the room, all of Zechs's pack of thugs. It was a regular gathering of all of the people at school that I never wanted anything to do with; Relena, Dorothy, Alex, Mueller, Trant, Rachel, a girl that Relena and Dorothy often hung out with that was only slightly less cruel and sadistic than they were, and three other boys that followed in Zechs's shadow: Lewis Thresh, Conroy Williams (Conny to his friends), and Ralph Kurt. Ralph and Conroy were from my side of town, typical, teenaged thugs that smoked too much, had absolutely no parental supervision, and liked to harass any girl that crossed their paths. There were even rumors that they had assaulted a few of them and while I am the last person to judge anyone over a rumor, in their case, I believed every word of it. Lewis was from a high, middle class family like Heero and for awhile, I had thought that he just followed Zechs around because Zechs was a Darlian, but I soon realized that he followed him around not because of his money, but because they had the same tastes in leisurely activities, namely destroying shit and terrorizing anyone they felt was beneath them, which was just about everyone.

They formed a circle around me so I had no hope of escaping, but it was a useless gesture. There were too many of them anyway in that small room for me to push my way through no matter where they were. Mueller was the last one into the classroom. He was holding that damned baseball bat of his. He shared a look with his leader and closed the door behind him. They didn't have the key to lock it, but that really didn't matter. Even if I screamed bloody murder at the top of my lungs, I doubted anyone was going to come to my rescue, and now no one was going to be able to see into the room, either. My stomach dropped to my knees as I saw the ugly intent in every pair of eyes staring at me. I felt like a bunny rabbit surrounded by a pack of hungry wolves, even one baring their saliva soaked fangs at me. I knew that that baseball bat wasn't for show.

"Maxwell, Maxwell, Maxwell," Zechs said snidely, making a tsking sound with his tongue, "We just keep missing each other, don't we? First all day at school yesterday, then on the way home. And I was so looking forward to having some personal time with you and that 'boyfriend' of yours," he spat the word out, not like it was offensive to him while most of the other people in the room looked repulsed, but like it was a terribly funny joke to him, "If I didn't know any better, I'd think that you were avoiding me."

He walked up to me, the circle closing tight around the two of us, and he slammed his fist into my stomach. I gasped for breath, the pain radiating all the way down into my legs, but I managed to stay on my feet somehow. He reached out and brushed his knuckles over my cheek where the scratches Relena had given me were. It was a gesture that I would expect from Heero, a gentle caress against my skin, a mockery to it and I felt disgusted at his mere touch, flinching away from him. Zechs and his cronies laughed at my reaction, or maybe it was the look of complete and total hatred on my face.

"And here I thought that, after the tender care I gave to Yuy's face, you'd want some love marks to mach. I guess you two aren't as close as I thought you were," he teased cruelly.

Maybe on a normal day, I could have kept my composure, just rode it out like I usually do. Maybe my sleep deprivation had loosened my tongue or made me too emotional, or maybe it was just because Zechs was mocking my relationship with Heero. After what Heero had said to me that morning, my memory of the love in those lovely blue eyes, his easy forgiveness and his concern, Zechs attacking us for those same things left me chafed raw, like he had peeled the skin right off of me. No matter the reason, I couldn't handle it. I snapped, and in my rage, I forgot the ancient lesson that Quatre had told me, that Zechs himself had taught me, about who I am and who _he_ is, that there is one thing that I was to never do to Zechs and that was to fight against him. It's amazing how such deeply engrained lessons just get forgotten over something as petty as just having a relationship turned into a foul joke by a mere bully who had probably never had such feelings for anyone in his life.

"Leave Heero out of this," I snarled.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Relena's face twist into one of rage and I have no idea why. She had been as still as a stone up until that point, but when I mentioned Heero, she looked absolutely furious, like she thought that I didn't have the right to even speak his name in her presence. Knowing her, that was probably her exact thought. But I had bigger problems than her at the moment.

"Whatever your problem is," I growled at him, even as sirens were going off in my head, screaming at me to just shut up before I made things worse, all in Quatre's voice, "it's with me, not him. He hasn't done anything to anyone, so just leave him alone."

I didn't say any of the things that I had told Heero to say, that it was all a big mistake, that we weren't actually together, that Heero was just experimenting with me, or even what so many people assumed, that I had infected him. Heero would have been pissed with me if I had, but it wasn't that. I realized something standing there, looking at all of the people who hated and were repulsed by me so much that they didn't just turn a blind eye when I was about to be hurt, maybe even killed if this went too far, they wanted to fucking _watch_ it happen. I realized that Heero was right. I didn't want to hide our relationship, not from these assholes. I suddenly didn't care that I was about to get the shit beaten out of me or any other repercussions to it, I didn't want to lie about something that I was proud of, one of the only good things that has ever happened to me in my life. Everyone should know. I wanted them to know that I was happy. That for all of the times they had pushed me down and made me feel like trash, like I should just kill myself, there was still someone out there that loved me, who was _in_ love with me and nothing that they did could change or stop that, for all of their cruel words and fists and pranks.

So maybe it was just my pride, or rage after eight long years of abuse, but even though I knew the rules, I just couldn't stop myself. My self-preservation had flown the coop. I wanted so badly to lash out at these people, to tell them that they were hateful bigots and my relationship with Heero was no one's business but my own, that they were wasting their time because nothing that they did was going to break us up, that their hate meant nothing at all to me. Compared to what I felt for Heero, what I would do for him, what I would sacrifice for him, they were all so very small and unimportant to me. I looked down on all of them. For the very first time since my first day of school, I saw them for what they were. Children that thought that they were big and arrogant, that they had some sort of power over me, just because they could hurt me. I thought about my father and the control he had over me and almost smirked. My classmates had no idea what real hurt, real power was. Perhaps only Zechs did, but the rest of them were pathetic, like tiny gnats following some bright flame because they wanted a taste of what he could give them.

Zechs sighed in fake exasperation, like a parent that had just caught his child doing something exceptionally foolish and looked over at Mueller, making a small gesture at him. I knew exactly what was going to happen to me and cursed myself for opening my stupid mouth at all, knowing that I wasn't going to be able to run away this time. I had let the damned jackals corner me and cursed myself again for my idiocy. I expected Mueller to hand his leader the bat, like he had before, and prepared for it, but it was Mueller himself who stepped up to me, a cruel, horrible grin on his face and tightened his grip on the bat.

Adrenaline is truly a wonderful thing. I had been dragging through the day, struggling just to get through the simplest of tasks, whether it was answering a question from a teacher, holding a conversation with Heero, or even just writing down a single line of notes, everything had become so difficult and draining to me. But right then, when Mueller raised up that bat and took a swing at me, I was more awake and alert than I had been in days. I felt like my veins were on fire, like I could run a hundred marathons without breaking a sweat. When that bat came sailing at me, I darted without even thinking about it, my body knowing what to do faster than my brain.

The blow had been aimed for my head and probably would have at least given me a concussion if it hadn't knocked me out entirely. I've seen Mueller's swing before and I knew that he could do serious damage to me with that thing, but he had held back, the injury not designed to kill me, but to just hurt and incapacitate me. I probably could have dodged the swing entirely if I hadn't been surrounded, but there was just no where to go, they had made sure of that. The thick, wooden instrument struck me in the arm, _hard._ Not hard enough to break any bones, but hard enough that I screamed in pain from it.

I've been hit with blunt instruments before. My father has hit me with just about anything at hand when he's been angry enough: his belt, the iron, a broom handle, glass bottles, even a frying pan once. But I've never been hit with a baseball bat before and I never want to be hit by one again. It was like nothing I'd ever experienced before, this solid, driving force striking me, creating a heavy, searing pain through my muscles all the way down to the bone. I could actually _feel_ my flesh swelling, could feel my skin breaking, not from any sharp edge, but just the sheer force of the blow. I felt blood soak into my shirt and for a moment, I really did think that he had broken my arm and that it was from a shard of bone sticking through my skin or something.

The pain was immense as I grabbed at my arm, feeling the tackiness of my own blood on my shirt and left me dizzy. I was in so much pain and shock over what had just happened that I didn't even see the second blow, I only felt this excruciating agony when the bat struck me again, this time in the upper thigh of my right leg. Again, the force wasn't enough to break anything, but it really didn't need to be. I cried out again and this time, I fell to my knees, my vision swimming. I grabbed at my leg with my left hand, my right hanging dead and limp at my side, but didn't feel any blood that time. Not that the bleeding mattered.

I felt dazed, like a bird that had just flown into a window. It felt like my entire body was throbbing in pain and my leg was already beginning to swell under my jeans. My right hand and arm were trembling. My fingers were twitching. I had to put my left hand on the ground just to steady myself until my knees could do the job again. I felt something on the ground, something solid, and for a moment, I felt a thrill of relief that I might have found something to defend myself with. But as I closed my hand around it, I realized that it was just a pencil that someone had dropped there. Sharpened, but thin and ultimately useless to me. Even if I could stab someone with it, which was in itself laughable since the person would see that coming a mile away, and it would barely do any damage at all compared to that baseball bat or even a fist, I couldn't stab all of them. Still, I clenched it in my hand and didn't let go of it. Just having something in my hand made me feel, oddly, a little bit better, and I supposed that hurting one of them, Mueller or Zechs, was better than going down without a fight. Hey, I never said that I was neither stupid nor petty, ok?

Zechs, with a very satisfied look on his face to see me in terrible pain, reached out, grabbed me by my bangs and pulled me up so all of my weight was on my knees. I instinctively hid my left hand behind my leg so he couldn't see what I was holding. It was all that I had, so while I was sure that he would just laugh in disdain at my pitiful excuse for a weapon and I seriously doubted that it would amount to anything, I didn't want to risk it being taken away from me. I struggled to raise my right hand, my arm still in such agony that any movement from it seemed impossible, but I somehow managed to lift it and grasp Zechs's wrist, futilely trying to get him to let go of me. My efforts were laughable. Even at full strength, he's a hell of a lot stronger than me. As I was, I only managed my grip for a few seconds before my arm fell down limply again. That I had kept a hold for even that long was miraculous as my arm continued to shake from the trauma of it's injury.

"You just never learn, do you, faggot?" He jeered, giving my head a little shake, "You don't need to worry about the other fudge packer, I'll take care of him, too. Right now, I suggest you just worry about yourself. Another outburst like that, and I'll have my good friend here start breaking things."

"You're crazy," I choked out, unable to stop myself, but it only made the asshole laugh at me.

"No, I believe that _you're_ the crazy one," he sneered, "I mean, what else could you possibly be? Did you really think that you two pansies could go around flashing your disgusting perversions at the rest of us and we would stand for it? There are stiff penalties for that kind of arrogance, Maxwell, or did you forget about that? Yuy at least has an excuse, he doesn't know how things are around here, at least not yet. But he'll learn. I just can't figure out why someone like him would dump a pretty girl like my little sister for a white trash fairy like you. Maybe you could enlighten us on the subject, because quite frankly, we're all a bit confused," he used his grip on my bangs to turn my head from side to side, like he was examining me, "I mean, you're not much to look at are you? I suppose you're a bit pretty enough to pass for a girl, but I don't think that's it."

He suddenly let go of my hair and I fell back, half on my rear and half on my knees, sagging like a broken puppet. My leg convulsed, threatening not to hold my weight, but I ignored it. Zechs, his hand darting out like a snake, curled his hand under my jaw, then squeezed his grip painfully tight and pulled me back onto my knees. I shook my head widely, trying to dislodge him, but it was as fruitless as grabbing his wrist had been. My only reward for my efforts was him squeezing my jaw until I could feel bones rubbing together. I gritted my teeth and bore it out, but there was something absolutely repulsive in his blue eyes that I didn't like. It didn't take me all that long to figure out what that something was. With icy eyes, silver hair, and that glint, he looked a lot like a wolf eying something that it wanted to eat. He looked like my father did some nights right before he crawled into my bed, drunk and full of lust and desire. Realizing that, my stomach plummeted and I nearly threw up at the memory alone, let alone the realization that this wasn't my father's face I was looking at, it was Zechs's, and I was just as helpless to whatever he wanted as my father.

"You know what I think? I think you must be a pretty good cocksucker to seduce a straight-laced mamma's boy like Yuy," Zechs mused, gaining a few chuckles from his loyal followers, "Yeah, I think that must be it. You'd have to be pretty skilled at _something_ to have turned him into a complete faggot overnight."

His fingers traced over my lips and I had to fight incredibly hard to neither bite them or gag. His hands and fingers were as big as my father's, but through some mercy of the universe, that was their only similarity. Unlike my dad, Zechs Darlian has never worked a day in his life. His fingers were smooth instead of rough and instead of smelling like the mill where he worked or oil from working on his car or even alcohol, Zechs's fingers smelled like the pot and cigarettes that he rolls. It was a repulsive smell, like rotten leaves. I thought about Heero for a moment, how nice his hands always smell because of how clean he keeps them. They smell like the soap that's in the upstairs bathroom at his house. Sometimes his hands smell like the baseball he and his father throw around on the weekends, or like his dog if he had been playing with him.

His fingers were smaller than Zechs's were, not smooth after grueling training with that bat of his, but not rough, either. His fingers are longer and stronger than Zechs's because of that training, while most of Zechs's brutish strength is in his muscled arms and broad shoulders. I crushed those thoughts. I couldn't bear to compare them. I couldn't bear to think about Heero just then, his fingers on my skin, his gentle kisses while Zechs had his hands on me, was touching me, violating me. It was too painful and too terrible.

"I suppose I can't blame Yuy for switching sides if that's the reason," Zechs said with this terrible leer, and the thought that he was imagining me going down on my boyfriend and was getting off on that like some kind of voyeur had my stomach rolling with disgust again, "But I'll have to punish him for that. You understand, don't you, Maxwell? It isn't right for a man to horde such a talent for himself, and it certainly isn't fair for you to only use such amazing skills on a pathetic coward like him. You're obliged to share that talent with the rest of us, aren't you? It's only right to spread a bit of that good will around to the entire class, don't you think?"

My heart quickened in my chest at his insinuation. I knew that he was just joking, just trying to rile me up, scare the shit out of me before he really laid into me, but his words were sending chills of horror down my spine. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I wondered when the next class in that room would be, why no one had come in yet. It was well into the next period at that point. Why had no one come looking for all the kids that were clearly missing? Did no one find that strange, or did no one care? Unwittingly, I thought of Heero again. He would be in his English class at that point. Did he have any of my tormentors in that class? Between the sleep deprivation and my fear, I just couldn't remember. If he had enough of them missing, he might get suspicious, but even if he did, what could he do? Even if he suspected that something was up, even if he went to investigate, would he find me? And even if he did, how could he possibly stop them? Him against an entire group, against Zechs?

"I think I want to see those skills first hand," his fingers swept over my lips again with such deliberation that I couldn't help but try to flinch away from him, but his grip held me tightly in place, "I want to see if it's your mouth that swayed Yuy or your tight, little ass."

The fear in me continued to grow as I started to question what he was doing. He couldn't be serious, I was sure. It wasn't that I thought he didn't have it in him to be so horribly cruel. Like I said, I wouldn't put it past his friends to sexually assault some poor girl, and that went triple for Zechs. For a guy like him, he was probably more into hurting someone than actually fucking anyway. But this was different. I was a guy, the resident faggot. Just the thought of me and sex in the same room should have all of these guys gagging in repulsion, not looking on like this was a goddamned spectator sport. So this all had to just be some cruel joke, like when he had dumped that jar of semen on me. Didn't it?

That fear screamed to new heights when Zechs held out the hand that wasn't gripping my jaw and Mueller gave the bat over to him. He weighed it in his hands, a sadistic smirk on his face. There was this glint of... glee in his eyes that was absolutely terrifying and when he pressed the side of the bat against my wounded arm, hard enough to streak its surface with my blood before trailing it up until it was almost resting on my cheek, I wasn't so sure if the small noise I made was out of pain or fear. He was going to bash my face in with that thing, I just knew it. By the time he was done with me, Heero's bruised and swollen face could win beauty pageants by comparison. I glanced down at it, this monstrous object that had already assaulted me twice. It looked so thick and solid, the wood gleaming under the harsh lights of the classroom. It made my blood look cherry red, gaudy and cheerful.

"Open your mouth," Zechs suddenly ordered me.

I stared up at him in shock. I had been expecting him to just take a swing at me, maybe break my nose or knock out a few teeth. I had no idea what he intended to do, but his order frightened me and I shook my head frantically. I didn't care about what he would do to punish me for disobeying him, I decided, and I didn't care about what his intentions were, there was no way in hell I was doing what he wanted. If he was going to beat me, even kill me, then he could just go ahead and do it without my help.

That sadistic expression hardened into one of anger and I felt his grip tighten on me, his nails digging into my skin and his fingers bruising the sides of my mouth he was holding me so tightly. He shoved the head of the bat against my lips and it dawned on me with this wave of horror what it was he was doing, what he wanted _me_ to do. I clenched my jaws closed so hard that my teeth ground together, feeling that hard wood pressing against them and I tried to push back, even as I knew that I couldn't get away from him.

"I said open, you prissy piece of shit!" He snarled at me, but even in his anger, there was something in those cold eyes of his that told me that he was enjoying this. He was enjoying my fear and my attempts to fight him, "If you don't open your fucking mouth, I'm going to break every tooth in your fucking skull, understand?!"

I felt tears gather in my eyes and I hated myself for them. If this had to happen, why the fuck couldn't I maintain a little bit of dignity in it? Why couldn't I be strong like Heero and put up a brave front? Why did I have to be so goddamned scared? Yes, I understood. I understood that Zechs meant every word that he was saying. He was going to break my teeth if I didn't let him do what he wanted. Right then, I wasn't sure what was worse: the tears that I absolutely refused to let fall, the humiliation of what he wanted to do to me, or the pain of shattered teeth. A pain that I was quite familiar with. Some terrible voice in the back of my head asked me if Heero would still love me with no teeth.

I obediently opened my mouth and, without even letting me take a breath first, Zechs shoved the head of the baseball bat past my lips, his hand still tight on my jaw, forcing it open as soon as I relaxed it. I almost did retch then as that hard instrument thrust into me. My throat convulsed and this horrible taste filled me, the taste of wood and my own blood.

"Oh my god, he's actually doing it!" I heard someone say and someone else laughed mockingly.

My face burned with shame and I told myself that it wasn't a big deal, I didn't have a choice. It was this or getting my teeth broken, but that didn't make me feel the least bit better. I felt the head of the bat slide over my tongue and thought 'it's over now, it's done, I survived.' Then Zechs let go of my jaw, curled his hand around the back of my head, and forced the bat down my throat in one, jarring, violent motion. It struck the back of my throat, the furthest that it could go, and if I hadn't had my mouth full, I would have screamed.

I thrashed against Zechs as I suddenly found my air passage blocked and I struggled just to breathe. My jaw was stretched so far open that I could actually feel the strain. The worst though was the panic that immediately filled me as I began to choke. If I threw up, I was going to die, I realized, and it was only that thought that kept me from doing just that. I gasped uselessly for breath and when none came, I almost panicked completely before I reminded myself to breathe through my nose, but even that seemed to be a useless struggle.

"Wow," one of the girls gasped out, but I couldn't tell who it was, "He took all of that!"

"What a slut!" Alex laughed uproariously.

"Man, Zechs must be right, he must really love sucking cock if he can take something that big!" Trant jeered.

"I wonder how many cocks a faggot has to gobble before he can get that good," another unfamiliar voice chimed in.

"Well, poor Heero is just no match for _that_ ," Dorothy chuckled and I could just hear the smirk in her voice, "I think you've made his day, Zechs. He's probably as hard as a rock!"

I squeezed my eyes shut and that was when I started to cry. Thankfully, my tears were silent as they slid down my cheeks. Sobbing right then would have been a very bad idea. I tried to tune out the hateful slurs being thrown at me, but they just kept coming. Hateful names, lewd comments, a few of them even egging me on like I was giving some great performance just for them. Zechs wasn't just satisfied with almost choking me to death, either. His fingers dug into my hair, fisting it to keep my head steady, pulling almost half of it out of its braid, and moved the bat in and out of my mouth, cruelly miming oral sex.

'Just bear with it,' I told myself in desperation, 'Just a little longer, that's all, and it'll be over. It's humiliating, but it doesn't hurt, does it?'

Only it did hurt. The physical pain from my jaw and throat were fairly minimal, especially compared to my arm and leg, but the pain in my chest was unbearable. I have no idea how long this went on for. Probably only minutes, but when you're in hell, time seems to come to a crawl. It was long enough to make my cheeks completely wet with tears, and long enough that saliva began to drip out of the corner of my mouth, racking my shame up higher and higher. Then, suddenly, miraculously, Zechs let go of my hair and pulled the bat completely out of my mouth.

My throat suddenly free, I gasped for air, only to rasp and choke and hack when I found it. My throat burned worse than when I had a cold and I doubled over, unable to get it to stop spasming. Thick strands of saliva dripped from my open mouth onto the floor, but I didn't even have the presence of mind to wipe my mouth for another couple of minutes after that first deep breath of air. My entire body was shaking and I felt like screaming. All I could hear past my own, thundering heart was that mocking laughter. I felt such hatred then for all of them. I wanted them to die. I wanted to kill them with my own bare hands, wrench _their_ jaws open like they were nothing more than animals and force something down _their_ throats. I wanted to rip them apart until there was nothing left but a bloody smear.

"Oh, yeah," Zechs sneered, still not done with me despite leaving me bleeding and broken on that dirty floor, "You're a real pro. I absolutely have to try those lips for myself."

I saw him reach for me and it was terror more than anything else that had me flinching and dodging from him, but he managed to grab me by the back of my head by my hair again and forced my face against his crotch, the metal zipper of his jeans scratching against the scabs on my cheek. His stench assaulted my nose, that heavy, thick musk that only a man can have down there, a smell that despite my attraction to my gender, my limited sexual experiences have caused me to find repulsive. Hell, even if I found it attractive, just the fact that it was Zechs's smell would have made me gag. I fought against him weakly, knowing that it was a stupid waste of energy at this point, but I couldn't stop myself. Just how much was he going to humiliate me? When would this end? How much more of myself did he want to rip out of me before he was satisfied?

"Now, now," he crooned, "there's no need to be shy, I'm not such a bad person when you get to know me. And I have plenty of meat even for _your_ appetite," he snorted derisively, "Clearly more than that wuss has. Be a good boy and I'll show you what you've been missing out on all this time. Don't and... well, a slut like you doesn't need teeth, now do you? Hell, you'll probably be able to fit even more dicks down your throat without them, so either way I'm doing you a service, now aren't I?"

I wanted to scream at him that he had taken this stupid joke of his far enough, he had done the damage that he had been after and now it was time to _stop_. But then he was shoving my face forward, pressing my cheek fully against him and I was too horrified for any other thought. I could feel his dick even through his jeans, pressing against my face. It was as big as he had joked that he was. That would have been terrible enough, but that wasn't what my heart racing hard and white noise start ringing in my head. Even through that thick denim, I could feel how hard he was. The asshole had an erection.

I could feel myself start to hyperventilate as I felt that hardness, memory after memory assaulting me and threatening to drag me under right there where I was kneeling. Memories of Trowa and my father, feeling them entering me, the smell of them, their hands on my skin, that hardness thrusting into me... I bit down on my tongue hard, enough to draw blood, trying to bring me out of it. I couldn't afford to lose myself in them, to have a panic attack, not now. I felt sickened by Zechs's arousal and focused on that feeling instead. Just how long had he been hard? Since he had threatened to make me suck him off? Since he had forced that bat into my mouth? Since he had ordered Mueller to beat me? Because I knew with this terrible clarity that it wasn't the thought of any sex act, whether he intended to do it or not, that had him horny. It had been the violence, hurting me, forcing me, dominating me, making me cry and suffer that had turned him on.

I glanced to the left, looking for someone, _anyone_ in the crowd that might help me, petrified that I knew what was going to come next and not wanting to dwell on that possibility for so much as a second. I saw Relena there, standing in the corner of the mob next to Dorothy. I half expected to see her looking like her brother, a sadistic smirk on her face, cheering this on, a haughty, superior expression as she watched the faggot get his. But it was so much worse than that. She was standing as still as a statue, her back stiff and her arms crossed over her chest. Her expression was like stone, and there was some quality under it, something in her eyes that was so familiar to me that I couldn't place, this expression like she was watching this from some distant, safe place, like she wasn't really there while the rest of her face was locked in this look of cold satisfaction. Not cruelty, not smugness or superiority, but satisfaction, grim and almost tired or bored. But even that isn't exactly right. I would even say that it was relief, this glint of... finality or even familiarity, but I couldn’t make any sense of it.

It was looking at her that what I had been trying to deny and not think about struck me with the kind of terror that you might read about in gothic horror tales. The kind of fear someone feels when they realize that what they are experiencing isn't a nightmare after all, but reality. This wasn't a prank. This had _never_ been a prank. Zechs meant this. He had meant it from the moment he had told his cronies to corner me. This wasn't some cruel act meant to scare me or mess with me. His threats were real, that erection of his was _real_. My question of how far he planned to take this was staring me right in the face. Zechs was planning on forcing me to give him, and no doubt every boy in that room who had the stomach for it, a blow job, even if he had to break my jaw open to get me to do it.

And I had my answer of how he could possibly do something like that to a faggot like me as well. It wasn't about the sex for him. Maybe it would be for some of the others, those that didn't care who was sucking them off so long as they got off and could lie to themselves that they were just doing what they had been told, but not Zechs. He didn't care about getting his jollies off through me. To him, it was about the rape, about forcing me to do this disgusting thing. It was my horror and repulsion that had him hard, not the thought of my oral skills and that was the most terrible thing about all of this. That was the real difference between Zechs and my father, the only difference that mattered. My father raped me because he was hard up. Zechs was going to do it to hurt me.

'Are you sure about that?'

I shuddered at the thought and felt like slamming my head into something to make it go away forever. It was an even more repulsive thought than when I had first realized that my father was interested in me, the thought that my dad and Zechs weren't so different after all, that my father did what he did to me, not because he was horny, but because he was well aware of what it did to me, how it tore me apart, and he _liked_ it.

Along with my fear, I felt my rage fill me up. It was like an old friend, one that I usually tried to ignore and deny, but right then, it was more than welcome. Surrounded by a bunch of my peers that were either willing to rape me or were happy to watch me being raped, I was grateful for the rage. It helped to cover up how fucking terrified I was. There was no time for screaming and crying and panic attacks when I wanted to bash their heads in. In my anger, I pushed my head back and actually managed a few inches, enough to glare up at Zechs with unbridled hatred.

"You're such a fucking hypocrite," I hissed at him and nearly wished that he had his cock in my mouth already so I could bite it off. If that was the last thing that I would be able to do with my teeth, well, it was worth it, "Let go of me, you fucking pervert!"

I thrashed my head from side to side, trying to dislodge his hand and by some miracle, I managed to free myself from his grip. Not that it made any difference, there was nothing I could do still and Zechs easily grabbed my hair again, this time twisting it brutally and pulling my head back by it, making me cry out at the pain.

"'Pervert'?" He sneered, "You're one to talk. I just want to see what all the fuss is about. Why should you two fairies have all the fun?"

His hand lazily went down to the front of his jeans and he pulled down his zipper. I saw with mounting dread that he wasn't wearing any underwear. I could see the shadow of his dark pubic hair right through the slit of his jeans. I don't know why his not wearing anything under his jeans was so awful to me, the lack of another layer between me and his cock making my stomach clench, but it was. I thrashed again, hoping that I could at least manage to get my head free again, but his grip was too tight this time, he wasn't going to let go of me.

"Now, now, don't be like that, I promise I'll be real good to you. Hey, I'll tell you what," he said amicably, like we were just the best of friends and he was trying to freaking _negotiate_ with me, like it was over a game he wanted to borrow for the weekend instead of forcing me to give him oral, "if you can get all of us off by the time the next bell rings, I'll just let you go. You can run back to that pussy boyfriend of yours and I'll even forget about all the backtalk you've been giving me. No harm, no foul, what do you say? Hell, because I'm such a nice guy, I'll even pay double what he's obviously paying you," those icy blue eyes glanced down at my shoes, the sneakers that Heero had bought for me after Relena had burned mine and felt my stomach go as cold as Zechs's eyes at his insinuation, his look making me feel dirty over something that had been a gift, "You know I'm good for it. Whatever it is that he's been giving you to get that sweet mouth around his cock, I can give you so much more."

My temper swelled at what he was saying about Heero and I wanted so badly to take a swing at him. If he had been anyone else, I would have. My left hand clenched around the pencil that I was still holding. Even through everything, I hadn't let go of it, the one thing that I had, but I still didn't dare do anything with it, not when Zechs was in a good position to cave my head in. My right arm was still mostly useless, too. It had stopped shaking, but all of my attempts to raise it just made me realize how weak it was.

"Fuck you!" I snarled at him, my voice the only thing that I could lash out at him with, even if it was probably going to get me killed. If he was going to rape me, there was no way in hell I was going to be passive about it, even if it made things worse.

My efforts only made the asshole chuckle with amusement.

"You should be grateful for such a deal," he grinned, "You can suck on the best cock around _and_ get paid for it! Most whores don't even get it this good, Maxwell! You really shouldn't be so selfish," he pulled me up a little by my hair and got in my face, his hot breath washing over my skin like something rotten, "After all, your poor, little friend doesn't have that luxury," I frowned at his words, thinking that he was talking about Heero and not understanding what he meant by that, but his next words sent a jolt of horror and complete and utter fury through me, "He has to suck cocks for free in hell."

The second that I realized that he was talking about Quatre, I saw red, actual _red_. That Quatre was dead because of him, him and his cunt of a sister, him saying that to me, even suggesting _any_ of that of my deceased best friend filled my gut with an anger so immense, there was no way of controlling it. It was like a belly full of boiling hot water and I was acting before I had any further thought beyond the desire to rip Zechs's face off with my nails. I wanted to cut out the tongue that could possibly say something so awful.

I snapped. There's really no other word for what I did next. I fucking snapped, had some kind of psychotic break or something, because the next thing I knew, I felt this kind of crazy strength. I saw Zechs reach into his jeans in my haze, grabbing something in there and I knew exactly what it was, and what he was going to do with it if I didn't stop him, but beyond a sickened feeling in my gut, it didn't faze me anymore. Driven only by my blind rage, the same rage that had made me punch Relena and Zechs shortly after Quatre's suicide, I grabbed Zechs's other wrist with my previously dead right hand. I can't tell you how I managed it. I wasn't even aware of the pain or of anything else really, only that I suddenly had his wrist in my hand and I was squeezing it as hard as I could, not that it got him to release his hold on my hair.

Without any conscious thought to what I was doing, which is probably how I managed to do any of it, I Zechsched his hand away from my hair. His grip ripped some right out of my head, but I didn't give a fuck about the pain, only my goal. Although he still had a hold on me, I had enough leverage now to move my head. Just enough to twist my head around and sink my teeth into his hand.

I bit him savagely, more like a vicious animal than a person, closing my aching jaw on his flesh _hard_ until I could taste his blood flooding into my mouth as my teeth ripped his skin right open. I didn't even let go when he cried out, probably more in shock than pain, until he forcefully pulled his hand away. I spat his blood out onto the floor, feeling ridiculously satisfied in doing so. If he hadn't taken a step back, I might have even gone on for a few more seconds, maybe taken some flesh instead of just blood that time. Zechs looked at his hand and I felt proud and a bit feral at just how much it was bleeding. Fucker might even need stitches, I thought. I wanted to snidely tell him that he should really have that looked at, that he might get rabies or, god forbid, even AIDS from being bitten by a pillow biter like me.

"You fucking **_FREAK_**!" He screamed and his left hand lashed out at me, back handing me with the same sort of ferocity that I had just bitten his hand with.

The blow split my lip right open and blood sprayed down my neck, dazing me a little. I barely felt it. I barely felt anything at all even as blood poured down the side of my mouth and chin, because right at that moment, I heard the classroom door open. 

It didn't matter to me one bit who was coming through that door; a teacher, a classmate, the principal, another one of the pack, or even god himself descending from the heavens. It didn't matter because Zechs and every other person in that room turned to look at who it was. For a brief moment, no one was looking at me. More importantly, for the first time, Zechs wasn't paying me the least bit of attention and, even if it didn't amount to anything, even if it got me killed, I wasn't going to waste the only opportunity that I had.

I tightened my grip on the pencil so hard that I could feel it start to splinter and stabbed Zechs right in the thigh with it. The pencil, though sharp, never would have gotten through the thick, expensive denim, but through intention or pure luck, I have absolutely no fucking idea, I got him right through one of the artful, pre-made tears in his hundred dollar, vintage jeans. The sharpened tip easily made it past the rip and sunk deep, a full three inches deep, into his white flesh. Blood blossomed like a beautiful rose and spread through the blue denim, growing wider and darker by the second and Zechs cried out again, but this time I was pretty damned sure that it was in pain. My only regret was that I hadn't had the presence of mind to aim for his open fly and stab him in his dick.

With a roar of anger, regaining everyone's attention, Zechs grabbed at the pencil and started to pull it out. I would have stayed to watch how his blood was dripping down his leg and off the pencil, but I was gone by then, already pushing past him and towards the barrier of bodies, the only thing halting my run to freedom. I wasn't going to make it, I realized. For all of my efforts, they weren't going to let me escape. That was alright, though, I didn't take any of it back. I hadn't evened the score with Zechs even by a mile, but I had made him bleed and that was enough.

Sure enough, although a few of the people blocking me looked shocked and uneasy about how this turning out, Zechs's closest friends, Alex, Trant, Mueller, Dorothy, and Ralph closed ranks, blocking my path. Alex and Mueller especially looked like they wanted to murder me, either for spoiling their fun or for injuring their leader. I was willing to just stand there and let the blows come, knowing that there was little else that I could do to get past them, when I saw the most beautiful thing in all of creation past Trant's shoulder. More beautiful than a sunrise or a waterfall or a freaking wonder of the world, I saw Heero striding towards us. It hadn't been god after all that had come through the door. My boyfriend had come looking for me and there he was, with murder and rage and intent in those lovely eyes of his.

"Get the fuck out of my way!" He bellowed like a damned lion at the people blocking the two of us and shoved at Dorothy, sending her sprawling to the floor and chivalry be damned.

"I said _move_!" He yelled as a few people turned to stare at him in shock, but didn't get out of his way fast enough.

With strength that I hadn't even know that he possessed, Heero grabbed the back of Alex's shirt and freaking _flung_ him right into the wall. Trant, his eyes going wide with fear, the first time that I had ever seen him afraid of anything, instinctively backed away from my rampaging best friend. A few others that hadn't seemed to know what they were supposed to do followed his example. I guess they thought that if big, bad Daniel Trant was freaked out, they should be, too. Then there was only Mueller separating Heero and myself, with Zechs at my back and I knew that it wouldn't be long at all before he went after us.

Mueller glanced at Heero, at the bat on the floor that had rolled between them in the chaos, and then back at me, his dark eyes calculating the situation. He wasn't as stupid as some people mistake him to be because of his shitty academic performance, he knew exactly what the weak link was and spun, making a grab for me. I don't know what he had been planning, to just get one last hit in, to use me as some kind of hostage or what. Whatever it had been, Heero was faster. He surged forward and grabbed the bat, immediately falling into a batting position. It was like watching a snake strike, it was that smooth, that quick.

Heero's eyes were cold and piercing as he gripped the bat, his muscles tensing and at the ready. I had seen him in that position before and what he could do to a baseball when he swung with all of his strength. Who knew what he could do to a human skull, and that was exactly what he was aiming for, Mueller's laid out before him, a hell of an easier target for him than a moving ball.

"Let him pass, _now,_ " he growled menacingly and would have looked down right terrifying if he hadn't been doing all of this to protect me. Just that thought alone made my heart swell and if I weren't in such a dangerous position, I might have broken down and wept with both relief and love, "or I'll break your fucking face."

Mueller narrowed his eyes at him as though he were considering calling his bluff, but I knew that he was seeing exactly what I was, that Heero was deadly serious. No matter about my boyfriend's moral issues with attacking someone who was unarmed or his usually peaceful demeanor, he would do it, I realized with shock. He was prepared to strike Mueller with that bat if he had to. All to save me. I felt my heart tremble and there was this feeling there so strong that it seemed to consume me. It wasn't love. It was stronger than that, this pure, incredible emotion that there is no word for in existence.

When Mueller didn't move after a few seconds, Heero tightened his grip on the bat, his muscles tensing so hard under his skin that it had to have hurt, but he didn't so much as blink. Finally, with a superior, mocking smirk like it didn't bother him at all, Mueller raised his hands in fake surrender and took a step to the side. I hurriedly walked past him, not trusting him, but neither did Heero. He didn't take his eyes off of him the entire time. When I was close enough, he grabbed at my jacket, pulling me towards him and pushing me behind him, but still never taking his eyes off of either Mueller or Zechs, who was glaring at Heero like he was thinking of lunging at him, bat or no bat.

I really don't know how we got out of that room. It's days later and it still feels unreal to me. Not the assault, that feels all too terribly real. But Heero coming to my rescue like an avenging angel or right out of a corny comic book, us backing up out of that classroom and making it out of there without getting grabbed feels more like a dream than something that actually happened to me. When we were free of the classroom, we didn't stop. Although school was still going and sooner or later, the hallway would be full of teachers and classmates, neither of us held any illusions that we were safe.

Heero grabbed my wrist and pulled me along, thankfully by my left one instead of my right which, now that my rage was long gone and had been replaced with terror again, was once more useless to me and in worse shape than before. We couldn't run, my right leg made that impossible and Heero thankfully slowed down a little when he saw that I was limping. It wasn't like my leg was broken, but it was so swollen and giving me so much pain that putting weight on it was agonizing. My boyfriend didn't yell at me once to hurry, though, although I tried to.

It didn't take me long, even in my state, which probably qualified as 'crazed' by then, to realize where Heero was taking me. I felt this incredible relief and could have applauded his intelligence when I saw the locked door to the studio looming before us. I nervously glanced back, but I didn't see anyone following us. Even if Zechs figured out where we were hiding, he wouldn't be able to get to us without the key. Unless, of course, he had the same skills that I did, but I didn't want to think about that. Heero patiently waited for me to pick the lock on the door, then the second that it was unlocked, dragged me inside hurriedly and slammed the door closed behind us.

As soon as the door was locked, he dropped the bat to the floor, the noise it made almost making me jump out of my skin. The sight of that closed door and the knowledge that this was our first bit of privacy before we had separated for classes that afternoon, how close our harrowing escape had been, how close I had come to... it was all that took to break me. My right leg decided that it didn't want to take my weight anymore and buckled, sending me to my knees. It was like it knew that I had reached the end of my rope and surpassed that breaking point.

Everything that had just happened... being assaulted, those things that Zechs had said, accusing Heero of being my pimp, of Quatre sucking cocks in hell, shoving that bat in my mouth, almost raping me as everyone watched on with glee... Gods, I could still _smell_ him, that heavy musk, could still feel his hand on me. I could still see him in my head, the image seared forever into my fucking brain, him lowering the zipper of his jeans, his hand reaching inside and grabbing his cock, ready to pull it out and force it into my mouth just like he had the bat. I could still see the small glimpse of it that I had gotten before I had tried to bite him, his fingers wrapped around hard, dusky flesh. If I had taken just a couple seconds longer to act... It all crashed into me like a tidal wave.

I sobbed harshly, brokenly as I knelt there on the floor. All of my strength was just gone in an instant. My entire body shook like I was having a seizure, fat tears rolling down my face as I cried, my sobs so immense and violent that they almost sounded like I was screaming and choking all at once. My throat felt sore, but I couldn't stop it. All I could do was double over and curl up as tightly as I could, like I could contain it with my abused body, wrapping my arms around my stomach and crying into my knees. I felt like I do every night that my father rapes me. I felt violated. I felt abused. Somehow... even though none of those people have ever been friendly to me or even polite, I felt betrayed. I felt like all of them, every single one of them and not just Zechs, had torn me down and shredded my soul into pieces.

They would have raped me, these same people that accused me of being a rapist and child molester with such disgust. They would have gang raped me while the rest of them watched and cheered... what had I done to deserve that? What terrible sin is in me that is so great that they would want to do that to me? Am I that disgusting of a creature? Am I that loathsome that they would think that it was acceptable... that it was _justice_ to do something like that to me? Why? _Why?_ I thought that over and over again, but I couldn't come up with any answer. Only an overwhelming feeling of shame.

I hadn't fallen to the floor for more than three seconds than Heero was falling to his knees behind me and swept me into his arms, holding me so tightly, it was like he thought that I was made of vapor and would disappear on him if he loosened his grip even a little. I felt his hand in my hair, almost all of it loose now, and it felt so good, that touch erasing my memory of Zechs's, not completely, but enough to keep it from driving me insane. I turned in his embrace and buried my head in his shoulder. It felt so familiar, so comforting, like how I imagined it must feel for a child to be held by their mother when they were sad.

"They... they were going to..." I sobbed harshly, but the words were lost, I couldn't bear to say them out loud.

That was fine, I didn't need to. Heero had seen enough. He had seen Zechs holding me there, and I was positive that, from where he had been standing, he could have seen Zechs's open fly. Oh, god, I wish he hadn't. I wished more than anything that he never would have known what they had been about to do to me, but he did. I remembered the look of absolute rage on his face, how desperately and quickly he had gotten me to safety, and I knew that he knew. He tightened his grip on me and I knew that he was remembering it, finding me like that. Had he seen me bite the fucker, too? Had he seen me act like a trapped fox, like some creature instead of a person? I didn't know what was more shameful to me, the humiliation of nearly being forced to fellatio all of our tormentors, or the things that I am capable of, the rage and violence that I can do.

"I know," I barely heard him whisper and I heard his fear and his anger as well in his voice.

I knew, without ever needing to ask, what he was thinking, that he had almost been too late, and what would have happened if he hadn't found me. I didn't want to think about it, either. I felt him shaking against me and a wetness spreading on my shoulder. He was crying, too, I realized and I gripped at him harder. I wasn't even sure who was holding whom anymore and that didn't really matter. The both of us were broken and distraught. I might be the one with the bruises, but we both would carry the scars of what had just happened, and what had almost happened, for the rest of our lives. Would he dream about this that night? Dream about not being able to save me? Dream that this could happen to him, too? Did he blame himself for not being able to stop it entirely like I always do when he gets hurt?

I sobbed harder into his shoulder, wishing that my arm wasn't busted to hell so I could do a better job of holding him, wishing that I could comfort him while I was too much of an emotional wreck myself to know how. He stopped crying before I did, at least I think he did, his shaking stopped, but he still felt so tense, a taut string ready to snap at any moment. I felt his hand smooth over my hair, petting and stoking it and despite myself, despite my pain and humiliation and the terrible, black things in my head, I could feel his touch calming me, little by little.

"It's alright now," he murmured against me, drawing me closer and closer to him until I was sitting in his lap and he was rocking me gently back and forth, his arms and legs wrapped around me like he was trying to tangle us together, like letting me go would kill him, "You're safe now, sweetheart, we're both safe..."

That only made me cry harder, not out of sadness, but out of sheer relief and the horror of it all. Safe... were we really safe? Would we ever be safe again? No... we never had been. They had always been capable of this, I had just been blind to it.

"I was so scared!" Heero suddenly started to sob again and I tried to imagine what he must have been going through when he had first realized that something was wrong, that the reason why people were missing from class might have something to do with me, the terror he must have felt, "Oh god, love, I thought..."

I knew what he thought, and was what had really happened really any better than his worst fears, or was it worse? Is it sick that I wish that Zechs had just put me into the hospital from a bad beating than do what he had done? I couldn't even talk about it with Heero. I couldn't tell him how scared I had been in that classroom, and how dirty I felt afterwards, like I had been raped even though the act had never happened. How is that even possible? How can you feel like that _after_ you were saved? How could the intention, knowing that people want to do that to you, be just as bad as the act itself?

But it was and while I knew that I should probably talk about it, that that might be better than bottling up these feelings like I do with my father, all I could do was just cry against my boyfriend like a little kid, submerge in the comfort that he was offering me. Because deep down, I knew that nothing could possibly make this better. Just like with my father, I knew that there was no cure for this kind of betrayal. How could I even move on from this? What was I supposed to do now? They never tell you, you know. There's no guidebook for this shit, no written rules or handy tricks.

How was I supposed to continue on with my life? How was I supposed to go to school every day for another year and a half and see the very same people that had tried to sexually assault me and act like none of it had ever happened? Should I tell someone about it? Go to the police? But how was this any different than any of the other shit that they did? If I told the police that Zechs Darlian had tried to orchestrate a gang bang on me, what were they going to do about it? I had no proof, save my and Heero's testimonies, but I was a nobody and Heero had barely seen anything. Zechs could just pay people off to give him an alibi, or threaten them. Between him, his sister, Dorothy, and the other kids that had been in that room that came from well to do families, no cop was going to listen to a word I said, whether they believed me or not. If any of them even cared that a fag had almost been orally raped.

Maybe they would be right not to care. I felt violated and beaten down, but some part of me, some very big, prevalent part, didn't feel like a victim. All of the guilt and shame that I felt only made me wonder if all of this was my fault. Heero would yell at me for thinking that, I know, but that didn't stop me from feeling it. He would say that I had had no control over the situation, that I hadn't asked for them to do that to me. But what if he's wrong? They had called me slut, cockgobbler, and whore. What if they were right? What if I had been unable to stop them, not because I had been powerless, but because I had known that it was pointless to stop it, that those words weren't just meaningless slurs?

I know it might sound ridiculous, my feelings of guilt. I've never given head in my life, after all. I've never even jerked someone off or done anything beyond taking it up the ass, so how could I be any of the things that they called me? But even if the act was different, how was letting my father fuck me any different than letting them all fuck my mouth? I don't stop him and I couldn’t stop them. So what's the difference? I say that I can't stop my father, but isn't the reality that I won't even try? I say that I'm scared of him. I say that it won't make a difference. I say that it isn't so bad and he's my father, but what if the abuse... Zechs's and Relena's and my father's, the physical and the sexual and everything else, is all my fault because I can't stop it? What if I deserve it because of those excuses, because I'm too weak?

Does some part of me really enjoy it and that's why I don't fight back? Am I really a slut and I'm just in denial of it? Everyone keeps saying it, so what if I'm wrong? What if these feelings that I keep having every time my father rapes me aren't illogical? What if I really do have something to feel guilty about? Heero's father thinks that I take too much on my shoulders, but what if I'm trying to make up for all of this, for not having the strength to stop the abuse, for allowing my father to use me like a sex a toy? And don't I enjoy it? Don't I let him do it because some part of me likes it? Not the sex, at least I hope not, but how he sometimes treats me afterwards, the affection he shows me? How is that any better than being a slut who's willing to take any dick, no matter whose it belongs to? If that's the sort of person that I am, willing to do such disgusting things for a shred of love, than how am I any better than what people like Zechs accuse me of?

I know this sounds stupid, the ramblings of someone who is mentally and emotionally unstable, but that was how I felt. How I still feel at times. The guilt is always there, below the surface, along with all my doubts. I'm riddled with them. They just stay there and wait for a weak moment like the one that I had that day, whether it was from my sleep deprivation, the trauma of what I had just gone through, or a bastard mixture of the two. It was a toxic cocktail, dragging me down into the murky depths of depression and self-hatred. Heero and I sat there, tangled up in each other and crying for what felt like hours, until I wasn't quite sure anymore what I was crying about, what had happened or what I was feeling.

Even when the tears stopped, both of us too tired and drained to cry anymore, we didn't part. Neither of us wanted to, I think. Although the waterworks were over, we were both very vulnerable and raw. We needed each other, we needed that closeness. Heero loosened his grip and I rolled onto my left side, laying my head against his chest so I could hear his heartbeat and he kept his arms around me, his legs on either side of me, like he was sheltering me with his body alone. Every so often, I would feel his hands stroking my hair. It was a wonderful feeling, being entwined together, not needing any words or further intimacy than that to love each other with. And I did feel loved. Even with my fucked up emotions, I felt loved by him and that was stronger than any of my doubts.

With my adrenaline rush slowly fading, my tiredness came back twice fold, my body reminding me that, not only had I over exerted myself in the last few hours with a mix of terror, rage, and shock, I was still operating on incredibly little sleep. I was entering into that red zone of insomnia where sleep is still far off and everything starts to shut down. I felt like life was kicking me right in the balls, over and over again. Coping wasn't even a consideration. I was in this hellish space where rest is an impossibility, I just kept sinking lower and lower into new levels of exhaustion. That stupid buzzing in my head came back and so did my slowness. I wished the adrenaline rush would comeback, at least then I had had my wits.

My eyes felt heavy as we laid there and I actually felt like, if I could just lay there in Heero's arms for long enough, I might be able to doze off, or come close to it if not for my erratic thoughts and mood. The end of school bell rang, startling the both of us. Heero actually flinched. I could have felt frustrated that the loud noise had jostled me out of my almost dozing state if I hadn't felt so confused about what the noise was. It took me a minute to realize that it was just the bell and I slowly sat up, wincing at the pain in my arm.

"It should be safe soon... don't you think?" I asked softly while still sitting between Heero's legs, too comfortable to want to move away just yet.

"In a little while," he nodded, "We skipped our last classes, so they probably thought we left school by now, if they're looking for us at all, but I want to play it safe."

I was in full agreement with that. There was no way in hell I wanted to run into a single one of those assholes again that day, even if it was by accident. Zechs would probably continue to look for us, eager to settle the score after I had bitten and stabbed him, and Alex, Mueller, and Trant by extension. If they suspected that Heero and I had left the school, I had no doubt that they would try to catch up with us, lay an ambush like they had tried to the previous day. But I didn't think that we had to worry about the rest of them, not even Relena. A few of them were probably too worried that we were going to tell on them to want to come after us and the others, like Relena, were probably satisfied with the damage that they had done.

And did they have a reason to be worried? I wasn't sure. I couldn't think that far ahead to what I was going to do about all of this, how I could possibly defend myself and Heero as well. I could barely handle the present without wanting to scream, let alone consider the future. Heero tucked his legs in and the loss of his body head suddenly made me feel very cold. I felt both oddly clingy, wanting to latch myself to him and never let go, and very distant. As welcome as his touch was, as much as it comforted me, it also made me remember what Zechs's fingers had felt like on my skin and in my hair, his bruising grip and his mocking touches to my face. I didn't want to be near anyone at the same time that I couldn't bear to be alone. It was a weird, conflicting feeling that I couldn't make heads or tails of. It reminded me too much of how I had felt right after Quatre's death, wanting everyone and everything to go away while needing to be comforted.

Heero moved to stand up, but paused, his eyes going wide at something. For a moment, I felt panicked, thinking that he had heard someone approaching us and glanced nervously towards the door, but then I realized that he was looking down at his shirt. There was a streak of blood across it from when he had been holding me. I hadn't even felt it at the time, but now that I was paying attention to it, I could feel the steady, heavy throb of my arm from when Heero's hard embrace had put too much pressure on it. The blood on my shirt sleeve had grown with some fresh blood, too, but I really wasn't that worried about it. My boyfriend, however, as usual, was a different matter.

"Oh, god, Duo, you're hurt," he said mournfully, already starting to build himself up into one of his over-protective panics, "I'm so sorry, I didn't know... and you were limping before..."

"I'm alright," I half lied, since I wasn't quite sure how much damage Mueller had done, but I honestly didn't think it was anything to get worked up over, "My arm and leg are just a bit swollen."

"Can I?" Heero asked me as he touched my shirt sleeve.

I sighed, not wanting to deal with this or anything, really, but I nodded, knowing that it wasn't an argument that I could win on a good day, let alone that day. He very gingerly rolled up my sleeve, but my upper arm was so swollen at that point, it really didn't matter how gently he did it, it hurt like hell. He winced right along with me as he tried to get the sleeve over my enlarged flesh and then gasped in shock when he finally saw the extent of the wound. I didn't really blame him for once. It looked pretty terrible for something so non-threatening. The area that Mueller had struck looked like I had a baseball under my skin and the swelling was the least gross thing about it.

The blow had indeed taken off a good amount of skin and was still bleeding, but nothing that a Band-Aid and some ointment wouldn't cure. However, there was a hell of lot more bleeding under my skin, which had turned this utterly repulsive mix of black and purple and a rainbow of different shades of red ranging from dark pink to deep crimson to brown that went from just above my elbow to just under my shoulder (1). It didn't just look like a bruise, but was one solid mass, like some uncreative kid had painted my arm.

"Oh, fuck," Heero whispered in this pained town as he looked at the hideous contusion.

He reached out like he was going to touch it, but quickly drew his hand back, obviously realizing that touching it was not a good idea.

"What the hell did Zechs do to you?" He suddenly demanded, his hands curling into fists and his eyes like sapphire fire in his rage.

"Mueller did it, actually," I corrected him, "He hit me with his baseball bat. He got me in the right leg, too."

"Christ," he swore and that anger went right back to horror as he glanced over at the baseball bat with disgust, "Is... is anything broken?"

"No," I told him, moving my arm from side to side, although carefully, to demonstrate that for him, "It hurts like fucking hell, especially with how swollen it is, but nothing's broken."

"How bad is it?" He asked me, finally gaining the courage to touch my arm, but just gently cradled my elbow in his hand, examining the wound with a much more critical eye.

"Bad," I confessed, "but bearable."

"We should get you to a doctor," his protective streak had returned, I recognized the frantic glint in his eye and that tight, worried tone.

"I don't need one," I argued.

"Dammit, Duo!" Heero finally lost his temper, and while anyone else raising their voice at me like that would have made me flinch, I still wasn't scared of him. Even if I had been, I knew that his anger was because he was worried about me, "You have a hematoma! You probably have one in your leg, too! Your face is bruised, your arm looks like a piece of bloody liver, and you were almost sexually assaulted! Will you stop acting like such a tough ass for _once_ in your goddamned life and let me take care of you?!"

I felt speechless, not because of what he had said, although when the words 'sexually assaulted' came out of his mouth, my stomach twisted up and I felt like I was going to puke again, but because of the desperation and fear on his face as he yelled at me. He wasn't angry at all. Even though his tears had dried up and he had stopped shaking, he was still terrified.

"Hey," I said softly, touching his arm with my left hand since I knew that if I tried it with my right, if I flinched or showed that I was in pain, it would only make him feel worse, "You got me out, remember? It got pretty bad, but you got me out before they could... before they could do _that_. You saved me, Heero."

It was like my words, or perhaps my touch, had opened the flood gates. A heart-wrenching sob burst out of him and he crumpled in on himself, fresh tears dripping down his face. I wrapped my arms around him and held him as closely and as tightly as I could manage, not caring about the pain or anything else beyond comforting him. This time, Heero pressed his face into my shoulder, crying so hard that I could feel my shirt getting wet in mere seconds. I wove my fingers through his hair, stroking the thick, silky strands and hoping that I could offer to him what he had given to me.

"It's alright, I'm alright," I murmured to him.

"I'm going to kill them," he cried against me, "I'm going to kill _all of them_."

"No, you're not," I soothed, "You're going to stay far away from them. We both are, just like always."

"He was going to..." Heero cried with anguish and he grabbed me so tight, held me with such force that I thought that he was going to break something, but I didn't pull away.

He held me like he thought that if he could just will it hard enough, he could go back and keep it all from happening from me, stop what had already occurred. I tried to put myself in his place, tried to imagine what it would have been like if I had walked in on Zechs forcing Heero to his knees, ready to orally assault him so I could understand what he was feeling and shuddered as a storm of protectiveness, revulsion, rage, and horror hit me.

Love is a strange thing like that. I could accept what had happened to me gracefully and easily. True, it had traumatized me. I was frightened and disgusted and hurt. I was even betrayed and maybe a little bit shocked, not that it had happened to me, or even that Zechs had been the one to do it, but mostly at their boldness, the reality and the hatred that had resulted in it. I don't know, maybe because of what I went through with Trowa and my father, it just didn't touch me as badly as it could have. It's a dark cloud that I'll never be able to shake, and it weighed on me heavily for the rest of the week, but not as much as it probably should have. But when I thought about that happening to Heero... I couldn't accept it at all. Just the possibility made me want to scream. If he felt even an ounce of how I felt... well, I guess I couldn't fault him for being a bit distraught, could I?

"I know," I said, "but you didn't let him. I'm alright now and we're going to do whatever it takes to make sure that it never happens to either of us."

He let go of me and pulled away so he could look at my face.

"We have to tell someone about this," he demanded, "The principal, my parents, the cops, I don't care who, but this has to stop."

"Heero..." I sighed, really not having the energy to have this argument with him.

"No," he snapped, "This is serious, Duo. I mean," he ran a hand through his hair, "it always _was_ serious. My dad is right, we can't keep hiding this! I was willing to go along with what you wanted because you've been dealing with this for so long and you seemed to know how to handle it, and I thought that you made a lot of sense, but this... enough is enough! Zechs can't get away with this! What he wanted to do... this isn't just... pushing some kids around or even a few beatings! He's _sick_ , and I am not going to give him another chance to assault you, to assault anyone! Even if I have to risk his coming after me for it, you cannot just ask me to sit by and do nothing while he and his fucking friends almost rape someone that I care about!"

"Yes and I can and I will," I said with a hard, unmovable tone, "Because even if he hasn't done anything like this before to me, even if it's terrible, nothing has really changed. It's the same situation that we've been in the entire time and you know that. You're right, he's sick, a monster, and he deserves to go to jail for everything he's done, let alone what he just tried to do. It disgusts me that he might try to do it to someone else, and of course I want to stop him, but I can't. I couldn't stop him from terrorizing Quatre and myself when we were kids and I can't stop him now."

Doubt began to erode his resolve, just a tiny bit, and I hated myself for it. I hated myself because Heero had so much more integrity than I did. He was willing to risk himself to do the right thing. All I wanted to do was survive. I hated myself for my words and I hated myself for feeling relieved because, the second I saw that doubt on his face, I knew that I was going to win and I didn't want to. I was a coward and he was strong and brave and everything screamed at me that he should be the one to triumph, not me. I had wanted to do the right thing once, I reminded myself, and look where it had gotten me. Almost drowned, my best friend hurt... wasn't a bit of self-loathing an alright price to pay compared to that?

"We need to do _something_ ," he protested stubbornly.

"What do you think is going to happen if we tell someone the truth?" I asked him, feeling like the worst kind of asshole, but not able to stop myself, "Do you really think that if we tell Principal Stoan or the cops that Zechs tried to rape me, that anything is going to happen? Do you really think that they would even believe us, or that if they did, they would want to do anything about it? Two outcasts... two _homosexuals_ calling rape against the only son of the wealthiest family in town? They'd say that we were making it up just to save their own asses. I'm sure that Zechs's parents can hire a hell of a better lawyer than even your father could."

"My father would believe us," Heero pointed out.

For a moment, those words shook my heart. They echoed in my head, the truth of them. _Justin would believe me_. He would, I knew that without a single doubt in my head. If I told Heero's father everything... about Zechs, about Relena... even about my father... he, and he alone out of all the adults in my life, would believe every word that I would tell him. Never in my whole life have I ever been able to say that about anyone, not even my mother or Solo. He already knows that Heero and I are being bullied, and he already knows that my father hits me. If I told him about the rest... he would believe me, wouldn’t he? I couldn't imagine him accusing me of being a liar. He might ask me for proof, but he wouldn't brush me off outright. That isn't the sort of man that he is. Just like Heero, even more than Heero, actually, Mr. Yuy is a disturbingly perceptive person, somehow both pragmatic and taking people at face value.

"Yes, he would," I murmured, "but so what? Heero... even if every person in this town believed us, we don't have any proof of it! No one wants to believe this sort of thing, and no one cares, especially not when _I'm_ the person it happened to! Without proof, nothing is going to happen to Zechs."

"We have your injuries," he argued, as stubborn as a damned mule.

"That's just proof that someone hurt me," I argued right back at him, having already thought all of this through, "Anyone could have done it."

"We have the baseball bat," he shot back, "It has Mueller and Zechs' prints all over it, _and_ your blood!"

"And your prints, too," I told him sadly and watched him go pale at that realization, "This is how it's going to happen. You're going to accuse Zechs of trying to assault me. He'll say it never happened and everyone at this fucking school is too terrified of him to say otherwise. If you can't prove the sexual assault, then you'll prove the physical assault. Only Zechs wasn't the one to hit me with that bat, Mueller was. Even besides that, it's a generic bat, it could belong to _anyone_ on any of the baseball teams, including varsity. Do you get what I'm saying?" I asked in exasperation, "If you accuse Zechs or Mueller of hitting me with that bat, Zechs will just turn around and accuse you."

"That's ridiculous!" He sputtered, "We're _friends_."

I snorted.

"All that's going to do is assure that we hang out with each other and spend more time around each other than we do with Zechs, more opportunities for things to go wrong. Zechs will say that we were arguing. Maybe I made advances on you and maybe you didn't like that. Or maybe he'll admit that we're together and had a lover's spat, maybe over your outing us. Things get heated and you attack me with the bat. _You're_ the one with the batting arm. You don't want to get in trouble and you know that Zechs and I have a history, so you blame him and I go along with it to get Zechs into trouble. Now who do you think the cops are going to believe? At the very least, it diverts suspicion away from him, enough that they're just going to dismiss it all together. And that's not even mentioning how many people Zechs can get to give him an alibi or lie and say that they witnessed you attacking me. Do you get it? Without proof, and I mean concrete, cannot be denied proof, no one is going to believe us. So what is the fucking point?"

"You're asking me to turn my back on you... to... to let him get away with this, like what he did is ok," he whispered heartbrokenly, making me hate myself and my damned, cursed logic even worse.

"No," I insisted, "I would never ask you to do that. You're honest and honorable and have principles, and I love that about you. I'd never want you to change that. I just want you to understand all the facts, how this would go down and I don't want you to get hurt just because you want to do the right thing when no one else does. You aren't turning your back on me. You're right here with me through all of this, I know that. I'm not asking you to let him get away with this, I'm asking you to protect yourself. I'm asking you to be smart and defend yourself. I know that what he did isn't ok, but that doesn't mean that I think that either of us can _practically_ do anything about it beyond making sure that he doesn't get a chance to do it again."

Heero fell silent, mulling over my words with a great deal of seriousness. That relieved me, that he was actually going to stop and consider my logic instead of rushing into things all hotheaded.

"I know you're right," he muttered, "I really hate that, you know? You always make so much goddamned sense, even when I know you're full of shit," he smiled dryly, taking any sting that I could have felt out of his words, making me realize that he wasn't mad or even trying to insult me, but that it was being said with endearment, "but that doesn't mean that I have to like it, does it?"

"No," I smiled weakly at him, "And full of shit or not, I don't like it either. But those are my reasons."

"What do you want me to do?" He asked me, "If not the right thing, then what?"

"The smart thing. We're going to be on the defensive more than ever before. No going _anywhere_ in school alone, even during our team practices and meets. Even if we're just going to the bathroom or going to separate classes, we either go together or in plain view of a teacher. Hell, we should do that even when we _are_ together. Zechs easily got a dozen people together to ambush me, if you had been with me at the time, we would have been fucked. But I don't think even Zechs is going to try anything in front of a teacher. At least I hope he won't," I fretted.

"We should program our phone numbers into emergency contacts," Heero strategized, "So in a pinch, if we do get separated and get into trouble, all we'll need to do is hit a single number and call and we can reach the other. We can just assume that the other person is in trouble even if they don't say anything and go get help."

"That's a good idea," I nodded.

I hadn't even thought about that. Having a cell phone is still such a novelty to me that it didn't occur to me when I had run into trouble to try to use it to call for help. Not that Zechs would have let me, but I should have remembered that I had it on me and had thought of _something._

 _"_ Fine," my best friend finally conceded, "We won't tell anyone, but in return, I want to take you to the hospital."

I nearly snapped at him that this wasn't a bloody negotiation, but managed to temper myself, if only barely. As I looked at him and saw that tenacity of his clear on his face, I suddenly felt very tired, even more tired than I had been feeling all day. I was tired of fighting with him, tired of everything. I just wanted that day to be over and it was only two in the afternoon. I just didn't feel capable of doing anything at that point. Everything felt overwhelming to me and it was in me to just surrender and go along with whatever he wanted to do, even if I thought that he was being ridiculous.

"I'm not going to the hospital," I muttered, managing to find at least a tiny bit of strength left, although hell if I can tell you how.

"You're being stubborn," Heero argued curtly.

"No, _you're_ being stubborn," I suddenly lost my temper, needing more than wanting for him to back off, "I get hematomas all the time and they aren't a big deal. It hurts, but there's really nothing that a doctor can do for me beyond draining it, and even that isn't necessary because they go away on their own just like any bruise. I don't want to go to the hospital and I'm not going to go when I know I'm fine just because you don't believe me!" I bit my tongue, worried that I was going to say something harsh that I really didn't mean and tiredly rubbed at my eyes with the heel of my hands, "Look, I'm sorry, but I'm tired. This has been an incredibly long and shitty week and it isn't even hump day yet. I don't have the energy to fight with you on this, I'm going to lose and I'm just too exhausted to care anymore, so please, can we not do this?"

He placed his hand on my back and lightly rubbed. Just that one touch soothed away some of the intense anxiety that I was feeling.

"I'm sorry," he apologized to me, "You're right, you don't need this right now. How about we just stop by the nurse's office to get a bandage on that and maybe some anti-inflammatory ointment? Or we can just go right home if you want to."

I felt so relieved that he was backing off that I could have hugged him again.

"The nurse sounds good," I said, "I want to get some of this blood off of me before we go anyway."

"It should be safe by now," he said, glancing at his watch, "I doubt they'll think to camp out the nurse's office and if they're there, the principal's office is just a few doors down. Here, let me fix your hair first."

I nodded and flashed him a small smile out of gratitude, knowing that my right arm probably wasn’t going to let me put my hair back up. He was very gentle as he gathered my hair, my scalp still aching from when Zechs had pulled my hair out and from tugging on it so much, and put it back into its proper braid. I let him help me to my feet by my left arm and still stumbled a little as my leg protested, but I steadied myself fairly easily. When Heero was sure that I wasn't going to keel over, he picked up the bat. I thought that he might take it with us for protection, but instead he tossed it into the nearby trash bin with a look of disgust. I thought about telling him what Zechs had done to me with that bat, but I couldn't. I couldn't even think about it myself without feeling revulsion and I couldn't bear having him know about it out of shame. It was bad enough that he knew about everything else, but that was too much for me to handle.

Heero's protectiveness hadn't abated at all and he was the first one out of the room, poking his head out to make sure that there was no one lurking out there before gesturing to me that it was alright. I let him do it, hoping that it made him feel a little bit better and ignoring the slight annoyance that I felt. The entire floor was completely empty since there no classes held up there during the last period, even if it hadn't been long enough after the bell had rang for everyone to leave. Still, I felt tense, waiting for someone to jump out of the shadows at us. I was sure that Heero felt the same way, so I was surprised when he suddenly glanced at me and smiled in this tender and endeared way as we walked down the steps to the next floor.

"You said that you loved something about me," he said boldly with this smitten look on his face.

"Huh?" I blinked at him, trying to remember when I had said that and it took me too long for it to come to me, given that it had just been minutes before, "O-oh, yeah," I blushed darkly, "I guess I did."

"You don't say it much," he pointed out, not in any accusing way, just stating a fact.

That only made me blush harder. I felt mortified, not because I had done some sappy, romantic thing, but that he was right. I tried to remember a time that I had told him that I loved him, not that I just liked him, but actually loved him, and couldn't think of any, which horrified me worse than anything else that had happened that day. It seemed like he was always telling me stuff like that, so how could I have never told him? What sort of asshole was I that I couldn’t have told him that?

"I told you how I feel," I murmured defensively.

"I know, you've just never used those words before," he said softly, confirming my fears.

I wanted to find a dark hole to crawl into, shame and self-loathing filling me. I was the worst boyfriend in existence. _This_ was exactly why I should never date, I thought. This was probably the most obvious thing in the world, telling your boyfriend that you loved him. Even an idiot would know to do that, and probably would be able to do that with ease. But I hadn't. Because _none of this_ comes easy to me. All of a sudden, I felt like a complete failure. Worse, like I was failing Heero. I felt incompetent, a pale copy to what he wanted me to be. I was sure that Relena had told him that she loved him all the time. I couldn't even measure up to her in this one, simple area! What the hell did he see in me? Why did he want to stay with me when literally anyone, even the girl that he can't stand, would be better than me?

"I-I'm so sorry," I stammered, trying to apologize, trying to let him know that it sure as hell wasn't because I didn't feel that way about him, but he cut me off with an amused chuckle.

"You don't need to apologize," he assured me, "It's just the way you are, you keep things close to your chest. I get that and it doesn't bother me. You show me that you care about me all the time. But hearing you say it like that... that you love me..." He looked away from me shyly, blushing a little himself, "it made me really happy."

My face felt red hot, like I was going to combust, and I made a mental vow to him that I would try to say it more. After everything that he had given me, everything that he does to make me happy, I could remember to do that much, couldn't I? It wasn't anything more than telling the truth, but Heero is right in that respect. It's just the way that I am. Hiding things from people, especially my true feelings, is in my nature and it isn't easy for me to be honest, because that's how you get hurt. But that wasn't what Heero deserved from me. If he could lay his heart out bear for me, why couldn't I do the same for him? Why was this so hard for me?

"Did you want my father to pick us up today?" Heero suddenly asked, changing subjects for one of our sake's, although I couldn't tell whose, "It would be safer than walking home."

"I'd rather you didn't," I confessed and rushed to explain when he looked bewildered, "I really don't want him to know about this, Heero, _any_ of it."

He sighed.

"He's going to know that something happened, especially when he sees you limping. I won't tell him if you don't want me to, but you know my dad. He's like a bloodhound with stuff like this," he pointed out.

"I know, but I just can't deal with him asking questions right now," I confessed without coming out and actually saying that I was having a hard time dealing with what had just happened to me, "Besides, I thought that we were going out to lunch?"

I was a bit amazed that I even remembered that between the sleep deprivation and the shit storm of an afternoon that I had had, but I was glad that I did. It was a good sign that I wasn't completely brain dead yet. Heero was shocked, too, his eyes widening.

"You still want to go?" He asked in surprise, "We don't have to, you know. Things got a bit... crazy. It might be better if we just crashed at home."

"I want to," I told him, trying to make myself sound as convincing as possible even if all I felt was worn down, "I think it would be a good idea. I need to get my head away from all of... _this._ I don't want to focus on Zechs and all of his bullshit and it would be nice."

I'm such a good liar that I disgust myself. Well... ok, it was only a half lie for once. I really didn't want to go out to eat. I wasn't in the mood and I had even less appetite than I had all day. But I really did need a distraction. More than anything else, I didn't want to let Heero down. Realizing that I had never told him that I loved him before had made me feel horribly self-conscious. It made me realize what a sucky boyfriend I was and that, if I wanted to not just keep Heero in my life, but make him happy, I had to do better. I had to stop being so selfish and self-absorbed and think about him, his wants and needs, to be the boyfriend that he wanted even if it didn't come natural to me, even if it was hard.

"Alright," he smiled and I was immediately glad that I had made this decision, that smile like a reward, "but I want to get your wounds cleaned up and get some ice on that swelling right away."

"Yes, doctor," I joked.

We were incredibly cautious as we got to the first floor of the school and sneaked to the main hallway where the principal's office, nurse's office, and other staff offices were. We were perhaps too paranoid, especially given that we didn't run into a single person, teacher or fellow student, the entire way there, but given what we had just gone through, I think that could be excused. I should have known, given how late it was that even most of the staff had gone for the day, but I wasn't all that dismayed when Heero went to open the nurse's office door and found it locked. I was actually a bit relieved. One last person for me to have to deal with.

"Dammit," he swore, "She's gone already?"

"Or out for a smoke," I mused, but the even though lights were still on inside, that was unlikely, "Not a lot of clubs meet on Tuesdays, so she probably just went home early."

He sighed heavily with frustration, but I was not so easily deterred. I dug into my backpack for the tools that I use to pick through locks; a bit of wire, the metal ink cartridge of a pen (empty, of course), and a discarded credit card depending on the door. Getting the door open was just as easy as the studio door. It was just a high school nurse's office, after all, not Fort Knox. There weren't even any drugs in there beyond ibuprofen and asthma medication. Heero shot me a disapproving look and I had to struggle again not to snap at him to leave off me, it wasn't like we were breaking into a fucking bank.

"Don't lecture me right now, alright?" I said and was relieved that my voice came out sounding more tired than irritated, "I can't handle it right now."

He easily backed off, probably out of respect and worry more than anything else. I closed the door and locked it behind us, just in case someone came along. I had gone to that office so many damned times that it was easy to find everything that I was looking for: sterile wet napkins, anti-inflammatory ointment, and a bandage for my arm.

"Take your jeans off," Heero ordered as he fished out an ice pack from the refrigerator while I put the supplies down on a table near one of the beds.

Those words echoed in my already frazzled head and I felt myself go as red as a strawberry. In my defense, I wasn't really thinking clearly to begin with, so all I could think about was what Heero wanted to do in this locked, empty room with just the two of us with a demand like that. That old fear rose up in me, my flight instincts kicking in and I felt both cagey and embarrassed at the same time.

"W-what?!" I stammered like an idiot, "No!"

"I'm not trying to ogle you," he said in amusement, which was infinitely better than him being insulted, "I want to take a look at your leg."

"Oh," I blinked at him owlishly and could have smacked myself for my own stupidity, but it did nothing to make me feel less shy, "T-that's alright, I can take care of it..."

He raised an eyebrow at me, clearly thinking that I was being ridiculous and he was right. We were both boys, even if we were dating, and my shirt was long enough to cover my crotch, he wouldn't even see my underwear. So why did I feel so body shy? Part of it was feeling inadequate, as pale and skinny as I was, but I just felt so off balance, not wanting to strip in front of him. Another part, if I am being entirely honest with myself, were my leftover feelings from the assault. I still felt dirty and wrong and I didn't want to be vulnerable in front of Heero. Not that I thought that he would try anything, I just didn't like feeling that way in front of him. I wanted to be strong and attractive, not weak and pathetic.

"Come on, I promise I'll be quick," he vowed.

I sighed and did as he asked because I knew that if I kept protesting, he would realize that this ran so much deeper in me than just not wanting him to see my bare chicken legs, that I kept thinking about my father pulling my pants down and Zechs forcing that bat into my mouth with repulsive lust on his face. I'm not completely oblivious to what my problems are, ok? I know the reason why I only like to wear baggy clothing now, when before I hadn't cared if my jeans or shirts were too tight. I know why I feel such fear when I have to get undressed to take a shower after gym, and it has nothing at all to do with the bullying. I know why my body disgusts me even more than it ever did before my father first sexually assaulted me. And I know why I felt so shy and vulnerable exposing myself to my boyfriend, but that doesn't mean that I could do anything about it.

I slid my jeans down my hips, careful to make sure that my shirt fell over my boxer briefs so Heero couldn't see them. Not that there is a single thing tantalizing about my body or my plain, black underwear, but it made me feel a tiny bit better. I winced as I tried to pull my jeans down past my thighs, the swollen lump that was my right upper thigh making it difficult and no matter what I did, the restricting fabric made it hurt like hell. But after a few tugs, I did manage to get them off, prissily folding them neatly and placing them on one of the beds, my face on fire as I tried very hard not to look at Heero. But when I did, his gaze was soft and soothing, so completely unlike my father's or even Trowa's, which helped a lot.

"Sit down," he gestured to the bed.

I obediently sat and he kneeled down in front of me so he could get a better look at my right leg. I closed my legs tightly, tugging my shirt down a little although I tried not to, the gesture so meek and childish. His blue eyes strayed the insides of my pale thighs and for a moment, he seemed enraptured with them for some reason, hell if I know why, and he began to blush as well before pulling his gaze away to where it was supposed to be. It's odd, if anyone else had done that, I would have felt sickened, but Heero staring at me like that, while I felt a twinge of fear and discomfort, it didn't make me panic. I felt embarrassed and inadequate again, but something else as well that I didn't really understand. It was a good feeling, which was pretty damned odd under the circumstances. Heero pushed the bottom of my shirt up to expose the wound on my thigh, but only enough so he could see it, no higher out of respect. That alone helped settle my nerves.

"This one doesn't look as bad as the one on your arm," he noted, very lightly touching the swollen lump on my leg.

It didn't, but only slightly. It was still a rather large lump the color of purple liver, an obvious hematoma, but it was mostly the placement of it that was causing me so much pain and not the severity of the injury unlike with my arm. The blow to my arm had been a punishment, the one to my leg had meant to hinder my movements.

"You have sweatpants at home, right?" He asked me as he took the cap off the ointment and began to spread it on the swollen area.

I shivered as I felt his fingers on my skin. My flesh felt so cold, his so warm and gentle. It made my skin tingle. It took me a moment's worth of thought to realize that when he said 'home' he meant _his_ home and not mine. I nodded. At that point, two-thirds of all of the clothes that I owned were in his house. They just kept... migrating there. Just like Heero had promised, he was quick in caring for my leg, which needed less attention than my bleeding arm.

"Here," he handed me the ice pack.

I pressed it to my thigh and hissed as the cold seeped into my skin, making the wound throb unpleasantly. Heero pulled my shirt back down, sharing a slight smile with me. He understood, I realized. Even if he didn't understand _why_ , he still understood that I was uncomfortable and was trying to make me feel better. Very few other people would even bother.

"Thank you," I murmured softly, "for saving me."

Heero looked up at me in surprise, then smiled tenderly.

"You don't need to thank me for that," he said in a whispery, soft tone, "not ever. I would have put them all in the hospital to make sure that you got out of there. I just wish that I had gone looking for you sooner."

He lifted up my shirt sleeve so he could get at the worse of the two hematomas. It was inevitable that he was going to cause me some pain, but he was still incredibly gentle as he cleaned the blood off of my arm, spread the ointment on it, and bandaged it. He even gave my split lip some attention, using the wet naps to clean the blood off of it and my face. His fingers stroked over the dark bruise on my face that Zechs had given me, but there wasn't anything he could do about it.

His fingers moved over the bandage on my arm, almost like he was checking to make sure that it would stay on, but his touch wasn't clinical, it was almost reverent, worshipping. He leaned in and kissed the bandage very lightly, but lovingly. I shivered again, my heart leaping in my chest and that cold feeling in my skin immediately went away. I was silent, wordless and breathless as he continued to kiss my arm, making a trail all the way down to my hand. It was like he thought that he could cure everything, my horror and my pain, with his kisses alone. Or maybe he was just trying to assure himself that I was alright, or perhaps he was just so relieved and this was his way to comfort the both of us.

He curled his hand around mine and brought my hand to his lips, kissing my knuckles softly. I watched him do it with amazement and when he looked up at me, his eyes full of love, I felt my heart stop. He raised himself up a little and, without saying a word, trailed his fingers over the unblemished side of my face. I closed my eyes, leaning into the touch, but when I opened them again and saw that he was leaning over to kiss me, I flinched away from him.

I don't know who looked more horrified, him or myself. I had never done that to him, been afraid of him and his kisses before. True, I had been unsure at the beginning of our relationship, nervous about intimacy, and I still was sometimes, but not like that. Never like that. Not with such... terror and hesitation. Because I wasn't thinking about him kissing me when I saw how close he was. I was thinking about Zechs brushing his fingers over my lips in such a mocking, perverse way. I was thinking about how he had forced that bat down my throat, all while looking at me like I was some dollar hooker that was doing some cheap trick in front of him. I was thinking about how he had wanted to do the same thing with his cock.

To my credit, I hadn't thought about Heero like that. They were nothing alike, him and that... that scumbag. He would never be capable of doing or even thinking of something like that, to me or to anyone. It was the opposite. I wasn't scared of him, I was scared of myself. I didn't want those lips touching mine, the same lips that Zechs had touched, the same ones that he had violated. I didn't want Heero to become tainted because of me. It was that feeling that filled with me horror and revulsion. But the horror on Heero's face, him thinking that I was scared of his gesture, of _him_ made me hate myself so much... I can't even put how much to mere words. I had hurt him so badly with that one flinch, like slapping a child for a hug, and there was nothing that I could do to take it back.

"I'm sorry!" I cried out, horrified at myself and clapping my hands over the mouth that had created all of these problems. Tears erupted from my eyes, trailing down my bruised face as I sobbed, "I'm sorry! I'm so, so sorry-" I chanted.

"Duo, it's alright. Ssssh," he tried to soothe me when I should have been the one comforting him.

I squeezed my eyes shut, feeling my tears fill them over and over again and shook my head violently. I suddenly felt freezing cold, like I was submerged in ice, like I would never be warm ever again. Zechs hadn't just assaulted me, I realized, he had taken something precious and beautiful away from me. Was this how it was going to be from now on? Would every time Heero tried to kiss me be a moment of terror? Would I never feel that love and passion again? Did Heero even _want_ to kiss me anymore?

I opened my eyes in shock as I felt my boyfriend lightly stroke his fingers over my cheek again. It was such a tender, gentle touch, not one that I had been expecting from him after I had rebuked his advances like that. When I looked at him, there was no disgust for me, no anger when there should have been. There was just love, a little bit of hurt, but mostly desperate concern for me.

"Will you let me make it better?" He asked kindly.

I almost began to sob again. He understood. How could he possibly understand? But he did. I could see it in his gaze. He knew that I hated myself for my reaction, that I had been unable to stop it. He knew how much I was hurting, how desperately I wanted our closeness back, to erase everything that Zechs had done. Somehow, he knew all those things.

"Why?" I choked out, "Why do you want to kiss me after... after you saw what he almost did to me?! Aren't you disgusted?!"

He cupped my other cheek with his other hand, using his thumbs to wipe away my tears, although it was pretty fruitless at that point. They were coming down like a damned river.

"Because I love you," he said so simply that it only made me cry harder, "Because just because someone does something repulsive and disgusting to you, it doesn't make _you_ disgusting. Even if he had done it," his eyes clouded over, obviously greatly troubled by the thought, "I would still want to kiss you. No matter what happens, I always will."

I couldn't believe him. No one loved that blindly. No one could see past what he could. He had every right to be repulsed by me, didn't he? That's what my heart was saying, but I couldn't deny his words or his touch or the truth of how much he loved me. The why was a different matter, but it's hard to deny something that is literally staring you in the face. There was a part of me that wanted to cruelly call his bluff, accuse him of being full of shit and telling him about letting Trowa fuck me on the cold, dirty floor of a garage, about letting my father fuck me and never trying to stop him. Would he love me then? Would he still claim to not be disgusted? But I could never do that. Even if I thought that he was naïve and blind, I liked those parts of him too much to challenge them. I loved him too much to lose his respect and his love, even if it was over the truth. Even if I had to lie to him.

He leaned again, always trying, always willing to stick his hand in the fire with me a second time. Only this time, that thing, whatever it had been, that had reared its ugly head and caused me to have such a severe reaction was gone, or at least dormant. He pressed his lips against mine and I cried, fresh tears pouring down my face in utter relief and wonder and love for him. The kiss was chaste and gentle, but no less incredible. I think it was that kiss, more than anything else, that allowed me to separate myself from the violence that had happened to me that afternoon. Heero had asked me for my permission to make it better, and that's exactly what he did. Not all the way, not even close, but enough for me to live with it and keep going on. Enough to make it seem smaller somehow, lessen its grip around my heart. I had never thought that such a small thing like a single kiss could have that kind of power in my life.

Heero rested his forehead against mine for a moment.

"Better?" He asked me softly and I nodded, unable to put my feelings or my gratitude into words just yet.

 He moved away, looking relieved, and pressed some tissues into my hand. He let me have a minute to myself to clean up my face as he erased any signs that we had been there, rifling through medical supplies so I could put myself back together. It wasn't easy. I felt shaken, not just by the assault, but by him. His faith in me. His patience and his kindness. I kept trying to find the strings, find what he wanted from me in return, but he always seemed to pull the rug out from under my feet. He never seemed to have any ulterior motives, only genuine care for me and I didn't know how to respond to that.

Again, I felt incredibly inadequate around him. This all seemed so easy, so natural with him when it was everything but to me. How could I compare to him? How could I make him feel the way that he makes me feel? What could he possibly see in me when all I saw was failure, a ghost of a person? How long before he realized that this is all I can be, that just being in a relationship is such a tiresome struggle and I will never be able to give him what he needs?

"Ready?" He suddenly asked me, pulling me out of my troubling, dark thoughts.

I nodded, tossing the tissues that I had used to clean my tears and rose to follow him out the door, then paused, feeling like I was forgetting something big. Trying to get my brain to remember some tiny detail right then was like trying to find a grain of sand in a pile of rice while wearing lard smeared glasses. It took too long to actually figure out what was bothering me and when I did, not only did my head hurt, but I felt incredibly stupid for not thinking of it.

"Wait, my book bag!" I exclaimed, "I left it in the classroom! And I have a bunch of my text books in my locker, I need them for my homework."

I half expected him to sigh in exasperation and point out to me how dangerous it was to go wandering around the halls as late as it was, with most of the teachers gone or in their offices, and right after I had told him that we needed to be more careful. But he just said,

"Alright, we'll make it quick," and that was that.

He rummaged through the nurse's cabinet one more time and brought out two little bottles, handing one to me. I looked down at the label on it and saw that it was antiseptic spray.

"Just in case," he said with a small smile.

I shrugged and stuck it in my pocket. It wasn't mace, but it would still sting like motherfucking hell if I got someone in the eyes with it. Even with the impromptu weapon, I didn't feel good about doing this. I just wanted to leave. This was foolish and I was dragging Heero along with me. If we ran into any trouble and he got hurt, it would be entirely my fault. All for some stupid homework assignments. I didn't even know if my bag was still in the classroom. It wouldn't be the first time that Relena had thrown out my stuff. I almost took it back, told Heero to forget about it, but he was already making his way to the door, his face set with determination. I knew that look. He was on a mission and nothing was going to stop him. If I told him about my concerns, he would just say that we would be careful or he would try to flag down a teacher to escort us, but he wasn't going to leave without my stuff.

Just before we left, I reached out and grabbed his hand. He looked back at me in surprise. I didn't often take the initiative in anything that we did as a couple and that realization made me feel worse. He shouldn't have to be surprised just because I wanted to hold his hand. He shouldn't be shocked by hearing me say that I love him. I had to do better than that. Somehow, I needed to change. I needed to be someone else, someone who could give him what he wanted, even if it was all a lie.

We were indeed quick in getting to the classroom. Actually, with no one around to yell at us, we ran. Or rather hobbled really quickly in my case. Putting my jeans back on had hurt my leg even worse, the material pressing down on the swollen flesh and I couldn’t have run if I had wanted to. Heero kept his own pace slow so I could keep up with him, but it took too long in my mind to get to the classroom. Then suddenly, we were there, standing in front of that open door.

Memories from only hours before flashed in my head. Being dragged in there, thrown like a sack of potatoes, everything that had followed... I was completely unprepared for my body's reaction to those memories, to where we were. My stomach dropped to my damned knees and I felt like I was going to be sick. Just from standing outside of the room. I didn't want to go in, I realized. My heart hammered in my chest and I didn't want to go in there. There was something terrible in there and I needed to get away from it right _now_.

I freaking jumped out of my skin when I felt Heero's hand close around mine, but I didn't pull away from him. I realized right then that my hands were shaking hard.

"You don't have to go in," Heero soothed, "I can look for it myself."

I shook my head violently. For all I knew, they could be lying in wait in there. I would never forgive myself if he left my side for a second and got attacked. Not that my presence could protect him, but if he was going to be hurt, then I was going to be hurt, too. I wasn't going to let a little bit of fear keep me from backing him up. If I could deal with returning home after my father's assault, then I could learn to deal with this, too.

'It's just for now,' I told myself harshly, scolding myself for my fright, 'I don't even have any classes in this room, so just fucking get it over with!'

"N-no," I stammered, "We'll do it together."

He gave me this strange look just then. It was warm and endearing, but something else as well. I could have sworn that it was pride, but there's no way that that's right. It had to have just been my wishful thinking that he didn't think I was being childish.

He didn't let go of my hand, walking forward and taking the lead as I walked carefully and fearfully behind him. I felt my muscles tense as we walked inside, my nerves screaming that something terrible was going to happen. There was some monster in there and it was going to get us. That place was _bad_ , just like how the train station was bad and my bedroom was bad and the place where Trowa worked was bad.

I was actually shocked when we walked into the classroom and found it empty. I had been so sure, absolutely _positive_ that one of them, maybe even Zechs himself, was going to be in there, waiting for us. But there was no one. The room looked entirely too neat and normal considering the chaos that had gone on there. There were a couple of red drops on the floor that could have been from anything, an exploded pen or even some ketchup, but I knew that it was blood. I just didn't know who it had belonged to, me or Zechs.

I actually found my bag pretty easily and despite my self-assurances that the bag didn't matter, I felt intense relief when I saw it. When Zechs had pushed me into the desk, it had gone flying under the desk in the far corner of the room and if anyone had seen where it had gone, no one had so much as touched it. I grabbed it and we quickly left, as fast as we could. Although Heero had been my pillar of strength going into that room, when we had actually entered, he had looked just as uneasy as me. He had gone pale and had looked like he was going to be sick. I guess I wasn't the only one with bad memories of this place. I should have felt bad about that, but it made me feel better about my own fearful reaction.

We were even faster getting to my locker, grabbing my and Heero's books from his own, and then heading towards the exit. We left the school unaccosted, shockingly and headed out onto Main Street to find a place to eat. It was probably a good thing that we had decided to go out anyway. If anyone had been waiting for us on our way home, they would probably give up after waiting so long. If Zechs wanted more than that pound of flesh he had already gotten from me, he would have to wait another day to get it. As we walked, for the first time, I thought about missing my last couple of classes that day, but found that I really didn't care that I was going to be behind. It was rather easy putting it into a 'I'll deal with it later' mindset given everything else that had happened.

We ended up not going to Charlie's because it was getting late and we didn't want to spoil our appetites for dinner. Instead we went to this little, Italian bistro on Main Street called Ami Cizia, so named after the owner's daughter, Ami T. Cillia (2). I had explained the word play to Quatre once and even my usually diplomatic best friend had rolled his eyes at that. Heero called his mother who was just getting home herself telling her that we had gone out so she wouldn't get worried. The snow had stopped at some point during school and only a little bit had built up, but it was still really chilly. I was sure that the warmth in the bistro was very pleasant, but the cold hadn't really bothered me. I could feel it and I knew that it was there, but I didn't feel cold. That should have bothered me, that I was already entering the stage of sleep deprivation where I was becoming desensitized, but I had so much else that I was worrying about that my lack of sleep wasn't even on the list anymore. It was too typical for me, practically a comfort compared to the new shit in my head.

We sat down together at a table by the window and were almost immediately handed menus by one of only two waitresses. The place was tiny, but the food was great and the place was usually packed. We had gotten lucky and there were only a couple other tables filled. As I looked around, I caught the eye of a couple at another table. They were our age and obviously classmates of ours. I actually realized that from the way that they were looking at us more than their age or even any kind of familiarity with them. The girl looked repulsed by our presence, but was trying to hide it, her boyfriend didn't even bother, just openly glaring at us like we had a lot of gall eating in the same place as them.

I nearly suggested that we leave, suddenly not feeling so welcome. It wasn't even the threat of them starting something, I just didn't like the way that they were looking at us, how we were being noticed. It felt wrong, like a splinter in my back and I felt like there was no way I was going to be able to enjoy this 'date' with their stares. It struck me then that this would be our first date _in_ Nausten and that I really needed to get used to this if Heero planned to take us out anywhere else in town. I really didn't think they were going to make any trouble for us, though. They were halfway through their own meal and although they kept glancing over at us, they seemed more interested in ignoring our existence than wanting to erase it. I didn't recognize either of them, which was actually a good thing. It meant that they didn't belong to either Zechs or Relena's circle of friends, especially not the group that had cornered me that afternoon.

"What's..." Heero asked me as he squinted at the menu, clearly oblivious that we were in hostile, or at least unfriendly, territory, "…'maccu'?"

"It's a soup," I informed him, for some reason able to come up with information about food a lot more easily than most other things that day, "You won't like it. It has dried fava beans and fennel in it."

He made a disgusted face, almost getting a chuckle out of me. Heero isn't a picky eater at all, although he is a bit pickier than I am, though that's like comparing a dog to a rat, but he really hates beans and I don't think he would like fennel very much. His expression suddenly became surprised, although if it was because I remembered that he doesn't like beans or that I actually knew what maccu is, I’m not sure. Just as quickly, that expression melted into one of warmth and affection. He leaned his head in his hand, resting his elbow on the table, and regarded me like he was studying me, trying to figure me out.

My stomach clenched and I looked down at the menu, pretending that I was reading it and not that I was avoiding that gaze. I suddenly felt very nervous, my skin prickling. Those blue eyes, so intense and focused on me, reminded me of the way that my father would stare at me sometimes, either right before a fuck or right after. It set my nerves on edge, primed my flight responses.

'Stop it!' I hissed at myself in my head, 'This is _Heero_ , not Dad! This is how couples are supposed to look at each other, you asshole!'

If I could have done it without gaining Heero's attention, I would have dug my nails into my arm and ripped some of my skin off in punishment. What the fuck was wrong with me? If anyone else had been looked at like that by Heero, they would have been flattered, not nervous. That feeling of inadequacy came over me again, more powerfully than ever before. I was half a person, trying to act like I was normal. I didn't know who was more foolish, Heero for wanting someone like me, or me for thinking that I could ever be what he needed, what he wanted.

"What do you think I would like?" Heero asked me, drawing me out of my bitter thoughts.

'How the hell should I know?' I almost snapped at him, 'Why are you even asking me that, like I know that much about you? Like I'm the sort of boyfriend that _could_ know anything about you like your favorite color or favorite movie or favorite foods?! I'm so inept, anything that I do get right is just a fluke!'

Relena would know, I thought. She would know what his favorite everything was. It was a real tragedy that she had been born a girl. If she had been a boy, would they still be together? Would he be willing to put up with her being a bully and a bitch if she were guy? Was the only reason why I had ever had a chance with him because of what was between my legs, something that I didn't even have the courage to ever let him see, let alone touch?

Despite my thoughts, I looked down at the menu, a part of me hoping that I would choose the right thing, like this was some kind of fucking test, and the other hoping that I chose something so wrong that Heero wouldn't even consider trusting my judgment, because in that moment, I was so positive that whatever I chose, he would hate.

"Hmm," I quickly scanned through the soup section, "If you want soup, you would probably like buridda. There are no beans in it. It's basically a seafood stew and has a bunch of different kinds of fish in it as well as mussels, plus tomato, garlic, and onion," all things that I knew that he liked, especially seafood, "For bread you want something really simple like ciabatta or michetta."

His smile only grew as I spoke.

"You're amazing, you know that?" He mused, making me blink like a stupid bird at him.

"What are you talking about?" I asked tiredly, not taking him the least bit seriously.

"I mean it. Between the stuff I see you whip up at home and know what all these dishes are, you should be a chef," he told me.

I flushed darkly.

"I'm nothing special," I muttered, completely flustered and embarrassed by his praise, as blind and ignorant as it was, "I just read a lot of recipes. Memorizing dishes doesn't make someone a good cook."

"No, but I think you would be a great one if you went to school for it," he insisted, "It's something that you seem pretty passionate about when you're cooking or baking things."

Our waitress came to take our orders before I could tell Heero how ridiculous he was being, that he was blinded by his feelings for me, thinking that I was anything in the way of talented. My heart burned with bitterness and perhaps a bit of grief at his suggestion that I go to a cooking school. He was right about one thing: I like cooking. I like experimenting with food, creating something out of nothing, something that everyone can enjoy. I can admit that it makes me feel satisfied when people like what I've made, knowing that, even if it's just in a good meal, I've made them happy. I suppose it also comes with what I mentioned before, my issues with food itself, skipping meals and being denied food either through one of my father's tantrums or a lack of money. I guess it's like my obsession with cleanliness in that regard. When something becomes a necessary, the luxury of it, using it as a comfort or an art form becomes a bit fascinating.

Maybe, in some other life, I could have gone to school for it. If I had had the money and the skill... but I lack both of those things. I know enough about culinary schools from the cooking shows that I watch to know that they're expensive, even as colleges go. It's like my writing or running track. Sure, I'm good at those things, but I'm not _great_ at them. Like I told Heero, I'm nothing special. What school is going to want me, just because I can throw some sandwiches together or make macaroni and cheese from scratch? 'Good enough' and 'passing' sum up my best attributes to a T. But that's all I am and all I'll ever be, I know that. There's no point even telling myself that I might be something more, I'd just be wasting my time and everyone else's. I'm just happy that I can cook for myself and not be like my father, having to rely on someone else or take out. That's enough, especially since I plan to live on my own pretty soon.

To my shock, Heero ordered exactly what I had suggested that he would like. In my head, I called him a fool for trusting my judgment of him, just like his thinking that I could be a chef. But that was his money, his loss. Maybe it would teach him to not put so much faith in me in the future. I decided that soup sounded damned good on a cold day like that and ordered zuppa toscana (3) with a chai. We put in an order of michetta for us to share. Our waitress bustled off and we fell into a thick silence. I suddenly felt very awkward, trying to find things to talk about and failing, all of my previous fears about my inadequacy in this dating thing coming back with a vengeance.

'Relena would know what to say,' I berated myself, 'Even if it was something uninteresting, she could at least find _something_ to talk about. The weather, a movie, a dress that she liked to buy, anything! So why can't you think of a damned thing to talk about? Why do you suck so much at this?!'

I felt so scared and small sitting there, not knowing what to do or say. It always seemed so easy for Heero. Even on our first date, he had carried the conversation with such ease, making it look natural. But when it became my turn, I floundered and stayed silent. I didn't know the niceties, the little things that two people were supposed to talk about and do on dates, all those romantic gestures. I was an awkward toad, trying to be something graceful, but no matter what sappy greeting card mentalities people like to spew out, you can't change who you are. It wasn't just that I had a lack of knowledge on the subject, I had that lack because of my personality. Even if I researched until my eyes bled, I still would falter. I would still have these awkward moments when I was sure that I was fucking things up, that I wasn't good enough, that anything that did come out of my mouth was going to sound trite, so I might as well not say a damned thing at all.

It wasn't long before Heero picked up the conversation again, trying to get me engaged into talking about a variety of subjects; the spring dance, our homework assignments, if I thought Pepper and Kanuck were getting along when we weren't around. It was all for naught. I couldn't focus on the conversation, couldn't find the words in my head to respond to him. Anyone else would have just given up and pissily stalked off, I was sure, thinking that I was bored or ignoring them. He did look troubled, and I hated myself for that. I wanted to tell him that it wasn't him, it was me. I was having trouble and he was, as always, wonderful. He was the perfect boyfriend, never letting us sit and brood for a moment and I was trying... but it was just too hard. But even those words wouldn’t come. It was like there was a block in me, this solid, brick wall between my brain and my mouth. But Heero never gave up, continuing the dialogue even if I couldn't contribute. That was him, essentially. Never giving up when all logic, all common sense, had to be telling him to.

It was happening again, I realized with complete horror. I was doing it _again_. For all my insistences that Heero isn't Trowa, once again, _I_ was the one fucking things up. _I_ was the one making the same mistakes over and over again. Our relationship hadn't just failed because of him. Far from it. Most of our problems had been because of me. But it wasn't just because of my sexual issues, or even that I hadn't been the person that he had really wanted. Everything else had been just as wrong because of me. We had never connected, even in just our communication. I had kept everything bottled up inside and when we had been together, just like things were with Heero now, I never carried our conversations. I had always been quiet, repressed, _boring_.

I had never thought that I would have these same problems with Heero. How could I? I loved him. I wanted to be with him. It had to be easier with him, didn't it? But it wasn't. It was harder. Because not only were things still awkward, I felt this intense pressure for them not to be. Every time I failed in a stage of the relationship, I felt panic and self-disgust, so desperate to do things right way this time around. But I wasn't. And I could never forgive myself for that. If we ended things because I was making the same mistakes... I couldn't live with that.

Maybe this relationship is doomed to fail. Maybe I can never make it work. I mean, after all, what the fuck do I know about love? About long lasting relationships? I've never seen a successful, full term relationship in my life. Just look at my parents. For the longest time, all I knew about two people being together came from them. As a child, they were my sole point of reference in real life, beyond what I saw on my father's television set. Here were two people that had been in love at one point, or at least in enough lust that they could fool themselves that it had been love. They had done everything that society says they should do. They had dated, had a child, gotten married, moved in together. And it had all fallen apart in... what? A couple years? Less than that? Just how long had it taken for my mother to realize just how much she hated my father?

How can I believe in a long term relationship when every, single day, I see the violence that my parents do to each other? Hear the screaming, the swearing, the callous insults? See the hate and loathing on their faces because they have been forced together? I don't know what real love looks like, what it's supposed to be like. For the first sixteen years of my life, all I could see was failure. My parents, Quatre and Trowa, Trowa and myself, Relena and Heero... It wasn't even until I had met Heero's parents that I knew that marriages weren't complete bullshit. But what did they have... what did they do that made them different from my parents? Was it their love for each other? Did they have some way of coping, to keep that love alive instead of letting it die out like everyone else?

What was the secret? What could I do to make sure that Heero and I could stay together? Or were we like all those other couples? Were we destined to fall apart no matter what I did, how I tried to change? Or was it worse? Were we destined to be like my parents or Trowa and myself and stay together, long after we should call it quits? When we started to hate each other. When I thought about my habits, how horrible I was at loving Heero, it seemed inevitable, the ending to it all. Just that day, he had been so shocked to hear me say that I loved something about him.

He had even been surprised when I had held his hand. I didn't blame him. As I sat there, eating my soup and bread, feeling relieved to have something to focus on so my silence didn't seem so strange, I thought through our short relationship, trying to remember every time either one of us had made a romantic gesture, either through words or actions. What I came to realize horrified me. Heero has initiated everything. With the exception of that day, Heero has been the one propelling our relationship forward. Every kiss, every date, every hug, even the time that we had shared a bed, they were all because of him. I hadn't done _anything_. Fuck, I hadn't even kissed him! I had never had a single moment when I had tried to kiss him or do something for him!

It was exactly like with Trowa, all over again. He had been the one to initiate everything back then, too, every touch, every date... What the hell is wrong with me that, not only can I not take a chance, to show my feelings, to reach out and be intimate, but I don't even realize I'm doing it? This should be simple. Being with another person should be the most natural thing for a human being. So why is it this difficult for me? Why do I always fumble like this? Why do I feel like an alien creature, flinching away from mere touch, mere connection? Have I lived alone for so long that this is the only way that I can live anymore? Anxiety filled me, ripping my insides to shreds. If I had realized these things, then Heero was sure as hell going to realize them. He was the one who was great at interpersonal relationships, the insightful one. He was going to see this. He was going to wonder why he was the only one making any effort in this relationship.

'If he hasn't already,' I thought in fear, remembering his surprise that day and the silent looks of worry he had given me throughout that meal, no doubt realizing how silent and distant I was being.

We ate quickly, neither of us attempting to pick up any vein of conversation again. We had ordered from the lunch menu, so the bowls of soup were small enough that we would both be hungry again in time for dinner. Heero paid, as he always did, and I felt another guilty pang. We would never be equals in this relationship, I realized. I couldn’t even take him out for a date because I can't afford it. Heero would always be forced to pay for everything because I never have any money. We couldn't even meet each other halfway. I have as little money as I have social graces and in both areas, I would always be using Heero as a crutch to hobble along with, weighing him down. He should be with someone that could take care of him, not the other way around, someone who could be his partner, not a dead weight. If I was supremely lucky, he would just get bored with me instead of loathing me.

We took the bus to Heero's house and managed to get there safely. Considering how shitty my day was going, that was something of a miracle. Of course, it was almost four by then. Zechs had to have given up on ambushing us by that point, right? If he had even tried to set up an ambush at all. He had to realize that we weren't going to make ourselves vulnerable after what he had tried to do. He would probably just wait until we would let our guards down before striking again. While that was unlikely to happen, Heero and I wouldn't be safe forever. Even if Heero's father drove us to and from school every day, even if we always took the bus and never walked the streets home again, even if we were careful in every respect, he would find another moment, it was inevitable. There were the gym showers or during our team events, moments between classes or during our runs. Sooner or later, it was going to happen again, I knew that.

I might have talked a big game with Heero about taking steps to be more careful, but in reality, I was at a loss for what to do. I could say that we would be safe if we hung out around teachers, but that really wasn't the truth. Zechs might not be willing to do anything in front of an adult, but that was just my assumption. He also didn't have any respect for authority and didn't really seem to give a shit about anything. Who was to say that he wouldn't try something in front of a teacher? And if he did, I could think of a few of my own teachers who would turn a blind eye to it, or even cheer him on. Principal Stoan and maybe, _maybe_ my home economics teacher wouldn't stand for it, but that didn't mean that they were going to be successful in stopping him.

Aside from running away from Nausten, or carrying a gun around, I just didn't see how I could possibly make either Heero or myself safe from Zechs. That thought alone terrified me. I had survived his assault through Heero alone, and there was nothing that I could do about what he had done. I had never felt so helpless since the first time that my father had forced himself on me, so weak, so much like a child. I felt like a boat on the waves of a hurricane, riding them out as best I could but knowing that I was at the mercy of a force of nature that held no sympathy or even pity for me.

As we walked from the bus stop to Heero's home, for the first time in a very long time, certainly the first time since I had been in elementary school, I thought about getting help. I thought about telling someone about Zechs. I hadn't been bullshitting Heero about all of my reasons not to do something like that. I knew that it was foolish, that it was likely to get me killed. Even if I got Zechs into trouble, even if he went to jail, which I knew that he wouldn't because he hadn't actually done anything and what he had done, I had no real proof of, his friends were likely to go after me for it. And Heero as well. It was a hopeless situation.

But that didn't do anything to stop me from remembering those moments in that classroom, how terrified and ashamed I had felt, how vulnerable in his hands. Heero was right, Zechs had crossed the line. He wasn't just some schoolyard bully, beating me up for my lunch money. He was a predator, a textbook sociopath, and, whether it was only his intention and he hadn't actually done it yet, a rapist. He was a monster pretending to be one of us, just another classmate. Could I really do nothing about this? Should I just turn a blind eye to it like everyone else? How much was I willing to tolerate before I finally pointed the finger at him? Did he have to rape me? Rape Heero? Kill one of us?

I knew that I had to do something, something that was more than just playing defense, but I couldn't figure out what that was. Telling a teacher was far too risky. There was too much of a chance that they wouldn't just laugh me off, that they might try to do something about it and Zechs would learn who had ratted him out. I think, if it had just been me at risk, I could have taken it. But that's the thing, the irony of the situation. If I had only been worrying about me, I wouldn't feel so strongly that I need to stop Zechs. But because I'm worried that Heero will get hurt if I _do_ try to stop him, I can't do a damned thing.

Well, there _was_ something that I could do. Something that I couldn't even suggest to Heero because it was so extreme, so completely ridiculous that I couldn't even call the possibility a part of reality. But it was there, in the back of my head. The daydream that I had had and kept secret since Quatre's death. The thing that I imagined in my darker moments, but had never considered doing seriously until that day. Because I wasn't completely helpless, see. I had a tool. This handy, little thing tucked away in my father's bedside table drawer.

How many times had I fantasized taking that gun out, bringing it to school, and shooting Zechs and his cunt of a sister right in the head? How many times had I wondered if things might be better, for me, for Quatre's memory, for all the other kids that they picked on, if they would just die? It wasn't like I had any future, anything to live for. Didn't Quatre deserve justice? After everything that Relena and Zechs have done, did they really deserve to live, to walk around like regular people?

But in the end, I have always discarded those thoughts for a number of reasons. The first being that, for all of the violence and hatred in my heart, I can't really imagine myself doing that. That alone keeps me sane. I might have hit them, I might be a brute like my father, but killing someone? Actually taking someone's life, as hateful as they are? I couldn't imagine doing that. I had come close to killing my father, but that was different. I had been depressed, half mad, and in the throes of one of those strange nightmares. Horror had had its claws in me, and my rage had taken control of me. But this... if I did something like that to my bullies, it couldn't be anything but pre-meditated.

But I had to be honest with myself here. A fantasy is different from reality. How close I had come to killing my father was very different than killing Zechs. I could say that I would be doing it for other people, but that would be a lie. It wasn't the other kids at that school that I thought of when I fantasized blowing Zechs's brains out. And I couldn't say that it was to give Quatre justice, either. Killing that prick wouldn't erase my best friend's suicide, and it sure as hell wouldn't have made Quatre happy, either. He would have been disgusted at my actions, horrified, and he would be right to. It wouldn't be justice, it would be revenge, mine and mine alone, not Quatre's.

And how could I say that Zechs and his sister didn’t deserve to live? Sure, they were monsters and had caused more pain and misery than I would ever know. They had caused someone to take their own life. They were not good people, or even decent people. But who was I to pass judgment on them? I'm not a decent person, either. There I was, contemplating offing someone, how indecent can you get? Thinking that it would be alright for me to kill Zechs because he deserved it was so arrogant, I repulsed myself. It just felt like a justification, something to make it easier.

I didn't need a justification. If I could do something like that... it wouldn't be because I thought that Zechs deserved it, that he didn't deserve his life when Quatre had lost his. My need for revenge didn't matter. Knowing what Zechs was, that he wasn't just some troubled kid taking out his aggression to feel better about himself but the kind of person that would bash a dog's head in with a hammer or light a handicapped person on fire was irrelevant. This wasn't about what Zechs had already done. This was about what he was going to do, and who he was going to do it to. I wasn't so sure if I would be able to shoot him to protect myself. It's a question that's haunted me for months, what I would have done on the day that my father had first raped me had I kept that knife, or had my father's gun in hand. Would I have shot him to make him stop? Could I make Zechs stop? But if it was Heero... if Heero was the one that Zechs went after, could I...

"Hello, boys!" Mariela greeted us as we walked through the door, interrupting my fucked up train of thought.

"H-hi, Mrs. Yuy," I mumbled, feeling myself blush a little for some stupid reason.

I suddenly felt terribly ashamed of myself as I saw her face, always with that beaming smile of hers. Just her sunny demeanor made me feel like reality was crashing in on me, as though she had dumped a bucket of ice water on me while I had been dreaming. What the fuck had I just been thinking about? Killing Zechs just because I thought I had no other options? Actually sneaking my father's gun into school and popping him in the head? If Heero's mother or even Heero himself could have read my mind, they would have been horrified. They would never want anything to do with me again and I wouldn't blame them. What was wrong with me? Was it just the sleep deprivation or was it something else? Was I going absolutely crazy to even be thinking these terrible things?

Mariela frowned and approached me. I took a hesitant step back for a second, terror filling me as I psychotically thought that she _could_ read my mind and had somehow figured out what I had been thinking. She would demand that I get out of her house, never see her son again, and that she was going to call the cops...

 I stood there, frozen in place as she stopped in front of me and reached out, very lightly touching my bruised cheek.

"Oh, Duo, you're hurt," she said mournfully, her dark eyes taking in my bruises and split lip, "and you look worse than you did this morning, you're paler. Was it those boys again? The same ones that attacked Heero?"

It had been concern that I had seen on her face, I realized stupidly, not reproach. She had just been reacting to my new wounds, nothing else, certainly not my homicidal considerations. Not my rage or any other twisted, ugly emotion in my heart that was making me feel like an animal, a monster, less than human.

"You're fishing, Mother," Heero complained, hanging up his coat behind me.

"I wouldn't have to fish if you two would come clean about the brutes that keep doing this to you," she glared at her son, before looking back to me, that hard, nagging look melting back into one of worry, "Does it hurt?"

"Only a little," I confessed, hoping that she wasn't going to grill me on what had happened because I just didn't have the energy to put my shields up and come up with some line of bullshit.

I shouldn't have worried. Heero was prepared to do all of the bullshitting for once.

"He just got roughed up a little. They hit him in the arm and leg, too, but he just needs some ice and he'll be fine," Heero assured her, which was close to the truth, although he cleverly didn't say what I had been hit with or how hard.

"Oh, sweetie," his mother said in a tone that I can only call heartbroken, obviously not believing for a second that my injuries were minor, or rather Heero's mom is the sort of person that treats every scrape like a trauma if it was put there with intent or not. She ran her hand lightly down my cheek and tucked an errant strand of hair behind my ear in a very motherly gesture, "I'll go get you an ice pack, then."

She bustled off to the kitchen, leaving me to hang up my jacket and scarf in the closet and kick off my shoes by the door. I struggled getting my jacket off, my tiredness suddenly hitting me like a steamroller and I found my fingers fumbling like a bunch of drunks whenever I encountered a button or a sleeve. Heero grabbed at my jacket, helping it off of me without a single word of mocking and even bent down to untie my shoelaces for me. My face flamed bright red at that, feeling like a child, but he didn't so much as smirk at me, going at his task with a great deal of seriousness, which helped my wounded pride a lot as I realized that he wasn't doing it with any kind of exasperation or because he thought I was incapable. He was just trying to be helpful and nice. By the time that I had gotten my excess clothing off, Mariela had returned and placed an ice pack in my hand.

"I just started dinner and it won't be ready for another three hours. Now, I want the two of you to hit the books right away and get your homework done early so Duo can get to bed and get a full night's sleep, alright?" She demanded a bit sternly.

"Yes, Ma'am," we echoed.

"And Duo, there is some ibuprofen upstairs if you need any," she told me.

"Thank you," I said and decided to take her up on that offer.

My leg was doing a lot better since we had left the bistro. I was still limping slightly, but it was barely noticeable at that point and I was sure that as soon as I got into looser pants, I would barely notice it myself. My arm was giving me the most trouble of my injuries, the blow having been harder there and the swelling was more pronounced. It was this solid, aching, hot pain and every time I so much as slightly moved my arm, it felt a hundred times worse.

Dismissed, we migrated upstairs. I took a couple of pills, changed my clothes, and took care of my cat. After the long, terrible day that I had had, a day that I was still having a hard time believing that I had survived, it was good to see her. She meowed at me and rubbed up against my legs and I nearly started crying again. I spent a few minutes playing with her, trying desperately to forget about everything but her, at least for a little while. When I was done, I carried her into Heero's bedroom so I could start my homework, knowing that she would just follow me in there anyway.

I wasn't so sure that I would be welcome in Heero's room after the way that I had behaved on our date, but even though I knew he had noticed my strange, distant behavior, he didn't seem put out by it and made no comment at all when I sat on his bed with my cat. She wasn't any kind of nuisance to either of us, laying down next to me and leaning her head against my leg, but that was all. Heero even stopped what he was working on to ask me how my arm felt, which was shitty, although the ice pack was helping a little.

An hour later, he asked for my help on his English assignment, sitting next to me on the bed as I showed him a few passages of the text that he was reading to use and explained why they were important. While I talked and flipped through the book, Heero edged closer to look at what I was pointing at until his leg pressed against mine. It could have been totally innocent, but I knew that it wasn't, that he had done it on purpose. That he didn't remove it until he had finished that assignment was proof of that. It should have made me feel anxious, knowing that he was initiating things again while I had only worried that he was upset with me, not even confronting him about my behavior or trying to apologize. However, it had the opposite effect. Feeling him touching me soothed some of my stress a little and I found it pleasant.

We stayed like that for the rest of the time until Heero's father called us down for supper, sitting close to each other even while we focused on our own work. We had less than usual to do, given that we had skipped our last classes, and it really shouldn't have taken either of us the full three hours to get the work done. It only took Heero two, but I was finding it very hard to concentrate on my work. My mind kept wandering, words and numbers on the paper blurring into nonsense as my tired brain kept shutting off at random times. Heero was incredibly patient with me, helping me focus when he wasn't working on his own assignments, giving me his notes and leading me through things that I didn't have the ability to do at that point.

The more that he had to help me, the more obviously worried he became. I had some vague idea that he had a right to be worried, that I wasn't acting like myself at all. I was flighty, distracted, overly emotional, and forgetful. Most of that I can peg on my sleeping disorder, but not all of it was. Some of it, a small but not insignificant amount, was because of the events of that day, splitting my already frazzled attention. I was getting closer and closer to a state of total shut down and I knew that. Soon just getting through the school day was going to be nearly impossible. Anything but staring dumbly at a wall was going to be like trying to climb a mountain.

My only hope was that I was going to be able to get some sleep that night, that doing so would give me some much needed clarity to what had happened to me that afternoon. Who knew, maybe sleep really was all that I needed and when I got it, all of the problems that I had been having, all the disturbing thoughts and crying and depression would seem silly to me, like something out of a dream. That was exactly what I felt like that evening, struggling through my homework, my mental state deteriorating the more sedentary that I was, my adrenaline rush a thing of the far off past. Like I was dreaming. Or perhaps sleep walking.

Conversation was very light at the dinner table. Mrs. Yuy had made a delicious meal of shepherd's pie, loaded with lamb instead of beef and it was the perfect meal for the cold night, but eating was literally the only thing that I could focus on. I was aware of when someone spoke, but not who they were speaking to or really what they were saying. The words were clear, I could understand them, but the meaning behind them was murky and uncertain. I was sure that I looked every bit a zombie during the meal, hunched over my food and eating in a mechanical manner, but I think that both of Heero's parents were well aware of what was happening and just let me be without any fussing.

I had enough presence of mind left after I had filled my stomach to thank Heero's mother for the meal and offer to help with the dishes, although she brushed me off. It was just as well. I probably would have broken something again. Mr. Yuy shooed us back upstairs. If he noticed my limp, he didn't say anything about it. At least, I don't think he had. He might have, for all that I was paying attention. I stumbled into the shower, brushed my teeth, and finished the tiny bit of homework that I hadn't done yet, and then it was time. Time for bed. Time for sleep. My blessing. My nightmare. Either the coolest, freshest pool of water that I would ever drink, or the poisoned well.

I just hoped that, for once, the universe would be kind to me and give me this one, small reprieve.

 

*****

 

So, guess how much sleep I actually managed in the guest room that night? If you guess zero, well, congratulations, you are the lucky winner! Because if there is one thing that the universe is not, it is kind. At least not to me.

You know, I don't even remember going to bed that night. I suppose that should frighten me, but I'm actually not surprised. Insomnia is annoying that way. Everything just... blurs together. Time becomes an irrelevant thing. Days, nights, it all becomes the same and you forget what day it is, what time it is. You never really appreciate how human beings measure time until you stop sleeping. Because sleep is nature's great reset. You go to sleep and then, bam, new day. But for insomniacs, there is no new day. It's all just one, big, long, never-ending day. My day had been going on for so long that my brain had lost the ability to recall all the events, especially something as insignificant as an everyday ritual.

I remember putting my textbooks back in my book bag. I remember Heero saying something to me. It might have been 'good night'. It might have been some question. I'm not sure. If he had asked me anything, I _am_ sure that I never answered him. If that was the case, he had probably thought that I was nuts, but had let me leave his bedroom anyway. The next thing that I knew, I was laying down in bed, staring up at the ceiling, Pepper laying on my chest.

Unlike that morning, I really wasn't surprised at all that I couldn't sleep or even as frustrated as I had been the previous night. While it was annoying that I had plenty of time to find sleep and it was the perfect environment for me to get some rest and I knew that I still wouldn't be able to, I had been expecting it. I had hoped that sleeping with Heero hadn't been a fluke, that it had been a sign that my sleepless spell was over, but even if it had been one, after everything that had happened that day, sleep would have been impossible anyway.

It's funny. That entire day, my brain had been a blank slate, nothing but white noise and random, almost nonsensical thought, and any kind of logical thinking that I had done had come at chaotic bursts or had just been an outright struggle. But that night, my head had absolutely no problems at all with supplying me with unwanted thought, making me feel wide awake with it's insane babbling and turbulent emotions. What Zechs had orchestrated was, obviously, at the front of the pack. That look in his eyes, his lust for violence and pain, humiliation and violation, haunted me that night worse than any nightmare. I felt his hands on me like some phantom attacker, holding me down like I was nothing more than a weak kitten, making me helpless, a toy in his grasp instead of a living thing.

I felt his fingers running across my lips like I was a whore that he had purchased for the night, felt his hand and the blunt, wide end of the bat forcing my mouth open, raping my throat. I could taste the wood and my blood staining it. I remembered the blows from that bat, remembered Zechs's look of rage and his hand striking me. I saw, more clearly than the ceiling above me, his hand reaching inside of his jeans, grasping and pulling, that brief glimpse of flesh. But more than anything else, I remembered everyone else in that room. Their faces. Their hatred. Their taunts. Their mocking laughter, like my humiliation was a spectator sport, some private entertainment, just for them. I remembered that look on Relena's face, a look that I still don't understand. How cold and like a doll she had seemed.

Haunted is as good a word as any for how I felt reliving those moments in my head, although tormented is another good one. I relived my terror, thinking that I was going to get raped again, in a way that my father had never dared. I relived my shame at being unable to stop it, wondering why this was happening to me, why they were doing it, what turns my life had taken that this was even a possibility. I relived my horror, wondering how Heero would react when he found out about it, if he would be disgusted, if he would blame me like I was blaming myself, only to end up being saved by him.

That's another thing that they never tell you, never explain in most stories or movies. That being saved doesn't mean that you are saved from the pain and horror. A terrible event might be stopped, but it's irrelevant. In your head and heart, it's already happened. No one had forced themselves on me, but I had been raped none the less. Sometimes, intent is enough.

I was plagued that night and into the early morning hours with fears of my future, how to move on from this, as well as all of the guilt and fear and uncertainty I had been feeling all day about my relationship with Heero. My distance from him. My inadequacy. I suppose the two issues, what Zechs did and my realization that I've been failing in this relationship are related. In both ways, I've failed and in both ways I've realized that there is likely nothing I can do to stop the inevitable. I don't have the strength to defend myself and I don't know how to be a better boyfriend, either. I don't know how to either accept intimacy or initiate it. It's like going back into that classroom for my book bag. I can tell myself that it's easy, to just get on with it, but I had still needed Heero to lead me in there. Forcing yourself to do something that frightens you might sound simple, right up until you have to do it.

Through it all, seeing me on my knees in front of Zechs, my silence on our date, holding me while I had cried and lost control of myself, thinking about shooting our bullies and knowing all of the darkness and anger and bitterness in my heart, I seriously wondered why Heero was with me. Not just as my boyfriend, but as my friend. I wondered what he would do if he knew these things about me, about my homicidal thoughts, about the depths of my hate. Would he still love me? Would he still say that I was so amazing? And through all of that, a thought bubbled up. A terrible and pervasive thought that took root in me and refused to let go.

'I should tell him,' the thought was, 'I should tell him about the sort of person that I am and end all of this. I can't break up with him, I've tried and I can't do it, I'm too much of a coward. So I should just let him do it, give him the choice and the tools to do it. If I tell him about wanting to kill Zechs and Relena, about almost killing my father, about my rage and how ugly I am inside, he'll want to break up. And really, isn't that for the best?'

I bit my split lip, making blood drip into my mouth. It was for the best... haven't I thought that about a thousand times since Heero had told me that he liked me? I still hadn't decided if that was true or not, I had just settled for the realization that I lack the strength to break up with him, that I need him too much and I can't break his heart like that. But was it really up to me? I felt like I had with Trowa, like I was teasing him. Leading him on. It wasn't just about the sex, that hadn't entered into our relationship yet, it was too fresh still. But everything else. Just like with the sex stuff, Heero didn't understand what he was getting into. He didn't understand who I really was. He saw the best in me, the stubborn person that kept going even when life was shit. That wasn't me.

The person on his knees in front of Zechs, savagely biting and ripping his hand open, not in self-defense, but in _rage_ , that was me. The animal. The weak child, crying in fear in Heero's arms, unable to comfort him back, that was me. I wasn't strong, I was weak. I wasn't beautiful, I was ugly and mangled. Heero was only seeing what he wanted to see, and I liked how he saw me so much that I was willing to let him live that illusion. But it wasn't right. None of this was right. Putting him in danger all for a lie... if I really loved him, shouldn't I tell him the truth and let him end it himself? Wouldn't any friend who cared and respected him do the same? Yet there I was, too scared to do a thing, too fucking _selfish_.

'It would have been better if Zechs and the rest of them had raped me,' I thought, 'It would have been better if Heero had seen that, then he could have left. He could have left and saved himself from me. I destroy lives and happiness and he should just leave before I destroy him, too.'

 

 _"Because I love you,"_ Heero's words rang in my head, _"Because just because someone does something repulsive and disgusting to you, it doesn't make you disgusting. Even if he had done it, I would still want to kiss you. No matter what happens, I always will."_

 

My eyes misted over at the memory of those heartfelt, sincere words, but I refused to cry. I refused to let that warmth and tenderness in. I shook my head violently to deny them to myself. What did he know? He didn't know anything. He didn't know how he _might_ have felt! The thought of it actually happening... the thought of not stopping Zechs and his friends from forcing me to suck them off disgusted _myself_ , so how could he possibly say that he would still love me?!

My thoughts were too terrible, too ugly and unbearable to me to deal with and I rolled out of bed, like I could escape from them by not lying there. I needed clarity. I needed sanity and knowing that I was doing the right thing. I needed an escape from these nightmarish thoughts and feelings. I need some goddamned, fucking _sleep_. I looked at the bedroom clock and saw that it was already 1:30 in the morning. I had gone to bed around eight. I had been sitting there in the dark, thinking and tormenting myself for five fucking hours. That seemed completely unreal to me and I wondered if my brain had been doing the micro sleeping thing or if I really had been so wrapped up in my thoughts that I hadn't noticed the passage of time.

I needed rest and soon. I was becoming more and more chaotic, more nonsensical. I wasn't even sure anymore if the thoughts that I was having made sense and I was scared to do anything, to make any kind of decision or action in case that they weren't. I blinked and suddenly found myself standing in front of Heero's bedroom door with no real recollection of having walked there. Clearly, even if my higher brain function was telling me not to do anything, my subconscious had other ideas. It made sense, even to my tired brain. I needed sleep. I had only managed sleep while I had been sharing a bed with Heero, so maybe that would work again. My hand reached out, seemingly of its own, free will, and gasped the door knob.

I could do it, I thought. I didn't even need to ask permission. I could go in there and lay down with him like before, I had every reason, every excuse, and it might help. If there is one thing that Heero always seems to be able to do, its give me clarity. No matter how muddled and confused my thoughts are, he always seems to be able to put them in order for me. His words just... have this weird kind of power over me, reaching into the tangled, knotted ball of my emotions and pulling out the truth, like he has some secret knowledge of my heart that only he can see. He would know what to say now. Hell, just by being near him, it might quiet my brain. I began to turn the knob.

'I never initiate anything because it scares the hell out of me, he frightens me. So I just lean on him, let him choose the path, let him make the first move. How the fuck is this any different? I'm just going to lean on him again, let him lull me to sleep instead of figuring things out on my own. He'll just think that I'm pathetic, weak, that I have to use him as a sleeping aid. Poor Duo, too helpless to save himself from the bullies. Too helpless to even get to sleep on his own without his boyfriend tucking him in.'

My own voice was mocking in my head, disgusted at my own actions. My hand froze on the door knob for a second, then let go of it like it had burned me. I hated what my thoughts had just told me, but they were the truth. I was leaning again. If Heero caught me in bed with him, needing him again, using him as a crutch, he would just pity me. I didn't want that. I wanted to be strong for him, to show him that strength, that I could be his equal in this relationship, that I could handle things on my own, that I didn't need him to save me... how could I possibly do that by slipping into bed with him, using him like a freaking stuffed animal or security blanket?

Look, I'm well aware _now_ of how stupid I was being. With a full night's sleep under my belt, I would have come to that exact, same conclusion, that I wasn't thinking straight, that my sleeping with Heero was not leaning on him, and even if it was, he wouldn't give a shit. He would demand me to do whatever it took to get some rest and he would have been right. But I had had less than three hours of sleep in three days. Add on to that emotional stress, trauma, and anxiety from various things and I felt like I hadn't slept at all in five.

The thing is, sleep deprivation is a lot like being crazy, and I mean truly insane. You could be doing the most mind boggling and nuts actions, using logic that exists only in your head and maybe in the head of a highly imaginative four-year-old, like thinking that the man in the check out line with you is a government agent spying on you just because he glanced at you for a little bit too long, so now you have to run out and buy lots of tin foil to keep the government's radio waves from reading your thoughts. Just like with the mentally insane, when you have sleep deprivation, no matter how nuts you're acting and feeling, no matter how out of character, everything you're doing makes complete sense to you at the time. My not wanting to burden my boyfriend with my problems, whether it was my problems at home, school, with him, or my insomnia made total sense to me. It never occurred to me that entire time how ridiculous I was being, that all I was doing was punishing myself.

Confident that I was doing the right thing and not realizing that I was slipping further and further down the rabbit hole, I crept downstairs into the kitchen. I don't even remember why I went there. I don't think that I even had a reason at that point, my body was just doing things, like some robotic force had taken control over me. I thought about making some tea again, but I didn't have the ability to make it past that first step. Every other step after that, getting the tea, getting a cup, getting the kettle and everything else was an impossible task. It was like I was contemplating building a circuit board and not making tea. There were no other thoughts in my head, no consideration to do anything at all, everything was just blank. So I stood there in the dark, staring out the window for a solid ten minutes, stuck in some senseless void until some movement outside in the dark caught my attention.

I blinked, coming back to myself like I had been awoken by a loud noise and walked to the window. It was dark, no moon or stars showing through the clouds that had plagued the day, but there was some visibility from the street lights and a neighbor's house, enough for me to see portions of the porch and patio and a small sliver of the backyard. For a moment, I thought that I might have just seen a squirrel rooting around the property for some food or a bird, although it was still too early in the morning for either to be active. I squinted into the dark and quickly saw that what I had seen was no animal, but the snow. It had started up again.

The sight of the snow mesmerized me for a moment for some strange reason, although it was still so cold outside that it really wasn't surprising. The flakes were large, falling to the ground lethargically and gently, no wind outside to make them flurry or gather on the porch, which was clear of any snow. I pressed my hand against the pain of glass of the sliding door leading out there, the cold burning into my hand. Suddenly, that kitchen felt very claustrophobic and I found myself, not really thinking about what I was doing but just acting, slipping my feet into Justin's boots that were standing by the door, and opening the sliding door, walking out onto the porch.

The cold was like needles through my pajamas, but it was tolerable. Maybe that was because I was desensitized, even to extreme temperatures, barely feeling much of anything even though I was aware of the sensations, or just because of the lack of the wind. The cold helped me to feel more awake, more aware and less like a zombie and I was immediately thankful for it. I sat down there on the porch step, the overhang keeping the snow off of me, and watched the snow fall. The boots kept my feet warm and I tucked my hands under my crossed arms, the only other thing I could do to stave off the cold.

It was beautiful out there, the snow covering the ground in a pure, white sheet, unmarred by even a single footprint, glimmering in the very low light. There was something very pleasant about the darkness. Everything was just so still... so _peaceful_. There wasn't a single sound. No voices. No animal calls. No cars or motorcycles. No sound of humanity or any other life but me. Not even the sound of the thoughts in my head bothered me and destroyed that feeling. It didn't do much to give me clarity or help me sort those thoughts, but I didn't feel so consumed by them or my anxieties anymore. I've always enjoyed watching the snow or rain since I was a kid, even if I'm not a big fan of being out in it. There's just something about it, the rhythm of it, the sound of it, even the look of it that I've always found very soothing.

I don't know how long I was sitting out there for. Long enough for my fingers and face to start to feel numb. Long enough that when the door opened behind me, I didn't even hear it.

"Duo?" I heard Heero's voice behind me, confused, worried, and sleepy.

I jolted out of my stupor and turned where I sat. I thought that I had to be hearing things, or maybe I had fallen asleep and was dreaming all of this, but there Heero was, standing in the open door, two mugs in hand, something draped over his arm, and wearing his winter jacket over his pajamas. His hair was mussed and there were dark circles under his eyes, nowhere near the extent of my own, but enough to tell me that he hadn't slept well.

"What are you doing out here?" He asked me in concern.

Some part of me that was still functioning realized how crazy I must have looked sitting out there in the cold and I blushed a little.

"It was snowing," I explained before it dawned on me that not only did that sound incredibly stupid, it didn't answer his question at all.

"You couldn't sleep?" He asked softly, cutting through my bullshit to the rather obvious heart of the matter.

I nodded sheepishly.

"Nightmares?" He asked, assuming, I'm sure, that it had been the events of the day that had kept me wide awake.

I shook my head.

"Just couldn't sleep," I admitted.

"Here," he handed me one of the mugs that he had been holding.

It felt hot in my hands and I almost dropped it, my skin having gotten used to the cold. I took a sniff of the steam rising from it and smelled chocolate. He had seen me sitting out here and had taken the time to make me some hot chocolate. My eyes went wet and I felt like a sappy idiot about it, but the rest of me felt warmed by his care. This was something that I would never think to do for him, I thought mournfully, a gesture of kindness that came so naturally to him and meant so much to me, but I could never manage.

"Thank you," I murmured and took a sip.

It burnt my tongue, but I was grateful for the sensation. The numbness was starting to feel too much like the greyness that had enveloped me after Quatre's death, that nothingness in my head and heart. I expected Heero to try to drag me inside, scold me for sitting out there in the cold and maybe making myself sick, but to my surprise, he wrapped the cloth that had been draped over his arm around me, which turned out to be his father's jacket, and sat down next to me on the steps. He took a sip of his own mug, which smelled like the French vanilla coffee, and stared out at what I had been looking at, the endless, white expanse of their yard.

"What about you?" I ventured, "Why are you awake?"

Too much time had passed since I had gotten up for me to have worried about waking him, but I couldn't think of any reason why he would have come down into the kitchen to have seen me out there.

"I couldn't sleep either," he admitted with a slight smile that didn't reach his eyes, "Bad dreams. I kept dreaming about today, about not getting there in time-" he cut himself off abruptly by swallowing roughly and took another sip of his coffee, but this time I thought it was to hide some reaction, a hitch in his breathing.

That immediately caught my attention and I looked at him as he turned his head away from me to watch the snow fall, and I mean I really _looked._ It might have just been a trick of the darkness, but he looked pale and drawn. There was a tiredness on his face that went far beyond the lines under his eyes. He was exhausted, and it had nothing to do with a lack of sleep. There was some quality to his face that made him look haunted. I thought that maybe not being able to sleep wasn’t so bad. Maybe there was something worse. I thought about the dreams that I had had about Quatre after he had gotten hit by that truck, nightmares of failing him, of being too slow, of not getting to him in time, how those dreams had torn at me and what Heero's own dreams might have done to him. What terrible things had he dreamed? What things had he seen in his own head?

"I'm sorry," I rasped, looking down into my own reflection in my cup of hot chocolate and feeling heartbroken that Heero had dreamed such terrible things because of me, and hating myself all over again for not being able to comfort him.

If I had been the one having the nightmares, he would find something to say to me or do for me that would make me feel better, I knew. But I had nothing. Should I hold his hand? Kiss him? Make him talk about it? I just didn't know how to help, or if I was just going to make things worse. He looked over at me again, his gaze sad and serious.

"Duo, tell me what's wrong," he said, not quite in a demand, but pleading with me.

"What?" I asked, startled by the question, "What are you talking about?"

What was wrong? The boy that I loved was having nightmares over something that was _my_ problem and all I was doing was sitting there like a lump! _I_ was what was wrong! Heero didn't seem frustrated by my response, or even slightly annoyed, his expression remaining somber.

"You were awfully quiet today after school," he said softly, "I know something has been bothering you, why don't you just come out and say it? I won't get mad or upset if that's what you're worried about, but it's been... concerning me, seeing you so wrapped up in it and trying to hide it. Is it about what happened today at school?"

I looked back down into my drink, unable to look at him, my grip tightening around the mug.

"No," I murmured, "It doesn't have anything to do with that... well, I guess it kind of does."

Could I tell him? Did I dare? All the shit in my head... my guilt about getting into this relationship, not being good enough for him, my anger, my ugliness, putting the decision in his hands... could I really do all of that? It was pointless debating with myself anymore, I realized. I was just going around in mental circles, my exhausted mind unable to reason anything out anymore. All I could do was just make a choice, yes or no, and deal with the consequences of either, and trust that it was the right choice, even if my reasons weren't exactly logical at that time.

"I've just been thinking," I said in a low tone, almost whispering, my voice coming out weak and nervous when I wanted it to be solid and strong, "… I've been worried that maybe this relationship was a mistake."

Heero looked like I had just callously stabbed him in the gut, and with those words, I might as well have. I knew right in that moment, with a surety I had never had before, an absolute certainty, that I would never be able to break up with him. In the dim light coming from the kitchen, a light that I hadn’t even noticed that he had turned on before coming out here, he looked pale and withdrawn, his blue eyes wide and eerie, a darker shade than they usually were. My heart wrenched at the sight of him, a pain so intense that it seemed impossible that it had come from my emotions and not some physical wound. I would have done anything at all to wipe that expression off of his face, to take back what I had just said, to never hurt him like that again. Even make the both of us suffer.

“What?” he demanded in a heartbroken voice that was a knife in my own guts, “But that’s… Duo…” he struggled with his words, his tone rising into a panicked frenzy and I could have sworn that I saw tears in his eyes, but it was too dark to tell for sure. At least, that’s what I took comfort in telling myself, “I know things haven’t been so great lately, but it hasn’t been so terrible, has it?” he looked down at his feet, his whole body tense like a metal strand about to snap, his hands fisting in his pajama pants so tightly that it was amazing that he hadn’t ripped them, “I thought… I thought this was going so well…” his breath hitched and I felt like the biggest asshole that could possibly exist on the planet, like I was going to break down and cry at my own bumbling failure, “Did I… Did I do something wrong?”

“No!” I cried out and touched his arm in desperation, giving his wrist a small squeeze to gain his attention, “No, you haven’t done anything wrong! I’m not trying to break up with you…” I tore my eyes from his anguished gaze, unable to meet that pain, knowing that I was the one that had put it there, “The problem _isn’t_ you. You’re great… great to me and great at this. You’ve been amazing all this time… The problem is with me. I suck at this… I’m failing at it and now I’m worried that I’m already fucking everything up and maybe it would have been better if we had never started seeing each other at all.”

“What do you mean ‘this’?” he whispered hoarsely, looking confused.

“This!” I gestured to the both of us and the small, almost nonexistent space between us, “Being together, being with you, being your boyfriend!”

I took a deep breath and ran a hand through my bangs, looking away from him again, staring ahead at the snow, although I didn’t really see it.

“I don’t know how to be loved, how to love someone back or be in a relationship,” I murmured.

“Duo, I don’t either,” he insisted, “I might have fooled around a little before and gone out on a couple of dates, but I’ve never actually been in a relationship like this, cared about someone like this! It’s understandable that you get overwhelmed sometimes, I do, too-“

“You don’t understand!” I snapped and angrily shoved my hands under my arms so he couldn’t see how they were balled into fists, “I’m not talking about being shy and awkward and stumbling a bit along the way! Don’t you get it? After all this time knowing me, after everything that I’ve told you about my past and what you saw today at school, how can you not see it? There is _nothing_ good about me! Whatever you think you see in me, it’s not really there, it’s just in your head! I am not the person that you think that I am! I’m not sensitive or affectionate or kind or even just a little nice! I’m… I’m nothing but hard edges and anger and bitterness and _hate_. That’s all that’s in me! That’s all that’s been in me for _years_. Until you came along, I didn’t even know what it was like to _feel_ love for another person!

“I don’t know why you like me at all, as a friend or as a boyfriend! I know that you say that you do all the time, and I get that that’s how you feel, I’m not so arrogant to say that you don’t, but I don’t understand _why_! I’m not attractive, I’m not interesting, I’m not a good person! You deserve someone who can love you back, someone _normal_. You can’t really be enjoying yourself, can you?! All you’ve been doing is taking care of me and dealing with _my_ problems! You were better off with Relena! Even if you were miserable, at least she didn’t get you beaten up, at least you didn’t have to come to _her_ rescue! It’s not like I’ve been doing anything for you! I’ve never kissed you, never taken the initiative in anything! I can’t even take you out on a date! Is that what you want? To carry on the entire, damned relationship?! To be a punching bag or for Zechs to sexually assault you for someone who can’t even show you that he cares for you?!”

I was aware that I was yelling and rambling, but I didn’t care. Even if I did, I couldn’t help myself. It was like all of the black thoughts that had been plaguing me that day were just pouring out like vomit. Heero’s eyes just kept getting bigger and bigger as I spoke, taking in everything that I was saying with a little bit more horror with each sentence.

“Hey,” he tried to sound soothing, to calm me down, but all I could hear was the frightened worry in his voice.

I was scaring him. Hell, if I had been in a better state of mind, I probably would have scared myself. Although, if I had been in that state, I wouldn’t be yelling at my boyfriend in the small hours of the morning in my pajamas on his porch.

“None of that is true,” he said, “You do _not_ suck at being in the relationship, and you’re wrong, after all of this time together, I _do_ know you. I know enough to know that all of the bullshit that people say about you is just that, bullshit. You’re not some troubled loner, or a hard ass, or a trouble maker. I don’t know, maybe you want people to think that about you, that you’re some kind of punk, or they just chose to think that because you’re different, because you’re quiet and don’t have many friends and get picked on, but I’ve _never_ believed it, not even when we first met. You aren’t that person and if anyone took the time to have a single conversation with you, they would see that.

“What I see in you… that you are beautiful and kind, intelligent and brave. _That’s_ why I love you,” he said passionately, his mere conviction enough to make doubt blossom in me, this single thread of doubt that forced me to wonder who was right and who was wrong, me or him, “Those things _are_ there. I wish that you could see them, too, see how amazing you are, but just because you don’t see them, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t there! How you see yourself, how you look down on yourself, _that_ is the illusion, not what I see! You say that you’re nothing but hard edges, but that’s not true at all. I’ve seen you passionate about a book that you’ve been reading. I’ve seen you get completely engrossed in a story that you’re trying to write. I’ve seen you talk about something nice that your mother did for you and how amazed you look by it. I’ve seen how you are with your cat, with my dog. And I’ve seen you with me. Maybe you do have some rough edges, more than some people, but even if you do, there’s only a few, and they’re nothing compared to those good things that you claim that you don’t have!

“You say that all you have in you is bitterness and hate, but I don’t see those things when I’m with you, not the way that you say it is. There is _so much more_ to you than that! If there weren’t, I could never see those things that I love. If they weren’t there, you never would have held me today because I was upset or wanted to protect me all this time. You wouldn’t feel guilty at all that Zechs is making things hard for me! I just think that you’re sad and very angry, but you know what? So am I! I’m angry that the boy that I love is going through such pain because of the assholes that pick on him, because his father isn’t the man that he’s supposed to be. I’m outright furious that I had to watch my boyfriend almost get raped today and all I could do was help him to run away instead of stop it entirely! If you’re angry, then it’s understandable and you have nothing to feel guilty about! _Anyone_ would feel enraged about all of this, _anyone._ I would be more worried if you didn’t, and it doesn’t make you a bad person!

“I was never better off with Relena,” his voice suddenly had a very hard and frustrated edge to it, “ _Never_ , do you hear me?! You’re right, I was miserable and do you know why? It wasn’t just that she was a girl. There was nothing about her that I loved… no, there was nothing about her that I even liked. She was judgmental and spoiled. If she was pretty, I never saw it. Do you know what’s that like, to be with someone, to go out with them, and not feel a single thing for them? To try so hard to find something, _anything_ that you like about them, but only see the places where they’re lacking?”

Trowa’s face flashed in my head and I bit my lip, my chest tightening with some emotion that I couldn’t decipher.

“But you… when I’m with you, I’m happy,” he told me, “With you, I don’t need to think about the things that I like about you, I just feel it. I feel it every single time I see you. That’s what love is. Do you really think that I care about getting bullied or having to pay for dates or being the one to kiss you instead of the other way around when I’ve never felt this alive… this _good_ around anyone like how I feel with you?! I care about you and if you think that I would be better off breaking up with you just because you think you’re not good enough or you don’t know how to act in a relationship, then tough, fucking shit, because you haven’t done anything or said anything to make _me_ think that this was a mistake!” he took a deep breath, his cheeks red from the exertion of yelling back at me and tried to calm himself, lowering his voice, “I’ll say it until I’m blue in the face if that’s what it takes to make you believe it. You, Duo Maxwell, are a good person. You deserve to be loved, to be happy, even if you don’t think so, and I’m not going to let you doubt me when I think that this relationship is worth a little bit of hard work!”

He reached out and placed a hand on my back, rubbing my back through his father’s jacket.

“Why can’t you trust me?” he asked in a softer tone, “Why can’t you believe me when I say that you’re the person that I want to be with?”

He continued to rub and for a brief moment, I could feel myself relax. His words had made my heart throb with some longing that I couldn’t voice or really figure out what it meant. I wanted to throw myself in his arms and let him make all those insecure and self-hating thoughts go away. I wanted him to make everything better with his arms and his endearing words like he always does. But not this time. I couldn’t accept what he was saying. I was a good person? I deserved his love? I was the one that he really wanted? Why should I believe him when every single person in my life that I have wanted to care for me was only using me in place of someone else? When no one has ever loved me the way that he says that he loves me? When everyone just hurts me in the end or I hurt them? No amount of his comforting gestures could make that truth disappear.

I shifted my back, removing his hand with a roll of my shoulders and scooted further away from him, out of his reach. I wanted to just get up and leave. Not even just the leave the porch, but leave his house and go someplace where he wouldn’t be able to follow me and make me feel so off balance. But where the hell would I go? I didn’t have anywhere to go and I couldn’t leave anyway. Only my fears made me want to leave, but everything else demanded that I not move from that spot, even if it meant that I was going to inevitably say something that I shouldn’t.

“How can I possibly believe you,” I muttered, “when you don’t even really know me? How can I trust you when I’ve never been honest with you?”

“What are you talking about?” he asked in confusion.

‘He needs to know,’ popped into my head.

Sure, he needed to know, but did that mean that I wanted him to know? I didn’t want anyone to know what was really in my head, let alone the one person whose opinion of me I really cared about. If I told him about the things that I had been worrying about, it would probably not just destroy our romantic relationship, but our friendship, too. If I hadn’t been so sleep deprived, I might have warred with myself a little longer, found some excuse to just brush him off and tell him to forget it. But it seemed like my mouth was running faster than my brain could keep up.

“A ‘good person’?” I snorted mockingly, glaring angrily at the snow on the ground in front of me, “Why, exactly, do you think that I’m a good person? Because I take care of my cat? Because I try to get decent grades? Because I work hard? Is that all it takes to be a good person? You only think that I’m good because that’s exactly what I want you think about me,” I glanced over at him, my gaze sharp and harsh and there was something in my expression that startled him, “Do you really think that I’ve _wanted_ you to find out what a fucked up person I really am? I love you, you know,” I bit my tongue to keep my voice from hitching or doing some other emotive tattle as I said that, “I wanted to be your boyfriend, so why would I let you see the shit? That would just be self-destructive. In reality, I’m a bitter, twisted little fuck and anything good or beautiful that you think that you see in me, it’s only because I’m too much of a coward to let you see who I really am inside.”

“Duo-“ Heero started to protest in alarm, but I wouldn’t let him.

“Who I really am is no better than my father,” I gritted out, “Full of hate and rage with all this ugliness in my head. Wanting to hurt everyone, just tear them apart into little pieces so I can hurt _them_ for once. Someone who hates his parents and everyone else in this damned town and would probably do something about that hatred if he weren’t an indecisive coward on top of everything else. Is that really the sort of person that you think you can love?”

“That isn’t who you are!” he snapped at me, that frustrated tone coming back.

“No?” I asked lightly, still not looking at him simply because I knew that if I did, he would draw me in again, he would make me want things, would make me weak and vulnerable, although I’m sure that it made me look cold and disinterested, which could only help me distance myself from him.

That was the only way that I was going to be able to make my way through this. If I was speaking to someone else and not the boy that had held me as I had cried that day, the boy that had saved me and drawn me out of my fear with a simple kiss.

“After Quatre died, I had a lot of nightmares,” I told him, focusing on a snow covered tree that I could just barely see in the distance as I spoke, “Most of them were about watching him die, but not all of them. In some of them, I saw myself go to school with my dad’s gun and shoot Zechs and Relena right in the head. Not in self-defense or any kind of justice, but just because I wanted to. Because I wanted to hurt them for being responsible for the death of my best friend. I wanted to do to them like what they had done to him, snuff them out like flames of a candle. I even remember feeling satisfied watching their brains paint the walls, like I had done the _right thing_.”

I kept Heero in my peripheral vision so I could see his reaction to all of this. I expected him to be disgusted or at least shocked to hear that I had been dreaming about seriously murdering people, but he just looked focused, listening to me with full intention like someone that was trying to work out an especially challenging puzzle. I frowned, not knowing what to make of that, but pushed on. There was a lot more to tell.

“When I could finally get out of bed long enough to go back to school,” I continued, “I didn’t even bother trying to control my rage at them. I kept asking myself why they deserved to live when Quatre had ended his life, why they got to just continue on, unpunished. I don’t think that I even wanted to control it. I just wanted to hurt someone. I ended up breaking Zechs’s nose. I even punched Relena for daring to talk about Quatre like they had been friends. I almost broke her nose, too, could have if I had angled my punch right, but it had just been a spur of the moment thing. Even that wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to do more to hurt them. I wanted to destroy their worlds. Soon, I seriously started to consider making my dreams a reality, to just blow them away and be done with it. And you know what? The thought pleased me. It fucking _pleased_ me. Even today, after Zechs tried to…” I swallowed roughly, “After he did what he did… I thought about killing him, I thought about how easy it would be and I considered it, actually considered shooting him so I wouldn’t have to deal with him anymore.”

The memory of that time, of all of the hurt and depression and hate that I had felt back then, how sadistic the thought of killing those two had made me feel, had my stomach rolling. How could Heero possibly still love me after knowing that about myself? I sickened myself and I still had those thoughts.

“But you never tried to shoot them,” Heero stated, “You didn’t even take your dad’s gun.”

I finally looked over at him in shock, startled that he knew that. His stare was knowing, the kind of look that his father had given me a few times, like he could see right through me. Like he could read my damned mind.

“No, I didn’t,” I admitted.

“Why not?” he asked me.

I looked back at the ground and shrugged.

“I don’t know,” I murmured, “I’ve always been unsure of that.”

And wasn’t that the truth. What, exactly had kept me from stealing my father’s gun back then? I couldn’t remember. I suppose I had retained some sense of morality, enough to not take that step from grieving friend to homicidal maniac. Or maybe I’m just so spineless, so incapable of standing up for myself that even a cowardly thing like shooting my peers had been impossible for me.

“I know why,” my boyfriend said a bit boldly, “Would you like to hear it?”

I whipped my head around, staring at him in shock again. He knew why I hadn’t killed them? I studied his face, wondering if he was putting me on, but he only looked sad and very tired, not sly or condescending. And there was still no reproach on his face, either. Did he not get what I had just told him?

“Yeah, sure,” I gave him a little nod, even as I tensed, thinking that he was going to accuse me of everything that I already knew, that I was a monster, even if I hadn’t gone through with it, that the only reason why I hadn’t was that I had let them get away with everything, that everything that had happened since then was my fault for not taking that path.

“When I was six years old, my dad took me out for my very first, major league football game. My grandparents on both sides were visiting us and my father’s father had decided to treat us and a few of my cousins on my mother’s sister’s side to a game. We never all got together like that, so it was a huge occasion, especially for me because I was so young and just starting to get interested in the sport. It was a perfect day, one of those days you get as a kid that you’ll always be able to remember, no matter how old you get. Just being with my grandparents and my dad and getting to go to an actual game was good enough, but then I caught a home run ball in the fourth. It just sailed right to me and I caught it easily. My dad was so proud,” Heero smiled wistfully, “He even got Moises Alou (4) to sign it for me when the game was over.”

I leaned my head in my hands and listened to him with rapt attention. I had no freaking clue what this story had anything to do with what we had been fighting about and was patiently waiting for him to get to the point, but I liked hearing him talk, especially about his far more idyllic childhood, and seeing that smile on his face. It was an experience that I envied him for.

“I _treasured_ that ball. See, Moises was Dominican-American and my mother’s father is from the Dominican Republic, so he followed his career almost religiously. My grandfather has always been very proud of his heritage, especially since he married my grandmother, who is from Japan and moved to Florida with the rest of his family shortly after my mother was born. He would talk about his country a lot when I was little and I think he still misses it there. I guess, through him, I idolized Alou, too. He had the lead of home runs on the Marlins and he would bat without wearing a batting glove. As soon as I had seen him play that day and I had caught his ball, I had wanted to be him. I even tried going without the glove myself, until I realized how it hurt my hands,” he chuckled, this deep, pleasing sound and I thought that I could listen to him talk about just about anything all morning, “It was the only ball that I would use when my dad was teaching me how to play, and I would always bring it along to use for practices and when I would play with the kids in my neighborhood. In retrospect, I should have kept it at home in a case or something, but it didn’t seem right to me to keep it locked up. A baseball is made to be played with.

“So it was my fault when I eventually lost it,” he said mournfully, “I was eleven when it happened. I had been playing catch with one of my neighbors, I forget his name, when another neighbor kid took the ball from me. He was older than us, only by a couple of years, but he was big and he was mean. Martin Pescano was his name. I might forget all the other kids in my neighborhood and elementary school, but I’ll always remember him. He would pick on the younger kids a lot, although I had never had a run in with him until then. He just grabbed it right out of my hands and refused to give it back. He was bigger and stronger than I was and there was nothing that I could do about it. That, more than anything, was what killed me.

“I was devastated. I tried everything that I could think of to get it back. For weeks, I pleaded and threatened him. I even offered up my allowance and trading cards for the ball, but he refused, even when I told him how special the ball meant to me. Probably because of that. While he certainly hadn’t been at Zechs’s level, he had that same personality. He didn’t give a shit about my ball, he had only taken it because I had loved it and he had enjoyed my suffering. Finally, I told him that I was going to tell my father on him and my dad would talk to his dad and his dad would make him give me the ball back. The very next day, he crossed paths with me at the bus stop with my ball in hand. I had thought that he had finally caved and was giving it back to me, but he threw it our neighbor’s wood chipper instead. He could have just handed it to me and that would have been the end of it, but he had decided that he couldn’t let me win, even if it got him into trouble.”

“What an asshole!” I blurted out.

Heero laughed and when he looked at me, his eyes were shining with that love that I kept claiming was based on a lie. Something in my heart clenched painfully.

“Yeah, he was a bit of an asshole,” he agreed, still chuckling, “I told my dad what happened, though, and he got punished for it. He had to come over to my house and give me a formal apology, even buy me a new ball with his allowance. It wasn’t the same as getting my ball back, but having to do that just about killed him, the apology part at least, and that made some of the pain go away. Not all of it, though. Not the anger and the feeling of injustice that I had.

“He never really bothered me again after that. He didn’t bully me or even try to beat me up for getting him into trouble, he wasn’t that much of an asshole at least. But I still had to deal with him for the rest of that year and elementary school and then again three years later when I went on to the same high school as him. I saw him every day, if not at school, then around town and that anger that I felt towards him never really went away. I hated him, not because he had taken something that I had loved, but he had used it to hurt me, this person that I hadn’t known, hadn’t even spoken to until then. And every time I saw him, I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to take my baseball bat and bash his face in. Do you get that, Duo? I wanted to attack him, to break his nose and make him bleed, and he hadn’t made my best friend kill himself. I felt the same urges that you did, and over a baseball, over a fucking _memento_ ,” he spat out.

I felt speechless as his piercing eyes met mine in the dim light. I could not equate what he was telling me with the person that I had known for almost five months now. This kind, gentle person who always wanted to do the right thing, who seemed so empathetic and patient and tolerant… I could not see him ever feeling or harboring the same thoughts of violence that I had at anyone, let alone another kid that had merely been mean to him. I tried to protest it, that even if he had felt that way, it just wasn’t the same, wanting to hit someone for destroying something that they had loved wasn’t the same as fantasizing about killing them, but that felt hollow. Our rage wasn’t the same, the intensity of our fantasies, but in the end… Heero knew what hate felt like. For the very first time, I wondered what sort of hate he felt towards Zechs. Did he want to hurt him, maybe even kill him like I did?

“But I never did it,” he told me, “Just like you, even though I fantasized about it over and over, and some part of me liked seeing myself doing those things to someone that had hurt me, I never acted on those desires. It doesn’t matter what you dream about, what you _want_ to do. All that matters is what you do, what choices you make. You chose not to act, you didn’t let your hate consume you, so how does thinking those things make you a bad person? There are a lot of people that would make the wrong choice, that would have killed them, but you’re strong enough to ignore those feelings. You aren’t your father, Duo. Just being angry does not make you him. It’s your actions. You chose not to act on your anger, while he has. That’s all of the difference in the world.”

“What the hell do you mean that I don’t chose to act on my anger?!” I demanded, “I told you, I hit them-“

“So what if you did?” he shot back at me, “I’ve hit people that have angered me before, and I’m not the only one, I just don’t make a habit of it! Neither do you! You hit them, what, once, maybe twice? After all of the shit that they did to you and Quatre, all the ways that they’ve hurt you, I’m shocked that that’s all that you’ve done to them! Frankly, I’m amazed at your restraint. Acting on your anger when you’re grieving and stressed and hurting like that… it doesn’t make you a monster. You aren’t any different from anyone else that goes through this shit. If anything, I would say that you should let it out more often, even if it’s not directly at them, find some kind of outlet for it. Because I’ve seen how tightly wound you are when you get mad. You just push it all down and try to ignore it. That’s just as bad as going around punching everyone who looks at you twice.”

I looked away from him, tightening my arms around my chest, and tried to digest that. Was he right? Was I really no different from anyone else? Even Heero had admitted to feeling this way, to hitting people… I had always felt so guilty when I had even had the urge to do that, and then actually acting on it… had I blown it out of proportion, my anger and my fantasies, the few times that I had been aggressive or actually struck someone, or was Heero seeing my problems through rose tinted glasses? Was he right that it didn’t matter if I had an anger problem or not, that it was my actions that mattered, that I wasn’t like my father at all? Was I just hyper sensitive to my anger because of that paranoia, because of how I see my father act?

Heero scooted closer to me, destroying the distance that I had made between us, but I made no move to get away from him. I felt his leg press against mine and it felt good, his warmth seeping through the pajama pants that I wore to my chilled flesh. I wanted to lean against him and believe every word that he had spoken about me, about my insecurities and just let all those fears go. I was so tired… not just my body, but my heart. I was tired of doubting everything all the time, of being terrified that I was making the wrong choices and hurting him. I wanted to believe that he was telling me the truth, that I wasn’t dragging him down. He reached over and covered my hand with his, not quite holding it, but smoothing his palm over my cold skin.

“You are a good person,” he said with conviction and when I looked at him, his blue eyes were warm and earnest, “Maybe you have some hard layers and maybe you get angry a lot, but underneath all of that is someone that is kind and gentle, who wants to do the right thing and be a better man than your father. _That_ person is who you really are, especially when it really matters. That’s why you’ve never seriously hurt Relena or Zechs, and that’s why you never tried to shoot them. Because that person deep down inside will never let you.”

I shuddered at that, at the sheer relief that his beliefs gave me, that not only was I not the person I believed myself to be, but that I never would be, that I would stop myself from doing the wrong thing every time. That I would never be my father. That my nature was stronger than my genetics or the way that he had raised me. I wanted to believe that so badly that it hurt. It wasn’t even a want, it was a need. Hadn’t that been the thing propelling me forward for so many years, the need to be better than my father? I had always felt like I was failing, that I would, in the end, make the same mistakes that he did, be driven by the same desires that he felt, but Heero was saying that that wasn’t true. Who was I to believe, my boyfriend that I hadn’t even known for half a year, or my heart?

“But what if I came close to hurting someone…” I asked softly, my voice tiny and barely audible, “What if I almost killed someone?”

That was right, I told myself. He didn’t know… he didn’t know how close I had come to becoming a murderer. How could I possibly be a good person when, even now, I still wonder if things might be better if I had pulled that trigger… that maybe if I had, these nightmares would stop, this anxiety would stop? Maybe I would be in jail, but at least I wouldn’t have to be so afraid of the next time that my father decided to touch me, not even in any sexual way, but just this terror that I have of his mere touch…

“What do you mean?” Heero asked with a frown, but he still wasn’t taking his hand off of mine, at least not yet, “You said that you never brought your father’s gun to school.”

“Not to school,” I confessed, “And it wasn’t… it wasn’t Relena or Zechs…”

“Your father?” he guessed, his tone going soft and sad.

I nodded and felt tears prick at my eyes as the memories of that night assaulted me. It felt like so long ago, but I could still remember it perfectly, like they were engraved in my mind. Heero had that day at a baseball game with his father permanently etched into his memory. I had the night that I almost blew my father’s brains out.

“He was hurting you-“ my boyfriend began to protest, always so logical, always trying to see the good in me and find a way to excuse my failings.

“He wasn’t,” I denied, “Not then.”

 _Not physically_ , I almost said out loud. Because I had been hurt. I had been walking wounded that night. Although my body had been intact, my father had broken my heart into irreparable pieces. 

“One night,” I swallowed roughly, wondering for a moment if I really should be telling him something this personal, this dark, but I knew that he was the only person that I could ever tell and that maybe he was right, maybe bottling things up had only made them worse, “One night I found myself in his room with his gun in my hand. I hadn’t really sleepwalked or anything, I remembered getting it out of the drawer after having this nightmare…” I struggled to explain about those strange nightmares that I have from time to time, but decided that it was just too complicated and dropped it, “Anyway, when I had it in my hands, all I could think about was using it. Not on him at first, but… but on me. I was going to shoot myself in the head.”

Heero squeezed my hand hard and he looked horrified, the reaction that I had been looking for through this entire conversation, but hadn’t expected it right then. I had told him before about trying to commit suicide, so I hadn’t really thought about what the impact of this little confession might be. It was almost funny in a way, hypocritical of him. He had told me that decisions and choices were all that mattered, that my wanting to hurt someone didn’t matter, yet there he was panicking over something that I hadn’t even gone through on.

“I just… I wanted to end everything. I wanted all the bad things to _stop_. I was so goddamned tired…” I felt tears start to pour down my cheeks as I realized that while I was describing something that had happened back then, what I was really talking about was what I was feeling right there, that very day as I sat there on the porch, “I wanted the bullying and the abuse to stop. I wanted to stop being so frightened all the time… of him, of them, of myself…” my voice twisted and I realized with some embarrassment that I was sobbing, but unable to stop myself, “I wanted to _sleep._ That was all that I wanted. To sleep and have everything go away, to go far, far away.”

I covered my face with my hands, crying uncontrollably for a moment. The sound of my own crying was so strange in the eerie silence of the night. With a small noise of concerned panic, Heero suddenly had me wrapped up in his arms again, holding me tightly against his chest as much as he could. It reminded me of how he had held me that afternoon, after saving me from Zechs, like he couldn’t hold enough of me together. I took a deep, shuddering breath, regaining some measure of control over my memories, his embrace and his comfort alone were the only things that allowed me continue on. I felt him rub my back like before, but this time I didn’t try to make him stop.

“I hated him so much,” I murmured, “but more than anything, I was scared of him and I couldn’t take it anymore. But that night, when I was looking at him with his gun pressed against my head, hate was what I felt the most. I realized how little he must actually care for me, that he couldn’t even stop from hurting me and I hated him for that, for taking all of his shit out on me. The next thing I knew, I had the gun to his head. And I was so fucking _calm_ , like it was the easiest decision in the world. It was exactly like wanting to shoot Zechs, I thought that it would be better for everyone if he were dead, better for me, better for my mother, that he even _deserved it_ , and just thinking about doing it made me feel good, only this was my _father_ , not some random bully!

“I even started pressing down on the trigger and I could have done it, I could have shot him right then! I wanted to do it, I wanted to kill him and make him stop hurting me…” I squeezed my eyes shut, remembering those feelings… that desire and that pain. A desire that has never fully gone away, despite my horror at my own actions that night.

“You didn’t,” his voice was deep and soothing as I felt it through his chest, “You didn’t shoot him.”

I shook my head violently.

“But I _wanted_ to,” I whispered harshly.

“Then why didn’t you?” he asked me, his voice still so soft, still so kind and lacking any of fear or disgust that I had thought he would have after hearing this.

“Because…” I opened my eyes, my vision blurry from crying. “Because he was my daddy. I-I loved him, even if he hurt me and I didn’t want to kill him! And because… I didn’t want to be a murderer…”

“You aren’t one,” he assured me.

“But I wanted to!” I cried out, “Even if I didn’t do it, I almost did! I almost pulled that trigger! How can I possibly be a good person when I almost killed my own father, when I still want to kill him! This… this isn’t some fantasy that I had! I held a gun to his head! I had my fucking finger on the trigger! What sort of good person does something like that?! Even if I’m not a murderer, just one more second and I could have been one!”

“No, you couldn’t have,” Heero said sternly and grabbed at my shoulders, pushing me off of him so he could look me in the eye, “You never would have. That’s who you are. Maybe you came close, but no matter how many times it happens, you never will, you’ll always stop yourself. You aren’t a murderer, Duo, and you aren’t a bad person. Feeling like that, so helpless and hurting and angry that you would want to kill your father… if those feelings are wrong, they’re feelings that your father gave you after beating the shit out of you and making you feel like trash! He deserves those feelings directed at him and they are _not_ your fault! Hell, after seeing what he’s done to you, I’ve been tempted to kill him myself and I’m not the one that he treats like his personal punching bag!”

“You weren’t the one who tried to kill him!” I yelled at him angrily, “You weren’t the one who pointed a loaded weapon at his head!”

“No,” he admitted, “But when you called me in the middle of the night to drive you to the hospital because you were in too much pain to go yourself, or when you came back here, bleeding and with a gash on your face because he slammed your head into a dumpster, if you had handed me a gun then, I might have. I might have even gone through with it.”

I stared at him in shock. I had had no idea… no indication that he hated my father that much, that he had actually wanted to kill him after seeing the injuries that he had given me. His gaze softened and he reached out to trail his knuckles over my cheek.

“I’ve seen what he does to you,” he murmured, “I’ve held you as you’ve cried after he’s hurt you on more than one occasion. You aren’t a monster for wanting to make him stop, through any means. _He’s_ the monster. You stopped, he didn’t. You made that choice. Maybe you came close to doing it, but you still stopped. You still decided that you couldn’t do it. So how are you a bad person, Duo? Tell me that. What have you done that makes you such a horrible person that you think this relationship is a mistake?”

“I…” for once, I found myself incapable of any words. All of the doubts that I had been feeling for so long escaped me and for that moment, I couldn’t remember why I had been so sure that this was the right decision, that Heero should be rid of me. Maybe it was my tiredness, or maybe it was just the things that he had said, but I suddenly felt very ridiculous, “… I don’t know how to love you…” I whispered, more tears falling as I blinked, looking at his chest, “I don’t know how to be what you want me to be…”

He cupped both of my cheeks and tilted my head so I was looking at him through my tears.

“I don’t want anything from you,” he said with a loving smile, “All I want is for you to let me love you, and to love me back, anyway that you know how. I don’t care if it isn’t graceful. I didn’t ask you out because I thought you were some kind of Don Juan, I asked you because I care for you, awkwardness, lack of social graces and all. All I want is for you to let me to be with you. Can you do that? Can you put aside how you feel about yourself just long enough to trust in what I want?”

I scrambled for those insecurities, for all of my self-loathing and the surety that I had had just minutes ago. I tried to bring up what had happened at school that day, how much better he was than me, all of that shit in my head, but I for once, I found nothing. All I could do was nod.

“Good,” his smile became a little bit brighter, “Now are you done scaring the shit out of me today, or do you have any more confessions to make?”

He got a tired, shocked little chuckle out of me.

“I… I think I’m done,” I confessed and realized that I was admitting to a lot more than an end to that stressful conversation.

I was done. I couldn’t do anymore. I was at the end of my rope, both physically and emotionally. I just… didn’t have any more fight left in me, against him, against myself, against the world… I was done.

“Good, because it’s getting colder,” he shivered and I immediately felt bad that he was out there because of me, because of my issues. His smile turned endearing and he brushed his thumbs against my cheeks, right under my eyes, “You look like a panda.”

“What?” I blinked at him stupidly, my tired mind unable to link myself with the animal.

“The circles under your eyes,” he chuckled, “They make you look like a panda or a raccoon.”

I blushed a little at that.

“Come on,” he urged, getting to his feet, “I’m tired and you’re exceptionally tired. Enough of this for the night. If you want to talk about it more, we can in the morning, but only after you’ve gotten some rest.”

“I’m sorry,” I murmured, “for giving you nightmares.”

“You didn’t give me nightmares,” he insisted, reaching his hand down for me to grab and pulled me to my feet, “Zechs did that. It’s only natural that I would have some bad dreams after what happened.”

“Well… I’m sorry for being such a pain in the ass all the time then,” I muttered.

I almost found my second wind and argued that he would be better off not having me around and dealing with the constant shit and anxiety that I gave him, but he had beaten it into my head that morning that he didn’t see it that way, only I did, so I kept my mouth shut.

“Now _that_ you can apologize for,” he said, but he did so with a smirk, taking any kind of sting out of it, “Don’t forget your mug.”

He leaned down to grab his own and I looked around in bewilderment, not understanding what he was talking about until I spotted the mug that he had given me earlier. It was sitting behind where I had been sitting on the steps and I had zero recollection of placing it there at some point during our argument. Of course, I also had no recollection of drinking more than a few sips of it, but the mug was empty. I snagged it and almost jumped when Heero grabbed my hand and pulled me back towards the porch door. He paused for a moment after opening the sliding door and glanced on me over his shoulder, this strange smile on his face.

“Oh, and Duo? I love your hard edges,” he said cheekily.

I flushed darkly. What the hell did that mean? I was so busy trying to figure that out that I was almost oblivious when he pulled me inside. Pepper and Kanuck were waiting for us in the kitchen, being tolerant of each other at least for the moment. My cat twined herself around my legs and meowed at me, but I ignored her for the moment while I kicked off Justin’s boots and let Heero take his jacket off of me before picking her up. I swayed on my feet and almost fell just doing that much, but my best friend was right there to keep me from doing something so stupid, placing a hand on my back to steady me.

“Whoa, there,” he eased, “Are you ok to make it upstairs?”

“I…” I almost said that I would manage, not wanting to bother him with my problems anymore, but he kind of had a point, “I’m not sure.”

“We can crash on the couch, then,” he said.

“Heero,” I sighed, “You don’t need to- “

He gently pushed me forward and I sighed again, realizing that he wasn’t going to listen to any of my protests that morning. He kept his hand on me and steered me into the living room, cat in my arms and his dog following us with interest.

“Sit,” he commanded and I did so, sitting in his father’s chair for a moment while he disappeared into the hallway that led to his parents’ bedroom.

I had officially hit that point of pure exhaustion when all I could do was follow orders, any sort of higher thinking having abandoned me. Heero came back seconds later with a blanket in his arms. I watched him in a very mechanical, not quite mentally there way as he gathered up a bunch of pillows and set them up on one end of the couch, laid down on it and covered himself with the blanket. He lifted it up and gestured for me to get in under it on the outside edge of the couch. Any kind of protests that I could have voiced about this arrangement were just white noise. With Pepper still secure in my arms, I laid down with my back towards Heero, exactly like I had started out the previous night, since that had worked pretty well. Pepper curled up against my chest, purring in contentment and I felt Heero put his arm around me like he had before and I could have started to purr myself. He felt warm and good against and around me. Then I felt him rest his head against the crook of my shoulder and I felt this intense sensation of peace, a kind of pleasure that no kiss could match.

“This alright?” he whispered into my ear and I tried very hard not to shiver as I felt his warm breath ghost over my skin, although he did, “You feel cold…”

“This is good,” I murmured and closed my eyes.

I let everything wash out of me, all of the bad shit. I knew that it would be waiting for me when I woke up, that I would go over everything that Heero had said, everything that we had argued about, but right then, I was just too tired. My brain couldn’t handle any kind of internal debating or serious thought. Right then, I just wanted to feel him against me, feel his realness after I had just tried to throw it all away.

I drifted for some time, probably no more than ten or twenty minutes, not in any kind of sleep, but just in this thoughtless, senseless way as I tried to force myself to doze off. Then I heard this strange sound that made me open my eyes in the dark. It was a sharp, hitch of breath and within seconds, I could feel a wetness soaking into the shoulder of my night shirt where Heero had his faced pressed. Even in my current state, I realized that he was crying. Why, I didn’t know. Because he had thought that I was breaking up with him? From hearing that I had almost offed myself with my father’s gun? Just from memories of what had almost happened to me at school? It was impossible to tell, but he tightened his grip around me, so I was at least sure that it had something to do with me.

I found his hand under the blanket and threaded my fingers with his, giving them a gentle squeeze. It was all that I could think to do and I was rewarded by feeling his lips kissing the bare skin between my shoulder and my neck as the soft sound of his crying ceased. His breathing evened out and I felt him relax against me again, relaxing his grip. I closed my eyes again, relieved that I had made it better, whatever it had been.

Finally, mere minutes later, I was right behind him, sleep finding me and dragging me under.

 

 

End Part 13

 

Author’s Note: I am back! Move went well, all things considered. I was without my computer for twelve days, but I managed to borrow friends’ computers to work on this thing and got the first hundred pages out before I got my computer back. Sorry about the length, but I decided to just keep it all in one part instead of breaking it up. Writing updates should return to more or less normal now, although I’m living with my parents atm, so finding peace and quiet to write is challenging.

 

Also, a reminder: My gay erotica novel, A Stray Cat in Faerie Tale Land has been published on Amazon. To date, I’ve sold 12 copies and someone wrote a really nice, five star review on it. I’ve decided to celebrate by having a free promotion on the book. From March 21st to March 25th, you can get it for free ^_^   Even if you miss out on the promotion, it’s only .99 cents normally.

 

 

 (1) If you're feeling brave and want to know what these types of wounds look like, type 'subcutaneous hematoma arm' in google images. Do not omit arm, because there are some pretty gross images under that search -_-

 

(2) In Italian, Amicizia means 'friendship'. Ami T, or amity, also means friendship. So yeah, I think Quatre had a good reason to roll his eyes, lol.

 

(3) For those that care, zuppa toscana is an Italian soup made with Italian sausage, crushed red peppers, diced white onions, bacon, garlic puree, heavy cream, and potatoes. A thick dish, but really good for cold weather.

 

(4) It should be stated right now that I know fuck all about sports, but I tried to do some research on the subject for this story. The game that Heero is (probably, again I don’t follow major league baseball) talking about is the Miami Marlins game against Cleveland at the Pro Player Stadium. Moises Alou was an outfielder that led the team in home runs. While Heero is talented in different areas of the sport, batting is his real passion, so he became pretty interested in various batters throughout his childhood.

 


	58. Chapter 8 Part 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Their lack of sleep causes Heero and Duo to make a lapse in judgment and their relationship is found out by Heero's parents. Will this strain tear apart their new relationship and take the only sanctuary that Duo has ever known from him?

A Stagnation of Love

Chapter 8

Part 14

 

 

          I didn’t sleep as well as I had the previous morning in Heero’s bed that morning on the couch with him. Don’t get me wrong, my sleep was deep and undisturbed. If I had woken up at all in that time span, I don’t remember, and I managed a full, three hours. A drop in the ocean compared to all the sleep that I had missed, and a pittance compared to the sleep that I had needed to get, but the most that I had gotten since Saturday. But my sleep had not been peaceful, at least not the entire time. I had dreams. Well, a single nightmare, really, but it had been a rather terrible one. That’s not too surprising and I would have been more shocked if I hadn’t had one after the day that I had just had. But that didn’t make it any less awful.

          My father was leading me down one of the hallways at school, although that wasn’t quite right. It was more like he was dragging me somehow, and the hallway was far too long to exist in reality. Even in the dream, I had known that something was wrong, that what my father was doing was wrong, but I let him keep pulling me forward because I was scared of him and unsure of what was happening. Then, after an unknown amount of time, the hallway defined itself and I saw where he was taking me.

          It was ‘the room.’ It was just the classroom where Zechs and his friends had assaulted me the previous day, but in my head that was what that place had become, ‘the room’ like the name of some horror flick. In my dream, the doorway loomed in front of me in a way that it never could in reality, a cavernous mouth, gaping and leading to some terrible monster, maybe even the one that stalks me in my worst nightmares. I fought against him hard then, knowing that there was something awful in there waiting for me, something that wanted to hurt me, but even in my dreams, my father is stronger than me. He just kept dragging me, hitting me a few times when I tried to pull away, before shoving me into the room, a lot like what had happened to me that afternoon.

          My dream self wasn’t any more surprised than my real self to find Zechs in that room, waiting for me in place of the shadowy monster that I’m used to. I had actually been expecting him and would have been more shocked if he _hadn’t_ been there. I was far more confused about my father’s role in the dream and was actually surprised that my subconscious hadn’t conjured up Relena or Mueller as well. Zechs seemed even larger and more imposing in my nightmare, this immovable thing that grabbed me in an equally immovable grip that wasn’t all that different from how he had held me down and made me defenseless in reality.

He forced me down on my knees and held my head in a hand that felt like it was made of iron. Then, when he was prying my jaw open, it felt like he was using a crowbar instead of his fingers and I had no choice at all to do anything but open my mouth for him or he would break my jaw, or perhaps get around to shattering my teeth like he had promised. I glanced back behind me for my father, knowing somehow that he was there, watching us. I wanted to plead for him to make Zechs stop, to save me like Heero had saved me, to be the father that I had always wanted, to be the dad that I had believed him to be as a child and _protect me_ for once, just this once.

I turned my head, something that I wouldn’t have been able to do in anything but a dream with Zechs holding me like that, and saw something much more horrifying than anything that Zechs could possibly do to me, dream or no dream. My father was sitting behind me in a chair, watching me with the same far too bright and intense expression that he would often have right before he raped me, an expression of interest. He had the fly of his pants open and his cock was out, erect in his hand. My dad usually fucks me from behind, sparing me from having to see either his penis or his face most of the time in one of the few kindnesses he shows me during the act, so that image of him sitting there, exposing himself to me while my bully pried my mouth open in an act that was just as violating was both strange and shocking.

Zechs pulled my attention back to him as he forced his fingers into my mouth. Thankfully, since it was just a dream, I was saved from tasting his skin, but that did little to lessen the unpleasantness of what was happening. Knowing what my father was doing, hearing the strange, soft sounds of him stroking himself behind me, the same part of me that was aware that this was all just an awful nightmare expected this dream version of Zechs to finish what he had been unable to before, that he was going to fuck my mouth. Instead, he shoved his fist inside of me, the whole thing going in with ease when, if it had happened in reality, he really would have broken my jaw like he almost had with that thinner, if only marginally so, bat. Even in the dream, even if it wasn’t real, it hurt like hell. His other hand pulled on my hair and his fist moved all the way down my throat, like some invading organism. It just kept going deeper and deeper down until I could feel it in my lungs, choking the breath right out of me.

I could hear my father groaning and panting, sounds that I was all too familiar with at that point. He was jacking off to Zechs killing me, getting as aroused by the sight of my pain and violation as he would to seeing my hair down or if I made the mistake of bending over around him. If I hadn’t been so thoroughly sickened by that, I would have screamed at him. He had brought me there like some kind of sacrificial lamb to be devoured by the lion. ‘Why?!’ I wanted to scream, ‘how can you do this to me?! Isn’t it just enough between the two of us?! Isn’t it enough that you have to rip my heart out when it’s just you?! So how can you bring me here, let this happen to me?! And how… how can you get off on it?!’

Deep inside of me, I felt that iron hand wrap around my heart and pull it right out of me, through my throat and out of my mouth. A fountain of coppery blood and acidic vomit followed it and I drowned in it while, behind me, I heard the telltale grunt of my father’s orgasm.

In a movie, I would have woken up abruptly with a scream or even fallen off of the couch in a struggle, but that shit almost never happens in real life. I’ve had some pretty horrible nightmares, certainly worse ones than I had that morning, and I’ve never woken up screaming before. Sickened maybe, depressed certainly, but never violently. It was no different after this one. I blinked my eyes open lethargically, uncertain of where I was and what was going on, my nightmare still seared into my brain. I tasted blood in my mouth and that pain from my dream was there in the waking world, which was disorientating enough for me to feel confused. But I wasn’t in that classroom on my knees. I wasn’t even in my own bed or in the guest bedroom.

It was the warmth of Heero’s body and his familiar smell more than anything that pulled me abruptly out of the lingering shadows and sensations from my nightmare. The couch that we were on was bigger than the one that I have at home, but it was still just a couch and the two of us were more or less molded together. Heero was lying flat on the couch, one arm tossed over his stomach and the blanket tangled around the both of us. I was laying on his arm and shoulder and that little corner of his side that I was neatly tucked in on my own side was blissfully warm from both of our body heats. I peered over at his sleeping face, just long enough to register that this was no dream and that I was safe before pressing my face against his shoulder.

Maybe it was that thought, that Heero was there and he would protect me, maybe it was the pleasantness of lying against him like that, or maybe it was my sheer exhaustion, but my eyes slid closed again after just a second and I was pulled back under. I didn’t have any more dreams, bad or not, I just slept. I have no clue how long for. It could have been an hour or just five minutes, I don’t really remember much of anything besides falling back to sleep and my next, far less pleasant awakening at the sound of someone shouting.

“A-ha!” a very familiar, feminine voice cried out in triumph, “I knew it!”

I came awake with a jolt, seventeen years’ worth of valuable lessons pulling me from sleep with a surge of adrenaline. I didn’t really register the words at first, only the loud noise and that it had come from someone. My eyes shot open and my body stiffened, preparing to flee like I have so many times when I hear my father start to yell, only this time I had no clue what I was running from. And there seemed to be something wrapped around me, something that was far from a threat, so my tired, sleep addled brain was stuck in the ‘huh? What?’ mode, which was keeping me from the running and hiding mode.

“Dammit, Mom!” I heard Heero hiss angrily, his voice vibrating through me with how close I was lying to his chest, “You woke him up!”

I heard Heero’s mother make a sharp, guilty, indrawn breath that sounded like the sort of noise you would make if you had stubbed your toe or broken a dish or seen a child skin their knee. It would have been comical coming from her over something so stupid as just waking me up if her mere presence hadn’t been so horrifying to me.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry!” she gasped at her error, but I could still here a smug twinge in her tone, even if it was receding fast.

Reality crashed down around me as I realized with all too sharp clarity what was going on. Details filtered into my consciousness little by little, like drops of water off a slowly melting icicle. For a strange moment, I thought I had to be dreaming, because I could not understand what Heero’s mother was doing there. I was well aware that I was still on the couch with Heero, I had to be if I was laying so close to him that his voice was that loud, but my knowledge of sleeping with him was all tangled up with the nightmare that I had had, that brief interlude after I had woken up from it before I had fallen back to sleep seeming unreal.

And I could still taste blood in my mouth, so I _had_ to be dreaming. That was my logic. My mouth hurt, too, just like it had in my dream. It wasn’t just soreness when I swallowed, but an actual deep, sharp, shooting pain through my mouth and throat along with the coppery taste of flesh blood like I had just bitten my tongue or gotten punched in the mouth. For some reason, when I tasted it, what came to me wasn’t the abuse that Zechs had done to me, wasn’t anything that had actually happened to me, but that nightmare. Before I realized that I was actually awake and that blood was real, that pain was real, I just thought that it was another part of the dream.

It didn’t take all that long for me to wake up enough to realize that everything that I was experiencing was really happening. I realized a few other things, too, that had my heart racing with stress. The main one being that, yes, Heero’s mother was there in the living room with us, maybe five feet away from the couch watching us. That, by itself, wasn’t much reason for alarm. Sure, it probably looked a bit… suspicious having the two of us sleeping on the couch together, but I could pull some bullshit out of my ass about us being exhausted and just crashing there because neither of us could sleep, or even that I had had a nightmare and Heero was just being a good friend. It wasn’t even entirely a lie, either. She might have even believed that if not for how we were laying.

At some point during the morning, I had stopped just being curled up in the fetal position pressed against my boyfriend’s side and was now almost entirely on top of him. I still had my head on his shoulder, but now I had one leg thrown over his hip and an arm around his waist like he was some kind of giant body pillow or a stuffed animal. Heero was almost as bad with one arm wrapped around my back, keeping me from rolling off of him or off the couch, I wasn’t sure which, and his other hand was resting on top of the one that I had on his stomach. The blanket was still, thankfully, tossed over our legs up to Heero’s hips, so his mom couldn’t see where my leg was, but with how close we were to each other, it was pretty obvious what was going on. And even if it wasn’t, friends don’t lie like that. I couldn’t even chalk it up to an accident because Heero was wide awake and he was still holding me and not making a single move to stop.

Panic flared in me. This could not be happening. This was an even bigger nightmare than the one that I had just had, it _had_ to be. We had just outed ourselves to Heero’s _mother_ of all people! No, _I_ had outed him. If I hadn’t been having sleeping problems and that little freak out that I had had on the porch, he never would have crashed on the couch with me. Because of me, his mother knew that we were together, just like at school. All of this was my fault. And don’t even try to tell me that she didn’t know, she had to. It was staring her right in the face.

Suddenly, her words and her tone came to me. _‘I knew it,’_ she had said, and with such smugness, like a little kid that had just found out that their father was Santa Claus all along after having suspected it for years. She had known? How?! We had been so secretive about it! We hadn’t done anything that would have made his parents think that we were seeing each other… hadn’t we? And just like that, it hit me like a slap to the face. The near fight that I had walked in on between Heero and his parents, the knowing looks that his mother and father had given each other, whatever Mariela had whispered to Heero that had made him blush like that… was that what it had all been about? Had she really guessed that our relationship had changed so easily? Did his father know, too? Why did that horrify me even more than his mother gloating that she had known like this was some kind of joke?

Horror is a pretty damned good word to describe how I felt lying there, realizing all of this. It shouldn’t have made me feel even half as bad as Heero deciding to out himself to our entire school. If anything, I should have felt relieved that, unlike then, if anything bad happened, it would be on my head and not his. His parents, thankfully, already knew that he was gay, so I hadn’t fucked up that much at least. And it obviously hadn’t come to much of a shock to Heero’s mother that we were dating. I didn’t think that it would, really. I was the only other gay boy that Heero knew in town, a fact that I was sure Mariela and Justin were aware of, and we were close friends, _really_ close, actually. It wasn’t such a stretch to wonder if there might one day be an attraction between us, or even that we had gotten together out of loneliness.

It made me nervous that his mother had actually _guessed_ it for who even knew how long and the possibility that she had suspected it from the start made me anxious as I went over our behavior that last week, trying to pinpoint when we had become so transparent. When we had gone out on our first date? I suppose that would have been the most obvious moment, given how nervous I had been and our dressing up for it, but what if it had been before then? I hadn’t thought that we were being obvious, so it bothered me a great deal that I had thought I had been discrete only to find out that that wasn’t true.

I have so many secrets that I try to hide from people, so my failure was nerve wracking. Although this was my first time trying to hide a relationship in broad daylight and I’ll be the first to admit that I hadn’t had a clue as to what I was doing. Hiding my seeing Trowa from our classmates had been easy since our romantic entanglement had been damned tepid compared to the fire that I feel for Heero, and Trowa himself had both made it easy and had done most of the work. Heero never makes _anything_ easy. He always seems to stray from the path that can be traveled with the least amount of effort. If I didn’t love him so much, being with him would be exhausting and stressful. It still _is_ stressful, but only because I care for him so much, and only because I am so invested in this relationship. I certainly never had to try to hide my relationship with Trowa in front of his family while also maintaining a visible friendship.

But just because our getting together wasn’t surprising, that didn’t mean that it was ok. It was one thing to know that your son is gay and even to be ok with it, but something completely different to know that he’s actually _acting_ on his sexuality. What were his parents going to think when they found out that he was dating? Hell, that he wasn’t even hiding it from the rest of the community? But the thing that really had my stomach sinking to my knees was that out of all of the people that Heero could be seeing, he was seeing _me._ There was not a scenario in my imaginings where either of Heero’s parents would be alright with that.

I was his best friend. We already spent a ridiculous amount of time together. Hell, we had shared a bed! Heero probably saw me more than he did his parents some days. If they knew that we were also dating, what sort of things would they imagine we were doing together? Would they think that us being so close, spending all that time together, sharing a bed and a home was inappropriate? Would they not want me to sleep over there if we were dating? Would they want us to back off from each other? Would I no longer be welcome in their home? Would their caring for me, doing things for me, be considered a conflict of interest? I know that sounds stupid and illogical, but these were the things that I was scared of, the worries that I had that were making me spiral into a panic that morning.

But the worst of it was the very real possibility that Heero’s parents might disapprove of him dating me because they didn’t think that I was good enough for him. I certainly didn’t think so and he was their child. If they did think that, I wouldn’t blame them. As certain… things about me had come to light, not just for Heero, but for his parents, I had become consumed with anxiety that they wouldn’t want me to hang around him anymore. I was a bad influence to a t. I’m poor, have a trashy mouth, an alcoholic and abusive father, am bullied and carry a shitty amount of baggage around with me and all I’ve done since we became friends is cause Heero problems. The only nice thing that can be said about me is that I haven’t gotten him into booze and drugs.

Justin had assured me that, while they worried about Heero getting bullied, he didn’t think that I was a bad influence and even if I had made Heero’s life harder, he wasn’t bothered by our friendship. I wasn’t so sure if I agreed with his views, despite his and Heero’s assurances of my character, but this was different! We weren’t just friends anymore, we weren’t just hanging out with each other out of loneliness or even just companionship. I have absolutely no frame of reference for this sort of thing, for your parents finding out that you were dating, let alone the wrong person, but I just knew that Justin and Mariela were not going to be ok with this.

I felt it in my gut, this horrible sinking feeling. All the anxiety that I had about dragging Heero down, his parents were going to think that, too. How couldn’t they? They were nice people, and they cared about me, but even they had to see that I was no good for him, that the best thing they could do was to kick me out of his life. I might not know how they were going to react, or know how this sort of thing worked, but I knew they well enough to know that if they were going to be angry at anyone, if there was going to be any consequences for our actions, it would be on my head. They might be mad at Heero for a little while for hiding this from them, for dating someone like me, but they would be understanding about it.

But I wasn’t their child. I wasn’t part of their family. The most I could hope for was that they didn’t want me to sleep over at their house anymore, the very worst was that they would demand that I never seen Heero again. They would do it to protect him and they wouldn’t be cruel about it, but that was the only outcome of all of this that I could see that morning. Maybe it was just my pessimism talking or my continued exhaustion messing with my head, but I had a surety that this was going to be my last morning in that house. Before Mariela had even spoken a word, I was already terrified and in mourning. I could feel everything slipping through my fingers in that one instance. All of the good things that had happened to me… dating Heero, my sanctuary at his home, being accepted by his parents, all the things that they’ve done for me… it was all going away. Because that’s what life does to me. It takes and it takes. Even when it gives me something wonderful, deep down I know that one day, it’ll leave me, too.

I didn’t even want to look at Heero’s mother. I wanted to keep my face pressed against his shoulder and pretend like it wasn’t happening. I remembered her smile every time I walked through that front door and the thought that I would never see it again, that all of her warmth for me was going to go ice cold, that she was going to look at me like how my mother used to look at me ripped a hole in my heart. Justin was never going to ruffle my hair or pat me on the shoulder again. Somehow, losing that was more painful than losing having a place to sleep, a safe place away from my father. I could even feel tears start to form in my eyes as depression filled me. I couldn’t handle this. I couldn’t cope with his parents knowing about us, being angry at us for keeping this secret, or even just disappointed in our choices.

All of these thoughts passed through my head in, perhaps, five to ten seconds, but that was more than enough time for me to go from ‘half asleep and panicking’ to ‘really fucking wide awake and in full freak out mode.’ Laying there under Heero’s mother’s stare, not even knowing what she was thinking as she saw us tangled together, made me feel like some kind of pervert, even though it had been completely innocent. I suppose if I had been a normal, teenaged boy, I might have equated it with my mother walking in on me jacking off, embarrassing but probably fairly normal. But since this is me, I could only think of how I had felt yesterday with Zechs holding me down and unzipping his jeans, everyone looking at me and _judging_ me, or even the time when he had dumped a jar of semen on my head, which I was now, after what had happened in that classroom, absolutely certain was his, although I couldn’t bear to really think about that or I would throw up.

My reaction to all of this was a bit violent and probably overly dramatic, but at the time, I could only think about distancing myself from the situation, running away like I always do because I couldn’t handle the scorn. I couldn’t handle knowing that I had fucked up again, although I suppose it would have just been a matter of time anyway before Heero’s parents had figured this out. From what Mariela had said, they had already suspected it, unless she was just joking and I didn’t think that she was. I pulled myself out of Heero’s arms, throwing the blanket off of me so I could sit up. He made a grab for me, but by his surprised expression, he hadn’t expected me to move so quickly and I managed to dodge his efforts to keep me in his arms. I had no idea what Heero was thinking. He had to be just as freaked out as I was about this, right? He should be trying to diffuse the situation, too, not trying to hold on to me right in front of his mother!

Heero’s behavior only made me more convinced that I needed to leave, that if I wasn’t there, it would make things better for him. He could explain things to his parents and keep their tempers down. I was the problem. I always am. I swung my legs over the edge of the couch and almost stepped on Kanuck who was still laying on the floor, looking up at the two of us like we were nuts. Even in my freaked out state, I carefully put my feet down away from him.

“Duo-“ Heero protested as I moved as far away from him to the edge of the couch as I could manage, finally getting a grasp on my shirt, but it was the hurt and trepidation in his eyes that kept me from immediately getting up and not his grip.

The sound of footsteps coming from the hallway pulled my attention away from him and I watched in absolute horror as Justin emerged, still dressed in his night clothes and looking like he had just woken up. I had no idea what time it was, so it might have been his wife’s shout that had woken him, which was somehow more horrifying than the possibility that he was getting up for the day. Ice water settled in my gut. I don’t know why, but I felt more terrible about Heero’s father being a party to this than his mother. Maybe because his view of me meant so much to me. I had done nothing to earn it, but I had his respect and I craved that.

What was he going to think when Mariela told him what she had just walked in on? Would he be furious? Or just annoyed that we had kept this from him? Would he think that I had gotten his son to do something inappropriate in his own home? Or even more awful… would he think, and rightfully so, that all of this was my doing? That I had… had led Heero astray or something? Fuck, they didn’t even know that Heero had outed himself to the entire school because of our relationship and I was already expecting the worst! Mariela turned to her husband and I expected her to start screaming the truth at him, that she would tell him that we were obviously together, or at least being… intimate with each other and it would spark some sort of argument. I couldn’t take that, being the reason for them fighting and I knew that if his parents made this an issue, Heero _was_ going to fight about it. The very last thing that I had been expecting in that awful moment sitting on the couch, feeling my world falling around my head, was for her to flash him a triumphant, arrogant grin.

“See?” she boasted, looking far too proud of herself, like a little kid who had found out that they were right and their parents were wrong, gesturing to Heero and myself, “I told you so!”

It dawned on me the sort of picture that my boyfriend and I must be presenting to his father right then, Heero still laying down with me sitting right in front of him, his left hand gripping my shirt and his right on my hip, the both of us wide eyed and looking far too guilty for us to be innocent. It must have dawned on Heero, too, because he suddenly turned bright red and looked embarrassed, but to my shock, he still didn’t remove his hands. All he did was use my shirt as leverage to sit up, but that just made it look like I was almost sitting on his lap, which was worse.

Justin’s blue eyes slid over us lazily, studying us for a mere second, but to my continued disbelief, instead of him getting mad and demanding what we were doing and what was going on, he just looked rather bored by all of this, immediately looking away and walking over to his wife like utter chaos wasn’t unfolding in his living room.

“Yes, dear,” he said drolly, looking very unimpressed by her declaration, “I knew, too, only _I_ didn’t say anything because I wanted to be discrete about it so we wouldn’t scare Duo off,” his remark came out a bit sharp and scolding, like he was talking to his kid instead of his wife.

She looked a bit taken aback by that comment until he gestured to me and she glanced back at us. I don’t know what it was that she saw on my face, my fear, anxiety, or just the general trapped rabbit look that I was going for, but it made her pale. I guess she hadn’t realized how freaked out I was getting until Justin had pointed it out to her. It was at that point when her shock turned into horror for some bizarre reason that I was clueless about that I had decided that I couldn’t take anymore. Was she horrified because she really had just been joking around and had just realized that this wasn’t a joke at all, or because her teasing had made me overreact, I don’t know and right then, I really didn’t care. All at once, everything that had happened that week flashed before me; Heero deciding to out himself, Heero saving me from Zechs, his parents walking in on us sleeping together… I had done enough damage to his life that week.

“S-sorry,” I sputtered and finally managed to pull myself from Heero’s grip enough to get to my feet, “I should go… I’m sorry about all of this…” my voice fell flat.

It hurt to talk. I could still taste blood and my voice sounded like I was being strangled. I supposed that Zechs had done more damage to me than I had thought. I hadn’t noticed any pain yesterday. Had I been so out of it that I hadn’t even noticed the damage done to my mouth and throat, or had it just taken time to get worse? My body was moving before I really realized what I was doing, filled with nervous energy and I just hoped that with my hasty retreat, no one would see how my hands were shaking. I snatched up Pepper who had been curled up by our feet and maneuvered my way around the dog, who looked oddly concerned for an animal and seemed like he was going to try to follow me. If I had had my jacket and boots in hand, I would have run out of the house right there, literally. I knew that I was doing some kind of weird, skittish deer dance as I prepared myself to quickly get the fuck out of there, but that was exactly how I felt.

“Oh, no, Duo,” Mariela protested in alarm, looking incredibly guilty, like she had just kicked a puppy, and reached out for me, desperate to stop me without quite touching me yet, “You don’t need to go anywhere, everything is fine-“

“No, it’s alright,” I shook my head, stepping away from her and trying to smile with some kind of assurance, but I just didn’t have the ability, “I don’t want to cause any more trouble, I’ve already screwed things up enough…”

I bit my tongue before I could start rambling, not realizing how tightly I was holding my cat, like a life line, although she didn’t complain. I began to walk away, wondering if I could make it up the stairs to change and grab my things for school or if it would just be better to make for my coat and leave.

“Dammit, Duo, stop,” I heard Heero swear and heard him get up from the couch.

His words did nothing to get me to stop or calm me down, it only spurred me on. Definitely just leave, I decided. If Heero caught up with me, he was going to do that thing that he always does and get me to stay for the fall out. He didn’t get that this was all of my fault, that the best thing that could be done was for me to back off, that I didn’t want to be there and listen to what his parents had to say about our relationship. I was in full flight mode and there was nothing that was going to make me stop, not him, not his mother, not all of the logic in the world. I just wanted to go hide and cry and lie to myself that this wasn’t going to change anything, that I hadn’t destroyed things again. At least, that was what I thought until Justin decided to take control of the situation.

“Duo, sit down,” he ordered.

His voice was stern, but not angry or cruel, yet I still flinched at the command. Seventeen years of obedience at such a tone having been drilled into me, I stopped in my tracks. I hadn’t even made it out of the damned living room and could only barely see the front door. My heart sinking, I turned back and saw that even Heero hadn’t had the chance to do more than stand up before his father had stopped me. I loosened my grip on Pepper and walked back to the couch, my head down and my back as straight as a board, feeling like I was walking to my own beheading. My steps were slow, but I didn’t draw things out, sitting back down on the far end of the couch, as far from Heero as I could get, like there was an intensely heavy weight dragging me down.

I put Pepper down on the couch, expecting her to run off after being treated so roughly, but she just loyally laid down next to me, pressed against my leg. Heero sat back down, too, looking conflicted about whether I needed comfort or space and negotiated by sitting down on the middle of the long couch, close enough to touch me if I needed it, but not crowding me. I wished that I could tell him how much that meant to me, but all I could do was nervously grab the bottom of my shirt in my fists and tug on it. I bowed my head as Justin sat down on the edge of the coffee table that was in front of the couch, not wanting him to see how scared I was as he perused me. I tightened my grip on my shirt and it's really a miracle that I didn’t tear it. I let go of it and wrapped my arms around my stomach, feeling very sick all of a sudden, whether it was from my continued tiredness or emotional turmoil. I bit my split lip, tasting more blood as my anxiety rose in me like a wave.

“Please don’t kick me out,” I whispered hoarsely and was further horrified to feel wet tears track down my cheeks.

My plea sounded so desperate and pathetic, delivered in a bare whisper that made me feel very childish. I glanced at Heero’s parents through my bangs and caught them glancing at each other, both looking a bit shocked and horrified themselves. Mariela put her hand in front of her mouth, looking at me with this devastated expression that tore at my heart, even though I didn’t know why she was so bothered.

“No one is going to kick you out of the house!” Heero protested, but the slight doubt that I saw on his face as he looked at his parents made me feel very sick.

He always had such faith in his parents, but right then, he didn’t know any more than I did. We were both braving through unknown territory.

“Oh, sweetie, of course we aren’t going to kick you out!” his mother promised.

I looked over at Justin and the small nod that he gave me, his eyes sharp and intense and honest, almost had me crying in pure relief. He reached over and touched my arm, getting me to release myself. When I put my hand on my knee, he covered my hand with his. It dwarfed mine, but less than my father’s would. For the first time, I realized how pale his skin was. Not as pale as mine or my mother’s, but paler than my father’s and fairly close to my own. I had never noticed that before.

“They’re right,” he told me in a very soothing, soft tone, “No one is going to kick you out, Duo. Mariela and I aren’t mad at either of you,” he looked to her for confirmation and she nodded frantically, “Even if we were upset, which we aren’t, we would never do that to you. You are always welcome here and you haven’t done anything wrong.”

I let go of a shuddering breath. I hadn’t even known that I had been holding it in. _“You haven’t don’t anything wrong_ ,” echoed in my head. I hadn’t? That wasn’t how I felt. I felt guilty. I felt like I had done something awful. But as my anxiety over the situation started to slowly trickle to a tolerable level, I wondered if Justin was right. Had I done something so terrible for me to feel that way? I hadn’t intended for his parents to find out and Heero clearly wasn’t that concerned about it. He was looking at me with this intense worry and he hadn’t been the one to freak out over his parents discovering us like that. I had just wanted to sleep with him and, if I am being entirely honest, I hadn’t exactly been thinking rationally when he had gotten me to lay down with him on the couch. I still wasn’t thinking rationally.

“Of course we aren’t mad,” Mrs. Yuy smiled at me, “We’ve known that Heero is gay for a very long time now. If we had any misgivings about his sexuality, we learned to get around them years ago. We have no reason to be upset with him for finally finding someone that he cares about, quite the opposite. If anything, we were really hoping that the two of you would get together, so this is a huge relief for us. We’re happy, not mad, so you don’t need to worry.”

I stared at her in shock, my overly taxed brain trying to pick apart what she had just said in vain. I knew that his parents didn’t have any problems with his sexuality, but since I had never really dealt with that kind of acceptance from _anyone_ in my life, I hadn’t really considered what that meant for Heero’s family. Tolerance isn’t acceptance. Just because his parents were ok with it, it didn’t mean that they would be ok with him embracing that part of himself, acting on it. And even if they accepted it, I had never considered the possibility that they would be _happy_ about it, that they would encourage him to find a boyfriend, date, do all the normal things that someone his age would do, just with someone of the same gender.

I nearly flinched as I felt something press against my legs and looked down to see Heero’s dog laying his head in my lap. Usually he would whine at me to get my attention, but this time he seemed to just be trying to comfort me, his large eyes staring up at me in that mournful way that dogs can manage. I stroked the top of his head lightly, the feeling of his soft fur on my fingers a welcome thing. If nothing else, it helped me try to work out my thoughts.

I had been dealing with hatred, both personally and through Quatre, for such a long time that I just didn’t know what to do with being told these things. Heero and I were not normal, so how could his parents possibly treat either of us like we were? That’s how I had thought of this. In my imaginings, if they had found out about us, they would have to react like I would expect anyone to react. That they would be alright with it… actually relieved about it, had never dared to cross my mind. I supposed, if I looked outside my personal involvement in it and looked at the situation pragmatically, it made some sense. They had already accepted that this was just the way that Heero was, so wouldn’t the next step be wanting him to be happy in a relationship? At least, if he had been straight, that’s what a typical parent would want.

I suppose I had always just thought that, even if his parents accepted him, even if his father insisted that Heero was better now that he had dropped the charade, his parents might have been relieved when he had been dating Relena. Maybe they had disliked her, but she was still a girl, even if she was the wrong kind of girl. I hadn’t really considered how much it had worried them, to the point where his dating me was a relief. I guess I just couldn’t get my head around the fact that they were ok with _me_ being the other half of this equation with everything that they knew about me. And then there was the other half of what she had said, that they had actually been _hoping_ that Heero and I would get together. What the hell did that mean?! Why would they be hoping for that? Just because they had wanted him to find someone, just because I was gay, too?

“I don’t understand,” I said, rubbing tiredly at my forehead, “Why would you hope for the two of us to date when you didn’t know that we even liked each other? I know that there’s slim pickings in this town, but that doesn’t mean that he was even remotely interested in me.”

I felt Kanuck start to lick my hands. It was like he could sense how stressed I was, or maybe I was reading too much into his affection. He didn’t normally try to lick me because Heero had tried to train that out of him, and if he did try, I would push him away, but right then, it was as comforting as having Justin’s hand on mine had been. As I glanced up from the dog, I caught Heero’s father giving him an insistent, meaningful look and Heero looking distinctly uncomfortable, squirming where he sat.

“Actually…” my best friend and boyfriend murmured shyly, rubbing at the back of his neck, “I kind of told my parents that I like you.”

“W-what?!” I sputtered unintelligently.

He had actually _told_ them that he liked me?! This thing that we had been trying to keep a secret from them, the thing that I had been so anxious about and he had told them so easily, without a second thought to the consequences! I felt oddly betrayed when I really didn’t have a right to be. These were his parents and if he wanted to tell them what was going on in his life, I really didn’t have a say in the matter. Sure, I was a part of this relationship, but I didn’t have the right to get mad at him. At least he hadn’t told them that we were together, just that he liked me, but in reality, we had never talked about keeping this from his parents. He hadn’t made me any promises, so what did I have to feel betrayed about?

“It was a really long time ago!” he rushed to explain, “Before we had even gotten together.”

That made me feel a little bit better, for all of about a second before something dawned on me. We had only been dating for around a week, so if he had told them before that… just how long had they known about his feelings for me? Two weeks? _Longer_? I found it a bit horrifying that they had known about it, that somewhere in their heads, I was no longer just ‘Heero’s friend’ but someone that he had had a crush on. All the times that his parents had said something or acted in a way that I hadn’t understood… was that what it had been about? I glanced at Justin and Mariela and caught them sharing an amused look with each other at all of this, like this was some big, inside joke that they had kept for a long time. I narrowed my eyes at Heero who was looking more and more embarrassed by the second.

“When exactly did you tell them?” I asked suspiciously.

          He looked away from me, his face bright red.

          “When I realized that… that I liked you,” he murmured under his breath.

          “How long?” I demanded, realizing that he had never actually told me even when he had been confessing his feelings to me, only that he had liked me for a while.

          He still wouldn’t meet my gaze, looking down at his pants and picking at them like there was some lint there that only he could see.

          “…Around the beginning of the school year,” his voice was so quiet that I almost didn’t hear him, and even when I did, I was sure that I had misheard him.

          “ _What?_ ” I gaped at him, “But… but we hadn’t even spoken back then! You didn’t even know that I existed! There was no way that you could have liked me back then!”

          He kept scratching at the back of his neck and when his father chuckled lowly, he glared at him for a second before glancing shyly over at me.

          “Not… not at first,” he admitted, “At first it was just an attraction. You might not have noticed me, but I noticed you…” he rubbed at his eyes and grumbled, “Dammit, that makes me sound like a stalker… but it’s the truth. I noticed you and I was interested, even if you didn’t realize it.”

          “I don’t understand,” I shook my head, feeling my skull start to throb, “When? When we were partnered up in chemistry? When you kept bumping into me on the beach?”

          “Nooo,” he drawled and somehow looked more uncomfortable, “Way before that. Actually… it was on my first day of school here.”

          I stared at him with wide eyes, not believing what he was telling me.

          “Wha-,” I started to say but couldn’t even finish formulating the thought.

          The first day of school? But he hadn’t even known me then! Hell, I hadn’t known him, either, beyond some rumors, until he had started to hang out with Relena! How the hell had he even known me enough to feel attracted to me? And why? He hadn’t known a single thing about me! There was nothing for him to be attracted _to_! I had just been another nameless face in the crowd for a new kid. Dressed in worn clothes, no friends and nothing to set me apart from anyone else, there had been nothing extraordinary about me, so why the fuck would he say something like that? He saw my disbelief and huffed in frustration.

          “The very first day of school, I was a wreck,” he confessed, looking over at his parents who looked sad at this admission, but it wasn’t something that came as a shock to them, “I was still grieving over Sarim’s death and feeling guilty about moving here. I didn’t have any friends and everything was strange to me. All I could see was the bad and I was sure that I was going to hate it here. I already _did_ hate it here. I just stood in front of the school doors, not wanting to go inside. I was certain that nothing was going to get any better. I wouldn’t make any friends, get decent grades, get onto the school baseball team, and worst of all, I was scared that everyone was going to figure out that I was gay. Back then, that had been the most important thing to me, just surviving my time through high school.

          “I might have never gone inside that day, but then you walked past me,” he smiled wistfully and slumped, letting his head fall back and rest on the back of the couch, staring off into a memory, “It was your hair that got my attention. I’d never seen a boy with your shade of chestnut before, especially not in a braid,” I tugged self-consciously at the said braid, not even realizing that I was doing it, “You were cute and I was lonely. At first I just watched from a distance, when I was sure no one was paying attention to me. Sure, there were other boys in our class that I found attractive, but when I saw your eyes for the first time when you passed me later that day to go to the library, I was lost,” he flushed a little bit more darkly, although it didn’t hold a candle to the tone of red that my own skin was taking.

“It was just an attraction and I tried to dismiss it because I had no intention of doing anything about it, but I couldn’t get you out of my head that entire week. Every time I tried to ignore it and forget the attraction, I would see you in the hallway or in a class and I couldn’t ignore _you_. One day, I think it was that Wednesday, I saw a couple of boys push you into a locker and you just kept walking like it had never happened, like nothing in the world could faze you. I think I knew then that I was screwed. When my dad asked me how school had been at the end of that week, I couldn’t help but mention you. I told him and my mom that there was this handsome boy at school that I liked with long hair and violet eyes.”

I could have groaned out loud with mortification as an embarrassing thought came to me. If Heero wasn’t lying and he really had told his parents about me so long ago… then they had known about all of this even before he had dragged me through the door that day that he had saved me from Zechs. And they had known who I was… of course they had. I mean, how many boys with braids and violet eyes could there possibly be in one small town?! But they hadn’t said anything. They had kept their mouths shut and I hadn’t been the wiser _all of that time._

 “I don’t know why,” Heero continued, “I guess I was hoping that they would discourage me, tell me to stay hidden or encourage me to do something about it because I sure as hell didn’t know what to do.”

He shot another glare his parents’ way, but his father just shrugged.

“Heero, if you wanted our advice, you just needed to ask, you know that,” Justin scolded lightly, “But we wouldn’t have told you what to do. You’re almost seventeen and you need to make these decisions for yourself. We’re happy to give you whatever help or advice you need, but at the end of the day, this is _your_ life and the consequences are yours to live with, not ours.”

“When you told us that you were going to make sure that no one would ever find out about your sexuality, that you were going to do whatever it took, even be someone that you weren’t, when you refused to talk about your new friends and then you brought that…” Mariela bit off what she had been about to say, “your girlfriend here… we didn’t approve of any of it, but those were your choices to make. We advised you that it wasn’t going to make you happy, but we refused to tell you what you _should_ do. If you had asked us if pursuing Duo or not was what you should do, we would have told you the same thing: to do whatever you thought was best.”

“But you still think that I made the wrong choices when we first moved here,” Heero said with a frown, “You wouldn’t say it, but you thought it.”

Mariela and Justin shared a look, but stubbornly stayed silent, even if the obvious fact of that was written all over their faces.

“And you were right,” he admitted, “I made a huge mistake. I hung out with people that I hated, people that on a normal day, I would have crossed the street just to avoid. I dated someone that I wasn’t just not interested in, but I never in a thousand years would have even wanted to be friends with! All so I could take the easy way out,” he hung his head and looked at his hands that were laying palm up in his lap, like if he studied them for long enough, he could decipher his own actions, “I thought I was making the right choices then,” he murmured dejectedly, “I thought that I knew what I was doing, but now… now when I think about all the things that I did back then… I’m disgusted with myself. I wish I could go back and do the right thing… stop myself from making those asinine decisions,” he lifted his head and looked at me, his blue eyes dark with remorse, but also with a great deal of love, “I wish I could go back and stop myself from hurting you… I wish that I had followed my initial instincts and gotten to know you instead of pretending to be something that I’m not. I wasted all that time acting like a jerk, but worst of all, I caused you pain. I liked you, and I still did that because of petty reasons, even when I knew that it was wrong. I’ll never forgive myself for that.”

I was overwhelmed by the emotions that were radiating from him. Heero, for all of his openness and honesty, is rarely that raw. I don’t think it’s a defensive thing like with me or if it’s just in his nature, but he neither bottles things up inside or is the type of person to be an open book. He has no trouble expressing his emotions, but he’s more of the kind of person to listen to other peoples’ problems than someone who needs to talk things out. But that morning, there was something in him that desperately needed to get out. His admission of being interested in me for so long… and his guilt.

We don’t talk about it that much, what he used to be like. The things that he turned a blind eye to, and the things that he willfully participated in. The bullying, the slurs, his cruelty towards me. I won’t say that it didn’t hurt, because it did. It still hurts, really, when I remember how it used to be between us. But I don’t dwell on it because what he said is exactly right. He was pretending to be something that he wasn’t. The Heero that Relena used to look at with puppy dog eyes, _her_ Heero, the one that would call me a faggot with cum breath or would shove me or would play look out when Zechs beat me up… that person wasn’t _my_ Heero, the one that held my hand and kissed me and could make me feel better, make me feel alive and important with a mere look. They could never be the same person. It had been a mask, a role, so I could never hate him for the things that he had done at the time.

His parents were right. He had made a decision. He had hit the nail on the head earlier that morning, when we had been arguing on the porch. He had told me that just being angry did not make me my father, that my father makes a choice when he hits me, every time he hits me. I could deny it all that I wanted, but somewhere deep down, I know it’s true. It’s the one thing that I can cling to when I worry that one day I might grow up to be him. My father made his choice and I’m making mine. Well, Heero made his choice, too. He had made the choice to act that way, to hurt me.

So how can I dismiss what he did so easily? I suppose some would say that I’m in denial, or that I’m just so smitten with him that I can overlook the abuse just like I overlook my father’s abuse. But it isn’t that fucking simple and not all of my actions come back to that, alright? It’s very basic. Yes, he made those choices. But he also made all the ones that came after. A person isn’t wholly made of bad decisions or good decisions, but a balance of both. My father isn’t just an abusive drunk, there is some good in him. It’s that good that makes it so hard to deal with him. The same thing goes for my mother. She isn’t just the woman who was strong enough to love me and try to do the right thing. She’s also the woman who turned her back on me for so many years, that part never went away.

Heero is no different. He made some bad choices, just like everyone else in existence, but he made those good ones, too, and I know that the good outweighs the bad. Maybe I _am_ in denial and that’s just how I want to see things, but I don’t see the bully anymore when I look at him, only the person that saved my ass, again and again. Despite my continued anxiety, despite feeling shocked by all of his confessions, I saw the pain in him, the desperation for comfort and his raw need to make things right. Without really thinking about what I was doing, that I was right in front of his parents or feeling any hesitance for once, I reached over and held his left hand in my right. His skin felt warm and when I touched him, his blue eyes widened a little.

“I forgave you for that a long time ago,” I told him softly and brought his hand to my lips to lightly kiss his knuckles.

He looked at me in amazement and then all of that guilt on his face just melted away like snow on a spring day and he smiled at me. It was a beautiful thing to watch. Then I remembered that we weren’t exactly alone and looked over at Heero’s parents, finding the both of them smiling warmly at us like they might a couple of playing kittens, half amused and half endeared. I flushed darkly at my blunder, cursing my insomnia and this entire situation and feeling incredibly embarrassed even as I reminded myself that if Justin and Mariela were really angry about the two of us getting together, that would have been the moment when they would have blown up at us. Still, I tried to let go of Heero’s hand, but he wouldn’t let me, grabbing it and holding tightly, this look of conviction on his handsome face.

“When Heero brought you home that day and we realized who you really were, we were so relieved,” his mother said, “We knew, without him needing to tell us, that he had dropped the charade. We had hoped that being friends with you might draw him out and give him the strength to be himself again and it has. That’s all we’ve ever wanted for him, to be happy and comfortable in his own skin. We’ll always be grateful for that, Duo. Of course, we had also hoped that he might get the courage to tell you how he felt, or vice versa, but it was enough for us to see that he had a friend that he could talk to about anything, even his sexuality.”

I felt humbled at her gratitude, but I instantly picked up on ‘or vice versa.’ How the hell had Heero’s parents been that perceptive? Even Heero hadn’t guessed that I liked him until I had told him!

“How did you know?” I whispered, starting to feel a bit freaked out again.

“Well,” she drawled with a slightly smug and amused smirk, “you weren’t exactly discrete, either, honey.”

I didn’t think that I could possibly turn more red than I already was, but boy did she prove me wrong.

“W-what?” I gawked, feeling like a parrot at that point, “But I… I never did anything…”

Until Heero had confessed his own feelings to me, I had kept mine under lock and key, so how…

She chuckled at my naivety and looked at me like she thought that I was the cutest, but also dumbest, thing she had ever seen.

“Sweetie, you are not nearly as good at hiding as you think you are,” she said in amusement, “You might be quiet and don’t say what’s on your mind as much as we wish that you would, but you can’t hide it when you’re in love with someone, not all the time, trust me on that. True, you did have us wondering for a while if the two of you were just very close friends or if you cared for Heero more than you were letting on, but sometimes I would catch you _looking_ at him, and I knew.”

“Looking?” I asked, unable to shake my bewilderment at this conversation.

So I had looked at him sometimes, that didn’t mean anything. Even if my looks had lingered for a bit too long, that was to be expected. I’m gay and Heero is… well, he’s beautiful. Of course I would look at him from time to time! But there was no way she could have known that I was more than just attracted to him, right?

“It’s a very particular look,” she said with a wistful smile, like she was well acquainted with such a look and I don’t know, given her relationship with her husband, she probably was, “You just look at him sometimes like he is the most wonderful and amazing thing that you’ve ever looked at in your life, like you can’t believe that he’s real and you never want to stop looking at him.”

I instantly felt mortified. I did that? And she had actually noticed it? I wanted to find a hole to crawl into where I could weather out my humiliation. I wanted to demand to know just how long she had been noticing me doing that. Instead, I looked over at Heero, scared of what he was thinking about all of this. It was embarrassing enough that his parents knew that about me, but him finding that out was just intolerable. He was still holding my hand, which was something, I guess, but he looked both shocked and amazed to hear that from his mother. That actually made me feel a tiny bit better, that he hadn’t known. I had fooled him at a least.

“How long?” he asked me in this soft, almost breathless tone.

I shot him a confused look, unsure of what he was asking.

“You asked me how long I’ve liked you, well, I want to know the same thing,” he demanded in a slightly steadier voice.

I swallowed roughly. I don’t know why, but I felt nervous confessing this to him. Would he feel insulted that he had been at least attracted to me at a glance, but I hadn’t even realized that I liked him for a while? Probably not. He had seen me as a stranger, just another classmate, while my experiences with him had been as a bully, an asshole. He would understand that. But my reasons for falling for him seemed so silly compared to his. He had fallen for me because he had liked my hair and my eyes and my personality, for some insane reason. I had fallen for him because he had been nice to me one time and had a handsome smile. That seemed stupid compared to his story. But I did owe him the truth, an explanation more than ‘a while.’

“It was a few months ago, back in early October,” I told him, the date coming to me easily as one of those dates that will always be stuck in my mind, like the date of the first time that my father fucked me, the date that Quatre died on. The date that I had fallen in love for the first time, with a boy named Heero Yuy, “We were partnered up in chemistry.”

He still looked confused and I didn’t really blame him. He was probably asking himself how that time could have been significant when he had still been such a jerk to me at that time. This only made me feel stupider for my reasons, because he would be right. I had fallen for one of my bullies, instead of later when we had been friends, so it would probably sound ridiculous to him. How could I make him understand how important that one, single moment in our relationship, even before we had even had a slight friendship, had been to me?

“I had hurt my leg and I could barely get up on those stupid stools,” I reminded him, trying not to say anything that would get him into trouble with his parents, “I dropped my pencil and I was in so much pain that I didn’t think I was going to be able to even get off the chair, but you picked it up for me.”

“That’s it?” he asked dubiously with one eyebrow raised.

I almost blurted out that it was no small thing, that it hadn’t exactly been in his nature back then to be nice to me, that would have led to questions that neither Heero or I would want to answer.

“No,” I admitted, “But it got my attention. No one else would have done that. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not exactly well liked among my peers.”

Heero snorted in neither humor or denial, it was more a sound of irritation and acceptance. His parents, however, looked very sad. I had never talked explicitly to them about what was going on with us at school, but I was sure that any person with a single brain cell in their head could see that I wasn’t just getting bullied by a couple people, or that someone like me would have a hard time at school between my attitude, the clothes that I wore, and my sexuality.

“It was the first nice thing that anyone has done for me since...”

‘Since Trowa and I broke up,’ was on the tip of my tongue, but I bit it off. I didn’t even know if I could claim that. Not everything about our relationship had been bad, although much of it was painted over with my anxiety and doubts. He hadn’t always been an asshole to me. He had taken me out to movies and bought me meals and back then, I had been amazed at that, at anything he could have given me. But now even that is bittersweet because I have to wonder how much he had done because he had liked me, because he had _wanted_ to do those things for me, or if he had only done them out of some kind of obligation, because we were dating and he thought that that was what he was supposed to do. Or worse, he had done those things as a means to an end, to get into my pants.

“Well, a while,” I said a bit lamely, “so it took me by surprise. I don’t know, maybe that would have been enough to make me fall for you. Maybe it would have been more gradual. But that wasn’t it. It was when I thanked you for it, and you smiled. You tried to hide it, but I saw it,” I felt my heart race a little just remembering that smile, a smile that I have seen directed at me a hundred times since that day, “I couldn’t get your smile out of my head. Then I couldn’t get _you_ out of my head. I might be oblivious to some things, but I know what it means when you can’t stop thinking about a person and your heart can’t stop racing every time you do-,”

I bit my tongue, hard, to stop from saying anymore. It was embarrassing enough confessing this shit to him, but I felt like a freaking exhibitionist saying it in front of his parents. On a normal day, I never would have blurted something like that out, but I was still operating with only a third of a brain. The nap that I had taken with Heero had helped a little, and I had the feeling that I had slept for a bit longer than I had the previous morning, but not nearly enough. Hell, even if I had slept for ten hours, I was so far gone that it wouldn’t have been enough, either and I knew that, based on what little light was coming through the windows, I had only slept four hours, tops, and even that was pushing it. Heero looked far from embarrassed from my telling him the effect that he had had on me back then, his cheeks slightly red from pleasure and he had that expression like he wanted to kiss me.

“You never gave me a clue that you liked me in all that time,” he said softly, “I looked so hard for _something_ and my parents were the ones that saw it. If I hadn’t told you how I felt, would you ever have said anything?”

He seemed a bit put out about that, but it was probably for the best. In all honesty, if he had confessed to me when we had just become friends, or even a month after that, it would have just freaked me out and I would have run so hard and so fast that no one would have been able to find me again. It still scared the hell out of me, but I feel so close to him now that it’s a bit easier for me to handle. Or rather, I can’t imagine running away from him and his feelings, not without eviscerating myself in the process.

“At first…” I looked down at my left hand as it lay on my lap, looking thin and pale, “At first I was positive that there was no way you could like me back. Hell, at first I thought that you were straight and even when you told me that you weren’t, I was certain that you would never be attracted to me, let alone _like_ me, and even if you did, we were all wrong for each other. Even when you told me that you liked me, I was so scared, I almost lied about how I felt. I thought that it would have been the right thing to do, but I… I just couldn’t do it.”

Heero looked a little scared at that and I could only imagine what he was thinking, that he never would have known that I really cared about him, that he never would have gotten the chance to be with me like he was now if I hadn’t grown a set and told him that I liked him. Justin chuckled and I caught him looking at us like he thought we were both idiots, and he wasn’t far wrong from that. He also looked slightly frustrated and I could just imagine him wanting to smash our thick heads together.

“When I first realized that you two were seeing each other, I was amazed that it took you so long to get together,” he said dryly, “Now I’m amazed that the two of you got together at all.”

Heero glared at him, but I just felt embarrassed again. I suppose it _was_ a bit ridiculous. The both of us had been attracted to each other before we had even been friends. We had danced around each other for months pining for each other before either of us had had so much as a hint that the other person was interested. And it wasn’t like there hadn’t been glaring signs of attraction, we had just been too oblivious, too full of doubt, too scared that we were wrong, or in my case, right. We were two gay, unattached, and lonely people, but the possibility of what had been staring us in the face hadn’t occurred to us. Though it had certainly occurred to his parents. I could just imagine the both of them watching us and laughing to themselves about how thick and clueless we were.

“Well, it’s about time!” Mariela remarked with humor, “I was going to spill the beans if this went on for much longer with _neither_ of you getting a clue!”

Her husband rolled his eyes at her and I could just see the two of them having this very same argument, what to do about the two of us. It felt surreal. They should have wanted to keep us apart, not play matchmaker!

“How long exactly have you two been dating?” she asked us, this sharp glint in her dark eyes that I didn’t trust at all. It was in Justin’s eyes, too, but on him it just made him seem omniscient while she looked like a little kid that knew a secret that she wasn’t supposed to, “A week?”

Heero and I looked at each other in surprise.

“Actually yeah,” he admitted, eying his parents with suspicion, “It’s been about a week. Our first date was on Saturday.”

“Yes!” Mariela cried out like she had won the lottery, “I knew it!”

The two adults shared a grin, one of tempered amusement and the other of glee and they reached over and high fived each other. Heero groaned in embarrassment at his parents’ antics, hiding his face in his hands while I gaped at the two of them like a dumb, oblivious fish. What the hell?! They had known exactly when we had started dating? Not even when we had gone out on Saturday, but before then? And they hadn’t overshot it either, but how? Had we really been so obvious to the both of them? I don’t know what threw me more, that I had thought that we had been discrete when we obviously hadn’t been, or Heero’s parents’ attitude about the whole thing. They were acting like a bunch of kids over it, making bets and joking about it behind our backs like it was no big deal. No, it was more than that. What had Mariela said? That they had hoped for this, that they were _relieved_.

          “I don’t understand how you could be happy about this!” I suddenly blurted out, “Or how you could have hoped for it! It’s great and all that you can accept that Heero is gay, but how can you condone him dating someone, especially someone like me?! Do you have any idea what it’s going to be like for him?! The whole school already knows that he’s with me and he’s been getting hell for it! So what is there to be happy or relieved about?!”

          I bit my tongue hard to cut off my rant, unable to believe that I had just let that slip. I hadn’t meant to say that, to let his parents know that the bruises on his face were because he had come out. But the damage had already been done. Mariela and Justin looked shocked by my confession, but I didn’t see any of the traces of anger that I had been expecting. Didn’t they get it? Because of me, Heero was in danger! He was going through hell every day because of this relationship. They should be pissed at me, just like he should be, but they were just as infuriating as he was, refusing to point the finger at me. I guess I couldn’t really see them doing that, and I got that it wasn’t entirely my fault, but whether they thought I was to blame or not, I had been expecting some kind of anger from them for not trying harder to keep this a secret.

          “Is that true?” Justin asked Heero, his expression and tone going very serious, although not quite hard, “Do your classmates know that you’re gay and dating Duo?”

          Heero glanced at me, as though he were weighing what he should say… no, it was more like he was asking for my permission.

          “I’m so sorry,” I whispered, guilt eviscerating me, “I didn’t mean to tell them…”

          He smiled faintly at me, not angry in the slightest although he should have been.

          “It’s alright,” he soothed, rubbing his thumb in little circles on my hand, “It’s not that big of a deal and I should have told them myself before now, I just didn’t know if you wanted them to know,” he looked over at his father again, losing some of his nervous energy through some inner strength and determination, “Yeah, it’s true. I decided that I didn’t want to hide it,” he looked over at me again briefly, his expression warm and tender, “I didn’t want to hide _this_ , not even from our classmates. Duo didn’t want me to, but he’s been out for a while, so I decided it was an acceptable risk to take.”

          I looked away from him, feeling tears pricking my eyes at his words. But for once, it wasn’t out of sadness, but merely out of the power of my love for him as I realized that the only thing that had kept him from holding back at all from revealing our relationship at school had been my safety. In those days after he had confessed to me, he had acted like we had just been friends for my sake, not his.

          “Are you in danger?” his father asked, his expression not cold or cruel, but fierce and protective, so it shocked me a bit when that gaze fell not just on Heero, but myself as well, “Either of you?”

          He knew that answer. He had seen our injuries, the bruises, the split lips, my limping, so he knew what was going on at school, and now he knew why. Would he demand that we split up to stop the bullying? I didn’t know if that possibility would give me more relief or more pain. Could I do it, for Heero’s sake, because his father was ordering it, or did I have the strength to stand up to him and tell him no, I would only break up with Heero if that was what Heero wanted when I knew that it wasn’t? Was that even what _I_ wanted anymore?

          “Yes,” Heero said with the same hardness that was in his father’s voice, shocking me further.

          I had expected him to lie and say that it wasn’t a big deal, that it was just some bullying and he could handle it to get his parents off his back. But he had just looked his father right in the eye and told the truth. What was more, he really didn’t seem to care that it was the truth. Even his parents looked surprised by that, which is understandable given the lengths that he had gone through in the past to avoid this very thing.

          “But I don’t care,” he continued and his voice sounded so adult, so much like his father that I felt that ache again in my stomach, that pain of desire and longing for him, an attraction so strong that it was a physical and very real thing, “I did before, but now…” he looked at me again, the fire in those blue eyes leaving me breathless, “I don’t care if they hurt me for it, I’m not going to pretend to be someone I’m not… pretend that I’m not in love just to save my own ass. Duo has been suffering from them for years, even more since he came out. If he can handle it, I can, too, anything they can dish out. I’m not going to back down,” he looked back at his father and his expression now was actually _challenging_ , like he was daring his dad to do something or saying with his mere look that he would fight him as much as the kids at school, “And I’m not moving away again. I don’t care how bad it gets or how much you think that you’re doing the right thing, I am _not_ running away from this and leaving Duo behind to deal with by himself! I care about him and no matter where I go, there will always be a threat because of who I am, so I don’t care what you say, I’m staying here, I’m not going anywhere.”

          Justin didn’t look put out that his son was basically ordering him around. He looked surprised and there was some intense emotion in his eyes that I couldn’t decipher, but he didn’t look mad at least. I, on the other hand, felt like I was going to start crying just from the wellspring of emotions in me. I wanted to wrap myself around Heero and kiss him for everything that he was saying. From relief, sure, since his moving away from all of this had been something that had played on my fears for some time now, but mostly out of love for him. He looked like some fierce warrior, reading to fight anyone that stood in his way, all so he could stay with me. I didn’t know how to handle that, the realness of his feelings for me, or the strength of my own for him.

In that moment sitting there on the couch, hearing him rant and feeling his hand clutching mine like someone would have to saw his hand off just to let me go, I realized that if Heero really did move away, if his parents packed up and fled with him for his safety, no matter what he wanted, I would follow them. I had no idea how I would accomplish that, and the possibility had never even come to me before then, that there was any other choice for me but to suffer and accept losing him, but I was so sure of it in that moment. If Heero left, I would run away. Because I couldn’t lose that light in his eyes or that warmth against my body. It would kill me, so what other choice did I have but to follow him wherever he went? I suppose that sounds sappy, the sort of stupid, illogical belief that only a teenager in love could spout, but that was how I felt. Whether I could do it or not, I don’t know, but that was my only thought right then, that I could be just as strong as Heero and just as stubborn, that it was the only thing that I could do to reward him for his loyalty to me and this relationship.

 “Heero-,” Justin began to say, but I felt myself opening my mouth and before my brain could catch up to that act, words were spilling out, unwanted like a busted tap.

“Maybe you should,” I heard myself whisper.

It was even more surreal than listening to Heero’s parents say that they were relieved that we were together. There I was, thinking and feeling something with such passion, such surety that I was on the verge of tears, and I was suddenly hearing myself say something completely different. Something that I didn’t even really feel. Maybe I believed it, maybe I had thought it, but those weren’t my words and that wasn’t my voice. It was and it wasn’t at the same time. It was like I was having some sort of out of body experience or someone was using me for a ventriloquist’s dummy. But that wasn’t exactly true, now was it? I could blame it on my insomnia and that was at least half right, but that wasn’t all that it was. Because I might _feel_ like I would follow Heero anywhere, do anything to stop him from moving away, but what I felt and what I believed were two separate things. I loved him and I would do anything for him, but as much as I loved him for his determination and convictions, there was still a part of me that wanted to save him from all of this. I don’t know, maybe there always will be a part of me that is sure that he would be better off if he left. Left this town. Left me.

“Duo,” Heero said in shock, looking hurt by my words, “you don’t mean that.”

“It’s only going to get harder for you,” I continued, my mouth running away from me, looking down at my lap again and finding my left hand gripping my pants hard without having consciously done it.

I couldn’t bear to look at him, so I looked over at his father, instead. What I had to say, I had to say to him anyway and not Heero. Because Heero didn’t get it, and at that point, I didn’t think that he ever would. He was too optimistic and naïve, or too confident and love smitten or just too plain stubborn, I can’t tell. But if I could get anyone to understand, it would be his father.

“I was twelve the first time someone called me a faggot,” I said, perhaps a bit harshly, putting all of my effort in trying not to drown in those memories, especially after what had happened to me that week, and I’m not just talking about what Zechs did, but all of the bullying, and what Relena had said to me before trying to scratch my face off, “and that was long before I ever stupidly outed myself. Since I did, it’s only gotten worse and worse. I get beat up every day, my homework gets destroyed, my locker broken into, and I have disgusting, obscene pranks pulled on me. The worst part of it isn’t getting a broken nose or finding ‘fudge packer’ carved into my desk or even knowing that everyone that I go to school with hates me and thinks that I’m some kind of child molester just because I confessed to liking another boy. The worst part is knowing that no one cares. It doesn’t matter how far someone goes, how many lines get crossed, what laws get broken or how I get hurt, no one cares,” I glanced at Heero briefly and found him looking downcast and knew that he was thinking about our argument concerning Zechs, “That’s what hurts the most. It doesn’t bother me that no one cares enough to try to stop it, what bothers me is that no one cares enough to even feel sympathetic or to even feel pity because I’m the resident faggot and whether they hate me or not, whether I disgust them or they’re scared of me, they would all be happier if I just went away forever.”

“Oh, sweetie,” Mariela murmured sadly, looking pale and heartbroken at my words, but I didn’t pay her any mind, even as I felt this pain in my heart as I realized just how much she reminded me of Mrs. Daniels on the day that I returned to school after Quatre’s death, desperately wanting to make all the bad things go away for me, but at a loss as to how to do that.

“Is that what you want for Heero?” I demanded of his father, “For everyone to turn their backs on him? Hate him? Not care if someone kills him just so they won’t have to look at him anymore?! Is that really what you want for your son, because it sure as hell isn’t what I want for him!”

Justin was quiet for a moment, but in his eyes there was genuine pain and sadness, not pity or even sympathy, but a real empathy.

“Is that really what you want?” he asked me somberly, “For Heero to move away, to break up with him to spare him from that?”

Heero looked at me like I had just very calmly reached into his chest and ripped out his heart. He knew. He had probably realized it long before I had even said anything, that I was considering what I should do to make things better for him, that I might even hurt the both of us to stop the bullying. But seeing that expression, that agony and that fear in him broke me. How could I do that to him? How could I hurt him that much? I felt like I was being torn in two between that pain and the pain that I felt every time I got him hurt. Justin had asked me what I wanted. I didn’t know. Fuck, I had no clue. I wanted Heero safe! I wanted him to have the perfect life, a happy, normal life, and I wanted to be with him. Why couldn’t I have both? Why, in all of the endless possibilities of the world, could I only have one or the other?

“N-no!” I yelled, frantic to take that pain away from him, “No, I… I don’t…”

I rested my face in my hand, overwhelmed mentally in trying to find the words for how I felt, trying to find an answer that had alluded me on good days. But there was nothing there, only chaos. Only emotions with no logic or reasoning. Heero squeezed my hand and I lifted my face up to look at him. His pain was still there, but now it was tempered with worry for me and an understanding that I didn’t feel that I deserved. It only convinced me more that I wasn’t the person that he deserved. Our relationship was fucked from the start, any relationship that he had with another boy, but at least anyone else would be able to love him like he deserved to be loved, to give him clarity and not constantly wobble back and forth, going from hot to cold at a moment’s notice.

“Do you think that Heero would be safe if he moved away or you two weren’t together anymore?” Justin asked me sadly, “Because I don’t. Heero can’t change who he is, Duo, and neither can you. You can lie to your classmates and pretend that Heero is straight and you’re not even friends anymore, but that doesn’t change the truth that you love him. Us moving away won’t change Heero’s sexuality and it certainly won’t change the nature of bigots. The people that have hurt the both of you are going to continue to hurt you no matter what you tell them, so why hurt yourself like that?”

I chewed on my lip until I reopened my wound and could faintly taste blood. It was an oddly comforting taste, if only because it was so familiar. More familiar, anyway, than the thoughts and confusion that I was facing that morning. It seemed so ridiculous to me, that in all of my anxiety over this, what Justin was saying had never entered my head when it should have. I had only thought about saving Heero from my horror story, of turning back the clock and giving him some security back. I had thought that, if I could only convince him to take it back, that our classmates would leave him alone and focus on me again. But Justin was right, and I should have known that. How many years had I been dealing with this shit? How many years had I been bullied for a stupid rumor that I was a fag, before anyone had known that for a fact? How many years had I understood that it didn’t really matter to them what I was or was not, they would keep hurting me whether I was gay, straight, asexual, bisexual, or a space alien?

So why had I thought, even for a second, that I could save my boyfriend just by denying that we were dating? The second that he had held my hand in the cafeteria, he had signed his death warrant and there was nothing that either of us could do to stop that. We could renounce each other publicly and never be seen together again and they would still go after him. There was nothing I could do to help him. That should have made me feel better because it took a break up completely off the table, but it didn’t. It made me feel worse in a way, because I could never take it back. I could never stop it. Heero had opened a door that he could never close and I was the one that had led him to it.

I hadn’t given much thought to how moving might help him before I had blurted that out, either, but I knew that his father was right about that, too. It was that door again. Heero might have decided to hide himself before, but I had meant what I wrote before about that being a different person. Heero isn’t that same person anymore, and he is never going to be that person again. He doesn’t even want to try to be that person. Even if he moved, I really don’t think he would ever try to hide himself like that again. He might escape from Zechs and the others, which is all that I could hope for, but I’m not so naïve as to believe that there aren’t other Zechs’ out there in the world. All moving would accomplish was giving him a little bit of peace, for a little bit of time, but not from the pain of relocating himself again.

Justin gave me a small, very faint smile and I got that sensation again that he somehow could read my mind. Maybe that’s some kind of psychiatrist superpower or something or Justin is just that perceptive, but I just knew that he knew what I was thinking, that what he was trying to tell me was getting through my thick skull.

“What I want,” Justin told me very earnestly, “is for the both of you to be happy. I want you to be able to achieve that without having to worry about getting hurt or how other people will react to you, but that isn’t the world that you were born into. You and Heero were dealt a shitty hand, not because you were both born gay or different, but because the people around you think that it’s any of their business, that that difference gives them an excuse to treat you like you’re less than human. If you can’t have both, then I would just want the two of you to be happy and have the chance to make your own decisions. Your _own_ , Duo, not the ones that have been made for you by other people.”

I flushed, feeling like he was reprimanding me although he probably wasn’t.

“Wanting to protect Heero is an admirable thing,” he assured me, seeing how guilty I felt, “and your getting so worked up over this and willingness to sacrifice what you want so he doesn’t get hurt anymore just shows how much you love him. Believe me, I want this to stop as much as you do. But if you care for him, then you have to let him make that choice,” his blue eyes glanced at his son for a moment before falling back on me, “Heero is happy right now. Whatever choices he’s made, he is sure that they’re the right ones, you aren’t going to be able to convince him of otherwise. It’s up to him to decide what’s the most important thing right now, and clearly that’s you. You need to stop worrying so much about protecting him from the world. I have the same impulses, but I can’t stop your classmates from bullying him and neither can you. It isn’t your job to take on that kind of responsibility. You need to do the same thing that Heero has and decide what is the most important thing to you, how you feel about Heero, staying with him and being with him, or trying to protect him with the only guarantee being make the both of you miserable.”

But how, I wanted to scream at him, how could I possibly choose the right thing to do when I had no idea where either path was going to lead me?! How could I know what to do when I was sure that no matter what I decided, in the end, I was just going to break Heero’s heart?

“As for us,” Justin glanced at his wife, who nodded at him, giving him the signal that she agreed with whatever it was he intended to say, “We know full well the sort of trials that Heero is going to go through now and I can’t say that we’re happy that either of you are being bullied and assaulted, but we _are_ happy that the two of you finally got together. And I for one am very proud of Heero for coming out,” he met Heero’s embarrassed stare, “I know how hard it must have been for you to do. It was very courageous and I want you to know that the both of us are very proud.”

Mariela nodded again, her dark eyes shining with love as she looked at her son.

“Not really,” he murmured, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly, “I wasn’t really thinking about it, I just wanted to not hide my relationship with Duo. And I felt like an ass for hiding my sexuality when he was getting all the shit for his.”

“Whatever your reason was, we’re glad that you aren’t hiding anymore,” his father told him, “and we are especially glad that you told Duo how you feel about him. We were very… worried that neither of you would be brave enough to take that leap.”

“And we would never force you to move if you don’t want to, Heero,” his mother assured him, “We moved because you were in such pain after your friend’s death and staying there seemed to be making it worse. Of course we feared for your safety, too, but if you had told us that you wanted to stay, we would have listened and talked about it. But here… you’re so much happier here. We’ve made a home in this town, for better or for worse, and we would never want to hurt you by running away because you’re having problems. And we would never hurt Duo, either,” she smiled warmly at me, “We could never be that cruel, even if we are concerned about how you’re being treated at school. I know it seems almost impossible for the two of you right now, but things will get better. Seeing you fall in love and act on it is all that we could ever hope for.”

“Even if it’s me?” I muttered.

“Duo,” Heero sighed, “we talked about this.”

But I brushed him off, pulling my hand away from his. This wasn’t about how he saw me. Maybe he was right and I was wrong that I was all wrong for him, that he was just deluded and what he saw in me was really there, but this wasn’t about that. It was about how his parents saw me. It was about if there was even a thread of truth in my feelings that I was all wrong for him, that I would just end up corrupting him with my problems, even if it was just a sliver.

“What do you mean?” Mariela asked, genuinely confused.

“You know more about me than anyone else,” I said lowly, digging my fingers into the material of my pants, “You know what I’m like… how can you possibly be alright with me dating Heero?”

“And what exactly are you like?” Justin questioned very calmly, infuriatingly so.

I felt like I was going to tear my hair out. He knew exactly what I was talking about and he was still going to make me say it?

“You know what my family’s like,” I grounded out, “My parents are losers and I’m a loser, too, I’ve always been one! It’s a miracle that genetics haven’t kicked in yet and I haven’t become an alcoholic like them! I have a shitty temper, I swear all the time, and I don’t know _how_ to love anyone besides my cat! Hell, the whole reason why I’m even here right now is because I can’t sleep in my own, damned house! And…” my voice cracked and strained until all I could utter was a strangled whisper, “…and you know about my dad… what he… what he does…”

I swallowed roughly, trying to get control over myself while stubbornly not looking Heero’s father in the eye to see what he thought about what I was saying.

“I can’t even stand up to him and make him stop… no, it’s not even that I can’t, I just don’t,” I choked out, feeling something drip down the left side of my face and not even caring, “That’s the sort of person that you’re glad is dating your son?! The kind of person that willfully drags him into his own… his own shit?! Because that’s all I’ve done, cause more and more problems for him! I can’t even do anything to pay him back for everything that he’s done for me! Relena might be a bitch, but even she was better for him than I am! He might have been miserable dating her, but she never got him beaten up or give him an ulcer worrying about her while not even trying to help herself! You say that you’re proud of him for being strong, well I’m not like that! I’ll never be like that! I’m not strong and I’m not brave and I sure as hell don’t see what Heero sees in me or why either of you would think that him dating me is a good idea!”

“Duo, _stop_ ,” Heero urged and I felt his hand on my back, rubbing gently as he stared at me with concern.

I felt more tears slide down my cheeks and realized that I was losing control and fast. I wished that he would hold me and make me feel something other than self-loathing and emptiness. I wanted more than just a back rub from him. I wanted to bury my face in his shoulder like I had when we had been sleeping and tell him that I was too tired, I couldn’t handle any more of this, but all I did was bow my head and cover my eye with my left hand, my right dangling down between my legs, my fingers feeling soft fur that was oddly comforting just then.

Mariela made a distressed noise, one of those mixes of a groan of pain and urgency and a hiss that only mothers seem capable of. I don’t know if it was over my tears or what I had been ranting, but one moment she had been standing next to her husband and the next she was moving my cat out of the way so she could sit down next to me on the couch and wrap her arms around me. Pepper made a snappish noise, but I didn’t pay much attention to her. My prideful side flared for a moment, my irritability making me not want to be coddled, but the rest of me was in too much pain and sadness to do anything but let this woman hold me.

Being held by women… being held by anyone but Heero and Quatre, really, is still a very alien thing to me. My mother’s gotten a lot better about showing affection, but it’s still awkward between us. When she does hug me, which is still rare, it’s like a machine without oil trying to move, stiff and slow with a great deal of unsureness. Heero’s mother is nothing like that. She gives affection and gestures like a hug like they are the most natural thing in the world to her. She held me close that morning and let me lean against her a little. It felt good, that gesture of comfort. I felt her hands moving over my hair and it was so much like something that Heero had done for me a dozen times by then that I almost broke down. I realized, somewhere deep inside past my insomnia and mental confusion, that this was the closest that I had ever come to actually _talking_ to an adult about my father’s abuse. It was kind of terrifying, actually.

Justin looked very pained as he watched his wife hold me while I tried not to cry any more. For the very first time since we had met, he looked unsure about what to do and I could actually see him struggling with his own urge to comfort me somehow or stay where he was.

“Oh, Duo,” she murmured, “you’ve lived with that… that _man_ ,” she spat the word out in this hateful tone that I have never heard from her before, “and in this town for too long. Not everyone is so closed minded. Your parents’ faults don’t make _you_ a bad person. We certainly don’t blame you for the things that your father does and we would never disapprove of Heero dating you because you’re having a hard time at home. We just want to help you, and we’re _glad_ that Heero is dating you if that makes you happy, too. You aren’t a loser and we certainly don’t think that you aren’t good enough for Heero! He loves you and you love him, that makes you perfect for each other. That’s all either of you need.”

“There is no ‘good enough’, Duo, so stop thinking like that,” Justin scolded lightly, “You know fully well that we don’t judge you for where you live or who your family is. I told you before that you aren’t a bad influence on Heero, quite the opposite. It… distresses us a great deal that you won’t seek help, but not doing so doesn’t make you weak and it doesn’t make you a bad person. It makes you scared and uncertain, that’s all, and we will do whatever it takes to help you, even if it just means letting you stay here, I’ve said that several times now. We don’t think less of you, you’re a wonderful person even if you refuse to see that and I’ll keep saying it until you finally start believing it. As for dragging Heero into your problems, well, he isn’t kicking and screaming about it, now is he?”

Hesitantly, I shook my head. No, Heero had never complained about my problems. If anything, he stubbornly interjected himself into them and kept trying to help me even as I tried to distance him from them. He had promised not to tell anyone about my father, but I hadn’t completely twisted his arm about that. He always worried over me when I was hurt by him and wanted to protect me when Zechs started in on me, it was only my demands that he leave it alone that stopped him.

“Getting involved with the problems of someone you love… that’s just part of being in a relationship,” he pointed out, “Wanting to take things on by yourself and protect him from all of that… that’s strength. It might not be a strength that I find particularly healthy and I wish that you would let us do more to help you, but don’t call it cowardice or weakness. You’re stronger than you realize.”

Mariela let go of me a little, letting me sit up, although she kept her arms around me loosely as I vainly scrubbed at my face with my hands.

“You’re exactly the sort of person that any parent would be glad to see their child with,” she smiled at me as I blinked at her in astonishment, “You’re smart, kind, hardworking, and even if you say that you don’t know how to love anyone, it’s obvious to even us that you care for Heero very deeply. All those things that you say make you a terrible fit for him either aren’t there or don’t matter. Your feelings for him are what matter,” she reached out and gently brushed my bangs away from my face, “From the first moment that you stepped through our front door, I have liked you more than I ever could Relena Darlian and since then, my opinion of you has only grown, not diminished. Do you really think that we think you’re a bad person because your father hits you or you have a bit of foul mouth from time to time?

“I never liked that girl, even before Heero introduced her to us and she never made him happy. We’ve always liked you and we knew from the beginning that you were a better fit for him. He cares about you more than I’ve ever seen him care about anything. As far as I’m concerned, you are perfect for our son.”

It’s so strange. It wasn’t her hug that pulled me apart, it wasn’t hearing from Heero’s father that they wanted to help me or that they liked me and didn’t think that I was a bad person or even that they didn’t mind me dating Heero. It was those words.

_“As far as I’m concerned, you are perfect for our son.”_

Not that I was acceptable or merely a better choice for him. But _perfect_. If those words hadn’t been enough to tear down the walls of my delicate and fragile self-control, the look on both Justin and Mariela’s faces would have been. There was worry there, but shining through was acceptance, true acceptance, and care. It was on their faces that I saw the truth. They hadn’t just said those things to appease me and make me feel better. They had meant them, the both of them. Tears fell in a cascade down my face as the intense anxiety that I had been feeling since I had woken up… no, for days now, eased away. All those insecurities and sureties that I had been struggling with released their hold on me like a bad cramp finally going away. They didn’t go completely, and I still wasn’t so sure that Heero and his parents weren’t delusional, but it was enough seeing their faith in me, knowing that if anyone thought that I wasn’t good enough, that I didn’t belong with Heero, it was only me. Well, and Relena, but she thought that I wasn’t good enough to spit on to begin with and I was pretty sure that she would feel that way about anyone that tried to date Heero, simply because they weren’t her.  
          There was a part of me that wanted to protest that they were all wrong, that they just didn’t it, get _me_ , and see the terrible person that I really am. The same, stubborn part of me that always believes the worst and can never let go of these things, my own, pessimistic nature. But the rest of me just felt confused and only a small part of it was from my sleep deprivation. I had said that they knew me better than anyone else had and that was the truth. Hell, Heero’s parents know more about me than my mother does. That’s not really saying much, but it said just enough that I couldn’t believe in the bullshit that I was trying to sling.  
          Was Heero’s mother right, had I really just been around Nausten and my father for too long? Was my almost non-existent self-esteem just that, or did it have some basis in reality? Had I let myself be poisoned by my father’s hate and convinced myself that, because of the mistakes that I had made with Quatre, and because of my father’s verbal abuse and how I’m treated at school, I’m lesser somehow? Heero certainly thought so. He had told me that my father was full of shit on more than one occasion. I had thought myself stupid and incapable for a long time, but he had shown me that I am smarter than I give myself credit for, I just need to have more confidence. I’ve always looked down on myself for being poor and having the parents that I do, but neither Heero or his parents thought that my parents’ failings had anything to do with me, that my inability to tell on my father didn’t make me a bad person. So who was right? My guilt or what they saw? Who was the delusional one?

I wiped furiously at my face, trying to get the tears stopped, but they just wouldn’t. It was too much for me, the enormity of my relief and hope. I’ve lived so long trying to nuke that particular little fucker, so it’s sudden blossoming in my heart was incredibly painful and dangerous. I couldn’t believe in the good things, it hurt too much, even when they were staring me in the face. My heart is a shriveled, icy stone, I can’t survive exposure to any warmth, even if it was just being told that I was the right person for my boyfriend. I was too tired to succeed in building that wall back up, my defenses tattered and my emotions multiplied to an unbearable level after… after… fuck, I couldn’t remember what day it was or when the last time I had managed more than four hours of sleep had been. That alone told me how far gone I was, if the tears hadn’t already.

“It’s alright, Duo,” Heero soothed and I felt his welcome hand on my back again, rubbing softly as he molded himself to my side, “Just cry it out.”

I shook my head violently even as I melted against him, the warmth of his body even more pleasant than Mariela’s arms had been. I wanted to crawl into his lap like a little kid, which was stupid and embarrassing, the least reason being that we’re the same damned height, more or less. My fingers found Kanuck’s fur again and I dug my hand into it like it was a security blanket as Heero tried to talk me down. It was a couple of minutes of him saying comforting, nonsense things to me and rubbing my back before my tears finally stopped. When I felt human and adult enough to actually take a deep, if shuddering, breath and get myself back under control, Heero handed me a corner of the blanket to wipe my face with. I didn’t want to lift my face from it and face the rest of my little audience, I was too ashamed at my outburst and tears, but when I did, I found Mariela smiling warmly at me instead of judging me.

“See?” she said very gently, touching my arm for a moment and looking at the two of us like we had done something especially sweet, “The two of you are so good together. You care so much for each other, that’s proof enough that I’m right. And trust me, Duo, we have _always_ liked you more than Relena,” she looked down and smiled in amusement, “Even the dog likes you more.”

I blinked and followed her gaze, finding Kanuck still sitting loyally at my feet, his large head pressed against my leg and looking up at me in that sad, wide-eyed way that only dogs can manage.

“Kanuck didn’t like Relena?” I asked in amazement, my voice disgustingly rough from whatever throat injury I had and crying, and I could taste a tiny bit of blood again.

That surprised me as much as anything else Heero’s parents had told me that morning. Even the first time that I had met Heero’s dog on the beach, he had been super friendly to me, a stranger that his master had been hostile towards, so I had been under the impression that he was just that way with everyone. I’ll admit that I know less about dog behavior than cats having never spent much time around them before becoming friends with Heero, I just thought that some dogs were like that, always loving everyone no matter who they were. He certainly had gotten attached to me rather quickly, or maybe that was because I was around here a lot and always gave him pets. I’ll have to admit that it made me feel a little bit smug, as petty as that sounds, to hear that the dog liked me more than that bitch. Maybe he could sense the evil.

“He… never really warmed up to her, no,” Heero confessed a bit awkwardly, raising an eyebrow at the husky mix who just whined at him, “He wasn’t aggressive to her or anything, but he stayed away from her and wouldn’t even wag his tail when he saw her. And when she tried to pet him, he would just walk away from her.”

“From what I could gather, the feeling was mutual,” Justin muttered.

Heero sighed, but didn’t refute that.

“But I saw the two of you walking him before,” I pointed out, “She didn’t seem scared of him.”

“She wasn’t scared, she just didn’t care for him much,” he told me, “I don’t know if she just doesn’t like dogs or pets in general, but I think one of the reasons why she would always try to talk me out of taking her to my house was because of him.”

“The only reason why that girl would tolerate him enough to take him out on walks,” Heero’s father told me, “was to impress Heero, but beyond that, they didn’t want anything to do with each other. Dogs can be very perceptive, I guess he figured out that Relena didn’t like him rather quickly.”

“But when I first met Kanuck, he came right up to me and tried to lick me,” I told him, “and I was terrified of him at first.”

Heero flushed darkly and I wondered if he was embarrassed of how his dog had acted that day, not that he had been so friendly but that he had frightened me. Or maybe he was just aware that I couldn’t be blamed for that reaction. I mean, suddenly having a huge, wolf-like dog run up to you and get in your face is scary enough, but finding out that that dog belongs to someone that hates your guts is pretty terrifying. For all I had known, he had sent the animal over to me to attack me. I glanced at my boyfriend again, trying to decipher his embarrassment and realized that that wasn’t what I seeing on his face. It was guilt. What the hell did he have to be guilty about? Losing hold on Kanuck’s leash? That was just stupid, he was a large, strong dog…

Suddenly, it hit me. This prickling suspicion that was only just that, not really any kind of epiphany of truth, but the suspicion was strong and stubborn. I’ve walked with Heero and his dog more than once. Hell, I’ve held his leash before and one thing that I can say about the canine is that he is very well trained. Heero even told me once when I remarked about it that he has to be, because he’s so much bigger and the one thing that you don’t want is a huge, strong dog to know how much more powerful he is than you. Even when he gets hyper and tries to pull away from Heero, he just tells him to stop and he does. He might whine about it, but in all the times that we’ve walked him, he’s never pulled his leash out of our hands, not even when I was the one walking him and he spotted another dog or a cat or a squirrel. He’s come close, but he always listens to even me when I tell him a command.

So why not that day? If he had pulled his leash to run at me like that, why hadn’t Heero stopped him with a command? And the dog hadn’t even been running that fast, it had been more like a trot. Heero could have easily caught up to him and grabbed his leash, but he hadn’t. It could have been totally innocent. He could have just been talking to Relena and not been paying attention to the dog, which was entirely plausible given how long it had taken the two of them to catch up. But there was something inside of me, some feeling telling me that that wasn’t the truth. That feeling was screaming at me ‘what if he had done it on purpose?’ So what if he had, I countered. What reason could he possibly have had for letting his dog run up to me? It wasn’t like he had really hated me enough to hope his dog would bite me. That had been an act and, according to him, he had already had a sizeable crush on me at that point. So why?

‘To have an excuse to talk to me?’ I wondered and the mere possibility of that, that he had orchestrated that moment _just_ so he could interact with me, even if it was a heated exchange was both wonderful and completely ludicrous, but I couldn’t shake the thought, even narrowing my eyes at my boyfriend, trying to find some clue of that in his expression. Of course I couldn’t find any, probably because there was nothing to find and I was just looking out of wishful thinking. Because the thought that he had been crazy about me, even then, and desperate enough to talk to me to risk his girlfriend finding out, made my chest feel incredibly warm. It was nuts, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to believe in it.

Justin chuckled, gaining my attention again.

“Maybe he just has very good taste,” he mused, looking down at the large dog with some affection, “That just proves that you’re the right person for Heero. Kanuck certainly approves of you.”

Kanuck barked happily and lolled his tongue, probably just a reaction to getting that we were talking about him, but it almost seemed like he was agreeing with Justin, making me stare at the canine incredulously.

“Oh, so you need my dog to tell you who to approve of me dating?” Heero asked dryly.

“Well,” his father quipped, “I certainly trust his judgment over yours.”

That only made Heero color even darker, almost looking as red as I do when I blush. I bit my tongue to keep from laughing at his father’s teasing him because there was a grain of truth in Justin’s tone. I think it was a sore point between them that, given how Heero had acted when they had first moved here and his dating Relena, Justin’s faith in him had been shaken a little. It seemed to be repairing itself with Heero’s recent honesty, but his dad still had reason to worry about him and his choices. I was instantly glad that I was not one of them, at least not yet. Things seemed to settle down after that, Heero’s father having successfully set a much lighter tone and I no longer felt like I was going to run screaming from the house. I took better care of scrubbing my face clean and felt like I might actually be able to get through the rest of my day without bursting into sobs again.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” I blurted out as I rubbed at my right eye with my hand. It felt sore and chafed.

“Oh, sweetheart, you don’t need to apologize,” Mariela told me, rubbing my arm in a comforting gesture, “We know how hard this is for you.”

“You’re just tired,” Heero assured me, “It’s understandable, there’s no reason to feel embarrassed.”

Which of course did absolutely nothing to stop me from feeling ashamed of myself, but it did make me feel a little bit better knowing that they didn’t think I was some kind of cry baby or that I was unhinged. I didn’t know how much his parents were aware of my insomnia, just what little sleep I had gotten that week, but at least they weren’t holding me accountable for my emotional outbursts. The less that I embarrassed myself in my current state, the better, because I was sure that when I actually did get a full night’s sleep and my sanity came back, I was going to look back at my behavior this week with horror. Mariela brushed my bangs away from my face and studied me. Whatever she saw there made her frown with worry, not that I blamed her. I was sure that it wasn’t a pretty sight between the bruises, the split lip that I kept chewing on in my anxiety, and my insomnia. I probably looked like something out of a zombie flick, one with really shitty makeup effects.

“Do you think you can sleep some more, honey?” she asked me, “There’s still a couple more hours before school and we can call you in late if you want. You don’t look much better than you did yesterday.”

It was tempting. I felt like I had been hit with a steamroller that had cruelly backed up and ran over me again. My head was pounding, my throat felt like I had swallowed a fistful of briars, my leg and arm where I had been hit felt like someone had stuck iron weights under my skin, and those were the very least of my problems. I was only awake and alert at that point from the residual adrenaline of being shocked awake and that wasn’t going to last much longer. How I looked was one thing, how I felt that morning was indescribable. I would have been better off if I _had_ been a zombie. Climbing a mountain would have been an easier task for me than getting through the school day. The mere thought of it sent little bursts of horror through me. Bad enough getting through the day like normal, but this wasn’t a normal day. This was the day after Zechs had almost sexually assaulted me. Facing that was impossible with the current level of brain power that I had on top of everything that we had just talked about. All I wanted to do was lay back down with Heero and black out, let the whole world just disappear into oblivion.

“Not now that you’ve scared him half to death!” Heero snapped angrily at his mother.

I looked at him, startled. I had never heard him take that tone with his mother, not ever, not even when I had caught them fighting. He was genuinely mad about her rousing me and unafraid of telling her so. I couldn’t even begin imagine taking that kind of tone up with either of my parents, not over something so small, and especially not in front of my father. It wouldn’t matter if I was yelling at him, Mom, or one of the neighbors, children and teenagers were not supposed to cop such an attitude towards adults, their obvious betters. It must be easier to lose your temper at your parents when you don’t have to worry about getting a beating for such an oversight. But I still expected Justin, if not Mariela herself, to scold him for talking to her like that, so I was further surprised when Heero’s father stood up and walked calmly into the kitchen like nothing important was happening.

His mother, on the other hand, paled and looked at me with this intensely guilty expression like she was utterly ashamed of herself. I could almost feel bad for her if I wasn’t a bit irritable about the whole thing. I knew that she hadn’t done it on purpose, but I really could have done without this little heart to heart that we had just had. Sure, it was a huge relief to know that we wouldn’t have to keep sneaking around, and any kind of support was good, but I would have rather gone through this when I wasn’t so exhausted.

“Yeah,” I confirmed what Heero had said, a part of me wanting to soften the blow for Mrs. Yuy and at least _try_ to sleep, but I know my own brain well enough to know it would be a fruitless effort and it was too hard for me to put on a brave face right then, “I’m not going to be able to go back to sleep now.”

“Oh, Duo, I am so sorry,” she apologized profusely.

‘It’s alright,’ I thought, but the words just wouldn’t reach my mouth for some reason, like my body was deciding that it wasn’t going to listen to me anymore.

“I’ll make you some pancakes so you can at least get a decent meal this morning, alright?” she managed a small smile.

I felt a very brief amusement as I realized that that was the exact thing that I would do in this situation if I was stressed and guilty. Human beings have all sorts of coping mechanisms for embarrassment, from denial to charity, so it was kind of amazing that Heero’s mother and I had the same one: cooking. Unfortunately, the very last thing in the world that I wanted to do was eat. My throat hurting was one thing, but there was an iron ball in my stomach and I felt like I didn’t even have the energy to chew, let alone try to cut up and eat something as rich and heavy as pancakes. But the effort of telling her ‘no thanks’ and having to deal with her worry was too much. I couldn’t handle it. Instead, I just nodded and felt relieved when she left us to join her husband in the kitchen.

It was easier with the two of them gone. I didn’t have to think. I didn’t have to pretend that I was ok, not for Heero. He knew that I wasn’t. I almost expected him to make a big deal out of it, but that’s the thing that I love about him. He always seems to know what I need and right then, he seemed to understand that I couldn’t handle the fussing or even a simple conversation. He let me sit there on the couch with him and just rubbed my back. I could have kissed him for it. The two of us fell into an easy, companionable silence, neither of us saying anything. I think he might have been trying to lull me back to sleep, which might have been possible with the way that I was leaning on him and his comforting touch on me, but even as brain dead as I was, there was too much shit in my head again, only now none of it made any sense and it was kind of like listening to monkeys scream at each other, this twisted nest of errant thoughts that I had no ability to pick apart. I just kind of stared at the wall and I knew that I was doing my living dead impression again, but I couldn’t snap out of it.

Kanuck plunked his head back in my lap, whining at me when I didn’t pet him, and Pepper seemed to realize that the human that had stolen her spot on the couch was not returning and reclaimed her place against my left leg, although she still somehow managed an expression of irritation at the whole thing.

“How long di’ I sleep?” I heard myself ask, doing that out of body thing again along with the zombie thing.

Trying to talk was like walking through quicksand, like my mouth was full of hardening molasses, which was a lot more worrying than the pain in my throat.

“Three hours,” Heero obediently informed me, “It’ll be six in fifteen minutes.”

There was a clock on the wall by the kitchen door and all I had needed to do was turn my head to see the time, but even that knowledge had escaped me. I was beginning to wonder if maybe Heero was right and I needed to see a doctor. If this went on for much longer, even that bit of logic was going to be beyond me, but if just holding a conversation was too difficult, making a decision like that sure as hell was. It wasn’t long before I smelled coffee and something cooking in the kitchen and Heero’s parents returned to have breakfast with us. Mariela handed Heero a heaping plate of pancakes, as promised, but I was gifted with a lovely mug of coffee and some scrambled eggs. I don’t know if Justin talked to her or if she had gotten some common sense while cooking, but the blander and easier to eat food was most welcome. I took a sip of the coffee, not even waiting for it to cool and barely feeling it when I burned my tongue. I was further pleased to find that, unlike Heero’s black coffee, mine was loaded with cream and no sugar, just like how I like it.

I ate slowly, only able to pick at the food, but I did manage to eat most of it by the time that everyone else was finished. I’m sure that it was delicious, but I was having a hard time tasting things. It reminded me too much of what I had gone through right after Quatre’s death, how I had been unable to taste much of anything for months, maybe even a year, food becoming like bland, lumpy ash in my mouth. It wasn’t quite that bad, but the memory came anyway, unwanted, and made my stomach churn, which wasn’t a good thing for my barely existent appetite. It really struck me then, how much had changed in my life. I couldn’t stand remembering those first few days, the depression I had felt, how hopeless and angry and sad I had been. They were even worse memories than the ones I have of my father’s rape.

I suppose some people might find that odd, that such a violating act plays second fiddle in the trauma centers of my brain compared to Quatre’s death, but it’s true. That first week without Quatre, his suicide playing in my head, my guilt and my horror and my depression swallowing me alive was the worst thing that I have ever gone through and I don’t like having to remember it. But things are different now. I’m not alone. I may still be depressed, but not like that. I’m still angry, especially now with this… this change to my relationship with my father, but it isn’t a constant thing. I can push it aside. More importantly, I can feel things other than nothingness now, even more than anger and self-hatred.

While all of those things are still there, there is also a lot of light in my life now. I have Heero. I have his family. I have things that I never, in a million years thought that I would ever have. His love. My mother. A decent job. A friend. A boyfriend. A home. Things aren’t all sunshine and rainbows, don’t get me wrong there. In fact, a lot of things are shit and if I think about those things for too long, I might go insane from horror and depression, but not like that. Not like what I had experienced after watching the only friend I had ever had decide to splatter himself all over the train tracks. What would he feel right now, I wondered, if there really is a heaven and he’s looking down on me? Would he be happy for me, or angry that I’m living the life that he could never have? Would he see all these changes in my life and ask, like I so often do, what I had done to deserve them? Would he see Heero’s parents’ acceptance of our relationship and feel rage that he had never gotten to experience that, that everyone in his life except for me had hated him for his sexuality, that even Trowa had turned his back on him in the face of it?

Would he demand to know why I got to have this support from Heero’s parents when he had had none? An entire town that had hated him for daring to love another boy and out of all of those people, I had found two that could accept me and the boy that I loved for who we were. Would he be angry, or would he just be happy and relieved that one of us got to experience this, had this sanctuary where we could be with each other and not worry about someone attacking us? Wondering that, this whole situation seemed like a dream. That part of me that can’t let go of the bad things reared its head again and screamed at me that this couldn’t be real. Because Mariela was right. I’ve lived in this fucking town for too long. I’ve seen the ugliness, how people feel about… people like Heero and myself. Faggots.

I know, logically, that not every person in the world feels that way or thinks the things that my classmates think about homosexuals, but I had this incredibly hard time believing that Heero’s parents were some of those people. I’ve lived the last five years of my life seeing how gays are treated, having the worst sort of slurs and behavior thrown at me. It’s not an easy thing to let go. Maybe Mariela and Heero could accept the two of us, but how could I possibly accept them when I was constantly waiting, and dreading, for their disgust? A disgust that I knew, just from knowing them and our previous conversation, would never come? The two beliefs warred in my heart. I was a fag and I should be repulsive to people for being different, for loving Heero. And Heero’s parents were not those kinds of people.

“Is it really ok for us to be dating?” I murmured out loud, dropping my fork down on my plate and placing it on the table in front of the couch.

The plate was only two-thirds empty, but my appetite, as insignificant as it was, was now long gone. Around me, everyone stopped eating. Heero looked at me with concern while his parents shared some indecipherable look. I wanted to demand them to tell me how they could be so accepting, what was so different about them from everyone else I knew, but I just kept silent.

“Of course it’s fine,” Justin assured me and nodded to Mariela.

She smiled back at him and rose, taking our plates to the kitchen. I guess no one had a huge appetite that morning. Even Heero looked like he really didn’t want seconds.

“I’ll keep saying it until you believe me, but the two of you can date. It is fine with us, more than fine, we fully encourage it, so long as the two of you are careful about it. As much as I wish that I didn’t need to tell you that, the both of you know, more than most, how dangerous your being together could be, but you’ve been fairly discrete about it so far, which is a good thing. I’m not saying that I want you to hide how you feel for each other in public, just be careful. That being said, I want to lay down some ground rules for your relationship while you’re here,” Heero’s father told us, not coldly, but sternly in a tone that commanded no arguments.

“Dad,” Heero began to protest, giving off that vibe again that this was something they had discussed before, or at least he knew what his father was going to say.

Justin held up a hand and his son immediately went silent, no doubt knowing that he wasn’t going to get very far.

“I don’t mind Duo being here, you know that, and I certainly don’t mind the two of you kissing or even sharing the couch. We aren’t uncomfortable with displays of affection and we aren’t prudes, but you both are still teenagers and we’re the adults here, especially since we’re the only ones that know that you two are together with any say in how you act,” he looked over at me, “I’m guessing that your parents would not be alright with this if they knew?”

“My mother…” I swallowed roughly, not wanting to think about the damage it would do to our newfound relationship if she ever found out that I was gay, “… she would probably be disgusted. Her parents were fairly religious, although she isn’t very faithful to it anymore, but that was how she was raised. My dad would kill me. Maybe literally,” I muttered, not having meant to say that out loud, but while Heero looked horrified, but his father just nodded like he had been expecting that answer.

“If you want to be with Heero,” he told me, “someplace safe and private, I want you to feel like you can come here whenever you like, Duo. I can’t begin to imagine how difficult it is for you at home, having to hide this, so if you ever need our support or just a sanctuary, know that you have both.”

I nodded, my throat going tight and I had to fight against tears again.

“But the two of you are still young and as far as I know, this is the first time that either of you have been in a serious relationship,” he eyed me, looking for some clarification of this, so I nodded again, not wanting to talk about Trowa, but he didn’t really apply, either. Our relationship had been nothing like this, there was no comparison, “so I want to get some things out in the open right now before this goes any further.”

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his legs and crossed his fingers together, regarding the both of us with an intensity that had Heero and I sitting ramrod straight. It would have amused me that we had the same ingrained reaction, that although Justin was a good father and a kind man, he still had a presence that demanded respect and obedience when he wanted to, but I was in too much of a panic over what he was going to say.

“I want to know if the two of you are sexually active yet,” he broached the subject very bluntly, like he was asking us if we had broken a window or something else candid, not that if we were fucking or not.

I honestly do not know who was more mortified at the question. For once, I would have to go with Heero, who looked like he wanted to sink right into the couch cushions and disappear forever. I am unfamiliar with the number one, clichéd teenage fear of being embarrassed by one’s parents, at least directly and not just by being associated with mine genetically, but I got a taste of it right then as Heero turned dark red and looked like he was considering strangling his father.

“I already told you that we aren’t!” he cried out, sounding a bit indignant.

I blinked at him. They had actually talked about this before, and he had never told me about it? I felt that old paranoia coming back, the fears that dating Trowa had instilled in me, but it wasn’t a fear of Heero, but a fear of myself. Was this something that he had been thinking a lot about? We had been only going out for a week, but did he already want to expand our relationship? On a better day, I would have realized that just because Justin had broached the subject before, it didn’t mean that Heero was ready to take things to that level yet, but my rational thoughts were muddled and my paranoias were carrying far too much weight.

“No, you told me that nothing was going on,” Justin said sternly, “which was obviously a lie. Now I want a straight answer about just how far the two of you have gone.”

I breathed with relief. Every time I heard that Heero had been talking about to his parents about me, or his parents had been talking behind our backs, I had felt a little bit betrayed. But he had lied to them for me, even though he hadn’t really had a problem with them knowing about us. He had tried to keep our secret for as long as he could have and hadn’t actually been actively talking about his sex life, or his desire for one. Those blue, eagle like eyes of Justin’s bored into me, taking their perusal off of his son.

“Well, Duo?” to my continued shock, he directed the question at me instead of Heero.

I felt frozen to the spot for a moment that lasted about a second before horror settled over me.

“No!” I practically yelled, feeling my own face go red hot at the mere suggestion, getting a small taste of Heero’s embarrassment, “No! Absolutely not!” I put up my hands in a defensive gesture, “We’ve only been together for a week, all we’ve done is kiss, I swear!”

In a moment of dread, I thought that he was going to make me prove that we hadn’t been intimate somehow or hound me about it, but my graceless sputtering and extreme reaction to the question seemed to appease him. He relaxed, sitting up straight, and nodded at me.

“Good,” he said, believing me easily for some reason.

“I already told you that it wasn’t like that!” Heero threw his hands up in pure frustration, “I might have been lying when I said that we weren’t dating, but I wasn’t lying about _that_.”

Justin shrugged.

“Maybe,” he conceded, a dry smirk on his lips, “but Duo is a lot more trustworthy than you are.”

The two of us gaped at him, Heero looked both shocked and indignant while I thought that he was just joking when it was obvious that he wasn’t.

“I am?” I asked in surprise.

“You’re very responsible and level headed,” Heero’s father said in a matter of fact way, like he was telling me that the sky was blue, “so I believe you if you say that you haven’t done anything together.”

Something in my chest tightened. No one had ever told me that they trusted me before, especially over their own child. It overwhelmed me for a moment, my ego not knowing if it deserved such a boost in my self-esteem or if I felt humble for Justin feeling that way about me. I might often get pegged as someone who is mature and pragmatic, but never the trustworthy one. Never the responsible one. I didn’t know what to do with the knowledge that Justin saw me that way.

“Look,” Mr. Yuy’s tone and gaze softened, “I’m not unsympathetic. It sounds trite and clichéd, but I was a teenager once. I know how frustrating it can be to want something badly and have everyone around you tell you that you’re too young, too inexperienced and too foolhardy to do anything about it. I remember doing things when I was your age that my parents told me not to and feeling like I could handle it, that I was different and I knew what I was doing. Everyone your age feels that way and I’m not going to tell you to keep your emotions in check and your hands to yourselves entirely because after going through it myself, and counseling teens for years, I know that’s practically impossible even with a strong will. Not only is it not effective, I don’t think it’s reasonable to ask you to be completely abstinent until you both turn eighteen. It would be nice if you would consider that, but no one here is that naïve.”

          He glanced towards the kitchen where Mariela was still bustling about and I wondered if he might have gotten in trouble with her for saying all of this. Heero had that look again as his father talked, like he was so embarrassed that he wanted to melt into the floor. I didn’t really blame him and Justin wasn’t my dad. I didn’t even want to think about these things, about sex at all. I would be perfectly happy if we never had it, but like Heero’s father, I was not that naïve. Heero was going to want it eventually. Probably sooner than later since he had none of my hang ups and was a perfectly normal, healthy, sixteen-year-old. But was it really too much to hope for that he really would wait until we were both eighteen? That I could keep this relationship going for at least a year before starting the downfall? Because let’s face it, whether I let him talk me into it like Trowa had or not, whether I gave it up for him or tried to stall him out, that was going to be the end of this dream. The second Heero wants more and finds out what a freak I really am, or accuses me of being a tease, this will all be over.

          “So I’m not going to tell you to put on promise rings or anything like that,” he said derisively, telling us what he thought about such things, “but I do want you to take things slow. Very, very slowly, and not just because you’re too young to have sex. If you were a straight couple, that would be one issue, but sex between two men is different and more complicated. Now, I want you two to be completely honest with me,” he held up his hands, “no judgment and I won’t punish you for it, but have either of you had sex? I mean penetrative, not just oral or anything non-evasive?”

          Heero groaned in further embarrassment, but Justin would not budge, raising an eyebrow at him. Heero glanced at me, perhaps judging if I was going to be angry with his answer more than his father was, but I was too busy fighting my own shame at the question to be worried about his.

          “Not…” my boyfriend shrunk in on himself, “not penetrating, no.”

          He winced and slowly looked over at his dad, no doubt frightened that Justin would read between the lines on that and know that, even if he had never had intercourse, he had certainly done _something_ , but his father just nodded at his answer. I guess he really wasn’t so naïve as to think that his teenaged son hadn’t at least experimented. I’m far from the jealous type, so I was mostly just curious about what Heero had done, if he had more experience than me with such things, if it had been with a boy or a girl and if he had enjoyed it any more than I had. My fear of intimacy and my need to be normal hoped that he hadn’t, but my love for him had me hoping that he had, that he didn’t have the same problems that I did. That he was normal and liked sex, even if it would doom us. He relaxed when he saw that neither Justin or myself really cared that he had been sexually active at some point and then it was my turn.

          I wrapped my arms around myself tightly, not caring about the pain in my arm compared to the icy fear in my chest. What should I do? What should I say? The truth? Mr. Yuy was going to know if I lied, I just knew it. But this was so incredibly shameful. Even Heero, who seemed so much more comfortable with his body and sexuality hadn’t done it, but I had. He knew that I had dated Trowa, that I had regrets, but I had never come out and told him exactly what that entailed. Would he be disgusted to know that I wasn’t a virgin? That I was easy? Would Justin be disappointed in me? Never before did I feel as… as dirty as I did then and I wasn’t even considering telling them about my father. I felt like a whore. A filthy whore that had made all the wrong choices. Never before did I regret so much giving my virginity to Trowa on that dirty, garage floor, all for sex that neither of us had really enjoyed. And the rapes… how would either of them react if I told them that I let my father fuck me? Heero wouldn’t want to even touch me or look at me if he knew what I let happen at home.

          “Yes,” I murmured softly, feeling so ashamed of myself, “I’ve done it.”

          I glanced at Heero in anticipation, looking for the disgust that I was so sure I would see. Some paranoid part of myself screamed that this was it, he was going to break up with me if he knew I had had sex before. I felt like I was balancing on some precarious edge, torn between two beliefs that contradicted each other. All my life, I had been hearing two things, that teenagers shouldn’t have sex, that you were a slut if you were a girl and had done it, and the other, that if you hadn’t been intimate with someone, there was something wrong with you. You were a nerd or unattractive. Trowa had asked me what I was saving my virginity for and had been so indignant that I was sixteen years old and _didn’t_ want to have sex. He had made me feel like a freak for that. But after we had done it, I had still felt like a freak, had felt like I had done something that I wasn’t supposed to, that I was a slut just for that one time, for letting him pressure me. So what was the truth and what would Heero think? That I was a slut for having sex before I had even turned seventeen, jealous that it hadn’t been him, or jealous that I had beaten him to the punch?

          I saw him frowning at me and feared the worst, that he was angry, before sense kicked in and I realized that it was a frown of concern. I suppose that’s understandable given my tone and reaction to this. I wasn’t embarrassed like he was, it was worse than that and like his father, he could read into me like I was made of glass. I only hoped that he thought that all of my fear was from worrying how he would react to this news. I felt myself relax a little as I saw no reproach on his face, just that concern. Maybe this would be alright, I thought, maybe he wouldn’t hate me for one of the worst mistakes of my life. But it was Justin’s reaction to my confession that really surprised me.

          “Then you’re aware of how careful you need to be,” he said simply, no judgment on his face or in his tone at all, just an acceptance, one that was far too easy, like he had been expecting that answer, “and how things can go wrong if you rush in head first.”

          I nodded in agreement, the coldness in my chest spreading as I remembered each and every time my father wasn’t careful. The tearing. The blood. The horrible, agonizing pain. Sex hurts, I know that, even when Trowa was careful, it still hurt worse than I had ever thought it would, but going in unprepared, rushing like your body wanted to, not just because you’re eager, but because your instincts are wired for fucking a girl and not a boy was horrible. Getting my arm broken had hurt less than that ripping, radiating, hot pain. If we ever did have sex, I would never want Heero to go through that, knowing that he had hurt me, injured me in that way. Unlike my father and unlike Trowa, he would actually care about such things. I vowed, right then and there, that if it ever happened, I would do everything that I could to never let Heero know how much it hurts.

          “If you can’t control yourselves,” Mr. Yuy advised, “and you do decide to be intimate with each other, I want the both of you to be very careful. Do some research, even if you think you know what you’re doing and have done it before, and don’t be afraid to ask questions. I won’t judge you or try to embarrass you if it will make sure you’re safe.”

          “Dad, _please_ ,” Heero groaned, hiding his red face in his hands.

          Justin raised an eyebrow at him in wry amusement.

          “Say that to me again when you can’t figure out how to get the condom on,” he smirked with a sadistic enjoyment that really should be illegal for a parent.

          “Agh!” Heero cried out, lifting his head up and glaring at his father like he was going to start a fight, “Are you done yet or is there more to embarrass the hell out of me with in front of my boyfriend?!”

          Justin leaned back in his chair and crossed his fingers over his stomach in a very candid posture.

          “Heero, you of all people should know that I will never, ever be finished embarrassing you, even when you’re fifty years old and I’m in a nursing home,” he joked in an otherwise serious tone, “And no, I am not done. While I would say that you’re not allowed to have sex here and if you must do it, to do it somewhere else, I would rather if you’re going to fool around to be as safe as possible. I just ask that you’re alone if it happens and that you take all the necessary precautions. On top of that, a few rules. You and Duo can share a bed when you’re sleeping, we don’t mind that, but behave yourselves,” those sharp, blue eyes stayed entirely on Heero as he said that.

          “Why are you saying that to me?!” his son demanded, his face flaming even darker.

          “Because you’re the one that I need to say it to,” Justin said dryly and continued on before Heero could protest anymore, looking at me this time, “and Duo, if he gets fresh or tries to pressure you when _you_ aren’t ready, I want you to tell me and I’ll set him straight, alright?”

          I did my stupid owl impression at him, wondering seriously for a moment if he could really read my mind or if he was just joking at Heero’s expense.

          “Y-yes, sir,” I choked out, even though I had no intention at all of doing that.

          Next to me, Heero looked like he was dying and I was starting to worry that he was going to combust if his father kept this up for much longer.

          “When you two are together in Heero’s bedroom, or any other bedroom of this house, you are to keep the door open and always have at least one article of clothing between each other,” Justin lectured like he was reading from a legally binding contract.

          “Oh god, please stop,” my boyfriend begged.

          His father chuckled and if the things he had been saying hadn’t actually been important, all of this would have been hysterical and I would have suspected that he was only having this conversation with us to mess with his son. But I think that even Heero, for all of his moaning and complaining, understood the seriousness of this.

          “Alright,” his dad surrendered, standing up and brushing off his pants, “I think I’ve done my fatherly duty and embarrassed the two of you enough for one day. But I meant what I said, is that understood?”

          “Yes, sir,” we echoed.

          For all of the awkwardness, I actually felt a bit relieved at Justin’s ‘ground rules’. I certainly had no problem following them and they took my mind off the issue of sex, at least for a while. Given my work schedule, there wouldn’t be a lot of moments when we would be alone in the house together and even when we were, I was really hoping that Heero would keep this conversation in mind and have _some_ restraint, not that he had made any advances yet. In some ways, this was easier than with Trowa. Any time we had wanted to spend _any_ time together, we had to be alone in some secluded spot. Heero not caring about being seen with me in public might keep such moments to a minimum and give me some peace of mind.

          “I am so, so, so, so, so sorry,” Heero muttered when his father walked down the hall and into the master bedroom.

          “It’s alright,” I tried to a small smile, the very most that I could manage, “He just wants to make sure that we aren’t going to do something stupid, and that could have gone a lot worse. He was actually pretty cool about it, both of your parents were.”

          “Yeah,” Heero said sadly and I knew that he was remembering what I had said my own parents would do if they ever found out that I’m gay and was probably feeling a bit fortunate despite his embarrassment.

          He reached over to brush my hair out of my face. The touch was pleasing, gentle and welcoming with everything that had happened that morning. I was still feeling off balance and sensitive, on edge from the swirl of emotions that the various talks had given me, so that one, serene gesture felt very peaceful and calming. Heero glanced to the kitchen doorway, but his parents were still either doing dishes or were just giving us a bit of privacy. He turned back to me and leaned in close.

I knew that he was going to kiss me even before he pressed his lips to mine and I had a second’s worth of nervousness doing something like that with his parents so close, but I quickly realized that I didn’t care. It might have just been the insurance that they didn’t mind or my tiredness, but I desperately wanted that kiss. It was a sweet and tender thing, he felt warm against my chilled skin and he was slow and careful not to hurt my split lip. I closed my eyes and melted into it. I can’t begin to describe how happy it made me, not just him kissing me, but that we could do this and not have to worry that his parents were just a few feet away. It really hit me then with this realness. People knew about us and didn’t hate us. We had a security blanket, someone to watch our backs, and a private place where we could be together like this and not have to worry about what we did or how we acted.

I opened my eyes when we parted and he cupped my cheek with his hand, very gently running his thumb over the bruises that Zechs had given me.

“You don’t look so good,” he said a bit bluntly, reminding me of his father, “Are you sure that you want to go to school today? After what happened yesterday… it doesn’t make you a coward to not want to go back to that.”

He was tempting me again. Of course I didn’t want to go to school. The thing with Zechs and the rest that had participated in that little nightmare was one thing. I was so far gone that morning that I didn’t even want to leave Heero’s house. Hell, I didn’t want to leave the fucking _couch_. I wasn’t even sure if I was capable of it. I didn’t want to face what had happened yesterday. I didn’t want to remember it. I just wanted to lay back down, even if no sleep came, and let nothingness wash over me. But the memories came anyway, a horror movie in slow motion. I could feel my hands want to shake remembering how helpless I had felt, how I knew that it could very easily happen again and this time, I might not be so lucky.

“No, I should go,” I heard myself say and I have no idea where those words came from, “I have to go back eventually.”

He sighed and gave me this sad look, like he thought that I was being self-sacrificing and I suppose that I was. There was no reason why I had to go to school that day. I could have gone the next and hoped that some distance between myself and what had happened would make things better. But I am nothing if not stubborn and stupid. I guess, despite Heero assuring me that I wasn’t one, I felt a bit like a spineless coward for wanting to skip school. Zechs had been fucking with me for years and I had always felt this way, like I couldn’t stand one more day. That his and Relena’s bullying was going to make me insane, but I always went back to it. So why should this be any different? I felt weak just for considering taking a day off, this constant need inside of me to keep going forward, to pretend that I was fine.

And then there was that stubborn part of my personality that said that I _had_ to go. If I didn’t, then Zechs would know that he had gotten to me. He would win and I couldn’t tolerate that, just knowing that he would be smirking that smug, nasty little smirk of his and thinking that he had scared me. Which was ridiculous. Of course he had won and of course he already knew that he had gotten to me, he had seen how terrified I had been yesterday, which was another serious blow to what little pride I had, so what did it matter? But it did. Going back to school and facing him was suddenly very important to me. I guess I’m just the kind of person that keeps trying to stay on the horse that bucks me every single time, even when I’m bleeding and broken.

“I want to look at your injuries at least, ok?” he asked me.

I had, mostly, completely forgotten about them. The human mind is funny that way. Beat a man down and, most of the time, he’ll get back up, heal, and move on with his life. But make a man cry? He can carry that shit around forever. I was in pain, especially my arm, and sure my exhaustion was taking some of the edge off of that, but I had barely even noticed that pain. Instead, I had been entirely focused on the emotional trauma that the previous day had given me, my fears and my hate over the whole thing, and the shock that that morning’s events had brought, while my physical injuries played second fiddle.

“K,” I murmured.

He helped me to my feet and somehow, I have no clue how, I managed to stay on them. I picked up Pepper, trying to remind myself to check to see if she had food, which was becoming harder and harder for me. That, more than anything else at that moment, told me that I needed to fix this sleeping problem before something important like that slipped my mind. Heero led us upstairs, his dog following behind me in the usual procession. The first step that I took after I got off the couch was the worst. My injured leg was even more swollen than it had been the previous day and it was stiff as hell. I gritted my teeth as I tried to move it at first with little success, the pain immense and my entire leg feeling like a stone, but once we got moving, it became easier, some of the stiffness going away. Heero still had to keep a hand on my back as we walked up the steps, but I didn’t fall even with my limping, so there is that.

He sat me down on his bed, which was definitely a welcome thing with how the room was slightly spinning. I placed Pepper on the bed and Kanuck sat at my feet as his owner ran to the bathroom to get some supplies, returning with a tube of ointment and a wet washcloth. The washcloth puzzled me until he knelt down in front of me and ran it over the corner of my mouth.

“Your lip is bleeding,” he explained.

“Thanks,” I murmured, unable to raise my voice more than that anymore.

The washcloth was pleasantly hot and I appreciated the thought, not even caring when my lip stung.

“Is your throat sore?” he asked me as he placed the washcloth down, “Your voice sounds weird.”

I almost blurted out that my throat was killing me and I thought that I had a tear or something in there before my brain finally kicked in and reminded me that Heero didn’t know about what Zechs had done with the bat and there was no way in hell I was going to tell him.

“Just a little,” I lied, “It’s fine.”

I didn’t tell him about how I could still taste blood and it hurt just to talk. Really, a throat injury was the least of my worries. It’s not like I’m chatty to begin with. Heero very carefully rolled up my shirt sleeve and made a pained, hissing sound as he saw my arm. It looked worse instead of better. Like my leg, it was more swollen than it had been, even the skin around the wound an inflamed red and the pain hadn’t really receded that much, either. But it was bearable. I didn’t even wince when Heero put the ointment on it.

“You should take an ice pack to school with you,” he fussed, “At least to get the one on your arm down.”

That was the most he lectured me as he finished with my arm and rolled up my pajama pant leg to look at the other hematoma. He didn’t even tell me that I should see a doctor, which pleased me to no end. I think he was starting to get that stressing me out in my state was a lot more harmful to me than some swollen limbs. When he was done, he sat down next to me on the bed and sighed heavily. Pepper saw that nothing exciting was happening anymore and decided to climb into my lap. My hand, almost automatically, went to her head to pet her. For the first time, I looked at Heero and saw just how tired he was. It made me feel like a shit, both that I hadn’t noticed it until then and that I was the cause of it. I knew that he wouldn’t see it that way. He loved me, so of course he worried about me, but I still felt responsible. When was I ever going to stop causing problems for him?

“Will you come here after work tomorrow morning?” he asked me, not as a question, but as a plead.

Before I could even think about the question, his bear of a dog decided that the bed was clearly the place to be and tried to jump up next to Heero.

“No!” he snapped at the animal, pushing him back down, “You know you’re not allowed on the bed, bad dog!”

Kanuck whined loudly in misery, looking over at my cat as if to say ‘but _she’s_ allowed up there,’ and shot his master a pitiful, sad stare.

“She can be up here because she is small and well behaved,” my boyfriend lectured the animal like he could actually understand such things, “She doesn’t try to lick people’s faces or think she’s tiny when she’s the size of a small pony.”

Kanuck looked to Pepper again, who was sitting ramrod straight and staring at the dog, although not in any kind of fear. Dogs might have the ‘oh woe is me’ look down pat, but cats have somehow perfected smugness down to an art form. She was staring the canine down with this oddly human expression of haughty superiority, like she knew exactly what was happening and was gloating at him that she could be up there with us while he had stay on the floor. It was almost like she was teasing him. She very daintily began to clean her paws and Kanuck whined again, only this time he seemed to be whining at _her_ instead of either of us humans. It made me wonder how they acted when we weren’t around, if they were getting along or had some kind of ongoing feud with each other. Heero saw it and shook his head in amusement.

“So?” he pressed.

“Huh?” I asked with all of the intelligence of a rock.

“You? Here? Sleeping?” he asked wryly, raising an eyebrow at me, “Or at least trying to in your case?”

I blushed a little, embarrassed at how easily my mind had just zoned out.

“Oh… uh…” I stumbled.

An alarm went off in my brain, screaming at me that there was some reason to say no, some reason why I should maybe go home, but it was so hard to think. My dad popped into my head for all of a second and while I did remember that I was supposed to be limiting my time around Heero so my father wouldn’t kill me, it seemed somehow unimportant.

“Yeah,” I told him, agreeing very easily.

Let it be known: insomnia can totally get you killed. Not by itself, but from making stupid ass decisions.

“I’m glad,” he smiled and leaned over to give me a small peck on the cheek.

I don’t know why it was that kiss and not the previous one, a tiny display of affection compared to the one that he had given me downstairs, but it sparked something off in my brain. This little bolt of electric thought, bringing up two memories that hadn’t even occurred to me, as wrapped up as they were in bigger, more traumatic ones. Heero’s voice in my head from yesterday, soothing me after he had saved me.

_“I was so scared! Oh god, love, I thought…”_

Followed swiftly by,

_“You’re safe now, sweetheart, we’re both safe…”_

I felt my face go red hot as the memories, and the things that I had felt when they had taken place, filled me.

“I… I should go shower,” I stammered, removing Pepper from my lap so I could make a hasty retreat.

I heard Heero chuckle at me.

“Alright,” he called out.

He no doubt thought that my blushing and awkward behavior was from the kiss. Well, he was half right. I hurriedly left the bedroom and jumped into the shower, turning the water on so hot that steam easily filled the bathroom within minutes. I barely felt the temperature or the water. I could escape Heero, but I couldn’t escape my thoughts. I especially could not escape those memories.

Why? Why now of all times did I remember that? Why not before? Why had it taken me so long to remember what he had said? Even in the shower, all alone, I could feel myself flushing as the words replayed in my head over and over and over in a loop. Every time they did, I felt this warmth in my chest, steadily growing. But along with it was a sharp fear. He had called me ‘sweetheart’ and ‘love’. I know, he had been terrified at the time and feeling overprotective of me, his emotions going into over drive, but still… He had called me pet names. And not even something silly like ‘honey’ or anything insipid like that. But ‘love’. He had called me Love. I ran my hand through my wet hair, staring at nothing.

Remembering that, I felt a deep and intense love for him. In a moment of horror, he had held me and been so sweet, so tender… No one had ever called me a pet name before, not even a nickname, unless you counted faggot or loser. This… this was a big deal, wasn’t it? This wasn’t just a simple thing, unless I was blowing it way out of proportion, but I didn’t think that I was.

We were escalating. That’s what this was, right? We had been dating for just a little more than a week and we were already… already becoming serious. Two dates… no, even before that second date and he had called me sweetheart. Sweetheart, something precious, something to be cherished. I rested my head against the cool tile of the shower stall and closed my eyes. Pet names… it was a wonderful thing and I could feel my heart actually _glowing_ remembering those moments. But then there was that fear. The fear of how close we were getting. The fear of how fast things were happening. A week and we were already serious, a week and more and more, I felt like I couldn’t live without his touch, his kisses, that look of love that he gives me when he thinks that I’m not watching him…

How far was this going to go, and how soon? How long before he wanted more and more from me? I had that feeling again, like I was perched on a precarious edge of some abyss, above a swirling, chaotic vortex and at any moment, something would shift, a gust of wind would hit me and I would go tumbling into it. How much I loved him terrified me and his own feelings were frightening. How long could I keep this together? And what was waiting for me in this relationship? I had been using Trowa as my comparison, but there was no comparison for this. This was new and scary, because I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know anything at all.

How long was I going to be able to keep my balance, and what was going to happen to the both of us the moment that I fucked up… the moment that I fall?

 

End Part 14

 

This moment of how to thoroughly embarrass your child has been brought to you by…

 

Um, yeah, I’M NOT DEAD. Sorry to everyone who asked me if I was alright or has been waiting for this update, I thank you for your patience. Things have been a little bit nuts for me lately, in case some have not realized that. I started a new job and I’ve been struggling to find the time to write anything. While I was unemployed, I was averaging 5-20 pages a day, but lately I’ve been getting in one or two. Not only do I live in a household that makes peace and quiet impossible, I’ve been working 45 hour weeks with a 45 minutes commute each way, five days a week. I barely have any time to do anything anymore. Plus, this part ended up being very long, hence the delay. So rest assured, I AM writing, just don’t expect an update a week anymore, it’s not going to happen.

 

If anyone ever wonders what I’m up to or what my writing progress is, remember that I have a twitter account (same name as this).

 

 

 

 


	59. Chapter 8 Part 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duo returns to school after Zechs' assault on him and struggles to deal with his memories of the act. Will he be able to keep himself and Heero safe, as well as keep his anger in check?

A Stagnation of Love

Chapter 8

Part 15

 

 

 

          I did a lot of thinking in that shower, far too much for the time that I spent in it, and most of it was negative and none of it was at all productive. I went over everything that had happened in the last two weeks. Heero telling me that he liked me. Our first date. Relena’s desperate attack, Heero’s coming out, Zechs’s assault, our talk on the porch, his parents finding out… It was all a snarled nest in my head at that point, some memories fuzzy, others far too sharp and real, things meshing together that had happened days apart. I felt like I was falling to pieces, my memories a sand storm in my skull. Moments of Heero proving to me that he loved me, moments of terror, moments of anguish. I tried to track our short relationship, searching for all those moments when I had felt the same fear that I felt in that shower, that we were going too fast, that this was quickly spinning out of my control.

          I actually laughed out loud, and a bit darkly at that thought. When had I _ever_ been in control of this? Hell, if I had had even an ounce of control over just _my_ feelings, I never would have fallen in love for Heero in the first place! But I was terrified of what that lack of control was going to mean, where Heero was leading the both of us. I was falling too hard for him, completely entangled in him and I didn’t know how to stop it. I’m pretty sure that this _can’t_ be stopped, and that was horrifying to me. I had certainly tried, hadn’t I? I had told him things that I had been so sure would repulse him about myself and they hadn’t.

Or had I really done that to get him to break up with me? I had thought that at the time, but looking back on it, looking back on him, myself, and our relationship, I wasn’t all that surprised that he hadn’t broken up with me. No, it was my own reasoning for telling him those things that surprised me. The more I thought about it, the more I suspected that some deep, dark part of myself had admitted to my hatred and murderous thoughts not to distance myself from him or to even be honest with him, but because that part of me wanted to be forgiven by someone. And if there is one person on this planet that can forgive me, it’s Heero. If he couldn’t, then that would have been all the more proof of the monster that I am. As it is, I’m still not so sure that he’s right that I’m not a bad person, but I like how trying to believe in him makes me feel.

I had told him that I had put a gun to my father’s head and had been mere centimeters away from blowing his brains out, and Heero still loved me. That was beautiful, a relief, and also terrible. I couldn’t understand or cope with the power of his feelings for me, his ability to forgive me every time I fucked up. His ability to look at me and see me and not just ignore the flaws, but embrace them. To love them along with the things that he claimed were good about me. I look at myself and I can’t see anything worth loving, but every time I say that, he opens his heart to me and little by little, that self-loathing of mine just bleeds away. How the fuck does he do that? How can he dispel a lifetime worth of guilt and disgust with a few words? How can he make me believe things that I have no business believing in?

There’s a power in love. I know that sounds trite and clichéd and like something someone in a cheesy, romantic movie would say, but it’s true. It sweeps over you and pulls you under. For better or for worse, you can’t shake it once it has it’s claws in you. It’s not a good thing or a bad thing. It can make the world beautiful. It can make _you_ beautiful, but it can also make you do the most horrific things, to yourself, to others, even to the person that you love. Understanding that was frightful in itself. By the time that I turned the water off, I was practically shaking with it, the knowledge of how fucked I was, how deep I had gone. When had this happened? When had I gone from being unable to forget Heero’s smile to seeing him and feeling him everywhere, in every part of me, to never wanting to be apart from him no matter what it took? How, in the course of only a few months, had I gone from having a crush to being a love sick fool?

I felt utterly miserable as I got out of the shower and wrapped a towel around myself. It would be a misery that I would not be able to shake until the small hours of the morning after work the next day. The shower had done absolutely nothing to make me feel more awake and alert and my throat was feeling worse by the second. I’d gone from feeling like I’d swallowed a burr to a handful of razor blades. Whatever damage Zechs had done to my throat had no doubt been exacerbated by all the talking and crying I had done from our talk on the porch to that morning. Why I hadn’t felt it until I had woken up, I had no idea, but the taste of blood was not going away. The slow building headache had quickly become a scream in my skull and the very first thing that I did after grabbing the towel was dig out the bottle of ibuprofen from the cabinet and take out two lovely, white pills of the stuff.

I turned on the faucet and was just about to pop them into my mouth when I tasted blood again, stronger than ever, and something thick deep in my throat, like mucus when you get a cold. Disgusted, I coughed, trying to get whatever it was up, and spat it out into the sink. Instead of just spit, or even that nasty green or yellow phlegm that you get when you have a sinus infection, I spat out a clotted mass of blood only slightly less than the size of a golf ball. There was a bit of the liquid stuff, too, but not too much. The dark red clot was alarming enough without me coughing up a fountain of blood, thank you very much. I grimaced at the sight of the mess in the sink.

“Joy,” I muttered in disgust.

I coughed a few more times, a little bit more coming up each time and swallowed handfuls of water from the sink until my spit was coming up clear and I could no longer taste the blood. I probably should have been worried about my throat, but I was too far gone to even consider something like going to the hospital or telling someone about it. Also, I’m probably making it sound worse than it actually was. All the blood that I was coughing up was about the equivalent of a bloody nose, not a serious injury. I still had my voice, I could swallow, although not without pain, and the bleeding was probably just from crying, nothing serious. I mean, it wasn’t really surprising that I had a throat injury, the only thing surprising is that I hadn’t noticed it at the time or that Zechs hadn’t broken my fucking jaw with what he had done. I really had nothing to complain about. A sore throat was a pretty good price to pay for not getting raped.

As soon as the taste was out of my mouth, I threw on some clean clothes, fixed my hair, and brushed my teeth. The fresh taste of peppermint was a welcome one. Even though I was clean, I was nothing to look at. My face was dry and pale, my eyes bloodshot, and the dark circles under my eyes had grown. To my irritation, Heero had been right, I looked like a fucking raccoon. My face was starting to look almost bruised in areas that it hadn’t before and the places where I _was_ actually bruised, like my lip and side of my face where Zechs had struck me, looked awful and prominent. But as a veteran of insomnia, I was used to all of that and merely scowled at my ugly reflection and left the bathroom.

I went through my daily, morning ritual at the Yuy home: put my dirty clothes in the hamper in the guest room, cleaned Pepper’s litterbox, refilled her food and water bowl, brushed out her fur, and played with her for a little while until time was ready for Heero and myself to leave for school. I went down the steps, finding the living room blissfully empty, Heero’s mother doing something in the kitchen and his father having disappeared somewhere as I waited for my boyfriend. I was glad for the absence of people, for the silence and lack of eyes staring at me, studying me, judging me. If I felt that way just about Mariela and Justin, I didn’t even want to think about how the day at school was going to make me feel. My skin was already crawling and I was trying to distract myself from it, lying to myself that this was just an ordinary day, that I wasn’t returning to the place that had very nearly chewed me up and spat me out like a wad of gum the previous day. I didn’t have the mental capacity for such thoughts. My brain was near sighted, unable to focus on anything but what was happening to it right then. What might happen in the next few minutes or an hour from then existed in some far off, parallel dimension that was unreachable and unknowable.

Heero came down the stairs only a few minutes after me, his bag slung over his shoulder and holding another in his hand. It actually took me a full thirty seconds to recognize it as my own, a bag that I had been using for the last four years since Relena had thrown out my other one. It might as well have belonged to a stranger for all that I had recognized it at first.

“Forget something?” he quirked a dark eyebrow at me with slight amusement.

I flushed darkly, realizing that I would have left the house without any of my school supplies or textbooks and not have noticed that I was forgetting anything. For me, that was like forgetting to put on underwear or forgetting to braid my hair. I had never forgotten my book bag in eight whole years.

“Thanks,” I muttered lowly in embarrassment and took the bulging, heavy bag from him to sling it over my shoulder.

“You boys leaving?” Heero’s mother called from the kitchen.

“Yeah,” he called back.

“Well, don’t forget your lunch,” she reminded him in a tone that I can only call motherly.

I followed him into the kitchen where Mariela handed him a paper bagged lunch. At some point during my shower, she had changed out of her night clothes. Instead of the skirts and blouses or sweaters that I usually saw her in, she was dressed in an old pair of paint stained jeans and an equally old sweatshirt, her long, black hair done up in a tight braid that was wrapped, coiled, and pinned into a bun. She must have had the day off work and was preparing to do some housework. Somehow, even those stained clothes suited her somehow.

Seeing her in jeans suddenly reminded me of my own mother, who is not one for dresses and skirts when she’s off of work. It’s strange because, in old photos of her when she was a teenager, she seemed to wear a lot of dresses, but a lot has changed in her life since then. I don’t know when exactly she started to prefer more androgynous, neutral clothing, if it’s just because at her previous job at the bar, she was required to wear a skirt and she got sick of it or if it was just something that she grew out of, but I almost never see her wearing anything but pants at home.

It dawned on me then that I hadn’t seen my mother in days and I felt a pang of equal parts guilt and worry. Did she wonder where I was or did she just assume that I had been with Heero? Probably the latter, as it was becoming a bad habit for me not to come home. If something had happened to her… if my father had hurt her, I would never know unless she felt it necessary to call my cellphone. Even if Dad had hurt her, I reminded myself, there was little that I could to help her. Even if it happened right in front of me, it wasn’t like I could stop him. Still, I felt guilty, like I had abandoned her just because I was having a hard time coping. I thought about calling her, but she would be heading off to work soon and I didn’t want to risk my father picking up the phone or pissing him off that early in the morning. I would call her later, when I was out of school, I told myself and hoped that I would remember.

I blinked stupidly at Heero’s mom when she handed me a paper bag as well. It felt very hot, so I made sure to hold it from the top and not the sides.

“For me?” I asked in confusion and she smiled brightly at me.

“Just some vegetable soup,” she told me, “It will be easy on your stomach if you’re not feeling well and the thermos should keep it warm until lunch. There’s also some rolls for dipping that I got from the bakery on Ashford.”

“T-thank you,” I stammered, feeling deeply touched that she would make a lunch for me, and one that would be easy for me to eat.

Her smile softened and she must have seen something on my face that bothered her, because even though she was still smiling, it was a worried one and it looked a little bit sad. She reached over and smoothed my bangs away from my face. The gesture was very nurturing and for a moment it made me feel like a little kid. It was a strange feeling because not even my own mother has ever made me feel that way, partially because of our strained relationship and how very little she had fussed over me as a child. But also, even if my mother had ever made me feel that way, Mariela wasn’t my mom. Besides, I was taller than her.

Still, it made me feel good, like she was looking out for me, even if it wasn’t her job to do that. I guess Heero’s mother is just one of those types of women that truly falls into the mothering role and has to take care of anyone that that crosses their paths. Or maybe she just thought that I was doing a piss poor job of it, which I kind of resented but I’m well aware of how Heero’s parents worry that I don’t take care of myself. Which is far from the truth. Ok, so I have sleeping problems, have a tendency to ignore my injuries, and don’t always eat as well as I should, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t take care of myself. I’ve been doing it ever since my parents stopped giving a shit, which was probably around the time I turned seven, although maybe before that. It’s hard to remember. It isn’t like one day they just decided that I was old enough to do things on my own. It had been an insidious, gradual thing, their affection and care for me bleeding out of them from some small wound that had never healed until things had ended up the way that they are now.

Before my mother had stopped drinking, I had either been a ghost in my own family, a bad smell, or a pest that needed to be dealt with, excusing the few moments of affection that my father gave me when he was in the right mood. But those have been getting few and far between since I started going to school. Not that those things are at all related, but those car rides he would take me on, the lunches on the hill by the train station, taking me to the library… around the time that I had turned nine and had gone to school finally, they had dwindled. I could probably even chart it out into a graph if I had the inclination. The more that his tempers and number of drinks a day grew, the rarer those moments had become. It was almost equal, really. I don’t know what it was. Work had gotten harder, he had gotten more tired and angrier. As a kid, it had felt like he had just been too tired to deal with me, but now that I’m older, I wonder if the love that he had felt for me as a child had been the thing that had dwindled and not his time and patience. When had I stopped being his child in his eyes and started to be an annoyance, the thing that he resented for keeping him back, keeping him chained down? When had he really started to hate me?

Mariela’s touch had made me feel warm, but that thought drove all warmth right out of me. It was a thought that I had often had as a child after my father had struck me or I would hear him argue with my mother over money or when he would call me stupid or a waste of space. Does my dad hate me? It’s a painful thought, one that I still struggle with because I don’t know. I think it might be easier if I knew for sure that he did. I don’t think that I could hate him back. I think I’m stupid enough to keep loving him no matter what he does to me, but I could accept his hate and that would make the abuse easier to swallow. But then he does something nice. He hugs me. He tells me that he loves me. He buys me things. He puts his hand on my shoulder or touches me without hurting and my conviction that he feels nothing but resentment towards me wavers. I wonder if he loves me and that thought is even more painful, because it brings with it other thoughts with it, ones that are far more terrible than thinking that he hates me. Thoughts like ‘if he loves me, then why is he doing this to me?’ Thoughts that make me feel hollow and sad.

Like I said, love has a power. Heero’s love for me makes me feel full and wonderful. My father’s stabs me right through the heart and leaves me bleeding every time. Hate is better. People might write songs about how great love is, how it’s the only thing that you need, how it can make everything better if only people would love one another, but they’re wrong. Trust me, sometimes hate is better. None of these things must have shown on my face, because Mariela’s expression didn’t change and she smoothed my hair back again.

“You don’t have to go to work tonight, do you, Duo? Why don’t you just come here after school, you still look so exhausted. You could use the rest and I don’t want you hurting yourself at work because you’re so tired,” she fussed and somehow, through some miracle, her concern drove away some of the pain that I was feeling. Not much of it, but enough to make it bearable.

“I’ll be alright,” I assured her and even managed a small smile that I was sure was thoroughly unconvincing.

She frowned, but she didn’t push the issue. Maybe Heero gets that from his mother and not his father after all.

“Ok,” she said in defeat, “but you’re welcome to stay here to sleep whenever you like. You know that, don’t you?”

She sounded worried and a bit guilty again. I had no doubt that she was thinking of our earlier conversations and was berating herself for them, wanting to reassure herself that she hadn’t ruined anything or made me feel unwelcome in her home. I really wished that I wasn’t so tired so I could find the words to tell her that she had done the exact opposite. Accepting me as Heero’s boyfriend, not freaking out over it and telling me that I was good for him had only made me feel more welcome, not just in their home, but in their lives. As it was, all I could do was smile at her reassuringly and nod. If I had been in my right mind and had had the energy to deal with my emotions, I might have been tempted to hug her and tell her that she hadn’t done anything wrong. I was still feeling unsure of myself, but it wasn’t anything that she had done and she shouldn’t feel guilty. But I could barely string two thoughts together, let alone be sensitive to other peoples’ emotions. It was becoming hard to even recognize them, let alone be aware that I should be reacting to them.

“You two have a nice day, and if you run into any trouble,” she looked at Heero with a pleading, desperate expression, “please, call us.”

She had to be thinking about what I had told them, about how hard things had been for me at school and that Heero had outed himself. As proud as his parents were for him, as relieved that they were that he wasn’t putting on an act anymore, they were far from happy knowing about why he had come home beaten up. I felt that guilt again that I was dragging the boy that I loved into something terrible, something that he most definitely did not deserve, but I was lost to find a way to pull him out of it. Staging a break up wouldn’t work. Distancing ourselves publicly wouldn’t work. Standing up to our bullies sure as hell wouldn’t work. For once, I had no clue what to do and I hated the thought that there was nothing that I _could_ do. It was Quatre all over again, watching him getting bullied and knowing that no sacrifice I could possibly make would help him.

I would have gladly cut off my own arm to help Heero, but I was starting to understand that all I could do was stay by him and look out for him. And I didn’t like that one bit. You would think that I would have been relieved to know that sacrificing our relationship wouldn’t make things any better, but I hate feeling this helpless, this worthless to protect the one person that I love. I know what it feels like, to be completely vulnerable, powerless, useless. Zechs and my father had seen to that, and I didn’t want Heero to get so much of a taste of that feeling. Again, I thought of my dark dreams from years ago and the even darker thoughts that I had had the previous day of just killing Zechs and being done with all of it. The temptation was there, but not the willpower. Heero had said that I wasn’t capable of it and right then, whether I was or wasn’t was irrelevant. Heero thought I was a better person, so I _had_ to be a better person. There was no other choice.

I wanted that look in his eyes, that pride and that love for me. I would suffer through anything for the look and it would only be on the day that he stopped looking at me like that that I could even _consider_ something so awful. Quatre had made me want to be a better person, but Heero did make me a better person. His assurances, his confidence in me… when we were together, I felt better. More than the loser that my father sees me as, more than the person I confessed to be last night, so consumed with rage and bitterness that I felt sick with it. The monster that I have feared since my childhood that I might become.

“I will,” Heero promised.

He managed to convince his mother and we were allowed to leave without any further demands or questions, but I wondered at his promise. He hadn’t called his parents yesterday when everything had gone to shit, although that was mostly because of me, but just how much was he willing to put up with before he caved and got them involved? Just how much were his parents willing to overlook? Some part of me wondered if asking them for help might be a good idea. I obviously was incapable of doing shit about it and I was pretty sure that they couldn’t help us, either, that no one could, but what if I was wrong? What if I was making things harder for Heero by being too stubborn to ask for help, too used to being independent to rely on another person?

If we got into trouble again and Heero wanted to tell his parents about it, could I let him do it? Should I? I felt like I was manipulating him, asking him to suffer through this and preying on his feelings for me. I just felt so overwhelmed. If I believed in God, a loving God at that, I would have prayed for guidance, for someone to tell me what to do, what was the right decision to make. I resented the entire universe, not just for putting these problems in my path, but for giving me the power and responsibility of dealing with them. Heero had proven that he was going to listen to me, even if he thought I was doing things the wrong way, and that terrified me. But if there is a god, I’ve learned by now that He doesn’t a give a single, solitary shit about me and my fears, confusion, or guilt. The only person that I could resent for letting these choices fall on my shoulders was my boyfriend and I’m as incapable of hating him for that as he is telling me that I’m full of shit.

So we walked to school together, me doubting every single decision that I’ve made since I was nine years old, doubting every decision that my boyfriend was making in letting me call the shots, and even doubting that I had made the choice to go to school at all that day. I could have blamed it on my sleep deprivation, and I’m sure that that was a part of it, but I just felt lost, like I always have. I suppose everyone feels that way at one point or another, but for me, it’s like every path that my life has taken has found me in that state. I feel like a little kid facing some terrible monster and someone has offered me the choice of two weapons and I can only have one, but I have the sneaking suspicion that neither of them are going to help protect me, let alone slay the beast, and the person handing them to me wants to see me devoured. That every choice I’ve made seems so blatantly wrong after the fact doesn’t help my confidence one, tiny bit.

I was so immersed in my chaotic and troubling thoughts that I didn’t even notice that we were almost at school until we entered the parking lot and the brick building loomed in front of us like some decaying, ancient crypt. My stomach suddenly twisted and I felt horribly sick, like I had swallowed something slimy and poisonous, my skin going cold and my heart beginning to race. It was almost like the feeling that I had had after my father had tried to molest me and I had struggled with the decision to return home, this terrible feeling in my guts like a current of electricity was running through me. I stopped right where I stood and felt frozen. Every terrible memory from the day before came at me at once.

I could feel the hard linoleum of the classroom floor against my knees, Zechs’s hand tight on my hair, pulling me towards him, his smell invading my nose like some living parasite as he unzipped his jeans. I could feel the terror that I had felt then, the helplessness, and the disgust, along with the anger that had caused me to bite him. I could feel the shame of all those eyes on me and the rage that not a single one of them cared enough about me as a human being to want to stop it. And all at once, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go into that place. I couldn’t face him, what he had almost done to me. My fear strangled me and I felt chilled to the fucking bone. I couldn’t bear it, not even just seeing him and knowing… knowing what he wanted to do to me. Just like him. Just like my father… he wanted to trap me like a wild animal and take everything from me, and just like my father, he would succeed. Because that’s what I am. An animal, just a thing, and he has all of the power. He was going to hurt me again. He was going to make me helpless and strip away my humanity, just like my father.

Heero stopped and looked back at me, having realized that I was no longer walking at his side. He hurried back to me, his eyes wide with alarm for a moment, but I didn’t pay much attention to him at first, too consumed with anxiety. Then he lightly touched my arm and, even though I barely felt it, he was the only thing that I could focus on. I was dimly aware that I was shaking and felt ashamed of myself. I had told him that it was fine. I had told him that I didn’t mind going back to school, that I could handle this, and there I was, shaking like a mouse. Why couldn’t I ever be strong around him? Why did he always have to see this weak side of me? It really was a wonder that he was still attracted to me at that point.

“Duo,” he said in this soft, soothing tone, “we don’t have to go in. We can still go back. We can wait a day when the memories aren’t so fresh. It’ll be better tomorrow.”

He was so understanding, but in reality, he didn’t get it. I _had_ to do this. If I wanted any sort of respect from him, from myself, I had to beat this thing. I would not allow the school to become another nightmare like my bedroom, like my own house. I would not let Zechs take this from me. I would not run screaming from my owned damned memories, from my fear. Because if I really dug deep into what was bothering me, it wasn’t just Zechs and what he had tried to do. That was terrible enough. But the true source of my fear and flight reaction was how it reminded me of my father, of what he does to me late at night, the secret thing we have between us. Zechs isn’t my father. I had to repeat that to myself in my head over and over. He would never be him. He had to be one monster that I could face, if not, I think it would actually drive me insane. Besides, I knew that Heero was wrong. It wasn’t going to be better tomorrow. And the memories were never going to stop being fresh in my head.

“Yes, we do,” I murmured, but I still found it hard to take that first step forward towards the school, like there was a ball of iron my gut weighing me down.

I flinched slightly when I felt Heero’s fingers slide over mine, his skin incredibly warm compared to mine. He gave an apologetic smile, but didn’t pull away from me, holding my hand in a firm, unrelenting grip. To my amazement, my shaking started to ease, like the warmth of him was erasing some bad chill.

“There’s still time to tell someone what happened,” he urged, a desperate, almost pleading light in his eyes, “Principle Stoan, Coach Horner, my parents, the police, someone is bound to believe us. I know you’re scared, I am, too, but we can get help, we can stand up to him!”

It might have been a little bit easier to agree with him, or I would have felt a lot less conflicted, if there had been any judgment in those blue eyes of his. If I had had any suspicion at all that he was looking down on me for not telling on Zechs, but even in my fuzzy mental state, I knew that he didn’t. I might think that I’m a coward, but he doesn’t. I could have been flustered at his naivety, but I just found it endearing and refreshing. He honestly believed that if we just told the right people, something would change. Who knows? Maybe he was right, but I didn’t believe that.

I could have told him a lot of things then. I could have said that I didn’t care if he was right, I was not going to risk his life and safety on a maybe, that the only two possible outcomes were retaliation or victory and I couldn’t deal with those odds, the entirety of my life experiences screaming at me that the monsters always win. No matter how hard you fight them, this isn’t a fairy tale. Even if it was, it’s always the knights or the innocent, morally superior ones, the princes and their like that slay the beast. I’m not like any of those characters, I’m no prince. I could have yelled at him for putting this decision on my shoulders again, making me feel conflicted again, cried that I didn’t have the ability to think, let alone make this kind of decision right then, even if it would keep him from making it and doing something rash, if well intentioned.

I could have listed all the ways that his plan was childish and dangerous and doomed to fail. Principal Stoan was tough on bullies, but Zechs was still a Darlian, the family solely responsible for the computers that they had donated to our classrooms, the uniforms that the sports teams used that they had paid for, and the family that could not just take all that away, but make life hell for one small town high school. Compared to all that, the welfare of two, teenaged outcasts really didn’t measure up. Heero might like Coach Horner, but he really didn’t give a shit about the bullying. I had witnessed him turning a blind eye to it more than once and while Zechs had been kicked off the wrestling team, he was still on the football team and his closest friends were some of Horner’s star players.

As for the police, well, I could tell Heero all about how useless _they_ were. My father had been a cop and look how he had treated his own family, Pat, too. All of their friends on the force that I had met had known that he was beating on my mother and myself and they hadn’t just turned a blind eye to it, they just didn’t care. I would never trust any cop for as long as I lived. Heero’s parents were the only ones who cared and would actually try to do something about it, but so what? What could they do? Nothing had changed since yesterday. There was no new evidence, nothing to hang Zechs with and even if there were, the Darlians had the kind of money to make such problems go away. And if this went to court, I was fucked. I didn’t have the resources to get a lawyer. Hell, Zechs’s parents could sue me for defamation and I have no doubt that they would win. So what was the point?

It all boiled down to that, didn’t it? What was the point? I could stop Zechs, maybe, by some kind of miracle, but not the rest of them. I could never win this battle, so it was useless trying. That made me feel weak and pathetic, but I couldn’t escape my common sense. I just kept telling myself over and over and over again ‘nothing has changed.’ Because it hasn’t. Zechs might have escalated his game to something terrifying for me, but _he_ hasn’t changed. He had tried to feel me up before and I had brushed that off. He had been scaring me for years, this was just a different way to mess with me. I kept telling myself that, but it did nothing to get rid of the ball of terror in my stomach, this horrible feeling of disgust in myself, being trapped and treated like I was a thing for him to play with and not a person, and the terror that he might do this to Heero, too.

I didn’t tell him any of this. I didn’t want him to know. I didn’t want him to worry. Even if I had been in my right mind, I don’t think I would have tried to argue with him on it. I simply shook my head. Heero looked defeated, but not disappointed, which made it all a lot easier for me.

“Ok,” he said softly in surrender, but somehow managed to smile at me, “In that case, I’ll just have to make sure that he never gets the chance to hurt you like that again.”

The protectiveness and confidence in his voice made a wave of affection and love for him wash over me and fill me up, emotions that I could barely handle on a good day and then, they almost had me shaking again. I could feel tears want to gather in my eyes, but I regained at least a tiny bit of control over myself, or maybe I was so tired that even crying was too much for me. I had certainly done enough of it in the last twenty-four hours to last me weeks. I look back on the promise I had made to myself after Quatre’s death, that I would never shed a single tear again, and I can laugh at my own stupidity. I hated myself for my inability to control my own emotions and worried a great deal that Heero thought that I was some kind of cry baby, but I couldn’t stop these… outbursts.

I wanted so badly to kiss him then, to show him how much I loved him and how much I appreciated him wanting to protect me, even if I didn’t believe that he could. Thankfully, I wasn’t so far gone to try such a thing, partially because of my continued, ridiculous shyness and partially because of where we were. Holding hands had gotten the shit kicked out of him, I can’t even imagine what our classmates would do if anyone saw us kissing. Heero walked forward, still holding my hand and I followed him, his words and his affections melting through some of the ice that had had me frozen. I could still hear this little voice in my head shrieking ‘don’t do it! Don’t go in! They’re going find you! They’re going to hurt you! They’re going to rape you!’ That voice threatened to overtake me and almost had me shaking again, but it was easy to ignore with my boyfriend there, leading me forward. I was infinitely more afraid of what he thought of me than what Zechs had done. The adrenaline that raged through me and had my heart pumping was welcome, though, better than a cup of coffee to make me feel more awake, even if I knew that I was going to crash hard when it was gone.

‘At least I can’t fall asleep in class,’ I thought with wry, bitter humor.

We stepped through the doors of the school and I don’t know why, but I expected _something_ to happen. A clap of thunder, a punch to the face, some ominous occurrence to prove that little voice in my head right. Of course nothing did and that helped ease a tiny bit of my paranoia, enough that I stopped feeling like I was sleepwalking through a nightmare and give me just a little slice of normality back.

And the day _was_ fairly normal. Well, for me, which isn’t saying much considering the shit that I deal with every day at school. We had gotten there early, so Heero and I had a little bit of peace as we deposited our afternoon class materials into our lockers (finding both blissfully empty of booby traps, which was surprising) and went to our homeroom. I didn’t have it in me to start up any kind of idle conversation, so Heero let me sit there and zone out as he talked about nothing important, his voice this pleasant white noise that helped to relax me. I was so far gone at that point that all the little aches and pains, my arm, leg, throat, and the headache that was steadily building steam, didn’t even bother me anymore. It was going to be a miracle if I got through that day at all. At least I didn’t have to worry about a teacher calling on me because most of them liked to pretend that I didn’t even exist.

When our classmates started to pile into the room, it was too soon as far as I was concerned. My heart started to race again and even though no one really paid much attention to us at first, I felt like every single person was staring at me, like all of them knew what had happened yesterday, that I was the butt of a joke that everyone was aware of but me. I knew that I was just being paranoid and overly sensitive, but I couldn’t shake that feeling. Then, Relena, Rachel, and Dorothy strode into the room and something other than fear or paranoia filled me. I wasn’t scared of them for once. They had watched what had happened, but they hadn’t participated, hadn’t wanted to… do _that_ to me, only watch it happen. What I felt was anger, the same kind of rage that I had felt as a kid when Relena had first started to pick on me, this incredible urge to wipe that smug little expression off of her perfect face with my fist.

What had I done to her that was so horrible that she would gladly see her brother sexually assault me? Almost kill me? Spurned her advances? Hit her for getting my best friend killed? Taken her boyfriend away from her? Were these justifications for her standing by and watching her brother hold me down and force a bat down my throat? Threaten to orally rape me? No, I knew. She might have gained pleasure from seeing me so low because I, in her mind, had corrupted her boyfriend, but long before Heero had ever moved here, she still would have been in that classroom, watching, relishing in my fear and pain, because that was just the sort of person that she was. What the fuck gave her the right, gave _any_ of them the right to treat me that way?! Because they had more money than me, parents that would buy them whatever they wanted, because they were bigger, older, stronger? Because they weren’t fags, weren’t unwanted? They thought that they were better than me, fine, I don’t give a fuck, but why did that mean that they thought they could do something so disgusting?

I openly glared at them, not even caring for once that they might see it and retaliate. I didn’t care, I wanted them to see my anger, to know that I wasn’t scared of them for what they had participated in. Almost as if she could sense the hostility being directed towards her, Relena glanced at me. Dorothy, who had been saying something to her best friend, noticed her shift of attention and saw me. Her cold features twisted up into a look of hate and anger that I was daring to cop an attitude towards her precious queen. She sneered at me, that anger turning into smugness. Her light blue eyes took in my bruised face and that sneer only grew. It made me feel cold, knowing that she was thinking about what had happened like it was some sort of victory, like I had been put in my place. Those feelings of self-loathing threatened to sneak their way in past my anger at that dirty look, but I refused to let her make me feel that way. Zechs could, even Relena could, but not that ice bitch.

I fully expected Relena to give me the same sort of sneer of smugness and superiority, to look at me like she might a common whore or a diseased, stray dog, something filthy that should be put down so she wouldn’t have to look at it. To my shock, she didn’t so much as smirk at me, but instead looked angry and I didn’t think that it was over my glaring at her. She looked infuriated just to see me and also frustrated, something that I very seldom see from her. It was the same look she had given me when I had been twelve years old and had tried to fight back and dodge her bullying.

It was the look she had given me after I had taped my history book back together and Quatre had brought me back from the nurse after she had dumped pepper in my eyes. The look of rage knowing that her attempts to hurt me hadn’t worked out as she had planned. She was looking at me like that because… why? Because she had wanted to actually see Zechs rape me and I had gotten away? Because just seeing me bleeding and terrified hadn’t been enough for her? Or was it because Heero had been the one that had rescued me? Was she angry because he had, once again, shown how much he cared for me, or even angry because he had caught her taking part in it and she blamed me for that, too?

I waited for her to stride over to me and do something, maybe take a swipe at my face again although I didn’t let up on my glare, for once not scared of her animosity or what she might do. That was one effect that I hadn’t expected from Zechs’s assault, that compared to what he had done, anything that the others could do to me no longer really scared or worried me. There was very little that Relena could do to me anymore that would hurt me as much as what her brother had done. I was a bit… mentally slow that morning, that whole week, really, but something dawned on me in that instant. Since Heero and I had become friends, I had become less and less concerned with Relena’s bullying.

Maybe that was because Zechs’s had escalated, but he had always been the bigger threat. That didn’t mean that Relena scared me any less. While Zechs did more damage, Relena’s bullying tended to be more common and more emotionally damaging. She loved to humiliate me while Zechs tended to do things to me that were more disgusting or physically harmful. But it wasn’t just that Zechs was the one going after Heero and myself now, it was that, if I really thought about it, her hostility towards me had… not really diminished, but her attempts to mess with me sure had. The only reason for that that I could think of was Heero’s presence, that she knew that if she messed with me, she would have to mess with him, too. Or maybe he had gotten to her when he had broken up with her over her cruelty. She might claim that I had perverted him, but some part of herself realized that it was her bullying that he had found so repulsive. Or maybe she was still in such grief over their break up, even if it had been months ago, that some spark had gone out of her.

I didn’t feel an ounce of pity for her, though. My relationship with her and my hatred of her non-withstanding, as much as I could sympathize with her over her feelings for Heero and how _I_ would feel if he broke up with me and told me that he couldn’t stand me as a friend, let alone a partner, she had made her own bed. Heero had told me that I wasn’t a bad person because I’ve made choices, different choices from my father and people like Zechs. And people like Relena. She made the choice to reject what he had said to her, to blame someone else for losing him instead of accepting that she repulsed him, and not because she was female. She would never know what it was like to be friends with him, to know how wonderful even that was, even if she could never have his affection, all because of whatever ugliness was in her, her inability to give up on her hatred and superiority.

Instead of instigating anything or teaching me another lesson about coping an attitude towards her, she broke our gaze first, flicking her hair over her shoulder in a prissy, dismissive gesture, like flicking your hand at a fly, and walked to her desk, her loyal followers at her heels. I let go of the breath that I had been holding. I might not have felt all that afraid of her, but that didn’t mean that I had wanted an altercation. I glanced over at Heero to find that he was, thankfully, still seated at his desk, but his entire body was taut and tense, his blue eyes sharp with alarm. I knew exactly what was going on in his head, how long and how fast it was would have taken him to jump out of his seat and get to me if Relena and her friends had tried something. It almost had me smiling, his desperate urge to protect me, even if it was from his ex. I could have felt insulted by that. I can take care of myself and have been taking care of myself long before he moved here, but I haven’t done a whole lot of protecting myself from my bullies, especially not that Heero has seen and have asked him several times not to interfere. A promise can’t get rid of instincts and desires, I just hoped that he would have been smart enough not to do anything if Relena hadn’t backed down.

The classroom quickly filled out with the people that I had been stuck with in that same room for the last two years and would continue to be stuck with until I graduated. The bell rang and, just like always, Alex, Connie, and Lewis filed in four minutes later, laughing about something and not giving a single shit as our homeroom teacher shot them dirty looks for being late, but didn’t have the balls to actually say anything to them like he would to me. Their laughter quickly stopped as they spotted me there. Predictably, Alex smirked at me and gave me a look that I can only call a leer, making me feel uneasy, dirty, and quickly had me regretting my decision to come in that day.

Stupidly, I wanted to reach out across the aisle that separated us and make Heero hold my hand. I wanted him to steady me and make these feelings go away, feelings that were making me feel like garbage, like a well-used hooker being regarded by some regular customer that she loathed, but couldn’t get rid of. With a single look, Alex had made me feel worse than Relena ever could. He made me feel like I was back in that room, being looked at with disgust and lust, like a fucking blow up, sex doll. Connie and Lewis on the other hand just looked surprised to see me there. I guess they had thought that I wouldn’t show up that day, which would have been the smart thing to do, really.

Our teacher, looking annoyed when the three boys took their sweet time to take their seats, read out of the morning announcements and drawled on about Spring break starting next week, the same topic that all of my teachers have been on the last two weeks and a detail that I had kept forgetting. Not that it really matters. For my classmates, a week off of school meant family outings, general trouble making, and trips to places warmer and more exciting than our small, coastal town. For me, it usually just meant longer hours at work, more chores, and more beatings. My father seemed to resent knowing that I was on a break and just seeing me not going to school would piss him off. He would load work onto me, saying that if I wasn’t at school, he would find plenty for me to do to occupy my time. So it wasn’t really a vacation for me and in the last few years, any free time I had had, I had spent at the library, tucked away in a quiet corner with a book until they closed.

Even when Trowa and I had been dating, he had gone away for the week, so I had been alone. When we had been kids, Quatre would go away with his family and it was one of the few times that I had seen him truly happy as it was one of the only times of the year that his parents would take off of work to go vacationing with their children. Even if I was lonely in his absence, I could never begrudge him those rare moments with his mom and dad. As he had gotten older, though, his parents had been too caught up in their jobs to even bother for that one, solitary week, a fact that had made him severely depressed. He would spend every second of the day that I wasn’t busy with me, dragging me out to dinner or to the movies, or just hanging out with me at the park, trying to act, I suppose, like everything was fine. But it wasn’t. Even I could tell that it wasn’t. When he had been with me, he had really been somewhere else, probably thinking of those family trips and why they had stopped.

‘But this year is different,’ I suddenly realized, the thought coming like a ray of light in the dingy dark.

I looked over at Heero as covertly as I could and saw him with his cheek resting on his fist, listening with extreme boredom to our homeroom teacher, his eyes half lidded and tired. I found myself unable to stop the small, endeared smile that graced my lips. This year was different. I wasn’t alone this year, I had a friend, something more than a friend, and I had the time to spend with him. That possibility of actually having the time to be with Heero as well as an escape from school and the threats that it brought made my heart race with excitement before common sense, as it so often does, smothered it. What if they were going away for the week like everyone else? And why wouldn’t they? Heero and his family weren’t the ones who were poor, who had no family to visit, no way to escape from Nausten. They were probably going to visit his grandparents or go someplace warm and exotic like all the other families that could afford it, leaving me here.

That thought left a hollow hole in my chest and I found myself panicking over it in my sleep deprived state. It was only for a week, if they were even leaving at all, so why did I suddenly feel so terrified, so… abandoned? It left me feeling drained and pathetic, like a little kid throwing a temper tantrum because his parents were going to see a movie without him. It had nothing to do with me, I told myself. They might accept me, but I wasn’t family. I wasn’t one of them. Pain shot through my chest. I wanted to be… but… I wasn’t one of them.

I had that stupid sensation again of tears wanting to form and just shut it down immediately. I dug my nails into my left hand, leaving bloody gouges in my skin and used the pain to keep those depressing feelings and thoughts at bay. I was _not_ going to start crying in class over the _possibility_ that Heero and his family were going to be gone for a week! A _week_! What the fuck was wrong with me? Why was I getting so upset over nothing?

The bell suddenly rang again, signaling the end of homeroom and I hadn’t even noticed when our teacher had stopped talking. I might have just sat there and looked numbly at nothing, so consumed by my troubling thoughts and anxieties if Heero hadn’t been looking out for me, just like he always does, just like he had promised me that morning that he would do. I didn’t even have the time to form the thought that, with Alex and the rest of them in that classroom, it might be a good idea for us to leave before the teacher did and before they got the idea in their heads to do something before Heero sprung into motion. With the kind of quick, fluid motion you might see in a well-choreographed action film, my boyfriend grabbed his book bag, got to my desk, grabbed mine, and dragged me out of my seat and out of the classroom before any of our tormentors had even stood up.

I think it was around that time that I really, truly realized what a huge mistake I had made in going to school that day. It wasn’t even that I was scared and shaky, flinching at every shadow and remembering things from the previous day that I would rather forget forever, all of it making it hard for me to deal with just being at school, I was in no shape to be there at all. While I had been panicking over being alone for a week, I had forgotten all about the threat to my life and Heero’s. Even as he manhandled me out of the classroom and into the hallway to get to our first class, my mind wasn’t on our bullies or my anxieties over Zechs. I kept thinking about what a week without Heero would be like. If things got bad, I couldn’t hide at his house, I couldn’t go talk to him or his parents. It would be just like how things had been before we had become friends and that realization struck me with all of the power and sheer force of a raging bull. What was this… this terror that I was feeling?

Why did the thought of being without them not only hurt me so much, but make me feel so desperate and helpless, like a little kid getting lost in a shopping mall? It was a week, for fuck’s sake! And besides that, I have lived most of my life alone, taking care of myself, dealing with loneliness and moving forward even when I felt like my entire life was nothing but a gaping hole of nothing. So why was this overwhelming me? Because of my sleep deprivation, or was this something else? Why did I feel like I was being abandoned? And where had all of my self-reliance and independence gone?

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t pull my head out of my ass through that entire first half of the school day. All I could think about, all I could concentrate on, wasn’t my schoolwork, which was getting shoddier as the week went on, or the air of menace that had permeated through the very walls of the classrooms that I was in, surrounded by the same people that had wanted to seriously harm me the day before, were all the things that were going wrong in my relationship with my boyfriend, and the faults that I saw in myself. My freaking out over spring break and him calling me pet names, my continued feelings of inadequacy both in my self-worth and how I acted in this relationship, pretty much everywhere but where my mind _should_ have been.

If I had been alone, I would have been fucked and probably cornered within the first couple of hours and I’m sure that Alex and his friends had been trying to do just that. He and Mueller especially seemed eager to stalk me, clearly angry that I had escaped them the previous day. I also think that they were angry that I had actually hurt Zechs and that Heero had scared them. I’m sure Mueller was plenty angry with him for taking and getting rid of his bat. But Heero took his promise and self-appointed mission to keep my pathetic ass out of the fire very seriously. If it hadn’t been so endearing, it would have been funny, him guarding me like a vicious, but well-trained dog. He never left my side all through the first half of the day. When we were walking in the hallways, he kept a constant eye on me so no one could separate us and made sure we were the first ones out of every classroom and didn’t go into our next one until the teacher was there. We didn’t loiter at our lockers, but stayed close to teachers and the principal’s office. When we went to the bathroom, we went together when we were sure there was no one else in there and Heero locked the door, something that could have gotten us in trouble, but miraculously didn’t.

He was always there, this steady, driving, unmovable presence and I could only imagine that he was giving himself an ulcer, taking this job so seriously. He was so on edge, I could imagine him snapping under the pressure, but I didn’t have the ability to comfort him or tell him to lay off, that I could take care of myself and he didn’t need to take on this responsibility. Because that day, I really _couldn’t_ take care of myself and even if I had proved to him that I could which, given what had happened, I really hadn’t, he was too frantic over the need to make me safe to listen.

The miraculous thing was that he kept his cool over it through most of our classes. I could see him visibly tense every time Alex, Mueller, Trant, or even Ralph, Connie, or Lewis came towards us and I could see anger simmering beneath the surface, threatening to burst out, but he kept it tightly contained and just focused on playing defense. I could see how much he wanted to start something with them, wanted to tear them down as much as I did, wanted to throw a punch, wanted to make them bleed like they had made me bleed, but as furious as he was at them, as much as he wanted justice, his common sense overrode his anger. He could take on Alex or Trant, but Mueller was another story, and certainly not all of them together. Attacking them would put both of us in harm’s way and he got that enough to just stay away from them.

But that surprisingly cool demeanor of his finally broke on our way to Computer Science. We had survived our first three classes fairly well, although the both of us had had some trouble in second block when we had to split up, him going to his Spanish class and me going to my short stories class. Our first block apart for the day. I actually think that Heero had a harder time with it. Ever since he had saved me yesterday, he had been overprotective, so desperate to not see me in that position in danger again, like a parent whose child had almost been kidnapped. He hadn’t wanted to leave me, even for that one block. He had walked me to the classroom and had actually hesitated. For a moment, I had thought that he was going to go in with me.

“It’ll be ok,” I had told him, daring a hand on his arm.

It hadn’t helped his fears much, but he had managed a very weak smile. I think the only thing that had gotten him to walk to his class, trailing right behind a teacher so he wouldn’t have an incident himself, was the knowledge that the only people of danger in my short stories class were Relena and Dorothy. He didn’t have any of our bullies in his class, either, but he was still obviously worried about me. He was right at the door when I left that class, he must have run all the way there. I was all too happy to assuage his fears that nothing had happened during my class. Relena and Dorothy had thrown some especially dirty looks at me, and Dorothy had made some obscene gestures at me, reminding me of what had nearly happened, but that was the worst of it.

I might have downplayed how it had made me feel at the time, that reminder, but as far as I was concerned, Heero didn’t need to know that I was a having a hard time dealing with things without him. I wanted to project this illusion that I was confident and strong and independent, even if I felt like I was going to freak out at any second and all I wanted to do was run and hide in some dark corner away from everyone and every memory. But then we were going to our Calculus class together and I tried to tell myself that everything was fine now, I had survived without him for forty-five minutes, hadn’t I? But it was all a lie. I felt unhinged and as panicky as a rabbit. It took every ounce of concentration and strength that I had left just to keep Heero from realizing it.

So the both of us were incredibly on edge and tense when our math class ended and we had to, once again, split up for different classes. And this time the computer lab and the photography lab were on different floors, so Heero was extra cagey. Add in the fact that I have Zechs in my Computer Science class and I could almost _see_ that ulcer forming. I should know, I felt like I was going to get one, too. I hadn’t seen the prick all morning, miraculously, and I was intensely hoping and praying that he wasn’t there that day, that I would be spared from having to deal with him for another day, but I know that fate is never that kind, that it was just a matter of time before our paths collided and that my time was up.

Still, it was a shock when I saw him in the hallway, talking with Alex and Mueller and not getting to the classroom in any kind of hurry. I knew from experience that he would be at least ten minutes late to class, which could only work to my favor, and the teacher, while bothered by his attitude, wouldn’t say a single thing about it. It was Heero who spotted him first. He froze, his eyes going wide. His reaction immediately made me stop and look to where his gaze was, my brain currently in ‘react’ mode and not ‘think’ mode. It’s not hard to spot Zechs Darlian in a crowd. Even if my brain isn’t wired to pick him out, like a deer with a wolf, just like with my father, it would still be easy. At 6’7, he towers over most of us. I mean, I’m almost 5’8, not the tallest guy around, but not the shortest, either, and the guy dwarfs me. Add in those piercing, cold, blue eyes of his, his age (I think he turns 19 sometime in the spring if he hasn’t already), and that platinum silver hair of his like a silver curtain, not even including his leather jacket, boots, and artfully ripped jeans (purchased, I have no doubt, at a store that few people could afford to shop in), and it’s impossible _not_ to notice the asshole.

I spotted him in an instant. He was leaning against a set of lockers lazily, just shooting the breeze with his two cronies like he owned the place, and he practically did. Although he was clearly saying something to them, those eyes, the eyes of a predatory animal, were locked onto me. I suddenly realized that in order to get to the classroom, I was going to have to walk right past the three of them. Zechs had to realize it, too. His lips stretched into a smug and filthy smirk, his expression twisting into a leer. The same leer that he had given me yesterday. A pink tongue darted out, very purposively and mockingly, and traced over those lips. I felt my stomach plummet to my knees and all of a sudden, I felt very seriously, physically ill. I felt weak and hollowed out, like I couldn’t manage another step. My heart raced frantically and I felt my hands start to shake again. Such a stupid, useless reaction, a show of weakness that I didn’t want and couldn’t afford. I couldn’t let him know how terrified I was of him, what his actions had done to me. But even then, I could have snorted at my naivety. How could he not know? It was impossible to fake any kind of confidence around him anymore, not with those memories bouncing around in my skull.

Thankfully, my hands were the only things that were shaking and I shoved them into my pockets so no one would notice. Heero caught the movement and his own hand twitched towards me before he stopped himself, but I could see the naked desire to comfort me, even if he didn’t dare do it in front of Zechs. He might talk a tough game about not caring what people thought of us and not wanting to censor himself from being affectionate with me, but even he had the common sense to not spur Zechs into action. He apparently, though, did not have the common sense to just walk away and ignore the asshole. He glared very openly at the bully, his hatred of him right there for anyone to see. It was a miracle that Zechs hadn’t decided at that moment to teach him a lesson. Instead, he was content with messing with me instead. Or maybe he had just known that, by going after me, he could make Heero flip out.

The silver haired teenager, looking at Alex and Mueller with smugness, like they were about to share some inside joke, let his hand drop to the front of his jeans and his long fingers moved towards the zipper. For the very first time, I saw that his hand was heavily bandaged. I felt a momentary rush of bitter pleasure as I realized that it was from my biting him before the fear came rushing back. I hope the motherfucker had needed stitches. He could have been about to mime unzipping his pants like he had yesterday, or even just to grab his crotch in some obscene gesture, but that little movement was all that it took. Up until that moment, I had been fighting very hard to ignore my memories of what had taken place the previous day. I know that seems questionable after telling you how freaked out I was, how those memories kept invading me, but it’s true. Knowing what happened, the bare facts of it, was enough to freak me out, but I had kept the worst of it at bay. Knowing something and reliving something are two different things, but in that moment when Zechs reached for his zipper, that barrier between that memory and my sanity cracked.

In that one instant, that one, tiny motion of his had me reliving every second of that nightmare. He would have done me less damage to have just walked up and punched me in the face. Suddenly, all I could see and feel and experience were the things that I had tried to lock away in my head. It was like with my father all over again, flashing back to things that I didn’t want to revisit, things that I just wanted to forget had ever happened to me, but something in my head refused to let me, like I was punishing myself. I was there again, on my knees on the dirty floor, at eye level with Zechs’s bulging crotch, his hand in my hair and smelling him, seeing his arousal and his vile intentions. I saw him reach for his zipper, just like he had done in the present, only this time it wasn’t a joke. I knew what he was going to do to me when he opened his jeans, but no matter how hard I fought, I couldn’t stop him. I watched him lower it and, for a second that I still try to tell myself was just in my imagination, I could see his cock. In that moment when I could see that dark bit of flesh, I could only think of my father and Trowa, of feeling helpless and afraid and vulnerable, of being treated like a sex toy, just a thing for other people, people stronger and bigger than me, to get off with.

I flinched hard and violently, even though I was still several feet from the bully and he hadn’t even touched his zipper yet and I was sure that that was exactly Zechs’s intention with that fucking hand motion of his. I almost stumbled in my desperate attempt to jerk away from him and the disgusting things in my head, somehow only managing not to fall on my ass because of my desire to not look like an idiot and nothing else. Zechs, Alex, and Mueller burst out laughing at my fearful reaction like it was the funniest damned thing that they had ever seen. Zechs’s hand fell from his jeans and I realized in shame, my face turning bright red, that he had never intended to do what it had looked like he had been about to do to begin with. He had manipulated me, played me as expertly as Heero with his racing games. That made my stomach churn even worse and I felt like I was going to throw up. I didn’t even feel like glaring at them. I just wanted to get far away from all of it and go someplace dark, someplace where I didn’t have to think or feel anything. I wanted to go to fucking sleep.

An angry growl from next to me jolted my attention back to Heero, already feeling so on edge, like my skin was electric and my hair was standing up and thinking that I was being attacked. Instead, I saw my boyfriend still standing at my side. His face was almost as red as mine was, but with pure fury. He wasn’t an idiot, he knew what Zechs had done and why I had suddenly flinched and he was clearly not ok with what had just happened even though, in reality, it should have been nothing. If I hadn’t reacted so poorly, we could have ignored it and walked away like we do all the time when Zechs does shit like that. Instead, Heero was standing there, glaring, gritting his teeth together, both of his hands curled up into tight fists.

I don’t know what the hell was going through his head right then, if he was reacting protectively or if he was just so enraged with Zechs’s crude gesture and how freaked out I was that he just snapped. He took a step forward, his body tense and blue eyes electric with intention and fury. I don’t know how I reacted so fast when my brain was operating on standby power that day, but I immediately recognized his posture as a fighting one and I saw his lunge before he even attempted it and jumped in to intercede. Zechs didn’t even look bothered or alarmed or even surprised when Heero raised his right fist and I doubt that it would have connected even if Heero had made that lunge at him, but I didn’t let him get that far. He had spent that entire day looking out for me, now it was my turn to look out for him, because it was bad enough that he had glared at Zechs, bad enough that he had raised a hand to him, but if he had actually managed to hit him?

I couldn’t dare to get between the two of them. I never wanted to put my back to Zechs, not ever, and I wasn’t sure that I could stop Heero in time. Instead, I grabbed Heero, wrapping my arms around his by his shoulders and jerking him back. My right arm screamed in pain, especially when he fought against me, but I hung on tight.

“Heero,” I snapped at him, struggling to hold him as it was like trying to hold a large, struggling dog, “Stop it!”

          He thrashed against me, trying to get free. He probably could have managed it, but he didn’t want to hurt me. Even through all of his anger, he was so careful not to accidentally hit me or even shove me away from him. 

“Dammit, Duo!” he yelled, “Let me go! Let me do this!”

For a moment, I was blown away. Not by his obvious anger, but how much he wanted to do the right thing, to protect me, to make Zechs pay just for… for disrespecting me. It was so tempting to let him do it, but I loved him too much to let him go. This wasn’t about him protecting me or proving to me how much he cared, I reminded myself, I already knew all that. I knew how much what had happened yesterday hurt him, how he blamed himself so stupidly for not being there for me before Zechs had hurt me. This was about those same fears. How could I possibly forgive myself for being right there and not stopping him from getting hurt, not saving him, even if it would feel good to watch him pummel Zechs?

“No,” I hissed stubbornly and tightened my grip on him.

I wouldn’t let him go, I thought with iron conviction. I wasn’t going to let him go for anything, even if he hit me or bit me, I would hold on tight and make sure that nothing happened to him.

“You can’t do anything about it, so just stop!” I said desperately, trying to calm him down, “Just let it go, Heero!”

“Yeah, Heero,” Zechs said mockingly, that fucking superior smirk back on his face, “You should really listen to the little fairy. We wouldn’t want you to get a nasty bruise, lover boy. Don’t worry though, if you end up in the hospital, the rest of us will take real good care of Maxwell,” he leered at me, “We wouldn’t want him to get lonely. He’s probably just worried that if he sees me pummel you into the dirt, he won’t be able to get it up for you anymore. Then who will be his sugar daddy?”

He stood up straight from his slouch and took a menacing step towards us. Heero and I stiffened, but by some miracle, he didn’t thrash harder. I was fully prepared to let him go and drag him away if Zechs was going to start something, but he stopped short, that ugly smirk still on his face.

“My offer still stands, Maxwell,” he sneered at me, “Any time you want to fuck a real man, just say the word. I can give you everything that he can’t, and not just from my wallet.”

He grabbed his crotch, looking all too proud of himself, either at how pale my face had gotten or his snub at Heero’s ‘manhood’, who the hell even knows. I fully expected my best friend to make another lunge at the prick, but to my shock, he went still and limp in my arms. I was half convinced that it was a trick to make me let go so he could jump him anyway, but I decided to risk it. Getting away from Zechs would be a hell of a lot easier if I didn’t have to fight Heero, too. I released him and, thankfully, he didn’t make a move. He just glared up at Zechs as if he was challenging him, but didn’t try to punch him.

“Oh man,” he laughed uproariously, “and here I was thinking that Maxwell was the ankle grabber in this cute, little relationship,” he jabbed a finger into Heero’s chest and my boyfriend flinched, but somehow kept his cool, “I got to tell you, Yuy, you’d look ugly as fuck in a skirt.”

Mueller and Alex joined in on his laughter, but Heero stood stock still, like a statue. Zechs eyed the both of us, probably waiting for one of us to start a fight, which would probably make his damned day. When neither of us took his bait, he snorted mockingly.

“Come on,” he told his underlings, “I need a smoke before this fucking class.”

He pushed past us, bumping his shoulder hard into Heero’s and making him stumble, the gesture as dismissive as one of Relena’s little hair flicks, but I didn’t so much as breathe until I saw all three of them walk out the set of double doors leading to behind the school.

“Are you alright?” Heero asked me worriedly, looking a bit calmer now that Zechs was gone, returning to his usual self.

I had never seen him that angry before. Even the day before, when he had been saving me, he had been intense and mad, but I think he had been too scared for my safety to really be enraged. I wasn’t scared of him, it just bothered me seeing him like that. He really would have tried to beat Zechs up, I realized with horror.

“Am _I_ alright?!” I exploded in exasperation, pressing my palm to my forehead, “Are you nuts, Heero?! He would have killed you, you know that, don’t you?!”

He had the common sense to look a bit guilty, but I got the feeling that it was just an act.

“I know,” he admitted, “but-“

“No!” I snapped at him, not wanting to hear any of his arguments, not wanting to hear that he still wanted to do it or that he would have done it if I hadn’t held him back, that he wished that I hadn’t intervened, “Don’t you get it?! You can’t do shit like that! I don’t care if he deserved it, I don’t care about you having the higher moral ground and defending me or any of that shit! Do you have any idea what he would have done to you?! Do you really think that I want to see him hurt you?!”

It was too much. I couldn’t handle it, between the adrenaline starting to leave me and the image in my head of Heero, bloody and broken because I had been unable to protect him. Because I couldn’t defend myself against Zechs. I covered my face with my hands, feeling overwhelmed by my emotions and having little control over them anymore. I could feel myself shaking again and wished that I had any strength left over, but everything from that week was strung together. With no sleep, I felt like I was just having a very long, very trying day. Zechs assaulting me had happened a couple of hours ago, Heero’s parents finding out about us mere minutes. Time was an illusion and nothing was making sense anymore.

I felt a soft touch on my arm and lifted my head to find Heero right in front of me, looking at me with such warm concern, all of the anger on his face had fled. This time, the guilt that I saw there was very sincere.

“I’m sorry, Duo,” he apologized and drew me into a hug.

I almost fought him for a moment, knowing that we were at school and this was really not the place for this kind of intimacy, but then I suddenly realized that I didn’t care. I wanted his comfort and as far as I was concerned, if anyone had a problem with that, they could fuck off. I relaxed into him, wishing that I had the courage to reciprocate or even kiss him, but I couldn’t let those last few walls fall down.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he murmured, “I’m so sorry.”

We stayed like that for a minute. I heard people around us pass us by and mutter ‘fucking faggots’, ‘queers’, and ‘disgusting’ among other things, but I let it wash over me like white noise. Heero dropped his arms and smoothed my bangs out of my face.

“I just wish you would not let him get to you like that,” I muttered, looking down at the ground, “You worry me when you fly off the handle like that.”

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, “but how do you want me to feel when that asshole hurts you?”

I wanted to argue with him. I wanted to point out that Zechs hadn’t hurt me, but that was a lie. He might not have hit me, but he had hurt me more with his obscene gestures and thinly veiled threats than he could have with a punch. And arguing with him about controlling his anger and not letting Zechs get to him would have just made me a hypocrite. If Zechs had said those things to Heero, I would have felt the same way.

“I just want you to be more careful,” I told him, “I don’t need you protecting my non-existent honor.”

“You have a lot of honor, Duo,” he smiled softly at me, “And you’re right, you don’t need me protecting it because someone as pathetic and disgusting as Zechs can’t do a damned thing to it.”

I stared at him in shock, feeling my face going hot at his words. Honor? Me? No one had ever said something like that to me before. In fact, the idea that I had any kind of honor was laughable. _Me._ The one that has let down every single person I’ve ever been close to, the one that can’t even stand up to people like Zechs or my father. What the fuck does someone like me know about honor? But that Heero believed that I had it meant everything to me. It warmed my heart and washed away all of the cold horror that Zechs had visited on me in those brief few minutes.

“We… we should get going,” I stammered very shyly, trying to hide how pleased I felt and probably failing.

“Maybe you shouldn’t go to class,” he offered, glancing at the doors that Zechs had gone through and no doubt thinking of what that piece of shit was going to do to me without Heero around, “I mean, it’s just an elective, it won’t be a big deal if you skip it.”

“I have to face him at some time,” I tried to sound reassuring and not let my boyfriend see how that very prospect scared the ever loving shit out of me, “It might as well be today. It’s not like I can skip classes forever.”

Heero sighed heavily.

“Why do you always have to be so damned logical?” he groused but led me to the classroom anyway, “Call me if you run into any trouble?”

His face was pinched with worry again and his expression was filled with self-doubt, I’m sure he was thinking that we were both making a terrible mistake. It was easy to promise him that I would. He hesitated for a moment, on the verge, I think, of asking me if I was sure. Thankfully, he didn’t, because I’m not so sure if I could have maintained my façade of confidence if he had. Confidence is not necessarily something that I’m overflowing with and at that moment, I was thinking that this was going to be another one of those stupid mistakes of mine.

But then he was gone and it didn’t matter if I was having second thoughts or not because I was all alone. My heart began to race again as I hurried to my computer station. I felt, not only bereft, but vulnerable to the point of nudity, my nerves raw as I sat there. Zechs hadn’t even come into the classroom yet and I could still feel the threat of him, like he was staring at my back. I busied myself with logging in to my account, but inside, I was shaking like a damned leaf. I was so pathetic. How the fuck could I handle it when- _if_ Heero left for a week when I couldn’t even handle a single, goddamned class without him?

It terrified me, absolutely terrified me, the thought of him not being there, that constant presence, my lifeline. I wouldn’t have classes without him, but everything else… it was just too much like those years I had spent after Quatre had died and no matter how much I told myself that I was being ridiculous, I just felt empty, like some brilliant light had gone out of my world. Class was a welcome distraction to thinking those things, even a class like Computer Science. I really don’t like working with computers. Heero loves technology and seeing him mess around on his laptop, it comes second nature to him. For me, I don’t know what it is. Heero says I’m an ‘old soul’ and teases me sometimes about preferring books and writing things by hand, but even though I’m finally learning how to use a computer properly, it’s just a tool to me, nothing that I really enjoy. Maybe because I’ve never had one of my own and except for using the ones at school or at the library for a homework project, I had never used one recreationally before Heero had come along.

Don’t get me wrong, Computer Science is useful and has helped me a lot to get more proficient at finishing assignments on the computer. Heero lets me use his laptop when we do our homework so I don’t have to go to the public library for that anymore, and now I know how to do more than just find out where the damned thing’s on switch is and how to open up a text document. I even know how to make a spreadsheet now! But while all of that is great, I have no real urge to use his computer for anything other than homework, nor do I feel a sense of loss that I will never be able to afford one of my own.

So the class was barely a distraction at all for me, especially when Zechs decided to grace us with his presence a whopping fifteen minutes later. He came in boldly, like he always did, smirking at the teacher like he was challenging her to say anything about his tardiness and just as boldly reeking of cigarettes, which was not only illegal because Zechs isn’t twenty-one, but it isn’t allowed for _anyone_ on school property, even teachers. As predictable as a clock, the teacher didn’t so much as shoot him a dirty look over either issue, simply continuing on with the class like he didn’t exist, which I’m sure she would rather be the truth. He took his seat at his own station, leaned back in his chair, put his feet up on the table, and closed his eyes, just like he did every class. He wouldn’t really sleep, but he sure wasn’t going to do any work. He hasn’t done any work in that class since the first day of the semester to my knowledge and if he has, I would be thoroughly shocked.

I don’t really get Zechs. I’ve never tried all that hard to understand him and I don’t really want to, and not just about why he’s such a monster. I’m not much of a philosopher, but I do think that some people are born… well, maybe not evil, but certainly messed up. Is Zechs one of those people or is he just a product of environment? I really have no idea. It would seem to the be the former. I mean, sure, both he and his sister are pieces of shit, but despite their cruelty, they are really nothing alike. Relena, while mean and a bit crazy, actually cares about her grades and how people see her. While she acts ugly to me, when she’s around adults, she puts on this perfect act, which is why I’m usually safe around them. And unlike Quatre and myself, from what little I know about their parents and from the brief moments that I’ve met them, if Zechs became a monster, it wasn’t from them or anything that was happening at home. Or maybe it was something subtle or had nothing to do with his parents at all. Hell if I know.

No, what I don’t understand is why he even bothers to come to classes at all anymore. The guy has been held back from graduating for two fucking years and each year it seems like he cares less and less about that. I’ve never seen him do any work, he’s always late for classes and plays hooky all the time. If I was his teacher, I would just want to get him out of my hair and graduate him, so why that hasn’t happened, I don’t know. Maybe Principal Stoan is aware of the situation and won’t let it happen, or even Zechs’s parents. They seem like the sort that would want Zechs to actually _get_ an education, even if he is hell bent on using his family’s name and his threatening presence to get him through life, and while Stoan is as much under the Darlians’ thumbs as anyone else in this town, he’s a fairly decent, upstanding man and pretty big stickler for the rules and what’s right and wrong. It doesn’t mean that he isn’t capable of turning a blind eye to what Zechs does, or that it doesn’t make him a pain in the ass to deal with, but I’ve had worse principals and he’s given me a fair deal when I’ve been framed for things.

So I can chalk Zechs still being in high school up to his misguided, but well-intentioned parents (although in my opinion, the best thing that they could do for their son and the rest of us is to lock him up and throw away the key), but why does _Zechs_ go to his classes? If no one gets him into trouble and he doesn’t do any of his work, why bother even showing up? It’s not like anyone here has the balls to suspend or expel him for it, so if he’s fine with getting a failing grade than why even come in? For that matter, why not put the most minimal effort in to get a passing grade so he can finally be free of this? He can’t be that lazy, I mean, he passed all of his other grades, so why does he not care that he’s nineteen years old and still in school with his younger sister?

The only thing that I can think of, which gives me no comfort _at all_ , is that for all of his resentment towards the teachers and work and being stuck here all day, he likes it. He likes roaming the halls of this place like he owns the damned building and everyone in it. He likes how everyone cowers from him, being the biggest, baddest asshole here and terrorizing the lot of us. The world is a big place, full of pricks like Zechs and compared to some of them, and out there, he won’t always be at the top of the food chain, the one with the most money, the most power, or even the strongest. In the world, he’s a barracuda at best, but here, he’s a shark and I think the allure of that is stronger than his resentment of being held back.

I could almost pity him for that mentality, for wanting to remain the king even if it means stunting his life and potential. Maybe. If I didn’t hate him so much, and if his choices and personality didn’t make me bitter as hell. If I had his money and opportunities, there would be so much that I would do with my life. I could go to any school that I wanted, get almost any job if I even needed to get one. I sure as hell wouldn’t stay in Nausten for a single second. While money and power wouldn’t solve all of my problems, it would give me things that I’ve never had. Freedom, certainly, to do whatever I wanted, even if that was just to get a house somewhere and do absolutely nothing with my days but read and listen to music. That Zechs didn’t value those opportunities of his, that money was only a means for him to be superior to everyone else, angered me.

I was going to spend my life working my ass off just so I could survive, if I could even keep a job and a place to live while Zechs could just coast through life. He thought that made him better than people like me, being born to those privileges. He could do whatever he wanted, and _this_ was what he had chosen. I wondered if his parents were ashamed of him or if they were that blind to the sort of person that he was. They sure as hell didn’t seem to be doing anything about it. As I watched him just sit there like a lump, I felt that anger simmer in me, this hot, prickly feeling in my guts. I hated him so much and it was so hard not to let Heero see that hatred. I had told him about a lot of the unpleasant things in my head, had confessed about wanting to kill Zechs and his sister, but I never wanted him to see those things. He had accepted me and told me that my anger at the world was normal, but I couldn’t bear to risk the moment when he would see me like that, more animal than person, wanting to tear everything apart and he would be disgusted with me. It was easier… _better_ to push it all down inside and pretend that nothing bothered me, even if that was a lie. After all, what was one more lie to the boy that I loved? Something else entirely for me to feel guilty about.

Zechs left me alone during the class period. He usually does, either because starting something in front of the teacher is too much of a hassle or because he can’t be bothered to leave his seat. We were, thankfully, seated at opposite ends of the room and he would have to get up and walk over to me to even give me a dirty look. I often wonder if our teacher did that on purpose, not wanting him picking on me to disrupt her class or even out of some sympathy. I don’t really care about the reason, even if it was just dumb luck, because I managed to get through the class and get the fuck out of there as soon as the bell rang.

I was never happier to leave the classroom and almost immediately see Heero walking down the hallway. He must have been the first one out of photography and had run all the way there, because he looked out of breath and frantic. When he saw me, unscathed and more or less alright, he beamed at me, looking so relieved that I thought he was going to make himself sick. We were quick to get our lunches out of our lockers and go on our way to the cafeteria. Heero tried to convince me that we should eat in the studio where it would be safer, but that felt too much like running and hiding to me. Maybe it was stupid and he was right, I was putting us in danger because of my pride, but I was also worried that if we went up there too much, Zechs might find it and we would lose our safe place. I couldn’t stay out of the cafeteria forever and I just hoped that, with so many teachers and classmates and lunch staff there, if Zechs or his friends did start something, it wouldn’t be violent.

Shockingly, Zechs, Relena, and their whole lot stayed pretty much to themselves during the entire lunch period. That did absolutely nothing to settle my nerves and I was constantly on alert, waiting for the inevitable moment when they would decide that they had been far too lenient on me for the day. I knew that there were going to be repercussions for getting away from them yesterday, that Zechs would want to pick things up where he had left off as soon as he had an opportunity, and he was going to get revenge for my biting and stabbing him, I just didn’t know when. When it comes to Zechs, retribution could be immediately or it can come back to bite me in the ass months later, I never know. So while he and his friends sat and ate and talked obnoxiously loudly at their table, I was on high alert, my nerves tattered and feeling incredibly sick to my stomach waiting for that ax to fall, for the moment when I would have to either make a run for it or try to protect Heero. Like I could fucking do anything.

As promised, the soup that Mrs. Yuy had packed for me was still warm thanks to the thermos and I’m sure that it was quite delicious, but between my exhaustion and how tense I had been since we had left the house that morning, I didn’t taste it. I didn’t even want to eat anything at all, my stomach rebelling against every spoon full of broth and bite of bread that I took. I’m actually amazed that I didn’t throw up. I probably wouldn’t have eaten anything if it had been something that I had packed for myself, but Mariela had made it especially for me, so I had to eat it. Besides, even if I couldn’t taste it, the heat of it felt good in my stomach. It made me realize just how cold I had been feeling all day and I really don’t think it had anything to do with the weather.

“You’re quiet again,” Heero said softly after he finished with his sandwich, looking at me again with a great deal of worry that I really didn’t think my behavior warranted.

I felt my face go hot and felt like I had been caught doing something bad for some reason.

“Sorry,” I apologized guiltily, berating myself for not making more of an effort to be social with him, but it was so difficult, I could barely string a coherent thought together.

I was at that stage of sleep deprivation where multitasking was no longer hard, it was literally impossible. I could focus only on one thing at a time and even that one thing was beginning to tax me. In a couple days, just that would be impossible and I would be falling back on very basic tasks and thought processes if I didn’t get some sleep. I could focus on eating and writing down things that my teachers had written on the chalkboard, but holding down a conversation, let alone initiating one, involved more thought process and concentration than I had available. That didn’t mean that I didn’t feel bad for being such a stick in the mud, something that I am on a normal day. I’m just… not a chatty person and Heero seems ok with that, but my not saying a single thing to him was no doubt weird.

“That isn’t all that you’re eating, is it?” he switched tracks on me and I kind of stared at him for a moment while my brain attempted to catch up.

I looked down at my lunch and realized, my face getting even redder, that I hadn’t eaten for several minutes and had been staring off into space again. I had managed half of the soup and one of the rolls and even though my attention was back to lunch, I didn’t think I could manage any more than that. I probably wouldn’t have even eaten as much as I had if I had been paying attention and not been on autopilot.

“I’ll save the rest for dinner,” I told him, hoping that would appease him.

I might actually do that, too. I hadn’t planned on eating anything that night, my appetite as far gone as my intelligent thoughts, but it might be nice to have something hot, and if I wasn’t careful, I was going to stop eating all together. It happens every time I get into these long bouts of insomnia. I have this bad habit of not eating when I don’t feel like doing it and I’ve gone days before without eating anything more than a slice of bread when I was in that state. I knew, intellectually, that I needed to eat, especially if I wasn’t sleeping, especially when I was working. Besides, Heero would figure it out and freak out and think that I needed to see a doctor. Instead of being relieved that I was going to eat _something_ that night, he frowned.

“Duo, you need more than that for two meals,” he lectured me sternly, reminding me every bit of his father.

“I just don’t feel well,” I muttered, a bit defensively, but honestly.

My best friend looked at me sadly.

“Is that why you’ve been quiet? I know that you want to go to work tonight, but if you’re already feeling this lousy…” he tried to argue.

“No, it’s not that,” I assured him.

While my exhaustion was a large part of my silence, it wasn’t the only thing. I was just too consumed with my own thoughts and trying, in vain, to make sense of them to have any energy left to deal with what was happening around me.

“Then what is it?” he asked me kindly.

I sighed. I could tell him that my mind was only on Zechs and he might buy that, but I was so sick of lying to him and keeping things from him. Some things I couldn’t help, like my father’s sexual relationship with me, but other things… things like this, I didn’t need to lie to him about. I’ve never been much for honesty, but every time I lied to Heero, I felt like I was ripping out a chunk of my own heart. He believed in me, said that I had honor… and I couldn’t even talk to him about something that was honestly bothering me? What was the point of this relationship if we couldn’t even talk to each other, be honest with each other?

“Are you and your family going away for Spring break next week?” I blurted out, approaching the subject with all of the grace of a raging bull.

Heero startled, that having been the very last thing he had thought I was going to say.

“No,” he told me, “We aren’t planning on going anywhere.”

Pure relief flooded me, more potent than any adrenaline or anxiety. All that worrying that I had done, for nothing. They were staying. I wasn’t going to be left alone. I felt so pathetic, but I felt like I could have cried with joy.

“I mean, we never talked about leaving,” Heero continued, “I guess we all just assumed that we would stay here. We usually do go away…” he paused and inexplicably blushed, confusing me, and then regarded me with a sharp, perusing eye, the sort of expression that his father would have right before he said something that made me think he was psychic, “Are you going anywhere? Visiting family or something?”

I knew that he knew, or at least suspected the answer to that. I had told him before that, with the exception of Trowa taking me out on dates, I had never been out of Nausten before and it wasn’t like trips were a big thing in my family. I felt a sharp pain in my chest as I thought ‘what family?’ and remembered my mother’s loss of my grandmother. What family, indeed. I was still curious if I had any extended family, but after hearing about my grandmother’s death, all alone in some cold hospital, I wasn’t so sure if I wanted to know anymore. As much as I liked hearing stories about my grandmother and how I reminded my mother of her, it hurt. I had lost something precious that I would never get back from her passing. I ached, both for my mother who had never gotten to say goodbye, and my grandmother who hadn’t been able to see her child before she had gone, all because of my father.

“No,” I couldn’t keep the sad note out of my voice, but I didn’t tell Heero what I was thinking about, “We never go anywhere.”

“You know,” my boyfriend said with this small smile that was somehow both knowing and affectionate, “if we _had_ decided to go away for the week, we would have taken you with us.”

My eyes widened in shock.

“You would have?” I asked in surprise.

That possibility had never even occurred to me, that Heero’s parents might ask me to go on a trip with them. I didn’t belong, I had told myself, I wasn’t a part of their family, so that thought had never crossed my mind. It seemed like a fantasy, to go someplace different, to get away for a little while. It felt too much like that moment in the hospital, Quatre asking me to run away with him. Something that could never happen, something I so desperately wanted, and something that frightened me. Because as good as it sounded, it was another step, wasn’t it? A step further in this relationship, a step deeper into this connection that I have with Heero. Wonderful and scary pretty much sums up every aspect of our relationship.

“Of course,” he chuckled, “What? Did you think I would just leave you here?”

An arrow pierced my heart and I had that annoying sensation of tears wanting to burst free. I had thought that. Of course I had, and he knew it. Heero didn’t have my insomnia weighing down his thoughts and he was a pretty bright individual. The second that I had brought it up, he had put my question together with my melancholy and had known right away what I was so scared of. But my fear wasn’t even a possibility in his head. If he left, I was coming with him, it was that simple of a thing to him. He sure wasn’t afraid of what that meant. I wondered, if he had wanted to go and I had wanted to stay, would he have made his parents cancel whatever plans they had made? That was just as frightening as him saying that he wouldn’t leave me. And just as wonderful. I felt like that contradiction was going to rip my head apart. But my fear didn’t stop me from loving him even more for saying those things.

“Did you want to go somewhere?” he asked, continually bulling forward like he hadn’t just shaken my world again, “I would have asked you sooner, but I figured, between your work and your father…”

My dad. I hadn’t even thought about him, only the consequences towards my relationship with Heero. Yeah, if I disappeared for an entire week, my father would kill me. For a man who would often tell me that he wished that I would just disappear, and seemed all too happy to pretend that I didn’t exist, he would also throw fits without any warning if he caught me gone. I never know which father I’m going to get from day to day, the one that doesn’t give a shit, or the one that wants to control my every move, every action.

At that thought, something startling came to me. When was the last time I had gone home? I couldn’t remember. I was sure that I hadn’t spent _that_ many days at Heero’s house, but so much other shit had happened since Saturday that I couldn’t remember something like that. I prayed that my father hadn’t noticed and was suddenly rethinking my decision to go to Heero’s home the next morning, but not enough that I had decided to go back to my house. I probably should, but I couldn’t make decisions like that anymore and was firmly on the path of least resistance. I didn’t even know if I could handle my father. Some sick, twisted part of myself suggested that maybe it would be a _good_ thing, going home. My father was going to be angry with me, and even if he wasn’t, I could easily make him angry. Hell, I do it without even trying. Maybe I could make him mad enough to hit me hard enough to make me black out and I could finally get some sleep that way.

“Yeah,” I said lowly, feeling embarrassed again about my father, that Heero couldn’t even ask me if I wanted to go on a trip with him like a normal kid because we had to worry about how my father would react, “I’d like to, but I’d rather stay here.”

I flushed darkly, feeling like a useless lump. Who the hell would want to stay in Nausten when they could go anywhere else? Yet I wanted to stay, not because my father would be mad and not because I had two jobs, but because as much as I loved the idea of leaving, the fact is I have never been out of this town for more than a few hours. I hate this place and I’ve fantasized all of my life about going somewhere else, even just for a little while, but every time someone presents me with that opportunity, I freeze up. When Quatre had asked me to run away with him, I had told myself that I couldn’t because we could never survive on our own for long, that someone would find us, and that I would miss my parents too much.

But all of those things had been lies. Logical lies, but still lies. The real reason why I had told Quatre no was because, for all of those fantasies and desires of mine, Nausten is the only place I’ve ever known. I might dislike it, but it’s familiar to me. I know the rules here, I know how to survive in these waters, where every street leads, where every store is, every tree and every hill. But out there? I have no clue what’s out there, how to survive and how things work, and that scares the shit out of me. In the end, I’m just a spineless coward, too scared to leave this comfortable, little hole of mine, even when that hole is covered in shit. Heero smiled sadly at me again and I was frightened for a moment that he knew what I was thinking and thought me pathetic. He would be right, of course.

“Me, too,” he said, surprising me, “There’s plenty to do around here, we don’t need to go anywhere. We can hang out, go to the movies, I can take you out again when you have the night off, if you like. But maybe next Spring break, we can go somewhere.”

I felt myself nod in agreement and my spirits lift a bit. He didn’t mind staying here. Just like me, he was just happy to have some time together, everything was ok. I have no idea what my life will be like in a year. I’ll be eighteen, so either still living with my father or on the street, but I’ll be an adult, so I’m hoping that I’ll have more freedom. And who knows. Maybe in a year, I’ll grow enough of a spine to leave this damned place for all of a week. I decided, right then and there, with all of my two percent of functioning brain power, that I would do it. If Heero wanted to go away during Spring break, I would go with him. Not because I wasn’t scared, not because I wanted to leave, but just because I wanted to be with him. I discovered that, when I thought about it like that, not leaving Nausten, but being with Heero, it made that choice much easier and simpler.

“Are you sure that you aren’t going to eat anymore?” he asked, my perpetual worry wart.

I shook my head.

“I’m sorry,” I murmured.

He sighed.

“Maybe you’ll have a bigger appetite tonight,” he conceded, the closest thing to a truce that I was going to get, “Just please have a full meal? You’re going to make yourself sicker.”

That was a promise that he wasn’t going to get out of me. I knew that he was right, I needed to eat, but I also knew that the longer that this went on, the worse it was going to get, not better, and by the time I ate dinner, my appetite was going to be all but gone. Heero dug around in his lunch bag and pulled out a cupcake that his mother had packed for him, a golden mound of cake nearly the size of his fist and covered in light blue frosting. Mariela doesn’t buy desserts, so I knew it would be homemade from the cake to the frosting.

“At least put my mind somewhat at ease,” he said dryly, pushing the cupcake across the table until it was in front of me, “and eat that.”

“I’m not going to take your dessert-,” I protested.

“It’s not mine, it’s yours,” Heero smirked a bit smugly, “My mom packed two of them.”

He pulled another one from the bag to prove it. I eyed the paper bag, wondering if there was a vortex in there and he was going to start pulling out more food. I looked down at the cupcake, wanting to say no, that I didn’t think that I could eat it, but I just sighed. There wasn’t much that I wouldn’t do for him and as it turns out, eating a cupcake was not on that list. I just hoped that the sugar from the sweet would give me some much needed energy so I could get through the rest of my day. It took me the rest of the lunch period just to finish the thing. It wasn’t too rich, thankfully, but my stomach was not happy with me when I ate it, making me feel heavy and achy. I had just finished taking my last bite when the bell for the end of the lunch break rang. Heero sighed heavily again and I didn’t blame him. It had been nice having lunch with him and not being bothered by anyone, I really didn’t want to go back to class.

“Stick close to me,” he said a bit unnecessarily as we packed up our things and left our table.

I nodded anyway, letting him fuss and knowing that his anxiety was well placed. Leaving the cafeteria after lunch is always a stressful process. The teachers don’t let us linger and everyone just leaves at once in this huge huddle, in a hurry to get to their lockers or chat with their friends in the hallway to prolong getting to class. It’s like a stampede, really, so Heero’s concern about getting us out of there in one piece was warranted. It was also the one time when we would be in close quarters with all of the people we wanted to avoid since the hallway getting out there is a bit narrow compared to the mass of people trying to trudge through it. The only other place that we would have to go that was more dangerous was the gym locker room.

We approached the line to leave the cafeteria hesitantly, looking around for any possible threats. It was just too easy to be cornered in that hallway and it would be the perfect opportunity for Zechs to do something without a teacher seeing. However, I quickly spotted Alex and Mueller leaving ahead of us and relaxed. I pointed them out to Heero and he nodded, deeming it safe to get into the line. I couldn’t see Zechs, but he, Alex, and Mueller were almost always the first ones out. They would be heading to the exterior doors so they could smoke before class, it’s what they did every day. I could even spy Relena and Dorothy far ahead of us, not even paying us any attention. Heero got in front of me, probably worried that someone might spot us and make their way back to us. I let him, even if I was a little annoyed that he was trying to make himself a human shield.

I don’t like crowds, for obvious reasons, having been the victim of crowd mentality far too many times and not liking being boxed in the way that we were, no exits in sight. There was a lot of yelling, pushing, and shoving in that line as teenagers tried to get where they were going and not liking how slow the people in front of them were moving. Heero and I tried to stay to ourselves and keep each other in our view, but it was hard. Several times the crowd managed to separate us, but Heero would grab my shirt and pull me through whatever gap he would find or I would angrily push my way past the asshole that had cut in front of me.

My temper was already bad at that point in the day. Between dealing with Zechs that morning, my tiredness, and my anger at Zechs’s overall actions since yesterday, I just couldn’t deal with the crowd. That prickling feeling in my gut hadn’t gone away yet and every time someone brushed up against me or pushed me out of their way, it grew into something hotter and more bitter. It wasn’t long before I wanted to start punching people to get them to stop _touching_ me. And I know that part of it was just my exhaustion and fears of physical contact with how tense I was, but that didn’t help me regain control over those feelings.

I was so on edge, being so close to nearly a hundred things that my taxed brain was labelling as ‘threats’, that when I felt someone pull me back by the belt loops on my jeans, I almost cried out in shock. We had been some of the last people in line and were purposively moving slowly so everyone would be in front of us that neither of us had been paying much attention to behind us. Why would we? There was no way to double back around and I had seen our worst threats ahead of us. Or rather, I had assumed that I had. You know that saying, how assuming makes an ass out of you and me? Well, it’s not just a cute, little joke.

The person jerked me back and for that brief second when I was being separated from Heero, I wracked my brain for who it could possibly be. Stupid me, I should have known, and I should have been more careful. It’s funny how Heero and I had talked about being hyper vigilant, how careful we needed to be, and I had fallen into the most obvious attempt to get at me. I was pulled flush against someone, their hard body pressed against my back, until my ass was pressed against their crotch and I knew it right then, my heart going like a jackhammer from a mix of that knowledge and my paranoid memories, who it was that had me even before they spoke.

“We just keeping meeting like this, don’t we, Maxwell?” Zechs’s deep voice tore through me like an earthquake, his breath washing over the back of my neck as he leaned in so close to me that I could smell him, that breath warm and like a rancid, wafting air from a broken refrigerator or perhaps a bad piece of meat that had been left out in the sun for too long.

I could feel the bulge of his crotch pressed right up against my ass. He wasn’t hard at least, not like last time, but that really didn’t matter. I could still _feel_ him, his body pressed against mine. It threatened to make terrible memories bubble to the surface, and not just ones of him. The strength went right out of my legs and I think if Zechs hadn’t been holding me up, I would have fallen on my knees. My stomach clenched and I seriously thought that I was going to vomit, but I was too busy trying not to tremble, trying not to show weakness that I couldn’t spare a thought to anything else. The worst of it was that, mingled with the fear was this intense anger and hatred. He had done this to me, turned me into a scared animal, has treated me in a way that no human being deserves to be treated. He wanted to hurt me, to humiliate me, and for what? For his enjoyment? I bit down hard on that anger, knowing how dangerous it would be if I let it spin out of control. I tried to focus on what Heero had said that morning on the porch, how I was a good person, how I made the right choices, how I wasn’t my father, but it was so hard to listen to those words with Zechs touching me, threatening me.

“Why did you skip out on our date yesterday? That really hurt my feelings,” he said in a fake, mourning tone.

He, with a gentleness that was obscene coming from him, nosed at my hair, his lips inches from the back of my neck and I almost lost it right there. It was the same thing that my father would often do, a parody of tenderness coming from my bully. I became filled with repulsion and that anger in me that had only been a prickling suddenly became a roaring fire.

“You know,” he drawled, unable to keep the smirk out of his voice, the tone of superiority and mirth, like this was all some amusing game, “I can easily schedule a repeat performance for you, someplace where we won’t be interrupted this time.”

I clenched my hands into fists and found hard against the urge to slam my elbow into his face, breaking his nose for a second time like I wanted to. His very obvious threat should have scared the hell out of me, but it was my anger that was taking the reins for once and not my fear. Yes, I felt frightened. The asshole had just told me that he was going to separate me from Heero one day, get me alone, and rape me like he had wanted to the previous day, I would be an idiot not to be scared or to think that it was merely a joke. But that threat made my hatred of him swell more than anything else. I just kept asking myself what right he had to say those things, to desire those things, let alone do them, and what I was going to do about it. The answer, of course, was the source of these ugly feelings. Nothing.

‘Control it, control it,’ I chanted in my head, but my own thoughts seemed so small compared to the fear, anger, and disgust that I was feeling.

But who did I hate more? Who was I more repulsed by? Zechs for treating me like some kind of whore or perhaps a punching bag or sex doll just like my father and Trowa, or myself for not being able to do anything about this, for being helpless? I couldn’t stand up to my father and I couldn’t stand up to this prick, either. Everything that was happening was my fault and that only made the bitterness rise, higher and higher. It nearly had me quipping that if he wanted a repeat performance that badly, I would gladly rip open his other hand and put a few more holes in his leg. I had to bite down on my traitorous, stupid tongue just to keep silent, but even that enraged me. Why couldn’t I fight back? Why couldn’t I be the strong person that Heero claimed that I was? Why the hell couldn’t Zechs just leave me alone? That was all I had ever wanted from the time that I was twelve years old, to be left alone, to just be allowed to live my life. Why me? Why had he picked me of all people to be his favorite chew toy and no one else?

I heard a sharp noise suddenly. It was a noise of fear and anger, so much like what I was feeling, but it hadn’t come from me. I lifted my head and, my heart sinking, I saw Heero there. A part of me felt this incredible relief to see him, to know that he had my back, that he wanted to protect me from this, but most of me screamed at the unfairness of it all. Those parts had wanted him to not notice that I was no longer behind him, to just keep walking and not look back, to not see this. I didn’t want him to see Zechs treating me like this again, to see me just taking it like the coward that I am, afraid and vulnerable. Most of all, I didn’t want him to see my anger.

‘Why did you have to notice?!’ I wanted to scream at him in my shame, ‘Why are you here?! Just go away!’

I’ve never dealt well with embarrassment, but having Heero there, watching Zechs manhandle me, I couldn’t bear it. The rage in me grew at his eyes on me, taking in how Zechs was holding me, like we were lovers instead of enemies, like I was his and not Heero’s, my humiliation and guilt fanning the flames in my gut.

‘Control it!’ I screamed at myself in my head, reminding myself that not fighting back was nothing compared to what Zechs would do if I unleashed my anger at him, or how Heero would see me if I lost control.

Almost like our emotions were linked, our fires feeding each other’s, Heero growled just like he had that morning, his hands curling into fists just like mine and he took a step forward, no doubt to intervene and get Zechs to let go of me. Before I could even snap at him to stop, Zechs wrapped a hand around my throat in a bastard parody of an intimate touch, the way that Trowa would sometimes touch my neck when we were making out. But this wasn’t just another way to mess with me and make me feel filthy or even to tease Heero, it was a threat. I could feel his fingers pressing down on my windpipe and suddenly, I could barely breathe. His grip was solid, like iron, but he wasn’t actually strangling me, yet for some reason that I couldn’t understand, it felt like he was. Agony shot through my throat at the pressure and every breath that I tried to take was strained. It felt a lot like the times that my father had almost choked me, like Zechs was squeezing my neck a hell of a lot harder than he was (1) and I felt a very real fear then that he was going to kill me, cut off my air supply and not even realize that he was doing it.

          Heero stopped right in his tracks, looking horrified and unsure of what to do. I suppose that, from where he was standing and how scared I looked, to him it looked like Zechs was choking me. I could see him calculating it in his head, stuck between two very desperate instincts: protect me and get Zechs away from me, or protect me from Zechs’s threat by doing nothing. He looked so helpless that I ached again and I felt my anger grow even more for him. I never wanted him to be in this situation, to feel like I felt, to think that he was letting me down when he wasn’t. Those feelings were my fault, too. I was making him feel helpless. We were completely alone in that hallway at that point, and even with the two of us, we couldn’t do a thing. What really tore me apart was knowing that Heero wasn’t going to blame me for this. He would be understanding and say that it wasn’t my fault, but it _was_. And how could he not look down at me after this, seeing me brought so low?

          I didn’t need to even glance back to know that Zechs was smirking triumphantly and arrogantly at Heero. I could see it in my boyfriend’s face, his expression tightening with anger, his body stiff as he still struggled with what to do. I was so focused on him that I was unprepared for when Zechs moved, drawing me even closer to him and suddenly swiped his tongue over the back of my neck. Pure revulsion almost had me screaming as I felt that wet muscle crawl over my skin like some revolting slug, tasting my skin like I was a piece of meat. If Zechs hadn’t already made his threat known and didn’t still have his hand on my throat, I have no doubt at all that Heero would have lunged at him at that moment. He was gritting his teeth so hard that I was amazed he wasn’t hurting himself, his blue eyes practically on fire with hate, rage, and the sort of protectiveness that one might see in pissed off, mother bears. And there was absolutely nothing I could do to comfort him.

          Zechs laughed when I started to shake, no doubt thinking that I was terrified, but it wasn’t out of fear. I was so ashamed and so angry that I trembling with it, quickly losing the ability to handle my emotions. I would have been breathing hard with it if I _could_ breathe. My fear and Heero’s anger were apparently enough for him, because Zechs let go of my throat, leaving me coughing hard, this incredible pain lancing through my throat and shoved me forward. I almost fell, which I’m sure was his intention, but I made a grab for the lockers and righted myself. Zechs pushed past me and walked right past Heero, completely unafraid of any attack.

          “See you soon, Maxwell,” he waved, not looking back at me in complete dismissal, the threat in his words just as obvious as all the others.

          I thought for sure that Heero was going to try to hit him then. His right fist was shaking with the barely suppressed need, but he stayed still. I think some of his common sense was finally coming through and he was either just too worried about me to do anything or he knew that it he hit Zechs, he would come after me. He was probably just relieved that we had both escaped that close call without a scratch. I didn’t feel any kind of relief over it.

          I felt disgusting. Hollowed out and shaking, filled only with bitter anger and self-hatred, I felt like the ugliest thing on the planet. I could feel Zechs’s saliva on my skin, wet, sticky, and cool in the coldness of the hallway. I wanted to peel that patch of skin off with a knife. I wanted to run after Zechs and punch his smug, psycho face so _he_ could know pain for once. I wanted to tear him apart and shame him in front of the person that he cared about, as if he cared about anyone. I wanted to make him feel helpless and afraid and treat him like a thing, to take out all of my anger and disgust on him, pour it into him so I didn’t have to feel it anymore. So Heero would never see me like this again.

          And just like that, with Heero watching, my fragile control snapped and I couldn’t contain my violent rage anymore. Fury from years of bullying, of backing down, of being the weak coward, the helpless victim exploded in me. Eight years. Eight years of this shit, of being treated like I’m not even a fucking _person_ , of not being allowed to be normal, just another face in the crowd, of being constantly attacked and chipped away into nothing, deprived of friendship and safety, my life here at school destroyed. Why? For what? And why couldn’t I stop it? Why did I have to be so fucking **_weak_**?!

          With a loud cry of rage and frustration, I was unable to control the dark, twisted emotions anymore and punched the closest wall to me as hard as I could. Sharp pain radiated through my knuckles, my wrist, and all the way through my already injured arm, but I honestly did not care if I broke my hand or had made my hematoma worse. If Heero hadn’t been there, I might have even kept hitting that cement, tiled walled until I _had_ broken something. Anger is a lot like sleep deprivation, it makes you do stupid shit and you never care about the consequences until later.

          “Duo!” my friend cried out in alarm, running to my side, but I didn’t want to be comforted.

          I deserved his disgust, his reproach for lashing out in my rage like that. I was a repulsive thing, just like my father, no matter what Heero said. Maybe I hadn’t hit anyone, but I wanted to. I mean, look at me, punching a fucking a wall because someone had licked me! I turned from him, not even wanting to look at him and feeling so ashamed of myself. I could feel tears filling my eyes and it had absolutely nothing to do with the throbbing pain in my hand. I felt him put a hand on my shoulder and I pulled away from him. Why?! I demanded the universe. Why did Heero have to have been there to see that? Of all the people to witness my humiliation, why did it always have to be him?! The one person that mattered to me?!

          My anger continued to burn in me, punching something hadn’t helped it at all and I felt like I was coming apart with it. I wished that Heero would just leave, abandon me to my ugliness so I could get some semblance of control back.

          “Why?” I rasped, “Why did you have to be here? I didn’t want you here!”

          In some distant part of my mind, I was horrified by my words, torn to pieces in fear that Heero was going to take them at face value, the things that I was saying out of tired, nonsensical, rampant emotions and be hurt by them. But I couldn’t take them back and I didn’t know how to articulate how I was actually feeling in any kind of intelligent way.

          “Duo, I don’t understand,” he approached me like one would a wild animal, cautious, unsure, but he wasn’t backing down, either, the concern in his eyes shining brightly, stronger than his confusion.

          I felt hot tears spill down my face and I hated myself for them. What the fuck was I even crying about? I didn’t know. Everything was so messed up in my head and I was just reacting. I felt guilt and fear and disgust for myself and I was reacting to those feelings while the reasons behind them became confusing and distant. Later, much later, I would look back at this and feel embarrassed for how I was acting, but I could understand it. I hadn’t slept, really slept, in almost a week. I was stressed and anxious, dealing with things that I was in no condition to deal with. It was understandable that I was being overly emotional, even if I hated it. On any other day, if dealing with Zechs hadn’t piled on to what had happened that morning and my sleep deprivation, I think I could have handled it quite gracefully. But on that day, I just couldn’t.

          “I didn’t want you to see him do that to me,” I whispered, laying my forehead against one of the lockers. The cold metal felt good and I could pretend that I was hiding my face from my boyfriend. I realized, even in that state, that I wasn’t just talking about Zechs had just done, but yesterday, too, “I didn’t want you to see me like this…”

          I curled my injured hand into a fist. It throbbed unpleasantly and shook, but that was good. I needed the pain. It’s the one thing that I’ve always had, the only thing in my life that has ever been loyal to me, always been there to give me strength behind the fear. I can handle pain. It centers me, makes me feel real, like a human being. Not the violence, but just that reaction to it. Whenever I’ve been hurt, I’ve been able to put aside all the reasons for it and just focus on taking care of the pain. It pushes past all of my insecurities and drives me forward. Hell if I know why, when some people just shut down because of it, but I’ve always known how to deal with pain, how to focus it. I’ve lived with it my entire life, so I had to if I wanted to survive. But these other things… hating myself, being scared, depressed, the rage… I don’t know how to handle these things, what I’m supposed to do with them, how to control them, rationalize them, ignore them… Compared to those things, pain is like an old friend who speaks a language that only the two of us can understand.

          “You have nothing to be ashamed of,” Heero said very gently, in that soothing way that he does that often settles me and makes me feel like all the things that I have been worrying over are ridiculous, that I’m turning anthills into mountains, but this time I refused to let him gentle it away.

          He tried to put a hand on my arm again, using his comforting touch when words might fail him, and I pushed him away from me. Actually _pushed_ him. In all of the months that we’ve known each other, even before we had ever been friends, I had never gotten physical with him. We fight and bicker and get exasperated with each other, but neither of us have ever gotten physically aggressive. I know that a push isn’t a punch, but I felt something particularly ugly and hateful coil in my stomach. I had lashed out at my best friend and boyfriend, the one thing that I had thought that I could never do. I should feel horrified, and I did, but that anger was still there, boiling under my skin, and my horror had done nothing to defuse it.

          What really frustrated me was that, even when I had pushed him, Heero didn’t get angry at me. He should have. He had just been trying to help me and I had lashed out. He should yell at me. Hit me. Call me trash, because that’s exactly what I was. He should have been disgusted with me and stormed off. He didn’t do any of that. He stumbled backwards before he righted himself, not having been pushed as hard as I had thought, and he looked slightly hurt, but also understanding. I didn’t deserve that understanding. I deserved his ire, his reproach, I deserved him giving up on me, but he didn’t. He stubbornly took a few steps forward, correcting his stumble. It made my anger rise in my throat, choking me.

          “Go the hell away!” I yelled at him, “Do you think that I want you here?! You think I want you to see me acting like a fucking animal, humiliated and punching walls like a thug?! Just go away and leave me alone!”

          ‘Go away forever,’ I wanted to scream at him, ‘and never come back! Get away from me before I hurt you, before I really do become my father and take all of this out on you! I’m no good, can’t you see that?!’

          Heero’s face became hard in an instant and I felt my stomach plummet to my knees. I thought that he was really going to do it. This was it. It was too much for him and he was going to break up with me. We were through. As much as I had wanted that for his sake, I could feel more tears dripping down my face and I could have fallen to my knees and screamed with remorse and regret. If it wasn’t what I deserved, I might have. I destroy everything. Everything that is good in my life, I rip it to pieces. I knew that, but some stupid part of myself had hoped… had hoped that Heero could be the one thing that I could spare from that. Stupid me. Hadn’t life taught me a long time ago how useless hope is? Hadn’t I spent years pushing it down and ripping it from me so I could never be dragged down by it again?

          “No,” my friend said stubbornly, completely shocking me into silence, my hand falling limp at my side, “I’m not going anywhere. I’m exactly where I want to be, and exactly where I need to be.”

          I couldn’t wrap my mind around what he was saying. Didn’t he get it? This is who I really am. A weak, dysfunctional person wrapped around a ball of rage and petty bitterness, the kind of person that someone like Heero should hate, not claim to love.

          “You…” I choked out, “You don’t understand…”

          “What’s to understand?” he snapped at me, his angry tone contradicting with what he was saying, “Do you think that this comes as some kind of shock to me,” his blue eyes glanced at the streak of blood on the wall from my punch before shooting back to me, “After everything we talked about this morning, do you think that I’m surprised? I told you that I understand, that I don’t look down on you and that you have every right to be angry. Why should seeing it be any different than you telling me about it?”

          “I never wanted you see this part of me!” I cried out desperately, “I never wanted you to see what he did to me yesterday, how low I am, or… or this!”

          I looked down at my injured hand hatefully.

          “So what if I have seen it?” he shot right back, “What? You think that I’m ashamed of you for being angry? Or for what Zechs did to you? Why? Are you ashamed of me when he beats me up or when I fail to protect you?”

          “No!” I protested.

          “Then why should I be ashamed of you?” he demanded, “You think that I didn’t want to bash his face in for daring to touch you? If he hadn’t had you by the throat, I would have! How does that make me any better than you for being angry?! How am I any different for letting him overpower me and not fighting back?!”

          I swallowed roughly, the pain in my throat nothing compared to the one in my chest. I didn’t answer him. I couldn’t. Because I didn’t know what to say, what the answer was. I couldn’t make him see how much I hated myself, how humiliated I felt when he was, once again, being completely logical. He reached out and grabbed my injured hand very gently. I flinched, but not from any pain.

          “Duo Maxwell, I want you to listen to me very carefully,” he said in this hard, no-nonsense tone, “because if you forget what I’m about to say to you, I am going to be very angry. Do you understand?”

          I nodded, speechless by the fierce look in his eyes.

          “I love you,” he said, his voice like iron, “I love every part of you. I love how stubborn you are, your intelligence, how hard working you are, I even love your grumpiness. And I love all of the things that you think are ugly, even your anger.”

          “How…” I rasped even as my heart raced from his words, “How can you possibly love me for that?”

          His fingers smoothed over my hand like they were trying to smooth away the damage that I had done to it.

          “Because this is a part of who you are,” he told me, “You might think that your anger makes you an ugly person, but it doesn’t, especially not to me. It’s a piece of the whole, one that I wish I could soothe away because it hurts you, but it doesn’t make it any less a part of you. And there is nothing wrong with it beyond the fact that it bothers you so much. I have never seen you hurt anyone but yourself with it. You suffer with it and struggle to control it, but feeling angry all the time doesn’t make you a bad person. It doesn’t make you your father and it doesn’t make you Zechs. I told you that this morning, it’s your choices. I don’t think less of you for what Zechs did to you, and I certainly don’t think less of you for punching a wall. If I did, I would be a hypocrite. I wish I could take your anger from you, but don’t you dare think for a second that I judge you for it.”

          I blinked, my vision blurry and my chest so tight, it was hurting me. Confusion and exasperation swelled in me. I couldn’t understand him. He knew so much about me… he’s seen me at my worst, degraded and furious, weak and pathetic… so why? Why doesn’t he judge me like everyone else does? How can he possibly see the ugliness in me and still say that he loves me when no one else has? Why can’t he see that I’m garbage, not even worth his time, let alone his affections when everyone else, even my own father, treats me like trash? Why does he have to make so much fucking sense and make me doubt my own insecurities, the things that I’ve always thought and believed about myself?

          “Then why do I feel this way?” I whispered, my voice cracking a little as I tried not to cry anymore, “Why do I feel like so disgusting and repulsive?! If this is normal, why does it hurt so much?!”

          Heero looked pained, like I had just struck him and I couldn’t figure out why. I pulled my hand from him grasp and curled it back into a fist. I could feel blood gripping between my fingers, warm and tacky. I looked at the appendage. It was smeared with blood, large pieces of skin torn away at the knuckles and it was already starting to swell, the skin darkly discolored.

          “I don’t want to feel angry anymore!” I cried out and suddenly, I wanted to rip my own hand off, the thing that had lashed out, the only part of my body that reminds me of my father, “I’m so sick of it! Why do I have to feel this way?! I don’t want to be angry, to want to tear everything apart just like _he_ does! Why can’t I control it?! Why does everything make me so mad?!”

          “Duo…” my boyfriend tried again to sooth me.

          He placed a hand on my shoulder and this time I didn’t push him or move away. I was too tired. I didn’t have the energy to fight him anymore. But the touch didn’t make me feel any better.

          “It’s all I feel sometimes,” I said in a more subdued tone, but I could feel the tears starting up again, the little fucking traitors, “Just… angry at everything. Even when I was a kid, I wanted to hurt people. Relena mostly. I thought I could be a better person, someone better than my father and the people that pick on me. I tried to be like Quatre. He was a good person, always kind and patient, like nothing ever bothered him. I tried… I tried so _fucking_ hard! But then he was gone and it was like he was the only thing that was keeping any goodness in me. After that… I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t control it anymore! Every time I see Relena and Zechs, I want to hurt them. My father, too. I even get so furious at my mother sometimes. I remember what she was like, the things that she did, the things that she let _him_ do to me and I think that it’s not enough. No matter how kind she is now, no matter what she does to make it up to me, it can’t erase how she used to be, it can’t make it better.

          “Ever since Quatre died, it’s just there,” I pressed my wounded hand to my stomach, not caring that I was getting blood on my shirt, “This… this ball of rage and hate, like acid, eating away at me. Sometimes that’s all there is. For a while, that was alright. I didn’t care about being a better person, about not being angry and trying to control my temper. Because the world had taken away the only thing that I had ever cared about and I didn’t care who I hurt anymore. Nothing mattered. Then…” I looked at Heero and saw that I was only making the pain worse. Another thing to hate myself for, “…then we became friends and I had to hide it again. I had to push it down deep inside and never let you see it. I tried to be good, to be the person that you think I am, but it’s only gotten worse!

“I just want to destroy everything, hit everything! You say that I’m not my father, but how am I _not_ like him?! Because I don’t go around beating the shit out of people? So what?! I’m still angry, just like him! All I had left was keeping you from realizing that and I can’t even have that anymore! Me telling you what I’m like and you seeing it… they’re completely different! Even now, I’m scared and I’m sad and I hate myself, but it’s still _there_! I’m still so angry and I just want to hunt Zechs down and bash his face in! I busted my hand against a wall and I shoved you! If this is what I am… if this is a part of me, then I want to be someone else! Anyone else! I don’t know how to be better! But I have to be… I _have to,_ because if I’m not, there’s no way in hell that you’re going to love me anymore! I don’t even understand why you do _now_!”

Heero squeezed my shoulder, his eyes wide with shock and a few tears of his own. I would remember this later and realize how much I had freaked him out with what I was saying, but at the time I only realized that he had grabbed me, not in comfort, but because I had been swaying on my feet. When the hell had that happened? His left hand came up to grab my other shoulder, steadying me, and suddenly the blue of his eyes was all that I could see.

“But I do love you,” he said in that soft, calming tone of his, “and nothing you can say or do is going to sway me. You have no control over how I feel about you, do you understand?”

I shook my head. No, I didn’t understand anything. I didn’t even understand my own fucking feelings, I wanted to scream, let alone his.

“I love you,” he repeated, “You can punch all of the walls that you want and scream and shove me around and tell me that you’re the worst, most despicable person on the planet, but I’m going to keep loving you and say that you’re full of shit, because you are. You don’t disgust me. What Zechs did to you doesn’t disgust me. I’m angry that you’ve felt this way for so long, but not at you. You don’t scare me and I’m going to keep saying this until you get it through that thick skull of yours. You. Are. Not. Your. Father. You will never _be_ your father. You think that you not going around hitting people doesn’t make a difference, that your anger is all that matters. Well, guess what? It _does_ make a fucking difference! That’s the only difference that ever matters and it’s just as much a part of you as that anger! I’m glad that I got to see this side of you because all it means is that I can help you through it when you get this way instead of you hiding it all the time. That’s a hell of a lot less healthy than you punching walls. You’re just going to have to accept that you’re stuck with me for a good, long time, so you might as well start coming clean about this stuff and stop thinking that I’m going to hate you for it.”

Hearing him say that should have relieved me and made me incredibly happy, but it didn’t. I felt frustrated and lost. I felt this sudden urge to hit him, to prove him wrong. I wasn’t a good person, that urge was proof of that. I was ugly and twisted. I felt torn in half between my fear that I was going to lose him and my desire to do just that, that I needed to push him away from me. He was being naïve, I thought to myself, and he didn’t understand. He thought I was being overly emotional, that he could make me see sense when _he_ was the one being thickheaded and oblivious.

My frustration was making my rage rise again, only this time there was no target for me to unleash it on. Heero was blocking me from the wall and even though my hotheadedness had made me want to hit him, it was like me wanting to shoot Zechs. My emotions were one thing, but I would sooner pick up that gun and mow down all of my classmates than raise a hand to Heero. I just felt this deep desperation and a feeling of failure, like feeling sand escape between my fingers as I tried to grasp at it. Unable to do anything with my anger, feeling it coiling and rising and tearing through me, in mere seconds I realized that I was breathing hard with it. Or at least, I was trying to. My breath was getting caught in my throat and I was right on the verge of hyperventilating, the air not feeling like it was going anywhere. Trapped along with my fury and frustrations.

“I can’t breathe,” I gasped out, panicking as my throat started to hurt again, worse than before.

I fully expected Heero to start freaking out like I was, usually being the one to fly off the handle at things that I wouldn’t even bat an eye at. To my surprise, he very calmly placed a hand on my chest, right over my heart.

“Yes you can,” he said with such confidence and cool headed surety that he could have told me that I could fly and I would have believed him, “You need to just let go of it, Duo.”

“I can’t,” I choked, “I can’t!”

How the hell did he expect me to let go of my anger, just like that? Hadn’t he been listening? I couldn’t control this. Even if I could in the past, in that moment, it seemed impossible. Punching hadn’t helped. Screaming hadn’t helped. So what did he expect me to do?

“You can,” he repeated, a steely note in his voice, but it wasn’t from exasperation or even impatience, “You need to stop just pushing it down and ignoring it. You’re not controlling it, you’re denying it and that’s just making it worse.”

“How?” I demanded hopelessly, “I don’t know how to do that!”

He smiled at me and it was like a cool breeze on a blistering hot day. That smile reached me where his words had been unable to.

“I’ll help you,” he assured me, “You don’t have to deal with this by yourself anymore, ok?”

Some intense emotion surged in me, past the rage and the frustration. Love, trust, and relief. Pure, undiluted relief. No one had ever said those words to me before. ‘You don’t have to deal with this by yourself.’ Even when Quatre had been alive, he had been by my side, but never at my back. He had never told me that he would help me share the burden of my problems. We had both held our own issues close to our chests and with Heero’s help, I have come to understand that why I will always love Quatre, will always see him as my friend, he was not the pure, innocent victim that I had seen him as after his death. I had let him down, but he had let me down, too. I had been too wrapped up in my own failings to really acknowledge the damage his actions had done to me, how us not talking about things had only made them worse for the both of us, but I can see that now, both because of the talk Heero and I had had at the cemetery, and from our friendship, the things he makes me feel when he refuses to make the same mistakes that Quatre and I had.

Distantly, I felt fresh tears slide down my cheeks, but I wasn’t concerned with them anymore. Was Heero right? Had hiding these things from him been the wrong decision? Could he really help me? Could we help each other, balance the burden instead of protecting the other from it? I didn’t know if I could do that. It had been so long… no, I had never done this before, really shared my pain with someone and reached out to them for help. My father might have taught me fear and pain and distrust, but it had been my mother who had taught me never to depend on anyone. People let you down, even the ones that you love. Especially the ones that you love.

‘It can’t get any worse than this,’ I pointed out to myself.

Heero knew now, he had seen me shaking with rage, bursting with it. There was nothing to hide now and I didn’t have the strength to shake off his concerns and try to go it alone. I had done that my entire life and what have I accomplished? How have I made anything better? Maybe… maybe Heero could help. At the very least, I wanted to trust in him. I wanted to try. I nodded in agreement and that little smile of his grew into one of deep pleasure, but also one of humility. It made me feel a little better that he knew that he was holding something very fragile of mine in his hands. I think he knew something that I only barely acknowledged in the back of my mind, that if he fucked this up, if he let me down, I would never reach for help, his or anyone else’s again. If it had been me, I would have been too terrified of failure to do a thing, but Heero is made of stronger stuff.

As much as he insists that I’m the strongest person he’s met, he is so much stronger than I could ever hope to be. He’s strong enough to walk the tightrope while I cautiously trudge through the road of shattered glass, slicing my feet apart because I’m too scared of what _might_ happen. What he sees as strength, I know is just bullheaded cowardice.

“What do I do?” I asked him and it cost me a great deal to say it.

I know it’s a huge character flaw, but it’s almost impossible for me to ask for help, even when I know that I need it. I suppose that’s why I’m always so stubborn about going to the hospital, and why I lie and hide things from people, even when I know that it isn’t a big deal. It’s just easier, relying on myself, not getting close to anyone, not making myself vulnerable. Even as I said that to him, some part of me was screaming to handle this myself, to push it all down and get control over it. For once, my insomnia was a gift. If it had been a normal day, I would have soldiered on like I always do, keep the burden squarely on my shoulders and pushed my anger back down into that ever growing, cancerous mass in my gut. But I was so exhausted and so pliant that it was easier just surrendering and letting someone else take the reins. I just… didn’t have the ability to do it anymore. 

“Close your eyes,” he instructed me.

I almost balked, probably would have if I hadn’t been half out of my mind and told him that this was stupid and walked off. But I did as he said. I trusted him. That still throws me for a loop, but I did. I trusted Heero. He’s only proven to me, again and again and again, that he is worthy of that trust. He’s the only person that I can say that of, but it still shocks me that I even have that ability anymore. I guess love really does make people idiots, but he had it, the thing that is harder for me to give than even my heart. I closed my eyes and he rewarded that trust again by not moving and I couldn’t hear anyone else in the hallway, either. They were probably at class and I might have been concerned that we weren’t in ours, but I just didn’t care right then.

“This will help me control it?” I asked him a bit nervously, still having no clue at all what he was trying to do.

For all I knew, he was going to knock me out or something so I would wake up calmer, even if I knew that was ridiculous.

“No,” he said and I almost opened my eyes, my heart jerking and a tiny seed of doubt forming for a second, at least until he spoke again, “This isn’t about hiding your anger or keeping yourself from expressing it. Every time you push it down, you’re not solving anything, you’re just making it harder, more poisonous. It’ll be more manageable if you just let it go and move past it instead of denying it.”

“How?” I demanded, feeling hopeless again.

How could I make him understand how much anger had a hold over me? How strong it could be? I could barely fight it and ignore it, letting go of it was simply impossible. But Heero refused to let me deter him.

“You need to express it,” he said and cut me off when I began to protest that, “Yes, you do. I know you’re scared to do that, but I don’t mean just going around hitting things.”

“How the fuck am I supposed to do that?” I asked in exasperation.

Heero chuckled and I wished that I had my eyes open so I could glare at him.

“Constructively. There are a lot of different outlets for anger beyond taking it out on other people,” his tone was bitter and I knew that he was thinking derisively about my father.

“Wouldn’t the constructive thing to do be not feeling it at all?” I pointed out a bit snappishly, “I shouldn’t be like this to begin with!”

“Everyone gets angry, Duo,” he admonished me, “ _Everyone_. Some people more than others, but it’s not something to be ashamed of. It’s much less healthy _not_ getting angry at things that are genuinely painful and frustrating than it is to want to bash someone’s head in. And there isn’t really anything that you can do about it. You can’t change how you feel and asking you not to be mad because people treat you like shit is impossible and cruel. You have every right to feel that way. I know you have issues with it, but you need to just accept it and move on or it’s going to keep tearing you up inside.”

I didn’t like what he was saying. I didn’t like knowing that I was going to have to live with this rage for the rest of my life, but it wasn’t anything new. I had never had much hope that I could exorcise it, but some childish part of me had wanted to believe that it was just a matter of willpower, that I was angry and hateful because I wasn’t strong enough, not because it was a permanent part of personality. I just didn’t know how to accept it like Heero was suggesting. I could agree with him, and in reality, what he was saying made sense and it seemed like my only rational option beyond letting these feelings turn me into a man like my father, but I have been fighting against this for most of my life. My anger is a poison, slowly killing me from the inside and I have to fight with everything I have to deny its existence. Now someone that I respect and trust is telling me that I need to stop fighting and just accept its existence. How could I when that meant that my worst nightmares would be my reality, that I couldn’t avoid this fate?

I felt like I was going to cry again, but knowing that my choices were to listen to Heero and hope he could help me or keep going on like this, punching walls and thinking about shooting classmates, I opted to stay silent and wait patiently for my boyfriend to continue.

“Can you feel my hand?” he asked me, completely jumping tracks on me.

I nodded. Of course I could feel his hand. It was still right over my heart, the only source of warmth that I could feel in that hallway. It almost felt like his heat was being seared right into my chest.

“Focus on it,” he ordered in a soothing tone, “Nothing else exists but my hand. We’re not at school, there’s nothing here but the two of us and my hand.”

I almost snorted at that. It sounded like some corny, hypnotism trick, but I did as he asked, just focusing on his hand. I concentrated on the heat, the gentle pressure, the shape and size of it. Little by little, without even really being consciously aware of it, everything melted away. Just like Heero had said, there was nothing else. The hard floor under my feet disappeared. The smell of the cafeteria not far from where we were, fried grease and canned tomato sauce, faded into nothing. I couldn’t even feel the slight draft in the air or hear the sounds of classes going on in that hallway. I only felt that hand and the excitement that his touch always gives me. It made me feel… oddly calm. The anger was still there, but it seemed distant somehow, less important. Heero’s touch was important. My inability to multitask made it a lot easier to see that, but it was true. All those other things, my negative emotions, where we were, what had just happened, all of it were just distractions, noise in my head, like the coiling barbed wire in my stomach from my violent outbursts.

“Now breathe,” Heero continued after a few minutes of this, “Breathe deep, right from your diaphragm.”

Another impossibility, I thought. My throat was killing me and I was still breathing harder than I should have been, but I did what I was told anyway. I took a deep breath and almost started coughing, a tightness in my throat reminding me that this was not a great idea. My heart was still hammering from adrenaline and my body’s instinct was to up my breathing rate, so fighting against that was hard at first. But after I took a few more breaths, breathing deep like Heero had told me to, it became a little bit easier with each one.

“That’s it, let it out slowly,” he soothed, his words a bit unnecessary, but just his voice alone had a calming effect on me, like the ocean waves.

I have no clue how long he made me do that. Not as long as a class period because the bell didn’t go off, but long enough that I entered some kind of trance. He kept his hand on my chest and I kept taking those breaths, deeper and deeper each time, until it became like the tide. Every time I breathed out, my breath took with it some of my anxiety and, miraculously, some of my anger. Just a tiny bit, but I could actually _feel_ my sense returning to me and some of that poison leaking out. Heero was right, like he always seems to be. This was nothing like ignoring my anger, wresting with it until I had it in a stranglehold and pushing it deep down inside of me, still simmering and festering, eating away at me, but not exploding out. I didn’t feel that tightness in my chest anymore. When I thought about Zechs and what he had just done to me, or how Heero had stubbornly refused to leave, I didn’t feel like hitting anything. I still felt depressed and frustrated, but it was manageable. A paper cut compared to a gaping wound.

My hand hurt a hell of a lot worse than my anger did and that alone told me that the worst of it was over. All from some stupid heavy breathing. How could it be that simple? It wasn’t possible. All those times that I had fought against my rage, to not lash out… going home almost in tears, those feelings not dissipating, sometimes for days. And Heero had made me feel better in under an hour. I opened my eyes and found him smiling warmly at me. I felt so foolish, like a real idiot for how I had carried on, pushing him and yelling at him. Now that I was calm, my anger seemed so stupid and childish. I knew that it wasn’t, that I hadn’t been throwing a temper tantrum over a harmless prank, but the ease in which Heero had managed to talk me down was a bit overwhelming.

“Better?” he asked me.

I nodded and he removed his hand to my disappointment. I nearly quipped that he could keep it there, even if I was feeling better, but that would have been far too embarrassing.

“Where did you learn to do that?” I asked in amazement.

“Uh… my dad taught me,” he mumbled, rubbing at the back of his head sheepishly and averting his gaze.

“Your dad?” I was astonished, unable to think of a single reason why Justin would teach him such a thing, or why he knew that trick, either.

“He used to work with kids that had anxiety and anger issues,” he informed me, “He says it helps focus and decreases heart rate as well as anxiety. It helped some of his patients a lot when they were having panic attacks during sessions.”

“Alright,” I could buy that. I still wasn’t entire clear on the kind of work that Heero’s father used to do, but he obviously had a few mental tricks up his sleeve, “But why did he teach it to you?”

My boyfriend suddenly looked terribly embarrassed, like the truth was something shameful for him.

“I…” he started, stopped, and glanced at me, his fingers unconsciously tugging at his thick, chocolate brown hair a little before he continued, looking down at the ground again, “I had a lot of problems after Wufei was killed. I didn’t handle it very well, and after I found out who was involved… it got worse. All I could think about wasn’t grieving over his death or coming to terms with it, but seeking revenge. And not just on the people that had killed him. I wanted to find and hurt every person who had ever teased him, ever pushed him around, ever looked down on him like they were somehow better. Sometimes, my rage got so bad, it would give me headaches. I got into fights, I snapped at people, people that didn’t deserve it. I broke things. But none of it made me feel any better. It only made the rage worse. My dad taught me how to try to move past it, to not let it control me. It helped a little, enough that I could function, although that anger never really went away. I just have other ways of letting it out from time to time than hitting people or hurting myself.

“He helped me understand that feeling that way didn’t mean that I was a bad person. I’m angry because I loved my friend and something terrible happened to him and I know that’s wrong, but I also know that I can’t do anything about it. That’s where my anger comes from. I think it’s where yours comes from, too, but you’ve had to live with it for a lot longer than me.”

          He finally looked up and when he saw me staring at him in astonishment, he smiled endearingly, like he found my shock cute or something. I just couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I knew that we had some things similar, we had both lost friends, and I knew that he had had a hard time with anger in the past, but he had never really talked about it like this. He had never told me just how much his friend’s death had hurt him, how it had twisted him. I thought about how he had looked when Zechs had grabbed me, that rage in his eyes. It had been the same in my gut, reflected right back at me. I had realized it then, but I couldn’t accept that. I couldn’t accept even the possibility that Heero understood what I was feeling because… well, he’s Heero! There’s no way he could feel that ugliness, that rage! The same person who is always so even tempered and understanding to me… how could he know what that anger feels like, to want to tear everything apart?

          “You keep thinking that we’re so different,” he said with amusement, “That we’re opposites, but we’re not. We have a lot more in common than you think that we do. I may not understand everything that you’ve gone through, but this,” he held my hand again, so gently that it was almost reverent, “I understand this.”

          There was that choking feeling again, a surge of emotions that threatened to rip me apart, but this time, anger wasn’t amongst them. I curled my injured fingers around his hand. His skin felt so warm and alive. It was impossible to imagine that same hand striking anyone.

          “You said that… that I need to find a constructive way to let it out,” I said after giving me a few moments to compose myself and not start blubbering again, although this time it would be out of love for him, and being overwhelmed by this… connection that we shared.

          “Yeah,” he confirmed.

          “So, what’s _your_ outlet?” I asked him, honestly curious to know what he did to stay so damned calm and in control most of the time.

          “A few things,” he told me, “My dad told me that physical activities help the most, but playing video games can help a little, although not much. We have a punching bag in the basement that I use from time to time. I’m not much of a boxer and I wouldn’t know how to correctly punch someone if my life depended on it, but it helps getting the angry energy out and I don’t have to destroy anything to do it. Mostly, when I’m feeling angry and hurt, I go into the backyard and hit some baseballs,” he smiled a bit sheepishly, “I, uh, like to hit them as hard as I can and pretend that it’s Zechs’s head.”

          He won a shocked laugh out of me and looked quite smug by it. It felt so strange to laugh with everything that I was feeling, my hand throbbing and my face caked with tears. I looked down at my hand. It looked as strange as laughing had felt, stranger. Like a patchwork quilt, some bits red and bloody, others bruised black and swollen, and others as pale as milk. It didn’t look like it belonged to me, the only thing connecting it to me at all was the pain. Now that I was further removed from my anger, I felt so stupid for it. I had made an ass of myself in front of Heero, and for what? Punching walls because I had felt humiliated and angry… over something that was no different than the shit that happens to me on any other, normal day. I felt pathetic, like a child now that I could actually think. How easy it was for me to go down that rabbit hole, to let my anger consume me frightened me. My hand was ugly and disgusting, not because it was swollen and bloody, but because I had done that to myself without any reason, any logic other than Zechs had managed to get to me again.

          “What’s wrong with me?” I asked Heero and I hated how heartbroken my own voice sounded and the feeling of wetness in my eyes. I had thought that I was done with this shit.

          Heero’s expression fell for a moment, he looked desperate and aching for some reason, making me wonder what terrible thing I had done and not realizing that it was the pain in my voice and the tears in my eyes that were the culprits, and he gave me a small, but sad, smile. He let go of my hand and that was almost enough to have me crying again, thinking that he was rejecting me, that he was going to tell me to stop whining and keeping him from going to class, or call me a cry baby even if I really knew he would never say those things. But instead, he reached out with both of his hands, and with a tenderness and gentleness saved for one holding a small infant, his fingers lightly touched the sides of my neck.

He cradled my neck in his palms and slid them up until he was cupping my face, his thumbs brushing away the tears that had only just started to dry on my skin. The touch was light, but it made me shiver anyway.

“It isn’t about what’s wrong with you,” he told me, his blue eyes sharp with concern and affection, “it’s what’s wrong with all of the people that have hurt you.”

He swept my long bangs up with his right hand and pressed his lips to the bridge of my nose, right between my eyes. I felt them slide closed, almost reflexively. It was nothing more than a brush of his lips, really, but it felt so incredibly good. Like those first few seconds when an especially bad headache starts to ease, a single moment of pure bliss that is so perfect, nothing can taint it. I opened my eyes again slowly when I felt those soft lips leave my skin, but I could have stood there with him in that hallway, the two of us so close that I could smell his deodorant, forever.

“I won’t say that there’s nothing wrong with you,” he said softly, “because it’s not right that you feel this way, but that isn’t your fault. It’s not because there’s anything wrong _in_ you. Anyone would feel like this after everything you’ve gone through. Even if you live through it and tell me that it isn’t a big deal, that you can handle it, you know that it’s wrong. You know how much it hurts and even if you won’t admit to it, your anger does. You can’t expect to be treated like a punching bag for your whole life and be calm and rational about it all the time,” he smiled at me encouragingly, making the bite of pain that his words brought seem a little less crippling, “I’m actually amazed that you handle yourself so well, that you haven’t ended up… well, like Zechs or your father. Instead of putting yourself down all the time and saying that there’s something wrong with you, you should be proud of yourself because of all the things that are right about you. You’ve been dealing with your anger since you were a kid, and it’s only gotten worse like you’ve said, but you are still one of the kindest, most level headed people I’ve ever met.”

That was all that it took. A tear, thankfully only the one, tracked down my face and I had to squeeze my eyes shut to keep the rest from following it in the wake of what my boyfriend was saying. There was nothing wrong with me? Then why do I always feel like there is something broken inside of me, I wanted to ask him. But I understood what he was saying. If there was something broken, it wasn’t due to any failings of mine. I suppose that made sense, even if I wanted to fight against it. I wanted to say that he was wrong, that I was the monster, this anger was wrong and disgusting and it was on my head. But somewhere deep inside, I knew that he was right. I hadn’t always been this way. Maybe a part of that was growing into it, but it wasn’t like this sort of thing just… triggered at a certain age. It hadn’t always been there, just waiting for a moment to strike.

I’ve had issues with anger for a long time, that’s true. Even when I was a kid, I would get frustrated and mad at people like Relena who embarrassed me. I had even thought of hurting her when she had first started to bully me. But was that because it had been in my nature, because there was something wrong with me, or had it just been a natural reaction to being bullied? If it was the latter, why had I never felt that way before? If that anger had been a natural part of my personality, why hadn’t I felt that way towards my father?

The worst of it, wanting to hit people and struggling to contain these feelings, that hadn’t really happened until I had been older, when the bullying and my father’s abuse had escalated. Was Heero right? Had it all just… built up in me? Was it understandable that I was angry all of the time because of how I’m treated and not because of who I am? I know what I want to believe. I know what I need to believe if I don’t want this to make me crazy. Heero let go of my face and let me rub at the tear track with my left hand. I rubbed at my eyes for good measure and I could feel how much they were burning between my sleep deprivation and my crying. I would really need to get some eye drops before I went to work if I didn’t want my coworkers to think I was high or something.   

When I was done cleaning off my face, I saw Heero looking at me with concern again. I was sure that I looked especially awful after all of that. But it was better than how I would have looked, and felt, if he hadn’t been there for me. I didn’t even want to think about it. That gnarling, twisting ball of barbed wire in my stomach was gone. I held no illusions that it was gone for good, it would be back before long, but for the first time in years, it wasn’t tearing me apart anymore. Heero had done that. He had reached inside and taken it from me, this thing that’s grown bigger and bigger from my neglect, like a tumor. He had eased it and soothed it away when I hadn’t even thought that such a thing could be possible. Even if I didn’t feel that rage for only a second, it was a second more than I had ever thought possible.

“Heero…” I began.

But there were no words. My tiredness and inability to be coherent aside, what could you possibly say to the person that had given you a gift like that? That had shown you, not only that you aren’t a monster, that your rage is understandable, but how to not get swallowed alive by it? What words of gratitude could ever be enough to show how you feel, how thankful you are to them, and how much you love them for it? There aren’t any. So instead, for one of the few times in my life, where my words failed me, I fell back on actions. I wrapped my arms around him loosely and hugged him.

“Thank you,” I murmured, resting my head on his shoulder.

 It was awkward at first. I don’t really do stuff like that. Even when I get the inclination, it’s difficult for me. Reaching out, being intimate or even just engaging in physical contact doesn’t feel natural when I’m the one initiating it and even when I do get the inclination, I always wonder if it’s weird, if I’m doing it right. It was a lot easier with Heero than it was with my mother, partially because my sleep deprivation had lowered my shields a little, partially because of how I was feeling, but mostly it was just because it was him. I feel more comfortable about Heero than I have any other person I’ve ever known, even Quatre, which is kind of strange considering how on edge he makes me feel sometimes. You would think that, with us dating and my issues with sex, any ease that I had felt when we had just been friends would have vanished. But for some reason, that isn’t true. I don’t know if it’s because I love him, or if I have that backwards and I love him because I feel so comfortable around him.

Heero froze for a second and I didn’t really blame him. He was probably trying to wrap his head around my hugging him for once instead of the other way around, but then he was holding me back, just as loosely and carefully, like he was afraid of hurting me or something, even though my hand was my only newly acquired injury of the day.

“You’re welcome,” he said back to me, the sincerity in his voice belying his hesitant motions.

I felt him rub at my back and it felt so good that I could have just melted against him like that and closed my eyes, let the rest of the world just pass me by. Everything else that had happened that day felt so far away and distant, unimportant compared to having him in my arms. When he let go of me, I felt cold. Not as bad as I had felt minutes before during my rage fit, but I could actually feel his absence against my skin, his warmth cooling there.

“We need to get that looked at,” he said worriedly, gesturing to my busted hand.

I looked down at it again. As terrible as it looked, bloody and bruised and throbbing along with my upper arm, which was probably going to start swelling again itself, I didn’t think that I had broken anything. It was almost on the tip of my tongue that I was fine, my hand was fine, and I didn’t need to do anything more than wash the blood off of it. But I realized then, looking into Heero’s hard, determined stare, that I was going to lose that fight. And you know what? I was tired of fighting. Maybe that was just the insomnia talking or the after effect of my blow up at Zechs’s actions, but I was just so tired of it all and I didn’t care anymore. If Heero wanted to get me to the hospital wrapped up in blankets and bubble wrap, fine. I would go willingly if I just didn’t have to think or feel or worry anymore. I was done. I was officially done putting up a brave front, pretending nothing was bothering me, and trying to keep this bullshit façade up, because guess what? I wasn’t ok and I just didn’t have the energy for it anymore.

“I need to wash my neck,” I murmured under my breath.

It was probably stupid given everything that we had talked about, everything that had happened since the moment that Zechs had grabbed me in that hallway. I mean, time alone had made his saliva dry and I had much bigger worries, namely missing classes and hurting myself. But I could still _feel_ it there, that wet patch. I could still feel that disgusting, wet muscle trailing over my skin, making me feel like a whore and I wanted that feeling gone, even if it was entirely in my head. _He_ was still there, his saliva, his stench, his touch, and I had to get rid of it or it was going to drive me crazy. I fully expected Heero to tell me that I was being ridiculous and we were going to get my hand checked out before I did anything, but to my relief, he nodded gravely. He understood. Somehow, he understood how freaked out I was by the whole thing. I guess, given the anger he had shown while Zechs had been touching me, he had felt some of what I was feeling, too.

“You can go back to class,” I told him, feeling a bit guilty that my stupid actions were going to get him in trouble with our teachers, “I just want to go to the bathroom. I’ll go to the nurse right after.”

“We’ll go together,” he said in a steely, but confident and determined tone, making me blush a little.

Of course he wasn’t going to let me go on my own. I wouldn’t let him go alone, either, not after yesterday. Not after the threat that Zechs had just delivered, we would have to both be stupid to let the other wander off by himself. I nodded, found where my book bag had fallen in the scuffle and we migrated to the closest bathroom. It was blissfully empty and Heero rushed to get the door closed and locked behind us. I was sure that it was going to get us into trouble one day, but I would honestly prefer to get yelled at by a teacher or the principal than deal with whatever our classmates might do to us in an isolated bathroom.

I went right to the sink, grabbing some paper towels, covering them with the bland smelling, pink, liquid soap and wetting them a little. I didn’t care one bit at the moment about my bloody hand or even the intense, throbbing pain in my upper arm. All I cared about was getting rid of that gross, violated feeling that was making my skin crawl. I pushed my hair to the side and rubbed the scratchy, cheap paper towels against my neck. Heero looked like he wanted to help, but just stayed off to the side. I could have kissed him for that, wanting a bit of privacy and just not able to deal with his concern on top of the paranoia and sickness curling in my stomach. I scrubbed at my skin harshly and if I didn’t take off a few patches of it in my neurotic, and almost psychotic, cleaning, I would be amazed. I pressed down so hard that it actually hurt and it shredded the paper to a fine mush, leaving pieces of it clinging to my skin and me wishing that I had a washcloth so I could do it properly.

I cleaned for several minutes, far longer than the single lick had warranted, and when I was done, only felt a little bit better. The memory of it still left me feeling dirty, but I could at least pretend that I had wiped it away. I’m sure that I had looked nuts, scrubbing at the back of my neck like one might scrape old paint off the outside of a house, but Heero, bless him, let me have my little freak out. It just reminded me too much of that first day of school, uselessly trying to scrub marker off of my forehead to the point that I had made myself bleed. Only Quatre wasn’t there with some marker remover to help me this time. I didn’t need him to be. Heero knew, just as Quatre had known back then, exactly what I needed to get rid of the tainting mark. When I was done, he finally approached me and very, very gently, brushed off the pieces of paper that I had missed before placing a hand on my shoulder and leaning in to give me a soft kiss on the cheek.

It's a bit amazing, considering that washing my neck like a lunatic hadn’t eased the pounding of my heart or the nausea in my guts, but that one, tiny kiss made me feel better than if I had gone at the spot with steel wool. How does he always know exactly what I need when I never do? How can he wipe away those horrible feelings with a simple kiss or a hug or just by holding my hand, the same feelings that have plagued me for so long and cling to me like a bad smell, refusing to be exorcised no matter what I do? It’s a mystery and when I think that there might be a day when I won’t have that support, that remedy, it tears a hole in me, this gaping pit of terror and anxiety that I have no hope of healing.

“Let me see your hand,” he said softly and I let him take my hand in his so he could examine it.

Just like with everything else, he was almost achingly gentle as he looked at the damage that I had done, his face pinched and pale as he took in the bruising, swelling, and torn skin. When he moved my fingers, I felt a stinging, terrible pain, and he shot me an apologetic look when I gritted my teeth at it, but I know what broken fingers feel like and I felt relief that I could still more or less move them, just awkwardly with the swelling.

“Dammit, Duo,” he muttered in exasperation and frustration, “Why couldn’t you have hit a pillow or something _other_ than a concrete wall?”

“Verdict?” I asked him as he lightly swiped his thumb over my busted knuckles, flushing a little in embarrassment from his words, but I knew that I deserved them.

“You fucked your hand up,” he quipped in this dry, deadpan tone that almost got a laugh out of me, “but I don’t think you broke anything, _somehow_.”

I breathed in relief, although I had been sure that I hadn’t broken my hand as much as it hurt. I let him roll up my shirt sleeve to look at my arm, just in case, and he hissed in sympathy when he saw how swollen the hematoma was. I hadn’t pulled my punch at all, even with that injury.

“This needs ice,” he remarked unnecessarily.

I sighed, starting to overthink not fighting him on going to the nurse, but it was a fleeting feeling. I tolerated him fussing over my hand, carefully washing the blood away and holding back a hiss at the burning feeling of the water so he wouldn’t apologize or feel guilty.

“I don’t know how to find an outlet,” I suddenly blurted out, not realizing what a non-sequitur it was even when Heero paused and looked a bit confused before he realized what I was talking about.

“Well, the next time that you feel like this,” he said softly, his gentle fingers moving over my hand to get more of the blood off, making me shiver a little, “we can go running with each other. Sometimes just working off a little steam can do a lot of good. Or you’re always welcome to our punching bag. You’ve already got punching down pat,” he commented with a slightly amused smile, making me blush again, “Maybe not so much _what_ to hit, but you know how to do it correctly without breaking your thumb at least.”

He had me there. Even in my rage, I hadn’t tucked in my thumb like I see a lot of people doing when they get into fights at school. If I had, I definitely would have broken it as hard as I had hit that wall.

“My dad had to teach me how to do it,” my boyfriend remarked, finishing up with my hand and drying it with some more paper towels, “He caught me waling on it one day and informed me that I punched like I was acting in an especially bad action film,” he flushed darkly.

I imagined that it had embarrassed him quite a bit to admit that to me. If it had been me admitting to him that I hadn’t known how to punch something, I’d be thinking that he thought I was pathetic or weak and I really wish that I had had the ability to assure him that I didn’t care about such things. In fact, him not knowing how to hit, in my eyes at least, was more of a comfort than something to make fun of him about. In my exhaustion, I opened my mouth and almost quipped at him that my father had taught me how to punch correctly, too.

But Heero isn’t stupid and he would read between the lines on that one, and I didn’t think he would appreciate the reminder of what I’ve been dealing with at home since I was little. It’s a fact, though, that after seventeen years of being beat on, I had picked up quite a few things from my father. How to take a hit, where to hit someone to cause the most pain but least damage, and how to punch someone. I also know how to perform a choke hold and a few other maneuvers, not that I would ever use them on anyone, knowing how dangerous they are. There are only two people that I would ever want to use them on, and they’re both bigger than me to begin with.

Then Heero was unlatching the door and shepherding us to the nurse’s office. I think the bell for the next block might have rung when we had been in the bathroom. I had heard some knocking and some slurs thrown through the door, but it’s fuzzy, like something out of a fog. For all I can remember and for all that I was aware of that day, the hallway might have been bustling with people trying to get to class, or it might have been quiet and empty. I was quickly entering that stage of insomnia where a bomb could have gone off near me and I would have been oblivious to it.

     The nurse’s office was blissfully empty and she saw me right away. She gave me this dry, almost annoyed look when she saw that it was me and I really didn’t blame her. She probably sees me more than any other kid in school, even the ones with asthma or diabetes or the ones that constantly feign illness to get out of class. She didn’t make a peep about it, though, and didn’t ask me what had happened to my hand or why my face was bruised and scratched or why I was very subtly limping. She had seen it all before and probably knew enough, or cared so little, not to cause a fuss over me. She proclaimed that I did not have a broken hand (like I needed her to tell me that), dabbed some ointment on the cuts, wrapped it up, gifted me with an ice pack and then she was done with me. It was more efficient than going through a fast food drive thru.

 “You’ll need this,” she called to me just as I was about to leave, hastily writing out a pass for me to get out of gym and thrusting it at me, “Just for today,” she scolded.

          I took the comment as her bitchily thinking that I was going to try to get out of class for longer with the note. I was so irritable at that point that I almost snapped that I could read a fucking dated note and only just barely managed to keep from saying something just as snarky or worse. I snatched it out of her hand, shooting her a cold look that made her frown even more severe and let Heero haul me out of there. We were almost done with sixth period as it turned out, and I mourned missing my cooking class more than history, so we hung out at our lockers until the next bell rang, me alternating the ice pack between my hand and my arm. I honestly didn’t want to go to my literature class, which was strange for me, but I was so done with the day. I just wanted it all to be over and it for it to be the next morning when I could crawl back to Heero’s house. Even if I didn’t expect to get any sleep, even wandering around his home at three in the morning was better than anything that had happened to me so far that day.

          I just hoped to survive that long.

 

End Part 15

 

 

 

  * For those wondering about this, the reason why Duo can’t breathe even though Zechs isn’t squeezing his throat that hard is because of his throat injury. Zechs tore the inside of his throat with the bat, not enough to seriously damage him, but his throat is swollen, so even a light pressure is dangerous



 

Author’s Note: Lots of delays again. I stupidly volunteered my services to help edit someone’s yaoi visual novel (Russian is their first language and they’re making an English translation. I found 270 errors in my first playthrough, haha *cries*), so I’ve been working on that. It brought up something that I wanted to bring up here: I am available for editing services if anyone needs them, whether its games, comics, fanfics, or novels. I’m a bit slow because, again, 50 hours of my week, I’m at work, but I’m otherwise efficient and beyond having been a writer for 15 years of my life, I have an English degree and experience editing professionally (it was what I wanted to do before I realized there’s no money in it).

 

Which brings me to a very important question to all of you loyal readers. A writer that I follow recently started up a patreon for their fanfiction. What is patreon? Well, it is a site where you can donate to various different kinds of artists to pay for them to have the time to work on their craft and they in return will give you goodies. I pledge over a hundred dollars to various artists myself, and I often get artwork and comic pages from them that aren’t available elsewise. Now, I personally have had a problem with fanfiction writers having patreons. I don’t mean that I don’t like giving money to free writers to show my appreciation. I think it’s a great idea. But I find it offensive when fanfiction writers hold their stories hostage (especially ones that are already established and further content was promised) for money. That’s not what this is. It would just be a way to donate money if you like my work. One of the perks is that, with money, I can commission art of these stories, or I can open for suggestions of new stories, pairings, ect after ASOL is done. But if there is little to no interest in such a thing, it’s not worth it to put the work in.

 

 

 

 

 

 


	60. Chapter 8 Part 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Still unable to sleep, Duo struggles to get through school and work. After a bad night terror, he and Heero share a tender moment.

A Stagnation of Love

Chapter 8

Part 16

 

 

 

          “I don’t think that you should go to work tonight,” were, predictably, the very first words out of Heero’s mouth when we met up again after seventh period.

          Parting for the block had been difficult, neither one of us wanting the other to go off on his own, especially after the threatening words Zechs had left me with. But it could have been a lot worse, and it had been earlier in the day. Zechs wasn’t in either of our classes and our classrooms were in the same hallway, so we were at arm’s length if something did happen. I felt too relieved that Heero had skipped his metal shop class with Zechs to really complain about some anxiety watching him walk away from me to his classroom. I know that makes me a massive hypocrite. I had been telling him all day that I needed to face the bully eventually, but when it came to the thought of the two of them together in the shop classroom, filled with tools and sharp implements, it twisted my guts into shreds.

          My literature class was tense for me, and not just because I didn’t like having Heero out of my sight. Relena and Dorothy were in the same class as me and while they didn’t try anything, I acutely felt their presence, the threat that they posed, and trying to keep an eye on them and pay attention in class was so draining, I wanted to just black out. It was almost impossible to focus and the adrenaline rush I had had right after the lunch period had made my tiredness worse. The real icing on the cake was nearly making an ass of myself in front of the entire class.

          My teacher, Mr. Walsh, is one of those that would rather pretend that I don’t exist. I don’t know if it’s because I’m gay or that he believes in my reputation as a punk. I kind of made matters worse in the first week of that class when I made a point about the literature we were reading that contradicted what he was teaching. Normally, I would have shut up and just conceded to his point of view as it wasn’t really important enough for me to care, but I had been having a bad day, as I so often do, and my temper and frustrations had gotten the best of me. We ended up arguing about the text and which passages supported our different views of the subject matter until things had gotten ugly. He had called me a smartass brat, I had accused him of having his head too far up his ass to comprehend anything that he was teaching and thus had been sent to the principal’s office. I had actually deserved that one.

          Now, if Mr. Walsh was like most of my other teachers, he would have branded me an asshole and spent the rest of our time together giving me dirty looks and spitefully shooting down any answer that I tried to give him. However, he is also one of the few teachers that I have that actually gives a shit about his class and what he’s teaching. So instead of writing me off as a trouble maker, and even though he had been pissed that I had called him out and made him look hotheaded and perhaps a bit stupid, I think he also sees a sort of kindred spirit in me. At least more than the other kids in my class that are just there because there was nothing else open that block.

I do more than just read the assignments and pick the easiest answers and I think it makes the class more interesting for him. So while he might hate my attitude, and probably my sexuality as well, I’m usually the one that he calls on to answer a question, especially after one of my classmates gives him a flat, obvious answer. He’ll get frustrated with them and call on me, then nod with whatever answer I give, he’ll even tolerate it if I tell him that he’s wrong, so long as I don’t outright talk back to him. This has gotten me into some… tense situations, especially if Relena was the one that he had called on first. You would think that after all of these years, I would know better than try to be noticed in class, but I can’t help it.

I know I should keep my head down, pretend to be stupid even if it gets me a lesser grade if it means her leaving me the hell alone, but when Walsh says something about the text that I don’t agree with, or he challenges my opinion, there’s something in me that spurs me to open my big mouth. Maybe because literature and writing are the only subjects that I’m any good at, the only ones that I really care about, I have to take that risk. When you’ve been called stupid and useless your entire life, after a while, some part of you becomes desperate to be good at _something_ , to prove to people that you aren’t useless. It’s that part of me that can settle for mediocrity in classes like that and home ec, even if I know it’s just going to get me into trouble.

I didn’t have to worry about it that day at least. I was completely hopeless in class, only barely able to answer the simplest of questions and forgetting basic things like names and settings from the text. I retained enough information to keep my teacher from thinking that I hadn’t read the assignment, but he wasn’t shy in telling me how disappointed he was in me for not paying attention to the material. Honestly, his disappointed expression hurt more than the laughter and jibes from Relena and her friends, behavior that Walsh didn’t even bat an eye at.

I might not deal well with embarrassment, but disappointment is even harder. It’s been my personal nightmare since the time I was four years old, disappointing my parents. After thirteen years, I’ve come to accept that I’m a disappointment to them and there is probably little that I can do to change that, despite the agony that causes in my heart. I’ve since moved on to being terrified of disappointing Heero, which is infinitely more difficult to prevent because I feel like I’m flying blind in this relationship. I never know what to do or how to live up to what he sees in me. On top of that, my parents are stuck with me whether they like me or not, Heero isn’t. But I’ve made some pretty big blunders since we became friends. I’ve made an ass of myself over and over and he still looks at me like I’m something special. He doesn’t even look disappointed when I refuse to tell on Zechs or my father, at least not at me, personally, just at the situation. What is it going to take for him to look down on me? For me to let him down? I don’t want to find it, but it seems inevitable. I’ve let down everyone in my life, even Quatre and Trowa, it’s just a matter of time before Heero gets that.

Normally that kind of thought would send me into a depressive mood for the rest of the day, but I was even too tired for that. I only felt a brief flare of anger when I heard Relena laughing at me, too. I think the well was dry, at least over something so petty, and I didn’t know what to chalk it up to, my exhaustion, my previous blow out, or Heero’s efforts to calm me. Either way, the smoldering anger that I usually feel after being embarrassed fell flat and by the time I walked out of the classroom to meet Heero, I just felt weary and apathetic, like the emotional centers of my brain were beginning to shut down along with logical thought and memory.

My brain did another one of those time lapse things during class, not a full micro sleep, but it made the period feel like I had only been there a couple of minutes instead of forty. If only the rest of the week could feel like that. Even though it felt like I had said goodbye to Heero a minute ago, it was still good to see him waiting for me outside of the classroom, but his insistence that I skip work made me feel irritated. I felt like I had had this very same conversation with him about a dozen times that day and I had quickly gotten sick of it.

“I’m fine,” I said a bit snappishly, unable to keep the note of frustration out of my tone, “It’s not like I’m seriously injured. My wrist may hurt, but I didn’t break it.”

“It’s not your wrist that I’m worried about,” he countered, surprising me, “Duo, _look_ at yourself! You’ve slept what, five hours in the last four days? You’re swaying on your feet, you zone out all the time, and you’re constantly forgetting things! You need to rest. Even if you can’t sleep, you shouldn’t be going to work, you should be relaxing. And you especially shouldn’t be working with dangerous tools and moving heavy shit around! You’re going to hurt yourself, it’s just a matter of time.”

I didn’t need him to point it out to me, I knew that he was right. I could barely focus in school; it was kind of scary to think about someone handing me a nail gun or using a box shredder. I was less worried about hurting myself as I was hurting one of my coworkers, but I couldn’t concede to Heero even if I knew that he was right.

“I’ll ask for lighter work,” was the best negotiation that I could come up with, “But I’m not skipping. I need to work, Heero.”

My words came out as a plea, which I resented but couldn’t stop. Still, I could see the surrender in his eyes and knew that, whether it had been my tone or my stubbornness, I had won the argument. I knew that he was thinking that I meant I couldn’t skip work because I needed the money, but it had nothing to do with that. I had to go to work because I needed the ritual, the schedule and normality of it. I couldn’t deviate or make decisions anymore. I was somewhat aware that my stubbornness might be due to my exhaustion as well, but that didn’t mean that I could break free of it. It was just easier to keep going on a straight path, even if I probably should have listened to my boyfriend.

Another reason, one that I really didn’t want Heero to know, was that I needed the distraction. Not being able to sleep and desperately wanting to was slowly driving me insane. I needed to keep busy so I wouldn’t think about it. Thankfully, my brain the way that it was, so taxed and only able to focus on one thing at a time, it was easy to distract myself. Normally during work, my mind would wander all over the place and I would get lost in whatever thought was depressing me, but I knew that just the tasks of my jobs would be all I could handle.

“Why do you have to be so stubborn?” he sighed in exasperation.

On a normal day, that would have amused me, but I only felt relief as he dropped the subject and we continued on to gym.

‘Thank fucking god,’ I thought to myself as we entered the gymnasium.

It was the last block of the day. If I could just survive the next forty-five minutes, everything would be fine. And I had a pass, so I didn’t need to shower or interact with Zechs at all. I could just sit on the bleachers and get some homework done and be out of there before Zechs even left the locker room. I could have cheered, at least before I remembered that while I had a pass, Heero didn’t. He had to participate in whatever excuse for violence activity Horner had decide on for the day, and even worse, he would have to change and shower in the locker room.

After everything that Zechs had done to me in the last two days after getting me alone… I couldn’t bear to think of what he would do to my best friend if he got the same opportunity. I got a taste of the same panic and terror that Heero had felt when he had left me alone for my computer class, feeling helpless to protect him. I couldn’t even ask him to skip the class because it would make me a huge hypocrite. It made me feel like an ass, knowing that I had made him feel this way. I guess it showed because as I hesitated at the bleachers, unsure of what to do, Heero flashed me a warm smile.

“It’ll be ok,” he promised, “I’ll be careful.”

On a normal day, I would have snapped at him that it didn’t matter how careful he was, this was not something that he could prevent any more successfully than I had. Of course, it wasn’t like he was in any more danger than he usually was, but I just had this bad feeling in my stomach, so certain that something was going to happen to him and it would be my fault. If I hadn’t escaped Zechs yesterday, he wouldn’t be on our scent the way that he was. I was actually incredibly paranoid that he hadn’t tried to kill either of us yet, that all he had done was threaten us. I don’t even think he was that bothered by my biting and stabbing him, I think if he was angry about anything, it was that he hadn’t gotten to mess with me, that Heero had foiled those disgusting plans.

I knew that there was going to be repercussions for all of this and that nothing had happened yet was making me cagey. If I had fur, it would have been bristling. And if I hadn’t punched that damned wall, I could have gone through gym with him, at his side where I could keep an eye on him. Not that I could do anything if Zechs did try to hurt my boyfriend, but that didn’t mean that I wouldn’t have tried. All those reasons that I have for not standing up for myself, all that logic that screams at me that fighting against Zechs is an incredibly stupid and foolish idea… I can’t even hear it when I think about Heero getting hurt. If Heero’s life is in danger and I know that trying to save him is a death sentence, I don’t think that I could ever just stand by and watch it happen, not to save my own sorry ass.

I guess I’ll never know until it happens, but I feel that conviction in my gut. I have no hope in winning in a fight against Zechs, but for Heero, I would die trying. So while I knew that it was stupid and pointless, I cursed myself for damaging my hand for such a stupid, impulsive reason. Not only was I destined to spend the block sitting on the bleachers, I had handicapped myself. If anything happened… I was beyond useless. Sleep deprived, dominant hand and arm injured, leg still swollen and sluggish… a cat would have a better luck in a fight against that prick than me. I had no way to articulate any of this to Heero, so even though his words did nothing to comfort me or give me confidence, I just nodded. I followed him to the locker room door where he abruptly stopped and looked back at me with concern.

“I think you should stay out here,” he said, his tone tight in a mixture of resignation and anxiety as I was sure that he knew exactly what I was going to say.

“No,” I shook my head and felt a little bit dizzy from it, but didn’t care.

I knew what he was saying made sense. Although he was in Zechs’s sights as well, _I_ was the one that he kept going after the worst. If Zechs wanted to try something in the locker room with me there, I would be his most likely target. It would be safer for me in the gymnasium, so putting myself at risk when I had an out was reckless. But that didn’t mean that I was going to listen to him.

“Duo-,” my boyfriend tried to argue.

“ _No_ ,” I said very firmly, shutting him right up.

I don’t usually take that tone with him. I can win an argument by being logical or simply just asking him to stop if it was something that he knew was upsetting me (I am ashamed to admit that I manipulate him with that sometimes). But I didn’t have any logic or arguments this time, all I had was that word, my stubbornness, and that tone. I didn’t care if he was right, I didn’t want to leave him alone. He sighed heavily, but gave in rather easily, having predicted that he wasn’t going to win that one.

That feeling of wrongness, this prickling sensation in my gut that I needed to be cautious, that an anvil was about to fall on my head only grew and grew as we walked into the locker room together. Usually, that feeling is never wrong and I’ve learned to listen to it throughout the years. It’s the kind of feeling that some animals get when a predator is around, even if they don’t know how they know that. It’s a visceral instinct, and it’s always followed by something terrible. One of my father’s rages, a bad prank, some kind of misfortune. Ever since I had gotten it the day of Quatre’s death, walking out to the school’s parking lot, even before I had seen the crowd and what was on that bulletin board, I’ve listened to it and lived by it, even if I never know exactly what the threat is or where it’s going to come from.

          Having that feeling after everything that had happened since the previous day was not shocking to me, any idiot could have told me that Zechs was going to come after me again. No, what plagued me and twisted my guts into shreds of paper was the overwhelming sensation that this feeling wasn’t directed at all towards myself, but towards the boy that I loved. I waited for Heero to change, as tense as a guitar string, positive that a threat was lurking around every corner. Every time someone slammed a locker door shut, I jumped, ready to snap. I dug a pair of scissors out of my book bag and gripped them tightly in my left hand, ready to use them if I needed to, the only weapon that I really had and a piss poor one at that. They were cheap, dollar scissors that could barely cut through construction paper, not shears.

          But nothing happened. Heero quickly changed and we left the locker room, not seeing even a glimpse of Zechs or his friends. But still, I was positive that disaster was headed right for him. Sitting on those bleachers with that feeling coiling and writing in my stomach was an anxiety attack waiting to happen. I couldn’t even try to do my homework and I spent the period staring at Heero and Zechs like a hawk, waiting for that moment to rear its ugly head… for me to do… what exactly? I wasn’t sure, I could only feel the adrenaline pumping through my veins and knew that I was in no shape to help anyone. I was amazed that I was even capable of focusing on anything, that I could still stand after all the energy I had already used up that day.

          The moment never happened. I waited and waited through the block, vibrating with tension and fear and paranoia… and nothing happened. Horner split everyone into teams for volleyball and through some unlucky chance, Heero and Zechs got put into the same team, a perfect recipe for exactly what my instincts were warning me of. But they largely stuck to themselves, Heero in the back right corner and Zechs in the front left. Zechs, always the glory hound, always wanting to be the victor, spiked most of the balls as they came over the net, giving the people in the back row little, if anything to do, and besides some smug, dirty looks, the bully didn’t make a single move towards him.

          You would think that that would have made me relieved, but every time I looked at the two of them, that feeling surged, warning me of… something. But as the bell rang, I just felt foolish. In my current state, how could I possibly trust my own feelings? Of course I was worried about my boyfriend, of course I felt that he was in danger, because he was, but I was jumping at shadows, letting my paranoia get the best of me. I followed him into the locker room again, but no one bothered either of us as he showered and dressed. We even managed to run (literally) out of the school doors and crossed the parking lot without incident. I couldn’t believe it. That instinct notwithstanding, something should have happened. After yesterday, Zechs should have done a hell of a lot more than lick me and threaten me! I hated this kind of stupid waiting game. It was just like dealing with my father, knowing he was drunk or pissed and sooner or later, he was going to take it out on me, but I would never know when.

          Even when we hit Main Street, that feeling didn’t leave me. It should have, we were out of danger until another day, but it lingered like queasiness after a bite of rotten meat. It hasn’t left me since then. I can’t chalk it up to my sleep deprivation anymore, not since my insomnia finally broke, all I could think is that after what Zechs pulled, it’s just made me paranoid. It’s not exactly a welcoming feeling, but I don’t know how to stop it and it isn’t something that I want to talk to Heero about. He would either tell me that everything is ok, to not worry about him, or it would make him paranoid, too. If I was just being nuts and overly cautious, which is exactly what I think this is, there was no reason to freak him out.

          “Want to take a walk on the beach before work?” Heero asked me with that warm smile of his that made me forget about my anxiety for a moment, “I think some fresh air would do us some good.”

          I knew that he really meant that it would do _me_ some good, but I still smiled back at him. A walk with him was exactly what I needed.

          It was slightly warmer out than it had been lately, but it was still rather cool and we had most of the beach to ourselves. I cherished it, knowing that as soon as the weather would start to get warmer around late May, everyone in town would be suffering from some serious spring fever and moments like these would be a rare thing. The tide was high, the waves crashing against the getty that I always like to walk on, the place where Heero had disturbed my solitude so many times before we had become friends. Seeing it then as we walked side by side, our hands almost touching but not quite, and remembering all those moments together, I flushed. I had resented him so much back then just for breathing, and I had almost outright hated him for intruding on my personal space, for causing me such pain. I had thought him cruel, not knowing what he was doing to me, and just wanting him to leave me alone.

So much had changed since then, so many things that I would have thought as impossible. Being friends with Heero, sharing so much with him, being together with him… I hadn’t even been able to dream such things, let alone think they would happen to me. Back then, those memories were bitter things, bitter and sad and lonely, moments when he had shown me a tiny glimpse of who he really was, the kind soul buried under layers of lies, and I had loathed him for it. Now those memories are pleasant, those glimpses of the boy that I had fallen in love with, and knowing what I know now, it’s hard to believe that I hadn’t realized that there was something more in his actions, that some part of him had been reaching out to me while the rest of him had been too scared to let those masks slip an inch more.

We didn’t speak as we walked. We didn’t need to. As much as I hate this town, there will always be certain things, certain places and senses that I unconsciously label ‘home’, the sorts of things your heart cries to when you return to your hometown, things that the child inside of you can never let go of. For me, it’s the smells of the library, the sight of the warm red of its bricks in the sun, a glimpse of light through the trees of the park. But more than either of those things, the one thing that will always bring this place and all my memories of it from the moment I was an infant to mind is the smell of the ocean, that bitter smell of sea spray and seaweed and dying crustaceans when the tide is low, the crying of a sea gull and the feeling of cool sand and rocks under my shoes.

Nausten’s beach is not a beautiful place. It’s too cold and harsh here for too many months for it to be some prime vacation spot and it has little to no relation to the warm, tropical beaches that so many of my classmates would be escaping to in the following week. The sand is grey, dark and rocky, the water fierce and black, even close to shore. Even when the sun is shining bright and it gets hot in the later summer months, it never looks especially inviting. But this beach is home to me. That water, salty and icy cold, even in the summer, runs through my veins more than anything else in this town, anything from my childhood. It’s one of the few places where I feel at peace, like nothing in the world can touch me, even when I’m feeling sad, and being able to share that with the one person in my world that I care the most about is the closest I’ve come to contentment.

“Do you mind if I walk with you to work?” my boyfriend asked me a bit shyly as our time ran out before I needed to get going.

I wondered at that, if he was afraid for me and didn’t want to let me out of his sight, or if he could sense my sadness that our walk was over and wanted to spend more time with me. I hesitated, my overly taxed brain unsure of how to handle such a request. I almost immediately answered that it was fine before I remembered I was going to my _job_ , a job that I sorely needed when I graduated. If Leneski thought, for even a second, that Heero and I were together, I had no doubt he would retract his offer to hire me on full time. Or he would just flat out fire me.

I don’t even know how my coworkers and boss haven’t figured it out already. Several of them have kids that go to our school and it seemed unlikely that they hadn’t heard about it by now, but I hadn’t gotten so much as a dirty look at work. I couldn’t risk them finding out, but telling Heero that made me feel like the biggest asshole in the entire world. It felt like I was choosing a job over him.

          “I’ll be discrete,” Heero promised, “Around your coworkers, we’re just friends.”

          That only made me feel like a bigger piece of shit. He was willing to hide our relationship for me, after all he had gone through to not hide our relationship at school, and I couldn’t even make that sacrifice for him.

          “I’m not ashamed of you,” I tried to explain.

          “I understand,” he smiled at me, “and I know that you aren’t.”

          “But you said that you didn’t want to hide this,” I protested, “I can’t ask you-,”

          “You aren’t asking me,” he cut me off and gave me a brief squeeze of my hand, “And this is different, Duo. I know that you love me and I know you aren’t ashamed. This is about your livelihood and I won’t make things harder for you. I won’t put your job in jeopardy, even if I think you shouldn’t _have_ to worry about your job because of who you are.”

          I swallowed roughly. His assurances didn’t make me feel that much better. I felt inadequate again. He had sacrificed so much for this relationship, had dealt with all of my crap, and didn’t even blame me for being so awkward and distant. I felt like I never did anything for him, never took any risks or showed him how much I loved him. He had held me as I cried, took beatings for our relationship, taught me how to control my anger and has never judged me for my many failings, yet I still struggled in being… normal for him. And now, even though he didn’t like it and thought it was wrong, he was going to help hide my sexuality from my coworkers. How can one person be so… so compassionate and perfect? And why can I never show him just an ounce of the same care that he shows me instinctually? Why am I so incapable, so bumbling?

          ‘Make the effort,’ some voice in my head hissed hatefully at me, ‘Stop being so scared and worried all the time and do something about it. If you hate failing him, then stop doing it! Even if you have to work at it, harder than anything else you’ve ever worked at, Heero is worth it!’

          It would take me days to realize that the voice had been my own, not some alien consciousness or something buried deep inside of myself, but _me_ , peering out through the tired fog wrapped around my brain, screaming out at myself with bitter anger and hatred at my own failings. I didn’t so much listen to that voice as I did just react to it, like everything else that was happening around me. I looked around to make sure that no one was near us and, out of desperation and determination, I reached out and grabbed Heero’s arm, stopping our slow gait. He immediately stopped and glanced at me with concern.

          “What’s wrong?” he asked.

          My heart pounded in my chest like a jackhammer, my anxiety surging like the waves and I could hear some voice in my head screaming, but it was faint and wordless.

          ‘I’m ready for this,’ I thought to myself, like a mantra or maybe a promise.

          After all this time, I was ready and it was time for me to stop holding back out of fear… right? Wasn’t I?

I slid my hand up Heero’s arm and leaned in close to him, the sight of his tanned face blushing and his blue eyes widening giving me courage and, oddly enough, this bold feeling that was almost like triumph or smugness, knowing that it was my proximity that had gotten that reaction from him. It blows me away sometimes just knowing what I can do to him. I may not understand why, but I can’t deny the truth of it.

          Feeling bold, if unsure and anxious, I pressed my lips to Heero and kissed him. It wasn’t just a peck on the lips, either. I kissed him deeply and soundly, the way that he would sometimes kiss me that never fails to steal my breath away. I could feel his eyes fluttering closed, his eye lashes brushing against my skin and he made a surprised, but pleased noise at how forward I was being. I had never done anything like this before, had never been the one to initiate this kind of intimacy. It felt… strange. Terrifying. I didn’t know what I was doing and some part of me worried that I wasn’t good enough, that I was going to fuck it up like everything else.

But it was also wonderful. This kiss… _I_ had done that. Those pleased noises were for me. I was the one in control for once, the one that wanted this instead of just being willing to accept it. It was overwhelming and incredible and every second that passed feeling those lips against mine, tasting his mouth, the more confident I felt until I could almost call it pride. When we parted, we were both out of breath and Heero’s eyes were bright with happiness. Knowing that I had done that, that I had made him happy, that I had done _something_ in this relationship, something _normal_ was like a blow to the gut, but a good one for once.

“Wow,” he murmured and lifted up a hand to lightly touch his lips.

His praise made me turn bright red, but I wasn’t ashamed of what I had done. Still a bit unsure of myself, but beyond my exhaustion, beyond my anxiety, I was proud of myself. I had done something that I had been scared of, something that I had thought was for someone other than me, something that I never would have dreamed of doing, but now that I had, I didn’t regret it. I felt like I had met some barrier and had defiantly crashed right through it. It had taken me awhile, and I don’t know if I would have been able to if I hadn’t been half out of my mind with tiredness or if I would have let my doubts swallow me up again, but I had done it.

“I just…” I tucked an errant strand of hair that had gotten loose from my braid in the wind behind my ear with a slightly trembling hand, “I wanted to thank you for everything… for helping me yesterday and calming me down today…”

“You don’t need…” he started to say, but strangled his words and simply smiled at me, obvious thinking what he had been about to say was not adequate or proper for what had just passed between us, “You’re welcome, Duo.”

He reached out and found another rebellious, reddish bit of hair to secure behind my ear.

“You’re very welcome,” he murmured.

The two of us, blushing like a couple of idiots, walked back off the beach and towards my side of town. Just before we left the beach, I could have sworn I heard him say ‘thank you’ under his breath, but with the wind whipping around us, I’ll never know. But I choose to think that he really had said it and I had to bite my lip to keep a goofy smile from forming. He walked me all the way to the shop, but looked hesitant when I headed for the door. For a moment, I thought he was going to beg me not to go again, but he shot me a crooked smile that was more of a shield than anything genuine.

“Don’t overdo it, alright?” his tone was light, but I could see the worry in his eyes.

I nodded, the most of a promise that I could give him. We said goodbye to each other and I headed inside. I went through my daily, pre-work rituals, my tired mind falling back on familiar things that required no thought as I tried to pretend that my heart still wasn’t beating maybe a tiny bit too fast from that kiss. I changed into my work uniform in the bathroom and stashed my things in my locker. While I was in the bathroom, I snuck a look at my hand again and found that the bleeding had stopped, but the swelling hadn’t gone down much. There were still a few minutes before I needed to clock in, so I took the time to pilfer some more bandages from the first aid kit in the break room and changed the wrappings. If I could just get some work gloves on before anyone saw it, no one would even know-

“What the hell did you do to your hand?” Solo’s gruff voice, so close to me as I was just finishing securing the bandages over the sink, almost made me flinch.

I was so out of it, I hadn’t even heard him walk into the break room, which was pretty bad because he’s not exactly light on his feet, especially with the heavy work boots that he wears.

“I hit a wall,” and of course the first words out of my mouth weren’t a lie or even a brush off, but the stupid truth.

I didn’t even have the time to be mortified by my slip up. Solo snorted, obviously neither impressed or concerned.

“You should probably try not doing that next time,” he quipped and moved past me to dump the remains of his coffee down the sink.

I instantly felt relieved. That’s why I like Solo, he never fusses or pries, nor is he unafraid to tell me that I’m an idiot when I deserve it, but he never makes a big deal out of anything. It makes it easy to talk to him and tell him things that might bother most people.

“Yeah,” I shot back dryly, “I’ll keep that in mind the next time I try to punch a hard, immovable object.”

I turned away and a bout of dizziness immediately struck me, making me sway on my feet. I grabbed at my head, my stomach churning unpleasantly as my brain suddenly forgot which way was up. It only lasted a second, but long enough for Solo to suddenly notice my swaying and quirk an eyebrow at me. I flushed, feeling like a moron, and righted myself, trying to play it off as nothing, although I’m sure that he wasn’t convinced.

Work was… decidedly not fun. My first shift wasn’t too bad, but every, tiny task had become about a thousand times more difficult and complicated. Thankfully I was not responsible for loading our equipment into the van that day or I might have gotten fired. I forgot all about telling Heero that I would take on lighter work, not consciously, but the path of least resistance was just so much easier. I know how that sounds. Doing work that I shouldn’t have been doing was easier than just asking for desk work? But that’s the truth. I think Solo figured out that something was seriously wrong with me pretty quickly. He kept shooting me these weird, indecipherable glances and shaking his head at me. I don’t think anyone else caught on, though, thankfully. Most importantly, Leneski didn’t find out that he was sending me out on construction jobs with not even ten hours of sleep under my belt for the week.

Our project for the day was located in north Nausten, installing a new pool before spring properly hit. I don’t have the right permits and training to do any of the pool construction, but now that the pool was practically finished, it was time to put up the fence around it to keep the family’s three-year-old daughter out of it, and probably the neighboring wildlife as well. On a normal day, putting up a fence was just another day at that job. I had done it a hundred times. That day, all I could do to function was follow what everyone else was doing, not thinking, not taxing myself.

I went to grab a hammer, just like the other guys on my crew, to start hammering in the posts, but Solo intercepted me. With a wry look, he plucked the hammer right out of my hands and replaced it with a paint brush. I kind of stared at it for a moment like it was some alien tool that I had never seen in my life or had any idea what it did. Solo was probably sure that I was going to put up a fight or think he was babying me, but I just accepted my newly appointed task and joined the guys that were rain proofing the parts of the fence that had already been put up the day before. Usually that would wait until the whole thing was up, but it was going to rain the next day and Leneski wanted it rain proofed before then, just in case. I didn’t even really think about what I was doing, let alone be insulted by Solo appointing me to a less physical task, I just did it. That was probably out of character enough of me for him to feel that he had made the right choice.

It was probably for the best. Although the day was a bit cloudy, I spent the first two hours of my shift with the sun in my fucking eyes and that headache that I had been valiantly trying to fight off since yesterday exploded in my skull. The pain left me feeling dizzy and sick to my stomach, doing any kind of manual labor, even just painting the posts became pure hell. When we left the site to go back to the shop for our lunch break, I could have cried with relief. By the time we got there, my headache was a jack hammer and my injured hand was throbbing in agony. In retrospect, I probably should have used my left hand to hold the brush, but it had been mostly instinctual.

I made a beeline right to the break room with a couple of the other guys, Solo included, while the rest got their things and headed out to places to eat, but while my coworkers went to the refrigerator and microwave, my destination was the first aid kit. I dug out a bottle of ibuprofen and tried to dig out a couple, but struggled with the cap. Trying to grip anything was making my hand shake and my fingers didn’t want to cooperate with me anymore. I felt like my body was beginning to shut down on me, piece by piece. First my brain, now my hands. I fussed with the cap in pure frustration for a couple of minutes, and I might have devolved into senseless, childish tears at how incapable I was if the bottle hadn’t been plucked from my hands.

Solo unscrewed the cap on the bottle and dumped two pills into my hand, shaking his head at me in amusement as I popped them into my mouth. I was so tired and in so much pain that I didn’t even feel embarrassed anymore. My most important task completed, I went to my locker, got my things, and shuffled like a zombie back to the break room, sitting down at the same table that Solo was at. It took the entire act of sitting down and getting the remains of my lunch out of its bag before I realized that I didn’t want any of it. The mere thought of getting up, walking to the microwave, and heating up the soup exhausted me and the idea that I was going to put something into my stomach made me feel sicker. Even the remaining roll might as well have been a ball of concrete or covered in mold for as much I wanted to eat it.

“Ain’tcha gunna eat that?” Solo asked me through a bite of tuna sandwich.

The smell of the tuna almost had me gagging and I wrapped my arms around my middle, wincing at the churning of my stomach as my body warred between being repulsed at the mere idea of eating and knowing that it needed food.

“Not hungry,” I murmured.

It was probably stupid, as tired as I was, as much as I was struggling to do even the smallest things with what little energy I had, I should be trying to eat _something._ And I had promised Heero that I would… but I found that I just couldn’t force myself to do it. Solo put his sandwich down and leaned forward, examining me with an intense stare.

“You look like garbage,” my coworker suddenly proclaimed.

I scowled at him. I knew how I looked, I didn’t need anyone telling me that.

“No, really,” he insisted, “You sick or something? You look like you have the flu.”

“Just haven’t been sleeping,” I muttered.

But I frowned at his suggestion. I _did_ feel lousy, but it was hard to know if all of it was from a lack of sleep or if I was getting something. It’s not like the two things aren’t linked. Sleep deprivation lowers your immune system and I often get actually sick when I haven’t slept for a while. Yet another thing for me to worry about. Shooting me a look that was half amused and half exasperated, Solo gathered up my food and walked to the microwave. I watched with a dead-eyed, unthinking stare as he heated up the soup until it was steaming. I assumed he was going to have it for himself, which I didn’t mind, but he placed the thermos in front of me and thrust a spoon at me. With more automatic instinct than actual, intelligent thought, I took it.

I took a spoonful of soup, still not thinking about what I was doing, my brain making me do things because it knew what it was supposed to do in this situation. I ate because food was in front of me and there was a utensil in my hand, not because I wanted the food or even because I knew that I needed to eat. I didn’t even taste the soup as I ate it, burning my mouth and not caring. I didn’t even realize that Solo was tearing up the roll into manageable chunks and putting them in front of me to grab until I was done eating, just mindlessly dunking them in the soup and putting them in my mouth. When I was done, I snapped out of my stupor long enough for what had just happened to dawn on me.

“Did… did you just feed me?” I gawked at him.

“Someone had to,” he said cheekily, grabbing the thermos and going to rinse it out in the sink, “since you’re obviously too hopeless to do it. I don’t exactly relish being the mature one around here, you know.”

I flushed darkly, finally able to feel embarrassed. His joking attitude took some of the sting out of it, but not all. It’s true that Solo tends to be more reckless and… well, not immature, but if he had his way, he would have fast food and beer for every meal and would often stay up too late watching porn or boxing. I was usually the one doing stuff for him, whether it was bringing in food that I knew he would like or making him coffee and giving him painkillers when he would show up to work too hungover to be of any use to anyone. He likes to joke that I’m more of an adult at seventeen than he is in his late twenties. I guess our relationship is kind of odd.

I mumbled a thank you to him and he ruffled my hair. It was more an attempt to muss my hair, something that a big brother would do, I guess, and that’s pretty close to how he treats me after having worked together for so long, but it reminded me of Justin and for a moment, I ached for him, for his intense, but patient and caring eyes and his gentle, but commanding presence. Something in me cried in wishing that I was home with Heero and his family, some childish part of me thinking that they would make things better and hating myself that I had gone to work that day. It passed quickly, but the wave of depression that it left behind worried me.

I somehow managed to get through the rest of my shift without making more of an ass of myself, but the food that I had eaten sat like a lump of concrete in my stomach and made me feel queasy and heavy, although maybe that was a mix of my lack of appetite and the headache. The pills had helped a little, but not much, especially when we went back to the site. I didn’t feel much relief when my shift was over, either. Although I would get to be inside and away from the glaring sounds of traffic and the rapidly cooling wind, I had another, more laborious shift to get through and the early morning hours when I could finally go home felt eons away from me.

As I grabbed my things from my locker and left the shop to begin the walk to the factory, I wished that Heero was there to walk me like he had earlier. It was a stupid thought. I had spent more time with him and his family than I had with my own that entire week and I would be seeing him again in a few hours, but I suddenly felt horribly alone and ached to see him. He would smile at me and that would be all that I needed to feel better again. No matter what desolate thoughts I was having, no matter the pain that I was in, Heero can always break through all of it. Just _thinking_ about him, at the same time that it made me feel lonely for him, I felt less tired, less incapable of taking another step.

I closed my eyes, just like he had told me to do, and felt his hand on my chest, warm and solid, more real than the wind against my face or the sound of cars driving past me. That warmth, even if it existed only in my head, seeped through my skin and eased some chill that I hadn’t even realized was there. In my head, I heard him telling me to breathe in and out and did so, feeling myself start to calm, almost slipping into that nothing place that he had shown me that afternoon where things like my rage and my loneliness didn’t exist, only the feeling of him and my breathing did.

“Please tell me you’re going home,” Solo’s deep, drawling voice snapped me out of my trance and I opened my eyes.

          He was standing right next to me at the bus stop that I had apparently been standing at. I had no clue when I had gotten there because I didn’t remember where I had been when I had closed my eyes and I didn’t know how long ago my coworker had joined me, how long he had been standing there watching me swaying on my feet with my eyes closed like a lunatic.

          “What?” I asked him, completely confused, “Why would I go home?”

          For a moment, I felt a spark of paranoid fear that I was missing time, that this wasn’t after my first shift, but after my second, that it was in the early morning hours and I was _supposed_ to be going home. I wasn’t so far gone yet that that didn’t worry me at least, that I could miss that large of a chunk of time. But a glance at the watch Solo wore on his left wrist informed me that it was still night time, not morning, and I was right in thinking that I had been walking to the factory. Solo snorted derisively.

          “Well, for one, your hand is trashed,” he eyed the traitorous appendage, still heavily bandaged and swollen, “I was watching you paint, you know. You were shakin’ like a damned leaf at the end, there. You really think that you can shift cargo like that?”

          “Doesn’t hurt,” I mumbled out a lie, “I use my arms more anyway.”

          I was really too tired to have any kind of argument with him about this, so I was a bit proud that I could even come up with that. Of course, I didn’t tell him that I had injured my right arm as well and it would be a miracle if I could handle the weight. Remembering that, I doubted my decision to go to work. Heero had clearly thought that it was a bad idea and now Solo was telling me to stay home, too. Was I just being stubborn and selfish, being a liability to my coworkers by coming in to work injured?

          “Alright, then how about the fact that you can’t even stand still without looking like you’re going to fall over?” Solo shot back, “You look like you’re damned sleepwalking and you keep zoning out every five seconds. You’re going to get yourself hurt even worse!”

          I was too far gone to be concerned about that. Even if I had had a full week’s worth of sleep under my belt, I probably wouldn’t have been too concerned about further injuring myself, I just didn’t want to be a burden.

          “I can handle it,” I murmured stubbornly, knowing somewhere deep down that I was being an ass, but unable to stop myself.

          Solo opened his mouth to argue some more, and he probably would have succeeded where Heero had failed, but then the bus pulled up. He sighed heavily.

          “Do you have bus fare?” he asked me and I knew that he was dropping the argument for now.

          I stuck my hands in my pockets, ignoring the throbbing pain from my right, and fished around for spare change. When I found none at all, I blushed red hot. What the hell would I have done if Solo hadn’t decided to take the bus, something that he almost never did (1), tried to get on with no money? And why had I walked to the bus stop in the first place? Why hadn’t I just walked to the factory since it wasn’t all that long of a walk and I almost never take the bus there from the shop unless it’s snowing or raining? What the hell had I been thinking? The answer, of course, was that I hadn’t been, but it wasn’t like I could tell Solo that. If I just kept walking like I had never intended to go on the bus in the first place, I would look like an idiot. Of course, with no fare, I looked even worse than that.

          “No,” I admitted in embarrassment and hated how pathetic I sounded.

          He sighed again and pushed me forward toward the bus. Before I could protest that I didn’t have the money and I didn’t _need_ to use the damned bus, I was stumbling up the steps and Solo was paying for the both of us. He kept pushing me forward like I was as an inanimate object in his path until he sat down in one of the seats, grabbing the back of my jacket as I walked past him and pulled me down to sit next to him. We spent the very short bus trip in silence, him still looking exasperated and me too embarrassed by this whole thing to want to make myself look like a bigger idiot by trying to insist that I wasn’t one, either by lying that I had just lost my fare or telling the truth that I hadn’t wanted to get on the damned bus in the first place.

          Work was an absolute nightmare. It started out relatively alright. I clocked in on time and managed to get some work gloves on my hands before anyone could see that my right hand was wrapped. I found out that the cargo we were working with was rather light, which was a huge relief to me. If we had been working with cinder blocks again, it would have been the end of me. The downside was that there were a lot of crates to move and Lorathe wanted all of it done by the time our shift ended, including cataloguing, so it was going to be a rush job. I managed the first hour with few problems. Unlike my other job, there is little deviation from what we do. Move pallet from area A to area B, unload boxes, move product from area B to area C, dispose of boxes and crates, fill out some paperwork, rinse and repeat. It’s tedious and depending on what is being shipped, can be rather straining, but it takes zero mental effort at all, which was exactly what I needed that day.

          I moved slower than I would have, but there was nothing that I could really forget. I couldn’t put the crates in the wrong area because I was just adding to the stack. All I had to do was follow what my coworkers were doing. Easy. At least at first. Then my body started to betray me. It started with my hand and arm, predictably. After the first couple of boxes, they began to ache, then throb, then scream in pain at me. I worked through it, ignoring the agony like it was some whiny child trying to get my attention. I probably should have asked Lorathe for office work at that point, if not at the very beginning, but my exhaustion was making me not care about anything, even serious pain. It seemed so minor compared to the strain of just _asking_ for a deviation in my routine. In my state, hurting myself was easier than talking to anyone, so I kept working. Even when something in the air, maybe sawdust or the chill in the unloading zone, had me coughing on and off.

          Then I started to feel sick. It was bound to happen. With constantly moving back and forth, I started to feel dizzy, then sick to my stomach. Like a responsible, mature person, I completely ignored all the warning signs that my body was giving me that I was overdoing it, not really seeing much of an alternative. The end of my work day, and the time when I could _finally_ go home to see Heero, seemed forever away from me, like I was caught in this unending loop of misery.

          I could barely believe it when our dinner break came, so certain that time wasn’t moving _at all_. Aching and sore, I followed the line of my coworkers off the floor and headed towards the break room. The room, catering to a larger work force than Leneski’s crew, was larger and better stocked. There were a couple pots of coffee already brewing, several long tables that looked almost exactly like the ones in the school cafeteria, a row of microwaves, three refrigerators instead of one, and a slew of vending machines. However, almost no one that I worked with used the place except for if they wanted to grab a coffee right before their shift or towards the end of it. Most of the guys would head out to one of the diners nearby for an actual meal or eat what they had packed out back so they could smoke at the same time.

          Since I never have the money to go out to eat, even at the dives on that side of town, and I don’t find clustering around the poorly lit exterior of the building smelling cigarette smoke that reminds me a bit too much of Pat enjoyable, I spend most of my breaks in that room. Usually I’ll save half of my dinner or use my spare change to get a granola bar out of one of the vending machines, kind of a pathetic snack, but better than a bag of chips for keeping me going through the rest of my shift, and spend my time eating and reading a book.

However, I had eaten what was left of my lunch, hadn’t packed anything for dinner, and had no money. On top of that, I was so tired and drained that even reading or trying to do my homework didn’t appeal to me. I didn’t have much left of it, but I knew that I should do it before I became too tired to do anything at all, a state that I was quickly approaching, if I hadn’t already. Left with nothing else to do during my break, I found an empty table to sit down at, folded my arms on the flat surface, and let my head fall on them, burying my face against the soft material of my shirt. I would have groaned if it wouldn’t have made me look like a lunatic in front of the couple of other guys in there. My right arm, hand, and head were doing plenty of groaning for me anyway.

“Well, don’t you look energetic,” I heard Solo’s teasing voice and felt the table shift slightly as he sat down and put his dinner down.

It was in me to keep my head down and just flip him off. He would have gotten a kick out of that. Instead, I raised my head and glared at him blearily. He took one good look at me and shook his head.

“I’ve seen days old road kill with more life in it than you,” he quipped.

I did flip him off then and predictably, he chuckled.

“You’re an idiot, you know that?” he accused and I didn’t even know what he was referring to anymore, but I figured that he was probably right, whatever it was.

He pulled a beer, some kind of sandwich that looked like he had bought it from a convenience store, a bag of chips, and what looked like a snack cake, all probably purchased from the same place, out of the brown paper bag he had put on the table. He opened the beer and I couldn’t help wrinkling my nose at the telltale smell of it, but I didn’t say anything. My issue with alcohol was my own and I wasn’t about to lecture Solo about him drinking it, or anyone else for that matter, if they wanted to, even if he shouldn’t be doing it at work. It reminded me too much of my father getting fired, probably for something similar.

But Solo wasn’t my dad. Far from it, and even in my sleep deprived state, I couldn’t compare them. For one, I had never seen him drunk. Solo might be a bit rough around the edges, might swear and drink and freely admit to both doing and selling pot and other recreational drugs, but he isn’t irresponsible. He never comes to work stoned or drunk, and he only ever has the one beer during break time. Sometimes he doesn’t even finish the whole thing. My dad might not do half of the shit that Solo does, but ‘responsible’ with his vices is one thing that I can never say about him. Solo didn’t even really need to worry about our boss finding out about the beer. Lorathe would never lower himself to mingling with the workforce beyond telling them that they were useless or too slow. He always took his breaks either off the premises or in his office.

“Why don’t you take a nap?” my coworker suggested after taking a bite from his sandwich.

Ham, egg, and cheese, I decided from the look and smell of the thing. My dad would buy the wrapped sandwiches from the Quick-Mart down the street from us sometimes. I’d taken a bite of one once, but they were so cheap and bland that I would only eat one if there was no other alternative.

“I can wake you up when break’s over,” Solo urged.

“Can’t sleep,” I said automatically, so used to it by then.

“Insomnia?” he asked, suddenly frowning with concern that I was just as used to seeing by then as having to insist to people that I couldn’t sleep.

I nodded, not elaborating on that. That’s the great thing about insomnia. Tell someone that you’re depressed or you have a migraine or your stomach hurts and they’ll want to know _why,_ why you’re sad, why your head hurts, what did you eat. But tell someone that you have chronic insomnia, they just assume that it’s some random thing, like having the flu. I wouldn’t know how to answer that question anyway. ‘Because I’m scared.’ ‘Because I have something in my head, like a tumor. Only it isn’t cancer, it’s memories.’ Because of probably a thousand reasons that no one would understand anyway, between my father, Quatre, my nightmares, my anxiety, and who the fuck even knows what else that adds up to weeks like this: restlessness and sleepless torture, not because of a disease, but because of something that only exists in my head.

“How long?” was Solo’s inevitable second question.

It was insomnia’s version of the why question, what everyone asks when you tell them that you haven’t been able to sleep. ‘How long.’ It was always ‘how long have you had insomnia’ or ‘how long has it been since you’ve slept?’ I somehow knew that Solo was asking the latter.

I paused for a moment, wracking my brain for the right answer, but it wouldn’t come. I couldn’t even remember what day this was, let alone when this bout had started, what day I had gotten more than just a couple hours of sleep.

“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully

If Heero had been the one to hear that, he would have freaked out, insisted that I go to the doctor or take a sleeping pill, groped at some cure or way to help me. Solo’s frown just deepened and he looked like he wanted to say something to me about it, but he just resumed eating. It was just as well, because hell if I knew what I would say to any of it. I laid my head back down and closed my eyes, but it was futile. I couldn’t sleep in my own bed or even in the guest room at Heero’s house, I sure as hell wasn’t going to be able to nap at work in the brightly lit break room. What seemed like only seconds later, Solo’s cell phone alarm went off, shooting piercing, jagged spikes of pain through my skull and I startled.

“Sorry,” he apologized, fumbling with his phone to turn it off.

I had hoped that the second half of my shift would go smoother. I had given my body a short break, I thought, so maybe I would have an easier time with the manual labor. No such luck. The rest of my shift was pure hell, making the first half seem like a pleasant memory. All the rest had done was tighten up all of the aching muscles in my back and shoulders and my hand and arm were worse instead of better. I had to compensate using my left hand for all of the heavy lifting and pulled a bunch of muscles in my left shoulder and side of my back within the hour.

I dropped a bunch of things, ran into people, fucked up paper work, and brought a palette to the wrong location. Thankfully nothing we were moving was fragile enough that I broke it, but Lorathe was fuming at my many mistakes. He didn’t care that it was a rare thing for me, that I looked like shit, or that nothing that I fucked up couldn’t be un-fucked up. He spent the remainder of the shift screaming at me, calling me a punk, a moron, a useless piece of garbage and various other things, making my headache and overall stress levels soar. I knew that it must be bad because, not just Solo, but a few of my other coworkers looked like they wanted to say something to Lorathe about the verbal abuse, but I knew that none of them would. Keeping their jobs was more important than sticking up for me, and most of them didn’t really like me to begin with, and I didn’t blame them for either of those things.

I didn’t tell him to knock it off, either. For one, I need this job, too. Two, I was just a punk teenager. It wouldn’t make him stop, he would just get more abusive. And three, he wasn’t dishing out anything that I don’t get at home, five times worse. So while it bothered me and made me feel like the piece of garbage he was accusing me of, not just for messing things up, but for being, once again, too much of a coward to stand up for myself, I just let it all roll off of me. And if some of it stuck, it was nothing less than I deserved anyway.

I should have been relieved when Lorathe finally got fed up with me and sent me home an early. I should have felt like crying with joy that I could finally leave and see Heero, but I just felt like a loser and a failure. I walked out of there and down the street towards the north end of Nausten like a rock. Every muscle in my body was sore, stiff, and heavy like large shards of boulder. My head pounded like a sledgehammer on cement, my right hand basically useless in even carrying my things so I had to use the left one which was also getting sore. The hematomas in my leg and arm felt like they were swelling, pushing against my skin like hot, ripe watermelons. And I was so exhausted and so emotionally vulnerable from that exhaustion and everything that had happened to me that day that I could have been hit by a truck or fallen down and cried and I just would not have cared anymore.

Sleep became a mantra in my brain. Sleep, I’m going home and I am going to sleep. But then I remembered that it probably wasn’t going to happen. I wasn’t going home to a bed and wonderful oblivion. I was going to go to Heero’s house, roll around in bed for hours, and then get up to pace around the quiet, dark house until the sun came up and I would have to repeat this endless torture again and again and again. For how long? When would my mind let me rest? How long before I broke? Went insane? At that thought, not the going mad thing, but just that sleep would elude me again, that this day that had been going on for almost a week, was not going to end, finally made me cry a little. I felt so incredibly frustrated, wanting to bash my wounded hand into more solid objects, and I just didn’t have the mindset to stop and try Heero’s little trick.

It was cold and dark out that night, clouds gathering above that blocked out both the moon and the stars, and the wind was picking up, but I didn’t even feel the cold. I felt numb all over, stiff and sore and numb. It could have rained and I wouldn’t have noticed. I just made my way in the dark and even if I had had money on me, I wouldn’t have thought to take the bus. The Yuy home had its exterior lights on, like a beacon to the weary traveler that I was and if I had seen either of Heero’s parents then, I might have hugged them and cried again, but I was done with that, at least at that moment. I had had my mini freak out on my way over and the tap of my feelings were closed. I didn’t have the energy to feel anything.

All I wanted to do was take a nice, long, hot shower, finish the tiny bit of homework that I had left, try to sleep or maybe read or something. I doubt I was going to be able to read, not coherently, but just looking at the words would be comforting. Or I could turn on the television in the game room and watch something on mute, anything to make time pass more quickly. What else could I do? That was the really painful thing, time. Getting through this insomnia and not being able to do anything with that endless lapse of time because I was too tired to do more than stare at nothing. I couldn’t even go running because of my leg or listen to my music because of my headache or read because my mind was just gone.

Kanuck was sitting by the door as I entered, somehow knowing when I was coming home. Or maybe he had just camped out there on the possibility of it or had seen me coming up the walk from one of the windows. Hell if I know how dogs think. He was excited to see me, his tail wagging energetically and I envied his enthusiasm. At least he didn’t bark and wake anyone up, just gave a soft, happy ‘woof’, barely more than an exhalation of breath.

“Hi, boy,” I murmured and trailed my bandaged hand through my fur as I walked by.

He trailed after me as I turned the outside lights off (more muscle memory by now than actual, intelligent thought) and trudged my way upstairs. It felt like I was walking up a mountain with iron weights chained to my ankles and back instead of a single flight of stairs. I had every intention of just going into the guest room and preparing to take a shower, but Kanuck trotted ahead of me and into Heero’s room. Heero’s room which was wide open. He never leaves his door open when he’s sleeping. What was more, the light was on inside. Perplexed, and honestly, more than a little bit concerned, I walked towards that light. I don’t know what I thought was going on in those wee hours of the morning. My paranoia screamed at me that something was obviously wrong, there was absolutely no reason for him to be up at one in the morning unless there was.

But when I peaked in the room, I saw Heero just sitting at his desk, typing and focused on whatever he was doing. I stood there for a moment, just taking in the vision of him, like some pleasant mirage or dream. I felt like I hadn’t seen him in days, not just hours and I could have stood there all morning, just taking in the straight, perfect posture of his back, his tussled dark hair and long fingers as they moved across the keyboard of his laptop. Despite the early hour, he looked wide awake and refreshed, but still dressed in his pajamas: coal grey, cotton pajama bottoms and a blue, long sleeved night shirt that had some red and blue super hero with bug eyes on it (2). He looked beautiful, even like that.

Heero tore his eyes from his computer screen when Kanuck bounded up to him and licked one of his hands. The monster of a dog didn’t even need to get up on his back legs to reach the top of the desk. My boyfriend seemed to realize that his pet was not the only one invading his personal space and he finally looked up at me, still standing stupidly in his doorway. Instantly, the second his eyes met mine, they just lit up like jewels, his whole face breaking into a happy and exuberant smile. He was happy to see me, even his skin glowing with the love that constantly knocks me off my feet. That alone was enough to erase all the shittyness of the last few hours.

“Duo!” he managed to exclaim without raising his voice much, “You’re back early!”

He sounded incredibly pleased by that right before his concern tempered his expression into a worried frown.

“Is everything alright? How was work?” he asked and I wondered if he was just worried because I was there early or if something showed on my face.

“I’m alright,” I lied softly and winced at how unconvincing that sounded, “Work was fine. Just… tiring.”

It was as close as I could come to the truth. I wouldn’t tell him about being yelled at or how much my body was hurting me. I didn’t see the point. He stood from his desk and crossed the scant few feet to lightly kiss me on the forehead. I felt my face flame and scolded myself for having that kind of reaction. How many times had he kissed me at that point, and I was still getting embarrassed by it?

“Why are you awake?” I asked him, worried that he might have stayed up just for me.

“I took a nap right after dinner,” he told me and it was his turn to flush a little, “I…wanted to be awake when you got back.”

He glanced away from me in shyness from that admission, rubbing at the back of his head.

“O-oh,” I stammered stupidly, not knowing what to say.

It was a little bit mind blowing that he had taken such steps just for me, just to make sure that I was alright.

“Come on,” he quickly regained his smile, although this one was a bit more tempered, “Why don’t you get dressed for bed, you look exhausted.”

It came to me that he meant to try sleeping with me again and for some reason, my face practically combusted. I felt embarrassed that I kept disrupting his life, only thinking that I was bothering him and he was going out of his way to try to help me, not that he might _enjoy_ sharing a bed with me.

“That’s alright,” I tried to wave him off even though laying down with him was the one thing that I really wanted to do, “I was just going to take a shower and try to sleep in the guest room…”

“Duo,” his frown returned, “you need sleep. You can just shower in the morning.”

“I smell,” I protested desperately and as he took a step forward, I took one back, not wanting him to get close to me after I had been working all night. I’m sensitive enough about smelling after an adolescence of sparse, quick showers and rare laundry days, but around him, I’m practically neurotic about it.

To my surprise, he chuckled and lightly touched my arm, careful not to put any pressure on my injury.  
          “You don’t smell,” he assured me, even though that was probably a lie, “Now come on, the sooner you change, the sooner you can go to sleep.”

It sounded nice, sleep, the word almost like a comforting spell on its own even if I doubted the universe was going to be that kind to me. But who knew? Heero had helped me fall asleep before, maybe he could work whatever magic he had this time, too. He didn’t give me much of a choice anyway, using his grip on my arm to turn me around and gently herded me out of his room. I was too tired to argue anymore and my protests had been half-hearted at best to begin with. It’s hard to fight against something that you want, all the way deep down, if you can at all.

I obediently shuffled my way to the guest room. Heero didn’t follow me, obviously trusting me not to disappear on him. I felt like I was approaching the end of the nightmare. Not my lack of sleep, but just that day. I was going to lay down with Heero again, be close to him, touch him, and for a moment, everything would be alright. Whether or not I could sleep wouldn’t matter so long as I could be with him.

As soon as I walked into the other bedroom, Pepper was right there, meowing at me and twining around my legs. I stopped to pet her for a moment, smiling a little as she closed her eyes in contentment, then I dug out some pajamas I had stashed in the drawers of the dresser. It still somehow felt both strange and completely normal, seeing my clothes there, like they belonged. I dressed slowly, various body parts not wanting to cooperate with me, then picked up Pepper. She purred loudly and butted her head against my chin, rubbing her fur against my skin. Her purrs vibrated through me and felt so good, reassuring. I cradled her in my arms like one would an infant and brought her with me back to Heero’s room. She would have been pissed if I tried to sleep somewhere without her and I wanted to be with her.

Heero was turning down his bed for us and turned to smile at me when he heard me enter. I wasn’t really paying attention to what I was doing and slammed the side of my leg into the edge of his desk. Thankfully, it wasn’t my right leg, but it still smarted and I hissed out a hasty “fuck” and winced, my face going red hot again at having embarrassed myself in front of him. Normally, Heero would tease me a little about doing something like that and somehow succeed in taking the sting of the embarrassment off while my father or one of our classmates would have made fun of me for being clumsy, but Heero frowned for some reason and put down the sheet he had been pulling back.

“Are you alright?” he asked in concern, making me feel like an even bigger idiot that he was worried over me bumping my damned leg.

I nodded, but he looked far from convinced. He walked over to me, his blue eyes studying my face and he put his hand on my forehead, almost like he was checking my temperature. I don’t know, maybe I had worried him so much and looked so awful that he was.

“Did you eat tonight?” he asked me.

It took me a few moments too long to remember if I had or not and I could see that my hesitance was only making him more and more worried about me, but trying to pull memories out was like trying to find a path in a thick fog. The longer I didn’t sleep, the harder it was becoming, and even things that had happened minutes ago were getting lost.

“I finished the soup,” I finally replied, thinking that that would soothe his worries, but it only seemed to further them for some reason.

“That’s all you’ve had all day?” he probed.

My fuzzy mind could not understand why my only eating one thermos worth of soup that had been mostly broth and a couple of rolls for almost twenty-four hours was an issue. I had eaten, my tired mind thought in frustration, just like he had asked me to, so what was the problem? I nodded in confusion.

“You should eat something,” he fussed, “even if you’re just going to lay down. It’s not good for you to not eat, you need to take care of yourself.”

“I’m fine,” I insisted even as the thought of food didn’t just make my stomach churn at that point, I literally felt like I was going to vomit, “I’m not hungry. You don’t need to fuss over me.”

I don’t know what troubled me more, the thought of trying to eat something or making him get me food when he should be sleeping.

“Here,” he gestured towards the bed, “Why don’t you sit down and relax and I’ll grab you something small, just to get something in your stomach.”

“You don’t need-,” I tried to protest, but he silenced me by pushing my bangs back and giving me a gentle, but lingering kiss to my forehead.

“Hush,” he soothed, his voice comforting at the same time that his tone was a bit demanding and pushy, “I am going to make you some toast and you are going to eat it because you love me very much and wouldn’t want to see me worried in knots over my boyfriend’s nutrition…” he paused and his lips spread into a small, cheeky smile, “or complete lack of.”

I glared at him, but it lacked any heat at all and it only made him smirk more. He left to go downstairs, his dog looking torn about which of us he was going to follow and decided on his owner, leaving Pepper and I alone in the bedroom. Heero isn’t much of a cook, so I wasn’t worried about him going overboard, but I seriously doubted that I was going to be able to stomach anything that he made. I did what he told me, partially because it was so much easier following instructions and partially because I just couldn’t stay on my feet any longer and sat on the edge of the bed.

I could have fallen back into those soft sheets right then, eager to shut out the entire world, and if I had been able to sleep, I might have done just that. Instead, I passed the time waiting for Heero to get back by playing with my cat. There was something terribly comforting about watching her attack and chew on my hands. I wished that my own life could be that simple, that all I needed to be happy was someone to feed me and give me a little bit of attention. That I _could_ be happy without some worry or fear taking it all away in an instant.

Heero was quick in returning with my snack, that or I had zoned out and just hadn’t noticed. As promised, he had made toast and, to my utmost relief, instead of loading the two slices up with butter and raspberry jam like I usually like my toast, he had only put a very bare amount of butter on and nothing else. He must have realized that I wouldn’t be able to handle much food, let alone anything rich. He also had a tall glass of orange juice in his hand, which was a lot more desirable than the toast. My throat had been feeling dry and irritated for hours.

“Thanks,” I told him as I took the plate, even if I hadn’t wanted anything to do with the meal to begin with.

I started to take the glass from him with my right hand, but a shock of pain went through my wrist just trying to wrap my hand around it. I tried to be smooth about it, quickly switching to my left hand, but of course he saw my brief wince because I was not nearly as subtle as I thought I was. In my defense, he had days’ worth of sleep up on me.

“Your hand is still bothering you?” he asked with a worried frown, but without much surprise.

I nodded and after a moment of hesitation, decided to come clean.

“It’s worse,” I admitted and it took me quite a bit of effort to be that honest.

“Do you need something for it?” he fussed.

I shook my head. It had stopped bleeding a long time ago and it was mostly just swelling now, so there was little anyone could do for it. Thankfully, he trusted my judgement and let the matter rest, but I could tell from brief glances at me that he was concerned.

Heero took a dog brush out of the nightstand drawer and walked around the bed with it to sit on his side. As though he knew exactly what Heero wanted, Kanuck followed him and obediently sat beside him as his owner brushed out his white and silver fur while I slowly ate. I took a sip of the orange juice first and almost cried out in pain. The citrus burned liquid fire down my throat and I had to fight not to cough. I had completely forgotten that my throat had been hurting me. Well, not forgotten exactly, more like I had been strictly ignoring it, even when I felt like I had shards of glass stuck in there every time I coughed.

It wasn’t exactly a good meal, between feeling like I was going to puke and wincing every time I drank. I had to take it slowly, nibbling on the bread like it was poison, and it might as well have been. But there was still something nice about sitting there in quiet companionship with my boyfriend, even as my stomach clenched with every bite, the bread feeling heavy as it sat uselessly in my stomach, my guts protesting the alien invader. I have no idea how, but I managed to eat both slices of toast and drink the entire glass of juice, even if it took me longer than it should have, without puking. Heero looked satisfied, and more than just a little relieved, when he saw that I had eaten all of it, which was enough of a reward for me to feel that the queasiness was worth it.

“Lay down,” he said softly.

I knew that I should brush my teeth, but I think we were both aware that I wasn’t getting up off that bed without help and if I had to stand in one place for something like brushing my teeth, I was going to fall on my face. I did as he said automatically, a machine following some pre-programmed order, laying down on my side of the bed. It felt wonderful, soft and warm from my sitting there, like a literal cloud. I wished that I could just melt into that bed and disappear forever. I heard Heero chuckle and wondered if he knew what I was thinking, but then I felt him pull the covers up over me and felt embarrassed again, realizing that I had forgotten to do that.

“Good night, Duo,” I heard him say in that low, soft tone of his that was somehow hypnotic.

“’ni’t, Heero,” I mumbled in reflex.

I heard the click of him turning off the light and felt the bed shift as he laid down next to me. His body heat washed over me, more pleasant than any blanket. Pepper’s soft fur brushed against my cheek as she curled up on the pillow by my head. Within minutes, all I could hear in that silent room were her tiny purrs and Heero’s soft breathing. For all of his assurances that he had taken a nap earlier, he had fallen asleep instantly. I still couldn’t believe that he had done that, changed his sleeping schedule just so he could be up when I got there. Had he missed me as much as I had missed him? Had it just been a gesture, something that people were supposed to do when they were together? Or had he been so worried about me, cared about me so much, that he had felt compelled to do it?

I was overwhelmed by all of the things that he had done for me that day; trying to stand up for me, teaching me that calming trick, staying up for me and making me a snack at almost two in the morning. I didn’t deserve any of it, but it warmed me deep down in that place that only Heero seems to touch. Laying there, feeling him next to me, I felt this deep love for him push away all of my other feelings of frustration and tiredness. Suddenly, I felt an intense panic. Had I thanked him? I couldn’t remember. Did he even know how grateful I was, how much I cared for him, and how wonderful he was being to me? How could I have forgotten to tell him, even in my current state?

My guilt was a dagger through my chest, one that kept me wide awake and frantic for an hour, sure that I had done something terrible. What if he was angry with me? What if he thought that I didn’t appreciate him? I was being ridiculous, but I had stopped being rational and collected more than a day ago. I had to roll over onto my other side facing him, just to assure myself that things were ok, that he was next to me, that if he had really been mad about how distant I had been, he would have kicked me out of his room, not let me sleep next to him.

He looked so peaceful, deep asleep and bereft of any of the anxiety that I was feeling, oblivious to the world. I envied him that, that he could just fall asleep so easily, like everything was alright. I tentatively reached out and brushed a stray lock of chocolate brown hair from his face. If I wasn’t so scared of waking him, I would have kissed him lightly on the forehead like he was so fond of doing to me. He was so handsome and kind and affectionate… what the hell was he doing with me? Why wasn’t he with someone better than me? Someone confident, sexy, someone who was a whole person and not someone with Swiss cheese for a heart? Why me? When was he going to wake up and realize how broken I am?

Another wave of panic swept me up. What the hell was I going to do to keep him? What could I possibly do? I felt like I was holding on to this relationship like a handful of sand and it was only inevitable that it would all slip through my fingers no matter what I did. In the early hours of the morning, that fear was a horror, something to make my heart race and pound like a jackhammer and my head screamed in red pain from the stress, reawakening my headache. I was going to lose him, I felt with surety, and that thought was so terrible, I almost started crying, anxiety pulling me down into a spiral of depression made worse by how tired I was.

‘Sleep, goddammit,’ some hard, frustrated voice in my head snapped at me, ‘Worry about it later and just _sleep_ for fuck’s sake!’

It took a great deal of effort, but I tried to heed the voice, which was really just my own, logical thoughts, but sleep deprivation had turned it into some alien intelligence. I squeezed my eyes shut and willed my brain to quiet, to stop sending me terrible thoughts to whip me into a frenzy of worry, but that was pretty much impossible. I could barely string two words together or remember how to do long division, but of course my mind was still perfectly capable of torturing me.

I’d love to tell you that I was finally able to settle after that. That lying there with my boyfriend helped to lull me to sleep like it had the last couple of mornings. That would have been wonderful, but it’s far from the truth. Even when my torturous thoughts finally ceased enough that I should have been able to sleep, I found myself awake. I can’t say that I was wide awake, that would imply some sort of awareness. I was trapped in that halfway state between awake and asleep, not resting, but feeling like rest was just barely out of reach, like it was taunting me. Kind of like when you feel that you have to piss but no matter how hard you try, your body just won’t cooperate with you, but you can still _feel_ it.

The various aches and pains of my body didn’t help one bit. Besides my pounding headache, because of the wound to my right arm, laying on my right side, the side I always lay on when I sleep with Heero, was torture. Every time I rolled onto that side, I felt a deep, throbbing pain there, enough to keep me fidgeting and twisting my body into uncomfortable positions to avoid it. It felt like absolutely nothing I did could make me comfortable. My left leg felt stiff like stone and whether I stretched it out or tucked it in, it felt miserable. I couldn’t even toss and turn that much because I didn’t want to wake up my boyfriend. So after a few turns, I realized that I couldn’t sleep facing him without probably waking him up with my restlessness and settled on my right side, deciding to just deal with the pain.

I buried my head into the pillow and squeezed my eyes shut, praying with all of the forces of the universe to give me a break for once and just let me _sleep_. Four hours, that was all I asked, just for a reprieve from this torment. But, as usual, the universe proved to me that it had little love for me. Each second dragged on for what felt like an eternity. Heero soft breathing turned into a gentle, even snore while I laid there, my eyes burning and my whole body feeling hollowed out, like I wasn’t even living anymore. I don’t know how long that went on for. An hour, maybe two, it’s hard to tell. I felt like I was slowly going insane as I floated in this strange, nonsensical state.

That was when I heard the noise. It must have been just at the beginning of three am, maybe just before. A whisper of a sound, like skittering or scratching, only there was a rasping sound, too, like something rough being dragged on the floor, or someone breathing heavily. The sort of noises that some unwanted vermin would make; rats, raccoons, insects. Or a monster. It was that thought that had my eyes flying open, as though I had been slapped. The monster. It could have been Kanuck, or even Pepper going to use her litterbox, but those were rational conclusions, and in my heart, in those dark recesses where pure, raw instinct lies, I knew that this thing, the source of the sound, was something terrible.

That fear would have been enough to have me scrambling out of bed at that hour, so sure that something was there. And that would have been bad enough, just that sound and my paranoia. Maybe if that had been it, I could have chalked it up to having a bad morning, to being exhausted. But then my eyes were open and instead of darkness, instead of the familiar walls of Heero’s bedroom, I saw something else, something insane.

It was peering at me from underneath Heero’s desk, from deep in the dark shadows where such things like to lurk in children’s stories. I couldn’t see it very well, just this dark shape, but that didn’t matter. I could see it, as clearly as I could see anything else, the thing that haunts my nightmares sometimes, something that doesn’t belong in anything but a dream. But it was there, skulking and awful, looking at me in the dark with eyes the color of stone and a gaping mouth full of jagged, knife-like teeth. It looked at me with intelligence, with lust and I knew, just like I always know in those strange dreams, that it wanted to eat me.

It was my terror that told me, above anything else, that this had to be real. No one could possibly be this scared in a dream, could they? My heart felt like it was trying to escape my rib cage and I could feel a scream in my throat. I curled my body into a tight ball, petrified and frozen. It had followed me to Heero’s house, I thought, it had somehow found me, sniffed me out, hunted down the scent of my meat and now it was finally going to devour me. It had me cornered, nothing more than a frightened rabbit in the gaze of a hungry wolf. Worse, it was going to have Heero, too!

 _Heero_ , I thought in desperation and groped backwards for him in the dark. Not for him to protect me, but for me to save him. I had to save Heero from the monster. I can remember that thought so clearly, ‘I have to save Heero.’ My hands searched for him, the only part of me that dared to move because I knew that the second I moved, that would be when the monster would make a go for me. It was always that way in the stories, you were only safe as long as you stood perfectly still.

My searching hands found nothing, just air and warm covers. I was alone. Heero had left me. That spurred my terror on, fed it like dry wood to a flame. Had it already eaten him? Or had Heero ran from it? I didn’t know, I couldn’t think, my head was too full of screaming wasps. It kept asking me how this was possible. How could the monster be here when it only lived in my head? I was struck cold by the realness of it, of seeing it there, leering and drooling. I had to move, I realized. If Heero wasn’t in bed, then he was outside the room somewhere and he didn’t know, he didn’t know what stalked the dark corners of his home. He didn’t know that I had brought a ravenous monster into his life. Even if the monster got me, I had to try to warn him! Had to try to save him… because I couldn’t save myself from it, but at least I could tell Heero to get away before it got him, too.

Adrenaline coursing through me like a repeated eruption and with speed and grace that I really shouldn’t have possessed at that point, I found my cat in the dark, still curled up by my head, wrapped her protectively in my arms and leapt out of bed. I heard sharp sound from behind me, almost like a snarl, but that wasn’t quite right. I couldn’t handle the possibility that there might be two monsters, and that didn’t sound right either. The second my foot touched the carpet, I was sprinting forward. I felt the thing in the dark take a swipe at me, could even see its hands, large, strong, and rough with long, sharp fingers like claws, like something out of a horror movie, but it missed me. I ran, not really knowing where I was going, but I could hear it coming after me and I knew that even if I was faster, it was going to catch me.

I ran past the steps, too scared to brave them, and ran to the game room. I don’t know why. I don’t think I was thinking at all at that point. I saw a glimmer of light and I followed it, the only source of comfort. The door was wide open and I didn’t bother closing it behind me, knowing it would do no good. If it could follow me all the way from my house to there, what could a closed door help? I almost ran right into the couch in there, but I was in such a state of terror that I could have fallen right over it and it wouldn’t have fazed me. Adding to that terror, I discovered that there was no light in the room at all, no sanctuary, just the brief glow from the moon and a street lamp coming through the uncovered windows. Worse, Heero wasn’t there. I don’t know why I had thought that he would be, my half-crazed mind linking my best friend to that room, maybe, but his absence was devastating.

I had failed. I hadn’t been able to protect him and now the monster was going to come and find me, come and rip me to shreds like it had been craving all this time. Completely out of my mind at that point, I looked around the dark room for something; a light source, a hiding place, a weapon. It didn’t even dawn on me to turn on the light switch. Some insane belief had hold of me, that I could not escape this, that I was not safe and if I tried for the lights, they wouldn’t come on, no weapon would be able to save me.

‘I should have shot it when I had the chance,’ I thought and had no idea what that even meant or where it had come from.

I could hear the thing coming for me, the floor boards creaking under its weight and soon it would be on me, pushing me down, its foul breath on my skin and its claws on me, ripping through me, maw tasting me… I hurried to the only real place to hide in the room: a corner between two bookcases. As I went, I grabbed a flashlight off the shelf, put there for some unknown reason. It was metal, heavy and sturdy. I could probably do a lot of damage to a person if I hit them in the head with it. But this wasn’t a person that was chasing me. I didn’t even know what it was, but I knew that a flashlight wasn’t going to stop it.

With hands shaking so badly and so violently it felt like I was having a seizure, I tried to switch the flashlight on. It flickered once, twice, and then died, the light puffing out like a flame, like all of my hope. I could have screamed then, if not in fear, then in frustration. Hearing another noise in a hallway, the thing looking for me, I crammed myself into the corner, folding myself into as small of a ball on the floor as I could, gritting my teeth to keep me from making any kind of sound. Pepper made an annoyed noise when I squeezed her a bit too hard and scrambled from my grip, but thankfully stayed by me. I clutched the flashlight tightly to my chest and my whole body shook. My heart was racing so hard and so fast that I felt like I was going to vomit, tears beginning to drip down my cheeks.

I heard more noise out in the hall. The thing was leaving the bathroom and walking down the hall towards me. My chest heaved and I tucked my head down against my knees. I felt like screaming for Heero, but I couldn’t. I felt like tearing my pulsing heart out of my chest and couldn’t do that either. All I could do was tighten my grip on the flashlight and try not to listen, try not to hear that the thing was getting closer and closer, practically in time to how the scream was rising in my throat, until I could hear it in the room with me, hear it scratching on the floor, hear the floor creak and smell its breath, breath sour, like mildew or my father’s breath after coming home from a bar. Breath that, any moment, would be washing over my skin, invading my nose with its rank odor-

“Duo?”

I blinked open my eyes for what felt like the first time in hours. That voice was impossible, so impossible that I seriously thought that the monster was mimicking my boyfriend’s voice to trick me for some reason. But when I opened my eyes and lifted my head, expecting to see those terrible eyes and those sharp teeth again, I only saw Heero. And I mean I really _saw_ him. Standing right in front of me, his form outlined by the low light coming from outside the windows. Seeing him, it was like waking up from a dream, seeing something _real_ for the first time. No, it _was_ waking up. The difference between reality and a dream… for those brief moments when I had seen that… thing, I had blurred that line, had confused what was real and what wasn’t. But now that I was seeing something real, that… whatever the fuck I had seen was so obviously not real, it was like getting a splash of ice water to the face.

What… the fuck. How can you wake up when your eyes are already open? How can you snap out of a nightmare when you aren’t even really asleep? I don’t know. Before that morning, I would have told you that such things aren’t possible, but they are. It happened. One moment, I had seen the thing that haunts me in my nightmares, the next, I was waking up, like stumbling out of a fog. It was that night in my father’s room, his gun in my hand all over again. Sleep walking while I was awake, sleeping with my eyes open. That… that or I was going insane. Could that be it? Was I losing my mind? Was _this_ a dream, too?

“Duo,” Heero repeated softly, squinting to see me in the dark, “What’s wrong? Why are you in here?”

He knelt down and reached out for me. Still not entirely in control of myself, I flinched from him. If that motion hurt him or alarmed him, he didn’t let it show, putting a hand on my arm. Even through my nightshirt, I could feel that touch, the warmth seeping through the chill that had settled in my skin. No, this was definitely real. But the monster… it had seemed so real at the time… like how dreams feel real sometimes, but this was different. Heero must have seen how freaked out I was, because he suddenly looked very alarmed.

“What happened?” he urged, searching me, I suppose, for some injury, something obvious that would tell him why I was up at that hour and looking like a frightened rabbit.

Too bad what was wrong with me was in my mind, and nothing that anything could fix.

“I…” I struggled for the words.

How could I tell him my fears that I was going crazy? How could I tell him that I had run, on the verge of screaming, from his bedroom because I had seen a monster? How could I possibly come clean about the strange nightmares that I have, the ones that seem so real, the ones that are always so terrifying?

“I had a nightmare,” I blurted out and felt something ease at my words.

A nightmare. And just like that, it came to me. A realization. Sleepwalking was one thing. Not being able to snap out of a nightmare even after I had woken up was one thing. But having a nightmare when I was awake? Impossible. That only left one possible answer, the only thing that made a lick of sense. I had fallen asleep. Not completely, but one of those stupid moments when my brain had shut off, when I had micro slept without noticing. Can you have dreams when you’re in that state? I don’t know, but apparently I did. One of those nightmares must have happened at the same time and it had all gotten mixed up and confused… that or I was nuts, take your pick.

“You’re shaking,” Heero said with worry, drawing me close to him, “Christ, you’re freezing!”

I _was_ shaking, but this time the fear that I was feeling had nothing to do with monsters, but with myself, my own fragile mind. I guess some people would say that it’s understandable. I hadn’t gotten any real sleep in days and if my mind hadn’t been shutting itself off like that, this never would have happened. But that didn’t make me feel any less horrified at myself. You need to understand how freaked out I was by these nightmares and the things that I do when I have them. I can’t rationalize them away or control them. I do things that, at the time, seem so logical. I can’t stop myself and realize that monsters don’t exist, the thing that hunts me isn’t real. In those moments, it is very real and my actions never seem as crazy as they really are.

I couldn’t shake the memory of myself walking into my parents’ room and aiming that gun first at myself, then at my dad, almost pulling the trigger and splattering his brains all over the worn, pale green sheets. Maybe wanting to shoot my father had happened after I had woken up from the nightmare, but taking out that gun had happened before. What else might I be capable of during one of these weird… hell, could I even really call it sleepwalking? But this one had happened in front of Heero. I’m not dumb enough to think that I would ever hurt him, even in my sleep, but I was mortified just to have him see me like that, huddled like a little kid in some corner, shaking and crying and frightened all from a _nightmare_. And if I ever told him the truth about what had just happened, he would think I was nuts, and he would probably be right. And there was nothing I could do to stop this from happening again.

“You weren’t in the bedroom. I got scared and…” I heard myself say and had to bite my tongue harshly to keep myself from saying more, mortified that I had admitted to being scared by a stupid nightmare, like a child.

This only made Heero look more concerned.

“Duo, what are you talking about?” he asked me with a frown, “I was still in bed. I haven’t left all morning. I only got up when I heard you leave.”

What the hell? But I could remember it so clearly, groping for him in bed and finding nothing. I could even still remember how the sheets had felt under my hand, how they had felt warm from his body lying there. It seemed as possible as anything else, as actually _seeing_ the monster when I had thought that I was awake. Everything else had been just as real and I struggled to untangle the mess in my head, to figure out what had been the nightmare and what had been real. Obviously the monster hadn’t been, but what about everything else? Clearly I had just dreamt that Heero was gone. Then those noises… the sounds of the monster chasing me… I must have just been hearing Heero coming to look for me. At what point had I woken up and when had I still been asleep?

“I…” I rubbed my fist against my face, feeling my tired eyes burning and how cold and pasty my face was, whatever tiny bit of sleep I had gotten not nearly enough to help, “…I must have still been dreaming.”

Heero gave me a small smile, but I could tell how worried he still was. I didn’t blame him. Not many seventeen year olds would have a nightmare and go hide in a corner with a damned flashlight. With a kind of tender gentleness, he pried the flashlight from my still trembling hands and placed it back on the shelf. He then lightly brushed my hair out of my eyes, his fingertips lingering on my cheek. His touch felt hot compared to my cold skin.

“Come on,” he said softly, like someone trying to gentle an animal or sooth a frightened child, “You’re freezing. Let’s go back to bed.”

I wasn’t in any state to argue with him or form any kind of counter opinion on the subject. My heart was still racing, although not quite as psychotically as before, and the fear was as lingering as Heero’s touch, not wanting to give up its grasp on me. I still had that feeling like every shadow was hiding something sinister and I might have stayed there in that corner for hours, terrified of moving if Heero hadn’t come along. With a steady grip on my left arm, he carefully got me to my feet. He placed his hand on my back and rubbed, trying to comfort me. I guess it was obvious that I was still shaken up, and I just didn’t have the strength to try to put on a brave face for him, as much as it embarrassed me.

His hand moved across my back until he had an arm wrapped around me. I don’t know if it was merely for comfort, because I was cold, or if he thought it might help me get over whatever fear I was experiencing. It did help a little, knowing he had my back, and as he walked us back to his bedroom, I started to feel myself coming back to some kind of sanity. That being said, the darkness of the bedroom made me feel uneasy, that lingering fear telling me that something was in there.

“Can… can you turn the light on?” I asked shyly, ashamed of myself.

“Sure,” Heero responded easily and flicked on the light switch, not even mocking me for it.

Bright light flooded the room and I flinched as pain shot through my skull. Sure enough, with the light on, I could clearly see that the room was just as it had always been. There was no monster lurking under the desk, no grey eyes staring at me from some corner. Kanuck was gone, probably wandering around downstairs or had left for his food dish, but everything else was exactly how it had been when we had gone to bed. I felt so incredibly ashamed. I had embarrassed myself in front of Heero and I had woken him up out of a sound sleep, all because of a stupid nightmare. Now that I was wide awake again, my fear starting to fade, it all seemed so dumb. I didn’t understand any of it, how I could have reacted like that, but I never do.

“Into bed,” Heero ordered in a light, soothing tone, both of his hands rubbing at my arms to get some warmth back into them while being careful of my right arm.

“I… I won’t be able to sleep,” I was capable of confessing now that I could focus on something other than my mindless terror.

I hadn’t been able to sleep in the first place, not really, but I couldn’t tell him that. First, he would insist on me taking medication again and second, he would be alarmed to know that I had had a vivid nightmare without properly falling asleep. To know that all of this had passed for me like a day dream, not a nightmare, and to my memory, I had been awake through all of it. He sighed heavily, but it was one of resignation and sadness, not frustration or even exasperation at me.

“Ok,” he said, walking to the bed.

“I’ll just go downstairs so you can sleep,” I told him, “I’ll be quiet-,”

He cut me off with an amused snort.

“We’ll stay up together,” he insisted, “I won’t be able to sleep knowing that you’re wide awake at this hour when you’re the one that needs the sleep, not me.”

I opened my mouth to protest that there was no reason at all for the both of us to suffer, but I promptly closed it when I saw his firm expression, knowing that he was going to be stubborn about this. I just nodded, not seeing a way to fight it.

“Need to finish my homework anyway,” I murmured.

This was one of the very few times that I hadn’t finished it before going to bed, but I hadn’t been able to focus all day, my mind scattered. Even reading had been a painful experience for me that day.

“I’ll get your book bag,” Heero offered, pouncing on some way to be helpful.

“You don’t need-,” I argued, but he was already gone.

I wondered if he was just trying to be nice to me or if he understood that some idiotic part of me was still nervous about going out into the dark hallway. Feeling foolish and defeated, like I was dragging my boyfriend right into my problems again, I sat down in his desk chair and waited for him to come back. I looked at the clock and frowned when I saw that it was four ten in the morning. I felt silly all over again. Heero should be sleeping and he was grabbing my homework for me because I couldn’t sleep. It was ridiculous.

As promised, he returned quickly with my back pack and frowned when he saw me sitting at his desk, making me wonder what I had done wrong.

“On the bed,” he commanded.

“Why?” I asked, quirking an eyebrow at the strange order.

“It’s more comfortable,” he said simply, like that was the most logical thing in the world.

I sighed, not understanding, but sat on the left side of the bed. Pepper jumped up and resumed her usual position of trying to mold herself to my leg. Heero put the bag down on the floor and opened it.

“What do you need?” he asked me.

I mulled it over. All I really had left to do was my reading assignment for my lit class and a work sheet for calculus.

“There should be a soft cover book in there with a dark purple spine,” I told him, deciding on the assignment that was most likely for me to actually get done, and it was sure as hell not my calculus homework.

“This one?” he handed it to me.

I nodded. Then, as an afterthought, one that took way too much effort, I muttered ‘thank you.’ He walked to his side of the bed and I thought that maybe he was going to try to fall back to sleep anyway, even with the light on. But to my surprise, he grabbed his pillow and added it to the one I had been using before sliding in behind me and laying down on them, his back propped up so he was sitting up like I was. He stretched out his legs on either side of me, not quite touching me, so close, all either of us had to do was twitch.

“Scoot back,” he said with a warm smile.

I flushed darkly at the intimacy of what he was asking me to do, but my body moved before I could even consider it, scooting backwards until I could feel his chest against my back, his legs touching mine. I could have combusted, my heart racing for an entirely different reason now. How can something feel so wonderful and nerve wracking at the same time?

“This is more comfortable than just sitting at a desk, right?” he chuckled.

That just made me blush even more darkly and I was so glad that he couldn’t see it. I nodded, feeling too shy to confirm verbally, but it _was_ comfortable, and even though I was a little bit nervous, it was nice. I could already feel his body heat seeping through my back, erasing the chill and the memories of my nightmare like it had never happened. I hastily opened my book and tried to find where I had left off since I had been too out of it to remember to put in a book mark, ignoring how my heart was thumping and the feeling of those long legs pressed against mine.

“Your hair is all messed up,” he said with another low chuckle and I felt him give my braid a light tug, “Do you mind if I take it down?”

Both my hands and my heart froze. It was certainly not the first time that Heero had touched my hair, nor would it be the first time that he had seen it down, but for some reason, his request paralyzed me. It wasn’t like I thought he was going to do anything to my hair or even that I didn’t trust him, it was just… the thought of his fingers in my hair, seeing me with it down… it hit some sensitive place inside of me. I thought of Trowa making fun of me for having long hair, calling me girly and felt ashamed. I thought of Zechs grabbing and pulling that hair, sticking his face in it and felt disgust. And I thought of my father stroking my hair when he raped me and felt fear. I thought of all the times that I’ve wanted to just cut my braid off or shave my head because I hate my hair so much, because it reminds my father of my mother, because people think I’m feminine just because I wear it in a braid.

‘This is Heero, for fuck’s sake!’ I chastised myself for that fear, ‘He’s your boyfriend, your best friend! If he wants to take your hair down or touch it, what’s the big deal?’

And it wasn’t. If I were a normal, well-adjusted person, this wouldn’t be a big deal at all. If anything, it would just be a normal thing that couples did, so why did I feel so freaked out?

“Sure,” I told him and hated how uneven my tone was, how shaky my own voice was.

I felt his hand very gently unravel my hair tie, followed by the soft brush of my hair against my neck. He tucked my hair back, over my shoulder and behind my ear, those light touches making goosebumps rise on my arms. He laid his head on my shoulder, which was somehow more intimate than us sitting like that or him taking my hair down.

“Read to me?” he asked and his tone was so childish that I almost burst out laughing.

How could he, in a matter of an instant, make me defensive and nervous, and then at ease so easily?

“You don’t even take this class,” I pointed out.

“So?” he countered.

“And you wouldn’t like this book,” I told him, “It’s 19th century feminism, there isn’t even much action in it.”

“Please?” he begged, like he was asking me to do a huge favor for him and then proceeded to make me breathless with, “I like listening to your voice.”

How could I possibly say no after him saying something like that? Not that I can deny him anything to begin with, but that comment would have been completely manipulative if he hadn’t been absolutely sincere. I could have countered that there wasn’t anything about my voice _to_ like, especially since I don’t talk much, but I conceded. After everything that he had done for me, reading to him was literally the least that I could do.

“ ‘Edna felt depressed rather than soothed after leaving them,’” I read when I finally found my place, “ ‘The little glimpse of domestic harmony-,’”

I stopped reading when I felt Heero’s fingers run through my hair, the tips just barely caressing my skin and I couldn’t stop the little sound of appreciation at his touch.

“That feel good?” he asked me with some amusement and repeated the motion.

“Yeah,” I murmured, my eyes closing briefly from pure pleasure as those fingers brushed against my scalp.

He gained a bit more confidence after hearing that, scraping my skin very lightly with his fingernails. I sighed in contentment at the feeling of it and if I had been a cat, I might have purred. It felt so good, both to have my hair down with the headache I had, and to feel him scratching and touching places that I rarely do myself. He was so careful at first, those long fingers untangling my hair before his motions became smoother, no longer restricted by snarls. I opened my eyes and resumed reading to him.

“ ‘The little glimpse of domestic harmony which had been offered her, gave her no regret, no longing. It was not a condition of life which fitted her, and she could see in it but appalling and hopeless ennui. She was moved by a kind of commiseration for Madame Ratignolle, --a pity for that colorless existence which never uplifted its possessor beyond the region of blind contentment, in which no moment of anguish ever visited her soul, in which she would never have the taste of life’s delirium. (3)’”

Heero never stopped combing his fingers through my hair as I read, keeping his other hand curled around my hip like he was afraid that I might try to get up. Little by little, the motion of his fingers lulled me down from my remaining anxiety and I fell into a kind of rhythm with my reading. It was easier saying the words out loud than it had been trying to read them the previous day, although I have no clue why.

Those moments in that early morning, just reading to Heero, just being together with him like that, it was the most at peace that I have ever felt. I could have stayed like that forever and died feeling content. I don’t know how long it went on for. Long enough that, every so often, I found my eyes drooping closed and would have to force myself to open them so I could read the next line. Long enough that I could feel my body start to droop with them until I was laying against Heero instead of just sitting up in front of him. Long enough that the words had stopped making sense and the only thing that I was really aware of towards the end was the sound of my boyfriend’s heart beat as I laid my head against his chest.

 

End Part 16

 

  * This is a very subtle clue, but for those that don’t pick up on tiny details like this, Solo was following Duo to make sure he would be alright, he had no intention of using the bus. Because this is first person narrative and Duo can be oblivious to certain things in the best of times (like not realizing that Heero has been into him for so long, that his mother had been trying to quit drinking, or that Heero’s parents had known they liked each other), there are a lot of subtle clues to things that aren’t spelled out.



 

  * Duo never read comic books as a kid, so he is not well versed with super heroes, but Heero is obviously wearing a Spiderman shirt, lol. Growing up, even before he fully realized that he was gay, Heero felt different from the other kids in his neighborhood between being mixed race and being interested in both technology and sports, so he really identified with non-typical superheroes. His favorite series was actually the X-men, especially when he got older and started to understand his sexuality more.



 

  * The passage Duo is reading comes from Kate Chopin’s _The Awakening_. It’s an early feminist novel about a married woman who seeks independence from her role as a wife and mother and tries to fight what society dictates she should be. However, when the man that she loves leaves her forever, knowing that they can never really be together, she can’t live under society’s chains and kills herself by jumping off a cliff and into the ocean. Considering his own struggles dealing with a society that can’t accept him for who he is and trying to find his own identity, this story would probably appeal to Duo a lot



 

Author’s Notes: all review responses will be at the end of the next part, which is completed! Yes, that’s one of the reasons why it’s been so long between updates. I wanted to get part 16 and 17 done for a double post. Thank you for your patience!

 

 

 

 

 


	61. Chapter 8 Part 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duo tries to sleep at his own house, but can't handle his father's continuing abuse. Will he be able to shake free of his insomnia before he hurts himself?

A Stagnation of Love

Chapter 8

Part 17

 

 

 

 

A screaming, repetitive noise like shrill thumping had me crawling back to consciousness. And I almost mean that literally. Normally, a loud noise would jolt me into wakefulness, incredibly alert and aware and looking for the sign of danger, but that morning, it was a painful and slow, tortuous climb out of sleep, a part of my brain screaming at me that the noise was important while the rest of me just wanted to ignore it and surrender to the bliss that was sleep. Maybe even forever.

I heard Heero curse loudly from under me, the sound a pleasant rumble, like a large cat’s purr. That I was hearing it from under my head didn’t strike me as odd at the moment, even though it should have, my head was too fogged up. All I could register was that Heero was there with me and that not only seemed normal, his presence almost had me drifting right back to sleep again. I heard a couple of solid ‘thwack’ noises, then the annoyingly loud sound that had roused me went away. Warm arms wrapped around me and I burrowed into them, not wanting to leave them for anything.

I think it was the pain more than anything else that kept me from falling back asleep, or maybe I would have stayed awake anyway. The tiny amount hadn’t been enough to ward off my headache and the act of being woken up from a sound sleep had only made it worse. My throat still hurt on top of that and I was laying on my right side which, while comfortable, hadn’t been such a great idea for my injuries. They were really nothing compared to the headache and the groggy feeling I had, though. I felt like my skull was trying to tear me apart and like there were iron weights somewhere behind my eyes.

“Go back to sleep, Duo,” I heard my boyfriend urge, but I knew that it was too late for that.

Alarm meant I needed to wake up. I didn’t know why and I wanted so badly to ignore it, but the feeling that there was some important reason why I was awake was too prominent for me to just ignore. With a frustrated and somewhat angry groan, I blinked open my eyes. Immediately, the bright red digits on Heero’s bedside clock had me squeezing them closed again as they shot barbed arrows through my eyes and into my brain. I had to tuck my head down before I could open my eyes again so I wasn’t looking at the clock, and even when I did get them open, it took me a few minutes for my mind to register what my eyes were seeing, which was not a good sign for my mental state.

Bright morning light was seeping through the twin, blinded windows in the bedroom, which was a better indicator for me that it was morning than my common sense, the remaining whispers of which had fled me at some point during my pathetic nap. I suddenly realized that the reason why the pillow under my head was so warm and moving slightly was because I was laying on Heero. We (and by we, I mostly mean I) must have fallen asleep exactly in the positions that we had been in because Heero was still in a half laying, half sitting position and my head was resting on his chest, our legs twined together like rope.

I would have been embarrassed, not just by how we were laying, but that I had literally fallen asleep on top of him, but I didn’t have the ability. Things like shame and guilt, if I felt them at all, were too muddled. In actuality, I felt worse than I had coming there from work that morning and I don’t just mean my headache. I felt literally ill, that hollow feeling you get when you have the flu, like every inch of you is just _wrong_. The fog in my head was a lot thicker and everything, from sound to vision to thoughts, felt like it was coming to me from a long, dark tunnel. I wasn’t even worried about my insomnia and what it was doing to me anymore. I had reached that mythical point of sleeplessness where my consciousness had taken a permanent vacation into some far corner of my head like a grumpy child, waiting for the rest of me to come to my senses.

There comes a time in every insomniac’s marathon when your brain finally decides that it’s sick of your shit and shuts itself off. For me, it started the process that Thursday morning and finished the job by the following day. That morning, I could still process some things, if I tried hard enough, but I was beginning to not want to. I could look at the digits on the clock, but I couldn’t read them, not without extending some effort. I could feel Heero’s chest rising softly with his breathing, but I couldn’t find the will to get up off of him. All I could feel was how warm he was and how I didn’t want to move, even when I knew that I should.

The closest to intelligent thought that I had was realizing that I must have fallen asleep before Heero that morning, maybe right in the middle of reading to him, although I couldn’t remember, because there was a blanket on me that had definitely not been there in my memories of that morning. When I looked at the bedside table again, I saw that Heero had placed my book there. It was sitting right next to his clock, between his cell phone and the empty glass that I had used.

Through my tiredness, I felt this hot, little burst of happiness looking at that table, seeing my things mingling with Heero’s like they belonged there. Like we were just like any other, normal couple, like it was the most natural thing in the world. I loved how it felt, the same way I feel sometimes when I go into that guest room and see my clothes in the closet and dresser. Only this was more intense, more important. I felt, not just that I was inching into Heero’s life, that I had become entangled with him, like I was that book, like I belonged.

“Wha’ time ‘s it?” I was finally able to mutter, my voice raspy, sore and barely audible.

“6:45,” Heero answered, sounding a bit put out by that.

I frowned. 6:45. What was important about that? Why even had Heero set an alarm? He hates waking up early. Something niggled at the back of my mind and it took me a couple minutes just to drag it out. School. I had no idea what day it was, but school was the only reason why Heero would be awake at that hour.

“How long?” I wondered out loud.

How long had I been asleep for? I couldn’t remember what time it had been the last time I had noticed it, couldn’t even remember clearly what time it had been when I had gotten to Heero’s house, but I just knew that it hadn’t been a long time. Not if it wasn’t even seven yet, and I didn’t feel like I had done more than shut my eyes and zoned out for a few moments. I didn’t even feel like I had taken a decent nap like I had been doing the last couple of days with Heero.

“An hour,” he grumbled, voicing the frustration that I was even too tired to feel, “Less, I think.”

Shit. How many hours had I gotten that week? Six? Seven? Not enough, that was all I knew. Hearing that only made me feel more exhausted as my mind blatantly reminded me of how much sleep I had missed and how there seemed to be little end in sight to this nightmare. I might have just laid there for hours, feeling miserable and hating myself and this stupid… disorder or whatever it is if it weren’t for the knowledge that I really needed to get ready for school. I still had to shower and feed my cat and I had never finished my homework. I’d probably have to skip breakfast if I wanted to get my math work done on time.

“Duo, don’t-,” my boyfriend began to protest as I sat up off of him, but despite his obvious displeasure with my not going back to sleep, he put a hand on the small of my back to help me sit up.

My back still protested and I didn’t know if it was from using Heero as a bed or some injury I had given myself at work, but it was just another ache to add to the pile that was making me feel like absolute garbage. Heero sighed heavily as I made it to my feet, swaying and unsteady and probably looking like I was drunk as fuck. I really didn’t think that my leg was going to hold me. It was still a bit swollen and the workout that I had given it the previous night had made it feel worse.

“You don’t have to go to school today,” Heero tried to argue, quickly sitting up on the corner of the bed, wincing a little and rubbing at his own back, making me feel guilty that he had let me lay on him for even that long, “Why don’t you try to going back to sleep? My parents can get you excused and you haven’t missed that many days this semester. It’s almost the end of the week anyway.”

I just shook my head, unable to form any kind of argument. I knew that he was right, but I couldn’t step off the straight forward path. I was supposed to go to school, so I was going to school, whether it was a good idea or not. I heard him huff in frustration and imagined that he wanted to strangle me for being so stubborn, but I just limped out of the room to the bathroom. Working completely on autopilot, I got undressed before I realized that I hadn’t brought a change of clothes in with me. I could have just taken the shower and then made a run for the bedroom in a towel, but the possibility that Heero might see me was too embarrassing, so I put my clothes back on, even though it made my sore muscles protest angrily.

Fresh clothes in hand, I returned for a quick shower which, despite making me glad that I didn’t smell like sweat anymore, didn’t make me feel much better. Combing my hair with my left hand was awkward, but my right still hurt too much to do anything fancy with it. I could write with it because I had to, but clenching anything was agony. I didn’t look at myself in the mirror. I didn’t want to see how ugly I looked, how pale I was and how red my eyes were. I dug around in the cabinets for the bottle of eye drops I had been using before going back to the guest room. After I fed Pepper, I resigned myself to starting my calculus homework. I was positive that I wasn’t going to be able to finish it, not in what time I had before school, not as tired as I was. But I could at least try to get half done and not get an incomplete on the assignment.

I looked around the room for my book bag, but I couldn’t see it anywhere. Confused, I just stood there, staring at the corner of the room where I usually put it like I thought that if I just kept looking there, it would magically materialize. I have no idea how long that I was standing there, staring off into space for. More than just a couple of minutes, long enough to be thoroughly embarrassing if anyone had caught me doing that. I was so perplexed, not knowing what to do, that I didn’t hear Heero coming up behind me until he spoke.

“Mom made breakfast,” he told me, speaking softly so he wouldn’t startle me.

It took me a bit too long to realize that he was not just telling me that for the joy of it, he meant that he wanted me to eat breakfast with him.

“I’m not hungry,” I told him, and boy was that the understatement of the century, “and I still have homework to do.”

“Don’t worry about your homework,” he assured me, “You can do it before class. You really need to eat something, you can’t just skip meals, especially when you aren’t feeling well.”

‘If I eat anything, I’m just going to puke it up anyway,’ I thought.

My stomach felt shriveled and hard, like a peach pit, and the thought of food alone made me want to gag. But if I told Heero that, he would definitely demand that I see a doctor.

“Please?” he decided to go for the low blow of pleading, “Just have some juice at the very least.”

I sighed. I didn’t have the energy to argue and I couldn’t think of anything to say anyway. Maybe juice wouldn’t be so bad. Surely my stomach could tolerate that. It was probably a good idea to stay hydrated anyway if I couldn’t eat anything and maybe the sugar would give me a tiny bit of energy. I trudged after my friend down the hall and stairs. Halfway to the bottom, I could smell food cooking. Bacon and eggs. The rich smell of the bacon almost had me throwing up right there on the steps. I grabbed at my stomach, feeling it want to heave, and through sheer force of will, pushed the urge down.

“Good morning!” Mrs. Yuy greeted us as we walked into the kitchen, only to frown when she got a look at me, from my face to my wrapped hand.

I mumbled something at her. It might have been ‘morning’, or it could have just as easily been ‘fuck you’ for all that I recall. I caught her giving her son a concerned look, but I ignored it. I sat down at the table with Heero and muttered something at his father when he came in shortly after. I wondered if I was ever going to be able to hold a semi-coherent conversation at that rate. Justin gave Mariela the same, exact worried look that she had given Heero, which would have been funny if it had been happening to anyone else but me. I caught him glancing at my hand, but he didn’t say anything about it, just looked concerned.

Justin took a plate heaping with a large omelet and bacon, handing it to Heero. I felt my stomach drop at the notion of trying to eat any of that. I even almost winced at the thought of trying to drink another glass of orange juice. While I was thirsty and I probably needed the vitamins, I remembered how it had burned my throat drinking it that morning and could have gone without the pain. Breakfast was not going to be a pleasant affair, but I vowed to force my way through it. I was a guest and it would be rude to refuse food that had been made for me, even if it was going to make me puke.

To my surprise, Mariela handed a bowl of plain, wonderfully bland oatmeal without anything on it except for a small bit of cinnamon mixed in. On top of that, instead of a glass of orange juice, I was given a glass filled with an unidentifiable, light green liquid. It looked like some kind of alien substance and had a slightly citrus and grassy smell to it.

“Mom,” Heero gawked at the drink, pointing a finger at it, “what the heck is that?”

“It’s a Nice Green!” she said with a brilliant smile, “There’s nothing weird in it, I promise. It’s just celery, apples, lemon, and an orange! I tried it earlier, it’s quite good.”

Heero made a face of disgust, probably at the celery bit.

“Where did you buy something like that?” he demanded, looking a bit flabbergasted that his mother would purchase something like that.

“I didn’t, I made it,” Mariela looked quite proud of herself, “I looked up the recipe online. It’s supposed to help with fatigue.”

Instantly, I felt warmed and a bit overwhelmed at her care for me. She had researched a drink to make me feel better, had gone out of her way to make it even though no one else might like it. I’m not a picky person (I’ve tried food that looked a hell of a lot grosser than a lime green drink), so I would have tried it anyway, but that cinched it for me. I raised the glass to my nose, whiffing at it. It definitely smelled like celery and citrus, nothing offensive. I happen to like celery and most other vegetables, so I wasn’t turned off by the smell anyway. I took an experimental sip and was surprised to find that it actually tasted good. It was light and summery tasting, the celery giving it a strange, but not unpleasant flavor. It tasted just as citrusy as it smelled, but it didn’t burn. It probably had more celery than orange or lemon in it, giving it a fruity taste without the acidic effect.

“It’s good,” I exclaimed and Heero looked more shocked by that than I had been, “Thank you.”

Mariela practically beamed like a lantern at my praise, like I had just made her whole damned day. I ate very slowly, as quickly as my stomach could handle it, taking small bites of the oatmeal and tiny sips of the drink, which was a lot more welcoming going down than any food. I hadn’t really realized just how dehydrated I was until I had started drinking it, then it was like I couldn’t stop. Seeing me eat like that, eating the solid food like it was poison and the drink like I was famished, Justin just looked more worried. When we finished, Heero and his parents hurriedly cleared the table, not letting me even ask about helping. I just sat there like a lump, my fried brain confused about what I was supposed to do next.

“How long did he…” I saw Justin ask his son.

Heero sighed.

“An hour, I think. It might have been less than that, honestly,” he responded.

I had no real concept that they were talking about me, that it had anything to do with me at all. Their words went right over my head like white noise or listening to people banally speaking of neighbors or some distant relatives. Justin took in a sharp breath of air, sounding like a hiss.

“Any luck convincing him to go see a doctor?” he asked.

Heero shook his head.

“I’ll keep trying,” he vowed, keeping his voice low.

“Sssh!” Mariela hissed angrily at the both of them, giving them a sharp, reprimanding glare and glancing at me.

Now that I can think again, I look back at that realize that she was chastising them for talking about me right in front of me like that, but at the time, I was just bewildered at her strange behavior. Heero looked over at me guiltily, flushing a little.

“We should get going,” he recovered, still looking a little sheepish.

Taking that as my queue to stop staring into space, I got up from the table.

“Mrs. Yuy,” I asked her very shyly, “could I… would it be alright if I had the rest of that drink?”

So far, it had been the only thing that I could actually consume over the last couple of days that hadn’t made me feel horribly sick. I had work that night, so I was definitely going to need something to give me energy if I didn’t want to fall flat on my face and solid food was disgusting me.

“Of course!” she looked incredibly pleased by my request instead of annoyed that I was taking all of it, “I’ll pack it in a thermos for you.”

I mumbled out a soft, but very sincere ‘thank you’ and went upstairs to brush my teeth and change the bandages on my hand, only to realize after I did it that I really didn’t need to keep it wrapped anymore and took them off. Heero slipped into the bathroom for his turn when I was done and I went back to the guest room to look for my book bag again. It had still not magically materialized back to where it should have been and I was beginning to feel very frustrated by my inability to figure out the simplest of things.

“Ready to go?” Heero asked me from the doorway.

I turned, about to tell him ‘no’ in anger at myself, when I saw that he was holding my book bag. I was completely confused until a tiny, foggy shred of a memory rose up, letting me recall that he had brought it into _his_ bedroom that morning. I could have slapped myself.

“Yeah,” I muttered, walking to him with feet that felt like they were incased in cement blocks.

We went back downstairs and I found that his mother had made both of us lunches again. I don’t know why, but it took me aback. She was being far too nice to me, but I knew that telling her that she didn’t need to do these things would fall on deaf ears. She handed me a cold thermos that I assumed had the drink in it, and there was another in the brown paper bag, but this one was piping hot. As I reached out to take the bag from her, her dark eyes glanced at my hand and she went a little pale. I didn’t blame her. It was pretty ugly, bruised and swollen, my knuckles scabbing over slowly, but she didn’t pester me about it.

“Just some tomato soup,” she told me, “Very plain. There are some crackers in there, too, if you want them.”

“T-thank you,” I stammered, amazed at the lengths that she had gone through to do something nice for me.

Her smile melted into a small frown and she reached out to brush my bangs away from my eyes.

“You’re coming back here after work, aren’t you?” she asked and it actually sounded like she was worried, almost like she was pleading.

I wanted to say yes. Although I hadn’t gotten much sleep, it had been nice and pleasant being with Heero, sharing his bed and reading to him. But even though I didn’t have all my mental faculties available, a needling concern and a small fear jabbed at me. For the first time in what seemed like days but wasn’t, I thought about my own home. It had been awhile since I had been there, I felt. Too long. My father was probably pissed as hell, if he had noticed me gone. And my mom… was she worried about me like Mariela was worried or did she understand that I was someplace safe? I hadn’t called her like I had planned to. I had forgotten. I shook my head.

“I really need to go home,” I told her, but the word ‘home’ sat heavy and strange on my tongue.

Home… it didn’t feel like home anymore. Had it ever, really? Being with Heero and his family had given me a taste of what home was really supposed to be like. It wasn’t just the place that you rested your head when you needed to, or where all your shit was, or the address you wrote down when you were filling out forms. It was the place that you wanted to go back to at the end of a long, hard day. It was where the people you cared about and who cared about you lived. It was family dinners, peace, quiet, warm smiles and someone to make your lunch for you when you were having a bad time. That had never been my home and I didn’t see how it ever would be, even if things were better between my mom and me. You weren’t supposed to dread going home. You weren’t supposed to think about walking through that front door with terror, not knowing what was going to happen to you. You shouldn’t think about your own bedroom with disgust and revulsion.

“Alright,” she conceded, but she, Heero, and his father all looked a little bit upset at the news for some reason, “but try to get some sleep. If you can’t, please think about taking a sleeping pill, ok? There’s nothing shameful about needing medication, Duo.”

“Ok,” I lied.

She didn’t understand. She and Heero and Justin would _never_ understand. I couldn’t take sleeping pills, no matter how bad it got and it wasn’t because I was being stubborn about it. I could get addicted to them, just like my parents got addicted to alcohol. Shit like that’s genetic, I read that somewhere. Not alcoholism, but addiction itself. I’ve gotten through seventeen years of my life not falling into that pit, not making the same mistakes my parents have. How could I possibly risk undoing that because I was just having trouble sleeping? I couldn’t. I refused to become that, even if I had to suffer through insomnia for the rest of my life. Better than being a pill popping addict any day.

I walked with Heero to school in a fog, my legs heavy and my body protesting every movement. I had no clue how I was going to get through the day when I already felt that I had been dragged over about a mile of rough road. I hurried to home room, reminding myself over and over like a mantra that I had to do my calculus homework, even if it was just a couple of the problems, but between my tiredness and my screaming headache, that seemed entirely impossible. We had gotten there early enough that we were the only two in the classroom, the perfect time for me to try to get work done, so I rushed to get the worksheet out of my bag and started. Only when I looked at it, I saw that it had already been filled out completely.

I stared at it for a while, confused and a bit concerned about my mental state. Had I really already done the assignment and just forgotten about it? I mean, my memory was shaky, but I always struggle with math. Could I have done it and not remembered having problems with it, just done it automatically? Something like that didn’t seem possible, but then that weird nightmare that I had had that morning hadn’t seemed possible, either. Then I actually _looked_ at the worksheet and saw that the handwriting didn’t look anything like mine. It was familiar, but definitely not mine, even with my busted hand. It took me only a couple of seconds studying the handwriting to realize why it was familiar: it was Heero’s. I looked over at him and saw him staring at a poster by the chalkboard. For the first time, I noticed just how tired he looked. If he had fallen asleep after me, even with his earlier nap, he hadn’t gotten a lot himself. When had he even had the time to do my homework for me?

“Why?” I asked him, all that I could articulate.

He looked over at me, confused until he saw what I was looking at, then smiled.

“You’re exhausted,” he told me frankly, “You have enough stress that you’re dealing with right now and I didn’t want one assignment to add to it.”

“But-,” I began to protest, not sure if I disliked him doing that for me more, or that he had done work that had been my responsibility.

“ ‘But’ nothing,” he interrupted, “It’s just one assignment, Duo. You already know how to do it, and if you don’t, I’ll just help you study before we have a test on it anyway. You’re too tired to concentrate to begin with, do you really think anything is going to stick in your head?”

He had a point there. I could barely remember anything from classes that week, which is why I had put off that assignment last, I hadn’t been sure if I would have been able to do it.

“If Mrs. Harkins tries to give you trouble about the handwriting, just tell her it’s because you had to write with your left,” he pointed to my bruised right hand.

I really didn’t think that was going to work. If she really cared enough to study the handwriting, she would be able to tell that it matched Heero’s own homework and would nail the both of us for it, but I didn’t think she would look too closely. The woman is ancient, but too proud to admit that her hearing, vision, and basically all her other senses are beginning to fail her. She won’t even wear glasses, even though everyone knows she has a hard time seeing things with how much she squints.

“Thank you, Heero,” I finally conceded, realizing it was pointless arguing when he had done me a pretty big favor.

Besides, it was just more proof of how much he cares for me and I didn’t want to begrudge him that. He beamed at me, reminding me of his mother when I had said I liked the juice and I didn’t feel guilty anymore about the homework.

I won’t bore you with the details of the first half of my school day, partially because nothing much happened and partially because I can’t remember it too well. My memory is as full of holes concerning Thursday and Friday that it might as well be Swiss cheese. I was much more successful staying away from Zechs that day, or maybe he just wasn’t in the mood to mess with me, content to let me stew in paranoia. About the most ‘exciting’ thing that happened was that I somehow managed to cut my left hand with a butcher’s knife in my cooking class. We were cutting meat to learn how to make beef wellington and I don’t know what happened. I guess my right hand must have slipped. It had been doing stupid things all day and with my concentration shot, using a knife that sharp with my injured hand had been a disaster waiting to happen.

My teacher fussed and fretted as I bled into the sink at my station, an accident like that rarely happening in her classes and made sure to rush me to the nurse’s office. Personally I thought that she was being overly dramatic, I had barely cut myself. The sting of the wound was just another pain to add to the pile, a fairly minor one. Sure enough, the nurse cleaned the cut, exclaimed that while it looked deep, it really wasn’t and didn’t need stitches, slapped a band-aid on it and evicted me from her domain. I was just thankful that Heero wasn’t in the same class as me. He would have freaked if he had seen the blood and would have fussed knowing that it was my exhaustion that had caused it. He probably would have tried to convince me to skip work again.

He did fuss a little when he saw the large bandage on my hand, but I managed to write it off as a minor slip because of my hand, not because I had been so tired that I hadn’t been paying attention. He still made me promise not to wield any sharp objects until my hand was better, but it was a promise that I could keep. I don’t think Mrs. Koch was going to let me near a knife for at least a few classes. She seemed to have taken me getting cut in her class like some kind of personal fault. Or maybe she had just been worried that I would sue her.

I felt little relief when Heero and I walked into the gymnasium. For once, I was dreading work more than school. School held its own horrors, but I really had no idea how I was going to manage through both of my shifts. That morning had been terrible and now I was even more tired. On top of everything, the thing that was really bothering me was that I couldn’t even look forward to going to see Heero after it was all over. I had to keep reminding myself that I was going to _my_ home and it just felt like being kicked when I was down.

I didn’t want to think about it, but it kept evading my thoughts through the day. Home. I couldn’t even remember when I had last been there, what had happened, or what my father’s mood had been. I supposed that it didn’t matter. He was hardly consistent, going from perfectly calm to a hurricane in seconds. Was he angry that I had been gone so long? Would I be walking right into that? I didn’t think I could handle it if he was pissed. I didn’t have the strength anymore to deal with one his rages. If he wanted to beat me, I decided, I would just let him. I wouldn’t even try to run. What was the point of running anyway? With my leg still bothering me, I probably wouldn’t get far and I had no energy left to care. Maybe if I didn’t react, didn’t try to run or get away from him, it would just be a short beating. At least, I hoped that a beating was all that he would do to me. I couldn’t even bare to think about the other thing that he might do…

I stopped at the bleachers, opened my back pack and dug around inside, but I was having a frustrating time finding what I needed. With a small noise of annoyance, I placed the bag on the bleachers and began pulling books out, hoping to find that it had migrated to the bottom of the bag.

“What’s wrong?” Heero asked, stopping his trek to the showers when he saw what I was doing.

“I can’t find the nurse’s slip,” I muttered grumpily, not sure if it was from not having any success or from him pestering me, my fuse already so short that it was almost nonexistent, “I put it in here and now it’s fucking gone.”

Just what I needed. There was no way in hell I was going to be given another one and Horner was not going to take my word for it. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that Heero was staring at me, looking perplexed and I don’t know why, maybe I was just too tired by then to have any kind of rational feelings anymore, but I felt further annoyed. I hate it when people stare at me, it reminds me too much of my father or how people, people like Zechs, will stare right before they do something terrible. Beyond that, I hate feeling like I’m being studied, measured up, because I know that I’m lacking and I hate being reminded of it. I knew that Heero wasn’t looking at me because of any of those things, but it made me nervous and confused because there was no reason that I knew of for him to be doing it.

“What?” I demanded and immediately hated how snappish it came out.

“Duo…” my best friend started hesitantly, but didn’t look wounded by my short temper, “You don’t have a note to get out of gym today. You just had the cut on your hand, you wouldn’t get one from that. The slip was from yesterday when you hurt your other hand. It was just for one day and you gave it to Horner, remember?”

I frowned and looked down at my hands, like the truth was written on them. Yesterday? Was he right? I stared at my bruised scabbed right hand, the swelling finally starting to go down, although it would quickly flare up again later that day when I worked. I couldn’t remember. Not then at any rate. My memories were tangled up, things that had happened that day with the previous. I couldn’t even remember what day of the week it was, what had happened that morning, or why I had been so sure that I would get excused from gym that day. That terrified me almost as much as the nightmare had that morning. I was losing chunks of time, time lapses really, and on top of that, I couldn’t keep things straight anymore. I had been perched on the rabbit hole for days and now I was starting to lose my balance, gravity pulling me down. The next day, Friday, and the following day as well, I would find myself plummeting.

I looked at Heero and saw that he was as scared as I was, incredibly worried for me and he had every right to be. I’d be surprised if he didn’t immediately rush me off to the hospital, but I had no words of comfort for him. I didn’t even have any for myself, because I was quite sure even as we stood there that the following morning was going to offer me no respite. This wasn’t going to stop and it was only going to get worse. I was positive of that.

“I’m sorry,” was all I could say as I placed my hand on my forehead tiredly, pushing my bangs up a little and feeling my headache steadily growing from pounding to screaming, “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Are you alright?” he asked me, touching my arm lightly, the brief and gentle contact taking some of the sting out of my embarrassment and shock.

“I…” I started to lie, but I didn’t have the energy and I just didn’t care anymore, “No, not really.”

That only made him more concerned, but I realized that I was glad that I hadn’t lied. Usually I would feel guilty, but I mostly just felt relief this time. Not another lie to add to the never-ending pile. Not another mark against me as the worst boyfriend, and just plain friend, that had ever lived.

“If you need to see a doctor,” he pressed, sounding a bit desperate, but he wasn’t insisting, not yet anyway.

I shook my head, the unpleasant pain from the motion a fitting punishment for both my stubbornness and letting him down. Again. Heero looked frustrated, not necessarily with me, but like he was at a loss for what to do. I could just imagine him debating with himself whether he should listen to me or drag me to the hospital against my will.

Time decided for him. The bell rang, signaling the start of the final period and I winced at the spears piercing my brain. I shoved my textbooks back into my bag and left it there on the bleachers.

“Need to get changed,” I murmured and walked past him to the locker room.

Heero sighed very audibly, but I could hear him following me. I had known that he would, that he wouldn’t risk me being in there alone, even though Zechs hadn’t shown up yet. I guess it was a bit manipulative, but I just couldn’t fight with him. I dressed quickly and followed Heero back out onto the gym floor, not once running into any trouble, a rarity. We joined the huddle of our classmates sitting on the floor, waiting for our teacher so we could begin the class with stretches, sitting far away enough that most wouldn’t be inclined to start shit with us, but close enough that we didn’t look like we were necessarily avoiding them. I tensed when I saw Zechs and the other thugs come out of the locker room, sure he was going do try something since he hadn’t all day, but then I saw Horner come out of his office a couple minutes later and breathed in relief, at least until he opened his mouth.

“Maxwell!” my coach called in the snappish, loud way that he always talks.

It sounds like he’s yelling at everyone, but I had known him long enough to know the difference between his usual, gruff demeanor and when he’s in a foul mood. When he’s angry, he bellows. I stood up, confused with what he could possibly want with me.

“I need to talk with you,” he snapped and walked back towards his office without even checking if I was following him.

“Oooooh,” the rest of the class crowed mockingly.

“Shut it!” Horner growled loudly at them, clearly annoyed with their antics.

I didn’t look at Heero to see what he thought about this, just ignored the jeering and followed my teacher. Horner didn’t go all the way to his office, telling me more than anything else that I wasn’t getting chewed out. He stopped short, just far enough away that we were out of ear shot so long as he didn’t yell.

“How’s the hand?” he asked me, the very last thing that I expected out of him and nodded at my right hand.

“Better,” I said simply, lifting it for him to see.

He frowned as he looked at it, but I didn’t understand why. It wasn’t like it was broken and it didn’t look that bad to me, although I was a bit biased since I had done a hell of a lot worse to it before.

“You’ll be able to make practice on Saturday,” I was unclear from his tone whether that was a question or a demand.

“Yeah, I mean I don’t need my hand for running and I’m not in any of the throwing events,” I pointed out, but I felt a bit of clarity.

He had only been concerned that I might miss our first real practice. Then it really hit me. Track practice. Saturday. I had completely forgotten. I hadn’t even given any thought to the rest of the week. If I had thought about Saturday at all, it had been with relief that I could finally spend the day with Heero. No distractions. No anxiety. Even if I still couldn’t sleep by then, just having some quiet, away from school, away from my father, away from work and hopefully, away from my own stupid thoughts would help settle my nerves. Now I suddenly felt all of that ripped away from me and felt a sinking depression.

‘Oh, grow up,’ I chastised myself angrily, ‘It’s for an hour or two, it’s not like the whole day is ruined!’

But I still felt like it was just another stone piled on my back, another anxiety to worry over. I didn’t have the energy to get through gym class, let alone track. I would probably fall flat on my face and, right then, I couldn’t handle it. It was too much. I felt like I was going to cry and I wanted to scream at the universe to just _stop_ already.

“Wasn’t talking about your hand,” Horner said gruffly, “You look like you’re about to keel over. You sick or something?”

“Or something,” I muttered and instantly regretted it because it made me sound like I was hung over or something.

“Well drink some OJ or something,” he barked, “I expect you to be on your best Saturday. I’m going to put you boys through the wringer to get you ready for the season.”

I almost groaned and told him that I couldn’t go, I had the flu, chicken pox, anything to get me out of it. I didn’t think I was going to survive the experience. He clapped me on the shoulder and I flinched, not out of any kind of pain, but fear of the sudden movement from the large man. If he noticed it, he didn’t say anything and sent me back to the group. We did our stretches, which hurt like hell with my sluggishly healing injuries, and then were told, with a glee saved solely for sadists and gym teachers, that we were playing dodgeball since it was too cloudy outside and might rain any second. I could have screamed. Heero somehow looked even more put out and went out of his way to make sure we ended up on the same team, not that it really mattered of course, Zechs went out of _his_ way to make sure he was on the other team. I didn’t even feel my usual sense of foreboding. I just didn’t care anymore and had a plan of my own.

Having no drive at all to deal with bullies and their nonsense, I let myself get struck out within the first minute of the game by a skinny, short freshman whose wild throw wouldn’t have been able to hit the broad side of a barn if I hadn’t intentionally gotten in the way. Pretty much everyone laughed and threw insults at me, calling me pathetic and a dork for getting hit by a freshman. I didn’t care, it was better than getting hit by Zechs or one of his asshole friends. I dared to glance at him as I walked to the bleachers, the designated spot for those knocked out of the game. He looked irritated at having lost his chance to hit me, but not pissed. He probably thought I really was that clumsy and hadn’t caught on that I had done it on purpose. He was satisfied to jeer at me.

Being able to sit down and start my homework while my classmates ran around like idiots was the closest to happiness that I had felt since waking up in Heero’s arms. Even when, little by little, people started getting knocked out and sent to the bleachers, they kept a wide berth from me and left me alone. It was oddly peaceful, not having to do anything or worry about anything. I knew that Zechs would be occupied for the rest of the game, he was usually the last one standing.

Best of all, being the first one out, I had been granted the rare opportunity to watch Heero without anyone seeing me. I don’t get to do it often, especially at school, but everyone was too preoccupied with the game to care about what I was doing. Not many people realize it, but Heero is quite graceful. Unlike me, he’s one of those people that was just born to be an athlete. When he’s playing a sport, he moves like he doesn’t even have to think, like it’s written right into his DNA.

True, he isn’t as fast and agile as I am, but it comes more naturally to him. He can’t dodge and evade like I can, but I saw him snatch balls that would have hit him right out of the air like a snake would a bird. And when he threw the ball back, the speed and accuracy of it was as intense as watching him play pitcher during his baseball practices. He had taught me how to throw, but I… and probably every other person in that school, could never be at his level. I won’t say that he was godlike, because that seems a bit biased and while Heero was good, I knew that he had practiced hard to get that way and still practices hard to get better, but when he had that ball in his hand, you could actually see the trepidation in some of the other kids’ faces.

Dodging his throws is nearly impossible. I’ve only ever seen a couple of our classmates do it. More amazing than that is his concentration. It was just a silly game, but he was completely focused, his eyes like blue stones. I had taken the easy way out, willing to lose in order to get the hell out of there, but Heero isn’t like that. I could see the hatred burning in his eyes at each one of our classmates, but especially at Zechs and his friends, and knew that he was not going to back down. I wonder if he was thinking about what Zechs had done to me the previous day, how vulnerable and angry I had felt, how he hadn’t been able to protect me and wanted a tiny taste of revenge, even if it was petty. Or maybe he was just trying to burn off some of that anger like he had told me to do.

Either way, he got his chance. It wasn’t long before it was just Heero, one other boy, a senior, versus Zechs, Alex, and Mueller. The senior had knocked out Trant, but that was little comfort. Zechs and Mueller were the ones to look out for. Alex sneered at Heero, eager to be the one to take him down, the only real obstacle to their winning the game. I don’t even think he cared about winning, I think he just wanted to take Heero out. He already had a ball in his hand while my boyfriend didn’t have any, they were all on Zechs’s side of the field. Alex lobbed it a him, a hard and harsh throw that would have smarted quite a bit if it had hit, but even I could tell when he was going to let go of it. Alex is seldom a threat when we play this stupid game, he’s too predictable.

Just as I knew he would, Heero easily dodged the ball and managed to scoop it up, lightning quick, as it bounced on the floor. His face hardened as he stared at Alex, who was impatiently waiting to see what Heero was going to do before risking to get another projectile. Heero’s look wasn’t angry, but cold and intense, his features sharp with focus. Then, with no warning at all, he whipped the ball at Alex at full speed, harder than he had thrown any ball earlier. You could actually _hear_ the ball as it cut through the air towards Alex, like it was singing, and the sound it made as it struck Alex’s side was almost as loud as a thunderclap.

Our joint bully howled, actually _howled_ , although I’m positive it was in shock and not pain. I know how much those stupid, rubber balls can hurt being thrown like that and I was positive that he would have a lovely bruise to remember Heero by, but he seemed more startled than anything else. Despite all my lectures about not making waves, not fighting back, I wanted to cheer and applaud. Alex glared angrily at my best friend and I thought he might start something, but thankfully stormed off to the opposite end of the bleachers, not even going over to me to start something. When Heero saw that the asshole was far enough away from me, he returned his attention to the game, very narrowly missing a ball thrown from Mueller.

The game might have gone on for quite a while longer if not for a clumsy misstep. After knocking Alex out, Zechs had Heero in his sights and Heero had had some very close calls, only barely able to either dodge or knock the ball away with one he held in his hand, but Zechs kept at him, not giving him so much as a second’s worth of peace to try to grab a ball of his own. Then, as he was trying to dodge another violently thrown ball, the other boy on Heero’s team also dodged one of Mueller’s in the same direction, bumping into my boyfriend. Thankfully, Heero got hit in the arm and not the face, but he still looked angry by it. Zechs just smirked at it while Mueller threw another ball, successfully hitting the other boy and knocking out the remains of our team.

Heero trudged to the bleachers, looking defeated, and sat down next to me. I didn’t tell him that it was for the best that he had lost, or Zechs would have beat the shit out of him for winning against him or lecture him about hitting Alex. Instead, I smiled at him, taking in his light panting, slightly red skin, and sweat from exertion, the light in his eyes that can only come from battle, even if it was a rather tiny one.

“That was awesome,” I told him and knew that I didn’t need to clarify.

He instantly blushed, but his lips quirked into a tiny smile, that defeated expression erased in a second and he looked incredibly pleased.

“Yeah, well, someone has to remind that asshole once in a while that he isn’t the hotshot that he thinks he is,” he muttered, glancing over at where Alex was sitting, “I just wish I had gotten Zechs at least once, too.”

Again, I kept my mouth shut about what a bad idea that was. He might get away with knocking out Alex, but never Zechs. Zechs couldn’t let anyone think for a single second that they were better than him, especially in a sporting competition. There wasn’t enough time after the dodgeball game had ended to start another, so we all just sat on the bleachers and socialized or did whatever to pass the time. Heero helped me with my calculus homework so I would at least get that done and not run into another situation like that morning. I seriously don’t think that I would have gotten any of it done without his help, I was becoming more and more useless by the minute.

I experienced a time lapse that afternoon worse than any I had had since this insomnia bout had started. I remember going into the showers and leaving without incident. I remember walking through the parking lot with Heero. Just as we were about to hit the street, he stopped and asked me, “Are you sure about not coming to my house after work tomorrow morning? I’m worried that you aren’t going to sleep if you go home. You need to sleep somewhere quiet.”

That’s the last thing that I remember. I don’t recall what I said to him, if we argued or if I had folded. It wouldn’t have mattered if I had. The next thing I can really remember, I was walking to the factory. I have snippets of memories before then, but they don’t make any sense to me and are too full of whispers and mist to pull any concrete information from. I don’t remember much of my factory shift, either, just being very, very tired and getting yelled at a lot. I do remember twisting my back and pulling a muscle that sent shivers of pain from the small of my back to my left shoulder, but that’s about it.

Then the bell was ringing, our signal that the shift was over and it was time for us to go home. I almost cried out in agony as the noise set off mini explosions in my skull. The pain was so bad that I thought I was going to vomit. Or maybe that was my anxiety, knowing that it was finally time to suck it up, grow a pair, and go back home. Funny how one word can taste like bitter poison on your tongue and make your stomach curdle. Funny how just a place can seem like a gaping chasm of nightmares.

‘I’m not going home,’ I remember thinking, ‘Not really. Home isn’t east. It’s north. I’m not heading to my house or my family, I’m going backwards in time to the past.’

I almost laughed at my own melodrama, but even if it was dramatic and silly, I couldn’t fault the truth in it. The house that my parents lived in, where my bedroom was, wasn’t my home. It was my old life. Every board, every plate in the kitchen, every boxed photo in the basement, every familiar smell was my past, one that I was finding myself drifting away from. Maybe on some subconscious level, that’s what I was trying to do. I didn’t belong there anymore than the person that I had been a year ago belonged in my head. I am different. My life is different. It’s so silly, just a couple months ago, I felt like an alien in Heero’s home. Now I feel like one in mine.

It was not a pleasant feeling. I know that it might seem like it, but it isn’t. I felt… displaced. Like a leaf floating on two, opposing winds, not knowing where it’s going to end up. It isn’t just unpleasant, it’s terrifying. I don’t know where I belong anymore. I don’t think I belong anywhere. I don’t think I ever have. I feel like a stranger in my own life. I guess… I’ve always felt this way one way or another. I’ve always been the odd one out, have always been different. No matter what I do, how I change, who I become, it’s never who I want to be.

Maybe it was just the sleep deprivation, but I felt deeply depressed as I walked down my street towards my home. My neighbor’s dogs barked and snarled at me from the other side of the street and someone was loitering outside another house, smoking a cigarette. I saw my own home in the distance, all the lights off, my father’s old car parked in front. I should have felt afraid seeing it, knowing that he was home, but I just felt this burning anger in my chest.

Things hadn’t always been like this. When I had been a child, home had had some measure of comfort to me. The creak of the second stair leading to the attic, the ugly yellow that the kitchen was painted, the smell of my father’s coffee in the morning… these things had been home to me, familiar, normal. Maybe I had never loved my home, and maybe I had always feared it as an animal fears a cage, but it had still been mine. If not my home, then certainly my memories’, the things that define me. Then… he had taken it all away. Me. My sanity. My memories. All those things that make me who I am… who I was. My father had ripped it all away. I wanted to go back… with everything that I am, I wanted to go back to just being a child, scared of making my father angry because I wanted him to love me, not a shell of a person, just scared of _him_.

The door was predictably locked. I dug my key ring out of my pocket and tried to put the key in the lock, but found that it didn’t fit. For a minute, I panicked, thinking that my father had changed the lock on me. It seemed like the sort of petty thing he would do, before common sense kicked in, telling me that we didn’t have the money for something like that. Then I realized that I was using the key to Heero’s house, not mine, and mentally slapped myself. I fumbled for the right key, the stained brass one, not the gleaming silver one, and successfully unlocked the door. I braced myself as I stepped inside, ready for him to be there, waiting for me, but it was impossible to see in the pitch black of the house.

I didn’t want to risk that the kitchen light might alert my father to my presence, as silly as that was with the bedroom door closed, so I used my cell phone’s display to light way into the kitchen. As I passed by the living room, I could faintly see that someone was sleeping on the couch, no doubt my mother. It was impossible to tell if she was injured in any way, but I didn’t want to wake her just to check. At least one of us could get some sleep. The kitchen, from what I could see of it, looked fairly clean. There were some dishes sitting in the drying rack, too many to have just been from that day. That made me wince. My mother must have done them. I usually do them and don’t let them sit for more than a day so my dad will always come home to a clean house, but there was two, maybe even three days’ worth of dishes there.

I couldn’t hear my father’s snoring, which made me paranoid, but he wasn’t lying in wait for me. At least not yet. And right then, I knew with certainty that I was going to get no sleep that morning. There was no way in hell. Maybe I could have gotten a little, even just a couple of minutes, if my father had been awake and had beaten me, but without knowing the kind of mood he was in, if he was angry with me, or what he might do, I was going to lie awake, anxious and scared, until he awoke.

I slipped into my bedroom like a ghost, closing the door behind me and flicking on the light. To my intense relief, my bedroom was exactly how I remembered leaving it. There was nothing out of place, nothing destroyed, nothing moved. Maybe my father wasn’t all that angry about my disappearance. Maybe he hadn’t even noticed. The very first thing that I did was change out of my work clothes and into my more comfortable pajamas, wincing as my back and what seemed like the entire upper right side of my body protested in pain as I pulled my shirt off. I knew that I should be icing my arm and hand, but I was too tired to care.

I eyed my mattress, sitting so innocently on the floor, mocking me. I didn’t want to lay down on it. I told myself that I wouldn’t be able to sleep, but the fact is that I was scared of finding that out, of knowing how fucked I was.

‘I have homework to do,’ I told myself, grabbing for whatever distraction I could find, ‘I’ll do that first, _then_ I’ll sleep.’

That seemed like a good idea, of course, my brain was running on backup power, so for all I could figure, going running during a thunderstorm might seem like a good idea to me. I sat down at my desk and dug out the first textbook I could find. I didn’t have much homework, actually, but it still took me over an hour to finish, my brain slow and sluggish. Even as I tried to focus on my work, I was incredibly tense, on alert for even the slightest indication that someone else besides me was awake in that house.

About thirty minutes in, I heard a loud, strange sound that had me jumping in my chair. I was so startled and so frightened by it that I almost cried out, which is just embarrassing. I sat there, my eyes wide and my hands shaking before I realized that it was not the sound of my father coming up the stairs but one of the branches of the tree outside the house scraping and banging against the side in a high wind. I sighed angrily at myself, but I didn’t relax, staying in that stressed and alert state for quite some time, positive that the next sound wouldn’t be anything nearly as innocent.

I finished with my last assignment around three in the morning and sat there, staring at the wall. I realized that I had nothing left to distract me from the inevitable, nothing that needed to be done that could make me delay in what I _really_ needed to do: try to sleep. A nervousness came over me as I glanced at my mattress again. It was like a slumbering tiger or some dark, sinister shape hiding in the shadows. I could actually _feel_ it taunting me.

“This is stupid,” I muttered angrily.

I needed sleep. Even if it was just for an hour. I was falling apart and if I didn’t get something akin to rest, I was going to go insane. I slammed my textbook closed with a bit more force than necessary and rose from the chair. Defiantly, like some petulant child, I strode over to the light switch, flicked it off, located my bed in the dark, and threw myself down on it. The mattress, the same mattress that I’ve slept on since I graduated from a crib, felt flat and stiff and smelled weird. There was a lump right in the middle of it that I can never seem to get rid of and I’m pretty sure a couple of the springs are broken. The sheets, although they were fairly clean and fresh, felt scratchy. The pillows, which I’ve had for as long as the mattress, were just as flat, but even lumpier.

I sighed again as I pulled a blanket over me. What the hell was wrong with me? This was my mattress, it was as familiar as anything else in that house, so why did it feel so horribly uncomfortable? I rolled onto my right side in my standard sleeping position, but my arm still hurt too much. I rolled to the left, but that had me facing the door. I couldn’t even see it that clearly in the dark, but I knew that it was there and the fear that I felt facing that portal to the rest of the house was unbearable, so I rolled back on to my injured side. I curled up my legs, but that just made my left leg throb, so I had to stretch them out again.

I let out a sharp, frustrated puff of air, ruffling my bangs. I grabbed my pillow, trying to fluff it up, but that just made it feel even lumpier.

“Stop this,” I muttered to myself, “Just _sleep_.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and fought against the nervous energy that made me want to fuss with my bedding some more. It wouldn’t do any good, I knew that, and fidgeting was just keeping me awake. But everything felt wrong, even the blanket wrapped around me. Even the air I was breathing. I jolted, my eyes flying open as the branch hit the side of the house again. I groaned, but didn’t close my eyes again. I just stared into the dark, feeling them burn and ache. Fuck, even my fucking eyes felt tired. I wanted to bash my head against something hard until I didn’t have to be awake anymore.

I tucked myself further under my blanket. My face and back felt cold for some reason and there was something bothering me, something about the bed that was wrong. As I reached out my hand across the pillow, meeting nothing but the pillow cover and empty air, I realized what it was. Heero, no matter how we had ended up falling asleep, would always be pressed right up against my back when I woke up, like he gravitated to my body heat, leaving my back pleasantly warm. It was just like Pepper using my pillow as a makeshift bed. No matter what, she would always slowly edge herself towards me until her fur was brushing against my cheek. And Heero’s long legs would always get tangled up in mine for some reason, or I would feel them brush against mine as he would shift to get comfortable.

It dawned on me then with a deep, miserable pain. I wanted my cat. I wanted my boyfriend. I had never thought it possible, but I missed sharing the bed with him, even if it sometimes scared me or embarrassed me. I missed Heero’s light snoring, I missed feeling his arm around me like I was his personal teddy bear. Without him and Pepper there, it didn’t feel right, like a splinter in my brain. All alone in that cold, dark attic, I felt abandoned and bereft, sleep eluding me like some kind of punishment.

I’m not certain of how long I laid there like that, hating myself and the universe, so frustrated that I could actually feel tears gathering behind my eyes, unable to drift off even to half-unconscious doze. I was just as awake as I had been when I had first laid down when I heard the noise. It was a soft creak, not the kind of sound that I could mistake for that tree branch or any other sound that might be coming from outside. My whole body tensed like a taut string, knowing exactly what that sound was: my parents’ bedroom door being opened. I held in my breath and waited, listening intently for any noise, even a faint whisper of one that would tell me what was happening downstairs.

I prayed that it was just my mother, going into the bedroom for some reason. But that didn’t make much sense. Since she had stopped drinking, my mother had pretty much ceased sleeping in the same bed as my father. I think she was disgusted by him, even more than she had been, and was all too happy to sleep on the couch. So instead, I prayed that he was just getting a glass of water or using the bathroom. The next sound, a creak just a foot away from the steps, was a python squeezing my chest. Another creak, this time at the bottom of the steps. There was no denying it now. I wrapped my arms around myself, not caring that it made my right arm throb.

‘Turn around,’ I pleaded, ‘Turn around and go back to bed.’

But no. I could hear his footsteps approaching me, heavy and terrible.

‘He knows I’m home and he’s pissed,’ I thought without any kind of conviction, ‘He’s angry and he’s going to beat me, that’s all. That’s all he wants, to teach me a lesson for disobeying him again.’

He was half way up the steps and it wasn’t the quick stride he usually has when he’s angry.

‘Please, just let him hit me,’ I begged, squeezing my eyes shut to try to keep the tears at bay, my heart hammering in my chest, ‘I don’t care if he beats me until I’m bloody, just please let that be all. Please, please, oh god, just this once…’

My heart jolted as I heard the knob turn and my door open behind me. I couldn’t handle the sudden flood of adrenaline, the sheer terror, or the voice screaming in my head to _run_ , to do something besides just lay there and let it happen, just like always. I could feel myself trembling and as my father walked into the room, I felt a wave of revulsion and self-hatred stronger than any adrenaline rush.

My father didn’t say anything to me as he approached my mattress or even turned on the light. It was that one act that erased all hope from me and I could actually feel my stomach sinking down to my knees. He never turns on the light when he wants to fuck me. I guess it makes it easier for him to pretend that I’m someone else, that he isn’t fucking a boy, let alone his own son. I can’t complain. I don’t like seeing his face when he does this to me or hear his voice. Afterwards it’s alright. Those times when he says that he loves me. That’s fine. But during, I never want to hear his voice. I don’t even like hearing him pant or grunt. I wish I could pretend that he was someone else, just like he does me, but there’s no one that’s more than marginally better, no one to comfort myself with.

He was quick that morning, too eager, but also rough. I wondered if that was from my not being there or if he had just had a stressful day and needed to work off some steam. I guess it’s no different than him taking his bad moods out on me with his fists. He found me in the dark too easily, his heavy weight making the mattress sag, pulling the blanket down and arranging me how he wanted me. I put up no resistance. I was a broken doll, lifeless and limp. I never put up much of a fight when he does this, not anymore, and I was certainly in no state to put up one then. People might think that it’s easy, just letting him do what he wants. I suppose it is, in a way, not to struggle. But in another, it isn’t at all. Every instinct in me screams that this is wrong, this is disgusting, and I hate him for it. I want to lash out and hurt him like he’s hurt me just by wanting me this way. I want to run from him, to find some way to keep him from touching me. I have to fight against those instincts, against hating myself for being too weak to fight back, knowing that I’ll have to live with myself afterwards. Live with knowing that this isn’t a rape, not really, but a surrender.

Then he was jerking down my pants and underwear and shoving himself inside of me and it didn’t matter if I had the thought to fight back, it was too late. I couldn’t have anyway. I keep telling myself that. Even at full strength, even with a full night’s worth of sleep under my belt, even in every best case scenario, if I fight him, I’ll lose. He taught me that the first time. I drew in a sharp, pained breath at the penetration, trying not to scream. Then I had the same feeling that I always have during these events, the sickening knowledge that this isn’t Trowa inside of me or even a complete stranger, but my father, and it isn’t tears or cries of pain that I’m fighting against, but nausea once again.

It was harsh, his motions violent, and everywhere he touched me, my hips, my thighs, he left bruises. He grabbed my wrists one time, drawing them back and I did cry out then as his strong grip sent hot, screaming pain through my right arm and hand, but it was nothing compared to the other pain he was causing me and he didn’t stop at my cry of pain. I bit my lip hard enough to bleed and buried my face in my pillow, letting it absorb my tears. He was quick this time, I don’t think it went on for more than ten minutes, probably less, but it was long enough to make me feel like I was going insane. Like I was having one of those strange nightmares again. Like I was being ripped apart from every angle.

He finished with a hoarse grunt, his nails cutting into my skin at the hips and I had the absolutely abhorrent and repulsive sensation of him squirting his semen inside of me. Although I wanted to scream, I still stayed silent. All I did, besides curse him in my head, curse myself and cry, was pray that he was done, that this time, once would be enough. This time, that prayer was answered. He pulled out abruptly, making me wince at the sharp pain, then his weight was gone, that awful weight keeping me pinned down, and I heard the rasping sound of him cleaning himself off, probably with my sheets, and then he was gone, walking down the steps. He didn’t have any kind words for me that morning, he didn’t have any words at all, I had fulfilled my purpose.

I curled up on my side, wrapping my arms tightly around myself like I could pretend that someone else was holding me. Silent tears trailed down my face, my wrist and ass throbbed with hot pain, and all the while, there felt like there was a drill, slowly grinding away inside my head. My chest felt tight, too tight, like I was having a heart attack and it was hard to breathe, but I still laid there. I didn’t want to move. I didn’t want to do anything. I didn’t even want to live. I just wanted to lie there until I starved to death, until I wasted away into nothing. But then I felt something warm trickling down my legs and I had to get up. I couldn’t bear the thought of staying there with that… that disgusting stuff still in me.

I carefully rolled on my back, taking my underwear and pants the rest of the way off, and got to my feet, hissing at the pain in my rear. It must have been awhile, or he really had been rougher than usual. I walked stiffly to the light switch and flicked it on, squinting at the light for a moment. Now that the light was on, I could see the spots of blood on my sheets, mingled with globs of white and my stomach rolled, nearly making me wretch right there. I looked at the clothes I had balled up in my hand and saw that they had some semen and blood on them, too. Rage filled the void in my chest and I angrily threw them across the room as hard as I could, stupidly using my right hand out of instinct.

Said right hand wasn’t looking so hot. My wrist was swollen again, now worse than before, and there were fresh, black bruises in the shape of fingers on my skin. I couldn’t let Heero see that. I’d have to wrap it or something. I didn’t have the money to get a brace and he would notice if I was suddenly wearing gloves all the time. I ignored the injury and set about stripping my bed, finding the lingering warmth of them repulsive, and dumped all of the bedding, even the blanket, on top of my soiled clothes. I reminded myself to wash all of them when my mother wasn’t around, so she wouldn’t see, wouldn’t know. Not that it makes much of a difference, but I wanted her to know as little as possible. I didn’t want to see that guilty expression on her face, to know that this was tearing her up inside, but she was as powerless as I was to do something about it.

I grabbed some fresh underwear and some sweatpants, a long sleeved shirt, too, since I could still smell my father on it. I knew that it was just in my head, but the smell was there and I wanted it gone. I went downstairs to the bathroom, my head filled with the single minded purpose of a shower and taking the steps very, very slowly. A tumble down them would be the very last thing that I needed. In the bathroom, I stripped and turned the hot water on high, but as usual, only barely lukewarm water came out. I just stood there under it, letting it pelt me and wash over me, not moving at all. I felt blank, completely hollow inside. And I felt filthy, but the water wasn’t making me feel any cleaner. I was a rotting, pus filled skin wrapped over a black hole. I leaned my forehead against the shower wall and dug my nails into the grooves of the tiles until they started to hurt.

I stayed like that for so long, the water turned to ice and my body shivered harshly, but I didn’t feel it. Slowly coming out of my nothing daze, I finally grabbed the soap and a washcloth and cleaned the filth off from between my legs, but I didn’t feel any better. Not really feeling like being naked anymore, I finished with my shower, suffered through the pain of combing my hair back into a braid, and dressed. Although it couldn’t have been later than four am, I brushed my teeth, too. I wasn’t really thinking at that point, far too gone for something like that.

Nothing more to clean and nothing that I could do to try to make this better, I had no choice but to go back upstairs to my room. I didn’t want to. It felt suffocating, like I was being choked by something heavy in the air as I walked back up the steps. That air smelled and tasted sour, something that was only in my head, but in my current state, felt as real as anything else.

I forced myself forward and up the steps, trying in vain to remind myself that these things, the sour smell, the foreboding feeling that I wasn’t safe, my anxiety, the cold, the sensation of my father’s breath on my neck, they all only existed in my imagination. There was no smell, no boogieman, no more cum trailing down my legs. On a normal day, I might have been able to listen to myself, to ignore those feelings as nothing more than frightened paranoia. But my insomnia and sleep deprivation gave a realness to these delusions that was outright terrifying. To my tired mind, these ghosts of whispers were there, all the demons in my head let loose in the waking world. The filth, the repulsive smell… it made the slow trek up the stairs and into my bedroom all the more menacing, turning reality into one of my nightmares. I felt like I was being ripped apart, like I truly was going mad.

The walk even seemed like an eternity. When I found my bedroom door open and the light on, I panicked, thinking that my father was in there. I almost fled back down the steps, but something in me kept me walking ahead, like I was in a trance, even as I trembled with fear, my heart like a pounding gong. I think I had just gotten to the point where I couldn’t even get my body to respond to my desires, it could only continue with a single, simple action and any protests I had weren’t even under consideration. I found the room empty, my sheets and clothes still tossed in a corner, my homework still on the desk. Confused, it took me almost ten full minutes to realize that no one had come into my room when I had been in the shower. I had just left the light on.

“Dammit,” I swore at my stupidity.

If my father had found the light on, he would have killed me. Any of us wasting something like water, electricity, or heat drove him insane. I had only made the mistake of leaving a light on a small handful of times as a kid, but almost never now that I’m older and such things are too deeply engrained in me. This insomnia had changed from frustrating to dangerous. I couldn’t make slips like this, and the possibility that I might _really_ fuck up in my tiredness was scary, like leaving the front door unlocked or leaving the refrigerator door open all day when no one was home. I couldn’t make mistakes like that, but what choice did I have? I hadn’t even realized I had left the damned light on.

I reached my hand out to flick the light off, but hesitated, my hand frozen in the air. I knew that I should turn it off, I didn’t need it on and it would just get me into trouble… but I just couldn’t make myself shut it off. I needed the light. I couldn’t bear turning it off… I didn’t want to face the darkness and whatever might be lurking there. Any other morning, maybe I could have been brave, but not then. If the monster became real again, too, I really would go crazy.

I walked to the other side of my mattress and sat down on the floor, crossing my legs, too tired to even continue standing. I stared at my bed, naked of sheets, looking deceptively innocent considering what had just happened on it. My tired eyes studied every inch of it, looking for any evidence of the sex that I might have missed. I couldn’t see anything beyond the dip in the mattress, not even a single drop of blood. It might as well have never happened.

‘Need sleep,’ I didn’t so much think the thought as it filtered into my brain on its own.

‘Yes, sleep,’ I echoed back, ‘Just put a fresh set of sheets on and lay down. There’s still time. I might get an hour, maybe even two.’

It was laughable that I had gotten to the point where I was considering two hours of sleep to be some kind of holy grail. That was all I needed to do. Stand up, get the fresh sheets from my dresser, throw them on the mattress, lie down. I didn’t even need to make the bed neatly just so I had something to lay on. Easy.

‘So stand up,’ I ordered my body, a first step that I was perfectly capable of.

But I couldn’t move. I just kept staring at that off-white mattress, yellowed with age and stains like it was some kind of nightmarish beast. Yes, it was like it had never happened. But it had. This time and all of the hundreds of times before it. They had all happened, they weren’t a nightmare, or even a daydream. And I knew that if I laid down on that mattress, I would feel his body heat. I knew that if I pressed my face to its surface, I could smell him and the scent of sex and blood there. And I knew, even if it was completely ridiculous, that if I dared to so much as approach it, I would feel him on top of me again, hurting me, violating me. And suddenly, I was terrified all over again.

I couldn’t do it any more than I could have turned the light off. I couldn’t lay down on that mattress. Forget about sleeping on it. Forget about sleeping at all. My memories wouldn’t allow it. They would just remind me of the pain, of his panting voice, his hands on me. Very best scenario, my nightmares would come back, but you need sleep for that and somehow I knew that even a micro sleep was a clear impossibility for me. I could have felt angry and frustrated at that, but I just felt very lost and depressed. Suddenly, the room was tiny and restricting and if I stayed there for much longer, I was going to start screaming.

‘Why?!’ I suddenly thought, even the voice in my head an angry, betrayed cry, ‘All these times I lapsed, all the things that I can’t remember because I’m too tired to, why couldn’t this have been one of them?! Why do I have to remember this?! I don’t want to! I want to sleep! I want to forget it?! So _why_?!’

My exhausted mind had no answers to that question. I struggled to my feet and left my room, somehow remembering to turn the light off as I went this time. I had no idea what I was doing and ended up in the kitchen, confused as to what to do beyond flicking on the tiny, single bulb light over the stove. The doorways of my house were like a labyrinth, tearing my brain apart in many directions. I thought about leaving the house. That seemed like the smartest thing to do. I could go running. I hadn’t done it for a while and I was thoroughly out of practice for Saturday, but I had no energy. Even the thought of putting on my sneakers and tying them was daunting.

I could write or read something, but my eyes hurt so much, constantly burning now, and I sometimes was finding my vision to be blurry although I’ve never really had vision problems before. Besides, I couldn’t concentrate on stuff like that. I couldn’t listen to my music, either. My headache was even worse, building to a steady, high pitched scream that was making my nausea just as worse, too. Eating was entirely out of the question. Literally the only thing that I could do was watch television. It wouldn’t do my headache any favors, and the idea really wasn’t all that appealing, but if I turned the sound all the way down, I wouldn’t wake anyone at least, and it was something to look at even if I couldn’t actually watch anything.

Of course, my dad would be just as pissed off about that as about me leaving my bedroom light on all morning. It’s a waste of electricity, he would say to me just using it as the visual equivalent of white noise, if you’re not going to watch anything, turn the fucking thing off, I’m not paying for electricity just for you to space out. I could even hear his exact voice in my head, giving me the same, angry lecture that he had given me a couple of times before, enough that I don’t even turn on the television anymore because I never know what’s going to set him off. It could be keeping it on when I’m baking something and wandering off for all of minute to put something into the oven while leaving it on, or just watching something that he doesn’t like and him calling it a ‘waste.’

Not that his rule is at all self-imposed. He falls asleep with the damned thing on all the time, but there’s no one around to yell at _him_ about the waste of money, so what does he care? A flash of red, hot anger went right through me. ‘You know what,’ I thought in spite, walking towards the living room, ‘fuck him. If he can use the TV whenever he wants, for as long as he wants, then why can’t I?’

I knew that I wasn’t thinking logically and I knew exactly _why_ I did not have the same privileges as him, but I was acting off of anger from how he treats me and logic and intelligence had little to do with my reasoning. But as I stepped into the living room, right before I had been about to turn on the light, I remembered that my mother was sleeping in there and hastily took a step back. Even if I turned the television all the way down, the glow from it might wake her up and I wasn’t so angry and senseless that I wanted to risk that. I wasn’t going to punish her just because I couldn’t sleep.

I back tracked into the kitchen, again at a loss. I had no feasible way to pass the time. I couldn’t even clean or I might wake up my parents. I only knew that my father had gone back to sleep because I could hear him snoring. The sound ripped through me and made me shake with pure rage. I hadn’t really slept in almost a week and he got to rape me and sleep like a damned baby. Why? What had I done to deserve this? To deserve any of this? I had been a poor excuse for a son, an even poorer excuse of a friend, but did that mean that I deserved to be beaten, raped, humiliated, and terrorized and not even be granted the escape of rest? Why did my father, a man that had violated me, beat his son and wife, drank heavily, was proud, angry, and selfish get to sleep so deeply, lacking any guilt or nightmares while I stood there in the kitchen while the rest of the town was asleep because I was filled with nothing but guilt and anxiety?

I felt the unfairness of it, but it didn’t matter. Life has never treated me fairly. I’m used to it. I’m used to people like Zechs and my father stepping all over me, being superior to me, of never being equal or even being treated decently. Heero was the one with the high moral compass, not me. He might look at this situation and say ‘it isn’t right’, but I look at it and say ‘so what?’ People like me get stepped on and I had learned very early in life that trying to fight back only makes that boot come down harder, so what did it matter anyway? I had learned to accept that I would never be commanding like my father or have everything handed to me like Zechs and I had learned to accept that there will always be someone pushing me down into the mud, not just because that’s how the world works, but also because that’s who I am. The one who gets pushed.

With literally nothing else I could do, I dug out an ice pack from the freezer to deal with my wrist. My father had really fucked it up when he had grabbed it. It was now almost twice the size it had been and nearly entirely black with bruises. It hurt a hell of a lot more, too. Just clenching my fingers made pain radiate through it. I sat down at the kitchen table, pressing the ice pack firmly to my wrist, and stared at the far wall. Right next to the door to the basement, there’s this gouge in the wall, a chunk of white plaster showing against the pale, yellow paint. That gouge always creeped me out since the first time I noticed it years back. It happened when my father had been chasing me downstairs. He had been drunk as hell and had flung the basement door open so hard that the knob had smashed right into the wall and taken out a large chunk of it.

What was weird in a completely coincidental kind of way was that he had managed to hit that same part of the wall again two years later when he had tried to hit me with a frying pan. Again, he had been as drunk as a skunk at the time, almost blind with it and I hadn’t really been in any danger from his enraged and wild swing, but he had hit the wall, scratching it all the way across, almost to the door. Added with the gouge, the mark on the wall looked like a sword, pointing towards the basement. It was an ugly thing, but in all these years, he had never fixed it and I doubt that he ever will.

Cosmetic things like that seldom get fixed in our house. My dad will keep up the outside of the house out of pride, but with important things like the flickering kitchen lights that had still not been fixed since I had been a child, something like that was trivial. And nowadays, even the upkeep on the outside was lacking. I think my father has stopped caring about the house, his pride lost with the hard hours he works, his tiredness, and the drinking. The main door creaks something awful, the porch steps are getting rotten again, and I’ve been the only one mowing the lawn and getting the leaves out of the gutter. Some asshole, probably a teenager, had hit our mailbox off and that hadn’t been fixed yet, either, plus there was some kind of ungodly draft coming in from one of the windows, either in my parents’ room, the living room, or the little one in the kitchen. Since Heero’s father had shown me how to caulk, I had considered fixing it myself, but I didn’t want to risk my father’s often senseless wrath if I touched his tools. I didn’t even know if he had a caulk gun.

‘This house is falling apart,’ I thought bitterly as I stared at the sword shaped wound in the wall, ‘Just like us.’

I blinked in confusion at where the thought had come from, oddly intelligent considering I couldn’t string two coherent words together. But the thought faded, along with my awareness. I did that stupid ‘staring at nothing’ thing that had become a constant habit for me this week. I’m starting to think of it as ‘power saving mode’, just my brain shutting down what it could since it hadn’t had any proper rest to help it run things. I think Heero finds it a bit creepy, me staring and zoning out. I recall him asking ‘where does your mind go’ once that week, maybe even on Thursday or Friday, kind of jokingly, but I clearly remember the worry in his eyes. I don’t think I answered him.

I stayed like that for a while. I’m not sure how long exactly, only that it was just shy of five in the morning when I sat down, and then six the next time I looked at the clock. Three more hours until I could see Heero. It felt like an eternity. I might have just sat there and stared all morning, maybe even missed school if I had been completely alone in the house I was so far gone.

“Duo?”

My mother’s voice roused me from my stupor. I turned in my chair and found her standing in the living room doorway, looking at me with sleepy confusion. She was still dressed in her uniform from the night before: a tight, buttoned up shirt and skirt, both a dark maroon color that really wasn’t flattering on her. It was a similar color that I had to wear when I worked at the diner and pizza joint and had looked just as awful on me, in my opinion. I guess that color is just a staple for food industry work, probably because it helps hide stains and is easy to clean. She must have fallen asleep in her uniform instead of her nightgown because her clothes were badly ruffled and wrinkled, and while she buttons up her top meticulously, the top two buttons had come undone. Her long chestnut hair, the same brown shade with errant strands of red that mine is, was mussed and her eyes were half-lidded, still half-asleep.

“What are you doing?” she murmured, running a hand through her thick hair.

I stared at her for a moment. What _was_ I doing in the kitchen? Suddenly, I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t remember why I was there or what I had just been doing.

“Nothing,” I responded not very intelligently, the safest thing that I could say when my mind was a total blank.

My voice was thick, almost gravely between the throat injury and not having used it in all of that morning and evening. As I spoke, I realized just how dry my lips and mouth were. I couldn’t remember the last time that I had had anything to drink. I couldn’t even remember if I had finished the health drink and soup that Mrs. Yuy had packed for me.

“Are you alright?” my mother brought me back to reality, her face pinched with worry, probably because I kept zoning out, which really isn’t like me.

I just shrugged, not really knowing how to articulate that I hadn’t slept for more than a couple hours since last Saturday, and I couldn’t remember the last time I had slept more than five.

“You look tired,” she pressed, which was rare for her, even with our improved relationship, still usually too shy around me to push me and fussing over me wasn’t really in her nature, so I must have looked especially awful, “Did you sleep at all this morning?”

I shook my head and was brutally reminded of my screaming headache, wincing as sharp pain shot through my skull. I really needed to stop doing that, but talking was so difficult, nonverbal answers had become the norm, if I even answered at all. She hesitated for a moment and I saw how pale her face had become, her grey eyes looking down at the floor like she couldn’t bear to look at me.

“…Did he…” she began to ask in a very shy and nervous tone, but couldn’t continue, her expression full of a bastard mix of guilt and fear.

I knew the question that was on her tongue, but I wouldn’t answer it any more than she could ask it. She didn’t want to know the answer, not really, and I didn’t want her to know. I couldn’t even muster up the ability to lie to her. She would know it wasn’t the truth anyway. Unable to stop myself, I glanced fearfully at the bedroom door like I thought our just talking about him would make my father emerge, but the door stayed closed. I felt so relieved, I could have cried. I didn’t want to see him again that morning. I didn’t want to be reminded of what he had done again.

I looked back at my mother and found her looking at the door, too, but she lacked my fear. She looked at that door with such raw hate that it shocked me a little. For a moment, I was actually afraid that she would go in there and attack him. Thankfully, she had more sense than that. She sensed me staring at her and gave me a small, but incredibly pained smile, clearly at a loss for what to do, how to comfort me. Neither of us are very good at that. There was little to comfort anyway. I wasn’t going to call the police on my father and neither was she, there was nothing that we could do to stop it and it was going to keep on happening. My mother could try to stop him in little ways, keep him from getting into my room, lie for me so I could escape the house, but she knows just as well as I do that eventually, it’s going to happen again. Until one of us grows a backbone, or at least a greatly reduced sense of danger and sense, it’s never going to stop.

“How about I make you some breakfast?” just like me, she latched on to the only thing she could to try to make things better, even if it was a rather small gesture in comparison to the pain I was feeling, “There are a couple of eggs left. They’re a bit old, but they should still be good.”

Just like it had been for days now, the mere idea of food turned my stomach. Even something bland like eggs or easy to eat like soup made me feel like I was going to puke. I could actually feel it in my throat, that feeling like if you so much as stand up too quickly, you’re going to retch. All I wanted was something to drink. Specifically, I wanted the drink that Mariela had made for me. I can’t say if it had helped my fatigue at all, but I had managed to keep it down and it had been refreshing on my injured throat. I knew that we didn’t have the ingredients for it, and even if we did, we didn’t have a blender. I was sure that all we had in the house to drink was water, maybe milk or orange juice, coffee, and copious amounts of alcohol. None of which sounded all that appealing to me.

“Not hungry,” I murmured, “but coffee?”

If I had to drink something, it might as well be something loaded with caffeine. I knew that it wasn’t the healthiest thing to do, but what choice did I have? Most of me had fled elsewhere and I still had an entire day of school and work to trudge through. My mother seemed surprised by my request. I don’t drink our coffee much. For one, I don’t have much of a taste for it and two, my mom and dad usually need it more than I do.

I drink it at Heero’s house and when we went to get his coffee in the mornings sometimes because I like the different flavors, but my dad thinks flavored coffees like vanilla and hazelnut are, and I quote, “for faggots.” He gets whatever original roast he can get cheapest, in bulk, and drinks it black, sneering at my mother for adding a ton of sugar to hers, like that makes him more of a man or some shit. If I were suicidal, I’d be tempted to inform him that Heero’s father puts cream AND sugar in his and, in my opinion, he’s more of a man than my father is. He doesn’t need to beat his wife and kid or put us down to make himself feel that way. I might not be much of one myself, just one of those faggots that my father thinks should get their balls cut off (another one of his drunken tirades with Pat), but I’m pretty sure that you either are one or you aren’t and the way someone drinks their damned coffee doesn’t make you one or turn you into a fag if you don’t like how it tastes straight up.

“Alright,” my mother said and dug out the bag of coffee to begin brewing it.

We didn’t talk much as we waited for it to brew, both of us too tired for idle conversation. The kitchen filled with the thick aroma of coffee while the pot made some ungodly noises, the thing being as ancient and heading towards retirement as most of our kitchen appliances. It won’t be a good scene on the day that it finally dies. My dad needs coffee in the morning too much, so he’ll either have to settle for a cheap piece of junk to replace it or dig into our rather pitiful finances. I wonder just how small that pile is, given some of the bills I see in our mail with ‘PAST DUE’ stamped in angry, red ink on the envelopes. Another worry for another day. Of which I mean, it will stay in the back of my mind, rotting away until I get an ulcer over it. Some days, I think I worry more about our bills than my father does.

My mother handed me a mug of coffee and I blew on the steam for a few minutes to cool it down before daring a sip. I immediately grimaced and put the mug down. Not only did the cheap coffee have an unpleasant, watery taste to it, it was also disgustingly bitter. How the hell did my father choke that shit down every morning?! I am probably the least picky eater that ever lived, but I could only barely swallow it. I believe ‘swill’ is a pretty accurate word for it. I grabbed the creamer when my mother put it down on the table and poured a ridiculous amount into the mug. I like cream in my coffee to begin with, but even if I didn’t, anything would have been an improvement. I even put a decent amount of sugar in it, something I usually don’t do. I took an experimental sip and found that the additions had done little to make the coffee appetizing, but it was significantly less bitter, which was good enough for me.

As I drank, I thought about how Heero would have taken one sip of that coffee and either would have made a face at me for drinking it, or knocked it right out of my hands before dragging me off to a café. If he had actually done something like that, I would have been annoyed and touched at the same time and the image of my boyfriend taking offense to me drinking that coffee made me smile a little. My mother saw me grinning like an idiot and found a small one of her own, but didn’t ask what I was smiling about.

“Have you been staying over at your friend’s house?” she suddenly asked me.

I startled, almost dropping my coffee, and for a surreal moment thought that she had just read my mind before I pulled my head out of my ass. It was an obvious question, I scolded myself, I’ve been gone for days. It doesn’t mean she suspects anything weird.

“Uh…yeah,” I admitted.

“That’s good,” she nodded.

 _“That’s good.”_ If we had been a normal family, that remark would have just been a banality, like saying ‘that’s nice.’ But for us, it wasn’t an empty remark. It was honest. My mother was glad that I had been with Heero. She had been glad that I wasn’t home, that I had been someplace safe. She might as well have said, ‘that’s for the best.’

“I haven’t seen you or your father around much this week,” she remarked, a fairly diplomatic way of saying that my father had all but disappeared.

I breathed in relief. If neither of us had been coming home, it most likely meant my father hadn’t noticed my absence. If that was true, I had gotten insanely lucky. I found that I didn’t even care where my father might have been. When I had been younger, I would have. I would have worried that he was safe or, if I had been a bit older, worried that he was fucking some strange woman. But at seventeen, I was just happy to hear that he hadn’t been home. I bet my mother had gotten some peace away from him. I had stopped caring about him getting smashed with Pat or even having an affair. If anything, I hoped it was true. I no longer thought of it as him not being the man I had thought he was or cheating on my mother. I only thought ‘better some nameless woman than me.’ How fucked up is that? How had we fallen apart so quickly, so completely?

“Will you be staying at your friend’s Saturday, too?” she asked me.

My mother isn’t usually this talkative, or this inquisitive. Even off the alcohol and talking to me more like she’s my mom instead of a grudging stranger, she just lets me do my thing. I think she’s too off-balance, unsure of where we stand and tip toes around our new relationship as much… no, even more than I do. That or she just wasn’t someone who was a natural mom, unlike Heero’s. Her questions, more than anything else, told me that she had been worried and was hoping I would stay out of the bear’s jaws as much as I could get away with it. It made me feel incredibly warmed and cared for. This was the most motherly behavior I had seen out of her in years.

“Yeah,” I said, “I don’t know about Sunday yet.”

It was probably a bad idea, and I felt like I was pushing my luck, but I knew that there was no way I was going home on Saturday. The second Heero saw me that morning, he, and probably both of his parents, were not going to let me leave. That wasn’t a bad thing. I wouldn’t want to leave. I needed this. Even if it got my arm broken or worse, I needed the rest. Even if I still couldn’t sleep, if I had to stay home, it would be the end of me.

“Good,” my mother said with blatant relief, “I’ll think of something to tell your father, if he even comes home tonight.”

In the past, she would have said something like that about my father with a great deal of bitterness and hatred for him. But he and I aren’t the only ones that have changed recently. I could only hear desperate hope in her voice.

I don’t really remember much after that. I had crossed the point of no return, stumbled head first into this vortex of time and nothingness. The coffee obviously hadn’t done shit to help me, because I fell into the worst time lapse I’ve had during one of these insomnia bouts. I don’t remember having any further altercations with my father, or even if he had ever left the room while I had been there. I didn’t have any new injuries when I did snap out of it later that day, so I guess that’s the best proof I have.

I don’t remember any of that school day, either. Thank fuck it was a Friday and not the middle of the week. While I got a ton of homework, there were few new lessons. I, apparently, took notes, which is a bit creepy, and Heero filled in the rest from our joint classes or I would have been totally clueless. I probably still missed something important, but I haven’t even looked at my homework to find that out yet. All I can really recall from that entire day is drinking coffee in the kitchen with my mother, then the next time I came back to sanity, it was some time after school. Heero and I were sitting on the tiny brick wall in front of the school, watching as cars left the parking lot. It must have been well after school had ended because the lot was almost empty and the only people around were teachers and staff. Heero was rubbing my back in a very soothing manner, slowly up and down. It felt incredibly good.

“Welcome back,” he said.

The words were joking, but his tone was soft and affectionate, tinged with worry. I felt my face go hot with embarrassment as I wondered just how many times he had tried to engage me and how strangely I must have been acting all day. I guess I’ll never know, which is probably a kindness. I really don’t need anything else in my life to be ashamed about. Something weird in my lap caught my attention, said attention span having turned into that of a cat, and I looked down at it. The ‘weird’ thing turned out to be my right hand, encased in one of those sport braces people wear when they get an injury like tendonitis. I didn’t know where I had gotten it.

“Are you alright?” he asked me, “You’ve been zoning out all day.”

I felt this peevish spark of irritability go through me at his concern. Why the hell did everyone keep asking me if I was ok? I didn’t answer him, partly because his concern was annoying me, but mostly because I just couldn’t. I didn’t know if I was alright. I wasn’t even sure what that meant anymore. My silence only made him more worried, his frown growing more severe before it softened and he continued rubbing my back. It eased away some of my irritability, too tired at that point to even be emotional and cranky.

“Come by as early as you want Saturday, alright?” he urged, “Even if no one’s up yet. My parents are really eager to see you again.”

Why? I wondered. I had only just seen them on Wednesday morning. But the question was fleeting and left my head as quickly as it had entered. I just nodded because it was the easiest thing to do. I couldn’t even think about Saturday, knowing that I, somehow, had to get through track practice, but being at Heero’s again would be like a breath of fresh air. Just the knowledge that I didn’t have to go home that day, that I didn’t have to see my father or be in that house was a huge relief. If I played my cards right and went over there early like Heero had told me to, I might be able to leave my house before I’d even need to see my dad. I didn’t even feel my usual anxiety that he might want me to do chores in the morning and would be pissed at me for disappearing. I didn’t have the ability to care about anything anymore.

I don’t remember anything else from that day. It’s kind of scary, losing whole chunks of your life like that, not knowing what you said or did or what was done to you. It’s like getting roofied, only you did it to yourself. The only real proof that I have that that memory of Heero talking to me that afternoon wasn’t just another waking dream was that it had been pleasant and I never have pleasant dreams. In any case, my next bout of awareness found me stumbling to my front door in the dark after work. My father’s car wasn’t there, but that wasn’t surprising. It was early Saturday morning, after all. He was either still drinking, crashed at Pat’s place or at one of the homes of his other cop buddies, or on his way home from a bar depending how drunk he was and his overall mood.

I slowly and stiffly made my way through the dark kitchen and up the stairs to the attic. I had more aches and pains than I knew how to deal with anymore, and I probably would have benefitted greatly from popping a few pills, but that thought didn’t even enter my brain. I just dragged myself, quite forcefully, up the steps and into my bedroom. I didn’t turn on the bedroom light this time; I didn’t see the point. I didn’t want to see my mattress, I didn’t want to be reminded of the horrors that it brings me or flash back to the previous morning. I just wanted to sleep. Even with the lights off, I stared at where I knew it was sitting on the floor and felt my guts clench. I could feel it there in the dark, waiting for me, this mindless sense of fear and anxiety.

I had to force myself, actually _force_ myself to lay down on it, and even when I managed it, I just felt sick, my headache like a drill, tearing up brain matter and bringing unwanted senses to the surface. I didn’t even change out of my work clothes or brush my teeth or take a shower. I just laid down on the mattress and closed my eyes, praying with what sanity I had left for a reprieve. From the moment that I laid down, I felt wrong again. The mattress felt damp and cool under me, like I was laying in something that shouldn’t be there. It smelled of mildew and sex, or perhaps like rancid meat that was far off. All of this was in my head, but it might as well have been real for as much as it affected me.

It felt like a repeat of the morning before, minus the tossing and the turning. I hurt too much for that, and I was too tired to extend even that much energy. The day, whatever had happened in it, had taken its toll. I was a doll, a zombie, unable to exert even the tiniest bit of effort. I just laid there on my side on a bed with no sheets or blanket and not caring that I was laying on my injured arm. I laid like that for an hour, I think, before I stiffly climbed back to my feet. Even after just that one hour, I knew that it was hopeless. Everything was hopeless. For the first time in what felt like a long time, I thought about killing myself. Just ending this frustrating cycle the only way that I knew how, the only way that I could ever have control. But even in my exhaustion, it was a fleeting thought, one that lacked any kind of substance.

I had been an idiot to think that I would be getting any sleep on that damned mattress when I could barely stand to be in the room anymore. I trudged back down the steps, feeling like I had just gone up them mere seconds ago, and almost tripped on the way down. That would have been a really stupid way to die. I turned on the lights in the kitchen, not concerned with waking up anyone since my father wasn’t home, and saw that the kitchen was a mess. Beer cans littered the table and kitchen counter. Plates with half eaten food and globs of cheese sat on the table along with a full ash tray and there were even more plates in the sink. There were two empty pizza boxes on the counter and crumbs on the floor. The whole place reeked of stale cigarette smoke, beer, and pizza. That I hadn’t smelled it coming in was a testament to just how far gone I was.

The ashtray painted the story for me. While full, there were not enough pizza boxes or beer cans for a full game of poker or whatever the hell else my father and his buddies do, which meant that it had just been him and Pat. They must have come over after work and then left again after making the mess. Normally, this would make me furious and bitter, but it wasn’t even a blip on my radar. I walked past it and peeked into the living room, finding it empty. Either my mother was crashing somewhere else for the night, or she was in the bedroom with him gone. One way or the other, the couch was empty as I had hoped. I flicked the kitchen light back off and laid down on the couch facing the back end of it, still on my injured side. Sleep or no sleep, staying on my feet was too taxing. I needed to rest and the qualms that I had about my own bed, I didn’t have about the couch. My father hasn’t assaulted me on it.

I buried my face in the old, ratty couch cushions and grimaced as I got a whiff of them. They smelled very faintly of beer, all the times that my father has spilled his drinks on them, and that musty smell that old furniture gets. But they didn’t smell like mildew and they didn’t smell like sex, so that was an improvement. If I could just ignore the beer smell, how it reminded me of my dad, maybe I could get through this. I groped around the couch for a blanket to pull over myself, the living room colder than the air outside, and found an old afghan.

I brought it up to my face, smelling it to see if it smelled as bad as the cushions and feeling it for any crumbs or wet spots in case my father, or even Pat, had spilled anything on it. To my surprise, I could only find some holes and it didn’t smell like alcohol or even must at all. It smelled light and pleasant. Floral. The scent of my mother’s perfume. It had to be the afghan that she used when she sleeps on the couch. I balled it up and used it as a pillow, taking in the more welcoming smell. I couldn’t even smell the cushions over it, like it cancelled them out. It was comforting, reminding me of when she had crept into my bed and told me that she was sorry, or held me close in one of those rare moments.

I curled up into a tight ball, the only position that was even remotely comfortable on that ancient, tiny couch and tried to force myself into something resembling sleep. Shutting off my brain had become easy, almost frighteningly so, but I just couldn’t sleep still. I drifted for a while, slipping a little bit deeper towards sleep, but it took me another solid hour to even start to actually drift off. Even when I did, it was only for a couple of minutes. The front door opening and then slamming closed hard enough to shake the walls roused me, sluggish and heavy headed. I didn’t even have the presence of mind to feel frustrated anymore. I perpetually felt like I was floating. I distantly could hear our neighbor’s dogs barking their heads off, making my headache shriek, but it seemed like it was happening in another world.

I listened for my father without even knowing what I was doing, the instinct so ingrained in me that I didn’t need to think about it. He tromped around the kitchen, still wearing his boots and obviously either still drunk or hungover with how much he was swearing under his breath. He rattled around in there for a few minutes before shuffling into the bedroom, slamming the door closed with the same force as the front door. I glanced at the clock on the wall, illuminated only barely with the faint light coming through the window. Four am. I had been struggling to sleep for two and a half fucking hours. I waited, listening for him to start fighting with my mother, obviously in a foul mood, but there was nothing. I heard him grumbling, swearing loudly at something, but it didn’t sound like it was really directed at anyone. She must have not come home.

I felt relieved enough by that, knowing that she was out of the blast zone even if I was right in the middle of it to close my eyes again and I found myself drifting off again as my father’s swearing petered off into quiet. Quiet enough, at any rate. I could still hear the dogs barking and some cars honking their horns at something as they passed on our street, but I was so tired that things that would have kept me wide awake were becoming white noise, my body shutting down like a hand radio that had run out of batteries.

Suddenly, I was being dragged out sleep, quite literally. Fear sent jarring shocks of adrenaline through me as I awoke to feeling myself falling. It was like getting my heart jump started and sent my headache into overdrive. But the disorientation during that one second before I hit the floor was the worst, not knowing what was happening, where I was, or why I was falling. I landed on the floor hard, right on my injured arm and cried out as pain radiated through it and the stressed muscles of my back. I opened burning, tired eyes to see my father looming over me upside down, his face a mask of senseless rage. His expression was pinched and his eyes and face were still red from the heavy drinking he had done the previous night and morning. He didn’t even need to tell me how badly hungover he must be, I knew what that pinched look was. From outside, I could still hear the dogs barking as furiously as my father looked.

“Get the fuck up!” he snarled at me and stomped his foot down on my side, not even giving me a second to respond.

I gasped out in pain, but thankfully he wasn’t wearing his boots anymore, so it just hurt, it didn’t damage anything.

“I said GET UP!” he bellowed, “If I can’t get any motherfucking sleep, why should you, you stupid brat! And clean up the damned kitchen! I worked my ass off all week and what have you done, huh?! Can’t even keep the fucking house clean! What good are you?!”

I didn’t understand. I couldn’t understand. I was too far gone and nothing that my father was saying… screaming at me made any sense. I didn’t even feel angry that he was blowing up at me over the mess that _he_ had made, or that he was so petty that he wouldn’t let me sleep just because he had a hangover and was bothered by the noise outside. I just fell back to the lessons that had been taught to me at an early age: obey. I clumsily and slowly rolled onto my knees, not wanting to get stomped on again, grabbed at the edge of the couch and used it to get to my feet. My father glared at me, his face eve redder from screaming, and I hunched in on myself, thinking he was going to hit me again, but he just huffed and stormed off back towards the kitchen.

“Ungrateful, lazy piece of shit,” I heard him growl under his breath as he stormed into the bathroom, slamming the door closed behind him. He seemed incapable of actually closing a door without doing that that morning. A couple minutes later, I heard him turn on the shower.

I glanced at the clock again on the wall, squinting even in the light that my father had turned on in the kitchen, struggling to force my brain to engage enough to read it. 4:13. For some reason, that time almost had me in tears, but I couldn’t think of why it mattered enough to give in to the impulse. I stretched my back, wincing as something between my shoulders complained with a throbbing ache. My head hurt the most, but my right hand was close behind it. For some strange reason, my wrist hurt even more than my knuckles and for the first time, I realized that I was still wearing that brace. I stared at it stupidly for a moment, not even really wondering at its existence anymore but just staring at the strange, alien thing. I left it on, even if I had had the presence of mind to _want_ to take it off, the strap would have defeated me.

I walked like an old man into the kitchen and automatically, without so much a single thought about what I was doing, began cleaning the mess. With my various injuries and over exhaustion, it was very slow going. I dumped all the beer cans and bits of food and pizza boxes into the trashcan and brought the bag to the laundry room so I could put a fresh bag in the bin. Trash pick-up had come and gone Friday morning and I couldn’t put the full bag outside. We’d attract raccoons, dogs, and squirrels to say the least, and once they showed up, they would never leave.

I dumped all the dishes in the sink and went to work on scrubbing down the counters and the kitchen table. I had to use my left hand for the actual scrubbing and it was clumsy work. As I was just finishing washing the kitchen counter, my father finally emerged from the bathroom. I froze like a stone, my heart beating wildly in my chest as I heard him stop in the kitchen. I could actually feel his eyes on me, burning through me while the rest of me was like ice. My hands shook with every second that he just stood there. Would he be in the mood to beat me now? Or did he want something else? Would he pin me to the wall or perhaps the newly cleaned table and fuck me like he had the day that my mother had stumbled upon that disgusting scene? My left hand clenched the sponge that I had been using, soap and dirty water running over my hand.

I heard him drop something onto the table, making me jump at the sound, but then there was the unmistakable shuffle of his feet as he walked to the bedroom door and shut it with a bang once again, setting off an explosion in my skull. I finally dared to turn and saw that he had thrown his dirty towel, wet washcloth, and the clothes he had been wearing on the table, a silent command to do the laundry. The memory of him going into the bathroom came to me along with the unwanted revelation that he hadn’t had a change of clothes, so he had been walking around naked right behind me. Nausea crawled its way up my throat and I fought hard to push it back down, but it refused to go all the way, making me feel sick and a little bit dizzy.

Trying my best to ignore the feeling (not that I had anything in my stomach to throw up anyway, so it was for the best), I grabbed the mess on the table and walked to the laundry room, grimacing at the smell of cigarettes, booze, and my father’s body odor on the clothes. I was all too happy to dump them into the washer, which was full of other articles of clothing as well by then, and turned it on. If the sound disturbed him, he could come turn it off, I just didn’t care anymore. I returned to the kitchen and had to wash down the table again since his dirty clothes had been on it, finally feeling some irritation at him. When that was done, I grabbed the broom from behind the basement door and swept up all of the crumbs that he and his slob of a friend had left behind.

The easiest tasks done, I stood at the sink and looked down at the large pile of dishes caked with sticky food with a deep sense of foreboding. I couldn’t clean _those_ with my left hand. On a normal day, I would have been pissed with my father over this, but even my pain didn’t do much to phase me. I turned on the water at the sink and almost stuck my hand right in before I remember that I was still wearing the brace. I fumbled to get the strap undone, but it took several tries between my fumbling fingers and being confused as to how to unwrap the damned thing. Thankfully no one was around to see me or it would have been incredibly embarrassing.

Washing the dishes was taxing and arduous. It took what little concentration I could muster not to drop and break anything and it took well over an hour just to get the damned cheese off the plates. By the time I had the last dish clean and resting in the drying rack, I was beyond tired, my entire right arm from my fingers to my shoulder throbbing harshly. I turned off the water and dragged myself to the kitchen table, practically collapsing down in one of the chairs. I sat there, unthinking and unmoving, drooped like a flower that hadn’t gotten enough sun. I was at the end of my rope. I couldn’t take anymore. And to top it all off, not only was my nausea not going away, it was worse. My throat felt raw and scratchy, probably either from the injury or, much more likely, the beginning warning signs of a cold. It was surprising that I hadn’t come down with something already. I’m sure my immune system was practically nonexistent by then.

I caught myself nodding off even with my eyes open, which was kind of creepy, but I managed to drag myself out of it, almost falling out of the chair as I righted myself. I didn’t even know why I was doing it, why I wasn’t sleeping, only that there was some reason why I wasn’t supposed to. Another round of barking outside, this time a lot louder and angrier sounding had me glancing at the front door and I realized for the first time that the sun had come up, I didn’t even need the kitchen light on anymore. I glanced at the kitchen clock. 7:03. I had been cleaning for almost three hours, depending on how long I had been sitting there.

Seven in the morning. Why was that important? I didn’t know, only that it was. With a great deal of effort just to get myself to do anything, I stood and trudged my way up the stairs. I grabbed my book bag, some part of me knowing that I needed it, and left the house. Thankfully my sneakers were still tied, because there was no way in hell I could have managed that. I didn’t comb my hair or try to eat or drink anything or even brush my teeth, I just left. Across the street, I could see the dogs in their chained pen, the huge Rottweiler named Brutus that I’ve been terrified of since I was a kid that age had done little to calm his temperament, and a younger pit bull that I didn’t know the name of.

They both leapt at the fence, biting at it like they wanted to tear their way through as they saw me, snapping and barking, saliva flying everywhere in their fury. I was incredibly grateful for that pen and shuddered thinking of what those jaws could do to me if they ever got outside of it. Give me Kanuck any day. I walked past them, hunching in on myself as their loud, thunderous barking made me want to scream, the agony in my head making my nausea worse and worse. The end of the day was going to see me kneeling in front of a toilet, I just knew it.

I walked without knowing where I was going, only sure that I needed to be somewhere. My feet seemed to know while I didn’t, following ritual and instinct. I had another one of those lapses and found myself standing in front of the school. It made sense. Where else could I possibly need to go at that hour? But when I pulled on the front door, I found it locked, which confused the hell out of me. I couldn’t think of why the school would be closed at past seven in the morning, but I didn’t dwell on it. Again, my feet moved without my consent, to the only place I had left to go. The rest of the walk was a grey blur and I once again found myself standing some place like I had teleported there, this time it was Heero’s house.

I tried the front door here with much more success, it was unlocked. Another time lapse hit me, or maybe my mind was just so fuzzy at that point that I just can’t recall things from that day very well, but the next thing that I remember, I was sitting at the table in the kitchen with Heero and his father as his mother fussed with something in the oven. Heero was still wearing his pajamas, his dog sitting loyally at his feet. I came back to myself a little bit from the sudden and extreme change of scenery, managing to take in a few little details here and there. It still wasn’t quite eight o’clock yet. Mariela and Justin were still in their night clothes, too. There was something baking in the oven, something that smelled sweet and familiar, and the mere scent of it had my stomach rolling, almost making me puke right there at the table.

“Duo, will you be staying the night with us?” I heard Justin ask, something in his tone telling me what he thought of my saying no.

I nodded, not even looking at him and wrapped my arms around my stomach.

“Honey, are you alright?” Mariela asked, sounding worried.

It took me a minute to realize that she was talking to me and I looked up at her. Her face was definitely pinched with concern and now that I was looking, the same expression was on Justin and Heero’s faces, too. Why, I had no idea.

“Stomach just hurts,” I murmured.

I noticed then that while my boyfriend and his father had their customary coffees, someone had put a nice, tall glass of water in front of me at some point. I realized how incredibly thirsty I was and reached for it. I was probably dehydrated if I couldn’t even remember the last time that I had had anything to drink. My hand shook as I wrapped it around the glass and took a sip. I squeezed my eyes shut as my stomach protested having anything in it at all, but after the first couple of sips, I found myself chugging the whole thing, my body craving more. I had barely even set the glass down when Justin was pouring more into my glass. I hadn’t even noticed him getting up or getting the pitcher from the refrigerator. He and Mariela shared a look when I immediately gulped down this glass, too, not caring about the tight feeling in my stomach.

“Well, I just made some more tomato soup,” Heero’s mother told me, fussing over me a little, “Maybe if you had a little, your stomach might feel better.”

I highly doubted that. I was absolutely certain that if I ate anything, it was going to make it worse. But if I told her that I didn’t want it, she would worry or I would hurt her feelings, so I just nodded. It was easier agreeing to everything, easier not to try to force myself to think and worry everyone. She placed a small bowl of hot soup in front of me, refilled my water and returned to the stove to take what she had been baking out of the oven. The tomato soup could have been a bowl of excrement for all I wanted it, but I grabbed the spoon, wincing in pain as I did so, and obediently ate a spoonful of it, not even tasting it.

Heero’s mother cut up whatever she had made, which turned out to be cornbread, and served everyone a piece of it. Normally I love cornbread and I remember telling Mariela once that I’ve always wanted homemade cornbread, especially on a cold, damp day like that morning was, but my father hates it for some reason, so I never have the ingredients for it. She probably had made it to be nice and had no idea that it would just taste like a block of lead to me, so I couldn’t refuse to eat it. I dared to eat half of it, my piece noticeably smaller than everyone else’s, eating slowly with tiny bites, and instantly regretted it. My stomach roiled in rebellion, furious at my betrayal and I couldn’t eat anything else after that. I’m sure that I turned a particularly sickly shade of green because Heero was looking at me with alarm.

“After you’re done eating, Duo, why don’t you go lay down and rest?” Justin said to me, my state not having gone unnoticed by him.

I shook my head.

“I have track,” I murmured, a bit amazed that I had remembered that.

How the hell was I going to make it through an hour of track practice? Or even five minutes? I could barely stand up and now, after eating just half of a very small piece of cornbread and a whopping third of a bowl of soup, my guts were trying to furiously expel themselves upwards. I didn’t even think I was going to be able to walk back to school in the state that I was in. I’d probably get hit by a car if I was lucky. Justin shared another secretive look, this time with Heero before he turned back to me.

“I called you out of track practice today,” Mr. Yuy confessed to me.

“Sorry, Duo,” Heero said a bit sheepishly as I stared at the two of them with wide eyes, doing that thing he does when he thinks I’m mad at him, rubbing at the back of his neck, “I didn’t think that you’d be up for it. You’ve been so tired and spacy this week, I didn’t want you to be anymore stressed just because of one practice.”

“Horner wasn’t mad?” I croaked, remembering my last conversation with the man.

“I told him that you weren’t feeling well,” Justin told me, “He was very understanding. He said he would go over what they did today after school Monday and that he is mostly just going over exercises and how the track season is going to go. We all decided that it would be best if you stayed here today and not over tax yourself, so don’t be mad at Heero. He’s just been very worried about you.”

I glanced over at Heero. He looked like I had already chastised him and I supposed that normally I would have been angry. I’ve had people making decisions for me all of my life and him doing something like this would have really rankled. But I just didn’t feel mad at all. I felt guilty that my insomnia had worried him so much. I felt relieved that I had an out of practice. And I knew that he had only been thinking of what was best for me, trying to take care of me when I obviously couldn’t myself.

“I’m not mad,” I assured him as best I could, choosing each one of my words carefully so I wouldn’t sound like a drunk or say something especially stupid, “I… I really didn’t want to go. Thank you.”

He smiled at me, looking about as relieved as I felt that I had diffused that little situation. His parents looked relieved, too, and the three of them continued with their breakfast. I didn’t have any more of mine. My stomach felt bloated and twisted and just all around terrible. I did that stupid zoning out thing again, staring at the wall and probably not even blinking. Kanuck came over and licked my hand, but went back to Heero with a whine when I didn’t pet him like I usually do. He looked up at his owner like he was asking Heero what was wrong with me. When the Yuys were done with their meal, Mariela and Justin gathered up the dishes, Mariela looking concerned again when she saw just how little I had eaten, and started to clean.

“He looks awful,” she said in a low tone to her husband as she wrapped up what remained of the cornbread, “He hasn’t moved and he looks so pale…”

“Was this what he was like at school all week?” Justin asked his son, looking just as worried as his wife did as he glanced at me.

“Kind of,” my boyfriend confessed, “but he’s a lot worse now.”

Their words washed over me like white noise. I could hear them, I understood the words, but I couldn’t really understand their meaning, let alone that they had anything to do with me.

“You need to get him to bed,” Mrs. Yuy urged Heero and he nodded.

Heero stood and abandoned me to help his parents. His dog sat down beside me, looking up at me and nuzzling my hand once in a while. Just as stubborn as his owner, and just as much of a worrywart. They bustled around me for a bit, working around me like I was an inanimate object, which isn’t far from the truth. When they were done, they should have dispersed and started getting ready for the day. Heero’s mom would get the shower first while Heero’s father would either make their bed, finish reading the newspaper, or go over what chores he wanted Heero to do for the day. But this day, they broke the ritual, sitting back down at the table with me.

The deviation broke me out of my stupor and I looked at them with confusion. All of them, even Heero, looked worried and serious. Heero was looking at the floor, but both of his parents were staring right at me, making me nervous. With their almost somber expressions and how they were nearly in a circle around me, it almost looked like some clichéd intervention straight out of a talk show or sappy drama. It would have been funny if the whole thing didn’t have me so off balance.

“Duo,” Justin leaned forward, his voice commanding, but also deliberate and lacking any accusations, “We want you to get some sleep today. You don’t have to worry about doing anything else, no homework, no chores, we just want you to try to get some rest.”

After the fact, the thought of the three of them standing around and discussing my lack of sleep and how worried they were and what they should do about it is beyond mortifying. In case you haven’t noticed by now, I really don’t take embarrassment or being coddled very well. When I’m hurt or sick, my default reaction tends to be trying to take care of it, or in most cases ignore it, on my own and any time someone tries to help me, I feel like I’m being treated like a child. But right then, it just made me feel very annoyed and grumpy. I know that my moodiness and irritability had no real roots in reality, but that doesn’t mean I could stop myself from feeling that way, even if it embarrasses me now.

“I can’t,” I grumbled, sick of having to insist on that.

What was the point of even trying anymore? I was so fucking tired of laying down, tossing and turning, frustrating myself and unable to get comfortable, not even able to sleep for even ten damned minutes. I was done with it. I wasn’t going to torture myself anymore. If my mind refused to let me sleep, then it could suffer right alongside me. I know that these were insane, nonsensical thoughts, but I was out of my mind and just so pissy, I was happy to spite myself all over the place. Heero’s father, however, was not fazed by my attitude. It really wasn’t fair, in retrospect, starting an argument with me. He knew how tired I was and he not only had plenty of sleep under _his_ belt, he had two able-minded people backing him up, and he was the adult _and_ I was just a guest there. He could have just ordered me to go to bed and be done with it. He was fighting dirty, goddamnit.

“When was the last time you got a decent night’s sleep?” he demanded, bulling right forward while I was still floundering to get my scattered wits together to form a decent defense.

I paused and for a moment, I couldn’t even remember what yesterday had been. Had I slept yesterday? Hadn’t Heero gotten me to sleep a little? No, that hadn’t been yesterday. It took me a couple of minutes to even remember that I had slept decently last Saturday. Fuck, had that really been last week? On the one hand, that I had barely slept in a week felt unreal to me, on the other, last Saturday felt like a year ago. It hadn’t even been a full night’s sleep, but it might as well have been considering what this week has been like. I opened my mouth to answer the question, but Justin held up his hand to stop me.

“Six hours, minimum,” he added.

I silently cursed him. How was I going to remember that? I tried to rack my brain for the answer, but it was like there was a brick wall there when I tried to recall _anything_ before Saturday. The more I tried, the more my head hurt until I felt like I was just going to black out from the pain alone. And of course my headache was making my nausea worse, too. I rubbed at my forehead to try to alieve the pain, but it was hopeless.

“I don’t remember,” I murmured, “Saturday I slept for… five hours?” I looked to Heero for confirmation and felt relieved when he nodded. At least I could remember that much.

Both Mariela and Justin looked alarmed by that.

“That’s it? That’s the most you’ve slept in a week?” he pressed.

I nodded.

“How much has he slept since then?” he asked his son, who was clearly a more reliable source of information at that point than me.

Heero looked to the floor as he thought about it for a few minutes.

“Well, he got five hours Saturday and almost an hour Sunday and Monday,” my boyfriend recounted.

I stared at him in surprise. How did he know about Sunday and Monday? Had I slept at his place? I couldn’t concretely remember (1), but I didn’t _think_ that I had, so how did he know that?

“Wednesday he got three hours before Mom woke him up,” he glared at his mother who looked horribly guilty, “And he only got an hour Thursday. What about Friday?” he asked me, “And this morning? Did you get any sleep?”

It took me a startling long time to remember considering he was just asking about today and yesterday. I was having a hard time just remembering what day of the week it was, why I was there, and following the conversation. Things like ‘Friday’ had little meaning to me anymore.

‘Friday was the morning I went home,’ I suddenly recalled and my stomach dropped to my knees as I remembered what had happened that morning and how much sleep, or lack of, I had gotten because of it.

“I didn’t sleep at all Friday,” I murmured, “And this morning…”

What had happened this morning? I scoured my brain for some memory, some clue, tracing back my steps from my arrival at Heero’s house to when I had been in mine. It was difficult, my memory full of holes that I’ll never be able to fill in, but finally there was a spark and a cloudy memory came to me. My father pulling me off the couch. Cleaning the kitchen.

“I think I slept a little,” I struggled to decide whether or not I had actually been asleep when my father had forcibly evicted me from the couch, “Ten minutes, I guess.”

“You only slept for ten minutes?” Justin asked in surprise.

“I think,” I muttered, knowing that ten minutes was probably generous and it was more like five, “My dad woke me up, he was in a bad mood.”

I hadn’t meant to confess that, it had just slipped out without my permission. At least I hadn’t told them that my father had woken me up on purpose or _how_ , but Heero and his parents still had sour expressions on their faces about it.

“So you’ve had about eleven hours of sleep in seven days.” Mr. Yuy summed up.

I nodded, trusting his math skills on that. Heero looked like he had swallowed a mouthful of broken glass. His father looked upset, almost angry. Mariela just looked horrified.

“Oh, Duo,” she said in that low, motherly and sympathetic tone, “Sweetheart…”

“It doesn’t matter,” I argued a bit snappishly, their reactions making me feel defensive, “I can’t sleep, I’ve _tried._ It’s not like I sleep a lot anyway.”

“How long do you typically sleep on a good night?” Mr. Yuy asked me, losing his disturbed expression and regaining his composure, his tone cool and professional.

I was too tired to realize that it was probably the same tone that he took with his patients and he was trying to use those skills to get the truth out of me.

“Four,” I told the truth without even thinking about what I was admitting to, “Five. Sometimes I can manage six.”

Heero already knew that I was a rather light sleeper, but his mother was even more upset by that for some reason.

“It’s always been like that?” Justin pressed.

“No,” I admitted, “I used to sleep normally, but since-,”

 _“Since I watched Quatre die,”_ I almost said, but bit my tongue to shut myself up. What the hell was wrong with me? It was like I had been doused with a truth serum or something. No one needed to know that, and I didn’t want anyone to know that I had only started having real problems sleeping since I had watched my best friend get pulverized by a train. Heero would probably figure it out, but it was too private of a thing to tell his parents. Besides, if his father knew that my insomnia was because of a traumatic event like that, he would insist that I go for counseling. Been there, done that, it hadn’t helped me one fucking bit.

“That just means that it’s even more important that you try to get some sleep when you can,” Heero butted in, “I know you’re frustrated. This week has been very difficult and stressful, but you still need to try to sleep! You can’t just give up because you think you won’t be able to.”

“I don’t ‘think’, I know that I can’t!” I snapped at him.

I rubbed at my tired and sore eyes, feeling frustrated tears gather in them over the futility of all of this. I knew I was having a major over reaction, and I was being overly emotional and not making much sense, but I couldn’t stop myself.

“What’s the point?” I demanded, “I tried everything! Even when my house was completely quiet and no one was there, I still couldn’t sleep! _Nothing works_.”

I felt a tear escape and angrily wiped it away, furious with myself that I was crying in front of them just because I couldn’t sleep.

“Duo,” Heero’s father said in a very soothing tone, reaching underneath the table to place his hand on my knee, stopping my emotional tirade, “That’s part of the problem. You’re trying too hard. Insomnia isn’t something that you can just make go away with enough will power. You’re trying to force yourself to sleep, you’re making yourself stressed over it and it’s making it worse.”

“I don’t know what else to do,” I whispered and hated how pathetic and heartbroken my voice was, “I’m just… I’m just so tired…”

I felt like I was breaking apart, like I was having some exhaustion-induced, mental breakdown. In all honesty, I probably was. I fully expected Mr. Yuy to berate me about it, to tell me that I was acting like a stubborn child or something, but to my relief, he gave me a soft smile and squeezed my knee before letting go.

“That’s why I want you to do nothing else today but try to sleep. You don’t have to, I don’t want you trying to force yourself. But I want you to just lay down and rest. Relax and don’t worry about anything. Stress is the worst possible thing for your insomnia. You need to put everything out of your mind and just let sleep come naturally,” he told me.

Great advice, and I knew, somewhere deep down, that he was right, but how the hell was I supposed to do that when all I could think about was how I needed sleep? Craved it? How fucked I was?

“You were able to get some sleep when we slept together,” Heero pointed out, his tone soft, “Why don’t we try that again?”

A part of me wanted nothing more than to do just that. That part of me wanted to do just as Justin had suggested: lay down in Heero’s soft bed, feel him wrap his arms around me, the ghost of his breath against my neck. Sleep or no sleep, it sounded so wonderful, better than staring at a wall or just lying in my own bed like a lump, feeling every ache and pain and thinking about how wrong the bed that I had grown up in suddenly felt. But the rest of me was swept up in a bitter wave of depression. Heero should be enjoying his Saturday. He wasn’t the one with a stupid sleeping disorder. Instead, he was babysitting me because I couldn’t get my shit together. Not only did he feel that he had to take care of me because I was so pathetic, I had worried him again. If I hadn’t been so tired, the depression would have rooted itself deep in me, forcing me to ruminate about all the things that had been bothering me lately, feelings of inadequacy, self-loathing because of my inability to be a good boyfriend, fears that I was ruining Heero’s life. Probably the same thoughts that had contributed to my sleeplessness in the first place. But my sleep deprivation was a blessing for once. I was too exhausted to even wallow in self-pity beyond just feeling very sad and very frustrated.

“It worked twice,” I argued back heatedly, “And only for a couple of hours. Last time I only got an hour, remember? I kept you up all morning and I still couldn’t sleep. They were probably just flukes. I was emotionally exhausted the second time,” I had to bite my tongue again to keep from reminding him exactly what had happened that had made me that way at the time, not quite tired enough to let something like _that_ slip, “It’s not going to work,” I felt that frustration try to bubble out of me again, my hold on it tentative and it almost had me crying again, or maybe even screaming at him, “I know it won’t help.”

Heero, far from being deterred by my moodiness and insistence, reached across the table and took my left hand in his. I blinked at him a bit owlishly and realized for the first time that my hand had been shaking. It wasn’t even my injured one. Was I really that bad off that I was getting the shakes or was it because I hadn’t eaten very much in the last couple of days?

“I know,” he said in that soothing and loving tone of his that always somehow breaks through all of my fears and anxieties and gentles me like I’m a wide animal, “I know you’re frustrated and tired. I know how hard it’s been and you’re stressed over your insomnia, but you can’t keep going on like this,” his thumb rubbed hypnotic circles on the skin of my hand, “Look at yourself. You’re _killing_ yourself! You can barely stand up anymore. You haven’t really slept in, what, a week and a half? More? The insomnia is one thing, but you’re so high strung, and so hard on yourself, you’re making it worse. My dad is right, you need to relax. You need to let us help, not shoulder this yourself like everything else and just _hope_ it will go away on its own! You thought that you wouldn’t be able to sleep the first time I suggested we try sleeping together, remember? You said you were absolutely sure that it wouldn’t work, but it _did_. You might have only slept for two hours, but that’s because we tried it too late.”

“It was probably just the tea,” I muttered testily, rubbing at my eyes again, even as I had to concede to myself that he had a point: I _had_ been sure that it wouldn’t work and it had.

“What can it hurt to just try?” Heero insisted, completely ignoring my attitude again, “Even if you can’t sleep, at least you’ll be off your feet and can rest your eyes. I know your back and head have been hurting you, you can just lay down with a hot compress if you still can’t sleep.”

I blushed at the knowledge that he had noticed my headache and back pain. I couldn’t remember the last two days well enough to know if I had been in obvious pain or if he was just that perceptive.

“I can’t ask you to do that,” I said weakly, slurring my words slightly, feeling my resolve, as stupid and stubborn and senseless as it was, weakening, “It’s Saturday. You just got up. It wouldn’t be fair of me to ask you to lay down with me… to do nothing and waste your day…”

My boyfriend snorted at that.

“It’s not some big trial. I _like_ being with you and I want to help you. You’re my boyfriend and you’re in pain. This is my _job._ Don’t even sit there and tell me that you wouldn’t do the same thing for me,” he accused.

There really wasn’t anything I could say to that, since he was obviously right. Helping him sleep would be tiny compared to all that he had given me. It just didn’t seem equal. What had I done for him? But I couldn’t begrudge his affection, or his desire to help me.

“And I’ll be fine,” he assured me, “I have my laptop, so it’s not like I won’t have anything to do. Besides,” he smirked, “now I won’t have to do any chores.”

Justin shook his head at his son, but he looked more amused than annoyed.

“Jokes aside, I think it would be a good idea,” he jumped in, “There is no real cure for chronic insomnia, but it can be treated with medication, depending on the cause, and it can be managed. The key is lessening your stress. Hot baths beforehand, no television or computer use, sleep in a cool, dark room, these are good ways to combat it. If sharing a bed with Heero has worked before, it’s worth a try.”

I had read the same advice on insomnia before, but I had never put much stock in it. I had never tried any of those things, but I don’t take baths or showers before bed, I don’t have a computer or use my phone or the television right before I sleep anyway, and while my bedroom is certainly dark, it is definitely not cool, but there wasn’t anything that I could do to change that. Of course, my recent… emotional problems involving my home, my room especially, would probably render all of that moot. I still didn’t think that sleeping with Heero was going to make much of a difference, but his father made sense. My stress levels were already down just by being there. Sleeping in Heero’s bed with him would be a lot more tranquil than sleeping alone on my lumpy mattress with the threat of my father looming over me.

“Please, Duo?” it was Mariela’s turn to chip away at my bullheadedness, using emotional blackmail instead of her husband’s cool logic or Heero’s stubbornness, her eyes large and her face tense with concern so perfect that I could have sworn she had practiced this, “Just try for an hour or two, ok? I’m worried that you’re going to get very sick…”

Too late for that, I thought, if my headache and nausea were any indication. It dawned on me then that the three of them had ganged up on me, a veritable united front. I don’t know if they had necessarily planned for that, but that was certainly the image that they presented. They made perfect sense, all of them. Why was I even fighting it? Why was I being so stubborn? What were we even arguing about? None of it made any sense to me and, right at that moment, laying down with Heero was the only thing that I wanted. I nodded, all of that stubborn, moody streak gone. I was so tired that I didn’t even have the energy to be irritable anymore. The three of them looked so relieved, I seriously wondered why I hadn’t agreed in the first place.

“Why don’t you take a quick, hot shower?” Mariela suggested as the three of them stood from the table, bulling forward in fear that I was going to change my mind.

I struggled to my feet, almost stumbling as I suddenly felt very dizzy and sick, but managed to both stay upright and not hurl.

“K’,” I mumbled, just mindlessly agreeing to whatever they wanted me to do. It was easier that way.

Heero’s mother placed a hand on my back and gently steered me upstairs, taking the lead. Her gentle, but steady nature was exactly what I needed. I felt a bit like a child being led around by the hand, which would usually rankle me, but I didn’t care. Some part of me craved someone to make these decisions for me, to tell me what to do because I was so tired of fighting, of struggling, of dealing with this shit with not even half a brain at my disposal. She led me to the bathroom, but thankfully did not follow me inside. That would have been a bit too much embarrassment for me to handle.

“We’ll get the bed ready for you, just take as long as you need, ok, Sweetheart?” she told me.

I nodded and she shut the door. Cheery daylight streamed through the small bathroom window. It looked like it was going to be a nice day out and I felt another pang that Heero could be outside, enjoying it instead of stuck inside with me. It was bright enough that I didn’t need the bathroom lights, so I kept them off. They would just make my head hurt worse anyway. I turned on the shower and grabbed a clean washcloth, but it took me a few minutes to get my clothes off so I could actually step in. The pulled muscles in my back and the injuries to my right arm and hand made getting my shirt up and over my head a nightmare and I was so stiff all over that even just pulling my socks off was a slow, lethargic process.

My wrist was even more swollen, I guess from all the cleaning I had done. I didn’t understand why because I had just sprained it. It wasn’t like I had broken anything. I had hit the wall with my knuckles, and while they were still scabbed over, they didn’t hurt as much as my wrist did. The hematoma on my right arm looked worse than the one on my leg, too. While the one on my leg was still a little swollen and both had faded in color, my arm still felt like I had a hot ball shoved under my skin, even if it had diminished from a soccer ball to a baseball. It was still an angry, purple color, too, though the edges of it had changed from blood red to this disgusting yellow-brown color.

I fumbled with my hair tie with my left hand for another couple of minutes and was so frustrated with it that I almost just left it up before I finally managed to tug it off. Finally stumbling into the shower, I just stood under the hot spray for a while, hissing when the pleasant heat hit my worn muscles between my shoulders, both feeling amazing and hurting at the same time. I bowed my head, letting the water stream down my neck and hair, closing my eyes and just leaning my head against the wall. It was probably a good thing that I still couldn’t sleep, or I think I might have just fainted in the shower. Feeling my muscles loosen just a tiny bit after about ten minutes of this, I picked up the washcloth with my still trembling left hand and slowly, tiredly washed myself, barely having the energy to even do that much. If I hadn’t felt so dirty from work and had actually been able to remember when I had last taken a shower, I might have not even done that.

I skipped washing my hair. I hurt too much and decided that I just didn’t care. When I turned off the water, stepped out of the shower, and dried myself, I didn’t even comb my hair or put it back up into its braid. I wasn’t so sure that I could anymore. I just brushed my teeth because my mouth tasted like something between rotting meat and raw sewage, still sloppily using my left hand, and popped two painkillers for my headache, drinking a handful of water from the tap.

When I went to get dressed, I realized that I had forgotten to grab clothes. Before I could debate just putting my dirty ones back on or if I could successfully make a run for the guest room, I spotted some fresh pajamas that had been laid out for me on top of the hamper. Someone must have thought of that and grabbed a pair from the dresser while I had been showering. I felt a little disturbed that I was so out of it that I hadn’t even heard anyone come in, but it was a tiny blip on my radar at that point. I migrated to Heero’s bedroom and found only Mariela in there, pulling down the sheets of the bed. She had pulled the shades over all the windows and only a tiny bit of light was showing under them, casting the room in this peaceful, dim glow. She smiled at me.

“Have a nice shower?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Heero?”

“He’ll be right in,” she told me and patted the side of the bed closest to the door, somehow knowing that that was the side that I always slept on.

I obediently sat down on that side. The sheets felt cool and crisp. She must have been putting fresh sheets on while I had been in the shower. True to her word, Heero walked in only a few minutes after I had sat down, carrying my cat in his arms. It was the first time that I had ever seen him holding her and I was a bit amazed that she was being so calm about it. Then again, she had never seemed all that nervous around him and had accepted him sharing a bed with us pretty easily. It was just his dog that she wasn’t too sure about. Although she didn’t seem to mind him carrying her, she only perked up and meowed when she saw me, struggling a bit so she could get to me.

“Thank you,” I told him as I reached out and took the mostly black cat from him, touched that he had thought to get her for me.

Pepper headbutted me and rubbed her cheek against my neck. It felt so good, holding her and feeling her affection, like I was something special, the only thing that she cared about. It’s almost the same way that I feel when Heero looks at me sometimes, like I’m the only thing that he sees. That he loves me and only me. It’s like something reaching far down inside of you, grabbing the air from your lungs and pulling it right out of you.

I placed her on the pillow and she easily settled there, folding her limbs neatly under her. She would never be a large cat, but she was almost a full adult by now and was a bit too big to be sharing a pillow with me. She’d always press right up against me and curl around my head, sometimes her tail would even wrap around my neck. As the weather gets warmer, it will get a bit stifling, as sleek as her fur is, but I didn’t mind. It reminds me of how Heero likes to keep his arm around me when we’re sleeping, and how our legs get all tangled up sometimes. Hot fur on my neck feels better than sleeping alone and she’ll usually get up and wander around after a couple of hours anyway.

“Come on, lay down,” my friend urged in a soothing tone as I sat there, petting my cat.

“Right,” I mumbled, feeling like a moron, but neither Heero or his mother were giving me weird looks, so I managed not to blush.

I moved mechanically, laying down on the bed. It felt like it had been months since I had last laid in that bed. The pillow was familiar, full and plush and pleasant, unlike the ones that I had slept on the last few mornings. I buried the right side of my face in it, relishing in how cool and clean it felt, that light, airy smell of cloth that had just been laundered. It was already a vast improvement to my other sleeping arrangements. As soft as the bed was, my right side still throbbed and ached, but unless I tried sleeping on my left side again, there was nothing I could do to help that. The pain was distracting, one of the many things keeping me from sleeping, but for some reason, I was frozen, like I couldn’t even just roll over.

“Comfortable?” I heard Heero ask, still in that same soft tone.

I felt him run his hand over my shoulder, and opened my eyes to look at him. He was sitting on the other side of the bed on top of the covers, his computer on the pillow, and looking down on me with such tenderness, his eyes dark in the dimness of the room. All I could do was nod. I was about as comfortable as I was ever going to be, so it wasn’t a complete lie. Mariela pulled the sheets up around me, tucking me in like I was a little kid, something I only remember my own mother doing when I had been very little, almost too young to remember.

“Did you take some medicine for your headache?” she asked as she walked towards the door.

I nodded again and she looked satisfied.

“Did you need anything before I go? Water? A hot compress for your back?” she offered.

I shook my head.

“Goodnight then, Duo,” she said with smile, even though it was still early morning.

She closed the door as she left, leaving the two of us alone.

“Close your eyes,” Heero urged, his voice like a song.

I did it even though I still didn’t feel like I was going to able to sleep. It was comforting in a way, closing my eyes, like flicking off some switch to my brain. I guess the less input, the better. It didn’t do much to make my headache better, but even a fraction was better than nothing.

“Try to sleep, love,” his voice came again like a gentle ocean wave, lapping at my consciousness, wrapped in its murky fog.

I obeyed that, too. At least, I attempted to. It was so peaceful in that room. Dark, quiet, but not like the tomb that my own house can be when I’m the only one in it. I could hear Heero next to me, slight sounds to know that he was there, within arm’s reach. I could feel his warmth. I could feel Pepper’s silken fur brushing against my cheek. The bed was soft and clean and held the opposite of bad memories for me. There was absolutely no reason why I shouldn’t be able to fall asleep.

I told myself that over and over. ‘Sleep, please just sleep.’ I remembered what Justin had told me, not to try to force it, not to worry or stress over it, just let it come naturally. But I couldn’t do that. Even as exhausted as I was, where intelligent thought and sanity was coming so hard for me, my anxiety was always there, as natural and constant as a heartbeat. It pulls me apart. That day, days really, it kept me awake and tortured me. It made even my stomach tense, my nausea cresting higher and higher the more that I tried to ignore it. Even in the most perfect conditions like that, I had reached some nightmarish point where not even being with Heero was settling me.

I squirmed where I laid, trying to get comfortable without alerting my boyfriend that I was having trouble. Sleep eluded me. Not completely. I dozed off a couple of times. Tiny, restless sleeps brought on by pure exhaustion and nothing else. But then my stomach would roil or a sharp pain would go through my head, often both, and would drag me kicking and screaming from those light dozes. One particularly bad twist of nausea roused me after about an hour, maybe less, since I had laid down and I could feel that nasty sensation in my throat, the taste of bile, a tightness that only nausea brings. I blinked tiredly, squinting in the dark, and wrapped my arms around my traitorous stomach, tucking up my legs until I was curled in a tiny ball.

I tried to close my eyes again, tried to slip away, but that poisonous, hateful feeling in my stomach just kept rising and rising until I knew exactly what was going to happen, no matter how hard I fought against it. I kicked at the covers, trying desperately to get them off of me and only succeeding in getting them tangled in my legs. I sat up a bit too quickly and my stomach protested rather vocally. I couldn’t help but groan even as I was pushing away the sheets.

“Duo, what’s wrong?” Heero asked in alarm as I swung my legs over the bed, even my uninjured one feeling like it was made of wood and unable to move with any kind of quickness or grace.

“Sick,” I croaked, my throat raw and I could feel something thick in there, making it difficult to talk, “Need to throw up.”

“Shit!” he swore and how fast he scrambled out of bed and ran to my side would have been comical in any other situation

I had only gotten my feet to the ground and was clumsily standing up, almost tripping in my first steps forward by the time he got to me, putting a hand to my back and helping me to the bathroom. Even with his assistance, it was slow going. With one arm around my stomach, each step was torturous between how my head was swimming along with my vision and each movement bringing another horrible wave of nausea. I almost didn’t make it to the bathroom. If Heero hadn’t been helping me, I wouldn’t have. There was a bit of embarrassment I didn’t need. My humiliation levels were already high from Heero having to help me, I didn’t need to go throwing up in the hallway of a house I was a guest at.

I fell on my knees hard in front of the toilet and probably would have skinned them on the hard floor if my friend hadn’t grabbed me and tried his best to keep me from hurting myself. I nearly threw up right in front of the toilet instead of in it, so exhausted that I was having trouble keeping myself upright, but Heero wrapped an arm around my middle and held me up, allowing me to grab the toilet and retch into it. I heaved violently, my stomach trying to forcefully evict itself from my body. Heero was thoughtful enough to pull my loose hair back from my face and was patient as I vomited for what felt like hours. It was probably just for minutes, but I threw up no less than seven times before my insides stopped spasming enough for me to stop. It was long enough that both of Heero’s parents came running to see what was going on, long enough that I had thrown up everything that I had eaten in the last twelve hours until I was painfully dry heaving.

It was one of the worst bouts of nausea I’ve ever experienced in my life and hopefully ever will again. It took everything out of me, even what little strength I had left, leaving me feeling hollow, completely scooped out, and about as weak as a two-day old kitten. My arms shook terribly as I tried to keep a hold on the toilet in vain, my right hand slipping off several times. Thankfully, Heero kept a sturdy hold on me, so I didn’t lose my balance. I could only barely hear him saying things to me. I couldn’t make them out, but his tone was soothing, comforting.

“Is he alright?” I heard Mariela ask in alarm as I began to dry heave.

“I think breakfast made him sick,” Heero told her.

When I was finally done, he helped lower me to a sitting position instead of a kneeling one on the cool floor. My entire body was shaking from the ordeal. I even think that I couldn’t get up and walk if I needed to. Hot tears of shame and exhaustion poured down my cheeks. I felt so sick and embarrassed knowing that the boy that I loved and admired had not only just seen me throw up, but had had to help me do it. I wondered if this was how Quatre had felt when Relena had made him vomit in front of Trowa; ashamed, disgusted, hating himself and his body for betraying him, feeling the ground cave in under his feet, like something was slipping from his grasp, terrified that he had repulsed the person he loved. At least he had had Relena to blame. I only had myself.

I looked over at Heero as he let go of me and stood, expecting to see him looking disgusted or at least distancing himself from me, but there wasn’t an ounce of any of that on his face. He looked concerned and determined, but not repulsed. Not grossed out. That only made the tears come down harder. He grabbed a towel and handed it to me. I cleaned off my face thoroughly. My skin didn’t even feel hot with my embarrassment, just cool and sweaty.

“All done?” he asked kindly.

I nodded. My stomach hurt like hell and I had that weird, shaky feeling you get after you’ve thrown up, but the worst of my nausea had faded and I was pretty confident that I didn’t need to hurl again.

“I’m so, so sorry,” I rasped, fresh tears tracking down my face and my voice hitched, but I didn’t really understand why I was still crying.

“You have absolutely nothing to be sorry about,” he assured me as he flushed the toilet then poured cold water from the tap into a small, paper cup, handing it to me.

I drank slowly, not wanting another incident and really only wanted the drink because of how awful my throat felt. It was like I had swallowed sandpaper, or maybe a fistful of tacks. I thought that I might taste a little bit of blood, but the taste in my mouth was so sickeningly terrible, it was hard to tell. I handed the cup back to him and he tossed it in the trash.

“Duo, I am so sorry,” Mariela apologized profusely, sounding miserable and guilty. I had forgotten that she and Justin were still standing in the doorway, “I wasn’t thinking. I should have known you couldn’t handle all that food.”

I shook my head. ‘It isn’t your fault,’ I wanted to say, but couldn’t quite manage, ‘You were just trying to be nice. It was all my fault.’ My fault that I had wasted her food. My fault for not telling her I was sick to my stomach. My fault for this stupid insomnia that had had me hunched over a toilet right in front of my boyfriend and his family.

“Mom, can you get him some Coke?” Heero asked.

“Of course!” Mariela exclaimed and practically raced downstairs, eager to help.

“Are you ready to go back to bed?” my friend asked softly.

Truthfully, I didn’t want to go back to bed. Some of the tears on my face had nothing to do with either shame or guilt, they were from frustration. Just how much more was the universe going to throw at me? Just everything that had happened between Heero and I, his parents, and at school was enough to make me feel insane. Add in my sleeplessness, the nausea, my headache and other various pains, and I felt like I was cracking. I couldn’t take anymore. I _literally_ could not take anymore. I didn’t want to try to sleep. I didn’t want to drift in and out of restless nothingness. But I nodded anyways because what else did I have to do? I barely had the energy to sit up. Laying down was about all I _could_ do.

“I… I don’t know if I can stand up,” I murmured tiredly, slurring my words again.

I felt embarrassed again and would have given almost anything to haven’t admitted that.

“That’s alright, Duo,” Heero’s father soothed, “There’s no shame in not feeling well and I wouldn’t want you hurting yourself.”

He and Heero shared a look. My boyfriend kneeled back down and helped me to my feet. I managed most of the work myself, thank god, but I was so weak and dizzy, I had to lean on him, my injured leg shaking and my head swam. Justin went to my other side, keeping a hand on my arm, not holding me up so much as making himself ready if I fell. The walk back to Heero’s room was very slow, my body still trembling and my dizziness not easing much. I was afraid to move quickly anyway in case the nausea decided to raise its ugly, unwanted head again. Heero and Justin were very patient with me. Once we were back in the bedroom, Justin let Heero sit me back down on the bed. I wrapped my arm around my middle again as my tortured guts protested the constant changing positions, but it wasn’t a serious warning.

Justin knelt down in front of me and slid his hand under my bangs, resting his palm on my forehead. Automatically, I closed my eyes. I didn’t know what he was doing, not recognizing the classic ‘checking temperature’ technique, but his touch felt good, gentle, his hand cool and dry.

“Does he have a fever?” Heero asked worriedly.

“Mmm, I don’t think so. I think he’s just overheated from exertion,” his father told him, “If it is a fever, it’s a small one.”

Mr. Yuy withdrew his hand and stepped away. I blinked my eyes open, the sudden return of sensory input making my head throb again. Almost the second Justin took a step back, Kanuck shoved himself between Heero and myself, laying his head in my lap and whined at me. The dog actually sounded sympathetic and worried, like he knew that there was something wrong with me. I petted his tall ears. It was oddly comforting. Not even a minute after the dog had invaded my personal space, Heero’s mother returned with a tall glass of Coke.

“Thanks,” Heero took it from her and gave it to me, “Here, drink this.”

I frowned at the dark liquid.

“I hate Coke,” I grumbled.

That only made him smile.

“I know,” he said affectionately, like he thought I was terribly cute or some shit, “but it will settle your stomach.”

I stared at him in bewilderment. I might have been a few tomes short of a full collection at the moment, but I was nearly positive that I had never told Heero before that I don’t like Coke (2). He’s seen me drink other kinds of soda before, so how the hell did he know that?

“Sorry, but we don’t have any ginger ale, so this is the next best thing. Come on,” he urged gently, “Just half, you don’t have to drink the whole thing.”

I surrendered, thirsty enough that I really didn’t care that much, and took a sip. At least it had ice in it. I really don’t like soda if it isn’t ice cold. I managed a few more sips before I really didn’t want anymore, but drank half of the glass to appease Heero, putting the glass on the bedside table. At least the soda had done a great job of cutting that nasty taste out of my mouth.

Heero lightly pushed his dog off of me and knelt down to gently touch my right forearm, a safe distance from my hematoma.

“Are you feeling better?” he asked in that kind tone.

“Yeah,” I told him with some surprise, “I don’t feel as sick to my stomach anymore.”

That was actually true. Although just talking was taking a lot out of me and my words were quickly becoming difficult to understand, my nausea was slowly dissipating. I guess I had just really needed to throw up.  
          “Good,” he smiled at me and lifted my left hand, pressing a light kiss to my knuckles that still made me blush, both at how bold he was being in front of his parents and at the tender gesture, “Would you like me to put your hair up?”

I nodded, having somehow forgotten that it was even still down. It was probably a good thing that I was so tired or I would have felt incredibly self-conscious. I didn’t think Heero’s parents had seen me with it down before. I let my boyfriend take the hair tie off my wrist and grab my brush from the dresser. How it had gotten there from the bathroom, I had no recollection. Heero sat behind me and carefully ran the brush through my hair, mindful of tangles. I had to bite my tongue to keep from moaning in pleasure. There is something strangely intimate and pleasant about someone else combing my hair. And Heero always does such a good job of it for someone with such thick, unruly hair. It wasn’t long before I could feel myself drooping, both my body and my eyelids, feeling myself start to relax.

“Did he sleep at all?” Justin asked, he and Heero unapologetically talking over me. I was too out of it to really notice or pay attention to what they were saying anyway. Heero snorted derisively.

“What, in the…” he paused although his combing didn’t, “forty-seven minutes since he laid down? Not really. He drifted off a couple of times. At least, I think he did. But it was only for a few minutes at a time. He kept waking up and zoning out. But even when he was awake, he didn’t respond to anything I said to him.”

I have no memory of this, but considering the state I had been in this morning, it doesn’t surprise me. He finished combing through my hair and put it up in a very loose ponytail, probably considerate of my headache.

“Let’s get you down before you keel over,” Heero put my hairbrush on the table and nudged lightly on my shoulder.

I obediently laid back down on the pillow, although I kept my legs dangling over the side, not really thinking about it. Still wearing that slightly amused, affectionate smile, Heero lifted my legs onto the bed with the rest of me and pulled the sheets up over me. My body still shaking a little, I rolled onto my bad side and put my right hand on Pepper who licked my fingers with her rough tongue.

“Here,” I heard Justin say as I slowly closed my eyes and there was a rattle, like a bottle filled with lots of small things being shaken, “Get him to take one of these.”

“He won’t take it,” my boyfriend argued.

“Heero, he needs sleep,” his father said sternly, “Look at him. This can’t go on for much longer. I’ll just give him half a pill, he just needs-,”

“ _No_ ,” Heero snapped angrily, “You think I don’t want him to get some sleep? He’s so tired that he can’t even eat anything without throwing up! Hell, he can barely walk! But I’m not going to force him to do something that he doesn’t want!”

“He isn’t in his right mind right now,” Mr. Yuy pointed out, “We can’t trust any decision that he makes, you know that. And he might not even protest-,”

“I am not going to manipulate him like that!” Heero’s voice rose enough that I opened my eyes in confusion, but closed them again, not understanding that I had anything to do with their conversation, “You’re right, I can’t trust any of his decisions right now. If I ask him what he wants, I can’t trust that it’s actually him talking. So I’m making the decisions for him, and I know what he wants, Dad. I’m not giving him a sleeping pill. This whole time he’s suffered through this and refused to take one. He doesn’t like them and I’m not giving him one when he’s weak and confused. And not just because he would be pissed and hurt about it later, I’m not going to disrespect him like that.”

I think that, if I had been myself, I might have kissed him right there in front of his mother and father and not even cared. Even now, remembering all this with a much clearer mind, I’m tempted. He’s watching something on his computer and I don’t want to disturb him. No, that’s just an excuse. It’s because, despite everything, despite thinking that I’m ready for this relationship, I’m still disgustingly, pathetically shy and uncertain. But it would make him so happy, me kissing him out of the blue and after standing up to his father for me, protecting me even from someone’s good intentions, I need to kiss him. Fuck it.

I did it. I was right. He blushed darkly, but he has this big, dumb, charming smile on his face now. He asked me why. It hurts that I can make him so happy with a single kiss, and it hurts even more that he needs to ask me why I had kissed him. I’m his boyfriend. This is something that I’m supposed to do all the time, isn’t it? If I was normal, he would never ask. I was tempted to say “just because I love you.” But even though that _was_ part of the reason, I told him the truth. I told him how much it means to me that he respects me, that he respects me enough to do the things he knows I want when he disagrees with them.

I told him how much I love him for everything he did for me this week. Taking care of me. Protecting me. Loving me. Teaching me how to deal with my anger. Being so patient and understanding. I cried a little. I’m still a bit hyper sensitive to my emotions, but not nearly as badly as I was when I had been sleep deprived. Well, I’m _still_ sleep deprived, if I’m being honest. Can’t really undo over a week’s worth of damage in a single day, but you know what I mean. I’ll get over it eventually. Heero didn’t mention my tears, just drew me close and made it better without needing to say a single thing like he always does.

Damn, where was I? My memory is a lot better now, too, or I wouldn’t even be able to write all this, but there are still gaps. I still have moments when I forget what I’m doing or lose a train of thought. That, too, will get better eventually. Ah, right, the pills.

“Alright, Heero,” I heard Justin concede.

He sounded only a little put out that Heero had put his foot down on the issue, probably thinking that we were both idiots. But mostly, he sounded proud, like he respected his son for taking my side.

“Do you need our help getting him to sleep?” his mother asked.

“No, it’s fine,” Heero sounded very distracted, like he had already dismissed his parents from his attention.

I blinked my eyes half open as I felt his weight dip the bed on my side. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, looking down at me. He was worried again and I didn’t understand why. I had done everything he had asked. I was laying down. I had drunk the Coke. So why did he look so upset? He reached over and very tenderly brushed my bangs out of my eyes.

“Tell me what you need,” he urged in that soothing tone of his that reminds me of a lullaby.

“Nothing,” I murmured, even my tongue feeling heavy.

“Are you sure?” he asked, “There isn’t anything bothering you? You were fidgeting a lot before. You’re positive you’re comfortable?”

I looked away from him to the floor, flexing my injured hand subconsciously and shifted a little, trying to take my weight off my arm in vain.

“My hand just hurts,” I admitted lowly, barely audible and very hesitant.

I expected him to brush that off. There wasn’t anything anyone could do about my throbbing wrist or swollen arm, I was just going to have to deal with it. But to my surprise, he smiled at me and turned to his parents who were still loitering in the doorway, unsure of leaving us.

“Can you get a pillow?” he asked.

“Sure,” his father took up the task.

He left and returned quickly with one of the pillows from the guest room that I sleep on, handing it to Heero.

“Lift up your arm,” my boyfriend ordered.

I did as he asked and pliantly let him rearrange me how he wanted. He didn’t move me much, just had me lay slightly at an angle, part on my back and part on my right side. He slid the pillow under my arm, making sure it was cradling the entirety of my hand as well, and very lightly touched my hand, his tan fingers brushing over bruises and scabs.

“Better?” he asked me.

I shifted a little, expecting some pain, but was shocked to find that the support had eased a lot of it, and the new position was keeping my weight off of it.

“Yeah, a lot,” I couldn’t keep the surprise out of my voice, that he had actually solved the problem so easily.

“Good,” he smiled with relief and leaned down to kiss my forehead.

He pulled the covers over me, smoothing them almost neurotically, and walking to his side of the bed. I expected him to pick up his laptop again, but he laid down beside me and wrapped an arm around me, snuggling in close under the covers.

“And this?” he asked lowly, almost whispering in my ear.

I shivered in pleasure, feeling his warm breath washing over my skin, his deep tone reverberating through me.

“Better,” I sighed.

Feeling him there, so close to me that I could even feel his body heat, his familiar arm around me felt a lot better than just him sitting next to me. I was selfish and spoiled, but it felt so good and soothing, even if I was inconveniencing him. I felt his hand smooth over my hair, brushing back some errant strands.

“Good night, Duo,” I heard him murmur and he pressed a brief kiss to my temple.

My eyes slipped closed and the last thing I saw were Heero’s parents still in the doorway, watching us with amazed expressions. I think they hadn’t really believed him when he had said he didn’t need any help or maybe they were just amazed to see this new, affectionate side to him. I didn’t open my eyes after that. It was too difficult and I couldn’t think of a reason why I needed to.

“Heero,” Justin said very lowly, keeping his voice down so he wouldn’t rouse me, “We’re going to go out for the day, so it’ll be nice and quiet here.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Heero sounded relieved, although I don’t recall having heard much noise when they had been there, though they had probably been trying very hard to be quiet.

“I want you to text us if you need anything, alright?” his father ordered, “And I mean _anything_. You have your cell phone on you?”

“Fully charged,” my boyfriend confirmed.

“Good. We’ll bring you back some pizza later tonight.”

“Thanks,” he repeated.

I heard their quiet footsteps finally leave the room, followed by the very quiet creak and shut of the door. The sound of it panicked me. I flashed to the other morning. My father coming into my room. Touching me. Pushing into me. Hurting me. He was going to hurt me again, tear me apart again. My whole body stiffened, waiting for my mattress to dip with his heavy weight, to feel his large hands on me. My heart raced psychotically and I suddenly found it difficult to breathe.

“Sssh,” Heero’s voice washed over me, a tranquil wave slowly pushing out my anxieties, pebbles in a gentle tide, “Hush, love. Everything is alright. You’re safe. Nothing can hurt you here.”

The crazy thing wasn’t my panic attack over something as normal and simple as the sound of a door shutting, it was that I believed him. On a regular, average day, I wouldn’t have. I would have scoffed at him. Of course I wasn’t safe. I’m not safe anywhere, not in my house, not at school, not on the street. Heero’s house might be the safest place, and it was highly unlikely that anything bad would happen to me there, but my pathetically long, yet short life has taught me to always be on guard, always be ready for the hammer to fall, because you never know when it will and it’s when you think you’re safe, when you think you can relax that it comes for you. And that’s when it hurts the most.

No place, and no one, can be trusted to not hurt you, to keep you safe. I trust Heero, but getting to that point was very difficult and strange for me. I had been easy to trust once, when I had been a child, but my parents and Relena, and finally Quatre, had stripped that from me. Quatre most of all. Because I had trusted him almost as much as I trust Heero, and he had hurt me the most. I had spent years after his death building up walls, telling myself to never care about anyone ever again, then I would never get hurt again. I had thought that I was playing it safe.

But like I just wrote, it’s when you let your guard down that you get hurt the worst. I hadn’t been expecting Heero. I hadn’t been expecting to fall in love with anyone, let alone someone like him. I hadn’t thought myself capable. But he got in and he hurt me. But somehow, and hell if I know how, I had learned to trust him. When all of my history and all of the world that I’ve ever known has taught me that no one can be trusted, _especially_ someone who used to bully me and held the power in his hands to hurt me more than anyone else, I had come to trust him more than anyone. I had broken my one rule and not even the pain from Quatre’s betrayal can get me to take it back.

I guess some people could chalk it up to my blind love for him, but I don’t think that’s true. I think that it’s just who he is, and what he’s done. I think that even if I had never fallen for him, I would still trust him. There’s just something in my soul that calms and feels at peace when I see him, when I hear his voice, like some deep, instinctual part of me just knows that I have nothing to fear from him. Maybe it _is_ love. In any case, I trusted him not to hurt me, but that doesn’t mean that I think he can keep me safe, or believe him when he says that I am. I’m not that naïve, even if he is. He doesn’t understand the depths of my anxieties, that for how deep and sometimes crazy they are, some of them come true. Sometimes, my paranoia is very warranted.

But that day, I believed him explicitly. He said that I was safe, so I must be safe. That feeling of security, something that I have rarely felt in my life, washed over me. My father wasn’t there, it whispered in my ear, Zechs wasn’t there, Relena wasn’t there, there was no one that wanted to hurt me. Just Heero. No one would hurt me. No one would abuse me. No one would violate me or humiliate me. Just the two of us. I felt him rub his cheek against my neck, the only sound in the room that of his gentle breathing. I slipped a little deeper down the rabbit hole.

His hand crept against my back, rubbing over my shirt. Not quite massaging, but pleasant, soothing. His other was against my stomach, his fingers curled there in a way that was both intimate and innocent. That’s the last thing I really remember, feeling his hands, how warm they were, how nice it was to be touched by him, while everyone else’s touch was a horror. Then I was gone, pulled under a deep, dark, but sedate wave.

 

*****

 

          I didn’t fall asleep. I fell into a damned coma. At least, that’s what it felt like. I didn’t dream that I can remember, which is probably a blessing. I slept hard and deeply, and for a very long time. It was like being dehydrated and getting the first sip of ice water. Your body knows that it’s getting what it needs and before you even know what’s happening, you’re chugging that water down. I gorged myself on sleep, falling into some black hole that I couldn’t have clawed my way out of if I had wanted to, and I hadn’t. It was nice in there and I saw no reason to be anywhere else. I guess it’s a bit frightening if I stop to think about it. Although I’ll never be sure, I have some idea that if Heero had needed to wake me up, he wouldn’t have been able to.

          I have these vague… glimpses of awareness from that time. Heero saying something to me, the back of his hand brushing against my cheek. I said something back to him, probably just nonsense, but he smiled and kissed my temple, pulling the sheets up to my shoulders and wrapping his arm around me over them. The vision was muted, like I was observing everything through some haze, either because I was just dreaming or because I couldn’t open my eyes fully. Then I was gone again.

          There are other moments that I think might have actually happened. Waking up for a minute, but Heero didn’t even need to coax me back to sleep. It was like I was in reverse of how I had been the last few days. Instead of micro sleeps, my brain drifting off while I thought I was still awake, I would wake in these tiny, little spurts, only to get dragged back under with no effort at all. It was soothing, like being rocked by gentle waves, completely peaceful.

          I woke up, really woke up, for the first time later that night. It was a slow, lethargic thing, my brain like a lightbulb growing brighter and brighter, or a computer warming up. At first, just muted colors and the sense of warmth. Then a few details emerged, tea leaves floating to the surface. I was very warm, covered in blankets. What I was laying against was equally warm, moving very subtly. Then, as I managed to get my eyes more than half way open, everything came into focus.

          I had abandoned my right side at some point in the day and was now laying on my left, curled up into a tight ball like a little kid. My head wasn’t on a pillow anymore, but was using Heero’s shoulder as one, his arm flung around me like he didn’t want me to move. The rest of me was firmly tucked against his side, like a child with an overly large stuffed animal. His fingers were idly playing with my pony tail, what little there was left still held together, so lightly that I could barely feel it. I don’t even think he was aware that he was doing it, focusing on reading some graphic novel. At least, that’s what it looked like from the cover. I closed my eyes for a moment, burying my head against him and feeling the soft cotton of his night shirt against my cheek. I might have even fallen back to sleep if I didn’t feel an uncomfortable fullness in my bladder. I opened my eyes and shifted my head again. It was enough to gain his attention.

          “Welcome back,” my boyfriend smiled lovingly at me, putting his book down.

          I felt like I was seeing him, really seeing him, for the first time in several days. To my surprise, I smiled back at him easily, something that I would have struggled with these last couple of days but was now like an instinct, an unconscious reaction. I must have been asleep for a long time, I realized. The state of the room supported that. There was a plate full of crumbs and a glass of watered down soda, not even an inch full, on the dresser next to Heero’s side of the bed. There was no light streaming under the shades of the windows and Heero had dared to turn on the tiny lamp next to him, but just on its lowest setting.

          “Hi,” I murmured and suddenly felt this hot little burst of affection for him.

          I had no idea where it came from, just that it was there as I looked at him, just from being so close to him and knowing what he had gone through to make sure that I stayed asleep.

          “You really awake this time?” he asked, giving credence to my suspicion that I had drifted in and out of sleep a few times.

          I nodded.

          “I think so,” I told him.

          I was incredibly drowsy and I could feel sleep’s cloak over me, trying to weigh me back down, but I found it easy to ignore it, capable of going either way.

          “Feeling better?” he asked me.

          I nodded.

          “A bit,” I confessed.

          I wasn’t all the way back to my usual self, I still felt heavy headed, like I was sleep walking, but I was a hell of a lot better than I had been. I felt more alert and alive, refreshed, and just being awake wasn’t causing me pain and frustration. I could think. I could hold a conversation without snapping at anyone or zoning out. Although I was still tired, it was bearable.

          “How long have I been asleep?” I asked.

          He glanced at the clock. I followed his gaze and saw with amazement that it was ten at night. I had slept the entire day away.

          “About thirteen hours,” he confirmed with a satisfied smile.

          Fuck, it was no wonder why I needed to pee so bad.

          “I… I need to go to the bathroom,” I murmured, my face going red hot.

          “Ok,” he was so easy and quick to accommodate, taking his arm out from around me.

          With a great deal more effort than it should have taken, I rolled away from him, some part of me mourning the loss of his body heat and my sinfully comfortable position. Everything was fine until I actually tried to sit up. My muscles had grown even more stiff from laying down and I think despite my moving to my other side, I hadn’t moved much in my sleep. Everything kind of protested at once just from the strain of sitting up, all the aches that I had had when I had fallen asleep still there with the exception of my headache, but that didn’t stop a wave of dizziness from assaulting me. I groaned loudly and clutched at my head, willing the room to stop spinning.

          “Hold on, I’ll help you,” Heero said, eager to assist.

          He got out of bed and walked to my side with an ease that I envied, wrapping an arm around my back and helping me to the edge of the bed. I accepted his help despite my pride. It seemed rather stupid to pretend that things were fine when they weren’t and I really didn’t want to upset him. He helped me to my feet and my legs immediately wobbled, not wanting to take my weight. If Heero hadn’t had such a good hold of me, I would have fallen on my ass.

          “I’m so, so sorry,” I apologized, embarrassed that I had less grace than a new born deer.

          Heero chuckled, not put out by my weakness.

          “There’s nothing to apologize for,” he assured me, “You’ve been laying down for more than half a day and you’ve barely had anything to eat or drink in a long time. And even though you slept for a long time, you’re still not at a hundred percent. It’s understandable that you’re not at your best. Cut yourself some slack.”

          He made sense, but I flushed anyway. He got me to the bathroom but thankfully saved me further shame by not going in with me. The small trek had helped steady me a bit, although I still felt a bit dizzy. I pissed and took the extra time to brush my teeth while I was in there. My breath probably smelled horrible. Heero didn’t need to help me so much on the way back to his bedroom, just kept a hand on my back in case I lost my balance again. I was all too happy when I sat down on the edge of the bed. So long as I was sitting, the world stopped moving. I laid back down, settling in the bed. I was too tired to do much else still. I felt even happier when Heero returned to his side next to me, actually laying down with me even though I was sure he was tired of it.

          “Want to go back to sleep?” he asked me.

          I mulled that over. I easily could have gotten more sleep and I knew that I needed it, but thirteen hours was still a bit much. I was right in the middle of it, too tired to actually get up and too awake to want to sleep the rest of the night away, so I shook my head.

          “Do you mind if we just lay here for a bit?” I asked meekly.

          He smiled at me and tucked my hair behind my ear.

          “Sure, whatever you want,” he told me, “Did you want something to read?”

          Tempting. It felt like it had been forever since I had been well enough to really read anything, but I knew that if I did try to read, I would definitely drift off back to sleep.

          “Can you get a notebook and a pencil?” I requested instead.

          “Absolutely,” he was all too happy to give me whatever I wanted, disappearing to the guest room to snatch one of my spare, composition notebooks.

          He returned not only with that, but with a glass of water. He handed it to me hesitantly, probably thinking that I was going to protest, but I was thirsty and drank it all in three big gulps, making him beam at me. Even if I hadn’t been thirsty, I would have done it just for that smile. He probably wanted me to eat something, too, but I was nervous that it would make me throw up again and he didn’t broach the subject.

          “Sit up,” he urged and when I did, he slid behind me like he had the other morning when I had read to him.

          I sighed with contentment as I laid back against him.

          “I like this,” just slipped out of me and for once, I didn’t care that I was probably being a bit too truthful.

          “Me, too,” he murmured, making my heart flutter, and kissed my head.

          I felt him untie my hair and let him smooth it out and put it back up again, this time in a slightly tighter pony tail so it wouldn’t fall apart so easily. I wrote as he fussed with my hair, keeping quiet as I worked, logging what I could remember. I was nervous about him seeing what I was writing, reading my thoughts and my feelings, but he was very discrete, not even peering over my shoulder. Respecting my privacy. He seemed content just to have me use him as a pillow as I wrote quickly, scrambling my brains to remember things and details. I’m sure that I’ve forgotten things, but I’ve tried put things in the right

 

*****

 

          March 11, 2008

 

          I fucking fell asleep. I can’t believe it. Well, I guess I can. I guess it’s understandable that after an hour or two of writing, I fell asleep right in mid-sentence, right there, laying on top of my boyfriend. That doesn’t make it any less mortifying, though. I slept for another seven hours after that. Heero somehow got me off of him and tucked me back into bed with him lying next to me. I apologized profusely when I woke up again for wasting his entire Saturday like that, but he wasn’t angry. He just smiled and kissed me, like that was some kind of response. Sunday was a really weird day for me. We got up like it was any other day, like I hadn’t just slept for almost twenty-four hours. Only I was still incredibly groggy and tired, sluggish even if I was doing a hell of a lot better than I had been.

          I had slept enough by Sunday morning that I decided that I really needed to get up and at least eat something if I did nothing else, even if I probably would have been happy to stay in that bed for the rest of the week. Again it took me a little while to actually be able to get out of the bed, but the very first thing I did when I managed that was take a long, hot shower because I felt absolutely gross. It felt incredibly good just to have clean hair again. My back muscles still hurt, but there was little I could do beyond the hot water and popping some pain pills. I got dressed in some clean sweat pants and a long sleeved shirt and returned to the guest bedroom to make sure that Pepper was all taken care of. I felt horrible that I had been out of commission for so long, but found her food and water bowls full and her litter box clean. Heero’s parents must have been taking care of her. My debt with them was ever growing.

          My cat’s need met, I had to finally think of my own. Namely how hollow and weak I felt, my stomach angry at my betrayal. I wasn’t so sure that I could take a big meal, but I trudged downstairs in hopes I could find something extremely bland, maybe crackers and water. Lots of water. I heard the television on from the stairs and I could smell pancakes and coffee. Heero was probably already eating his breakfast. The second I stepped off the stairs, before I could even think of joining him, I was assaulted by his mother.

          “Duo!” she exclaimed joyfully as she stepped out of the kitchen, looking remarkably awake and dressed for the day, a cheerfully colored apron fixed over a light blue and white dress, “You’re awake!”

          She hugged me tightly, throwing me off balance, then held me at arm’s length to examine me with a mother’s eye.

          “Oh, don’t you look so much better! Those awful black circles under your eyes are almost gone. How are you feeling?” she asked, her expression going soft with worry, reaching out to brush my bangs from my face in a very fussy gesture.

          “A lot better,” I assured her, “I’m still a bit tired, but I’m doing a lot better now.”

          “Good,” she beamed, “Now we just need to get some food into you.”

          “I don’t know what I’m up for yet,” I admitted, touching my stomach with a slight wince.

          As weak and wobbly as I felt, as much as I knew that I was hungry, I didn’t quite feel like it. I think I was either still slightly ill or my stomach had just gotten used to the emptiness at that point.

          “How about just some vegetable soup broth?” she offered kindly, “If you can handle that, I can give you the vegetables. I also have some nice chamomile tea.”

          “That sounds good,” I said and felt the very first twinges of hunger at the thought of food.

          “Great,” she was quickly beaming again and navigated me towards the couch, “Why don’t you sit down, I’ll go get the food.”

          I automatically sat, still not completely steady on my feet.

          “Wait, you don’t have to-,” I began to protest, but she was already gone into the kitchen.

          I sighed.

          “Good morning, Duo,” Heero’s father greeted me from where he was sitting in his usual chair.

          I almost jumped. I hadn’t realized that he had been there the whole time.

          “Morning, sir,” I croaked like a reflex.

          He shook his head at my manners.

          “It’s good to see you looking more alive. Did you sleep well?” he asked.

          “Very,” I said, “I’m feeling a lot better now. Thank you for letting me stay here.”

          He brushed off my gratitude, just like he always does, like he thinks I’m being ridiculous. It reminds me too much of Heero. As though I had summoned him just by thinking of him, my dark-haired boyfriend walked out of the kitchen right then, holding two plates full of pancakes, bacon, and scrambled eggs. He handed his father one of the plates and sat down on the couch with me.

          “Doing alright?” he asked me.

          A part of me bristled at his over-protectiveness, but I just reminded myself of what I had been like those last couple of days and really couldn’t fault him for fussing over me.

          “Yeah. Still feeling tired, so I don’t think I’ll be up for much today, but I’m not doing too bad,” I admitted.

          “That’s fine. We can just hang out, be low key, I don’t mind,” he smiled.

          I think he was just relieved that I wasn’t acting like a zombie anymore. I looked down at the ground as memories of that week came to me. Things I said. Things I did. How I had acted… I hated those memories. So many of them made me feel ashamed.

          “Heero, I…” I wrapped my arms around myself, suddenly feeling cold, “I just want to apologize for everything this week… I acted like such an ass, so many times. I’m sorry I was so irritable and I got mad at you and wouldn’t talk to you…”

          “Hey,” he reached over to touch my hand, “It’s alright. I already told you that I understand. It was a long, hard week. Things… things got out of control and you got the worst of it. I would have understood you being a bit snappish and out of it even if you hadn’t been having sleeping problems.”

          He squeezed my hand and, oddly enough, it made me feel better. I still felt guilty and like I was a horrible person for everything that I had put him through, but it didn’t feel like it was going to eviscerate me anymore. We stopped talking when Mariela bustled back into the living room with a tray, placing it down on the table.

          “Here we are,” she said with her customary smile, “Careful, the tea and the soup are still very hot.”

          “Thank you,” I told her, picking up the cup of tea, instantly grateful to find that she had put it in a mug and not one of her china cups. I really didn’t need that anxiety, the surety that I would break one of them in my clumsiness.

          I folded my legs up onto the couch and leaned into the corner of it as I blew on my tea, taking cautious sips until it had cooled down enough. It tasted nice; sweet and flowery with a bit of honey in it. Heero’s mother fussily grabbed an afghan from the other half couch and draped it over my lap and legs, then took her plate of scrambled eggs and toast to sit down in the chair next to Justin’s. He turned the station that he had been watching from the news to some sort of British drama. I suspected that it was because of me, knowing that I don’t like the news and it would do little to settle my nerves. I almost protested that he didn’t need to do that, but it just didn’t seem worth the effort.

I rested my feet against Heero’s leg as I put the tea down on the table next to me and picked up the bowl of soup. I glanced over at him to make sure he didn’t mind. He didn’t look at me, engrossed in what was on the television even if it was definitely not something he would normally enjoy and eating his pancakes, but he slid his hand under the afghan and put it on my bare feet, his fingers lightly running over my skin. No one had ever touched my feet before, so the touch was kind of weird, but also nice.

At first, I didn’t want anything to do with the soup, but the second I actually tasted it, it was like my stomach unclenched and just became a gaping chasm. I didn’t eat it too quickly, although my body wanted me to, still afraid that I was going to throw up, but I managed all of the broth and tea, and was even adventurous enough to dip and eat the two rolls that Mariela had put on the tray for me.

“Do you want some more?” she asked when she saw that the bowl was empty.

“Yes, please,” I nodded, flushing a little that I was making her get my food for me, even if she had offered.

She looked absolutely elated at that and Heero and his father were relieved. I was glad that I hadn’t told them just how little I had eaten that week. Mariela returned, this time with whole soup and not just the broth, some more tea and rolls as well. The next couple of hours were incredibly pleasant and serene. I slowly finished my second helping of soup, the food making me feel sluggish, while Heero and his family watched the program, which turned out to be a movie. It was one of the only moments of _family_ that I’ve ever had, just being with them. I felt like I belonged there, a feeling that is very rare for me, always the outsider. Maybe not as a part of that family, but accepted by them. Something more than a guest. It was a wonderful, warm feeling.

I finished my meal and was content to just stay there on the couch, curling up in the corner of it. I felt heavy from all the food and tea, but it was a good thing this time. I didn’t feel nauseous at all. I tried to focus on the movie, but the talking was so soft, I found my eyes starting to droop and I couldn’t concentrate. I’m fairly certain that Heero’s father had picked that movie for that very reason. It wasn’t long before I had drifted off, right there on the couch. I woke up probably just a couple of hours later still curled up in the corner, although someone had put a pillow under my head and pulled the afghan up to my shoulders with loving care. Heero and his parents were still there, watching another movie that had the volume done so far, it was almost inaudible to not wake me up. I blinked sleepily at them and promptly fell back asleep.

The rest of the day was like that. I would wake up in these short bursts, an hour or two at a time, and then would drift off no matter where I was, like my brain had finally engaged and realized what it had done to itself and was desperately trying to catch up. Heero and I, otherwise, had a very low key day. No one really talked about my staying there for the day, it just kind of happened, like some kind of silent agreement. When I woke up from my doze on the couch, we sat outside on the porch for a little while until I fell asleep in one of the chairs. Then upstairs in the game room while Heero played a racing game and I had tried to read. If I hadn’t needed the sleep so much, I would have been humiliated that I couldn’t seem to keep my eyes open for more than a few minutes.

Then it was night time and I realized that I had, more or less, slept another day away. I managed to keep myself awake enough to sit through dinner, which turned out to be a hearty beef stew with buttermilk biscuits and fruit salad for dessert. I ate it like I had never eaten before in my life.

“You’ll be staying the night here, won’t you, Duo?” Mariela asked as she took everyone’s dirty plates from the table.

“Actually,” I chewed on my lip a little, “I was thinking about going home tonight.”

Or more accurately, I had been trying to _not_ think about going home, but I wasn’t going to say that to them.

“Why?” Heero demanded in an upset tone, “Duo, you still need more sleep. It’s quiet here. We can get our homework done and then we can just go straight to bed. You’re not going to be able to sleep-,”

“That’s why I need to go home,” I argued, “I need to be able to sleep in my own bed, Heero. If I can only do that here, that’s a huge problem that I need to deal with. I need to know that my insomnia is gone for now and this isn’t just a fluke. Besides, my father is probably pissed that I disappeared all weekend.”

I hadn’t wanted to play that card. I hate having to remind my boyfriend that my father isn’t as even tempered and accepting as his is, that even if I can hide out with him, it’s still a threat that I deal with every day. Day by day, like the turning of the tide, my life revolves around my father and his moods. It’s something that I’ve dealt with for so long, it’s just become a part of my life as normal as school or knowing I have to take the trash out on Fridays. It’s a thing that I’ve been ignoring since becoming friends with Heero, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t still there, in the corner of my mind. That fear. That feeling of guilt, going against my father’s orders.

If our relationship hadn’t become so twisted lately, it would have been a lot worse. I would wonder to the point of neurosis if I was being a terrible son, if I deserved the beatings and ire. I still do, but now there is a part of me that wonders ‘so what? If I’m a terrible son, then isn’t he an even worse father? Does he really deserve my obedience after everything that he’s done? Does he deserve even an ounce of respect?’ The thoughts are so hateful and I try to stop them. No matter what he does, he’s still my father. I still love him. But the thoughts are there and I have to realize the truth: I may love him. I may be incapable of stopping myself from loving the man. But the respect for him that I’ve always had since I was a child… that’s long gone. I wish that it weren’t, I wish that things could be like they used to be, that I could fear him, hate him a little, but still respect him as my father. But I can’t. He ripped that from me.

The comment had the desired effect anyway. Heero quieted and looked concerned. I knew what he was thinking, what he was struggling with. He didn’t want me to go because I was safe there, away from my father. While I was there, my father couldn’t beat me for making him angry. But the longer I stayed away, the angrier my father was going to be when I eventually went home.

“But what if you can’t sleep again tonight?” he asked weakly, the only card he had left to play beyond full out begging.

“Then I’ll come over tomorrow night,” I promised, “I’ll be fine, Heero, really. He might not even come home tonight.”

Heero’s mother looked sad at that. I think she has a hard time dealing with the fact that my father hits me, like she doesn’t even know how to react to that, but it’s his drunken habits, like letting our bills fall into debt for too long while he goes out drinking or not coming home because he was at a bar all night that she’s vocal and disapproving about. Justin’s father is the opposite. When I talk about my father not coming home or him spending all our money on booze, he acts like that’s only to be expected. But when I talk about him hitting me, or I show up with fresh bruises, his expression goes all cold. He doesn’t get angry, it’s worse than that. Sometimes, I think Justin loathes my father as much as I do, which doesn’t make any sense to me. They’ve never even met.

“I’m sorry,” I told Heero, knowing how much I was upsetting him and starting to rethink my decision.

He gave me a sad smile, coming to terms with it even if I knew he hated it.

“Just… stay safe, alright? And call if you need help,” he forced me to promise.

I tried to help Mr. Yuy do the dishes, but he gently pushed me out of the kitchen, looking amused by my attempts at being a decent house guest. Upstairs, I brushed my teeth and gathered up the dirty clothes I had accumulated there that week, again attempting to be a decent human being by starting a load of laundry, but Heero’s mother similarly shooed me out of the laundry room, starting it for me. Even when I went back upstairs to clean up Heero’s room for him, I found that he had already made his bed at some point and was picking up his dirty dishes. I huffed at him about it, but he just brushed me off.

“Deal with it,” he smirked, handing me my notebook.

I rolled my eyes at him, wondering why he and his parents were so dead set on me not doing any chores after having put up with me for an ungodly amount of days that week. After that, there was nothing for me to do but accept the fact that it was time to go home. I’m not really one for procrastinating, but that night, I really wished that I were. At the door as I was slipping on my sneakers and jacket, both of Heero’s parents came to wish me good bye. Mariela handed me a thermos with this guilty expression on her face. I think she didn’t want me to go home any more than Heero did, which just made me feel like an ass, but what could I do?

“The rest of the tea,” she told me, “You should have some before you go to bed. Chamomile is very good to help you sleep.”

“Alright,” I appeased her, tucking the thermos into the pocket of my sweatpants. It was hot, almost burning my leg, but it would keep me warm on the cold walk home and I didn’t want to put it in my book bag in case it spilled.

I looked from her to Heero to his father, each of them looking concerned and in varying degrees of wariness at having me leave. What had I ever done to earn that worry, that care? Who was I to these people? Heero I could understand, but why did his parents care what happened to me at home? Why did they make me feel like I was doing something wrong going back there?

“Thank you…” I tried to speak, my voice thick with emotion as I looked at them, “for everything this week. You’ve all done so much…” I choked a little, memories assaulting me, some only half formed but, while I might not be able to remember the details, I definitely remembered their kindness, “I wouldn’t have been able to get over this without your help.”

I didn’t want to think about the state I would have been in at that point if they hadn’t been there for me. I’m sure that I would have gotten over my insomnia on my own, but not so quickly, and I’m sure it would have gotten a lot worse. The knowledge of that made gratitude and love for them strangle me.

“It wasn’t any trouble at all, Duo,” Justin smiled, putting his hand on his shoulder, “Any time you need help, we’re right here, you know that.”

I nodded and hated myself for the tear that managed to escape. But it was just the one, so I guess I can forgive myself for that, wanting to chalk it up to my tiredness and knowing that that was bullshit. Leaving that house that night with Justin was strangely painful, like removing a limb. I’m not proud of myself for doing it, like fighting some craving. I loathed the universe that I had to, and for what I had to go back to. Being with Heero and his family is wonderful, but it breaks down my walls, gets me used to things. Warmth, kindness, security. Then I have to go back home and everything seems so awful, so cold and alien for that first day before I get used to it again. It hurts, something akin to getting used to a cold day after staying in a warm, heated room for a few hours. The only real mercy I had was that I felt, after getting some real sleep, I could deal with all of that with a lot more grace than I had those last few days. Heero’s father walked me to the bus stop and saw that I got on it, slipping a five-dollar bill and leaving before I could protest.

The yard across the street from my house was littered with cans and glass bottles. I thought that I might have even seen a joint or needle on the ground, but it was hard to tell from that distance in the dark. I was sure that there had been another party there and was glad I had missed it. It was hard enough to deal with one drunk man on a daily basis, I didn’t need to handle a dozen. The dogs barked and snarled at me from their pen and I struggled to ignore them. I know it’s stupid, but I hate that moment when I have to turn my back on them to open the door. I know they’re chained up and there’s no way they can get out to get at me, but I still have that animalistic instinct to not turn my back on a threat, my hair raising up and I always rush to get the door open.

The lights were on in my house and my father’s car was parked in our driveway. He was actually home for once. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. It could go either way, really. Either he was sober and in a decent mood, something akin to the father that I had been used to several years ago, or he was in a bad mood because he was at home, because he didn’t have the money to drink or he had to get up early. Also he would be aware of my absence. I tried to see it as a good sign, but as always, my pessimistic nature shone through and I dreaded walking into that house.

It was just late enough that my mother was home from her shift as well as my father. I found the both of them in the kitchen, my dad reading the newspaper at the kitchen table and my mother rifling through the cupboards, looking for something to make for dinner. She was still dressed in her uniform and looked exhausted, her face pinched with weary that I had the sneaking suspicion was half a hard day at work and half because of my father’s presence. I didn’t even want to know what the two of them might have been arguing about. She had probably just gotten home and hadn’t even taken the time to get comfortable. I felt a hot burst of guilt over it. If I had been home to make dinner or take the brunt of my father’s irritations, she could have relaxed a bit.

She looked up from her search and flashed me a wan smile. I smiled back, but it was just as tepid when I saw the fresh bruises on her face. They looked about a day old, it must have happened shortly after I had left Saturday morning. My father, on the other hand, actually put his paper down to acknowledge me. His expression wasn’t drunken or even angry. He was alert and _there_ , two things that I, for once, did not want him to be. The look he gave me was worse than rage. It was hard and cool, making something icy cold settle in my gut, erasing the warmth I had felt being with Heero. Fuck.

I joined my mother, dropping my back pack by the stairs and picking one of the cupboards she hadn’t gone through yet. I could feel my father’s hateful eyes on me, boring through me. I didn’t believe for a second that my mother and I could create some kind of unified front against him, but it did make me feel a little better to have an ally.

“Duo, could you make dinner, please?” she begged me, her eyes desperate and a bit fearful.

I didn’t know what had gone on in that house the last couple of days, but whatever it was, it hadn’t been good. I think she was partially just too tired, but mostly she was scared of not pleasing my father. I easily nodded and she smiled gratefully, leaving me to go to her bedroom to change. I resumed the search and found a jar of tomato sauce and some pasta, which was better than nothing. To my dismay, we were out of garlic, but I found some scraps of herbs here and there that I had bought a while ago that I could use to spice up the sauce and, miracles upon miracles, some left over sausage I could throw in there as well.

As I put the water to boil, adding the pasta when it was ready, and heated up the sauce on the stove, adding pinches of spices and testing it on myself, I heard the scrape of my father’s chair as he rose and strode towards me. I froze like the cornered animal I was, feeling him right behind me. What was he going to do, my anxiety screamed, beat me? Rape me? I could feel my hands shake as I gripped the wooden spoon. Suddenly, my father slammed his hand on the cupboard door near my head, his arm effectively trapping me where I was and making me jump. He leaned in close and the feeling of his breath and body heat was a mocking parody to my memory of Heero’s as we had slept together.

“You think you’re so fucking smart, don’t you?” he hissed in my ear, “You think you can pull the wool down over my eyes like I’m some idiot, don’t you?”

The water began to boil over, streaming down the pot and making a threatening hiss sound as it hit the hot coils of the burner, but I didn’t turn down the heat or move the pot, too scared to move. My father, with the lightning quickness of a viper, grabbed my right ear and twisted, having grown impatient with my silence. I cried out in a mix of pain and surprise. I heard my mother come running out of the bedroom at the sound, but there was nothing she could do.

“You think I don’t know where you’ve been going, you little shit?!” he snarled at me, right in my abused ear and twisted it harder, the pain almost sending me to my knees, “Huh?! You and that cunt you call a mother think you’re so much smarter than me. You think you both can lie to me and I’ll believe your bullshit?! I know you were with that mutt prick again! Where else does your worthless ass have to go?! After I told you I don’t want you hanging out with him, you continue to disobey me! You even skipped work today!”

Shitshitshit. My eyes widened as I realized that he was right. I hadn’t gone to work. I had completely forgotten about it. Leneski must have called my house wondering where I was, I’ve never taken off of work without calling him first.

“I wasn’t feeling well,” I gasped out, knowing that if I lied, my father would be able to tell.

He let go of my ear and I thought maybe, just maybe he would believe that and stop when he punched me hard in the right side of my head. The blow was so powerful that I almost fell, narrowly managing to grab at the kitchen counter to keep upright. He hit me again in the same spot, stars erupting in my vision, and then again, this time getting me in the neck. I choked and he grabbed at me, shoving me against the counter. I cried out again as he grabbed my left hand and held it by the stove, the boiling water running over it. I pulled my hand away, the pain terrible, but he drove his fist into my gut and I nearly touched the hot stove just trying to gain purchase of something.

“Don’t you fucking lie to me, boy,” he sneered in my face, grabbing the back of my head by my hair and jerking me up, “Don’t you _fucking_ lie!” he glanced over at my mother, who was standing between the bedroom and the kitchen, watching this with horror, but frozen, too scared to intervene, “Either of you. I catch you lying to my face again, I’ll break your lying mouths in.”

He gave me a violent shake, but finally let me go, letting me get a breath. He looked at the overflowing pot of water with disgust.

“And take care of that! Even an idiot like you knows what to do with damned boiling water! What the fuck are you going to do?! Just let it sit there?! Hurry up!”

I rushed to the stove, turning down the heat and removing it to a cooler part of the stove. I felt tears forming in my eyes from the pain in my left hand, but I ignored it. It wasn’t the first time that my father had burned me with boiling water and it probably won’t be the last. It was better than a broken hand anyway. He strode off after he saw that I had taken care of the pasta and returned to his newspaper like none of that had ever happened. I was used to that, too. My mother rushed to my side and cradled my abused hand gently. It looked about as red as a lobster, a few blisters rising to the surface, but I’ve had worse.

“Oh, Duo,” her voice was pained and full of a guilt that I was well familiar with.

“Leave it,” I urged her, “I’ll take care of it later.”

I didn’t want her to get hurt if my father took offense to her helping me. I noticed for the first time that she was half undressed, her top unbuttoned and her skirt gone, just wearing her underwear. She hastily closed her shirt and went back to her bedroom, looking wary and uncomfortable that she had rushed out like that, but it still made me feel better. In the past, she wouldn’t even have cared. I finished making dinner even with my hand on fire and my head, neck, and stomach aching in pain. I could take a few bruises. Honestly, a handful of punches and a burn were light compared to some other things that my father has done to me.

When my mother was finished dressing, she joined my father at the table, eying him warily like she might a rabid dog, but his moment of violence seemed over. He was calmly reading the paper again, satisfied. I put out plates of pasta for them, poured a beer for my father and some iced tea for my mother. I cleaned the kitchen as they ate. When I was done with that, I soaked my hand in luke warm water, trying to soothe the burn. I wasn’t hungry, especially after getting sucker punched in the gut, and I was sure that my father wouldn’t let me eat anyway. He seemed to be in one of his petty moods. That was confirmed when I finished with their dishes and started to head up to my bedroom to start my homework.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” he said in this low tone, almost a growl.

“I have homework,” I explained in the mildest tone I could so he wouldn’t accuse me of being argumentative.

“You’re not going to your room,” he snapped, “You want to disobey me and go behind my back, you can sleep in the damned basement like the rat you are.”

“Nathan,” my mother began to protest in alarm, but stopped when he turned his steely stare at her.

“You can shut your fucking mouth,” he said in a threatening tone, “unless you want to join him down there, bitch.”

She looked away from him, defeated by her fear of him. She flashed me a pitiful, apologetic look, but I shook my head. I wasn’t mad at her. It would be a pointless fight and, honestly, the spark of rage heating in my chest wasn’t over being evicted into the basement for the night, it was not being able to do my homework, sure that if I made a go for my back pack, that would just piss him off more. I was going to fall behind again. I probably already had with what little I could remember of that week, all because of my father’s pettiness. I felt that hate of him in my throat, bitter and rotten, digging its razor claws into me and ripping apart all of the peace, all of the affection I had felt when I had been with Heero’s family.

A part of me wanted to lash out at my father, to expel that rage in some way that would have been completely foolish. Normally, it was my own fear of him and my common sense that would push that down that anger, but this time I tried Heero’s way. I took a deep breath. I focused on my memories of him, the last touch he had given me before I had left and the small smile my mother had given me when I had walked through the door. Little by little, the worst of that anger eased, enough that I could successfully walk to the basement doors and start down the steps without glaring at him. It must have not been fast enough for him, though, because just as I was halfway down the stairs, he lashed out at me with his foot, kicking me square in the back.

I fell and rolled the rest of the way down the steps. It was just a couple of feet, so I wasn’t in any real danger, but I banged myself up pretty good, scratching my face and slamming my elbow against the wall. I heard a loud ‘clang’ as the thermos of tea went flying. I hit the floor hard, skinning my left knee. I hissed at the pain of it and grabbed at it, feeling warm blood stain my sweatpants. I had to roll up the leg, but as my father slammed the door shut on me, it was pitch black. I was sure the injury wasn’t serious, just painful, but I limped heavily when I finally stood up from my heap on the floor. My face, stomach, and head ached heavily, my abused elbow and knee stinging, all completely manageable, but it seemed like the final straw, getting spit on when I had already been down. Just the shit covered cherry on top of the vomit cake that had been my week, I guess.

I limped slowly across the room, feeling my way through the dark. The basement was chilly, but thankfully I had never taken my jacket off, so I had some warmth. I coughed at the dusty air, not remembering when I had last gone down there or where things were. It wasn’t long before I slammed my injured knee into the corner of something solid.

“God damn fucking motherfucker!” I swore loudly at the pain, but continued my way to the corner of the room and sat down in it.

It was far enough away from the stairs that I would see my father coming before he could see me. I sat there, my body aching, my hand still burning and throbbing like I had never removed it from the boiling water, feeling exhausted again, and laughed. I don’t know why. There was nothing remotely funny about this, but I found it funny anyway. I sat and laughed until the tears came, but I managed to get myself together before I could start to properly cry. This wasn’t any kind of big deal, I told myself. Compared to some of the other shit that had happened to me lately, getting kicked down the stairs and forced to sleep in the dark, dank basement with a foot worth of dust and probably a horde of bugs was nothing.

I sighed, wiped the tears from my face and grabbed at the wall to stand up again. As tempting as it was to just curl up and feel miserable, I needed to take stock of what was down there. A light source would be great, but I already knew that I wasn’t going to find one. The light had been busted for years and no one cared enough to fix it. There were no flashlights or matches in the pile of crap, I had certainly searched enough in all the times that my father had locked me down there in punishment. I had my cell phone, but I didn’t want to waste the battery by using it as a source of light. If I couldn’t have light, it made finding something to pass the time pointless. I had rescued most of the old books that had belonged to my mother from the storage boxes, the old record player was as broken as the lights, and there was little else down there but old, family mementos and clothes that didn’t fit anyone.

If I was going to be stuck down there in the dark, I was going to try to get some damned sleep. I had no idea if I was going to be successful. I had a hard enough time in my bedroom, I didn’t see how I was going to sleep down there, but I was going to try. I already knew that there were no pillows down there, but there were plenty of old blankets, if I could just find them. As I shuffled my way through the basement, my foot hit the thermos that had fallen. By some kind of miracle, the cap hadn’t come off. The thing was a hell of a lot sturdier than I was. I tucked it into the waistband of my pants and navigated my way to a pile of boxes.

It took me about forty-five minutes, seven boxes, and three times scuffing my knuckles on hard things, but I managed to find a couple of blankets that didn’t have too many holes in them. I made my way back to the corner and was starting to make something akin to a bed, or perhaps a nest, when I heard the basement door open again.

I immediately froze. There was no way in hell my father had changed his mind. That never happens. When he thinks up a punishment, or rather a torment, he never goes back on it. Which meant that he was coming to do something else to me. He had already beaten me, so he was either going to punch me around worse or… or do the other thing.

‘Please, not down here, please not down here,’ I thought in terror, backing up into my corner and curling up into a tight ball.

Whoever it was hesitated at the top of the stairs as I trembled, wrapping my arms tightly around my knees. Then, after no more than a minute, they closed the door so softly that I barely even heard it. There was no way that that had been my father, I decided. He would have slammed the door again. My curiosity over-rode my fear and I got to my feet again, limping up the stairs. There was enough light to see that there was something at the foot of the steps: a flashlight and my book bag. It didn’t take a genius to figure out who had put them there.

Despite everything, I felt myself smile. My mother has risked her safety just to sneak me what I needed to do my homework.

“Thank you,” I whispered to the door and went back down into the dark of the basement.

I returned to my corner, turning on the flashlight and finding that my mother had also put fresh batteries in it, and got to work. I put the thermos of tea down next to me and pulled out my calculus text book first, already dreading it. I didn’t remember most of my lessons, so this new homework was going to seem like gibberish to me. I opened the book and a piece of paper fell out. I frowned at it and picked it up with some trepidation. I don’t leave paper in my text books.

‘Someone must have gotten to my books,’ I thought with annoyance, ‘It’s probably a gross note from Relena or Zechs or one of their stupid friends.’

But when I opened it and shined the flashlight on it, my curiosity overruling my good sense to just rip it up, it was Heero’s handwriting that welcomed me.

‘Duo, I compiled all my notes from this week and stuck them in your books so you won’t get lost. If there’s anything you’re confused out, just call me or we can go over it together before class tomorrow. Hope this helps! J’

I could feel the tears start behind my eyes again and I sniffed, trying to get control of them. Heero had done this… he had put so much work in… just to help me. I had done nothing to deserve it, but he had done it anyway. I knew that if I said something like that to him, he would just brush it off. Knowing him, he would probably say something like ‘that’s what friends do for each other.’ I hastily dug my cell phone out of my pocket and pulled up a new message to send to Heero. But what could I say? What could I possibly type in that little box to convey how grateful I was, how I felt that I could never possibly measure up to him, to his generosity, his kindness, but I wish that I could. What could I tell him to let him know how much I care for him? In reality, there was only one thing I could possibly type.

‘I love you.’

I stared at the message, my finger hovering over ‘send’, my mind, always so neurotic and obsessive about such things, doubting if I should send it. What if he thought I was being corny or dumb? What if he got annoyed that I had sent it in a text message instead of saying it to his face? And then there was the weak, scared part of myself that was just plain terrified of making myself so vulnerable, of exposing my raw feelings to another person.

“Stop being such a coward,” I snapped at myself and stabbed the send button.

I wiped at my face, feeling a little bit of wetness on my cheeks, but not much. Before I had the chance to flip the phone closed, it dinged. A message from Heero, of course. I felt nervous about what he might say, that he might accuse me of being a sap, or who knows what else I was frightened of. I opened the message, not really knowing what I was expecting.

‘I love you, too, dummy.’

It shocked a pleased laugh out of me and this excruciating, and wonderful warmth spread throughout my heart. I could feel myself crying again, but I just didn’t care anymore. That warmth stayed and grew each time I opened one of my text books and found another note, another sheet of his scribblings. There were no other greetings or messages, he had even known me well enough to know that I would open the calculus one first. I got through my work, mostly thanks to those handwritten notes, finishing my tea as I went along, and made a little note of my own that I needed to do something for him. Something special. Bake him something, do something that he wanted to do, anything to pay him back for all of this. As if I could.

I finished a little after midnight. Both of my parents had gone to bed, I couldn’t hear them moving around above my head anymore. I hoped that my father would unlock the door in the morning, but there was little I could do if he didn’t and I didn’t want my mother to get in trouble with him for doing it herself. Putting that worry out of my mind, I made my bed in the corner. I shucked off my jacket and balled it up into a pillow, wrapping the blankets around me. I felt at my knee. It had stopped bleeding and was already scabbing over, so I pushed my pant leg down, stiff with drying blood. I flipped my cell phone open and read Heero’s message again. It made me smile like an idiot.

“Good night, Heero,” I murmured and closed my eyes.

The floor was so hard that I had to lay on my left side, and the silence was eerie, almost threatening. Every breath I took seemed to be filled with stale dust and even with two blankets and a long sleeved shirt, I was cold. Despite all of that, I was asleep an hour later.

 

 

End Part 17

 

  * I am not mean enough to make you try to find this information. Duo did not sleep with Heero Sunday and Monday, but he did mention how little he had slept to Heero. So no, Heero is not psychic, Duo’s short term memory is just shot to hell.
  * It should be abundantly clear at this point in the story that Heero was a bit of a stalker before he and Duo became friends, lol. He watched him whenever he could get away with it and has retained little bits of information here and there, like Duo’s favorite sandwich, what cake he likes, and yes, the fact that he does not like Coke very much.



 

Author’s Note: THE INSOMNIA ARC IS DONE. *dies* In all seriousness, this was never supposed to go on this long, it just kind of… happened, lol. I must once again apologize to all of you for the wait and I thank those that were so patient. There are a few reasons why I haven’t posted anything in a while. The first is due to a certain review that really hit me hard. It wasn’t necessarily mean or negative, but this review made me doubt and question everything that I was writing, my writing abilities entirely. It got to the point where I could see these doubts painting what I was writing and I was getting very self-conscious about everything. I had to write through this and try to ignore it, but it wasn’t easy. The other reason is that recently the job that I have been working as a temp got dismantled by the company. Thankfully, they just shuffled me off to another position instead of getting rid of me, but the hours are equally long and the shift is a morning one, so I have even less time to write than before. It has been a challenge just to churn out these 170ish pages. I wanted the last part and this one to actually be one part, but it got so out of control that I had to split them up, but I still wanted to post them together. And then, of course, I have more selfish reasons for this taking so long. I kind of got distracted by a few games, mostly Bloodborne and, more recently, Pokemon Go. But they also helped to keep me sane, so I hope you forgive me ^_^

 

Additional note: I am going to take a short break now that this particular arc of the story is done. The next arc is… well, it’s very complicated and long and I want to take the time to fuss with my notes for it and reread certain past chapters to get certain events stuck in my head. But hopefully that won’t take too long.

 

Also a reminder to those that were asking where I’ve been: I have a twitter account. It’s the same name as every name I use: shinigamiinochi. I will often post updates about how many pages I’ve completed, so if you want to see how I’m progressing or what is taking so long, that’s the best way to go about it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	62. Chapter 8 Part 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duo and Heero enjoy their spring break, but Duo's world comes crashing down again when he has a nasty run in with an old friend.

A Stagnation of Love

Chapter 8

Part 18

 

 

March 23, 2008

 

 

          The past never rests. It never dies. It never becomes a distant thing that you can look back upon pleasantly or think ‘thank god I survived that.’ In reality, there is no ‘past’ at all. It’s always there, in the back of your head and it is always in some fucked up affair with the present, waiting patiently to rise up and bite you in the ass again. After Quatre had died and the school counselor was forced upon me, she would often tell me shit like ‘the past is past,’ ‘let go,’ and my personal favorite, ‘time heals all wounds.’ I didn’t believe it then and I know enough now to believe it even less. Time heals shit. Time hides and distances _nothing_. Everything comes back eventually. Every hurt. Every bad choice. Every mistake.

          I guess that’s why I’m so distrustful of times like the last couple of weeks. Time that seems too blissful, too perfect. There has to be something there, waiting for me, if I could only see it ahead of time. But I never do. The past always blindsides me when it comes back and it really shouldn’t. Things that I thought were over, ugly choices I had made that I had thought that I didn’t need to hate myself over anymore, that I was done with and my regrets are only because of what had already happened. After all these years of the universe proving to me that it doesn’t like me very much, you would think that I would understand that everything, even the things that I’m sure I’ll never have to look in the eye again, comes back at me eventually.

          So, given how oddly idyllic last week was, I really, really should have been on the lookout for something heavy to fall on my head. But I guess I can cut myself some slack, because never in a thousand years would I have thought of what that something ended up being. Zechs getting back at me for getting away from him in that classroom. Relena attacking me over taking Heero from her. My father beating the shit out of me for not obeying him about never seeing Heero again. Those things would have made sense. But what I _literally_ ran into last Monday? No, that never would have even fucking occurred to me. I guess because, with how things have been going with Heero and myself, I hadn’t wanted to remember. I had pushed it all down and ignored it. And because, out of everything that has happened to me in my life, this was the first and only thing that I truly believed was done and over with.

          First off, some good news before I delve in this shit, I guess. My insomnia hasn’t made a reappearance since the weekend that I played a coma patient at Heero’s place. Yay. That was sarcasm, by the way. Kind of hard to tell in writing, I suppose. Don’t get me wrong here, I hold no illusions at all that I’m cured. One bought of heavy sleeping isn’t going to fix the damage of the last four years. I’ve still been sleeping lightly. I still have trouble sleeping in my own bed. But I haven’t been unable to sleep for more than a day in the last two weeks, so that’s something to be thankful for, isn’t it?

          It took me awhile to really get back on my feet. I had stupidly done more damage than I, in my sleep deprived insanity, had thought that I had, not that that comes as much of a surprise. It took several days just to stop tiring easily and wanting to take constant naps. I almost nodded off a few times in class on Monday and Tuesday, but I powered through it. That Spring break was starting that Friday and few teachers were eager to assign large amounts of homework helped. I could finish all of my work during my lunch and dinner breaks and have time to go to bed early when I got home.

          The hardest part of that week, however, hadn’t been my tiredness, or Solo poking fun at me for how I had acted during my insomnia, or even Heero’s overprotective nature going into hyper drive, constantly asking me how I was sleeping, getting me to eat more than I needed to, and almost nagging me when I was absent minded over something. No, that was the worst part. Not really the absentmindedness per say, but my memories of the last week, both the things that I did remember and the things that still haven’t come back to me.

          Memories came back to me in a sluggish trickle, sporadic and random. Conversations, little moments that hadn’t made any sense to me at the time, but in remembering them after the fact and with some decent sleep under my belt, made me feel mortified and wondering what the fuck was wrong with me. Yeah, embarrassment sums up the state that I had been in the beginning of that week quite well. The things that I had put Heero through, how much I had worried him and his parents ashamed me. Once again, I had forced my own problems on him, had made him take care of me like I was a little kid and inconvenienced his entire family because I had been unable to handle my problems on my own like I should have, like I’ve always been able to.

I know that they hadn’t minded, had insisted on it, in fact, but that didn’t make me feel any better. I felt like I was losing control over everything. Even with my insomnia gone for the time being and things looking up, I looked back over the last couple of weeks and felt trepidation. So much had happened that made me feel like my life was spiraling into something chaotic, something that I had no handle on. Being with Heero, how fast our relationship was progressing when all I wanted was to slow the hell down and enjoy what I could, when I could, everything with my father, my sudden inability to be in my own fucking house without feeling like I was going insane, and that shit with Zechs… hell, I didn’t even want to think about that.

Out of all of my memories during that sleepless period, the ones of being in that room, surrounded by my classmates, hunted down and assaulted like an animal are the ones that I wish that I could forget the most. So, of course they’re the ones that I remember the most vividly. It’s cruel. I still have so many holes in my memory. Heero has helped fill some of them in, but others are never going to come back. I tell myself that they can’t be too important or too terrible if I can’t recall them, but what the hell do I know? It’s a bit off putting having these chunks of my life missing. Even if those chunks were just mundane things, slices of banality, I don’t like not having them. It reminds me too much of all the times that I would wake up in a hospital bed, my head screaming in pain, and missing even the memory of what my father had done to put me there, or how long I had been there.

However, while I can’t trust my own head, I can trust Heero. If anything even remotely important had happened, even if it’s something that I would have been all too happy to remain in the dark about, I know he would tell me. He would loathe doing it, but he would do it anyway. I know that because not all of my memories of my insomnia are bad. Mingled with my memories of punching that wall, being so exhausted that I had cried, and Zechs trying to rape me are moments of tenderness. Heero holding me, soothing my frustrations, waking to feeling his warmth by my back. Him teaching me how to let go of some of my anger. Him saving me. I treasure all of those memories and I don’t even care if some of them might be dreams or hallucinations. They’re like a glimmer of some rare light.

I suppose one might think that it’s the memory of him coming to my rescue that’s my most cherished one of those times, or maybe reading to him while he ran his fingers through my hair. But while those memories are precious to me, they aren’t the one that I hold closest to my heart. It’s one of the fuzzier ones, but one that I know wasn’t an illusion. Heero telling his father that he wouldn’t dose me, simply because he respects me and, even if he thinks I’m wrong, he won’t betray me like that. Maybe that’s strange, that I treasure a memory that’s only half formed of when I was at my lowest, but it’s true. No one… no one’s ever respected me before. I don’t even know what something like that looks like or feels like, to be held in someone’s esteem.

I can handle affection. Trowa wasn’t always an asshole to me. There had been moments… moments that I still can’t bear to think of when he had been intimate without lust, gentle and caring without any strings attached. I’m somewhat familiar with that, even if it feels so much stranger, so much more intense coming from Heero. But respect? Trowa hadn’t held any for me. Sometimes I think, even at the start of our relationship, he had resented me a little for not being Quatre. I don’t think he truly looked down on me until I had started to test his patience, but he hadn’t had any reason to respect me. No one has. So it’s hard for me to understand why I have Heero’s respect, what he sees in me.

He thinks I’m strong. Brave. Resilient. Smart. I don’t see any of what he does. Maybe I won’t ever be able to, whether it’s just his delusions or I hate myself too much to see those things. But I’m not talking about admiration. He doesn’t respect me as someone that he looks up to or is attracted to. He respects me as a human being. I don’t know what to do with that, how to cope with it. The last person that had treated me like a person and not a thing or an animal, save my mother’s recent return to sobriety, had taken all of that away from me. That loss had ripped a large hole in me and in a way, in his absence, I had become a bit of the animal that everyone treats me as. What would losing Heero do to me? What would that loss drive me to? And what is he going to do when he finds out what I’ve been hiding from him? Just how little I deserve to be treated as a person? How fast will that respect bleed out of him when I can’t be intimate with him? When will he start to loathe me just like my last boyfriend did?

I can’t bear to think of those things. I wish that they would just disappear into whatever hole had swallowed up my missing memories. I wish I could pour all of my doubts and insecurities and gut wrenching, agonizing fears into that dark, bottomless place along with my memories of what Zechs had tried to do. Of all the things that had happened to me that week, I wish more than anything I could get rid of those memories. Never mind my embarrassing behavior or the things that my father had done to me, I want to erase that disgusting look on Zechs’s face as he had held me like a rag doll and the knowledge of what he wanted to do. It doesn’t even surprise me much. Not really, anyway. Hell, I’m not even all that surprised at remembering all the other hateful faces in that room. Most of them followed Zechs around like some alpha hyena, all too happy to do whatever he wanted and enjoy the ride.

I want to be shocked at the realization that any one of them would sexually assault me, but I have my memories. I know all of them too well, Zechs especially. Even though I had never really thought that he would do something so vile, it sure as hell didn’t shock me now that he had tried. But he had crossed that line and… now what? What do I do about it? I had already considered my options a hundred times since it had happened, but now that I was no longer sleep deprived, I had to take them out and examine them again. Was I right in deciding to not say anything, to just take the defensive and not go to Principal Stoan about this, or even Heero’s parents? My reasons are all still there, all of that hateful logic. I’m still sure that there’s nothing that I could really do outside of taping Zechs doing something horrible or blowing his brains out, but what if I’m wrong? What if Heero is right and I need to take a chance?

Why does this… this brick wall suddenly show up in my head every time I consider it? Because I can pull these reasons out of my ass that Zechs is rich and crazy and no one would take my word over his and even if they did, he would find a way to come after myself and Heero for it, but in reality, I’m just scared. I always have been. Just a yellow bellied coward from the time I was a kid, even before I had ever met Relena or Zechs. I can’t move past that part of my nature. The thing is, passivity and inaction are just so easy, especially compared to the alternative. I’ve fought against this before and I lost, so what’s the point of getting back on that horse? There’s only one reason, and he’s the reason why I’m so terrified of trying and failing again to begin with.

So I tried to push it all down away from me. Tried to forget what happened and just tried to focus on protecting Heero. It was easy because Zechs didn’t even bother showing up for what little school we had left before the break and then his family was gone until school resumed. Like a breath of fresh air, my two biggest concerns were something I could put in the ‘deal with it later’ folder in my head. I had much more pressing concerns than my memories, namely a bigger and more terrible bully. Over spring break, I had essentially traded Relena and Zechs for my father, which could have gone in either the bad or good direction depending on my father’s mood and how much our paths intersected. Which actually turned out to be not that much.

Our schedules actually didn’t change terribly much. My father didn’t talk to me about taking on extra hours while I was on break, I guess he just assumed that when I left in the morning, I was going to work, not to Heero’s. I didn’t tell him otherwise and just hoped like hell that he wouldn’t think anything of it when my paychecks were the same. I thought about that a lot, debating with myself about how stupid I was being, but this was the first time since we had started dating that I could really spend some time with Heero and I was willing to risk punishment for that. I felt like I owed it to him after putting up with all my shit, but really I just wanted to be with him.

I’m not a total idiot, ok? I can take a bloody hint. When my father had beaten me, burned me, and then kicked me down the steps, I had become abundantly aware of how much, as he had said, I had been pushing my luck. For the first three days of the break, I was more careful. Friday I spent doing chores around the house, appeasing my father’s every whim to try to diffuse his temper before going to work like the obedient child that I had once tried to strive for before my father had become as frightening and crazy as he is now. I didn’t even see Heero that day, although he did call me when I was washing the kitchen floor. Thankfully my father had been at work by then, so I was able to talk to him for a bit while I was doing my chores. When I hung up a ridiculous hour and a half later, I felt disgusted in myself at how good just hearing his voice had been when I had seen him the previous day.

Saturday featured another morning full of chores that my father had somehow pulled out of his ass, things that even I knew were total bullshit like cleaning the blades on the lawnmower and pulling weeds out of the cracks of our driveway, something that he never bothered doing. I did all of them without so much as a peep and even put together a meatloaf that my mother could just stick in the oven for them that night before heading off to Heero’s. Doing nice things for my father, or chores without having to be asked to do them, went a long way with improving his mood, and meatloaf is one of his favorite meals.

Saturday was wonderful. Sunday, too, for that matter. Heero wasted no time, clearly having been chomping at the bit to hang out with me, and took us to see a movie that night. While not the first time that we had gone to see a movie together, it was the first time that we had gone as a couple. I don’t know what I was expecting, something different, I guess, maybe like the times that Trowa had taken me, which was a mistake. I keep forgetting every time I experience something new with Heero that the two of them have just about nothing in common besides the act of dating me and being male. Other than that, they’re as different as night and day. Whenever Trowa and I had gone out on dates, he had just called me up and asked if I wanted to do this thing with him and I had always agreed because I had wanted to be with him and even if I knew I wouldn’t enjoy it, it was better than doing nothing and being alone.

The restaurants we had gone to had all been places that he had enjoyed. The movies had been ones that he had picked out, usually something new and popular, but rarely something that I would enjoy. Look, I know that makes him sound like a selfish prick, never doing anything that I liked together, but it wasn’t always like that. Sure, sometimes he had been selfish, like with the movies, but not always. Sometimes he would ask me what I wanted to do, or what movie I wanted to see, but I hadn’t known. It was easy going along with what he wanted because I was either too inexperienced, had no opinion, or knew that I what I wanted to watch or do, he wouldn’t like, so what would be the point? And yes, I know that’s hypocritical of me to go do things that I didn’t enjoy with him and not ask the same, but I was so scared, especially towards the end of our relationship, of him losing interest in me that I just didn’t care.

It wasn’t like that with Heero and I don’t know why I had assumed that it would be. While Trowa and I had been friends before he had asked me out, he really hadn’t known that much about me, not like Heero. Heero knows the kinds of things I like and don’t like, so when he suggested we go to a movie, I shouldn’t have been surprised when he didn’t say which movie _he_ wanted to see, but sat us down with the local newspaper and discussed what our options were. It wasn’t anything different than when we had just been friends, really. And just like back then, even though I tried to agree upon what he wanted, he managed to get a suggestion of what I was interested in and we met in the middle. It just reminded me of why I loved him, all the things that are different in this relationship than my last one. I can’t concretely remember the last time Trowa and I had met in the middle about anything. We had either done our own thing, or gone along with the other person to appease them.

We went in the afternoon to limit the amount of people that we would run into at the theater and were rewarded with being just two out of seven people going to that showing. It was quiet and we sat far away from everyone else so no one would see what we were doing. We couldn’t neck or make out like other young couples that would go into a dark movie theater for only that reason, and we didn’t really have it in us to do something that… public even if we weren’t social lepers, but the dark allowed us some secrecy. It started small at first. Heero brushing his fingers against mine as he took the large soda he had purchased for both of us from me (when you’ve swapped spit as much as we have at that point, you stop being squeamish about using the same straw and there was plenty of soda for the both of us) or lightly grazing the back of his hand to mine as we traded the popcorn bowl back and forth. But it wasn’t long before his leg was molded against mine and he was holding my hand instead of just pretending he was accidentally touching me.

Somehow, that date ended up being as intimate as the first one, even if we were in tiny theater with a sticky floor instead of a nice restaurant. I don’t even remember the movie that much, having been more focused on that hand around mine. After that, we took a long walk through the park and went on foot to Charlie’s where we had loaded hamburgers and cheesecake for dinner. We got a few glares from those that knew us, but we didn’t kiss or hold hands, just talked and ate and were thankfully left alone. Heero even tipped our waitress well for being one of the few wait staff _not_ looking like they wanted to spit in our food.

There was nothing that I wanted more after such a nice day than to spend the night at Heero’s place. But like I said, I can take a bloody hint. I had had a good day and counted myself fortunate, not wanting to spend the rest of my vacation in a cast. We hung out at his place and played video games for an hour after dinner and then I went home. It was painful and I felt like an asshole at how disappointed Heero was, but I just promised him that I would see him after work the next day and left.

Sunday wasn’t much different. My father had once again disappeared for the weekend, so I didn’t have to deal with him, but I was still not willing to risk that he would randomly show up and realize that I was missing. That most of the meatloaf was gone attested to that, but I still didn’t see him at all until Monday morning. With him gone when I had gotten home Saturday night, I was able to read on the couch in the living room before crashing there for the night. I had had too nice of a day to want to ruin it by sleeping on my mattress. Although I hadn’t had an early morning visit from my father in days, I was more comfortable on the couch and I am aware by now that most of my problems exist in my head and will haunt me even if my mattress doesn’t actually smell like sex. Honestly, sleeping there when my father isn’t home and my mother doesn’t need it is becoming a bad habit, but I can’t stop myself. I went to bed early to take advantage of the quiet for as long as I could, wrapping my mother’s blanket around me, and fell asleep in minutes. A lack of stress and pleasant memories can do that to a person. A day with Heero is better than a day at a spa, I swear.

I woke right on time, my biological clock doing its job, took a shower, made myself a frozen waffle breakfast, and then went straight to work. Dinner was waiting for me at Heero’s home when I was finally free at six. Mariela had made a Dominican dish from her father’s side of the family, something called asopao that was like a stew or gumbo, loaded with rice, chicken, and more spices than I could name. It was delicious, if spicier than I am used to eating with my bland diet (not that that’s a bad thing at all), and Heero seemed to love it. I wondered if Mariela would give me the recipe so I could try to make it for him sometime, but was too nervous to ask in case it was some sacred family secret or something.

After dinner, Heero and I went on another date. Well, Heero called it a date, so I consider it to be one, but it was a lot more laid back and informal than our others, even our terrible second one at the deli when I had been too tired and miserable to have been any kind of good company. We took Kanuck out for his walk and Heero led us to one of the nicer bakeries in town and went in to buy something, leaving the dog with me outside. Kanuck was good as always, sitting next to me on the sidewalk as I held his leash, not moving so much as an inch even as another dog went by and tried to lunge at him. He stayed statuesque, his fur only rising a little and stared the other dog down while its owner dragged it away. Then as soon as the pair were gone, he looked up at me, lolling his tongue, as if he was asking for approval. I told him what a good boy he was and petted his ears which made his tail wag almost violently.

Heero re-emerged with a box and let me walk Kanuck as his owner led us. I’m not really nervous walking the huge dog anymore and he let me choose the pace, not pulling at the leash one bit, looking about as happy as any dog can about it. We went to the beach and sat down on the edge of the getty to eat what Heero had bought, which turned out to be a lobster tail. The pastry was small, but incredibly rich and filling. Although it was dark out at that point, the sky was clear and the moon was out, turning the waves silver as they lightly crashed into the side of the getty. The sound was incredibly soothing and I could see why Heero had taken us there. Even a cynic like me could see that it was romantic, if you believed in that sort of thing.

I realized it about halfway through the pastry, sucking some cream off of my fingers and noticing Heero glimpsing at me before quickly looking down at his food. I couldn’t see his complexion, but I just knew that he was blushing, just like I knew what he was thinking and what it meant, taking me to some romantic, moonlit beach at night when no one was around because it wasn’t even the first day of spring yet and far from beach going weather. It dawned on me that his leg was pressed against mine so thoroughly that he would have to get onto my lap to get any closer. If we were normal, this would be the perfect situation to be intimate. Maybe some making out, heavy petting, whatever the hell couples did when they weren’t quite ready for the serious stuff, but beyond just some kissing and hand holding.

I felt a spark of fear go through me in that moment, wondering if Heero wanted more already. Not sex, of course. It had only been a week since our first date, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t want something more. Who wouldn’t? We handled kissing just fine, we were comfortable with each other. And we had gone through more shit than most, had grown incredibly close in a very short amount of time. Of course he wanted more, even if it was just some harmless fun, and I should be fine with that. Trowa and I had done more than Heero and I had at this point, so why did the thought of doing those things with the boy that I actually loved feel so much more terrifying?

Just when my stupid, paranoid fear was making me think that that was the entire reason why Heero had brought me out here, to take our relationship to the next, obvious level, he finished with his dessert and stood, helping me up, and we were walking back to his house. I felt a relief so strong that I was almost shaking with it and felt like the worst kind of moron, not because I had been scared, not because I had assumed things that weren’t true, but because it hadn’t happened, and it should have. I had this suspicious thought that if I had been anyone else, Heero would have gone for it, but he had held himself back. I should have felt relieved about that, happy, but I didn’t. I felt like a loser. I loved him for his restraint, but I hated myself for not being able to take the initiative and cross that line with him, to progress our relationship like any other person would have. What the hell is wrong with me? What is broken in me, malformed to the point that I can’t even want to be closer to someone that I love so much, I can feel it in my goddamned soul? And again, the fear came upon me, the terror that one day Heero will see that and I’ll disgust him so much that he won’t even want to be friends with me anymore.

My fears threatened to tarnish that wonderful evening, but then we were standing at his front door and he stopped right there under the overhang, put his hand on my arm, and kissed me deeply, not caring one bit that his parents might come out or see us through the window. It soothed away everything, all of my paranoia and black thoughts until there was nothing else left but his lips and my love for him and everything that I had been worried about just seemed so stupid, things that I didn’t even need to think of, and I kept letting them tear me apart. All at once, the day was magical and tranquil again. I wished that every day could be like that. No classmates. No father. No anxiety or stress. Just the two of us, like the rest of the world didn’t even exist.

But, as I’ve said, eventually all good things like that weekend have to end. Monday always comes around. I just wasn’t expecting _that_ Monday to be one of those days. I had thought, stupidly, against all of my pessimistic nature, that I could have another wonderful day with Heero, another dreamlike day where nothing bad happened, except for the shit that only exists in my fucked up head. But I guess the universe had decided that my happiness quota had been abundantly filled and it needed something to knock me back down on my ass.

Monday started fine. Not great, but fine, and for the first half of my day, it had only gotten better. My dad didn’t come home at all Sunday night, either, but showed up some time in the early morning hours just before work, waking me up from my doze on the couch unintentionally for once. He didn’t pay any attention to me at all as he stomped into the living room, making my heart pound with adrenaline as I assumed that he was gunning for me, but he disappeared into the laundry room. I sat up and watched him warily from behind, squinting in the dark. I could smell him more than I could see him, the stench of liquor thick on him, and body odor to boot. I don’t think he had washed since he had last been home. For once I couldn’t smell cigarette smoke on him, which meant no Pat, which was a huge relief. No one can rile my father up quite as much as that prick he calls a friend.

His hair was badly mussed and when he stumbled out of the laundry room, minus the shirt he had been wearing, his eyes bloodshot and his hair messy, I saw that he hadn’t shaved in days, either. He glared heatedly at me. I think if he hadn’t been obviously nursing a legendary hangover and exhausted, he might have made a go for me. Survival instinct fully engaged, I rolled off the couch and all but ran for the kitchen. My hands moving faster than my sleepy brain, I started to make some coffee, sure that there was enough for both of my parents since my mother would be up in an hour. My father continued to glare at me wordlessly as I waited for the beverage to brew, looking like he wanted to hit me for no other particular reason than I was there and not in the agony that he was in.

But then I was pouring his coffee and handing it to him and he just sneered at me and took it into the bedroom with him, like it was some kind of offering to appease his wrath and he had decided that I had made myself useful enough that morning to spare me. I pulled some eggs out of the fridge with the intent to make him some breakfast to keep the good will, and hopefully lack of incidents, going, then briefly escaped to the bathroom. I splashed some water on my face, combed my hair, and brushed my teeth. I would have taken a five-minute shower, but I was going to Heero’s that morning, so I didn’t see the point. I was digging out some pain pills for my father when I heard my mother scream from the bedroom.

“Get the fuck off of me, you sick bastard!” her shriek pierced right through the thin wall separating the bathroom from the bedroom, eerily sounding like she was right there in the room with me.

I froze, still not entirely awake and not really understanding what was going on. I heard my father grunt in a mix of rage and pain and then there was a thud that I couldn’t identify, like something falling and hitting the floor. The next I could because it was so familiar, a roar of anger and flesh hitting flesh, the sound of a punch, followed by my mother’s cry of pain. I ran out of the bathroom like my hair was on fire, not really knowing what the hell I was going to do, but refusing to cower in the bathroom. I stared in trepidation at my parents’ bedroom door. Should I go in there and stop the beating or would that make it worse? Before I could decide my mother ran out of the door, her grey eyes wild with fear and panic, stopping short when she saw me.

The left side of her face was a solid, massive bruise and swelling rapidly. Blood trickled down the corner of her mouth from a split lip. He had really clocked her one hard. Whatever had just happened, it had been bad, enough for him to go from ‘in a bad mood’ to ‘flaming pissed.’ But it looked like she had gotten out of there fast enough that he had gotten only the one hit in, at least. Just to make sure of that, I looked down from her face and saw that her button up pajama top was unbuttoned all the way down to her stomach and I could see the curve of her breasts. I quickly turned away, more out of respect than out of discomfort at seeing my mother’s breasts, or any woman’s breasts, for that matter.

I walked to the freezer, giving her a moment to compose herself and took my sweet time fishing out an ice pack. Seeing her top open like that, the scene in the bedroom became clear. My father had tried to have sex with her. Even after all these years, he still hoped she would let him touch her, I guess, or maybe he had just been so desperate, perhaps still a bit drunk. She must have still been asleep if he had managed to her top halfway unbuttoned before she had freaked out on him and hadn’t taken her dismissal too well. Memories flashed in my head. Trowa’s rage every time I had refused his advances. The ugly, poisonous things he had screamed at me, his disgust at me and that burning desire in his eyes, how his hand had tightened into a fist and I had often wondered if he would strike me. Was that how it was like with my parents? Did my father loathe her like that while still wanting to make love to her? Or after all these years, was it more base than that, just wanting to fuck a familiar woman, the ghost of the girl that he had once loved enough to make a kid with because it was preferable to fucking a boy?

When I turned back around, my mother had buttoned her top back up, her face redder than even mine and her eyes to the ground, obviously embarrassed. She held her hand to her wounded cheek and I saw for the first time that her short nails had blood on them. She must have scratched him, which would explain his grunt. Good. I hoped she had ripped his face open. I handed her the ice pack and she managed a tight, small smile of gratitude, pressing it to her cheek. I turned to start breakfast, the eggs still resting by the frying pan on the stove when my mother grabbed at the back of my night shirt, giving it a gentle tug. I turned back to her and was startled at the terror in her eyes.

“Duo, you need to leave,” she started to say, but then we heard a sound coming from the bedroom, my father throwing their closet doors open with a bang and we both flinched.

We froze in some kind of fucked up, surreal unison, holding our breaths to hear the next noise, that terrible sound of him striding towards us, but whatever he was doing, he was staying in there for now. My mother looked back at me again, her eyes even wider and the expression that was there I can only call horror, but not in fear of a beating. It was something else, something worse. It took me a moment to realize that whatever it was, it was fear for me, not herself.

“Please, please, Duo,” she begged so desperately that I worried that she might start to cry, “You have to leave right now before he…”

Her words trailed off, but she didn’t need to go on. I suddenly understood. She wasn’t scared of him coming out here and beating the both of us in his sexually frustrated rage. She was scared of him taking that rage out on me in a completely different way. She was thinking of him getting on top of her and slyly unbuttoning her top while she slept. She was thinking of denying him and making him, not just angry, but hard up. And she was thinking of what he often did when he wanted release but she refused to give it. I felt my own horror just then and nodded frantically. No, I suddenly didn’t want to hang around there at all. I was worried about what he might do to her in retaliation, but that childish part of myself that he created the very first night that he crawled on top of me and pinned me down like a whore screamed and cried. I couldn’t protect my mother, but I could protect myself.

Even though I felt like a total asshole for it, I knew that I had made the right choice when my mother looked completely relieved and some of the tension went right out of her. She could look after herself better than I could, I told myself as I went to the front door. I didn’t bother getting my book from the living room or even changing out of my pajamas. There was no time for that. I put my jacket on and zipped it up, hoping that no one on the street would notice that I was walking around in night clothes and was just about to put my sneakers on when my father came out of the bedroom.

He was still minus his shirt and now his jeans were unbuttoned and unzipped. Infinitely worse than seeing my mother’s breasts, I could see a definite, large bulge in his underwear from an erection and when his eyes met mine, seeking me out like a man dying of thirst, they were desperate and frustrated and hazed over with need, things that I never wanted to see in my father, but were all too used to. There were deep scratches on his face, dripping blood down his chin, almost a mirror image to my mother. He had his belt clutched in his hand. Whether he intended to use it as a weapon or a way to restrain me, I had no clue. I really didn’t want to know. I hastily shoved my feet into my sneakers, my heart going a mile a minute. He saw that I intended to flee and took a threatening step towards me, his grip tightening on his belt, but I was already gone.

I flung the door open and fucking _ran_ down the block. He wouldn’t follow, I knew that much, but still I ran like all of the hounds of hell were at my heels. I ran all the way to central Nausten until I was in front of the library, panting, my lungs and side on fire. It took me several minutes to get my breath back, but that was ok. I was ok, although it took me even longer to really get that through my skull. All things considered, not the way that I would have wanted to wake up that morning, but I had escaped without a scratch and my father hadn’t raped me. Not horrible as far as mornings go. I burst out laughing at that thought and some old women passing by gave me a look before hurrying on their way, no doubt thinking that I was bat shit insane.

As soon as my heartbeat stopped doing something freaky, I kept walking towards Heero’s house. I wondered at my odds for just running in there and up to the guest room before anyone saw me and realized I was in my pajamas. Never had I been so grateful to have a clean work uniform there and I had been smart enough to leave my boots there the previous night, too. I felt around my pockets for my cellphone and found it in my jacket where I had left it, sighing with relief. That would have definitely been something that I would not want to leave behind for my father to discover.

I put it all behind me as I got to Heero’s house with only a few stares, my father’s look of want, my mother’s unbuttoned top, the blood on his face, her fear for me… I pushed it all down. It didn’t matter. Those thoughts… those memories didn’t belong in the Yuy house. They had happened somewhere else, somewhere far away and to someone else. When I walked through that door, I was just Heero’s best friend and boyfriend, not the scared boy that had just run from his bruised mother and horny father. That boy didn’t belong in Heero’s home any more than those memories did and I did what I could to discard him, to forget even though I knew that I was completely bullshitting myself. It was so much easier to pretend that it was true, that I wasn’t that person, that it hadn’t happened, even if I knew somewhere deep down that it was a terrible, painful lie.

The luck that had allowed me to escape unharmed from my house didn’t follow me to Heero’s. My boyfriend was right there at the door as I walked in and we almost collided with each other.

“Whoa!” he cried out in surprise, grabbing me by the shoulders and moving us around by our forward momentum so we didn’t bump into each other, “Hi, there.”

“Hi,” I echoed, blushing stupidly at his hands on my shoulders and feeling pleased at seeing him although it had only been, what, twelve hours?

He eyed me and I internally cursed him for never being oblivious to anything, especially when it concerned me.

“Why are you wearing-,” he quirked an eyebrow as he looked at my pajama pants and I hastily moved away from him.

“It’s nothing,” I said in a rush, unzipping my jacket and hanging it on the coat rack by the door since the jig was up anyway, “I just need to get changed-,”

“Duo, hold on, what’s wrong?” I felt him grab the back of my shirt and stopped moving with a sigh. When I looked back at him, his eyes were dark with worry and he was desperately scanning my face, maybe for some injury or other sign, “What happened?”

I shrugged, feeling a bit defensive.

“Nothing,” I muttered, “Just… my dad was in a bit of a mood, so I left.”

I very carefully did not say what kind of mood that had been and let him fill in the blanks himself. That’s the real key to successful lies. Lead the person just a little bit and have them make up the story themselves, it works almost every time. His expression immediately went from terrible concern to sadness as he took in my pajamas and lack of socks for the second time. He searched my face again, too, probably to assure himself that I had escaped without any new bruises. I still had the bruises on my face from last Sunday, but they were far too faded to mistake for new ones.

“Duo…” he started to say, but couldn’t seem to really formulate what it was, probably on his way to start a lecture about my father and how I shouldn’t have to flee from my own home in my damned pajamas.

I didn’t want to look at that sadness and glanced down at his hand still clutching the back of my shirt. Suddenly, without any kind of warning, I flashed to earlier. My mother grabbing my shirt. Her look of terror. Telling me, begging me, to leave before my father came looking for me, before he took what he wanted from me instead of her. The guilt that had been living behind that terror, which was somehow more terrible. Unable to control it, I shivered. Heero immediately saw it and frowned, the worry coming back, really the only thing that could derail one of his many lectures about what an asshole he thought my father was.

“You must be freezing,” he mistook my horror for the brisk weather outside and how undressed I was, “Why don’t you go take a hot shower? I’ll tell Mom to wait on breakfast.”

I smiled gratefully at him and I was grateful that he had dropped it, even if I had had to make him worried to do it. I could take what little, twisted victories that I could, even if guilt was eviscerating me for always worrying him. Bitterness at myself, at my inability to be a good boyfriend, or even just a good friend, threatened to rise up, but I squashed it angrily. I was not going to do this to myself. Not that morning. There was too much other shit in my head screaming for attention and despite the fucked up way I had left the house, I was going to have a good morning and if I had to be in denial to do that, well that was just fine with me.

I had already cleaned Pepper’s litterbox and filled her water the previous night, so I just fed her and played with her a little before I took my shower and slipped into some sweat pants and a flannel shirt. Although it was the third week of March and the first day of spring was just three days away, you wouldn’t know it in this town. Experience told me that we might be looking at another one to two months of cold weather, maybe even some snow here and there until spring decided to actually arrive. There had even been a snow storm in June once when I had been a kid, although that hadn’t happened since. We’d get a few warm weeks here and there, but I wasn’t holding my breath that winter was done with. The cold is like a bad memory, it tends to cling on for as long as it can, dragging you down as soon as you think you can move on from it.

After I was certain that I was much more presentable than when I had arrived, I went downstairs where I was treated to a huge meal of Belgian waffles, fruit, bacon, scrambled eggs, and hot chocolate. Ever since my insomnia marathon had ended, Mariela had been spoiling me a bit too much on the food portions. I think I had frightened her between just how little I had eaten and how sick I had gotten towards the end and she had decided that it was her duty to compensate for all the missed meals. That or she had just gotten it into her head that I was too skinny and _I_ obviously wasn’t doing anything about it.

“Will you be sleeping over tonight?” she asked me when I finished and helped her with the dishes.

I sighed, having been dreading that question. The scene from that morning flashed in my head. I really, really, really didn’t want to go back there, but that was nothing new.

“I don’t think so,” I said, although it just about killed me to get the words out.

“Why not?” Heero demanded from where he was cleaning the table, his tone a bit snappish, but I knew it was from frustration and not anger at me, “Why do you suddenly not want to sleep over here?”

Guilt stabbed through my stomach as I saw past his irritation and at the insecurity and hurt that he was feeling. He thought that my not staying over had something to do with him, that he had done something wrong. Just like I did when I got thoughts like that, he was probably thinking that he was being ridiculous, but I was abundantly aware that logic has very little to do with love and fear, especially when the two meet. And I didn’t care if his fear was ridiculous or not. I had hurt him.

That made me feel like I was ripping out my own guts. I hadn’t meant to. I had just been trying to do what my father wanted, to protect myself and wind him back down for a little while so I could stay over again without having to worry about him doing something crazy. It made me miserable, but it seemed like the safest option. Now I wish that I had taken that risk to have spared Heero from feeling, even for a second, like I was avoiding him. Love makes people do stupid shit. It can make me do just about anything to make Heero happy, even things that I knew were going to get me hurt and beaten and I was alright with that. If it kept that vulnerable expression off of his face, I was perfectly alright with that.

“Heero!” Mariela chided sharply, “That was rude!”

He immediately flushed in embarrassment, either from being yelled at by his mother in front of me or because he realized the tone he had just taken with me. We fight and bicker sometimes, but he rarely gets this way with me, rarely loses his temper.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized to me, looking a bit like a whipped dog.

“You don’t need to apologize,” I assured him, feeling a bit that way myself, “and I’m sorry, it’s not that I don’t want to stay over here. You know that I do, it’s just…” I chewed on my lip.

How could I explain myself without letting slip that my father had full out forbidden me from coming over here, from seeing him at all and that all of the bruises on my face, almost healed but not quite, were from disobeying him to be with Heero? Heero and his parents would freak if they found that out, that I was putting myself stubbornly in harm’s way to spend time over there and I didn’t want them involved in the whole mess. The less they knew about what was going on at home, the happier everyone would be, including me.

“It’s just… my dad’s had a lot of chores for me to do around the house since I’m on break and he’s been in a really bad mood lately. He always gets pissy when I’m off from school and I didn’t want to risk ticking him off if he wants me to make dinner or something and I’m never home.”

Christ that sounded lame, but it was all that I could come up with besides an outright lie or the truth. I didn’t tell them how angry and spiteful my father got when I was on a break or what he had threatened to do to me if he caught me or my mother lying to him again. I knew that I had said plenty when Mariela and Heero shared a worried look and my boyfriend looked about as guilty as I felt. It hadn’t been my intention and I felt bad about it. I felt like I kept manipulating him, playing on his feelings for me every time I brought up my relationship with my father when we had a fight, but what could I do? The truth would be worse and there was no getting around it. Things are the way that they are and I just wish that Heero would stop getting so damned upset about it when I can’t do anything to make him feel better.

“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” I murmured, feeling something insidious squeeze my heart and I folded like a stupid chair, “I can stay over tonight if you really want me to-,”

“Duo,” Heero’s mother soothed in this mournful, pained tone and shot her son a scathing glare which seemed just so out of character for her that I was stunned, “don’t let him bully you. He’s a big boy and can handle a little disappointment. You need to look out for _yourself_. I wish more than anything that you didn’t have to deal with your father’s… moods,” her diplomatic words almost had me laughing if only because of how ridiculous it sounded, “but you do and you need to focus on what’s best for you and your own welfare, no one else’s.”

I knew that she was right, but that didn’t stop the guilt, or the feeling that I was the worst boyfriend that ever was and I needed to do something to make Heero feel better. It was more than just childish disappointment. We were a couple, and this relationship was so new… I wanted to make him happy and as dangerous as it was, and as foolish, there was this part inside of me that was screaming to just do what Heero wanted, even if it angered my father. Because Heero was the one that was important, not me, not my parents. Heero was the only thing that mattered. It scared me that there was something inside of me like that. Because I could handle a beating, but what happened when Heero wanted something else that I knew I shouldn’t give? If I couldn’t even fight him on something so simple as sleeping over at his place, how the hell was I going to be able to fight him when he wanted sex? And even with that frightening, foreboding thought in my head, I could _still_ feel myself caving, just rolling over like a submissive dog. Because I didn’t want to disappoint him. I’d die if that ever happened, and me being me, how could it not?

“That’s not true, he isn’t bullying me-,” I began to protest, feeling that I had to stick up for him and not liking her lumping him into that category when I knew fully well what bullying really is.

“Yes, I was,” Heero admitted guiltily, shocking me, “I’m sorry, Duo, my mother is right, that was incredibly rude. I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that just because I was a bit frustrated. If you need to go home tonight, then that’s fine, it doesn’t hurt my feelings. I didn’t mean to make you feel guilty or that you’d done something wrong. You haven’t, I’m the one being stupid. And don’t…” he looked down at the ground, looking a bit like he was wishing it would swallow him whole, “don’t change your mind or do things that you don’t want to do or know that you shouldn’t just because I’m being an ignorant jerk, ok?”

I didn’t think that he was being stupid or ignorant or especially a jerk, and I knew that that was a promise that I couldn’t keep, even if I had wanted to and I didn’t, but I nodded to appease him, just not wanting to feel that way anymore, anxious and guilty and feeling like a bit of a jerk myself. Mariela looked satisfied that Heero had apologized and we weren’t dancing around each other anymore and returned to the dishes. Heero and I took the hint and dropped it, although we both probably felt like morons, I certainly did, and worked on finishing cleaning the kitchen.

After that weird, little moment, things went back to pretty much normal for us and the rest of the morning and afternoon was very pleasant. While Heero showered and dressed, I played with Pepper and brushed out her fur. It wasn’t much of a chore. She has short fur and it wasn’t warm enough for her to start shedding, but it helps keep the room clean and she enjoys the attention. When Heero was ready, and infinitely more awake, we left his house to go for a run in the park. When we ran out of steam, we still weren’t quite ready to go home, so we stayed and took a much more leisurely walk through the center of town.

By then we were both tired from the exercise and had worked up a small appetite, so Heero treated us to brunch at a café. He cheekily said that the rules state if only one of us paid for a meal for both of us, it had to be considered a date. I rolled my eyes at him and informed him that if that were remotely true, he would have to consider all the school lunches he had bought me dates as well, which just made him look pleased. If I put enough effort into it, I could pretend that none of the painful things from that morning had happened.

When we did eventually finish our meal, which had been drawn out with pleasant conversation, and got back to his house, I only had little over an hour before I had to go to work. I would have given my right foot to have not gone that day, but I was supposed to be working _more_ hours that week, not less, and though I had relaxed my workaholic nature very slightly since becoming friends with Heero, it would never be enough for me to be that irresponsible. I washed up and the two of us watched a little bit of television before I couldn’t put it off anymore, I had to go.

Mariela was waiting for me downstairs as Heero and I went down, a plastic bag in her hands. She handed it to me with a beaming smile.

“For dinner tonight,” she told me, “Nothing special, just a grilled chicken salad, a peach, and something nice for dessert.”

“Mom, you’re fussing again,” Heero warned in an exasperated tone.

“Oh, hush,” she waved him off, not caring one bit.

I took the bag from her, once again amazed by her generosity. I think she must like having a kid around that likes vegetables because she keeps overloading me with them, not that I’m complaining. I love salad, but my father hates it. He’ll force himself once in a while if it accompanies certain meals, but never cares for them, so the only lettuce we usually have on hand is saved for sandwiches, and it’s never fresh. Tomatoes are even rarer as they spoil quickly and are too expensive.

“T-thank you,” I stammered, “but you didn’t need to…”

“Were you planning on buying yourself dinner?” she asked me slyly, her dark eyes piercing and perceptive.

I blushed at how easily she had caught me. I hadn’t had the opportunity to pack anything to eat that morning and I hadn’t been planning on taking anything for dinner.

“No money,” I muttered in embarrassment.

I didn’t have so much as a cent on me. Mariela shot Heero a smug look and he shook his head. At her or me, I don’t know.

“Have a nice day, Sweetie,” she told me, opening the door for me.

I doubted that I would, but I thanked her anyway and was about to leave when Heero stopped me with a hand on my arm. He glanced at his mother intensely and when she just stood there, quirking one eyebrow at him, he sighed heavily.

“Can I have a moment alone with my boyfriend?” he asked dryly.

She looked from one of us to the other suspiciously, like we were hiding something from her and she could get to the bottom of it if she could just make one of us crack. But I was clueless and Heero stood firm, folding his arms over his chest until she narrowed her eyes at him.

“You’d better not give this poor boy anymore trouble,” she threatened, but even I knew that she was just teasing him, “He has enough to deal with without you adding your nonsense on top of it.”

Heero blushed a little at that, but otherwise was like an unmovable rock. His mother relented, which I was grateful for considering all the teasing and inside jokes revolving around our newfound relationship between Heero and his parents and I had this distinct feeling that this was another one of those things. Sure enough, though Mariela started to walk towards the kitchen, she looked back at him and shot him another suspicious look and this time it was clearer to me that she suspected he wanted to be alone with me for a very specific reason that I was clueless about, and Heero was all too aware of that. He just glared at her until she finally disappeared back into the kitchen and he relaxed, shaking his head again at her.

If I hadn’t been involved in it, it would have been amusing. Sometimes Mariela reminds me of a little kid with how she and Heero act around each other. I felt some part of me ache, but I won’t say that I wished that I had that kind of relationship with either of my parents. I refuse to let something like that so much as become coherent in my head, let alone take root. Wishing for things that would never happen was just opening the door to misery and I didn’t need any more of _that_ in my life, thank you very much.

“Sorry about that,” Heero said sheepishly when he was sure that his mother was out of earshot, “But I really need to talk to you about something.”

An icy hand of fear squeezed my heart, making it race like I had just ran a damned marathon. Talk? What did that mean? Was he still upset with me for not sleeping over because of my father? Or was it something else? Something that I had done when I hadn’t been sleeping? Or was there something about our relationship, about _me_ that he wasn’t happy with and he wanted me to change? Or was it already too late for that and he wanted to call this off? Maybe I had lost my appeal to him, whatever that had been, or I was too distant, too closed off and aloof or boring. Insane, stupid thoughts, but I could feel myself starting to panic, on the verge of hyperventilating as I played over everything that I had ever done since we had started dating and hated myself for every flaw, every moment when I hadn’t been good enough. It’s funny, after all the times that I had come close to breaking up with him myself over my own insecurities and fears, and the thought of him doing the same thing to me filled me with screaming dread.

Some of my horror must have shown on my face, because Heero paled and looked as scared as I felt.

“No, no!” he nearly shouted, “Nothing bad, I promise!”

He put his hand on my arm and between that touch and his words, most of my fear fled me and pure relief filled the emptiness that it had left behind. But I felt worn and drawn, shaky like I often feel after a panic attack or after one of those weird nightmares, like someone scooped out my guts. What the hell was wrong with me that I keep doing this to myself? Why do I keep flying into these panics over nothing and making myself look insane in front of Heero?

“I just need to ask for your help about something, that’s all,” he rushed to explain, keeping his voice down to an ear whisper, “I would have asked earlier this morning, but…” he scratched at the back of his head, “it’s kind of a big favor and I wasn’t sure if I should ask…” he looked back at the kitchen door, but Mariela was still in there and it sounded like she was starting the washing machine.

“Do you mind if I walk with you to work?” my boyfriend suddenly asked, still looking a bit flustered and guilty about scaring me, even if that was completely my fault for jumping to conclusions.

“Sure,” I shrugged, trying to hide how happy that made me after nearly scaring myself to death.

He beamed at me with pure relief and grabbed his coat and shoes. Outside, the air was cool and dry, more like fall than early spring, but the sky was clear and it was nice out even with the slight chill. We walked down his street together and into central Nausten, heading towards the south end. It wasn’t until we walked past the public pool that Heero spoke again.

“I just want to apologize again for this morning,” he said, “I didn’t mean to snap at you like that or make you feel like you had done something wrong…”

“It’s not your fault,” I told him, “I get it. You thought we’d be spending a lot more time together this week. I should have told you why I couldn’t sleep over to begin with. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

“No,” he shook his head, “My mother is right. You have too much shit to deal with for me to be acting like a spoiled brat on top of it. We’ve been spending a lot of time together, and I love that and I shouldn’t be feeling frustrated or hurt just because I wanted you to stay over. What’s going on between you and your dad… while I wish you would have told me why you weren’t staying over, it’s not my business and you don’t owe me any explanations. And I don’t want you putting yourself in harm’s way just to cater to me, that’s not fair to you.”

I sighed.

“Heero… you know how much I like spending time at your place. And I… I really missed sleeping over,” I admitted with a shy blush, “My house is… well, it’s always quiet over there… I guess I could call it lonely. I only stayed away because I had to, not because I didn’t want to. I can stay over for the rest of the week, so you don’t need to feel bad about it,” I tried to appease him.

“Duo, I just said-,” he began to protest and I almost screamed at him in frustration.

“I had planned on it anyway,” I assured him, which was only half a lie because I really had been planning on sleeping over at least Tuesday, but hadn’t known yet what I was going to do for the rest of the week, I had wanted to play it by ear, see what mood my father was in, but I just couldn’t fight the hurt that I had seen in Heero’s eyes earlier that morning, “I just wanted to stay on my father’s good side and I did all the big chores already. I’ll just make sure I finish whatever else he wants me to do tomorrow before I come over to your place.”

Heero looked leery, like there was something else that he wanted to say, but I rushed to derail him, not wanting doubt to weaken my resolve.

“I thought you said that there’s a favor you wanted to ask of me?” I tried to divert him as far away from the subject matter as possible and was shocked when it actually worked.

“Uhh, yeah… about that…” Heero ran a hand through his thick hair and looked adorably flustered, “It’s kind of my mother’s birthday on Thursday…”

“What?!” I stared at him incredulously.

Out of all of the things that I had thought that he might say, that wasn’t even in the ballpark and it took me a moment just to get my head out of my ass long enough to realize that, not only had this not been about me at all, it wasn’t even a problem, just like he had said. Then what he had just said really sunk in and I felt slightly annoyed.

“Your mother’s birthday is on Thursday and you’re just telling me this _now_?!” I swept my hand through my bangs and shook my head at him, “I don’t have the time to get her anything… or the money,” I murmured as it dawned on me that it really didn’t matter when he had told me about his mother’s birthday, it wasn’t like I could do anything for her.

And really, what did it matter if I was broke or not? What the hell could someone like me buy Mariela that she couldn’t afford herself? I had nothing to give her, this woman who was constantly doing all these amazing things for me. I was garbage. I didn’t even care about hiding how depressed that made me feel from Heero, looking away from him and down at the ground as we walked.

“Actually, I was really hoping that I could get your help with that,” he told me.

I glanced over at him, hating the little burst of hope in my chest and trying to gauge if he was just pitying me, but no, there was hope in his eyes as well. He really did need my help, for some bizarre reason. But why would he ever need my help with anything?

“What with?” I asked him.

He sighed and flushed a little with embarrassment.

“Well… this is the thing… this birthday is kind of special because it’s my mom’s fortieth,” he told me.

“Really?” I quirked an eyebrow, “I always thought that your mom was almost my mom’s age.”

“You said that your parents had you when they were seventeen, so your mom’s only 34, right?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Her birthday was in August,” I confirmed.

“Christ,” he muttered with a shake of his head, “I can’t even imagine having a kid as old as we are now, I still feel like I’m not even halfway to being grown up yet, you know?”

I nodded again. I had known about how my parents had had me since I was a kid and it still mystifies me how they had managed at such a young age, so I had always been a bit understanding towards how… well, fucked up our family is.

“Well, my mom was 23 when she had me, and my dad was 28,” Heero said, smiling wistfully at some memory, “So they were young, but old enough to take on the responsibility. And they had planned on getting pregnant, so their ages had never been an issue.”

I listened to my boyfriend with rapt attention, enjoying hearing about his parents’ relationship compared to mine. I felt like it was a window into this ideal, harmonic world that I had heard about my entire life, but had thought was only a fairy tale. The story of a normal family, parents that loved each other and supported each other, had known exactly when they wanted to have a child and how they were going to raise him and give him everything he would ever need. Fuck, I bet they were even the types that had started saving for his college education from the moment they knew Mariela was pregnant.

“My mother met my dad when she was still in college,” Heero explained, “My dad was doing a part of his residency there as a counselor and was helping to teach a class in child psychology. My mother took offense to one of his theories on communicating with child patients with mood disorders and they would spend whole classes bickering with each other,” he chuckled and even I had to smirk at the image of the two of them going at it in the middle of a classroom, “Then it kind of left the classroom and my dad would take my mother out to lunch so they could debate some more.

“I guess he figured out that his interest in her was more than just academic when he realized that those lunches were the best part of his day. But he felt weird about asking her to date since he was technically her teacher even if he was just assisting and they were only five years apart, so my mom was the one that asked him out first (1). They got married when my mom graduated from college. My grandmother was already sick by then, so they moved back to Florida so my mom could be with her family. A year later, both of my parents’ jobs were pretty stable and they had enough money to get house and decided it was time to start a family,” he shrugged, “Not exactly a super interesting story, I guess…”

“I think it’s great,” I smiled and tried not to think about my parents’ own, failed marriage.

“In any case, my mom and dad are going out Thursday to celebrate on their own, so we’re having a birthday party as a family on Wednesday and my dad expects me to put everything together. He asked me to invite you, too, by the way,” he looked at me a bit nervously, “But I didn’t want to bring it up because I know you have work…”

“I can come!” I interrupted eagerly, “If you don’t mind eating a bit early, I can ask my boss if I can start my shift a bit later and I’ll just make the hour up another time.”

Heero shot me a grateful smile. I thought about protesting that I wasn’t family and I felt kind of rude showing up to Mariela’s birthday, but Justin had asked, so I was going to go. I didn’t tell Heero that I planned to ask Leneski to skip my break that day to make up for the lost hour since that would upset him, but I get paid under the table, so it was doable. And unlike my other boss, he’s pretty lenient about switching around our schedules. If we were getting sent to a site, I could just take the bus and catch up with the crew.

“Wait a minute,” something suddenly dawned on me, “Your mom knows that you’re planning something for her birthday, doesn’t she? That’s why she was acting so weird when you said you needed a moment alone with me.”

“Yeah, my mother can sniff out secrets like a damned weasel,” he groused, “Which makes surprising her with anything like trying to put together a spy mission. My dad’s a lot better at it than me, and he’s usually the one that gets her cake together and the decorations up before she suspects anything while I just have to worry about buying her present. I tried to make the cake a couple of years ago, but I majorly fucked it up and my dad had to make another one.”

“Well at least you didn’t try to buy one from a store,” I smirked.

Given Mariela’s own penchant for making everything from scratch, something that I highly approved of even if I can’t usually practice it between money and time constraints, I did not think that she would appreciate getting a store bought cake. And after she had made my birthday cake herself, I wouldn’t let him do that.

“Yeah, well, I have come to accept that baking cakes is not in my repertoire of skills,” he quipped dryly, “So I was thinking, since you don’t have money and are really good at baking, and I suck at it but I have enough of an allowance to buy my mother something really nice…”

“You want me to make her a cake,” I summed up.

“I hate asking, since she’s my mom and all and I’m making more work for you, but I figured I could say the present is from both of us, and I’ll do whatever I can to help you make the cake. If you give me a list of ingredients tonight, I can have everything ready by tomorrow. _Please_ , Duo?” he begged, clasping his hands together and everything, “You’d be doing me a huge favor and I’ll do anything that you want. _Anything._ ”

I snorted at that. He didn’t need to do me any favors. He was doing me a favor just by being my friend. He did me a favor just by spending a second’s worth of his time with me, I didn’t need anything else from him. His love was more than I could ever dream of asking for.

“You don’t need to do anything for me,” I brushed him off, “After everything that your mother has done for me, the least I can do is make her a cake for her birthday. What kind does she like?”

“Angel food cake,” he replied, “It’s her favorite.”

I gave him a surprised look and he chuckled again.

“I know, I would have thought that she would want something like she had as a kid, maybe one of grandma’s Spanish recipes, but she’s always loved angel food cake, especially with whipped cream and strawberries,” he told me.

“That’s easy,” I assured him as we stopped in front of Leneski’s shop, “I’ve made angel food before. I can text you what you’d need to get.”

“You are completely amazing,” he breathed and his blue eyes were practically shining with a love for me that I just couldn’t handle, “and my lifesaver.”

He paused, looking at bit lost for some reason.

“I want to kiss you right now, but I don’t want to get you into trouble,” he glanced at the small building Leneski’s operated out of.

I flushed as dark as a raspberry and felt so pleased, I might as well have melted into mush.

“It… it isn’t a big deal,” I muttered.

“It is to me,” he smiled, “and I promise I’ll make it up to you somehow. I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”

“Definitely,” I nodded.

“Have a good night, Duo, and thank you so much,” he gushed.

“No problem,” I said a bit weakly.

The first half of my first work shift was boring as hell and it seemed like it just went on for bloody ever. But, given the shit storm of a nightmare that the rest of that shift ended up being, that’s not a bad thing. In my life, boring is good. Most of that first half was a waste of time for myself and all of my team. First, I talked to Leneski about coming in an hour late on Wednesday in exchange for my lunch hour. He was nice about it and didn’t even hound me about why I wanted to come in late, just waved off my attempts to negotiate and told me to keep my lunch hour and just stay on an hour late Sunday to help inventory the shop.

Then I piled into the van with the rest of the team for our first job of the week: laying down pavement at the site of what was going to be a new restaurant on the west part of central Nausten. Only when we got there, we discovered that the customer had given us the wrong address and couldn’t be reached to reschedule. And when we went back to the shop to find out what was next on the schedule, it turned out that we had been given the wrong paperwork for that job and until the right forms were faxed to us, we didn’t have anything else we could do for the day. Leneski stuck us on boring jobs until our lunch hour came around, filing and filling out paperwork mostly, cleaning up the shop, going through mail, stuff like that. By the time we could go to lunch, I felt like I had been there for days and all I wanted to do was go home just for the change of scenery.

I was saving the food that Mariela had packed me for my factory shift, which was when I would need the pick me up the most, and decided to go for a walk on my break, desperately needing to stretch my legs after sitting at a desk shuffling paperwork for a good part of the afternoon. I was in the break room grabbing something to drink before I headed out when Leneski found me.

“Maxwell,” he called from behind me, almost making me jump as I took my first sip of water, “Someone’s here for you.”

Immediately, my paranoia flared. Who the hell would come to see me at work? Zechs or even my father came to mind, but no one knew where I worked. I suppose just about anyone could stalk me and figure that out, it’s not exactly something that I try to hide, but why ask for me? If Zechs or someone else from school wanted to key me up, they could just wait until I left work, and my father was at work himself. The only person who might come to my work is Heero and he would only do that if there was an emergency, but why not just call me? I checked my cellphone, but no, no new messages.

Filled with trepidation and confusion, I walked to the front of the shop, only to feel like an idiot when I saw Heero standing at the front desk, waiting patiently and looking neither hurt or stressed. He smiled brightly when he saw me.

“Heero, what are you doing here?” I asked, perplexed even though I was happy to see him.

“I thought we could get lunch together today,” he said.

His words were so carefully chosen, something that any casual friend might say, so laid back and benign that I didn’t feel afraid even for a second that one of my coworkers might read something else in it. Just two friends having lunch together, nothing weird about that, right?

“This your boss?” my best friend asked as Leneski walked behind the desk and opened the register.

“Guilty as charged,” the man quipped as he began to count the drawer.

While Leneski’s business largely operates as a construction/handyman company, we do have a small shop where we sell home improvement hardware and supplies, although it’s uncommon for people to shop there since we’re more expensive than the other shops. However, we do sell some tools that the other places don’t for more obscure home repair and such, so we’re the go-to place for people that can’t wait for things to be shipped from a website or those that run small businesses since we discount for bulk orders. We’re a small place with not much security, not in a bad neighborhood, but still on the south end of town, so Leneski is always extra careful about making sure there isn’t a lot of cash in the register in case we were get robbed.

“Is it alright if he’s a bit late coming back, sir?” Heero asked my boss, “The place I’d like to take him is a bit of a walk.”

“Heero!” I snapped at him, amazed that he would ask something like that, but then again, he’s always been a lot bolder, almost tactless, than me.

To my shock, instead of reaming him out or telling Heero no way in hell was he going to make concessions for me, he waved us off like he was shooing away a fly.

“Take yer time,” Leneski said, not even looking up from what he was doing, “He works too damned hard. Nothing important to do around here today anyway.”

Before I could demand what that was supposed to mean when I worked only as hard as anyone else there, Heero was pulling me out the door by my arm.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to surprise you like that,” he had the sense to apologize when we were a decent distance away from the building, “I just thought you could use some fresh air and I wanted to do something to make up for snapping at you this morning.”

I sighed. It was impossible to be annoyed at him when he kept doing nice things for me like this.

“You know, you can’t just automatically forgive me every time I snap at you and not expect me to do the same,” I pointed out and ignored his slight blush, “I already told you its fine. And you don’t need to do anything for me,” I gave him a small smile, “but thank you. You’re right, fresh air sounds great.”

That seemed to bolster him and what little guilt had remained in his expression finally melted away.

“So, I take it I’m supposed to consider this another date and not just a quick lunch?” I asked, half joking.

“I would like that, yes,” he said with this strangely soft smile that made my heart beat faster.

“It isn’t any place fancy, is it?” I looked down at what I was wearing self-consciously: work boots, jeans that were worn but without any tears or holes yet, a white t-shirt with some light saw dust and paint stains here and there, and a thin, denim, button-up shirt over that, plus my jacket.

I hastily zipped it up with a blush, uselessly hiding the stains on my shirt since I couldn’t hide the ones on my jeans.

“No,” he chuckled, “I figured that you would just want a laid back lunch and I didn’t want to waste your break waiting to get a seat.”

He didn’t even bring up how I was dressed, like it hadn’t even been a consideration for him when deciding where to eat. Knowing him, it hadn’t been. He’s so weird sometimes.

“There’s this new seafood place that opened up on the boardwalk,” he told me, “Mom took me there a couple days ago. The food is really good and they have outdoor seating that looks out onto the beach. It’s a bit cool today, but there’s no wind, so I thought you might like it.”

“That sounds great,” I told him and it did, I desperately needed some fresh air and it had been awhile since I had had seafood, to my hazy memory anyway, “You and your mom have been going out a lot during the day?”

Since Mariela is a teacher, she gets spring break off, too, although she only teaches elementary school grades, and in a different town. Hers just happened to align with ours.   
          “A bit. She likes having me home,” he admitted, “We do some housework, go shopping, on walks, out to eat, whatever we’re in the mood for until my dad comes home. It’s nice.”

I found myself smiling as he talked. I love it when he talks about his relationships with his parents. Their comradery and love for each other, their ease around each other is something I’ve never experienced before. It’s like getting a glimpse into another world. Sure, it’s painful. It’s a world that I should have been born into, but is forever shut to me. All I can do is look in on it once in a while, like some perverted voyeur and live vicariously through my best friend’s family. It makes me feel like a leech, engorged on longing and love instead of blood, but it’s still pleasant, in its way.

“Hey,” I suddenly realized, giving him an accusing look, “the boardwalk isn’t that long of a walk from here. Why did you tell my boss we needed the extra time?”

Far from feeling guilty for his subterfuge, my boyfriend smirked.

“So I could have some extra time with you, obviously,” he said.

“Heero-,” I began to complain, not liking him taking advantage of my schedule just so we could hang out. I was supposed to be working, not having fun.

“I wanted you to have a nice time,” he insisted, “and I didn’t want you to stress about being late and having to rush back. Your boss is right, you work too hard.”

I completely disagreed with that, but there was this somber note to his voice and when I looked at him, worry was sprawled all over his face. I worried him. I had reduced my work schedule, but the hours I worked and how stubborn I was concerning my jobs bothered him. I knew that it probably always would, and there was that part of me again that was frantic to make him happy, to do whatever it was he wanted. But I couldn’t budge from this. Even if we didn’t need the money, my dad wouldn’t let me quit and my fear of him has grown so much lately that I’m willing to keep working if only to never find out what he would do to me. But I also _desperately_ needed these jobs if I was ever going to survive after graduation, especially Leneski’s promise of a full time position.

I love Heero, but the realist in me knows that in this one area, I can’t fold for my own good. Heero might think I need to relax and stop working like a dog, but what I really need is money and financial security. As they say, I could rest when I was dead. Until then, I need food and shelter, if nothing else. I didn’t lecture him about getting my break extended, though. I let him have this because we both knew he was never going to win the war, and really, even if I complained, I was happy. For a little while, I could be with him. Even if it was going to make going back to work harder.

Through some sort of miracle, lunch was pleasant and nothing bad happened. Given what happened after it, I would even call it wonderful, or better yet, blissful. As in ‘ignorance is bliss.’ It was like this… this perfect little microcosm, a pocket of time, a moment when nothing could touch us. An hour of peace and, for a while at least, I was truly happy, all that I could ever ask for, really. The restaurant must have just opened the previous week because there was a big ‘Grand Opening!’ sign over the front of it and while the place wasn’t packed at that hour, it was a bit more crowded than an introvert like me is comfortable with.

When I saw a few familiar faces as we strode in, I almost told Heero that we should leave. No one had spotted us yet, thankfully, but I didn’t want hateful glares or slurs muttered a bit too loudly or even a possible… incident to ruin our date. Heero was already walking up to a waitress and asking for a table outside, though, so I missed my chance. However, to my utter relief, there was no one else outside when we were seated, most people opting for the cozy inside of the restaurant.

It really wasn’t _that_ cold out, just cool, and as Heero had said, there wasn’t even any wind. Just being the only two out there, having that kind of privacy made it worth it, but it was also beautiful. The outside eating area was on a porch overlooking the beach as Heero had promised, giving us a wonderful view of the beach at high tide. Instead of the soft pop music that had been playing inside, all I could hear were the waves and cries of a few birds. The salty air of the ocean fed my appetite and the solitude soothed my nerves. I could easily imagine coming there for dinner and watching sun set.

I ordered a shrimp gumbo to go along with the cool weather, the food heating me from the inside out and it really was delicious. I knew we would be going back there for another date and the both of us inhaled our food in record time. We even got a piece of cheesecake each. We decided not to linger at the restaurant, although I was only halfway through my break and opted to take a walk.

“The beach?” Heero asked.

I glanced down at the beach. It was still high tide and I warily eyed a few people that were taking walks themselves. I couldn’t see who they were, if they might be our classmates. I really didn’t want to deal with them, or anyone, really. Partially because I didn’t want the date ruined, but mostly because I was feeling anti-social and nervous around other people. I had been feeling that way all day, even around my coworkers, like my skin was too thin and every time someone that wasn’t Heero or Solo got too close, I could feel a scream building in my throat. I guess, in retrospect, what had happened, and what _hadn’t_ happened with my father that morning had left a mark.

“There’s a trail in the woods behind my work,” I offered instead, “It isn’t kept up very well, but I like walking it sometimes.”

If I had known or even just suspected what would happen after we had left the boardwalk, I would have kept to the beach. I regret that now, but how the hell could I have known? Out of all the bad things that could have happened that day, what actually did never would have occurred to me in a thousand years. Even if it had, I never would have thought it would happen a block away from work.

“Sure,” my boyfriend agreed.

He paid, like he always does, leaving our waitress a generous tip for the fast service and for not pestering us like some wait staff do. As we left, I felt another stab of guilt over my place in this relationship. Bad enough that I’m boring, awkward, and nowhere near as affectionate and supportive as Heero is, I feel like I don’t contribute anything and when it comes to our dates, that is absolutely true. I know it isn’t a big deal. Heero certainly thinks so. He has no problem paying for meals or a movie or whatever else we do. You can tell his family does well because I have never seen him actually _look_ at the cost of anything, he just flashes that card of his, like he already knows he can afford it, which is such a strange and alien concept to me that it borders on unbelievable.

          In terms of finances, even with my jobs and if my father didn’t take my money, Heero and I live in completely different worlds. And there really isn’t anything I can do to fix my inability to pay for anything besides doing something illegal or taking up a third job. Heero knows that and he’s understanding. I can’t pay, which he never sees as my fault, so that particular ball is forever in his court. Heero doesn’t hold money sacred like I do, having never known what it’s like to desperately need something like food or clothes or have a bill past due and not even enough cash to take the bus, so he doesn’t care. I know all that, but it doesn’t stop me from feeling like a disgusting leech, nothing more than a despicable parasite latched onto him and feeding off of him until there is nothing left. I was never going to be good enough for him. Looking at him, all I could do was wonder what the hell we were doing together.

          I probably would have let those thoughts sink me into misery for the rest of the day if not for Heero. He did what he does best: he gave me clarity and made my worries and anxieties seem like nothing more than shadows and mist. And he did it with ease, doing nothing more than starting up a simple, but relaxing and almost boring conversation. He dragged me out of my near depression, forcing me to communicate with him. I don’t know if he did it on purpose, somehow sensing that I was in one of my moods or he just had really great timing, but I was happy to focus on him and not my inner turmoil.

          We talked about stupid shit for the rest of the walk back to where I worked; what I wanted to do for the remainder of spring break, Mariela’s birthday, a band that Heero had recently discovered, nothing important, yet all of it was to me. Just like that, I felt myself relax, like just listening to his voice had put me at ease.

          “Did you have a nice time?” he asked me when we were just a block away.

“Yeah,” I smiled at him easily, something that I seem to only be able to do with him, “This was great, thanks, Heero.”

          He blushed a little, but it was his serene, soft smile, so full of love and happiness that made my heart stop. I was suddenly completely overwhelmed with the desire to kiss him. I haven’t taken the initiative like that since that Saturday night when I had finally been able to sleep again, but right then, I really wanted to. If we hadn’t been on a public street, maybe I would have had the spine to do it. Maybe. I like to think so, anyway, but we were too out in the open, and too close to my work for me to dare it, even if I had been feeling especially brave.

          I was so absorbed looking at Heero, at the handsomeness of that smile and feeling this intense love for him knowing that that smile was just for me that I didn’t look where I was going as we turned the corner onto the street that Leneski’s is on and I collided right into someone. The person was bigger than me and I was so unprepared for meeting a solid object that I landed backwards on my ass with a small cry of surprise. The other person fared a lot better than me: he managed to grab the brick wall next to us and keep upright, but the papers that he had been carrying flew everywhere.

          “Ow,” I muttered, although I wasn’t really hurt much, besides my pride.

          The other person hastily kneeled down to gather up what he had dropped so it wouldn’t blow away and I got on my knees to grab a couple errant papers that were trying to escape.

          “I am so, so sorry,” I apologized profusely, “I should have been watching where I was going…”

          Heero rushed to my side and grabbed my arm to help me to my feet.

          “Thanks,” I murmured, blushing a little at my own clumsiness.

          “You alright?” he asked, brushing some dirt off of my jacket.

          “Yeah,” I assured him and started to turn to the person I had run into, apologizing again, “I’m really sorry-,”

          My breath caught in my throat as I looking into a very, very familiar pair of dark green eyes. Trowa hadn’t changed very much in the little over five months since we had broken up. Same height, same long legs and arms, same big hands and tanned skin, a lighter shade than Heero’s. The only thing different was his cinnamon brown hair. It was longer. Not anywhere close to mine, but it hung almost to his chin and his bangs still covered one of his eyes. For the person that had verbally bullied me over my long hair, he had let his own hair go. But besides that, it was like those five months hadn’t happened at all.

          And suddenly, they hadn’t. It felt like I had just broken up with him yesterday. I could see the shock and hurt on his face when I had told him that we were through. I guess, even though he had been well aware of how terrible we were for each other, he hadn’t really thought that I would break up with him. He hadn’t thought that I had the spine. Funny, I hadn’t either. It still surprises me that I had been able to say those words and stay away from him, that I hadn’t gone crawling back in my loneliness. Maybe if I hadn’t had Pepper, if I hadn’t been suffering in longing for Heero, and maybe if my father’s ugly desires hadn’t reared their head, I would have. Or maybe I’m too proud and stubborn, maybe I had been too wounded by our relationship. It wasn’t like I had had much desire to see him after the break up. Had it just been shame from the break up and the things I had done when we had been together, or something else?

          You want to know the really funny thing? I had actually thought that I had moved on from him, moved on from the bad memories, the hurt, the betrayal, all of the shit. I had walked away from him, from _us_ , and I had stayed gone. I had done the one thing that I can’t seem to do to Heero and my father. I hadn’t talked or even thought much about Trowa in months, beyond comparing our broken relationship to mine and Heero’s. But not about _him_. Not about the fallout or the fact that I was never going to be with him again, might never see him again or touch him again, would definitely never have him kiss me again or hold me. I had gotten a cat so I wouldn’t be alone. I had gotten a new friend and a boyfriend who was both good to me and for me, one that actually loved me and didn’t make me feel like shit. One that didn’t make me feel like both a freak and a backstabbing whore of a best friend. I had changed. I was better. I had moved on.

          Moved on. Hah! How fucking hysterical. I had told myself that I don’t think about Trowa because I don’t miss him. I don’t need to think about him because I have nothing but bad memories of him, and since we’re over and done with, what is the point of thinking about it? But that isn’t the truth at all. I don’t think about Trowa because it hurts. As I looked into those green eyes, wide and shocked like mine probably were, I realized how in denial I’ve been these last five months. I realized that I had pushed it all down, all the pain, and chose to believe it was all over simply because I had said it was. I told myself that if Trowa didn’t try to talk to me, didn’t try to get back together, that was fine and it didn’t hurt me at all because it was what I wanted. I told myself that I didn’t miss him because I had never loved him and he had only ever hurt me anyway. I told myself that I wasn’t lonely without him because I had Pepper and I didn’t need friends when they only hurt me.

          But that was a lie, too. I only remember the bad things because I choose to. Because I can’t bear, for even a second, to remember the good. If I do, that aching emptiness and regret in my heart will tear me apart. But then, face to face with the thing that I had tried to scrub my brain and my heart clean of for all these months, trying to pretend that none of it had ever happened or if it had, it had happened to some other person who had simply looked like me, I remembered the truth that I had been denying for all this time just because I couldn’t face that pain, I couldn’t face hating myself even more than I already do, and I couldn’t face my own, pathetic weakness and lack of resolve when I knew, I had fucking known for _weeks_ before I had gone through with it that the breakup had been the right decision for both of us. The truth that not all of it had been bad, and certainly not as bad as I choose to remember it.

          There had been good moments. Wonderful moments, really, especially at the beginning. It’s easy to forget that with all of the shit that happened later. But just because everything fell apart and turned rotten, just because I have regrets and I begrudge him and myself for those bad memories, it doesn’t mean that those other moments hadn’t happened, or that they’re tainted or mean any less. They don’t and I resent myself for forgetting them. Even if it had been out of self-preservation, those memories are bright and shining, sweet and tender. And I, in my cowardice, had tried to erase them. But as I looked at the boy that I had given my virginity to, had given me my first real kiss and shared his time with me for over a year, all of those memories came rushing back like a hurricane.

          I remembered when those thin, cool lips had first kissed mine. Not at the train station. I didn’t count that, partially because it had been so unwanted at the time, but also because I hadn’t been ready for _anyone_ to kiss me. No, my first real kiss had been on a grassy hill overlooking the beach on New Year’s Eve. I could feel that kiss still, how carefully, almost nervously he had kissed me, unsure of himself. Maybe even then he had known it was wrong, had known that he had felt nothing for me. Or maybe he had just worried that I might hit him again. I remembered that endearingly tentative touch, and I remembered how good it had felt. It hadn’t held a candle to my first kiss with Heero, and I have a sneaking suspicion that no other kiss will for the rest of my life, but it had been my first, real experience with intimacy and it had been wonderful. Not the electric shock of any of Heero’s, but it had made me feel alive during a time in my life when I had felt nothing but emptiness. Trowa had made me feel that.

          Trowa had been my first boyfriend. I know that’s not exactly a grand statement considering I’ve had about two and one of them had been a relationship of desperation, but it had been a huge deal for me, especially in those first few weeks when I struggled to find my footing. That first kiss had been… well, it had been a moment of discovery… and one of immense relief. All those years not knowing what I was… truly believing that I was some sexless freak. Well, I still constantly worry about that, given that I still want absolutely nothing to do with the act, but that kiss answered a question that had burned in me since I was twelve years old. I was gay. I liked boys, not girls. I was, at the very least, not such a freak that I couldn’t feel attraction. Trowa had handed that puzzle piece to me. He had given me a surety, a peace of mind over something that had plagued me for four whole years. I owed him so much for that alone.

          And I remember the other things, too. Moments of intimacy and affection that no one, not even my own parents had given me as a child. Trowa kissing me as we hung out in some secluded area. All the times that he had taken me out to eat or to the movies, spent his hard earned cash on me, just so we could be together. Him opening a door for me, smiling at me in one of those rare moments when he hadn’t had one of his many shields up, holding my hand in the movie theater, telling me that I looked nice, how those dark green eyes had seemed to warm just by seeing me… Little shards of happiness. I could see them now, maybe because I had experienced similar things with Heero, just at a larger and much more intense level, like I was realizing for the first time that I had been happy, even if it had been too mixed up with darker things.

          The two of us had… no, _have_ a connection. One that Heero and I will never have that has nothing to do with love or even friendship. A shared history. I could try to forget it existed, but just like those good memories, that did nothing to erase it. A history of pain and loss, but a powerful one. It wasn’t until I had literally bumped into him again that I realized how much I had missed looking into the eyes of the only other person in the world that truly understood how much pain I was in, and felt some of that pain, too. I had missed looking at those shadows in Trowa’s eyes, the comfort in knowing that there was one other person who knew the truth, one other person in mourning. When I looked at Trowa when we had been together, I had realized that I wasn’t alone. I had needed that so much then, and I had needed it just as much after, in those months when I had found myself alone once again.

          Had he thought about me at all afterwards, or had he simply been glad to be rid of me, like I had done him some grand favor? Had he wiped me from his mind like a bad smell and moved on in relief, or had he, like me, simply chosen to forget out of regret? Did he still hate me? Did he even give a shit or had he felt no pain at all, hadn’t even missed me for a second, even as a friend? Did he remember those tender moments or did he have no good memories of our relationship at all? Had I never made him happy, even just for a little while? I don’t want to know, because I’m scared that I already know the answer.

          “I’m sorry,” I started to say again, but this time I was apologizing for a hell of a lot more than just bumping into him.

          Unable to look at those piercing eyes anymore because it hurt too much, I looked down at the paper that I was still holding in my hand. My trained eye recognized one of the forms to place a construction order that Leneski uses. Just at a glance I could tell that it was an order to repair a porch or buy materials to fix one, and the name on the form was Trowa’s father’s. His dad must have sent him out to schedule construction while he was at work, it was the only explanation why he would be on that street. Leneski’s is really the only business there beyond an auto shop and a real estate office. But the more I thought about that, the less it actually made any sense at all. If he had gone there from his house, there were three other hardware stores on his way there that could either sell the materials to fix his porch or could do the construction. Even if we were closest, we were not the cheapest for either materials or labor. True, we did have better construction costs, but for long time customers or large projects. From the list of materials Trowa had filled out on the form, the repairs were minor, really just a one-man job. So why come to our shop when he could have just walked to the hardware store two blocks from his house for the same service at a fraction of the price? I had never met Trowa’s father, but from how he talked about him, he strikes me as a very shrewd man, the kind who pinches every penny and only ever buys _anything_ if it’s on sale.

          Trowa glanced away from me and at where Heero’s hand was still on my arm and just like that, like some switch had been thrown, his eyes went hard and cold, like chips of ice. I had completely forgotten that Heero was even there. The whirlpool of my memories had pulled me in deep. Did Trowa know who Heero was? Did he know that we were together? He had to, everyone in the school fucking knew it. Even if he had never seen Heero and myself together, he had to have heard about it. I had this weird surreal feeling as I realized the situation that I had just bumped into, trapped between my current boyfriend and my ex. This was the sort of thing that might happen on some cheesy soap opera. The next thing you’d know, they’d be fighting over me or some bullshit. That thought almost made me laugh out loud. What was it that Trowa had said to me once?

 

          _“Do you think you’re some prime lay? You?! Do you think some knight on a white horse is going to come by and fuck a piece of white trash like you?”_

The same pain that I had felt back then stabbed at me, but I also felt a pang of bitterness and anger. That was right, I was nothing special, so what was there to fight about? I doubted that Trowa even gave a shit about what I was doing with my life so long as I stayed out of his. Why would he care if a piece of trash like me was dating someone else, it had nothing to with him anymore. We were just strangers that used to hang out together now. I was so wrapped up in painful memories, and even more painful musings, that I was unprepared for when Trowa snatched the paper from me, like I had stolen it from him instead of picked it up for him. He pushed past me, purposely slamming his shoulder into mine so I would stumble.

          “Whatever, slut,” he muttered in that too loud for anyone _not_ hear way that drives me nuts.

          A burst of anger more intense than any I’ve felt since I had punched that wall exploded in me. It easily took control of me before I could take a deep breath and think about what I was doing. While my common sense screamed at me to just let him go and forget that this had ever happened, that rage was so much louder and it had me grabbing his arm and pulling him back. It was shockingly easy to do and it shouldn’t have been, not if Trowa had been determined to leave.

          “What the fuck did you just say to me?” I snarled at him in a threatening tone.

          ‘Slut,’ really? What the hell did that even mean? My reluctance to put out for him had been one of the biggest reasons for our break up! So what made me a slut in his eyes, exactly? Letting him fuck me because _he_ had emotionally blackmailed me? I wasn’t the one that had constantly tried to push him into something he hadn’t wanted to do! I wasn’t the one that had fucking tried to rape him when I hadn’t gotten my way!

          Trowa pulled his arm from my grip like my touch was something especially repulsive to him and faced me, a steely, bitter glint in his eyes. I was reminded again that he was bigger than me, but just like when we had been dating, his height didn’t intimidate me. It had never been his size that had made me wary of him. Poor Heero had seemed so unsure when Trowa had glared at me, no doubt realizing that we knew each other, but the second Trowa had called me a slut, he had bristled and his eyes had gone just as hard as my ex’s. He was at my back and I could feel, without even needing to look at him, that he was ready to defend me if this came to blows. But again, I wasn’t worried about a fist fight. I’ve been punched by Trowa before and while he might be bigger than me, he can’t hit worth shit. No, I was infinitely more terrified of what Trowa might let slip in front of Heero. There were so many things that Trowa knew that I never wanted Heero to find out. Things that Trowa could use to hurt me if he wanted to, and I knew that he did. Things that would destroy Heero and mine’s relationship if he ever knew. He knew that I had had a boyfriend before and it had ended badly because of me, but I have never told him any specifics for very good reasons.

          “You heard me,” Trowa snapped snidely and glanced at Heero with this expression like he was measuring the both of us up, “How long did it take you, a week?”

          I felt my face go red hot in embarrassment as it was made clear just what his problem with me was, which I’m sure made me look like a complete idiot. I really hate my complexion, have I ever mentioned that? Why I couldn’t have been born with my father’s instead of my mother’s pale one is beyond me. I am not exactly well versed in the rules of dating, ok? And since Trowa hadn’t deemed me important enough to talk to after our break up, it had never once occurred to me what he would think about me getting together with Heero.

          To be fair, Trowa might have been the furthest things from my mind, but I feel I can be forgiven for that between finding myself falling in love for the first time, my sleep deprivation, and having to deal with the entire damned school, _including_ Zechs and Relena finding out about us, I hadn’t had the mental capacity to think about the feelings of someone who hated me and hadn’t talked to me in freaking _months_. And really, it wasn’t like I had just dumped him and picked up someone else the next day. I had wallowed in loneliness for a month and a half before I had even become _friends_ with Heero. It had been five goddamn months since I had broken up with Trowa, and Heero and I had only been dating for a couple of weeks! How the hell could he accuse me of being a slut for moving on after almost half a year had passed?

          But did he know that, I asked myself. Did he know how recent a thing this was when all he knew about our relationship had come from ridiculous rumors and homophobic gossip? Maybe a lot of our classmates assumed that we had been together a lot longer than we had.

          But what exactly did Trowa believe, that we had even been together before Heero had broken up with Relena, that he had been cheating on her? As much as that hurt, that the person that I had once called my boyfriend knew so little about me that he would believe that, I wouldn’t put it past him. It takes a cheater to know a cheater, right? That was what really got to me and fed my bitter anger like gasoline on a fire, his hypocrisy. How fucking dare he accuse me of being some… some man-slut who would run around with someone else’s boyfriend right after breaking up with another one when he was the asshole who, had not only cheated on me, but had flaunted it in my face and outright told me that he had every intention of continuing his other relationship _and_ having sex with her!

          In my rage, I shoved at him, gratified when he stumbled back in surprise.

          “You’re one to talk!” I screamed at him, quickly losing control over myself and forgetting that we were not alone, or even some place private, “I’m not the one who had to fuck some girl to pretend to be normal and rub it in my boyfriend’s face!”

          Even though it felt like my heart was tearing in two, it felt kind of good to attack him over that. There had been a lot of things in our relationship that I had never voiced because I had been so afraid of losing him and had felt like I was the only who had done anything wrong, even though I knew that that wasn’t true. Maybe I had destroyed our relationship and had been the one that had ended it, but Trowa hadn’t helped keep us together.

          “Maybe if you had been any good at it, I wouldn’t have had to fuck someone else,” he sneered at me and shoved me back, almost making me bump into Heero, “And let me tell you,” he leaned in, getting in my face, his eyes full of contempt and hate for me, “she was a much better lay than you ever were. Aren’t you ashamed that some girl was more successful in getting your fag boyfriend off than you,” those eyes looked me up and down, measured me and made me feel dirty, ugly and unwanted, just like he had always managed to do before and I could feel my anger start to seep out and be replaced by shame, “Although _that’s_ not surprising,” he snorted, “Even a girl would be more attractive to a homosexual than you, Duo. At least she wanted my cock and didn’t treat it like it was poisonous. Do you know how nice it was to fuck someone who didn’t act like a goddamned child or a virgin spinster?”

          I looked down at the ground so he wouldn’t see the tears that were suddenly pricking at my vision. My face felt incredibly hot, like I had a fever, and my hands shook as his words ripped through me, tearing me apart. I wanted my anger back. Now, I only felt hurt. Oddly betrayed considering his insults were nothing new. He had said similar things when we had still been together. It was amazing, almost an accomplishment that he could still make me feel this way when we weren’t even a couple anymore. Shame. Self-loathing. Unattractive. Repulsive. A freak. Trash. Worst of all, Heero was hearing all of this. He knew. I couldn’t look at him, couldn’t find out what he thought about all of this, if he understood what Trowa was saying and was disgusted with me. I felt like I was going to throw up and whatever fight that was in me was long gone. I truly felt like the unwanted child that my ex had accused me of.

          “I feel sorry for you,” to my horror, Trowa turned his attention to Heero and I really looked at my boyfriend for the first time since Trowa and I had started fighting.

          His expression was both hard and intense, his eyes sharp as he looked at the taller boy with open contempt and hatred and even anger. He had to have figured out who Trowa was. Was he jealous? Did he believe the things that Trowa was saying about me? Was some of that contempt for me as well? I worried about that anger, just who he was mad at and what he would do with it, but he was as still as a statue. I didn’t like that I couldn’t read what he was thinking and feeling. Five minutes with Trowa and I could feel this relationship slipping through my fingers. Worse than that, I felt like I did when Trowa and I had still been together. All those worries and insecurities that raise their heads once in a while when I’m with Heero, knowing that I’m not good enough for him, that I can’t give him what he wants from me without loathing him just like Trowa, feeling like a freak, like our relationship had an expiration date on it and I was just waiting for this one to reach that point like the last one, that I was going to have to watch it fall apart and rot away and know that it was all my fault. Only it wasn’t going to be like with Trowa. This time it was going to kill me. And this time, I knew just how much it was going to hurt Heero.

          “Be careful with blue balls around this one,” Trowa sneered at Heero, “He’s too high and mighty to spread his legs for the likes of us. Even when he does, it’s never good enough for him. He might act like he’s into you, but don’t let it fool you. He’s just a tease and no matter how hard you try, you’ll never get anywhere with him.”

          I wanted to find a hole and let it swallow me up, so ashamed that I would have been happy if a car had jumped the curb and taken me out. Why, why did this have to happen when Heero was with me? Did the universe really hate me that much?! And Trowa… did he truly believe all that? That my issue with sex had just been because my standards were too high? That I was just a tease? What had I done to make him see me that way? Let him kiss me? Touch me? Agreed to go out with him?

But wasn’t I a tease? Maybe not for the reasons why Trowa thought so, but I had agreed to the relationship. I had known what he wanted and when things had started to get more… heated, I had known what I didn’t want. As soon as I had realized just how messed up I was, that I could never be with him like how he wanted to, I should have ended things. Maybe we would still be friends if I had. But like the chicken shit I am, I had kept going. I had let him believe that he had a chance with me, I just needed a little bit of time. I had hurt him all so I could be with him a little bit longer and I was doing the same to Heero. Letting him believe that we were actually a couple, that we had some kind of future together when I knew that the second he brought up sex, it was going to be over.

I was playing him like I had played Trowa, letting him hope, all so I could be happy for a little bit longer. So I could have the intimacy that I wanted; the kissing, the holding hands, the closeness, but never let him have what he wanted. Was this going to be the rest of my life? Just collecting boyfriends for a few months and then destroying our entire relationship when it got too intense for me? This is the sort of person that I am, I realized with shame and self-loathing, a weak, cowardly person with no spine, selfish, a poisonous leech and all I was going to do in the end was rip out Heero’s heart and spit on it.

“Or maybe I’m wrong,” Trowa’s cold eyes raked over my boyfriend, taking in who knows what, his expression, his handsomeness, or just the nice clothes he was wearing, those eyes gaining a cruel glint that I recognized from some of our worse fights, “Maybe you _have_ gotten that far with him. Tell me, what exactly did it take? Did you have to beg him? Or maybe it didn’t take much at all. It must be easy when you have some cash to flash around. See, I didn’t have that luxury, so I had to work for the scraps that I got. Maybe if I had been loaded like you, I could have gotten him to fuck me more. Hell, maybe we would still be together like you two. I might have never been good enough, but then, I never bought you nice, new clothes and gadgets to get you in the sack, did I, Duo? That was my real mistake, thinking that I didn’t have to.”

My face burned like it was on fire as I finally lifted my head and glared at him, but it had nothing to do with shame. True, I did feel some shame and embarrassment at what he was implying. It drove home to me, more than what Zechs bullied me about and what rumors I might catch being spread behind my back, that this is what my classmates think of me. Truly thought of me, didn’t just say it out of cruelty, that I wasn’t with Heero because I loved him. I wasn’t even with him because I was some kind of slut like a lot of them liked to say. No, I was with him because I’m white trash and he isn’t. I’m with him because he buys me new sneakers, new jeans, a cell phone. I’m with him because he’s dumb enough to pay for it and because I don’t have a lot of money, obviously it was the size of his wallet that I loved.

That I hadn’t gone off and fallen for someone when I hadn’t been able to fall in love with him, that Trowa really thought that I was only with Heero for the money, that I was someone’s whore hurt. That he sincerely thought I would have stayed with him if he had been richer hurt even more. It tore me up inside that he was so angry, so bitter that he truly could believe that about me. I had cared for him once, and if I’m being honest, some part of me still does care for him, and I had hoped that he might care just a little for me, if only as a friend, but he only saw me as a money grubbing kept boy. He never knew me, or he had just chosen to believe that, I don’t know which is more painful.

But it wasn’t the pain or the embarrassment of him saying those things in front of Heero that made my face go bright red. This time it was all rage. It flooded right back to me in that instant, like an old friend and I fought hard not to strike Trowa right there on the street. In an instant, he had reduced this beautiful relationship that I am always in such awe of, the one bit of truth and love that I have ever experienced in my pitiful life, to garbage. A farce. A fucking business arrangement. He could think that about me, fine. Apparently everyone does. I could handle being the town whore as well as I could handle being the town faggot. But him saying that about Heero enraged me.

He didn’t know shit. And that he thought that I would have stayed with him after everything he had done to me if he had just had some money was beyond insulting. But Heero had taken me in, he loved me in ways that I can never understand, he was kind and gentle and had given me things beyond what a boyfriend could; self-esteem, security, friendship, truth. He saw things in me that no one ever had, maybe save Quatre. He saw through my father’s bullshit and had found a way to make me believe that maybe, just maybe I wasn’t the loser that my parents had seen me as. Trowa hadn’t even tried to get to know me. He had looked at the bruises on my skin and had ignored them. Heero tried to comfort me over them, he worried about me. And Trowa wanted to make that dirty, wanted to honestly believe that money meant _anything_ to me in the wake of that.

I grabbed Trowa by the front of his shit and shoved him into a wall. I felt almost gratified when his eyes widened in shock. He hadn’t expected me to do that. Hit him, maybe, but not corner him. The fear in those eyes only made me angrier, though. What is it about me that is so terrifying when I get mad? Or maybe he’s just a coward. In the back of my head, I could hear this tiny voice screaming at me not to do this, to control the rage, that Heero was watching, but I couldn’t do it. My anger and my hurt were swelling up in me, controlling me like I was nothing more than a puppet for my own emotions.

“What the _fuck_ do you care, huh?!” I screamed at him, knowing there were tears and pain in my eyes but not caring if my ex saw them, “Why do you give a single, flying fuck what _I_ do, who I see, who I hang out with, who I date, why do you care about _anything_ that happens in my life?! When have you _ever_?! What was it that you said to me? Oh, right, “there’s nothing else I want from you,” remember?” I said snidely even as I felt like my heart was ripping apart remembering these things, “Well guess what, I haven’t put out for you in five fucking months, so why does it matter anymore, huh, Barton?! You’re the one who told me that you didn’t know why you didn’t break up with me! You wanted that just as much as I did, so don’t you act so fucking superior just because I tried to move on! I’m not the one who said that I should have been the one to kill myself! ‘You were never the one I wanted and don’t you fucking forget that’, right? So why do you care one, tiny bit what a piece of trash like me does?! You never even liked me! I could have been literally anyone else, so long as you got your rocks off!”

In my peripheral vision, I saw Heero go pale and horrified as I screamed at my ex, but I couldn’t tell if it was the things that I was saying or just how quickly I had flown out of control. I couldn’t think about Heero anyway, not then, or I was going to lose that anger and I needed this. I needed to make Trowa hurt as much as he had hurt me. Even saying that, I was already too focused on my boyfriend and gave Trowa an opening to get out of my grasp and shove me back again.

“Yeah? And what exactly is there about you to like, Duo?” he asked me in the most condescending tone I had ever heard in my entire life, “Your looks? Let me tell you, they’re certainly not going to win any awards! Calling you average is the closest thing to a compliment you’ll ever get! You’re as scrawny as a twig, so pale you look like you have cancer, and your eyes are about the only thing you have that are even remotely unique, not that anyone would know with that scowl or blank expression you always walk around with. And your hair,” he reached out, making me flinch, and flicked my braid from off of my shoulder, grimacing with some kind of repulsion, “You’re still wearing it like this? It’s no wonder why no one had a hard time believing that you’re gay! It’s insulting to the rest of us. You might as well just put on a fucking skirt and be done with it.

“You know what I don’t miss? How you’d always smell and how I could never go anywhere decent with you because I was too embarrassed of how you dress! Oh, or how just hanging around with you was so dull, I felt like screaming sometimes! It sure as hell can’t be your personality! You’re coarse, swear like a sailor, have an ugly temper, and don’t know anything about anything that _normal_ people are interested in! Who the fuck wants to hear about cooking or your stupid writing or some trite book you finished reading?! Do you really think that anyone gives a shit about that crap? You’re _boring_ , Duo. What’s more, you’re petty and don’t even say a word most of the time! You’re just a drab, tedious bit of _nothing_. You walk around like you’re some kind of rebel with that stupid glare of yours, but you’re a meek, spineless child! How could I or anyone else be interested in someone like you?!

“Get something straight in your head, Duo,” he sneered at me in open contempt, blind to the open, raw hurt on my face, how every one of his words made something bitter and old and terrible wrap like a snake around my heart or how those tears that I had tried so hard to ignore were now streaming down my face without my consent, “the only reason why he,” he pointed a finger at Heero, “or I could ever want to date a loser like you is because you’re the only fag in town, and you come cheap. And just how long is that going to be true, huh? He’s a lot handsomer and richer than I was, won’t be long before he wises up and finds someone prettier than you, one that won’t make him buy him things just for a lay. My advice to you,” he jabbed his finger hard into my chest, “is to get easy quick. You’ll never find another sugar daddy willing to throw money at you like you’re something worthwhile. I mean, what are you even keeping your legs closed for anymore? You aren’t a virgin and you don’t have anything special to save,” he barked out a twisted laugh, “Hell, you never did even when you _were_ a virgin! I should know! I hadn’t even thought it possible, but fucking you was as boring as trying to talk to you! If I had known that, I never would have tried to hang out with you in the first place. I only said that I wanted nothing else from you, because there’s nothing else you’re good for. It’s no wonder you’ve only had one friend that you never had sex with!”

Never mind about finding that hole to hide in. If someone had handed me a gun right in that second, I might have actually blown my brains out. Everything that Trowa was saying, I already knew. I’m not oblivious, ok? I know that I’m ugly and uninteresting. I know have an attitude problem and there is nothing about me that is likeable. Every single thing Trowa just said about me, I’ve thought about myself. Every time Heero says that he loves me or is attracted to me, I think how and why. But… but I still like it when he says those things. Every time he explains what he likes about me, calls me handsome or smart, it makes me feel good. I might think that he’s delusional, but there’s always been this part of me that’s wanted to believe he’s right and truthful, that I’m not the loser that I see myself as. I know that he’s not, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t _want_ to believe it. Still, I know what I am. I know what I look like. And I know how lucky I was that I had a boyfriend like Trowa, let alone Heero.

But having to hear those things from Trowa… to be reminded of them, to be ripped out of the dreamlike cocoon that Heero had so careful woven around me was agony. I had never realized just how much Trowa hadn’t wanted to be with me, how much he had resented me or how he had seen me as a bother beyond the hope of having sex with me, and even that had been a complete let down. It made me wonder for about the billionth time why Heero was with me. Why couldn’t he see whatever everyone, even Trowa, had? Trowa’s words hollowed me out and brought me to a place that I haven’t been to in months. That place of isolation and self-loathing, that grey world that I think has always been there since the time that I was a child, I just self-medicated it away with Quatre’s friendship. Being reminded of just how worthless and unwanted you are is… well hurtful isn’t really an accurate word to describe it, is it? It’s deeper than that. What little confidence I had had thanks to Heero, I felt it being stripped away. I felt like nothing again. Worse, I felt like all those things that Heero had said about me… all the things that he said he loved about were lies, that _I_ was a lie. And now Heero was going to be able to see that, too.

I might have run away then. I sure felt like it. Just go crawling back to the dusty, mold-smelling darkness of my room. Maybe cry. Although I didn’t quite feel like crying. I just felt like turning off everything, even myself, to just stop the hurt and hating myself any way that I could. Stop the knowledge that everything was crumbling around my feet, that Heero was going to see me for who I was now, that Trowa was right, there is nothing likeable about me. Fuck, I don’t even like myself, so why should anyone else? I couldn’t even face the possibility of being alone with only myself again. I couldn’t go back to that. I had to dig my claws into Heero as deeply and lethally as I could because that’s how pathetic I am. He deserved so much better. They all did; Quatre and Heero and Trowa. They had deserved better than me, better than my filth and my nothingness. If only I had the spine for it, I would break up with Heero and run away some place where I couldn’t hurt anyone else and no one would have to deal with me. It would be the only good thing that I could ever accomplish in my life.

I was too busy wallowing in misery and depression that I stopped paying attention to what Heero and Trowa were doing, so I almost didn’t notice it when Heero strode towards us. I glanced at him, my vision blurry from tears so it was hard to take in his expression, but I could recognize rage when I saw it. I thought ‘this is it’, honestly believing that I was the one that he was angry at. How could I not be? I had hidden the reasons why things had gone south with my previous relationship, had dragged him into more of my problems, and… and I didn’t know. I wasn’t exactly thinking logically. I just saw Heero coming towards me and felt so isolated, so insecure by everything that Trowa had said, I had just assumed Heero was going to break up with me, maybe even hit me, ignoring the fact that there was zero reason for him to do that. I was just in a terrible place, mentally and emotionally, that everything seemed like a threat against me.

I was unprepared for when he grabbed me by the back of my shirt and pulled me away from Trowa, but not nearly as unprepared as Trowa was when Heero slammed his fist in his face. I honestly don’t know who was more shocked, Trowa or myself. I actually think I was because, although I have certainly seen my boyfriend angry before, I have never seen him hit someone before. He might not have much technique, and I could see how he had said that he only learned how to punch correctly recently, but he either doesn’t know how to pull his blows or he was just that damned angry, because there was some serious power to that punch. He knocked Trowa back against the wall and split his lip open, blood spraying down his chin and staining his shirt. Heero stood in front of him, still stiff and statue-like, his eyes like blue fire and blood smeared all over his hand.

I stood there like an idiot, watching this, not even thinking for a second that maybe it would be a good idea to split the two of them up in case Trowa retaliated or Heero wasn’t done with just the one punch. My frazzled mind just couldn’t understand for the moment why Heero would punch Trowa. I was in such an awful state that the possibility that my boyfriend might be a bit… annoyed at the shit that Trowa was saying about me had never occurred to me, let alone that he would get angry about it. It should have.

I don’t understand why, after all this time with him, I couldn’t get it through my thick skull that he does care for me, and even if he believed everything Trowa had said, he was not the sort of person to throw me under the bus. He’s the kind of person that would stick up for me even if he was angry at me, that’s just who he is. He isn’t Trowa. He isn’t even Quatre, too frightened to try to do the right thing. I don’t understand how easy it is for me to let these things pull me down. Heero copied my move of grabbing Trowa by the front of his shirt while he was still dazed from the sucker punch and pinned him to the wall. His hands were visibly shaking he was so enraged, but he kept Trowa there, his glare burning into him and Trowa actually looked wary of him, unsure of what to do. The left side of his face was already beginning to swell and bruise.

“I don’t care who you are,” my boyfriend growled, sounding exactly like a pissed off wolf, “and I don’t care what your history is with him, you do _not_ talk to him like that! He’s not the one who isn’t anything special, _you_ are, and if this is how you treated him when you were together, I’m not surprised he broke up with you! Hell, I’ve only known you for a few minutes and I want nothing to do with someone as ugly and twisted as you!”

Trowa’s face twisted in anger, either from being manhandled by someone he clearly hated or just because of what Heero was saying and pushed at him, trying to get him away from him. Heero wasn’t having any of that, though, and kept a firm grip on Trowa’s shirt, shoving him hard enough against the wall that Trowa hit his head against it and hissed in pain.

“I don’t care if you don’t like him,” Heero snarled, “and I don’t care if you’re angry at him or what your fucking problem is, you don’t say those things to _anyone_! And if you really believe any of them, then you have more than just a screw loose! I’m the one who feels sorry for you if you really only dated him because he’s gay and think he’s cheap. If that was really you’re only reason, then you’re the one who’s easy, not him, and I pity you that you’re so disgusting and messed up that that’s the only thing you see when you look at him. But don’t you _dare_ lump me in with a bastard like you!

“I love him,” my boyfriend said with such conviction that I could actually feel my heart stopping for a few beats and even Trowa looked bowled over by the ferocity of Heero’s raw emotions, “so I know that you’re completely wrong, everything you just said. There must have been something about him that you liked if you decided to date him, even if you say there isn’t. And if there really isn’t, and if you can’t see how amazing he is, then that’s because of your own failings, not his!

“If you really think that he isn’t attractive, that he’s boring and common, then you’re fucking blind! Duo is beautiful! Even if I hadn’t fallen for him, I still would have been attracted to him. His eyes are gorgeous and you’re crazy if you think for a second that just having long hair makes him even _slightly_ feminine! That’s your own damned prejudices and it doesn’t make it true! You obviously didn’t spend a single, fucking second trying to get to know him if you can act like him being skinny or smelling or always wearing worn clothes is somehow his fault!

“And as for his attitude and glaring all the time, if that’s the only side of him that you ever saw, then you didn’t give him a reason to be anything else! And you know what, I’m _glad_. I’m glad that you never got to see what he’s really like, how handsome he looks when he smiles, how gentle and compassionate and intelligent he is, how hard he works for his family, how responsible and caring he is because someone like you doesn’t deserve to know him, to see that side of him! If you never got to see those things, it’s only because you never gave him a reason to show them to you, and that’s _your_ fault!

“And you think he’s boring?” Heero snorted mocking laughter, “The only boring person here is you if you never enjoyed spending time with him, if you could never find the things that he likes interesting! Even if you didn’t, that doesn’t make him dull, it makes you dull for not even bothering to try to like what he likes! You were his boyfriend, it was your damned job to do things with him, connect with him, and all you can complain about is that he likes things that other people don’t? And that makes him uninteresting?

“I love that Duo likes those things, I love that he isn’t like everyone else and doesn’t try to be! I love how alive and excited he gets when he’s cooking, I love how intense he is when he’s writing one of his stories, I love how he gets so wrapped up in whatever he’s reading sometimes that a bomb could go off and he wouldn’t even flinch, and I love how he doesn’t need to prattle on and on about mundane things, that we don’t need to have hour long conversations to enjoy each other’s company. If that’s the sort of person you were looking for, you had no business dating him in the first place! 

“As for the things that I buy him, it’s not any of your goddamn business, but they were gifts. I’ve never asked him for anything, and he’s never asked anything out of me, we don’t need to. I buy him things because I care about him, that’s the only fucking reason I need and anyone that thinks that there needs to be another reason is sad and pathetic and they can go fuck themselves. Duo’s right, what we do together, what he’s doing now with his life is none of your business and he doesn’t owe you a single, damned thing.”

I stared at my boyfriend in complete awe, his words washing over me and through me like the tide, trying to push out the poison that Trowa’s tirade had filled me with like grains of sand. There was still this intense pain in my heart, but this time it was from love. Intense, burning affection for him, for everything that he was saying because I knew that he wouldn’t lie about those things. Beautiful… Heero really thought that I was beautiful? I had known that he’s attracted to me, he’s said so enough times but… beautiful, really? How? How is that even possible? How can he see me like that when no one else does? When every time I look in the mirror, I can only see how ugly I am? And every time Heero said that he loved something about me… I could feel my heart swell with pure, raw emotion.

I hadn’t known that he felt that way. Loved me, perhaps, but those things? I’ve always seen myself as boring, just as Trowa has said. I never have anything interesting to talk about, I don’t know popular bands or television shows or movies. I’m not interested in sports or dancing or really anything that most kids my age are. All I do is read and listen to music that most of my classmates would think is old fashioned. I don’t find my writing to be anything exciting, either and like Trowa says, who gives a shit about cooking? I would have thought that my getting excited about trying out a new recipe would make me a dork or effeminate in anyone’s eyes, but Heero said he liked that about me… no, he _loved_ it.

And suddenly, looking at him, so intense and angry on my behalf, looking like he wanted to belt Trowa again and insisting on how much he loves me… what Trowa thought, what he said didn’t matter. It didn’t matter at all. It was nothing but white noise, senseless slurs like one of my classmates calling me a pedophile. All that mattered was what Heero thought and said, because he was the only one that mattered to me. If he could love me for those things, if he thinks I’m handsome and interesting, then why should I care what Trowa thought? Or anyone? Heero loves me. That should be enough. So why, even when I was well aware of that fact, did sometimes it seem so hard to believe? How could I let a little rant from my ex bring me so low? Why did I have to keep being reminded of Heero’s feelings?

No one has ever really had my back before, you know? Not like this. Quatre had always been there for me, but he had never stuck up for me. He had never told Zechs and Relena to fuck off or tell them that they were full of shit for the things that they said about me. He would try to cheer me up afterwards and I knew that he never believed those things, but he hadn’t been able to stick up for me. I didn’t know what to do, how to feel seeing Heero attack Trowa for hurting me. I didn’t know what to do with this feeling in my chest, knowing that he was by my side, not just protecting me or sheltering me, but letting me know through his actions that he believes in me. _Me_ of all people, someone that no one should ever have any faith in. What do you do with that knowledge? With this feeling that you’re part of something greater than yourself, a true partnership, when you know deep down inside that it can never last? That it will inevitably end doesn’t rob it of any of its power, but the loss of it… I don’t know, now that I’ve seen it and felt it and experienced it, how I will be able to live without it. I think there are some holes, some losses, like the loss that I felt after Quatre’s death, that you aren’t meant to survive. Some losses will rip you to pieces no matter how hard you try to keep those pieces together.

“I don’t know what happened to the two of you,” Heero continued, “and I don’t know what your relationship was like, but if this is what you were like when you were together, then I’m glad he broke up with you. All that I do know is that you hurt him and you don’t get to say those things to someone you’ve hurt! You need to move on and let all of this shit go!”

Trowa angrily shoved at Heero and this time he was more successful at freeing himself, his face twisted with hate that I hadn’t even known he was capable of feeling towards anyone but me.

“You’re delusional, you know that?” he sneered at my boyfriend, “You really think that he,” he pointed at me, “loves you? That he gives a single shit about you? He doesn’t love _anyone_ , he isn’t even capable of it! This is all a big game to him and as soon as you want more, want to get closer, he’ll throw you to the curb like he did me, just you watch!” Trowa glared at me and I could actually _feel_ how much he hated me, loathed me, how much he wanted to hurt me for everything I had ever done to him, “But hey, you don’t have to take my word for it. You’ll see what the bitch is really like when you get sick of his cock tease act. If you really want to get laid with him, you’re better off just taking what you want and not letting him get a word in, or a fist for that matter, he likes to hit, this one. You’ll be dropping him anyway as soon as you get bored, but trust me, it only takes the one time.”

A new, hot flash of rage filled Heero’s eyes and I knew what he was going to do before he even curled his fist. Like lightning or a snake’s strike, Heero lashed out again, his fist making a startling loud crack as he nailed Trowa in the face again, the force of the blow twisting the taller boy’s head to the side.

“You sick, twisted, _disgusting_ ,” Heero snarled and brought his fist back again, the fury in him taking complete control over his senses.

‘He isn’t going to stop,’ I realized in shock, ‘He’s going to keep hitting him this time.’

I am ashamed to admit that a part of me, a small and ugly part, liked that idea. That part of me still felt incredibly hurt by everything that Trowa had done to me and relished in the sight of him almost doubled over, blood dripping down from his mouth. It was like some animal, a coyote, wanting more blood, more pain, more revenge. But the rest of me just felt horror. This wasn’t Heero. Not _my_ Heero. The one that was always so understanding and even tempered, who forgave me for everything and was so kind of and gentle. This was me in his skin. All that dark rage and the desire to tear things apart. I had done this to him. I knew him well enough to know that if this kept on, Heero was going to regret it. He was going to hate himself for acting like such a monster. That guilt was enough to snap me out of my depressed stupor and I ran to intercede, wrapping my arms around his to keep that fist from hitting his target.

“Heero, stop!” I demanded.

He looked back at me, those beautiful blue eyes wide with surprise. He hadn’t thought that I would stop him.

“Why?” he snapped, “Did you hear what he just said about you?! Why should I stop?!”

Yes, I had heard it. I was trying very hard not to think about those words, that the boy that had once been my first boyfriend had just insinuated to my current one that he should just force me to have sex. And I was trying not to think about why that upset Heero so much, knowing that he was no doubt thinking about that day when he had saved me from Zechs and his cronies. Heero has always had a protective streak a mile wide. If I were a psychologist, I would say that it has something to do with his best friend getting murdered by a bunch of bullies when Heero hadn’t been there to protect him. I can understand that feeling, my baggage is pretty similar. But after that day… after seeing me on my knees, bleeding and being treated worse than a whore, it had gone into overdrive.

If he knew… if he even suspected that Trowa had blackmailed me into having sex with him… and that I had broken up with him after he had tried to actually rape me, not even I could stop him from breaking Trowa’s face. It was hard enough just trying not to remember that night in that derelict house, the smell of mold and the pizza we had just eaten, Trowa’s heavy body on top of me, his large hands fumbling at my clothes. I couldn’t think about that or I was going to have a panic attack. Because back then it had been horrible enough just knowing that this person that I had once called my friend would do that to me just because he was sexually frustrated. But now? Now that I know what’s it like to be raped, now that I have all these nightmares in my head… I can’t bear to have those memories of Trowa join the ones of my father. I just can’t. If I do, I’ll never be able to look at him or think of him again without wanting to scream.

“Because I’m asking you to,” I said softly, letting the warmth of his body soothe the chill and horror I was feeling as I battled against the flow of those memories, refusing to let my broken mind pull me under like it so often does right after my father fucks me, “Please, Heero, you don’t want to do this. He isn’t worth it, it’s just words.”

And he wasn’t. Trowa was not worth the boy that I loved feeling guilty or, god forbid, even getting arrested for assault. I could feel Heero’s body start to relax and knew that I had won. Not because Heero agreed that Trowa wasn’t worth it, but just because I had asked. I hate that about him, that he just gives in to everything that I ask for, like I’m someone important, someone that matters, like I even know what the fuck I’m doing. Heero lowered his fist and I dared to let go of him even though I could still feel some tension and anger in him. I trusted him not to fly off the handle again.

Trowa straightened up and spat out a wad of blood, rubbing his fist against his bloody lips. When he looked at Heero, it wasn’t in rage, although there was still some dark, bitter anger there. He didn’t look like he was going to retaliate, either. He looked… hurt, I realized, perplexed. Not by the blows, but by something else. I couldn’t figure out what it was since he was the one who had said all the really hurtful things to me. But the hurt there was definitely directed at me and nothing that Heero had said or done. Had he actually wanted Heero to hit him? That made no sense at all.

“Whatever,” he growled, picking the papers he had dropped when Heero had hit him the first time off the ground, “Neither of you are worth my fucking time. I hope you enjoy each other,” he snapped snidely and then strode off down the street.

I felt no relief at all watching him go. I felt like I had been hit by a bus again, only one made of bad memories and hurt instead of metal. Everything that Trowa had said rang in my ears, his face full of anger and hate like a permanent wall paper in my head. But more than any of his insults, it was the last thing that he had said before Heero had punched him again that ripped my insides to watery shreds. And it had nothing to do with Trowa almost raping me, or even his insinuation that Heero do the same.

 

_“But hey, you don’t have to take my word for it. You’ll see what the bitch is really like when you get sick of his cock tease act… You’ll be dropping him anyway as soon as you get bored, but trust me, it only takes the one time.”_

 

My greatest fears, anxieties, and insecurities, my biggest nightmare laid out in just a few words. Trowa hadn’t known… he couldn’t have known just how fragile I am when it comes to my relationship with Heero, he couldn’t have known how much I hurt when I think about how things have ended with him, and how I know they’ll end with Heero the same way. But it seemed so calculated on his part, even if I knew he had just been ranting in anger, an attempt to eviscerate me. All of those fears rose to the surface and swallowed me up. I know… I’ve known since the first moment I realized that Heero has feelings for me that this is the only outcome of getting close to him, of letting him in. How can there be any other ending?

I’m broken. A freak. Everything that Trowa accused me of. Cock tease. That’s what I am. I could never be what he wanted, and all he had ever wanted me for was sex and to ease his loneliness after the death of the only person he had ever loved. And I had been incapable of even that. Maybe Trowa’s actions towards the end had sealed the deal, but my coldness and distance and refusal to be intimate had been what had decayed us. I had ruined the only relationship I had ever been in because there is something terribly wrong with me. I had hoped that the issue had simply been because I hadn’t been madly in love with Trowa like I am with Heero, but I know now that that isn’t true. Thinking about having sex with Heero… the terror isn’t as strong, but my lack of desire is. I have to face up to the fact that I am never going to like sex. Hell, I’m probably never going to get an erection, never feel real desire for anyone or anything.

I have been living in a dream. A magical place where all of those things don’t matter. I can be with Heero because I love him and he loves me. We have fun together. We like being together. That’s all you need in a relationship, right? But all this time, I’ve been ignoring that voice in my head that constantly reminds me of what Trowa said to me once, that there is no point to this kind of relationship if one of the parties won’t have sex. Maybe that’s true, maybe it isn’t. But I know that Heero wants that. Maybe not now, but sooner than later, he’s going to want to take that step with me. And I can’t do it.

There are only two possibilities there. One, it will happen the same way that it did with Trowa. I’ll keep putting it off until Heero gets angry, until he starts assuming that he’s the problem, that I don’t find him attractive and he starts to resent me. Then, to keep him in my life, I’ll cave, let him do whatever he wants until I start to resent him, too. We’ll grow to hate each other, especially when Heero finds out that I’m such a disgusting freak, I can’t even get hard and we’ll either stay together out of loneliness, constantly fighting and hurting each other, or Heero will finally give up on me. Two, I break up with him before any of that happens. It’ll hurt like hell for both of us, but there is some part of me that knows that this is what I’ll have to do. Heero won’t break up with me, not until he knows the truth of who I am, just like Trowa said, but I know what needs to be done.

And what will be the point of forcing myself to have sex with him, I asked myself, dimly realizing that more tears were pouring down my cheeks and my chest felt painfully tight, right on the verge of an anxiety attack. What was the point of it when Trowa was right about that, too, that I can’t satisfy Heero? Why hurt him like that, make him feel like he isn’t good enough when I’m the one who isn’t good enough? I ruin everything. I destroy everything. I don’t have a single reason to stay together with Heero knowing all these things. I love him and I have to do right by him, I have to save him from me and my ugliness. But I’m so pathetic that I can’t even do that, because I need him too much. I’m too weak.

I felt like our entire relationship has been this clock, ticking away the seconds and minutes that we could still be together, still be happy before I piss it all away. And now, we were even closer to the end. Heero had met Trowa, had met my shameful past and had been given a glimpse into the person that I really am. Maybe he didn’t believe it, maybe he had stood up for me, but later he was going to go over everything that was just said and wonder if it was true. If I really was a tease. If I really wasn’t worth it. He was going to walk away from me. Or I was going to walk away from him. And then it would be all over, every good thing that I have left in my life.

I couldn’t bear my own thoughts, even if they were the ones that I’ve been struggling with since Heero had confessed to liking me. My chest felt like it was going to explode and I was certain that I was going to start screaming. I turned while Heero was still glaring at where Trowa had gone, like he was mentally daring him to come back and not paying attention to me, and walked quickly down the street towards my work. I didn’t look back at him. I couldn’t. I couldn’t look at that handsome face and those beautiful, expressive eyes. It was killing me. My past… no, who I am and all the things that I’ve ever done because of who I am, was killing me.

I could feel sobs clawing their way up my throat and a fresh torrent of tears dripped down my face, but I ignored it all.

“Duo, wait!” I heard Heero call to me, but I ignored him, too.

I didn’t know where I was going, certainly not to work, but I kept walking. I needed to get away from everything. No, the only thing that I needed to get away from was _me_. The only thing that I can never escape. My vision was blurry with tears, but I kept walking, keeping up a quick stride without actually running until I found the entrance to the woods behind the Leneski property. I almost tripped over some bramble and didn’t even care enough to slow down or take the time to get my bearings. I could hear Heero following me, trying to catch up to me, and I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t let him see what a wreck I was from one, stupid, insignificant fight with someone that I had barely even thought about in almost half a year.

“Duo, hold on, slow down!” familiar hands grabbed at my arm, pulling me back.

I squeezed my eyes shut, not wanting to look at his face, to see him judging me or embarrassed to catch me crying for what felt like the hundredth time. The last thing I expected was to feel his arms around me, wrapping me close against his chest. Feeling him around me was like coming home. I mean real home, that feeling of belonging, of safety, of being surrounded by the people that care for you and love you. His body was so warm, so familiar, and it chased away the chill in my gut. Feeling him holding me when I had been thinking that I didn’t deserve this kind of comfort and intimacy opened the flood gates. I had thought I had been crying before, but that was nothing compared to him breaking down my cracking barriers.

I shoved my face into the crook of his shoulder and sobbed, my tears like a damned waterfall that just wouldn’t stop. I felt this deep, never-ending sorrow. For Trowa for losing Quatre and having to settle for me, for making him that angry and bitter instead of being the boyfriend that he had deserved. For Heero who was stuck with a loser like me because of his shitty taste in partners, who was doomed to have his heart broken. And for me, for seeing the dream that I had dared to keep, a dream of love and a future unraveling before my eyes, knowing that just like Heero, I was never going to have what I really wanted. Because of fate, some cruel trick of the universe, and my own failings, I was never going to be happy, I was never going to keep anything good in my life.

“It’s alright,” Heero soothed, stroking my hair gently, “Just get it all out.”

‘I don’t think I can,’ I almost said, ‘There’s too much, I can’t get all of this out, I’ll choke on it.’

But to my surprise, I didn’t. I cried my heart out, but every second that went by with those arms around me, every time he stroked my hair like I was a little kid, I felt that sorrow ease just a tiny bit until it was small enough for me to bottle it up again. When I was finally able to lift my face from his shoulder, I found that my tears had left a bit wet patch on his shirt, making my face flame with embarrassment, but he didn’t complain, just smiled at me. I rubbed at my burning eyes, wanting to find that hole again. Why did I keep crying like a goddamned baby in front of him? Why couldn’t I be strong for once in my fucking life and move on from these things? And if I couldn’t do that, why couldn’t the universe allow me an ounce of grace to cry in private?

“Are you alright?” my boyfriend asked me in concern.

I didn’t even bother to try to lie about that one. Any idiot could see that I was far from ok. I shook my head, keeping my eyes to the ground, unable to find the words to describe the crippling depression and self-loathing that I was feeling, and even if I could, I didn’t want to. I didn’t want Heero to ever see that side of myself.

“Hey,” he soothed, reaching out to brush his knuckles against my cheeks to try to wipe away the tracks of tears in vain, and cupped my face in his hands, tilting my head up so he could look at me, “Duo Maxwell, I need to tell you something and I want you to listen to me very carefully, alright? Can you do that?”

I nodded, finding myself completely incapable of words at that point, like Trowa’s hate had just made everything dry up on my tongue. He leaned in close and pressed a gentle kiss on my forehead. My eyes slid closed in bliss. I felt like it had been forever since he had last kissed me, like that one, single fight had gone on forever, like some epic war instead of what had probably been a mere twenty-minute argument. I felt so worn down, so tired, all of my energy just gone.

“Your ex, your father, Zechs, Relena… all of the assholes that hurt you and bully you and think they’re superior to you…” he told me, his eyes shining with some intense affection and conviction, “They’re half of what you are, and they always will be. Do you hear me?”

I shook my head even as I felt my heart swell with his words. I wanted to believe him so badly, but how could I? How could I when the truth stares back at me through every mirror?

“Yes, you are,” he insisted, his voice like steel, “You are so much more than them. Everything that they say about you, it’s all lies and they know it. You’re beautiful and strong and they’re trash, every last one of them. So don’t you dare believe in a single thing that that prick just said to you, because he’s full of crap.”

I thought about protesting that, but some part of me suspected that he was right. Even if Trowa had been right in everything he had said, he had only said those things to hurt me. He had gone out of his way to tear me to shreds, and why? Because he was angry over our break up? Why would he be? He hadn’t wanted to be with me anymore than I had wanted to be with him at the end. For getting a new boyfriend? Why did he care? I still couldn’t figure that out. He hated me enough to say those awful things, so why did it matter to him? And for that matter, why did him saying all that hurt _me_ so much. I was over him and our messed up relationship, wasn’t I?

But then I thought about seeing him again for the first time in months, before he had turned hostile. Some part of my heart had cried out. Some part of me had been happy to see him. Why? He had hurt me so much… he had almost assaulted me, hit me, cheated on me, and ripped my heart to pieces over and over. So how could I have been happy? I think it’s because, somewhere deep inside, I’ve always remembered the excitement I had once felt towards him. The anticipation of something new, something special, something I had dreamed about in abstract ways, but had never believed it would happen to me.

I keep telling myself that I had never felt anything for him more than friendship, that it had been easy to break up with him, that I had moved on. But it was in that moment in the woods that I truly realized just how in denial I’ve been these last five months. Maybe I had never loved him. I can see the difference now that I’ve actually fallen for something. Ok, so it had never been love, or even a crush, but that doesn’t mean that I had felt nothing for him. We had been friends and I had cared for him. I had even felt some attraction to him if I’m being completely honest. I had liked him. I had liked being with him, when we weren’t fighting at least. I had lied to myself, tried to deny the truth, but after seeing him again, I couldn’t keep the lie together. I hadn’t moved on, and breaking up with him had not been easy. If it had, I would have done much sooner.

I had… I had missed him. His cool, quiet demeanor. Those dark green eyes. The feel of his hand on me and how sometimes his touch could be so reverent. I had known that that touch was not for me, but that doesn’t mean that I hadn’t learned to crave it. I missed his kisses, his dry sense of humor, hearing the sound of his voice. I had missed him… but I had refused to let myself acknowledge it. If I had felt an emptiness in me, that was just the loneliness and had had nothing to do with him. But now… now I see how much breaking up with him had hurt me. And the knowledge that now, because of me, because of what I had done to us we could never be even friends just killed me inside. I really am a fuck up. Maybe I hadn’t deserved Trowa’s insults, but I deserved his hate and his rage. Every, single ounce of it.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I murmured, rubbing tiredly at my eyes again.

“There’s nothing wrong with you, Duo,” my boyfriend assured me, putting a supportive hand on my shoulder.

“Yes there is,” I snapped, but I still couldn’t tell him why I believed that, what I actually meant, that it had little to do with my emotional outburst, although there was that, and more to do with everything else that was wrong in me, “I keep doing this…”

Making my problems your problems. Hurting you. Worrying you. Dragging you through the mud because I’m too much of a weak coward to deal with things on my own…

“There’s nothing for you to be ashamed about,” Heero insisted, “He hurt you… anyone would have been upset with the shit he said, but he was your boyfriend. I would be alarmed if that didn’t get to you.”

‘I deserved it,’ I thought miserably.

And I did. I deserved all of the hate and anger and ugly accusations Trowa had thrown at me. But I couldn’t say that. It would only upset Heero more, and he didn’t understand. So I just shook my head and pulled away from him.

“I’m going to be late,” I muttered and walked past him.

Heero grabbed my arm again and pulled me back. I didn’t resist. I had all of the mental strength of a two-week old kitten at that point and his touch, even in that situation, felt too good, too comforting. I had used up all of my strength fighting Trowa, and losing, I just didn’t have it in me to fight Heero, too.

“Duo…” he sighed, “I’m not psychic. I don’t know what you’re thinking. I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s bothering you.”

“I don’t want you to know what I’m thinking,” I admitted, unable to look at him.

“Why?” he demanded.

“Because it isn’t your problem!” I snapped and sat down hard on a tree that had fallen over at some point, probably during a storm, hiding my face in my hands, “None of this is your problem.”

          “Of course it is,” Heero said softly, “It’s your problem and you’re my boyfriend, that makes it my problem, too. You’re hurting and I want to help.”

          I raised my head as I felt him move closer and saw him kneeling on the ground in front of me, not caring that he was getting mud smeared all over his probably expensive jeans and sneakers.

          “You’re getting your jeans dirty,” I said weakly.

          “Come on, Duo, _talk_ to me,” he completely ignored me and put a hand on my knee, “What happened between the two of you? You told me a little the night that we got together, that things got bad, he was an asshole, you made mistakes, he hated you, and you broke up with him. I thought that you were exaggerating, but I get that now,” he said, but there was little humor in his voice, “I don’t know what kind of mistakes you think you made, if you even did, but if this is how he treated you, you were in the right to break it off.”

          Something in my heart shuddered at that. I was right… It’s funny. All of these months, when I dared to think about the break up, I had told myself the same thing over and over again. Even if it had hurt, it had been the right thing to do. We had been miserable together. There was no way that we would ever work as a couple. He wanted things that I couldn’t give him and he just made me depressed and angry and stressed out all the time. And after he had nearly raped me, what other choice had I had? It had been the best thing for both of us. I had thought that I had believed all of those things, but deep down, there had been a doubt. I had wondered if I had done something terrible, if I should have given us another chance. If I had truly ruined everything. I know, I know. The asshole had cheated on me and, if I am being honest, he had gotten a bit abusive towards the end. I know that I’m just making excuses because I regret how it had ended, but hearing from Heero that I had done the right thing was like a balm on my soul, to have one person assuring me it had been the right choice, to have my back.

          “I think I can piece some of the rest together now, too,” he continued, “The two of you were intimate, but not as much as he wanted, so he cheated on you with a girl. Correct?”

          He said it in the softest, most neutral tone to lessen the blow, but I felt the pain any way. Heero was technically right, but it had been so much more complicated than that. Cheating… could I even call it that, really? I mean, considering that it had been our relationship that he had kept a secret, hadn’t he really been cheating on _her_ with me? Hadn’t that made _me_ the ‘other woman’, the affair, the dirty secret? Being cheated on hurt enough, but thinking that… knowing that he had turned me into that and I had been willing to put up with it just to keep him made me feel so filthy… so much like the trash he accused me of being.

          “I deserved it,” I murmured.

          And I had. If I had just broken it off with him the second I had known I couldn’t give him what he needed, or if I had just sucked it up and given it up to him sooner or tried harder to make him feel wanted… I had given him a reason to cheat on me. Any pain I had felt every time I had seen him and her together… that was my fault, not his. Heero suddenly squeezed my knee hard. I know he hadn’t meant it as a kind of punishment, just to get my attention or what I had just said had pissed him off so much that he hadn’t realized he was even doing it.

          “Don’t say that!” he snapped at me, very obviously bothered by what I had said, “Don’t you _ever_ say that! No one deserves to be cheated on, _no one_! I don’t care what you did or didn’t do! I don’t care what happened between the two of you, he cheated on you, that makes _him_ the asshole!”

          I stared at him, a bit wide eyed for a moment, but not at what he was saying, but at my own feelings. I’ve blamed myself for everything bad in mine and Trowa’s relationship, all of it. Even the things that he had done to me, I had known they were my fault, I had driven him to them. But that didn’t stop them from hurting me, and it hadn’t stopped me from loathing him and wanting to attack him over them. And every time I had felt that way, I had hated myself even more. What right did I have to feel angry at him? Hell, what right did I have to even feel hurt or betrayed? I was no victim. I had deserved it. That I could feel hurt, that I could see myself, for even a second, as the one who had been wronged just made me a pathetic, disgusting excuse for a human being.

          I had believed that and the things that Trowa had just accused me of had only strengthened that belief. But Heero didn’t buy that. And even though he was on the outside and wasn’t seeing things clearly, I wanted to so badly for him to be right. I wanted the right to be in pain, to not feel guilty, I wanted to know that I hadn’t deserved the betrayal, all of the shit. But I just couldn’t believe that. Even if Heero is usually completely logical, and often right, when he points out that I’m being a ridiculous idiot, I couldn’t escape the damage that I had done, this feeling of guilt and regret right in my guts telling me that no matter what Heero said, this _was_ my fault.

And I could not escape from that voice in my head gleefully and sadistically reminding me of all the moments in Trowa and mine’s relationship that Quatre would have done better, that not only had I cruelly and selfishly taken the person that should have been his boyfriend, not only had I hurt him and destroyed something that should have been beautiful if I had been someone else, I was once again just a pale copy, a fucking mockery of the person that should have lived. Heero might have gotten me to believe that that wasn’t true, and I needed to stop thinking things like ‘it should have been me,’ but that didn’t mean it was easy to actually do. There will probably always be a part of me that wishes I was dead and Quatre was alive.

          “You don’t understand,” I muttered a bit defensively.

          How could he? Heero was prefect. He was sane and well adjusted. Sure, he had his issues, kind of hard to hide your sexuality and have your best friend murdered and not come out with a few battle scars, but compared to me, he was the shining model of perfect health and personal strength. Heero would never make the mistakes and choices that I had. He could never be that fumbling, that cold, that heartless, or that incompetent. How could he ever understand what it feels like to mess up at the depths that I had, to feel like you deserve to be hurt because you’re such a fuck up? To know that you hurt someone you cared about, not in some knee-jerk reaction, but _deliberately_ , and you had seen it at the time and had the ability to stop it, but had chosen not to for selfish reasons? _How_?

          “What is there to understand?!” he snapped at me, losing his temper again, his face pinched and his eyes burning, “He went behind your back and had sex with someone else. He lied to you and betrayed you. He hurt you! I don’t care about his reasons. I don’t care if he’s really bisexual and was madly in love with her. I don’t care if he was hard up and wasn’t getting what he wanted from you. I don’t care if he was just using her like a smokescreen like I did Relena. None of that matters! No matter his reason, it was a prick thing to do! Nothing you did makes you deserve to be treated like that!”

          I eyed him when he mentioned Relena. That was right, I realized, he knew a hell of a lot more than I did, what it was like to want to be, or at least appear to be, normal so badly that he was willing to use someone else’s feelings for that illusion. Heero could understand Trowa, what he had been going through and his reasons a lot better than I could. But that realization made me wonder something that made my insides go all cold and hard.

          What if Heero and I had gotten our heads out of our asses a hell of a lot sooner? Would things have been different if Heero had confessed his feelings when he had still been hanging around with Zechs’s group and I had still been (relatively) in the closet? Would he have had the strength and courage at that point to dump Relena and his friends for me? My almost getting beaten into a hospital bed had been the catalyst to letting go of the mask that he had carefully constructed around his life. He had said it himself that day, that he couldn’t let them do that to me. But if my life hadn’t been on the line, could he have done it? If he had figured out that he could have both, that I liked him before he had had a falling out with that crowd and his girlfriend, what would he have done? Which Heero, the one that I am nearly psychotically crazy for, or the one that had turned his back on me for the sake of his own safety, would I have gotten? Would he have decided to do exactly what he had done in reality and be content just by having me, or would he have wanted to play the field, be like Trowa and be my friend and lover at night, and my bully by day? Would he have been able to live with himself to have what he wanted and what he had once thought he needed in the same breath?

          An even more painful thought came to me. What if Heero would have decided to go even deeper than that? What if he had followed in Trowa’s footsteps completely and decided he could have what his heart wanted, me, and what people _expected_ him to want, Relena, at the same time? The only real difference being that I wouldn’t have been blind to it. I would have known from the first day that I would always be his filthy little secret. To be with him, knowing all that, and assuming that I even would have been _able_ to be with him back then, what would I have done?

Could I have walked away from him when I couldn’t Trowa? This person that I actually loved? Even knowing my past mistakes, and knowing that this time it was going to rip my heart right out of my chest? Or would I have just repeated history, repeated all those mistakes I regret so much but can’t seem to fucking _learn_ from, just because I crave love like a nympho craves sex? Because the experts are right. Addiction is genetic and instead of booze or rage or pills, I’m addicted to being loved.

I would like to say that I’m smarter than that. I would like to say that I have enough of a backbone to be strong, make a difficult decision that I know is the right one for me in the long run, that things were so awful with Trowa, there’s no way I’d be willing to go through that again just for some scraps of affection. But I can’t. Because it would be a lie. That I’m with Heero now even knowing that it’s never going to go anywhere is a testament to that. If Heero had wanted me to be his strange on the side, even knowing I couldn’t have sex with him, as lonely and broken as I am, I would have jumped at the chance. I would have doomed my own heart to misery and rot just for a taste of a relationship with him. Tell me, how can you possibly see yourself as the one wronged when you willfully keep sticking your hand in the fire over and over and over? Trowa had never been the bad guy. Just me.

Heero caught me sizing him up and his expression suddenly went incredibly hard and intense. I felt my stomach plummet as I realized that he knew exactly what I had been thinking, that I had been comparing him to Trowa, putting him in my ex’s place and trying to figure out if he would have done the same things to me. I instantly felt a deep shame for even _wondering_ that, for thinking for a second that he was anything like Trowa, that he would be that cruel to me. I know how stupid my own thoughts were, ok? But I was depressed and my mind does these weird leaps of thought and logic when in these moods. I know fully well that this was _Heero_ , not Trowa, and Heero would never do something like that to anyone, especially not me. He had been miserable hiding his sexuality, and he still feels guilty about leading Relena on and he can’t stand her. Cheating on someone he cared about wasn’t just beyond him, he wouldn’t even _think_ about it. That’s the kind of person that he is. He would rather be either miserable or ostracized than do something so underhanded. So I felt ashamed of myself for just wondering about it, like I had betrayed him somehow. What made me feel even worse was that, when he grabbed both of my knees in a firm, but painless, grip, he wasn’t angry, although he almost looked it. He looked worried and scared that I had considered it for even a second. And he looked hurt.

“ ** _Never_** ,” he said forcefully, his voice fierce like he was waging a battle with his words and the conviction in his voice had a fresh tear rolling down my left cheek, “Do you hear me, Duo? I would never, _never_ do that to you! I will never hurt you like that, not for _any_ reason. And anyone that does is garbage, but never me. Do you understand?”

I had already known that, but hearing those words from him, just knowing how much he loved and respected me had me crying a few more silent tears.

“I know,” I whispered painfully, trying so hard not to remember what it had felt like that day as Trowa had told me that yes, he was seeing someone else and he had no intention of breaking it off for me, telling me without actually having the balls to say it that my feelings didn’t matter to him, “I know, I just…”

My words dried up in my throat. I couldn’t even figure out what I was feeling, only that I really didn’t like it and just felt really upset and melancholy, there was no way that I could accurately articulate it. Heero’s eyes softened into a look of sympathy, but it wasn’t pity. He was sad for me and he wanted to help me, but he didn’t look down on me for it.

“Oh, Duo,” he said almost mournfully, his thumbs soothing over my cool skin, “You don’t even know how badly he hurt you, do you?”

I flushed, but didn’t say he was wrong because he wasn’t. I had thought that I had handled the fallout of our relationship and breaking up with Trowa pretty well, as well as I could, anyway. Yet in the course of a, what, ten-minute fight, I had lost my shit. I felt like something, some ache was gnawing away at my heart. I had been rendered low by some bitter memories. I felt torn apart, all by remembering a shitty relationship with someone that had been far from the love of my life. Worse, this had completely blindsided me. Just as Heero had said, I was hurt more than I had realized. I had done what I’ve always done, pushed it down deep, kept moving and told myself that I was over it, that it was fine, that it wasn’t a big deal. While all the while it rotted inside of me, waiting for a weak moment to eviscerate me.

“How can you possibly think that you deserve this, love?” he asked me in that soft, comforting tone of his and I wasn’t sure what hearing that nickname again made me feel more: terror, love, guilt, or pain.

“Because I do,” I whispered, wrapping my arms around my stomach as I suddenly felt this tight pain there, “I deserve this… all of it… Maybe he cheated on me, but it was my fault. I’m the one that hurt him, I don’t get to feel betrayed.”

“Don’t say that!” Heero demanded, “You deserve to feel hurt. No matter what you did, he decided to cheat on you. He decided to go behind your back-,”

“He didn’t,” I confessed, wishing more than anything that I didn’t have to tell him these things, but I knew that he wasn’t going to let it drop, not this, “He didn’t go behind my back.”

My boyfriend blinked at me, looking incredibly confused and shocked by that admission.

“Well, I guess he did,” I amended, “but only at first. Only until I found out about it. After that, there really wasn’t any reason for him to try to hide what he was doing.”

“What?” Heero asked, horrified, “You found out and he just kept doing it?”

“There wasn’t any reason for him to stop,” I told him, “I mean, what could I possibly do about it? It wasn’t like we were publicly dating. And he needed her a hell of a lot more than he needed me,” I tried to ignore how that little revelation sent a spike of pain right through my damned heart, “He needed her so everyone could think he was straight. We had one fight about it, and it wasn’t even much of a fight. He just… told me how things were, that he was going to have sex with her and keep dating her. He wasn’t going to break up with me, either. What could I do about it?”

I swallowed roughly, feeling something strangling my throat as those memories came flooding back. I had never really known for sure if he had fucked her until now. It must have been shortly after we had had that fight. That knowledge tore at me. He had seen my pain, my hurt, and then he had pushed it aside like it was nothing. Like I was trash to him. That he had enjoyed it more than he had ever enjoyed having sex with me didn’t matter. It was that he had done it while he had still been with me, knowing that I knew, that hurt.

“Oh, god,” my best friend looked like he was going to hug me again and I couldn’t even imagine what he must have been thinking about all of this, “That’s why you broke up with him?”

He asked it in this tone like he thought it was the most obvious question in the world. It would have been if I had been anyone else, because what sane person would stay with someone like that? I had to have broken up with him at that point because literally _anyone_ else on the whole fucking planet would have. I didn’t say anything, just looked at the ground away from him. I didn’t want to talk about this. I didn’t want to tell him about what a low, pitiful person I was. The things that I had done to keep someone that I hadn’t even been in love with…

“Duo,” Heero sighed heavily in exasperation when I kept silent, “Please, talk to me.”

I thought about just getting up and making a run for Leneski’s. It wasn’t far and I’m faster than Heero, but that just felt pathetic. He deserved the truth, I knew. He had stood up for me, punched someone twice for me. He loved me and for that alone, just because he cared, he deserved to know. But also because he was my boyfriend and he needed to know about what he was getting himself into. What he could expect from someone as repulsive as me. Still, I hesitated, not wanting to rip my soul open for him so he could see the filth that was inside.

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” I lied, still trying to weasel myself out of this damned conversation.

“Bullshit,” he snapped, “Of course it still matters. You’re still thinking about it, and it still hurts. If it doesn’t matter, you wouldn’t be crying, so don’t even try to tell me that.”

I fussed with the zipper on my jacket. I didn’t even know what to say. What could I tell him, the truth? That I had broken up with Trowa because I had finally woken up to the truth that I’m such a freak I can’t even have sex with someone that I find attractive? That he tried to rape me because I had driven him insane with frustration? That even after Trowa had hurt me by cheating on me, I hadn’t even had the spine and the self-respect to dump him? As always, I couldn’t bear the thought that Heero might be disgusted with me if he knew those things. But now that he had met Trowa, now that he knew at least somewhat of the truth, how could I get away with a lie? Heero sighed again, seeing that I wasn’t budging and sat on the tree next to me. He put his hand over mine, stopping my motions and putting our hands together on my leg.

“You always assume that I’ll hate you for a mistake you’ve made or some flaw that you think you have, but when have I ever?” he asked me earnestly.

I finally looked at him and those expressive eyes of his were shining with love and concern, but no judgment. Never any judgment. Everyone in my life judges me and finds me wanting. My father, my mother, my classmates, Trowa… Everyone latches onto every mistake, but no one more than myself. But Heero never has. He might get frustrated with me, we might bicker and fight, but he never looks down on me. I can’t understand it, how I’ve found this person, how he can even exist.

“I told you before that there is nothing that you can do that will make me hate you,” he reminded me, “That’s still true. I didn’t hate you when you told me what happened with Quatre. I didn’t hate you when you told me that you almost killed your father. I didn’t hate you when you told me that your father beats you and you won’t do anything about it, either. What makes you think that I’ll hate you for this? How can it possibly be any worse than anything else you’ve blamed yourself for?”

It wasn’t… and it was. How things had gone down with Trowa doesn’t even touch on the guilt I had felt over Quatre, so you would think that if Heero could accept the things that I had done then, he could easily accept what I done to mess up one relationship. But all of those things were different than this. They had all happened before I had met Heero and they had little to do with him beyond how they affected me. Even my father’s abuse was something that happened outside of our relationship. But this? He was my boyfriend, this directly affected him. He would look at the things that I had done with Trowa and ask himself if he wanted to go through that, too. He had to.

But again, just like all those other times, it wasn’t my hope to be finally punished that got me to speak, but another hope, a much more desperate one, the hope that Heero might forgive me, accept me. Even if he would say that it was all my fault, if he didn’t hate me… if he wasn’t ashamed of me… that was all that I could ask for.

“How can I believe that you won’t when I’m so ashamed of it?” I choked out.

But he didn’t buy that, his expression still both curious and caring.

“So far,” he said, “you haven’t said a single thing that I think you _should_ be ashamed about.”

I sighed. Fuck it, I decided, feeling almost bitter that he didn’t understand that I was the bad guy here and spitefully wanted to open his eyes, to make him see how wrong about me he was, my self-loathing warring with my fear of losing him.

“I didn’t break up with him because he cheated on me,” I finally admitted.

“What?” Heero demanded in shock, his eyes wide, “Why-,”

“It was complicated,” I said simply, because it was and it was a better explanation than saying ‘because I’m a pathetic piece of shit’.

“How was it complicated?” he shot back, more of an accusation than a question, “He was unfaithful, he didn’t deserve to be in a relationship with you! That’s cut and dried, Duo!”

“He just wanted to be normal!” I shot back, getting angry and I have no clue why when I knew that Heero was right, “How could I be angry with him over that, Heero? How could I hate him for wanting to be like everyone else when that is exactly what I’ve wanted my entire life?! It’s what you’ve wanted, too! So how can you or I or anyone else judge him?!”

“I can judge for him for exactly that reason!” he snapped, “I’ve never cheated on anyone, Duo, no matter how much I wanted to protect myself or pretend that I was straight. You never cheated on him, either, and don’t say that I can’t know that, because I do. I know you and you would never be that heartless to anyone. It’s also how I know that you are twice the human being that he could ever hope to be! Certainly better than me, because you’ve wanted to be normal as much as either of us, but you never pretended to be something you’re not. You didn’t use some girl’s feelings for you as a shield. You didn’t two time anyone. And playing both sides, that’s not normal. He still got involved with you, he made that choice instead of sucking it up and dating some girl for real. He used the both of you. And he didn’t have to do it. Neither had I. Having a girlfriend just makes it easier for people to believe the lie, but he didn’t have to do it. He just took the coward’s way out. How can you possibly defend him?! And how could you have stayed with him after he hurt you like that?”

His question was honestly curious, not laced with any blame, but that didn’t stop me from accusing myself. He was right. How could I have done that? For all of my excuses, all of my insistence that him doing that to me didn’t make him the monster, it’s a question that I’ve asked myself a hundred times since I saw him kissing that redhead in the school hallway. Why did I stay with him? Why hadn’t I broken up with him right there? I could say that I had driven him to it, but just because it had been my fault, why did that mean that I had to put up with it? I tightened my grip around my stomach, my guilt tearing into me like an animal.

“I wanted to,” I whispered hoarsely, feeling tears threaten me again but refusing to let them fall over this confession, “I… wanted to leave him… things were so bad even before that. We were falling apart long before I found out about the cheating, and then after that… it just seemed so pointless. Everything. If I had cared for him before… it was hard to then, hard to feel anything towards him but anger and hurt. No one can survive in a relationship like that, not him and not me. I should have ended it. Fuck, I should have ended it long before that point, for both our sakes’. I knew that. But… but I just couldn’t do it…”

“Why?” Heero demanded in a much softer tone, “Why do that to yourself? Why stay with someone that didn’t even have the common courtesy to consider your feelings? If it wasn’t affection, then what?”

“I…” I tried to swallow, but my throat was suddenly dry. I felt like there was this black vortex in my head and if I dared to look at it for too long, it was going to suck me in and all of the things that I had felt in my memories were going to latch on to me like hungry ghosts, “I was just so lonely,” I finally bit out, huddling in on myself like I had a bad chill or was trying to make myself a smaller target, “Quatre had been dead for three years by then… Three years, Heero,” the tears finally won the battle and began to stream down my face again as I remembered, properly, for the first time in the months all of the real reasons why I had stayed with Trowa, why I had put up with all that shit from both him and myself, why I had needed him so badly, “Three years of depression and sadness and grief… of _nothing_. No friends, no one to really talk to… I just… I wanted someone who gave a shit, you know? I wanted to have just one person who… who saw me and smiled at me again…”

Heero wrapped his arm around my shoulders and brought me flush against him. I think I could have sobbed then and just taken all of the comfort that he was offering me, but I knew that if I started, I probably wasn’t going to stop and I would never get this out.

“He could have been anyone. A neighbor. Someone that I didn’t even know. But it wasn’t… I… I had known him before and he had been nice to me… so when he asked me out… Well, he was handsome and I needed someone. And when he cheated on me, when we got into constant fights or… or he hit me or called me trash, I put up with it because I didn’t want to be alone again. I could deal with just about anything else, even knowing he was fucking some girl on the side. That seemed so small compared to how terrified I was of going back to nothing. So you see, he isn’t to blame at all. He didn’t do anything to me. I let him do it. Just for a relationship that neither of us even wanted anymore, I let him. That’s why I deserve this. I could have broken up with him, I knew that I should. But I didn’t. I’m fucking pathetic! I deserved him cheating on me and I’m glad he did. At least she could hold his hand in public, and kiss him!”

Heero turned on the tree until he was nearly straddling it so he could wrap his other arm around me and hug me tightly to his chest. Although I didn’t feel like I deserved his comfort, I still craved it and almost melted against him. He looked so distraught by everything that I was saying, though, that I felt like I should be the one comforting him.

“I am so sorry,” he whispered, his voice tight and I realized with shock that he was crying although he didn’t have anything to cry about.

“Why? I asked, perplexed, “You didn’t do anything…”

He pulled away a little so he could look at me and I saw that his eyes really were wet.

“I’m sorry that you had to through that after your friend died,” he said, “You were hurt so badly and no one was there for you for so long. You couldn’t even talk to your parents about it. Did they even know?”

“Not really,” I shrugged, trying to downplay the horrible depression and pain I had been in back then, “They never knew Quatre. They hadn’t even known that I had a friend. I felt like even if I told them, they wouldn’t understand and I didn’t want their pity because that’s what any comfort from them would have been. I don’t know, maybe I was just too angry and bitter to reach out to anyone, or maybe I had been punishing myself. I did tell my mother once, but because I had been angry, not because I wanted comfort. She was drunk anyway and didn’t even say anything about it.”

I felt a bit amazed to be talking so candidly about the most painful time in my life. I hadn’t been able to do that with Mrs. Daniels or the school shrink and talking to Heero about it should have been even harder with my desperate desire to be strong and capable in front of him, but it was oddly easy. I felt like I could open up about these things with him, and only him. Not because I was in love with him, or even because I trusted him with my bare soul and all that mushy garbage, but because he had lost his friend, too. He understood. Trowa had, to some degree, because he had known Quatre, but even though we shared that history, it hadn’t been like this. Trowa knew what it was like to lose the boy that he loved, and I would, hopefully, never know what that’s like.

But Quatre hadn’t been Trowa’s best friend. They had known each other for less than a year. I had known him for four. I’m not saying that it was easier on Trowa, it wasn’t. The sorrow was just different. We could connect on it because we were missing the same person, and we both felt guilty about letting him down, but our connection to Quatre had been different for each of us. But Heero understood what it was like to lose your best friend forever, to know that he’s buried in the ground somewhere and you can’t even call him on the phone, hear his voice, or just be happy knowing that he’s somewhere else in the world, growing up, living his life, getting new friends and lovers and having a future. I could talk about my pain because I knew that Heero understood _exactly_ what I was talking about and he had felt those things, too. Maybe not exactly, but our hurts were close siblings.

Heero looked incredibly pained as I talked about my past, still keeping his arms around me, trying to offer the comfort that had been denied to me for the last four years. I’d say that it had come far too late, but while it’s true that the damage had already been done, it didn’t mean nothing to me, and it did help a little.

“No one should have gone through that,” he said mournfully.

I shrugged again.

“I’ve always been alone, one way or another. I didn’t even get a friend or anyone my age to talk to until I was nine. I’m used to being by myself, I just… had a hard time getting used to it again,” I said a tiny bit defensively.

“Don’t belittle your grief,” he scolded softly, “It wasn’t just a matter of getting used to being alone. You were dealing with a lot, things that no thirteen-year-old should have to, let alone by himself. You needed someone and you were isolated for years. How can you feel ashamed for holding on to someone so desperately after that? And how can you think that I would look down on you for it?”

I blinked stupidly at him, incapable of believing that he, once again, didn’t look down on me for something that made me feel so low.

“But I-,” I started to protest, but he cut me off.

“No,” he insisted, “You have no reason to feel ashamed. Look, I’m not happy that you stayed with that asshole when he hurt you so badly. It was a poor decision, but you already know that and you’ve spent far too long regretting it and hating yourself for it. But that doesn’t mean I don’t understand. I can’t begin to know how you felt. This is the first real relationship that I’ve been in. I’ve fooled around a little and gone on a few dates, but I’ve never been in a committed relationship like this, let alone a relationship with someone I wasn’t in love with. I don’t know how things were for you or between the two of you. And I don’t know what you were feeling after Quatre had died. I might have lost my best friend and I might have been alone until I met you, but not like you were. Even when my other friends distanced themselves from me because they didn’t want to deal with my grief, I still had my parents. They were always there for me whenever I needed to talk to someone, or just to be around someone. I’ll never know what it was like for you to be so alone, but I do understand that you were horribly lonely, and I will never look down on you for trying to hold on to the only person you had left, even if you made bad choices.”

He gently wiped away some fresh tears making their way down my cold cheeks and I was surprised at how good that light touch felt.

“You should never put up with _anyone_ that treats you like trash, especially someone who hits you,” he said and I knew that he wasn’t just talking about Trowa, “and now I don’t feel a single regret about punching the prick. Maybe you made the decision to stay, and that was wrong, but that in no way makes him blameless. He isn’t innocent just because you didn’t defend yourself against him! You didn’t deserve the way he treated you, and you don’t deserve the horrible things he just said to you, either, so don’t you dare think that. You being lonely and willing to overlook his cheating on you doesn’t make me hate you, it makes me hate him even more because he knew you were hurting. He knew how much you needed him, at the very least as a friend, and he wasn’t there for you. He turned his back on you, willfully. He was selfish, hurtful, and spiteful, and you think you’re the one that I would be disgusted with?”

I flushed again. I almost blurted out ‘he was hurting, too, and I didn’t do anything to help _him_ ,’ but bit my tongue for two reasons. One, the most important, I didn’t want Heero to know that. I didn’t want him to know who Trowa really was and would do just about anything to keep him from finding out that fucked up little fact. The shame that I felt about not breaking up with Trowa earlier, or even having sex with him, is absolutely _nothing_ compared to the shame and disgust I feel towards myself for dating the boy that my dead best friend had loved.

And two, I might try to deny it, excuse it away by thinking that Trowa had been hurting just as much as I had, but Heero had a point. Trowa had known, or had at least some idea, of how damaged I had been by Quatre’s suicide. He had watched me try to kill myself. He had seen me cry. I had even told him about some of what I was feeling that day at the train station, my horrible guilt. He had his own grief and his own problems. I had, at least, been able to grieve openly, to be miserable and sad and everyone around me had known why. They had used it to hurt me, but at least I hadn’t gone through what Trowa had, forced to hide his tears and anger at the risk that everyone would find out that he had been in love with Quatre. He had had to move on, pretending nothing was wrong and I can’t begin to imagine what that had done to him.

We had both been hurting still when we had been dating. And we had both never really acknowledged it, never really spoken to each other or tried to comfort each other. But Heero made me realize something that I had never really considered. While we had both ignored each other’s pain, that didn’t mean we were both just as guilty, nor did it make any of what Trowa had done to me any less callous. I might have ignored his pain, but Trowa had thrown mine in my face.

He had taken what he had known about my grief and my guilt over Quatre’s death and he had used it, so cruelly and pettily, belittling the magnitude of my feelings, just to hurt me when he had been mad at me. True, I was guilty of that, too. During that nasty fight of ours at the beach. I had been so angry at him after he had left me to be found by his damned friends. And then when he had said that he would scream rape if we were ever caught, and everyone would believe him… I had just wanted to hurt him back so badly, but it wasn’t just that. I had meant what I had said about him doing that to Quatre, and it would have killed him. Not as a calculated way to hurt him like Trowa had often done to me, but because I had still been angry at him for turning his back on my best friend the day that he had killed himself and I really had wondered if he would have done the same to someone he loved, or if he really cared so little about me that my wellbeing didn’t matter to him. But mostly, it was the anger that had made those words come spilling out.

I regret it now. It’s one of those things that I will never forgive myself for, no matter what Heero or anyone says, no matter how ‘understandable’ it is. I never should have said what I said to him that day. It was cruel and hurtful, no better than the punch to the face he gave me right after or the equally cruel things he said back to me. We hurt each other. It’s almost fucking inevitable, like gravity making a rock fall. No matter how hard we tried, Trowa and I always end up hurting each other. No matter how much I might regret how things ended, I can never truly regret breaking up with him for that sole reason.

But, even though I had lashed out and used Trowa’s guilt and grief over Quatre to hurt him, I didn’t make a fucking habit of it, ok? I know that’s splitting hairs. Saying what I had to him still makes me an asshole, but if that’s true, he’s a bigger one than me. He had done the same thing to me countless times, and sometimes, it hadn’t just been a slip in anger. He had done it coldly and with a great deal of intent. He had known what he was doing. Worse, he had never apologized. Had he even cared that he had used my pain to rip my heart to shreds, just because we had been fighting? Heero was right, I realized. Trowa had turned his back on me long before he had even managed to goad me into having sex with him.

I had let my guilt take complete control over me, both how I had acted back then, and how I looked back at things. Because I had fucked up and made shitty choices, I felt that I had deserved all the things that Trowa had done. But what if Heero was right? Did my guilt really absolve Trowa of his? Maybe I had driven him to cheating on me by withholding sex, but did that really mean that I had deserved that betrayal, or at least how he had treated me after, how coldly he had rubbed it in my face? If I was guilty of hurting him and had deserved the pain, then he was just as guilty and any pain I had given him, he deserved, too. I just couldn’t believe that, even after telling Heero about choosing to stay with Trowa, he not only didn’t feel repulsed, he blamed Trowa for it, not me.

“And you’re wrong,” Heero smiled softly and lightly brushed my bangs out of my face, “Just because he could be public with his relationship with her, it doesn’t mean that it was better than yours, or that he was any happier. He didn’t love her, right?”

I shook my head. I don’t have the slightest clue what Trowa had been thinking when he had decided to date that girl. I know what had motivated him, at least somewhat, but not his thought process, not why he had chosen her specifically. Maybe because she had looked a little like Quatre, enough to fool himself, but not enough to cause suspicion. Maybe she had just been the most recent girl to ask him out and it had been all timing. Or maybe he had just found her more tolerable, personality wise, than the others, someone he could stand to be around even if she had been the wrong sex. I don’t know, and I probably never will, just like how I don’t know if they’re still dating, because I don’t _want_ to know. But I do know, with absolute certainty, that he did not love her. And that surety has absolutely nothing to do with Trowa’s sexuality.

Trowa had loved Quatre. Sometimes, I had wondered if he had been telling me the truth that day at the train station, given how he had reacted when Quatre had been outed, or if it had just been his guilt, or even that he had been trying to placate me in a really clumsy way. But I can see it now because I see it in myself. Looking back now at how Quatre and Trowa had acted around each other, I wonder how I could have been so moronically blind to them being so into each other. It’s easy when you can recognize the same feelings and behavior in yourself. The shyness, the awkward glances, the bumbling conversation, the way their eyes would light up as soon as they saw each other, the yearning that Quatre had angsted over that I, at thirteen, had been incapable of understanding, Trowa’s disappointment when Quatre had invited me to dinner with them, and his rage when I had told him how Quatre had really broken his arm.

No, Trowa wasn’t in love with that girl. And he sure as hell had never been in love with me. Why did that hurt so much? Why did remembering the flat, emptiness in his eyes when he had looked at me make my heart ache? Why does knowing that what little light had ever been in there when we would meet at first, a light that had dwindled the longer our relationship had gone on, had never come close to the search light he had for Quatre make me feel like my heart was bleeding? Why when I had never really loved him? Why when even if that light _had_ been there, I never could have reciprocated? Why does it matter?

I don’t even think Trowa is capable of falling in love with anyone anymore. I know that sounds arrogant when I had never really known him all that well, but I know him well enough to believe that. Because he changed. I think something vital was ripped right out of him the day that Quatre killed himself. I’m not saying that he might have fallen for me if he had never met Quatre. I don’t think I would ever be his type, but I don’t think he can ever fall for someone like he fell for him. I think that part of his heart is long gone. Or it’s still there, but it’s still so connected to Quatre, so tangled up and so without closure that he’ll never be able to notice anyone else.

I think it hurts me even more now, knowing that Trowa had never cared for me because I’ve found something that Trowa lost and might never get back. The nothing in his eyes is so painful now, not because I had ever wanted him to be in love with me, or even because I feel so inadequate that I couldn’t make him feel _something_ for me, like I had failed him somehow, or even knowing that what little light had been there hadn’t really been there for me to begin with, but because of the fire in Heero’s eyes when he looks at me. When those blue eyes fall on me, they _blaze._ And that flame is only there for me. I can’t begin to describe the power of that knowledge.

What Heero and I have, Trowa and Quatre should have. Sometimes, it would seem like a travesty that I of all people and not Quatre got to experience it, but what I feel for Heero is too beautiful for me to ever taint with such a thought. My relationship with him makes the one I had with Trowa seen so… ugly and broken and tasteless. I suppose it always was, I just hadn’t realized how much. And while knowing how little he had cared for me hurts, most of the pain I feel now is for him. Because he lost the person that he loved and he might never know what this feels like, being held and comforted by that person. If what had happened to Quatre ever happened to Heero… I don’t know how I could keep breathing. I guess Trowa is stronger than I am.

“Then what does it matter if he could kiss her in public or not?” my boyfriend asked, “He didn’t love her, so it was pointless. Being with the person you love…” he wrapped his hand around one of mine and his skin felt blissfully warm, “Being able to hold hands or kiss in public… being able to be with them and not have to hide how you feel for them… it’s the best feeling in the world.”

I felt my face go hot again as I remembered the day that Heero had not only come out to our peers, but outed us as a couple. I remembered fighting with him about it, and how everyone had reacted to us. It had not been a good day for me. But now that everyone knew we were together, even taking into account the escalated bullying and constantly worrying about Heero’s safety, the dirty looks, Relena’s rage at me, and the guilt over being at least half responsible for Heero destroying his reputation, I kind of don’t regret it. Don’t get me wrong. I have moments when I think it’s a terrible idea, moments when I wish there was a way to take it back, moments when I feel like I’ve ruined his life and he’ll never have any friends all because of me. Like when he has fresh bruises or looks hurt and angry and I know why. I wish I could take that pain from him and I hate myself for it. But the longer this goes on, the more fleeting those moments are. The bullying is still bad, but I think I’ve just come to accept the guilt, and accept the fact that the boy I love is as stubborn as a fucking ox and nothing that I do or say will get him to change his mind about public displays of affection.

Not that we’re especially bold in public. We don’t kiss. We just hold hands and hug, maybe say those grossly sweet things that couples do, although Heero is a lot guiltier of that than I am. But when you are not just a gay couple, but the only and most notorious gay couple in town (who needs tons of friends and popularity when you can be infamous, right?) it doesn’t take much. Heero and I just _looking_ at each other is about as scandalous as a straight couple fucking on one of the tables during lunch. But I think I’m starting to accept that there is nothing I can do to change any of that. The cat is already out of the bag and there’s no way in hell it’s going back in. I could, very publicly, break up with Heero and it wouldn’t matter one bit. He had already sinned as far as anyone was concerned by just being _friends_ with me. Heero had made his choice and the both of us had to live with it.

Now that the bad is inevitable, I think I’ve come to appreciate the _good_ about everyone knowing that we’re together. I hadn’t really thought that there would be any when Heero had told me that he didn’t want to hide his feelings for me. Just like with everything else in my life, I had only been able to see the bad. But also with just like everything else in my life lately, Heero has this weird ability to make me look outside of my pessimism and show me that not everything is as hopeless as I used to believe. There’s some good in almost everything, if I can just pull my head out of the storm clouds enough to see the fluffy silver ones.

I had always thought that I was ok with hiding my relationship with Trowa. I had understood his need for it, why even just being friendly around each other was a risk, and had just gone along with it. I had thought that I was happy knowing that at least one of us was safe from the bullying and hatred, that I was content knowing he could lead a somewhat normal life. But you know what I’ve finally come to realize, thanks to Heero and thanks to that day on the street, fighting with my ex? I had never been ok with it, and his refusal to even acknowledge me in public, his need to hide me away like he was ashamed of me hurt me more than I had ever thought possible. It had wormed its way under my skin like a parasite, everything he had done to keep our relationship a secret until I eventually had come to believe that he _was_ ashamed of me. Maybe he had been, even at the beginning.

We had never discussed it. That had never even occurred to me before I had started dating Heero. It’s funny the things that dawn on you when you experience the opposite, the things that completely escaped your notice. Like realizing how much I missed Trowa just by seeing him again, or realizing how much he had hurt me because of how much Heero hasn’t. Heero and I… well, we talk about everything, even the stuff that I really don’t want to talk about. Quatre, my father, my issues with anger and depression, all the painful things that Heero somehow is capable of dragging out of me, even if it must be a frustrating process for him. But we talk about other stuff, too. Him wanting to not hide our relationship. How his mother and father met. My mother’s struggle with sobriety. I guess that’s why I feel like I can talk to him about Trowa, because it’s just become natural for us.

I suppose that’s really the key difference between the two relationships that I’ve had. If something is bothering me, Heero can usually find a way to get me to open up about it. He’s given me some really good advice, too, like telling me that I needed to talk to my mother about her telling me that I had been an unwanted child. Even when he had wanted to date me, it had been a thing that we had both discussed and agonized over, mostly because of my fears, but it wasn’t something that we had jumped into. He had even asked me if it was ok to kiss me. But Trowa and I… that relationship had been a polar opposite. We had never talked about _anything_. The things that had bothered us, what was wrong with our relationship, nothing. We hadn’t even really discussed getting together. He had just asked if I wanted to go out, I had said yes, he had kissed me, end of story.

The publicness, or lack thereof, had gone the same way. He had never broached the subject with me. We had never talked about how I felt about it, what I wanted. I had just understood that this was what _he_ wanted and that had been the end of it. I had had no say. When Heero had wanted to come out, we had argued about it and I had been against it, but I know that my opinions on the subject hadn’t been meaningless to him. He had listened and understood why I was scared, had even tried to comfort me. If I hadn’t already been outed, it probably would have gone another way. But the point is that we had discussed it. We never really assume anything about each other. We might hide things (myself, mostly) and bicker, but we don’t just… let things happen. That was what dating Trowa had been like. Letting things happen. Gravity. Wherever Trowa had wanted to go, whatever he had wanted to do, whatever big changes in our relationship he had wanted, I had just gone along with.

It wasn’t just his fault. I had let it happen. I had let him make all the decisions and let him bully me into things. That was why we couldn’t have ever worked. Not because we weren’t in love, but because we both had turned our backs on each other, ignored things that we should have been talking about. Things could never be like that with Heero. He doesn’t let me be the doormat and in this relationship, I don’t want to be. He makes me want to be involved with everything, to not just let things fall where they’ll be. I’m still a bit of a doormat, I suppose. He could want to go swimming with sharks and I’d probably jump into the water right after him just because he wanted to do it. But I’m not as content to play the passive role because, this time around, I do care about our relationship. It matters to me when it hadn’t before.

I don’t know what I would do if Heero suddenly treated me the way that Trowa had, if he suddenly pretended that we weren’t together, or acted like everything was fine when it wasn’t, or even… what Trowa had done to me that day after gym class. If he treated me like I was fucking expendable, ballast that he would get rid of as soon as I started weighing him down. Like I was some whore that he didn’t even need to pay.

It gives me such relief that I might actually cry to know that Heero will never do those things. He can hold my hand in public, not because he was outed, but because he chose to be. Because he likes it and he doesn’t care what other people say or do, all he cares about is being with me. I can’t begin to describe how good it feels when he does that, how much I’ve come to treasure that we don’t need to hide or sneak around. It only makes my memories of being with Trowa, acting like a double agent, all the more painful. If Heero didn’t get hurt, too, I would say that the bullying was worth just getting to do those things, to know that Heero is proud of our relationship, that I’m worth it to him. That’s a feeling that Trowa will never know.

For the first time, I can truly pity him. He’s tried so hard to keep his secret safe, but at what cost? Back then, before I knew what it was like to really love someone and _want_ the privilege of holding their hand in public, I had thought that his safety was the most important thing. I could handle him ignoring me in school because I hadn’t wanted him to be bullied and hurt like I was. But he had to live every day in fear, worrying about getting outed. If he fell for another boy, they would never be as important as his reputation to him. He had destroyed any possibility of being with Quatre for it and has to carry that guilt around with him for the rest of his life.

But he didn’t learn from it. That reputation was still the most important thing to him. Or maybe his fear is. Either way, what has it gotten him? What has playing it safe gotten him? The ability to go through the motions, to walk through the halls of the high school without glares of disgust? In the past, I would have said that that was more than worth it. But now? Now that I know what it’s like to be loved by someone, to just… be ourselves and not have to treat it like a dirty secret… I can see how lonely and pointless a life like that would be like. I guess I’ve changed more than I even realized since I’ve started to date Heero. Only a few weeks and my priorities have been completely rewritten. I can’t really complain, though. Looking back at some of the things I’ve done… what I did when I was with Trowa… I think I needed some new perspective, or at least something to pull me out of that spiral of depression and nothingness, something to give a shit about. But it only makes the prospect of losing it all the more terrifying. Do I even have the strength to go back? Can I? Or are the things that Heero has changed in me permanent and any attempt to go back to how I used to be will just rip me apart?

“Whatever he had with that girl, it was meaningless,” Heero assured me, soothing his fingers over my skin, tracing my knuckles and the burn that my father had given me a little over a week ago that still hadn’t fully healed because I hadn’t put anything on it soon enough, “He was just using her, Duo.”

          “I guess our relationship was meaningless, too,” I murmured.

          Heero looked stricken and guilty and I quickly realized he had mistaken my comment as an accusation when I had only meant it as a simple truth.

          “Duo, I’m-,” he tried to apologize.

          “No, you’re right,” I interrupted, “It was meaningless. We didn’t love each other. I didn’t love him. I… I wanted to. I wish that I had. Maybe things would have been better… or maybe it would have made it more painful, I don’t know. But he sure as hell didn’t love me. I still don’t know why he even wanted to be around me. It’s not like we had anything in common beyond not being very talkative. I guess it was the same as me, just loneliness and us being the only gay people we knew. It’s no wonder he didn’t want to be public with our relationship. Public with what? We barely got along towards the end. It’s like you said, he didn’t love me or even just have a crush on me, so risking his reputation just for what little we had would have been pointless.”

          “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean it like that,” he said guiltily.

          “It’s fine,” I tried to assure him, “It’s only the truth. I didn’t mean anything to him. I knew that for a long time. The things he said just now only prove that. Hell, he probably didn’t even want to be friends with me in the first place. He told me once that I was no prize. That pretty much sums up his entire feelings for me, doesn’t it? So why should I care why he chose to keep us a secret or that he thinks I’m a slut?”

          Pain ripped through my heart at that reminder.

          “I’m sure that isn’t true,” Heero tried to soothe me, rubbing my back gently in a motion that actually helped to ease some of the anxiety I was feeling, “I’m sure that, even if he wasn’t in love with you and even if he did use you, he didn’t feel nothing for you. It must have hurt a lot when he ignored you at school and took you out of town for dates so no one would recognize you, but-,”

          I couldn’t stop the derisive snort at that.

          “Hurt,” I muttered with deep bitterness, “Right, I guess it hurt. I guess it messed me up a little, being treated like his fucking mistress or like I was too repulsive to be around him until he was lonely enough, but honestly? Him pretending that I didn’t exist when it wasn’t _convenient_ for him was probably the least painful thing that he had ever done to me.”

          Heero looked deeply concerned by that, but didn’t pry or try to rush me. It was probably a good thing that he didn’t or I might have realized what I was confessing to and either for my pride or just how much I didn’t want to remember these things, I would have clammed right up.

          “Sure, him not so much as looking in my direction at school or having to watch him kiss that girl had been painful. But that was just like a slap to the face compared to some of the other stuff. You want to know what hurt? And I mean really hurt, like a gunshot wound? It was him telling me that if he didn’t get his way, if I couldn’t keep us a secret, he would throw me under the fucking bus. No, it was even worse than that. He would use my shitty reputation and all of the horrible things that people accused me of, confirm them as fucking _fact_ to the entire school if he had to, all to save his own ass.”

          I was honestly amazed and stunned by the wave of bitterness just oozing out of me as I said that, and the amount of hate and loathing I could still feel towards Trowa all these months later. I might have told myself that this was all done with, that I was over these things, but that sure doesn’t make it the truth. I couldn’t even forgive my mother for the ways that she had betrayed me growing up, how could I ever forgive Trowa?

          “I don’t understand,” my boyfriend asked in confusion.

          I looked at the ground for a moment, wondering if I could really tell him about what had happened that day in the gym. It wasn’t even close to the thing that I was the most ashamed about, it was just… embarrassing, I guess. It’s a bit bewildering that I can feel ashamed over something like that when, when I really think about the things that happened, it hadn’t been my fault. It had been all Trowa’s. So why did I feel so hesitant in admitting it to Heero? Probably because it had been another glaring sign that I needed to break up with Trowa, and even after he had literally betrayed me and stabbed me in the back twice, I had still stayed. But I couldn’t think of a compelling reason to lie about this or keep it from Heero that didn’t amount to my stupid pride, which was a dumb reason since I have nothing to be proud about anyway.

          “It’s stupid,” I said bluntly, “and it never should have happened in the first place.”

          Never should have happened because I should have had the common sense to break it off with Trowa by then. If his verbal abuse every time I had refused his advances hadn’t been reason enough, then my first, and thankfully last, sexual experience with him should have been by a freaking mile. And it never should have happened because I never should have let him put us in that situation. I have more common sense than that, but I had assumed that he did, too, that he, of all people, would be the one most invested in being discreet.

          “It happened after school. Trowa and I were in the equipment room in the gym… uh…” I blushed hotly and felt stupid that it was this part that I was having the most trouble with, “making out,” I said in a tiny, ashamed voice.

          I studied Heero, expecting to see him look angry to hear about my exploits with my ex, ashamed of me, or amused at it, each would have been equally mortifying to me, but he looked so nonplussed, just waiting for me to continue that I rushed to explain.

          “It was his idea,” I winced at how whiny that sounded, like I was making excuses for it, “Not that I told him no,” I sighed, hating how damned awkward I sounded, like I was explaining this to an adult and not another teenager, “It just… kind of happened, ok? We didn’t plan it. Or at least I hadn’t, I had just wanted to put some equipment from class away and if I had known that he was going to do that-,”

          I would have what, I demanded myself. What would you have done that is any different than what happened?

          “Duo,” to my shock, Heero chuckled, but it wasn’t in a mocking way, “It’s alright. I get it. You had a boyfriend before me, it doesn’t bother me to hear that the two of you were being intimate with each other. Making out during school in secret is what people do, it isn’t a big deal.”

          “It isn’t what I do!” I protested, feeling this idiotic need to defend my non-existent honor to him, “I didn’t even want to… not… not there anyway. Not at school.”

          He gave me this endearing smile that blew me away and I had no clue at all what he was thinking, why he would be looking at me like that.

          “I know you aren’t like that, love,” his voice was so tender, so wistful as he said something that any other person would have said with a roll of the eyes or the shake of the head, because he was right, wanting to make out during school was normal and my not wanting to wasn’t, but he was acting like it was adorable or some shit.

          “We had had a really bad fight the night before,” I said in an almost whisper and winced again, wondering if you could really call what had happened at Trowa’s work, during and after, a ‘fight’, “and I’ve always had a hard time telling him no,” I fought against the wince this time as my mind gleefully bombarded me with reminders of how true that was, “I guess I had just been scared of making him mad again by telling him no.”

          My voice trailed off as I found myself almost wandering into memories that I had tried so hard to shut away, memories involving a cold, hard floor and the sounds of Trowa panting in my ear, but Heero squeezed my hand reassuringly, bringing me back to the present. It didn’t matter anymore, I told myself, it was over and done and I didn’t have to face it anymore, my shame of not being able to perform and the pain that Trowa had given me, a pain that paled compared to what my father had done but that still didn’t make the memory any more pleasant, at least until Heero wants the same thing from me.

          “I knew better,” I said mournfully, “and I was terrified that someone was going to find us, but I let it happen anyway. I just thought that Trowa would be more cautious than that. Anyway, the worst happened in the worst moment and some of his friends came into the equipment room looking for him.”

          Heero’s blue eyes went wide with fear and shock. That had probably been one of his worst fears before he had publicly outed himself, being discovered in a very telling, very vulnerable position by a bunch of people that might get… well, a bit violent finding a bunch of queers making out in front of them.

          “What did you do?” he asked in an almost child mix of horror and amazement.

          Heero is a smart boy. He was well aware that I had to have gotten out of that little scrape or the whole school would have known about my sexuality back then, but he was still brimming with curiosity.

          “ _I_ hid,” I told him, my voice still filled with acidic bitterness, “I found a nice, little corner to tuck myself into and prayed that none of them would see me, waited for them to leave, and somehow miraculously got out of there with no one seeing me. Trowa, on the other hand, bailed before they even got the door open. He shimmied out that window that I went out of when Zechs and the rest of them had chased me that one time. Back then, though, I didn’t have the time or the leverage to get up there, but Trowa could reach. He was gone before I had even realized that he had left me behind.”

          “Wait…” Heero seemed to have a particularly difficult time swallowing what Trowa had done to me, his eyes still wide with shock. I didn’t blame him. I had had a difficult time understanding it myself at the time, “He just _left_ you there? He didn’t try to help you get out?”

          “Nope,” I muttered dryly and a bit of hate mingled with the bitterness, “He left me to the wolves so he could save his own ass. It was bad enough that he left me there like a damned cornered rabbit. In a closed room, a two people sized indent in the mat on the floor, and my clothes askew, anyone could have figured out what I had been doing in there, and with the rumors flying around about me… Well, Trowa had known exactly what he had been leaving me to. Just knowing that had been enough to piss me off. Even if he didn’t love me, we were supposed to be friends. We were supposed to look out for each other. Quatre never would have done that to me, not in a million years, left me to get hurt so he could escape. It made me realize more than anything else he had done to me up until then just how little he cared for me, how expendable I was to him if things went south. I should have broken it off with him then, that would have been the smart thing to do, what any sane person would have done. I was so… flaming pissed at him after that, I didn’t even want to talk to him.”

          Heero snorted like he was agreeing with me and I saw that he actually looked angry on my behalf. Why did that make me feel so good? So… righteous? It was that feeling again, that I had someone at my back. Heero wouldn’t have done that to me, either, I realized with this silly little burst of happiness and love. If he had been able to reach that window, he would have boosted me up before him, risking being seen and wouldn’t have cared. Or he would have helped me face those other boys, a unified front. A front that I had wished I could have had with Trowa.

          “Even when he called me that night to ask to meet with me, I didn’t want to,” I confessed, “but just like always, I caved. Even when I met with him the next day and he asked me if I was alright, I knew that he didn’t care. All he cared about was his precious reputation and wanting to know if I had been seen, if I had ratted him out,” there was definitely anger in my voice now as I remembered that stormy day on the beach, how I had tried to hold on in vain to the nice things he had done for me, how tenderly he had treated me, trying to lie to myself that that Trowa was the real one and not the one that had left me behind. That that tenderness was real and not just a product of manipulation and guilt, “We fought. Hard. It was probably the worst fight that we had ever had. We both said some pretty ugly shit to each other. That was the first time, and the last time that he ever hit me,” I self-consciously rubbed the back of my hand against the cheek that I can still remember him striking, still remember the feel of that large and heavy fist punching me, smaller and weaker than my father’s, but I had been well aware that Trowa had not pulled it, he had hit me with everything that he had and that had hurt a lot worse than the blow itself, “Not for a lack of his trying, I just got a lot better at reading him.”

          “He had no right to strike you, no matter what you said,” Heero said softly.

          “He did,” I argued, “What I said to him… it was terrible, _I_ was terrible. I hurt him and I knew that I deserved it.”

          “Duo-,” Heero began to protest, but I ignored him.

          He didn’t understand. He didn’t know how it had been, what I had said.

          “It doesn’t matter. I hit him more times than he ever hit me. I even hit him when I was breaking up with him. I’m no innocent in this, Heero. As far as I’m concerned, I owed him a few hits. Still do, really.”

          “And that was wrong,” he snapped, “but that doesn’t make him striking you right.”

          I just shrugged. I couldn’t explain to him why it didn’t bother me that much because to any normal person, it would sound fucked up and it would create an argument between us, a very familiar one. The thing is, compared to everything else that Trowa had done to me in the course of our relationship, a punch after I had ripped his heart open is really the least of it. Actually, it’s probably the thing that bothers me the least. Of course it does bother me, friends, especially boyfriends, don’t hit each other. But I’m used to being hit. It’s normal to me, more normal than anything else that Trowa had done. I knew how to handle it, how to roll with it and I could understand being struck in anger a lot more than I could the rest of it.

          “He hurt me,” I murmured, “but it had nothing to do with him punching me. He accused me of only being bullied because I don’t care what other people think of me, that I’m not as cautious as he is,” Heero snorted derisively at that and he won a slight smile from me. That was right, I realized with an oddly pleased feeling, out of everyone else, he would understand that the most. Trowa had never understood. He might have witnessed the bullying, but even when Relena had been going after him to get to Quatre, he had always been on the outside of it. He would never know what it was really like, how what I did and how I acted was irrelevant. Maybe he had just been trying to hurt me, or maybe he had really believed that I just wasn’t trying hard enough to stop it, like I worry sometimes. Both possibilities are equally shitty.

          “I guess he thought that I… that I act gay or something and if I was more secretive like he was…” I muttered and tugged on my braid unconsciously.

          “You don’t,” Heero insisted, “He was just being an asshole.”

          I felt this tiny shred of hope that he was right, but my doubts were stronger. Even Pat and my father accused me of being girly, and Zechs had been throwing that insult around since I was twelve. So hearing the same thing from Trowa, someone else who was gay, had fed the flames of my paranoia. I felt it again, sitting on the tree with Heero, this fear in me as I tried to examine all of my actions and looks and mannerisms for the fault in me, the thing that makes me different from everyone else, the thing that exposes me for a faggot before I had even known what that was.

          “I asked him what he would have done if either of us had been caught by his friends that day, what lengths he would have gone to protect his reputation from me, from us and our relationship.”

          My throat went dry as I remembered the rest of that terrible fight. My breath felt constricted, something slithering in my chest and more tears gathered in my eyes, but I refused to let them fall over that memory. It was in the past, I told myself, Trowa had hurt me as much as he could and it was done with. But that didn’t mean that those words stopped hurting.

          “He said that we didn’t have a relationship because we weren’t having sex,” I bit out.

          That still hurt, too. I had known at that point what I was to him, all that I could ever be to him and if we couldn’t fuck, he wanted nothing more to do with me. He had asked me once what the point of a sexless relationship would be. As harsh as those words had been, I suppose he had a point. People get together, fall in love, and forge these connections for that inevitable conclusion, don’t they? Just because I can’t do it, it doesn’t mean that everyone else doesn’t believe that. Was that what Heero believed, too? Would he break up with me as soon as he realized that I couldn’t give him that? Would he, like Trowa, not see the point of staying with me if we couldn’t have sex? What was so wrong with just the rest of it? Why couldn’t I just have what Heero and I have now, what Trowa and I had once had? Just being together, being close, caring for each other, kissing, holding hands? Why did I have to muddle it all up with sex? In the end, it only ruins everything anyway.

          To his credit, Heero looked pained. I guess, even if it’s some kind of unspoken, social understanding about relationships, you aren’t supposed to actually say that to the person you’re dating. Or what if he was thinking about our own relationship? But I couldn’t bear to consider that.

          ‘We’ve only been together for a couple of weeks,’ I reminded myself with desperation and fear, ‘I still have time, don’t I?’

          “I thought that the two of you had sex,” Heero asked in confusion and then his face darkened as he realized how blunt that statement had been and that he was treading in some very personal territory, “I’m sorry, that’s none of my business.”

          I was glad that he had at least that much tact, but as much as I didn’t want to talk about this, and as much as I agreed that it really wasn’t anyone’s business but mine, I felt like I owed him the truth. He had put up with a lot of shit from me in this relationship, had been there for me, had stayed with me when most other kids our age would have run as far and as fast as they could. He had helped me through a lot, always with a gentle hand and more understanding than I deserved or thought was capable for a person. The least I could do was answer a few questions. And really, while this was a private and painfully personal topic for me, it was kind of Heero’ business, too, wasn’t it? He was my boyfriend. While I don’t know if I’ll ever have the courage to have sex with him, my past sex life was probably something he should know about. I can’t ever tell him about my issues with intimacy, not if I want to keep him and his respect for me, but I would tell him what I could bear to. Even if I was ashamed of it.

“Just once,” I admitted shyly and with great effort, “And it had been far from exciting and stellar for the both of us. I… I kind of put the brakes on it happening again.”

I pulled my hand from under Heero’s and looked at the ground, unable to meet his gaze, too frightened of what I might see there. My face was hot and I felt so embarrassed admitting that. It was the plainest form of the truth, omitting anything close to detailed, including why it had not been a good experience for either Trowa or myself, and how that was completely my fault for not being good enough for him.

“That was the first time you had had sex?” Heero asked hesitantly, trying to tread lightly on the sensitive subject.

I nodded. I wished that I could claim that it had been the last time, too.

“Duo, lots of people don’t enjoy their first time,” he stubbornly ignored my attempts to shun physical contact and comfort and placed his hand on my shoulder, “You have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of! If Trowa expected it to be amazing when it was your first time, and your first time together, then he was nuts! It doesn’t mean you’re bad at it or that you’re unattractive. You were just inexperienced.”

‘But how many guys can’t even get it up their first time?’ I thought bitterly, ‘How many people completely repulse their boyfriends? How many people would be perfectly happy to never have sex at all?’

I shook my head.

“Trowa was right,” I murmured, a wave of depression crashing inside of me, “I’m no prize. Even if we had done it again, I was sure that it would be just as bad as the first time. I didn’t see the point in a repeat occasion. But Trowa wanted to try again,” I snorted, “Hell if I know why. He hadn’t been quiet about how dissatisfied he was in me.”

My guts rolled as I remembered how disgusted he had looked when he had figured out that I hadn’t even gotten aroused. How he had muttered under his breath that I was a freak. Just the mere memory of it, of how unwanted and broken I am made me feel nauseous.

“It wasn’t your fault,” my boyfriend insisted, even though he had no way of knowing that, “If you were having issues with the sexual part of your relationship, it doesn’t make you a cock tease. Did you tell Trowa that you were having problems, or ask him to try something different that would make you less uncomfortable?”

I shook my head. It was something that I hadn’t considered at the time, that we should try things differently. I wouldn’t have seen the point in it even if I had. The end result of anything that I would have tried seemed obvious. If I couldn’t even jerk off, how could I have sex with anyone?

“I didn’t really talk about it,” I admitted, “but he knew I was uncomfortable. We fought about it a lot. Even before I had sex with him, I kept putting it off until he got so angry with me about it, he threatened to break up with me. I guess he thought if we just got it over with, I would be easier to convince the next time, so he got pretty pissed when I kept telling him no.”

Heero got this strange, angry, pinched look, his eyes going hard as I continued to talk, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure it out. He had no reason to be upset. If I wasn’t in such a rush to get this awkward conversation over with, I might have puzzled over it some more, but I ignored it instead.

“I guess he was right. We _didn’t_ have any kind of relationship. I mean, what was he risking his reputation for? A boyfriend that wouldn’t even put out, who would shy away any time he would try to touch him… it’s no wonder why he left me behind in the equipment room. I sure hadn’t given him any reason to stay and stick up for me.”

“Duo-,” Heero started to protest in alarm, but I continued to ignore him.

“I could have handled him telling me that just fine. I mean, it wasn’t anything that I hadn’t already been thinking and fearing myself, as painful as it was hearing it from him. But then…” I swallowed roughly over the words that were forming in my throat and on my tongue, “then he said that he would have done anything to save himself from me… from being outed alongside me. If his friends had found us together that day, he would have told them that I had raped him. And, he said, they would have believed him.”

“Jesus Christ, Duo,” Heero swore, completely horrified by a memory that still horrifies me, too, when I can bear to even remember it, although that still doesn’t really hold a candle to what I had felt that day, hearing those terrible words leave the familiar lips that had kissed me more times than I can count.

His arms wrapped around me and crushed me to his chest, his embrace and his body warm and welcoming. To my shock, I realized that my cheeks felt wet again. When had that happened? My tears were fat and cool as they rolled down my face lethargically, tears that I hadn’t been capable of crying back then, even as Trowa’s words had cut my heart to ruins. I had never expected him to act this way during this messed up, little confession. Heero can be a bit overprotective, I know that, but my pain is my own, my past and my issues are my own and not his. If I had been hurt by Trowa’s callous words, it was just because I was weak and sensitive. But there Heero was, holding me and comforting me, not just because I was upset, but because he was, too. He understood why those words had been so painful, he understood that they were awful and abusive where other people might wonder what the big deal was. His pain validated my own, his tight embrace and the feeling of his cheek pressed against my hair told me more than anything else that I was right to feel hurt, that I wasn’t being ridiculous or overly emotional.

          I felt the old pain of those words wound me like Trowa had just uttered them minutes ago, not months ago. Hearing him say that was a worse betrayal than him leaving me in the equipment room had ever been. It was more painful than even knowing that everyone I went to school with, kids I had known for eight years of my life, believed I could rape someone. Knowing that this person that was supposed to be my friend would destroy my life just to protect his own. That he would use a sick accusation about me… no, not just me, but everyone like us against me. All because he was a coward. He wouldn’t just carelessly affirm that I was gay, but that those horrible rumors were true, and put me in harm’s way in doing it. It had hurt back then. It hurts more now that I know what being raped is like. It hurts being lumped in with my father, and with Trowa although he hadn’t been successful, when the mere idea of doing that to anyone makes me sick.

          Maybe I had deserved him trying to rape me. Maybe I had deserved him cheating on me. But that? What had I done to him to deserve him using me a smokescreen? Our friendship, as far as I am concerned, died that day. At least for me. I suppose it should have died when he had bullied me into letting him fuck me, but even that hadn’t been as painful to me as what he had said at the boardwalk. Like I had told Heero, him punching me was irrelevant after all the shit he had said.

Heero somehow sensed my mood and tightened his grip around me, doing what little he could to offer comfort. It was more than enough for me and I curled my arm around his, wishing I could just sink into him, let him take away all the bad memories so there wasn’t a single thought in my head save for how much I loved him. That was right, I realized in shock, Heero understood. He knew, where Trowa never could, what it was like for your classmates, people that were supposed to be your friends or, if not, at least tolerate you, a rapist. He knew what it was like to know that it wasn’t some kind of cruel insult, or a sick joke. It was the truth, that they all truly believed it. Heero and I were child fuckers and rapists. Maybe we did it with animals, too. And to have a friend use that like it was nothing, like it didn’t rip your world apart every time someone uttered those words…

Our contact was brief. I pulled away from him and rubbed at my wet eyes. They already felt raw and I felt that we had been out there for hours talking and arguing, when I knew that it had only been minutes. I wanted this whole day done with so I could pretend that it had all just been a bad dream.

“It’s no wonder why you hated me so much before we became friends,” Heero murmured against my hair, “I did the same, exact thing to you that he did. No, I was worse. I treated you like garbage at school, but tried to be nice to you whenever I would see you at the getty… I was so _horrible_ to you, and I tried to put that other person behind me, tried to open up to you… I was so two-faced. I must have reminded you of him and I hurt you so badly…”

“It wasn’t the same,” I insisted, “I never knew any other side of you but the person that bullied me. When you were nice to me… yeah, it confused the hell out of me. I didn’t understand who you were, which side of you was the real one. I won’t lie, it hurt a lot because you made me hope that you might be different than the person that called me a faggot at school. I was already falling in love with you back then, that side of you, so every time you would talk to me like we might be friends, and then go right back to acting like I was a human cockroach, it hurt too much. I didn’t know what to believe. Some days, I thought that you were just toying with me and I couldn’t handle that kind of heartbreak. I just couldn’t deal with that added stress in my life.”

I didn’t want to think about those days, about how things had been right after my father had first raped me, the spiral of confusion and betrayal and terror I had gone through. And then here had been this boy that I loved, my very first crush, who gave me scraps of attention amidst the abuse… It’s so strange remembering those things now, comparing the boy that I had known with the one that holds me like that and kisses me so gently. It doesn’t seem possible that they’re the same person. How can they be? Heero made a pained sound to hear the pain that he had caused me and tightened his grip around me even more. I could actually _feel_ all of his regrets and self-loathing in that embrace, how desperately he wished that he could take it all back. That was enough for me. I won’t say that it erased that pain in my memories, but I could look past his mistakes because he isn’t that person anymore. He never was, really. Just an illusion, like Trowa pretending to care for me.

“But it isn’t the same, Heero,” I told him, “It isn’t the same at all. I knew Trowa before I had ever dated him. He had been nice to me, and he had seemed like a good person. I still think he is, somewhere inside. I had known from the beginning who he was, and I knew that I would never be as important to him as his reputation, but I still went with him anyway. You and I weren’t even friends. I didn’t have any expectations with you. You didn’t betray my friendship or act like what we had was garbage. You didn’t tell me to my face that you would throw me under the bus, accuse me of rape because I’m expendable, because I don’t matter.”

“And he blames you for not sleeping with him anymore after saying something like that?” Heero said hotly, recovering from his melancholy with bristling anger, “I wish he _had_ gotten caught. It would serve him right, the asshole. With a stellar personality like that, I’m amazed that you were strong enough to stay with him for so long.”

“Strength…” I smiled bitterly and self-depreciatively, “Strength had nothing to do with it. The things that he had said and done to me… they had nothing to do with cutting him off sex, either. All it was was cowardice, Heero, pure and simple. I was a spineless coward. Still am, really.”

“You aren’t a coward,” he argued, still sounding angry, “You aren’t a slut or a cock tease or any of the other shit he called you. You were just lonely and desperate, there’s no shame in that.”

“I have plenty,” I shot right back and fussed with the bottom of my jacket, my hands desperate for something to do, “And he was right. I was a cock tease. I had deserved everything he did to me because of that.”

“You deserved him treating you like shit because you refused to put out for him? Duo, that’s ridiculous,” Heero protested.

“Is it?” I asked coldly, “I didn’t just cut him off after we had sex the first time. I was always like that for our entire relationship. Any time he wanted to get closer to me, I shut him down. Any time he wanted more, I would tell him no. I knew, from very early on in our relationship, that I didn’t want to be with him like that. But I still dated him. I stayed with him for so long, just stringing him along and letting him believe that he had a chance with me when I knew the truth. I already knew that if we did have sex, it wouldn’t matter. I didn’t want it and he did, the second I had realized that, I should have broken it off. I should have done right by him and let him find someone better me, someone that he could love and someone that could love him back. Instead, I stayed with him. I drove him insane. I teased him and he was the one who was strong to stay with _me_ after I kept leaving him hard up. Tell me Heero, who does that? Who lets someone they care about suffer in a shitty relationship because they don’t have the fucking spine to let them go?”

I expected him to be disgusted with me, at least as much as I disgusted myself hearing all that, but to my shock, Heero reached over and gently brushed a stray lock of hair that had escaped from my braid behind my ear, his expression still understanding, still tender. After everything that I had already told him, how could he look at me like that? How couldn’t he understand what a horrible person I am?

“Someone who is hurting, too,” he said softly and I could feel myself start to cry again, like there was just a bottomless reservoir behind my eyes, “Someone who was scared and lonely and didn’t know what to do. You were what? Sixteen years old at the time? You were still trying to figure out how to be in a relationship and still grieving over your friend. Everyone makes shitty decisions, Duo. It was wrong of you to stay in that relationship, but you’re asking me to blame you and call you a tease, and I’m not going to do that. It was just as much his fault for staying with you as it was yours. If he was sexually frustrated and angry at you for always turning him down, he should have broken it off, not taken it out on you. It was your decision to have sex with him, not his. But bullying you? Blackmailing you into having sex with him? That’s disgusting and horrible. If that’s how he got you to have sex with him, I don’t blame you at all for cutting him off. That is exactly what he deserved.”

I covered my face with my hands, not wanting him to watch me as I cried, my hands trembling slightly. No one had ever said those things to me before. ‘It was your decision.’ My decision… when had it ever been? First Trowa, then my father… everyone just does what they want to me, and I go along with it. When has what I wanted ever mattered to anyone, especially me? Trowa had never respected my decision to not have sex with him. He had just broken down my barriers, threatened me, and fought with me constantly. He had never tried to find out why I didn’t want to have sex, he hadn’t cared, only that he had won in the end. Had it even meant anything to him? Or just a notch on his belt, a way to get his rocks off? Had _I_ mattered?

“He…” I rubbed angrily at my face and only succeeded in smearing my tears, “He always made me feel so worthless…” I laughed in bitterness, knowing full well how nuts I sounded, “At least… at least his girlfriend showed him a good time. Better than I ever could.”

God, was there any end to this misery in my chest? This gaping chasm of gnashing teeth, cannibalizing me? Was there any end to my regrets and self-hatred? Heero ran his palm over my cheek, his warm skin making me shiver a little.

“You could never be worthless, not ever,” he told me with this intense conviction, “Even if he didn’t love you, and even if he thought that you weren’t good enough or felt no attraction towards you, you are _never_ worthless, Duo, and don’t let a prick like that ever make you feel that way.”

Tears pricked at my eyes again and I had to bite my tongue, hard, to keep them from falling. His sweet words made the pain that I had been feeling seem so trivial. What did it matter what Trowa thought of me, what he had made me feel if Heero truly believed that? If he believed that I wasn’t worthless, if he loved me that much, what did anything that Trowa said or felt about me matter at all? I rubbed my jacket sleeve against my face and was more successful this time cleaning my skin of wetness. Heero was silent, just watching me try to compose myself, but even in my fragile state, I could clearly see that there was something more that he wanted to say, something that was bothering him.

“Just ask,” I said.

Heero was silent for a moment.

“It’s tactless,” he told me.

I snorted.

“More tactless than anything Trowa just said about me?” I asked dryly.

He smiled weakly.

“No, nothing like that. But it’s none of my business…” he said warily, but I could still see that curiosity in his eyes.

“Ask anyway,” I insisted.

He chewed on the corner of his bottom lip for a second.

“Why didn’t you want to have sex with him?” he finally broached, “You said even early on, you were hesitant. Was that before he started… started treating you like crap, or because you weren’t in love with him?”

          I almost winced. Ok, that was a bit tactless. I wasn’t offended, it was an honest question, but that didn’t mean that I wanted to answer it. I didn’t even know what I was going to say. I didn’t want to lie, come up with some bullshit answer, but I couldn’t tell the full truth. I couldn’t tell him that I hadn’t wanted sex because I was scared, scared of myself, of finding out that I really was some asexual freak. That I had felt so guilty of just being with Trowa, there was no way I could have sex with him. That the idea of sex itself was frightening, just getting that close to someone, being that vulnerable. There hadn’t been any reason for me to want to do it, least of all with Trowa Barton and I have spent the last five months regretting giving in to him. Not that it matters at all. I suppose I should be grateful to him for taking my virginity instead of hating him for it. Better him than my father.

          I pulled away from Heero further, looking down at the ground again and faced forward instead of towards him. This would be so much easier if I didn’t have to look at him. I picked at a dried paint stain on the knee of my jeans with my fingernail, unsure of what to say.

          “I don’t know,” I whispered, which was probably the closest to the truth that I could ever get seeing as how, half a year later, I still didn’t know what the fuck was wrong with me, “I just… never really saw him that way, you know? I know I should have. I liked him. Cared about him. I even found him attractive. It’s not like he’s ugly or anything, and I’m gay, so why shouldn’t I have wanted to have sex with him?”

          I did wince then, hating to admit even that much. I didn’t want Heero to know that he was the only person who has ever made me feel even the tiniest spark of sexual attraction, that that moment at school when he had chased me down and pressed himself against me, kissed me deeply like he was dying and I had been the cure was the only time in my entire life that I have ever felt any kind of passion, any kind of desire. And even that moment had been fleeting.

          “It’s not that simple,” my boyfriend argued, “He might be handsome, but his personality sure leaves a lot to be desired. Just because someone is attractive, it doesn’t mean you’re obligated to want to sleep with them. I sure wouldn’t want to sleep with him or Zechs for that matter and he’s far from ugly.”

          He won a small smile from me at that. I suppose he had a point. Zechs and Mueller were pretty attractive and I wouldn’t want to touch them with a thirty-foot pole. Of course, they also weren’t gay, but Quatre had been gay and while I can admit to some small attraction, or at least the knowledge that my friend had been very handsome and I could easily see why Trowa had been interested in him, I hadn’t felt any interest in him myself. Maybe that was because of my… issues, but I could also understand if it had been my feelings for him. Quatre had been my friend and we had shared a closeness that had nothing to do with sexual attraction. Our bond had been different, deeper, and I could not imagine kissing him. It would have been like kissing a brother.

Maybe Heero was right. Maybe I shouldn’t look down on myself for not falling in love with Trowa, or feeling attracted to him more than I had just because he was gay, available, and very attractive. Maybe there’s more to it than that. I can’t begin to decipher it, why I’m more attracted to Heero’s tanned skin and deep blue eyes than I ever was Trowa’s large hands and cool demeanor. What makes a person gravitate towards one individual more than another? I have no clue. I don’t believe in that psychological mumbo jumbo that you fall for someone that’s like your parent. Trowa is a lot more like my father than Heero is. And even before I fell in love with his smile, I can admit that I was more attracted to his looks than Trowa’s. The why of it will probably always elude me. Some kind of body chemistry, the way my brain’s wired, I don’t know.

But I can easily admit that Heero might be right on the personality angle. If I had felt some kind of sexual attraction towards Trowa, it probably would have shriveled up rather quickly when our relationship had gone south. I can even pinpoint the exact moment when any interest I had had in him would have died. That time in the woods when he had gone too fast and I had rejected him. The moment when he had gone cold and angry and had mocked my hair. Kind of hard to keep loving a person when they clearly think so little of you, and how easy it is for them to turn on you.

“I wanted to be attracted to him,” I murmured, “I tried so hard… Some part of me was. I could at least find him handsome. And it wasn’t like I thought some other gay guy was going to show up in the near future that I would be any more into. I knew that he was probably my only shot at an actual relationship in my life, but I still didn’t feel any real… desire towards him. Even before our relationship got so acidic, I wasn’t chomping at the bit to jump into the sack with him. Maybe it’s like he said. Maybe I’m just so childish and inexperienced, the classic virgin that doesn’t know what he’s missing…”

“I don’t think you’re childish,” Heero soothed, putting his hand on my shoulder, “And I pity him if he really believes that someone not wanting to have sex makes them immature. Some guys do want to fuck anything that moves, but not everyone is like that. It doesn’t mean that you’re in the wrong, you were just different than him. And yes, you were inexperienced. You said it yourself, Quatre was your only friend. You’ve lived a very isolated life and with how much you work and how people treat you at school, you haven’t had a lot of chances to bond with other people. That’s not your fault. He certainly didn’t make it easy for you to connect with him and want to be close to him like that if he wasn’t shy about looking down on you about sex. Being inexperienced at our age isn’t a crime, and it isn’t that strange. I mean, do you think I’m weird for not having sex at almost seventeen?”

I finally looked over at him and took in his earnest, but unafraid expression. He didn’t have any of the paranoia that I had felt in being a virgin at sixteen. He didn’t feel strange and wrong at being inexperienced. I envied him that. I had always felt… I don’t know, like the odd man out that I had never been intimate, even just the pg-13 stuff at my age. It seemed like everyone else in my grade had hooked up with someone, had a slew of boyfriends and girlfriends under their belts. Then there was me, who still blushed at kissing and holding hands. And then there had been the things that Trowa had said in anger about me when I had continued to reject him. He had made me feel ashamed to still be a virgin, for not wanting to do it with him. He had acted like it was something ridiculous and strange, a boy that didn’t want to fuck. He had made me feel like I _had_ to have sex in order to be normal.

But then I had and he had made me feel like a slut for doing it. I have wondered for a long time what the truth is, if there even is one. Trowa had obviously been more experienced than me, so he had just made me feel like a child, like I should have already done all these things and that was normal. But even when Heero had confessed to never having done it, to only making out and some heavier stuff, I had never really thought about it. I had never compared him to myself, had never found it strange that he was sixteen, the same age that I had been when I had lost my virginity. I shook my head. I don’t know why, and I’m aware that it’s a double standard, but I really didn’t see him as weird or inexperienced like I had seen myself. When it came to romance and intimacy, Heero seemed so much more mature and knowledgeable than me. He was the one in control of this relationship, the one leading, so it was just incredibly weird to me to suddenly look at him as the one that had never experienced the things that I had.  

“I don’t think he really believed that, either,” Heero continued, “I don’t know him very well, but I think it’s possible that he just used that to pressure you into doing something that you weren’t comfortable with. I don’t know if he was really that manipulative, but he might have even just done it subconsciously or lashed out to hurt you. I find it hard to believe that someone only a year older than you would think that it was ridiculous, you not wanting to jump into having your first sexual experience at sixteen.”

I stared at him with wide eyes. That had never occurred to me, the possibility that Trowa had been talking out of his ass when he had accused me of hoarding my virginity, that I was too old to be acting so childishly. That he might have just been saying hurtful things out of anger, not out of any truthfulness, or that he might have full out manipulated me into giving him what he wanted. I… I don’t really know how I feel about it. It makes me wish that I had punched him a few times, perhaps broken his nose. If it was true, how could he have done that to me? Even if he hadn’t cared about me, how could he have hurt me just to get me to spread my legs for him? How could the boy that I had seen blush to just be around Quatre, and spoken so softly and shyly a few years ago have grown into the kind of person that would do that? I didn’t want to believe it. As much as I hated him, I couldn’t bear to believe that about him.

“It doesn’t matter,” I muttered, looking down at my hands as they laid on my lap.

I hated them suddenly. They were too white, the fingers too long, calloused from the construction work that I did. Looking at them, I remembered the nasty thing that Trowa had done in the studio, how he had grabbed one of them and forced it in his pants. Remembering that, I think a part of me, if only a part, could believe it. Manipulated. Had Trowa really not know what he had done to me every time he had called me names, verbally abused me after I pushed him away? Or had he played me, maneuvered me onto the dirty garage floor like a chess piece?

“It doesn’t matter,” I said again, this time more forcefully, knowing that I wasn’t talking to Heero but to myself, “It doesn’t matter if he believed it or not or if I was into him or not. I knew what I was getting into when I agreed to date him. I knew that I didn’t want to have sex with him, just like I knew that he didn’t really want me, either. I knew all those things and I still had sex with him. I still got into that relationship. I deserved him saying those things to me, every hurtful thing he said when I wouldn’t give him what he wanted… it was all my fault.”

“Of course it wasn’t your fault!” Heero snapped at me in frustration, but I couldn’t tell if he was really frustrated with me for not listening to him or just frustrated at the situation, “You do not deserve to be hurt just because you wanted some company, because what you wanted didn’t align with what he wanted from you! He was just as responsible. As soon as he figured out that you weren’t interested in sex and he couldn’t handle that, he should have broken up with you! Instead, he used you and hurt you to get what he wanted. That’s fucked up, Duo. You messed up and made mistakes, but even if you used him for companionship, what he did was a hell of a lot worse. And I don’t believe for a second that he didn’t want you, no matter what he says. He’s the one that asked you out, right? There must have been something that he liked, something that drew him to you. Maybe it wasn’t love, but he was attracted to you, why else ask you out?”

Why indeed. I’ve asked myself that enough times by now, but no matter how much I want to believe otherwise, I already know the answer.

“I know that there was nothing that he liked about me, just like he just said,” I felt like I was drowning in my painful memories, all those times, hundreds and hundreds of times, that I had looked into his eyes and known he wasn’t looking back at me, all the times when he had been seeing the person that he had actually wanted. I heard him call Quatre’s name as he fucked me, using me like a sex toy, like a living cock sleeve as he pretended to be with someone else and felt like my heart was ripping apart all over again, “He made that perfectly clear to me a long time ago.”

“He was angry,” Heero tried to argue.

“He was telling the truth,” I ignored him, “Everything else… taking me out on dates, kissing me, being nice to me… _those_ had been the real lies. I had always known from the moment that he had asked me to hang out with him that I was only with him for convenience. I was gay and available. That’s all that mattered to him. I was a blank slate and he could pretend I was someone else because I was empty and boring and there was nothing in me that he cared for. I knew it for so long, it didn’t even shock me when he admitted as much to my face. "You were never the one I wanted and don't you fucking forget that." Those were his exact words, I believe. Kind of hard to lie to yourself that you’re something important to someone when they say something like that to your face.”

Heero looked so incredibly pained and in shock as I laid out that old, poisonous memory, but I didn’t know how to comfort him. Tell him that it was alright. I couldn’t even comfort myself. ‘Unwanted’ doesn’t really cover what I am, does it? I had told Heero that Trowa could have been anyone if it meant that I hadn’t been alone. Well that works both ways.

“He hated everything about me, just like he said,” I said hoarsely, another traitorous memory popping in my head, like bubbles rising in the water, “My personality, the clothes that I wore, my looks…” I grabbed my braid with both hands, tugging it over my shoulder.

I remembered standing in front of my bathroom mirror, loathing myself, feeling disgusted in the curves of my face, the color of my eyes, and even the length of my hair. I remembered my anger, at Trowa for tearing me down, for making me hate that one, tiny bit of myself that I could change, at myself for not wanting to change this one thing to make him happy.

“He even hated my braid,” I gave the offending bundle of reddish brown hair a tug, the pain feeling good for some reason, like I was punishing it, “Truly hated it. I almost cut it off for him once. I thought, why not, it would make him happy and wasn’t that all that I wanted? I wanted him to like me and it was such a small thing… but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t even do that much to appease him.”

And I still couldn’t understand it, why I had caved so easily to having sex with him, but had been unable to cut my hair off for him, too. It seems so stupid now in retrospect. It was just hair, nothing special, nothing worth anything. So why had I clung to it so strongly? Why had it upset me so badly, him wanting me to cut it? Why does it still upset me when I know, without a doubt, that it wouldn’t have made a difference? No matter how hard I tried, no matter what I did to myself, I never would have been enough like Quatre for him. I could have copied all of his mannerisms, even his way of speaking, but I never would have been him. And in the end, Trowa would loathe me anyway, so what was even the point of agonizing over this anymore? With an incredible gentleness, Heero pried my hands off of my hair and smoothed my braid back, his fingers running through it slightly, lingering on it like he didn’t want to let go. That reverent touch eased some tension in me in a way that only Heero seems capable of doing.

“I’m glad that you didn’t,” he said softly.

I blinked wide eyes at him. I really didn’t see how it mattered to him one way or the other what I had done to my hair.

“I love your braid,” he said and with how his eyes shone, I couldn’t even accuse him of lying to make me feel better.

“You do?” I asked in shock.

He loved it? No even just liked it or thought that it suited me, but actually loved it. Why? I know that he’s one of the few people who doesn’t think my hair makes me look girly, and he’s said that he likes it before, but never like this, never with such affection in his eye. Just like that, it was like that wound that Trowa had placed on my heart had healed, just to hear Heero say those words. It wasn’t all the way gone, there was a deep scar there and it would always be there, but it was no longer a gaping wound. Heero likes how I look, I thought, for some bizarre reason, so can’t that be enough? Even if I find myself repulsive, and even if Trowa had said there was nothing special or attractive about me, so long as Heero loves me, does any of the rest really matter?

“I always have, from the moment I first saw you,” he said, his expression and smile wistful, “And you should never let anyone make you feel you aren’t worth it, that you need to change something about yourself just to be liked or treated with respect. Your hair was never the problem, Duo, he was the problem. I loved that about you, you know, how the things people say about you might hurt you, but you just keep going, you don’t try to change or hide to suit them. Trowa and I… we did disgusting things to blend in, to not draw attention to ourselves, but you never did. You could have cut your hair, gotten a girlfriend, tried to put on the same mask that I did, but you didn’t. Even when you were desperate to keep Trowa, you didn’t cut your hair. That he couldn’t see how amazing and beautiful that makes you is his loss.”

I flushed so darkly that I thought I might actually combust. It always blows my mind when he says shit like that, when he talks about the things he loves about me. I can’t see any of it. He saw my refusal to cut my hair an act of strength, I saw it as a confusing act of cowardice and pettiness. I don’t know which is the truth.

“But I did give into him in the end,” I muttered, “I still slept with him, even though I didn’t want to.”

That was right, I reminded myself. Heero could claim that I was strong for not changing myself to suit others, but when it had really mattered, I had flinched, hadn’t I? I had given in and changed in the one time that I shouldn’t have. I was weak and I had paid the price. All the haircuts in the world really didn’t add up to my biggest surrender.

“Why-,” Heero began to ask and then suddenly blushed, realizing how careless that question was, “I’m sorry, that was rude.”

“No, it’s fine,” I said and wrapped my arms around my stomach, feeling it ache with stress, “I’m just… not proud of it.”

“You said he blackmailed you,” Heero said softly, “If he really bullied you into it, you can’t look down on yourself for that.”

“Sure I can,” I looked at the ground, “It wasn’t like he forced me. I… I made the decision to sleep with him, even when I knew that I shouldn’t. It wasn’t like literal blackmail or anything. I just… We fought about it all the time, my pushing him away. The longer it went on for, the more hostile he got and the more that I started to hate him for it. After he told me that sex was the only thing that he wanted from me… and he couldn’t see the point of being with me if I refused to do it with him… I just assumed that if I kept putting it off, he would stop caring about me, if he had ever cared at all. I was sure that he would break up with me if I didn’t spread my legs for him,” I chuckled bitterly, “I guess I was right, huh? He might not have broken up with me, but he didn’t exactly fight our break up. He must have been relieved to not have to deal with me ever again. I hadn’t given him what he wanted or needed, so there was really no point in us trying to get back together. He didn’t even care enough about me at that point to want to stay friends or even just apologize for how things ended. I guess that’s just how little I meant to him, huh?

“He made me feel like I was incapable of being loved… just like my mother did,” I whispered so lowly that it was barely audible.

I felt something deep inside of me clawing its way out, something ugly and twisted. Thoughts like black water, icy and dark were trying to twist their way into my head. I didn’t want to remember. Not how I had felt when I had realized that all my fears about my relationship with Trowa had been true, that I was just some hollow replacement, a sex doll for him and I could have been anyone else, so long as he could have that fantasy. But the real me had never mattered to him at all. I certainly didn’t want to remember how I had felt when my mother had told me that I was unwanted, how she regretted not aborting me, even if I know now that isn’t true. And I didn’t want to remember how I had felt as a child, being hit, being screamed at, being made to feel like I was trash, constantly looking at my parents and wondering if they loved me. Wondering if it was all my fault, if I was unlovable, if I was such a screw up that there was nothing in me for them to love.

Hot tears burst down my cheeks and I hid my face in my hands, hating myself for them. Hating that I was so weak, so damaged, so emotional. Hating that I couldn’t be strong, hating that I cared so much about how other people saw me, that I needed to be loved in the first place. I had wondered, and feared, for a very long time if I was just one of those people who is destined to never connect with anyone. That there is something… lacking in me. Not my inability to be intimate. Not my dislike of sex. But something more, something deeper. Some… hole. Something that everyone else is just born with but some cruel twist of fate denied me that makes it impossible for anyone to love me.

As time went on, that fear only grew until it had consumed me. Can you even call it paranoia when it seems like everything in your life is the proof of it? My parents loathed me. Quatre had stayed with me for a time, but if he had loved me, he wouldn’t have killed himself in front of me, right? Even Trowa hadn’t loved me. No, worse than that. After six months together, he hadn’t found a single thing in me to love, nothing at all. And I had wondered if that was because there was nothing there, not just for him, but for everyone, if my inability to fall in love with another person, to get a crush on someone, to still be a virgin at sixteen wasn’t because I was uncomfortable around people, but just because I was empty inside. This was my life, my fate, to be used, to be hated.

Even before I had dated Trowa, I had come to believe these things about myself. I had believed them so strongly that I had tried to kill myself, unable to face a future of nothingness and solitude and the knowledge that I’m not even half a person. And after I had broken up with Trowa… after what my father had done to me… if I had never met Heero, I think I might have tried again. I think I would have tried a lot harder. Hell, maybe I would have anyway if we had never become friends. Maybe just knowing that, after all these years, I had finally fallen in love with the person who could never want me would have been enough to bring me back into that low, dark place again.

But Heero saved me from all of that. Even before my mother had gotten sober and told me that, despite all of her years of neglect, she did love me, Heero had showed me that I am not the despicable, empty person that I had come to believe. He had showed me that people _did_ care about me. And now… now I can deny all of his reasons for liking me, all of the things that he says he sees in me, but I can’t deny that he does love me. I can’t believe that sometimes, that this handsome and kind person loves me of all people, but I can’t deny it, not anymore after everything he’s done for me. And I like how it makes me feel, just knowing that there is someone who cares for me. I don’t want to think about the dark things, those times before we met where everything seemed so hopeless and twisted. I wanted to put all of that behind me and be the person that Heero sees me as. I don’t want to remember the bad things, the anger, my loneliness, Trowa’s loathing for me… Why, I screamed in my head, why did he have to come back into my life?! And why did he have to expose this part of me that I never wanted Heero to see?

“What do you want from me?!” I cried into my hands, so sick of my own emotions, “Why are we even talking about this?! Why does it matter?!”

I felt his arms go around me again, tighter this time, and he drew me so close to him that I was almost in his lap, but I didn’t even care enough to be embarrassed by that fact. I didn’t know what he wanted me to say, what he wanted me to do to stop having this painful and completely pointless conversation. I just wanted to _stop_. I felt humiliated and I wanted to find some dark place where the thoughts would stop, where those memories would never be able to find me. Why couldn’t I leave them behind? I had been so happy an hour ago. Where had it gone? Why did the past have to keep dragging me back?

“Ssh,” my boyfriend soothed, stroking my back and my hair, “None of that is true. I love you. I love you very much. Your mother loves you. Quatre loved you. You can’t let people like Trowa and your father make you feel that way. You aren’t incapable of being loved. You aren’t garbage. You could never be garbage, Duo, not ever,” I felt his familiar and welcome hands touch my face and he forced me to look at him through my watery, blurry vision. His eyes were so intense, they looked like they were burning, “I love you,” he repeated with that same intensity, making a few more tears fall as his words made this strange, but not completely unpleasant pain burst in my chest, “and we are talking about this because I hate seeing you in so much pain. I know it’s hard, but you need to talk to someone about this. You keep things inside too much. It’s killing you and I won’t let it, even if I have to drag it out of you, word by word.”

His words, so kind and understanding and not at all what I thought I deserved, only made me cry harder, but Heero didn’t stop holding me or touching me. I think he knew how much his kindness hurt, but he also knew that I needed it, even if it embarrassed me. And though it did hurt, I felt like I could have stayed there forever with just the two of us. I wished that the whole rest of the world would cease to exist just so I would never have to experience anything else. I don’t know how long I cried for, probably just a couple of minutes, but it seemed like a long and arduous thing as I fought to regain my iron control over my emotions, to shove them back behind that wall that I’ve spent my entire life erecting, a wall that only Heero seemed to know the secret path to get around. We sat there for a moment in silence, him patiently waiting for me to clean my face off before speaking again.

“I…” he started and then hesitated, looking like he wanted to be doing just about anything else at that moment, even fighting off a large shark, like something especially rotten had crawled down his throat, and he was obviously reconsidering saying what he had intended to say, but I waited silently, doing him the same courtesy he had done me, “I need to ask you something.”

“Alright,” I said easily.

“No, it’s… it’s something that’s going to upset you a lot and I don’t want you to be hurt anymore.”

I snorted.

“I’m already upset,” I pointed out dryly, my throat sore from crying and my voice thick, “and you’ve been asking me difficult questions this entire time.”

“This is different,” he murmured and eyed me like he was trying to decide if I could handle what he had to ask. I couldn’t decide if I felt touched by how protective he was, even against himself, or offended that he thought I couldn’t handle a single question, “Just… promise you won’t be angry with me?”

I raised an eyebrow at that. I had been telling him things that I had been so sure he would hate me for, and he stubbornly refused to. I was very sure that I was incapable of hating him no matter what he had to say to me.

“I promise,” I told him but even with that, he looked like he would rather be stabbed in the gut than say whatever was on his mind.

“Your ex…” he started and stopped again for a moment, clumsily trying to put his words together, “You called him Barton.”

A warning went off in my head. At the time, it was just this flashing, red light, not a full alarm, but I felt this sickly little sensation in my stomach, nausea starting to rise. I couldn’t understand what his point was, at least that was what I told myself, but deep down, I knew. I knew and I felt like screaming the whole time that I repeatedly told myself over and over again that it was fine, Heero couldn’t know. How could he possibly know? But I knew that that was bullshit, just like how I knew how fucked I was.

“Yeah, that’s his last name, so?” I asked defensively while that sick feeling screamed at me to get out of there before Heero asked the question I knew was on his mind, before he did something that we could never take back and opened a door that I could never walk through.

“Trowa Barton,” Heero said in that still hesitant, still nervous tone, but he was always too blunt and too stubborn to back down from even his own curiosity, “That’s the Trowa that Quatre had a crush on, isn’t it?”

He said it without accusation. Without judgement. Without repulsion. Just honest curiosity. But it didn’t matter, it did the same damage as if he had said it with complete reproach. My heart exploded in my chest and I felt like I was going to vomit out my guts right there. I pulled away from my boyfriend and best friend like he had just struck me. I’m sure that my face had done something especially interesting, because Heero looked alarmed even before I sprung to my feet like a cat that had just been spooked. Yeah, that’s a good word for how I was feeling. Spooked. Haunted by a ghost that hasn’t left me be since that day at the train station four years ago when Trowa Barton had kissed me. Me and not Quatre. Because I was the one that was alive. My heart still doing something really freaky, I felt like my insides were moving faster than my outsides, like something was trying to escape out of me. I could feel the world crashing around my ears in a matter of seconds, all because of one question. I had been worried about our relationship ending because of my sexual issues at some future time. I hadn’t even needed to wait that long. Because I knew, and it was the reason why I had hidden it, that this was not something that we could survive.

How could we? Heero had forgiven me for some pretty heinous stuff, but this? Dating my dead friend’s love, the boy that he had _killed_ himself for, spitting on his memory and his grave like that? It’s a sin that I can never forgive myself for committing, one that no one should forgive me for. Disgust doesn’t even come close to how I feel about it. I had always known that the moment Heero found out about it, about how horrible and repulsive I am, it would be over. There was no way he would want to be with someone like that.

“I-I should get going,” I stammered, already moving before Heero could realize that I intended to flee, “I’m late for work, probably really late by now and I don’t want to make my boss mad. We can talk about this later, right?”

I was rambling like a lunatic and I didn’t even care. In my head, if we didn’t talk about this, Heero would never know for sure that my Trowa was Quatre’s Trowa and he wouldn’t break up with me and everything would be fine just so long as we didn’t _talk_ about it. I know I was losing my mind, alright? But I was panicking and after everything else that had just happened, I couldn’t handle this. I didn’t know _how_ to handle it, so I did what I do best, I ran the fuck away from it. Well, I tried to, anyway.

“Wait, Duo, don’t-,” Heero got up off the tree, taking longer than I had because he had still been straddling it, but I was already walking fast towards Leneski’s back lot.

I just needed to get out of the woods and into the open before he caught up to me, I thought. It was just like when Dad chases me, I just need to get to where other people are and he won’t do anything in front of them, right? Heero would never make a scene in public like that. I even thought about just making a run for it as I heard Heero coming after me, suddenly no longer caring if I looked nuts in front of him or not just so long as we never, ever, _ever_ had this conversation. Those were my grains of sand. So long as I didn’t confirm his suspicions, this was salvageable. But just like always, they slipped through my fingers. Before I could move from a brisk walk to a full out run, I felt Heero’s arms go around my stomach and he held me back, flush against him. Normally I would have blushed like a damned cherry feeling him pressed against me like that, but this wasn’t a normal day. I instinctively tried to fight against him, not liking the feeling of being trapped when I was that anxious and scared, but I didn’t try very hard. Even freaking out like I was, I knew from experience that it was impossible to get out of that hold unless I elbowed him in the gut or slammed my head back against his, but even panicking, I didn’t want to hurt him.

“Stop running from me,” Heero growled against my shoulder, sounding very angry.

I flushed realizing that he had known exactly what I had intended to do and finally gave up, sagging in his grip, but he didn’t let go. I think he suspected (and rightfully so) that if he did, I was probably going to bolt again. If I stopped being so stupidly frightened and cagey like a damned animal, his hold and the feeling of him against me would have been pleasant, if a bit embarrassing, but my nerves were strung too tight to enjoy anything. Of course he was angry at me, I thought with sorrow and a good deal of self-loathing. I had just confirmed his suspicions, stupidly given myself away by trying to run away from him. I might as well have just screamed ‘yes, I fucked the boy that my best friend loved so much, he couldn’t even live with knowing that he disgusted him! Yes, I’m so disgusting that I can try to kill myself in missing him and then turn right around and stab him in the back, just because I wanted a little company!’

I could have played it cool. Could have just told him no, my ex was not the same person at all, sure Trowa was probably the only Trowa in our entire town, but I mean, there had to be another Trowa somewhere in the whole, wide world of possibilities, I had lied when I had said that that was his name, the other Trowa had moved away, something. Instead I had freaked out like a nutcase and tried to run. Now he knew the kind of disgusting excuse for a human being that I am. No wonder he was mad, knowing that I hid that from him, and then hadn’t even had the spine to face him. Everything that I had done to Trowa in our relationship… being a cock tease, breaking up with him, leading him on, saying those horrible things to him, hitting him, it didn’t hold a candle to how I had betrayed Quatre.

“Just stop,” Heero murmured into my hair, “ok?”

I could feel myself shaking and a new bought of flight hit me. I felt almost the same desire that I had felt when Zechs had tried to rape me that had gotten me to bite him, but much lesser. It wasn’t like there was anywhere to run to, I reminded myself. Heero could find me anywhere.

“Why didn’t you just tell me?” he chided, but to my shock, his tone was soft, annoyed and frustrated, but he wasn’t calling me names yet, wasn’t telling me how disgusting I am yet and I was completely confused by it, “Duo, this was important, why didn’t you tell me who he was?”

“I don’t want to talk about this!” I burst out, tears streaming down my face again.

“Tough shit,” he ground out, “because we need to talk about this. Why are you so upset? This has obviously been bothering you for a long time, why hide it?”

A new bout of panic struck me as I realized that no matter what I did, no matter how strong and resolute I was, Heero was going to be able to get this truth out of me. This time I couldn’t fight it and I started to struggle again, pulling and pushing and almost thrashing against him. To his credit, Heero held on, refusing to let go out of pure stubbornness. I realized that he wasn’t going to let go and that feeling of being trapped, just like when Zechs had had a hold of me, just like when I had been five and my father had locked me in the closet in the laundry room for breaking a glass, just like when Trowa had held me down and tried to rape me came over me. Just like the first time my father had forced himself on me, binding my wrists behind my back with his belt, his heavy body pressing me down to my mattress as I begged him to stop. Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe. My breath came out in tiny, gasping pants and I couldn’t draw in any deep breaths. Heero must have realized that I was hyperventilating because he immediately let go.

Just like that, the second he let go and backed off, I could breathe again. Somewhere in the back of my mind, past my anxiety and past the sound of my still frantically beating heart, I felt ashamed of myself. This wasn’t the first time Heero had given me a panic attack directly at his touch, but it had been a very long time, long before we had gotten together. He was my boyfriend; I should love to be touched by him. At the very least, I shouldn’t be freaking out just from being held by him! Another part of me, a part of me that was very much an animal and had been partially responsible for my panic attack screamed that I was free now, I could run away.

But I didn’t. I was in such a weird, awful state that I might have, but as Heero had let go of me and I took a few relieved, gasping breaths, I saw him from the corner of my vision. He looked horrified, guessing correctly that he had been the cause. Horrified and guilty. That expression ripped me to shreds and didn’t so much gentle the animal in me as it subdued it and beat it back down. I had hurt him. Again. Bad enough that I was a freak who would have such an extreme reaction over nothing, but I kept hurting him over and over again. And I knew that in the end, I was only going to do a lot worse to him, just like I had to Trowa. Heero could be as understanding as he wanted, he could insist that I had just made poor mistakes, that I wasn’t the horrible person that I had believed myself to be, but even he couldn’t deny that I had hurt Trowa with those mistakes.

“Oh god, Duo, I am so sorry,” Heero apologized, his eyes wide and looking terribly guilty, like he had slapped me instead of just restrained me for probably not even a full minute.

Anger exploded in me, but anger in myself, not him. I was the one that had freaked over something completely innocent, and he was apologizing to me? He hadn’t fucking done anything wrong!

“How?” I demanded through my tears, “How did you know?”

Heero hesitated, probably because he thought I was too fragile and distraught to go on. I hated that. Even if I’m weak, I didn’t want him to see that, I didn’t want him to treat me like I was made of fine china. No one has ever done that. Even Quatre always acted like I was the toughest son of a bitch he had met, always telling me that I was strong when I knew it wasn’t true, that I’m mature and reliable, all that garbage. But not Heero. He might say I’m strong, but when I’m like this, when I’m falling apart, he acts like I’ll break at a strong wind, like he wants to bundle me up and protect me against the world when it isn’t the world that’s the problem, it’s my own damned self.

“After you told me what happened to Quatre, I looked into it further,” he told me, “I found a couple of articles on the town’s newspaper’s website, but there wasn’t much information in them and what was there was mostly misinformation and sentiments about his passing. None of them really said anything about what happened to him at school or even that he was gay.”

‘Money talks,’ I thought bitterly, thinking of my encounter with Quatre’s parents at school, how quickly his father had tried to insist that his son had just been sick and how I had wondered if he had meant Quatre’s depression or his sexuality. I wonder how much he had paid for the newspapers to not mention that little tidbit and I felt a deep anger at the man for it. His son had taken his own life and what he had cared about in the end was his own fucking reputation. Just like Trowa. Even after Quatre had died for it, he hadn’t changed, neither of them.

“They mentioned Trowa?” I asked in disbelief.

Honestly, I hadn’t paid much attention to the reports of Quatre’s suicide. I couldn’t have, not if I had wanted to stay sane, and even if I did, I was the first one to know that anything the media had to say about it was utter horseshit. But if they hadn’t even mentioned Quatre’s sexuality, at least the more reputable newspapers hadn’t, then why would they mention Trowa? Who would even know, or care about his role to play? We had known, us that had been there that day and read what had been posted on the board, but no one had talked about the bullying or that prank, so why would the media mention him beyond maybe saying they were friends?

 I was sure that I hadn’t been mentioned. No reporters had come knocking at my door. Maybe because I was a cop’s kid, maybe because of my age, but I had always just assumed that no one had mentioned my connection to Quatre. Which was weird considering everyone at school knew we were best friends and I had been the only witness to his suicide. I guess the police hadn’t been forthcoming with that piece of information. So if not me, then why Trowa?

“No,” Heero relieved my anxiety, “they didn’t mention him, or much of anything, really. But it wasn’t that difficult to figure out who he was. You said his name is Trowa and he was a really good basketball player. They have pictures and names of all the athletic teams in the high school and middle school yearbooks, so it was easy to find out who he was, especially with an unusual name like that. When I saw him today, I knew I wasn’t wrong. It couldn’t have been a coincidence and he looks exactly like he did back then, just taller.”

I blinked at him, feeling so incredibly stupid. I was amazed that I had never thought that he could do that and felt like smacking myself for ever telling him Trowa’s name in the first place, or that he had been on the basketball team. Of course, Heero being Heero, had investigated and figured it out. I’ve never been one for school spirit (obviously), so the yearbook thing had completely escaped my mind. I looked down at the ground, not wanting to meet those blue eyes, not wanting to see any recrimination there. I didn’t need any. I felt all of it there, right in my chest, this swirling storm of anxiety and loathing threatening to pull me down and tear me apart.

“Then you know,” I ground out, not seeing the point of lying about it, “You know how much he didn’t want me. I was just a fucking replacement.”

“Duo…” Heero said, pained, and tried to reach out to me to comfort me.

Even then, seeing me as I really am, his instinct was to comfort. But I wouldn’t let him. Not over this. I didn’t deserve anyone’s comfort. I pulled away from him and wrapped my arms around myself. I felt like everything was coming down, crashing around my head.

“That’s not true, you weren’t-,” he started to argue.

“No?” I snapped at him, “How, Heero, how was I anything else but a replacement for the person that he really wanted? He wasn’t shy about letting me know it! What, you thought that it was some grand coincidence that _I_ was the one that he asked out?! Was it because I was the only other fag in town, or was it because I had been Quatre’s friend? I was the only one who came even close to reminding him of Quatre, which is a fucking joke. I even failed at doing that for him! All I did was remind him over and over that I wasn’t the one he had wanted! I was too tall, not blonde or pale enough, my eyes are too blue, I don’t smile enough, I don’t like any of the things that Quatre liked, I couldn’t even let him fuck me like Quatre would have! I failed at everything in that relationship!

“He never saw me, he only saw him, I was just a living sex doll as far as he was concerned and I wasn’t even a good enough copy to make him happy! None of it even mattered, I never should have been with him in the first place! I knew from the first moment he asked to hang out that he was only asking me because I was the only one left alive that could remind him of the one that he had loved. I knew, and I still went out of with him! I kissed the boy that my best friend… my dead best friend had loved! He had died because of Trowa, because he couldn’t be with him, and I had kissed him! I had let him touch me, let him fuck me! _Me_! Those kisses, all those dates, that intimacy, it wasn’t mine, it was Quatre’s! I spat on his ghost every time I went out with Trowa. I mocked him, I stabbed him in the back and I stole those moments from him! I’m a disgusting person and a horrible friend! So tell me, Heero, what exactly is it about me that you love so much?!”

I knew that I was screaming and I didn’t care. I knew that I was crying and borderline hysterical and I didn’t care about that, either. Heero looked more and more alarmed with every word I spoke. I was scaring him. There was this part deep inside of me screaming to stop, to just stop frightening him, to stop making him look at me like that. But there was another part, a dark and twisted part, that was glad. Maybe if I scared him enough, he would go away. Maybe if he saw how fucked I am, he would give up on me.

“You say that I’m smart and strong, well this is what I really am,” I growled at him, ignoring the former part, the part of me that loved this boy in front of me and never wanted him to see this ugliness, just letting all these terrible feelings out into the open where he could gawk at them, “Twisted and _empty_. It’s just like Trowa said. I’m a hollow bit of nothing! I’m sick and depraved, doing all of the things that Quatre had wanted to do with him when I didn’t even love him! Only he could have done all of it better than me, just like everything else, he was always better than me!”

I didn’t even know where half of this sorrow, this self-loathing was coming from. After our trip to the cemetery, Heero had gotten me to believe that I had deserved to live just as much as Quatre, that you don’t get to choose something like that, and he had made me start to doubt my belief that Quatre had been the strong one, so where was all of this coming from?

“He would have been better at loving Trowa! He was the person that Trowa needed, not me! I should have been grateful that he even wanted to spend time with me, instead I destroyed everything! I couldn’t be the person that he was missing, no matter how much I tried! That wonderful person that you think I am is a lie, this is reality, Heero! I’m just a shell, not even good enough for someone to play out their sex fantasies with! That’s who you’re dating, a blow up doll!”

Heero’s face twisted with anger and when he reached for me, I seriously thought he was going to strike me, that some of what I was saying was finally getting through to him. Instead, he grabbed my shoulders, his grip firm, but not painful, and held me still.

“Stop it!” he snapped at me, “Stop doing this to yourself! Just _stop_ , Duo!”

He gave me this small shake and I did stop, if only because I was so shocked that he was still even speaking to me. Some of his anger eased when he saw my bewildered expression, but he didn’t let go of me.

“Why do you always have to do this?” he asked me softly, his voice so deeply pained, like I had ripped his heart out somehow, “Why do you have to constantly tear yourself down and blame yourself for everything?”

He let go of my left shoulder to cradle my cheek in his hand. It was only at that touch that I suddenly realized with shock that I had been crying heavily through my entire tirade. My cheeks were soaked again and tears were dripping down my chin and neck. Even in my anger, I hadn’t been able to stop crying. And still, he was touching me. Talking to me. Trying to soothe me. Why? Didn’t he see? Didn’t he understand the kind of person that I was? Wasn’t he disgusted? Frustration flared in me and I shoved him back, away from me. But even then, it only took him a second to recover and he didn’t back away or even glare at me angrily for pushing him. He took a step forward again, like it had never happened, still looking so pained and upset, but not for the reasons that I had assumed he would be.

“You haven’t been listening to anything-,” I started to snarl at him.

“Oh, I have,” that soft tone cut through the air in a way that my screaming never could, like a clap of thunder, “I’ve been listening to _all_ of it. So, let me get this straight. Your best friend’s crush asked you out three years after his death and you were so lonely after all of that time that you agreed. And you think that now that I know that, I’m going to break up with you?”

“Why wouldn’t you?!” I demanded, not understanding what his point was, “Don’t you get it?!”

“I get that you spent three years mourning and grieving and blaming yourself for Quatre’s death,” he continued undeterred, still in that damnable soft and kind tone. He held my face in his hands and this time, even though I was angry with him, a weak part of my heart sang out at his touch and I didn’t have the strength to push him away again, “I get that you were lonely and hurting, and there was this person, not a complete stranger, but someone that you had known and been on friendly terms with once, someone who had known Quatre, known what had really happened and was probably the only person around that really understood what you were going through that wanted to be with you, closer than anyone’s ever been. I get that you were in a very bad place and someone had given you a way out of it. Why should I hate you for that?”

“But it wasn’t mine!” I sobbed, “It wasn’t mine, it was Quatre’s! I stole it from him! I’m repulsive!”

Heero’s hands slid from my face and found their way to my shoulders again, but this time the touch was gentle, a means to comfort and not restrain.

“You aren’t repulsive,” he soothed, “You aren’t disgusting or sick or nothing or a sex toy. You’re a human being, one that’s made mistakes, but mistakes anyone would have made in those circumstances. You were just lonely and desperate, that doesn’t make you a monster. And it sure as hell doesn’t mean that you betrayed Quatre. You didn’t steal anything from him, love, he stole it from himself.”

I stared at him in confusion.

“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked with a twinge of anger, but I was finding that it was dwindling, I was just too hurt, too twisted up to maintain it.

“Quatre made his choice,” my boyfriend insisted, “No one made it for him. He was the one that turned his back on those kisses, those dates, all those chances to be with Trowa. He gave up on life, he gave up on any chance he might have had. You didn’t do that to him, Duo, only he did that. Trowa might have turned his back on Quatre, but Quatre did that, too, and he turned his back on you, as well. He gave up, do you understand that? Dating Trowa was obviously a poor choice, but don’t you dare say that you betrayed your friend! You didn’t choose the way that things went down. You didn’t abandon Quatre, and you didn’t abandon Trowa, either. They did that to each other and you were left with the broken pieces. You did what you could with them, and you used them to try to make yourself feel better. Maybe that’s not right, but you didn’t do it maliciously and you didn’t choose to be stuck with Trowa as the only person who made any kind of effort to be there with you! I don’t know the kind of pain Quatre was in, all I know is what I would have done, and if there was even a sliver of a chance that I could be with you, I would have fought tooth and nail to keep hold of that chance! I wouldn’t have given up on you just because all hope seemed lost!”

Oh god, he had me sobbing again. But it wasn’t with sorrow this time. I just… I loved him so much, so much that I couldn’t even contain it inside of myself. I loved him for trying to comfort me when all common sense told me that he should loath me for my mistakes. I loved him for the passion and determination in his voice as he pledged that he would always fight for me. And I loved that it was him, and only him, who could break through these barriers of self-hatred and depression that have surrounded me and make me feel _doubt_ for the very first time. I tried to hide the things that I was feeling by burying my face in my hands, but he wouldn’t let me. He gently pulled my arms down by my wrists and kissed the bridge of my nose, almost making me sob even harder at that loving gesture.

“And even if I had,” he continued in pulling the ground out from under my feet, “I wouldn’t have the right to feel betrayed if you moved on with someone else! Instead of feeling like you betrayed him by taking what affection someone was offering you, offering _you_ because I know you well enough to know that Trowa was the one who sought you out, not the other way around and don’t you forget that, you should feel betrayed that Quatre choose to leave you. Leave the both of you. This is what survivors do, Duo, they seek comfort in each other, it’s natural.

“Trowa could have found anyone else. Even if you were the only in town he knew was gay, there are other towns. It would have been a much safer idea for him to have seen someone else that no one at school even knew if he was that obsessed with secrecy. But he didn’t. He chose his dead crush’s best friend. You think that you’re fucked up for taking that comfort? And you don’t think that he was just as aware as you of what it meant to be seeing you? If you’re right, and the only reason why he chose you is because of your connection to Quatre, knowing how much you were hurting, if he was really using you and pretending that he was with Quatre that whole time, then he’s a sick, twisted fuck, not you.”

          I felt my right hand tremble along with some emotion in my chest. I can’t name it precisely, only that it left me feeling shaken. Clarity, I guess I could call it, or perhaps doubt or uncertainty. The feeling you get when someone comes along and tells you that a closely regarded truth of yours is bullshit and they just make so much sense, and that truth is so dark and terrible, that you want to believe them. But can you? Are they right? That’s how Heero’s words made me feel. The pessimistic part of myself screamed no, he was wrong and I was right. I was disgusting, I had done something terrible. This heavy feeling I’ve been carrying around for so long exists for a reason. _That_ is the truth.

          But the part of myself that loves Heero and wants his respect faltered on my resolve. I was just… so tired. Tired of hating myself for the things that I had done with Trowa, all those shitty choices that I had made. Tired of being terrified of how Heero would see me. Tired of carrying around that weight, all this guilt and self-loathing, thinking that Quatre, if he’s in heaven and looking down on all of this, must hate me. Tired of thinking that maybe Trowa was right and Quatre should be the one alive, not me. I wanted to let it go, but I had loved Quatre too much, and I’m too practical and self-sacrificing to do that. I have too many faults and I’ve obsessed over them since I was little. How do you let go of that? How can you just accept it when someone tells you that your entire view of yourself, a view that your peers and family have backed up, is false?

          Wanting to believe in something that makes you feel good and needing to believe in the truth are two very different things. I don’t know what to believe anymore, if the truth is even something that I want if it makes me feel this… this torn apart and hollow. Solo told me once to believe in the person that makes me feel good. I don’t know about that, but the same practical part of myself that told me that these feelings don’t exist out of thin air, that if I feel guilty, it’s only because I did something wrong, and if I hate myself, it’s only because I’m repulsive was the same part that examined Heero’s words and wondered ‘what if he’s right? He makes sense, the things he’s saying seem logical, seem true. Is he mistaken, or is it me?’

          Heero said it was Quatre’s fault, not mine, for not being there for Trowa and myself, for giving up on any possibility of a relationship. I have a hard time believing that, not because I don’t think it’s true, somewhere deep down, I have this suspicion that it might be, and even if it isn’t and it’s just his opinion, it makes enough sense for me not to completely discard it. I have a difficult time believing it because Quatre was my best friend and when he killed himself, he took a very large part of my soul with him. I’m not trying to be poetic or poignant, I mean that very literally. He took a chunk of me, a piece that had been my ability to trust, my ability to smile easily and find a connection with people and I’ll never get that back. What I have with Heero… it’s special. It’s something that I never should have found again because I just _can’t_ anymore, a literal miracle.

          I can’t believe that Quatre turned his back on Trowa, stole his own destiny, his own dream from the both of them because I remember what it was like being with him in those last few days. I remember his misery, his tears, his depression. And I remember the site of him falling back into that train, the smile on his face. It rips me apart, even now years later. How can I blame him for anything, even hurting me, when I had loved him so much and now he’s gone? I know Heero is right. Quatre was my friend, but what he had done… he had betrayed me. And I know that in my grief, I’ve shored up this image of him as a perfect friend, a kind, amazing person. I’ve put him on a pedestal because of my grief and my guilt. But even if I chose to see him that way, deep down I know that he was a person full of faults, full of weaknesses.

Deep down, I think I know that Heero is right, even if I can’t admit it to anyone, even myself. He had said that what Trowa and I had done, while a mistake, had been natural. Was he right? Was I really not to blame? Was I really not disgusting? I shook my head, unable to accept it.

“If I feel guilty, there has to be a reason for it, right?” I choked out, “Why would I feel this way if I didn’t do anything wrong?!”

Heero smiled affectionately at me and lightly brushed my bangs away from my eyes.

“Because you, Duo Maxwell, are frustrating, bull headed, and maybe a bit nuts,” he said with amusement, “But above all else, you’re a good friend. You loved Quatre and you’ll always feel like you should have done more to help him, that’s just who you are. You feel guilty for dating Trowa for the same reason why you feel guilty over Quatre’s suicide. You didn’t do anything wrong, but you lost something precious and it has never stopped hurting. It never will. People blame themselves when things go wrong, when they’re hurt, even when they know there’s nothing they could have done to change it. I know,” he looked away for a moment and swallowed roughly, this deep pain coming into his eyes, “I’ve felt it, too. When Wufei died, I blamed myself. I thought if I had just been with him, if I had told on those bullies before, even if I had taken them out beforehand, I could have saved him. I blamed myself so much for not being there for him, I thought that I was just as responsible for his death as the ones that had killed him.

“I believed it for a long time. Just like you, there is still a part of me that believes it, and probably always will. Even when my father had told me that there had been nothing I could have done, I didn’t want to believe it. I wanted to believe that it was my fault for letting him down and it took months of my father pointing out the truth to me before I let it get hold in my head. The truth, he said, was that even if I had told on them before, it wouldn’t have stopped them from wanting retribution. And even if I had been with Wufei that day, I couldn’t have stopped all of them from beating on him. In all likelihood,” tears gathered in his eyes and I wished more than anything that I knew how to comfort him, but all I could do was take his hand from my shoulder and curl my fingers around his, “if I had been there that day, he said, they would have killed me, too.

“Guilt doesn’t have to have a reason to exist, Duo. It doesn’t have to have a purpose other than to torment you, and its existence is _never_ proof that you did something wrong. Guilt is pointless. The only thing that matters is seeing the mistakes you made and wanting to change. But if there’s nothing to change… do you really think that if you hadn’t gone out with Trowa, it would have appeased Quatre somehow, that it would have changed anything or made anything better for anyone? Not being with him wouldn’t have brought Quatre back. You know that. The only mistake you made was trying to make a relationship out of grief and pain, knowing that neither of you could love each other. But not because Trowa belonged to someone who had thrown his life away,” he kissed my hand and cupped my cheek again with his other, his touch reverent and gentle. My tears had stopped, but I could still feel this deep pain tearing up something inside of me, “You’ve been holding on to this guilt for so long, and you don’t need to be. All these months… what for, love? What is the point of you feeling like this? Do you really think Quatre would be happy to know that you think you’re repulsive, all because you reached out for the first sign of comfort?”

I sniffed, feeling another wave of tears wanting to come out and just so sick of it, of all of my freak outs and violent emotions, scrubbing uselessly at my face with the sleeve of my jacket.

“Not months,” I whispered, my voice cracking pathetically.

“What?” my boyfriend asked in confusion.

“It… it hasn’t been months,” I somehow managed to choke out, “It’s been longer. When we first got together… that wasn’t when we first kissed.”

“When?” Heero asked gently in this soft, careful tone.

I think even then he knew the kind of things he was treading on, that this was a sensitive subject without knowing the exact reason. Could I really tell him this, I wondered, did I have the strength for it anymore?

‘Why not?’ I thought, ‘I’ve come this far. What secrets do I even have left to tell that aren’t worse than what he already knows?’

“Years ago,” I whispered, “During Quatre’s funeral… I… I went out onto the train tracks to kill myself.”

“Oh god, Duo,” Heero gaped and squeezed my hand, hard, completely horrified even though I had already shown him the scars from my second suicide attempt, so he knew the kind of state of mind I had been in back then.

Had Heero entertained the same thoughts after Wufei had died, I wondered and felt this flurry of panic and pain and terror as I thought about him doing the same thing that I still think about sometimes. It’s funny how the human mind works, isn’t it? The thoughts of my own (multiple) suicide attempts don’t even phase me anymore. But the mere thought of Heero having been in that same dark and terrible place made me want to scream. Or maybe he hadn’t. Maybe, if I had the kind of emotional support he had, I never would have slit my wrists. Or maybe some pain is too much, even when you have parents that love you and aren’t shy about showing it. I guess I’ll never know.

“I didn’t go through with it, obviously,” I rushed to explain before he could freak out any more than he had, “I just… I wanted to be with him… I wanted the pain to stop,” talking about this was like trying to talk through a throat full of broken glass, not from all of my crying, but from this thick, unwanted emotion in my chest, “But when I saw that train approaching, suddenly I was terrified. I don’t know why, but I just couldn’t go through with it. Though I got the courage back later,” I rubbed my free wrist against my hip.

I couldn’t really feel the scars there exactly. It was more of a negative sensation. Apparently, even though I had cut the wrong way, according to the doctor that had stitched me up, I had been quite serious in my attempt. I had cut deep and given myself nerve damage. I still have trouble feeling sensations on the damaged skin, same with the big scar on my back. I know I’m being touched because there’s a pressure, but I don’t actually feel anything. It’s a pretty weird sensation, or lack of one. Heero looked deeply troubled, on the verge of tears, that look like he wanted to wrap me up in some indestructible material so nothing could hurt me ever again, even myself. I made a mental note to never talk to him about this shit ever again. I remembered, a bit vaguely due to how out of it I had been at the time, that night when I had talked to him about almost shooting myself with my father’s gun and how he had held me on the couch earlier, crying silently into my shoulder when he had thought that I was asleep. I immediately hated myself for even bringing this up with him. It seems like all I do anymore is upset him.

“I got up on the platform before the train could hit me and Trowa was just _there_ ,” I recounted, remembering my shock at seeing him there, thinking for a moment that he had been stalking me or something, and then getting so angry at him, realizing that even if he had tried to help me, it would have been too late and wondering why he had even cared if I died or not, “I guess he had had the same idea that I did, minus the attempted suicide part. Neither of us could go to the funeral. The only people that even knew what we had been to Quatre were each other and even if his parents had known, I doubt they would have invited us. I think he went there to pay his respects, or to grieve over him since it was the only place that he could. Guess he never thought that he would get to watch me almost waste myself like I had with Quatre on that same, damned platform,” I smirked but felt absolutely no humor as I remembered that moment, seeing him there, feeling him lift me up from the tracks and cover me pointlessly with his body.

“We fought, the first of many fights. He was pissed that I had tried to kill myself like Quatre, and I was just pissed at him. It was the first time that I had even seen him since he had abandoned my best friend and I wanted to rip him apart, to make him feel every ounce of my anger and grief even though I knew he was grieving, too. All I had to do was look at him to know how guilty he felt over it, but it didn’t matter to me. I was so… so angry at him. Angry at everyone. I was even angry that he was angry that I had tried to kill myself,” I laughed darkly, “That’s hysterical now, all things considered. I asked him why I shouldn’t kill myself, why I got to be the one left alive when Quatre was dead. Then, he kissed me,” I rubbed at my lips with the back of my hand. If I tried too hard, I could remember that first kiss and I really didn’t want to, “First time a guy ever kissed me and it had to be _him_. First time I really realized that I liked being kissed by a guy.

“I don’t even know why he did it, if he was just lonely or he thought it would help me or something. He begged me not to kill myself, told me that if I took my life like Quatre, he couldn’t handle it,” I chuckled bitterly again, “Three years later, he told me that I should have been the one to kill myself. Funny how much people change, huh?”

And even now I wonder what exactly had changed him from the shy boy at the train station, fumbling and failing to comfort me with a kiss to the one that had forced himself on me, had said all those hateful things to me. Treated me like trash. Had it simply been all of the years of guilt and secret grief, weighing him down, turning him hateful and full of rage like it had me? Or had I done that to him?

“Oh, sweetheart,” Heero whispered in a mix of horror and pain, like he had been the one to have those words thrown at him and not me.

He wrapped his arms around me again, and that was ok. That was more than ok. My anger and frustration were gone. Only hurt remained and I was at a place where I could finally accept his comfort. Accept that he was motherfucking insane and nothing that I had told him had changed how he saw me. I didn’t understand it. I sure didn’t agree with it, but he still loved me. For some reason, that blind adoration of his was bulletproof and I have to wonder just what it will take for me to finally blast it apart. I leaned against him, resting my forehead against his shoulder and letting him stroke my back. It would be so easy to accept his affection, those hands on me, to let him touch away all the bad things in my head and my heart. Impossible, but so tempting to forget everything that I had told him, all these old memories that Trowa’s intrusion back into my life had dredged up. I wanted so desperately to go back to an hour ago when we had been having lunch together and looking out over the ocean. Why couldn’t I have that back?

“I knew that he was just angry at me when he said that,” I murmured against Heero’s shirt, letting his warmth and his familiar smell fill all those empty places in me that Trowa’s angry words had ripped open, “I know that… but… I always wondered if he really wished that every time we had gotten together… every date… every kiss… even when we had sex, I wondered if he was wishing that I had died and not Quatre, that he would have traded our places if he could. If everything would have been better if I was dead and Quatre were alive.”

          “Don’t do that to yourself,” I felt Heero’s arms tighten around me and he kissed the top of my head, “Don’t think those things.”

          “Why not?” I croaked through a fresh batch of tears, “He made me think it myself a hundred times over by the time I broke up with him, that his life would be better if Quatre and I had switched. I bet he even wished he had pushed me off that damned platform that day instead of kissing me.”

          “Christ, Duo,” I could feel him shaking his head, “You’ve had all this shit in your head? No wonder why you didn’t want to try dating again.”

          I barked a surprised, twisted laugh. I wonder the same thing myself sometimes, why I’m risking this all again, if I’m insane for sticking my hand in that fire again. But then I remember how wonderful it is being loved by Heero Yuy. I look at him and I feel that burst of love for him and I realize that it’s a completely different fire this time. And even though I’m going to get burned even worse this time, maybe that isn’t so bad. I know I’m lying to myself, but I still can’t manage to regret being his boyfriend. I lifted my head from his shoulder and looked at him, alarming him when he saw tears and probably a good deal of despair in my eyes.

          “Why are we still here?” I asked him miserably, “Why are _you_ still here? After everything I told you… I made so many mistakes, I dated someone I had no business being with because I was too pathetic and needy to let him go. I… I was a whore, having sex with him when I didn’t even want to, just so we could stay together! I hit him, I lied to him, I hurt him over and over… anyone else would have run away screaming from me now… so why, Heero, why do you still give a single shit about me?!”

          That was the question of the hour, wasn’t it? Why did he still claim to love me after everything I had just confessed to him? The things that make me ashamed and guilty, the things that make me feel disgusting… and there he was, holding me and kissing me and telling me these sweet things… why? How?

          “You aren’t a whore,” he said sternly and angrily all the while still stroking my back, “and don’t you ever call yourself that again! I’m not like anyone else if anyone else would be so petty to break up with you for making some bad choices. They don’t make you a bad person, or even a bad boyfriend. You frustrate the hell out of me sometimes, like right now, but beyond that, I certainly don’t have any complaints. I’ve made shitty choices, too, but you’re still with me. You can rehash every mistake you made in your last relationship. You tell me anything you want to make me think you’re not worth my time, but guess what? I’m not going to break up with you for any of it and you’re just going to have to accept that and stop thinking that’s the sort of person that I am. Just because you’re hard on yourself and can’t cut yourself a break for five damned seconds, it doesn’t mean that I’m like that. I’m not like your ex, either. Even if you make mistakes with us, I will never treat you like that, I will never make you feel like that, either. Bottom line: no, I am not going to break up with you or be disgusted with you, you’re just going to have to deal with it.”

          I stared at him like he had just grown a second head. He might as well have. After everything that I had told him… I just couldn’t fathom that someone like him existed. All the shame that I felt… and it didn’t mean anything to him. It wasn’t even like he was in denial about the things that I had done, he accepted them, he even agreed that I had messed up. But he didn’t look down on me for any of it.

          “You’re insane,” I breathed.

          “I’m stubborn,” he smiled, “and I’m not giving you up for anything now that I have you. I spent months being miserable, having to watch you from afar and treat you like crap. I thought that even if I confessed to liking you, there was no way you could like me back after the things that I had done to you. Then I kept quiet for even longer after becoming friends because I didn’t want to scare you off or destroy something that was a miracle just to have. Do you know how hard it was to keep quiet all that time, to deny what I was feeling for you when you were at arm’s length the entire time? To not try to comfort you and be affectionate when you were hurting or upset? Or how annoying all those damned jokes my parents would throw around about my crush were? Then even when I told you and you said you had to think about it, I thought no way in hell you were going to go for this. After all of that, there’s no way I’m just going to walk away because of a few, tiny skeletons in your closet.”

          I shook my head, feeling amazed by all of that. It was incredible enough that he bullheadedly refused to end it with me and didn’t even feel repulsed… but I had never really thought about what it must have been like for him to have been in love with me all that time and having waited so long to tell me. The guy had the patience and self-control of a saint. Stubborn… yeah, he was all of that and more. But I suddenly couldn’t fault him for not running far, far away from me at that point. I thought he was nuts and blinded by love, but if our roles had been reversed… if Heero had confessed things that he had been ashamed of to me, like what had happened to Wufei, I probably would have said the same thing. I didn’t see the same faults that he had. I didn’t blame him for what had happened to his friend and I fully agreed with Justin that Heero had done what he could. Was that how it was with him? Did he see my mistakes in that same way? Even if I had blamed him, I wouldn’t break up with him for it. I loved him too much, and I had gone through too much to keep him with me. What the hell would I do without him? Compared to losing him, some mistakes he had made in his past didn’t really match up, did it?

          “Is there anything else that you would like to tell me?” he asked and I had a hard time telling if he was being serious or joking, “Any other secrets that you stupidly think I’m going to hate you for or are you done scaring the shit out of me for the day?”

          “I… I don’t want to risk it,” I muttered.

          And wasn’t that the truth. I felt like I had been through a fucking meat grinder and somehow came out the other side, maybe not intact, but unmaimed at any rate. I felt like the luckiest fucking human being on the planet. Heero still wanted me, I realized. Everything that Trowa had said… everything I had confessed to… and he still wanted me. I almost burst out crying all over again.

          “Alright,” Heero said easily, somehow accepting the fact that I did have more secrets and just moving right along. Although, he was probably as emotionally exhausted as I was and just wanted to forget all of this had ever happened, too, “But can you just tell me one thing and then I’ll drop it? Just the one?”

          I chewed on the corner of my mouth. I didn’t want to talk anymore. I didn’t want to feel anymore. I just wanted to find a corner and stare at a wall until I didn’t have to think. I wanted to go home with Heero and curl up in his arms and take a ten-hour nap instead of go to work. But as usual, I can never deny him anything, at least not something so small. It’s just one more thing, I told myself, one more. How can it possibly be worse than Heero finding out who Trowa really is?

          “’k,” I said very cautiously and had this overwhelming feeling that I was going to regret this.

          “Why did you break up with him?” my best friend asked.

          I felt like I had just been slapped. My heart even skipped a beat as those words left his mouth, so very innocently. Out of all the things that he could have asked, why did he have to pick _that_? I couldn’t tell him that. If he knew what had happened that last night that Trowa and I had been together… he would freak. Hell, I still had a hard time coping with it, understanding what Trowa had done and I wasn’t one with the protective streak a mile wide. If I told Heero… he was going to flip his shit and go find Trowa and murder him.

          “I can’t…” I started to protest and tried to pull away from him, but Heero kept his arms around me and I didn’t get very far.

          “Please, Duo,” he begged me, “I need to know. You said that you didn’t break up with him after he cheated on you or after he said all those horrible things… you said that you were desperate and lonely, so what did he do that was so horrible that you finally broke up with him?”

          “You don’t know that it was something that he did,” I argued weakly, “Maybe I just got fed up with it. Maybe… maybe I finally woke up and saw how horrible we were for each other, you don’t know!”

          “Yes, I do,” he insisted, “I know you. You can be just as stubborn as me. If you hadn’t left over the cheating, then it had to have been something worse. Please, just tell me. I promise I won’t get upset, or are you still too thick headed to get that I’m not going to be disgusted with you?”

          “You _will_ get upset,” I muttered.

          Again I entertained thoughts of just making a run for it, but been there, done that. Seemed kind of stupid to run in the face of this after everything he had gotten me to say. I didn’t see a way around it anyway. Heero knew now that something had happened between Trowa and me, something bad, and he was going to keep going after it relentlessly until I said it. I could manipulate him, I knew. Order him to not ask me about it again. I knew that, just like myself, he couldn’t refuse me if I outright asked. But I couldn’t do that to him. No matter how much I was ashamed of what had happened in that condemned house that night, and my role to play in all of it, Heero was going to get the truth out of me sooner or later. I sighed heavily in resignation.

          “He… he tried to rape me,” I winced even as I said it.

          Heero’s eyes went wider than I have ever seen them get before and all of the color in his face was just gone. All in an instant, he looked horrified, sickened, and enraged. He grabbed me by the shoulders again, so hard that I winced for the second time.

          “What?” he demanded, his hands shaking, “He… he raped you?!”

          “No!” I rushed to explain before he could really get started, “He only tried.”

          “ ‘Only’?” Heero snapped out.

          “He didn’t really do anything,” I insisted, “I got him to stop before it got that far. It…” I looked down at the ground and spoke in a tiny voice, not wanting to admit this part, “It was all my fault.”

          Heero gave me a tiny shake and I looked back up just in time to see the frustration and rage in his blue eyes.

          “Do. Not. Ever. Say. That. Again,” he growled out each word, “Do you hear me, Duo? Not EVER! Someone doing that to you… it isn’t your fault, it’s never your fault! He acted! He forced himself on you! That’s what rape is! Your consent had nothing to do with it! Your actions had nothing to do with it!”

          I was shaking again. But I wasn’t thinking of Trowa and that night anymore. I was thinking of my father. Heero was wrong. Wrong wrong wrong wrong. He didn’t know. How could he know? It was my fault. All my fault. All of it. I had done this to myself. I shook my head frantically.

          “I pushed him into it!” I cried, “I… I made him into that!”

          “No,” his expression softened and he looked so heartbroken, but I didn’t know what I had just said to make him look like that, it had only been the truth, “No, that isn’t true-,”

          “Yes, it is! He was just frustrated at me-,” I tried to explain.

          “So that makes it ok?” Heero demanded, “You didn’t want to have sex, so he’s allowed to fucking rape you?!”

          “I didn’t just not want to have sex,” I whispered painfully, remembering the events of that night with the kind of clarity that I never wanted to have, “I told him… I told him that I was never going to have sex with him again. I said it right to his face.”

          “You decided that?” he asked softly.

          I nodded and leaned my head against my hand, feeling this pounding, horrible headache begin to throb.

          “I couldn’t do it,” I whispered, “After everything that he had done… cheating on me, leaving me behind in the equipment room, those horrible things he had said… When he touched me that last night when we were together, I just knew, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t make myself have sex with him ever again. And when I told him that, he got so angry… he got on top of me and tried to make me have sex with him, tried to get my pants off… he was so frustrated, all that time that I kept pushing him away…”

          “God, Duo,” my boyfriend lessened his grip on my shoulders, “Baby, you have got to stop thinking that everything in the entire world is your fault. It isn’t. Him forcing himself on you wasn’t your fault, it was his.”

          “It was!” I yelled, “It was my fault! I cut him off! He was just angry!”

          ‘Who are you trying to convince here?’ some voice in my head asked, a voice that sounded oddly like Solo’s for some bizarre reason, ‘Him or yourself?’

          “So what if he was?” Heero asked, “I don’t care how hard up he was. I don’t care how angry he was. No one does that to you, Duo. No one… places their hands on you and tries to force you when they know that you don’t want it. He was frustrated? Tough shit! That’s what masturbation is for, or he could have gone to that girlfriend of his. But trying to rape you? That’s on him. If he didn’t like you cutting him off, he should have broken up with you, not pushed you down and taken advantage of you! That’s fucked and you know that! Stop making excuses for him!”

          Was that what I was doing? Making excuses for Trowa? A thousand comebacks filled my head. It was my fault, wasn’t it? If I had just given him what he wanted…

          ‘He could have walked away,’ I thought, part in misery and regret, part in anger, ‘He could have just stormed out of that house and left me behind, found some other guy in another town just like Heero said. So why didn’t he? Why did he keep going with me when he knew that I wasn’t going to spread my legs like he wanted? I thought that I knew him. I thought that he would never do that to anyone, not even me. So why? Why didn’t he just leave?’

          I felt a tear drip down the left side of my face and angrily wiped it away.

          “I don’t understand why he did it…” I whispered, my voice tight and raw, “I don’t understand why he would do that to me. I knew things were bad between us… I knew he was angry… but had I really deserved him doing that? Did he really hate me that badly?”

          My thoughts strayed to my father again, the very last place that I wanted them to be. I remembered the pain I had felt when he had forced his way inside of me, that agony. Not just the physical pain, but the pain in my heart. The knowledge of what he was doing, the violation of it all. Trowa had wanted to do that to me. He had wanted to tear me apart, all so he could cum. I should be furious at him. So why was I making excuses for him? Why wasn’t I looking to punch his lights out? Why had I just let him hurt me again and not just broken his fucking nose? What the hell was wrong with me? All the things he had said, calling me a slut, telling Heero that I’m a cock tease… how the hell did any of that matter to me now after what he had nearly done to me?

          I was unprepared when Heero suddenly pressed his lips to mine, but I leaned into the contact instead of flinching away. Just minutes ago, I had thought that he was going to break up with me, that I would never get another one of these kisses. I was so relieved, I couldn’t have pushed him away even if we had been in public. The kiss was slow and tender, no tongues, just warm, soft lips. He kissed me until I felt that shaking thing inside of me begin to ease. I didn’t even know what it was, but I drowned in that kiss, drowned in him and suddenly I realized that it didn’t matter. It did not matter what Trowa had done, or almost done that night. It didn’t matter if it was my fault, his fault, God’s fault, any of it. It didn’t matter because Trowa was gone and done with, if not from my heart, then certainly from my life. I had Heero now. Heero was safe. Heero loved me. Heero would never, ever do that to me. I knew, through that kiss alone, that even if things went south between us, he would never do that. I had thought that about Trowa once, too, but even knowing that… no, Heero would never be Trowa. Not ever.

          When Heero parted from me, I wanted so badly to tell him that that was it, I was done. I had this light, wonderful feeling in my chest and a good deal of my anxiety was gone. I wanted to end it there, before all those terrible thoughts came back. But I knew, even before he opened his mouth again, that I wasn’t going to get off that easily.

          “Of course you didn’t deserve it,” he soothed, “No one deserves that, not even that asshole. No matter what you did, you weren’t at fault, love, you need to stop thinking that. But… how did you get him to stop?” he frowned.

          I had no doubt that he was thinking about Trowa’s size which, while not as intimidating as Zechs’s, was still greater than my skinny ass frame.

          “I kicked him so hard in the throat that he choked,” I growled, remembering how satisfying that had felt at the time and was rewarded with an amazed, sharp bark of laughter from my boyfriend, “He tried to hit me after that, but I was faster. Nailed him right in the face. I told him we were done and I left. I hadn’t even spoken to him after that until today.”

          “You’re amazing,” Heero complimented with a shake of his head.

          “Amazing?” I asked in confusion, “What, because I beat up my boyfriend?”

          “Your asshole of a boyfriend and attempted rapist,” he amended, grinning at me, “and yes.”

          “You are so weird,” I muttered, but felt myself blush with pleasure at his compliment anyway.

          I would have thought that he would have pegged me as a brute for hitting Trowa twice, but I guess trying to rape someone trumps physical assault in Heero’s book.

          “You should have pressed charges against him, too,” he told me.

          I kind of just blinked at him for a moment.

          “I… that didn’t even cross my mind,” I admitted.

          And it hadn’t. About any of it, really, including the time that Trowa had hit me. Pretty stupid for a cop’s kid to forget about things like that. But I probably wouldn’t have done it anyway even if I had thought of it. I’m not much for cops, in case you haven’t figured that out by now, and I have little trust in adults or their rules. Who was going to care that someone had punched me or tried to rape me? I get punched all the time, what difference did it make that that time it had been my boyfriend and not a bully? And admitting to a total stranger that some guy had tried to take your pants off is just too humiliating.

          “It would have been pointless anyway,” I muttered.

          “Duo, he tried to assault you,” Heero argued, “You deserve justice for that!”

          Did I? Did someone like me, someone that lets their father fuck them really deserve something as pure and shining as justice?

          “I would have had to tell them that Trowa was my boyfriend,” I pointed out, “Besides, nothing really happened. Trowa was the one with the bruises, not me, and I had no proof that he had tried to rape me. I didn’t want to out him or myself, I just wanted him out of my life.”

          Heero looked very sad at that for some reason.

          “I’m sorry, Duo,” he said mournfully, “I didn’t know it was like that… I never would have asked…”

          “It’s fine,” I assured him and it was. He hadn’t known just how bad it had been at the end and he deserved the truth.

          “It’s not,” he shook his head, “I brought up so many upsetting things for you…”

          “Trowa did that,” I smiled sadly, “I’m… I’m sorry that I dragged you into a mess again…”

          He leaned in and kissed my forehead, making my blush darken.

          “Your mess is my mess,” he said simply and I felt my heart swell at that.

          “You’re not…” I rubbed at the back of my head, “You’re not… jealous having met him… right?”

          I have no idea how these things are supposed to work, that whole ex meeting the current boyfriend thing. I think I had given Heero ample reasons to not see Trowa as any kind of threat, but I really didn’t know what he was thinking. This was all brand new territory for me. To my relief, he snorted like I had just told him an especially amusing joke.

          “That piece of shit? Please,” he said dismissively, “What do I have to be jealous about? I’m at _least_ twice as handsome as he is and I don’t have to lean down to kiss you.”

          I laughed in shock at his humor and the smug tone to his voice, which made him smile in both relief and triumph. I guess lightening the mood had been his intention, but behind his joking demeanor, I saw the hard set of his jaw and the fierceness of his eyes. He had been thinking of other reasons why he had no reason to be jealous of my ex. Somehow, I just knew that he was thinking ‘I won’t rape you or treat you like garbage.’ I had to agree, when it came to Trowa, Heero had nothing at all to be jealous about, I was just relieved that he realized it, too.

          “Thank you,” I told him seriously, looking away from that intense gaze and felt my damnable face flame even darker, “for being there for me today… for standing up for me and… and not running away or… or breaking up with me,” I said that last bit in a tiny, weak voice, fussing with my shirt.

          “You don’t need to thank me for that,” he smiled that gentle smile of his, “I’m glad that I could be your back up and I’m glad that I could help you through this.”

          I smiled a little at that. I really didn’t want to think about the kind of mess I would have been if he hadn’t been there. I still was a mess, but nothing like I had been when I had run off into the woods. Even if the things that Trowa had said still weighed on me heavily, and I still felt sad and upset, I still had Heero and he had given me a lot of things to think about. His kindness and his love had eased a lot of the poison Trowa had sent swirling through my heart.

          “Thanks for hitting him, too” I said with some humor, but only half joking, “It made me feel better.”

          I didn’t chastise him for beating up Trowa. I didn’t really see the point in it, Heero was well aware of how I felt on the subject and he had stopped when I had asked him to. And I wasn’t lying, it _had_ made me feel better even if his overprotectiveness and his anger had worried me. Heero’s smile grew.

          “If I had known that just hitting him made you feel better, I would have gone a few more rounds with the prick,” he said, but I knew that he was just joking.

          I gave a little sigh, for the first time actually thinking of going back to work. I didn’t even want to know what time it was.

          “I should go back to work,” I said, even though I really didn’t want to for about a hundred reasons, “Leneski is going to kill me.”

          My boss might have told me that it was ok to come back from lunch late, but this was a little ridiculous. I tried to do the math in my head. We had only been at the restaurant for a half an hour and it had taken us about ten minutes to walk back. I don’t know how long the fight with Trowa had been. Ten minutes, twenty. Shorter than it felt. But how long had we been in the woods? At least an hour. Yep, my boss was going to kill me. I knew he wasn’t going to fire me over it. We have guys on the team that have been an hour late coming back from lunch before and he just gave them a stern warning, and this was my first offense. It didn’t mean that it was any less embarrassing, though.

          “You don’t have to go back,” my boyfriend offered, “You could tell him you’re sick and come home with me. My parents would love to have you over for dinner and we can just relax, watch some movies, do whatever you want.”

          He was trying so hard, so desperately. Normally it would have annoyed me, him trying to manipulate me and get me to skip out on work or something else he knew that I had to do that he didn’t like. But after everything that had happened, after him seeing me like this, such a wreck and saying shit that had scared the hell out of him, I couldn’t really blame him for wanting to keep an eye on me. Now, I know he didn’t think I was suicidal or going to hurt myself because of some bad memories, but he was obviously worried about me and I wished that I could agree and go home with him, if only to make him feel better. It was the least that I could do for freaking him out and him talking me down from that dark place that I get into when I’m stressed and hating myself. But I just gave him a sad smile and he sighed, knowing what my answer was.

          “I look awful, don’t I,” I scrubbed at my face again, it felt dry but I was positive that my eyes were as red as a stoners. Just what I needed, my coworkers thinking I was coming back late from my break high.

          “You look beautiful,” he gave me that smile again, like he thought that I was the most wonderful thing in the world and he could look at me for hours, the smile that always made me oddly feel both amazing and loved, but also incredibly awkward and uneasy.

          “Not helpful,” I muttered, trying to hide the fact that my face was on the verge of combusting into flames.

          I took a check that my hair wasn’t a complete mess, the only thing that I _could_ fix, then we left the woods together and walked out into the backlot. I felt this weird tightness in my chest at the thought of going back into work in the state that I was, but pushed it down. If that day had taught me anything, it was that I can’t run away from my problems. Sooner or later they always come back and bite me in the ass. Of course, that thought only brought back my anxiety. If Trowa had bumped into me once, would it happen again? Was he so angry at me that he would make a scene at school or, now that he knew he could find me in that area of town, would he hunt me down and have it out with me again, this time when I didn’t have my boyfriend with me? Or worse, would he try to go after Heero?

I didn’t think I could handle another encounter with him. I thought that I could, but this fight had shown me just how weak I am, how vulnerable to his hate. I hate myself for that, that I need Heero around like some kind of security blanket, that I can let myself be brought low just by some harsh words. How pathetic is that? I hadn’t expected that when I broke up with Trowa, that our relationship had done this to me. It just amazed me that Heero still wanted to be with me after seeing me like that, screaming and crying like a baby over some old hurts. Heero suddenly grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me back a little.

“Are you ok?” he asked in concern.

I couldn’t hide my feelings from that intense, piercing stare of his. I knew that he could see right through me, could see the hurt and vulnerability that I was feeling. He always could. Even before we had been friends, he had somehow known when something was wrong. I don’t know if it’s because it’s always there and everyone else just… doesn’t give a shit or if it’s something that only he can see, just like his father.

“No,” I admitted easily. Our… talk, argument, whatever you want to call what we had done in those woods had helped a little, but those feelings were still there, all of my hurt and doubt and loathing, lessened, bearable now, but still there. It would take more than one discussion to make them go away, “No, I’m really not.”

“Please, spend the night tonight,” he begged me, “Just come to my place after your second shift.”

“Heero, you know I can’t-,” I started to argue.

“Yes, I know about your father,” his expression tightened at that word, like calling my dad that was distasteful to him somehow, “but you’re still so upset. You’re hurt, you need to be someplace…” he bit off what he had been about to say, but I could finish his sentence for him. ‘someplace where people care about you,’ ‘someplace safe,’ ‘someplace away from your father,’ ‘someplace you won’t feel even worse,’ “You were going to come over tomorrow morning anyway, right? Please,” he begged again, cupping my raw cheeks in his hands and trailing them down my neck until they were resting on my shoulders, “Please, Duo. Let me take care of you.”

I looked away from him, the warm feeling in my chest from those words too much for me to handle. Take care of me… he knew, more than anyone, how hard it is for me to let anyone do that. But I think he’s also aware that at the same time that I grumble about it and fight him on it tooth and nail, there is a part of me that loves it when he takes care of me. When he’s overprotective and does things for me. I don’t know why. I’ve always been independent, always the loner. Quatre had praised me on my ability to take care of myself and it’s something that I have some pride in, always being able to not need coddling, to just keep going on alone when things got shitty. But then Heero came along and now, when I’m on the verge of tears and there’s that horrible pain gnawing away at my chest, instead of shouldering it alone and just pushing it down deep and ignoring it, all I want to do is find Heero and lose myself in his arms and his kisses, in that soft, deep voice telling me ‘everything will be alright.’

It makes me feel pathetic and useless, and it also makes me feel loved and protected. I don’t know how to deal with it or how to feel about it anymore. But I knew, just like Heero did, that all he had to do was say that and he would win. Because I was still in a bad place and despite what my independent and antisocial nature was telling me to do, the child in me, the part of me that was still hurting, still crying on the inside where I would never let anyone see, wanted him to take care of me. I nodded and he smiled brightly at me, looking so relieved that I wondered why I keep fighting this. He let go of my shoulders and walked me to the back door of the shop.

“Do you want me to come in with you?” he asked, “I can tell your boss that it was all my fault, you’re being so late.”

I smiled at that. That was Heero, always wanting to stick up for me, even when it was my fault I was in this mess anyway.

“No, it’s my fault I’m so late,” I said and I tried to keep the bitterness out that wanted to sneak into my tone. If it weren’t for me, Heero never would have been dragged into this mess.

“I’ll see you first thing tomorrow morning then,” he smiled easily.

I had this sudden desire to kiss him and thank him again for sticking by me, but we were too close to the shop and there were too many windows. I could even see some people moving around through them, so they would easily be able to see us. We waved goodbye to each other and Heero left, walking around the building, heading towards Main Street and his part of town, probably. I stood there at the door and watched his back as he walked away from me, my hand on the door knob, but not moving it, not yet. It still amazes me sometimes, comparing the relationship that I have with him to the one that I had with Trowa. It’s incomparable, really, the support that he gives me, the love that he shows me. I think that’s why Trowa’s attitude towards me hurts me and wounds me so much now. I know what it feels like to be in a good relationship, a relationship that builds me up instead of tears me down and it only highlights for me everything that went wrong before, all those mistakes I made… no, _we_ made. My talk with Heero had pounded that into me at least.

But there was this terrible, painful thought in my head as I watched the love of my life walk down the road away from me that day. A thought that I could never voice to Heero. That was going to be our relationship. One day… one day soon, I would watch that back walk away from me and that time, it was going to be forever. One day, I was going to have to accept the fact that I would never see those blue eyes and warm, loving smile again. Only his back to me. Because I know a truth now that I’ve been trying to deny, something that I volleyed around in my head until it’s felt like my brain is being ripped apart.

I can’t have sex with him. I’ve thought, over and over and over until it’s driven me half insane, that maybe I could. I love him, so maybe it will be easier than with Trowa. I can give Heero what he wants because I want him to be happy. All I have to do is hide the fact that I’m not aroused and he’ll never know. But I can see now that it’s the fact that I love him that will keep me from doing that. I love him too much to lie, to pull him along like that. Heero had said that he still loves me because the mistakes that I had made with Trowa were just that, mere mistakes. But what does that love mean if I can’t learn from them? How can I possibly tolerate doing the same things to the boy that I love so much? I can’t. I know now that I can’t, even to keep him.

I gave Trowa everything once, everything except my heart. I gave him my body and my virginity, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t good enough. Now, there’s nothing that I can give Heero. He might have my heart, but the rest of it… even that is in tatters, missing chunks that my father ripped out for himself. I’m incomplete, my body tainted by the things that Trowa and my father have done to it. I love Heero more than anything… and I have nothing to offer him for it. How long before he realizes that? How can I possibly let this person… this beautiful and wonderful and pure person put their hands on someone as disgusting as me? How can I possibly taint him, too? I can’t. I’m just like Quatre. No matter what, no matter how much it hurts, I can’t survive knowing that I’ve disgusted the one that I love. It will kill me, one way or another. And I will do anything in the world to keep him safe from knowing what I really am. Walking in front of a truck is nothing compared to what I would do. I would even break his heart.

As I watched him leave, that strong, handsome back to me, all I could think about was all the reasons why I love him so much. All the reasons why I’m too weak and cowardly to break up with him. But there’s a pervasive thought that weighs me down and echoes through my head like a broken record. A thought more terrible than any that Trowa gave me that afternoon.

 

‘Maybe I should.’

 

 

 

 

 

/You are right, I'll move on

But my lungs feel so small

I couldn't breathe if I tried

 

I lay my head on the floor

My beating heart wanted more

But I'll keep it in and keep you out

 

I'm drowning, I'm drowning

I'm drowning, I'm drowning

 

But for the longest time I knew

There was nothing left for us to do

But I tried, oh, I try

 

And in this quiet company

There is nothing staring back at me

I'm in need of the sound

 

Hungry for the kill, but this hunger, it isn't you

Voices disappear when you are speaking, in sombre tunes

I will be the wolf and when you're starving, you'll need it too

Hungry for the kill, but this hunger, it isn't you

It isn't you, it isn't

 

I grew tall to fill the void

Let me go 'cause you are just a shade

Of what I am, not what I'll be

 

But in this quiet company

I forget sometimes just how to breathe

Fill my lungs with the sound

 

Hungry for the kill, but this hunger, it isn't you

Voices disappear when you are speaking, in sombre tunes

I will be the wolf and when you're starving, you'll need it too

Hungry for the kill, but this hunger, it isn't you

It isn't you, it isn't

 

I'm drowning, I'm drowning

I'm drowning, I'm drowning

I'm drowning, I'm drowning

I'm drowning, I'm drowning

I'm drowning, I'm drowning (2)/

 

 

 

End part 18

 

 

  * Originally Justin was only going to be a couple years older than Mariela, but it wouldn’t make any sense. In order to become a psychiatrist, he would have needed to get his BA, then MD, followed by two years of residency before he could even take the licensing tests. Justin actually graduated from high school early (he skipped a grade) and got his BA a year early at age 20. He got his MD at age 24 and was already a year into his residency when he met Mariela.



 

  * / / will indicate things I am adding into the story that Duo did not write, probably only song lyrics that pertain to the themes of the current part. I don’t like adding them into the main body of the story for a few reasons. One, Duo isn’t writing them so they don’t belong there. Two, they break up the flow of the story. This particular song is ‘Hunger’ by the amazing Of Monsters and Men, owned by them and not me, only being used because this was the perfect song to detail Duo’s feelings towards the end of his and Trowa’s relationship, his feelings that Trowa’s actions are not the actions of the boy that he was once friendly with, the lack of comfort that Trowa gave him, and how Duo took the initiative in breaking up with him, but his belief that it was the best thing for both of them.



 

 

Author’s Note: oh my fucking god. I cannot believe this part is 160 freaking pages long. Or that I finished it, lol. This one gave me soooo much trouble (is terrible with lengthy dialogue scenes). I don’t like it very much, hate rehash scenes, but this scene was very vital for events that will happen later and needed to be done (and I hate ‘and then I told him everything’ lines with a burning passion and think they’re lazy writing). One day I will be able to post a part of this story and not need to apologize for taking so long, but sorry. It took me a long time to get notes together (still not entirely done with that) and then format how this confrontation and confession was going to happen. Between work and the difficulty of writing at home, it’s took far too long to get this out. But I have acquired a tool that has made it a lot easier for me and without it, this probably would have taken me another couple of weeks to finish: a wireless keyboard for my phone! It works amazingly well. Now I can write during my lunch hour three times as fast without killing my hand with a pen and wasting time at home typing it all up.

 

I can’t promise that the next part will be any more lighthearted, but it should be faster to get out since there aren’t any incredibly lengthy scenes like this ^_^  Also I’ve been kind of laughing to myself about everyone asking me if Trowa is coming back, lol.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	63. Chapter part 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The spring break saga continues. Duo deals with the aftermath of his confrontation with Trowa and falls deeper in with Heero. When his coworkers find out about his sexuality, will Duo be able to keep his job and his friendship with Solo?

A Stagnation of Love

Chapter 8

Part 19 (Part 1 of 2)

 

 

          Bad luck comes in threes. I read that once when I was a kid, although I can’t exactly recall from which book. I’m sure it’s a saying that most people have heard of at one point or another. Even then I had thought that it was complete bullshit, just something that superstitious people like to throw around, like how thirteen is unlucky, if you sneeze twice it means that someone is talking ill about you, or never open an umbrella indoors. Bad luck doesn’t come in threes. It comes as many times as it freaking feels like, and in any varying degree of intensity. It can come in hundreds of little, shitty moments. Or it can come in one, big, fucked up event, there’s no way to measure it.

          But sometimes, once in a blue moon, bad luck does come in threes. Usually when the universe is feeling especially spiteful towards you and just wants to kick you when you’re down. I just had no way of knowing that that Monday was going to be one of those days. After I watched Heero walk away and I finally dared to go inside Leneski’s, I had the foolish thought that that was it. The worst thing that could have happened to me that day had already happened. Compared to that ugly run in with my ex, the rest of the day was going to be smooth sailing. It just had to be, right? I forgot about the one thing that the world has been teaching me since the day I was born: it really doesn’t like me very much.

          I went back to work with that mindset of tired relief. I had beaten the odds that day. I had slipped out of some pretty awful possibilities _twice_ and even though those things happening at all had been bad luck, I had been feeling pretty damned lucky. I mean, I had narrowly avoided a run in with my father and even after everything that had happened between Trowa and me, everything that I had told Heero, he was still with me. He still loved me. You can’t really get any luckier than that, can you? No matter what else the universe throws at me, I thought, as long as Heero still loves me, I can handle all of it. I’ll just let all of it roll off my back without so much as a wince. I guess that’s still true. Heero loves me and anything else that happened that day was rather insignificant compared to that. But that doesn’t mean that what happened at work didn’t smart.

          I didn’t realize anything was wrong at first. I had rushed through the back door and into the little bathroom in the back to wash my face and hadn’t been paying attention to any of my coworkers. If I had, I would have run right back out that door and never gone back. Instead, I hid in the bathroom for ten minutes, the longest that I dared. I was already horribly late, but my pride refused to let me return to work looking like I had just spent the last hour bawling my eyes out. Thankfully the bathroom was empty for once and I very quickly closed and locked the door behind me.

          The lights in the bathroom were these hideously bright and glaring things, making my face looked washed out and even paler than it actually was. I winced when I caught a glance at my reflection. Saying that I looked awful is being kind. My paleness only served to accentuate how raw and red the skin around my eyes and my eyelids were from all the violent crying I had done. My eyes were bloodshot and my cheeks had this awful pallor to them that only insomnia or a long bout of crying can achieve. Great. I looked like a little kid that had just thrown a temper tantrum and I was going to have to work with a bunch of hard asses for the next few hours who were going to look down at me and probably poke fun at me. Just what I fucking needed.

          I scrubbed my face with water, getting rid of the remainder of dried tears on my skin. It didn’t do much of anything to make me look better, but I did feel a tiny bit better. I dried my face with my jacket sleeve and dug around in the cabinet above the sink for anything I could use to make me look even slightly less like week old shit. By some kind of holy miracle, there was a tiny bottle of well used eye drops in the corner that was about a third full. I put a couple of drops in each eye and patted my cheeks, trying to get some color back into them. I glanced back up at my reflection in the mirror, cracked and cloudy at the corners from not being properly cleaned for years. I didn’t look much better than I had when I had first gone into the bathroom.

 

_“I look awful, don’t I.”_

_“You look beautiful.”_

I flushed darkly from just the memory of Heero saying that with such brutal honesty, not once, but a few times. It served a lot better to put more color on my cheeks, and the rest of my face for that matter.

“Beautiful, huh?” I murmured to my reflection.

I stared hard at myself, every inch of my face, my hair, my neck and shoulders, everything that I could see in the small mirror like I was scrutinizing some befuddling puzzle or perhaps a picture that boasted some hidden code or secret. I looked long and hard, trying to see the things that Heero says he sees in me, but I still couldn’t see them. I only saw a sad, pathetic kid, hurt by just some harsh words. A pale face, a mouth more used to frowning and scowling than laughing and smiling, downcast, hard eyes the color of violets. The same face that I’ve had my whole life. The same face that I’ve always loathed. I couldn’t see anything at all.

 

_“Calling you average is the closest thing to a compliment you’ll ever get! You’re as scrawny as a twig, so pale you look like you have cancer, and your eyes are about the only thing you have that are even remotely unique, not that anyone would know with that scowl or blank expression you always walk around with.”_

I squeezed my eyes shut. No, I didn’t want to remember the things that he had said to me. I just wanted to move on from all of this! I knew that if I stopped to remember, really remember the hurtful things that he had flung at me, I would probably start to cry again. It was so easy to break, all the confidence that Heero had given me, all the wonderful, loving things he had said as he held me. Why was it that easy, that fragile? Why were the poisonous words that Trowa had said so much more powerful than the things that made me feel better about myself?

I dug deep into my memories, trying to get that feeling back. That feeling of being loved and accepted for all my mistakes, all of my many fuck ups, trying to stave away the pain that the mere memory of the accusations Trowa had flung at me had brought back.

 

_“I love you. I love you very much… You could never be garbage, Duo, not ever.”_

Just like that, the twist in my heart eased and I saw my reflection smile, just a little one, but it completely changed its expression from that dead eyed look of sorrow and defeat. It doesn’t matter, I thought. Not the things that Trowa said, not the things that he made me feel, not if I was wrong, guilty, and had deserved all the shit he had given me, not even if I was really beautiful like Heero said or how I felt about myself. Heero loves me. That’s all that matters. I tore open my black heart and exposed my ugliness to him and it hadn’t changed anything. No, if anything, I felt like it had strengthened something, created this iron connection between the two of us. He knew things that no one, not even Trowa, knew about me and he still cared about me.

But all the same, regardless of how I felt, I just couldn’t stop thinking about what had just happened. Trowa… my mind kept dragging me back to that moment when we had been fighting, but this time it wasn’t to punish me or torture me. It dredged up the image of my ex-boyfriend’s face as he had sneered and ranted at me. The same face that I had kissed and used to smile so shyly at my best friend had been twisted into a look of hate, rage, and disgust. The same look, I realized with this sick feeling in my stomach, that is always on my father’s face when he yells at me or wants to hit me.

Back in the woods, that realization might have brought fresh tears to my eyes, just knowing the depths of hate that Trowa had for me, that things were that messed up between us. But Heero had worked his magic, like he always does. I was still hurt, and shaken, that feeling you get when you’re almost hit by a car, but I felt better, steadier. I just felt… very sad, I guess, more than anything else. Not just for myself, but for Trowa as well. Now that I wasn’t in hysterics and feeling like my heart was being ripped right out of my chest, I could actually look back at our fight objectively, could actually glance at those memories without drowning in self-loathing.

Now that I could think instead of just emotionally react, I didn’t understand any of it. What Trowa had been doing at my work, why he had reacted the way he had to seeing Heero and I together… It didn’t make sense to me. If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought that he had gone there to talk to me, but why would he? We had nothing to talk about anymore, he had made the clear to me that that day, and even if he did, why go to my job? Why not just catch me after school or something? Unless he was stalking me, which made even less sense than him wanting to talk to me. I didn’t understand him at all. He hated me. He wanted nothing more to do with me, so why had he cared at all about me being with Heero? Why not just walk away?

All those things he had said… did he really mean them or had he just been talking out of anger? But why be angry at all? Because I had broken up with him? He hadn’t really wanted to be with me to begin with, and even if he was mad, that was five months ago. I guess I could understand if it had been weeks, holding on to that anger at being scorned, or even just me hitting him, but after all that time, surely he had moved on, knowing that he was better off without a fuck up like me in his life.

But those accusations hadn’t just come from nowhere. He had thought them. Maybe he even believed them. And maybe he didn’t, maybe he had just been trying to hurt me. I don’t know what is more painful for me to believe. What if that was his game? What if, even after all this time, he wanted to take me down piece by piece? What if he wanted to make me miserable and destroy my relationship with Heero and hearing about us had been the trigger? Just the possibility of that left me feeling betrayed. More than that, I felt guilty. If that was really his game, then I must have hurt him a lot more than I thought I had, otherwise, why would he care at all? Still, I couldn’t believe that about him. We might have fallen apart, he might have done terrible things to me, but I couldn’t believe that he would be so spiteful that he couldn’t accept me being happy.

But… even as I thought that… I felt this kernel of doubt. I had known him once. Or I thought I had. Guilt threatened to tear me apart again as I suddenly realized that I had known Trowa better over the scant few weeks I had known him when I had been thirteen than in the entire eight months that we had dated. When I dare to compare my ex-boyfriend to that shy, but kind boy, it’s like comparing two strangers. How can they possibly be the same person? Pain changes people. I know that better than most. Sure, I hadn’t exactly been this amazing, grounded person before Quatre had died, but after it? I suppose I should feel lucky that I’m not completely insane, that I can even still form relationships with people and have a life. But I just can’t remember how Trowa used to be, it hurts me too much, seeing how much he had changed in the wake of his grief.

I can still remember that night when we had all had dinner together. He had been so nice to us with this great, dry humor. He had talked with me and treated me like anyone else, nothing like I’m used to from my classmates. Maybe he had only given me a chance because I was Quatre’s friend, but we had gotten along and I had enjoyed talking to him. I had even thought that I had made a friend. Who knows? Maybe, if Quatre hadn’t killed himself, we would have become good friends. God, that hurts more than anything. I had lost two friends the day Quatre had thrown himself in front of that train. Quatre had ripped us all apart and if there’s any kindness or mercy in the universe, he never knew that, the damage he had done to the two people that had cared about him the most. Is that selfish that I can feel a tiny bit angry at him for that, for making us so alone? For killing himself before Trowa and I had really begun to know each other, so we couldn’t have even had each other to lean on?

Remembering how Trowa used to be, and remembering the person that had just called me a slut makes my heart ache. I remember how tight a control he used to have on his emotions, especially his anger, like he couldn’t bear to let even a single drop out because it was so out of character for him. He had always seemed so mellow and laid back to me. The only time I had ever seen him angry was when I had told him that Relena had been directly responsible for breaking Quatre’s arm. Even then, it had seemed so awkward to him. What had happened to that control? What had happened that could make him like that, so glad to hurt me and pull me apart? Had it just been his guilt over Quatre’s death? The secrecy? Or had I done that to him?

I can’t escape that I’ve hurt him. Heero can reason it away and insist that I just made bad choices, that I had been inexperienced and had made some mistakes like anyone else would have. You can justify it, but that doesn’t change the fact that I did hurt him. He hurt me, too, and all I had wanted at the end of our relationship was an apology from him. To know that he cared at least enough to realize that he had been an asshole, to want to make things right. But he never had. I still wonder if he doesn’t give a shit about the things that he had done, if he even sees how hurtful he had been.

But now that I could see past my own pain and anger at him for our fight, I felt guilt. Guilt for not doing the one thing that I wished he had. Instead of letting him get to me and screaming back at him, I should have told him how sorry I was for how I had treated him. I should have apologized until my throat had been raw for letting him down, for breaking up with him, for making him feel for even a second that he was undesirable. Instead, I had lashed out in my pain and maybe he had deserved that, but I still wish that I hadn’t. Standing there in that tiny bathroom, looking at my reflection, that was the only thing that I wanted. I wanted to hunt him down and say, with every ounce of honesty that I have, that I was sorry. Say it over and over a thousand times until he believed me. But I knew that I wouldn’t. As horrible as I felt about our relationship, I know that I can’t face him. In the end, good intentions or not, I’m a disgusting coward. I’m too weak and too scared of getting hurt again to even do the right thing.

Was this it, then, I wondered. Was this going to be how things were between the two of us from now on, at least until he graduated and left for college? Me avoiding him and him trying to pin me down and hurt me as much as he could for as long as he could, or had this one fight been enough for him? Was I just being paranoid? Great, just what I needed in my fucked up life, another thing to worry about, that I was going to run into my ex again. And isn’t it just pathetic that I’m actually scared that that might happen? He was just a year older than me and he couldn’t even lay a hand on me, not like Zechs and my father could. So why did I feel so scared that he might have it out for me?

More than fear, thinking these things, I felt grief. Grief for knowing that now we can never be friends. Not ever. We probably can’t even hold a civilized conversation anymore. It’s so strange. We barely knew each other. Even when we had been friends for a few months before he had asked me out, and only a couple weeks when Quatre had been alive, he had never really opened up to me. And there I was, mourning the loss of someone that I hadn’t really known. But I did. I missed being friends with him, I missed hanging out with him and enjoying being around him, having that connection.

There’s another fear in me that has nothing to do with him having some kind of revenge mission against me. Trowa dated me because I was his one, tentative connection to Quatre. Well, that door swings both ways. Being with him had helped me to remember my best friend, to hold on to memories that threatened to slip away. Things Quatre had said, the love in his eyes whenever he had seen Trowa or talked about him. The pain that makes him so real still. But they’re both gone now, Quatre and Trowa. Already there are memories of my ex that threaten to fade, both because I’ve tried to forget and simply because of all the months that I haven’t seen him. How long before they’re gone?

I might have a great memory, and can recall conversations perfectly after so much time has passed, but it isn’t infinite. Without a trigger, a smell, an emotion, something tangible, I do forget things. Now that I don’t have Trowa in my life, the only person to remind me of those weeks before Quatre had died… will Quatre also fade? That possibility is infinitely more frightening to me than anything else. How can you forget someone that you loved so much? How can I possibly betray him like that? I can’t forget. I have to hold on to every scrap of memory of him because I’m the only one that can. I’m the only one that remembers him, how kind he was, what a wonderful friend and person he was, all those years… If I let those memories slip away from me, I’m killing him all over again.

I rubbed my sleeve against my eyes, but they were miraculously dry for once. But honestly, I would have preferred the tears to the gaping, gnawing hole in my heart.

“Enough of this,” I glared at my reflection, “Just enough already.”

I made sure that I was as presentable as I possibly could be, and even though I wanted nothing more than just to leave and go to Heero’s house, I left the bathroom, ready to face the music of my extreme tardiness. Like everything else that had happened in the last hour wasn’t bad enough, I had to deal with Leneski probably being pissed with me. At least I wasn’t dealing with my other boss. Leneski might lecture me and scold me a little, but he wouldn’t scream and swear at me for hours. As I came out of the bathroom, one of my other coworkers was standing outside of it, Mitch Conner.

“Sorry,” I murmured to him, not knowing how long he had been waiting.

Mitch is part of the group that I usually go off with, along with Solo, Bruno Samson, Zeke Michells, Caleb Williams (Connie Williams’ dad), and Jack Ranier, so if he was there, it meant that they hadn’t been sent out on a job when I had been gone. At least I wasn’t going to get into trouble for that. Mitch is a pretty quiet guy, likes to keep to himself sort just like me, so I was expecting a shrug or no reaction at all. What I wasn’t expecting was the cold look of contempt that he gave me, or how he gave me a wide berth as he passed me like the mere thought of maybe, accidentally touching me was akin to touching a leper. I stared in shock at his back as he escaped into the bathroom.

What the fuck had that been about? I mean, I’m not exactly friendly with any of the guys that I work with, except for Solo, but it’s not like they hate me or anything. I’m just the dumb kid that they work with. They were a bit cool to me at first, not out of spite, they just didn’t think I would last long. But as soon as they realized that I wasn’t going to slack off, they had been fine with me. Not buddy-buddy, but we said hi, made small talk, pass me that screw driver, that kind of shit. I hadn’t done anything to make Mitch look at me like I was a bug under his shoe. That expression was so familiar, but for the moment, I couldn’t figure out why. What the hell was going on?

I shrugged off that weird moment and headed towards the break room. I had to go see Leneski, tell him that I was back and grovel over my lateness, but first I stopped at the little row of lockers outside the break room to put my jacket in my locker. I went as cold as a sheet of ice when I heard Zeke’s voice behind me in the break room, the deep tone in a twist of contempt and mocking.

“Sure, I heard my kid talk about it,” he was saying, “He and the Hicks boy were saying something about it just the other day. But kids say all sorts of shit about each other, I didn’t put much stock in it. And he’s weird to begin with, always keeps to himself, the kind of kid that gets picked on. I didn’t actually think that he was really a fag.”

I froze as still as a stone as my heart began to race in my chest. No. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck **_fuck!_** This couldn’t be happening. It just couldn’t. I was dreaming. This was just a stupid nightmare and any moment I was going to wake up and find out that this entire day was some terrible dream.

“Sure doesn’t act like it,” I heard Jack say, “I wouldn’t have known. I mean, he doesn’t dress like one and he talks normal. I just thought that boy was his friend. You’re positive?”

“Absolutely,” Zeke snorted, “and sure he doesn’t _act_ like a fruit, but everyone says he’s queer, it can’t be complete bullshit if you really think about it. I mean, he was friends with that Winner boy and those types like to run together.”

“Ugh, and we’ve been sharing a van this whole time,” Caleb said with disgust, “No way in hell I’m working with a faggot.”

“Don’t worry,” Jack laughed, “There’s no way Leneski is going to stand for hiring some pillow biting fairy. He’ll sack him for sure.”

“He’d better,” Bruno grumbled, “or I’m quitting. Bad enough that someone like that is going to school with our kids, I’m not dealing with a freak like that.”

“I always did wonder why he was working at a place like this,” Zeke said, “Makes sense now, don’t it? Why work at some fast food joint when there’s plenty of eye candy for him around here?”

“Shut up, Michells, that’s disgusting,” Caleb made a sound like he was going to vomit, “Now that’s all I’ll be thinking about, all the times he was probably checking one of us out.”

I was the one that felt like I was going to throw up. I closed my locker door as quietly as I could, even though my hands were shaking hard. I just kept thinking ‘this can’t be happening’ over and over again. I didn’t even have the presence of mind to mourn over losing that job, I was thinking more of how I was going to be able to get out of there with no one seeing me and deciding that maybe just firing me wasn’t enough. Maybe I needed to be taught a lesson. Like how faggots like me couldn’t go around ogling men trying to make a decent living. Fuck, I really should have gone home with Heero…

How could this have happened? I had been so careful… or I had been until I had gotten into a screaming fight with Trowa just a five minute walk away from work. Was that it? Had we been so loud that they had overheard? Or had someone seen that Heero and I had gone into the woods together, or seen us afterwards in the back lot? We hadn’t said anything scandalous, but with how close we had been standing… Fuck. Just fuck. How could I have been so careless? I shook my head at myself. I couldn’t think about that. What was done was done, I needed to focus on getting the hell out of there. Unfortunately, the universe was nowhere near done fucking with me.

“Maxwell!” I heard Leneski yell and flinched so hard, I almost hit my head against the locker.

He was standing in the doorway to his office, arms crossed over his chest and looking at me with this cold, hard expression. There was no disgust on his face like there had been with Mitch, but he had never looked at me like that before.

“In here,” he snapped, jerking his thumb back and strode into his office, sure that I was going to follow him.

My stomach plummeted to my feet. This was it. I was going to get fired. I trudged after him like my legs were made of concrete. If Mitch hadn’t been in the bathroom, I would have considered running in there to puke. From the break room, I could hear jeers and harsh, mocking laughter as my crew joked about my fate. The same kind of laughter one might hear from classmates while you were being called to the principal’s office. They all knew exactly what was going to happen to me and found it hysterical. That would have been bad enough, but they were also glad and relieved. The faggot wasn’t going to be their problem anymore.

I hated each and every one of them, but no more than I hated Trowa in that moment. Because of him, because he couldn’t have had that little run in with me anywhere else in town, I was going to be fired. I was going to lose the best job I had ever had, my one chance of having income when I got out of high school. All gone. Now I had nothing. And just how long was Lorathe going to keep me when _he_ found out? He was going to, I’m not stupid enough to lie to myself about that. Caleb works at the factory, too, along with Ralph Hicks’ dad. And Solo. God, Solo. He was going to hate me now, too. I was going to repulse him.

It was that thought that brought the tears back as I walked into Leneski’s office and closed the door behind me. If I had been alone, I might have indulged in them, but I fought them back. Bad enough that everyone there knew I was gay, I wasn’t going to have them call me a crybaby, too. I don’t have a lot of people in my life that I can really talk to, in case that hasn’t become abundantly clear by now. I never expected to make a friend amongst my coworkers and when I first took that factory job, no one that I had worked with really liked me. They all knew that I had no business there and while no one had actually said anything about it to my face, I knew they talked and would have been happy if I just went away.

But Solo had never seen me that way. I don’t know why he had started talking to me, having lunches with me. Maybe that’s just who he is, maybe it was because he knew what my father was like and felt bad for me, but that isn’t really his style. For some bizarre reason, he likes me and I like him. He’s blunt, crude, and rough around the edges and I’ve always felt really comfortable around him. Kind of like a big brother, I guess. That’s pretty much how he treats me, just his dorky, baby brother. I’ve come to cherish that relationship, to have someone in my life detached enough not to raise a fuss when I show up to work with a black eye, but understanding enough that I don’t have to lie to him. I can tell him that my father hits me and he gets what that’s like. He knows why I don’t try to stop it, why I just roll with the punches. And he’s given me a lot of advice, or at least a sympathetic ear when I just need to vent about things that I can never tell Heero. But that, just like my job, was gone now. Unemployed… fuck, my father was going to freaking kill me when he found out.

‘So what if he finds out that you’ve been fired,’ I realized grimly, ‘What is going to do when he finds out _why_?’

Fuck, fuck, and triple fuck. What was I going to do? If my father found out about that… I really was dead, wasn’t I? Not as a joke, I mean that very literally. If my dad found out that I was a fag, that was it for me. He would never stand for that. He hates gays as much as he hates rich people and to know that his kid was one of them… By the time I sat down in front of Leneski’s desk, I was shaking so badly, my stomach twisted in tight knots that I felt like I was going to black out. I can’t remember being as terrified as I was then since I had watched Quatre die.

My boss was silent for a long while, or at least it felt long. He just sat back in his chair, arms still crossed over his chest, regarding me across his desk with those cold eyes, like he didn’t know quite what to do with me.

“I-I’m really sorry I’m so late coming back from break,” I stammered, desperate to say anything just to break the tense, painful silence, “Something happened when I was on break and time got away from me, I promise it’ll never happen again-,”

“Cut the shit, Duo,” my boss said, not harshly, but his voice was as icy as his expression, “You know that’s not why I called you in here. Don’t insult my intelligence.”

I looked down at the floor. Yeah, I knew. No way Leneski didn’t know every goddamned thing that happens under his roof, the man is like a hawk. I thought about protesting it, saying that they were all wrong, no way was I gay, it was just a stupid rumor. But what was the point? Even if I could miraculously get him to believe that and keep my job, there was no way I could work with the guys after this. They sure as hell didn’t want to work with me.

“I…” I swallowed roughly and felt those stupid tears threaten me again.

I curled my hands tightly in my lap, trying to get them to stop shaking so much. It was all over and I needed to accept it. Maybe… maybe it wouldn’t be too bad. Maybe my dad wouldn’t find out about my sexuality. I could tell him that I had just gotten laid off and I could pick up some other jobs. I might have to go back to three to pick up the slack… and my free Tuesdays and Saturdays were going to be done with, but maybe he wouldn’t beat me to a pulp. Fuck, Heero was going to freak, too. That was literally the only word I could think of anymore. Just fuck. I almost laughed at my own delusions. Yeah, right, sure, self. Everything is going to be just _fucking_ peachy.

“I’ll get my stuff,” I croaked, my throat suddenly rough and sore.

I stood up from the chair. Just grab my things and leave… it would be simple. I didn’t even care if I got my paycheck for the week. Leneski could keep it. I just wanted to run away, far from this fuck up. Go to Heero’s and pretend that I hadn’t just gotten sacked, that everything was fine and my world hadn’t just fallen out from under my feet.

“Sit back down, Maxwell,” Leneski snapped at me.

I obediently sat, my stomach doing that nauseating, twisting thing again. Dammit, I wanted to scream at him, just let me go and you’ll never have to see me again, why can’t you at least let me keep just that one scrap of my dignity?! I looked down at my hands, not knowing what he wanted from me. Did he want me to apologize for not telling him that I was queer? Tell me how I was disgusting and on a one way road to hell? Leneski stood and I actually flinched again, thinking he was going to hit me, but he walked to the window, looking out onto the back lot.

“You’re not going to tell me that this whole thing is nonsense?” he asked, not even bothering to look me in the eye, “Give me some bullshit line about how you’re as straight as a bloody arrow?”

“No,” I said.

I didn’t see the point of it. He had told me not to insult him and lying at that point was just an exercise in stupidity. He glanced at me and nodded. To my shock, he actually seemed satisfied by that, like my lying to him would have been worse than the truth of my sexuality.

“I am a simple man, Duo,” he told me, looking back out the window, “and I like to think I am a somewhat fair employer. I have one rule. I believe I told it to you on the day that you were hired. Keep your shit outside of this place, whatever it may be, and we’ll get along just fine. Do you remember that?”

I nodded. I remembered him saying something like that. This is a place of business, he had said to me, not a therapist’s office and not a place for gossip and airing out your dirty laundry.

“I was raised Catholic,” he told me, putting his hands behind his back, his stare focused intensely on something that only he could see, “I go to church every Sunday and I believe in God and the bible. I’m not comfortable with… well, _this_ ,” he looked at me and I could see the truth of that in his eyes.

He wasn’t quite disgusted looking at someone like me, but he was definitely uncomfortable. I would get no sympathy from him, not that I had been expecting much.

“But I’m not your father,” he continued, “What you carry on with when you aren’t here is not any of my business and quite frankly, I really don’t want to know any of it. I don’t approve, I don’t think it’s remotely appropriate, but that ain’t my place. I’m your boss, not a priest, and you’re my employee. All I care about is what you do under my roof.”

He walked around and sat back in his chair. I watched him carefully, completely confused by what he was trying to get at. This was definitely not how I thought this conversation was going to go. I thought he would just fire me and tell me to get the fuck out of his site, not carry on like this. He laced his fingers together as he laid his hands on his desk and looked at me again like I was some alien creature and he didn’t know yet if he should bolt or shoot me down.

“I don’t like having these kinds of talks,” he said very bluntly, “I don’t like having this crap dumped on my lap and I would like nothing more than to tell you to take a hike and never show up here again.”

I twisted the bottom of my shirt in my hands, waiting for him to drop the bombshell on me, just tell me that I was gone and stop playing with me like this.

“However, as I said, you’re my employee, not my kid and not my friend,” he continued on coolly, “And a rather good employee at that. You been here, what? Almost half a year now? Maybe a bit less?”

I nodded even though I could not for the life of me remember something like that in my panic and anxiety.

“All that time, you never brought any of this into the workplace, I never heard a single rumor of what you get up to outside of it. You kept my rule and did your job,” he leaned forward a little in his chair and to my shock, his expression softened just a little, “Hell, you’ve followed that rule better than any of the other guys here. You don’t show up to work high or stoned or drunk, don’t bring your problems at my doorstep and I appreciate that. So while I don’t want you here on moral grounds, as your boss, I don’t want to just cut you loose, either.”

I blinked stupidly at him.

“I don’t understand,” I said, completely baffled.

“What I am trying to get at,” he leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest, “is while I might be simple, I am also shrewd. It takes time that I don’t have to train another employee and your… ‘preferences’ aside,” he bit the word out like it was especially offensive to him, “you’re a good worker, a hard worker. It would be foolish of me to let you go when you haven’t caused any problems for me all this time.”

“You… you’re not going to fire me?” I asked in amazement, but couldn’t bear to let myself hope.

He held up his hand in a signal for me to stop talking.

“That depends entirely on you,” he told me, “Like I said, as long as you keep your personal life to yourself and out of my way, it ain’t any of my business, no matter how unsavory I might find your tastes. If you want to stay here, you abide by my rules. Otherwise, you can get the hell out right now. Is that understood?”

I nodded, ready to accept any of those rules so long as he didn’t can me. I even saw a little bit of respect in his eyes when I agreed, although it was very tiny and I wasn’t entirely sure that I wasn’t just seeing things.

“Rule one, same rule as always, you keep all of this out of the workplace. I don’t want to hear about it. I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to know about it,” he said coldly.

“Yes, sir,” I agreed.

Fairly easy considering how hard I’ve tried to do just that.

“Rule number two, your b… that boy that came by today, he isn’t allowed to come around here anymore, understood?” he demanded.

I winced a little. That was a little bit harder, if only because it wasn’t really up to me. It wasn’t like I had asked Heero to meet me at work. But I nodded anyway. I didn’t know what I was going to tell him, but I would make Heero understand and it would be fine. I knew he wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize my job. Trowa, on the other hand, now that he had run into me around there, was the real problem.

“Last rule, I hear anything from the other guys that you did anything, made them uncomfortable, any of that garbage, you’re out of here, got that?”

I felt like wincing again and what hope I had felt instantly died. I was definitely done for. It didn’t matter what I did, how I distanced myself from my coworkers, all they had to do was lie and I was going to get fired, and there was no one who would vouch for me. Just awesome. But I wasn’t fired yet, which was a freaking miracle by itself. Still, I felt a stab of bitter anger at my boss’ ‘rules’. If I were straight, he would never need to come up with conditions for me, he would never think that I would try anything. Just because I was gay, why did that mean I was going to do something inappropriate? And with a bunch of fucking adults even. It was ridiculous to me that a bunch of guys three times my age were actually worried that I was going to come on to them! It was almost in me to remind Leneski that I had no need to do that, I had a gorgeous boyfriend who was into me and half the guys that I worked with were far from attractive, especially after a long day of sweating under the hot sun, but that remark would get me fired for sure.

“Yes, sir,” I repeated with a nod, “I promise, I’ll be completely professional. Thank you, thank you so much.”

Even if I was going to get fired down the line, Leneski was giving me a chance. That was more than I ever could have hoped for, that someone who obviously didn’t like homosexuals was going to overlook his prejudices just because I did my job was a definite miracle. Something in that cold look of his eased at my gratitude.

“Don’t make me regret it, kid,” he warned and some of my anxiety bled out of me at just hearing him call me kid like Solo often does.

We stood and he opened his office door, ushering me out, no doubt not wanting to be around me for more than he had to be. I hesitated for a moment, not really wanting to go back out there. While it was wonderful knowing that I wasn’t getting sacked and I felt so grateful towards my boss that I might have hugged him if I didn’t know that my touch would be repulsive to him, or maybe just cried with sheer relief, it didn’t change that much. My coworkers still loathed me and wanted me gone. How could I face them? Keep working with them? Best case scenario, they were going to lie to Leneski to get me fired. Worst was them beating the shit out of me or worse. But the thing that really had my stomach doing back flips was the thought of having to face Solo, of being hated by him and knowing that I had fucked up another friendship.

‘It’s no different than school,’ I lied to myself, ‘Just ignore the slurs and keep going. Power through it, just like always.’

I followed my boss into the hallway and we walked towards the break room just in time to hear Caleb jeer.

“How can they even let someone like that go to school with the rest of the kids? Isn’t there a law against that or something?” he was asking.

“A law against being a fudge packer?” Zeke laughed, just as charming as his piece of shit son, “I must have missed that one. It is disgusting, though, isn’t it? I’ll have to have a few words with their principal. There’s no way my kid is showering with that little queer, not on my watch.”

I would have been content to just walk right by the break room, or leave out the back so none of them would see me, but Leneski strode right in and I saw little choice but to follow him. The whole gang was in there, not just my crew anymore, but a bunch of my other coworkers as well, all joining in on the juicy piece of gossip at my expense. Worse, Solo was there, standing in the corner of the room far from the other guys by the refrigerator, just watching and listening to all of this. He looked tense and when he glanced over at us as we walked in, his eyes were even harder than Leneski’s had been. He looked pissed I realized, feeling sick to my stomach all over again. He was probably thinking back to every moment we had spent together, every conversation, every shared lunch and wondering if I had been checking him out. All of those hateful, icy stares fell on me and it hit me. That look was familiar to me because I see it every day at school. It’s exactly the same, whether it came from my classmates or my teachers. The look of disgust, repulsion, and pure loathing. Like I’m some filthy cockroach and they’re all so pure and clean and shining compared to me.

“Oh look who it is,” Bruno sneered at me when he saw me hovering behind our boss, “Did you have a nice little chat with the boss man, princess?”

My face went bright red and I felt the sudden urge to slam my fist into his face, not even caring that he was as tall as my father and could beat me into a pulp with just one hand. This was what I was going to deal with for now on, I realized. Just like at school. Just more of the same shit. Was I never going to escape it? Was the universe determined to make my entire life a living hell? All I had left, I realized, to escape this hate, was Heero’s house. Everywhere else was tainted now and I was never going to get any peace from it. I fully expected Leneski just to ignore it, not really caring if the guys harassed me, so I was surprised when he strode right over to Bruno and actually shoved him back.

“HEY!” he snarled and the entire room just went as quiet at the tomb, “Cut the shit, all of you!”

My coworkers all froze, staring at their boss like he had grown a second head. I guess they hadn’t expected him to be bothered by their behavior, either. After all, he was just like them.

“Grow a pair, the lot of you!” Leneski bellowed at them, “This is a goddamn place of business! I don’t want any of that shit here, not his shit,” he jerked his thumb at me, “and not your shit!” he jabbed a finger hard into Bruno’s chest, “Learn to deal with each other! You want to act like that, you do it off the clock, you hear me? Now, anyone got anything to say about it?”

Unsurprisingly, no one did, not even Zeke, although all of them, especially Solo, looked like they had just swallowed some rancid roadkill. Zeke looked like he took offense to Leneski’s demands, but everyone knew who signed their paychecks and their issues with me took a back seat to their jobs. Seeing that everyone was on board, my boss stormed back out of the break room and returned to his office, leaving me alone in a room full of men that would have sooner spat on me than want to breathe the same air as me. I felt like some armor had been ripped from me as I stood there in the doorway, all alone and not having a single clue what I should do. I thought about just fleeing to the bathroom or some other safe area since now I couldn’t just leave, not when Leneski had given me a chance. But that would have made me seem weak and cowardly and I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I might have, if Solo hadn’t been there.

“This is fucking bullshit!” Zeke suddenly snapped, “He seriously didn’t fire him?!”

“We shouldn’t have to work with a damned faggot,” Bruno growled, the both of them talking like I wasn’t even in the room with them, which suited me fine. I knew what was going to happen as soon as they acknowledged me.

“He’s going to give the business a bad reputation,” Caleb grumbled, “Everyone in town’s going to think that we’re queer lovers. No one’s going to want to work with us so long as he’s on one of the crews.”

That was something that I hadn’t really considered, that word of my working at Leneski’s might get out and hurt his business. I almost felt guilty about it, but really, I had been out for months and it hadn’t been an issue. Unless these guys started blabbing about it, I didn’t see how it was going to change anything.

“Tell us, fag,” Mitch growled at me, his face pinched with equal parts anger and repulsion, “What did ya have to do to get Leneski to keep you? Suck his dick?”

“He must be really something,” one of the guys from the other crews, Tom Belfast, laughed, “to get a guy like the boss to want to keep him around. They weren’t even in there for fifteen minutes!”

Ice water ran through my veins and I took a step back in screaming fear. Suddenly, I was back in that classroom with Zechs holding me by my hair, my arm and leg in horrible, swollen pain, him jeering about my supposed skills and how he wanted a taste of them. It was hard to breathe just then, like all of the air had been sucked right out of the room. If any of them had taken a step towards me, I might have even screamed.

“He can’t make us work with him,” Caleb whined, “If he does, we’ll just strike until he fires him.”

A bunch of them all started talking at once in agreement with the asshole and I had that feeling again, like everything around me was spiraling out of control. I felt like someone had cursed me or something, that was the only explanation for why all this crap was happening all at once. This was utterly ridiculous, I thought. All because of me, because they had found out I was gay after working with me with no issue for months, they were all going to strike until I was gone. I was making problems for Leneski and all of them by staying there. I knew enough about Solo to know that he couldn’t afford something like a strike.

And what was the point? For a paycheck? So my dad wouldn’t hurt me? To help my family, keep a job after I graduated? I wasn’t welcome there. Even Solo probably wanted me to leave. It was just going to be like it was at school. Slurs muttered under breaths, cruel pranks and jibes. The only difference was that these were adults. They were supposed to be better than this. But I know that’s not true. I’ve known men like my father and Pat for too long to believe that adults are any better than kids. I thought that I could deal with it as work as much as I did during school, but standing there, listening to them say those things… I realized that was true. And I’m shit at dealing with school. I couldn’t handle it. I wasn’t keeping any of the money I was making anyway and I seriously doubted that Leneski was going to give me the full time position now. I hadn’t asked, hadn’t wanted to push my luck.

‘I’ll just fucking quit,’ I thought angrily, ‘No one wants me here anyway and at least if I go, no one will have to strike and Leneski won’t have to worry about losing customers.’

I was just about to voice these thoughts, hoping that they would appease my soon to be ex-coworkers from attacking me when Solo strode from his place in the corner towards me. Pain lanced through my heart. I had half expected someone to throw a punch at me and try to force me to leave, but I hadn’t thought it would be him. There was little denying that that’s what he wanted to do, as pissed and hard as his expression was. I took a stumbling step back, wondering if I could make a run for it before any of them caught up to me when Solo shoved Caleb against the wall with just one hand. My eyes went wide like an owl’s. I hadn’t known he was that strong.

“Yeah?” Solo sneered at Caleb who looked about as shocked as I and the rest of the guys did, even when he let him go and took a step back, giving him one of the dirtiest looks I have ever seen, a look that I had expected him to give to me, “You don’t want to work with him? Fine, then fucking quit.”

Caleb glared at him.

“What the hell are you on, Bennet?” he snapped, “You want to work with a damned queer? He should quit-,”

“Why should he quit,” Solo cut him off heatedly, “just because the lot of you are uncomfortable around a freaking teenager?” he looked around the room, addressing all of them, “You’re grown men for fuck’s sake!” he snarled at them.

“He’s a fag, Solo,” Bruno ground out, “No way in hell am I going to tolerate working with someone like him!”

“Is that so?” Solo asked mockingly, “Well, I can’t tolerate that disgusting cologne you wear, Samson,” he turned to Caleb, “or the way you pick your nose when you think there’s no one looking, Williams, but you don’t see me bitching about it! He’s your fucking coworker, no one said that you have to be friends with him!”

He walked over to me and despite everything that he was saying, I still shrank from him, thinking he was going to do something to me. Instead, he clapped me on the shoulder. He actually _touched_ me, without so much as a wince or hesitation or any indication that he didn’t want to do it. The other men actually looked scandalized to see him standing next to me, like he had betrayed them somehow. I was just too shocked to move. I felt the same way I had earlier, when I had suddenly realized that Heero was standing up for me, creating this united front with me against Trowa. Only this was even more incredible since Solo was just a guy that I was on friendly terms with. And he wasn’t gay. He had no reason at all to take my side.

“If you’re such a bunch of weak willed pansies that you can’t handle a kid half your age just cuz they like guys, then just get the hell out of here,” he continued to rant, slinging an arm over my shoulders like we were the best of friends and making me go stiff and frozen, completely confused over what was happening, “The kid and I do most of the work on this damned crew anyway! Buch of whiny babies,” he grumbled.

“I never would have pegged you for a queer lover, Bennett,” Caleb sneered, “You really want him on the same crew as you? In the same van? You won’t be singing the same tune when he comes on to you! Hell, he’s probably been checking you out this entire time!”

I looked nervously up at my defender, certain that he would look disgusted at that, but he didn’t even look phased, just grinned cockily at the other man.

“So? He must have good taste, I’ve heard on good authority that I have a _very_ nice ass,” he said haughtily, “What are you so worried that he’s going to do anyway? Overpower you? You so pathetic you can’t even protect yourself against a teenager?”

Caleb flushed darkly in embarrassment at the accusation.

“Besides, you saw the kid that picked him up today. Why would he be interested in any one of us when he has someone like that to ogle?” he pointed out with a mocking laugh, “He sure ain’t gunna hit on _your_ ugly mug, Williams.”

I didn’t think that Caleb could turn any redder, looking like he didn’t know if he should be insulted, disgusted, or pissed. Solo looked around the room again, dropping the mocking humor and staring down each of the men with a threatening expression.

“And if any of you start spreading lies about him to the boss, I’ll tell him just how full of shit all of you are. Hear that,” he told me, “if any of these pricks gives you any shit, just direct them to me and I’ll set ‘im straight, got it?”

All I could was stare up at him with wide eyes and nod in amazement. I felt like I had wandered into some parallel dimension where absolutely nothing made any sense.

“Whatever,” Caleb snarled at him, “If you want to be friends with the ass ramming fairy, go right ahead. Fucking queer-lover.”

He stormed off towards the sink, grabbed a mug from the cabinet and slammed it down on the counter by the coffee pot so hard, it’s a miracle it didn’t shatter. I heard some grumblings from the other guys, a few more slurs being passed around, and a few of them looked at Solo half like he was an alien life form, and half like he had stabbed all of them in the back. But thankfully, they turned from us and pretended to do other things around the break room. I don’t think any of them wanted to even go near us. That was just as well, I didn’t want any of them near me, either.

I looked up at Solo again and found that he was glaring at Caleb distrustfully. I couldn’t begin to imagine why he had stood up for me. I guess he had just disliked them ganging up on me like that. I felt this sharp pain in my chest as I realized that his good deed for the day was over and this was probably going to be the last time that he was going to be this friendly towards me. He might have been willing to stick up for me and not want me to be bullied, but that didn’t mean that he wanted me around, either. And I had ostrasized him. Sure, he hadn’t been on amazing terms with the other guys, no friendships had been broken, but they were never going to treat him like one of them ever again. He had given that up for me and I didn’t feel like I deserved it. I shrugged his arm off of my shoulders.

“Thank you for standing up for me,” I murmured, “You don’t need to worry about me, ok? I’ll stay out of your way from now on.”

Feeling like I had killed something precious, I walked out of the break room. Tears stung my eyes. Why did this hurt so damned much? He was just a guy that I knew from work. This wasn’t like losing Quatre or Heero or even Trowa. But it did hurt. I felt like my sexuality keeps taking things from me, like it’s a literal curse that I’ve been afflicted with. I couldn’t even be friends with the guys that I worked with because of it. I could never get close to anyone, unless they were like me. To everyone else, I was this filthy thing and there was one surety in my life, that the second someone found out what I am, that would be the end of any connection we might have. I shouldn’t feel this way, like I’ve lost a good friend. I have Heero. He’s all that I need, the only thing that I can hold on to and I don’t even deserve that much. I guess that I’m just greedy. I gasped a little as I felt someone grab the back of my shirt and jerk me backwards.

“Don’t do that,” Solo growled angrily at me.

“What?” I asked fearfully, not knowing exactly what I had done to piss him off so much, unless everything he had said before was completely an act and he wanted to have it out with me after all.

“Don’t you fucking assume things about me,” he snapped, “I freaking hate that. Don’t assume that I’m an asshole like they are when you don’t even know what I’m like.”

I flushed hotly with embarrassment.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized earnestly and he finally let go of my shirt, “I just…”

I didn’t know what to say to him, how to apologize. He was right, of course. I had assumed that he hated me just like the others did because that’s what I’m used to. That there could be someone out there that could accept me without loathing is such an alien, strange concept. I still have a hard time accepting that Heero’s parents are ok with it sometimes, but they have a gay son and they love Heero, so their reaction I get. I didn’t get Solo’s, why he would be alright with it when I was little more than a friendly acquaintance to him. But he was right about that, too, even if we were close at work and hung out sometimes, it didn’t mean that I knew him, what he was really like. I only even know that he’s straight because he talks about his girlfriends sometimes and stashes porn mags in his locker at the factory and flips through them on his breaks.

“Used to pricks like that, huh?” he guessed.

I nodded sheepishly, rubbing at my right arm.

“I didn’t mean to insult you,” I tried to explain weakly, “It’s just… Kids at school… they pick on me a lot. I’ve gotten used to expecting that from people.”

Some of the hardness left Solo’s expression.

“People suck,” he said bluntly, “but not everyone does. I’m not exactly… over the moon about it, you know? But the way I see it, you’re the same dork that you were yesterday and I didn’t have any problems with you then, so I don’t see the point in having a problem with you now, you know? And I meant what I said to them about them acting like babies. You’ve never done any of the shit they just said, they’re just paranoid and stupid. You work harder than most of them, you don’t have to put up with that crap when none of them even know you. You’ll really come to me if they try anything, right?”

I nodded and managed a small smile.

“Thank you, Solo,” I said a lot more earnestly than I had before.

He smirked and ruffled my hair. With that one gesture, I felt that tear in my heart seal itself up. Nothing had changed between us, I realized, and it was that even more than not being fired that almost had me crying again. We were still friends. And even if something had changed, it was minor and unimportant.

“Hey!” Leneski’s shout had the both of us flinching, “Just because there aren’t any jobs today, it doesn’t mean you can slack off!” our boss turned from where he was standing in the hallway behind Solo to yell into the break room, “and that goes triple for you guys, get your asses in gear! There’s tools to clean and a stock room that hasn’t been tidied in days! Maxwell, get downstairs to the basement, there’s equipment I want put away. And when you’re done with that, I have some invoices for you to file since you’re the only one out of this lot that doesn’t screw up my system.”

My smile grew a little. If I wasn’t still shaken, I could almost lie to myself that everything was normal.

“Yes, sir,” I told him.

“And next time you’re that late coming back from lunch, you can make up for it or I’ll take it out of your pay, got it?” he said gruffly.

I nodded and walked swiftly passed him to go down into the basement, my heartbeat still racing, although now it was with pure relief instead of terror. The rest of my shift, while incredibly tedious and boring, proved to be a great distraction from all of the rampant, buzzing thoughts in my head. Better yet, it kept me away from the rest of the guys and I had to wonder if that had been intentional on Leneski’s part. He might not have had much love for me at that point, but he didn’t want any incidents at his shop and I was all too happy to work on paperwork in his office and not have to be around anyone. I really didn’t know how to think or feel about this new… development in my life.

I thought about just telling Leneski that I was going to quit probably a hundred times in those last few hours. It seemed simpler for me and for everyone else. Even if Solo could keep the guys from trying to get me fired or beating me up, work was not going to be pleasant from now on and I have so much other shit in my life to worry about, I just didn’t want to deal with this as well. Oddly, it was Heero that kept me there and not Solo’s assurances or even my fear of my father. I knew that if I had asked for my boyfriend’s advice, he would tell me to stick it out, to not let them bully me, that I was no different from them and they should be the ones to suck it up and deal with me. For a guy that spent the first few months of his life here pretending to be straight and homophobic, he is incredibly opinionated about people not treating people like us differently because of our preferences.

I don’t know if he’s just sheltered, too much of an optimist, or if it’s entirely his parents’ influence, but even after being bullied for being gay, he still has these ideas of how life should be. I’m not that idealistic. I don’t expect any of my coworkers to accept me and I highly doubt they will any time soon, but Heero would approve of me not just running away and hiding like I always do, so I stayed and hoped I wasn’t making an enormous mistake. I mourned what I had once had; a nice, stress free job with an employer that liked me, a place that I could go and make a decent wage away from my father, away from my bullies, where I could just be one of the guys, just the kid that made up for his age and scrawniness with hard work and persistence. Now I was just the fag again. Always just that.

For the first time ever, I was actually happy when my shift at Leneski’s ended and I could go to the factory. I knew that it wasn’t going to last, that there was no way that Caleb was going to keep his big fucking mouth shut and soon I was going to get outed at that job, too. Only Lorathe really was going to fire me because he wasn’t as pragmatic as Leneski is, or as understaffed. Also, he’s been looking to fire me for a very long time and my being gay, even if he didn’t care and everyone knows that the prick is as homophobic as Caleb is, was the perfect excuse for him. I was less worried about losing that job since I don’t make as much there, but it was still incredibly stressful because Lorathe actually knows my father and was in the position to cause heaps of trouble for me if he wanted to.

I waited like the coward that I am for as long as I could to collect my things from my locker, hoping that my coworkers would leave without hanging around to maybe teach me a lesson or rough me up to get me to quit. I was fairly successful, not even seeing anyone as I opened my locker and grabbed my bag. I shrugged my jacket on, feeling like my entire body was made out of lead. I was exhausted from pure, emotional overload. I just wanted the day to be over with already. I wanted to find the closest flat surface and tune out the entire world. I wanted my boyfriend. Heero… if I told him about this, I knew that the first thing he would do was hug me and suddenly, I wanted that so badly that I felt like I was going to cry.

It was so stupid, but I missed him so much. I had seen him hours ago, but right then, it felt like weeks. It felt like he was so far away from me and I needed him, I needed to see the love in his eyes for me, I needed to feel his body against mine, his warmth, and for him to tell me that everything was going to be ok. I wanted, more than anything else, to call him that very second, if only to hear his voice. I only didn’t because I knew I would come off sounding needy. I had embarrassed myself in front of him enough for that day, thank you very much. All of this… all of these thoughts and the things that I was feeling, the aching loneliness, my fears and anxieties, the pure stress and confusion were all weighing me down and giving me one hell of a headache. I couldn’t begin to sort any of it out between Trowa, Heero, and now this thing with work. I tried to push it out of my head and just continue on with my day, like I always do, even if I already felt like I was a zombie and it wasn’t even ten o’clock yet.

‘Tomorrow,’ I reminded myself, ‘I’ll see him tomorrow morning.’

That was right. I had promised him that I would go to his place after work, not my home. I had wondered if that was a good idea, but right then, I was incredibly relieved. I don’t think that I could have handled my father very well in the state that I was in, and I just knew that I wouldn’t have been able to sleep in my bed or maybe even on the couch. And if he was still in the same mood that he had been in that morning… no, it was best if I stayed at Heero’s. He was right, just like always, I needed someplace where I could relax and lick my wounds. And I didn’t have any work that day. We could hang out, bake his mother’s cake together…

“Shit,” I swore out loud as I zipped up my jacket.

I had completely forgotten about Mariela’s cake in the wake of everything else. I still needed to text Heero the ingredients that he needed to get. I was already making a list in my head as I walked out the door and started down the street towards the main one, wondering if I should stick with cream and strawberries or if she would want something new and different. I was so lost in my thoughts that I almost didn’t see Solo.

He was leaning against the brick wall at the mouth of our little street. I hesitated there for a moment as I realized with a pang that he was standing in the exact spot that Heero had pinned Trowa to earlier that day. I still wasn’t entirely sure where Solo and I stood. He said that he didn’t look down on me for my sexuality and he didn’t want the guys to harass me, but the paranoid part of myself insisted that it couldn’t be that simple, that something had to have changed between the two of us. He might not loath me or want to see me hurt, but that didn’t mean he wanted me hanging around him, right? To my surprise, Solo noticed me standing there and grinned at me.

“Thought I’d walk ya to work. You don’t mind, right?” he asked, although he had never really asked before in the hundreds of times that we’ve walked together.

“You don’t need to protect me,” I murmured, “I can handle things myself.”

I could read between the lines. Solo had been worried that I was going to get jumped by Caleb or one of the other guys. I had assumed the same thing but hadn’t seen any way around it.

“Sure you can,” my coworker said in amusement like he was placating me, “Don’t mean I can’t help, does it?”

I gave him a tiny, weak smile that probably came out a little bit bitter.

“No, it doesn’t… thank you,” I said, looking down at the ground, “Even if you don’t have to.”

“No problem,” he assured me, “We’re goin’ the same way anyway.”

We continued on together and I never did see even a glimpse of any of my other coworkers. Maybe the both of us had just been paranoid, or maybe they had seen that I was with Solo and hadn’t bothered. He’s not the biggest guy amongst them by a long shot, but he can take care of himself and I’m well aware that he carries a switchblade with him, at the very least. I wasn’t important enough for anyone to risk getting the shit beaten out of them for. I glanced up at him from time to time as we walked, trying to get some kind of idea of what he was thinking, why he was doing this. I couldn’t understand him, why he would want to stick up for me. He had told me not to assume things about him and I wasn’t, I was just having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that I had not been fired and now that I had someone in my corner. Shit like that doesn’t happen to people like me, at least not in my experience. I wasn’t sure if I should chalk it up to the universe making up for making me it’s human kickball for the day or if there was some hidden threat in all of it that I wasn’t seeing just yet.

On red alert, waiting for something to happen to make up for the rare string of good luck, I almost forget to get Heero the cake ingredients again, but remembered when we walked through central Nausten and past a bakery. I whipped out my cell phone and texted out the rather short list. Angel food cake is not a difficult thing to make, it’s just a trick of separating the yolks from the whites really, and I can do that by hand after practicing it a few times. I made sure to ask Heero if they had the right sized cake pan and what I needed to decorate the cake as well and shot him the text. He must have been using his phone, because his reply was immediate.

‘Thx! Think we have all that, let me check.’

I waited obediently and another text came in a couple minutes later.

‘Yep, we have those. I’ll go to the store tonight and have everything ready for you tomorrow.’

‘Thx,’ I texted back, still getting used to the weird abbreviations you can use for texting and was about to put my phone back into my pocket when it pinged again to indicate I had another text message.

‘You alright?’ he was asking me.

I could just imagine him sitting on the couch in the living room or out walking his dog, staring at his phone with intense concern and I smiled warmly at the image. Immediately, I felt a good deal of the anxiety and pain that I had been feeling lifting. It’s amazing how easily he can do that to me, make me feel better and loved just by asking if I was ok, just like he had on the day that I had fallen for him. I wanted to pour everything that had happened to me since he had left, everything that I was feeling and thinking out into a message to him, to tell him that no, I wasn’t alright at all. I was terrified that I was going to lose my job, terrified that one of the men that I worked with was going to retaliate, and even more petrified that my father was going to find out. I was scared that I was going to lose my other job and scared that, between Trowa and almost getting fired, my life was spiraling out of my control. But how could I possibly put all of that, the enormity of my feelings and problems into something as simple as a text message.

‘No,’ I typed, going for honesty when I couldn’t admit to everything, ‘I miss you.’

I worried that that might across as too needy and sappy, but I sent it anyway, hoping it would please him to know that I was missing him, thinking about him.

‘I miss you, too. I love you so much, Duo,’ he texted back.

The text was simple, without any of those stupid emoticons and heart emojis. For some reason, that made it feel more powerful to me, more earnest and I felt that explosive heat go off in my chest again. It made me miss him even more.

‘I love you, too,’ I typed back.

When I flipped my phone closed and put it away, I found that Solo was smirking at me.

“What?” I asked, bewildered by his expression.

“I’ve never seen you smile like that before,” he said a bit cheekily, “or much at all, actually.”

I flushed a deep, dark red as I realized that I had been smiling like a complete and total dork at my phone and it was probably obvious to just about anyone that I had been texting my boyfriend. I wondered if it was the same, stupid smile that Quatre had gotten whenever Trowa had texted him and felt mortified. My reaction just made Solo chuckle at me.

“With that smitten look, your boyfriend right? That kid that came by earlier?” he asked, amazing me at his boldness and that he wasn’t shying away from the topic.

I hadn’t even realized so many of my coworkers had seen Heero, but then again, it had been the lunch hour and everyone had been coming and going at once.

“Yeah,” I murmured, “He’s my boyfriend.”

That only made me blush harder as I felt oddly happy saying that. It was the first time I had ever really said those words out loud to anyone.

“No reason to be shy about it,” my coworker said, “I told you it doesn’t bother me.”

“I don’t want to make you uncomfortable,” I admitted, “Just because you don’t want to beat the crap out of me like everyone else, I don’t need to rub it in your face.”

He snorted.

“You couldn’t be more subtle about it if you tried, kid, and if I were uncomfortable, I wouldn’t have asked,” he pointed out, “When I said that I wasn’t overly excited about hearing that you’re gay, what I meant is I don’t know a whole lot about gay people beyond the kind of shit that Caleb and his lot said about you. I’ve never even met a fa-, er… a homosexual before,” he corrected himself hastily, but I wasn’t offended by it, knowing that he hadn’t meant it as an insult, “I mean, sure, some guys in jail did that stuff, but only because it was acceptable in a place full of guys. But you’re the first I’ve actually met, at least that I know of,” he narrowed his eyes at me, “So you’re actually gay, right and that’s not just a rumor?”

This time, I snorted. It was a little late for him to be asking that question.

“Last time I checked,” I quipped dryly.

He chuckled again.

“What’s that like? Being gay, I mean,” he asked with curiosity.

It took me a full fifteen seconds of staring at him incredulously before I realized that he was being serious. No one had ever asked me that before. This conversation was getting more surreal by the minute.

“I don’t know,” I shot back, “What’s it like being straight?”

Solo exploded in shocked laughter, shaking his head at that and I didn’t bother to tell him that I was in fact only half-joking, because I was just as clueless about how it felt to be straight, to be normal and like girls as he was about what it was like for me to be gay.

“I don’t know,” I repeated with a sigh, “I don’t even know what it means half the time. I just… like guys, that’s all.”

‘One guy in particular,’ I thought and felt my face go slightly warm again.

“Why?” he asked and I got that surreal feeling again.

I hadn’t spoken this candidly about my sexuality with anyone since Quatre had died.

“Hell if I know,” I admitted, running my hand through my bangs, “I just do. I don’t know how this stuff works.”

If I did, I would have tried as hard as I could to reverse it.

“How’d you figure it out?” Solo asked me, which was a much easier question to answer.

I shrugged.

“I got old enough to start liking girls and I didn’t. I didn’t really notice guys, either, but I liked being kissed by them a lot more than I liked being kissed by girls, so that was a pretty big indicator.  It’s really not any more complicated than that.”

“You didn’t just try to like girls?” Solo asked and I felt the same annoyance that I always do when someone says something like that, but I brushed it off knowing that he didn’t mean anything by it.

“What’s to try?” I said a bit more brusquely than I had meant to, “You shouldn’t have to try to be attracted to someone, it should just happen or it isn’t real, right? Then you’re just lying to yourself and pretending something’s there when there’s really nothing. I never had to try with my boyfriend, it just happened out of the blue. I didn’t ask to be gay, it’s not like something happened to me when I was a kid or I thought, gee, this might be fun! See, what no one gets is being gay has nothing to do with liking girls. It doesn’t matter if I think they’re repulsive or ok or if I’m attracted to them. What matters is that I like guys, and forcing myself to like girls isn’t going to change that!”

Solo was a bit wide eyed when I finally stopped ranting.

“Waiting a while to get that off your chest?” he asked with a quirk of one blonde eyebrow.

I looked down at the ground, embarrassed that I had flipped out over nothing, but he was right. I had never really had someone to talk to about these things. It was rather pointless ranting at Heero about them because he probably felt the same way.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t take it out on you,” I apologized, “I’m just so used to having people say shit about it and I can’t even defend myself…”

“Why not?”

“Because no one cares,” I muttered, “It doesn’t matter why I am the way that I am, or how much it frustrates me, or even that it’s impossible for me to change. I’m different and I have to pay for that, for being someone that everyone’s afraid of or is disgusted by. Half of them wouldn’t believe me if I said all that and the other half think me being a fag makes me fair game to mess with, and they’d keep doing it even if they did believe me. It would just get me beaten up worse anyway.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that,” he assured me, “I suck at this whole talking thing. I just meant if you’d tried being with a girl and knew you were gay from that.”

“I got kissed once,” I admitted, “and I didn’t like it very much. I wasn’t sure if it was just her or I was the problem and it could have been any girl… but then I got kissed by a guy and that was ok. It didn’t repulse me, the opposite in fact. Then I fell for my current boyfriend and it seemed kind of stupid to keep thinking that I might not be gay.”

Solo smirked at that.

“Yeah, that’s kind of a good indicator. Sucks that you’re out at school. Kids can be little pricks sometimes,” he commiserated and actually did sound sympathetic.

“Adults, too,” I muttered with a shrug, “It doesn’t really matter. They’ve been treating me like trash since I was a kid. Me being gay was just another thing for them to come after me about. And really, they’ve been bullying me about that years before I came out, so not much has changed.”

“They thought you were gay? Why?” he asked me with honest confusion, “I never even would have guessed in a million years if the guys hadn’t said something about it.”

“Really?” I asked with wide eyed surprise.

For a moment I thought he was just trying to be nice, or even sarcastic, but he seemed genuinely confused and Solo isn’t the kind of person that would lie to make someone feel better. He’s very blunt, for better or for worse. It’s one of the things that I like about him, that he isn’t shy in telling people when they’re being a dick or an idiot. While he isn’t a complete jerk about it, he doesn’t believe in sparing someone’s feelings. I know that Heero had said the same thing to me earlier, that Zechs and the rest of them were wrong and there’s nothing about me that outs me as gay, but my boyfriend’s perception when it comes to me has always been a bit… skewed. Besides, what did he know? He was gay, too.

“You don’t exactly come across as a… well, you know,” he rubbed at the back of his head, “Not like I would really know, but gays are supposed to be all swishy and dress fashionably, aren’t they?”

I shrugged.

“I haven’t met a lot of other gay people,” I said honestly, “and none of them were really like that. I think it’s just a stereotype.”

“Maybe, but if it isn’t, you’re not like that at all,” he looked from my ratty jeans to my cheap, thin, dark grey jacket that had seen better days years ago, “The only indication I ever would have had that you’re gay is you never talk about girls or seem very interested in dating, but I thought you just weren’t bein’ talkative about it, not like you’re chatty to begin with. I just can’t see why anyone would accuse you of being a homosexual.”

“Well, my hair…” I self-consciously tugged on my braid, “I started wearing it longer when people started calling me a fag.”

“Yeah, so?” Solo challenged, “Lots of guys have long hair, it doesn’t make you queer.”

I looked at his own, tiny ponytail. It was so short, barely even half an inch of hair pulled up, that it was a miracle it even stayed in the rubber band that he used. He doesn’t wear it like that a lot, mostly during work if he gets sick of it getting in his face. For some strange reason, his messy blonde hair pulled back like that actually made him look more masculine instead of less. Zechs was the same way. His hair is actually a little longer than mine, he sure as hell doesn’t look girly and no one would ever accuse him of being a fag for keeping that silvery white hair long.

“I’m scrawny,” I said, hunching in on myself a little.

It’s something that’s always embarrassed me since Zechs started bullying me, just how… small I am. I’m not short, thank god for that, although I’ll never be as tall as him or my dad, but I’m a decent height. But there’s barely any muscle on me, even after working at physical labor and my shoulders aren’t very wide. I guess slender is probably the nicest word you could use about my body type, but scrawny probably fits me better.

“And?” my coworker looked at me like he thought I was being ridiculous, “Last time I checked, guys come in all shapes and sizes. I don’t think gays have the corner market on skinny.”

“I’m not athletic at all,” I argued, “The only sports team I’m on is track and I have zero interest in sports. All the stuff I like, reading, writing, cooking is girly. No straight guy would be interested in that crap.”

My tone came out bitter and I had to fight with myself not to remember the harsh words Trowa had had for my hobbies.

“That’s stupid,” Solo scoffed in annoyance, “I wasn’t into sports at your age, either. All I wanted to do was smoke and jerk off in my spare time. Sure, I could be athletic when I needed to be, but I was too busy working for my dad and in the end, it was just a bunch of idiots chasing after a ball, didn’t seem to have a point to me. And so what if you like that stuff? You’re one of the smartest guys I know and smart guys read. I admit that I don’t know a lot about cooking or writing, but there a ton of straight novelists and try to tell the chef at the BBQ Hut that he’s a fag. That guy’d throw a damned knife at your head.”

He won a surprised laugh out of me. I had never really thought about it, that there were plenty of guys that cooked in restaurants and wrote books for a living, guys that no one would claim as girly or feminine.

“My point is, if the kids you go to school with think that stuff makes you gay, I don’t think they actually know what gay is. And this is coming from someone that doesn’t know much on the subject himself,” he told me, “Of course, it’s my opinion that most kids are morons anyway, present company excluded.”

I smiled wryly at that, but I just as quickly lost it.

“If you don’t know that much about it, then why are you so okay with it?” I dared to ask, even though I felt like I was really pushing my luck, questioning something that I was so grateful for, “Why didn’t you believe all the stuff that they were saying about me?”

He gave me probably the most serious look I have ever seen out of the man, besides how angry he had looked when our other coworkers had been spewing all that shit about me.

“What? That you’re going around trying to cop a feel on every guy you meet? That you only took that job ‘cause you want to see a bunch of guys sweating and working their asses off? That you sucked Leneski’s dick to keep the job? Or that you’ll give them a bad name and probably have some kind of disease?”

I winced. I hadn’t heard that last one. Not that someone accusing me of having AIDS was anything new, either.

Solo sighed.

“Look, maybe if I had met you in high school I would have been like them,” he admitted and actually looked embarrassed, “I was an idiot at that age and I might have believed some of that, or just been a bit wary of you, but I’m not that person anymore, haven’t been for a really long time. Some people do grow up, you know. Then there’s people like Caleb and that whole lot that never will and still believe that carrying your girl’s things for her makes you a whipped pansy, anyone who’s smart and actually cares about their grades is a nerd, and anyone who isn’t a meathead jock is a fag. Thankfully, I grew out of that by the time I ended up in jail.

“People say a lot shit about me, too. When I was a kid, I was poor, did drugs, drank too much like my old man, and would never amount to anything. Then my sister was either a liar for pointing the finger at my dad, or a liar and a slut for taking it back and people wondered if I was doing her as well. Now I’m just an ex-con and drug dealer that’ll still amount to nothing. The kind of guy little, old ladies cross the street to avoid, ya know? Don’t matter to them that I’m just trying to make a damned living and I’ve paid for my damned mistakes, a thug is all anyone ever sees. Talk is shit, we both know that. So it’d be hypocritical of me to do the same crap to you. Besides, I know you. I may not have known about the gay thing, but I know the kind of person you are and I know that what those dicks were saying is utter horseshit. It’s got nothing to do with them anyway. Thinking you’d be checkin’ out a bunch fugly old men. And if they would just keep their damned mouths shut, no one would have to worry about getting a bad reputation either. Adults can be pretty fucking stupid, too,” he said angrily.

I blinked at him in amazement. I had never realized that he was that bothered by the shit that people say about him, just because he had done a couple of stints in juvie and jail. He always seemed so cool about it, just brushing it off like it was a big joke, like it didn’t matter to him. Maybe he didn’t completely understand how I felt being gay, and what that really meant, but he understood what it felt like to have people judge you and not know the first thing about you. He caught me staring at him and he got that dead serious look again that was so out of character for him.

“You know, even if I weren’t ok with you being a… being gay, I’d never treat you the way they did. I’d never treat anyone like that,” he said in this strangely soft tone, but then smirked and joke punched me in the shoulder enough for it to smart, “Dumbass.”

“Ow,” I ground out but found that I was smiling a little again.

We walked in silence for a bit and I realized that we had come to some kind of understanding. He might not have been completely ok with me being gay. He probably even had a few prejudices that he was holding close to his chest, but he was trying to ignore them. We were friends, even if we weren’t especially close, and he liked me enough to respect me. I really didn’t care what he thought about me, if he believed in some of the stereotypes. That respect was more important than anything else and I could deal with the rest. I could feel some of the pain around my heart easing a little. It wasn’t ok, and I didn’t know how I was going to deal with work from now on, but I still had Solo as my friend and I still had my job. That was good enough.

“It’s too bad you’re queer,” he suddenly piped up again when we were just a couple of blocks away from the factory, “It’s a real loss to girls everywhere, you know? But what can you do?”

I stared at him, baffled and failing to see what why my being gay was a loss to anyone, let alone girls and not sure if he was joking in the light way he had said it, or completely serious.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

He looked at me, amazed by something that he saw on my face and burst out laughing.

“Do you seriously not get it?” he asked in total disbelief.

“Get what?” I demanded, but that just made him laugh again and he clapped me hard on the back.

“Oh, man, you are a riot!” he wiped at his eyes, still chuckling, and grinned at me, “Don’t worry, you’ll get it one day.”

I didn’t know whether to be offended, thinking he was making fun of me for something, or just plain confused about what he was talking about, but he refused to elaborate and every time I tried to get him to clarify what the hell he was talking about, he just teased me over being oblivious more, so I dropped it. Then we were too close to work for either of us to be comfortable talking about the subject of my sexuality and fell into a companionable silence.

My second shift was hell. Not as bad as my first, but that bar was set pretty fucking high. I was exhausted from the moment that I punched in, not in the mood for the hard, manual labor and lacking any kind of energy for it. On top of that, my mind was still buzzing with anxious thoughts concerning everything that had happened that entire day from my father’s actions that morning to my conversation with Solo and I was incredibly stressed about word of what had happened at Leneski’s getting out. Every time one of my coworkers at the factory glanced at me or said something under their breath, I was positive that they knew and it sent me into a near panic attack, complete with racing heart, a voice in my head screaming to flee, and my breath threatening to hyperventilate.

I stayed far away from Caleb and even Ralph’s dad. The two of them were just as close as Connie and Ralph are, I’m pretty sure their families have been friendly for generations and they live fairly close to each other. If Caleb told anyone, it would be Hicks first. Thankfully, Solo kept close to me. I don’t know if he was just trying to reassure me that things were fine between us or if he was aware of how scared I was of Caleb, but he was my virtual shadow that night. I was even too terrified to use the bathroom until my dinner break because I was paranoid that Williams might corner me there to beat me up or something. By the time the bell rang for our break, I was so nervous and keyed up that I was almost twitching.

I couldn’t take more of this. My emotions throughout that day were like some toxic cocktail and my body couldn’t handle the stress of it anymore. If anything else happened, I was convinced that it might actually kill me. As it was, my head was screaming from the stress and every muscle I had was throbbing from the work because I just didn’t have the strength for it. I felt jittery and hollowed out at the same time. All I wanted to do was crawl to Heero’s, find the nearest flat surface to lay down on, even if it was just the floor, and cry from sheer, emotional overload. I wasn’t even really thinking anymore, just feeling things, like my brain was short circuiting.

The break room was nearly empty when Solo and I went in to have our dinner and I could have wept from sheer relief that I didn’t have to deal with a lot of people. My social anxiety was flaring up even worse than it had early that morning and just being around anyone except for Solo was making my skin prickle and making me feel skittish like a deer. I almost just went to the farthest table in the corner and just laid my head down on it, not caring that I was hungry and with how shaky I felt, should probably eat something before my brain finally woke up out of its coma and reminded me that Mariela had made me dinner. Even though I had put it in the refrigerator when I had come in for my shift, it took me a moment to even recall what it was. A salad. Something light and easy. I could have hugged her for that.

I sat down at one of the empty tables with Solo, who had a rather sad looking dinner of an egg and cheese sandwich, a bag of chips, and a beer, and pulled out my dinner from the bag that Mariela had packed for me. I gotta say, Heero’s mom is really amazing. The salad was huge, filled to the brim with all kinds of vegetables; cucumbers, lettuce, tomatoes, and carrots, plus shredded bits of cheese, strips of tender chicken, and croutons. On top of that, she had given me a lovely, ripe peach, and a vanilla cupcake decorated with pastel purple frosting. Lastly, she had snuck in a small thermos of that nice green drink she had made for me when I had had insomnia. Seeing it made me grin despite everything. She had acted like she was just giving me a light snack and had packed a banquet. I ate ravenously, not really wanting food at first until I actually started to eat, then I couldn’t stop.

My appetite quickly died again when Caleb Williams walked into the break room with a small, individual sized pizza box in one hand. I went completely cold as his hard brown eyes fell on me and his thin lips pulled back in something that was half sneer, half scowl of disgust. I thought for sure that he was going to walk over to me and start something. It was just the three of us in the break room at that point, not that anyone would have come running to my aid if there had been other people there. Solo lifted his head up from the magazine he had been reading and caught my expression, and probably how pale I was. He followed my gaze and frowned when he saw Caleb there. All at once, he stiffened like he was preparing for a physical altercation and grinned at the other man, but there was a fierceness to his eyes, making the grin look more like the warning snarl of a dog. That’s exactly what it was, I realized, a warning to Caleb not to start anything with him.

More shocking than Solo’s expression was Caleb’s reaction to it. I tensed, expecting a fight to break out between them, or at the very least for Caleb to tease him for taking my side, maybe call him a faggot lover again. But he didn’t move from his place in the doorway and glared at my friend. Not just glared, he looked more pissed than I had ever seen him, like he wanted to tear Solo limb from limb and spit on his corpse afterwards. I thought that they had to come to blows as they stared each other down, but Caleb, with a dismissive, angry snort, left the break room, storming off towards the back loading bay where the other guys were probably eating and smoking. Solo gave a snort of his own, his just as dismissive, but almost mocking.

“What the hell was that about?” I asked him.

Solo regarded me for a moment, clearly deciding if he was going to answer truthfully or just give me some flippant remark. He took another bite of his sandwich, chewed, and took a swig of beer before answering.

“Nothing really,” he told me, “I just told him before we left Leneski’s that if he starts spreading rumors about you or tries to tell Lorathe, I’d break his face in. Guess he took exception to that.”

He smirked smugly at that and I gaped at him like an idiot. He had gone to bat for me again… and what was more, although he was smirking, I understood that it hadn’t been an empty threat. It had been enough that he accepted me, but to do all this… to protect me… I couldn’t understand why he would do that for me. I could only feel this incredible relief. Caleb was clearly too scared of Solo to ignore that threat if he had looked at him such rage. I was safe, if only from him and Lorathe firing me.

“Solo, I… thank you…thank you so much…” I felt tears prick my eyes, but I was too proud to cry in front of the guy that I looked up to.

He looked away from me like it was nothing to him, but I could have sworn that he was blushing, just a tiny bit.

“Ain’t no big deal,” he brushed me off, “I just hate bullies is all. I’m sure you’ve got enough problems as it is to deal with getting fired and harassed by that asshole on top of everything. And if you got fired, I’d have no one to bake me cookies.”

I rolled my eyes at that.

“Yeah, I’ve got enough problems,” I muttered, trying not to think of any of those other problems, lest my brain would explode with all the thoughts that were weighing it down already.

“Well, at least you’ve got a boyfriend. That’s gotta be a perk, right? If you’ve gotta be out, at least you’re out over something that’s worth it. He’s pretty attractive, as far as guys go,” he smirked at me and I was once again amazed that he could speak so candidly to me about these things without being awkward.

“Yeah,” I smiled softly, “I guess you’re right, I never really thought of it that way. Heero is great.”

Heero was worth it. All the anxiety I had felt that day, all of the risk over losing my job and worrying that someone was going to retaliate… all of that was worth just having Heero in my life.

“There’s that smile again,” my coworker teased, making me blush, “At least you’re not like one of those guys that can’t shut up about his girlfriend for two seconds, although I guess you two kind of have to keep it low key, huh?”

I snorted at what a colossal understatement that was.

“I don’t mind,” I admitted, “Even if it weren’t such a big deal for us to be dating, I’d still probably be low key about it. But I’m just happy to be with him, it’s kind of a miracle, you know?”

Solo quirked an eyebrow at that, not getting it.

“The two of us, that we got together at all,” I clarified, “It’s not exactly easy for… for guys like us. I mean, anyone we fall for, we have to think ‘there’s a nine out of ten chance that this guy is straight and wants nothing to do with me.’ And you can’t just ask because that’ll just get you punched in the face or worse. And even if he is gay, in that ten percent chance, it’s no guarantee that he’ll like you back and even if he does, you have to wonder if it’s a good idea to date at all. It’s not like this town is very gay friendly. So yeah, on pure statistics alone, it’s a fucking miracle we got together in the first place. Kind of makes all the hassle and threats and shit worth it.”

‘A miracle,’ I thought bitterly, ‘and I’m thinking of destroying it. What does that make me? What sort of disgusting person would spit on a miracle?’

I took an angry bite out of my peach and barely even tasted it. Solo snorted dismissively at me.

“Yeah, well, at least you don’t have a police record a mile long,” he pointed out, “I might be straight, but let me tell you, the dating scene isn’t pretty for guys like me.”

I raised an eyebrow at him.

“But you’re…” I started to say and bit my tongue.

Solo might be ok with my sexuality, but I didn’t know how he would take my calling him attractive, if he would get paranoid and think I was hitting on him. I just couldn’t imagine him having a hard time getting girls. He really was attractive with his wide shoulders, strong arms, long legs, and messy, wispy golden hair. Plus, he had that whole bad boy, rogue rebel personality thing going on that I hear some girls are just crazy about.

“An ex-con?” he pointed out, “A guy that can barely get a job because he was charged with assault, theft, and selling drugs? Even if I don’t tell my girlfriends that up front, they find it out eventually and most of them wouldn’t touch me with a ten-foot pole after that, the good ones, anyway. It just leaves me with three types of girls; one: the ones that are stupid enough to be into me because they think I’m some kind of bad ass, which I’m not, two: the ones that think that if they try hard enough, they can change me, or three: the ones that think I can help them score drugs despite the fact that I’ve never supplied anything besides pot, shrooms, and lsd. That’s pretty much it for my dating perspectives.”

“I’m sorry,” I said with a wince.

“It’s fine,” he shrugged, “But you know how lucky you are, right? And not ‘cause you’re gay. Finding someone to connect with that you actually mesh well with is a tall order whether you’re straight or gay and if that guy of yours can make you smile like that, then you’re right, that’s a miracle.”

“Yeah, I know how lucky I am,” I murmured.

Every time I see Heero, I know how lucky I am. Out of the millions of people on the planet, I found the one person who’s perfect for me, the one person that loves me and makes me feel normal. But Heero hadn’t been so lucky. He had fallen for someone who didn’t even have the spine to stick by him. He had spent that day showing me how much he loves me, sticking up for me and caring for me. I had spent it thinking about how much better off he would be if I dumped him, but was too much of a coward to actually go through with it because I think, at this point in our relationship, with how deeply he’s gotten under my skin, if I did dump him, it might actually kill me. Solo narrowed his eyes at me and I worried for a second that he could tell what I was thinking, or just that he knew something was seriously bothering me.

“Finish your dinner,” he scolded instead, gesturing his head towards my half-eaten salad and he sounded so much like a gruff older brother that I nearly laughed at the ridiculousness of it.

I put everything that we had just talked about and I was thinking about in the back of my head with the rest of the screaming garbage, rushing to finish my meal before I had to go back out onto the loading floor. I did a little bit better in the first hour back from break. I had a full stomach, a little bit more energy, and I was less stressed than I had been before knowing that Caleb would likely not say anything to Lorathe or Hicks about me. Caleb and Solo were about the same height, but Caleb, while not being necessarily fat, has a slight beer belly and Solo has more muscle in his arms. In a fair fight, anyone could see who would win and that was without the knife that Solo carries. I was not worth it, in my humble opinion, but who knew how deep Caleb’s revulsion for me ran? Still, I had more hope than I had coming into the factory that day and the fact that Lorathe didn’t drag me off the floor attested to it.

My tiny boost of energy didn’t last very long, though, and soon I was dragging even worse than I had been in the first half of my shift. I pulled a bunch of muscles across my shoulders, which only made doing my job twice as hard and made my headache pound like a gong in my skull. The very first thing I was going to do when I got to Heero’s was pop some pain pills then fall face first into bed and not emerge again until maybe noon. I was never so happy that my insomnia bout had gone away, although that seemed to be tempting fate. If I wasn’t able to sleep that morning, I was going to end up punching a wall again. Only I was pretty sure I didn’t even have the energy to do that anymore.

“Maybe you should go sit down or something,” Solo suggested as I struggled lifting a box, almost tripping and shuffling with it like a zombie, or perhaps like my legs were made of iron.

I must have looked especially awful because Solo never really fusses over anything.

“With my luck today, Lorathe will just yell at me for the next hour,” I muttered tiredly, feeling another sharp pain in my back as I put the box down in the loader, “and I’m fine. Shift’s almost done anyway.”

He shook his head at me, but let me be. By the time the bell rang to signal the end of the shift, I was just done. Completely and truly done with that entire day. I was so exhausted and drained that, as frugal as I am, I actually debated asking Solo if he had a couple of bucks on him so I could take the bus. It was only my pride and how much I hate asking for handouts that saw me walking heavily through the streets of Nausten at one in the morning, slowly making my way to the North side. I was so tired at that point that I didn’t even care that my back and head were killing me, I just wanted to go home into the little, safe cocoon of Heero’s house where nothing could hurt me or yell at me.

The light was on for me again and the door unlocked. I couldn’t help but think of my father, how he would flip his shit if my mother or I had done anything like that. Of course, when you have the kind of money that the Yuy’s do, you don’t need to worry about using a little extra electricity to make someone feel welcome and not stumble around in the dark, and they lived in a much nicer neighborhood. They didn’t have to worry about their neighbors and even if they did, they had a state of the art security system and a large dog. Although said dog probably would just lick an intruder to death rather than tear their throats out.

Sure enough, Kanuck was at the door when I came in, wagging his tail furiously to see me and lolling his tongue, waiting for the opportunity to use it. Despite my many aches and pains, I smiled at his exuberance. Pets, especially cats and dogs, are great like that. No matter what you’ve done wrong, no matter how shitty your day was, you always know that someone will be happy to see you come home. I never knew how wonderful that feels until I got Pepper, remembering with a heavy heart how it had felt as a child to come home from school and no one would care. No one would even say hello to me or ask how my day was or so much as smile just to see me. If I had been lucky, my mother wouldn’t be in such a bad mood to yell at me about what a waste I was or if I was especially lucky, she might have at least made eye contact with me instead of just staring off into space.

“Hey, boy,” I petted his head, never so grateful that he’s such a big dog, I don’t need to kneel down to pet him.

I turned off the front light, locked the door, and entered the code to arm the security system. I could almost lie to myself that I actually belonged there. I trudged up the stairs, so exhausted and so hurting that I actually considered just crashing on the couch in the living room just so I wouldn’t have to deal with the stairs. But the desire to change out of my dirty clothes was too strong. Besides, I needed to see Pepper.

Kanuck followed me up the steps, practically attached to my hip and copied me when I paused at the top of the stairs, staring at Heero’s closed door. Suddenly, this intense desire to see my boyfriend swept me up like a gale storm. I wanted nothing more in the entire world than to feel his arms around me, holding me closely and reverently, to feel the warmth of his body against mine and that deep, smooth voice telling me how much he loved me, how everything was going to be alright and even if it was only for a second, I would lie to myself and believe him. I wanted to lay down with him like I had gotten used to during my insomnia bout so badly that I felt this gaping, hollow hole in me, this deep loneliness.

But I couldn’t give in to it. I was sure that Heero wouldn’t mind me sharing a bed with him again, but this wasn’t like before. I wasn’t sick, I wasn’t having a hard time sleeping, and I wasn’t even injured. Well, not physically anyway, even if my heart was bleeding and full of holes. Besides, he was probably fast asleep at that hour and I didn’t even dare to peek in on him. I knew that I was being stupid, but I just felt leery of assuming that my climbing into bed with him was ok. I didn’t know where we stood on the subject, if he would think that I was being needy, if it would make him happy, or if he would think I was giving him some kind of signal that I was ready to take our relationship further soon. It was too confusing in my tired state for me to bother with. Although it made me feel stupidly sad and lonely, I had to go to the guest room.

Kanuck looked up at me and whined, like he was egging me on,  begging me to take the chance. I just smiled at him and patted his head, then walked into the guest room. I expected him to slip through the gap in Heero’s doorway since that’s where he always goes when his master is asleep, but surprisingly, he followed me into the bedroom. Pepper was right there at the door when I walked in, twining around my legs and meowing at me insistently like she hadn’t seen me in days.

“Hey, love,” I chuckled at her, wincing as I kneeled down so I could pick her up in my arms, “What’s wrong? You just saw me this morning.”

She kept meowing like she was lecturing me about leaving her. I suppose Heero wasn’t the only one who had been displeased about me not staying over. I felt guilty about it. I was doing the best that I could for her and things were a lot better than they had been. She was someplace safe and warm, I never had to worry about running out of money to pay for her food and litter, and she had lots of room to explore, plus she wasn’t alone all the time now. I had worried a little that with me working all the time and sometimes not even having the time to go visit her, she would forget about me and connect more with Heero or even his parents since she lived with them, but that hadn’t happened. She was as attached to me as ever and while that was sweet, that she had imprinted on me so much worried me. I couldn’t spend as much time with her as she needed, obviously if she was so clinging every time I stayed over. It made me feel like the worst pet owner in existence that I couldn’t even play with her as much as she deserved, that she was always lonely for me.

I petted her for a bit, just having something alive that cared for me there in my arms was the best feeling and when she purred and headbutted my neck, I could have cried. I put her on the bed as I buzzed around the room, her content to watch me so long as I didn’t leave her sight; I think she thought if I did, that meant I was leaving her again. I simultaneously stripped and checked on her food and water, though thankfully neither of them needed refilling because my body was crying for sleep and I felt if I tried the stairs again, I was going to trip and break my neck. Not because of how tired I was, but simply because, like I said, I don’t believe that bad luck only comes in threes and it had been awhile since the universe had fucked with me.

I dressed in a blissfully clean pair of pajamas and stumbled into the bathroom, both animals following me like I had a set of groupies. As quickly as humanly possible, I pissed, brushed my teeth, and popped some pills for my head and back. As wonderful as a hot shower would have been, I didn’t want to wake up Heero and sleep was a much more pressing concern. I returned to the guest room and laid down in the bed. The sheets were fresh and clean, Mariela must have changed them. I would have to make her cake extra nice to repay her. I threw the sheets over myself and snuggled under them. I cannot begin to describe how good it felt just to be laying down on a soft, clean bed instead of my mattress or even my couch. Hell, to be laying down at all after that horribly long day.

In the back of my mind, though, it wasn’t right. I ached, actually, physically ached for a familiar arm around me, a warmth against my back, and to feel a weight behind me, something that had once given me panic attacks but now is a source of comfort because I can tell the difference between my love’s body and my father’s. I think if I had been any less exhausted, I would have had trouble sleeping, feeling that loss. A rather stupid desire, all things considered. I mean, how selfish and greedy was I? Instead of my freezing house, sleeping all alone on my soiled and lumpy mattress, smelling mildew and the phantom, nonexistent stench of sex, I was warm and cozy, snuggling with my cat and far away from anyone that wanted to hurt me, but still I wanted more.

I didn’t have the ability to worry about any of that for once. My head hit the pillow. Pepper snuggled up to my chest. Kanuck laid on the floor next to the bed, something that I’ve only seen him do when Heero goes to sleep, I closed my eyes, and that was it. I was gone from the world for a solid seven hours, longer than I had slept since I had been recovering from my insomnia, and the deepest. I didn’t rouse once, another rarity, even when Heero’s parents starting puttering around the house and, apparently, I even slept through one of Mariela’s cousins calling to wish her a happy birthday (a few days early, but according to Justin, dates and remembering special occasions is not the strong point of the people on that side of the family, so she was just happy they got the week right).

My sleep wasn’t entirely peaceful, though, unsurprisingly considering the shitty day I had just had. It was probably a good thing that I had been so completely, emotionally drained or I would have spent most of the morning tossing and turning, which I must have done in my sleep anyway because when I finally woke up, I was laying on the other side of the bed, on my stomach instead of my side, and the sheets were a total mess, pulled out from the corners of the bed and everything. I had nightmares. Well, really just the same one on repeat, slightly different each time. I was back in the equipment room, only the person that I was making out with was Heero. Just like before, we were discovered, only this time, neither of us could hide, and instead of Trowa’s friends, it was Zechs and their gang, as well as the guys from work, with Trowa leading them, pointing his finger at us like he was accusing us of witchcraft.

It was always this point of the dream that changed. Sometimes I scrambled out the window like Trowa had, leaving Heero behind, sometimes I joined Trowa and blamed Heero like my ex had threatened to do. Sometimes I attacked Heero, beating him into a bloody pulp while our spectators jeered me on. The differences didn’t really matter. All of those old memories resurfacing of Trowa after talking to Heero about it, and my coworkers finding out that I was gay had only set the scene, they weren’t the direct cause of it. I might not be some great psychotherapist, but even I could see why I had dreamt those awful things. I might have still been hurting after the previous day’s events, but the thing that had been weighing me down and torturing me all the night and morning was my guilt.

Ever since I had had that thought that I should break up with Heero to spare him the pain that Trowa and I had gone through, I’ve been struggling with indecision. My common sense told me to just get it over with before we got any deeper than we already had. Obviously, this relationship was never going to work. Trowa was right about me when he said that I wasn’t capable of loving anyone. Sure, I felt the emotion, but I had no idea what to do with it. Love is about caring for someone, making sacrifices for them, and I clearly don’t know how to do that. It’s not just about my sexual hang-ups, although that is a big part of it. I don’t know how to be in a relationship, how to be good to Heero, how to give him what he wants. He says that he knows I’m awkward and inexperienced, but how long before he gets sick of it? How long before he figures out how cold and distant I am, how much I struggle just with displays of affection? How long before he gets sick of picking up the pieces of my heart after I drag him into problem after problem?

My head tells me that there’s only one conclusion, and I need to do what’s right for the boy that I love, for his happiness and not mine and just end it. But my heart… my heart is a traitor to everything I know, everything I believe. It silences that voice in my head that tells me to just get on with it. Every time I get close to making the right decision, it drags out all these beautiful and wonderful memories of our time together. Sweet kisses, comforting embraces… it reminds me of how much my heart is entangled in his and it doesn’t matter if I drag this out longer, because I’ve already fallen too deep. And for once, my heart is winning over my head. This betraying, tattered thing has a strength that I hadn’t thought possible, like it’s just been waiting all these years, biding its time. I know why I had those dreams. Because I’m selfish. I want to keep Heero in my life, even knowing how much I’m going to hurt him. In the end, I’m not different from Trowa, willing to tear someone apart because I can’t sacrifice anything for that person. I’m willing to become a monster, to make that person hate me, all because I’m too weak to break up with them.

That revelation was not exactly a great way to wake up, neither was the tight pain in my back that had only gotten worse in my sleep. My headache was gone, but there was a warning pressure in the base of my skull signaling me that it could come back at any moment. If I had been in my own house, I might have wallowed in my depression, but Heero was there. I could see him. I didn’t have work that day and we would basically have the house to ourselves until Justin came back from work. Days like these were rare, something beautiful and precious, and after the horrible day I had just had, I refused to let myself drag me down. Maybe I would break up with him, maybe I wouldn’t. The important thing was that, if only for then, we were together and I wasn’t going to waste that chance.

I slowly dragged myself out of bed, wincing as my back protested the movement. I balked at the fact that it was 9:30 in the morning for a moment, shocked that I had managed to sleep that long, and very slowly so I wouldn’t aggravate my back further, I grabbed some comfy sweatpants and a button-up, blue flannel shirt that Justin had surprised me with a few days ago, stating that one of my older, torn shirts had come apart in their washing machine when Mariela had done a load of my clothes. I don’t know if that’s true, he had a rather sly look when he had shoved the shopping bag into my hands and I think he had just taken one look at that ratty, old shirt and dumped it right in the trash.

I protested a little bit at him buying me something out of the blue like that, but it was rather weak. Beggars can’t be choosers, right? All my plans to buy warmer clothing had flown right out the fucking window when my father had stolen my savings. I couldn’t even pay Justin back for a single shirt I was so broke. But he was right, almost all of my clothes were years too old for me to still be wearing and I was grateful that he cared that much about me to buy me a warm shirt when it was still rather chilly out. It was really soft, too, much nicer than anything I could afford even if I was allowed to still keep a small bit of my paychecks, so I had just given up trying to get Justin to take it back.

Pepper followed me as I walked to the bathroom and meowed pitifully at the door as I closed it on her for a solid two minutes before realizing I was not coming back out any time soon. I was just glad that she isn’t one of those cats that scratches at doors. She used to be, back when she lived in the attic and saw that I was getting ready to go somewhere, but I managed to wean her of the habit. It would have been kind of hard to explain tiny scratch marks in the door. I probably could have let her into the bathroom with me, but I hate leaving her cooped up in small rooms like that and it worried me that she wasn’t used to my going places without her when she had been living at the Yuy’s for so long. I wonder just how insufferable she is for them when I’m not there or she only acts like this when I finally show up.

The very first thing I did was down some nice pain pills, then jumped in the shower. I hissed when the hot water hit my back, first in pain, then in utter relief as the heat soothed them a little. It was nice just standing there under the hot spray, having complete solitude like the shower was this cocoon and nothing could touch me when I was in there. The soaps and shampoos mingled with the light scent of cleaning products, a pleasant smell compared to my own bathroom, and the steam from the warm water was heavenly. I could already feel myself start to relax, the memories of the previous day not quite washing away with the hot spray, but becoming muted. It was over with, I told myself. No point in worrying about Trowa or work, I would just deal with all of it later. In the past I would have let those thoughts and memories drag me down and torture myself with my insecurities and anxieties, but I’ve been finding it easier to push them aside when I’m around Heero, especially in his house, hell if I know why.

I suppose it’s a form of denial. Heero’s house, his family and his life is like this security blanket and when I’m with him, I can pretend to be someone else. I can pretend like none of it exists. Not my father, not the kids at school, not my ex. It’s just us. I can be normal, for the very first time in my life, surrounded by loving parents and a close friend, homecooked meals and mindless television or video games. I’m sure that it’s not entirely healthy. I’m just avoiding things, lying to myself and the people around me that nothing is wrong. But the second I walk out that door, the second I say goodbye to Heero, it’s all waiting for me and the pleasant memories I have of that house and that family only make the cold reality of my life all the harsher. Lately, it’s been harder and harder for me to deal with those things and I’ve been craving staying at Heero’s place more and more. It’s incredibly dangerous, I know that, but I don’t know how to stop it. It’s like I don’t even know how to deal with my own life anymore.

I washed thoroughly, staying in the shower longer than usual just because I could, a luxury that felt a bit sinful, but I was just so tired of feeling shitty that I indulged in it for once. Finally finishing with my shower, I combed my hair, my back starting to feel good enough that I could do it without wincing, and dressed. The new shirt felt even better than I thought it would against my skin, soft and loose. I wondered if Justin had gotten my size wrong or if he was aware that I prefer to wear looser clothing. It looked pretty nice on me, too, I guess. It was a plaid pattern and one of the shades of blue in it was an exact match for my eye color and I wondered if that was on purpose, too. Heero’s door was open when I left the bathroom and I could smell bacon cooking downstairs. Pepper ran out of the game room like a shot when she heard me and I scooped her up so she could sit on my shoulders while I walked down the stairs, her small, light frame managing it easily.

“Yes, I’m positive that we don’t want to come with you,” my boyfriend was talking with his mother as I came into the kitchen, “I think Dad just wanted it to be the two of you today and Duo had a long day yesterday, we just want to lay low.”

Mariela, stirring a bowl of some kind of batter, narrowed her eyes in suspicion at him.

“Can we trust the two of you to have the house to yourselves all afternoon?” she asked him.

Heero, to his credit, blushed a little at the accusation. If I hadn’t known the reason why he wanted her out of the house, I would have felt a thrill of fear and wondered the same thing that she was. But despite my own fears, I trusted him. He had said it was too early in our relationship for… well, that stuff, and I chose to believe him that he wasn’t just appeasing his parents. He wasn’t like Trowa, he wasn’t that sneaky. I was beginning to understand that, if he did try to become more intimate with me, he would be straightforward about it. Yet another reason for me to be madly in love with him, I didn’t have to worry about any sneak attacks like with my last boyfriend.

“Of course you can,” he insisted, “We’re just going to hang out around here. You know, watch movies, play video games. If the weather’s nice, I was thinking of maybe playing catch out back or going for a jog.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” his mother approved, relaxing a bit.

I don’t think she had really been thinking that he was going to try something with her and Justin gone, more that she had been suspicious he was doing something behind her back for her birthday. Which of course he was, but either he was a really excellent liar, or he was really planning on doing those things with me after I finished making Mariela’s cake because he was as cool and honest looking as could be. Heero’s entire face lit up when he saw me standing there in the doorway.

“Hey,” he greeted.

“Good morning, Duo. Oh, you look so handsome in that shirt!” she gushed, “Blue is definitely your color!”

“You… you look really good,” Heero stammered, blushing harder, which only made me turn bright red, always incapable of handling a compliment very well.

“Thank you,” I murmured, fussing with the bottom button on it and made a note to wear blue more often if he liked it so much, not that I have a very extensive wardrobe and that shirt was probably nicest one I owned.

“I’m making waffles, sweetheart, did you want some?” Heero’s mother asked, her tone slightly worried, obviously thinking of all the times when I was too tired or sick to want to eat anything more than soup.

“Yes, please,” I nodded and she beamed happily at me.

I swear, I could eat three helpings of whatever that woman makes me and she would happier than if I gave her a diamond necklace.

“I also have some fresh fruit,” she told me, “I was going to cut it up to make a fruit salad if you like.”

“I’ll do it,” I jumped in eagerly.

“Alright,” she chuckled, having learned by now that I can accept things like free food and handouts more easily if I can give something back, “It’s all in the fridge.”

I dug out a king’s bounty worth of fruit; peaches, grapes, some apples that were sitting in a basket on the table with some bananas, a pineapple, kiwi, plums, strawberries, blueberries, and even a whole, freaking watermelon. I felt a pain that she had just spent what my family spends a month on meals on just fruit. I can’t even remember the last time we had had fresh fruit at home. I think it was a few weeks ago when I picked up some oranges because they were on sale.

“Can I do anything to help?” Heero asked awkwardly, standing off to the side as his mother checked on the waffle iron to see if it had heated up enough yet.

“Can you wash everything?” I asked him, feeling bad that he felt he was in the way, “And peel these?” I gestured to the little pile of peaches, apples, kimi, plums, and bananas.

He smiled gratefully at me and dug out a small, peeling knife from the drawer while I grabbed a chopping block and a larger knife, having stayed over there long enough to know where almost everything in that kitchen is. The two of us worked like a well-oiled machine, him washing and peeling and me chopping. It made me happy to do something like that with him, how we could work together like it was something second nature. By the time we got all the fruit cut up and put in a big, glass bowl, Mariela had finished cooking the bacon and all of the waffle batter.

“Perfect!” she smiled brightly at the both of us, looking amused at how poorly Heero had peeled some of the fruit, but I didn’t think he’d had much practice at it.

We ate in the living room, watching some soap opera that Mariela enjoyed and Heero made fun of while I just enjoyed my meal. I had three whole helpings of waffles, something that made Heero’s mom very happy, and the three of us ate about half of the fruit salad before it was put in the fridge. I miraculously convinced Mariela and Heero to let me clean up and they retreated to their bedrooms to get dressed for the day. I was so full that I felt like I was going to explode as I collected all the dishes and I didn’t even care. The most I felt was a bit of guilt that my parents weren’t having anything half as nice for their breakfast, but for once all of that guilt was directed towards my mother and not my father. I could forgive him coming after me the previous morning, but not what he had tried to do to my mother. I guess that’s strange, isn’t it? He had done less to her than what he does to me, but seeing her like that, her shirt unbuttoned and a huge bruise on her face, knowing that he had tried to molest her in her sleep bothered me intensely.

There was this sinister, little thought in my head that if I had done the same to him, if I had fought back and dared to claw up his face, he would have beaten me to a pulp and fucked me anyway. But he hadn’t done that to her. He had let her go and had come after me next. No matter how twisted their relationship was, no matter how much they seemed to loathe each other, he never violated her like he had me. She had cut him off completely, and while he might still try, he never raped her. It was something that I realized, and loathed about her before we had started to repair our relationship. Now, I still feel bitter about it, knowing that he loves her more than he will ever love me, but there’s a part of me that’s glad that she’ll never know what this feels like, and that I’ll never have to worry about the two of them being alone together. He might beat her, but he would never force himself on her.

I pushed the thoughts away. They didn’t belong there, not when I was with Heero. I just focused on washing the dishes and cleaning up the kitchen, all too happy to let the work distract me. I was all done by the time Mariela came back into the kitchen, dressed in a beautiful periwinkle sweater and a long, pure white skirt, her hair done in a complicated braid. She had simple, but elegant silver earrings and a necklace on that complimented the outfit. Even I could tell that she was dressed to go someplace nice.

“Justin and I are meeting to go out today,” she explained to me, “We probably won’t be back until around dinner time, so you and Heero will have the house to yourselves. There’s a beef roast in the refrigerator for tonight. Can I trust you to start it cooking so it will be ready on time? It needs to go in at four and you’ll need to baste it and keep an eye on the temperature. The instructions are on the fridge.”

“Sure, I can take care of it,” I said, feeling my ego inflate just a tiny bit that she was trusting me with it and not Heero. Although, given some of the meals he made when we were in the same home ec class, I could understand why.

“Such a good boy,” she smiled affectionately at me and I worried that my heart was going to be the thing bursting and not my stomach.

Heero walked in with his monster dog in tow, dressed very casually in blue jeans and a grey long-sleeved top.

“Sweep the porch before your father gets home,” she told him, “and make sure Kanuck gets his walk.”

“Yes, Mom,” he said obediently.

She kissed his cheek, the highest she could reach, and made me blush again when she did the same to me.

“Have fun today. Don’t break anything!” she teased as she made her way out the door, grabbing her purse and jacket from the coat rack.

“Have a nice time,” I waved goodbye to her.

The door shut and we were suddenly all alone. Finally. Terrifyingly. It wasn’t like we had never been alone together at his house before, but there had always been the threat of his parents suddenly coming home, or I had had work or school to busy myself with. This was one of the only days we’ve ever had together where it was just us and there was no pressure of time or schoolwork. The only thing we had to do was get the cake done, but I saw that less as a chore and more as something enjoyable we could do together, which I guess is weird for someone my age, but that was how I felt, like I was sharing something personal with him.

For him, really. Thankfully baking is one thing I’m confident in, especially after Heero and his parents had praised the sweets I had made for them during Christmas, or I would have been stressed over fucking things up and making a shitty cake. Instead, I felt incredibly flattered that he had asked me to do this and eager to make something special, to prove to him that I wasn’t a complete loser in everything that I do. Heero grinned at me when he saw that his mother had pulled the car out of their driveway and had vanished down the street, happy that we were finally alone, but I didn’t see any indication that he had any hidden plans or expectations, so I relaxed.

“Did you sleep well this morning?” he asked me.

“Pretty good, I was exhausted,” I admitted.

“I can imagine,” he smiled sadly, “How are you feeling?”

“A little better,” I said softly, “I guess. Better than I was yesterday.”

Not that that was saying much, but I was feeling better. Less overwhelmed and hyperemotional. I still felt like my skin was too thin and I couldn’t think about that fight with Trowa without feeling depressed, but I no longer felt like I was going to burst out into tears every four seconds. I stiffened as he drew me into a hug.

“What’s this for?” I asked in confusion.

“Because you need it,” he murmured, “and because I like holding you.”

I relaxed. Not just my body, but some tension inside of me eased. Even hours after all that mess had happened, it felt so good feeling his arms around me again. He didn’t know about the work thing yet, but I imagined that this is what he would have done if I had told him yesterday, hold me and make things better with just a touch. Solo was right. Heero was worth it. I rested my head on his shoulder, just snuggling against his body and enjoying the contact. I’m not always able to do that, so unused to being held and opening myself up to someone, but that seemed like a day for indulgences.

“You’re really ok?” he asked in concern, rubbing my back.

I felt so amazed right then that he had stayed with me. After all of the shit I had told him, he was still there, holding me and comforting me, like none of it mattered. I wrapped my arms around him and hugged him back tightly, wishing I had the courage to tell him how much I loved him for not turning his back on me. I wished that I had that kind of strength

“No,” I confessed, “It still hurts, but I’m getting there.”

He pulled back a little so he could kiss me tenderly. He let go of me, but only to wrap his arms around my shoulders, drawing me even closer.

“You know that I love you, right?” he asked, completely unnecessarily with how bright his eyes were shining, “I have managed to get that through your head, haven’t I?”

I looked down at the ground.

“Yeah,” I murmured, “I know.”

I was apparently completely unconvincing, because he leaned in to kiss me again, deeper and more thoroughly.

“You can do better than that,” he teased and won a chuckle from me.

“Alright, alright, I get it,” I rolled my eyes, “I’m not getting rid of you that easily.”

I ignored the little throb of pain in my chest as I wondered just what it would take to get him to get tired of me and my shit. Heero’s smile turned warm and he gently brushed my bangs out of my face.

“Damned straight,” he agreed, “So don’t let what that prick said get to you, alright?”

I sighed.

“I’m trying,” it was the best that I could do.

I didn’t tell him that I was only managing as well as I was because of his support and the fact that I was trying not to think about Trowa at all.

“Is there anything that you need?” he asked, still with that worried crease on his forehead.

“Just time to get my head straight,” I assured him, “Look, Heero, I’m really sorry about everything yesterday…”

“I told you I don’t mind,” he scolded me, “Stop apologizing when he was the one that dragged you into a fight. Like I said yesterday, I’m just glad that I was there to help you.”

“You didn’t go after him to beat him up some more, did you?” I asked.

I glanced at his right hand. His knuckles were scabbed over, but that didn’t tell me much. He had hit Trowa pretty hard, twice.

“I was a good boy,” he smirked, “I promise, I just went home.”

I sighed with relief.

“Now, do you want to hang out for a bit? Watch a movie? Take a walk? Or do you want to get the cake out of the way first?” he asked, holding both of my hands in his.

“I should start the cake first,” I jumped on the topic, happy to not have to talk about yesterday anymore, “Especially if you want it frosted before your mother comes home.”

“It’ll take that long?” he quirked an eyebrow at that and I almost laughed before remembering that he had fucked up when he had tried to make this cake. I was starting to see why.

“Yes and no,” I answered, “Making the cake and baking it shouldn’t take long at all, probably thirty minutes to make and an hour in the oven, but the cake has to sit for a while after it comes out. Then I have to make the whipped cream.”

“You’re not just going to use pre-made whip cream?” he asked in confusion, “We have some cans of it, or there’s some cool whip-,”

He stopped when I made a disgusted, shocked face at him and laughed, although I could tell that he didn’t know why I was grossed out. I just couldn’t believe that he, the son of a woman who made almost everything from scratch, would suggest something like that.

“God, Heero, no! That’s stuff’s fine for ice cream or pie, but I wouldn’t frost a cake with it! And I want to make it nice for your mom, not give her something half-assed,” I told him.

His gaze softened into pure affection and he kissed me on the forehead.

“You’re amazing,” he said, making me blush again.

“I’m really not,” I muttered, “I just want to do something nice for her and it’s not that difficult to make whipped cream. Some of the ingredients I asked you to get were for that to begin with. It won’t take long to make that either. If you want to get your chores done and walk Kanuck, I’ll probably be mostly done with the actual baking by the time you get back.”

“No way,” Heero snorted with amusement, “I want to watch.”

“It’s really not that exciting,” I told him, “unless watching me crack some eggs and stir things really thrills you for some reason.”

He gave me this sly, incredibly attractive smile that was almost a leery.

“Everything you do thrills me,” he said, as smooth as fucking cream.

I felt my entire face go red hot and felt like an idiot for it, but it only seemed to amuse him.

“Whatever, it’s your house,” I murmured, completely not used to flirting and not having any idea of what I was supposed to say back to that or how to be smooth in return.

He kept a hand on my back as we returned to the kitchen and I almost said something about it. He was being exceptionally clingy. I know Heero is a lot more… touchy than I am. He doesn’t have my many issues with physical affection and he often will just hold my hand or give me a kiss out of the blue, touch my hair and lean his leg against mine. I’m… not used to it per say, but I’m getting better at accepting it and I do enjoy it once I get around my initial flight reaction to someone touching me. It helps when you’re madly in love with the person and just their touch can make your heart race. But that morning was different. It was like, now that his mother had left, he couldn’t keep his hands off of me. Not in a sexual way, he just couldn’t bear to break that contact with me. He was also being incredibly affectionate and almost doting on me, even more than usual and I couldn’t figure out why.

“I put the eggs, heavy cream, tartar, and strawberries in the basement so Mom wouldn’t see them,” he told me, “Oh, and I got an extra bottle of vanilla extract since we were low and that and you said you needed extra. I’ll just go get them.”

“The basement?” I asked, perplexed and worried that he hadn’t realized that he needed to refrigerate those, but he wasn’t an idiot.

“Yep,” he said and ran downstairs.

I felt better when he came back and handed me the ingredients. They felt cold, so it must have been chilly enough down there.

“Thank you for getting all this,” I said and dared to give him a short peck on the lips.

Heero’s face flamed red like I had just given him tongue instead of a chaste kiss and he did that cute thing he does when he’s flustered and rubs his hand against the back of his neck.

“N-no problem,” he stammered, “My dad says thanks, too, by the way for helping make this. I got all the right stuff, didn’t I?”

He was so adorably shy that I wanted to kiss him again, feeling oddly bold that morning. Maybe because of what had happened the previous day, like I was rewarding him for sticking by me or just felt a tiny bit more confident that he knew some of my darker secrets and wasn’t bothered by them. In any case, I fought the urge because if I kept doing that, we weren’t going to get anything done.

“Yeah, this is perfect,” I assured him as I pulled out everything else I needed; cake flour, white sugar, salt, and almond extract.

As usual, the Yuy kitchen was really well stocked and most of the stuff that I had needed for the cake, they already had. I even found a bunch of tools that were going to make this a whole lot easier. I stuck the heavy cream for the whipping cream right into the refrigerator and just as I was closing the door, Heero wrapped his arms around my chest from behind, pressing himself against me. I didn’t panic, ok? There was nothing threatening in his embrace, nothing that screamed he wanted to fool around. It was just a cuddle. But I hate being held from behind, it freaks me out. It reminds me too much of unpleasant things, but because this was Heero, instead of hyperventilating, my heart just started to race and I stiffened.

I immediately relaxed and started to enjoy it when he nuzzled my neck and kissed the crook between neck and shoulder with incredible tenderness, like he was worshipping my skin. Although I really didn’t want him to stop and I could have melted right in his arms when those lips kept kissing different spots on my shoulder and neck, I turned to face him. Just like I thought, though there was a deep love in his eyes and affection for me, there was some darkness there, something that was haunting him and was the cause for his desperation to keep touching me.

“What’s wrong?” I asked him in concern.

His eyes widened with surprise.

“There… there’s nothing wrong,” he insisted, but I knew him well enough to spot a lie.

“You’re touching me an awful lot today,” I pointed out and cursed myself when he looked alarmed.

“Is it bothering you? I’m so sorry, I’ll stop-,” his arms fell away, but I wasn’t going to let him feel guilty just about an embrace and wrapped my arms around him so he couldn’t escape.

“No, I like it a lot,” I assured him, “it’s just… you’re being awfully nice to me this morning.”

“I am always nice,” he protested with a fake pout, making me smile.

“Nicer than usual,” I corrected, “I know something’s wrong, you’re not usually this forward and I know it’s not just because your parents aren’t here. Just tell me. You’re always telling me I should talk when something’s bothering me. Well, that goes both ways.”

He looked down at the floor, not in avoidance, but more like he was struggling to find the words to express himself. I tried to think of what it might be. What could have happened after we had parted ways yesterday that would have bothered him so much? Unless it was something from our conversation that was still bothering him. I didn’t think he was second guessing his decision to stay with me, he wouldn’t be trying to be so sweet and affectionate if it was that and he didn’t look that guilty. Suddenly, as I went through our conversation in my head, it dawned on me.

“This is about what I told you yesterday, about Trowa trying to rape me, isn’t it?” I asked.

I knew that I had hit the problem right on the head when that darkness in his eyes exploded and he reflexively put his arms around me again, like his immediate instinct was to protect me, shelter me, even if it was from something that had happened months ago. He drew me close and hid his face in my shoulder. I felt this tremor go through me seeing how much this had shaken him and I realized that he had been so touchy feely that morning because it was like he was trying to convince himself that I was ok, that everything had turned out alright and would continue to be alright if he could just prove to me how much he loved me. I wished more than anything in that moment that I could take it back, that I had never told him what Trowa had nearly done to me. I could never let him find out about my father, not just for my own pride or knowing it would be the end of our relationship, but because of this. If he reacted this way to something that had never even happened, how would he take knowing that it had?

“Hey,” I rubbed his back, the gesture coming easily to me because I was so desperate to comfort him, “I told you nothing happened, remember?”

“Promise me,” he murmured into my shoulder, “You hide things all the time, so please promise me nothing happened.”

There was that piercing guilt again. This was what all my secrecy and evasion had done to him, he couldn’t even trust me when I was telling the truth. I didn’t feel betrayed by his inability to trust me when I trust him so completely. He had proved himself to me, I never had to him. I never talk about the things that are wrong, he has to drag them out of me, word by word. Mixed in with the guilt, there was panic. How many lies had I told him that he knew were bullshit? How many secrets had he guessed at, or at least knew that I was hiding something?

“I promise, Heero,” I vowed, “Trowa didn’t rape me. I got away from him before he could. Worst he did was scare me a little, but that’s it.”

“He still tried!” his voice was muffled against me, but I could feel how tense he was, how angry, “He still tried to force himself on you, he wanted to do that and if you hadn’t fought back, he would have and he didn’t even care! I hate him so much for doing that to you, for putting that ugliness on you… he had no right.”

I tightened my arms around him. It was really the only thing that I could do to reassure him because I couldn’t refute anything that he was saying. He was right, Trowa might have failed, but he had still tried to rape me and he didn’t seem all that bothered about his actions. He had even suggested that Heero do that himself. I loved that Heero could feel so offended on my behalf, but mostly I felt tired and hurt remembering these things, remembering just how little my ex had cared that he had tried to violate me.

“I’ve always known how ugly people can be, Heero,” I murmured, thinking not just of my father, but everything Zechs has ever done to me. I hadn’t needed to realize that Trowa cared so little for me as a human being that he would treat me like a sex toy he could use whenever he was in the mood, regardless of what I wanted to see that ugliness. I just wish I hadn’t seen it in him, too.

I could still feel him shaking with anger and beyond loving him for getting that worked up over me, I worried about how emotional he was getting. If he was still this angry now, a day after I had told him, how had he reacted yesterday when I wasn’t around? Was this what he had been like when he had walked home, enraged and hating my ex, wanting to tear him to pieces for forcing himself on me? I drew back and grabbed his arms, almost flinching when his eyes met mine and I saw the anger and helplessness he was feeling.

“You really didn’t go after him, did you?” I had to ask, even though I was pretty sure he hadn’t lied about that.

“I wanted to,” he admitted with a humorless smile, “but you asked me not to and I didn’t want you to get mad at me, even if it would make me feel better. So, I went home and whaled on the punching bag for an hour instead. It really wasn’t as satisfying as hitting the prick, though, even when I imagined it was his face.”

I sighed in relief. Not that I didn’t think that Trowa didn’t deserve it, he probably did, but I cared a lot more about Heero getting arrested than I did about Trowa not getting the shit beaten out of him.

“I’m sorry, it’s just… it scares me that it doesn’t bother you, what he tried to do,” Heero said, “He tried to rape you and you didn’t even think to press charges. You just… let it go like it didn’t even happen.”

I looked away from him. I could argue that just because I hadn’t pressed charges against Trowa, it didn’t mean that his actions didn’t bother me. I could say that he wouldn’t have been charged anyway, or that we were over now, so it really didn’t matter. But I knew that he was right. Trowa had tried to rape me and the most I had done was hit him a couple of times and broken up with him. After that, I had just moved past it like it wasn’t a big deal. It wasn’t that simple, it’s something that still hurts me, but that’s essentially what I did. I pushed it out of my mind like I do with everything else and ignored it. I was angry about it, but nowhere near as angry as I should have been. I should have wanted to bash in Trowa’s face for it just like Heero, but I just felt kind of… numb. I guess it doesn’t really matter. After what my father has done to me, how can anything, no matter how horrible, touch me like he has? My boyfriend trying to force me to have sex with him and failing doesn’t really compare to my father tying his belt around my wrists and violating me simply because I remind him of my mother when she was seventeen.

“I don’t know,” I murmured, “I just… it didn’t seem to matter. No one would have cared and I guess you’re right, I didn’t care that much, either. I guess I was just used to being treated that way by people, not the rape part, just… being treated as less than human. The only part that really bothered me was that we had been friends once. I had never thought he would do that to me, but a part of me felt like I deserved it. I still kind of do. I felt like I had pushed him into it, so I could hate him for trying to rape me, but I couldn’t entirely blame him, either.”

Heero hugged me tightly, making this pained noise, practically crushing me against him.

“Oh, Duo,” his voice was tortured and so full of hurt, just like it had been the previous day when we had had our long talk, “I told you, what he did to you… it wasn’t your fault. You didn’t push him into anything, and you certainly didn’t deserve him treating you like that!”

I laid my head against his shoulder, using his comforting scent and the familiar feel of him to try to ward off the depression that was starting to swell up, threatening to pull me under like it had the previous day. He was so warm, I just wanted to burrow against him and forget about everything.

“Even if I believe that, it doesn’t stop me from feeling this way,” I murmured.

“I know,” he said and I wondered how he could possibly say that with such honesty, like he really did know, but then he was stroking my hair and it didn’t matter. I just closed my eyes and tried to forget about anything else, even my own, dark thoughts, “I know. I’ll just have to keep saying it until you believe me, won’t I?”

Tears pricked at my eyes, but I didn’t want to cry in front of him, not again. I couldn’t bear to let him see how pathetic I was, that a few kind words from him could break through all of my walls and touch on things that are too vulnerable for me to expose. I couldn’t cope with the fact that this wonderful, strong, and beautiful person loved me this much. At the same time that I can accept his feelings, know that he isn’t lying and he really feels these things, it also doesn’t feel real at all. Some part of me always thinks that it must be some trick or maybe he’s just nuts, because I don’t deserve this affection or even his comfort. I hate myself so much for it. I tell him that I believe he loves me, and that I’ll try to accept those feelings and trust him, but there’s always this part of me that I can’t seem to shake off, all this doubt and insecurity that drags me down. I don’t even really know where it comes from.

 

_“Get something straight in your head, Duo: the only reason why he or I could ever want to date a loser like you is because you’re the only fag in town, and you come cheap. And just how long is that going to be true, huh? He’s a lot handsomer and richer than I was, won’t be long before he wises up and finds someone prettier than you, one that won’t make him buy him things just for a lay. My advice to you is to get easy quick. You’ll never find another sugar daddy willing to throw money at you like you’re something worthwhile. I mean, what are you even keeping your legs closed for anymore? You aren’t a virgin and you don’t have anything special to save. Hell, you never did even when you were a virgin! I should know! I hadn’t even thought it possible, but fucking you was as boring as trying to talk to you! If I had known that, I never would have tried to hang out with you in the first place. I only said that I wanted nothing else from you, because there’s nothing else you’re good for. It’s no wonder you’ve only had one friend that you never had sex with!”_

 

If Heero hadn’t been holding me so tightly, I would have banged my head against the countertop to stop that rotten memory from spilling out into my head.

‘Stop it!’ I screamed at myself, ‘Just stop it! Stop remembering the things he said! Why can’t you just remember what Heero said? Why do you have to keep dragging this out again?!’

Despite all of my self-control, a tear escaped down my cheek as doubt threatened to rip me apart. Doubt in myself, doubt in every pleasant memory I had ever had with Trowa. But worst of all, doubt in Heero. What if what Trowa had said was true? What if Heero was just like him and he was only with me because I was the only person he could have? What if I was nothing but a male version of Relena to him, just the next best thing to what he actually wanted? I mean, how could he possibly love me? Trowa never did. My dad probably doesn’t, except for in those few minutes after he cums. Only my mother has ever claimed to and even that I doubt sometimes in my weaker moments.

I know none of those thoughts are true. I know that Heero loves me. But I still have these feelings from time to time that it can’t be possible and no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to stop them. Even if they’re right, I don’t want to have them. I don’t want to believe them. Even if it were a lie, and I know that it isn’t, and Heero doesn’t love me, I don’t care. I like the way believing in him makes me feel. So why does this depression exist, and why can’t those good feelings ever stay? I put my hands on his chest and pulled away a little, but I still couldn’t look at him with wet eyes, knowing he would see how depressed and overwhelmed I was feeling.

“Do you really want me?” I whispered and I loathed how heartbroken my voice sounded, like a child asking a parent if they loved them.

Heero grabbed my face and lifted my head up so I had to look him in the eye. The look in those beautiful blue eyes drove away all of my fears and insecurities in an instant. Even more incredible, I saw that he understood that I wasn’t asking this out of the blue, that I had been remembering all the nasty things Trowa had said to me and was feeling insecure, not because Heero hadn’t made me feel loved, but because Trowa had made me feel so worthless.

“I always want you,” he said with intense passion, “more than anything.”

I gave out a small, teary chuckle even as I felt my heart throb.

“Sap,” I accused him, trying not to let him see how happy his words made me, words that I wished my father or Trowa would have said to me, the only words that I had ever craved.

I couldn’t let him know just how much they meant to me. I wouldn’t know how to voice what I was feeling even if I did. I didn’t even care if he was just humoring me or was being cheesy, saying something like that.

“It’s not a line, Duo,” Heero said, completely serious I realized with shock, “I’ve never wanted anything in my life more than I want you… more than I want this to work.”

‘Hear that?’ a cruel voice chimed in, ‘He’s never wanted anything more than you. When you take that away from him, it’ll be like ripping his heart out with your bare hands-,’

I squashed the thought mercilessly like stepping on a cockroach. I couldn’t think about all that right then, not when he was holding me and making my heart feel like it was going to burst at any moment.

“I… I want this to work more than anything, too,” I rasped.

Pure agony encased my heart and tore at it with dagger-like claws as that hateful voice in my head laughed at me, reminded me that it didn’t matter how much I did want it to work, it wasn’t going to. Sooner or later, I was going to fuck things up and ruin everything, just like always. Tears poured down my face as I couldn’t hold back the wave of depression that hit me. I wished desperately that there was some way I could just push all of my feelings back into the box that Heero had opened, to not feel anything at all because, as wonderful as love, it brought too many painful things along with it. But at the same time, I thought that maybe that was ok. I might struggle with these things, this pain and longing and devastation, but the moments when I realize how much we love each other might be worth all of that, especially if I dare to think of those days before we had become friends.

“Ssh, love,” Heero soothed, holding me in his arms again, “It will be ok, I promise. We’ll make this work.”

I wished I could believe him. I wanted to, more than I have ever wanted anything, but I kept seeing Trowa’s face after we had had sex, how cold and distant he had gotten, how angry every time I had pushed him away. I had thought that making Heero angry or disgusted at me like that would be the worst thing. Now, I just can’t bear the thought of hurting him or making him feel like he wasn’t desirable. He let go of me when I got myself under control and I wiped my tears away on my shirt sleeve.

“I’m so sorry,” I apologized, “You asked me to help make your mother’s cake and all I’ve done is cry on you again.”

“You don’t need to apologize,” he chuckled, “I brought it up in the first place, it’s my fault that you’re upset. And if it makes you feel better, you can cry on me for as long as you want.”

I really didn’t deserve him, I thought, but smiled at him.

“Well, I do feel a little better,” I admitted, which was actually the truth so long as I ignored all those insidious thoughts that kept cropping up.

I resumed getting everything ready to make the cake, all too happy to put my little crying fit behind me and use the task to distract me. I fished out a small bowl and two whisks, putting one of them and a bowl into the refrigerator. I told myself to just relax and stop thinking about all these dark things, to enjoy the day I had with Heero because in all likelihood, Wednesday was going to suck. I had to go back to work and face all that shit. I had to figure out how the hell I was going to work with the guys again now that they thought I was a diseased cockroach. I wondered how Solo was going to handle it without me there, if they were going to give him any shit. Probably not to his face, but definitely behind his back. I know he doesn’t care about it, but I still felt guilty that I had ostracized him from our coworkers, that I had turned him into the resident ‘fag-lover’, even if it had been his choice to stand up for me. I should make him some cookies, I realized. Sure, he had just been joking about that, but after all the trouble he had already went through for me, I felt the need to do something to thank him…

“Ah!” I cried out as Heero suddenly pulled my braid, not hard and it didn’t hurt at all, just a gentle tug, but it startled me out of my thoughts.

“Sorry,” he apologized with a sheepish smile, “but I asked you something and said your name three times. You were zoning out again.”

“Sorry,” I muttered, turning bright red with embarrassment.

I was supposed to be hanging out with him and I kept getting distracted by my own, stupid head.

“You’re not thinking about Trowa and all that again, are you?” he asked worriedly.

“No,” I assured him, “Nothing like that.”

“Then what’s wrong?” he pressed.

“Just something stupid that happened at work yesterday, nothing serious,” and it wasn’t serious, I still had a job, “What were you asking me?” I leapt at distracting him, really not wanting to talk about anything else that had happened yesterday.

“I was just asking why you were putting that stuff in the fridge,” he said, looking perplexed at my actions.

“Oh, it’s just for the whipped cream,” I explained, “It comes out thicker if everything is kept as cold as possible.”

“Neat,” he actually sounded impressed for some reason.

I grabbed another two bowls that I needed for the cake, a flour sifter, measuring cups and spoons, and a mixing spoon. I was amazed to even find a flour sifter, we don’t have one and usually have to use our pasta strainer over and over and it still doesn’t come out as well as it should. But then again, given the amount of baking Heero’s mom does, I shouldn’t have been surprised.

“Doesn’t angel food cake call for a lot of egg whites?” my boyfriend asked.

“One and a half cup,” I told him, “So yeah, I’ll be using most of the eggs that you have.”

“It’s alright that I got you whole eggs?” he asked nervously, “They had egg whites, but you said eggs in your list…”

“I don’t like using the quarts of just egg whites they sell,” I said, “It doesn’t come out as well and they aren’t as fresh. Whole eggs work a lot better even if it’s more work separating the yolk from the egg whites, and I can use the yolks to bake something else so nothing’s wasted.”

He gave me that look again like he thought that I was the most amazing person he had ever seen, which just made me feel weird. It wasn’t like I was some kind of chef prodigy, everything I was doing was typical for baking and I was just following a standard recipe, nothing special.

“I hated that part when I tried to make this last year,” he frowned, looking embarrassed to admit that he had been unable to bake a cake, “I messed up half of the eggs that we had by getting yolk in the whites, which is probably one of the reasons why the cake came out so shitty. I didn’t even know we owned an egg separator. My mom thought that was hysterical.”

I couldn’t help but laugh a little at the mental image I had of Mariela showing Heero an egg separator with dry amusement. I love Heero, but he is pretty hopeless in the kitchen. He doesn’t have a lot patience and guesses at things and doesn’t measure ingredients correctly judging by the final product and is fairly clueless about cooking utensils and gadgets.

“We still have it around here someplace if you want to use it,” he offered.

“No, thanks,” I waved him off as I fished a single egg out of one of the cartons in the fridge, “I don’t really need it.”

“You can separate them by hand?” he asked me, getting that amazed look back.

“It’s not hard,” I said, “There’s just a trick to it.”

“I can’t even crack an egg with one hand,” he shook his head at me.

“I can teach you how,” I offered.

“No thanks,” he waved his hands in dismissal, “I can barely make mac n cheese. I’ll just leave all the hard stuff to you.”

“It’s not complicated,” I rolled my eyes at him, “I learned to do it in home ec a couple of years ago. We don’t have an egg separator at home, so I wanted to learn how to do it by hand. It’s a simple technique, it just takes a bit of practice, but since angel food cake needs a lot of egg whites, I got the knack of it.”

I couldn’t help but smile a little as I remembered asking my home ec teacher if I could have whatever ingredients were left over after class to practice and she had been so flattered that I was putting the effort in to learn the technique she had showed me that she had not only let me use the classroom, she had given me extra credit for it.

“Here, look,” I demonstrated it for him, knocking the egg to the metal edge of the mixing bowl on the side just barely hard enough to crack the shell.

The impact was perfect on the first try, even though it had been awhile since I had done this, and left a small, thin, horizontal crack on the side of the egg. I used my fingernails to peel the crack open further until the egg cracked perfectly in half, the yolk in one half of the egg and most of the whites in the other. I dumped the whites into the bowl and very carefully worked the yolk from one half of the shell to the other, getting the remaining whites to slide off the edge and into the bowl, then dumped the yolk into the other bowl. I had had enough practice at it that this only took me about three seconds.

“Wow, that’s amazing,” Heero complimented me, “Your hands are so graceful.”

“Graceful?” I stammered a little, my eyes going wide with surprise.

“Yeah,” he smiled, “I noticed it in chemistry, too, but you’re really graceful when you’re using your hands for cooking. My hands are pretty clumsy unless I’m handling a ball.”

I flushed darkly. No one had ever called me graceful before. In fact, almost everyone assumed that I’m clumsy ever since I was in middle school and I hadn’t made any effort to dispel that belief. It comes in handy on the off chance that someone might ask about a bruise or broken arm if they think that I’m constantly running into things or tripping over my own feet.

“It’s no big deal,” I said shyly, but self-consciously looked at my fingers, not really seeing what made them graceful, only what made them not; they were long and thin, the ring finger of my left hand at the knuckle looked slightly off if you compared it to my right because between Zechs and my father, I had broken it about five times, “You’re plenty graceful at baseball.”

‘And touching me,’ I thought, fighting back a pleasant shiver as I remembered how it feels when those tanned fingers ghost over my skin. Heero could definitely be dexterous when he wanted to be.

He watched with apt attention as I separated four more eggs in the same way, taking each out of the refrigerator, one at a time.

“Wouldn’t it be faster and easier if you just took out the whole carton out of the fridge?” he asked me with honest curiosity.

I was surprised that he was so interested in what I was doing, enough to ask me questions. Even though he had said that he wanted to watch, I had thought that he was going to get bored pretty quickly. I felt… oddly flattered that he was taking an interest with what I was doing and not just indulging me or hanging out in the kitchen impatiently.

“The colder the eggs are, the easier they are to separate,” I explained.

He watched me separate eggs like it was the most fascinating thing in the world until I had enough and put the bowl full of yolks in the fridge, making a mental note to find a cookie recipe I could use them with.

“So,” he said a bit slyly as he sat up on a part of the counter that didn’t have foodstuffs or kitchen utensils on it and put his elbow on his leg, resting his cheek on his hand and looking at me like some humorously bad attempt at being candid, “what happened at work yesterday?”

I had to literally bite my tongue to keep the snort of laughter at bay. I had this weird image of us in my head as some kind of married couple, me coming home from work and him asking me how my day was. Standing there in his kitchen baking, I felt oddly… homey. Normal. The thought was both pleasant and painful and I pushed it away.

“Get off,” I scolded him, sure that Mariela would not be happy at all to see him sitting on her counters and even if she didn’t, it was pretty rude.

“You’re evading,” he accused, which was only half true, but did as I said, sliding back off the counter top.

I sighed heavily. I really didn’t want to talk about it, but it wasn’t like what had happened with Trowa. It wasn’t difficult to talk about, and it wasn’t going to make me burst into random, stupid tears. If anything, it made me angry, if I stopped for a moment to really think about the things my coworkers had said, and how close I had come to losing my job over something that didn’t make a difference in the work I do at all, but it’s also something that doesn’t surprise me. I’ve been dealing with prejudice since I was twelve years old, the first time someone had called me a fag, so I was a hell of a lot more used to what had happened at work than what had happened during my lunch break. I didn’t want to talk about it because I didn’t see the point. Talking wasn’t going to make me feel better and it wasn’t going to make the problem go away. It was just going piss Heero off, but I knew that if I kept deflecting his questions, he was going to think that it was something really serious.

“Ok, look, it’s not a big deal, alright?” I said defensively as I dumped my rather large pile of egg shells into the trash, making another mental note to take the bag out so Mariela wouldn’t see it, “Just… someone at work heard us arguing yesterday…”

He just stared at me, waiting for me to get to the point and not getting what I was trying to say. He wasn’t making it easy for me.

“I don’t know if they actually heard the three of us going at it or if someone saw the two of us together when we went back or how it happened exactly, but one or maybe even all of them figured out that I’m gay and we’re together. By the time I got back to the shop, everyone was already talking about it.”

That still bothered me a little, not knowing how I had gotten outed. I guess it doesn’t really matter, but the thought that those guys had heard the things that Trowa and I had been screaming at each other made my skin crawl. It made me hate my ex even more, that if he had had to make a scene, why couldn’t he have done it some place more private than a block away from where I worked? I didn’t know what was worse, that a bunch of homophobes had heard my ex accuse me of being some kind of man slut, or if one of them had seen the tender moment Heero and I had had in the parking lot. Either way, I felt a little bit violated by it. I’ve always been a very private person and I don’t like the feeling that my relationship problems were on display for someone’s entertainment. Or their disdain.

“Oh god, Duo,” my boyfriend went pale, his eyes as wide as saucers and any bit of teasing between us had completely fled, “How the hell can you say that that isn’t a big deal?! What did they do? They didn’t hurt you, did they?”

He looked me up and down, completely unnecessarily since he knew I wasn’t injured. His fear was understandable, though. Me surrounded by a bunch of guys twice my size who hated my guts and he hadn’t been there to protect me. Ever since Zechs had tried to rape me, it’s been a sore point for him and he hasn’t quite come to terms with the fact that he can’t always be there to protect me. Not that I hadn’t worried about them beating the shit out of me, too, but I had been more scared about getting fired than getting hurt. I guess that says a lot about me.

“I’m fine,” I assured him, keeping my hands busy by measuring out tartar, almond and vanilla extract, “None of them touched me, just said a lot of crap about me, nothing different than what people say about us at school anyway.”

“Why didn’t you call me?” he demanded, “I could have been there for you! You shouldn’t have gone through that alone!”

“Heero,” I sighed again, “I didn’t call because nothing really happened, nothing you could have helped with anyway. My boyfriend showing up there would have just made things worse. All telling you about it would have done is worry you and I thought that I had done enough of that for the day. If someone had tried to beat me up, they would have just beat you up, too. I was too busy freaking out that I might lose my job to really care about retaliation at first anyway.”

“You shouldn’t have had to worry about that!” he suddenly snapped, “What difference does it make if you’re gay, straight, or bi?! You’re a hard worker, it shouldn’t make any kind of difference who you date or what your preferences are! You shouldn’t be treated like that!”

He was so adorably naïve and idealistic sometimes.

“I don’t care about how the world should be,” I shot back at him, “That’s not how things are. I shouldn’t have had to worry about losing my job, I shouldn’t have to worry about my parents finding out that I’m gay, I shouldn’t have to get beaten up at school or have my teachers think I’m garbage, but that’s reality. Saying that it’s not how it should be doesn’t change anything. I don’t care if all of my coworkers treat me like crap or that my employer suddenly wants nothing to do with me and thinks I have some kind of plague that he wouldn’t want to touch with a thirty foot pole,” some pain gripped my heart as I remembered how Leneski had acted towards me the previous day, knowing that any friendliness he had once had towards me was long gone. He might praise my work ethic, but he would have been happy just to get rid of me. It hurt, that loss of respect, but I refused to shed a single tear over it, not this thing that I’ve been fighting with the last five years of my life, “Christ, Heero, I could have been fired! My boss certainly wanted to and almost anyone else would have! But because he needs me and I work hard, I still have a job! I don’t care if it’s wrong for them to call me a fag or judge me for it when I’ve been nothing but a model employee, I’m too busy being grateful that he was willing to overlook his personal feelings to keep me!”

Heero looked so guilty, because he had upset me, because he hadn’t seen how things were, or because he was partially responsible for my getting outed, I don’t know. It really wasn’t his fault. It was mine and Trowa’s, but I knew that he wouldn’t see it that way.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized, “You’re right, all that matters is that you still have a job. But Duo… are you going to be safe there? Is your boss going to make sure it’s not going to be a hostile work environment from now on? I know you need the job, but if it’s going to be like it is at school and there isn’t even going to be anyone there who has your back… maybe you should just quit.”

He looked like he thought I was going to bite his head off for that, but I had thought the same thing. If Solo hadn’t stood up for me, who knows, I might have. I’m still wondering if staying there is so smart, but I feel like I really don’t have a choice. It’s either deal with my coworkers or deal with my father. You want to know what’s really stupid? Even knowing what my father would do to me if I got fired, even being frightened of him beating the ever loving shit out of me for it, that’s not why I’m so leery to quit. It’s not even mainly because I’m worried about what I’ll do after I graduate if I don’t have some kind of source of income. The thing that really tears me up inside and makes me risk my safety to keep working there is thinking about telling my father that I was fired and it wasn’t his rage that really made fear squeeze my heart in an icy grip. It was his disappointment.

It was him looking at me with the same look I’ve known my entire life, the look right before he calls me a loser. Trash. Worthless. A fuck up. And just like when I was too young to even read, I knew they weren’t just words, that that is exactly how he sees me. Or worse, he would just accept it. Because this is what he expects from his son, absolutely nothing. A failure. I’ve done a lot in my life to try to keep that look out of his eyes, to make him proud of me. I’ve tried to change, to be better, stronger, more independent, someone to be relied on. I’ve stayed up all night, sacrificing sleep and meals to study and get my homework done.

I learned to cook, wash clothes, and use the lawn mower to take the burden off of my parents, but also because I craved approval from him. A nod. A thank you. Something to let me know that I’m not as useless as he says I am. As a kid, if I skinned my knee, I had bit my tongue hard enough to bleed to keep from crying because he hates that sound. If I got sick, I would go to school anyway and not tell anyone. I tried and I tried. And it was never good enough. It was never enough to get rid of that look or that sneer of disapproval. The disappointment in his eyes that the only son he has is just a burden, just a weak loser that doesn’t play sports, isn’t all that smart, and just constantly aggravates him. Even after everything that he’s done to me, I still burn with the need to make him happy, to make him love me for who I am and see that I can be useful. I would suck it up and work with a bunch of guys that would rather spit on me all to keep my father from thinking that I’m such a screw up, I can’t even hold on to one, simple job.

“I can’t,” I said simply, not wanting to say any of that to Heero; he wouldn’t understand if I did, he would just look sad and tell me that none of that was remotely true, “But it’s ok. One of my coworkers is fine with it and he said that he would look out for me. I don’t think anyone is really going to try to hurt me, but he has my back if someone does try something.”

It was the most I could do to reassure him and I was relieved when it worked. He hugged me from behind again, but this time it didn’t bother me at all. I could use a hug and I felt myself practically melt against him.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, but this time he wasn’t apologizing for anything, just being sympathetic, “I wish you didn’t have to go through that shit. Please… I know you said that someone is looking out after you, but please promise me that you’ll call me if you run into trouble? At least keep me from getting an ulcer.”

I chuckled, but there was little humor in it with how guilty I felt that I was worrying him again.

“I promise,” I said easily and hoped that it would never come to that.

He let go of me after placing a little kiss on my neck and let me resume working on the cake.

“Can I help with anything?” he asked with a bit of a desperate note in his voice as I grabbed the whisk and began to beat the egg whites.

“Sure,” I stopped what I was doing to take the strawberries out of the fridge, measuring out a few cups worth by eye and putting them in a little bowl, “I need these sliced.”

He practically jumped at the chance to do something to assist me and I was happy to see some of the tension disappear from his face. He didn’t want to have to think about all of this heavy shit any more than I did. I took a small, paring knife out of the drawer of cutlery along with a small cutting board.

“They need to all be washed first, but like this,” I rinsed a strawberry off in the sink and demonstrated how I wanted them sliced, cutting off the top, leafy portion and carefully sliding the blade through the ripe fruit, making thin, perfect slices, “Easy.”

I watched him copy me, only having to correct him the first time when he took too much off the top and made the first slice too thin, but he got the hang of it after that. Seeing him helping me, the two of us standing side by side at the kitchen counter made me smile. It was a cozy, homey image that I’ll always keep close to my heart. We make a good team, just like when we pair up for class projects, able to work in a comfortable silence and move around each other like it’s second nature. There’s just something very companionable about it, we can do things like this together just as well as we can go out on a date or make out. Actually, I cherish moments like that more because I’ve never really had that kind of… ease around a person, even Quatre, like we just fit together so perfectly.

I whipped the egg whites until they were stiff enough for my satisfaction, then added the extracts and tartar, moving on to measure out flour, sugar, and salt in a separate bowl, carefully sifting the dry ingredients together several times, marveling with some envy at how easy it was with the sifter.

“Done!” Heero said with pride as he put the remaining slices of strawberry into the bowl.

“Perfect!” I grinned at him when I saw that he had done a pretty good job with the task, “Now just one more thing,” I grabbed a couple handfuls of strawberries from the large carton he had bought and put them on a paper towel by the cutting board, “these need to be washed and cut up, too. For these ones, cut the tops off just like the others, but only cut these ones in half, vertically.”

“Ok,” I couldn’t help but smile when he just automatically followed my instructions, not asking why I needed strawberries cut up in different ways.

I slowly added the egg white mix in with the sifted dry ingredients, enjoying the subtle, sweet smell of it.

“Can you hand me the hand mixer, dear?” I asked Heero as I stirred, not really paying much attention to what I was saying.

It took me almost a full minute to realize what I had just said and my face went red hot. I couldn’t believe I had just called him ‘dear’. It had just… slipped out. I hadn’t even thought about what I was saying, it had been like some kind of automatic reflex, even though I had never used a nickname with him before. At the same time I was kind of embarrassed by it, I realized how good it felt to call him that. Was this how he felt every time he calls me ‘sweetheart’ or ‘love’? I don’t know why, it was just a dumb endearment, but it made me feel closer to him somehow, this pleasant warmth bursting in my chest. I looked over at him, dreading how he would take being called that, but he was beaming at me with this big, happy smile.

“You are so adorable,” he teased, which only made me blush harder.

“I am not adorable, and it’s your own fault for all those nicknames you call me,” I grumbled, but then he was kissing me and I really didn’t care anymore.

It was a sweet, tender kiss that seemed to go on forever, his hand in my hair and mine fisted in his shirt. When we finally came up for air, his eyes were as bright as sapphires and I was sure my face was as red as the strawberries. He handed me the little hand mixer from one of the cabinets and went back to his slicing, all with this goofy, happy smile on his face, like he had just died and gone straight to heaven. I was still embarrassed, but also pleased knowing that I was the one that put that smile on his face.

“Ok, now for the whipped cream,” I said, trying not to think about what had just happened or I was going to get really distracted again, although that was pretty impossible when I had the tingling in my lips to remind me.

I put the cake batter into the refrigerator so it would stay cold and took out the bowl and whisk I had put in there earlier, along with the heavy cream and powdered sugar. I whipped the cream in the icy cold bowl with the mixer until it was thick, and then added the sugar and some vanilla extract, beating it together until the mix looked like lumpy, white butter, Heero watching me with fascination. I experimentally tasted some of it and added a little bit more powdered sugar when I found that it wasn’t quite sweet enough.

“And now for the hard part,” I murmured.

I poured about a third of the batter into the cake pan, then using a rubber spatula, spread a layer of whipped cream on top of it. Heero looked amazed as I started to lay slices of strawberries down on top of it.

“That’s so cool,” he said.

“So easily impressed,” I teased as I added another thin layer of cream, poured another third of cake batter and made the second layer of cream and strawberries.

“No, really,” he insisted, “I didn’t know you could do something like that.”

“Well, I’ve never actually done this with an angel food cake before,” I admitted, “but I saw it done on a cooking show once and we had to do layered cakes in home ec last semester, remember? I’m just doing something a tad bit more complicated than that.”

He blushed a little, no doubt remembering how he had almost screwed up his and Relena’s cake before she had fixed it by putting way too much frosting between the layers. I finished with the bottom layer and slid the pan into the oven, turning it on for 325 degrees.

“You don’t need to preheat it first?” he asked.

“Not for angel food,” I said, “The oven needs to be cold.”

“I guess I messed that bit up last time, too,” he rubbed at the back of his head sheepishly, “The recipe just said 325, so I assumed I had to preheat it.”

“Working off a bad or incomplete recipe isn’t your fault,” I pointed out, “This will just take an hour, then it needs to cool before I can do anything with it.”

“Yeah, I learned about that the hard way, too,” he muttered, “I tried to take the cake out of the pan as soon as it was cool enough for me to touch it and…”

“It fell apart?” I guessed and he nodded with embarrassment, “Yeah, you gotta be careful with that. I screwed up the first time I made a box cake that way because I was too impatient. You know,” I offered, “if you’re really interested in all this stuff, I can teach you a few tricks for cooking and baking. You might just need a more one on one tutor.”

“I would like that,” he smiled softly at me, “but I doubt I’ll ever be as good as you. I prefer your cooking a lot more to mine any day.”

There I went, blushing at his compliments again, not sure if I was more embarrassed or more pleased that he liked my cooking.

“It’s… just a hobby,” I muttered and felt a pain that Heero, his parents, and even my mother had said that I had a talent for cooking, but my father had only ever looked down on it. He might eat my food and compliment me, but if I wasn’t making dinner for him, I was being girly and weird.

“It could be more,” Heero said very carefully, like he thought he was approaching some sensitive topic for some reason, “You’re beyond basic skills or even a passing interest. My mom was really impressed with all the work you put into baking those desserts for Christmas. It wasn’t just delicious, it was presented really well. She… the three of us think that if you wanted to pursue it, you could go to a culinary school or something, become a chef or a baker if that’s what you want to do.”

I picked up the egg timer by the stove and stared at it like it was the most interesting thing in the entire world. I knew that he meant well. He was trying to give my confidence a little boot and make me see that I had options. I appreciated that. He couldn’t possibly know how much it hurt, though, thinking about those things. Thinking about the future. Giving me these ideas… these dreams and hopes that, while pleasant to think about, will never come true for me. A chef… I didn’t have nearly that much skill. I was just trying to copy things that I had seen on television and in home ec class, it’s not like I have some grand talent or drive. There’s so much I don’t know about cooking. Besides, even if I did have the talent, I sure as hell didn’t have the money. I couldn’t even afford to get into a trade school, let alone a specialty school like that.

“I don’t know what I want to do,” I murmured under my breath.

And wasn’t that the truth? I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life. If I try to think about the future, all I see is Heero and knowing that I can’t even have that much is pure agony to me, the pain in my chest a very real, physical thing. I guess it doesn’t matter what I want. Life has shown me, again and again, that I’ll never have what I really want, so it’s pointless even just dreaming.

“Well, you have plenty of time to figure it out,” Heero tried to reassure me, “We still have more than a year left until the end of high school. Honestly, I don’t know what I want to do, either. My dad’s been talking to me a lot about it, but I’m clueless.”

He laughed and I managed to smile at him. I was sure that, no matter what he decided to do, he would be amazing at it. The pain in my heart deepened. Maybe breaking up with him really was the best thing for both of us. It wasn’t like our relationship was going to last either way. Whether from the lack of sex or trying to maintain a long-distance relationship when he eventually left Nausten to go to college, it really was hopeless, wasn’t it? No matter what happened, one day, we were going to have to say goodbye to each other.

I twisted the dial on the egg timer a bit more harshly than I had intended and placed it back on the counter.

“Ok” I pushed my sad thoughts down deep and tried to pretend that everything was perfectly fine, “We have an hour before I have to take the cake out. What did you want to do? I should probably stay near the kitchen so I can check up on it, though. The recipe might say an hour, but I don’t want to over bake it. You can get your chores done if you don’t want to stick around here.”

“Nah, I’ll do them in a bit. Do you want to play a racing game? We can use the tv in the living room so you won’t have to go far,” he asked.

“Sure,” I agreed.

A game sounded relaxing, something to get me out of my head for a little while. Cooking usually helps me do that, it’s one of the reasons why I like it so much, but that day I was in this weird melancholy. I think it was just an after effect of the strange day I had had previously. While Heero ran upstairs to grab the game console, I made myself a cup of tea in hopes it would calm my nerves, finding a blend in Mariela’s tea cupboard that smelled like sage and cinnamon that I hadn’t tried yet. It was too early for soda, so I poured Heero some cran-apple juice, remembering that he likes the taste of cranberries.

“Thanks,” he said as he took the drink from me and we sat together on the couch in the living room.

The hour passed quickly as we played a few races, the room beginning to fill with the sweet scent of cake. After each round, I checked on the cake, which was baking nicely. I haven’t had a lot of opportunities to use the oven at Heero’s house. The one at home is kind of like the majority of my clothes, worn down and several years passed the time that it should have been junked. My dad tinkers with it and keeps it running, but only barely. It barely bakes anything anymore and I have to keep food in there two to three times longer than it calls for. And half of the time, the ancient thing gives out this foul, burnt smelling grey smoke that makes the food taste like ash. Not that I throw anything out, food is food. The oven at Heero’s place was brand new and state of the art and I have to admit that it was nice using something reliable. The cake was pretty much perfect at the hour mark. I could have even taken it out a little bit before the hour, but I like cakes to be a toasty brown.

“Now what?” Heero asked me as I took it out of the oven, gently poked at the hot, spongy mass to make sure it had baked all the way through, and put it on the stove top.

“Now it needs to cool, then it has to be removed from the pan and I can frost it. Then it needs to be refrigerated until it gets eaten because of the whipped cream. It shouldn’t take too long to cool, I’d give it about forty minutes just to be on the safe side. Then it will take about an hour or two for me to remove the cake.”

“That long?” he asked with wide eyes, “Why don’t you just shake it out, or use a knife?”

“It’ll take that long if you want it to look nice,” I laughed, “or not come out in pieces. Don’t worry, I know how to get it to come out perfectly. Remember: patience.”

“I’m not so good at being patient,” he said with a wry grin, “Which is exactly why I suck at cooking.”

“And yet you’re dating me,” I muttered under my breath, feeling a brief flare of guilt.

If I was a normal person, he wouldn’t have to be so patient with me. And how long do I have before that patience wears out?

“You’re the exception,” his smile turned affectionate as he wrapped his arms around my waist, making me blush for about the millionth time, “I always have patience for you.”

He kissed me, long and slow, and I closed my eyes in bliss. This was exactly what Trowa and I had never had, this comfort in just being together. How easy it was. A kiss was just a kiss, something to show how much he cared for me, not a prelude to something or some kind of foreplay.

“I need to rake the patio and porch,” he said when our lips finally parted, “Want to go outside while the cake cools?”

“Sure,” I nodded.

We grabbed our jackets and hats since it was a bit cool out that day. The second that Heero opened the back door in the kitchen, Kanuck came running and did that weird shuffling motion that dogs and kids do when they’re really excited about something, his tail wagging violently.

“Is it alright if he comes outside with us?” I asked.

“I’d prefer it actually. I don’t trust him here alone with the cake,” he gave his dog a sharp look, but the husky mix just lolled his tongue innocently, “He’s pretty good and doesn’t steal food off counters, but better safe than sorry. It’d suck if it got ruined after all the hard work you did. Here,” he handed me Kanuck’s leash, “Probably won’t need it, but I don’t want him to go running off after squirrels if he gets too excited. Our property is big, but we don’t have any fences and I don’t know how our neighbors would feel about him running around on their property, and I don’t feel like chasing after an animal that can run twice as fast as me even if he comes back when I call him almost every time.”

I clipped the leash to Kanuck’s collar, which only made him even more excited as he realized he was being let out and not just to go to the bathroom. The air outside was crisp and dry. It felt a hell lot more like autumn than it did early spring, not a good sign. I let the dog sniff and explore the yard while Heero raked, like he hadn’t smelled a particular tree or a patch of ground a thousand times since they had moved there. I wondered if he liked living in Nausten more than Florida. It was probably a lot more exciting for a dog, all this new territory to explore, than it had been for Heero, and with his thick coat, the cold probably didn’t bother him that much. He was pretty relaxed with me letting me lead until he spotted a squirrel making a break for a different tree. He didn’t bark at it, but he stood at attention, those tall ears of his perking straight up and directed at where the squirrel had gone. To his credit, I think Kanuck knew he wasn’t supposed to go after small, furry animals because he didn’t pull at his leash, but looked up at me with large, imploring yellow eyes, begging me to let him chase it.

“No way,” I said with a chuckle, “Heero says you’re not supposed to go after them. I doubt you’ll be able to catch one anyway, they’re pretty quick.”

He whined heavily at me, shifting restlessly and giving me this look like I had just allowed an intruder into the house or something. I had no idea dogs could be that expressive.

“It’s not a bloodthirsty squirrel (1), boy,” I chuckled, “and they’ve got hard enough lives without having to worry about you. They don’t have someone that feeds them every day and keeps bigger animals from using them as a chew toy. Just leave them be, ok?”

“You do realize that you’re trying to reason with an animal that has the personality of a five-year-old, right?” Heero called out in amusement.

“Hey,” I mock protested, “Don’t you listen to him,” I said to his dog, “You’re very smart, aren’t you, boy?”

Kanuck grinned up at me and barked in agreement. Heero just rolled his eyes at the both of us.

“I think I got all of it,” he said, looking around the yard.

The yard, porch, and patio all were leaf free. He shook out the rest of the leaves that were stuck on the rake onto the pile he had made on an old bed sheet and twisted the whole thing up to make an impromptu bag.

“What are you going to do with them?” I asked.

“Oh, we have a compost pile,” he explained.

“Seriously?” I asked in amazement.

I had heard about composting, but Nausten doesn’t even have a big recycling program. If my father knew anyone who composted, he’d probably call them a hippy faggot and I honestly don’t know that much about it myself.

“Yeah. We have a big yard and you’ve seen my mom’s garden, it’s huge. When we came here in the summer, we had a lot of yard waste after my dad mowed the lawn and weeded the area Mom wanted to put the garden in. It seemed like a better idea than just taking it all to the dump. Composting is really good for soil. My mom has been using it since the summer and she hopes it’ll help since the soil here isn’t ideal for growing things,” he told me.

I nodded. I had seen Mariela’s garden during one of my tours of their home. There was this big patch on the other side of the house. It wrapped around from the back near the pool to the side of the garage, this area fenced in hopes to keep wildlife out. There hadn’t been much to it in the early winter, just soil and stakes where the tomato plants were going to go in the spring, but I bet it was going to look beautiful. The only flowers that grew on our property were weeds. When I had been a kid, I had seen a commercial for vegetable seeds on television. That had seemed so magical to me, the idea that we wouldn’t need to spend so much money and we could get fresh vegetables of our own. Maybe we could even make money if we sold them at the farmer’s market that crops up on the weekends.

My father had just laughed at me in that condescending way of his when he thinks that I’m being especially stupid and childish and informed that the only thing the shitty soil around our house could grow was weeds. Even our grass was shit and he had long ago stopped caring to maintain it. It grew in haphazard patches, large parts of what I can laughably call our lawn having died out from dry summers and harsh winters. After a few hours of weeding and mowing the lawn, I honestly would wonder why we even bothered and why my dad didn’t just let it all go to save the both of us some work. Or hell, just salt the damn lawn to kill what remained of the grass and weeds. It wasn’t like our home was going to win any awards anyway.

Heero left the ‘sack’ of leaves by the back door and we went back inside the kitchen. Kanuck took his sweet time following me, clearly wanting to stay outside.

“Don’t worry,” I told him, “we still need to take you on a walk. We’ll do that later, ok?”

The dog looked up at me and his tail started wagging, although that was probably just from the attention. I unhooked his leash, hanging it on back on the key hook by the door and he went off somewhere, doing whatever it is he does in the house when he isn’t plastered to Heero’s side. Hopefully not harass my cat. She had also disappeared some time after I had brought her down with me for breakfast. Knowing her, she had located a sun beam and was taking a nice nap. It’s one of her favorite things to do now since she didn’t have that luxury cooped up in the windowless attic. I touched the side of the cake pan and found that it was quite cool. We had been outside for a good thirty to forty minutes, so I deemed the cake settled enough to try to get it out of the pan.

“Do your parents have any wine?” I asked him.

“If I didn’t know you any better, I’d think you were trying to get me drunk,” he teased and I rolled my eyes at him as he disappeared down into the basement.

The subject of alcohol had never come up with me and Heero’s parents, even though they clearly had some in the house and we were a couple of teenagers. Heero never seemed all that interested in the stuff and, well, I guess his parents had just figured that, considering my parents, they didn’t need to lecture me about not drinking. He came back with a tall bottle of white wine.

“This stuff is pretty pricey, I think,” he warned, “What do you need it for?”

“I just need the bottle,” I assured him and secretly wondered just how much the wine had cost if Heero considered it pricey.

Of course, I hadn’t ever seen Justin or Mariela drinking that much. A glass or two with certain meals, that was all. I had never seen either of them drink a beer and I didn’t think there was a single can at the residence, which set my mind at ease. I guess when you weren’t putting away gallons of liquor a month like my parents, you could afford the nice stuff once in a while. I placed the bottle on the table, judging how sturdy it was, which turned out to be very. It was one of those glass bottles with a long neck, the base thick and it wouldn’t so much as wobble unless someone, or perhaps some animal, bumped into the table hard enough.

“Perfect,” I murmured.

I flipped the cake pan upside down, the cake not so much as budging since you’re not supposed to grease the pan, and very carefully balanced the pan on top of the wine bottle on the metal center of the pan. Heero watched all of this like I had just performed some astonishing magic trick, baffled but amazed.

“Gravity will loosen the cake from the pan,” I told him, “After a few hours, I can just pull it out without it coming out in pieces from still being stuck to the pan.”

“That’s awesome,” he marveled, almost making me laugh at how easy he was to impress.

“It’s just simple physics,” I pointed out, blushing just a tiny bit at his praise, “I saw it on television once. Um… do you think we can keep Kanuck out of the kitchen? I’m just afraid that he’ll knock it over.”

“No problem,” Heero assured me.

He whistled, as clear and clean as a bell, a talent that I hadn’t known he possessed. I can’t whistle worth shit. I’ve tried, but I just don’t have the knack for it, I guess. I felt this weird, pleasant warmth in my chest as I realized I had another piece of the puzzle that made up the boy that I loved, something new that I hadn’t known. How many more pieces were there? I wanted to uncover all of them at the same time that I didn’t. I wanted there to always be more to learn about him. Kanuck came running from what sounded like the basement and sat obediently in front of Heero, looking up at him with intense focus, waiting for some command, I guess.

“Good boy,” Heero crooned, making the dog wag his tail, but I saw with fascination that he didn’t budge from that spot, sitting as straight and perfect as a soldier at attention.

My boyfriend dug out a carrot from the fridge and Kanuck ate it right out of his hand.

“He likes vegetables more than dog treats,” he explained when I gave him a questioning look, “He still does like treats, especially jerky, but these are better for his teeth and his breath.”

After getting such a nice snack, Kanuck followed Heero as we left the kitchen, probably hoping he could get some more.

“What do you want to do now?” my boyfriend asked.

“Well, the cake will probably be ready to come out and be frosted in a couple of hours, so movie?” I suggested.

“Alright,” he agreed.

We brought Kanuck up to the game room where I also found Pepper, napping on the window sill, happily soaking up the afternoon sun. The dog went right over to her, sniffing at her and she opened one eye at the disturbance. I was positive that she was going to hiss at him and take a swipe, but she must have been used to him by then because she just gave him a disdainful look, like his mere presence was beneath her and her fur didn’t even rise. Then she saw me and couldn’t care less about the dog, stretching up from her curled up posture, made a graceful leap over the canine, and trotted up to me with a soft murr.

“Hello, love,” I greeted, scooping her up into my arms.

She felt warm from her sun bathing and happily snuggled against me, purring. I sat down on the couch and Heero picked a movie that we hadn’t watched together yet: some thriller/horror film about a bunch of scientists trapped deep down in the ocean with a hostile alien lifeform that could conjure anything just by thinking about it (2). I’m not really big on horror films. I find it almost impossible to get spooked or startled just by something on a television screen and it seems like the majority of them are played up to be silly or ridiculous, and I outright hate slasher films. A bunch of dumb teenagers running from an equally dumb killer in a knife and mask, I don’t find much entertaining in that. But this movie was interesting. Heero told me halfway through that it was adapted from a novel and I made a mental note to try to find a copy.

Quatre would have loved the math that was woven into the plot and would have wanted to try solving it himself. Thinking about that made my heart ache with missing him, but it wasn’t a bad ache, especially if I imagined that he was sitting there with us, enjoying the movie like he would have if he had still been alive. I had to wonder, if he had lived, would Heero and I have become friends? I like to think that we would have. While my loneliness and pain might have driven me to him, I think we still would have connected. I like to think that he still would have made the choices he had and would have dropped the mask eventually. It was harder to figure out if Quatre would have liked him and accepted him as my friend and eventual boyfriend.

I think he would have been wary at first, like I had, dealing with this strange boy that had once been our bully, but then claimed to be just like us. Maybe he never would have trusted him, not blinded by love like me. But I want to believe that they would have gotten along in the end. I like to think that he would have been happy for me, to have an attentive boyfriend who didn’t mind exposing himself for our relationship, unlike Trowa. The pessimistic side of me wonders if he might have become jealous of our relationship and resented me a little, but I didn’t want to think that. For once, I wanted this fantasy of the three of us being friends to be pleasant and in that fantasy, everything was perfect. Quatre was close friends with Heero and we could all hang out together. He would tease me for how smitten I am, but would be happy for me, not angry or jealous.

At some point towards the climax of the film, I realized that Heero and I had migrated a lot closer to each other, our legs almost touching, and my cat had crawled out my arms to wedge herself between us, enjoying the warmth from our bodies, while Kanuck looked at her from the floor with obvious jealousy. I had worried that he might get bored of us just sitting there and try to wonder off and we would need to close the door so he wouldn’t leave, but he was content to just lay down in front of us.

I looked over at Heero. He was completely engrossed in the movie, his eyes dark and fixed to the screen, lips slightly parted. But his hand was on mine and had been for the last hour, his warmth seeping into my skin. It was almost like an instinct, to touch me because we were close to each other, to be drawn to each other. If it had been Trowa and me together, he would have done a lot more than just touch my hand. I was all too aware that this was the perfect opportunity for something to happen between us. Alone someplace away from not only his parents, but any prying eyes, watching a movie with our bodies so close after spending a pleasant morning together… Just about anyone with a normal sex drive would take this opportunity for some intimacy. But Heero hadn’t tried anything. It was just like it had always been with us these last few weeks since we had gotten together. He kissed me, held my hand, touched me, but nothing more than what I was comfortable with.

I’m not quite sure how I feel about it. On the one hand, I’m grateful because I’m not ready for anything more than that and Heero never pushes me into anything. It’s how I can be so at ease around him. But on the other… I kind of want him to push. Well, I do and I don’t. I want to be closer to him and I want to be like a normal couple. But I can’t. As much as I can’t come to terms with that fact, I’m not normal. The same closeness that I would give my right hand for, I’m terrified of. It’s a constant struggle, pulling me into two different directions. Wanting and dreading. Desire and revulsion. It wasn’t so bad with Trowa, I hadn’t wanted him like this. I hadn’t been in love with him to want him like this.

This is just how Heero is, I told myself, he won’t go any further unless I tell him to. It’s comforting and it’s frustrating because I don’t know if I can give him that permission. My fears always hold me back. A part of it is my fear of sex, but I also just don’t know how. And I think I made it worse by telling Heero all the things that had happened between Trowa and myself. Heero is so overprotective and I pushed the whole thing into hyper drive by telling him about Trowa forcing me into things that I hadn’t been ready for. I think he’s gotten it into his head that he can’t ever take the lead, no matter how much he wants to, because I’ve already been hurt by someone making all these decisions for me. I don’t know how to tell him that some pushing is fine, that I’m too scared and awkward to make those first steps. I wouldn’t even know if we’re ready for them or not.

Like in a situation like this. If we had been normal, we would have been making out, or wrapped up in each others’ arms or something sappy like that. Right? Isn’t that what couples do? But there I was, sitting right next to him, and I knew that there was something I should do. Something to show him how much I was enjoying being with him. But I couldn’t figure out what that was. Should I hold his hand? Put mine on his knee? Kiss him? Not for the first time, I wished that there was some kind manual for this stuff, or a class that I could take. How the hell did Heero do it? How did he always know exactly what to do with such ease? And why was it so impossible for me?

I might have just sat there like a lump through the rest of the movie, trying to figure out what to do like an idiot, but something clicked in me. Frustration with myself and that raw desire to be the one to show him how I cared for him for once, I guess. This burning need in my chest to be closer to him. Not really knowing if it was the right gesture, but going with my gut instead of my nervous, twittering head for once, I leaned against him and laid my head on his shoulder. It felt good, his solid body under my cheek, his subtle scent, that smell of him and the deodorant he uses that always reminds me of ocean spray. He froze and I nearly sat right back up, thinking that I had done something wrong, my heart racing with embarrassment. But then he wrapped his arm around my waist and brought me closer to him. When I dared to sneak a glance up at him, he was smiling, a tiny one, but he looked so happy, I didn’t dare move.

We stayed like that all the way through the credits, neither of us wanting to be the first one to move. I was so comfortable that it seemed obscene to do anything except stay slumped against him. It was like when he had been helping me sleep through my insomnia. I had missed the feeling of his body against mine more than I had even realized. For someone like me, someone who hates being touched and shies away from everyone, who feels suffocated by crowds and can’t stand anyone to invade his personal space, how is it possible that I crave being so close to this one person?

I was the first to get off the couch, not because I wanted to, but because I really wanted to get the cake done long before Mariela got home. We all traveled back down into the kitchen, even Pepper, although she quickly got bored of us and went to explore the house. I found the cake still upright on the wine bottle, so that was something. It was pretty loose, the cake having separated from the edges of the pan thanks to gravity, so I was able to carefully wiggle it free and onto a cake platter.

“Wow, it’s perfect,” Heero marveled.

I had to agree. It was in perfect shape, not a single crumb out of place, and had baked to a lovely golden brown. I felt so relieved that I hadn’t fucked it up. Of course, I still had to decorate it, but I had no doubt that it would taste fine. I got the whipped cream and bowl of sliced strawberries out of the fridge, as well as a little bottle of red food dye and a rubber spatula. Heero kept out of my way, but ever the interested observer as I carefully scooped whipped cream out of the bowl and spread it evenly over the cake. I could have just left the cake like that, covered in pure, white whipped cream, but I wanted to add an extra flare for the occasion and there were some techniques that I had been wanting to try out for a while.

I started with the base and sides of the cake, running the spatula around it, smoothing out the cream and making neat rows. For the base, I used the strawberries that Heero had sliced in half, creating a layer all the way around. The top of the cake was more complicated. Whipping cream is not exactly the easiest thing to manipulate, not like cream frosting, but using a spoon and a fork, I managed to great little, swirled peaks of frosting and a ridged layer all around the edge of the top of the cake. Between the swirls went more strawberries that I cut into little flowers with the paring knife, remembering how much Mariela had enjoyed that effect on the yule log I had made for Christmas. The rest of the strawberries got cut into thick slices and arranged into a rose-like pattern right in the center, the effect making each slice look like a flower petal.

Finally, I dropped just a tiny bit of food coloring on the tips of the swirls, the dye soaking into the whipped cream and making this neat, dripping effect. When I was finally done, there was sweat on my forehead and I felt exhausted, not from any kind of exertion, but just from my effort and being so anxious not to screw up, but I felt the same way that I usually do after I cook or bake something that turns out exactly how I had wanted it to: satisfied and maybe just a tiny, tiny bit proud of myself for accomplishing something.

“Christ, Duo,” Heero stared at the finished cake in total awe, “That… that is incredible!”

That feeling of pride swelled until I could actually feel it in my chest like a real thing.

“Do you think your mother will like it?” I asked shyly.

While his praise made me feel good about myself, I hadn’t made it for him, even if he thought of it as a favor. There was only one person’s opinion that really mattered.

“Like it?” he scoffed, “Duo, she is going to freaking love it! It looks like we hired a professional baker!”

I flushed as dark as the food dye.

“It’s nothing special,” I murmured, even as his words made me feel pleased, “I just followed a recipe and anyone can decorate a cake…”

“Bullshit,” he protested, “I looked at all kinds of cakes online when I thought I was the one who was going to have to make this and this looks as good as any of them! I mean it, you put a lot of hard work into this and it looks amazing!” he wrapped me up into a tight hug from behind, placing a kiss on the side of my neck, “You’re awesome, you know that? It’s not just that you’re a good baker, you are, but you’re also creative and you love doing it. Thank you so much for doing this. Mom’s going to be over the moon.”

My face couldn’t be any redder if I tried. Heero let me go, but continued to gush over the cake, saying he should take pictures of it and post it on the internet or something.

“Stop,” I begged, not able to handle any more of his compliments.

“It’s good for you,” he grinned.

“What, you making me combust?” I grumbled.

“Letting you know how talented you are,” he teased, dropping another kiss, this time on my cheek.

“Enough,” I muttered and rushed to find another subject to distract him with, “I hate to be a buzz kill, but this is supposed to be a surprise, right?”

“Yeah,” he nodded, “Mom doesn’t even know that we’re throwing her a party tomorrow. She probably suspects it, but Dad and I have been really secretive about her birthday plans.”

“Well, how are we going to hide this?” I asked, feeling like slapping myself for not thinking of this before, “We can take out the trash and even get rid of the cake smell before she gets home, but the cake has to stay cold. There’s no way we can hide it in your fridge, it’s too big.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” he assured me, “We have a refrigerator in the basement. She won’t look in there between now and tomorrow.”

“You… you have two refrigerators?” I gaped at him, completely unable to get that concept.

I mean, I know that the Inoris are well off, but seriously? Who the hell needed more than one refrigerator?! Of course, because they didn’t live hand to mouth like us, I supposed they could actually afford enough food to warrant the second one, but still, it just amazed me. My family couldn’t even afford one refrigerator. Ours, according to my mother, had already been there when they had inherited it from one of my father’s uncles. Just like our stove, my father kept it up and running through tireless maintenance, but it was still on its last legs. The freezer on it was total shit. Too close to the door and it didn’t even keep things cool, let alone frozen, too far in the back and the food would get freezer burn, only our freezer couldn’t make up its mind about what constituted too far or too close.

“Three, actually,” Heero corrected in a matter of fact tone, obviously not getting how shocked I was, “There’s a little one in the garage, too.”

Three. They had three refrigerators. I couldn’t even imagine something like that, the excess or even needing three fridges because you had enough to fill them.

“Your electric bill must be outrageous,” I muttered, trying to play off my shock and, I have to admit, maybe just a tiny bit of bitterness.

Heero laughed.

“You’d have to ask my dad about that. When we lived in Florida, we really needed them. My mom has a really big family, so whenever there would be a holiday or some other occasion, she needed all the fridge space for these big dinners, and if there’s something we’re saving, like steaks, or extra gallons of milk or my mom made something big like a cake to take to her classes, she would just stick it in the fridge in the garage. The one downstairs was for whenever I had some of my friends over. We would hang out in the basement so we wouldn’t disturb my parents with the noise and we’d stock the fridge full of soda and stuff. It was just more convenient than running up and down the steps all the time.”

I shook my head. They had a third fridge because it was convenient. I just could not wrap my head around that. Heero covered the cake with the lid that came with the platter and, very reverently like he was carrying something made out of spun glass, he brought it downstairs. I followed him, mostly out of curiosity. Sure enough, there was indeed a fridge in the basement, tucked into one corner. I felt a little bit relieved that it wasn’t the huge monstrosity that they had in the kitchen, but a mini fridge that probably only had three shelves.

“There,” my boyfriend said in triumph as he tucked the cake away in there, “She’ll never find it in there, there’s just soda and water in there right now. Even if she comes down here for whatever reason, my dad and I can run interference until dinner,” he gave me a measuring look, almost making me squirm, thinking it was over something serious that I had done, or hadn’t done, “You must be hungry by now,” was what he said instead.

“Yeah, a bit,” I admitted.

It was just after 2 and while I had had a big breakfast, I hadn’t had more than some tea since 9:30 and had been smelling a freshly baked cake for hours. I wasn’t ravenous, but my stomach was cheerfully reminding me that food would be a very nice thing right about now.

“How does a grilled cheese and some tomato soup sound?” he asked, “I swear, I can make at least that much without poisoning you, I promise.”

I gave a little smile, pleased at the thought that he wanted to make something for me when I knew how much he hates cooking, even something as easy as a grilled cheese sandwich.

“You don’t have to do that,” I assured him, “I can take care of myself.”

“I’m not such a terrible person that I would make you slave away all day in the kitchen and not even make you lunch,” he scoffed, “And I picked up some chocolate milk and those baby dill pickles that you like when I was at the grocery store getting the cake ingredients.”

“Thank you,” I said, honestly touched that he had thought to do that.

My gratitude made him beam again. We went back upstairs and while Heero was busy making us lunch, I cleaned up around the kitchen. It would suck if Mariela figured out what we had done by smelling cake or seeing some egg shells in the trash. The grilled cheese and heated tomato soup helped to erase the smell of baking and I put the trash bag in the bin in the garage where only Justin would see it. All utensils and various tools were cleaned to perfection and put back where I had found them. When I was done, the kitchen was exactly how Mariela had left it that morning.

“Here you go,” Heero put my sandwich on a plate and placed it on the table along with a steaming bowl of soup.

Just like he had promised, the grilled cheese looked like a normal grilled cheese and smelled like one, no poison at all. The bread wasn’t even burnt.

“Thank you,” I sat as he poured two glasses of chocolate milk and put another plate of pickles on the table.

We had a nice, quiet lunch together and I felt incredibly satisfied. In myself, in that entire day. It almost seemed like the universe was overcompensating for the shit it had pulled the previous day, giving me one of those perfect moments that come so rarely. It’s a cliché, but I really could have died right there and would have been perfectly happy.

“Want to go out for a bit?” he asked me as I chomped down on the last, crisp pickle, “I need to walk Kanuck and there’s something out back I want to show you.”

“Sure,” I nodded, happy to get some more fresh air.

He washed our dishes and I called his dog, who instantly became hyper again when I clipped his leash to his collar. I really did feel like we were some married couple and felt a bittersweet pain realizing that this was what we could have if we stayed together. Baking together in the kitchen. Peaceful lunches. Long walks with the dog. Snuggling on the couch playing games or watching movies. Things… beautiful, wonderful things that I had never experienced before I had met him. Things that I can never have.

I felt wetness sting at my eyes and shut down those thoughts in a hurry. I needed to stop this. I wasn’t going to break up with him that day, I couldn’t, not any time soon. I didn’t have the spine for that. So, what was the point thinking and obsessing about the future? Our time together was going to be short, one way or another, but I had those slices of peace and love right now. They were more than I had ever dreamed of having anyway.

We donned our coats again and walked out back to the immense space that the Inoris called their property. We walked through groves of trees and patches of wide, open field until we came to a hill about a ten-minute walk away from the house, close enough that we could see the house and could hear if his parents called, but far away enough that we would have privacy, something that every teenager dreams about. There was a tiny grove of trees on top of the hill. A couple of oaks, a maple, and a magnolia tree. I bet it would look gorgeous in the spring.

“What did you want to show me?” I asked when we stopped walking under the trees.

“This,” Heero put his hand on the trunk of one of the oaks.

He put his foot on the stub of what had once been a branch just above knee level and hoisted himself up to the first branch of the tree that was big enough and thick enough to support his weight.

“Up here,” he told me, “It can hold both of us, trust me.”

“Uhhh…” I hesitated, hating to seem like some kind of scaredy cat in front of him, but I was in no rush to climb up after him.

“Never climbed a tree before?” he asked with a quirk of the eyebrow.

“No, I have,” I assured him.

Zechs and his gang of thugs had chased me up a few of them during the times they had cornered me outside of school, and once, during one of the very rare times when my father had been pissed enough to chase me into our neighbor’s yard, I had narrowly escaped from him that way. He had tried to shake me out of it, but the tree had been scraggly, half-dead, and far too thin for him to dare going up after me. I’m actually very good at climbing things, it’s a survival skill, just like running and jumping.

“Scared of heights?” Heero pressed in a much more sympathetic tone.

“No, it’s not that. I hurt my back at work this morning,” I confessed.

“Again?” he frowned, “You’re always hurting yourself at that job.”

“It’s not a big deal,” I said defensively. This was a fight that we’ve had often, “It doesn’t even hurt that much anymore. The shower this morning helped, it just aches a little and I’m afraid if I try to pull myself up there, it’s going to flare up and make me fall on my head or something.”

“You shouldn’t be hurting your back like this at all,” he argued heatedly, then took a deep breath, calming himself, “Duo… You can’t keep doing this to yourself. You hurt your back or your shoulders or your neck or your arms multiple times a week. You’re seventeen years old and I’m sorry, but you don’t have the build to be doing that kind of labor! You might be young now and it seems like no big deal, but if you keep hurting yourself, it’s only going to get worse. It’ll become permanent. You’re destroying your body!”

“You think that I don’t know that?!” I snapped at him angrily, hating that we kept having this argument and he still hadn’t given it up yet, “I know that I don’t have the body to be doing manual labor, that I can’t keep up with any of my coworkers! And I know that my body is just telling me that it can’t handle the strain and if I keep doing this, I’m probably going to seriously injure my back and get myself hurt worse! None of that matters because even if I do really hurt myself, even if I tear up a bunch of my muscles and give myself a permanent injury, I can’t quit! I would fucking love to, Heero! You think that I want to work until almost two in the freaking morning lugging around boxes with guys twice my size, for a boss that hates my guts and treats me like shit?! If I had any choice at all, I would quit that goddamned place in a heartbeat and go work longer shifts for Leneski! He pays better anyway.

“But I don’t have a choice. I didn’t chose this damned job, my dad did! He doesn’t care if I throw out my back or if I hate working there, or if I’m so exhausted by the time that I come home, I can barely stay upright! He won’t care about any of that if I quit, all he’ll see is that I spat in his face and took income away from the family! You think he’s going to thank me for that? Even if I tell him that I’ll make more money at my other job, he doesn’t care, all he cares about is doing what I’m fucking told!” I could feel a tear trailing its way down my cheek and I felt so ridiculous that I was yelling at Heero when he was sitting a good ten feet above me, but I couldn’t stop, this wellspring of bitterness and frustration that I’m often pretty successful at pushing down and ignoring erupting out of me, “So you know what, I’ll do what I’m goddamned told, just like always! I’ll work until every muscle in my back aches! I’ll work until I can’t even raise my damned arms, because I don’t have a choice, because the alternative is a hell of a lot worse than that!”

“I’m sorry, Duo,” Heero murmured, his whole expression just falling into one of guilt and pain, “I didn’t mean to lecture you…”

All the anger drained out of me, anger that I didn’t even know the source of, and I felt like a complete asshole. He was just worried about me and I had snapped at him again. Just like my father. I wasn’t any better than he was, lashing out at the people that were trying to help.

“No, I’m sorry,” I apologized, looking down at Kanuck who was somehow not looking at me like I was a threat or even just a jerk, just looking concerned about why Heero and I had been fighting, “I had no right to yell at you. I’m just still so stressed from yesterday and almost getting fired… I shouldn’t have taken that out on you. I know you’re worried, but I don’t know what to do, Heero. This is just… how things are with me.”

When I looked back at him, I was shocked to see that he was smiling. It was a pained, half-hearted thing, but it was still there.

“I know,” he said softly, “I know and I’m sorry. I keep pushing you. I know you’re stressed and I shouldn’t have started a fight. If I knew how, I’d give you a massage,” he offered with that tight smile of his, trying to get the lighthearted mood back and winning an equally tiny smile for his efforts.

“It really is feeling better,” I assured him, “I just don’t know if I’m up to climbing trees.”

“I’ll help you,” he jumped in eagerly, less because he wanted me to climb up there and more to make up for the fight, I think, “I won’t let you fall, I promise.”

If anyone else had said that to me, I would have scoffed and refused. But I trusted him. If Heero said he wouldn’t let me fall, then he wouldn’t. He would break his arm and throw out his own back to keep anything from happening to me. I nodded. It wasn’t like the branch was that high up anyway. I wrapped the end of Kanuck’s leash around one of the low branches so he couldn’t wander off, careful to leave him plenty of slack to walk around with, but he still whined at me about it. I ignored him and repeated Heero’s maneuver, putting my foot on the stump and hoisting myself up. Heero leaned as far down as he could, wrapping an arm around my lower back and keeping me steady as I climbed up onto the branch. I felt a strain between my shoulder blades in the same area that I had hurt myself, but just as he had promised, Heero kept a grip around me so if I did have problems, he could grab me. In all likelihood, as we’re about the same height even if I’m lighter than him, I would have ended up pulling him down with me if I fell, but knowing him and that overprotective streak, he would have found some way to land on the ground first and keep me on top of him. The idiot.

“Wow,” I murmured when I got myself situated on the massive branch in front of Heero.

I could instantly see why he had brought me up there. The view was… well, it was beautiful. I could see his entire property from there, as well as the rest of the street. I could see the back yards of every home: swimming pools, grand gardens, patios, gazebos, and even a tennis court. His neighbor two doors down had a Saint Bernard wandering aimlessly around the back yard, sniffing at this and that. It was pretty far away, his neighbors would need binoculars to see us, and I only recognized what kind of dog it was from the size and colors of its fur. I wondered if Kanuck could make friends with it or if he didn’t like other dogs that much.

But it was the view directly around us that was the most impressive, not just a glance at the immaculate homes. I could see a patch of thick woods further east, a large field that I had no doubt would be overgrown with wild flowers by summer, and the pond that we had skated on more towards the house. There was another pond, a much bigger one, below the hill we were on. To my amazement, I could see what had to be ducks swimming around on it. It was a tranquil scene right out of a travel brochure or maybe a nature documentary and seemed out of place in the town that I had grown up in, like I was seeing some secret place. And it was all ours. If we sat under the thick oak tree we were sitting on, no one had any hope of seeing us, binoculars or not. It really was a secret place, a refuge from everything else lurking out there in the town. I think I fell in love with that spot in that moment and I could have stayed up in that damned tree for the rest of my life and been perfectly happy. I didn’t even startle when Heero very carefully wrapped his arms around me and pressed himself against my side. Compared to the chilly air, he felt blissfully warm.

“It’s beautiful,” I said, still taking in everything.

“I’ve been thinking of asking my dad to help me build a tree house out here,” Heero told me.

“A tree house?” I looked back at him, eyebrow raised, “Aren’t those for kids?”

“Well, not a full tree house, but I thought it might be nice to have a platform and a ladder. We could lunch up here sometimes and you can read up here in the summer since there’s so much shade,” he explained.

“That… sounds really nice, actually,” I admitted and with the way his face immediately lit up, I knew that was all it took for him to decide to do it, “I can help. I don’t know much about building in a tree, but I’ve made things like that before for my job. We should probably hold off until late spring, though, just until we’re sure it won’t snow again.”

“You have got to be kidding me, it’s late March!” he protested, “I know it hasn’t been warm lately, but how can it snow this late?”

“It’s snowed in May before,” I shrugged, “Once it even snowed in June.”

He made a horrified, disgusted face and I laughed at him. I thought that I was bad about hating the cold, but Heero would probably be happy to live in sweltering heat every, single day. We enjoyed the view for a bit more before the wind started to pick up and it got too uncomfortable to stay. Heero helped me down, Kanuck getting excited to have us back on solid earth after whining now and again that he couldn’t follow us up the tree, and we walked down the hill to the pond. The ducks quacked in alarm when they saw us approach and quickly swam to the far, other side where we couldn’t pester them. I would have to remember to bring some bread crumbs next time. I sat at the bank and watched them, wishing my life could be as complicated as a duck’s, just floating, eating, and worrying about nothing else except predators sneaking up on me. Heero scrounged around at the end of the pond until he found a couple of rocks. He flicked one of them on the surface of the pond and it skimmed it three times before falling into the water.

“Not really a great day for this,” he remarked and handed me the other flat rock, “The wind is making the water ripple too much.”

I stared at the rock like it was an alien thing, not having a clue what to do with it.

“Please tell me you’ve skipped rocks before,” he said with the same lost expression he gets when he finds out I didn’t have the same idyllic experiences that he had as a child, like he’s sad and bewildered, but also not surprised given what I’ve told him my childhood was like.

“Not really. I don’t get what the point is,” I told him and he gave me the same look that I had been giving the rock.

“For fun,” he said obviously, like he was explaining something fundamental to a child or someone from a vastly different culture, “You know, fun, that thing you do for pleasure and not work?”

“Never heard of it before,” I teased, but appeased him by standing and, remembering how he had thrown his own rock, I flicked it out onto the water.

I managed to get two skips with mine and felt more relieved than satisfied that I had managed to do it. It was like whistling, it seemed like anyone should be able to do it, so at least I hadn’t made myself look like an incompetent idiot.

“Not bad,” Heero praised, “Your wrist could use a bit more motion, but you just need to practice. It’s fun, right?”

“I suppose,” I conceded.

It was a little fun. Not like going for a run or the enjoyment I got from cooking, but it was pretty amusing when we got competitive over it. We skipped stones for a bit while Kanuck ignored us, watching the ducks with extreme interest, but he never made me nervous that he was going to take off after them. I didn’t skip as much as Heero did, he got five once, but I did get better than two after a while.

“We should probably head back in,” I said after a look at my cell phone, “I need to put the roast in the oven.”

“Alright.”

Kanuck whined when he went back into the house, but ran upstairs as soon as we had his leash off. It must be nice to be a dog and always have that kind of energy. I took care of dinner, following Mariela’s instructions to the letter, and we spent the rest of our time alone in the living room, playing more games. I actually felt regret when we heard the front door open and Kanuck came running down the steps, barking happily. I had enjoyed just being there with Heero and I had no idea when we would have a day like that again. Heero turned off the game console and we went to meet them.

“Well, looks like the house didn’t burn down,” Justin was joking with his wife, “I guess you owe me ten bucks.”

“That remains to be seen,” Mariela stuck her tongue out at him, the most childish gesture I have ever seen from any adult, “and you didn’t even check the liquor cabinet yet.”

“You guys are hilarious,” Heero muttered dryly, “I think we can be left alone for a few hours without getting into trouble.”

“Well, I’m sure Duo can,” his mother smirked at him, “You, on the other hand… I seem to remember leaving you alone once and coming home to find a broken window and jelly and popcorn all over the kitchen floor.”

“I was ten!” Heero protested, flushing with embarrassment, “I thought I would have enough time to clean up the kitchen before you got home, and I apologized for breaking the window. I was batting too close to the house.”

“A habit you quickly grew out of after that, thankfully,” Justin quipped and smiled warmly when he saw me, “Hi, Duo. Did the two of you have fun today?”

“Yes, sir,” I nodded.

He gave me a slightly put out look. I know how much he hates it when I call him ‘sir’, but I can’t seem to stop myself. Addressing adults politely is something that was drilled into me at a young age. It’s really just a reflex at this point.

“We just hung out,” my boyfriend said a bit defensively as his mother gave him a piercing stare, “I showed him that big hill out back near the pond.”

“Oh, that spot is so beautiful,” Mariela’s expression softened, her fears that we might have been doing something… inappropriate relieved for the moment, “It was wonderful in the summer. You should take Duo back out there when the flowers start to bloom.”

“I will,” he vowed.

When Mariela walked off to the kitchen to check on dinner, Justin flashed me a questioning look. It took me a moment to understand what he was asking before I remembered that he was aware of what Heero and I had really been doing that day and why we had wanted them out of the house. I nodded and he grinned, giving me a thumbs up and a clap on the shoulder in approval. My heart swelled, and not just because we had been successful in our subterfuge. Mariela might have suspected that Heero and I had been planning something for her birthday, but we had been incredibly thorough.

The rest of the evening was peaceful. We ate a hearty, delicious dinner and Heero and I were allowed to go upstairs while his parents cleaned up. We watched some television, played a few more games, and I read by myself in the gaming room with Pepper on my lap as Heero showered.

“Are you going to stay over after work tomorrow?” he asked me when he emerged again, toweling off his wet and messy hair with a towel.

I froze as I took him in, every last detail like I was looking at some exquisite painting. Fresh from his shower, his dark hair looked longer than it was and a few locks stuck to his cheeks. He hadn’t done a great job at drying himself off and his night shirt conformed perfectly to his body. It was ridiculous, but when he raised his arms to dry his hair and that shirt rode up, revealing his flat stomach and tanned skin, I felt my heart start to race and there was this strange warmth in my gut. For a moment, I couldn’t say a damned worth, my mouth was too dry with the realization of just how gorgeous he is.

“Uh…” was all I could say for a second as my face started to heat up before my brain properly returned to my head, “Yeah, I mean, I’ll try to.”

I half expected him to get annoyed at me again, but I didn’t want to make promises to him. I wasn’t going home and I had no desire to, but who knew what kind of mood my dad was in at that point. Maybe I should go home in the morning, I thought, just for a minute to make him think that I hadn’t disappeared. It was a good idea, but then I thought about how he had been that morning. That desperately hungry and pissed off look he had given me, the bulge in his pants and suddenly I didn’t care if it was a good idea or not. I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to go back to that. Because if he was still in that kind of mood, I knew exactly what he was going to do to me and it just wasn’t worth it. My terror wouldn’t let me anyway. To my utter relief, instead of getting pissy, my boyfriend smiled.

“We’ll keep the door unlocked, then,” was all he said, so diplomatically and for some reason, his easy acceptance almost had me crying.

He finished drying his hair, tossed the towel into the bathroom, and flopped down next to me on the couch. He smelled so good, the shampoo he had used a mix of honey, pears, and something else that I don’t know the name of, but smelled rather earthy. As he turned on the television and flipped through the channels, I became focused on the beads of water he had failed to dry off as they dripped down his neck from his thick mop of hair. Suddenly, I felt this urge to press my lips to his clean skin and taste those drops of water. I have no idea where that urge came from, like someone else had just planted it in my head because I’ve never felt anything like that before in my entire life. I had to forcefully pull my eyes off of him and back to my book, feeling like a pervert.

‘What the hell is wrong with me?’ I thought angrily as I looked at words that didn’t mean anything.

I felt so weird, hot and prickly, and wondered if this was how Trowa had felt when he had wanted to touch me or if this was something completely different. Heero found some detective show to watch and we passed the rest of the night in that silent companionship that I love. I actually did get some reading done, but found myself sneaking glances over at him and at some point, we had gotten so close to each other that we were almost on top of one another.

“I think I’m going to call it a night,” Heero said a bit sheepishly around ten, “I had a lot of fun today. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Ok,” I said, “Good ni-,”

He silenced me with a deep kiss and when his tongue slipped into my mouth for a moment or two, something that he rarely does, I couldn’t stop a small sound of enjoyment. It’s such a weird thing and I never really got what the point was of doing that while kissing. Trowa had done it a lot, and while I did kind of like it, I had always found it bizarre and had never been able to get the courage to do it back to him. I mean, the human mouth is a pretty filthy thing and wasn’t it just a little bit disturbing, having someone’s tongue in your mouth? But with Heero, it was nice and intimate and I didn’t feel the least bit grossed out. I actually enjoyed it, hell if I know why it’s different with him.

“Good night,” he said with a cheeky smile, “Don’t stay up too late since you won’t get much sleep again tomorrow.”

There was just a small, tight note to his tone telling me how much that fact displeased him, but he didn’t start another argument about it.

“I won’t,” I promised and felt that pang of loss again, knowing that he was going to his bed and I would be going to mine alone, save for Pepper.

Kanuck followed his master into the bedroom and I wondered about doing the same myself. Heero was right, I have very few chances to actually get a decent night’s rest, at least compared to how most people sleep, but I didn’t feel all that tired and knew if I tried to force myself to sleep, I wasn’t going to sleep at all. I stayed up for another hour watching television until I felt relaxed and drowsy enough to maybe fall asleep. I collected my cat and my book and returned to the guest room, dressing in my pajamas before brushing my teeth and getting into bed. I lasted about twenty minutes of lying there in the dark before I had to switch the light back on. It wasn’t because of any insomnia, I just wasn’t all that tired at eleven pm. I had had a nice day and felt refreshed after how shitty the previous one had been. It felt like it had been a long time since I could look back on an entire day and smile, which was ridiculous.

I stayed in bed and read for another couple of hours before I dozed off. If I had done that at home, my father would have killed me. But Heero’s parents didn’t lecture me about it and when I woke up the next morning, I found that someone had come in to turn the light off at some point. Wednesday turned out to be another one of those nice, almost lazy days that I don’t trust. Justin ended up taking Mariela out for breakfast while craftily leaving a note for Heero and I to decorate the kitchen before they got back. Heero pulled out a box from one of the storage rooms that seemed to be filled with only birthday decorations and we decked the entire kitchen out with garland, streamers, and a large banner that said ‘happy birthday’ on it.

I can’t remember the last time I had decorated for any occasion, even Christmas. My dad always felt it was a waste of time and gaudy. I remember when I was really little and my mom would make the effort to put up wreaths, but my father had always refused to help and year after year, the number of decorations and enthusiasm over the holiday had dwindled. By the time I had turned ten, we had done little to nothing for the holiday. My mom stopped going to church on Christmas Eve and those decorations stayed in their box in the basement.

Our only task done, I used what remained of the fruit bowl we had cut up the other day and made crepes with honey and powdered sugar. Heero teased that he was probably having a nicer breakfast than his parents were. I think he has some kind of daily quota to make me blush and that’s the only reason why he slings around compliments like that. We finished the dishes, got dressed for the day, and watched television for ten minutes before his parents got back.

Mariela gasped in surprised when she went into the kitchen and immediately whirled on Justin, who was smirking with amusement, and a bit of triumph that we had actually managed to surprise her.

“You!” she accused, punching him lightly in the shoulder, “I told you not to do anything like this this year!”

“Ow,” he laughed and held up his hands in mock surrender, “It’s wasn’t me. This was all Heero’s idea.”

Her expression softened and she hugged Heero tightly.

“Oh, honey, this is so sweet of you,” she said, “But you didn’t have to go through all this trouble…”

“Happy slightly early birthday, Mom,” he hugged her back, “And it wasn’t any trouble. Duo helped, too.”

She let go of her son to draw me into an equally tight hug, shocking me.

“Duo, thank you, this was so kind of you,” she said, making me blush a little.

“I didn’t do much,” I protested, “I just wanted to do something after everything you’ve done for me…”

“You’re here,” she drew back and held my face in her hands, her face so open and honest and happy that I didn’t know how to respond, “that’s all I could want!”

I really didn’t know what to say to that, that she even cared that I was celebrating her birthday with them.

“Duo can’t stay for dinner because of work,” Justin told her, “So  we’re going to have dinner instead of lunch if that’s alright with you.”

“Of course!” she beamed, “That sounds perfect.”

“But you can’t lift a finger,” he ordered, “No cooking, no cleaning. I’ll make dinner and Heero will clean up, but I don’t want to see you doing a single thing.”

She huffed at him, but it was obvious that she was pleased. Justin watched her like a hawk as she sat down on the living room couch and picked up the book that she had been slowly making her way through. Heero busied himself with making her a cup of tea and Justin started preparing for ‘dinner,’ putting some potatoes in the oven.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” I asked him.

“Sure,” he smiled at me, “I have some steaks marinating in the refrigerator in the garage. Could you get them for me? It’s too early to broil them, but they need to be at room temperature.”

I nodded eagerly and ran out grab the bag of meat, sauce, and spices. There were four of them, I realized with surprise, Justin had planned for me to have dinner with them, unless he had just happened to have these on hand, but I doubted that.

“Thanks,” he said as I put them on the counter, “I don’t suppose you know how to make twice baked potatoes?”

“Yeah, I’ve made them a bunch of times,” I said.

“Got any pointers?” he asked.

“Sure!” I felt incredibly flattered that he was asking me and the two of us hashed out all the ingredients that we needed.

He had a solid recipe and everything that he would need, but I had a few extra tips and herbs that I thought would make it better. It made me feel good to have something to contribute to the meal since, although it was for Mariela’s birthday, I was still being fed for free.

“You don’t have to help me make them if you don’t want to,” he told me, but he obviously knew what my answer was going to be, “Heero told me all the effort you put into making the cake, it wouldn’t be right of me to ask you to do more.”

“I don’t mind,” I insisted as I dug around in their fridge for some bacon, “I like cooking and you and Mariela have done so much for me… I’m happy to give something back, even something this small.”

“It isn’t small,” he said softly, “I really appreciate you making the cake, Duo. I know you don’t feel inconvenienced, but it means a lot to me, and especially Mariela.”

“I hope she likes it,” I murmured, flushing darkly at his praise.

“It’s from you,” he said with a serene, knowing smile, “so I know she will.”

I felt this odd, little bit of warmth grow in my chest. I tried to hide how much him saying those things meant to me, but I think he got it with his pleased expression. We worked in silence around each other getting the food ready, Justin frying the bacon and me getting all the ingredients and tools ready to make the potatoes as soon as they came out of the oven. Heero poked his head in at one point looking for me, but when he saw what we were doing, he shook his head with this amused smile and vanished again. Cooking with Justin reminded me of the previous morning, how well Heero and I had molded into a team. It was different, but Heero really is like his dad. They both have this… calmness about them that has a similar effect on me. There wasn’t any desperate need for conversation and the silence was very companionable.

My relationship with Heero’s father is kind of strange, I guess. I like him a lot, not just because he and Heero are so similar, there’s just something about him that makes me feel relaxed, like I can be honest with him and don’t have to feel anxious around him at the same time that I probably should. He’s kind, patient, intelligent, and understanding, all the things that I’m sure everyone wishes they had in a parent, but I’ve never experienced with mine. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that he’s everything my father isn’t, he’s just… this window into a normal life, I guess. I still don’t know what to make of him half the time, how to act around him. One minute I’m just hanging around him like we’re almost friends, the next he’s peering into my soul and guessing at things like he can actually read my mind.

I guess that’s why, at the same time I feel comfortable around him, he also can make me feel on edge. Being around him is dangerous because without saying a word about it, he had already guessed that my father is beating me and that I have issues with self-confidence and who even knows what else. That terrifies me. He’s never done anything about it that should make me worry, but it sets me on edge that he can see those things. I have secrets that no one should ever know about. I don’t know if I can trust him like I do Heero. Maybe that’s because of my relationship with my own father, but I don’t really know a lot about his father beyond what I see on the surface.

Beyond that fear, being around Justin hurts. When I look at him, I see the father that I wish I had and as wonderful as it feels when he acts like I’m his kid, when he does nice things for me or ruffles my hair or worries over me in his subtle, non-overbearing way, it rips my heart to pieces because it just reminds me of everything I’ve ever wanted out of my father, just a tiny piece of affection, and how I’ll never have that. And I wonder why. What makes Justin such an amazing dad and a loving husband, and mine such a monster?

I pushed those thoughts away and just focused on what I was doing. We made an obscene amount of food; broccoli, twice baked potatoes loaded with bacon, chives, and cheese, crescent shaped butter rolls, and steaks marinated in a rich, garlic ginger sauce. It was like Christmas all over again and I wondered if every special occasion was like this. I tried to assure myself that it wasn’t a waste of food, nothing was going to get thrown out, but the only thing that made me feel better was knowing that I could take some of it home for my mother.

“This smells delicious!” Mariela exclaimed when she walked back into the kitchen with her empty tea cup, “Duo, you didn’t make all of this, did you? I hope you made my lazy husband chip in at least a little.”

I flushed again while Justin rolled his eyes at her.

“I only made the potatoes and rolls,” I said weakly.

“Only, he says,” she teased and suddenly hugged me, “You are just so sweet, you know that, don’t you?”

“If you say so,” I murmured lowly, feeling like I was going to combust.

“I think I have everything under control now, Duo, if you want to watch television,” Justin told me, “The steaks should be ready in twenty minutes. Send Heero in to set the table in twenty-five, will you? You’ve done enough work for today.”

I nodded and left just as Mariela was wrapping her arms around him and kissing his cheek with this tender look in her eyes. It was the same look that Heero gave me sometimes.

“Sorry my dad kidnapped you,” my boyfriend teased as I flopped down on the couch next to him.

“He didn’t kidnap me, I volunteered,” I insisted.

“I know,” he smiled like he thought I was cuter than a puppy, “You just wanted to help. I know you feel like you have to pay us back for things, but you really don’t have to. There isn’t some kind of… balance that you have to keep measured. Just because someone does something nice for you, it doesn’t mean that you owe them something. I buy you things because I love you. My parents let you stay here because they like you and they know that things are hard for you at your house sometimes. They just want to help. You don’t need to feel like you have to give back all the time.”

I looked down at my hands, focusing on the lines of my palms and the little, white scars here and there.

“I know that,” I murmured, “I know that you and your parents don’t see things like that… But it makes me feel better knowing that I’m not totally useless, that I can do nice things for you and your family. It… it makes me feel less like a leech.”

Heero slid his hand over mine and for a moment, I was fascinated by the difference of our skin tones, how his palm was bigger than mine, but my fingers were longer.

“You aren’t a leech,” he insisted, “Your dad might have made you feel like that, but you aren’t, and you don’t need to see things like he does. Just because he thinks everyone needs to be useful or pull their own weight or that an act of kindness has to mean a kind of debt because he doesn’t understand how to give without taking, it doesn’t mean you need to believe that.”

Did I believe it? I guess I did, at least a little. I know that my desire to do things for Heero and his family is partially because of him, because of how he raised me. He would do things for people, but only as favors. I saw that clearly with the first job he got for me, but its more than that. He told me once when I was a kid to be careful with people that gave you too much, that sooner or later, they would want something out of you. Nothing is for free. And if someone does do something nice for you, pay them back as soon as possible. Then you don’t owe them anything, because you don’t want someone to have that kind of power over you. That’s how my father sees kindness, not as something done out of love, but a form of manipulation. Or maybe I’m wrong and he’s just bitter, but doesn’t always see things that way. It’s hard to tell with someone as closed off as him, someone who doesn’t have much use for other people to begin with.

“It’s not completely about him,” I confessed softly, “A part of it is, maybe, but it’s not always about thinking that I need to pay you back because I owe you. I… I haven’t had a lot of people give me things. I’ve had even less people be kind to me,” I curled my fingers around his, “I just… this is the only way I can show how much I appreciate it… how much it means to me, that’s all.”

He gave me that smile, that special, tender one that makes me feel like he’s holding me even when he isn’t, and leaned in to kiss my cheek.

“I love you so much, you know that?” he said, more of a statement than a question.

“What brought that on?” I blinked owlishly at him.

“Nothing in particular,” he said with a slight, teasing tone and kissed the corner of my mouth, “Just you.”

He finished his little trail of kisses and pressed his lips against mine. He was doing that a lot more lately, kissing me, but I certainly wasn’t going to complain about it. I liked the kissing and he hadn’t tried to cop a feel or shove his hand down my pants, so even though I realized that this was another progression in our relationship, it was one that I could handle. Someone, far too close to us, suddenly cleared their throat very loudly and I nearly jumped right off the couch.

“You two ready to eat?” Justin asked wryly from the doorway, “or should we wait until you’re finished here?”

Heero glared heatedly at his father, obviously annoyed at having been interrupted. I just felt like steam was going to come out of my ears out of pure humiliation and had the urge to hide my face in Heero’s shirt. At least his father was taking this with amusement instead of outrage, I thought, but that really didn’t help the whole embarrassment thing, especially when Justin chuckled a little and shook his head at us. I swear, the man thinks embarrassing his kid is some kind of competitive sport. Heero got off the couch, grumbling about nosey parents and I followed him into the kitchen. He set the table, absolutely refusing my attempts to help him, draping a white, linen tablecloth over the table and even lighting some candles even though it was afternoon.

‘Dinner’ was amazing and I don’t think I had eaten that much since the Christmas dinner I had had with Heero’s family. Everything tasted perfect and better yet, Mariela seemed so happy and stunned by the effort we had put into the little surprise.

“Well, that’s it for me,” she sighed, leaning back into her chair, “No dinner. Or breakfast for that matter.”

“You’d better not be full,” Justin chuckled, “There’s still cake.”

“Of course not,” she immediately perked up, “Didn’t you know I have a secondary stomach just for sweets?”

That made him chuckle again. It’s true that Mariela has a serious sweet tooth, part of the reason, she says, why she’s always baking cookies and pies and who even knows what else, so she can indulge and claim she was just making them for someone else. I started to get up to fetch the cake, but Justin held his hand up.

“I’ll get it,” he said, “You’ve done enough, sit back down.”

I sat, suddenly feeling very nervous and berated myself for it. It was just a stupid cake, not a final essay or a science fair project. All that mattered was that it was edible, right? But I still felt my stomach doing flip flops in hopes that Mariela would like it. Justin came back up after a few minutes bringing the cake and I saw that he had lit some tiny, blue candles on the top of it, being very careful to avoid the decorations I had made. I breathed with relief when I also saw that the swirls I had made were still intact. I had worried that they might get mushy, but we had been pretty quick in getting it into the fridge. Mariela’s dark brown eyes went wide with amazement as Justin put the cake down in front of her and he and Heero started singing happy birthday to her. I jumped in, a bit awkwardly at first, but got my stride in the second verse. Mariela blew out all the candles and marveled at the white and red cake.

“This is beautiful!” she said, “What bakery did you get it from?”

I immediately went bright red again as I realized that it wasn’t just a line, she really thought they had bought the cake from some place. I knew that I had put a lot of effort into it, but I didn’t think it looked that professional.

“The one sitting right next to you,” Justin smirked.

It took her a moment to realize what he meant by that and then she looked over at me in surprise and I really wished Justin had lied. I don’t know why it embarrasses me so much when people fuss over me or praise me, it just does. I guess I don’t like the attention and I never see any of that stuff as special, so it makes me feel weird when Heero and his parents or even Quatre said otherwise.

“Duo, you made this?” she asked me in awe.

I nodded shyly.

“It’s not a big deal,” I tried to downplay it, “I just… I didn’t have any money to get you a present, and I wanted to do something special-,”

I didn’t get the chance to finish my near rant as she leaned over in her chair and wrapped me up in a crushing hug.

“Oh, Duo, of course it’s a big deal! I love it! You’re so talented and it’s so beautiful! It must have taken so much work!” she gushed, “Those flowers on top are so pretty! You really didn’t need to do all that just for me.”

“It wasn’t too hard,” I murmured even as I hugged her back, feeling like my face was on fire, “and I didn’t do it by myself. Heero helped.”

My boyfriend snorted.

“I sliced some strawberries,” he refused to give himself any credit, “You’re the one that made the cake and decorated it.”

Mariela finally let me go and continued to marvel over the cake, especially when she finally let Justin cut into it and she saw the strawberries and cream between the layers.

“I never would have thought to do that with an angel food cake,” she admitted, accepting a slice of the cake from Justin, “It must have been difficult.”

“Not really,” I confessed, thanking Heero’s father when he handed me my own plate, “I kind of half-assed it. I didn’t have time to bake the layers separately, so I just layered the batter in the pan.”

Mariela made a pleased noise when she took the first bite of cake.

“This is delicious! You made the whipped cream yourself, didn’t you?” she asked with interest.

I nodded.

“I thought it would taste better. It’s fresher this way,” I said.

“I certainly think so,” she winked like we were sharing some grand secret with each other, “I always try to make my own, too. These strawberries are nice and ripe, too, and the cake is so soft!”

I smiled back at her, immensely relieved that she liked it. I tasted the cake for myself and had to agree with her assessment. The cake had come out perfectly, not too moist, not dry, the perfect consistency for angel food. Even the whipped cream had come out well, light and airy with just the right amount of sweetness. I felt that sense of accomplishment that I always get when something I make comes out alright, no matter how easy or difficult the recipe. I didn’t really care if I was a good cook or if people thought I had some kind of talent. Mariela liked it and that was all that mattered.

We all had seconds of the cake, with only a half left over. Justin and Heero cleared the table, leaving Mariela and I to relax for a moment. She reached over and patted my hand with this serene smile on her face.

“Thank you so much for the cake, Duo. It was lovely.”

“You’re welcome,” I ducked my head, still feeling shy about it, but that just made her chuckle.

Heero disappeared upstairs and came back down with a present wrapped in lilac and robin’s egg blue paper. It wasn’t immaculate, but if he had been the one to wrap it, he was a better wrapper than he was a cook. His mother smiled at him when he handed it to her and unwrapped it carefully, fussily saving the wrapping paper like I do, and opened the box to reveal a dress. It was a very pretty thing: a sleeveless summer dress made of gauzy, soft linen with crisscrossed violet ribbons on the back down to the middle, ending in a small, but elegant bow. It was very long and would fall to Mariela’s ankles.

From the bottom of the dress to just short of the waist, there were flowers of a million different colors and hues reaching upward in an ocean of color. Instead of sewn into the cloth, it looked like someone had painted them on by hand with watercolors, the paint creating this gorgeous bleeding effect, making the flowers look like they were made of water and mist. I’m not exactly an expert in fashion, but even I knew that the dress must have cost a fortune. If that weren’t enough, there was another box in the package, this one containing a necklace and earrings that clearly were chosen to go with the dress.

Both the necklace and earrings were silver and simply designed. The necklace was a thin, silver chain that led to a cluster of silver flowers and diamond beads. Dangling from that was a single, five petaled flower, each pedal a diamond and hanging from that, another cluster of three oval shaped gems. The earrings were similarly done: a cluster of flowers, the petals mere outlines of silver with three diamond ovals and a tiny flower and diamonds dangling from them, the design very elegant and underdone compared to some of the gaudy monstrosities I’ve seen girls like Relena and Dorothy wear.

I doubted they were actually diamonds, unless Heero really had that much money. I mean, I know he gets a decent allowance and hardly spends any of it unless it’s on me, and I have no concept of how much a diamond that size costs, but it still amazes me how people like Relena can walk around wearing those rocks like they aren’t decked out in thousands of dollars’ worth of jewelry just for the hell of it. I can’t think about it too much or it makes me feel ill, how someone like me could survive for months of what they just casually wear on their fingers. I don’t begrudge them that, I just don’t see the point of it and I have no idea what that luxury feels like. My mother doesn’t own a lot of jewelry and most of it, including her wedding ring, had belonged to my grandmother. She keeps all of it carefully hidden so my father can’t get to it. I haven’t even seen her wear her wedding band since I was a kid.

Relena probably has no concept of it, having been showered with expensive gifts her entire life and I bet she’s even come to expect getting gifts like that, but Mariela clearly didn’t even though I know she has jewelry, she only tends to wear the expensive stuff on special occasions, and only ever to go with what she’s wearing. She just looked amazed for a moment, like she couldn’t believe what she was looking at, marveling at the jewelry and dress with the same wonder that she had the cake I had made for her.

“Oh…” she put a hand to her mouth, tears gathering in her eyes, “Oh, Heero, they’re beautiful…”

She carefully put her presents on the table and got up to hug him.

“Thank you so much, Heero,” she kissed his cheek, “I love my present.”

“You’re welcome, Mom,” he blushed a little and hugged her back, “I’m glad you like them.”

“Sixteen years old and already upstaging me,” his father shook his head but I could tell that he was impressed.

“Sorry, Dad,” Heero grinned, completely unapologetic.

Presents delivered and cake eaten, we finished cleaning up the kitchen and then it was time for me to head off to work.

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay for a bit longer?” my boyfriend fretted when I came back downstairs, dressed in my work clothes and grabbed my boots from the hall closet.

I felt annoyed that he was asking me that and gave him a little glare. He knew what my answer would be and I didn’t appreciate the temptation. Of course I wanted to stay for longer. Of course I didn’t want to go to work, especially after what had happened on Monday. I was trying very hard not to think about it, honestly. But I had already accepted a while ago that this was always going to be an argument between us, me being a workaholic and him wanting me to be more laid back and stop working so much. To my surprise, Justin butted in on my behalf.

“Duo is more responsible than you, Heero,” he said dryly, “He isn’t going to drop everything and push his luck just because you want to hang out some more. God help you when you get a job.”

Heero rolled his eyes at him, but Justin just ignored him and smiled at me.

“Thank you for everything you did,” he put his hand on my shoulder, “I really can’t thank you enough for making the cake and helping me with dinner. You went out of your way and we really appreciate it.”

Mariela muscled her way past him to hug me.

“Thank you so much, Duo! I love my cake. It was so thoughtful of you, everything you did to put this together.”

“It wasn’t any trouble,” I assured her, but melted into the hug anyway.

I thought about my own mother and wondered if she was ok, feeling that pang of guilt again that I had just left her with my father and she could be in the hospital for all I knew.

“Hold on just a sec,” Heero’s mother ordered and ran to the kitchen, coming back with a bag of something that she gave me, “Leftovers. I thought you could have some for dinner tonight. And feel free to take whatever you want when you go home for your parents.”

“Thank you very much.”

“I’ll walk you out,” Justin offered, grabbing his coat.

Panic stabbed at me, remembering the other times he had followed me to the bus station and the talks that we had had, but I brushed it off. He was just being nice, I told myself. I waved my boyfriend goodbye with the promise that I would see him in the morning. I tried not to mull over the worried look on his face. It wasn’t getting any easier, knowing that I was giving him a complex over his concern for me and my work schedule. Justin and I walked to the bus station in silence and when we got there, he suddenly shoved something into my coat pocket like a ninja. I blinked in confusion and pulled out a ten-dollar bill.

“Take the bus,” he ordered, “to and from work today. The weather forecast said it’s going to get chilly tonight and I don’t want you walking around in the dark if there’s ice on the sidewalks.”

Ah, that’s why he had followed me out, to make sure I got on the bus. I nodded.

“I will,” I promised.

It’s kind of weird thinking that not all that long ago, I would have protested vehemently and tried to give the money back to him. Heero and his family were changing me, but I’m still not sure if that’s a good thing or not, if it was good that I was getting used to the handouts and finding it easier to just accept them. Justin smiled in relief and ruffled my hair, laughing when I pretended to be annoyed by it, but he knew that I really wasn’t. He stayed until I got on the bus, then left back for his cozy house and loving family. I found an empty seat at the very back of the bus and called up my mother’s work, sagging with relief when she picked up.

We talked for the entire bus ride. She asked if I was ok, if the Yuy’s were treating me alright. She was fine, she said, but there was a small quiver to her voice that told me that she might not be too badly hurt, but she was not ‘fine’. Dad was fine, too. Everything was fine. She asked when I thought I would be coming home. I told her the truth, I had no clue. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe. She didn’t seem all that bothered by that, which was the most telling sign. She thought it might be better if I was someplace safe, even if it might make my father angry.

“Duo…” she suddenly asked, completely out of the blue and with some hesitation, “Are you happy?”

I fell silent. I didn’t know how to answer that question. If I told the truth, would she resent me? And what was the truth? I thought about everything that had happened in the last couple of days, all my dark thoughts and feelings weighing me down, the swirling depression that so often comes upon me for no concrete reason at all. And I thought about being with Heero and the tight hug Mariela had pulled me into when she had thanked me for baking a cake for her.

“Yeah,” I confessed, “I think I am.”

“Good,” she said with this soft, relieved sigh, “I’m glad.”

I almost started to cry right there on the damned bus. Because I was happy… and she wasn’t. I couldn’t take much more after that, not if I wanted to keep my eyes dry, and rushed to say goodbye to her. Just like that, after a less than ten-minute conversation, I felt the good vibes I had gotten from the day at Heero’s just wither away and this melancholy settle over me. What right did I have to feel happy after I had abandoned my mother for two days? She was working hard and being miserable stuck in that house with my father and I had just run away from all of it again. I had spent the last two days pretending that my home and my family and my problems didn’t exist because it was easier. I had eaten full meals, slept well, smiled and laughed and cozied up to my boyfriend. All the while, my father had probably been beating on my mom and making her feel like lower than dirt. Just like he always has to both of us. I actually felt guilty just because I had been happy.

That depression refused to leave me for the rest of the day and followed me into the small hours of the morning. Just this feeling of guilt and sadness weighing me down, making me feel like walking garbage. I desperately grasped at my memories of the last two days, all those wonderful moments that had made me feel content and at peace, but it was so hard. Even when I got that spark back, I would just remember the sad relief in my mother’s voice and I would get dragged back down again.

 

End Part 1 of 2

 

 


	64. Chapter 8 Part 19 (part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> continuation of Part 19. Duo struggles to balance his life with Heero and his life with his father. Between dealing with the animosity at work, Heero's concerns over him, and his father's rage at disobeying him, will Duo be able to handle the stress and make the right choices?

A Stagnation of Love

Chapter 8

Part 19 (part 2 of 2)

 

Work didn’t help. My shift was… well, it was weird. Worse than I had hoped, better than I had dreaded. It didn’t help that I walked to Leneski’s with a dark cloud over my head, emotionally speaking. I felt on edge with my melancholy, my skin too thin like it had been after my fight with Trowa, and I was in no mood for anyone’s shit. Not exactly a great mood to go into a place where everyone either hated my guts or was nervous around me. Everyone on my crew, even Solo, were gone on a job, but that was to be expected with me coming in late. The other crews were gone too, the only company van in the lot belonged to Leneski, so I felt less on edge not having to be around the other guys, but not by much. If everyone was gone, that meant that I had to ask Leneski to drive me to whatever site we were working at.

In the past, this would have been no problem at all. My boss has driven me around before in the other times that I’ve needed to come in late and he doesn’t mind doing it. Didn’t mind doing it. This wasn’t the past anymore. Everything was fucked now. He didn’t want anything to do with me beyond employing me and I didn’t even want to ask him for the favor. I would have been content if I didn’t have to see or interact with anyone there except for Solo ever again, but life doesn’t work that way. If I could stand having to talk to teachers like Haskins, I could stand talking to my boss, right?

I stashed my stuff in my locker and put my dinner in the fridge, then sucked it up and went to my boss’ office. Leneski looked up from the papers he was shuffling and the awkward way that he looked at me, not with outright hate, but with apprehension, like I was some painful chore he had known he had needed to take care of and was dreading, twisted my stomach into a knot.

“Oh, Duo…” he said and I could actually feel just how much he didn’t want to be around me, “You’re in.”

“Yeah, I’m here,” I said flatly because it was better than showing the pain that I was feeling.

“I guess you need a ride, huh?” his words were conversational, the sort of thing he would have said before, but his tone sure wasn’t, it was stiff and unnatural.

He just stood there for a moment, looking away from me like he expected someone to come running out of nowhere to take this problem off my hands.

“Guess I’ll take you,” he said hesitantly, doing little to hide how much he didn’t want to be stuck in a van with me.

That pain ripped through my chest and bitterness like pus leaked out of the wounds. A week ago, he would have just shrugged and taken me along and made some joke about needing to get out of the office anyway. We might not have been friends, but he had liked me back then. Before, he had let me listen to whatever radio station I had wanted to, not even making fun of my penchant for jazz music and older rock bands. He would have bitched about his wife’s terrible cooking and the latest stupid thing one of his sons had done and asked me how my life was going, how I was doing in school. Now, he didn’t even want to get close to me. He didn’t want me in his van because I made him uncomfortable. He didn’t want a fag in his vehicle, it might taint his precious upholstery.

I felt it all being ripped away, our relationship, that comradery, the comfort that I felt working there. Monday, when it had all happened, I had felt sad. But right then, seeing that just knowing that I was gay was making my boss treat me like a fucking leper, I didn’t feel sad. I felt pissed. You know, I never really lost anything when I had come out at school. Sure, things had gotten more dangerous for me and it’s a lot harder just walking the halls now. But I’m not like Heero or even Trowa. I had never had friends to distance themselves from me like a particularly bad smell. I had never lost a friendship or felt betrayed. I had never been popular or had much of anything before then.

Even on my first day of school, no one had been all that eager to make friends with me. I hadn’t needed them to know that I was a fag to treat me like that, I had been marked by Relena. Or maybe it’s more than that. Maybe I’m just different. Quiet, too many rough edges, too poor, too anti-social. I guess it doesn’t matter. The only people that I had ever cared about losing had turned out to be gay, too. It wasn’t until this that I really knew what it felt like to be treated like walking garbage. I think I hated Leneski right then. Because what the fuck was so wrong with me that he didn’t even want to give me a ride? Was I such a terrible person, just for being in love with someone of the same gender as me? Was I any different than I had been before? Solo was fine with it, Heero’s parents were fine with it, so why wasn’t he? Did he really think that I was a disgusting person, that I was going to try something with him, give him something just by being near him?

“Never mind,” I said curtly, my voice frosty and sharp, “I’ll take the bus.”

Leneski was taken aback by my tone, one that he had never heard me utter before. There was this tiny voice in the back of my head reminding me that he could still fire me, but I suddenly didn’t care, I was too angry.

“Duo-,” he began to say, bothered by something. For a minute, I almost thought he looked guilty, but he was probably just shocked that I was giving him an attitude.

“I said forget it!” I snapped and he actually flinched, “I don’t fucking need this bullshit. I’ll find my own way there so I can do my goddamned job.”

I stormed out of his office, only just narrowly ignoring the urge to slam his door in pure pettiness thanks to the warning bells going off in my head. I would be lucky, again, if I still had a job after that little outburst, but I was too hurt and mad to think about the consequences. It was just like I had told him. I didn’t need that bullshit. I was so fucking sick of all of it, of being different, of being the diseased rat among the pure, innocent rabbits. I was sick of being the fag. So much for having a good day. That thought almost had me laughing right there in the damned shop, but I was right on the edge of my rage and frustration turning into a crying fit that I didn’t dare laugh at anything, bitter or not.

I got the address off the white board in the break room that lists all of our jobs and which crews are assigned to them. Thankfully there was only one for mine for the day, so I didn’t have to guess. I was suddenly very thankful that Justin had given me bus fare because I only had enough change myself for one trip and I didn’t know if I would have a ride back. So, I got back on the bus and took the ten-minute ride to a tiny, Italian restaurant in western, central Nausten to meet up with my crew. I probably could have walked, but I was in an incredibly foul mood by then, it was getting colder just as Justin had promised, and it was still a bit of a long walk. As I sat there on the bus, I suddenly had the thought that I should call Heero. He would want me to when I was feeling this way, and he would make me feel better. But I didn’t want to talk to him when I was in that kind of poisonous mood. I don’t know why, like I was scared that it might taint him somehow or I was scared of what he might think of me, but I didn’t dare even text him.

I saw the white vans parked in the vacant lot in front of the property and knew I had gotten the right address. I saw Caleb and Mitch in front, ripping up boards from the wrap around porch and my stomach sank as I senselessly worried that Solo might not be there. It was stupid of me to think that. I couldn’t see the rest of my crew, either. Just like it was stupid to think that my coworker could really have my back. I mean, what did he expect to do? Never take a day off just because he had to look out for me? It was ridiculous. But thinking that he might not be there made me want to get right back on that bus for the third time and just go back to Heero’s. I needed to see the one person that wouldn’t look at me like my boss had and the thought that I would have to work with the rest of my crew without him was unbearable for some reason.

I walked past Caleb and Mitch, the both of them glaring at me heatedly. I fought the urge to glare back at them and flip them off, but I really didn’t need to incite violence during work, even if punching something would have made me feel a tiny bit better. Then Leneski really would fire me. I just ignored the both of them, daring them to do something or say something to me. They didn’t, but I could feel their cold eyes on me as I walked around back. I could have cried with relief when I found Solo working on the back of the porch with some of the other guys, who glared just like Caleb and Mitch had, but I didn’t care about them even if their obvious contempt for me fed the anger burning in my gut. I get worse at school and they could glare all they wanted so long as they stayed the fuck away from me and kept their mouths shut.

“Hey,” Solo called when he saw me and I felt that bitter anger retreat a fraction just to have someone who was happy to see me, or at least didn’t look like they wanted to spit on me.

“Hi,” I muttered back icily, unable to get into a neutral mood even around him.

“What crawled up your ass and died?” he joked, raising one golden eyebrow.

“Nothing,” I brushed him off as I looked through the pile of tools he had for what I would need to remove boards.

“You don’t want to talk about it?” he asked awkwardly, not really the type to want to talk about problems, but he was still making the effort even if it wasn’t typical of him.

“I just want to work,” I grumbled.

He shrugged and went back to his own section of the porch. The physical labor actually helped my mood a lot. I won’t say that it cured me of that thundercloud or my anger, but instead of clocking one of my coworkers, I got to take that rage and frustration out on planks of wood. I tore and threw and swore and pulled, wrecking my back worse than I had the previous day for all that I even noticed that I was in pain. I busted my knuckles bloody from not even being careful or cautious with what I was doing, bruised both of my arms to hell and pulled a bunch of muscles everywhere, but by the time we broke for our lunch break, I was feeling better. Nothing like some physical venting to clear the head. I still felt depressed, but I didn’t want to punch anything anymore. It wasn’t the first time I had done something like that and Solo would usually tease me about it, but this time he wisely kept his mouth shut.

The other guys on the crew took one of the vans to head back to Leneski’s to have lunch, leaving the other van for us. I think they had planned for that and some of that bitterness from earlier threatened to come back, but I was just too tired and knew I was going to have to get used to it.

          “Want to head back to home base?” Solo asked as he put our tools away.

“I’m not hungry,” I admitted, “I had a big lunch before work. I was just going to hang out around here. Take a walk, maybe.”

I didn’t tell him that I just didn’t want to go back there, to have to be around the other guys and Leneski and deal with more of that shit, but I think Solo got that.

“Fuck that, you’re not leaving me to eat lunch with those pricks. There’s a bistro around the corner. You don’t have to order anything, just keep me company,” he said, “I’ll get you a soda or something.”

His offer surprised me. Solo doesn’t usually eat out because he claims it’s too expensive when he can just pick up something from a convenience store or a vending machine. I guess he didn’t want to go back to the office and eat near Caleb and that lot, either.

“Sure.”

We spent our lunch break at the bistro, Solo scarfing down a pastrami and cheese sandwich and me sipping at a Sierra Mist, in relative silence, only talking about banal subjects like the weather until we had to head back. Not as nice as my lunch had been, but a hell of a lot better than hanging around the office would have been. I didn’t throw myself at my work with the same… vigor as I had before lunch. I didn’t have the overwhelming need to attack blanks of wood like they had offended me. Even if I had, my body couldn’t keep up. My back was in agony and my fingers felt stiff, my knuckles raw. I had put disinfectant on them and popped some pain pills before we had left for lunch, but it wasn’t helping much. I was seriously dreading my second shift.

I felt relieved when it was time for us to go back to the office to clock out. Maybe the factory wasn’t glamorous, but I didn’t have to deal with those cold stares and slurs that I could clearly hear being muttered around me. I felt exhausted as I packed up my tools and wished that I could be at home with Heero instead of dragging my feet, my back craving a hot shower.

“He’s not riding with us,” I heard Caleb snarl as I walked around the restaurant to the front parking lot and saw the rest of our group in a huddle around the man, all facing off against Solo.

“What? You expect him to walk back to headquarters?” Solo snapped back at him.

“I don’t care how he gets there,” the other man sneered, “but he isn’t coming with us. None of us want to sit next to a fag.”

There was a general murmur of agreement. No wanted to sit close to me in the packed van. No one wanted to breathe the same air as me or risk bumping against me, like I was contagious.

“I can’t believe this shit,” Solo said condescendingly, “The whole lot of you! Grow a damned spine! He’s not going to feel you up!”

“You want to share a seat with the fudgepacker,” Caleb glared at him, “that’s fine by me, but you’re on your own.”

“I’ll walk,” I said coldly as I stormed past them, “I wouldn’t want my presence to inconvenience any of you for a five-fucking minute ride. You don’t have to worry about me grabbing your fat ass, Mr. Williams.”

Solo’s condescending tone didn’t have anything at all on mine. Caleb flushed with pure anger and his right hand curled into a fist. He hated it when people brought up his weight and it was all too easy to get that dig in. I was almost hoping that he would take a swing at me. I suddenly felt like fighting again. And sure, it made me a bit sick, that surge of anger, the desire to hit something, but I didn’t have the presence of mind to try Heero’s calming trick and the fact that I was fighting with a bunch of adults was so ridiculous to me.

“No, you’re not,” Solo snapped before Caleb got the chance to hit me, “I’ll drive, you can sit up front. That far away enough for you princesses?” he spat at the other guys, “If not, you can all pile into the other van for all I care, or you can suck it up for a freaking handful of minutes and sit in the back.”

He didn’t wait around to see what they planned to do and stomped over to Mitch, snagging the keys to one of the vans out of his hands and stormed over to it, throwing his tools in there. I followed him, handing the tools I had been using to him for him to do the same.

“Thanks, Solo,” I said softly.

I could feel that anger bleeding away a little again, just having him stick up for me and get pissed off on my behalf.

“Fucking immature pricks,” he muttered angrily, “Acting like they’re still in the third grade and they’re going to get cooties or some bullshit. Come on, I’ll let you pick the radio station so long as it isn’t country or pop.”

I got in up front with him as he turned the car on and waited to see if any of the guys were going to grow a pair and get in with us. I found a rock station because I knew he liked that sort of thing. The vans are four seaters, most of the space used for our equipment, so it would be really uncomfortable for all six of them to cram into one van together along with the paint cans, tools, and ladders. Mitch and Bruno got the short straw and, very grudgingly and with a great show of muttering and hot glares, got into the back of the van. Solo heroically ignored them, but I’m pretty sure he blasted the music as loudly as he did and made sure to hit every pothole he could find to piss them off even more.

I managed to get into the building, log the work I had done, grab my things, and punch out without having to see my boss. Then it was back on the bus. I would have been happy to just walk, but I had promised Justin that I would use the bus. At least Solo was going to take the bus with me, I really didn’t want to be alone with my thoughts. He had to use the bathroom before we left, so I wandered outside to wait for him. There were still too many of our coworkers getting their stuff there, and I knew Leneski was probably in his office. I didn’t want to see or deal with any of them and just being in that place for less than ten minutes had me desperately craving some fresh air.

It probably wasn’t the smartest idea that I’d ever had, going outside alone, away from Solo and Leneski who, even if he was treating me differently, still didn’t want a fight on his premises, in an area where my coworkers were coming and going. If I were an intelligent person, I would have just walked to the bus stop and waited for Solo there. Instead, like the moron that I am, I loitered outside in the parking lot, enjoying the crisp, cold air and the sound of birds chirping in the woods by the back lot.

“Hey, faggot!”

I was unsurprised to hear Caleb’s voice coming from behind me. For a moment, I wanted to be extremely childish and not even turn around, to just ignore that he even existed. But if he had anything in common with his piece of shit of a son, he would just punch me in the back of the head. Just as I was turning around to yell ‘what’ at him, he grabbed me by the front of my jacket and hauled me in close to him. I wasn’t frightened by it. If anything, I just felt bitter humor that the prick didn’t want to sit next to me in a van, but now his foul breath was washing right over my face.

“You got a lot of nerve, don’t ya, fairy?!” he snarled at me and I winced as I felt his saliva on my face, “Coming back here! No one wants you here, so why don’t you just get the fuck out, huh? You think you can suck up to the boss and Solo and the rest of us will just take it? You got some real balls on ya, huh?!”

I could feel his rage coming off of him like a vibration. He towered over me and even though he was a bit overweight, I could still feel the power in his arms and his hold on me. He could easily pound me into mush, but oddly enough, I didn’t feel all that scared of him. Not like I was of Zechs and my father. He was angry and mean and petty, but he wasn’t crazy and he wasn’t sadistic. He just wanted to teach me a lesson and get me away from him, even if he had to beat me up to do that. All I felt towards him was that bitterness and anger again, the rage that screamed at me that I didn’t need to take this. I might have done some bad things in my life, I might be trash, but I did not deserve the spite of people that didn’t even know me. The people that did, sure, but not these dickless assholes. Because they didn’t hate me and weren’t scared of me, they just hated what they thought I was. They didn’t know anything. They hated a goddamned bed time story in their heads.

“I don’t know,” I sneered at him, startling him by showing just how little afraid of him I was, “why don’t you tell me? Bigger than yours, obviously. I’m not the one quaking and pissing my pants in terror of a teenager.”

The man turned bright red at my insults and his entire face exploded with rage, his humiliation overriding his judgement just like I knew it would. Connie was the same way. Embarrass him a little and he acted like a freaking caveman. His large hand curled into a tight fist and he cocked it back, not even really thinking about what he was doing, just reacting on his desire to pound me into dust. That was ok, I could deal with someone trying to hit me a lot better than I could someone treating me in the way my boss had or calling me a faggot. You would think that after all this time, I would be used to it, just like I’m used to getting hit. I don’t know why I’m not. I don’t know why being treated this way cuts me to the core more than a blow.

I was ready for that punch and already was reacting by the time he pulled his arm back. Like most of the kids at school, he was going for my face. A rookie mistake. My father had taught me that if you really want to hurt someone, and make sure you were going to hurt them, you don’t go for the head. A hit like that is easier to dodge, which was my exact plan. But go for someone’s gut or knees and you can surprise them and wind them so the next hit, they can’t evade. And Caleb, though big, was a lot slower and clumsier than my father and Zechs, dodging his punch would be easy even with his grip on my jacket. If I could get out of it, I could get away from easily and defend myself without having to hit him at all. I bet he was just as slow at running. I didn’t get a chance to test that theory. Just as the bigger man was throwing his punch, Solo came up behind him and shoved him hard. Hard enough that he let go of my jacket and hit his head on the brick wall.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” my friend snarled at him, looking like the human personification of a pissed off wolf, “Huh?! What the fuck,” his own fist flew and slammed into the left side of Williams’ face, “is wrong with you?! Like beating up kids, do you?!” he hit him again, “Well how about me?!”

I watched in shock as Solo hit him a third time. Each blow was powerful and violent, easily as hard as my father can hit when he’s angry, and sent blood spraying out of Caleb’s mouth and nose. When Solo finally stopped hitting him, Caleb put a hand to his abused nose and his dark eyes went wide when his hand came away bloody. It was no wonder why Caleb was scared enough of the man to not tell Lorathe on me. Caleb was bigger, but there was no way he could hit like that.

“You…you’re crazy!” he sputtered, pointing at Solo in accusation with his bloody hand, “Absolutely insane!”

“Yeah, that’s right!” Solo roared back at him and took a threatening step forward, making Caleb flinch in fear, “I’m fucking crazy! Now get the hell out of here before I do something really nuts!”

The other man didn’t need to be told twice. With a glare of resentment that was totally spoiled by his swelling face and obvious fear, he practically ran to his car. Solo watched him go with a piercing stare, daring him to come back and try something. He shook his hand and I saw that there was blood on his knuckles, but I couldn’t tell if it was from Caleb or he had split them.

“You ok?” he asked me, doing a complete 180 from enraged to concerned, “He didn’t manage to hit you, did he?”

“N-no,” I stammered, still looking at him in shock.

“I’m sorry,” Solo murmured, looking at the ground, his expression suddenly downcast, “I frightened you.”

“No, it’s not that,” I assured him, “I just… I didn’t know you’re that strong, or that you would get so angry.”

“I just really hate it when someone only goes after someone ‘cuz they think they’re helpless. It disgusts me,” he growled and I knew that he was thinking about his sister, “Come on, let’s get the hell out of here.”

“You don’t need ice for your hand?” I asked softly, remembering how much my hand had hurt after I had hit that wall at school.

“Nah,” he grinned, playing it off with some bitter humor, “I get into fistfights all the time, I’m used to it.”

We walked out of the parking lot towards the main street together and I only just barely managed to not look back over my shoulder in paranoia to see if any of Caleb’s friends were following us.

“I’m not helpless you know,” I murmured, “I can actually take care of myself even if I don’t look like it. I could have handled him.”

“I know you could have,” Solo agreed, surprising me that he wasn’t just trying to stoke my ego, he actually did know that, “but I just wanted to handle it for you.”

“Thank you,” I managed a small smile, warmed that he cared about me enough to step in and keep me from getting pummeled.

“Yeah, well, next time I’ll let you take care of him,” he grinned and punched me lightly on the shoulder.

The rest of my day wasn’t so bad. Solo coming to my rescue, not because he pitied me or because he thought I was weak lightened my mood. I could almost feel those cloud dissipating, if not entirely, and I was able to get through the rest of my work day without crying or hitting anything. I felt even better when Caleb showed up at the factory ten minutes late, his face swollen red and his bottom lip split, and got reamed by Lorathe for it. When our other coworkers teased him about getting beaten up and his nose still bleeding off and on, he looked like he wanted to murder someone, but he didn’t come near Solo or myself, so I quickly forgot about him.

The damage that I had done to my back multiplied and I was so exhausted by the end of that shift, I just wanted to lay down on the floor and not move for a week. Just the thought of walking to the bus stop felt tiring. But that was all ok because work was over and I could go home and see Heero. Well, I could in the morning, but that wasn’t the point. I could be in the same house as him, know he was sleeping just a few feet from me and that thought alone made the back pain feel like nothing more than an inconvenient paper cut. Solo and I walked to the bus station, me feeling like I was carrying a block of concrete between my shoulders, but he didn’t get on. I felt a bit embarrassed realizing that he had just walked there to make sure I didn’t get cornered by Caleb if the man was still pissed enough to try, but it was kind of nice knowing that he gave a shit. I was still trying to get used to that.

Just like always, the light was on when I got back to the Yuy house, the door was open, and the dog was waiting for me. I barely had the energy at that point to pet him, walking like my whole body was made of stone and just not caring about anything at all, even brushing my teeth or going to the bathroom or even taking a hot shower, only finding a bed and collapsing on to it. I turned the light off and trudged towards the steps, only to slam my foot into the little hall table.

It took every ounce of self-control I had left not to cry out a swear, biting my tongue as I muttered it instead. I hadn’t hurt myself much, but it still smarted. More than that, the hit had made the glass vase rattle and I had to grab at it to make sure it wouldn’t fall over and shatter. That would be exactly what I needed, wake up everyone in the damned house and stand there in my socks surrounded by broken glass. I didn’t want to think about how much that pretty vase cost, either. Thankfully, I had seen that vase every day for months, so I was able to right it even in the dark. I waited, holding my breath, to see if I had woken anyone, but I couldn’t hear anything and breathed back out in relief.

“So fucking stupid,” I grumbled at myself.

How many times had I walked past that table before and I had to hit it with my stupid foot. Feeling embarrassed for no real reason, I climbed the stairs, my foot throbbing and me feeling like a moron. A moron who could barely lift his tired legs. My back might have been the part suffering the most, but my legs are always tired after standing for so long at the end of the day. As quietly as I could, I snuck past Heero’s door, but it was either not quietly enough, really bad timing, or my hitting the table had woken him, because suddenly the bedroom door opened and there my boyfriend was in all of his sleepy glory, his pajama top hanging off of one shoulder, his hair adorably mussed and falling in his eyes, and one hand rubbing at his face having clearly just woken up.

Heero’s half-lidded eyes widened a little with pleased surprise when he saw me standing there.

“Oh, Duo, you’re home,” he smiled tiredly at me.

 

_“You’re home.”_

 

This warm happiness burst inside of me and I had that silly, surreal image of us again as a proper couple, sharing a home and a life together. It was the sort of thing that I’m sure Mariela and Justin said to each other all the time. And suddenly, like a slap to the face, just as painful and violent, but much more pleasant, it hit me. Home. This was home. I had been thinking it all day, self-consciously and consciously, that I was going home to be with Heero. Not to Heero’s house, just home. When the hell had that happened? When had I started thinking that way? When had I started to crave this place so completely, so powerfully? The same moment that I had stopped thinking of my house as home, the same time when I didn’t even feel welcome in my own bedroom, like there was some equal exchange going on there?

But it was, I realized with shock. At some mysterious point, without me ever being aware of it, it had become my home. And my own house… I was just a guest there, the people there distant and alien, the smells, the sounds, everything so strange and different and wrong. All the things that I had felt the first few times I had gone over to Heero’s house… I had stopped feeling them there, but they hadn’t gone away, they had just switched places. But Heero’s house… I feel safe there. I feel at peace. Two things I have never, ever felt. When I’m there, I feel like nothing can touch me, not even my father. I feel protected. I feel loved. That’s what home is supposed to be about, right? When I’m there, I’m happy. When I’m not, I feel lonely and aching, like there’s all these holes in my heart. I didn’t even know what I should do with that revelation, if I should be happy about my own happiness or be worried. How fucked up is that? I was even scared of feeling happy. And only partially because I’m sure that it won’t last.

‘You’ll lose that, too, in the end,’ a voice in my head sadistically chimed in, ‘When you push him away, all of this, you’ll lose it-,’

I squashed the voice into some dark corner in my head. Not now, I screamed at it, you don’t exist now. Not now because now is the only thing that matters. Now I’m loved and safe and with Heero and he loves me and I’m home.

“Yeah,” I smiled at him, “I am.”

“You look exhausted,” he remarked in concern and I almost laughed at the irony of him saying that when he barely got the sentence out before he yawned widely

“It was a long day,” I sighed, “I just hurt my back again and I’m a bit tired, no big deal.”

He frowned, but thankfully didn’t lecture me about work again.

“I’m sorry I woke you up,” I tried to apologize.

“It’s fine. I wanted to be awake for when you got home, but I fell asleep anyway,” he blushed in embarrassment.

“Well, I’m home now,” god, just saying the word was enough to make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, “so go back to bed.”

I needed to go to bed, too, and I felt tired enough that I decided to skip the shower and just go straight to the laying down part. I shuffled past Heero and reluctantly headed towards the guest room. I hated how hesitant I felt and scolded myself that I shouldn’t be so greedy. Even if I didn’t want to be alone, the guest room was a hell of a lot better than my room. That perked me up a little, but I still felt… empty somehow, returning to that room. Not sad. Not morose. Just like something was missing and I knew what it was and felt disgustingly clingy. What was wrong with me? What had happened to the person who could walk through life with no one but himself, who didn’t need friends or anyone because he was independent and could take care of his damned self?

“Hey, Duo,” Heero called out to me while still being careful to keep his voice soft in case he woke up his parents, “You know…” he hesitated when I turned to look at him, “You don’t have to sleep in there,” he rubbed at his arm in a nervous gesture, his face going bright red and he looked down at the floor, “You could… sleep with me…” his eyes suddenly widened, “I mean, not like anything weird, I just mean we could share a bed again… only if you wanted to!”

He was so adorably flustered and blundering, I just stared at him for a moment, not used to seeing him so off balance, although it seems like the only times he ever is, it’s because of me.

“I… I miss sleeping with you,” he said shyly, “I thought it might be nice to do it just because it’s enjoyable, not because you’re sick or you’re having trouble sleeping. I know it probably makes me a horrible person considering what a terrible time you were having before, but I really liked sharing a bed with you… being that close to you… I’ll just shut up now.”

“No, it’s fine!” I rushed to assure him, not liking how uncomfortable he looked admitting that, “I… I liked it a lot, too. It was the only good part in all that mess,” now it was my turn to blush awkwardly, “sleeping with you… it was the only thing that helped me feel… relaxed, I guess is the right word. I only was able to sleep because you were there with me. I’ve been missing it a lot, actually,” I murmured lowly.

His face lighting up with happiness and relief was a beautiful thing and I didn’t regret admitting that, even if I felt a little bit embarrassed and awkward.

“I’m glad,” he said with a soft smile, “Did you want to do it again, then?”

“Sure,” I blushed at my own eagerness, “But… won’t your parents mind? Us sharing a bed? Just because they were ok with it when I was sick…”

“As long as we keep things g rated, I don’t think they’ll care. Which is exactly what I’ll do,” he rushed to assure me, “You know that, right? That I’ll never take advantage?”

I nodded. He had proven that much to me. I trusted him, especially after how he had reacted to hearing what Trowa had said to me. He would never touch me or do anything to me just because we were in bed together, not without asking first. The relief that knowledge brought me almost sent me to my knees. I remembered him telling his father that he refused to drug me against my will, I remembered realizing how much he respects me and I knew that I would never have to worry about him forcing himself on me. If only him. I had to turn from him to keep him from seeing the tears in my eyes before they started to fall.

“I’ll just… take a quick shower. I stink from work,” I rubbed at my face, pretending that I was just tired.

“I don’t care,” he chuckled, “Just come to bed, Duo. You need sleep.”

I nodded. Sleep sounded amazing. I was so tired that I was able to get past my issues with smelling and went to the bathroom to brush my teeth, popping a couple of pills for my back and put on some deodorant anyway, the best that I could do. I changed into my pajamas in the guest room, wincing at having to put the top on, and Pepper followed me into Heero’s room. When we walked in, she boldly ran right up to the bed and jumped on to the pillow that I had used the last time I had slept in there, like she knew exactly what we were planning on doing and making me chuckle.

“We’re both getting spoiled,” I murmured, petting her ears.

“You need to be spoiled a bit,” Heero said defensively, “if you really think that I’m spoiling you just by letting you crash here.”

I couldn’t say anything to that. I didn’t want to let him know how guilty I feel sometimes, using his home and his family like this, getting to expect things like an unlocked door and a home cooked meal, or even this. Him loving me and letting him sleep beside him because he had spoiled me in that regard, had gotten me to feel lonely from missing him. He probably knew anyway. I slipped into bed, laying my head right next to my cat. Heero flicked off the light and laid down behind me, pulling the covers up over us. He scooched in close to me so his back was almost touching mine, but not quite. Just feeling that familiar heat and warmth there was comforting. I felt a bit awkward, but it was nothing compared to how I had felt the first few times we had done this. I was getting used to it, craving it. I didn’t even flinch when he carefully put an arm around me.

“This ok?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I murmured, my eyes closing all on their own, “This is nice.”

It was more than nice. Having him there, feeling his arm around me was wonderful. It was like coming home in of itself. I didn’t even feel the pain in my back anymore, or I just didn’t care. It felt like something had clicked into place, like everything was suddenly right with the world again. I can’t really describe it accurately. All I know is I was asleep within minutes, something new for me, and it was only partially because of how tired I was.

I slept pretty deeply that morning, which turned out to be a very good thing, but I’m getting ahead of myself again. I roused a couple of times, mostly to go to the bathroom and because I turned the wrong way in my sleep and my back reminded me of the abuse I had done to it. I could see why my back was unhappy when I woke up around eight on Heero’s side of the bed with my head laying on his shoulder again, the rest of my body curled up into a ball against him. Why did I keep doing that in my sleep? Gravitating towards him and laying on him? I guess you don’t really know what you do in your sleep, especially when you’ve spent most of your sleeping alone. Feeling a bit embarrassed, I maneuvered off of him and somehow succeeded in not waking him up.

I had only gotten about five and a half hours of sleep, but that was pretty good for me and I had slept well the last two nights as well, so I felt too awake to try to go back to sleep. Besides, there were things that I needed to do and I didn’t want to lounge all morning in bed, even if it would be incredibly pleasant. I pulled the covers back up over Heero, took a long, hot shower, and dressed for the day, making sure to pack some clean work clothes in my back pack. Pepper got played with, fed, and brushed, her litter box cleaned and I made sure that the room was clean as well. I could hear Heero walking around by the time I finished and he popped his head into the guest room.

“What are you doing up?” he frowned.

“I didn’t feel tired enough to go back to sleep,” I told him.

“Yeah, but… you didn’t need to get up, you’re just staying here again until work, right?” he asked nervously and I instantly saw what the problem was.

He, as always, was far too perceptive for his own good.

“No,” I admitted guiltily, sitting on the bed so I could put some socks on, “Actually, I’m going to go back to my house.”

“Duo,” he began to protest.

“I need to go back,” I argued defensively, hating that expression on his face, that desperate, kicked puppy look, like he knew that nothing he could say would convince me, but he needed to try anyway, “I haven’t even seen my parents in days. My dad probably has all kinds of chores for me to do and doesn’t even know where I am. And I want to check on my mom.”

I didn’t say why I needed to check on her, just letting it hang in the air. I knew he got it, and hated that he did, when he looked guilty. As much as I couldn’t stand making him feel that way, I remembered the phone call I had had with my mother and knew this was the right decision. Even if she had been well enough to go to work, I had to make sure she was ok. And my dad was probably pissed by then. I, thankfully, wouldn’t see him because he was already at work, but I could do some chores, clean up and make it look like I had been home at some point.

“Please, Duo,” he used his last resource, pleading with me and putting his hand on my shoulder, “Please don’t go back there.”

The sheer worry and fear in his eyes was painful to see. He was pulling himself into knots with concern for me, knowing exactly what I was going back to, that I might get hit or worse. I had nothing to comfort him with. I couldn’t say that I would be fine, that nothing was going to happen, not at that point. He had seen the bruises, taken me to the hospital, seen the blood and the pain and my hurt. Every day that I went back there, I killed him a little. How many hours did he stay awake at night thinking that the next time he saw me, I might have a broken arm, or that the next text message might be me telling him I was in the hospital again? But what could I do? What could I possibly do to make him feel better?

“I can’t stay away from home forever, Heero, you know that,” I said softly with a sigh, “I can come back tomorrow morning, but I need to go back there today. I haven’t seen my mom since Monday. I love staying here, you know that, but even if I don’t want to go back home, I have to. It’s not like I can just… run away from it.”

Been there, done that, I thought bitterly, remembering Quatre’s offer in the hospital and wondering for about the billionth time if my life would have been any different if I had told him yes that day. If I could have avoided everything that came after that day… of course, it would have meant that I never would have met Heero and I don’t know how I feel about that. What would I sacrifice for my heart? My soul? That shattered, withered thing that my father had broken the night he had climbed on top of me? If I could have one or the other, my sanity or Heero… I honestly don’t know which I would pick. I guess that’s progress. A couple of months ago, I would have chosen running away from him at the expense of my friend in a heartbeat.

“I know, I’m sorry, I just…” said friend chewed on his lip, “Can you at least have breakfast here?”

“Yeah, of course,” my tone softened with relief that this wasn’t going to devolve into a fight.

He smiled at that, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. We went down together and I could hear his parents’ shower going. Given the time, it had to be Mariela, leaving us alone in the kitchen.

“What did you want for breakfast?” I asked him.

I would be perfectly ok with some fruit, toast, or even a bowl of cereal, but I felt bad about making him worried and making something for him seemed like the only thing I could do since I was obviously shit at comforting him.

“You don’t have to make me anything,” he protested, “After everything you did yesterday… If anything, I should be the one making something for you.”

“I like cooking. And I would rather not go to work with food poisoning,” I teased him, lightening the mood a little, “It’s no bother. Omelet ok?”

“That sounds amazing,” he smiled at me again and this time it did light up the rest of his face, “Do you think you could make that omelet roll thing you made that one time? My parents really loved it and I don’t think my mom’s had breakfast yet.”

“Sure,” I nodded and took out a glass, baking pan from one of the cabinets.

Heero sat at the table as I made us breakfast, just watching me at first with this small, endearing smile on his face that I couldn’t hope to decipher. Then, after I finished chopping up the green onions, we started up some meaningless conversation, just because it was pleasant and it helped fill the silence. Neither one of us wanted to think about our little talk upstairs or what I would be doing when I left there. Heero went silent in mid-sentence as he watched me crack an egg with my left hand, his eyes wide.

“It always amazes me when you do that,” he said with wonder.

“What? Crack an egg with one hand?” I asked and he nodded, “It’s not that difficult. I mean, it is at first, but once you get the hang of it, it’s like anything else. It’s all just muscle memory.”

“Yeah, but why learn how in the first place? And why do you do it with your left hand? I know you’re not ambidextrous,” he asked, puzzled.

And just like that, with that one question, I felt the easy comfort that seeped into me in the last few moments from being there with him and doing something that I loved get sucked right back out, replaced by cold memories and a bad taste in my mouth. My right arm, holding the bowl steady, suddenly ached sharply, but I knew that pain didn’t really exist, it was just in my head.

“You don’t want to know the answer to that,” I murmured instead of just coming up with some clever lie.

I don’t know why, I just didn’t feel up to it, putting on the mask, brushing off his question, just saying that it had been fun to learn how to do it with my non-dominant hand. It hadn’t. It had been painful and frustrating. But I couldn’t tell him that. And for some reason, I couldn’t lie to him, either.

“Why not?” he asked softly, suddenly behind me.

“Because it’ll make you mad,” I warned him.

He wrapped his arms around my waist and kissed the back of my neck. He didn’t say anything. Didn’t assure me that he wouldn’t or that he still wanted to know, just comforted with his lips and his touch like he always does. I sighed, knowing from the moment that he had brought it up that I would cave, even if it was going to upset him. Even as I surrendered, I questioned why I was saying this. Why I couldn’t just lie, what was so special about Heero that he could do this to me, make me want to tell the truth when it was nothing that he wanted to hear.

“It’s going to sound horrible,” I cautioned, “A few years ago, my dad broke my right arm,” I felt him stiffen and he tightened his embrace around me, but I kept going, “It’s not as bad as it sounds. He was drunk and I fucked up. He left me a note not to use the washing machine because there was a leak in one of the hoses, but I hadn’t seen it and used it. He came home and there was water everywhere. I tried to clean up, but I ran out of towels. He just… he grabbed me and twisted my arm. He forgets sometimes when he’s drunk,” I winced as I remembered that tight grip, twisting and grabbing, the horrible strain in my arm, and the equally horrible pain when the worst had happened, “It probably would have been fine, but I slipped on some water when he was still holding me and he broke it,” I swallowed roughly, remembering how little he had cared when I had cried, holding my arm, and barked at me to get off the floor, stop crying like a sissy, and help him clean up the water, “And one morning after that, he was running late and wanted me to make him scrambled eggs while he showered. Only I couldn’t because I couldn’t break the eggs without getting the shells everywhere and he got pissed about it,” I omitted the part where he almost broke my nose that morning over it and had given me a nasty, black bruise from the bottom of my eye to my chin, “It seemed like a really stupid handicap to have since my arm was going to be in a cast for so long, so I taught myself how to do it with my left. I taught myself how to do a lot of things with my left, actually, but I never did get the hand of writing with it. At least not legibly.”

I tried to spin a tiny bit of humor into it, but it fell completely flat, just like I knew it would. Heero certainly didn’t find anything funny about it. I had thought that he had been holding me tightly before. After I finished my twisted, little story, he was practically crushing me as he moved his arms from around my waist to chest level. I really wished that I had just lied about it. I really don’t know why I hadn’t been able to.

“Oh, god, Duo,” Heero’s voice was tight and twisted up, like he was the one who had broken his arm, “Christ! And that’s the person that you want to go back to?!”

I pulled myself out of his arms and was surprised at how easy it was, how he just let me do it even though he was holding me like a constrictor.

“I don’t want to go back,” I argued hotly, annoyed that we were arguing again at all, “We’ve talked about this, Heero, a thousand times by now. What do you want me to do? It was just an accident. A stupid accident-,”

“Stop making excuses for him!” he snapped and I quickly shut up, “He broke your arm, Duo! He broke your arm and then he got mad at you because you couldn’t make him breakfast! How do you not see how fucked up that is?! Did he even apologize for it?!”

I looked away from him, wrapping my arms around myself defensively.

“He didn’t need to apologize,” I murmured, but deep inside, I felt my heart breaking all over again because Heero was only saying something that has torn me to shreds over and over and over again. When had my father stopped apologizing for hitting me and my mother? I can’t remember. It was too long ago, “He’s my dad, Heero. I love him. I know that’s not convenient, I don’t exactly want to love him most of the time! You think that I don’t know what he does is fucked up, that I wish I could hate him and turn my back on him like he’s a stranger?! I’ve tried and I can’t! He’s my dad and that is never going to change. I wished I was strong enough to go to the cops or ask someone for help, to run away with my mom or find a way to make him stop. I wish I was strong, like you are, but I’m not. I’m a coward. I’ve always been a coward.”

“No, Duo,” Heero’s tone turned soft, full of love and regret, but most of all, fear as he put his hand on my right arm, rubbing it gently and touching me so reverently like he was trying to convince himself that I was alright, my arm wasn’t broken anymore, I was whole and I was ok, “I’m not strong. I’m not strong at all. I’m terrified. I hate knowing what things are like for you at home and I feel so fucking helpless all the time. I know what your father does and I let it happen! I don’t do anything to help you!”

“That’s not true,” I told him with iron conviction, holding his face in my hands in a weak attempt to comfort him and make him look at me instead of at the floor with that tearful, guilty expression, “You do help me. You have no idea what I was really like before we became friends, how… how messed up I was. You’ve given me a safe place to run to, a friend that I can rely on to be there for me if I need to talk, and an attentive boyfriend that constantly puts up with my shit without a complaint. You and your family have helped me more than anyone ever has, even more than Quatre did. And we both know that if I hadn’t forced you to make a stupid promise about it, you would have gone to the cops about this months ago. I’m the one that lets him hit me, Heero, not you. I’m the spineless coward that won’t do anything about it. I hate that you feel guilty about this, and I hate myself for always making you worry about me.”

“Don’t say that,” he pleaded, “I don’t want you to hate yourself. There’s nothing for you to hate. I’m scared because I love you and I’ll always worry about you, even if your father didn’t hit you, it’s just the way I am, alright?”

I leaned forward and rested my face against his shoulder, his smell comforting me and I let him stroke my hair. I didn’t think I deserved comfort, but he was giving it to me anyway and like a little kid, I took it, melting against him.

“I’m sorry,” I heard him say, “All I do is upset you and remind you of terrible things...”

I chuckled darkly into his shirt.

“That’s my line,” I muttered.

His hands moved from my hair to my back, gentle stroking tired muscles. We stayed like that for a few minutes, but tore ourselves away from each other painfully when we heard the shower turn off. Neither of us wanted Mariela to find us like that. We were too raw for her teasing and when she saw that we were upset, she would try to get us to tell her why. I buried myself in the task of finishing making breakfast, but my thoughts were everywhere else.

“Something in here smells good!” Mariela exclaimed when she came into the kitchen a few minutes later when Heero and I were well into our breakfast.

She was clad in a terry, blue bathrobe and her long, black hair was loose. I had never actually seen her with her hair down before, she always had it up in a ponytail or braid, sometimes a bun if she was doing housework, but never loose. Her bangs stuck to her forehead and her hair, still wet from her shower, was almost iridescent under the light. I was struck right then just how beautiful Heero’s mother is. She reminds me so much sometimes of how my mother looked in those old, school photos; eyes clear and fresh and shining with a bright smile, hair somehow naturally perfect, skin flawless like a model’s without the need for make-up and camera tricks. Mariela might have been forty, but I would wager a guess that she didn’t look all that different from when she had been a teenager, unlike my mother. Of course, Mariela hadn’t spent the second half of her life miserable and trying to drown herself in a bottle.

“Oh, Duo, you spoil us,” she said happily as she cut herself some of the omelet roll.

“Not really,” I mumbled, hiding my embarrassment by taking a sip of water, “I just thought it might be nice to make you breakfast for a change.”

She smiled endearingly at me, making my chest feel both tight and warm at the same time. She poured herself some orange juice and sat down with us, pulling me into a hug the second she put her plate down and kissed the top of my head.

“What’s that for?” I asked in bewilderment, my pale face bright red.

“For yesterday, spending time with us and helping throw a party for me,” she sat down in her chair still wearing that soft smile, “And for making us breakfast. You’re too sweet.”

Heero smirked at me while I stared at my plate like it was something terribly interesting, still not capable of taking compliments well.

“Will you be staying here this afternoon, Duo?” Heero’s mother asked as she shook a little bit of pepper onto her slice of omelet.

“No,” I said regrettably, wondering not for the first time if I was being responsible for going home or making a big mistake, feeling cold and wrong with the mere thought of leaving that house for some reason, “I’m going to go home after breakfast. I haven’t been there since Monday morning and I want to check up on my mom. She probably won’t be there if she has work, but there’s probably a lot of chores to do by now anyway.”

I expected her to put up a fight about it like Heero had, but to my surprise and relief, she nodded in understanding.

“There are still lots of leftovers, even some cake, if you wanted to take something home for you and your parents,” she offered, “We’re going out to dinner tonight, so please help yourself to whatever you want.”

“Thank you,” I nodded, wondering if some good food might soften whatever mood my father might be in, but I doubted it.

I procrastinated as much as I dared to that morning, doing the dishes, puttering around the upstairs bathroom and guest room, but I knew that I couldn’t put it off forever.

“Let me walk you home,” Heero said desperately at the front door, watching me put on my boots and jacket with this hopeless expression.

“That wouldn’t be a good idea,” I told him.

“Why not?” he argued.

I felt a spike of fear that he was mad at me, but I realized he was just frustrated and was trying to stall just as much as me. I bit my tongue to keep from blurting out that my dad didn’t even want us hanging out with each other, let alone have him near our house, but I couldn’t let him find out about that. 

“Because my neighbors are all a bunch of gossipy assholes,” I explained in a tense voice, “Especially if what they know might get someone into trouble. Honestly, I don’t know how my father hasn’t found out that I’m gay yet, but now that my coworkers know, it’s really just a matter of time. He isn’t friends with any of them, but they go to the same bars, shop at the same grocery stores… hell, I know a few of the guys that I work with that would love to go out of their way to tell my father just to mess with me, and some of them have family that work at the same place that my dad does. Given how fast certain… rumors get around this place, it’s a fucking miracle he doesn’t know and I would like to keep it that way. I’ve been careful, really careful, but I thought that I was being careful at work, too, and look how that turned out! What are my neighbors going to say if they see you dropping me off all the time? Knowing them, they’d probably make up all kinds of lies about it anyway and I just can’t risk it.”

My heart pounded like a freaking jackhammer in my chest as the fears that I had tried to push down since Monday came right back. Of course I was terrified that my father was going to find out that I’m gay, but that was only part of it. If he did find out about my sexuality, he was going to find out who I was dating. He already had a bug up his ass about me hanging around Heero, what would he do to me if he found out I was seeing him romantically? If he didn’t kill me for being a fag, he would definitely do it for being with Heero. And what would he do to Heero if he found out that he had been hanging around our house? Bad enough he had one fag in his home, but two? I couldn’t stop the shudder as I imagined what sort of things he might do to my boyfriend.

“I’m sorry,” Heero apologized, “My parents have always been cool with my sexuality, even when I first came out. They’ve always been supportive, I forget sometimes that not everyone’s parents are like that, even yours. I didn’t even think about anyone saying anything if they saw me walking you home.”

I shrugged one shoulder.

“It’s not a huge deal. I mean, it is, obviously,” I rubbed at my forehead and suddenly felt tired for some reason. No, tired isn’t the right word. It was more like weariness, “But it shouldn’t be a big deal, us just walking together. I’m sorry, I’m just…”

“Worried about your welfare?” he quirked an eyebrow at me, “Don’t apologize for looking out for yourself, ok? I’m the one being an idiot, it’s just something that never occurred to me.”

I wondered what that was like, to grow up with parents that always supported you instead of shut you down over everything you tried to do, tried to be, and everything that you were. To have so much confidence in your family, to feel so safe that it never occurred to you that you should be careful in even who you were seen hanging out with, that something like a mere rumor could destroy your life and put you in danger.

“Duo, are you alright?” Heero suddenly asked me in a soft, worried tone.

“I-I’m fine, why wouldn’t I be?” I asked in confusion.

“You’ve been really distant lately,” he said, “Distracted, like there’s something heavy on your mind. I thought maybe you were just tired because you slept really deeply this morning, but something is still bothering you, isn’t it?”

I blushed a little, feeling like I had just been caught red-handed at something and wasn’t sure what it was, that he had seen that I was bothered, absorbed in my chaotic thoughts and insecurities, or that he had been watching me sleep. I’m not sure what’s more embarrassing.

“I’m fine,” I repeated, “A lot of crap has happened lately, that’s all, between Trowa and this shit at work…”

“But this morning was ok?” he asked nervously, keeping his voice down to an almost whisper in case his mother might hear, even though she was in the kitchen, “Us sleeping together?”

I smiled softly at him. Of course he would worry about that of all things.

“It was great,” I assured him, “I slept really well.”

Heero’s face broke out into a relieved smile.

“I’m glad. You know,” he rubbed at his arm shyly, his eyes darting away from me and then back again, “if you wanted to do that again… I mean, if you liked it… you don’t need to ask or anything. I liked it a lot, too and I wouldn’t mind sharing a bed again, whenever you wanted.”

“I would like that,” I nodded, wanting it so badly that I was able to be bold for once, “It was really nice. I’ll see you tomorrow morning, right?”

“Definitely,” he nodded eagerly, “And Duo… I know I’m being clingy, but please text me when you’re home today, just to let me know you’re alright?”

I felt a brief flare of annoyance at his overprotective nature, but I pushed it down. It wasn’t like he was worried for no reason. I had given him a reason to worry, so I didn’t have the right to complain. Of course, that only made me feel guilty that I was putting him in that situation again, waiting by the phone, thinking that I was getting beaten to a pulp.

“Sure,” I conceded and with that promise, I was finally allowed to leave.

Not that I wanted to go and I wouldn’t have minded if Heero had stalled me for a bit longer. I gave him a quick, chaste kiss on the lips that made him blush for once and went on my way. Joy. It was a bit warmer outside than it had been, but I didn’t feel very happy about it. It could have been bright and sunny and felt like a summer day and I still would have been miserable. I didn’t bother taking the bus, I saw no point in it. I didn’t want to rush back to my house and I hoped that the walk might do me some good. It didn’t.

The second I walked onto my street, I felt this tight knot of pain in my gut and my heart rate quickened. I berated myself for it. I wasn’t even at my house yet, hadn’t even seen my father, so why did I feel so anxious and terrible? It was worse, I realized. My anxiety, my fears, my apprehension. Being with Heero, staying at his house had made it worse. It was weakening those walls that I’ve erected around myself, pulling me out of the cold and into this warm, comforting place, but only made the cold feel even harsher when I had to return to it.

My father’s car was gone from the driveway, just like I knew it would be, but I didn’t feel any relief. I just felt like the air all around me was heavy and suffocating me. I felt weary again, like I had run for miles and just the thought of walking to that front door, unlocking it, and forcing myself to go inside was sapping all of my energy. It was dark and cold inside, just like always, and for a moment, the musty smell of my own house and it’s quiet and stillness felt very alien to me. Even when I was alone in Heero’s house, I never felt that way. It was always warm there, and even without my boyfriend and his parents around, for some reason, it never felt like I was alone. I always had Kanuck and Pepper with me and I knew that the Yuys would be back. I never knew when my parents were going to be home, and I never knew if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

“Hello?” I called out timidly as I closed the door behind me and flicked on the light switch in the kitchen.

The light flickered a little, but bravely stayed on. There was no answer, not that I expected there to be since both of my parents should have been at work. I surveyed the kitchen with a heavy sigh, taking in the huge pile of dishes in the sink, the used skillet on the stove that was caked with egg and cheese and the grease on the stove itself. There were beer cans on the counter, the trash was practically overflowing, and there was mud from my father’s boots on the floor. It was like he had purposefully gone out to make a mess, which wasn’t like him. Sure, he would leave dirty dishes and wouldn’t clean much during the week because he was too tired from work to be bothered with it. Instead, he would just bark at my mother or myself to deal with it, but it looked like he hadn’t even done that much. It was almost like he was being vindictive, wanting me to come home to that mess and knowing that I would have to clean it.

That might seem a bit paranoid, but since getting off the booze, my mom has been a lot better at getting chores done and it’s been a big help, not having to come home from school or after work to a ton of things to do. That she hadn’t done the dishes in days was too suspicious. My dad might not be a slob, but he can be incredibly petty when he wants to punish someone, usually me. I found more beer cans in the living room and a plate of crumbs on my father’s chair that he had left there that morning. I peeked into the laundry room, which I only call a laundry room in jest because it’s really just a closet that’s big enough to hold the washing machine and the space heater we use in the winter to dry our clothes and some water pipes and that’s literally it.

Lending credence to my theory that my father had forbidden my mother to clean up, there was a laundry basket tucked secretly away in the corner next to the heater where our dryer had once been before it had been sold. It looked like my mother had started the laundry that morning, but had forgotten to finish it. There were folded clothes in the basket, but I found wet clothes in the washer and some hanging over the heater that was still on. If she had been in a rush, I could understand the clothing still hanging there, but she wouldn’t have left the wet clothes in the washer without hanging them to dry like that, and she definitely wouldn’t have left the heater on.

It was a side effect of the alcohol abuse. You can’t try to drink yourself to death for seventeen years and go on about your life without any scars to remember it by. My mother forgets things easily. She never used to, but now she’ll frequently start things and never finish them, or she’ll forget dates and times. I have to leave her notes on the fridge and I always get nervous when she’s baking or cooking because a few times, she’s forgotten to turn the oven off or has burned whatever she made. The laundry was no different. But I could tell just by looking at the laundry basket that she had done it in secret, as soon as my father had left the house for work. The room was warm from the heater, but not as hot as it should have been if she had started it when she had first gotten up that morning. The most telling, however, were my own clothes found in the bottom of the basket, carefully hidden under my father’s shirts. She hadn’t wanted him to know that she had done the laundry, but especially not my laundry.

I sighed again, not at the amount of chores I now had to do before work, but knowing that my father was in one of those special moods of his where he was so pissed off, he didn’t care if he was acting childish to spite someone or not. I was already starting to wish that I had just stayed at Heero’s place. Sure, that wouldn’t have been the smartest choice and it only would have fueled my father’s anger, but he was clearly already pissed off and maybe if he came home that night to a clean house, it might improve his mood a bit. I highly doubted it, but I could still hope. I trudged upstairs and found that my room was a mess, too, and I had definitely not left it that way.

It wasn’t like the time that he had stolen my money and found out about Pepper. Nothing was destroyed, it was just messy. My clothes were dumped on the floor, things had been knocked off my desk, my chair was lying on its side. The worst was that my father had shoved my bookcase on its side. Nothing had broken, miraculously, but my books were everywhere. At least he hadn’t ripped any up like last time, but the knowledge of his tantrum left me feeling cold inside. I was never so happy that I had work, an excuse not to be there when he came home, and that he would hopefully be asleep by the time I finished with work. If I got up early enough before him, I might not have to see him at all. I didn’t know if that was a good idea, but I really didn’t want to get dragged into a fight again.

I remembered the promise that I had made to Heero before I had left and shot him a quick text. ‘I’m fine. No one’s here. Going to do a few chores before going to work.’ His reply back was instant, and the thought that he had just been staring at his phone this whole time, waiting for me to contact him, ripped my insides to shreds with guilt. ‘Good. Be careful. Call me if something happens. I love you.’ Despite my guilt, I found myself smiling and read the whole thing in my head with his worried, fussy tone.

I righted my bookcase, my injured back protesting loudly at the strain, but that was all that I did in my bedroom. Although it was still morning and I had plenty of time before work, I didn’t want to waste it cleaning my room instead of the rest of the house that needed it a lot more. I changed into an old top and sweatpants, things that were already worn and stained and I wouldn’t have to worry about getting dirty. I abandoned my cluttered room for downstairs. I took the trash out to the curb, thankful that it was Thursday and it would get picked up the next morning. Something in there seriously reeked and I didn’t want to keep it in the house. I quickly gathered up all the beer cans and chucked them into a separate bag, putting them in the kitchen in a corner where my dad couldn’t complain about it being in his way. We don’t really have a recycling program, but I take them to the grocery store and get a tiny bit of money for them, spare change, really. Change that I know is going to be used for more beer, or maybe at a bar over the weekend. I guess that’s kind of like recycling.

I hit the kitchen first since it was the worst. The bathroom needed a good cleaning, too. The toilet needed to be scrubbed and there were damp towels on the floor, but I was less concerned about that as the dishes. We don’t have a lot and from the pile in the sink, I was sure we were almost out of clean was. My dad has always been perfectly capable of shooting himself in the foot out of pettiness. It took me hours to clean the kitchen. The dishes themselves and that damn skillet were a chore. My wrists and arms were aching and sore by the time I got all the dishes cleaned and dried and the skillet scrubbed out. My fingers were gross and wrinkly from the soapy water and all I wanted to do was sit down for a little bit, but I plowed through the rest of it, vacuuming and washing the floor, cleaning the stove and scrubbing out the microwave

I stepped back and looked at my work with a critical eye. The kitchen looked pristine. Well, as pristine as our kitchen is ever capable of looking. There was nothing for my father to get pissed about at any rate. I checked my time and sighed with relief when I saw that it was only noon, giving me plenty of time to clean the living room, laundry room, and maybe the bathroom if I was lucky. As I was dragging our heavy, ancient vacuum into the living room, my stomach gurgled angrily at me. I glanced at the clock again.

“Guess I can have a small lunch,” I mumbled to myself.

I looked through the cabinets in the kitchen and the fridge and came up with a third of a loaf of bread (almost stale), a single egg, an apple, half of a glass worth of milk, some apple juice, a six pack of beer, shredded mozzarella, half a container of mushu pork, one and a half slices of pepperoni pizza, a box of cornflakes, a jar of green olives, and half a can of tomato soup. I grimaced at the poor selection, even though it was more than I sometimes found and shouldn’t really complain. I passed by the Chinese and pizza leftovers, knowing my father would stake his claim over them, while the soup was probably my mother’s leftovers. I grabbed the box of cornflakes even though they had been in the cupboard for weeks and were probably stale. I had only bought them because they were cheap, but my dad hates cereal and my mother had only had a bowl of them once before forgetting that the box was in there.

I opened the box to test if they were still edible and almost chucked the whole thing across the room. Squirming and writhing among the golden flakes were several, dark things. I didn’t look at them close enough to figure out what they were, maggots, beetles, or millipedes, I just opened the tiny window above the sink and dumped the cereal and bugs outside for some birds to get at, then threw the box into the trash, shuddering with revulsion. I did a quick check of the cabinets to make sure no other food got tainted, but there was no sign of more bugs. I kicked uselessly at one of the kitchen chairs, suddenly feeling pissed off and frustrated. Not that there had been bugs in one of the few things that I could eat, but that we had so little food to begin with.

‘If I was at Heero’s, there’d be a thousand things I could make lunch with,’ the errant thought popped into my head.

I frowned at myself. What did it matter if we were low on food? It happens all the time, for as long as I can remember. Sure, it had always bothered me a little, but not like this. Why did I feel so upset over it? Because I was getting spoiled at Heero’s, always having a home cooked meal? Always having a meal, period? Or just because Heero’s parents were responsible enough to always make sure there was something to eat? I bet Heero had never gone to bed hungry in his life, or skipped meals, or felt frustrated because he was hungry and he had no money and no options. Because we didn’t always run out of food just because we were having problems with money. Sometimes my parents just forgot to buy it. That hadn’t happened much lately with my mother getting sober, but before then, it had happened a lot.

I felt disgusted with myself. I wasn’t even that hungry, in reality. I had had breakfast, and I had the leftovers that Mariela had given me, but I wanted to save them for my dinner break. I had skipped meals for days before without a single peep of complaint, but for some reason, I felt hopeless and irritated, blowing this out of proportion. I returned to my cleaning, trying to put it out of my mind, trying to tell myself, over and over, that there was no reason to get pissy and upset like a little kid just because my parents were different than Heero’s. I turned on the vacuum and cleaned the carpet in the living room with a bit more force than was warranted. I did Heero’s little trick, the breathing thing, but I didn’t have anything acceptable to hit, so it only helped a little.

Suddenly, just as I was finishing vacuuming the crumbs from under the chair, I was overwhelmed by the feeling that I was being watched, the hairs on the back of my neck standing up and my arms covered in goosebumps. My instincts have saved me enough times that I’ve learned to listen to them, so instead of ignoring this feeling, I gave it my full attention. I whirled around and my stomach dropped to my knees as I saw my father standing in the doorway, watching me with this incredibly cold, intense stare. For a moment, I thought that he had to be an illusion before I remembered that it was almost one and he was on his lunch break. Where he works is close enough to us that he often comes home if there’s food available. How the hell had I forgotten that? I hadn’t heard his car pull up or him coming through the door because of the loud, rattling vacuum and I wondered with this tight, agonizing pain in my stomach just how long he had been standing there watching me for.

“Dad…” was all I could say, my heart racing with fear as I hit the power switch on the vacuum with my foot.

The sudden loss of sound made the silence in the house all the more powerful and eerie. I realized with cold dread as my father stepped into the living room that I was trapped. There was no way, no matter how fast or agile I was, that I was going to get around him and out the front door. I was completely fucked. I dropped the vacuum handle with numb hands. There was nothing I could do. I couldn’t run. I couldn’t defend myself. I couldn’t even call Heero to tell him that I might need help. I wouldn’t have the time and even if I did, I couldn’t let my father see my phone. Even if I could find some place to hide and make that call, I knew that I wouldn’t. Between my embarrassment and my desire to spare him from all of this stupid shit, there was no way I’d ask him to come save me. Not that he could. If he tried, it would only go two ways: my boyfriend beaten just as badly as me, or my father in jail. Both of those possibilities left a terrible taste in my mouth.

“Where the fuck have you been?” my father growled at me, his grey eyes narrowing in anger.

His tone was cold, like his voice was encased in a block of ice, and it was barely raised at all. That alone told me how screwed I was. He was sober and enraged, never a good combination. His reflexes would be quick and he wasn’t going to give me an opening to escape.

“I…” I started to say, scrambling for some excuse.

There was nothing, nothing I could say to ease his anger and even if I could think of something, if he caught me lying to him, it would make it worse. He strode forward and before I could do anything, he grabbed me by hair and pulled on it violently, twisting my braid in his iron grip until I cried out in pain.

“Don’t you lie to me,” he snarled, “Don’t you fucking dare lie to me like that cunt you call a mother!”

He pulled my hair up, hard, and I had to get on my toes to alleviate the sharp sting of pain in my scalp.

“I was with a friend!” I cried out, “I stayed at his place when I wasn’t working, that’s all!”

“ ‘With a friend’,” he mocked childishly and gave me a rough shake before getting right in my face, his own twisted into an ugly rage, “I know who you were with, you fucking piece of shit! You think I don’t know?! You think I’m so stupid, don’t you?! What you’ve been doing behind my back! You were with that asshole mutt again, weren’t you?! After I told you, again and again, to never see him again! And getting your mother to lie to about it! When did I raise a punk who can lie to his father and make a fool out of him, huh?! You think he’s your friend?! Hah! There’s only one thing someone from a family like that would want you for! You take his handouts, come to heel when he wants you, do whatever tricks amuse him… You’re nothing more than his trained dog!”

“No!” I yelled back, suddenly not caring about the pain, just feeling so angry at the things my father was accusing Heero of, “Heero is my friend! He isn’t like that! He cares about me, no matter what you think, and I’m not going to stop being friends with him because you’re prejudiced against him and don’t even know him!”

Pure fury made my father’s eyes darken to deep slate. He let go of my hair and slammed his fist into the side of my face. The blow was so startling and so powerful that he almost knocked me right on my ass. The only thing that kept me upright was the wall that I grabbed onto. Pain exploded in my head and for a moment, I thought I was seeing double, but by some miracle, my father had hit the side of my face instead of my nose or eye and didn’t even knock out a tooth that time, but the hit had been so strong, he easily could have if he had gotten me in the mouth. I could already feel my cheek swelling up.

“I don’t need to work my ass off all day and night to come home to an ungrateful brat who thinks he can talk back to me!” he roared and grabbed at my hair again with one hand, my right arm with the other, “I don’t care what that prick is like! I tell you to stay put, and that’s exactly what you’re going to do, I don’t need to fucking explain myself to anyone, let alone to you! You do what you’re goddamned told!”

He dragged me forward by my hair, leaving me no choice but to let him do it unless I wanted him to pull my hair and scalp out. I blindly tried to grab on to something or kick at him, but it didn’t even phase him.

“Dad, no!” I yelled when I saw that he was dragging me towards the laundry room.

“If I can’t trust you to do as you’re told, then I’ll make you stay put!” he snarled.

“No, no you can’t! Please, Dad!” I cried, thrashing against him.

He ignored me and threw me into the closet. My back hit the wall, almost driving the breath right out of my lungs, but I didn’t stop fighting him. When he shoved me down, I tried to push against him, but it was like trying to move a brick wall. He grabbed a zip tie from a jar of them that we keep on the shelf above the washing machine along with a bunch of other, stray items that we don’t have the room for anywhere else. When it dawned on me what he intended to do, fear burst in my chest. The kind of fear you feel when you’re a little kid and the power goes out in the middle of the night, that blind, senseless terror.

“Please, please don’t!” I begged, tears streaming down my cheeks and I was so scared that I didn’t even feel ashamed of them, “I have work, you can’t do this-,”

He punched me so hard in the stomach that I couldn’t breathe and fell to my knees.

“Shut the hell up,” he hissed at me, “This is your own, damned fault, you understand? Who the hell do you think you are to tell me what I can do?!” he grabbed my wrists in an iron grip and secured them to one of the pipes high above my head, stretching my body out so I stayed on my knees in an awkward position, “Maybe now you’ll learn to do as you’re told!”

“I will, I will,” I sobbed, “Don’t do this, please, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”

He got up and glared at me heatedly.

“You’ll stay in here until I feel you’re ready to come out,” he sneered.

He slammed the door closed behind him and I heard him lock it, which was completely unnecessary given that I couldn’t even kick at it.

Darkness. There was no light in that tiny closet, save for the sliver of it under the door, but even that disappeared a couple of minutes later. My father must have shut off the light in the living room. It wasn’t my first time in that closet. My father had often locked me in there when I had been a kid to punish me for this or that. I still remember those moments, how terrified I was. Not of the dark. Even when I was little, I quickly grew out of that childhood fear faster than most because I never had a nightlight when I slept. I got used to the dark, although I can never say I was comfortable with it, but I wasn’t scared of it. No, the thing that absolutely terrified me as a kid was the thought that my father might never come back and let me out. Maybe I had pissed him off enough that he would leave me in there out of spite. Or maybe he would just forget about me. He’d get drunk and no one would ever come for me. I would wither away in that small space, starve to death or something.

It was a stupid fear. Of course he would never leave me in there to die. Of course. Besides, someone had to do laundry eventually. But those sureties had never given me much comfort and they gave me even less now. That fear came back full force, that paranoia that I was trapped and I was going to die or go insane from the enclosed space. Only things were worse now. My father had never tied me up like that before. He hadn’t needed to because I had been too little back then to break the door down. But now there really was no way out. I was trapped. And there was no one who was going to free me. My father was going to go back to work. My mom wouldn’t be home for hours. I didn’t even care about missing my work shift, all I could do was feel how hard my heart was pounding in my chest and panic that was swallowing me whole.

Worse still was that I was right next to the heater. Thankfully, I had switched it off, but it was still hot from being on for so long and it quickly made the closet stuffy and hard to breathe. Suddenly, the thought of spending the rest of the day, and maybe even the entire night in there, in that stifling heat with my arms above my head, all of my limbs aching with the position that I was in, made me snap. With a cry of desperation and anger, I twisted my body as much as I could until I could brace my feet against the wall behind me and pushed, so hysterical that all I could think of doing was getting that tie off of me. The plastic cut into my wrists, but I was freaking out so badly that I didn’t even care about the pain until I felt something wet drip down my left arm and immediately stopped pulling. I wasn’t worried about the damage I had done, only that the tie wasn’t going to snap before I seriously hurt myself and bled to death or skinned my hand.

I fell limp, twisting my body back around until my back was to the wall again, completely defeated. I would need scissors or a knife to get out of the zip tie, two things that I did not have on hand. Hell, even if I did, I wouldn’t be able to use them anyway. I even had the means to save myself right there in my pocket: my cellphone. All I needed was to speed dial Heero’s number and he would come running, but I couldn’t even do that. It was like dying of thirst and having a tall pitcher full of ice water just out of arm’s reach, but in full view, taunting you. I began to laugh, even though that situation was decidedly not funny at all and had to bite my tongue to stop it. Laughing hysterically until I would start crying again was the last thing I needed.

“Everything’s fine,” I muttered to myself, “You’re not going to die. Nothing bad is going to happen just because you’re trapped.”

The memory of what had happened the last time my father had tied me up came to me and I slammed my head back against the wall to clear it away.

“No,” I snapped angrily at myself even as my heart raced even faster, “Everything is fine, just think, goddamnit!”

My heart and my head wouldn’t listen to me, the latter torturing me with the memory of that first rape, the feeling of his belt biting into my wrists so close to what I was feeling right then that the panic attack almost over took me, and the former doing something freaky that made me think of heart attacks. Think, if I couldn’t get free, there had to be something I could to at least make myself more comfortable until someone got me out of there. The position itself was not ideal. I was on my knees, but my upper body was stretched, forcing me to use muscles that I wasn’t used to using that way just to keep my weight off my wrists. I shifted my legs as best I could under me to try to stand up since I couldn’t sit down, but the pipe that I was tied to was much lower than shoulder height for me and I could only stand up halfway before my shoulders felt the strain and I had to get back onto my knees.

Frustration nearly had me pulling at the ties again, wanting to get out of that kneel, but I managed to keep a tight control over myself. Panicking again was just going to make things worse. Not that they could get much worse at that point. The next seven hours were hell. I mean that, they were pure hell. It sure didn’t feel like hours, it felt like days. Take away things like the sun, put someone into sensory deprivation like that, and they lose all sense of time. Everything became meaningless to me. There were no sounds that I could even use to judge what time it was, what day it was. I clung to the knowledge that I hadn’t heard the front door open, so it couldn’t possibly be as late as I thought it was.

It didn’t take long for my awkward position to start to tax my body. An hour, maybe less. My injuries from the past week had been healing nicely, thank god. I don’t know what I would have done if I still had those hematomas. But even though the swelling had gone away, having my arm above my head and putting all of my weight on my thighs and knee were making those old injuries flare up with deep aches and whatever I had done to my hand when I had hit that wall was making itself known, too, from the pressure around my wrist. All the pulling I had done had definitely made it worse and the pain there was a lot worse than in my arm and leg. The strain and being unable to either sit or stand was torture enough. After an hour or maybe two, everything began to tremble with effort and I felt like I was having muscle spasms in my back. I probably was, but I was trying so hard not to feel it, to distance myself from what my body was feeling.

That, in itself, was a mistake, because it wasn’t my body that was the problem, it was my head. It was the boredom, having nothing to do and nothing to think about but how scared I was that got to me in the end. You really take all the little distractions for granted, the things the mind does to occupy itself. In that closet, I had nothing but my own thoughts, which have never been very friendly to me. My skin felt weird. Prickly. Crawling. Like something was trying to jump out of me. I wanted so badly to get up and pace, do something to get rid of all that nervous energy. I knew, on some level, that I was having a panic attack from being tied up. I hadn’t even known that I had that phobia, but the terror of it was unmistakable. If it had happened to anyone else, it might have been interesting.

I mean, I know where that fear came from, but I had no idea it had developed into a psychosis in the span of, what, a few months? Of course, what Zechs had done to my recently had probably helped in making it get that bad. I just had this ridiculous sense that something horrible was going to happen to me when it already had. And I kept picking up stray details of memories from that night, so many months ago, like it was a painful scab, which was not helping me calm down in the least. The only thing that I could do was think about those things or sleep. I tried after a while, wanting to escape all of it in the only method I had. That proved useless, too, however. I started to doze off a little when I settled down enough to accept that I was not going anywhere for a very long time and my brain started to shut down. You can only stay in a state of blind fear for so long before your body falls back on tricks like that.

It sort of worked, at first. I began to doze off. Escape reality, really. I sagged and felt this pressure in my wrist and a stinging pain, like a warning, but even that wasn’t enough to wake me at first. Then the pain grew all the way down from my wrist, down my arm, into my shoulders and back until it felt like I was pulling my arm right out of my socket and I jolted awake. Forgetting where I was and what was happening, I tried to stand, only I couldn’t. I had been kneeling like that for too long and had lost all feeling in my legs. Unable to balance myself, I slammed my side right into the heater. It was still hot enough to burn my neck just a little, like getting hit by hot grease, and let me tell you, that is not a good way to wake up, even from a two minute doze. I thrashed, crying out in pain, and had no clue what was going on, which way was up and which way my body should be going when it seemed like everything I did caused pain. I only managed to right myself by grabbing the tie holding me and pulling myself up a little before settling back into the position I had been in before.

I burst out crying in frustration, tiredness, and hopelessness. It seemed appropriate, given my situation and for the first time since Quatre had died, I indulged in my tears instead of trying to lock them up inside. It wasn’t like there was anyone there to see me. It oddly did make me feel a little better, just crying things out instead of panicking. When I was done, I felt exhausted, like I had been hollowed out and would have given anything to have been able to sleep. I almost felt like I had during my insomnia bout, just listless and drained. I thought about Heero a lot when I was in that closet. What he was doing. How he would freak if he found what had happened to me. I made up my mind right then that I wouldn’t tell him, he didn’t need to know about that shit. I gave him enough to worry about as it was. I tried to imagine that he was there with me, like I used to with Quatre, just to comfort me. I tried to conjure him up, holding me, stroking my hair, telling me that everything was going to be ok if I just kept my head together, but I couldn’t manage. It seemed like a betrayal, bringing him into all that. It just felt too wrong.

My father had dragged me into the closet around noon, probably 12:30ish. I didn’t hear the front door open again until eight. By then, I was just mentally gone. I was in some kind of screen saver mode, not really thinking, but not asleep, either. My body was a mess and I felt cold and shaky, probably from shock. My hunger sure hadn’t helped matters. I didn’t feel any kind of relief hearing someone come through the door. I didn’t cry and think ‘finally, I can get out of here.’ From where I was, I couldn’t figure out who it was and I only felt apprehension that it was my father, coming back for me. Not to free me, but to fuck me. Or maybe beat me. It was those thoughts that kept me from crying out for help, not knowing who might answer that call. I even tensed and felt afraid when the person finished rummaging around in the kitchen and began walking towards me. I shrunk into my corner, trying uselessly to make myself as small of a target as possible. Light glowed from under the door, burning my eyes.

The door swung open and I turned my head away, squeezing my eyes shut at the sudden brightness.

“Oh my god,” my mother’s voice was the sweetest thing I had ever heard, “Oh my god, Duo!”

I blinked my eyes open as she fell to her knees in front of me, my vision watery and I told myself that it was just from the light.

“Oh my god, oh my god,” she kept repeating, her voice shaky with horror.

Her face was like ash and her eyes were wide as she took in every inch of me, everything making her shock grow and grow. Her hands were all over me, touching my swollen cheek and the burn on my neck before shakily trailing up my arms to where my wrists were bound, bruised, swollen, and bloody and she quickly retracted them, like it was too terrible for her to even touch.

“What did he do? What did he do?!” her expression was filled with fear and sorrow and anger, but despite her words, there was no disbelief in her tone and that was the worst thing at all, that she could see my father doing this and maybe it had shocked her, finding me like that, but not the possibility of it.

“I’m ok,” I croaked, my mouth dry, trying to reassure her even though it was blatantly obvious that I was very far from ok.

She grabbed at the ties and pulled them, being careful not to touch my wrists, but quickly figured out in her frantic attack on them that they were not going to budge

“Hold on,” she said in a panic, climbing to her feet, “Just hold on, Duo, I’ll get them off.”

“Mom-,” I called after her, suddenly scared of her leaving me alone in there, but she was already gone, actually running into the kitchen.

She didn’t leave me for more than ten seconds, but it was enough for the panic to start to swell again. I almost cried with relief when she came back, scissors in hand. Her hands were shaking hard, but she managed to cut the tie free from the pipe without cutting me. I fell forward from the sudden lack of anything holding me up, my arms feeling like they were made of wood. I probably would have fallen on my face, but my mother grabbed me, letting me lean on her. She wrapped her arms around me and hugged me tightly, drawing me against her, cradling me like she hadn’t done since I had been very young.

“That bastard,” she sobbed, “That fucking bastard.”

She rocked us and cried into my shoulder until my shirt was wet. I brought my arms up to hug her back, but they were clumsy and useless and I was only managed to do it through pure desire alone. I can’t even tell you how good it felt to touch her, not just a warm body, but my mother. Even when she let go of me, she didn’t shy away like she normally does when she hugs me, but cradled my hands in hers, looking at them with rage and that soft, loving concern that I had only ever seen from Heero’s mother, never my own. My wrists looked truly horrible, all red and swollen, encrusted with blood. I hadn’t just cut myself with the tie, I had rubbed the skin right off of them. There were already bruises forming and it was probably a bit stupid, but I wasn’t angry about what my father had done, I was just worried about how I was going to hide the wounds from my boyfriend. They weren’t exactly something I could write off as an accident, not with how those bruises were shaped. My hands were shaking harder than my mother’s, muscles fatigued.

“How long did he keep you in there?” she demanded, her eyes sharp and fierce like a lion’s.

“Since noon,” I rasped, “I… I don’t know what time it is.”

“It’s eight, love,” she said pained, caressing my unbruised cheek and looking like she was going to cry again, “Come on, we have to get you out of this damned closet. You need water and food.”

She stood and I tried my hardest to get to my feet as well, but as soon as I put any weight at all on my legs, they shook, unable to manage even just that much and I nearly fell right into the wall. My mother, as quick as lightning, wrapped an arm around my waist and helped me wobble out of the closet, her doing pretty much all of the work and practically dragging me. I don’t even know how we made it to the kitchen as well as we did, but I could have kissed her when she sat me down in one of the kitchen chairs and I could finally take weight off of my abused legs. Every part of me ached and just sitting up in that chair was taking what little strength I had left.

“Thank you,” I told my mother.

She tried to smile, but there was still too much sadness and anger on her face and she failed miserably. She poured me some water from the tap, looking apologetic that we didn’t have bottled water, but I was so thirsty that I didn’t even taste the slightly metallic flavor of the water for once, just guzzled the whole thing down in one go and my mom rushed to get me more. She snagged some bandages, a wash cloth, and antibacterial ointment from the bathroom, put some water in a bowl, and sat next to me at the table, taking my right hand and started to gently clean the dried blood off of my skin.

“I can do that,” I protested, feeling both awkward and warmed that she was taking care of me.

“Your hands are shaking too much,” she said, but she seemed more settled now that she was taking care of things instead of just reacting.

I sipped at the water while she cleaned my wounds, her expression pinched and pissed as she examined the marks and cuts under the kitchen light. When she was done bandaging my wrists, she heated up what was left of the tomato soup for me. I struggled to eat it with a spoon, my hands not wanting to listen to me, but I was ravenous with hunger and didn’t care if I made a mess. I took the pain pills my mom gave me just as eagerly as the soup, not used to seeing her fret and fuss over me. It must have really terrified her, seeing me strung up in the closet like that. When she was positive that I wasn’t going to keel over on her, she went back to the laundry room to finish the clothes.

I slowly finished my soup and sat there at the table, feeling numb and zombified, willing my hands to stop shaking and every muscle in my body to stop hurting. My back and my wrists were definitely the worst, but my legs ached something fierce, along with my stomach and my face. I had this overwhelming urge in that moment, sitting there alone, feeling like I had been awake for days, wanting to punch something and couldn’t even do that much, to call Heero, tell him what had happened and run over to his house, hide there like the scared, little child that I was. But I couldn’t. If I heard his voice, it would undo what tentative control I had over myself. For once, I was more frightened of that than him finding out what my father had done to me.

My eyes wandered down to my wrists, even though it was the last place that I wanted them. That whole time, I had been trying my hardest not to look at them or notice them and had kept my eyes firmly fixed on the reddish liquid in the bowl in front of me. The bandages were crisp and clean, probably completely unnecessary since I had stopped bleeding a while ago, but I still appreciated them because they hid the worst of the damage from me. But I could still see dark bruises and reddened, swollen flesh spreading from under them, marking my skin like tattoos.

‘My dad did that,’ the thought suddenly burst into my head like a camera flash and lingered in the same way, even as I shook my head, like that could clear it out.

No, no. I didn’t want to think about that. I had spent the last seven hours desperately denying that thought, refusing to let myself think, even for a second, about what was happening to me, only that I was trapped and in pain, never about why. I hadn’t let myself acknowledge it, feel anger or even fear at what my father had done, but sitting there, I felt it bubbling up. Repulsion. Anger. Hurt. Betrayal. And fear.

‘He did,’ I thought, fighting my own stubborn refusal, ‘He dragged me into that closet, tied me up like an animal, and left me there to rot. Every bruise, every pain, he put there. He did that to me, he left me there in the dark like that’s all I am to him. Nothing.’

I hid my face in my hands, my body shaking for an entirely different reason.

‘It was my fault,’ I argued, ‘All of it was my fault. I had lied to him, gone behind his back, just like he said. I knew he was going to flip out and punish me, but I did it anyway. Maybe he had tied me up there, but it was my fault I got so hurt. If I hadn’t panicked, everything would have been fine.’

Maybe it had been my fault, maybe I had pushed my father into it, but I had been expecting a beating, not… that. Why did it hurt me so much more, remembering the rage on his face, his total disregard for me, locking me up than the blows to my face and gut? Why did it frighten me so much, that he could do something like that to me? And all because I just wanted to be with Heero. Not because I had broken something or talked back to him, but because I dared to have a friend that he didn’t like. That feeling in my chest, the rage mingled with hurt and betrayal, grew and grew the more that I thought about it, the more that I remembered what had just happened to me at the hands of my father. If Justin or Heero ever heard about this, they would be sickened and demand that I go to the police. I just felt… empty. Tired and weary, sick of all of this. I let my head fall into my arms, not caring that just the weight of my head was hurting fatigued muscles.

My father would never apologize, I knew that. I didn’t even think he thought he had done something wrong. Just punishing his kid, like any father would. His duty and responsibility, never mind that he had done it in rage. It had been his right. What was truly sickening about all this was that there had been a time when I would have thought that was true, that my father was just punishing me because I had messed up, like striking me for breaking a dish or breaking my arm for forgetting to turn the oven off. I might have learned that not all fathers are like that, but I had still believed that it was just what my own dad was like, it was just how he parented and I still deserved it because I was a bad kid and couldn’t do anything right.

I remember being so amazed watching Heero and Justin together, how they got along, like they were friends and not just father and son. Even when Heero messed up, I had never heard Justin raise his voice at him, let alone just want to strike him. I had quickly learned that he would never, ever do something like that to anyone, especially Heero. I had learned what kind of relationship a dad was supposed to have with his child, and how completely fucked my own was, even if you ignored the sexual assaults. What my father did… not just the beatings, but the things he said to me, the way he makes me feel, the things that he does when he’s angry and how he treats me, it’s all messed up.

I cried softly into my shirt sleeve. Once, I had clung to the belief that my father would never go too far, would never hurt me more than I could handle or heal from. I had had at least that much faith in him. I don’t know when that faith had died, during one of the many times his anger had landed me in the hospital, when he had almost choked me to death, or when he had raped me. It’s all kind of muddled now. Now, instead of that belief, all I have is this fear that its inevitable, that one day I’ll push him too far and he’ll cross that line. All him locking me up in that closet was in reality was another step closer, another thing screaming at me ‘see?! See what he’s capable of?! See how little control he has, how little he cares about you?!’

Anyone else would have called the police. Anyone else would have run away. Anyone else would have been strong and had a spine. But me? Lowly, cowardly me? I was sitting at my kitchen table, doing nothing about it but knowing that I should. And I knew that I was never going to do a thing about it. I don’t even know why anymore. Because I love him? Do I love my father more than I love myself? My life? More than I love Heero? More than anything that I can ignore this fear in my chest? Or is it that fear that keeps me from ignoring my father’s actions? Fear of him and what he would do if I stood against him. Fear of failure. Fear of ruining his life. I don’t know. All I did know in that moment was that I was going to keep going on like this had never happened. My back and my wrists would heal and I would push it all away like nothing.

‘Heero doesn’t deserve a piece of trash like me,’ I thought miserably as I fought for control over my tears, ‘He deserves someone who is just as strong as he is, someone that would fight back and wouldn’t take this shit from anyone, even his father. And that someone is never going to be me.’

My heart torn to shreds, I trudged up from the table, almost falling because my legs were still recovering from seven painful hours putting stress on my knees and thighs, but I managed to get to the sink by grabbing the counter, nearly dropping the bowl in the process. That would have been a great way to continue that shitty day, breaking things. I was a mess, emotionally and physically, but I couldn’t just sit there. If I kept thinking, I was going to drive myself insane and bring myself to some place… unpleasant. I tried to wash the dish, but it was impossible. My fingers were half numb, half overly sensitive now that blood was flowing the way that it should and I gave up, not wanting to drop it. I struggled my way upstairs to the attic, keeping a constant grip on the handrail. It was a long, painful process, but it helped get more feeling back into my legs and by the time I got up the steps, I was walking more normally, if stiffly.

I did some stretching exercises when I was up there, the only room in the whole house that had enough space for it, just the stuff that we usually do in gym to warm up. There were some that I definitely couldn’t manage because of my back, but the rest helped my legs and arms as much as anything was going to. Feeling just a little bit more limber, I found the last, clean pair of work clothes I had that weren’t in the laundry room, and went back downstairs to the bathroom. I reeked from sweating in that warm closet and while I wasn’t going to get a hot shower to soothe some of my aching muscles, maybe luke warm water would be good enough to make me feel better.

I grimaced when I saw my reflection in the mirror. I almost looked as bad as I had when I hadn’t slept in over a week; my face was ghastly pale, like chalk, but under my eyes was red and puffy, and the paleness of my face only made the swollen bruise on my face look even worse. I looked miserable, which was exactly how I felt. There was definitely no way I could see my boyfriend like that. Not only did I look ugly, he would know something was wrong with a glance.

I wrapped some plastic wrap around the bandages and went into the shower. I got about three minutes of somewhat warm water before the shower head sputtered and it quickly petered off to ice cold. I didn’t have the energy, and my arms hurt too much, to attempt to wash my hair anyway, so I just quickly washed myself and got out of there before I froze. I dressed, wrung the water out of my braid, and even brushed my teeth just to try to make myself feel cleaner. In the kitchen, my mother was using the table to finish folding the clothes.

“I have some clean clothes that are more comfortable than those,” she offered when she saw I was wearing my work uniform.

“Thanks, but I don’t need them,” I told her.

She watched me with this perplexed expression as I walked to the fridge with a thankfully normal, if somewhat stiff, gait. The brief warm water hadn’t helped much, but the pills and exercise were. I opened the fridge and glanced at the food Mariela had packed for me, debating if I wanted to take it. Honestly, I wasn’t the least bit hungry, even though all I had had since that morning was half a can of soup. I knew, intellectually, that I was hungry, but I felt this disconnect between my brain and my body. I still felt numb, I guess, distant, like I was in a fog. It seemed like a huge waste of food when I was sure I was just going to pick at it. Besides, I suddenly realized, my mother had probably just given me what she was going to have for dinner and looking at those leftovers hurt. I remembered all the good memories attached to them too easily; making the cake with Heero, celebrating Mariela’s birthday… And it only made me think about how my evening could have gone, that I could have had a nice meal with Heero’s family, taken a jog with him, played video games or helped with chores instead of being tied up in a closet.

“There’s leftovers I brought for dinner if you want,” I told her, about all I could do to thank her for caring for me, “Steak and potatoes and cake… there’s a lot of it, if you want to give Dad some, too.”

I meant it as an offering to appease his anger, maybe put him in a better mood for her to deal with, but her eyes got all hard and bitter.

“Thank you, Duo. I’ll save you some if you get hungry later tonight,” she said in this catty tone, letting me know loud and clear that she had no intention of giving any to my father.

“Alright,” I said, not wanting to argue and snagged an apple, putting it into my jacket pocket when I went to the door.

I glanced at my cell phone to make sure that it had enough of a charge to last until I got home and saw that I had a text message from Heero. I had no doubt in my mind that it was him asking me if I was ok, but there was just the one message, so he must have not been too worried that I hadn’t responded. He probably thought I was still at work. My hand hovered over the keys for a moment, feeling the strong urge to call him, or at least text him, just to see his response because I wanted to see him so badly, and couldn’t. I drew my hand away and forced myself to slide my phone back in my pocket. I couldn’t reach out to him, even to just send him a quick text message. I was still too raw and Heero has this unique ability to make the oldest of my wounds bleed, to rip apart my walls and expose my nerves and cracks to the harsh light of day. If I let him do that then… I couldn’t cope with it. And even if I could, I wasn’t strong enough yet to keep myself from saying or doing something I didn’t want to in front of him.

“Where are you going?” my mother asked worriedly when she saw me put on my jacket.

“Work,” I said simply.

“Oh, no, Duo,” she protested, “You can’t! You need to rest-,”

“I need to work,” I insisted.

“You don’t,” she argued, surprising me.

My mother is usually very shy and nervous, completely different from how she was when she was drunk. For a long time, I thought she was afraid that I was going to hit her or yell at her, always walking on egg shells around me. Maybe it was like that at first, before she had gotten sober, but once she had, I think she realized that I’m not like Dad. That was the thing that made me realize that I was wrong, how she acted around him. Sure, she could be skittish and cautious, but never like she is with me. Even knowing that she’ll get him angry, she’ll still snap at him and argue, but with me, she draws away.

It took me awhile to realize that it isn’t fear of what I’ll do to her, but fear of going back to how things used to be between us, that simmering hostility. She was scared of losing me or hurting me or upsetting me, always unsure of how to act around me. Things between us have gotten a lot better. She’s a bit bolder, affection coming more easily, but never as easy as it is with Heero’s family. It probably never will be. But that’s ok. Those rare moments when she touches my arm or smiles at me are more precious than Mariela’s hugs or Justin ruffling my hair because things like that don’t come naturally to my mother, but she puts the effort in for me. Still, even if we’ve become more open around each other, probably as open as people like us can be, we never argue or fight. We’re both too scared to, not wanting to lose what we’ve managed to get through hard work, so it was shocking to hear her raise her voice to me like that, get frustrated at me.

“The money isn’t important,” she said, the first time anyone in my family has ever spoke those words.

“Yes, it is,” I said softly and just like that, that strong front she had crafted crumbled because she knew that I was right, how much we needed every cent.

“You’re hurt,” she said almost in a whisper and the pain in her eyes tore at me, almost enough to make me stay but not quite, “and you’re exhausted. You should be in bed, not working. You’re going to hurt yourself. After what just happened… you need to rest.”

She shocked me again. She might worry about me from time to time, when my father was in one of his rages, or she saw the aftereffects of a beating or a rape, but she had never come out and said it like that, had never fussed over me. I found myself smiling a little as I thought of how much her words reminded me of my boyfriend and his own fussing.

“I need to work. Please, mom,” I pleaded, “I just need to work.”

Her expression softened and I knew that she understood. She was right, the money wasn’t the important thing and it wasn’t the reason why I was leaving. I just… I couldn’t stay there, not after what had just happened. I might have gotten out of that closet, but I still felt trapped, claustrophobic and stifled in that house. If I didn’t get out, I was going to scream and work was simply someplace that wasn’t there. I couldn’t stay home and I couldn’t go to Heero’s. I had nowhere to go, so why not the factory? I knew I was going to hurt myself, but any place was better than where I was.

“Alright,” she conceded unhappily, “Will you come home after or…”

I nodded, which was clearly not the answer that she had been expecting, or wanting. I didn’t blame her. I sure as fuck didn’t want to go back there and if my dad had done the same thing to her, I would have wanted her to get as far away from him as possible for as long as possible. I started to open the door and paused, looking back at her.

“Thanks, Mom,” I said somberly.

She was startled for a moment, then she just looked pained and upset.

“Don’t… don’t thank me for that,” she murmured defensively, “Not ever.”

She looked away from me guiltily and I knew that she was thinking that if she had been drunk, she never would have even found me in there. I would still be trapped, who even knew for how long, and if she had been really drunk, or not even that drunk but just in one of her drunk and petty moods, she might have left me in there anyway. I almost apologized, realizing that I had demeaned her by thanking her, like she had done me this huge favor when anyone should have helped me. In her mind, if she hadn’t been, not just a terrible mother, but a terrible human being, I wouldn’t need to thank her for something like that. But apologizing for it would just make her feel worse.

I left the house with a heavy heart, feeling guilty for making my mother feel bad and just incredibly miserable over how my day had turned out. I almost had it in me to say ‘fuck it’ and go walk around town for the rest of the night. I didn’t have a lot of money on me, just a couple of bucks, and pretty much everything was closed by then or would close within the hour, but surely I could find something to kill time with even if I was still hurting and the thought of taking a jog was nightmarish. Going to work was a terrible idea, even an idiot like me knew that, but I didn’t relish the thought of doing nothing until almost two in the morning, either. So, I used up the rest of my pocket change on the bus and went to work because I didn’t even feel like walking the twenty to thirty minutes it would take me to get there. I didn’t feel like anything, really, except finding some way to make the thoughts in my head and the horrible, empty feeling in my heart stop, whether from hitting my head against a wall until I blacked out or finding something nice and sharp, but I didn’t want to think about that even as a joke, because it wasn’t. It frightens me sometimes, how easily my mind drags me to those thoughts, reminds me of how easy it was the one time I got close to offing myself. I tell myself that things are better now, and they are. They’re immensely better, and I don’t really have a reason for acting on those thoughts, not when I have Heero and his parents and my mother. But for some reason, that doesn’t stop me from having those thoughts to begin with.

Do I even need to tell you that my work shift was a complete, horrible disaster? Bad idea and foolish or even moronic don’t really come close to describing the decision to go. Even feeling better than I had when I had been stuck in the closet, I hurt all over and had no energy at all, and that was just what was wrong with my body. My head was elsewhere, nowhere, and everywhere all at once. My heart was tangled in briars. Everything felt wrong. Depressed is a pretty mild way to describe it. Even if I shoved my thoughts down where I couldn’t understand them, I could still hear that background noise, the vibrations of them affecting my mood no matter how hard I tried to just ignore all of it and keep going through the motions.

Thanks to the bus trip and leaving home earlier than I should have, I had some time to kill when I got to the factory. The previous shift was still on the clock and I didn’t want to linger outside even if the fresh air was incredibly nice after almost eight hours stuck in a tiny, warm closet, just in case I ran into Caleb again. I hid in the break room, snagging one of the books from a tiny, beaten bookshelf that no one but me ever seemed to care about. I had been working there for years, but the books seldom changed, mostly pulp horror novels, self-help books, and cheesy romances, nothing very stimulating or close to what I usually like to read, but it was better than staring at a wall.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Solo’s voice roused me from a thoughtless stupor and I realized I had just been sitting there, staring at the same page for the last ten minutes for some reason.

I looked up from the book and saw that he was more concerned than accusing and was puzzled for a moment before it dawned on me how weird this looked, considering I had skipped my first shift with him. He grabbed the chair on the opposite side of the table that I was sitting at, swung it around and sat in it backwards.

“Wow,” he said as he narrowed his eyes at me, scrutinizing me, “You look like total crap.”

“Thanks,” I muttered dryly even as I blushed a little.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, “You missed work. I thought maybe you were avoiding it after what Caleb tried to pull yesterday, but looking at you, you sick or something?”

“I just hurt myself,” I murmured, a half lie, “My back and my arms. I didn’t really feel up to working. I’m sorry, I forgot to call out. Was Leneski mad?”

I felt a flare of anger at my father for what he had done. It was bad enough that he had hurt me, scared the shit out of me, and treated me like that, but he had also made me miss work. Sure, it wouldn’t be the first time that he had hurt me so badly that I had to skip, but never so deliberately and that was frightening by itself, that he had been so furious, he hadn’t even cared if I had shown up at work. Considering the bug he had up his ass about me working, that was… incredibly worrying. More than him doing something so crazy as tying me up in a closet all day. I didn’t even know where I stood with that job anymore. Maybe Leneski was like Lorathe now and was eager for any opportunity to fire me and I had just given him one. As much as he said he needed me, he sure didn’t want me. I felt like I was walking on a tightrope with him, waiting for the moment when his discomfort outweighed his practicality and he would shove me off.

“Nah,” Solo assured me, “He wasn’t mad, he was concerned.”

I snorted.

“Yeah, right.”

“No, really,” he insisted, his tone genuine, “He asked me if something was wrong with you, if one of the guys had messed with you. He thought you didn’t want to go to work, that you had been threatened or something.”

“He’d probably be happy if I was,” I muttered under my breath.

“Hey,” there was a sharpness in his voice that made me look up from the table at him, his expression fierce, but worried, “I know things are… strained between the two of you, but he isn’t like that. He might be uncomfortable, but he wouldn’t want you hurt or to quit because one of the guys was messing with you. He’d feel personally responsible, and just because he has some old-fashioned ideas in his head, it doesn’t mean he relishes the thought of anyone on his team, let alone a kid, getting bullied and pushed around. He’s not a bad guy, he just… doesn’t know how to act around you right now.”

That actually gave me a tiny measure of comfort to know that, as much as Leneski didn’t like me, he might still stick up for me. Hell, he already had, if I pulled my head out of my hurt long enough to remember the day he had found out I was gay. He had been uncomfortable and gruff with me when he hadn’t been before, but he hadn’t fired me and he had told the others to knock it off. He had pulled away from his discomfort enough to try to make a safe work environment for me. It wasn’t enough to keep guys like Caleb off my back and everything was strained and difficult now, but he had tried. That was good enough, wasn’t it? Hell of a lot more than what any of my teachers have done for me.

“So, if you hurt your back, why the hell are you here?” Solo raised an eyebrow at me, “You should be at home, not in this dump.”

“I couldn’t stay there,” I admitted, opting for the truth since he was the only one beyond Heero that I could say that to who would understand what I meant, “I needed to get out.”

Heero would have been concerned by that and it might have resulted in another argument, or him treating me like he needed to coddle me or take care of me which, in my current mood, would not have been a terrible thing as much as my pride refused to admit it, but Solo just nodded, understanding me perfectly.

“Ok, so why not go lie down on a park bench or go to one of those shelter places for the night?” he asked, “They let you do that, you know. So long as you leave in the morning, they won’t ask any questions.”

I blinked stupidly at him. That thought had never occurred to me in all of the years that I had been chased from my home by fear of my father, that there were places that I could go that weren’t the library or the park. I knew that there were places like that in town, but I had always associated them with kids that didn’t have a home or women that couldn’t go back to theirs because their husbands were beating them and their kids too much and they had finally gotten fed up with it. In my mind, they had never had anything to do with me because I never intended to run away from home, not permanently, and even my mother didn’t seem all that interested in leaving my father, for all of the crap he’s put her through. It had never occurred to me that I could just stay in a place like that for the night instead of sleeping on a park bench or walking around town until school started or my dad was at work. Honestly, I didn’t know if I could. It seemed so embarrassing. Even if no one asked questions or called the cops to take me home, it was still a small town and someone there was bound to know who I was. What would they say or think about why I was there? And there were people there that really needed a place like that, people that didn’t have anywhere else to go and needed help. My life might not be perfect, but I have a home and a family. I don’t live on the street or have kids to worry about. It seemed selfish to take up a bed when there might be someone who actually needed it.

“If you just need a place to stay for a while,” my friend and coworker offered, seeing my reluctance, “you can always crash at my place for a day or two. It’s not glamorous, but there’s a couch, some juice and take out in the fridge. As long as you don’t mess with the settings on my tv, you can stay as long as you like. I don’t mind.”

“W-what? No!” I sputtered unintelligently, in total shock as I watched him fiddle with the hefty ring of keys attached to his belt and start to take one off of it, “No, no, no! It’s fine! Thank you, but I’m fine, I don’t need a place to stay!”

I was incredibly weirded out by his offer, and the ease at which he had suggested it, like it was no big deal, him offering his damned home to me. I mean, ok, we were friends, but not like Heero and I were friends. In reality, we barely knew each other. I could be a clepto or something for all Solo knew and he didn’t even hesitate to let me crash at his place just because I had didn’t want to go home. Is there something especially pathetic about me that people keep opening their homes to me, like I’m some beaten puppy stuck out in the rain? I won’t deny that what he was giving me was tempting, but I felt like it would be incredibly inappropriate for me to accept that kind of handout. This was Solo’s home and I have a hard enough time dealing with Heero always giving me things, I don’t need Solo to start doing that just because he feels sorry for me or whatever reason he had done that for.

“If you insist,” he shrugged like it was no big deal at all, “but the offer’s open if you ever need a place to crash. I don’t have any roommates, so it wouldn’t be crowded with just the two of us.”

I squirmed, torn between being amazed at his charity and feeling like the biggest loser in the world that he felt the need to offer that to me. Thankfully, he dropped it and I was allowed to save face.

“You’re a colossal idiot, you know that?” he scolded lightly, “Coming here of all places with a hurt back. It’s just going to make it worse.”

“I know,” I murmured, “but I needed to do something.”

He shook his head at me, looking at me like he thought I really was a moron. He wasn’t wrong. Going to work that day was a pretty bad idea in a long life of bad ideas. I might have stopped shaking and could walk normally again, but the rest of me was far from fine. I was in a horrible amount of pain from the muscles between my shoulders to my fingers and it took an ungodly amount of effort just to not let on that I was hurting. I thought that if I could just make it through half of my shift normally, then I could deal with the other half, I just had to power through it, that was all. I didn’t last five minutes. I dropped the first box I tried to lift, my arms giving out on me along with my back, the pain of holding something that heavy making me shake again. Then I dropped the second. And the third. I was just thankful that the cargo was light enough that we weren’t working with a partner, so I didn’t risk hurting anyone, but Lorathe blew up at me over it.

“Are you fucking kidding me?!” he roared after storming up to me, “No one could possibly be this incompetent! Do you have oatmeal for brains or are such a limp dicked little pansy that you can’t handle a single shipment?! Why don’t you just get the fuck out of here, Maxwell?!”

He jabbed a finger into my chest and I don’t know what it was, that contact or what he had said or if I had just been holding it in since my father had dragged me into the closet, but I freaking snapped.

“Back the fuck off,” I growled at him, annunciating each word with a tone that was chiseled in ice and barely suppressed rage.

All around me, all work stop and the other guys went deadly quiet. They were used to Lorathe bellowing at them, especially me, and often went about their business trying to ignore him, but I had never spoken to anyone in that tone before. Hell, I had never stood up to our boss before, no one had. No one could, they were all too scared of getting fired. Everyone needed that job too much, only at that moment, I suddenly didn’t care if he fired me. Maybe I was depressed. Maybe I was just too angry to care, but in that second when my rage started to seep out, that job didn’t seem so important anymore. It was only for a second, but even that second is terrifying to think about now, how easily I lost control over literally nothing.

“If you touch me again, I’ll give you something worse to worry about than a few dropped boxes,” I snarled, my voice tightly controlled even as I felt like I was going to explode and I took a threatening step towards him.

Lorathe’s eyes widened in fear. He wasn’t a huge guy, maybe half a foot taller than me with more fat than muscle. Between his beer gut and his balding head, he wasn’t that impressive to look at. Maybe he realized that, as skinny as I am, I could still hurt him if I got a punch in, which was likely, even his gait is slow, or maybe he was just so shocked that I had snapped at him. Whatever it was, something scared him enough that he took a step back from me, his face pale. Then he managed to shake off enough of his shock to realize that the entire crew was staring at us and he went from white to bright, tomato red.

That’s the thing about guys like Lorathe and my father. As soon as they get turned into a spectacle, they lose all ability to act rationally. Even my boss’ wariness towards me didn’t hold a candle to his humiliation. I could practically see the wheels turning in his head. His initial instinct was to fire me, and he would have been in his right to do so since I had just threatened him. But now he was thinking about how retribution against me would look. Would the rest of his employees think he had done it out of anger, or would they start talking behind his back and suggesting that the real reason was that he was scared of me? They had already seen him take that step back and the shame of it was in my boss’ eyes. I had embarrassed him and he wanted nothing more than to clock me one, but he couldn’t do that, either. That would be admitting that I had gotten to him. All he could do was act like I was the kid that I was, that it meant nothing to him, the big man. Pride is a stupid, ridiculous thing like that.

“Now you listen here, you little twerp,” he growled right back at me, hiding how shaken he had just been fairly well, “You talk back to me again, and you’re out of here, understand me?! And don’t even think of trying to get another job around here, you ungrateful brat! No one talks to me like that, especially not a punk like you!”

I glared right back at him, daring him to do it, to fire me, even as I questioned where my sanity had gone.

“When you’re done with this shipment, you’re on clean up duty!” he bellowed, “Bathrooms, bailer, floors, trash! And I want this place fucking sparkling and if I hear a single peep out of you for the rest of the night, you can do it with a fucking toothbrush!”

He narrowed his eyes at me, doing a little daring of his own, but I was stone silent. With a huff, he stormed out of the bay, slamming the door behind him shut so hard that the bulletin board rattled and almost fell to the floor. I instantly deflated as soon as he was gone, feeling completely hollowed out and beyond exhausted, just drained and limp. I couldn’t believe that any of that had just happened, me threatening him or him not firing me. How fucking lucky could one person be in a week, to narrowly miss getting canned _twice_? I couldn’t take much more of this stress, even knowing that it was stress that I had made from not controlling myself.

“Dude,” Solo put a hand on my shoulder, his eyes wide with amazement, “that was seriously awesome.”

“What?” I raised an eyebrow at him, “Me losing my temper over literally nothing and almost getting my stupid ass fired? Again?”

“Uh, _yeah_ ,” he grinned, “No one else has had the balls to snap at Lorathe like that, ever. And if someone was going to do it, I never thought that it would be you. I mean, you’re always so even tempered, nothing ever seems to faze you.”

I stared at him incredulously. Me, even tempered? That was laughable. Everything gets to me. Everything upsets me. I’m just this bitter little ball of rage, always crying or punching things over things that shouldn’t bother me. I get depressed at the drop of a hat, even when nothing should be wrong. I’ve tried to kill myself three times and think about it all the time. Saying that nothing fazes me is hysterical.

“You are seriously scary when you’re mad,” Solo remarked.

“W-what?” I stammered.

Me, scary? I had had that thought before, based purely on how people react around me when I’m pissed or glare at them, but I had never truly believed that I’m frightening. I’m not big like my father or Zechs or tall like Trowa. There isn’t anything scary about me at all. I like cooking and I have a small cat that I call ‘princess’ for fuck’s sake! I was sure that Solo had to be joking, but even though he was still grinning, I could tell that he wasn’t messing with me.

“Yeah,” he confirmed, “When you’re really angry, you get real quiet and there’s this fierce, intense look in your eyes. I knew guys in juvie that got that look, they were always the ones that we knew not to fuck with, ya know? Not the ones that swore and screamed a lot or threatened they would cut you. It was the ones with that look that you knew would do a lot worse than just threaten if you crossed them. It’s like…” he considered his words for a moment, “It’s like there’s two kinds of guys, right? On the one hand, you’ve got guys like Caleb. They’re like terriers. They move around a lot, yap all the time, and get right in your face, but it’s mostly for show, to intimidate and make you forget how small they are. They might bark and bark and snap at your ankles, but they’re not going to do much and they know it. Then there’s guys like you. Guys that are like German Shepherds and Rotties, the trained guard dogs and police dogs. They don’t bark or move around or even snarl. They just get real still, real quiet. And they look at you with that piercing look of theirs and you don’t dare move, because you know that the second you do, they’re gunna rip your throat out.”

“I look like that?” I muttered, feeling my heart sink like a heavy stone.

I knew the look that he was talking about. My father has that same look. That stillness and stare right before he lashes out. He can rant and scream, but when he got quiet, that was when I knew I was in trouble. I didn’t like that. That I scared people and that I had something in common with my father. I didn’t want to scare anyone, I didn’t want to be that kind of person… like him. Solo gave my shoulder a little reassuring squeeze.

“Hey, it’s a good thing,” he said, his expression more serious and I think he saw that he had upset me, “Not only is it kind of cool to see, but it makes people back off. Just look at Lorathe, he looked like he was going to piss his pants! Bein’ intimidating isn’t a bad, kid. It just means that when you do act, it’s a serious thing. You don’t go around beating on people cuz it’s fun or you lose your temper. When you bark, you mean it and people, those with common sense at any rate, respond to it.”

“If you say so,” I murmured, but I couldn’t shake the disappointment in myself that I felt and that sinking feeling of self-loathing.

If I did have something like that, it was pointless anyway. I couldn’t make the people that I actually _wanted_ to back off scared. My father, Zechs, Alex, Mueller, and the rest of them. I wondered just how scary I looked that it had impressed Solo, freaked out my boss, but had never done anything to Zechs. Or even to Heero, when I thought about it. When I had gotten angry enough to hit that wall, he hadn’t flinched. He had been scared, but not of me, of what I had done to myself. Maybe Solo was just exaggerating, or maybe Heero was immune to my shitty behavior for some reason.

I bent down to pick up another box, sending the signal to Solo loud and clear that I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. My arms ached horribly even when I just put them around the box, protesting angrily at the work I was making them do, but this time I was dedicated to not dropping _anything_ , no matter how much it hurt. Which turned out not to be my decision at all, because the second I tried the lift the damned thing, my back seized up. I felt this tremor go through the damaged muscles in my upper back and the pain was so severe, I almost cried out. Instead, I seemed to lose the ability to control my arms and the box almost tumbled down to the ground. It would have, if Solo hadn’t deftly caught it and put it on the trolley with the rest of the cargo. I flushed darkly, hating showing that kind of weakness and making myself look clumsy in front of everyone. The other guys had gone back to their own tasks, but I caught a few of them looking our way every so often.

“Is this the part where I tell you ‘I told you so’?” he jibed in half amusement, half scolding, “As in ‘I told you to just go home’ and you have no business doing this shit with your back all fucked up?”

“I’m fine,” I muttered irritably, a blatant lie, “I can do it.”

“Your worth ethic is humbling for us normal human beings,” he said dryly, “but all you’re doing is hurting yourself worse. At the rate you’re going, you’re going to end up not even able to walk, let alone go to work tomorrow. Why don’t you just go start cleaning so you aren’t here all morning mopping the floors? I’m sure it’s going to be just as painful, but at least you won’t be lifting anything heavy. I can take care of the rest of this.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, wide-eyed at how nice he was being, “There’s still a lot…”

“Yeah, I’m sure. No sense making you do this in the state you’re in. Besides, having to watch you and make sure you’re not doing anything stupid is giving me more work, not less,” he smirked.

I knew that he was joking, but I still felt guilty about him doing all the work. Still, he was right. I was just getting in the way and I was pretty much useless at lifting anything. It made me feel like I was being selfish, going to work simply because I had wanted to take my mind off of things when everyone else had a job to do. I wandered away from the group to start cleaning the warehouse, which turned out to be an even bigger pain in my ass than trying to move cargo had been. Just like Solo had said, I wasn’t lifting anything, but it still hurt, all that moving around, crouching, scrubbing, putting things away, washing, and even tossing things into the bailer.

The minutes ticked by like hours and with each second, I felt worse and worse. My back and arms were stone, my head throbbing, and the lack of food I had had was starting to take its toll. I had zero energy for anything and I caught myself almost nodding off when I was cleaning one of the bathrooms. Or maybe that was just from emotional turmoil. During dinner break, I was a robot, methodically chewing on my apple because I knew that I had to, not because I wanted to. I felt kind of like I had during my insomnia bout as I laid my head on the table while Solo finished a tuna sandwich, the smell of it utterly repulsive to me and my fragile stomach. I wanted so badly to just nod off and spend the rest of my break in a coma, but I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to. I just hoped that that wouldn’t prove true when I tried to sleep that morning.

I didn’t even feel any joy when the shift was over, or even just relief that I didn’t have to scrub anything anymore. Truthfully, in as much pain that I was in, I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to go home. My father would be there and it didn’t matter if he was asleep or awake, if I had to see him or not. I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t deal with being around him. And that was just from what he had done to me that day. I couldn’t bear to have him touch me, to feel those hands pulling my pants down and the rest of it. I didn’t know if he would do that, or maybe just beat me, but the thought of going home to him made me want to vomit. I wanted to go to Heero’s. I wanted crawl into bed, his bed, the guest room bed, or even the couch, I didn’t fucking care. Any bed would be better than mine. It was unbearable, but I had no choice. I had to go to my house. If I didn’t, I didn’t want to think about what my father would do. He had just proven to me how insane he could act when he was pissed and I didn’t want to push him anymore.

That being said, and please call me an idiot all you like, I had no intention of actually listening to my father and staying away from my boyfriend. There was no way I could do that. I had just spent not even twenty-four hours away from him and I was miserable. I felt worse about being apart from him than I did getting stuck in that damned closet. And it terrified me a hell of a lot more, too. I was beginning to depend on him, his presence and his affection for me, but it was worse than that. He was like a drug and I needed him just to get through a single day. How pathetic is that? My father could scare me as much as he wanted, but the truth is, it’s not up to me. I can’t stay away from Heero, not as things are right now. Even if he breaks my arm, I’ll still end up going back because I don’t need an arm. Or a leg. Or my ribs. I just need Heero. I need the way that he makes me feel and forget all the bad things back home like I need air in my lungs.

As I walked out onto the street, I tried to mentally prepare myself. I was not going to Heero’s, I just kept repeating that over and over again, pounding it into me until my forlorn brain got the clue to stop being so stupidly depressed over something that I couldn’t change. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck suddenly stand up and, far too tired to even be cautious or wary, I glanced back over my shoulder. Amongst the small group of guys that were walking the same way as me was Caleb, glowering at my back. I ignored him, not scared of him at all. Compared to my dad, he was nothing, a too-big kid throwing a temper tantrum. Besides, he wasn’t going to do anything with Solo walking with me. Still, when I felt someone from behind me suddenly clap me on the back, I flinched, even though he hadn’t been close enough to touch me. I whirled, expecting Caleb to have run up to me, eager to start something despite what had happened the last time he had (he still had some lovely bruises on his face to remind him), or maybe one of his friends that he had told even with Solo’s warning. Instead, it was a coworker that I had never spoken to before and it took me a moment just to conjure up his last name. Richards. I didn’t even know his first name.

“Hey, Maxwell,” he grinned at me and the honesty of that expression and the lack of hostility in his eyes disarmed me, “That was great, what you said to Lorathe today.”

I just blinked at him for a second. That had been the very last thing I would have expected him to say to me, given that none of the guys I work with ever have anything to say to me. I’m just the runt that they’re forced to work with. Worse, some of the guys are like Solo, ex-cons with a rap sheet a mile wide and I’m the kid with the cop for a father. Ex-cop, but that doesn’t actually matter to them. If anyone were to come up and talk to me like that, I would have expected it to be abuse or threats, not approval. From behind Richards, I could see Caleb glowering at us. He even hated seeing me getting along with one of the other guys, or maybe he was just pissed that he couldn’t say something and shoot me down.

He was probably thinking that no one would congratulate me for anything if they knew I was a fag. I could just imagine him fantasizing about butting in and telling everyone I was a queer, how fast Richard would wipe his hand on his jeans for just touching me. I might have felt some smugness at his frustration and anger, but I wasn’t in the mood. I just felt tired by all of it. All of the anger and hate, it had worn me down to nothing and I found, alarmingly, that I was too depressed to even care anymore.

“Uh, if you think so,” I said shyly, rubbing at the back of my head, “I didn’t really do anything, I just lost my temper for a moment.”

Richards snorted at that and a few of the other guys looked half amused, half embarrassed.

“No one loses their temper at Lorathe, no one dares to,” he pointed out, “And even when they do, he never backs off like that because he knows he has all our balls in a vice,” some of the other guys nodded at that, others looking bitter and angry and I couldn’t even imagine living your life that way, knowing that one man had all of the power over your life and livelihood, that in the course of a single day, he could be in a bad mood and you would find yourself without a roof over your head, homeless without a cent, your security and ability to feed yourself and cloth yourself destroyed over some petty squabble.

Actually, no, I take that back. I know _exactly_ what that feels like, and it sucks.

“You’re more man than us, kid,” Richards chuckled, “standing up to an asshole like him.”

At that, Caleb went bright red with rage at the mere mention of me and being a man in the same sentence that wasn’t tinged with mocking and he ground his teeth together so hard that I’m surprised he didn’t crack any of them, his hands curled into fists. I had to admire his restraint, though, or his cowardice, because he didn’t do anything. Maybe it was just Solo standing at my shoulder, but he stayed where he was, just glaring daggers at me as the other guys walked past Solo and I, a couple of them copying Richards’ move by clapping me on the shoulder and thanking me for putting Lorathe ‘in his place’, if only for a second or two. It was only when the mob had gotten past us that he dared to follow them, and I could actually see the strain on his face to fight the urge to do something, punch me or just slam his shoulder into mine as he passed. But Solo was right there, glaring heatedly at him and he moved on. It was just as well, in the mood that I was in, only two things would have happened: I would have let him beat me into a paste, or that rage in me would have bubbled out again. In my exhausted state, I didn’t have the presence of mind to control my emotions, even using Heero’s trick. I likely would have stupidly taken a swing at him.

“Congrats,” Solo smirked at me, “You’re a celebrity.”

I almost rolled my eyes at him. I didn’t want to be and I didn’t really care that my coworkers were suddenly talking to me, accepting me only because I had talked back to our jerk of a boss. I meant what I had said, I hadn’t done anything beyond risk my job like a moron. I didn’t want any of them to notice me, even if the attention was positive for once. What had happened at my other job had shown me the kinds of things that can happen when coworkers notice you. There was only one person who I wanted to notice me, whose opinion I cared about. To the rest of the world, I was invisible anyway, in all of the ways that mattered. I had been since the day I was born. Adults that saw my bruises and looked the other way. Teachers at school that saw Relena and Zechs bullying me and acted like it was either ok or it didn’t happen. I was a ghost and the only times that I wasn’t, like when I had come out, or when Quatre had died, I had just wished I were. Things would be easier if everyone but Heero thought I didn’t exist. If it was going to hurt either way, being invisible or being attacked, I’d rather it be the former.

At the thought of my boyfriend, I smiled for what seemed like the first time in the last twenty-four hours, something in my chest lightening. He would be impressed by my standing up to Lorathe, but would also understand how stupid I had been. Instead of congratulating me, I knew without any kind of doubt that the first words out of his mouth would be ‘are you ok?’ But that only made me miss him so powerfully that I felt like just falling to my knees right there on the sidewalk and crying. Fuck, would I ever grow up and stop being such a pussy in this relationship? Heero might miss me, but I bet he wasn’t on the verge of tears just from my not being with him for a day.

I got home, somehow, although I don’t remember much of the walk, my head elsewhere. Solo walked with me about halfway until he went off to whichever direction he lives in. I was in so much pain at that point, I probably would have just taken the bus for the short journey, but I had used up all my spare change already. Then there I was, standing in front of that tiny house with the cracked driveway and dying grass. There was no light on for me. The door was locked. Just like always. I fished my ring of keys out of my pocket, unlocked the door, and feeling like I was walking to the gallows, went inside.

The air in the house was as cool as outside, but stale and stagnant. I groped for the light switch in the kitchen, not feeling like navigating the room in the darkness. I was in enough pain, I didn’t need to stub my toe among everything else. The kitchen was exactly how I had left it, which was a huge relief. I had been so sure that my father would intentionally make another huge mess for me to clean in the morning. I was still positive that he was going to find a billion things for me to do as punishment, but cleaning another disaster in the kitchen would have frustrated the hell out of me, especially since I was planning on going to Heero’s the second that my father left for work. I didn’t have any appetite, so I didn’t bother looking in the fridge to see if my leftovers were still there, just poured a glass of gross tap water and drank that down.

I peeked my head into the living room to see if my mother was occupying the couch. I sincerely hoped that she wasn’t because sleeping on the couch was probably the only hope I had to get any sleep that morning. To my shock, my mother wasn’t in there, but my father was. What was even more surprising, he was awake, watching a football game on the television with the volume turned down. I have no idea how I hadn’t seen the flicker of light coming from the room when I had first come in, I guess I was more tired than I had thought. He had to have heard me come in with the television on mute and when he felt me staring at him, he turned his head and glared at me. In the light of the television, I could see bruises and scratches on his face. He and my mother had been fighting again. For someone who was scared of him, she lost her temper at him so easily and I just knew this had been about him locking me in the closet. Either she had suicidally confronted him over it, or he had been pissed at her for letting me out, take your pick. All it meant was that he was in an even worse mood. I flinched away, walking slowly towards the stairs, my entire body tense and alert as I waited to see if he was going to follow me and start another altercation.

He didn’t move from his chair, but I felt absolutely no relief. He had stayed up to wait for me, not to fight, but to make sure that I had come home and hadn’t gone to spend the night at Heero’s again. I knew that for a fact. For one, it was two in the morning on a work night, there was no way he would be awake and, unlike me, my father seldom suffers from insomnia. Even if he did, I knew this was deliberate. He wouldn’t put the television on mute for anyone’s sake but his own. He hadn’t wanted me to hear him. That just sent a chill down my spine. This wasn’t just some little thing that he was pissed at me about. This wasn’t breaking a plate, this, him not wanting me to hang out with Heero, was a serious thing.

I snuck into the bathroom, locking the door behind me even though I didn’t think he was going to come after me. I hoped that just seeing that I had come in after work would appease him and he would go to bed and leave me the hell alone. My violet eyes found my reflection in the mirror. I looked like hell, weary lines under my eyes and pale from fear. I ignored the tired face that I saw and brushed my teeth, taking my sweet time. I shook out two pain pills from their bottle and swallowed them dry. Staring at the bottle, debating, I took two more. I was more concerned with the pain in my back, shoulders, and arms than I was any potential side effects. I eyed the shower, considering taking one even knowing the water wasn’t going to help my aching muscles at all. It would help to waste time and I would be safe in there. Maybe. But my dad might get pissed at me wasting water if I took too long in there and I really didn’t want to shower in that house. I didn’t want to be naked and vulnerable when my father was there and I didn’t want to feel that cold water or smell the mildew or the shampoo that my father uses.

When I finally finished in the bathroom, the living room was completely dark. He had gone to bed after all, I thought with relief so intense, I could have cried. I knew that it didn’t mean anything, but at least he wasn’t on guard anymore. I went up to the attic, which was still a huge mess, but I found that my mother had put a pile of my clean clothes and sheets on my desk, so that was something at least. I sighed as I took in the clutter around my room that my father had caused, immensely glad that I had put my bookcase back up yesterday, because with the way my back felt, there was no way in hell I was getting that done that morning.

For once, it wasn’t my fear of my father’s wrath that had me hurriedly picking up my room, but just how little I wanted to sleep. It was stupid, I was exhausted and I didn’t want to show up to Heero’s house looking like a zombie again, it would just make them all worry about me, and I just plain needed the sleep. But when I looked down at my mattress, stripped bare and the dark stain that was in the middle of it, sleep was the last thing that I wanted. I didn’t want to struggle to find sleep with my muscle pain, it would be too much like when I had had my insomnia. I didn’t want to have nightmares. And most of all, I didn’t want to lay down on that flat, smelly mattress and stay awake listening for footfalls on the stairs. All of it seemed worse than any nightmare my brain could possibly conjure up.

So, I cleaned. I busied myself with picking the entire place up, putting away my clothes, making my bed, putting my books back on the shelf, all the little things that didn’t really matter, but I could lie to myself that they did until there was absolutely nothing left for me to do. For the first time since spring break had started, I missed having homework to do. I flipped open my phone to see what time it was, hoping I had staved off an hour or two and it would be a bit closer to when I could leave, but to my dismay, only forty-six minutes had passed.

“Get over it,” I muttered to myself and angrily unbuttoned my shirt, throwing it into my hamper along with my pants.

I dressed in the warmest pair of pajamas I could find, which weren’t very. I wished I had the pajamas that Heero’s parents had gifted me with, but I had left them at his place so my dad wouldn’t find them and start asking questions. More and more of my clothes were ending up at his place, it’s difficult to remember to keep some of them at my own house. I suppose I should be worried about that, how easily it is for me to forget that I have another life, that as wonderful as being with Heero is, that life isn’t real. As much as I want it to be. His home might be home in my heart, but I knew what my real home was. The place that I was forced to return to, no matter where my heart was.

I turned the light off and very carefully laid down in bed, but still groaned as my back hit the mattress and a wave of agony ripped right through my upper back. I rolled onto my side, but it only alleviated the pain a little. I was just going to have to get used to it.

‘Just like when I heart my arm and wrist and leg before,’ I thought bitterly, ‘Because I was just so successful in getting used to it then.’

I pulled my sheets over me and closed my eyes. The fact that the sheets were clean helped a little, but not much. It felt… it felt wrong. Just like it always does lately. The darkness of the room. The smell of it. The feeling of those sheets. The lumpy, flatness of the mattress. But most of all, being there by myself felt the worst of all. How had this happened in such a short time? How had just a few nights curled up with Heero made just trying to sleep by myself feel so… off? I wanted to feel his arm around me, his warmth at my back. I wanted to feel his breath lightly ghosting over my neck. I wanted my cat pressed against my head. I wanted the warmth of that house with its clean, floral smells, that feeling of safety and love. I wanted to be able to close my eyes without feeling my heart racing with fear and anxiety. I wanted to be in a place where I knew no one there wanted to hurt me.

Unsurprisingly, I couldn’t sleep. Everything that had happened that day kept replaying itself in my head. Heero’s worry. The closet. My father’s rage. Snapping at my boss. It suddenly dawned on me that I still hadn’t answered Heero’s text, but I was still too much of a coward to even look at my phone. I opened my eyes and sighed in frustration at myself. This was pointless, I realized. There was no way I was going to be able to sleep like this. I threw the sheets off of me angrily, hating myself that I couldn’t even fall asleep in my own damned bedroom, that I kept torturing myself like that, and struggled to get up. It wasn’t easy, but somehow I managed. I snapped on the lights, looked at the clock on my phone, and swore under my breath. Another forty minutes had passed and I felt even more tired than before, but I hadn’t managed to drift off for even a second.

          Feeling incredibly irritable and frustrated, I grabbed a book from my bookshelf and sat at my desk, simply because there was nothing else I could do. Laying down hurt and it brought with it too many memories from the previous time I hadn’t been able to sleep. I think I read about three pages before I started to nod off right there at the desk. That would have been fine. Sleeping at my desk would have been preferable to not sleeping at all, but my back injury wouldn’t let me. Every time I started to slip closer to blissful rest, I would slump on my desk and a jolt of pain would go through my shoulders, leaving me wide awake and even more frustrated. That happened a couple more times before I gave up on the idea that I was going to be able to read or sleep at my desk and returned to my bed.

          I don’t know how long I laid there for that second time. Thirty minutes, maybe. Maybe a little longer. Long enough for me to start dozing off into an uncomfortable, light sleep just out of pure exhaustion. It lasted all of a few minutes before I came shooting back awake, jarred and alert with a headache pounding in my skull from the sudden surge of adrenaline as I heard a very familiar sound: footsteps on the stairs.

          ‘No, no, no, please, no,’ I chanted in my head, curling up into a tight ball as my heart raced unpleasantly, ‘Go away go away go away, please I’ll do anything, just not again, please not again.’

          The universe or God or whoever it is that’s in charge of such things was not in a very sympathetic mood that morning. I heard the light squeak of the doorknob being turned and squeezed my eyes shut. Not that it mattered. My father has never cared about interrupting my sleep. Sure enough, he pulled the sheets off of me and rolled me into position, just like always, not giving a single shit about if I had been sleeping or not. This was about him, his wants, and had nothing to do with me beyond it was my body that he was using. I stayed still, letting him do what he wanted because I knew it would be quicker that way and that was my only goal, for this disgusting act to be done as soon as possible.

          He yanked down my pants and grabbed my hips and even though he had done that hundreds of times before, pure terror shot through me. Maybe it was the time since he had last raped me, maybe it was my fragile emotional state that morning, I don’t know. I didn’t so much fight back against him as I reacted to that sudden fear. I didn’t do much, just tried to sit up, but my father growled low in his throat at me, sending ice water through my veins. I felt his hand at the back of my neck and he pinned me down to the bed like a damned animal. Horrible agony ripped through my back and shoulders from the pressure and I nearly cried out, realizing that he had just made the injury worse, but there was nothing I could do about the painful position or him holding me down.

          I had to bite my tongue to keep that scream from coming out when he shoved into me with a lot more force than he usually does. Mostly because I didn’t want to show any reaction to what he was doing. It wasn’t like he cared, so it wasn’t out of spite, I just couldn’t bear letting him or myself know how much he was hurting me. I felt something warm trickle down my thighs and wasn’t surprised at all. Then my father began to move inside of me, keeping one hand on my hip and the other on my neck the entire time, and the pain of it made tears drip down my cheeks. It was only from the pain, I told myself, and nothing else. I had to bite down on the bandages wrapped around my right wrist to keep from making a sound, tasting cloth and my sweat. Strangely, I wished they weren’t there so I could chew through my own skin.

          ‘I forgot to change those. Need to remember to do that. If they even need changing, the cuts didn’t bleed when I was working,’ I thought, a bit idiotically considering what was happening to me.

          My father’s thrusts and his grip on me was rough, violent, and angry. I realized that this… him fucking me was only a small part because of his pent up urges. Another part was a punishment, him taking his anger out on me with his cock instead of his fists for once. I could take him needing release and using me for it, it was horrible and disgusting, but I could grasp the why of it. But him using this to purposefully hurt me like he would a punch? It tore me apart inside because this was deliberate. Him raping me because he was horny… that was something that he seemed to do as a knee-jerk reaction. I was there and he was hard up, it was just something that he didn’t seem to think about and he never mentioned it, like the him that crept into my room in the morning was a completely different person to him. But this… this was different and if I dared to look at what he was doing for longer than I already had, it was going to make me insane.

          I grimaced with disgust and felt bile rise in my throat when he came inside of me, but thankfully it was over. He didn’t seem to need a repeat performance that morning and pulled out of me roughly, making me gasp at the burning sensation. He wiped himself off on my sheets, pulled up his pants, and left without a word. Just like always. I sagged, a puppet with its strings cut, and rolled over onto my side, every inch of me hurting I curled back into my tight ball, shaking. I told myself that that was just from the pain, too.

          I didn’t move for a long time. Long enough that the blood and semen on my skin went cool and started to get flaky and itchy. I just laid there and cried and felt the hot, heavy ache in my back and the stinging, brutal pain in my ass, the newly forming bruises on my hip. I felt cold and empty, torn apart and the mere thought of moving ever again, of taking another breath and living for another second seemed like a cruel betrayal. The gun in my father’s nightstand or one of the knives from the kitchen were a blissful relief. At least then I wouldn’t have to feel. I wouldn’t have to hate myself and my father and the entire world for doing this to me.

          A memory burst into my consciousness like a camera flash. Heero with his arms around me, pressing a sweet kiss to my forehead. Of course. How could I ever do what I had just been thinking of? Killing myself was laughable and it would only make everything worse because then I could never see him again. I’d bear anything in the entire world to see those blue eyes one more time, even the rapes and the abuse, even the self-loathing because none of that mattered compared to being with him. I cried harder, but the tears weren’t as bitter. They were easier and breathing was easier, too, because instead of thinking of those breaths as another moment that I was alive when I didn’t want to be, I thought of them as another breath closer to the time when my father would leave and I could go see the boy I loved and pretend like all of this… all of this horror had only happened in my head.

          I got to my feet stiffly and awkwardly. If I hadn’t felt so gross, I probably would have just stayed there in my ball, even if it meant not moving until the sun rose, but it was that gross feeling that propelled me to get up and take care of the aftermath. My thighs were tacky with blood and other things, and when I turned on the light, I saw that there was a small pool of blood on my previously clean sheets, which felt like deliberate pettiness from my father, like he had been rough to intentionally stain my sheets. I would have to deal with it, and the blood on my pajama pants, later. I went through my post-fucked ritual, washing the blood off of me, throwing my pants into the washing machine. I even popped some more pain pills, even though it was far too early for another dose. I just didn’t care. All the while, I stubbornly refused to look at my own reflection.

          Back upstairs, I took the sheets off my bed and put them in the corner of my room as a reminder to put them into the washing machine along with my pants the next time I went downstairs. I silently apologized to my mother for taking the time to wash everything and now it was all filthy again. I found another pair of pants to put on and struggled to find something to do, to keep moving. I ended up sitting at my desk again, reading, even though sitting was painful and I probably should have been lying down. My eyes took in the words on the pages, but I didn’t really comprehend anything. I wasn’t consumed by my thoughts, either. I was just… blank. I recognized it for what it was: a coping mechanism, and didn’t care enough to be worried. I was just glad that I could do it.

          After a while, I began to slump again and my eyesight became blurry with tiredness instead of tears. I was beyond tired or exhausted. I had nothing left, not a single shred of energy. I glanced at the clock. Five in the morning. If I didn’t try to sleep at that point, I had to find something else to do, and I couldn’t turn up at Heero’s looking like I did, so sleep it was. Even if I knew there was no way it was going to happen as fucked up I was. Purely going through the motions and not really thinking about things, I grabbed the pillow from my bed and laid down on the floor in the corner. It was hard and uncomfortable, but shockingly, I managed to doze off for a little under a half an hour before the nightmare hit me.

          I’m not surprised at all that I had a nightmare. What surprised me was that I didn’t dream of my father raping me. I dreamt about being trapped in the closet again, only instead of plastic ties, my wrists were bound by barbed wire and I wasn’t alone, my father was there, watching me. I begged and pleaded with him to let me go before it found me, to not let it hurt me, but my father was unmovable. In the shadows, shadows that should not have existed in such a dark place, I saw _it_ moving towards me. The thing from my strangest nightmares, a monster with a twisted form and smoldering grey eyes and a mouth full of sharp teeth and long, clawed fingers.

          Suddenly, it was there in front of me, this rotting, horrible thing. I expected its teeth on my throat, but instead felt the same agonizing pain that I had in reality that morning from my father penetrating me. Only this time, it was this inhuman thing. It fucked me and when I began to scream, it sunk its teeth into my stomach and began to eat me alive. When my father saw it rip my guts out, he smiled this sickly, snide little smile. It wasn’t until I woke up, covered in a cold sweat, that I realized it was the same smile that Zechs had given me the day he and his friends had tried to rape me. Talk about fucked up. Bad enough that I had to dream about that damned closet, why the hell did my brain have to mix in a bunch of other freaky stuff to it?

          I felt a bit shaky after that, the dream already becoming fuzzy, but I could still remember the worst parts of it and knew that any hope I had had of being able to sleep was long gone. Even if I had been able to doze off, I sure didn’t want to. Who knew what else my imagination would conjure up to torture me with. I didn’t feel like staying cooped up in that attic reading a book, either. I couldn’t stay there and I couldn’t leave, not while my father was still there. But I desperately needed some fresh air, to get as far away from that house as I could, so I dressed, got my jacket and shoes and went for a walk. I even set an alarm on my phone for seven-twenty so my father would see that I was still there before he left for work.

           I spent the next couple of hours of my morning just walking around town, not stopping anywhere, even for a moment because I didn’t want any thoughts to catch up with me. It was bitter cold out and the air had me wrapping my arms around myself and sticking my hands under my arms for warmth, not having any gloves on me, but otherwise, it was fairly nice out. There was little wind and only a few clouds and when I walked on the beach, the sun was coming up and it lit the sky. It was beautiful and I allowed myself a moment to breathe and feel just a tiny bit better about everything. It wouldn’t last, but just being away from that place, away from _him_ made it all seem less horrible.

          I got back home just in time to see my father come out of the bathroom, getting ready for the day. He shot me an icy glare and disappeared into his bedroom to get dressed. I didn’t even need to be told to make his breakfast for him, brewing enough coffee for both of my parents, managing scrambled eggs with the remaining egg, beefing it up with some shredded cheese and tabasco sauce and a ton of pepper the way he likes. My mother came out of the bedroom shortly after my father went in and took her turn in the bathroom, smiling tiredly at me when I poured her a cup of coffee.

          “Do you want me to make you something to eat?” I asked her softly.

          She shook her head.

          “No,” she admitted, “I don’t have much of an appetite this morning.”

          I could understand that. She looked awful, pale and worn, her face darkened with bruises from whatever fight she and my father had had, but at least it didn’t look like anything was broken. She just seemed very subdued, distracted by some dark thought. When my father came back out of the bedroom, we both froze, two frightened deer in the presence of a wolf. He grabbed the plate of food I had made for him, the newspaper from the kitchen counter, a mug of coffee, and sat at the kitchen table. My mom escaped into the living room, not wanting to be in the same room with him for more than she had to. I wished I could do the same, but I didn’t want to linger there for more than I had to. While my father ate, I washed the skillet that I had used and wiped down the stove, even though it was perfectly clean, just to make it look like I was busy.

          My father sat there the entire time, chewing on his food and watching me like a hawk, those grey eyes of his burning a hole through me as I stood there, as still as a board, waiting to see what he would do. I hated him. I hated more than I could stand. I hated how he was making me feel. I was so caught up in those feelings that when he dropped his dirty dishes on the counter by the sink, I flinched. I tried to get to the sink to take care of them before he could utter a word to me when his hand shot out and grabbed me by the throat. I made a short, harsh sound as I suddenly found my airway restricted. He wasn’t choking me, not yet anyway, but his grip was solid and threatening. It reminded me of how he had held me down by the back of my neck when he had been fucking me and the comparison was so loathsome, I felt my stomach churn. I hated how his hand felt, so strong and big and calloused, as familiar as the sound of his voice, how easily he could strangle the life out of me right there.

          “Nathan, stop it!” my mother screamed as she came running out of the living room, having heard the noise I had made, I guess.

          He shot her a harsh, warning look and she stopped dead in her tracks, all the color bleeding from her face as she watched, completely helpless to stop him. He turned his gaze back to me, his eyes narrowing and intense.

          “You’re going to do as you’re told from now on,” he said in a cold, tense tone, “You’re not going to go anywhere besides work today, aren’t you?”

          He tightened his hand around me, just a little bit, but the threat was clear.

          “Yes, sir,” I rasped out my lie.

          He suddenly released me and I gasped for breath, coughing harshly. My mother was immediately at my side, putting her hand on my back and she bravely dared to glare at my father, her expression heated while his remained as cold as stone. He sneered at the united front we presented, not the least bit impressed and strode back to the bathroom. My mother helped me into one of the kitchen chairs and got me a glass of water to sip as I got my breathing back under control. She stood by me, watching me as I drank, clearly trying to think of something to do for me and failing.

          “You’re to do those dishes,” my father ordered when he stepped back out of the bathroom, “and clean the bathroom, mow the lawn, and wash all the windows. And if I come home and there’s a single fucking thing out of place, you can _live_ in that damned closet.”

          He didn’t wait for confirmation, just snagged his keys and, finally, fucking finally, he left. Both my mother and I breathed with utter relief, which would have been funny if we hadn’t been so frightened minutes ago.

          “Are you ok?” she asked me and I knew she wasn’t asking about him grabbing my throat, but about yesterday.

          “No,” I answered truthfully and studied the bruises and swelling on her face, “Are you ok?”

          “No,” she echoed, smiling wryly, but there was no humor at all in it and she quickly lost her smile into a more serious and wary expression, “Are you…” she hesitated, chewing on her lip, “Are you going out today?”

          “Yes,” I answered honestly, not seeing the point in lying.

          Her expression fell and she looked fearful, no doubt thinking of my father’s threat.

          “I don’t want to stay here,” I told her dejectedly.

          She nodded in understanding. I didn’t tell her where I was planning on going. The way I saw it, she probably knew anyway, but as long as she didn’t know for sure, she couldn’t lie for me. It was stupid logic, but it made me feel just a tiny bit better about what I was about to do, even if she was looking at me like I was insane to keep disobeying him.

          “Duo…” she sighed, “I know you and this boy are friends, but maybe… maybe you should listen to your father… He’s serious about this. He doesn’t want you hanging around him. And if you keep doing this, he… he might…”

          She couldn’t even say it out loud. I felt this pang of anger towards her for telling me to stop being friends with Heero. She didn’t understand. Of course she didn’t. To her, I was taking stupid risks and was stoking my father’s anger. She didn’t see how much this meant to me, what I would be giving up. And how much I didn’t want to give in.

          “He’s the only friend I have,” I said, trying hard to keep the anger out of my voice, but some of it bled in anyway, “He’s all I have.”

          “You can make other friends,” she tried desperately.

          I laughed harshly.

          “If you had been paying attention at all for the last eight years of my life, you’d know how wrong you are,” I accused bitterly, taking no pleasure in how hurt and guilty she looked, but unable to stop myself, “Before Heero moved here, I had one friend from the time I was a kid and he killed himself. I’m not the type that makes friends. To everyone at school, I’m just white trash anyway. Heero is the only one who doesn’t see me like that and I’m not going to stop being friends with him just because Dad can’t see that, whether I can make a new friend or not. He’s stuck by me all this time, the least I can do is do the same for him, even if it isn’t easy. I know you don’t know what’s that like, sticking by someone, but I’m not going to be that kind of person!”

          My mother looked down at the floor, her hands bunched the hem of her top.

          “I’m sorry, Duo,” she said roughly, “I won’t mention it again.”

          I stood up slowly from the table, wincing as the pain in my ass and back decided they needed to remind me that they existed and limped to the sink.

          “I need to get these chores done, then I’m leaving,” I told her in an icy voice, still angry at her.

          It’s stupid now, looking back on it, but I felt betrayed. Beyond Heero and his parents, my mother is all that I have. My only family that actually cares about me and sees me. I had thought that she understood how close I was with Heero, what he gave me and how much I needed him, at least enough to get why I was suffering and struggling through all of the punishments my father was dolling out for disobeying him. Instead, she was fucking agreeing with him, not because she thought he was right, but because she didn’t think our friendship was as important as staying out of my dad’s way. Her asking me to obey him hurt more than him hitting me or even locking me in that closet. I felt like I had lost an ally, that she had pulled the rug out from under my feet and there I was, just like before she had sobered up, fighting this alone.

          “Alright,” she murmured and rushed out of the kitchen back into the living room like I had lit her hair on fire.

          It didn’t take me long to pull my head out of my ass and realize what a huge shithead I had just been to her. She was worried about me, that was all, she hadn’t meant to hurt me, and I had lashed out at her. As I went through my chores, struggling against my injuries and the frustration at the universe that I was feeling, I felt lower than dirt and my mood plummeted again. What the hell was wrong with me? I claimed that I didn’t want to be like her, the kind of person that could abandon someone out of convenience and to keep from being hurt, but I clearly had no problem hurting someone just because I was angry at a situation, taking out my feelings on them. I scrubbed hard at the dishes, furious and hating myself again.

          I made sure the kitchen was absolutely spotless and was about to start on the bathroom when I caught my mom heading towards the door to leave for work. She walked with her head down, her back to me, unable to even look at me and I watched, helpless, as she shrugged on her jacket, shoulders slumped and looking absolutely miserable.

          “Mom, wait,” I called out.

          I couldn’t let her leave like that. I refused to be like my father. We both might lash out and hurt people, but I wouldn’t treat her feelings and my mistakes like they were nothing. I couldn’t do that to her. She looked back at me warily and I saw with a stab of pain that her eyes were red. She had been crying and I hadn’t even heard her. I walked to her, stopping short when she looked nervous, thinking I was going to yell at her again.

          “I’m sorry,” I apologized earnestly, “I never should have said those things. I didn’t mean them, I’m just angry, but not at you. I’m so sorry. I’m just an asshole, like him.”

          Some of the pain lifted from her face and I felt so incredibly relieved. She reached out and lightly touched the side of my face that wasn’t bruised.

          “You are nothing like him,” she said with a sad smile and hugged me tightly.

          Something wet dripped down my face. I hugged her back, ignoring how much just lifting my arms hurt.

          “I’m sorry, too,” she said into my shoulder, “I never should have said what I did. I know your friendship means a lot to you. Your father shouldn’t be making you choose between him and your friend, and I shouldn’t be putting more pressure on you, either,” she drew away from me and there were tears in her eyes, “And you were right. I spent most of your life ignoring you. I might have been right here, but I… I abandoned you. I’m trying to make things right, but there’s still so much about you that I don’t know and I have no right to tell you to do something like that… You’re so much stronger than me or your father. I’m just worried about what he might do if this keeps up…”

          She had me speechless. Strong? Me? Because I wasn’t listening to him? Because I had decided to take anything he threw my way, even if he seriously hurt me just because I couldn’t give up Heero? That was just me being stupid and stubborn, not strong, wasn’t it?

          “I know you’re trying,” I dropped my arms and tried my hardest not to wince so she wouldn’t be reminded of just how much danger I was putting myself in, “and I love you so much for that. You aren’t that person anymore and I was a jerk for bringing it up like you still are. But even if Dad hurts me, I can’t stop being friends with Heero. I meant what I said, that I don’t make friends easily. I never have. I’d do just about anything to keep being friends with him,” I smiled dryly, “Besides, he’s even more stubborn than I am. He’d never let me just break things off with him without a really good reason.”

          God, wasn’t that the truth. If I just told him that I couldn’t be friends with him anymore, he’d probably stalk me or something. Heero can never let things just… _be_. If I broke up with him, would it be like that, too? Would he just accept whatever excuse I could come up with, or would he hound me and refuse to let me walk away? That possibility terrified me because it’s hard enough thinking about what I might have to do when things get more serious between us, how much it’s going to hurt the both of us. I’m so weak, if he got under my skin, I would lose what little spine I have and let it destroy the both of us instead of sparing him by leaving. What would I have to do to convince him to stay away from me? Break his heart? I immediately pushed that possibility away as pure agony ripped through my chest. No, don’t think about that, I screamed at myself, not now. Right now things were fine. I had time still.

          “Just be careful. Please, promise me you’ll be careful,” she pleaded desperately with fear, grabbing my shoulders.

          “I’ll try, I promise,” was the best that I could do.

          We said our goodbyes to each other and she left for work, leaving me entirely alone. Blissfully. Horribly. I stood there in the kitchen, listening to the creaks from the wind outside and abundant nothing of anything else. I lasted all of two minutes before I couldn’t stand those noises anymore and needed to put on some music or something, anything to cancel out the _nothing_. I didn’t have any of my cds or my player that Heero had gifted me with, all of it was at his house since I didn’t want to risk them getting destroyed again, but my dad had an old, beat up, battery-operated radio that he kept in the shed. Well, he called it a shed, but it was actually about the same size as the laundry room and he had had to build it himself as a place to put his tools and the lawnmower. It’s literally the only thing in the back ‘yard’ besides a jungle’s worth of weeds because no one cares enough to mow back there.

          My father would go out there often when I was a kid. To work on broken appliances or parts for the car. Or so he said. When I had been little, I had thought he was so hardworking, keeping the house up and running when he wasn’t at his job. Now that I’m older, I know the truth. He might have been working on things back there every now and then, but what the shed really was, was a place to get away from my mom and I. He could take a beer out there and listen to sports on his radio and be by himself. Peace and quiet. He spent a lot of time in that shed. Now it’s been replaced by disappearances to bars and hanging out with Pat. I would prefer that he was just holed up in the shed.

          I had to fight through a pile of various tools and random crap, boxes filled with who even knows what, but I found the radio and made my escape. At least it was too cold out for me to worry about bugs. I didn’t bother pulling out the lawn mower. There was no point because I had zero intention of mowing the lawn like my father had asked. The front lawn was perfectly flat from the cold, dry days from the last time I had mowed it. I knew that my father had only ordered me to do it to give me extra work to do and he probably wouldn’t know the difference. Normally, I wouldn’t risk that probably, so paranoid of being punished. I felt a lot better after the talk I had had with my mother, some dark weight lifted from my heart for a short time. But I was still angry and I was tired and I was hurting and I just wanted to get the fuck out of there, so I decided to risk it. He was so furious about the Heero thing that my not mowing the lawn seemed like a drop in the ocean.

          I put the radio on the kitchen table after cleaning some dirt and rust off of it and blasted the first station I came across that I could actually hear clearly. The thing was old and had been a piece of junk brand new, in its twilight years, the sound was fuzzy and garbled and half of the buttons stuck. But I found two stations to my liking, one that played classic rock, the other jazz. I decided on the rock. I didn’t want to be soothed, I wanted to hit things, so rock seemed more appropriate. I spent the next hour and a half on my chores, and I probably could have cut that time in half if my ass and back weren’t in throbbing agony. The bathroom was actually the worst of it, having to get down on my knees and scrub the floor and the shower. By the end of it, my arms were screaming at me in pain and I wanted nothing more than to lie on that newly clean floor and succumb to unconsciousness. I could even use the rug as a pillow.

          It was only the lure of seeing my boyfriend that kept me from doing something like that. As I finished cleaning the bathroom, I glanced at the bottle of pain pills in the cabinet, debating taking another dose. But six pills in six hours was probably pushing it a bit already. I suffered through the rest of it, thanking the universe that I had cleaned my room already and the rest of the work went easily. Then that was it. It was time to go. As I stood back in the kitchen, realizing that, I almost fell to my knees and cried. Finally, finally, I could go. I was free. I actually felt overwhelmed by the notion and seriously wondered what was wrong with me and decided to chalk it up to a mix of a shitty couple of days and my sleep deprivation.

          I spared little time getting out the door, paranoid that forces beyond my control were going to conspire against me to keep me there. I returned the radio, grabbed my phone charger and my work boots and practically _ran_ out of there, my heart thudding in my chest. I didn’t bother getting a change of work clothes, I had some at Heero’s, and anything else that I might need and even if I didn’t, nothing was important anyway. I felt my spirits lift just walking out of there, knowing where I was going. I was going to see Heero. Everything else didn’t matter. Everything else, everything that had happened, didn’t even exist.

Not even the fact that every step I took, I was pulling on whatever injury that my father gave me didn’t matter to me. All I could think about was getting there as soon as possible and hoping that Heero was still in bed, which was highly probable. Unlike me, Heero is a heavy sleeper and loves sleeping in. Sometimes I think he’d love to sleep until noon if he could get away with it. I could slip into bed with him like he told me I was welcome to do and maybe he would let me nap for an hour, maybe even two if his parents didn’t come to wake us up. That fantasy was disgustingly pleasant, the thought of that warm and cozy bed, his arm around me, and actually getting to _sleep_. No nightmares. No father to wake me up. No weird smells or monsters and random creaks to jostle me out of sleep like an electric shock…

After spending most of my day yesterday and a good deal of my morning in my shittily heated house, I hadn’t realized just how cold I was until I stepped into Heero’s home and felt the cozy warmth hit me. I shivered for a moment until that warm seeped into me, then it was like snuggling into a thick, terry blanket and I almost sighed happily. Even from the foyer, I could hear Mariela talking to someone loudly, probably on the phone with a friend or relative, although I couldn’t make out the words. Just the sound of her voice made me smile. If I put a lot of effort into it, I could pretend that the last twenty-four hours had never happened, that instead of leaving for my house yesterday morning, I had just stepped out and had a run and I was back. Everything was exactly the same: the same flowers on the same table, the same warm air, even the same smells. Everything else screaming in the back of my head was just from a bad dream I had had that morning.

I snuck up the stairs, eager to see Heero. I didn’t even care anymore if he was awake or would let me take a nap, I just wanted to see him and let him weave his magic and wrap me up so tightly in his light and love and companionship that I would forget about anything else. I frowned when I got to the top of the steps and saw that his bedroom door was wide open. He hates sleeping with it open. He’ll keep it open a crack for Kanuck, but no more than that. My frown deepened when I stepped inside of his room and found that, not only was there no trace of him anywhere, his bed was neatly made, his dog was also missing, and even his laptop was closed.

Was he awake, I wondered, maybe having just gotten up? It was possible that he had gotten up early, knowing I was coming over, or maybe his father had given him some chore to do, but he never makes his bed that well. Heero is of the mindset that throwing the bedspread over the bed constitutes ‘made’ and everything else is just fluff. Perplexed, I wandered around upstairs and got distracted when Pepper trotted out of the game room to meow at me.

“Good morning,” I smiled at her and picked her up, wincing harshly as my body yelled at my betrayal, “I don’t suppose you’ve seen Heero?”

She just purred at me and nuzzled my neck. I took that as a no. I lifted my arms higher, on the verge of gasping from the effort, but she took the hint and I was so relieved when she climbed on my shoulder and I could put my arms down. I peeked into the game room, but he wasn’t in there, either and there was no sign that he had been that morning.

‘He’s probably just downstairs,’ I told myself, ‘eating breakfast.’

‘And he didn’t hear you come through the front door?’ a stray thought shot back, making my heart beat a bit faster.

‘Then he’s walking Kanuck,’ I argued with my own paranoia.

Completely plausible. Or maybe he was out back, practicing his batting or raking the yard, or any of a thousand things he could be doing at that hour that would have made sense, but I didn’t believe. Walking the dog was more likely than any chores at a little after nine in the morning. That had to be what he was doing, I told myself, but the panic in my chest didn’t ease and my heart pounded, screaming at me that something was wrong with all of this. I knew that it was mostly from being so tired and so desperate to see my boyfriend, but I couldn’t calm myself. It seemed like _everything_ since I had left that same house the previous morning had gone wrong.

Feeling lost and unbalanced, I walked back down the steps and glanced around the living room. The only thing out of place was a newspaper folded on Justin’s chair. I heard a noise in the kitchen and felt a burst of relief before it quickly crashed, along with my spirits, when Justin walked out of the kitchen holding a mug of coffee instead of the one person that I wanted to see. For a moment, his face did something strange. He smiled, then frowned like something was bothering him intensely, then covered it up by smiling again. All in the span of maybe a second and a half, so quick I almost missed it.

“Duo?” Heero’s father seemed just as surprised to see me as I was to see him, “Good morning, I didn’t hear you come in.”

For a moment, I wracked my brain, wondering if I had skipped a day somehow and it was Saturday, not Friday, and that was why he was there instead of at work. But that wouldn’t explain where Heero was.

“Good morning, sir,” I greeted tiredly and ignored how he wrinkled his nose at my manners, “Have you seen Heero?”

“Heero?” he questioned in confusion, “He’s out of town for a game. I actually just got back from dropping him off at the school, their coach is driving them,” he raised his coffee as proof, “I always have to drive him for these early morning games. I can’t trust him to get out of bed on time, let alone get himself to the school,” he chuckled.

A game? Heero had a game today and he hadn’t bothered to tell me? He had really pulled this on me _again_?! My heart sank and, pathetically, I actually felt like I was going to start crying at any second. I wasn’t as upset about him not telling me that he wouldn’t be there as I was about the fact that he wasn’t there. I had wanted… no, I had needed him so badly and for the first time, he wasn’t there for me. I didn’t even feel like I had the right to feel this upset, I felt like I was being incredibly immature, like a whiny child. Sure, I was sleep deprived and I had had a really crappy day, but did I really expect Heero to always be there when I was feeling low? Am I that disgusting, to lean on him so hard?

“A game?” I murmured, still wrapping my head around it.

“I thought he told you,” Heero’s father frowned, looking very concerned for some reason, “He told me last night that he texted you about it.”

A text? But he hadn’t…

Oh.

Fuck.

Feeling like a complete idiot, I dug around in my pocket for my cell phone. I vaguely remembered seeing a text from Heero yesterday and having ignored it again and again, thinking he was just checking up on me. Then I had completely forgotten about it. I flipped open my phone and saw, to my shock and embarrassment, that what I had thought was a text message was actually a whole chain of messages under one notification. A whopping ten of them. I haven’t had that many messages in one _week_ , let alone one day since Zechs had gotten my classmates to spam my phone. With a feeling of foreboding, I opened the chain, starting with the first message that had been sent last night around six, the time that I would have been on my ‘lunch’ break, but had been tied up like a piece of meat in the closet. The last one was dated at six that morning.

 

‘ _Duo, you there?’_

_‘Duo?’_

_‘You must still be at work. I need to tell you something. Call me, please?’_

_‘Duo.’_

_‘Duoduoduoduoduoduoduoduoduoduo’_

_‘I’m going to keep doing this until you answer me.’_

That message actually had me smirking in amusement, imagining him childishly typing in my name over and over, but that smile quickly faded.

 

_‘Did I do something to make you mad? I’m sorry for fighting with you, I promise I’ll try harder not to annoy you so much, just please call me. I really do need to tell you something. I promise it isn’t bad.’_

_‘I know you’re not at work. Are you alright? Do you need me to come get you?’_

_‘My dad says I’m being a pest and freaking out over nothing. He says you’re fine, though how the hell he knows that. Well, either you’re not looking at your phone or you forgot to charge it, I guess. Please call or text me when you get off your second shift? I don’t care how early or late it is, just let me know you’re ok.’_

_‘Still haven’t gotten any messages from you. I wanted to go check on you, but Dad says that would just get you into trouble and not to worry. I wanted to tell you this in person when you got here this morning, but you’re not here yet. Ok, so, I kind of have an away game today. Just a practice one again, but I don’t know how long it’s going to be, or how far away this town is from here. Coach says it’s an hour drive if there’s no traffic, but who knows. I didn’t keep it from you, alright, so don’t get upset. Things have just been so nuts lately, I totally forgot about it until my dad brought it up last night. So I won’t be here this morning. I don’t even know if I’ll be there that afternoon, Coach usually takes us out to eat afterwards and since he’s driving, I can’t turn him down. But I’ll do whatever I can to get there as quickly as I can, ok? Just please, please, please, don’t go back home. Stay at my place, even if I’m not there. You can use my computer and play my games or whatever you want, you’re welcome here, you know that. Just don’t think you have to go back to your place, please, Duo.’_

Separate from the chain was another text that had been sent just a half an hour before I had arrived at his house. He must have sent it when his father had been driving him to the school.

 

_‘I love you so much.’_

And suddenly, just like that, with that one message, everything was better. All the pain and frustration and anger, the gaping hole in my chest from missing him, feeling betrayed and miserable… it all eased from five words. If I thought back to everything that had happened since I had last seen him and measured up all of it to those words, none of it mattered. Those words were all that mattered to me, the only thing that held any weight. I suddenly realized that I was being watched and looked back at Justin, catching him smiling at me affectionately and I blushed darkly, realizing that I had been smiling like a total, besotted weirdo at my phone and closed it quickly.

“Um,” I squirmed awkwardly and nervously rubbed my hands against my pants, although I had no idea why I was nervous, “Would it be alright if I stayed here until I have work, even though Heero isn’t around?”

“Absolutely,” he brightened and actually looked relieved for some reason, “You know you’re always welcome. Have you had breakfast yet?”

I shook my head, not even wanting to think about food even though I knew I should eat something.

“I don’t have much of an appetite,” I confessed.

“Something light, then,” he offered in a soft, sympathetic tone, “Fruit?”

“That sounds good,” I said and it did.

He gestured to the coach for me to sit and I did, wincing again when sitting made the pain in my rear flare up. Pepper jumped down from my shoulders to curl up against my leg.

“Anything special to drink?” he asked me when I was settled.

I paused. After the long walk in the cold and my nerves still being somewhat sensitive and raw, I really wanted a hot chocolate. I’m not shy to admit that it’s one of my comfort foods and I’ve come to associate it with Heero’s mother with how often she makes it for me, but I was already being a pest and didn’t want him to go out of his way to make a cup for me.

“Just water,” I said instead.

He shot me another smile and bustled off. I sagged against the couch and sighed. It felt so fucking good, just to sit there and not have to move. I could have stayed right there on the couch for the rest of the day and been quite happy. I already was, just to be there, to have my cat and not have to think or do anything. I even managed to make my back feel just a tiny bit better by wedging a pillow under my upper back, sighing again. Justin quickly returned with a bowl of slices of oranges, pears, blueberries, and green, seedless grapes. I had to wonder what their food budget was like that they always had such a wide array of fruit on hand.

“Here,” he handed me a steaming mug, “Careful, it’s still incredibly hot.”

“Hot chocolate?” I gaped in shock, marveling at the tower of whipped cream he had put on it and began to wonder at my suspicions that he was some kind of mind reader, “But how did you…”

Justin chuckled lightly as I carefully took the mug from him, almost purring like my cat at the feeling of the heat coming from it.

“You look like you’re having a really rough day. I thought you could use it,” he smiled, but this time, it was very sad.

“Yesterday was… kind of shitty,” I admitted with a sigh, blowing some of the steam off the mug, “Some of it carried over to today.”

That was the understatement of the century.

“I’m sorry,” he said sympathetically, “Today would have been a lot better if Heero had been here.”

I flushed a little realizing he had guessed what one of my problems was.

“It’s fine,” I said half-heartedly, “I wish he were here, but it’s not like I have a monopoly over his time. He’s on a team and he loves his sport. I’m not so pathetic that I can’t live without being attached to his side for a day.”

“I don’t think you’re pathetic,” Justin soothed, “It’s natural to miss the person that you care about and your relationship is very new still. I remember when I first started dating Mariela, every date we went on seemed like a miracle and I couldn’t get enough of her. Some days, when we couldn’t see each other, seemed so long, they were unbearable.”

I stared at him with wide-eyed amazement. It had never occurred to me that I could talk to him about these things. I couldn’t talk to my own parents for obvious reasons. Even if I claimed I was in love with some girl, my parents have proven to me countless times since I was a kid that they’re the last people I should talk to about love. Heero was the only person that I could talk to and since this involved him, that was off the table. It had never dawned on me that I _did_ know two people that were in love with each other, that might understand how I was feeling and help me to untangle my rat’s nest of feelings.

“Does it ever go away?” I asked in a somber tone.

“You get used to it,” he smiled, “You learn to tolerate the times when you can’t see them. You find other things to distract you and you get used to that pain. It just becomes this familiar ache in your chest. But no, it never really goes away completely.”

I frowned at that. I had hoped that he might have a different answer, a magical cure, perhaps, for this stupid heartache, this _longing_ , but of course he didn’t. He understood that I missed Heero, but he knew that there was nothing that he could really do about it, either of us. That one day, I might get used to that pain seemed so impossible. The hurt was too deep and too mysterious and strange to wrap my head around. I’m used to beatings and being treated like dirt. That pain is familiar. But this… missing someone when I knew I was going to see them again? Yearning just to hear their voice when I’m used to solitude? How could I possibly get used to that?

“So, you have today off?” I asked when he sat in his chair and took a sip from his coffee.

“Sort of. I only had one appointment this afternoon, but he had to bail,” he explained, “which isn’t rare. People often ditch their therapy sessions, but almost never doctor’s appointments, unfortunately,” he chuckled at something that reeked of being an inside joke, “Usually, even if I don’t have a client for the day, I’ll still stay at my office to work on patient files. But since Mariela is off from work, I thought it might be nice to do my work at home later today and spend the afternoon with her, especially with Heero not here.”

I looked down at my bowl of fruit, unable to meet those familiar, blue eyes. Justin had been hoping for a quiet day alone with his wife, and I had butted right into it. It was just another brutal reminder that, as much as this place felt like home, the truth is that I’ve invaded these peoples’ lives. It was bad enough that I pulled Heero from his safety net and keep throwing him into these tense situations, forcing him to help me with my problems and making him worry… but I was being a nuisance to his parents, too. I might be welcome in their home, but anyone else would have been annoyed at my just showing up like that, wouldn’t they? All because I couldn’t deal with my own family, I had to pester them.

“I can leave if you two wanted the house to yourselves,” I offered meekly, “I don’t want to be a pest…”

He snorted, cutting me off with a look that told me he thought I was being ridiculous.

“First off, you are never a pest,” he chided, “I told you a long time ago that you are always welcome here. It’s never any inconvenience to us. And even if it were, this is a big house. I think we can somehow find a room you aren’t in if we really wanted to be alone.”

I managed a small smile, his insistence making me feel a little better.

“Drink your cocoa before it gets cool,” Justin ordered, turning on the television.

“Yes, sir,” I said automatically and took a sip from the still steaming beverage.

Heero’s father shook his head at me, but didn’t bother correcting me. He found some biology show on genetics across different races and cultures that was actually pretty interesting, but it reminded me too much of school and the fact that spring break was rapidly coming to a close, so I tuned it out. I ate and drank my breakfast very slowly even though my stomach was finally waking up enough to want the food, just savoring it because we had nothing half as nice at my house.

 Halfway through the fruit, my eyes began to droop, my tiredness finally catching up to me. A few sips of the cocoa staved it off, but I could feel that heaviness looming, threatening to drag me under and beyond the fact that I was eating, I couldn’t come up with any good reasons _not_ to doze off. I was safe, warm, fed, and had literally nothing at all to occupy my time until later that afternoon. And my body kept reminding that I wasn’t just merely tired from skipping a night’s sleep, but that it was damaged and I had put it through the wringer.

“When did you eat last?” Justin’s voice pulled me out of my stupor and I blinked over at him. He looked so concerned and I couldn’t figure out why.

“What?” I asked stupidly, “Why?”

“Because you look as pale as a ghost,” he frowned, “And you’re quieter than usual.”

I stared for a moment, not realizing that I had been acting strangely. But then again, after seeing me in insomnia mode, Heero’s parents could probably see the signs of me skipping meals and sleep rather easily.

“Not since last night,” I admitted with embarrassment, “I had a bowl of tomato soup and some water around eight. Oh, and an apple at work later on, so I did eat.”

“Duo,” Justin began to scold and I rushed to defend myself.

“I really wasn’t feel well yesterday,” which was as close to the truth as I could get, “That was all I could manage. I didn’t feel great this morning, either, and my dad had all these chores and we’re light on food again right now, so I just didn’t feel up to making myself any breakfast.”

“I want you to finish that, then,” he urged, gesturing to the bowl of fruit, “Are you sure that you don’t want anything more substantial than that?”

I shook my head.

“My stomach is kind of messed up today,” I said, because being assaulted by your father, physically and sexually, and endangering your life by continuously pissing off said father can do that to a person.

“Well, drink lots of water at least,” he fussed in a way that was so much like Heero, I had to smile, “and you’re not leaving here today until you get a real meal in you, even if it’s just more soup. You’re going to make yourself sick again if you keep skipping meals like this.”

I nodded, knowing that I just needed sleep and my appetite would probably return, especially if I knew it wasn’t going to be cheap takeout or an instant, frozen meal. I popped a grape in my mouth and took a sip of the cocoa to reassure him that I was actually consuming something and, with a satisfied look, he returned to the show. I ate the remainder of the fruit slowly and put the bowl on the table next to me when I was done before allowing myself to sag into the couch. I felt my eyes begin to droop again as I tried to focus on the television, but it was all just flashing colors and garbled words. I felt full and heavy and the thickness of the couch felt good against my back. I tried to rouse myself, but without any reason to do so, I only sank deeper down until I was gone.

 

 

End Part 19

 

Author’s Note: UGH. This was a really awkward place to end this part, and it was going to go on for a bit longer, but I felt guilty about making everyone wait so long for an update. Again, sorry for the wait, but Nanowrimo hit and I didn’t see the point of breaking this part up into a bunch of smaller parts. Nano was a success. I didn’t write as much as last year, but I hit past the necessary 50k, so that’s something. I’m worried that everything that happened in this part was rather boring to people because most of it is setting up things that happen later in this chapter that are very important. Some of it is probably glaringly obvious is you’ve been paying attention. I am going to attempt to condense the remainder of spring break into part 20.

 

Alright, review response time:

 

Hikaru Itsuko: haha, yeah, Duo is having a really long, shitty week, but at least not all of it has been bad.  
 

 

(1)     My friends and I have this group chat on telegram and when I was writing this, I mentioned in it that I was busy writing at the same time that another friend mentioned something about bloodthirsty squirrels attacking people in Florida (see cracked website for more info on that). She immediately went ‘shini, write about bloodthirsty squirrels.’ And I said that I would. So, this line is a shout out to my close friend, Chaosie, even though she will never read this, lol. 

 

(2)     They are watching a personal favorite of mine, Sphere.

 

 

Well, I am super tired from writing all this, so I am going to take a super short break to work on the notes that have once again piled up and will hopefully get the next part out a lot quicker. Reminder that I post story updates on my twitter (same name as I am everywhere) as well as art that I commission for my stories (uploaded some incredibly amazing pics from Beyond the Looking Glass for Halloween). And yes, there are a couple of ASOL pics in the works (all of these are for the original versions of these stories because I feel a stronger connection to my original characters and a lot of the artists I commission won’t do fanart for legal reasons).


	65. Chapter 8 Part 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heero and Duo spend the last of spring break together as Duo's long work hours put a strain on their relationship and begin a project together. Duo finds out from his mother that their finances are a lot worse than he feared and he struggles to find a way to help. Heero talks about his faith and sexuality.

A Stagnation of Love

Chapter 8

Part 20

 

 

          I dozed for about twenty minutes, but it felt like a lot longer. One of those deep sleeps where your mind likes to play time tricks on you without the benefit of making you feel well rested. I’m not what you might call a deep sleeper. It takes me a long time usually to fall asleep and when I do, a pin drop can wake me back up. It often takes severe tiredness or sickness to really knock me out, so that I had managed it sitting there like that with Heero’s father feet away from me was worrisome. I had only skipped a day of sleep and while the last few days hadn’t been great, I don’t understand why they got to me as much as they had, why I had felt so drained. Who even knows how long I would have slept if I hadn’t felt a familiar hand on my shoulder, very lightly shaking me.

          “Duo… Duo, wake up,” an equally familiar and gentle voice roused me.

          Normally, I would have shot right awake, alert and ready to flee if I had felt someone touching me or someone talking, no matter how close the voice was and this voice was very close. But I knew, even waking groggily and confused, that this person was not a threat. My father would have kicked me or yelled at me if he wanted me to wake up and my mother would have sounded a lot more urgent. There was only person I could think of that would wake me so gently and thinking that it had to be him made it less jarring, even if I didn’t know where I was or why he was waking me up.

          “’Ro?” I murmured, opening my eyes halfway and blinking as I tried to focus.

          A deep voice chuckled.

          “Not quite,” the voice said in amusement.

          My vision cleared enough for me to see Justin standing by my side, achingly familiar, blue eyes looking at me endearingly. I rubbed at my eyes, feeling embarrassed and confused.

          “I think you’re the only person who has ever called Heero that,” Justin said with a smile.

          I flushed bright red.

          “He… He says he doesn’t mind it,” I stammered like an idiot.

          “I’m sure he doesn’t,” Heero’s father said with a knowing smirk, “from you.”

          That only made me blush darker. Justin ignored my embarrassment and knelt down in front of me, brushing my bangs up and away from my face and looking at me in the same way that doctors would after I had been hurt, with a critical, studying eye.

          “Did you sleep at all last night?” he asked with a frown, taking his hand away from my face to let my hair fall back.

          I didn’t see the point in lying, I was sure he could see the dark circles under my eyes and how tired I was. I shook my head, which made his frown deepen with concern.

          “Your insomnia again?” he asked, “Or your father.”

          Because there could only be the two possible reasons, I thought with a small bit of bitterness.

          “A little of both,” I admitted, “I had a hard time sleeping. I managed for about ten minutes, I think, but then my dad woke me up and I couldn’t fall back to sleep.”

          There, as close to the truth as I could get. Not that it helped, Justin just looked annoyed before he pushed it away with a forced smile.

          “Come on,” he patted my arm and stood up, “Let’s get you upstairs and into bed, then.”

          “I don’t need-,” I began to protest before it clicked in my tired brain that there was no reason for me to be arguing.

          “Yes, you do,” his voice went firm, “You’re exhausted and you need to sleep someplace better than a couch. You don’t have anything to do today besides work later in the afternoon, so I want you to get some rest.”

          His tone made it clear he was not going to accept any arguments, but I didn’t have any, knowing he was right. Between my injuries and stress, I needed sleep or I was going to fall flat on my face at work. I nodded and tried to stand. ‘Tried’ being the operative word. It was so stupid to try to move so suddenly after having been sitting down with my injuries, but I was still groggy and didn’t think about it. It was actually my anal injury and not my back that fucked me over. It awoke like a sleeping bear the second I stood, sending this horrible, electric shot of hot pain through my ass, down my legs and up my lower back. It was so immediate and so sharp and terrible, I didn’t even have the ability to cry out in shock.

The only relief I had was that I didn’t feel any blood from it, but I had definitely pulled the tear and even when the wave of agony stopped, it left this unpleasant, throbbing heat in its wake that made me want to vomit. I stumbled, groping for something to hold on to as all the strength went out of my legs, but there was nothing there and suddenly, I was falling. My attempts to stop it only made my whole back seize up again and even if there had been something to grab, I would have fallen anyway as more waves of pure, white pain rolled through my shoulders and down my arms, making everything down to my fingers totally useless. That time, I did gasp, but couldn’t do anything else as the domino effect ripped right through me. I probably would have fallen forward and hit my head right on the edge of the coffee table if Justin hadn’t been next to me and with a cry of alarm, grabbed me, keeping me from collapsing. Even as he held me, I could feel my back and anal muscles twitching angrily, my arms shaking a little, but noticeably.

“Oh, my god, Duo!” Justin went incredibly pale and frantic as he clutched at me, trying to keep me steady as I struggled just to stay upright, “Are you alright?!”

“I’m sorry,” I gritted out through the pain, “My back… I stood up too quickly…”

I couldn’t exactly tell him that there was more wrong with me than that, but he accepted that answer easily enough, his face pinched with concern. I didn’t have much of a choice but to lean on him as my muscles settled and the shaking went away, but I still felt like a shit for it. Justin was incredibly patient with me, not moving an inch until he was positive I wasn’t going to fall on him again.

“Do you need to see a doctor?” he asked worriedly, “If your back is hurting you this badly-,”

“No,” I rushed to assure him, but only winced as I took my weight off of him and felt this disturbing tremor go right down my spine, “I’m alright, I just keep making it worse because of work, but I don’t need a doctor.”

Justin looked far from convinced, but he wasn’t my father and he couldn’t force me to see a doctor if I put my foot down. I already knew exactly what a doctor was going to say anyway, that I needed to take off work and rest my back, which was not going to happen.

“I think there’s a heating pad upstairs,” he offered instead of lecturing me, “That would probably help.”

God, did that sound good. Any kind of heat on my sore muscles sounded like heaven, actually.

“Come on,” Heero’s dad gently steered me towards the steps, “Let’s get you into bed before you give me another heart attack.”

He stayed behind me on the steps, again being patient as it took me longer to ascend them, probably anxious that I was going to fall. I had just enough energy left to feel guilty about it, but I was fading fast for some reason. I had no clue why I was so tired, only that my body was screaming at me that it wanted to crash, so I had better find it a flat surface.

“Why don’t you put on some comfortable pajamas and I’ll heat up the pad,” Justin said.

“Alright… Thank you, Mr. Yuy,” I said a bit shyly.

He just smiled at me and patted me on the shoulder. I went through the motions of getting ready for bed as quickly as possible while he went to the bathroom to rummage around for the pad. By the time I had changed my clothes (an arduous and painful feat), Heero’s dad had gone somewhere and I was able to get into the bathroom to pee, pop some pain pills, and brush my teeth. When I caught my reflection in the mirror above the sink, I suddenly understood the weird look Justin had given me when he had first seen me that morning, and why he had been so concerned with my sleeping habits and eating. Not only was I pale as shit and had dark circles under my eyes and a pinched expression, I had completely forgotten about the bruises my father had given me from punching me in the face.

Compared to the pain in my back, the bruises were negligible, so common that they were like background noise to me. But to Justin, who had just seen me the other day, the new bruises were like a red flag to what had happened to me when I had gone home. I might as well have been wearing a t-shirt proclaiming that my father had beaten the shit out of me and I had to admire the guy’s self-control that he hadn’t said something, given me a lecture, or even called the cops. Heero would have flipped and pointed out that he had been right, after trying to make me feel better, of course, but Justin had known that it would have been pointless. In some ways, it was easier with him. Unlike Heero, he knew that badgering me wasn’t going to get him anywhere, but he wasn’t apathetic, either. I didn’t have to hide things from Justin like I do his son because he doesn’t make a big deal out of things. As much as I love Heero, being around his father is both frightening because of that whole clairvoyance thing he has, and refreshing because of his laid back attitude.

I was heading back to the guest room to finally lay down when Heero’s dad stepped out of Heero’s room.

“Where are you going?” he asked in confusion.

“To bed?” I pointed the bedroom.

He raised one dark brown eyebrow at me.

“I turned Heero’s bed down for you,” he informed me to my shock and leaned against the door frame, “You sleep better in his bed, don’t you?”

I gaped at him, surprised that he had guessed that. I know that he can be really insightful, but how the hell had he known that? He knows that I sleep well with Heero, but not necessarily in his bed. I’m sure that not even Heero knows that. It’s not like his bed is more comfortable than the one in the guest room, it’s just… Ok, this sounds psychotic and maybe a bit stalkerish, but Heero’s bed just… it soothes me, ok? It’s not that it’s softer or anything, it’s… it’s the smell. That bed smells like my boyfriend and I always feel really relaxed when I’m lying in it, even if Heero isn’t there. And just the feeling of that mattress under me reminds me of him, of the times that we’ve shared that bed. I know it sounds dumb, but I can pretend that he’s there. I just… feel safer, more at ease. I flushed bright red at the mere thought that Justin might have guessed at that, wanting to find some hole to crawl into. It was just what I needed, my boyfriend’s father thinking I was some kind of creep for liking Heero’s smell on the pillow and sheets.

“Heero told you that we shared a bed last time I slept over, didn’t he?” I asked.

Justin chuckled.

“No, he didn’t say anything,” he admitted, which made me feel a lot better, “and it isn’t any of our business to ask him something like that. Mariela was just up here that morning putting out fresh towels in the bathroom. She saw the two of you in bed with each other.”

My face combusted with the image of Heero’s sweet mother checking up on us and thinking… well, she probably wasn’t thinking that we had been fucking or she would have said something to either of us, but it was still embarrassing.

“We didn’t do anything,” I said defensively, but I wasn’t defensive over the sex thing, just the ‘Duo needs to sleep in Heero’s bed’ thing. It wasn’t like I could tell his dad the real reason why I slept better there and I couldn’t come up with any understandable reason that wouldn’t sound just as creepy.

“I know you didn’t,” Justin waved his hand dismissively, “and neither of us mind if the two of you want to share a bed. You’ve both been very responsible about it so far. And you don’t need to be so embarrassed by it, either, Duo. There’s no shame in missing someone that you love and being comforted by being in their space. If sleeping in Heero’s bed helps you feel better, then you should do it, that’s all the reason anyone needs. You don’t need an excuse to do something that you want.”

“Oh,” was all I could really say to that.

I supposed he had a point. There really wasn’t any reason for me to sleep in the guest room bed if everyone else was fine with me sleeping in Heero’s, beyond my pride. Maybe it’s normal for couples to do something like that, but I hate admitting to that sort of… dependency, like Heero was my crutch. He is, but I still hate other people knowing that.

“I guess I should tell Mari that there’s no need to put fresh sheets on the guest room bed anymore,” he quipped as we walked into Heero’s room, looking back at me with a question in his eyes.

I nodded and he smiled, looking happy about it for some reason. Kanuck was sitting by the bed and barked happily when he saw me. I took a moment to pet him before slowly, very, very slowly, sitting down on the edge of the bed with a wince. The dog immediately put his head in my lap, either desperate for more attention or sensing that I was in pain. Either way, running my fingers through his thick, white and silver fur was a comfort.

“Did you take some medication for the pain?” Justin asked with another frown.

“Yeah,” I murmured.

I don’t know if it was just the act of sitting down or if my exhaustion was catching up to me, but I suddenly felt very tired and drained. All I wanted to do was let gravity pull me down into that bed and close my eyes. I suppose I was subconsciously eager to escape everything, all of my memories of the last twenty-four hours, maybe longer. I barely even noticed it when Justin sat down on the bed next to me until he put his hand on my knee.

“Duo…” he started in this heavy, serious tone that put me on alert, “Heero… is he good to you?”

It was such a bizarre question that I just kind of blinked at him.

“Of… of course he is,” I said in confusion, “Why are you asking? He’s your son…”

My parents might not be big on the whole, well, parenting thing, but it’s been my experience watching others that most parents seem to think that their kids shit gold bricks and their offspring would never, ever do anything but perfection, so it threw me for a loop that Justin was asking something like that, especially when his kid was _actually_ a good person, unlike most of the kids my age that I’ve interacted with.

“Yes, I know he’s my son,” he gave a short laugh, “and I’m supposed to think the world of him and that he can do no wrong. I _do_ think the world of him. Heero is smart, loyal, and most of the time, he tries to be a good person and makes the right choices. Like most fathers, I want to believe that he’ll always do the right thing and treat others with respect and be everything that I’ve always wanted, but I also know that he’s a human being and people make mistakes. They blunder things up and they can hurt people, even when they don’t mean to. And I also know that this is the first, actual relationship that he’s been in, and maybe he acts cool and confident about it, but as his father, I know that he isn’t. He’s scared shitless and wandering in the dark, and I know he hasn’t always made the right choices in the past. He’s trying to correct that, but Mariela and I are well aware that Heero is not a perfect being, he can act rashly and hurt others.”

Heero was scared? That was news to me and I felt amazed just at the possibility of it. It was just like Justin had said, Heero acts so confident about everything. From every kiss, to every gesture, to every word he says to me, he seems so put together, like there’s a playbook and he knows it by heart. He just… knows how to make things better and what he should do and how he’s supposed to act in love while I’m the one groping for some kind of clue, walking blind and terrified that my next blind step is going to send me hurtling off some steep cliff. That he could be feeling the same way was so… impossible to me.

“But none of that matters at all,” Justin smiled softly at me and gave my knee a small squeeze, “What matters is that I care about you, too, Duo. And you don’t have anyone in your corner to fight for you and stand up for you like Heero does. Heero has us, but your parents don’t even know that you’re dating anyone and from what you’ve told me about them, even if they accepted your sexuality, I don’t think they would stick up for you if you’re having problems, would they?”

I shook my head. My father wouldn’t, my sexuality aside, simply because he wouldn’t give a shit. My mother wouldn’t because I don’t think that she would really know what to do and she isn’t exactly the bravest person around.

“I love Heero and I trust him,” he told me, “but you need someone on your side, too. I want you to feel that you can come to me if you’re having problems with him, if he’s doing something that you don’t like or he’s hurt you, intentional or not, and that I won’t play favorites just because he’s my son. Your feelings matter just as much as his and we all care about you. I don’t want you to feel like you just have to put up with things because no one is going to listen to you.”

Tears pricked at my eyes and I rubbed the back of my hand against them to wipe the wetness away, choosing to believe that it was just from tiredness, even though I knew that that was a lie. I felt like I had on Monday, when Heero had stood up for me and tried to protect me from Trowa, that amazing, intense feeling knowing that someone cared for me, that someone wanted to help me and had my back. Only this time it was even stronger because I had never thought that I would have that kind of support from this man. I knew that he cared, but not like that, not enough to offer me what he was, someone to talk to, even if it was something bad about his son. I nodded because I couldn’t seem to get my throat to work enough to form words. He kept his hand on my leg, offering me some comfort, somehow knowing that I didn’t want him to hug me or that careful wall built around my emotions was going to burst.

“Heero _is_ good to me,” I insisted, “He… he’s wonderful. He’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Justin’s blue eyes softened as I soothed his misplaced worry.

“He’s kind and gentle and patient,” I continued, the words flowing out like a river where I hadn’t been able to force them out before, “He never pushes me or snaps at me, even when I think he should sometimes. He’s better to me than I ever thought he would be,” I bit my lip for a moment and decided to just get it out since it was already on the tip of my tongue, “My last boyfriend… he… he wasn’t so good to me, you know?”

Heero’s father didn’t say anything, just put his hand over mine and I knew that he understood.  
          “I wasn’t so good to him, either,” I laughed bitterly, hating that I had to think about these things again, but it was easier this time for some reason, like most of the poison that had been building up in me, I had already let out, “We fought all the time. He was really cold to me sometimes and said things just to hurt me. We hit each other and… and even at the beginning, he treated me like a dirty secret, something he was ashamed of, and I knew that he didn’t love me, or even cared that much for me. Heero isn’t like that. I… I know I can trust him with my feelings and that he won’t hurt me like that. He listens to me and he cares about me, so you don’t need to worry.”

“Thank you, Duo” he gave my knee another pat and actually did sound relieved, “and I’m glad. You deserve someone who will treat you right. I know you don’t believe me,” I looked away when he caught my downcast expression, “but I hope that one day you will.”

One day… I don’t think that I’ll ever be so delusional as to believe that I’ll ever deserve someone like Heero. Justin stood and leaned over me to touch the heating pad that he had draped over the pillow.

“I think this is hot enough now. Why don’t you lay down,” he picked up the pad and put it at the foot of the bed.

I put my cell phone down on the bedside table and let him help me lay down on my stomach. I usually hate laying down like that, but I was too tired to care at that point. Pepper immediately jumped up on the pillow when she saw that I was going to lay down and started purring. I could have purred, too, when my head hit the pillow and I felt how warm it was from the heating pad. Kanuck put his paws on the corner of the bed and tried to get up there, too, but Justin quickly shoved him down.

“No,” he said in a firm tone, pointing his finger at the dog.

Kanuck bowed his head and whimpered in misery.

“Bad dog. Just because your master isn’t here and this one,” he jerked his thumb at me, “is a soft touch, don’t you go around misbehaving.”

I gave the malamute mix a pitying smile, feeling bad that he just wanted to cuddle like my cat and kept getting told ‘no.’

“Sorry, buddy,” I said and I could have sworn the damned animal gave me big, watery eyes on purpose, like he knew I was the weak link in the chain.

“Where does your back hurt the most?” Justin asked me.

“Shoulders and between,” I told him.

“I’m going to feel your back,” he warned me before slipping his hand down the top of the back of my shirt.

Even with the warning, I still hissed in pain when he pressed down between my shoulder blades and that familiar, hot pain flared up again.

“Sorry,” he apologized, “Duo, you have a huge knot here. I can feel it even with this much pressure! You have to tell me if this gets any worse.”

“Sure,” I murmured, really not caring, just wanting enough relief from the pain so that I could sleep, anything else was a bonus.

He slid his hand out from my shirt and laid the heating pad over my back. The thing was large enough to cover the backs of my shoulders down to almost my waist. I was right, the feeling of heat seeping through my shirt and into my abused muscles are heavenly and I couldn’t help a relieved sigh as I practically sank into the bed. This definitely beat sleeping on the cold floor of my bedroom.

“Comfortable?” Justin asked.

“Yes,” I murmured, cracking my eyes open a little so I could look at him, not even having realized I had closed them, “Thank you, Mr. Yuy.”

He smiled softly.

“You’re welcome, Duo. Have a nice, rest, alright?”

I closed my eyes again as he pulled the sheets over me and ran his hand over my hair. As sudden and fleeting as an arc of lightning, an old memory flashed in my head, unwanted, but unable to be shaken free.

I had been four, maybe five years old. It had been a Saturday. I only remember that because my mother had been working and my father had been home. This memory is one of the few, clear memories I have from when I was that young because there is nothing in it that I wish to forget. There were no beatings, no yelling, just a perfect, pleasant day. Of course, back then, the beatings had been rarer, just a punch if I had done something foolish like breaking something or wasting food. Back then, my father had been more likely to yell instead of hit, and when he did hit, it was usually my mother and not me. He had more patience back then, and more self-control. Or maybe he had just cared more to not hit me. Back then, I had loved him completely, even when he had hit me, and I had thought that we were a normal family.

I remember everything from that day. How tense my father had been until my mother had left for work, then it was like all the stress had bled out of him just by her not being in his sights. I had never connected those two events as a child, but remembering these things now, it’s obvious. How he had tip toed around her, avoiding her or doing things for her, only to get into a screaming fight with her over nothing. I don’t know when he had stopped trying to be a decent husband to her. I guess, after years of trying to get past the immovable wall, he had gotten sick of it and used that wall as a punching bag. I could almost feel sorry for him, dealing with her coldness and how obvious she had made it that she didn’t want to be in that marriage if I hadn’t heard some of their fights, hadn’t watched him give her a black eye when I had been little, if I didn’t remember that sadness and confusion and fear, trying not to cry as I saw my mother on the floor, her face swollen and blood dripping from her nose because my father hated it when I cried.

As soon as my mother left the house, it was like a switch had been thrown. He made us a quick breakfast of scrambled eggs and meat, sausage for him and bacon for me, and let me watch cartoons and play with my Legos while he mowed the lawn and did other chores around the yard. Usually at this point in the day, he would either disappear until the evening, leaving me alone, or he would make me go to my room while he watched television. I had spent a lot of my childhood lonely, especially before I had gotten old enough that my parents hadn’t cared if I left the house on my own or I could read. At four years old, I was starting to be able to read on my own, simple kids books that contained three letter words and bright, large pictures mostly, but I liked it better when my father read to me.

But some days, like that day, it seemed to click into my father’s head that he should do something with me, or maybe he had just gotten into the mood for it and had been bored himself. That mood would get rarer and rarer as I got older, but back then, he had paid more attention to me and had been more eager to include me in his life. As soon as he had been done with his chores, he had made me clean up my toys and packed us up in his car to take a ride. He just drove around town aimlessly, pointing out things to me, singing off key to songs on the radio and making me laugh. We stopped at a deli for lunch and the grocery store.

When we got home, he read a couple of books to me, then we had pizza for dinner. He even let me watch television with him as we ate, which was rare. He would often evict me from the living room, saying that he was watching things ‘for adults only.’ I had accepted that explanation easily as a child, but now I know that he had just gotten sick of me and had wanted to be alone. That night, however, he didn’t seem to mind and I got to stay up later than usual as he watched the news and a hockey game. I didn’t care much for the hockey, I was too young to really understand what was going on in it, but I liked sitting there with him. 

All of that was rare and wonderful enough to cement the memory into my head, all these years later, but what I really remember and cherish about that day was when it got late and I began to fall asleep on the couch. My father had noticed me beginning to droop, already half-asleep, and had chuckled.

“I guess it’s time to get you to bed, huh?” he had said and gotten up from his chair.

He picked me up and held me so my head was on his shoulder and his hand was on my back. I used to love that. I had loved how strong he was, before that had become something dark, and how easy it was for him to pick me up, like I weighed nothing at all. And I had loved the feeling of my cheek against his wide shoulders, the smell of him before that had become something terrible as well. I miss those things sometimes, him holding me, loving him like that before I remind myself of all the reasons why I don’t love those things anymore. He carried me upstairs and tucked me into bed. Then, and I remember this so clearly that it tears into my heart, he had smoothed my hair with his hand and kissed my head.

“Goodnight, sweetheart,” he had said and I had mumbled goodnight back to him, my eyes already closed, sleep coming easily back then.

It’s a simple memory. I’m sure most people have hundreds like it. But for me, I only have a couple. Sure, my parents had often tucked me in at that age, before they had considered me old enough to take care of myself, or had just stopped caring, but I have few memories of a day like that, of a moment when he had been like a normal dad, when I had thought that he loved me. Remembering it, I could feel tears gathering in my eyes and was glad that Justin couldn’t see them or he might ask me what was wrong. I wouldn’t know how to answer that, how a nice, normal memory could tear me completely apart. When had my father… the father that used to tuck me in and read to me and take me on car rides become the monster that I still lived with? What was different between him and Justin that he could stop doing those things, stop at least pretending like he cared?

Was it me? Had I done something wrong, something that had made him stop loving me? Or had he never loved me at all and he had just lost patience for me? I buried those thoughts deep down. It didn’t matter. How my father felt for me, how I felt for him, it didn’t change anything. If he loved me or not didn’t matter, Heero loves me, my mom loves me, and Justin and Mariela care about me, so what did it matter if my father loved me or not? What did it matter if the words that he whispered to me when he was done with me at night were real or not? It didn’t. At least, that’s what I told myself.

“Wake me up at two-thirty?” I murmured to Justin as he went to leave.

“Of course,” he assured me.

I heard the door click closed behind me very softly and burrowed my head into Heero’s soft pillow, smelling him on it and that pain in my heart eased, but only a tiny bit. Still, it was enough and helped me to ignore it, even the very slight wetness on the pillow. I didn’t want to remember that shit, I didn’t want to remember what I’ve lost, so I blacked out my mind and focused on nothing else but the heat on my back and the feel of my cat’s fur against my cheek.

Despite the melancholy that threatened to worm its way inside, I was asleep in minutes, the stress and tiredness from the previous day easily catching up to me. Laying there, more comfortable than I have ever been in my entire life, the house quiet and peaceful, I slept long and deeply. I can’t say for how long since I have no clue when I laid down, but when I woke up, it was well into the afternoon. I don’t remember dreaming or waking up even to go to the bathroom, a rarity for me. With how groggy I felt when I did wake up, I probably would have slept for a couple more hours if my phone hadn’t rung loudly, right next to my ear. I jolted awake and even Pepper jumped and disappeared under the bed as the phone chimed and vibrated on the bedside table. I glared at the demonic thing for a moment, not understanding why it was making the noise until my head cleared enough to inform me that someone was calling me. I might have even just turned the fucking thing off and fallen back to sleep, but the thought that it might be Heero had me groping for it. By some miracle, I hadn’t moved an inch in my sleep and the heating pad was still on my back, which felt a lot better between that and the pills. I felt so cozy and comfortable in my cocoon of blankets that I wouldn’t have slid my arm out of them to grab the phone for anyone less than my boyfriend.

“’lo?” I muttered, only barely coherent, into the phone.

“Duo?” a voice much deeper than Heero’s spoke.

I frowned in confusion, unable to place the voice. It was vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t put a name to it. Was it another prank?

“Who is this?” I asked in a rough, annoyed tone.

“Bob Leneski,” the voice said hesitantly.

That only confused me more. I had given my bosses my cell phone number to contact me for whatever reason, since nowadays I’m away from home more often than I’m there, and in case they needed to leave any messages that I didn’t want my father to hear, but why would he be calling me? Especially Leneski? I lifted myself up on my elbows and glanced at the clock. What I saw nearly gave me a heart attack. 4:27. I was almost thirty minutes late for work after I had completely skipped my shift the previous day.

“Shit!” I swore, not caring that my boss could hear me.

I sat up and immediately gasped in pain as my back protested my moving at all. It wasn’t the crippling agony of that morning, the heating pad having done its job, but there was still a tight pain there that I would have to be careful of. But my back pain was really the least of my concerns at that point.

“I’m so, so sorry, sir,” I apologized as I waited for the throbbing pain to ease enough that I could sit up straighter and throw the sheets off of me, “I took a nap and I overslept. I’ll be right there, I promise. I’m sorry-,”

“It’s ok, Duo,” my boss soothed, “You don’t need to rush.”

Was there no need to rush, I wondered, because he was finally going to fire me? Anxiety squeezed my frantically beating heart and I gripped the phone tightly.

“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” I promised him, wondering if Justin would mind if I bummed a couple of dollars from him for the bus like the loser that I was, “And I’m so sorry about yesterday, I… I didn’t mean to skip-,”

Leneski sighed deeply, cutting me off.

“I want the truth, kid,” he said and for the first time that week, he sounded like his old, gruff self, his tone honest instead of uncomfortable, “Solo mentioned you had hurt your back. Is that true, or did you skip because someone threatened you? Did something happen the other day? If you want to quit because of the way things have been around here-,”

“No!” I protested, “Nothing happened and I don’t want to quit, really. I did hurt my back and I just totally forgot to call in yesterday. And I really was just taking a nap, I didn’t think that I was going to sleep this long,” I winced at the shitty excuse, even if it was the truth, “I’ll work Saturday to make up for it.”

“No need for that, it isn’t a big deal,” he assured me, then hesitated, “Look, ki-… Duo… I wanted to say this to your face, but I guess now’s as good a time as any. I want to apologize for how I’ve been treating you lately.”

My throat tightened with some unknown emotion.

          “You don’t need to apologize,” I murmured in a tiny voice.

          “Yes, I do,” he snapped, “I… _we’ve_ been real assholes to you lately. I don’t agree with… well, you know. I was raised to believe that people like that were wrong and unnatural, but that’s no excuse for thinking you deserve to be treated like some kind of leper. I told you to check all of that at the door and just do your job, but I didn’t do the same in return. I let my personal feelings and prejudices change our relationship. I treated you like crap the other day when you’ve been nothing but professional and, if I may be frank here, pretty fucking brave staying here and putting up with it. You did exactly what I asked of you and you were right, what you said the other day. You don’t deserve this. You do your work and you don’t deserve to be treated differently than any of the other guys. No matter my personal feelings, I acted pathetically. Besides, you’re the kid and I’m the adult, I’m supposed to be better than that. Hell, god forbid, if my son that’s your age were ever treated like that for whatever reason by someone three times his age, I’d pop the sonofabitch one,” he chuckled bitterly, “It just took a bigger man than me scolding me like a child to get me to realize what an ass I’ve been to you, exactly what I was doing and saying to you by being uncomfortable and treating you like I couldn’t stand having you around.”

          I felt a tear travel down my cheek as I realized who that ‘bigger man’ had to have been.

          “I gave the guys another lecture about what I would do to them if I got wind of them trying to intimidate you,” he told me, his voice thick with guilt, but also determination, “and that I won’t stand for that crap. So you don’t need to worry about it, alright? I promise, even if I have to can someone, I won’t tolerate this being a hostile work place for you. Now, don’t bother coming in today, I’m giving it to you off with full pay.”

          “I… Thank you so much, sir,” I said in amazement. Leneski isn’t as stingy as Lorathe is, but I knew a gift when it was handed to me and that this was a rare occurrence.

          “No need for that,” he said in that gruff tone again, “Consider it a part of my apology for acting like my head was up my ass. Besides, if you really hurt your back, you shouldn’t be coming in. I don’t need a lawsuit on my hands on top of everything else. You just take today to heal up, alright?.”

          “Yes, sir,” I confirmed, feeling my mood lift, “Absolutely, and thank you again.”

          I put the phone back down on the bedside table when my boss hung up, feeling a bit like I had been hit by a truck, but in a good way. That entire conversation had been so surreal, I felt like I had just dreamed it. For most of my life, nothing has really changed all that much. I’ve been poor and alone and struggling for as long as I can remember, even when I had been a kid and too young to really see it. Knowing how things could have been, I can see that clearly now. Things might change a little, like getting a friend, but life has taught me that as quickly as something can change, it can go right back to the way things were in an instant. This town hasn’t changed from the time I was little and the people in it have changed even less. The people that hated me when I was nine years old only hate me more. My father has gotten worse, not better, and even the changes that I see in him aren’t the ones that I wanted and hoped for. So asking me to believe that my employer, the same man that hadn’t wanted to get into a car with me and had actually debated firing me just because I was gay, had changed overnight and was now sticking up for me, was too much.

          Or was it? Maybe change is rare and what little change I’ve seen has just been from bad to exceptionally shitty, but that isn’t absolutely true. A lot has changed for me lately, and not all of it bad. Heero changed. Sure, maybe he hadn’t really been a prick to begin with, but he had still changed enough to drop his masks. My mother changed. Again, maybe she had been this way from the beginning and it had taken her world being shaken to its core when she had seen my father rape me and now that she’s sober, that person that she used to be was coming back, little by little, or maybe this is a completely different person. It doesn’t really matter, because just getting that strength to drop the booze and try to be a mother is a huge change for her. If I discount the fact that my boss has changed his tune, even if he had to be shamed into doing it, I’d have to discount all the other changes, too, just because I find them to be impossible sometimes. Being loved, laying in my boyfriend’s bed, in his house, with his parents downstairs. That seemed like a dream, too.

          I suppose, if anyone _could_ change his tune about how he treats me, it would be Leneski. He wasn’t like Caleb or Zechs or any of the others that loathe me. Sure, he was uncomfortable around me and he had prejudices, like he said, but even when he had found out, he hadn’t been abusive, he had tried to work with me. He had hurt me, even he could see that, but even before Solo had had a talk with him, he had seemed guilty about it. It just seemed so unreal that he was going to try to get past his hang ups with me. No one else had ever put in that kind of effort, no one had ever seen the point in wanting to. No one had cared enough about me to. I didn’t really know how to handle it, or the fact that Solo had, once again, gone to bat for me. Baking him some cookies didn’t really cut it, did it? I just kept thinking ‘who is this person and why does he give a shit’. Of course, when I went down that mental track, it wasn’t Solo’s face that I saw, it was Heero’s.

          Carefully laying back down on my stomach, I pushed those thoughts away. I had just been given a gift and the more I thought about it, the more I scrutinized it, the more I started to doubt it and I didn’t want that. Leneski was trying, and he had given me the day off, I should be grateful, not skeptical. And I sure as hell didn’t want to spiral into another depression thinking about my relationship with Heero and how unreal it seemed, all of my doubts, all of my thoughts that I’m not good enough and he has to be delusional. They were too heavy and I was still too tired to deal with them. Pepper jumped back up on the bed, sensing that the source of the startling noise was gone and no longer a threat and rubbed against my cheek for comfort. I scratched under her chin, her purr oddly comforting.

          My moment of confusion and shock done with and suddenly not having anywhere that I needed to be, I warred with my body wanting to go back to sleep and my mind having that annoying feeling that I should be doing _something_. It’s a stupid bi-product of usually having seldom free time to myself. I knew that I should revel in the fact that I could relax, but it doesn’t really come easily to me, something that Heero has pointed out in exasperation more than once. It’s not like I’m hyperactive, I’m capable of just sitting down with a book or watching television, but it bothers me and times when I could just lay down in a bed and do nothing at all are almost nonexistent. So I just laid there for a few minutes, my mind yelling at me that I was being lazy despite knowing full well that I didn’t have anything I needed to do anyway.

          My stomach broke the quiet with a rather loud growl, sounding humorously like a petulant child. I groaned at it and rolled onto my side.

          “Fine, _fine_ ,” I muttered at it, annoyed that I had to leave the warm and cozy nest even if I hadn’t eaten a solid meal that wasn’t soup or fruit in more than a day.

          I slowly got out of bed, wincing a little, but the pain in my back was bearable for the first time since before my father had confined me to the closet. Of course, I was probably going to screw my back up again at work, but for now, it wasn’t a constant distraction and I felt a lot less worn down. I unplugged the heating pad and wandered downstairs in search of food. I smelled the heavy aroma of cooking meat, ginger, and garlic right when I got halfway down the steps and I thought my stomach was going to try to chew its way out of me just to get at it. Mariela was in the kitchen, splitting her attention between whatever was in the oven, rolling out what looked like bread dough, and mixing cookie dough in a bowl that I caught Justin trying to steal a taste of when Mariela turned his back.

          “Hey!” she caught him, too, in the corner of her eye and smacked his hand lightly with the spoon she was using.

          “Ow,” he groused and with a teasing gleam in his blue eyes that I had never seen before, sucked the dough off his finger.

          “You and your son!” his wife accused, “Now you have to wash your hands. And if you keep doing that, there won’t be any dough left!”

          “It tastes better like this,” he argued, but washed his hands at the sink anyway.

          “Oh, Duo,” he saw me over Mariela’s shoulder as he was drying his hands, “You’re up.”

          Mariela’s eyes brightened and she pulled me into a brief hug.

          “I didn’t get to say good morning to you this morning! Did you sleep well?” she asked.

          “Is your back feeling any better?” Justin jumped in.

          I nodded to both questions.

          “Yeah, I feel a lot better now. Thank you for the heating pad,” I said, which made him smile.

          “I know it’s awfully late,” Mariela rubbed her hands together, looking guilty for some bizarre reason, “but do you have time for dinner before you go to work? The beef tips are almost ready. I was making some rolls and chocolate chip cookies, too, or if you need to rush out the door, I can fix you some sandwiches to take with you.”

          “Sorry it’s so late,” Justin apologized to me, “but you were sleeping so deeply, I…” he glanced at Mariela who had that guilty look again, “we really didn’t want to wake you up.”

          “It was my fault,” his wife confessed, “I begged him not to.”

          Ah, that explained the guilt.

          “No, it was my decision,” he admitted, his eyes piercing and he didn’t have a single spec of remorse in them, “You were exhausted and in a lot of pain this morning. I thought it would be better if you rested for a bit longer. When I called your name and you didn’t wake up, it didn’t feel right to disturb you.”

          Any irritation that I might have felt at him for taking that decision away for me and breaking his promise to wake me up in time for work seemed pretty petty when I knew that he had just been concerned about me. If it had been Heero, he would have woken me up, and I would have loved him for that, but he would have hated himself for it. I wasn’t happy about people making choices for me and I was damned lucky that Leneski hadn’t been bad about me being late, but I didn’t want the people that I cared about to feel like shit just for waking me up.

          “It’s… fine,” I said hesitantly.

          “No, it isn’t,” he said with a serious tone, “You were relying on me and I did something selfish.”

          “It’s just as well,” I shrugged, “You’re right, I needed the sleep. I don’t know what’s wrong with me lately, I’ve just been feeling more tired than usual.”

          Heero’s parents shared a concerned frown at that.

          “In any case, it’s not a big deal,” I assured them, “My boss just called and I don’t have to come in.”

          “You didn’t get in trouble for being late, did you?” Justin asked in alarm, probably thinking that it was all his fault if I had.

          It wasn’t entirely his fault. I should have set an alarm on my phone and I don’t know why I hadn’t. It had slipped my mind somehow in my tiredness, which I could excuse if I hadn’t been sleeping for a few days, but just one? That worried me more than the fatigue itself.

          “No, nothing like that, he just gave me the day off,” I looked down at the floor, “It’s… kind of a long story.”

          “What’s wrong?” Heero’s father asked me, leaning against the counter and giving me that concerned, but open expression that always gets to me, like he’s all ears and I can tell him anything. It’s like some kind of therapist mind trick.

          “Well,” I rubbed at my arm, “Things have been a bit tense at work this week. Some of my coworkers found out that I’m gay…”

          Mariela’s eyes went wide with shock and horror and she made this tiny, almost inaudible gasp that still made me go silent, unsure if I should be telling them this. I didn’t really know why I was, other than not seeing a reason not to. I have so many secrets, things I’ve never told anyone, things that I have only ever told Heero, things I can never say, but this wasn’t one of them. I wasn’t ashamed of it, it frustrated me more than anything else, so the words came easily. Justin gave Mariela a sharp look, probably annoyed thinking that I wasn’t going to talk now, but despite feeling bad about worrying her, it didn’t bother me that much.

          “Did someone threaten you?” Justin demanded, looking protective for some reason, like Heero had been the one in danger and not me. He was probably thinking of how Wufei had died and all the reasons why they had moved away, to protect his son.

          “Not really,” I lied, the last thing that I needed would be to have him hunt down Caleb or something, “I got a lot of shit for it, but I work with a bunch of adults. It’s unlikely anyone is going to do anything to me because of it besides call me some nasty names.”

          That was mostly true. Caleb was the only one that I worked with that had actually tried to do anything to me. The rest seemed content with verbal abuse, no doubt knowing what would happen to them if they did anything to a teenager, having some shred of common sense that Caleb didn’t. Or maybe he hates queers so much that he doesn’t care.

          “I only cared about getting fired, but my boss told me that I could keep my job so long as I kept being professional. But he’s still been really nervous and standoffish around me because of it. I guess he realized he was being kind of a jerk and homophobic, so he gave me the day off in apology,” I explained.

          “That was nice of him,” Mariela said diplomatically, but her and Justin’s hard, peeved looks belied those words.

          “Duo, if you need someone to speak to him…” Heero’s father began to offer, but I frantically shook my head.

          “No!” I exclaimed, “It’s fine! I mean, it isn’t exactly, but he apologized and said he’s going to be stricter with my coworkers about how they’ve been acting, too. Someone already talked to him about treating me like that, a guy a work with. He’s ok with it and he’s been looking out for me.”

          Both of them looked slightly relieved at that.

          “So long as you’re safe and they treat you fairly,” Mariela fussed, smoothing my hair down with her hand in a very motherly gesture, “You don’t deserve all that you put up with, sweetheart. I know you get it worse than Heero does and I wish there was something that we could do…”

          There really wasn’t and I knew how much that fact pained her, but I didn’t know how to comfort her any more than she knew how to help me.

          “It’s no wonder why you’re so tired,” Justin shook his head, “That must have been very stressful.”

          “I guess…” I rubbed at the back of my head.

          Was he right? Was it just stress? Probably. In reality, everything that had happened that week wasn’t that big of a deal, but my anxieties had blown it all out of proportion. What had I been worrying about? Getting fired? My dad beating the shit out of me if I lost my job or he found out that I’m gay? The fight with Trowa? My dad tying me up in a closet? How the fuck did any of that compare to watching Quatre die or my father raping me? When I put it into that kind of perspective, I just felt like a massive pussy. But I still felt so worn down, drained. It was like everything that had happened lately, not just that week, but since I had agreed to date Trowa, was piling up on my shoulders and I couldn’t handle the weight anymore.

          “Well, it’s a good thing you have some time to relax now,” Mariela beamed at me and her happiness was like this soft, warm light, erasing the worst of my somber mood. I smiled at her and her own grew, she looked so relieved that it was contagious.

          “Why don’t we have a nice, early dinner and then you can go lie down for a bit more before your other job?” she suggested, “Heero’s game went over a bit, so he’s not going to be home for a bit longer.”

          My heart ached, but there was nothing I could do for those stupid, longing feelings, so I just mentally scowled at it and nodded. She returned to her cooking and baking like that entire conversation had never happened.

          “Do you like nuts in your chocolate chip cookies, sweetie?” she asked with another sunny smile.

          “No, thanks,” I told her, “I can help-,”

          Justin put his hand on my back and gently steered me out of the kitchen while his wife just chuckled at my wide-eyed look.

          “None of that,” he teased before he stopped, his expression going serious again, “Duo, I mentioned this earlier this morning when I asked you about Heero, but I wasn’t just talking about your relationship with him. Your parents don’t know about a lot of the things going on in your life, your sexuality, the bullying… I just want you to know that if you need someone to talk to or stand up for you, you can come to us. I know I’ve said that many times now, but I don’t just mean about your father. If there is _anything_ wrong, at school or work or home or even if you just need someone to help you sort things out, we are always here for you.”

          “I know,” I murmured, starting to feel a bit overwhelmed by his generosity, how his words tore at me and brought in too many thoughts, too many ‘should I’s, “Thank you, sir.”

          For once, he didn’t roll his eyes at me for calling him that, but just gave my shoulder a little squeeze. He made me sit down on the couch while he hunted down some more pain pills and a heated pillow for my back so I could sit upright instead of lay down with the heating pad again. It felt incredibly weird to be fussed over and waited on like that, but I knew that any protests would just be ignored, so I rolled with it. While we waited for dinner to be ready, I checked my phone to make sure I hadn’t missed any messages from Heero. There was just one, a plea for me to call him and an apology that he wasn’t home. The dagger of guilt plunged deeper into my chest and I shot off a text to him, hating myself for not having done it sooner, that it had just slipped my mind.

 

          _‘I am so so so sorry. I wasn’t ignoring you. I’m not mad. I barely looked at my phone at all yesterday, I didn’t realize you were trying to contact me. Please forgive me? Things have just been so hectic. I’m not mad that you had a game today, it’s fine, I know how important baseball is to you. I spent today at your place, so don’t worry about me, alright? Just have fun at your game. I hope I’ll see you tonight. I’ll come over after work tomorrow morning, I promise. I love you, too.’_

There was so much more that I wanted to say, how much I missed him, how horrible I felt for taking so long to respond to him. But I was afraid that if I kept going, it was just going to sound whiny, defensive, and clingy. I wondered why it was so much easier texting ‘I love you’ to him than it was to be honest and tell him all the things that I was feeling to his face.

          Dinner was a rather laid back affair. We had it in the living room instead of the kitchen for once, Justin refusing to let me stand up once I had gotten comfortable with the pillow and Mariela even draped a blanket over my legs, making me blush. She laid out all the food on the coffee table and we ate while watching a movie. I had three helpings of everything and felt so full and content by the end of it that I could have dozed off on the couch. I felt disgustingly lazy and blamed it on the heat seeping into my sore back and the rich food. After I was done eating some of the cookies that Mariela had made, Heero’s parents shooed me away to go back to bed, which made me feel like an indulgent piece of shit, spending most of my day sleeping, but I couldn’t deny that I was still tired and I should sleep while I could.

          I brushed my teeth and almost ran right into Justin when I walked out of the bathroom.

          “You have work at 9:30, correct?” he asked me and I nodded, “I’ll wake you up at eight then so you’ll have time to shower. I promise.”

          His tone was passionate and I knew that he meant it this time, but I felt bad about putting him in this position all the time, making him feel torn between what I needed from him and what he felt was right. Just like with Heero. Waking me wasn’t nearly the same as asking them to turn a blind eye to my father’s behavior, but it didn’t make me feel any better.

          “It’s fine,” I assured him, “I’m just going to set an alarm on my phone, so don’t worry about it.”

          “All right,” he said hesitantly, but after a quick ‘have a nice rest’, he left me to help with the dishes.

          I plugged the heating pad back in and laid down on my stomach again, slipping the pad under my shirt this time before pulling the sheets up again. Just like before, I was asleep in minutes, so I guess going back to bed had been the right decision. I wonder if it was really just stress, like Justin had said, or if I could sleep like that all the time if my family and home was more like Heero’s, if I could have a full meal every night, parents that cared and did nice things for me, a place to crash that was quiet and I didn’t have to be on alert, waiting for sounds and yelling. Hell, just having a warm room instead of the cold attic probably helped my sleeping habits a lot. As good as it felt, it still worried me that most of the sleep I had been getting lately was at Heero’s house and not mine. I didn’t know what I was going to do if I couldn’t sleep at my place anymore or even in those sparse spurts that I had been managing in. What the hell was wrong with me?

          Despite that anxiety, my sleep was deep and undisturbed until my phone buzzed loudly on the dresser at eight. I’m usually a light sleeper, so that obnoxious noise was more than enough to rouse me and I hadn’t felt the need to set the ringtone as my alarm. I blinked at it in the low light and groped for it to turn it off. The thought of leaving my warm cocoon and going to work was physically painful, but I was already on thin ice at both of my jobs and I couldn’t just not show up because I was pathetic and weak and ‘didn’t feel like it.’ I tried to push myself up on my elbows to start the slow ascent, but suddenly realized that I was too heavy. Or rather, there was something over me that was heavier than should have been, even including the heating pad and the comforter.

More curious than alarmed, I rolled over under the weight and found Heero next to me, sleeping. The slight weight was just his arm thrown over me. Love burst, warm and pleasant, in my chest and I smiled at the sight of him. It felt so good just to see him, like it was some kind of miracle. I had to keep reminding myself that I just seen him the other day, because it didn’t feel like it at all. He was so beautiful, his face relaxed and his dark hair falling over his eyes. He smelled of sweat and grass, an attractive scent. I could just imagine him coming home from his game, finding me in his bed, and laying down with me. I wondered how long he had been there and marveled that he had managed to doze off when it was barely night time.

I slowly reached out my fingers and, with the gentleness of a breath, brushed his bangs out of his face, careful not to touch his skin in case I woke him up. I was overcome with a desire to press my lips to the bridge of his nose and taste his skin, something that made my face flame hot, but I ignored the urge. The curve of his eyelashes fascinated me and I felt drawn to the warmth of his body. I could have laid there for hours, just watching him, but that was dangerous, for more reasons than just missing work, so I very forcefully and painfully tried to roll away from him. Heero, even asleep, wasn’t having any of that and rolled towards me, now wrapping both of his arms around me and made this distressed, petulant noise, like a child having a treasured toy taken away from him.

It would have been funny, him reacting like that in his sleep, or even endearing, if he didn’t sound so… so desperate, if he wasn’t suddenly clinging to me like a little boy, his brow furrowed. This is what I do to him, I thought, I deny him what he wants, I hurt him because I can’t give him what he needs. I couldn’t even stay with him or soothe him. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t make this better and I couldn’t wake him up or let him keep me there. I felt so frustrated with myself. Anyone else would know what to do. It would probably come easily to them, something simple and natural and obvious. But to me… I had nothing. I was cold and distant, an alien in this world and all I could do was look at him and feel so helpless, so worthless as his boyfriend.

‘What would Heero do for me?’ I wondered, my heart ripping apart as I knew that he was one of those people that would just _know_ what I needed, ‘What does he need me to do? If I were having a nightmare or having problems sleeping or if I were anxious, what he would do?’

Just like that, the answer came to me and I smiled again. I carefully brushed his stubborn bangs back again and placed a soft kiss on his forehead.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

Heero’s lips quirked into a soft smile and his arms relaxed. He mumbled something that I couldn’t make heads or tails of, but miraculously, didn’t wake up. I was amazed that it had worked at all, but I was able to slip out of his loose embrace and sneak out of the bedroom. My lips still felt warm from his skin. With heavy regret, feeling like I had just turned down something wonderful, I grabbed some fresh clothes and went into the bathroom. I took down my hair and dared a glance at my reflection to see if I still looked like shit. I actually looked a lot better than I had that morning, not quite as pale and the dark circles under my eyes were gone, so I could probably go to work without Solo thinking something was wrong with me.

My back felt better, too, stiff and achy, but better. I managed to get my shirt off without too much trouble, so that was a step in the right direction. But when I got it off and threw it in the hamper, I realized that the bandages my mother had wrapped around my wrists the previous night were still there. I hadn’t bothered to change them in twenty-four hours and had even forgotten they were there somehow. I was incredibly lucky that Justin or Heero hadn’t seen them. Especially Heero. He knew that I had tried to kill myself, I could only imagine what he would think. I unraveled them and winced at the sight of my pale, thin wrists blackened with bruises and scabbed over with blood. The skin was beginning to heal, but I could clearly see where I had rubbed it off and the cuts made from my frantic attempts to free myself were ugly.

I just stood there for a while, paralyzed as I studied every inch of the wounds, my swirling emotions making me feel sick. The sight of them threatened to bring back everything that I had tried so hard to not think about, but I couldn’t afford to be pulled into those memories. I didn’t want to remember my father dragging me by my hair, the feeling of those ties around my wrists, how easily they had cut into me when I had panicked, the warm blood dripping down my arms that had felt so cold, my terror, any of it, so I shut my mind down. It was easy, I’d only had a lifetime to perfect the technique.

My wounds bled as I scrubbed them in the shower, but only a little, so I wasn’t that worried about them. When I was done and drying my hair with a towel, I considered wrapping them up again, but decided not to. It looked too suspicious and Heero was less likely to notice if I didn’t have huge, gauze bandages wrapped around my wrists, so I settled for some anti-bacterial ointment and larger, square band-aids on the cuts that looked the worst. I brushed my teeth and went to comb my hair before I realized that I had left my brush in the guest bedroom. I planned to sneak in there, do what I needed to do, and leave the house before I woke up Heero, but when I left the bathroom, the light was already on in his room.

Like a moth to the flame, I walked into his room and found him sitting on his bed, rubbing at his eyes and clearly having just woken up.

“Hi,” I said dumbly and felt my face get warm when his entire expression brightened just to see me.

“Hi,” he smiled warmly at me.

“When did you get in?” I asked.

“Six,” he said, “I’m sorry, I was really hoping to get back earlier, but the game went over, then Coach took us out for dinner…”

“It’s fine,” I assured him, “You win?”

“Of course,” he said a bit smugly, which almost had me laughing, “You feeling better? Dad said you didn’t sleep before you came over here.”

“Yeah, much better,” I said, “Sorry I hogged the bed. And woke you. You must be tired.”

“Not really, I just wanted to be with you,” he confirmed my suspicions, “I wasn’t entirely sure you were coming back here after work, so I wanted to lay down with you while I could.”

He hadn’t meant for it to, but guilt ate at me. I hadn’t really known if I was going to stay, either, and again felt myself torn between my fear of my father and my love for my boyfriend. What I wanted and what Heero wanted, my desire to not hurt him, or being safe. Neither options were all that enticing. But as soon as he said that, I knew that my mind was made up.

“I’ll come back here after work,” I told him, “and tomorrow, too, alright?”

He looked so relieved, I knew it was the right decision. Maybe not for me, but certainly for him. I didn’t want to think about what my father was going to do to me as soon as he figured out where I was again and was already forming plans to see that that didn’t happen.

“Come here,” my boyfriend urged, holding my wrist and pulling me down to sit on the bed with him.

I managed to hide a wince at the pain just that light grip gave my wrist, then he made me forget all about it when he kissed me, long and deep. He didn’t do that tongue thing that he had done the other day, but put his hand on my hip and slowly slid it down my leg, something he hadn’t done before. I tensed at this new step, his fingers making my skin tingle in a sensation that wasn’t completely unpleasant, but he kept his hand on my leg and nowhere else, so I relaxed. If this was another step further in our relationship, it was a non-threatening one, at least so far. But I still felt nervous, just knowing that another boundary had been breached.

“Mmm, minty,” Heero murmured when we parted for a second, then kissed me again, this time more chastely.

When he finally pulled away, he very gently cupped my bruised cheek with his hand, his thumb trailing over the purple and black marks while his eyes studied every inch of it with a pinched look that was a mix of sadness and anger.

“He hit you again,” he murmured.

I was the one to pull away this time.

“Don’t,” I pleaded.

The kisses had been nice. Laying with him had been nice. I didn’t want to lose that feeling by having another argument with him about my father.

“I wasn’t going to start a fight,” he soothed, “I’m just… worried. Does it hurt?”

“No,” I said.

And it didn’t, not really. Compared to my other hurts, the bruises on my stomach and face were practically nonexistent. Heero lifted his hand again and his expression changed, but into one that was warmer and affectionate. Instead of touching my face, he tucked my hair behind one ear.

“I love it when you take your hair down,” he said, skipping tracks on me and making me blush darkly.  
          “You do?” I asked, surprised.

It was just hair and I didn’t think it made me look all that different, so I couldn’t see why it mattered if my hair was up or down, only that it kept out of my way.

“It’s beautiful,” he said, running his fingers through the reddish-brown ends of my hair and didn’t give me a moment to protest the compliment, “Do you mind if I comb it for you?”

I shook my head. He had done it before, I was just too shy to admit to him that I enjoyed it. I retrieved my brush from the guest room and sat down on the bed in front of him. He was incredibly gentle as he combed my hair, just like he always was, careful of every snarl and brushing longer than really warranted, but I couldn’t complain. It was soothing, just like laying down with him was and I felt another pang of regret that I couldn’t indulge in spending more time with him.

“Thanks,” I told him as I redid my braid, ignoring the slight expression of loss on his face, “I should get going.”

“Alright,” Heero conceded, but I could tell that he was far from happy about it, “Don’t work too hard.”

I flashed him a small smile and, feeling like the biggest jerk in the world, left him to go to work. It was practically a literal shock when I stepped out of the warm and toasty house and realized how _freezing_ it was outside. The temperature had dropped drastically as soon as the sun had set and the wind had picked up. I huddled in my jacket and the scarf that Mariela had made for me, wishing that I had money for the bus. The walk from Heero’s place to my work was a long one and I could already start to feel my muscles ache again, probably just from the cold and suddenly being vertical and active.

Work itself wasn’t so terrible. At least, it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as it had been the previous night. Lorathe snapped at me a few times, but not because I had done anything wrong. More likely to re-establish the fact that he had all the power and I was just a snot-nosed kid in his employ in front of the other guys. Solo and I rolled our eyes behind his back, but otherwise, I kept my mouth shut and didn’t have to scrub anymore floors. I did a lot better than I had the last night and managed not to drop anything, but, predictably, screwed up my back and arms again. Not as badly as they had been before, but I felt worse than I had when I had left Heero’s house. By the time the shift ended, I was exhausted even though I had slept most of the day and my muscles were screaming at me along with my head. Thanks to the lengthy stay in the closet, my arms felt like lead and my shoulders were useless, but nothing was shaking yet, so I took that as a good sign.

“You coming back to Leneski’s?” Solo asked me when we were punching out.

“Yeah, I’m feeling a bit better. Sorry I didn’t show again today,” I apologized, not knowing really why beyond that he had been alone with a bunch of guys that wanted nothing to do with him, but he had never been very social with them to begin with.

He waved off my concern.

“Don’t need to apologize to me. Probably best you took it off, looks like you got some rest. It’s too bad we don’t get any vacation time from this place, you need a break. Hell, _I_ need a break and I’m not the one that has to go to school, too,” he pointed out, taking off his bandana to wipe his face clean of sweat.

“I want to thank you for talking to Leneski…” I looked around to make sure there was no one within ear shot of us, “for… you know…”

“Don’t need to thank me, either,” my friend said gruffly, putting on his jacket and gloves, “I figured he might be part of the reason for you being in such a foul mood the other day. He was being an ass. Maybe not as bad as Caleb, but there’s no reason for it,” he gave me this strange, undecipherable look, “You know… if he _had_ fired you that day, I would have gone to bat for you… you do know that, right?”

I just kind of stared at him for a moment before looking down at the ground shyly.

“You wouldn’t need to do that…” I murmured.

“Hell, no, I wouldn’t have needed to,” he snorted, “I would have _had_ to. I got you that damned job. As far as I’m concerned, it’s my responsibility that they don’t treat you like that and you don’t have to feel so lousy just going to work every day.”

“Thank you,” I repeated, continuously amazed by him, but he just rolled his eyes at me.

As we parted ways, I considered just going back to my house to let my father see that I was there and then sneak away to Heero’s, or just move stuff around so he would think that I had spent the morning there, but I was scared to. Scared that he might do something to me anyway. Scared that he would rape me again. Scared that he might find a way to keep me there. I was a coward and the decision was stupid, but I went the temporarily safer route, instead of the intelligent and safer way long term, and just went back to Heero’s. It was even colder out, but Solo assured me that the weather forecast stated it would be pretty warm the next day. I hoped that this random spurt of cold weather was just winter’s last temper tantrum before spring hit us, but I wouldn’t make any bets on that. At this time of the year, the weather tends to fluctuate between winter and spring sporadically. It could be seasonally warm one day and freezing the next.

I’m used enough to the cold that I just shoved my hands into my pockets and trudged my way back north with only a slight sense of discomfort. The wind had almost completely died down since I had been at work, so I barely needed the scarf, I was just getting tired of the cold. I could only imagine how frustrated Heero must be with it, having little experience. I found him awake when I went upstairs, sitting up in bed with his laptop.

“You’re awake,” I said in amazement.

Heero closed his computer and smiled brightly at me. He didn’t _look_ tired, but that didn’t make me feel any better about him being awake at two in the freaking morning.

“You haven’t been up all this time, have you?” I accused.

“No,” he assured me, putting the computer on the bedside table, “I ate dinner, watched some television, and went back to bed. I’ve only been up for twenty-five minutes.”

“You don’t need to do this,” I sighed, “Staying up this late-,”

“ _You_ stay up this late,” he pointed out.

“ _I_ have to,” I shot back, my tiredness making me short tempered, “and I’m used to it, you’re not.”

“Just because you’re used to it, it doesn’t mean that you should do it,” he argued, “You go to school at the same time as me and we’re almost exactly the same age, minus a few months, you shouldn’t be coming home at two any more than I should be awake.”

“Whatever,” I muttered, all the fight going out of me as I rubbed at my eyes, far too tired to have this argument.

“You’re exhausted,” he noted and there was an edge of guilt to his voice that told me that he knew what he was saying was getting to me, but not any indication that he was going to drop it this time.

“I’m sorry,” I said automatically, “This shift just takes a lot out of me. Hell if I know why. It’s only four hours.”

Heero made an annoyed, dismissive noise.

“Four hours of back breaking labor, late at night, and that’s just on the week days,” his voice was tense with something, anger, frustration, I wasn’t sure, “Your walking stiffly again, like you were the other day.”

“I am?” I asked, not having noticed that.

It was true that I felt a lot stiffer than I had last night, but we had been lifting heavy cargo, heavier than we had the last few shifts, and there had been a lot more of it, so I had to work fast.

“Your arms are hurting you now, too, aren’t they?” he accused.

I didn’t say anything, I didn’t need to. I almost shot back that my arms hurting wasn’t entirely because of work, but that would have been a stupid thing to admit.

“You were feeling so much better last night, now you’re hurting again,” he snapped, “Just four hours of work, you hurt yourself and you’re so tired, you can barely stand. And you didn’t even go to your other shift today! It’s like this every day, Duo. Every single day that I see you, you’re exhausted and drained and your back is killing you! And why? What is the point of this? Of working these ridiculous hours that even an adult would struggle with? It’s not like you’re making any money!”

“You fucking know why I work like this!” it took every ounce of self-control I possessed to not start screaming at him, partially because I didn’t want to and partially because I didn’t want to wake his parents, but I still felt tears of frustration at him reminding me of all this shit gathering in my eyes, my hands curled into shaking fists and my tone was hard and full of anger, though not at him, “I’ve told you countless times! I have to work! I need the money… my family needs the money! I don’t just have things handed to me! I can’t ask my dad for new clothes or meals or text books when mine get ruined by some asshole at school! I have to work for everything that I need! I have to work long hours at jobs that give me pulled muscles and headaches because my family can barely get by with all three of us working like this! My dad and my mom work their asses off to keep a roof over our head and what little that we do have! So what if I’m tired, and so what if all I want to do is hang out with you, not have to work late at night and never have any kind of life or time to myself?! It’s my responsibility-,”

“You’re seventeen years old!” he yelled at me, his eyes fierce and somehow attractive in his anger, like a tiger’s, “It is not your responsibility to be the bread winner! That’s on your parents, not you! If they need money that badly, there are other ways to get it than making their kid take on two fucking jobs and leeching off of him!”

Some ugly, twisted part of me wanted to lash out at him, hurt him in some way because he didn’t understand, no one fucking understood. I was struggling to keep everything together and he kept trying to pull it all apart. Didn’t he see how hard I was trying? I felt so incredibly frustrated at him for digging out these feelings in me, for tearing everything apart. I was trying to manage all of it, keep a balance between my two lives, to try to be a good boyfriend and keep the rest of it together and manageable. But he kept prodding, kept making me feel so helpless and weak, like none of it mattered. Every time I thought I found that balance, he wanted more, made me regret and second guess myself. What more could I do to make him happy? I couldn’t quit my jobs, even if it upset him and he would be happier if I did, but for the first time, I wanted to, just for his sake, and that terrified me, the hold he has over my heart. I had thought that Trowa had been capable of getting whatever he wanted from me… he didn’t hold a candle to Heero.

But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t last out him, no matter how frustrated I was, because I loved him and I couldn’t hurt him, not intentionally, not if I had a choice, which was just as frightening. Besides, I knew that he wasn’t wrong. I might feel like it was my responsibility to help my family, and it was something that my father had drilled into my head since I had been young, between his rants about how useless I was and how much it cost to feed me and cloth me, all the resources I used and when he first started talking about getting me a job to help pay the bills when I had been twelve years old.

 

 _“My dad had me working in his shop when I was your age,”_ he had said, _“It’s a man’s job to provide for his family, not that I can come close to calling you a man, but like hell am I going to work my ass off and let you lounge around the place like you’re the fucking prince. Everyone else here has a job and you sure as shit aren’t better than us. Your grades are shit and it’s not like you’re good at sports. You’re just useless all around, so you might as well do **something** with your pathetic life now that you’re old enough.”_

He might have been slightly drunk and tired from working an especially frustrating case, but I had known that he had meant those words. I was a leech and had no use otherwise, so if I was going to eat his food and use his electricity, I might as well take some of the burden off him and my mother. I had taken those words to heart and I fully meant it when I said that it was my responsibility, but I was also old enough now to resent my father for it a little, to be jealous of other kids my age and realize that Heero and Justin were right. I was tired all the time, worn down all the time. I had always felt a kind of pride when I had brought home a paycheck, but these last few years, it just feels like another one of my father’s punishments. If he had to suffer, then so did I, the money was just a perk. I don’t know if that’s true, but that’s how I feel. I used to like work if only because I felt that I was helping my parents, that I was doing what my father wanted and making him happy. Now I hate it.

I hate that my father takes all my money that I sweat and hurt my back for. I hate that I can’t be with Heero because I’m always at work and I can’t ever pay to take _him_ somewhere, even if it’s just for a cheap meal. I hate that I have to do my homework on my breaks sometimes because I just don’t have the time when I get home. I hate that I do all of this for him and my father still treats me like breathing garbage. I’m so sick and tired of all of it. I just want to be normal. A normal teenager with a normal, part time job with normal hours, making just enough cash to take my boyfriend out on dates, maybe buy a CD I want, instead of working 47 hours a week on top of going to school and doing chores and being stressed all the time about schoolwork and the bills and now all this shit at Leneski’s.

Everything that Heero was saying was right. It shouldn’t be my responsibility. But it was. That’s what he didn’t get. It didn’t matter what was fair, it didn’t matter how tired I was or what I wanted, this _was_ my responsibility, because my family was still my family and I’m a part of it and I needed to help and this was all that I could do. We were still just scraping by, all my hard work was still shit and worthless, just like my father had said. I wasn’t even good enough at this. My sudden burst of anger withered into nothing, leaving me feeling weary and empty, like all of my energy had just bled out of me.

Without having any real clue what I was doing, I sat bonelessly on the edge of the bed, facing away from him, looking down at the floor. I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling colder for some reason, or maybe the warmth of the room was finally making me realize how cold I was. It was just like my father claimed, I wasn’t good for anything. Being a son, being a boyfriend… I just fail everyone in the end. I couldn’t even keep Heero from worrying about me. I can’t do anything right, no matter how hard I try.

“I don’t know what you want from me,” I murmured, “I don’t know what you want me to do.”

‘Whatever you want, I’ll do it,’ almost slipped out, but I couldn’t say it, I couldn’t let him know the power he holds over me, or make promises that I can’t keep.

The bed dipped and I heard a rustling of fabric and suddenly he was sitting next to me, his arm around my waist. I didn’t even need to think about it, my body just reacted and I was melting against him. That I had felt angry at him just a moment ago seemed laughable. The feeling of him was warm and so familiar and I wondered when that had happened, when I had stopped shying away from him and finding how intimate he could be strange.

“I just want you to not be stressed and hurting all the time,” he said softly, having lost his own anger, “You have so much on your plate all the time, and I hate seeing you like this, so tired, walking like an old man because you’re in pain and it frustrates me that you act like it’s nothing. You work so hard to help your family, and I love how selfless you are, but it kills me to see how worn down you get, and all over something that shouldn’t be on your shoulders.”

“How things ‘should’ be doesn’t matter,” I countered tiredly even as I felt warmed that he thought I was selfless, “This is how things are. Maybe I shouldn’t have to work two jobs to help support my family, maybe you’re right and it isn’t my responsibility, but it _is_. We need the money. If I quit, I would only be more stressed because we would have even less and I would be letting my parents down. Even if I wanted to stop working like this, my dad would never let me. He’d be furious if I got fired or quit, so what can I do, Heero? Tell me what you want me to do!”

He fell silent for a minute.

“I don’t know,” he finally admitted, “All I know is that this doesn’t feel right and I hate this. But I don’t know how to help you.”

The frustration and self-loathing in his voice was so painful and it twisted my guts knowing that I had made him feel that way. But I was just as clueless how to help him as he was to help me. We were both lost, not even knowing how to comfort each other.

“I don’t need help,” I insisted, “I can handle it, you don’t need to worry about me.”

Heero snorted.

“I’ll always worry about you, there’s really nothing you can do about that,” he kissed my cheek and just like that, any negative feelings I might have had from our fight just dissipated like vapor.

We just sat there for a while, enjoying the feeling of our bodies pressed together, not saying anything because what was there really left to say? Heero was the unstoppable force and I was the unmovable wall, neither of us were going to change and I was too tired to argue anymore.

“Sleep with me tonight?” Heero timidly broke the silence.

I felt another stab of guilt as I realized that he thought I wouldn’t want to stay with him because he had made me angry. I gave him a smile and nodded. He nearly sagged with relief and kissed me again. I hurriedly brushed my teeth, changed into pajamas, and collected my cat. Heero’s bedroom was dark when I got back to it and he was in bed, the covers on my side pulled back. I closed the door so only a crack was visible and thought about closing the door completely in an act of pettiness, remembering what Justin had said about Mariela seeing us before, but while it weirded me out, I couldn’t blame them. We were two teenaged boys that were into each other and were now sharing a bed, normally the perfect equation for a parent’s worst nightmare, if only both parties were normal. I just felt grateful that they were willing to overlook it enough to let us share a bed. If I had to deal with them peeking in every once in a while, I would. It was a rather tiny price to pay for being with Heero while I slept.

I sat on my side of the bed and set an alarm for seven. I debated setting it for earlier, but it was Friday and my father never got up early on the weekends unless he absolutely had to and I clung to that for comfort. I wasn’t worth him sacrificing sleep over, even if he was trying to catch me in a lie. I made sure to keep it on vibrate. It had been enough to wake me up before, but not Heero. He’s a much heavier sleeper than I am. I laid down and Heero tried to snuggle up to me like he always does, being a bit bolder now that we had done this a few times, but he suddenly hissed with discomfort when his feet accidentally brushed against mine when we were rearranging ourselves.

“Jesus, Duo, you’re like a block of ice!” he complained, my skin still a bit chilled from being outside for so long and not inside enough that I had warmed completely.

“Sorry,” I muttered and tried to roll off the bed, feeling guilty again.

It was bad enough that I worried him and made him so frustrated that he fought with me, I didn’t want to make him uncomfortable and cold in his own bed just because I had been walking around outside.

“Uh uh,” he murmured and wrapped his arms around me tightly to keep me from escaping, “I need to warm you up.”

I felt my face get hot as I felt his chest press against my back. If anyone else had been holding me like that, it would have been restraining, a prison, and I would have been thrashing and biting to get out of it. But with Heero, I felt safe. Protected by the same kind of embrace that should have made me panic. It had before, when I had been agitated and trying to get away from him, but right then, I felt relaxed and at ease with his closeness and his embrace just felt comforting, kind of the same way I feel when he hugs me. I guess that’s why I can sleep so deeply when I’m with him, I just know that he would never let anything happen to me. Once I got used to him being there and in my personal space, once I got to know him, it’s like something just… clicked in me, some barrier crumbled away. I haven’t felt something like that since Quatre broke my heart, not even with Trowa in our best moments.

“I’m sorry,” Heero murmured against my shoulder, “You have so much on your shoulders and I just keep adding to it, don’t I? I don’t want to fight anymore. I’ll try harder, I promise.”

I found his forearm where it was resting against my ribs and wrapped my hand around it.

“You have a right to be upset,” I told him, “You don’t need to apologize for caring about me.”

‘I’m just sorry that you have to be worried about me,’ I thought miserably, ‘I’m sorry that I’ll never be good enough for you.’

I felt him press a soft kiss to the side of my neck and that’s the last thing I remember before I drifted off. I slept undisturbed for the next five hours, which kind of weirded me out. I couldn’t remember sleeping that well so consistently in many years. Not so much how long I had slept, but how deeply, not waking up to a strange noise or feeling restless or just having a nightmare. Actually sleeping like a normal person. It was like Heero had woven some magic spell on me. I felt more rested after five hours in Heero’s bed than I did six or seven hours in mine.

I glared in irritation at my vibrating phone, which had roused me as planned, but that didn’t mean that I wanted to get up. I turned the thing off with a lot more contempt than an inanimate object deserved, especially considering that this shitty decision had been mine and almost groaned just at the thought of getting out of that bed, but that might have woken Heero. I peered over my shoulder, hoping my alarm hadn’t woken him, but he was still curled up in an awkward position, one arm flung over me, leg sprawled all over the place, face almost buried in his pillow and snoring softly. Despite the stress headache that was already starting to build in my skull, I smiled softly at the sight of him. I wanted nothing more than to just fall back asleep, basking in the warmth of his body heat. If I were normal, I could have done that. Instead, I had to run back home like a whipped dog.

I came to this… asinine decision sometime during work the previous night. I had been tearing my stomach into knots with anxiety over what I was going to do, how I was going to be able to balance giving Heero what he wanted, staying over his place, with my father’s threats and rage. I couldn’t stay away, not if I wanted to keep Heero thinking that everything was fine and stop him from worrying, and also because I couldn’t bear it. But I also couldn’t keep sleeping and staying over like I had been if I wanted to stay out of the hospital. I needed to make my father think that I was sleeping at our house without actually sleeping there, which was nearly impossible.

All I could do was keep up appearances and use mine and my father’s different schedules to my advantage. By the time I come home from work, he’s usually asleep, and I usually get up before him, so it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that I could make him think I was listening to him. It was those times when he snuck into my room in the small hours of the morning that I couldn’t prepare for, but honestly? Beyond wanting to be with Heero, I was glad that I couldn’t obey my father, because… Well, how many times had he caught me out of the house because he had wanted to fuck me? How many rapes had I avoided, blissfully unaware, sleeping in the guest bedroom or in Heero’s arms? Better a beating than that. That was a dangerous thought, too, because it only made my sleepovers at Heero’s house more alluring, more of a temptation.

I couldn’t account for my father’s pettiness, him checking up on me just to make sure I hadn’t snuck off, but that was unavoidable. However, I _could_ make him think I was there during the mornings when he didn’t sneak into my room. All I had to do was make sure he saw me when he got up in the morning. If he saw me early enough, I could get him to think I had slept there, even if he thought I had just gotten home late. I could sleep for a few hours at Heero’s, get up early, and run back home. No one would even know if I got lucky.

I didn’t like it. I didn’t like sacrificing my mornings with Heero just to appease my father’s temper tantrums. I didn’t like disappointing my boyfriend or sneaking out of his place like I had done something wrong, like our relationship was something secretive. I guess there’s a sort of irony in that. There are probably a lot of homosexuals that have to hide their relationships like a dirty secret, yet everyone in town knew I was a fag and Heero and I were together except for my father. It seemed so ridiculous. And Heero sure as hell wasn’t going to like it. I couldn’t bear to think about what he would think when he woke up and found me disappeared like a thief in the night, just like I hadn’t been able to tell him that I had been planning this, coward that I am. But what the hell was I going to say when he asked me why?

Slipping out from under Heero’s arm was both easy and impossible and I felt a very real pain when I looked down on him. He made an annoyed noise and curled up in the empty, warm spot I had made like a cat in a sun spot. I leaned down and kissed his cheek, the only thing I could do. As quietly as humanly possible, I rummaged through his desk and found a pen and a post-it note. I stared at the blank square for five whole minutes, an endless expanse of words in my head, none of them good enough.

With a defeated sigh, I wrote ‘I’m sorry’ and put it on his desk. It wasn’t enough, but I couldn’t think of anything to write that might make him forgive me or could explain why I had left without telling him about how much my father didn’t want us to hang out with each other and how I was risking my welfare disobeying him. Not without lying and with how much I do that already, I didn’t want to do it if I could avoid it. I snuck into the guest room and retrieved my work clothes from the day before. I didn’t bother changing out of my pajamas. It would help to have my father see me in clothes that I had obviously slept in. I skipped a shower, too. Having my hair wet when no one had used the shower would be way too suspicious.

Luck seemed to be on my side that morning, for once. My two biggest worries about this plan had been being caught either by my father or Heero’s parents, but although I could hear Mariela and Justin puttering around their bedroom and the shower going, I didn’t see them as I left. I felt absolutely horrible as I snuck out of that house, feeling like some asshole who had seduced a kind hearted, trusting person and snuck out the morning after without so much as a thanks or goodbye. But it had to be this way, I told myself. At least on the weekends when school resumed. For the very first time, I was almost looking forward to it because I could get away with sleeping over at Heero’s more often, my dad might just think I had left for school early, which I do a lot.

Miraculously, the chill from the previous day was gone and while it wasn’t necessarily warm out, it felt like it was going to be. I made a mental note to check the weather for the next day and felt this giddy, little boost of mood as I remembered that the next day was Saturday and I didn’t have to go to work. I didn’t have any track practices, either, due to the break, so Heero and I could hang out all day. Well, as soon as I could escape from my father. That soothed a bit of the sting that leaving early that morning had given me.

I ran across town to my house, confident that with my work boots on my feet and a jacket over my pajama top, no one would find my appearance weird. Even if they did, I didn’t care that much. Sneaking into my house was a hell of a lot harder than sneaking out of Heero’s. My neighbor’s dogs barked viciously the second that they saw me and I worried that my father might wake up and check out why, but that was just paranoia. The fucking beasts bark over _everything_ , sometimes even nothing at all and we were used to it. My father, drunk and angry, had gone over to yell at their owner about it and had even threatened to shoot them if he couldn’t get them to stop (I know because my father, at that point, had been bellowing at the guy), but our neighbor had just told him that he would bring up charges against him for threatening him and besides, the dogs were supposed to bark and be vicious, how else was he going to protect his property?

 _“ ‘Property?’”_ my father had sneered when he had stormed back into the house, _“In that crack den? With all the lowlife scum and niggers that parade in and out of that dump, the only ‘property’ he has are those damn dogs and a heap of heroin. He probably fights with those fucking mutts.”_

I had been very young at the time and not really understood half the things he had been ranting about, only that the dogs scared me. My father, not so drunk at the time, and before he had seemed to stop completely giving a shit, had seen my fear and gotten even angrier. I had thought that I had done something he didn’t like, but he pulled me aside and gotten down on his knees to look me in the eye and I realized that it wasn’t me that had angered him, but that he couldn’t do anything about the dogs.

 _“Just stay away from them, Duo,”_ he told me, _“They’re bad animals. You just stay far away from that place and there’s no reason to be scared.”_

 _“Yes, Daddy,”_ I had nodded enthusiastically, eager to agree not only because I always had been back then, but because he had been drunk and out of control when he had gone over to the neighbors and I knew what might happen if I made him madder.

At the tender age of six, I hadn’t had the heart to tell him that I was just as frightened of the smell of alcohol on his breath and his large, hard hands bunched up into tight fists as I was of the snarling dogs. I had kept my promise, though. I never went near that house or even walked on that side of the street. I guess my singular experience with canines was one of the reasons why Kanuck had frightened me that first time he had run up to me on the beach. Now that I was familiar with him, it seemed laughable that I had ever been scared of the over friendly animal. I guess I can say the same for Heero. That I had ever been wary of him, that he was going to beat me up or do something nasty to me seemed ridiculous now.

I ignored the dogs and very carefully, with the hands of a surgeon, pried the front door open. There was a very specific speed to open the fucking thing that wouldn’t make a very noticeable and irritating squeak or creak or some other noise that might alert someone. I just as carefully closed the door behind me, held my breath, and waited. It was silent for a moment, not a single sound to tell me if I was fucked or not before I heard something from my parents’ room: a snore. I breathed in relief. It didn’t mean that I had pulled this off, but at least he was asleep and hadn’t caught me coming in red handed. With the skill of a ninja, I got my jacket and shoes off and went into the kitchen without making a single peep. The place was clean for once, which meant few chores when my father woke up, but I was sure he would think of something.

          My mother was asleep on the couch and obviously had come off of a double shift; her hair was in a messy pony tail that was quickly falling apart, she was still in her uniform, and even asleep, she looked worn. I hoped that she wouldn’t have to get up early to go back to work, that they might have given her some leeway, but I doubted it. Her bosses treated her like shit, just like Lorathe treats me, but worse in some ways. My relationship with Leneski might be a little strained, but at least he didn’t treat me like a pack mule. Her quilt had fallen to the floor at some point and I pulled it back over her before sneaking up the steps to my room.

          If I needed proof that my father hadn’t found out where I had been that morning and flipped out about it, the state of my room served pretty well. Everything was exactly how I had left, not so much as a sock out of place. Could I have really been that lucky this time? I didn’t dare to hope, but continued to stay on red alert, at least until my father either disappeared for the day or let me leave. I laid down on my mattress to make it at least look like someone had been in it at some point and sighed. What was I going to do now? The book that I had been reading was at Heero’s house and I had already read all of the books that I had at mine, not that I’m the sort that can’t stand rereading something, I just didn’t feel the urge right then. I was tired, but didn’t bother with the frustrating attempt of trying to nap and I wasn’t hungry at all. I should be, but I felt this hovering depression in the back of my mind at the mere fantasy in my head of going back down the stairs and rummaging through the fridge and cupboards for something I could eat. No thank you.

          I suppose ‘depression’ is a pretty good word for what I felt laying on my mattress and listening to, well, the sound of nothing. Although ‘moody’ and ‘despondent’ also come close. I didn’t feel like doing anything. I didn’t feel upset or sad, I just suddenly felt like nothing was important or mattered and I was quite happy to just lay there and feel miserable for myself, that I felt no drive, no emotion at all beyond this strange heaviness. I didn’t even want to listen to music, although I couldn’t anyway with my CD player at Heero’s place. If Pepper had been there, I would have played with her, but I had nothing and no one to give me any sense of purpose. Not there, not anymore.

          I got up simply because I hated the feeling of lying there and buzzed around the room, trying to find things to do to keep my hands busy and make the minutes and hours pass by until I could leave the prison that my home had become. I refolded clothes. I organized my books by title, then deciding I didn’t like the way that looked, by author and then genre. I dusted every surface, every crevice with a rag in my sewing pile. I fixed some holes in socks, did some stretching exercises, reorganized my desk drawers, and even organized my fucking clothes by color. By the time I was done, my cell phone sadistically informed me that it was only 8:30 and I thought that I might scream.

          The rest of my morning and early afternoon at home passed pretty much like that, with me frustrated and hating every hour long second of it. I longed for a scrap of homework to do or to go for a jog, but I couldn’t risk leaving before my father saw me, so I just flitted from one useless task to the next. When I heard someone moving around downstairs, I made sure to go down there, knowing that the light footsteps belonged to my mother, so I didn’t have that tight pit in my stomach. She smiled at me slightly and tiredly and we said our subdued ‘morning’s to each other. She didn’t seem to realize that I hadn’t spent the full morning at home, so I relaxed a little more. While she made coffee, I turned on the television and found an early news station that had the weather. According to the meteorologist, it was too early to say for certain if Spring had truly arrived to our area, but the weekend was going to be nice; clear and sunny with temperatures around 60 degrees. Nowhere near to the kind of weather Heero was used to, but that would make him happy. Maybe we could have lunch on his porch or take a walk on the beach.

          When the weather report was over, I quickly flipped through the stations, not wanting to see anything else the news had to offer. I found a home network that was demonstrating various, Portuguese baking techniques. I knew that it was dangerous, watching something like that at home. Mariela and Justin were very tolerant, liberal people and my being interested in things like cooking or sewing or some educational program over sports wasn’t something that they even blinked at. Mariela liked that we had a common interest, but neither of my parents would think that it was appropriate. But my curiosity won over my caution for once, having never made anything Portuguese before and some of the ingredients the chef was using intrigued me.

          I committed a few things to memory before the program switched over to some kind of quilting show, another thing that I have little experience with, my hand craft skills limited to mending socks and making scarves or hats, but it was interesting and a nifty skill to have. I barely noticed when my mother wandered in with her cup of coffee and sat down next to me on the couch. Neither one of us wanted to sit in my father’s chair and I wondered if it was fearful respect of him or just a territory thing, that we both felt more comfortable on the neutral couch. My mother sat there for a while, taking small sips, and alternating between watching the show and taking strange glances at me. My stomach prickled at that stare, but I tried to ignore it and after a few minutes, I forgot that she was even there until she spoke up.

          “Isn’t this a bit…” she paused, seeming shy and unsure, “… Isn’t there something else that you’d rather be watching?”

          I met her grey eyes and immediately looked away from her, not liking the look in them. How she was looking at _me_. There was no contempt or mockery there like there would be if it had been my father, but something that was, in a way, worse than a sneer. Discomfort, suspicion, and, worst of all, fear. I wondered what she was thinking. Was she wondering if there was some hidden meaning in me watching something like that? Was she wondering if I was a fag, or was she simply afraid of what my father might do or say if he found out? Was she judging me or did she merely find it strange?

          “There’s nothing else on,” I said defensively.

          Her expression didn’t change. She wasn’t buying it. Suddenly, I missed Heero’s home keenly and wished with every frustrated, pained fiber of my being that I was there. No one there would ever look at me like that, like I was strange, like I was abnormal, like I was doing something sinful. It never changes, I thought. My relationship with my mother might be better, but there were some things that would never change. She was still conservative, still prejudiced in the same ways that my father and most of the town were, although maybe not as severely. But still, in her world, boys liked sports and cars, girls liked cooking and sewing. If a boy liked what a girl would like, that made him a freak. A queer. Even if he wasn’t, he still _was_ , and that was something to look down upon.

          “She’s really pretty,” I blurted out and pointed at the host of the show, a buxom, young redhead with white skin that reminded me an awful lot of the girl that Trowa had slept with, “isn’t she?”

          “I suppose so,” my mother said and I could actually _hear_ the fucking relief in her voice as she jumped on my words and let me manipulate her, let me make her believe that I had been watching the show, not to learn how to make quilts, but to stare at some woman’s cleavage like some horny, mindless animal.

          Just like my father. Just like Pat. She smiled at me and I could see that relief there, all the ugliness in her expression erasing as her world was put right again. Her son wasn’t strange at all. He was a totally normal, hormonal, teenaged boy. More importantly, a _straight_ one who had no interest at all in girly things. That was just something that her husband liked to say. She could handle my cooking well because it was a good skill to have and it reminded her of her mother, but sewing? Actually enjoying and having an _interest_ in cooking and quilting? Never that. Along with the relief, I could see her desperation. She chose to believe what I had said, not because it was apparent to her that it was the truth, but because she _needed_ to believe it. At all costs, she had to believe that I wasn’t… _that way._ In an instant, I felt my heart shatter.

          No matter how close we had grown, I could never reveal myself to her, my honest, true self. I could only wear a mask, just like Heero had. If I didn’t, then she wouldn’t love me anymore. How could she? When everyone else in my old world hated me for it? But that was ok. I could keep up the lie for her, because I know what her not loving me feels like and while it hurts knowing that she will never accept me, the lie is so much less painful. I quickly lost my taste for the program and shut off the television. I couldn’t bear to be around my mother, either, and left for the kitchen. I poured myself a mug of coffee, making sure to leave enough for my father, knowing that I wasn’t going to like it and didn’t even care. I took a sip and didn’t even taste its bitterness. I couldn’t taste anything. It was too much like back when Quatre had died, that grey time when I had dreamed horrible things and I hadn’t been able to feel or taste anything, like Quatre had taken all my senses with him when he had killed himself. I dumped the rest of the coffee back into the pot.

          I scrounged around for some breakfast, figuring that I should probably put the effort to eat something that morning just for the energy, and discovered that some kind soul had gone grocery shopping. It made me realize just how disconnected I was with my own family now. I knew more about the coming and goings of Heero’s parents than I did my own. What did that say about me? I used to be so attuned to my parents’ moods, their stresses about bills, and keeping track of every item of food that we possessed, making plans and worrying about when shopping would need to be done, what repairs needed to be made to the house. But recently, I haven’t just fallen out of touch with my parents’ lives, I’ve stopped caring about things like keeping the house running or what my father has been doing. I just… feel this empty void in me. It’s like I’ve run away from home while my body is still there.

          Feeling uneasy about that revelation, I dug out some eggs, trying to remember if my parents had gotten paid recently or I should worry where they had gotten the money for groceries, but it only made me realize even more how little I cared. What sort of horrible person was I that I could detach myself so completely from my family? The people that I loved? To turn my boyfriend’s parents into replacements for my own? Was this really what I wanted? To run away from my parents? To erase my own life? Heero wasn’t a permanent thing. I had to keep reminding myself of that. Sooner or later, that was going to end and I would be back here. What would happen to me, then? Would I still feel this way?

          I felt like I was fading, or drifting away drop by drop, and those feelings were so horrible and alarming, so similar to the depression I had felt before Trowa had returned to my life that I felt actually sick with them and had to focus on something else, anything else, or I was going to have a panic attack. I couldn’t think of things like ‘what the fuck is wrong with me’ or ‘am I even alive right now.’ I don’t know where such thoughts and feelings come from. Some nether realm in my head, but it was too frightening, this… distortion, what my own mind was capable of and I hastily shut myself down, focusing instead on the feeling of the cool, smooth eggs in my hand and the motions of preparing breakfast. Heating up the skillet. Collecting cheese and milk and various other things from the fridge. And when my consciousness threatened to slip back to that horror show, I recited poems and short stories, both mine and others that I had read repeatedly, in my head. I concocted whole novel skeletons in the time that it took to make my mother an omelet, while the entire time, way in the back of my mind, I could hear myself chanting ‘I need to call Heero, I need to call Heero.’

          What for, I challenged myself, what the hell for? What would you say to him? That you’re using him as a distraction? That he’s the only thing that makes you feel alive anymore? That there’s nothing in you and even the love you once felt for your parents is ebbing like the fucking tide and sooner or later, he’s going to realize what a husk you are? Some pretty words from him about how smart and handsome and _wonderful_ you are aren’t going to change this reality. So why, precisely, do you want him to figure that out now?

          My hands shook. I think I knew then, though distantly, that I was having some kind of bizarre anxiety attack. Or maybe a dissociative attack. Hell if I knew what was happening to me beyond how scary it was.

          ‘Justin would know the word for it,’ the thought popped into my head.

          I suddenly could picture it, telling him about this. He wouldn’t judge me. He wouldn’t call me a loser or a freak or call me nuts. He would just put his hand on my shoulder and sit me down on their couch and explain it to me in that rational, cool way of his that always makes things seem less apocalyptic. Heero has the same skill. He can just reach into my confused and chaotic soul and rearrange things to make sense. And in that moment, I always realize how stupid and overly emotional I’ve been. Sure, it would never last, but in that moment, I feel this… clarity. Justin is exactly like that. He’s just so calm and collected, like nothing can ever get to him and he makes my anxieties and panic seem so small and unimportant. It was so odd, but… it was that mental image of him and not the boy that I loved that soothed something in me enough that my hands stopped shaking and I wondered why I felt like I had gotten hit by the emotional equivalent of a drive by.

          And that was when my parents’ bedroom door flew open and my father made his appearance, thankfully right when I was beginning to pull myself back together and not a minute or two before that. I froze, not even daring to breathe as he immediately noticed me there, his senses sharp and more awake than I would have liked for him to be. He narrowed his eyes at me and I was positive that he was going to start in on me, that he would say that he knew where I had been that morning, or maybe even drag me into the closet again. Instead, he shot me this nasty look that I couldn’t quite decipher, only that it was icy and ugly. I couldn’t tell if he was suspicious or not as he brushed past me to get his coffee. I’m sure that he was, but not enough to accuse me of anything, or he was saving it for later, when he was more awake.

          I didn’t say good morning to him or really acknowledge his presence beyond dropping some eggs into the skillet to make him breakfast. In the past, even if he was in a mood and even if I was feeling wary of him, I would make some kind of effort, be nice and cordial and ask him how his work had been, just to _try_ to get past that iron wall he erects around himself. Sometimes it even works. But lately, I haven’t been trying at all. That desire to connect with him, to try to get him to see me and talk to me seems to have shriveled up completely. I still love him, I still feel hurt when he acts like I don’t exist or like I’m just a servant that he doesn’t have to pay, that he can tolerate me if I make him breakfast or do my chores, but otherwise, he wants nothing to do with me.

          But lately… there’s this disconnect between us. Instead of saying good morning, how was your day, did you sleep well, anything to break that icy silence between us, I kept my head bowed and focused on making him breakfast, my back stiff and my whole body ready for some altercation, not even wanting to look in his direction. It’s been like that ever since he first tried to molest me, and then it rooted itself firmly between us after he raped me. I might love him still because he’s my father and I have these memories of him in my head, but I can’t equate the man that forces me down and uses me to get off with the same man that was standing next to me that morning. The man who works hard to pay our bills and hugged me when I was crying over Quatre. I don’t understand him. I’m not sure if I want to. He’s a monster and he’s my dad. I know the feel of his hands on my forehead and the feel of his fist on my body. I remember his faint, but honest smile and I remember the hot, sickening look of lust, all on that same face. I can’t stand to be around him anymore, because I see those two men standing in the same spot and it threatens to tear my head apart trying to understand how they can possibly be one person, why he does the things that he does.

          That disconnect isn’t just my fault, it’s his, too. Ever since he raped me that first time, he’s been distant, even more than usual. He won’t look at me sometimes and treats the space I’m occupying like forbidden ground, like some specter is there that he can’t look at or touch, so he just stays away from it and pretends like it isn’t there. He never acknowledges what he does to me. It’s like there’s this switch in his head that turns on when he wants to fuck me, but as soon as he cums, he turns it back off again and none of it ever happened for him. I think he chooses to forget, just like I wish I could. I think it disgusts him, fucking me. Fucking, not just his son, but a boy, so he just pretends like it didn’t happen. And I think that if I ever dared to bring the subject up, he would beat me into the hospital just to avoid having to think about it.

          Maybe I’m reaching out of hope. Hope that he hates what he does to me as much as I hate it, that he feels _something_ , even if it’s just disgust, if not regret and self-hatred for hurting me. Even if it’s just the sex that he loathes and not the damage he’s done. But there’s other things, little things, that make me wonder if I’m right. How quick to anger he is around me lately, how he can’t look at my mother, either, sometimes. How he seems to loathe the both of us now, actually _loathe_ us, like we had done something to him. Maybe we had. Maybe he blames us for those urges, for what he needs to do to silence them.

I think about that a lot, how it must be my fault. If I acted more like a man… if I cut my hair and looked more masculine, he wouldn’t want me anymore and he could go back to sleeping with other women. I think about how I’m teasing him, keeping my hair long like my mother, refusing to cut it pettily, how I cook all the time like she used to and take care of him like she’s supposed to. I think that I did this to him and I hate myself for it, but I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. Should I cut my hair? Hell, shave my whole head and stop acting like such a… such a wife all the time? Stop being interested in cooking and sewing and reading and take a bigger interest in sports? Make myself more unattractive to him?

I just don’t know. I tried my entire childhood to change for him, but in the end, I’m a failure. One, colossal failure. I deserve him treating me like a whore. I’ve never been any use to him as anything else and I don’t even have the spine to make him stop. I just let him do it because it’s easier. Hell, Trowa was right. I’m not a whore, I’m a slut. I can put out for my father, but not the boy that I actually love and want to be with. If Heero knew, he wouldn’t be able to get far enough away from me in his disgust. Trowa was right about that, too, as much as it had hurt me to hear him say it. Heero should just force himself on me. Clearly that’s the way to get me to spread my legs, just do it and I’ll let it happen because I’m too pathetic to say no.

I put the omelet on a plate and slid it over to my father wordlessly, my thoughts mired in a deep, swirling pit of depression that seemed impossible to crawl out of. My father took his breakfast just as wordlessly and ate standing up at the counter. Suddenly, I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t take being in the same room with him. I couldn’t take my own thoughts. I had to get out of there. What I felt, I can only associate with a swift panic or anxiety attack, not quite cabin fever, but something worse. I felt like the walls around me were trying to suffocate me and I was going to start clawing my own skin off if I had to stay in that house any longer. I went upstairs to my bedroom and dressed in old sweatpants and thin, long-sleeved shirt, then ran back downstairs. In the kitchen, my mother had joined my father to eat her breakfast. And when I say ‘joined’, I mean they were standing on opposite sides of the kitchen, not making eye contact, both reading different sections of the newspaper. It would have been comical if it wasn’t so depressing. My father didn’t even look up until I went to the door and slipped my sneakers on.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” he snapped at me, making me flinch.

“I’m going for a run,” I told him truthfully, “It’s nice out-,”

“No, you aren’t,” he demanded pissily, “You’re going to help me on the car this afternoon and you’re going to do it without a single complaint.”

He was too busy glaring at me to see my mother snidely roll her eyes. My father’s ancient, clunky car has been a sore point between my parents lately and they have had many loud and violent fights about it. With how tight our finances have been, it’s likely we’ll need to find another expense to do away with soon and really, that’s all that stupid car is. Frankly, I’m on my mother’s side in the argument, but I’d never tell my father that. The car barely runs anymore and eats through gas between the model and just being ornery. It needs a lot of upkeep and my father spends more time fixing the stupid thing than it runs, it seems like. The parts are expensive, too.

We don’t even need the damned thing. We’re fairly close to a bus stop and it isn’t _that_ far to his work, he could even walk. There is no logical argument to keeping it when we have bills to pay, but my father is nothing else but bullheaded stubborn and selfish. He’s sold the dryer and a bunch of my mother’s things and refuses to buy new kitchen appliances and rags on her constantly over every, tiny thing she buys, be it new work shoes or more expensive shampoo over the generic because the generic dries out her hair and scalp, but he refuses to sell things that he considers ‘his’ that we don’t really need. The television is one thing, at least my mother uses it, too. But the car, apparently, used to belong to my grandfather, so my father refuses to listen to anyone about it.

I kind of held my breath as I stood there in the hallway, but my mother was smart enough for once not to say any of those things to my father, that he should just scrap it, then he wouldn’t need my help fixing anything.

“Patrick isn’t around?” was all she dared to ask, “I thought he likes helping you with that car.”

Her words were carefully chosen, but even I could tell that they were bitter and heard the words that she wasn’t using, like ‘asshole’ and ‘piece of junk.’ It’s true that Pat often comes around to help my father with the car, but I don’t think he likes it. I think he likes the free beer and getting to antagonize my mother. He seems to take the weirdest pleasure out of how much she loathes him. Pat actually reminds me a lot of Zechs, the sort of person that’s only happy if he’s making someone else miserable. My father narrowed his eyes at her, waiting for her to make some remark that would warrant a slap, maybe a comment on Pat’s overall uselessness and how little she wanted him around or some accusation about them getting drunk on a Friday afternoon.

“Duo has two, perfectly good hands,” he sneered at her in raw contempt, “He might be useless with cars, but he can hold a fucking wrench,” those cold eyes fell on me and the disgust there made me feel frozen inside, “Can’t you? Or are you so worthless that you can’t do as you’re told?”

I just nodded and took off my sneakers. How little I wanted to stick around and deal with his abuse, working on his car and being told that I was worthless for not knowing how to fix a car really didn’t matter. Even that didn’t make him happy.

“Maybe you can see how a real man takes care of his things,” he snorted, “Instead of being a whiny, limp-wristed bitch all the time like your mother. If it were up to you two, you’d throw everything out the second it breaks. You’re both so fucking useless without me around, aren’t you?”

He seemed to take some strange pleasure in that comment and I felt my hands curl up into fists while mother stared at him stonily, handling her anger better than me for once. I almost yelled at him that maybe I didn’t know anything about working on cars, but did he know how to strip paint or build a porch or fix a leaky roof? Maybe I never had any interest in those things, but I knew how to do them now and they were a hell of a lot more useful to us than fixing his shitty car! I could literally _feel_ the words on the tip of my tongue and bit down hard on it so not a single one of them would come spilling out. I relaxed my hands and walked back into the kitchen to grab myself a glass of water. I still didn’t have any appetite, but if I was going to stuck at home all afternoon, I needed to eat something. As I passed my mother, she gave me a wan smile and lightly touched my shoulder to show her support. Despite the strange, sobering moment we’d had earlier, it made me feel a little better. For some reason, seeing that made my father angry, like he couldn’t stand us interacting with each other, my mother’s newfound affection for me infuriating him for some bizarre reason.

“And you,” he snapped at her, “Why don’t you do something, huh? When was the last time you cooked or did anything around here besides coming and going like the queen herself?! I have a button missing from one of my work shirts and a tear in my jacket, so why don’t you make yourself useful for once?”

“I have work,” she said frostily, her anger finally getting the better of her enough to glare openly at him.

“I can do it,” I said softly, trying to stop a fight from happening.

“No, _she’ll_ do it,” he snapped at me and glared right back at my mother, “If it were up to you, he’d be wearing a skirt and your makeup! _You’re_ the reason he’s like this! A seventeen-year-old boy shouldn’t know how to fucking _sew_ and _knit_. Pat’s right, I don’t have one bitch around here, I have two, and it’s because of your influence!”

She gritted her teeth, her light grey eyes on fire and I worried that she might actually take a swing at him or say something that would cause the whole, tense situation to explode.   
          “I have work,” she ground out, “but when I get back, this _useless bitch_ will mend your clothes and clean and make your dinner and all the other thousands of things that Duo and I do around here that you deem too _feminine_ and beneath you to do, your majesty!”

She swiped up her mug of coffee and downed the rest of it like she might have a shot of liquor before storming back into the living room. My father glared at her retreat, his eyes smoldering, but through some miracle, he didn’t go after her. He grabbed his own dishes, dropping them into the sink with a clatter and stormed into the bathroom, slamming the door closed so hard that my mother’s dirty plate would have fallen to the floor if I hadn’t caught it. Suddenly left alone in the kitchen, I realized that I was shaking a little.

I put my mother’s dishes in the sink, checking to make sure my father hadn’t broken anything, which I was sure he would blame on me, and made myself some scrambled eggs, with just a tiny bit of sausage and pepper. I didn’t even wish that we had more food or something like chive and sweet bell pepper to make the meal less bland. I just felt lucky to be unmaimed. I washed my underwhelming breakfast down with some milk, not having the stomach for tap water and evaluated the clothes that I had on, deciding that they were old and ratty enough that I didn’t mind if they got dirty, but swapped out my sneakers for boots, not wanting to get oil on my fairly new sneakers.

The rest of my morning and afternoon at home went pretty much how you would expect. In other words, by the time my father and I were done with his car, my heart was swiss cheese and I felt like finding some dark, silent corner to crawl into so I could lick my wounds in private. I can’t tell you exactly what we did to the stupid contraption, I just did exactly what my father ordered me to do. I held tools, put my hands deep into the engine like he told me to, grasped different things that I couldn’t name, got oil all over my skin and scraped my knuckles raw a few times. It was a long, painstaking process before my father turned the engine on, listened for about the billionth time, and finally gave a tiny nod of approval.

Before then, it was a lot of snapping and swearing and, most of all, yelling at me for every, tiny mistake that I made. And there were many. When I handed him the wrong tool, I was an idiot with my head up my ass that couldn’t understand basic English. When I burned my hand on the engine when he didn’t bother to tell me it was too soon to put my hand in there, he laughed and said that any moron would know not to do that. He didn’t throw a single punch of me, even when I made him frustrated, but he didn’t really need to. He called me every name in the book, swore at me constantly, and went out of his way to make me feel like garbage for being clueless about what we were doing. And just to make matters worse, there was the _smell_.

I know enough about myself to know that there are certain… things, certain smells and sounds and tastes, even words that get to me, sensations that worm their way under my skin and do strange things to me. It’s like there’s a switch in my head and all it takes is just the right combination of stimuli to flip it and send my entire body into this insane chaos. Being unable to move. Mildew. Alcohol. The feeling of someone standing too close behind me. Someone staring at me. These things are all uniquely capable of turning on that switch and when it’s thrown… it’s like all sense flees from me and all I can think and feel is **_fear_** , panic, screaming terror. There are others, but those are very specific because they make the memories come flooding back. Memories of what my father did. Because it’s that one time, the first time, that always comes back and tears me into shreds, makes me almost scream and drags me back to that feeling of horror and helplessness.

But not all the terrible things in my life come back to that one moment. A lot of them, sure, but not all, because life couldn’t just be convenient and narrow all my nightmares, all my anxiety to one, single moment. No, there are others. The worst moments of my life. The sound of trains brings me back to the day I watched Quatre die. The smell of cigarettes reminds me of Pat. But there’s another, one that I didn’t even properly realize until that morning, helping my father fix his car: the scent of gasoline. I suppose it isn’t that surprising that smell brings back bad memories. My tumble with Trowa in the garage of his work is a bad enough memory of that smell, but it isn’t the worst one. The worst was throwing my body over Quatre’s as gasoline soaked metal ripped through my back like the claws of an enraged tiger, all the while screaming in my head because I was so sure that the both of us were dead, that I had been too late and we had both gotten hit.

All it took was that first whiff of gas and oil from my father’s car to bring that memory back, sending my heart into full panic mode and my stomach twist violently. My back, right along the scar, itched horribly and it actually _hurt_. My head buzzed and a terrible headache rose up, leaving me almost shaking, torn between those two memories: near death and one of my biggest regrets, pain and humiliation. It’s funny how a simple smell can tie together two different events that have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Well, beyond the fact that Trowa had had a hand in causing both, just like me.

I don’t work with cars and there’s nothing I really do at either of my jobs that has a smell exactly like that, so I hadn’t realized it until it had reared its ugly head from the shadows and gutted me. After that, trying so hard to hide my trembling and how distracted I was from my father, every time he yelled at me, I flinched and fumbled at whatever I was doing, which only caused a new barrage of insults to come pouring out of him and into me, wasps getting through my weakening barriers and stinging at the vulnerable, raw parts of my heart. Even when I got something right, there was no smile of approval, no congratulating me or just telling me that I had done alright or that he appreciated my help. He just griped that it would have gone faster if he had done it himself and pondered if there was _anything_ I could do right without him leading me around by the hand.

I felt no triumph when I was finally released from his service. I hoped and prayed that the engine blew or the car set on fire. But mostly, I felt as useless as he had claimed. He was right. I was seventeen-years-old. I should know how to fix a car by now, right? But I didn’t even know the names of the parts that I had been handling. He had even made fun of me for clearly not liking the feeling of grease and oil on my hands, claiming that I was even prissier than my mother. I just disappeared into the bathroom, angry and feeling like I was on the verge of tears, but too tired, emotionally, from the last few hours to even cry between the verbal abuse and my panic attack.

I went through the motions, trying not to think or remember any of the hateful, purposefully hurtful things that my father had said or my shameful reaction to the smell. I washed in luke warm water, scrubbed my teeth until they bled, got dressed, combed my hair, and finally left. Fucking finally. I fully expected my father to stop me when he saw me leaving, but he didn’t, just shook his head at me, telling me with a single, wordless gesture just what a huge disappointment I was to him, this nasty, snide little smile on his lips. Maybe he thought I had work or maybe, more likely, he was content with the pound of flesh he had already taken.

I felt so down on myself, hating myself for being a fuck up and deserving everything that my father had said about me that morning that it wasn’t until I was two streets away from my house that I had to stop and ask myself where I was even going. I flipped open my phone and saw that I had a good three hours still before I needed to go to work. I also saw that I had a new text message, sent at ten that morning. I swallowed roughly, knowing exactly who it was from and what it was probably about. Heero. He must have texted me as soon as he had woken up and realized that I had abandoned him.

Guilt turned my heart into an anvil, hard and heavy and cumbersome. I really was a loathsome person. I couldn’t do anything right, just as my father said, even when it came to being a good boyfriend to Heero. He was probably hurt and angry and asking me why I had just run off on him. My finger hovered over the button to look at the message. I was the worst sort of person, promising to stay with him and then leaving with only a post-it and no explanation. A fucking _post-it._ He had every right to be angry with me. And the really horrible thing was, as bad as I felt about it, I had no intention of never doing that again.

I flipped my phone back closed. I couldn’t bear to read whatever he had sent me, whether it was out of anger or, infinitely worse, worry. I couldn’t go back to his place, not that day. He would want to know why I had left and I couldn’t answer him with anything but a lie. Maybe… just maybe when I got there after work, he would forget about the whole thing.

“Yeah, right,” I muttered angrily at myself.

But I still knew, even if I didn’t want to face him with my guilt, I would still go there because I needed him. I had fallen too deep and Heero is the only thing that can keep my afloat anymore. But it’s not just that. It’s not just need, like needing to breathe. It’s want. He’s the best thing in my life and all I want is to be with him all the time, but I can’t have that. Just like everything else that I’ve ever wanted that the world has taken away from me, I can’t even spend as much time as I want with my boyfriend. Instead I get these stolen moments, times when our schedules align and I can be away from my father. How long before those scraps weren’t enough for him? They already weren’t enough for me.

I thought about going to the beach for a walk to clear my head. The day was nice enough for it, that sort of early spring air that gives you hope that summer might _actually_ be on the way. But that warmish air meant that I wouldn’t be alone on the beach and I was in one of my antisocial moods. I didn’t want to deal with people. I didn’t want their smells or their sounds, all that useless noise that people make, the small talk and the fake laughter, all that shit, or the way that they would look at me. I wanted to be alone in my own, miserable corner of the world, to be sad and hurt and angry in peace. So, I went to the only other place in town besides Heero’s place or the getty where I could do that: the library. On a nice day like that, in the middle of spring break, it would be a ghost town.

The library turned out to be a good choice. Even the staff seemed sparse as I walked through the adult section, so familiar with the tall stacks that I didn’t need to look at the signs to find the genre that I wanted. There were a few people, mostly adults and the same man in his eighties that I always saw, no matter what day of the week I visited, all with their heads buried in books or magazines or pestering the receptionist for help with one of the computers to so much as glance at me. I easily found a copy of the book that I had been reading and wandered upstairs to the young adult section where I only spotted one other person, a girl that I only vaguely recognized from my grade using the computers to web search. Although the public library prefers people to only use their computers to search for book locations or school projects, they don’t really police their usage unless it’s especially busy, so a lot of kids like me that don’t have computers at home use them for chatting and games.

I ignored her and went to the far, far corner of the section where there were a bunch of long tables set up for readers and relaxed when I saw that they were all completely empty. I sat down with my book and just reveled in the complete quiet of the library. You could literally hear someone breathing it was so silent, but it somehow lacked the aching, lonely quality of my own house when no one but me was there, that feeling of a tomb. It was warm and inviting and, most importantly, familiar to me. I’ve been escaping to that place since I was old enough to find it on my own. The various librarians, most of them still working there since I had been little, had been a range from amused to concerned to see a child wandering around the library without a parent, but I hadn’t been scared or lost and I hadn’t made any noise or bothered anyone, so they had gotten used to me.

I think some just found it funny or even, ugh, _cute_ that I preferred to spend my time at a library and not an arcade or playground. But I had no one to play with and no money. I still remember how magical it had seemed the day that my father had signed me up for a library card and the elderly, children’s librarian had informed me that I could take out books for free. We hadn’t been living quite so hand to mouth back then, but money had still been a tightly controlled resource and the concept of getting something that I wanted for free had just been amazing.

I felt comfortable there, reading all by myself with only the rare librarian walking past, leaving me blissfully alone. It felt like home to me, some place where I was in my element. This place was _mine._ Everything was familiar, a comfort, nothing ever changed there, there were no surprises and my guard didn’t have to be up. I didn’t have to think about all the things that I didn’t want to think about or worry about hurting anyone’s feelings or considering my own bleeding feelings. I could just read and let the thoughts in my head settle like sediment. The flow of characters and words and dialogue were like waves, gently pulling me under and away from all the crap, all the screaming and pain and chaos. Everything that had happened that morning melted away. Or rather, it all slinked back into the shadows of my mind, waiting for me to return so they could feast. But for right then, I had my security blanket wrapped tight around me and nothing could touch me.

I had been there for about forty-five minutes when I sensed someone walking by my table and stopping on the other side of it. I had just started a new chapter and it barely even caught my attention until the person made some small noise. I was expecting another patron asking for direction or a librarian, so when I saw my boyfriend standing there like a damned mirage, I was so startled, I almost dropped the book.

“Hi,” he simply said with this small smile, completely unperturbed by the stupid, gawking look on my face.

He pulled a chair out and sat down across from me instead of next to me. Like I always do, I analyzed that to death. Had he sat there intentionally? Because he was angry with me over leaving him that morning? He didn’t _look_ mad, but that didn’t mean anything. Maybe he was hiding it, knowing that wasn’t the place for us to be fighting, or he didn’t want me to know he was mad. Maybe he still wanted to have it out with me and needed to see my face. Or, I thought in annoyance, he had just grabbed a randomly free chair and it didn’t mean a fucking thing.

“What… what are you doing here?” I asked in shock instead of saying ‘hi’ back.

I winced at how that came out sounding like an accusation, like he couldn’t just happen to be in a library on his own accord. But it _was_ highly suspicious that he just happened to bump into me. He isn’t a book worm like me.

“I was looking for you,” he confessed and his smile grew, “and here you are.”

How the fuck-

“How,” I choked, not voicing that thought, “How did you know I would be here?!”

That smile of his turned soft and endearing, that way he’ll look at me sometimes like he thinks I’m the most wonderful thing he’s ever seen that makes me squirm every time.

“I know you well enough to know all the places you go when you’re upset,” he said so candidly despite the mix of emotions that one sentence gave me, happiness that he paid attention to something like that and loved me so much that he knew I was upset when I hadn’t seen him, and vulnerability for that very same thing, “The beach was actually going to be my first stop, but the library was closer. I also figured that, with the weather so nice, if you really were upset about something, you wouldn’t want to go to the beach since there would be too many people. I thought you’d rather go here, someplace quiet where you could be alone.”

There it was again, happiness warring with fear. He knows so much about me… it’s like he can read into my soul sometimes. I know that it means that he cares, perceptiveness born out of an obsession only love can bring, but it still terrifies me that he knows these things, that he can make these guesses that make him seen almost omniscient. He’s too far under my skin and I don’t know how to dig him out. I don’t even know if I want to. Sometimes the fear wins and that’s when I’m certain that I need to end this. But the longer this relationship goes on, the more I’m with him, the more often it’s the happiness that’s the winner. The more I think that I don’t mind him reading my mind if it means that he truly loves me. His expression suddenly became very somber and nervous.

“Do you… do you want to be alone?” he asked shyly, clearly realizing that the fact that he _had_ found me here might mean that he had intruded on my attempt for solitude.

“No!” I exclaimed, remembering at the last minute to keep my voice down, “I-I mean, I did come here to be alone, but not from you. Please, stay.”

I tried hard not to have that come out as whiny and pleading, but it still sounded like it to my ears. If you had asked me minutes ago if I wanted to see Heero, I would have screamed ‘No!’, the idea of him seeing me like that, morose and depressed was repulsive. I felt too weak and raw still to be around the one person that can read me too well and can get to me more than anyone else, except for my father. But now that he was here, I desperately didn’t want him to go. While there was a part of me that needed solitude and didn’t want to be around anyone, there was another part that needed him, his touch and his care and that bizarre ability of his to make everything better. Because there was so much in my head that I needed to be better, or at least for a distraction so I didn’t have to look at it.

“You didn’t need to come looking for me,” I muttered when he relaxed.

“You weren’t answering your phone,” he shot back and I blushed a little with guilt.

“I’m sorry, I just-,” I started to say, but he interrupted me.

“You don’t need to lie,” his soft tone belied his words, but it still made me feel like a major asshole, “I know you were ignoring me. And don’t say you’re sorry. I know you weren’t doing it maliciously,” he held up his hand just as I started to do just that and his expression went soft with worry, “What happened this morning? You look… sad. That’s why you weren’t answering my texts, isn’t it?”

My eyes widened as I realized he had seen through that, too, and known that I was upset instead of getting angry at ignoring him. I put the book down on the table and kind of fussed with it a little, not knowing what to say. Sure, I had been scared to look at his message, thinking he was mad at me, but it had mostly because of my depression. I had just wanted to get away from everything, even him, for a while. But what I wanted and what I needed were two completely different things.

“Did your father do something?” Heero demanded, hitting the nail right on the fucking head.

His dark blue eyes scanned me, looking for some injury that wasn’t there, for once. I thought that he would be relieved to see that I was unhurt, but he just looked even more concerned as he realized that, whatever had happened between my father and I, the wound had been caused with words and not fists.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said roughly, my tone tight as I tried not to remember _anything_ that had happened that morning or I might give something away, “I had a really, really shitty morning and I don’t want to talk about it, ok?”

I knew that it wasn’t fair, asking him to drop it and knowing that he would for my sake, but I just couldn’t face this. I was still in that dark place in my head, trying to keep my nerves and emotions under control, but a slight wind would turn everything into chaos again and all it would take was for Heero to say the wrong thing and I would sink deeper. To my utter relief, he flashed me a comforting smile and reached over to still my fussing hands, gently taking one of them in his. His skin felt as warm as sunlight compared to my own.

“Do you want to get a coffee?” he said, awkwardly moving the conversation to safe territory and I could have kissed him for dropping it so completely, “There’s a little café downstairs.”

I smiled back at him, a bit shocked that I could manage it. A coffee with him sounded like exactly what I needed.

“No,” I said, surprising him, maybe even hurting him a little, “That café is horrible. The coffee is garbage, the service is slow, and even the snacks are so sugary, you’ll get a headache. And it’s all overpriced.”

“How about Josefine’s?” Heero looked relieved that I wasn’t actually turning him down, “It’s expensive, but I promise, the food and beverages are really good, and it’s by the bus stop, so you don’t need to rush to get to work.”

“Alright,” I agreed, just happy that we weren’t talking about my bad morning or why I had left him in bed.

I put my book back and we walked out together. I was already feeling a bit better just to have him there with me and I realized that ignoring his texts out of fear and trying to isolate myself had probably been the wrong decision. That time had helped to build a few walls back up, but it hadn’t done much to knock me out of that spiral of depression. But the second I had seen him, things felt… different. Not completely better, but he made my sadness and self-loathing feel bearable. I had needed to be alone, but I still shouldn’t have locked him out and ignored him.

It didn’t take long for us to get to what people call the ‘designer’ part of town, which is just a nicer way of saying ‘shops for rich assholes.’ It was the nicest shopping area in town and held a lot of boutiques and specialty shops. There was a store just for perfume and another for dress shoes and only dress shoes. Josefine’s was an equally fussy and exclusive café that was ridiculously expensive and would serve tea in actual tea cups and a cookie cost six to ten dollars, depending on what kind it was. Beyond my disgust at the cost of food and drink at a place like that, it was really quaint and pretty, lots of flowery decorations and an outdoor sitting area. The café was sandwiched neatly between a floral shop, which was probably where they got their decorations from, and a dress boutique that I know for a fact Relena shops at because I recognized one of the tops in the window. It didn’t have a price tag on it. One of my father’s pearls of wisdom stated that anything that doesn’t have a price tag on it is too expensive for ‘normal’ people to afford, because shit like that can only _be_ affordable to people who don’t need to ask for a price.

Normally, I would argue about us going to a place like that. I didn’t feel comfortable with him spending that much money on me for a fucking _coffee_ and I felt out of place, but I wasn’t in the mood for a fight that I couldn’t possibly win, so I just let it go. He obviously liked the coffee there and had been there before, so it would be stupid to make him go somewhere else. The server gave the both of us a weird look, me in my work uniform and construction boots, the both of us in jeans, although Heero’s were, of course, much nicer. She still seated us without a peep, though, so that was something.

Heero made her sit us in a quiet, empty corner by the window, denying her insistence on seating us outside with a few of the other patrons because of the warm weather. She clearly thought we were nuts, but I knew he had only done it because he had known I was feeling a bit… touchy around anyone else but him and gave him an appreciated smile to let him know I thought he was wonderful for it. He blushed a little and for once, I felt like I had done the right thing. It’s stupid how something so small and irrelevant can boost your self-esteem.

          “Do you mind if I order for you?” he asked me when she handed us our menus, “I tried a coffee last week that I think you’d really like.”

          “Sure,” I shrugged, trusting his judgment and knowing that, with my pickiness, I’d probably like just about anything.

          Like he was performing some covert operation, Heero showed our server a few things on the menu, not saying what they were out loud, and sent her off. I looked out the window, taking in the sunny day and people walking on the street without jackets, enjoying the weather, which was a mockery of my mood that morning. Unwanted, with nothing to distract me, my thoughts turned back to my disastrous morning. I can’t tell you what lingered on my mind the most; the pain of leaving Heero, the incredibly awkward and agonizing moment my mother and I had had, the chasm of depression and apathy I had felt towards my disconnect with my family and the likelihood of my breaking up with Heero, or how my father had ripped me apart with a few, scathing comments. It all just seemed so muddled together, sending my self-esteem and overall mood plummeting. Heero could elevate it a little, but those things were still there in the back of my mind; my mother’s relief and how obvious her discomfort had been at the thought of me being a fag, all the times my father had called me useless, worthless, or worse. Maybe it would have helped to talk about those things. Heero could at least understand a bit about my anxiety towards my mother and my sexuality, but I just couldn’t. It hurt too much.

          “Duo?” I realized that Heero was trying to talk to me and, embarrassed, turned my attention back to him.

          He looked incredibly worried at my zoning out and I wondered if my face had given him any hints that I was feeling somber again. I would have smiled to reassure him that I was ok, but a smile seemed impossible at the moment. It dawned on me, in shame, that a good ten minutes had passed since I had looked out the window.

          “I’m sorry,” I apologized sincerely, hating myself again, “I’m not good company today.”

          He smiled at me, somehow not annoyed at my behavior, just like he had been before when I hadn’t been sleeping and been unable to socialize with him. Only this time, I didn’t have that excuse, yet he still wasn’t bothered by me not being talkative and in a mood. He reached across the table and took my hand in his like he had in the library, not giving a solitary fuck if any of the staff or other customers saw us and I envied him that bravery. Compared to him, when I thought about that morning and how quickly I had lied to my mother, I felt like the worst coward there was.

          “Hey,” he said in this soothing, assuring tone, “you don’t need to be ‘good company’ or sociable when you aren’t feeling up to it, ok? I get it, you’re having a bad day. I don’t need constant conversation, I just need you here with me. I’m happy just to hang out with you.”

          Hell if I know why, but his words made my eyes mist up and I had to rub at them, pretending that it was just out of tiredness and not that I was so pathetic, some sweet words could make me cry. It just made me realize how much I had missed him that morning, how much I wished I had stayed with him instead of gone home.

          “Thank you,” I said softly.

          He just gave me another one of those soft, endearing smiles that helped to melt a few of my insecurities.

          “How’s your back?” he asked.

          “Not great,” I had to admit, rolling my shoulders experimentally and wincing a little as my muscles reminded me of how unhappy they were, “but better than it was.”

          “Good,” he said with relief, “Maybe you can use the heating pad again in the morning?”

          I had to grin at his sly way of asking me if I was going to spend the morning with him.

          “Sure,” I nodded, even though I knew that I shouldn’t let my success of that morning make me cocky, “It helped a lot last time.”

          Our server returned with our food, a dark roast coffee and cinnamon roll for Heero, and a mystery coffee and what looked like a large, round turnover with caramelized sugar on top for me. I was instantly amazed to find that the pastry was hot and freshly baked. I had to say that much about the place, their food might be pricey, but I had never been to a café that served fresh pastries out of the oven like that. I sniffed at it, trying to figure out what Heero had ordered me.

          “Apple?” I asked, taking another sniff and my eyes went wide, “And hazelnut?”

          “I know you love hazelnut pastries,” Heero said, looking a bit proud of himself, “It took me a while to find a place that serves them.”

          “How do you know that?” I asked in confusion, “I’ve never told anyone that.”

          It wasn’t like it was some big secret, it’s just that it’s a particular flavor that isn’t very common and I haven’t had one in several years. Even Quatre hadn’t known because it’s not like I eat a lot of sweets. It was Heero’s turn to look confused.

          “You don’t remember?” he asked, “I brought you a raspberry turnover for breakfast when we met before school a little while back. I asked you if you liked it and you said that you like pastries, but you haven’t had your favorite since you were a kid, that your mother used to buy you hazelnut ones when she got paid, but the bakery by her work stopped making them.”

          I blinked stupidly at him. I remembered what he was talking about. When I had been little, before my mother had decided to forget that I existed, twice a month, she would squirrel away a tiny bit of her paycheck and come home with a bag of sweets for all of us. My dad got a slice of coffee cake, my mother a slice of tiramisu, and I got a hazelnut turnover. They hadn’t been very good compared to the ones I’ve made or Mariela makes, but as a kid, they had been amazing. Just to have that kind of rare treat had been amazing. I remember being so sad when my mother came home one day with a cherry turnover and told me that they didn’t make the hazelnut anymore. The cherry one had tasted just fine, but I had strangely felt like I had lost something, that something had changed. Shortly after that, my mom had stopped bringing home those desserts, but the taste of hazelnut, even just hazelnut coffee, still reminds me of those days when we would sit at the dinner table, eating our treats and spending time together. Back when we actually ate meals together and that was one of the only times of the day that I had to look forward to. Of course I have those memories, but I have absolutely no recollection of telling anyone about them.

          “I don’t remember,” I said in alarm, disturbed that I was missing some memory. I mean, I know I’ve taken quite a few blows to the head in my life, but it was still freaky, the thought that I was missing a chunk of memory like that.

          “Well, it _was_ when you hadn’t been sleeping for over a week,” he told me, instantly making me relieved, “so I really shouldn’t be surprised that you don’t remember it.”

          I didn’t really like knowing that we had had full conversations that I couldn’t remember while I had been out of my mind, but it was better than knowing that I was missing random memories for no reason. I took a sip of my coffee and made a pleased noise as I instantly fell in love with it. It was sweet and fruity and creamy all at once, a far cry from the dark coffee that my father brewed.

          “This is delicious!” I exclaimed, much to my boyfriend’s amusement, “I’ve never had anything like it, what is it?”

          “French vanilla, raspberry mocha,” he said, looking a bit smug that he had chosen something that I loved, “I thought, with how much you like my dad’s French vanilla and hot chocolate, you’d probably really like this.”

          “I do,” I told him, taking another, longer sip, “Thank you.”

          We ate and drank in quiet, watching the world go by from our window and making pleasant remarks about the food or atmosphere, just useless small talk. It reminded me of the library, not the café, but being with Heero. He relaxed me. Only it was better than the library because I wasn’t completely alone. I felt… soothed between the coffee and few secretive glances at my boyfriend. Knowing why Heero had gotten me that pastry even made it taste better, the same way the pastries that my mother had brought home had. Knowing that someone thought of you can make anything taste better. I could have passed the rest of the time I had before work in that peaceful, serene quiet and companionship, but I still worried about what Heero might be thinking about that morning, why I had taken off on him. I felt like he deserved some explanation, especially after going out of his way to make me feel better, but I still didn’t have the courage to tell him the truth.

          “Are you angry?” I asked him after finishing my last sip of coffee and putting the mug down, clarifying when he gave me this startled, owlish stare, “I mean about this morning… when I left…”

          He looked down at his empty plate, his gaze a bit stony and I felt this dark cloud pass over me.

          “Yes,” he admitted and I shrank in on myself, but he continued, “but not because you left so suddenly,” his blue eyes lifted and found mine and they were softer, not quite happy or affectionate, but not angry or accusing, either, “I was only mad because you never said goodbye.”

          I didn’t know which I felt stronger: blissful relief or chilling guilt.

          “I-I’m so sorry,” I apologized with a shaky voice, “I just… I needed to…”

          “You had to go home, I get it,” he gave me a very slight smile and I felt him press his knee against mine under the table, “I’m not angry about that. Frustrated, I guess, but not angry. But Duo, just promise me that the next time you need to get up and leave like that, please wake me up so I can at least say goodbye and don’t just leave with nothing but a stupid post-it note, ok?”

          I flushed. That had… not been one of my more stellar ideas. It was an easy thing to nod and make that promise and his larger smile would make keeping it even easier. I could do that. So long as he didn’t ask me _why_ I was leaving so early, I could keep that promise. He paid and we left together. I hadn’t thought it possible, but it seemed even warmer out, even the wind was pleasant.

          “Heero…” I said as we walked past the café, “Thank you for this. I really needed it.”

          “I know,” he gave my hand a squeeze, “And you’re welcome. I’m glad that I could make you feel better.”

          “No, I mean it,” I insisted, my voice hitching as emotion overwhelmed me, “I really, _really_ needed this. This morning at home… it was horrible and I thought that what I needed was to be alone. I don’t know,” I rubbed the back of my hand across my face, “maybe I did, at first. I just didn’t realize how much I needed _this,_ with you. I should have answered your text. I should have talked to you, but…”

          He suddenly pulled me into the little alley by the café where they did their deliveries and I let him do it. Out of sight from anyone nearby, he wrapped his arms around me and hugged me. It felt so incredibly good and my eyes started to get wet again. I knew that I was being overly emotional, but all that crap from the morning was lingering and I didn’t realize how wonderful it would be just to be hugged by someone.

          “I know,” he murmured into my shoulder, “You’re used to going it alone and relying on yourself. But you don’t have to do that anymore, Duo. You have me now. Even if I’m angry, I’m never angry _at you._ I’ll always be here to talk to you when you’re upset, no matter what happens between us. Hell, even if you just need a hug, I won’t ask you why, alright?”

          He let go of me and, my emotions in overdrive, swinging from burning love for him and pure, shining gratitude just for his existence, let alone what he was offering, I kissed him. It wasn’t a chaste kiss for once, either, but I felt shockingly bold right then and made it deep and lingering. He tasted like coffee, sugar, and cinnamon. When my shyness crept back enough that I had to stop the kiss, my face was bright red, but so was his, and his eyes were wide with a kind of pleased shock. My heart was going like a hummingbird’s.

          “I… uh…” I looked away from him in embarrassment and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, “I should probably get going…”

          “Uh, yeah,” he rubbed the back of his head, finally getting over his speechlessness, but his face was still dark and his eyes glazed over, “Um, here.”

          He dug around in the pocket of his jeans and thrust a ten-dollar bill into my hand.

          “From my dad,” he explained, “for the bus. He doesn’t like it when you walk around so late by yourself. I don’t, either.”

          “Ok,” I put it in my pocket, not wanting to argue about how I had been doing this for years and hadn’t gotten mugged yet or that I didn’t need the bus because it wasn’t cold out, deciding to do it if it made him happy.

          The following few minutes before we parted ways were filled with empty pleasantries as we both struggled to regain our composure after that kiss, which had shocked me almost as much as him; have a nice day at work, I’ll see you tomorrow, shit like that. He walked me to the bus stop and I thanked him again for coming to find me, still feeling like a jerk for that. Then the bus was there and we hastily waved good bye. It still hurt, forcing myself to walk away from him, but it was a hell of a lot more bearable than it had been that morning.

          Just as I was opening my locker as I was greeting Solo at Leneski’s, my phone chimed. Without even looking at it, I knew it was from Heero and I rushed to open the two new messages.

 

          _‘That kiss was amazing <3’_

_‘I would have said so before you left, but I couldn’t think_ _J_ _’_

I stared at the messages with this stupid, goofy grin until Solo noticed and rolled his eyes at me.

          “Dork,” he muttered, but I couldn’t stop grinning.

 

*****

 

          My mood improved a lot after that. Instead of thinking about nothing but the tension between me and my parents and letting all that poison drag me back under, miserable and depressed, I only thought about Heero for the rest of the night. Him searching for me just because he knew that I had been upset about something. Not getting angry with me over hiding something and not pushing me. Our little date at the café. The strange courage and boldness I had gotten to kiss him. How much I loved him. And how I was now certain I couldn’t live without him or his love for me. Even that didn’t depress me like it would, but instead gave this… odd certainty. A kind of strength. Trowa was wrong. I wasn’t incapable of loving someone. Maybe I sucked at it. Maybe Heero deserved better than me. But I still _felt_ that love. Expressing it and doing right by it was one thing, but my heart wasn’t as broken and shriveled as being with him had made me believe.

I could still love someone, fully and completely. I just didn’t know what to do with it, if I could really give myself to Heero like that… Just because I loved him, it didn’t make me any less terrified, but I felt this pride remembering that kiss, and how I had made him speechless. Could I do this? Was I ready? Or had this been a fluke? Was my confidence a mirage and the second he pushed me to be more intimate, I would crumble again, or could I force myself to have sex with him and give him what he wanted? I didn’t know, but I felt like I had taken a step in the right direction for once and I clung to that desperately, to the possibility that I could have something more with him and not let it end up like it had with Trowa. It was better than loathing myself and dreading the future. I didn’t want to think about the future and my surety that this relationship was going to end, I just wanted to enjoy the time I had left and believe there was plenty of it, even if that pessimistic part of myself believed I was lying to myself.

Work went by fast for once. When I mentioned it to Solo offhandedly, he said that it only felt like that because time flies and I had spent the entire night with my head in the clouds. He had been pretty proud with that quip, especially when I rolled my eyes at him. I usually tune out the pointless chatter of my coworkers around the factory while we work. Sports, weather, women, cars, kids. But I kept my ears open for any news about the weather for the next few days, which the consensus was that it was going to be very nice. I wanted to hope that winter had left us without a fight, sick of the cold even if I was used to it. That it was fairly warm and comfortable out when I left work for the bus station seemed like a wonderful omen that the rest of the weekend was going to be looking up. I didn’t even want to take the bus, wanting to savor the nice weather, but I had promised Heero that I would, so I did. I even took my jacket off when I left the bus on the north side of town, my work shirt and buttoned over shirt plenty warm enough. The walkway and front door lights were on for me, as usual, at the Yuy place, but I froze by the street when I saw a figure sitting on the porch swing in front.

Heero’s home is the closest thing to a sanctuary that I’ve ever known. Sure, I feel safe and comfortable in the library, but I know that that’s an illusion. It’s the one place in town that I’m least likely to run into my bullies or my father or anyone else that might be looking to hurt me, but it’s still a public place and if someone wanted to get to me there, they easily could. I doubted a librarian would try to stop it beyond calling the police, and even then, it was unlikely. But Heero’s home _is_ safe. Nothing can touch me there. It’s this fortress, this warm cocoon where I can lick my wounds and escape from the harshness of the real world outside of it. I can lie to myself and be happy there because no one can penetrate it, no one can hurt me there. I know it’s part denial, but that feeling of safety is very real. Between the nice neighborhood, the solid doors, the security system, and the large dog, I felt like the rest of the world, all those things that want to rip me apart, can’t touch that place.

But as safe as the inside of the Yuy home is, the outside isn’t. It’s always such a weird realization, this thing that seems impossible and bizarre, but I’m actually more in danger in Heero’s part of town than I am in my own, if you discount who I live with. I always seem to forget _where_ Heero lives, that quite a few of the kids that bully us at school live close by to him. Fuck, Zechs and Relena live just a few streets up from him! I suppose I should feel incredibly lucky that Heero’s family is only well off and not filthy rich and they don’t live in the same area with the sprawling mansions and tall gates that Quatre did. But the Darlians and Inoris still lived very close together, and Zechs knows where Heero lives thanks to Relena having been there before.

It was a long shot bordering on paranoia, but Zechs could easily stake out Heero’s house for us, for me, really, because whether I wanted to admit it to myself or not, he only messed with my boyfriend to hurt _me_ , his favorite toy. It isn’t something that I think about much, that Zechs and his friends or even Relena could come after me on my walk to Heero’s place, especially at two in the morning, as I’ve never seen them and Heero has never claimed to, either, but when I saw someone sitting on the porch that early in the morning, that was my immediate thought, that they were a threat. That it was Zechs or Mueller and they had figured out my schedule, that I was alone and vulnerable. It could even be Trant or Alex, although they lived on my side of town, for all I knew.

It was late and I was exhausted, almost sleeping on my feet and I knew that my mind, weary from all the emotional leaps and twists from the day was jumping to conclusions, but I was still ready to listen to my paranoia and bolt when I finally spotted the very familiar, huge dog laying by the swing. It was Heero. Relief flooded me and almost had me shaking where I stood, my heart still beating just a tiny bit too quickly. Of course it was Heero, how could I have been so stupidly paranoid? My heart quickened for an entirely different reason than fear, but was just as stupid, and I started to go down the path, feeling a bit too much like the clichéd moth being drawn to the flame. He was dressed in sweatpants and a long shirt, his arms crossed, slumped and his eyes closed.

Given his posture, I assumed that he must be dozing and debated waking him. As comfortable as the porch swing was, it couldn’t be good for him to be sleeping out there like that. And yes, I know how hypocritical that thought was, given that I’ve slept out on park benches in much colder weather, either because my father kicked me out or I was too scared to go home, sometimes not even because of anything my father had done, just because I didn’t want to see him or even face the possibility that he was drunk when I had been little and in that weird between state of starting to get that my father was not the wonderful man that I wished him to be, but not understanding why he acted like that. Sometimes even a park bench in the cold is better than dealing with that fear and confusion. But knowing that I was being a hypocrite did nothing to quell the concern of him just sleeping out in the open like that without even a jacket. Love is stupid that way.

Kanuck took the decision out of my hands. He lifted his head when he noticed that the human was entering his territory, but seemed to recognize me immediately. He gave out this soft, welcoming ‘wuff’ noise that woke up my boyfriend and trotted over to me, tail wagging. Although my back wasn’t entirely happy with me, it was a lot better than it had been after my mother had gotten me out of that damned closet and I dared, with a tiny wince, to get on my knees and let the dog lick my face. Heero didn’t like it when he did that, said it gave him bad habits, but as weird as it sounds, it was kind of comforting. A few months ago, I would have freaked to have a dog in my face like that, but now, it makes me happy just like hearing Pepper’s purr or when she kneads my legs when she’s laying in my lap.

“Hey, boy,” I greeted him and gave his ears a vigorous rubbing.

“You’re home,” Heero said, sitting up straighter and rubbed at his eyes.

“Yeah,” I said, ignoring how my face got a little warm at that phrase and how pleased I felt, “What are you doing here?” I asked as I stood and joined him on the porch, his dog following me with an exasperated whine.

“Waiting for you,” he said simply, like that was the only possible explanation.

I blinked at him.

“Heero, it’s two in the morning,” I said in amazement.

Just how long had he been out there for?

“I wanted to see you when you got home,” he said a bit defensively.

“But sitting out here in the cold,” I argued and not even knowing why, just that I felt guilty that he had felt the need to sit out there and wait for me.

“It’s not that cold,” he shot back with a slight smirk.

“And you’re out here alone,” I countered, “What if something happened?”

“What could happen? I was safe, Duo,” he assured me, giving me a weird look, “Besides, you walk here alone every morning.”

He had me there, but I still didn’t like the idea of him sitting there so late, all by himself, all because of me. It was part guilt, part paranoia. I’ve had so many things that I’ve loved and wanted taken away from me, I just get so worked up about him sometimes. Yeah, that makes me a hypocrite, too, hating his overprotectiveness and doing the same to him. I don’t give a fuck. Heero is the best thing that’s ever happened to me and the rules of my life dictate that that means something horrible is going to happen to him. Or I’m going to ruin things. Hell, maybe even both. So it drives me insane sometimes how he can treat me like I’m made of glass and put himself at risk in the same breath.

“Zechs lives ten minutes away,” I pointed out, ignoring his logic that if I could walk around alone, he could do the same thing, “and he knows where you live.”

“He’s never bothered me here,” he soothed, “He’d have to be pretty suicidal to. He might get away with it at school, but if he attacked me near my house, my dad would call the cops in a heartbeat. Or maybe he’s just too lazy, but I’ve never seen him around here. Besides, I have Kanuck with me.”

Said dog looked up at me and lolled his tongue. I quirked my eyebrow at him. I remembered how he had run right up to me on the beach, a total stranger, looking excited and happy like we were life-long friends. Some guard dog.

“Hey, he’s vicious,” Heero said in a defensive pout that I couldn’t help but chuckle at. That dog, while big, is anything but unfriendly, “Even if he isn’t, all he has to do is sit on someone. Few people are crazy enough to start something with me when he’s around.”

That was true. Kanuck might be a giant baby, but that size alone would make a lot of people wary of him. People in general tend to think twice about going after someone if they have a dog with them. He made a good deterrent, even if he was probably useless in a real fight.

          “I’m sorry,” I apologized for arguing with him, “I’m just tired and I was… worried. You didn’t need to wait out here for me.”

          “I worry,” he echoed my words with a slight, amused but also somehow sad smile and my guilt grew.

          I didn’t have anything to say to that. Sorry doesn’t really cut it when you’re giving someone you love an ulcer over you, does it? Heero stood and stretched a little, frowning when he finally got a good look at me under the lights.

          “You look exhausted,” he commented.

          “It’s been a long day,” I sighed, “A really, really, really long day.”

          He didn’t ask me why, what had happened that had made me flee to the library or why I had been depressed. He just gave me a very soothing smile and brushed my bangs out of my face.

          “Let’s go to bed, then,” he said and I could have kissed him.

          He put a hand on my back and led us inside, his dog following.

          “Do you still need the heating pad?” he asked me as we got to the foot of the stairs.

          “Yeah, actually,” I confessed, despite my best efforts to ignore just how much my back was aching after a full day’s worth of manual labor, “Thanks.”

          “No problem,” he kissed my cheek and we parted so I could get ready for bed.

          I have fairly thick skin when it comes to the cold, one of the perks of growing up in place with harsh winters and a very stingy father, so I put on a short sleeve pajama top instead of a long sleeved one, sick of wearing winter clothes and brushed my teeth in the bathroom. When I was done, Heero was already dressed himself and waiting in his bedroom, the heating pad plugged in on my side of the bed, a collection of words that still makes me feel so weird, but in a good way. I sat on the edge of the bed stiffly, fighting the temptation to just faceplant into the soft beddings in my tired state, knowing that my back would just seize up from the sudden change of position. Pepper sat at my feet and looked up at me imploringly, her huge eyes begging me to pick her up even though she knew full well that she could easily jump up on the bed.

          “For someone that I found eating out of my trashcan, you sure act like a spoiled princess, don’t you?” I groused.

          She just meowed at me, the picture of pure innocence. I sighed and picked her up, putting her on my pillow, which she gently kneaded and curled up on. Heero chuckled at us, then kind of went silent, my only warning before he suddenly gasped sharply.

          “Oh my god!” he cried out, immediately sending me into a panic.

          “What?!” I looked around wildly, trying to figure out what was wrong.

          He had been sitting on his side of the bed and nearly jumped over to where I was sitting, grabbing my right arm with a gentleness that belied how much he was freaking out. My stomach dropped when he turned my arm over to examine the inside of my wrist and I realized what the problem was.

It’s stupid, but at first, I didn’t think of my blackened and cut up wrists. I didn’t think about my _fresh_ wounds. I thought that he was looking at the scars from my failed suicide attempt. In reality, they looked a hell of a lot worse than what my father, and my panic, had done to me. I hadn’t known what I had been doing at the time, didn’t know that you weren’t supposed to cut across your wrist, but down it. But I had meant it. I had sure as fuck meant it. It hadn’t been some dramatic cry for help or attention. I had set out to kill myself and my doctor had assured me that, if my father hadn’t found me that day, if I had been bleeding for another hour or two, I probably would have died anyway as my heart weakened and shock set in.

The scars were a pretty glaring testimony of that: ugly and deep and wide. They were disgusting to look at and I was… _am_ ashamed of them. So naturally, they were what I thought Heero was seeing. Sure, I had shown them to him before, but only briefly and only in a fit of anger. Heero has never seen me in anything but long sleeved shirts thanks to us having met in the fall, so he’s only seen a glimpse of my scars. And not just the ones on my wrists. The scar on my left arm from getting hit by the buckle of my father’s belt. A burn from being shoved and hitting a hot stove. A couple of cigarette burns that Pat had given me as a joke when he and my father had been drinking at our house and my father had gone into the bathroom. I had been ten and too scared of Pat even then to say anything about it to my father. Besides, it was my father’s friend and I had been even more frightened of finding out the answer to who my father would believe, his son or his best friend. One would make me love him intensely, and the other would be more painful than the burns. So I had just kept my mouth shut, just like all the times that my father had struck me. It was easy.

But Heero wasn’t looking at any of those. He was looking at the bruises and cuts and raw places on my wrists like he was looking at a fucking gunshot wound, his face pinched with horror and anger and worry. I cursed myself a thousand times for putting on a short-sleeved shirt, but I was just so tired, I had forgotten all about my bruises and to keep them covered around him. I realized, watching him freak out, that I could never let him see the rest of my body, and for more reasons than it made me shy and nervous.

If he was reacting like this to a few bruises and cuts, there was no way I could let him see the huge scar on my back from the truck accident. Beyond not wanting to explain it, or see him like this again, it was too ugly for him to see. I don’t like thinking about it, how disgusting it must look, all long and thick and puckered. It’s probably a very good thing that I can’t see it, but my imagination paints it clearly to me. It was bad enough that he was looking at the cuts on my wrists like they were some gaping wound. I could see the wheels going in his head as he perused them and knew that he was trying to figure out what had caused them.

The pattern of bruises and cuts were very specific. I couldn’t think up a single lie that would explain them and sound less psychotic than the truth, that I had been tied up. There was literally nothing else that could have created the thin bruises that completely wrapped around my wrist. I hoped that Heero was innocent enough not to get that, not to think that could ever happen to me, but while he might be a bit naïve about some things, he isn’t stupid. With how pale he looked, how hard his expression was, I knew that he was figuring it out and that it was both freaking him out and making him angry, just like I knew we were about to have another fight, one that neither of us could possibly win.

“Your father did this to you, didn’t he?” he suddenly snapped as he looked at me.

He was practically vibrating with rage and I didn’t know if I felt love for him, that he cared about me so much, or frustration that he couldn’t just let this go, that he always had to get upset about it. Or guilt. Probably guilt. Because no matter how hard I try, no matter how much I fight to just get through one day to the next and do right by him, I only end up hurting him. Every time. And I don’t know what to do to stop hurting him and making him worry about me. What am I supposed to do, is there some kind of manual for this thing? For balancing two completely different lives and trying to keep that balance between them without things falling apart?

Sometimes I think about how much easier it would be for the both of us if we weren’t together. I wouldn’t have to risk my father’s anger to give Heero, and myself, what we want. I wouldn’t have to live in constant stress that I’m making the wrong decisions and making him anxious all the time. And he wouldn’t have to stay up until two in the morning and beat himself up over something he had no control over. Sometimes I think that agreeing to date him was the biggest mistake I’ve made since not running after Quatre the second that he fled the school parking lot. It’s a fleeting feeling, but it’s there, where I don’t want to look at it because I don’t want to believe that it’s true. I love Heero. I love being with him. He makes me feel so good, so bright, something I’ve never felt in my life. He can make me smile and laugh where I haven’t in years. How can that be a mistake? I pulled my wrists from his grip and cradled them to my chest so I didn’t have to look at them and see what he had seen, how ugly they were.

“So what if he did?” I shot back angrily and bitter when I hadn’t really meant to be, a nest of nasty emotions swirling in me between hating myself and resenting him a little for not letting me pretend that things were fine, for making all this rise to the surface again, “What fucking difference does it make?”

“He hurt you!” Heero’s voice rose and I could tell he was working up to a good rant about how he felt about my father and my denial, but I wouldn’t let him start.

“So what?!” I struggled not to start screaming at him, partially because I didn’t want to wake his parents so they could be audience to our spat, but mostly because I never wanted to direct my rage at the person that I loved when, really, he wasn’t the one that I was angry at, “Who the fuck cares?! How is this any different than when he dislocated my shoulder or any of the other shit you’ve seen?! You already know what he does, so why does this matter?!”

He grabbed my wrists back and held them straight between us so we could both see them. Despite the quickness he had done it and how angry he was, his grip was incredibly gentle, like he was holding something made of thin glass. His mindfulness to not cause me any pain even when he was mad at me had me feeling wonderful and horrible all in the same moment. I hated myself when I flinched slightly, not really thinking he was going to strike me, but unable to stop the automatic reaction to suddenly being grabbed like that. Normally, just seeing that fear would have made him stop and he would have backed off, but he must have been really pissed that morning, because he ignored it for once.

“ ‘Why does it matter?’” he echoed incredulously with frustration and exasperation and he held my wrists up a little, “These matter! Look at them! Look at what he did to you! How can you not think that this matters?! You’re right, this is _no different_ than him striking you or dislocating your shoulder or breaking your arm or giving you a concussion! Just because you didn’t have to go to the hospital or you aren’t impaired by them, it doesn’t make them any less horrible! He put these marks on your skin! He caused you pain! He put his hands on you and he hurt you because he could! I don’t care if he’s your father, he doesn’t have that right, no one does! How can you possibly sit here and defend a man who beats you and leaves cuts like that?! Aren’t you scared of what he’s going to do to you next? Aren’t you furious at him for treating you this way?!”

“Stop it!” the yell finally erupted, strangled, from my throat.

I pulled away from him violently and nearly fell off the damned bed, hunching in on myself in my little corner, not caring that I probably looked insane. His angry words rang in my head over and over and I felt like screaming just to drown them out. I didn’t want to think about those things. I didn’t want to remember what my father had done to me or how scared I was of him, how twisted and wrong things are now. I didn’t want to think about any of it. I hated Heero in that moment. I just wanted to be with him and forget about my other life for a while. Why couldn’t he let me have that? Why did he have to drag those memories and feelings back?! I felt betrayed and I knew that I didn’t have the right to feel that way when Heero was just concerned for me and was trying to help me, one of the only people in my life that actually cared enough to want to help.

“Duo…” my boyfriend whispered in alarm, seeing my crazy reaction, his eyes wide and he tentatively reached a hand out to me, then dropped it, staring at me for a moment before getting the courage to lift it again and put it on my knee, “I’m sorry, Duo, I am, but… I’m just so worried about you. Every time I see the things he does… when I see how hurt you are, not just physically, but emotionally from him… it tears me apart. I’m so worried all the time and I don’t know how to help you.”

Pure, black guilt and self-loathing ripped through me, leaving my heart in bloody clumps. This was all my fault. Everything was my fault. Why do I keep doing this to him? What was even the point? That feeling came back, that gaping hole and rage at myself, that I was disgusting and horrible. It brought with it the usual thought, the same one that has been weighing me down since I had agreed to give dating Heero a chance. ‘He doesn’t deserve this. We should just break up.’ I might hate it. It might hurt. But that didn’t make it untrue. What sort of person does this to the one that they claim to love? How can I possibly hurt him like this, over and over, and stay with him so selfishly? My father and Trowa are right. I really am ugly and useless. I didn’t deserve Heero’s love and concern.

“If it bothers you so much,” I heard myself say, my voice angry and twisted like a growling coyote, “then maybe we shouldn’t be together!”

The second the words left my mouth, this incredible horror fell over me and I felt cold and empty and I distantly wondered if I was dreaming all this, because it didn’t feel real suddenly. What had I just said? What the fuck had I just _done_? And Heero, poor Heero, he looked like I had just struck him. Somehow, he looked even more horrified and stricken than I felt, his eyes huge and his face pale. He withdrew his hand like I had burned him.

“I didn’t mean that,” I said hastily, my words coming out so fast and so senselessly that I was babbling and I wrapped my arms around my knees, my body shaking, “I didn’t mean it, I didn’t, I didn’t…”

I realized that I was having a panic attack, but I couldn’t stop it. I could only hear what I just said echoing in my own ears and would have given up one of my limbs to take it back. I couldn’t believe that I had actually said it out loud, that doubt and fear that I’ve been feeling for weeks and the terror was so immense, I could have blacked out.

“Duo,” Heero had that wide-eyed, concerned look again as he watched me fall apart, like my reaction was more important than the fact that I had just hurt him again, worse than I ever had before.

He looked so scared and I couldn’t tell if it was of me and my freaking out or that he thought I had meant what I had said, that I wanted to break up with him.

“No!” I cried out, tears streaming down my face, but I wouldn’t know it until later when I realized that my eyes were burning and my face was wet, “I don’t know why I said that!”

I felt like I was going to throw up. I knew, somewhat, that I was overreacting to a slip of the tongue, something stupid said in anger, something that probably happens between couples all the time. But to me, it wasn’t something said in anger that I regretted at all. It wasn’t some idle threat or something said to hurt the other person. It was a shard of honesty. Because I had lied to Heero when I said that I didn’t know why I had said it. I know why I had said it. I had meant it.

“Hey… hey…” Heero put his hand on my shoulder, gripping it lightly and the warmth of his touch and those soft, blue eyes so full of tenderness and concern for me almost had me crying harder. He made me feel so miserable just then, so useless and dirty, like a bug under his shoe for the things that I had been thinking, “It’s alright, Duo, I know you didn’t mean it.”

Words meant to soothe me only made me feel worse. If only he could see into my head and know my doubts, know what I was planning to do to him the second things got too much for me to handle…

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, heartbroken and trying not to show it, “I am so, so sorry,” his expression softened even more as he believed I was apologizing for snapping at him and saying something that had crossed the line, when I was only apologizing for what was going to happen, a remorse that did nothing to change my mind and only further proved to me how lousy I am, “I just… I hate upsetting you so much… I hate that I keep making you feel this way… Every time we fight, it’s because of me and I just keep worrying you because I’m not strong enough to change anything…”

Not strong enough to just move past whatever wall is in my head and let you fuck me so I can keep you and pretend that I’m normal. Not strong enough to get away from my father so you won’t have to worry about these bruises anymore. Not even strong enough to end this relationship so I won’t hurt you any more than I already have… Heero slid his hands over my cheeks, brushing away thick trails of tears and silenced the rush of thoughts in my head in the way that only he can seem to do.

“I worry about you so much because I love you,” he told me, “You can’t switch something like that off. I know it isn’t fair, us fighting all the time because I worry, but I can’t just stop hurting when you’re hurt, not without stopping how I feel for you. And you are plenty strong,” he held my wrists again, but this time, instead of studying them, he brought each to his lips and kissed the bruises, “You live with this every day. You put up with it and you keep moving on in spite of it. Anyone that can do that is incredibly strong. But I don’t need you to be strong. All I need is for you to keep loving me. Everything else we can deal with as it comes. And if we fight, that’s ok, too. It doesn’t mean that I’m angry with you or that I’ve stopped loving you. And it doesn’t matter if I tear myself up with worry, it doesn’t mean that I think I would be better off without you, ok?”

I nodded, but my throat was too tight to speak as fresh tears dripped down my face. He did it again. In an instant, with a few words and touches, he reminded me why I loved him so much, and how impossible it was to end this. I couldn’t. I needed his love and those soothing words to breathe. I hate to admit it, but I needed him. After all those years in the cold, in the grey nothing, I needed him more than I needed food or water or air. It’s selfish and terrible, but I can put up with hurting him so long as he can look at me like that, so long as he can say that he loves me. I hated myself for it, but if he could put up with it, too, it made it easier, like he was enabling me. Even if he couldn’t, he was wrong. I _am_ weak. Too weak to not latch on to his love, too weak to be selfless when he makes my heart blossom with warmth every time he looks at me like that.

“Tell me what you need,” he begged me, soft fingers running lightly and carefully over my abused wrists, “Ointment? Ice?”

I shook my head. My hands could be hanging there by the tendons and I wouldn’t have felt the pain right then.

“Just you,” I whispered and it cost me a great deal to say those words, to be vulnerable enough to admit to that, but I managed somehow.

He wrapped his arms around me and laid us down in bed together. He was like an octopus, his limbs seemed to have multiplied as he latched onto me and normally, that would have caused me to panic, but for once, I needed it. His body was like a warm, comforting blanket, and I didn’t care if I wasn’t used to it or it freaked me out a little to be restrained and feel someone’s body pressed to mine, I needed to bury myself in him, in someone stronger than me, someone better that loved me. And I think he needed it to assure himself that we were still together, that I hadn’t nearly just ripped his heart out.

We fell asleep like that, no one bothering to pull the covers up or even turn off the light. We were both too exhausted and neither of us wanted to break the contact with the other for something so unimportant. Heero fell asleep right away, but I, even as utterly exhausted as I felt, didn’t manage to nod off until around four-thirty. I had so many twisted thoughts in my head and I kept examining them and letting them sweep me up that I couldn’t shut off my brain. Heero’s arms around me and the sound of his breathing and heartbeat were the only comforts that I felt. They were probably the only reason why I managed to fall asleep at all. I forgot to set my alarm on my phone, but managed to wake up around eight anyway. I was confident that, on a Saturday, there was no way my father would be awake at that hour.

Heero and I hadn’t stayed tangled in our sleep, but hadn’t migrated far from each other, either. I was curled up against his side and he had his lower body twisted at an awkward angle that one can only manage in their sleep, one of his knees trapped between mine. He was still fast asleep when I woke up, breathing heavily, but not quite snoring. I drew myself up on one elbow so I could watch him sleep. It’s one of the only perks about this getting up early nonsense, I can watch him and he’ll never know. That kind of makes me sound like a stalker, doesn’t it? But I love watching him. It’s not even just how attractive he is, there’s just something about him that fascinates me, gets under my skin.

I was bolder that morning than the previous, reaching out a hand to brush his dark bangs away. Our fight from that morning seemed like years away as my vision traced his features and how his chest lightly rose with his breathing. Remembering the things that I had said, how I had cried and quickly lost control over myself, I felt incredibly embarrassed. Heero must think that I’m a nut job, losing my shit because I had suggested, in a fit of tired anger, that we break up. But he didn’t understand. Neither did I, not really. I feel insane sometimes with the way my emotions can tear me down, how easy it is lately for me to spin out of control. But I also remembered him holding me and saying those things to me… that he loves me and that’s all that really matters.

Those memories fresh in my head, looking at him, I loved him powerfully. Every plane of his face, the curve of eyelashes, those soft, sweet words… I loved all of it more than I could bear. It was more intense than anything else, even my self-loathing, and I didn’t know how to manage it, how to deal with constantly swinging between passionately, always wanting to be with him, and loving him so much that I could acutely feel all the ways that I was failing him. But I did love him, more than I have ever loved anything else. More than Quatre or my parents. I don’t know how it happened. I don’t even know how I’m capable of it, but sometimes, it’s just too much.

I’m… I’m scared. Of him. Of this feeling. After Quatre died, I promised myself ‘never again.’ Never again would I love someone so much that I would give them the power to hurt me like he had. And after my father had raped me, that promise had only grown. Love is painful, it kills and maims more than hatred. I put a wall up around my heart and the day my father violated me, I had thought I had felt it die. I had thought that I could reject the crush I had on Heero, that it would be simple. Love has only ever hurt me, so what was the point of it? But I, like a child, hadn’t really known that I have no power over it at all. That the choice had never really been up to me.

Love is insidious. It seeps into you without you even realizing it. I hadn’t realized just how much I loved him until it was far too late to take it back. By the time he had confessed to me, it had been stupid of me to think that I could turn him down. I had tried so hard to protect myself, but now I’m more vulnerable than I’ve ever been. I’ve grown too close to him, just like I did with Quatre, only it’s worse with Heero. Heero makes me feel things that Quatre never could, and that, in itself, is terrifying to me. I am barely hanging on to the tattered fabric of my life, and here comes this boy that exposes my heart to the sun; warm, comforting, but blazing and intense. I feel like I’m possessed sometimes as I find myself doing things that I never would have done before, thinking and feeling things that I can’t understand.

Logically, I know what I have to do to protect myself, but emotionally… in the deepest parts of my heart… I _can’t._ Our fight that morning proved that. I had had the perfect opening to break up with him, to do the right thing for him. He would have been hurt, but maybe he would have seen that I was right to do it, that I couldn’t keep doing these things to him and it was for the best. Ha, yeah right. He would never let me break up with him just because he was worried about me, but still, I could have let things fall into place. Instead, I had freaked and taken it back.

What the fuck was I going to do when I had to end this? Was I just going to keep chickening out? Is this going to end up being like it was with Trowa, knowing that we needed to split up, but being too scared to do it, just dragging our relationship around like a rotting corpse? No, I realized as I laid there. This was nothing like how things had been with Trowa. With him, I hadn’t been able to break up with him because I had been scared. Scared of being alone. With Heero… I couldn’t break up with him because of love. Either way, it was selfish, but with Heero… it's deeper. With Trowa, I just hadn’t wanted to go back to the way things had been for me since Quatre’s death. But with Heero… when I break up with him, nothing will ever be the same. It will destroy me, that pain of knowing I can never be with him again.

I don’t know how to live without him anymore. I don’t know what’s happened to me, how things have come to this. Why I’m so weak that I need to lean on him. I only know that I can’t go back to the way things were and if I lose him, that will be it for me. Maybe I’ve lost too much. Maybe he’s shown me too much, about myself and about what my life _could_ be like. If I break it off with him, all of that will be gone and I’ll be nothing, even more of a nothing than I was before. I’m too weak and too much of a coward to face up to that reality, so I keep going in circles, loving him, hating myself, knowing what I need to do, cowering in terror of it, hating myself even more for it… Rinse and repeat.

I pushed all those thoughts away, just like always, with my mantra of ‘not yet, there’s still time.’ But how much time? I drive myself crazy with these thoughts, but that one is always there, like an hourglass dripping grain after grain. Every moment closer to the moment that I know I’ll break and have to make that choice. But not that morning. Not yet. I can take solace in my own procrastination. I tore my sad and pained gaze away from him and sat up, leaning over to gently shake his shoulder.

“Heero?” I said softly.

He mumbled nonsense words at me and buried the side of his face deeper into his pillow, making me smile. He looked so peaceful, I didn’t want to wake him. It seemed like a real asshole thing to do, especially after he had waited up all morning for me, only to have us fight and scare the crap out of each other. I wanted to just slip out of bed and let him sleep or, better yet, not go at all and give him what he wanted. But I couldn’t. I knew the chance was slim, but my father might be home that morning and he might go looking for me. I was on such thin ice, I didn’t dare push him more and see what he would do. And I couldn’t disappear on Heero again. I had promised him I would tell him when I was going, that I would say goodbye, even if it was likely I was just coming right back there. So, I shook him again, harder this time, even knowing that the boy that I love is not remotely a morning person. He’s a deep sleeper and can be grumpy when roused, and probably wouldn’t be happy with me, even if he had made me promise.

“Nnng,” he groaned in protest and frowned, refusing to open his eyes in pure stubbornness, but I knew he was awake.

“I need to go, Heero,” I told him and he finally cracked an eye open at me.

“No,” he muttered irritably and I didn’t know if it was from being woken up at eight on a Saturday, or that I was leaving early again, “It’s Saturday, you need to go back to sleep.”

He groped for the bottom of my shirt and gave it a couple gentle tugs to indicate that he wanted me to lay back down with him. The gesture was so endearingly childish that I felt warmed and very much wanted to do as he asked.

“I can’t,” I said with some pain, “I have to go.”

He gave me this look that was half a glare, half a pout, his hair in his face again and his eyes half-lidded, the perfect picture of someone who hated mornings with every inch of their being.

“Why?” he said very snappishly, “It’s your day off. There is literally no reason for you to go _anywhere_ , so why the hell are you running off again?”

I tried not to take it personally. I told myself that the only reason why he was talking so brusquely to me was because he was always like this if he got up too early and he was just annoyed that I was leaving him, but I still tensed.

“My dad wants me home,” I picked my words carefully, not wanting to lie, “I have chores, things he wants done and I want to make sure they’re finished before he goes anywhere today. He’ll get pissed if he thinks I brushed him off. He just… doesn’t like it when I disappear like this, especially if there are things to do around the house.”

There, as close as I could come to the truth without actually admitting anything that I didn’t want him to know. To my frustration, it didn’t seem to appease him at all as he just frowned.

“Your father? The same guy who never pays any attention to what is going on in your life and never cares about where you are or how you’re doing? He actually notices when you aren’t coming home?” he asked incredulously in that tense, grumpy tone.

“Only when he wants something from me,” I muttered.

“You’re just a goddamned dog to that prick, aren’t you?” he snapped again, getting angry about something that I wasn’t quite getting.

I drew away from him sharply, sitting up straighter as my insides went cold. I could actually _feel_ the color draining from my face. I wasn’t angry at what Heero had said. Hell, I wasn’t even hurt. Because it’s the truth, isn’t it? I’ve thought so a few times, in my darker moments. How I’m more like a pet to my father than his son. Teach me a few tricks, feed me when he feels like it, so long as I do what he says. And now that I haven’t, he keeps me on a short leash. Or maybe it’s a choke chain. That I won’t listen to him enrages him, like his concerns are the only thing should matter to me. What he had said finally dawned on Heero and his eyes went wide. He sat up slightly with alarm, maybe thinking that I was going to bolt or he had really hurt me.

“God, Duo, I didn’t mean…” he started to apologize, but his sleepy brain, even now waking up from shock, didn’t want to cooperate.

“No, it’s fine,” I looked away from him, my tone thick with bitterness, “You’re right, I’m a dog. I just heel whenever he calls, don’t I? I do everything he says on command, just like he wants. Hell, I’m probably better trained than your dog.”

I hadn’t meant it to, but my words just made him feel more horrible.

“Duo, I’m sorry, I’m an asshole,” he put his hand on my arm, “You know me. You can’t listen to a word I say before I’ve gotten some coffee into me.”

I chuckled. It came out rather twisted and dark, but it was better than the bitterness I had been feeling.

“I know,” I said in a more soothing tone, “It’s ok. You’re tired, I’m tired… Just go back to sleep, alright? I just wanted to say goodbye.”

“Alright,” he sounded unsure as his hand slipped away, probably thinking that he should apologize some more, maybe grovel.

I stopped that from happening by leaning down to press a brief kiss to his mouth. He had a pretty blush when I pulled away.

“That is a much better wake up call,” he said, a bit dazed and I felt myself smile.

“I’ll be back later, I promise,” I told him, trying to soothe away any hurt feelings, knowing I would feel annoyed at him later, but I just wanted things to be right between us before I left, “I might even be back before you wake up again.”

“Ok,” he said more easily, “I promise I’ll be in a better mood then. I’m really, really sorry I’m such a jerk…”

I just gave him a smile and got out of bed. He looked like he was on the verge of begging me to stay, but even at that hour, he had more common sense. I repeated my quick getaway from yesterday; taking care of my cat, skipping changing my clothes or a shower since, if I had any luck at all, I would be going back there that day, and snuck out without anyone else seeing me go.

I was so tired that morning. Drained from emotional overload from… well, really that entire week if I stopped to think about it. And I had only gotten about three hours of sleep, which was enough to keep me somewhat alert, but my body was begging for more. I had gotten so wrapped up in our fight, I had forgotten to use the heating pad and my back was aching, but bearable. Still, when I stepped outside and felt that first ray of warm sunlight, I felt invigorated. It was actually warmer outside than it had been the previous day and the sky was a clear, powdery blue. There was a slight breeze, but even that felt warm. It wasn’t quite t-shirt weather, but I took off my jacket, realizing that I didn’t need it. We should have lunch outside on the porch, I thought, if I could manage to get back to Heero’s place in time for lunch.

It was in me at that point as I walked into central Nausten to just turn around and go back. It was a nice day out. I didn’t have work. I had an anxious boyfriend to get back to and only two days left to enjoy spring break. And there I was, walking back to the one place in the world besides school that I didn’t want to be to find either one of two things: this had been a waste of my time or my father was there and I would have to cater to whatever he wanted out of me until I could escape. Heero calling me my father’s dog came to mind again, as much as he said that he hadn’t meant it. It had only hurt because it was true.

I trudged forward anyway and decided that I didn’t care if it had been a wasted trip, I didn’t want my father to be home. I would have prayed for it, begged some invisible deity that controls such forces in the universe, but if such a thing exists, my prayers and hopes only seem to invite disaster. So, when I got to my house and my father’s car was gone from the yard, I was optimistic, but not relieved. However, when I snuck into the house, I found that things were more or less the way that I had left them the previous day and my mother wasn’t sleeping on the couch, but the bedroom door was closed. He hadn’t come home Friday night. The number of beer cans in the fridge was a bigger testament to that than anything else. I could have screamed with joy and didn’t even care about the implications of it, where he might be or that he and Pat were probably sleeping off hangovers. It didn’t matter to me where he was, so long as he wasn’t anywhere near me.

On the off chance that my father might come home sometime between Saturday morning to Sunday morning (unlikely), I fussed around with a few things in the house to make it look like I had been around. I moved things around in the fridge, changed my sheets and dumped all of the dirty laundry (there was barely any, but it’s the thought that counts) into the basket in the laundry room. My subterfuge complete, feeling childishly giddy that I could go back to Heero. I ran, actually _ran_ all the way back to the Yuy home. I kicked off my shoes, hung my jacket back up, and ignored the enticing smell of bacon cooking in the kitchen as I went back up to Heero’s room.

Heero was still fast asleep, just like I had hoped, and when I slipped back into bed with him, he instinctively inched closer to me and made a contented noise. I pulled the covers up over the both of us and thought that, if I tried really hard, I could pretend that I had never even left that bed that morning like I had wanted. That time, my tiredness caught up with me and I was asleep in seconds. When I woke again, it was a full, two hours later and Heero was the one wide awake, watching me sleep with this dopey smile on his face.

“Morning,” I mumbled.

“Morning,” he parroted.

I rolled onto my back slowly, giving my body a chance to wake up along with the rest of me. I felt pretty well rested compared to how I had felt the first time I had woken up and glanced at the clock, shocked to find that it was almost noon.

“Shit,” I swore at how late it was and sat up, “Why didn’t you wake me up?” I accused my boyfriend, wondering how long he had been awake.

“You looked too peaceful,” he said with an amused smirk, “I didn’t want to be rude and wake you when you needed the sleep, especially after all the stupid shit I said this morning.”

“It’s ok,” I assured him, but he shook his head.

“It’s not. I shouldn’t have said what I did, I don’t even know why, except that I was talking out my ass because I was annoyed. That’s not even really a decent excuse,” he winced, “I’m sorry, for what I said and for fighting with you. You kept your promise to say goodbye and I just snapped at you like a grouch.”

“I’m not mad,” I smiled warmly, “I know how you are first thing in the morning and like I said, it’s not like you were trying to hurt me or you said anything that wasn’t true. My dad does treat me like that and I do whatever he says. It isn’t fair to you.”

“It’s less fair to _you_ ,” he frowned and reached out to brush my bangs away from my eyes, “I shouldn’t have such an attitude about it when you’re the one who’s dealing with that crap. It’s not like you can tell him no, I get that,” he sighed, his expression downcast, “We just keep fighting, don’t we?”

“It’s unavoidable,” I murmured, sitting up straighter and drawing my knees to my chest, “Neither of us is going to budge. You won’t stop being a worrywart and I won’t do anything about the things that worry you, so of course we’re going to butt heads.”

“It still shouldn’t be that way,” he sighed again, “I’m trying, Duo, I really am…”

“I know,” I murmured, looking down at my knees, “I’m sorry… if I wasn’t so spineless, I could stand up to him… my dad and Zechs and everyone else…”

“You aren’t spineless,” he argued heatedly, “You’re practical and you’re a survivor, that’s not something to be ashamed of. I wish you would put your welfare over your feelings for your father, but I can’t be angry at you for it. He’s the one I’m always pissed at, not you, ok? I just… need to learn to lay off of you.”

“That’s not fair to you,” I pointed out, feeling like an ass again, “You _should_ be mad at me.”

He snorted, telling me exactly how he felt about that.

“It’s less fair to you. I don’t need to be adding to your problems by making you feel like shit when you’re already dealing with so much. I’m sorry, alright?” he apologized again.

“Alright, alright,” I grumbled, “We’re both idiots, then. Happy?”

“Ecstatic,” he quipped dryly.

It was probably the closest thing to a peace treaty that we would get, the both of us feeling like jerks and not knowing what to do about it. But in the face of the knowledge that we had an entire day together, it just didn’t seem important.

Heero let me have the shower first and the hot water helped a little to loosen my back up. It was getting better, but I had really fucked it up when I had been stuck in the closet, and then from continuously stressing it at work. It was probably going to keep hurting for some time, maybe another week, but I wasn’t impaired from the injury or the pain anymore, so that was something. I dressed in a loose pair of old jeans, not really knowing what we were planning on doing that day, and a light, long-sleeved top, then Heero, Kanuck, and I went down together. Pepper had decided that the early spring sun was infinitely more important than whatever we were doing and stayed stretched out on Heero’s made bed, right where the sun was hitting it.

“Did you two have a nice sleep?” Mariela greeted us, her tone lightly teasing, as we came into the kitchen.

She and Justin had obviously finished their breakfast hours ago, and instead of cooking or cleaning up the kitchen, she was sitting at the table, looking through a couple thick books for something and had a pad of paper with a few scribbles and blocky sketches that I didn’t identify.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized, flushing darkly, “I overslept.”

My father would have called me lazy for sleeping until almost noon. Heero’s mother just chuckled.

“It’s fine. It’s the weekend. Besides, that’s what vacations are for, being lazy and getting well rested. There’s no shame in taking some time to relax, Duo,” she scolded lightly, but still with that teasing smirk, “There’s some pancake batter and bacon in the fridge if you boys want that for breakfast. And some fresh blueberries.”

“Blueberry pancakes?” my boyfriend asked and I nodded enthusiastically.

“That sounds great,” I said and started to go to the fridge to start preparing, but he grabbed me by my shoulders and turned me around to face the table.

“Nope!” he protested, “You sit, I’ll make the food. I can cook pancakes, at least.”

“Now that the batter’s made,” his mother continued to tease him and he childishly stuck his tongue out at her, which she copied, crossing her eyes.

I obediently sat across from her and glanced at the books she had open. They appeared to be displaying different styles of quilts and color patterns. She caught me looking and smiled warmly at me.

“One of my sisters just had her first child,” she explained, “We have this silly tradition in my family that if something major and life altering happens to any of us, like getting married or having a kid, we have to give them something handmade. My eldest brother made Heero’s crib and I thought Fatima might want something practical like that for her baby.”

“I don’t think that’s silly,” I told her, “I think it’s nice. Almost all of the stuff I had when I was little was handed down from my parents or grandparents. I don’t think anyone ever made anything for me, or my parents when they got married. According to my mother, their parents weren’t very approving of them getting hitched, or having a baby together,” Mariela looked so sad when I said that that I wished I hadn’t mentioned it, “But my dad is pretty good with his hands. He made some toys for me when I was really little. I always liked them because he had made them. They felt more special than him buying something from a store.”

Back when my father had cared enough about me and doing something beyond watching television, getting drunk, or going out with his obnoxious friends, but I didn’t tell her that. I can’t remember what had happened to those toys when I had gotten older, if they had broken, been sold, or thrown out. They had been crude things and there had only been a handful of them, but that he had put the effort in and tried to make me something to play with because they hadn’t had the money to buy me some expensive toy from a store amazes me now. Even back then, it had seemed rather magical and I had loved him for it, but now, it mostly hurts, wondering where that man went.

“I’ve made a few quilts before,” Mariela told me, “but this part is always the one I struggle with the most, trying to decide what kind of quilt it should be and the colors and patterns I want to use. I don’t suppose you could take a look at these?”

She flipped one of the books around to show to me.

“I really don’t know that much about quilts…” I admitted, but she waved her hands at me.

“You don’t need to,” she assured me, “I just need some ideas and both Justin and this one,” she jerked a thumb towards Heero, who rolled his eyes, “might as well be color blind.”

“Green and gold go together,” he groused.

“Not in a baby quilt!” she shook her head in exasperation at him.

I flipped through the book and wasn’t surprised that she was having a difficult time picking a pattern. There were dozens of different styles and stitching, colors and patterns to choose from and if it were up to me, my head would be spinning. As I looked for a pattern that I liked, Heero slid me a plate of pancakes and bacon. I was too focused on the book to really notice, just automatically grabbing a fork and shoving food into my mouth. He chuckled at me, but left me alone, sitting next to me so close that he sneakily pressed his knee into mine and ate his own breakfast.

“These ones are nice,” I showed Mariela a cream colored quilt with a rectangular border and central sunburst design made out of a dozen different strips and blocks of cloth, all various patterns and colors focusing on dark green, yellow, and red, and then another that was a blocked pattern, each block segmented into two triangles against a white border around the quilt, each triangle a mix of spots and stripes of various shades of blue and grey.

“I love those, too,” she gushed, “But the colors are so drab…”

“Well, what about,” I flipped through the book, “that first design with the green and pink from these?”

“Oh, that would look beautiful!” she beamed at me, “Especially with a light blue on the background… You have a really good eye, Duo.”

I blushed at the compliment.

“I could teach you how to quilt, if you like,” she offered, “I think you would be good at it.”

“No… but thank you,” I murmured shyly, throttling my interest down with disgust.

The things my father had said the previous day replayed in my head and I remembered my mother’s reaction when she had caught me watching a show on that very subject. Did I want to learn? Of course I did. Even more than learning how to make a quilt, I liked the idea of spending more time with Mariela, we got along easily and had some similar interests, but it wouldn’t be a good idea. I didn’t need any more things for my father to call me queer over or for my mother to get that suspicious look in her eyes about. The mere thought of it soured my inquisitiveness and I felt like some… chunk of me had been stolen away, or perhaps bound tightly with duct tape. It was bad enough that I was the cook of the family, I didn’t need my parents’ disdain about knowing how to quilt.

          “Maybe one day,” Mariela said with this knowing look that made me feel like she had borrowed her husband’s skill of looking into my soul, “What do you think of this one? I like the pattern in the center, but I’m not so sure about this notched border…”

          She drew me back into the subject with ease and I knew right then that she knew that I was very interested in learning how to quilt, but wouldn’t admit it. I guess she thought that she could get around my hesitance by asking for help. She can be a lot sneakier about things than Justin or Heero. I wondered what she would say if I told her about the weird moment between my mother and me, and my almost blinding fear of her finding out that I’m gay. It’s hard to tell with her sometimes if she’ll be naïve and optimistic, or have practical advice, she’s surprised me enough times.

          The two of us chatted about color combinations and stitching styles while Heero managed to get another helping of pancakes into me in the same sly way as the first until his father came home from the grocery store, his presence announced by Kanuck before he even opened the door and walked into the kitchen, arms full of bags.

          “Morning, boys,” he greeted, putting the bags down on the counter and glanced over his wife’s shoulder to see what we were doing, “Any progress?”

          “A bit,” she admitted with a bright smile, “Duo’s been helping me!”

          “Poor Duo,” he said with fake sympathy, “Well, better him than me.”

          He gave me a wink that I couldn’t help smiling at. I felt so good that morning, completely different from how I had felt the previous day. It just felt so wonderful to be with them, to talk about silly things and have a home cooked meal, surrounded by their smiles and banter. It made all the things that I had been worrying about seem so small and irrelevant. I felt so much better with them and everything else out there, my family, school, being gay in a closed-minded town, none of it felt real, like I was in this safe, little bubble. I could smile and joke and not have to worry about anyone thinking I was strange or wrong. I could talk about baking and quilts and writing and that was ok because it was completely normal to the people around me. It’s so stupid, but when I’m with Heero and his parents, I feel more like I’m a part of a family than I ever have with my own.

          “So, you two have any plans today?” Heero’s father asked us as we cleared the table and started the dishes.

          “Mmm,” Heero glanced at me, “I was thinking, since it’s so nice out today, we could put up the treehouse.”

          “Oh,” I said with surprise, “You really want to do that?”

          “If you do,” he said, “I think it’s a nice idea, and we have all the supplies and tools to make a basic one, but I don’t want to force you to do work on your day off if you’re not into it…”

          “I don’t mind,” I told him, “It’ll probably be easy, so I wouldn’t consider it work,” I blushed just a tiny bit as I thought that just being with him would make just about anything more bearable, and it’s not like I dislike building things, I just don’t have a great aptitude for it, it’s more like a learned skill that’s been hammered into me at this point, “I just didn’t know if you were being serious, let alone that you’d want to do it so soon.”

          “Heero mentioned it the other day,” Justin explained, “and I think it’s a nice idea. That’s a really good spot for a tree house; the tree is young and sturdy, and the view is perfect. I had to go to the hardware store for some paint for the shed yesterday, so I grabbed a few things we would need to put one together, if you two decided that you really wanted to do this.”

          “I know you said we should hold off until spring is _actually_ here, but it’s really nice out today,” Heero pointed out, “and we have the day off, so it seemed like a good time to do it. And even if it does snow,” he gave me this incredulous look that almost had me laughing, “we can just cover it up with a tarp or something.”

          “I’m game,” I told him, “I don’t mind the work, especially if it’s to build something that I’ll be using. I’ve never actually built a treehouse before, it might be fun,” I shrugged.

          I didn’t tell him that it wasn’t the idea of a treehouse that sold me, but the notion that we were going to work together, build something together. It could have been an outhouse for all I cared, the idea warmed me deep inside, that we could share something like that. I could have done just about anything with him, even something painful or degrading, and just having him there with me, helping each other, would have made it fun.

          “And afterwards… want to go out on a date?” Heero asked with this bright smile.

          I blushed again, amazed at how bold he was being right in front of his parents. It really shouldn’t have floored me so much, they knew we were together and it wasn’t like he was asking me to have sex or something. Knowing Justin and Mariela, they probably thought we were being cute or such nonsense. I guess it still shocks me a little that they know about us and are so ok with it, that they don’t just approve of us, but were _hoping_ for this. I hide so much from my own parents that it just weirds me out sometimes how open Heero can be around his own. They weren’t even batting an eye at any of this, so I had little I could do beyond nodding.

          “Casual or formal?” he pressed.

          “Casual,” I answered, my face still red.

          We hadn’t really gone out to a place as fancy as where we had gone on our first date and I was ok with that. I felt a lot more comfortable at the family restaurants or food stands at the boardwalk. I felt less guilty about Heero paying for everything and less conscious of all the people around us, what they must be thinking of two boys having dinner together. I would never tell Heero this because I feel like it would mess with his expectations or he would get disappointed with me, but some of the happiest dates I’ve ever been on with him were the times we just shared a couple of burgers and fries on the getty, watching the sun set over the black waves.

It was those moments, and not the times when he took me out to a four or five-star restaurant dressed in the nicest clothes that I owned, that I truly felt that we were together, connected and intertwined and sharing our lives and not just as two close friends playing dress up. I suppose that’s weird. I mean, isn’t that what a date is? Having a nice dinner, making small talk across a candle-lit, linen draped dinner table? But they could never compare to curling up with him on the couch or walking his dog together or even just going for a jog. I wonder what that says about me, if I really am lacking any semblance of class or if I’m just boring as dirt.

“Alright,” my boyfriend said, not missing a beat and actually looking happy that I didn’t want to go anywhere fancy, “I know just where to go.”

“Wear work gloves!” Mariela lectured us as Justin led us out the back door, “and goggles!”

Justin gave her a little salute. Kanuck whined pitifully when I shut the door behind us, refusing to let him outside, but it was for the best. Well-behaved or not, none of us wanted him around when we working in case he got hurt. Justin and I gathered some tools out of the garage and shed; the wood he had gotten from the store that still needed to be measured and cut, a tape measurer, goggles and work gloves, and even a sander.

“Can you handle this?” he asked me as he handed me a nail gun.

“I use one at work all the time,” I told him, but still felt this humble pride that he was willing to let me work with it.

“Alright,” he said, “I trust you.”

‘ _I trust you_.’ I thought that my chest might burst with the sudden warmth I felt. My father had never said anything like that to me before. He would probably think that I would shoot myself in the foot or didn’t even know how to turn the thing on, but Justin didn’t bat an eye. Heero watched all of this with interest, but clearly had no clue what he should be doing. Justin handed him a hammer, obviously uncomfortable with his son handling the nail gun if he had never used one before, and gave me a hand saw while keeping the electric one for himself.

“I know you’ve probably used one before,” he told me, “but I would still rather be the one to use this.”

I wasn’t bothered by that in the least. I use both at work and for such a small project, we probably didn’t even need electric saw, and I knew that his hesitance to give it to me wasn’t about thinking I couldn’t, but him just being the responsible adult of the lot of us. Heero’s father grabbed a collapsible bench to saw the wood on and dumped the planks in a large wheelbarrow, then we were off, trekking across their backyard to the hill.

Heero and I had a rather lengthy discussion about how we wanted to construct the treehouse, how high it should be and what features it should have. I tried to get what he wanted out of him, but he refused to make all of the decisions, claiming that it was for me, as well.

“I’ve never had a treehouse or been in one,” I argued, “I have no clue.”

“All the more reason you have some input, too,” Justin finally interjected.

I looked at the ground as an idea floated up. Some childish thing that I was shocked I even remembered and was too embarrassed to voice out loud, but the two of them just kept looking at me, waiting for me to come up with something.

“A… a trapdoor,” I practically whispered under my breath, “I want it to have a hatch we can close when we’re up there.”

I had seen it in a movie once when I had been little and had loved the idea of having some secret place of my own that I could just lock up and no one could get in but me.

“That sounds like a cool idea,” Heero brightened, “We could get a light ladder to pull up when we’re up there, too.”

“And I want it open,” I was starting to warm up to this, getting into it more as something that we were actually going to use and not just a fun project to do with Heero, “I don’t want it to be like a box, all closed in. Maybe just a couple of walls, but I want to be able to look out.”

“We don’t really need walls,” Justin said, “Although a safety railing would be a good idea.”

“I want the floor to be big enough that we can bring up a futon or maybe a very small couch,” Heero added, “And no roof. I want to be able to star gaze if we come out here in the summer.”

“You’ll have to sweep it out every day,” his father warned, “No roof means it’s going to get wet and covered with leaves and bugs.”

“I’ll do it,” my boyfriend said stubbornly and I had to admit, I liked the idea of being able to look up and see the sky between the thick branches and leaves of the tree, it had a tranquil feeling to it.

His father just shrugged, trusting that he would. Then again, a lot of kids beg their parents for a dog and promise that they’ll walk it and feed it and train it, but get bored and lazy and their parents have to do it for them. But when Heero was eleven years old and had begged his parents for a puppy and done that whole ‘I’ll be responsible’ dance, he had taken it to heart. He took him on walks, taught him how to be housebroken, brushed out his coat, fed him, and cared for him every day, even trained him since the kennel attendant had warned him he would have to do it, and do it rigorously if he didn’t want a disobedient dog that was going to outweigh him one day.

Justin had told me this story once, with some amusement, how he and Mariela hadn’t raised a finger with Kanuck. Heero had taken on the responsibility wholeheartedly and still puts him through his commands every day so the dog doesn’t slip up. He took him to obedience classes and was firm with him, never letting him get away with anything that he shouldn’t, like sneaking food or chewing on the furniture. In reality, Kanuck was nearly professionally trained and could probably go on one of those dog shows if Heero felt like it. He even taught me a few of the commands and I can get the canine to sit and stay pretty easily now. Heero joked once that I’m so good with his dog, I could probably teach my cat a trick or two, but she had just given him this disdainful look, like she knew what he was saying. I don’t think she would appreciate being taught tricks when she could be napping or playing with one of her toys.

If there’s one thing that I learned about that story, beyond how proud Heero’s parents were of him, it was that my boyfriend, when he puts his mind to something, when he really puts the effort in, he can accomplish just about anything. And he means it when he makes promises, whether it’s raking a treehouse floor or never calling the cops on my father. How could I not love someone with that kind of character? But at the same time that it makes me love him even more, it makes me hate myself for not being like that, for being so weak and scared and hesitant all the time. For not keeping my promises or trying new things. It only makes me wonder for about the billionth time what a person like that could possibly see in someone like me.

The upside to our building plans was that there wasn’t much to actually build. We had to do the base and the floor and the railing, but that was about it. We agreed to be lazy about the ladder and just buy a rope one. It would be easy to pull up and store. And the tree was so thick and healthy, we didn’t have to worry all that much about damaging it or making the tree house extra sturdy. The wood was thick and could easily support five to six people jumping around on a platform the size we wanted, so I was confident we could do this. I might not have all that much experience with treehouses, but I know how to build sturdy floors and suspended structures, it was really the same principle.

“The trap door will have to wait until I can get some hinges,” Justin warned, “but we can cut out the space now. We’ll also put off any painting and water proofing and just focus on getting the actual structure up. Heero, I don’t want you sawing anything and let Duo handle the nail gun. Listen to what he tells you to do, alright?”

I felt that stupid warmth again when Heero nodded and looked at me with this intense trust and deference as the leader, someone that knew what they were doing and was the one with the experience. No one has looked at me like that since Quatre and I didn’t realize how good it felt to have that back, that respect instead of always being looked down upon, always seen as being incompetent.

The three of us worked fast to get the thing done before the evening when it would be too dark. Heero mostly stayed out of the way, measuring and sanding and moving materials while Justin and I cut the planks. But Heero and I were the ones in the tree, laying down the floor and hammering while his father supervised from the ground, looking a bit nervous at first since we were about fifteen to seventeen feet up, but the branches easily supported us and when he saw how well we worked together and how careful we were, he relaxed. Heero held things steady for me as I worked with the nail gun and insisted on being the one to test out the base. He claimed that it made sense because he was heavier, but I knew he just didn’t want me in any danger. I also knew that if I showed any signs at all that my back was bothering me, he would demand that we stop. I caught him staring at me a few times, judging my discomfort levels, but it wasn’t so bad. I wasn’t exactly doing anything to strain it too much.

“Everything go ok with your father this morning?” he suddenly asked me as I straddled a nearby tree branch while he gingerly put his weight on the base we had constructed.

I was on edge, watching him intensely for any sign that he was going to lose his balance or the base was going to shift with his weight. Hell if I knew what I was going to do if he did fall, make a grab for him or something. Justin was standing below us just for that reason and Heero’s question caught me off guard for a moment.

“It went fine. Actually,” I snorted, “he wasn’t even home. Probably sleeping off a hangover. Or in the process of making a new one.”

The acidic bitterness in my tone shocked me because I didn’t even know where it came from. It had been a huge relief, him not being there that morning, so why was I suddenly angry? What did it matter? It wasn’t like this was anything new with him, so why did I feel like I was choking on some twisted emotion? Heero sat down on the very edge of the base, which made me incredibly nervous, but then he reached over and took my hand in his. They were warm and sweaty, covered in a fine layer of saw dust from smoothing the edges of the boards with the sander.

“It’s alright,” he soothed, his eyes soft and so welcoming, I wanted to drown in them.

“No, it isn’t,” I muttered and looked down at the ground below.

Justin was standing off to the side, watching us with a concerned frown, but I was confident that he couldn’t hear what we were talking about. Heero rubbed his thumb against my skin, not caring about my own sweat.

“No,” he agreed hesitantly, “If he-,”

“Please,” I begged him, my voice cracking a little from some emotion I couldn’t name, “I don’t want to talk about him. Not now, not here.”

Instead of arguing like I expected him to, he smiled and let go of my hand.

“So…” he drawled, “You think this thing is sturdy enough?”

“Well, if it can support your fat ass,” I joked even though any humor in it was strangled by my rough tone and the tight feeling in my chest and the fact that maybe, just maybe, my eyes weren’t quite as dry as they should be.

Heero chuckled anyway, appeasing my desperate need to lighten the air.

“And how’s the back?” he couldn’t help asking.

“Not great,” I had to admit, “but not terrible. I can finish this. Can you ask your dad to hand you the rest of the boards? I think I’m confident this base will hold, so all that’s left is laying down the floor and putting up the safety rail.”

I stood on my branch and crossed over to the base. It took my weight easily and I dared to do a couple, small jumps on it just to see if it had any give. It didn’t so much as shift and I felt that bit of pride I get at work when I complete a project and it works like it’s supposed to. I guess construction is a bit like cooking that way for me. I always expect to fail, so when I don’t, it’s like I’ve scaled a mountain. Although I don’t get as much enjoyment out of it as I do when I bake something. I don’t know why, it’s not like it’s a chore, it’s just something I can do. I wondered what my father would do if I built him a new shed. Justin would probably be flattered, my father, however, would probably think I was attacking his manhood or something.

I pushed all thoughts of my dad out of my head. I was having a wonderful day. The weather was nice. I was with Heero, building something with no fights, just enjoying each other’s company… so why was I thinking about these things? I wished for some way, some magic switch that could turn all those thoughts off. Heero and I laid out the boards to make the floor and I began to nail them into the base. I was on the third board when I noticed Heero staring at me from the same branch I had been sitting on before, completely enraptured.

“That’s hot,” he blurted out when he saw that I had noticed him.

I was so confused that I blinked, not really getting what he was saying.

“It’s not that warm out,” I assumed he was talking about the weather, even though that didn’t make any sense.

“Not the weather,” he chuckled, “ _You_. With that nail gun, that you know how to do stuff like this, it’s hot.”

Heat burst in my face and I’m sure that my skin did a pretty good impression of an overly ripe tomato. He thought I was sexy?

“I’m not ‘hot’,” I muttered shyly, feeling more off kilter than if I had fallen out of the tree.

Heero smiled at me and rested his head on his fist, studying me with this yearning expression that made me both flattered and uncomfortable at the same time.

“You are totally hot,” he smirked.

He thought I was attractive, and was quite obviously turned on by watching me construct the treehouse for some bizarre reason. It made me feel weird. My heart was beating too fast and I felt embarrassed and amazed that anyone, let alone someone as beautiful as Heero, could find _me_ attractive. It made me feel oddly good and happy that he could see me that way, the same way I feel towards him sometimes. But, of course, I also felt sick. My stomach twisted just realizing what his expression meant. Images of my father and Trowa flashed in my head and I angrily banished them. He wasn’t like them, he wasn’t using me, he didn’t want to fuck me just to get off, he liked me and he was expressing that interest like a normal person by telling me he was attracted. So why did I feel this way? Why did I feel both amazing and horrible, like I might vomit? Why did I feel so scared just to know that the boy I loved wanted me? Because I couldn’t give him that or was it something worse?

I kept my head down and kept nailing boards with the gun like that incredibly embarrassing moment hadn’t happened, even while my skin crawled. It wasn’t Heero’s fault and I didn’t resent him at all for it. Oddly enough, though my mind wanted to keep digging it back up and pull me down with it, it didn’t spoil the rest of the day for me. I was nervous and off balance, but then enough of the floor was down for Heero to join me and he helped me nail down the rest of it, the two of us working together like he hadn’t just hit on me and everything just flowed to how it had been minutes ago and by the time we had the floor done and we were starting on making a frame for the trapdoor, I felt at ease again. Despite his declaration, Heero didn’t try anything or say anything or even give me that look that makes my stomach plummet to my knees. He was just… Heero again, the person that I trust with everything and I felt so foolish for my reaction.

We finished the safety rail rather quickly with the two of us working together, adjusting it until we could both lean on it heavily without it shifting. A bit tired, but feeling accomplished, we laid down on the floor together, taking a moment to rest. The sky peering through the tree’s foliage was cloudless and a very light, tranquil blue. In that moment, our shoulder’s touching, laying on this thing that we had built together, I felt completely at peace. My father didn’t matter. School didn’t matter. My problems and fears and anxieties didn’t matter. All that did was the two of us, being together, loving each other, sharing our lives with each other.

“This is nice, right?” Heero asked me.

“Very nice,” I agreed, although I was talking about a lot more than just the tree house.

“Thank you for helping me do this,” he said, his eyes darker and deeper than the sky.

He very gently took my chin in his hand and moved my face towards his so he could kiss me. Suddenly, all those empty holes in me were full of love for him, so much that I felt like I might overflow. I wanted to be with him forever, I wanted to entangle myself in him and never let go because he can make me feel this way. He makes me feel whole and special, only him and I know with this incredible certainty that no one I could ever hope to meet will ever make me feel this way again. It was a beautiful, pure feeling. The sort of feeling that can make you believe in things like miracles or God or even hope. But at the same time that it lifted me up and left me humming with this pleasurable current, it also scared me.

Heero and I fit together so perfectly, in ways that I hadn’t even thought possible. We click and get under each other’s skin. Just look at how we built that treehouse; in sync, moving around each other like we were one person instead of two. We might fight sometimes, but never for long, and we always meld back together. This love… this connection we have… it’s like we’re a jigsaw puzzle. One that’s new and stiff and the edges aren’t as flexible as they should be. You have to fight and push to get the pieces to fit together, but once they did, it was hopeless to get them loose again without tearing the whole thing apart. There’s a word for this kind of connection: soul mates. Is that arrogant or childish of me to think? It’s not like I’ve ever been in love before, that I’ve had something to compare this to, so maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m reading into things, but this is how I feel when I’m with him. Like I belong, like he’s the only person I could ever get this close with.

You would think that this feeling would make me stronger, more confident, and it does in a way. But it also scares me because, for all of my dark thoughts that week, all of my surety of what I need to do to keep from hurting him, I realized that afternoon the reality of my situation. I couldn’t do it. Not just break up with him. As I lay there with him, his lips on mine, I couldn’t even see the end anymore. The end of us. I literally could not imagine my world without him and I wondered if this really needed to end. I loved him, more than I had ever thought I could feel anything for anyone. Everything between us seemed so perfect. So how could this possibly end, especially under my fumbling and inept hands? It was like a bug thinking it could stop a hurricane and in that moment, every part of me didn’t want to. For once, my doubts and fears were silent.

“Everything good up there?” Justin called up.

Heero and I pulled apart in surprise. We had both completely forgotten that he was even down there.

“Yeah,” my boyfriend called, quickly sitting upright, “It looks great!”

We gathered up the tools and went back down the tree, using its branches instead of the space we had made for the door because we didn’t have the ladder yet and there were no branches right under it. In reality, the trap door was just a false sense of security. Someone could make it up the tree and into the treehouse since there were no walls, but it was still kind of dangerous and took a bit of agility and dexterity, especially getting up instead of down. Heero went down first so I could drop the tools down to him and Justin, then helped me down when I got to the lowest branch, probably thinking about my back. It was aching, but no worse than it would be after a shift at Leneski’s, but I accepted his help with grace, not wanting to fight.

“It looks very sturdy,” Justin remarked, peering up at our handy work and clapped the both of us on the back, “Great work, you two. Now it just needs a coat a paint, a ladder, and some rain proofing. Decide what color you want it to be and I can pick everything up after work on Monday.”

We nodded. I didn’t especially care what color we painted it, I just felt so amazed that the two of us had done this, actually built a treehouse that was _ours_. I couldn’t wrap my head around that bit. Our treehouse. Our space. A place that was just for us, where we could go to be alone. When it really got warm out, we could go out there and have lunch or watch the sunset or just have a quiet moment together. I’ve never really had that, a place of my own. There was no where I could go in my own home to be alone, unless I dared to push my dresser in front of the attic door or something, but I was always too scared to try that. Sure, I had the getty and the library and, before my break up with Trowa, the studio. But none of those places had really been _mine_. They were always public and there was always the threat of someone coming into my personal space. But for the first time, I had a secret place that no one but myself and Heero knew about. Our sanctuary.

It was getting late when we made the trek back to the house, around five, and the sun was beginning to set, leaving the sky a fiery blue and orange and red. The air was starting to cool, too, but was still pleasant without a jacket on. I tried to help Heero’s father put the tools and leftover scraps of wood back into the garage, but he shooed the both of us away to get ready for our date. Mariela was in the kitchen, taking what looked like Chinese food out of a takeout bag for her and Justin’s dinner.

“How’d it go?” she asked us.

“Great,” Heero told her while sneaking a piece of shrimp from one of the food containers, “We got the whole thing up, just need to paint it. Duo did most of the work.”

“I did not,” I grumbled, “You and your dad did a lot of it, too.”

He just grinned at me.

“You two should shower before you go out to dinner,” she wrinkled her nose at us teasingly.

“Yep, that’s where we’re going,” he called back as we walked out of the kitchen and up the stairs.

“So… just how casual is casual?” I asked him.

“Not dressy,” he told me, “But not sweats, either. Definitely not slacks, but maybe those jeans my parents got you?”

“Sure,” I went into the guest bedroom and fussed around with my clothing choices while Heero hit the shower.

I felt almost neurotic as I looked through my limited shirts, trying to find something nice before I reminded myself that we weren’t going anywhere fancy. In all likelihood, Heero was just taking me out to a family restaurant, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to look presentable. I ended up choosing the black jeans from the three new ones I had and a blue, long-sleeve shirt because Heero likes it when I wear blue. I had a dark, denim over shirt that would look nice and wasn’t too old and worn that would be better than a jacket. I showered quickly, combing my hair and brushing my teeth fussily before meeting Heero out in the hall. He was dressed similarly to me in cream colored jeans, a black over shirt and a dark, navy shirt under it that set off his eyes beautifully, somehow nailing the casual but nice look better than I ever could have.

We left on foot, which told me that either this was going to be a laid back night, the place we were going to was close by, or maybe both. It didn’t bother me, all the street lights were on and while most people that had been gone over the spring break were starting to come back that weekend, even when we hit central Nausten, there weren’t a whole lot of other pedestrians or cars going by.

“So, I was thinking we could just have dinner and then catch a movie afterwards. I know we’ve done that before, but I figured you’d want to do something laid back tonight,” he offered.

“Dinner and a movie sounds great,” I smiled, and it did. I was mentally exhausted from the long, endless week I had had and I probably would have been just as happy to stay in and watch movies at his house, but since it was Saturday and the end of the break, I also felt the need to go out and do something with him while I could, “But…” my smile slipped away, “it’s Saturday night. The theater is probably going to be crowded…”

“If we get there early enough before the movie starts, we should get tickets no problem,” he pointed out, “And there are still quite a few people on vacation until tomorrow, so it won’t be as busy as it usually is on the weekend.”

“That’s not what I meant. I just mean… all those people…” I couldn’t finish the sentence because it sounded so stupid out loud that I was worried about us being together when we were already ‘out’, like a crowd really made a difference at that point, I was just feeling a bit sensitive, though not completely anti-social, not yet.

“If you don’t want to go-,” he started to say, but I shook my head.

“No, it’s not that,” I didn’t want to disappoint him, especially not when I was only feeling a little hesitant and nervous.

“I don’t really care how many people are around,” he told me with this knowing look in his eye, “I’m not going to act any differently. We don’t owe them anything and if they want to stare, who cares?”

He boldly took my hand, right there on a crowded street, and didn’t let go as we walked. He got it without me spelling it out for him and I realized that he wasn’t just putting on a show, he really didn’t give a shit who saw us together, or what we were doing. If he wanted to hold my hand or kiss me, he would do it, no matter who saw. That should have made me nervous, but it did the opposite, erasing my anxiety completely and I smiled again. I felt confident in his assurances, not less. Don’t get me wrong, I still worried what people might do, but I felt more confident in him and I knew he was right.

Trowa’s insistence on us keeping things secret had a hand in tearing us apart, but Heero had promised that he would never be like that and he meant it. To him, being with me was a source of pride. Relena told me once that Quatre should be ashamed of himself, all fags should be, throwing themselves at someone of the same sex in public. I had protested that, but… after so many years of hearing remarks like that, that homosexuality is wrong and ugly, some of those things have wormed their way into my heart. Enough that, sometimes, I feel nervous when other people watch us and I wonder if I _should_ be ashamed. But then I look at Heero and I think ‘of what?’ Heero is handsome and wonderful and strong and he loves me. I can’t think of a single reason _not_ to broadcast our relationship, to show people that they’re wrong. People like us can fall in love and have a normal, healthy relationship just like anyone else. Hell, we probably have a better relationship than many of the so-called ‘normal’ people in our school. If what Relena and the rest of them say about gays is true, then how can things be going so well between us? Why haven’t things fallen apart by now? In those moments, I can feel pride, too.

“Sure,” I said, “Where do you want to eat?”

“You’ll see,” he gave me a cheeky smile.

‘You’ll see’ turned out to be the only restaurant in town that serves Japanese food. And not just a sushi restaurant, but one of those hibachi places that serves a bunch of different things.

“Have you ever had Japanese before?” Heero asked me when he caught me staring at the sign in front of the place.

“No,” I confessed, “and sushi has always seemed… weird to me. I mean, you go your whole life hearing that you shouldn’t eat raw fish because it has parasites and it can make you sick…”

Heero chuckled.

“I guess so, but you don’t have to worry about that so long as the fish is prepared right. It can be a bit of an acquired taste for some people, but I figured since you like practically anything, you might want to try it,” he said.

“I think you just called me a food slut,” I teased him.

I don’t do it often, but I was in such a rare, good mood that night, almost like I was on drugs, that it just slipped out of me naturally.

“You just have a very open stomach,” he bantered right back and I felt so stupidly proud of myself for it, for carrying a conversation that I should be able to like any other, normal person, but even when Quatre had been around and I hadn’t been quite as closed off around other people (not that that’s saying much), I hadn’t teased him much.

“Sure, I’ll try it,” I said and followed him inside the restaurant.

That’s something that my father and I will never have in common. He’s very… I wouldn’t say ‘picky’, exactly… more that he’s set in his ways. He knows what he likes, whether it be food or television programs or hobbies and hardly ever tries new things. He would probably blanch at something like sushi or any other kind of foreign food, preferring pizza or hamburger or macaroni and cheese even if it’s something he’s had a thousand times. Me, on the other hand, I love discovering new flavors, new kinds of meals with ingredients I never would have thought to use together. Even if I didn’t, I don’t see the point in being so picky. And if I bring home something outside my father’s comfort zone, at least he won’t steal it.

The restaurant was almost empty, between it being just a tad early for a dinner rush, people being on vacation, and Asian cuisine not being a huge hit in our little town. I certainly didn’t mind, and we got waited on almost the second we walked through the door. Our server tried to get us to sit at the hitachi grill, but Heero insisted on a booth in the corner, saying it was because we wanted a window seat. The menu was… extensive and I didn’t know what most of the items even were, let alone if they appealed to me, but my boyfriend was all too happy to clarify what each thing was and if he recommended it or not.

“Are you some kind of expert?” I asked, aghast that he didn’t so much as balk at the Japanese words.

“Not really,” he shrugged, blushing a tiny bit, “My grandmother on my mother side was Japanese, though. She used to take me out to places like this and taught me what all the different kinds were. She said that, although it’s diluted in me, it’s still a part of who I am and it’s important to remember our culture, where we and our ancestors came from. It’s one of the few things that she and my grandfather agreed on,” he chuckled.

I smiled warmly at him, endeared by his story even though I was a little bit envious. I don’t really know what that feels like, having a rich culture and traditions passed on to me. Hell, my parents didn’t even just have holiday traditions and I don’t know that much about my grandparents, let alone where my ancestors came from, if there was anything that my great grandparents would have been proud to pass on, if they would have been upset to see what their grandchildren were like. Questions about my father’s family were only met with a cold stare and “They’re dead, what’s more to know,” while I felt uncomfortable asking my mother about her side of the family because she got that sad look in her eyes and I knew she was thinking about her deceased mother and estranged father, if he was even still alive.

Even with Heero’s instruction, I couldn’t make up my mind about what I wanted, but our server was nice enough to have them make us a platter that had a mix of their most popular sushi. I have no idea how much it cost, but I’m sure it was a lot, but like always, Heero waved away my concerns.

“It’s your first time and I like spoiling you,” he said, his eyes bright with amusement, “Besides, it’s not like we get to do this a lot.”

That much was true. With school returning, and my attempts to keep my father in the dark about where I was actually spending my mornings, finding the time to go on dates like this was getting more and more strained. It was my fault and I felt guilty enough to indulge him that I dropped the issue.

Sushi, as it turns out, is delicious and if it really is an acquired taste, I already had it. I loved all the different kinds, even the eel that Heero refused to touch. They didn’t just bring us sushi, either. There was miso and onion soup, some kind of meal bowl with rice, egg, vegetables, and beef, and a selection of different meats and sauces to dip them in. It was all amazing and I felt disgustingly decadent, like a member of royalty, and I can’t remember ever eating so much. Thankfully, the labor we had done that day had built up quite an appetite and my stomach felt like a black hole, sucking in everything that was put in front of me. Even though I felt incredibly full, I couldn’t help but peek at the dessert menu, mostly out of curiosity to see if they had anything different or if it was standard dessert fair like cheesecake or ice cream, and it didn’t disappoint.

“Fried banana with red bean ice cream?” I asked incredulously, unable to decide if that sounded interesting or bizarre. I mean, who fries fruit?

Heero chuckled.

“You’d like it,” he assured me, knowing how much I like bananas, “It’s caramelized and different from fried American food. Crunchy and sweet, and the ice cream is pretty good, too. But I actually want to take you some place for dessert after the movie, so you’ll have to try it some other time.”

The theater, as predicted, was more crowded than I would have liked, but the film we saw had been released a couple of weeks ago, so it was far from the busiest showing. It was a thriller about a bank heist and scandal, not something I would have chosen, but the pickings were slim that week and it was actually pretty enjoyable (2). I got a good laugh when I needed to flash my school ID at the ticket booth to prove I was seventeen and could see the rated R film while Heero griped about dating the ‘adult’ and being the under-aged one in our relationship (at least when it came to perks of being seventeen, which are pretty much limited to seeing R movies, donating blood, and getting a driver’s license).

By the time we left the theater, aided by the smell of hot popcorn and candy, we both had enough room in our stomachs that dessert sounded like a pretty good idea. The night air was still nice, cooling down, but there was little to no wind, so we stayed on foot. I figured out where he was planning on taking me when we passed the boardwalk and entered the little cluster of tourist trap shops near the beach that also featured some of the better seafood restaurants and the arcade.

“Granelli’s?” I guessed.

“You’ve been there before?” he sounded so disappointed that I almost wanted to lie, but that would have been stupid.

“I have lived here my entire life, you know,” I teased him, “And it’s only the most popular ice cream shop in town.”

Granelli’s is this quaint, ice cream shop that’s been run by the Granelli family for the last three generations and has earned the right over all the other ice cream stores in Nausten to call itself an ice cream parlor. It’s cute and well maintained and the service is always very personalized, but more importantly, the ice cream, custard, and even gelato is all homemade, but not expensive. Because of that one, key fact, it’s insanely popular in our little town, especially in the summer. They also have an amazing selection of flavors that I’ve never even seen in a grocery store.

“Relena took me there a few times,” he flushed, looking incredibly embarrassed and nervous to be talking about her, but when he didn’t see any accusation on my face, he continued, “When we had a few warm days in the early fall… I’m sorry, it’s kind of skeezy for me to be taking you to the same places I went with her, isn’t it?”

“Heero,” I stopped him before he could start to feel really lousy, “I don’t _care_. You’re allowed to like a place that she took you to and want to share it with me, it’s not going to bother me. How am I going to get jealous over someone you don’t want to be with anymore and don’t even talk to? Besides, this is a small town, of course we’re bound to go to some of the same places you went with her. It’s not a big deal, or any kind of deal, really.”

Just like that, all of his anxiety melted away and I felt so happy that I had been able to do that, that I had said something right for once.

“Do you know how amazing you are?” he suddenly blurted out.

“What?” I gaped, not getting why he would think that, “How am I amazing?”

“A lot of people would feel… insecure, their boyfriend or girlfriend taking them to someplace they took their ex,” he said, “They’d think they were competing or would compare themselves to them, but it doesn’t bother you at all.”

“That’s stupid,” I muttered under my breath.

I don’t understand how some people think, why they feel the way that they do, and I certainly don’t understand all the little, unspoken rules of etiquette in a relationship. I don’t understand how someone could get jealous of someone that the person they’re dating tossed aside for something so petty as taking them to the same places, but then again, I’m not exactly normal. I was just happy to be with him, I didn’t care where we went or that he had been there with Relena. He was with there with _me_ , that was the important thing in my mind.

I won’t say that I’m not jealous of Relena. It’s kind of hard not to be. I’ve spent most of my life under her shadow, pushed around by her, having my nose rubbed in the fact that she is everything that I will never be. Smart, rich, pretty, popular, straight, with normal parents that love her and would do anything for her. And for a small amount of time, but much longer than Heero and I have been together, she had the boy that I loved. The only boy that I had ever loved. She had had this shinning, perfect relationship that had spit on me in so many ways. They had seemed so happy together, he had made _her_ happy, this bitch that didn’t deserve to feel something like that, to be loved by him.

Every time they had walked down the hallways of the school together and people had gushed over them, I had felt this incredible pain. Not just because I secretly liked Heero and knew (back then) that I would never have anyone like him, let alone _him_ , but I would never have that relationship. I would never be normal. I could never hold hands with the person that I loved, not without the slurs and the hate and the disgust. Of course I had been jealous of her, how could I not?

The truly stupid thing is… I’m still jealous of her. Even now, with Heero, knowing that he picked me and that their entire relationship was based on a lie, that he had just been using her, I feel jealous. Because compared to me, she’s still perfect. Even as the wrong gender, even as hateful as she is, she is still better than I could ever hope to be. She still has a bigger chance of giving Heero what he wants than I ever could. How fucked up is that? Sure, he’s happy with his choice now, but how about months from now? A year? When he figures out how much of a freak I am? Tell me what’s worse, a girl that he was never interested in, or the boy that he is that’s just teasing him and leading him on? And I bet that she never worried him, never made him pay for everything or made him make promises he didn’t want to keep. I bet he never had to take care of her or punch out one of her exes or hold her while she cried.

“My dad used to take me to Granelli’s when I was a kid,” I told him, ignoring my inferiority complex, “Usually when something was bothering him, something at work or when he and Mom were having a rough time,” which was frequently in those days, back when they made some kind of attempt to be around each other before ignoring the other existed and avoidance became the best way they could cope with their marriage, “He told me once that his dad would take him whenever whatever sport team he was on back then would win, so I guess he considered it a tradition or something. Quatre was the same way,” I smiled sadly, caught in my memories, “He loved Granelli’s. Whenever he was upset about something, if Relena had done something especially mean to him or his parents had locked him out of the house or forgotten something they were supposed to do for him, he’d take me there. We never talked about it much, but he would always order this red velvet custard they have, his comfort food he’d call it, and he would seem a little bit better afterwards. I know it’s terrible, that I should associate the place with the people I care about feeling shitty about themselves, but I’ve always loved the place because I got to be with my dad and Quatre. Actually, I haven’t been there since…” my throat got tight and the words were strangled from me, “Well, you know.”

Heero was silent for a second, but even in the low light, he looked pale and stricken.

“Duo, I’m so sorry,” he finally said and there was such remorse in his voice, like he understood exactly how I was feeling. Actually, he probably did. I wonder if he felt any relief at all when he moved up here, that he would never have to go somewhere that reminded him of his friend or, if like me, he missed those places deeply _because_ they reminded him of Wufei, “If you want to go somewhere else-,”

“No,” I shook my head and smiled at him to show that I didn’t mind, “It’s not a bad thing. I like remembering being with Quatre. He was my best friend for four of the best years of my life. He made my life better, more than just bearable. Sure, it hurts remembering him because I miss him and losing him was the worst thing that I’ve ever been through, but remembering the good parts… remembering how much I loved him and the time that we spent together…”

“It’s a good hurt,” he finished, a statement, not a guess and that he understood the strange swirl of emotions I had as we stood in front of the ice cream shop made my heart burst with a newfound love for him.

“Yeah,” I murmured, “I like remembering him, before all of that. Even if he hurt me, I don’t want to forget him.”

Heero gave my hand a reassuring squeeze and we walked into the shop together. Although I hadn’t stepped a foot into the place in four years, Granelli’s was exactly the same as I remembered it, even down to the tip jar in the shape of a cow on the counter, always full of dimes and quarters from the patrons. On a Saturday after the first burst of warm weather, the place was a madhouse. I saw quite a few kids from school there, standing in line and socializing at one of the tables, but didn’t tell Heero that we should leave. No one was going to start anything with us. Granelli’s was neutral territory, a sacred place for teenagers just like the large arcade across the street. We could all put up with each other out of fear of getting kicked out, or worse, permanently banned.

If it hadn’t been so crowded, we would have shared one of their immensely popular sundaes, but opted for soft serve so we could take it with us. One of the reasons for Granelli’s popularity is that their soft serve doesn’t come out of one of those big machines, but a hand-cranked, old timey gadget that you have to scoop the ice cream into which takes longer, but you could ask for any flavor on their menu instead of the standard vanilla, chocolate, or half and half. I felt childishly giddy when I saw that they still had my favorite flavors on their menu and despite wanting to try something new ordered the same thing that I had usually gotten when I had been with Quatre: raspberry cream, double mocha, and lime soda which is kind of mix of lemon, lime, and green tea ice cream. I know it sounds bizarre, but I swear, the mix of tangy, fruity, and chocolate is great.

As we walked out the door, me with my Frankenstein creation and Heero with his Rocks and Berries, a Granelli creation of French vanilla, black raspberry, and dutch chocolate, he shot me the same look Quatre had given me the first time I had ordered that, incredulous and like I was nuts, but there was also this endearing warmth to it that my best friend had had all those years ago, like he thought I was being cute for some reason.

“What?” I challenged, taking a lick of my ice cream and almost sighed in contentment. The place really hadn’t changed at all, it tasted just the same as it had years ago; rich, creamy, and with just the right amount of sweetness.

“I love you,” he blurted out, right there on the sidewalk, making me blush a dark crimson.

A woman in her forties passing by us overheard and gave us a disgusted look. I didn’t even care.

“Why?” I asked, bewildered, “Because I get weird ice cream?”

“Yes,” he said with this pleasant smile and, feeling especially bold, gave me a quick peck on the lips before walking off in the direction of the beach.

I stared at him in confusion, but just shook my head, chalking it up to him being weird and followed him. We walked out to the getty and sat down on the edge. It was a cloudless night and the moon was full and fat. It turned the normally black waves a bright, whitish silver. I’m sure every couple that happened to be watching the moon like us thought so, but it seemed like it had been put there especially for us. We didn’t even start to head back to his place until around ten and when we got there, his parents were already in bed.

“I’m pretty tired,” Heero confessed and I didn’t blame him, after helping put up the treehouse and how I kept disrupting his sleep schedule, “I’m just going to go to bed. You?”

“It’s too early for me,” I admitted.

I knew that I should probably try to sleep while I could, but I was too used to going to bed at two and it wasn’t even quite eleven yet.

“Can you lay down with me?” he asked, his tone almost pleading, “I have a book light if you want to read.”

I recognized the signs of him being in full cling mode, but I didn’t mind it. Given that we only had one more day before we had to go back to school and this was the last night where I wouldn’t have work, I was feeling a tad clingy myself. Sure, I knew I was being ridiculous, feeling that way. It wasn’t like I was going off to war or we would never have a day like that again, I was just starting to feel the depression and anxiety of returning to school, to Zechs and the bullying and having less and less time to be with my boyfriend creeping up on me. I nodded and you would think that I had just given him my hand in marriage or something with the way he smiled.

I did my nightly rituals, making sure to refill Pepper’s food dish and grabbed my book. Heero was in bed when I came into the room and closed the door. He had the heating pad all warmed up for me and was nice enough to help me slip it under my shirt, although he let me adjust the strap across my chest so I could still sit up with it on. I set my alarm on my phone and stiffened as he watched me with a tight, unhappy frown, sure that this was going to devolve into a fight and I really didn’t want it to. It had been a great day and I was so tired of fighting with him, but to my immense relief he dropped it and just turned the light off when I had the light fixed to my book.

He was asleep within minutes, snoring lightly, stretched out on his side like a big, lazy cat. The sound was so soothing that I ended up putting my book down only an hour later, suddenly feeling sleepy, and feel asleep almost as quickly as he had, rolling over onto my stomach so my back could be the full benefit of the heating pad, feeling stupidly content and relaxed.

 

*****

 

When my phone vibrated in my ear at five-thirty, my initial instinct was to smack it right off the bedside table in grumpy irritation. Not because I hadn’t gotten enough sleep for once, but just because I was warm and comfy and ready to attack anything that wanted to try to drag me out of my dozing state. Of course, my higher brain power kicked in rather quickly to cruelly remind me that it was my own damned fault that I had to get up, not my phone’s. With an annoyed noise, I forced my eyes open and groped for the phone, finding it, flipping it open, and killing the vibration before nearly (but only nearly) slamming it back down. I rolled onto my back and realized that it was feeling a lot better, like ‘I might be able to survive this’ better, which helped to sooth some of my irritation. I still sat up slowly, not wanting to risk it, and saw Heero laying facing me, his eyes half lidded and looking as grumpy as I felt to have been woken up. I silently cursed myself and my phone for having roused him, whichever it had been, but at least I didn’t have to painfully shake him awake like before.

“You’re going?” he asked, his voice rough and thick and his eyebrows creasing in frustration.

I had the same, tense feeling of last night, that this was going to be another fight and I would do just about anything to keep it from getting to that point, because there was no resolution, the proverbial unstoppable force meeting the unmovable object, so I just nodded. To my shock, instead of snapping at me like before, he reached out to put a hand on my arm.

“Come back soon?” he pleaded, unknowingly hurtling daggers into my heart.

Without even thinking about it, like some kind of reflex, I smiled endearingly at him and leaned down to kiss his forehead, making him close his eyes and smile sleepily.

“I promise,” I told him, even knowing it might not be one that I could keep, “I’ll come back as soon as I can.”

He mumbled something and burrowed deeper into the sheets, content that I would be back. I rushed out the door, feeling pretty confident that things would go the way they had the previous morning, that my father wasn’t going to be home. That’s usually the way it is when I don’t see him on Saturdays. He would probably stumble in some time that night, have a quick and simple dinner, watch some television, and head to bed depending on what time he decided to go home. It always varied. There was the rare occasion when he would come home early Sunday morning and sleep off a hangover until noon, but I was hoping this wouldn’t be one of those times. I probably should have been more on edge than I was. I had had a good day, a too good day, really, and that usually spelled disaster, right? But I was in high spirits after spending all day with Heero and looking forward to spending my time before work with him. I was in an incredibly rare mood for me, feeling so good that it was like nothing could bring me down. Which is usually when something does, hard and violently, but I just couldn’t shake it. The morning was warm like the day before and my head was full of pleasant memories instead of screaming anxieties.

Thankfully, for once I was right and the universe wasn’t out to get me that morning. My father’s car was gone again and his boots weren’t by the door when I snuck in. Still, I wanted to be absolutely sure, so I went into the kitchen and found my mother already awake, drinking coffee and making herself scrambled eggs for breakfast to get ready for a morning shift. She flashed me a tired smile when she saw me and it was the lack of any fresh bruises on her face that told me my father likely hadn’t been around more than the missing car.

“Morning,” she said.

“Morning,” I walked into the kitchen slowly, still in high alert, just in case.

“He hasn’t been home all weekend,” my mother informed me with a knowing look and I would have felt embarrassed if she didn’t completely understand, or her tone hadn’t been as relieved as I felt.

“Oh,” I said, wondering if it would hurt her feelings to know that the only reason why I was there was to make sure _he_ wasn’t, or if she had already guessed that, “Well… I’m on my way back out, I was just popping in for a second.”

“Going to your friend’s?” she asked.

I nodded.

“I guess you don’t need breakfast then,” her smile was small and muted and there was something sad about it that dug at me.

I wondered if she missed me and wanted me home and I felt like the biggest prick in the world, and a horrible son to boot, that that possibility had never occurred to me. When I thought about being home, I only ever thought about my father. When I did think about my mom, it was more worry that he was hurting her than worry about her being alone. I’m just still getting used to her _wanting_ me around instead of pushing me away, but that doesn’t excuse it. There I was, enjoying being with Heero and my mother had no one.

I felt that pull, that strain on me as my balancing act went from two directions to three, the burden just continuously piling on. It was nearly impossible to balance this new, shining relationship with Heero and trying to cater to my father’s moods. Now I had to ask myself how much of my already limited time I could give to my mother. I wanted to spend time with her, too, I just… it hurts sometimes, you know? Remembering what she was like, loving her and loving our new connection and then feeling bitter towards her for not giving me that when I really needed her. Sometimes it’s just easier to put it all out of my mind, but how is that fair? She gave up drinking for me. She’s gotten hurt because of me. She’s trying to be a real mother to me and I don’t even spend any time with her. Guilt overflowed and oozed from my heart like ichor. At the same time that it made me feel like a monster, there was this tiny voice in my head pointing out that I was right to stay away. Away from her. Away from my dad. Away from that house because as soon as I went back there, it all just dragged me down again. Why should I want to come home when it only makes me feel miserable all the time?

“Is… is there anything you need for me to do before I go?” I asked helplessly, feeling a bit like a whipped dog.

“Well…” she bit her lip and with how much she was hesitating, I knew that she didn’t want to keep me, but whatever it was bothering her was important, “There is just one thing… if you aren’t too busy…”

I shook my head. I was desperate to get back to Heero, but my mother needed me more than he did. I followed her into the living room.

“I wouldn’t ask, but I had no idea what to do,” she said and, hearing the panic and stress in her voice, I knew I wasn’t going anywhere until whatever was wrong was fixed.

I immediately saw what that was when I noticed the heap of towels piled on the floor of the laundry room, some of them completely soaked.

“Again?” I sighed wearily.

She nodded, looking exactly how I felt. This was probably the third time already this year that the damned washer had leaked. Like most of our appliances, it had come with the house and stopped working properly ages ago.

“It needs to be fixed. The hose definitely needs replacing and a few other things as well, but…” she shrugged.

“It needs to be thrown out,” I muttered.

She gave me a smile that was completely devoid of humor, the both of us knowing full well that we couldn’t afford to pay someone to fix the washer, let alone replace it. All we could do was keep it running as best we could or start washing our clothes in a river. I wondered what my father would do when it died for good, finally cave and realize he needed to sell the car or stay stubbornly on the same path and insist we could get by without one.

“I’m not good at fixing things…” I said softly, insecure as I bitterly knew that this was my father’s area and if he were here, he would demand that I not touch anything because I would just fuck it up more and then rant about how any other seventeen-year-old boy would know how to fix a damned washer.

My mother, however, just smiled at me and put her hand on my arm in a show of support.

“You do fine,” she told me and would probably never know how much those three little words made me feel better, “Anything you can do, even if you can just get the water to stop… I put a towel around the leak and turned the water off, but it’s still coming out for some reason… Your father is going to throw a fit when he gets home,” she wrapped her arms around herself tightly and looked so pale, like a doll.

I thought about how Mariela would have said something like that as a joke, but with us, it was quite literal. My father could not come home and find this and I would do my damned hardest to make sure of that. I took off my socks so they wouldn’t get wet and marched into the laundry room like a soldier on a mission. I ignored how much I never wanted to be in that closet again and just focused on what I needed to do.

“Can you help me move it away from the wall?” I asked her and the two of us set about moving the huge, ancient thing, both with a great deal of strain without scraping the floor and onto the towels.

I was suddenly incredibly grateful that my back wasn’t wrecked anymore. Instead of addressing the water not shutting off issue, I turned on the rinse cycle and examined the hose as more water soaked into the layer of towels.

“It’s definitely something from inside the machine,” I told her and she chewed on her lip some more.

I turned the machine back off, unplugged it and took a look at the water tap. Sure enough, my mother had turned it off, but as I turned it, I felt how loose it was. It was turning, but it wasn’t closing the tap at all.

“Fuck,” I muttered in frustration. It was just one thing after another.

I unscrewed the wheel of the tap, alarmed at how easily it came off and saw that it was cracked and rusted to hell. A part of it had busted off and was still stuck, which was why it wasn’t doing anything.

“Mom, can you get some electrical tape, pliers, and a screwdriver from the shed?” I asked her.

“What kind?” she fretted, not knowing much about tools.

“Thinnest pliers you can find. Super, super thin, and a screwdriver to fit those,” I pointed to the screws on the back of the washing machine, knowing telling her the name of the screwdriver wouldn’t help her much.

She rushed off and I grabbed some more towels from the bathroom, working to dry off the floor as much as I could, partially because the last thing we needed to worry about was more mold and partially because I didn’t want it to be too wet as I worked. My mother was quick in returning with the tools and I got to work, first using the pliers to turn the piece of the tap that had broken off until the water stopped, then getting on my knees to work the cover of the washing machine off, not caring that my pajama pants were getting wet. My mother watched all of this with a pinched, but hopeful look on her face. She was probably hoping for a miracle and I felt incapable of providing one.

I saw what the problem was immediately. The external hose had been patched about a hundred times with glue and tape and who knows what else, but now the internal hose was fucked as well. It was cracked all over and starting to come apart.

“God fucking dammit,” I swore, feeling around the hose and finding the main source of the leak immediately, “This,” I pointed to it so my mother could see, “needs to be replaced immediately. I can probably patch it, but it’s just going to keep doing this until we get a new one.”

My mother got that sickly look that she always gets where we have a new expense she knows we can’t afford.

“I guess… I can look at our budget for next month… maybe if we shave some things…” the stress on her face was unbearable and I knew right then that she was hiding something.

“Mom, what aren’t you telling me?” I asked softly.

She looked away from me and at a puddle of water on the floor in the far corner that I had missed.

“Is it the bills again?” I pressed, “The electric?”

She nodded and the tears that were in her eyes just tore me to pieces.

“The oil was the worst, but electric is bad, too,” she whispered, her voice rough, “This winter was so bad… and we’re so behind…”

“How far behind?” I asked worriedly.

She leaned against the doorway and looked up at the ceiling wearily.

“Two months,” she confessed, making my stomach sink, “for the oil and electric. This… this will be the third month we won’t be able to make the full payment. And we’re a month behind on the water bill, too. We just…” she sighed, “We’ve been having problems with the pay decrease with your father’s new job. Ever since he got fired, we’ve been falling more and more behind. If something doesn’t change, they’re going to cut the power off. They’ve already started threatening to…”

“Mom, why didn’t you tell me?” I asked in shock.

I had known that our finances had been poor lately, but I hadn’t known they had gotten that bad. I watched in alarm as tears tracked down my mother’s face and she rubbed them against her arm. Suddenly, looking at her worn expression, I knew why she hadn’t told me. Because of what my father has been doing to me, she hadn’t wanted one more thing on my plate. She felt so guilty about not doing anything about it, she had started to hide anything that might make me even more upset. While I could appreciate that it was love and protectiveness that had made her do that, I didn’t like being coddled and I didn’t like that she had hidden this from me when I might be able to do something to help. This was my family. I might not like it, I might be ashamed of it sometimes and be distancing myself from it, but I couldn’t run away from it. If we were having problems, I wanted to do whatever I could to help.

“I didn’t want you to worry,” she told me, “I didn’t want you to feel like you needed to do anything about this. You already work so hard… I don’t want you to give up your days off because your parents are having a hard time.”

“Mom-,” I started to protest.

“No,” she interrupted me, her grey eyes fierce, “You’re just a teenager, Duo, this shouldn’t be on you! None of this should be! Your father shouldn’t be making you work just to help support all of us! You should be enjoying your teenaged years, getting a girlfriend, hanging out with your friend, enjoying your freedom before you become an adult, not growing up so fast! I can’t ask you to sacrifice any more than you already have…”

“You don’t have to ask me,” I got to my feet and pulled her into a tight hug, “We’re a family. We support each other. At least, that’s how it should be,” I thought of Heero’s family with pain as my mother cried into my shoulder, “I don’t know what to do, how I can help… Maybe… maybe I should drop out of school, go full time at work…”

My mother pulled away and glared at me angrily.

“Don’t you dare, Duo! Don’t you even _think_ of that!” she gave me a little shake, “Your father and I gave up on our education when I got pregnant. All the dreams I had in high school of graduating and going on to college… I threw them away because I needed the money to take care of you and make a home for myself. But you have a chance that your father and I never did! There is nothing stopping you from getting your high school education, from doing what we couldn’t and I will not let you throw it away like I did! We’re your parents, it’s our job to support _you_ , not the other way around! We’re failures, the both of us, we can’t even provide for you…”

“There has to be something! Something I can do to help…” I said, feeling desperate and helpless.

She smiled at me through her tears and cradled my face in her hands.

“Oh, sweetheart, you _are_ helping. You’ve been so wonderful for this family… taking on all those jobs without a single complaint, cooking meals, mending clothes, trying to fix things… You’re the only good thing that your father and I have ever done. There are days…” her voice cracked, threatening a sob that didn’t quite break out, “days when I look at you and I just can’t believe that you came from _us._ It’s like a miracle.”

Tears poured down my face and we hugged each other, full of love for each other, but a good deal of sadness, too, because, I realized, she was just as helpless and clueless as I was. But just like me, she was trying to keep it together.

“Don’t buy food for me anymore, ok?” I told her as we clung to each other, “Just buy enough for you and dad. I can eat at Heero’s house until things pick up, and shower there, too. And I’ll go through the house next weekend, try to find things that we can sell…”

“You don’t need to do that…” she tried to insist, but it was weak. She knew how bad things were even more than I did.

“Yeah, well, I’m going to do it anyway. There have to be more corners that we can cut…” I pulled away so I could look at her, hesitating and wondering if I should even broach this subject, “Mom… do you think… do you think we should sell the house?”

To my surprise, she didn’t seem all that shocked by my question and her expression as she looked away told me that this was something she had thought about as well.

“I know this place belonged to one of Dad’s uncles, but if we’re struggling just to keep up with bills, maybe it would be better to sell it and get someplace cheaper. We don’t have a whole lot of space as it is, but even if it’s just a shack or something, we could make it work.”

I knew it was hopeless even before my mother said anything. I didn’t even know if that old house was worth anything or if there was a way to lessen our expenses that way, but I was scrambling for _anything_ that could ease this burden

“Your father would never allow it,” she said bitterly, “This house was a gift to him, not even to his father, but _him_. He would rather we be in debt for the rest of our lives than admit that he couldn’t keep it, even to himself.”

I had known that she would say that. My father can’t even give up a fucking television set, how would he give up the entire house? I wanted to argue that he couldn’t very well keep the television set if we lost our power, but just let it drop. She flashed me a very luke warm smile and patted my arm.

“Thank you for trying, though,” she said, “We’ll think of something. But don’t you quit school or take on anymore shifts! You’re overworked as it is and I don’t want you to feel you need to be responsible for this.”

I sighed, but let it go. She was right, I knew. Heero has told me a thousand times now that I’m not an adult and it’s not up to me to take care of my parents’ mistakes and problems. There was no way in hell he’d let me take on more work or quit school. I knew exactly how that discussion would go down. We would fight, he would make all the sense in the world and I would cave because I had nothing to fight _with_ except a feeling of responsibility and wanting to help. For now, all I could do was tackle one problem at a time and right then, the problem was the washing machine. The rest of it, our debt and the bills and overwhelming stress would have to wait for another day.

As stressed as I was over this bit of news, there was a part of me that was happy at how far my mother and I had come, from spiteful, bitter strangers, to awkward acquaintances dancing on eggshells around each other, to her trying to shoulder all of this so I didn’t have to and actually acting how I imagined any mother would, making sacrifices so I wouldn’t have to for once. I refused to accept that and I would do whatever I could to help her, but I loved her caring about me.

I returned to the washing machine and, carefully and thoroughly, patched up every hole and crack I could find with the tape. When I screwed the back of it into place, turned it on and put it through another cycle without it leaking a single drop of water, my mother and I shared a triumphant grin despite the fact that all we had done was fix a light on a sinking ship. Hey, one problem at a time, right?

“Oh, thank you so much, Duo!” my mother pulled me into another quick hug, her voice filled with so much relief that I thought she was going to start crying again, “I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

I blushed, sure that my father would have done a better job, but still feeling a bit proud that I fixed the problem, even just temporarily.

“I can stick around and clean up,” I offered, knowing that it was late and she needed to get to work, unless she was already late, but she waved me off.

“No, I’ll do it. You have fun with your friend,” she urged, but there was this… tight, little pain in her eyes.

It was like a twisted mix of loneliness and jealousy, wishing she had my freedom, wishing she had a friend to run to, or wishing she had my time like Heero did, I don’t know. It drove that dagger of guilt deeper and deeper into me, enough that I almost stayed. But I also knew that if I did, she would hate herself for it. And I had promised Heero. I was being pulled beyond my limits again, so all I could do was nod. I put my socks back on and started to walk to the door, but paused and turned back to her as she picked up the soaked towels.

“Mom… do my favor and don’t tell Dad about the hose, ok?” I asked, “Just let me handle it?”

She stared at me, puzzled, but nodded.

“Sure,” she said, “It’s probably for the best he doesn’t know about this.”

I trusted that she would listen to me, giving her a grateful smile, and left the house. I was still worried, though. My father has this weird ability to sniff out a lie, it’s almost impossible to pull one over on him unless he’s drunk. It wouldn’t matter that it wasn’t even a big, important lie, just that one of us had lied to him would set him off, but lies of omission were easier. If my dad didn’t notice anything wrong with the laundry room, I doubted he would figure out that something had happened with the hose.

As I walked, I ran everything that had just happened through my head about a billion times, the hose, our financial problems, how to deal with my father, what we were going to do… Stress, like an ulcer filled with acid, thick and heavy and sickly, formed in my guts, weighing me down and making my head throb. What the hell were we going to do? I thought through all my options, both the things that were feasible and the things that, like quitting school, I knew I wasn’t going to do. It all seemed so hopeless. Even if I did quit school and started working full time, I wasn’t confident that I could do much to help. I had no clue how much in the hole we were, but judging by my mother’s levels of stress, it was a lot.

The problem, I realized by the time I got to the north side of town, wasn’t how little my parents made. It wasn’t how expensive our bills were or how much we used the heat or that I wasn’t working enough. The problem was my father. In the past, I would have hated myself just for thinking that and refused to believe such a thing, but lately, Heero and his parents have done a lot to open my eyes to some things. I know it’s not entirely my father’s fault that we’re broke, but it _is_ his fault that we’re this much in debt that we have almost no hope of paying our bills.

Heero and Justin are right. My father has let his pride and selfishness bring him to this place, not society or some bad luck. He had options, but they would make him look weak, make him look like he had failed, so he refused to even consider them. Sure, we were always getting by on the skin of our teeth with money, but when I was a kid, every bill got paid because my father had been careful with money. But over the years… I don’t know, it’s like he’s stopped caring. Not enough that he doesn’t still scream at me for using up too much warm water in the shower or keeping a light on for too long, but enough that he does stupid things. Like not selling the car or spending all my mother’s tips on booze. Do you have any idea how much money we saved when my mother stopped drinking? Every cent she used to spend on vodka and whiskey was now being fed into bills and meals and it had helped. If my father did the same, if he swallowed his pride and sacrificed some things, maybe we could dig ourselves out of the hole enough to survive.

Maybe, I thought angrily, building myself up to a decent, bitter rage, if he didn’t spend all weekend out drinking with Pat, he could take on a second job like me. All of the lectures Heero and Justin have given me about how I shouldn’t be working so hard rang in my head. It had taken a lot for me to just ask for two days off so I could get my homework done and spend time with my boyfriend, and my father had never even considered giving up his weekends for me, for us. He wouldn’t cut down on the television to save electricity or ask his friends for help. He was too content to ignore his side of the problem. Hell, if it weren’t for him and his pride and his drinking, he never would have been fired in the first place. For all I knew, it was those qualities that had kept him from being promoted.

By the time I got back to Heero’s house, I was so frustrated and upset, depressed and angry that I felt like I was going to cry. I had come to a conclusion, one that made me hate myself, but I couldn’t ignore the logic of. There was nothing I could do to help. Not really, not in any way that truly mattered. I, alone, could not get us out of debt. I couldn’t pay off the thousands of dollars that my parents owed to the oil and electric companies, not unless I did something really drastic or lucked into a much better job. This knowledge did nothing to alleviate my stress, though, it only multiplied it by a thousand. I didn’t know what to do. I just felt like there was this great, big, black shadow looming over me and I knew that whatever was making it was going to collapse on top of me, but no matter which direction I ran, no matter how hard or fast, I couldn’t escape it. I didn’t even know how bad this might get. Would they really cut off our power? Were we going to lose the house, what little we had?

I felt so sick. All I wanted to do was crawl back into bed with my boyfriend and pretend that everything was fine. Do what my father does and live in denial, act like all of this doesn’t exist. That we aren’t broke. That my father doesn’t beat and rape me. That my mother is happy. That _I’m_ happy. I left the house that morning feeling like everything was sunshine and rainbows and in the course of just a couple hours, everything was shit again. Is my life always going to be this way? Is every scrap of happiness I find only fleeting until the inevitable fall, like a single ray of sunlight through a rainstorm?

I put it out of mind. Or at least I tried to. That shit didn’t belong with Heero and I refused to let it track into his home like mud, I would only worry him again. But even though I refused to think about it, I could still feel the stress and my depression, splinters in the back of my brain. Eager to see Heero again, I turned the knob of the front door, only to find that it was locked.

I stared at it for a moment, bewildered. It’s not like I’ve never come over to Heero’s and not found the door locked, but only when everyone was out of the house, and that wasn’t possible in this instance, right? I hadn’t been gone for very long, less than two hours, so even if Heero’s parents had gone out, Heero definitely wasn’t up yet. I tried the knob again, stupidly, or rather stubbornly, thinking that I had just turned it wrong or it was stuck or something just as asinine, but no, it was definitely locked. I looked at my phone, but it was just a little after seven and there were no new messages. Maybe Justin and Mariela were staying in and had forgotten to unlock it after I had left that morning. I dug my keys out of my pocket and unlocked it, still feeling a little confused, but it wasn’t a big deal.

I was met at the door by Kanuck, barking happily and wagging his tail furiously to see me.

“Hey, boy,” I greeted, wondering what he was so hyper about and found my answer in the hall closet when I went to store my shoes.

          Three pairs were missing from the neat row of shoes and it took me a second to realize that Heero’s dress shoes were one of them. That explained why the door was locked, they had gone out somewhere, but where and why? I didn’t feel hurt that they had left and not told me, just puzzled, maybe a little bit depressed that I had wanted to see Heero, but I had been feeling pretty down in the first place, so even that wasn’t a big deal. I hoped that they would be back before I went to work at nine, but I would see them afterwards if they didn’t. So why did I feel so disappointed?

          “Left you all alone, huh?” I asked Kanuck and he whined at me like he was agreeing.

          I thought about trying to go back to bed, but I only had an hour and a half until I needed to leave for work, so that seemed pointless. Besides, Heero’s bed might still be warm and it would smell like him and that would just make me miss him worse than I already did. I might as well shower and get some breakfast since I had time to kill and maybe make a lunch to take to work. Keeping busy would be the only thing that could keep the stupid, annoying heartache at bay. That’s what they never tell you about falling in love with someone, that it makes you pathetic enough to miss them when you had just seen the person and would again eventually that day. It made me feel like a moron, but that didn’t make the ache any less real.

          Upstairs, Heero’s bed was neatly made, really nailing home that he was gone and probably would be for a while. I fished out some sweatpants and an old, loose shirt from the guest room after some debate to just put on my uniform, deciding that being lazy and comfortable was going to trump being prepared that day. Kanuck followed me around like a shadow, happy to have someone around and whined when I shut him out of the bathroom, actually laying outside the door and waited for me to come out. It almost made me laugh that we were the same, lonely and desperate for amicable company, clinging to each other. If the dumb dog hadn’t been around, I have no doubt that I would have felt worse. Still, the shower felt good and I felt a little bit better after it. I didn’t feel like I had the right to complain. Every time my feelings tried to get me to feel sorry for myself, I remembered the broken washing machine and how my mother had cried out of stress. What the fuck did I have to feel bad about, just missing my boyfriend while I showered in hot water that I never had to pay for and eating food that was both plentiful and free? Of course, that just made me feel worse again, guilty and more pathetic by the minute.

          In the kitchen, I found a large plate of what looked like cake covered on the table and a note on the fridge:

          ‘Duo, we’ve all gone to church, but we’ll be back in an hour. Please help yourself to some butter ring! Also there’s ham and hard boiled eggs in the fridge.’

          At the bottom of it was Mariela’s signature and a couple of hearts. I shook my head at it, a smile finding its way on my face. Leave it to Heero’s mom to think about me even when they were trying to get out the door. But church? Why had they gone to church? I know that Heero’s family is more religious than mine, which really isn’t saying a lot, but they celebrate all the major Christian holidays and go to one of the churches in town, but it doesn’t seem to be a regular thing with them like some people. Justin and Mariela do go to church some Sundays, but it’s rare that Heero goes with them. Not out of a lack of religion, he just hates waking up early. Their faith, whatever it is, seems to be rather loose and they’ve never rubbed it in my face, so it’s easy to forget sometimes that they aren’t atheist like my father or agnostic like me.

          ‘Must be something special about today,’ I reasoned, something in the back of my mind niggling at me that I should know what it was, that I had missed something.

          But I am not exactly an expert on religious holidays and I couldn’t remember if Heero had mentioned it to me, so I just shrugged and let myself feel relieved that they would be back before I had to go to work. I cut myself a slice of butter ring, which turned out to be an incredibly sugary cake slathered with cream cheese frosting, and dug out the ham from the fridge. I was surprised to find that there was a good amount of hard boiled eggs, which was weird because no one in the family really had a deep love for them. Even weirder, someone had dyed them a bunch of different, obnoxiously bright colors. There was that niggling feeling again, but it didn’t seem important. Maybe Mariela had done it out of boredom or something.

          I grabbed a couple of eggs, peeled off their colorful shells, and garnished them with chive, pepper, salt, and just a tiny bit of ketchup and sat down at the kitchen table to eat. Even as I ate, that thing in the back of my head kept digging into me, telling me that I had missed something rather obvious. The eggs, the ham, which was very good and obviously not just cold cuts from the deli, two things that were not served a lot in the Yuy household… I probably could have just looked at the calendar in the kitchen, but I didn’t care that much. My mind was trying to be occupied with bigger, more important, and infinitely more stressful things and I was trying to ignore those thoughts all together, so what day it was, what religious holiday it might be, was pretty irrelevant.

          I did the dishes and still had an hour left to kill, so I decided to go outside for some fresh air since my options were to do that, sulk around the house, read, or watch some television. Kanuck had started to paw at the back door to do his business anyway, so I let him out and sat on the porch, waiting for him to come back. It was another nice day out, the sun undisturbed by any clouds, and the air was warmer than normal for a March day. It was the sort of day that made me loathe the fact that I had work. Sure, I was going to be out on some project, but I yearned for a day like I had on Saturday when I could be with Heero instead of my homophobic coworkers and relax and not need to do anything. I would worry that I was getting lazy if I didn’t know that working had nothing to do with it, that it was my anxiety that I was worrying about.

I was high strung and tense even though I was trying not to think about our money problems and quickly heading towards that kind of mood where I’d want to deck someone if they said anything nasty to me. That I had school in the morning, which now came with it, not just the likelihood of seeing Zechs again and having to do my evasion dance with him, the possibility that I might run into Trowa. I hated that that was now added to my plate and had to quickly shut down _that_ realization before it spiraled out of control and might drag back memories of our encounter on Monday. Fuck, had that really just been Monday? It felt like months ago.

I closed my eyes and just tried to focus on the soft breeze ruffling my bangs and the feel of the sun on my face, but it was hard. So much had happened that week, some of it pleasant, but some of it was wracking my nerves just to remember. I was starting to feel overwhelmed again, like I was never going to escape from all of my worrying and problems when I felt a cold nose quest around my face and I opened my eyes to see Heero’s dog sniffing at me before giving me a tentative lick on the cheek. Both Kanuck and I knew that he wasn’t supposed to do that, but I let it slide, enjoying the sign of comfort. I smiled and stroked one of his ears to show my appreciation. He laid his head in my lap and looked up at me mournfully. I don’t know if he sensed that I was feeling down or if he was just that desperate for attention, but I was grateful that he was there with me. It was stupid, but he made me feel a little better, just to not be alone. I thought about hunting Pepper down and bringing her out, too, but she absolutely hates being outside. I think that period of time when she had been abandoned scarred her and every time I try to get her to go outside, she’s either too scared of whatever she experienced as a kitten or she thinks I’m trying to abandon her, too. She did enjoy it when I stashed her in my pocket and took her to the beach, but she’s way too big for that now and while she’ll tolerate me holding her and bringing her outside, she always clings to me and looks miserable when I do it. Her anxiety really wasn’t worth my comfort.

Needing a distraction, I found one of Kanuck’s balls that had rolled under the porch and played fetch with him for a while. It was oddly soothing, watching the canine chase after it excitedly, even though my throws weren’t that great compared to Heero’s and the dog brought them back pretty quickly. He seemed to enjoy it at least. I had wrestled the ball from him for about the tenth time and had cocked my arm back to throw it again when he bolted forward onto the porch past me, barking excitedly and wagging so fiercely that I worried he might fall over. That was ok, if I had a tail, I probably would have wagged it, too. I turned and saw Heero pulling the sliding door open, only to almost get knocked over by his dog. He and his parents must have been home for a while because he had changed out of his dressier church clothes and into worn jeans and sneakers.

“Ack,” Heero shoved his dog back down, “I appreciate how much you missed me after a single hour, but down, dammit.”

The canine obediently sat, but his butt still wiggled happily. Heero didn’t even pay him any attention as soon as he saw me sitting on the edge of the porch, his face breaking out into a beaming smile.

“Hey,” he greeted.

I raised my hand in a slight wave.

“Hey, how was church?” I asked.

“Church-like,” he quipped and sat down next to me, “Pretty boring and uninspired, actually. I think it’s the same sermon they give every year, the pastor looked pretty bored, too. My dad wasn’t very impressed with it. How was home?”

“Fine,” I lied, “My dad wasn’t there again.”

His expression fell, just a little, as he probably thought about my bitter remark the last time I had found my father gone, but mostly he seemed relieved.

“Before I forget,” he plopped a white box that he had been hiding behind his back onto my lap, “Happy Easter.”

I stared down at it. Easter. Of course it was. I really _was_ a total idiot to not have realized that between the ham and the colored eggs and the time of year it was. Hell, I was sure that my coworkers had been talking about it, but I’m so used to tuning them out and I had been so focused on my own problems that I hadn’t noticed the decorations up around town or people talking about their Easter plans. How thick could you possibly get?

“Uh…” I looked back over at Heero who had been watching me with amusement, “Yeah, Happy Easter.”

“You had no idea, did you?” he smirked knowingly and I blushed a little in embarrassment. Am I really so oblivious that he had guessed that?

“I guess it just slipped my mind,” I muttered, which was kind of a lie since it hadn’t entered my mind to begin with, “You didn’t say anything about it yesterday.”

“I wasn’t sure if you were doing anything for it,” he shrugged, “You didn’t say anything yourself, so I just figured you didn’t care.”

“Not really,” I admitted, “We never colored eggs or went to church for it when I was a kid. My mother would and she wanted to take me, but my father wouldn’t let her.”

Heero raised an eyebrow at that and I rushed to explain.

“My dad has always… I don’t know, looked down at her for her faith. He sees it as pointless and silly and would tease her about it sometimes. At first when my mom would take me to church, back when I was really little, he would just refuse to go, but then he started to outright refuse. He said he didn’t want her to fill my head with ‘that jesus crap’,” I quoted, “They fought about it sometimes, mostly on Christmas and Easter. My mom said once that I was going to grow up not even knowing God or right or wrong, but my father put his foot down and said that she wasn’t going to brainwash ‘his son’ into believing in some imaginary boogieman in the sky telling him how to act,” I chuckled bitterly, “I was always his son when he was trying to make a point with her, but the second I fucked up, I was only hers.”

I noticed that Heero’s expression had turned sour and realized what I had said and could have slapped myself for it.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized profusely, hoping like hell that I hadn’t hurt his feelings or made him mad at me, “I didn’t mean to offend you or your beliefs…”

He shook his head.

“You didn’t. I’m not the sort of person who’s so sensitive, I’d get pissy if someone didn’t believe in the same things that I do,” he assured me, “I just think your father is a prick for making fun of your mother for believing in something. And he’s an even bigger prick for not giving you a choice. Everyone should have a choice to either believe or not believe in whatever appeals to them. Even if he doesn’t believe in God, he shouldn’t look down on people that do.”

I agreed with him on that. I might not believe in God, and maybe that’s because of my father’s refusal to let my mother take me to church or maybe it’s because of everything that’s happened to me in my life, but I didn’t begrudge my mother or Heero for their religion, even if I didn’t completely understand it.

“So, what is this?” I pointed to the box, desperate to steer the conversation away from me and my parents, “You got a present for someone who doesn’t even celebrate Easter?”

“Like I need a reason to get you a present,” he jokingly scoffed, “Just because you don’t celebrate it, it doesn’t mean I can’t get you something. _I_ celebrate it. Easter is supposed to be about miracles and hope. It’s about something beautiful coming from something terrible,” he suddenly blushed very darkly and looked down at the ground shyly, “At church, the pastor told us to think about something in our lives that reminds us of that and I… I thought about us.”

His dark blue eyes glanced at me, gauging my reaction. For a moment, I was completely speechless and when I finally did find the words, there was some emotion wrapped around my throat, making it hard to breathe.

“You think we’re beautiful?” I asked in almost a whisper, my heart beating wildly.

Heero slid his hand over mine and wrapped his fingers around me.

“I do,” he confessed, “Everything else… how we’re treated at school… Zechs, Relena, all of them… it’s all so ugly. But us? We love each other. We’re strong together. This relationship we have makes me feel like I can face all of that like it’s nothing. How can that not be beautiful?”

Heat licked at my face. For someone who claims he isn’t that articulate, he could really nail things on the head. I’ve felt the same way about our relationship, that it’s this beautiful thing, the only good, pure thing in my life, but hearing that Heero felt the same way was… I can’t describe it. It bowled me over and it made me love him even more. I hadn’t even thought it possible, to love him more, like there’s no bottom to this.

“You’re so corny,” I grumbled to hide my embarrassment.

“Just open it,” he laughed.

I obediently opened the box and found a large, chocolate egg about the size of my two fists, decorated with pastel-colored flowers made of frosting. When I picked it up to inspect it, I realized that it was actually cut so a third of it was a lid. The inside was stuffed full of jelly beans and little lamb, chick, and rabbit shaped chocolates.

“Wow,” I marveled, picking up one of the lambs, “This is so neat.”

“I thought you would like it,” Heero smiled, “The lambs are filled with peanut butter, the chicks with crème, and the rabbits are milk chocolate.”

I popped one of the chicks in my mouth and hmm’d appreciatively before handing a rabbit to Heero, knowing he prefers milk chocolate to dark.

“You really didn’t need to get me anything,” I felt the need to say, even though I knew he didn’t care.

“But I wanted to,” he pointed out.

“But… I didn’t get you anything,” I protested.

“You came back,” he said with a cheesy smile and kissed my cheek.

I snorted at that. Like I wouldn’t spend every waking moment with him unless I couldn’t help it. I dug another piece of chocolate out, a chick this time, and popped it in my mouth before putting the lid back on the egg and putting it back in the box so it wouldn’t melt in my hands. The dark chocolate was really rich and the egg itself looked like it must have been expensive. The guilt that had never quite left me since I had left my house tore at me. I felt disgusted with myself. There I was, feeling sorry for myself for my family’s financial trouble while my mother was upset that we couldn’t even afford a washing machine hose that probably cost only a little bit more than the chocolate I was eating. What right did I fucking have to complain about anything when my parents were the ones struggling through this? I had a safety net, they had _nothing_.

My mother had taken all of this on herself because my father couldn’t be bothered. She had to police everything, every expense, just to make sure they had enough to make it through every week and instead of doing my part, instead of working more or making the same sacrifices, I was eating huge, home cooked meals and sleeping in a house that was always warm, always had power, and always had hot water, and I dared to say that I was stressed? I was a fucking hypocrite. Hell, my mother was probably working right at that moment on a holiday instead of going to church or whatever it was she could be doing to celebrate it while I ate Easter candy. I should be pulling double shifts on my weekends like her, not taking Saturdays off and just doing a single on Sundays. What the hell did things like homework or hanging out with friends mean when my family was falling apart, what little of it was left? I should be…

Thinking about work just then, about going to Leneski’s and asking him to work longer that day despite how much I wanted to be with Heero, again torn between what I wanted and what I should do, something dawned on me, something that I should have realized before that made me feel like an idiot. I fell back, laying my back against the warm deck and looked up at the cloudless, powdered blue sky. Despite everything that was going on with my life, my guilt and stress and self-loathing, just lying there next to Heero and looking up at that endless expanse was somehow soothing. Peaceful.

“I don’t have work today,” I said out loud, still feeling like a moron.

“No?” Heero asked, sounding relieved and excited that we would have another full day together.

I wish I could muster up those same feelings. I did feel relieved and excited, but deep down, past the guilt that was growing and growing exponentially. I had the day off. I should feel happy. Instead, I felt like a louse because my mother had to work all day and night, which was what I should be doing. My father should be doing it, too, I thought with bitterness. Instead we were ‘relaxing’. A day off didn’t mean spending time with Heero, I reminded myself in anger, it meant another day without pay. Why should I feel good about that? Why should I feel happy when my mother was scared and worn down? I hated myself just for feeling good that I didn’t have to go to work. I hated myself for having this safety net with all these resources and I still couldn’t do a single, fucking thing to help her, only myself.

“No,” I confirmed, trying my hardest not to let Heero see that I was upset, “The business is family run and my boss is pretty religious. Catholic, I think. He always closes up for major holidays, some of the smaller ones, too.”

“Great,” Heero said, but there was a note of worry in his voice. Not much, just a tinge, something that most people wouldn’t have even noticed unless you knew him as well as I do. I wondered if I was a worse actor than I thought and he had realized something was bothering me or if it was over something else. Or maybe I was so wrapped up in my problems that I was just imagining it.

          I heard the door sliding open behind me and sat up. Justin poked his head out.

          “Hey boys,” he greeted.

          Mariela muscled her way past him to step out onto the deck, all beaming smiles and dressed in a very pretty, lacey white top and pale blue jeans, a weird mix of dressy and casual.

          “Happy Easter, Duo!” she smiled widely at me, like an excited child, and she was so sincere and endearing that I had to smile back at her.

          “Happy Easter,” I echoed.

          “Your mom and I are helping out at the town Easter egg hunt,” Justin told Heero, which explained why Mariela was wearing jeans instead of a nice skirt, “We were going to hold off until Duo goes to work, but-,”

          “Actually, he doesn’t,” Heero jumped in, “because of the holiday.”

          “Oh, that’s great!” his mother clapped her hands together, “We can have dinner together! You like lamb, don’t you, Sweetie?” she asked me.

          I nodded.

          “Then it will just be the two of you for the afternoon,” Justin said, “The hunt finishes around three, I think. Rebecca wasn’t very clear in her instructions.”

“Rebecca Darlian?” I guessed suspiciously and caught Heero’s frown.

James and Rebecca Darlian, Relena and Zechs’s parents, have their fingers in just about everything in this town, especially if it made their family look good or boosted their social standing, however that works. That included Nausten’s yearly Easter egg hunt. It was really just an event for kids, obviously, but it was also an event for parents to socialize as they supervised their kids and had refreshments. I have never been to it personally, but I know that Relena always gets roped into attending and it was one of those things the entire town gets involved with and is supposedly a big deal, although not for anyone in their teens. It didn’t surprise me at all that, being the new family in town even if they didn’t have a young kid, the Darlians would take it among themselves to invite the Yuy’s. Even if their son had broken their daughter’s heart. That’s just the sort of people Relena’s parents are: reputation before personal grudges. Or maybe they hadn’t liked Relena dating Heero that much, who knows. I just found it really… weird. I mean, did they know _why_ they had broken up? Did they know that the same punk that had punched out both their children in middle school was seeing their daughter’s ex? Did they know that the Yuy’s son was gay? I didn’t think they were going to start any trouble, it wasn’t their style, but that didn’t make the thought of Heero’s parents hanging out with Relena’s any less surreal. I was just glad my parents weren’t involved. I don’t think my brain could handle the crossover.

“You’ve met?” Mariela asked me.

“Once,” I admitted, “She and Mr. Darlian. They seemed… nice.”

‘Unlike their kids’ was on the tip of my tongue, but so was the fact that they probably never would have given a kid from the south end like me the time of day if I hadn’t almost broken their daughter’s nose. Nice people, yes, but they tended to turn a blind eye to things if their kids were any indication.

“Unlike their kids,” Heero muttered under his breath and I almost burst out laughing at how our thoughts had been in sync.

“Well, Rebecca’s manners have skipped a generation,” Mariela remarked very cattily, again not keeping her feelings about Relena hidden.

Justin shot her a warning look, but his wife just looked innocent. I’m pretty sure she has perfected that look to whip it out in situations like this.

“Behave,” he scolded, but there was more amusement in his tone than anything else, “It would be nice if you didn’t burn bridges when we’ve only just moved here.”

“I _do_ behave,” she said childishly, giving Heero and I a conspiratory wink, “I get along with Rebecca just fine. Even if she has her head in the clouds half the time. I still think she bumps into me around town on purpose. Probably thinks that if she points out how _perfect_ our kids were together, I’ll make them get back together.”

In all of the months that I have known Mariela, I had never seen such disgusted contempt from her and had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing at the sudden image of her being subtly snide and catty at Relena’s mother and Rebecca being too dense to see the hostility.

“ _Behave_ , dear,” Justin repeated and with a roll of his eyes, dragged her back into the kitchen before poking his head out again, “And that goes double for you two,” he cautioned, but was looking at Heero.

“We’re just going to hang out at the tree house and watch some movies,” Heero insisted with an annoyed expression, crossing his arms over his chest defensively.

“We’ll bring you boys back some cake!” Mariela called cheerfully from the kitchen, poking her head back out, too, “If anyone brings any that _isn’t_ store bought, that is,” she made a face at the mere thought before Justin pushed her back in.

“We’re going to be late,” he said dryly, but I think he was amused by her antics.

          “Your Mom’s a real card,” I joked when the both of them finally left.

          “She’s a real _something_ ,” my boyfriend drawled.

          “Relena’s mom doesn’t really bump into her on purpose, does she?” I asked worriedly.

          “Yes, actually,” he sighed heavily, “She did it the last time we were at the grocery store together, even though I know for a fact that she doesn’t shop at the same one that we do. It was mostly stupid small talk, but she had to point out in front of me how depressed Relena has been since our breakup, how disappointed she and her husband were about it, what a _shame_ it was, and couldn’t the two of us just put whatever silly disagreement we had behind us and make up?” he mocked, “After all, we are just ‘oh so perfect for each other.’ I almost told them that homophobic bitches aren’t my type, and even if they were, we couldn’t possibly be perfect for each other because Relena doesn’t have a dick,” I almost choked just with the mental image of him saying anything remotely like that to Rebecca Darlian’s face, “I thought my mom was going to drop a watermelon on Mrs. Darlian’s foot at one point. She had to make some half-assed excuse just to get away from her. The woman is relentless.”

          I laughed, and god, it felt so good just to laugh, just to have this silly conversation with him.

          “Does she seriously not know that your mother can’t stand Relena?” I asked, which didn’t seem possible given how Mariela refused to hide that fact, even from Heero.

          “She’s completely oblivious,” Heero grumbled, “Like my mom said, head in the clouds. Or she’s just in denial. She’s nice, like you said, Relena’s father is, too. And I get that they’re just trying to do right by their daughter and I don’t know if they actually know what really happened and are ignoring it or are clueless, but if they keep it up, my mother really is going to say something about it.”

          “Probably not a good idea to piss off the most powerful family in town,” I pointed out.

          “My mom really doesn’t care,” he said with affection, “She just hates that passive aggressive attitude of Rebecca’s, and her arrogance to boot. Relena was the same way when we were dating,” his expression turned sour as he remembered those days, long before we had become friends and he had been trying to bury himself in an ugly lie, “She’d even have that same tone any time we would have a disagreement, like I was crazy or hysterical just for having a different opinion and she knew best about everything. I hated it.”

          The pure loathing in his voice shocked me. Sure, he’s never spoken about Relena with much affection, but beyond reacting to what I’ve told him about her, he’s never seemed all that hateful towards her, either. I think it’s because he still holds a lot of guilt for lying to her and getting her hopes up. It was kind of refreshing to know just how much he had hated being with her and a huge relief that he was happier in our relationship than he had ever been in his last one, even if I felt a bit like an ass for liking something he had only done out of fear and self-loathing. At the same time, I knew exactly how he felt. I remember all the times she had talked to me like that. I remembered fighting with her in our middle school as she told me that my best friend was a freak and was going to hell, that haughty, arrogant tone and her incredibly, not subtle at all, insinuation that I was going right along with him. Because to Relena Darlian, everyone was stupid and inferior except for her and we should all feel blessed that she deigned to speak to us and give her exceptional advice of how to live our lives. That was what had gotten Quatre’s arm broken, him daring to tell her she was wrong.

          “Well,” Heero said in a much more neutral tone as he stood up, “I’m going to make some lunch. They had some snacks at church, but nothing very filling and none of us wanted to stick around. You want anything.”

          “Sure, I could eat,” I followed him back into the kitchen.

          “Want to have lunch in the tree house?” he asked, digging out a loaf of white bread from one of the drawers, “Since it’s so nice out.”

          I nodded. I really didn’t want to be cooped up in the house. Even though Heero’s home feels about three times bigger than my own, I was oddly claustrophobic that day. My skin felt like it had been pulled on like a glove that was two sizes too small and the enclosed space was stagnant to me. I was probably having some kind of nervous reaction from the level of stress I was under, even if I refused to think about it or acknowledge it. Heero made me a peanut butter and banana sandwich, and a peanut butter and jelly for himself, and put some strawberries and blueberries into a Tupperware container and loaded all of it, including a thermos of cold, sun tea into a picnic basket. We took Kanuck with us this time, sans leash as Heero said he had been training him more strictly not to wander off outside and he was confident he wouldn’t chase after a squirrel or get into a neighbor’s yard.

          Getting up into the treehouse took some doing now that it was constructed and we still didn’t have a ladder, but we managed. Kanuck whined pitifully up at us, but with a single command, he laid down in the shade of the tree and seemed content to stay there, just watching things in the distance.

          “This was definitely a good idea,” Heero sad as we sat down and looked out over the hill of grass, finally starting to come back to life after the long winter.

          I nodded and took a bite from my sandwich. It really was beautiful and I should have felt at ease, happy to be with my boyfriend, having lunch, and relaxing without having to worry about work or anything else. But with the distraction of his parents and the walk out to the treehouse gone, my mind was free to wander. As I ate my lunch, I remembered the first time that I had eaten a peanut butter and banana sandwich. My mom had made it for me, though I can’t remember why. My father had said she was stupid for giving a weird sandwich like that to a little kid, sure that I was going to hate it and then he would be stuck eating it and he didn’t even like bananas. But then he had praised me for liking it, for trying new things, and ruffled my hair. I remember the joy of that touch and feeling proud of myself for having earned it. Even my mother had beamed at me, but there had been something in her expression that had taken some of the brightness out of the moment. Only a tiny bit, but it had been there, something I hadn’t been able to understand, but still a tiny kernel of something had worried at me.

          Older and recognizing such an expression, I knew it had been relief. Relief that I had liked it and hadn’t gotten my father mad. I had been young enough back then to not feel quite as fearful over my father’s moods and, in reality, he had been in a much better temperament back then to not have struck me. But then again, back then, he had been more likely to hit her than me. I don’t know if he had loved me more back then, had been more conscious of how easy it would have been to seriously hurt me, or just hated her more for her growing coldness towards him, before it had become a staple in our family.

          Suddenly, the image of my mother from that morning, leaning against the doorway and crying silently in anxiety and fear and stress wormed its way back into my head and the good mood that I had been starting to build back up faded. Guilt that had been lying dormant exploded in a tidal wave and my stomach twisted painfully, something inside me clenching into a tight ball of stress and agony as it all came flooding back. I felt ill with it and had to put my sandwich down. I was hit, for about the hundredth time that day, with a sense of impending doom, like I was staring at an abyss and knew that the longer I stood at the edge, the more likely the ground beneath my feet was going to crumble.

          What the fuck was I doing? My family was falling apart. We were broke, broker than we had ever been before. My father didn’t give a shit. Our power was probably going to be shut off, and who even knew for how long, and I had no clue what else we were going to lose before we got our feet back under us. If we ever did. I should be at home, going through our finances, trying to find a way to get that money and increase our income, even if it meant invoking my father’s rage like selling things he didn’t want to or finding a job that paid better than the factory so I could increase my own income, _something_. Instead, while my mother worked, probably with a stress induced stomachache of her own, and my father drank away our savings, I was having a fucking sandwich with my boyfriend, pretending like everything was just fine and dandy. I was just as much of the problem as my father was. After everything my mother had done for me; giving up drinking, lying to my father for me… what was I doing for her? And what was I going to do? What were any of us going to do?!

          A touch to my arm startled me out of the chaotic spiral of my miserable thoughts. I met deeply concerned, dark blue eyes, which just made the guilt worse. Not only was I letting my family down, I was letting Heero down, too. No matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried to hide what was going on in my life from him, I just ended up worrying him more and more.

          “You’re a mile away,” he tried to smile, but it was worn and insincere, “I was asking you something.”

          “Oh,” I looked away from him, embarrassed and hating myself for bringing him down when he had been looking forward to hanging out with me, “I’m sorry-,”

          “What’s wrong?” he interrupted, “You’ve been distant ever since you came back. Something’s bothering you, what is it?”

          “How…” I stared at him in surprise, wondering how he always knew, like he could read my thoughts.

          “You got pale,” he told me, “and you got that look you always get when you’re stressing about something big. Did something happen at home? You said your father wasn’t there…”

          “It’s not about him,” I tried to assure him, but then realized that that was a lie and rubbed a fist against my forehead, “I mean, it is, but not entirely,” I sighed heavily, “It doesn’t matter.”

          “Of course it matters if you’re upset about it,” he argued.

          “It has nothing to do with you. You don’t need to worry about it,” I said flatly.

          Part of it was that I didn’t want to worry him about something that he couldn’t do a thing to help me with, but mostly? I was embarrassed. No, I was ashamed. My family was barely holding it together compared to his and I know that it’s not completely my fault, but I still felt responsible in some way, at least by association. I don’t even know where that shame comes from, from seeing the hoops my father had once jumped through when I had been a kid to make it look like we were doing a lot better than we were all for the sake of his pride, or all the times Relena and her fucking friends ripped on me for being poor like it was something that I, personally, _should_ feel ashamed of, like I had committed some sin in their eyes by having parents that were having problems and couldn’t provide as well as theirs could.

          “Of course I do,” he grabbed my hand and squeezed, “I love you. We’re a team, anything that you’re upset about, it’s my job to help. At least I can listen.”

          His skin felt warm from the sun, warmer than mine did. It’s so strange, he hadn’t really said anything he hadn’t made abundantly clear before, but that simple touch bulldozed its way through the carefully constructed barriers I had put up between him and my turbulent emotions. It eased something in me, something wild and angry and for some reason, I felt like I was going to start crying. He was always there for me, always trying to help, always trying to make things _better_ , and what had I ever done for him? What had I done to deserve him?

          “It’s nothing you can help with,” I assured him, but I knew that he had worked his magic again and I was going to tell him everything that I could. Maybe he was right and I just needed to, needed someone to listen instead of keeping things bottled up like I always do, “It’s just… money problems. Things are really tight right now.”

          “How tight?” he asked, his brow creasing with worry.

          “Worse than they have been,” I ran my free hand through my bangs as that thing in my gut tightened even more as I brought the truth to the surface, “My mom told me this morning that we’re in debt pretty badly with a few of our bills. Our finances have sucked ever since my father was fired. Between the time it took him to find another job and the pay decrease… our bills got kind of fucked,” I laughed dryly, “My mom’s been working so hard to make ends meet again, but my dad… It’s like he doesn’t even care. He just keeps going on, doing the same shit that he did when he was a cop. The booze, not working the weekends, keeping the tv on all day and night when he’s home, paying to fix his fucking car that he doesn’t even _need_ while our budget for bills and food and everything else takes a hit. He knows how bad it is, but he never acknowledges it and just gets angry when my mom tries to talk to him about it. It’s like he thinks if he just ignores it for long enough, things will get better on their own! All while my mother works herself exhausted trying to compensate! She’s already got two full time jobs, she can’t do anymore and here I am, enjoying another goddamned day off with no pay while she’s working jobs she hates over and over and over…”

          Once I started, the rest just spilled out. I couldn’t have stopped it if I tried. Hot tears poured down my cheeks and I angrily wiped at them with my right arm, hating myself for being so weak. Heero let go of my hand and rubbed my back in a calming motion.

          “Hey,” he soothed, “It’s alright, love.”

          “How is it alright?!” I demanded through my tears, “I can’t do _anything_! Do you have any idea how much my mom has sacrificed for me?! And I can’t do a single, fucking thing to make things easier for her or my father! I’m useless! I can’t even work Saturdays and Tuesdays again because I promised her that I wouldn’t! I don’t understand it! She knows how much we need the money, so why?!”

          My frustration tore me apart, but Heero kept me together, wrapping his arm around my waist and drawing me tight against him.

          “She loves you,” he said fiercely, “She is making sacrifices _because_ she loves you, because she doesn’t want you to feel this way or work yourself as hard as she does. That’s what parents do, Duo. They take on burdens for their children so they don’t have to. They work hard to provide for them. That’s what your mother _wants_. She doesn’t want you stressed and working all the time because she and your father are having trouble. It’s not your responsibility and you are _not_ useless. You are not a bad person, either. You care about your parents and you want to help. It’s not your fault that your father is an idiot and that you’re already doing all that you can, which is more than you even _should_.”

          “It’s my family,” I argued, knowing we had had this fight before and he had won it back then, and I also knew that he had been right back then, but I couldn’t help protesting, “They _are_ my responsibility!”

          “No, they aren’t,” he shot back, “You are _theirs_. You shouldn’t be working five days a week, over forty hours because your father refuses to act like a fucking adult and do what needs to be done to pay the bills. It is not your fault that he is so irresponsible, or that your mother was just as irresponsible until she stopped drinking and finally woke up to realize they were in trouble. They made those choices, Duo, not you, and they cannot ask you to pay for them. You can’t ask that for yourself, either. You are not going to feel guilty for being here with me, for taking what we are offering while your parents work and suffer when you have only ever been a wonderful son to them and they were horrible to you in return.”

          I opened my mouth to protest, certainly not feeling like a ‘wonderful son’, but he was having none of it.

          “No. I am right and you know that I’m right. It’s fine if you feel bad for them and want to help, you love them. If it were my parents, I would feel the same way. But you have got to stop beating yourself up and tearing yourself down for not being the breadwinner of the family. That is your father’s job and it is not up to you to pick up his slack! Your mother is right. You are not going to work more or harder or take on a _third_ goddamn job or make any more sacrifices for them! You shouldn’t even be working as much as you are now. You are going to let your parents deal with the problems that _they_ made to begin with. Maybe your father will finally wake up and realize that his pride isn’t worth all this.”

          “But my mother-,” I started, that image of her crying bursting in my skull again.

          “Your mother is a grown woman who can take care of herself,” Heero snapped, “and just like your father, needs to take care of her own problems and not rely on you to save them. She did the right thing by making you make that promise. She is finally taking responsibility for her life and being a parent to you, so let her do that. You think that you have to shoulder the responsibility for her because she’s working so hard, but she has options, Duo.”

          “What options?!” I demanded, “What, work even harder?! Sell a fucking kidney?!”

          “Well, for one, she could divorce your father,” he said.

          His words, and the matter of fact, obvious way he said them, was like a punch to my gut. Divorce my dad? What the hell was he talking about?

          “W-what…” I gaped at him, feeling so small and faded, like my consciousness was trying to pull away from reality, like I was in shock, “Why would you say that?”

          “I’m sorry,” he apologized for bringing it up, but still didn’t ease off now that he had his opening and I wondered how long he had had this in mind, just in the course of our conversation, or longer, “but you said it yourself. Your father is the biggest problem. He lost his job, which is his own fault, too, by the way. He knows how tight your money is, but he won’t make sacrifices. His drinking is the worst of it, obviously. He spends all weekend getting hammered instead of working, buys alcohol instead of groceries, and won’t give up on the things he likes to save money. Love, even if you dropped out of school and worked like your mother does, do you really think you would be able to help clear them of their debt and get out of the hole they’re in? Or would your father use that as an excuse to keep going as he is, keep wasting money and not taking responsibility for his actions?”

          My stomach sank because I knew that he was right. I wanted to deny it, wanted to protest that I could help, I could make a difference and save my parents because I didn’t want them to live like this. And because, although I hate to admit it because it sounds so selfish and pathetic, this was what I had always wanted since I was a kid. To help my father, to show him that I could be useful, that I wasn’t a burden. Because maybe, if I got them out of debt, if I helped the bills get paid again, maybe he would love me.

          Heero wrapped his arms around me and held me and I let him, desperately needing him, needing that comfort, this one person who knew what I was going through and could help, through his common sense and love for me, pull me out of my dark depression and keep me from doing something stupid. This person who could make me feel better, could make me believe, whether it was true or not, that I was doing the right thing for once in my shitty life.

          “Your father is dragging you and your mother down,” he continued, weaving that magical web of words and conviction that I have never possessed in my entire existence, “He did this to your family. Your mother helped, but she’s trying, finally, to make things better. But your dad… he isn’t there yet. He might never be there. He might keep ignoring it for the rest of his life, but your mother doesn’t have to put up with that. She can cut ties with him. Between the two of you, you can move out of that house, find someplace small, and rebuild. He can be stuck with the house and the car and the debt and maybe he’ll do what needs to be done, maybe not. But you two will be free of it. If she divorces him-,”

          “Stop saying that!” I pleaded, the tears coming harder every time he uttered that word.

          “Would that really be such a bad thing?” he asked sincerely, stroking a hand over my hair, “Them getting a divorce?”

          “Yes!” I cried out, nearly screaming it.

          How could he suggest that my mother do that? Divorce my dad? Our family was holding on by a thread, but that would be the blow of finality, wouldn’t it? We wouldn’t be a family anymore. We would just be… ruins. Scraps. Maybe they didn’t love each other like Heero’s parents did, but they had been together for seventeen years! My father still loved my mother, in his twisted, fucked up way. He still wanted her like she had been and, I choose to believe at least, he wanted to make things work. Why else would he have stuck by us for all this time if he didn’t want to keep us together? Why put up with being broke, in a marriage with a woman that never gave him the time of day if he didn’t want things to get better? How would he feel if she divorced him? Then he really would be a failure and worse, he would have lost the girl he had loved all those years ago. How could I want that for him? How could Heero even think that that would be a good thing, to tear us all apart?!

          ‘But,’ the stray thought, completely unwanted and terrible, popped into my head, ‘what if he’s right? _Would_ it really be such a bad thing?’

          Unable to shake it or run from it, that memory of my mother from that morning came back, a camera flash. But this time, along with it, every memory I have of her crying or with a fresh bruise or in the hospital. All those screaming fights where my parents tore into each other with every weapon that they had until someone either walked out of the house and didn’t come back for days or, more commonly as I had gotten older, my father had finally snapped and struck her. All those times I would find her crying with a busted lip and a bloody nose. Her growing fear and disgust in him, my own hatred of him every time he hurt her, either out of pettiness or because she dared to fight with him or push him away.

          “No,” I whispered, changing my mind in an instant.

          Because Heero was right, I knew that even if I didn’t want to know that. Things would be better if my mother divorced my father. Not for me and not for him, but for my mother. She wouldn’t have to be hit anymore. No more trips to the hospital. No more sleeping guarded in case he tried to initiate sex with her. No more sleeping on an old, beat up couch or skipping meals or stressing over the bills. No more living with a man that she didn’t just not love, but actively hated because of his temper and the fact that he was fucking her son. She could live her life how she wanted, finally free since she had been knocked up by him. She wouldn’t have to be scared all the time. What sort of horrible person would I have to be to want to deny all that for the sake of my father’s feelings? How was that fair to her? She had lived through hell, had fought and struggled and come out on the other side. She was trying to be a better person, trying to do the right things while he only got worse. She didn’t deserve staying in that marriage just to spare our feelings. She didn’t deserve anything that he did or had done to her.

          “Yes,” I flipflopped again as a certainly came bubbling up from my mess of thoughts.

          It really didn’t matter, did it, if things would be better or not? Because it was never going to happen. My father was never going to let my mother divorce him. If he loved her, loved this family, did not matter. It was his pride, always his fucking pride. He would never allow himself to become Pat, would never let people know that he had failed and couldn’t even keep his marriage together. He would threaten her, attack her, hurt her, and she would be too scared to go through with it. Hell, she had probably thought of this scenario herself hundreds of times in the last seventeen years and was too scared to do anything. Her going through with it wouldn’t make things better, it would make them worse, I knew that with absolute clarity. And there was another thought, one that I refused to look at because it wasn’t true, it would never happen, of course it wouldn’t. Even when I knew, deep down, that it could.

          ‘He might even kill her.’

          “I don’t know,” I buried my face in my hands and tried to keep the sobs from bubbling out.

          I didn’t know what to do. How to feel. What to think. I was so confused by everything. What was the right thing to do? Should I try to convince my mom to divorce my dad, or at least run away from him, go somewhere safe even if I had to go with her? Should I really do as Heero said and forget about our financial problems, let my parents sort them out for themselves? Should I talk to my mother about all this? I didn’t want to deal with any of this. I wanted yesterday back, that perfect day when I hadn’t known about our money troubles and Heero had never suggested this to me. I wanted to be carefree and completely focused on him, while somehow ignoring our own problems, like how I couldn’t commit to him and I was going to have to break his heart one day. Another rat’s nest of problems that I couldn’t even begin to think about right then or I was going to pitch myself from that tree and hope that the fall would kill me or give me amnesia or something, which it wouldn’t because we weren’t that high up.

          Heero wrapped himself around me and I curled up against him in his lap like a little kid as he made soothing noises and stroked my back and hair. Cocooned in him, I was able to really cry, to just pour out all those terrible, toxic feelings until the wellspring dried up and I was just doing that stupid hitched breath thing you do when you’ve cried too hard for too long.

          “I’m sorry,” Heero apologized to me, still stroking my hair, “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you this much.”

          “You didn’t,” I whispered, my breath hoarse, “It’s not your fault.”

          He had just been trying to help, to make me see reason. It wasn’t his fault that my life is so fucked up. We untangled ourselves when I was able to breathe normally again and I used the napkins he had packed in the basket to dry off my face.

          “Feel better?” he asked tentatively.

          “I… do, actually,” I said in amazement.

          I couldn’t believe it, after he had brought up divorce and I had cried like a dumb, little kid, but I did feel better. Not as heavy and down, like everything was shit and only getting worse. Just being able to cry like that and have him hold me had drained some of the poison. And the things that he had said had lifted some burden that had been pinning my shoulders to the ground. He was right, I knew. Even if I felt that it was, the pragmatic, reasonable part of myself agreed that this was not my responsibility, that I was driving myself insane with guilt over something that I had not created and, realistically, could not fix. I could not make this better. I had to repeat that little mantra in my head a few times, kicking and screaming in denial, but it finally sank in.

There was nothing I could do. I could stress about it and pick at it like a scab, but even if we got some huge win fall, it wouldn’t help us. Even if I worked my ass off, I would only make a little bit of difference, but unless I intended to hold my parents’ hands their entire lives, unless they could figure this out on their own, it was only going to happen again. Was I willing to do that? To take full responsibility, pay the bills, pay the debt, when I didn’t get paid much better than my mother? I would have to sacrifice school and even Heero to make that happen. I would never have any free time, I would give up on everything my mother had given me and she definitely wouldn’t thank me for that. My father wouldn’t, either, for the same reason he had flipped out at me getting a better job, because it meant that he had failed. That I was doing better than he was.

What would be the point, then? If I couldn’t make things better, what was the point? Just like that, I felt some of my guilt over being with Heero, relaxing and having this sanctuary, this place I could be where I was safe and fed and happy, melt away. Not all of it, but the worst, sharpest edges of it and the rest of it was fairly bearable. I even managed to smile at the boy I loved and kissed him gently.

“Thank you,” I told him earnestly and he looked so relieved, another few of those edges to my guilt fell away.

“Any time,” he said softly and kissed me back, “We can help, you know. You don’t need to deal with this all on your own. If you need money, I’m sure my father could help, he wouldn’t ask anything from you, you know that.”

I snorted. Justin’s generosity was just about saintly, but I would never ask him for that kind of help.

“The bus fare and handouts are bad enough,” I said, “There’s no way I could ask for that. Besides, this isn’t like a… a new pair of jeans or even a computer. It’s thousands of dollars, Heero! Even if I had the gall to ask him for that kind of money, it wouldn’t help. It would get us out of the hole this one time, but what about the next time? Or the time after that? Unless we can figure out how to handle this on our own, it won’t solve anything. It’s like that bible story. You know, the one about the fish.”

“Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and feed him for a life time?” Heero paraphrased.

I nodded.

“Alright,” he conceded, “But we’re always here if you need us, even if you just need to get away from all that for a while.”  
          “Yeah, I know,” I assured him.

I picked up my sandwich again and, to my surprise, found that my appetite had returned enough to finish it and pick at the fruit.

“We going anywhere tonight?” I asked him, grabbing for any subject that didn’t include any of the things that I had been worrying about.

“I thought we might stay in tonight,” he told me, “since Mom is making dinner and we have school tomorrow,” ugh, school, I had almost forgotten about that, “but we can go somewhere if you want…”

“No,” I said quickly, the thought of actually going out, in public, in the kind of mood I was in was terrifying, “I… I’d really like to stay in today.”

“Ok,” he smiled, always so accommodating, “In it is.”

We finished eating our lunch and as I looked out over the pond on the other side of the hill, I thought about that parable. It was incredibly apt for my parents’ situation. My father had known how to fish once, but these were different waters. Cold, stormy, and treacherous. He should have adapted and learned how to navigate them, but instead he was acting like nothing had changed and he was still a fisherman. If he didn’t learn how to fish again, he was going to drag us all down like Heero had said. But how could he when he refused to listen to anything that my mother and I said about it? I wondered how my mother was doing at work and hated the fact that she had to work on a holiday that she actually believed in because of all this. If she could make a sacrifice like that, why couldn’t he give up his car or limit his drinking?

“Do you really believe in God?” I blurted out, surprising Heero and myself as well.

It had been there, in the back of my mind, that question. I guess that bible parable had brought it to the surface, but I was still shocked that I had voiced it out loud.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized, “That was rude.”  
          Thankfully, instead of getting mad that I was questioning his religion again, Heero chuckled.

“It’s fine, it’s an honest question. Yeah,” he answered, “I really do believe in God.”

‘How?’ was right on my tongue, but that would have been exceptionally rude, so I bit it back.

“And you?” he asked me, “You said your dad isn’t very religious and your mom is, but what about you? What do you believe?”

“I don’t know if I believe in God,” I admitted, “I don’t entirely _not_ believe in a higher power, I guess I just never really cared one way or another since it doesn’t change anything. When I was a kid, I think I tried praying once or twice, but it just made me feel silly, like I was talking to myself and not God. I never got anything I prayed for anyway, so it didn’t seem to matter. When I realized that I was gay and the bullying and my dad’s… temper… got really bad, I decided that if there was a God, he didn’t care about me anymore than I cared about him. And then when Quatre took his own life… I didn’t want anything to do with God. It’s funny, I thought about it more then than I ever had in my entire life, if there’s a heaven or a hell. Why Quatre did it. Why God would allow him to do it, why he made Quatre’s life hell. I decided that God either didn’t give a shit or He hated my guts.”

          “I don’t believe that!” Heero blurted out passionately and I worried that I had offended him, but he looked so intense and not with anger, although I couldn’t place what he was feeling, probably because I didn’t have his faith, “I don’t believe that God hates you! Bad things have happened to you, more than anyone should ever experience, but it isn’t your fault and it isn’t God’s, either. He gave us free will, the ability to choose our own fates and actions. God didn’t take Quatre, the people that hurt him and his own hand did. God doesn’t make your father hit you, either, _he_ does that. If God really does exist like I believe He does, then he loves you, Duo. He doesn’t want you to be hurt or take things away from you anymore than I do.”

          “How can you believe that?” I asked him in disbelief, hating questioning him, but I was genuinely confused, “After Wufei was murdered and after all the terrible things people here have done for you for being gay… how can you possibly believe that there is a god and that He loves you? I’m not accusing you of anything, I just don’t understand.”

          He looked out over the sky, that endless blue with the rolling green hills and houses that were built in a similar style to his, but all just a bit different.

          “I’m not entirely sure, myself,” he confessed, “It’s only a feeling. But even though I’m gay, and even though Wufei was taken from me… I just believe that God doesn’t hate me for who I am. Other people might, but not God. That belief was a comfort to me when I started figuring out that I was… different. Even when I wasn’t sure that my parents would accept me and I hated myself a little for not being normal, I felt this surety that God wouldn’t hate me for this thing that I couldn’t control. If He created me, how could He hate what He made? I don’t know, maybe I had to believe that just to get through that time in my life. Maybe I’m wrong or delusional, but it made it easier to accept what I was and not try to change myself. At least for a while.”

          I listened to him, enraptured and fascinated. I wished that I had that experience when I had been discovering my own sexuality. I had been so scared and confused, not knowing what I was or what to do. I still am, really, but Heero spoke about his own sexuality with such confidence. And I envied his belief, that something loved him for what he was. Even if he fucked up, even if he was something that society says he shouldn’t be, he believed he was loved. I guess that’s easy when you’ve always had someone in your life like his parents, who loved him and accepted him, while I still have a hard time accepting peoples’ love after living so long without it. He was just so strong, stronger than I could ever hope to be and I loved him for it. Sure, he had pretended to be something he wasn’t for a while, but deep down, he had known who he was. What he was. He had known he couldn’t change. The only things that I’ve ever felt sure about was my love for him and that I’m a freak.

          “I’ve never talked to anyone about this stuff,” he admitted, looking at me with this piercing, grateful expression, “I’ve never had anyone who’s been there before and understands what it’s like… being gay and trying to accept that part of yourself…” I reached out and took his hand, showing where my words failed me that he had my support and that I _did_ understand, “My parents know a little. We had a long talk when I finally came out to them,” he chuckled, “and they were wonderful about it, but there were a couple years before that when I was horribly lost and confused and freaked out about the whole thing. Have you ever just… known deep in your heart what you’re supposed to be? Know that when you grow up, you’re going to be a certain way, how you’re going to live your life, the job you’re going to get, the person you’re going to fall in love with, how everything is going to be and have absolute faith that, no matter what you did, no matter how you screwed up or what life through at you, things would end up exactly like that?”

          “No,” I said with some dark amusement, “I’ve never been sure of anything.”

          Boy, wasn’t that that truth? Of course, when life shits on what tiny expectations you’ve ever had fairly quickly, about the only thing you can come to expect is that life sucks and not to expect anything from it. What security I had felt as a child had been pretty short lived. It died on my first day of school when life made it clear to me that I was not going to have a ton of friends, be accepted, or have an easy life.

          “Well, I did,” he said, “When I was a kid, I knew exactly what my life was going to be like, what _I_ was going to be like. I was going to grow up to be exactly like my dad. I was going to be a good Christian, do all the right things, make all the right choices, donate to charity, make the world a better place, and never stray from that path. I was going to fall in love with a girl who was nuts about me and a good person, too, marry her as soon as we were old enough and financially secure and have a bunch of kids. Not exactly an exciting dream, but that was all I wanted out of life. I just wanted to be happy, be stable, have a good, full life, you know? I would be a great husband and an amazing father, just like my dad. I wanted his life. I was just a kid, but I looked up to him so much, he was my ideal of this perfect man, the person everyone strived to be. Tolerant, strong, someone who loved his kid and his wife and helped other people.”

          He smiled wryly and hugged a knee to his chest.

          “Then I got older and I started to notice other boys, I fought against it so hard,” he told me, “I just kept denying it, even though I never felt anything for any of the girls in my class and there were quite a few boys that I thought were cute. It wasn’t like I was shy around the girls, either. I even got asked to a few dances, but I just turned them down. Thankfully, I wasn’t old enough for that to be weird, but I just kept waiting…”

          “For your body to clue in to what it was supposed to like?” I finished.

          He looked surprised for a moment, then smiled lovingly at me.

          “Yeah, that. It never happened, though. I probably should have figured out that it wasn’t entirely normal to notice a boy for their smile or their eyes or wonder what it would be like to kiss one of them…” he snorted, “But I just kept reassuring myself ‘this is normal, everyone probably thinks things like that.’ God, I was such a stupid kid. But then, I was at the movies once and there was this scene with a guy taking his shirt off… I got my very first erection,” his face blushed crimson to admit that, “I was so mortified. I thought there was something horribly wrong with me. It didn’t take much after that to realize that it wasn’t some fluke, that I liked men. I tried for a bit to shake it, to like girls, but it wouldn’t take. I was too terrified to tell my parents. I realized that that childhood dream of mine was dead. I was never going to be normal, I would never have kids of my own, and I was definitely never going to marry a girl. I could never have any of that.”

          There was such terrible pain in his voice and it suddenly dawned on me that, Heero might say he accepted himself, but that pain had never gone away for him. He still wanted that dream, to be normal, to have a family at some point in his life, but knew that he couldn’t reach for it. It made me understand a part of why he had done what he had when he had moved here, dating Relena, being something that he wasn’t. He had wanted to protect himself, yes, but he had always wanted a taste of normal. Date a girl, even one he couldn’t stand, be one of the popular kids, be _ordinary,_ even if it was a lie. Living a dream that he knew he had to wake up from one day. I couldn’t begin to imagine how horrible it must have felt for him at such a young age, his future torn apart and everything he had thought he had known about himself distorted. The family that he had wanted, died stillborn, like he had been cursed. I had never had a taste of normal, wouldn’t know what to do with it if I had it, but I felt devastated for him. I squeezed his hand and wanted to kiss him, to find some way to make it better, even knowing that there was no way to make something like that better, but he wasn’t done.

          “I came clean to my parents when I was thirteen,” he said, “It was bound to happen eventually. It was hell keeping it from them, fearing every day that they would find out and stop loving me. I knew that they weren’t homophobic, they were very accepting, but that didn’t reassure me much. I had no clue what they would say or think about _me_ being gay. I wanted to tell them so badly, just to get the secret out, and because I was desperate for someone to talk to, but I couldn’t find the courage. My dad knew that I was depressed about something and he tried so hard to get through to me. He and my mom did everything they could think of to get me to cheer up and it did help, but it took me years to really get my head around the fact that I was a homosexual. I was even too afraid to do any research on it because I didn’t want to know what it meant for me.

          “Then I had my first kiss… There was this boy in my grade, I can’t even remember his name now,” he chuckled, “He caught me staring at him in the showers after gym. It was so stupid, I was lucky not to have gotten beaten up for that. But by some kind of miracle, he didn’t mind it. He was curious, I was curious, so we kissed, just to try it out. We never talked about it after that or became a thing, we were too young for that. It was just… like an itch getting scratched, I suppose. We both liked it, or at least I think he did. I sure as hell did. I felt like I had been walking around with this shroud over my eyes and that one moment lifted it right off and I could see everything so clearly. But it wasn’t anything that I wanted to see. I had these incredibly vivid, wet dreams about that kiss for weeks, and other things that I could never remember when I woke up, but I understood that they were as close to sex as someone who didn’t really know entirely what that was yet could dream up. I felt sick, like a pervert, abnormal and wrong.”

          “Oh god, Heero,” I slid my arms around him and he leaned into me, “I am so, so sorry…”

          In this, we understood each other perfectly, feeling wrong and different, like a criminal that had committed some horrible sin they didn’t even understand. I might not have had those kinds of dreams or urges, but I had felt that way, lost and confused and hurt.

          “It’s alright,” he smiled and kissed the top of my head, “Maybe not back then, but… it got alright eventually. I didn’t know what to do, so I fell back on the one thing that I had always been able to do when I was scared. I went to my parents, in tears, begging for help. I was so stupid, I thought they might have some magical cure for it, something to put me back on the right track,” he chuckled, “Instead, they sat me down, told me that they still loved me, would always love me no matter what, and just held me for a long time. When we were all done crying, we talked through it all night. How I felt, my fears, all of it. My parents educated me on a few things and helped me to understand that the world was not ending just because I was different, it was just beginning. I had lost some things, but I had gained others. I still didn’t have the courage to tell anyone else, but that was ok. Things got… better after that, having them support me. I was still a bit down, and it still took me a long time to accept it, but I eventually did. I accepted all of it, who I was, what I was, and that being gay was just a piece, something that I could never cut out, so I was just going to have to learn to live with it.”

          “It never tested your faith?” I asked.

          “Of course it did,” he said, “For those few years before I told my parents, I was positive that God didn’t love me anymore. I felt like He had abandoned me or even cursed me. I felt so… _angry_ at Him for it. I still went to church with my parents, but I stopped praying, stopped believing. Then, my parents accepted me and I thought, if they can love me for what I am, then God must still love me, too.”

          “But the bible says being gay is a sin,” I pointed out, remembering some of the choice things my classmates have thrown at me through the years.

          “Actually, it says that two men having sex is a sin, not actually being gay, but I guess that’s rather nitpicky,” he informed me, “The bible isn’t supposed to be some… rule book or ultimate authority on how to live your life. There’s a lot of stuff in there that would be impossible to follow nowadays. It’s a guide, one that everyone should use to fit their own lives. That’s how religion should be: personal, not collective. Besides, the bible wasn’t written by God, it was written by people in a different culture and a different time. Maybe I’m just trying to justify it, but if God is really supposed to love us, why would he make us this way in the first place?”

          “Fair enough,” I could agree with him on that.

          “It’s not like it’s been easy,” he confessed, “Every day it’s a challenge for me to maintain that belief with how people treat us, and Wufei…” he swallowed roughly, “I lost my faith again after he died. I thought the same thing that you did when Quatre killed himself. If God is real, how could He let some thugs murder my best friend? Because his beliefs were different? Because He didn’t care? I didn’t want to believe in such a being and I hated Him, just like I had before, for doing that to me, to Wufei’s family, for making people so _ugly_. I turned my back on Him again, but I couldn’t do it forever.”

          “How did you get it back again?” I asked.

          His smile grew and he took my hand in his.

          “You,” he said simply.

          My face went red hot.

          “Me?” I sputtered, “But I don’t even really believe in this stuff!”

          “You don’t have to,” he chuckled, “But I have to believe in God, in miracles and all of that because, in all of this huge, wide world, I found you. Of all the millions of people in this country, I move to another state and I find the one person I’m meant to be with. And you love me back and want to be with me, too. That’s a miracle. Loving you is a miracle. So many people can go their whole lives without that, without finding anyone that cares about them that much, let alone someone that fits with them so well. When I’m with you, I feel like I’ve been blessed.”

          He brought my hand up to his lips and kissed my knuckles. I gaped at him, unable to form words, but my heart was racing. Did he really believe that? Did he truly believe that we were a miracle? Something so pure and wonderful?

          “But…” I pulled my hand from his, “All I’ve done is get you into trouble. If it weren’t for me, you’d still be with Relena. Everyone would still think you were normal. You could be living your life like you wanted when you were a kid. It might have been a lie, but it was safer! I ruined all of that!”

          “I told you a long time ago that you didn’t force my hand,” he argued with this affectionate, but slightly annoyed smile, “My feelings for you did. Duo…” he grabbed my hand again, entwining our fingers, “I _chose_ this. Not you, not anyone else but me. This was my decision, how I decided I wanted to live. I might have been born gay, but I chose to act on it. That dream I had as a kid… I won’t say that I don’t want that anymore, but I’m not that person anymore. I’m different and I have different dreams. Being with Relena… that was one of the biggest mistakes of my life and even if there had been a chance, a huge chance, that I could have made a life with her or some other girl that I could have stood, have kids, have that life, I wouldn’t want to take it. Not ever. But this?” he squeezed my fingers, “I want this. I chose this. Even if God hates me for it, I don’t care anymore, and I don’t have any regrets. I love you and I never want to turn back the clock, not for anything in the world.”

          He kissed me, passionately and deeply, like he was trying to prove everything that he had just said. I knew that he was sticking by us, but he really didn’t regret it? Not at all? He wanted to live like this? With me, with any boyfriend he had and not a normal life? I kissed him back, letting my desire loose instead of tightly containing it like I usually do, my love for him enveloping me. I wish that I had half of his strength, and half of his certainty. But behind all of my love for him, there was that doubt again, and a wave of self-loathing because the more he loved me, the more he wanted this, the more I was going to hurt him.

          But in that moment, I didn’t think about that. It would come later. But right then, sitting in that tree house, kissing him, I only thought about how disgustingly happy I felt. I was sluggish with it, like a snake that had devoured something far too big for it. In that shred of time, I felt as though nothing could touch me. Not Relena or Zechs or my father or even my own doubts. Everything was perfect because Heero loved me and I would face anything else as it came. As long as he kept loving me, I could do that. I was whole and brimming with elation just to be with him. Nothing else existed.

          We stayed up there for the rest of the afternoon. I felt the need to pay back Heero’s honesty and told him about my own experiences with my sexuality. Zechs’s stupid prank with the pornography, trying to beat off to it, only to come to the horrible realization that I didn’t feel a thing towards those women, Zechs calling me a faggot for all those years, Quatre and I helping each other through all of it, how I had tried to deny up until Trowa had kissed me at that train station and I had liked it. I even told him, in nightmarish detail, about what had started those rumors that I was a faggot, Relena kissing me and Dorothy telling everyone that I must be gay for not liking it. All of my confusion and fear back then, and my continued fear of my parents finding out. He had known most of the story already, but was patient and quiet as I talked, holding me as I held him. Even when I was done, we kept our arms around each other’s waists, not wanting to be apart.

          It was a nice, if emotional day. I felt even closer to Heero than I had before, seeing how much we had in common. I would have felt content to stay up there with him all night, but Kanuck had started to whine at us again, the sun was setting, and we were both getting hungry again. We cleaned up our mess and made the trek back to the house. The kitchen was full of the pleasant smell of cooking meat and Heero’s mother was mixing what looked like mashed potatoes by hand and Justin was looking after the lamb.

          “Hey,” I greeted, “How was the egg hunt?”

          “It was great!” she grinned, “The Darlians really went all out on it and it was managed pretty well. The kids loved it, too. They were all so cute… I really miss having kids around that age,” she said rather meaningfully and looked at her husband.

          “Nope,” Justin was far from dense and held up his hands in mock surrender, “I’m not walking into that one.”

          He quickly took his exit with the air of a man who has more common sense than most. Mariela didn’t seem bothered with it, she even chuckled a little, giving me a sense that this was one of their inside jokes. I wondered if it was only that, if she was serious in wanting another kid or just liked teasing him, and why they had only had one child since they obvious could have afforded more and clearly had no problems with intimacy like my parents, but it was really none of my business, so I didn’t pry.

          Since everyone was hungry, we ate early. Mariela’s jibe about store bought cake had turned out to be another inside joke, because it turned out that she had made one for us, an amazing white cake with layers of sweet cream that was shaped and decorated like an Easter egg. Everything we had for dinner was incredible and I felt this childish bit of smugness that it didn’t matter what food the Darlians had provided at the egg hunt that day or whatever meal Relena was sitting down to that night, mine tasted a thousand times better. And it had nothing to do with the quality of the meat or how moist the cake was.

          Nothing much of note happened for the rest of the night, which is a kind of miracle in itself. Heero and I sequestered ourselves in the game room and watched movies and played games, sitting close enough to each other that I would have to call it ‘snuggling.’ Usually I’m a bit… distant, even with Heero. I have a wall built around myself at all times and I hate it when other people violate it, even if it’s just physically. Since my father started raping me, that wall only got thicker and taller. Even with Heero, it takes me a while to warm up to being intimate with him, and letting him be intimate with me. But that night, it was easy for some reason. I wanted to be close to him and found myself leaning against his side as we sat on the couch together, and when he put his arm around me, I didn’t feel the urge to draw away from him. Maybe it was something in the air or maybe I had taken another step further in our relationship, busted through some barrier.

          When it was time for bed, I was actually really tired for once and decided to go to bed with Heero instead of stay up later. School was going to be… challenging, so I should probably get what sleep I could before I ran back home, I reasoned. I showered first and when Heero popped into the bathroom after me, I snuck back downstairs, wanting to do this when he wasn’t around simply because I was too embarrassed. Luck was with me and I managed to catch Justin alone in the living room, watching the news. I nervously rubbed my hands on my pajama bottoms, hating that I was doing this, but my guilt was stronger than my pride.

          “Mr. Yuy?” I called out to him and looked back from his chair at me.

          “What is it, Duo?” he turned the television on mute and turned where he sat, giving me his full attention.

          “Um…” I hesitated once those familiar blue eyes were on me, but bulled my way through, repeating to myself over and over that this wasn’t for me, it was for my mother, “I… I was wondering…”

          “You need money for something?” he guessed, used to my shy floundering whenever I needed a favor from him.

          I nodded, blushing hotly.

          “How much?” he asked in that easy way that always makes asking him for these favors so much simpler.

          “Can I borrow a hundred and twenty bucks?” I asked, “I know that’s a lot of money, but I promise I’ll pay you back.”

          “No, you can’t borrow $120,” he said cooly and my heart sank.

          I had been sure that he wouldn’t just fork over that much money to me, but I had still hoped, seeing that light at the end of the tunnel. Still, I couldn’t be mad about it. He was letting me stay in his house and gave me handouts all the time, and that was a lot of money to ask for in the first place.

          “You can _have_ $120,” he continued with a wry smile, shocking me, “and I don’t want to hear a word about you paying me back.”

          “I… thank you,” I stammered, feeling like I was going to start crying in sheer relief and love for the man.

          “You don’t need to thank me, I told you to feel free to ask if you need help,” he chuckled, “but can I ask what you need it for? Are you in any trouble?”

          “Not like that,” I confessed and had to look away from him, not wanting to admit to this, but he deserved to know where his money would be going, “We’re just… having a little bit of money trouble right now, but our washing machine is busted. It’s been on its last legs for a long time now and it flooded again this morning. I need to get a few parts for it, but we can’t afford it right now and I’m just worried that it’s going to flood again.”

          That would be the last thing we needed, more mold and rust from water damage.

          “I was going to get materials to make the ladder for the treehouse tomorrow. If you give me the list of parts you need and the washer’s model number, I can see if the hardware store has the parts,” he offered, not so much as batting an eye to my problem.

          “That… that would be amazing, sir,” taken aback by his generosity.

          “Not ‘sir,’” he scolded lightly, making me blush more.

          “I just need a drain hose, water supply hose, and a water inlet valve… mmm, and a hose connector if they have one,” I added, remembering how rusted ours had looked.

          I found a post-it note in the kitchen and wrote down the parts and the washing machine’s information for him. He raised an eyebrow when he looked at the model number.

          “If I am not mistaken, this brand hasn’t been in circulation for over ten years now and I think this particular model is from the eighties,” he said dryly.

          “My mom said they’ve had it since 78, actually,” I corrected sheepishly, which only made him look more incredulous.

          “You need a new washing machine, then, not new parts,” he pointed out, “And you needed a new one a decade ago.”

          “We can’t afford one,” I muttered, wishing I could find a nice, dark hold to crawl into.

          I could see the wheels going behind his eyes and I knew exactly what he was going to suggest to me next.

          “Please, don’t,” I begged him, unable to take it if he offered to buy me a freaking washing machine, “New parts are all it needs.”

          “If that’s what you want. Anything else you need?” he asked me and it was just too much for me.

          Even though a thousand different things that needed to be fixed or replaced in my home popped into my head, I shook my head. He had already done more than enough for me and I was not going to take any more advantage of him than I already had.

          “Alright, Duo,” he said with an affectionate smile, “I’ll get these to you by the next time you come over.”

          I definitely could feel tears gathering in my eyes.

          “Thank you so much,” I whispered and wondered if he even knew what he had just done for me and my family, or what it had cost me to ask.

          He seemed to understand perfectly well and stood to give me a gentle hug, shocking me again.

          “Any time,” he patted my back and let me go, “Now do _me_ a favor and get some sleep, alright? You have school in the morning and it’s always hard, getting up early after being on vacation.”

          I nodded, thanking him profusely again, and went back upstairs, feeling about fifty pounds lighter. My mother was going to be so relieved and, even though I hadn’t really done anything, I felt so much better, like I had helped. I brushed my teeth and slipped into bed with Heero, immediately burying myself under the thick covers. Heero turned on his side so he could look at me, a small, content smile on his lips. He leaned over to kiss me, his arm pressed against mine and I felt so stupidly happy, in a high of endorphins after all of the stress of that morning.

          “Don’t leave early tomorrow,” my boyfriend suddenly asked me, his tone pleading and desperate, “Please?”

          “Heero…” I began to protest.

          “Please,” he repeated, “For me? I miss you in the mornings, and we have school. Your dad can’t possibly have chores for you to do, you haven’t even seen him for days. Even if he does, he works after you usually leave for school, right? He’ll wake up when you’re gone anyway, so what difference does it make? This way, you can sleep in longer and my house is a lot closer to school than yours.”

          He made perfect sense and I knew he was right. Unless my father tried to make one of his early morning ‘visits’ to my bedroom, he would never know that I hadn’t come home, and spending more time with Heero was too alluring for me to turn down, especially if you added in not having to go home. All the stuff I needed for school was at Heero’s house anyway. But it wasn’t all that that made me nod my head, it was his pleading and saying ‘for me.’ Of course I would do it for him. He had pulled me out of my misery, soothed some of my guilt, and shared a very fragile piece of himself that day. In return, I would give him just about anything.

          “Thank you,” he whispered in relief and happiness and kissed me again.

          I let him throw an arm around me and even turned on my side to face him, feeling warm and comfortable at our closeness. Spring break was over and I didn’t even care because I was suddenly sure that, no matter what shit Monday would bring, the both of us could survive it. I just hope that I’m not wrong.

 

End part 20

 

“Cause I know that time has numbered my days,

And I'll go along with everything you say

But I'll ride home laughing, look at me now,

For the walls of my tower they come crumbling down

And my ears hear the call of my unborn sons,

And I know that choices color all I've done

But I'll explain it all to the watchman's son,

I ain't ever lived a year better spent in love

 

'Cause I know my weakness, know my voice

And I'll believe in grace and choice

And I know perhaps my heart is fast

But I'll be born without a mask

 

Like the city that nurtured my greed and my pride,

I stretch my arms into the sky

I cry Babel, Babel, look at me now

For the walls of my tower they come crumbling down

You ask where will we stand in the winds that will howl

Is all we see will slip into the cloud?

So come down from your mountain and stand where we've been

You know our breath is weak and our body thin

 

Press my nose up to the glass around your heart

I should've known I was weaker from the start

You'll build your walls, and I will play my bloody part

To tear, tear them down

Well I'm gonna tear, tear them down

 

'Cause I know my weakness, know my voice

And I'll believe in grace and choice

And I know perhaps my heart is fast

But I'll be born without a mask”

 

This is going to be included in Heero’s epilogue, but for those who want to get a taste of what was going through his head during these last few scenes, Babel by Mumford and Sons is basically his theme song. It perfectly sums him up, not just his faith, but his character and how he feels towards Duo. It has a couple of spoilers, but they’re vague enough that I’m ok with posting the lyrics here. I recommend looking up the song, it’s really beautiful.

 

 

 

Author’s Note: fucking FINALLY. The spring break saga is over and done with. Of course, chapter 8 is nowhere near completed (sorry about that, but I said it’s the longest chapter in the story and boy, was I not joking), so on to the next saga! I won’t name it, because spoilers, but it isn’t going to be a fun ride. Personally I think it’s rather obvious what this next saga will entail, but to not give anything away, there won’t be many lighthearted moments and while this current saga was probably a bit boring, it sets up the major conflict to come, so I promise more action (as much as there is in this story, lol). 

 

I want to thank Hikaru Itsuko for sticking by and continuing to review this story. This story has never been very well reviewed, which is disheartening, especially compared to the amount of people that want me to ditch it and return to The Road to Kindness, so I feel a bit like I’m only writing for myself anymore, lol. So I really appreciate those of you that have stuck around. Also to those that have begged, pleaded, and actually berated me to write more TRTK, I’m sorry, but I’m not changing my mind. I love that so many people like that story, I like it, too, and I really miss writing for it, but ASOL has my full attention until the end, then TRTK will have its turn. I’ve found that when I bounce around too much, I lose my groove and it takes me too long to get back in the mood of some stories. Besides, after 15 years of constantly rewriting ASOL, I just want it to be done with.

         

 

 

  * This is kind of a biased shout out. I finished the show (it’s on Netflix for those interested) and am now working on the book series. I have really been enjoying it personally, but it’s the sort of thing that Duo would really love also, so I had to slip that in there even if it didn’t come out until 2010. I try really hard to be realistic in this story (I even research dates and lunar cycles :V) ^_^ Imagine a story like Harry Potter, only set in America, and instead of kids, you have teenagers on the cusp of their college years learning magic. It’s a much more adult work than Harry Potter and I actually like its approach to magic as a very difficult and challenging craft more. Also throw in some Narnia in there and you’re close to what this series is like.



 

  * Duo is talking about ‘The Bank Job.’



 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	66. Chapter 8 Part 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duo and Heero return to school. Zechs plays a prank that gets Heero into trouble and Duo blaming himself for it. Duo struggles with his anger issues and grades. Duo and Heero's relationship progresses and pushes Duo's boundaries. Will he be able to get past his issues with intimacy or will he finally have to accept that he can't ignore them?

A Stagnation of Love

Chapter 8

Part 21

 

 

April 3, 2017

 

         

          When I was about ten years old, I got into a real Greek mythology kick. I read every ballad, poem, myth collection, and ‘history of’ that I could find at the public library, devouring everything that they had. There was no real reason for it, I just get into literary trends sometimes. I went through a gothic period a year ago and a Celtic poetry period the year before that. But in the fifth grade, I was all about Greek myths, literature, and poetry. In particular, I had felt an attachment to the myth of Sisyphus. Not a god or a demigod, or even a hero. He hadn’t even been a very nice guy, kind of an asshole. He wanted to murder his brother and killed all sorts of people to get what he wanted, not the sort that anyone is meant to root for, but he was also incredibly crafty and was always pissing off the various gods, but mostly Zeus and either Thanatos or Hades, depending on the version I was reading.

          After repeatedly being a thorn in Zeus’ side, the god finally got back at Sisyphus by ordering Thanatos take him to the underworld and chain him there for the rest of eternity. But Sisyphus managed to trick Thanatos, not just once, but _twice_ and escaped the underworld both times, managing to trick Persephone, too. He began to brag that he was craftier than even Zeus himself, something that Zeus could not abide. So Zeus got spiteful and cursed Sisyphus to forever roll a large boulder up a hill and told him that he would be freed of his torment the moment the rock sat on top of the hill. But Zeus could be crafty, too, and just cursed the damn thing to always roll back down to the bottom before Sisyphus could make it all the way up to the top.

          So, raging dick or not, I had felt an affinity for the guy. Because that’s what my life is, isn’t it? Always rolling a boulder up a hill, seeing freedom in sight if I can just strain and bear it for a little bit longer, only to have the damn thing escape from my grasp and finding myself down at the bottom again. Always pushing, always struggling and never finding myself anywhere. You would think after all these years, I would stop hoping for anything different, but there are times, times like the week of spring break, where I let that little bastard in anyway, despite all common sense. I wonder if Sisyphus ever stopped hoping when he saw the peak of the hill, after an eternity finally learning that he was never going to be free, or, if like me, he just couldn’t help thinking ‘this time. Surely _this time_ things will work out.’

          But they never do, do they? I can lie to myself that this time, things will be different. I’ve tried hard enough. I’ve paid my dues to the gods or the fates or whoever runs the universe and luck and I’ll get a break. And for a while, like those last few days of vacation, it seems like I have. Being with Heero that weekend had been wonderful. Everything that I had been worrying about seemed… lesser somehow. My intimacy issues, my father’s abuse, our financial problems, they were all still there, but Heero had gotten through my hysterical anxiety somehow and made me realize that worrying about it the way that I had been wasn’t solving anything, that there are just some things that I can’t fix. He had soothed all the bad shit in my head, made it bearable, and by the time we had gone to bed together that Sunday night, I… I had been happy. Truly, purely _happy_.

          I haven’t felt that way since… no, I don’t think I’ve ever really felt that way. Happiness for me comes in scraps of times, brief moments, bursts and flashes. A pat on the head from my father. My mother telling me that she loved me. Quatre wanting to be my friend. While I treasure those moments, they’ve always come polluted with something else, something in the back of my head. Wishing that my father would always treat me with affection, even when he was angry at me. Resenting my mother for waiting so long to let me know she cared. Knowing that Quatre would be my only friend because every other kid in my school thought I was a freak. Even being with Heero lately has been tainted by the knowledge that, sooner or later, something is going to give. I am going to fuck up and he’s going to realize that he will be so much better off without me.

          But that night? Those thoughts didn’t come. There was just him and me and how much we loved each other. I didn’t want that to end, I wanted that feeling forever and wondered if this is how everyone else feels. Happy. And I wonder if I’ll ever feel that way again. Probably not. I know, somewhere deep inside where I don’t want to look, that when I lose Heero, I’ll never get a chance at that feeling ever again. I pushed that rock up the hill and saw the beautiful valley stretching out before me, inches away from the top. But reality always comes crashing back in. The rock always rolls away. Only it’s worse than that, isn’t it? Because it’s not just that I have to start from the beginning. Every time that I have to start over again, I find that the hill has changed. It’s steeper, taller, and there are more jagged rocks and edges in my way. Now, that hill is as tall as a skyscraper and I can hear the wolves closing in behind me. The happiness that I had felt that weekend seems like a sick joke, a shining gift given to me by the gods, only for them to rip it away as soon as I touch it.

          But I’m getting ahead of myself again. I wasn’t aware of any of that as I drifted off to sleep in Heero’s bed. I felt at peace and didn’t have the slightest clue that things were going to start spiraling into chaos again. But honestly? I’m glad, because I was able to hope for a little while that I could handle my problems with some grace. In reality, I should have seen it coming. I should have seen it for what it was: a vacation, a respite, and it was over and the real world was closing in on me again.

          I didn’t want to admit it, even when Heero’s alarm went off Monday morning. I was nice and cozy, wrapped up in blankets and my head resting on the back of Heero’s shoulder as he slept on his stomach next to me, my arm flung over him for a change. Something like that would have normally embarrassed the hell out of me, but I was so comfortable that I just didn’t care. I cracked open one eye and turned my head to glare back at the alarm clock and its racket. The temptation to turn the damned thing off and lay my head back down on that firm, but strangely comfortable shoulder was strong. Too strong. I didn’t want Spring break to be over. I didn’t want to go back to how things usually were. I didn’t want to go back school and tests and homework and being loathed by everyone, even my teachers. I especially didn’t want to see Relena or Dorothy or Zechs or Alex or Mueller, any of those assholes. I didn’t want to have to watch my and Heero’s back every second and worry like crazy about him when we were separated. I didn’t want to lose all my free time again.

But I couldn’t deny reality. Vacation was over, life was starting back up again. And I could ignore the alarm and fall back to sleep, but Heero’s parents would just come wake us up. Besides, being with Heero might have me wanting things that I never had before, but I hadn’t become quite lazy enough to listen to those whiny thoughts. So, I rolled over so I could switch off the alarm, sat up, and gently shook my boyfriend. He groaned with just as much frustration and grumpiness that I felt, maybe more, but I knew that he was awake.

“Five more minutes,” he mumbled and made a hand motion like he was shooing me away.

Despite everything, I smiled at how endearingly childish he was and poked him hard in the side where I know he’s slightly ticklish, making him squirm.

“No, because if I give you five minutes, you’ll go back to sleep,” I pointed out and gave him another hearty poke when he pretended to not be listening to me.

“Why are you so mean to me,” he whined and gave me a glare, but there was a playful glint to his eye, telling me he was full of it.

“Yeah, I’m just horrible to you,” I teased and rolled out of bed, “I’m taking a shower. If you’re not up and dressed by the time I get out, I’m dumping cold water on you.”

He made another irritated noise at me, but I was satisfied when he kicked off his covers and sheets with as much theatrical drama of annoyance as humanely possible that he wasn’t just going to fall back asleep. I showered and dressed quickly, although I didn’t have to rush too much. Heero and I are opposites when it comes to our showers, me preferring to take them in the morning and him at night. I felt a bit spoiled for taking one so soon after the previous evening, but I wouldn’t have time to take one before work. When I was done, I peeked my head into Heero’s bedroom and saw with approval that he wasn’t just awake, but dressed with his hair combed and was making his bed. He quirked an eyebrow at me, like he was asking ‘is this good enough’ and I gave him a thumbs up while keeping my expression deadpan, which made him laugh. It was better than a shot of coffee for suddenly making the morning seem a whole lot better.

Speaking of coffee, we smelled it brewing from downstairs, along with the intoxicating aroma of bacon and migrated to the kitchen. Mariela was at the stove, making us breakfast. And when I say ‘us’, I mean Heero and myself because I knew she didn’t have work any time soon.

“Good morning!” she beamed at us and I had to marvel at her for a moment. I had never met a more chipper person in my life and I wonder sometimes if she really just wakes up like that.

“Morning,” I greeted, “Do you always make Heero breakfast before school?”

Heero snorted at that.

“No, she doesn’t,” he told me, “My dad, either. We _are_ capable of fending for ourselves, you know.”

“One of the benefits of teaching grade school,” she said, winking at me, “is I get to be the last one up. While Justin and Heero are running off to work and school, I’m still in bed.”

“Mr. Yuy goes to the office early?” I asked, not really familiar with the work habits of therapists.

“Not too early. He’s usually just getting up by the time Heero is leaving, but Justin has always been an early riser. He’s just like you in that regard,” she informed me, not knowing how that pleased me for some bizarre reason, just to be compared to him in any way, “He doesn’t really have any patients in the early morning, most of them are in the afternoon or evening, but he’s always working on articles or books. He has quite a few published already, but he loves the research almost as much as he likes counseling people.”

I envied Heero’s father a little, to have a job like that that he was clearly very invested in, something that mattered to him. I would probably never know what that felt like, to be both interested and proud in my work. Honestly, I would count myself lucky if I ended up working at Leneski’s my entire life and not in a factory like my father, or worse, completely jobless.

“So, what’s the special occasion?” Heero asked, nodding at the stack of pancakes his mother had already accumulated as she finished with the bacon.

“I just thought it would be nice to make breakfast for you two since it’s your first day back at school, and this is the first time Duo’s had an early morning with us, so I didn’t want him rushing out the door with just a couple pieces of toast,” I flushed a little with guilt since that’s pretty much what most of my breakfasts are like, if I even bother to make myself breakfast before school.

“Ah, so all of this is for him, got it,” Heero said dryly.

“Of course it is, so don’t get used to it,” she shot back cheekily.

“Thank you so much,” I cut in past their banter, “You really didn’t need to go through all this, but I appreciate it.”

“Of course, sweetie,” her expression softened, “I know going back to school after such a long break can be hard. Giving you a decent breakfast is the least I can do to make it easier. And I’m packing you a lunch, too. I don’t want you skipping meals or surviving solely on cafeteria food.”

I was starting to get overwhelmed again, but Heero came to my rescue, filling up a plate full of pancakes and bacon, handing it to me and making me sit down at the table. As much as it felt weird to be waited on like that, it was nice. My mornings before school usually consist of showering, finishing off any last-minute homework, making my parents breakfast if they’re up, doing any chores that need to be done, and then, if I feel like it, making myself breakfast. Lately, that last part has been less and less frequent, which I know is a bad idea given how much I skip meals, but I rarely have the appetite, knowing what I’m going to be walking into, or if my father touched me that morning.

Food and meals in general lost their luster for me after Quatre died. I went through that whole mourning period that lasted no less than a year where I couldn’t even taste anything and food felt like sawdust in my stomach. I guess it’s a weird thing to admit, that food doesn’t matter to me when I enjoy cooking, but I’ve had a strange relationship with it for a long time. Some days it’s just an expense and a chore, something I need to do for my body to function. Others I have an almost obsession with it, not so much the eating of it, but cooking and baking. But lately, now that Heero has come into my life and the more time I spend with him and his family, the more my meals and nutrition have become to regulate themselves. I haven’t had this much constant food in my life since I was a kid. I’ve even put on a little weight thanks to Mariela.

I could complain about her babying me, but in all honesty, her worries are correct. My moods control me more than my body ever has, especially lately. If I don’t want to eat, I won’t, I just don’t care. Or I don’t have the money or I need the money for something else. It’s a horrible habit and I can’t fault her for forcing food down my throat. I guess a part of it is that meal time doesn’t mean much in my household. Everyone eats when they feel like it and we hardly ever sit down as a family anymore. But now, thanks to Heero, I’m starting to enjoy eating again. Because it isn’t just about eating, but sharing time with him. I like cooking for him, or just going out for a burger. I especially love eating with his family because it makes me feel like I belong, and it reminds me of a time when my family used to do the same thing, before everything started to come apart.

So, I didn’t complain, but enjoyed the quiet breakfast. I even drank some of the coffee that Mariela had brewed for Heero even though I didn’t need the caffeine for once, having slept well and deeply, something even rarer than my eating a full meal.

“I’m going to miss this,” I muttered, mostly to myself, but Heero looked up from where he was reading the newspaper from the previous day.

“What, having breakfast together?” he asked, perplexed.

“Spring break,” I admitted, “Hanging out with you so much… having all that freedom, you know? I still had work, but being able to see you every day without having to rush off or worry about homework, going on dates and just doing nothing…” I flushed darkly to be saying those things, but it was the truth, “It was really nice.”

“We can do them again,” he said, “Summer isn’t that far off, less than three months. Then we’ll have two months to hang out together.”

I shook my head.

“My dad always makes me take on extra shifts in the Summer,” I told him, “and now that we have so much debt…”

I let it just fall there, because I really didn’t know what was going to happen. My dad might make me take on a summer job, or just have me pull extra shifts like he always does. It was something that I hadn’t talked with Leneski about, just like the full time position he had offered me, but the discussion we had had over the phone Saturday gave me hope that, whatever he felt for me personally, he wouldn’t take work away from me. I wasn’t really sure how I felt about the summer. On the one hand, we needed the extra money and if I could convince Leneski to let me work full time over the summer, that wouldn’t be a terrible thing, right? But on the other, all I wanted was to spend time with ‘Ro.

I wanted to have a normal summer for once in my life, hanging out with friends like we had over the break, going to the beach, swimming, having lazy afternoons, all the clichéd crap. I’ve never really experienced that. Even before my father forced me to take on these jobs, he always had extra chores for me to do during the summer. Probably the closest I’ve ever had to it are those few years when Quatre was around and I wasn’t working. I would rush to finish my chores and go off with him someplace, usually the beach or behind the library where there was no one around. I miss having time like that. Heero looked so disappointed to hear that I would be working more, not less, and I felt daggers of guilt in my gut again that I couldn’t give him what he wanted, that I couldn’t be a normal boyfriend and just make him happy. But then he showed me how much better and more amazing he was than me by shaking it off and smiling.

“That’s ok,” he said, like it hadn’t just bothered him, “We’ll find time to hang out. And you’ll still have Tuesdays and Saturdays, right?”

I nodded. My father could force me to take extra shifts, but he didn’t know about my days off. The part of me that hates my laziness screamed at me that I shouldn’t be taking _any_ days off, but after our talk on Sunday and seeing Heero’s bright smile, that voice was easy to ignore. He reached over the table and slid his hand over mine, his thumb tracing random patterns on my pale skin.

“We should get the treehouse ready before summer gets here,” he told me, already making plans in his head, “Really make it look nice. We still need to pick out a color to paint it.”

“I’ll think about it,” I told him.

“Good. You’ll come to my games in the summer, right? That’s when the season really kicks off,” he told me.

“Yeah, I’d love to,” I smiled at him, even as anxiety tightened like a metal band around my guts.

I wondered if we would still be together then, but pushed that thought away angrily. I didn’t want to worry about that yet. Things were fine. For all I knew, they would remain fine for a long while. I can laugh about my optimism now. I’ve never been the optimistic type, and the one time I try it, it fucks me over. I really had no idea that day just how fast things were going to go from 'ok’ to ‘disaster.’ But Monday, everything was great. Heero and I were getting along and I felt pretty good about myself, all things considered. There really is something to that saying ‘ignorance is bliss.’

Anyway, Heero and I chatted briefly about things we wanted to do to the treehouse that weekend. I wanted to get the trap door on and the whole thing painted and waterproofed. Heero was more whimsical and talked about putting furniture up there. Nothing too fancy, but something to lay down on and maybe a hammock or a bench. Breakfast passed far too quickly for both of us, then we were rushing to brush our teeth and collect everything we needed for school. Mariela had our lunches out when we ran downstairs, waving us goodbye as we shoved feet into sneakers. Outside, it was very noticeably colder than it had been the previous couple of days, which made Heero huddle in his jacket and grouse like an old man, but it wasn’t that bad, just cool and a bit windy.

School sucked. Do I even need to say that at this point? I mean, of course it sucked. How could it have not? Going back to that place, everyone giving us the cold shoulder or hissing slurs or the occasional attempt to do something really nasty, looking over our shoulders and feeling like we were in a bloody warzone instead of a classroom. But that was all par for the course. I walked into the school that day expecting all of that, expecting things to be harder because of the break, but I really had no idea how shitty they would be. Not as bad as the day that Zechs tried to assault me or even the day that I had come out, but worse than a typical day. I’d rate it a high seven.

It was pretty much what I had been expecting through most of the day. Everyone was coming down from the vacation high and no one wanted to be there, including our teachers. Our classmates ranged from still far too relaxed to be in school, not paying attention, chatting up their friends and getting constantly yelled at by the teachers, and just plain pissy that they had to be back in class. I don’t really get the point of the seasonal breaks. Winter break at least makes sense because of all the holidays we get off anyway, but why spring break? It just becomes a distraction and you have to start from scratch again. I’d rather just have summer break come a week early than have a sudden vacation and come back rusty. Which was exactly what I was, especially in my biology and calculus classes, which are my worst subjects by far, but history was pretty bad, too.

My school day pretty much consisted of being miserable in class, having to take reminder assignments and brush up readings to get everyone back into the work mode, and dodging irritated classmates eager to unload on a couple of fags and teachers with no patience for any of their students. Thankfully, almost all my teachers were also still in vacation mode, so the work was light beyond just repeat homework assignments to make sure our brains hadn’t liquefied out our ears during the break. Please note I said ‘most’, not ‘all’. And who do you think was the exception?

I was not at all surprised that Harkins, that stone cold, dinosaur bitch, the same one that loathed me and had told Heero to protect himself from me in case I tried to molest him or something was the one that had it out for us. The second I trudged into that classroom and saw her superior smirk, the kind of smirk one gets when they are in the unique position to make someone they resent miserable, I knew she had something nasty planned for us. The woman so openly hates teenagers, always calling us lazy and spoiled, that I am genuinely shocked she has never gotten fired just for being a raging bitch towards her students. Seniority, I guess. She’s never really done anything outrageous like hit one of us or say anything that might get someone to complain, but she doesn’t hide the fact that she doesn’t like us and loves to pile on homework and pop quizzes. So, I wasn’t surprised when I spotted the huge stack of papers waiting for us on her desk. It was like getting a foreboding glimpse of doom.

“Good morning, class,” she said with that crocodile smile of hers, “I hope you all had a nice vacation,” she picked up the hefty stack of papers and began to make her rounds through the aisles of desks, dropping a packet on each while we kind of stared at her in disbelief, “Now that the niceties are over, to make sure none of you are rusty or forgotten anything while you were lazing in the sun on some beach or wasting your lives away napping and playing video games, I’ve put together a little refresher course.”

A collective groan went up around the classroom and when she dismissively dropped the packet on my desk and I saw that the damned thing was _at least_ ten pages long, I wanted to groan, too.

“Silence,” Harkins snapped, “What? Did you think you would come back to this class and we would all have milk and cookies and sing some songs? Your little, merry break is over and if you have any hope of passing this class, you will complete this assignment with a 75 or better. You should feel grateful that I am taking the time to go back over everything we have learned this year instead of moving on or I’m sure that most of you,” she looked right at me with a sneer, “would be hopeless for the rest of the class.”

I bristled at the obvious insult, but just gritted my teeth and stayed silent. She would love for me to give her a reason to send me to the principal’s office on my first day back and was probably a bit put out that, ever since I had become friends with Heero, I had been controlling my mouth and attitude in my classes, and such trips were becoming very rare.

“You will complete this assignment by tomorrow,” she told us, marching back up to her desk, her short heels making equally short clicks on the floor and reminding me of a marching general, “at which point there _will_ be a quiz.”

There was another, even heartier groan at that. But I didn’t feel like groaning. I felt screaming. Was this cunt really, seriously thinking that we could finish all these calculus problems AND have time to study for a quiz in just a day?! Well, my classmates probably would if they buckled down and weren’t as inept as me, but my horrible skills at math aside, _I_ certainly didn’t have the time! How the fuck was I even going to finish the assignment between all the other homework I had and work? I could probably finish my other homework during my breaks, but this calculus assignment was going to take _hours._ I was going to have to go through all my old notes, and then somehow have the time to study… I was going to have to do an all-nighter again. I hoped that we had coffee at home, because that was the only way I was going to get through this. At least I had gotten a lot of sleep that weekend, but if my father was home and in a mood, he was not going to make it easy for me.

All my progress in that class, all the homework and tests Heero had helped me to pass, all the hard work I put into the midterm felt like it was slipping through my fingers. There was no way I was going to be able to do this. I was going to fuck up, like I almost always do. I was going to fail and have to take this fucking class with this fucking bitch again my senior year. I was quickly working myself up into a frenzy of anxiety and panic, feeling like I was going to start to hyperventilate as I catalogued how many hours and minutes I would have between work to work on this and kept coming up far too short to make much of a difference. I was fucked. I was completely fucked.

But the bitch wasn’t satisfied with turning my world upside down and when she wrote up some problems on the board to have us ‘practice’ what we had been working on before the break, who the fuck do you think was the first person she called up to the board? Yeah, the universe goddamn hates me. Or at least Haskins does. I looked up incredulously when I heard her bark out my last name, but only met with that damnable, superior smirk of hers that made no attempt to hide that she was doing this out of spite.

I stood and walked up to the board on legs filled with lead. The numbers and symbols and graphs all blurred together. My mind went completely blank and it was like looking at some foreign language that I had never seen in my entire life. Everything that I had ever learned in that class was gone and all I could think, in misery, was that if I couldn’t solve one, simple problem in class, how the hell was I going to get through a quiz? I picked up a piece of chalk and made to write something on the board, but there was nothing to write. My heart raced as humiliation and self-loathing began to fill me A few of my classmates laughed and my hand began to shake, any chance that I might have had to solve the equation gone. I never did manage to learn how to handle public humiliation and failure well, especially being laughed at. It’s like nails on a chalkboard or rather more like a shotgun blast. The second I hear it, I can’t think or focus on anything else but that hateful sound.

          “Come on, Maxwell,” Harkins snapped at me, tying to sound annoyed, but unable to hide how triumphant she felt in embarrassing me, “You can’t possible have gotten any stupider in just the course of a couple of weeks!”

          My face flamed bright red and I angrily slammed the chalk back down in the tray so hard that it broke in half and stormed back to my desk. I felt so humiliated as the rest of the class joined in laughing at my failure, Haskins not bothering to shush them like she normally would. I hated her so much and I wanted nothing more than to slam my fist into her old, wrinkled face. But I didn’t hate her nearly as much as I hated myself for letting a petty, old woman and a bunch of teenaged pricks get to me like that, or for being just as stupid as she accused me of being. It was the same self-hatred I always feel when I prove my father right for calling me stupid and useless. I curled my hands into fists, but it didn’t stop them from shaking from rage and shame. I felt Heero’s eyes on me, but I couldn’t look at him. I knew that he didn’t think I was stupid, but my emotions were being held into place by a fraying strand and he makes me feel too vulnerable. A shred of comfort from him would make it snap.

          “How about you, Yuy?” I heard Haskins say in the same, snide way she had called my name, “Do you think you can solve an easy equation you learned already, or do you need to be reminded how, too?”

          I finally looked up from my intense stare at the faux grain on my desk to glare at her. She looked so haughty and sure of herself, ready to embarrass the only student in her class that had dared to talk back to her, she really _did_ deserve a good punch to the face, I thought. I dared a glance at Heero and saw he was staring right back at her, challenging her like two, quarreling dogs. He looked furious, like he was about to do something very stupid. But then his expression calmed and warped into the same, superior smile, mirrored back at our teacher.

          “Sure thing, Mrs. Haskins,” he said with fake deference, actually taking her aback a bit.

          He strode up to the chalkboard with confidence, picked up one of the halves of chalk I had used, and finished the equation with ease. Our teacher watched him work with poorly concealed irritation. She had really thought that he would flub it or choke like I had. In her haste to shoot him down a few pegs, she had somehow forgotten that he was one of her best students. She just stared at his work, trying to find some fault in it, but even I knew there wasn’t one.

          “Well, is that correct?” he asked her with a sneer, “Or do you need help understanding my handwriting? It’s been a while since you’ve seen it.”

          I couldn’t believe how pissy and bold he was being at her, not caring one bit if he got into trouble, all to stick up for me. I loved him more than I could stand and it soothed some of my hurt, if not my anger.

          “Sit down!” she snarled at him angrily.

          ‘Ro was happy to do so, sitting back down at his desk and folding his arms over his chest, all still smirking smugly, even if there was rage boiling behind his eyes. Haskins didn’t call on either of us for the rest of the class, moving on to find other victims to torment and work her anger off on. I certainly didn’t mind. If she called on me again, there was no way I was going to be able to control my mouth or my rage. I tried to push it all away. I mean, how was it any different than any other day at school? What did it matter that I kept catching people staring at me or sniggering behind me and I knew that I was the one that they were laughing at? What did it matter that I felt overwhelmed with my work load or that I had let some homophobic hag embarrass me in front of people that didn’t even like me?

          It shouldn’t matter, but it did. And no matter how hard I tried as I sat there and stared at the board without actually seeing or hearing anything that was going on around me, I couldn’t push my anger down, or my anxiety. I felt like I was falling again, being dragged under by some icy undertow. School, money, work, failure… it all pushed and pulled against me, surrounded me and filled me up until I felt like I was going to be sick. And there was my rage, simmering under it all, my constant fucking companion, along with depression. Would it never end? Why couldn’t I hold on to the good feelings I had had the previous day? Hell, that morning? Why are the best things in the world also the most fragile?

          I should have been working on the homework assignment, getting a head start on it like I was sure that everyone else was. I sure as hell needed one. But I didn’t. I couldn’t think of anything beyond trying to control my smoldering anger, let alone doing fucking equations. I was vibrating with it and I still couldn’t seem to get my hand to stop shaking. When was the last time I had felt this way? Like I was going to overflow with my rage, that I was going to break if I didn’t hit something? I couldn’t quite remember. I felt like an animal again, nothing more than a creature reacting to my base emotions. I wanted to run off somewhere where no one could find me or look at me, especially not ‘Ro. I wanted to hurt something, even if it was just my own hand.

          I was out of my seat and shoving things into my bag before the bell even rang, eager to get the hell out of that classroom and away from that smug cunt before I snapped, every time those flat, brown eyes fell on me, my embarrassment and anger surged like the tide. Oddly enough, Heero was up even before me, grabbing his things and storming out of the room after he briefly glanced behind him to make sure that I was following him. Even in the mood he was in, my safety was always the first thing on his mind. He looked as angry as I felt, but the camaraderie didn’t make me feel any better. It made me feel worse because this was not his problem. Haskins hating me for being disrespectful, a lowlife punk, and, worst of all, a fag, shouldn’t be on him, but he had stood up for me and made it known to everyone that we were not just friends, we were _together_ and he had no intention of turning his back on me. He had put himself in her sights and talked back to her and now she was gunning for him, too. Not that she could do much with his grades and aptitude for the subject, but it still angered me that she, an adult four times our age was being so petty.

          Heero led us to our lockers, flung his open, tossed what he didn’t need for afternoon classes inside, and slammed it shut so hard that it rang like a gong.

          “That fucking _bitch_!” he snarled and it would have been funny in any other circumstance since he usually had much better temperament and manners than I did, the sort of person who would just smile and nod if an adult was giving him shit because he had been taught to be polite. So had I, until I had lost all respect for my teachers after Quatre’s death and had just stopped caring about being nice and polite when all I had wanted to do was rip everything apart.

          “I can’t believe she did that!” he ranted, “Assigning that much work to do in one day is ridiculous, and then she just singled you out! What the hell is her problem?!”

          On a normal day, I would have felt flattered that he was so upset because someone had hurt me, but I couldn’t even control my own feelings over it, let alone deal with his on top of it. His rage was rolling off his body in waves and I couldn’t let it add to mine or I was going to end up punching a wall again. My wrist still hurts sometimes from that asinine decision. Instead of simmering and sulking, or storming off to find something inanimate to hit, I remembered what ‘Ro had told me that day when I had almost broken my hand, how he had soothed me and settled me when I had felt like I was going half-insane with rage.

          ‘Just breathe,’ I scolded myself, ‘Never mind what that cunt did, never mind how much the rest of the day is going to suck or that I’m probably going to fail that fucking class or Dad or Mom or anything else. Just _breathe_.’

          I closed my eyes and focused on that one thought, because when I did, I suddenly realized just how hard it had been to breathe, how tight my chest had felt that entire time. Nothing else mattered but fixing this one thing. If I could breathe normally again, then I could think. If I could think, I could see how stupidly emotional I was being and I could move past it. Maybe not my anxiety over my work load, but maybe I could move past my shame. I took a deep breath, held it for a couple of seconds and slowly let it out. It didn’t help the first time, but for once, I let my stubborn nature help me instead of hinder me and kept at it. Finally, after about the tenth time, I could feel that tight thing squeezing my chest ease off and my anger start to trickle away. I felt… not better, really, but saner. Less likely to hit something or, worse, someone. I opened my eyes again and Heero was staring at me in concern.

          “Are you alright?” he asked softly, putting aside his upset feelings with a lot more ease and grace than I could, unless he was just a really good actor.

          I shrugged and opened my locker with a steady hand, putting away some of my books. I didn’t want to talk about it. I had just barely gotten control of myself again and didn’t want to slip back into that pissy, snapping coyote mode. I was so focused on controlling my emotions, I realized I had put some books that I needed in my locker and had to dig them back out in frustration.

          “Hey,” Heero put a hand on my arm, stopping me, “You aren’t stupid, ok?”

          “I couldn’t even do the first step of the problem,” I said bitterly.

          “So?” he challenged, “It’s your first day back after a week away with no homework, of course you’re going to be a little rusty. And I know you can do that equation, I helped you with your midterm, remember? You didn’t have problems with it because you’re dumb and you didn’t know the answer, you just froze, that’s all. Not everyone is good at doing stuff like that in front of an entire classroom, especially not one that’s making fun of them. It would have happened to anyone, Duo. You weren’t the only one she called up that couldn’t do an equation, you were just the only one she made fun of for it,” he pointed out angrily.

          “You didn’t mess up,” I muttered, which just sounded stupid and I whiny to me, but it was what I was thinking. Heero didn’t mess up. Heero never messes up. Only I did.

          “ _I_ can do math in my sleep,” he argued, “and I’m not the one that skipped several years of school. So math isn’t your strongest subject, so what? Haskins knows it and she picked you on purpose, she set you up to fail, not you. It was a fucked-up thing for her to do, but it isn’t your failure, it’s hers as a teacher. And don’t worry about the quiz, either, ok? You’ve got this, don’t stress yourself out. Remember when you thought you were stupid and were going to fail that test?”

          I nodded, not really wanting to remember that dark memory and how stressed out I had been back then.

          “And what happened? You proved that it wasn’t you. When you buckled down and studied, you did great. You’re smarter than you think you are and you already know this material, you just need a refresher,” he insisted.

          I gave him a half-hearted smile, wanting to believe that he was right, but still feeling that doubt. My father’s voice screamed away in my head, a recording of every time he had called me stupid and a failure. I could turn the volume down, but I couldn’t quite stop it. Even if I knew that Heero was right, that I’m not as stupid as my father and classmates have led me to believe, it was difficult to believe it completely. I still felt that anxiety in my gut that I was going to fuck this up. Even if Heero was right and I just needed a refresher, I didn’t have the time and I didn’t have the ability to _make_ the time, so it didn’t really matter if I was smart or not, did it?

          “Why are you even in this class?” it suddenly dawned on me and my brow furrowed in confusion as I zipped up my bag, “Why aren’t you in advanced placement? You obviously can get through this class with half trying.”

          It was his turn to flush in embarrassment.

          “Uh… well…” he rubbed at the back of his head sheepishly, “The thing is… when I first moved here, I wasn’t exactly invested in my education, remember?”

          I nodded. I remembered Justin thanking me because, after Wufei died, ‘Ro just stopped caring about his grades and they had really suffered, especially when they had shipped him off to a new town. It was understandable. After Quatre had died, I had stopped caring about things like school and grades and pretty much anything that wasn’t how much pain I was in and hating myself. I had only gone back to school because I didn’t have anything else to do and it had seemed like a pretty good way to punish myself.

          “Well, when they were placing me for classes, I flubbed the math exam,” he admitted with shame, “I just didn’t care about anything.”

          “You can apply for AP next semester,” I pointed out, “It’s too late in the year for this one, since those classes run all year, but there’s some senior AP math courses.”

          “Yeah,” he smiled wryly, “but then I’ll be in a different class than you.”

          “You are not taking a remedial math course just to stick around with me,” I rolled my eyes at him, “Mr. ‘You should take the AP English and not stick with me in basic because you would be bored to tears because _you_ could be teaching that class.’ Remember?”

          He flushed even darker as I reminded him of his own argument when I had thought about taking English 3 with him instead of the advanced 19th century literature class I had really wanted to take. As much as I always wanted to be with him, he had been right. English 3 _would_ have bored me to tears and I loved my advanced class, even if I had to take it with Relena, and the thought of him sucking up another year of math he could run circles around just because I was terrible at that subject pained me. I might have no chance of getting into college, but I knew for a fact that that was where Heero would be headed after he graduated and a course like that would help him. I should have felt bitter about him getting that kind of opportunity, of having a future I would never know, but love is funny that way. I wanted him to succeed, to have every opportunity in life, even if I never could, and refused to let him cripple his chances for me.

          “Fine, I’ll try for AP next year,” he conceded and that tiny victory did more for making me feel better than the breathing exercises had.

          He walked me to my next class and we did our usual song and dance that, to anyone else, would have just looked like us making pleasant small talk, but was really just a desperate attempt to stall and drag out every second before we had to part ways. It was pathetic, and we both knew it was pathetic, but we still end up doing this every afternoon anyway. My heart sunk when he finally had to walk away or he would be late for his class. I’d like to say that I’m getting used to this feeling; heartache, missing him even though I’ve just seen him and I know I will again soon, but I’m not. I don’t understand it and I hate it, but it doesn’t seem to be getting any better. What I am going to do when I have to walk away from him forever? The more I think about that lately, the more I’m scared I won’t be able to survive it. And the more I think that I don’t want to.

          My computer class was exactly what I needed, and the second I sat down at my terminal, I felt more at ease. No one was going to call on me to do anything. No one was going to stare at me and laugh at me. Hell, the way the computers were spread out, anyone that wanted to look at me would have to turn around, but we were all too busy with our assignment to mess around. _And_ there was never any homework. Best of all, my teacher didn’t care about me one way or another. I wasn’t the fag. I was just another face in the crowd to her, one that was quiet and did his work, so she didn’t even notice me, which suited me just fine. I wasn’t even the troublemaker in that class thanks to having never had that teacher before, back when I had been giving everyone an attitude.

          Of course, when you have Zechs Darlian for a student, everyone else, no matter how poorly behaved, is pretty much a saint. Even on my worst day, I could never hope to compare to his flippant attitude and disrespect towards every adult that crossed his path. He wandered the classroom, messed with everyone, used the computer to look at porn or watch loud music videos, and constantly sexually harassed our female classmates and even the teacher. He even would flick his lighter or that damned knife of his if he was especially bored. If he even showed up to class at all.

          I was hoping that it was one of those days, but I knew I wasn’t going to get that lucky. I had seen the asshole prowling the halls earlier, so he hadn’t skipped, and given that it was our first day back, he was going to make an appearance, if only to remind me of his existence. That he hadn’t done anything yet to me was making my hair stand on end and my guts clench. Every time we get a break from school, as soon as we get back, he always feels the need to stake his claim over me again, like he has to remind me of who it is that makes my life hell on a daily basis. Or more like he’s making up for lost time. And the longer the break, the worse his behavior. My first day back this year from summer vacation, he almost drowned me in a toilet, dumped pee in my hair, and made me eat a rather fat cockroach he had brought to school in a jar. And that was just the stuff before lunch.

          So, the fact that he hadn’t done anything yet was making my skin crawl. It was going to happen, sooner or later, and my biggest fear was that it was going to involve ‘Ro somehow, and what he had tried to do to me in that classroom. Even when the beginning of class bell rang and he was nowhere to be seen, I didn’t relax. And sure enough, ten minutes later he strode in like the king that he was, chewing on an unlit cigarette and tracking in mud on his heavy boots. Our teacher didn’t say anything. It was beyond that at that point. She just tensed and continued her lecture, happy to pretend that he didn’t exist.

          Zechs sat down at his station and I had never before been so fucking happy that we were on opposite sides of the room. It wouldn’t do anything to stop him from fucking with me if he wanted to, but I didn’t have to smell him or feel him close to me and have all those unpleasant memories bubble up. He tossed his feet up on the keyboard like he always does and leaned back in his chair. Was it really too much to hope for that he would fall and crack his head on the floor? But no, Zechs is much too coordinated and ‘cool’ for something like that to happen. He’s not especially graceful or anything, he would just never embarrass himself in front of anyone, unlike me.

          I completely forgot that I was staring at him until those cold, icy blue eyes fell on me and those hateful lips spread into a cruel, eager grin. He made a grotesque and crude gesture at me using his fingers and tongue and I turned back to my computer in revulsion, suddenly feeling like I was going to puke. I wasn’t able to get rid of that feeling the entire class, kind of like when you get motion sick and it just _lingers_. The closer it got to the end of class, the worse I felt, until it screamed into full blown panic when Zechs just waltzed right out of the classroom ten minutes before the bell rang, not giving a single fuck that it was too early. I had hoped to run out of the room before he could corner me, but now, for all I knew, he was lying in wait for me to leave the classroom. If he had been waiting to ambush me, or even Heero, this would be the perfect opportunity.

          I was certain that I was going to get jumped as I walked out of there. So certain that I considered getting some kind of weapon ready. A pair of scissors. A pen. _Anything_. But that was just stupid. For one, I had managed to stab Zechs with a pencil that one time out of sheer luck. Two, even if I had a weapon on me, I didn’t know if I would have the balls to use it again. The last time had been from animal terror and rage. It turned out that it would have been completely unnecessary anyway. There was no one waiting for me outside the classroom, not even one of Zechs’s friends, which only made me more petrified.

          There were only two possibilities in my head: that Zechs wanted me scared out of my wits to get a good laugh without actually doing anything to me, or he was planning something so awful, he didn’t want an audience. Guess which my money was on? The longer he didn’t do anything, the more frightened I became. I was getting overwhelmed again, my head torn between anxiety and embarrassment over calculus and terror and paranoia over Zechs, with everything else that I had to worry about in between. I hadn’t forgotten about Trowa, either. But unlike Zechs, I hadn’t seen him at all, and it had been a bit foolish to think that he would try to corner at me at school anyway. I hoped that he would stay away altogether. I just could not deal with a pissy ex on top of everything else.

          I could have cried with relief when I saw Heero walking towards me, completely unharmed and clueless that I was shaking on the inside. I managed to talk him into eating our lunch in the library instead of the cafeteria without him getting suspicious that something was wrong. Or maybe he did know and just wasn’t making a big deal out of it. The rest of the school day wasn’t bad, actually. I didn’t see Zechs at all until gym, although I had to deal with Relena and Dorothy. They were their typical, bitchy selves, but I was too busy worrying about Zechs for them to phase me much. Ever since he had tried to rape me, it was like the rest of them had lost some of their power. Relena could still make me feel like shit, but she couldn’t make those horrible memories come clawing out of me, leaving me nothing more than a shaking husk of fear and panic. She might have even orchestrated what had happened in that room, given her brother the idea or the go ahead, but he was still the threat in my mind, not her. And me dating her ex had tipped the scales a bit on my side for the first time in eight years.

She could hurt me, but I had hurt her, too. The things she does to me now always have a bite of rage to them, and seem more desperate to leave the deepest wounds, but she always hesitates to do anything when Heero is around. Even though it’s been months since they were a couple, she still has this asinine idea in her head that he’s just with me to get back at her over something and he’ll come to his senses eventually. Like the bullying wasn’t enough that, if he was going to do it, he would have done it when his reputation had been dragged through the mud and people were trying to beat him up on a regular basis. She’s so sure that, if she bides her time, things will work out, especially if he doesn’t see her fucking with me. I guess some of his lecture about him not liking her had gotten through, enough to embarrass her, if not enough to actually stop her. That she doesn’t realize she sickens him and he knows she hasn’t changed is baffling to me.

So, I ignored the jeers, the pins in my food in home ec, the lard dumped in my hair, and the hot glares in our literature class, just focusing on getting through the day. Every minute was a small victory and I wonder if there will ever be a day that I don’t feel that way about school, when I don’t have to count every second and consider the moments when I’m not crying or feel the urge to hit someone a triumph.

The worst part was the anxiety, waiting for something to fall on my head and knowing that it was going to happen, and probably soon. When the bell rang at the end of my literature class, my stomach fell to my knees. If something _was_ going to happen that day, I told myself, it was going to happen in gym. It had to. It was the perfect opportunity for Zechs and his squad of goons. It would probably happen in the locker room, or right after class ended. Or maybe even _in_ class depending on what we were doing and how closely Coach was watching us. My heart was a drum as I met up with Heero again and we trudged to the gymnasium. Heero didn’t know what I did, but he still looked like a man walking to the gallows. But that was just a typical day for us.

          Only, nothing happened. Heero and I did our ‘united front’ routine that we had been doing all day, sticking by each other like a pair of gazelle, and made sure we were the last people in the locker room to get changed. Our activity for the day was weight training, which I couldn’t really complain about. Any non-team activity was a relief. While the class bickered over what show to put on the television and who was going to get what machine, Heero and I secluded ourselves into the far corner of the room on the treadmills. It felt like it had been ages since we had run together and I found myself relaxing a little, running a bit harder and faster than I would usually to work off my tension. When Coach left us to take a call in his office, I was on red alert, but, bizarrely, Zechs and his group didn’t move from where they were lifting weights. Zechs, himself, seemed content to stay where he was where he could stare at the girls on the nearby yoga mat. Or rather stare at their asses. He wasn’t even being subtle about it and when one of them noticed, just leered at her. Thoroughly disgusted (I sure would be), they migrated to some treadmills behind him.

          “So…” Heero said between light pants as he jogged beside me, “Want to continue our morning runs?”

          “Yeah,” I said eagerly, having missed them during our lazy, break period, “I need to get back into shape for track on Saturday.”

          Not to mention that it would guarantee to get me out of the house before my father woke up.

          “You never got _out_ of shape,” my boyfriend argued and eyed me up and down.

          Unlike Zechs, his checking me out was very brief and subtle and, for some reason, it didn’t leave me feeling dirty, like I was a slab of beef someone was examining to see if I would be tasty or not. His perusal and obvious approval made my face flame red and my heart quicken, but although I felt a little self-conscious and shy, maybe a little nervous, the glance didn’t make me feel like running for some hole to hide in. I wondered if I was getting used to his interest in me. I hoped so. If I could just force myself to accept what he wanted from me, that he was attracted to me and ease myself into the idea of having sex with him, maybe, just maybe I could get through this. Maybe I could fool him into thinking that I was normal and I wouldn’t have to end things like I had with Trowa. I wanted to believe, to hope so badly and I grabbed for that maybe with both, desperate hands, clinging to it like a ledge I was dangling from, the only thing that could save me from death.

          We chatted lazily as the class ticked by and we remained in our corner, either on the treadmill or I loitered by the weight machines that were closest to us while Heero used them to work on his arms. I didn’t partake. Weight training is, obviously, not my thing and I didn’t want to embarrass myself in front of him by showing him just how weak I am. Besides, after all the injuries I’ve had in both arms, hands, and wrists, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to lift anywhere near what he could and just didn’t need that blow to my already tattered self-esteem that day.

          I felt a bit better after the work out. Less tense. But I still kept my guard up as the class ended and we made our way to the locker room. It had to happen now, I thought, when the coach was in his office and we were all rushing around taking showers and getting dressed to leave school. There was no way Zechs would let me off on our first day back, that wasn’t his style. So, when both Heero and I finished with our showers and walked out of the gym without an incident, I was practically vibrating with nervous energy. Maybe he was planning to jump us after school, like before, that seemed to make the most sense. I wondered if Justin would give us another ride if we asked. Probably, but I didn’t want to keep asking him to bail us out. Bad enough that Zechs makes me feel like a scared, little kid, I didn’t want to look like one, too, and it would just make Heero’s father worried.

          “To your place?” I asked Heero.

          Maybe if we took a different route to his house than usual, we could sneak past Zechs. Unless he was waiting for us in the school parking lot or something.

          “Sure,” my boyfriend nodded, “I just need to go to the shop class for a minute. I forgot to ask my teacher about something in class today, it won’t take that long.”

          “Ok,” I breathed in relief when Heero turned his back to me and led me towards the arts wing of the school.

          The longer we lingered at the school, the more likely Zechs would get bored of waiting and put off whatever he was planning for another day. At least, that was my hope. It was hard to tell with the prick. Sometimes I could wait him out, other times he was like a crocodile with the scent of prey; he wouldn’t give up until he had a bite. Luckily, Heero’s teacher was in his office right next to the classroom, so we didn’t have to hunt him down. I almost stepped inside with Heero, but realized at the last minute that it would be kind of weird, seeing as how I don’t take shop. Heero raised a dark brown eyebrow at me.

          “I’ll just wait out here,” I said lamely.

          “Are you sure?” he worried, looking around for some sign of trouble that wasn’t there.

          “Yeah, I’ll be fine. I’m just going to stay out here,” I assured him.

          He hesitated, clearly uncomfortable with me being alone, but even he had to see that he was being silly. Most of our classmates that weren’t in clubs had cleared out and while teachers were still in their classrooms or in the teacher’s lounge before roaming out into the hallways, there was a thin door separating me from a teacher. If anything happened, someone was going to hear it, so I wasn’t that worried. It would have been suicidal for anyone to start shit with me when a teacher or even the principal could walk by at any moment. Heero disappeared into the office as I stood by the lockers, patiently waiting and biding my time by watching people pass by one of the outer windows.

          Stupidly, I forgot a key fact about my tormentor, that Zechs doesn’t really give a shit about getting caught, that his hiding his treatment of me from teachers wasn’t out of fear, it was just part of the game. I was no safer in an empty hallway outside of a teacher’s office than I would have been on the street. Even on my guard, I was so eager to get the hell out of there, already thinking pleasantly about getting a snack at Heero’s house and starting in on my homework before rushing off to Leneski’s that I quickly stopped paying attention to my surroundings, right up until a large hand grabbed the back of my neck in a familiar grip of iron. I tried to twist my body and get the hand to release me, but then I was being shoved forcefully into the lockers, pinned there like I was nothing more than a damned kitten. Not hard enough to stun me, just to let me know how powerless I was, Zechs obviously not wanting to make a big enough noise that someone would feel the need to investigate, only hard enough to make the metal locker ring like someone had just closed it. I didn’t even need to turn around to know it was him. I knew that smell, that stale smell of tobacco, weed, and whatever deodorant he uses, and I knew the feel of that hand, that brute strength.

          “Maxwell, fancy meeting you here!” he jeered, squeezing down on the back of my neck and twisting his fingers into my hair threateningly, “You’re just the person that I was looking for.”

          I gritted my teeth, biting down on the hundred, different, pissy comebacks that wanted to pour out, fighting against every instinct I had to fight against him and try to flee, the smell and feel of him making my stomach tighten with nausea. I was making a pretty good effort until I felt his hand on the small of my back, fingers trailing down my spine in a gesture too intimate for anyone but a lover. Those instincts and my fear screamed and snapped and I stupidly thrashed against him, needing to get away from him.

          “Uh-uh,” my bully bore his weight against me, pinning me to the cold, metal surface, suffocating me in my terror, “None of that, now. Didn’t you miss me?”

          Suddenly, I felt his knee forcibly go between my legs, keeping them apart and it took everything in my limited power just to not scream or hyperventilate. This was not happening. He was not doing this to me right there, in the middle of the school hallway…

          “I’m hurt,” he mocked, “I missed you…”

          His hand returned to my back, slowly moving down to my waist. I started to shake, realizing where that hand was going and I couldn’t stop it, or my breath from coming out in quick, desperate pants. When I felt those long, cold fingers curl around the hem of my pants, I squeezed my eyes shut and fought hard against the instinct to slam my head back into his like you see all the time in action films. Thanks to Trowa and Heero, one of the few things they have in common, I’ve seen plenty of them, but I know that hardly works in real life. Sure, you can hurt someone with a headbutt, but it hurts right back and I’ve had plenty of head injuries in my life.

          “I especially missed _this_ ,” the bastard almost did succeed in getting a cry out of me when I felt his hand finish its journey down my back and grip my right buttock tight enough to hurt, but it was the intrusion, the feeling of someone touching me there that almost caused the scream, not the pain.

          Callous fingers massaged and fondled my ass roughly, pressing against the material of my pants and slipping between my cheeks. Hot tears poured down my face as a different smell assaulted me, a smell that only existed in my head. Liquor and blood and sex. A hot, familiar breath in my ear and heavy pants. My heart pounded so fast, I felt like I was going to black out. I couldn’t breathe.

          “Seriously, Maxwell,” Zechs sneered, “how is it possible that you have a nicer ass than most of the girls in this school? It’s indecent. How can I possibly concentrate on my schoolwork with this thing in reach?”

          He leaned in close and smelled my neck, smelled my terror and I don’t know if it was that, the knowledge of how frightened I was of him or just by him overpowering me and molesting me, but I could feel his hardness pressed against me and there was nothing I could do to stop him. Not because he was bigger or stronger than me, but because I couldn’t move. I was frozen, cowering, my mind blank and all my rational thoughts scattered, screaming in the wake of my panic attack.

          But at some point during all of this, anger was beginning to join the fear. My hands were still trembling, but now I curled them into tight fists as I felt this intense desire to use them against the man doing this to me. Shame fed it like green wood to a flame. I wanted to tear him down and rip him apart for touching me, for making me feel this way. I wanted to _kill_ him for putting his hands on me, for turning me into a victim again, for bringing me low and vulnerable. I wanted to hit him until he was just a bloody smear on the face of the world. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t fight him. I couldn’t unleash my anger on him, I couldn’t make him stop. I couldn’t even fucking defend myself, stand up to him for once in my life and that made that rage in me surge, torn between wanting to hurt him or hurt myself for being such a disgusting coward. There was something in me, some howling beast that told me ‘fuck that.’ Fuck my fear. Fuck all logic that said I could not win against this person. Even fuck the knowledge that he would just retaliate against me and Heero. None of that mattered. All that mattered was making him bleed. Making him scream with the pain that he had caused me. Make him feel ashamed and weak and useless, a bit of nothing to be pushed around by everyone else.

          I had to tolerate it. I _had_ to. I told myself that over and over and over and over. Just grin and bear it, just like you’ve been doing for the last five years. But I didn’t want to. I wanted to hurt someone else for once, and even just that thought, that desire to lash out against anyone that crossed my path made me sick. But that did nothing to quell the desire. Knowing it was wrong, knowing that if I did, I would be just like my dad, didn’t do a single thing to quiet that beast or my angry tears, knowing that I couldn’t do it. I didn’t understand my own emotions. I was angry for not being able to do something that I didn’t even want to cater to! What was wrong with me? Why am I like this? Why did I want to lash out at Zechs, not to protect myself, not for justice, but just because I wanted to cause pain, to let out this intense rage at the world?

          ‘Breathe,’ I repeated Heero’s mantra over and over, ‘Breathe, just breathe!’

          But breathing was hard. Keeping my fists on the locker and not pounding into someone’s flesh, even if it wasn’t Zechs’s flesh, was hard. My stomach rolled with nausea, my nerves frayed as I fought against myself at all angles; against my anger, against my terror, against the scared boy in my head that was trying so hard not to remember all the other men that had touched me like this, my father, Pat, Trowa...

I have no real idea how long he kept me there against the locker, feeling me up like that. It felt like hours to me, hours of mindless panic and revulsion, but was probably only a couple of minutes. When I dared to open my eyes, when I could think enough to do even that much, I spied someone further down the hallway, some kid from my grade that I only vaguely recognized, not one of my regular bullies. He had just been passing by and had stopped to take in the free show, though I couldn’t tell if it was with entertainment, or just with the air of someone watching a train wreck. He only stayed for a handful of seconds before creeping away. This wasn’t his problem. He would probably leave the school feeling pretty damned fucking good about his life because no matter how shitty he had it, at least he didn’t have to deal with this crap.

          It was at that moment that the shop teacher’s door swung open and I looked at it with absolute horror. Never mind what Zechs was doing to me, what I felt when Heero walked out and looked to his right, where we were, probably looking for me so we could go home and instead saw Zechs grabbing my ass is indescribable. Horror and shame don’t really come close to it. I wanted to sink into the floor. I wanted to die. WHY, I wanted to scream at God and the universe, why, if I have to live through this, this horrible shame and embarrassment, why does Heero have to be audience to it, too?! Why does he have to keep seeing me this low, this disgusting? Why can’t I once, just once, hide this ugliness from him? How weak and pathetic I am?! I just wanted to die. I wanted this to stop. I didn’t want to see how Heero’s eyes went wide with horror as he saw exactly what Zechs was doing, where his hand was. I just wanted to fade away from the world.

          Whatever reservations I had about beating someone or fighting back against Zechs, ‘Ro did not share them.

          “ **Get the fuck off of him**!” he bellowed, his face twisting into one of absolute fury, and freaking _charged_ at Zechs.

          Heero shoved at the older boy, putting all of his weight into it and managed to get him stumbling back, away from me. Just like that, I could breathe again, but I quickly realized that my boyfriend was in full rage and protect mode and he was going to do a lot more than just push Zechs. I hadn’t seen him like that, furious like a wild animal, both mindless and intensely focused on one thing: protecting me since he had come to my rescue in the classroom and threatened Mueller with his own baseball bat. It would have been terrifying if I were in his sights. I watched, helpless, as the boy I loved cocked back his fist and punched Zechs hard in the side of his face.

          “You don’t _ever,_ ” he hit him again in the face, “touch him like that,” another punch, this time he nailed him in the stomach and Zechs’ breath came whooshing out, yet he somehow didn’t seem otherwise effected by the blows, “again, you rapist pig!”

          All I could do was watch. I knew that I needed to stop him, the more damage he did, the worse Zechs was going to retaliate, but I was frozen to the spot. It was frightening watching the usually calm and collected and peaceful person that my best friend was lose complete control like that, but if I’m being completely honest here, it was also kind… oh, fuck it. It was kind of romantic, alright? That he could throw aside all his sense and reason, get so worked up because someone had hurt me. But it still wasn’t right, I just didn’t know how to get in between the two of them without getting Heero hurt.

          “Heero, stop it!” I tried pleading with him, but for once, he wasn’t listening and hit Zechs again in the stomach.

The other thing that was bothering me about all of this was Zechs himself. The guy is big and he was taking Heero’s punches like they were nothing. Sure, Heero was driving him back and they obviously hurt, but they weren’t hurting enough to wind him and keep him down. Yet he wasn’t fighting back. It was like he was letting Heero hit him and the only reason he would do that was if there was some trick to it, if he was waiting for an opening. I thought about that knife of his, but he didn’t have it in his hand, so I couldn’t figure out why he was just letting this go on instead of belting Heero one back.

Out the corner of my eye, I saw Heero’s shop teacher run out of the office to see what the commotion was about and suddenly I understood. For that brief moment, I had acquired precognition. Everything that happened in the next couple of minutes, I saw before they occurred in perfection.

“Heero, _stop now_!” I screamed at him, but it was too late.

I knew that it was too late and I still couldn’t do a single thing to stop it. I was useless, even to protect my boyfriend and later, I would look back at all of this and hate myself for just standing there. Heero cocked his fist back and struck Zechs in the face again, getting his cheek, his knuckles grazing his nose. Blood erupted from Zechs’s nose and dripped down his mouth. On any other day, I would have been mentally cheering. Instead, I was screaming as Heero’s teacher watched this in shock.

“Heero Yuy!”

Finally, it was his teacher’s shocked yell that had him freezing where he stood, his eyes wide with confusion. It took him a moment to realize what had just happened, his face slowly getting that horrified look back. His hand fell, red and slightly swollen at the knuckles, but limp. He looked like a little kid that had just been caught breaking a window, but he didn’t look ashamed to have been punching someone, only ashamed that someone had seen him do it.

“Go to the principal’s office, now!” the teacher roared at him, getting red in the face.

“But he-,” I tried to protest that it wasn’t Heero’s fault, he had been protecting me, but really, what would have been the fucking point?

If I said something like that, I would be pointing a finger at Zechs, which would only make things worse. I didn’t even have proof that Zechs had done anything to me or ‘Ro. We were both without a scratch. The only obvious victim here was Zechs. And even if the teacher would believe me, so what? The reason for what Heero had done didn’t matter, he had still attacked someone on school property. Because of me. This had all happened because of me and now Heero was going to get in trouble. Not me. Not Zechs. Heero. Who had only been trying to do the right thing and save me from be sexually assaulted. The guilt was worse than the groping had been.

“OFFICE!” the teacher roared and Heero, looking like he was in shock and disbelief, took a few steps in that direction.

His teacher immediately forgot that he existed and turned to Zechs, fussing over him like all the adults in that fucking school did when a Darlian was involved.

“Go to the nurse’s office, Zechs,” he said in a softer, more nervous tone. The asshole was probably worried about Zechs’s parents suing the school or something, “Get some ice on that.”

Something ugly crossed Heero’s face and I worried that he was thinking about lunging at him again, but I put a hand on his back and he continued to walk forward, missing the look on Zechs’s face. The silver-haired prick pinched his swelling nose closed, which did little to stem the trickles of blood, but he was smirking. Actually fucking _smirking_ at me as we walked away. The look on his face was vindictive triumph. He might as well be wearing a sign on his face that read, ‘I won, you lost.’ He licked his lips lewdly and I turned away quickly.

He had done this, I realized, feeling nauseous all over again as what had just happened, what had _really_ just happened finally unfolded for me. Zechs had planned for _all of this_ to happen. Of course. How could I have been so monumentally stupid?! Not doing anything to either of us all day, waiting to get me alone right outside the teacher’s office where Heero would stumble on him molesting me. Heero flipping out and punching him in front of the teacher, getting him into trouble… He must have been following us and I hadn’t noticed him… or maybe he had already known Heero was going to see the shop teacher after school. They were in the same class, after all… He had set us up, manipulated the both of us so perfectly, and I hadn’t seen it.

I should have been the one to hit Zechs, I thought, then I would be the one going to the principal and probably expelled, not ‘Ro. Oh god, he was going to get expelled… My stomach twisted and dropped from some great height. I had gotten Heero expelled. He had been seen assaulting another student, and not just any other student, but Zechs Darlian. It might have been his first offense, but I remembered how I had broken Zechs’s nose in middle school and nearly gotten kicked out for it. If it hadn’t been for Mrs. Daniels and the Parkers, I would have been. This was all my fault. Because I hadn’t stood up to Zechs, because I had gotten Heero involved… whatever punishment he got, whether it be expulsion or just suspension, it was on my head and my conscience.

I looked over at him, expecting him to be mad at me, to hate me, but he just looked pale and drawn, shaky, almost as shaky as I felt. I didn’t know if it was because he was scared to be sent to the principal for the first time since he had moved here, if he had realized that Zechs had set us up, or if it was just him coming down from an adrenaline high.

“Are you alright?” I asked him in a subdued voice.

Heero’s eyes were as wide as an owl’s as he looked at me with surprise.

“Am _I_ alright?!” he echoed in astonishment, “Are **_you_** alright? God, Duo, he was-,”

“He didn’t really do anything to me,” I cut him off, “I’m fine.”

“ ‘Didn’t do anything,’” he went even paler, “He was mol-,”

“I said I’m fine!” I snapped before he could even finish the word, something in me screaming again and my voice echoed harshly in the empty hallway. My hand was shaking again and I had to take a deep breath, ashamed that I had yelled at him when none of this was his fault, “I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry, Heero… You’re in trouble and it’s all my fault!”

“It is not your fault!” he insisted, stopping and making me stop with him, “You didn’t do this, Duo.”

“Yes, I did!” I lost my temper again, “This happened because of _me_! Because you needed to protect me, **_again_**! Because I didn’t stand up for myself and I didn’t do anything to stop you from doing it!”

“No!” he grabbed me by the shoulders, his eyes a fiery sapphire as they bore into me, “No, that is not your fault! I did this to myself, love, and Zechs… he’s the one that touched you and I’m the one who lost his temper, not you. I don’t…” he let go of me and looked at his red knuckles, “I don’t regret what I did. No matter what my punishment is, I don’t regret clocking that son of a bitch, ok?”

“You’re so stupid!” I hissed angrily at him, bitter tears stinging my eyes and making my vision blurry.

How could he not regret it? He was probably going to get kicked out of school and he still thought punching Zechs had been a good idea?!

“He hurt you,” he said simply, “and he upset you. He put his hands on you and he had no right to do that. You couldn’t have stopped me from getting back at him for that. Hell, if he were in front of me right now, I’d punch him again.”

I shook my head, but then he had his arms around me and was holding me and I just didn’t care anymore. I melted into his warm embrace, resting my head on his shoulder. I felt so tired, so worn down. Everything inside of me had been scraped out.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, pained, against his shoulder and wrapped my arms around his back.

I wanted to cry, to let out all the pain and anger and self-hatred after what had just happened, but I didn’t want to fall apart in front of him. I didn’t want him to see just what Zechs had cost me when he had groped me, all the things I was trying to keep buried inside.

“Stop,” he ordered, stroking my hair, “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

I did, but I didn’t have the strength to argue with him and I was afraid that his teacher was going to check to make sure he got to the office. That was the last thing I needed, to get Heero into even more trouble. We untangled from each other and walked the rest of the way to the principal’s office. At some point, Heero reached for my hand and I let him take it, suddenly not caring that we were still at school and someone could see. He had saved me again. Knowing that it was a terrible idea and Zechs was going to come after him for it, he had still saved me. I could give him at least a hand to hold. We only let go when we were standing in front of that foreboding door. Heero took a deep, but shaky breath.

“So… any advice?” he asked with forced humor, “I’ve never actually been sent to the principal’s here before. Does he accept bribes?”

“I’ll wait for you,” I ignored his need to turn this all into some amusing farce instead of the tragedy that it was.

Suddenly, startling me, his face went dead serious, like a block of ice.

“No, Duo,” he said sharply, “You can’t stay here. You need to leave as soon as you can.”

“What? No, I’m not leaving you-,” I protested, not understanding why he was making me go.

“No!” he demanded and how scared he was made ice settle in my gut, “You have to go! This is what he wanted, this was _exactly_ Zechs’s plan, to separate us, get _you_ alone. You know that you’re the one he was really after with this, don’t you? He doesn’t give a shit if I actually get into any real trouble or not.”

I nodded, not wanting to admit it, but I had figured that out pretty quickly after I had realized that this had been a set up. Heero has never been Zechs’s target, only me. If he set Heero up to get punished, it was only to hurt me, but that was just a perk of all this. His real game, I had realized, was to get at me, like Heero said. Ever since he tried to rape me, Heero and I had been pretty much inseparable. Of course, that shouldn’t matter. Zechs and his goons could take the both of us, but that wasn’t the point. It wasn’t part of the game. Making us vulnerable, really hurting me and making Heero feel that it was his fault… that was Zechs’s perfect play and it would have been a great way to start off the rest of the school year. Put us in our place. Remind us that we couldn’t protect each other. The second Zechs was sure that Heero was in with the principal, he would drag me off somewhere and do who even knows what to me. Rape me. Break me. Use that knife of his, whatever would allow him to get his rocks off at my expense, take the pound of flesh he had been intending to take that day in the classroom that he had been unable to for so long. I could deny it, but I knew that if I stayed and waited for Heero, Zechs would get to me and it wasn’t leaving Heero alone at the school that I should be worried about.

“Look, we bought a little bit of time,” Heero told me, “Mr. Richardson is probably going to escort Zechs to the nurse, do his due diligence and all that shit. But as soon as he does, Zechs is going to come looking for you and you _cannot_ be here! You have to go! Run to my house, you’ll be safe there.”

I shook my head, feeling a traitorous tear fall down my cheek, not wanting to leave him alone even if he made perfect sense.

“Please,” I begged him, “What if you’re wrong? What if he comes after you instead and it’s all my fault for leaving you!”

Don’t make me fail you, I thought with desperation, not again. Not for the hundredth time. He put his hands on my shoulders again and leaned in for a brief, chaste kiss.

“He won’t. I’ll be safe. Please, Duo. If anything happens to you…” he swallowed roughly, his eyes thick with fear and protectiveness, “I can’t handle that. I’ll be fine. I’ll be with the principal, what could be safer? And if I see even a glimpse of Zechs when we’re done, I’ll hide out in the office and tell my dad to pick me up.”

          “Then call him now!” I demanded, “I’ll stay with you and hide out in the office and we can just leave together!”

          He smiled softly at me.

          “You know that won’t work,” he pointed out and I did, I just didn’t want to admit it, “I don’t want Principal Stoan to know you were involved in this. This is my first time, but you’ve been here dozens of times this year alone. He might be lenient with me, but not you, if he thinks you had anything to do with it. Besides, it will take my dad awhile to get here and Stoan will probably split us up to get our story’s straight and make you wait out here. It’s the same damned situation. Please, Duo, please trust me. I’ll be fine, but you need to run before Zechs finishes whatever he was planning.”

          I fought with myself, fear for myself, the same fear that I’ve lived with forever, warring with the newfound fear for the boy that I loved. But while I felt that I was betraying him, I knew that he was right. Feeling like I was stabbing him in the gut, I quickly pressed a frantic kiss to his lips and ran back the way I came. The last expression I saw on his handsome face was relief, but I felt none of it. I just felt angry and like the biggest piece of shit on the planet. It was in me for a brief moment to stay and let Zechs do whatever it was he was planning because I was sure that I deserved it, but while I might hate myself, I’m not _that_ suicidal.

          I rounded the corner to the T shaped intersection that made up that wing of the school and that was when I saw them, standing against some lockers in the other part of the hallway across from me, maybe about fifty feet or a little more away, well within eyesight. Mueller, Trant, Alex, and Zechs. They weren’t even talking, just standing there, arms crossed over their chests, waiting. Heero had been right. If I had stuck around for a few more minutes, they probably would have gone looking for me.

Looking at them, I felt this indescribable rage build up in me. Because of these punks, because of some grudge they had against me, they got one of the kindest, most amazing people I have ever known in trouble. Heero hadn’t deserved that, _they_ did, and the fact that Zechs could have done the same thing and not gotten into trouble at all made the blood boil in my veins. The rage that I had felt when Zechs had been molesting me returned, only it was joined by the anger and shame and frustration that I had felt that morning when Haskins had made a fool of me and everyone had laughed. It all mixed together and surged, consuming me.

I experienced a brief moment of temporary insanity right then. I wanted to run over there and meet the four of them head on, pound them into dust and take out every ounce of my anger on them. I didn’t care that three of the four of them were bigger than me and all of them were stronger than me. I didn’t care about what they could do to me, I just wanted to hurt them. I wanted to get back at them for what they had done to Heero, just to get at me.

Zechs seemed to sense my intense glare as I just stood there like a total idiot and finally noticed me. The second those predatory eyes fell on me, it was like a splash of icy water to the face. What the hell was I doing? Why hadn’t I just snuck out of there before he had seen me after Heero had made me leave? It was too late for that as Zechs punched Mueller lightly in the shoulder, getting his attention, and nodded his head in my direction. Then all four of them, their eyes gleaming like jackals stalking their prey, started towards me.

I bolted before they could figure out that I was preparing to run, deciding that, angry or not, I really wasn’t all that keen to stick around and figure out what they were going to do to me. I heard one of them bellow something, but my heart was pounding in my ears and it washed out all other noise. Thanks to my stupidity, I hadn’t given myself much of a head start. I could hear them coming after me, the sound of sneakers and boots thudding on the linoleum and cruel catcalls. I slammed into one of the outer doors, which slowed me down a little. That was the moment that I was the most frightened, that they would catch me at the closed door and drag me back. I could hear someone right behind me, barely more than an arm’s reach away. That had to be Alex, right on my ass. He grabbed at the back of my jacket and actually got a fist hold, but I twisted away and managed to break free.

I couldn’t slow down, not even for a second, not even when I hit the main street and ran towards Heero’s home. I could outrun Mueller and Zechs, but Alex is fast, as fast as me when I’m not going all out. But that’s exactly what I was doing, running for my damned life and pushing my body to its limits, ignoring all pain and tiredness. If I could just keep ahead of them and keep that speed, I might be able to get away from them. Alex is fast, but he isn’t a stamina runner. After all those years in track, he still can’t seem to manage to hold his gait, to wait and save his energy for the last lap. He has no patience and goes all out too quickly. Also, he wasn’t running from a bunch of assholes that wanted to pound his face in or worse.

I was betting on the worse. The four of them were dedicated this time as they chased me through the northern part of Nausten. I could still hear them, right on my tail. I probably should have tried to go through some trees and shake them somehow, like how Heero had hid us that day he had saved me from his then friends, but I was too scared to stop, even to go into a store and wait them out. There were only three people in the entire world that I trusted to protect me from these thugs, one of them was in trouble for that very act and the other two I was making a beeline towards.

I didn’t stop running even when I hit Heero’s street, or when I heard the sound of frantic footsteps peter out behind me. I guess they had figured out exactly where I was headed and that they were not going to grab me before I got there. Zechs might be suicidal enough to chase me to Heero’s house, but the rest of them weren’t as bulletproof as he was and he wasn’t fast enough to catch me. So long as the front door wasn’t locked, I might be able to survive this. Instead of slowing down, confident that I was safe on this street, I sped up, my goal in sight. I could have cried when I saw that beautiful house with its perfect lawn and lattice arch and crawling ivy looming before me. I prayed, and prayed hard that someone was home, _anyone_ , and had the spare key squeezed in my right hand so hard that the metal teeth cut open my skin.

I stopped at the door and, unable to help myself even though it was the stupidest thing I could have done, I looked down the street for my pursuers. They were gone. They must have given up the second I had gone down the street. I tried the door. It was open, but there was no one there to greet me, even the dog. Whoever was home must have taken him out back to go to the bathroom or something. I didn’t know. I didn’t care. I didn’t have the mental capacity for it in that second. As soon as I got the door closed, just like that, the click some kind of signal to my brain, my fear washed out of me, leaving me shaking. I should have collapsed. I should have had no energy left to do anything from the long, frantic run. But I wasn’t completely empty. My rage was still there and it grew and grew as my fading fear left more room for it. It filled me up, made me burn.

I stood there at the front door of the house, panting, my hands curled into tight fists, so furious that I felt like I was going insane with it as the entire day played over and over and over in my head, every slur, every touch of Zechs’s hand, every moment when I had wanted to drive my fist through a wall. That urge was back. The need to destroy, to hurt. I wanted to grab the fine vase near the door and dash it to shards against the wall. I wanted to find someone, anyone, and slam my fist into their face. I wanted that person to be me, but since I couldn’t physically manage that, it might as well be anyone else because I couldn’t take this feeling, this rage. I had never felt more like my father in my entire life and that knowledge left me so sick and full of loathing, but that only fueled the fury.

          _“Just breathe,”_ I heard Heero’s voice in my head and it would have weirded me out to hear it so clear and real, more like he was actually talking to me and not me just reliving a memory if it weren’t also so comforting just to hear his voice, “ _Breathe deep.”_

          Breathe. Right. I could do that. I could get this out of me, all this poisonous rage and hatred, I just needed to breathe. I closed my eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. It didn’t do a thing, even when I repeated it a few times. I didn’t feel even a measure of calmness. I tried to remember how Heero’s hand had felt on my chest that day, his warmth spreading down into my heart and erasing all those terrible feelings, little by little. But when I tried to remember, all I could see in my head was his frightened rage as he had punched Zechs and his horror when he had realized his teacher had seen him do it. That look of betrayal, like the universe had just stabbed him in the back as it had dawned on him that he had been set up. A look that should have been aimed at me. Because it was my fault. If I had never come into his life, he wouldn’t have ever needed to look like that. He never would have been scared and probably thinking about his dead friend, thinking about how he had already failed one person. If it weren’t for me dragging him through my shit, he would never have to go through any of this.

          Guilt made my anger acidic and I knew that there was no calming this deep, consuming rage and self-hatred. I could stand there, breathing deeply, like an asshole for hours and all I would see was Heero coming to save me, Heero standing up for me, Heero trying to do the right thing while I destroyed his life with my selfishness. I angrily kicked off my shoes and strode down into the basement. I found the punching bag in the corner of the room and the gloves on a nearby shelf, but I ignored them. I didn’t want gloves. I didn’t want the comfort or to protect my hands. I wanted to hurt myself. I wanted the raw feeling of my fists pounding against something solid, even if it wasn’t someone’s face like I wanted. I tossed my jacket onto a nearby lounger, rolled up my sleeves, and slammed my fist into the punching bag, making it rock back at the sheer force of the blow, putting all of my fury into it.

          It felt weird hitting a punching bag. I had never done it before. It was both solid and not, nothing like hitting a person. It had more give, but was solid enough to be at least a little satisfying. That one punch was like releasing some barrier in me and everything, my anger, my hate, my guilt, my regret, it all came pouring out at once. I whaled on that damned bag like it was the cause of all my problems until I was panting and crying out and still I didn’t stop hitting it with every ounce of strength I had.

          With each hit, a thought burst into my head.

          I couldn’t stop him. Zechs. Heero kept coming to save me from him, but I never even tried, did I? I just let him do that to me. I let Heero hit him and I did _nothing_. And what had I ever done for Heero? When had I ever saved him from anything? I didn’t deserve to be saved. I didn’t deserve _him_. Heero should have let him feel me up. He should have let them fuck my mouth. He should have let them beat me with that baseball bat. He never should have become my friend. He should have turned his back and walked away, just like everyone else in my life does. They were the smart ones. At least they got away from me.

          _Hit. Hit. Hit._ The punching bag made a strange sound every time my fist connected with it. Subtle. Muffled. It made the force that I was using, that rage I was feeling seem so petty, it was insulting. The punching bag morphed into Zechs’s face and I hit it harder, taking great pleasure in the thought that I was punching him and not an object. I thought of everything he had ever done to me. Every slur. Every sneer. Every blow. Every disgusting, crude prank. Getting everyone to call my phone and leave those lewd messages. Trying to cut my hair. Beating up Heero. Trying to rape me. Groping my ass. He had no right… no fucking right to touch me like that! And I had let him do it! Just like him… just like my father…

          Unwanted, Zechs’s sneering face turned into my father’s, but I didn’t even falter. I just kept hitting, harder and harder, faster. My wrist, still a bit messed up from punching the wall weeks ago, screamed in agony. I didn’t care. The pain only reminded me that Heero had seen me like that and that fueled my loathing. Hot tears dripped down my face as I thought about striking my father for everything that _he_ had ever done to me. Beating me. Breaking me. My bones and… and my heart. Shattering me. Holding me down. Fucking me. Over and over and over and over. Turning me into his whore. Never stopping, never caring. Never loving me. Never sparing me. This was all I was to him, a fucking punching bag!

          _Hit. Hit. Hit._

          I didn’t want to be like him! I didn’t want to be a monster! I didn’t want to get driven to this point so easily, to want to take out all this blackness on other people! Why couldn’t I be better than him?! Why couldn’t I ever escape him?! Did I have bleed out every last drop of my blood for that to happen, even when I became an adult? Even if I ran away from him? Heero said that I wasn’t like him, that I would never be like him, but what did he know?! He couldn’t tell the future, he couldn’t see inside of my soul! How can I feel this much anger and hate and not become the same kind of man that my father had?! Heero said that we were alike, that he got like this, too, but he didn’t know the things I thought and felt. He didn’t know how disgusting I was, how weak and pathetic. How much I hated everything about myself. How easy it was for these things to bring me to this point, so low.

          Suddenly, my father’s face became my own and with a tired, but angry cry, I hit the bag viciously. I was an animal, not even human anymore, just reacting to these base, useless emotions. I mean, just look at me. Beating an inanimate object because someone had touched me inappropriately, losing all control over myself. I was a thing, not a person. I wasn’t any better than what my father becomes when he drinks. Or when he wants to rape me. Wanting to destroy things, hurt people… hurt Heero. I might not want to, but I do anyway, don’t I? I drag him down, make him bleed, tear him apart over and over… and in the end, I was going to break his heart.

          My optimism from that morning and the previous evening was gone. I saw myself clearly as I hit the punching bag. It didn’t matter if things were good between us then. They weren’t going to be forever. I was going to fuck up. I already _was_ fucking up. I couldn’t do anything right. I couldn’t protect him from Zechs. I couldn’t make him happy. I never could do anything but destroy everyone around me, had I really thought, even for a second, that I could give him what he wanted? I didn’t want to hurt him. Oh god, I didn’t want to… I felt so helpless in the face of everything. Controlling my anger that seemed to grow every day, subduing my fear that my closeness with this person that I loved so completely had done nothing to quell. Even if I could, Heero deserved better than that. Better than half a person. No, an animal that couldn’t even stop from biting on instinct. Someone like me didn’t have any business dating and loving _anyone_ , let alone someone as wonderful as him.

          The fight drained out of me and I sagged, grabbing at the punching bag for support and leaning my sweat soaked forehead against the cool fabric. My face felt caked with sweat and drying tears, my bangs and shirt sticking to my skin. I panted heavily, my chest heaving and my heart racing crazily as a headache pounded in my skull. Running at full speed for so long and then immediately attacking the punching bag had, admittedly, probably not been the best idea. My body was taxed and even the thought of staying upright was unwelcome, but even with my arms and legs feeling like blocks of throbbing, aching wood, I just didn’t care. My body’s needs and pains weren’t important to me, only the chaos that was going on in my brain as a torrent of bad feelings washed over me.

How had this happened? I had felt happy that morning. Maybe not ecstatic, with school looming and life turning back to normal, but I had felt good about myself, about my life, and my relationship with Heero especially. I had woken up pressed against him and it had seemed like I could take on anything that life threw at me. What had changed in just a few hours? A bad day? Being made fun of? Being harassed? Letting my boyfriend down? How was any of that any different from a regular day? It wasn’t really, and that was part of the problem. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, how I could swing from one mood to the next so rapidly, why it takes so little nowadays to make me feel depressed and loathing myself, why I can’t hold on to the good things.

All I knew was that, no matter the reason why, if it made sense or not, I hated myself. I hated everything about me. I hated my temper, I hated that I was so inept and stupid that I couldn’t even make it through one test, I hated that it didn’t matter how much I tried, because I was just going to get pulled down again, not by life, but by how useless I am. How I can never get ahead of anything or be strong like everyone else, just suck it up and move past it. I hated that it didn’t even matter if I did or how hard I tried because even if I tried my best, even if I got all A’s or coasted through the rest of my teenaged years doing everything right, I still was going nowhere in my life. I hated that didn’t have anything to offer anyone, let alone ‘Ro. I was just an angry, bitter, asexual faggot, flawed and broken and full of shit. I wasn’t attractive. I wasn’t sexy. I wasn’t even remotely cute. I was filthy and cracked.

But most of all, I hated that I hated myself. I hated that I couldn’t be happy, that I let Zechs and my father and everyone else do this and I couldn’t be like Quatre, just slap on a smile and keep going. It was like this endless circle in my life, always leading me back to this hopelessness. I could hate Zechs for treating me like this, like a doll, or an animal that he had hunted down and caged, but I didn’t feel like I deserved any better, either. I just wanted to be like everyone else. I wanted to be normal. I didn’t want to be this lost and confused and twisted. I didn’t want to drag down the one person that meant the world to me, who didn’t deserve… all of this. Although, on the plus side, I didn’t feel so angry anymore. I just felt depressed. That thought almost had me laughing bitterly.

I raised my head and scrubbed at my face with my shaking right hand, although it felt more like a brick than a part of my own body. It wasn’t bleeding or anything, but it was red and stiff and I relished the pain. I pushed myself off the bag and tried to compose myself. I didn’t want Heero to come back and find me like that, shaking, sick, and worn. I wished that I could just collapse somewhere and sleep, forget about this entire day, but remembered with weariness that not only couldn’t I take a nap, I had homework, a quiz to study for, and two work shifts to go through before I could sleep.

And I should really be going home now that I had pushed my luck to the brink all that vacation, if only because I needed to fix the washing machine and check on my mother. And I had promised to help her sort out our finances at some point that week. And I should call Heero to make sure that he was alright, if he wasn’t already home… I didn’t even know what time it was, how long I had been down in the basement, throwing a temper tantrum. Who even knew how long I had wasted. For all I knew, I was already late for work, but I didn’t think so. ‘Ro would have been back by then and even if I had been too deep in a rage trance to have heard him come in, he would have come looking for me.

The weight of everything bore down on me then and I felt paralyzed by all of it. It was too much and I was too drained to deal with any of it. It just made the anger come flooding back, realizing that I had sabotaged myself, that every minute I was down there was a minute that I could have been studying and doing my homework. Why was I so fucking useless? I turned my head to look for my jacket so I could run back upstairs, even while I was debating going a few more rounds to see if I could rid of the rest of this poison in my chest, though I knew, at that point, it was pretty useless, and saw that I wasn’t alone anymore. Instead of Heero, Justin was sitting on their pool table watching me, perched precariously on the edge of it like it was as comfortable as any chair. I swear, that man is like a cat between how quiet he can be, how graceful he is, and that unnerving, piercing stare. I felt my already flushed face go even hotter as I wondered just how long he had been down there watching me attack his punching bag like a freak. It bothered me enough that he had seen me lose control like that, but I also worried that he might be annoyed at me for using his property without asking, but he was always telling me that their house was open to me, so I didn’t think he cared. He didn’t look perturbed by either, but it’s always impossible to read him.

“You hit hard,” he remarked simply.

I had no idea how to take that comment and just looked away from him at the floor. Was it an insult that he thought me foolish for going all out on a punching bag, or a compliment to my fighting skills? Either way, I felt embarrassed.

“I don’t know how to hold back,” I muttered.

I don’t know why. Lack of practice or the fact that my dad seldom restrains himself when he’s angry, or that the only time I’ve really hit anything or anyone was when I was truly pissed, but I’ve never pulled a punch. I always hit things as hard as I can, no matter the circumstances, which is exactly how I had managed to break Zechs’s nose before. Even when I hit Relena, I had given it my all. I suppose that’s not very chivalrous, but I don’t really believe in that shit, especially when it involves the girl who drove my best friend to his death. Fuck gender politics, she hadn’t deserved anything less than I had given her.

“Heero is the opposite,” Justin smiled, “he always pulls his punches, and always has. I don’t know if he isn’t confident enough or is just squeamish about hitting someone, but it took him awhile of practice just to put any force behind his punches. He’s never had that problem with batting, so I just think his heart wasn’t into it.”

‘He didn’t have any problems with it today,’ I thought, remembering how hard he had hit Zechs, but didn’t voice it. Justin might have taught his son how to punch correctly, but I doubted he would be happy to know he was getting into fights, if he didn’t already.

“But you hit like you mean it, every time,” he said, like it was something significant.

I had no clue how to respond to that. I just flexed my right hand and felt the solid, throbbing pain in it from my knuckles down to my wrist.

“Does the reason why you’re so upset have anything to do with why Heero isn’t home yet?” he asked me, but for some reason, he didn’t sound concerned at all, just curious, even though his kid was missing.

“It’s my fault,” I murmured miserably.

To my shock, instead of demanding what happened or what I had done, Heero’s father chuckled at me.

“I doubt that,” he said.

“Why?” I snapped in frustration, “You don’t know what happened! Heero could be hurt or-,”

He held up his hand to stop my rambling.

“I know he isn’t hurt,” he assured me.

Despite my anger, relief flooded me. I hadn’t known if Heero would be alright and had hated myself for running for sanctuary and leaving him behind to save my own ass. For all I knew, Zechs and his thugs had doubled back for him as soon as they had realized they weren’t going to get me.

“He called you?” I guessed.

“Nope,” Justin denied, “Haven’t heard from him all day.”

“Then how can you possibly know that there isn’t something wrong?” I asked in bewilderment, “Or think that it isn’t my fault?!”

Justin stood and leaned against the pool table, folding his arms over his chest.

“I know that he isn’t hurt or in any serious trouble because, if he were, you wouldn’t be here right now. You would be with him,” he pointed out.

I looked away from him again. Ok, he had me there. I had only left Heero because he had assured me that he would be fine and, realistically, he probably would be. Zechs could be waiting to jump him, or he could have just gone home, his real target having escaped him. And if Heero thought there might be trouble, well, he’s smarter than I am. He would have called his father. Or me to let me know he was ok. Another shard of guilt stabbed at me. That was what I should have done the second I had gotten to his house, texted him that I was safe instead of selfishly focusing on my own feelings and nothing else. He was probably worried sick.

“And I know that it was likely not your fault because most of the things that you blame yourself for aren’t,” he said with some amusement.

“That’s not tru-,” I began to protest.

Justin dryly raised an eyebrow and I shut up.

“Duo, you are a very responsible person,” he told me, “In fact, I’ve seldom met any adults that are as responsible and trustworthy as you are. You take care of your household, go to insane lengths to get your homework in on time, and work hard at your jobs. But when it comes to assigning blame to something, you are completely untrustworthy. Frankly, you have a rather large sense of misplaced guilt.”

I stared at him owlishly. Misplaced guilt? Was he right? Was I feeling guilty about things unnecessarily, or did he just not understand? If I wasn’t guilty, then why would I feel that way? Why does it stab at my heart every time Heero gets hurt because of me or when I take a day off while my parents worked? Heero had said that I wasn’t responsible for those things, but then why does it hurt so much? Why do I hate myself so much? How could Justin possibly believe that I wasn’t at fault when he didn’t even know what happened? And how could Heero believe it when he was the one in trouble and not me, when I was the one who had been too weak to defend myself?

“He got into trouble because of me,” I argued, but didn’t elaborate.

Justin strode over to me and put a hand on my shoulder. I almost flinched at the contact, still feeling a bit like a wild animal, ready to lash out at anything that got too close, even if I knew he wasn’t any kind of threat.

“Duo, not everything in the world is your fault,” he said, “I know it seems like that sometimes. You’ve gone through some terrible things in your life and from what I can gather from what you’ve told me about your parents, they went out of their way to make you feel like their problems were because of you. But you know that isn’t true. Everyone is responsible for their own actions and, no offense, but you are a seventeen-year-old kid. You don’t have the power to screw up your parents’ lives, only they do. And whatever happened today, I’m sure it wasn’t your fault, either. If Heero got into trouble, then it is either because of something _he_ did, or something someone else did, but I don’t believe for a second that you did anything to purposefully get him into hot water. Did you?”

I looked down at the plush, pristine carpet, mulling over his words. Of course I hadn’t done anything to get Heero into trouble, I had done the opposite: nothing. And I hadn’t wanted anything to happen to him, but it had happened anyway. Because of me. So how could I believe what Justin was saying? It was like a math equation. Take me out of it and nothing would have happened to Heero. I might not have wanted it to happen, I might want to go back to that moment and stop it, but I couldn’t. So how could I believe that this wasn’t my fault?

Seeing that he wasn’t getting through to me, Justin took his hand off my shoulder, but didn’t seem irritated or frustrated by my confusion and bullheadedness.

“I used to get bullied, too, you know,” he confessed to me, “and I used to think the same things that you are, that it was my fault, that I was only a victim because I didn’t fight back.”

Startled, I shot my head up, staring at him and trying to figure out if he was lying to me because there was no way this man in front of me could have ever been bullied by anyone, and also a bit shocked that he had guessed that the reason why I was so angry was because of bullies.

“Why?” I demanded, unable to believe that Justin understood, even when I saw the same bitterness and frustration that I felt in his eyes, just muted and much, much older.

How could anyone have ever bullied Justin? He was so calm, collected, smart, handsome, strong, and normal. Nothing at all like me or even Quatre. Heero’s father gave me a wry smile that was completely devoid of any amusement.

“Bullies don’t need reasons, Duo,” he told me, “And people don’t get picked on and abused because of some fault in them. They hurt others because it makes them feel good, superior, and they have a cruel streak in them. Or they’re troubled and being hurt as well and need to take that out on someone else. They pick their victims based on how easily they can get away with it, or there’s something about the person that they don’t like, or just knowing that they can hurt that person more. It can be because the person doesn’t have a lot of friends, is isolated, smaller than them, or they’re shy and lack confidence. It’s not because there’s something wrong with that person or that they deserve to be treated that way.

“As for me, well, I was a late bloomer,” he chuckled, “A really, really late bloomer. I stayed pretty short all through middle school. Puberty left me with a lot of acne and I was a bit of a nerd, always with my head in a book. I didn’t have many friends, either. I just wasn’t the social sort. I had a couple of loyal friends that I’m still friends with now, though we live in different parts of the country, but they were in different grades from me and I never saw the need for any more. On top of all of that, I was quiet and liked to keep to myself even on the playground, and I came from a family that, while not rich, was comfortably well off. Some of the kids I went to school with came from families struggling just to keep their homes and jobs, so they resented kids like me that came to school with new, designer clothes and could afford to go on all the out of state field trips while they got left behind.

So, I got teased and beaten up a lot. My things got stolen constantly, or defaced. I went home in tears a lot of days and got into fights with my parents because I didn’t want to go back there, but they didn’t want me to run away from it. Sometimes I didn’t even want to go home because I had a new black eye or bloody nose and I felt so ashamed that I couldn’t do anything about the bullying. And I refused to tell my parents who was doing it to me because I didn’t think it would help, just make it worse.”

“What did you do?” I whispered hoarsely, my chest tight as he described some of the same things that I had been going through since the fourth grade.

“My grandfather and I were really close,” he told me, “Closer than I was with my father, even. He figured out pretty quickly what was going on and I was able to talk to him about it because he didn’t get frustrated with me when I refused to name the bullies or look down on me for not doing anything about it. He was a boxer in his youth, so he taught me a few things to defend myself with.”

“You beat your bullies up?” I asked with wide eyes, not able to see him doing something like that, even in self-defense.

“Hell no,” he laughed loudly, “I was far too scared to use any of the things my grandfather taught me against an actual person instead of a punching bag. However, the training did make me feel a bit stronger, more confident and less helpless. I even stood up to my bullies a few times, but no, I never hit anyone back. I always remembered how much it hurt when they hit me, and I could never do that to someone, make them feel that pain.”

I swallowed roughly, my own thoughts echoed back at me. It didn’t seem possible that I could have this much in common with someone like him, someone that was so much better than me in every way. But we were and, somehow, Justin had moved past his experiences and grown into this amazing man. Could something like that happen to me? Could I let go of my rage and hate and be a better person? It felt like pushing that rock up a hill, something impossible. Whatever had enabled Justin to be stronger, it wasn’t in me. But I still felt a strong connection to him, just knowing that he understood what it felt like to be isolated and pushed around, treated like less than human.

“Did… did they ever stop?” I asked him.

“Eventually,” he told me, “When I got to high school.”

“How?” I had to know, hoping for some secret answer to my own problems, even knowing that such a thing didn’t exist.

“I got taller,” he smirked, “Right around summer vacation after I graduated from middle school. I shot up like a freaking weed,” he chuckled, “My family went on vacation to Florida that summer and the sun cleared up the worst of my acne while time just did the rest. I made a few friends down there and just being away from school and those kids made me feel better. It gave me perspective. I realized that those kids that pushed me around in middle school didn’t matter. I was going to get away from them eventually, and I would not let them drag me down and turn me into something that I wasn’t. I was going to stay the course and ignore them and just reminded myself that, as much as they tried to make me feel like trash, I wasn’t. I was the one that refused to hurt people like that, even if it meant that I had to get hurt. I returned to school that autumn a new person, or at least more confident. The bullying just kind of stopped. I can’t say why, maybe because I was bigger, maybe because I was less shy and had a better outlook on life, or maybe they just lost interest in me.”

He put his hand on my shoulder again and this time, I didn’t tense, my anger having started to melt away into a deeper, aching bitterness and depression.

“Nothing is forever, Duo,” he smiled at me, “I know that it seems like it now, when you’re young and the future seems so far away, but things get better. No matter how bleak things feel now, you can get past them.”

I wanted to believe that so badly. I wanted to believe that I just needed to be strong, stay the course, not let all this shit drag me through the mud, and I would one day come out the other side of it all. With time, things would get better. I would get past whatever block or defect was in me that makes intimacy so impossible and could give Heero what he wanted. I could graduate from high school and get away from Relena and Zechs and the rest of them forever. I could get a job and an apartment and get away from my father, never have him touch me again out of lust or anger. I wanted to believe in that kind of future because I can finally admit to myself that, while I still love my dad, I need to get away from him. He’s killing me, ripping me apart and turning me into something that I truly loathe and, even if it means working like a dog for the rest of my life, it would be better than continuing to live under the same roof as him. I wanted to believe I could do all that, that one day I would be whole and safe and happy… but I didn’t.

“How can it?” I said bitterly, “It’s not like I’ll just stop being gay. I’m never just going to… grow out of this. Even if I move away from here, I’m still me, and the same people that hate me for being… for being what I am are still out there.”

I felt a bit of jealousy for Justin, then. For every kid that grows up and is able to cast aside their bullies because they’re a different person, more mature and able to handle themselves. They get bigger, more attractive, more confident. But that was never going to happen to me. I could be seven feet tall and built like a super model, but I’d still be a fag. No matter how far I run, that’s stuck to my skin forever. And I already knew I wasn’t going to grow into anything. I was seventeen, I had done all the growing that I could do, physically and emotionally. This is who I am and it’s always going to be who I am. Pathetic, shy, weak, angry, resentful. You can’t grow out of something like that. Justin’s expression fell into a sad, but understanding smile.

“I’m sorry,” he gave my shoulder a little squeeze and the reassuring touch made me feel oddly better. Usually, after being swept up in rage and feeling hollowed out like that, I hated people touching me, but something in me craved it in that moment, that physical connection with someone that cared about me, “I can’t even begin to understand or imagine what you and Heero are going through. I know it hasn’t been easy, and it probably won’t ever be easy, but that doesn’t mean that things won’t get better. Nausten is a very small place, and there are people here with very small minds, but the entire world isn’t like that. There are people who understand and don’t let prejudice and ignorance control their actions. So don’t lose hope in your future or other people, alright? There are some good ones out there.”

I gave him a small smile and nodded. If anyone had said that to me a year ago, I would have laughed in their face, but now… Little by little, I did lose my faith in people. That first day of school, Relena and the rest of my fourth-grade class ripped a chunk out of me. They stole a hope that I had had of making lots of friends and finally leaving behind my loneliness. But more than that, they had cracked my faith in other people to be sympathetic and kind and trustworthy. They had shown me just how ugly other people could be and ever since then, having people turn a blind eye to assholes like Zechs and Mueller and Relena, or even join them in making mine and Quatre’s lives hell, I had begun to believe that there was no good in others. Sure, there were people like Mrs. Daniels, but I had even begun to believe that if she ever really got to know me, knew about my anger and my father’s abuse and my budding belief that I was gay, she wouldn’t be so nice anymore.

I had believed since Quatre’s death, seeing how he had been treated even after he had taken his own life, that no one would ever understand me or treat me with even just basic respect once they knew that I was a fag. I had become positive that only other homosexuals would welcome me with open arms and everyone else would feel repulsed by me. Some might act like they were alright with it, or just ignore me, but I was certain that they hated me, they just wouldn’t show it. But now, seeing how Mr. and Mrs. Yuy treat me, and Solo as well, I’ve realized just how pessimistic I’ve been and that Justin is right. Not everyone is like that. There are even probably some kids at school that don’t think that way, but are just too scared to go against the majority. They might even be some of the ones that pick on me, not wanting to show sympathy to the freak.

But as wonderful of a revelation as that is, it doesn’t change the fact that among those people, there will always be those like Relena that think homosexuals are revolting, or Zechs that just enjoy using it as an excuse to hurt people like me. I didn’t have the heart to tell Heero’s father that I had lost my faith in people and my future a long time ago. I loved him and Mariela and Solo, but the reality was that faith was never coming back. I could learn to trust, but not until I really knew the person and even then… Well, Quatre had done his part to make me doubt even the people I think I know well, hadn’t he?

“I could teach you some boxing moves,” Justin offered, putting a hand on the punching bag, “You already have some basics down. You hit hard and you obviously have stamina, though your stance and breathing could use some work. You could learn how to defend yourself.”

I shook my head, not liking the thought of learning how to hit someone. I was too close to being like my father, knowing how to inflict pain and using that against someone out of anger. Justin might say it was for self-defense, but I knew that wouldn’t be how it would happen. I never fight against Zechs and the rest of them to protect myself, I only lash out at them when I get into that animalistic, raw, instinctual mindset, like when I broke his nose or bit him and stabbed him with the pencil. I had no intention of fighting back against him otherwise, even after Heero had gotten into trouble because I’m such a fucking coward, so learning skills like those would only mean it would be easier for me to really do some damage when I lost control. I didn’t want that. Controlling my temper and taking it out on inanimate objects was all I could do, and honestly, it was barely working at all.

“It’s fine,” I murmured, rubbing nervously at my arm, “I don’t want to learn how to fight.”

“Why?” he asked me, but I could see in his eyes that he knew exactly why and just wanted me to admit it out loud.

“I’m scared that if I really learn how to do that stuff, it’ll be too easy for me to really hurt someone. I’ll just do it because I’m angry and want to lash out, not to protect myself. I’ll just… be catering to my anger and justify it. I could never…”

“Take out your anger on someone, even someone who caused that anger to begin with?” he guessed.

I nodded again, feeling so strange that this man understood that about me when I don’t think that even Heero, for all of his own anger and admitting that he had gotten into fights after his friend’s death did. Justin’s smile grew and he swept my sweaty bangs out of my face in a very fatherly gesture, I don’t even think he had realized he was doing it, just a reflex.

“We’re very alike, you know,” he said endearingly, “And I understand. But Duo… being so angry that you have to take it all out on a punching bag until pure exhaustion and wanting to hurt the people that have hurt you does not make you like your father.”

“How…” I sputtered and wondered if Heero had told him that, but he wouldn’t do something like that to me.

“It’s not that hard to guess,” his smiled turned humorless, “It must be very difficult for you having your father be that sort of person and being scared that you’re going to turn out the same way, but being angry because you’re being bullied does not mean you’re like him. Defending yourself against those kids doesn’t mean that you’re taking your anger out on them like he does to you. Being hurt and confused and hating people that have harmed you and made you feel like garbage does not make you a monster. And genetics can only make up some of a person, but not all. The choices that you make decide the sort of person that you are, who you _want_ to be.

“I look at you and I see a young man trying to do the right thing, to be a good person even if he slips up now and then, even if he struggles with dark emotions and hatred. That young man still hasn’t given up on being a better person because he knows the sort of path that he can go down when he stops caring about those things. That is much more important than people who only do the right thing because they think that’s what expected of them. You know the true consequences of your actions, you’ve seen them and you want to change. _That_ is what makes you a good person. Your anger, how you feel, that doesn’t make you bad. And your father… he makes his own choices and they don’t reflect on you, _ever_ ,” Justin’s eyes were fierce, this brilliant, dusky blue that reminded me painfully of my boyfriend and all the times he had told me these things, how passionately he cared about me, “He chooses to take his anger out on you and your mother instead of dealing with his problems. He decides to drink even knowing the sort of person he is and he decides to lose control. You are a better person, Duo, because you fight not to lose that control. Even if you slip up now and then, you still try. You are not your father and you are never going to _be_ your father. I know it doesn’t seem like it now, but you are already a better man than he is.”

It felt hard to breathe again. Tears pricked at my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. I would not cry in front of Justin. I couldn’t let him see how weak I was, that his words had gotten to me. I didn’t even know exactly how they made me feel, but it was far from a bad feeling. Happy? Hopeful? Loved? Maybe a mix of all three. I wanted to believe him and ‘Ro so badly when they said things like that, I wanted to be the person that they claimed they saw, strong and good. But there’s always that voice inside of me that sounds just like my father screaming ‘bullshit!’ But I still latched on to those words, letting them erode the ugly bitterness around my heart with a gentle warmth.

“Heero told me the same things,” I said lowly, in a near whisper like I was embarrassed to admit that.

“Yes, well, Heero is very smart,” he said with a bit of pride and put his hand on my back between my shoulders, “Come on, kiddo, you’ve been down here long enough. Let’s go upstairs and I’ll make you some hot chocolate, alright?”

I nodded and let him lead me up the stairs, my tiredness and fatigue making me pliant. Even if I was still angry, I didn’t have the energy for it or anything else. I was tired of the basement and the feel of the bag against my knuckles and my sweat cooling on my overheated skin anyway. I hung my jacket up in the hallway, hoping that I wouldn’t need it as soon as I _thought_ I would, and joined Justin back in the kitchen. He was dumping cocoa power into two mugs, but all I could see was the clock hanging in the corner. 3:17pm. I had been in the basement for an hour, it was no wonder why my arms hurt so freaking much. But worse than that, I had wasted an hour of my day that I should have been finishing that damned assignment.

Hopelessness weighed me down like a huge bag of dense sand. It had already been rather hopeless before, but now, I could actually feel my calculus grade slipping away from me. I bet Zechs would really get a kick out of it, knowing he had a hand in my anxiety as well as my fury, but I couldn’t even blame him. I was going to flunk that stupid test and it was all my fault for not getting control over myself. And just to be the cherry on top of the shit sundae that was my afternoon, I was probably going to be late for work after skipping twice. I’d have to shower, get dressed, and be across down in forty minutes. I could probably make that if I really hurried, but I couldn’t pack myself a dinner and it would be another hour wasted because I was so sweaty and gross, I _had_ to shower.

“I should shower before work-,” I tried to tell Justin before he could add any milk and waste it.

“Sit,” he ordered, gesturing to the chair.

I didn’t even think about telling him no, just responding to his tone and sat. I felt like the biggest loser in the entire world and the really fucked up thing was that this was not the worst day I had had. In reality, this was pretty normal for me. While Justin heated up the milk in the microwave, I miserably stared at the clock, each ticking minute like a dagger going through my skull.

‘Oh, what the fuck does it even matter?’ I thought bitterly.

Yeah, what was the point? Why even worry about my homework or test? What was the point of studying at all? I was just going to fail, like I always do. Sure, Heero had shown me that I’m not as dumb as my father claims and that when I have the resources and the time, I can pull off miracles. But I didn’t have either of those things, normally, and when I really thought about it, all those times when I had done well on my tests were probably flukes. I always fail at everything, choke up when I can’t afford it. I had gotten lucky before, but even if I had that extra hour back, between work and needing to go home, how much studying could I really do? Even if I stayed up all night, I was already exhausted, nothing was going to stick in my head. It was going to be like being called up to the board again. I _knew_ the answers, somewhere in the back of my brain, but my panic would erase them and it would all be a massive blank. So, what was the point of any of it? I was just so tired of being a failure.

Just as I felt like I was going to start crying out of pure frustration again, Justin put the mug of hot chocolate in front of me and sat across from me with his own. He had heaped homemade whipped cream on mine the way I like while leaving his plain.

“Careful, it’s hot,” he warned me and I nodded absently.

I lightly touched the ceramic mug, the heat feeling nice on my skin. But when I curled my right hand around it, the appendage throbbed like it was irritated at me and with a wince, I switched to my less aching left.

“Your hand hurts?” Heero’s father asked in concern.

“A bit,” I admitted, “Since I hurt it a few weeks ago, it’s been bothering me off and on. Using it so much just now probably wasn’t a smart idea.”

“You should probably have a doctor look at it,” he frowned and I rushed to nip that in the bud.

“I’ve broken my right wrist a lot,” I assured him, “so I’m used to it. Sometimes it just hurts like this.”

He didn’t look appeased by that, clearly wanting to put his foot down, but to my relief, he let it drop. It wasn’t like my wrist was broken, it probably just needed more time to heal and I kept not letting it. Justin got up to dig around in one of the kitchen drawers for a bottle of painkillers, handing me two pills before sitting back down.

“Here,” he said, “They’ll help with the swelling, too.”

“Thanks,” I popped them in my mouth and took a swallow of the hot chocolate.

I was overheated from exertion, but the hot chocolate tasted amazing to me and for some reason, it made me feel a little better. I guess that’s why they call it comfort food.

“Next time you want a go at the punching bag, please use the gloves,” Justin urged, “It might be soft, but it’s not that soft, you could really hurt yourself if you keep hitting it that hard for that long.”

I nodded again, not having the heart to tell him that the reason I hurt my wrist in the first place was from punching a stone wall, so a bag was a vast improvement with or without gloves. We drank in silence, me staring down into the dark brown liquid and ignoring Justin’s eyes on me, studying me. I suppose he was trying to decide if he should just come out and ask me what was going on or if I would come clean given time, or maybe there was something else on his mind entirely. When I took my last sip, already feeling steadier and less like I was going to snap in a slight breeze, he reached out to put his hand over mine

“Duo,” he said with obvious concern, “you don’t have to-,”

Whatever he had been about to say was interrupted by the front door opening and a large, excited canine bursting into the kitchen, barking happily at the sight of me. Thankfully, he kept his training in mind and didn’t try to jump on me to lick my face, just planting himself before me, butt wiggling and whining until I pet him. Despite everything that was plaguing me, the dumb animal still managed to win a smile out of me in a way that few people could.

“And where were you?” I teased him, ruffling his large, pointed ears.

He just lolled his tongue at me.

“At the vet!” Mariela called as she walked into the kitchen, all beaming smiles, “Hi, Duo!”

“Hello, Mrs. Yuy,” I greeted and tried to school my features so she wouldn’t think anything was wrong until what she said finally clicked, “The vet? Is there anything wrong with him?” I asked fearfully.

“Oh no,” she waved off my concern with a laugh, “It was just a check-up. He has a clean bill of health, as usual.”

Kanuck barked happily, like he understood what we were talking about and I sagged with relief. He wasn’t even my dog, but I love that silly canine. When there had been things bothering me that I didn’t dare tell Heero, Kanuck had been there to listen and comfort me in that special way that only animals seem to be capable of. More importantly, Heero loved him and if anything happened to him, it would kill him. Mariela looked at the two of us at the table and frowned.

“Where’s Heero?” she asked, the first one to do so.

Guilt tore at me again and I realized that I had to come clean. I couldn’t let Heero’s parents worry about him just because I was ashamed of what happened or I wanted to keep them in the dark as much as possible about what was going on at school. Just as I was opening my mouth to spill my guts, Kanuck’s ears perked and, barking excitedly again, he raced back to the front door. I knew Heero was back even before we heard the door open and nearly slam shut. We heard heavy footfalls as he ran to the kitchen and then he was there, the most beautiful thing I could have ever seen. He looked like he had run all the way there, like I had, his face flushed, his eyes wide and wild, and his hair a complete mess. My first thought was that someone had been chasing him and that made panic seize me once more as my own thoughts berated me, ‘You should have gone back for him,’ ‘You shouldn’t have left him alone,’ ‘You claim to love him and yet you just let him fend for himself when Zechs and the rest of them were probably out there to ambush him.’

But then those frantic, scared blue eyes found me and none of that really mattered. Heero sagged against the kitchen doorway for a moment, his fear leaving him in a rush the moment he saw that I was there.

“Oh, thank god,” he said in this tight voice before gaining momentum again and striding to me.

My first instinct, seeing him there whole and unharmed and perfectly ok was to throw my arms around him and kiss him deeply. My guilt didn’t matter in that moment, I was just so enthralled to see him and my desire to touch him and press my lips against his and feel his warm body was actually _painful_. But my shyness held me back, reminding me that we were not alone and how awkward it would be to kiss like that in front of his parents. But I still hated that shyness, wanting to ignore it for once, just this once, and not care what other people thought. Heero, however, had no such qualms and hugged me tightly. I could feel him trembling a little and couldn’t even imagine how frightened he had been, not knowing what had happened to me and I hated myself a little more for being so socially inept that I hadn’t thought to leave him a text. I wrapped my arms around him, finally giving in to the urge, and melted against him. I think, if his parents hadn’t been standing right there, I might have cried a little at how good it felt to hold him.

“You’re ok,” he breathed with relief when we finally let go of each other.

“I lost them on your street,” I said, not really thinking that I was confirming that I had been chased to him and his parents until he went pale, “Are you?”

The question was a bit unnecessary because, if Zechs had caught up with him when he had left the school, he would have been bruised, but I had to know.

“I didn’t see any of them,” he assured me, “But I was so scared. I didn’t hear from you and I thought… I thought they got you and I wouldn’t be able to find you.”

“I’m so sorry,” I apologized, feeling horrible as tears filled his eyes.

He shook his head with a small smile and wiped them away.

“No, it’s alright. You know that I always go overboard with worrying. I was sure you made it here ok, I just couldn’t stop thinking ‘what if.’”

“What happened?” Mariela asked in alarm, but we were both too wrapped up in each other to bother with her or Justin at that moment.

“They didn’t expel you, did they?” I asked anxiously, which made Justin stand up sharply from the table and I heard a sharp intake from Heero’s mother.

“No,” I felt like I could breathe for the first time in hours.

If Heero had gotten kicked out of school because of me… I would never be able to forgive myself. His parents wouldn’t, either. And then what would they do? Homeschool him? Our high school is the only one in town. Would they have moved again? Even though it hadn’t happened that way, my heart still quickened with panic just at the thought of me causing Heero to move again. Heero didn’t sound entirely happy about not being expelled, though, and I knew Stoan wouldn’t have let him off scott free.

“I got detention,” Heero grumbled angrily, “Today and tomorrow. And I have to be TA for all my classes for the rest of the week _and_ I have to write a five paged paper, single spaced, on why it’s wrong to hit people,” he rolled his eyes at that and I had to admit, given _who_ he had hit, it was pretty fucking hysterical, “And,” he crossed his arms over his chest and looked incredibly annoyed, “I have to apologize to…” he eyed his parents who were both watching us with pinched expressions, “You know who.”

I winced, suddenly understanding his anger. Heero could handle the detention and even the paper with dignity, but having to actually apologize to Zechs? I wasn’t so sure that I had the spine to do that without wanting to punch him in the face again, let alone Heero. Zechs would probably get a real kick out of it.

“You hit someone?” Mariela asked, horrified, “Oh, Heero, you promised you wouldn’t pick fights anymore!”

“What happened?” Justin demanded, obviously getting that there was more going on than just Heero getting into a fight like he used to at his old school.

Heero looked at me, silently asking me what he should say, but I had no clue. I didn’t want his parents to know about Zechs because they would want to do something about it, but I also didn’t want him to get into trouble with his parents or, worse, let them down, either. Heero had protected me and he didn’t deserve to get grounded or scolded for doing what he felt was right. He’s the only one of us that ever does.

“Heero,” Justin said sternly in his best ‘I am your father and you had better listen to me,’ “Tell me.”

“I… I got into a fight with someone at school. I hit him a few times and gave him a bloody nose. There’s nothing else to tell, I lost my temper,” he muttered, unable to look his father in the eye.

“It wasn’t a fight!” I protested, unable to let him lie just because I was a coward, “Heero was just protecting me! Someone was… was hurting me and Heero only hit him to make him stop, but the teacher only saw the last second of it and we couldn’t prove anything! It was all my fault, not Heero’s! I’m the one that should have gotten in trouble, not him!”

I expected them to get mad at me, blame me for getting Heero detention, but to my shock, neither of them got angry. They both relaxed and smiled at their son like he had just told them he had aced a final.

“Oh, honey,” Mariela smoothed down Heero’s windswept hair, “I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed…” she hugged him and Justin clapped him on the shoulder.

“I’m proud of you,” he said.

“Really?” my boyfriend asked in surprise and his father nodded.

“I know I always say that fighting is wrong and to find another way around things, but you stood up for Duo and you protected him. We’re both very proud of you, it takes a lot of courage to do something like that.”

Mariela nodded in approval. I wrapped my arms around myself, waiting for the ax to fall on me, but when Heero’s parents finally paid attention to me, they just looked worried and sad.

“This isn’t your fault, Duo,” Justin told me, “If someone was hurting you, you’re the victim in all of this. You didn’t try to get Heero into trouble.”

“If I had just stood up for myself for once, this never would have happened,” I argued heatedly, “Heero had to protect me because I was too weak to do anything!”

“No, sweetheart,” Mariela let go of Heero and, looking pained, cupped my face in her hands, “You aren’t a coward for not fighting back. You were probably very scared, anyone would have a hard time in a situation like that. I know that I would. This isn’t your fault, you have to know that, and we would never blame you or get angry at you for someone bullying you. Are you alright? You aren’t hurt, are you?”

I shook my head, not really knowing what to feel at their acceptance. Frustrated that they didn’t blame me, or relieved.

“Nothing really happened,” I murmured.

“ ‘Nothing happened’?” Heero snapped angrily, losing control as he probably was remembering the scene he had walked in on that afternoon, “Duo, he molested you!”

Mariela and Justin were horrified the second Heero uttered that word and I could have slapped him for saying something like that in front of them. Now they were going to freak out over nothing because what had happened _was_ nothing. It wasn’t like Zechs had been trying to rape me, so what was the big deal? And Justin knew that I had let it happen, that I had let some boy grope me and had done nothing. I felt so ashamed, I wanted to run out of there and never look back.

“He did not molest me!” I snapped right back, “It was barely even anything-,”

“He had his hand on your ass!” Heero nearly screamed, getting worked up at my refusal to really address what had happened, “He was fondling you! He had you pinned down and he was touching you, how can you say that was nothing?!”

“Because it wasn’t!” I yelled right back, “It was over my fucking clothes, Heero! He was only doing it to get a reaction out of you!”

Which was probably a lie. Zechs hadn’t needed to do much to get a rise out of Heero enough to provoke him. He had done what he had because he had enjoyed it, nothing more. Getting Heero to hit him had just been a bonus. But I didn’t want to admit that out loud because then that would make it true, that Zechs had grabbed my ass just like Pat would when he was drunk; to cop a feel and hurt me, make me feel dirty, and I couldn’t think about that just then, not if I wanted to keep a hold and not let certain memories come flooding in. Not if I didn’t want to feel like a whore and inanimate sex object to every man I had ever dealt with.

“I know what I saw, Duo,” Heero stubbornly argued, “You were terrified! He was hurting you!”

“Stop it!” I screamed at him, my heart exploding in panic and anxiety as that memory of those hands on me, squeezing, and that hot breath on my skin and the strong hand on the back of my neck, making me helpless threatened to sweep me up, “Just stop! You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

It was getting hard to breathe. Why couldn’t I deal with it? How did this compare, at all, to Zechs and the others trapping me in that classroom and trying to rape me? Why couldn’t I move past it? Why did this hurt so much? Mariela watched the two of us fighting with a hand over her mouth, looking absolutely horrified, while Justin just looked incredibly angry. She took a step towards me and hesitated, not knowing what to do. I hated the look on her face as she looked at me, like I was walking wounded and she desperately wanted to fix me. I was fine, why couldn’t they understand that?! I didn’t have a scratch on me, and any pain I did feel, I deserved, so why did she have to look like that, like she had just caught someone trying to drown a kitten?

“Tell me this boy’s name right now,” Justin growled at Heero, shocking me.

I had never seen the man lose control before, or look as angry as he did then. Heero, again looking to me before answering, shook his head.

“Heero, I mean it,” his father demanded, “This stops now. I want to know who this boy is and I am going to have a long talk with his parents _and_ the principal. He sexually harassed Duo and you need to take this seriously!”

“I am taking it seriously!” Heero protested, “How can you think that I’m not!”

“You still won’t tell on him!” Justin argued, “After all of this, something needs to be done about this and I’m not just going to sit by-,”

“I’m the one who saw it happen!” my boyfriend snarled, “You have no idea how I feel! You don’t know what’s going on! We have our reasons for not tattling-,”

“I don’t care about your reasons,” Justin said hotly, “What I care about is protecting my son and his friend against a bully! How can you not want to give him up after all this time?!”

“Because it won’t make a difference!” I snapped at him, unable to stop myself, “It hasn’t made a difference in five goddamn years! So what if we give up his name and the name of all of his friends?! It won’t do a freaking thing! We don’t have any proof that he did anything and he’s the one with the bruises on his face! He’ll just get his friends to back him up and the principal won’t want to do anything unless there’s proof so his parents don’t sue the damn school! All it will accomplish is a slap on the wrist at best and him knowing who it was that told on him! This isn’t the first time he’s done something like this to me and it isn’t going to be the last just because I got him into trouble! Even if he got expelled, he wouldn’t care, he’d still come after me!”

Heero stood next to me and crossed his arms over his chest, glaring his father down.

“I am not going to put Duo in danger over a _maybe_ , Dad,” he insisted, “If I knew that it would get this to stop, then fine, I would tell you in a heartbeat, but it won’t. This is just one guy. He might be the worst of them, but he isn’t alone. And Duo’s right, getting this guy in trouble won’t stop him. He’s a monster and he gets off on making Duo’s life miserable. If he can’t get him at school, he’ll get him somewhere else, especially if he knows Duo fought back. The only way we’d ever get rid of him is to get concrete proof he’s done something criminal. I can’t risk Duo’s safety over such a small chance of stopping this one person!”

Justin deflated in the face of our joint force. I got that weird, proud feeling again like I had when I had been fighting with Trowa that I wasn’t alone and helpless for once. Heero and I were a team and he would back me up, even if he didn’t completely agree with this course of action.

“If you don’t tell someone what’s going on, there _isn’t_ a chance of stopping him,” Justin countered, but he knew that he was beaten and there was nothing he could say to get us to tell, looking completely exasperated by both of us.

“I don’t even care about the groping,” I insisted, “It doesn’t bother me, alright? It doesn’t matter.”

Mariela and Justin shared a look and I could tell that she was dubious and he full on just did not believe me. Mariela put a hand on my shoulder, trying to soothe me.

“Oh, sweetheart, of course it matters. It happened to you. You might not be able to prove it, but it still happened and it shouldn’t have. You don’t deserve that, to have someone put their hands on you in that way and treat you like that. I know you want to believe that it doesn’t bother you, but there’s no shame in being upset,” she urged.

I shied away from her hand and the slightly hurt and confused look she had drove that knife of guilt deeper into me, inches away from gutting me open.

“Why should I care if some prick cops a feel for a prank,” I snapped, not really at her or anyone else but myself, wishing that that statement was true, “What bothers me is that I have a mountain of homework, a test in my worst subject to study for, _and_ I’m late for work!”

I felt like I was going to throw up as I looked at the clock and saw just how late it was. What the fuck was I doing there, arguing about stupid, irrelevant bullshit? Leneski was going to be pissed, I had lost two, whole, fucking hours of study time, and I was seriously worrying about Zechs of all things?

“Hey, you’ll do fine on the test,” Heero soothed, but that was bullshit.

I might have had a chance before all this had happened, but now there was no way. Lost time aside, I was a nervous wreck, my mind tangled up in too many things to focus on calculus or any of the other homework I had to do. It really was hopeless, so why even bother freaking out about it? Which was exactly how I felt anyway.

“You have a test so soon after vacation?” Mariela asked Heero, perplexed.

“In calculus,” he grumbled in irritation, “Along with a ten-paged work packet.”

“Well that’s ridiculous,” she said.

I ignored the both of them and angrily grabbed my mug and put it in the sink to wash it. I didn’t even want to think about how sweaty and gross I was, but now I couldn’t even take a shower.

“I have to go,” I muttered.

Heero snagged my arm, keeping me still when all I wanted to do was rush and get to Leneski’s as quickly as humanely possible. I almost pulled my arm out of his grip in the mounting frustration I was feeling, only barely realizing that I was slowly headed towards a panic attack as anxiety upon anxiety was thrown at me.

“You aren’t seriously thinking about going to work after what happened today,” he said in exasperation.

“What happened?” I snapped, “Nothing, like I already said! I don’t have time for this. I’m already ten minutes late for work and I haven’t even started on my homework-,”

          “What about your test?” he demanded, “Are you just going to give up on it?! There’s no way you’re going to be able to study _and_ get all your homework done on top of your work shifts!”

          “I know that!” I cried, my heart racing and stress closing in on me like clichéd walls of spikes as he reminded me of the same fact that had been strangling me since that morning.

          “Then why are you even talking about going to work right now?!” he argued.

          “Because I have to! You know that!” hot tears spilled down my face and I didn’t even know why I was getting so upset.

          “It’s just two shifts, Duo! It’s that or a passing grade in a class that you need in order to graduate!” he pointed out.

          “What the hell do you want from me?!” I wiped angrily at my eyes, but the tears just kept coming, “What do you expect me to do?!”

          “I want you to stop crippling yourself and stressing yourself out because you’re trying to provide for your family! I want you to do things for yourself for once! Call out from work and study so you can get a grade you deserve instead of one that doesn’t show anyone what you’re capable of because you were too tired from working until two am!”

          “I can’t do that!” I protested.

          Something tight and suffocating squeezed my chest at the mere suggestion that I skip work just to study for a test. I couldn’t. My mother’s tired, stressed expression from when she told me how much in debt we were flashed in my head along with a neat little tally of just how many work days I had already skipped since the beginning of the year.

          “School is more important than helping your parents dig themselves out of a hole _they_ made themselves! We already talked about this. You aren’t responsible for them, you’re only responsible for yourself! Do you think your mother would be happy to know that you flunked a test just so you could get, what, an extra hundred bucks? You said yourself that it wouldn’t help, so why are you making yourself sick over this?!”

          Justin put a hand on Heero’s shoulder, stopping his rant.

          “Heero is right, Duo. School is more important. Your only job is to make sure you get through high school. Your responsibility is to get your homework done and get through this test. Your mother would understand that,” he said.

          “I can’t!” I repeated, the only thing I could say when I knew that Heero and Justin were right, but stubbornly refusing to admit it, “I need the money!”

          “Duo-,” Heero tried to get through to me in alarm, but I shook my head widely, breathing hard.

          “No!” I sat down in the chair that I had recently vacated heavily, burying my wet face in my hands, my fingers tugging painfully at my bangs, “I can’t.”

          I could feel my body trembling. I could lie to myself and say that it was because my body was at its limits, every inch of me aching with exhaustion and overuse, but I knew that wasn’t it. I was having some kind of anxiety attack or meltdown. I don’t even know why. It wasn’t like this was the worst thing that had happened to me, but I suddenly couldn’t handle any of it. The stress over money. Zechs. My guilt. School. Work. My failings. All of it heaped on me and I couldn’t breathe. It was all rising, this tide that I couldn’t hope to escape and it made everything, even just the choice to skip work, this impossible, terrible thing. Stress doesn’t come close to describing it. I was hysterical and shutting down and I just wanted everything to go away. Tears dripped down my chin and dropped onto my pants. I had no idea how I had found myself there in that state, or how to get out of it. I felt like I was going crazy. Warm hands on my shoulders had me lifting my head. Heero was hovering, looking scared and unsure of what to do for me, but it was his father who was kneeling in front of me, holding me steady, and the calm, soothing look in those blue eyes was what broke through my mindless misery.

          “Hey,” he rubbed at my shoulders, “It’s alright. Take a deep breath,” I did as I was told. It didn’t help to make me feel much better, but it did stop me from hyperventilating and Justin continued as soon as I was able to regulate my breathing again, “I know it’s difficult and I know the choice is a sucky one. You love your parents and you want to help them and it seems like everything is weighing down on you at once, like everything is falling and you’re rushing to catch it, but you know you can’t,” I stared at him in astonishment as he pretty accurately described how I had been feeling, “And I know it’s in your nature to take everything on yourself, to be the responsible one, but you need to take care of yourself first, before your parents. The stress of trying to catch up to everything that’s going on in your life is going to kill you. Ok?”

          I nodded. I knew, somewhere deep down past my guilt and anxiety, that he and Heero were right. Hell, the fact that I had just had a panic attack over skipping one day of work proved that they were right and it was a bit insane of me to give up on school over skipping two shifts. Honestly, looking back, I don’t know why I had freaked out so much, if it had just been everything piling up on me at once or something else, but I felt my face go hot with shame when I remembered how I had just acted in front of the three people I never wanted to see me like that. I took a few more deep breaths until my heart rate went back down to a saner level, feeling hollow and drained, which isn’t surprising. I had pushed myself too hard, too fast again.

          “I’m sorry,” I said miserably when I had calmed down enough and rubbed at my eyes again, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

          Justin smiled kindly and smoothed his knuckles over my cheek.

          “You’re spreading yourself too thin,” he told me, “You need to stop being so hard on yourself.”

          “I just… What’s even the point?” I asked wearily, “I’m not going to pass that stupid test. Even after all that studying I did for the midterm, I couldn’t remember a single thing in class today! I can’t even remember anything _now._ It’s all a blank. It just doesn’t stick! I can never keep it in my head! So, I thought I might as well not bother and just go to work and make some money. I can do _that_ right at least,” I couldn’t stop the bitterness from dripping from my words, or the frustration that I was feeling again.

          I just still felt so stupid, so much… less than anyone else, even after Heero had proved to me that I wasn’t, that my father and everyone else that had called me stupid was full of crap. I always feel like something is wrong with me, there’s some fault, some piece that everyone else has that I’m missing and every time I fail, even just in little bits like that day in class, it seemed like proof of that. 

          “You froze,” Heero said, “You aren’t stupid. Stuff like that happens to people all the time. It’s certainly happened to me, you know how awful I am in the morning. And of course you can’t think of any of that stuff right now, I’d be surprised if you could. Heck, I’m still too freaked out to remember anything!”

          “Heero is right,” Justin confirmed, “We’ve talked about this before, you need to cut yourself some slack and stop focusing in so much on the times that you don’t succeed and ignoring the times that you _do._ The latter is much more telling about how smart and hardworking you are. And stop worrying so much about your parents and work. Despite what your father has raised you to believe, money is not the most important thing in the world. I know that probably sounds a bit hypocritical coming from someone who doesn’t have to worry about finances, but it’s true. Your future and your happiness are more important. Unfortunately, your father doesn’t seem very invested in either of those things, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be, either,” he smiled and gave my knee a comforting squeeze, “And you will do just fine on the test. Remember how you were so sure you would fail before, how you insisted that you were too stupid to pass? But it was never your fault and once you found the right environment, you did very well. You did that once and you’ll do it again. We’ll make sure of it, ok?”

          I nodded, feeling tears gather in my eyes again. “Thank you” just didn’t seem to be good enough anymore for everything that Heero and his family had and were doing for me. My nod was enough to satisfy Heero’s father that he had finally gotten through to me and he stood and walked over to the kitchen phone. Mariela, still looking teary and very upset, pushed a chair up to my side, sat down, and pulled me into a tight hug. I was still feeling incredibly sensitive and introverted and hadn’t been expecting the gesture of comfort, but I didn’t pull away from her. It felt good. Too good, and I melted against her. I could have started crying again, if I had let myself, when I felt her hand on my hair, but I didn’t. There had been enough of that, thanks. I could feel her heart going a mile a minute. I guess I had really freaked her out, either with my hysterics or having found out that I had just been molested at school. I guess, to her, it was a big deal. I don’t even want to know how she would take it if I had told her that that same boy and his friends had nearly gang raped me, or that I _had_ been raped, many times, and by whom.

          “I am so, so sorry, Duo,” her voice was tight and she was as close to crying as I was, “What happened to you at school today… that never should have happened to you…”

          “It’s ok,” I weakly tried to comfort her, but didn’t really know what to say. Hell, as much as I insisted that it didn’t bother me, I know that it did, although probably not as much as Heero and his parents thought it did or should, and I couldn’t even comfort myself.

          “No, it isn’t!” she said fiercely, a bit of the mother bear showing through and her grip tightened on me, like she thought she could protect me, “I wish you would let us help you. That boy doesn’t deserve to go unpunished for doing something so horrible!”

          “I can handle it,” I tried to assure her, but the words sounded so pathetic and hollow to me. Handle it? When had I ever handled anything?

          “You shouldn’t have to,” her voice went even tighter and I knew she was holding back her tears.

          I wondered what I had ever done to earn this woman’s care, if she was just always like this, always so full of love, the sort of person that sees the world through rose tinted glasses and when those were knocked off, instead of denying the harsher world she saw like the Parkers, she became stronger, more ferocious. Maybe teaching kids had made her quicker to protect other people, maybe being a mother had, or maybe this was just her nature, but I didn’t really know how to handle it. The last person to really stand up for me that hadn’t been a close friend or my mother had been Mrs. Daniels, and I hadn’t been able to understand her and why she would do that for me, either.

          She pulled back a little and cupped my face in her hands, studying me for something.

          “Are you sure you’re alright?” she asked, fussing, “If you want to talk about it…”

          “I’m ok,” I assured her, “I’m used to it.”

          But that only made her look more upset and I realized that it had probably been the wrong thing to say, even if it was the truth. She opened her mouth and I felt my guts clench, not wanting to talk about any of this, least of all with her. What was it with these people that they always had to try to drag out every poisonous, painful thing from me? Justin wasn’t so bad and seemed to know when to back off, but between Mariela and Heero, I feel like I want to scream sometimes. I know that they just worry about me and think talking about shit will make me feel better, and sometimes I’m wrong and it does, but it’s easier to cope if I just don’t think about things. Sure, that might not be the healthiest thing to do, but I’m damned good at it. It’s a skill I’ve perfected in my lifetime and every time Heero gets me to talk about things I’ve bottled up and tried to move past, it’s like being eviscerated through an ancient scar.

          Thankfully, Justin saved me from whatever his wife had been about to say and handed me the phone. Mariela got out of the way and he flashed her a stern look before turning his attention back to me.

          “Call your bosses,” he said in a tone that told me this was not something I could argue about.

          I thought about it as I looked at the black, cordless device. Tried to dredge up the feelings and thoughts that had led to my little meltdown just a few minutes ago, but they were suspiciously absent. I suddenly realized that I didn’t care. I didn’t care about work or money or responsibility or even my father getting angry. In fact, as I rolled around in my head everything those three people had just said to me, I realized that I didn’t want to go to work. The thought of doing so made me agonizingly tired, even more than I already was. I wanted to stay there, study, do my homework, and go to bed like a normal, goddamned teenager for once. Just for once, I wanted to not have to worry about time and classes and tests and be exhausted because I had pulled another all nighter. I was done. I had nothing left to give and it was too easy to just go with the flow, do what was being asked of me and stop fighting.

          So, that’s exactly what I did. I took the phone from Justin without so much as a look of protest and dialed Leneski’s office number. Heero’s father gave me a smile of approval and that was enough to make me feel better about the whole thing. Actually, I was feeling a lot better, if I am being honest here. I felt frustrated, a little bitter, but not angry or panicked. Once the knowledge of ‘I’m not going to work tonight’ really settled into my brain as a fact, I was a bit startled to realize just how _happy_ and relieved I was. I hadn’t noticed how much I hadn’t wanted to go until the possibility of _not going_ had been presented to me by more intelligent minds. And little by little, 'are you seriously doing this' melted away into 'why weren’t you going to do this in the first place? What the hell were you thinking?’

Heero’s grateful smile at his parents for helping to soothe me down and get me out of my stubborn hysterics helped me the rest of the way to accepting it. And sure, I still kind of felt like I was doing something wrong, but that feeling was growing fainter by the second. My sanity was returning and, logically, I knew what I had fought against so strongly briefly before, that I was doing the right thing. Maybe school didn’t matter in the long run. It wasn’t like I was going to college or anything. And maybe money was more important to my father, but how I did in school mattered to _me_. I didn’t want to be a loser, and I especially did not want to fail like my father had. It was arbitrary to how I planned to live the rest of my life, but I wanted to pass that class. I wanted my high school diploma. I wanted to have just this one thing to prove to myself that I was better than my father at. I had stuck to the path, even when it had been hard and hadn’t given me anything in return, simply because that’s what I wanted to do. I didn’t want him to be the reason why I gave up. I didn’t want him to take this away from me. It was stupid, but that was how I felt.

Even with that conviction, I felt a bit nervous dialing up Leneski. I had skipped… fuck, two days of work previously and would not have been surprised at all at that point if he had just canned me. Especially since I had given him zero notice each time and this time, as well. But ironically, Leneski took my calling out that evening a lot better than Lorathe did. He was a bit cold about it at first, believing again that it was because I didn’t want to come in because of the harassment. However, I was fortunate enough to have his youngest in my calculus class, so when I told him I needed to study, he was pretty understanding. He even agreed, like Justin and Heero, that school was more important than work and lamented that he couldn’t give me another day off with pay. I was fine with that, just glad that our conversation hadn’t ended in a fight or my getting fired.

Lorathe was… considerably less understandable. He didn’t really care that I had a lot of school work, he was just flaming pissed that I was calling out last minute and, in typical fashion for him, responded with pure, seething verbal abuse. He called me lazy, a punk, irresponsible, useless, and those were just the pg things that came out of his mouth. On a normal day, it would have stressed me out, but oddly, I had been so stressed for so long that day, it didn’t faze me at all. It was like the emotional centers of my brain had overloaded and had just temporarily shut down under the strain. Or maybe I was just too tired to care about one man-child’s temper tantrum.

I might have not cared, but Heero and his parents sure did. At a certain point in the rather one-sided conversation when Lorathe stopped ranting about what a terrible employee I was and just started to scream obscenities into my ear, he was doing it so loudly that they could all clearly hear what they were saying. Justin looked pissed and Heero was just horrified. He knows I hate my boss and get shit from him from time to time, but he’s never witnessed it before. Mariela got this really intense look and made a go at the phone, although who knows what the hell she would have told the ass, but I nimbly dodged her by twisting in my seat and quickly ended the call before she ended up getting me fired. That Lorathe hadn’t done it already is astounding.

“What a vile man!” she snapped, “How can he talk to a teenager like that?!”

“By being my boss,” I quipped dryly.

“Well, he shouldn’t be boss of _anyone_ ,” she ranted crossly, “You shouldn’t have to take that from him! What’s the name of your HR rep?”

There was this brilliant fire in her eyes and I saw with horror that she was completely serious, she was ready to call up HR and complain about my boss to anyone that would listen. She was in full protective mode and I can’t even imagine how she would have reacted if I had been her own child. Justin put a hand on her shoulder, keeping her from flying off the handle even more.

“Down, dear,” he scolded lightly and I breathed in relief when she actually calmed a little.

Proving that he was the level headed one of the family, and probably understanding that I needed that job and just didn’t have the ability to deal with anything more that day, he nodded to me.

“Duo, now that you have the night clear, why don’t you take a nice, hot shower before dinner? I think we’ll have it a bit early so you two can have more time to study. Pizza sound ok with you?” he asked.

I nodded enthusiastically. I was so wiped and so exhausted that paste would have sounded delicious to me, but pizza was a godsend.

“That sounds great,” I told him.

“Alright, pizza it is,” he took the phone back from me.

“Lots of meat on mine,” Heero demanded, “With all this stupid homework Mrs. Haskins gave us, I’m going to need the energy.”

Mariela’s frown deepened.

“Why on earth would she give you so much to do in such a small amount of time? And why your first day back?” she looked worriedly over at her husband, “Maybe we should have a talk with her-,”

“No!” Heero and I both shouted at the same time, startling his parents.

“You cannot talk to this woman,” Heero protested after we shared a paranoid look, “She already hates us enough as it is, having my parents lecture her about how to run a class is going to make that a thousand times worse!”

God, I could imagine the sort of ire she would throw at ‘Ro if that happened and was instantly glad that overprotective parents is not something that I ever have to worry about.

“Why would she hate you?” Justin asked, perplexed.

“It’s… complicated,” I said diplomatically, “It’s really me that she doesn’t like. She just started not liking Heero because we’re friends and he stood up for me when she said some… not great things about me.”

My boyfriend, on the other hand, was much blunter.

“She’s an old fashioned, raging homophobe who hates teenagers because she’s seventy-years-old and should have stopped teaching in the seventies,” he groused with his arms crossed over his chest, “She hates Duo because he’s gay and insinuated that if hung out around him, he was going to molest me or some bullshit. So, I told her off and now she hates me, too.”

“Oh, my god,” Mariela gasped, horrified.

Justin got this dark frown, looking pissed, but not shocked like Heero’s mother was. I guess in her world, teachers don’t say stuff like that about their students. I glared at Heero for confessing that to his parents, but he was thoroughly unapologetic.

“It sounds like we need to have a word with your principal and not your teacher,” Justin muttered with complete seriousness.

“No,” I protested.

“Duo, someone like that should not be teaching a class,” Mariela interrupted, “Believing something so horrible is bad enough, but to actually say that to a student! She has no business being a teacher!”

“ _Please_ ,” I begged them, “I do not want to be the one responsible for getting her fired after working there for over forty years! None of my teachers are going to be able to tolerate me if that happens. She’s not exactly popular with any of them, but I’d still be that kid that got a teacher canned because she offended me or gave out too much homework!”

“Alright,” Justin held up his hands in surrender, “I see your point, even if I don’t agree with it. But promise me you’ll tell us if she does something extreme, like alter your grades or harasses you in class, ok?”

He looked at Heero, probably knowing that I couldn’t be trusted to make a promise like that. Heero nodded and I just hoped that it would never come to that. I make enough waves at that fucking school as it is, I don’t need the faculty pissed at me on top of it. Mariela looked far from happy about the compromise. I think Haskins’ behavior offended her professionally, but I didn’t think she would do anything about it. Honestly, I didn’t care. Sure, I hated the bitch and her class was a nightmare for me, but I just had her for a few more months, then I’d never have to deal with her again. I could last that long and compared to everything else that was going on in my life, she was a minor annoyance at best.

“Duo,” Justin pointed at me, ignoring Mariela’s look, “Veggie lover’s?”

I’d had pizza there enough times that the man knows what I like, although I’ll eat pretty much any kind of pizza. I nodded happily while Heero made a face at me jokingly. On a better day, I would have teased him that there would just be more for me and his dad, who also liked the vegetable pizza, but my ability to hold a conversation, let alone banter, was greatly impaired. Justin didn’t even need to ask Mariela, she always gets half sweet onion, pepper, and garlic.

“Um, Mom, Dad, can you give us a moment?” Heero suddenly asked a bit shyly.

Oh, god, now what, was the only thing I could think. Not even batting an eye at his request or asking why, Justin steered Mariela out of the kitchen with the phone to place the order for dinner in their bedroom.

“What’s wrong?” I asked him nervously as soon as we were alone.

I couldn’t take any more bombshells thrown at me, my nerves were just in shreds. He sat down in the chair Mariela had left and scooched as close to me as he could. I waited anxiously for him to tell me what the big secret was and just hoped that it wasn’t something huge like him lying to his parents about not being expelled or something even worse. Instead, slowly and gently, he wrapped his arms around me and drew me against him. His embrace was more welcome than his mother’s had been and I sagged against him, my weary and strained body gravitating towards his familiar heat. He’s always so warm, warmer than anyone else I’ve ever let hold me, like an electric blanket or a soft beam of sunlight. I felt this rare, strong desire to be close to him, my prickly, unsociable mood melting away into one of strong neediness.

Acting purely on that need and some kind of instinct that I hadn’t even known I had possessed, I laid my head on his shoulder, letting him hold me as tightly as he wanted to. I felt like a little kid and later, I would be embarrassed by how clingy and desperate for affection I was, but right then, I was in fucking heaven. I don’t know what was wrong with me. I’ve never felt something like that so strongly, not since I was a kid and had been upset and wanted my mother to hold me, but I had grown out of that fairly quickly. Or at least I thought I had. I could feel my heartrate decreasing, easing off into a mellow rhythm as the last drops of bitterness and anger were soothed by that warmth and the familiar smell and feel of him. I could have happily dozed off right there and wished that we were laying down together. I knew right then that, no matter the consequences, I would be staying over there that night. I don’t know what it was that had happened to me that day, but I needed him powerfully, I needed his love to stop me from becoming that monster again, to keep me human even if it made me weak. When I felt one of his hands on my back, right between my shoulder blades and below my neck, I felt like I was going to melt.

“I’m sorry I’m so crazy,” I murmured, still feeling incredibly ashamed over my outburst of hysterics.

“You’re not crazy. Well…” he pulled back a little so he could look at me while still keeping his arms loosely around me, his lips pulled into a wry grin, “maybe just a _little_ crazy.”

He pressed a chaste kiss to my lips and I felt the heat that I had been feeling on my skin seep deeper inside of me, not even having realized that this was exactly the balm that I had needed. I placed my hands on his chest, liking the feeling of him through his shirt.

“I’m sorry for everything,” I apologized again, feeling so guilty that I hadn’t been able to protect this amazing person who was holding me, “For freaking out on you and… and for getting you into trouble…”

“I told you, that wasn’t your fault,” he swept my hair out of my eyes, doing that staring thing that always feels way too intimate and weirds me out, “You had no idea what was going to happen, or that I was going to hit him right in front of a teacher. Duo… it was my choice, not yours, I already told you that. _I_ acted and did something that I knew that I shouldn’t because it’s what I wanted to do and I don’t regret it. I certainly don’t blame you. That was Zechs’s fault, and mine. He used the both of us, don’t forget that, ok?”

I nodded, but I still felt wrong, like I should have done something. Fought against Zechs. Tried harder to convince his teacher of… something.

“Do you have my notes?” my boyfriend asked and it took me a moment to switch mental gears and understand what he was asking.

“Yeah, I still have them,” I said.

“Ok, that’s all you really need to study. The worksheets should help, too. Just forget about what happened at school today and focus on studying, alright? None of that other crap matters and it’s not like I got into serious trouble, just detention,” he pointed out.

“I still can’t believe you weren’t expelled, or at least suspended,” I muttered with a shake of my head.

“It was my first offense, Stoan was pretty lenient. It helped that Zechs didn’t show up to make a fuss and, well, Stoan isn’t an idiot. He knows what Zechs is like, even if he can’t really do anything about him, so he believed me when I said that I had only hit him to get him to stop hurting someone. That’s why I didn’t want to get you involved. If it had been you, you probably would have gotten suspended,” he admitted.

I knew he was right. I had gotten sent to the principal’s office too many times, even if most of them had been false accusations, and while my attacking Zechs and Relena hadn’t happened in high school, I was sure there was some record of it that had followed me.

“Are you going to be alright?” Heero abruptly asked, caressing my cheek, “You still seem a bit… shaky.”

“I’m just tired,” I said with a sigh, “It’s been a really long day and I pushed myself too hard running home.”

“They seriously chased you all the way here?” he asked in alarm, but didn’t seem all that surprised by it.

“Yeah. They were pretty serious this time,” I confessed, although I didn’t really want him to know that, “but I made it here before any of them caught up with me.”

Heero looked like he had just swallowed a tack and I knew he was going to be in protective mode for the rest of the week after this, but maybe he was right to be. Zechs and his close circle of friends were escalating, getting more dangerous and I was the one they were gunning for, for some reason. Just because I was their favorite, or because of how I had hurt Relena by dating her ex? It didn’t really matter the reason, but the longer this went on… especially ever since that time in the classroom, I’d been wondering more and more if it might be a good idea to tell Heero’s parents. It was just too big of unknown and I would have cut off my left hand just for a peek at the future, just to know what the right thing was to do, to stay silent or try to do something about Zechs. Because his retaliating against me was starting to look about the same as how he was treating me on a daily basis. It was only Heero and his own welfare that was keeping me from acting, plus an old, instinctual fear of the bully. I didn’t know how to keep ‘Ro safe, so it felt like all I could do was just stay the course.

“It’s probably a good thing, then, that I was the one who got in trouble. I can outrun Zechs, but Alex…” he said.

A tiny shard of my guilt eased at that and I wondered if Zechs and the others would have made a go for both of us if their stupid plan to separate us had failed. Heero was right, he’s pretty fast, but he isn’t as fast as me or Alex, they probably would have caught up to us if we had been together. It made me feel a little better about the whole thing, not all the way better, but enough to make things bearable.

“Are you going to be ok with detention tomorrow?” I asked worriedly, “Maybe I should stay behind in case they’re going to jump you…”

“No,” Heero protested urgently, “No, Duo, you can’t do that. It’s just like it was today. They’re probably going to want another chance to catch you, so you need to go straight home. In fact, it would make me feel a hell of a lot better if my dad picked you up from school. You don’t know that they aren’t going to cut class early just so they can ambush you on the way out of school.”

I chewed on my bottom lip. He was right and I hadn’t even thought of that, how perfect this fucked up plan had been for Zechs, that he had known if he could get Heero into trouble, he would have more than just one chance at cornering me. I didn’t want Justin to pick me up from school, I didn’t want Zechs to have that victory of making me scared and I didn’t want to inconvenience Heero’s family over _my_ problems. But I also didn’t want the boy that I loved to have his nerves tied in a knot over worrying about me, either.

“I’ll go home with your dad if he picks you up after detention, too,” I bargained.

“Deal,” he agreed and kissed me on the forehead.

We let go of each other and I already mourned the lack of contact, again wondering what was wrong with me that afternoon that I felt so needy for his attention.

“I need to shower,” I said.

“Yeah, you do,” he confirmed.

“Sorry,” I muttered, thinking he was offended by my body odor and I had just been pressed up against him.

“No,” he waved his hands dismissively with some amusement, “I meant if you really out did it and ran all that way here, your muscles are probably tired. A hot shower would help.”

“Yeah,” I winced, not wanting him to know just how sore I was and that some of it was from hitting a punching bag.

As I started to stand up, he grabbed the hem of my shirt and gave it a little tug.

“Hey, we’ll get through this, alright? The test and everything else,” he said.

That warmth blossomed in my heart as I realized he had said _we_ , not you. I gave him a grateful smile and we finally parted so I could wash up. In the bathroom, I dared a glance at my reflection in the mirror and grimaced. The bruises on my face were fading decently well, thankfully, but I looked like shit anyway. My skin was greasy from sweating, my bangs stuck to my forehead still, but now that I wasn’t exerting myself anymore, my skin had gone pale from tiredness. I looked worn and about as drained as I felt and my hair was a mess, falling out of the braid here and there. Not exactly attractive, not that there had been much to start with in the first place. But then, as I got undressed, I caught the rest of my reflection with disgust. Beyond the fading bruise on my stomach, I had fresh ones now on my ass. Dark black ones on my white skin where Zechs’s fingers had dug into me. The fucker had squeezed me so hard that he had bruised me. I was less surprised about that than the fact that I hadn’t noticed that my ass hurt, but my hand hurt more, so I guess I had just ignored it. There was really nothing I could do about the bruising, but I still felt annoyed that he had marked me, probably intentionally.

The hot shower was fucking _heaven_ and I turned the water up to just shy of boiling, letting it soothe aching muscles and pains. I already felt about seventy percent better and more like a person again. I washed harder than I usually do, _twice_ , and told myself that it was because I was so gross and not because I could still remember how it had felt, Zechs’s hand trailing down my back and grabbing my ass like he might have a girl’s breast. And if I washed that area obsessively or angrily, that didn’t mean anything, and the fact that I scrubbed on the back of my neck hard enough to make it hurt, it had nothing to do with the fact that he had put his hand there or I had felt his disgusting breath there, either. It made me feel better, so what difference did the reason make anyway?

I have to say, as much as I had first fought against it, taking that night off from work was one of the best decisions I have made in a very long time. I’m not even talking about suddenly having the time to get my homework and studying done or even the great reduction in stress, which would have made it worth it by itself, that I could fucking _breathe_ again and think instead of feeling sick and like my stomach was discovering a new method of origami. No, just being there, in that place with Heero and his family and not having to go to work, to be able to just _stop_ and relax and know that I was in a safe place with people that cared about me was as soothing as Heero’s arms around me had been. I felt like I was being brought down from some great, perilous height. And sure, it made me feel a bit nuts for having overreacted so much, but that was suddenly ok, too. I was going to do this. I was going to get my homework done, pass that stupid test, forget what had happened at school that day, have a nice dinner, and spend whatever spare time I had left that night with my boyfriend. Everything was going to be ok, just like they had said.

By the time I was done, dressed, and had combed my hair back up, I could smell the sweet scent of pizza coming from downstairs and followed it like a shark following a trail of blood. Fuck, but I was hungry. My stomach felt like a gaping maw, ready to suck in anything I could get my hands on. Justin had already put out half of the pizza we were sharing out on the table for me, as well as a beautiful, tall glass of some dark amber soda which proved to be root beer and had brought my bookbag in from the hall where I had hastily dropped it earlier.

“I thought you could study in here,” he offered, “It will be nice and quiet,” he handed Heero a tray of his own soda and meat loaded pizza, “And you, upstairs. I don’t want you distracting him.”

“I won’t-,” Heero began to distract him.

“Not on purpose, but I remember what it’s like being with someone. If Duo really needs help, he’s welcome to go get you, but he’ll do better without any temptations,” he pointed out.

He did have a point. Heero and I study pretty well together, but the desire for small talk would be there and I really didn’t need his help with this, I had his notes and I just needed to concentrate. Heero sighed, but shrugged, seeing the wisdom in it and caring more about helping me to do well than hanging out.

“Thank you, Mr. Yuy, for all of this,” I said when Heero had gone back upstairs.

His father just smiled at me and ruffled my hair a little, then he and Mariela disappeared with their pizza. I don’t know exactly where they went, they were so quiet the entire time I did my homework. I could hear them moving around a little from time to time, but it was pleasant white noise, barely registering on my radar when I got sucked into my work. I devoured all of the pizza and two glasses of soda while I tackled all of my other homework first. The food helped to give me energy and I felt less like I was about to keel over at the kitchen table. At some point, Mariela managed to sneak in there and replace my empty dishes with a bowl of strawberry ice cream, but hell if I know how. I hadn’t noticed her at all and only assumed she was the one who had done it because it seemed like something she would do.

Pepper wandered into the kitchen shortly after I finished eating, peering up at me with curiosity and meowing, but I ignored her, needing to focus on my work. Not one to be deterred when she was seeking attention, she jumped up on the back of my chair and used my shoulders to climb up on my head, probably looking quite smug the entire time, if cats can look that way. This was not the first time she would do that, use me for higher ground. She used to do it all the time as a kitten, sit on my head or shoulders while I did my homework or read and it would usually amuse me, being her perch. But she’s pretty much full grown now and while she is a fairly small cat, she was still a solid weight on my head and the swish of her tail in my face was too distracting.

“Nope,” I told her firmly, picking her up off my head.

She meowed incredibly loudly in irritation until I put her on my lap.

“Be good and stay there,” I scolded her.

She kneaded my lap lightly and, deciding that it was warmer and more comfortable where she was than on my head, sprawled out with a deep purr. I sighed and fought against the urge to pet her, diving back into my work. I imagined that that was what having a small, needy child felt like.

The calculus packet of worksheets was painful for me at first. My brain has this weird block when it comes to math. I look at it, and it’s all gibberish to me and I get frustrated. I imagine it’s a bit how people feel when they’re dyslexic or learning a second language at first, only no matter how much I study, it never really goes away for me. I have to work at it, break it apart piece by piece while my brain fights me, not wanting to do it. Doing that packet was like that for a little while, but then, to my pleasant surprise, the knowledge came back to me and it got easier and easier.

Now that I wasn’t freaking out about it and shooting myself down before I had even started, I saw that Justin and Heero were right, I could remember these things just fine so long as I took a deep breath and cleared my head of all the crap rambling around in there. Although having no one staring at me or laughing at me helped a lot, too. I wished that all my classrooms and own home could be like that; peaceful, quiet, still and comforting, allowing me to focus. It was even more amazing, the lengths that Heero’s parents were going through for me, keeping the house quiet just so I could study. I don’t have a single clue how to really repay them for all of that anymore.

I finished with the worksheet around nine, but took an extra hour to look over Heero’s notes again and do all the problems that I had struggled with the most over again on a spare sheet of paper until I could do them perfectly without looking at any notes at all and I was satisfied that it would stick in my head for tomorrow. I packed all my things back into my bookbag, stood, and stretched with a wide yawn, wincing as my spine cracked from sitting for so long. I was completely wiped, but I felt so fucking _relieved_ , I knew I was going to be able to sleep that night. My bookbag slung over one shoulder, I went looking for Justin and Mariela to thank them again for coming to my rescue and not letting me give up, Pepper following me like my constant shadow and probably annoyed that she no longer had my lap to curl up on. Not finding them in the living room, I went down the hall to the master bedroom and found the door only slightly ajar and heard their voices coming from inside. Not wanting to be the sort of person that eavesdrops, I almost backed away until I heard Justin say my name in a hushed tone.

“I really want to get him a desk,” Mariela was saying, “The last few times he did homework here, I caught him doing it on Heero’s bed. He needs a better place to study! Heero’s desk is too small for both of them and the kitchen isn’t a proper place, either. There’s enough room in the guest bedroom for one. We should have finished furnishing it when we moved in, I just didn’t want you lugging that old desk of mine all the way up the stairs if no one was going to use it…”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Justin agreed, “Although not that old thing. It’s too small and I’d need to fix the back, right leg before _anyone_ uses it again. I looked at desks when I was at the hardware store, but they didn’t have a great selection. I want to measure that space and hit the office supply store for one. They’ll probably have something more appropriate…”

I listened to all of this with mounting horror. What the hell were they talking about? Buying a desk for me? Why? Why would they do something like that? It wasn’t something I needed, it wasn’t like bus fare or even money for washing machine parts, it was a fucking _desk_. Why did they even care?! I wasn’t family. I wasn’t their kid. I was just their son’s stupid, pathetic boyfriend who couldn’t even handle his own life, so I needed to leech off them. And they were going to throw hundreds of dollars at me, for something just to make studying a little easier? Who were these people? Why did they give a shit about me? I could not wrap my mind around it, what I was hearing, that they were having a conversation about me and getting me things that I needed _at all_.

“No!” I protested as I went into the room, not caring that they were going to know that I had been eavesdropping or that it was rude of me to barge in on them like that, I needed to put a stop to this.

“Duo,” Justin said in surprise, but I cut him off.

“I don’t need a desk!” I argued, “You can’t… you can’t just keep throwing money at me like that!”

“We aren’t, honey,” Mariela assured me, “And it isn’t any trouble-,”

“How can it not be?!” I demanded, feeling like I was becoming hysterical again, but this all seemed entirely too unreal for me, “I don’t need something like that! And even if I did, I don’t want you buying me things when I can’t even pay you back!”

“We’ve already discussed this,” Justin scolded me, “We don’t expect you to pay us back. This isn’t a loan or a favor. We want to buy you a desk because it’s something you need and we can provide. It’s just that simple, Duo.”

“I can’t accept that,” I said harshly, “I don’t understand why you would want to…”

“Because we care about you,” Mariela insisted, “We told you that our home is open to you, that this can be a place for you to study so you can keep your grades up. Well, this is a part of it. If you’re going to do your homework here, you need somewhere to do it, you need your own space. The kitchen might be better than Heero’s bedroom, but it’s not quiet enough. Really, we’ve been remiss in not putting one up there for you to begin with. We want to do this for you, sweetheart.”

“But I haven’t done anything to deserve that,” I whispered, which only made her smile sadly at me.

“That’s the thing about caring about someone. You don’t need to deserve anything, but you do deserve it, by the way. And you don’t owe us anything,” she said.

“Mari is right,” Justin put his hand on her shoulder, “I know you’re not used to people doing things like this for you and you’ve been taught that people don’t give handouts without asking for something in return, but that’s not true. The simple fact of it is, this is something that we want to do and, like or not, we are going to do it for you. And you are not going to worry yourself sick about paying us back or that you don’t deserve it, alright?”

I swallowed roughly, a thousand protests on my tongue, but I nodded. I knew he was right. I could rant until I was blue in the face, try to make them see reason, but I would never win. They would do whatever they wanted, so I should just accept it graciously, even if it made me feel like shit. Even if I felt so guilty about them lavishing gifts on me that it felt like I was being eviscerated. Even if I knew, while they refused to see it, that I did not deserve a single thing that they did for me.

“Finish your homework?” Heero’s father switched tracks on me, burying the topic probably so I couldn’t make up any further arguments.

“Yeah, I’m all set,” I told him.

“And feel better?” he pressed.

I knew that he wasn’t just asking about my schoolwork, but the scene he had walked in on in the basement. I nodded again.

“A lot,” I confessed, “I feel more confident about tomorrow, I think I’ll do alright.”

“Good,” his smile brightened, “See what you can do if you just take a deep breath and slow down for a second?”

I gave him a small smile back.

“I… I want to thank you for that… for helping me and not letting me make a big mistake. And for the pizza and letting me study here and everything else…”

“Oh, you don’t need to thank us for that,” Mariela protested.

“No, I do,” I insisted and looked guiltily down at the ground, “You guys keep doing all these amazing things for me and you have no idea what it means to me… and… and I want to apologize, for earlier. For freaking out earlier and arguing with you and acting like… like a hysterical child…”

“Hey,” Justin put a hand on the back of my head, “none of that, ok? You never have to apologize for your feelings, not ever. It’s alright to feel hurt or angry or overwhelmed sometimes, just so you know that you have people that understand and will support you, help you through it, so you don’t try to bottle it up inside and ignore it. That’s why you had that outburst today, because you always try to just ‘be ok’. You don’t need to be. If you need to cry or scream or go a few rounds with the punching bag to get out your frustrations, there’s no one here who is going to punish you or look down on you for it.”

I wiped at my suddenly wet eyes. How could he know that? How could he possibly know that my father hated it when I cried or was upset, even when I was a kid, that sometimes he had even beaten me for it? Was he just grasping at straws or had it been a blind hit? True to his word, he didn’t look disgusted that I was crying again, just gave me this reassuring smile and a pat on the shoulder that made me feel less ashamed of my emotional instability.

“Why don’t you head up to bed?” he said, “You’ve had a very difficult day and you look exhausted.”

“Alright.”

Bed sounded amazing. Bed with Heero sounded even better. I was completely gone at that point, quickly heading towards a zombie state and even the thought of crashing on the couch would have been pleasant. We said our goodnights to each other and I headed upstairs, dumping my bookbag in the guest room and dressing in my nightclothes before going into Heero’s room. I expected him to be already asleep at that hour, so I could just slip into bed with him, but was surprised to find him awake, sitting on his bed and looking at something on his computer. He smiled happily at me and closed the laptop, putting it on the dresser next to him.

“Hey,” he greeted, “Got everything done?”

“Yup,” I confirmed and sat on the other side of the bed, “Thankfully.”

I sighed in relief. I can’t even describe how insanely good it felt to have all my homework and studying done before midnight, like this granite boulder had been lifted from my back. I sagged against the headboard. Heero moved over so he was sitting right next to me, his leg pressed against mine. Unable to stop myself, I leaned against him a little. His hand found mine and he cradled it, studying it like it was something especially fascinating to him, some relic or puzzle he had to solve. He smoothed his thumb over my knuckles and frowned at how red and swollen they were. Thankfully it was my left hand and not my right, which was worse. At least I hadn’t broken the skin this time.

“You were hitting things again,” he said sadly.

My first instinct was to pull my hand from his, but I was enjoying his touch too much, even if his perusal made me feel defensive. Instead, I sat up and crossed my legs, turning to face him.

“Not a wall this time, though,” I tried to make it lighthearted, but he refused to take the bait, so I sighed, “I was just… so angry when I got here. Everything that happened today… the shit Haskins pulled, Zechs getting you into trouble… and I couldn’t control it. I wanted to hurt him and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t keep that… bottled up.”

“It boiled over,” he guessed and it made me feel so much better, that reminder that he knew what I was talking about, he felt these things, too, sometimes. Maybe not as much as I did, but he knew what it was like to be so angry at everything, to want to lash out at the world, “I told you, Duo, you can’t keep bottling this shit up, you’re just making it worse.”

“I know, I just… it’s how I’ve always dealt with it, how I’ve always coped… I tried the breathing thing,” I admitted, “but it didn’t work. I remembered what you said about having an outlet and I tried the punching bag.”

“Did it help?” he asked.

“A little. Your dad helped, too,” I told him.

“Good. You’re feeling better, then?”

I shrugged.

“Enough not to hit things,” I muttered dryly, “Not so much the rest of it.”

I had been able to push down most of it, the dark thoughts and feelings that had been looming over me for most of the day. Being around Heero and his family made those things seem small and distant, and I had been too focused on my schoolwork to have the time to brood, but now that I didn’t have any distractions and I was exhausted, those things came back, bubbling up on the surface. I wasn’t angry anymore, just like I had told Heero, but my doubts, anxieties, fears, and frustrations still simmered in the back of my head and I knew little was going to soothe them away. I could feel better, get my anger out, but what had happened had happened and they weren’t pleasant memories to have. Or maybe I just needed some sleep, to reset my brain and I could be more successful in burying it all.

“I’m sorry,” Heero said mournfully, “About everything that happened today…”

“What are _you_ apologizing for?” I snorted, “Being amazing and beating up Zechs? Trying to make me feel better after Haskins made an idiot out of me? Getting me to stop flying off the handle and screwing over my grades?”

“I’m apologizing because I care about you and none of that should have even happened to you, dummy,” he teased and brought my hand up to his lips, kissing my knuckles gently, blushing slightly at my praise.

He studied my hand for a little longer and I almost asked him just what about it was so damned fascinating, his thumb tracing over tiny white scars from when my father had beat me with an empty bottle, so small that they were nearly invisible.

“I want this morning back,” he murmured so low that I almost didn’t catch him.

“Why?” I asked perplexed and he looked at me, his expression so sad that it was heartbreaking.

“You were happy, then, weren’t you?” it was hardly a question, but I nodded anyway, looking down at his sheets dejectedly.

“This weekend was… it was amazing,” I said, “But today… a lot of shit happened. It… It wasn’t all about school. Things at home haven’t been great, and all of this just piled up on me. I’m sorry I worried you. I wish I could be happy… I’ve tried-,”

“No,” he gave my hand a little squeeze, “I don’t want you to force yourself to be happy when you’re miserable, whether it’s to make me feel better or yourself. If you’re upset, you should be upset and not hide it away. You shouldn’t have to apologize for what you’re feeling.”

I couldn’t help but smile at that.

“Your dad said the same thing.”

Heero looked a bit surprised at that, then schooled his expression to one of obviously fake annoyance.

“He steals all my best lines,” he grumbled and managed to win a faint, strained laugh from me.

With a relieved smile, he leaned in and kissed me, soft and chaste and brief.

“I mean it, though,” he said in a more somber tone, “about not bottling it up inside. It doesn’t just apply to you feeling sad and unhappy, but your anger, too. I wish you would express it more instead of apologizing for it and running from it all the time. It isn’t something that you need to be ashamed of, love.”

I scoffed at that. How can I not be ashamed of the rage I feel? How easy it is for me to lose control over myself when I’m mad, just like my father? The same thing that has frightened me since I was a child, and I have it in me, too. I’ve seen where it leads, but I can’t stop it. So how can I not be ashamed of it? Of how weak I am that I can’t be better than this?

“Hey,” he said sternly, “I was angry, too, remember? I lost control, too, a lot worse than you did. You weren’t the one who hit someone and lost his shit.”

“You were just trying to protect me,” I argued.

“Maybe at first,” he confessed, “when I shoved him off you, but after that… I was just so furious that he dared to put his hands on you, that he had scared you. And after what he did before when all of them cornered you… I wanted to hurt him so badly. I wanted to pound him into paste and I almost did… Duo, if that teacher hadn’t come along, I wouldn’t have stopped. I didn’t hit him in self-defense or to protect you, but for the sake of vengeance, because I was angry. So, please, tell me, how is that any different or better than you needing to hit something because someone you care about got in trouble or you were humiliated in front of an entire class or some prick molested you?”

“Because this was one time!” I snapped, “One time that you lost control! Do you get that angry every time someone pulls a prank on us or calls us fags or pushes us around?! Do you get so angry every day, it’s like you’re going insane and you just want to hurt people, even people that haven’t really done anything to you, just because you’re so tired of being the victim all the time?!” I was shaking again, remembering how it had felt that day, being so enraged that I had actually felt sick and looked down at my trembling, red hands, remembering the feeling of pounding them into that punching bag and imagining I had been hitting a person instead. I saw for the first time that, although I hadn’t hurt myself enough to bleed, I had hit the bag hard enough to take off a good amount of skin from the knuckles on my right hand.

“I didn’t use to _be_ this way, Heero,” I whispered painfully as I continued to stare down at my hands, “I was never like this when I was a kid, it just… it just _happened_ , gradually. I got angrier and angrier until I realized how twisted I was. But when I was a kid, before I went to school, I wasn’t like this. I wasn’t angry all the time. I didn’t hate everyone and everything. I loved my parents and when my father hit me or my mother ignored me, I didn’t hate them for it, it just made me sad. But now… You want proof that I’m a horrible person? I hate my mother some times. I love her, she’s my mom, and she’s trying so hard to put her life back together. She quit drinking for me, she stands up for me against my father now sometimes, she worries about me and cares about me and is trying to show that. But there are times when I look at her and think ‘where the fuck were you for all these years, what the hell were you doing,’ and I hate her. I hate her so fucking much. And then I realize what I’m feeling and I hate myself so much for feeling that way, for being so miserable and full of loathing _all the time_. There’s something… something broken inside, something all twisted up and I don’t know how to fix it!”

“Oh, Duo,” Heero murmured and wrapped his arms around me, not really hugging me, but drawing me closer until I was nearly on his lap, laying his head on top of mine, “That doesn’t make you a horrible person. You’re allowed to feel that way. Just because your mother has changed, it doesn’t mean that you aren’t allowed to feel hurt or angry at her for how she used to be. She hurt you, very badly, I think. It’s natural that you still feel that pain and resent her for not changing sooner, for needing to change _at all_. People are complicated. You can love and hate someone at the same time, and hating your parents for how they treat you does not make you a bad person.”

“I don’t care if it’s natural!” I cried in protest, “I don’t want to feel this way anymore!” my voice cracked with pure, frustrated desperation and my eyes started to feel wet again, my vision blurring a little, “I’m so tired of it! I don’t want to hate people! I don’t want to be angry every second of my fucking life!” I wiped at my eyes uselessly, hand still shaking like I was a junky coming off a high, “I feel like fate is mocking me,” I whispered, “I’ve spent so long… and tried so hard to be different. To be better. To be the calm-headed, responsible, logical one that didn’t let his emotions control him and hurt the people around him. It’s the one thing that I’ve strived for my entire life, even after I finally figured out that I was never going to get my parents’ approval, I figured that if I couldn’t be a good person, at least I could be _better_. I put in all this effort and I still turn out like this! Bitter and angry at people for my own failings! And the more I’ve tried, the more I’ve failed to be that better person, the more I’ve… I’ve become the one person I don’t want to be. Every time I lose control like I did today or when I punched that wall, I’m _him_ ,” with just a glance at Heero, I knew I didn’t need to elaborate who ‘him’ was, he got it loud and clear, “I feel like he’s _here_ ,” I grabbed my right wrist and squeezed painfully, relishing in the pain, “in my blood, buried deep inside and it doesn’t matter how hard I try, he’ll always be in there, a part of me, and I can’t dig him out. He’s me and one day, I’m going to wake up and realize that I’m him, too, I’m just as angry and hateful, like it’s my fucking destiny. I feel like it’s pointless to even try to be anything different anymore, like I’m fighting against the inevitable.”

“You are _not_ your father,” Heero insisted, “You are never going to _be_ your father-,”

“You can’t know that!” I snapped back at him, “You can’t see into the future! You have no idea what I’ll be like! As bad as things are now, if I’ll just get worse-,”

“And neither do you,” he cupped my face in his hands, effectively cutting off my self-depreciative rant, “You don’t know what will happen in five years, ten, what you’ll be like. Maybe this will be easier for you. Maybe you won’t even feel this way at all. You don’t _know_ , Duo! Hell, maybe you’re right. Maybe it won’t get better, maybe it will get worse. But that doesn’t matter because I _do_ know that you will never be like your father because I know _you._ You will never be a man like him. You will never take your anger out on someone like that. You’ll never lose control and beat someone and put them in the hospital just because you had a bad day and it makes you feel better to hurt someone.”

Tears tracked down my cheeks. I wanted him to be right, I wanted it so badly. I wanted to look back on all this, my pain and my fears, twenty years from now and be able to laugh at how silly I was as a teenager to be scared of things that never came true in the end. But when I try to picture myself as an adult, I only saw my dad. Miserable. Angry. Hating and blaming the world for all my problems. Hurting everyone around me. Alone because I had driven away everyone else. Just a disgusting failure.

“Then who am I, Heero?” I asked, my voice tight and weak.

It could have come out as a bitter, sarcastic challenge, but instead came out as a heartfelt plea. Please, ‘Ro, give me something to hope for. Anything that I can hold on to, even if it’s a pipedream. Because right now, all I have are nightmares and anxieties. He smiled at me and that smile was so warm and full of love, I felt like it was ripping me apart. He gently wiped the tears off my cheeks.

“You said that you feel like you’re fighting against the inevitable. _That’s_ who you are, love,” he told me, “Not your father. You might have his genes, but you also have his choices. He gave up, or maybe he never even tried to be a better person, but you haven’t. You might think you have, but you’re still fighting against it. You might be angry like he is, but you haven’t let that turn you into him. You’ve never lashed out cruelly at anyone. You could have today, and instead you used our punching bag to try to control those feelings. You’re upset and trying so hard still to not follow his path. That’s who you are, the person who can’t accept what your father willingly chose. That choice is more important than what you _feel_. It’s not that you feel angry all the time, it’s what you choose to do with that anger that defines the kind of person you’re going to become.”

God, he sounded so much like his father. It would have made me laugh, but I didn’t feel much humor at the moment.

“That person you’re describing…” I murmured, “I don’t feel like him. I never have, I… I don’t even feel human when I’m like that, when I’m so angry and I want to tear everything apart… They treat me like an… like an animal, Relena and Zechs and all the rest of them, even adults like Haskins… and I just feed into it when I’m like this. I become an animal, just reacting to my anger, and it makes them _right_.”

“You are not an animal,” Heero said angrily, “You’re a human being. Those feelings are the feelings of someone who has been cornered and treated like a thing, but that doesn’t make you less than anyone else, and your reacting that way sure as hell doesn’t make you lesser. They aren’t right,” he grabbed my right hand in both of his, looking at the swollen, stripped skin of my knuckles, “ _This_ is your humanity, Duo. If you were just an animal, you would lash out at all of them, you wouldn’t struggle and fight against your own rage so hard that you would hurt yourself with a punching bag or ignore your anger for so long that it’s made you feel this twisted up inside!”

He pressed his lips to the torn skin of my knuckles reverently, then turned my hand over and kissed the vein on my wrist, soft lips tasting my pulse. The gentle, but incredibly intimate touch made my face flame red and my heart beat a little bit faster. When he kissed me just as softly on the mouth, I leaned into him, happy with the contact. It was like a warm bath on a cold day, the one bit of comfort I had that could soothe some of the depression that I was feeling and when he stopped, I ached for more. I wanted his touch, I wanted him to make me feel good for once instead of empty and cold and bitter.

“You are amazing,” he told me fiercely, “and wonderful. You aren’t a single thing that those assholes call you, so don’t let them make you feel that way, ever, ok?”

His love for me was a brilliant fire in his eyes and like the leech that I am, I latched on to it with sheer desperation, let it fill the empty parts of me up in ways that nothing else had been able to do for my entire life. When he kissed me again, this time deeper, his lips moving against mine hungrily, something in me sparked. It felt a bit like drowning, like I was falling into something deep and inescapable. Usually it takes me quite a while in these make out sessions of ours to get to that point, yearning for touch and rising to meet Heero’s passion, but that night, it was almost instant. I kissed him back just as hungrily and he became bolder, realizing that I was reciprocating, that I needed this. When I felt him gently graze my lip with his teeth, I opened my mouth and let him slip his tongue inside.

His hand wrapped around my head, fingers sinking into my hair without tugging on it and I grabbed at his shoulders, feeling some strange stirring in my gut. I felt one of his legs try to wrap around me and I didn’t protest as he practically pulled me into his lap sideways, enjoying the closeness and his mouth on me, like he was trying to devour me. If I had the courage, I would have wrapped myself around him. I even almost protested when, after several minutes of this, his mouth left mine, but then he was kissing the side of my neck and I could actually feel myself melting. I don’t know what it is about my neck, but I had liked it when Trowa had kissed me there, too.

Heero kissed a trail down my throat, nipping and sucking and licking my skin, leaving little red marks on my pale neck and I couldn’t help but make a tiny, almost inaudible moan at the feeling of it. Unlike Trowa, Heero wasn’t quick with his explorations, wasn’t out of control with his passion and desperate to reach the parts of my body that he actually wanted to touch, but was almost lazy, slow and careful, like every inch of me was incredible to him and he had to give each tiny part of skin equal attention. I distantly felt some tiny fear as I realized that this was different, we hadn’t done this before. It was another step, another barrier breached and usually, that would terrify me and I would pull away, but right then, I didn’t care. There was something stirring in me, something deep in my gut, turning my skin, every nerve that Heero’s tongue and lips and teeth touched into electricity, and I didn’t want to listen to that skittish part of myself. I wanted to be normal. I wanted to just be a boy making out with the person he loved. I wanted this contact, I wanted him to make me _feel_ something, something that was beautiful and hot instead of painful or twisted.

Heero wrapped his arms around my waist, drawing me even closer as he buried his face in the crook of my shoulder. I could feel his teeth pressing into me, barely even a bite, but more solid than just a nip, and to my mortification, I heard myself whimper. I didn’t understand what was happening to me, only that I didn’t want him to stop. Even as my stomach twisted and something in me screamed that this was leading someplace I did not want it to go, I couldn’t speak. I felt this incredible frustration with myself as a part of me wanted and another didn’t, tearing me in two. I ached for him in a way that I never had for anyone else and the bits of me that were waking up for the first time in my life with love and desire warred hopelessly with my ancient fear of intimacy, of being this close to _anyone_ , neither having any hope of winning, so I was just left paralyzed and confused by myself.

My boyfriend trailed a hand down my back, feeling at the curve of my body like he was searching for something, or trying to commit me to memory and that anxiety grew a little as I realized that this was progressing faster than I could keep up and it was heading someplace forbidden, someplace I couldn’t come back from and the lower that hand trekked down my spine, the smaller and smaller my desire became as I knew, just like I had with Zechs, what Heero was going to do. But just like with my bully, I didn’t know what to do, if I should tell him to stop, remove myself from the situation, or just let him do what he wanted. There was a part of me that just wanted to surrender, the same part that contained my yearning for intimacy and normalcy. What was the point, it argued, of stopping this? Maybe it would be better if I just let what was going to happen, happen. Maybe if we got it over with, it would be easy. Easier than what had happened with my ex. Heero would never have to know that I didn’t want him to fuck me. I could stay with him if I could just force myself past this one thing. The first time would be the hardest, right? Then it wouldn’t be so bad. It could be just like with my dad, just lay there and let him do what he wanted until he was satisfied, then move on like it had never happened. Simple. Better than living with this terror of waiting for it to happen. Wasn’t it? If it was Heero, I could do it, couldn’t I? He wasn’t my father or even Trowa, I liked him, I was attracted to him, I wanted him. So why couldn’t I have sex with him? Why was there this tightness in my gut just like all the other times? Why did I have to be this way?

Suddenly, while I was warring with my thoughts and paralyzed by indecision, Heero’s hand finished its little journey down my backside and cupped my rear. He didn’t grab me, not like how Zechs had. It was gentle, barely a touch, and didn’t even hurt my many bruises, just his fingers curved around my ass, just feeling in a way that, remembering it later, I would realize was endearingly shy. I don’t even think he had thought about what he was doing, something other than his head dictating his actions, or he would have known he was putting his hand in the same place that Zechs had. Not that it really matters. I mean, yeah, I was especially sensitive about my body and anything intimate or sexual that night because of what Zechs had done. Hell, I had probably come on to Heero the way I had when he had been kissing me because I wanted to wash away those sensations, that ugly, disgusting memory. But I think that it wouldn’t have mattered _where_ Heero had touched me below my waist. It could have been my crotch or inner thigh or the other side of my ass and I would have reacted exactly the same way.

Poisonous memory burst in me the second I felt his hand there. Flashes of sensation like when I flash to the first time that my father raped me, bursts of feelings and sensory information instead of the full thing. That’s what the movies and a lot of books never get right. Flashbacks, shellshock, all that crap. It’s not a replay of a bad memory like replaying a song over and over. It’s what you were feeling at the time, a sense. The smell of blood. The feel of a belt biting into my wrists. The sound of my father’s aroused pants. The pain. That horrible, tearing pain. This time, it was the smell of Zechs’s breath, the feel of his large hand roughly squeezing me, and that horrible feeling of being trapped and violated and used. In that moment, I wasn’t in Heero’s bedroom making out with the boy that I loved anymore. I was in a cold, empty hallway, pressed and restrained by a hulking form, turned into a trapped animal.

I snapped. There’s really no other word for it. Without any conscious thought to what I was doing or why, my body reacted and, in my panic, it lashed out at the thing that was frightening me. I shoved at Heero, not hard enough to push him off the bed, having at least _some_ sense left to not want to hurt him, but enough to fall back out of his lap. I might have even screamed if I hadn’t found it so fucking hard to breathe. Heero and I stared at each other, both in shocked horror. I honestly don’t know which of us was more freaked out by what had just happened; me with my heart pounding like a damned jackhammer and on the verge of hyperventilating, or him with his eyes like silver dollars and looking like he had just belted me one right in the face, like he had seriously hurt me and was both regretting it and shocked that he was even capable of it.

“Oh god, Duo…” he reached for me, wanting to comfort me before he remembered that he was the reason that I had freaked out, and his arm quickly fell, “I am so, so sorry! I wasn’t thinking- I… I totally forgot…”

I took a few shaky breaths, trying to get myself under control. It took about the time for my heartrate to go back down to something slightly normal if a still a bit fast for my fear to ebb enough for guilt to set in. What the fuck was wrong with me? Nothing had even _happened_! Heero hadn’t done anything at all to me and I had freaked out and not only pushed him away, but scared him and made him feel like he had done something wrong! It had been a freaking touch! He hadn’t held me down. He hadn’t raped me. He hadn’t done anything more than Trowa had done before our relationship had fallen apart, and I had _wanted_ it this time. So why? Why had I gotten so scared? Why had I hurt him? Frustration and anger at myself welled up in my chest. Why couldn’t I be normal? Why couldn’t I just be fucking normal like everyone else and enjoy my boyfriend touching me like that?! Why did I have to ruin everything! We had both been into it, and I had shut us down with my stupid fears and reactions!

“I’m ok,” I told him, forcing every part of my body to be just that so he wouldn’t think that anything was wrong, even refusing to let my body shake as the adrenaline eased off.

“No, you aren’t!” he protested and again looked like he wanted to reach for me, “I can’t believe I touched you like that after what Zechs did!”

I moved closer to him, bridging the gap that I had made so he would understand that he wasn’t the one that I had the problem with, he wasn’t the one at fault here.

“Heero, it’s ok,” I tried to soothe as we switched roles and he looked a hell of a lot more freaked out than I felt, “I wasn’t even thinking about that,” I lied, “I just… I wasn’t prepared… I didn’t know you were going to do that and it startled me, that’s all.”

He relaxed, that wild-eyed look easing off, but there was still a good amount of guilt there that I didn’t like.

“Are you sure?” he asked, “I… I didn’t remind you of what he did? I didn’t… scare you?”

I hated lying to him, so I slid my hands over his shoulders and forced myself to kiss him, long and deeply. Something in me revolted, not wanting to touch _anyone_ , still reeling from my panic attack and just wanting to be by myself, someplace quiet and secluded and away from everyone, my skin crawling. I screamed at the feeling and beat it down. I was not going to let it win this one. I was _not_ going to let Heero know just how much of a freak I was. Even if I had to rape myself, I was going to make this better. It was just a kiss, so why did I suddenly feel sick to my stomach and so nervous anyway? I loved him, so why did I feel like jumping out of my skin just by being close to him? I hated myself so powerfully and every second that passed into that kiss when I didn’t feel anything but coldness and anxiety, the more that hatred grew.

“I’m sure,” I told him when I finally stopped kissing him, “I was just startled, you didn’t do anything wrong.”

He opened his mouth to say something and I kissed him again. I didn’t want any of his doubts or guilt. I didn’t want him to stop because I couldn’t get my shit together. If I had any chance at all of staying in this relationship, I had to get past this. It didn’t matter if it was frightening. It didn’t matter if it hurt. I could do this. I _had_ to do this, for him. If I couldn’t… if I couldn’t get past my own issues and this stupid block in my head, then how could I ever claim to really love him? It seemed like such a small price to pay, my discomfort, to give him what he wanted. It shouldn’t be this hard.

I felt a small victory when Heero gave up the fight and finally ignored his own fears and insecurities for his desires, kissing me back.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to stop?” he murmured between nips of my bottom lip.

“I’m sure,” I said and at least that wasn’t a lie. I might be scared shitless, but I didn’t want to stop what tiny progress we had made. Despite everything, I still enjoyed _this_ at least. If only this, like I had a fucking chalk line drawn in my head.

With what looked like great, Herculean effort, he pulled away from me a little.

“Do you want me to slow down?” he asked in concern.

‘YES!’ I screamed in my head, ‘Please, I can’t do this!’

For once, every part of me was in agreement. My heart had begun to race again and I could actually feel the blood rushing in my head as my anxieties tore me apart. I wanted to take two steps back, to when we had just been kissing. Even him nipping my neck had been fine, but the rest of it… just the thought of letting him put his hand on my ass again made me feel sick. But I could tell just by looking at him that Heero didn’t want to slow down. He wanted me to say no. He wanted more and I couldn’t deny him. I loved him too much. I wanted to give him the world. One, tiny ‘no’ seemed so easy to give, a little thing compared to everything he had done for me. How could I deny him that? How could I make him stop when I could actually give him something for once? This was the only thing I had to offer him. Even if I felt like I was going to vomit, even when every part of me was screaming yes, I want to stop this, I’m not ready, I couldn’t do it. Just like I had with Trowa, I could feel myself caving to him.

“No,” I said and felt another stab of guilt at how much I was lying to him, “I want to keep going.”

This horrible anxiety ripped through me just then as I realized, properly for the first time, the danger that I was in. I couldn’t do it, it dawned on me. I could not tell him no about almost anything. If he pushed, even a little, if I saw that naked _want_ in his eyes, all my strength was just gone. Turned to dust in the wake of my weak heart. Love had killed me again, just like it had with my father, and some part of me wished that I had stayed true to my promise that I would never love anything again after that betrayal. But I hadn’t and now… all Heero had to do was ask and I would open myself to him. I would give him my black, rotting heart if that’s what he wanted, not even caring that it would kill me. That anxiety tore me to shreds worse than any other fear and left me with a singular thought that still hasn’t left me: If I can’t even say no to him now, how am I ever going to say no to him when he wants to take that last step?

Heero’s blue eyes were intense as he studied my face and I schooled myself to not give away a single trace of my reluctance, just how little I wanted this. He found whatever he was looking for and smiled at me, softly and tender, brimming with love and affection and whatever tiny resolve or confidence I had had that I could survive this shattered. I couldn’t do anything in the wake of a smile like that. He put his left hand on my arm and his right caressed my cheek. I craved that touch, that kindness in lieu of his passion and wished that we could just have that. But dating Trowa had already taught me that love comes with a price. It comes hand and hand with something violent and dirty, a hungry want and I couldn’t have one without the other, ever. Heero leaned in and I tensed, expecting him to pick up exactly where we had left off, him hungrily devouring me and exploring my body. Instead, to my shock, he pressed his lips to mine chastely, barely even a brush of our lips against each other and sat up straight.

“It’s late,” he said, like nothing at all had happened, “We should go to bed.”

I stared at him, wide-eyed, and felt completely lost. What the hell had just happened? I knew that he wanted to keep going, so why…

“But… I said it was ok,” I said in total confusion.

          “I know,” his smile turned sad and he rubbed my arm gently, “But it’s not.”

          “I said-,” I started to protest.

          “I know what you said, but I know you’re uncomfortable with it. I can feel how tense you are right now,” he pointed out and I flushed a little bit in shame that I couldn’t hide that from him.

          I crossed my legs, sitting indian style, and looked down at his comforter. I felt so disgusted with myself.

          “I shouldn’t _be_ uncomfortable,” I muttered hotly and wondered just who I was arguing with, like I could change anything, “I should be fine with it. It isn’t even a big deal!”

          “Of course it’s a big deal,” Heero insisted, “This is how you feel. You forced yourself into this when you weren’t ready once before, so you should know that you can’t just make yourself fine with it.”

          “You aren’t Trowa!” I snapped, “How I felt then shouldn’t have anything to do with now! I just need to-,”

          “That’s right,” Heero shot back, the fierceness of his tone cutting through my own, “I am _not_ your ex. I am not going to force you to do something that you don’t want to do just because _I_ want to do it!” he put his hands on my knees and leaned in closer while still being careful not to violate too much of my personal space with me being as skittish as I was, “Love, we’re in this relationship _together_. We’re supposed to be a team. What you had with Trowa… it wasn’t a real relationship. It was one person dragging the other along, not caring about their feelings or desires or even their comfort. I can’t be like that. I love you and if your heart isn’t in this, then I don’t want it. If I forced you to do something, knowing you felt this way… it would kill me.”

          His words made me almost gasp in pain as it felt like all the breath had been driven from my body. _It would kill me._ No, he couldn’t say something like that. Panicking, I nearly screamed at him to take it back, but it was too late. It was in me now, those words, this fear. He couldn’t mean it, but I knew that he did. If we did have sex and he ever found out that I hadn’t wanted it… that wouldn’t just be the end of ‘us.’ It would hurt him, more than anything else I could possibly say or do to him. Why? Why did he have to say that?! I felt like my entire world, all my desperate hopes, were falling around me into dust. If I hadn’t been so shocked, I would have sobbed with the loss.

          “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I choked out, “I’m sorry…”

          “Oh, no, Duo,” he cupped my face gently, like I was something fragile, something precious, “It’s fine if you aren’t ready. There’s nothing wrong with you. I’m not ready, either, I just… I want to touch you sometimes, so badly, but I should have asked if that was alright.”

          I grabbed his wrists and pulled his hands down, away from my face.

          “Don’t coddle me,” I said bitterly, “I know you want to have sex. It isn’t fair to you to ask you to wait just because I don’t have my shit together.”

          “It’s perfectly fair,” he argued, “This isn’t a one-sided relationship. It isn’t fair of me to demand you put aside your feelings because I’m a stupid, horny teenager. None of that matters to me half as much as you enjoying it and feeling comfortable with it. Do you remember what I said to you before? About how it’s ok to feel angry and not apologizing for your feelings? Well this is part of that. Never apologize to me because I’m ready to take the next step and you aren’t. If I can’t take that step with you, it’s pointless to me.”

          I felt a wetness trail down my left cheek and I wanted to wipe it away, but I was still holding on to Heero’s wrists and I didn’t want to let go of him even more. I couldn’t believe in anything that he was saying, that he actually felt that way about me… about us. He… he had stopped. Not even because I had asked him to, but because he had known that I wanted him to, even after I had lied about it. He had felt that I was uncomfortable and he had _stopped_. Just like that. He could have easily kept going, I had given him permission. Trowa would have. He would have even if I had asked him to stop. But not ‘Ro. He was right, they were nothing alike.

Heero, he… he respected me. He loved me. He didn’t just want me, although I knew he did. In a way, his passion and desire to touch me had been incredibly flattering, past the fear of the act. But it wasn’t just that. He cared about how I felt… what I wanted… As much as he had wanted to go further, he had stopped himself, cut off his own desires for my sake… I have never felt safer, more protected and loved than I did right then, his words and actions wrapping around me like a blanket. Heero would never do the things that Trowa and my father had done to me. I had known that, but now I had proof beyond just knowing the sort of person he was and his word. He had given me a precious, shining gift and didn’t even know how much it meant to me, how he had stripped me raw with this one act. He could never know how, after my father, and after Trowa constantly pushing me, ignoring me, and… and forcing me in every way he could manage, I had needed this…

And I didn’t deserve any of it. I didn’t deserve him.

          Heero very gently pulled his wrists out of my grip and, with an endearing smile, wiped the tear off my cheek.

          “You’re exhausted,” he said simply, “It’s been a long day. Let’s just go to bed, ok? If you want to talk about this in the morning, we will, but we’re both just too tired right now.”

          I nodded silently, still too much in awe of him to say anything. It was so difficult for me to believe that he was real, that someone like him could possibly exist in my world and care about me. It seemed like a trick.

          “Um…” he said a bit nervously, unable to meet my eyes, “I guess you’ll be sleeping in the guest room tonight…”

          Agony ripped through my chest. I hadn’t been prepared for it. One minute, he had made me feel loved and in the next, he had torn out my heart.

          “You’re… you’re kicking me out?” I whispered, heartbroken and completely unable to keep that raw emotion out of my voice.

          I felt like I was going to start crying again, like he had slapped me in the face. He didn’t want me to sleep in his bed with him. Of course he didn’t. If I could get over the pain of betrayal, I could see that that was obvious. Who _would_ want to share a bed with me after I had just turned them down? It wasn’t even that he was punishing me, that would have been something my ex would have done. No, Heero just couldn’t stand to be with me. I had hurt him, so naturally he wanted to be alone, right? But even certain of that, even as understandable as that was, it left me bleeding. I didn’t want to sleep alone. I didn’t want to be by myself. I wanted to be with him! I _needed_ to be with him! Already, I could feel the cold claws of solitude and guilt and loneliness digging into me. It was so stupid, it was just for a night, but I was so needy and desperate to know that I hadn’t fucked things up. But apparently I had. Maybe not beyond repair, but, for all of Heero’s assurances, if he didn’t want me in his bed, then that meant I really had screwed up everything.

          Heero’s head whipped back up and he looked absolutely horrified, somehow as terrible as he had when I had pushed him away.

          “What? No!” he exclaimed, “No, I’m not kicking you out! I would never do that!” he wrapped his arms around me and, like the parasite that I am, I relaxed in his embrace, feeding off his warmth and desperate affection, just so happy that he wasn’t… rejecting me like I had rejected him. My guilt was a thousand, poisoned needles, “I just thought you would be uncomfortable… with me, after what I just did… I didn’t know if… if you could trust me…”

          His voice was so small, a wounded child’s, and I clung to him, loathing myself for making him feel this way.

          “I trust you!” I rasped, my throat strangled, “Heero, I’m so sorry, I trust you. I know you would never do anything, I promise. Please don’t make me leave. Even if you don’t want me here, please…”

          I hated how needy I sounded, but apparently it had been the right thing to say, because Heero pressed an earnest kiss to the side of my neck.

          “Of course I want you here!” he insisted, “There’s nothing else I want more, I just want to do the right thing. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable around me.”

          “I’m not,” I said with an intense conviction, “I swear, Heero, you didn’t make me uncomfortable. Maybe you went a little too fast for me, but it wasn’t you, just what you were doing. I was never scared of you.”

          I rubbed at his back, feeling inadequate and strange in a territory that was usually his, but he relaxed in my arms. I pressed my face into the crux of his shoulder and we just stayed like that for several minutes, both of us a bit freaked out that we had completely misunderstood each other. We untangled and laid down next to each other. It was just like usual, except there was now this… gap between us, put there by our worries and my stupid actions.

I hated it. I hated feeling this way, like I had ruined something. Heero was even making sure that he was a good half a foot away from me when, usually, he would be pressed against my back or have an arm around me, always wanting to touch and be closer. But he was too shy that night, nervous that he was going to do something that would set me off. I had done this, I thought miserably, and I didn’t know how to fix it, how to go back and tell him that just because I had freaked out, it didn’t mean he needed to treat me with kid gloves. Being direct probably would have worked, but the words refused to leave my throat. Heero pulled the covers up on us, but still firmly stayed on his side of the bed. I reached over on my side of the bed to turn off the light, just because laying there like that was making me antsy. More minutes passed in painful, awkward silence.

“This alright?” Heero asked very hesitantly, still looking for any sign that he was doing something wrong.

He wasn’t going to take the lead this time, I realized. I only really had two options. I could just lie there and let this go on, angry at myself for putting this space between us and not speak up like I always do, because that was the easiest option. Or I could take the first step for once, kick that prickly feeling that made touch and closeness seem so threatening that night right in the balls and reach for what we both wanted. It was barely even a choice.

“No,” I said firmly, and before Heero even had the chance to read anything into that that I didn’t mean, like I didn’t want to lie with him after all, I grabbed his arm and forcefully pulled it over me like a blanket.

Heero’s worried expression finally broke out into a beaming, relieved smile as he understood what I wanted and rolled over closer to me, until he was pressed against my side. I felt him lay his head on my shoulder and I actually sighed in relief, feeling that space between us shrivel up into nothing. In a moment, things were back to normal, almost like nothing had happened. This time, the minutes passing were comfortable, pleasant, and even though I wasn’t falling asleep, that was alright. I could feel his warmth washing over me, the tingling sensation of his skin against mine and as skittish as I still felt, I wanted those things even more. My love warred with my anxiety and for once, love won.

“You asleep yet?” he murmured against my shoulder after about ten minutes had passed.

“No,” I said with a small laugh and god, it felt so good to laugh after what had just happened.

“I was thinking about tomorrow when you were studying,” he said, “What we could do after we get our homework done… I thought we could have a mini date, just pizza and a movie. But before that, I was thinking we could do a little more work on the treehouse. My dad got the parts to finish the trap door and ladder, and he said if we picked out colors for the paint, he could pick it up on his way home. If you were interested.”

“That sounds good,” I replied, knowing he was mostly bringing this up to try to make things normal again and put more distance between us and our disaster of a make out session, but that was ok because I wanted that, too, “What color did you want it?”

“Nu-uh,” he teased and rubbed his nose against my neck. It felt so good, him holding me and touching me like that when I had almost lost it all in the face of our fears, “This is your treehouse, too. We’ll pick the color together. I was actually thinking we could do a few colors, nothing too gaudy, but something natural?”

“That would be nice,” I agreed, “Maybe we could match the colors to the tree, like camouflage so no one would even know it was there until they got close.”

The idea of having a place that was just ours that was a secret from everyone else enchanted me and soothed that scared child that lives in my head. The one that only really seems to speak up when I want to run screaming from the world and find some dark corner, far away from anyone else, to hide in, usually after my father has fucked me, but is always just there, in my mind, silent and cowering.

“That would be neat,” Heero said with surprised interest, “We could do army camo. It would blend in and look really cool close up.”

It made me feel oddly… good about myself that I had not only come up with something that we were in agreement on, but he liked my idea and I had contributed to something. I found his arm around my waist and curled my own against his, liking the shape and feel of it. We fell silent and the sound of his deep breathing soothed me, but I knew he wasn’t asleep yet. It’s strange, I felt more horrible then about shutting him down and scaring him than I would had if he had kicked me out of his room. He was too nice to me, loved me too much, and I just kept repaying him by being a shit, making him worry, and freaking him out because I’m abnormal.

“I’m sorry,” I murmured in the dark, keeping my voice low in case he was drifting off, “I didn’t mean to push you away like that.”

“You don’t need to apologize for that,” he assured me, his voice soft and sleepy, “You were startled, it was a reflex. I would have done the same thing.”

I didn’t believe that for a second, that someone as well adjusted and normal as Heero would freak out the way that I had. Besides, there was no reason for him to freak out at a goddamned touch from someone he was into, was there? I was the one with the pathetic issues, not him.

“I’m sorry I’m such a fuck up,” I buried the side of my face into the pillow, tears starting to well up again and I was just so sick of them, of my feelings and everything else.

I was just glad he couldn’t see me, so he would never know just how twisted up and miserable I felt. I closed my eyes as he brushed his hand over my hair in a gentle gesture.

“You are _not_ a fuck up,” he insisted, “It was my fault, Duo, not yours. I went too fast. You don’t need to be embarrassed for getting overwhelmed, it can happen to anyone. We’ll just go slower next time.”

‘Next time.’ I felt such a volatile mix of swirling emotions from those two, little words. Relief that there was going to _be_ a next time, that I hadn’t fucked up so much that Heero was too scared to try again. Happiness that he still wanted me, even if he had to put up with my shit. Terror that this was going to happen again, that he was going to want to keep pushing that line. And anxiety of what was going to happen that next time. Would I freak out again? Push him away? Even hit him? It had been easier with Trowa. All I had had to worry about was his disappointment and anger.

But with Heero… I knew now that he would never get angry with me. Even if he was frustrated, he wouldn’t show it. He would never raise his voice and hit me, and while on some level that was a relief, it would be easier if he would. Because I can deal with that, I’m used to it. But him loving me so much he would never lash out, just bottle up his frustrations… And just the thought of disappointing him was terrible. It felt like it was ripping my guts apart, like I couldn’t bear it for a single second. But even worse, something that I had never had to deal with my ex, I hurt him. I couldn’t handle that, knowing that every time I rejected him, I would just hurt him more and more. I never should have let it get this far… I should have never even started this to begin with, I had only made this impossible for both of us. To move forward. To stop. No matter what I did, I broke his heart. I’m repulsive.

“You shouldn’t have to,” I whispered, “You shouldn’t have to slow down just for me.”

His arms tightened around me and he drew me even closer somehow, like he was trying to merge us together, but I didn’t feel trapped for some reason.

“Hey, listen to me,” he said sharply, “You matter, Duo, alright? You _matter_. Not just me. What I want is _not_ more important than your feelings, so stop that. It’s more fair to ask me to slow down than for me to ask you to speed up when you aren’t ready. I’m not going to do that. This is not the big deal that you are making it. I love making out with you and what we just did… getting to hold you and touch you like that… it was incredible and you pushing me away didn’t make it any less incredible. I would love to try that again, when you’re more comfortable.

“And yes, you’re right, I want sex. But I’m not in any rush to get to that point and I’m not going to get upset or angry with you for making me wait. I _want_ to wait. I meant what I said about not being ready, either. Physically, sure, I’m ready. But we haven’t gotten to that point yet. We’ve only been together like this for a few of weeks, it’s too soon and I will never push you into it. But as great as I’m sure sex is, this,” he gave me a little squeeze, “being with you, laying with you, cuddling and just being _comfortable_ with each other like this… I like it just as much as I do making out. Alright? If sex is even _half_ as amazing as this, it’s something worth waiting for. And I _can_ wait, for as long as you need.”

          My stomach sank as he confirmed what he wanted. Not that I had thought any differently, but hearing those words from him really drove the fact into my skull what I was looking at here, what the edge of this cliff really meant. The beginning of the end. The barrier had been breached, and Heero might say he was willing to slow down for me, but you can’t take something like that back. We could stop, slow down, but we couldn’t go backwards. My safety net was gone and everything that lay ahead was frightening. If I stopped to really think about it, what this meant for me… for _us,_ I would scream. It was all I could do to stay in that wonderful, muddled denial of ‘not yet, not yet’. I had bought myself some time with my little freak out, but not much, and even that, I felt no happiness about.

I just felt like I had with Trowa, that I had put the brakes on our entire relationship and the longer that it went on, the more Heero was going to resent me. He didn’t know, but he also had no idea just how messed up I am and that I didn’t know how to progress our relationship, or that a part of me didn’t even want to. He said that my feelings mattered, but that wasn’t how I felt. I felt like a prick tease, tiny and unimportant, leading him on. He could be as understanding as he wanted, but I still loathed myself for this… this inability of mine. I just wanted him to fuck me like my father and Trowa had, just get it over with so I could breathe again because if he put this in my hands like he seemed all too happy to do, he was only going to hate me in the end. It only drove home to me that the major problems in my last relationship had been because of me, not Trowa, that even with someone that I loved, who was nothing like him, I was still broken and I was still going to ruin everything.

Heero’s breathing deepened and I realized that he had fallen asleep. I felt relieved. I didn’t want to talk about this anymore. I didn’t even want to think about it. I just wanted to follow his example and shut myself down. I didn’t have the energy for any of this crap, for all the junk swirling in my head from that awful day. But as tired and worn out as I was, I didn’t fall asleep right away. Instead, I rolled over onto my opposite side and watched my boyfriend sleep. There was only a sliver of light coming from the hallway and under the window curtain, but I could see him well enough. He looked so peaceful, his face relaxed in a deep sleep and my heart throbbed painfully with love and want for him. A want that I didn’t really understand because it was so pointless, wasn’t it? I felt like a bird that was afraid of flying, this… instinct in me wanting to stretch my wings and lose the ground so powerfully, but I knew that I never could. It hurt, even more than my guilt did.

Every part of him made me yearn to be like him, to be normal and hunger for him like he obviously did for me, for reasons that were beyond my understanding because I sure as hell wasn’t anything for him to be lusting after. The curve of his nose, his smooth skin, the fall of his dark hair, even his smell made me want what he had so badly. I loved him so much. I loved that he could wait for me, that he wouldn’t ever push me, that he would be patient and gave a shit about how I felt, even if I didn’t deserve it. I could feel it, my attraction for him, an attraction that I had never felt for anyone else, not even Trowa, and I had to wonder why. What was it about ‘Ro that called to me, that made my heart beat faster? And why wasn’t it enough to suck up whatever issues I had and give myself to him? If I was so attracted to him, if I wanted him, why couldn’t I take that step? My heart feels like it’s overflowing with everything that I feel for him, so how can my fear, out of all of that, be the only thing I can listen to? Why does it have such a hold over me?

Watching him sleep, I had a tiny epiphany. If I can even call it that. I think it was always there, I just hadn’t wanted to look at it. I hadn’t wanted to cop to my inadequacies, my overwhelming failure, but… I realized it that night. I didn’t want to have sex with him. Not because I was scared. Not because just the thought of sex is almost enough to make me retch. Not even because I didn’t want him to find out that I couldn’t get it up. I didn’t want to have sex with him… because I didn’t want to hate him. I didn’t want to resent him for it like I had Trowa. I didn’t want my feelings to be tainted like that, to hate the person that I loved just because I’m a freak and he isn’t.

Depression filled me and I had to turn back to my other side so I wasn’t looking at him anymore. I was just so tired. So fucking _tired_ and weary of everything. Of school. Of my family. Of myself most of all. I was sick to death of _me_. My weakness, my fear, my shyness, my doubts, my failures, all of it. I didn’t want to be me anymore. I wanted to leave my skin. I wrapped my arms around my pillow and crushed it to my chest. Laying there next to Heero with his arms around me, I thought about suicide. Not seriously. I didn’t have the urge to take something sharp to my wrists. I just wondered what would have happened if I had succeeded when I had been thirteen. All the things that never would have happened to me. What Heero’s life would have been like if we had never met and I had never dragged him down into all this shit. If I felt any urge to kill myself right then, it was only to leave myself behind, to rest, actually _rest_.

As I finally started to drift off, my exhaustion and confused, depressed jumble of thoughts getting the better of me, that terrible question popped into my head again. How was I ever going to be able to tell Heero no when he wanted to push us over that final line? Only now I have my answer: I can’t.

I can’t ever let it get that far.

 

 

End Part 21

 

“When the words

Weigh heavy on the heart

I am lost

And led only by the stars

*

Cage me like an animal

A crown with gems and gold

Eat me like a cannibal

Chase the neon throne

*

Breathe in, breathe out

Let the human in

Breathe in, breath out

And let it in

Plants awoke

And they slowly grow

Beneath the skin

So breathe in, breath out

Let the human in

*

The air is silk

Shadows form a grin

If I lose control

I feed the beast within

*

Cage me like an animal

A crown with gems and gold

Eat me like a cannibal

Chase the neon throne

*

Breathe in, breathe out

Let the human in

Breathe in, breathe out

And let it in

Plants awoke

And they slowly grow

Beneath the skin

So breathe in, breathe out

Let the human in

*

Cage me like an animal

A crown with gems and gold

Eat me like a cannibal

Chase the neon throne

*

If I could only let go…”

 

-‘Human’ by Of Monsters and Men

 

Author’s Note: And thus the main climax of chapter 8 begins. Part 22 SHOULD be shorter than this.

 

Darkeyedone: Duo is definitely his own worst enemy, not his father or Wren. He lets his doubts and depression control his life, which is true of a lot of people who suffer from clinical depression. And yes, even if he manages to get away from his father, he will be working on these issues for the rest of his life. That’s the real tragedy of abuse, there’s no cure for it, it’s a constant fight.

 

Fred freeloader: having some random thing just happen to Duo’s father wouldn’t really fit into the narrative of the story with any purpose. And really, the times when he _has_ been in trouble have only fueled Duo’s problems, but I promise that Nathan will not have an easy time in this story. And again, everyone is different. Everyone has different coping mechanisms and strengths. Some people do survive this kind of abuse. And Duo has tried to kill himself several times now. His coping is really just him in denial and not facing any of his demons. The abuse doesn’t drag him down as much as it should because he makes a very serious effort not to think about it or consider it a big deal, it’s just normal for him. And now he’s using Heero has a distraction from it. And also once again, if anyone has been paying attention to this story, they know that Justin is well aware that Duo is being abused. They even blatantly talk about it. Justin frequently tells Duo that if he needs help, he has it, he just needs to ask. Justin has counseled kids like Duo for years, so he knows that if he pushes him too hard, Duo is just going to bolt and lose someone to talk to about it. Duo only feels so comfortable around Justin because he hasn’t told anyone about the abuse. And even if Justin did go to the police, nothing would happen unless Duo wants to press charges. He hasn’t gotten to that point yet and Justin knows it would only put Duo in danger.

 

Raign: haha. Ok, I promise right here and now, while there may be character death in this story, Duo and Heero do not die. I don’t like writing death fics, I don’t really do them usually. And after everything I’ve put Duo through, I am not going to kill Heero on him. Honestly, he wouldn’t be able to take it, that would be the last straw. I did toy with that idea, killing Heero to push Duo to fight the abuse in his life, but it was too dark a path. The song isn’t really a eulogy for Heero, it’s mostly about him finding strength in his choice to finally be himself, even if he gets hurt, him being aware of how fragile Duo is and a choice that he is going to have to make soon.

 

As always, thank you to everyone that left a review <3

 

instinct. than that. Better than half a person. No, an animal that couldn' if I ran away from him?


	67. Chapter 8 Part 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duo tells Heero a little more about his childhood and his insecurities about their relationship grow. After another assault from his father, Duo struggles to keep his feelings in check around Heero and ends up making a terrible mistake.

A Stagnation of Love

Chapter 8

Part 22

 

          I suppose that, after reading all that crap, you might think that my sleep Monday night was restless, filled with nightmares on all sorts of anxieties and fears considering the things that I had been feeling and thinking that entire day. Hell, just the memories that Zechs had brought to the surface should have been fodder for a few disturbing dreams, but you would be wrong. I slept like the dead. I didn’t even rouse the entire night to so much as go to the bathroom, let alone because I couldn’t sleep. And if I had any nightmares, I don’t remember them. One minute, I was brooding and depressed, the next, Heero’s alarm dragged me out of a deep sleep feeling oddly refreshed.

          I think I had just been burnt out. Too much had come at me too fast and, remembering all of it, I felt a deep shame at myself, at how emotional and out of control I had been. I guess Justin is right, that I should cut myself some slack. Really, if I stopped to think about it beyond being mortified, a lot had happened to me in a very short amount of time. My fight with Trowa, being outed at work, my mom’s bombshell about our finances, my father locking me in the closet, stress about my homework, Zechs’s stupid prank, freaking out about Heero getting more intimate with me and about a thousand other little things… it had all just dragged me down and if I took a moment to look at all that with unbiased eyes, I guess it was a little bit understandable that I had gotten overwhelmed and had a panic attack (ok, maybe two or three). But that didn’t stop me from being ashamed or wondering what the fuck was wrong with me. Or stop me from feeling depressed that morning.

          Some of it, especially towards the end of my day Monday, had been my exhaustion. Sleeping for as long and well as I had helped a lot. Waking Tuesday morning, I felt… better. Not great. All those things that had dragged me under that night were still there, but it was easier to ignore them, just push them down deep inside of me and focus on something else. I could feel them, anxiety festering, but they had already happened. Zechs had already molested me. I had already made Heero slow down. I couldn’t take them back and dwelling on them was only making them worse in my head, so I did what I always do, even when I probably shouldn’t. I moved on. If I kept being introspective about mine and Heero’s relationship, I knew what was going to happen. I was going to freak myself out again and make a stupid decision that I was not at all ready to make. Besides, I had a test to worry about.

          I heard Heero groan next to me and I knew that the six hours of sleep had done me a world of good because I was able to smile. I rolled over to face him and found him lying on his side facing me, his eyes still closed like he was feigning sleep or just couldn’t bear to open them yet. Hair a complete mess and sticking up at odd angles, he was just as beautiful as he had been last night. Watching him and remembering everything that he had done for me the previous day, I was swept up in amazement. I just couldn’t believe that this person really existed, or that he had found his way into my life. That he cared for me, let alone _loved_ me seemed like a dream that I had come up with in my most desperate moments. Something too good to be true.

          If I were capable of that, if my dreams were ever anything but nightmares, I could have believed it. If I am being completely honest here, when Heero and I had become friends, I had been at the end of my fraying rope. Looking back at that time, dealing with my father and loneliness and my heartache for Heero, how depressed I had been, is frightening. I don’t want to know where that road would have gone if we hadn’t found each other that day, what my life would be like now, if I would have had a life at all because, let’s face it, I had been dying. Rotting away, piece by piece, just waiting for that final strand to snap so I could finally end my farce of a life. Then Heero had risked everything for me and had shown me how _beautiful_ the world could be and just thinking of going back to that horror show makes me feel ill.

          I’m not in total denial. I know that some… things are not better, that I’m still stuck in that mire, I’ve just distanced myself and refused to let myself think or feel. This new part of my life… this separate reality with Heero and his parents, this new person that they’ve helped forge in my head is a dream and I know that one day, I’ll have to wake up from it and all that shit will be waiting for me. I haven’t moved past it, I’ve just put it on standby. But for now, I have Heero. I have this connection with another person and as long as he loves me, I can lie to myself and store everything else in a box in my head, secured with a thick padlock and chain.

          My smile grew as I remembered what had happened the previous night. Not how I had pushed him away or my resulting depression from knowing how fucked I was, how much I had failed, but what Heero had done. It was still difficult to wrap my head around, that he had stopped. I had given him permission, something that I had never given Trowa, but he had still stopped because he had known I was lying. I had done nothing to deserve someone like that, someone who cared about me, not just out of want, but _respect._ I had never had anyone in my life that actually saw _me_ , and just what they wanted to see, or something to use, but me. I loved him so powerfully for that, for continually rewarding my trust in him and treating me like a person and not a sex doll or a toy. He had meant every word he had said about me mattering to him. It made my own failings so much more painful, wrought with guilt, but it also gave my love for him an intensity that made it hard to breathe.

          Feeling the need to reward him for being the most amazing and wonderful person I had ever met, the only person that has ever given a shit about me, no strings attached, and has never abandoned me, even when he should have long ago, I kissed him deeply and he gave this adorable, tiny, sleepy moan against my mouth.

          “Mmm,” he mumbled when I stopped, lips twitching into a smile and navy eyes staring up at me still half-lidded with sleep, “That is a _much_ better away to wake up than an alarm clock. Can we do that every morning?”

          I smirked at his candor.

          “What’s the occasion?” he asked, starting to look slightly more awake.

          “I love you,” I said bluntly, the words spilling out of me raw and unedited, my bare feelings on display either because of the magnitude of them or because I wasn’t fully awake yet, it was hard to tell.

          Heero’s eyes widened in surprise and I felt another stab of guilt. I wished that I could be like him, that I could be as open with my feelings and affections as he was. He told me that he loved me all the time, but I say it so little that I can still shock him when I do. It made me feel as low as mud, but he drove that away by slipping his hand around the back of my head and drawing me down for a deeper kiss.

          “I love you, too,” he said with an endearing smile, his fingers playing with my hair, “What brought this on?”

          The knife dug deeper. I never had to ask him that. He was always spontaneous, always affectionate, but he had to ask me why I was being the same way, and he was right. I was only feeling bold, only reaching out and telling him how I felt in gratitude.

          “I just… Thank you, for last night,” I looked away from him awkwardly, “You know… for not…”

          “Hey,” his hand caressed my cheek and it felt so good that I almost closed my eyes and leaned into it like a cat, “You don’t need to thank me for that, ok? Not ever.”

          I swallowed roughly and nodded.

          “I meant what I said before,” he told me, “I’m not your ex. What you had with him… it’s not like that with us and I never want it to be. We respect each other, we don’t use each other. I could never do that to you. To anyone, really, but especially to you. I love you and I’m not going to risk hurting you or losing you when I can be a bit patient. I know he hurt you and you have issues with some things because of him. If we have to go a bit slow so you feel safe and comfortable again, then that’s what we’ll do.”

          Something warm tightened around my heart like a vice. A strange mixture of guilt, self-loathing, and love. I didn’t deserve him. That singular thought kept re-emerging in my head. I wished he _would_ be like Trowa. I wished he would be an asshole to me, push me, and stop making this so fucking _hard._ He was too good to me and just kept digging that knife deeper and deeper. Despite that, I kissed him again, this time only because I wanted to.

          “Still want to go jogging?” I asked him, “Or would you rather sleep a little bit longer?”

          “Nope, I’m up,” he assured me and proved it by rolling out of bed, “We can go around the neighborhood and be back in time to get some breakfast.”

          I followed his lead and went to the guest room to change into some running appropriate clothing. We snuck out of the quiet, dark house and did a few laps around his street, passing other morning birds doing the same thing. Neither of us was much out of shape despite the vacation and that we hadn’t done this in a little while, but I wanted to improve my gait in time for track practice on Saturday. When we got back to his house, we shared a quick breakfast of french toast that I whipped up. It was a nice, peaceful morning and I was starting to love sharing mornings before school with him. It was a very dangerous feeling, but I felt like I actually _lived_ there, like we were a married couple or something. I had to keep reminding myself that I needed to go back home, that I could crash there, but the longer I stayed, the worse it would get for me. And I’m not just talking about pissing off my father, but how deep I was getting into Heero’s life, and how hard it was to go back to my own.

          Tuesday would prove to be a much better day than Monday, one of those idyllic days like the previous weekend had been where happiness felt within my reach and there was some shield around me. Strange after everything that had happened, like the universe had decided to dump all its shit on me at once instead of spreading it out through the week. It would be the last good day that I would have. School was oddly… fine. I felt a bit anxious going. Between my test and what Zechs had done, I wanted to be just about anywhere else. But life goes on and I just needed to suck it up and remind myself that nothing had really happened. Despite how I felt, it wasn’t anything different or worse than usual and, in reality, I still don’t know why it hit me as hard as it had.

          Heero and I got to school early so he could quiz me on Calculus, which made me feel about a thousand times better about the test when he approved of the answers I gave. He even went over my worksheet and gave me a thumbs up on it. I could feel the worst of my stress bleeding away and when the period actually came, I didn’t feel like my guts were trying to chew their way out of me. For one of the first moments ever, I _wasn’t_ one of the last few to hand my test in. Harkins gave me a weird stare, obviously unsure whether to think I was giving up early or cheating or something. But with how closely she watched me, I knew she couldn’t pull some bullshit, like claim I wasn’t doing my own work. It felt so good, handing it to her and returning to my seat. Not just because I was confident I had done the best that I could, but just that it was over and I could move on to something else to have an anxiety attack over.

          I was actually more nervous that day about running into Zechs than I had about the test after all the hours of studying I had done. Stress is funny that way. With the worst of it gone, I could focus, and even with Harkins staring at me with that piercing, judgmental gaze of hers, everything that had been on that worksheet and everything that Heero had gone over with me before class stuck. It was actually kind of soothing, in a way. Looking at those equations and submerging myself in the work, even if it was work that I hated, filtered out all the other crap. When I was focusing on the test, I didn’t think about failing the class or what my mother was doing or breaking up with Heero because I was absolutely terrified. I didn’t even think about Zechs or my father until I passed the test in.

          But after that, without any other distraction, Zechs was all that I could think about. I didn’t want to see him. And I sure as hell didn’t want a run in with him like I had had the previous day. I could still feel it if I stopped to _let_ myself feel it, how helpless and dirty and ashamed he had made me, my fear as he and his goons had chased me through the school and across town, my guilt over how he had used ‘Ro. I was more or less successful in not letting myself feel any of that, delving into school work and small talk with Heero to turn it all from screaming to white noise. I didn’t want to end up like I had yesterday, stressed to tears and just so fucking _angry_ at everything.

          It turned out not to matter anyway because Zechs didn’t try anything during school. I guess he thought that he could get at me when I went home alone again and didn’t need to terrorize me before then beyond making a few lewd gestures and leers at me during gym. It didn’t even bother me like it usually does, not with the bruises on his face and his nose swollen. As awful as I felt about Heero getting detention, I felt this twinge of smug victory every time I saw the prick’s face and knowing who had done that to him. Heero practically looked like the cliched cat that gotten a whole bowl of cream, so much so that he didn’t look all that eager to beat him up again.

          Whatever Zechs had planned for me that afternoon, we made damned sure we would never find out. Heero and I rushed through our showers after gym, making sure we were among the first ones out, and separated at the end of school bell. He joined the tiny crowd of kids heading to detention, all with a grumpy, but accepting look on his face, and I went with the mob to the school parking lot where Justin was waiting for me. If our request to have him pick us up at school had troubled him in any way, Heero’s father didn’t show it. I think he was just happy to do something to help even if we refused to name our bullies, which helped eased some of my miserable feelings over the whole thing.

          It felt kind of weird to get to Heero’s house and not have him be there with me, but I still felt immensely better than I had on Monday. If I was still angry, it was manageable, and I didn’t have an abnormal mountain of homework to get through. I didn’t even have to worry about work. I made myself a peanut butter and banana sandwich, helped myself to some chocolate chip cookies from the cookie jar, and sat down at the kitchen table again to start on my homework, Kanuck laying at my feet and looking bereft without his owner there. Justin gave me a relieved, approving look before disappearing back out the door again, leaving me alone with the dog in blissful quiet.

          I didn’t have a lot of homework compared to Monday to trudge through. Because the test had taken the entire period, I only had some reading and a work sheet in Calculus (single paged, thank fuck) and the rest of my classes were mostly just reading work. I got most of it done in an hour, breezing through my literary assignments, cobbling something together from a draft I had already had mostly done for my short stories class, and even getting through most of my history homework, leaving just a couple pages to read, math, and science to deal with, but I was confident that I could finish it in time for Heero and I to go out on our date. Even though we had gone on quite a few of them by then, I still felt excited to spend some time alone with him. I wondered if that feeling would ever fade, if these dates would become old hat or I would always feel this silly, giddy excitement at the thought of being with him. Regardless, I needed it. After the stress of yesterday, I needed to get out of my head for a little while. A movie and dinner out sounded like heaven.

          I was interrupted from finishing my history homework by Pepper boldly trotting into the kitchen past Kanuck, ignoring the canine like he was a piece of furniture instead of a large animal that could rip her to shreds on a whim, and sat at my feet. Kanuck watched her with interest, but didn’t stand up. It amuses me that the two of them, after having such a rough start, seemed to get along. Kanuck usually just regards her as this curious thing in his home, but he’s never been aggressive towards her and my cat basically treats him like an annoying older brother, tolerant but grudgingly, and hasn’t taken another swipe at him. She doesn’t even hiss at him or seem wary around him anymore, to my relief. She stared up at me and when I was too focused on my work to acknowledged her, she meowed loudly. For such a small cat, she can project her voice like an opera singer.

          “What?” I asked her.

          Her eyes were huge and round, like she was begging something out of me, and meowed again. I frowned. If she wanted attention, she would just jump on me or rub against my legs, but instead she put one paw on my leg.

          “What’s wrong?” I asked again, aware that she couldn’t actually answer me and probably didn’t understand me, but I like talking to her, “Do you need something?”

          She pawed insistently at my pants and meowed again.

          “Out of food?” I guessed.

          She gently bit my pant leg and tugged on it and I decided that I had either guessed right or she was being playful.

          “Alright, alright,” I chuckled, stretching my arms over my head and cracking my back, “Heero is going to be home soon anyway.”

          Kanuck raised his head again and his tail wagged feebly at the sound of his owner’s name. I closed my text book, using a scrap of paper for a book mark and decided that it was a good time to take a break anyway, following my cat upstairs as she took the lead for once at an excited run. Sure enough, she made a beeline right to her empty food bowl, batting it and making the metal dish ring.

          “I get it,” I scolded, “This is a terrible restaurant.”

          She meowed like she was agreeing with me, but waited patiently for me to fill the bowl with dry food instead of diving right in, letting me mix in some wet food as well before attacking it eagerly. She only stopped when I topped her water dish off and lapped at it eagerly, like the new water was better somehow. I think she was getting spoiled. I heard the front door open and close, Kanuck barking happily, and I felt that stupid little thrill I always get when I know I’m about to see ‘Ro. I abandoned my cat and went back downstairs, finding my boyfriend in the kitchen, pouring himself a tall glass of orange juice.

          “Hey,” he greeted me with a smile.

          “Hey,” I echoed, “Uh, how was detention?” I asked a bit nervously, but he didn’t seem all that upset over it.

          “Fine,” he told me, “Boring. I got most of my homework done at least. It’s a bit like study period, just there’s a teacher breathing over your shoulder and yelling at you any time you try to talk to someone.”

          He gave me an incredulous look like he was saying, ‘as if I have anyone to talk to.’ Kanuck watched the two of us and then, with a whine, walked over to the door to the porch, pawing at it.

          “I wanted to text you,” Heero ignored him, “but I probably would have gotten my phone taken away from me.”

          “I think you’ve gotten into enough trouble this week,” his father drawled as he walked into the kitchen, “Take Kanuck out for a bit, would you? He needs some fresh air. The poor dog has worse spring fever than you do.”

          “’K,” Heero drank his juice down in three big gulps and rinsed the glass at the sink before turning to me, “I kind of need some air, too. Did you want to go outside for a little bit?”

          I wasn’t really suffering from spring fever, but it was a nice day out and some fresh air sounded wonderful.

          “In a bit,” I said, “I just want to finish up a little more homework, then I’ll join you.”

          “Alright,” he gave me this little kiss on my forehead that made my face turn bright crimson and took his dog outside.

          “While I commend your hard work,” Justin said with an endeared smile, “don’t stay cooped up in here too long, alright? It’s your day off, you should have fun, too.”

          “Yes, sir,” I forgot to correct myself and he just sighed, but good naturedly, and followed his son out the door.

          I yearned to go after them, but the faster I got my homework done, the sooner I could enjoy my spare time. I allowed myself just another half an hour, finishing up my history homework and the reading for marine biology, leaving my Calculus to do later since that would take me the longest. Outside, it was so nice out that I didn’t even need a jacket, the sky clear and cloudless and the sun cheerfully beaming down with barely any wind. I could almost believe that it was finally spring. Heero was practicing his batting with his father while Kanuck sniffed around the backyard.

There was no batting cage or anything to stop the balls from going too far, but Heero had amazing control over his swing and always seemed to get the balls to hit something to bounce off of; a hill, a sturdy tree, the fence around the pool, so they never traveled as far as I had seen him hit them during his try outs or practice games. Kanuck seemed to understand the difference between Heero’s batting the balls and when we would play fetch with him and was completely disinterested in chasing after the baseballs, but he was plenty interested in me, trotting over to me and joining when I sat down on the porch steps to watch Heero play. As much as I’m not very interested in sports and athleticism normally, I love watching Heero, whether he’s competing or just practicing. He’s just so focused, so controlled in everything he does. It’s not like he’s a master or anything, but he knows what he’s doing and exudes confidence when he has a bat or ball in his hand. I always feel this mix of envy and awe when I watch him, this little thrill of adrenaline at how intense he looks.

I watched him like some creepy stalker, that steely glint in his eyes, his perfect posture, how the muscles in his arms would flex every time he would swing the bat and I felt that weird warmth in my gut again, the same feeling I had had when we had been making out the previous night, before I had ruined everything. I didn’t understand that feeling, what it was, why it existed, or why it made me feel so strange. I had hoped that it meant something, that this is what arousal and desire feels like, but I didn’t get hard from it and I didn’t feel like… I don’t know, ripping his clothes off or anything from it, so it just confused me. If it _was_ desire, it was muted and controllable and it only drove home how wrong and broken I was, that it was the most I could feel, even if I had only ever felt it for ‘Ro.

It seemed rather useless to me, painful even, to feel that way towards him, to want him, but not enough to push through everything that wasn’t working in me. But still, even though it hurt and angered me, that Heero could be this burning flame and me, just a smoldering ember if that, I still liked it. It was still a relief to know that I could feel that much after what Trowa and my father had done to me. I was broken, but there was some piece of me that was still working, small and out of sync with the rest of me, but still there, ticking away. I wished that I could find it and pull it up to the surface, kindle it somehow, but it was always out of my grasp.

A line from a movie I saw with Trowa once comes to mind, that there are two types of boys: astronomers and astronauts. That’s exactly how I feel when Heero and I are intimate. He’s the astronaut, always exploring, always meeting things face to face, pushing and not caring if it’s dangerous, just going after what he wants, brave and stubborn. But me? I’m an astronomer. All I can ever do is watch from afar, never really experiencing anything for myself. It makes me ache, like there’s this… icy pit inside of me that should be filled with all those things: passion, desire, arousal, lust, _something_ , but there’s nothing. Always nothing. A spark or two, but they’re fleeting and fading by the time I notice them. I just don’t understand what’s wrong with me, why I feel this way, why I… why I’m such a freak.

I guess I could understand if I got this way after what my father had done to me. After being… touched and violated by him, I never wanted anything to do with sex again and just the thought of someone grabbing me, caressing me, even just pulling my pants down creates this deep, screaming terror in me. But it’s more than that. I hadn’t been raped when Trowa had started being intimate with me, and I had still felt nothing about the act beyond coldness and distance. I’ve been like this my entire life. When I had been twelve years old and called a fag for the first time, I had just thought that, whatever my sexuality was, that I felt no desire to date anyone or even had a tiny crush on anymore, I would just grow into it. At thirteen, I had assumed that I was a late bloomer, but three years later and I still felt… nothing. What my father had done really hadn’t made a difference in my sexual urges beyond locking a door that had already been firmly closed.

Watching Heero that afternoon, I felt frustrated with myself, my failings as a boyfriend and potential lover from the time that I had gotten my first kiss to pushing away the one person that I might _actually_ want to be intimate with. It wasn’t even that I felt nothing for him or that I didn’t want more with him. That’s what I don’t understand, the thing that makes me want to scream with complete frustration. I _do_ want it. I want those things with him. I want to feel more. I want him to touch me. I want to feel his passion and love for me in a physical way. When he had gently bitten the crook of my neck and shoulder, I had felt it for just a moment. Desire. This heat inside of me, a need for something that I don’t really understand and can’t name. Then it was gone. I want it, so why?! Why am I like this?! Why can’t I just ignore my fear and be like everyone else?! Why am I so fucking scared to begin with?! ‘Ro isn’t my father and he isn’t Trowa, so why is this so fucking difficult for me and only me?!

I tried not to think about it, not let it get to me because I knew that if I did, I would be pulled back down into that dark spiral of depression I had been in Monday night and I didn’t want that. I was so tired of feeling sad and angry and upset about everything. I just wanted to be happy for once, even if it was only for a few hours. Those twisted feelings didn’t belong when I was with Heero, so I kicked and punched them shrieking back into their box in my chest until the next time they broke free and clawed me to ribbons. I instead focused on the warm air on my face and the feel of Kanuck’s soft fur as I pet him and I reminded myself that things were ok. Sure, that was a lie, but it also wasn’t. Heero still loved me and I had time. And who knows, maybe by the time he actually pushes to have sex with me, I’ll be ready and all this worrying, all this tearing myself apart and hating myself would have been for nothing and I can laugh about it with crying relief. Denial is a wonderful thing, isn’t it?

Heero finally noticed me after about his sixth swing and turned to smile at me, his face a little bit red, but it was impossible to tell if it was from exertion or he was embarrassed that I had been watching him. If he was, he didn’t stop, getting back into position and he somehow looked even more focused and intense from my being there. But this time, when his father threw the ball at him, he hit it hard, sending it flying over the hill and disappearing somewhere. The hit was impressive, struck with perfect accuracy and power and it gave me this weird little… well, pride, I guess, that this was my boyfriend and how amazing he was. It also made me feel a little bit insecure, like it always does when I watch him play.

I can imagine him years from now on some major-league team, showing the world how great he is, and I feel this surety that, wherever he ends up, it won’t be with me. He would move on by then, probably be with someone he deserves, someone just as talented as he is, someone that can make him happy. It’s not like I have anything that I can offer him. I don’t even have anything that I’m good at like he is. Sure, I can cook and write and run, but even the things that I’m decent at, that’s all I am. Decent. Not great, not amazing, not gifted. How long would it be before he finally sees just how… plain and boring and nothing I am? How long before this honeymoon period wears off and he asks himself why he’s even with me? I viciously squashed the wave of sadness that tugged at me before it could drown me.

I might have been impressed with Heero’s show of power and skill, but Justin was not, giving his son an annoyed look at how far he had hit the ball.

“You’re showing off,” he said in exasperation.

Heero and I both blushed, Heero at the accusation and me realizing that he _had_ been showing off. For me. Because of me. It made me bewildered that someone with as much confidence in himself that Heero had wanted me to be impressed by him. Didn’t he know that everything he did impressed me? Justin sighed and shook his head, but he looked amused by the whole thing more than anything else.

“Well, now you’re going to need to go find it,” he pointed out dryly, “So I hope it was worth it.”

Heero shot him a sour look, but sighed in resignation.

“We can go look for it when we go out to the treehouse,” I suggested.

“Good idea, but first you two need to finish your homework,” Justin nodded at Heero, “I think you’ve had enough fresh air.”

Heero gave him a little salute that was somehow not mocking or sarcastic.

“That was pretty cool,” I told him as we walked back into the house together, both being honest and trying to soothe his embarrassment, but it only made him blush harder, “I didn’t realize you could hit like that. I didn’t see you do that any of the other times I’ve watched you play.”

“There’s really no need to,” he shrugged, “It hurts my arm if I do it too much and I don’t really need to hit that far, even during an official game unless my team really needs a home run. I can teach you how, if you want. How to bat, I mean.”

“No thanks, I’ll stick to just learning how to throw,” I muttered, “and even that I suck at.”

“You do not suck at it,” he scolded, “so stop that. Your throw has gotten a lot better since we first started and your catching has improved a bit, too. You just need to have more confidence in yourself.”

“I don’t see me ever getting decent at batting,” I confessed, “Pitching is one thing, but I don’t have a lot of strength in my arms. My joints ache sometimes because of all the breaks I’ve had, especially when I swing, so I doubt I’d ever be able to hit anything half as hard as you can, if I can manage to hit anything at all.”

“Mmm, true, you probably shouldn’t make a habit of batting if your bones are weak,” he admitted, “I don’t want you to hurt yourself. But it doesn’t hurt when we play catch, does it?”

“No, it’s fine,” I assured him, self-consciously flexing my right wrist and feeling the dull ache that I had only made worse after hitting the punching bag with such fervor.

We separated to do our homework, Kanuck looking from me at the kitchen table to the doorway, not knowing who to follow, but eventually followed Heero. Justin came in ten minutes later, but I was so deep into my calculus homework, I barely paid any attention to him. I felt him looking at me for a minute, then he put a tall glass of water in front of me and wandered off to the garage. His fussing, so like Heero’s, made me smile. I also heard Mariela come in at some point, but she disappeared someplace with a wave when she saw I was doing my homework. I’m getting better at just surrendering and accepting that doing nice things for me and being accommodating was just who these people were, but it was still a weird thought that I was, little by little, taking over the whole house.

Every room seemed to have a piece of me in it, whether it was a memory or one of my things. Some days, when I saw one of my books on the coffee table in the living room, or my shoes in the hall closet, or one of Pepper’s cat toys in the kitchen, I felt like I belonged. Like I was family and it’s enough to drive me to my knees with love for Heero and his parents, this… cloying desire to forget where I came from, my entire past and just dissolve into their lives. Other days, I feel like a virus or parasite, just taking and taking and perverting. It usually happens right after I spend a day at my own house. I wonder how I fit into Heero’s world and I feel this intense guilt for everything that I’ve changed for him, and how I happily neglect my own family.

Sometimes, I can almost wish that my mother and I had never reconciled, that it would be so much easier to live this illusion if she had never told me that she loved me and I didn’t want to be with her, help her, protect her. I feel this pull between two realities, the one that I’ve always known and the one that has created this… other person inside of me. The one that hates my father and loves Heero, that can get good grades and melt into his boyfriend’s arms without fear or self-loathing. Some days I have to actually remind myself that that person is just a lie I’ve concocted and the scared, hateful boy in my head is actually _me_ , I just can’t bear to cop to it.

Ironically, my calculus homework was a welcome distraction from my depressing thoughts that, no matter how hard I tried to hide and deny and push down, kept coming back and circling around me. I couldn’t understand it. I was safe, with people that cared about me, in a place that I could relax and I didn’t have really anything to worry about. I was going to go out on a date with my boyfriend. My homework was almost done. Things were a hell of a lot better than they usually were for me. So why did I feel this way? Why was there this… this black muck hanging on me? Why can’t I ever shake it? Why can’t I ever just… _be_ happy?

‘Because you don’t deserve it,’ a cruel voice in my head piped up, ‘Maybe you didn’t let Quatre down. But his step-mother still killed herself because of what _you_ said in anger. Maybe you weren’t solely responsible for what happened with Trowa, but you still let him fuck you and you still led him on. Maybe you didn’t destroy Mom’s life, but you still won’t stop Dad, will you? Because that’s all you do: nothing. You just let things happen and never fix anything, never help anyone. So what exactly have you done your entire life that you think you’ve earned the right to be happy?’

With a growl of frustration, I ground the heel of my palm into my left eye until the voice shut up.

“Just stop it,” I hissed angrily at myself and dove back into my work, but while focusing on math helped to quell that voice and those thoughts, my chest still felt tight with anxiety.

Heero came back downstairs about thirty minutes later looking for me. When he saw that I was still working, he tried to sneak back out of the kitchen, but I raised one finger up.

“One more problem, then I’m done,” I told him without looking up from what I was doing.

He sat down in the chair closest to me at the table and peeked at my work. His arm and knee pressed against mine, making my face go hot and my heart start to beat faster. You would think that after all the times we made out, just a simple proximity wouldn’t do this to me, but it does every time. Even just the smell of him or the sound of his voice is enough sometimes.

“Looks good,” he told me, “See? I told you that you would pick this up just fine if you cut yourself a little slack.”

I gave him a tiny, sheepish smile.

“Yeah, I guess so,” I conceded, still feeling a bit embarrassed at all the fuss I had made the previous day over that stupid test, but also a bit amazed that he _had_ been right, just like before.

“Want to head out to the treehouse, or relax a little bit?” he asked.

“Treehouse sounds good. I’d like to get the ladder and door done before it gets dark, and then work on painting Saturday?” I suggested.

It probably sounds weird, considering what I do for work, but some physical labor, even if was the tiny amount of work that we still needed to do on the treehouse, was exactly what I needed to clear my head.

“It’s a plan,” he smiled.

We gathered up all the tools we needed from the garage and headed out to the treehouse. Justin had already put the rope ladder together, we just needed to secure it, most of the work was getting the trap door done. Heero found his baseball on our way to the tree house and I was amazed that it had gotten as far as it had. He flashed me another sheepish grin, dusted the grass off of it and put it in his pocket. The trapdoor really didn’t need two people working on it, but he was happy to watch me attach the hinges and secure the door to the space we had made in the floor for it. All in all, it was pretty easy, boring stuff and it didn’t even take me an hour to finish, but with the sky starting to darken into a crimson and lavender, there wasn’t any point in trying to paint anything.

“What are you in the mood for eating tonight?” Heero asked me as we walked back to the garage to put the tools away.

“Nothing specific,” I said, “Something casual? Burgers?”

“Sounds good to me. Charlie’s probably won’t be too packed tonight,” he pointed out.

We washed up and dressed in nicer jeans and long-sleeved shirts, the air having already started to get cooler as the sun set. We got intercepted by Heero’s mother on our way out the door.

“Going out?” she asked.

“Just dinner and a movie, maybe a walk afterwards,” Heero told her.

“Alright, but don’t forget, you’re doing your laundry tonight,” she said in a light, scolding tone that made him roll his eyes at her.

“Yes, mother,” he muttered.

Our date turned out to be an exceptionally laid-back affair. Charlie’s was practically dead on a Tuesday night with only a couple of families there, so we were able to get our burgers and eat fairly quickly. We opted out of dessert, deciding to get something at the theater instead and made our way there. We were about a block away from the movie theater, about to cross the street towards it when we narrowly missed a probable disaster.

“Shit!” I swore when I saw them and grabbed at Heero’s arm, keeping him from crossing.

“What is it?” he asked in alarm and followed the direction that I nodded my head in, his face losing color when he saw what I had.

Leaning against the brick wall right next to the theater were our four least favorite people: Zechs, Mueller, Trant, and Alex. For a paranoid moment, I seriously thought that they had found out about our date plans somehow and were waiting for us. But they didn’t seem to be waiting for anything or were there with any kind of purpose, just talking and smoking while an usher at the front of the theater gave them the stink eye, but was obviously too scared of them to tell them to get lost. It was impossible to tell if they were hanging around for a movie, had just come from one, or were just loitering to cause trouble, but I doubted they were there for us. In reality, we had been pretty damned lucky so far to never run into them outside of school. It would have only been a matter of time before it happened anyway, but just seeing them there soured my evening a little.

“What do you want to do?” Heero asked me after his shock passed and he protectively dragged me into a side alley where the terrible quartet wouldn’t be able to spot us, “They might not do anything in public like this…”

I chewed on my bottom lip. That was true. Zechs often would tone done his abuse in front of adults and maybe if he did something, the usher or another adult would call the cops, but that seemed like a huge risk to me. If anything, being away from school made this more dangerous and increased the likelihood that no one would do anything if we were in trouble. It seemed like a stupid risk to take just so we could see a movie. Also, I just didn’t want to deal with him. I didn’t want those twisted memories of yesterday to intrude on our date. I didn’t want that ugliness, even if it made me a coward.

“Want to skip the movie?” I suggested like the wimp that I am, “Just get dessert somewhere?”

Heero’s obvious relief made me feel better as I realized he had only been putting on a brave front and he didn’t want to go anywhere near the theater, either.

“Sure,” he said, “Let’s go to that crepes place near the park.”

My guilt and my fear eased along with the pressure to not let Zechs and our problems at school intrude into our blissful, little world. We even took the bus to the park even though it was barely a ten-minute walk, just to be on the safe side. The ‘crepes place’ wasn’t even really a ‘place’, just a take-out stand across from the park with benches that you can eat at. While the crepes there were delicious, they were also messy, so we both got soft serve instead so we could walk and eat at the same time.

The park was beautiful that time of night, lit by lanterns and the almost full, waning moon. We walked leisurely, not really having a destination in mind, just making small talk and eating our ice cream. Walking blindly, we found ourselves at the playground on the far east side of the park. The empty, brightly colored slides, jungle gym, carousel, and bouncy, cartoonish animals looked almost eerie in the moonlight, like a ghost town or a set from a post-apocalyptic horror film. Heero, unperturbed by the quiet solitude, sat down in one of the swings meant for bigger kids and I raised an incredulous eyebrow at him.

“What?” he said with an amused smile, “They’re big enough for us. Come on,” he patted the swing next to him.

I hesitated for a moment, imagining how stupid it would look if someone saw us, two teenaged boys on a kid’s swing set, but then I realized that I didn’t really give a shit what anyone thought. I sat next to him as Heero swayed lightly back and forth.

“Swings were always my favorite part of a playground when I was a kid,” he said, “The slides were fun and all, but I could be on these things for hours. My dad was always the best at it. My mom would be too scared of me falling off to push very hard, but my dad would let me go as high as I wanted to. What about you? Uh… did your…”

His voice trailed off, obviously regretting his question immediately, remembering that I hadn’t exactly had the childhood that he had.

“Yeah, my dad used to take me to the park on the weekends when I was little,” I told him, smiling faintly at the memory and that we shared another thing in common, “The swings were my favorite, too. But now…”

I bit my tongue as a sharp pain pierced me as I reminded myself of the last time that I had been to that park, and the last time I had ever been on a swing with someone else. One memory was dark and twisted and bitter, the other bittersweet.

“What’s wrong?” my boyfriend asked worriedly, but also very cautiously, sensing that I was upset and not sure if it was something that I even wanted to talk about.

“It’s nothing,” I tried to brush it off, but those dark blue eyes were like a search light, probing around inside of me and illuminating things that I had kept tucked away, “It’s just… Quatre and I used to do this all the time… Swinging, I mean.”

“Here?” he asked softly and pressed his leg against mine in a show of comfort.

“Sometimes, when no one else was here, but mostly when we were at school. We never wanted to be near anyone else during recess,” I confessed, “and we knew that if we tried to use the playground at the middle school, Zechs or Relena would just kick us off of it. So, we were happy to just hang out in the woods behind the playground. It was kind of our secret spot, you know? One day, I even made us some swings so it was like we had a playground of our own.”

“Resourceful,” Heero complimented with an affectionate smile.

I snorted at that.

“We were just lucky that no one stole them. I… I took them down… after…” I fell silent, unable to get the words out and looked at the dirt under my sneakers.

“I’m sorry, Duo,” Heero put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed, “If you want to go somewhere else-,”

“No, it’s alright,” I shook my head, “It hurts remembering it, how I felt that day… but the rest of it, remembering swinging with him, hanging out at recess, I _like_ remembering that stuff, just not what came after. This playground was kind of our place, too, in a way,” I curled my hand around the chain of the swing, feeling the metal links just like I had one winter night, so many years ago, “I haven’t even been back here for years.”

“Because of Quatre?” he asked in that small, soft tone, like he was scared to ask, but also wanted me to talk about it.

“Actually, no,” I admitted, “After he died… this was one of the places that I could actually go to and remember him without… without hurting so much that I couldn’t stand it. It was one of the places that we shared, even before we had ever met. We both liked to come here when we were upset. Him when his parents would lock him out or his sisters were bullying him about something. And me…” I swallowed roughly, a part of me wanting to talk about this and another screaming no, it was too embarrassing and it would just make him sad, but I bulled ahead anyway, “Sometimes I’d be too scared to go home. I’d know my dad was mad at me or… some days I just didn’t want to go back to all that, even if he wasn’t in a mood. So, I’d walk around town or go to the library and when it got dark, I went here. I guess because it was kind of comforting, having a place that I only have good memories of me and my dad in. I’d stay there for a long time, sometimes even until the sun came up. I liked the solitude and the darkness, even if it made me feel lonely, and I’d feel safe there, even when I was sad.

“One time, when I was nine, Quatre found me there. He was just passing through, having nowhere to go and depressed about something. I never did ask him what it was. I think we both knew why we were there, that he couldn’t go home and I was too scared to, but we never talked about that shit, we just _knew_ , and we didn’t have to. We just sat here in the dark and swung and danced around all the crap in our lives for a while. It was nice. We never really planned any of the times that we met up here, it always just sort of happened, our paths would cross. And after he died, I kept coming back here and I’d… I’d pretend that he was still there, swinging with me, like he’d never died. Fuck, that sounds so stupid and nuts,” I laughed, but it was bitter and choked up and I suddenly realized that there were tears on my cheeks.

I wiped them away, angry at myself for my emotion and admitting something like that to him. That we were even talking about this at all. We were supposed to be on a date, having fun, and I was bringing up this maudlin crap again? What the fuck was wrong with me?

“It isn’t nuts or stupid,” Heero slid his hand over mine as I gripped the chain so hard, the old metal bit into my skin, his own grip solid and warm, “I used to see Wufei sometimes.”

I looked over at him in shock, his eyes dark and glittering wet.

“I’d just be doing an errand or some other mundane thing,” he confessed to me, “and I’d see him. Sometimes out of the corner of my eye, others he’d be clear as day. Sometimes he’d smile and wave, others he would be angry at me. My dad says it’s normal when you lose someone, that the brain does weird things.”

“I used to pretend that he was there with me,” I admitted even though it embarrassed the hell out of me, “When I was really upset or lonely, I’d just pretend that he was there. He’d even… even talk to me sometimes. I thought it was sick, but I couldn’t help myself…”

“It isn’t sick,” he said, “I did the same thing. Before I talked to anyone about his death, I felt so guilty, I’d actually imagine him having it out with me, blaming me. But when I started to realize that not all of my guilt was real, I would just imagine him for comfort. It made me feel better, like he was a ghost, that he still existed in my world in some way, even if it was all just in my head. Duo, if something made you feel better about Quatre’s death, even for just a second, it isn’t wrong.”

I nodded, unable to speak around the lump in my throat, more tears tracking down my face, but Heero wiped them away for me.

“Why did you stop coming here?” he asked me, another question that I didn’t really want to answer and I knew that this one would really bother him, but I had already opened that box and I couldn’t lie to him.

“It’s dumb,” I muttered defensively, “and it’s only going to upset you.”

“So?” he pressed, “Even more of a reason to talk about it.”

I snorted again. He amazes me sometimes. No one wants to hear about this crap, they don’t want to know and have it drag them down, but Heero, even if it makes him sad or depressed or furious, never flinches away from it. As bothered as he was to know that my father hits me and makes me feel like garbage, he’s always ready to have me talk about it, like hearing about it doesn’t hurt him. I thought about lying to him anyway, coming up with something that was nicer than the truth, but being dishonest with him only made me feel like a bigger shit.

“It was about a year after Quatre died,” I told him, “Maybe less. I still wasn’t… dealing with it very well. I was listless and everything was very minimal effort for me, whether it was my homework or jobs or even dealing with my parents. I pissed off my dad a lot, but even if he hit me, I just didn’t care anymore. I was still scared of him, but it didn’t matter to me, nothing did,” Heero pried my hand off the chain so he could hold it, entwining our fingers. Just that one touch, one gesture of comfort made the bad memory easier to get out somehow, “So, when our kitchen sink got a bad clog in it and kept overflowing when I did the dishes and my dad ordered me to fix it by the time he got home… well, I don’t remember if I just didn’t do it because I forgot to or because I just didn’t give a shit. I guess it doesn’t matter why.”

His grip on my hand tightened and I knew that he could see where this story was going.

“Either way, he got home and the sink was full of filthy water and bits of food and wasn’t draining at all. He got pissed, started screaming at me and hit me, but I didn’t apologize or make any excuses. I just told him that I had forgotten about it. I was pretty blasé about it. I don’t know, maybe I wanted him to flip out at me. I… did a lot of things that first year without Quatre that were pretty… suicidal, I guess. Nonsensical. Anyway, my attitude only made my dad angrier. He grabbed my head and pushed it in the sink, all the way down into the water, and held me there for a minute, maybe two.”

“Jesus Christ,” Heero interrupted me, horrified, “Your dad is a fucking psycho!”

I remember having about the same thought at the time, but I just shrugged.

“It wasn’t that bad, he pulled me back up pretty quickly and everything would have been fine if I had just held my breath,” I said, “But it was in the middle of winter and the water was like ice. I lost control and breathed in some of it. Not enough to drown, but it hurt like hell.”

Heero’s eyes were like silver dollars, perfectly round with shock as he listened to me. I decided right then that I wouldn’t tell him the rest of it, how terrified I had been that my father was trying to drown me, how the water had been like breathing knives of ice, or how I had been unable to breathe even when my father had let me back up, coughing so badly to get the water back out.

“My mom saw the whole thing,” I remembered with a small spark of bitterness, “but she just kept eating at the table, too drunk or too tired to care, I guess. She only got out of there when my dad took another swing at me.”

“He almost drowns you in a fucking sink and then he kept beating on you?” Heero asked in cold anger, his voice low in an almost growl.

“He tried to. I ducked and got the hell out of there. Probably not the smartest idea I had considering it was snowing and cold, but I came here. I sat here, in this exact swing actually, in the snow because I had nowhere else to go and even when the sun came up, I still couldn’t muster the courage to go back home, even when my cough got worse and I could barely feel my face. I tried to imagine that Quatre was with me, like before, but it just made me feel so empty and alone because no matter how real he might have seemed in my head, I knew that he wasn’t really there. No one was. The next day, I was in the hospital with pneumonia. I don’t know if it had been because of the cold or I would have gotten it anyway after breathing in all that water. I don’t know, after that, this place kind of lost its charm for me.”

I fell silent, not really wanting to talk about any of that anymore. I mean, it was all old hat, wasn’t it? My father had lost control and had crossed a line. I had spent three days in the hospital with pneumonia for the third time in my life and another couple of weeks recovering from it, but I had still gone back to that house. Back to my dad. Just like always. Depression seeped back in at that thought and I suddenly found it hard to look my boyfriend in the eye. He was just so… strong all the time. Confident. Brave. Sure, he’s stumbled a few times, made some less than stellar choices. But when he knew that he needed to change, that he needed to be himself, he _had_. But me? I know, have known for a while now, that I need to get away from my dad.

That day when my father had first molested me, I knew then that I needed to get the fuck out. Every instinct I’ve ever had had been screaming that at me and I had just… ignored it. I buried it all deep and turned away because I’m a spineless coward. Too scared to run away, too scared to do something about it. So I just let it happen, every single time. Because it’s easier. Heero didn’t deserve someone so weak, such a goddamned failure. I just dragged him along with me, made him make that stupid promise, and I kept reminding him that my father is beating me and he’s sworn to secrecy. What sort of asshole does that to the person they love?

Suddenly, I felt very cold. I told myself it was because, sitting there on that very same swing in the dark, I could remember how the thick snow had piled up on my legs and head and shoulders but I had been too empty and depressed to even shake it off or care, or that I could remember just how chilled I was, my throat burning and my lungs aching and breathing in ice, how even without any wind that night, I had felt like I was encased in the stuff. But I know better, enough that I knew that the cold I was feeling had nothing to do with memories.

I felt Heero tug on the chain of my swing, but I still couldn’t look at him. I didn’t want to see the reproach on his face or his worry and anxiety. I could sense the fight that we were about to have, the same one we always do when I talk about my father’s abuse. Heero would plead with me to tell the police or anyone that could help, I would insist it isn’t a big deal, he would flip out about it and point out how awful it was and what a shit my father was and how he didn’t deserve my protection, and I just didn’t want to go through that again. I didn’t want him to make me doubt, to make me look at things that I couldn’t bear to look at and make me hate my father more than I already do. But to my shock, instead of starting in on me and my denial and refusal to do anything, even just acknowledge the danger that I was in, he pulled me as close as he could manage and wrapped one arm around my waist and another around my shoulders, laying his head on my shoulder. His body felt so perfect against mine, like it belonged there, and I sagged against him. It felt so natural to let his warmth and the solid feel of him to comfort me and I tucked myself into him, resting my cheek against his shoulder. Gradually, I felt his arms tighten around me, like he needed to prove to himself that I was real, that I hadn’t really drowned or died from pnuemonia. Even through his thin jacket, I could feel him and I closed my eyes as his hand rubbed up and down my back.

          “I’m sorry,” he murmured against me, “I’m so sorry that you had to deal with that… that you still have to deal with that…”

          ‘It’s fine,’ almost slipped out of me, but it wasn’t. I knew that. And for once, I didn’t want to put on that mask of indifference and denial. I was so tired of it, of the lies and evasion. He hadn’t freaked out at me and for once, I felt like it was alright not to be ok, to be bothered by my grief and fear.

          “I didn’t know this place was so awful for you,” he said with remorse and I felt his hand trail back up my back, finding my braid and running his fingers over the strands, “We can leave if you want to…”

          “No,” I shook my head and lifted myself off him a little so I could look at him with a slight smile, “It’s alright. I don’t mind coming here. They’re just memories and… I’m not alone anymore.”

          ‘For now,’ some insidious, cruel voice piped up and I viciously stomped it dead.

          Heero smiled back at me, softly and full of love, my words erasing the doubt and worry on his face. He cupped my face in his hands and kissed me deeply, his lips warm and welcome against mine. Normally I would worry about someone seeing us, not because I was ashamed but because I didn’t want anyone to start shit with us or ruin our date. But I had already accomplished that by spilling my guts when Heero had been nice enough to share a shard of his childhood. He had told me something pleasant that he and his father used to enjoy. I had told him about being depressed and abused. That was pretty much the two of us in a nutshell. It just made me wonder what the hell he saw in me, what we had in common at all, this boy that was so blissfully normal and well-adjusted, and the freak.

          “I’m sorry I ruined our date,” I apologized mournfully.

          “It isn’t ruined,” he assured me, his thumbs caressing my skin, “Does this feel ruined to you? This is nice. I don’t mean you remembering something painful, but us talking, being together like this… This is better than going to see a movie.”

          I snorted derisively.

          “Me telling you about how I got pneumonia and turning my dead, best friend into an imaginary friend is preferable on a date to going to see a movie?” I scoffed.

          “I _like_ talking with you, learning things about you. You didn’t evade or dismiss or try to make me feel better. You were _honest_ with me,” he said with awe, like just that was amazing to him, “I wish you would be that honest with me more often.”

          I didn’t know which I felt more at that remark: hurt that I thought he was calling me a liar, or guilt that he had every right to. Guilt, probably, because I knew that he hadn’t really meant anything insulting or harsh, and I knew that he was right. I couldn’t even protest that it wasn’t true, that I _am_ honest with him, more honest than I should be because _that_ would be a lie. I am honest with him, sometimes, but most of those things are things that I hadn’t wanted to be and he had to forcefully pull out of me. Everything about Trowa and Quatre, my issues with anger, my father’s abuse, being bullied, my suicide attempts, all that crap. I would have happily lied to him to never let him know all those things. And yeah, talking about them had helped and it was a relief to know that he didn’t hate me or had even just lost interest in me because of them, but could I really say that I had been honest when it had been such a painful process just to tell the truth?

          The truth, the bare, honest, terrible truth is that I’m a liar. Whether it’s from omission or outright lying to his face, I lie to Heero all the time. I lie about how I feel when I say that I’m alright or something isn’t a big deal. I lie every time I try to paint my father’s abuse as acts of drunken mistakes instead of the violent intent they really are. Our entire relationship is a lie. I let him believe that I am fully invested in us, in being together and loving each other when I’m just biding my time until I ruin it or I have to make a hasty retreat. I lie every second that I let him kiss me and touch me and love me and don’t tell him that my father’s fucking me, that my father has a better chance of getting with me than ‘Ro does, which is on a level of fucked up that I can’t think about too hard or I might come completely apart.

Somehow… from the time I was nine years old and desperately trying to scrub ‘LIAR’ off of my forehead and now, I had become a pathological liar, a con man. I can say that my father turned me into this, but is that really the truth? Or is this just who I am now? Someone who can’t even face the truth and has to keep running from it to the point that my boyfriend is amazed at one moment of pure honesty? Because Heero knows that I’m full of shit. Maybe he doesn’t know how much, but he knows that I don’t always tell him the truth, that I hide things and how the hell he can still be in a love with a piece of shit that does that to him day in and day out is beyond my comprehension. And you want to know something else that’s messed up? Even knowing all this, even feeling guilty for all the subversion and lies, I still wanted to take all this back, telling him the honest truth about why I don’t come to that part of the park anymore and I still felt like an ass for hurting him with that truth.

“Even if it upsets you?” I muttered, my tone somewhat bitter.

I expected him to flinch at my acidic tone or surrender to that obvious fact, but he kept surprising me and held my hand in his.

“Especially if it upsets me,” he said and when I gave him a bewildered look, he continued, “If it’s something that upsets me, then it’s something that upsets you, too, whether you’ll admit it or not. And I want to know those things, Duo. Even if you think they’ll hurt me, I want you to talk to me about the things that hurt you, too. Even if you think that talking about them won’t help, and even if it _doesn’t_ help, I want to know everything about you, everything in your head, because I love you.”

I swallowed roughly, my heart swelling with affection for him, and I wanted to deny what he was saying, tell him that he was full of shit and had he really thought those things when I had shown him the scars on my wrists or when he had sat by me in the hospital waiting room while I bled and wrapped my arm around my busted-up ribs? But I knew exactly what he was saying because I had felt the same things about him, that I needed every piece of his puzzle, even the ones that were torn and bent instead of the colorful, neat ones. My heart had ached and bled when he had told me about Wufei and his depression and his guilt about his parents moving to Nausten, and when Zechs had dumped piss on him.

When he had told me about how scared he had been when he had found out that he was gay, I had felt like I was going to cry with all the pain that he had felt, and there had been this agony in my own chest when he had admitted to that childhood dream he had had and how he had given up on his faith in the face of losing it. I understood, all too well, what it was like to hurt for someone that you loved when they told you painful things and wanting to make those things all better for them, but never regretting having learned them because they were a part of that person. But that did nothing to keep me from wishing that Heero had never found out about them. I felt like I was tainting him with my filth, with every twisted memory and moment of my life that I revealed to him, whether it was something that I was just telling him or it was something that he was seeing first hand.

Just as I thought my self-loathing and depression were going to spiral out of control again like they seemed to be doing an awful lot lately, Heero twisted in his swing, gently grabbed my chin, and turned my face to him so he could kiss me. The kiss was much sweeter and more tender than the ones he had given me the night before when I had freaked out, but it was still long and deep and I felt it settle the terrible nest of writhing snakes in my guts. I kissed him back, not with hunger like before, but in apology for being such a mess in front of him all the time, even if I couldn’t say that out loud.

“See?” he said when he pulled away, his eyes glittering like secret gems in the dark, “You haven’t ruined anything.”

I loved him so intensely right then, how much he cared for me, how easy it was for us to be together like this, his constant acceptance of all of my flaws and mistakes. I wanted to kiss him again with all of my sudden passion, but I was too frightened to. I felt like if I did, I would be leading him on like the cock tease that I am, give him some signal like I had before and would only hurt him again when I put the brakes on. I wished, more than anything, that I was better at this, that I could read and understand those signs so I would know what to do and what not to do. I wished there really was some visible line that I could point at and say ‘this is it. Never cross this and everything else is fine.’ I wished that I could tell him with that honesty that he coveted that the line even existed, that I _wanted_ things from him, but not all of the things that he did without him finding out exactly what those things were at the same time. I desperately yearned for a manual, some loop hole in all of this that would lay out all the rules for me and show me how to save _us_ before I ruined everything.

“Your dad is still a flaming asshole, though,” he added and despite the flippant, joking way he said it, there was very real anger and protectiveness and _hate_ in his eyes for the man that had nearly drowned me in barely twelve inches of ice cold water.

I couldn’t help it, I barked out laughter. It was probably just stress-relief, but it still made him smile and lose some of that hard edge. It helped to lighten the mood a little, but I still felt that shard of guilt in my chest, stabbing deeper and I wondered if it would ever go away, if there would ever be a time when I would do right by this amazing person and would stop hurting him. I doubt it. It seems like all I do is hurt people, as instinctively as breathing.

“I’m sorry,” I said softly, unable to look at him again, “about not being honest with you all the time, I just…”

But what more was there to say? I had no excuses for my shitty behavior or what an awful boyfriend I was. I can say that I lie and evade to protect him, but that’s not really the truth, either, is it? I do it to protect myself, so I can keep being in denial and so Heero can never convince me to do things that I selfishly don’t want to do. I’m willing to force him to make promises that hurt him so I never have to make a difficult choice about my father. I tell him not to make waves with Zechs because I’m too scared to do it myself. I downplay the things that Zechs and my father and everyone else in the world does to me because I can’t face it, because I’m a gutless coward and it’s just so much easier coasting through my life than it is trying to fight back.

Fighting is tiring and painful and pointless, so I just let this shit happen. When my father goes too far, I just tell myself and everyone around me that he was too drunk, it was an accident, it was no big deal. I sit in some park in the dark and cold until I have to go back home instead of doing something about it. I’ve been fine with that my entire life, being a coward and in denial beyond some healthy self-hatred for it in those moments when I dare to really look at my own actions. But now I’m dragging Heero along for the ride and every shitty choice I make only weighs him down, too. I love him so much, but it’s not enough is it? It’s really too bad he fell for such a spineless bastard who won’t even do right by him, who is so disgustingly self-centered and worthless. He had every right to ream me out for it, but he put a reassuring hand on my shoulder and gave me a gentle squeeze.

“I won’t say that it’s ok, because it isn’t, but I understand,” he told me, “I know it’s hard for you to talk about this stuff. I can’t even imagine…” he trailed off and when I looked over at him, there was something about his expression that was intense, almost fierce, his eyes burning into mine, “You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met, you know that, don’t you?”

I gaped at him. Strong? Me? He had said that before, many times, but each time it was harder and harder to believe him, both that it was true and that he believed it.

“There’s nothing strong about me,” I muttered, “How you can even think that…”

“Yes, there is,” he said in frustration, “You might not see it, but you’re amazing and you have plenty of strength-,”

“Name one thing,” I demanded.

“You went back,” he shot right back, “Your dad hit you and half drowned you in your kitchen sink, but you still went back.”

“That’s not strength, that’s just stupidity!” I cried out, exasperated at his logic.

“You went on after you saw your best friend die right in front of you,” he challenged.

“ ‘Went on’? I tried to kill myself!” I pointed out, not getting what the hell he was talking about, “I became miserable and maladjusted and I lashed out at anything and everything! I got so depressed that I didn’t even care if my dad beat me to a pulp and that was almost a year after it happened! If I were strong, it wouldn’t have taken me four fucking years to function again!”

“God, Duo,” he snapped, “Being depressed and sad and grieving after something like that, even years later, doesn’t make you weak! Coming back here just to reconnect with Quatre, and avoiding it later because it made you empty doesn’t make you weak, either. After I dropped out of school, I almost didn’t come back I was so messed up! And that was after all the counseling and having parents that supported me and were there to comfort me! You didn’t have anyone to talk to that whole time, but you still went through the motions. You did your jobs, you went to school, you did your damned homework! I can’t even begin to imagine the sort of strength it took to do that without completely falling apart. And maybe it took four years, but you still said goodbye to him, you still faced what happened with a lot more strength than I could have!”

“I don’t feel very strong,” I murmured, shaken by the things he was saying, wanting to believe him, wanting to be wrong, but I just couldn’t shake that stupid voice in my head that always calls bullshit when he says things like that. My father’s voice, cruel and biting.

He cradled my face in his hands, starting to cool from the air, and pressed a gentle kiss to my forehead.

“Well, you are. And I’m not… angry that you aren’t always honest with me about things. It bothers me, but I get it. I make it hard for you to tell me the truth,” he said.

I opened my mouth to protest that, but I knew it would be a lie, so I stopped myself.

“I do,” he smiled, but there was something almost bitter about it, “I worry a lot about you and I know you don’t tell me some things because you don’t want me to be hurt or anxious. But I want you to feel like you can talk to me about this stuff instead of just keeping it all bottled up inside until you explode.”

“I’m trying,” I said pathetically, all that I could offer him.

“I know you are,” his smile softened and he ran his fingers through my bangs. I closed my eyes in pleasure at the light touch, “And I know something has been bothering you lately-,”

I began to protest again, but he quickly cut me off.

“No, I know, ok? I’m not an idiot. You’ve been down lately, and distracted, especially since yesterday,” he said and I felt something in my gut twist and tear, making me feel like I was going to throw up.

I hadn’t realized that I had been acting any differently, but Heero reads me so well sometimes that it’s almost creepy. And I _have_ been depressed lately. I’ve tried so hard not to show it, that something is bothering me more and more, but the further our relationship goes, the worse it gets. And every time I think I’m over this, all these doubts and anxieties and screaming stress over my failings and my guilt and what the hell I’m going to do, how much I’m hurting the person that I love, something reminds me of who I really am and it just… tears me down all over again. Take that night. One minute, I had been happy, just sharing ice cream with my boyfriend, the next I felt this… darkness weighing me down, a million thoughts like knives. It’s gotten a lot worse since that night. Heero probably thought it was because of Zechs molesting me and had no clue that it was my pushing him away that was haunting me so much. No matter my guilt, I could never let him make that connection, let him suspect for even a second that his touch had anything to do with my crippling depression and, even worse, what I was thinking about doing to him because of it.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered under my breath, wanting to find some dark hole to crawl into, although I doubted that it would help me escape from my guilt.

“It’s alright,” he tried to assure me, “You don’t need to apologize, just… I understand if it’s something you aren’t ready to talk about, but I’m here when you are, ok?”

I nodded, yet another lie because there was no way in hell I was ever, _ever_ going to talk to him about this. Even if it cannibalized me raw and bleeding, my lips were forever sealed. He got up from his swing and I thought that was it, we were going to go home, but he went behind me and grabbed both of the chains of my swing.

“What are you doing?” I asked in more confusion than paranoia, only to laugh when he put his hand on my back, realizing what he planned to do.

“Pushing you,” he teased and proceeded to do just that.

“I’m not a little kid!” I protested, but it was completely ruined by my surprised, gleeful laugh that I couldn’t quite manage to contain. How the hell did he manage to do that? Get me to go from being so fucking maudlin to laughing like a dork?

“So?” he teased as he pushed me to swing higher, “There’s no age limit on having fun, is there?”

          He pushed me for a few minutes, not hard enough to really get me to go up high, but it was nice, if strange. I really did almost feel like I had as a kid when my father had pushed me on those same swings, free and happy, only it was better this time. I didn’t worry about being swung too hard or that my father would get tired of it and order me to get off. It was better with Heero, like everything is, because I didn’t feel anxious with him. He was having fun, too, and wasn’t doing this as some kind of chore. Eventually, he even got back on to his own swing and pumped his legs so we were swinging at the same pace, like we were flying together. It was an oddly light and blissful way to end a date that had quickly gone from enjoyable to strained, kind of like none of the heavy stuff had ever happened.

          We left when the night air started to get too cold to really be enjoyable anymore. It was still on the early side of the night, and there were more people on the streets than we liked, so we took the longer, more secluded way back to his house. We weren’t really worried that we would run into Zechs again, but it was nice being just the two of us on the side streets.

          “You’re going-,” Heero started to say when we walked onto his street, but strangled whatever he had been about to say and amended in a much meeker tone, “Are you going to stay the night?”

          I chewed on that for a moment. Honestly, I hadn’t really been thinking about where I was going to be crashing that night. It’s become second-nature for me to end up at Heero’s place, it feels like sometimes it isn’t even a conscious decision and that night was one of those times because, big shocker, I didn’t want to go home and I wonder if, on some subconscious level, I hadn’t thought about it beforehand because I just wanted to let things be, stay over at Heero’s and not consider the fact that I couldn’t keep doing this, I couldn’t keep hiding from reality.

Already my mind was supplying me with every reason why I shouldn’t go home. I wanted to be with ‘Ro, I wanted to be safe and sleep and I didn’t want to see my father. I wanted to be with Pepper and Heero’s parents and not have nightmares or smell and hear and see things that weren’t real, that only existed in my fucked-up head. That Heero had obviously rephrased his question to not pressure me or guilt trip me into anything only had the opposite effect. I felt like I needed to reward him for making the effort. It’s just too easy for me to give in to him, with everything. But when I thought about all the reasons why I should be going home, why I _needed_ to go home, it wasn’t my father that was the foremost in my mind for once.

“I… I should really go home,” I admitted, feeling like I was ripping out my own guts with each word, “I can sleep at your place for a little bit, but I need to get up early and go back.”

To my relief, Heero didn’t look hurt, but he frowned with concern.

“How early?” he asked.

“Around three,” I told him, it was the latest that I could put off going home without my father thinking I had been somewhere I shouldn’t have been.

Not that it was going to matter, I hadn’t been home Monday at all, so if he had noticed that, that I was back after I would have been coming home from work the next day was going to do shit to appease him. That I was going to be walking into a fight that morning was another reason to stay away, but I ignored it. Heero obviously didn’t like my answer, his frown deepening, and there was something he was chewing on, probably the urge to plead with me to stay or some argument.

“You’ll be exhausted getting up that early,” was all he said and I loved how much he was restraining himself from fussing and arguing with me, he really was trying.

I didn’t have the heart to remind him that I usually don’t sleep as much as I had been with him lately and getting up that early was no big deal for me.

“It’ll be ok,” I tried to assure him and almost winced at how close this was to an outright lie, “I’ll probably just go back to sleep at home. I probably won’t be sleeping over the rest of the week, either.”

I practically squirmed as I admitted that, those two halves of me, my caution and this weird, new person that befriending Heero had created in me, warring with each other. The disappointment on my boyfriend’s face was a knife in my gut, but I couldn’t take it back and the more practical side of myself knew that this was the right decision. I hated it, and I especially hated my father for making me do this, but I was taking too many risks lately and if I kept poking the bear the way I was, it was going to wake up and maul me sooner or later. I just had to keep telling myself that I had to suffer through this now so I could hang out with Heero later.

“Is this because of your father?” he asked me, unknowingly hitting the nail right on the head, his voice tense, but he was still trying so hard not to make this turn into a fight.

“My mother, actually,” I confessed, which only made him look confused, “I promised her that I would help her come up with a budget this week, and I really need to fix the washing machine. I’m sure my father has a billion chores for me to do by now, too.”

Half of which were probably useless busy work that he was only throwing at me to keep me occupied and punishing me for continuously disobeying him, I thought bitterly.

“Don’t spread yourself too thin,” he fussed a little in his typical, worrying way, but kept any other concerns to himself.

“I know,” I eased, “But it’s not just that. It’s…” I struggled to find the right words to accurately describe what I was feeling, this heavy guilt that’s been weighing on me for days, how watching my mother cry over our finances and looking so haggard had wrenched my insides into a twisted mess, “I love staying over your place. It’s… it’s the closest I’ve come to feeling like a home, some place I belong…” Heero slid his hand over mine, threading our fingers together and his warm skin gave me a fleeting kind of courage, “You know why,” I murmured, not wanting to talk about my father’s abuse and being scared to go home any more than I had that night, “It’s not like I want to go back. But my mother doesn’t have that luxury. She’s alone there with… with him and…” the words choked in my throat and Heero gave my hand a very gentle squeeze.

“You worry about her,” he summed up in a soft, kind tone.

I nodded.

“We only have each other,” I whispered painfully, “and I keep abandoning her so I don’t have to deal with it.”

“It isn’t like that,” my boyfriend tried to soothe me, but I shook my head.

“No, it is,” I smiled bitterly, “I keep leaving her to deal with him because I have a safety net and she doesn’t. It isn’t fair to her, and you’re right, I worry about her all the time. If they’re fighting, if she’s depressed and alone and missing me. She gave up drinking for me, we’re finally getting to know each other and getting comfortable around each other. I want to spend time with her and I’ve been feeling so lousy, like the worst son there is for just abandoning her like this.”

“You aren’t abandoning her,” ‘Ro urged, “and you are not a bad son. She knows what your father is like first hand, Duo, so she knows how you feel. I doubt she begrudges you for not wanting to be there and dealing with all that crap if you can help it. If it were me, I would be relieved that my child was somewhere safe and cared for, that he was happy instead of being jealous or resentful. You have no reason at all to feel guilty about it, but if you don’t want to stay over this week so you can spend more time with her, well…” he gave me a small, humorless smile, “I won’t like it, but I understand. Your mother is finally back in your life. I’ve always had both of my parents, so I can’t begin to imagine what that feels like, but you should spend time with her. I’ll get over it.”

I stared at him with amazement. God, he really was trying, wasn’t he? I could see it on his face, how much he didn’t want me to go, how worried he was and frustrated, and the sheer amount of effort it was taking him just to let this go without a fight, to accept what I wanted and not give voice to any of his arguments or desires. It made me feel like a shit, but even more than that, I felt a bright, shining love for him and relief that he wasn’t going to argue. My love and amazement made me bold and I grabbed his shoulder, keeping him from walking, and kissed him deeply, even daring to slip my tongue between his parted lips very briefly like he had done to me before, his lips still tasting slightly sweet from the long-gone ice cream. His eyes were comically wide and under the lamp light, I could tell that his face was a bit red when I pulled away.

“Wow,” he marveled, his voice unsteady and I felt this weird burst of pride that I had done that to him, even if the kiss had made me a bit embarrassed, too, “What was that for?”

“Being amazing,” I said simply.

“I’ll have to do that more often then,” he teased and I rolled my eyes at him.

We resumed our walk down his street, holding each other’s hand and neither of us caring who saw us doing it.

“I’m going to miss you,” Heero suddenly said.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I laughed, “You’ll still see me at school and we’ll still hang out after, I just won’t sleep over until maybe Saturday.”

“No, I mean, I’ll miss sleeping with you,” for once, he was the one that was unable to meet my eyes as he spoke shyly, but honestly, “I love waking up next to you.”

“God, you’re so sappy,” I teased him, but gave his hand a squeeze, knowing exactly what he meant and my heart blossoming with warmth even as his words cruelly fed my guilt, making me doubt myself. I didn’t even want to think about how unbearable it was going to be, trying to sleep in my own house without feeling him next to me, knowing that I was safe and loved and warm.

“Guilty as charged,” he quipped back.

We stopped in front his house, the both of us hesitant to go back in, liking the solitude on the quiet street.

“I’m going to miss you, too,” I murmured awkwardly, shy and embarrassed to admit something like that even as I stubbornly refused to let go of his hand and had only managed it after our little talk about honesty.

He rewarded me by smiling brightly and leaning in to kiss my forehead, making my skin flame.

“Thank you for the date,” he told me, “Even if it didn’t go exactly as planned.”

I looked away from him guiltily, but he grabbed the side of my face and forced me to look at him. There was absolutely nothing that I was feeling on his face, just warm affection and maybe just a bit of worry.

“I mean it,” he assured me, “I had a good time. Maybe we didn’t get to see a movie, but I got to spend time with you anyway, so there’s nothing for you to feel bad about. If anything, I’m the one who should feel bad about bringing up something that made you sad.”

“It isn’t you,” I smiled slightly, “They’re just memories. All of that was a long time ago.”

But was it, I thought, was it really? How had anything changed from back then? My father still beat on me, only it’s gotten a lot worse. In reality, him almost carelessly drowning me in anger was nothing compared to some of the other crap he’s done to me and maybe the pain from Quatre’s death was better, but I was still lonely. I was still empty. Heero filled me up, he erased those terrible feelings away, but standing there in front of his house with his hand on my cheek and all my anxieties and confusion swirling in my head, I was achingly aware that, the second ‘Ro left my side, those holes, that ache would return. He hadn’t fixed or cured anything, I was just using him as a crutch. Lying to myself that anything was better just because he loved me, that I was somehow a better person when the opposite is true.

I shook myself out of my thoughts and followed my boyfriend inside. I was so sick of this weird, depressive mood that I couldn’t seem to pull myself completely out of. I was tired of feeling morose and like there was this tight ball of fear in my gut. Hell if I knew what was wrong with me or what had brought this on. What had happened Monday after school? Everything that had happened during spring break, just all piling up on me, or was it something even older, finally catching up to me? I couldn’t keep feeling this way, not in front of Heero. He had already figured out that something was wrong. How long before he realized that whatever it was, it involved him and our relationship? How long before he put the pieces together and saw that my quietness and distance had gotten worse after he had felt me up and I was backpedaling, hard, and not just with intimacy, but with us.

It wasn’t really late enough for us to go to bed, so we ended up in the game room upstairs, looking for something to occupy us until we were tired enough to call it a night.

“We could watch a movie since we missed ours,” he suggested, “or we could play a board game if you like those things.”

“You have board games?” I raised an eyebrow, amused that he had something so… old and low tech when he had a bunch of new video game consoles.

“We have a ton of board games,” he said eagerly, getting down on his knees in front of one of the bookcases and looking through some of the rectangular boxes I never noticed were there, “My parents used to play these with me all the time when I was little. Every time the power went out or we were all together on a Sunday afternoon, we’d play one of these. Let’s see… there’s Monopoly, that’s a bit boring, though… Scrabble, you’d win at that in a heartbeat…”

          I sat down next to him on the carpet, watching as he rummaged through the colorful boxes for something appropriate. Kanuck trotted over to him, curious with what he was doing, but when Heero didn’t give him any attention, he quickly got bored and laid down with a heavy, dog sigh.

“Did you play any of these as a kid?” my boyfriend asked.

“A couple,” I admitted, “My dad and I used to play Clue when he was bored enough. Or I would just play with myself, most of the time. We had some other game… I can’t remember what it was called, but I liked playing with the pieces a lot more than the actual game…”

My voice trailed off as I suddenly remembered why we had stopped playing Clue, that in one of his fits of cruel temper, my father had ripped the board right in half and tossed the whole thing, along with a few other toys, in the trash. He hadn’t bothered to buy another one. Heero finally settled on a game that I wasn’t familiar with, one that involved this weird dome in the middle of the board that held a single dice and a bunch of childishly colored, plastic pegs that served as the playing pieces. Heero quickly explained the rules of the game to me and to my relief, it was incredibly simple. It was probably suitable for little kids, but I really didn’t care, I didn’t want to think about anything and it was a game that even I couldn’t mess up. All you had to do, Heero told me, was pop the dice, move your piece how many places the dice said until you got all the way around the board. If you landed on a spot that the other person already on a piece on, you could ‘knock them out’ and they would have to start again at the beginning. Whoever got all their pieces around the board first won. Easy.

After twenty minutes of teasing and gloating at each other whenever one of us knocked out one of the other’s pieces, Heero ended up winning. I didn’t even feel bad or inadequate for once since it was a game of pure luck, not strategy. It was fun and the mindlessness of it helped take me out of that weird head space I had been in for most of the night. I forgot about what Heero and I had talked about, my anxiety, all of that shit and just enjoyed spending time with him. It was stuff like this that I always enjoyed the most with him, just doing things that we would have done back when we were just friends. As much as I loved our dates and kissing him, just playing games or watching a movie with him was soothing. I didn’t have to overthink anything, worry about what I was doing, what I wasn’t doing, being a good boyfriend, being interesting and attractive and everything that I know I’m not. I didn’t have to think about the end or if he was going to want to push that line.

I was helping Heero set up for a second round of the game when I felt something brush against my leg. I didn’t even need to look to know that it was Pepper and I reflexively petted her for a minute until she slipped out from under my hand in that finicky way that cats are and wandered away somewhere. I heard her meowing at something, but ignored her, knowing her food and water dishes were plenty stocked and it was just for attention or maybe she saw something interesting through one of the windows.

“Uhhh, Duo?” Heero asked nervously.

I looked up, having never heard him talk in that tone before, thinking that something was wrong. Instead, I saw my boyfriend looking down at my cat with wide, uncertain eyes as she sat not even a foot from him, looking back at him with equally round eyes, putting on her best ‘I’m the cutest thing on the planet’ face and, seeing that she had his full attention, continued to myew at him.

“She’s meowing at me,” Heero said fearfully, like he was being approached by a tiger instead of a not even ten-pound housecat, “What do I do?”

I couldn’t help it, the picture the two of them made was too adorable and endearing, I laughed.

“She wants you to pet her,” I told him with an amused grin.

“But why?” he asked, bewildered.

“You’ve pet her before,” I pointed out,

“Yeah, but she’s never come to me before,” he told me, still not taking his eyes off the animal, “She lets me near her, but when you’re not here, she sticks to herself or to my mother. She likes my mom more than she likes me.”

That was news to me, I hadn’t known that Pepper liked Mariela, but then again, the woman seemed to love animals and probably spoiled her with attention.

“Well, she’s used to you by now. I guess she approves of you,” I shrugged, though hell if I know how cats think.

If anything, Pepper probably had only tolerated him instead of seeking his attention because of Kanuck, or maybe she was just finally warming up to her new home and the people in it. I certainly hoped it was that and not that my absence made her lonely. I leaned my chin on my fist and watched with an affectionate smile as Heero, still incredibly unsure of himself, reached out his hand to her and paused. His dog looked from him to the cat, just as unsure, probably sensing his owner’s nervousness, but he also knew that Pepper wasn’t any kind of threat. Pepper sniffed at his fingers and headbutted them, finally giving Heero the confidence to pet her down her spine and making her purr happily.

As he continued to pet her, Heero’s uncertain expression slowly melted away into a small smile of amazement, like a little kid. It was beautiful, so open and honest and I loved him so much for it, that he could see the world that way, as something amazing, each new thing a wonder instead of something frightening. It was an incredible thing to watch, but it was also painful. When was the last time I had ever looked at anything that way? When was the last time I had ever felt that way? Everything scares me or makes me feel hate or anger. Sometimes it feels like Heero is the only thing in my life that can make me feel anything good, anything close to that childish wonder, but everything else… the world just makes me bitter and twisted. I can’t even remember what it felt like as a child to learn new things, to love things. Heero gave me a shard of that back when he had gotten me into running again, but is that enough?

I still feel like that part of me, that child that still lives in my head the way I’m sure the child that Heero had once been lives in his, is shriveled and dead and watching Heero pet my cat that night made me truly mourn that child. I yearned for that innocence back, how I had loved my parents, loved reading, loved everything that I saw out the window of my father’s car when we had ridden together. I’m so tired of these feelings, of love coming only in these bursts when I’m with Heero, but when he’s not there… only feeling sad or angry, if I feel anything at all. But it’s too late, isn’t it? That child is dead. He’s been dead for a very long time now. And when Heero leaves or when I push him away, I’ll lose even those shards. What will I become then?

Pepper, enjoying the attention she was getting, rubbed against Heeros’s leg and walked around him until she was rubbing his other leg and made a circle back to me. I swept her up into my lap, her making a small meow in half protest.

“You sure are spoiled, all these people petting you,” I teased her, grabbing her legs to make her flop onto her back and moved her paws up and down.

She was well used to my playing with her like that and was content to kick her feet and chew on my fingers gently. It was so stupid, but playing with her actually made me feel a lot better. Just having her and Kanuck and Heero there, spending time with them so casually, not doing anything important or even talking about anything important lifted that cloud of depression for me. Lately, it’s been harder and harder for me to find ways to do that, get out of those funks, and easier to slip back into them, like an old junkie trying to get a fix and, not for the first or last time, I wondered just what the hell was wrong with me.

We started up another game, Pepper staying in my lap and not making much of an effort to leave, but we didn’t get very far into it before we were interrupted by Heero’s mother striding into the room, looking put out.

“Heero Yuy!” she scolded, startling her son so badly that he almost knocked his pieces off the board, “What do you think you’re doing?”

We both stared at her owlishly. I had never seen her really raise her voice to Heero before, something that usually would have made me skittish and tense, but I felt so much at ease around her, knew her so well, and even with her in full parental mode, she still didn’t hold a candle to either of my parents or even look all that angry to begin with that I was mostly just confused about why she was upset. If anything, I felt good, amazed really, that I felt so safe with Heero and his parents that any one of them could yell at me, and I wouldn’t react like a scared child.

“Playing?” he said hesitantly, not getting why he was in trouble, either.

Mariela folded her arms over her chest in a huff.

“And what did I tell you to do when you got back from your date?” she scolded.

It took him a moment, but clarity finally dawned in Heero’s eyes.

“Laundry,” he swallowed and looked at his mother sheepishly, “Sorry, I completely forgot.”

She sighed, shook her head at him, and gestured to the floor.

“Now, Heero. You can pick up your game later, but you promised me you would start doing your own laundry. I’m not always going to be there for you to do it, especially when you go off to college. It’s time to learn how,” she lectured him.

Heero glanced at me and turned beet red, obviously embarrassed at my finding out he didn’t know how to do his laundry, but I didn’t look down on him for it. I’m sure there are lots of teenagers our age that don’t know how to do their laundry and their parents just do it for them. It was an alien concept to me, having been doing not just my own laundry, but my parents’ as well since I was eleven. But if Heero’s parents were any indication of typical parents, I guess it was usual for them to do their kids’ laundry and not the other way around. He sighed as soon as his mother left and gave me a small, apologetic smile, still a bit embarrassed.

“To be continued,” he told me.

“It’s fine,” I assured me, “Not like the game is going anywhere.”

He seemed relieved, though I think it was more that I didn’t think less of him for relying on his mother to do his laundry and not that I wasn’t upset about our game getting interrupted, and left to collect his hamper. I kind of felt in awe of the whole thing. I had never actually seen Heero’s parents scold him for not doing something, or even punish him, although I’d witnessed them bickering before. It had been so laughably different than how either of my parents had reacted to me forgetting to do something they had ordered me to do. There had been no yelling, no screaming, no swearing, no hitting, no derisive or abusive comments. Mariela had been annoyed, but not angry with him and hadn’t called him useless for not knowing how to do his laundry or an idiot for being so forgetful. She had just reminded him to do it and that had been that. This is how normal parents are, I thought with some bitter sadness. It really made me realize just how fucked up my own family is, how abnormal we are, especially my father. I wondered why he couldn’t be like Heero’s parents, why he got so furious any time I did something wrong. Why he hates me so much.

          I followed ‘Ro downstairs, all the while telling myself that I was not following like a pathetic, lost puppy, I just needed to get something to drink. I even poured myself a tall glass of ice water and drank half of it before putting it on the counter and checking on Heero in the laundry room. It wasn’t that I was clingy, I just wanted to make sure he didn’t need any help, that was all. I was just in time to watch him dump his entire hamper into the washing machine and start setting dials.

          “What are you doing?” I asked, bewildered.

          “Laundry,” he said dryly as he pointed to the machine like it was obvious.

          “You can’t put that much in there,” I said, struggling not to grin with amusement at him, unsure if he was completely oblivious or just lazy.

          “It fits,” he pointed out.

          “Just because it fits, doesn’t mean you should load the machine like that!” I rolled my eyes at him, “You’ll overload it and nothing will get clean and you might even flood it. You need to take out at _least_ half of that. And,” I peeked into the machine to confirm my suspicions, “you have colors mixed with whites. And you have it all on one setting.”

          “I don’t get what difference it makes,” he said stubbornly as he crossed his arms over his chest and I realized that Mariela had probably already told him about the settings before and he had just ignored it, “Warm or cold, it gets clean either way.”

          If anyone else had said something like that, I would have gotten frustrated, but his logic was more endearing to me than anything else.

          “Sure, your clothes will be clean,” I teased him, “They’ll also shrink. And it’s not just about warm and cold, some clothes also need to be on a gentle cycle, unless you want some of your thinner shirts ruined, and you have this as small load instead of regular or bulk.”

          He had the common sense to look embarrassed at his half-assed laundry skills as I started to pull out clothes from the dryer and sorted them.

          “Well, at least _one_ of you can take care of himself,” Mariela teased as she stood in the doorway, watching us, “You could teach him a thing or two about doing things the right way and putting a little bit of effort in to boring chores, Duo. It’s nice to see someone your age who doesn’t shirk his chores,” she gave me a conspiratory wink and I felt oddly proud that she thought I was responsible for knowing this stuff instead of making fun of me for being good at housework like my father and Pat do.

          “I’m sure he’s not completely unteachable,” I couldn’t help but be drawn into teasing Heero just a tiny bit.

          “You’re supposed to be on my side,” my boyfriend whined at me and I smiled at him.

          “But I _am_ on your side. Your mom is right, you need to know how to do stuff like this, especially if you’re going off to college in a couple of years,” I told him, ignoring the horrible, sudden stab of pain in my chest.

          That was right. It didn’t really matter, did it? If I broke up with Heero. If Heero dumped me when he eventually figured out I was leading him on and have been full of shit all this time. What I chose to do, whether I could find the courage to keep Heero in my life or if I wanted to do one, decent thing for him and push him away before I hurt him too badly. No matter what, this thing we have… this relationship and connection… it will never last. Never mind that love never does, it changes and fades, just look at my parents. One day you can just look at that other person and realize that you loathe them, that whatever you felt, it’s long gone. Never mind all that, though, because even if things were perfect, even if we were having sex and always were crazy about each other and I was normal and well-adjusted, we can’t be together. Not long term.

          Just two years and Heero was going to be gone from my life. He’d go off to college and I would stay here. We would drift apart. He’d see the world and I’d stay in the same tiny pond I always have. Maybe one day I would even grow to resent him like my parents have each other, and I never want something like that to happen, whether it’s because Heero unknowingly pushed me into having sex with him or he had all these amazing things, a future and a loving family, that I would never have. Maybe he would finally realize how dim and ugly I am, find someone better. That would be the best-case scenario, wouldn’t it? Worst case would be us staying together, only seeing him on vacations and holidays, keeping our relationship going through cold text messages, maybe the odd phone call, until we stopped _knowing_ each other. It’s hard enough to keep this going when we see each other every day, knowing what I’m doing to him, how inadequate I am. I guess it really doesn’t matter, does it, worrying about the future. Because our relationship isn’t going to survive two more years. The way things are going, my faltering resolve and how lousy I felt when I refused his advances, I doubt we’ll even last out the year.

          Despite his griping about the task, Heero watched me closely as I helped him sort out his clothes and patiently explained to him which load needed which setting and why, all with the air of someone who had heard this spiel before, but it never quite stuck.

          “How the heck can you even remember all these stupid, little rules,” he grumbled as he dumped his towels and bed sheets into the washer to be done first.

          “If you can remember all the rules for baseball and all those video games you play, you can remember how to do your laundry,” I told him frankly.

          “You’re just going to have to do his laundry for him from now on, Duo, probably for the rest of his life at the rate he’s going,” Mariela grinned with amusement.

          This time, both Heero and I flushed in embarrassment at her insinuation that we were going to even _be_ together for the rest of our lives. Of course, after all the fuss Heero had made about dating Relena and how long it had taken us to get together, she might actually be hoping for that, that Heero had found the right person. I was far from that, but hell if I really knew what his parents thought about our relationship. They had said that it had relieved them when they had figured it out, that we were good for each other. They really had no idea, but that Mariela might be thinking about us as a long-term thing would have been both cute and exasperating if it hadn’t scared the crap out of me. It was just another reminder to me that when I ended things with Heero, if I ever got the damned backbone for that, he wasn’t going to be the only one that I hurt, which only made this impossible thing even more difficult.

          “How did you learn, Duo?” she asked me, finally ceasing teasing us and picking up on how experienced I was with doing laundry, “Did your mother teach you?”

          “No,” I confessed, “My mom never really taught me much about housework, even cooking or cleaning, I always just taught myself. When I was really little, my mom was pretty good at getting everything around the house done even though she was working two jobs. She was a decent cook and she tried to make a schedule of specific days when she would do a chore because she didn’t have the time to do it all at once. But after a while, she just kind of gave up on it. She would put things off because she was too tired or she would just forget. My dad’s pretty useless at things like cooking and doing laundry, so it all fell on her until I started helping out, so if she was having a bad week and forgot to do something, it just wouldn’t get done. I don’t think my dad even knows how to do laundry.”

          “Well, that wasn’t very fair,” Mariela frowned, “It’s no wonder your mother was tired, having to do all the housework herself _and_ raising a child. Justin and I might have days off to get household chores done, but we still split the chores between all of us.”

          I didn’t point out to her that neither of my parents had been all that gung ho about raising me, not like how she meant, but she was still right. Remembering how hard it had been for me to get all the chores done, get through school, _and_ work my two to three jobs before my mother had sobered up, I could easily imagine the strain my mother had been in, especially when I had been a baby, trying to juggle all of that when my father had only barely helped out. And that had been before he had stopped giving a shit.

          “It wasn’t always because she was too tired or she was working too much. When I got older, she would let things go because she was drinking more and more and forgetting things or just plain didn’t care. I tried to pick up some of the slack, especially when she didn’t do chores for weeks, cleaning and doing dishes mostly. I didn’t know how to cook yet back then, so we survived on a large amount of take out, frozen dinners, what little my father knew how to make, and the few times my mom remembered that dinner need to be made. That the laundry was starting to get worse and worse and sometimes it wouldn’t get done for weeks, one time even a month, didn’t really bother me until I started going to school. I didn’t realize that I smelled and my clothes looked dirty and ratty until my classmates started to make fun of me for it. I was so embarrassed just to go to school every day and sometimes, when I hadn’t had anything remotely clean to wear for weeks, I would even think about not going I was so ashamed.”

          Mariela looked so devastated and sad hearing about me talk about my childhood that I almost talked talking entirely. Even Heero looked angry, though I couldn’t figure out why. They both knew that my parents had been neglectful and I had been bullied even when I had been younger, this was nothing new. I hadn’t set out to upset anyone by talking about this, it was just a fact of my past to me, but it was too late to take any of it back.

          “I just got tired of it by the time I got to the sixth grade, so I decided to teach myself to wash my own clothes,” I explained with a little shrug.

          “How?” Heero asked, “Just trial and error?”

          “Sort of,” I told him, “I didn’t have any kind of clue about what I was doing, so I taught myself with books and TV. I watched a _lot_ of infomercials,” I chuckled, “They were the most useful, really. I still messed up a few times, shrunk some clothes, used too much detergent, stuff like that. But I figured it out and I started washing my parents’ clothes, too, so it wouldn’t be another thing on my mother’s shoulders.”

          Even as the words were coming out of my mouth, I had to wonder at what point had that burden on my mother’s shoulders, piece by piece, been lifted on to mine? When had I stopped just trying to help my parents out and become solely responsible for all the household chores, taking care of the two of them like they were _my_ children instead of the other way around? Distantly, I wondered whose fault that was. My father for being too stubborn to learn something he considered to be a woman’s job, my mother for being negligent, or mine for letting it happen, for learning these skills and being so willing to let them use me like a servant. And I wondered when I had stopped being happy that I could help them be less stressed and started to resent them. Things weren’t like that anymore, not with my mother helping out again, but that resentment and bitterness remained. My father sure as hell hadn’t changed, even if my mother had, still expecting us to take care of his home and clothes and meals, all the while looking down on me for those very same things.

          “I’m so sorry, Duo,” Heero’s mother sad sadly.

          “For what?” I asked, confused.

          “No one should have to live like that,” she said with a small, sympathetic smile, “especially a child. Making you take on so much responsibility at such a young age…”

          “It’s not a big deal,” I brushed off her concerns with a half shrug, “Things needed to get done around the house and I had the most spare time to do them back then, so it just seemed logical that if I had a problem with my clothes smelling or that there was nothing to eat or there weren’t clean dishes that I should do something about it. They’re good skills to have, especially now that I’m almost an adult, I don’t have to learn how to do any of that stuff. I can’t complain about being self-reliant.”

          “Still, you shouldn’t have to be,” she patted my cheek still with that damning, motherly smile and then finally left us alone.

          Feeling really weird after that conversation, not quite vulnerable, but not steady or confident, I turned back to Heero, only to find him staring at me with an amazed expression.

          “What?” I asked defensively, worried that he would say the same things that his mother had or that I was weird for having learned how to do laundry in my preteens because my parents were that irresponsible.

          “You’re incredible,” he blurted out, “You know that, don’t you?”

          His compliment made my face warm with embarrassment and I tried to cover it up with a dismissive snort.

          “Yeah, right,” I rolled my eyes, “Being able to do laundry because I got tired of smelling like a sweatshop because my parents were too big of losers to get it done themselves makes me incredible.”

          “You taught yourself how to take care of yourself before you even hit thirteen,” he argued, “Even just learning something like that at that age is amazing, but not having anyone to teach you… just _wanting_ to be responsible makes you incredible. And you didn’t give up, even when you made mistakes like a lot of people would have.”

          “I didn’t have that luxury,” I muttered.

          “Maybe, but it doesn’t make it any less amazing. And then there’s me…” he looked over at the piles of laundry with a self-depreciating frown, “I’m seventeen-years-old and I can’t even do my own laundry because my parents have been doing it for me my entire life. I can barely cook and if we didn’t take turns doing chores, I probably wouldn’t know how to work a vacuum, either.”

          “And any of that is a bad thing?” I scoffed, not liking the strange, indecipherable shadow I saw behind his eyes, a shadow that reminded me of myself for a moment, “Heero, you have two parents that love you enough to take care of you, to cook you meals, to do your laundry, to make sure that you have everything you need, that you don’t go to school in dirty clothes or an empty stomach! Your family is _normal_. Don’t feel bad because you have things that I don’t, it’s not your fault that I had to grow up quicker or my childhood was completely different from yours. It doesn’t make you a lesser person.”

          “I guess you’re right,” he smiled at me, but it was flat and didn’t quite reach his eyes, it was just for show.

          I felt this strange… heavy thing sinking into my gut as I watched him, knowing that something was wrong without him having to say a word. But I’m not him. I don’t know how to drag things that are bothering him out of him like he always can do to me. I’m useless when it comes to comforting him, helping him, being a good boyfriend to him. So, I just did what I always do and didn’t say a thing about it, feeling so incredibly inadequate.

          I almost laughed about it as Heero and I sat down in the living room to wait for his first load to finish. He had praised me for being self-reliant. Responsible. Well, who the fuck cared? What good is being self-reliant anyway? I can take care of myself, so what? I’m the only one I can take care of. I’ve spent my life protecting myself, learning how to take care of myself, but I can’t ever help anyone else, even the people that I actually care about. I’m selfish, always have been. Too busy focusing on my own problems to see anyone else’s. And now that I actually want to help someone, I don’t know how. It’s the one thing that I never taught myself. If I had, I never would have dragged ‘Ro down this road. I never would have agreed to go out with him in the first place, knowing that I’m just going to break his heart.

          There it was again. That feeling like I’m drowning, all this crap weighing me down. Going from being happy and teasing my boyfriend one minute, to sadness and self-loathing the next. It felt like it would never end, that life would keep sucker-punching me, pointing out my own failings every time I started to feel better about everything. All I wanted was to help my boyfriend do his stupid laundry and there I was, studying him out of the corner of my eye and hating myself for not just coming out and asking him what was wrong, to just _talk_ to him. All because I was too much of a coward. Because I _knew_ what that heavy thing on his mind was.

          I self-medicated it all away with the cop drama that Heero likes to watch that I’m not terribly interested in and the mind-numbing beginning of late evening commercials, booze and season finales and movie trailers and life insurance and drugs. But mostly I used ‘Ro, his body heat as we sat close together on the couch, so close that our arms and legs were touching and by the time his hand found mine, our fingers lacing together like it was the most natural thing in the world, the feeling faded from a sharp stab to a dull throb, not forgotten, but distant enough that I could feel something else besides the slowly growing depression that had been plaguing me on and off for the last twenty-four hours.

          We spent the rest of the night finishing his laundry, bouncing back and forth from the laundry room to the living room while we waited for a load to finish, Heero insisting that I could watch a movie upstairs or read, that he wasn’t so helpless that I had to waste my night helping him do _his_ laundry. But I didn’t, joking that he needed all the help he could get if only to hide how much I wanted to be with him. And it was nice, helping him do chores. It made me feel useful to him, for the first time in what felt like a very long time, like I had a purpose in his life beyond being a leech and a troublemaker. It was like we were a team.

Domestic, I think is the word I’m searching for. That’s one positive thing I can say about us as a couple, one thing that isn’t tainted by a regret or guilt of mine: we work well together. Heero switched out the loads and I explained to him a few more things about the settings and that, yes, you _do_ need to clean the lint trap after every load and no, your mother was not exaggerating when she said you can start a fire if you don’t do that. I taught him the right way to fold jeans and that you do not just ball up underwear and socks. In turn, he introduced me to things like fabric softener and dryer sheets, things that I had heard about, but never used myself since they were just an added expense that my parents refused to pay for.

Yeah, it was nice, but still, that shadow didn’t leave Heero’s eyes the entire time. I knew what it was, I had seen it in the mirror for most of my life and lately, it’s only gotten bigger and darker. It was guilt. Only, unlike me, the guilt wasn’t Heero’s. It wasn’t anything that deserved to be there and it didn’t stem from any of his insecurities. _I_ had put it there. I was the one making him feel that way. Guilt over letting me go home to a father that beat me and had tried to drown me just for forgetting to do a chore while he would just get lightly scolded. Guilt over complaining to do something at seventeen that I had had to do at eleven. Guilt over just leading a normal life with every one of his needs met, while I had had to struggle to survive, that he never knew what it was like to go hungry or spend the night at a playground because he didn’t want to get beaten again.

          Despite all of my reassurances that my fucked-up life was no reason for him to feel bad about his well-adjusted and healthy one, he felt guilty. I had done that, by opening up my fat mouth and talking about things that I knew upset him. He might treasure my honesty, but how can I open up to him like that, even to make myself feel better, when it makes him feel like shit? I hated myself for those shadows. They didn’t belong there, not behind those pretty blue eyes, not on him. I didn’t deserve to be in this person’s life, to be making him feel lousy because I couldn’t keep my shit together.

          And all of it, everything that I had confessed to him that night, only drove home to me how ill-suited we were for each other. I was never going to be good enough for him. Heero was handsome and bright and had nothing but light in him. He had loving parents, a stable home, a future, and a strength that I would never know. What did I have? An abusive, alcoholic father. A shabby house that we probably won’t be able to hold on to. Ghosts and pain and scars. I had only let him see a few of them and already it was glaringly obvious to me that someone like me… someone as dirty and despicable as me, from a family like mine, if you can even call us a family anymore, shouldn’t be in Heero’s life, let alone as his boyfriend. He deserves better. He deserves someone better. Not even just someone that can give him what he wants, but just someone who doesn’t make him feel this way, someone who can support him instead of use him like a crutch.

          I’ll never be that person. Not ever. That hurts to write, but it’s the truth. I can try to be someone else. I can come up with this persona and squirrel away all the bad things like I have been, but they always come back, don’t they? Who I really am. Where I come from. What I am. You can’t hide from the truth forever. It had been nice, pretending that that person doesn’t exist when I’m with Heero and his family, but it’s all a lie. And every time I talk about my childhood or let Heero peek inside to see the real me, it only makes that persona harder to maintain. How long before he sees me as I truly am, all of me? How long before he sees the full extent of my ugliness? The more that I realize that, how unfair this is to him, how I’ve hurt him, the more I realize what a mistake this all was. But the funny thing is, even if I know I’m selfish and going to hurt him, I can’t stop. I’m still not strong enough to sacrifice my feelings for him. Trowa was right. I might be able to _feel_ love for someone, but I’m not capable of really loving them, am I?

          Depression fell over me like a cloud as Heero and I finished folding his clean laundry, suffocating me, but I made sure that he wouldn’t see it. I didn’t want his comfort. I didn’t want him to cast his spell and make me feel better for a time. I deserved the pain, that punishment for being so weak, so self-centered. By the time we got upstairs to put the laundry away, I was exhausted purely from the emotional turmoil and mental Olympics I was doing. It didn’t matter if I wanted it to stop or not, for whatever reason, I couldn’t shut it off.

          We never did finish our game that night. We could have, but I knew that Heero was tired even if he was trying not to show it, since I usually stay up later. I don’t know if he was just being clingy or it was a pride thing, but I knew that I was certainly feeling the former and pretended I was tired, too. I guess I was, a little. Not that I had done anything that day that was taxing for once. I suppose if I had to put a label on what I was feeling, it was ‘weary.’ I was tired of feeling depressed and anxious and scared, constantly flying from being content and happy and loving Heero to these twisted, terrible thoughts, like my heart was being wrenched in two separate directions at all times. It was exhausting and I just wanted to be with him and shut myself off for a little while, just enjoy our time together. I know it isn’t true, but that night, it seemed like a very long time since I had done that, just… _existed_ in this relationship instead of driving myself to panic and worry and doubting every little thing.

          So, we put the game away for the day and got ready for bed. I showered, brushed my teeth, got dressed in my pajamas with a mental note that I should probably do my own laundry soon if Mariela would just stop doing it for me when I was at work, and gathered my cat to retire to Heero’s room for the night, but when it came time to actually walk in there, I froze. Standing just before the open doorway, my heart raced and I felt this weird tension running through me. It wasn’t like going home or even trying to lay down on my mattress at night. It wasn’t a screaming terror, I can’t really even call it ‘fear.’ It was just this strong anxiety, like a storm cloud over my head, feeling wary and on edge and just _wrong_ , staring something dangerous in the face.

          Memories of the previous night rose in my head, black tea leaves or perhaps debris from a storm. Heero kissing me, touching me, sliding his hands down my scarred back and cupping my rear. He had promised me that he would slow down, that we could take a few steps back as we waited for my stupid self to catch up, but what if he wanted to push again? What if he tried all that again? My heart raced a bit faster as my thoughts went a mile a minute. What would I do? Tell him no? Remind him of his promise? Ask him to stop? Or would it be just like last night? Would I freak the fuck out over absolutely nothing, frighten him, make him feel like I didn’t want him, that I was scared of _him_ when it wasn’t him at all that made me feel like I was going to scream at a simple, almost innocent touch? Would I cave and hate myself for it, just like all those other times in the past? I only distantly realized that I was holding Pepper tighter than before, my living security blanket.

          ‘Stop it!’ I hissed at myself in my head, almost saying it out loud I was so furious at myself, the constant, disgusting traitor, ‘Don’t you dare do this! Don’t you dare think about him, about this room and his bed like it’s something terrible! Don’t you fucking _dare_! This is the last place where I feel safe and loved and you will not take that from me, you fucking coward!’

          That was right, I thought with angry conviction. This was Heero, not Trowa, not my father, not Zechs, not even my neighbor and his drunken friends that would sometimes cruelly catcall me when they were drunk, probably mistaking me for my mother. Heero cared about me and this place… his room, his bed, his arms were the last place that I had where I belonged. I was safe there and I would not let my pointless issues steal that from me like my father has slowly stripped me of every security, every comfort I’ve ever felt. If I did that to myself… if I did that to ‘Ro, I couldn’t cope with it.

          Wrestling that feeling down with every inch of will power that I have ever possessed, I stepped into the bedroom. Heero had beaten me in getting ready for bed and was turning down the covers. He gave me a soft smile when he saw me and it eased some of my anxiety. Not all of it, I still felt tense and uncertain, but I didn’t have to force myself to step forward and when I laid down next to him in bed, I felt more peaceful than leery.

          “Can you set my alarm for three?” he asked me when he slipped in beside me.

          “Heero, you don’t need to get up with me,” I frowned, “That’s way too early-,”

          “I want to say goodbye to you,” he interrupted.

          “You’re going to see me three hours later,” I rolled my eyes, “There’s no reason to lose out on sleep for something like that.”

          “Tough,” he said with a stubborn grin, “If you’re leaving in the middle of the night, then I’m saying goodbye. And I promise I won’t snap at you this time.”

          I sighed heavily, but did as he asked, setting his alarm.

          “Idiot,” I muttered, but I couldn’t keep the touch of affection out of my voice, warmed that he was willing to get woken up for something so stupid.

          When I was done, he leaned in close and although I tried my hardest, I couldn’t help tensing, wondering what he was going to do, if he was going to push, try to make out, or touch me in some way that would make me uncomfortable. Instead, he pressed a brief, chaste, and completely normal for us kiss to my lips. I felt like an asshole and would have blushed with complete shame if he had ever suspected that I had been anxious over a damned kiss.

          “Good night, Duo,” he said, still with that soft smile that always makes me feel warm and comforted.

          “Good night, Heero,” I echoed and managed a small smile in return.

          I turned off the light, submerging the room in darkness save for the nightlight in the hall and the dim light from the moon peeking through the space between the window and the curtain. I turned on my side in my usual sleeping position, getting comfortable even though I was sure I wasn’t going to be able to fall asleep any time soon. I had too many thoughts and it was too early, but that was ok. Just being able to lie there with him, feel his heat next to me was worth it. It didn’t take long for his breathing to settle into sleep, it never does. Heero and I are complete opposites when it comes to sleeping habits. The guy sleeps like a damned bear sometimes, always deep, almost like he’s in a coma, and it comes easily for him.

The sound of him dozing was soothing and should have helped ease some of my remaining anxiety, but all the twisted thoughts that I’d had that day came back to me in a rush. It was stupid and maddening, but I felt that depression start to seep back into me, something darker than just melancholy or even worry. Insidious and crippling. My mind, always so eager to torture me like I had done it some grave injustice, gleefully reminded me of every shitty thing that I had done that night, from telling him about my father giving me pnuemonia to making him feel guilty just for being able to do laundry. When it ran out of slights from that day, it dug deeper, pulling out all my inadequacies and pointing out all my doubts, all my reasons why I knew I had to make a decision about Heero, and why I never can. It even taunted me with visions of what had happened last night, my pushing Heero away in terror and asked me, complete with some fucked-up doomsday clock, just how long I had, and what sort of sick and twisted person would do this to someone that they cared about even half as much as I did ‘Ro. Anxiety swelled in me as it coldly asked me what I was going to do and if I really could give Heero everything that he wanted, or if I was nothing more than a giant failure with every, tiny thing I do.

Anyone actually reading this garbage will probably think I’m absolutely crazy, that the thing that my mind kept coming back to that night, the thing that I was obsessing about that had happened that week wasn’t Zechs using Heero to corner me or even my rage attack, but that one incident when the two of us had been making out. I guess it shouldn’t be a big deal to any normal person. I had freaked and Heero had been understanding, why should anyone be feeling so down and anxious over something that _hadn’t_ ended badly, especially someone whose previous boyfriend had tried to force them to give them a hand job, pressured into having sex they hadn’t wanted to have, almost raped, and constantly belittled for shying away from intimacy?

But I was. We had survived a lot of shit in this relationship. Heero’s coming out, Zechs trying to rape me, all of our bickering and fights, all the ugly parts of my soul and past that I had revealed, raw and bleeding, to him. My insomnia. My shyness. My awkwardness. His parents finding out about us. Somehow, we had defied the odds and survived all that shit. But this? It sounds ridiculous compared to all of that, but that moment when I had pushed Heero away was the worst thing that had ever happened between us. ‘Ro just didn’t realize it yet. But I did. I saw it for what it was. Not a misstep. Not an awkward moment. Not a missed opportunity for intimacy. Not even a step backwards for us. No. It was the end. I was seeing the very first glimpses of it, that rift, the cracks just starting to form. Because Heero might say that he was willing to go slowly, to take that step backwards, but I knew the truth. You can’t take this back.

I felt this… loss. A loss of something precious. Things had been going so well… hadn’t they? Better than well. We had been connecting, tangled up in each other, loving each other… But then Heero had opened this door, a door I can never go through and he’ll always just be on the other side of, waiting for me. He was moving away from me, little by little, and I could feel this intense tightness in my chest knowing that, soon, he would be out of my sight and I would never catch up to him. Soon, he was going to see the truth, what I really am, what I’ve been doing, how I’ve been leading him on and betraying him and I don’t know what to do. A thousand choices swirl in my head. To break up with him now, to drag this on until he pushes too hard, to keep up this illusion until it destroys us…

All I knew was that what we had had, that comfort, that trust, it was eroding and he didn’t even know it. Because of me. Because I will do anything, jump through any hoop, fall from any cliff to make sure he never sees this filth in me, even if I know I’m just lying to him and getting his hopes up. But how long can I keep it up? How long can I keep my terror and pain and grief a secret from him? How long before he realizes that my hesitance to take the next step with him isn’t just some mild discomfort, it’s a screaming fear that will never go away for as long as I live and he’s better off without me? He’s always been better off without me.

I have no idea how long I laid there in the dark, or how long I would have laid there letting my thoughts eat away at what little comfort and confidence I had, my heart going like a drum while my boyfriend slept peacefully and ignorantly next to me. Probably all night and well into the morning. But then Heero was turning in his sleep and somehow managed to get his arms wrapped around my waist and chest, squeezing me so tightly that he was almost crushing me, something he almost never does when he’s awake, my back pressed to his chest in a way that would have made me blush like crazy if it hadn’t been just an innocent thing he had done while unconscious, and nuzzled his face into the crook of my shoulder. It’s so stupid, but just like that, in barely more than the span of half a minute, everything was fine again. His warmth and his touch and the smell and feel of that familiar, safe body washed over me and drove away those heavy thoughts like a lantern in some shadowy room. As Heero’s breath ghosted over my skin and I could hear his heavy breathing in my ear, my heart settled. It didn’t matter. He made it not matter. There was still time and right then, he loved me and he didn’t know what was in my head and everything was fine. So long as he could keep holding me like that, loving me so much that he sought me out even in his sleep, everything would be alright.

          It didn’t take long at all after that for sleep to drag me under as my body and mind slowly relaxed. Heero’s breathing was like a metronome, or a lullaby, peaceful and hypnotic, and it would have been impossible to fight sleep even if I had wanted to. If I dreamt anything unpleasant, I don’t remember it. My sleep was a welcome respite out of my head, a wonderful chunk of time when I didn’t have to think or feel or anything but rest. When Heero’s alarm roused the both of us only a few hours later, I think I was actually more irritated than Heero was for once. I think sleeping with him has been spoiling me. Usually, sleeping in spurts of three to five hours like that doesn’t faze me, it’s typical. But lately, after all these nights of sleep, six to seven hours of good sleep, returning to my usual, shitty sleep schedule is almost painful. Or maybe it was simply the knowledge that I had to leave that lovely cocoon of warm sheets and bodies and not only leave Heero, but I had to go home that made me feel so miserable that morning.

          If I had known that those few, scant hours were going to be the last good sleep I would get until Saturday, I would have just turned the alarm off and gone back to bed. Instead, hating myself and my father and the universe as a whole, I wacked the alarm button on the clock spitefully and began the long and arduous journey to getting vertical. I pushed myself up, kicked the sheets off me while being careful to not disturb Heero too much, and sat on the side of the bed, rubbing tiredly at my eyes. The room was just as dark as it had been when I had fallen asleep, making me feel like I hadn’t slept at all, the digits on the clock mocking me.

          “Mmm, don’t go,” Heero mumbled behind me and I felt him make a sleepy, fumbling grab at the back of my shirt, “Just a little longer…”

          I felt equal parts endearment and frustration at him, because ‘a little longer’ sounded like everything that I had ever wanted, but I couldn’t indulge in it. Beyond needing to keep up the illusion that I was coming home from work and not Heero’s, I knew that if I slipped back into those arms, there was no way in hell I was going to wake up again until school. I sighed heavily, feeling worn and weary all of a sudden.

          “I can’t,” I told him, hating the guilt that I felt just for doing what I knew that I had to, and that feeling again like I was being pulled too thin between my family and ‘Ro, one life and the other, what I had to do and what I wanted to do, “You know that.”

          I turned to face him and found him looking at me with anxiety and fear that was heartbreaking to see, far more awake and alert than he should have been at that hour, and more awake than I wanted him to be.

          “Please, Duo,” he said almost in a whisper, his voice heavy with desperation, “Please don’t go back.”

          The shadows were back in his eyes and just like before, I knew that they were my fault, and I knew what he was thinking of, what had put that guilt there. If I had the ability to go back in time, I never would have told him about my father trying to drown me. I never would have told him about being so scared as a kid that I wouldn’t even go home some nights. He could praise me for telling the truth and being honest all he wanted, but this is exactly what happens every time I do. I just drive him to anxiety and guilt simply because he can’t help me and he thinks that makes him a bad person. This is what I do to the person that I love and trust more than anything else in the world, every time I open my stupid mouth or show up on his doorstep with bruises and broken bones.

          “I’m sorry,” was all I could say to him and it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t what he deserved, “I’m sorry, Heero, I can’t, you know that,” I brushed his hair out of his eyes, “It will be ok,” I lied, not even caring anymore that I was blatantly lying if it would just get him to stop looking like that, “I’ll be ok. I’ll be seeing you in a few hours for our run anyway, remember?”

          His expression lightened a little, but only a little as he gave me a small smile and, without so much as a nod, grabbed the front of my shirt and pulled me down for a hot and passionate kiss that he should not have been capable of at that hour of the morning that left my skin tingling from my head to my toes.

          “Call me,” he urged, “Even if nothing happens, even if you’re safe, call me, ok?”

          I nodded, willing to do almost anything to make him feel better, still feeling the ghost of his warm skin on my lips. Everything in me screamed to do what he asked, not to go, to stay there with him and let him kiss me again. We could curl back up under the sheets together, use each other to lull each other back to sleep, and pretend like nothing was wrong. Pretend that my father and Zechs didn’t exist. Pretend that our guilt and my inadequacy didn’t exist, just for a little while.

          I pulled myself away from him, almost violently, knowing that if I didn’t do it then, I wouldn’t be able to ignore that want for much longer. I struggled to my feet and navigated my way out of his bedroom in the dark, not wanting to rouse him any further by turning the light on, and went to the guest bedroom. Just to be on the safe side, I changed back into my dirty work uniform to keep up the illusion that I was coming home from work and nowhere else, and didn’t bother to shower. I made sure I had everything that I needed for school with me, just in case something happened at home and I couldn’t make it to Heero’s beforehand like we planned, and rushed to clean Pepper’s litterbox and fill her food dish, her running into the room at the sound. I gave her a brief pat on the head as she ate and shouldered my backpack. I couldn’t procrastinate any further. It was time to leave.

          As I walked down the hall to the steps, even though I knew that I shouldn’t, the masochistic streak in me had me peeking in on Heero again. He had, predictably, fallen back to sleep already and I almost envied him that ability to sleep so easily. He had migrated to my side of the bed at some point, curled up in the warm spot I had left behind and was clutching my pillow like a stuffed animal to his chest, his head only barely resting on it. I knew it didn’t mean what I thought that it did. It was his bed and he probably slept on that side all the time when I wasn’t there, but seeing him like that, arms wrapped around the pillow I had been using like he was desperate and using it like a security blanket or something wrenched my heart.

          I felt like a biggest asshole on the planet as I turned my back on him, ignoring my screaming instincts to go to him, comfort him, tell him I wouldn’t go and slip back into his arms so he wouldn’t look like that anymore, like a kicked puppy or like he had lost something precious. I just kept telling myself that I had to, that I couldn’t linger, even to soothe his feelings, and the longer that I stayed, the harder I was going to make it on the both of us. This was for the best, it really was. So why did I feel like I was ripping my heart out? Worse, his heart as well?

          I walked to my house with this incredibly heavy, worn feeling in my chest. I hated myself and everything around me, from my family, the weather, to the weight of my backpack against my shoulder. When it started to rain heavily halfway to my place, I didn’t even care. It just suited my overall mood. I felt strange walking into my house that morning. I felt like I hadn’t actually been there in a very long time, which wasn’t remotely true, and I had to remind myself that I did not have to sneak in for once, that I actually _wanted_ my dad to know that I was there. The house was still and stale, smelling very faintly of burnt cheese and the raw scent of rotting food, the tell-tale smell of the sink backing up again. I wrinkled my nose with distaste, but beyond that, I didn’t care for once. I was sure that my father would make me unclog the drain, but it didn’t matter at all to me. The house could have been on fire and I would have felt that same melancholy and disinterest in my life.

          Everything was the same as it always was and I was hit with this sense of almost boredom. My same, old life. Same shitty house, same stale smells, same creak of the floorboards. Even the sight of my mother sleeping on the couch was like a record on repeat. That morning, I didn’t even feel trepidation when I heard my father moving around in his bedroom, awake at that hour for once. The sound of him annoyed me, almost angered me and I didn’t understand why I was feeling this way, why just being there made me feel on edge and pissy at the same time that I was weary, in this weird fog of malaise and tension. I didn’t want to be there. Not that that was anything new, but god, I didn’t want to be there. I trudged up the steps, feeling about a thousand pounds too heavy and about as tired and worn as if I had gone to work that morning. I threw my bag on the floor and just kind of stared at my room. How can anything look both disgustingly familiar and completely alien?

          I was disconnected, drowning in something I can’t really name. I don’t know where the feeling comes from, but it wasn’t the first time I’ve felt it after coming home from being with Heero. I felt like a part of me was still with him, lying in bed where I belonged and the rest of me was just… nothingness beyond that sensation that I should be somewhere else, that I shouldn’t be _there_ and a lingering depression that this had been my home once, that I should feel comfortable in my familiar surroundings but don’t. Can’t. Whatever the right word is. I was irritated at my own feelings and my inability to deal with things, to just accept the way things are and stop being so goddamned abnormal.

          I stripped into pajamas and although I didn’t want to lay down on my mattress or even the hard floor in the corner, I forced myself to, like making a child eat their broccoli, knowing that it was far too early for me to be awake and I should sleep when I could, that if my father was pissed or horny, I wouldn’t be getting any sleep. My mattress was like an old quarter that one has carried around for years, not out of any love for it, just because they couldn’t seem to get rid of it. Familiar, fingertips knowing every curve and risen edge, but rough and dirty and with strange dents and scratches. I knew those bumps and lumps and stains and damp smell, but they brought me no comfort of the familiar, only a dreariness of it. That fucking mattress just seemed like a reminder of everything that was wrong, everything that was missing.

          I struggled to ignore the feeling, telling myself that I had absolutely no excuse to not be able to sleep on the mattress I’ve been sleeping on since I was a child. The sheets were clean, my back wasn’t hurting me enough to keep me awake, it was quiet and warm and fine. Everything was fucking _fine_. And if it wasn’t, it was just in my head anyway. That there was no soft, warm fur to rub my cheek against or an arm tossed over my waist and a gentle breath against the back of my neck didn’t really matter. I had lived for seventeen long years without any of those things, so no matter what my stupid heart was crying at me, I could deal without them just fine.

          I closed my eyes, trying to shut out my nonsensical feelings, hoping that I was tired enough to manage some sleep. But even though I _was_ tired, I didn’t feel all that restful. I was tense, just like I always am when I’m at home, waiting for that first sound, and that my father was awake was not a good sign. But more than that, I just felt empty, like there was a hole in me. I knew why I felt that way, that I was missing Heero and just didn’t want to be there around my father, that the things that Heero and I had talked about the previous day were making me sensitive and vulnerable to all the usual shit in my head, but I didn’t know how to shut it off, or why I had to miss my boyfriend so much. Is this how it is for everyone? If it is, how the fuck do normal people function?

          I laid there for a good thirty to forty minutes before I gave up, frustrated and irritated at myself for being so pathetic, I couldn’t sleep without my security blanket. I remembered what Justin had told me, about not trying to force sleep to come, to just let it happen naturally and figured it was solid advice. Lying there, annoyed at my sleeplessness wasn’t doing me any favors, so I got up, taking my lantern to the desk, and snagged a book to read. It seemed to help, focusing on reading and not how much I wanted to just go to sleep because after another twenty minutes, I started to feel drowsy, my head drooping and my eyes struggling to stay open and on the words. Not wanting to break the spell, instead of trying for my mattress again, I just put the book down and rested my head on folded arms. Probably not the best way to get some sleep, but it shockingly worked. In minutes, I had dozed off.

          I don’t know how long I slept like that for, a minute or an hour, though my money’s on minutes. I was not terribly surprised that it was the sound of my door opening that roused me. I had slept lightly in that way that I always do, now more than ever, when I’m home, half-alert for moments exactly like this. Not that it matters. All that energy preparing, being cautious and ready to fight back and for what exactly? My father strode over to me, finding me easily at the only source of light in the room and all those instincts that made me such a light sleeper kicked into overdrive. They screamed at me ‘run, you idiot!’ ‘Do something, stop him!’ But it was just the same as always. I stood up from my desk so fast that I knocked the chair over, every muscle in my body tensing and a thousand voices in my head screaming, but when he was suddenly _there_ , smelling of the cheap, spicy shampoo he uses and cigarette smoke, eyes hard and sharp with a mix of frustration, desperation, want, and anger, I didn’t do a thing. I didn’t hit him or push him away or try to run or even just plead with him not to do this, to please, _please_ not do this again, that it was killing me a little bit more every time and I couldn’t take it anymore. Because what’s the point? After that first time, after I failed to stop him, what does it even freaking matter anymore? I lost the war a long time ago.

          Just like always, my father didn’t say a single word as he grabbed me by the back of my neck, kicked the chair away, and viciously bent me over and slammed the upper half of my body on the desk with a lot more force than it warranted given I hadn’t done a thing to resist him. He yanked my pants down in a rush, like he couldn’t just take a damned breath, and grabbed at my hips clumsily before getting a hold, those familiar hands like vices, squeezing me so tightly I thought he was going to break something. With how frenzied and rough he was, I fully expected him to just shove in, unmindful of the damage he would do to me and gritted my teeth, preparing for that searing pain that was slowly, disgustingly, becoming as familiar to me as those hands.

          But instead of just slamming his dick inside of me, he went slowly, pressing against me until he was sliding in, just a little at a time. I gritted my teeth so hard that they started to hurt, my breath trapped in my chest as I fought against both tears and nausea. He isn’t always rough. He doesn’t always tear into me or even cause me much pain. Sometimes, he’s almost gentle. He wasn’t that morning, even if he was going slowly, but he wasn’t violent, either. In all honesty, although this might seem strange, I prefer it when he’s rough. When he’s angry and violent and hurts me so much I can’t even sit down for hours. Because when he does, it’s the pain I can focus on. That white-hot agony in my ass that shoots up my back and down my legs and it seems like that’s the only thing I’ll ever feel, pain so sharp, I almost retch.

          But this? These moments when there’s only a sting and I can feel him inside of me… every part of his dick, hot and thick and solid pushing its way inside of me, knowing that it’s my father’s cock, knowing that he isn’t just fucking me to get rid of some pent-up urge, but actually _enjoying_ raping me… it makes me feel like I’m going insane and I just want to claw at him, get him away from me and _out_ of me so badly, I could scream. I just wanted him to end it, to make it hurt so it could really feel like I was being violated, punished by him, and not like we were having actual sex, like we were lovers-

          ‘But you _are_ ,’ a voice in my head said cruelly.

          ‘No!’ I screamed at it, ‘We’re not! No! No!’

          ‘How aren’t you?’ it asked, oddly mean and sadistic considering it was my own head, ‘He fucks you and you let it happen. You let him pull your pants down and stick his dick in you without so much as a _peep_. He touches you, puts his hands on you like Trowa did. Hell, he’s fucked you more times than Trowa ever got to. Dad’s the only lover you’re ever going to have. Can’t even give it up to poor Heero, but Dad has the right, doesn’t he? You’ll let _him_ on top of you because you’re just as sick as he is. It’s just as well. Better that Heero never gets that ‘privilege,’ he deserves better than sloppy seconds, don’t you think? And with your luck, you’d probably give him something nasty anyway. I don’t think he’ll thank you to know that he has to share the same hole with another man.’

          Hot tears poured down my face. I couldn’t breathe. As my father began to thrust inside of me, working himself up, my skin felt clammy and cold, rawhide cloth pulled tight over my thin limbs and twisted body. The sharp corners of the desk dug painfully into my hips, leaving bruises as my father’s own hips struck my ass with smacking sounds that haunt my dreams every so often. The lantern fell off the desk as it shook and rolled somewhere, but even that was the equivalent of white noise to me. My vision went gray and suddenly it wasn’t just my chest that felt constricted, but my entire insides. I just wanted it to stop. Just stop, I nearly screamed at my father, just get out of me and away from me and out of my life forever! I hate you, I hate you so much I could die, so why don’t you just get the fuck away from me?!

          The scream that was building in me as my father’s thrusts became more frenzied and I sunk deeper and deeper into some kind of temporary madness, rage battling with disgust battling with self-loathing died choking in my throat when, with an animalistic grunt, he finally came and let go of me. But as he jerked against me, still thrusting in blind pleasure, he seemed to lose his balance. Maybe his foot slipped on the hardwood floor, maybe he just lost control, or maybe, something that I have to deny fervently, he did it on purpose. Whatever the reason, he didn’t stay in me as he came like he always does, but suddenly pulled out in a rough, jarring motion, the pain of it almost making me cry out just because I was unprepared for it. Repulsion roiled in my guts as I felt warm cum splash on my back where my shirt had been pulled up from my father’s thrusts and his cock, still hard and warm from being inside of me, trail across my wet buttocks and slide over the small of my back like a slug.

          It took every ounce of self-control I have ever possessed not to vomit right there on the desk as the realization that that thick, warm mess on my back was my father’s semen, that he had just cum on me like a whore, whether it had been intentional or not, that that nastiness wasn’t just in me or trickling down my thighs like usual, but _on_ me, sticking to my skin, soaking into it hit me like a punch to the face. I barely noticed when my father cleaned himself off and walked out of the room. I didn’t care. I slid off the desk, sinking to my knees on the floor, shaking and trembling. I crouched there for maybe a second, tears dripping down my face in a torrent and my breath hitching and ragged, before I ripped off my shirt and wiped with a kind of mad desperation at my back, trying to get the disgusting mess off me.

          I wiped and wiped until I felt my shirt come back wet and sticky and threw it to the floor, panic welling up in me when some of the cum got on my fingers. My eyes strayed to the clump of shirt on the floor though I told them not to, and even in the dim light from my missing lantern, I could see it as clearly as if it were illuminated by a search light. I saw the mess on it; white and wet, thick like cream shampoo. It was on my left hand and on my back and in me, still more of it, more than I could ever clean off. I covered my mouth with my clean hand, fighting off waves of nausea, my stomach spasming. I left my shirt there as I stumbled awkwardly to my feet. I couldn’t face it. Not then, maybe not ever. I didn’t care if I had to throw that shirt away, all I cared about was getting that nasty shit off. I kicked my pants away and grabbed blindly at a clean pair of clothes before walking swiftly, almost running, down the steps. I didn’t even care if anyone saw me naked.

          It’s a bit of a miracle that I made it down those steps and didn’t break my neck. My vision was strange, still gray and distorted like it had been the first time my father had raped me. Shock, I guess. Although, if I really think about it now, why I was in shock escapes me. It wasn’t anything different than what happens every time my father fucks me, it was just on my back instead of just inside of me, so I’m not entirely sure why I was freaking out so much or why, when I got to the bathroom and closed the door behind me, I fell to my knees and threw up violently into the toilet. Thankfully, it was only the once, but it didn’t make me feel any better.

           I coughed out bile, my throat incredibly sore between how hard I was breathing, the panic attack still hitting me hard, and vomiting, but I ignored my frightened, rapidly beating heart and how close I was to hyperventilating and the urge to throw up again, flushing the toilet and ripping open the shower curtain, turning on the water with a rougher turn of the knob than it really called for. The shower head sputtered and for a truly terrifying moment, I thought that no water was going to come out, that I was never going to get clean and came very close to screaming and punching the shower wall. The shower head gave another valiant sputter and finally spewed out a small torrent of water, the spray weak, but constant, luke warm at best.

          I didn’t give two shits about how cold or hot the water was, I didn’t even really feel the temperature at first, just stepped into the shower and drew the curtain closed, frantically clutching a wash cloth in one hand and the bar of soap in the other. I scrubbed every inch of skin I could reach fervently like a hypochondriac. I washed my back so hard that it actually started to hurt after the tenth time. With how hard I was pressing down with the washcloth, I probably took a little bit of skin off. But it wasn’t enough. Even when I couldn’t feel anything slimy there or between my legs, I didn’t feel clean at all. My skin felt dry and prickly, like there were a hundred ants crawling all over me.

          It was my skin, I realized, that was dirty and I itched to tear it all off, just rip it off me until that filth was gone. The impulse had me scratching at my arms, wanting to get rid of the prickling, gross feeling, but I only succeeded in making bloody scratches with my nails on my white skin.

          ‘Stop it!’ I hissed at myself, forcing myself to drop my hands away from my body, ‘There’s nothing there! It’s fine! You’re fine!’

          But I wasn’t. I knew that. There was something wrong with me. My body. My skin. Every part of me. I could ignore it, use Heero as a distraction, but it was always there, that wrongness. And every time my father touched me like this, it grew and grew and grew. I hated my skin. I hated how it looked and how it felt and even how it smelled. I’m not even sure if I wanted to scratch it off because I loathed it so much, because I wanted to get clean, or if I just wanted the pain to punish myself.

          I snagged a bottle of shampoo from the shower shelf and dumped a little on my hair, suddenly realizing that I had never taken my hair down and ripped the tie off, taking some strands with it. I didn’t understand why I was feeling this way, why I was freaking out. It was like the first time all over again; vomiting, the panic attack, hyperventilating, shaking like a fucking child, wanting to shut myself off but so hyperaware to everything around me…

          ‘Shouldn’t it have gotten better by now?’ I wondered miserably.

          It had been months since my father had first violated me. Months of this happening, over and over again. Him cumming on me might have triggered something, but it wasn’t the sole reason for my panic. It’s always like this after. I can bury it sometimes, distract myself, but there is always a part of me that is screaming inside, hating myself, hating him, feeling like I’m being ripped apart. Why hasn’t it gotten any better? Why aren’t I used to this by now?! I got used to my dad beating on me, used to being bullied, even used to being alone and sad, so why not this? Why did this always have to bring me so low? I was losing myself… losing my grip, a little bit more each time, and there isn’t much left.

          I scrubbed viciously at my hair as I began to cry again. Weak… I was so fucking weak and pathetic and disgusting, I should just pick up my father’s razor like before, only slit my throat this time, really make sure I got the job done. Couldn’t even do that right, I’m such a useless failure. I sobbed, my fingers tangled in my soapy hair as I cried hard, almost unable to breathe with the pain I was feeling in my chest. I didn’t want to be like this anymore. I didn’t want Heero to ever see the real me-

          The shower curtain was suddenly jerked aside, scaring the ever loving crap out of me, and before I could do a thing or even process the fact that I had been so consumed by my dark thoughts and feelings that I hadn’t heard the bathroom door opening, my father grabbed the back of my neck, getting a fistful of my hair as well, and dragged me out of the shower. When one of my feet hit the edge of the tub, he let me fall in a boneless heap on the floor, the wind getting knocked out of me. Or maybe he threw me out. I was so scared he was coming back to fuck me again that little details like that were hard to discern. Soapy water ran into my eyes, making them burn. I swiped my hair away from my face, needing to see what my father was doing, ready for him to grab me and force me onto my knees or hit me, but he was just standing there, glaring down at me.

I grabbed a towel that was hanging in arm’s length from where I was sprawled and hastily wrapped it around myself, not liking him staring at my naked body. Not that it mattered, the man used to give me baths when I was a toddler and it wouldn’t have been an issue a year ago. Shouldn’t have been an issue. I guess it still isn’t one. It’s not like he would ever ogle me, especially from the front. The only parts of me he has any use for are my hair and ass, but it still made me feel a tiny bit better not to be that vulnerable around him, even if that comfort was a complete illusion.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he snarled at me, bearing his teeth like a rabid dog.

His grey eyes were cold and hard and I couldn’t understand what he was so pissed about. But it wasn’t just that. The way he was looking at me… There was so much loathing as he glared at me, so much repulsion. Hatred. He hated me so much. That dark part of myself that always rears its ugly head when I’m pissed, the one that screams for blood like a hungry coyote said with biting, seething loathing that was as equal and complete as my father’s, ‘good, let him hate me. I hate him, too. The only difference is he doesn’t have to hide it. So why should I?’ But the other part of me that loves my father, will always love my father whether he beat me, raped me, or made me feel like garbage wanted to cry with that knowledge. I’ve always wondered if he does, even when I was kid and before all this shit happened between us. Every time he hit me, called me useless, never seemed to care about what I was doing or what was happening in my life, I wondered if he secretly hated me, his only child. Now I had my answer and it didn’t bring me any relief just to have that question answered. Not knowing was better.

I just didn’t know why. Why did he hate me so much? What had I done? Disobeyed him? Was this about me and Heero again or something else that I just couldn’t see? Had he figured out where I had been, and if so, why was he pissed off about it now and not right when I had come home? The thought that his lust was more powerful than his anger was terrifying to me. Was it all just pent up loathing from my entire life, spilling out where I could see?

          “You think I’m made of money, you brainless punk?!” he snarled at me, “I have to work fifty hours a week to keep a fucking roof over our heads and here you are, taking up what little hot water we have and racking up our bills! Christ, it’s no wonder why the water bill is so freaking high every month! Who do you think you are, the bloody queen?! That I’m running a damned spa?! What do you want next, princess? A massage and a pedicure?! Fuck, I’ve never met a girl as prissy as you are, let alone a boy!”

          I flushed darkly in equal parts embarrassment and anger at his insults. So that was what he was so pissed about. It wasn’t the first time he had thrown a fit about my mother and I taking too long or too many showers, but it didn’t make any sense to me. I mean, how often had I even taken showers there lately? When was the last time I had? I couldn’t even remember in that moment, although that might have been from being still shocked from being dragged out of the shower. I knew that he and my mother were stressed about our bills and he got wound up like this sometimes, prone to losing his shit over little things, even getting angry over things that weren’t a big deal or didn’t even exist, but this was ridiculous, even for him.

          I wanted to scream at him that he could call me a girl for wanting to take a single, fucking shower all he wanted. He could call me a fag, prissy, whatever he wanted, whatever hateful, hurtful thing he could come up with, it didn’t matter. Because it _wasn’t_ my goddamn fault, it was his! ‘You’re the reason why our bills are so high!’ I wanted to yell out all of my anger and anxiety at him, ‘You’re the reason why we’re so in debt! Not Mom, not me, just you! Your damned pride and your drinking and hitting and car and television, all of this is your fault, **_not mine_**! If it weren’t for you, none of this would be happening to me or to Mom!’

          At some point in the rant in my head, I couldn’t tell anymore if I was screaming at him about our debt, or what he had just done to me. But even though I was working up to a fine rage, I was still terrified of him. Not his fists or anger, but what he had just done to me, my own temper waging with that cowering fear, helping me to hold my tongue, and all I could do was sit there and stare at him with a mix of stupid confusion and bafflement.

Although it sounded nuts, him just pulling me out of the shower like that for using up a little bit of water, I still wouldn’t put it past him to do something crazy like that, and I know full well the sort of insane things a person can do when they’re stressed, especially if they have a temper. But I didn’t buy it. The way that he was looking at me… even in his worst rages, he had never looked at me like that before. That wasn’t anger over me wasting his money or even not listening to him. He might get worked up over something like that, but this was something different. And looking at him, seeing that hate for me so naked and raw on his face, I understood.

He hadn’t pulled me out of the shower because he didn’t like how many showers I took. He wasn’t screaming and ranting at me and saying those hurtful things to me because he was pissed at how shitty our finances were. He wasn’t even enraged over something that had happened at work or some invisible slight he thought I had done to him. I understood because I see that look on my own face every, single, freaking day. That hate. That darkness. Right behind my eyes. It’s always there, but it’s even more pronounced right after I let my father rape me. And now, it was in his own stone-colored eyes. Repulsion, loathing, and anger. And just like with myself, it was all directed at me. He wasn’t angry with me over taking a shower and using up the warm water. He was angry at me because he was remembering what he had just done, because he could only deny and forget so much and it was harder when he was sober and right then, he could remember every terrible detail of fucking me.

          It hit me like a physical blow. Worse, really. He had raped me and he hated me for it. I didn’t even feel anger towards him for it, for blaming me for what he had done because I blame myself every time it happens. Seeing it echoed on my father’s face was just further proof that it was. Maybe some of it was my father’s fault, too, for losing control and using me as his sex toy, but if I wasn’t there, he wouldn’t be tempted. If I didn’t look and act like my mother, he wouldn’t be screwing a boy and his own son at all. If I didn’t make it so easy for him, he wouldn’t need to rely on something so disgusting for an outlet. But even knowing that it was my fault, knowing that he believed it, too, that he actually, literally hated me for it was a knife, twisting in my insides, ripping me apart. It was too painful for even tears, one of those intense agonies that drives you low and makes you want to find a gun just to end the misery of it, but I was already so low that morning, all I could do was just stare up at that angry, familiar face and hope for a beating, because I didn’t know how to punish myself.

“From now on, you get two showers a week,” he jabbed a finger in my direction, his face twisted in this disturbing mix of anger, authority, and sadistic pleasure, “and you’re only washing that stupid hair of yours once a week.”

          “What?!” I exclaimed, scrambling to my feet with an iron grip on the towel, incredulous at what he was saying, “Dad, I can’t just take two showers a week, I’m going to reek! Especially after work-,”

          “So?” he sneered and I felt sick to see how pleased he was that his ultimatum had upset me. He reminded me so much of Zechs in that moment, it made me feel physically ill, “Who gives a fuck if you smell? Who do you have to impress? It’s not like you have a girlfriend,” he gave me a quick, dismissive look up and down, like he was appraising me and finding me lacking, “And really, who the hell is even going to notice?”

          I flushed hotly with anger, but also a good deal of shame and horror. All I could think about was ‘Ro, how disgusted he would be if I stopped showering, if I started to smell and felt that ancient insecurity from when I had been a child and hearing my classmates teasing me for wearing dirty clothes. Only this was a lot worse than wearing unwashed clothes for a week. I wouldn’t have to worry about ‘Ro pushing the intimacy issue, he wasn’t going to want to be anywhere near me. I couldn’t even use that to plead with my father to change his mind. Even if he knew that I was gay, he hates Heero. If he knew that was what I was worried about, he might forbid me from taking showers completely.

          “Stop being so damned prudish all the time,” my father snapped at me, seeing how upset I was getting, “You’re a teenaged boy, for fuck’s sake, what are you worrying about how _clean_ you are for?! If you’re so concerned about it, cut that ridiculous braid off! Soon you’ll be wearing your mother's perfume and getting your hair permed!”

          I gritted my teeth, on the verge of biting down on my tongue to keep from saying something really stupid. But I wanted to. I wanted to scream at him. He didn’t understand. He had no clue what he was doing to me, the nerve he was hitting, what he was taking away from me. Not just with Heero, I realized with mounting disgust and horror, but I couldn’t take showers after he fucked me anymore, not all the time. Oh god, what if Heero smelled it on me? Something in me quaked and my stomach twisted, almost making me hurl again. But I knew that if I told my father this, if I even dared to bring it up, he would beat me to paste for voicing that thing between us that I wasn’t allowed to and he wouldn’t care anyway. How I felt didn’t matter compared to his petty anger. Something surged in me, a whipping, violent wind and I didn’t know what it was: rage or hate. Even this little voice in my head, repeating over and over that this could not be happening couldn't break through it.

          “And you’re not going to shower for any longer than ten minutes,” my father continued to snap at me, not realizing or not giving a shit that I was now glaring at him, quickly losing control of the fear and anger in my gut, “A minute longer and I’ll drag your worthless ass out like I just did.”

          I don’t know what it was, my father’s haughty, superior tone and expression, what he was taking from me, or what he had done to me earlier, the memory of him fucking me and ejaculating on my back, but something in me snapped.

          “This is ridiculous, you can’t do that!” I snarled at him, one of the few times that I’ve ever talked back to my father.

          Normally, saying something like that to him would have rewarded me with a punch or two, if not worse, but he just slapped me hard across the face, effectively shutting me up. The blow stung like hell and it was startling, almost making me bite my tongue, but it hadn’t been meant to really hurt me, just humiliate me. The slap was, somehow, as mocking as my father’s tone. His hand, as quick as a snake’s strike, shot out a second time and grabbed me by the ear, pulling my head up by it and I cried out at the pain.

          “What did you just say?” he growled, his grip on me tight and threatening.

          A red, warning light flashed in my head, screaming at me that I was being incredibly stupid and if I didn’t keep my damned mouth shut, he was going to do a lot worse to me than just forbidding me from taking showers and how worried Heero would be if I showed up at his place beaten to shit again. I didn’t want to listen to it, I didn’t want to care. There was a part of me that remembered everything that had happened since Monday afternoon, Zechs molesting me, me pushing Heero away, hurting him and making him feel guilty, failing him over and over, not fighting back that morning, and wanted my father to hit me. I wanted him to wash away all the things that I was feeling and thinking with a sea of pain and blood.

          But at the core of my being, I’ll always be a coward. Whether it’s standing up to my father or Zechs or my own fear of intimacy, I’m always a spineless coward.

          “Yes, sir,” I ground out through gritted teeth, those two words taking almost all the strength that I possessed.

          “Keep up that attitude of yours and you’ll get no showers at all,” he snapped at me, his gaze daring me to say something else, but I didn’t so much as glare back at him, averting my eyes to the ground.

He snorted derisively, but let go of me. I put my hand over my abused ear. It felt hot and swollen. As I looked at him then, all smug and superior and apathetic, I hated him. I hated him so much. This man standing in front of me, treating me like garbage and always taking things from me, little by little… this man had raped me. He had held me down and shoved his dick into me and cum on me like I was tissue paper. Just a thing. Not even a person, let alone his child. He had done all of that and he dared look at me like that? Like I was a worm under his boot, like I was so far beneath him? Maybe I’m trash, certainly nothing special.

And maybe him raping me was my fault, maybe not. But he was definitely no innocent in it. I wanted to scream at him that I had to take a shower to wipe off his nasty cum, because he couldn’t control himself, because he was disgusting and weak and he had no right to look at anyone like that! I hated him so much in that one moment that I was almost shaking. My fingernails found the ragged cuts I had already made in my arms as I wrapped them around myself, the urge to scratch at myself and make myself bleed more was strong. My father snorted again when he saw that I wasn’t going to say or do anything to give him an excuse to hit me.

“Pathetic,” he muttered and walked past me, purposively bumping hard into me and the only victory I had all that morning was that I didn’t stumble into anything or lose much of my balance.

The word burned into me, ‘pathetic’, but even though it hurt, I accepted it. Yeah, I was pathetic. So pathetic that I couldn’t stand up to him about anything. Couldn’t defend myself. Couldn’t tell him ‘no, you’re crazy’ about not using the damned shower… I mean, what the hell was I going to do? I couldn’t go for days without showering! If it weren’t for work, fine, I could deal with it, but I sweat like a pig every day moving stuff around. Taking a five-minute wash after gym wasn’t going to cut it. The thought of Heero smelling me and being grossed out or thinking I was dirty cut right through me. His opinion of me was everything to me. Him thinking that I was attractive, even if it scared me, always made me feel so good… How would it feel when I repulsed him? And if he smelled sex on me… God, just the thought of it was almost enough to have me retching again.

‘You won’t need to worry about him pushing to have sex with you,’ that cruel voice in my head cackled with sadistic glee, ‘One whiff of you after a couple weeks of this, he isn’t even going to want to kiss you. And if he does smell Dad on you, you won’t even need to worry about breaking up with him, he’ll do it for you. How will you explain that one to him, that you can’t bend over for him, but you’re cheating on him with some other guy?’

I squeezed my hands into tight fists as tears tracked down my face. I wiped at them angrily, loathing their existence over something so stupid. It wasn’t like this was the first time that my father had thrown a fit over something and made some petty ultimatum. It wasn’t even the first time he had limited our water usage (which he never extended to himself), but it was the first time he had done that and I had felt like he had done it to punish me, personally.

‘That will never happen,’ I hissed back at the voice, ‘ _Never_ , I won’t let it happen!’

          That was right. I wasn’t a child anymore. I didn’t just have to take his demands with a subservient nod and ‘yes, sir’ anymore. I could do something about this… couldn’t I? I had options, including another home with a shower where I wouldn’t be fucking timed and dragged out like I had done something wrong just by wanting to wash my damned hair. Remembering that, my spirits lifted a little. That was right, even if I didn’t take showers at home, I could just take them at Heero’s house. I had been doing that more and more lately anyway, liking the hot water and not having to rush. That was the best of all worlds, wasn’t it? I could stay clean, not gross out Heero, keep my father unaware, and help my family save money.

          But then, as it so often does, reality crashed down on me. There was no way that was going to work. Showering at Heero’s was too dangerous. Not only would my father realize I had disobeyed him about the showering thing if I showed up at home with clean hair, he would wonder _where_ I had showered. It would only help to clue him in that I was disobeying him on two ultimatums, not just one. Even worse, if Heero didn’t realize that there was something wrong when I stopped being clean, he was definitely going to notice when I stopped taking showers at his place. This wasn’t going to work, I realized with panic. What the hell was I going to do? Either I pissed off my father or worried and grossed out my boyfriend. Of course, the former was going to worry him anyway, so no matter what I did, I was screwed.

          As I tried to regain my composure, nervously and pointlessly closing the door that my father had left open, I caught my reflection in the mirror. Reddened, tired violet eyes bordered by heavy lines and a too-pale face stared back at me. I was strange to myself, like that face belonged to someone else entirely. I looked so helpless and worn down, my skin almost like ash. Waking up next to Heero seemed like it had happened days ago, something so far out of my grasp that all I could remember or think about was the feeling of my father thrusting inside of me and looking down on me with disgust and loathing. Everything was falling apart. My entire life. I couldn’t keep a grip on anything, on either part of that life, my relationship with Heero or my relationship with my parents. It was all just… crumbling away into chaos.

          I placed my hands on the corners of the sink and stared myself down, studying that face in the foggy, dirty glass. Despite my haunted, weary expression, there was a hard meanness in my eyes that reminded me too much of my father. It was the only thing I could find on that face that bore any resemblance to the man, the only thing that anyone could see to tell that we were related. I guess that just makes it easier for him to do what he does to me. I’m just the pale copy of my mother, close enough to pass, but not good enough. Never good enough.

          The only spot of color on me was the livid, red mark from when my father had slapped me. There was nothing else. My features were as boring and lifeless as everything on the inside, from my brown bangs, limp and caked with shampoo to my thin, light pink lips, pressed into an equally thin line, a permanent frown. I remember, so very vividly, Heero pulling me down and kissing those same lips that morning. I remembered the small kisses he had trailed down that colorless face the other night. I remembered every time he had ever called me beautiful. I thought of all those moments of affection he had given me with icy, detached coldness.

          ‘What does he see in you?’ I seethed hatefully at my reflection, ‘Just what the fuck does he see in you?!’

          My reflection didn’t have any more answers than I did, it turns out. I pulled my gaze away from the mirror, knowing that I was going to dark places that I wouldn’t be able to drag myself out of if I didn’t stop immediately, although it was probably far too late. I twisted the knob on the sink almost violently and shoved my head under the tap, trying to rinse out as much shampoo as I could as quickly as I could, in case my father came back and got pissed about that as well. Even when I was done, my scalp felt itchy, but I couldn’t tell if it was actually from the shampoo since the skin all over my body felt just as itchy and weird. I knew it was all just in my head, but I didn’t feel clean. I could still feel cum sticking to my skin, molding with it. Staining me. Even if I had stayed in the shower for hours, I would probably still feel that way, but being pulled out before I could piece myself back together and lie to myself that I was clean had made it worse.

          I didn’t understand these feelings, why my skin felt so wrong, tight and cool and irritated. Like it was crawling with a hundred insects and all I wanted was to find something sharp to get it off. Ever get semen on your skin and not wipe it off right away? I have. It dries and gets flaky, makes your skin itch. That’s how I felt. Prickly. Only there was nothing there, it only _felt_ like there was. It was a difficult, almost impossible thing to ignore, but I forced my hands back to gripping the edges of the sink instead of letting them do what they wanted, which was to tear more of my skin open and let my blood wash that prickly feeling away.

          “You’re fine,” I hissed at my loathsome reflection, “Everything is going to be _fine._ ”

          That was right, I lied to myself. I’m resourceful. I can find a way around this. And maybe… maybe this was a good thing. Maybe this would give me the strength I needed to not hang out at Heero’s place so much, kind of a kill two birds with one stone thing? Sure, he would be upset, but he would be just as upset to know that I wasn’t being allowed to shower and if I could just schedule our hang outs around the two days a week that I _could_ shower, maybe he wouldn’t realize anything was wrong. I wouldn’t even need to worry about Saturdays, thanks to track. If my father pulled a fit about that, well, my mother knows I have track practice and we _have_ to shower after practice. He might think I was lying and hit me anyway, but there was nothing I could do about it.

          ‘Yeah,’ I almost laughed at myself, ‘Everything is going to be just fucking peachy.’

          I stood up straight and for the first time in what felt like hours but had only probably been about fifteen minutes, thought about getting dressed and going back to bed. Or rather ‘couch’, because there was no way I was going back to that mattress that morning. Instead, I just kind of stood there, frozen. Not for any real reason. Moving just seemed like such a chore. Everything felt like a chore, even just breathing. Putting on clothes. Walking out of the bathroom. Maybe running into my father. Checking to see if my mother was on the couch. She probably was, so what was the point of trying to sleep anyway?

And what if my father wasn’t done? What if he wanted another fuck? He does that sometimes, comes back an hour or two later for another round. What if he was in the mood that morning, if not out of lust, then just wanting to hurt me? How was I going to clean myself off afterwards if I couldn’t shower? I’d need to find some clean towels and some way to get that nasty stuff off me. Or just learn how to deal with feeling it in me, like I’ve been so successful doing in these past five months.

          Just that thought made me feel so tired. Not the physical strain of being raped, but just trying to deal with my emotions and freak outs. I suddenly realized I was scratching my arms again. They were red from my self-abuse and I had made a few more bloody scratches, as well as reopened the ones that were trying in vain to heal. I tried to stop the impulse, knowing how crazy I was acting, but it was so difficult and I was scrambling for a reason not to give in to it, to just go to town and rip my skin apart until this damned feeling of filth went away. The feeling of skin and drying blood under my nails was repulsive, but the stinging pain in my arms soothed something chaotic in me, just the knowledge that I was hurting myself. Punishing myself.

          Only it wasn’t enough. My faults and my guilt and my failings were too big, too momentous for some scratches to ease. For anything to ease. It was just all so pointless, wasn’t it? Going on from here, continuing to live. I felt almost the same way that I had before I had decided to kill myself when I had been thirteen, that everything was just exhausting and what was even the point of this struggle anymore? My dad would keep on raping me and I was never going to get used to it. I was going to find myself in this bathroom, my heart beating like a drum, feeling sick and disgusting and hating myself and him over and over and over. I was going to have to feel like shit for worrying Heero and not being good enough for him and hating myself for hurting him every fucking day for the rest of my life.

          I understood it then perfectly. It didn’t matter if we broke up or not. No, breaking up was just going to make this feeling worse because that was the ultimate blow to Heero’s heart. I was going to have carry that guilt around forever, until the day that I died. I was never going to get away from my father because, even if I ran away, he’s inside me. He’s in the blood that was welling up from the ragged cuts on my arms. He was the crawling feeling on my skin that just wasn’t going away no matter how hard I scratched. Heero was that feeling, too. The guilt that I wasn’t doing something about my father, my weakness and how pathetic I was, that he didn’t deserve to be chained down by something as loathsome as I was. That feeling is always going to be here, no matter what I do. It’s too late to escape it. My self-loathing.

          My eyes strayed to my father’s razor, sitting so innocently on the yellowed and stained counter, like it had been put there just for me. Some part of me craved to reach out and pick it up. In my head, I saw myself pry it open and take the blade from it, just like I had four years ago. I thought about raking it down my wrist, just below that hideous, deep scar, and thick, dark blood pouring down my arm, covering my white skin in brilliant red. It would be warm, just like the last time, and it would soothe away that prickly, claustrophobic, repulsive feeling like aloe on a sunburn. The thought of it, that image in my head, of letting go and leaving all this shit, all these terrible feelings behind me and being free, finally _free_ for the first time in my life like I had wanted all those years ago but failed to do had sent a shiver of pleasure through me.

          I lurched back violently from the sink until my back hit the wall like I had been sucker-punched, nearly smacking that razor off the counter in reflex. What… what the hell had I just been thinking? I didn’t want to really kill myself… did I? Sure, that thought crops up every now and then, especially when I’m feeling depressed or I’ve done something stupid to feel guilty about, but it’s usually fleeting, just an idea. Like when you’re famished and you think that you could eat a whole buffet. Of course you can’t _actually_ eat a buffet, it’s just the hunger talking. Well, depression can talk to. Can scream if you let it find it’s voice and I have yet to find any means of shutting the prick up.

          But this… this was different. This wasn’t an idea. It wasn’t just some idle chatter from my feeling down and maudlin. This was shrieking. This was an urge, a powerful thing in my gut that was like hunger, but so much worse. I hadn’t even felt horrified at it at first, I had felt _pleasure._ I had felt good at the image of me opening my veins, of letting my life flow out of me like it was nothing at all. Was it really just because I was having a weak moment? Because I was still freaked out from being raped and about a thousand other things? Or was it more solid than that? Was I just overreacting, or was it there still, buried somewhere in my head, waiting for me to finally give up, like it knew some truth that I was struggling and fighting to deny?

          The memory of Heero tenderly kissing the scars on my wrist flashed through me, him begging me to never do anything like that again, my assuring him that I didn’t feel like that anymore…

          ‘If you slit your wrists right now, no one is going to save you this time. Mom’s asleep and Dad’s probably heading there. Even if he finds you this time, you know the right way to do it now. Maybe he’ll even be grateful, happy that you’re dead. The temptation will be gone and he’ll be relieved you aren’t around anymore to make him fuck you anymore. You’ll finally do something to make him happy, there’s that at least, right? But you’ll be dead and maybe you’ll finally escape from being miserable all the time and dealing with him and his fists and his cock, but you won’t see ‘Ro anymore, either, have you thought of that? Do you think _he’ll_ be happy to hear that his boyfriend killed himself?’

          The thought was like a shot through my skull and my revulsion and horror was so strong, I had to fight against doubling over and vomiting right there, all over the floor.  No, I didn’t want to kill myself, how could I?! I had Heero. Maybe things were falling apart in my head and maybe it wouldn’t last, but I still had him and as long as that was still true, nothing else mattered. How could I ever think about ending my life, of hurting him like that? I wouldn’t just be stopping the pain and violence, but all the good things, too. Why is it so difficult to remember that when I have these twisted thoughts? Why does everything always seem so terrible and those wonderful moments so dim and fleeting? I didn’t understand it. I didn’t understand what was wrong with me that I could think things like ‘I should just kill myself,’ that I could look at a blade with fucking pleasure, all because I was feeling sad and ugly.

          I shook my head violently, like I could clear those terrible thoughts and mood like a cloud of gnats. I needed to get my shit together. I needed to stop this. I couldn’t let Heero see me like this, I would just scare him. Sleep, that was what I needed. And time. Time to get my wits back and to put all of this behind me, to turn the rape and this weird repulsion into just a bad memory. Then I could go on, like I always do. Nothing to it, right? Going on when things turn to shit is one of the only things I’m good at. I was fine, everything was fine. This was just another day of the same, old crap. It was just fine.

          Ignoring the fact that I was _not_ fine, feeling hollow and shaky, I dried off my hair, combed it, put it back up into a braid, and dressed. Even as I repeated my little mantra in my head over and over, I trembled a little as I opened the bathroom door and left, waiting to run into my father. I caught my first lucky streak of the morning and found that he had gone to bed, his bedroom door closed and the lights off. Thank fuck. My luck didn’t last very long, though. Hoping to crash on the couch, I found my mother had beaten me to it and then remembered that I had seen her there when I had first gotten home. I had somehow forgotten, that one moment seeming so far away, like it had happened a long time ago on some other morning. I thought about trying to sleep in my father’s chair, the only other place besides the floor that was available, but the smell of him on the fabric just churned my stomach. The thought of finding a space of floor in my room or in the living room wasn’t all that appealing, either.

          Fine, I decided with a flash of irritation at myself and everything else in the world, no sleep. I didn’t feel like sleeping to begin with. Even if I managed it, I was just going to have nightmares anyway, so what was the point of trying? Ok, if I couldn’t have sleep to distract me from myself, I needed something else. Reading, listening to music, _something_ or my thoughts were going to drag me down again. I just needed to last long enough until I could leave that house and get far away from my father. What came after that, actually leaving the house, I didn’t think of. For once, the knowledge that I was going to see ‘Ro didn’t fill me with glee. If I really stopped to think about my emotions, for the first time since we had become friends, I didn’t feel happy about going to see him or even just going to his place, but I refused to examine that any further than a mere glance and just kept moving, the whole while feeling this… this dark _thing_ weighing me down, smothering me while stubbornly refusing to acknowledge what that thing was.

          I trudged upstairs, not having any kind of energy, worn down and focusing what tiny bit I did have on not thinking or scratching myself again. I very purposively did _not_ look at my chair still on its side on the floor or that my desk had shifted a bit more to the right or the drying puddle of semen on the floor. I would hate myself for it later when trying to scrub the disgusting mess off the hardwood floor, but I couldn’t bear to even notice it, not unless I wanted to devolve into that insane fear and self-mutilation again. Ignoring my mattress like something had died on it and was slowly rotting, I scrounged around in my backpack for my cellphone and the washing machine parts Justin had gotten for me, shoving the former in my pocket, and went back downstairs, shoving my feet into my sneakers and going outside, around back to the shed.

          At just shy of five on a late March morning, it was still pitch black out, so I flipped open my phone to use a flashlight app to light my way, but noticed that I had an unread message and a missed phone call. I felt confused about why _anyone_ would be calling me at that hour, even Heero, before I remembered that I had promised to call him when I had gotten home. That had almost been two hours ago. I stared at the notification like a man dying of thirst that had suddenly found a cup of poisoned water placed before him. A part of me itched to call him, to hear his voice. Usually, that part had the loudest voice and was a huge chunk of me, but that morning, it was just a tiny shard, easily beaten down and smothered by the rest of me.

Suddenly, I realized that I did not want to talk to him. I didn’t even want to see what he had texted me. I just wanted to be left alone and, while it made me feel like an asshole, I didn’t want to deal with him. I didn’t want to hear that soft tone, I didn’t want to hear his concern or how much he loved me or see those pretty blue eyes. For the first time in our entire relationship, I couldn’t bear being around him and while that shard of me ached for him, the rest screamed for solitude and for every single person on the planet, even the boy that I was supposed to love, to stay far, far away from me. If anyone got close to me, god forbid hug me or hold my hand or kiss me, I was going to jump right out of my skin.

          Feeling horrible, about as low as dirt for how I was acting, for not wanting anything to do with my boyfriend who was only worried about me and so wrapped up in my misery and jumpy feelings that I couldn’t even just fucking _call_ him to make him feel better, that I was willing to keep him away with worry than just text him ‘hey, I’m fine,’ I gathered up all the tools I needed from the shed and forced myself to go back inside the house. It wasn’t easy. The night air was cool and eased my skittishness a little, just to be able to breathe again, but the second I went back into that stifling house, it came back tenfold. The air in that place was like a fist of iron gripping my insides and it was so hard to breathe. It is possible to have a prolonged, if diluted, panic attack? Because that’s what this was starting to feel like.

          I snuck into the laundry room past my sleeping mother, closing the door before turning the light on so it wouldn’t rouse her. I spent the rest of those early morning hours working on the washing machine in blissful, aching solitude. I let my mind consume itself with the work, which was alien enough for me not to fall into the equivalent of physical white noise like I would have if I were doing a construction project, which might threaten to let unwanted thoughts come flowing back. I was thankful for it, even when I got frustrated with my lack of knowledge and skill a few times, because it meant that I didn’t have to think about how my mind was tearing itself in two between desperately wanting to talk to a living person that didn’t enjoy hurting me and ripping me to shreds, and wanting to isolate myself in a dark, quiet hole for the rest of my life. Or the reasons why I felt that way.

          I somehow didn’t manage to break any of the parts or tools or even make enough noise to wake my mother. I’ve patched various household appliances a few times, in those times that my father can’t be bothered or makes me do it, if only so he can make fun of me later, but I’ve never actually replaced parts in the washer before. I’ve seen my dad do it a couple of times, though, and I downloaded some instructions on my phone just to be safe, so beyond a couple of skinned knuckles and muttered curse words and getting my shirt somewhat wet, I managed to get the new parts in and the old parts out with less fuss than I had feared.

          By the time I thought I had everything done to my satisfaction and was screwing the back of the washer into place, I heard my mother moving around in the living room and took the back off again so I could run a test cycle and make sure I had done everything right. My mom wandered in when she heard the washer going, still wearing her night clothes and her straight, chestnut hair askew, but holding a mug of steaming coffee.

          “Everything alright?” she asked me pensively.

          I almost blurted out ‘no’ before I realized she was just asking about the washer.

          “I think so,” I told her, giving the newly installed tube an experimental tug and was satisfied when I couldn’t see any leaks and the cycle was running smoothly, “I think that ought to hold us, at least in terms of leaking.”

          “Oh, Duo, you’re amazing,” she beamed at me with a look of great relief, like this weight had been taken off her shoulders.

          I felt a bit shy at her praise, but just knowing that I had done something right for once, that I had been able to ease even just a little of her stress was a balm to some of my guilt.

          “It’s still not going to run well,” I warned her, “but at least it’s one problem fixed.”

          And Dad won’t find out and ask me where I got the money for new parts, I thought and knew that it was on my mother’s mind as well. She didn’t ask me how I could have possibly afforded it. Either she didn’t care so long as the problem was taken care of or she had figured out that Heero had something to do with it. My mother can be a bit prideful, too, so that knowledge would probably sting, but not enough to not understand that we had been given a gift. One that we don’t deserve. She looked like she was going to hug me and I tensed, my heart starting to race a little, but then we heard the toaster go off and she left for the kitchen. I sighed in relief even as I was berating myself for my reaction. She was my mother, for fuck’s sake, and I didn’t want her to touch me? Three years ago, I would have given my left arm for a single hug or kind word from now and now that I have it, I flinch away like it’s something repulsive? What the hell was wrong with me?

          I put away all the tools, being very careful to make sure every last one of them was exactly where they had been before, cleaned up any water from the laundry floor and erased all evidence of my deeds, putting the old, battered and filthy parts in a plastic bag to dispose of somewhere else. It was probably just my paranoia, but my dad is disturbingly sharp and perceptive, even when he’s drunk. I mean, he was a pretty decent cop for seventeen years, a few months weren’t going to suddenly switch that off. The only difference is that he’s gotten meaner and bored with his work at the plant, so it’s like he enjoys using those skills to make my life hell, the only way he can still be a detective and take his frustrations out on someone at the same time. Or maybe I’m wrong and he really does just hate me that much.

          In the time that it had taken me to fix the washer, I had pulled back out of myself enough that I could think about things beyond my emotions and how utterly miserable and angry I was at the world and registered the nasty, rotten smell in the kitchen. I was already in trouble with my father, so I didn’t feel all the keen on leaving the problem and waiting for him to yell at me to fix it. My mother was in the shower, so I didn’t have anyone to ask what the problem was and just assumed that it was a clog again. We’re supposed to have a disposal, but it doesn’t work half the time and when it does, it doesn’t do it well, so these clogs happen frequently. Sure enough, when I went to the sink, I saw that there was a good three inches of water just sitting there along with some indiscernible bits of vegetable and other food matter.

Looking at it, at the same time that I felt frustrated that this was yet another thing I had to fix that my father was plenty capable of himself, I almost laughed. I had just told Heero about my father punishing me over a clogged sink, and here we were again. It felt like the universe had done this to me on purpose for daring to share that twisted little story. Or maybe it was like everything, my entire life, was just one big, fucked up cycle. No matter how far I think I’m moving away from things, no matter how much it seems like things are getting better, it just all comes back around eventually. Trowa, my father’s abuse, my depression and self-loathing, even letting Heero down. It all just comes back, no matter how hard I fight it. So what’s the point? It’s like that fucking sink. I could unclog it. Even buy some of those chemical products you’re supposed to dump down the drain, but what is the point? It’s just going to clog again. Shit always comes back around, it’s a freaking fact of life, you can never escape it.

But there I was, unclogging the sink anyway, even knowing that it doesn’t matter. Just like how I was with ‘Ro. I knew it wouldn’t last and I knew it was pointless to reach for these things, but I still do it. I don’t even know why anymore. It’s not like I’ve ever been one to hold on to hope. I know where things lead, I know what’s inevitable, so why am I still doing this? Why am I still with him? Why am I still with my father? Nothing matters. And standing there in front of that sink, looking at that nasty water, I suddenly felt very tired of my life. I didn’t want to do it anymore. I didn’t want to go through the motions. I’m just so tired of myself and everything else and in that moment, knowing that I was starting another shitty day, I couldn’t bear it, that dreary feeling that tomorrow I would have to go through all of this again. Even if my father didn’t rape me the next day, the knowledge that he wanted to was there. Even if I had a perfect day with ‘Ro, I knew it wasn’t going to last.

I had this weird urge to just lie down on the kitchen floor and not do anything. Shut myself off somehow. I suppose I was tired. I had had a stressful morning on only three hours of sleep. But it wasn’t that kind of tired. Sure, my body was tired, but this was different. This was in my soul, if there is such a thing. Just… weariness. And I knew that I could sleep for twelve hours and it wouldn’t do a thing to ease it. I’m not sure anything can. I shook off the urge, though, because it seemed rather pointless and I didn’t want to be there if my father woke up early. So, I attacked the sink, pulling out lumps of food from the drain, about two generous handfuls, until the sink finally started to lethargically drain, all the while cursing under my breath at how fucking gross it was. Even that didn’t matter. I had felt gross long before I had stuck my hand in the dirty water. Unclogging the sink by hand didn’t make much of a difference.

I washed my hands vigorously at the sink since my mother was still in the shower. I felt a tiny bit of resentment that _she_ got a decent shower. Even if my father got pissed at her, he certainly wouldn’t drag her out. Would he even give her the same ultimatum that he had given me? I doubted it. For one, I was positive he had done it mostly to punish me and two, even he had to realize that she couldn’t show up to her jobs dirty and smelling. I beat that bitter feeling down. It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t even know about it, not that she would do anything if she did, and I couldn’t blame her for any of that. She would be sympathetic, but she wouldn’t understand why it bothered me so much. I couldn’t tell her about dating someone and I sure as hell was not going to tell her that most of the showers I take at home nowadays are to get my father’s stench and semen off me.

Even if that’s the truth, and even if I feel a bit of resentment towards her sometimes that she doesn’t have to deal with this shit, I’d never let her know it. She already feels so guilty about it, I see it every time she figures out that my father just fucked me or she sees that I’m struggling with it, how much she hates him and herself, how much she wants to do something about it, but is too frightened or unsure. I could hate her for that, but I don’t. I’m not sure why. I hate myself for not doing anything, it’s just… I love her, she’s my mom and how can I hate her for this when I know that anything she tries to do to stop it is something I don’t want anyway? Either my father in prison or her in the hospital… We’re both lost mirrors of each other, a pair of cowards who are willing to ignore the violence and cracks in this family just to survive until the next day. I just tell myself that it could be worse. She could be losing herself in a bottle again so she doesn’t have to think about the fact that her husband is raping her son for sexual relief. Instead, she tries to help. In little ways that don’t really matter in the long run, but she does try.

          I ignored the mess in my room that I just could not deal with yet and focused on going through the motions of my morning and getting ready for school. I didn’t think ‘I’m going to school,’ because even that was unbearable. I couldn’t handle thinking about going there, dealing with the bullying and being near people, and god forbid Zechs. Just the thought of someone brushing up against me in the hallway made me feel twitchy, but if _he_ touched me? Some part of me understood that I was quickly heading towards something touching on hysteria and I was really in no condition to be social or go to classes. I was in such a bad place, I couldn’t even think about going running with ‘Ro. Seeing him, going to his house, talking with his parents… it all felt so beyond my ability to cope with. Even the thought of just having that sanctuary away from my shitty life brought me no comfort that day.

It really hit me in that moment as I stood in my room, not seeing the evidence of what my father had done to me and just rifling through my clothes for something to wear to school. I had nowhere to go. Nowhere I could slink to where I could lick my wounds and just be by myself. Even with all the changes lately, good and bad, my life felt so bereft. Heero has brought color and light and allowed me to breathe, but strip away all that and there was just… nothing. I pushed the thought away and wondered what had happened that morning that made it so impossible for me to escape these feelings, to just go on with my life like I always do and bottle up this crap. I felt like I had some open wound that refused to heal, just exposing all these raw nerves to the air.

I had no idea how warm or cold it was out, but I immediately rejected t-shirts and jeans. I didn’t want to feel that tight material on my skin or have my arms visible and it had absolutely nothing to do with hiding the scratches on my arms. If possible, I would have worn a parka and ski mask just to hide every inch of me. I made sure I had everything for school, a task that usually only takes a couple of minutes, but I made sure would take no less than ten because I didn’t want to face my room. I didn’t want to remember. But even though I didn’t want to, I knew that I should clean as much as I could stand then, because I sure as hell didn’t want to come home to it after work. If I wanted any hope of sleeping, I would need to remove as much evidence as possible.

Cleaning up the dried pool of semen by my desk was completely out. I knew that I should, it was already going to be a bitch to clean and I was going to feel even less like doing it the following morning, but I just couldn’t. Instead, I did what was manageable, sliding my desk back into place and righting my chair, picking up all the things that had fallen when my father had shoved me onto my desk. I found my lantern in the corner of the room. It had still been on when it had fallen, but there was no light coming from it. I was sure that it was just out of juice since it had been on that whole time, but the light didn’t come on even when I switched out the batteries. It was broken.

I’m sure anyone reading this will roll their eyes or laugh at me, but I almost fell to my knees and cried. It was too much. On top of everything, that my father had broken the lantern that Quatre had gotten me when he had heard that my father doesn’t like me turning on the light in the room unless I was studying and he knew that sometimes I had bad dreams and having a light on afterwards always made me feel better. Just like the CDs that had been his and the player he had gotten me, it was broken and I didn’t know how to fix it. I didn’t even know if it _could_ be fixed. Another thing I had lost. Later, when I was done with my prolonged freak-out, I would get feel rage at that, that my father had taken one more thing from me. But right then, I just felt this deep, terrible sorrow and guilt, like I had tarnished something precious. The wave of depression was almost too much and I had to tuck the lantern away in the corner and think about something else or I really was going to start crying. I was so pathetic.

Right when I was thinking that my morning could not _possibly_ get any worse, I found my shirt, crumpled in a ball and soiled sticky and encrusted with semen. I had completely forgotten about it. With an unsteady hand, I found a part of it that wasn’t marred and picked it up, looking at the mess on it with this strange kind of numbness, like I just couldn’t take any more horror and revulsion. I should have washed it right away, I thought. It seemed impossible to clean all that gunk off it now that it had mostly dried and I wasn’t so sure that I even wanted to clean it. The part of me that was still wounded by the whole thing wanted to chuck it right in the trash, but the stingy parts and stubborn parts that didn’t want my father to win this on top of everything else screamed that it would be irresponsible and childish of me to throw away a perfectly good shirt simply because it disgusted me. I had already thrown away other articles of clothing for that same reason and I couldn’t keep relying on Justin and Mariela’s handouts for new clothes. It was just cum, not cement, it would wash out. So why did just the thought of scrubbing the gunk off and throwing it in the washing machine seem like this arduous task to me? Why did it almost have me crying just like my broken lantern?

I feel so stupid looking back on it. It was a fucking night shirt, but I was standing there for a good fifteen minutes debating with myself on a purely emotional and not intelligent level on whether to clean it or not, torn in two and on the way to having a panic attack over something that didn’t really matter. And yes, I am aware that it wasn’t really about the shirt, that I was having some sort of minor… I don’t know, breakdown or something, but it still feels so stupid after the fact. Who knows, I might have even stayed like that all morning, just staring at my dirty shirt if my mother hadn’t come into my room just then. I have no idea why she had come up there, to tell me something or ask a favor or maybe she had even sensed that there was something wrong with me. She isn’t terribly perceptive, especially not to my feelings, not having much experience with reading them, but even she had probably noticed that I had been rather subdued, even for me.

She gave me a questioning, concerned look when she saw me just standing there, staring. I thought about hiding the shirt from her somehow, ashamed and embarrassed and I didn’t want her to see it, didn’t want her to know what had happened even though it seemed rather pointless considering she was well aware of what was going on, maybe just tossing it in my waste basket, but that would just look suspicious and stupid. I floundered with indecision for too long and her grey eyes flickered down to what I was holding in my hands and I froze in trepidation and humiliation.

          What seemed like a thousand different emotions went through my mother’s eyes and expression, one after another. First, she was confused, probably wondering why I was holding a night shirt with a white-knuckled grip. Then, her eyes widened with horror and revulsion as she finally realized what she was seeing, her skin going ashen. In a split second, that horror melted away into anger and hatred so immense, I truly thought that she was going to storm downstairs to strike my father. Her hands curled into fists and trembled with her rage, but she stayed there, like her feet were rooted into the floor, like her anger was so terrible, she didn’t even know what to do with it. I’ve seen her angry, but not like that, not so consumed by it and it was oddly humbling, just knowing that she loved me so much that she could become enraged at the reminder of what my father does to me.

          But then what color her anger had given her drained out of her face again and her eyes clouded over with intense guilt and self-loathing. I knew exactly what she was thinking, that if she was angry with my father, then she had to be twice as angry with herself for not stopping him, that he had raped me while she had been sleeping, unaware, that I was hurting because she was so powerless and cowardly. But etched in her face and her guilt, so plainly and so visibly that it made me feel like I had just been slapped, was a thought that even I could see: it should have been me.

I saw that desire like she had just voiced it out loud, to switch our places somehow, to take the brunt of this from me, to spare me and even though I still felt skittish and bitter and hurting from everything that had happened that morning, I loved her so completely. It didn’t matter if she didn’t do anything to stop my father. She wanted to and that was more than enough for me. As if that weren’t enough, she saw how shaken and conflicted I was and smiled softly at me, still with that self-loathing in her eyes and I knew that this was going to haunt her for some time, maybe even more than it had me. She took the shirt from me, my fingers releasing the cloth easily, wanting to be rid of it, and was careful not to touch any of the mess herself.

“I’ll take care of it,” she told me in a soft, somber tone and I saw for the first time that her smile wasn’t just guilty or comforting, but full of a painful grief.

“It’s alright,” I tried to tell her, but she shook her head, losing her smile as she frowned, some of her anger coming back.

“No,” she said forcefully, her eyes full of a silver fire that I had never seen before even when she had been fighting with my father, “I’ll do it, Duo. You don’t need to worry about it.”

Tears pricked my eyes and it was so hard not to let them out. I felt like she had just lifted this incredible burden from my back and, it’s so strange to write this, but that one act made me feel cleaner somehow than the entire time I had been scrubbing at the small of my back.

“Thank you, Mom,” I whispered roughly around my twisted emotions.

Her smile grew a little and I saw her naked desire to hug me. But, despite everything, despite the love that I felt for her, despite what she had just done for me, I still felt shy towards human contact and that screaming thing in my head hoped that she wouldn’t touch me. I hated myself for that, that I could even feel that way towards her, even in a moment when we both needed affection and I had to wonder for about the hundredth time that morning what the hell was wrong with me. I felt like my heart had dried and shriveled into a stone. I don’t know if she realized that I didn’t want her to hug me, and I really hope that she hadn’t because she didn’t deserve that, but she leaned in and kissed my cheek instead. Even just that light touch made that wild and animalistic thing in my chest flinch, while soothing something else. The conflicting emotions were almost enough to make me scream.

Deep down, in all of those dark places that hurt too much to look at, I wondered if this was a permanent change, if I was always going to be so torn in two between physical touch and affection making me want to scream and desperately needing it. I realized it a long time ago, what my father is doing to me. Tearing me apart piece by piece until, one day, there isn’t going to be anything left of _me_ , who I used to be before all this darkness, just bitterness and hate, something inhuman that couldn’t even enjoy another person. I wondered, my heart heavy and bleeding, if one day I wouldn’t even be able to enjoy Heero’s kiss and embrace anymore, if feeling him sleeping next to me would become a horror, just like my father’s close presence and smell has become to me. The mere thought of that made pure, terrible agony rip right through my heart and almost drove me to my knees in a mix of remorse and repulsion. Even though it hadn’t happened yet, at least not to my knowledge, I felt the loss and became nauseous with it, hating myself and my father to the core of my being. Maybe it was a blessing in disguise. Maybe it would make it so much easier to break up with my boyfriend if I had one less thing to cling to, one less reason to stay.

I watched my mother go back down the stairs, filthy shirt in hand and that feeling of hating myself for being so loathsome that I couldn’t even kiss her back or hug her, just fucking force myself to do it for her, refused to dissipate. I vowed to make it up to her somehow, to let her know how much I appreciated it when I was feeling myself again, but would I ever? That question plagued me, that this wasn’t just some weird mood that I happened to be in that morning because of my father, but that it wouldn’t ever leave me, that he had stolen another chunk of me and no matter how hard I tried, I would never get it back. I felt like my lantern. I didn’t know what was wrong and I felt completely inadequate to fix it even if I figured it out.

I tried to bury all these fucked up thoughts and feelings inside and just concentrate on getting out of there, but even that was impossible. Even when I was trying to ignore them, I still felt them, weighing me down like a weight tied to my ankle, making me sink in black water. My room clean, myself dressed and as presentable as I would ever manage to be, there really wasn’t anything else keeping me there. I thought about making myself breakfast just to have something else to do to keep myself from having to think or do anything to continue on with my day, but hungry was the very last thing that I was and I had told my mother that I would eat at Heero’s to save ourselves a little bit of money and I planned to stick to that as long as I could. It might just amount to pennies worth of difference in our debt and budget, but it was all I could do.

I slunk out of the house with immense relief that I hadn’t run into my father again, but the feeling quickly left when I walked down our drive way and onto the sidewalk. I was suddenly struck with the realization that I didn’t know where I was going. I had rushed out of the house, but had taken great, mental pains not to actually think about what I was doing next. I knew where I was _supposed_ to go. Heero was probably just starting to wake up at that hour and would be getting ready for our jog. Normally, I’d have a little bounce in my step knowing that we had time to spend together before school and would be looking forward to our run, but that morning, I only looked to it like I had looked to going to school before Heero had come into my life. Dreary, like it was some great chore. Why was I like this? I loved Heero. I loved being with him, so why did the idea of walking to his house and spending some time with him suddenly make me feel so tired and heavy?

I didn’t want to see him, I realized and felt so distant, so displaced from my own emotions like I was fading or escaping my body that what should have horrified me only made me more depressed. I didn’t want to look at his texts or call him. I didn’t want to hear his voice. I didn’t want to see his blue eyes light up to see me, like I was something special, like I was something to look forward to. I didn’t want to feel his familiar touch or his lips on mine. I didn’t want to walk into that perfect home and see his parents. I wanted to just skip the damned jog, find a park bench and just stay there until I had to go to work.

I didn’t want to go to school, either. I didn’t want to have to see Zechs or Relena or Dorothy or any of them. I didn’t want to go to my classes and pretend that anything that I was learning and working hard towards mattered, would make any kind of difference. I didn’t want to bum some money off of Heero so I could get lunch or change for gym or get my books out of my locker. I didn’t want to bump into people in the hallway, have some kid that I’ve gone to school with since I was nine years old but was still a mostly stranger to me brush up against me and feel them on my dirty skin and want to peel my flesh off my bones. I didn’t want to have to pretend that everything was just fucking _fine_ for my boyfriend and coworkers and classmates and anyone else. I didn’t want any of it. I didn’t want anything.

The melancholy and aching _nothing_ that filled me was horrible enough that just lying down on the sidewalk with my neighbor’s dogs bark and snarling at me and just crying and not moving for the rest of the day was a very real possibility. It was all so hard and pointless and I just didn’t want it anymore. I didn’t want my life. I didn’t want to breathe. I didn’t want to exist in this tainted, worn skin anymore.

Without any conscious thought to what I was doing, I saw myself put a foot forward, and then another, and another, instinct taking control instead of just standing there, doing nothing. I went into autopilot mode, just like I had when I hadn’t been sleeping for over a week because, just like then, it was the only thing that I had the ability to do, the easiest thing. It probably hadn’t been the smartest idea, given that I had just been considering skipping both my morning jog and school just because of a damned mood, but the easiest thing was apparently walking to Heero’s.

I stood outside of his house for a good ten minutes, just looking at it, unable to move. I felt this kind of dawning horror at the prospect of going inside, putting all my feelings and memories from that morning into their box and locking them away for a time so I could pretend to be fine and normal for these people. But even more than that, I felt so out of place. I didn’t belong there, as much as I wanted to. I was an invader, a parasite in their lives and all of them deserved so much more. It was in me to just turn around and walk back the way I came, not wanting to taint that bright, peaceful place with my chaos and filth, but I didn’t know where else to go and I think there was a part of me that desperately needed to be there, away from my depression and strange, displaced feelings.

Kanuck was waiting for me at the front door and gave a short, happy bark to see me. Despite everything, it felt so good to see him, to be greeted with that dumb, happy, dog grin, just to have someone or something happy to have me there and I got on my knees to pet his thick fur, even letting him lick my face a little. I fought against the urge to wrap my arms around the animal, bury my face in his fur and cry because he was the only one that I _could_ cry to about this. I struggled back to my feet and he followed me into the kitchen where, to my surprise, I found Heero pouring himself a glass of orange juice. He was still mostly asleep, eyes half-lidded and hair askew. I felt that horror come over me as his dark blue eyes found mine and he smiled sleepily at me. What the hell was I doing there? Could I really slip the mask back on and keep it in place around him when all I wanted to do was find a hole to hide in? I felt like he could see right through me, could see every time my father had touched me, could see the filth clinging to my skin and the darkness and disgust staining every part of me.

“’Morning,” he mumbled while somehow maintaining that bright smile.

I forced a smile onto my lips, amazed that I was capable of even the small one. But my acting that morning clearly needed some serious work, because Heero’s immediately fell into an expression of worry, exactly what I had been trying to avoid.

“Are you alright?” he asked with a concerned frown, “You look tired. Did you sleep at all?”

‘With you,’ I thought and this intense pain filled me as I remembered sleeping next to him, comfortable and at ease, content and unaware of what I would be walking into when I left that bed. Pulling myself away from him, feeling so guilty just for leaving him seemed like it had happened years ago and I ached to have that early morning back. I wished painfully to go back to that moment and stay with him this time. Never mind my father’s fury because it was better than this. Better his anger and fists than this memory of him in my head, of the feel of his slimy cock trailing down my back like a dog pissing on a tree to mark it as his or the naked hatred and contempt, how much he blamed me for everything he had done as he had dragged me out of the shower. But the terrible thing was that, even though I would have given almost anything to do that morning over again, I knew that the following morning would have me doing the same, fucking thing because while being fucked had hurt me so much more, it was invisible to ‘Ro. He would never know what had just happened to me and that was the only solace I had in this whole mess. But if my father beat the shit out of me for disobeying him, I had no hope of hiding that. The only comfort I had was the knowledge that I was doing this for Heero, to keep him from worrying and feeling guilty. If I could spare him, it was worth it, I could shoulder anything, couldn’t I?

“Not really,” I admitted, “but it’s fine. I slept pretty well when I was here.”

          That didn’t seem to make him feel any better and if anything, his frown deepened. I just can’t stop from making him feel like shit, can I? Then his expression softened into one of affection and I saw the need in his eyes to comfort, to make everything better like he always does, like my lack of sleep was somehow worse than my making him feel bad. He took a step towards me and his hand twitched forward. I realized in that second with terror that he was going to touch me, maybe even hold me or kiss me. The same things he always does when he worries there’s something wrong and he has to soothe it away, something completely normal and, on a typical day, more than welcome. But that morning, he might as well have punched me or spat on me.

          Something awful and black and violent roared awake in me, screaming and thrashing. Before I could stop myself, like my body was acting far ahead from my brain, I took a quick, reflexive step back from him, dodging his touch like it was a sucker-punch and not just him trying to be nice and affectionate. How I managed to not make it look like the flinch that it obviously was, I have no idea, but I twisted around him, opening the refrigerator and pretending like I hadn’t seen what he had been about to do and was just getting something to drink. I even poured myself a tall glass of ice-cold water and downed it in two large gulps to complete the bullshit illusion. If Heero suspected that I was dancing around him, keeping him at arm’s length and had pushed him away _again_ , he didn’t say anything.

          I watched him from the corner of my eye as I drank, but for once, he was impossible to read. He didn’t look hurt, but he frowned again, confused. I could take confusion over pain, I supposed. That was my goal that day, I decided. Not actually getting through the school day and work with my nerves intact, but to make sure that Heero wouldn’t figure out that anything was wrong with me. Which actually seemed like the more difficult chore. But I was so tired of hurting him all the time and on top of that, I didn’t feel capable of dealing with his concern or talking it out with him, so it just seemed easier to put on an act. It wasn’t like I could tell him the truth anyway, which of course only made me feel worse as I remembered last night, him telling him how much he appreciated my honesty. It just drove home again, for the millionth time, how ill-suited we were for each other and how I was constantly letting him down.

          I poured another glass of water and drank it more slowly, not as an act, but for myself to try to calm my rapidly beating heart and ignore the stab of self-loathing knowing that my panic had come from absolutely _nothing,_ because of a person I was supposed to love and trust, not be scared of. How much of a loser can you get?

          “Do you want to get dressed and head out?” I asked him and even just talking to him seemed so difficult, like I was speaking through a mouth full of tar and it felt like what little energy I had was draining with every word. I didn’t even care about what his answer would be. I didn’t care about anything at all.

          “How about breakfast first? I haven’t eaten yet, so I was just thinking something light for a bit of an energy boost. Have you had anything yet?” he asked me.

          I shook my head. I still didn’t have much of an appetite and I was fine with just the water. At least it didn’t taste like brackish metal. But although I wasn’t hungry, I didn’t mind making something for the both of us. It would keep my mind off things and while I didn’t even feel much of an interesting in cooking, it somehow felt less of a chore than socializing. However, when I tried to make another go for the fridge to see what I could make that constituted as quick, light, and still would give the both of us plenty of energy, Heero cut in front of me and grabbed a wrapped bowl of leftover fruit with a bratty grin, essentially evicting me to the table. As I walked over there in surrender, I realized in shock that I was smiling at his childishness. Actually smiling and not something that I had forced myself to do for appearances. It gave me this tiny glimmer of hope that I might be snapping out of my funk.

          Heero put the bowl of fruit in front of me and bustled off to make… something. I didn’t pay much attention to him as Pepper trotted into the kitchen and jumped on my lap. As I pet her head, she did that weird tucking maneuver cats do when all their limbs disappear under them and purred loudly, just content to be near me. I wished my own life could be as simple as a cat’s and felt a bit of my stress wash away as I stroked her velvety fur and picked at the mixed bowl of pineapple, grapes, strawberries, blueberries, and watermelon. The fruit helped settle some of my remaining nausea and my stomach was appeased with the slight meal. I raised an eyebrow when Heero put a steaming bowl of oatmeal in front of me.

          “What?” he questioned in a teasing manner, “It’s hot and I can make it.”

          Which might have actually been the reason for him going with the oatmeal instead of cereal or toast, but given the glint of concern that refused to leave his eyes, I wondered if he had chosen it truly out of laziness, or because it was one of our comfort foods. He had even put slices of bananas and a bit of honey in mine along with a heap of cinnamon and nutmeg, just the way I like it. It eased me a bit more out of the animal state that I was in and I felt even more like an ass for my weird behavior. I was shying away from him, refusing to be touched and hating being there with him and he had to do something like this just to make me feel better when he had no clue what was wrong.

It reminded me so much of my father hugging me when I had started crying at the kitchen table four years ago, him not knowing what the hell was wrong with me, just that I was hurting and he had clumsily tried to make it better. I don’t know why, but him showing me blind affection like that had made it more powerful than if he had known it had been over my dead friend. It was like that just then with ‘Ro. That he had no clue what the problem was, but was still trying to help almost had me in tears and wanting to spill my guts to him. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.

Heero got dressed while I rinsed our dishes and put them in a dishwasher, then we were off. We did a few laps around his neighborhood and despite how little I had cared and had even thought about just not showing up for it, the running turned out to be a welcome distraction. It was fairly nice outside, something that I hadn’t noticed on my walk over there, all traces of the rain in the early morning gone besides a few puddles here and there. I remembered all the things that Horner wanted me to work on and focused mostly on my gait, hoping that I could show at least a little bit improvement for him by Saturday. It felt nice to be able to worry about those tiny, unimportant things instead of the pain in my chest or the ugly, buzzing thoughts in my head. I still felt distant and skittish and dirty, but I was starting to feel like I might be able to function like a human being and force myself to act less closed-off around Heero at the very least.

“There’s still a bit of time before school,” my boyfriend remarked when we got back to his house, “why don’t you take a hot shower?”

I paused for a moment and, for the first time since I had gone over to his place, I remembered my father’s ultimatums. It was almost enough to erase all the progress I had just made. I even nearly, stupidly, blurted out the truth to Heero, that I wasn’t allowed, but managed to contain myself. I strangled my feelings of hopelessness, not wanting to get that started again, but it did nothing to keep me from feeling it. Again, I wondered what I was going to do about this, both staying away from Heero and not showering. The two were linked by more than just my father’s threats. I had thought that one would make the other easier, but even in my depressed state, even as close as I had come to not going to Heero’s that morning, I still had. I could almost laugh at my naivety, to think that I could stay away from him for any reason. So long as I was still welcome at his place, it was impossible to fight that pull, even when I didn’t want to see him. Or maybe I had just been lying to myself the whole time, in deep denial.

I struggled for some kind of excuse to tell him no, I couldn’t shower. In reality, it wasn’t that big of a secret, not like the fucking or my sexual hang-ups or even that my father didn’t want me around him anymore. Heero knows that my father can be… well, an asshole (his words), so he wouldn’t be all that surprised to know that he had pettily ordered me not to shower. I wouldn’t even need to come up for a reason why he was punishing me. But I couldn’t tell him. It would worry him again, but beyond that, it was embarrassing. And he would just want to help and get his parents involved and I just didn’t have the mental capacity for all that… _fussing_. I just wanted everything to go away, even if it meant ignoring everything that was wrong. Thankfully, I didn’t have to make that decision that morning, remembering with utter relief that while my shower had been cut short, I _had_ showered, so I could take another one and my father wouldn’t figure it out. It was the first break I had gotten since I had gotten out of Heero’s bed that morning.

“Sure,” I told him and went upstairs, passing Justin as he went into the kitchen for his morning coffee and greeting each other.

I took my time in the shower, not even caring if I was late for school or not for once. I just wanted to be clean. I turned up the hot water until it was nearly scalding and turned my fair skin almost red, using a liberal amount of shampoo to get my hair clean as it, along with every other part of me, still felt itchy and flaky. I scrubbed and scrubbed, taking off dead skin and maybe not so dead skin in some areas, especially my back. I think I cleaned the area where my father’s semen had hit me about ten times before I moved on. I knew I was being crazy and excessive, but it made me feel a little bit better. I rubbed hard at my arms with the washcloth, making the cuts open up and bleed again, trying to rid myself of that weird, itchy, gross feeling. I watched the blood drip down, turned light pink by the water, until I realized what I was doing and forced myself to snap out of it.

I felt a lot better when I got out and dried myself off. Maybe not clean, but not as terrible as I had felt before when I had left my house. I still felt wrong, like my skin was paper and I was fragile, vulnerable, but less likely to punch someone if they tried to touch me. Progress, I guess. If I had even an inkling then as I put some clean clothes on that my day at school would undo all of that, I might have just stayed in that bathroom all day, like a child clinging to a door frame as their parents tried to drag them off to see the dentist. Unlikely, but it’s a comforting thought.

Despite what I just wrote, nothing really disastrous happened at school. In fact, if I hadn’t already been so messed up before I had even gotten there, it would have been a perfectly normal day. I might even rate it as a good day. Heero didn’t have detention anymore. We could leave school together like we always did and I wouldn’t have to be scared or feel guilty about leaving him behind. I didn’t have any more tests that week and Zechs didn’t do anything all that terrible to me, so I should have felt happy. Or at least relieved. I was, at first. When it was just Heero and me in homeroom, things were fine. I read a little and he looked at something on his cell phone until our classmates started to wander in and the beginning of school bell rang. Even after that, it wasn’t so bad. It wasn’t great. I didn’t want to be there and I felt a bit claustrophobic in the full classroom, but it wasn’t bad. Yet.

I started to really have problems when we left our first classroom for the next period. All those people closing in on me, getting near me, _touching_ me… it was too much. Every time someone accidentally brushed against me or pushed me on purpose or threw a slur or dirty look at me, I felt that panic start to seep back, that screaming fear and feeling like my skin was about to tear. My heart raced every time someone that wasn’t Heero broke that bubble I had put around myself and just in the couple of minutes it took to get to our next class, I was just trying not to pant, or worse, hit someone. A childish part of myself wanted to grab Heero’s hand, just to have contact with someone that didn’t make me feel repulsive and paranoid, but I didn’t know what I would do if touching him made me feel even an ounce of that insanity, and I knew that he would definitely know something was seriously wrong if I did that. Besides, if we held hands in front of everyone, it might start an incident or egg Zechs on. So, I just kept my hands at my sides, curled into tight fists.

By the time lunch came around, I was a wreck. On the verge of shaking and just wanting to find some place dark and quiet and, above all, devoid of anyone but myself. I was coming undone, so sensitive to everything and I was suffocating. I kept catching myself scratching at my arms again and having to put my hands on my desk or shove them into my pockets to stop doing it. That sensation of needing to tear my filthy, dirty skin off had returned and it took every ounce of my concentration just to focus on classes and not these weird, half-psychotic feelings.

I was so focused on my skittishness and aversion to literally every person who came within four feet of me that I didn’t even feel any anxiety about the results of my calculus test. I wasn’t even confident about it anymore, it just seemed so small compared to everything else that was weighing me down. That I had been freaking the fuck out days ago over it was amazing. Instead of handing it to me, Harkins put it face down on my desk, not quite slamming it down, but I won’t call the maneuver gentle, either, all with a sour expression on her face before moving on to the person behind me. I flipped it over and blinked at the red letter on the paper, so sure that I was just seeing things for a moment. A-. I had gotten an A-. I don’t think I’ve gotten an A on a math test since… well, I can’t even remember.

I should have felt overjoyed about it, ready to punch up my fist in triumph and giving Harkins a victory grin. I did feel a bit of relief and some confidence, enough to make me feel a bit better, but nothing near what I should have been feeling. I felt washed out, anything beyond my anxiety and loathing muted and grey. I couldn’t even be happy over the fact that I had just boosted my grade in that damned class significantly and that Heero and his father had been right, I _could_ do this and I was not the loser that my father and I assumed, that the grades Heero had helped me get before were not some fluke. I wasn’t stupid. If there was anything holding me back, it wasn’t a lack intellect.

But right then, looking at that paper and the lack of red x’s on it… I don’t even know what I was feeling, but it wasn’t the happiness that should have been there. My father had taken even that away from me. I didn’t even feel smug that I had fucking _earned_ that grade, that Harkins was just as wrong as my dad and how much it must have pissed her off to have given it to me. Well, ok, maybe I still felt a little bit smug. I’m sure that she paid extra attention to my test, looking for anything she could mark me down for and any evidence that she could use to excuse me of cheating. She probably wasn’t even wrong to do that, considering I usually don’t do nearly as well as I had on this test. But I had won even that victory, there was nothing she could do to keep from giving me that A. Maybe she had even wanted to risk accusing me of cheating anyway, just to see if she could get something to stick. But she had to have realized that Stoan is well aware of her hatred for me (he’s quickly gotten sick of her sending me to his office over every little thing and has lectured her a few times about learning how to control her class herself) and unless she had some really damning proof, he would probably take my side. And boy, wasn’t that rare concept.

Heero was a lot more overjoyed over it than I was, gushing over the grade and how he knew I had it in me and how proud he was of me. I couldn’t help it, the bright, shining love in those blue eyes won a smile from me. Even if I felt distant from him that day, he always succeeds in drawing me out of my shell. He overflows with this… brilliant light that washes away everything else. But at the same time that I loved him and I loved that he could look at me like that, it also made me guilty that it wasn’t enough to erase all the black feelings in my chest and the antagonistic thoughts in my head. It just teased me with the knowledge that I really don’t deserve someone like him. Someone so teeming with life and happiness. That light can’t change me, not all the way, not deep down inside where it really matters. My darkness seeps in, warps everything around it. How long before it finishes the job and extinguishes that light that I love so much? How long before I finish dragging him down into the depths?

Everything turned to shit in my computer science class. I had actually been looking forward to the period, despite knowing I would have be stuck in the same room with Zechs. Heero wouldn’t be there and for once, that thought gave me more relief than pain. There was a part of me that missed him and worried about him out of my sight, but another that was in the driver’s seat that day that was tired of putting on an act for him. Better yet, I didn’t have to be too close to any of my classmates and even the teacher would leave me alone to do my work in peace. I stupidly thought that Zechs wouldn’t bother doing anything to me, even though I had deprived him of that chance the last few days. I won’t say that I felt safe in that class, I just didn’t expect him to start shit in front of a teacher. I wasn’t even paying him any attention as I worked, which was how he was able to sneak up behind me. Not that I would have done anything if I had seen him approach me, but when he was suddenly _there_ , pressing himself against me, his breath wafting over my neck, I was too shocked by it to do much of anything.

“Whacha working on, Maxwell,” he jeered teasingly in my ear, “Anything interesting?”

I froze and my hand clenched the mouse so hard that it amazes me I didn’t break it. When he put his own on my shoulder like we were just the best of buddies, I couldn’t breathe. I clenched my other hand on the edge of the table just so I wouldn’t be tempted to slam it into the smug face I could see reflected in the computer screen.

“Nothing to say?” he tried to bait me, although hell if I know what he would have done if I had said anything to him, “That’s too bad. I was hoping we could have a little chat, but we keep missing each other lately, don’t we? If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you didn’t want to see me.”

His other hand trailed down my back and the touch was so similar to what he had done the day that he had gotten Heero in trouble, I was having déjà vu. Long fingers traced a line down my spine and over the place where my father had ejaculated himself that morning, sending that itchy, repulsed feeling that I had been fighting ever since into hyperdrive. I started to shake in a mix of fear, disgust, and boiling rage, trying so hard not to do something to make him stop. Roll my chair back over his foot, slam my elbow into his face, I’m not entirely sure. He wasn’t restraining me this time and of course the one time when I had options to fight back, I had more sense to.

I expected him to grab my ass again, was prepared for it, but he had a different mission this time. My heart pounded like a primal drum in my rib cage as that large, cruel hand found the hem of my pants and slid inside, curling around my hip and grabbing it with the same bruising force he had treated my rear to the other day. My mind supplied me with the twisted fact that he only had to twitch his arm one way or the other and he could touch my ass or my cock skin to skin, it was really up to him. I stared ahead, incapable of even looking anywhere else but my computer screen, but it wasn’t the computer that I was seeing or Zechs’s hand on my hip that I was feeling but my father’s. Grabbing me and thrusting inside of me. And when Zechs let go of my shoulder to run his other hand up my neck and through my hair, as intimate as a lover, it was a larger, rougher hand that I felt, the breath ghosting over the back of my neck smelling of alcohol instead of tobacco. My stomach rolled and clenched in pure repulsion, my vision turning grey for a moment as I felt lukewarm semen splash on my skin and a slick, but still hard organ press against my skin, not just on my back this time but all over…

“How about it, Maxwell?” Zechs whispered in my ear, fingers tracing sickening patterns in my hip as he slipped his thumb into the juncture between my stomach and leg, almost like he was penetrating me, “You, me, after school in a classroom or janitor’s closet… only this time no boyfriend to interrupt us… what do you say?”

His voice grew pleased as he finally realized that I was trembling, no doubt thinking it was his threat that had me so terrified, but I barely heard him. I could only hear the panting. My father’s or mine, I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t even sure if I _was_ panting or just breathing a little bit too hard. I felt fat tears rolling down my cheeks and the sensation was just so alien in that moment. I didn’t even feel humiliated that I was crying or understand why. Was it the fear? The humiliation of having that bastard touch me? Or just the angry sorrow of having to be reminded of what my father had done again? Either way, I was just as paralyzed by them as I was my memories and Zechs’s sexual harassment.

“Mr. Darlian! Sit down!” our teacher snapped at him, but there was a very clear note of fear in her voice and her face was pale.

I wondered just how long she had been watching this go on for before she had decided to do something about it and even then, she still seemed hesitant to say anything. I didn’t really blame her. Zechs’s been written up a dozen times for disrespecting teachers and he’s never gotten more than detention for it, which he doesn’t show up for, so there was little she could do if he retaliated against her. If I hadn’t felt so damned ashamed of what he was doing to me in front of everyone, I would have been amazed she had even said anything on my behalf. The only relief I had from the humiliation as every eye in the classroom was on Zechs and me was that I sit near the far corner of the room and only the girl that sits next to me could see where his other hand was and she was looking at her computer screen with stubborn intensity, not wanting to get involved with the perverted piece of shit.

I fully expected Zechs to just ignore our teacher. He was clearly enjoying himself and my reactions to his close proximity, but to my shock, he backed off me, putting up his hands in mock surrender and went back to his station, all with that sick, smug grin of his. But I didn’t feel any better with him gone. I could still feel his hands on me and smell his breath, awakening nightmares in my head that I just wanted gone. I still felt like I couldn’t breathe, my insides twisting and there was this tiny, screaming voice in my skull that just wouldn’t shut up, the same one I hear every time my father comes into my room at night. It was too much. I couldn’t handle it. Even as I sat there, breathing hard, my heart like a jackhammer, I felt bile rose in my throat and that repulsion of my own body flared back to life. I felt so ugly and filthy, my body like some twisted, gangly mess of roadkill. I wanted to find something sharp and take myself apart, piece by piece, remove all the bits that people like Zechs and my father and even Trowa love to touch and defile and grope, like I’m made of putty.

Realizing what was about to happen, I asked my teacher for the hall pass, which she happily gave, probably wanting me gone so Zechs wouldn’t disturb her class anymore, and fled while trying my hardest not to look like I was fleeing. I found an empty bathroom in a hallway that had the least amount of classes for that block and locked the door, not caring if I got into trouble. I went into the first stall and got there just in time to get on my knees, grab the toilet, and puke violently into it. I didn’t have a whole lot in my stomach to retch at that hour and spent a solid five to ten minutes just dry heaving with such force, I felt like I was trying to expunge my stomach from my body.

When I was done, my stomach still twitching and throbbing painfully, I spat once more into the toilet just to be sure and sagged against it, all my strength gone. My bangs were cemented to my skin with sweat and I shook hard, completely hollowed out. I pressed my feverish forehead against the icy-cold side of the toilet and cried, fingers finding my arms and slipping under my sleeves to scratch mindlessly at my crawling flesh. I’m not sure why I was crying, exactly. Stress, shame, self-loathing, anger, hopelessness. It all just kind of mixed together into one, terrible emotion, more violent than my vomiting. What the hell was happening to me? Why was I like this? Running to go throw up just because a stupid bully had touched me a little? Getting so freaked out and torn apart by something that my father has done to me hundreds of times by now.

Christ. Hundreds. Was that really accurate? Five months… it had been five months… no, longer than that. So, yeah, I supposed it probably was accurate. If not, getting close to it. It had been a hundred and sixty days since my father had first raped me. Five months and ten days. He hadn’t fucked me on every one of those days, but multiple times every week. That cruel, sadistic part of me that loves to torture me with things wondered how many times he had ripped into me, made me bleed. How much blood had I shed because of his cock, how much semen had he ejaculated into me that I had wiped up afterwards? If I put the effort in, I could probably translate that into an equation and come close to an answer.

I grabbed at the toilet again and gagged, my throat rough and on fire, but thankfully got enough control over myself to not dry heave again. I needed to stop this. I had to just… stop thinking about it all the time, that was all. It’s something that happens and I just had to deal with it, like everything else, like the bullying and abuse. That’s all it was. So why was this so hard for me to cope with? After all these months, why couldn’t I get a fucking grip?

I stumbled upright on shaky, unsteady legs, and went to the sink, washing out my foul-tasting mouth with water and washing my face clean of tears and sweat. Do I even need to say how terrible I looked? My eyes were red and there were dark circles under my eyes, even though I wasn’t sleep-deprived enough for them. My skin looked clammy and pale as fuck aside from the small spots of red from exertion. My bangs were hanging in limp clumps around my face. I went to sweep them out of my eyes when I winced at a stinging pain in my arms. I already knew what I was going to find, the blood under my nails and that stinging a clear sign, but I pulled up both of my shirt sleeves anyway and winced again.

In my fit, I had really done a number on myself. My skin was caked with smears and rapidly drying blood, having ripped open the cuts I had made that morning again, but there were about a dozen new, ragged marks to join them all over the tops and sides of my arms, my fair skin making them look a thousand times worse than they were. My nails aren’t sharp at all, they’re blunt and I keep them as short as possible because of work, but I had pressed down pretty hard in my scratching. The wounds weren’t serious, no more than vicious cat scratches, I had just let them bleed for too long, and my shirt was black, so I didn’t even need to worry about anyone seeing the blood. What the hell would I tell anyone if they did see it? That I was doing something insane to myself in a weird, reflexive compulsion because I was so tired of feeling so dirty and tainted?

I should probably put band-aids on them, I realized, a few of them deep enough that they were still bleeding, but I just didn’t care. I rinsed the blood off in the sink and put my hair back up. I was as presentable as I was ever going to be, but I still lingered, just staring at my reflection and feeling miserable, the stinging pain on my arms made me feel a little better for some bizarre reason, something real and concrete to focus on instead of my emotional turmoil and weird thoughts, but it also made me feel incredibly pathetic. Weak.

I should stop feeling so sorry for myself and head back to class, I thought. But I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to leave my little sanctuary and go back to all those people staring at me. I especially didn’t want to be near Zechs anymore. If I didn’t, Heero was going to go looking for me. He always meets me at the computer lab so we can walk to lunch together. Even that thought wasn’t enough to get me to move. Thankfully, the end of class bell rang, startling me out of the weird paralysis and I rushed out of there, just taking a second to get a drink from the water fountain to help get rid of the gross taste in my mouth.

Miraculously, I managed to get back to my class before Heero showed up, Zechs was long gone, and my things had been untouched. I logged out of my computer and met my boyfriend in the hall.

“Did you pack a lunch today?” he asked me, although I was sure he already knew the answer to that.

Mariela had slept in that morning, leaving us to fend for ourselves, which was actually a relief. I could barely handle Heero’s upbeat attitude, which was nothing compared to her beaming personality, and her making my lunch again would have made me feel even more pathetic. I shook my head.

“I’m not very hungry,” I said honestly, “I was just going to skip lunch.”

I knew he wasn’t going to like that, but his concerned frown still annoyed me as I could see a lecture building on his tongue. I had had breakfast, wasn’t that enough? Of course, whatever had still been in my stomach from breakfast, I had just puked it out, but he didn’t know that. Heero’s family’s obsession with that ‘three square meals a day’ thing can be really grating sometimes. I suppose that sums up my entire relationship with Heero. At times, the things he does that I’m not used to; worrying about me, all his fussing, telling me I’m something beautiful, caring about me, trying to get me to sleep and eat more, insisting that I’m everything that I know I’m not, it can be so wonderful. The one, pure, shining light in my life, a glimpse of what my life could be like. But other times, it grates on my nerves, either because I’m not used to it or I don’t think I deserve it. I didn’t need three full meals a day and I definitely didn’t need them worrying about all the times that I skipped a meal, but Heero always acts like it’s some terrible thing when I say I’m skipping because I’m not hungry or I don’t have time or I don’t have the money.

“We can share mine,” he offered instead of a lecture and I had to wonder if he sensed that I was just not in the mood for it.

“Heero,” I sighed, beginning to protest that he didn’t need to do that when I had no appetite.

“I have plenty for both of us,” he argued, refusing to listen to me, “And I packed extra fruit in case you wanted some.”

I had that feeling again, half exasperation that he had gone out of his way to do something like that just on the off chance that I might want fruit, but I also felt warmed that he had thought of me, so I was unsure what was the right thing to feel.

“Thanks,” was all I could think of to say, but it seemed like an alright thing and he smiled at me.

I followed him, keeping an eye out for anyone in Zechs or Relena’s crew, until he took a right down the wrong hallway.

“Where are we going?” I asked in confusion, “The cafeteria-,”

“I thought we might eat in the library today,” he suggested, “I think we could use some peace and quiet.”

I stared at him wide-eyed with shock. Did he know? Did he really understand what was going on with me, that I needed some solitude and quiet, away from everyone else? Did he just get that something was wrong and I might feel more comfortable in a library, my home turf? Or was I just seeing what I wanted to see? No matter the reason, I loved him powerfully for it. That love was strong enough to break through all of my problems and aversion to contact and I wanted to kiss him. Maybe, if we hadn’t been at school, I might have taken that chance, my introversion be damned.

“That… that sounds perfect,” I stammered and watched in awe as his smile turned into something softer and affectionate.

He, as always, was a lot bolder than I and, after taking a look around the hallway, took my hand. I let him, enjoying the contact, if only for the moment. My skin didn’t crawl. I didn’t feel repulsed or claustrophobic. If my heart beat any faster, it wasn’t out of fear, but just happiness to have him touching me. For that moment, it felt like I was escaping that dark place. Like I was coming back to myself. I didn’t hold any illusions that I was suddenly, magically cured from whatever the heck was wrong with me, but it was a beautiful respite. Just that I could feel love for him, something positive instead of terrible and depressing was beautiful.

It lasted through our lunch together, but not much longer. I even felt more warmth than irritation at him when he unpacked his lunch at one of the conference tables and I saw that he had sliced up a banana and put some peanut butter in a small container for me. I knew it was for me because it’s one of my favorite snacks and Heero is not a huge fan of bananas. He’ll eat them, but it isn’t something he would pack for himself.

“You didn’t have to do this,” I told him softly, fighting against tears because it was just so fucking stupid to cry over a damned snack, even as I plucked one of the slices and dipped it in the peanut butter.

“You looked like you needed a pick me up today,” he said still with that soft, loving smile that always gets past any barrier I try to erect, no matter how thick and battle tested, and makes me feel both comfortable and weak.

I blushed a little. I had tried as hard as I could to hide that I wasn’t feeling… well from him, but I suppose it had been impossible to keep it a secret. While no one else really cares, or they’re used to me being introverted and having an attitude, ‘Ro knows me better than anyone else. Even better than Quatre had known me. He can read my moods like a book.

“I’m sorry,” I murmured, looking away from him and nibbling at the piece of banana, feeling that knife of guilt stab me in the chest for getting him involved just because I was having some sort of bizarre break down, “I just… haven’t really felt like myself today.”

That was as close to the truth as I dared to come to.

“It’s alright,” he soothed, “Do you want to talk about it?”

I shook my head. There was nothing to talk about and there was nothing he could do to make me feel better, so what was the point? My mood was my own damned fault anyway for being so weak and pathetic. My father’s hateful, accusing gaze flashed in my mind and I suddenly felt very cold. I waited for Heero to argue with that, to insist that I needed to tell him what was wrong, but he just kept smiling and picked up his sandwich.

“Ok,” he said, “but if you change your mind, just let me know.”

Amidst the cold and tightness choking it, my heart blossomed with love for him. How the hell does he do that? How does he know when to push and when to back off? When I need a hug or space? I don’t even know most of the time, but he always seems to have the right answer. I didn’t deserve that kind of love from anyone, let alone him. I deserved his ire and exasperation, but even when he _is_ frustrated with me, he barely lets me see it. He always insists that he isn’t annoyed with me, just the problem and I don’t understand how it is that someone so wonderful and perfect could be in my life, let alone _want_ to be with a loser like me. How could I ever tell him about how I’ve been feeling, this crippling depression and sorrow and grief? How could I ever let even a shard of that inflict him?

I ate the bananas and peanut butter even though I didn’t really want anything in my aching stomach, simply because Heero had brought them for me and that alone made them a comfort food. I was starting to feel better again until we had to separate for sixth period. Walking into my advanced cooking class without him and seeing Relena standing in the hallway there, glaring at me with disgust as Heero waved goodbye to me without even looking at her, I just felt all that coldness seep back into me, like some tide, like it had just been waiting for Heero to leave so it could back to where it belonged.

The rest of the day was like that. I stayed away from everyone, grateful that I had a station to myself and could lose myself in baking and our class discussion in my literature class, all the while feeling Relena’s simmering hatred for me behind my back, her desire to fuck with me and take me down a few pegs, but even she was too preoccupied with our assignment and the discussion to have much time to herself. I don’t really know why she or Lucy are in that class. From the time we were kids, she never seemed to have much of an interest or aptitude for reading, writing, or even spelling, but she keeps ending up in all my English classes. 19th Century Literature is an advanced placement class, so it’s not like she didn’t belong there, she works hard at it, but she doesn’t seem to like it very much, so it baffles me that she couldn’t find some other class that period. I wonder sometimes if she got into that class just so she could have another opportunity to make my life hell, but she had to have better things to do with her education. If anything, wouldn’t she want to spend less time around me if I pissed her off so much?

She _was_ very catty with me that day, shooting down everything I tried to add to the discussion when called upon, because I wasn’t even in the mood that day to want to talk regardless of if it was one of my favorite classes, doing her best to make me look like an idiot. I was so submerged in my malaise that I didn’t even care to fight back against her, even when I knew she was full of shit. However, I didn’t need to. A couple seniors in the class called her out and backed up my opinions, leaving her blushing with anger and embarrassment. That’s what I love about taking AP courses. My classmates aren’t there for recreation or just to fill a requirement. They’re there because they’re passionate about the subject, knowledgeable in it, or they really need to put down something impressive on their college applications and actually have something to say instead of coasting by with a passing grade.

On a good day, I would have found it hysterical and loved seeing _her_ be the one embarrassed for once, but I only found a small amount of amusement in it because I knew that it didn’t come close to evening the score between us. It just made me feel petty, to find any enjoyment in one moment’s humiliation after everything the bitch has done to myself and Quatre. Gym wasn’t much better. I got to be with Heero, but just having Alex and Trant there soured it for me. About the only good thing that happened that period was that, when Horner announced we would be playing badminton, Zechs and Mueller walked out of the class. To go where and do what, I didn’t care and Horner didn’t say a word about it. Alex and Trant didn’t even do anything to us, but their presence just reminded me of them chasing me to Heero’s house on Monday and what Zechs had done to me earlier that day.

I worried for a moment as we did our stretches that they might be planning something, that Zechs and Mueller were setting up an ambush, but decided that was unlikely. With Heero no longer stuck in detention, we could leave with the crowd that doesn’t take the bus and keep from getting caught by ourselves pretty easily. If we did catch wind of anything, we could hop on a bus or something. Sure, it could still happen, but I wasn’t getting any secretive vibes from any of the terrible quartet that day.

“Are you coming over my place after school?” Heero asked me as we volleyed the birdie back and forth.

By that point of my day, I was done with being near my classmates, socializing, all of it, and I think if Horner had made us do team activities, I might have found some way to skip the class or even get myself sent to the principal just to avoid it. So, playing one on one with ‘Ro was a huge relief. Even if he wanted to talk, I could force myself through it, even if just conversing with my best friend felt like trudging through thick molasses. I shrugged and hit the birdie back to him. That I was putting any effort at all in what we were doing was taking all of my energy and attention.

“Sure,” I said simply.

I didn’t agree to it because I wanted to be with him and knew I could get away with it for once. I love him and I was grateful for him making an effort to help me when I was feeling off, but I just wanted to be alone. I wanted to find some quiet place where I could mope or cry or whatever it would take to make me stop fucking feeling like this and I was just so exhausted around him, of putting on a smile and pretending I wasn’t as bad off as I was when I knew that it was pointless, he knew something was wrong anyway. But I didn’t want to go home. Even though I knew _he_ wouldn’t be there and I would have the house to myself, I didn’t want to go there. So, it was Heero’s place or the library and at least at his place, there would be less people and I could play with my cat for a few hours before going to work. Which was yet another thing I didn’t want to think about doing, being that close to other people again. Solo would want to talk to me and I didn’t have the strength to pretend things were fine with him, either. And be surrounded by a bunch of guys that can’t stand me. Oh, fucking joy. I was sure Lorathe would want a few choice words with me for taking off Monday, too.

If I could go back and change one thing about that day that wasn’t going to my house that morning, it would be going to Heero’s after school. I was in no condition to be around him and, for his sake, I should have told him no and just hid in the library until work or something. But I was blissfully clueless as we walked to his house that it would end up being such a cluster fuck. I thought I could hang out someplace that didn’t remind me of all the awful shit that had happened that day, all the ugly thoughts in my head, just relax, do my homework, grab a snack, play with my cat, and go to work. Hell, maybe in my own space, away from school and my father, I would finally shake this damned depression and antisocial behavior and act like a normal person again. For a moment, I actually forgot that things seldom turn out how I wish they would.

Things were ok at first. Normal. We were gifted with a house empty of everyone but our respective animals and a note from Mariela that there was some chili with roasted lamb I could take for dinner in the fridge. She was chaperoning an after-school field trip and Justin had an evening patient, so I wouldn’t see either of them before I went to work. I hated myself for it, but I felt relieved. I really didn’t feel up to dealing with Mariela’s upbeat personality and mothering tendencies or Justin’s creepy perception abilities. I felt like he, like his son, would know there was something wrong with me at a glance and whether he would ask me about it or not, I just couldn’t handle that. A quiet, but welcome house was exactly what I needed to lick my wounds. I don’t want to write this, but honestly, if Heero hadn’t been there, I might have been able to do that. What happened is not at all his fault, it’s mine, but that’s just a fact.

Heero made us a quick snack of grilled cheese and pickles, insisting on making it himself even though he had made us breakfast and we took it upstairs to his bedroom so we could start on our homework. He helped me with my calculus and I helped him with his English assignment, just like always. It was all so incredibly normal and predictable and everything that I needed to feel more at ease. It lasted about thirty-five minutes.

“You’re… going home after work in the morning, right?” Heero asked, hesitant and nervous to even bring the subject up, probably thinking that we were going to fight about it, but unable to help himself from fussing, I guess, “Are you sure you don’t want to crash here?”

He couldn’t even look me in the eye as he asked that and I felt incredibly annoyed at him. I had already told him that I wouldn’t be sleeping over until Saturday, but he just couldn’t let it go. I wanted to be angry and almost snapped at him, but it wasn’t because of anger. It was because he kept poking at a sensitive spot with a sharp stick, reminding me of things that I didn’t want to think about, decisions that I regretted and reopening wounds. I know he didn’t really realize what he was doing to me, just how much it hurt to force myself to go home because of my father, how much I struggled with balancing my attention between him and my family. He just worried, I knew that. But that didn’t stop me from being irritated about it. I could even see clearly on his face that he knew he shouldn’t be pestering me about it and he hated his weakness, but he still couldn’t stop doing it.

          I didn’t want to go home. Of course I fucking didn’t. Why the hell would I? What was waiting for me there anyway? Sleep? I wasn’t going to have any. As tired as I was, I knew that, even if my father didn’t come home, sleep was going to be a distant stranger. My mom would be asleep, so I would be alone. It’s funny, all day long I’ve been looking for that, solitude, and if I went home, I could finally have it. But thinking about going to that house with all of my heavy thoughts and feelings and being greeted with that deep, hollow silence made me feel painfully lonely and empty. No matter what I did, I would never be satisfied. I could never get what I wanted. I didn’t even know anymore what that was. Conflicted doesn’t even come close to what I was feeling.

          And then there was the crux of it: my father. What if he was there when I got home? What if he was awake and waiting for me? What if, as soon as I got to my room and turned off the light, he would come lumbering up, the monstrous beast in my life, and violate me again? Dirty me all over again. Put his hands on me, pant in my ear, touch me and hurt me until he could spill himself into me. What if it happened all over again? Could I take that? Could I survive it? I had thought before that I could, that I had already been through it so I just needed to stay the course like I do with everything else. But each time, it takes a little more from me. Each time, I think more and more that maybe I don’t even want to survive it anymore.

Did I really want to go home to all that shit? To him and his hatred of me, even if he didn’t fuck me? Even if he just hit me a little and sneered at me? Again, what exactly was I going home to that would make me want to be there? All I had were those memories and a puddle of dried semen on the floor. And there my boyfriend was, offering me an out. Offering me exactly what I wanted, but knew could never take. I think I hated him for a moment, even if it passed quickly. I hated that he had no idea what he was doing to me. I hated that he would be deep asleep when I was at work. I hated that his father didn’t rape him, didn’t dare lay a hand on him or do anything more than raise his voice because he loved him enough to never do that. To never _want_ to do that. And I hated him because he would never know how this feels, this terrible hopelessness and bitter loathing of everything and everyone. I hated him for ever telling me that he loves me. I hated him for our entire relationship and being so wonderful that I could never hope to measure up to him, for making everything so much harder, so much more painful. Of course, when the feeling passed, it only made me hate myself more for feeling such a horrible thing towards someone who didn’t deserve any of my shit, let alone my anger or jealousy. It was impossible to truly hate him anyway when he was the only reason I was even bothering with anything anymore.

“No,” I told him, “I need to go home.”

Even I almost winced at how empty and dead my voice sounded. Heero immediately went from nervous to worried and I didn’t really blame him. If he had ever spoken to me like that, I would have been concerned and sure that something was off immediately. Just great, now he was looking at me like he was searching for some great wound to mend and nothing I could say was going to convince him that I was fine. He stood up from his desk and sat on the edge of the bed next to me. I moved back reflexively, just like I had that morning when he had tried to kiss me, but he once again didn’t seem to notice that anything was off about it, probably thinking that I was moving over to give him room on the bed and not because my personal space barrier was twice as big that day.

“Duo, tell me what’s wrong,” he pleaded in a soft tone.

He slid his hand over mine, his skin warm and soft, and gently stroked my middle knuckle with his finger. The touch was both innocent and intimate, both breaking through my barriers and giving me room to breathe. Normally, a gesture like that from him would be enough to bring me to my knees and feel comforted. I would spill my guts to him, feeling that connection between us and being in this cozy, safe place that was our friendship. I might even want to touch him back, maybe kiss him, like a single touch from him woke up some secret thing in my head that drew me out of hiding. That day, however, it was all I could do not to pull my hand away from his like he had burned me, to just keep my hand there under his as my skin tingled unpleasantly and that screaming thing in me woke up again, wanting to retreat as far away as I could. Pretending like things were fine and his touch wasn’t loathsome to me was exhausting and I really hoped that whatever heart to heart we were about to have, it would be quick and he would let me have my space back.

“Nothing’s wrong,” I lied to his face, struggling to keep my voice steady and unemotional without sounding like a robot.

“Duo,” he repeated with a heavy sigh and slid his fingers between mine, linking our hands.

I felt phantom hands from a memory grab my wrist and pin it down as an unwanted weight pushed me down on a mattress that smelled foul, like mold and cheap pizza that wasn’t Heero’s or even my own. I pushed the stray memory away angrily, not even understanding why I was remembering something like that from months ago in that moment, what the last moment Trowa and I had shared before our break-up had anything to do with what Heero was doing right then. I felt panic clench around my heart as I fought against the strong urge to free my hand from Heero’s. Instead, I shoved my other hand under my leg where Heero couldn’t see it and clenched at his comforter tight enough to hurt.

“I know something wrong,” he insisted, “You’ve been so quiet lately. Distant. Not just today, but ever since we got back from vacation. I know there’s been something bothering you. Today it’s worse, isn’t it? You aren’t acting like yourself. You’re acting like a stranger and you’re so tense and distracted. Did something happen when you went home this morning? Is this about your father?”

I almost winced at how succinctly he had just hit things right on the head, prodding and poking at things that I did not want to think about without even knowing it.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said irritably, probably the most honest thing I had said to him all day.

“Why won’t you let me help you?” he demanded, starting to get frustrated with me and I couldn’t blame him, “If something is upsetting you-,”

As he continued to press, all while his hand was still entwined with mine, I began to feel claustrophobia wrap around me, like his words and his concern were walls closing in on me and it was getting hard to breathe. I didn’t want to talk about this, why couldn’t he understand that?! Why the fuck did he care about what had happened to me anyway?!

“Because it isn’t a big deal!” I snapped at him, starting to get angry and I didn’t understand why when he was just trying to help, “It doesn’t even matter! So what if I’m a little quieter than usual, it’s not like I’m talkative anyway!” there was another stab of guilt, another measurement between the two of us that I fall short of, “Why do you even care?!”

Heero stared at me in wide-eyed alarm and that look quickly deflated my sudden rant. What was wrong with me? Why was I yelling at him when none of this was his fault? Just taking out all my shit on him again.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered and rubbed at my eyes as I felt tears prick them, feeling tired and drained and I had no clue why, “I’m sorry, I just… I’m tired and I’m in a bad mood, I didn’t mean to snap…”

My words were lame and pathetic, but it was all I could think to say that wouldn’t come out the wrong way. Despite that, his expression softened back into love and concern.

“Hey,” he soothed and slid his other hand over my hip, not quite holding me, just curved around me, “It’s alright.”

Although it was Heero that was touching my hip, it was Zechs’s hand that I felt, grabbing me like I was some hooker he had bought for the night, Zechs’s foul breath on the back of my neck when there was nothing there, Zechs’s ugly words in my ear and I couldn’t stop the tension that ran through me as my body reacted without my consent to the memory.

“I’m not mad,” Heero assured me, “You can yell at me all you want if it makes you feel better, ok?” he lips quirked in a little, dry grin and I would have smiled a little back, guiltily, but I was too focused on where his hand was to be able to follow the flow of conversation.

He let go of my hip, but before I could take a relaxed inhalation, that hand was moving up my back. My father’s cock, hard, slimy, and too warm from friction and being inside of me trailed down my back, leaving a trail like some overgrown, monster snail. I breathed in a shuddering breath, disgusted in myself and my broken, sadistic mind that couldn’t get it’s shit back together, that I even could flash to something so nasty when I was with my boyfriend. That hand, so different from my father’s or Zechs’s, found my shoulder and curled around it. The sensation should have been pleasant, his exploration of my body in an attempt to comfort, but inside, I was screaming at his touch.

“But I do care,” he was saying, “I love you, Duo, you know that.”

He pulled his hand from mine, finally, but only so he could brush a stray lock of hair from my face and tuck it behind my ear. Finger tips grazed my cheek, close to my lips.

‘no,’ the thought bubbled up, a child protesting, slowly building to a tantrum.

Heero drew closer to me, his knee touching mine, until his face was only a foot away from mine, his eyes dark with desire and a desperate need to comfort me. Too close. He was too close and I was suddenly, horrifyingly, aware of his touch and how far into my space he was. If I were an animal, I would have been bristling in warning.

‘No no no no,’ that thought kept chanting, but as Heero got closer to me, it quickly changed to a scream, ‘Stop! Stop! You’ll get it on you! You’ll get dirty, too!’

But he wasn’t stopping. The world went weird for a moment, in slow motion, or maybe I was predicting things. Colors muted and my heart actually froze. I knew what he was going to do the second he put his hand on my leg and got close enough for me to feel his breath. But even though I knew, when he pressed his lips to mine, I was still, somehow, blindsided by it. I don’t know what I would have done if I had been able to react in time. Probably the same thing, but that he was suddenly there, his mouth on mine, his skin touching mine shocked me. In a way, I felt betrayed by something we had done every, single day. Something welcome, something that I loved. My own memories turned something beautiful into something ugly. I was a taught string covered in crawling, rotting skin and this wonderful, amazing person was tainting himself with me, touching the same skin that my father had ejaculated on like a napkin, the same skin that Zechs had grabbed and fondled and I wasn’t sure which thought it was, that I was perverting the boy that I loved or that that same boy was kissing me and wanted to do those gross things to me, too, but I snapped.

“Don’t touch me!” I cried out, nearly screaming, and slammed my hands against his chest, shoving him _hard_ , a lot harder than I had the previous night.

I came back to my senses the second my hands made contact with his body, realizing what had just happened with shock in the flash of a second and everything that happened after came to me through a thick fog of disbelief and shame. I might as well have just hit him with how violently I had pushed him away from me. That’s certainly what he looked like. That I had just hit him. His eyes went wide, startled and pained. Then Heero lost his balance and fell back. For a terrifying moment, I was so sure that he was going to hit his head on the corner of the bedside table, but miraculously he regained his balance, putting his hand behind him on the edge of the table and keeping himself from going off the bed. Not that it really mattered in regards to my horror at what I had just done. I had almost seriously hurt him, at least physically. He could cut his head wide open on that corner, all because of me. Because I had lost control. I was no better than my father, lashing out at someone mindlessly, hurting them because of my feelings. No, I _was_ my father. But emotionally? The damage was already done. I had beaten my boyfriend, not with a punch or even some harsh words, but with something even more permanent and damaging.

I can’t properly describe the shame and self-hatred I felt when Heero righted himself and looked at me with this terrible expression of confusion, shock, and betrayal. It kind of hit me all at once. I saw him kissing me, just like he always does, trying to help me feel better and show me some affection, and I saw myself freak out over nothing, saw myself push him. Saw him very nearly get seriously hurt. And why? Because of some memories. Some ghosts. Because I was insane and having problems that didn’t even make any sense. I had hurt the most wonderful person in the world because I’m broken and too weak to distance myself from him and now what I had feared would happen had: I had made him feel unwanted. I had betrayed him and pushed him away, just for being a good boyfriend.

All in an instant, I regretted the whole of our relationship. I saw the mistake I had made, what I had always dreaded would happen from the moment Heero confessed his feelings to me, and I had taken that chance anyway. And I had just broken something beautiful for that chance. Even if I hadn’t, even if he could forgive me and we could somehow move on from this, it was still there. The rot feeding on our relationship. Even if this wasn’t the thing that shattered us, I saw, just like I had when I had pushed him away a few nights ago, the end of it all. I never should have done this. I never should have tied myself to him this way, made him vulnerable and then struck him, right at his heart. I’m the worst sort of person there is. I tainted someone who deserves so much better than me, all because I was too selfish to tell him ‘no.’ I could have settled for us being friends, but I had reached for something someone like me had no right to. What had I done? What the hell had I done?

I couldn’t handle it. That look on his face. Knowing that that pain was because of _me_. Feeling so embarrassed even under the shame and loathing that I must look like a psychopath, that I couldn’t even tell him why it had happened because I’m so pathetic, I can’t risk him being disgusted with me. Hating myself for all of my shitty choices. Hating myself for being weak and out of control and that Heero had to bear the brunt of it for being stupid enough to fall in love with me. It was too much and I couldn’t make it right. Nothing I could do would ever make this right. I’m a freak and he had finally seen it, could finally understand the sort of person I really am. It was too much and, like the coward that I am, I couldn’t take it, seeing my nightmares come to life and knowing what I had done…

“I’m sorry,” I choked out roughly between sobs that threatened to bubble out, “I’m so sorry.”

I fled the room. I should have asked him if he was alright. I was sure he hadn’t hit his head or hurt himself, but I was losing it and fast, so what if he had? It’s what he would have done, made sure that I was ok, but I didn’t. Just like always, I only thought of myself and left the bedroom as quickly as my feet could carry me, but now that I had escaped, I didn’t really know what I was going to do. I was panicking, all this white noise and babbling thoughts in my head confusing me. I know that part of it was that I was still in the throes of my panic attack, but not all of it.

It was in me then to turn around, tell Heero that I couldn’t do this anymore, that I never should have done this to begin with and end it with him, if there was anything left after this to end, and run out of that house and never look back. But I was too much of a coward to even do that. I knew we were done, how could we not be? In a bad moment, I had turned him into every man that has ever hurt me. Dad, Trowa, Zechs… he had become them and I hadn’t been able to even force myself to let him kiss me. I had almost hurt him, all from a kiss. What if he tried to fuck me? Or even just tried to touch me like he had on Monday? What was I going to do? How could we ever stay together with that looming over my head? We couldn’t. I could see that now.

But I didn’t flee the house. I should have. It would have been the smart thing to do, just end this before I hurt ‘Ro more than I already had. But I felt so lost, unable to think clearly. I had nowhere to go. That really hit me, like a lance through my heart. I had nowhere to go. This place was all that I had left. That soon, I would have nothing at all was just too much of a terrible thought, causing havoc in my already too fragile heart. Instead, I escaped into the guest bedroom and shutting the door too hard behind me.

The colorful comforter on the neatly made bed and bright sunlight streaming through the window seemed to mock me. Everything felt like it was slipping through my fingers; my life, my family, my sanity, my emotions, Heero… I collapsed onto the bed and grabbed one of the pillows, crushing it to my chest. It was the only thing I had to comfort me. I could hear Pepper meowing and scratching outside the door, but I didn’t let her in. I didn’t deserve her. I didn’t deserve the comfort she would give me. My heart felt closed up, incapable of letting anything in just like how I had shut the bedroom door. I was so tired. Just… so tired of all of it. I cried silently and miserably into the pillow, my tears like a damned waterfall, fingers digging angrily into the soft thing, my breath shuddering, threatening to start sobbing at any moment, but I was even too tired for a good cry, so my tears just dripped down my cheeks as my chest tightened and hurt with fear and bitterness.

I felt so broken. Even more than I had that morning when I had been freaking out over my father’s actions. I felt like a thing, a doll made of bits of cloth and dirty buttons, filthy and used and not coming close to resembling what I was supposed to be. I shouldn’t be there, in that house, after what I had just done. You may call me overly melodramatic, but I felt that strongly. I felt like I had betrayed something pure and shining and that I had stayed while Heero was probably confused and hurting and angry with me felt so arrogant and self-centered, but I didn’t have the energy to even get out of that bed at that point.

‘I wish Dad never saved me back then,’ I thought and the thought was as miserable as my crying was, full of regret and hopelessness.

He never should have. Why, if he hated me so much, why bother to save me that day? Why couldn’t he just have let my blood leak out of me until I ran out and died? I wish he had. I wished it desperately. If he had just let me die, I never would have known how my father really saw me. I never would have known what it was like to be raped by him, to be turned into a whore. I never would have dated Trowa and learned just what a lousy excuse for a human being I am. I never would have found out what a freak I am. I never would have felt all those dreams about finding someone to love, having a normal relationship die. I never would have found out how painful and disappointing sex is. I never would have met Heero and ruined his life and his heart. He would have been so much happier, so much better off never having met me. Mom would still be a drunk, but she would never have to know what my father would have done to me. I ruin everything. I knew that at thirteen. So why couldn’t I have been successful in erasing myself from the world? Why do I have to be such a failure at everything, even that?

I remembered that weekend, how happy Heero and I had been. Things hadn’t been great, I had still had doubts, but I had felt like we still had time. I had felt such hope that I could fix things. I could be brave for him, I could make myself be the person that he wanted. Even if I didn’t like sex, I could pretend. If I could do it for Trowa, surely I could do it for ‘Ro, the person that I actually cared about. Had I seriously thought that I could just… beat this wall in my head and in my body? After all these years? I couldn’t even cope with my father’s abuse, how the hell had I ever thought I could be strong enough to get past this thing that’s a part of me?!

It’s all dead and gone now. All of my hopes. What little strength I ever had. It didn’t take long. But then again, blind optimism has never been my strong suit. I’ve always been a realist and I so clearly see the path laid out before me. I have since I told Heero I would give ‘us’ a chance. The only possible future for our relationship. My fear of intimacy defeated me. I wasn’t strong enough. Not to beat it and not… not strong enough to keep him. The one thing I’ve wanted to keep, the only thing that really mattered and I wasn’t even good enough to hold on to it. I didn’t love him enough, clearly. He loved me enough to put up with all my shit, to make promises that went against his moral code, to worry about me all the time and take beatings for me, to slow down our relationship, to wait so I could catch up to him. He gave me everything. And I didn’t love him enough to give him what he wanted, even just a little piece of it. I wasn’t even a ragdoll. I was nothing. I was a piece of shit. Worthless. Useless. Weak. Just like my father says. He might be wrong about my intelligence, but he isn’t wrong about that.

Just as I was starting to lose the battle against my crying, I heard the bedroom door open and I froze. Every muscle in my body tensed and I bit down on my cries, embarrassed enough that the cloth of the pillow was already drenched. I heard Heero pause at the door, probably taking in the ball I was curled up in, but he wasn’t saying anything or making any kind of sound to tell me what he was feeling or thinking. He was probably disgusted with me, freaking out over a fucking _kiss_ , almost pushing him off the bed, and then running to cry like a baby. My father would have hit me for being such a loser. Heero was just silent.

After a minute, he walked over to the bed and each sound of his footsteps made my heart beat faster and faster. I squeezed my eyes shut, not wanting to know what he thought of me, not to see that disappointment or anger at me on his handsome face. It would kill me. I can take just about anything, but him thinking those things about me wasn’t one of them. Again, for about the billionth time since we had gotten together, I thought that I never should have done this, that this entire relationship was a mistake from day one. Did any of the happiness I had felt with him really matter when I was responsible for hurting him? If he felt even an ounce of what I was feeling then, it was too much.

I opened my eyes again when the bed on the opposite side from where I was laying dipped instead of him yelling at me or, somehow worse, just walking out of that room. I didn’t dare look at him, though. I didn’t feel like I could move at all, like his mere presence and my humiliation had frozen me into a stone. I could just barely see his form from the corner of my eye, but it didn’t tell me anything, just that he was sitting up straight next to me, looking at me. My heart beat frantically as he shifted, yelling at me to just run. It swore at me that I should have locked the door, why the hell didn’t I lock the door? Because I had felt like I didn’t have the right to do something like that. This wasn’t my home. I had wanted it to be, but in that moment when I had fled from Heero’s room, I had never felt more like a stranger in someone else’s home.

Not saying a word, not raising his voice or scolding me or demanding to know what the hell was going on or accusing me of anything, Heero reached over across the bed and I flinched, thinking he was going to hit me. I didn’t really believe something like that. I know he would never really strike me, even if he was angry, and I felt ashamed for even having that reaction, for thinking something so terrible. But I couldn’t help it. I deserved to be hit for what I had done, so my body just reacted, assuming that that was what Heero was doing even if I knew better. It had been hit in situations like these, situations where I had fucked up royally, too many times to feel safe, even if it was someone that I trusted with all of my heart. Trust really didn’t have anything to do with the emotional state I was in.

Heero paused, obviously seeing my flinch and unsure of what to do. I had probably hurt him again. That knife of guilt and self-hatred buried itself deeper into my chest and guts. I’m actually quite amazed that it hasn’t run me through yet. The worst part of it was that I knew exactly what he was feeling, just how badly I had hurt him not just once, but now twice in the span of just ten minutes. I know what it feels like to have someone you care about see you as repulsive, unattractive, to push you away, if not physically, then certainly emotionally. When Trowa had finished fucking me in that garage and called me a freak, every time he had told me that I wasn’t the one that he wanted, every time he had belittled me for my appearance or personality, for everything that wasn’t good enough for him… yeah, I know what that feels like.

Only, I hadn’t been in love with him like Heero is with me, so I can only imagine the severity of that pain. That he was even in the same room with me without screaming at me was a bit amazing. But then again, he’s always been better than me. Better than Trowa. Better than everyone. And that’s the sort of person whose heart I keep ripping out. Heero scooted as far to the edge of the bed as he could and my heart leapt with terror and loss. He was going to leave. That little flinch had told him, loud and clear, that I didn’t want him around. I had hurt him too much and he was done with me. Just like Trowa and my father and Quatre. It wasn’t anything that I didn’t deserve, but he was going to leave me. My heart lurched in this intense, throbbing pain that I’ve never experienced before. I don’t even know what to call the emotion, only that it was horrible and I never wanted to feel it again.

In my panic, I nearly rolled over and tried to plead with him to stay. Grovel, hold him, whatever it would take to keep him from abandoning me. I’d even cut off all my hair and one of my hands, too, if that was what it took. Stupid, right? I had been thinking about how we never should have been together in the first place, how I should just break up with him to spare him any more agony and then I had a thought like that. That’s how selfish I am. I can drive myself crazy with doubt over ending things, but when he tries to end them himself, I freak the fuck out.

But Heero didn’t move any further than he had and reached out towards me again, this time more slowly and carefully. I squeezed my eyes shut again, waiting for… I don’t know. Him to grab me. Shake me. Demand to know what the fuck my problem was.

His hand settled gently on my head. I blinked my eyes open in confusion, not understanding what he was doing, only for them to slip half-closed in pleasure when he, very lightly and tenderly, stroked my hair, all the while not leaving from his awkward perch on the edge of the bed. He hadn’t been trying to leave, I realized, fresh tears pouring down my face, he had been giving me more space, trying not to crowd me while also trying to find a way to comfort me. Comfort _me_ , like I was the one hurt and not him. Like I was the one that mattered and not the piece of shit that had messed up. I was the one who should be comforting him, not the one crying. The whole moment felt both achingly normal, him trying to make me feel better, and surreal given that he should have been furious with me. But no, he was acting like he always was, like if I had been upset over my father beating me and not that I had shoved him and rejected him. God, what would I have to do to get this boy to stop loving me?

There were a million things that I needed to say. The truth, for one. “I’m sorry I’m so screwed up” would be the top one, along with “please don’t break up with me,” “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” and “I can’t do this anymore.” But two of those were a bit contradictory and the others just sounded pathetic. ‘Sorry’ did cut it. Saying that I hadn’t meant to do it didn’t change the fact that I had and, in all honesty, probably would again. It wasn’t like anything was going to change. I wasn’t going to stop feeling this way, as much as I try to. What was I going to do? Tell Heero that even kissing me when I was like this is out of bounds? It all seemed so pointless. If I couldn’t even get past this one thing, how were we ever going to stay together? I know that answer now and anything I could say to make it better just sounded like shit. As for the truth, well… even then, even with all the damage I had already done, I couldn’t give him that, either.

But even with all those thoughts in my head, even knowing I hadn’t been able to handle his touch just minutes ago, him running his hand over my hair, all while keeping his distance out of respect, even when he didn’t know the reason, was oddly comforting. Just knowing that he cared about me, that he was willing to brave the beast after getting bitten because _I_ was hurting made me love him more than I ever had before. That simple gesture soothed some of the prickly feelings and yearning for distance that I had, as well as the severity of my guilt. I still hated myself, but it felt less like something was eating away at my insides and more like a constant, throbbing pain, something bearable.

Pepper decided that it was safe to come in and jumped onto the bed, settling into my arms when I released my death grip on the pillow. Unlike people, her closeness and contact was welcome and nothing that I felt skittish around. I closed my eyes, resting my cheek against her familiar fur, and felt my body start to relax. The tension just bled out of me as I realized, like a slap to the face, that _this_ was what I had needed all day without knowing it. Not to be far away from everyone. Not to push everyone, even the ones that I loved, away and find some dark, lonely hole to crawl into. Just this. The two of us, myself and someone that loved me, respected me, a safe connection and comfort. Quiet, but not silence. A closeness that wasn’t suffocating or hurtful. Just that hand in my hair and that gentle, soothing presence by my side. He didn’t even demand to know what was wrong or try to pressure me into talking about it. He was so understanding and perfect, letting me breathe while also letting me know he was there for me without a single word spoken. I didn’t deserve him, but I had him, I just didn’t know why.

After a few minutes, my tears finally stopped and my eyes slid closed again. My breathing was even and for the first time since I had gone home that morning, I felt… not quite normal, but close to it. At ease. I have no clue how he does it, how something so simple could break through terrible feelings nothing else has helped to disperse. Or how he knows what to do when I’m like this, whether I’m hysterical like I was Monday or unwilling to talk to him or be around him, as closed up as an oyster. Maybe he doesn’t, maybe he’s just lucky, though I don’t know if I believe that. As my heart and panic and fear settled, the embarrassment came back tenfold. I kept seeing what had just happened in my head, him trying to kiss me and my freaking out and pushing him so hard he had almost hit his head.

I felt so ashamed, so out of control, but I also realized how stupid I was to think that he would break up with me over that. I had told him so many horrible things about myself, he had seen me punch a wall and heard me tell him about trying to kill myself and almost killing my father. If he got through all of that and still tells me that he loves me, it was a bit unlikely he would lose that love over something like this, even if I thought he should. Heero’s feelings for me are as stubborn as he is and while that should have comforted and warmed me, it mostly scared me because I didn’t know what to do. If he would just fall out of love with me, it would make all of this so much easier. I knew that it wasn’t fair to him, but I knew I was dragging him down and this needed to stop, but I didn’t have the spine, it seems. So as unfair as it was to put this decision on his shoulders, that seemed like the only option I had. But I didn’t know what I needed to do to get him to see what a terrible person and boyfriend I really am. I felt like either way, I was ripping his heart out and every time I came close to feeling the resolve to do that, I chickened out.

We stayed like that for a long time. I don’t know exactly how long, but long enough that my being late for work felt like a real possibility. Still, with Heero’s hand on me and Pepper’s soft purrs vibrating through my chest, I easily could have fallen asleep if I dared to. On one hand, with everything that had happened that day, I just didn’t care about work. I didn’t have the energy to care and a part of me wanted to call out again, too tired to deal with it. But on the other, I had missed enough days of work and we needed the money. More than that, I didn’t have any more excuses to give Leneski and felt that if I kept pushing my luck with him, he was going to fire me. I didn’t have the luxury to mope around, feeling sorry for myself, or even to take a nap. I opened my eyes and looked at the clock. Just shy of four. Not as late as I had feared, but late enough that I really couldn’t continue my petrified wood routine. And Heero deserved something from me, even if it was just pointless sentiments. Work didn’t really matter, I thought. Only Heero mattered and I didn’t know how to make this right between us.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I murmured so lowly that my voice was almost inaudible, rough from my crying.

His hand stilled for a moment before resuming it’s soft, petting motions.

“I understand,” he said, keeping his voice as soft and gentle and safe as his touch, making it impossible for me to tell what he was actually thinking and feeling, “It’s alright.”

I shifted under his hand and sat up, transferring my cat to the bed next to me.

“No, it’s not,” I argued, trying to keep any heat out of my voice when I was the one I was pissed with and didn’t want him to think he was the problem. He was never the problem, “Heero, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry... for acting this way and… and what I did, pushing you like that,” I swallowed roughly, tears threatening to come again, but I fought against them, “I didn’t mean to. I don’t know why I reacted like that…”

I was scared out of my mind of what I would find, my hands nearly shaking again, but I turned a little so I could look back at my boyfriend. He was still sitting on the very edge, his expression completely raw and open and vulnerable to what I might say, because he was hurt or because he didn’t know what to expect, I’m not sure, but it made a guilty pain shoot through my chest. He was so off-balance and it was all my fault. I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen him look like that, so unsure of himself, so out of character for how he usually was. And still, he managed to give me a smile, dimmer than one he usually had, but no less sincere.

“I know you didn’t,” he said with that same accepting, soft tone, and I could see the lie there, how much he wanted to say ‘you didn’t hurt me,’ but he was smart enough to know that it wouldn’t fool me, “You just… you scared me, Duo.”

I looked away from him for a moment, shame constricting my heart and I felt like I couldn’t breathe, swallowing roughly around a thick emotion. I felt very cold suddenly.

“I know,” I murmured and clenched my hands in my lap, nails digging into skin. I wanted to scratch at my arms again, but for a completely different reason this time.

I glanced at him again and saw the naked desire to touch me, to be closer to me and reassure himself that everything was fine. He might be understanding, but he still didn’t know what to do. In a situation like this, we would usually talk and he would hold me or kiss me and everything would be ok again. But his being in my personal space was the issue, so he was floundering. Being across the bed from each other certainly wasn’t helping things and I felt almost as awkward as he did. I scooted over and looked back at him, giving him the wordless ok to sit next to me. Pure relief flooded his face, making me feel like an even bigger shit for denying him something so basic in the first place, for making him doubt himself and what he wanted and needed.

He walked around the bed and sat on my side, but was still careful to give me a few feet of space. I didn’t know how to feel about it. Love for him that he was still trying not to crowd me or loathing for myself. There was space between us now, both literal and figurative, and it was only because of me that it existed. Usually he would always like pressing his leg to mine when we sat next to each other, but he was being so cautious and aware now, making sure no part of him was close to touching me. I wanted to get closer to him, to show him that things were fine. And they sort of were. Maybe not between us, but with me. I didn’t feel alright, but that aversion had faded, at least around him. His closeness to me, for some bizarre reason, did not bother me like it had just half an hour ago. I couldn’t figure out why. I still felt shy and ugly and shaky, but the prospect of him holding my hand wasn’t making me scream. But I was too scared to try to initiate contact. Not of him, or even sending him some signal that I wasn’t aware of, but myself. What if I wasn’t alright? What if I did try to touch him and that feeling came back? What if I did something worse than pushing him off a bed? What if I hit him?

“I’m sorry,” I apologized again when neither of us spoke for a minute, lamely, but unsure of what else to say and not liking the silence, “I…”

“You get like this sometimes, don’t you?” he said.

It wasn’t really a question, but it wasn’t an accusation, either, and it should have been. I gave him a questioning look, not sure exactly of what ‘this’ meant. Crazy? Overly emotional? Weird? Frustrating?

“Withdrawn,” he clarified, “Quiet. Not wanting anyone near you. Not… not wanting to be touched.”

I had to look away from him again, choosing my hands on my lap. I nodded. This might have been the first time that I had done something like that when he had been kissing me, but it was far from the first time that I had pushed him. Just the other night and before, when I had been sleep-deprived and angry. It sure as hell wasn’t the first time I had shied away from his touch or been closed off and silent around him. He was used to me having moods like that, but never this severe. Never towards him personally.

“Hey, I get it,” he tried again to assure me, “It’s completely understandable, you don’t need to feel bad about it.”

Why, I nearly screamed at him, why is it understandable?! And how can you possibly understand it?! You’re normal, you don’t feel this way! You don’t flinch at someone’s touch or want to scream just to walk through a crowd of people because you’re having a bad day! You’ve never pushed me away or made me feel unwanted!

“No, it isn’t!” I snapped at him, unable to stop myself even though he wasn’t the one that I wanted to yell at, “It is not fucking ‘understandable’! I shouldn’t be like this!” I couldn’t help a note of frustration and misery from entering my tone, “I shouldn’t be so irritable and snapping at everyone all the time! I shouldn’t hate being touched like it’s some horrible thing!”

“Everyone needs their space sometimes, Duo,” he still tried to soothe me, “Everyone has times when they just want to be by themselves and need some solitude and quiet. _Everyone,_ especially someone who isn’t overly social to begin with and is used to people hurting them, can feel like that. It’s nothing for you to be ashamed of.”

          “Yeah?” I challenged angrily, unable to understand how he could be so accepting of this, how he could possibly say that this was normal when I sure as hell didn’t feel normal, “Does everyone feel that way around their boyfriend?! Does everyone push someone away when they’re just trying to make them feel better?!”

          “Yes,” he said firmly, his gaze steady and cool, stopping my rant as I stared at him with bewilderment, “Just because I’m your boyfriend, it doesn’t mean that I have to be glued at your side every second and it sure as hell doesn’t mean that you don’t have a right to want to be alone or feel that you’re a freak just for not wanting me to kiss you! You’re still your own person, love, and there is nothing wrong with needing space, even from me. It doesn’t mean you don’t care about me or are rejecting me.”

          I shook my head, refusing to believe him. This was not normal. The way I was feeling, how I had pushed him away, none of it was ok! He should be furious with me for it, not defending my actions to me. He could insist things were fine and my feeling this way was somehow justified because my father beat me or my classmates made my life hell, but all I had to do was remember that look of shock and betrayal when I had shoved him and how close he had come to having a serious injury.

          “I could have hurt you!” I cried and that was all it took to break the damn again, warm tears coursing down my face, “Don’t you get that?! I almost did! If I had pushed you just a little bit harder, you could have cracked your head on that damned table! And no matter how I was feeling, it doesn’t excuse shoving you like that! No, I _did_ hurt you!”

          “You didn’t,” Heero insisted frantically and I saw that need again to touch me, to hold me and tell me everything was alright, to use his body to make things better since his words weren’t making it through to me, but with a saint-like restraint, he didn’t. He stayed right where he was, “You didn’t hurt me, Duo. I didn’t hit the table. Even if you _had_ pushed me harder, I wouldn’t have. I think you know that, even if you won’t admit to yourself. I could have pushed you just as hard and you would have steadied yourself, too. It’s a physical reaction, a reflex. At worst, I would have fallen on the floor, but I never would have hit that table. You’re punishing yourself over a fear, not something that almost happened! There isn’t a mark on me.”

          No, no that wasn’t true. I saw how close he had come to the edge of the table, he was wrong! Wasn’t he?

          “That’s not what I meant!” I shot back and his dejected sigh cut me off before I could start my rant back up again.

          “I know what you meant,” he admitted and there was a slight sadness to his tone, “Duo…” he ran a hand through his thick, dark hair, “Yes, you hurt me. I didn’t understand what was happening. I thought you were mad at me about something and you didn’t want me to kiss you because of it and yeah, that hurt. A lot. But you pushing me? I didn’t care about that. It was what you said. “Don’t touch me.” I thought…” he looked down at the floor, “I don’t even know what I thought. You’ve been so distant lately… so… sad and upset and you won’t talk to me about what it is. I kept thinking over everything I’ve done and said lately, trying to find what I did wrong. But when you apologized and ran away… you looked so terrible and I knew it was something else. And when I remembered what you’ve been like all today… how closed off you’ve been, how much trouble you seemed to be having to get through our classes… It really didn’t have anything to do with me, did it?”

          I shook my head.

          “No,” I whispered and wanted to beat the shit out of myself for ever letting him think, even if it was just for a second, that he had done _anything_ wrong, ever, “Heero, I swear, it was never about you. You’ve been great, you always have been. It’s me. It’s me and this day and all these other things… Today was shit long before I came to your place before school and I carried it around with me the whole time. It just got worse and worse until… I just snapped, I guess. I never should have lashed out at you! I never should have taken all my problems out on you! You didn’t do anything wrong! This was my fault, all of it. I’m garbage,” I sniffed, feeling tears dripping down my nose and wiped at them with the back of my hand, hating that I was crying in front of him for what had to be the billionth time.

          “Don’t say that!” he protested, his eyes dark with pain and frustration at seeing me cry, “You aren’t garbage!”

          “I feel like garbage,” I murmured, glancing away for a moment, “I don’t know how you can stand me.”

          His face suddenly eased and blossomed into the bright, affectionate smile that I was used to seeing from him, all his uncertainty gone in the blink of an eye.

          “I love you,” he said so simply, so easily that it actually shocked me. It always does, hearing those words from him. I might know it, see the evidence of it every day, but it still makes my heart throb to hear him say it without any doubt, “If you’re hurting, I hurt, too. I wish I could make you feel better. I hate it so much, seeing you in such pain, how scared and miserable you were, how much you blame yourself. But this isn’t your fault. I wish I could make you see that. You shouldn’t feel like this because you’re having problems. Yes, you shouldn’t have shoved me or yelled at me, but I don’t hate you. You aren’t garbage and it hurts me so much when you call yourself that. I get it. Maybe not all of it, but enough. I know you feel claustrophobic sometimes and you bottle all these feelings up inside until something like this happens and it shouldn’t.

“I wish you would talk to me, but I won’t make you if you don’t want to. I just want you to know that I care about you and there’s nothing for you to feel guilty or bad about. You didn’t hurt me, not really. I think you hurt yourself a lot more. I can handle you pushing me away, but sweetheart, I’m not a mind reader. Even when I know that something’s wrong, I don’t always know what it is or why. I need you tell me when you’re like this, when you need me to give you space or not touch you. I never want to see you like that again, so scared and panicked! I want to help, but I need you to give me a clue once in a while, ok?”

My tears grew thick and heavy and my hands weren’t enough to wipe them away, although I tried. My breath hitched, but I didn’t sob. He was just so… too good for me. I didn’t deserve those kind, sweet words. I didn’t deserve him telling me that he loved me or that he hurt just because I was in pain or how much he wanted to help me. I didn’t deserve his understanding or kindness. I couldn’t even tell him that I loved him back, though I wanted to so badly. The love I felt for him then was so powerful. Too powerful, really. It felt impossible to contain or ignore, but I still didn’t say it. I somehow knew, deep inside, that those words would erase everything, every hurt, every bit of damage I had done, perfectly mending the space between us.

So, why didn’t I? If I loved him and I wanted to do right by him, why didn’t I say it? Because while a part of me wanted to, wanted to make it all better, my pragmatic, logical side rose its head and for once, it wasn’t strong or responsible or full of common sense. It wasn’t my ally. It was ugly and twisted and cold and I hated it in an instant, even though I couldn’t shake it. It told me that erasing that space wasn’t the answer. Widening it was. If I had any hope of making a clean break, of not completely disemboweling the both of us when the end came, telling him that I loved him wasn’t going to make anything better. It was only going to make everything a whole lot worse. I hated it so much, but I knew it was right. If I kept backpedaling, ignoring what was happening between us, pretending like things were fine and burrowing myself deeper and deeper into his heart, how was he going to feel when I ripped it out of him? I wasn’t being kind, I was being weak and cruel and if I had only had a spine, I would have ended things right there with him. But if I couldn’t do that, at least I couldn’t make things any worse, right?

Heero must have seen something truly dark and disturbing on my face, because he looked intensely worried and sad again and I saw one of his hands twitch with the desire to touch me and brush my tears away. I was so weak, I couldn’t even keep him from seeing how troubled I was. I couldn’t even speak the words that I was alright. There was a war of emotions and desires going on in those dark blue eyes, the desperate need to do something, the need to hold me, and his frustration at himself that he wasn’t doing this right, he wasn’t getting through to me, wasn’t making it better. He was, but he didn’t get that and I knew even less what to do than he did.

“Can I hug you?” he asked me very shyly and meekly, completely unlike himself, but still faltering and confused around me.

I rubbed one hand on my pants nervously where he wouldn’t be able to see the gesture. It was odd. An hour ago, the thought of him touching me would have made me feel shy and withdrawn. But that feeling in my skin, like it was crawling with insects and I had to rip it off and if he dared to touch me, it would make him dirty, too, or remind me of things that I couldn’t bear to remember was… not quite gone, but dim and fading. The thought of his arms around me, pressing his body to mine didn’t send me into screaming terror, it… it sounded kind of nice actually. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I did want him to hug me. Craved it. I wanted him to hold me more than anything else, if only him. How was that possible? How could I go from pushing him away one moment and wanting to curl up in his arms like a child, to be comforted that way the next?

My own emotions didn’t make any sort of sense to me. I was completely nuts and I didn’t even know if I could trust myself. What if the second he did touch me, that feeling turned out to be a lie and I pushed him away again? How would he ever be able to trust me again? That he still could was a total miracle. But I nodded anyway, only knowing what I felt in that second and it was a desperate, almost insane need to lose myself in his embrace and desire to make everything better.

Heero’s face brightened with pure relief and I was too weak to fight against a look like that, even as half of me felt good that I had done something right and the other half sighed in exasperation at my spinelessness. My boyfriend sat closer to me on the bed, though he was still careful to leave a good foot and a half between us, probably thinking that I might flee anyway. It was in the back of my mind to do just that, but his closeness didn’t make me feel like flinching and when he, slowly and cautiously, put his arms around me, that prickling feeling in my skin and the claustrophobia didn’t return. My heart beat quickened, but it always does when Heero touches me.

It was awkward for a moment. I had been distancing myself all day from human contact, so even just being hugged was a bit weird. But then something clicked in my head. Maybe the knowledge that it was Heero and it was alright. Maybe how much I needed this or even just how good it felt. And it did feel good. I felt something tight and terrible crumble away from inside my chest and I could breathe for the first time since I had left Heero’s house that morning. It felt more than just good, it felt right. It felt like the only right decision I had made all day. His hands rubbed at my back in the same soothing way he had stroked my hair and I felt myself relax even more. His body against mine was warm and welcome and familiar, it seemed crazy that I had fought against it, that only a little while earlier, this would have made me want to scream. This was what I wanted to give up? Why? And how could I possibly do that? My cowardice made perfect sense in that embrace, my inability to do what I knew had to be done because I couldn’t think about going on without his support and love.

It hit me in a rush, how I had seriously believed that I had lost him. It was silly, then, that I could have thought something like that, but I still felt like I almost had and I wrapped my arms around him tightly in desperation and near panic, like we had just almost been in a car accident and not because I had acted like an asshole. I pressed my wet face into his shoulder and he must have sensed something, because his own arms tightened around me to match my own, his fingers clutching at the back of my shirt with equal desperation. Maybe he realized it, too, that this had been a close call, that something bad could have happened. Had nearly happened. I felt so stupid, but I couldn’t deny the realness of my feelings and panic from that morning, not while I was still teetering on the edge of it, unsure if I was going to be able to move past it or fall back into it with a mere puff of air, or the very real possibility that a day like this could happen again, that it probably _would_ happen again. How long did I have before Heero stopped being so understanding about my fragile, insane moods and got sick of having to talk me down like this?

I saw that ticking clock in my head again and I was so torn, so tired and confused and weary that I didn’t know anymore if it was a good thing or a bad thing. My head tried to measure the arguments, Heero breaking up with me because he was sick of me versus me not wanting to stay in this relationship until that happened, wanting desperately to stay to get as many of these peaceful, affectionate moments between us as we could towards the end versus not wanting to hurt him anymore than I had, but it was too much. I felt like I had been in flight mode for too long and I was shutting down, just surrendering to gravity, to Heero and what my baser instincts were telling me, because I couldn’t do whatever the ‘right’ thing was, couldn’t even consider it anymore. A part of me didn’t care about the consequences either way, it just wanted to stay in his arms forever and pretend like the rest of it, my guilt, my father, even Heero’s pain and worry, didn’t exist, creating this perfect bubble around us.

But, like everything else in my life, I knew it had to end, if for no other reason than I had responsibilities, even if I didn’t want to even care about them. I stayed in Heero’s arms until I felt steadier, more likely to survive the rest of my day without bursting into stupid tears or punching someone. I could actually _feel_ my boyfriend’s disappointment when I pulled away from him. He studied my face, looking for something. Probably any sign that I wasn’t ok, that I was going to fall apart again.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized, downcast and still feeling depressed, not even really about anything specifically, it was just this somber feeling in my chest, “I’m so sorry, ‘Ro, for acting this way…”

“It’s alright, Duo,” he tried to assure me, “You don’t need to apologize. We’re a team, remember? We help each other through this stuff, always. I’m just glad that I could help in some way for once.”

“You always help me,” I told him, putting my hand on his knee, “Heero, you don’t even realize how much you help when I’m like this. I don’t even know how I would have been able to get through today if not for you.”

He smiled shyly at me and I felt such incredible relief that my words had gotten through to him, that my assurances actually did make him feel better. Did he really have no clue what he does to me? I thought about telling him the truth, that some days, he’s the only reason why I can get out of bed. If he hadn’t come into my life when he had, I’m pretty sure I would have offed myself. For real this time. I don’t think I would have been able to hold on if he hadn’t given me a hand to grab, if he hadn’t given me a reason to keep going when everything else had seemed so dark and terrible. It still does, but he always keeps me level, always helps me see that there is some light in my life, I just have to look for it and hold on to it. But it’s easier with him. He _is_ that light. That one day that light is going to be snuffed out terrifies me more than anything else, even my father. But I didn’t say any of that because, if it terrifies me, how the hell is he going to take it? I’ve seen how he’s reacted to knowing about my past suicide attempts and I don’t want him to know how close I’ve really gotten, the things that live in my head. He’d never let me out of his sight or worry himself right into a heart attack. And I never want to put that kind of pressure and responsibility on his head.

“I should really get ready for work,” I sighed, about the last thing I felt like doing other than going home.

“Are you sure?” Heero frowned in concern, “I mean, are you alright to go into work if you’re feeling like this? Maybe... maybe it would be better if you stayed here, at least until your second shift. You didn’t eat much all day, either.”

To my credit, I didn’t snap at him for his fussing, which told me more than anything else that my mood was starting to ease. I shook my head.

“I’m feeling better, really,” I insisted, “And I’ve taken too many days off work as it is. I can’t push my luck anymore. I’ll be fine going in.”

“Will you at least come here after work?” he pleaded and the desperation in his eyes was painful to see, doubly so when I already knew what my answer was, “Please? I worry that you aren’t sleeping well when you go home and you really need your rest, especially after today.”

His blue eyes studied me again and I realized he was taking in how pale and worn I probably looked. I felt a spark of irritation at him, but it was a lot fainter than it usually is. I don’t know why. Maybe I had been tense and irritable for too long, but I couldn’t muster any real annoyance at him and his overprotective tendencies.

“I can’t,” I said with very real pain in my chest, wishing that there was something I could give him, some reassurance or promise, “I’m sorry, but I can’t. You know I want to, but…”

“I know,” he smiled sadly, “I know, and I’m sorry that I keep pressuring you, I just… I worry about you.”

His eyes briefly flashed to my face before he guilty looked away, but not fast enough for me not to catch the fact that he was looking at the faint mark on my cheek from where my father had slapped me that morning. He obviously thought that it was the recent for my… space issues. Which of course only made me remember that part of my morning. I had been so consumed by everything else my father had done, I hadn’t done a whole lot of thinking about his ultimatum, only the look in his eyes when he had given it to me, how much hate was in him for me that he would punish me for it. I still had no clue what I was going to do about the whole limited showers thing and I didn’t want to think about how I was going to feel (or look or smell) later on that week, but at least I had taken a few showers that day, so I shoved it into the ‘worry about it later’ folder in my head. That folder is bulging and overflowing lately.

A low, childish whine drew my attention from my boyfriend and I found Kanuck sitting at my feet, looking up at me with big, soulful eyes, pleading for something. When he saw that he had mine and his owner’s full attention, he planted his head right in my lap and whined louder. Heero chuckled.

“Kanuck’s worried about you, too,” he said with amusement.

The dog huffed and it sounded so much like he was agreeing that the dumb thing won a short laugh out of me, too. After so long moping and feeling down and sorry for myself, it felt so strange to laugh, but the animal had somehow managed to make me feel a bit lighter in a way no human could. I guess that’s why people have pets and I have to admit that feeling my cat pressed against my leg had helped to comfort me and bring me down from my tense and anxious state.

“Alright, alright,” I teased, petting the top of his head like I knew he wanted, making him boneless, “But you and your ‘dad’ can give me all the wide-eyed, pitiful looks you want, I still can’t stay.”

          Heero shot me one of those looks and got another small laugh, looking far too proud of himself.

          “Fine,” he conceded, “But will you please text me this time? Even if it’s just a single word statement so I don’t think you’ve gotten hit by a car or something.”

          I sighed heavily, pretending to be put upon.

          “I’ll try,” I joked and he shook his head at me in exasperation, “and you don’t need to worry about my eating. Your mom packed food for me, remember? I’ll be fine, Heero, really. I’m sorry I scared you.”

          He didn’t look at all convinced, but let me off the bed, keeping a lingering hand on my back until the very last moment. I felt that prickling, anxious emotion raise its ugly head again, but viciously kicked it back down. I rushed to get ready for work, but took the time to scrub my face and put eye drops in so I might look less like I had spent the last who knows how long crying my eyes out like a little kid throwing a temper tantrum. I made a show of grabbing the food Mariela had left me and a bottle of water for my boyfriend and he waved me goodbye, looking sad and worried and making me feel like a jerk just for choosing work instead of him. But, I reminded myself, it was better than how I could have left that house, alone and single and still in tears.

          Heero didn’t kiss me goodbye like he usually does when I leave for work. I didn’t know how I felt about that. Relief. Sadness. Yearning. Bitterness. Not towards him, but towards myself for creating this rift in the first place. For making him feel like he shouldn’t kiss me, and for knowing that it was probably a good thing anyway, like some fucked-up validation, so I couldn’t even call it stupid. I was all kinds of twisted up as I walked to work for the first time in days. There were too many thoughts and feelings tangling each other up in a nest of knots. Love for Heero. Fear of the future. Loss. Anxiety. Outright terror at the thought of going home, but also rage at my father and myself. Worry for my mother and ‘Ro. Tiredness. A lot of that. I longed for Saturday, a day that I could be with Heero and forget about my other life again, pretend that I was normal and this day had never happened. But in order to get to that day, I had to survive another two of _this_. Would my father rape me again? Would he take other things away from me? Would I push Heero even further away until one of us snapped?

          “The prodigal son returns!” Solo cried happily when he saw me at my locker.

          I was overwhelmed by his personality and I wasn’t sure I could deal with him if he was going to be like this, teasing and joking around with me, but I was still glad to see him. I was especially glad that he was the first of my coworkers to run into me. At least he was a friendly face. I could really use more of those that day. I had to remind myself that I was expected to not act so withdrawn and surly and at least _try_ to be sociable and rolled my eyes at his quip.

          “Harr harr,” I muttered.

          “No, I mean it,” he sobered a little, “I missed you, man. I thought I wasn’t going to see you here again.”

          He gave my shoulder a little punch, something light and normal and innocent, something he’s done to me a hundred times before. I almost punched his lights out in reflex, only barely remembering that this man was a friend and his touch was ok, not something to be scared of. I still couldn’t help tensing and feeling irritated that this stupid feeling hadn’t gone away like I had hoped from being around Heero. If nothing else, he had really stood up for me and went beyond just for me to not get picked on at work, so I owed him not being an asshole.

          “I told you why I was out,” I muttered, “and that I would be back. I would have Sunday, but with the holiday and all.”

          “What about Monday?” he pressed, “You didn’t show up for either shift then.”

          “I had a surprise test in my worst class,” I said defensively, “I needed to study. My friend convinced me to call out.”

          “ ‘Friend’, huh,” he grinned knowingly at me and I fought the urge to roll my eyes at him again.

          “Yeah, fine, boyfriend. He pointed out that school is more important than work and it was kind of hard to argue when I’m only just barely getting by on my grades to begin with,” I said.

          “Got yourself a keeper,” he marveled, “And good. You’re still a kid, you _should_ be focused on school instead of getting a paycheck. You don’t have to worry about bills and rent and all that grownup shit. You get to worry about grades and tests and asshole classmates instead.”

          “I think I’ll take the bills,” I muttered and wasn’t entirely sure I was joking.

          Solo laughed.

          “I hear ya,” he commiserated, “Yer still working as much as the rest of us and while I don’t have to deal with homework, the tradeoff is all the little shits you go to school with just grow up to be your shitty neighbors and coworkers. It’s all just the same crap, isn’t it? Only difference is you have the choice to not deal with your folks anymore.”

          Though I tried not to think about it, I felt this burst of hope at that, that one day I might not have to deal with my father. I couldn’t cut him off completely. I still loved him, despite all this crap, though that love has been getting further and further away from me lately. I just… didn’t really want him in my life anymore. That one day I would have that choice, that I could just walk away from him was more of a dream than I could bear. It seemed like one of those impossible things. Like keeping ‘Ro or going to college. A day when my father wouldn’t be the dark shadow looming over me? That really was a dream.

          “I’m proud of ya,” Solo suddenly said as he shrugged off his jacket and hung it in his locker.

          “What?” I scoffed, secretly taken aback by his words, “Why?”

          “For sticking with it,” he explained, “School, I mean. Your parents dropped out, right?”

          “Yeah,” I confirmed.

          He nodded.

          “It’s easy, especially when you don’t have many choices for the future. Not going to college after kind of takes the wind out of it, you know? You just get sick of all the fuss. I certainly did. Sure, I had juvie to thank for some of it, but mostly, I didn’t give a shit about school. My dad didn’t give a shit and everyone expected me to drop out, so I just kept asking myself why I was even doing it. I regret it now, though. Not because I think it would have made a difference, but just for the accomplishment, you know? Just to have that one less thing for people to look down at me about,” his voice darkened with a little bitterness, “People like to form different opinions about high school dropouts than guys that just weren’t lucky enough to go to college. But you’re making that effort. That’s already an achievement, giving a shit. So yeah, I’m proud of ya.”

          My heart swelled at his praise which, oddly, meant more coming from him than it would my father. Maybe because there were too many other things in the way with my dad. All the times he had called me worthless and hit me for getting a bad grade and telling me I was so stupid, I might as well not waste my time going to school. Him saying he was proud of me would make me happy, of course. It’s what I’ve wanted to hear from him my entire life. But all that other stuff would still be there. But with Solo, there was nothing. It was a purer kind of happiness. Maybe not as powerful, but it was easier. Or maybe it was just because I respect Solo a lot more than my father. Yeah, he’s a screw up like my dad, but he’s never hit me or raised his voice to me or made me feel like shit. That whole mess with my coming out at work only solidified that feeling. And there was the fact that Solo had no reason to feel pride for me at all. We were just friends, not family. He wasn’t my brother, although he kind of acts like it sometimes.

          “What are you, my dad?” I teased in fake exasperation and embarrassment, hiding how I was really feeling behind humor.

          “Please,” he rolled his eyes, “I like to think I’m at least two levels above that asshole.”

          I glanced at him, trying to decide if he was just joking, but it was too hard to tell with him. I looked back at my locker, finishing putting my things away.

          “You’re a lot more than that, Solo,” I murmured softly.

          He whirled to look at me, his eyes wide with surprise, having expected another quip from me and not for me to suddenly be serious. I flushed. I hadn’t really intended to get all mushy with him. If there was one person I wanted to be tough and adult around, it was him and I thought about how, if any of the other boys at school heard me say something like that, they would have teased me mercilessly about being a girl. But Solo isn’t like that and didn’t even rip into me for it, just grinned and ruffled my hair like I was being cute or something.

          “Stop!” I swatted at his hands and smoothed my hair back down.

          The bell on the front door jingled and I froze in our horseplay as I heard footsteps approach us. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Caleb, Mitch, and Jack coming in. I kept my eyes fixed to my locker, pretending like I was still fussing with my things as they walked by while still keeping them in my vision in case they tried anything. Not a day at that place had gone by when they _hadn’t_ tried something. Nothing physical. Only Caleb had tried that one time and none of the other guys had bothered. I don’t know if they were just more mature than him, to not try to beat up a teenager, or Solo had gotten to them, but they had kept their harassment to sneers and cruel remarks. Not that that was any better to me.

          I waited, but was shocked when they walked down the hall and into the break room without even so much as a muttered slur or glare. Jack I could understand. He liked to make fun of me and say gross, mean things about my sexuality, but they never had any real heat in them. My being gay was a big joke to him, but he was the least likely one in the group to take a swing at me or be intolerable of me in his personal space. Mitch was another matter. Ironically, he was quieter about how much he didn’t like me around and how I made him uncomfortable, but he was more visibly repulsed by me, the first to make sure there was a good ten feet between us at all times and glare at me like my being a fag was something I had forced on him. So him walking by me without shooting me a hostile look was bizarre.

          But the weirdest one was Caleb. He didn’t glare at me. Didn’t even look in my direction, but he obviously saw I was there and wanted to do something or say something. He just kept his gaze fixed forward with some great effort, his hands curled into fists. It was weird. He’s never shown much restraint in _anything_ , let alone making me feel less wanted around there. I thought back to what Leneski had said over the phone about Solo lecturing him about treating me like a social leper and narrowed my eyes at him.

          “What did you say to them?” I asked suspiciously.

          “I have no idea what you’re talkin’ about,” my coworker said with all of the innocence of a kid that had eaten every cookie out of the cookie jar.

          “I mean it, Solo, what did you do?” I accused.

          “Really, nothing,” he held up his hands in surrender, being serious for once, “I laid into the boss man a little for actin’ like a child, but he was the one to talk to the rest of them, not me. Guess whatever he said must’ve stuck.”

          I frowned, not knowing if I liked the sound of that or not. Don’t get me wrong, if Leneski had gotten through to even half of them and they would lay off me a little, I owed him a big thank you. But I also didn’t like knowing that I had gotten my coworkers scolded because of some hurt feelings. I was already getting shit for being girly just because I have a boyfriend, I didn’t need any of them thinking that I had squealed because I couldn’t take a little bit of bullying. Which is fucking hysterical if you think about it. I’ve gone how many years of school without doing just that, and I get into hot water at work for it after just a few days? I caught Solo’s gaze and hated how worried he looked. Not like how Heero does, just that he was thinking back to all my absences and wondering if I had really been telling the truth about them or if I had been a lot more bothered than I had let him see.

          “No,” I told him a bit snappishly, “I’m fine. It had nothing to do with them or anything else but my grades and destroying my back.”

          Heero would have dug into me, tried to make me talk about it and insisting to know if I was really alright. Solo just shrugged.

          “If you say so,” he said plainly and I could tell just by looking at him that the subject was dropped, not just out loud, but in his head.

          It was refreshing.

          “I do,” I muttered angrily, half to himself and half to myself. Though not about work. I was thinking about everything else. Enough was enough. Just like my father says, I need to stop being such a fucking pansy about everything in my life and grow a set.

          Solo followed me into the break room so I could put my food in the fridge and I froze near the doorway as I saw that pretty much my whole team was milling in there, making coffee or chatting each other up. Though the chatter shriveled up and died the second they noticed me. Despite all my bluster about growing a pair and not letting these men get to me, my initial instinct was to disappear. Of course, that would just make me look like a spineless coward, so my pride and stubbornness refused to let me do that. But I felt paralyzed in their stares and just stood there, unable to move like a weirdo. A few of my coworkers, Bruno, Jack, and, oddly, Mitch, quickly looked away from me, like they had been caught doing something embarrassing. What the hell was going on?

          Whatever it was, Solo seemed to know exactly what it was and was unsurprised, not about the stares, but about a few of my coworker’s inabilities to look me in the eye or crack a joke. When I gave him a questioning look, he just nudged me forward. I walked past Bruno and normally, if I got that close to him, he would make an effort to put space between us. I saw clearly that he wanted to, but he didn’t, which confused the hell out of me, especially when he looked… almost chagrined. I put my food in the fridge, baffled and lacking the energy or ability to give a shit to deal with the weird behavior, just kind of having this general feeling of ‘great, NOW what?’

          “Oh, good, all my little ducks are here,” Leneski’s booming, almost gleeful voice from the doorway nearly made me jump and, strangely, it made a few of the guys flinch and look about as miserable as a cat stuck out in the rain.

          He stepped into the break room, automatically looking for me and I felt nervous that he was about to chew me out for all my absences in front of the other guys, but he smiled when he saw me.

          “Nice to see you back, Maxwell,” he said and actually _did_ seem to be glad to see me for some reason, “Feeling better?”

          For the first time, I wondered what he or Solo had told the rest of the group about why I had been absent, if anything. Had they been told the truth or had they, like our boss, assumed it was because of their treatment of me? I bet most of them had hoped that it meant I wouldn’t be back.

          “Yes, sir,” I said respectfully, “Thank you.”

          For more than just letting me call out so many times or giving me a day off with pay. I had no idea what he had said to the troops, but if not a single one of them had thrown me so much as a dirty look, it must have been quite a lecture.

          “Good, I’m glad. You’re one of my best workers, I don’t want you hurting yourself or for your grades to suffer,” he seemed to put extra emphasis on that last bit for some reason and stared intensely at Caleb, his eyes narrowing.

Caleb looked down at the floor and grit his teeth hard, which just made me more confused about what was happening. My boss cleared his throat and glanced around the room.

“Well, since the team is all here now, don’t you have something that you need to say to Duo?” he urged in a tone that made the comment definitely _not_ a request, his eyes hard in a way that I had only seen when he was pissed at one of us over something serious.

That uncomfortable, awkward air in the room increased times fifty and I felt somewhere between horrified, shocked, and a bit embarrassed as I realized what was happening and what that something Leneski wanted them to say to me was. It was kind of a surreal feeling, like suddenly realizing I had to be dreaming. Next to me, my self-imposed bodyguard and united front, Solo straightened to his full height and crossed his arms over his chest, looking at his teammates with that same hard, firm look our boss had, only solidifying my fears. Both of those gazes were set on Caleb and it didn’t take a genius to figure out they had singled him out as the leader of the ‘I hate faggots’ fan club and had appointed him as their speaker.

But Caleb, despite the obvious threat the boss man was leveling at him, stood still as a stone, glaring down at the floor like it had just socked his mother one, every part of him clenched and radiating tension, his face red and pinched. The other guys looked, wonders of wonders, actually mollified by all of this, or at least putting up the effort of looking it, but not this man. He just looked pissed, a petulant child that was being forced to do something he didn’t want to do or, worse, believe he _should_ do, and was throwing a silent temper tantrum over the whole thing. Solo narrowed his eyes at him further and he tensed. Leneski looked far from pleased himself by Caleb’s silence and for a moment, I thought either of them were going to snap at him and I was caught so off balance by all of this that I didn’t even feel smug or amused by the prick getting taken down a few pegs.

To my continued shock, instead of Caleb getting the balls to do what Leneski had ordered him to do or Solo starting a fight with the man, Mitch stepped forward. Caleb finally looked up at the floor, staring at his friend with the same kind of surprise that I was feeling, but also with betrayal. I guess he had thought that he had his own unified front, that the other guys would back him up when he refused to do this, and hadn’t ever believed that their fear of our boss would trump their loyalty to him. Mitch didn’t even look at him, dismissing him either because it made this easier for him or he honestly didn’t care what Caleb thought. He didn’t look at me either at first, just shuffled forward, looking like he was getting a root canal instead of just speaking to me, and shoved his hands in his pockets. He was only marginally more mature about it than Caleb had been.

“Uhh,” he rubbed at the back of his head, dragging out the noncommittal sound and the following silence for as long as he could, “Well… The guys… I mean _we_ , wanted to apologize for how we’ve been acting lately…”

His eyes flickered to mine finally and if his tone weren’t enough, I could clearly see in his expression how much he didn’t want to do this. Hell, _I_ didn’t want him or anyone else in that group to do this! I wasn’t even entirely sure if I was grateful for Leneski taking this so seriously and really talking to them instead of just doing it to appease me or embarrassed that he had clearly threatened them enough that they felt forced to do it. That wasn’t what I wanted. I didn’t want the pricks to say they were sorry because they were being made to. It was all just empty words. I was so sick of empty words.

“Like fucking pulling teeth,” Solo muttered in frustration at Mitch’s completely disingenuous apology.

The other man flushed and glared at him. Mitch isn’t one for words and speeches, usually the sort to stay quiet while everyone else is chatting loudly or cheering at a game and he clearly was only doing this to get it over with.

“I’m just saying that we’re sorry,” he said grudgingly in a very put-upon way.

I covertly looked around at the other guys. It was easy. None of them would look at me. They all looked uncomfortable, wanting to be anywhere else, while Caleb mostly looked pissed. If it had been a normal day, a good day, I would have shrugged it off. Not made waves. What would be the point? I would have said ‘sure’ and let them off easy, let Leneski think all was forgiven and their shitty apology was enough for me. But you know what? It wasn’t a normal day. It wasn’t even an ‘ok’ day. It was a crappy, lousy day and the only good things that _had_ happened to me, of which there were almost none, I had left behind saddened and full of guilt over something that was _my_ fault. I was tired. My nervous were frayed. I was worn and sick to death of people. Of being touched. Of being pushed. Of being shat on by pieces of shit like them that thought I was beneath them, just because I was different. Because they didn’t understand me and thought they knew every inch of me just because they knew a shard, had gotten a glimpse. They saw something ugly because _they_ were ugly and I hated all of them.

I just wanted this to stop. I wanted to not be looked at like that, like I was a thing, like I wasn’t even a person, like I didn’t even deserve a fucking honest apology. Leneski and Solo at least understood how I was feeling and were trying, the rest of them either didn’t care or didn’t understand. I don’t know which is worse, but either way, past my tiredness, past all the other shitty things and feelings from that day, or maybe because of them, I felt anger rise in me. Maybe on a normal day I would have fought against it, but I just didn’t care anymore. Maybe I had just needed an outlet because I couldn’t lash out against myself enough, or maybe I was just so tired that my control over my own actions was practically nonexistent, but their behavior pissed me off and I couldn’t come up with a single reason in that moment why I should be nice and accepting of them when they had been bastards to me.

“Just stop,” I ordered him, my voice cold and steely, which I suppose was better than me screaming at him.

Surprisingly, he stopped in mid-sentence, his eyes going wide with shock. I guess he and the rest of them had thought that I would just go along with this without a peep. I’m sure that a few of them, at least half, had honestly believed this was something _I_ had made Leneski do, if not all of them as they all stared at me incredulously. Mitch actually looked nervous at my tone, which was fucking hilarious. He isn’t as big as Caleb is, but he’s a good foot and a half taller than me and three times my age, that he or any of the other guys would be nervous by some scrawny teenager was ridiculous. Was he nervous because he just didn’t want to talk to me, afraid of what I was going to say, or just that Leneski might do whatever he had threatened to if I didn’t accept their apology? No matter the reason, it made me feel a strange mix of empowered and resentful.

“I don’t want some forced, half-assed apology just because you lot don’t want to lose your jobs or whatever it was you were threatened with. And don’t even bother to try to kid me that you’re actually being sincere. None of you are sorry for shit, so just save your fucking breath. I’m not an idiot and I don’t need some worthless platitudes from a bunch of grown men. You don’t even understand _why_ you’re apologizing, do you? You can’t even see what assholes you are, let alone grow a set and give an honest apology like the adults you’re supposed to be,” I snapped at them.

Almost every guy in there turned red with a mix of embarrassment, shock, and anger at my accusations, but strangely, Bruno and Jack weren’t among them. They looked a bit red, too, but they didn’t seem angry or even put out that some brat was calling them immature and spineless. It was probably all in my head, painting the reaction that I _wanted_ to see from my coworkers, but they almost looked ashamed. Honestly, I could understand why they were all shocked. Around them, I’m usually subdued and quiet. Like Mitch, I don’t say much and I’m not assertive like this. I like keeping to myself or just hang with Solo, but next to his exuberant personality, I probably looked meek to them. I’m not and Solo would have laughed his ass off at anyone calling me meek, but the rest of them don’t know that. They don’t know what I’m really like, but they were perfectly happy to draw up their own conclusions when they found out I’m gay. That knowledge only pissed me off even more. I didn’t look back at Leneski or Solo to see how they were taking this. Leneski was probably angry at my attitude, but Solo would be amused. I ignored the both of them. They weren’t important in that moment.

“I don’t blame you for not understanding why you’ve been a bunch of pricks to me,” I said and was kind of proud that it came out only a tiny bit snidely, “All I am to you is a fag, right? That’s the only thing that matters to any of you. You don’t know me. You think you do because of that one, stupid, insignificant thing, but in reality, none of you know the first fucking thing about me. But, hey, if ‘fudgepacker’ is all you can think of me as, not your coworker, not as a person, that’s just fine. I’ll be the mature one here and deal with it, even if all of you can’t. You don’t want to be around me? Fine. I don’t exactly want to hang out with a bunch of prejudiced homophobes with their heads up their asses, either! And if my being a fag is so terrible, you can’t even work with me without threatening me or throwing around some childish, cruel insults like civilized adults, like Solo and Mr. Leneski obviously can, then that’s alright, too. Not like I expect anything better from some of you, given what your kids are like. But I’m not going to let a little bit of harassment by closed-minded bullies make me quit. I’m not going _anywhere_ and there is nothing any of you can do about that! So if you can’t work with a faggot, then we should just stay out of each other’s way. I won’t get in the same van with you or talk to you or even look at you. Hell, I won’t even share the same damned tools with you if you’re so terrified of catching my gay cooties,” I couldn’t help a harsh, rough laugh at that, “I mean, what exactly do you think is going to happen if I work here with you? That I’ll turn you gay? Give this place a bad rep? The only way that’d happen is if you go shooting off your fat mouths, not that that’d surprise me any. Or no, wait, I know why you have such a problem with me! You think I’m going to hit on you, right? Try to cop a feel?”

I nailed that one right on the head with how all of their complexions went several shades darker with embarrassment and almost laughed bitterly again.

“Right. I only got this job so I could ogle you lot, I forgot. I just go around molesting every male within arm’s reach and you just didn’t realize it until now,” I snorted, my acidic anger rising and I didn’t even care that I was starting to shout, “Give me a fucking break. I have done nothing, absolutely fucking **_nothing_** to make any of you question my sexuality the entire time I’ve been working here! I have never, ever done anything even remotely inappropriate to any of you! I have been nothing but professional! I’ve done my job, I’ve kept my shit to myself! All I have ever wanted since I was hired here was to do my work, be left alone, and be treated, if not like everyone else here gets to be treated, at the very least not like I’ve done something wrong! Because I haven’t! I haven’t done a single thing to deserve all this crap from all of you! I deal with enough shit from your asshole kids at school, I don’t need to deal with it here, too!” I yelled at them and swiped my hand quickly through my bangs, “Although I guess this solves the mystery of why your piece of shit kids have been treating me like garbage since we were in elementary together! At least now I know where they get it from! And at least they’re only teenagers, what the fuck is your excuse?!”

I was panting and red in the face by the time that I was done. It was hard to breathe, and not because of the exertion. It was like that little rant had swung open a door I had shut and locked for a long time. I hadn’t even realized it, just how much I had buried deep down in the last few weeks, how I had denied myself any kind of release or relief from the twisted feelings of dealing with my coworkers, and maybe a few other things as well. Honestly, even though I was still really angry and hurt, I felt a little bit better. I felt like I had purged something and sure, some of those feelings had come from things that had happened that day and had had nothing to do with my coworkers, but if there was anyone I could unload on and not feel any guilt about, it was those assholes.

I felt Solo put his hand on my shoulder, to show support or get me to stop, I don’t know, but anything else I had been about to scream died on my tongue and I just stood there, trying to get my breath back. A tear (thankfully only the one) was drying on my right cheek and I angrily wiped it away, not even embarrassed about it, just annoyed that I had cried even that tiny bit over something so insignificant.

“So, save your breath,” I said lowly when I got control over myself back, feeling drained and tired again and so done with the entire day, “and don’t insult my intelligence with some fake, coerced apology just to appease me or save face because I really don’t give a shit about being placated or seeing the lot of you groveling when we all know you still think I’m some kind of pervert and you’re the ones being wronged with having to deal with me! Just stay out of my way and leave me the hell alone and I’ll leave you alone, ok?”

Not a single man there would look me in the eye. Even Caleb, although he looked like he was seriously considering taking a swing at me whether the boss was there or not, was looking at the floor still. No one bothered to continue with their piece of shit, group apology, which I was incredibly grateful for. I was done with the lot of them, still pissed that they couldn’t even have mustered up some decent acting for this charade. My day had been far too long and they could all rot in hell for all I cared.

I turned around, ready to storm out of there and to the van to just wait for whatever the game plan for the day was, not wanting to be stuck in that building with them. I prepared myself to deal with Leneski’s ire, too, and was so tired that even that didn’t bother me. I didn’t think he was going to fire me for having it out with a bunch of his full timers, not after he had proven to me a few times now that he was willing to work with me. but he might chew me out for bringing my problems to the work place like I had promised him I wouldn’t do. But it wasn’t like I had asked him to make them apologize to me! As far as I was concerned, just them promising not to harass me too much anymore would have been fine, even if it was a lie. Sure, I shouldn’t have yelled at them, and I was expecting him to be pissed about that, but I thought that, up until that moment, I had done a decent job of being professional.

So, I was surprised when I saw him still standing by the doorway and, instead of mad at me, he had this strange, little smile on his face and I saw this small bit of respect in his eyes, mixed with some guilt as I imagine he could have put all of the things I had accused the rest of the crew of on his shoulders as well. Why he would respect me for my rant, I couldn’t even begin to understand. Solo, on the other hand, looked totally shocked, his eyes wide and staring at me like I had grown another head. He wasn’t used to seeing me so out of control. At least he wasn’t laughing at me for getting so worked up over a stupid apology.

“Well, I think that went well,” Leneski said with some amusement, though he briefly shot Caleb a dirty look, “Duo, Solo, there’s only a small job later after lunch, the customer cancelled their early afternoon appointment so I’m sending you two on a store run. The rest of you go through the itinerary and get the vans ready. When you’re done with that, you’re all on clean up duty.”

The rest of our crew groaned loudly, but a snap from Leneski shut them up again. I had a suspicion that he was putting them on clean up while sending Solo and myself out on easy errands as a sort of punishment, but hoped that they didn’t suspect that. I was hoping that his threats and my rant had been enough to keep them from bothering me for a while. 

          Solo kept looking at me with that surprised expression as we walked out of the break room, leaving the rest of the group and our boss to do… whatever, probably get yelled at by him or something.

          “Dude,” he said incredulously the very second we were out of ear shot of anyone else, “you’d all that bottled up inside you this entire time?”

          I flushed in embarrassment at the fact that he had, once again, witnessed me losing my shit over something stupid. I had expected a healthy amount of good-natured teasing over it, but not him being amazed over it. I gave a half-hearted shrug, feeling self-conscious and rolling around everything I had said and yelled about in my head with dawning humiliation. I had been trying to play this whole disaster off as something that didn’t bug me, nothing for anyone to concern themselves over since it was my problem and no one else’s, so it annoyed me that I had lost control and been so emotional at work of all places. I don’t think even Heero really knows how much I’ve been struggling just with the thought of having to deal with this work environment. Of course, I hadn’t told him about Caleb threatening me or the kinds of things my coworkers had been saying about me, either. Only Solo had seen all that.

          “Why didn’t you ever say anything?” he demanded and it was impossible to tell if he was upset or just confused, “If you were feeling like that all this time-,”

          “Nothing to say,” I cut him off brusquely, “It’s not a big deal. I get this same crap at school, like I said. I didn’t mean to go off like that, I’m just having a shitty week.”

          “It’s kind of a big deal,” he argued in exasperation, “and I’m not talking about you unloading on them. Those pricks deserve it. I’m talking about you feeling and thinkin’ those things in the first place and acting like you don’t these last few weeks. You should have told someone, if not me, then Leneski at least.”

          I snorted at that.

          “No one wants to listen to a whiny teenager complain about some hurt feelings,” I muttered, “I can handle it on my own.”

          “Uh huh,” he shook his head at me, but he looked less like he didn’t believe that I could and more like he thought I was plain nuts for thinking that way, “This is a bit more than whining about someone not liking you or being a little bit rude, kid. Especially since I know you and you could come to this place a damned broken arm and not make a peep about it, so for you to flip out like that, it’s a lot worse than even what you just said. You’re going to give yourself an ulcer, not talking about that shit.”

          “That’s just a saying,” I said dryly in an attempt to diffuse him, not be a smartass, “You can’t actually get an ulcer from stress.”

          It had the desired effect. He rolled his eyes at me.

          “Asshole,” he muttered, but there was no heat in it, “You know what I fucking mean. But whatever. You ok now? Got all that out of your system?”

          I nodded and felt a bit warmed that that was his gruff way of worrying about me, which was somehow easier to deal with than Heero’s concern and fussing, which always has this tinge of fear and desperation to it.

          “Good. Maybe some of them will finally have the sense to shut their yaps and mind their own damned business,” he groused, “I think you even embarrassed a few of them, getting lectured by someone the same age as their kids for acting like a bunch of spoiled brats.”

          I didn’t mind that in the slightest. I wished I could do the same thing to my classmates and get them off my back, if only for a day.

          “Did you tell Leneski about what Caleb tried to do before?” I asked him suspiciously as I remembered how my boss had glared at the man and made him in charge of apologizing to me.

          “Nah,” my coworker assured me, “Thought about it. Probably would have done at least that if he had managed to hit you, if only to get him canned, but I figured you would be pissed if I did and he didn’t try it again. I didn’t really need to say anything, though. Caleb hasn’t been secretive about people knowing how much he doesn’t like you and Leneski ain’t dumb or blind. Besides, Williams was talkin’ a lot of shit about you when you were out, gloating how he had run you off and got you scared, sayin’… well, you know, that you were a pathetic, little girl who couldn’t take some teasing,” I frowned in irritation at that, although it didn’t really surprise me and I had heard worse at school. Solo seemed pretty miffed at it, too, but then snorted in disdain, “I shut him up a few times, just reminded him that he was the coward that was scared of my shadow, but Leneski overheard some of the shit he was saying and set him straight. If anything happens to you, Caleb will be the one who gets into trouble, so you don’t have to worry about him anymore, ok?”

          “I was never really worried about him hurting me,” I confessed, “He’s a whole lot of talk and even if he had gotten to try to hit me that day, I could have defended myself or gotten away from him. I’m not scared of him, I just couldn’t stand the things he was saying behind my back. I can take care of myself.”

          “I know you can,” he murmured and I knew he was thinking about my father, of all the times I had come to work bruised or limping or had to call out because of some injury, or even his own run ins with my father. If I could survive all of that, I could survive some threats from Caleb Williams, “Don’t mean you should have to around guys like that.”

          I looked away from him and down at the ground as he picked up the list of things we needed to get from the bulletin board from outside Leneski’s office. It still weirded me out a bit that he looks out for me so much, this hard-ass ex-con who’s easy with a punch and doesn’t seem to have a lot of friends. I had told him, repeatedly, that I was fine with how things were going at work and he had still talked to Leneski for me when I hadn’t given a single complaint. Somehow, he had known what my foul mood was about and had done something about it. I’m not used to people like that, people that give a shit and try to change things. Even more amazing, whatever they had talked about had actually seemed to get through to my boss. He had been contrite over the phone, but that look of respect he had given me was something else entirely. I knew he was still a bit uncomfortable around me, but he was trying and I couldn’t imagine what Solo had said to bring about such a change in the man.

          “What did you and Leneski talk about anyway?” I blurted out, suddenly very curious, “He seemed pretty chastised when I talked to him last and to make everyone apologize like that…”

          Solo rubbed the back of his head, trying to act nonchalant and failing.

          “Nothing much, really,” he brushed it off like it was nothing, “I’m sure he gave you the gist of it. I just told him that he couldn’t really have a rule like ‘don’t bring your shit in here’ and then bring all of _his_ shit in, that you were acting more mature about the whole thing than he is in his fifties and following his own rules better than he was. And how you might be a year away from being a legal adult, but you’re still just a kid dealing with a bunch of adults treating him like shit. No one deserves that, but especially not you with how hard you work and all the crap you have to deal with away from here. I pointed out that he and the rest of them were making this place uncomfortable for you and were being piss-poor examples and, while I don’t really know what happened between the two of you last week, he was obviously one of the reasons for your foul mood, and if he didn’t cut the shit and stop acting like a child, at this rate, you were going to end up quitting and you would have every right to. Hell, if I were in your shoes, I’d tell him to shove it up his ass and give my notice, but you’ve got more of a spine than me. I guess I shamed him a little," he laughed, "I mean, he’s not a bad guy, unlike Williams. I think he was a bit ashamed to begin with for his behavior, so it didn’t take much to get him to realize he was being a shitty boss, and Christian to boot. It really wasn’t a big deal.”

          I stared at him in amazement for a moment.

          “I…” I struggled to find the right words and failed, “Thank you, Solo. You really didn’t need to do that, but thank you.”

          He shrugged, but was a terrible actor and couldn’t hide that he felt pleased at my gratitude. We went into Leneski’s office and collected the company credit card and the keys to the pickup we use to go on these supply runs before heading out into the parking lot. As we walked over to the truck, Solo glanced at me and suddenly burst out laughing.

          “What?” I bristled as the sound cut through me, too used to it being at my expense.

          He shook his head, still laughing.

          “I just… I can’t believe you yelled at all of them!” he said between gasping laughter, “And the look on their faces! They were like a bunch of misbehaving brats getting scolded by their parents! It was so hilarious!”

          I flushed with embarrassment, but smiled a little. At least someone was entertained by it. I guess it _had_ been kind of funny, if I forgot that I had been the one screaming at them. Solo shook his head, still chuckling a little, and we got into the pickup together. Just like always, he let me choose the radio station. I usually pick rock since it’s something that we both like, but I went with jazz this time, being selfish and wanting something to soothe my frazzled nerves. Solo didn’t seem to mind the change that much, humming along when a song he recognized came on. The store we get a discount at is at the other end of town, though it usually isn’t that long of a drive, but traffic was heavy with all the 9-5ers getting off work and trying to get home, forcing us to sit at traffic lights for some time.

          I closed my eyes as we sat at a red light, letting Solo’s humming and the soft, saxophone melody wash over me. For the first, proper time that day, removed from my hurt over what my father had done and my guilt at pushing Heero away, I felt at peace. Sure, that other stuff was still there, in the back of my head, but at that moment, it was just myself and Solo, no one else in that truck and nothing that I had to worry myself sick over. I realized, truly realized also for the first time just how tired I was, how twisted with anxiety and fear the second that they started to sink back down. It was nice, listening to Solo’s humming and having that be the only sound in my head for once, not all those painful thoughts. Even the loud motor of the car and the motions of going through traffic were oddly serene, like being rocked. It was the same sort of feeling as a breeze on a warm and lazy Sunday afternoon.

          I blinked my eyes open, head heavy and fuzzy, as the pickup came to stop and saw with embarrassment that we were at the store. I had drifted off for what must have been a good fifteen to twenty-five minutes if not longer.

          “Long night?” Solo asked, quirking up one dark eyebrow.

          My face went a little hot.

          “Sorry,” I mumbled, “I didn’t get a lot of sleep this morning.”

          “Given how late you go home and how early you have to get up, I’m surprised you get any decent sleep,” he remarked and, getting a good look at me, frowned, “You know, this really doesn’t need to be a two-person job just going shopping. If you want to stay in here and take a nap, it might do you some good.”

          I shook my head and rubbed at my tired eyes.

          “No, it’s fine, I’m up,” I insisted, but I could tell from the heavy sigh he gave me that he didn’t believe me.

          Groggy and full of that weird ‘missing time’ feeling, along with a healthy ‘should never have woken up’ one as well, I followed my coworker into the hardware store. We took our time getting through the list, neither of us in a huge hurry to get back, Solo because he didn’t want to get roped into cleaning anything and me because I didn’t want to face anyone after my little temper tantrum. We ended up getting back just shortly before our lunch break, longer than it should have taken us. Before Leneski had certified me to do construction with the rest of the crew, he had often sent me on supply runs, trying to get me used to what the tools looked like and all the names for them before he taught me how to use them. Solo was right that either of us could have done it alone and gotten done probably in half the time it took the both of us. We work really well together no matter what project we’re doing, especially just shopping, so it should have taken us a third of that time. If Leneski suspected that we had dragged it out, he didn’t say or even give us a weird look.

          I thought about heating up my food and disappearing out back or something during the break so I wouldn’t be stuck in the same room as the other guys, but they were suspiciously absent as I went into the break room. Whether this was by Leneski’s design, they were still too humiliated to be around me, or they didn’t want to be in the same room with me, either, I had no idea. Even my boss was giving me my space, but I got the impression that this was for my benefit and not his, so it made me more relieved than bitter.

          Solo and I sat together to eat, my meal looking (and smelling) a lot better than the convenience store purchased tuna egg sandwich he had, but he rebuked all of my attempts to share. The peace and quiet of the break room was broken as my cell phone vibrated in my pocket. I knew without even looking at it that it was ‘Ro and couldn’t decide if I was nervous about talking with him, even via text, or happy at the proof that he really wasn’t upset with me, that things were normal between us. Or as normal as anything can be between myself and another person. Happiness won for once and I dug the phone out of my pocket. Or maybe it was the sharp bite of guilt remembering how I had promised that I wouldn’t ignore him after I had done that all that morning and how, after all the things he had done for me just that day, the least I could do was grow a pair and answer a damned text.

          ‘ _Having a nice lunch?’_ he had texted me.

          Despite the heavy feeling of guilt and anxiety still in my chest, I smiled. I’m not stupid, I knew that he was just fussily checking up on me and making sure I was eating, but even that felt good. Just hours ago, my stupid actions could have ruined our entire relationship and instead, he was still worried about me. Still loved me. My chest and face felt warm as I envisioned him sitting cross-legged on his bed, staring intensely at his phone, maybe chewing on his lip a little in that way he does when he’s concerned about something.

          “The boy toy, I assume?” Solo teased me when he caught my smile.

          “Don’t call him that,” I said defensively and hit ‘reply.’

          ‘ _Yes, mother,’_ I texted cheekily, fucking overjoyed that I could find the right beat and tone, that I could tease him instead of being so morose and depressed all the time. It was a vast improvement from the rest of the day, ‘ _I ate and drank and used the bathroom like a big boy.’_

Heero’s reply was almost instant.

          ‘ _Brat.’_

My smile grew as I imagined his fake pout. I suddenly ached to be there with him and missed him powerfully. It was such a strange feeling since I was still scared to be around him, to let him see me so raw and being so weird. But I did miss him, even if it was easier by myself and I was still feeling a bit skittish towards touch now that I was surrounded by people again.

          ‘ _I love you,’_ Heero texted me, which made me feel a swirl of guilt and love at the same time, strong enough to make me dizzy, ‘ _Take care of yourself. I’ll text you when you’re done with your shift, ok?’_

I realized that he was asking for my permission and that swirl turned into a tornado in my chest, the guilt turning into self-loathing that Heero _had_ to ask my permission just to fucking text me because he didn’t want to annoy me or pressure me, and love that he respected my feelings that much. I don’t deserve someone like that. I had ignored his texts that morning because of some petty, useless feelings and I had made him feel like shit just for being concerned about me and he was still trying to do the right thing, to be a good boyfriend and I was thinking of breaking up with him and I didn’t deserve anything that he gave me.

          ‘ _Ok,’_ was all that I texted back, like the loser that I am. Not the millions of other things in my head. Not ‘I love you,’ because just those three words were ripping me apart and I was too chicken shit to tell him in case it gave me another excuse to drag him down. Not ‘I think we should break up’ because even without those words, I was _still_ a chicken shit. Not even ‘I’m sorry’ because I knew he didn’t understand just how sorry I was, how much I hated myself and how much I wanted to protect him, even if it meant killing myself so I could save him from me.

          My mood kind of tanked after that as what little good I had been feeling from Heero’s text and being around Solo seeped out of me. The depression was muted, though, kind of like this pervasive, steady ache. Maybe because it was just more of the same. The same anxiety, same fears, same feelings. Things had been that way for so long now, it was like I was adapting to them the same way I had to being hit. Or maybe I was just so tired, I was shutting down, not even caring about being depressed and anxious over things I can’t control anymore. I’d like to say that these feelings started only when Heero and I had hooked up, but that would be a lie. Sure, it had made them a hell of a lot worse and had spiked the second Heero had pushed for more intimacy, but they’ve been there for a lot longer than that. It started when I had realized that I was in love with him. Then it had exploded when my father had first molested me. Then Heero and I had become friends and it had burst again and again and again until I had realized he liked me more than that. I guess that’s when it really started to fuck with me, all of these worries and crushing stress about doing the wrong thing, losing him, hurting him, not being good enough. By the time we had started to actually date, without me quibbling over whether I should or shouldn’t, it had rooted itself deep in me and become this nightmarish thing. Doubt. Self-loathing. Wanting and hating myself for even wanting when I knew I was deluding myself just thinking we could ever be together.

          So, while these thoughts left me feeling down, it wasn’t like it had been that morning or afternoon. I didn’t feel like I was going to burst into tears or want to find a hole to crawl into. I just felt sad and distant, hollow. Like there was something missing, something that had been pulled out of me and all those good things were too far away for me to hope to grab at them. Like that old cliché of a cloud over my head, only it wasn’t my head, it was inside me. I tried to keep Solo from noticing it. I don’t know if I was very successful at that, but he didn’t give me any weird looks or ask me what was wrong all of a sudden, so that was a small victory.

          Lunch ended way too quickly, then the lot of us were thrown back together for our afternoon project, which turned out to be a rather large painting job on a newly constructed office building in the center of town. Leneski split us up into two teams and for a horrifying moment, I thought he might throw Caleb and me together to make some kind of point or a team building exercise or some shit. Thankfully, either by chance or my boss using his common sense, Solo, Bruno, Jack, and myself ended up on one team to do one side of the building and Caleb and the rest on the other. Still, when the two of us went out to one of the vans, I fully expected Bruno and Jack to squeeze into the other van with the rest of the guys like before, so I was shocked when they got into the back of our van without so much as a dirty look from Solo or Leneski. They didn’t even seem all that bothered to be paired up with me, which was bizarre.

          Despite my grumblings about my boss lecturing the rest of the crew on my behalf, I have to admit, things at work were a bit better that evening than they had been in over a week. Surprisingly, the four of us worked really well together, even better than we had before this bullshit had happened. Bruno and Jack didn’t throw me a single look or make a snide remark about me. Jack even asked to switch brushes with me since I had picked the one with the longest handle and his hands are too big for the shorter ones. And he did it with complete ease, like I was anyone else. I tell you, it was fucking weird, like I had fallen into an alternate dimension. It went a long way to soothing some of my anxieties, though I was too much of a dyed in the wool pessimist to believe that it would be a permanent change or that it made everything at work better. Still, if I could work with two of them instead of none of them, or even if I would stop hearing those gross jokes and comments from half of them, it would go a long way to making me feel comfortable working there again.

          Not that I would ever mistake their sudden professionalism for friendship or actually trust any of them. So, when I was cleaning off my paint brush at the end of the day and Bruno and Jack approached me, both with serious looks on their faces which didn’t suit either of them, but Jack especially as he’s one of those guys that’s always quick with a stupid joke and never takes anything seriously, even when he should, I was on red alert. You know when one cat walks up to another and the other gets all bristly and its tail starts lashing back and forth? That was me. I had been crouching over a bucket of water and quickly stood up, ready for who knows what. Which was doubly stupid since Solo was thirty feet away, gathering up the used paint buckets. He saw them, too, and stiffened and began to walk towards us. It came to me that one of could throw a punch before he got there, but like I had told him before, I can take care of myself. I’m not scared of Caleb and I’m definitely not scared of Jack or Bruno, though Jack is taller and more fit than Caleb is.

          “What?” I asked defensively, trying to hide how intensely I was studying them for any clue that they were angry or going to try to hit me, threaten me, whatever.

          The last thing I expected was for them to give each other these nervous, weird looks and hesitate. It reminded me a little of how Mitch had been when trying to apologize to me, but this was different. Whatever they were doing, they were hesitant, but it wasn’t something that they were forcing themselves to do, they were just off balance by it. I remembered how they had acted when I had gone into the break room at the beginning of the shift and during Mitch’s shitty attempt at apology and my blow up. Guilty and nervous and unable to look me in the eye, which made their sudden ease around me even more baffling. It also made the possibility that they were angry about having to apologize and wanting to get back at me unlikely, which just confused the hell out of me.

          “We, uh,” Bruno must have gotten the short straw in their staring contest because he was the first to speak, his tone gruff, but not begrudging or annoyed like Mitch had been, “We really wanted to apologize to you-,”

          “Not this again,” I snapped in exasperation, wondering what the hell they were doing, if they seriously were still going through with this after the disaster of that afternoon. Did they still think this was going to do _anything_ , get Leneski off their backs or something? It made no sense to me, “Look, I already told you-,”

          “That you didn’t want an apology unless it was sincere, we know,” Bruno glanced at Jack before looking back at me, actually meeting my eyes unlike the rest of them had been unable to, “But we really mean it, ok?”

          I relaxed my rigid stance, but I was no less shocked as I realized that he wasn’t bullshitting me. This wasn’t an act or something they had been forced to do. They were doing it because they wanted to. They were actually sorry. I supposed that, of all the guys besides Solo that I worked with, they were the two most likely to feel guilty about treating me like garbage. Jack had treated my sexuality like a cruel joke while Bruno mostly seemed uncomfortable and the sort that easily joins in on things whether it’s an opinion of a sports team or the queer coworker. But that didn’t make it any easier to swallow that these guys were actually apologizing to me.

          “Kid… Duo,” Jack amended, anxiously rubbing at the back of his head, “We’re really sorry. You were right, everything you said earlier… we’re assholes, always have been. I know we’ve never exactly been… welcoming to you, besides Solo, anyway. But you being hired here… it was kind of like a joke at our expense, you know? And then when we found out about you being queer… well, I never met a f- homosexual before. Don’t really know a whole lot about ‘em besides things that people say. But you’re right, we don’t know you that well. You never did anything to rub us the wrong way. Hell, at first I didn’t believe it. You don’t exactly scream ‘flaming homo.’ Then it was just kind of funny, saying all that shit. Seeing everyone getting worked up. I said a lot of stupid, nasty things and I never stopped to think about _what_ I was saying or you hearing an adult say those things about you. Leneski, you, Solo, you’re all right. You didn’t do anything to deserve that. And you’re just a kid and we treated you… well, you know.”

          “It was bad enough that Leneski hired a teenager,” Bruno tried to explain, “It was like you took a job from someone like us that might really need it. Then Mitch said you were a fag and it made a lot of us, maybe even all of us, uncomfortable and no one wanted you here. So, it didn’t seem like a big deal, bullying you a little. But you work hard, all of us can see that, we just… don’t know how to deal with you. Guess that doesn’t really excuse it,” he said sheepishly, “but we, Jack and I at least, don’t hate you or anything. Not going to lie, it would have made things easier for all of us if you had just quit. But you didn’t and all that shit we said about you… that wasn’t fair. We heard about what Caleb did to you… threatening you. That was fucked up. You’re his son’s age, for Christ’s sake, and we’ve all been treating you like walking trash. We really didn’t need Leneski to say anything after we heard about that. It was kind of a wake-up call, you know? I mean, if anyone pulled this shit on my kid where he works, I’d knock a few heads in. Williams was way out of line. So, we mean it when we say that we’re sorry. I can’t speak for the other guys, but Jack and I wanted to really apologize to you, especially after the things you said earlier. You really made us feel like a couple of douchebags.”

          I blinked, amazed that the usually reserved man had that many words even in him and sighed heavily.

          “I guess I owe you guys an apology, too. I knew no one really liked me working here, but I didn’t know it bothered everyone that much. I didn’t think much of it when Solo offered it or when I decided to take it. I’ve worked in shitty, cheap, part-time jobs since I was thirteen because my family really needs the money. So, this job was a miracle when it landed in my lap. I’d like to say that I should have thought about how all my coworkers felt about some punk kid working with them, but it wouldn’t have made any difference. I’m not working here because it’s fun or I need some extra pocket change. I don’t have the money to go to college when I graduate, so this is it for me. It pays well and Leneski’s already offered me a full-time position once I’m out of school, so it’s the best shot I have when my dad kicks me out of his house. I understand that not many guys here like me, especially now, but I meant it when I said that I’m not going anywhere. Maybe that’s selfish since I don’t have kids or anyone to support, but I _do_ need this job.”

          Both Jack and Bruno went a little wide-eyed at that information. I wondered if any of the hostile feelings towards me being gay might have been soothed if I had bothered to take the time to talk to anyone when I had first gotten hired, let them get to know me, tell them why I was really working there, that I wasn’t just some asshole kid using a friendly coworker to make extra money. I didn’t think so, but it still made me feel like a jerk that they had resented me this entire time because I hadn’t cleared things up.

          “Shit, kid,” Jack exclaimed, “That sucks. We didn’t know it was like that.”

          I shrugged.

          “It is what it is,” I said nonchalantly, “I didn’t know it was a problem or I would have said something.”

          “Shouldn’t _have_ to say a damned thing,” Solo groused, glaring at the two of them, giving me a sense that this was not the first time he had brought this up with them, “because it isn’t anyone’s business.”

          Bruno and Jack had the good grace to blush and look a tiny bit ashamed.

          “He works over forty hours a week, and that’s on top of school. You didn’t even _finish_ high school, did you, Jack? So, why don’t you just lay off? At least he’s trying to get through school _and_ has two jobs to help support his family. You barely get your car payments in on time,” he rolled his eyes.

          It was my turn to flush with embarrassment, not liking how Solo’s words made the both of them look even guiltier by painting me as some kind of sad sack. But then again, he wasn’t saying anything that wasn’t true, so maybe I really am that pathetic? What was even more amazing was that Solo knew that about Jack. I hadn’t known they said more than three words to each other.

          “Well, we’re sorry about that, too,” Jack said sheepishly, “We’re ok, kid. And if Williams tries anything else, just let us know. We’ll set him straight.”

          “You really don’t need to,” I insisted, “I can take care of him.”

          “Yeah,” Jack chuckled, “I know. You sure tore us a new one earlier,” I blushed darker, “But you shouldn’t have to. He’s always been a bit of a prick, even when we were in school together. We know how to talk to him. Mitch and the others aren’t going to put their asses on the line for him, either.”

          “Thank you,” I gave him a small smile, more for his intentions than any need for them to protect me, “for the offer and for being understanding. I promise I’ll try not to make anyone uncomfortable.”

          The two of them looked surprised by my gratitude and oddly pleased. I guess they could count that as their good deed for the year, being tolerant of their gay coworker, at least on the surface. I didn’t expect miracles.

          We headed back to the shop and Solo and I hopped on the bus to go to our next shift. My butt had barely hit the seat when my cell phone buzzed in my pocket. I don’t want to admit it, even here, but knowing that it was Heero checking up on me again, I hesitated. I knew what was going to happen the second I looked at his text, what sort of thoughts were going to come back and I didn’t want them to. I was in a decent mood for once and I didn’t want to feel that melancholy and depression. But like any junkie in the need for their fix, I was unable to stop myself from taking my phone out of my pocket and flipping it open.

          ‘ _You ok?’_

          My lips twitched in an almost smile, but it quickly fell apart as I felt this coldness settle around my heart. My fingers hovered over the buttons, not really knowing what to type. Not really knowing what to do, and it had nothing to do with just telling him that I was perfectly fine. I just saw his face from earlier that afternoon when I had shoved him and screamed at him not to touch me. His hurt. His confusion. That coldness gripped my heart in a vicious, careless fist of ice and rock. Not for the last time that day, I wondered just what the hell I was doing. I felt like I was completely out of control. Like I was joyriding on a bender while my entire life fell apart around me, knowing that my sobering up was inevitable and then all the shit would come back, collapsing on top of me.

          What the hell was I doing? That was a good question. How had I found myself there was a better one. I didn’t know. I don’t know. I didn’t know what I was doing anymore, let alone what I _should_ be doing, like I was just reacting to things and not thinking. Hadn’t that been how I had agreed to this relationship in the first place? Putting my feelings instead of common bloody sense first?

          I tightened my hand around the phone. Just its existence seemed to mock me, that reminder of the amazing person Heero is. The kind of person that I can never hope to be. I felt so hopeless and confused, floundering in this foggy maze of mirrors. I ached to tell someone about it, about everything that was in my head and had been for such a long time. Every doubt. Every fear. Every anxiety. Even if they couldn’t tell me what to do, I yearned for someone to talk to, someone that could understand when I couldn’t. Someone that could tell me that it was ok, that my worries weren’t real. That I wasn’t fucking everything up. That I was wrong and one day, this would all make sense and things would work out. That I could keep him.

          But who could I tell? Not my parents, that’s for fucking sure. Solo? I didn’t think he would understand and talking to him about sex and feeling like a freak was beyond embarrassing. Usually I would talk to Heero’s father, but that was out. If he knew that I was thinking of breaking his son’s heart, he would hate me. I could take that almost as poorly as if it were Heero himself. It’s kind of funny, isn’t it? The one person that I have that I can tell almost anything to, and he’s the reason why I’m so scared. I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to see him. I wanted to touch him. But I couldn’t. Because that day was a nightmare and as nice as that day at work had made me feel, I knew deep in my bones that that nightmare was still happening. I was never going to wake from it.

          And there’s that thought again, everything else seeming to confirm it, that I never should have done this. I never should have agreed to date ‘Ro. I had known it back then, but I had gone through with it anyway despite all of my sense. All for a taste of love. I never should have fallen in love with him. Hadn’t Trowa taught me that I’m not capable of loving anyone? Hadn’t Quatre taught me that I just destroy everything in the end? That being close to people just brings disaster? That all I can do is hurt the people that I love?

          The truth is there isn’t anyone. I don’t have anyone. That has been the one fact in my life, even before I ever met and lost Quatre. I’m all alone in this and whatever choices I make, they’re on me. And would it matter? Would telling anyone really matter? It’s like this gravity pulling me to this choice and nothing I can do will stop it. Even if I begged someone to take it out of my hands, even if there was someone that could, I know it wouldn’t change anything. It doesn’t really matter either way, does it? There’s no one here to help or even listen. I knew that at seven years old. I know it even more keenly and absolutely at seventeen. I’m alone. I’ve always been alone. And I will always be alone. I can only rely on myself. My weak, pitiful self. And for the first, real time in my life, that scares the shit out of me.

 

End part 22

 

//I can't tell anyone

I can't tell my parents

I'm in a relationship that's dragging my stained conscience around

 

How many more times can I see him before I can be forgiven?

I know that such a thing will never happen

 

I wish to see him

I can't see him

It's better for me not to see him

I can't stop these thoughts

 

If freedom can be bought with money, I want to buy it

I wish to escape from this place along with you

 

I want to love you

I can't love you

It's better for me not to love you

I can't stop these thoughts

 

Somebody stop me

Somebody stop me

Somebody stop me

 

'Cause I can't stop myself//

 

-‘Somebody Stop Me’ by Angela Aki

 

Author’s Note: Sorry for the wait on this one. A lot of things kind of cropped up on me. I’ve been planning a vacation in two months, plus pokemon go has stolen me for a few days. Some changes in medication left me drained. Then my dad had knee surgery and I’ve been helping out with my niece. Those are the nice answers to why this has taken me so long. The not so nice answer is that I don’t like this part in the story. I didn’t like coming up with it, even though it HAS to happen. I certainly don’t like writing it. I am one of those unfortunate writers that gets into the headspace of my characters really easily. It makes me empathetic, which is usually fine, makes things flow well. But I also struggle with depression on my own. So having a narrator that deals with some of the same things that I do (self-esteem issues, depression, anxiety, ect) is a real challenge. Writing in Duo’s voice all the time makes my own mood plummet and there are just some days when I can’t do it. It’s kind of a weird thing to admit, but even though Duo in The Road to Kindness’ circumstances were horrible and writing all those rape scenes gutted me, they were a bit easier than writing Duo’s narration here because some of the things he thinks and feels hit too close to home and I need to take breaks from it from time to time. So, apologies, but this part in the story is not going to be easy for me and it is going to be slow going, but necessary. Anyway, that’s the explanation ^_^

 

 

 


	68. Chapter 8 Part 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duo continues to struggle balancing all of his secrets and two lives while keeping Heero in the dark, but the weight of his problems quickly starts to see him making fatal mistakes.

A Stagnation of Love

Chapter 8

Part 23

 

          When I left work that morning at 2, I was overcome with this sense of terror. Why 2 and not 1:30, you ask? For the same, stupid, childish reason for that fear. I didn’t want to go home. I never do, but that morning, I felt that so strongly that it was almost a physical need, to stay far away from that house and my father. I had survived the previous day by the skin of my teeth and when I thought back to everything that had happened to me, everything I had felt and done, I felt shaken. It had taken almost twenty-four hours for me to feel somewhat normal again, and even that seemed dubious. I could be around people, but I didn’t want to be still. If I couldn’t stand to be around strangers, how could I stand to be near my father when he was one of the reasons for all this shit? But most of all, I didn’t want it to start over again. I didn’t want him to touch me or look at me with such hatred, or even just look at me at all. I didn’t want those memories back in my head. I didn’t want him to eviscerate me and turn me into a frightened animal again.

          I spent the last hour of my shift catering to that fear. I thought about running to Josh’s. I thought about hiding in the park or some other place no one would be able to find me. I thought about just plain running away and the pleasure of that thought, of leaving everything behind, even Joshua and all the stress I had been feeling since we had gotten together, told me that I really needed to stop thinking about this entirely. It didn’t matter. There was nothing I could do. But that knowledge did nothing to stop me from being afraid. So, for the half an hour after my shift, I took my sweet time leaving. Going to the bathroom, packing up my stuff like I had a full suitcase instead of my backpack. But after that, I finally grew a pair and left, surrendering to the inevitable.

          Then came the swell of terror as I took that first step off the factory property and onto the sidewalk towards home. With it came a twisted and rather fucked up thought, that I was walking to my own rape. That I was a party to it, a willing participant and it seemed like all the good that my work shifts had done me in separating me from that screaming horror in my head was undone, leaving me shaking and nauseous. It wasn’t a new thought. Nor do I think it’s bullshit. What else can you call what I’ve been doing all these months but raping myself, refusing to run or try to stop it? And still, even knowing that, I took those steps forward. I walked to my neighborhood knowing with some strange sense of precognition what was going to happen that morning. I felt like screaming and hiding like a child, but I walked through the front door of that house anyway.

          Both of my parents were asleep when I came in. I could hear my father’s snores through the door of their bedroom and felt a twinge of irritation that I didn’t even know if I was going to be to sleep _again_ that morning while he could sleep so easily, either because he had nothing to keep him awake like me, or he had self-medicated himself to sleep. But mostly I felt relief that, even if it didn’t mean I would be completely safe until school, at least for that one moment, he wasn’t there. I didn’t have to look at him, see that hate in his eyes or that superior sneer or smell him or any of it. It helped to quiet my twisted memories of the previous morning, but I held no illusions that I wouldn’t have nightmares about it.

          I opened the fridge to get myself some water and under the dim light saw the shirt that my mother had taken from me folded neatly on the table. I kind of froze, staring at it and wondering at its presence there. That feeling in my chest that I had been trying to suppress, the panic and fear that had almost succeeded in choking me to death earlier the previous day, came back, twisting and tightening its way around my heart and lungs. Those unwanted memories threatened me, but I pushed them back down and stomped them flat into their box. It was fine, I told myself. Even if she hadn’t managed to get it all the way clean, it was washed and certainly a lot cleaner than it had been before, so what was I so frightened of? It was just a fucking _shirt_.

          With more disgust with myself and less actual courage or belief in any of the things that I had been thinking, I put the water jug down and tentatively reached for the folded bit of cloth, my hand shaking like I was about to put it in the mouth of a slumbering bear instead of picking up an article of clothing. My fingers brushed against it. It felt cool and soft and had obviously been there for quite some time. I wondered at that. I doubted she would have had the time to do laundry between her work shifts and she probably would have been too tired after, so she must have done it in the morning after I had left. Had she left it sitting on the table all that time? That wasn’t like her, especially to risk getting my dad pissed at her. She usually keeps the finished laundry in the laundry room until she can put it away or leaves mine on my desk so my father won’t have to look at it. Had she just put it there before going to bed for me?

          I suddenly imagined her cattily putting my shirt on the table specifically for my father to see, rubbing it in his face or trying to get him to show some guilt and him just as cattily ignoring it. Or being completely oblivious to it. I shook my head, dispelling the image. I was overthinking things again. And something that was so completely small and irrelevant to boot, all because it’s what I wanted to believe. I didn’t understand it, but at the same time that I hated my mother knowing about this shit and knowing how much it hurts her, it makes me feel good when she gets so angry over it. I don’t like that she can risk her welfare in her anger, but I still like that she cares that much. Isn’t that fucked up? I wished that I could still have the relationship that I have with her now without her knowing about the sex stuff, but at the same time it makes me happy and relieved, which only makes me feel like an asshole. I really wish my own feelings would make sense one day.

          I lifted the shirt to my face and, with a grimace, tempting a panic attack but doing it anyway in my usual, masochistic tendencies, sniffed at it. It didn’t smell like anything. Not sweat or booze or semen or anything else but the cheap laundry detergent. Pure relief almost had me falling to my knees. I fussily held the shirt under the fridge light, looking for a telltale stain, some dried, encrusted mess that she might have missed or had been too difficult to get out, but there was nothing. It looked perfectly clean, like nothing at all had happened. I clutched the shirt tightly to my chest as tears pricked my eyes and I fought to hold them back, berating myself for such an overreaction. It was just a clean shirt, that was all. I was just tired from everything, it wasn’t the big deal that I was making it to be.

          But it was, I knew. It wasn’t just a clean shirt. It wasn’t just that I didn’t have to throw it away or learn how to deal with it or that she had saved me the hassle of trying to get those stains off when just the thought of touching that bit of clothing almost had me retching. I felt like she had taken some heavy, terrible burden off my shoulders. She had, in her fumbling but honest way, tried to make something better. It didn’t make up for the years of neglect or that she couldn’t stop the act from happening entirely, but that was ok. She had tried and she had done her best, more than most would have done for me and I loved her so much for just wanting to take this one thing on for me, for scrubbing and spraying and washing until any trace of it was gone. It didn’t make it better completely, but it did erase some of the horror I had been feeling since the previous morning. Enough that getting through that morning didn’t seem like such a nightmare.

          Still with a tight grip on my shirt, I crept into the dark living room. From passing car lights coming from the window, I found my mother sleeping with her back to the doorway, her afghan bunched around her legs from a turbulent sleep, her blonde hair in a tangled mess around her head. My lips quirked in a small smile and I risked waking her with a quick, tiny kiss to her head. I pulled the afghan back up around her and left before I roused her.

          I managed to keep that pleasant warmth in my chest right up until I walked into my room and flicked on the light. Everything was exactly as I had left it the previous morning, so it wasn’t like I had any nasty surprises waiting for me, but that knowledge did nothing to stop the ice from forming in my gut. My desk was still back in its proper place, my lantern was still on it where it belonged, and my chair was still upright. But along with everything that was where it was supposed to be, the puddle of semen that I had also left that morning was still there, too, despite my wishes for some miracle. Only, because I had been stupid enough not to clean it up right away and had let it dry, it was no longer a gross, gloopy puddle on the hardwood floor but an encrusted, gloopy stain that was going to be ten times harder to get out.

          I remembered all my reasons for leaving it and knew I couldn’t exactly go back in the past and change any of it, but I still sighed in exasperation at myself. Even then, even wishing I had just grown a pair and dealt with it sooner, there was still a part of me that was grasping for anything that would put off my having to clean it for as long as possible. I could just ignore it and deal with it when I woke up for school, it reasoned. It wasn’t like it was going to get any worse. Or I could ignore it entirely and just move my desk over it. Out of sight, out of mind, right? Then I wouldn’t have to get on my hands and knees when I was already sore and exhausted and scrub at it for who knew how long and smell it and remember or want to vomit from being that close to it or, God forbid, actually accidentally _touching_ it.

The thought was tempting, too tempting, but there was no way I was going to do that. It wasn’t even my sense of responsibility or anything reasonable and logical like that. It was simply the knowledge that if I tried to go to sleep knowing it was still there, out of sight or not, I wasn’t going to be able to. It was like a bad smell or a splinter, this tiny thing that I couldn’t ignore until I dealt with it. So, with this heavy, tiring weight on my shoulders and legs, I trudged back downstairs into the kitchen and procured a bucket, thick sponge, an old, stained towel, and the rubber gloves my mother uses when she cleans. I filled the bucket up with soapy water, as warm as I could manage, and lugged it all back upstairs.

I put the bucket down when I got to my room and just stared at the stain for a moment, like I thought that if I just glared at it hard enough, it would get the message and disappear on its own. Just looking at it made my stomach roll with disgust, but I refused to let it make me hurl or feel anything but hesitance. It was just a stain, I kept telling myself. Nothing more. It was like a puddle of spoiled milk or maybe frosting that had melted there, nothing more than that. But the lie wouldn’t stick. I knew what it was and my tired brain refused to let me forget that for even a moment, trying to drag up those awful memories of how that mess had gotten there. I could even smell it from where I was standing and knew that that was impossible, that I was only imagining things. But that didn’t matter. Even that ghost of a smell was enough to make me sick.

I walked to it and tried to kneel down, but the smell only got stronger and I lurched back away from it. ‘This is fucking ridiculous,’ I yelled at myself in my head even as my hands shook, ‘Just get it over with!’ I took in a deep but trembling breath and picked up the bucket again, bringing it to where the stain was and, though it made me feel prissy and stupid, I put on the gloves that I’ve never needed to use before and wrapped one of my shirts around my face from my nose to my mouth, just loose enough so I could still breathe, making an impromptu mask. This sounds strange, but it helped. Even with that smell only existing in my head and knowing it shouldn’t have, having something to shield my nose and mouth made that smell lessen like it was a real, tangible thing.

I still had to force myself to get on my knees and grab the sponge from the soapy water, but I managed this time. I scrubbed at the mess, keeping my eyes closed for the first half of the job, not wanting to even glance at it. It was hard going, I didn’t need to look at it, I could feel it, how it didn’t want to give, even when I bore my weight down and scrubbed so hard that my hands started to hurt. For some reason, it angered me, like I was battling with the damned thing and its stubborn refusal to just go away like I wanted to made me scrub at it viciously and violently. I finally opened my eyes when I felt it start to give, start to get smaller and worried that I was just imagining that, too, that I was _never_ going to get it off the fucking floor and was going to have to learn to live with it, just like everything else.

But no, the stain was smaller now, finally surrendering and that knowledge, that tiny, dumb victory gave me the drive to keep on, even when my arms ached. I watched intently, almost obsessively, as that white mess disappeared, little by little, until, finally, I couldn’t see any of it. Just the old, hardwood floor with its scratches and imperfections. To my shock, I realized that my face was wet with tears and I couldn’t remember when I had started crying, through my frustrations or my utter relief. I wiped them away with my upper arm and dropped the filthy sponge into the bucket. I dried the floor with the towel in this silly sense of triumph, like I had won something even though I knew I hadn’t. It didn’t make anything better. It didn’t erase what had happened to me. It didn’t do shit. But it was nice to lie to myself that it had for a little while.

I went back downstairs, opening the little, yellowed window by the sink to dump the scummy water out of, rinsed out the sponge and left the gloves on the edge of the sink to dry. Even though I knew that I hadn’t gotten anything on my skin, that I couldn’t have, I still washed my hands fussily, hating myself for needing to, for being so insane the entire time I was doing it. All the same, when my hands were clean and everything was put away and I went back up to my room and didn’t see that stain there, didn’t see any evidence of the previous morning, I almost started crying with relief again. I even managed to walk over to where the stain had been with no trouble, taking a big whiff of the air, but I couldn’t smell anything. Just soap.

The ghost in my room taken care of, I suddenly felt hollow and exhausted, like I had run a marathon instead of just washed a small portion of the floor. I even felt like I might be able to sleep and was thankful for once that my father had fucked me on my desk instead of on my mattress, even if that was just as small as a relief as cleaning the floor. But even though that was a rare feeling and after not sleeping at all the previous morning and knowing I should take the opportunity to do so, I still had a small amount of homework to do. Feeling better than I had all day, for reasons I still don’t really understand, I fished what I needed out of my backpack and spread it out on my desk. For a moment, I worried that I wouldn’t be able to. That those memories would come back screaming and remind me what had happened on that desk and I would have to do my homework on the floor, but somehow, they stayed silent as I worked.

A rare silence seemed to fall over my street as I spent the last hour finishing up my history assignment. No cars honked. No one yelled or called someone a slut or a motherfucker. No sirens blared. Even my neighbor’s irritating dogs had found some peace in their lives to shut up for more than five minutes. It was like I had been given this tiny gift to compensate for how fucked up the previous day had been. Or I was just at the eye of the storm, but I didn’t want to think like that. I needed something, even something this small, this moment of quiet when I wasn’t being heckled by my own dark thoughts or worrying about my father or being a bad boyfriend or torturing myself in some way. A moment when I could just have a slice of normal, being a kid trying to get their homework done before bed, that was all.

I finished with a satisfied sigh, happy that I wasn’t going to have to stay up all morning or work like mad before class to get my work done. I closed my book and tucked my homework away safe into its binder. I dressed for bed and went over to the light switch, but paused. I really didn’t want to sleep in the total darkness, I realized. It was a childish thought, ironic since I’ve been sleeping in total darkness long before most of my classmates and am well used to it, but the thought of doing so that morning made something prickle in me. There are no monsters lurking in the dark. I’ve known that since I was six years old and my father told me I was too old for a night light. But that doesn’t mean they won’t come for you when the light is gone.

Not for the first time, I hated that attic room. I hated not having at least a window, some tiny shred of light from the street to make that darkness less oppressive. I ached for Josh’s home, which never seemed dark, even in the dead of night. Mariela had a night light in their hallway and upstairs and that seemed totally normal to them. No one had ever balked about it being childish or a waste of electricity. I had even asked her about it once, surprised that a grown woman would do such a thing and she had just told me, with that sunny, easy smile of hers, that it was so no one would stub their toes if they had to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. And there was nothing wrong with being able to see in the dark, or having just that little bit of comfort, was there? I’m sure that if I told her that those lights made me feel more at ease, less wary when I woke in the middle of the night from a strange sound or a bad dream, neither she or Justin would ever make fun of me for it. That ache in my chest grew and I longed to be there so strongly, to be able to talk to someone about these things that wouldn’t mock me, who would actually listen and _hear_ me instead of calling me a loser.

This wasn’t the first time that I had felt this way. Scared of the dark. I say I’m used to it, having slept in that attic my whole life, but that’s not entirely accurate. I’ve always been afraid, at least a little, of being in that big, dark room, of not being able to see what’s there. I grew out of the fear of monsters a long time ago. But you don’t need to be scared of make-believe when you live with one more times than not. Not knowing which father I would have from one day to the next was enough to get me scared of things I can’t see, of not knowing if I woke up if he was there, angry with me or just feeling petty.

Then this whole mess started and I began to get scared of monsters again. Of the one my father has become and… and the one that stalks me in my nightmares. Some nights I don’t even think about it. Some nights I don’t feel scared at all. Some nights, the dark is even a comfort, like a heavy blanket that helps lull me to sleep. But lately, I’ve been feeling more and more wary of it. In those moments when I’m half asleep, the thought seems to come, this crazy but terrible thought: Sure, you’re probably alone. Sure, that prickling feeling on the back of your neck is probably just your imagination. Sure, there’s probably nothing in that corner, lurking, waiting for you to fall asleep. But what if there is? I’ve learned to hate and fear those three words in my life. ‘But what if.’

This wasn’t the first time I hesitated at the light switch and it wasn’t going to be the last if these stupid nightmares and paranoia kept up. Usually when I felt this way, it was no big deal. Usually… I glanced over at my desk and at the lantern I had pointlessly put in the far corner. On a normal night or early morning when I felt this way, after a battle of calling myself names for acting like such a baby, I would cave and just keep my lantern on. No problem, right? I hated it because I was catering to something that was completely illogical, especially at my age, but it worked. The soft light always made me feel better, safer, and it didn’t use any of our electricity, so it didn’t make me feel guilty or make my father angry. But that morning, I remembered how it had fallen off my desk from my father’s actions and how it had refused to turn on after.

A strange mix of depression and panic filled me, one at the thought that my lantern might really be broken beyond repair and the other at the threat of those memories, a tangible, physical reminder that I couldn’t push away and ignore. The damage to my lantern and why it had happened was something I couldn’t refute, couldn’t forget, and unlike the damage to myself, it wasn’t something I had thought to shield myself from. It came like a sucker punch from one of those dark corners of the room. I curled my hand into fists to keep them from shaking, to keep from really thinking about any of it and, hesitantly, my heart beating a little too fast and this heavy, somber mood draped over me, I crept back to my desk.

I reached my hand out towards the lantern, paused, and quickly, like I had been burned by some unseen force, drew my hand back. I didn’t really want to know for sure if it was broken, and if I tried to turn it on, I would. I wouldn’t be able to lie to myself that maybe, through some miracle, it had repaired itself and it would turn on. Maybe it would flicker, maybe the light would be a little bit dimmer, but it would certainly turn on. Because the world couldn’t be that cruel, could it? But I knew that it could and frequently is, just like I knew, deep down, what was really happen if I hit that switch. Even knowing that, even knowing that I was setting myself up to be let down, I reached out my hand again because I had to know, I had to cater to that stupid, infuriating, tiny shred of hope. It was a rare enough emotion and I didn’t know what else to do with the damned thing since, though small, this one seemed rather stubborn and set on sticking around.

‘Just give me this one thing,’ I prayed before my finger touched the switch, something even rarer than my hoping for anything, ‘I know I’ve been asking for a lot lately, but please, don’t take this away from me. Just this one thing, please…’

I gently hit the switch, deluding myself that maybe if I was gentle with the stupid thing, it would be nice to me and _work._ There was nothing. Not a flicker, not even a spark. It was completely dead. I turned it over in my hands, examining it with frustration, trying to find the fault, something, _anything_ that I could fix in my desperation. I could tell where the lantern had hit the floor from some scuffs and scratches on the side and a tiny, barely noticeable dent, but nothing that was obviously causing it to not turn on. Even the tiny bulbs inside the thing looked intact. That somber feeling grew, trying to suffocate me. I’d call it despair, but that was a bit melodramatic over a broken lantern. Hopelessness comes close, along with a heaping of loss. I didn’t know a thing about lanterns, especially not to fix what was wrong. My dad might, but I wouldn’t ask him. I wasn’t even being petty about it, I knew that unless I caught him in one of his rare good moods, he wouldn’t help me anyway.

          ‘Justin might,’ I thought.

          Sure, he might, but probably not and I felt too much like a leech already, always asking him for help. If I had the money, I could take it to a shop and ask them to fix it. But even that seemed rather stupid, money or not. It was a cheap lantern, probably only thirty or forty bucks worth. Outside of my financial reach, but anyone capable of fixing it would probably just tell me that it would be cheaper to just toss the old thing and buy a new one. In reality, it was a bit amazing that the silly thing had lasted five years without breaking before, if only because I tried to take care of it. It was pointless keeping it. It was broken, no one was going to fix it, and it was just junk. I should have tossed it the previous morning when I had realized it wasn’t turning on. Only blind hope and stubbornness had me clinging on to it. Now I had neither and while it sucked that I wouldn’t have a light at night anymore, it would be stupid to hold on to it, right?

          I expected that realization to depress me even more, maybe even make me cry in that easy way crying has been happening to me lately. What I wasn’t prepared for was the hot, bitter anger that burst in my chest. I clutched at the light tightly, like I was going to break it even further. It was stupid, just so fucking stupid! Hatred boiled in me. I hated my father for breaking it. I hated myself for putting it on my desk in the first place instead of on the floor. I hated myself again for not just tossing it before. And I hated myself a third time for being so upset over a fucking _light_. Lastly, I hated myself most of all for not being able to hold on to something. My money. My friend. My CDs. Joshua. Stupid. Stupid. _Stupid!_ That’s what I was!

          It was useless, just like me, just like everything about me and I should break it just like everything else I touched, shatter it until it was nothing just to finish the job! I cocked my arm back in my anger, ready to throw it as hard as I could against the wall. It didn’t matter, I told myself over and over again, it didn’t _matter,_ it was just a thing! It wasn’t something precious like my mother’s necklace or the phone Josh had given me, so why hang on to it like this?! Why was it so fucking hard just to accept that this was something I could not fix and get rid of it?!

          ‘Because Nate gave it to me,’ I thought with a lot more calmness than I had thought I possessed in that moment, ‘Because it’s one of the last things I have that he gave me and if I throw it out, then that’s it. It’s gone forever. One more thing. How much do I have left to help me remember him? Remember the good things? How much he cared about me despite everything that happened?’

          My arm froze in the air and I could feel it tremble a little as my anger bled out of me, leaving me with an aching, hollow feeling, like something had been ripped out of me. My arm sagged and I brought the lantern to my chest, wrapping my arms around it and hugging it tightly. That’s when I felt the wetness on my cheeks. I guess I had cried after all. I wanted to feel irritated at myself for being so pathetic and weak, but I didn’t. I knew, even if I didn’t want to admit it, that this wasn’t just about a busted lantern, that I was crying over that feeling of loss, a feeling that I’ve been experiencing more and more lately, every time I try to make a choice about Josh, every time I try to think about our future and realize that we don’t have one.

          But it was more than just not wanting to lose something that he had given me or needing to hold on to a memory of him, though that was the biggest reason why I couldn’t make myself toss it. I had been using it for so long to stave away the dark and help myself sleep that that light was like a kind of security blanket, I suppose. I can still remember him giving it to me when other memories have started to become dull and faded. He had just… given it, no fuss, no pretense, hadn’t even said why, so very much like Nate. He had loved gifting me with things. I think that if I hadn’t found it so awkward and I hadn’t been so stubborn, I would have found a lot more presents from him. At the time, it had ruffled me the wrong way when he just gave me something out of the blue. If he had been someone else, I would have thought he was looking down on me, thinking that he needed to take care of me or he liked having that kind of superiority, that he could just buy whatever he wanted and wanted to boast about it. But Nate was never like that.

Now that I’m older and can look back at those memories, see him not just as my best friend, but as a kid that had been hurting and wanting for so many things he would never have, I can understand so much clearer why he had done those things. It wasn’t because he thought I needed them, that my being poor was something he needed to fix, or even to make himself feel better about giving me things I couldn’t afford. He had been lonely, just like me. We were really no different in that regard, both with no other friends and family that barely knew we existed. The only difference was that I bottled that feeling up inside and drew away from other people, clinging like a leech to the one person who made me feel like I wasn’t alone, that I was accepted. Nate had hidden his loneliness, too, and had clung to me just as hard.

Only, I think anyway, he had bought me those things, not just because he cared for me, but because he had been scared of losing me. I don’t mean that he had tried to buy my friendship, my refusal sometimes to accept him buying me things should have told him that his wealth wasn’t the reason why I was sticking around, but it had been the one thing he had plenty of, the one thing, in his mind, that made him special. He could give me the things that I needed because money was something he had and it was also the one thing he had that he didn’t give a shit about. It had meant nothing to him. But _I_ had meant something, so he had desperately grabbed at me with the only thing that he had known because it had been the same way his parents had shown him that they cared for him. Not with hugs or talking to him, listening to him when he was sad or hurt or asking him how his day was, but with a credit card and allowances and leaving him money on the kitchen counter when they didn’t have the time to make him lunch or buy him expensive presents when they missed his birthday. They had never realized just how cold that kind of love was.

I hadn’t, either. I had known that it wasn’t what Nate needed, that, like me, he yearned for affection from his parents or even his sisters. But I had lived under a budget my entire life. Hell, I slept in an attic on a mattress that was older than I was, wore cheap clothes and ate cheap food because my parents either couldn’t buy nicer things for me or my needs just weren’t high enough on their list to bother. If they even remembered that I needed anything some days. So that Nate’s parents gifted him with disposable income had seemed magical to me in those days. Sure, it wasn’t what he had wanted, but it was more than what I got, so that was something, wasn’t it? I had thought so back then, but I know better now. Not because of his suicide, but because of Josh and his family. Before becoming friends with him, I had never really seen how a normal, loving family functions. I had never understood how wonderful it was to know that your parents love you, would do anything for you, and would be there for you if you needed to talk to someone.

I thought about what Josh had told me about coming out to his parents, how supportive they had been, how they had talked to him and helped him to accept it. I thought about all the times I had needed to talk to someone and Justin had been there with a comforting hand and an understanding ear. Even when he knew he couldn’t make things better, he had still _listened_ to me. He hadn’t mocked me or ignored me or just nodded along. I thought about every time Mariela had hugged me when I had been feeling depressed or how pissed she had gotten on my behalf when she saw that someone at school had beaten me or I got upset over something. And I remembered all the times that I had seen them show Josh that they loved him, how much he _knew_ that they did just from touching him or a few words. I know now, more than I ever could have when I had been a kid, just how hurtful a twenty-dollar bill on a kitchen counter or coming home on your birthday to an empty, dark house and a present on your bed instead of a hug or even a phone call can really be.

I wished I had known that at thirteen or even twelve or younger. I wished I had told him that I understood and it was ok, he didn’t need to do those things for me, but if doing them made him feel even just a little bit better about himself, then he could do it as much as he wanted to. I wished I had told him how much I appreciated that lantern. Of course I had at the time, just from his generosity, but I wish I could have really made him understand how much he meant to me, just by being my friend and wanting to give me things. How much he understood _me_. Because, when he had given it to me and I had asked him why, he had just shrugged, so nonchalant about it, and said that it was better than a reading light. But that wasn’t true, at least not completely true.

What _was_ the truth was that I hadn’t slept in days because I had been having terrible nightmares every night. I can’t even remember what they had really been about. The usual shit revolving around Wren and my father, probably. And just like Nate, when he had asked me earlier that week why I was so tired, I had been completely nonchalant about the nightmares, trying to play it off like they were making me restless, not afraid. But as usual, he saw right through me and when he gave me that lantern, I had seen right through him, too. Even back then, we had known each other too well, but lied to ourselves that we were fooling each other. What a bunch of idiots.

I hugged the lantern tighter for a moment, caught up in those memories of loving him and missing him. It made the loss of this one, tiny thing all the more terrible. I felt like I had betrayed him somehow by letting it break and being too incompetent to fix it. It had been the only real thing I had left from him that worked. Everything else was broken, lost, forgotten. The hoodie he had given me didn’t fit anymore and, like the lantern, I just stubbornly clung to it, unable to give it up. The CD player and CDs he had both given me and I had taken from his locker were smashed up and the bits were probably sitting in a landfill somewhere. Josh had done his best to replace him and he was amazing for even wanting to do that, but it didn’t change the fact that I had lost what Nate had given me.

That wasn’t going to happen this time. I knew that I was being incredibly stupid, that it didn’t mean anything and I was just holding on to junk, but I still tucked the broken lantern away in the bottom drawer of my desk, hoping that nothing would ever happen to it in there. I guess I’m just a sentimental moron. But who knows? Maybe one day, I’d figure out how to fix it or get the money to take it to a shop. Yeah, yeah, there’s a fine line between being optimistic, something I suck at anyway, and being delusional, don’t laugh at me. I actually felt a lot better, not having to think about it, out of sight out of mind and all that. I realized I’ve been doing that a lot lately. Not making decisions. Ignoring things because I don’t want to deal with them. That sooner or later, whether it was about a broken lantern or my father or Joshua, I was going to have to actually make a choice. One that I wasn’t going to want. But what else is new?

I pushed those thoughts away as quickly as I could, knowing that if I dwelled on them for much longer, I was going to drag myself back down into that dark place in my head that I had been living in for far too long lately. I needed to sleep, not brood. It seemed like my father was still asleep, so I might actually get the chance to do that, at least for a few hours and didn’t want Josh to see me with raccoon eyes for another morning. I worried that the darkness or some stray thoughts might keep me awake, but for once, I was asleep in forty minutes after tossing and turning a bit, trying to get comfortable on the flat mattress. The last thought I really remember before I dozed off was how much I missed Josh and Pepper and even Kanuck and maybe that was a good sign that I wouldn’t be so… weird around my boyfriend compared to the previous day.

I managed a solid hour and a half of deep sleep before a familiar sound had me jolting back awake: a creak on the stairs. Even in deep sleep, there’s always a part of me that’s on alert when I’m at home and after so many years in a war zone, that part is high tuned and sensitive to certain things; sounds, smells, some sort of electric current in the air. It’s so deeply ingrained that I knew something was wrong and I was in danger before I even realized what it was that woke me. Ever been woken up from a sound sleep by a rush of adrenaline? It’s not pleasant. It’s jarring and confusing and almost painful. Instinctively, I curled up into a tight ball, my heart racing while the rest of me tried to figure out what was going on.

‘No,’ a childish voice began to cry in my head, ‘Not again, not again, please, please!’

I froze and listened. Maybe it was nothing, I told myself out of desperation. It’s an old house. It makes noises sometimes. It’s not like I’ve never been woken up by some phantom noise before, so maybe that’s all it was.

There was another creak on the stairs. Heavy. Purposeful. My heart exploded with fear as I couldn’t deny what was happening, what that sound was and I knew that it wasn’t my mother who was coming up the stairs.

‘Why? Why?!’ I screamed in my head, almost hysterically.

‘It’s fine,’ I tried to calm myself, ‘It’s no big deal. You survived it before, you can survive it again. Just like all the other times, lay still, let him do what he wants and then he’ll go away.’

That was right. All I had to do was nothing, nothing at all, then it would be over with for another morning and he would be done with me. I could survive. I’m good at that.

Another creak on the stairs, right outside my door almost had me crying out. I felt the ghosts of fingers on my hip and a soft breath against my neck. Wren’s, my father’s, it didn’t matter. I could feel it and it was real. I could feel him inside of me, could feel his nastiness on my skin. That crawling feeling that I had thought had finally left me suddenly returned with a vengeance and it was hard to breathe, like something was clenching down on my windpipe and no air was getting into my lungs.

I blinked my eyes open in the pitch blackness as I felt something else, just as familiar. Fingers running through my hair. A hand gently caressing my head. But it wasn’t my father’s. This time, it was Josh’s. I could feel it just as strongly as the other things, the memory of him trying to comfort me that afternoon as clear as my memory of my father raping me. Josh… oh god, Joshua. He would never know about any of this insanity. He would never know the disgusting things I let my father do. He just kept on loving me, so oblivious. So kind. He was so much stronger than me. He would never let someone do this to him without some kind of fight.

Pure loathing for myself filled me, but it didn’t touch on the disgust I felt at the thought of my father touching me again that morning. Not because I was scared that it would bring me back to that dark place and I would push Josh away again, but because I remembered how it had felt being touched so gently by him, being loved by him. That memory made the knowledge of what my father was coming up to my room in the dead of the morning to do all the more horrible and loathsome.

I couldn’t do it, I realized. I couldn’t just… just lay here for another morning and let my father mount me like a whore. If I did, I was going to go insane. But more than that, I couldn’t keep doing this to the boy I loved, I couldn’t let my father keep stealing these pieces of me, pieces he had no right to take. If I loved Josh… if I had ever loved him at all, if I ever wanted to be anything close to the boy he thought I was, how could I just lay there and take this? How could I let him touch and hold such a disgusting person?

The sound of the doorknob being turned choked the breath right out of me and every instinct I had screamed at me to run, just fucking run and get away from him, get away from this place before it happened again. Because this really had nothing to do with Josh or trying to be a stronger person. I was just scared. Terrified, right down into the deepest parts of my soul and I couldn’t do this anymore.

‘Not now!’ I screamed right back at my baser instincts, ‘If you run now, he’ll just catch you on the stairs or when he’s opening the door! You have to wait! Don’t let him turn you into a frightened animal, not again.’

But it was difficult. Almost impossible. Now that the idea of ‘run’ instead of ‘just take it’ had creeped into my head, staying there for a second longer was terrifying. Every muscle tensed in preparation, waiting for the right moment. But I wasn’t even facing towards the door, so it hard to know when that would be. All I could do was wait and run and hope this worked. A vicious little voice reminded me that all of this was pointless. Even if I got away from him this morning, what about the next? Or the next? Or the next? I squashed it angrily, knowing that if I listened to it for too long, it would make perfect sense and I would give up before even trying, just like all the other times it had convinced me.

The door swung open and those instincts grew into a cowardly, gibbering chorus, but I ignored them, focusing on the sounds coming from behind me. I waited, but shifted my body as subtly as I could, getting into a position that would make it easier for me to get to my feet as quickly as possible, slowly and gently pushing my sheets down and slipping my legs up and over them so they wouldn’t get tangled around me. For once, the darkness was an ally instead of my enemy. My father didn’t seem to realize that I was awake or that I was preparing to bolt. He paused at the doorway for a second, probably to get his bearings in the dark room, then took a few steps forward, not even trying to hide his movements.

When I judged that he was a few feet into the room, leaving the doorway clear, I scrambled to my feet and jumped over my mattress, racing past my father and getting so close to him that I almost crashed right into him, hoping he would be too surprised to think to do anything to stop me until I had hit the stairs. But that’s the thing about my father. Even when he’s dead drunk or exhausted or looks like he’s not even paying attention, he always is. He’s always alert and has some of the quickest reflexes I’ve ever seen. I used to admire that about him. That morning, I hated him for it. Anyone else I could have gotten past easily. It was five in the morning and I’m pretty damned fast and agile. Besides, it was dark and my eyes had adjusted more than his had. But my father wasn’t ‘anyone else.’

The second I tried to get past him, he tried to grab at me and I was prepared for that, dodging his hand easily. I was even prepared when his leg swiped at me, though I wasn’t prepared for how quickly and viciously it came at me, aiming for my legs. And when I tripped, misjudging his quickness, I was equally unprepared for his other hand getting a grip on the back of my neck and shoving me into the wall face first. He hadn’t pushed me very hard or I would have ended up with a broken nose, but the burst of pain and blood dripping down into my mouth told me it was going to be bruised and swollen. My father didn’t give me a second to take a breath, dropping me to the floor with a swift kick to the back of my leg, his hand still on my neck.

He hadn’t really set out to hurt me or he really would have broken my nose and maybe a few other things, but the fall to the floor was still jarring as I hit my head, knocking the wind and sense out of me for long enough that I didn’t fight when he pinned me down with a growl of frustration and anger. I wondered what I had done to piss him off, made him work for it or that I had actually almost gotten away. I didn’t feel any victory about either or making him frustrated. As he got on top of me and pulled my pants down, it didn’t seem to matter and any smugness I could have felt about not making this easy for him would have been petty anyway.

I pressed my aching face to the floor and spent the next fifteen minutes concentrating only on that pain, the hot and heavy throb that I was making worse, and trying not to cry with the same frustration my father had just felt. Only those two things. Not what was happening to me. Not thinking about what time this was. Not the feel of his hands on me or my shame or the burning pain as he entered me or even the familiar sounds of his panting.

‘See?’ that hateful voice jeered, ‘No matter how hard you fight it, it always ends up this way, doesn’t it? Did you really think that _you_ could stop him, ever? You couldn’t even run from him, and is that so surprising? Sure, you might be faster than he is, but he was cop for almost as long as you’ve been alive. How did you think that some scrawny, loser teenager could get away from someone with that kind of experience, let alone someone twice his size? Mom knows better than you. Why do you think she’s too scared of him to do anything? She knows how to survive. She knows it’s easier to do nothing than to run in molasses her whole life. So why don’t you just give up the act? You might get away with it once or twice, but in the end, he always wins, doesn’t he, in every way a person _can_ win? He’ll drag you down and fuck you or beat you until there’s nothing left but little shards of him, bitter and angry and full of hate.

‘What are you hanging on for, exactly? And what are you holding on to Josh for? So he can see it, watch someone he loves dissolve into this disgusting person? You’re already halfway there, aren’t you? He just hasn’t gotten it yet. But sooner or later, the lie falls apart. It always does. So please, explain to me why you’re even trying anymore.’

I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed my face against the floor even harder, making more blood drip out of my nose as hot tears streamed down my cheeks, the two almost indistinguishable from each other. I almost slammed my head into that floor, wanting to disperse the voice and the vicious, terrible things that it was saying, even as I knew that that voice wasn’t some alien invader. It was just me. The me that couldn’t lie to itself, couldn’t push everything away and pretend that things were fine. The me that knew just how full of shit I was and hated me for all my failings.

And I could deny it. Fight it. Call it a liar. But it was right. I had failed spectacularly. I hadn’t even made it to the damned stairs, let alone out of the house. And then what? To Josh’s? At five in the morning? So he could ask me why I was running around in my pajamas looking scared out of my wits? It didn’t matter. That voice was right. I couldn’t stop this. Even when I had finally gotten the courage to try to run, I hadn’t gotten anywhere. It was pointless to fight. Pointless to do anything at all but just lie there and take it like the pathetic loser that I am. I felt something get ripped right out of me that morning. Hope. I hadn’t had much left to begin with, but once again, my father had shown me just how weak I really am. If Josh could have seen me, he would have been ashamed.

My father finished and left unceremoniously, obviously not in the mood for any words or gestures of affection. Even if he had been, I had clearly pissed him off trying to run and was probably lucky he hadn’t given me one last kick out of spite. For once, I was glad. I didn’t want to hear those words from him that morning. I didn’t want that shit in my head with everything else, confusing me, ripping my heart in two. I’m already constantly conflicted with everything, I felt like just that reminder of one more thing that made me so uncertain would kill me, give me an aneurism or something. I mean, how could he do something like that? How could the man that had looked at me so hateful the previous morning have ever told me that he loved me like that, with so much affection in his voice? How could he have ever stroked my hair or put his hand on my shoulder and kissed my head? Was it all a lie? Was he seeing someone else when he did it? Was it just to assuage his guilt and how much he hated having to do this? Or was that hate a lie? Something he told himself to make this easier? Which was the easier thing for him: hating me or loving me? And which possibility was less painful for me to believe?

I slowly lifted myself off the floor, wincing at the throbbing pain in my nose and the disgusting sensation of wetness dripping out of me at the change of position. There was a smear of blood on the floor from where I had had my face pressed to it. Something in my head screamed at me that I needed to get _it_ out of me, needed to scrub myself clean before it set into my skin, but for once, that voice wasn’t sending me into a screaming panic. I just sat there, half kneeling, frozen. Between the swelling agony in my face and the taste of my own blood and the sharp, nauseating pain in my ass, I felt battered in a way that my father’s fists could never accomplish. I wanted to scream and cry, but it was all stuck, bottled up somehow. I just felt repulsive, that feeling like there were worms under my oozing, rotting skin was back, that compulsion to tear it all up and let myself bleed returning, but lesser for some reason. Maybe I was just too tired. Maybe I was starting to shut down. Or maybe I was finally realizing that these feelings didn’t matter, that I could peel my skin off with a knife and it wouldn’t help.

None of it mattered. Trying to run away, fighting back, trying to keep a hold of myself… none of it. I just fail anyway, no matter how hard I try, so what’s the point? What’s the point of holding on to anything at all when it just slips through my fingers? Why was I dragging this relationship with Josh out like this when I knew I was never going to be able to keep it? Everything falls apart, I’ve known that for a long time now. So why do I keep doing this? Why do I keep letting myself hope? Why not just let things fall apart and be done with it because I’m so tired of worrying and trying to pretend that things are fine? That I can do anything, that I’m anything more than the failure that I really am?

Feeling as low as a maggot in raw sewage, I got to my feet. I needed to be clean. _That_ was what mattered. I needed to get the stink of sex and him off me. If I could just get clean, it would be like none of this ever happened. I threw my pants into my hamper with a lot more force than was needed, gathered up some clean clothes, cleaned up the blood on the floor and drying on my face with a rag, and went downstairs. My mother was still sleeping on the couch, blissfully unaware of what had just happened and I planned to keep it that way. It was the only thing I could really do for her. My father was puttering around his bedroom and I felt a tiny burst of hate for him. I hoped he would just go back to bed and leave me alone. Maybe I could even leave before I would have to see him again. That hate melted into depression and melancholy as I wondered when it had happened that all I could hope for was to not see my father, when I hadn’t even felt conflicted by loving and hating him, I just didn’t want to be around him at all. Had it started with the rapes, or before that? I can’t remember anymore, but only because I don’t want to remember.

I locked myself in the bathroom, more out of spite than thinking it would give me any privacy. If my father wanted to burst in there like he had done the previous morning, he would need to break the shitty door or the shitty lock. Like that had never happened before. We had gone a whole month without a bathroom door once when I had been seven from my father kicking the door in chasing my mother during a bad fight. And if he had to do that with me, he would beat the shit out of me for it, but I didn’t care. He wasn’t going to burst in on me unawares this time and I wasn’t going to let my guard down for a second. I studied my reflection in the mirror, careful not to take in how pale my skin was or the flat, empty quality to eyes lined with tired creases.

I hadn’t done a very good job wiping the blood off my face. It was caked on and under my nose and above my lip, thick and drying. My nose wasn’t swelling as much as I feared it would, but there was a dark, black and purple bruise on the bridge, as well as a bloody cut from where I had hit the wall. I cleaned the blood off with a washcloth, ignoring the throbbing pain when I pressed down a bit too hard on my injured nose and tossed it in the sink. That was the most I could tolerate before I had to take care of the mess between my legs or I was going to go crazy. I tugged my hair band off, stripped out of my shirt and threw open the shower curtain. But when I reached out to turn the water on, my brain finally kicked in and I drew my hand back like the shower handle had been boiling hot.

My father’s ultimatum. In my desperation and loathing, I had forgotten about it. That would have been just the icing on the shit cake, wouldn’t it? Getting the shit beaten out of me for disobeying him. He was probably even expecting it and I had to wonder if that was why he was still up and about, waiting for me to slip up so he could have the reason to hit me. He didn’t really need one, but I didn’t like the dark thought, that he _wanted_ me to disobey him just so he could hurt me. That was something that Wren would do, but it was so easy to imagine my father in his bedroom, listening to what I was doing, waiting for me to fuck up like I always do. The really messed up thing was that I actually debated it. I looked at that shower handle and raised my hand again. Like always, I weighed my options. A beating or him leaving me alone. Obeying or getting clean. And for a moment, taking that shower, and the inevitable beating, was worth it. Just to get that feeling off my skin.

Only it wouldn’t, would it? Even if my father gave me the time to scrub and scrub and scrub, which he wouldn’t, it wouldn’t make me feel clean. It would help, but it wouldn’t cure. And maybe getting hit would make me feel a little better, too, because I deserved a beating, didn’t I? Not for taking a shower, but I still deserved one. But then Josh would see the bruises and worry about me and it would be all my fault again. No matter what I did, I was fucked, wasn’t I? What was worse, bothering him and worrying him or risking him smelling sex on me? They both sounded pretty bad. One would probably end up in us fighting again and the other I might be able to stop, but was even more unpleasant.

I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling myself tremble slightly as it finally really hit me that I wasn’t going to take a shower that morning and that sickening, creeping, itchy, and loathsome feeling on my skin grew and grew until I wanted to scream. What was I going to do? I needed to get it off me, but how? I wasn’t going to get clean. I was never going to get _it_ out of me. That scream started to claw its way up my throat, hysteria beginning to build.

‘Get a fucking grip!’ I snapped at myself, ‘Stop freaking out over nothing! So what if you can’t shower?! Dad’s right, you’re just a prissy loser to lose your shit over this! If I can walk through a thunderstorm to the hospital with a broken arm, I can go a few days without a shower! How is this even a problem?! It’s just _semen_ for fuck’s sake! It’s not shit, it’s not glass shards, it’s nothing harmful! So why do you have such a problem with it?!’

          I didn’t have an answer for myself. I didn’t know… I _don’t_ know why it bothers me so much, but even if I could rant and rave at myself, it didn’t stop me from feeling it. If only I could. If only I could just shut this all off, turn it into nothing like I turned my father’s anger and beatings into nothing. How is this any different? Why does it always bring me so low? Lower than anything else? I can’t begin to understand it, I only know that it tears me apart and I have yet to find a way to keep myself together.

          ‘Come on,’ I tried the gentler approach with myself, knowing that fighting against it wasn’t betting me anywhere, ‘You can’t just stand here all morning. Just get it done. The sooner you get clean, the sooner you can leave.’

          I specifically kept the thought of ‘the sooner you can see Joshua’ out of my head because I wasn’t so sure yet if that was a good thing or not. I missed him. I missed his voice and how easy it was to be around him compared to everyone else. The memory of him being so understanding the previous day when I had been falling apart was comforting, but I was also scared of how I would act around him. Would I still shy away from him? Not want him to touch me? Do something stupid? And that wasn’t even considering my fear of not doing a good enough job washing and him smelling it on me or, in that eerily perceptive way of his that reminds me so much of his father, he would just _know_ there was something wrong and try to get me to talk about it. And I would have to brush him off and pretend that everything was fine and I just didn’t feel strong enough to do that yet.

          So, I pushed all thoughts of Josh out of my head and just did what needed to be done. It was the only thing I could do to keep myself from overthinking everything and driving myself insane, or worse, into another panic attack, which felt like a very real possibility in that moment. I sat on the toilet, trying to get all of it out the easiest way possible. It hurt like hell at first, like it always does right after, just the act of moving my lower body or pushing even a little. But I grit my teeth and bore through it, so used to feeling that pain when my father wasn’t in the mood to be careful.

          I’ll save you the gory details because I’m sure no one wants to read it and I sure as hell don’t feel like recounting it. Suffice to say that it was a long, disgusting process that left me feeling weary, hollow, and frustrated. I washed and washed, inside and out, scrubbed until my skin was red and then scrubbed more, allowing myself to give in to that feeling of dirtiness, but just a little bit. I went through three washcloths and more water than a spit shine washing warranted, but I seriously didn’t care. I finally had to force myself to stop because if I didn’t, I would probably be in there for hours more, fussing over things and insisting to myself that it wasn’t enough, I wasn’t clean yet. As it was, I had been in there at least twice as long as it would have taken me to shower and I was amazed my father hadn’t banged on the door yet. I guess he had been appeased by not hearing the shower going. It didn’t matter, even if it was just a fluke, I was happy I had at least been left alone, even if I still felt filthy.

          It was a very real, physical trial to get myself to put down the washcloth I was using and get dressed. That scared child in my head cried that I was going to get my clean clothes dirty and I needed to wash more, but the pragmatic, sane adult just rolled his eyes and pointed out that it wouldn’t make any difference, I was as clean as I was ever going to be. The only thing left I could do was wash my hair, but I really didn’t need to and it was only going to be a colossal waste of my time since it wasn’t going to make me feel any better. I dressed, putting on a very liberal amount of deodorant, and sniffed at myself. I didn’t smell anything gross or suspicious, but that didn’t ease my paranoia.

          I left the bathroom, not feeling much better than when I had entered it and went back upstairs, managing to avoid my father as he left his bedroom. He didn’t say anything to me, but I could feel his eyes on me, making my heart race and the hair on my arms stand up. When I got to my room, I fruitlessly closed the door behind me, like that was going to do anything, my heart screaming in my chest. I took a few deep breaths, but it seemed as pointless as closing the door had been.

          ‘Move, move, just move,’ I chanted at myself, ‘It’s fine. He’s done for now, it’s over.’

          But those words, ‘for now’, erased all the rest and the knowledge that this would happen again, even if it was common knowledge by then, made something in me cry hysterically. Sensing the imminent panic attack that would render me senseless in maybe a minute, I seized my nose and squeezed the bridge as hard as I could, focusing on the wave of heavy pain to snap me out of it. It’s fine, I told myself again for the hundredth time, you can’t even hear him moving around downstairs, can you? Tomorrow doesn’t matter. Two weeks from now doesn’t matter. What _does_ matter is getting out of this house and going to Joshua’s. I can deal with anything that comes after that later, just like always.

          Simple to think, harder to do. But since my choices were ‘go to Josh’s’ or ‘stay here in the same house as Dad and have your freak out’, that made things a little easier. I gathered my things, obsessively making sure not a thing was out of place on my person, giving in just that inch to my paranoia, and went downstairs. It was still a bit too early to go to Josh’s, but I would have fled that house like my ass was on fire if my father hadn’t been in the kitchen, fussing with the coffee maker, and given me an icy stare when he saw me. If I left, he would be immediately suspicious and demand to know why I was leaving so early. Besides, I knew he was expecting me to make him his breakfast. Why he was up when he could have gone back to sleep was beyond me. I tried to not care about what he did, but it made me even more paranoid. Was he staying up to monitor me? Make sure I stayed put? Had he even realized what I was doing and where I was going when I left before school?

          The hair raising on the back of my neck with those cool, grey eyes on me, I put my bag down in the hall by the door, pretending that I had been doing that in first place before I had breakfast when I was really making a path for an easy escape if it came to that. What had happened earlier that morning should have taught me that I can’t escape from him, not really, but I also knew that if I threw in the towel completely, it would be the death of me. I’m not just being poetic, I mean that very literally.      

          With the two of us not saying a single word to each other the entire time, my father finished making coffee, poured himself a cup, and sat down at the table with the paper while I started to make him breakfast. We had food for once, but with our bills the way that they were, I was leery to use a lot of it, wanting to stretch it out as much as I could, so I settled for scrambled eggs and toast. I didn’t even think of making myself anything, even though it would help with the illusion that I had come here to eat, not flee. For one, I didn’t have any appetite. I had also told my mother not to worry about getting me any food, that I would just eat at Josh’s. It would help our budget and my guilt, taking just a tiny bit of the burden off my mother.

          “Not that shit again,” my father suddenly snapped at me when he saw me put bread in the toaster, making me flinch with fear, “Make something decent for once, not that bland garbage. I’m sick of it. If I wanted swill, I’d go to the quick mart and I’d still get something more filling. Can’t you do anything right?”

          That last bit was said with exasperation and a bit of weariness, like he was tired of dealing with me, which I’m sure is the truth. It took an obscene amount of self-control not to roll my eyes at him, even with my back turned. ‘If you want a five-star breakfast every day,’ I wanted to snarl at him, ‘maybe you should cut down on the booze and make some other sacrifices for once, then we could afford a bigger grocery budget. Or maybe you could make it your fucking self. It must be nice having someone wait on you all the time.’

          I schooled my expression in case my father could sense it somehow and gritted my teeth, bottling up my anger and hatred of him. I didn’t want to make my rapist breakfast, or do anything else for him, but already my hands were going through the motions, my body on autopilot, ancient fear of him and his rages taking over. I put the bread back in the bag and prepared some bacon to make an omelet with, even chopping up some peppers and mushrooms just to get him off my case and made sure there would be enough left for my mother. When I put the food on a plate and dropped it in front of my father with just a little bit more attitude than I had intended, he just snorted mockingly at me and ate without a word of thanks or warning. I started to turn to take care of the leftovers when he snapped his fingers at me and pointed to a wad of cash and a slip of paper on the counter.

“I have parts for the car that need to be picked up this afternoon,” he told me in the same brusque, no-nonsense voice he always uses when he issues me an order, “I’m going to be at work, so you’re going to get them after school before you go to work. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir,” I said automatically, willing to agree to anything if it got me out of there.

“Good. They’d better be in this house when I get home,” his voice turned tight in a serious warning, making something in me, something that’s been there since my childhood, clench with fear, “The place is closed Friday to Sunday and I’m not going the weekend without a working vehicle. Can I trust you to do this one, little thing without screwing it up?” he nearly sneered.

The anger threatened to overtake me at his naked contempt, but under that, under the hard stare and his obvious irritation with me that I haven’t been able to understand since I was a kid, I saw just how tired he was, how weary and frustrated. How many times that month had he fixed that damned car? My mother and I were annoyed about it because of the money it cost to keep it running, but for the first time, I thought about how my father felt about it. He loved that car, obviously, whether because it had belonged to his father or for some other reason I didn’t know, and he worked hard to keep it going. But it wasn’t enough, it just kept breaking down and he had to dedicate more and more of his spare time to working on it. That he didn’t have to, that he could just take a bus like my mom does didn’t seem to matter much.

Maybe, like everything else, it was about his pride, about being able to have a working car or about not failing in something that mattered to him. I don’t know, but that he was tired and angry that he had to work on it again that weekend or he had to spend money on parts or just that he had to rely on me and not himself was blatantly obvious. Two parts of me, the part that hates my father for what he does to me and how he sees me, and the much older part that loves him despite everything he’s put me through warred with each other. But just like always, I felt the love part winning, worming its way into me past the hate. It was almost nauseating, having these two feelings in my head, but at the same time that I wanted to strike him for making me feel like nothing, like trash, and for raping me, for putting these terrible thoughts in my head, I also wanted to hug him and tell him that it was ok, that I knew how tired he was from working a job that he hated and worrying about bills and the car and everything else and how much I wanted to help him and Mom. I was paralyzed by that duality, this tearing sensation in my heart that made me feel physically ill.

I didn’t do either. I wasn’t in the mood to get hit and I knew that either of those actions would result in exactly that. I felt this… aching hole in me at that realization, that I couldn’t even hug my father when he was in this kind of mood or tell him that I cared about him without him taking it the wrong way. It made a part of me yearn to see Justin, but it wasn’t the same. If anything, that desire made the rest of me hurt even more because for so long now, there’s been this distance between my father and myself that can never be breached. It’s more than just him not being a touchy feely person or showing me much affection, I can’t even risk doing the same to him if he’s in a mood. It’s like there’s some chasm there between us, or a barrier of fire that I can’t even touch. Some days, when he’s hurt me emotionally or physically or sexually, I’m ok with that. I don’t want anything to do with him and I hope that barrier grows and grows and grows. But others, I desperately yearn for some scrap of affection or even just a touch, like a little kid wanting to be held. Some days it’s so bad, I almost cry knowing it will always be like this between us.

Maybe when I was little, it was different, but as much as I hope that things would change, I know this is just how it is now with us. I’ll never have what Josh has with his father. I’ll probably never even be friends with mine. All I can really hope for are those rare days when we have some kind of connection, when I can talk to him and not get my head bitten off. Maybe I can hope for some day when he gets a better job, when he’s happier and less stressed, but even then I don’t know if things will change, if his attitude towards me is just because of how miserable he is, or if he truly does hate the person I’ve grown up to be.

“Yes, sir,” I repeated, but in a softer, dejected tone.

My father stared at me like I had grown a second head, probably having expected me to get pissy at his insult, not maudlin. I ignored him and put the wad of bills in my pocket. Him thinking I was being weird or even being a pansy was a lot better than him thinking I was coping an attitude and needed a slap. I quickly cleaned up the kitchen and after that, decided I had spent enough time there and it was time to leave. Not because it was late, it was still a little early, but just because I didn’t want to be there anymore. I managed to get as far as putting my sneakers on before my father saw what I was doing.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he asked in a cool, hard tone, “And don’t give me some shit lie about you going to school this early.”

‘And what are you doing awake this early when you don’t have a single thing to do besides give me shit,’ I almost snapped back at him, but held my tongue.

“I go jogging before school,” I told him, bending down to tie my shoes to pretend like I wasn’t the least bit fazed by his question when I was really shaking inside, my entire body tense, waiting for this line of inquiry to blow up and turn into a fight.

My father snorted at that and I had to wonder how he hadn’t noticed that I go for runs. Sure, I might not have started to do it consistently until recently, but he had to have realized that I like to run when I have the spare time. Unless he was just pretending that he hadn’t to fuck with me, which was a level of messed up I couldn’t wrap my head around.

“Since when?” he jeered.

“A while now,” I confessed, deciding to stick to as much of the truth as possible so he couldn’t catch me in a lie, “Not so much during the winter, but now that it’s warmer out, I’ve been doing it more often.”

“And since when have you given a shit about being athletic?” he sneered in that mocking tone of his that always cuts me into ribbons.

I finished tying my shoes and straightened up, carefully studying him to see what kind of mood he was in now, if he would just mock me or he was ready to accuse me of something that would piss him off. His eyes were like granite as he regarded me, taking in my thin body with contempt. I could already see the accusation in his eyes, that I was clearly lying because I was weak, scrawny, and had as much interest in sports and being physically active as a horse is interested in hopscotch. It hurt, knowing he thinks that of me, that just because I’m not into sports and I’m not as big as him, I have no interest in anything physical. But mostly it pissed me off, which was dangerous, but I couldn’t stop feeling that anger because running is one thing that I’m good at and my father didn’t even know that about me. Josh is a lot more athletic than I am, but I can still outrun him. Hell, I can outrun Wren and his fucking cronies, all of whom are on teams and I bet that if I told my father that, he still wouldn’t give a shit.

I could be the fastest kid in school and bring home medals and trophies and he’d still call me a sissy. I bet, to him, track wasn’t even a real sport. That I tried hard and it was something that I was slowly becoming a little bit proud of after all these years of not giving a shit about anything school related wouldn’t matter a single bit to him. It shouldn’t matter, it was just some dumb activity that I’m decent at and my father would be right. No one cares if the track team does well or not besides our coach. The school didn’t get funding and nice uniforms for the track team, our accomplishments weren’t first page material. But it was _my_ sport, the only one I had ever bothered to care about, let alone the only one I had succeeded in and it angered me and hurt me as much as bringing home an A- had when I had been a kid after trying so hard, only to be gruffly asked why it wasn’t an A+. I shoved that anger deep down and wondered if I should just make a run for the door, cut this asinine conversation short, but that would probably be a bad idea even if I made it.

“What’s even the point?” my father just wouldn’t quit driving that hot poker deeper and deeper into me and I had to look away from him so his contemptuous, superior expression wouldn’t make me do something stupid, “It’s not like you’re on any teams, not that any team would _want_ your scrawny ass. Doing a few laps around the neighborhood isn’t going to make a loser like you anything special.”

My hand curled into a tight fist as his words burned into me. Something flashed in my head. Joshua urging me to try out for track, supporting me, telling me how fast I was and how I had a real chance to make it. And he had been right. Not my father. Not the man that brought me into this world and had raised me, but a boy I had known for a few months. He had seen me, known more about me than my own damned parents. Despite the voice screaming at me to back down, I felt something else in me snap and that pissed, snarling coyote that my anger has become over the years gained a few steps forward on the tight chain I keep around it.

“Actually,” I grabbed my bookbag and slung it over my shoulder, still incredibly careful not to look at him so he would see that anger, “I’m on the track team.”

My father went silent for a moment, that superior look slowly draining from his face to be replaced by icy anger. I froze where I was, waiting for the moment when he would stand up from the table and make a go for me, but it didn’t seem to have escalated to that yet.

“Don’t you fucking lie to me,” his voice was like hard chunks of glacier and I knew that the smart thing to do at this point was to apologize and just let the whole thing drop, but for once, this wasn’t a lie and I hated that the possibility that I was telling the truth was so non-existent for him that he would accuse me of bullshitting him. e of the leftovers when he snapped his fingers at me and pointed to a wad of ce attitude than I had intended, he

“I’m not lying!” I snapped, cutting off whatever he had been about to say, ignoring that little voice babbling about how fucked I was and what had I just done.

By some kind of miracle, my father didn’t get up and belt me one right there. Maybe he was too tired or not in the extremely pissy mood I had thought.

“They must have really been in desperate need for members if they wanted you,” he said arrogantly with this sickening smile as he took another sip of his coffee, still obviously not believing me, but all too eager to get a few more digs in before getting really mad about my lying to him.

I wanted to scream at him, really rip into him and call him an asshole, that he didn’t know a thing about me and that he was the big, tough jock and I’ve been running circles around _him_ since I was a kid. Hell, he was the reason why I got on track in the first place, if you really thought about it. I had needed to be fast and a good runner to get away from him! All of that was in my throat, ready to spill out into the air, but I took a few deep breaths, trying to calm myself down before I said something really stupid.

“Horner’s been trying to get me on the team for years, actually,” I told him and felt gratified that I finally had his attention as he blinked at me in surprise. Horner’s been teaching and coaching high school sports for twenty years, so I knew my father had had him as a coach as well and probably knew the man better than I did, “ever since I was a freshman. He knew I was fast and even though he had a full team, he still wanted me to try out anyway,” it took a great deal of self-control not to have that come out with any inflection or smugness to really drive home to him just how wrong he was, “but I never had any interest until this year, so I always turned him down. But I guess he was right, I beat out a few guys that had been on the team for years.”

I had said it very lightly, not even bragging because I was just stating a fact in my mind, but I didn’t expect my father to really care about any of it. I patiently waited for him to mock me again, ask me ‘so what’ or say something else to try to humiliate me just like he used to back when he had cared about my grades and I had gotten anything lower than a B. My dad didn’t even say anything for a moment. He stared at me in shock and I didn’t know how to feel about that, that he was that surprised I had actually made it on a team. The most amazing thing about it was that I didn’t see any disbelief on his face. I couldn’t even remember the last time that I had made him speechless like that.

“I have practice every Saturday morning,” I babbled, all the anger suddenly bleeding out of me and making me feel unsure and strange. When was the last time I had even spoken this candidly to my father about anything, let alone school or an extracurricular activity? Hell, when was the last time we had spoken to each other that hadn’t resulted in yelling or hurt feelings? “We haven’t had any meets yet since the season is still early. I’ve been jogging to try to improve.”

I bit my tongue to stop, wondering what the hell was wrong with me. Why is talking to my father like this so difficult? Why, after all these years of letting him down and him letting _me_ down, am I still so pathetically desperate for his approval? Why does it even matter? My father seemed to recover from his shock, but to my continued surprise, his expression didn’t return to disbelief or hardness or even superiority, but he almost looked wistful.

“I tried out for track when I was a sophomore,” he said, thinking of some far-off, distant memory, “but I was never fast enough. Football and hockey were more of my thing anyway.”

It was my turn to stare in shock. Not at his confession that he had tried out for the same team and failed, but that he was confessing anything at all to me. I can count on one hand the number of times he had told me anything about his childhood or teenaged years, most of them said gruffly and unwillingly, like he was extracting a tooth. My father isn’t the sharing sort of person, but I get the impression from his attitude when telling me these things that he doesn’t like to think about his younger years all that much. I suppose he doesn’t like thinking about it because they were better times for him, before he was saddled with a family and debt and jobs he hated.

Or maybe there’s some other reason that I don’t know, but I learned very young not to ask those kinds of questions unless I wanted to put him in a mood, so it was weird he was volunteering such information, not with a chip on his shoulder, but as someone reliving something pleasant. I guess, for my father, sports was the one thing he was really proud of as a teenager. It was just too strange to me, this whole conversation, and how easy we were communicating with each other all of a sudden. It would be too easy for me to forget how he usually is, that he had fucked me just hours ago or how much I hate him. It was too easy when he was like this to remember how he was when I was a child, how much more patience he had had for me and being a father. How he had seemed to care.

“What’s your rank?” he asked me and his obvious interest in something that had to do with _me_ continued to make me speechless for a moment.

“I-I’m the third fastest on the team,” I confessed in a small voice, not wanting to admit that in case he accused me of lying again and because I still struggle with knowing that I’ve accomplished something like that, even if Josh has gotten me more used to it.

Something passed through my father’s face and, for a moment, it was such a strange and unexpected thing, I couldn’t read him at all. It was an emotion I hadn’t seen from him in a very long time, so long that I can’t even remember accurately the last time I saw it. Since I had taught myself how to read, maybe. It was certainly something I had thought I would never see again, the way things have been going between us the last few years. Pride. Pride in _me_.

I told myself that I was just seeing things. The glimmer in those eyes was small and I wanted it to be there so badly, I must have just imagined it. After the way he had looked at me the previous morning, there was no way he could look at me like that. Even if that had never happened, I couldn’t believe he could be proud in anything I’ve done. But although it was small, it wasn’t some fleeting thing and I saw it with perfect clarity. It was real.

A deep warmth filled me. It was a mix of feelings that I haven’t had in quite some time towards my father: love and happiness, untainted by hatred of him or wariness. I was confused and there was some bitterness there, at myself and at him because I didn’t want this in my head. A part of me did. It wanted his approval and it wanted to love him like this, to have this shining moment when he wasn’t a monster, when he was only my father. But it only tore me apart more and made me feel bewildered because I couldn’t equate the man that I was talking to then with the same person that had brutalized me earlier. I liked it better when I could just hate him, not have my resolve waver like this. It made me weak and threatened to numb the pain that _he_ had given me in the first place. The love I felt for him made the nightmares tolerable and it eroded any clarity I had. In a way, that one look of pride and approval was more painful and dangerous than any beating.

“Good,” he said, bringing me out of my tangled thoughts and feelings, his voice returning to that gruff tone he often takes with me, “It’s about time you got your nose out of those damned books and got an interest in a physical activity.”

‘Thank god you’ve stopped being an embarrassment to me and did something _normal_ for once,’ was implicit in his tone even if he didn’t say it out loud. That he was thinking it was written all over his face. He started reading his paper again and took another sip of coffee. I had been dismissed. I rushed out the door, relieved to get out of there and away from that whole, confusing scene, not to even mentioned that I had miraculously gotten away without a scratch or having my father realize that jogging wasn’t the only reason why I was leaving so early.

It was nice to hold on to that positive feeling for a while, to not think about everything that was dragging me down and just focus on the fact that I was out of my house, going to see my boyfriend, and, if only for a moment, my father had been proud of me. But just like always, I couldn’t cling to it for very long. It slipped through my fingers and the closer I got to Josh’s house, the more I felt that veil of melancholy and fear cover me. It was the same feeling I had had the previous day when I had left Josh’s house for work. I didn’t really have any reason to feel better about myself, did I? Nothing had changed from yesterday. I had still done something immensely hurtful and stupid to Joshua. I was still messed up. About it and about what my father had done, only what he had done that morning was now piled on top of it, along with my paranoia about not taking a shower that morning.

That feeling I had had yesterday, not wanting to be touched, not wanting to deal with people, finding my own skin disgusting… it had never left me. I had just wanted to believe that. Or maybe it really had and my father had just made it come back, but I couldn’t deny that it had. What if… what if I reacted to Josh the same way I had the day before?

I stopped where I was walking, just two blocks away from Josh’s street as anxiety gripped my chest. In my head, I saw it over and over again: me pushing him away and him only just barely regaining his balance before he would have hit the table. His shock, my disgust in myself. Drawing away from him every time he had tried to touch me that day. I didn’t want to go through that again. I _never_ wanted to feel that way again, and I sure as hell didn’t want Josh to feel rejected again and have to deal with me acting like I was insane.

I stared at the open mouth of Josh’s street helplessly. I didn’t know what to do. Turn around and just take my run around the park alone so he wouldn’t have to deal with me, or risk having another… what can you even call what yesterday was? A freak out? Episode? Mental breakdown? I supposed that running away wouldn’t matter. I’d have to see Josh at school anyway and us being alone together at some point was just an inevitability. And if I didn’t show up at his place that morning, he would just get worried and ask me why, and I didn’t have a single, sane, understandable excuse tucked away. I guess I could have told him that I was just running late, but I hate lying to him and given what had happened before, he wasn’t going to believe me. Besides, after our awkward chat in the park the other day, I was trying to be more honest with him. Failing, but still  _trying_ , so it seemed senseless to lie over nothing. And then there was the fact that, despite my anxieties and knowing what I was risking and feeling like a shit for hurting him, I still desperately wanted to see him. Just because I didn’t deserve it didn’t mean that I didn’t need it. 

Not seeing a better choice, or having the self-control to stop myself, I walked the rest of the way to Josh’s house. Someone in the family (probably Justin) was obviously up at that hour because the inner door to the house was wide open while the outer, glass door was shut. I could already see Kanuck inside by the door as soon as I got to the walkway, sitting and staring outside. He stood up when he saw me, his tail wagging furiously and he did that weird, shuffling dance dogs do when they’re excited that looks an awful lot like little kids that need to pee. I smiled, happy to forget about everything else for a moment and just amused at how excited the dumb dog was to see me.  

“Hey, boy,” I greeted when I got inside and kicked off my sneakers.  

He whined at me until I gave him his traditional pat on the head, then followed me into the kitchen where I found his owner. Josh didn’t look like he was getting any more used to these early morning runs, about as awake and happy about it as he had been the previous morning, staring with irritation at the coffee maker as it buzzed, signaling that it was ready. When he glanced over at me, an icy hand squeezed my heart. Was he mad at me for yesterday? Did he think that I was a freak? He had said that it was ok, that he understood, but had he said that just to placate me or was it really not a big deal? And worse, would I fuck this up again and this time he would finally run out of patience? And what if he smelled me and knew something was up? What if I disgusted him like I disgusted myself? Insecure doesn’t even begin to touch what I was feeling that morning.  

But instead of acting weird around me or being nervous or anything else that would tell me that things were definitely not ok, Josh’s tired, peeved face suddenly beamed in a radiant smile, the same smile he always gives me when we see each other in the morning. He wasn’t disgusted with me or even mad, he was the same as he always was. Forgiving, understanding, patient. More than I could ever deserve. I felt myself smiling back at him, more subdued, but no less honest and was amazed. I hadn’t felt much like smiling on my walk over there. How could one person change my entire mood just with a smile?

“Morning,” he greeted sleepily.

“Morning,” I echoed.

He took a step towards me, closing the gap between us a little, but only the one, still seeming a little unsure of himself. He was probably wondering if it was alright to get in my personal space after yesterday and usually I would hate myself for putting that doubt in his eyes, but I was too busy with the wave of utter relief that struck my entire body. For a moment, when I saw that he was going to move towards me, I steeled myself. Not because I didn’t want him to touch me, but because I had been scared of not wanting him to touch me, ready for my introversion to rear its ugly head. The previous morning, I had dodged all his efforts for any kind of intimacy and prepared myself for the same reaction. But to my shock, it didn’t come. It might have if it had been anyone else, but unlike yesterday, the thought of Josh touching me didn’t horrify me.

It was the opposite, actually. I wanted him to touch me. I wanted to feel that familiar hand on my skin and know that how much he cared for me. How could so much have changed in just a little over twelve hours? How could I want something so much when the mere prospect of it had made me want to scream before? I didn’t understand any of it. And it didn’t matter. I could be around Josh. I could let him kiss me and not push him away or make him feel repulsive. I could be myself again and not the scared child I had been the previous day. The relief I felt at that fact was so strong that I could have cried if I had let myself. If Josh hadn’t been right there, I might have, maybe it would have helped to wash some of the unpleasantness of yesterday from me and even that morning.

Josh suddenly frowned and I wondered with paranoia if he could read what I had been thinking about.

“What happened to your nose?” he asked in concern.

I blinked stupidly at him, not understanding what he was asking until I remembered all the things that had happened that morning that I had been trying to block out of my head, even my father being proud of me because it was all twisted and mixed up with the rest of it.

“Oh,” I rubbed self-consciously at my nose, the swelling making it feel a lot worse than it actually was, “It’s nothing. I was stupid and hit a wall. I cut it a little, but the swelling isn’t that bad, it’s mostly just bruised.”

It was dumb, but I was a tiny bit proud that there hadn’t been a single lie in that statement up until Josh narrowed his blue eyes at me. I should have remembered that we’ve been friends for several months now and he knows more about me than even Nate did, including all my bad habits and what it usually means when I show up with a fresh bruise.

“Did you hit the wall or did your father help you hit it?” he asked bitingly.

I crossed my arms over my chest defensively and looked away from him, not childishly, I just couldn’t deal with that knowing, almost angry expression on his face and not knowing if he was angry at me for not telling the full truth or my father. I didn’t bother protesting or coming up with some lie or even defending telling a half-truth. It seemed rather pointless by now. How many times have we had this very conversation? I can’t even remember anymore. And like usual, Josh almost instantly deflated when he saw how closed up and defensive I was. I hate that. Sure, it’s great that it usually defuses the argument that I don’t even want to have in the first place, but I hate that he just shuts himself down like that because he doesn’t want to upset me.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that,” he apologized, rubbing nervously at the back of his head, “You don’t need that from me, especially not after the day you had yesterday.”

‘What does that have to do with anything?!’ I wanted to snap at him, ‘That was yesterday and you don’t even know what happened, only how I felt! And why does my feeling that way excuse anything?!’

Only I knew that he wasn’t the one that I was angry with and I refused to lash out at him when the only people I wanted to lash out at were my father and myself.

“Don’t do that,” I said with irritation, “If there’s something that you want to say, then say it. I’m not made of glass and I’m not going to go off the deep end just because you’re annoyed with me.”

“I’m not,” he gave me a small smile and, just like always, it was enough to make my irritation bleed out of me, “A little bit frustrated, but never annoyed or angry. And there’s nothing I want to say. I really didn’t mean to snap, I just didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.”

He looked ashamed of that for some reason, probably thinking that he was a louse for being testy because he was tired. I wanted to call him a hypocrite, remembering how many times I had done something stupid when my insomnia had been bad and he had waved it all away as ‘understandable’, but I was tired myself. I had gotten, what, an hour of sleep in 48 hours? Between that and my mood issues, I just wasn’t in the right head space to deal with an argument, so I was eager to let the whole thing drop. But distantly, I wondered what had kept him up, simple restlessness or worrying about me or overthinking what I had done. Was it my fault or was that just my guilt talking?

“I’m not mad,” I assured him, “It’s fine. I didn’t get much sleep either.”

Even if it hadn’t been my intention, the sympathy on his face made me feel like shit because it was like I had manipulated him the second I had mentioned I was tired, knowing that would effectively end the conversation.

“You look exhausted,” he admitted, “Did you manage any?”

“An hour,” I confessed.

“Insomnia?” he guessed in a worried tone.

I hesitated for a moment, but I didn’t want to scare him like the last time when I hadn’t really slept for two weeks.

“My dad,” I mumbled sheepishly.

          His lips pressed into a thin, sour line, but he didn’t say anything else on the subject. He didn’t need to. He might know me well, but I know him very well by now, too, and I could read the thought that was in his head clearly on his face. ‘Was this before or after he made you hit the wall?’ He wouldn’t say it, he didn’t want to fight any more than I did, but he was still thinking it and he was still irritated.

          “Do you want to lie down for a little bit?” he asked.

          I shook my head.

          “I’m fine, just a little tired. The run will do me good,” I said.

          “I made coffee,” he pointed unnecessarily to the pot, “Would a cup help?”

          “Immensely,” I sighed, “And thank you. You’re the best.”

          His smile grew and his cheeks went a little red as he dug out two cups and filled them with steaming coffee. Even just the smell perked me up a little.

          “Just a couple more days until the weekend,” he assured me, handing me my cup.

          “Thank god for small favors,” I muttered, making him chuckle.

          But the favors were far from small in my mind. An entire day without my father breathing down my neck or having to work. I could sleep, actually, properly _sleep_ without tossing and turning or having someone waking me up. I could spend a whole day with my boyfriend and pretend like everything was fine. I hated that that was such a double-edged sword now, that I couldn’t even fully enjoy that without this worry in the back of my head that I was going to do something stupid or be scared he was going to push that line again, but I was still overjoyed to have some time with him, uninterrupted by school or work or my father’s ultimatum. I took a sip of the hot coffee and hummed in appreciation at the mixture of flavors. I could taste hazelnut and vanilla along with cinnamon. Josh had even put cream in it the way I like without me noticing.

          “This is new,” I commented.

          “We picked it up at the store last night,” he told me, “Do you like it?”

          “It’s delicious,” I complimented.

          “Good, I thought you would,” he said, taking a long sip.

          I narrowed my eyes at him suspiciously, honing in on that one comment. In all the months that I’ve been drinking their coffee, I don’t think they’ve ever had anything different than the hazelnut French roast mix Justin likes.

          “You didn’t get your dad to buy this just for me, did you?” I accused.

          Josh took another sip, unbothered and not the least bit ashamed of himself, giving me a little shrug.

          “We needed more coffee and I just thought this sounded good. You and my dad both like hazelnut and I know how much you like things with cinnamon in it, too and my dad agreed we could try it,” he said, as smooth as the coffee we were drinking, “You would probably like chai a lot, too.”

          I could picture it in my head perfectly, Josh mentioning in a way that was far from offhandedly how much I might like this flavor and Justin buying it, always doing things for me and giving me things that I had never asked for. What would they have done if I had liked it and they hadn’t? Just kept drinking it? I could have made a big deal about it, but it seemed like a stupid thing to get annoyed about, it was just coffee. Plus, on the other side, it warmed me more than the coffee did to know that they cared like that. So, I muttered a sincere ‘thank you’ and drank it without a complaint. We finished our coffee in companionable silence while Kanuck flopped on Josh’s feet with a bored sigh. When we were done, I attempted to clean the mugs, but my boyfriend snatched mine from my hand and brought them to the sink with a satisfied grin while I rolled my eyes at him.

          I studied him secretly as he scrubbed and dried the mugs before putting them back in the cupboard. A part of me was still in shock that I was really there with him, that he could just move on like nothing had ever happened between us. That part of me still expected him to say “did you really think I’d be ok with you acting like that? Being so fucking weird and rejecting me? Are you even attracted to me at all or have you been leading me on this entire time?” But he just kept… being so nice and understanding. Loving me. It made me hate myself even more for all my faults and for hurting him, but it also made me love him more and wish that I could be better for him. 

“Josh,” I said roughly, my throat suddenly feeling very raw, “I’m… I’m sorry.”

He paused in closing the cupboard door and stared at me in confusion.

“For what?” he asked, baffled.

“Yesterday,” I said shyly, rubbing at my arm, “The stupid way I acted, pushing you, not wanting you to touch me…”

My face went red with shame, but Josh just quirked a small smile at me.

“You’ve apologized for that enough,” he chided in an exasperated, but affectionate tone, “It’s not your fault for feeling that way, and it was worse for you than it was for me. I know you didn’t mean to push me or tell me not to touch you. If it hurt me, it was just for a second. I’m over it, alright?”

I nodded, but stayed silent. Over it… it sounded nice. I wish I could do that, but I couldn’t. Not when I could still feel it and see it so clearly, not when I still hated myself for it. Josh’s smile faded into a sad expression of concern as he studied me.

“You’re still not feeling well, are you?” he asked in more of a statement than a question, his voice soft and welcome.

‘Not feeling well,’ it was a weird way of putting it. It made it sound like I had a cold or the flu instead of being crazy. I shrugged defensively, not wanting to talk about this strange… thing that I had been feeling since the previous day. This thing that made no sense and isolated me from everyone else when I didn’t need any help to do that on a normal day. 

“It’s not as bad as yesterday,” I murmured, but didn’t bother to deny it.

I was suddenly struck by this overpowering urge to have his arms around me and those few feet between us in that moment felt like miles. But looking at him, seeing that same desire in his eyes but his body language still so reserved, I knew that he wouldn’t do it unless I asked him for it and I didn’t know how without sounding as needy and insecure and fragile as I felt. I didn’t want him to see that side of myself and I didn’t know what to do, how to breach that distance without embarrassing myself. I knew I was being stupid, but I felt paralyzed and nervous with those words on my tongue. 

“I’m sorry,” he apologized solemnly, the love in his eyes for me somehow both a warm, comforting blanket draped around me and a dagger in my chest.

I blinked at him in astonishment, my words coming out of his mouth.

“What are you apologizing for?” I gawked in confusion.

“For you feeling like this,” he told me and started to raise his hand like he was going to touch me. My heart fluttered, wanting that touch, but his hand quickly fell away again, still needing that damned permission, “You shouldn’t have to deal with this. You shouldn’t have to be sad all the time.”

Sad? Was that what I was? I supposed that it was better than ‘nuts’ or ‘sensitive’, but when I really thought about it, when I tried to analyze the feeling in my chest, I realized with utter shock that Josh was right. He didn’t even know what was going on in my life and he had guessed that feeling perfectly. When I thought about everything that was happening, that had happened, my family’s financial troubles, the sexual assaults, all of my father’s various abuses, Wren using Josh to hurt me, Brian, my guilt, pushing Josh away, being terrified of my own feelings and this relationship when I should be happy, all my insecurities, my father’s ultimatum about my showering, that strange little moment of pride he had had that morning, my grades, my failings, all this shit smothering me and threatening to rip me apart… it wasn’t frustration or anger or even self-loathing that I felt the most, although I did feel those things. It was sadness. Depression. Call it what you want. It’s been growing steadily since Nate died, but since I started seeing Josh, it’s become almost unbearable. Just this constant, tight and heavy feeling in my chest. Not like I want to cry, but something worse. 

It’s the same feeling I had when I had decided to kill myself for real. Hopelessness. The knowledge that everything in my life was pointless and I didn’t even know why I was still bothering breathing and going on with any of it. Being with Josh helps make it go away for a while most of the time, but recently it’s been harder and harder to self-medicate, like an addiction. I don’t know what to do anymore or what’s wrong with me, if things are really that bad or there’s something broken in my head that I feel this way. But what I’m worried about now, more than my being depressed all the time, is that this feeling in my skin, this repulsion of myself and other people, is going to be like my sadness. It’s just going to keep happening and keep growing until I can’t stand being around anyone ever again. Until I really do lose my mind and what few people I care about. 

I haven’t lost Josh, I tried to tell myself to make myself feel better, but that was a hollow thought because it was followed, like some sinister doomsaying, by the word ‘yet’. I hadn’t done enough to push him away, but I would eventually, I was as sure of that as I was sure that the sun was going to rise tomorrow. He was going to get sick of dealing with all of this or I was going to break up with him, that’s obvious at this point. There’s no choice c for us, I’ve accepted that for a while now, even if it hurts.

But what I didn’t understand was how we were hanging on the way we were, why it hadn’t happened already. How we still… connected like this. How things could be so terrible and feel like they were falling apart one moment and so wonderful and shinning the next. How Josh could still love me, be so understandable and sympathetic and trying to comfort me and seeing me as the victim in all of this, the one to be protected and loved when he was the innocent caught in the storm. How can one person be so amazing and perfect when everyone else I’ve known before him only let me down? Even Nate. Even Mrs. Daniels. Everyone is either cruel or they turn their back on me sooner or later. But not Josh. He just… keeps being there, supporting me, caring about me, and that’s terrifying because I’m scared that one day I’ll get too used to it when it isn’t going to last. But that fact doesn’t stop me from loving him so much, I feel like my heart is going to burst.

Hating that space between us with dripping contempt, I stepped forward, ignoring how his eyes went wide with surprise, like my letting him into my personal space was some terribly shocking thing, and tucked my head under his chin, letting my face rest against his chest. Even having just woken up, he smelled nice, probably better than I did, and I just let that familiar smell sooth that skittish thing in me that had been bristling and defensive for days. I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t wanted him to touch me just yesterday. I could still remember it, all those feelings, all my fear and repulsion, and I still felt some of it inside of me, but that I had felt it towards him was so surreal to me when right then, all I wanted was him. This strange mood swept me up, the need to crawl into his lap like a little kid and have him make it all go away for a little while. It horrified me that I could be so… clingy, especially when I still wasn’t alright, but it was almost impossible to hide that neediness.

“What’s this about?” Josh asked, but his tone was affectionate, like he thought I was being cute instead of amused or confused even as he wrapped his arms around me like an automatic reflex.

“Being the best boyfriend,” I murmured, my voice muffled in his shirt but I knew he heard me when he chuckled and gently rubbed my back.

“I don’t know if that’s what I would call myself,” I heard him mutter.

I didn’t know how to tell him that he was wrong, that he was amazing and how much I didn’t deserve him or how much he cared for me. Any words I could have come up with would have fallen short. Instead, I did what I wished I had been able to do the previous day and lifted my head to kiss him. I found some heavy weight lift from my chest when, without missing a beat, he kissed me back tenderly. I wished that time could just freeze like that, this perfect little moment. Because, for the first time in days, when Josh was kissing me and holding me like that, I felt like me again. I never wanted it to end. I never wanted to leave that moment and come back to all the things patiently waiting for me. I didn’t want to face my father or my classmates or all the things in my head.

When his lips left mine, I rested my head on his shoulder, still stubbornly refusing to acknowledge that it was already over. Josh gave this little contented sigh and I knew that I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. I let out a little sigh of my own when I felt his fingers gently stroke the back of my neck, one of my sensitive spots that I had never known about until I had started dating him, small and barely an exhale.

“I wish you would tell me what’s wrong,” he said so softly that I almost didn’t hear him.

Guilt tore at me like a rabid dog. I wanted so badly to give him what he wanted, to give him an answer, to stop lying to him. But I couldn’t tell him the truth. Even if I could, I didn’t know how, or where to begin. Besides, the truth wouldn’t comfort him. It would make him feel worse, not better, so outright lie or uninformative truths was all I could give him.

“It’s nothing,” I mumbled against his shirt, “It’s just… things at home have been kind of shitty,” major understatement that, “I’m sorry for acting that way, for shoving you and always being so pissy and withdrawn. I always take everything out on you-,”

He drew away from me sharply, looking alarmed at what I was saying for some reason, even though I was trying my hardest to apologize and be as honest as I could be.

“Frey, that’s not true!” he protested, “I know you’ve been having a hard time at home. Just from what little you’ve told me about your parents’ financial situation, I know that. It isn’t ‘nothing.’ Your dad doing this to you…” he carefully touched my face, being excruciatingly gentle, fingertips moving over bruised skin with the barest of touches, “ _this_ is what taking something out on someone innocent looks like! What happened yesterday, that wasn’t it. You didn’t hurt me and even if you had, it would have been an accident. You aren’t your father, you didn’t hit me. You were stressed and I knew something was wrong, that something had been wrong all day. You reacted to something and you reacted poorly, but you didn’t take anything out on me. Maybe you snap at me sometimes and we fight occasionally, but you never hurt me to make yourself feel better or lash out. You keep everything bottled up inside so tightly, sometimes I think it would be better if you did, but you don’t.

“You’re so controlled about everything, but even when you lose it, you’re always so careful not to cross a line. Yesterday, I did something that made you panic, made you lose that control. You could have hit me to get me to stop, but you didn’t. You pushed me away like _anyone_ would have done if they felt trapped and wanted the other person to stop. You didn’t slap me. You didn’t punch me. You didn’t say anything cruel or hurtful. You told me to stop doing the thing that was making you panic and you pushed me. It wasn’t my fault and it wasn’t yours, either, it just happened. You need to stop blaming yourself, ok?”

I swallowed roughly and tasted the thick, salty tears that were tracking down my cheeks and over my lips, but I didn’t try to wipe them away. I was frozen by his words and the love that I practically feel radiating off him. He gently wiped them for me and I wondered if it was just the kind thing to do or if he understood how much I hate crying, how ashamed it always makes me to be so emotional. Was he right, I wondered, was what had happened understandable or was he just blind to what a freak I am? Could he really forgive me for every terrible thing I did, or was what I had done not really as terrible as it felt? Was I really a better person than my father that I had just shoved him instead of hit him? In all honesty, the thought to do that, the same thing that I had done to Brian when he had made me feel cornered, hadn’t even risen in my mind in my panic. The thought of hurting Josh never has. I’d sooner chew off my own arm. I don’t know what the truth is, but I know what I want to believe.

“Ok,” I echoed, my voice tight and rough and I rubbed at my face, not caring that I was hurting my nose, “You know, if we don’t go running soon, we won’t have time for breakfast.”

I didn’t give two shits about breakfast. I didn’t have any kind of appetite. But I cared about Josh having breakfast and I just wanted the painful conversation to be over so I could cram all my vulnerable emotions back into the steel drum I carry them around in and lock them away tight where no one could see them. Josh sighed in deep, utter exasperation and frustration at me, seeing right through me and obviously annoyed that I was being evasive again.

“Alright,” he just said instead of protesting in resignation.

Before I could pull away from him completely, he leaned in to give me a chaste kiss on the lips. He did it slowly and as carefully as he had touched my face, giving me ample of time and space if I didn’t want him to do it. I let him, and probably would have met him half way if he had chickened out of it.

We took our run, cutting it a little bit short because we had taken too long talking, but it was nice. It wasn’t quite warm out, but it wasn’t cold, either, and it was sunny, the sky a mellow, cornflower blue. I felt a bit better after the exercise and being around Josh in a way that I didn’t need to overthink or worry about anything. I still didn’t feel like myself, but I was able to work off a little stress. When we got back, we ate a light and quick breakfast, Josh making toast and I putting together some scrambled eggs and mixed fruit that I scrounged from their fridge. Then, I brushed my teeth, fixed my hair, and put on even more deodorant even though I knew I was just being obsessive, rushing to get out of the bathroom so Josh could take a quick shower. I felt a pang in my chest when I heard him turn the water on, desperately wanting to take one myself, but I reminded myself over and over that I couldn’t submit to that desire. I just needed to survive until Saturday, then I could take a shower and just tell my dad that I had taken one after track. Everything would be fine Saturday. 

I had time to kill, so I went downstairs to wait for Joshua and poured myself a second cup of coffee. I don’t usually do that. Caffeine is just as much a drug as sleeping pills, booze, or tobacco, even if it’s less harmful to get addicted to it, and I’d like to get through my life not becoming  _any_ kind of addict, especially since I already have a problem sleeping, but I was so tired and I needed the energy if I was going to get through another painfully long day. I took a sip, enjoying the flavor and not even noticing when Justin walked into the kitchen behind me. 

“Good morning, Frey,” he greeted in a low and pleasant tone, but I still jumped, almost dropping the mug and somehow managing not to spill any of it. 

“Sorry,” he laughed and the sound was so warm and nice and lacking any mocking tone that I didn’t even bristle or get defensive or hurt like I usually do when people laugh at me, “I didn’t mean to startle you.” 

“I’m alright,” I lied, my heart still going a mile a minute, “I just zoned out for a second there,” I took in his attire, a casual suit that was still a lot nicer looking than the one my father used to wear, his hair neatly combed, “Early patient?” I guessed. 

His eyes went dark with some shadow for a moment and he poured himself a cup of coffee, taking a minute to answer. 

“No, unfortunately,” he said and there was something in his tone that bothered me. I couldn’t quite place it, but it was something I had never heard in his voice before and it was dark. Sad. Almost bitter, “I have a consultation with an old colleague back when I did government work. I’d rather a client, actually.” 

My eyes went wide at that. It sounded important and I remembered Josh telling me that his father used to do federal work from time to time and it was one of the things that he had quit when they had moved. 

“I thought you didn’t do stuff like that anymore,” I said, “At least that’s what Josh told me.” 

“Oh, I don’t,” he assured me, “This is more a professional courtesy. Well…” Justin amended, “I turned them down several times on this case, but if the federal government is one thing, it’s stubborn,” he rolled his eyes, “It’s that double murder down in New York that’s been on the news. The twin girls.” 

I gave him a blank look and he gave a small, but still somber chuckle. 

“That’s right, you don’t watch the news. You’re smarter than I am,” he smiled, “Well, I won’t give you the nasty details, you have enough to worry about in your own life, you don’t need to worry about the other terrible things that people do to each other. Suffice to say, New York has a problem with a man that likes to prey on kids. The FBI even thinks this person has done it in other states and might have ties to some crime organizations, so they’re scrambling for any lead. It’s been going on for months, apparently. (1)” 

“Do they want you to do a profile or something?” I asked, ignoring the tight feeling I had in my chest as I read between the lines at what he refused to say, that murdering little kids wasn’t all that this sick fuck had done to them. If this was the sort of shit he used to deal with on his old job regularly, I understood perfectly why Mariela and Josh had begged him to stop. If it had made Justin look at all like he was looking now, it must have been awful for him. 

“No, I’m not really a profiler,” he confessed, “Criminal psychology has never been my expertise, nor do I ever  _want_ it to be. Knowing that there are people that exist in this world that can do these things to others is bad enough, I don’t want to know what makes them tick. But I am rather good at dealing with people who are traumatized and might not want to talk to the police. They finally have a living victim, at least they believe they do. Their very first. It’s very exciting for them,” this time his voice came out very bitter, almost mocking with contempt. I had never seen this side of him before and I was very glad that it was me and not Josh. He wasn’t even my father and it was alarming to see him that way, “But, understandably enough, the boy refuses to say a word about what happened to him. So, they need someone who is skilled at being understanding and knows how to talk to a scared child.” 

He took a sip of his coffee, his eyes hard, lost in some dark thoughts. This powerful tide of déjà vu swept me up looking at him and it took me a few moments before it came to me why I felt that way. It punched me right in the gut, how much he looked like my father had coming home from an especially hard case that hadn’t worked out how he had wanted it to. A perp had gotten away or someone, a kid or some other innocent had gotten hurt or killed and my father had refused to talk about it, just bottled it all up inside, but I had known, even when I had been a kid, that he had been hurting and angry. And just like then, even though Justin wasn’t my family, I felt the same thing I had when I had been little seeing him like that. I wanted to hug him and tell him it was ok, even when I didn’t fully understand all the things that he was thinking or feeling. All I knew was that I hated seeing him that way and felt inept at making him feel better. 

“I’m sorry,” I said sincerely, but rather pathetically, not knowing what else to say. 

Justin blinked like he was waking up from a dream and, shockingly, that dark thing in his eyes cleared and he was back to himself again, smiling at me like I was the one that needed comforting. 

“It’s alright,” he assured me, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to unload on you. You don’t need to hear about any of this. It doesn’t matter anyway, I’m not taking the job.” 

That surprised me. I could understand him not wanting to get involved in something that he had left behind, but he has always struck me as the kind of person that would jump to help anyone, even a loser kid who was broke all the time, had no friends, and was too pathetic and self-absorbed to stop bullies from beating up on him and his boyfriend or get away from his drunken, enraged father. 

“But that kid-,” I started to say in confusion and immediately bit my tongue. I didn’t want to guilt trip him and I sure as hell didn’t want to convince him to take on a job like that. At the very least, Josh would never forgive me and I thought that Justin was doing the right thing. Even if it was selfish on my part, I didn’t want him to do something that would hurt him, even if it would help someone else. I guess I’m just not a very good or nice person, huh? Not that that’s any big secret. 

Josh’s father sighed. 

“I wish I could help him,” he admitted, “That anyone could… but sometimes even talking about terrible things can’t make them better. And sometimes it can. In any case, I made a promise to my son and wife that I wouldn’t do these kinds of jobs anymore and I’m not going to break that. They can get someone else.” 

I smiled at him, relieved and maybe a bit proud that he was that strong, that he could keep that promise even if a part of him wanted to help that kid. I wished I had that kind of fortitude and resolve, to stick to one path and stop constantly overthinking and contradicting myself. Hurting other people because I’m too weak to make any kind of decision.  

“I’m sorry,” he apologized again profusely, “I don’t know why I told you all that.”

“It’s fine,” I assured him again, “I don’t mind if it makes you feel better.” 

I wanted to tell him that it was ok, I know exactly the sorts of terrible things that people do to each other without having to turn on the news. I had figured it out on my own every time kids at school beat the shit out of me or called me a fag or every time my father had beaten me to a pulp or made me want to kill myself from a few, sharp, contemptuous words and didn’t even care if he almost killed me. But Justin was having a hard enough time thinking about some kid he had never met, I wasn’t going to make him feel worse reminding him of my own problems.

“You’re a good kid, Frey,” he said with an affectionate smile, not knowing how those words stripped me bare, how much I wanted his approval like the louse I am, “And a very good listener. Thank you. Can you just do me one favor?” 

“Sure,” I nodded eagerly. 

“Don’t tell Josh about this?” he asked me, “It’s nothing that I’m keeping from him, but I’d rather he didn’t know since nothing is going to come from it anyway. He doesn’t talk about it, but I know how much what I used to do upset him and he worries that I might go back to it one day. Ever since his friend passed, he tends to get overly anxious about these things. He’s…” 

“Overprotective?” I finished for him, knowing exactly what he was talking about. 

I understood it completely. Losing Nate had made me a bit overprotective of what little I have, too, and I know that Josh’s tendency to freak out when I’m hurt or upset about something stems from his thinking he let Sarim down, but that just made me extra dedicated to try not to worry him about things, as much as I could anyway.  

“Yeah, a bit,” he laughed, “So, I would like for him to not get worked up about this. I know it’s not fair, asking you to keep this from him…” 

Compared to the other things that I’m keeping from him, I thought bitterly, this isn’t much of anything, is it? 

“I don’t mind,” I told him, “And I’m not really keeping it from him, I just won’t bring it up.” 

“Thank you, Frey,” he breathed in relief, “I just don’t want him to assume anything and stress about this nonsense.” 

I didn’t ask him anymore questions about this consultation of his, even as a few popped into my head. I wasn’t all that interested in the criminal justice process or witness handling, though I was sure that a lot of people my age would have been. Josh would have, with all those cop dramas he loves watching, but I wasn’t curious enough to bother Justin any more than I already had.

“Thank you for the coffee,” I told him when I finished mine, even letting him take the mug to wash without a fight, just wanting to change the subject.

“You like it then?” he asked. I nodded, “I like it a lot, too. Unless Josh hates it, I think we’ll switch over to this blend, it has a richer flavor.”

I felt this stupid, little warmth in my chest that he liked something that I did, too. It was the same feeling I had gotten earlier that morning when I had realized that my father was proud of me for getting on the track team and I squashed it angrily. Justin wasn’t my father and my wanting his approval or to have something in common was even more pathetic than my desperate need for my father’s. I knew that, but it didn’t stop me from hungering for it.

“Are you alright?” Justin suddenly asked me as he dried off the mugs, “You look tired.”

“I didn’t sleep that well the last couple of days,” I told him, trying to make it sound as small of a deal as possible and omitting that ‘well’ meant ‘at all.’

“I’m sorry to hear that. Is it your insomnia again?” he asked worriedly, making me think of his son.

The lie was on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t say it. I hate lying to Justin even more than I hate lying to Josh and not just because I’m sure I can’t get away with it, it just makes me feel like trash every time I do. I guess because I want him to think highly of me or because I respect him too much, but the thought of him looking down on me or being disappointed in me is too painful.

“No, my dad just keeps waking me up,” I said, pretty much the same thing I had told Josh and left it at that.

Justin frowned, not liking that answer, but unlike Josh, didn’t press the issue.

“You know you’re welcome to come over here after work,” he offered, “You really look like you could use a good night’s sleep.”

“I know,” I said guiltily, “but I can’t. Not… not tomorrow morning.”

“Will you be coming over Saturday and Sunday?” he asked and I felt relieved that I could give him that much, nodding, “Good. You need rest. You’re working yourself too hard again, Frey.”

I had the grace to blush lightly at the slight scolding.

“Yes, sir,” I said automatically before I could stop myself.

“You know,” Josh’s father sighed heavily with a put-upon expression, “before I die, I’ll get you to stop calling me that.”

I gave him a tiny, sheepish smile. We were interrupted by the loud sound of Josh racing down the stairs.

“Ready,” he said slightly out of breath when he got to me, backpack clutched in one hand, “Sorry I took so long. Hey, Dad,” he greeted his father, taking in his suit the same way I had, “You’re leaving this early?”

“I have some stuff to do at the office,” Justin said offhandedly, not lying but not giving any details, either, one of my many tactics when I didn’t want to tell the full truth, “I don’t have many patients today, though, so I’ll be home before you. Do you want me to pick you two up after school?”

“Not necessary,” Josh assured him and went to the fridge, digging out two brown paper bags, handing me one of them, “Here, my mom made lunch for you.”

It was my turn to sigh heavily.

“She really doesn’t need to keep doing this,” I said, feeling like a leech again, “She doesn’t need to bother…”

“Did you pack a lunch this morning?” Justin asked, a knowing glint in his eyes.

“… No,” I admitted and he raised an eyebrow at me.

“It isn’t a bother just to make a second lunch,” he said, “And we would rather you have lunch. It isn’t good for you to keep skipping meals.”

I was too tired to argue and didn’t mention the fact that I didn’t have anything for dinner, either, not wanting them to fuss. It seemed like a losing battle anyway, one that I’ve had countless times since becoming entangled in Josh’s life, so I just let it go. We said goodbye to Justin and I followed Josh to the front door when this terrible feeling swept through me at the realization of what we were doing and I stood there by the open door, frozen… No, it was more like I was paralyzed.

I didn’t want to go to school. I didn’t know why it hit me just at that moment and not when I had left my own house that morning or any other time, but I was overcome with this screaming denial and it was like even my body didn’t want me to walk through that doorway. I was having a strange, disturbing, and bad day, and it wasn’t even 8am yet. From trying to flee from my father and him raping me and our bizarre moment in the kitchen to almost fighting with Josh and my conversation with his father and barely getting any sleep, not to even mention all the shit from yesterday that was spilling over into this day, I felt off balance. Not as bad as I had been, but the thought of going to class, of dealing with the throng of classmates and Wren and Saren and our teachers, going from class to class, gym, lunch, taking notes, being asked to answer questions when my head was elsewhere, all of it seemed so utterly terrible and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t make it through one more day like this, with all these things in my head. I didn’t want to. I just wanted to go upstairs and crash on Josh’s bed and go back when I had my shit together again, when my walls were back up and I could deal with it… with _them_ , those unpleasant bodies that hated me and wanted to hurt me just like-

“Are you ok?” my boyfriend’s voice snapped me back to reality.

I stared at him for a moment as he stood there on the walkway in the bright sunlight and wondered when it was, exactly, that I lost my spine and become this simpering coward, scared of a single day of school, not because I might get beaten up, but just because I didn’t want to deal with people.

“Yeah, sorry, I blanked there for a second,” I lied, forcing myself to look as ‘ok’ as I could manage.

Joshua studied me and I knew that he didn’t believe me for a second, but he gave me a small smile and when I finally left the threshold and joined him on the walkway, his hand lightly touched my back for barely a second. It was the barest of touches, but it made me feel just a little bit better. It would be ok, I told myself. Josh was with me, which held its own anxieties, but I could keep myself together long enough to survive the day for him. And when my mind pulled up memories of what Wren had done yesterday, touching me, his breath against the back of my neck, I snapped back at it. If I could handle what my father had done that morning, I could handle Wren Parker fondling me or trying to beat me into mashed potatoes. I just had to remind myself that these feelings, this terror in my chest and this crawling repulsion on my skin had no basis in reality and I would be fine.

But I was far from fine. I could lie to myself all I wanted, but the evidence was pretty clear from the moment our homeroom class let out and I had to abandon the safety of my desk’s personal space and get through the mob to our first class. I had kidded myself into thinking that, just because I didn’t mind Josh’s touch, that I was better, but school that day was an eye-opener. I thought that I would be alright at first. Sure, being surrounded by people made me shrink in on myself defensively and I felt like I could barely breathe, but Josh didn’t seem to notice, so that was fine, and it wasn’t like I was going to be spending all day in a hallway.

Then someone pushed past me, brushing their shoulder against mine, and my insides clenched. That urge to scratch myself and find some dark place to hide returned, screaming and it was all I could do just to focus on getting to the next class, to have somewhere that I could breathe. Things went to shit rather quickly after that. Wren and his thugs didn’t even really bother us much during the day beyond shove Josh once in the hallways and throw a few gross comments around, but it didn’t matter. That one, initial contact that morning broke down my walls. Every time someone touched me, accidentally or otherwise, I flinched and had to grasp something just to keep from punching them. Even when I was in a classroom at a desk, I could feel them around me and felt sick with paranoia and aversion. I became withdrawn, not talking much even when Josh was the one talking to me, and if a teacher called on me, I gave the briefest, most basic answers, just wanting everyone to leave me alone.

I knew that Josh had noticed it. He kept tossing me worried looks that I didn’t respond to and when we were out in the halls, he would block me in closer to the walls with himself on the outside, a barrier between me and everyone else as much as he could like a bodyguard. I would have been irritated at his fussing and overprotectiveness if it hadn’t helped so much. By the time third period came, I had a screaming headache and I just wanted to leave, my heart racing over absolutely nothing. I honestly don’t know how I got through Calculus. My head felt like it was splitting in two and concentrating on the class became impossible. I didn’t even protest when Josh dragged me to the nurse’s office between classes to get some naproxen.

The nurse, in her usual brusque way, declared that it was probably not a migraine, but to come back to her office if I felt like I was going to puke, gave me the pills and sent me on my way in a manner of minutes. I could have saved her the trouble, I know what a damned stress headache feels like.

“Are you ok?” Josh asked worriedly. I thought about starting a mental tally for how many times people were going to ask me that question that day.

“I’m fine,” I said more snappishly than I had meant, my temper short and quickly getting fed up with him and his parents worrying about me.

“Hey,” he tried to soothe and put his hand on my shoulder.

At his touch, I pulled away from him. It wasn’t a flinch, and it wasn’t out of repulsion, I was just disgusted and frustrated with myself and I couldn’t stand him wanting to make me feel better, caring about me. It was an automatic reaction, though, and I couldn’t stop it, feeling like I had slapped his hand away or pushed him like before, when I had only retreated and distanced myself from him. It didn’t matter, the hurt in his eyes from being rejected again was just as painful to see as if I had struck him. My self-loathing was as immediate as his hurt feelings.

“I-I’m sorry,” I stuttered uselessly, “I didn’t mean…” my words felt so useless to me and I stumbled to find any that could get that pain out of his eyes. I was such a louse. He was just trying to help and I just kept hurting him, lashing out at him even though none of this was his fault. I was so disgusted with myself, I could feel tears starting to burn my eyes, “I didn’t mean to do that. I’m just…” I rubbed both hands against my face, not even feeling the pain from my bruised nose, “I’m tired, that’s all,” I murmured pathetically, “I’m just really tired.”

Tired of everything. Tired of these stupid feelings. It had only been a couple days, but with everything that kept happening, I felt like I hadn’t slept for a week. And that was still a shitty excuse for how I was acting, an outright lie, really.

“I know you are,” he sympathized in that caring, understanding tone of his that always makes me feel so vulnerable and safe at the same time, “But, Frey, I know there’s something else wrong. Please,” he begged me, “you have to tell me! I can help, whatever it is. Just tell me what’s going on with you.”

I swallowed roughly, my throat suddenly feeling incredibly tight, like something was stuck there and icy fingers of fear clutched my heart. Not because of what he was asking, or that he wouldn’t let it drop this time, but because, for the first time that he had asked me what was wrong, something horrible happened. This… I don’t even know what to call it. ‘Urge’ is too gentle of a word. It was like a compulsion, like being pushed off a cliff or falling out of the sky. It hit me and dragged me under it with all the grace and subtlety of a riptide or hit and run. For the very first time, as Josh asked me to tell him what was wrong, his eyes clear and honest and desperate and full of worry and love for me, I wanted to tell him the truth.

I wanted to tell him about all of it. My dad raping me. Feeling filthy. Feeling used. How worn down I was. How sometimes, when he touches me, my own boyfriend, I want to scream. How scared I am all the time. How my own body repulses me. I wanted to confess all of it. It was horrible and terrifying because that desire wasn’t just there, in my head, the actual words were on my tongue, inching forward, waiting to come bursting out. _“I let my dad fuck me and sometimes, when you touch me a certain way, he’s all I can think about. I won’t let you have sex with me or even just get too close because I’m weak and pathetic and I can let the man that made me and raised me touch me like a whore, but I can’t let you and I don’t know why.”_

I hated those thoughts, those words. I hated the truth of them. But more than anything, I was horrified of myself, how I could ever come so close to saying them. To _wanting_ to say them, and to Josh of all people! Scared of myself, I bit my tongue hard enough to bleed. I might have even just bolted right there between the nurse’s office and the computer lab if it wouldn’t have freaked Josh out and let him in on how seriously fucked up this was. What the fuck was wrong with me? Tell him this shit? How could I want that? To let him know what an asshole I am, that I can’t even be intimate with the boy that I loved more than anything? That I can’t even just be honest with him? I mean, even that makes me an asshole, doesn’t it? I can’t even be honest with him that I’m _constantly_ lying to him.

But I was so sick and tired of the lies. Both the outright ones and the ones that I just wouldn’t say. I was tired of hiding things, of scrambling for anything that would sound acceptable, understandable, something that didn’t make me look insane or like the prick that I am. I’m tired of telling people that I’m just clumsy. I’m tired of telling Josh and his parents that I’m fine. I’m tired of making these excuses. But so what? So, what if I’m tired? What I’m supposed to do, tell the truth? If Josh even found out ten percent of what was really going on, both in my life at home and in my own head, he would never forgive me. He would hate me and I just… I can’t handle that. Not ever. For leading him on, for letting my dad fuck me, for lying to him and never doing the right thing, he would be disgusted in me.

I mean, really, let’s play out this stupid scenario, shall we? What if I did tell Josh everything and, impossible miracle, he _didn’t_ hate me, he could actually forgive me for these things? If there’s anyone alive capable of that, of not being horrified and disgusted, it would be him. But even if I knew, a hundred percent, without a single doubt, I still can’t ever tell him any of it, _especially_ about my father because knowing what my father does would hurt him more than knowing that I’ve been thinking about breaking up with him. I remember how freaked out he had gotten when I had told him about Brian trying to rape me in that abandoned house on the last night of our relationship. How he had held me so tightly and acted like _he_ had been the one to almost been raped, how he had wanted to bash Brian’s face in for it. If he could overreact like that to someone just trying to rape me, how would he react if I told him that someone had succeeded? How much pain would he feel if he knew that person was my own father? More than finding out that my father beats me or treats me like garbage or that I had tried to kill myself, this would tear him apart. No, I could never tell him anything. He can never know, no matter what. I was making the right decision lying to him and keeping him in the dark.

‘Oh, give me a fucking break,’ I snapped at myself, enraged by my own complacent thoughts, ‘You don’t lie to him to save him from being hurt or you think he can’t handle the truth. You lie to him for your own fucking selfish reasons and you know it. You’re a coward, you’ve always been a coward. You just don’t want him to be grossed out by you. You’re not the sort of person to take a difficult path to save someone, you’re the one to do anything to save yourself. You’re the one who’s willing to cheat on the one that you _claim_ to love behind his back just because you need him! You never think about how he would feel, do you? You can’t pick between him and your father, so instead of growing a spine and breaking it off with him, you just don’t tell him shit. You don’t deserve him. Look at him, worrying about you because you aren’t acting normal and being so damned tolerant. Giving you _everything_ and you won’t even do what needs to be done to make this person happy. You’re disgusting.’

And that’s all it really took. It’s all it ever seems to take anymore to make what few good things I can feel get smothered by these suffocating, heavy thoughts and feelings. From just a few scathing, self-depreciating thoughts, I felt like I had the previous day, like I was drowning and couldn’t even take in a breath. Like everything was falling apart around me, even the ground under my feet and that there was nothing I could try to grab to keep from falling into that black hole. Everything was just so pointless. No matter how hard I tried, I lost everything. Because as seething as those thoughts were, they were right. They were the truth. I don’t deserve my relationship with Joshua. I don’t deserve his kindness or his love and I was going to fuck it all up in the end. I’m selfish and disgusting. I can’t even tell him why I keep pushing him away, to make him understand that it’s my fault and has nothing to do with him. I’d rather make him feel like shit, like there’s something wrong with _him_ than tell the truth.

“There’s nothing to tell,” I muttered bitterly, hating myself and the tight feeling in my chest, the hopelessness and disinterest in everything that was so powerful, taking another step felt impossible.

I just wanted to sit right there on the floor and not move or think or feel anything. It wasn’t even that I wanted to die, I just didn’t want anything. It was painfully close to the grey nothing I had felt after Nate’s death. Too close, and I hurriedly tried to walk away from Josh so he wouldn’t suspect just how much of a hold depression had over me. Josh, however, wasn’t going to let me go with such a half-assed statement. He ignored how skittish I was being for once and grabbed my arm to keep me from fleeing. By some miracle, my skin didn’t even crawl from his touch, I just felt cold when, normally when he touches me, I feel so hot I could combust.

“Frey, stop it,” I was shocked when those words came out, not angrily or full of frustration, but just worry, his tone soft, “If you don’t want to talk about it, I understand, but stop running away from me.”

I sagged, embarrassed that I had just tried to run from him like a little kid throwing a temper tantrum and he let go of me.

“I’m sorry,” I murmured, wrapping an arm around myself defensively.

“It’s alright,” he tried to soothe, which only flared my temper.

“How is it ‘alright’?” I snapped in irritation, “I’m acting like a fucking child.”

“You’re not,” he insisted, “You’re tired and having a crappy week. I don’t know what’s going on with you beyond what you’ve told me, but whatever it is, it’s hurting you, and I hate that. I hate that you’re sad and stressed, but that isn’t your fault. You’re allowed to feel off balanced and frustrated by it. I don’t know how you expect me to react, to get angry at you or annoyed that you’re acting this way just because something is upsetting you, but it’s not going to happen, so you’re just going to have to get used to it.”

I shot him an annoyed look, but he just smiled in that saint-like way of his, always putting up with my shit with such grace. He took slow, careful steps towards me and when I didn’t rebuke him or move away, he hugged me. The contact was brief, the both of us not wanting anyone that might be walking the halls to see us and start something, neither of us were in the mood. I was surprised to find that my skin didn’t crawl at the feeling of those warm arms around me, that even though the bloodthirsty thing in my head that’s my anger and revulsion towards other people in my space bristled a little, it eased something. It didn’t make things all the way better, but being hugged by him, feeling his hand gently stroke my back smoothed away some rough and sharp edges and I could breathe just a tiny bit better. I almost told him that he could keep hugging me if he wanted to when he let go, but it was too big of a risk.

Josh walked me to my next class where I sat at my computer terminal and tried to pretend that Wren wasn’t in the room with me. He really didn’t do anything terrible to me for once, just the usual crap, nothing that made me need to flee the room to puke like before, but just him being there was another to curdle my stomach and make my skin crawl again. Anxious and on guard, my headache didn’t ease a bit, either. The rest of the day wasn’t much better as I became more and more withdrawn, more distant, not just from Josh, but from everything.

I barely remember tasting the lunch that Mariela had packed me and I quickly became so numb that when Wren pulled my hair in gym and whispered in my ear that my hair was so soft, he could wrap it around his cock and jerk off with it if I was amenable (not that he used that word, but I prefer it to the words that he had _actually_ used), I didn’t even feel it. Not the stinging pain in my scalp or the terrible, icy ache of fear and self-loathing and disgust that I usually feel when he does and says things like that to me. I was too busy feeling miserable over my father and Josh to have time in my heart or my head for anyone else. I knew I was really worrying Josh at that point when he all but begged me to go over his house after school. ‘Why?’ I asked him even though I was pretty sure I knew the answer and it wasn’t like I had anywhere else I wanted to go. Something needled at me at that thought, something I was forgetting, but whatever it was didn’t seem important if I had forgotten it so completely. It would probably come back to me at some point.

          Josh just flashed me this smile that was a little sad and said, ‘Because I think you need to.’

          He was right, so I didn’t argue. It didn’t even matter what I was forgetting, a chore or something irrelevant. I couldn’t take anymore and my need to relax and take a small break from my life was suddenly as important as breathing. I pretended to take a shower after gym, mostly just rubbing water on my scabbed arms, too scared of what my father might do if he even suspected I had washed that day to dare soaping up, and joined Josh on a walk to his place. When we stepped into the house, we followed the intoxicating aroma of some freshly baked sweet into the kitchen, finding a heaping plate of chocolate chip cookies that must had just come out of the oven within the hour, because they were still warm along with a note advising us to have as many as we wanted, but Mariela had used the last of the eggs, so she had gone to the grocery store.

          I don’t know what it was, my tiredness or how drained and sensitive I was feeling, but the sight of those cookies almost had me in tears. I didn’t understand it at all, but when I bit into one, I literally had to fight to keep it held back.

          “We can take some upstairs while we do our homework,” Josh suggested as he piled some up on a plate, “I know you probably don’t feel like it right before work, but you’ll feel better tonight if you get most of it done now.”

          I had to smile about that a little. He had offered me a place to relax and felt bad about just suggesting we get our homework done like he was doing something awful, not realizing just how happy I was to be there and didn’t really care what I did. I already felt better just not being at school or my own house, to be somewhere quiet and mostly alone, with people that I trusted and would give me space.

          “Actually, I finished mine already,” I told him and explained when he gave me a puzzled look, “We didn’t really do anything in my home ec and literary classes. We had to watch a video on a few techniques I already know how to do in home ec and we had a substitute in literary, so that turned into a study period anyway. I figured I might as well use the time to get as much work done as I could so I can sleep earlier after work.”

          I hoped that plan would actually come to fruition. If my father would just let me sleep for one fucking morning, that would be swell. I was starting to enter that area of needing it that things were getting jumbled in my head and I wasn’t even sure if my actions and thoughts and feelings made any sense or I was just sleep-deprived.

          “Great,” Josh beamed at me, “You can relax, then. I’ll just go upstairs and leave you be.”

          “You don’t need to,” I protested, alarmed that he thought I didn’t want to hang out with him, “I can help you or…”

          He shook his head, still with that pleasant, happy smile.

          “It’s fine. You need to be alone,” he said so plainly, it surprised me. Both that he knew that and that he accepted it without a single hurt feeling. It made me feel like a diseased louse.

          “I’m sorry,” I murmured, looking down at the floor, but didn’t bother to lie that some alone time wasn’t exactly what I needed.

          Far from bothered, he stepped over to me and pressed a light kiss to my cheek.

          “It’s _fine_ ,” he insisted with affection, “I told you before, just because we’re together, it doesn’t mean that we need to be attached at the hip at all times. You need some space to breathe, I get that. I don’t mind, especially if it will make you feel better. Have some cookies and watch some television, or read, whatever will help. Just tell me when you’re leaving, alright?”

          I nodded and, overwhelmed by how amazing and supportive he was, repeated his gesture, but on the lips, making him blush a little. He took a few cookies and a glass of milk upstairs with him, leaving me alone in blissful quiet and solitude. It’s strange. If I had been in my own house and suddenly found myself alone like I often did when I was younger and came home after school or on the weekends, I would have felt lonely and like I was the only one alive in some tomb. Even when my parents are home, my house feels like that sometimes and even when I want to be alone like I did then, I would crave something. Not necessarily someone to talk to, but just to know that I wasn’t all alone. The sound of someone puttering in the kitchen or the television on. Isn’t it strange how fine a line it is between being comforted by noise of another living soul and being frustrated to not be alone or, as it often is for me, fear at hearing yelling or cursing or even just the sound of my father’s footsteps?

          I’ve never felt that way at Josh’s. Even when I have actually been alone in his house, I’ve never felt lonely or like solitude was strangling the life from me. I didn’t feel that way just then, either. Maybe it was the fact that Kanuck was pressed against my side or I knew that Josh was there, just one floor away from me if I needed someone, but the solitude and quiet was peaceful and nice instead of making me feel hollow and empty. I still felt a little bit bad about abandoning my boyfriend, but the thought of being by myself for an hour was so novel and unexpected, I loved him for offering it to me.

          I did exactly as Josh had suggest, snagging a few more cookies, a glass of milk, and a book from my bag, and settled on the couch in the living room to read and relax. “Spare time.” “Rest.” I didn’t know what to do with these things after feeling like I had been in a combat zone for days. It was so peaceful there, like it always was, that if I didn’t have work, I would have laid down and tried to take a nap. That I couldn’t and had to leave for work in a couple hours was almost enough to make me resentful, which of course only made me feel irresponsible and lazy, but some days, like that day, I really hate having to work, to be constantly dragged from one thing to the next.

          I got a good twenty minutes of reading before Justin came in from the garage, dressed in casual jeans and a short-sleeved shirt with what looked like the mail in one hand. Kanuck barked happily and trotted over to be pet.

          “Hi, Frey,” Josh’s father greeted me, dropping the mail on the coffee table, “How was school today?”

          “Alright,” I lied, “How was… uh… what you had to do today?”

          I worried for a moment that he wouldn’t want to talk about that, but he gave me a small smile.

          “Fine. I made my choice quite clear and gave them some recommendations of other trauma counselors they can go to. They weren’t very happy about it, but I think I got it across to them that I wasn’t going to budge,” he said, sitting down in the chair next to the couch and snagging a piece of mail to open.

          I relaxed, relieved for Josh and his family that nothing had come out of that. I picked up my book again and read a little as Justin went through their mail, tossing several pieces of it, mostly what looked like credit card offers and other junk mail.

          “No homework?” he asked me, noticing that I was reading.

          I shook my head.

          “No,” I said simply, really not wanting to talk about school although he clearly was trying to get me to open up a little.

          I knew I was acting weird and withdrawn again, but the words didn’t want to come and I hoped that Justin wouldn’t notice that I was purposively keeping my answers short, almost brusque and was acting distant. Given that I couldn’t even keep Josh from noticing that, there was no way I could hide it from his dad. He put down the mail he had been reading and frowned at me.

          “Are you alright, Frey?” he asked in a much more placid way than Josh does, but I knew I was worrying him, “You’ve been very subdued lately. Did anything happen at home?”

          I reflexively nearly barked out laughter at that. I wouldn’t even know where to start to answer that one truthfully, but had no desire to do so. Justin and Mariela knew that my parents were having a hard time with money lately, but I didn’t want to let them know just how much of an issue it was. I didn’t want their pity or to feel that they needed to help. And the rest of it, my father’s increasing temper and crazy behavior especially, I didn’t want any of them to know about. I shook my head.

          “I’m just tired,” I murmured, “Things haven’t been great at school or home, but I’m fine. Just a little stressed, I guess.”

          There, that was kind of the truth, right? At least it wasn’t an outright lie like telling him that school was fine. But even that tiny amount of it was enough to make his frown deepen.

          “I know you’ve been feeling down lately,” he told me, putting his hand on my shoulder, “and things haven’t been great at home. If there’s anything we can do to help…”

          I shook my head again.

          “There’s nothing anyone can do,” I murmured.

          About my family’s debt. About my father. About me. There was nothing. Every choice in front of me was shit. Quit school. Take on more jobs to make more money. Forget about my parents’ problems and let them fend for themselves. Let my father keep abusing me. Turn him into the police. Stay with Josh until our relationship deteriorated on its own. Break up with him. It all seemed pointless. I was a failure and no matter what I decided to do about anything, it felt like it would be the wrong choice, because that’s all I do. Make the wrong decisions. Even if Justin could help me, I would just fuck things up again. I don’t know what it is. My own weakness or if I’m just cut from the same cloth as my father. Maybe I’m cursed. That’s what it feels like lately, like everything I touch, everything I wish for just rots.

          “Hey,” he smiled at me, giving my shoulder a little squeeze and stood up, “I think you can use a little pick me up, hm? Why don’t we go out for some ice cream, just the two of us?”

          I blinked at him in astonishment. Of all the things that I had thought he would say, that had definitely not been one of them.

          “Oh, I, uh,” I blathered, “I have work…”

          “I know. This will be quick. I’ll get you back here in time to change and I’ll just drop you off at your work so you won’t have to rush,” he offered.

          “You don’t need to-,” I tried to protest.

          “It’s no trouble,” he assured me stubbornly, “and this way you won’t have to bother with the bus or walking all that way.”

          I stood with him, knowing that it was pointless arguing about it and a little treat of comfort food before work sounded pretty damned good after the week I had been having.

          “What about Josh?” I mentioned.

          “If he’s not down here with you, then I assume that he _does_ have homework,” he said, “Don’t worry, we’ll bring him home some.”

          I felt bad about leaving my boyfriend behind, and it was a bit weird to go off and do something with just myself and his father, but I let Justin shepherd me into his car. We drove in a strange silence that was somehow both awkward and comforting, but I was just glad that he wasn’t trying to pry any further details about my home situation from me. Justin is weird like that. Unlike Josh, I can always tell that Justin wants me to talk about these things, but he never pries. Or if he does, he easily drops the subject if he realizes I’m getting upset. It makes me a lot less defensive than I am around my best friend.

          I was even more bewildered by all of this when Justin parked the car, not at an ice cream shop, but at an office supply store. Normally I would just assume we were stopping off here for something first, but I suddenly felt this suspicion in the back of my head that this had been our only stop all along.

          “This is not an ice cream shop,” I said in a matter-of-fact tone.

          “That is correct,” he teased, turning off the car and undoing his seat belt, “It is not. I thought that, while I have you all to myself, we could pick out a desk for the guest room together.”

          Everything clicked into place.

          “You tricked me,” I accused, realizing that I was the proverbial kid that had been promised a trip to Disney World, only to find out he was really going to the dentist. Ok, that’s a tiny bit melodramatic, picking out furniture isn’t equal to getting holes drilled in my teeth, but I had completely put Mariela and Justin’s vow to buy me a desk out of my mind for a reason.

          Justin chuckled at that, looking like another proverb, that of the cat with the bowl of cream.

          “ ‘Trick’ is a bit harsh,” he grinned, “I prefer to think of it as I craftily manipulated a very stubborn person to do something he didn’t want to do. Besides, I didn’t really trick you. We _are_ going out for ice cream, but after this. And I didn’t exactly plan some elaborate, day’s long scheme to get you here. I just thought that this might be a good distraction, get your mind off whatever has been bothering you so much lately. I wanted to get your desk picked out by the weekend anyway.”

          I still hesitated. It was a nice gesture from him, but I still didn’t understand why he cared about getting me an expensive piece of furniture. I could do my homework just fine at the kitchen table or, if that was a hassle for them, on the guest room bed. There was literally no reason to waste money on me and just the fact that he cared at all was still so strange and confusing to me. He sighed when he saw my reticence.

          “Look, I know you don’t want to do this and you think we’re doing too much for you, but if you’re going to keep doing your homework at our house, you need a desk, I’m putting my foot down on the issue. We’ve already had this argument before, many times, but I’ll say it again. We care about you. Buying you something you need that you can’t afford or your parents can’t afford isn’t the big deal for us that you keep thinking it is. If it really bothers you so much, just think of it as us furnishing the room. That would be a lie,” he smirked, “I consider this desk to be yours even if it’s at our house, but if it makes you feel better, you can think of it like that. Either way, even if you don’t pick it out yourself, I’m buying it. You might as well get a say in the kind of desk you’ll be using. Come on, they don’t have a big selection, we’ll be in and out in twenty minutes, I promise.”

          I flushed a little, embarrassed that I couldn’t just accept this bit of charity gracefully. I was thankful for the generosity, so I don’t know why I can’t just swallow it. I know that money doesn’t mean the same thing to Justin that it does to me, that he doesn’t need to worry about debt or bills or having enough money to buy food or heat the house for the winter, so he can splurge freely like this, something that I have never experienced. Maybe it’s just because I know I don’t deserve it, or maybe I’m too much like my father, too prideful to accept a handout, even if it was from someone who cared about me instead of pitied me. It was that thought more than anything else, comparing myself to my father’s vain pride, which had gotten ourselves into our financial situation probably more than him losing his job, that had me nodding and getting out of the car. Justin looked pleased, but I took his advice and tried to stop thinking of it as ‘Mr. Inori is buying me a desk for no reason’ and only thought of it as helping him pick out a desk for _his_ guest room instead, blatantly ignoring how he had said that was a lie.

          As we walked into the building together, I was struck with the same strong sensation that I had had earlier going back home with Josh, that I was forgetting something important. Specifically, that I should have been doing something at that exact moment. But no matter how hard I tried to think of what that something was, it wouldn’t come. There was too much other shit in my head, especially right then, dealing with that weird situation. It was probably nothing, I reasoned. I was tired and stressed and I get like that sometimes when I’m sleep deprived, thinking that I lost something or forgotten something, only to realize later that that wasn’t true or it was something stupid, like forgetting a book I didn’t even need in my locker or returning a library book. It was probably the latter and I would either remember at some point during the day or when I had gotten some decent sleep.

          The store was large and very sparse of any people, just a handful buying office supplies or looking at desk chairs or printers, which helped me to relax. If I had to go through with this, at least I wouldn’t have to deal with a crowd. We walked through the store, dodging employees asking us if we needed help with anything, and I looked longingly at a sale of composition notebooks. I’ve putting off getting any more for a while now, even though the pages of this one are getting slim. Hell, maybe _that’s_ what I was forgetting. Usually I just use whatever the school gives us for assignments or the school librarian will let me have a couple. Thankfully composition notebooks are typically cheap, usually only 99 cents, so if I did run out, I could scrounge around for spare change or something. The sale was a lucrative two for a buck, but I didn’t have any money on me and it didn’t feel right asking Justin for anything. I know it’s stupid, it was a fucking dollar, but he was probably going to spend at least fifty bucks on me with this dumb desk (2), maybe even up to seventy-five or eighty, so I just couldn’t muster up the courage to ask.

          Just as Josh’s father had promised, the store, while pretty big and well stocked, only had about ten desks to choose from and half of those were L-shaped and were too big or too awkwardly shaped to fit in the guest room without moving every other piece of furniture around, so I chalked those up as a solid no. I just wanted something simple, small, and cheap. Hell, I’d take one of those folding tables or a tv tray if it meant saving the man that had already given me way too much some money, but I didn’t think he would go for that. I watched him move from desk to desk, examining features and the material it had been made with and how many drawers each had, feeling lost.

I didn’t know what he wanted from me, a lot of the desks looked the same or were way too fancy and expensive looking. I didn’t know how to choose or how he expected me to, what I was looking for. The one thing I did notice while watching him was that, to my horror, he wasn’t looking at a single price tag. Maybe he was just waiting for me to narrow it down and then chose based on price, but I had this terrible suspicion that he just didn’t care and, if I chose the most expensive one in that place, he wouldn’t tell me no. I didn’t know what to do with that kind of power, just go with it or try to pick something cheap to not abuse it.

Justin wandered over to some more modern desks that seemed to be exclusively made of glass and stainless steel and I didn’t join him. I just knew they were going to be pricy, but beyond that, I didn’t like how they looked. Soul-less, perfect, and unappealing, like something you might see in a corporate office of a supervisor or manager. But Justin was obviously interested in them and if that’s what he preferred, did I really care? I didn’t even want to pick one out for me and he was buying it, so it didn’t matter. A desk was a desk and for all his saying that it would be mine, I knew that wasn’t true, that when I was gone from their lives, it would still be theirs, not mine, so he might as well be the one to pick it out.

I started to walk over to him and ask him which desk he liked when I stopped short, something catching my eye. It was tucked away by some bookcases and a dresser that all looked to be part of a bedroom collection, so I had almost mentally discarded it in that way people do when they’re perusing a cluster of things, looking for something specific. But as my eye passed over it, I paused, the familiarity of it getting my attention. It reminded me strongly of a desk that used to be in our basement when I was a kid. We used to have all kinds of old furniture down there, just gathering dust, because while the furniture we had was shit and always falling apart, we didn’t have the room for any of it.

The desk had been nice, nicer than anything we could have afforded by several miles even if it had been old and worn down. It had made the tiny, flimsy desk in the attic that I use look like garbage, but even though there was plenty of room for it up there, I had never bothered to ask my father if I could use it instead. For one, it wasn’t mine and I could easily imagine him cattily asking me what was so terrible about the desk I already had, but also the thing was heavy and I didn’t want to trouble him lugging it up two flights of stairs when he would be right, there was nothing wrong with my desk, the one in the basement was just _nicer_. And what if he had, by some miracle that would never transpire in my lifetime, agreed to let me use it? Who would help him carry it up there? Me? He would laugh in my face and accuse me of dropping it or something, being too weak even though I lug around heavy shit at my jobs all the time. It just wasn’t worth it.

It didn’t matter anymore anyway. Like most of the furniture that used to be down there, it’s long gone now. Sold during one of our periods of financial instability. It had also been the source of one of the worst fights my parents have had, leading me to believe it used to belong to my grandmother on my mother’s side which, given what I know about her now, makes my mother’s rage a lot more understandable than it had been back then. She had come home from work just in time to catch my father and Pat, along with a couple of his other friends, loading it and a few more pieces of furniture in the back of a truck and had completely lost control, swearing and screaming at him, accusing him of being a selfish prick for selling what wasn’t his to sell and never his own things right there in our driveway.

That would have been bad enough, but she had done it in front of his friends. My father had coolly watched her, looking like the calm and reasonable one to any bystander but me. I knew a storm when it was building. I had gotten the hell out of there while my parents had been distracted with each other, not wanting to become collateral damage in their ongoing war, but I had seen the broken arm and bruises days later and knew that my father had just waited for Pat and the rest of them to leave. I don’t even know if he has that self-control anymore.

The desk I was looking at wasn’t exactly the same as my grandmother’s desk, but it was made in the same Victorian style and with the same dark mahogany that in low light would look like the darkest shade of brown imaginable before turning black, but in the bright lights of the store was a deep, rich, dark brownish-red. This one was even nicer than my grandmother’s had been with all these little details that only seemed to have a visual purpose; tiny ‘fences’ comprising of one horizontal rung along the sides and back of the top of the twin column of drawers on the back of the desk supported by tiny vertical posts, a sort of bridge between the two columns that was also bordered by the same kind of fence work, but bigger with little grooves carved into it that mirrored the etch work on the main section and sides of the desk.

The legs had been carved beautifully, too, with all these little flourishes, including what looked like leaves and vines carved into the wood. I leaned down to touch one, marveling at how thick and solid it felt, how fine the carving had been done. This wasn’t some factory, mass reproduced thing. It wasn’t as huge as those other desks, either, but that didn’t bother me. The desk wasn’t just pretty, but practical with a total of eight small drawers, two on each column, two on either side of the front of the desk and one long one in the middle. Plus there were these flat shelves towards the bottom of the desk on either side that were the perfect size for stacks of paper. Each drawer had two, tiny silver ring handles to pull the drawer open with instead of a cheap knob like mine did.

I stood and lightly ran my fingers over the desk. The wood felt smooth and soft and was perfectly gleaming. Suddenly, I wanted it. And I knew I couldn’t have it. I didn’t need something that fancy, just a flat space to do homework on, and a desk like that was more suited to a writer than just a student. If Justin was looking at modern desks, he wasn’t going to want something like that, even if I thought it would look great in that room. Besides, it had to be more than a hundred dollars. There was no way I could ask for it. And most of all, it was clearly a bundle with the other furniture around it, it all was in the same Victorian style with the same dark mahogany wood, so it probably wasn’t available by itself.

I don’t ‘want’ things very often. I learned from childhood that it was pointless and it would only hurt because most of the things that I wanted when I was a kid, some toy or affection or a pet, I was never going to have. I schooled myself on not desiring silly things and just focus on the things that I needed or I already had. It was easier that way and I got pretty damned good at it. But once in a while, I see something like that desk, something that just worms its way inside of me and I feel this crippling desire, along with the crushing feeling of loss knowing that it wasn’t for me. And I hate myself for it because I don’t _need_ these things. It’s stupid. How can you want something that isn’t even important, that you can easily live without? I don’t understand it, but I couldn’t deny that feeling, either. I just needed to pull myself away from it, suck it up like the adult I was going to be in a year, and pick a nice, simple, cheap-

“I knew you would like that one,” Justin’s voice from behind me almost made me jump.

He gave me a small smile and touched a corner of the desk, examining the wood.

“It’s nice,” I said as noncommittally as possible, trying not to let him see how much I really wanted it.

“I’m surprised to find something like this here,” he admitted, “I thought it was an antique the first time I saw it, but it’s just done in that style, I guess. Not very popular anymore, but when I came in the other day to look around and spotted it, I thought it was right up your alley,” he gave me another amused, but affectionate smile, “You have an old soul, you know that?”

 

_“You have such an old soul, Frey.”_

I stared at Josh’s father in shock, my eyes as wide as an owl’s and I’m sure I went a bit pale with how concerned he suddenly looked. ‘Old soul.’ Nate used to say that about me all the time. Why was it such a slap to the face to hear those words from someone else? I could even remember the last time he had called me it, weeks before his death. His arm had still been in that fucking cast and I had to write out his homework for him because he couldn’t type well with just one hand. He had told me that I could get it done twice as fast on his laptop or going to the school computer lab, but I had refused. I don’t like computers, I had said, and my handwriting is faster anyway. He had laughed and said those words. I had asked, probably as many times as he had called me it, if that was a bad thing. No, he had said, it’s cute. You’re probably the only kid of our generation in the entire world that likes handwriting and jazz music from twenty years before you were born minimum and doesn’t want a computer.

Then we had both gotten shy and embarrassed, me from being called cute when anyone else would have called me a pain in the ass for those very things, and him probably worrying that I thought he was hitting on me, which was ridiculous. The memory made my gut twist with a sudden terrible pang of longing. But my desire for my friend was even stupider than my desire for that desk.

“Frey, are you alright?” Justin asked me in a soft, worried tone.

“Uh, yeah,” I swallowed, trying to get my shit back together, “It’s just… a friend of mine used to call me that all the time. An old soul.”

I know for a fact that Joshua never told his father what I had told him about Nate, but when Justin smiled sadly at me, I knew that he knew. Or at least he suspected. Not about Nate’s suicide, at least I didn’t think he did, but that I had had a friend and something terrible had happened, that I had lost them in some way. It didn’t take a genius to figure that one out. I’ve mentioned having a close friend before, one that is obviously not in my life anymore, so the options were that we had had a falling out, they had moved away, or they had died. Josh had immediately gone for ‘moved away’ until I had taken him to the cemetery, because he’s an optimist. Justin isn’t and I’m sure he has enough hints by now to guess that my friend passed, especially given that Josh told him about telling me about Sarim. I wonder how he would take it if I told him that my friend had been none other than the infamous son of the Millen family that left a financial hole in our little community that the Parkers have done quite well to fill. I wondered just how much of the truth Justin or Mariela knew about that.

“It’s a compliment,” he assured me, again hitting at that memory, unintentionally prodding at the open wound, “It’s nice to know someone your age that would rather bury his head in a book than a cell phone and doesn’t listen to that god-awful pop music my son listens to. This is really a beautiful desk,” he opened one of the drawers to inspect it, “and it has a lot of storage. Plus, I think it would go with that room perfectly. The wood is almost a perfect match for the dresser. Is this the one you want?”

I hesitated, wondering why that was such a loaded question. It _was_ the one that I wanted, so why was it so hard to tell him yes? If he wanted to waste his money on a desk, that was his choice, and he had agreed that the desk would look nice in the room, so why was this so difficult for me?

“It’s not for sale, though,” I pointed out, more to my stupid self than to him, “I think it’s part of the set.”

“It is,” he confirmed, “but they sell the pieces individually, too.”

Hope flared inside of me and I mercilessly squash that traitorous little shit under my heel. He lifted one light brown eyebrow at me, obviously waiting for me to make up my mind.

“Why is it my decision?” I mumbled stubbornly, “I mean, it’ll be in your house, so it’s really your choice, right? I don’t want you to be stuck with a desk you don’t even like.”

“ _You’ll_ be the one using it,” he argued, seeming more amused by my mulish ways than annoyed, “not me. Josh won’t be, either. And while you haven’t been sleeping in that room lately, you still use it more than anyone else. It’ll be your study space so, like I said in the car, this is yours, Frey. And who said I didn’t like it?”

“I thought…” I glanced over at the desks he had been looking at earlier.

“Oh, I hate those kinds of desks,” he explained, “Truth be told,” he wrapped his knuckles on the desk lightly, “I’m partial to the older styles, too. Wood will always be more appealing than steel or glass in my opinion. The glass ones constantly need cleaning and the steel ones are just… impersonal, I guess is the word I’m looking for. But my secretary needs a new one and she was interested in some of the newer styles. I was just curious if any of these would be to her taste. I definitely wouldn’t buy one of those for the guest room. Mariela would kill me,” Justin chuckled, “I figured they wouldn’t be something you’d want, either. Now, is this the one that you want or do you want to look around some more?”

I looked down at the desk again, unable to meet those piercing blue eyes. My hand found its way back to the desk, almost like it had a mind of its own, my fingers trailing idly on the corner of it as I pretended to be making a decision. It would be so easy, shrugging it off and telling Justin no, that it had just caught my eye but it wasn’t the one that I wanted. There were a hundred reasons to do it. It was too expensive, it would probably be a hassle to put together, and the classic: I’m not even going to be around for much longer at the rate things are going, so he might as well pick one that he and Mariela wanted in that room. That he could say that the desk was mine until he was blue in the face, but that didn’t make it true. But there was really only one reason that mattered: I wanted it too much and I didn’t deserve it.

          I felt so blindsighted by the whole thing. I had never expected to be in that situation, for someone to want to buy me something so extravagant, or to actually _want_ that something so badly. But, just like with Joshua, even though my head knew what I should do, my heart was a different matter, and there I was, stuck in the middle. Stagnating with indecision, unable to let Justin give me something like this, but unable to let go. Knowing it wasn’t for me, just like love, just like happiness, but still wanting it so badly…

          “I’ll go find a sales associate and see if they have one in stock to take back with us today,” Justin smiled affectionately at me for some reason.

          I stared at him, shocked that he had, once again, read my mind and known that the real reason for my hesitance hadn’t been quibbling over wanting the desk. But before I could even form the protest in my head, he was gone, flagging down an employee that looked free and pointing over to where I was standing. They talked for a while and I watched with this sense of surrealness, like I was dreaming. That’s exactly what it felt like, maybe because I was so tired, but mostly because I still couldn’t believe that this was happening, not a single minute of it. It wasn’t until I looked down at the desk again that it finally hit me that it was. I was getting a desk. I was getting _that_ desk.

          My father’s voice sneered in my head, telling me how much I didn’t deserve it, and who did Josh’s father think he was, flashing all this money around, buying me favors? Because that’s what it was. No one was this nice, no one did shit like this for someone that wasn’t family without wanting something. Just because I was too stupid to see what that was, it didn’t mean that it wasn’t true. He had said that he cared for me, but that was a lie, too, because who the hell would give a shit about me, especially someone like Justin? He was too good for someone like me, so was Josh, and if someone like that bought me anything, it was either because they wanted something or they thought I was pathetic, that was all.

          The realness of it, the pain of knowing that if my father found out about this, those would be the exact words he would say, was terrible, but I refused to have those words in my head. Not about Justin, not after all he had done and still does for me. I imagined myself punching my father right in his sewage spewing mouth and it felt good. Even if it was just an image in my head, it felt really, really good because those words were lies. My father might believe them, but I refused to. Not anymore.

But still… my eyes wandered to the price sheet stuck to one corner of the desk… I needed to know how much this was going to cost him, how much I was going to have to pay him back because this was too much. I don’t mean the price of the desk, but what it meant to me, him caring about me and getting me something that I needed when he had no obligation to me at all. I had to let him know that, somehow, and paying him back was the only thing that I could think of. I bent slightly to read what the sheet said, but immediately my vision was blocked by Justin’s hand resting over the paper. I had been so wrapped up in my thoughts that I hadn’t noticed him walking back. I stared him down incredulously, but he just raised an eyebrow at me.

“Seriously?” I asked him, almost pouting.

“Nope,” he smirked a bit smugly at me, “That’s my business and none of yours.”

I huffed at him and thought about just politely asking him what this was going to cost, but I knew stubbornness when I saw it.

“That’s dumb,” I muttered defensively.

“Consider it part of the condition of doing this for you,” he teased, “I don’t want you obsessing about money, Frey. I said I was going to buy it for you and you’re not going to pay me back even if you had the means to, and the both of us know that you don’t so don’t even offer to, so there’s no reason at all for you to know. And don’t try to tell me you’re just curious, either. I know as well as you do that it could cost thirty or a thousand dollars and you would feel just as bad, so I’m not telling you,” he put his hand on my shoulder, “If you really want to make it up to me, you can help me put this thing together, ok?”

I nodded, feeling tears prick my eyes a little and something strangle my throat, but enough to make them fall. It wasn’t what I wanted and in my mind, it didn’t come close to making up for all of this, but it was better than nothing.

“Now, they do have one in stock,” he told me, “but the box is too big to fit in my car. I’m going to have them deliver it to the house tomorrow when I’m there and unload it in the guest room so at least we won’t have to worry about lugging up the stairs. We can put it together this weekend, sound good?”

“Yes,” I agreed, only just barely remembering to bite off the ‘sir’ that wanted to automatically come out.

He patted my shoulder.

“Let’s pay and get out of here then so we can have that ice cream and get you home in time for work,” he said with a bright smile and walked back down to the front of the store where the cash wraps were.

I attempted to follow right behind him, but when he saw me approach the line, he shooed me away. It took me a second to realize that he didn’t want me there in case I overheard the cost and I gave him a dirty look.

“This is ridiculous,” I grumbled at him, but he only grinned and I did as I was told, wandering over to the door and out of earshot.

Justin payed and joined me, the two of us walking through the parking lot to the car, him walking ahead of me. Watching his back, it struck me hard how much he reminded me of Josh. He was taller, thinner, paler, and their hair was completely different, but none of that mattered. He had the same careless, unconcerned demeanor that Joshua had had when he had bought me my cell phone or helped me study, like it was nothing at all to him to do something nice for me, like it was easiest thing in the world. I wondered what made them so different from all the other people in my life that just didn’t give a shit or didn’t want to give a shit. I don’t mean to do things for me, but just to care enough to want to. I can count the amount of people that had on one hand before Josh had come along.

It made me feel embarrassed and very stupid and foolish, that Justin had just gone ahead and done this like it was a simple errand while I had dithered and obsessed about it like I had been signing a legal contract to sell my first born. It was a freaking desk. I should have just gone in there, picked the one I had wanted and left, not agonized over it like it was something serious. I felt like a fucking drama queen, turning every little anthill into a mountain, but there was still that pessimistic voice in my head screaming that I didn’t deserve this and it had to mean something, I just didn’t get it. When was I going to stop being such a loser?

“Mr. Inori, I…” I started to say, but faltered, not really knowing what I was trying to say.

He turned to face me.

“What is it?” he asked.

There were half a dozen things on my mind that I should say to him. ‘You’re crazy.’ ‘You didn’t need to do this.’ ‘This is too much.’ ‘Why?’ But looking at him then, I wasn’t really thinking about those things or even him buying me that desk. I was remembering him staying up with me when I had that concussion, even though he had work in the morning. And I was remembering all the times that I had been upset in front of him and how kind he had been, so desperate to make me feel better. Even this wasn’t really about getting me a desk, I realized. Sure, he might be right that it would help me study, but even that was just about caring about me, wanting to give me a safe place so I could rest and get better grades. To do the right thing. To offer someone something that they didn’t have, but you did, even if they were little more than a stranger.

It was something that my father would never understand. He would explain it off in some terrible way and look down at Justin for it, but he was the one that was lacking. I’ve known that for a while, but I was just starting to understand just how wrong he was about… well, almost everything when you get right down to it. Not everyone saw the world like he did. Not everyone lived in their own bubble. The more I thought about that, the more I wondered how I had ended up with someone like Justin in my life, the more I felt this sharp pain in my chest thinking of what that life is going to be like again when he’s gone. How I’m going to handle knowing that this man hates me for breaking his son’s heart, for ruining all the good things he and his family have done for me like I ruin everything else. And the more I realized that those thoughts weren’t what I wanted to express at all, that I knew exactly what I needed to do.

I stepped up to him and, ignoring his surprised but pleased expression when he saw what I meant to do, hugged him. It wasn’t a tentative hug, either. I wrapped my arms around him tightly right there in the public parking lot, in front of everyone. I didn’t even care if it was someone from school or work or anyone who might know me and could recognize Justin, being brave and unconcerned with what other people thought for once.

“Thank you,” I said, my voice tight and rough.

I knew it was the right thing to say and do when I felt his arms go around me, returning the gesture. It would have been weird if it had been anyone else. I can count the amount of times an adult man has hugged me without much effort to remember, but that it was Justin made it less awkward for some reason.

“You’re welcome, Frey,” he said softly and patted my back.

My face was a little red when we parted, I don’t like showing that much emotion, especially in front of someone that I respect so much and want to have a high opinion of me, but Justin, in that easy way of his, didn’t make a big deal of it. He just smiled at me and we walked back to the car together like I hadn’t done something out of character and mushy.

Justin kept his promise to get me back to his place on time, too. He chose an ice cream place that was pretty close to his side of town, not as fancy as Granelli’s, but still very good. I got black raspberry in a waffle cone while Justin got small cups for himself and Josh; mocha for himself and chocolate, vanilla, and caramel swirl for his son. I finished mine during the ride back to their house and brought Josh’s up to his room for him. He was still working on his homework, bent over his desk and writing something down furiously on a work sheet. He doesn’t get as submerged as I do when I’m working on something and lifted his head at the sound of my footsteps, beaming at me with the same, warm smile he always gets when he sees me.

“Hey,” he greeted, “Where did you go?”

“For ice cream,” I said, putting the container on his desk.

“You’re the best,” he crowed, eagerly opening it, his expression brightening when he saw one of his favorite flavors.

“No, your father is the best,” I said with a lot more weight and seriousness than a simple trip to the ice cream shop warranted.

Joshua caught on immediately and his smile turned to worry.

“What is it?” he asked, obviously thinking that something had happened when we had been out.

“He… bought me a desk,” I murmured, rubbing the back of my head awkwardly.

Josh had the polar opposite reaction to that and got his smile back.

“That’s great!” he said, “Now you won’t have to keep using my bed or the kitchen table.”

          “Did you know he was going to do this today?” I asked, having this weird image in my head of Josh and Justin conspiring.

          “Not today,” he admitted, “But I know he and mom were planning on taking you to pick one out sometime this week or next. You found one that you like?”

          “Yeah, actually,” I had to confess, “It’s a really nice desk, I just wish your father hadn’t spent so much on me…”

          Josh was as dismissive as his father was about my concerns, answering with a careless shrug.

          “He likes doing things for you. And it’s not like we splurge a lot on anything. And it’s practical, if you’re going to be doing homework here a lot, you should have your own space to do it. It will help you concentrate,” he pointed out.

          It was so much like what his father had said that I had to smile a little. I knew when I was beaten. I had the feeling that, even if I could pay Justin back, he wouldn’t accept it anyway.

          “I should get dressed for work,” I said a bit mournfully, not wanting to go.

          “Ok,” Josh went a bit somber as well, obviously wanting more time with me but having the sense not to complain about it, “I’ll see you tomorrow morning?”

          “Definitely,” I promised.

          His relieved smile was painful to see. I thought about apologizing to him again for everything that had happened that week, but even my guilt complex could see that it was like beating a dead horse at that point. Instead, feeling a bit compulsive and wanting to do something to show him how wonderful he was, or just plain because I _wanted_ to, I leaned down to kiss the corner of his mouth, making him blush a pleasing pink.

          I rushed to change into my work clothes, shoving my school clothes into my back pack so I could wear them the next morning. I hated doing that, especially since I hadn’t showered, but all the clothes I had stashed at the Inori’s were clean and it would look way too suspicious if my father saw me in clean clothes when I hadn’t done any laundry. It might be something he could overlook seeing as he didn’t seem to care when the laundry got done, but it was an easy thing I could do to keep him from suspecting anything. One of the few things I _could_ control. I made sure Pepper was taken care of, putting on extra deodorant and brushing my teeth in the bathroom before going downstairs. Justin was in the kitchen sprinkling what looked like crushed peanuts on his ice cream.

          “Heading out?” he asked me.

          “Yes, sir,” I said and immediately bit my tongue at my slip up.

          Josh’s father clicked his own at me, shaking his head. He finished turning his ice cream into a sundae with some caramel he had heated up in the microwave and gave me a proper look, smiling softly at whatever he was seeing.

          “You look a little better now, less peaked,” he commented.

          “I feel better,” I told him and was a little bit amazed that I _did_. Nowhere near ‘fine’, but that little trip out had done me a lot more good than I had thought. My nerves were still a bit raw, but I felt more in control, sturdier, less like my thoughts were going to tear me apart. I might even survive the rest of the night, “Thank you again, for the desk and the ice cream. It helped.”

          “I’m glad. Do me a favor, Frey?” he asked, “Get some sleep tonight. You don’t have any homework to do, so I want you to jump right into bed when you get home.”

          His good-natured fussing had me smiling for once instead of feeling annoyed or coddled like Josh’s usually does. It was kind of nice to have a parent, even if it wasn’t my own, that cared at all about my sleeping habits instead of going out of his way to make me sleep deprived.

          “I’ll try,” I promised.

          It was the best that I could manage since the main reason for my exhaustion was completely out of my control. Justin knew that and nodded, pleased by my promise. Too bad it was one that I would turn out to be incapable of keeping.

          Justin forced me to take a few cookies and leftovers for dinner before he drove me to Leneski’s. A few of the guys gave me odd looks when they saw me coming out of the snazzy car. That model was obviously too high-end for anyone on our side of town, and it was from that year to boot, so it screamed ‘well-off.’ It wasn’t as fancy or disgustingly outlandish as the cars the Parkers drove, but it was still a damned nice car, one that I had no business stepping out of. Even Kane raised an eyebrow at me as he stood outside of the shop, smoking, but didn’t ask me who had dropped me off. Personally, I think it was rather obvious to anyone who had seen Josh at the shop on that disastrous day with his designer jeans and shoes and that kind of rubbed me the wrong way.

I don’t like people knowing things from my personal life, let alone gossiping about me, but thankfully no one made a peep or dared to ask why my boyfriend’s dad was driving me around. The truce, forced or otherwise, of the previous day was standing strong. But even more bizarre, the guys at the shop seemed to have formed fucking factions in the politics surrounding me. There was Caleb and his ilk, grudgingly accepting me like the kid in a group of friends whose parents forced them to interact with because he didn’t have anyone else to play with, and Kane’s group. I felt this petty spark of vengeance and arrogance when I stepped into the place that afternoon with Kane and Caleb saw Jack raise a hand to me in greeting. The asshole went white, then red, then kind of clenched his teeth and prissily strode off to the rest room. Mitch just looked horribly bewildered at why Jack and Bruno were suddenly so cozy to me, which was pretty hilarious. I think they took it as a personal affront that my group was steadily growing and theirs shrinking.

I won’t say that Jack or Bruno became my bosom buddies or anything, but they kept to their word. They didn’t give me shit and kept an eye out for me. It was nice for a change, not having to constantly watch my own back and I could just focus on my damned work like a normal employee without feeling like rancid garbage. The rest of my night was fairly normal in that regard and nothing chaotic or even stressful happened to me until I left the factory and walked back to my house.

My chest clenched when I saw my father’s car in the driveway. I had hoped that he wouldn’t be around since he doesn’t work Fridays and typically likes to start the weekend’s ‘festivities’ early. Aka, pull his disappearing act and do whatever it is he and his friends do, which is probably drink, play their poker games, and watch boxing matches or whatever. Him being home meant one of two things: he was too tired from work to go out, which might work in my favor because it might _also_ mean he was too tired to care about me. The other possibility was much worse. He might have still gone out with Pat, but come home early, which had it’s one possible up and downsides. He could be sleeping off an alcoholic stupor (good) or waiting up for me (bad). I’ve learned these last few months that my father often gets hornier when he’s drunk, or at least loses whatever keeps him from raping me every night instead of every other. And whenever he comes home after having been hanging out with Pat, he always comes looking for me. More often than not, those times he’s rougher, like he’s working off some edge, I have no clue why.

Considering he had done it the last few mornings in a row, I was hoping he had gotten it out of his system and would leave me alone that morning. Or at least bother me with his fists instead of his cock. It turns out I wasn’t going to have much luck in either department that morning. Just seeing his car there in the driveway struck me as wrong in some way, in the same way that going home with Josh earlier had bothered me, but I couldn’t find the connection. I was just too tired. Unless my father made trouble for me, I had every intention of keeping my promise to Justin and collapsing onto my mattress and blacking out for a few hours. I would still be tired when I got up for school, but even just one hour of uninterrupted sleep sounded wonderful. Hell, just one morning after the string of mornings I had just had with my father not touching me sounded wonderful. So, naturally, that’s exactly what _didn’t_ happen.

I knew that I was fucked, one way or the other, when I opened the front door and saw that the kitchen light was on and my father’s boots were by the door, but there was no sound of snoring or sign of any light in my parent’s bedroom or the living room. Of course, he could just be making an early morning snack or couldn’t sleep or any other reason out of a thousand reasons why he would be in the kitchen at that hour, I tried to reason. But, through pure instinct, this horrible sensation in my stomach, I just knew he was waiting up for me. Why, I didn’t know, but it couldn’t be anything good.

My heart hammering in my chest, I ignored my screaming instincts and turned my back to my father. I told myself that if he was going to fly at me the second I walked through the door, he would have done it already, though that did nothing to relax me. Using the shadows on the wall to keep track of where he was, I put my hoodie on the coat rack that was really just a line of hooks on the wall and took off my shoes. I went slowly, pretending that I was just taking my time coming in and untying my shoes, but all I did was slip them off, a trick I had learned at six years old after several escape attempts from the house. The previous morning had taken some of the fight and confidence out of me, but the animal in me was too strong to let go of the possibility of flight if things got bad again, and I had this horrible feeling in my gut that it was about to. I went through various escape plans, taking in every little detail, making sure nothing was in the way of the door, that my shoes were in just the right position for a quick getaway. The entire time, I could feel my father’s impatient, heated gaze burning a hole through me, but he didn’t stand from the table or say anything to me.

Finally, I couldn’t put off facing him anymore and turned around. A few things caught my notice right away, like how my father was wearing more casual clothes and not his work uniform. That meant he had been home for quite a while and hadn’t just gotten back from a bar. His state backed that up. Although he was nursing a beer, he wasn’t drunk. There was no flush on his cheeks and his eyes were too sharp, which was bad. Alcohol would have made his temper worse, but sobriety would make him cunning, quick, and cruel. Even worse than that, there was a pinched, tight look to him and when he saw me, his hand that wasn’t holding the beer went into a fist. He was pissed about something in that way that told me this night, depending on what I said and if I could control my tongue, would end in only two ways: a close call or me in the hospital again. Running on almost three days with little to no sleep, still feeling sensitive and raw, I had a feeling which of those endings I was going to get.

Worst of all, with the heated way that he was looking at me, I realized that whatever he was in a huff about, it was directly related to me. I thought about just rushing back out the door, too tired to want to deal with him in that mood, but there was still a small chance I could defuse the situation and all I wanted was to crash in my bed, not a park bench. I was sick of running to Josh’s all the time when things got rough like some pathetic puppy and if I showed up at his place, he would ask what had happened. There was no point in worrying him, I could take care of myself.

          “Where the fuck have you been?” my father snarled at me and despite my resolve to not show him how scared I was, I stiffened, my body ready for flight.

          He was already in the yelling stage. If he didn’t like my answer, it was going to progress to a beating lightning fast. I approached the table despite knowing this was probably a bad idea. Putting as much distance between us as possible might save my ass, but it might also piss him off more, I can never tell what might set him off, it’s like even his temper can’t make up its damned mind. Or rather, everything I do enrages him and he just picks a different thing each time. As I passed by the doorway to the living room, I glanced inside, looking for my mother. I didn’t expect her to back me up, only stay out of the way if this got bad so I wouldn’t have to look after her as well as myself, if he hadn’t taken whatever his problem was out on her first, but the couch was empty. Fear gripped my heart. At that hour, she had to be off work, so where was she? Already fled, maybe to one of her friends in her alcoholics group, or in the hospital. I desperately hoped it was the former.

          “At work,” I said hesitantly, confused at his question. If he had been drunk it still would have been weird, but slightly understandable. Considering he had been the one to get me that fucking job, he should at least remember where I go until 2 freaking am. It wasn’t like I was running around town at that hour for my goddamned health.

          I took a deep breath, feeling that threat of my own temper starting to rise from exhaustion, stress, and memories of the last two days, every time he had fucked me, him shoving me into the wall, his stupid ultimatum about showering. All his crap. I was so sick of it and all I wanted to do was lash out at him, hurt him the way he had hurt me over and over that week. And that was dangerous. If he even figured out that I was angry or coping an attitude, it wouldn’t matter what he was angry about or what I might say to calm him down.

          My father suddenly stood up from the table, the chair falling to the floor with a loud noise that had me flinching like a startled deer. I questioned my sanity in staying as he fixed me with a hard expression, his grey eyes narrowing in a temper much shorter and more volatile than mine. I still didn’t know why he was angry, but I did understand that I had crossed some line just then and even if I tried to run, I wasn’t going to get out of there without a few bruises.

          As fast as lightning, he slapped me hard across the face, his hand coming dangerously close to my already bruised and aching nose, but thankfully only striking my cheek and corner of my mouth, succeeding in whipping my head to the side. It had been a warning, nothing more, but my cheek flamed hot like he had hit me with his belt.

          “Don’t you get smart with me,” he snapped, jabbing a finger at me, “You know what I fucking mean. Where were you after school?! I gave you a goddamned errand to do.”

          I stared at him blankly, completely confused. Errand? What errand? I couldn’t think of anything, although that probably had more to do with me being tired and scared than any forgetfulness. My father gave me a disgusted, reproachful look like he might an adult that had soiled themselves when I didn’t answer him.

          “The car parts, you moron!” he growled, “Where the hell are the car parts?!”

          I went pale as recollection smacked me with as much force as he just had. I saw him ordering me to pick them up as soon as I got home from school and bring them home. I saw myself agreeing, shoving his money in my pocket, and then… what? I had put it out of my mind. I had forgotten it entirely. I can’t even chalk that up to being sleep deprived. I had just been so consumed by everything else going on in my life, with Josh and my guilt and school and all that shit that it had slipped my mind. It had become unimportant. _How_?! When had that happened? When had my father giving me an order and an important errand to do become so inconsequential to me? I used to live and breathe to follow every one of his commands, partially because I had respected him and wanted him to approve of me, to help him, and partially out of fear of making him angry like I just had. But that day, my father’s errand hadn’t even been the _last_ thing in my mind.

          I was fucked, I realized. And I had fucked myself. Ever since Josh had asked me to go home with him that afternoon, something had been bothering me in the back of my head, something important and I hadn’t even really tried to remember what it was because I had assumed it was nothing. Because trying to get through the day, trying to deal with my emotions and the decision on what to do about Josh had been all I could handle. I couldn’t even be angry with my father for striking me or being in a bad mood. For once, this was my fault. For once, I really did deserve the pain blossoming in my face. That niggling feeling I had had when seeing the car in our driveway made sense now, too. My logic that my father had to be home because his car was there had been faulty. He had said that if I didn’t get the parts that afternoon, he wouldn’t be able to use the car all weekend, so it had probably sat there all day.

          That fear gripping my chest became a screaming roar as it dawned on me that I would have to tell him that I didn’t have them, that not only was I so stupid and forgetful that I hadn’t done what he had asked, he wouldn’t have a car for the weekend and it was all because of me. I didn’t know what was worse, my guilt or that sense of doom in my guts. I scrambled to find some excuse, some completely believable and understandable reason for why I didn’t have the parts. I even could think of a few, but I knew it wouldn’t matter. My father would smell the lie and while there was a small hope he wouldn’t, I couldn’t bring myself to do it anyway. Lying to him about Josh was one thing, but this… I had messed up and I needed to own up to that. I don’t know, maybe I had a moment of temporary insanity. Maybe I wanted him to punish me.

          “I… I didn’t pick them up,” I confessed, my voice trembling, knowing what was going to happen next.

“You want to run that by me again?” he asked in a cold, tight voice.        

A little, terrified voice in my head screamed not to answer him, that he was setting me up and no matter what I said, he was going to hurt me, but not saying anything would be worse.

“I forgot,” I murmured guiltily, loathing myself for that basic fact.

The words were barely out of my mouth when my father punched me hard in the face. This time, he hit my nose dead on and I cried out, both in shock at the suddenness of the hit and the intense pain as blood gushed down my face. My cry was cut short in a strangled gurgle as he drove his fist into my gut, sending me crumpling to my knees, not pulling the punch by even an inch. My insides clench at the horrible agony that radiated from my stomach in hot, pounding waves. I wrapped my arms around my middle in some vain attempt of comfort and stayed there huddled on the floor, shaking and just trying not to throw up. I don’t know if it was from my nose bleed or the violence to my stomach, but I could taste blood thickly.

          “You’re so fucking useless, aren’t you?!” he screamed at me and gave me a strong kick to the side as I twisted to avoid him hitting my gut where he was aiming again, “I’ve never met anyone as forgetful and careless as you are! I’m shocked you can even remember to wipe your own ass after taking a shit! I give you one, little thing to do, something so simple, a retard could remember to do it, and of course you forget! I should have asked a dog to do it, then at least it would have gotten done! You’re worse than a fucking _child_! Practically a grown adult and you have the mental capacity of a damned five-year-old! I can’t trust you to do _anything_ around here! Fucking selfish _idiot!”_

          He punctuated each vile, poisonous sentence with a vicious kick, catching me in the shoulder, arm, and side repeatedly, making my ribs ache in warning that they couldn’t take much abuse. His hand lashed out again and I cowered, thinking he was going to hit me, but he grabbed my arm tight enough to leave black bruises and hauled me to my feet, shoving me against the table. The old, cheap table was as capable of handling the violence as I was and skidded a foot, almost hitting the counter and very nearly making me fall again, but my father kept me upright by clutching the front of my shirt, pinning me to the edge of the table.

          “I’m sorry,” I rasped earnestly, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Dad, I didn’t mean to forget-,”

          “Shut the fuck up, you pathetic loser,” he snarled, cutting off my babbling, “Where were you when you were supposed to be doing what you were told, huh? You were with that blue-eyed mutt again, weren’t you?! After I told you, again and again to stay away from that rich asshole!”

          Rage flared in chest, not at his insults, not at his violence, but at the things he was calling my boyfriend. I know my father is borderline racist at times, what he thinks about our black neighbors and the fact that Josh’s mother is mixed race, but hearing those words come out of the mouth of a man that used to be a cop, that used to have my respect made my blood boil.

          “It was nice out,” I gasped out around the pain in my chest, stomach and face, not even thinking about the fact that I was lying to his face, “I took a walk…”

          He grabbed me by the throat, his hand tight, but not choking me, not yet. Though that might change at any second. He slammed his fist into my face again, getting my cheek instead of my nose this time, making that entire side of my face including my eye go hot and numb.

          “Are you lying to me?!” he bellowed like the bear that he was, “You were with him, weren’t you?!”

          “No!” I screamed back in desperation, dangling from his grip like a damned kitten, one eye squeezed shut as my cheek began to swell, “No, I swear, I haven’t even talked to him in a long time!”

Which was not exactly a lie, only to any normal person like my father, that probably meant days or weeks, but to a lovesick fool like me, even just one hour was ‘a long time.’ Almost twelve was like a lifetime.

“I just… didn’t want to head right to work… I didn’t remember what you told me to do this morning… I was so tired-,” he cut me off again with another punch.

          “You’re just so tired,” he sneered mockingly, “Give me a break. All you give me are these shit excuses! Do you see me forget to pay the bills?! Do you see me forget to mow the lawn or put gas in my car?! Do you think you’re the only one in this family with the right to be tired after working all day?! You think you have it just so hard, don’t you?! While you’re relaxing on your ass in school, your mother and I are working ours off all day!”

          ‘You don’t forget to pay the bills,’ I thought with bitter anger, ‘You just would rather spend that money on booze and gas for the car you don’t even need! And you don’t forget to mow the lawn because you make _me_ do it, just like half the other things around here that you used to do!’

          I grit my teeth so not a single one of those words might leave my mouth and make things so much worse. My father let go of me, but belted me one again in the same side of my face. I couldn’t tell if he believed me and just wanted to get in one more to alleviate his fury or if he still suspected that I was lying, but he didn’t hit me a second time and I stupidly believed the beating might be over. All things considered with how badly I had fucked up, I had gotten off lightly. I just hadn’t realized just how much I had fucked up yet.

          “Give me my fucking money,” he snarled at me, looking like he was very tempted to have another go at me, or maybe bite my face off, “then you can sleep outside tonight, you piece of shit! An ungrateful, forgetful, disobedient louse like you doesn’t get to sleep in _my_ goddamned house! Maybe it’ll make you remember one, freaking, simple chore next time!”

          Rage rose in me again as I remembered all the other times he had made me sleep outside, usually in the back with the tall grass and weeds and dirt and bugs, when I had been a kid and he had been readier to do something like that than hit me, sometimes in the fall or early winter when it was so cold, it’s probably a miracle I didn’t get hypothermia or something. In the mood he was in, he was probably even going to routinely check to make sure I was stayed outside and wouldn’t wander off to find a nicer place to sleep. But I just reminded myself that this was all my fault. If I hadn’t been forgetful and self-absorbed in my own misery, I would have remembered to get the car parts in the first place and that anger evaporated into smoke.

          I shoved my hands into my pocket, fingers searching for the wad of cash he had given me that morning and only found my cellphone and key ring. My thoughts, already hazy from the blows to my head, my sleep deprivation, and the adrenaline that was still making my heart race, fled me completely as I panicked, only for pure relief to come rushing back a few seconds later, a few very _long_ seconds, when I remembered that I was wearing my work uniform, not the pants I had been wearing that morning when I had taken the money.

          I found my book bag on the floor and hauled it up onto the table, tearing open the zipper and digging through my things for the clothes I had stuffed in there earlier with shaking hands. My father watched all of this with great impatience, arms crossed over his chest, glaring angrily at me. I found my pants after a moment of useless fumbling and turned out the pockets.

          They were empty. The panic that I had felt when searching through my work pants didn’t even touch on the horror and panic I felt right then. Stress doesn’t come close to describing it. My head filled with this white, buzzing noise and it felt like my heart had just stopped. I felt tears of frustration gather in my eyes, threatening to fall.

          ‘Calm down!’ I screamed at myself, ‘You weren’t exactly gentle shoving those pants in there, the money probably just fell out. It’s in there somewhere, it _has_ to be.’

          It had to be because if it wasn’t, my father was going to kill me. A bruised face and a bloody nose were going to be the least of my worries and a mere trip to the hospital would be a relief with the current mood he was in. Bad enough forgetting to get him those car parts and making it so he didn’t have a vehicle until at least Monday, but if I had lost his money? We didn’t have the money for him to pay for those parts. Hell, we hadn’t really had it even with the cash he had given me and that was bad. But it wasn’t my father’s temper or my guilt over him not being able to fix his car that had me almost screaming. It was the memory of my mother crying over our finances, seeing how stressed she was trying to deal with their debt. If I was angry over my father and that fucking car of his, how could I deal with me being responsible for losing money? Not even just a little bit of money, but there had been more than a hundred dollars there and I had just shoved it in my pocket like it was change for the bus! How could I have done that? How could I have done that to, not just my father, but my mother?

          It was the thought of having to tell her about my fuck up, about possibly losing close to two hundred dollars that we couldn’t even afford that had those tears burning my eyes and me scrambling, pulling clothes and books out of my bag. It couldn’t happen. I wouldn’t let it happen. Not even I could be that much of a screw up… could I?

          I tore through my bag. I emptied every pocket, even flipped through my text books on the off chance the money had gotten wedged between the pages as, in the corner of my eye, my father got more and more pissed. I looked through the whole mess twice, three times until my book bag fell from my limp and numb fingers. I had this weird, out of body experience, like I wasn’t really there. I just couldn’t believe my own stupidity and forgetfulness. I couldn’t believe that I had stuffed all that money in my pocket and gone about my day instead of putting it in my wallet or a pocket of my bookbag. I flashed through that entire day. Going running with Joshua. Going to school. Changing into my gym uniform, leaving my bag on the bleachers. Going home with Josh. Going out with Justin. Changing into my work clothes. That money could be anywhere at that point. It could have fallen out of my pocket during the run or someone could have taken it right out of my backpack. I stubbornly tried to fight against the truth, but I couldn’t. The money was gone and I had lost it.

          Stupid, stupid, stupid, I’m so fucking stupid! Pure loathing and hatred filled me, replacing my fear. My father was right. I was useless. Worthless. Human trash. Self-important and untrustworthy. Forgetful. A loser. Anyone else in the entire world would have known enough not to put that money in their pocket, but not me. No, of course not! I had done this, I had lost my parents almost hundreds of dollars! There wasn’t even a point in going to look for it. I was positive someone had found it and treated themselves by then. I didn’t even care about how furious my father was going to be when I told him, I was too busy being furious with myself. I had been anxious all that time about helping my parents get out debt and then I had pulled this just because I was having a bad day. I’m just as bad as my father is. _Worse._

“I don’t have the money,” the words left my mouth, almost like they had a will of their own. I didn’t bother lying. That I should didn’t even enter my head, “I lost it.”

          I couldn’t look at my father, couldn’t see that look of disappointment and fury and disgust on his face. I remembered telling him about getting on the track team that morning, how he had seemed proud of me and felt a deep, aching loss that ripped my heart wide open. I was never going to get that look back. Not ever. There was nothing in me for my father to be proud of to begin with. If he hadn’t seen that before, he sure did now. He didn’t even need to hit me for this. Just knowing that I had lost any, tiny, shred of respect for me he might have had was pain enough. That I had hurt both my parents, made them more stressed, failed them like the terrible, worthless child I’ve always been was agony. I didn’t need to look at him to see that disappointment, I could fucking feel it on the air, along with his overflowing anger and disbelief at me, this hot, prickling sensation.

          “What?” his incredulous statement was icy at first before he exploded like a volcano, “What the fuck did you just say?! YOU LOST IT?! Are you fucking kidding me?!!”

          I was prepared for the first blow to my face, his fist connecting perfectly with my right eye, but I made no attempt to dodge it. Or the second blow hitting the side of my head, or the third or the fourth, or even the fifth one that succeeded in sending me crashing to the floor, my head only narrowly missing the edge of the table. I wasn’t even scared of how much he was hurting me, how angry he was. Every blow, I deserved. Every hurt, I had only done to myself. I just felt defeated, resigned. Running away didn’t matter anymore than it had that morning when I had tried to escape him and failed. This was a much worse failure and I surrendered to it, wanted it even. If I let myself, I could even imagine that he wasn’t just punishing me for this latest fuck up, but for everything. Everything that I had ever messed up on, everything that I had ever failed. For him, for my mother, for Josh. I didn’t even flinch when, with a roar of rage, my father grabbed one of the kitchen chairs and struck me with it. He had hit me with one before when I was younger and it had hurt just as much then as it did now, but miraculously hit me in the left shoulder and shoulder blade and not my head or the small of my back. I felt the chair leg break off and go flying somewhere, but neither of us really cared. It wasn’t like it was the first chair he had smashed up in a fit of anger. My shoulder blade went hot and wet. He hadn’t broken anything but the skin, but it bled heavily.

          My father barely took a breath as he dropped the broken chair to the floor and beat me viciously as I stayed crumpled like a ball of paper at his feet, spewing insults and hatred at me. Useless. Filth. Retard. He screamed that he wished that I had never been born, that he could have traded me for a child with some brains in their skull instead of soup and a thousand other things. He kicked me, over and over. It was only when he started to stomp on my head and sides and my ribs started to scream in pain that I even thought that I should defend myself, curling up into a tight ball and shielding my head with my arms. Not that that stopped him. He kicked my arms black and lashed out at my chest and shoulders. He didn’t hit me hard enough to break anything, somehow, but it was a near thing and when he finally tired himself out, he spat at me.

          “Why are you even alive?” he hissed at me, his voice icy and loathing, “Huh?! Tell me that, you fucking diseased cockroach. Why are you even alive?”

          He waited for me to answer, but I didn’t have anything to say. I couldn’t think of an answer. I didn’t even think he was asking me. I think he was asking himself. Asking himself why he had bothered to save me that day he had found me bleeding out on the bathroom floor. Why he hadn’t just left me there and saved himself a lot of trouble. He gave me one last, frustrated kick and stormed out of the kitchen, snagging his coat from the rack.

          “I’m going to get a drink,” he snarled at me, “I can’t even fucking _look_ at you right now. You disgust me. Now I’m going to have to ask someone for a loan because my worthless damned brat has less brains than a blowfly! Do you have any idea how embarrassing that is?!!” he screamed.

          I expected him to come back and go another round with the amount of pure fury in his voice, but he didn’t. I flinched as he slammed the door behind him, the walls of the kitchen shaking. A glass that one of my parents had precariously put on the edge of the sink fell over into it and shattered. I stayed in my little ball for half a second, feeling like mushed hamburger meat and trembling a little from the pain that seemed to be in every part of my body. Tears dripped down my swollen, bruised face in disgustingly thick streams. I uncurled slowly and grabbed at the counter, using it to get back on my feet. I wiped at my lips, my knuckles only lightly grazing my nose, but it was enough to make pain explode there. The back of my hand was streaked with blood, snot, and tears, my skin tacky with the stuff.

          Still keeping one hand on the counter, feeling so unsteady that I might fall again and blood dripping down my chin from my nose and twice split lip, I ignored my shaking arms and hands and my pounding head and slowly gathered up the shards of glass from the sink, making a little pile on the counter, a few of the shards cutting my fingers. I watched the blood bead out from the pad of my first finger. It looked dark in the low light of the kitchen, almost brown, like sewage. That’s all that throws through me, just liquid shit.

          _“Why are you even alive?”_

Suddenly, I knew the answer to that question. The only possible answer.

          “I don’t know,” I whispered, “I don’t know.”

         

 

//You are a worthless, worthless, worthless child

The most worthless child in this world

You're useless at studying, sports, and socializing

A poor, stupid, dirty child

You couldn't even say your own name but

I loved the sobbing noises you made

Drool, snot, dandruff, shit, piss

Germs, crybaby, weakling, just ignore it, ignore it all

Come here, I'll protect you

Together, together, together with me

A lullaby to go to sleep with

A duet with a drowsy feeling

Let us sing, let us sing

Sing together you and me

You lonely child, child

You are a worthless, worthless, worthless child

The most worhtless child in this world

You are a worthless, worthless, worthless child

Without me you'd be dead

You are a worthless, worthless, worthless child

A sad, sad failure of a child

You are a worthless, worthless, worthless child

I'll have to come and save you now

Moster, alien, invisible man

The flower vase in the urinal, never attending school

From your dried up lips you whisper cruel slander

Come, I will listen to your anguished shouts

Despite this, all the months still come and go

Lacking brains, lacking time, a lacking child

Oh, much too late for a brain so impaired

Cute child, good child, you are mine alone

A lullaby to go to sleep with

A dance with a drowsy feeling

Let us dance, let us dance, let us dance forevermore

Lonely child, child, child, child (3) //

 

End Part 23

         

 

  * This is a bit of a connection to two other stories of mine, a large one that’s available to read and one that hasn’t been written yet, but I still plan to. Readers that have been with me for a while can probably guess which story this is a nod to.



 

  * Yes, Frey thinks desks only cost fifty bucks, lol. While he is a bit worldly with how much he’s gone through in his life, he’s oblivious to a lot of other things and if he really knew how much a desk costs (the one I’m using right now is 200 and while this story takes place ten years ago, they were still expensive back then) he probably never would have agreed to this.



 

  * Song is “Kimi wa dekinai ko” or “You are a worthless/useless child”, written by KIKUO, just the first half of the song. The second will be used later.



 

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	69. Chapter 8 Part 24

A Stagnation of Love

Chapter 8

Part 24

 

 

          I stood there at the kitchen sink in a self-depreciating stupor, just watching the blood dripping down my fingers and making eerie ‘plink, plink’ sounds as the drops hit the rusting chrome of the sink. For once, I didn’t have a thousand thoughts buzzing in my head. In fact, beyond the physical pain and my depression, I felt numb, my head somehow both heavy and empty of much thought. I didn’t feel capable of it. I suppose I was in shock, less because of the beating and more because of _why_ it had happened. I’ve fucked up a lot in my life. I’ve crossed my father more than I’ve even fucked up, but this… this was bad, even for me. A part of me still couldn’t believe that any of it had happened, that I had done something so unbelievably stupid. Another could only think ‘of course, it’s me after all. Of course I would mess this up.’ Compared to my mood and thoughts like that, the pain I was in was almost a relief.

          I might have stood there all morning hating myself if I hadn’t been so damned tired. My legs trembled under me and I had to grip the sink to keep steady as my aching and throbbing body screamed at me that it didn’t have the ability to put up with me anymore and it needed to get horizontal right now. The aftermath right after a beating, especially a rough one like the one that I had just been given, is always the worst for me. Sure, getting hit and tossed around like a ragdoll isn’t exactly my definition of a good time, but this part afterwards, when my body is settling into all the new hurts and bruises and aches and, if the beating was really bad, broken bones sucks.

The beating I had gotten that morning was far from the worst I’ve had, but my muscles were spasming like they were trying to figure out what the hell had just happened, kind of like I was. The multiple blows to the head sure weren’t helping, either. I still felt woozy and dizzy, like the world was slightly tilted. I might have had a small concussion. Getting hit by my dad in full rage mode is like getting hit by a block of cement. In a way, my sleep deprivation was a blessing at that point. I could put all my depressive and self-loathing thoughts and feelings into that little box in my head reserved for shit that was unpleasant or inconvenient when things needed to be done and go through the motions. Taking care of myself after a beating is like riding a bike or tying shoes to a normal person. It’s my ritual, a habit, a chore, something ingrained in me from a very young age. Ten years from now, if I’m still alive and away from all this shit, I’ll probably still remember it, just like that cliché about riding bikes which, ironically, I’ve never done.

Only operating with maybe two-thirds of a full deck, I fell back on the step system I came up with when I was nine and found myself with a broken arm and no one in sight to take me to the hospital. Step one, assess the damage. Step two, fix what can be fixed. Step three, if things cannot be fixed, find a way to get to place where they can be fixed. If things have been fixed, proceed to step four: clean up. Step five, continue on or find a fairly safe place to crash and lick your wounds. Rinse and repeat. Step one was vital at that point. I had no idea if my father had broken anything and which pains I was feeling, and there were many of those, were just bruises and swelling and what might be a warning of a cracked rib or a concussion or a broken nose.

Fine thoughts. Not quite so simple to do as it turned out. I let go of the sink and didn’t immediately fall on my brutalized face, so that was good, but then I took that first step and I almost _did_ fall anyway. It wasn’t my legs. Their trembling was just from shock and tiredness. Miraculously, my father hadn’t hit them all that much, so they were fairly uninjured, which went a long way in making my trek to the bathroom easier. It wasn’t even my head or my face or the blows to my ribs that almost did me in, it was that first blow to my stomach. The second I moved, I felt something tighten and scream in my guts, nearly driving me to my knees as I gasped, grabbing at my abdomen. I stood there for several minutes with my arms around my stomach as it throbbed unpleasantly until it eased into strong discomfort.

My journey to the bathroom was slow as I worried at the possibility of broken ribs and didn’t want to move too quickly or in the wrong way. The dizziness wasn’t easing off and having one eye swollen shut was throwing off my depth perception in the worst way possible, but it was really only a few feet across the kitchen, I could manage. I thought about picking up the broken chair so it wasn’t in the middle of the floor when my father or mother eventually got home, but it just wasn’t possible, not until I knew for certain _I_ wasn’t broken. The best I could do was push the chair leg that had come off with my foot, making it roll under the cabinets to be picked up later. The chairs were cheap, old things that shouldn’t have lasted as long as they have, so I held no illusions that I would be able to fix it, but at least there were still two chairs left. Since the three of us never sit down together anymore, it wouldn’t be an issue, so that was one less thing to set my father off later.

I grabbed at the bathroom door frame and hauled my awkward and bloody self into the small room, not bothering to close the door because I really didn’t have the energy for it. I flicked on the light and squeezed my good eye shut as the light sent sparks through my vision, a pretty good indicator that I might have that concussion. But the light, while brighter than the one in the kitchen, was still dim and I adjusted quickly. I immediately grimaced at my reflection, regretting my decision. It wasn’t pretty, though I guess it could have been a hell of a lot worse if the beating had gone on for longer or my father had used something to hit me with.

The entire left side of my face from my eye to my chin was one massive, swollen, black bruise, easily the worst of the damage. I had one impressive black eye and between that and the swelling in my cheek, that eye wasn’t going to be opening any time soon. There was an abrasion right under my eye that was small, but bleeding sluggishly, but compared to the blood caked under my nose, it was barely anything. My nose was pretty bad, too, swollen and black and I couldn’t even twitch without it pounding, but I thought my nosebleed was finally starting to slow down. The two splits in my lip were still bleeding, too, but the right side of my face had somehow been spared from almost any damage. There was a bruise on that cheek, but it was barely noticeable.

          Before I even thought about making myself more presentable and looking less like an extra in a zombie film, I needed to make sure my father hadn’t broken anything. I raised my hand, already wincing before I even made contact with my face, and lightly prodded my nose. The explosion of pain was immense and I couldn’t stop the tiny whimper that bare touch wrangled from my lips. Already in horrible agony, I just went with it, gripping the sink tightly with my other hand as I carefully felt at my nose from the bridge down, moving it slightly from side to side even as I felt like puking with the hot pain. I don’t know how, given how hard my father had punched me, but it wasn’t broken, and I still had all my teeth, too. Well, not all the teeth I had ever had, but all the teeth I had had when I had left work, so that was something. There was one tooth that felt loose and hurt when I prodded at it, but I decided it wasn’t in any danger of coming out unless I took a few more blows to the mouth.

          Unable to stand the feeling of it anymore, I wet a washcloth and with incredibly slowness and carefulness, cleaned my face of blood. That was the most I could do for my head besides take some pain pills, which I planned to do as soon as I was done. The easiest way to check if I was concussed would have been my pupils, but since I couldn’t see one of them, I was just going to have to deal with it. Next, I checked my hands and arms. Since I had been using them, I was positive my father’s many stomps to them hadn’t damaged anything, but I studied them anyway, flexing my wrists and elbows and each finger. Like my nose, they were bruised and swollen in places and a couple of my fingers hurt to use too much, but otherwise were fine. My legs, too.

          Next was the only part of me besides my nose that I had been worried about: my ribs. I had bulled forward when examining my face, but paused, for the first time really wondering what I was going to do if I found a broken one. I was fairly certain they were ok. My dad had kicked me pretty hard, but I hadn’t felt a break and should have when I had been hauling myself up from the floor, but I still needed to make sure. But what would I do if I did find one? I didn’t have any money to take the bus to the hospital. Wait for my mom to come home? She should have been already and I had no clue where she was. I could call her work, but I didn’t think she was there and even if she was, she couldn’t do much to help me. Logic told me that I would need to call Heero. He had a car and money and he had gone through all this with me before, so he knew what to do. But it was that precise reason why I didn’t want to.

          I remembered that morning vividly, how frantic and angry he had been. I couldn’t do that to him. I couldn’t call him in the small hours of the morning and say ‘hey, I know this is a pain in the ass, but I have a broken rib again and I’m such a parasitic loser that I can’t deal with it by myself. Not only do I not have the means, I’m kind of a coward, and even though I’ve been dealing with this shit my whole life, I’m kind of scared and would rather scare the shit out of the boy I love than deal with it alone.’

Yeah. Right. No fucking way. My reflection’s expression went hard and cold. I decided right then that if I found that every rib I had was shattered to bits, I wasn’t going to call Heero. I was going to let him sleep in blissful ignorance and, if I had any say, never find out about it. And yes, I know I promised him that I would call him if something like this happened, if I needed help, and I knew it would make him happy to have me reach out to him. And I knew that I should, that it was probably ok for two people to lean on each other from time to time. But this wasn’t just ‘once in a while.’ This was all the time. I was leaning so hard already and I loved him too much to do this to him again, to make him stay up all morning, waiting in fear for news from my doctor that I was ok. And I just… I felt so ashamed. So embarrassed and weak and worthless. After what had just happened, after I had failed so completely that day and it had been made clear to me how useless and stupid and a pain in the ass I really am… I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bother my mother, either. I’d have to explain to her why my ribs were broken and I couldn’t. I couldn’t face her with the truth and see that disappointment and tiredness on her face. Walking on foot all the way to the hospital with broken bones was preferable to dealing with that shame.

Determined, I prodded at my left side where I had taken the most hits. The tight pain from just that gentle touch had me hissing, but aside from putting pressure on it, it was mostly a heavy ache. The pain was actually more bearable than my face and stomach. I bore through the self-examination and while I should probably get an x-ray to be positive, I was fairly sure nothing was broken. Sure enough, at least, to not want to go to the hospital. My right side was about the same, mostly deep aches, but I didn’t feel any damage. I sighed in relief at the thought of not having to go to the hospital. I’m not an idiot, I knew that I probably should, that I wasn’t a doctor and I could be more injured than I thought, but after seventeen years of getting knocked around like this, I know my body well. Mostly, I would do about anything not to go to that place, so it was a weight off my shoulders to not find anything broken.

Slowly and stiffly, I lifted up my shirt, hissing again as the movement pulled on all the wrong things, but I needed to check my back from when the chair had hit me. My front was not pleasant to look at. My shirt had hidden most of the bruises on my arms from me and most of them were already black or purple. There were few places on either of my arms that weren’t bruised, but my stomach was the worst. There was a single, huge bruise there, black and purple, tinged a dark blood red on the edges with a smattering of smaller ones on my chest and sides. It was probably a good thing that the more intimate parts of my relationship with Heero hadn’t progressed at all. He was going to freak when he saw my face, but at least I could hide the rest of this from him.

I winced again when I turned and used the mirror to look at the cut on the back of my shoulder. It wasn’t just a cut, but a long gash over my shoulder blade, still sluggishly bleeding. I cleaned the blood off with the washcloth, frowning at the ugliness of the wound, but it didn’t look too deep. The bruise surrounding it was as bad as the one on my stomach, but I would live with some bandages. And sure, it probably needed a stitch or two, but my revulsion for needles and stitches was enough to let me risk it. I pressed the washcloth to it until the bleeding started to really slow, then smeared ointment on it and slapped on the biggest, thickest bandage I could find. I would check on it before I had to leave the house for Heero’s and if it didn’t stop bleeding by then, fine, maybe I would see a doctor, but I didn’t really think it would be necessary.

All things considered, some bruises, abrasions, a black eye, and a little bit of blood shed was light compared to what could have happened, so I marked the whole thing off as lucky as hell. I popped a couple of pain pills dry and brushed my teeth to get the taste of blood out of my mouth. There wasn’t much more I could do for myself. What I really needed, I knew, was some fucking sleep, especially if I was going to confront Heero that morning and have to explain why I looked like a piece of well-tenderized meat. As I grabbed my shirt and left the bathroom, I paused, my father’s order to sleep outside in my ears. I knew right then that I might as well not try to sleep at all if I had to do that. Between my restless thoughts and my injuries, sleeping on the ground was going to be impossible. I wasn’t even sure if I was going to get more than a couple hours in my own bed, let alone in our back yard.

My guilt warred with my exhaustion. I was in this state because of my own failings. This was my fault and I deserved to sleep outside, but… I was just in so much pain, and so tired… Besides, even if my father found me sleeping in my room, what more could he do to me? Beat me again? I doubted I would even see him again that morning, not if he was going bar hopping or to ask for money like he had said. That guilt in my chest threatened to eat me alive at that thought. My father is such a prideful man, especially around his friends. I can’t even imagine how low and awful he felt asking for a handout. A lot worse than I do when I have to ask Heero’s father, I imagine. I also knew who he was probably going to ask money from. Pat. Because Pat is the type of man who would be all too happy to give money to anyone that asks. Not out of any altruism, but because he can hold it over their heads, feel superior or demand a favor. I wonder just how many times money has just magically appeared, whether it was for booze or bills, that had actually come from him. And I had forced my father into that position again.

My dad was right, I deserved to sleep in the dirt, but I couldn’t. The weariness in my bones was heavy and more painful than the bruises on my skin, my guilt only making it worse and worse and all I wanted, all I could even think about wasn’t the throbbing in my gut or the pounding in my head or eye or nose, but just how fucking _tired_ I was. I trudged slowly up the stairs, my legs feeling like they were made of granite. It wasn’t even a case of taking a stupid risk, I didn’t even think I had a choice anymore. I closed my door behind me and changed into night clothes, happy to toss my bloody work shirt in the corner. I would probably have to throw it out. The shirt wasn’t dark enough to hide the stains and I had let the blood settle. At least I had other work shirts, so I didn’t feel much loss over it.

I realized that I had left my bookbag in the kitchen and my stuff was probably still scattered on the floor and table but couldn’t muster up the energy to care much. I hadn’t thought to bring up an ice pack for my eye, either, and there was no way in hell I was making it downstairs just for that. I didn’t loiter for even a second, just flipping off the light and finding my bed in the dark. My descent down was agonizingly slow, careful of every hurt, but I stupidly wasn’t thinking and laid down on my left side. A thick pain flared the second my cheek hit the pillow and I took a sharp intake of air, immediately rolling over onto my other side to get away from it, but the throbbing was pervasive. The entire left side of my face felt unbearable hot and stiff, like it had been stuffed full of coals and even taking the pressure off it did little to make me feel better. My stomach felt similarly, and I wasn’t even laying on it.

I closed my eye, not even bothering with the sheets because then I would have to move and willed sleep to come and take me away. I didn’t care if I had nightmares, I just wanted rest, even if it was just for an hour. It’s funny, I had thought that my thoughts, what my father had said, and my guilt would be the thing that kept me up that morning, but although I still felt depressed, my thoughts were rather quiet. I think I didn’t have the energy for them anymore. Instead, it was the pain, mostly in my stomach and eye, but the side that I was laying on wasn’t so great, either. There really wasn’t any way that I _could_ lay without hurting. My guts were a mess, tight and tortured, this continuous twisting sensation like I was going to retch, but I never did. I came close to slipping off once, about twenty minutes later. I went deep, a mere foot from sleep, when my body twitched the wrong way, pulling at my abdomen and making the pain scream to life and jolting me back fully awake.

Forty minutes after that, I was still awake and drifting in that weird nothing state I get in when I’m tired, but my mind won’t let me fall asleep. I was inching towards it, though, I could fucking _feel_ it, just barely out of my reach when I heard the sound of the front door opening. For a moment, my heart jerked into a terrified rhythm and I tensed, which is really not the thing you want to do with bruises and injured muscles, but I was certain my father had returned and was going to come gunning for me.

The door closed softly. If our place wasn’t so small and I hadn’t been so on edge, I might not have even heard it. Not Dad, I realized almost on the verge of tears, it had to be my mother. She’s the only one who would care to make as little noise coming in as possible. I was instantly relieved, but not just because it was my mother instead of my father. I had worried when she hadn’t been home when I had gotten there and had assumed that she was crashing somewhere else, but had feared that my father had done something to her because of me, that she was in the hospital and I didn’t even know. I was also relieved and happy to not be alone. I knew that she couldn’t do much to protect me from my father, but it was nice to have a buffer between the two of us. Hell, it was nice to have someone around that wasn’t angry at me, but that wasn’t going to last very long. That my mother would just be angry and disappointed with me and wouldn’t hit me wasn’t a comfort. A beating would be better than that depressed, frustrated look on her face that I was sure she would have when she learned that I had lost all that money.

          My body relaxed a little with her there, but I immediately tensed again when I heard her coming up the stairs ten minutes later. There was absolutely no reason for her to be coming into the attic. Unless she already knew about the money somehow, my paranoia screamed, but I smacked it down. My parents don’t talk even on a good day, so unless she had the place bugged, there was no way she could know about that. I suddenly realized how the kitchen must have looked, between my stuff on the table, the table shoved out of place, the broken chair, and probably some blood on the floor. I couldn’t remember if I had cleaned any of that up, my brain was too scattered, but I was pretty sure I hadn’t. I wondered at my forgetfulness, how out of character I was acting the last few days between forgetting my father’s errand, losing the money, and not cleaning up the kitchen. Sure, I was hurt, but I wasn’t that hurt. I’ve cleaned up the aftermath of my father’s rages with broken bones before, but I had mostly just left things. Was it just my tiredness, or was I losing grasp over myself?

          My door opened, again lightly and quietly, almost tentatively, like my mother was nervous. Light spilled into my room, but my mother just paused there in the doorway. I could feel her eyes on my back.

          “Duo?” she called in a soft whisper after a few minutes, “Are you awake?”

          She was just worried about me, I realized, that was all, and was just checking up on me like I often would from when I had been little and knew my father had been beating on her. My guilt apparently had gotten better sleep than I had, because it woke new and refreshed, eagerly gnawing on me. There was no reason for her to worry, I wanted to tell her, I had only gotten what I deserved. It made me feel like a shit, but I didn’t so much as twitch, feigning sleep until she quietly closed my door and walked back downstairs, leaving me alone to that gaping feeling in my chest and my bitter thoughts. I was too much of a coward to face her, to tell her why I was beat to hell and have that wonderful concern of hers, which used to be the equivalent of a mythical beast in my life, vanish into either resentment or tiredness.

          Tears dripped down my face and soaked into my shabby pillow. I wasn’t even entirely sure why I was crying, if it was from thinking about losing my mother’s love over this, depression from my failures that day, how tired I was or just how much I hated myself. I ached for Heero’s arms just then. For anyone’s arms, really, but mostly his. But I didn’t deserve that comfort. My crying was awkward and almost painful with my injuries and having one eye swollen shut and it didn’t make me feel even a tiny bit better. Even with my mother there, hearing her puttering around the kitchen, I felt achingly alone.

          When my tears finally started to slow, I made another effort to close my eyes and try to sleep, but it was useless. It had been useless before, but now there was just no point in even lying there. I was just hurting my side and sleep was adamant in being elusive. I guess I didn’t deserve the rest, either. So, my choices were either just lie there and feel sorry for myself or face the music. If my mother heard me walking around up there, she would want to talk to me and even if she didn’t, even if I put off going down to talk to her, it only made me feel pathetic, like I was a little child, hiding from a scolding.

          I struggled out of bed. And I really do mean _struggled_. Everything was stiff and wooden and when I got to my feet, the room kind of swayed. I wrapped an arm around my stomach and groaned as my body tried to get acclimated to being vertical again, but it was far from happy. I could actually imagine it cursing at me and demanding to know why I was doing this to it. Even if I couldn’t sleep, I really need to not be standing with my head injuries alone. Maybe it’s just as well that I hadn’t been able to sleep that morning. While I’ve had worse head traumas, that woozy feeling wasn’t going away, making the possibility of a concussion more and more likely.

          In the dark, I found my desk chair and plopped myself down in it, taking a few, long minutes to get my breath back before grabbing the edge of my desk and got my feet back under me, more from pulling myself up than actually standing. I didn’t bother turning the light on so I could change out of my pajamas. I didn’t see the point of wasting that much energy and wasn’t looking forward to putting myself through those motions to begin with, but it was several hours too early to be going over to Heero’s. And yeah, I know I could have just gone there anyway, snuck in quietly and crashed in the guest bedroom.

Hell, I could have skipped the damned jog since there was no way I was going to be able to do that much strenuous activity and gotten some sleep. In that house, safe and quiet and familiar, I probably would have been able to. But as much as I wanted to see Heero, and as much as I needed the rest, I also really didn’t want to see him. I didn’t want to have to explain this. I didn’t want his well-meaning concern when he wouldn’t understand that I deserved every bruise. I didn’t want to worry his parents, either, especially after Justin had been so nice to me. Things were hard enough without adding my boyfriend and his issues into the mix. I just… couldn’t handle him in the state that I was in. I didn’t want to be comforted.

Ok, that’s a lie. I did want it. But I knew I didn’t deserve that, I didn’t deserve him washing it all away with his kind words and warm embrace. I had fucked up and if I was miserable, that was justice, wasn’t it? I had done nothing to earn Heero’s love or concern or that eerie ability of his to make everything better, to erase these bits of shattered glass in my heart, if only for a little while. So, while the smartest thing would have been to just go there and get away from my father, I didn’t do that. I stayed. Story of my life, that, when you get right down to it. I stayed and everything that came after that choice, just like my choice to stay after my father had molested me that first time, is completely my fault, no one else’s.

          My mother was in the kitchen when I went downstairs, taking my time on the stairs since my depth perception was all fucked up. Considering it was just shy of four in the morning, I expected her to be getting a drink of water before heading to bed, or rather a nap if she had an early shift, but to my surprise, she was sitting at the table, looking through a rather thick stack of papers. From the pinched, stressed look on her face, they were bills and she had been at it at least since she had checked up on me. Yet another pang of guilt ripped through me as I remembered my promise to her to help look through our expenses and find a way to lessen our spending. But just like how I had forgotten to pick up my father’s car parts, I had been too involved in my own problems lately to remember anything outside of my miserable, selfish bubble. I really a terrible son, aren’t I? I can’t even keep a single promise.

          “Duo,” my mother said with surprise as she heard me coming down the stairs, “I didn’t wake you, did I-,”

          She turned to look at me and the words froze on her tongue, her eyes wide and her face going pale as she took in my injuries.

          “Oh my god,” she gaped and pulled away from the table so hard that the chair almost fell over, “Oh, god, your face… what did he do to you…”

          She went to me, this deep pain in her eyes and her hands twitched, wanting to touch my face, but there really weren’t many places to touch that weren’t black and blue.

          “You didn’t wake me,” I assured her, carefully not saying that I hadn’t slept in the first place, “It looks worse than it is.”

          She completely ignored both statements, her shock melting away to anger.

          “That…” her voice became strangled, unable to find the right word for what she thought of my father, “Here, sit down.”

          She took me by the shoulders and gently led me to the other side of the table, sitting me down in the only other good chair left. I realized I had been swaying on my feet again. She rushed to the freezer and found a bag of ice, wrapped it in a towel, and handed it to me.

          “Thanks,” I murmured, and hissed at the half painful, half pleasurable sensation of cold against my swollen, hot skin as I pressed against my closed eye.

          “Do you need to go to the hospital?” she asked worriedly, studying what injuries she could see on my face.

          “I don’t think so,” I admitted, “It’s mostly superficial.”

          She pursed her lips into a thin, annoyed line and I had to admit, with the way I looked, ‘superficial’ was probably a stupid thing to call it.

          “You should get some sleep,” she fussed, “It’s too early for you to be awake, especially after such a long day.”

          I must look even worse than I had thought if she was that worried about me and I nearly winced at the thought. That really wasn’t fair, I knew. While my mother isn’t the type to really fuss, can I honestly say that? Most of what I knew about my mother came from years of watching her try to drink herself to death. Since she had become sober, it was like meeting a brand new person, learning about her all over again and while us warming up to each other had been a slow thing, lately she’s been quicker to worry over me, especially if it’s something my father has done to me. I just don’t know if this is how she naturally is now that she’s coming out of her shell or knowing what my father does to me has made her especially sensitive out of guilt.

          “Can’t sleep,” I murmured, and really did wince as my stomach clenched and the throbbing got worse for a second. I had a feeling that it wasn’t going to feel any better for the rest of the day, “Hurts too much.”

          I wrapped an arm around my middle, unable to stop the automatic reaction of sheltering a part of me that aching so much and my mother looked even more pained. Under it was a vein of true anger at my father. I wondered how quickly that anger would turn to me when she found out why I was black and blue.

          “Do you want a sleeping pill?” she asked in concern, “I have some…”

          “No, thanks,” I told her, fighting against the thought of how fucking nice it would be to take a pill, to be able to sleep and not wake up from a stray noise or a nightmare, “I want to leave early anyway. I’ll be fine.”

          My mother chewed on her lip, obviously not believing me.

          “You look tired,” she said in a low, careful tone. She was used to my father losing his temper at this point, if she kept at him on something.

          “I didn’t sleep very much the last few mornings,” I confessed, “but I’ll sleep in a bit this weekend.”

          “You’re staying at Heero’s Saturday and Sunday again?” she asked.

          I nodded, though there was a niggling doubt in the back of my head, bracing myself for her disapproval or even for her to remind me that I probably shouldn’t be hanging out with him again even though she had promised to drop it. To my surprise, she smiled a little in relief.

          “Good,” she said, “I don’t think your father will be around much this weekend, but I’ll think of something to tell him.”

          I didn’t ask how she was so sure he wouldn’t be around, I wasn’t keen on knowing what might have been going on while I wasn’t there, the fights they had had, how stressed my father had been lately. I thought of telling her not to bother, Dad was already furious at me, so I didn’t really care if he hit me some more for my absence and it wasn’t worth her getting hit, too, for lying to him again, but I didn’t think she was going to listen to me.

          “Thank you,” I murmured, “Are you… are you alright? With him, I mean. He didn’t… He didn’t fight with you tonight?”

          She looked perplexed.

          “You came home late,” I clarified.

          “Oh, no, nothing like that,” she explained, “I took an extra shift,” she looked down at the stack of bills with a rueful, bitter smile, “We need the money.”

          My stomach clenched again, but this time it had nothing to do with the physical injury as I thought about how many extra shifts my parents were going to need to take to make up for my fuck up. No, it wasn’t going to come to that, I decided with anger. I wouldn’t let it.

          “I’m sorry,” I said miserably, “I know I said I would help with the budget and I haven’t been working as many hours as I could…”

          “Don’t be ridiculous, Duo,” she scolded lightly, standing up from the table, “You’ve been busy with work and school, and I already told you that I don’t want you to take on any more work hours than you have. You’re tired enough as it is. If I were any kind of mother…” she turned her back to me, pretending that she was rifling through a cabinet when she was really trying to hide the guilt and self-loathing on her face from me, but hadn’t turned quick enough to manage, “I wouldn’t let you work two jobs to begin with.”

          “That’s not true,” I protested, hating that I was making her feel this way, “It’s not your fault. Dad got me one of those jobs! And I _want_ to work, I want to help this family.”

          She looked back at me lovingly, making this warm thing blossom in my chest, so out of place among all the other low, dark things I was feeling.

          “I know you do,” she said softly, like that was some wonderful thing, “But you shouldn’t have to. In any case, this is my mess, mine and your father’s. If I have to take extra shifts, I only have myself to blame, not you.”

          It was such a turnaround from what I had been hearing from both her and my father for most of my life that I almost cried, that warm feeling spreading. It hurt, but it was a good kind of hurt for once.

          “If you aren’t going to go back to bed, let me at least make you something to eat,” she offered, digging out a can of soup.

          The me that had lived with this woman for seventeen years and still wasn’t quite used to anyone trying to take care of me shrewdly wondered what she was trying to compensate for, looking for the angle, but I smacked it away. She was just being nice because I was hurt. She was making an effort and had been trying more and more lately to be more of a mother to me, or at least a better person, and I was not going to be like my father and think she had some ulterior motive. Her actions weren’t manipulative, but desperate, those of someone who worried that they had changed too little too late. So, I wanted to smile at her and say ‘sure’, just to let her know how much I appreciated her giving a shit, but the thought of putting anything in my stomach had me grimacing.

          “Thanks, but I’m really not hungry,” I told her, tightening my arm around me unconsciously. I was ninety percent sure that if I tried to consume anything that wasn’t bland liquid, I was going to puke, which was something I was trying to avoid with my injuries.

          My mother finally realized where my other arm was and the hunched in way I was sitting and winced with sympathy. It was the sort of thing that my boyfriend would have done, but I was suddenly struck with the epiphany that this was my mother and, unlike Heero, mixed in with that sympathy was empathy. Heero had sympathy for me because he hates seeing me hurt and he hates knowing that my father is the one responsible, but my mother has been on the receiving end of my father’s signature gut punches more than just a handful of times. She knows exactly how it feels, how much they fucking _hurt_ , how it feels like your stomach is trying to crawl out of your throat and turned to swollen jelly for hours after. Hell, she was probably the only person who really understood how I was feeling right then, battered and broken even when I didn’t have a single, serious injury. I don’t know why it bowled me over so much, realizing just how much of kindred spirits we were, but it did. It warmed me as much as her concern and made me feel this fucked up connection to her.

          Sure enough, she didn’t need any further elaboration and knew exactly what to do, putting the soup back and pouring me a glass of water instead.

          “We’re out of tea,” she said a bit sheepishly as she handed it to me.

          “Thank you,” I accepted it happily and sipped it slowly.

          Drinking was a little bit awkward with my split lip, but my body quickly realized just how thirsty it had been and I had to fight against the urge to chug.

          “Did you take any medicine for the pain?” my mother asked, nervously clutching the bottom of her shirt.

          “A little while ago,” I said and she relaxed, sitting back down at the table, knowing from experience that there really wasn’t much else she could do for me.

          I drank slowly and not just so I wouldn’t puke, because I knew that there was nothing else for me to do when the glass was empty. But then it was and I had to put it on the table. It was time, I knew, but I didn’t want it to be. I wanted my mother to still care for me, to not loathe me like she used to. I didn’t want to see that bitterness back on her face, like the last few months never happened between us and after all our hard work, we were back to square one with each other. That thought doubled the pain in my guts and my frantic mind scrambled for ways that I could put this off. I could just leave, I thought. I didn’t _have_ to tell her what had happened. But that was cowardly and she was probably going to hear it from my father at some point anyway.

I eyed the glass, judging how close it was to her reach and if she would be likely to throw it at me. My father would have, but it’s hard to tell now that she’s sober. Some days her anger is back on its hair trigger and others she has the patience of a saint. Her alcoholism left scars on her, one of them being a bullish temper and impatience, but it wasn’t always there. In that way, my parents are the same. Predicting either of their moods lately has become an impossibility, but there was a chance that she wouldn’t go for the glass, a bigger one than with my dad, so I decided to risk it. I would deserve it anyway, though we were already one glass less that morning.

“Mom,” I started, my voice low and nervous, scared of the inevitable and even I could hear the deep guilt in it. My tone gained her attention immediately and she looked up from the papers, pensive and knowing we were about to talk about something serious, “I… I’m sorry about the chair.”

Said sad-looking piece of broken furniture had been leaned against the wall in the corner, the leg placed next to it on the counter where it would stay until someone (me) gave it some attention. I vowed right then that I would find the time that weekend to fix the fucking thing, somehow, or find a suitable replacement. My mom doesn’t know anything about fixing furniture and while my dad does, he would see it as not his problem, since it was my fault he had broken it. But that was irrelevant. It was my fault and I _would_ make it right again.

“Oh, Duo,” my mother said, pained, “That isn’t your fault, you don’t need to apologize,” her kind words only made the dagger of guilt push itself deeper inside of me.

It seemed to really dawn on her then the reason why the chair was broken, that my father might not have just throw it against a wall, but at me. It wouldn’t be the first time, she had seen him do it before when I had been a kid and he had broken a couple of my ribs with the last one he had broken. Her light grey eyes widened with the realization and that worry was back tenfold.

“Are you sure you don’t need to see a doctor?” she asked, those eyes frantically searching me for signs of blood, concerned with how I was sitting and probably wondering if my arm around myself was really just for my stomach, “How badly did he-,”

Her concern and growing, misplaced anger at my father twisted that knife and I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t take the guilt anymore, having her trying to care for me when she didn’t even know what I had done.

“ _Mom_ ,” I said forcefully and she shut up, “It was my fault, not his. All of this was my fault. I deserved it.”

I looked away from her in shame, unable to meet the eyes that almost looked silver that I had known my entire life.

“Oh, no, no, honey,” my mother said in alarm, “Of course it isn’t your fault! Whatever happened, you didn’t deserve this! It’s his fault, he’s the one that hit you-,”

“I’m the one that fucked up!” I cried and she fell silent again.

I brought the ice down, my eye and cheek feeling pleasantly numb, and put it on the table, but I still couldn’t meet her confused gaze. Something prickly like briars was wrapped around my chest and it squeezed me mercilessly.

“I messed up,” I said quietly, the words, full of humiliation and self-loathing, fell from my split lips like shards of glass; rough and painful, “I… Dad asked me to pick up his car parts after school today and I… I forgot.”

“Duo-,” my mother started to protest.

“I lost the money,” I finished miserably, “I… I don’t know what happened to it, but it’s gone. I was stupid and forgetful and I lost it. It’s all my fault.”

Tears welled up in my open eye, but I refused to let them fall. I refused to give my mother even a single reason to feel sorry for me. I was a wretched piece of shit and I didn’t deserve anyone’s sympathy. My mother fell silent. The air around us went cold and icy, though that was probably just in my head. The longer my mother didn’t speak, didn’t make a single sound, the more she was pissed at me, I was sure. It was just like my father. He would go quiet for a moment, then the hitting and cruel words would start. But my mother didn’t hit me or say a word. That was worse somehow, that she was so furious with me, she didn’t want anything to do with me. I imagined her getting up and just walking out of the house, or throwing me out, or even telling me that yes, those bruises on my face were entirely my fault and I had gotten everything that I had deserved and how could I do this to her? To us? I expected the same words my father had spewed at me to come from her as well. How could I be this irresponsible?

When my mother finally did speak, before I even registered what she was saying, so on edge and ready for the explosion of temper, I flinched.

“That isn’t like you, Duo,” she said in a very low tone, but to my shock, that tone wasn’t one of anger or even disappointment, but concern. She might as well have said it of my getting an F in English or beating up a classmate, like my forgetting such an important errand didn’t mean I was shit, but that something was wrong and she was more concerned with that than my screw up.

My head shot up and her expression, so full of worry and so empty of the anger I deserved almost had those tears escaping after all. Why wasn’t she pissed at me? Didn’t she understand what I had said? And what ‘wasn’t like’ me? Screwing up? Burdening this family? It seemed pretty like me to me. She was probably just building up to being angry with me, I decided, and any minute now, what I had just said was going to sink in. That clenching, tight pain in my chest grew, threatening to crush me as I waited for the inevitable fall out.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” I sniffed miserably, cursing my swollen nose as it became harder and harder to contain the tears that wanted to burst out of me and my injuries only made it more obvious that I was trying not to cry, “I’m so, so sorry. I’ll… I’ll make up the money somehow, I promise! I’ll work Saturday and take a longer shift Sunday, Tuesday, too. That should be enough to get the money back,” I vowed desperately, almost panicking.

‘I’ll do anything, just please don’t be mad at me. Don’t hate me,’ was on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t get the words out.

And finally the anger was there, turning my mother’s eyes into hard slate.

“You will do no such thing!” my mother snapped and I cringed, thinking that she really was going to hit me, “I am not going to have you working all weekend, Duo. I don’t care about you making up the money.”

I stared at her for a second in shock as I realized that she wasn’t angry at what I had done, but that I wanted to work to pay off my screw up. She didn’t care? How the hell couldn’t she care?!

“But, Mom-,” I tried to protest, but that hard look was still on her face and for the first time since she had given up booze, my mother stayed firm.

“No, Duo, I am putting my foot down. You need a day off, there’s no reason for you to take on extra shifts because of this. I’m your mother and you’ll listen to me, understand?” she demanded.

I nodded in astonishment. She hadn’t taken that tone with me since I had been very young and I just felt baffled at what was happening, why she was reacting this way. A part of me felt angry at her for not letting me make this right, but the rest was relieved. I hadn’t wanted to give up my Saturday with Heero. My mother was right, I desperately needed a day off from this shitty week, but I hadn’t thought of any other way to get my father that money back.

“Now,” she said in a much calmer, gentler tone, her worried expression replacing that hard one, “how much money did he give you?”

“I… I don’t know,” I admitted cautiously, still sure that she was going to explode at me, especially when she heard how much had gone missing, “Almost two hundred, I think.”

Her eyes widened, but her shock quickly melted away into fury. I stayed stock still as she gritted her teeth, waiting for the screaming to start.

“That insufferable man!” she snarled instead of yelling at me, “I can’t believe him! He knows we can’t afford that! What the hell is he thinking?!”

I don’t think I could have gotten more baffled if she had suddenly turned blue and sprouted wings. Wasn’t she listening to me? I had lost almost two hundred dollars when we couldn’t even afford to lose a third of that and she was angry at my father, not me?

“Mom, I’m the one that lost the money, not Dad,” I argued, “This is all _my_ fault, not his! I can’t do anything right!”

Unable to keep them back anymore, quickly losing control over myself and feeling utterly defeated and worn and miserable, fat tears streamed down my face. My mother looked alarmed to see me cry, probably thinking that this wasn’t like me, either, like I had just punched myself instead of told her a very basic fact.

“Oh, honey,” that pained tone was back, that look that reminds me so much of Heero when he wants to fix something that he knows can’t be fixed, “of course it isn’t your fault! Don’t say things like that!”

I shook my head and rubbed almost violently at my face to clear off the tears and only succeeded in hurting myself.

“Why aren’t you angry with me?!” I demanded, almost accusingly, “We can’t even pay our bills and I lost over a hundred dollars! Dad was furious with me and he had every right to be, so why aren’t you?!”

My mother made this small, disturbed noise and quickly got up from her chair, only to fall to her knees by mine. She had tears in her eyes and I just couldn’t understand it, why she was so upset, why she looked so stressed, not by our screwed up finances, but my anxiety. She should loathe me, not be worried about me. Compared to our financial problems, who the hell cared if I was stressed over messing up so badly? My mother reached out and expertly put her hands on my face, cradling it with extreme care and gentleness, knowing exactly where to touch that wouldn’t cause me pain.

“That’s right,” she told me, her tone fierce, her eyes bright and warm and full of love for me, making it almost impossible to breathe, “I’m _not_ mad at you. I’m not your father, sweetheart. I’m not upset with you because everyone makes mistakes and that’s all this was. You made a mistake, it happens. Your father and I certainly make plenty of them, only there isn’t anyone around to beat your father to a bloody pulp when he makes his,” she said bitterly, but then smiled at me, running her thumb through the tracks of tears on my skin as she lightly caressed my unbruised cheek, “It’s only because you’re always so responsible, more responsible and mature than the either of us that we put so much on your shoulders and when you do make mistakes, when you do forget things, it isn’t at all like you. It’s wrong of us to do that to you. It’s especially wrong for your father to take those mistakes out on you. You don’t deserve this, any of this. Forgetting a chore, losing that money… it isn’t your fault and it doesn’t mean that you’re irresponsible. It’s because you aren’t that this happened in the first place. We rely on you for so much and that isn’t right. You never should have been put in this position in the first place. You didn’t do anything wrong, Duo, not a thing.”

My breath hitched, her forgiveness and her affection and trust in me washing through me, eroding some of the stinging pain and hate I had been feeling since I had come home that morning. My tears felt like a damned waterfall as they poured down my face and a sob threatened to tear its way out of me. I couldn’t keep hold of it and my mother seemed to understand what was happening. She wrapped her arms around me, again as carefully as she could although it was impossible not to cause me any pain, not that I cared. When she held me, that she was hurting my sides wasn’t even on my radar. She was warm and familiar and that lost child inside of me sobbed right along with me as I rested my mangled face against her shoulder.

My tears and sobs hurt, especially my closed eye and nose, but it was impossible to stop. I felt something in me, this twisted knot of guilt and weariness begin to loosen, just a little, but it was enough for the tears to come freely and I just let it all go, not bothering to keep it locked up inside anymore. Like my sobs, the release, as tiny and irrelevant as it was, both felt good and it hurt all at once.

“Listen to me, Duo,” I felt her hands stroke my hair and I closed my good eye at how good it felt. All of this… the chair and the money and you being hurt… they’re nothing that you did. _He_ did this to you… to _us._ He never should have used that money for parts for that fucking car to begin with, but if that’s what he wanted, he should have kept the money and picked up the car his damned self, not made you do it. You didn’t lose that money, _he_ did, and he has no right to blame you for it. You aren’t going to do a single thing to make it up. It doesn’t make any difference anyway.”

I blinked and lifted my head to look at her through my tears.

“What do you mean?” I asked, confused.

She brushed my bangs out of my face.

“A couple hundred dollars isn’t going to keep us out of debt,” she pointed out, “Even if it could, your father was dead set on using it for his car, not for us. Even if you hadn’t lost it, we would be out over a hundred dollars of our budget. That money was lost long before he gave it to you.”

My eye widened in shock as I realized that she was right. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it myself, but she was absolutely right. Losing that money hadn’t really changed anything besides the fact that my father couldn’t fix his car now, but everything else, worrying about how it was going to affect our budget and our debt didn’t matter. I felt a spark of anger at my father myself that he had, once again, put his needs before everyone else’s. I still felt guilty as hell that he had to ask for money now and that he was furious at me, but hearing from my mother that it didn’t make any difference to her took a great deal of stress from me. Even if I had done everything right, even if I had remembered to get the parts and hadn’t lost the money, we would still be fucked. I had messed up, but even if I made up the money, it wouldn’t fix anything.

“Are you alright?” she asked, smoothing down my hair.

I nodded, my tears finally slowing down and I was able to get a deep breath in.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized, embarrassed that I had cried on her like that.

She gave me a wan smile.

“Hush,” she said affectionately.

She got up and handed me a hand towel. I cleaned my face off as best I could with the least amount of pain possible.

“Can I help you with that?” I gestured to the stack of bills, my voice rough from crying.

“It would be a lot of help,” she admitted, “This really isn’t my strong suit, but only if you really want to.”

It wasn’t mine, either, but I could tell how much she wanted the help and nodded. I wasn’t sure just how much help I could possibly be with my shitty math skills, pounding headache, and sleep deprivation, not to even mention that I wasn’t really in the right state or frame of mind for it, but I needed to do something to help.

Over the next hour, my mother and I poured over our finances. I’d always had an idea that our bills are high from how stressed my parents have been over them for as long as I can remember, but I had no idea how slim the margin was between how much my parents make and how much goes to those bills until that morning. It was kind of amazing that they had managed so long before it had gotten this bad, but god, even in the shitty part of town that we lived in, even as small as our house was and how few expenses we had, the things my parents have to pay for just pile up. Keeping the house running with electricity, cable, phone, oil, all that shit was bad enough, but add in gas for my father’s car, car insurance, credit card debt, health insurance, and everything else and I could feel my headache grow with each new monthly expense I found, and I wasn’t even the one paying for them!

Well, the money I made was going towards a few things, but if this was what it would be like when I became an adult, I could see how easy I had things. Sure, I didn’t have a lot of freedom and school sucked, but how the hell do adults handle shit like this? It’s no wonder my dad is so pissed off all the time. He works his ass off, and what does it amount to? A house that’s always breaking down, crippling debt, and the knowledge that no matter how hard he works, nothing will ever get better. It’s hard for me to hate him, even when he beats me bloody, seeing what he has to deal with, how frustrating it is. My mother wasn’t even letting me see just how in the hole we were with the bills we hadn’t paid off yet, but I did the math of us having missed a couple months and felt like throwing up. I sighed as I finished going through everything.

“Mom, I don’t see where there’s a lot of room for saving or cutting back,” I had to admit with a heavy heart, wishing I could just lie to her, “Even if we did away with the cable and phone and sold the car and television and a few pieces of furniture we have in storage, well… it might help long term for giving us a bigger budget, but I just don’t think it’s going to get us out of debt. At least not that I can see.”

My mom smiled a little, though it didn’t quite meet her eyes. I guess she had been expecting that answer.

“I figured,” she said, “but I appreciate you taking the time to help with this. I don’t know what I was hoping for. A miracle, I suppose.”

“I wish I were better with math,” I lamented and wished that my poor math skills were the reason why I wasn’t finding the answer and not because there was no answer to find, “Heero would be a lot more helpful than me at this.”

My mother reached over the table and patted my hand.

“You are plenty helpful,” she assured me, “and I doubt your friend could do much, either,” her voice became heavy and she looked down at the paper she had been writing figures on with a strained expression, “There just comes a point when you have to face the inevitable,” she murmured, “We passed that point a long time ago, even before your father lost his job. But now that he doesn’t make as much, it’s beyond hopeless. I just didn’t want to admit that to myself.”

“What are we going to do?” I asked worriedly.

She looked across the table at me and there was fear and weariness etched all over her face, making my heart clench.

“I don’t know,” she confessed tiredly, “I didn’t want to say this, not to you, but… the way things are going, I’m frightened that we are going to lose this house.”

“Mom,” I said with alarm.

I had known things were bad, and that us losing our home might be a possibility, that we might have to downsize, but to hear the words come from my mother like that was terrible. We might lose our house. And then what? I could see the thought in my mother’s eyes, though she wouldn’t say it out loud: we have nowhere to go. I grabbed her hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

“We’ll figure out something,” I tried to comfort her, “We always do.”

Neither of us believed that, but she nodded anyway, letting me lie to her.

The two of us jumped like a pair of startled cats when the front door flew open, crashing against the wall as my father kicked it in instead of just opening it like a civilized human being. He strode in, took one look at us still seated at the table, holding each other’s hand, and he sneered in utter contempt. To my dismay, I noted the flush on his cheeks and the wild look to his dark grey eyes as well as the slow, clumsy way he kicked off his boots. He was stinking drunk.

‘Nice to see Pat made sure he was nice and sauced before sending him on his way,’ I thought bitterly.

I had no clue how my father had gotten as wasted as he clearly was that morning in a manner of just a couple hours, maybe less, but I hadn’t seen him quite that drunk in a long time, usually after he had had a really bad day. On top of his temper, it wasn’t a good combination. I don’t know if he really had gone to Pat’s to ask for that loan, or why his friend felt the need to supply him with alcohol, or if he had just gone to a bar instead, but I didn’t like how cagey he looked, or that sneer. Or how awake he seemed that early, like he had been juiced with raw electricity, or the glazed look in his eyes. It wasn’t just the booze. I wish that it had been just that, but I recognized the look well. It was the same one he had when he would come home hard up and desperate, searching for me like a starved wolf would a wounded doe. They were usually the times that he would fuck me more than once, and so hard that I thought he was trying to break me. With that one look, I was making exit strategies. I could take the beating. I could take the cruel things he had called me. But I just wanted one morning, just _one_ that he wasn’t looking to mount me like a whore. It didn’t look like I was going to get that wish.

“Well aren’t you two just as thick as thieves,” he mocked, throwing his coat up on the rack.

There was so much hate in his tone, I was actually taken aback, not sure what his problem was with my mother and I. Ever since she had gotten sober and we had started getting closer, he seemed to resent it. Which makes no sense to me because it isn’t like I stole her from him or vice versa. He can’t stand either of us nowadays, so why he cares that we’ve reconciled is beyond me. Sometimes I think he just loathes my mother for not being a partner in his drunken misery, like her getting sober is some slight to him and he thinks we’re conspiring against him or something. Hell if I know how the man thinks after all these years, his moods change like a damned whirlwind and I just can’t keep up. My mother stood up from the table, her eyes on fire with rage and before I could warn her not to, she was storming over to him. I stood too quickly to try to stop her and winced as my stomach and ribs protested the movement, reminding me that maybe staying out of my father’s way if the two of them came to blows was probably a good idea. I didn’t know how many more of those hard punches I could take.

“You unbelievable _bastard_!” my mother snarled at him.

If he had been sober, he might have slapped her. If he had been simply drunk instead of _stinking_ drunk, he might have punched her. Instead, he just blinked at her, obviously not having a single clue why she was so pissed.

“It isn’t enough that you take money, _our_ money,” she gestured between the three of us, “and try to spend it on that fucking car of yours instead of groceries or our bills or fixing the door or the plumbing or the thousand other things in this house that need fixing! No, you have to nearly beat your son into a hospital bed because you have to take everything out on him! You’re not a man, you’re an animal! A beast! How dare you put your hands on my child, Nathan! He isn’t your goddamn punching bag!”

She was nearly shrieking at that point and I hurried over to where they were near the door to intercede what I knew was coming. But instead of beating the shit out of her like I was expecting, my father just snorted derisively, blowing her off like he hadn’t even heard her.

“Oh, shut up,” he sneered again and took a step forward, blocking my mother against the wall.

She finally seemed to realize that she was trapped, her eyes widening with fear as he placed a hand on the wall close to her head and stood maybe a few inches from her, so close that he was breathing in her face.

“Why don’t you ever just shut the hell up?” he asked, but there was little heat in his tone.

His voice was heavy, husky with obvious lust as he leaned in and kissed her. I don’t know who was more shocked by his action, my mother or myself. It wasn’t the first time I had seen them be… intimate like that. My parents haven’t always been at each other’s throats, it’s just that, as time has passed, their hate for each other has grown to the point that they can’t be in the same building with each other before throwing something at the other’s head. But when I was little, really little, they hadn’t been quite as horrible to each other. They had had screaming fights, called each other terrible things, and moments of intimacy had been rare, but not nonexistent. I’ve seen them kiss and even hold hands, but as I got older, my mother seemed to not only stop instigating these moments, she had stopped accepting them altogether. Attempts at sex were met with swearing and thrown furniture. Even trying to kiss her had only gotten my father a slap or worse, so he just gave up. I didn’t blame him. I love my mother, but I can’t imagine being treated like that by someone you love.

I get why my mother reacted that way now that I’m older and know what it’s like to not want anything to do with sex when your partner does. I get how she feels about her body and especially about my father. And after seeing him rape me, I imagine what little attraction she might have still held for him is long gone. I can’t even remember the last time I had seen him try to kiss her, so seeing it now, after my mother had been screaming at him, was bizarre and shocking. I know it was mostly his… current state, being horny and too drunk to control himself, but it seemed like even common sense had flown the coop. My mother didn’t even move when his lips finally left hers, just having this trapped rabbit look. I think she knew that if she protested, he was going to hurt her and just didn’t know how to get away from him, frozen and panicked. I felt the same way, having been on the receiving end of his forced “affections” enough times by now, how horrible it feels, but not knowing how to stop it. As I watched him press himself to her, I felt totally lost. What should I do? Attack him? Get him off her? Couldn’t he see that she was terrified and wanted him to stop?!

I got a taste of what my mother must feel every time she realizes that my father just raped me. There was this sick, twisting feeling in my guts, this kind of icy nausea that gripped me. I felt detached from my body, like I was watching my own rape and I had to remind myself that the person pinned to the wall wasn’t me. But that only made it worse because I never wanted anyone to go through that, let alone my mom. My father’s head delve into the nook between my mother’s neck and shoulder. From where I was standing, I couldn’t see what he was doing, but from the hickey I saw later and her pinched, drawn expression, I can guess. He cupped one hand around her hip and I really, properly realized for the first time just how much bigger he is than her, how easily he could break her if he wanted to, and has before.

I watched in complete horror as his other large hand slid up her flat stomach and grabbed her breast hard. She was just wearing her nightgown that morning and didn’t have a bra on. I don’t know why I remember that so vividly, but that was the thought that came into my head at the time, that there was nothing between that rough hand and her breast but a thin piece of fabric. My mother’s face twisted with shock, horror, and most of all rage. She seemed to snap right out of her stupor like my father had splashed water in her face and shoved him, _hard._ He wasn’t prepared for it, too consumed by feeling her up and his urges and, despite my mother not being a very physically strong woman, he stumbled back, almost hitting the opposite wall. The sound of her hand striking his face was like a gunshot.

For a second, no longer than a flash of a camera lense, a strange look crossed my father’s face. It wasn’t rage, that came right after. It was shock, like somehow, after all these years of her pushing him away and striking him when he got too bold, her slapping him hadn’t even entered his head. I wondered at that moment, and still wonder now even though the thought makes me sick, if that shock is because of me. Because I don’t tell him no, because I only ever hit him that one time that he tried to molest me and never again after that. I wonder if it was me that made him bold, made him forget that my mother is nothing like me, which rips my heart apart. My mother is stronger than me, better than me. She can make him stop. I don’t even try. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been good for in my father’s eyes. I fail at everything else but letting him do his business while all my mother has to do is hit him and he’ll back off.

Why? Because she means more to him? I don’t know. I can’t even hate her for it, I only hate myself because it makes me feel like a slut. Maybe I am one, just like Trowa accused me of. Daddy’s little whore, only good for one thing. That thought is terrible enough, but that I was responsible for my father trying to force himself on my mother that morning is worse, that I was enabling this to happen. The betrayal mixed in with the shock on his face made my stomach churn as I thought that it had to be true. He felt betrayed, even though he was the one forcing himself on _her_ , because by then, he was probably too used to getting his way. Just like everything else, everything that was happening and everything that did happen that morning, this was my fault.

Then the camera flash faded and this horrible look of fury came over my father. He looked even more angry than he had when he had been beating me, but for some reason, my mother didn’t seem to see it or fear for her life like I did. Or maybe she did and was too angry herself to listen to her caution.

“Don’t you fucking touch me, you disgusting pig!” she screamed at him, “What the hell is wrong with you-,”

Without a warning, even a growl of rage, he punched her in the side of her face and she went down hard, crumpling to the floor at the force of the blow.

“Mom!” I cried out and ran to her, deciding that I didn’t care if my father finished the job of breaking my ribs or my nose, I had to protect her from him.

I was too busy thinking about saving my mother that I missed the cruel, almost sadistic glint in my father’s eye. Before I could even get to my mother, his hand struck out like a flash of lightning or a biting snake and snagged the back of my neck, his large hand grabbing me, twisting in my hair and clamping down on my nape with the ease of scruffing a kitten. Then he was dragging me towards the bathroom and I didn’t have any choice but stumble to keep up with him. Even when I realized what he was doing, I didn’t bother to put up a fight or grab something to stop him. It seemed so pointless and there was a part of me that was relieved, because as scared as I was, as much as I didn’t want it to happen, at least it wasn’t going to happen to my mom. Even in her woozy state, my mother realized what was about to happen, too, and leapt to her feet, swaying, but staying upright in her horror and rage.

“No!” she shrieked and lurched after us, “No, you sick bastard! Don’t you touch him! DON’T YOU FUCKING TOUCH MY SON!”

There was a hysterical, almost sobbing note to her voice as she ran at my father. Who knows what she would have done if she had caught up, if she had been able to stop him or just make things worse, but the blow to her head made her too slow, her gait too unsteady, and by the time she reached the bathroom doorway, my father was already throwing me in and slammed the door behind us. I watched in a kind of helpless, distant shock, like I was watching this on television instead of living it because it seemed too horrible and disturbing to be real, as the door fucking _shook_ and I heard my mother wordlessly scream like a banshee. It shook again and again and I realized that she was throwing her entire body against the door mindlessly. The lock on the door was useless, but with my father braced against it, all my mother managed was to crack the door around the top hinge. Even that, given how slight she is, was amazing. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so terrified before, so out of control, more like an animal than a person.

In one smooth motion that was almost procedural, my father kicked his foot at the door, keeping it closed and reached out with one long arm to rip the shower rod off the wall, tearing wall paper and bits of plaster off with it. I know my father is strong, and his new line of work has kept him in shape just as well as his old one, but it was still a scary thing to see, just how easily he could hurt me even with the reminder all over my face. He slammed one end of the rod into the door at an angle so hard that it left a sizeable, crescent-shaped dent and jammed the other end into the far wall at the bottom. Our bathroom is so narrow and small that it acted as a perfect, unbreakable door stop. There was no way in hell my mother was going to break the door down, even if she had a battering ram. No one was coming to save me. That was actually a slight comfort. She wouldn’t have been able to stop him anyway and at least now she couldn’t get herself hurt.

With an unholy fire in his eye and a determined expression that turned my blood to ice water, my father brought his attention back towards me and my heart raced painfully in my chest, my world narrowing down in tones of grey to that look in his eye and the obvious bulge in his pants. I didn’t think about trying to get away. The bathroom was too small to maneuver in and even without the improvised door jam, I wasn’t going to get that door open in time. I just remembered my last attempt to flee from him and thought ‘what is the fucking point anymore?’ At least if he was trapped in the bathroom with me, he wouldn’t be out there with my mom. She was safe and that was a kind of victory, even if it was a shallow one. It’s funny, when my father had first started doing this, I had felt a bit resentful towards her for being safe from his hands and his cock, but now it makes me happy to know that he can vent his frustrations on only me. It’s enough, isn’t it? I can do this one thing for her, the only good thing about this entire mess, can’t I?

My father grabbed me by my arm and I winced as his iron grip pressed down on half a dozen bruises. But that pain was nothing at all when he shoved me hard against the sink and the edge of it got me right in the massive bruise on my stomach and I felt like my guts were going to shoot right up my throat. I nearly cried out, but managed to turn into a pained, sharp intake of air. I didn’t want to make a sound, not with my mother right outside the door. Her pounding and screaming could mask some things, but if she had to know what was happening behind that door, I was resolved that she wouldn’t have to listen to as much of it as I could control. Not that I had much of that to begin with.

          My father really was hard up that morning, frantic and desperate like his life depended on him getting a load off and he wasted no time jerking my pants down, barely forcing them to just below my thighs before grabbing at my hip in a bruising grip. I don’t think he was even capable of touching me that morning without hurting me. He pressed himself against me and moaned a little at the contact, or maybe it was just having his erection free of his jeans. I didn’t even have the mind to be horrified at how horny he was, I was too preoccupied with feeling how hard he was and knowing right then that things were going to get bad from all the other times he’s been like that. His dick was stiff enough to drive through a plank of wood and he was practically trembling with excitement as he lined himself up.

Distantly, like I was covered in thick cotton and the thought was some relentless bird, trying to peck at me, I realized that, while he had stumbled home horny, what had really gotten him going as desperate as he was by then had been touching my mother, grabbing her breast and sucking on her thin neck. How long had it been since he had touched her like that? Since she had even let him get close enough to do those things to her? Hell, how long has it been since he’s been with _any_ woman? The realization was more violent and painful than any of the blows he had landed on me that morning. It was a bitter reminder to me that my mother was the one he wanted. The only one he had ever wanted if the things he whispers when he’s fucking me sometimes have any truth to them or it wouldn’t be her name on his tongue or our identical hair through his fingers. When he rapes me, she’s the one he’s sticking his cock into. She’s the only one he sees when he climbs on top of me. Not me. As far as my father is concerned, partially to get through the experience of fucking a boy and partially because that’s my only purposes in this shit, when he’s doing this, I’m not even there. Until he cleans himself off and he pushes the memory out of his head like a bad dream, the one thing I can never do, I don’t exist at all.

          Even knowing the kind of state he was in and feeling his cock against me, consumed by those twisted, bitter thoughts, I was completely unprepared when he suddenly thrust the entire thing inside me in one brutal, cruel motion. All my resolve to not make a peep flew out the window as my cry was almost a scream, the pain hot immense and worse than anything else he had done to me that morning, including almost breaking my nose. It was terrible, but also kind of a relief. I could only ride that wave, my world and my thoughts washed out in red, and I couldn’t even feel him moving in and out of me violently until it ebbed from agony to a mere burning throb that only felt like it might make me insane instead of kill me. I actually missed the mindless agony as I could suddenly feel him in me, pulling at damaged muscles. But oddly, I didn’t feel the intense revulsion I had the last few mornings. I didn’t feel right, but I didn’t feel like screaming, either. I just felt… very tired, like I was doing an especially exhausting and repetitive chore. I think that was the first indication I had that there was something wrong.

          My father grunted behind me, displeased by something and jerked my hips back, grabbing the back of my head and forcing it down until my chin was nearly resting on the countertop. I felt a flush of embarrassment and shame at him repositioning me like a blow-up doll, but that was it. I didn’t feel any tears or horror or nausea that usually come in moments like that, just this gnawing emptiness, weariness, and humiliation. The new position seemed to be exactly what my father had wanted because he groaned loudly in pleasure and slammed himself against me again and again in renewed fervor. He didn’t stop, either, his hard thrusts or moaning. He is usually more… vocal when he’s like this, but he was being a lot louder that morning.

At first, I thought he was just too drunk and too eager, but then I realized with yet another sickening epiphany that it had nothing to do with his lust or how much he was enjoying himself. He was being loud so my mother could hear. Every sound, every moan, every cry, he wanted to make sure she heard all of it and knew exactly what he was doing, that he was enjoying himself. To punish her, to hurt her, just to make her miserable. If I can hate him for anything he did that morning, I hate him for that. Bad enough that he was raping me, bad enough that she had to know about it and knew that she couldn’t do a thing to stop it, but rubbing it in her face like that was one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever witnessed the man do to either of us. I don’t care how drunk and spiteful he was, I’ll never forgive him for it.

It worked, too. As my father’s volume increased, so did my mother’s. She continued to scream and curse at him, but now she was crying, too. I could hear the tears, thick and gut-wrenching in her voice and I ached to do something, to say something to comfort her, but I knew that hearing anything from me right then was going to make it a hundred times worse, so I just bit my tongue and tried to find that resolve again, even as my father’s thrusts came faster and harder. I could hear her slams against the door slowing, becoming weaker. She was wearing herself out, but she was still trying. I couldn’t understand it. She knew she couldn’t break the door down, but she refused to give up, even when it didn’t matter. Even when it was far too late and, even if she did manage to get the door open, she couldn’t have stopped him anyway.

“That’s right, that’s right,” I heard my father moan, “Just a little more…”

I opened my eye at the sound of his voice, the tone of it, how familiar it was to his voice but also how wrong hearing that animalistic pleasure in the same voice I had known since I was a baby was, disturbed me, though even that emotion was… faded, somehow. I met my reflection in the mirror in front of me, but it took me a couple moments to realize that’s what I was looking at. I didn’t even recognize myself. I barely looked human, or alive for that matter. The damage to my face had gotten worse since I had last looked, the red, blue, black, and purple bruises had become deeper, seeping into my swollen skin. One eye was still firmly shut and I knew just from looking at it that the swelling wasn’t going to go down enough for me to open for the rest of the day. Even the unblemished part of my face looked wrong and horrid, the skin waxy and pale, a dark ring of exhaustion under my right eye, the eye bloodshot and flat. Empty and clouded like a catseye marble. Or a doll’s eye.

Watching the thing in the mirror rock back and forth to my father’s thrusts, the hair hanging in clumps around its face like mud-caked straw, that’s exactly what it looked like. Not me. Just a doll. A thing. I felt a complete disconnect with the image I saw in that mirror. Even as I watched my father fuck me, I didn’t feel like it was happening to me at all. I watched his face screwed up in pleasure, his eyes squeezed shut either because it felt good or because it was easier for him to pretend he was having sex with someone else. I didn’t feel repulsion like I should have seeing what he was doing. I didn’t feel horror or fear or even loathing for him or myself. I didn’t feel anything.

As he panted and leaned over me, his lips finding the same exact spot on my mother he had left that hickey and kissing me softly with a gentleness that was almost obscene and said those terrible, wonderful words in a breathless, relieved, and practically euphoric voice, “I love you so much,” it really hit me properly for the first time. Those words should have ripped my heart in two. After all the cruel things he had said to me that morning, after he had looked so approvingly at me the morning before, and knowing that he was doing this to get back at my mother, the same woman that he was fantasizing about, it should have destroyed me. It would, later. Much, much later. But right then, I realized that I felt nothing. I felt nothing at all about the whole thing. My heart was completely numb and empty, shot up with Novocain or packed away in ice. There was nothing there at all. How… strange.

That’s exactly the thought I had just then. ‘How strange.’ Like I was seeing snow in July or a deer in our driveway. Like I was witnessing something slightly peculiar, but irrelevant. Even my realization of how empty I was, how even my most basic horror and revulsion over what was happening to me had vanished was washed out somehow, like it didn’t mean anything to me. It wasn’t the first time I had felt this way. I had felt the same way after Quatre had died, as soon as the more insane, screaming parts of my grief had started to ebb away and had taken with it everything else. I’m still not quite sure if it was a blessing or a curse. I mean, wasn’t this what I had hoped for? To get used to the rapes? To lock it all away inside and stop freaking out over it? To just grow a pair and move on and let it be just another thing that happens, like my father’s beatings or being broke all the time or the bullying? Well, I had gotten my wish, hadn’t I?

I almost laughed right there with my father’s dick up my ass at the irony of the whole thing. How many times have I prayed to the universe to give me a break, to grant me one thing, and of all the things, _this_ was the wish it had granted. If that wasn’t hysterical enough, I wasn’t even sure if I wanted it anymore, to get used to this. To be numb to it all. I thought I had. In a way, it was a relief to not feel like tearing my skin off or like I was going to puke just from the feel of my father’s hands on me. It was exactly what I had wanted, but, just like everything in my life, I finally saw it for the double-edged sword that it was.

I didn’t want this. I didn’t want what it meant. I had wanted these feelings to go away, to stop tormenting me, but I never realized that when they finally did, that only meant they had become a normal part of my life now, as normal as going to school in the morning or spending Saturdays with my boyfriend. Just a regular occurrence, nothing more. That’s fucked up enough, but I also realized for the first time that this becoming normal didn’t mean it was getting better. Becoming numb to it, finally accepting it and getting over it… it wasn’t better. It was just as bad as before when I couldn’t get a grip on things because it was like it made it ok. It meant it had become a part of my weekly routine and if I could accept that, I had to ask myself how long before it becomes a part of _me._ How long do I have before, just like my father’s beatings, it bleeds over into my other life? How long before Heero starts to see it?

Even the horror behind those thoughts didn’t really reach me. I just felt this… this empty, pervasive ache and deep depression because I knew, I might not want this numbness, it might even scare me, but just like everything else in my life, there was nothing I could do to stop it. Was this going to be what I was like from now on every time my father raped me? Just… apathetic? Accepting, like it didn’t even matter? And did it? Maybe all this was was me surrendering to the truth, that no one cared and I shouldn’t either. That all of this nightmare just didn’t matter in the end.

A sudden sharp cry and slam on the door jerked me out of my thoughts. It wasn’t true. My mother cared, more than she should. If Heero ever found out, he would care, so would his parents. They would be disgusted with me, but they would still care that my father had done this even if they would want nothing more to do with me. Some emotion threatened to break through that cloud of nothing and I didn’t know if it would be a relief to feel it or if I should fight it, safe in this grey fog from hurt. It was just a spark of love and pain and maybe a little bit of hate for my father. I wanted to see Heero and Justin and Mariela. Some part of me, the same part that had so strongly wanted to blab the previous afternoon to ‘Ro, wanted to tell them what was happening, to tell someone that gave a shit. I felt this intense yearning for their arms around me, their acceptance and care. But I loved all of them too much to ever do something like that, because I didn’t want to lose their respect and because I didn’t want to hurt them. This was our secret, mine and my father’s, it had nothing to do with anyone else. My mother might have found out, but it was still ours. I had known that from the first time my father had raped me. It would always be just ours and if Heero found out about it, it wouldn’t be from my lips.

My father gave out a sharp, hissing breath and I felt him release himself inside of me. It was finally over. I didn’t even feel the crying relief that I usually do, just the same tired feeling I get every time I know my shift is over at the factory and I can finally go home. Weariness, relief that it’s finally over, but knowing nothing great is following it, that I would just have to look forward to another shift the next day or go home to a quiet house at best, a beating at worst. That’s exactly what it was like. I hadn’t endured anything, I hadn’t gotten through anything because it would just happen again. Worse, I would have to face my father after this and pretend like it had never happened in the first place. I had to wonder then as he pulled out of me how he does it so perfectly every time. How he can never talk about it or have problems looking at himself in the mirror after. I guess my father has a box in his head, too, one that’s thicker and sturdier than even mine, one with a hundred locks and chains wrapped around it. I wondered if he could teach me how to do that, too, so I could stop thinking about it and hurting over it.

My father breathed heavily, but I didn’t look in the mirror again to see what he was doing. I could feel his semen trickling out of me, making a slimy trail down, but he didn’t let go of my hips, just focused on getting his breath back. I could still feel that slug pressed against my ass, so I felt it when, minutes later, his cock didn’t soften. It wasn’t quite as hard as earlier, but enough to get the job done. So, I was unsurprised when he pushed back into me. I had suspected it at the beginning when I had figured out how wound up he was that this might be a double act, but that didn’t stop the misery that dug its claws into my chest. I just closed my eyes and went as limp as possible, letting him do it and letting myself fade away, sinking deeper into that numbness. It didn’t matter, I reminded myself for what felt like the hundredth time, it just didn’t. One time, two times, a thousand times, it was all the same.

He didn’t last long the second time, he hardly ever does. Just a small, few handful of minutes later, he grabbed my ass, _hard_ , like he was using it as leverage, gave two final, violent thrusts, and pulled out of me, ejaculating with the head of his dick pressed against the back of my right thigh. I felt it splatter against my skin and drip onto my underwear and pajama pants, reminding me too much of the other morning when he had cum on my back. But I still felt barely any reaction to it besides some small disgust, and even that was disconnected, vapor through the fog. My father let go of me and pulled away like he suddenly couldn’t stand the thought of touching me or even being near me, and I’m sure he couldn’t. I was tainted, the evidence of what he had just done and I was as loathsome and repulsive to him as the act itself. The most he did was shove me out of his way, like I was a used tissue or particularly mangy dog. I winced as his push woke up old and new hurts. The pain in my ass fought with my face, both familiar at this point, one sharp and hot, the other dull and throbbing.  

My father used the last clean washcloth to wipe himself off before tucking himself back into his pants. I hadn’t had the chance to do any laundry and all the other washcloths were dirty from the last few times I had cleaned myself of him. I didn’t feel any resentment towards him for not letting me have the washcloth. I wasn’t even a consideration to him at that point. He had gotten off and I had ceased to exist, it was easier for him that way. On a different morning, I would have felt anger and pain and disgust at not being able to properly clean myself, but I just rolled through the motions, using some toilet paper instead. I wiped his spunk off me and as much of my clothes as I could. I was acutely aware of how gross I had to smell between my personal body odor from not taking a shower for days and now the thick smell of sex, but the panic I had felt for days was absent. I just didn’t care anymore. I was quickly heading towards not caring about anything. 

My father didn’t even give me the time to put myself together before he was violently kicking the shower the rod from the door, the asshole not even caring where it fell or who was going to fix it, and wrenched the door open. I hastily pulled up my pants as my mother fell through the door way on her knees, but not quick enough for her not to see the motion. Not that it mattered, I’m sure her imagination and the sounds my father had made had been enough. For a split second, she looked between the two of us in utter misery. Her face was wet with tears, her eyes even redder than mine, her hair all over the place. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her like that before. My father pushed past her, giving her as much attention as he had given me and I saw hot, molten rage burst in her eyes. I expected her to keep screaming at him and maybe throw a punch, but then she looked at me and guilt and this heartbroken grief and concern was all that I could see. She picked herself up and practically ran to me, putting her hands on my cheeks at first, examining my face for something before pulling me into a tight, desperate hug. It felt good, that loving contact, just knowing how much she cared, but it also hurt knowing that I had hurt her. We had hurt her. Again, I cursed my father for not doing this in secret. Why had he had to involve her? I never wanted her to know about this and I wished so hard that I had a way to wipe it from her. 

“Oh, god,” she sobbed brokenly into my shoulder, “Oh, Duo, I’m so sorry! I’m so, so sorry!” 

I couldn’t find the words to comfort her. She didn’t give me the time to even hold her back before she was whirling on my father, returning to a spitting wildcat. 

“You fucking bastard!” she snarled at him as he nonchalantly straightened his shirt, “I’m calling the cops, Nathan!”  

He laughed at her. Actually looked her right in the eye and  _laughed_  like her threat to press charges against him was the best joke he had ever heard.  

“Go right ahead, bitch,” he mocked her, “The phone’s right over there. Here, let me help you.” 

He strode over to the phone and my mom watched him like a hawk, her eyes cold with pure hatred for him, her fingers digging hard into my arm and she grit her teeth. But behind her obvious rage, there was terror and I knew she was thinking the same things I always do when things get bad with him, when he hurts me so badly that I think he might actually kill me, how frightening he can be, how strong. I remembered seeing him hit her earlier and I remembered my thought of how easily he could break her. I thought about all those friends of his on the force, just like she was thinking it, and how many times they and our neighbors had seen my parents go at it, my mother sometimes giving it just as good as she got it. I saw her take that phone from him and him bashing her face in before she could even dial the number. I saw him break her into tiny pieces before the cops would ever get here. And I saw not a single one of them believe her story, either because they didn’t want to or they wouldn’t care because he used to be one of them. I knew, just like my father did, that my mother was bluffing. She could say that she was going to call the police on him, but she wouldn’t. She was too scared. I could be disappointed at her, but how? I’m not any stronger than she is and the simple fact was that it was a matter of survival. It was probably even the smarter decision. 

“No?” he sneered when he saw she wasn’t moving and I hated him so much right then, how he was making fun of her when all she wanted was to help  _me_ , how he was treating her like a child, actively making fun of her. 

“You’re disgusting,” she hissed at him, more tears streaming down her face from her anger, “Nothing more than a disgusting boar of a man. Your own son, Nathan, your  _son_! I’m glad I stopped letting you touch me years ago, before I realized how  _repulsive_ you really are!” 

My father strode up to her and I was so sure he was going to beat her into paste for daring to talk about the thing that neither of us were allowed to voice, especially to him. Instead, those cold, stony eyes fell on me. My mother’s grip on my arms tightened, hurting me, but I could have spared her any attempts to protect me. There was something truly ugly in my father’s eyes. Something spiteful and terrible and I knew that the blow wasn’t going to come from his fists. 

“Did your mother ever tell you what she was like when she was your age?” he asked me in a cruel tone that I didn’t really understand yet, though I did understand that he wasn’t really talking to me, but to her. 

My mother’s eyes widened in shock, staring at my father and, to my dismay, all that rage just vanished into fear. But not of him hitting her, but whatever he was going to say.  

“All the time you two have been so chummy,” he continued with this sick, superior sneer, “did she ever tell you how every boy in school wanted to fuck her?” 

Her face went pale and, even though I didn’t really understand what was going on, I understood my mother’s horror and felt sick. 

“Nathan, stop it!” she cried, but she wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at me, her face so pale and washed out and I wondered what she was so scared of. I’m not stupid, I knew my father was lashing out at the both of us, trying to pull us apart, taint the fragile relationship we had forged. Was that her worry? That whatever he had to say would make me judge her?  

“She used to be so beautiful,” my father refused to stop, “Prettiest girl in school and she thought that made her such hot shit. Every single one of us drooled after her like a pack of hungry mutts. All of us thought she was some prize,” my mother’s hands fell from me like she had been burned, shaking her head in denial, her eyes clouded with memories, “She even had the teachers wrapped around her oh so perfect finger. Ha!” he crowed in arrogant triumph, “Just look at you now!” he reached out and grabbed a handful of her chestnut hair, but didn’t pull it. It would have been better if he had. Instead, he let it slide between his fingers in a gesture that would have been sweet and intimate if it hadn’t been so calculated and snide, the sort of thing that Heero has done with my own hair before. My mother flinched hard away from him, eyes still wide and looking like a startled doe, like he had grabbed her breast again, “The aging whore!” he kept at her, attacking her more viciously than if he had been hitting her, “You might as well have kept drinking for all the good it did you, Sweetheart. Even off the booze, your _son_ is prettier than you are!”

I’m not sure who that double insult was meant to hurt more, me for implying that I was pretty and feminine or my mother for being unattractive and ugly, which she wasn’t. Sure, after over a decade of hard drinking, she wasn’t as beautiful as she had been at seventeen, but since she had stopped drinking so much, she had stopped looking so haggard and she was still pretty. Even a fag like me could see that. There might be a few more lines on her face than other thirty-four-year-olds, but she was still prettier than a lot of the women her age I’ve seen with her light grey eyes and long, fire and gold kissed, chestnut hair. I remember thinking when I had been little that my mother looked what I imagined princess and queens from the fairy tales I read must look like. The stress of her marriage and raising a child on two full time jobs and the beatings and the drinking had taken some of that from her, but you could still see it even when she had been trying to kill herself with liquor, the ghost of it trying to come through.

As for me, I had heard him call me a girl enough times that, while it still hurt, it wasn’t shocking. And I know what I look like, I know that I’m nowhere near as pretty, feminine or otherwise, as my mother or as handsome as my father, so the blow was a pretty cheap one. The snide, mocking glint in my father’s eyes suddenly vanished, although the arrogance didn’t, and he was suddenly in her face, jabbing a finger at her before I could do anything to protect her.

“For all your bellyaching about what a _repulsive_ monster and brute and terrible husband I am,” he snarled at her, “you seem to forget that, out all the rest of them, all those rich little shits trailing after you and kissing up to your sanctimonious ass, you chose _me!_ You thought that I was some great catch, didn’t you?”

“Stop it!” my mother cried helplessly and the total lack of anger and indignation in her voice along with this wavering betrayal made it all the more horrible.

My father might as well have been ranting at no one, because he just kept going, ignoring her tearful plea.

“Yet everything is always my fault, isn’t it?” he snapped, “It’s not your fault you’re a boozehound, right? It’s all mine because I bought you your first drink at sixteen and took you out to parties that _you_ wanted to go to, not me! It’s not your fault we’re always broke, even though you were the one who wanted to have the kid and you’re the one who got too drunk to care about fucking without a condom and _you_ are the one who could only get piddly waitressing jobs because you were too ashamed to go back to school! No, it’s all my fault for having to quit to take on a job to support my deadbeat wife and brat, my fault for fucking you in the first place, and my fault for having to take on a lower paying job! Always _my_ damned fault for every shitty thing that happens to you, isn’t that right?! It’s even my fault that your dad cut you off because he hated who you chose to marry, isn’t it?! Never mind how you acted like miss virgin Mary in front of Daddy dearest, right up until he turned his back and you got a few drinks in you! At least for a while. Not that you’ll let your own, fucking husband touch you a little! No, you’re too good for that, aren’t you?! And who would even want to marry you, hell, fuck you, now?!

“If he could just see you now, huh, Helen? He’d have a good laugh, wouldn’t he? All his self-righteous predictions come true, his little angel getting felt up every night just for some measly tips that can’t even keep our power on! But _I’m_ the bastard! _I’m_ the sick pig, right?” his face was mere inches from hers, but she didn’t even flinch at his sour, beer-smelling breath or his tight fists, too shocked by every word coming out of him, “You have a hand in all of this, too, _Princess_ ,” he hissed hatefully at her and even I knew that when he said ‘this’, he wasn’t just talking about our finances, their crumbling marriage, or even his temper, but what had just happened. What he had done to me. ‘If you hadn’t cut me off, I wouldn’t have to fuck your son, now would I? So, whose fault is it?’ was written in huge, screaming red letters all over his face, all but falling from his tongue. I could tell that my mother saw that thought, too, as pure misery filled her expression and with it, that terrible rage that had caused her to throw herself at the bathroom door.

She hit him. Hard. It wasn’t a slap this time, either. She punched him in the face with what looked like every ounce of strength she possessed. Got the asshole right in the nose, too. I felt this sick little burst of vengeance as blood dripped down his face, so much like how he had made my nose bleed earlier that morning, but I wasn’t even given the chance to feel smug about it. My father barely reacted to the blow. It might have been because my mother isn’t that strong and if she hadn’t hit his nose, she wouldn’t have even made him bleed, but he was also so drunk that he probably barely felt it. He didn’t even need a second to recover, he just reacted, giving her a punch of his own across her face, only while he hadn’t flinched, she hit the wall. Then, with a bellow of rage, he was hitting her again and again, twice in the face, once in the side of her head, and one sturdy, vicious punch to her gut. We would have matching bruises.

The fog that had filled me ever since my father had dragged me off into our bathroom seemed to lift as I watched in horror as my father tried to beat my mother to a pulp, her not even defending herself. Later, I would wonder if it was because of her shock at his attack or he had hit her too hard in the head or she was simply letting him do it. If, like I had felt when he had been beating me for losing his money, she felt that she had deserved it for letting me get raped. I hope to god that’s not true, but after some of the things she said after this to me, I think it is and I hate myself so much for her feeling that way. None of it was her fault and she didn’t deserve to get hit for it, but I don’t know what to say to her to get her to understand that the only person at fault here is me, that she did more to help me than I ever deserved.

But the thought didn’t enter my head in that moment, only rage seeing my father, hulking, muscles tense and corded in his arms as he hit her cowering, smaller body like watching a tiger go after a fawn. I suppose it’s a strange thing to admit, that I hated him more for the terrible things he had said to her and beating her than I did for what he had done to me, but it’s the truth. Watching those fists rain down on her as she curled up, feebly trying to defend her vulnerable head in an odd copy of the same thing I had done, I didn’t think about myself, only protecting her.

“Dad, quit it!” I screamed at him and grabbed the arm that was cocked back for another hit.

“Get the fuck off of me!” he yelled back and shook me off of him with ridiculous ease, my arms weak from swollen bruises.

He nailed me one right in the side of my head. I guess it’s lucky that he hit me there and not my chest or my face. I am a hundred percent certain if he had, he would have broken my already probably cracked ribs and shattered my nose with how damned hard he had hit me. If I hadn’t taken so many blows to the head earlier, I might have just gone on my knees, but if I hadn’t already had a concussion, I sure as shit did then. Things kind of… rang in my head and my vision went crazy. I was aware of meeting the floor and someone screaming, but that’s about it. Afterwards, I would realize that the screaming had been my mother, watching me take a swan dive.

“Stop it, stop it, you monster! Stop hurting him!” her cries shot razor blades through my skull, but then I felt her arms wrap around me, cradling me to her like she used to do when I was barely old enough to walk and it was so nice, so warm and comforting that I wanted to just close my eyes and let everything fade away. If I hadn’t had adrenaline and terror pumping through me at what my father might do to her, I might have fallen into that temptation. I felt her link one arm around my waist and pull me up into her lap, which couldn’t have been easy between her own injuries and my being half a foot taller than her, but she managed. I tried to sit up and blinked my eyes open, needing to know where my dad was and what he was doing, which turned out to be a mistake. Bright light that wasn’t actually all that bright shot through my skull, making the pounding there turn into a scream. I groaned miserably and my mother tightened her arms around me, soft hands stroking my hair out of my eyes. Her frantic, worried expression was somehow worse than the nausea and the fact that I could see three of her instead of just the one and had to immediately close my eye again. I thought I felt her rocking me, but that could have just been the head trauma.

“Ssh,” she tried to soothe, but her voice was too full of fear to be of any comfort to me, “Don’t move, baby, just stay still.”

It sounded like great advice and I fell limp in her arms. Even my good eye hurt. My body really couldn’t take much more of this. I waited until the worst of the dizziness and ringing stopped to try to open my eyes… er, eye again and was gratified when everything seemed steady. My head hurt like a bitch, but at least I didn’t have multiple vision anymore. I tried to sit up again, this time much, much more slowly and my mother helped me by keeping a hand on my back, her other arm still wrapped around me like she was scared to let go. The world righted and it went a long way to making me feel better. I didn’t try to stand up, though. I knew when I was pushing my luck.

“Are you alright?” she asked a bit unnecessarily. The right side of her face was already swelling up like a balloon.

“Yeah,” I lied, but from the pinched frown she gave me, I knew she didn’t believe me.

I looked around wildly for my father, sure that he wasn’t done with either of us, but he was at the fridge, rummaging around for something like the two of us weren’t sitting on the floor, bleeding and bruised. My mother glared at him in fury, but common sense seemed to have returned to her and she didn’t make a peep. My father realized her heated stare was on him and glared right back at her balefully before slamming the fridge closed, making the both of us flinch.

“Why the fuck isn’t there anything more than beer in this miserable hellhole?” he snarled at no one in particular, forgetting that he was the only one in the house buying the booze anymore, so the lack of anything harder was his own damned fault, “I need a damned drink,” he muttered, like he was the one who had had the long, hard morning having to deal with us instead of the other way around.

Our eyes followed him, the both of us holding our breath to see what he would do, as he strode over to the door, shoved his feet into his boots and put his jacket on and, finally, fucking _finally,_ left for the second time that morning. I hoped that he would stay gone this time. My mother and I sagged against each other, all the fight gone from us both. My adrenaline and battle high seeped out, leaving me hollow and shaking and feeling every one of my hurts and aches. With it, the fog seeped back, little by little. I guess that’s a bit of a mercy. I knew the things that were in my head, just waiting for the right moment to eat me alive. If I had to feel any of those things, I didn’t think I would have moved from that spot the rest of the day.

We waited for a few minutes to see if he would come barging back through the door and start on us all over again, just holding each other, like either of us could actually protect the other. Or maybe it was just for comfort, it was difficult to tell at that point. I wished that my father could have taken his car. Even when it runs well, it never runs clean and we could have heard it coming up the street long before he got to the door. But he didn’t come back.

‘He’s going to go right back to Pat’s,’ I thought sourly, ‘He’ll rant all about us. The brat who lost his money and the bitch that wouldn’t give it up when he needed it so badly. Pat will be sympathetic, call Mom a cunt and a tease and whatever other horrible thing he’ll come up with, fill Dad’s head with more anger, and all the while pour more and more booze into him until he passes out. That’s if we’re lucky.’

I would have rather my father found a bar that was actually open and serving at that hour than gone to his so-called best friend to get all wound up again, but if he went to a bar, that meant he would eventually come home again, so as much as I hated Pat and how he influences my dad for the worst, it would be better if he went to Pat. We might not see him for the rest of the weekend if that was the case. God, I’d hoped so. But if you’ve been reading this up until now, you know exactly how I feel about ‘hope’ and how well that’s worked out for me in the past.

We only truly relaxed and let ourselves the luxury of letting our guards down just a tiny bit when ten minutes had passed and neither of us heard anything. My mother tightened her arms around me, unwilling to let go of me even though the danger had passed and we had both survived. And without a hospital visit to boot, so we were actually doing quite well for ourselves. My heart clenched as she buried her bruised face into my shoulder and sobbed.

“I’m so sorry,” she cried hard, almost uncontrollably and I felt my shirt already getting wet, “I’m so sorry, Duo, I couldn’t do anything! I couldn’t stop him!”

I awkwardly joined my arm with the other and wrapped it around her, hugging her lighter than she was me just in case she had cracked ribs, too.

“It’s alright, Mom,” I told her lamely, “I know you tried.”

A harsh, mocking laugh burst out of her between sobs.

“ ‘Tried’, yeah, I tried real fucking hard, alright,” her self-loathing cut right through me, “I didn’t do anything! I didn’t do a single thing to help you! And he… he… Oh, _god!_ ”

The word came out as gut-wrenching cry that would have driven a hard stranger to tears. I was helpless to it and, even though I was sick of crying myself and hated the gummy feeling in my swollen left eye, I felt the tears come anyway. Because she was my mom and I hated that she was hurting because of me, even just hurting at all, but my part in it made it so much worse. And because I understood exactly how she was feeling. I felt it every time I watched my father beat her or treat her like crap and knew how weak and pathetic I was that, even if I tried to stop him, I never could. There wasn’t even anything I could say that would make her feel any better, I knew that from experience, so all I could do was tighten my arms around her and hoped she knew that I didn’t care, that I was just happy someone had tried, that someone gave a shit, and I loved her whether she had accomplished anything or not.

Just when I thought I might get over my guilt and the sorrow in my chest over the pain she was in, she lifted her head from my shoulder and she looked so miserable, her cheeks caked with tears and her eyes worn and red and clouded with hopelessness and guilt that it broke my heart. I knew right then that this morning would be one of those moments that would haunt me for a very long time, maybe even for the rest of my life.

“I should have called the cops,” she croaked in bitter regret, “Right when he was dragging you away… right when I saw what he was going to do… I should have called them! Instead, I lost my head and I did nothing! I should have just called on the bastard!”

She sobbed again, her face crumpling.

“No, Mom,” I protested in alarm, scared to see her like this, or maybe it was the possibility that she might be so far gone in her anger and guilt that her calling the police on my father might still happen if she wasn’t thinking clearly enough, “None of this is your fault. You tried to stop it, I know that. I don’t blame you, ok?”

Her eyes flew back open and she stared at me in shock. That she thought that I would hate her for what had happened hurt, but I guess I can understand it. Those eyes searched my face desperately, looking for any hint that I was lying.

“But… why…” she asked in almost a whisper, “How can you…”

“Because I understand,” I reminded her, “I know how terrifying he is, what he could to either of us if he gets angry enough. If we do something really bad to him…” my mind drifted to the gun in my father’s bedside table drawer.

The loaded gun, always so easily in his reach. I remember a time when I had thought he would never use it on either of us, obviously he wouldn’t. He was my dad and even if he got mad sometimes, he was still in control. He would never do something so terrible, right? God, how laughable my naivety is now. I still don’t think he ever will, but do I think he _could_? Do I even think that he needs it to kill us if he we did something so stupid like calling the cops on him? Even if they laughed off our story and did nothing to him like I’m sure they would, the embarrassment of having the police, his old coworkers, show up at our place because of either of us… he would tear us apart.

“I’m scared of him, too, Mom,” I admitted in a whisper, like it was something shameful, “I’m terrified of him. And I’m just as much to blame as you are,” ‘more,’ I thought, but didn’t voice it, knowing it would hurt her to hear, “Every time he’s hit you, I couldn’t stop it, either. And I never tried to call the police, either.”

“Oh, honey,” she cried, cradling the good side of my face, “That isn’t your fault! You’re my child, you should never have to make that choice… but I’m your mother. I should be protecting you, not the other way around! What he did… I should have done something, it was my responsibility-,”

“He would have killed you,” I cut her off, trying to keep her from going down that road because it wasn’t true. My father raping me was never her fault, despite the cruel and terrible thing he had said to her, “If you had actually stopped him, he would have caved your head in. Or… or worse…”

The image of him doing the same thing he had done to me to her, pinning her to that bathroom sink like a baby bird and fucking her while she pleaded him to stop turned my blood to ice and I almost threw up.

“It should have been me,” she broke down all over again, sobbing violently, her words horrifying me and making my heart and head pound like I had just watched her stab herself, “Not you, never you! If I had just let him have his way, he never would have-,”

“No!” I screamed and she flinched, getting that wide-eyed, shocked look back. Her words gutted me. They were worse than anything my father had done, that she could think something so awful… “Don’t say that! I don’t want him to _ever_ do that to you!”

“Duo,” she said, pained, “How do you think I feel when I know he’s done it to you?”

I reeled like she had slapped me. I knew how she felt. I knew because I had seen her horror and guilt every time she realized the truth. I knew because I had seen her that day in the kitchen, after watching my father rape me. And I knew because she had gotten sober because of it. I knew but, to hear that from her, to hear that pain in her voice was the most terrible thing. I hated myself so much for it, that she felt that way, that I make her feel that way every time she knows and thinks that it’s her fault. Right then, I truly hated, _loathed_ myself for asking her to clean my shirt. How could I? I might as well have been rubbing what had happened to me in her face. How disgusting can I be, just because I hadn’t wanted to wash a fucking shirt?

Her arms tightened even more around me right then and I felt her put her hand on the back of my head, bringing it down to rest against her thin shoulder. We just sat there for a good twenty minutes, holding each other desperately like we thought the other might slip away into vapor, not knowing how to make the other feel better. We were both hopeless. I don’t know. I guess you can’t really make something like this go away with a few comforting words and hugs. I couldn’t make this right. Not unless I stopped my father or ran away from home and even then, I didn’t think it would do much to assuage my mother’s misplaced guilt. Even as I held her in my arms, her words pounded in my skull, over and over and over and I felt like they had ripped my heart right out of me, leaving nothing but a bloody, gaping hole.

We eventually untangled ourselves, but we were both reluctant to do so. My mother helped me to my feet, which I was grateful for. I was pretty sure I could manage myself, the worst of the ringing having faded, but the pain hadn’t. Her hand lingered on my back, not wanting to break contact with me. I didn’t blame her. I was still having a hard time believe that we were both, relatively, in one piece.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” she asked me in a way that would have been fussing if she hadn’t seen me fall to the floor herself, “He hit you hard…”

“I’m not so dizzy anymore,” I told her, evading the question.

I didn’t want to go to the hospital, even knowing I had a concussion, and I especially didn’t want to worry her anymore. Also, I just didn’t care. Her hand finally slid down and off my back. I felt achingly cold with it gone. I already missed the adrenaline rush. Without it, I just felt sore and pained and empty and tired. Gods, I was so tired. If I thought it would do me any good, I might have just gone right back down to the floor and taken a nap, but I just hurt too much, pretty much all over at that point. With my father and the battle high gone, I actually had to stop and think about what I was going to do next, that the rest of the morning was actually an inevitability. Fuck, was it really just morning? Not even morning, but still too early to go to school? I felt like the last four hours had happened over the course of a couple of days.

I moved slowly to the bathroom, walking like an old man from my woozy head, lack of depth perception, and exhaustion. I needed to do a better job of cleaning myself and brush my teeth, if only to get the rank taste out of my mouth from swallowing blood. But I just stood there in the doorway, frozen, as I surveyed the damage. Even though it had all happened bare moments ago, I had forgotten the chaos, the shower rod on the floor, the scarred door, the ripped plaster above the shower. The shower curtain had landed in the shower at least, like the filthy shroud of some pathetic ghost, but the rings were scattered all over the place. I worried that one of them might have gone down the drain and we really didn’t need any more plumbing problems.

When my father had shoved me against the counter, a bunch of things had gotten knocked over, too. His razor, the toothbrush holder, and his deodorant were on the floor. The soap dispenser had shattered and there was liquid soap in a goopy, disgusting, streaked puddle on the floor. It smelled like hospital soap, cheap and unscented, and looked like semen. Or maybe that was just my morbid imagination. My father’s dirty washcloth was crumpled in the sink. He hadn’t even bothered to throw it the washing machine or run water over it so it the gunk would encrust on it.

I started to lean down to pick up the worst offender, the shower rod, wincing as sharp pain shot up my spine and down my legs from whatever damage my father had done when he had thrust into me although it wasn’t bleeding again _yet_ , when my mother stopped me with a hand on my arm.

“Don’t,” she said, her eyes hard and fierce and angry, but I knew it wasn’t at me.

“I can take care of it,” I said a bit pathetically, but she set that warrior-like expression on me and I just didn’t have any strength left to fight with her. Or anyone, for that matter. School was going to be a joy, I could feel it already.

“No, Duo,” she demanded, and then smiled softly at me, lightly brushing my bangs from my eyes, but that smile didn’t reach her own. There was only anger and grief there, “I’ll clean it up before I go to work, don’t worry about it. You just wash up, ok?”

On a better morning, I could have argued. It was _my_ mess, mine and my father’s, not hers. This whole fucking thing was my mess from the start and she never should have been involved. At the very least, we could have done it together, though it would have been difficult cleaning with two people in the tiny bathroom, but I just couldn’t do it. I was nearing the end of my rope and the thought of cleaning, let alone fighting with the woman that had forgiven me and tried to save me, was akin to doing another double shift or maybe moving a block of concrete up a mountain. So, I nodded and was rewarded with a kiss on my cheek that wasn’t swollen and that was worth the humility of knowing that I wasn’t even in the state to clean a damned bathroom that morning.

My mother left me be as I used the bathroom, escaping into her bedroom. I didn’t close the door. I was done with closed bathroom doors for a while, thanks. As I splashed cold water on my throbbing face, I paused, listening. The wall separating the bathroom from my parents’ room is paper thin. I can normally hear everything when I’m in there, every shuffle, every word whether it’s murmured or screamed. But I couldn’t hear anything then and imagined her laying down on the bed. She was probably going to try to get some sleep before her next shift. Good. At least one of us should get some rest and escape this nightmare for a little while.

I cleaned myself as best I could, taking a third of the time as the last few days because, with my mother out of sight, my apathy returned like a creeping mist, filling every space it could find. A part of me worried that Heero might smell it on me like he hadn’t the previous day, but when it had been a scream then, it was only a whisper now. I just didn’t care anymore, about anything. Maybe I was too tired to feel. Maybe it, everything that had happened since I had gone home from work or even before that all piled in together, was too terrible to be felt. I was just weary and depressed and if there was anything tearing me apart, it was the memory of my mother’s sobs and the things she had said, not how dirty I was.

Even taking the time to clean, it was way too early to go to school. Hell, it was even a little too early to go to Heero’s for our run. He would probably be waking up in a half an hour, blissful and unaware, well-rested and content even if he hates waking up so early. I should have felt resentment towards him, for his normal life, for his loving father who would never even consider the possibility of striking him, let alone beat and rape him in front of his mother. Heero who had the family I had always wanted when I was little and would never, ever know how this feels, to be standing in the ruins of your life without so much as a broom. But I didn’t resent him, even a little. I was glad that he would never know. I was glad that his parents loved him and he had lived a fairly regular, happy life with the exception of Wufei’s death and all the shit I’ve put him through. It just reminded me that, if it weren’t for me, that normal life would have continued. Instead, he had thrown his lot in with me and look where I’ve brought him. I don’t know what’s worse, that I had been stupid enough to think that this might work, or that I, not even deep down but right there at the surface, had always known how bad it was going to get and had just ignored it for a slice of what I didn’t deserve.

I met my mangled face in the mirror. The bruise on the left side of my face was even bigger and darker than before.

‘Everyone would be better off if you just disappeared,’ I thought hatefully at my reflection, ‘You know that, don’t you?’

I did and didn’t need to say it out loud. My father’s words from earlier that morning, demanding to know why I was alive, rung in my head. I still had no answer to that question and suddenly, it seemed like a damned important question. My eye wandered to the razor that had fell between the counter and the toilet, it’s blade gleaming sharp and silver. My father’s words were quickly replaced by the sickening sensation of raking that blade over my wrist. I could feel the sharpness of it, that stinging bite, feel the repulsiveness of the blade separating skin and the heat of my own blood even though my flesh was so cold, like ice. I could feel the scars on both of my wrists tingle, like they were admonishing me that I had screwed up the first time, just like I do with everything, but surely this time I could get it right. And I remembered-

I pulled my eye from the blade, shaking myself out of it. There was no point remembering any of that. I didn’t want to go where it would lead me. That was years ago and it was over and done with and I didn’t _need_ to remember it, so I shoved it back down and felt relief when it went without hysterics. Not that memory, not that morning. It was too much and I was too broken to deal with it. It didn’t matter anyway. Even if it would solve everything, I had promised Heero. That was the only reason I needed.

Now that I was clean and my mother had ordered me not to pick up anything, I had to face the fact that I really didn’t have anything to do. Spare time was… not an option. Sitting around the house, twiddling my thumbs while waiting for the minutes to tick down until I could go to school would lead to things like thinking and brooding and what had just happened made it clear to me that that wasn’t a good idea. I stepped out of the bathroom and listened again. Nothing. Not my mother puttering around the bedroom. Not my father storming up the front yard. Even the neighbor’s dogs seemed quiet for the first time in their lives, like the rest of the world had died around me.

I retreated to my room and got dressed for school, ignoring looking at my chest and stomach, which I am sure looked positively lovely. Somehow, the act of taking my shirt off and putting a new one on was even more painful than it had been before and I wondered if my face looked awful enough to get a pass from the nurse to get out of gym. It wasn’t a complete necessity but even just walking up a flight of stairs was a sluggish, painful, and awkward process and not being able to see out of my right eye was making me paranoid. If Zechs tried something, I was pretty much fucked. Mostly, I just didn’t have the energy for much physical activity. I didn’t even know how I was going to survive either of my shifts, so I would take what I could get.

I gathered up my dirty laundry and winced as I lifted the hamper, taking it downstairs and being exceptionally careful not to pull the gash on my shoulder blade or get dizzy on the way down. I could at least start a load of laundry before work, maybe get the towels done and finish the rest when I got home from school or work before I headed over to Heero’s Saturday morning. That thought was the only bit of hope and levity I had felt in what seemed like days. Saturday was a dream and I would have given my left arm just to skip the rest of Friday. Hell, if my father stayed gone Saturday and didn’t give me any chores to do, I could sneak off as soon as the house was clean and slip into bed with Heero while he was still sleeping and take a nice, long nap before I had to get up for track practice. The possibility almost had me weeping right there at the foot of the stairs. It had only been a couple of days, but it felt like forever since I had been able to share a bed with my boyfriend and my heart cried for it.

I paused at the bathroom door, fully intending on collecting the dirty towels, but a sharp, terrible sound stopped me cold. It was coming from my parents’ bedroom. It was my mother, sobbing brokenly. All thoughts of the weekend and ‘Ro and school and work and rest fled me, the hamper slipping from my fingers, my arms aching from the strain of holding it. She had been so quiet before, I had been sure she was trying to sleep, but then I realized she had only stayed quiet until she was sure I had gone upstairs. So I wouldn’t hear her cry.

It was all my fault. Every one of those raw, deep sobs and the guilt was almost enough to eviscerate me as I stood there, just listening and doing nothing. All she had wanted was to protect me and I had done nothing to protect her. I couldn’t even get her to see that she had nothing to feel guilty about, that there was no reason for her to be so sad. My hand reached out and touched the closed door, like it could reach her somehow. I felt like I had at ten-years-old, hearing my mother cry in her room after my father had beaten her, wanting to comfort her and not knowing how, feeling so inadequate and like the worst son there was. But this was worse than that, wasn’t it? Because it wasn’t that I didn’t know how to comfort her, it was that _I_ was the problem. If I went in there and tried to make things better, I would only make things worse. Just seeing me would be a reminder of why she was so upset.

‘It’s time to go,’ I thought miserably.

I couldn’t stick around there. I was just making things worse, like I always do. If I wasn’t around, maybe she wouldn’t be in so much pain, maybe she could forget. Because that’s all I do to her, I just hurt her, so the only way I could possibly help her would be to just go away. With a heavy heart, I let my hand fall from the door and walked away with my hamper in hand. I tucked it into a corner of the laundry room to do later, grabbed my bookbag, and headed to the door. Again, I paused with my hand on the doorknob. It felt wrong just leaving her alone in that house with my father still out there and a mess to pick up, but I guess ‘wrong’ describes pretty much everything about that morning. Hell, it describes our family pretty well, too.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I reminded myself, ‘You can’t do shit anyway. You can’t fix a damned thing. She’ll feel better when she doesn’t have to look at the bruises on your face or look you in the eye and remember what happened. What are you going to do? Leave her a note telling her how sorry you are? How worthless you are? Like anything you could possibly write can make up for all the ways you failed her today?’

Worthless. Yeah, that was a damned good word for what I am. I’ve always been worthless to do anything to help either of my parents. I’ve known since I was little that I’m just a burden. If it weren’t for me, they would probably be happy. I had believed that for a very long time. My mother had made me rethink it when she had told me that she didn’t hate me or blame me for her problems anymore, but I know now that she’s wrong. If it weren’t for me, maybe she and my dad wouldn’t be together. Or maybe they would and they would still love each other. My mother would never know what he’s capable of. Without me around, maybe he wouldn’t even _be_ capable of it. I was right. Everyone; my parents, Heero, even Heero’s parents, would be better off if I just disappeared.

As I left the house, that numbness rooted itself deep in me, not taking the pain with it, but everything else so it was all that I could feel. I walked towards through South Nausten and the events of that morning played out in my head over and over, like a sick record I couldn’t turn off. My father’s beating, his cruel insults, helping my mother with our finances, the rape, my disconnection with everything, him beating the both of us, my mountain of failures, one after another. And still, that fog of grey nothing wouldn’t lift.

However, through all of it, even with my mother’s sobs echoing through my head, and this is a really odd thing to admit even on paper, when I felt that numbness, there was a tiny glimmer of hope that came with it. No, ‘odd’ is the wrong word for the thought that popped in my head. The word I’m looking for is ‘disgusting.’ To take anything good from all that mess was repulsive enough, but once the thought was there, it was impossible to dislodge.

My father had raped me again and, instead of getting hysterical and freaking out about it like I always do, I had gotten over it. Like it was nothing. I had stayed calm and even afterwards, things had been… not fine, exactly, but I had managed to keep my shit together. If I let myself stop and think about it for a second, I was worried that it was permanent. Not about what my father does to me, but about everything else, that everything I was going to feel from now on would come through this thick filter. But there was a part of me that hoped that it was, that I would never have to feel much of anything ever again because, really, what had my emotions ever done for me or anyone else but make things worse? Look at all the shitty decisions I’ve made because of them. Just look at my relationship with ‘Ro. If it weren’t for my fucking, stupid feelings, I wouldn’t always be hurting him. He could have just quietly gotten over me, but no, I had to out myself to the whole damned school. I had to become friends with him because I wanted to be closer to him. I had to agree to date him.

But if I had made myself numb to my father’s rapes, then could I do the same for everything else, even my fear of intimacy and my panic every time Heero pushes me? Could I just shut my feelings down and stop reacting like a lunatic, stop pushing him away? Could I just let him do what he wanted and he would never be the wiser? Could I really use it and stay with him? The hope I felt was both terrible because of its source and that I would use this ugly thing anywhere near the boy I loved, but it was also wonderful, because it was all I had left. The only thing that I could cling to, my only hope that I wouldn’t have to break up with him, that we might have some kind of future together. If I could just get past this one speed bump in our road, things would be ok, wouldn’t they? I wouldn’t have to be scared all the time and so anxious I feel like I’m going insane sometimes and Heero would never have to feel rejected again. I could be the boyfriend that he wanted and I could turn all this hideousness into a gift if I could just get over how loathsome and scummy it made me feel. I had to try it. What else was there for me but to finally admit that all of this had been a massive mistake and to end it to spare the both of us?

I won’t say that I felt better or my heart was lighter as I walked into school because that would be a lie. I still felt as heavy and bogged down as if there was a boulder in my chest, but that hope was still there, so tiny and strange as it mingled with my depression.

The school was almost entirely empty, just like I had hoped, all the classrooms dark and only a couple members of staff milling around, making coffee or finishing up last minute grading. It was quiet and still and I enjoyed it with what little time I would have by myself before my classmates would ruin it. My homeroom classroom was similarly empty and I flipped on the lights, immediately wincing at the bright fluorescents. It was like getting a railroad spike shot through my right eye, my entire head in utter agony. Whatever, I thought in irritation. It was pretty much par for the course that morning, wasn’t it? About the only thing that wasn’t hurting were my legs, but everything else seemed to be pounding in unison.

I found my desk and carefully sat down in it wearily, feeling like I had just run a marathon instead of walked to school, and winced again as a sharp, stinging pain went through my ass and lower back. Awesome. But at least I didn’t think I was bleeding anymore, so I would take that tiny victory. I wished that I thought to take another dose of pain pills with me. The ones that I had taken weren’t doing very much and were going to wear off soon, but I hate taking pills. Besides, it was against school rules for students to walk around with unmarked pills without a prescription or in a bottle or something. I’d gotten in trouble for that enough times that I wasn’t willing to push my luck.

And no, I don’t make a habit of it. I’ve been called to the principal’s office seventeen times (I’ve kept count) since I started high school alone for ‘drug related defenses.’ Eight of those times had been false alarms. Someone (probably from Relena or Zechs’s group of friends) liked to give anonymous tips to teachers that I have drugs or pot on me. Nine of those times I actually _did_ have drugs or something illicit on me. Only three times had actually been my fault. I had been caring pain pills or antibiotics in my pocket, but that was pretty quickly cleared up. The other times, the drugs had been slipped in my bag or in my locker by someone. It was usually pot, and there is no doubt in my mind that it had been put there each time by either Zechs himself or one of his goons since I know for a fact that they smoke that shit.

It doesn’t even matter who did it or if I have any evidence that it isn’t mine, the only person who ever believes me is Stoan. And why not? People in this town, especially teachers and people from the north side, all assume that kids, teenagers from my side are either doing drugs or selling them, so whenever there’s a tip of someone selling pot or crack or whatever else, it’s always one of us that gets all the accusations and suspicion. With my reputation and attitude, no one is surprised when a bag of pot magically emerges from my locker. So, with zero tolerance, why haven’t I been expelled? Because while a good majority of my teachers think I’m a thug, my principal is less concerned with my various attitude problems and less than stellar rumors that float around me and more with the obvious fact that someone else has been setting me up. I don’t know if he really doesn’t believe that I’m the sort of kid that does or sells drugs, but after seventeen damned times in his office for this stuff and all the other reasons why I’ve ended up there, including that bullshit with the school paper, it just looks too suspicious. Even if no one else believes me, at least he won’t expel me for it. At least not yet. It makes me wonder just how many more chances with him I have before he stops sticking his neck out for me and starts talking about expulsion or worse instead of just detention.

I didn’t want my mind anywhere near that neck of the woods, but I found it dragging itself back to my father. I was beyond lucky that he didn’t know about any of that. After years of busting kids for drug use, his own kid caught with that shit in his possession? He would kill me. The irony that I haven’t done a single thing while both of my parents have been overdosing on a completely different kind of substance my entire life isn’t lost on me.

Of course, once my mind had wandered there, it was stuck there. I remembered my father groping my mother right in front of me and then dragging me into the bathroom, not just knowing my mother knew what he was doing, but doing it _because_ she knew and I felt this deep chill crawl down my spine. It was getting worse. I’m not entirely stupid. I can see that, as clear as day. My father was getting worse. I can’t even call what he did bolder than usual. It was just crueler. I can write it off as him being drunk as shit, or having a bad day. Hell, he had had a bad day because of me. But in reality, I had realized it some time ago, that that cruel streak in him has been getting bigger. Tying me up in the laundry room closet. Beating my mother and I to a pulp just because he suspected I was still hanging around Heero. The increased drinking and violence and _hate_.

If I’m being entirely honest here, I’m terrified. Of him. Of the future. How can things possibly get any worse? I’ve thought that time and time again in the last few years. But they do. They always do. I might have felt numb that morning, but I could still feel that. Scared. Confused. Lost. Just like I knew things were getting worse, and that things were going to keep getting worse, I knew that I couldn’t let this go on like this. My father was getting more and more out of control. Something, sooner or later, was going to break. Either he was going to keep getting worse and scarier until he crossed another line, or… or I had to do something. I don’t know what. Run away? Call the cops? Tell Justin? I’ve been fighting with these choices for months now and even as scared as I am, I’m not any closer to even wanting to make a decision. I don’t know what to do, so I just keep turning my back on it, pretending like everything is fine.

But that morning, covered in bruises, my eye swollen shut, and all those memories swirling around like a tornado inside of me, it was impossible to just ignore it like I always do. I kept seeing my mother’s fear and guilt, her tears on her bruised face, and my father’s enraged snarl, turning him into an animal. And it just pulled me down deeper, made me more and more lost in those black waves. Sitting there by myself at my desk, aching and tired and empty… I hadn’t felt so alone since the morning after my father had first raped me, knowing that there was no one to help me.

My fingers, moving completely on their own without any input from me, found my cellphone in my pocket and laid it out on my desk. I stared at it in yearning and icy hopelessness. I wanted to call Heero. I wanted to tell him all of these things. I wanted to tell him that I was scared. I wanted to beg him to tell me what to do. I wanted to ask for his help because I _needed_ help. My hand curled around the device, squeezing it as much as I dared. ‘Help me,’ I thought and I knew that, if that fog hadn’t filled every inch of me, I would have cried. I wanted so badly to rely on someone else, someone other than my weak, clumsy self. I was so tired of being all alone, always alone. For as long as I can remember, I’m the only one I could ever really reach for. The only person who really understood how I felt and the only one who could protect me. How pathetic is that? I’m no protector. I’m nothing. I can’t even do the right thing, or anything at all. Weak enough to not be able to do anything on my own, but also weak enough to never tell anyone the truth. How can I blame anyone else when my father beats me or calls me worthless or rapes me when I don’t try to stop it? When I’m not even sure if I want to do what it might take to stop it?

I flipped open my phone and began to type.

‘Not up to jogging today. You can go back to sleep.’

My finger hovered over the ‘send’ button. It seemed too little with a thousand other things that I needed to tell him, but my fingers were as frozen as my tongue.

“Fucking coward,” I hissed at myself, but stabbed viciously at the button anyway.

Knowing that I was pathetic and weak didn’t mean that I could be anything else, apparently. I slammed my phone back down on the desk while still being careful not to actually break the thing, then immediately jumped when it vibrated. I stared at it incredulously. It was still too early for him to be awake and he’s a heavier sleeper than me, no way my text had woken him up. What the hell was he doing awake? I reached out to pick up my phone and hesitated, scared of what he had texted back… no, that wasn’t right. The fear I felt then was completely irrational, like I thought that Heero could feel my pain through the phone somehow, that he would just know something was wrong even without hearing my voice. But I’ve always been incapable of staying away from ‘Ro, from the moment he first sat down at the getty with me. I picked up my phone again and flipped it open again.

‘Come over anyway. I’ll make you breakfast.’

My vision blurred as misty tears filled my eye. I smiled a little, but it was a bitter thing. My chest ached with longing and guilt, all over a fucking text message. I could feel myself start to do that splitting thing again, burying the things that I didn’t want to think about and falling into Heero and his life like it was some great painkiller. Numbing me in an entirely different way from the fog that was consuming me. Numbing me with all the things that I’ve ever wanted, if I didn’t let myself feel anything else. But there was too much pain that morning, I think. Too much shit in my head and every time my heart tried to reach for that other life, that pain just drew me back into reality.

‘I’m at school, it’s fine,’ I texted back.

Just go back to sleep, Heero, I thought tiredly, just leave me alone. I love you, but I can’t deal with you right now, not if I want to keep my shit together.

My phone went silent. I felt relief and heartache all in the same moment. It was for the best, I told myself. I couldn’t put off seeing him for long, but the second he saw me, he was going to freak. At least this way, I could put that off for a little bit and Heero could get a little more sleep. A win-win situation. Just omitting the throbbing need in my chest and the knowledge that, no matter how much I put it off, I was going to hurt him again.

I still had about an hour to wait before people would start filtering in for class, so I dug out the book we were reading in my literature class and flipped it open. I needed a distraction and reading has always done the trick since I was little. I almost jumped again when I didn’t even get a page in before my phone buzzed again.

‘What the fuck,’ I was starting to move way beyond incredulous and into irritated territory.

I flipped open my phone again, hoping that I would just see ‘ok’ or ‘sure, I’ll go back to bed’ or something. But when has Heero ever made things easy?

‘Ok, I’ll be there in a few minutes,’ he had texted me.

I wanted to slam my abused head into the desk. Multiple times. Was he fucking serious? It was six in the damned morning, there was no reason for him to lose out on sleep and come all the way down here just because I was too fucked up to sleep! I felt so angry and frustrated at him that I considered throwing something, which would have been a really stupid reaction. Heero is nearly an adult, he can make his own decisions, so why did it irritate me so much that he was ignoring what I was telling him to do? Why was I so upset over literally nothing?

I thought about texting him back, insisting that he just go back to bed or run by himself or watch television, because there was no reason for him to be doing this, but Heero is as stubborn as I am. Sometimes even more stubborn and if I kept telling him not to come, he would wonder why and show up anyway. There was really nothing I could do to stop him and that frustrated the hell out of me.

I opened my book again and tried to fade away into it, but it was impossible at that point. All I could think about was that Heero was on his way there and my anxiety was too high to do much of anything but agonize over the knots in my already throbbing stomach. It was stupid to be freaking out over seeing him, I know. He was going to find out that I had gotten hit again anyway, so I might as well just get this argument over with. What was I even afraid of? Hurting him? Fighting with him? Having the same argument we’ve been having for months?

I already knew how it was going to start and end. He would freak seeing my bruises and tell me that I should tell someone. I would tell him that I wasn’t going to do that because he was my dad. Heero would get upset but inevitably drop the subject, leaving himself miserable and me feeling guilty and shitty for not doing what he wanted. Then we wouldn’t talk about until this happened again because neither of us wanted to upset the other. Fuck, why were we even together? That thought keeps repeating itself in my head. Maybe we loved each other and got along when things were going well, but as soon as they weren’t (as things often go with me), we would fight and it would never go anywhere. It was exhausting and it hurt and I was so tired of all of it, of not being good enough for him, for being the only reason why we fought. If he were with anyone else, they wouldn’t do this shit to him.

‘A few minutes’ turned out to be a mere ten before Heero walked through the classroom door with a hell of a lot more bounce in his step than I had. He must have really rushed to get there and that he had done it so he could see me made me feel weird. Loved and like I was a burden all at the same time. I wondered if he had even had breakfast. The cup in one hand and the brown paper bag in the other told me no. He had probably rushed to a coffee shop on the way over. My nose was still so swollen that I couldn’t smell anything, but I knew it was a French roast coffee and probably something sweet. By some miracle, the door to the classroom was to my right and Heero, while having gotten some caffeine and was partially awake, was still groggy and didn’t realize there was anything wrong with me at first. I carefully kept the entirety of the left side of my face hidden out of view and he beamed happily at me.

“Morning,” he said brightly.

“Morning,” I mumbled.

Despite my anxiety and self-loathing, it was still so good to see him, the one ray of light in my cloudy, shitty morning. Some weak part of me wanted to throw my arms around him and hold him tight and never let go, to cling to someone who loved me and didn’t hate me or would be better off without me around. Of course, that was a complete delusion because of course he would be. He walked past me to his seat, which was unfortunately on my left side, and deposited his bag, food, and drink there. I ducked my head, making as much of my hair fall over the left side of my face as I could while pretending that I was just submerged in my reading. It was a vain attempt. You’d have to be blind to not see how bruised and swollen my face was. In that second as Heero fussed with his stuff, I foresaw the argument that we were about to have in perfect clarity. I saw his hurt and his frustration and my shitty excuses and him folding like he always does even though I know he doesn’t want to, and I saw our guilt, unwilling, pissy roommates to each other.

Heero made this shocked hiss, just a sharp intake of breath and my stomach sank.

“Oh, my god,” he cried and I still couldn’t look at him, closing my book, “Duo, your… What happened?!”

I finally looked at him and his expression of horror and worry made my insides clench.

“It’s nothing,” I tried to defuse the situation even though the words felt so pathetic and useless, “It looks a lot worse than it really is.”

Heero had that look like he was going to start screaming, or maybe start looking for blankets to wrap me up in so I could never get hurt again. I never know how to deal with him when he’s like that. Over-protective. Coddling. Caring. He still had that look, even when his eyes hardened with anger.

“What the hell did he do to you?!” he nearly wailed, completely ignoring what I had just said or knowing that it was bullshit, hands twitching to touch me, but he wouldn’t. He wasn’t like my mother. He didn’t know how to touch or where to touch that wouldn’t hurt me. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. His touch could make me unravel or it could keep me together, I wasn’t positive what my mood was that morning.

I should have felt irritated at his question and that he had immediately known that my father had done this to me, but I didn’t. I would in a few minutes, but with those dark blue eyes on me, I only felt guilt. Guilt and a strong sense of déjà vu, only it wasn’t déjà vu, was it? Because we _had_ been here before, so many times. We just keep on going in circles, over and over and over. Heero keeps trying to save me, but he can’t and he knows he can’t, which makes it worse. If I could lie to him or he could lie to himself and make himself believe he could do something to help, I think it wouldn’t eat at him so much. It wouldn’t remind him of how he hadn’t been able to help Wufei. I would do anything to give him that, but we both know it would be a lie. He is only going to keep getting hurt, every time he sees that my father has hit me, and it’s all my fault. For forcing him to make that stupid promise. For not trying to help myself. For us being together in the first place. That pain in his eyes… that was my fault, just like the bruises on my face were.

“Nothing that I didn’t deserve,” I muttered and bit my tongue.

I hadn’t meant to say that out loud.

“What the hell are you talking about, Duo?!” he exploded at me.

I almost sighed tiredly. I didn’t want to talk about this, but the cat was out of the bag. He was going to keep hounding me and I was just too tired to lie.

“I’m not some helpless victim,” I snapped at him irritably, “Ok? I deserved this,” I pointed to my shut eye, but I wasn’t thinking about losing that damned money. Or my father’s car. Or his beating the shit out of me. I was thinking about all the shit I’ve put Heero through. I was thinking of my mother screaming and pounding on the bathroom door. I was thinking of her sobbing in her room. I was thinking of hurting her and her sad, weak smile, telling me that she should have just let him rape her instead. The pain in my face was nothing. My guilt over losing that money was silly and childish. Yeah, I deserved those bruises and so much more, “I fucked up and it’s my own damned fault.”

“Don’t give me that bullshit,” my boyfriend snapped right back at me and some part inside of me flinched, thinking he was mad at me, “How could you have possibly ‘fucked up’ to deserve that?! And what do you mean ‘it’s fine’?! Have you looked at yourself in a damned mirror-,”

“I don’t need to!” I yelled at him, “You have no idea what’s going on or what I did!” I was screaming, but I didn’t care. I didn’t even realize at what point that numbing fog had vanished and all this… shit was pouring out of me, this anger and loathing like toxins, “My dad told me to get parts for his car yesterday after school. It was the last day that he could get them until after the weekend and now he doesn’t even have a running car because of me! Because I forgot to do what I was told!”

“You went home with me instead,” he recalled, his voice softening but still full of pain, like he thought that this was his fault or some other nonsense.

“I forgot because I was selfish and too concerned with my own shit to remember something so simple!” I shot back, “If that wasn’t bad enough, I lost all the money my father gave me! I lost almost two-hundred dollars of money we can’t afford, so don’t you fucking tell me I don’t deserve being punished for that!”

A tiny spark of realization went through him, but his thoughts were unreadable to me for once, until it was gone and he got pissed again.

“What are you even saying?!” he yelled at me, “You deserve this?! You get the holy hell beaten out of you for forgetting something and that’s your punishment?! You seriously think this is just what you had coming to you for having a lapse in judgment?!”

“That’s right!” I argued hotly.

“How exactly did you even fuck up?!” he continued to yell, “Huh?! How does that money even matter?!”

On a better day, him saying something like that would have just bewildered me. Of course money matters! What else have me and my family been struggling for all this time! But that morning, his words made me see red and I went from angry to furious in half a second. How could he say something like that?! What happened mattered! That I messed up mattered! This wasn’t some little thing that was inconsequential! I saw my mother crumpled on the floor sobbing her heart out as she clung to me while my father walked away, like it was nothing. Like she was nothing, and I wanted to punch something.

“What the fuck are you talking about?!” I screamed at him and stood up from my desk to do… I don’t even know. It’s not like I would have hit him and maybe Heero knew that, but it’s still a wonder that he didn’t flinch, “Of course it matters!”

“How, Duo?” he pushed, his voice a lot calmer than mine, but still angry, “How can it possibly matter? You work, what, 45 hours a week on top of school and chores and everything else, and where does all your money go? To your father. And what does he use it for? Is it bills or getting things that your family needs? No, he uses the money that _you_ work hard for on fucking _booze_. So he can get drunk and hit you and you can make shitty excuses for why it’s not his fault!”

“That’s not tr-,” I tried to lie, even as my heart throbbed in pain at just how true everything Heero was saying, I just didn’t want to hear it or think about it, but he cut me off.

“And how is the car any better than the booze? It’s just as frivolous! You told me yourself that it barely runs right and breaks all the time, and he doesn’t even let your mother drive it or use it to drop her off at work. He makes her take the bus! It’s useless to the both of you and he doesn’t even need it to get to work, but he’s allowed to beat you for getting parts for him? And you think that’s fair?! Why aren’t you furious at him for doing this to you?!” he bellowed at me, “Why don’t you hate him for using you as an errand boy and a punching bag, Duo?! You didn’t deserve what he did and you don’t even deserve him getting pissed at you! So why are you making excuses for him and saying this shit that it’s your fault?! Your father is a monster who should be sitting in jail right now for what he did to you and you don’t even care! Why aren’t you as angry as I am?! Why aren’t you enraged that you have to pull two shifts almost every day just so your father can get trashed and put his needs before everyone else’s?! What are you even working so hard for, Duo?! Why are you stressed and tired and hurting all the time?! Why do you try so hard, more than that prick has ever tried, when you’re still just a kid?! So you and your family can continue to be broke? What is even the point?!”

My fists trembled I was so angry at every word he was yelling at me. I was distantly aware that I was getting out of control and how in denial I was, that I didn’t really have the right to be this angry when Heero was saying nothing but the truth, but I didn’t want to hear it. For the first time in our relationship, I felt furious at him and it wasn’t even his fault. He, on the other hand, had every right to be angry with me. I grabbed my book and angrily shoved it back into my bookbag, jerking it over my shoulder and I stormed out of the classroom.

“Duo, no, wait!” I heard Heero cry after me, all the anger in his voice replaced by guilt and concern and regret.

I didn’t listen to him. I didn’t want to hear anything else he had to say. I just strode out into the hall and kept walking, running away like I always do. I know it was stupid. That I was having a temper tantrum and it was ridiculous that I couldn’t even take the truth when it was shouted at me. It was also beyond stupid because where did I have to go? School was going to start in a little while and I would just have to go right back to that classroom, and people were going to start showing up soon. Was I really going to throw a fit where people might see? But you know that expression, ‘I have no more fucks to give’? Well, I was officially on my last fuck. I was tired and angry and hurt and I hated everything and everyone, but no one more than myself and I just wanted to break things.

 _“What are you even working so hard for, Duo?!”_ rang in my ears and I almost growled out loud.

It didn’t matter, the things that he had said. I already knew all of it. My mother had already pointed it all out to me hours ago, that my losing the money hadn’t been a big deal, that it hadn’t been going somewhere useful anyway. That it had been my father’s fault, not mine. He had stolen from us. He always has. Heero is right. I try not to think about it, how often my saying that I work to help my family is a lie, that all the hours that I work, all the hard labor that I do, all the times that I have to skip sleep just to get my homework done, how much of it just goes to paying for my father’s addiction. I’m just an enabler, a supplier. Bad enough that I’m usually the reason for him drinking and having a temper, but it really is my fault, isn’t it?

But, despite what I had said to ‘Ro, this wasn’t about it the car or the money. I can accept that while it had been my blunder, losing the money, I hadn’t really deserved him trying to cave my face in for it. I can accept that him not having the car for a few days was not the horrible thing either of us had made it. But everything else… everything else was my fault. The bruises on my mom’s face, her tears, her pain, it was all my fault. If I hadn’t lost that money, my dad wouldn’t have gone to Pat’s that morning. He never would have come home wasted. He never would have groped my mother. He never would have raped me in front of her. He never would have beaten her. My one mistake that people keep telling me was harmless was anything but. It was a cracked mirror, spreading out over everything. And every single bruise on my body, I had deserved with that mistake. Heero would never understand. Even if I told him the full truth, he just wouldn’t.

I resented him then. I hated myself for it, but I truly resented him for bringing this up, for making me remember and stirring up the anthill of my dark feelings. He had every reason to be upset and call me out on my bullshit, but that didn’t stop me from being angry at him, even if he didn’t deserve that. All I wanted was to take everything from that morning and shove into that box in my head where I wouldn’t have to look at it or think about it or feel anything about it, just like always. I could live in that numb fog and not feel anything and just keep going with my life like everything was fine. But Heero wouldn’t let me. He never does. He just keeps poking and prodding and pushing and ripping off my scabs to expose the wounds raw and bleeding. It isn’t his fault, he doesn’t realize it, but he does it anyway.

I almost laughed then, remembering my hope that I could live in that fog around Heero, that I could use it to make things better, to pretend to be alright and push through my problems for him. Really? How could I have ever thought that I could stay numb around this boy? All he’s ever done is made me feel everything, like an explosion in my head and my heart. Love, anger, misery, joy… He makes me feel, even the things that I don’t want to. The things that break me. The good and the bad. That fog had never stood a chance against him.

A familiar hand clamped around my wrist and pulled me back, stopping my getaway attempt.

“Dammit, stop walking away from me!” he snapped testily and put his other hand on my shoulder, gripping it and turning me around.

I fought against the urge to wince as his fingers dug into bruises, not wanting him to know that my face wasn’t the only thing that was hurt. I expected to see rage on his face or frustration with me, but though he did still look a bit angry, he mostly looked concerned and confused and I saw in his eyes the urge to comfort, to make this better somehow. And guilt, like this, my temper, my need to get away from him were his fault. There was also a strong desperation there, probably to get me to see how stupid this all was, that I needed to do something about my father. If only he knew how much that very thought weighed upon me. I didn’t need him to say it out loud.

“Duo-,” he started to say and it would either be something to comfort me, an apology, or an insistence to tell someone about my father, Stoan or perhaps his father. I didn’t want to hear any of it.

I wrenched myself from his grip and tried to ignore the flash of hurt across his face even as it ripped me apart. It was the straw that broke my back and I could actually feel something in me snap.

“What?!” I screamed at him, my voice echoing loudly in the hallway and now that I can distance myself from that moment, I have to wonder how many teachers heard our little spat. Probably few, if any, but at the moment, I wasn’t even thinking of it, I was so out of control and losing grasp over myself. You can say that I was sleep deprived and traumatized or whatever, but it just felt like I had gone temporarily insane. I didn’t even know why I was screaming or what I was screaming about anymore, it just exploded out of me, “What do you want from me?! What do you want me to do to make you feel better?! What do you want me to say-,”

Heero grabbed at me again, his touch gentler this time, but I didn’t even think about fighting him as he pulled me to him, looking twisted and pained. Then his arms were around me, holding me tightly like he wouldn’t have dared if he knew I was bruised all over and I couldn’t have fought him even if I had wanted to.

“Shh, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he soothed softly.

His hand cradled my head, gently leading mine to his shoulder and that was all it took. I broke. Something in me cracked and shattered and all the terrible things that I had pushed down deep from the moment I had gone home that morning came bursting out, oozing through the cracks like a flood of crude oil. I clung to him and sobbed into his achingly familiar shoulder, nearly curling up in those comforting and sheltering arms like a wounded child and I just cried like the world was coming to an end. I cried for all the horrible things, everything that I hadn’t been able to stop. For not being able to protect my mother. For just lying there and letting my father fuck me and not even trying to fight back against him. For every awful thing he had called me. For all my mistakes and failures.

Heero murmured something in my ear, but I couldn’t hear him over my crying, but I could feel his hand stroking my hair and that was good. Being in his arms, in a way, in a very different way, was better than being in my mom’s. His love for me was purer, less tangled up in remorse and guilt, his embrace less desperate. I could feel how warm he was and how nice it was to be held by him and nothing else, nothing bittersweet.   
          “I can’t do this anymore,” I sobbed brokenly, my voice slightly muffled by his shirt, “I can’t!”

What ‘this’ was, I wasn’t even sure of anymore. The stress. Worrying about my family and money. My father. My mother’s guilt. My own guilt. Just all of it. I was done and the thought of going on for one more day, of seeing either of my parents again, was too awful to comprehend. I couldn’t do it.

‘Don’t make me go back there,’ I almost begged, could actually taste the words in my throat and on my tongue, though I knew I wouldn’t utter out them out loud, ‘I can’t go back there, please.’

          I felt his hand on my back, gently stroking along my spine and I wished that my nerves there weren’t so fucked up from getting cut up by that truck so I could feel more than the pressure. I wanted to just melt into him, close my eyes and forget everything but him. I missed being able to smell him, that sea-salt deodorant he uses and his sage shampoo.

          “Tell me what’s wrong,” he pleaded while still stroking my back, “Please, love, just tell me what’s going on.”

          “I…” I choked out and didn’t even think that maybe I should lie or brush him off. I had no defenses left. I just didn’t care anymore and found the truth spilling from me like vomit, “I’m just so tired… I’m so tired of being such a failure… of being so… so inadequate no matter how hard I try! I’m so tired of letting my parents down, of fucking up everything and hurting them… I just want to be good enough, just once, I want to do something right, I want to make them happy, so why… why am I such a screw up? My dad’s right, I’m worthless, I can’t even…” I sniffed, my eye and nose hurting like crazy and I could barely breathe, “I can’t even make him proud of me for anything. I’m so useless…”

          Heero tightened his arms around and my ribs protested the crushing pressure, but they could just fuck right off. It felt like that embrace was the only thing even keeping me in one piece.

          “No, Duo,” my boyfriend somehow sounded as broken hearted as I did and he didn’t even really know what I was talking about, the depths that I had sunk, “No, none of that is true!”

          “Yes it is!” I cried, “Don’t you get it? You’re wrong… I _am_ angry! I hate my father… every time he hits me, even though I deserve it half the time, especially this time, I still hate him for it. I hate my own dad! What sort of terrible son am I?!”

          “You aren’t a terrible son,” he soothed, “You love your father and your mother. The man treats you like shit, it’s only natural for you to hate him for it. I’d be concerned if you didn’t, seeing what he does to you. And you aren’t a failure or inadequate or a screw up or any of that shit! You are _not_ worthless, you can never _be_ worthless and your father is a piece of shit for ever calling you something so terrible! If he isn’t proud of you for everything you’ve accomplished, then that’s his failing, not yours! He’s blind if he can’t see what an amazing person you are! You’re hard working, smart, talented, a loyal friend, a great cook and writer, and you’re the strongest person I’ve ever met for having put up with his crap your entire life! You’re a good person, better than he could ever hope to be,” he let go of me, but before I could mourn the loss of arms around me, he very gently cupped my face, being mindful of the swollen left side, his navy eyes studying mine, “You can’t let him make you feel like this. None of this,” his thumb traced a bruise, so lightly I barely felt it, “is your fault. It couldn’t possibly be your fault. No matter what you did, no matter how much you screwed up. I don’t care if you lit that money on fire or flushed it down the toilet, you do not deserve him beating the shit out of you for it! You weren’t responsible, you were powerless. Your father was the one who had the choice. He acted of his own volition, you didn’t force his hand, and he deserves your hate because, all along, he had the power to stop. Not you, not anyone else, just _him._ He had that power, and he chose to hurt you with it.”

          A new wave of tears blinded me and I scrunched up my face uselessly and painful to try to keep them from falling, but I was beyond the ability to stop them. Heero’s arms came up around me again, but I didn’t feel comforted anymore. I just felt hollow, because I knew that he was right. But it wasn’t some big epiphany and I didn’t bother to refute it or fight against it. What would be the point? Because I didn’t need Heero to tell me any of that. I think I’ve known it for a while, I just didn’t want to know it. That my father doesn’t hurt me to punish me, or because he thinks that I deserve it. He does it because he chooses to. Because he likes it and it makes him feel better. He can stop whenever he feels like it, but he never does. Maybe I feel like I deserve the beatings, but if he loved me, really loved me, or even just cared for me a little, even if he were angry with me and wanted to punish me, would he still hit me? Heero doesn’t think so. And I think, deep down where I don’t want to look at it, I’ve known that for a very long time.

          That revelation, spoken so plainly by my boyfriend, dragged out into the light for the first time, should have sparked something in me. Clarify, action, determination. That’s how it works in books and movies, isn’t it? But this isn’t a movie and I’m not a hero in either the classical or literal sense and all any of this made me feel was more guilt and self-loathing on top of the already immense pile of it. Because I can accept that Heero is right. I can accept that the pain that I was in was my father’s fault. I can even accept that I use my father’s ‘love’ as a shield, an excuse, not to do anything. Because I crave it so much and even when I know it’s bullshit when he says he loves me, it’s so easy to pretend that it's real, to lie to myself and let it tear me in half. I know that, even if my father does love me, somewhere deep inside where he’ll never voice it, it will never compare to the love that Heero and my mother feel for me. It’ll always be flimsy and cheap and never what I actually need because it’s killing me like a rot. It’ll always be watered down and thin because even if he loves me, I know he hates me, too.

My mom and Heero don’t beat me. They don’t call me trash or make fun of me or go out of their way to make me feel like I’m less than human. Whatever my father feels for me, it’s a pale imitation. I don’t even think my father knows how to love anyone. How to _really_ love someone. I don’t blame him for that or call him a monster, because he isn’t. I understand because, before Heero and I started to date, I hadn’t known either. I hadn’t understood what it really meant, but once I did, I started to realize just how much my father’s actions and words hurt me and how his fists and not his words are the real proof of how he feels for me. Was that when I truly started to hate him? I can’t remember.

The sick thing and the reason for my self-loathing isn’t from realizing any of this, but that, even knowing it, even _believing_ it, it didn’t matter, because I still can’t stand up to my dad. Even if I can blame him for hurting me, for raping me and beating me and ripping me into little shreds, I know it won’t change anything. I’m still too scared, and while I know what a bittersweet thing my father’s love is, I still need it like I need air, this poisonous, mocking thing. Even if he doesn’t love me back, I still love my father as powerfully as I did as a child, although that love is battered and twisted now. That’s the thing about love that some people don’t understand, that it isn’t conditional and it isn’t something that can be reasoned away. I’ll probably feel it for the rest of my life, no matter what the man does to me.

And even if I wasn’t scared, even if I got the strength to tell on my father, I still couldn’t. Even if I grew a spine and decided I could live without him, that I would even be happy with him going to jail, which I’m not, I couldn’t do it. Why? Because I’m just as frightened thinking about what would come after as I am thinking about what my father might do to me if I told on him and he _didn’t_ go to jail. I’ve thought about it countless times, and more and more lately as he’s started to act more and more insane, what would actually happen to us, my mom and I. We’re barely holding on as it is, how the hell would we survive without my father’s income? What kind of stress would that put on my mother? And what would the cops do if they found out that my father hadn’t just been beating the shit out of us, but had been raping me, and my mother had known about it?

Whenever I think about this, my mind wanders to Sasha Williams, the girl that got taken away by social services and we never saw again. I know it probably would never happen to me. For one, she was fourteen at the time and I’m seventeen, almost an adult, but not quite. What if social services decided that I might be better off away from a mother that used to be an alcoholic, had neglected me for several years, and hadn’t called the cops herself as soon as she had known what my father was doing to me? What if they made me disappear like Sasha? What if they took me away from the only other parent I had left, the one I finally have a relationship with after all these years? What if they took me away from Heero?

I know it’s a stupid thought. Haven’t I been struggling with the decision to end our relationship? Don’t I already know that I’m no good for him? That he would be better off if I wasn’t around? But the thought of being sent off to a foster family or whatever the hell happens to kids like Sasha and never seeing my mom or dad or ‘Ro ever again fills me with icy dread. Like I said, stupid considering I knew our relationship wasn’t going to last. Stupid considering I knew my mother would be better off without me or my father around, but still that dread remained.

On top of all of that, even if I could blame my father for hitting my mother and I, I didn’t blame him for the rest of it. For fucking me. Ever since it first started happening, I’ve felt like I deserved the rapes, that they were my punishment for everything I’ve done and haven’t been able to do. Forcing my parents to stay together when they were both miserable. Keeping them broke and unhappy. Not being able to stop Quatre from getting his arm broken. Wedging him and Trowa apart. Just watching while he killed himself. Hurting Trowa. Spreading my legs for him instead of being honest with him. Breaking up with him. Even if I can hate my father for violating me, for using me like this, I feel like it’s my fault, that I made him this way. I couldn’t stop him, not once. I wear my hair like my mother used to. I look just like her when she was my age despite my height and sex. And I never tell him no. I never even talk about it. I just let him do it. Because I’m so girly, such a _fag_ , so easily accessible and because, as I’m sure my father’s well aware, I deserve it… I turned my father into a rapist. I perverted my own dad.

          As I stood there in the school hallway with my boyfriend holding me as cried silently against his shoulder, I thought about fate. Genetics. Destiny. All the shit inside of you that you can’t control that makes up everything that you are that was decided before you were even born. I thought about my dad and my grandfather. I don’t know a whole lot about the guy, just what I’ve heard from Mrs. Liddle and my mother, but enough to know that he was… not the nicest guy around. Sullen and mean and racist and homophobic and cruel. Like a junk yard dog that snapped at everyone, regardless of who they were or how nice they had been to him. Enough to know that my father had followed his footsteps, the sort of guy that drank too much, smoked too much, hit too much, and tore down everything around him. At least my dad doesn’t smoke, but everything else, including his meanness, he got from his father.

          The how is a mystery to me. Because that was how he had been raised, especially after my grandmother left them both? Because he had just spent too much time around him and picked up all his bad habits? Or was it in his blood? Could being an asshole and a brute be genetic? God, I hope not. Because sometimes, I can feel it there, in my own blood. The capacity for rage and cruelty. The need to tear something apart, to hit and hit until my own pain went away for a little while. Heero keeps telling me that I’m not my father, that I will never be my father, and I want to believe him so badly.

But if my own father grew into my grandfather, what exactly is stopping me from becoming either of them, if not with my temper or even the sexual violence, then what about my father’s inability to love? What if that part of him is already a part of me? What if I’m cursed like he is, what if I just have this gaping chasm where my heart should be? I mean, isn’t it already true? Just look at what I’m doing to Heero. I thought that I loved him, but if I did, would I hurt him so much? Would I push him away all the time? Would I still be so lost and confused about our relationship, what I should be doing, how to act, what to do for him, how to be a better boyfriend? What if there’s just something lacking in me, something missing, and no matter how hard I try, I’ll never really know how to love anyone? Maybe I never had a chance. Maybe I was just born like this or I picked it up from my father somewhere along the line of growing up. When we had last fought, Trowa had accused me of not knowing how to love anyone. Maybe he’s right.

“It’s ok,” ‘Ro tried to soothe, probably feeling my tears soaking into his shirt or the way that my shoulders hitched even though I wasn’t making a sound and I felt his hand back on the top of my head, but his words, usually a comfort, only made me feel worse.

‘Why do you love me?’ I wanted to ask, ‘Why do you have such faith in me?’

“None of this is your fault,” he insisted, “ _None_ of it, even losing that money. Your father was practically begging for it to happen.”

I pulled away from him and gave him a baffled look.

“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked a bit defensively, thinking he was saying that I’m forgetful even if I knew him better than that.

“Duo, when did he give you that money? Yesterday morning before you went to school?” he guessed.

“Yeah…” I said hesitantly, not understanding. It was an easy guess to make since I hadn’t gone home before work the previous day before work or all of this might have been avoided.

“So, he gave you almost two hundred dollars to keep with you all through school,” Heero summed up dryly, “a teenager and didn’t expect it to get lost or stolen?”

I blinked at him, feeling really stupid that I hadn’t considered the same thing.

“I should have left the money at home,” I muttered, wanting to slam my foolish head into something for being so damned idiotic, “and just picked it up after school…”

“ _He_ should have just left it there,” Heero said sternly, “and asked you to get it on your way home or just gone on his own damned lunch hour or something. Instead, he made you carry it around all day. It sounds like to me the only person who messed up in all of this was him. I know you’re responsible, Duo, and you have a good head on your shoulders, but you’re still a kid, he shouldn’t have put that on you. And then to beat you up for losing it is fucked up. The only person he has to blame is himself. In any case, you did pretty well, hanging on to it all the way through school. You’re lucky Zechs or one of those assholes didn’t steal it,” he said with a wry smirk.

“What?” now I was really confused. What did that even mean? “How do you know I didn’t lose it at school?”

His smirk only grew.

“I think I know where the money is,” he confessed smugly.

My eyes widened.

“What?!” I exclaimed, “Where?! How?!”

I could have grabbed him and kissed him just for giving me the slight ray of hope that maybe I could redeem myself, if not to my father, then maybe to mother, just a tiny bit.

“My dad found a wad of cash in his car last night,” he told me, “He couldn’t figure out where it came from since none of us are missing any, so it must have fallen out of your jacket or something when you were with him.”

I was awestruck for a moment, then burst out a laugh like it was the most hilarious thing I had ever heard, though I was aware there was a touch bitter hysteria to it.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” I laughed.

I couldn’t believe that I had kept the money on me all through school, including gym, and then had only lost it in the one place I could get it back from. I couldn’t believe my luck. More tears streamed down my cheeks as I got myself back under control, but they were as short lived as my laughter.

“You can come over after school and get it, my dad left it in the kitchen,” Heero said.

“I love you,” I blurted out, forgetting my decision to not say that to him anymore in my sudden relief.

He smiled affectionately at me, blushing a little.

“Well, I’m not the one who found the money, my dad was, but I appreciate that. It’s a little too late,” he said mournfully, his smile losing some of its luster as he examined my black eye, “but maybe it will put your father in a better mood.”

“Fuck my father,” I said sharply, shocking him.

“Huh?” he asked.

I frowned and remembered how my father had grabbed my mother’s breast, how scared and repulsed she had looked, how hard he had hit her for refusing him. Yeah, fuck him.

“I… I don’t think I’m going to tell him,” I admitted, the thought having popped into my head almost the second Heero had told me he knew where the money was, and continued to explain when he looked even more confused, “He was never supposed to take that money in the first place. It was part of our budget and he didn’t even ask my mom if we needed it for something else, he just took it out and used it on what _he_ wanted like he always does. Our finances are so tight right now,” I couldn’t keep the tight anxiety and anger out of my voice as I remembered going through our bills that morning and seeing for the first time just how bad things were, “we can barely afford a fifty-dollar leeway, let alone what my dad took for his damned car. It’s just like you said, it’s frivolous and selfish. My mother is in tears over the fact that we can barely afford to keep our power on and he’s stealing hundreds of dollars for a half dead automobile that he doesn’t even need! We need that money. My giving it back to him or picking up the parts he needs isn’t going to make him less miserable to live with, so why should I tell him that I found that money? If I don’t, he’ll never even know and we can use it something we actually _need_!”

I was panting at that point and had to take a few breaths. I hadn’t even noticed when Heero had put his hand on my shoulder or when his confusion had melted away into worry and sympathy. My anger started to fade and good, old, constant doubt wormed its way back in. Just how much of this decision had I made in petty anger? I mean, it wasn’t my money, it was my parents’. I didn’t really have the right to make that kind of choice, I hadn’t done anything to earn it, unless it had come out of one of my paychecks, and even then…

“Or maybe I’m the one being selfish,” I murmured to myself, looking down at the floor in shame.

“No, you’re not,” ‘Ro assured me, “You’re being practical. Your father can survive without his car for a little while and maybe that money will hold off the power company for a little bit longer, right? I think you’re making the right choice, and for the right reasons, not just because you’re mad at him for hurting you or upsetting your mother, which would be a completely justifiable reason anyway.”

I lifted my head and smiled at him, only to wince when I forgot about my spit lip and the gesture stung like hell. Heero frowned again.

“He doesn’t deserve it anyway,” he muttered icily, “not after what he did to you.”

 He gently cradled my jaw in his hand, only touching the unbruised parts, and properly studied my face beyond the black eye, each new bruise and abrasion making him look more and more sour.

“Your father is a fucking brute,” he growled.

I felt my face go hot, though I couldn’t tell if it was because of his perusal or how protective he sounded. I felt pleased that he cared about me that much, but I also didn’t like how serious he was about it, like I had a gaping wound instead of a swollen face.

“He just can’t control himself when he’s drunk,” I muttered defensively.

I almost winced at my own words, both that I had admitted that he had been wasted again and that I was defending him at all. I don’t know why I was making excuses, I knew Heero didn’t give a shit and it would just piss him off, and I knew that my father being drunk wasn’t the reason why he had hit me. Hell, he had been almost sober the first time he had beaten the shit out of me anyway, so it was pretty much a lie. But I had said it anyway and I didn’t know why, like it was just an automatic reflex. Sure enough, Heero’s face went hard hearing that.

“If that’s true,” he snapped at me, “then I guess he should know better not to drink, shouldn’t he?”

I should have felt irritated and snapped right back at him. Normally, I probably would have. There was a part of me that still felt defensive about saying something like that about my father, but the rest of me just felt hurt. Not by him, but by the truth of what he was saying, because, once again, he was right. If my father really gave a shit about either my mother or I, he would realize how out of control he was and that his drinking was part of the problem. He would see how vicious he was when he was wasted, how many times he had landed either of us in the hospital, and he would know, like my mom, that something had to give. But while the booze is part of the problem, it isn’t the entire problem is it? The alcohol makes his temper worse and his ability to stop himself less, but it doesn’t cause that temper or his meanness. That’s all him, sober or drunk, and he’s hit me plenty of times without a single beer in him. Even if it was just the alcohol, would he stop drinking for us? To save us from him? I… I don’t know and that uncertainty more than anything else is like a solid blow to my heart.

          I didn’t snap at Heero because there was nothing to snap at him about, but also, I felt better just having him around. Him telling me about the money was one thing, but just having him there touching me and talking to me and loving me was gentling something wild and insane in me, some howling thing that I had been suppressing all morning. I hadn’t had much luck, obviously, if a single argument with him could leave me screaming, but he had done it with an embrace and a few words. He didn’t even need that much. Just his presence always seems to be enough to make me feel more human, less like a snarling beast no matter what darkness I’m in.

          It should make me feel good. It should make me love him and it does. That he can do this to me is amazing and my heart burns for him every time he does it, every single time he brings me back from that edge. But I also feel like a parasite. A dirty, blood-sucking worm, just using Heero and his perfect life to feel better about myself even though there’s nothing for me to feel good about. I can hide my other life from him, but not myself. I know better. I know what I am and I know the things I’ve done. I’m just a disgusting hypocrite, always telling him when we fight about my father that ‘it’s just the way things are’, or I make up some stupid excuse why the beatings and verbal abuse are ok, but the entire time, I’m just using Heero to run away from those very things. I hurt him all the time and use him and never think about his own feelings. If I was any kind of friend… no, if I was any kind of human being at all, I wouldn’t put him through this. I wouldn’t let him see me beat to hell and then tell him ‘oh, it’s fine’ and not even let him have it out with me just because _I_ can’t deal with it.

          “I’m sorry,” I looked away from him, unable to meet his eyes, mortified as I remembered our screaming fight and how easily I had snapped, throwing a temper tantrum like a child.

          “For what?” Heero asked, perplexed.

          “For all of this,” I said guiltily, “For… for making you worry and screaming at you like that. I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”

          He just smiled at me, but it was a self-depreciating smile this time.

          “I think I’m the one who should be apologizing to you,” he said softly, “You’re hurting and upset and I went off on you. I shouldn’t have flipped out like that.”

          “ _Don’t_ ,” I snapped at him, finally lifting my head, “I hate it when you do that.”

          “Do what?” he looked at me owlishly.

          “Act like you getting angry with me is some terrible thing when I’m the reason why you’re upset in the first place!” I growled.

          “Duo, we’ve been through this before,” he sighed, “I’m not angry with you and you aren’t the reason why I got upset. I’m angry at your father and I got upset because I hate seeing you hurt and I… I just don’t know what to do. You won’t talk to me, you just act like it’s nothing and even when we’re arguing about it, you’re so dismissive! It, not you, just this whole damned situation, drives me nuts. But I shouldn’t be taking out on you. You’re the one with the black eye, not me.”

          I squirmed uncomfortably at his words, hearing the pain in his voice and knowing, despite what he was saying, that it was my fault. He might not believe it, but I knew it.

          “You…” I rubbed my palms against my pants, looking off to the side and not into his eyes or I would never get these words out, “You’re my boyfriend… you have every right to be annoyed at me and feel frustrated… if I hadn’t made you make that promise…”

          He put his hands on my shoulders, stopping my ramblings as it was all I could do to try not to wince as he put pressure on the gash on the back of my left shoulder.

          “You didn’t twist my arm,” he pointed out, “I made that promise because I love you and I didn’t want to hurt you. It felt like the only thing I _could_ do. But it just makes me a hypocrite. I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone, but I keep fighting with you just because I’m upset. I made that promise to make things easier on you and instead I make things harder.”

          I opened my mouth to protest that, but he cut me off with a stern look.

          “I do, you don’t have to say it or lie to me. I keep promising you that I’ll stop, but I just make you more stressed out, don’t I? You came to school instead of my house so you wouldn’t worry me,” he said mournfully.

          “I didn’t want you to see me like this…” I murmured, turning the injured side of my face away from him self-consciously.

          “Like what?” he pressed.

          I swallowed roughly, feeling something thick and unpleasant in my throat, making it difficult to get the word out.

          “…Ugly…” I managed in a small, whispery voice.

          To my horror, I felt a new tear track down the right side of my face. Gods, would the damned things just never stop?

          “Oh, love,” he sounded so pained, like I had just called _him_ ugly instead of myself, “You aren’t ugly. You could never be ugly.”

          I snorted bitterly at that. Didn’t he see me? The whole left side of my face swollen, my eye shut and black, bloody abrasions on my cheek? Did he really expect me to believe he wasn’t repulsed by me? I almost voiced the thought, called him on his well-meaning, but obvious bullshit, but then his hand was cupping the uninjured side of my face, pulling my head towards him where I couldn’t hide the bruises, and kissed me. It was gentle at first. He was conscious of the splits in my lips and clearly didn’t want to cause me anymore pain, but if there was pain, I didn’t feel it and I hungrily kissed him back. His lips on mine were electric, waking something inside of me. I needed it, I hungered for it, just… something that wasn’t pain. Wasn’t grief. Wasn’t guilt. Something beautiful and warm and entirely him. I kissed him back, sinking into it, grabbing hold of it like it was warm sunshine and I had been in some dark storm, cold and numb. I guess it’s not an analogy but shy of being literal. It was the first time someone had touched me that morning that hadn’t hurt one way or another.

          My eagerness seemed to spark something in him, too, and he forgot for a moment that my face was fucked up and kissed me back, still gentle, but I could taste his passion almost as though I could feel his heart beating through his mouth. The kiss itself was brief, over in less than a minute, but when he finally drew away from me, my heart was hammering in my chest and I could almost believe that he didn’t find me unattractive if he could kiss me like that. I knew better, but if that’s what he believed, that was all that mattered. He searched for something in my eyes as we parted, his hand still on my cheek, fingers tracing patterns on my cool skin. I expected him to start again about my injuries or the money or something else, but he suddenly switched tracks on me.

          “You look so tired,” he said in concern and there was a twinge of mournfulness in his voice. He was probably blaming himself for starting a fight with me when I was obviously exhausted, “Did you get any sleep this morning?”

          “No,” I admitted and I might have lied about the reason for that to just move on, but I was still on some kind of high from the kiss and it felt crass to lie to him, “I was in too much pain.”

          That just made him frown even more and he gave me a more thorough once over, looking for injuries he couldn’t see under my clothes.

          “How bad is it?” he sounded just a minute shy of panic, but kept his voice steady and in control, “Did he…”

          I really didn’t want to get into this with him, the less he knew the better, but knowing him, I had no doubt he was assuming things that were worse than the truth anyway.

          “Nothing’s broken,” I assured him, “I’m just bruised. My chest and stomach hurt a lot, so does my eye, obviously, but that’s the worst of it.”

          “You’ve been holding your left arm differently,” he noted.

          I blinked at him. That was news to me. But then again, my father had hit me with a fucking chair, so I guessed it wasn’t shocking I was having problems with my shoulder and arm. Actually, now that he had brought it up, I realized that my shoulder and my upper arm felt kind of numb, but I could still move both, so I doubted it was anything serious. Can’t really get hit in the back with a kitchen chair, shitty one or not, and expect to walk away unscathed.

          “My dad hit me pretty hard there,” I carefully didn’t mention what with, letting Heero draw his own conclusions, “but it’s not dislocated or anything, just smarts.”

          “You sure you don’t need a doctor?” he fussed and reminded me so much of my mother that I couldn’t stop a small, wan smile.

          “I’m sure,” I told him, “It’s all bruises.”

          He took my chin in his hand and turned my head right, then left, examining everything he could find. It made me blush and feel uncomfortable, but I let him do it, even if I wanted to die from the shame of having the boy that I loved see me disfigured. It was better than fighting a battle neither of us would win and if he was focusing on the wounds on my face, he wouldn’t find out about the gash or that my ribs were probably cracked or start freaking out again.

          “Stop it,” I grumbled when he took a bit too long, turning my head away until he let go of me, “I look gross.”

          “ _Stop_ ,” he scolded, “You don’t.”

          He did relent, though, and kissed my forehead, making my blush deepen.

          “We should get some ice for that eye,” he said, in full mother hen mode.

          I didn’t want to go to the nurse’s office and deal with her and any questions she might have. Not that she would have any, the most she does is give me these little suspicious looks like she thinks I’m full of shit, but that’s all anyone does. Everyone assumes that any bruise I show up to school with, Zechs put there, and since I hadn’t had a black eye yesterday, she would just think it had happened off school grounds. She might report it to Stoan, but I was used to deflecting his interrogations. Besides, Heero had moved on from pissed off and ranting about my father to wanting to take care of me and if it made him feel better at all, I didn’t care what she had to say. I nodded in agreement. Ice was probably a really good idea if I wanted to see out of that eye any time soon anyway.

          We walked down the hall in silence, but I could practically hear the wheels in Heero’s head turning. He had that pinched look he always gets when he’s thinking about something that’s especially bothering him and was obviously struggling to keep it to himself, which meant it was something he wanted to say to me, but didn’t know if he should. I sighed heavily.

          “Just say it,” I told him wearily.

          He startled and had the grace to blush that either I had read him so well or he’s so terrible at keeping his feelings off his face. Not for the first time, I wondered how the hell he was so damned good at hiding when he had been running around with Relena and Zechs. Since he had become friends with me, it was like he wore every little thing on his sleeve. Even with me calling him out, he chewed on whatever it was for another few seconds.

          “Duo…” now it was his turn to sign, his eyes darting over to me and lingering on my swollen eye, “I know we fight about this all the time, and I’ve asked you this over and over, and I made you that promise… but please… let me help you! I know he’s your dad, and I know you love him and don’t want anything bad to happen to him, but _look_ at yourself! He beat you to a pulp just for making a mistake! Since I’ve known you, I’ve seen you limping and in pain from broken ribs, a concussion, a dislocated shoulder, and dozens of other injuries, all from him! This can’t go on like this, he’s going to…” he had trouble getting the word out, but I had no trouble reading it in his frightened stare: “kill”, “seriously hurt you! You know that. You might not want anyone else to know it, but you do. I know you don’t want to get your father into trouble, but you have to see that this isn’t ok. I’m worried about you, my parents are worried about you, we just don’t want you to get hurt anymore! So, please, let’s go to the police together. We can protect you-,”

          “Heero,” I sighed again as I tried to ignore my guilt, writhing in my guts and trying to eviscerate me like it hadn’t already done that a thousand times that morning, “you know what my answer is. You… you know why I can’t, so why even ask?”

          I would have done anything to get that look off his face and to erase the fear from his voice, anything at all… but not that. I _couldn’t._ Why didn’t he understand that? To my shock, instead of getting angry with me for still telling him no, for being ok with his pain and anxiety, he gave me a small smile.

          “Hope, I guess,” his answer made that writhing tape worm constrict around my heart like a tight fist and I could actually feel it there, a very real ache.

          “I’m sorry,” I apologized earnestly, despising myself, but he surprised me again by slipping his hand around mine.

          “Don’t apologize,” he soothed, “I knew you would say that. I wish you wouldn’t, but don’t say you’re sorry. You didn’t do anything wrong and I’m not mad at you. He’s your family. I think it’s the wrong decision, but I promised I would follow your lead. I have your back, Duo, even if I don’t agree with you, you know that, don’t you?”

          It was meant to make me feel better, but mostly it made me feel even worse. I didn’t want him to be nice to me. I wanted him to lash out at me. I wanted him to hurt me like I’m always hurting him. Why does he always have to be so understanding and kind and wonderful? Why hasn’t he grown tired of me and my stupid excuses yet?

          “It’s only for another year,” I said lamely instead of answering him, not wanting to admit out loud that he did, even if I didn’t understand _why_ he had my back, “Not even. Just a little over ten months. I only have to survive it until then, then it won’t matter. I survived seventeen years of this, I can get through one more.”

          Heero looked at me sadly, clearly wanting to say something, but whatever it was, he bit it off. Even if he didn’t say it, I still felt like a loser. I couldn’t even comfort him right. Maybe I should have just lied. At least I’m good at that. We walked the rest of the way to the nurse’s office like that, holding each other’s hand. At least one of us should have been conscious of our safety, but the risk was low. Acceptable, in my opinion, as it seemed like it was only his hand around mine that was holding me up anymore, the only thing keeping the darkness at bay, that one warm, lingering touch. There wasn’t anyone around yet to see us anyway. It was nice, despite everything, just the two of us holding hands. I wished our entire relationship could be as simple and beautiful as that.

It reminded me of Trowa, the parts of us when we had been together that had made me happy and made me feel Quatre’s loss just a little bit less, before things had gone to shit. I had always loved holding hands with him, in those rare, secret moments when he would let me. But even in that regard, holding hands with Heero was different. He wasn’t tense, looking for a sign to let go, but stubbornly held on, looking as desperate as I felt to keep that contact. I didn’t even want him to let go as we got to the office, but knew we couldn’t just waltz into there like that. Everyone, even our teachers, knew about us, but flaunting it was just asking for trouble, or at the very least, disdain.

Just like I knew she would, the nurse greeted us not with concern, but with mild irritation to see me again. She had obviously just gotten in and was still turning on the lights in the office and setting up for the day, not exactly eager to have to take care of anyone so soon. That all I wanted was an ice pack and some over the counter painkillers didn’t make her any friendlier.

“And how did it happen this time?” she asked in a manner that, if her voice hadn’t been so flat and uninterested, I would have thought was catty, digging in a cabinet for the pills.

Next to me, Heero tensed, but I knew nothing was going to come from her half-assed interrogation. I was surprised she was even bothering to ask that question.

“I ran into a wall,” I matched her non-tone, like it was the most boring thing that had happened to me all week.

She actually raised an eyebrow at that, though I couldn’t tell if it was incredulous or amused. The biggest moron on the planet could take one look at my injuries and know what caused them. Sure, I might have hit a wall. Though I would have had to have hit that same wall about a dozen times.

“This wall have a name?” she asked dryly, not missing a beat, and pressed two white pills and a cup of water into my hands.

“Nope,” I shot back, only barely managing to keep my tone from drifting over into sarcasm and shoved the pills into my mouth, taking a sip of the cool water and tossing the paper cup into the trash, “Never met that wall before in my life.”

She snorted, shaking her head at me. She handed me an ice pack and I dutifully pressed it to my aching eye, unable to stop a tiny, almost unnoticeable hiss at the cold, burning sensation. Our little comedy act all over with, she was all business again and scribbled out a note, giving that to me, too. I blinked when I saw it was a pass to get out of gym.

“I don’t need-,” I started to argue and she cut me off with an incredulous look.

“I don’t want to see you in here again today,” she said still in the same bored, ‘it’s too early for this’ tone of hers, “and since you boys can’t go five seconds without roughhousing each other up, you’ll stay on the bleachers and away from any “walls.””

I blushed in embarrassment. She was wrong about where my bruises had come from, but she was right in taking me out of gym class. Zechs and his savage friends would just love to make my swollen face worse with a ball to my bad eye or shoving me to the floor. My vision was all fucked up anyway, I couldn’t guard myself or use my peripheral vision at all. I accepted the note, deciding to just count myself lucky, and we rushed out of there. People were finally starting to walk the halls and just seeing them depressed me. Despite our fight and despite my guilt, as endless as my tears and panic attacks, I had liked just being there with ‘Ro. It had almost felt like we were the only two people in the entire world and now it felt like some spell had been broken. I resented every person I saw on our walk back to our homeroom. I just wanted all of them to go away and wasn’t looking forward to the school day. I wasn’t feeling as… anti-social as I had been the last couple of days. Some of that numb fog was still in me, I could feel it wanting to seep back in and take with it everything, every feeling, every twisted thought, but it wasn’t enough to make me feel normal again. I still just wanted my own space and I hated every second that I was in that school, surrounded by people I loathed and that loathed me right back.

“Are you ok?” Heero asked me in concern, probably noticing how quiet I was getting again. There was a twinge of fear in his voice and he was probably thinking of the last couple days, too, scared that I was going back to that state where I didn’t want to be around anyone, even him.

We weren’t holding hands anymore, neither of us dared now that our classmates were around, and I ached for that connection, to feel his skin against mine. It’s funny. I had spent the last few days flinching away from that same touch, but now I just wanted to crawl into his arms, as deeply and completely as I could. However, though he knew better than to hold my hand, Heero stayed closer to me than a friend would, his shoulder nearly pressed against mine. I wondered if that was intentional, if he was as leery to part from me as I was him, or completely subconscious.

“I just want to spend time with you,” I said and winced at how miserable and sad and yearning my own voice sounded.

He smiled sweetly at me and lightly, discreetly, brushed his hand against mine.

“Soon,” he said, the words a promise, not of time, but from him, that there would be a moment when we really could be together without me having to rush off to work or home.

I saw my own desires swimming in those blue eyes, the hunger to be with me and a naked yearning to kiss me. He wouldn’t indulge in it, I knew, not with so many people around, but for a moment, I wished that he would anyway.

 _‘Soon,’_ his words echoed in my head and I almost shivered.

Soon… gods, it was Friday, wasn’t it? Finally, the end of the week. Fucking _finally_. This nightmare was coming to an end, at least temporarily. I had almost forgotten somehow, what day it was. I was so relieved, I could have cried again. I just needed to get through the day, just one more day, then I could spend all of Saturday and a good chunk of Sunday with my boyfriend. I didn’t have to see my parents or my house. I could take a shower. I could sleep. I could…

I quickly squashed the thought before ‘I could go home’ properly formed, not wanting to get that started. Still, just knowing that I was facing the light at the end of the dark tunnel was enough to lift my spirits a little. I think Heero saw it because his smile widened a little.

“I brought you breakfast,” he looked away from me sheepishly, “Although it’s probably cold by now.”

I raised my eyebrows at that.

“You didn’t need to do that,” I insisted but felt warmed anyway.

“Oh?” he smirked, “So you ate this morning?”

I felt my face darken. He really does know me too well.

“Thank you,” I mumbled under my breath and didn’t have the heart to tell him why I hadn’t eaten anything or that I wasn’t so sure that I _could_ without puking, but even though I had zero appetite, I’d try anyway if only to appease him.

By some miracle, there were only a couple kids in the classroom and no one had touched Heero’s stuff or stolen the bag of food he had. “Breakfast” turned out to be a cinnamon roll for him and an apple and raisin turnover for me. Instead of coffee for me, he whipped out a thermos and when I took a sip, I was delighted to find it was more of that green drink Mariela had made me during my last bout of insomnia.

“I asked my mother to make some more. You were really dragging yesterday,” his smile didn’t diminish the worry that was clear across his face, “I didn’t know if you might need it today or not.”

“Thank you,” I said, full of gratitude as I took another refreshing sip, not having realized just how damned thirsty I was, “and thank your mother for me.”

He chuckled.

“You can thank her yourself tomorrow,” he pointed out.

He took a swig of his coffee and grimaced. It was probably stone cold by then and I felt bad. It was only because of me that he hadn’t had his breakfast yet and I felt even worse when he only took another sip before chucking it in the trash, mourning the waste. And yeah, I was being an idiot. It was just a coffee, but I never should have had that… temper tantrum in the first place. Then again, if I hadn’t, we might have still been bickering over my bruises. I picked at my turnover slowly throughout the homeroom period, my abused stomach only able to take a crumb at a time, but I was still running on empty and it tasted good, so I managed the whole thing without hurling or wanting to throw the rest of it in the trash, so that was a good sign, right? Our homeroom teacher gave me a dirty look for eating in his class, but didn’t say anything to me. I think he’s wary of me for some reason.

School was about as nightmarish as I had assumed it would be, but it could have been a hell of a lot worse. I had to endure a fair amount of teasing about my mangled face and, just like I had predicted, every single one of my classmates assumed that Zechs was responsible. Zechs didn’t do much to deny the rumor, smirking every time it was brought up and throwing some oddly arrogant jibes my way when we passed each other in the halls considering that he knew he had had nothing to do with it. That’s the just the kind of guy he is. Instead of getting jealous that he hadn’t been the one to give me those lovely bruises, he was just happy to inflict any misery on me that he could, verbally or otherwise.

Heero grit his teeth through all of it, getting more and more pissed off as the day went on and he caught more people saying snide things about how I had been ‘given it good’ and I looked like a walking punching bag. It was almost funny that he was getting enraged and I just… didn’t care. At all. I was used to it and really, after everything that my father had done that morning, not much my classmates could do or say about me would faze me. My head was still trapped in those small hours of the morning, unable to move on from it at the same time that I was making a very serious effort not to think about any of it.

We got through the first half of the day pretty well. My boyfriend was far from happy, but besides some talk, no one had really done anything to either of us. That didn’t make school any easier. The minutes ticked away through molasses for me, either because of the pain I was in from what seemed every inch of my body, or because I was so fucking eager for Friday to be over and done with. It was hard to focus on classes and I struggled to read what was written on the board. But still, I made it to lunch more or less in the same state I had shown up at school and that was something. Zechs didn’t even bother to show up to our computer class, which left only lunch and gym to worry about from that corner, but even Alex and the rest of them didn’t seem particularly interested in fucking with either of us that day beyond their usual bullshit. As Heero and I went into the cafeteria, I almost hoped that we might get through the rest of the day. Almost.

We claimed our usual, empty table and, predictably, he frowned when he saw that I hadn’t brought a lunch and tried to feed me half of his sandwich.

“No way,” I shook my head at him and grimaced.

I don’t know if it was the turnover, the stress over being at school, or all the moving around I had been doing, but my stomach had greatly deteriorated in the last few hours, turning into a throbbing mass of pudding. My eye wasn’t doing so great, either. The ice pack had made it feel better for a little while, but now that the ice was all melted, it felt hot and wooden along with the entire left side of my face. The pain pills had worn off, too, and my screaming headache was back. My shoulder hurt like hell, too, and I knew I should really check the wound to make sure it wasn’t infected and get around to changing the bandage, but I didn’t want Heero to see it. It looked like another trip to the nurse’s office was in my immediate future. All in all, the last thing I wanted was food, especially Heero’s tuna sandwich. Just the smell made me want to puke.

“It’s just a sandwich, Duo,” he scolded in irritation, thinking that I was turning him down because I didn’t want him to go hungry, which was just another reason why I didn’t want his food, “I have more food-,”

“It’s not that,” I muttered, “I just… don’t feel so good.”

“Your stomach?” he asked gently.

I hadn’t told him that my father had punched me in my gut, but with the way that I had been moving, he knew that I was favoring it. I nodded.

“Do you need to go to the nurse?” he fussed.

“I’ll go after lunch and get more pills and ice,” I told him.

“That’s not what I meant. I mean, do you need her to check to make sure nothing’s… wrong?” he asked nervously, “Maybe you should just go lay down. You look as white as a sheet.”

I sighed, but not at him. A nap sounded like fucking bliss. Not even a nap, but just to not be vertical anymore and to close my eyes for a little bit… but in the state that I was in, if I fell asleep, I wasn’t going to wake up any time soon and I couldn’t afford to miss any classes. Just sleeping through the lunch period wasn’t nearly enough, it would just make me feel worse. It would be like putting a five-course meal in front of a starving man and telling him he could only have a couple bites, it just wasn’t worth it.

“The only thing that’s going to make it better is sleep,” I pointed out, “I’ll be fine after tomorrow, there’s really nothing she can do for me.”

Heero wasn’t happy with that answer, but didn’t press the issue.

“At least have your drink,” he grumbled, “before you keel over on me.”

I gave him a soft smile. Drinking I could do. In fact, that damned green drink was probably the only thing keeping me as alert as I was. I had been sipping it all through my classes and there was just a little left, so I happily finished it off, my body eager for some hydration. I just as I was gulping down the last few drops, a flash of color caught my attention. Gold and blue. My eyes, like an animal’s, darted over to the lunch line where I saw Dorothy and one of her friends leaving with trays in hand, walking in our direction. I tensed and my nausea went up a good ten levels.

‘They’re just going to their table,’ I told myself, ‘Calm the fuck down.’

But I knew that they were up to something. True, their table was past our own, but they could have picked any other aisle to go down to get to it and that prickling feeling I get when something is about to happen was up.

“What’s wrong?” my boyfriend asked in alarm.

His back was to the bitches, but he knew something was up by my rigid body language and I’m sure I had narrowed my eye or had a weird look or something. Before I could warn him who was coming, Dorothy was behind him. Her pale blue eyes darted to me and her face wrinkled up in a grimace.

“Ugh!” she exclaimed in disgust, “Maxwell, if you _have_ to come to school looking like that, at least have the common decency not to make the rest of us look at your ugly mug during lunch!”

Heero stiffened like a board, his eyes going hard with anger, but he didn’t move, waiting to see what she would do.

Dorothy leaned in to fake whisper to her raven-haired friend, talking loud enough for anyone around us to hear.

“I think I just lost my appetite,” she jeered.

“Me, too,” her friend had the same, cruel glint in her eye and mock gagged, “It’s like looking at a Halloween mask, but worse. I don’t think it’s even possible to make a mask look so hideous!”

My hands curled into fists and I felt my face go red, something bitter twisting in my chest. I was suddenly aware that nearly every eye was on us… on _me_ and my busted-up face and I just wanted to sink under the table in my humiliation and die. But I didn’t rise to the bait, didn’t snap at her or try to hit her. That’s what she wanted, a reaction. There were a few teachers lingering out of earshot in the cafeteria, just far away that they couldn’t tell anything was happening, but they would see it if Heero or I made a move against Dorothy. That was exactly what we needed, more detention. I doubted Stoan would be as lenient with Heero this time, or me for that matter. I tried to find Heero’s stare to parlay this information to him as best I could, but he was glaring down at the table. His hands were clenched on the edge of it, his knuckles white, and he was gritting his teeth. I wish that I dared to hold his hand. He doesn’t exactly have a great track record of keeping a cool head where I’m concerned. Dorothy suddenly put her hand on his shoulder and patted it like they were the best of friends. Heero flinched and I was honestly amazed he didn’t belt her one right there.

“Now, Heero,” she commiserated, “I know Maxwell isn’t the easiest person to get along with, but you can’t just go around beating him to a pulp every time he refuses to suck your cock. I mean, think about all his other poor johns, they aren’t going to want to fuck him looking like that. Now how will he survive until he looks a tad more presentable? You really need to think of him the next time you get your panties in a twist, or at least his looks. It’s not like he has much else to offer.”

“I don’t know, Dorothy,” her friend jumped in, “He really doesn’t look much different than he usually does.”

The two of them, along with the tables around us that could actually hear what they were saying, burst into laughter. For a moment, I only felt my mortification and every one of those laughing faces made me want to just run out of there and leave the school so everyone would stop _looking_ at me. But then I realized that not everyone was laughing. Some weren’t even looking at me, but Heero, with wary expressions and that was somehow worse than the laughter. Because, I realized with disgust, they actually believed Dorothy. These assholes didn’t realize that she was fucking with us and seriously thought that Heero had been the one to turn my face into paste. That he had recently hit Zechs and gotten detention for it, and I was sure that little rumor had flown around school the day after it had happened, probably only made it easier to believe.

I felt horrified that anyone could think that of him, but my horror was absolutely nothing compared to Heero’s as he came to the same realization. His face drained and his eyes widened and I ached to put my arms around and tell him that it was ok. Who gave a shit what these pricks thought of us? They already thought the worst and we both knew the truth, so what did it matter? Anything to get that terrible, guilty look off his face like he really _had_ beaten me up. Then again, he had always cared about his reputation more than me. Before we had become friends, it had meant being normal. Being, if not popular, than at least not a freak, not someone anyone would gossip about. Recently, it had become more about being a stronger, better person. Honest. If people called him queer, that was fine, and if people gossiped about what we did together, that was ok, too, because it was mostly the truth. But he’s always taken the crueler rumors about him being my sugar daddy and us being pedophiles harder than me.

Then, his eyes went all hard like ice and a flush of rage went over his face, like a switch had been thrown. I knew, before that face twisted into a snarl and he stood up so hard from the table, shaking it so hard that it almost moved, what was going to happen. I’m not entirely slow, ok? I can learn, given enough lessons, and that day when Heero had caught Zechs grabbing my ass had taught me quite a few of them. Like how to read the boy that I loved and how to tell the difference between him getting a temper and when he had was about to snap. I knew, from the second his horror faded, that we were well beyond ‘about to snap’ and were in ‘duck and cover’ territory. I moved before he did and if I hadn’t, things probably would have gone down an entirely different way. But I was still sore and stiff and slow and the thing that tripped Heero up more than anything wasn’t me, but that he had still been sitting with his back to the two cunts and had to twist around to face them.

“Shut your fucking mouth!” my boyfriend snarled at them.

Heero pulled back his fist and Dorothy’s friend… fuck what is her name… oh, right, Stephanie, went as white as a ghost, her green eyes going as wide as an owl’s as it seemed to dawn on her for the first time that maybe this little joke of theirs had consequences. Dorothy looked as cool as a cucumber. I wondered, not for the first time, if she could feel anything at all where Relena wasn’t involved. Then again, she probably had expected Heero to get physical with them. She didn’t even look shocked when I lunged at Heero, getting my arms around him and keeping him from swinging, dragging him back with every ounce of strength I had left. She just looked mildly amused. Maybe she had known how I would react, too.

I felt a tiny spark of triumph as I got ‘Ro back, spitting and swearing and fighting, though only a little, but the move had cost me. I was so drained that I could barely hold on to him and the lunge had made my ribs ache and my ass burn as badly as it had right after my father had pulled out for the last time. Probably another very good reason to not have eaten much that day, going to the bathroom would have been… an experience. Just getting my arms around my boyfriend and jerking him away from Dorothy had been enough to open up the healing gash on my shoulder blade. I felt a searing, sharp pain there, then wetness. But that was fine, the shirt I was wearing was dark, so no one would know I was bleeding and I would check on it later.

“Stop it, Heero,” I hissed at him.

“Dammit, Duo, let go of me,” he snapped, “She-,”

“I am _not_ going to be responsible for you getting detention again,” I hissed lowly in his ear so Dorothy wouldn’t hear me. Not that I was ashamed of us, but what we said to each other was none of her or anyone else’s fucking business and I was sick of being a spectator sport to these pricks, “and this time, if you hit _her_ , you won’t get detention, you’ll get suspended. Then who will be around to cover my ass?” it was incredibly manipulative, but I figured I’d have better results pointing out that I would be in school with these people alone, preying on one of his biggest, most deep-rooted fears than any worry he had over himself, “Besides, as soon as you’re done being angry, you’ll regret punching a girl.”

“No, I wouldn’t,” he snapped, loud enough for everyone near us to hear, but relaxed enough that I was willing to let go of him, “because she’s not a girl. She’s just a bitch.”

Dorothy suddenly lost her amusement and didn’t even get angry or scream at him, but turned to stone. Cold, hateful stone. Even Stephanie went completely quiet and looked scared. Heero pulled himself out of my arms and just as I thought the moment was over, he got in Dorothy’s face. I didn’t even have time to grab him again.

“You’re one to talk about Duo being ugly,” he growled right in her face, “I’ve never seen anyone as hideous as you are.”

Finally, an emotion flickered over her porcelain face. Rage. The kind of fury that I’ve only seen on her when someone (usually me) does something she doesn’t like to her best friend. Her hand twitched and for a terrible second, I thought she was going to claw his eyes out. Instead, in this incredibly creepy and surreal twitch of her facial muscles, she smiled. It looked like something out of a picture book I had read as a child. A book about witches.

“You really need to do something about that temper of yours, Yuy,” she said in a sweet tone that didn’t match her eyes at all, “Maxwell must _really_ be a masochist to put up like a brute like you. Or maybe he’s just that hard up for cash. Beggars can’t be choosers, I suppose,” she quirked an icy, threatening smirk at me, reminding me of crocodiles, her doll-like eyes trailing over my bruises and abrasions like I was a bug she was forced to dissect, “You have my condolences.”

She turned, pale blonde hair and blue skirt twirling around her, and strode off to their table, her heels clicking staccato. For the very first time, I realized just how quiet the cafeteria had gotten. Stephanie followed after her like the loyal poodle she was, still looking a bit frightened and unsure if she wanted to get away from us or her friend. I didn’t wait for her to decide to scratch my boyfriend’s face into confetti or come back with the rest of their friends to teach us some manners. I snagged both of our bags, grabbed him by the arm, and dragged him out of the cafeteria and into the nearest empty classroom in the most deserted hallway I could find, slamming the door behind us.

I was pissed, although I couldn’t tell you who at. Dorothy and Stephanie for their bullshit, Heero for always taking such stupid, pointless risks because he had some bizarre issue with people talking shit about me, or myself for not finding a way to stop it before it had gotten that bad. And while it might not have looked like much to the casual observer, I knew Dorothy too well. Heero hadn’t let her have her way and, infinitely worse, he had disrespected her. He had talked back to her and that wouldn’t stand. We would be lucky if she only took things into her own hands, but Zechs was probably going to hear about it. I could almost really start believing that the universe actively hates me. It felt like I had a target on my back all that week.

“What the hell is wrong with you?!” I yelled at him as soon as I had the door shut, “Huh?! What is your problem?!”

He wouldn’t meet my eyes, staring fixedly at the floor, but his face was hard and still angry. That that anger might be directed at me for not letting him hit her hurt, but I’d survive. He wouldn’t have if that blow had landed. Zechs and Relena’s circle of friends and followers was… kind of strange when you get down to it. The both of them had their separate groups and they never seemed to mingle unless they were ganging up on someone. Sure, they went to events and parties together, but they weren’t especially close and I sure wouldn’t call them friends. Stephanie wouldn’t be caught dead around Mueller and it often seemed like the only thing that kept them together was the fact that Relena and Zechs are brother and sister.

Only that wasn’t exactly true. It’s not something that many people know, but I’ve come to realize after dealing with the lot of them for eight years. Relena and Zechs weren’t the glue binding the two groups of popular kids and bullies together, it was Dorothy. It had always been Dorothy, even when we were in middle school. If someone made a diagram of the groups of friends in Relena and Zechs’s entourages, Relena would be red and Zechs would be blue and Dorothy would be the purple right in the middle. It’s a strange thing given that Dorothy and Relena have been inseparable since they were two (to quote Quatre here), and Relena loathes her brother, but Dorothy has been friends with Zechs and Mueller since they were young as well.

I don’t really get it myself. Dorothy doesn’t seem to like Zechs all that much, either, probably _because_ of Relena, yet there are times when she seems more comfortable in his group of friends than Relena’s. Despite the way she dresses and her prim, calculated manners, among that group of prissy, rich girls, she kind of sticks out like a sore thumb. I’ve never seen her join in on their gossip on cute boys and dating and fashion tips. She’s always so quiet and only ever seems to open up when she and Relena are alone and away from the other girls. She always seems to act more naturally when she’s sharing a cigarette with Alex or joining in with Zechs’s group to torment me. Dresses and perfume and hand bags only seem to suit her on a skin deep level, something she wants everyone around her to see and believe, but cruelty like what Zechs and his friends have seems to suit her all the way down to her black, twisted heart.

And on the other side of that is Zechs. You would think he would get annoyed having his sister’s friend pal around with his, but I think she amuses him. The ice princess that’s secretly as fucked up and rebellious as he is, but unlike him, can play both sides of the fence. I know for a fact that Trant has a crush on her, though even he isn’t quite stupid enough to tell anyone about it, let alone ask her out. My point is that, if Heero had done anything to her, even just given her a love tap, he wouldn’t just have her or even Relena to worry about. I’m not saying that Zechs is protective of her any more than he’s actually protective of his little sister, it’s just an excuse for him. But Trant and Alex _would_ be protective, since Trant is Alex’s best friend, and I didn’t want a single one of them gunning for my boyfriend. That he didn’t seem to care and this could easily happen again made me frantic. How, after all these months, did he not get that he could not pull this shit with these people? You would think that what had happened to his friend because of bullies would be enough to make him scared, not angry.

“Heero!” I snapped at him and he finally raised his head, his blue eyes on fire with rage and frustration, “Are you insane?! You can’t keep doing this! You can’t keep… challenging them like this! You’re going to get yourself killed!”

That finally seemed to get his attention and something black flashed in those eyes that I love so much.

“Why did you stop me, Duo?” he growled at me, “Why didn’t you just let me hit her?!”

“Why?!” I exclaimed, baffled, “Are you fucking kidding me?! That bitch probably bites the heads off rabbits as a hobby and you want to know why I wouldn’t let you retaliate against her?! And for what?! She didn’t even lay a finger on either of us!”

“I couldn’t let her say those things about you!” he bellowed, his face bright red and there was something wild there, something completely out of control that frightened me a little.

“What things?!” I demanded, “That my face is ugly? Well, guess what, it is! You might say it isn’t, but I don’t exactly look like a million bucks right now, ‘Ro! That I’m a whore? That I’m letting you fuck me for money? So what? They say that shit all the time, why is this time any different?”

“She said that I beat you!” he cried, all of his anger bleeding out of him and into this heartbreaking horror that made me want to hug him and beat up Dorothy myself, like he couldn’t even understand how she could have said something like that, “She said that I did that to your face and everyone believes her! They all think that I hurt you!”

The dam suddenly broke and he was sobbing. I understood everything as I watched him lose control over himself. I understood his anger and why he had tried to hit her. He saw what my dad did to me as unthinkable and for everyone to think that he had done it instead… it was nightmarish for him.

“I can’t…” he sobbed, “I can’t let them think that… that I would do that to you…”

I made a small noise. I’m not sure what it was, a moan or a cry or a whimper, but it was one of pain and I didn’t even think, just went to him and wrapped my arms around him tightly. That I was hurting myself didn’t matter, not at all. That was all that it seemed like he needed. Suddenly he was hugging me back and crying against my chest like a little kid, holding me a bit too tightly and that told me more than anything else the kind of emotional upheaval he was under, that he wasn’t thinking about my injuries and treating me like I was made of glass. I kissed his hair and he cried harder, holding me like nothing was good enough, like he couldn’t tighten his arms enough, couldn’t touch enough.

“Oh, love,” I murmured into that thick mop of chocolate hair, “why does this bother you so much? So what if they think that you did this to me? We both know it isn’t true.”

“I would never!” he cried out, almost screaming, and I could feel him shaking in my arms, like just the thought of striking me, for any reason, absolutely revolted him, “I would never do that to you! Not **_ever_**! I would never lay a hand on you like that!”

“I know that, Heero,” I said, pained by the state he was in, “You know that I know that.”

His head shot up and the look in those red-rimmed eyes tore my heart apart.

“Say it,” his voice was raspy, barely above a whisper, his words a desperate plea, “Please, please tell me, Duo.”

His arms fell from around me and his hands reached for my face, but halted in midair, afraid to touch me. I grabbed his hands, giving both a gentle squeeze and I smiled for him, the only thing I could think of to do and felt horribly inadequate for this. Nothing I could do or say would make this better for him. I felt so… weak and useless. The boy I loved was hurting and I was floundering, so inept. I didn’t know what to do, beyond give him what he was asking for.

“You would never hurt me,” I said with conviction, because I knew it then more than I ever had before that it was the truth. Everyone hurts me. Betrays me. Quatre turned his back on me. Trowa cheated on me and tried to rape me. My mother abandoned me for nine long years. And my father… my father… but not Heero. Never him. Emotionally or physically, he would never do those things to me. But me… “Never, Heero. You would never strike me or harm me. Everything she said… it’s total bullshit. I know that, you have to believe that I know that.”

I let go of his hands to cradle his face, his cheeks slick with tears but his eyes starting to lose that crazed look and softening with love.

“I’m safe with you,” the words seemed to just burst out of me, coming from some mysterious source that I can’t name, “You’re the only one… the only person in my life that’s never hurt me. You’re the only one I can trust.”

He seemed to be returning to normal and I had hoped that what I was saying was enough for him to see that he had nothing to feel guilty about, that Dorothy was just full of shit and even if everyone in school bought into it, we were the only ones that actually mattered and I knew better. But when I told him that he’s the one I can trust, he only cried harder and gripped my shoulders, pressing himself against me. Later, I would be amazed that I hadn’t felt nervous or trapped, but I hadn’t even thought about it at the time. Heero had been upset and that was the only thing I could see.

“I couldn’t protect you!” he continued to sob brokenly and I was starting to get seriously scared and loathing myself that I couldn’t snap him out of it, “I couldn’t save you!”

“What are you talking about?” I asked softly, trying to hide how much he was freaking me out. I’m usually the one to snap like this, not him. Heero is always in control, always so in touch with his emotions, this wasn’t like him, “Heero, she didn’t do anything to me-,”

“Not her!” he said, “Your dad!”

I reeled like I had been slapped. That’s what this was about again? How could he possibly feel guilty about that? It hadn’t had anything to do with him. I had gotten beaten to hell because of my mistake and my father’s temper, there was no other reason.

“It isn’t your job to protect me,” I scolded him lightly, tightening my arms around him, “You’re my boyfriend, not my bodyguard. It isn’t your job-,”

“Yes, it is!” he cried into my shoulder, “I have to protect you! I don’t want you to get hurt! I love you and I should have done something-,”

“ _How?_ ” I pressed, “How could you have, Heero? It happened at two in the morning, in my house, with my _father_. How could you have protected me? This wasn’t your fault!”

“I just don’t want you to be hurt anymore,” his sobs were petering off into something less violent, but weary, his breath hitching, “I hate it and there’s nothing… nothing I can _do_!”

I stroked his hair, searching for the right words, searching for whatever it is that’s in him that always has the right thing to say to me to make me feel better. For about the billionth time since I was a kid, I felt like there was something missing in me. Something lacking. I even failed at this.

“You don’t need to save me,” I told him, “I’m alright, Heero, I really am. I know you’re scared and I’m sorry I’m too weak to do the right thing… but this isn’t on you. You haven’t failed me. You love me, you give a shit about me. That’s all I care about. I don’t need some gallant white knight to ride in and save me from a dragon. I don’t need a super hero. I need a boyfriend that shows me that he loves me every day and is always there for me, even when I’m being a flaming moron, who’ll kiss me even when I look like Frankenstein’s monster and can get this upset over a few bruises. That’s all I’ve ever wanted and I still can’t believe sometimes that a person like that actually exists and wants anything to do with me!”

He lifted his head, slower this time, and finally seemed to be himself again, his eyes shining with something other than tears. In that careful way of his, he cupped my cheek, warm fingers finding the curve of my face like they had been made for that very purpose. For the first time, I realized that I had been crying, too, although hell if I know when that had started.

“I love you,” he whispered, “so, so much… and it still never seems enough… I just want to take all of this from you and I don’t know how…”

‘ _and it still never seems enough.’_

Those words sent fear shooting through me like an electric current. How could Heero think that? How couldn’t he realize how perfect he was, how amazing and wonderful he was? Did… did he know? Had he realized or suspected that I was thinking about breaking up with him? Was that why he’s been so clingy lately? Did some part of him know that I was looking to end things? Worse, did he think it was his fault? My guilt reared up and ate me alive. This was all my fault. Everything he was feeling. Guilt over my getting beaten. Thinking he wasn’t good enough. Every tear. All because of me. I’m shit. Just rotten, putrid shit.

“You can’t,” I whispered back around the dagger in my throat, “No one can. It just… it is what it is. You know that. And you don’t need to. I never asked for you to do that.”

‘It is what it is.’ How pathetic. The boy I would give up my tattered soul for was crying and in pain and that was the best that I could do?

          “But I want to,” he said sadly, “I hate this so much, seeing what he does to you. I can’t do anything…”

          “But you _do_ ,” I insisted, trying desperately to get through to him, “Heero, if it weren’t for you…”

          I bit my tongue. I was smart enough to know ‘I probably would have killed myself by now’ was not the right thing to say. Even if it’s most likely the truth.

          “Before we became friends, I had nothing,” I said instead, “ _Nothing._ I didn’t even have much when Quatre was alive. I was just holding on by my fingernails. And after… after it was worse than having nothing. Trowa kept me going for a little while longer and after that fell apart, I was drowning. Hell, after him I was _worse_ because I was so sure all of it was my fault and every bad thing that happened between the two of us just confirmed that I was always going to be alone. That I _should_ be alone. No one could ever love me, not as I really am. But here we are. Every time you say you love me and it isn’t just a line… you save me a little bit more every time, you get that don’t you? I know that sounds stupid and sappy…”

          “It doesn’t,” he assured me, his eyes swimming with tears again, but also this bright and beautiful affection and he rested his forehead against mine, “It doesn’t sound stupid at all.”

          “It’s the truth,” I whispered, struggling against tears of my own, “I mean it, Heero. I don’t need you to do anything about my father. You care. Just knowing someone cares… someone who isn’t just using me, someone who actually sees _me…_ that’s all I need from you. Everything else can sort itself out, but as long as you don’t hate me or resent me, I can survive anything else.”

          Such pretty words. I’d say they were lies, perfectly tailored to comfort him, but they aren’t. Not really. Those other things are there, eating away at me… at us, but I meant what I said. I could survive all of them. The rapes. The abuse. My doubts. My ugliness. My past. I could survive it… so long as he still loved me. That’s the root of it, isn’t it? Why this thought that we should just break up won’t leave me no matter how I try to distance myself from it. This terror and surety that one day… one day soon… he won’t love me anymore. He’ll get sick of my shit. He’ll see the real me and finally come to his senses. Or worse, I’ll make him hate me and, just like with Trowa, we’ll keep going on until there’s nothing left of us, not even a friendship. I can’t survive that. I don’t even want to try.

          “I love you,” his earnest words ripped open my heart, bleeding and raw, and at the same time, they mended something wounded in me.

          ‘Just a little longer,’ I prayed to God, the universe, Fate, Venus, whoever the fuck would listen, ‘Please, just let me have this for a little longer. Let me not hurt him and just have things be like this without me making a mistake a little bit more. That’s all I ask.’

          Then he was kissing me, so gently and sweetly and nothing else mattered. I got that little while when I didn’t have to think about anything else but how much I loved him, pushing away all my insecurities as I just focused on his lips on mine and his hands on my face and shoulder.

          Suddenly, the shrill sound of the school bell ripped through the air and we jolted from each other in shock.

          “Shit!” Heero swore and I almost echoed his curse.

We needed to get going before our little hidey hole got invaded. I didn’t know about him, but I would rather those pieces of shit didn’t see the two of us with tears on our faces, as vulnerable and raw as we both were. There was so much more that I wanted to say to him and I saw the same need in his eyes, but we just didn’t have the time. That’s a good damned way to sum up our relationship. Never having the time to do what we wanted, always pulling away from each other. I winced as I realized that my shoulder was burning again and it hurt worse than before. Of course my ever attentive boyfriend, even recovering from his little freak out, noticed it.

          “What’s wrong?” he asked in alarm and I rushed to diffuse his concern. I didn’t want to make him feel any worse than I already had.

          “It’s nothing,” I tried to assure him, “My shoulder is just hurting me a little.”

          That only seemed to make it worse as he frowned guiltily, obviously having realized that my pain was from him grabbing me.

          “I’m sorry,” he looked absolutely miserable and I would have given my left arm to go back and stop us from ever going into that fucking cafeteria.

          “For what?” I tried to hide my exasperation since it was mostly with myself, “It’s not that bad, Heero, it just aches a little-,”

          “I mean for everything,” he said in shame, looking away from me, “Freaking out like that, crying all over you… you don’t need this right now…”

          I fought against snapping at him as I suddenly felt very irritated with him. I was so sick of him coddling me like I was… broken or something. Or like I was a child, something to be protected from everything. 

          “‘Ro,” I said sternly in a scolding tone that I have almost never taken with him. It was enough to make his head snap up, his eyes a little bit wide with uncertainty, “don’t be stupid.”

          Before hurt could enter those pretty blue eyes, I put his face in my hands the way he had mine earlier, using the soft, reverent touch to soothe away any sting.

          “You can’t keep telling me that I have every right to cry and be upset and not to bottle my feelings up and then try to push all of yours down just because I’m having a slightly shitty day, ok? This is a partnership, remember? There’s nothing wrong with you needing some comfort, too. I just wish that I don’t suck at it so much…”

          “You do not ‘suck’ at it,” it was his turn to scold me and he curled one hand over my right wrist, sliding his hand to join mine covering his cheek. The warmth of his skin almost made me shiver, “You do just fine. If you hadn’t been here to help me, I’d still be a wreck.”

          “Are you ok now?” I asked worriedly, searching his face for any sign of his emotional turmoil, but he just smiled at me. It was a tiny one, faint and fragile, but still honest.

          “I’m ok, thanks to you,” I flushed at his words, feeling warm and pleased despite myself that, while I still thought I hadn’t done enough, I had done _something_ to make him feel better, “I really am sorry for losing my shit on you like that, Duo. I shouldn’t have-,”

          I kissed him to shut him up, not wanting him to feel bad just for crying and getting upset. It turned out to be a much more effective method than us arguing. We didn’t have time to fight about our close encounter with Dorothy or his over-protective tendencies or how him just… breaking down like that, all over _me_ , had scared the shit out of me. I broke off the kiss and dragged him out of the classroom. We ended up being too late to our next classes for me to go to the nurse’s office, so I just put off getting another ice pack and checking on my shoulder for later.

Things went kind of… bad when we had to finally separate for different classes. I think Heero had put it out of his mind, the whole stupid affair and that we would have to be by ourselves for a good chunk of the rest of the school day, because he got kind of wild eyed and panicky, hesitant to let me out of his sight. Between my injuries and his guilt over riling Dorothy up, he was obviously paranoid about something happening to me. To be fair, I wasn’t in the state to be running from anyone and the bitch was with me in my literature class, so he kind of did have a good reason to worry. And yeah, both Relena and Dorothy used every opportunity they had to fuck with me that period, taking out Heero’s slight on me because Dorothy wouldn’t take anything out on Heero herself even though she loathed him for what he did to Relena because Relena didn’t want her to. As for Relena, well, as far as she was concerned, everything was my fault anyway, so I might as well have nearly hit her best friend myself.

They put tacks on my chair, stole my pencils, tore up the poem we were tasked to write, pulled my hair, tripped me, the whole works. It’s funny, in the past when they pulled similar crap on me, it would have torn me apart and laid me low. I’ve called love a double-edged sword before, but that’s not really true. It’s a sword, but it’s also a shield. My love for Heero had torn me apart that day, made me hate myself for hurting him and made me ache when I had seen him sad and in tears, like a sword through my heart. But it was also my shield against anything those two bitches could have thought to do to me, because none of it mattered. I was too terrified of what Zechs might do to Heero in their class together to care about what might happen to me. Not for the first time, I wished that he had picked another elective.

More than once during that period, my hand twitched towards the pocket that held my phone, wishing desperately to know if he was ok, but I didn’t dare text him. I didn’t want to get my phone taken away if there was a real emergency and I didn’t want to get Heero into trouble with yet another teacher. So, I sat, waited, brooded, fretted, and ignored the two ice queens sitting behind me as rubber bands were shot at the back of my head. The next period bell seemed to take years. When I met with Heero in the hall on our way to gym and saw that he didn’t have a scratch on him, I had to fight the urge to hug him.

My relief didn’t last long. All through gym, as I sat on the bleachers and the rest of the class were playing indoor soccer because it had rained sometime in the early afternoon and the field was too muddy, my stomach was in knots. I didn’t bother trying to use the period to get homework done, I was too busy watching out for Heero, not that I could do anything. And sure enough, Zechs seemed to have it out for him. Not seriously, not like he would have if Heero had done the same thing to him or one of his close friends, but he always seemed right there, slamming into my boyfriend or ‘accidentally’ kicking a ball at him and even managed to kick him a few times in the leg, pretending he had just missed the ball. Like Zechs has ever been that clumsy. His third successful kick actually seemed to hurt Heero quite a bit and left him limping. It enraged me, seeing him fall to one knee and grab at his wounded leg while that prick stood there with this arrogant smirk on his face.

Despite all the warnings I had given Heero, I almost made myself a hypocrite by running over there and pounding my fist into Zechs’s face, but Horner saved me the trouble by bellowing for Heero to see the nurse. Heero shook his head and made some gestures with his hands, saying something that I couldn’t hear. Horner nodded and pointed the bleachers. I watched helplessly as Heero limped towards me, wondering just how badly he was hurt, right up until Horner turned his back and Heero mysteriously lost his limp, walking just fine to the bleachers and climbing up to my seat.

“Hi, again,” he beamed at me as he sat down next to me.

I shot him an incredulous look, amazed that he had really just done that.

“Laying it on a bit thick, are we?” I arched an eyebrow at him and he chuckled.

“Well, he really did kick me pretty good,” he admitted and rolled up his pant leg to see the damage.

I hissed at the sight of his bloody leg. It wasn’t anything serious, but Zechs had taken a bit of skin off with that last kick and there was some bruising from the others.

“Maybe you _should_ see the nurse,” I said.

“Nah, I’m fine,” he confessed, “I just acted like it’s worse than it is so I could get out of there before it _did_ get worse. I would rather spend the rest of the period with you anyway. And I might have hoped I could get him sent to the principal’s office.”

It was a pretty smart idea and reminded me of how he had tagged me out in dodgeball before to get me away from Zechs, but I snorted derisively at the thought of Horner sending Zechs to Stoan just for kicking someone.

“That will never happen, not with Horner,” I informed him, “He isn’t a terrible guy, but he doesn’t want to know what Zechs is really like. He doesn’t want to get in trouble with anyone or deal with any of that shit. Besides, he might have been forced to kick Zechs off the wrestling team, but he’s still Horner’s star football player. So long as Zechs and Mueller keep winning him games, he probably wouldn’t care if the asshole strode over here and punched me in the face.”

That made Heero’s eyes widen with shock.

“He’s really that bad?” he asked, “He never struck me as the type that would condone bullying.”

“He doesn’t,” I assured him, “He would just make sure that his back was turned at the perfect moment and stop it when he can claim he never saw what happened or didn’t know who started it.”

“Like that’s any better,” Heero muttered angrily.

A memory flashed in my head. Zechs holding my head under the water at the public swimming pool and our then gym teacher looking on, only to look away when he realized I had noticed him. He had looked so guilty… and he hadn’t moved an inch, even after as I had coughed and hacked up water while Quatre had held me above the water.

“It’s better,” I muttered bitterly, “Maybe not by much, but it’s better than nothing.”

I almost jumped as Heero held my hand, not expecting the contact and I looked nervously over to where our classmates had resumed playing, but Heero refused to let me snatch my hand back.

“It’s fine,” he soothed, “No one can see.”

He was right, I realized, our hands were hidden between our bodies and even if the group came a lot closer, they wouldn’t be able to see it. It still made me feel self-conscious, but that touch eased the coldness in my chest at that painful memory and I just didn’t have the strength to pull my hand out of his. Heero didn’t press, didn’t ask what had bothered me, just comforted and it was nice, not having to talk about it or lie or get defensive. I wished our morning could have been like this. Eventually he did let go of me, but only so I had my hand to start working on our assignments. Now that he was next to me, I wasn’t freaking out and could focus on other things. When the bell rang, neither of us moved, just watched as the boys disappeared into the locker room. Heero needed to shower, too, but lingered on the bleachers with me, which helped to make me feel less skittish and on edge. I didn’t want him in there alone with the rest of them and didn’t mind if I lost a little bit of free time waiting for the rest of them to leave first.

“You’re coming over to my place for a bit, right?” Heero asked hopefully as we waited for the crowd to thin out.

“Yeah, I need to pick up the money,” I said, even though I hadn’t decided a hundred percent what I was going to do with it, hide it until I could give it to my mother or just leave it for my father. My lifelong instincts of obedience told me to do the latter while my sense of justice and spite and anger at the man didn’t give a fuck what I did with that money so long as he never saw a cent of it. It even wanted to rub it in his face that I had found it and he was never going to have it, but I’m not _that_ suicidal.

          Heero beamed happily at me and I reflected that it really didn’t matter if my father would have wanted me home or if I should really just grab the money and go in hopes of catching my mother between shifts, I couldn’t say no to that look. I needed some time away from my parents in any case, time out of that house that wasn’t devoted to school or work and I desperately wanted some time with Heero where I wasn’t freaking out or thinking about maudlin shit. Being with him at school had helped get me out of my head and put some much needed distance between me and everything that had happened early that morning, and more distance could only do me more good. Maybe with enough time, I could even lie to myself that nothing before homeroom that day had happened. Not true, but it was a nice thought anyway.

          We gave it ten minutes before descending the bleachers towards the locker room. I cursed the fact that we hadn’t really been paying much attention to who had already left, but with my one eye still shut, I was having a hard trouble tracking people through the crowd. I recognized Trant and Alex as they rushed out the door, but that was about it. It was Friday, though, and no one was sticking around now that the final bell had rung. Ten minutes was all it had taken to clear most of our class out of there.

          “Anything you want to do tomorrow?” Heero asked me as we headed for the locker room door.

          “Not especially,” I had to admit, “I think I’d like to get the desk put together, and paint the treehouse if it isn’t raining, unless there’s something you wanted to do…”

          I hoped that my eye would open by tomorrow afternoon and the rest of my many pains would fade by then, but I felt confident I could still do the work. Thanks to my job with Leneski’s, I could almost do painting and small constructions tasks blindfolded.

          “I don’t have anything in mind yet,” Heero told me, “but painting sounds good. My dad said it’s supposed to be nice out. A bit chilly, but not that cold-,”

          I was too busy focusing on what Heero was saying and the way his handsome face lit up as he talked about our free time the next day that I didn’t see it when someone stepped out of the locker room immediately in front of me, or the elbow aimed for my face. All I really remember noticing came from a flash of movement in my peripheral vision, but that was enough to jab my battle instincts into high gear. My head moved before I was even conscious of it doing so or why. Which is a damned good thing because, in the time it would have taken me to realize something was coming at the injured side of my face, it would have already been too late and I would have gotten a broken nose anyway.

          I only became aware that something was happening when something very solid and strong slammed into my swollen eye and cheek, only barely missing it’s intended target. The pain was… immense. It’s a good thing it had only been one hit and nothing had followed it because I became useless as I rocked back, nearly falling on my ass and grabbing at the side of the bleachers to keep from doing that. Bright camera flashes exploded in my skull and I think I might have cried out, either in pain or shock, but I don’t really remember. All I remember is the sharp, shooting agony followed by a wave of red heat. It felt like someone had punched my eye right out of my head and all I could do was cover it with my free hand. Very familiar and much hated, smug laughter had my other eye flying open, adrenaline overriding the injury for a moment, putting me on high alert like the wounded animal that I was. I was thoroughly unsurprised to see that the elbow in question had come from Zechs. He had Mueller in tow, too, which meant Heero and I were fucked if they wanted to start something. I didn’t even think Horner or much of anyone else was around. 

          “Duo!” I heard Heero scream and I prayed that he would stay wherever he was, that he wouldn’t do anything stupid because I could barely stay upright, I wasn’t going to be able to stop him like I had at lunch.

          “Whoops,” Zechs crooned through his laughter, “Sorry about that, Maxwell, I didn’t _see_ you there.”

          His jibe made both him and Mueller laugh harder. I felt someone grab my shoulder, but I didn’t even flinch. Don’t ask me how, but I knew it was Heero. Some part of me… yeah, fine, call it my soul or my heart or whatever, but something knew from that one touch that it was my boyfriend and not one of my bullies even before I opened my eye, just like how I knew that he wasn’t going to go after Zechs, choosing to stay by me and make sure I was ok instead of retaliate. That didn’t stop him from glaring angrily at the prick as Zechs walked by, still laughing. Mueller patted my shoulder in what would have been a friendly gesture if he hadn’t done it so fucking hard. I did flinch then.

          “Nice face, fag,” he mocked, “You should really keep from smashing it into things before you break something.”

          I felt Heero tighten his grip on my shoulder, but that was ok. So long as his hand was on me, it wasn’t going to be punching Mueller’s lights out. I tracked them as they walked out of the gym, joking about how I was going to look even more grotesque now. I let their cruel words wash over me as I tried to get feeling back into the left side of my face. It didn’t matter, I told myself, not the physical abuse or the verbal. They were assholes and it didn’t matter. Even if they were right.

          “Oh, god, Duo,” Heero helped me right myself and the pain was finally subsiding enough that my vision wasn’t swimming anymore, “Are you ok?!”

I tried to remember just how many blows to the head I had taken in the last twenty-four hours, but compared to what my father had done, Zechs’s smack with his elbow had been a love tap.

“I think so,” I muttered, though I wasn’t entirely sure.

I pressed my hand harder to my eye, testing the injury, and made a small moan at the immediate wave of pain.

“Hey, don’t touch it,” Heero soothed, “Here, let me see.”

He pulled my hand from my face and hissed in sympathy.

“Yeah, it’s swelling up worse,” he said unhappily, “We need to get you to the nurse.”

“No, it’s fine,” I tried to assure him, “I just need to get some ice on it when we get to your place.”

“Duo-,” he tried to argue and I saw that stubborn set of his face that told me he was well prepared to fight me on this, plastered over his fear and anger.

“Please, ‘Ro,” I begged and hated how whiny and tired my voice sounded, “I just want to get out of here before any other bullshit thing happens, ok? It’s Friday, the week is over, and there is nothing the nurse is going to do for me that I can’t do myself. Please, let’s just go.”

I felt like I was on the edge of that cliff again, inches from plummeting off. I was done. I couldn’t take anymore. I was mere seconds away from dragging him out of that damned gymnasium if I had to, but I could not do this anymore, the fighting, the lying, dealing with all these people and all the shit in my head and the damned, aching pain in my face and the rest of my body. I needed it all to stop. Whatever Heero saw just then on my face must have scared him, because that stubbornness bled right out of him in worried tenderness. He gently stroked the right side of my face.

“Ok,” he said softly, his thumb tracing over my skin that suddenly felt chilled, “Ok, you’re right. We have plenty of ice packs and some naproxen. I think we have some ointment for the swelling, too. Let’s just get you home.”

Home. I could have cried. I felt like it had been days since I had been there and I didn’t really care about his reasoning for caving so easily, his concern for my emotional state or his fear that Zechs might lay another ambush for us if we lingered too long. I could see the light at the end of that tunnel, shining just a little more brightly. Heero even skipped his shower, looking around for Horner and when he didn’t show, he grabbed my wrist and we fled the school like both of our asses were on fire. I was completely shocked when we made it out the door and onto the main street without an incident. I might actually survive until Saturday after all.

“I’m sorry,” Heero apologized when we hit the main crossover street that would take us to his and we finally had enough privacy where no one would eavesdrop on us, “If I hadn’t messed with Dorothy…”

“This would have happened anyway,” I sighed, “He loves fucking with me when I’m hurt, you know that. It’s not the first time he’s hit me when I’ve been bruised. He probably wouldn’t have hit me quite that hard, but he wouldn’t have been able to resist. This wasn’t your fault.”

“Is your eye really ok?” he asked fussily, looking at my face in paranoia, probably thinking he should have dragged my ass to the nurse anyway.

“It’s fine,” I said wearily, “It was swollen shut in the first place. It just hurts like hell.”

He gave me a tiny, comforting smile and took my hand in his. My instincts screamed at me to pull away, but I just couldn’t. A part of me felt like the only thing that had kept me together that entire day was that hand around mine and I couldn’t make myself pull away from him. I didn’t have any more strength. I had been scraped raw and it wasn’t even time for my first work shift yet. That alone made me feel all my tiredness like it had been amplified by the power of fucking ten. I didn’t even care if anyone saw us and ran us out of town. I was beyond the ability to care anymore.

Kanuck was at the door to greet us, but he was the only one. Mariela and Justin were nowhere to be found. That wasn’t entirely rare, but I would have thought at least Mariela to be home on a Friday. Heero caught my perplexed look and chuckled.

“It’s date night,” he explained.

“Your parents go on dates?” I asked, baffled, “Doesn’t that kind of defeat the point being, you know, married and all?”

“They like to go out just the two of them at least once every other week,” he said with some affection, “They’ve been doing it since I got old enough to get by with a babysitter.”

It must be nice to have parents that still loved each other seventeen years into their marriage enough to want to spend time alone with each other and actually were financially secure enough to find that time away from their kid and work, I reflected. But that only made my chest ache as I remembered that morning, my father belting my mother across the face and I had to focus on something else. I didn’t want to remember any of it, not when I was with Heero. I didn’t want to go back to that dark place in my thoughts. 

          When we got to the kitchen, Heero made a beeline for the freezer, but I was busy frantically looking around the room. I almost screamed with relief when I spotted a wad of bills sitting so very innocently on the counter next to fridge, weighed down by paperweight shaped like an apple. I snatched them up and, even though I had no clue how much money my father had given me the previous morning, my fingers automatically flicked through the various twenties and tens, counting them out to make sure none were missing. I got to a hundred, then a hundred and thirty and there were still more bills. My stomach began to sink with anxiety as I got to a hundred and fifty, then a hundred and seventy. How much fucking money had he given me?

          By the time I had counted all of it, all two-hundred and thirty bucks of it, I felt like I was going to puke. How, I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs. Scream until I was coughing blood. How could he do this? How could he have taken two-hundred and thirty fucking bucks of _our_ money, and use it on his goddamn _car_?! We couldn’t pay our fucking bills. We could barely pay to feed ourselves right now. And he was using more than our monthly food budget on _car parts._ Why? Was he insane? Didn’t he understand how far up shit creek we were? He had always been selfish, always so sure that he knew best and his way was the only way, but this? This was crazy. He never would have done this five years ago. He never would have been this… this reckless, if not with our welfare, then his own.

          I squeezed the wad of cash almost to the point of crumpling it. I wanted to tear it up and throw it like it was so much confetti. I wanted to shove it down my father’s throat. I wanted to go out and use it on something stupid, like… like… fuck, I don’t even know. I could only think of practical things like winter coats or a new washer. Maybe a nice, new dress for my mother or… or jewelry or something. Lots of books and CDs and cat toys or games for Heero. I wanted to do it just out of spite and rub it in my father’s face. I didn’t know. All I did know was that I was pissed. Properly, seeing red kind of pissed. And I hated that money. I hated it almost as much as I hated my father. He had had no right to entrust me with that much money, but beyond that, it felt like the source of everything wrong in my life. I know that isn’t true, but that’s what it felt like just then. I didn’t just hate that money, but all money, the very concept of it. It was so easy to blame everything on it, even when I knew that a lot of that blame fell, not on capitalism or our financial problems, but on my father’s shoulders.

          I forced those feelings away, knowing it was all just a rage fantasy, like how I used to fantasize about taking my father’s gun and blowing away all the pricks at school, knowing nothing would really come from it and I shoved the money into my flimsy wallet, carefully putting it in one of the pockets of my bookbag and zipping it closed. See? I can learn, sometimes. No way in fucking hell was I putting it in my pocket. Never again. Heero missed my mini temper tantrum by twenty seconds as he dug out an ice pack and handed it to me. I immediately pressed it to my throbbing cheek and eye. The whole thing was starting to feel less and less like my face and it was so swollen and hard, it was kind of like clay that had been in the fridge. I didn’t even want to look at myself in the mirror.

          I followed Heero upstairs and into the guest bathroom where he dug out a couple pills for me to take and some anti-inflammatory ointment. I even let him put it on my face, although the mere thought of him touching my blackened, disgusting skin made me cringe.

          “I want to look at your leg,” I said when he was done fussing over me. Well, as done as he would ever be. He was still looking at me like I was a puppy he had just watched being beaten by with a mallet.

          I could see him fighting with it, not caring about his own injury and just wanting to take care of me, but he flashed me a wry grin.

          “Alright, Doctor Maxwell,” he teased and put his foot up on the toilet seat, rolling up his leg for me.

          I blushed, but only a tiny bit, and focused on his leg. Zechs had really done a number on it considering he had only kicked him a few times. The bottom of his leg right above his foot was covered in bloody scratches, his darker skin tone making the black and purple bruises look not as horrifying as they did on me, but it still made me want to find Zechs Darlian and bash his face in. I got to do my impromptu nurse act, washing Heero’s leg off, covering the scratches with anti-bacterial ointment and bandages. Heero was a great patient, not even hissing when I sterilized the area, although he tensed. It felt… good. Taking care of him. Being the one to make something better for once, even if that was an illusion.

          “You’d make a really good doctor, you know that?” he said and I was shocked to realize that he wasn’t teasing me this time.

          I snorted in dismissal, but felt a little bit pleased at his praise. He was kind of right, I guess. I’ve administered so much first aid on myself that I’ve gotten plenty of practice in taking care of cuts and bruises and broken bones. Maybe I _would_ be good at it. At least I had a head start. Not that I could afford anything as outlandish as medical school, so it was kind of a moot point. I hate being around people anyway, and I imagine my bedside manner would be… not the greatest. He suddenly frowned and looked at me with the same concern he seemed to have been throwing at me all day.

          “Are you alright?” he asked softly.

          “Yeah,” I said in confusion, “Why?”  
          “You’re… swaying again,” he pointed out and my blush darkened as I saw that he was right.

At some point, I had become unsteady on my feet again. I kept a hand on the counter to get myself to stop.

“I’m ok,” I sighed, “Just… tired.”

He smiled lovingly and brushed my bangs from my face.

“You don’t look so hot,” he examined, which just made me snort again. I was sure that I looked a lot of things.

“You should sit down and prop your leg up,” I tried to steer the conversation far away from myself, “It’ll keep the swelling down.”

He fell silent for a second, obviously considering something, then grabbed the bottom of my shirt between his thumb and first finger, giving it a gentle tug.

“Lay down with me,” he offered, but it sounded more like a plea.

I almost sighed again even as my heart blossomed, craving what he was presenting to me like a starving dog with a steak, drooling and whining. God, laying down with ‘Ro… it was all I wanted. I would have given anything in the entire world to do it, but… but I was scared shitless of the one thing that I wanted, how fucked is that? I was scared that it might lead to something. I was scared that I wasn’t going to be able to force myself to leave. And I was scared that he would smell me and get disgusted, like he hadn’t been hugging me and kissing me all day and been in my personal space enough to have smelled it already. But that didn’t do anything to stop the fear.

“I have work, Heero,” I said instead, trying to make it sound like a scolding, but it sounded more miserable to me.

That was right, I reminded myself, I have work and I needed to get the money back home before then, I didn’t have time to take a freaking nap. That should have made me feel better, having an excuse to keep going, never stopping, to think or feel or do something stupid. I had made enough of an ass of myself with him that week, I didn’t need any more opportunities as sleep deprived and raw as I was. So, why did it hurt me so badly?

“Just for a little while,” he begged, “Please, Duo, you need to rest for a little bit, you’re going to fall over.”

I felt so weak, standing there in his bathroom with those big, blue puppy eyes aimed at me, and that word ‘please’ in the air. Oh god, I wanted it. No, I needed it. After everything that morning… after spending days without him, I needed it like air. The last of my strength just crumbled away like it always does when I’m with him and I nodded. His relieved, brilliant smile would have done me in anyway.

He took my hand in his and led me gently, like I was a child, to his bedroom. He laid down on ‘my’ side of the bed, making me crawl on his side. I know I was dead tired because it took me several minutes to realize the reason he had done that was so I could lay facing him on my right side instead of having him spoon my back or having me lie on my bad side. It was the kind of forward thinking I was just not capable of making anymore. I laid down next to him and we just came together like magnets. He laid on his back and wrapped his left arm around my waist, keeping me close. If that touch wasn’t enough, his body heat seemed to suck me in and without any signals from body to brain, I was snuggling up to his side, throwing my arm around him and laying my head on his chest so I could hear his pleasant heartbeat. Heero sighed in pure contentment, almost like a purr. I very nearly did some of that myself when I felt his hand on my head, stroking my hair gently. My eyes started to droop, which was a very dangerous thing, but I couldn’t get it stopped. I had missed this so much, being with him like this. It really hit me in that moment, just how much I, both my body and my heart, had been hurting sleeping, or trying to sleep, without him those last few nights.

“This is nice,” I murmured sleepily.

“Yeah,” he agreed, almost absentmindedly.

“I missed this,” I voiced the thought, though I hadn’t intended to do so, and I distantly worried about where my mind was that I was blurting out stuff like this so easily and what else I might say in my exhausted state.

“I’ve missed it, too,” he sounded so pleased by my confession and I felt a pang of guilt that I don’t say things like that more often. I never think to, or the words just sound so stupid and awkward coming out of me. Or maybe there’s some other reason I can’t think of.

His heartbeat was so soothing to listen to and I could feel his gentle stroking dragging me deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole that I could not afford to get lost in, but it seemed impossible to pull myself out of. He was so warm and I was so cold.

“Close your eyes and take a nap,” he soothed and I could feel his eyes on me, watching me fight against sleep tenderly.

“If I do that,” I whined, forcing my eye open, which did nothing to make me feel less sleepy, it just made my eye burn like it was angry at me for denying it some rest, “I’m not getting up again.”

My boyfriend chuckled at me and my petulant tone.

“Is that such a bad thing?” he teased.

“I’m serious, Heero,” I grumbled irritably, “Don’t let me fall asleep or I’m going to miss work.”

In the state that I was currently in, I wasn’t even so sure that he would be able to wake me up if I did fall asleep. The sleep deprivation was one issue, but my body was seriously hurting and all it wanted was to rest and heal. Lying down had been a huge mistake, none of me wanted to get vertical again and I wasn’t looking forward to that battle, or trying to get it to cooperate to do physical labor. Every movement felt like passing through air made of mucus and jello. He paused in stroking my head and I knew right then that I was beyond exhausted because I almost whined like his damned dog.

“Maybe you shouldn’t be going to work if you’re this tired,” he broached cautiously like a man about to wade into a crocodile infested river, “I mean, with your job… you could have an accident…”

I felt a tiny bit of irritation at his worrywart fussing, but I couldn’t get up to full frustration because I knew he had every right to worry. My shoulder was fucked up, I couldn’t see out of one eye, and I work with a lot of dangerous equipment at both of my jobs.

“Not tired enough for that to happen,” I tried to appease him and it was the truth. I hadn’t had an accident when I hadn’t slept for two weeks, I wasn’t going to have one after just a couple of days, “And all of us have spotters. I’ll be alright.”

Again this was true, at least for Leneski’s, but I didn’t tell Heero that because Solo and I work so closely, he can usually stop me from doing anything stupid. Heero chewed on his lip, a nervous habit. I could see that he wanted to argue, that he was prepared to really pull out of the stops to keep me from leaving there, but also didn’t want to push me. It was my guilt that I was making him feel so conflicted that got me off him, forcing my body to move like pushing some great weight, almost audibly groaning with the physical and mental effort when all I wanted was to stay draped all over him, and didn’t stop until I was sitting on the edge of the bed. The loss in his eyes left my heart bleeding.

“I have to go, Heero,” I insisted and wondered if I was really trying to convince him of that, or myself, “This was really nice, but I need to drop the money off at home. If I lose it again, I’m going to scream.”

He quirked his lips in a tiny smile that didn’t fit the pain on the rest of his face at all.  
          “I know,” he said softly, seeing it as the losing battle it was. Or maybe he had known he couldn’t win at the start.

With some effort of his own, he sat up and put his hand on my good shoulder. Without meaning to, I leaned into it, craving more of that warmth.

“Duo…” he started and then did that hesitating thing again, telling me that whatever he was about to say was something that he either didn’t want to talk about or something that he knew was going to start a fight, making me tense up, thinking he was going to bring up my father again, “Come over after work tomorrow morning,” was what he said instead.

“Heero, I-,” I began to protest.

“Please,” he begged, hitting me below the belt, “You were planning on coming over later in the morning anyway, right? There’s no point wasting time you could be sleeping just to do a few chores that you might not even have.”

“My father-,” I tried, but he interrupted me again.

“He rarely shows up on Saturdays, you’ve said so yourself. And even if he is there, it’s Saturday, he’ll sleep in, won’t he?” he asked, already knowing that answer.

I nodded. Considering he had spent the good part of this morning getting hammered and then had left to drink even _more_ , I really didn’t think I would see him for the rest of the weekend. He was pissed and miserable and obviously didn’t want to see either me or my mother, plus he couldn’t work on the car, so common sense told me that Heero was right, going home Saturday to clean the house and appease my father was a total waste of my time. At least, I told myself it was common sense that was in the driver’s seat, but it just might have been my tiredness and how much I didn’t want to go home any time soon. But then I remember how enraged my dad had been that morning at me and wondered if it would be such a good idea. He had seemed… on edge and crazy. What if he did go home and didn’t find me there? Was even going to Heero’s at all that weekend a good idea?

‘I am not going to let him scare me away from Heero this weekend,’ I thought angrily, some of the anger I had felt at him that morning coming back, ‘I’m not sacrificing one of the only days we can have together just because he’s throwing a temper tantrum. He’s already beaten me to hell, what more can he do to me at this point?’

‘ _He can kill you_ ,’ the errant thought popped in my head and I recoiled from it like it had burned, refusing to consider that possibility as anything more than a paranoid fear.

The thought was irrelevant, whether I chose to believe in it or not. I think I really realized it then, which is probably just a tad ironic. Not when my father had been fucking me in the bathroom and I had gone numb. Not when I had lost my shit in front of Heero. Not even when I had nearly fallen asleep on him or when I had very seriously considered killing myself earlier that morning, but right then as I sat on his bed, feeling his warm body so close to mine. I was unravelling. I have been for quite some time now. Just... pushing away everything that’s hurt me or bothered me, made me feel guilty or scared. I just kept pushing it down like garbage in a bin, piling more and more on top and now it was starting to overflow. With everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours… no, that entire fucking week… I felt like I was going crazy.

There was just so much shit in my head and I couldn’t keep control of all of it anymore. I needed a break. I just needed… a little bit of time away from it all where I could pretend that none of it existed, that I was someone else and I could distance myself from it. I didn’t even care anymore about getting into trouble with my father, what he might do to me if he found out I had been with Heero that weekend. That, more than anything else, told me just how dangerously close I had gotten to the edge without even realizing it. I was infinitely more tired of myself and what I was getting closer and closer to than I was of my dad. And yeah, I know now how dangerous just that thinking was, that I was so busy focusing on the vipers at my feet that I had missed the rhino charging right at me until it was too late to miss being gored by it, but right then, I just didn’t care. I didn’t have the energy or the heart to care about anything. I was just so fucking _tired_ and it had little to do with how much sleep I had gotten.

“So, what’s the point?” Heero asked stubbornly, “If he’s not even going to see you, there’s no reason in stopping by there after work, is there?”

Then he finished with a really cheap blow, drawing me gently into his arms and kissing the top of my head and I knew that he didn’t need to make any sense at all. With a move like that, he could ask almost anything of me and I would do it, I was defenseless against it on a good day, not even in the emotionally fragile state I was in then.

“Please, Sweetheart,” that familiar endearment was the last strike to my already crumbling resolve, “You’re so tired. You need the sleep.”

I sighed, acting like the decision had been some difficult thing even though I agreed with him. Sleep in Heero’s bed with his arms around me again… it sounded so good.

“Alright,” I said, “I’ll just come here after work.”

“Thank you,” he sighed in relief and dropped a couple more kisses on the unbruised side of my face.

I rolled my eyes, but my blush probably told the real story to him.

“You act like I just gave you the moon and the stars,” I muttered, “You just make sense, that’s all.”

“Every second you decide to spend with me, you give me the moon and the stars,” he said in this airy, dreamy tone that I couldn’t tell if he was actually being serious with a corny line like that or just messing around.

“Uck!” I exclaimed, shoving him away from me with fake repulsion to cover up how my heart felt like it was melting with warmth, “Gross, Heero, do you want some pancakes to go along with that sugary sap?”

He let me push him, laughing pleasantly.

“At least take something to have for dinner,” he said, still with laughter in his voice that kept me from sighing in exasperation with him.

I almost argued that I still had no appetite so there was no point in wasting food on me, but just nodded again. It wasn’t worth the battle and I knew he was right. I might not want to eat, but if I wanted any hope of getting through the rest of the night, I needed the energy.

I dragged myself from the bed, hating everything in the entire universe that I couldn’t just flop back down next to my boyfriend. I almost did a double take when I saw that a good forty minutes had actually passed with us lying there. It had felt like only five to me and I couldn’t tell if that was from my exhaustion or just how much I did not want time to pass. I rushed through getting ready for work, making sure Pepper had everything she needed for another day and her litterbox was clean, grabbing some clean work clothes and going to the bathroom to brush my teeth, refresh deodorant, and comb my hair. I even redressed my shoulder and took a glance at the gash to make sure it didn’t look infected after it had been steadily bleeding on and off all day. It looked even uglier than it had that morning, caked in blood and oozing, the bruising and blood that had welled up under the skin a truly nasty color, but the skin around it was only a little bit red and I wasn’t worried that much about infection. I smeared some ointment on it and a clean bandage pad just to be on the safe side.

          Heero was downstairs when I was done, shoving a bag with a tupperware bowl and a thermos into my hands.

          “It’s just beef stew,” he told me with a sheepish smile, “There’s some biscuits in there, too, and that celery drink you like.”

          I was torn between being annoyed he was looking after me so much and being so fussy and feeling warmed for those same reasons. It felt nice being coddled, and it irritated the hell out of me because I’m used to taking care of myself and no matter how much Heero and his family tell me that they just worry about me and want to do nice things for me, there will always be a part of me that tells me they think I’m weak or stupid or can’t take care of myself, even when I know that’s not true. It was the fact that doing all of this probably made Heero feel a lot better about my bruises and letting me go off to work that kept me from snapping at him. Instead, I kissed him chastely.

          “I’ll see you after work,” he said, eyes glittering and face a bit red, this pleasant, happy smile on his lips.

          “You really don’t need to wait up for me,” I scolded, but I knew that he would anyway.

          He just grinned at me, then pulled me into a loose, careful hug.

          “Stay safe,” he murmured into my shoulder so quietly that I wasn’t quite sure if he had meant for me to hear it. My guilt made a pretty good attempt at trying to eviscerate me.

          We both lingered in that hug, neither of us wanting to let go, and I felt like a shit for it, but I had to be the one to pull away. I made sure not to look back as I left his house, this was hard enough on both of us. It was cool and gray outside, making my bruises ache something terrible. It bothered me enough that I sucked it up and took the bus with what I had left of the change Justin had given me for just that purpose. My heart gave this little jerk as I hurried down my street and I saw my father’s car before I reminded myself that he had left without taking it. Still, my heart seemed to stop entirely when I tried my front door and found it unlocked.

          ‘Please don’t be home, please don’t be home, please, please, _please_ don’t be home,’ I chanted in my head, every muscle as tight as a violin string about to snap as I slowly opened the door, ready to bolt at the merest sign of trouble. I didn’t want to see him, I decided. Even if I knew that I really needed to drop this money off, I did not want to see the bastard. If he was there, I didn’t care if it made me a massive chicken, I wasn’t sticking around. I’d go to work and… I don’t know, just keep the money in my wallet, or drop it back off at Heero’s house, although that carried with it its own risks, I just could not deal with my father. It was in that moment that I knew that my decision to go to Heero’s after work was the right one. I couldn’t do this anymore, I couldn’t face him. I just needed a couple days, then I would be fine, but not that day, not with those memories so fresh in my head.

          I released the breath that I hadn’t even realized I had been holding when I saw, instead of my father’s boots, the flats that my mother wore to work by the door.

          “Mom?” I still called cautiously, just in case my father was home, too and she needed help.

          “In here,” I only fully relaxed when I heard her voice coming from the bedroom.

          I finally went the rest of the way into the house, closing the door behind me. She didn’t sound like she was in any kind of distress and I could hear her rummaging through her dresser. I found the kitchen in perfect condition, although the broken chair and leg were still where I had seen them when I had left, but the table was back where it was supposed to be and there wasn’t a single speck of blood on the floor. Guilt tried to rear its ugly head again, but I just dealt with it. She had told me to leave it be and maybe it had made her feel better. I tossed the ice pack in the freezer so it would stay cold for my trip to work and walked towards my parents’ bedroom.

          My mother opened the door, dressed in her other work uniform, still brushing her long, chestnut hair. She started to smile to see me, then got a good look at my face and made this alarmed sound that was a mix between a hiss and a groan.

          “Oh, Duo, your eye!” she said in shock.

          “A kid at school bumped into it,” I told her, choosing not to make her worry by telling her it had been completely on purpose, “It’s a little worse, but it’s not that bad.”

          “Are you sure?” she fretted, “It looks so painful…”

          “Yeah, I’ve had an ice pack on it on and off all day, it just looks ugly,” I told her and walked into the kitchen to get a glass of water.

          “How was school?” she asked, although it took her a minute to even think of the question. She still struggles to do what she considers the ‘mom’ thing, but I appreciated the banal, safe question.

          “Besides getting elbowed in the face?” I raised my right eyebrow and won a surprised laugh from her, “It was fine.”

I finished my glass and cleaned it. Before I could forget about it _again_ , I dug around in my bag for my wallet and handed my mother the wad of cash, already feeling immensely better not having it in my custody anymore, like I had finally righted a wrong. It was her turn to raise an eyebrow as she regarded the thick wad of cash like it was a tablet depicting some alien language.

“What’s this for?” she asked in confusion.

“It’s the money I lost,” I explained, “Heero found it.”

Her eyes widened and she looked at the money in her hand again, this time with an expression of wonder and utter relief, like it was something sacred and it practically was. She might have told me not to worry about it and that it wasn’t my fault, but I could actually see the same thing I had gone through when Heero told me he had found the money all over her face, a shadow lifting from her, some burden being erased. She nearly looked like she was going to cry with happiness and it felt so good knowing that I had done that for her. Sure, it had been my blunder in the first place, but I had made it right again. How many opportunities in my life have I ever gotten to do that?

“Oh, thank god,” she breathed, “Honey, this is amazing-,”

I watched in amusement as she did the same, exact thing I had that afternoon, fingers moving to automatically count the money without much of her say so. I guess we really do have some things in common. And I saw the exact moment when, just like I had, she realized just how much money was in there. That happy relief drained from her pale face into one of shocked horror. She recounted, but she already knew she hadn’t made a mistake.

“Duo, is all of this…” she seemed afraid to ask.

“Yeah, it’s ours,” I admitted with a heavy sigh.

Red blossomed on her white cheeks as her shock quickly flashed into powerful rage.

“That… that… rat bastard!” she snarled and slammed the bills down on the table so hard, the whole thing shook, “I can’t believe he did this! How could he?! Even if it had been something we needed, he knows we can’t afford to spend this much on _anything_! We need every cent to pay off the power bill! What the hell was he thinking?! If we really had lost all this…”

She ran her hand through her hair, a nervous habit that she only does when she’s truly stressed and I felt so horrible watching her lose control and rant. She was right, if I hadn’t gotten lucky and really had lost all that money…

“I’m sorry, Mom,” I apologized, ashamed. If I had known just how much money I had just been carrying around like it was bus fare, I never would have been so careless, “I didn’t think… I… I should have counted it when he gave it to me. I was so _stupid_.”

My words snapped her right out of her fury and looked at me, stricken for some reason.

“Oh, no, Sweetheart, this isn’t your fault,” she cradled my face in her hands, reminding me too much of my boyfriend, mindful of putting any pressure near my swollen cheek and eye, “This is _his_ fault, all of this, just like I said before. He had no business taking this much money out of our account, and then to put all the responsibility on you! He was selfish, like he always is. Don’t blame yourself. Even if you had lost it, it wouldn’t have mattered either way. He’s still the one that stole from us.”

‘Us,’ she had said. Not ‘me.’ That only confirmed my suspicions that my father had used some of the money I gave him from my paychecks. I felt my own storm of rage begin to boil in my gut. I knew that the second I give that money to my father twice a month, it stops being my money, but still…

 

_“What are you even working so hard for, Duo?!”_

I shivered. What indeed. I… wasn’t so sure that I knew the answer to that question anymore. Why did I tear myself away from Heero every day? Why did I stay up, busting my ass and skipping out on homework until two in the morning every day? Why did I hurt my back and exhaust myself for? Why? I used to know the answer to that. I used to believe in the answer to that. But now… seeing that wad of bills on the table and knowing what my father had nearly used it for and where it had come from… I felt slighted. I felt betrayed. I felt like I had been lied to for most of my life and, even know that the wool had been pulled from my eyes and I saw clearly just what my labor was really worth, I still knew I would be trudging off to work to do it all over again because this little epiphany didn’t really matter. It was barely even an epiphany. I’ve suspected what my father has been using some of my money for, that not all of it has been going to bills and things that we needed, but only to him. It didn’t change anything.

“Mom, I…” I began to say, but quickly lost my nerve.

I thought back to that morning when I had told Heero about maybe keeping this money from my father, letting him believe it was still lost so it could be used for something useful. It had seemed like the right thing to do, which was kind of a sick thought on its own, that going behind my father’s back had become the right thing instead of the wrong thing, but in that moment, I wondered if I was wrong. So many of the choices I had made that day had turned out to be the wrong ones. I had fucked up so many times, regardless of my intentions. It seemed like I couldn’t do anything right anymore. What if this was just another bad decision that I or my mother would pay for later? What if hiding this money from my father made things worse? Giving it to him… keeping it from him… they both felt like the wrong thing to do and I couldn’t even figure out my own motivations, if one choice I had only made out of anger or if it was sound. I was just too tired, my brain quickly turning to mush and I couldn’t trust myself.

“What is it?” my mother probed, sensing that whatever I had been about to say had been serious.

I sighed again. This really wasn’t up to me, I decided. It was up to her. Maybe that’s a cop-out, a way for me to push the responsibility onto her shoulders instead of mine, but this was her money, too, and she seemed far more capable than I at making this decision.

“It’s just… I was thinking that maybe we shouldn’t tell Dad about this… about finding the money, I mean. It just might be better that way, if he still thinks it’s lost,” I winced at my own dishonesty, “But… if he finds out about it, he’ll kill us. And some of this money is his, so that’s not really fair to him… I guess I just can’t make up my mind-,”

“Oh, fuck your father,” she snapped.

I came so close to bursting out laughing hearing the same, exact thing I had told Heero that morning coming out of my mother’s mouth.

“Some of this might his money,” she glanced at the pile of bills, “but it’s ours, too, and he had no right to touch it in the first place. I’ll be damned if I let your or mine hard earned money pay to fix that rust bucket _again_! He doesn’t deserve to get what he wants. I don’t care if it means lying to him and going behind his back, and you will not feel guilty about it, Duo. He deserves this for what he did to you,” she said indignantly, her eyes on fire and she looked so self-righteous, so sure of herself.

I guess I wasn’t the only one thinking in anger. A part of me did feel guilty, if only for being the reason she was deciding to do this in case it turned out to be a mistake, but the rest of me swelled with love for her.

“We are not going to tell your father about this,” she said with fierce resolve, “With this much, we might not come close to paying off our debts, but we should be able to keep the power on for at least another month. I doubt Nathan will even notice or question where that money came from, the way he’s been lately. If he does, well, I’ll think of something to tell him. I won’t let him take this out on you again.”

We both knew that she was pretty much powerless to stop that from happening, but I just appreciated that she wanted to try. She smiled softly at me, her hands slipping from my face.

“I know that it isn’t much solace now, but it was lucky that you lost this money, not the other way around, Duo. It doesn’t make up for what that louse did… but if you hadn’t lost it, we’d be out almost three-hundred dollars. It wasn’t worth you getting hurt, but it wasn’t entirely a bad thing, ok?” she pointed out, “Now we can put some money into things that matter and, even if we did tell your father, it won’t make anything better. It won’t get you unbeaten.”

I felt some heavy thing lift from me as she spoke. She was right, I realized. Even if it had caused her nothing but pain at the time, losing that money had worked out for the better. She didn’t think that my getting beaten was worth it, but it was to me. We could keep our power on and things would be ok for a little while, a few bruises didn’t measure up to that. If it weren’t for how much it had hurt my mom, I could almost call it a win/win. That thought went a long way to making me feel just a little bit less like a loser. I even managed to give her a genuine smile. For the first time in a very long time, I felt like I had done something right and it was a balm to my soul.

“Um, I’m going to Heero’s after work tomorrow morning,” I broached the subject while we were both in a decent mood, not knowing if she would take it with worry or relief, “I’m probably going to spend the whole weekend there.”

Thankfully, she went in the latter direction and smiled in utter relief that lit up her entire face.

“That’s a good idea,” she said, something dark settling in her eyes and I knew that she was thinking about that morning, listening to my father raping me.

Just another reason why I should stay at Heero’s. If I wasn’t there, she wouldn’t be in pain. She wouldn’t have to remember or risk it happening again. The thought was heavy and tried to drag me back down into the mud, but I ran away from it as fast as I could. My spirits had been lifted a little between Heero and my mother and I knew that if I let them sink again, I wasn’t going to get them back up anytime soon.

“I doubt your father will be around long enough this weekend to notice you’re gone. I’m sure he went to Pat’s this morning,” she said with a thick bitterness that was pretty close to how I felt on the subject.

We said our goodbyes shortly after that and I grabbed the ice pack on my way out, putting it on my eye the second I was out the door. I resolutely did _not_ look into the bathroom like I compulsively wanted to see if it had been cleaned as well, deciding not to dwell on it if I wanted to get through the rest of the day. Leneski’s wasn’t far enough from my house to really justify taking the bus again, but I kind of regretted it when, by the time I got there, my head was screaming again and my entire body ached horribly. If I was already in that much pain from a brief walk, I was kind of scared to think about the state I was going to be in after two shifts. I tossed the ice pack back into the freezer in the break room and went to my locker where I met Solo, struggling with his lock. From the way he was fumbling and swearing under his breath at it, plus the pinched look to his face and how red his eyes were, he either had been up all morning doing… whatever it is he does when he has free time or was fighting off a hangover. Without a word, I picked the lock out of his hands and opened it for him before returning to my own.

“You’re a saint, you know that?” he sighed, opening his locker and shrugging out of his leather jacket, “You as fucking relieved as I am that it’s Friday?”

I grunted my agreement, changing out of my own jacket and stashing my backpack in my locker. Like me, Solo gets Saturday off from both of our jobs and reduced shifts on Sundays. Suddenly, everything went as still and quiet as a tomb and I could have sighed, knowing the reason for it.

“Dude,” my coworker exclaimed, “that is one hell of a shiner! What the hell happened? One of those pricks at school come after you or something?”

It was hard to tell if he was actually fishing or just making conversation, but I shrugged, stubbornly not looking at him so he could see the entirety of the damage. He was going to anyway, but that didn’t mean that I needed to speed things along.

“I hit a wall,” I lied flatly.

It was a stupid, reflexive answer. I should have just told him that he was absolutely right, some asshole at school had done this to me and he might have believed me, I had no clue why I didn’t. I was just so tired of having to placate people and just dealing with this shit. It felt like every five seconds, someone was reminding me of why I was hurting when all I wanted was to forget about it and get on with my life. I knew it was the wrong thing to say when Solo went quiet for a moment again. I glanced over at him and saw that there was a hardness to his eyes. He wasn’t fooled. I’m not even entirely sure if he had ever believed a classmate had done that to me. I forget sometimes that he’s met my dad and been on the receiving end of my father’s… less than stellar temper.

“Yeah?” he teased in the easy going way that makes it simpler to talk about these things with him than it ever is with Heero, “You just happened to hit that wall half a dozen times after that, too?”

That he was teasing me should have disarmed me, but I was still too sensitive. I just didn’t want to talk about it and that he had obviously figured out who had beaten the shit out of me made me defensive. I didn’t answer his question or respond to his teasing like I might have if I hadn’t felt so shitty. I just shoved my hands in my pockets and strode off.

“Duo.”

He didn’t call after me, didn’t raise his voice at all, but just said my name in this almost sad, quiet tone that was completely serious. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him sound like that before, he isn’t the kind of guy that takes many things seriously. He also doesn’t use my first name a lot. He’ll call me Kid or Braid Boy or a slew of other dumb nicknames, but he seldom calls me Duo. It made me stop and turn back to him. All the mirth and teasing was gone, replaced by worry. Somehow, seeing it on him was worse than on my mother or Heero. He’s always so laid back, actually getting him to actively worry about something like that is like a punch to the gut (no pun intended). He took the few steps that I had managed to take and took a second to really examine my face, frowning almost sourly at what he was seeing.

“Does this happen a lot?” he asked somberly, nodding to my face.

I looked at the ground in shame, not wanting to answer. He knows that my dad roughs me up quite a lot, but I’m usually pretty good at hiding my injuries or downplaying them, so I don’t think even he really knows how frequently this has been going on lately.

“I know you show up to work beat to hell sometimes,” he bulled forward, “and I’m not so stupid that I don’t know why between your asshole dad and those punks you go to school with. But is this why you call out so much? Just how bad is it?”

“It’s not that big of a deal,” I lied without actually answering his question, “He just loses his temper sometimes. I can handle it.”

Solo, however, is a bit more knowledgeable than Heero is about how to get around questions you don’t want to answer and narrowed his eyes at me.

“That wasn’t what I asked,” he said sternly.

“Please, Solo, just drop it,” I begged tiredly, “It’s fine, I’m used to it. There isn’t anything anyone can do about it anyway.”

To my relief and surprise, he threw up his hands in surrender, backing down. It was refreshing, not having someone go at it like a dog with a bone, to actually listen to me and know when to drop it before I started screaming. I just could not deal with talks like these anymore, I had passed my limits hours ago.

“Ok, ok,” he said lightly like he had been on me about not doing my homework and not about my abusive father, “I got it, you can handle things on your own. I just want you to know that if it gets to be too much, you don’t have to put up with it. Your dad’s a prick and you don’t deserve putting up with that crap. If you ever need a breather or he’s getting to be too much for you to handle, I can help you take care of it, alright?”

I swallowed roughly, something gripping my heart tightly and I could feel the telltale prickling of tears in the back of my eyes. There was so much wrapped up in that one, little statement: I can help you take care of it. Help me how, I wanted to ask. Did he mean to just let me crash at his place until things were safer at home? Help me go to the police? Help me to run away? Or was there something darker there, something I swore I could see in his eyes and I had to really wonder what he was offering me. It was too much to consider and it didn’t really matter because, as terrified as I’ve become of my father lately, I would never ask anything of Solo. I couldn’t even ask Heero and Solo, while I do consider him to be a friend, doesn’t know me anywhere near as well as my boyfriend. It was enough to know that he cared and wanted to help, in his gruff, big brother type way, with a fist instead of a hug, almost clumsily.

“Yeah,” I told him, giving him a dry, tiny, almost nonexistent smirk, “I know.”

He grinned and ruffled my hair.

“Good, you little shit. That’s all I wanted to say.”

And with that, the moment was over. He dragged me off to the assignment board where the rest of the guys were starting to cluster to see what was on the docket for us that day. I winced as I saw that we were patching a roof, not wanting to think about how I was going to get up and down a ladder in the shape I was in. I was still having some serious issues with depth perception and balance and I couldn’t help but wonder if Heero’s warning about me getting into an accident was some kind of shitty omen.

“Maxwell!”

I flinched as I heard Leneski bellow my name from a few feet away. He had come from my left side, so I hadn’t even seen the man approach us. I couldn’t read him as he stood there, arms crossed, waiting for me to acknowledge him. He didn’t look pissed, so hell if I knew what he wanted.

“My office,” he told me in a much more normal tone, jerking his thumb behind him.

I bit back a groan. Please, please, please, just let this fucking day _end_ already! I shot Solo a nervous look, but he was absolutely no help, just shrugging in confusion. I followed Leneski back to his office and felt this heavy foreboding in my chest when he closed the door behind me. I thought I might be in for a scolding, but then his eyes fell on my face and his own got kind of… tight and I felt like screaming. It was starting to seem like calling out might have been a good idea. I could have taken a nap, done my homework, gotten a decent, homecooked meal instead of this third degree just because I was a little bruised up.

“You wanted to see me, Sir?” I decided to just cut to the chase, wanting this uncomfortable moment to be over with so I could do my damned job.

My boss sighed.

“You know why I called you in here, Duo,” he said.

Oh good, he wanted to cut the bullshit, too. That would make this go a lot faster.

“Boys at school do that?” he pointed at my black eye.

I was suddenly glad I had had that huge rant at my coworkers when I had mentioned that I got a lot of shit at school. Clearly everyone’s first assumption was that I was getting bullied and not that anything was going on at home. This time, I had the common sense to nod. Leneski isn’t like Solo. If he got wind that my father was beating on me, I had no doubts he would feel obligated to get someone involved, so it was best that he thought otherwise. And technically, it wasn’t a total lie. Zechs _had_ hit me in the face pretty hard. He sighed again.

“This a regular thing?” he questioned.

“Not really,” I muttered, which was a kind of truth. Zechs and his goons don’t hit me nearly as much as my father does, so that was kind of irregular, right? “It’s not a big deal, honestly.”

I should get that tattooed on my head, ‘it’s not a big deal,’ then maybe so many people would stop fucking fussing over me, or at least I could stop saying it and just start pointing to it when I had these stupid conversations.

“Do your parents know that you’re having… problems at school?” he asked so diplomatically.

I shrugged, mindful of my shoulder.

“I don’t want to bother them with it,” I told him, which was only one of many reasons why this is something I will never mention to either of my parents. I had been dealing with it since I had been nine-years-old without their help, so there was no reason to tell them about it now. It wasn’t like they could do anything or, in my father’s case, would want to do anything.

That only made Leneski frown.

“I’m a father, Duo,” he reminded me in a sad tone, “and if any of my children ever came home looking like you do, I would want to know who hurt them. I would want to put a stop to it. This isn’t the first time you’ve come in with a black eye and what you said the other day about being bullied for… well, you know…”

I needed to cut the head off this thing before he really started to feel like he needed to do something about it, like talk to my parents. I wasn’t so sure that he would. He’s my boss, not my principal, but he obviously had issues with this.

“My mother has enough on her plate, I don’t need to add to it,” I argued.

“I’m sure your father-,” he began to press.

“He probably knows,” I voiced the surety I’ve had for a while now, that my father was probably aware _someone_ at school was beating me up if only from showing up at home wearing bruises he hadn’t put there, if he even noticed them at all. I was aware that my voice was hard and icy, taking a sharp tone with my boss that I really shouldn’t, but I was just so sick of talking about this and talking about my dad to this man at all made me feel uncomfortable, “Even if he doesn’t, he wouldn’t care that much. He’d just tell me to deal with it on my own, and that’s what I’ve been doing.”

His frown deepened and I really didn’t like where this conversation was going. I probably shouldn’t have admitted that my father wouldn’t give a shit to him, but I was too tired to come up with a convincing lie. I should have just said that I would talk to my dad about it, but I wasn’t so sure I could make those words come out of my mouth with any sort of believable tone.

“I don’t know if I would call this dealing with it,” my boss shot back, just shy of cattily.

“No offense, sir, because I really don’t mean any, but,” I had finally lost my patience even as my self-control screamed at me to shut up, “you’re my boss, not my dad. I know you mean well, but you don’t know my family or my school life or any of it. I know this looks bad, and I’m really sorry about showing up to work like this, but I can take care of myself. My parents bust their asses every day and have their own problems. My dad works long, shitty hours and my mom holds down two jobs and they’re still always stressed about bills. The last thing they need to worry about on top of all of that is a couple of kids at school being jerks to me. I’m not a little kid and I’m almost out of high school anyway. I can handle it.”

I waited him to snap at me, but he just gave me a sad smile.

“Of course, you’re right, none of this is my business. I just wanted to make sure things were alright and you didn’t need someone to step in, but that’s not my responsibility. Just… you’ll tell your parents if you do need someone, right?”

His words were almost a scolding.

‘Things are that bad,’ I thought bitterly, ‘But my mom already knows that and my dad is the reason why they’re so bad, so I don’t see that happening any time soon.’

“Yeah, sure, Mr. Leneski,” I lied through my teeth again.

He clapped me on my bad shoulder and I had to grit my teeth to contain my wince. He opened his office door and I was chomping at the bit to get out of there, but he wasn’t quite done with me yet.

“Oh, and Duo? You aren’t going out with the guys today,” he was back to all business.

“But, sir,” I tried to protest, but he stopped me by holding up his hand to silence me.

“I don’t want to hear it. You aren’t doing any work with that eye of yours. It’s an accident waiting to happen. I’m definitely not letting you go up on any roofs. If we had any painting jobs, that would be one thing, but if you fell, it would be on my head, and my wallet. I haven’t been sued yet and I would like to keep things that way. You can do paperwork and filing here until you have both of your eyes, understand?”

We both knew that his fear of being sued by me was bullshit, but I sighed and nodded anyway. It was probably for the best. If I really did fall off a roof, Heero would freak and I did not need any more injuries. And, while it hurt my pride a little to be singled out again, my body hurt too much and some light desk work sounded amazing compared to hard labor. No way was Lorathe going to give me that, so I should really take what I could get.

“Yes, sir,” I said dutifully.

I guess he had only made us have this little chat out of some sense of duty, because once he let me out of his office, he didn’t bring it up again. Solo didn’t even bat an eye when he was informed that I would be staying behind, just lamented that he should start getting into more fights so he could sit behind a cushy desk all day.

“Show up here with a single black eye,” Leneski threatened, not missing a beat, “and you can spend the day scrubbing out the toilets and cleaning tools.”

“Aww, come on, Boss,” my friend whined, “Why does Maxwell get the preferential treatment?”

“Because his hand writing is actually legible and he knows how to file a goddamned LOA form without half-assing it like someone I know. Also, he has the common decency to refill the coffee pot when it’s close to empty,” Leneski groused teasingly.

Once their two-man comedy act was done, Leneski set me up in his office. He had me doing mostly filing for a couple hours, but there really wasn’t a whole lot to do. I hated the feeling of being coddled, but just sucked up and used the rest of my time to do homework. I wanted to spend as little of my spare time with Heero working on the stuff, so I might as well knock off the more time-consuming subjects like calculus. I was actually grateful for that little bit of coddling when I had to do actual work at my second shift. Just as I had predicted, Lorathe had no pity at all for my state and didn’t even mention it as he watched us work. Thankfully moving cargo doesn’t take a whole lot of hand-eye coordination, but by the time that shift was done, I was completely dead on my feet, every muscle screaming in pain and the constant moving had only made the aches in my face and head triple.

But then it was all over. I clocked out, grabbed my things, and walked out the door. The second my sneakers hit the sidewalk, it hit me. It was Saturday morning. I had done it. I had survived the week. And for the next thirty hours, my time was my own. I didn’t have to cut my time with Heero short. I didn’t have to see my father. I didn’t have to be roused from a deep sleep. I didn’t even have to think about school. I was done. I could play with my cat. I could put the desk together and paint the tree house. I could do fuck all and there wasn’t a single person who would come by to yell at me, scream at me, throw things at me. In fact, my doing nothing on a Saturday would actually be encouraged by the people around me. I could have dinner with Heero and his family. I could fucking _shower._ These realizations were so profound, so powerful in my weak and sleep deprived state that my vision swam with tears.

I was so happy and relieved when I got to Heero’s house that morning that I didn’t even feel irritated when I looked up and saw that Heero’s bedroom light was on. I did not care anymore. I was going to brush my teeth, put on more deodorant, and crawl into bed with my boyfriend and welcome sweet oblivion until I had to get up for track. Hell, if we got the treehouse painted early enough and Heero hadn’t made any scheduled date plans, I might even nap for an hour or two. The sky was the limit.

I opened the door and Kanuck was right there to greet me with a soft ‘wuff’, his wet nose snuffling around my hands, tail wagging furiously. I dropped a soft pet to his head and trudged forward into the house. I’ve walked the halls of that house in the early hours of the morning dozens of times, so you would think that I knew it like the back of my hand by then, but as dark as it was and with my vision shot between how irritated from lack of sleep the right was to how swollen everything around the left was, it was seriously fucking up my orientation. I had to feel around the walls to find the stairs and still almost walked right into a wall. I jumped when I felt Kanuck push against me, pressing his muzzle against the back of my legs before I realized that the silly animal was nudging me in the right direction of the stairs. It was oddly sweet and so much like his owner, I could have laughed.

I wobbled up the steps, keeping my hand to the wall, and still kept bumping into the damned thing and the hand rail. Every time I did, the big malamute mix was there to nudge me back on course like a well-trained guide dog, as patient as a saint. It was almost like he knew how impaired I was, or maybe he was just annoyed with my incompetence. Finally, I gave in and curled my fingers around his collar, letting him lead me to the top of the stairs and down to Heero’s lit bedroom. I peeked into the room and found Heero at his desk, sneaking past him to get ready for bed. Kanuck and Pepper traded places, the dog trotting into Heero’s bedroom and the cat trotting out to meet me. I knew I was far gone because I really did have to bite my tongue to keep on laughing at the image they presented, like a guard being relieved of their duty. I happily swept her up into my arms and kissed her head. I had missed her so much. Yeah, I had seen her when I had been there during the day, but just knowing that I could sleep with her again made me realize just how much I had been aching for that warm, furry body against my head.

I went through my pre-bed ritual and finally went to Heero’s room. He must have heard me when I had first come up the stairs, because he just slowly turned in his chair, closed his laptop, and beamed at me.

“Hi,” he greeted and I echoed him.

“How was work?” he asked.

“It was fine,” I told him and was in such a good mood, I couldn’t help teasing him a little, holding up my hands for him to see, “See? All in one piece.”

“Good,” he stood from his desk and went to me, loosely wrapping his arms around me, “I like it when you’re all in one piece.”

He kissed me chastely on the edge of my jaw towards the right side of my face, making me blush. I still couldn’t believe he actually wanted to kiss me at all, looking the way that I did.

“You feel cold,” he frowned, “and your eye is more swollen than it was yesterday.”

“The temperature dropped,” I explained, “and I kept the ice pack on it through most of my first shift, but I couldn’t do much about it during my second. I’ll ice it some more when we get up.”

He tugged on my wrist, leading me to sit on the edge of his bed with him. He sat close and normally it would make me feel a little uncomfortable. If he had done that earlier in the week, I would have been looking for any excuse to put some space between us, but that morning was strange. I felt this… this need to be close to him, to feel him against me, an almost desperation. I didn’t want to pull away from him, but had this strange urge to get even closer. I wanted to touch him, but I didn’t dare. After all the times I had pushed him away, I couldn’t be that cruel, not unless I was willing to give him more than I wanted to. It wouldn’t be fair to him to reach out, only to pull away, give him that false hope. It left this deep yearning in my chest, an intense desire for the very thing I was frightened of. The feeling was confusing, to say the least. I just kind of floundered, scared to reach out and wanting to crawl into his lap in the same moment. When I didn’t make any move to rebuke him, he carefully put his hand over mine, still giving me the time to pull away if I didn’t want it. His skin against mine left this tiny, electrical current dancing across mine.

“My dad picked up all the paint we need for tomorrow,” he told me and I was relieved he had picked a banal, easy topic for me to follow, “and he said you two could put the desk together whenever you’re ready after track. Was there anything that you wanted to do afterwards when we’re done?”

I chewed that over. I hadn’t really thought much about what we were doing, date-wise. Honestly, I hadn’t wanted to. I might have gotten over my… weird skittishness from the last few days enough to act normal around him and most other people, but I was still far from ok. The thought of going out to a movie or restaurant, being around other people only made it feel worse. I was… scattered, I guess is a way to describe it. Like there was too much in my head and every noise, every single person that came near me just added more until I felt like I was going to scream. If I’m being entirely truthful here, I felt this animal-like urge to go to ground, to just stay holed up at Heero’s place and soak in the silence and solitude until I could erect those walls again. I didn’t even really want to go to track, but I had made a commitment.

“Actually, could we not go out?” I asked meekly, guilt digging its claws into me once more as I searched Heero’s face for any sign of disappointment so I could take it all back.

I started to form the words to explain, to describe some of what I was feeling in the least manipulative way possible, knowing that if Heero _had_ made plans, I’d go along with them no matter what I was feeling. It turned out that I really didn’t need to. This wonderful understanding came over his face and he smiled at me. He got it. Without saying a word, I knew that he did, that he was remembering how I had been that week, how messed up I was and he wasn’t even disappointed in me. He was ok with it. He really is amazing.

“Sure,” he agreed so easily, like it wasn’t even a big deal, “We’ve been going out a lot lately, it’ll be nice to stay in for once. It’ll give us plenty of time to get the treehouse done so we won’t have to rush. I think a lazy Saturday is exactly what we both need. Besides, my mom is making pasta for dinner.”

I groaned happily. I freaking love Heero’s mom’s tomato sauce. All her sauces, really. Woman should have been a sous chef instead of a teacher. But her tomato sauce is especially good, thick and rich and spicy with tons of meat and herbs and spices. It makes the canned shit my family eats taste like tomato water.

“I love your mom,” I said and he chuckled.

“Well, my mom loves you,” he teased, “When I told her you’d be staying for dinner, she had to make a huge meal.”

His words made me flustered. She loved me? Was he really just teasing or was he being serious? I couldn’t tell, but… I wanted it to be true. I wanted to be more than just a house guest to them, I wanted… I wanted to belong. How clingy am I? Mariela was not my mother, or even an aunt, but the idea that she might care for me that much opened this bottomless pit of need in me, the same one that grows every time either of Heero’s parents do anything nice for me, this craving that never goes away. It’s been there since I was little, that yearning for parents that loved me, and while it should have shrunk as I’ve gotten older and realized that I can survive on my own without love, and that dream is rather childish when you think about it, it’s only gotten wider and deeper.

Heero drew me back out of my depressing thoughts by putting a hand on my thigh. I suddenly realized that I was a lot closer to him than I had been a minute ago, our legs pressed together, and what was even more shocking than the fact that I hadn’t noticed was that _I_ had been the one that had moved towards him. What was this? This need to be close to him? It was so out of character for me, but it was exactly like the need I had had on Monday when he had comforted me in his kitchen after my little freak out. I should pull away, I knew. This was dangerous. This was sadistic of me, but I felt none of my previous reticence, only the burning desire to be with him. Even though I fought against it, I felt a tiny ember of hope. Was this it? Was I finally ready to take things to the next level? Had that numbness from the previous morning helped me get over my shyness around him somehow? Or was something else happening? I didn’t know, but I recognized how rare and special this feeling was for me and I just couldn’t squander it. I was too terrified that it might vanish at any moment and I would miss my chance. Beyond that… I didn’t think I _could_ fight it. How can something so fragile feel so powerful at the same time? So all-consuming?

Instead of drawing away from him and insisting that we go to bed like I should have done, I leaned further against him, resting my head against his shoulder. He twitched in surprise, obviously not having expected that from me, especially not after I had kept him at arm’s length for most of the week. But then he melted against me, wrapping an arm around my waist and it felt so good, like everything I had been searching for that week, everything that I had been craving without even knowing it. I curled up my legs and rested against him, so happy I could burst. After everything, all my grief and sadness and misery, my fear and regrets, it was a lot like a hot bath after a long, dreary walk in a blizzard. We just… melted against each other like our bodies belonged there, and cuddled with each other. It felt so right, I couldn’t understand why I had been running away from this for so long.

“I’m sorry,” I murmured against his shoulder.

“For what?” he asked in confusion.

“For… for having such a hard time with this usually…” I said guiltily, feeling like the worst boyfriend in the entire universe, “You’re always the one to initiate things and I never think about… about snuggling or touching you, or I just don’t want to. I’m sorry I’m always aloof, it isn’t fair to you. And I’m… I’m so sorry for pushing you away all the time, all this week… I was so horrible to you!”

“Shush,” he soothed, stroking his hand gently up and down my back, “You don’t need to apologize for any of that, love. There’s nothing wrong with not being as touchy-feely as I am. That’s just how I am and this is just who you are. I love you, not some completely different person, and it doesn’t bother me. It just means that times like this, when you reach out for me, they’re more genuine. They’re _special_ to me and I know it comes from your heart, it’s not some empty gesture. And I know you’ve been having problems lately, even if you won’t say why, but they aren’t your fault. You’ve been in more pain over them than I have. I’m just so happy that you’re feeling better. You were never horrible to me, you can’t help feeling the way you do sometimes any more than I can stop feeling overprotective or clingy.”

His hand found my chin and he brought my head to look at him. The love burning in his eyes for me made it hard to breathe. He let go of my chin and cupped his hand around my unmarred cheek.

“You need to stop beating yourself up about these things,” he urged, “I understand, Duo. If you weren’t you, I wouldn’t love you so much.”

Something wet trailed down my face and his gaze somehow softened even more with affection. Then, he was leaning forward and I saw his naked desire to kiss me. Despite how much I wanted it myself and despite how sweet he was being, I couldn’t help it, I flinched from him. I felt horrified by it, even though I knew why it had happened, waiting for Heero to recoil in pain, but he just blinked at me, undisturbed by my rejection.

“It’s alright,” he assured me, misreading me entirely, “I’ll be careful, I won’t hurt you.”

“I’m not worried about that,” I murmured and really couldn’t have given a shit if he aggravated my split lip or swollen face, “I’m just ugly like this.”

I really didn’t understand why he wanted to kiss me at all the way I currently was. I looked like a gargoyle, my face all mashed up. If I had been slightly attractive before, I sure as hell wasn’t now. I tried to turn my face away, to hide the bad side of it from him, but he wouldn’t let me, cupping the other side as well and keeping me from moving it away from him. His eyes studied every bruise, every inch of my gross, black eye, making me squirm with the need to hide it from him, not wanting to repulse him. But his expression was only fierce, not grossed out. He leaned in again and rested his forehead against mine, his blue eyes boring into me.

“You are never ugly,” he said the same line that he had given to me the previous morning, “You’re beautiful, Duo. A couple of bruises can’t change that.”

My good eye widened in complete shock at his words. He had called me beautiful before, but this felt different. He was so… so sincere, so honest that he was bordering on blunt, his expression intense. I searched that face obsessively, looking for the lie, looking for his need to comfort, to compliment me, even if he didn’t believe in it. But it wasn’t there. I only saw that love and surety. It wasn’t a line, I realized. It never had been. He thought I was beautiful. Even looking the way I did, he had never stopped believing that. I had to stop breathing to keep a sob from spilling from my lips. No one had ever thought that of me before, not even Trowa. Heero brushed the tears away with his thumb and leaned in again. This time, I didn’t flinch or push him away, but inched forward myself to meet him.

Normally, I would have pushed him away anyway, even if I had been ok with him kissing me. I hadn’t bathed in days and even with a new application of deodorant, I had to be pretty rank by then. But I ached for him like I had never ached for anything before and, just for a little while, I forgot about everything. My parents, how many times my father had fucked me since his stupid ‘no showers’ ultimatum, how Zechs had touched me, that crawling repulsion of my own flesh. I forgot all of it and just fell into the boy that I loved.

The kiss was gentle at first. Just as he had promised, he was trying so hard not to hurt me, but for once, I was the one that wanted more. I deepened the kiss, pushing him until he finally gave in and kissed me harder. I curled my hand around his shoulder, pulling him closer and when he slipped his tongue into my mouth, I happily let him and returned the favor. I just wanted to feel something that didn’t hurt, anything at all beyond nothing or sadness. I wanted him to make me feel alive.

When we finally parted several minutes later, we were both panting. Heero’s eyes were bright and his face completely flushed and I felt the same pride that I always feel when I realize that _I’m_ the one that does that to him. Seeing him like that, something sparked in me, some strange, unnamable heat and I felt a desire that I couldn’t quite understand, either what it was for or why it existed. I just… _wanted._

“Touch me,” I heard, but I only realized that I had been the one to say it when Heero stared at me in shock.

My caution tried to warn me that this was wrong, that I was being impulsive and not thinking this through, but I kicked it in the nuts and sent it off crying. I wanted Heero. I wanted… normalcy, something beautiful and wonderful. I wanted to feel his fingers on me. I wanted him to make me feel good in the way that only he seemed capable of. Suddenly, although I had been agonizing over it for weeks, I didn’t care about my fear of intimacy. I didn’t care about what was right or wrong or my issues. I just wanted to be a boy in a relationship, fooling around and being consumed by someone that loved him. I can do this, I told myself over and over. This is right, it feels right, and if I can just hold on to how much I love him and how much I don’t want to hurt him and break up with him, I can work past whatever it is in me that makes this so impossible and just fucking _do it._ Give him what he wants, what I want, and everything else will work itself out. If I can just get passed this one, stupid speed bump, everything else will be ok.

“Are you sure?” ‘Ro asked me breathlessly, but I could see how much he wanted this. For all his talk of waiting and being patient and understanding, he wanted this so much and I knew it wouldn’t take much at all to convince him I was ready.

I nodded.

“Please,” I begged and that was all it took.

He threw caution to the wind and kissed me again, somehow more passionately than the first time and I tangled my fingers in his hair, not wanting him to break away from me too soon. I loved how thick and silky it felt between my fingers. I knew it wasn’t true, but I suddenly felt so… I don’t know, _deprived_ , like I hadn’t touched another person in so long. I felt his hands on my arms, trailing upwards, feeling me and pulling up the sleeves of my pajama top a little before resting on my shoulders. I didn’t even feel the pain from the gash on the back of my right shoulder anymore, only this kindling heat in my chest and stomach. When he pulled away from me, I made a small sound of annoyance, not wanting him to stop. He looked down and I followed his gaze to my arms, swearing internally as I realized he was looking at the tattooed patchwork of bruises there.

I thought that was it, that everything would end right there and we would end up fighting again as I saw the way his eyes hardened. He took my arm in his hand and gently rolled up the sleeve all the way, revealing black and purple and white skin. Then, almost reverently, he brought my arm to his lips and gently kissed one blackened bruise on the inside of my arm, just below the joint. My breath hitched and my heart skipped a beat as I felt his warm breath ghosting over my flesh, making goosebumps rise up, and he kissed a smoldering trail up my arm as far as he could go.

In my head, I saw the heavy blows that had caused those bruises. And rising to the top of those memories like some insidious beast from the cold, dark depths, I saw my father’s reflection in the bathroom mirror as he fucked me, that familiar face screwed up with pleasure as he violated me, touched me, just like-

‘No,’ I snapped at myself and pushed those memories way, way down deep into my, ‘Not here, not now, not with Heero. They don’t belong here.’

I didn’t want to see them. All those terrible things, all that hate and violence and anger, all that filth on my skin… I didn’t want to see him. If only for just that moment, I only wanted to see Heero. I only wanted to feel what he was doing to me.

“Is this ok?” Heero asked nervously even as he molded himself to me, his mouth so close to the crook of my neck, his hand on my stomach, drawing languid, soothing patterns there that made every inch of me tingle.

“Yes,” I breathed, my voice shaky and husky and sounding like someone else’s, “Please.”

Please make me forget. Please, make it feel good for once. Make me clean, put me back together, just this one time.

I sucked in a sharp breath as his lips found my neck and he gently sucked, hand trailing up my body, trying not to make any sound even as I was shaking, something stirring inside of me. I… can’t properly describe what it was. I had felt it just a small handful of times before with Heero and I still couldn’t find a name for it. It was… electric, like static, but also warm and tight and strange. And then those curious, searching fingers brushed over one of my nipples through my shirt and I was just lost. It wasn’t the first time anyone had touched me there, but this felt completely different. Just the smallest of touches and it completely overwhelmed me. I gave out this tiny, almost inaudible moan. I don’t even know where it came from, but it just burst from me, this alien sound. It made ‘Ro bolder and he found my other nipple, grazing his thumb over it.

I felt both of my nipples harden as he very gently stroked them, not daring to pinch, probably too nervous for that yet, but later when I remember it, I would be mortified by the involuntary reaction of my body. I wasn’t a girl, there was no reason why it should have felt as good as it did. Maybe because it was such an intimate thing, and that it was Heero doing it, but it made me lose another ounce of control over myself. It was like something just clicked into place inside of me. Without having much conscious thought to what I was doing, my hands and lips were seeking him out, needing to mold myself to him.

I buried my face in his shoulder and pulled his shirt slightly to the side so I could kiss and lick his bare skin there, absolutely fascinated when I grazed my teeth over him and his breath hitched and his hips gave this tiny jerk against me. I felt like a little kid with a new, interesting toy. I had never felt this way with Trowa, had never been consumed by his reactions when we had made out or fooled around. Of course, I had never reacted much myself, just had stayed still and let him do whatever he wanted except for the few times I had kissed his neck and ears. But even then, it had just been a slight curiosity or because I had known he had wanted me to. But this… it was so intense, knowing I was pushing Heero’s buttons and that he wanted me. Not just him, but his body was responding to every touch, every little thing I did.

My hands danced along his body, trailing up his back, feeling his wide shoulders and how his muscles flexed, committing every expanse of skin and flesh and curve of bone through that flesh to memory like my life depended on it. I loved every inch of him and felt so blessed that he didn’t just let me do it, but wanted me to. Gods, but he makes me feel so much and that morning, I felt more than I have in my entire life. I felt awake for the first time. I felt… I felt like how I should, like I was normal instead of a freak. My skin prickled every time I felt those lips on me, and my body moved with his like I was in a dream. I could even hear myself panting. But even then, there was something missing. Something… out of place. The longer this all went on, the more and more I became aware of it. I fought against it angrily, not wanting to know, not wanting to think of it because I knew that if it wormed its way in, it would ruin everything.

Then I felt one of Heero’s hands slide under my shirt, lingering on the bare skin of my stomach, too close the hem of my pants and that thing, that wrongness exploded. I knew its name in an instant. It was fear. Fear that I had refused to feel. Fear that had been there since I had asked Heero to touch me, but I had rejected it and I had thought I had moved past. It had only been lying in wait for a weak moment.

‘Don’t!’ I screamed at myself, ‘Go numb, just like this morning, remember? You were scared then, too, but you shut it off. You stopped feeling. If you can do that for Dad, you can do it for Heero. It’s easy, just go numb, push through it, just let this happen and everything will be ok! Heero will think things are fine, he’ll never find out how fucked up you are. Who cares if you’re scared? What are you even scared of, do you know?’

Just let it happen. Just… don’t do anything. Let him have this. After everything he had done for me, with how much he loved me… I could do this for him. I _could!_ I squeezed my eye shut and dug my fingers into his shirt, pretending that my racing heart was from excitement and not from my rising fear. When had that happened, exactly? When had that heartbeat been driven by familiar terror instead of that new, wonderful feeling? What the fuck was wrong with me? The boy of my dreams was worshipping my body, trying to make me feel good, and I didn’t want it. I was scared, like a little kid, of the one thing I had wanted for so long now. What the hell was wrong? I kept still, resolved to not freak out, push him away, or do a single thing to let him know that I wasn’t enjoying myself anymore, that I was scared. I would rather die than let him think that he was scaring me, so I stayed still like a rock and prayed he wouldn’t notice the change.

Suddenly, I felt Heero’s other hand join the first in slipping under my shirt and slide down on under the sides of my pants, fingers cupping my hips and, unbeknownst to him but painfully aware to me, pressed down on the bruises my father’s larger and rougher hands had put there that morning. Memories, black and bitter and fresh burst in my head and my heart stopped right in my chest after a single, painful thrash, like a door slamming shut. Every inch of me went tight and tense as I had to exert every inch of control I possessed over my body to keep Heero from knowing anything was wrong. He didn’t even do anything with his hands. Didn’t try to dip lower and cop a feel. In reality, he was a perfect gentleman about it, keeping them where they were as he continued to kiss and nip at the side of my neck and shoulder. It should have been turning me on, but I wasn’t even feeling it. All I could feel was that fear, and this awful paranoia, this sense that something was horribly wrong with me and in any second, Heero was going to notice it, too.

‘He’s going to find out,’ a cruel voice that sounded exactly, eerily, like my father’s chirped in my head, ‘You do know that, don’t you? He’s going to find out that your father’s been fucking you.’

‘No!’ I screamed back it, ‘That will never happen!’

‘Sure it will. He’ll feel it on you, he’ll know his fingers aren’t the only ones that have touched your skin. Hell, all he has to do is find those bruises on your hips and he’ll know. Maybe he’ll even smell it on you, that scent that you can never wash off. He’ll know and just think of how disgusted he’ll be! Never mind that you can let your father do that to you, but that you actually let Heero touch you and didn’t warn him that he’s fondling spoiled goods,’ the voice kept at me, chipping away at my defenses.

‘No!’ I chanted, unwilling to even accept the possibility, ‘No!’

‘Yeah, maybe you’re right,’ it mocked, ‘Maybe he’ll never find out, but you know the truth. You’re just sitting here, letting him soil himself by touching _you_. But that’s ok, he doesn’t need to find out. Instead, he’ll figure out that you aren’t hard. That you aren’t even really aroused by anything that he’s been doing. He’ll figure out what a freak you are and finally see that Trowa was right all along. You’re demented. Broken. Filthy. He deserves so much more than you and he’ll leave you forever. Or maybe he’ll just be utterly repulsed by you and get that you aren’t beautiful at all. I mean, did you really think you could just force yourself to do this, pull the wool over his eyes and he would never notice it? How stupid are you?’

The thought of Heero looking at me in disgust like Trowa had the night we had had sex was like a punch to the face. I couldn’t go through that. I couldn’t handle it. I… I would rather die first than have ‘Ro ever see me like that! I could do this, really I could. I just needed to get my wits back and pretend. I’m good at pretending. I do it every single day that I tell someone I’m alright or that things at home are fine or I’m not falling apart a little more every day. This should be easy. I just need to make myself get into it, that was all. Or at least act like I was.

I tried to move. Tried to do _something_ to tell Heero that I was into what he was doing, but my body wouldn’t move. I was completely frozen and shaking. What was happening to me? Why was this so difficult? It shouldn’t be, I had done this before. I had made myself give it up to Trowa, so why couldn’t I do the same with ‘Ro? I loved him. I was attracted to him, this should be simple, natural, like a reflex, so why? Why was I paralyzed like this? Why couldn’t I do this for him? I just needed to spread my legs for him and do nothing at all, just like before, so why was even the thought of doing that so terrible? It was just sex, it wasn’t even something new or scary! I had done this before! So many fucking times now! It was for Heero! I could do anything at all for him… couldn’t I? After all he’s given me, I had to do this…

But I couldn’t. With his lips on me, him touching me so sweetly, in all the careful and gentle and loving ways that I didn’t deserve to be touched, it was like I was an ant trapped in molasses. That numb place wouldn’t touch me. My limbs wouldn’t move. My words were stuck in my throat. With Trowa, in a way, it had been easy. Just give in. Just stop fighting. Just let him do what he wanted like I was a doll for him to use. So why was it so much more difficult with ‘Ro? It shouldn’t have been. It defied all logic. I loved him… gods, I loved him so much. I would die for him in a heartbeat, so I should have been able to do this one, simple thing. If I could give it up for a boy that had broken my best friend’s heart and the man that used me like a blow-up doll, why not the only person I have ever truly loved? I trusted him. I knew he would never hurt me. He was handsome and wonderful and perfect. So why did this block remain? Why couldn’t I just move past this illogical fear? A fear that didn’t make any sense because I’ve survived it so many times now!

This isn’t working. That thought was a dagger through my heart, but I couldn’t deny the truth of it. It had pretty much been rubbed all over my face in that moment. I had tried, hadn’t I? I had tried harder than I ever had before… and I still couldn’t do it. It was just like trying to run away from my father. Even when I had gotten the courage to try, he had gotten me anyway. So, what was the point? I couldn’t keep living in denial. I didn’t have that luxury. This… thing between Heero and I, it was never going to work. Every time he tried to take us to the next step, it would end up like this. I would just shut down. I couldn’t get past it. I was too weak. It was going to be just like it had been with Trowa. As soon as he realized it, everything, this fragile connection we had, it was all going to shatter.

I knew now, without even the slightest shadow of a doubt, what I had to do. I had to break up with him. I couldn’t let this go on. I was only going to keep hurting him, and the longer it goes on for, the worse that hurt would be. I never should have gotten together with him in the first place. I never should have become friends with him. I had had the right idea months ago on that damned getty. It would have been better if we had just stayed apart, put as much distance between us as possible. How can you possibly be friends with someone who is so deep in your soul and not expect disaster? I had been an idiot. And still, I wanted him. I wanted all of it, just apparently not enough to let him fuck me. I didn’t know how to go on from this now that I had had this grand epiphany. There was no hope. There never had been, I had just been too stupid and naïve to admit that to myself. But I also couldn’t end it. I was too weak and I knew the kind of pain it would cause him. I was stuck between two impossibilities. And I had only done this to myself… to the both of us.

You want to know the sick thing about all of this? It wasn’t like I hadn’t felt _anything_ when we had been fooling around. Something had been there. Before the fear had come crawling in, I had felt some arousal. And I felt it again just then as Heero pushed a little bit more, being daring and slipping his knee between my legs. He didn’t press it against my groin, he wasn’t that adventurous yet, but he parted my legs with it a little and I felt that thing spike through me again. Need. Desire. But it was still wrong. I could feel it, but not like how I should have. There was… a disconnect there, wires that had been snipped between my sexual desire, what I wanted, and the arousal that I was actually feeling.

Something was broken. I had always thought that about myself and my body, but here was the very real, biological proof. It was like my arousal was coming through a thick wad of cotton, still there, but too muffled to mean much. I felt like it was mocking me, giving me a taste of something I would never really have or experience. There’s something wrong with me. Something twisted, dysfunctional. Maybe this is what impotence feels like, or maybe it’s something worse, something darker. Whatever it was, I’ll never be fixed, will I? I’ll always be like this, distant from everyone else. Different. Mutated. I can never be with ‘Ro the way that he wants me to be. The way that _I_ want to be. It had been robbed from me and, if Heero hadn’t been there with me, I would have sobbed with the loss of it. I would never know what love, true love, really felt like. I would never know what the big deal was about sex. I would never know what it’s like to be with your soul mate, to even have someone in your life and know it was forever. Because everyone was going to leave me. No matter what I felt for them, they would give up on me, because who wants to be tied to a sexual and emotional cripple?

How can Heero and I even be friends after he figures all this out? Even if we could distance ourselves from our feelings, from our dying dreams and his inevitable anger at me for hiding all this, it seems impossible that even our friendship could last. We’re such vastly different people. Heero has always walked the tightrope to avoid a road of glass shards, smart enough to avoid pain, but adventurous enough to take those risks. And me? I brave it on foot, willing the pain, but only because I’m too much of a coward to take a risk. He pushes, I run away. It’s always like that with us. How can two people like that ever be together in the first place? How can we ever stay on the same path together and hope to meet each other as friends or lovers? It’s impossible. I don’t even really understand how we’ve lasted this long, how we didn’t fall apart months ago.

Heero shifted and I came out of myself a little, fear jolting me as I thought he had realized what was going on, only to be completely relieved when he just moved his attention to my throat. If I hadn’t been completely terrified and miserable, his lips there would have felt nice, but I just felt cold and empty, shaken to the core of my being. I realized that I was clinging to him like a little kid and dropped my hands to grab at the sheets instead so he wouldn’t feel my trembling or, if he did, would just think it was from pleasure and not how horrified I was at myself and the fact that something anyone my age should have been fantasizing about had become my nightmare.

Warm lips kissed a trail up my throat, then pressed at the space just under my chin, lightly nipping me there, then sucking just as gently. I felt like I was experiencing all of it through a kind of filter, like it was happening to someone else even if I could still feel those touches. I desperately grasped at them, trying to rekindle that spark I had felt earlier, trying to enjoy it, but it just wouldn’t come back. I felt washed out and pale, floating in some murky, muddled sea.

          Heero suddenly paused and drew back, slipping his hands off me. I blinked at him owlishly, not understanding why he had stopped when he had obviously been enjoying himself. That was all that mattered, the only thing I could hold on to was that he liked this, even if I obviously didn’t. Later that weekend, when I got my sense back, I would remember this and realize that he had been able to feel my pulse through his lips and known something was off. Handsome blue eyes searched my face for something and I can only guess what he had seen. I’m sure I looked as white as a sheet, eye wide like a skittish animal although I tried my hardest to hide that from him. Still, my heart lurched and I scrambled for some way to get us back on track, to keep him from realizing how freaked out I was. Should I kiss him again? Demand he touch me? Touch him? I was too tired, too bogged down with everything and I couldn’t think at all. I wanted to scream.

          He leaned in and I kind of shrunk in on myself, waiting for him to get angry with me. He kissed me lightly on the lips. When he sat back, he was smiling lovingly at me. That, more than anything, shook me, how he could look at me like that when I had rejected him _again._ Why wasn’t he angry with me? Why didn’t he hate me?

          “We should go to bed,” he said simply, like that had been the reason for him stopping and not how bizarre I was acting just from a little bit of fooling around.

          “But… I…” I tried to protest and couldn’t even come up with the words, I just felt confused, “Why-,”

          His smile turned sad, effectively cutting me off.

          “I’m not dumb, Duo. I can tell when something’s wrong. You were getting uncomfortable, so we’re stopping for the night,” he said so plainly, like this made any kind of sense.

          “I’m not uncomfortable!” I lied, “I’m fine, really, you didn’t need to stop!”

          He lightly touched my face and it was only then as his warm fingers touched my cheek that I realized just how cool and clammy my own skin had become.

          “Sweetheart, it’s ok,” he tried to soothe me, “You weren’t into it anymore and that’s alright. It was nice, amazing really,” he quirked a wider smile, “But you’re exhausted and I went too far again, that’s my fault. It’s getting late anyway and I promised I wouldn’t push you if you aren’t ready.”

          His calm understanding should have made me feel better. It should have been easier to deal with than Trowa’s tantrums and anger. It wasn’t. That Heero was treating me so nicely when I had cut him off again only made me feel worse, the guilt eating me alive. I felt like I had let him down, that I failed in a big way. Even worse than that, I felt like I had betrayed him. I could tolerate my father raping me, I could let that happen, but not this? I wouldn’t even let my own boyfriend have sex with me? Not even sex, but even see me without my clothes or have him touch certain parts of my body. He didn’t deserve this. He deserved a boyfriend that would give him anything he wanted, the moon and the stars and everything in between. Not a broken toy.

I needed to do the right thing. I knew that, then more than ever before, not because of my anxieties or worries or even because I was terrified of Heero finding out about my father, but simply because… with all my shriveled, malnourished heart… I loved him. My doubts about myself and this relationship have never, ever been stronger than that love for him. That’s never changed even after all this time, after everything that’s happened and all these twisted thoughts and feelings that I have. But that love is reason enough to end this, to do right by the only person who has loved me this much. But when I looked at him, when I saw how understanding and loving he was, how much he cared for me, it was impossible. Like the leech that I am, I couldn’t let go.

          “It isn’t alright!” I cried, pulling my face from him as I felt tears drip down my cheeks, “Nothing about this is alright!”

          “Duo-,” Heero tried to protest, but I shook my head violently and hid my face in my hands, not caring about the pain and wanted to tear my hair out with the nauseating self-loathing I was feeling.

          “I don’t know what’s wrong!” I sobbed brokenly, “Why can’t I do this?! I want it, I don’t understand! I just keep leading you on!”

          “Shhh,” he hushed me, pulling my hands away from my face and tugging me forward, into his arms, “You didn’t lead me on. You thought you were ready, but you’re allowed to change your mind, there’s nothing wrong with that. And there’s nothing wrong with you. You’ll be ready, just not tonight. It was stupid of me to start anything, I should have known you were too tired for this.”

          I shook my head again. ‘You’re wrong,’ I wanted to scream, ‘I’m never going to be ready, I get that now.’

          “Not,” I gasped between sobs, “your fault. Mine. This is all my fault…”

          “Hush,” he rubbed my back as I tried to get my tears under control, but they, like my failures, seemed endless again, “It is _not_ your fault. I’m not mad, love. I told you that I would be patient. You didn’t need this tonight.”

          “I’m sorry,” I cried, unable to think of anything else I could say to make this right, I was too tired to find the right words, if they even existed, “I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry…”

          “Shhh,” he repeated, but now his voice sounded strained, concerned, but I couldn’t figure out why, “Oh, Duo, you’re too tired for this. We can talk about this in the morning, but you need sleep.”

          “I’m sorry,” I continued to babble like a lunatic even as he gently brought me out of his arms, “I… I…”

          “Come on,” he murmured softly and, like I was a child, he carefully laid me down on my side of the bed.

          I didn’t fight him. I wasn’t really capable of it at that point. In reality, he was right. I was too exhausted to do much of anything, even thinking or reasoning things out. I was crashing, between the adrenaline that was finally leaving me and my sleep deprivation and stress. I was only really aware that I had fucked up, everything beyond that was distorted and in a tangled knot. He gently rearranged me so the right side of my face was pressed against the familiar pillow. I felt him shifting things, bringing sheets up around me, folding up my legs. Something warm and soft settled against my head.

          “There you go,” he kept up the comforting, nonsense words, brushing my bangs from my face and the tears from my cheeks.

          I opened my eye and found him there, hovering over me with that worried expression of his. I had just enough sense left to realize that I was scaring him.

          “Heero…” I mumbled through lips that didn’t want to move anymore, “I… I’m sorry… I fucked up again, didn’t I?”

          He smiled softly at me and kissed the bad side of my face so gently, like the whisper of a caress.

          “No,” he said, his voice thick with affection, “No, baby, you didn’t fuck up. You didn’t do anything wrong. Just sleep, we’ll deal with this later, just rest for now.”

Rest sounded… really nice, actually. I could already feel myself start to drift, like my body was sinking down into the mattress. My mind tried to fight against it at first. Everything was wrong, I needed to fix this, I needed… I needed to make it right… But then I felt Heero’s hands on me, gently stroking the back of my neck and my back, his voice soft and welcoming and completely devoid of hate or anger. I could only hear his worry and his love for me, bringing me deeper down where my head and its turbulent storm of horrors couldn’t reach me.

“Close your eyes,” he soothed, as gentle as a cloud.

I automatically obeyed and closed my eye. The darkness was nice. Not having to see anything. I felt Heero’s warm body settle in next to mine and this feeling came over me, a feeling I hadn’t had in days. Security. Safety. Contentment. Despite everything that had just happened… everything I had done wrong… I was finally where I belonged. I felt that more strongly than I had anything else that morning. I was so out of it at that point, I almost thought that things might be ok. So long as Heero was there with me, as long as he loved me and I still could feel that I belonged there in his bed, maybe things would be alright after all. Almost… but not quite.

I felt him press another kiss to my bruised temple.

“I love you, Duo,” he whispered, thinking that I had already fallen asleep.

I was gone before I heard him turn off the light.

 

\\\ I've been believing in something so distant

As if I was human

And I've been denying this feeling of hopelessness

In me, in me

All the promises I made just to let you down

You believed in me, but I'm broken

I have nothing left

And all I feel is this cruel wanting

We've been falling for all this time

And now I'm lost in paradise

As much as I'd like the past not to exist

It still does

And as much as I'd like to feel like I belong here

I'm just as scared as you

I have nothing left

And all I feel is this cruel wanting

We've been falling for all this time

And now I'm lost in paradise

Run away, run away

One day we won't feel this pain anymore

Take it all away

Shadows of you

'Cause they won't let me go

So I have nothing left

And all I feel is this cruel wanting

We've been falling for all this time

And now I'm lost in paradise

Alone, and lost in paradise (1)//

 

 

 

End Part 24

 

  * “Lost in Paradise” by Evanescence



 

Author’s Note: I have returned! Nanowrimo was pretty successful. I got about 85k words done, banged out this part plus part 25, so look forward to that pretty soon, just need to finish editing it and wanted to post this first. Also about 25 pages into part 26, so I’m still chugging away here.


	70. Chapter 8 Part 25

A Stagnation of Love

Chapter 8

Part 25

 

 

          I suppose it’s rather surprising that, after the incredibly shitty day I had had on Friday and my depressing epiphany that morning, I had one of the deepest sleeps I’ve ever had. I don’t recall rousing once for anything, even when Heero’s parents started their own day and began puttering around downstairs. I don’t even remember having any nightmares. Well… I suppose that’s not entirely true. I did dream, but it wasn’t really a dream, nightmare or otherwise. It was a memory. A very old memory that’s stayed with me. I have no idea why. Compared to some of the other memories I have of my childhood, it’s a rather mundane one. Not amazing, not terrible. Just kind of bittersweet, I guess. It didn’t hold any kind of great epiphany, it had just been a regular day of my life. But, after what had happened Friday morning, recalling it holds more pain than it had before. I guess, if I had to rationalize why I had dreamt it beyond it just being a random-ass dream, that would be it. To torture myself with. Or maybe to punish. Or, maybe some part of me had just wanted to rub my nose in something and further confuse me. Well, it had damn well worked.

          I was five. Maybe four. It’s always hard to tell when you go that far back, isn’t it? There really isn’t anything in the memory itself that can help me place my age, nothing significant beyond how tall I had been and how… murky the memory is, so let’s say four. It had been a pretty happy time of my life. Compared to how things are now, it was downright blissful. Both of my parents had spent more time sober than drunk, although the warning signs of my mother’s alcoholism had just started to show themselves. My father had still had his trademark temper, but a lot more self-control. I can’t state the why of that, either. Maybe things at his job hadn’t been so bad back then. Maybe he hadn’t grown tired and frustrated at his life and my mother and I yet. Maybe the drinking hadn’t taken its toll. Who can really say.

          By that time, my parents’ marriage had already been, more or less, over, though at that age, I hadn’t seen that. There are a lot of fights they had had back then that had terrified me, but now seem so mild, almost friendly when I see how they are now. They could actually tolerate being in the same room together. They could talk about bills and the house and me without yelling. My mother, even back then, had spurned him, and my father had kept putting his hand in that fire, not caring yet that he was getting it burned off. Sometimes, I had even caught them kissing, but they were still strained when they were together. As for my mom, she hadn’t quite warmed to full neglect yet, still had seemed to care about what I was doing, nothing like how she is now, she had still been distant, but would put some effort in if she caught me with a skinned knee or wandering the house in the early morning hours looking for a glass of water.

          At least, that’s how I remember it, but like I said, memories of that age are murky. Maybe my mother had cared more than I remember back then, before the real drinking had started, but I remember my father being the more active parent, even then. Which wasn’t always a good thing. When I say ‘active’, it meant that he would be the first to hone in on anything bad I did _or_ good. He didn’t hit me nearly as much at that age as now or even at thirteen or nine. He had tried harder not to, or taken it out on my mother, either because he had had more control or he had known that a four-year-old couldn’t take that kind of abuse for long. I had been less scared of him back then, my love for him purer, even stronger than my love for my mother because he had been around more.

If I had gotten a toy or a scrap of affection, it had typically come from him. He had tried, I can say that much of him from my earliest memories of a child. He had become a monster in the end, but, for a few years at least, he had tried. Like I said, it had been a happy time for me. The happiest, before I had gone to school and met Quatre. Before I had started to realize just how much of a freak I was. Before my father sending me to the hospital had become a regular occurrence. Before my mother had told me that my father had wanted to abort me. Before he had raped me. The only times that I can remember being that happy were at the start of my relationship with Heero, before everything started to go to shit. Or maybe I’m choosing to remember that with rose-tinted glasses as well. It's not like I hadn’t had my doubts at the start.

I’m getting off track again. Right, the dream. Memory. Whatever.

It had been a cold and rainy Sunday evening. I can remember that and not what year it was because of the tiff my parents had gotten into that morning before my mother had gone to work. A Sunday morning shift had opened up at a rather popular restaurant in central Nausten and my father had wanted her to take it. I could see his reasoning. Sunday morning breakfast rush would have gotten her a lot more tips than where and when she had currently worked at a dive diner on our side of town that mostly catered to men coming in looking for coffee to fend off the previous night (and early morning) of partying. My mom, however, didn’t want it because she went to church Sunday mornings. Neither of them would budge. My father thought she was being stupid, turning down money for her ‘superstitious nonsense’ and my mother thought he was being a controlling asshole. And thus, the fight had begun.

          Just before the yelling had begun, my father had sent me up to my bedroom in a misguided attempt to protect me from seeing them go at it, and quite a few swear words. Misguided because even in my room with the door closed and my comforter over my head, I could hear practically every word anyway, and even if I hadn’t been able to, just knowing they were yelling at each other again would have been bad enough. My father would end up winning the argument, not with a punch like he would have if this fight had broken out years later, but by snidely reminding her that she had been working at that diner for five years now and hadn’t gotten a pay raise or a promotion and maybe it would be nice not to be the only parent paying the bills for once. Maybe, just maybe she could make some sacrifices after he had gotten the house and put up with her for the month after giving birth to me when she had just lazed around the place while he had busted his ass for us.

          She had stormed out, slamming the door so hard, I had worried she might break a window. She had relented, though, and by the end of the next week would be giving up her Sunday mornings for a little more money every week. She worked there for a year before she got laid off when another restaurant with better food had opened down the street and had gone back to work at the diner. She never did get her Sunday mornings back. She’s always blamed my father for that, for taking her away from her faith. I don’t really know what that’s like, but I imagine Heero could sympathize with her.

          My dream wasn’t about that fight, however. It never is, although I can remember that argument almost as clearly as everything else in this memory. I dreamt about after, my father and I waiting for my mother to come home from her last shift of the day in the kitchen before we could have dinner. Back then, it had always fallen on my mother to cook anything unless my father caved and bought take out or just popped a frozen dinner in the oven. He was capable of making macaroni and cheese or putting a sandwich together, but he hated it and it had just become my mother’s responsibility to make sure we had dinner. My father had finally gotten around to washing the dishes from our lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with chips and pickles and chocolate milk, a guilty pleasure for him, one I think reminded him of his own childhood. I can’t even remember the last time we had had chocolate syrup in the house to make one.

          I was playing on the kitchen floor with some blocks making… something. I can’t remember what I had meant for it to be, a bridge, a castle, a town. I guess it’s not important anymore. Normally I wasn’t allowed to play in the kitchen, but my father and I had had a good day and he had been in a pleasant mood. It hurts so much remembering that. I miss those days. I miss being able to just be with him on a lazy weekend, have him make me lunch and read to me and play with me a little if he wasn’t too tired or busy with yard work. I miss _him._ It had just been one of those days where everything seemed perfect to a little kid, even considering my parents’ fight. The rain hitting the house was slow and heavy, making the both of us lazy and drowsy, content to just stay around the house and do little to nothing. I was looking forward to having dinner with my parents, watching a little television with my dad, and having him read me one of the books he had picked up from the library that week. The fight had seemed like days ago.

          When I heard the front door open, I had jumped to my feet, almost succeeding in knocking over my blocks, excited in that way that only very young children can manage. My mom came through the door, her raincoat and hair soaked and her looking miserable with it. She’s always hated rainy days. She had that pinched, tired look on her face that she always gets when she’s exhausted from a long day of work and has one of her migraines, but I was too young back then and didn’t know what I do now, didn’t see the warning signs of her pain and frustration. All I knew was that my family was all home and all I wanted was to hug her.

          “Mommy!” I had squeaked happily and her brow furrowed even more, a glaring, red stop sign that I couldn’t read.

          I had thrown my arms around her legs and had managed the contact for all of two seconds before she shoved me away like I was some stray puppy nipping at her ankles.

          “Get off of me, you stupid brat!” she had snapped at me, jerking off her wet coat and practically slamming it down on the hook, “God, I can’t even get two minutes of peace in this place!” she pinched her nose and winced in pain, “I can’t deal with you with this damned headache!”

          Some details from that day are muddled with time, but not that. Not the pain of being rejected by my own mother or the hurt her words had caused me. I had just been a little kid and I hadn’t gotten around to building up scar tissue and walls around my heart yet. I had been so easily wounded at that age, before the years of neglect would teach me not to be. I had sniffed, feeling tears welling up in my eyes, but even at that age, I hadn’t wanted to cry. I knew my mom and dad hated it, that it would make my mother even angrier with me and tried my hardest not to cry, but you ever tell a four-year-old not to cry? Once it gets started, it’s pretty impossible to stop until it’s run its course. My breath hitched and big, fat tears streaked down my face. My mother ignored me, kicking off her shoes in a foul temper, that pinched look growing more and more severe as I couldn’t stop from sobbing.

          “Dammit, Helen!” my father snarled, throwing the plate he had been scrubbing into the sink.

          Thankfully, it had just been a cheap plastic one, so it hadn’t shattered.

          “What the hell is wrong with you?!” he strode over to her, hands in tight fists, but he didn’t strike her. If it had been five years later, he would have in an instant.

          “What?!” she snapped right back at him, her face bright red and her eyes glazed with a potent mix of indignation and aching pain.

          “How about you fucking act like a mother to your own son for once?!” he raged, “All he wanted was a damned hug after he hasn’t seen you for most of the day!”

          “Shut up, Nathan,” she hissed hatefully at him and stomped over to their bedroom door, flinging it open hard.

          My father trailed right after her, his anger quickly mounting.

          “That’s right, just ignore us just like always,” he sneered at her, full of contempt and so completely unlike the father I had just spent the day with, “Are you even going to make dinner and eat with your family or just spend the night wallowing in the bedroom like you always do when you’re sick of us?!”

          She whirled on him, her expression wild and fierce like a feral cat and slapped him across the face. I had watched all of this with horror, knowing even at that age that this must be all my fault again. My eyes were glued to my father, my heart racing with terror as I thought he might strike her for hitting him. He did that sometimes, I had thought, not knowing that ‘sometimes’ would become ‘usually’ gradually over time as their fights would become more frequent and their tolerance for each other less so. He hadn’t hit her back then, although he had come close. He shoved her, hard, slamming her into the wall. I remember crying out watching them, but neither of them were paying any attention to me.

          My mother somehow managed not to hit her head on the wall and recovered quickly, hair askew and hanging in her face and her glaring at my father so hatefully, like she was thinking of clawing his eyes out.

          “Fuck you,” she spat at him.

          She stormed back the way she came and I jumped out of her way, not wanting to go anywhere near her as she jerked her coat back on, shoved her feet back into her shoes, and left out into the rainy night, being sure to slam the door extra hard. Both my father and I flinched as the whole house shook with it. Still crying and trying my hardest to stop, I glanced over at my father, wondering if he was going to get angry at me, but he just kind of… deflated the second my mother left his sight. He sighed heavily, looking so tired and weary all of a sudden, and ran a hand through his dark brown hair. He noticed me again and his expression did some weird dance between grim, frustration, and trying to smile.

          “I’m sorry, Daddy,” I sniffed, trying to contain a sob, “I didn’t mean to make Mommy so angry.”

          “Oh, Duo,” he sighed, but his tone was soft, not mad, “Come here.”

          I went to him, rubbing my fists against my eyes, but the tears just kept coming. He got on his knees and wrapped his arms around me, hugging me a bit too tightly, but I didn’t mind. He rubbed my back as I got the last tears out.

          “It’s alright, Sweetheart,” he soothed, “It wasn’t your fault. Your Mom… she just gets in a bad mood sometimes. But things will be fine with just the two of us, won’t they?”

          I had nodded, more to just appear like I agreed than I actually had, thinking that while things were better without my mother glowering and being so mad at us, I still wish she hadn’t left. I had just wanted to have dinner with her, I got to see her so little. Now that I’m older and remembering all this, I can hear the relief in my father’s voice that I hadn’t as a kid, that he was happy my mother had left. I might miss her, but to him, things really were fine with just the two of us and if she had stayed, she just would have sat at the dinner table with us, icy and bitter. If I didn’t know any better and that he had just had a moment of losing control over his anger, I would suspect him of starting something with her to make her leave.

          “Come on,” he brushed my bangs out of my face and smiled wanly at me, “I’m not much of a cook, but I think I can heat up some stew. How does that sound?”

          I managed a watery smile. If it meant him not being angry at me, or worse, _disappointed_ , I would eat anything he put in front of me, even dog shit. He picked me up in that easy way of his, like he was carrying no more than a doll or maybe a cat, letting me wrap my arms around his neck as he kept a hand on my back, cradling against his chest and shoulder. I loved him so powerfully in that moment, at how gentle and nice he was being, or maybe that’s just how I remember it now, knowing that I might never see that man again. Had he ever really existed or do I just choose to remember him that way? If he had, where had he gone? Shriveled up and died? Or just hiding behind the monster, the animal that he is now? I don’t know what’s sadder, that I’ll never see him ever again, or that they’re just the same person and he chooses to not act that way. Because he doesn’t love me anymore, not like he might have when I was little.

          Writing this now, I have to think about what Heero said Friday, about choices and how my father makes a choice every time he hits me or my mother. I’ve always seen his beatings as my fault, for making him angry and that he has no choice but to punish me, but… having that dream-memory again and remembering the things my boyfriend had pointed out, I know he’s right. No one has ever pointed a gun at my father’s head and made him hit us. I don’t know why he does it, what makes him different from me or Heero or anyone else, a loss of control, a worse temper, or just apathy. But I remember a time when he had been able to hold back striking out because he was pissed or wanted to make someone else miserable. I remember him holding me like I was something precious, pushing all his hurt and frustration aside to make me feel better in his own, fumbling way. He used to have that capacity of affection, to actually be a dad, and that makes mornings like Friday all the more difficult for me to swallow. That comparison is what breaks my heart, that the same man that carried me to through the kitchen and opened up one of the cabinet doors that evening with his hand on my back and had let me rest my head on his shoulder is the same one that had dragged me into our bathroom four years later and raped me. Sometimes… like that morning… I think that my father, my _real_ father, had died sometime four or five years ago and I’m just living with his corpse, a corpse that had been somehow possessed by some demon. And sometimes, I can see that man peeking through, just a little, and I yearn to dig him out. But I don’t think there’s enough of him left for that.

          The dream continued with my father smiling and giving a small noise of triumph as he found a can of beef stew left in the cabinet.

          “See? We don’t need your mom to have a nice dinner together, do we?” he said.

          That comment makes me bristle now, like he was asking for some kind of justification or it was a contest between the two of them, but my four or five-year-old self had just smiled brightly at him. His smile only brightened more when he saw that my tears had finally stopped. 

          “That’s my big boy,” he whispered with a mix of affection and relief, ruffling my hair.

          There’s more to the dream; us eating a nice, quiet dinner together, watching television, him helping me brush my teeth, reading to me until I fell asleep, but it’s that moment that I remember the most clearly. Feeling so proud of myself to have earned him saying that and ruffling my hair, loving him so much and happy that I had made him smile. I guess that’s why that memory has stuck with me through all these years while others have faded, that one moment of pride and pure happiness, untainted by anything else, even my parents’ fight. But the older I get, the more I kind of resent that memory and wish I could just forget it. I still love that memory, love that I can remember a time when my father wasn’t so horrible, but it makes dealing with him so much more difficult. It would be so much easier if I could just hate him, and not remember why I still love him. Not be reminded that he isn’t just a monster, but my dad, and not have this hope that, one day, he’ll go back to the way he used to be, still a bastard, but one that cared about me.

          I woke with this strong, bittersweet feeling, emphasis on the ‘bitter’ part. Well… I suppose bitter isn’t quite the right word for what I was feeling. I just felt… sad. Like I had lost something. There was this hollow sensation right in my chest, like there was a hole there or something had been forcefully ripped out. Not exactly a great way to wake up first thing in the morning, even if it was largely tempered by the fact that I had slept like a freaking log. If I had had that dream in my own bed, I’m sure I would have fallen into a deep depression for the rest of the day. Not exactly anything freaking rare nowadays. But as I opened my eyes that morning, the feeling quickly dissipated.

          Yeah, you read that right. Eyes, as in plural. I noticed it, too, the second I had them both open. The swelling had gone down enough in my sleep that I could see with my left eye again. It hadn’t opened all the way and that side of my face still felt like a swollen, throbbing mass, but halfway open was better than not open at all and I had my depth perception back. I would take it. My stomach didn’t even hurt that much. Which was a really good thing because I was sure Mariela intended on stuffing me to bursting as soon as she found out that I hadn’t eaten much of anything the previous day.

          That thought almost had me grinning into Heero’s pillow, my mood lifting completely. That was right, I was at Heero’s. I could see his parents again and I had an entire day of freedom to look forward to. The ensuing euphoria was dizzying. I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt that way… _happy_. It was such a rare thing that my heart wasn’t adjusted to that it hurt. It might have been an after effect of actually sleeping like a normal human being for once, but I didn’t think so.

I twitched my head further to the side to gauge just how sore I was (the answer was ‘very’, but still less sore and stiff than I had been the previous day), and encountered something soft and very warm against my cheek. Pepper’s wide, round eyes greeted me and she lightly headbutted my forehead.

          “Morning, Princess,” I murmured, still a little groggy, and nuzzled her back.

          It was a much more welcome wakening than my father dragging me out of bed or his footsteps on the stairs rousing me with a start. I searched for the clock on the bedside table near my head and found with amazement that I had been asleep for about seven hours. It wasn’t enough to erase the damage from the last few days, but it was a good start. I might actually survive Monday if I could sleep like that Sunday morning, too. I was planning on sleeping over there Sunday night, too, the most I felt I could get away with and even just that, I knew, was a huge risk, but at least I would make back most of the sleep I had missed.

          “Mmm,” I heard Heero mumble in my ear and nothing could stop my smile as I realized that the weight I had only just barely noticed on my right side was him, draped all over me.

          I don’t think I had even moved in my sleep the entire morning. I was still mostly in the two-thirds on my stomach, a third on my right side position that Heero had put me in and he had obviously taken the opportunity, either consciously and hadn’t moved at all himself, or in his sleep, to use the back of my uninjured shoulder as his pillow, his arm wrapped around my waist like a python. It was no wonder why I felt so warm and content. Heero is such a cuddler, always touching and holding even when he isn’t aware that he’s doing it and that thought made affection burst in me. For about all of thirty seconds.

          Then came the memory of that same touchy, intimate nature of his and exactly how I had ended up sleeping like that and a good chunk of my mood melted away into a bit of horror and shame. I remembered everything from earlier that morning in vivid detail, my head not letting me forget how much I had fucked up. God, just… what in the fuck was wrong with me? How could I have done that him _again?_ That hopelessness I had felt in those small hours of the morning threatened to overtake me like it had then when Heero tightened his arm around me, drawing me out of my misery for a moment.

          “You awake?” he muttered sleepily.

          “Mmhmm,” I managed through my guilt, “It’s nine. Want to get up?”

          He groaned.

          “Right, you have track,” he said grudgingly, but still didn’t move, just snuggled against my back, “You could skip and we could just snuggle for an hour.”

          It was a testament that my mood from that morning was a little better than it had been before we had gone to sleep that I actually chuckled at his laziness.

          “Says the person who convinced me to try out for track in the first place,” I teased him.

          “Yeah, well, if I had known at the time that I would get Saturday mornings in bed with you, I would have kept my big mouth shut,” he grumbled, but we both knew he was full of shit.

          I felt him sigh against my shoulder, but he still didn’t make any effort to get up, just kind of laying heavily against my back. I really hate lying on my stomach for obvious reasons, so lying that way then should have had me on edge and having someone actually pressed against it like that should have had my anxiety screaming, but instead I felt… not just fine, but comfortable and happy. Anyone else would have gotten an elbow slammed into their nose, but with ‘Ro, it was ok. Every time the fact that there was a person on me tried to poke my panic instincts with a stick, there was this little voice in my head telling those same instincts ‘it’s Heero, so it’s fine. He would never do _that_ to me.’ I guess the most surprising thing is that I listened to it like it was word from God. That was right, Heero would never hurt me. He would never betray me like my father and Trowa had, he wouldn’t even think of it. Where the fuck was that voice when Heero had been slid his hands down my pants? Where had it been each and every time he’s wanted to be intimate with me? Why can I stand him laying on me but not him just touching me, fooling around with me? How can you trust someone so completely… and not trust them at all at the same time?

          Heero groaned and finally rolled off me, though he acted like it took some great effort to do. I shifted my body, slowly rolling onto my back myself and had to stifle a groan of my own. Fuck was I stiff. My only consolation was that I didn’t hurt as much as I had the previous day and my face didn’t feel quite so much like pounded hamburger meat, but I still hurt. My boyfriend sat up and smiled down at me, looking me over and liking what he saw.

          “Your face looks a little better,” he told me, “How do you feel?”

          “Like I might live,” I admitted and got a chuckle from him, “Better. My headache is even gone.”

          “Great,” he beamed, “Is your appetite back?”

          I nodded. My gut still ached a little, but my stomach felt like a black hole, ready to suck in anything that came near it. Hungry doesn’t really suffice.

          “Starving,” I had to confess, “I guess I should eat something before track or I’m going to fall flat on my face. Might end up doing that anyway.”

          “If you need more sleep…” he broached.

          It was my turn to sigh. It sounded so nice, forgetting track practice and going back to sleep, but I was already mostly awake and I didn’t think Horner would appreciate me skipping because I was ‘tired’.

          “I feel a lot better now,” I assured him, “The sleep did me a lot of good, I can at least get through track.”

          This weird silence fell between us then and I think Heero felt it, too, that both of our minds were slowly heading towards that thing that we had been avoiding. He looked like he had swallowed something sour and I wondered which of us was least looking forward to this.

          “Heero, about this morning…” I swallowed roughly, looking away from him at some invisible spot on the wall, “I’m so-,”

          He put his hand over my mouth and I looked at him in shock at the motion, but he was smiling slightly, even if it was a little thin.

          “No, Duo,” he said softly, yet the words still felt like an order or a reprimand, “No more apologies, ok? You have nothing to feel sorry over.”

          He lifted his hand and I searched his face, looking for the lie, looking for the judgement, but I couldn’t find either.

          “I pushed you away again,” I said in a small voice, “I… I led you on-,”

          I felt tears prick my eyes as I remembered those early morning moments in vivid, gruesome detail. My self-loathing and disgust came back full force, along with that terrible epiphany, that feeling that I was staring at the death of something that could have been beautiful, if it had been put in anyone’s hands except for mine. I blinked wide-eyed as he reached out to me again, but brushed my bangs out of my face, studying my eyes and it made me feel weird, kind of half pleased and half vulnerable when I realized the eye he was studying so hard was my left one.

          “No,” he said plainly, his voice mellow with affection, “No more of that, alright? You didn’t lead me on. You didn’t know, love. You thought you were ready, I… I had hoped you were ready, but I should have known better. I let myself get carried away. You didn’t hurt me, ok? I didn’t feel rejected. I won’t lie, I wish we could have gone further, but it was nice, wasn’t it? For a while?”

          I nodded again and was so relieved that I could give him that much.

          “So, there’s nothing to apologize for,” he repeated himself, “We fooled around a little and we stopped when we weren’t ready to go further. It happens. I wasn’t all that ready to go much further, either. If you hadn’t tensed up, I would have stopped, too, a few minutes later. It’s alright, stop beating yourself up over it.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say to that. I had no doubt at all that he would have stopped eventually. He hadn’t been gearing up for fucking or anything like that, I knew that, but it was kind of besides the point. That ‘it happens’ was also besides the point. I had tried. I had tried harder than I ever had before and I had still failed. I couldn’t find that numb place on command. I couldn’t make myself have sex with him or even just go a bit further than we had. This… road block in my head had thrown itself up and I couldn’t get past it. It was hopeless. I know that now. But I didn’t say anything, just nodded because that thought could never be voiced between us. I knew it was the beginning of the end, that I had reached my limits, but I couldn’t let him know that. Never mind my humiliation over my issues, if I did tell him, there could only be one of two outcomes. One, he would be disgusted in me and we would break up, which wasn’t anything different than the choice I had been struggling with for weeks. Or two, he would try to fix a problem that was just not fixable and would blame himself. I couldn’t let either of those things happen.

Besides, I told myself, if Heero didn’t know what was wrong, I could still have time. If he wasn’t going to push past that point that I couldn’t cross, I still could have a relationship with him. I had to hold on to that. What else was there? If that slipped through my hands, I would actually have to admit to myself that this… thing between us was over and nothing I could do would stop it from ending. I can’t think of what is going to happen after that, so it’s just easier to let him keep on thinking this is all temporary, that it really is just a matter of my not being ready _yet_ instead of _ever._ So, while Heero smiled, thinking I was over my guilt, my guts were still tying themselves into knots and I was just trying to find that happy place again. It was surprisingly easy with him next to me and the whole day ahead of us. I knew I was being delusional, but after the week I had just had, I needed that delusion or I was going to go right off the bend lightning fast. I just could not take anymore, from myself or anyone else, so I did what I did best. I ran and I hid from all of it and pretended that everything was just fine and motherfucking dandy.

“Um, do you mind if I take my shower before yours?” I asked, practically salivating more at the thought of finally getting clean than getting fed.

I didn’t even care if I was late for track so long as I got that damned shower. My sadistic mind tried to supply to me all the things that had happened to me since my last, real shower and not the aborted one I had gotten a few days ago, but even before that. All the times my father had fucked me, every gym class, every work shift… It made my skin crawl and I knew without a doubt that I was not going to be doing a single thing before I cleaned myself. I didn’t even like laying there anymore next to Heero, so sure he could smell me.

“Sure,” he agreed and didn’t even seem to find it odd that I wanted a shower right before I would be running around and sweating.

God, maybe he really could smell how rank I was and didn’t want to be near me… but that didn’t seem to be the case as he had been sleeping on me and hadn’t pulled away from me at all, so I forced myself to get a grip.

“Do you want anything specific for breakfast?” he asked, “I can ask my mom to start breakfast so it’ll be ready for you.”

“You know me,” I gave him a wry smile, “I’ll eat anything. Whatever you’re in the mood for is fine.”

I didn’t tell him that I was so hungry, if he put a can of anchovies in front of me, I could probably make it disappear in about three seconds flat. Anything his mom made would taste like heaven. His own smile turned softer, more affectionate.

“Yeah, I do,” he reached out his hand and lightly brushed my cheek with his knuckles before leaning down and kissing me.

The kiss was brief, but no less sweet, and not quite chaste as his lips moved against mine. It made me feel odd, bringing up memories of that morning that should have had me recoiling, if not with skittishness, then certainly with guilt, but I kissed him back, just happy for the safe, familiar brand of intimacy. I might suck at letting him touch me anywhere below my chest, but I could do this right at least. When he pulled back, his expression was hungry and I felt a twinge of fear, but then he rolled off the bed like it had never existed.

I was much slower getting off the bed, my body protesting having to move. It wasn’t going to be very happy with me when I made it run in a few hours. Honestly, I probably shouldn’t have even considered going. I could run, but I knew I wasn’t at my best and it felt like a waste of my time to be going to track only to perform like shit and just wear myself out, but who knows. Maybe the exercise would do me some good. Heero disappeared downstairs to go find his parents. I dug out my track uniform and some clean underwear from the guest room and made my way to the bathroom, feeling like I was dreaming that I could finally wash my hair.

I paused at the doorway as I heard voices from downstairs. Heero was saying something and my stomach twisted with dread as I heard Justin’s voice respond, half of me wishing I could hear what they were talking about and the other half really not wanting to in case it was about me. I didn’t know what might be worse, that he was warning them about how I looked or that he wasn’t, to get it out in the open or for them to be surprised. Either way, I wasn’t looking forward to going down there and facing them. I didn’t want to see that look of worry and hurt on their faces and have to assure them like I had Heero, to downplay this or even outright lie. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. I trusted my best friend not to tattle on me, but was that really any better? If I told the truth, they would freak. If I lied, I would feel like shit and Justin would probably be able to tell that I was lying. As usual, everything seemed like the wrong answer.

It didn’t matter what I chose to do, I decided. I had to go down there and see them either way and I couldn’t think of a convincing lie or how to explain the truth. I supposed I could go with what I had told Leneski, that kids at school were responsible, but Justin might try to get a name from me again or even call the school if he thought it was getting bad. I couldn’t think of a way that this was going to end with me just going downstairs, eating breakfast, and leaving for track. I was just… so tired of fighting and explaining away other peoples’ fears. I just wanted to tread the road of least resistance and this family wouldn’t let me. At this point, it was all feeling like an open, gaping, festering wound that nobody would let heal, they just kept poking and scratching at it. I didn’t want to be reminded that I looked like shit, or why that was.

I sighed heavily and went into the bathroom, shedding my clothes in record time and turning on the hot water. I stubbornly did not look at my reflection in the mirror over the sink. Then, I was stepping into the shower and all of it just went away for a while.

I don’t think I’ve ever washed more in my entire life. I even moaned a little when that blissfully hot water hit me, drenching my hair and warming up stiff muscles. I felt incredibly indulgent doing it, but I scrubbed three whole times and washed my hair twice, not even being gentle with healing contusions and cuts. The gash on my shoulder bled freely, but I didn’t see any pus and it looked like it wasn’t too inflamed, so I didn’t care. I hadn’t looked at myself with my clothes off in over twenty-four hours and it didn’t look great, but still better than it had the previous day. I would take what I could get.

I scrubbed every inch of me until I was pink, and then scrubbed another time just to be sure every speck of dirt and sweat was off me. I paid extra attention to every place that my father had touched me that week. I knew there was nothing left of him inside me or on me, but I can’t even tell you how good it felt to be able to clean those areas, the utter relief from getting to wash him away like a bad dream. When I couldn’t possibly clean anymore without going from obsessive to psychotic, I soaked up the washcloth with hot water, pressed it against my swollen face, and just stood there under the spray for a good five minutes. I felt so relaxed, I could have even dozed off. I let it all soak into me. Not just the water, but where I was and when and who with. I was safe from all of it, tucked away in my little bubble again where nothing else needed to exist. For a couple of days, everything would be ok. Nothing could touch me there, not in the sanctuary that Heero and his parents had made for me.

The bitter thought of what I would do when I no longer had Heero and I lost that safe place tried to bubble up, but I squashed it flat. Sometime between getting out of bed and going to get my clothes, I had made the decision that I was not going to do this that day. I was not going to brood and think about all the shitty things, the inevitable things. I was going to enjoy my fucking Saturday if it killed me. Sunday, too, if I could manage it, but for now Saturday was enough. Just give me one day to be a normal person, I would have prayed if I were the sort, just the one and I can handle whatever happens after.

It was probably a good thing that I had track to get to or I might have spent all morning in that shower, turning into a giant prune. When I finally did turn the water off and left, I felt better than I had all week. I actually felt like I could pass for human, enough so that I found the renewed strength to look at myself in the mirror as I dried off. It… was not a pretty sight. My face was still painted with blood-red, purple, and black bruises and my black eye was still pretty gross, but the abrasions had fully scabbed over and most of the swelling had gone down either completely or was on its way out. Heero was right, I looked better. Still not great, but at least his parents hadn’t seen it when it had been fresh.

I combed my hair, got dressed, put on some deodorant, and then it was time to face the music, but I was still relaxed from the hot shower and somehow it didn’t seem as terrible facing Heero’s parents. Hell, if I got some food in me, I might even survive track. The amazing smell of cooking bacon and something baking hit me as soon as I left the bathroom and its smells of soap and steam and my stomach just about died. My cat trotted after me as I walked down the steps, meowing to be picked up, but I ignored her for once. She was really getting spoiled and I had a sneaking suspicion that Mariela was one of the reasons for that.

          “It’s going to rain tomorrow,” I caught Justin saying.

          “I know,” Heero responded, “but we can just put a tarp over it. Duo wanted to get the painting done today and it’ll be nice out for the afternoon.”

          “If you two insist,” he conceded.

          “Morning,” I greeted as I walked in.

          Heero was chopping what looked like strawberries while his father sat at the table reading the paper. Mariela was stirring a huge pot of something and practically beaming the second she heard me.

          “Morning, Duo-,” she turned and, just like I had predicted, her sunny smile vanished the second she actually saw me.

          She gasped, covering her mouth with her hand and stared at me in shock, which was enough to make her husband put his paper down to get a look at me. He didn’t gasp, but his eyes got all hard and that was worse somehow.

          “Oh… oh, Duo, your face…” she gaped, taking a step towards me, hands almost reaching towards me like she wanted to touch my face, but they fell limp and I wanted nothing more than to find a nice hole to hide in.

          “Mom,” Heero hissed at her, “leave him be.”

          If I could have seen him around his mother, I would have given him a grateful smile, relieved that he had my back here, but his mother didn’t pay him any attention.

          “Oh, honey, what happened?!” she fussed and I heard ‘Ro sigh in exasperation.

          I fought the urge to turn my head to the side so she wouldn’t see the left side of my face, but that seemed rather pointless.

          “Nothing really,” I murmured, “It’s just a black eye, I’m fine.”

          “That’s a lot more than just a black eye!” she exclaimed, “Did those awful boys at school do this?!”

          I fell silent, not knowing what to say because I still hadn’t decided what I would tell them. I wondered if I could just get away with not saying anything, but I didn’t think so.

          “Can he just eat his breakfast without getting the third degree?” my boyfriend grumbled.

          I would have laughed at what a hypocrite he was being if I wasn’t so relieved to have someone not freaking out at me. Mariela whirled towards Justin who had stood up at the table, but was just watching me with this pinched, intense look that made me squirm even more than Mariela’s worrying did, like he could see right into me and knew where each and every one of those bruises had come from and why.

          “Justin, say something!” she pleaded, making a desperate gesture towards me.

          To my amazement, he pretty much ignored her. He stalked over to the freezer and dug out an ice pack for me. I wondered just how many of those they had and that they kept them in there for me made me feel really weird, part warmed and part horrified. I reached out my hand for him to give it to me, thinking we were done with the whole fussing over me thing, but to my confusion, he crossed his arms over his chest, refusing to relinquish it to me. Instead, he nodded at my black eye.

          “School or home?” he asked simply, his voice stern without being angry or reprimanding.

          I stood there frozen as I realized he wasn’t just not going to give me the ice pack if I didn’t answer him, he probably wouldn’t let me leave the house. Why does it matter, I wanted to snap at him, it’s over and done with and no one can do anything about it anyway! Paranoia tried to rise up along with the thought that this was it, he was going to call the cops, this was the straw that had finally broken his back, but I knew better. I don’t trust easily, but… I trusted him. I can’t say that I trust him as much as ‘Ro, it’s just a different kind of trust. I knew that he wasn’t asking to look for someone to accuse, he just wanted the truth. He needed to know, for whatever reason, but he wouldn’t get my father in trouble, not unless I asked him to. That was the only thing that kept me from hiding from him every time I was hurt, the only thing that helped me talk to him about this shit, knowing that I wasn’t ratting out my father, just talking to someone who was concerned about me and wanted to help. Still, I was horribly ashamed of what had happened, that my father had been the one to do this. That Heero had talked me out of believing that this was entirely my fault, my dad had still lost control and taken it out on me. That was just as embarrassing in my book. But I also knew Justin was not going to believe me if I lied to him and I didn’t want to, even if I probably should.

          “Home,” I mumbled, looking down at the ground as my face flamed with shame.

          Mariela sucked in another shocked gasp and I waited for the explosion, waited for Justin to lecture me like Heero had about my father. He uncrossed his arms and handed me the ice pack with a soft smile.

          “Thank you for telling me the truth, Duo,” he said gently and in that strange way of his, that one sentence made it all better.

          Between how accepting he was being and those kind words, I was suddenly struck with the powerful urge to cry my heart out to that man, to confess everything that had happened the previous morning, all my fears and anger and humiliation and guilt. It was an odd thing to feel, because it was my trust that gave me that urge, but my desperate yearning for his respect that kept me from doing it. You can’t really have one without the other. He ruffled my hair, getting a small smile out of me and a blush as well, but that seemed like the end of it. He walked back over to the table and Mariela stared at him incredulously.

          “Justin!” she protested, “We need to-,”

          He cut her off with a stern look and something passed between the two of them, some message written in a single glance that only couples that have been together for a very long time can manage. I had no idea what was going on, but my stomach curdled at the thought that they were about to get into a fight, and it would all be because of me. I didn’t know what to do but look from one to the other in horror, trying to think of something to stop the blow out. I wasn’t worth fighting over and the idea that maybe I should just go came to me, but the thought was too painful and I just felt kind of helpless. Heero looked at me in alarm but, bizarrely, whatever was freaking him out didn’t seem to be the fact that his parents were about to go at it right in front of him, but something he saw on my face.

          Mariela sighed in exasperation, then turned back to me. She smiled at me and it was suddenly like that whole exchange hadn’t happened, or would have if there wasn’t this shadow in her eyes when she looked at me again.

          “Put that on your eye, dear,” she said in such a motherly way, it soothed my anxiety and I obeyed her, “You must be starving. Go sit down.”

          I still was a bit groggy and my brain just could not skip the mental tracks that she had just made.

          “Do… do you need help?” I asked, flustered and bewildered.

          “I have my helper,” she jerked her thumb back in Heero’s direction, “Now, shoo.”

          I couldn’t figure out if she was demanding I not lift a finger to be nice or if she was worried about my injuries, but I didn’t fight it, going to sit next to Justin. He smiled at me, and like Mariela, there was a thread of concern in his expression, but if he wasn’t going to talk about it, I sure wasn’t going to.

          “You look a lot more well rested today,” he noted and it took me a moment to remember the last time I had actually saw him.

          “I slept like the dead last night,” I admitted.

          “Good,” he glanced at my face, his blue eyes lingering on the large bruise on my cheek, “Maybe you should skip track this morning.”

          I almost groaned and wondered if maybe it would be less of a hassle to just agree so they would stop asking me that.

          “I’m really not hurt that much, Mr. Yuy,” I insisted, “Nothing’s broken, it’s just some bruises.”

          “Actually, I mentioned it because you still look like you could use a bit more sleep,” he said with a smirk, “You could take a nap if you’re still tired, the track season is still early, so I’m sure your coach wouldn’t be too put out.”

          “It’s fine,” I told him, “I am a little tired still, but I’ll just go to bed early tonight.”

          “That sounds like a good idea,” he gestured to my face, “I know you said nothing is broken, but do you mind if I take a quick look?”

          I sighed, but dropped the ice pack so he could get a better look at the damage. It seemed like the least I could do to appease him if he wasn’t going to lecture me about my dad. He frowned as he took note of my bruised nose and the scrape on my cheek as well as my black eye, but didn’t make any comment on how dark and deep the bruises were or how strong of a hit would have been needed to cause that much damage.

          “These must hurt a lot,” he commiserated before his tone went serious, “Duo,” it was his turn to sigh, “I know you don’t want to hear it, but please, let us-,”

          “Please,” I begged, rushing to cut him off before he could ask me to let them help me, let them call the cops, to tell someone about my dad or even to talk to him themselves, refusing to even let myself hear those words, though I couldn’t decide if it was because I could easily predict them… or because I wasn’t so sure if he asked me directly, could I say no without a twinge of doubt, “Don’t say it. You already know what my answer is going to be.”

          Thank all the gods, he backed down, smiling humorlessly at me.

          “Can’t blame me for trying,” he said dryly.

          I put the ice pack back on my face. I caught Mariela watching us with a displeased frown and knew exactly where she stood on the issue. I remembered that Monday, how protective and pissed she had gotten at how Heero and I were being treated at school and how antagonistic my boss was on the phone. If it were up to her, she would have had the police on the phone that very instant, but somehow, Justin had reigned her in, or maybe she just knew she was outnumbered. Whatever the reason, it was a load off my shoulders knowing that the issue was done with and I wouldn’t have to worry about them doing anything… drastic. Neither of them looked very happy with it, but they wouldn’t go behind my back. But… there was a part of me… a very, very, very tiny part that wondered if maybe they should. I clearly couldn’t make up my damned mind on what to do, so maybe someone should make it for me. But then I just thought about what would come after, about trials and jails and social services and everyone in the entire fucking town knowing my personal business and I wanted to puke.

          I don’t know if my thoughts made me go pale or it was just really good timing, but Heero was suddenly there, putting a tall glass of orange juice in front of me. I blinked up at him and his reassuring smile made all my thoughts of my father dissipate like smoke and I smiled back, grateful for his presence and the drink because I was suddenly incredibly thirsty. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Justin smiling at us like he thought we were adorable, which made me blush hard. Mariela returned to cooking, the matter well and truly dropped and I relaxed. I felt Justin put his hand on my knee, giving it a soft, companionable squeeze like some silent message that he had my back even if he thought I was being an idiot, or maybe it was just to offer comfort. It didn’t really matter, it gave me that bittersweet feeling again, this yearning to have a father that would touch me like that, or touch me at all that wasn’t meant to hurt me in some way lately, but I just focused on the sweet part of that feeling and let the rest fade into the back of my head.

          Soon, I had a plate overflowing with crepes loaded with homemade sweet cream, blueberries, and strawberries and bacon and scrambled eggs. Mariela had even dusted them with powdered sugar.

          “You really didn’t need to go through all this trouble…” I told her when she and Heero sat down with us.

          “Oh, hush,” she waved off my concerns with that sunny smile of hers, “It’s Saturday, it’s nice to sit down to a big breakfast as a family.”

          I knew she hadn’t meant me as part of that family, that she couldn’t have and had just meant her and Heero and Justin, but it still made my face warm at how much I wanted it and I cursed myself for being that pathetic. I dug into my breakfast, using eating to hide my blush. I had three platefuls of the assorted food, happy to have not just something in my empty stomach, but something delicious and homemade. I caught Heero’s mother looking at me sadly once in a while, but if it was over my eating like I hadn’t eaten all week or my mangled face, I couldn’t tell, so I just ignored her. I had two glasses of orange juice, too, and by the end of the meal, I felt better than I had since spring break. My offer to do the dishes was thoroughly rebuked.

          “You boys better hurry if you want to get to the school on time,” Justin pointed out.

          “Hold on just one sec,” Mariela paused in her washing the dishes to go to the big pot on the stove, giving it a stir and presenting me with a spoon full of red sauce, “Duo, try this and tell me what you think before you go.”

          I was all too happy to sample what was on the spoon and almost groaned at the full, intoxicating flavor of spicy sauce with just a hint of sweetness.

          “That’s amazing, you could sell that in stores and make a mint, you know,” I praised and she blushed prettily.

          “Well, I don’t know about that,” she chuckled, “but I’m glad you like it. Think it needs anything?” she asked in an almost whisper, like we were sharing a secret and I felt myself swell up that she was asking my opinion.

          “Mmm, maybe a little more onion and paprika?” I suggested after thinking for a moment, “Oh, and a bit of nutmeg to make it sweeter?”

          “Good idea!” she gushed and actually rifled through her spice rack to do just that, making that proud, happy feeling in my chest explode.

          She made me try it again when Heero and I had finished brushing our teeth and were on the way out. I crowned it damn near perfect and we shared a conspiratory grin. I can’t even begin to describe how good it made me feel to talk to someone else that liked cooking and actually thought I knew what I was doing. Hell, to have someone who didn’t think it was weird that I liked cooking. While my mother was warming up to the idea, mostly because her own mother had been an allegedly great cook, she herself wasn’t that interested in it beyond making our meals and my dad just shoveled in whatever was put in front of him while mocking me in front of his friends for the very food they were enjoying. It had gotten old quite a long time ago, so while I’m the one that usually cooks when I’m home, I don’t go all out about it between his attitude and a lack of ingredients. It was somehow freeing to be around Mariela and talk about these things and being able to help cook for them without feeling like anyone was judging me for it.

          It was cooler out than it had been the rest of the week, not quite cold yet, but not exactly comfortable without our spring jackets on. I could practically taste tomorrow’s rain in the air and the sky was cloudy, but the sky poking through them was a deep, dusky blue, not grey yet, and we should be safe from the rain until the next day. I was looking forward already to getting out of work on Sunday and watching movies or playing games with Heero on a stormy night.

          We got to track pretty much on time, although it was still later than I would have liked since the rest of the team was there and I had to deal with the awkward moment of walking over to the group and have all of them give me the cold shoulder, or in Alex’s case, an icy glare. Horner gave me a weird look when he came over to us.

          “Maxwell! I thought you were sitting out today,” he barked in surprise.

          I kind of stared at him for a moment and, in blind paranoia, wondered if Heero’s parents had called him to say that, but that didn’t make any kind of sense. Then it clicked that the last time the man had seen me had been the day before when I had sat out on gym. He had probably assumed I wasn’t going to show up for track, either, and I blushed sheepishly while mentally smacking myself for my stupidity. I really could have just stayed in bed that morning and he wouldn’t have even raised an eyebrow at my not showing up. Oh well, too late for that now. Besides, it was kind of nice to get some fresh air and a little exercise since I had skipped the day before.

          “No, sir,” I told him, “I’m feeling a lot better.”

          He looked dubious at that, but moved on.

          “Since we did not have practice last week,” he boomed even though we are all close enough to him hear him quite well, “I trust you all have been keeping up with your exercises and I can see at least a little improvement from some of you from your try out times. After we warm up and do a few training exercises, I am going to pair each of you up to run three laps based on the events I placed you in during our first practice to see how you’ll match up and who needs help in what areas. Understood?”

          There was a chorus of affirmatives. Horner doled us up into pairs and I waited on baited breath to see who I would be running against, praying it wouldn’t be with Alex again. We weren’t even in the same events, thank god, but fate seems to really loathe me and I just did not want to deal with the prick. Thankfully, I ended up against Smith, the senior I had run hurdles against before and didn’t seem to outright hate me like most of the rest of the team, he just seemed a bit distrustful which, considering the rumors that flew around about me, was understandable, I guess. We went through our stretches and running exercises next, for which I was grateful. I had told everyone that I was fine to run and I mostly was, but I hadn’t realized just how stiff and sore I was from my father’s beating before I had to use certain muscles, especially my back and stomach. If I had tried to run right away, I wouldn’t have gotten twenty feet.

          Smith… whose first name turned out to be Terrance, or Terry as I had heard the other senior on the team calling him, and I were third on the track. It was nicer running against someone who wasn’t trying to show me up or trip me or would get pissy if I beat them because I was a ‘fag’. Of course, I didn’t beat him, I didn’t even come close. The guy was damned good and had obviously been doing this since he had been a freshman, I hadn’t stood a chance. Even at a hundred percent, I still would have lost, and while I told myself that it really didn’t matter, it stung a little having Heero see me lose. I didn’t even want to look at Alex, sure that he was making fun of me with his friends, a kind of payback for beating him. When Horner strode over to us, I was positive he was going to scold me for not running as well as I had last time, but my body was just too tired and aching to keep up.

          “Maxwell,” of course I was the one he was going to call out, right in front of everyone, “Good job.”

          I stared at him incredulously.

          “Your stride is a lot tighter than last time,” he complimented, “You’ve improved a lot given it’s only been a couple of weeks. Keep at it.”

          “Yes, sir,” I said in amazement and as soon as he marched off to collect the next two boys, I muttered under my breath, “Too bad I sucked at everything else.”

          Still, I had to admit to feeling maybe just a tiny bit of pride that I had improved in the area he had told me to work on. I almost jumped when someone clapped me on the shoulder.

          “Don’t beat yourself up about it,” Terry told me, “You’re pretty damned fast for someone who’s only had a couple of practices. Horner’s right, if you keep at it, you could get really good.”

          “T-thank you,” I stammered stupidly.

          I don’t know what shocked me more, that he was voluntarily speaking to me, that he had touched me, or that he was complimenting me. It would have been surprising enough with someone in my grade or even an underclassman, none of them wanted to come close enough to touch me with a ten-foot pole unless they were fucking with me, but he was an upperclassman, I should have been a bug under his foot. He seemed surprised, too, at himself and that I had thanked him. I wondered what he thought about me, if he bought into the rumors that I was just a thug or the ones about me molesting every male body in reach. Even stranger, he gave me a slight smile before he ran off to be with his friends instead of taking it back or making fun of me.

          The really messed up thing is that I spent the rest of track waiting for the anvil to drop. I was in too good of a mood and, besides some awkwardness before breakfast, I had been having too good of a morning. And now there was this piled on top of it. Something had to give, unless this was destined to be one of those rare, idyllic days that always hurt as soon as they’re over. I really hoped that’s what it was and this wasn’t the eye of the storm. Horner put me and the other hurdle jumpers through our paces towards the end of practice and I didn’t do much better. I didn’t hit any of the hurdles, but I hadn’t made much of an improvement in my speed even though my muscles had started to loosen up enough that I didn’t feel like I was running through pudding. Oddly, he didn’t lecture me about it, but he probably just thought my slowness was due to my injuries. Still, I made a mental note that, as soon as I had healed enough, to start putting more effort into doing some hurdle practicing.

          I sighed in relief when our coach blew his whistle and informed us that practice was over.  Finally, I was free of all obligations. Heero jogged over from his spot on the bleachers, ignoring the hateful looks Alex and a few of his friends threw at him.

          “You did great!” he beamed at me.

          “I sucked,” I corrected him and he raised an eyebrow at me.

          “Duo, you’re third best only after two people, Smith being one of them,” he pointed out in amusement, “And he didn’t beat you by that much. Trust me, you did great.”

          I told myself that it wasn’t that big of a deal, but I felt the same happy jolt of pride that I always do when Heero praises me for something, bullshit or not. I was just relieved that he didn’t look down at me for it. He followed me into the locker room for me to shower. I felt spoiled getting two showers in one day and almost laughed at myself. My father’s ultimatum had only been a few days ago and I was already so neurotic that I thought just showering after track was a luxury. If I wasn’t so eager to get back to Heero’s place and put my new desk together, I might have taken another long shower, but I just rinsed the sweat off and didn’t bother washing my hair again. I could take another shower at Heero’s after work tomorrow without getting into too much trouble, I tried to reason.

          I felt a little tense getting dressed, figuring if the anvil was going to come down, it was going to happen then out of Horner’s sight with Alex so close by, but he was too busy chatting with the other guys to pay attention to the two queers. Heero and I managed to sneak back out and onto the main street leading back to his house without a single incident. It felt too good to be true, but then we were safe and tucked away in his home and I thought that maybe, just maybe I would have that perfect day after all. Heero and I changed into older clothes to paint in and I hunted his father down in their backyard, pulling some weeds out of the grass by the side of the house where the pool was.

          “Hey,” he greeted, “How was practice?”

          “Alright,” I said.

          He dropped his handful of weeds into a half full bucket and stood, dusting off his jeans.

          “I suppose you want to put that desk together,” he said.

          “Not if you’re busy,” I put my hands up defensively, not wanting to be a pain.

          “Nonsense, I hate gardening,” he smirked and gave me a sly wink, “You’re just giving me an excuse to put this off for a little while longer.”

          Before I could protest anymore, he steered me into the house and up the stairs. The box with the desk parts was waiting for me where I had seen it earlier that morning but had ignored it, propped against the far wall and we discussed where it should go and what furniture should be moved, eventually just moving the dresser to the other side of the room and making a space for us to work.

          “You know,” Justin said, panting a little after helping me move the dresser, “if you aren’t feeling up to this today, I can probably manage to put it together myself, or we could do it next weekend.”

          I shook my head. Letting him do it himself was not an option. He had paid for the thing and it was allegedly mine now, so I wanted to be the one putting the most work into it. And, now that it had actually been purchased and was right there in front of me, I had to admit to being taken by a childish anticipation. I didn’t want to wait another week, I wanted to put it together, this thing that Justin had given me, this _gift_ , and I wanted my own space to do my homework on. I couldn’t believe it after all the fighting I had done to _not_ get the thing that I was actually excited for it. Not just the desk, but making something for myself even if it was a pre-manufactured piece of furniture.

          “I’m good,” I told him, “If I can run a few laps, I can put a desk together.”

          He shrugged in surrender and went back downstairs to get the parts that we would need to put it together. As I opened the box and started to arrange the parts around, joining bags of nails to the wood that they would go into and creating order from pure chaos, Heero came in and sat on the bed, watching me work with odd fascination.

          “That’s pretty,” he commented, looking at one of the desk legs with the ivy etched into it.

          “You should see it when it’s put together,” I couldn’t stop the grin, remembering what it had looked like, still completely amazed that this thing was really going to belong to me, if only for a certain period of time.

          “You’re in a good mood,” he smiled affectionately at me, resting his chin on his fist.

          I flushed, embarrassed at my own exuberance.

          “I… I’m sorry I’ve been so… weird lately,” I apologized.

          “Quit it,” he ordered, “I’m not chastising you for having a bad week. I’m just happy to see that you’re feeling better and are excited about something for once.”

          “I just…” I looked away from him and at the parts of the desk, “I’ve done a lot of construction… built a lot of things for other people… but I’ve never built anything for myself before. I still can’t even believe your dad bought this for me, it’s not like I’m his kid or he needed to do something like that for me…”

          “He cares about you,” my boyfriend insisted, “He’d buy a lot more than just a desk for you if you needed it, you know that, don’t you?”

          “That’s what I’m afraid of,” I muttered under my breath, but Heero caught it anyway and opened his mouth to say something.

          Whatever it was, I was saved by his dad coming back with the tools. He gave me his good hammer and let me take control of the whole thing, declaring that I was the one with experience. I really didn’t need much help, truthfully, and the work went by quickly. I think we got the whole thing assembled in under a half an hour. When you’ve put together everything from sheds to porches to fences, a pre-made desk was kind of a breeze. Justin mostly handed me tools and hammered nails into what I told him to or held things for me to work on. Heero stayed on the bed, watching all of this like it was the most fascinating thing in the world and acting as animal herder while we worked, ordering Kanuck out into the hallway when he tried to come in to investigate and shutting the door when my cat stubbornly refused to leave and kept trying to climb up on me.

          “You were right, Duo,” he marveled when we had gotten the whole thing put together and moved it to the side of the room I had wanted it in and had gotten down to cleaning it until it gleamed, “It’s beautiful. You did a great job picking it out.”

          I flushed again, but this time it was more pride than embarrassment. It really was a beautiful piece of furniture and with the light in the room, it looked a hell of a lot better than under the bright lights of the store, the faint rays of sun giving the wood a dark brown and cherry red gleam.

          “See? I told you it would be perfect for this room,” Justin said and tossed his arm over my shoulders.

          I stiffened, not used to that kind of physical contact, especially from an adult. It… came a little bit too close to my dream-memory. If I thought about it too hard, I could feel the ghost of a large hand on my head and back, could almost taste that feeling of happiness and love that I haven’t experienced in a very long time. But it was Justin, and just like his son, I trusted him and knew the gesture wasn’t mocking and there was nothing behind it, just companionship. Just an arm over the shoulders from a man that was always touching his wife and child and even me. But that didn’t make it hurt any less, especially as I realized that this man had touched me more like a father than my own had in several years. I caught Heero’s eye and saw that he looked pained, but I had no idea why. It faded into a soft smile quickly and the moment was lost as Justin slipped his arm from me, bending to pick up a screwdriver.

          “I still think that the two of you should wait until next weekend to paint the treehouse,” he said, completely oblivious to my little moment of apprehension, or knowing him, he had been aware of it and just had the tact not to bring it up, “But if you absolutely want to, the paint and paintbrushes are in the garage along with a tarp to cover it with when it’s dry. I also suggest you break for lunch before you’re done. I don’t want you boys taking in paint fumes on an empty stomach.”

          “Yes, sir,” we echoed.

          We followed him to the garage, only stopping briefly to fill up two water bottles with water in the kitchen and for Heero to put an extra long leash on Kanuck.

          “He won’t get into anything, will he?” I asked nervously, eyeing his white and grey coat.

          “No, I’ll just leash him to the tree like last time and take all the painting supplies up with us. The space will be a little cramped, but we won’t have to go up and down the ladder that way,” he pointed out.

          We loaded up the wheelbarrow with our supplies, the cans of paint too heavy and numerous to be lugging them all that way. We didn’t even have a lot of surface area to paint, we just needed more than one color. We had discussed it on and off when I had been less in a mood the last few days, what colors we wanted. Originally we had considered camo, but then figured out that neither of us really knew how to do that and settled for painting the treehouse in welcoming, dark brown that was pretty close to the color of the tree and accents of green the same shade as the stems of the leaves so even when it bloomed further along in the spring, the treehouse would be more or less hidden to those far away. It was an idea that appealed to me and green is Heero’s favorite color, so we agreed pretty quickly. However, we had needed a few different shades of brown and green to get it just right.

          We trekked out to the treehouse and helped each other bring up all the equipment. Like before, Kanuck whined at us, but figured out he could actually explore on his long leash and seemed content to sniff around at various bushes and trees near us. We divided up the task with Heero doing the half facing the truck and me doing the half facing outwards, starting with the rail and working ‘down’ towards the floor so we wouldn’t have to come back to get at everything when the first parts were dry. Mariela must have gotten the memo from Justin about us eating because she showed up around one with a tray of potato salad, chicken sandwiches, and iced tea. We ate on the ground together, Kanuck sitting down next to his owner without so much as glancing at the food and even when Heero fed him scraps of chicken, he ate it daintily. I wondered if you could actually train a dog to be that well-mannered and the thought almost had me laughing. I didn’t eat much of our lunch, just enough to keep me going until dinner. I didn’t want to spoil my appetite for what I was sure was going to be another big meal. If I had known that it would be the last solid food I would get for quite some time, I would have eaten twice as much of it.

          You know, Heero had made a little fuss about my doing all this, building the desk and painting the tree house, on a day that I should be resting, but as we worked together, I felt relaxed and as completely at ease as if we had spent the day sitting on the couch watching movies. I love going out on dates with him and making out and all that stuff, but it’s always been in moments like these that I’ve felt the happiest and most content in our relationship. I just love being with him like this, working together, moving around each other like we’re a well-oiled machine, sharing smiles and idle chatter. Just being comfortable in our own skins. It’s in these moments that I truly realize just how much in love with him I am and my heart feels like it might burst with it. I know it’s not exactly romantic, but that’s how I feel and sometimes I think that’s what kept me from falling for Trowa. We never had that connection or chemistry, that complete ease around each other.

          We finished around four, just in time to get washed up for dinner. The paint dried pretty quickly as the day got warmer and we were able to set up the tarp before we trekked back to the house. The ladder and underside of the platform were still wet, but the tarp wasn’t touching them, so we deemed it good enough. The smell of pasta sauce and meatballs was incredibly rich and intoxicating as we entered the house. I could also smell garlic bread in the oven and had to shake my head. Give the woman an excuse to cook and Heero’s mom really went all out. She and Justin had seemed to vanish, but I heard someone in the shower and faint noises coming from the basement. Experience told me that Justin was probably down there either tidying up after working around the yard and house that day or picking out a wine for them to have with dinner.

          “I’ll clean off the brushes,” Heero told me, jerking his thumb towards the garage door, “Why don’t you clean up and change before dinner.”

          I glanced down at my old, paint spattered jeans and smiled a little bit shyly.

          “Yeah, I guess your mother wouldn’t appreciate me wearing this for dinner. But are you sure you don’t want help?” I asked.

          He shook his head and shooed me away, he and Kanuck disappearing into the garage with the paint brushes. I decided not to fight it, in such a good mood at that point that I would agree to just about anything. Thinking back on all this, knowing how things had ended up and seeing all my mistakes in hindsight, I wonder what would have happened if I had gone to help Heero clean anyway. Probably things would have ended up exactly the same, or worse, but I still wonder, still try to find the moment when I fucked everything up. Probably the moment that I had decided to stay over at Heero’s in the first place. It’s like they say, hindsight is perfect. Dammit, I’m getting ahead of myself again, but it’s weighed on my mind lately. Regret.

          I scrubbed my hands clean at the kitchen sink, poured a glass of water, gulped it down, and walked out of the kitchen. I was just on the foot of the stairs when I heard it, a sound that now haunts my nightmares. I knew it right away. It was a very distinct sound, one that I’m familiar with after hearing it getting worse and worse over the years. And of course, my initial reaction was complete disbelief because that sound was not possible, for so many reasons. It just could not exist in my little sanctuary, it was completely impossible, and it was either that comforting fact, those safe little layers wrapped all around me from this delusion I’ve built up about my second life and that home or that I simply did not _want_ to believe that had me freezing there where I stood, my heart going like a jackhammer in my chest.

          I willed the hallucination to go away and there was a part of me that wondered if that was what it really was, if this was some kind of… waking nightmare like the ones I have about the monster that always feel like they’re happening when I’m wide awake. I even wondered if maybe I had lost my mind. But no, it was getting closer, like something out of a horror novel. By the time it reached the front of the house, it was unmistakable. It was this thick, shuddering, almost groaning sound, like a chain smoker trying to take a deep breath, only metallic, or the sound of a car several years past the time it should have been put out of its misery. Like I said, it just _couldn’t_ be. He didn’t know where I was! Even if he did, he said that he couldn’t drive that fucking car! It had to be in my head, it just had to be!

          My reassurances did nothing for my terror as that sound stopped getting closer and stopped right there in the driveway. I was distantly aware that I was breathing hard, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything at all but that horrible sound. Suddenly, I heard barking far off, behind me and it snapped me out of my terrified stupor like someone had slapped me across the face. It was real. The sound was real, not just in my imagination. Not just some after effect of having been thinking about that car so much since Friday morning. Real. My father was there. But how? Why?

          The how escaped me. I supposed that he could have figured out where Heero lived easily enough and it didn’t really matter, nor did I care. All that was important was why he was there. He had obviously figured out where I had gone that morning and… and he must be there to drag me back, I realized, my horror growing by the freaking second. He had come to… to collect me like the wayward child I was. What he would do after that was a prospect too awful for me to stand thinking about just then, that he was probably going to kill me or come close to it if he had gotten to the point where he would actually come after me, actually come to this side of town he was so enraged at me for my betrayal and disobedience.

          Honestly, I felt just as confused as I felt scared. My mind could not make the mental leap in imagination past ‘my dad is here, my dad is in Heero’s driveway’ to what he would do now that he was there. March up the front lawn, bang on the door and then… what? Drag me out? Punch out the lights of anyone who opened that door? What the hell should I do? Then, the sound cut off and I knew he had turned off the engine, that he would be coming any second. That jolted me into action and I all but ran to the front door. That Justin or Mariela or even Heero might hear that car and come to see what was going on absolutely horrified me. They couldn’t see this. Whatever was about to happen, I didn’t want them involved, I didn’t want them to be any part of this. I know it sounds a bit silly, but I didn’t want those two worlds to ever meet and now that they were, I couldn’t bear the shame of having the Yuys actually meet my dad, see the monster behind the bruises on my face.

          I stopped behind the door, frozen again as I realized that I had no idea at all what I should do. Call the cops? Get Justin anyway? Not answer the door? Just how angry was my father? How drunk was he? Those were very important questions because they would determine exactly what he was doing there and what he was planning on doing. Too bad I didn’t have any answers. I flinched as I heard the car door slam. I was out of time and I was still paralyzed.

          It was in me, some part of me, to just run. Just run upstairs, crawl under Heero’s bed and hide until he went away. Just let Justin take care of things, do whatever the hell he wanted, call the police if that’s what it would take for my dad to go away. I felt… oddly betrayed by his presence there. This was my safe place, the place Heero and his parents had made for me to get away from this man. And now he was there, tainting it, taking it all away like he does everything else in my life. And I felt a bit naïve that the possibility he might find that house and come for me had never occurred to me. I had never been able to handle such a thought. But now… everything was twisted and wrong and broken and I hadn’t even seen him yet.

          Immediately, I felt ashamed of my thoughts. I couldn’t do that to Heero and his family. I would die of humiliation, but beyond that, I loved them too much to subject them to the hurricane that was my father in full rage mode. I had done this to them… to myself by disobeying him and getting him to this point. I had to take responsibility for it. Even if I was terrified of what he was going to do to me, and I’m sure it was going to spectacular, he was my father and this was the result of my lies, and I would take care of it. Maybe if I was lucky, if I just went with him, they wouldn’t even know what had happened until afterwards. I guess it was a lucky thing that I was the one who had heard the damned car first.

          I shook myself from my paralysis, my heart in my throat and my brain having fled to parts unknown, which was probably for the best because if I really took the moment to think about what I was about to do, I don’t think I would have gotten the courage to do it. I had left my sneakers by the back door, so I just grabbed my jacket from the closet, shrugged it on, and, taking one last, deep breath and wondering about my sanity, I jerked the front door open and stumbled out onto the front step.

          Evening knowing that I hadn’t imagined it, it was still a bit shocking to see my father’s black, rusted car sitting there in the driveway, the proverbial ugly duckling amongst the swans of the rest of the neighborhood and their top of the line SUVs, minivans, and sports cars. My father looked similarly, almost humorously out of place as he strode up the walkway with his old, tattered leather jacket, stained jeans and scuffed boots, especially as he came under the white lattice, like a scruffy stray dog in a field of pristine daisies. But there was nothing funny about his face and the expression of anger etched all over it. His hair was wild and his eyes were dark and stormy. I didn’t need to see if his eyes were bloodshot or his complexion was flushed to know that he was drunk. It radiated off him and he had that intense, crazy gleam in his eyes that he always gets right when he is thoroughly sloshed and just does not give a shit about consequences. If his anger wasn’t enough to make me ill, that look sure was.

          He made a sound that was almost a growl, almost a bellow when he saw me and charged up the rest of the walkway like a bull. Running didn’t even enter my mind, though it probably would have been a really good idea. I just felt frozen still, like I was trapped in a nightmare that I couldn’t hope to wake from.

          “Get the fuck over here!” he snapped unnecessarily and I winced at the volume of his voice, sure that everyone inside the house and the neighboring houses as well could hear him.

          I begged the universe that Heero and his family would stay away and no one would come out to investigate. That someone might call the cops was horrifying enough, that people might gawk and Heero and his parents might see this was humiliating beyond belief, but the cherry on top of this shit sundae would be my father’s rage. If he saw anyone watching this like a spectator sport, if he was even sober enough to realize it, it would embarrass him and my father has always reacted to embarrassment with rage and I did not want to see what he would be like if he got angrier than he already was.

          He grabbed me by the back of my head, fingers like claws of steel gripping my hair, and dragged me forward off the step. It was so violent and quick that I nearly fell and would have lost a good chunk of hair, but I stumbled and righted myself just in time. His jacket smelled thickly of cigarette smoke and whiskey. Three guesses of who he had been with for the last twenty-four hours and the first two don’t count.

          “We are going home, **_now_** , you little shit!” he snarled at me and pulled me forward by head and hair.

          I struggled just to keep up with his longer stride as he dragged me towards the car. I felt this irrational burst of hatred towards the thing, wondering if he had somehow fixed it enough with Pat’s money to get it to run or had flat out lied that it was in too poor of a condition to run.

          “Dad, stop,” I begged, feeling like he was trying to rip my scalp out, “It hurts-,”

          “Shut the fuck up!” he pulled me forward more and I cried out at the pain, “When I’m done with you, you lying punk, some pulled hair will be the last of your motherfucking concerns!”

          He dragged me forward more, turning towards the car and disregarding me completely. It was then, as he turned that I saw a silver glint at his waist when his jacket rode up a little. The butt of his gun was poking out a holster. My blood turned to ice water. He had brought his gun with him. His _gun_ , the very same gun I hadn’t seen him wear since he had gotten fired. What… _why?!_ My brain short circuited at this disturbing piece of knowledge, caught on the image in my head of him getting worked up into a full-blown rage at my absence and actually grabbing the gun from his bed side table drawer. Why? I couldn’t think of a single reason for him to take it. To use it on me? To threaten Heero’s family if they refused to let me go with him? What the hell was he thinking?

          If I hadn’t been terrified before, I sure as shit was then. It wasn’t even that he had his weapon on him, it was his state of mind that scared me. He was crazy, absolutely, bat-shit insane that he was so drunk and so mad and so senseless that he had brought his damned gun just to bring me back home. That he might be considering actually killing me was in the back of my mind, but wasn’t a main concern. I think even then the possibility of him murdering me was still struck in between ‘no way my dad would ever do something so horrible’ and ‘maybe.’ I prayed to every deity I could possibly name that Heero stayed far away. But, as I think I have clearly demonstrated by now, fate, God, and the entire construction of the universe does not like me very much and I should probably just stop offering my hopes and prayers to it.

          I heard the front door swing open behind me and felt like screaming and crying. I didn’t want to know, but I couldn’t stop myself from pulling just enough from my father’s grip that I could crane my head around and look behind me. Heero was standing in the doorway of his house, looking lost and shocked and about as horrified as I felt. His eyes were wide and I knew that if he had a fairer complexion, he would have looked as white as a ghost. He just stood there, frozen, clearly not knowing what to do and just so terrified. I saw this terrible movie play out in my head of what was about to happen. He would snap out of it and all that rage, all that hatred he feels for my father for beating me and treating me like shit would surface. He would run after us and… and I could only see one of two things happening after that. My father beating him to a pulp on his own front lawn or… or shooting him.

          ‘Please go away, Heero,’ I begged with my expression, trying to relay this message as best I could without screaming at him and alerting my father that he was there, ‘Just go back inside. Go have dinner with your parents. Play with your dog. Just go!’

          Under my fear and my horror, I felt utterly humiliated that he could see this, me being lugged around by my dad like I was a sack of potatoes, tears streaming down my cheeks and looking as frightened as a deer. I would have given my right arm for him to have never gone outside during this. Hell, both my arms.

          “Get moving!” my father snapped at me and jerked me forward again, but that was ok, because his angry voice seemed to snap Heero out of his shocked stupor.

          He bolted inside, slamming the door behind him. I felt so relieved, I could have fainted right there. But, oddly, I also felt… abandoned. I hated myself for it. I was the one that hadn’t wanted Heero there, but there was some part of me that saw him turn his back on me and leave, just like so many people before him, that hurt me. I knew it was for the best, and him not being there made me feel so much better, but that little part of me had hoped… for something damned stupid, honestly. For him to save me. For him to try. It was the same part of me that had hoped Trowa would stand up to Relena for Quatre, only this time I didn’t even entertain that thought because I did not want Heero to stand up to my father. I wanted him safe and tucked away into his house.

          I stopped fighting my father and just let him finished dragging me over into the car. He slammed me up against it, but kept his hand clenched in my hair, twisting it until I gave another cry of pain.

          “Get in the fucking car!” he roared.

          I grabbed at the door handle to do just that when I heard the front door _slam_ open and someone came running out. I swore every curse I knew in my head and looked in that direction incredulously, expecting to see Heero coming back out, either having changed his mind or he had gone back in to get his bat or some other weapon, which was somehow a more horrifying thought than him coming back with no weapon to protect himself with at all. But it wasn’t Heero, it was Justin. He was just shy of running towards us and I was once again torn between feeling utterly humiliated, relieved to see him like he was some kind of white knight, and scared of what my father might do. Unlike his son, Justin didn’t look frightened when he saw my dad pinning me there, he looked… I don’t know, I don’t have a word for it, I only know that I have never seen him look like that in all the time that I’ve known him. He strode towards us with this hard, set look to his eyes, like a man on an important mission and there was this icy almost anger radiating off from him. I’ve never seen another human being so focused and determined and fierce in my life.

          Behind him, Heero and Mariela appeared in the doorway and it took me less time than it took Justin to make it across his driveway to realize that _that_ was the reason why Heero had gone back into the house. Not to abandon me, but to get his father. I didn’t know whether I loved him for doing whatever he could to help or wanted to smack him for not just staying out of it, and to drag his mother into this as well. She had obviously run out of the shower when she had heard Heero shouting, her hair was loose and soaked and she was only dressed in a bathrobe. She hadn’t even bothered with shoes. It might have been a trick of the light, but I thought I saw shampoo still in her hair. The both of them looked so stricken as they stood there and watched and for the first time, I thought my embarrassment might override my fear. Kanuck was barking his head off at Heero’s side, but my boyfriend had a tight grip on his collar, for which I was grateful. My dad might think twice about shooting any one of us, but not the dog. He hates dogs even more than he hates cats.

          “Who the hell are you?” Heero’s father snapped at mine, even though he knew full well who my dad was.

          “His father,” my father sneered at him and only tightened his hand on me, “Who the fuck are you?”

          His tone was mocking, but I saw the open hate on his face and the contempt for everything that Justin was. Calm, well educated, upper middle class, soft spoken, and completely unintimidated by him. I was just glad he was in a plain t-shirt and jeans instead of his work suit or that would have only made my father angrier, that blatant evidence of how far apart the two of them were. Even those casual clothes were nicer than anything my father had.

          Justin ignored my dad’s question entirely, only keying him up more, and instead focused on his hand in my hair, those handsome blue eyes going as hard as real sapphires as I think he realized just how much my father was hurting me. He narrowed those eyes at my father and for the first time in my entire life, I saw my dad, always so indominable and sure of himself, falter. I guess he had thought that Heero’s parents would be scared of him and he obviously hadn’t thought much of Justin. My dad easily outweighs him despite them being about the same height and, in a fistfight, he would wipe the floor with him, but Heero’s dad didn’t seem to care about any of that and was acting like there wasn’t a snarling pit bull in front of him.

          “Let go of him,” he ordered, his voice full of ice.

          It was the sort of voice that most people would automatically obey and it reminded me so much of my father’s own voice when he would order me to do something, but my father isn’t me. He glared back at Justin just as coldly, his rage burning like dry ice in his grey eyes and, like he was challenging the other man, tightened his grip on my hair, taking out his inability to strike Justin on me. I tried my hardest not to flinch or let Justin see that I was in pain, but something intense flashed across his face, something ugly.

          “He’s not your kid,” my father snarled at him, two dogs trying to piss on the same fire hydrant, “I’ll do whatever the fuck I want to my own brat, you just worry about yours. You’ve got no rights over him.”

          That ugly thing burst and I watched in alarm as Justin’s hands curled into tight fists. I had never seen him angry before and it was so different than my father, so tightly controlled, but just as frightening if only because he isn’t like that. He’s always so collected and kind, his temper like a chain of unbreakable steel. But in that moment, he was furious, even if he hid it well enough for those that didn’t know him to see it, but I was so sure that he was about to strike my father that I flinched when he did lash out. But instead of punching him like I’m sure he wanted to, he grabbed my father’s arm just as he turned to dismiss him. His grip must have been hard because my father flinched, actually flinched, another thing I had never seen him do, and there would be a dark bruise there later.

          Justin glanced over at me, nothing more than a flick of his eyes before he was glaringly stonily at my father again, but I caught how he had looked at my black eye and what I was sure a decent expression of fear and when he did look back at my father, the hatred on his face was raw and bare for anyone to see. He loathed him, utterly loathed him and wanted nothing more than to punch his lights out, even I could see that. Because… because of me? Because of my injuries? Because he was facing the man that had put those bruises on my face? I felt stupidly warmed by that and I shouldn’t have. Justin was going to get killed if he started an altercation and it was going to happen because of me. Because I had driven my father to this and I couldn’t keep my two lives separate. Because I had taken all these stupid risks and hadn’t cared about the consequences. But still, seeing how much he cared for me… I loved him for that.

          Heero’s father must have either tightened his grip or twisted my father’s wrist, because suddenly the hand holding me was gone, leaving behind only a throbbing pain. My dad looked almost shocked by it, either Justin’s gall or his strength. It was gone in a second, replaced by a white-hot fury and hatred to match Justin’s and I knew what Justin didn’t, that he had just made an enemy for life and was damned lucky he hadn’t gotten hit already. Or was it even luck or just my father’s self-control? I had to feel a bit bitter at that. He had never shown much of it around my mother or myself when he beat us, but only now because he didn’t want to get arrested for assaulting the man on his own property.

          Justin let go of his arm, but then proceeded to ignore him completely and flashed me what was meant to be a reassuring smile. I thought my father was going to blow a blood vessel.

          “It’ll be alright, Duo,” he told me softly.

          I didn’t say anything or smile back because I knew that wasn’t true at all. Nothing was going to be alright. And he knew that, too, it was written all over the pinched set of his face despite that smile. My father seemed to realize that I still existed and turned his ire on me, lashing out in the way he always does when he’s pissed at something and knows he can’t do anything about it, so he might as well do something to me instead.

          “Get in the damned car!” he roared at me and I scrambled for the handle, yanking it open and thinking he was going to hit me right in front of Heero’s dad.

          I sat down hard in the seat, my heart pounding erratically in my chest, but I turned so I could see what was going on behind me. I don’t know why, it wasn’t like I could do a fucking thing to help Justin if they did come to blows, but putting my back to them was making me tense up.

          “Keep your voice down,” Justin told my father coldly as I watched with wide eyes.

          My father’s face went red and his right hand curled into a fist that he somehow had more sense than to let fly, but opened his mouth, only too happy to let him have it verbally if not physically. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my dad hate anyone more than Mr. Yuy and given that he hates half of our entire town, that’s really saying something.

          “Duo might not be my son,” Justin cut him off, “but you are on my property and you are scaring my wife and child.”

          Before my father could even respond to that, the other man was suddenly in his face and my dad’s eyes went wide with surprise that Justin was actually in his personal space, too drunk and too senselessly pissed to react to it in time.

          “And you’re right,” my friend’s father hissed at mine, his own rage bleeding through that icy front of his, his voice low and threatening. That voice and his whole demeanor made me think about a conversation I had had with Solo once about dogs and how the ones that are usually silent and calm are the ones that you really need to look out for, not the ones that bark and snarl, “I don’t have any rights to him because he isn’t a fucking piece of property, but I will still look out for him and protect him from thugs like you,” he took a step forward and I saw in total shock that my father took one back, looking very unsure of the situation.

He hadn’t come here to be lectured by a soft-spoken therapist on his perfectly manicured lawn and I doubted things were going like how he had thought they would. When Justin jabbed a finger into his chest, a gesture that would have gotten just about anyone a broken nose, my father didn’t even react.

“I suggest you be careful,” Justin said and I don’t know who was more shocked by his open threat, me or my father, “I’m not a defenseless teenager or someone you can push around and bully. You don’t scare me, _sir_ ,” he spat the word out almost mockingly, “I will protect myself and I will protect Duo unless you watch yourself.”

That snapped my father back into reality and he regained that step, getting right back in Justin’s face. I tensed, absolutely horrified as I watched my father’s hands, waiting for the moment when one of them would go to the gun or swing at the man who had given me, a relative stranger, so much.

“Are you threatening me, you pompous asshole?!” he challenged, “You don’t know shit about me or mine-,”

“I know enough,” Mr. Yuy said and let that fact hang in there, making my dad falter again, “In terms of how much trouble I could make for you, I think I know plenty. But no, that was not a threat, that was just a piece of very friendly advice. You watch yourself and what you do and say to your son, Mr. Maxwell, because I’ll do what I have to, for his sake. Do you understand me?”

The two of them stared each other down, frigid blue boring into smoldering slate, but neither would back down. My father wouldn’t throw that first punch, not with the threat Justin had just given him about making trouble for him, and Justin was not cowering from him, either. Finally, after what seemed like freaking hours, my father snorted derisively at him.

“Fuck off and mind your business before someone minds it for you,” my dad sneered, perfectly capable of delivering a threat of his own.

He pushed past Justin, slamming his shoulder into the other man and almost sending him to the ground as he walked around the car to the driver’s side, taking his victory in getting the last word in. Justin seemed to deflate as he watched him walk away and when he looked at me, all that anger, all that bravado was just gone. He looked sad and guilty and completely helpless.

“Duo…” he said softly, but couldn’t find the words.

I felt like someone had just ripped out my heart.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized mournfully, hating myself and hating my father for what we had done to him, that he had been so kind to me, had opened his doors to me and in return, I had brought this… this craziness to his doorstep.

His eyes flew wide with alarm, but I couldn’t deal with any of it anymore and turned in my seat. But then I was just facing the house, that big, beautiful house, and Heero and his dog and his mother still standing on the front stoop. Heero had seemed to realize that his father was not going to be the white knight he had hoped for and was going to let my father leave with me. He looked frightened. Worse, he looked completely betrayed and that was on me, too. I wanted to tell him to not think badly of his father. Had he really thought he could stop this? It wasn’t his fault. It was _mine_. I closed my car door and felt something in my heart close, too. It felt like surrender, giving in to the nightmare. It felt like the end of things and I realized as I buckled myself in that that was exactly what this was. My father had seen to it. Tears trailed down my face and I knew it would just direct more of my father’s ire, but I couldn’t get them stopped. I felt like I had just ruined something pure and precious.

My father opened his car door, but paused to turn back to Justin, resting his arm on the top of the car in a candid way. I could practically hear the snide smile he had to have.

“Oh, and you don’t have to worry about him anymore because he’s never coming back here again,” he jeered, confirming my own thoughts, “And tell your kid to stay the hell away from mine,” he added like an afterthought, “I have to deal with enough shit, I don’t need to hear people think my son’s a fag because he’s hanging out with a damned queer.”

I wanted to laugh. If I hadn’t been so utterly terrified and facing, at the very least, a hospital visit in my immediate future, I would have. I had always wondered how my father had never heard of any of those rumors about my sexuality. Sure, most adults would just think it was the normal bullshit of kids saying crap about other kids they didn’t like, but after I had come out and Heero and I had started dating, those rumors had gotten a lot more vicious and widespread. I guess I can’t really call them rumors anymore since quite a large population of this town either knows or is quite sure that they’re true. So, it had always seemed strange to me that my father had never flown off the handle about them. I mean, he had to know, right? Even if no one wanted to say anything like that to his face, he had to have heard something. Here was the proof that he had, but he had also heard the rumor, not that we were dating, but that Heero was gay, too, and had just assumed Heero was the source of the rumors and people only thought I was gay because we were friends and not the other way around.

It was pretty fucking funny when you thought about it. That he still thought it was not just a rumor but Heero’s fault explained a little bit of his disgust for my boyfriend. Sure, a lot of it was his family’s money and Heero being mixed race and just the fact that I had a friend who gave a shit about me and bought me nice stuff once in a while, but that Heero is gay had only made all of it a thousand times worse. He hates the upper class, but queers just disgust him. Of course, him thinking my being gay was just a rumor, nothing more, had probably saved my ass from worse beatings but had only made him like a damned wolverine about my friendship with ‘Ro. There would be no arguing with him about it now. Not that I could in the first place. I almost wanted to turn around and see Justin’s reaction to my father calling his son a queer, but I didn’t dare. If he had any angry words left for my dad, my father didn’t let him get them out, just got in the car and slammed his door shut with finality.

He didn’t say a word to me. He didn’t look at me. He didn’t even grab me, he just threw the car in reverse and sped out of there like his ass was on fire, the poor car protesting the exertion. The smell it made and that horrible sound made me doubt we would even get home in one piece. I doubted he had done any work on it. Justin didn’t make any move to stop us, he knew what Heero had refused to acknowledge, that there wasn’t a damned thing any one of them could have done to stop it. Even if he had called the police, it would have taken them too long to get there, and then what? My father hadn’t hurt me, not really, not in front of witnesses, and while he had threatened Justin, it hadn’t been a very graphic threat. My father had been too smart even as drunk as he was to do something stupid enough to get arrested for. He had been right, Justin had no claim over me and Justin had been well aware of that. There was nothing they could do to stop what was going to happen as soon as my father got us home, either, but I appreciated them _wanting_ to try.

I thought about shooting Heero off a text as we drove through North Nausten. He had to be going off the walls right now and I hoped that he wasn’t too pissed at his father. Or at me, though he had every right to be. I didn’t know what I would say. I’m sorry? That was a good start, but then what? I was going to be ok? That was a blatant lie and he wouldn’t believe me. Don’t send the cops after us? That seemed pointless, too. I really, really hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but even if Justin called the police, I doubted anything would happen. I mean, what was he even going to say had happened? ‘My kid’s friend’s dad took him home and I think he’s going to beat him’? There were only two outcomes to that. One, they would laugh it off, especially when they found out it was about my father, or they would actually do their damned jobs and show up at my place. But given that more than half the cops on our tiny force were friends with him, they weren’t going to do anything to my father. I couldn’t think of a single thing to put in that text message that would come as a comfort to Heero, so I didn’t bother. Besides, I was too afraid that my father would take my phone and break it. I didn’t know what he was planning on doing to me, so I wanted my one way to communicate intact. Just in case.

As we entered the main part of town, I realized just how much I had fucked up. It would have been better if he had jumped me when I had eventually gone home, but now, by him coming to get me, I had truly messed up. There aren’t a whole lot of things that matter to my father. His car. The house, I suppose. Drinking. But all those things were garbage to him compared to his pride. For as long as I’ve known him, that has been the one thing that he has cared about. He didn’t have much to be proud _of,_ but that had made things worse, not better. It just meant that what he did have, he is _very_ prideful of to an almost obsessive quality. That’s why he would never sell the house or the car even if it were the only ways we could survive. How people see him, as a caregiver, someone who can take care of himself and what he owns, someone proud and strong and capable, a _man,_ these are the things he cares about.

That’s also why, when something comes along to tarnish that image whether it’s losing his job or finding out that his wife or kid have pulled the wool over his eyes, he goes completely off the rails. And I had just committed the worse sin of all by embarrassing him in front of a bunch of people that, in his twisted view of the world, already looked down on him and he wanted absolutely nothing to do with. He would have been less pissed if I had sucker-punched him or set his car on fire. I couldn’t have fucked myself over worse if I had tried. We hit the south and I started entertaining the notion of jumping out of the car. How fast does a car need to go before physics would turn you into road hamburger? I had read that in a book when I was a kid, but I couldn’t remember with my heart beating a frantic rhythm and all these frightened rabbit thoughts in my head. I could do it, too. The car was old and I could easily unlock my door and just roll out.

Then what, my more pragmatic side challenged. I had no answer for that, either, because the answer was ‘nothing.’ Even if I didn’t break anything getting out of the car and made a run for it, I had nowhere to really go. The library, I guess. It would be closed that late on a Saturday, but my dad didn’t know about the locked courtyard in back, I think. The getty? Too exposed. I could hide under the boardwalk like a scared animal or find some secluded place at the park, but none of it felt very safe to me. I knew my father’s current mood, I knew that this was not going to be one of those times where he would only chase me as far as our front yard. He had gone all the way to Heero’s house to get me, he wasn’t going to let me slip through his fingers like that. I still couldn’t believe that he had done that, that he was so enraged and infuriated with me that he would drag me back home instead of wait in ambush for me Monday. No, if he was crazy enough to do that, he was crazy enough to chase me down wherever I went. The only really safe place I had had was gone. He had taken it from me.  

He turned on to our street and my organs seemed to rearrange themselves, my heart crawling up my throat and my stomach sinking to my knees. I could practically hear my heartbeat in my ears, doing something pretty freaky and it was all I could do to concentrate on my breathing so I wouldn’t start to hyperventilate. I imagined that condemned prisoners walking their way to the electric chair felt something similar. Maybe that’s being a tad overdramatic, but not knowing what he was going to do to me, if this was going to be a really bad beating or something even worse was tearing my nerves to shreds. He stopped the car in our driveway and I knew that was it. Any chance to escape was long gone and I just needed to face this, to accept it with some measure of grace.  

‘I deserve this,’ I reminded myself and it was that bitter truth that made it just a little bit easier to surrender to. 

That was right, this was my fault. He had warned me over and over for several weeks now that I was trying his last nerve with the lies and disobedience, and I had chosen to ignore him. Heero was more important, I had thought and I still believed that, but… but I remembered his wide-eyed stare of hurt and betrayal and terror as he had watched us drive off. What had I been thinking? Of myself, just like always. I had just wanted to be with him. I had thought things would be ok because of that, but seriously? When have things ever worked out like that for me? I should have seen this coming by a wide mile, and some part of me had, but I had just kept putting off considering it for ‘another day.’ Where the fuck had my head gone all this time? All these years of living with my father, of taking his lessons to heart, of being cautious and obedient had seemed to vanish the instant I had fallen in love with someone. I don’t know what’s more terrifying, my own actions or my father’s.  

I thought of Heero again, of him standing on that front step, and my humiliation almost seemed outweigh my fear entirely. What had he thought about my dad, watching him drag me off by my hair like some kind of lunatic caveman? Hell, what had he thought of me? I couldn’t remember the last time I had been so embarrassed. For what felt like the hundredth time, I felt ashamed of myself for having ever brought that into his home, this chaos. My father and my problems didn’t belong there, he never should have had to see that. Justin and Mariela were probably ashamed of me, too, having their neighbors witness that. And what my dad had said about Heero to Justin’s face, calling him a queer… I have never been so ashamed of my father as in that moment. I didn’t even know if I could face Heero’s father after that, knowing the sort of man my dad is and where I had come from… Embarrassed doesn’t really cut it. Heero’s dad was so amazing and kind and smart and understanding, but mine was just an ignorant, bitter homophobe and a brute on top of that. I hated myself so powerfully for all of it. As far as I was concerned, I deserved every blow my father could possibly give me. Losing some money seemed laughable compared to the guilt I felt that evening. 

I was out of the car before he even turned off the engine, not wanting to be trapped in such a small space with him. He flew out of the driver’s side, no doubt thinking I was planning on running. 

“Get in the fucking house!” he snapped at me, completely unnecessarily as I was already running up to the door.  

It was in me to slam the door behind me and lock it, but that would have been suicidal and stupid, I knew he had to have a key on him just like I knew I couldn’t run from this, as much as I wanted to. I tossed my jacket onto the hook and kicked off my shoes, getting the second off right before my father kicked me in the back hard. Somehow, I managed not to fall, but only by grabbing at the wall. I heard my father slam the door closed and something somewhere fell. Ignoring the throbbing pain in my back, I stumbled into the kitchen and almost ran right into my mom.  

“Duo!” she exclaimed in alarm, looking frightened just to see me for some reason. 

I quickly figured out what that reason was when I looked at her. There were deep, fresh bruises all over her face and she looked like she had been nursing a bloody nose before we had come in, she was still clutching a bloody tissue and there was blood caked under nose. Her lip was split and bloody, too. He had beaten the hell out of her, probably for lying to him about where I was before driving off to get me. I bet she had hoped he wouldn’t find me. My guilt ate me alive as I studied every bruise, committing them and her fear to memory, each a cut into my heart as I knew that they were all my fault. If I hadn’t gone to Heero’s… if she hadn’t had to lie for me, this never would have happened to her.

“Dad, I’m so sorry-,” I turned to apologize to him, because as much as I hated him for what he had done to my mother and for humiliating me, I _was_ sorry for lying to him, so many times.

Just as I was turning to face him, he nailed me one right on the side of my head. I guess I should have felt lucky that he didn’t get me in the nose or anywhere on the left side of my head, I didn’t think that side could take anymore damage than it already had, but it turned my brains to mush anyway and I would have gone to my knees if he hadn’t grabbed me by my left arm and wrenched it so hard behind my back, I thought he was going to rip my arm right off. I almost cried out at the pain, feeling my damned bones stress in his ironclad grip, but then he shoved me into the kitchen table, the edge of it getting me in my bruised stomach and it drove the air right out of me. He put more pressure on my arm and slammed me down onto the table. I didn’t even protest or try to fight it, knowing from years of experience that he didn’t give a shit about breaking my arm to prove a point.

“Nathan!” my mother cried but didn’t try to stop him either, she knew better than that.

“You think that the two of you can just carry on behind my back while you lie to my fucking face and I won’t find out about it?! You think I’m just so stupid, don’t you?! The both of you! Making me drive all the way up to the other side of town just to collect my lying, good-for-nothing brat! How dare you humiliate me in front of that stuck-up, limp dicked asshole, you sack of shit!”

‘You did a good enough job of that yourself without any of my help,’ I thought in bitter anger.

He yanked my arm further back and I gritted my teeth, feeling things stress that really shouldn’t be stressed and tears bit my eyes.

“Well?” he sneered in utter contempt, “Let’s hear it. Aren’t you going to say you’re sorry like all the other times? Give me some bullshit excuse and tell me ‘yes, daddy, whatever you say daddy’?” he mocked, “Come on, pull my leg, you little fuck, tell me ‘sorry’ one more time.”

I squeezed my eyes shut as he pulled my arm again and when I was able to open them again, I found my mother standing by the family room doorway, looking as pale as a sheet as she watched him try to yank my arm off. I saw the bruises, black and purple, marring her pretty face. And I saw her fear, but under that, I also saw her guilt. It was more than just her not doing anything to stop this, there was something deeper, something she was blaming herself for that filled her grey eyes with this dark pain…

Suddenly, it clicked into place. Her bruises, her guilt, how she was having a hard time meeting my gaze even as her eyes flicked to me like she couldn’t stop herself, how my father had known where I was… she had told him. She had tried to lie about it and he had figured it out, beaten her until she had confirmed that I was with Heero at his house. That’s how he knew I would be there and not at the beach or the movies or anywhere else kids went on a Saturday evening. I still didn’t know how he knew where they lived, I hadn’t even told my mom that, but it couldn’t be that difficult to figure out. Heero’s family was still the new family in town and he had already somehow known they were rich and what Heero looked like, so that wasn’t so strange.

I didn’t feel angry at her for it, though. I didn’t even feel betrayed. I was glad that she had told him before he could hurt her even worse and it really didn’t matter, he probably would have gone to the house anyway and that he had hit her for no real reason at all enraged me. And I was pissed by his mocking words, asking for an apology. I could feel the threat behind them, could feel that he wasn’t just making fun of me but making a veiled ultimatum. He wanted that apology for making a fool of him. For lying to him and disobeying. He wanted me to apologize for not staying away from Heero. For daring to have a friend that he didn’t like, or maybe it was just having a friend at all. Either way, it didn’t make a difference. He had tried to take away the only good thing in my life and now he wanted an apology for not blindly obeying him. He wanted me to apologize just for wanting to keep something in my life that made me happy because he was bitter and ugly. Well, fuck him.

“No,” I ground out through the pain.

Everything went cold and completely still. I don’t even think I heard my mother breathing.

“What did you just say?” my father’s voice was as cold and still as that air and there was this voice in the back of my screaming at me to fuck my pride and fuck my anger, what I was doing was exceptionally stupid given how furious he was at me already, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself from speaking.

“I said,” I repeated louder and in a firmer voice, letting my own anger fill me up and give me a strength I sure as hell did not possess on my own, “ _no_. I’ll apologize for lying to you, I shouldn’t have done that. And I’ll apologize for going behind your back with Mom,” I looked at her and she was absolutely horrified, no doubt thinking that I was committing suicide by saying this stuff, “I’m sorry, Mom,” I said in a softer tone and tears filled her light grey eyes, “I never should have let you lie to Dad for me, and I’m sorry he hurt you because of me,” I felt him grip down even harder on my wrist and the pain almost made me falter, but I had already pissed him off, I might as well go for broke, “but,” I let the anger creep back into my voice as I addressed my father again, “I am not going to apologize for disobeying you, not this time! I am not going to apologize for hanging out with Heero! He’s my friend and I don’t care if you don’t like him or you think he’s a bad influence or whatever the hell your problem is with him! We’re friends and there’s nothing you can do or say to stop us from enjoying being together! I-,”

 _“I love him,”_ was on the tip of my tongue, but I bit that fucker off maliciously. It wouldn’t have mattered, it would have gotten lost in my cry of pain as I felt my father’s hand suddenly _twist_ and I felt that very familiar sensation of bones being put to the limit of their endurance, right before they snapped. My bone density isn’t exactly that swell to begin with and he was treating my wrist like it was a chicken bone.

“You fucking punk,” I heard him snarl and he just kept putting on more pressure, “Think you can talk back to me-,”

A scream was bubbling up from my throat, but I refused it. I wouldn’t let the prick hear me scream unless I absolutely couldn’t help it.

“You’re going to break his arm! Stop it, Nathan!” my mother screamed instead.

“Oh, shut up,” he snapped at her, “It isn’t going to break. If you weren’t so weak and pathetic, maybe your son wouldn’t be such a pansy! And if it does break, _good_! It’s exactly what a rotten mouthed brat like him deserves!” his fingers dug into my flesh like metal claws, but he finally stopped twisting, only just holding me down and making my wrist throb angrily at the abuse, “I gave him chances, more than he ever deserved! Dozens! But none of it ever stuck, did it, you piece of garbage?! Well,” his voice lowered into a threatening, almost sneering growl, “let’s find something that _will_ stick this time, and maybe you’ll think twice about listening to me when I tell you to fucking do something!”

He pulled back a little but kept a solid grip on my wrist, keeping me pinned. My heart did that freaky thing again as I heard a sound that was as familiar as the feel of an arm that was about to break: my dad fumbling to unbuckle his belt. I squeezed my eyes shut again, waiting for those blows. Him beating me with his belt isn’t nearly as commonplace as him punching me, but he isn’t shy with the damned thing if he is especially angry with me like he was just then. I heard him struggle with the buckle and I realized that he was so drunk and so mad and impatient that he was having problems getting it undone. I would have laughed if I wasn’t sure my hysteria and fear would turn it into something else. To think that I might be saved from getting my ass striped because he was so wasted, he couldn’t manage a simple belt buckle. But all mirth shriveled up and died when he growled in angry frustration and, in the corner of my eye, I saw him snag something from the counter instead.

          It took me a moment to figure out what it was before it hit me like a slap. The chair leg. The chair leg that had broken off and no one had bothered to touch since it had been put there on the countertop. I have to wonder if things might have gone differently that night if I had just bothered to hide it or even throw it out. I doubt it. I think my dad had been in such a state at that point, he would have just gone searching for something else, maybe the rolling pin or a broom handle or any other convenient thing he could beat me black and blue with to prove his point. His other hand grabbed the back of my jeans and I knew exactly what he was planning on doing with the fucking thing. I think I went pale, but it’s hard to remember. I just kind of went blank in my terror. It would have been better if he had just hit me with his stupid belt.

          “No!” my mom shrieked and flew at him, grabbing him by the arm that was holding me down and trying to pull him off me, “No, don’t you hit him with that, you bastard! Don’t you dare-,”

          My father dropped the chair leg heavily onto the table and his hand shot out, as quick as a snake, and grabbed her by the throat.

          “Don’t you fucking touch me, you stupid cooze,” he squeezed her throat and gave her a little shake, her eyes going as wide as dimes, “unless you want me to knock your teeth out of your lying mouth.”

          He squeezed her throat harder, probably just to threaten her, but I only knew that he had because she went even paler and true fear for herself darkened her eyes. It was that, that he was considering choking her more than what he was planning on doing to me that had me thrashing against him, trying to get loose, but he just shoved he back down, one-handed. It was like fighting with a fucking grizzly bear. There was nothing I could do, and that hopelessness threatened to turn me into a frightened animal as well as make me loathe my own weakness.

          “And you,” he snarled at me, letting go of my mother and grabbing the chair leg and practically shoving it in my face, “If you don’t stay still, I’m going to shove this right up your ass, understand me?!”

          I trembled a little as the hunk of wood swayed in front of my vision and I could all too easily imagine him forcing it in me like he does his dick. It wasn’t an empty threat I realized, if I kept pissing him off, he would do it. The kind of blind rage he was in, I didn’t think any crazy thing he could think of was in the realm of impossible. The sight of his gun flashed before me and I fell limp against the table, the image of him shooting my mother because I did the wrong thing here was like a nightmare I could never wake from. Oddly, it was like he had forgotten it even existed and didn’t use it to threaten me to stay still with. Again, I wondered why he had bothered to take it with him at all. I wondered if my mom knew about it. She had to, right? If she had been here when he had stormed out, had she seen him take the gun with him? And if she had, why try to fight him, why try to get him off me? She wasn’t suicidal.

          “I said do you understand me?!” he roared and his hand tightened on my wrist again. I felt him lean in and hiss in my ear before I had a chance to respond, “Go on, try my patience some more,” but that was the very last thing I intended to do and I nodded frantically, getting him to relieve some of the pressure and stand back up straight, “And stop your fucking crying! Take your punishment like a man for once in your worthless life!”

          I blinked in confusion before realizing that he was right. My face was wet and my vision was blurry. I had been crying. Not loudly, not sobbing like my mother was as she coughed for breath, but when he had grabbed her, my tears had finally fell. What they were for, fear of what he was going to do to me, fear for my mom, regret, grief, loss, anger… I just didn’t even know anymore. He grabbed the back of my jeans again and jerked them down unceremoniously. Some distant memory niggled at me as pure humiliation made my face flame scarlet. I felt like a damned little kid getting a spanking, only this was going to hurt a hell of a lot more than getting hit with an open hand. The memory wasn’t even of all the times he had spanked me as a child or hit me with his belt or any other time he had nailed me in the ass with something, but of when Zechs had pantsed me in the gym in front of our entire class. For some reason, I felt just as ashamed now as then, even though this was my father and he had done this plenty of times before. It reminded me too much of him pulling my pants down to fuck me and I didn’t know if I should feel relief that he was only going to hurt me and not rape me, or wish for the more familiar action. I caught my mother’s eye and saw her glance over at the sink and back at me, weighing some choice.

I followed her gaze and saw the frying pan sitting in the drying rack and immediately understood what she was thinking, saw her naked desire to do something but just stand there crying. She was shaking and terrified and looking to me for permission like she was the child and I was the parent. ‘No,’ I begged with my eyes and mouthed it just so she would get the message crystal clear and could have sobbed with relief when she looked away from me, defeated and ashamed, but she wouldn’t put her life in danger just to try to stop this. That was all I had to hold on to, that maybe she would be safe. I doubted she could have done much even if she had gotten the frying pan in hand.

          The first blow came with no warning at all. I barely even made a sound with it, just a surprised gasp, unprepared for the sheer force and damage behind it. The bastard had hit me like he would if he had just been using his hand, either unaware of how bad it would be for me or just not caring. I had been pretty unaware, too. I had been thinking of getting hit with a belt, not a solid piece of wood. It wasn’t like getting hit with a tree branch or a ruler. The chair leg was thick and blunt, but with a few edges from how it had been carved. It fucking _hurt_. I think I can honestly say that it was some of the worst pain that I’ve experienced in my life. It would have been better if he had just broken my freaking arm.

          I can barely describe what it felt like, there are few things I’ve experienced that come close to that pain. The closest I can compare it to is Mueller hitting me in the arm and leg with that damned bat, only the chair leg wasn’t quite that thick and sturdy, but my father wasn’t pulling his swings like Mueller had, and he was hitting a larger surface area. een my freaking arm.

ucking ck and fairly stuare, tooge behie in the ass with somethi That first hit struck me right across both buttocks and compared to any other area on my body he could have hit, it should not have hurt as much as it did, but the pain was deep and it blossomed with this thick, sickening heat that brought tears to my eyes again. Every instinct in my body told me to fight, to get away from the agony and protect myself and I had to envision that gun again just to stay still.

          The second and third blows came like lighting, fast and quick, heavier and stronger than the first now that my father had gotten some practice in and they drove a scream each right out of me. The blunt instrument made this horrible sound when it hit me, reminding me of beating meat with a tenderizing mallet, but the blows didn’t just hurt like getting punched, then stung like a bitch. It was the kind of pain that you just can’t wrap your mind around and it makes you sick to your stomach.

“Dad, please stop!” I sobbed brokenly, the words coming out gasping as I could barely catch my breath, “Please, please,” I begged, my voice sounding almost tight and wet from screaming around the tears that were streaming like waterfalls down my cheeks, “Please stop!”

But he just kept hitting, not caring about my pleas or my pain. My dad didn’t even yell at me for crying, too focused on the job at hand. The fourth blow hit me in the small of my back and I couldn’t even manage those screams, couldn’t get the breath into my lungs enough for it and I sobbed instead, huge tracks of tears pooling on the table.

The fifth hit my tail bone, making me sob harder as I pressed my aching face into the table. The pain was maddening. Barely five minutes had passed since the beating had started and my ass already felt swollen and quickly heading into the area between numb and incessant throbbing. By the time the sixth blow landed back across my butt, all I could do was gasp with the pain, hits following a rhythm that I couldn’t be quite sure if it made this worse or better, knowing when I was going to get hit. I could hear my mother sobbing, or maybe that was myself. It was getting hard to tell. Counting those damned hits was all that I could do to just keep some measure of sanity.

Just when I thought I couldn’t take much more of this, he hit me a seventh time. Only this time it wasn’t on the ass or even my back. I don’t know if he was just so drunk, his aim was shit or it had been a calculated thing, but given how precise his strikes had been up until then… It sure didn’t feel like a wild blow when he struck me, hard and viciously, in back of my leg, right underneath my left buttock. If he had missed my ass, it hadn’t been by more than a couple of inches. If I had had any breath left, or strength for that matter, I would have shrieked. All those other blows that I had thought had been the worst pain I had ever felt? Nothing. Fucking play punches compared to the strike to my thigh. I think he hit a cluster of nerves or something because everything from my butt cheek down to the back of my goddamned knee went white hot with agony, then tingled with this unpleasant heat before going numb, like when your foot goes to sleep, but it was my entire leg. I somehow couldn’t feel the limb, but I could still feel that pain. I have no fucking clue how that’s possible.

I think I did make a sound because my mother cried out. I don’t know, maybe I did scream. Things got a little foggy around that time. My vision started to get a little… grey and things like the counter and the kitchen window got real swimmy. I went limp, like someone had cut all my strings or my muscles had just been too tense for too long and my body finally surrendered to it. Everything started to fade into this weird mush, leaving only the pain and that disturbing sound. I was distantly aware that tears were still running down my face and I had my swollen cheek pressed against the table when I should be keeping pressure off it, but I was beyond caring.

And still, the blows kept coming, my father thankfully focusing mostly on my buttocks and only a couple times hitting right above on my back. He didn’t hit my thigh again, which is just as well, I think he damaged something with that one hit because the feeling to my leg was not coming back.

“Stop it!” I heard my mother scream somewhere in there, “Stop it, you’re killing him!”

She must have not done anything but scream, though, because the rhythm of strikes never faltered. That’s what my entire world had narrowed down to, blows, a flare of pain, and the constant sound of sobbing. I lost count of the hits after that. It could have been just a dozen more or a hundred, although I think it was more the former than the latter because not that much time passed from when we had gotten home. I think I blacked out at some point, but if I had, it had only been for a minute or two. My father had really gotten into his stride and it felt like he could have gone on forever, or until my entire backside had been reduced to paste. The thing that scares me now is that I’m not entirely sure he would have stopped on his own. I think he had gotten into that level of rage and vindictiveness where he wasn’t even really thinking about what he was doing, just blindly lashing out, everything a red haze in his head or he would have realized that I wasn’t quite all there anymore and he was just beating a doll.

I didn’t feel it when he finally hit me for long enough and hard enough that the chair leg finally cracked. I didn’t even feel it when it cut open my right butt cheek or when it left a huge splinter in my skin. I didn’t feel it when blood started to drip down the back of my thigh, either. My skin was too numb from the trauma and too flush to feel the warmth of blood. But I heard it, this loud crack like thunder that made my whole body jerk in shock. And I heard it when my father gave a snarl of frustration and dropped the broken leg on the ground. It was over. It was finally over, and I had survived it. How I had managed, I had no idea, but unless my father decided to find something else to hit me with, it was over and even if he did, at least it wouldn’t be with that fucking chair leg.

‘Looks like I’m really not going to be able to fix that chair now,’ I thought and felt this hysterical bubble of laughter in my throat, but I just didn’t have the energy to get it out.

I had all the strength left of maybe a newborn foal. Pain and trauma are funny like that. I hadn’t done anything more physically taxing than lie there like a lump, but I was more drained than if I had run from one end of Nausten to the other ten times over. I probably would have just passed out right there on the table with my pants still down and my ass a bleeding horror if my father hadn’t finally let go of my arm, which I wasn’t even sure anymore if it was broken or not, and hauled me up by my hair. It hurt, but that pain was nothing compared to the lower half of my body and I went, unresisting. I hadn’t been able to fight back against the bear before, it was just plain impossible now. He brought me flush against him and for this horrible moment that served to wake me right the fuck up like he had zapped me with a tazer, I thought he was going to rape me. He had tenderized me and now it was time for the main course.

If he had, I wouldn’t have even lasted through the penetration, I really would have fainted because I just could not take anymore. Never mind that my body had passed its pain tolerances several minutes ago, never mind the agony that my ass was in and that if anything so much as brushed up against it, I would be done. No, I just mentally and emotionally could not handle anymore. I couldn’t even think about what my father had just done to me, all the lines he had crossed, how easily he could have done something permanent, and I wasn’t so sure that he hadn’t. If I thought about any of that, I was going to unravel. If he touched me like _that_ , I was going to start screaming and never stop. But he didn’t, just kept me there by my hair, my stomach still pinned to the edge of the table and leaned in until his lips were almost at my ear.

“If I catch you with him again,” he hissed hateful, “next time it will be the whore you call a mother, understand me?”

My whole body shuddered at the mental image of my pinning my thin, slight mother to that same table and beating her mercilessly with whatever he could find, a stick or maybe the rolling pin and I nodded weakly. Yes, I understood the consequences of my actions perfectly now. I didn’t need any further lessons on what was going to happen if I kept selfishly ignoring the reality of things. He seemed satisfied with my nonverbal answer, which is great because I really wasn’t up to talking just yet, and dropped me. I mean that quite literally because the entire bottom half of my body from the waist down was shaking like I was having a seizure, my legs turned to pure jelly, and the only thing that had been holding me up had been his grip on my hair.

          I fell bonelessly in a heap on the floor and was perfectly happy to stay there for the next couple of days, or maybe until I could feel the rest of my body again, whichever came first. My mother, who had collapsed against the far kitchen wall, still crying, flew to my side, falling on the floor on her knees and swept me up in a protective embrace. She just collected me like so many soiled and tattered rags in her arms and brought me into her lap, my head pressed against her chest. She felt nice and warm and I struggled not to just follow the grey into oblivion. I wondered how my body could feel so cold that just her body heat had me shivering when my back side and left leg felt like they were on fire. Her hands swept over my hair and she rocked us slightly. I don’t even think she was aware that she was doing it. I could still hear her sobbing brokenly and I wished I could do something, say something to comfort her, but I was past the ability to do much of anything.

          I could feel her heartbeat under my ear, fluttering like a bird. My own was still pounding away, frantically, adrenaline making my head hurt powerfully. Or maybe that was just from the earlier punch. I wasn’t really sure of anything anymore, I was hooked to a humming live wire drowning in a sea of pain. It was just getting… confused. Later I would wonder about emotional exhaustion and maybe a concussion. Right then, all I could do was lay there like a useless, limp sack and listen to our twin heartbeats. I glanced up at my mom and found her breathing hard, but she wasn’t pale anymore. Her face was red with fury as she glared daggers of fire at my father. Her throat was red and dark from slowly forming bruises. He was breathing a little hard, too, for exertion but was otherwise unconcerned with the both of us.

          “You monster,” she hissed hatefully at him, “You _fucking_ monster! How could you do this to your own child?! You’re not even a man, Nathan, you’re an animal! Nothing more than a filthy ani-,”

          He pulled his hand back like he was going to backhand her and she cried out, tightening her grip around me and twisted, shielding me with her body and squeezing her eyes shut, waiting for the blow to land. He snorted derisively at her.

          “Come on, then,” he sneered, “let’s hear it, bitch. You got anymore? Any more mean names you want to throw my way? Going to tell me you’re going to call the cops again while you sit there and cower like the mouse you are? Come on, Helen, I’m such a monster, why don’t you do something about it, huh, I’m just so fucking awful to you? The phone’s right there,” he jabbed his finger in the phone’s direction, “Or hey, there’s always the door. The both of you are welcome to it, if you think you can last five minutes out there without me keeping food in your stomach and a roof over your head. Well?!”

          She lifted her head and the two of them stared each other down, my father’s cold, stony stare meeting her glare that was so acidic, so full of loathing and bitter anger, if looks could kill, he would have keeled over in a second. I could see how much she wanted to tear him apart, maybe make a go for that frying pan after all, but as furious as she was, she was also terrified. I could feel her shaking. Or maybe I was shaking. Or we both were, it was hard to tell. I guess, through the fog of pain and exhaustion and everything else, I was still scared, too. But whatever she was thinking or wanted to say to him, she kept silent, just tightening her arms around me even more, like she needed the physical reminder not to lose her temper. My father saw that she wasn’t responding to his taunts and gave her this snide, superior look, like he had won something.

          “You got off lightly,” he jeered at her, like he had done her some huge favor, “Don’t you forget that, cunt. I could have given you exactly what I gave him for lying to my face, and you have the gall to call me a monster?! You’re both so weak and pathetic,” he mocked, “It’s disgusting. A lying, disobedient brat and a smart-mouthed, ungrateful cunt for a wife. How did I get saddled with dealing with this shit-excuse for a family? If it weren’t for me, the both of you would be out on the fucking streets!”

          I was really amazed that he walked past us and started rifling through the cabinets for something instead of beating either of us again. Obviously tenderizing me to a pulp hadn’t done much to relieve his caustic, pissy mood. I turned my head to look up at my mother again now that my father was (for now) no longer a threat as far away as he was and nothing in hand to throw at us. Just in time, I caught her moving her lips, silently saying something, and was just barely able to catch the words.

          ‘The two of us would manage just fine without you, you pig,’ she was saying.

          Through the haze of pain and fear and depression, I felt something warm fill me at those words, especially the ‘two of us’ bit, like we were a united front, a team. Like we really could take care of each other, be there for each other and didn’t need him the way he thought we did. It was a nice thought and the feeling it gave me was akin to the way Heero had made me feel when he had backed me up against Trowa. Even when Quatre had been alive, I had never had that feeling before. We had been friends, but we had never been a team. We helped each other survive by caring for each other’s wounds and staving off the dark as much as we could, but we had never had each other’s backs like the way Heero had mine. We had looked out for each other, but always afterwards, and we had always fumbled at it. That I had not just one, but two people in my life now that considered me a partner of sorts was strange, but welcoming.

Too bad they had gotten the short end of the stick with such a pathetic second half. I couldn’t protect Heero or stand up for him like he had me, if I had, this never would have happened in front of him, any of it. The bullying, my injuries, my depression, my dad… I wasn’t so sure that I could help my mother, either. It was nice that she thought we could do just fine without my father, that we were both that strong and I wanted to believe that, too, that everything he said about us being weak was wrong, but I wasn’t so sure. I had been hearing those things from him my entire life and I had to wonder if maybe he was right. I sure didn’t feel capable of any kind of strength. I can say that I’m responsible and can take care of myself, but I’ve always had a roof over my head. I’ve always had access to food, even if I wasn’t allowed to eat it or we had to ration things when money got tight. I’ve never had to go it all alone, out on the streets before. And I sure as fuck didn’t feel capable of taking care of my mom.

I used to want that so badly. Even when she had been drinking and had loathed the mere sight of me, I had dreamed of being her white knight, of swooping in and taking her away from my father and everything about her life that she hated so much, of showing her that I wasn’t worthless and she didn’t need to regret giving birth to me. I still do want to give her a better life, to erase some of the shadows of weariness and pain and fear on her face, but I feel less and less capable of doing that, even in my own fantasies. Lately, it feels like every little thing I do is a failure. Being a good son. Being a good boyfriend. Hell, just being a good _friend._ Trying to keep my two lives separate. Trying to keep Heero and mine’s relationship afloat. Getting through school. Sparing ‘Ro from all of this… No matter how I try, everything just slips through my fingers. So, maybe my father is right. Maybe I, at least, could never hope to get by without him. I suppose I’m going to figure that out for myself in a year.

My father finally seemed to find what he had been looking for: a bag of chips and an unopened bottle of bourbon, both of which had seemed to magically materialize since the last time I had looked in there.

“When I come home tomorrow, there had better be dinner ready and this place had better look fucking _spotless_ ,” he threatened us, “And I don’t want to hear a peep out of either of you!”

With that declaration, he put his souvenirs in a bag and stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind him again. My mom and I held our breaths until we heard that god awful sound of the car trying to start up, choking and dying off. It took him four tries to get it started and instead of giving up on it and walking like a normal human being would, knowing how risky it was to drive a car that was probably terminal, he sped out of our driveway. He hadn’t even left his gun behind, I realized. When my mother was sure that he was gone, her arms became like a metal band around me, holding me so tightly that she was actually hurting me, although I would never in a million years tell her that, and she sobbed almost violently into my shoulder, her tears soaking through my shirt. I forced my uninjured arm to move although I didn’t want to move _anything_ right then, and curled it around the back of her neck, trying to offer what little comfort I was capable of.

My tension didn’t go away at all with him gone and I didn’t let down my guard, remembering how he had come back the previous morning. I wondered if he had come back home that day and was planning on coming back so early Sunday just because he wanted to check up on me to make sure I didn’t wander off again. He really didn’t need to bother. Now that the adrenaline and battle high were starting to take a back seat and I could think for long enough to catalogue all the things that my body was telling me, I realized just how fucked up I was. The numbness and throbbing agony in my leg was not going away. My left arm was absolutely useless and I couldn’t even clench my fingers. The damage to my rear and lower back was unmentionable. You ever get hurt? I mean really, really hurt. Like break your arm, skin your knee to the muscle kind of hurt? After the initial shock of the injury wears off and you realize you now have to live with the aftermath, the pain kind of wears you down, makes you feel like you’re going insane and you want to gnaw off whatever body part is bothering you just to get away from that pain for a little while.

That’s what this pain was, only it was in a part of my body that I couldn’t get any relief from. It wasn’t like my arm where I could just not move it for a while. Back and rear injuries are the worst like that. You can’t move at all without aggravating them. Speaking of that, I knew it was time that I should probably try moving to even see if I could do it. Otherwise… well, I had zero clue what I was going to do. I wasn’t sure what was damaged, if I needed to go to the hospital or what and only trying to stand was going to tell me anything, but after that savage beating, I was kind of scared to try. And with both my left arm and leg out of commission, I wasn’t even sure if I could get to my feet. I struggled in my mother’s arms, indicating to her that I wanted to move and she very reluctantly let me try to sit up.

“Oh god, Duo,” her hands lingered on my back when she saw how much trouble I was having, but shit it hurt even just to get slightly upright.

“Couch,” I rasped.

My body was screaming at me that it needed to stay horizontal, that I could stand up to get to a horizontal place, but only for that long or it was going to be seriously unhappy with me. No way in hell was I making it up those stairs, absolutely not, I didn’t even think I was going to be able to raise my bad leg high enough to manage the first step and I really didn’t like the thought of being trapped up there if I needed to pee or whatever. Therefore, my choices were limited to the kitchen floor, which was rather enticing because it was right there under me and I wouldn’t need to move, or the couch which was much softer and tucked away in a corner. That was exactly what I needed: a nice, dark corner where I could gather my thoughts and figure out just how badly my dad had worked me over. And it had the added benefit of being close to the kitchen, the television, and a power outlet. I had this sinking feeling my stay on the couch was going to be for the long haul and I desperately needed to check my phone messages as soon as I could as I had yet another sinking suspicion, but couldn’t remember how much power was left in it.

“O-ok,” my mother stammered, sounding like she didn’t think this was such a great idea, but still shifted to give me space to try to stand while keeping her hands on me.

She helped me out of my pants and underwear, which was embarrassing as hell, but my shirt was long enough to keep most of my modesty and it was just as well to lose the clothing. It would be easier to move and I didn’t want anything on my wounds just then. I grabbed at the edge of the table and hauled myself up, putting all my weight on my right leg until I was sure I was somewhat steady. It’s a good thing that I kept a hold of that edge or I would have dropped like a stone. My abused backside screamed in pain as I tried to use muscles there that were done for the day and everything kind of spun. I gasped as I realized the pain that I had been feeling when lying on the floor was absolutely nothing compared to trying to stand. My mother grabbed at my shirt worriedly as I swayed, but somehow managed to stay up. My legs shook, even my right one and I felt incredibly ill. I started to think that maybe the kitchen floor wasn’t such a bad place for me after all. But I hadn’t fallen and that was a start, right?

‘I can do this,’ I told myself, ‘Just one foot at a time, use the table and wall for support, it’ll be easy, just-,’

I took that first step forward, still keeping my hands on the table, and tried to put my weight on my left leg. All thoughts of this being easy immediately left me as some of the worst gut-wrenching pain I have felt shot through my thigh from bicep, up to my buttock and down to my knee. Before I even had my full weight on the damned thing, it buckled like a rotten strut and I was falling. My mother cried out and scrambled to get her arm around my waist, jerking me up as best that she could while I slammed my hands on the tabletop, fighting not to go back to the floor. It was not an easy battle. Just one climb to upright and one step later and my body was wiped. I didn’t even feel capable of staying there, clinging to the table, let alone the trek into the living room, a mere ten feet that now felt like five miles. I was done. Just trying to keep my weight off my mother and bad leg had me shaking and I just wanted to sink to the ground and tell her to let me stay there for the rest of the night. I didn’t even care about getting a blanket or a pillow, I just couldn’t manage anymore.

“Oh god, oh god,” my mother moaned against my back, “Oh, Duo…”

I could hear it in her voice, that she was just falling apart as quickly as I was and nearly laughed, thinking that we really were hopeless and my father was right after all. We couldn’t even manage a walk into another room.

“I… I don’t think I can make it,” I gasped out truthfully and felt ashamed of my own weakness, that I had walked on foot to the hospital with broken ribs before, but I couldn’t even go this far just from some muscle trauma?

I expected her to surrender and help me back down, but to my shock, my words and the shaky, watery quality to my voice seemed to shore her up and she gave me this confident and comforting smile.

“That’s alright, baby,” she gave me a small smile and took my useless left arm, slinging it over her shoulders and tightened her grip on my waist, getting a better hold on me, “Just lean on me, we’ll take it a little at a time.”

I felt utterly amazed by her. A minute ago, she had seemed like she wanted to give up, just like me, crying and freaking out, but the second I couldn’t do this, she had taken charge. I didn’t want to do what she asked. I’m taller than she is and although neither of us are big people, I still outweigh her and didn’t want to put all my burden (physical or otherwise) on her, but I didn’t see that I had much of a choice. I did as she asked, letting her bear my weight. She struggled for a second, but stubbornly moved a little bit forward, me using her as a human crutch.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” I choked out when we had gotten just a couple of feet from the living room doorway.

“Hush,” she ordered, straining to move us, but I thought I heard tears in her voice.

It was a long, scary journey just to get into the living room and only got worse when we actually got to the couch and neither of us seemed to know how to get me onto it without a great deal of pain. It was a strange struggle, my mother trying as much as she could not to cause me any more pain than necessary and my body just wanting that lovely flat surface. She was gentle and went slowly, helping to get me on my side on the damned thing, but I still groaned as muscles flexed and spasmed while I tried to settle into a position that was remotely comfortable which was just plain impossible. She rushed around me like the house was on fire, gathering up pillows and blankets to create a soft, warm nest for me. At least, that’s what it felt like when she was finally finished throwing blankets over my bare legs and my injured arm on a pillow.

“You’re bleeding,” she suddenly said in alarm and I realized it must have gone through my shirt if she could see that.

I hadn’t even noticed it myself yet and had no idea what she was looking at. I flushed like a strawberry as she peeled my shirt up so she could get a better look at my back side and she made this startling sound that was a mix of a cry and a groan of horror.

“Oh my god,” she sobbed, “We have to get you to a hospital.”

I almost wished that I could see what she was seeing, if, between the pain that she realized I was in and how my ass looked, it was really that bad or she was just freaking out with worry. But it was probably a good thing that I couldn’t see it, it wouldn’t do anything for my fragile stomach.

“I’m alright, Mom,” I tried to comfort her, but it was difficult with my back to her, “I don’t need a doctor, it’s just… bruises.”

I didn’t even know if that was true, but it wasn’t like he had shot me. They had to just be contusions, maybe a hematoma or two, right? The most a doctor could do was drain them, so what was even the point of going?

“Duo,” she exclaimed like she thought I was completely nuts, “You can barely move! You’re black and blue all over and your leg… your leg is swollen like a melon and the blood… You need a doctor!”

I turned my head so I could look at her and the pale, drawn expression of worry stabbed me in the heart. It was almost enough to get me to agree, but I just couldn’t because I knew what I would need to do even if I told her yes and I just didn’t have enough left in me for that. Her grey eyes kept looking at the damage, taking in more and more detail until she broke out in sobs again.

“I want you to see a doctor! I… I need to know you’re alright!” she cried.

Alarmed to see her like that, I dared to shift my body until I was lying on my other side facing her. It hurt like hell, especially my left arm, but I didn’t care and tried as much as I could not to let her know just what facing her had cost me.

“Mom, our insurance…” I began to say and couldn’t finish.

I didn’t even want to know what a trip to the hospital would cost us. How many times had either of us been there that year? How much money had we spent on my dislocated shoulder and broken ribs and everything else? I was bleeding, sure, but it was only a cut, probably no worse than the healing one on my shoulder and I had taken care of that all by myself. I wouldn’t see her throw more money away just because I was in a little bit of pain.

“We can’t afford it-,” I tried to dissuade her.

“I don’t care about the money!” she exploded, startling me.

She dissolved into more sobs, pressing her face into my shoulder and digging her fingers into my shirt, holding in the only way she could without hurting me further. I, however, had no such restrictions and twisted my body more until I could wrap my good arm around her, gathering her close. My attempts at comfort only seemed to make her cry harder. I felt awful and so guilty, but I didn’t let go of her, resting my cheek on her silky hair and rubbing her back, remembering how Heero would always do this for me when I cried.

“It’s ok,” I tried to soothe, “It hurts, but I’m ok. Is there a lot of blood?”

She didn’t answer me, but I felt her shake her head a little and I relaxed.

          “See? A band aid and some rubbing alcohol and I’ll be as good as new,” I said, trying to put a teasing note into my voice, but couldn’t quite manage it.

“You have splinters,” she argued, her face still pressed against me and her voice hitching.

It seemed like such a silly argument, all thing’s considered. I was more concerned with the swelling in my leg and the pain in my ass and back than I was some stupid chunks of wood in my skin, but there was something about the cut and the splinters that was really bothering her. Evidence, I suppose, of just how hard he had hit me.

“Ok. We have tweezers in the bathroom, they shouldn’t be too hard to take out,” I pointed out.

“He hit you… so hard… so many times…” she cried, confirming what I had just been thinking.

“Nothing’s broken, Mom,” I insisted.

“You don’t know that!” she raised her head to scream at me, her eyes burning and I flinched in shock, “You don’t know what he did to you! You could be seriously hurt and we wouldn’t even _know!_ He hit you in the head again… and after yesterday… there could be something wrong, Duo!”

I was speechless for a moment, paralyzed by the wave of fear and paranoia coming from her, and because I couldn’t entirely refute her concerns. She was right, I didn’t know. I could guess because I know my body and while I hadn’t been able to walk, nothing had felt broken, and I was reasonably sure that I didn’t have a concussion, but I wasn’t certain. Still, that didn’t change anything.

“Mom…” I hesitated, pained to tell her this but knew that it needed saying, “I’m-I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can get up again, not tonight,” I swallowed roughly and had to look away at the agony etched all over her face at that confession, “I just… I need to rest… I can barely move. And even if I could get up on my own, how would we get there? We don’t have a car and you can’t carry me to the bus stop. You heard Dad, he isn’t coming home until tomorrow and even if he did, I doubt he’d agree to take me there.”

She just kind of deflated right there, crouched in front of me, tears tracking down her white cheeks as she realized that I was right. I hated myself so much for that. I wanted to make her feel better. I wanted to give her some peace of mind, but there was only one way I was going to make it to the hospital at that point. One way, and I hadn’t told her because it would make her hope and I refused to even consider it. I could call Heero or Justin and have them drive me. But there was just no way in hell I was going to do that. I know, I had promised Heero that I would, but… what had happened that evening was embarrassing enough, but if I had to tell either of them exactly how I was hurt, what my father had done to me… It wasn’t even like my injuries were life threatening, I would be fine. This wasn’t a dislocated shoulder or even a really bad concussion, I wasn’t going to scare them any more than I already had with my problems.

“It’s ok,” I repeated myself, slipping my arm from around her, “It really is, Mom. I just need rest, and we have painkillers and things here, I really don’t need to go to the hospital.”

She nodded, her eyes downcast and I could tell that it had really hurt her to agree. Then, she got all fierce again and practically glared at me.

“You aren’t going to work tomorrow,” she demanded.

“Alright,” I agreed.

I didn’t want to and I could tell it surprised her a little because I’m usually stubborn about skipping work, but in reality, I didn’t think that I _could_ work in the state I was in. I didn’t even think my body could handle sitting in an office filing paperwork and if Leneski saw the state I was in after our little chat on Friday, he would freak. Maybe even start to connect the dots. I was almost out of bus fare anyway.

“And school Monday,” she pushed her luck, still with that angry, stubborn tone.

I hesitated. I really didn’t want to miss class, and if I didn’t show up after he had seen my father drag me off like that, ‘Ro was going to freak, but I nodded anyway. I wanted to give her something after I had strong armed her out of taking me to a doctor. It was worth it just to see her relief. I just told myself that the more time I waited to see Heero, the less likely he would know how badly I had been beaten. Really, the majority of my injuries were under my clothes, so if I played this right, he would never have to know about any of this.

“I’ll get the tweezers,” she sniffed, scrubbing the tears off her face with her sleeve, “and some bandages and… and pain pills and ointment…” I knew she was ranting, balancing on that fine edge between sanity and the deep end and just let her go at it. I kind of felt that way myself and if taking care of me made her feel even a tiny bit better, I would let her fuss to her heart’s content, “Is… is there anything you need me to get you?”

“Actually,” I was all too happy to give her things to do, to keep her mind and her conscience off what had just happened, and if I was going to be stuck on that couch all night, and probably all morning unless that throbbing pain eased enough for me to move, there were things that I needed, “Can you get my cell phone from my pants? And my bookbag? It’s in my room.”

“Of course,” she managed a smile and nearly ran out of the room.

While she was gone, I took the chance to turn around again. Lying like that was putting pressure on places I did not want anything so much as brushing against and it had taken a lot out of me to keep my mother from seeing the pain I was in, but I’m pretty sure she had known anyway and it was part of the source of her anxiety. I hated facing the back end of the couch. I felt exposed and it made my back itch, but it really didn’t matter. It wasn’t like I could defend myself anyway. I was so weak and hurting that it took me almost the entire time of her gathering things to actually get turned around and my arm back on the pillow.

“Here you go, Sweetie,” she handed me my phone and rested my bookbag in the gap between the back of the couch and my stomach, in easy reach for whatever I might want out of it.

“Thanks,” I told her.

          I let her take my left arm and examine it, pulling up my shirt sleeve. She hissed and finally getting a good look at it myself, I didn’t blame her. The asshole had tried to break my wrist and now I had some really delightful, bloody red and black bruises all over it to show off. I couldn’t help but remember what he had done the night Quatre and I had gone to Trowa’s game, how he had tried to pettily break my wrist then, too, and how long it had taken for me to be able to use my hand afterwards. He had done a lot more damage this time and it was a real wonder he hadn’t broken it anyway.

          “Your poor arm,” she commiserated and there was a vein of anger in her voice, telling me that she was thinking of what he had done and was probably wishing she could do the same thing to him, “It really isn’t broken?”

          I shook my head and demonstrated, trying to flex my wrist, which ended up being a huge mistake. I just cried out from the pain of my stupid actions and she hurriedly rested it back on the pillow on top of the ice pack she had gotten from the freezer.

          “A sprain,” I said through gritted teeth, “I think.”

          Her fingers lingered on my bruised skin for a minute, then she made my eyes flutter shut as she dropped a light kiss to my head, taking away a small measure of that pain with her touch and care. I wonder why that is. How someone just loving you and caring when you’re hurt can actually make the physical pain less somehow, in a way that painkillers can’t touch. I looked at my arm, limp and useless on the ice pack and wondered how many of the stupid things I had gone through in the last twenty-four hours.

          ‘Well,’ I thought and even the voice in my head sounded dry and almost bitter to me, ‘at least I have something besides my face to worry about now.’

          I almost laughed out loud at that. To think that just less than twelve hours ago, my biggest concern had been a black eye and swollen nose. My mother put a horde of medical supplies on the table next to the couch: bandages, rubbing alcohol, cotton balls, tweezers, a bowl of water, a washcloth, and some anti-inflammatory ointment a well as a couple pills that she handed me with a glass of water. I recognized them as my mother’s stronger pain pills for her headaches and eagerly swallowed them. We both knew that I probably shouldn’t be taking them on an empty stomach, but my appetite was completely nonexistent and I didn’t even think I could sit up long enough to take in some soup or something. While I gulped down the water, she worked on cleaning the blood off of me so she could start to pull the splinters out. She was achingly gentle and I barely felt anything as she worked.

          “Sorry,” she apologized anyway when she got the first piece free.

          I turned my head and grimaced when I saw the chunk of wood. When she had said splinters, I had been thinking of tiny things no bigger than a sliver of hangnail, but it was as thick as a porcupine quill and about two and two-thirds inches long. More than half of it was bloody. I really hoped that was the biggest one and could kind of see why she had freaked out so much.

          “It’s ok,” I murmured, feeling embarrassed that she was tending to my naked ass, even if she was my mom, “I didn’t even feel it.”

          That comment seemed to bother her for some reason, so I turned my head back around and turned my attention to my phone, sitting innocently on the pillow next to my arm, looking for all the world like a cobra playing possum, ready for me to make a move before it would come back to life and strike me. I really didn’t want to open it and look at my messages. I was sure it was nothing good. But I _had_ to. I needed to know if Heero was ok, if he was still scared and freaking and I needed to tell him that things were fine. I also needed to know that he and his parents hadn’t done anything drastic like call the cops. It was entirely possible. Not all that much time had passed since I had been taken from their house. Looking at the clock on my phone, it had been just shy of half an hour. I had to look at the damn thing twice just to make sure of that because it felt like days, hours at the very least, but the clock wasn’t wrong.

          Ten minutes to get to my house using shortcuts any south ender knew to bypass traffic. The beating had only taken fifteen minutes, maybe a little more, maybe a little less. Why did that sound so incredible to me? If the Yuy’s had called the police, they should have been there by now. But… maybe not. Police response time on this side of town has never been great and it was rush hour. South Nausten has always been a mess of a lack of traffic lights, a rat’s maze of side streets, and heavy congestion as all the factories and a good portion of businesses are located here. Plus, if they knew whose house they were being called to, they might take their sweet time. If it wasn’t illegal as hell, they might even just ignore the call depending who was on duty that night. But I was severely hoping they had kept out of it and hadn’t called anyone. I really didn’t know what I would do if the cops knocked on our door.

If my father had been there, he would have greeted them with a friendly air, maybe joke around about the rich assholes who freak out over every little thing and cause trouble for poor blue-collar guys like him if they were his friends. If not, just spin a rather truthful tale about how he had just been annoyed to find his kid had all but vanished and had gone to take him home. That’s the thing about my father. He can be a brute, a monster, and a dyed in the wool prick when he sets his mind to it, but he also can be incredibly charming. When he feels like it. If he’s talking to his friends or people he wants to go away and knows he can’t bully or a pretty shop clerk, he can be funny and witty and handsome and have them eating out of his hand, so long as he’s at least somewhat sober and needs to manipulate someone. He only shows his ugly side to his family and those that he truly loathes like Justin. That’s how, even if someone suspects him of hurting us, they usually think twice when they actually meet him. People can be easy to fool and often think first impressions mean everything when all it is is a lace doily over a pile of excrement.

It took me a minute to get my courage to flip open the phone to check my messages and when I did, I almost wished that I hadn’t. 12 messages. 6 from Heero, 4 from Justin, and 2 from Mariela. And 8 missed calls from all of them. 5 voicemails. I ignored the voicemails and the messages from Heero’s parents. It was going to be hard enough dealing with his texts. If I had to read what the two of them had sent, whether it was concern or condemnation, it might just break me. If they hated me for letting my father trespass on their property because of me and embarrass them in front of the entire neighborhood, I couldn’t handle knowing it. Not yet. Maybe the next day when the wounds weren’t quite as fresh. I didn’t even know how I was going to handle it if Heero hated me, too. At the very least, he was probably annoyed that our day together had been cut short because of my fucked up family drama and it took me another full minute just to look at his first text, sent not even a full minute after my father and I had driven off.

‘Text me the second you can,’ it ordered simply and I felt a tight fist of anxiety clench around my heart, so sure that the rest of the messages would be scoldings for what had happened, but the next replaced it with one of guilt and love.

‘Are you ok?’

I had to bite down on a laugh. It was so much like him. No harsh words. No demands to know what the hell was going on. Just concern and a need to know if I was safe and unhurt.

‘Duo, please don’t ignore these, I need to hear from you,’ the next read and the fourth, ‘Please love, I don’t care if you don’t want to talk to me or you’re embarrassed, just text me you’re alright.’

The fifth almost had me bawling like a damned baby.

‘I don’t know if you’re even reading these, if you’re too hurt or you’re just ignoring me because you’re ashamed, but I’m not mad ok? No one is mad at you, just that asshole. Please know that. Please let me know if you’re ok or not. If you’re not, I can come take you to the hospital. Do you need us to call the police? If you’re scared about that, my dad didn’t, alright? I wanted him to, but he said they wouldn’t be fast enough, and it might make things worse for you with your dad if they did show up. So you don’t need to hide, just talk to us. Are you safe? Did he hurt you? Please, even if you can just text me a yes or a no, please don’t shut me out. I love you.’

Tears streamed down my face and I struggled not to let the sobs start. I didn’t want to have to explain to my mother why I was crying just from reading text messages. But while that second to last message ripped open my heart and made me ache for my boyfriend and fill me with equal parts misery and love, the last one almost had me throwing up from anxiety.

‘You’re either ignoring your phone or you’re too hurt to answer,’ Heero had guessed, ‘I wish we had just gone out to dinner, then maybe none of this would have happened. But I guess it would have anyway, to you. At least we know about it this time,’ the gentlest of reprimands, then came the punch to my gut, ‘If you’re hurt like I think you are, don’t worry, ok? My dad’s on his way to your house to see if you need help. He left shortly after you did, but he’s stuck in traffic. He says he’s almost there, so just hold on a little longer, ok?’

          Oh god. Justin was coming _here, **now**_?! But he couldn’t! _Why?!_ I began to panic and had to bury my face in a pillow to keep my mother from realizing that I was on the verge of hyperventilating, making her think what she was doing was just hurting me a little and went more slowly. This could not be happening. This whole thing just had to be a huge nightmare, that was the only explanation. Bad enough that Justin was going to see where I lived and what my house looked like. That was just embarrassing. But if he saw the state I was in… the only word I can come up with for that wonderful scenario was ‘mortifying.’ The only consolation I had was that my father was gone, so they wouldn’t get into a fight on _my_ lawn instead of his, but that was really little comfort. He would make me go to the hospital as soon as he saw that I couldn’t move and the whole thing would spiral down from there. And what if the worst happened? What if my father came home and found Justin there?

          I had to stop this. He could not come here, absolutely no way. I was already starting to tell Heero just that, try to come up with the words to explain that he needed to call his father off and that I was just fucking fine and to leave me alone when common sense hit me. It would take too long to get in touch with Heero and then his dad and I was pretty sure Heero wouldn’t make his dad go back anyway, so I went to the source, switching the recipient to Justin’s number. Calling him would have been a lot faster and more likely to succeed, but I didn’t want my mother to overhear and ask me a billion questions I was in no state to answer and I just knew that my voice wasn’t going to be steady enough to convince Justin I didn’t need his help. I wasted another couple of minutes trying to come up with something to type that would get through to him, but my brain was too frazzled. I was running on empty and freaking out over this, it was like my head was full of squawking parrots that couldn’t form a single, coherent sentence.

          ‘Don’t come’ was all I could come up with. Pretty fucking lame, right? But hey, at least it was straight to the point because I figured that if I typed anymore than that, it was going to be a babbling rant.

          I waited, biting the pillow when my mother had finally finished getting all the splinters and started using the alcohol. I swear, I could live to be thirty and I would never get fully used to how much that shit stings. For a while there, I was sure that Justin was so close, he was going to get to my place before ever seeing that message and was actually a bit surprised he hadn’t arrived already. It’s not that long of a drive from his house, maybe fifteen minutes. Then again, Heero had said he was stuck in traffic, which made sense. It was around 5 on a Saturday and Justin had never been to my place before. I didn’t even think he had been to this side of town. He had no reason to. So, he probably didn’t know any short cuts and had gotten stuck near the industrial part of town where the main flow of traffic went if you didn’t know how to cut through to residential. In fact, it was probably that fact that had saved me from having him get there before my father had left. Wouldn’t that have been a scene?

          Despite my anxiety, a new message popped up no more than five minutes later.

          ‘Are you sure,’ Justin had typed, ‘Are you alright, Duo? Are you safe?’

          He reminded me so much of his son, I couldn’t stop a small smile as more tears dripped down my face and this pang of loneliness and want hit me. I wanted Heero so much. I wanted him to sit by me and feel his hand through my hair. I wanted him to tell me that everything was ok, we could still make this work and he wasn’t ashamed of me. I wanted to hear from him that he still loved me and not read it in a text message. I wanted to feel his body against mine so badly, it was a physical thing, like an addiction. I could feel how worried Justin was even through those three brief questions and felt another wave of guilt hit me at how I had turn these peoples’ lives upside down. He should be at home having dinner with his family, not driving through town looking for me. I felt struck by the absurdity of the situation, of having not just one person frantic over me, but four. No one should be worrying about me. No one should care, my depression screamed at me.

          I tried to type ‘I’m fine,’ but sounded so stupidly disingenuous. I wasn’t fine and for all his questions, Justin knew damned well that I was not anywhere near fine, he just didn’t know how bad it was. I couldn’t think of anything to tell him that would persuade him that I didn’t need him to come to my rescue, that there wasn’t even anything to rescue me from.

          ‘Please,’ was all that I could manage and it felt even more pathetic than my last message.

          There was another chunk of nothing lasting several minutes and I could only imagine that he was mulling that slightly cryptic word over, debating arguing with me or flat out ignoring me. I don’t know if I would have if someone’s response to my asking if they were ok was a plead instead of an answer.

          ‘Ok, Duo,’ he texted back and I honestly didn’t know if I felt relieved, which is what I should have felt, or sad, which made no sense given how little I had thought I didn’t want him to come here, ‘But you call us if you need anything at all. And please let Heero know that you’re alright. He’s worried sick.’

          I wiped the tears from my face and my mother paused in bandaging my bleeding wound.

          “Are you alright, honey?” she asked kindly.

          “Yeah,” I murmured, “I’m just… tired.”

          And that wasn’t a lie exactly. I _was_ tired. Tired down to my fucking soul. I didn’t understand what I was thinking or feeling anymore. I just felt very sad and depressed and miserable over everything. I didn’t even know half of what I felt guilty over anymore, just that everything felt like my fault. I had almost gotten to the point where I wished I had slit my wrists Friday morning after all, but not quite. Just skirting that edge of wanting it all to go away. My mother softly stroked her hand over my hair.

          “Almost done,” she promised, keeping her voice low and soft and soothing.

          I nodded, not really paying attention as she started to put the ointment on my bruised skin, mostly because I couldn’t focus but also because I was just too embarrassed still to want to deal with it. My phone pinged, warning me of another new message and I assumed that it was from Justin again, telling me he was going back or to insist that I call them. To my surprise, it was Heero and I wondered about the odds.

          ‘Everything ok?’ he was prodding again.

          His father must have told him that I had messaged him to turn around. I wished he hadn’t. I love Heero and it was nice to hear from him, but I just didn’t have the mental capacity to lie to him and comfort him right then. I was terrified that I was going to tell him the wrong thing and make things worse. But not answering would definitely be worse. He would think I was ignoring him or angry with him.

          ‘I’m fine,’ I texted simply

          Short and to the point. That was good enough, right? Not really a lie, it wasn’t like I was bleeding to death, and there was not much in those two words for him to read into.

          ‘Tell me the truth,’ was his reply and I could hear the terse demand in his phantom voice in my head.

          Apparently, there was a lot for him to read into. He really does know me too well. He had probably been fully prepared for me to down play this. A thousand lies popped into my head, but it felt cheap to me. Lying was what had caused all this. Lying to my father about not seeing Heero. Not telling Heero that my father didn’t want me to be with him. A lie of omission is a still a fucking lie.

          ‘He didn’t seriously hurt me,’ I told him.

          That, at least, was a more accurate truth and I hoped it would be enough to make him stop worrying. Although, on the other side of the coin was the fact that he would know my father _had_ hurt me, but he could easily guess that. He knew somewhat what my father was like. I think he had expected I was going to get the shit beaten out of me the second my father had shown up like that.

          ‘Promise me that you’re ok.’

          I would have gotten annoyed that he was still pressing on me if I didn’t somehow read the begging in those words instead of an accusation. He just wanted to be able to read it, to assure himself that he wasn’t making a huge mistake in leaving me alone. After everything he had done for me and everything that I had screwed up, I could do at least that much for him.

          ‘I promise. I’m ok. My dad isn’t even here right now, he left to hang out with his friends. It’s just my mom and me. I’m resting.’

          It was the closest I could come to the actual truth. Before he could respond to that message, I quickly sent ‘I’m sorry.’ His reply was almost immediate and I wondered if he really could type that fast or if he had been waiting for me to say that.

          ‘Don’t, Duo. You have nothing to apologize to me for. I’m the one who’s sorry. We’ll talk on Monday, alright? Sleep well. I love you.’

          I blinked as I read that message a couple times over, my tears making the words swarm and double. A myriad of emotions swirled inside of me like a tornado. Guilt and love over his ‘I love you.’ Confusion over his thinking there was anything he needed to apologize for. Utter bewilderment that he thought _I_ didn’t need to apologize for all this. Affection and even more guilt for his telling me to sleep well, still fussing over me when he should be pissed at me for so many things. Sorry for what, I had to wonder, but I already knew the answer as I saw him again in my head running off to get his father, only to have to watch us drive off with that horrible look of betrayal and hurt. He thought it was his fault for not stopping my dad and he was wrong. Why couldn’t he see that this was my fault and not his? If it weren’t for my lies, it never would have happened. But I had never thought in a million years that it would happen like _that,_ that he would be forced to see it.

          My hand trembled and I had to flip the phone closed, putting it on silent. I couldn’t take anymore of this. Not that night. I was already falling apart and one more text was going to shatter me to pieces. If I kept thinking about Heero and what was going to happen after that day, actually having to talk to him and his parents about this, all that I had lost and all that I had fucked up, I was going to completely lose what little shit I had left.

          “Was that your friend?” my mother asked as she finally moved from my rear to my messed-up thigh.

          If it weren’t for the subject matter, I would have been grateful for the distraction as she gently probed the swollen flesh. I could feel it when she put just the slightest bit of pressure on it when I hadn’t before just how swollen it was. It was like I had a throbbing, hot, and sickly feeling melon under my skin. I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be able to put on my jeans for a while. I wasn’t even sure if I was going to be able to walk on it in a day. I almost didn’t answer. It was all I could do not to scream at the sharp agony that made me think of coyotes in bear traps and gnawing off my leg again.

          “Yeah,” I choked out and turned the tremor that ran up my body into a twitch, shifting my upper body so I could look at her over my shoulder, “He… he was just concerned.”

          I tried to downplay it before I remembered that she probably had a very realistic picture of what had happened in her head, knowing where I had been when dad had stormed off to get me. Sure enough, she read between the lines and averted her eyes from mine, her expression sad and guilty.

          “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, and I knew she understood how embarrassed I had been, I could hear that same embarrassment in her voice, “I… I should have stopped him somehow… Oh, Duo, I’m so sorry for telling him where you were! I should have lied, I should have…”

          She struggled for the words because she knew full well that she couldn’t have done a damned thing to have stopped it. I stilled her babbling, finding her hand clenching my shirt on my shoulder and covered it with mine.

          “Mom, it’s alright,” I tried to comfort her, “I understand. I’m not mad with you. He hurt you. I’m just glad that you told him before he did anything worse to you. It’s all my fault. If I hadn’t gone over there when I knew he didn’t want me to, he never would have beaten you.”

          “No, honey,” she blurted out, looking almost alarmed, “That wasn’t your fault. You have every right to have a friend, to be with him and have a good time. I should have done something-,”

          “You couldn’t have done anything,” I pointed out, “He knew where I was, he just wanted to punish you for it and make me get angry with you. But I’m not falling for that bullshit. You don’t even know where Heero’s house is, but he obviously did. You didn’t do anything wrong, no matter what you had said to him, he would have flown off the handle anyway. I just… I’m just sorry that you had to be caught in the middle of all this, all because I couldn’t do what I was told!” I spit out hatefully.

          “Duo, it isn’t like that,” she tried to protest, “It isn’t your fault he hit me-,”

          “Yes, it is!” I snapped.

          She looked at me wide-eyed, startled by the bite in my tone and I had to look away from her or my guilt was going to eat me alive.

          “You were right,” I muttered and more tears filled my eyes, remembering that conversation from what seemed like so long ago although it hadn’t even been a couple weeks, “You told me that I shouldn’t see Heero anymore, that I should listen to Dad or something bad was going to happen. You were right, I should have stopped hanging out with him. It wasn’t worth you being his punching bag!”

          She grabbed my hand hard, and I looked back at her, nearly flinching at the fierce, upset look on her face.

          “You listen to me,” she demanded, “I was wrong, Duo, do you hear me? I was wrong to say those things and you were right. Your father has no right to tell you who and who you cannot be friends with. He’s a bastard for ever telling you that you can’t be with that boy. You were right, I wasn’t around for you for a very long time and I don’t know what things have been like for you, how lonely you’ve been or that you have a hard time making friends. But even I can see that this boy has been good for you. It is not your fault for wanting to keep him as a friend and it is not your fault that your father hit me. He did that all on his own and if he couldn’t use this as an excuse, then he would have just found some other reason, you know that!”

          “Mom…” I tried to find the words to make her understand my guilt, but I knew that she was right.

It might have been my fault this time, I might have been the trigger that had set him off and that was on me, but I still felt such bitterness for him making me feel this way, for making just having a friend be something that wasn’t allowed and for taking it out on my mother. He was responsible for that, not just me. And even if I had obeyed him to the letter, I would have just been miserable and he would have honed on to something else to lash out at us with.

“Your father is _wrong,_ Sweetheart,” she ignored me, squeezing my hand again, “This boy… Heero… he buys you things and lets you stay at his place because he’s a good person. He even texted you because he was worried for your safety. Someone like your dad can’t understand that and I doubt he ever will. So, don’t you ever say that either of us were right ever again! I was a coward and I didn’t think about you when I told you to listen to him. _Don’t._ Please, baby, don’t listen to him, not about this. Don’t let him take this away from you,” she begged, brushing the bangs from my eyes with her other hand and I was shocked to find that she was crying again.

I wished I could hold her, but I just didn’t have the strength left to turn any more than I was. My entire lower half of my body was as stiff as a rock and my pain threshold was gone. All I could do was clasp her fingers and I felt a little bit of relief when she smiled in gratitude.

“I won’t, Mom,” I promised her, “I can’t, even… even if you asked me to…” I admitted guiltily, but she didn’t look hurt by that, only reassured, “Heero is the first real friend I’ve had in four years. He’s the only person I have to talk to. He even knows about Dad, the beatings and drinking, I mean, his parents, too. They tried to help, but they’ve never stuck their noses in it. They’re nice, all of them, and they’ve never judged me for any of this shit. Even now, after what just happened… I don’t want to give that up. I know that sounds selfish-,”

“It isn’t,” she assured me, “Anyone who cares about you like that, Duo… you hold on to them, alright? Don’t let your father bully you over this like he has everything else.”

“I just don’t know what to do,” I had to admit in a shaky voice, “Mom, he… he’s scaring me. I don’t want to stop being Heero’s friend, but I don’t know what to do if he’s going to get like this… or worse.”

She stroked my cheek, trying to comfort me, but the pain and fear in her eyes just made me feel cold.

“I don’t know, either,” she confessed, “But I’ll think of something, ok? So, don’t worry about your father.”

It was a nice sentiment, but it didn’t make me feel much better. There wasn’t much she could do and she knew it. That was the source of her guilt, I think. That she, like me, knew something needed to be done and there wasn’t anything _to_ do. She resumed working on my leg, lost in her thoughts until she had done all that she could do for my injuries. She pulled the blankets and quilts up over me and it did help a little, just knowing I wasn’t completely exposed anymore.

“Is there anything you need?” she asked me, fussing a little, “Water? Something to eat? I can make soup…”

“I don’t think I can eat anything right now, but water sounds good,” I told her.

She hurried off, taking the remains of the first aid supplies and came back with a glass of water, leaving it on the table for me.

“Would you like the television on?” she asked and I shook my head.

“No thanks,” I murmured tiredly, “I’m just going to try to sleep.”

“Alright, honey. Good night,” she leaned down to kiss my head again.

As she left the living room, she turned the light off for me, bathing the room in a comfortable darkness, the only light coming from the kitchen. I almost asked her if she could keep that light on, or maybe just the light from the laundry room, but that would have been childish and I didn’t want to explain how sometimes my mind paints things in the dark, things with long claws that stalk nightmares that never feel like nightmares. But to my surprise, instead of running out of the house to get to her next shift, which I am sure she was quite late for, I heard her moving around the kitchen, making something for herself. It didn’t take me long to realize that she planned on skipping work so she would be there for me, to protect me from my father or offer her help if I needed anything. Part of me was guilty at the loss of money, but another was relieved. I didn’t want to be alone, and hearing her puttering around the kitchen, trying to be quiet and failing, was a comfort. It was nice, knowing she was there and that she cared.

‘I didn’t even get to eat Mariela’s pasta,’ the thought suddenly popped into my head and I had to bite down on my tongue to keep from laughing at that idiotic thought, like it even mattered. The stupid thing was that it did and only served to feed my depression.

That night would be one of the longest nights I’ve ever had, even taking into account that long brush with insomnia. It wasn’t that I didn’t sleep at all, I just kind of… drifted. I can’t call what I did true, deep sleep, but I did doze off a few times in the night and early morning hours. My mind was just full of all this crap and even though I was utterly exhausted, it kept dragging up random, chaotic thoughts and poking me awake with dark memories and emotions. It took me a full hour just to nod off the first time. I listened to my mother sit down to eat her dinner and closed my eyes, just trying to fall into that black hole where all of this could go away for a little while. But I couldn’t get comfortable.

There was just no way _to_ get comfortable. I couldn’t turn around like my restlessness wanted me to. All I could was lie there like a lump and feel every bruise, every contusion, every throb, and every swollen part of flesh. It would have been pointless anyway. No position would have relieved me of the pain and I was in the best one to not put too much pressure on anything, but I still hurt. The pain was enough to keep sleep from coming, but then I would doze off and my body would twitch or move in some way in my sleep and the jolt of agony would bring me right out of it again.

It went like that all night. I would sleep for a few minutes, wake up from some stupid thing, then take another hour to doze off again. It felt worse than not sleeping at all, not getting any kind of rest, but still getting a taste of it, like a drowning man taking a gulp of air before being dragged back down. The first time I managed to nod off, from pure tiredness and a desperate desire to escape reality, I don’t think I managed more than fifteen minutes. It was the longest sleep I would get that night and it was stained by the beginning touches of some nightmare. I can’t tell you what it was about. I remember blood and screaming, but I can’t recall whose screams they had been. I just remember something dark and awful, then I was awake and panting, drenched in sweat and almost screamed myself as I had stupidly tried to sit up to get my bearings, only for my lower back to remind me that it wasn’t a big fan of me moving.

It took me a while after that to find sleep again and when I did, it was just as brief. That time, it was my neighbor’s dogs that woke me, but I’m pretty sure they had just saved me from having another nightmare. It was a cruel parody of the first time, complete with sweat and my pounding heart and almost crying out in terror, only this time the terror was from something that actually existed, which made it a thousand times worse. I just kept thinking that my father was home and laid there, frozen stiff in my terror that at any moment he was going to come bursting through that door and hurt me again, drag me from that couch and rape me or beat me, maybe really break my arm this time. I didn’t even realize how hard and fast I was breathing until I heard light footsteps pounding their way to me and something touched my shoulder. I flinched hard, a scream in my throat.

“Shhh,” my mother’s frightened voice came to me and I shuddered, realizing where the touch had come from, “It’s alright, Sweetheart, it’s ok. It’s just those dumb dogs. They must have spotted a stray cat or something. You’re safe, go back to sleep.”

I blinked stupidly at the back of the couch, wishing that I was facing the other way so I could see her face, see another person, and realized that she was right. If it had been my father, the sound of his car would have woken me before the dogs had. He wasn’t there. My body relaxed and my mother sighed in relief, probably thinking that I was drifting off, but I stayed awake a while longer, just listening to the wind and rain pounding against the house, a sound that usually I find soothing but that night was just one more thing to add to my anxiety. The third time it happened, it was the pain in my arm that had roused me for once and not fear, although I can’t say if it was better or worse. I had rolled slightly in my sleep and had ended up lying on the damned thing until the pain was so horrible, I had jerked back awake.

I was starting to feel exactly like I had during that insomnia bout, like I was going to scream in pure frustration, just wanting a single hour of uninterrupted rest. Only this time I didn’t have the benefit of being able to just get up and go do something else. I wasn’t even in the right state of mind to just turn on the television for the sound alone or try to read. I quickly rolled back into the only position I could manage and bit down on my pillow to stop the gasp of pain that wanted to burst out. I had already brought my mother running before, I wasn’t going to do it twice.

While I tried to get my breathing under control, I suddenly became acutely aware that there was something in the room with me. A presence. Fear, a close, bosom friend of mine that day, returned as my very first thought was that it was the _thing._ The monster of my nightmares come to visit me finally during my waking hours. Because I was absolutely certain that I was awake and this was not one of those weird dreams. The pain was too real. The feeling of my hair standing straight up on my arms and the back of my neck was also too real. And once I had gotten around the shock, I also realized that this felt wrong. I didn’t feel paralyzed like I usually do in those dreams and the more awake I got, the more disoriented and the less scared I was. The more I realized how stupid and childish I was being.

I twisted myself as much as I was able, still not capable of getting onto my back but I was able to turn enough over to peer over my shoulder. I don’t know what I thought I’d see. My fears of a monster were fading as common sense started to make myself known, but fears of a different monster soon replaced them as I expected to find my father looming over me in the dark. Instead, in the sporadic light of a bolt of lightning, I found my mother curled up in my father’s chair, asleep. Her huddled form frightened me for a second, making me think that my father had come home and that was why she was sleeping there instead of in her bedroom, but I was on such a hair trigger, there was just no way he could have snuck into the house without waking me.

I was so fuzzy from my weird in and out napping that it took me a moment to figure out why she was there when she had a nice, comfortable bed just a few feet away. She was looking after me, guarding me in case my father came home or I needed something. Her concern for me washed away the last lingering fingers of my fear and anxiety and I had to smile at the image of her wrapped up in a blanket, slumped in the chair and curled up like a cat. It couldn’t have been very restful for her, and she probably would have heard me from her bedroom, but she had still decided to sleep in the old, beat-up chair. It was the sort of thing that Justin or Heero would have done and it reminded me so much of when I had had my concussion and the both of them had stayed up with me.

I turned back around and had to stifle a groan as pain flared in my swollen, lower back just from that tiny movement. Hours later and it still felt like the beating had happened minutes ago, the swelling making things worse. I tried to keep my mind on other things; the feel of the pillow under my cheek, the sound of the rain and thunder outside, the way the lightning sent shadows arcing along the wall by my head, Heero’s text saying that he loved me, my mother’s light breathing. But, against my will, my mind pulled up my memory of my father from that afternoon, getting in Justin’s face and looking just like a territorial, wild animal, his face twisted with rage, looking so ugly and just a hair away from snarling and bearing his teeth.

Like a switch had been thrown in my head, everything replayed out. Their fight, Justin’s cool but caring demeanor versus my father’s insane rage and pointless rivalry, the quiet drive home, him kicking me through the door and belting me in the face, him nearly strangling my mother, the toxic smell of booze coming off him in waves and how out of control he had been had terrified the both of us, him nearly breaking my arm, then the savage beating… He’s done some pretty crazy things before. Tying me up in laundry closet, hitting me with an iron, shoving my head in a sink full of water… but this went beyond all those things. I can’t even tell you why, it was mostly a feeling.

But the way he had hit me… it hadn’t been calculated. He hadn’t pulled his hits or even seemed to care about what he had been doing to me, just lashing out. He hadn’t even seemed to realize what he had been hitting me with or how much damage he had been doing. His rage had blinded him and sure, that was nothing new, but lately… lately he scares me so much. If he hadn’t just hit me on the ass with that chair leg, he would have put me in the hospital, maybe even done something permanent. That’s not what scares me, that’s just par for the course. What scares me is that I don’t think he would have cared at all, not just about us or killing us, but about himself and the consequences of any of his actions. It’s like he doesn’t care about anything anymore but drinking and being angry at the world. He didn’t used to be like this and I felt that childish hope rear its head again, that hope that he would go back to how he used to be, that that man was buried down under all that hate and he would wake up and see what he had done. He would come running home and apologize to me and agree that he needed help. But he wouldn’t.

There was my proof that he didn’t love me, right? Even when he sobered up and remembered what he had done, he still wouldn’t care. He would just think ‘he got what he deserved’ and that would be the end of it. And it would just happen again and again. My mother was right, it wouldn’t even need to be because of Heero, it could happen over anything. He was escalating into something… nightmarish and that he would lash out just like this over something small made me shiver. I had been tiptoeing on egg shells around him for so long, I didn’t know how much more I could do… Just like I had told my mother, I didn’t know _what_ I could do and I had this terrible feeling in my guts that, soon, I was going to have to make a choice, choose between my parents. My father’s freedom or my mother’s safety. It should be a no-brainer. My mom didn’t deserve this shit. But when I think about actually picking up the phone and calling the police, signing the paperwork to press charges against the man and having a _trial_ … something that I’ve only seen on television, this mystical, dramatic thing that didn’t seem to really exist in my personal world, my mind just shuts down. I remember my father not as he is now, but how he used to be when I had been little and I think about caging that man up, destroying his life and all of my common sense is gone.

‘When did things get this bad?’ I thought and honestly could not remember exactly when this had happened. When my father had gone from just giving me a black eye for mouthing off to him or breaking something to… to _this._ When had he gone from just being my dad, a little rough along the edges, a little light on his temper, to this monster? When had it become such a burden to remember things? When had my life become this unending nightmare?

I tried to bury those dark memories of that evening under something brighter, something I could hold on to that would make me feel anything but sadness and fear. I searched desperately for that memory I had dreamed about that morning, tried to conjure up the feeling of my father holding me, his large hand on my head in a way that soothed instead of hurt, the memory of his tired face, lips twisted in a smile instead of a snarl. Instead, I found something else. A memory as old as that other one, but very different. A memory that’s tried to come to me many times since, but I’ve always rejected it because I don’t _want_ to remember any part of it. It’s become a reflex, which is kind of scary when I think about it. Whenever I can feel that memory poking around in my head, I’ve always slammed the door shut on it, buried it deep like a dirty secret. But that morning, I couldn’t find the door. It just came spilling out, unwanted. Maybe I had denied it for too long. Maybe it had been something from that day dragging it to the surface, or maybe I was just too tired to defend myself from it, but it came, piece by piece.

It’s a very old memory, even more faded than the one that I had dreamed about, perhaps because I’ve made no real effort to hold on to it. I have to wonder why, after all the times I’ve tried to forget about it, I haven’t been able to when plenty of others have faded. Some memories just kind of stick with you, I guess, even ones that are almost as old as you are. I can’t even remember when this memory had happened, before or after the other one, but I assume I was around the same age because everything is at the same height in both memories. I remember doing something bad, but I can’t recall what it was.

I don’t remember anything at all that lead up to it, only the impact of my father’s hand on my face, his scowl of rage, and the hot burst of pain as blood gushed out of my nose. I remember the hurt. Not just the physical pain, but the wounded hurt of knowing that my father was mad at me, that he had _hit_ me, and I remember my fear of seeing that face that I loved so much turn into someone else’s in anger. At me. It hadn’t happened as much back then, him getting angry at me. If he yelled at anyone, it was usually my mom. He had had more patience for me back then, I guess, and even when I had done something wrong, he would usually get frustrated and disappointed with me, not furious. But that day, something I had done had made him snap. It was not the first time he had struck me, I remember that much, but it had been rare enough back then that it had shocked me, and I had begun to cry before the blood had finished tracking down my face.

But it isn’t my pain and shock that is the most vivid in this memory, it was my father’s own reaction to it. He had looked so… surprised. Horrified, really, an expression that I can’t recall seeing on his face in at least a decade. It might not have been the first time he had hit me, but I think it was one of the few times he had struck me when he had been completely sober back then. I’ll always remember how his face had gone pale and he had fallen to his knees in front of me, any trace of anger long gone.

“Oh, Duo,” he had moaned guiltily, “Oh, sweetheart, your nose!”

He had grabbed some paper towels from the counter and wiped the blood from my face, his expression frantic and lost, not knowing how to deal with my tears or what had just happened.

“Shhh,” he had tried to soothe, cradling my face gently, “Don’t cry. I didn’t mean to hit you, baby, you know that don’t you?”

I hadn’t been able to say anything, just sniffled and cried, trying to get it stopped, but my nose hurt so much.

“I didn’t mean it,” he had said with this desperation, “I just get so mad sometimes, especially when you don’t listen, but I didn’t really mean to hurt you. You know that.”

I had nodded. I did know that. My daddy wouldn’t hurt me, not on purpose. I had just done something wrong and he had gotten angry, that was all. If only I had known back then how much he would change, but that was lightyears from then. At that moment, I only knew that my dad loved me and if he hurt me, he either hadn’t meant to, like I didn’t mean to make him mad in the first place, or it was a punishment for something I had done wrong and I deserved it.

“I know, Daddy,” I had snuffled, “I’m sorry for making you angry.”

He had smiled at me then and I knew that everything was ok, everything was forgiven.

“Come here,” he had soothed and taken me into his lap and into his arms.

I vaguely remember a fight between my parents after that when my mother had seen my swollen nose and she had known what had happened. I also vaguely remember being very confused as to why my mother was so angry at him and thinking that she just didn’t understand. Funny how experience and age can make you see things in a different way and the parts of that memory that once made me feel good, made me feel loved by my father, cherished and forgiven and cared for only make me feel bitter. If there’s anyone that makes me feel loved in that memory now, it’s my mom because I didn’t understand at three or four what I do now, that her screaming at him was because she had been so upset he had hit me, that, even if he hadn’t meant to hurt me, he still had, and had used the forgiveness of a child barely out of toddlerhood to absolve himself of any wrongness.

There’s a part of me, a bitter, angry part that wants to go back in time and tell him no, I didn’t forgive him and no, I did not know that he hadn’t meant to hit me. I want to tell him what Heero told me, about consequences and choices and how this is how it starts, with him excusing his anger like it was a one-time thing, like it would never happen again when he knew damned well at the time that he had no control over it. He had chosen just to bury it and not think about it. Sounds familiar. I wonder if something like that is genetic. That part of myself remembers these things and I hate myself, even at that young age, for ever apologizing to him. I had apologized for making him mad when he should have been apologizing for hitting me. I spent a good portion of my childhood feeling guilty for upsetting him and making him angry at me. I still do, really, even when I know that, while I frustrate him and I’m not exactly son of the year material, it didn’t mean that I deserved all the beatings, or that my father deserved a forgiving punching bag.

‘He never apologized for it back then,’ I suddenly realized as I picked apart that memory, ‘For hitting me. Not really.’

I felt a little bit of bitterness over that, too. He had said that he hadn’t meant to do it, but not ‘I’m sorry.’ I can’t actually remember a time that he had. But I had still known that he was sorry the second he had fallen to his knees and touched me so gently. I had known that he regretted it. Was that still true? Does he still feel sorry… still feel regret for the things he does? Was he at Pat’s place right now, nursing some of that whiskey and hating himself for what he had just done? I had never seen any evidence of his regrets in several years now, but what if he’s just good at hiding it? What if he won’t say that he’s sorry to my face, but he still is and I’m just too oblivious to notice? Does it make a difference, knowing that? Do I want to believe it or does that just make all this so much worse? Is he sorry for the rest of it? Is he sorry for raping me, but just can’t stop himself? If he does… is there some way that I can get through to him? Is there some way that I can get my other father back and stop all this and I’m just too weak and fumbling to manage it? Whose fault is this mess exactly? Whose weakness caused this shit?

All it does is rip my heart open, again and again. Every time I think I can have the resolve to do what’s right, to protect my mother and myself and finally turn my back on him, I remember these things. I wonder which father is real. The man who tries to be a dad and a husband but has been so bogged down by life, all he can do is lash out and regret it later when it’s too late, or the petty monster that hates his family and just wants to destroy me, to tear everything apart. The man who had held me so sweetly and told me he hadn’t meant to hurt me, or the monster who had beaten the shit out of me because I had embarrassed him, who had nearly decked Justin and almost put me in the hospital because no matter what, he has to win everything. He always has to be on top.

I wanted to find that man and tell him “all I ever wanted was to make you happy. You might not have meant to hurt me, but you did. All I ever did was try to be what you wanted and all you’ve done is tear me apart. Why? That’s all I want to know. _Why?_ ” I wanted to find him and tell him that even now, even unable to stand because of what he did, even bleeding from my heart because of his cruel words and everything that he’s ripped from me, my sanity and my friend and my home, I still love him. I’ll love him until the day that he takes that away from me, too. Only, I know I’ll never be able to. I’m not even sure he’s real, not anymore.

Lying there in the dark, tears drenching the pillow under my head, I mourned the man that I can only half remember.

If that man is dead… if he never existed at all… why can’t I just let him go?

 

// Rip the earth in two with your mind

And seal the urge which ensues with brass wires

I never meant you any harm

But your tears feel warm as they fall on my forearms

 

But close my eyes for a while

And force from the world a patient smile

 

How can you say that your truth is better than ours?

Shoulder to shoulder, now brother, we carry no arms

And the blind man sleeps in the doorway his home

If only I had an enemy bigger than my apathy I could have won

 

But I gave you all

I gave you all

I gave you all

 

Close my eyes for a while

And force from the world a patient smile

 

But I gave you all

I gave you all

I gave you all

 

And you rip it from my hands

And you swear it's all gone!

And you rip out all I had

Just to say that you've won!

 

And you rip it from my hands

And you swear it's all gone!

And you rip out all I had

Just to say that you've won, you've won!

WELL NOW YOU’VE WON!

 

But I gave you all…

I gave you all…

I gave you all…// (1)

 

End Part 25

 

  * “I Gave You All” by Mumford and Sons



 

Author’s Note: All caught up with everything I wrote for Nanowrimo. I got a good chunk of the next part done, too, so I’m hoping it won’t be forever before I can post that.


	71. Chapter 8 Part 26

****

A Stagnation of Love

Chapter 8

Part 26

 

 

          I was wide awake when my mother roused from the chair early Sunday morning. It was still pouring out, but at least the thunder and lightning had subsided. As soon as the morning light, faint and gray and as dreary as my mood, had started to come through the blinds on the window behind me, I had given up the pretense of trying to get any sleep and just spent the time reading. I think I had managed about an hour of off and on sleep, maybe a little less, but I knew when to give up. The worst of the pain in my ass had edged off into an unpleasant, deep throbbing ache, but I was sure the rest of it would come back as soon as I tried to move. I desperately wanted a trip to the bathroom, some more water, and, most importantly, some more of that pain medication, but I didn’t think I was going to get very far on my own. I was just incredibly thankful for the seven hours of sleep I had gotten at Heero’s place or I would have been a complete zombie.

          I heard my mother rustling around and slowly and carefully rolled over onto my other side so I was facing her and not the back end of the couch. My arm protested loudly and my back and leg were not all that happy about the movement, either, but I actually managed it without screaming, so I took that as a sign that I might be doing a tiny bit better. My mother wasn’t doing too hot, either, groaning as she crawled out of the chair and cracking her back with a wince. But when she saw me looking at her instead of being fast asleep, her grimace melted into a soft smile.

          “Good morning,” she greeted.

          “Morning,” I rasped back, my throat a little sore.

          Dutifully, she refilled my water glass, but hesitated giving it to me.

          “Can you sit up?” she asked.

          “I can try,” I said, figuring moving around might actually be a decent idea if I wanted my muscles to heal.

          She put the glass on the table and wrapped her arm around my lower back, giving me as much support as she could. It… was not a fun time. Swollen muscles that had become stiff in the hellish night I had had woke up screaming and by the time my mom actually had gotten me sitting up, I was gasping in pain and already regretting this decision. She hurriedly rearranged the pillows while I was up so I could rest against them, making sure they could support my back without me straining anything. I practically collapsed against them and just tried to get my breath back.

          “Oh, Duo,” she moaned in sympathy, lightly rubbing my upper back, “Isn’t it better at all?”

          “A little,” I admitted through gritted teeth, “I wouldn’t have been able to do that last night.”

          She stroked her hand over my horribly messy hair.

          “You know,” I said when I could breathe and think around the pain again, “I’m going to have to get off this couch and try to walk around, right?”

          She quirked a faint smile.

          “I know, honey,” she said, but I could tell how reluctant she was to admit that, “but let’s give you a moment, ok?”

          I nodded. At least I was sitting up. That was a good first step.

          “Are you hungry at all?” she fussed, “I can make you something light. There’s chicken soup or tomato…”

          “Maybe in a little while,” I stifled a wince of my own thinking about how long it had been since I had eaten and how little of an appetite I still had.

          My mother frowned, but didn’t push the issue. She gave me the television remote and went about making her own breakfast. I could smell eggs cooking, but even the smell didn’t do anything to make me hungry. I spent the time that she was eating trying to get my back and butt adjusted to sitting, knowing that the trek to the bathroom that I needed was going to be a chore and it was going to be a ‘one step at a time’ kind of day. While I was ahead of myself and thinking about the rest of the day, I left a message on my boss’ answering machines informing them that I was bedridden with a fever and would not be in that day. I thought about mentioning Monday, too, but one day at a time, right? Who knew, maybe I would be well enough to work by then. Yeah, my naivety cracks me up, too. I just didn’t want to call Lorathe and have to deal with him.

          My one, big task complete, I turned on the television and flicked through the channels, looking for something mindless to watch to keep my mind off of how much I was hurting and how fucking exhausted I was. There wasn’t much on that early in the morning, mostly trashy talk shows, infomercials, and the news. I’ve never been all that big into television, especially after I outgrew cartoons. There’s never anything interesting to watch, just a lot of garbage, so I’ve always preferred my books or the rare moments when I could watch a cooking show. I didn’t dare to go anywhere near that station that morning with my mom around. I had learned my lesson the first time and I was too raw to deal with her issues on my… hobbies.

          The stuffy British drama got pegged as a ‘possible’. They weren’t selling anything, the dialogue wasn’t dumbed down, and no one was talking about their ‘baby daddy’ or how many bowel movements a certain celebrity had, so it was better than most of the shows I had been flipping through, but then I found a rerun of one of the cop dramas that Heero likes. I’m not a big fan of them, although I don’t dislike them, either, it’s just a lot of the plots are exactly the same and I find the shootout scenes to be rather dull. The investigative bits are fun to watch, though. I settled for the cop drama, not because I necessarily wanted to watch it over the British thing, just because it reminded me of ‘Ro and made me smile for a little bit, remembering all the times that we had sat down in his cozy living room to watch a couple of episodes while we ate a meal.

I know it was dumb and there was no way in hell Heero Yuy would be up at six in the morning on a Sunday, but I felt warmed thinking that maybe we were watching the same show at the same time, almost like we were together. Before I could stop it, I was crying silent tears of longing. I missed Heero. I missed my cat. I even missed the dog. If I tried hard enough, I could imagine that the soft thing I was resting on was him and not some inanimate pillows. I could imagine his arms wrapping around my waist and his lips nuzzling my neck. But it was just too painful, and I had to stop before the tears turned into something deeper. I focused on what I was watching, trying to figure out how they had managed each shot and picking out little details on the backgrounds of each scene, an extra in a crowd or a bird flying off in the distance, and the sound of my mother finishing her breakfast and doing the dishes. Little, stupid things that didn’t matter and didn’t hurt.

When my mother popped back into the living room to check up on me, I made sure I had wiped all the tears off my face.

“Do you want to try getting up?” she asked pensively, clearly not wanting to do this at all. I didn’t blame her.

“I probably should,” I sighed, not looking forward to it after remembering trying to get to the living room the previous day, “My bladder is going to explode if I don’t.”

She chuckled at that. It was weak, but still nice to hear her laugh. I switched off the television and moved my pile of stuff out of the way. My mother went to me with this pinched look, like she had been asked to put a puppy down instead of just help me to my feet. She crouched on my left side, letting me throw my bad arm around her and together we slowly got me sitting on the edge of the couch. I was already panting with pain just from that tiny maneuver. We hadn’t even tried getting me to my feet yet.

“This is a terrible idea,” she blurted out, “Duo, I’m not sure I can do this…”

“It’s alright, Mom,” I assured her, “I’ve just been lying down for too long, my body needs to adjust and I need to loosen up my muscles. What’s the worst that’s going to happen anyway? It’s not like a broken rib. At worst, I’ll fall and it isn’t even a long way down.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she protested.

“I’m already hurting,” I pointed out and hated myself for how stricken she looked, but I needed her to help me and she wasn’t going to if she was terrified of doing the wrong thing, “There isn’t much more anything we do is going to do to me.”

“A…alright,” she conceded and looked like she had just swallowed a handful of bitter grapes.

I kept my arm over her shoulders and she wrapped hers around my waist. I put my right foot solidly on the ground, preparing to let it do most of the work so I wouldn’t have a repeat of the previous day. I didn’t really care if I fell, but I was nervous about dragging my mother down with me. We took twin, anxious breaths together and _heaved._

Immediately as I went up and put weight on my legs and moved my lower body for the first time in almost twelve hours, I cried out at the pain of it. I almost sat right back down, certain I could not do this after all. If my mother had panicked and chickened out at my cry, things probably would have ended there, but she stubbornly grit her teeth and let me put my weight on her, using her like a crutch. She was incredibly patient with me through the whole thing, letting me just stand there, trembling like a newborn foal as I rode out the waves of agony, trying to force my body to just get over the pain and adjust to it, telling myself that going backwards was not an option and the only choice I had was to go forward towards the bathroom. I was really starting to double think my decision to not go to the hospital.

Look, I’m not a complete moron, ok? I know that my… issues with going to the hospital when I’m hurt like this are part stubbornness, part a strong need to be independent, part knowing my own body, part finances, and part not wanting to worry people, but another big, big reason why it takes a lot to get me to admit when I do need help and need a doctor is the fear I’ve had of the places since I was a kid. I don’t even like to call it fear. It’s not like I’m on the verge of screaming when I have to go there like when I hear my father coming up the stairs in the middle of the night or early morning. It’s just a… reluctance, I guess. A wariness. Kind of hard to look at a place that holds so many bad memories with any sort of warmth. Hospitals meant pain and loneliness and lies and abandonment.

Ok, maybe not that last part. But that’s the feeling that always comes to mind when I think about hospitals. Some things just happen when you’re a kid that stick in your head for the rest of your life. Little things that shouldn’t matter, but do anyway. For me, when I think about hospitals, what immediately pops into my head isn’t my near suicide attempt, or getting those stitches in my back, or the hundreds of times I’ve needed to go there because of a broken arm or a concussion from my father. What I remember, the very first thing that rises up from the murky depths of my consciousness, is that first lengthy bout of pneumonia when I was a child. I remember waking up, barely able to breathe and so scared that I was dying, that my parents and the doctors were hiding something from me and I was losing my breath and was going to drown in the shit that was in my lungs. I remember opening my eyes in that dimly lit room and finding the chair that my father had been in before I had fallen asleep empty. I remember the pain in my chest and the terrible coughing fit that had brought a nurse running into my room, sure, but mostly I remember the confusion and the betrayal thinking that my father had just left me there to die. That he had abandoned me.

There’s more, of course. A hatred of needles and tests and medical procedures and all that shit. All of it just adds up to… not really a phobia of hospitals, but certainly a strong dislike of them. So, while maybe telling my mom that I didn’t want to see a doctor had not been the smartest idea, I stood by it. I already felt weak and vulnerable and raw, I didn’t need a stranger poking at my many injuries to add to the mix and, like I had said the previous night, it wasn’t like we had many ways of getting there anyway. Even if I was in terrible pain and even if I was a little bit worried that I was hurt worse than I had thought I had been, I was glad that I could lick my wounds at home instead of in a hospital.

My legs shook like jello for a good ten minutes and I could feel my mother shaking trying to support the both of us, too. I ignored the pain in my arm and leg and just tried to deal with the injuries to my ass and back. Everything else was dead weight anyway for this, but if my back crapped out, we were done. I felt so stupid. I had just had my backside beat a little, it wasn’t like I had thrown out my back, so why did it hurt this much?

“Are you alright?” my mother finally asked in alarm.

“No,” I gasped out, “but we’re doing this.”

She sighed in exasperation, but let me take that first step forward with my right foot, shuffling forward herself. I almost fucked myself over when I went to take a step with my left leg. Whatever damage my father had done with that strike to my thigh, it had been pretty bad. I had thought it had been hurting me lying down. Well, it was nothing compared to trying to use the damned limb. The second I put even a little weight on it, it wanted to quit, threatening to buckle under me like yesterday, but my mother was there, doing the job that my leg didn’t want to do and I was able to steady myself.

“Are you sure you can do this?” my mother pressed again.

“No, but unless you have a wheelchair stashed around here somewhere, I don’t have much of a choice,” I gritted out and stubbornly took another step.

The whole trek to the bathroom went pretty much like that. Slow, agonizing in parts, the lower half of my body screaming at me about what a flaming moron I was putting it through this. But, like some kind of miracle, those small, careful steps seemed to help and by the time we were in the kitchen, I was walking a little easier, putting a little less weight on my mother. I thought that, with a little more stretching my legs, I might even be alright to walk under my own power in a few hours, if with a heavy limp. By the time we got to the bathroom, although I was in screaming pain, the worst of the stiffness was starting to ease off enough that I was confident I could stand without needing a crutch, I just couldn’t move while doing so.

“Do… do you need any help?” my mother asked me when I finally took my arm from around her and used the counter to steady myself, the both of us incredibly uncomfortable with the thought of her holding me up while I had to piss.

“No, I think I can manage,” I assured her.

“Call me if you have any trouble,” she insisted, almost in a scolding tone and I decided I was going to make damn sure it wouldn’t come to that. If I couldn’t pee by myself, I was in a lot of trouble anyway.

She closed the door behind me, but not all the way, leaving just an inch ajar so she could hear me. I faced the toilet, feeling like I was facing a battlefield instead of an everyday occurrence. I was incredibly relieved that pissing was all I had to do. I didn’t think I was going to be able to manage sitting on the hard thing, let alone getting back off of it without help. I was also glad that I wasn’t wearing pants, saved me a lot of trouble, but I vowed to ask my mother to get me some loose-fitting sweatpants from my room even if wearing them was going to exacerbate my bruises. Walking around in only a shirt was making me twitchy.

I managed to pee without much issue, actually, sighing in relief after not having done it in… well, since before Heero and I had gone out to paint the treehouse. Christ, that felt like weeks ago and it had only been half a day. I caught my reflection over the sink and grimaced. I still had that stupid black eye, although the swelling in my face at least had gone down considerably, but I was deathly pale and my eyes were terribly bloodshot. I sighed at myself, knowing what I was going to do and not wanting to anyway. Gritting my teeth and glaring my reflection, I turned, putting my back to the mirror, and lifted up the bottom of my shirt to my ribs, looking over my shoulder back at the mirror.

In an instant, I understood why my mother was so worried about me and why she hadn’t wanted me to move off the couch. My face had not been a pretty sight the first time I had seen it after my father had beaten me. This… this was a horror show. I almost gagged in disgust at the sight of myself, at the very physical proof of what my own father had done to me, but settled for a grimace, stubbornly holding up my shirt so I could study every inch. It was… grotesque. From right above my ass on my lower back to just below my left buttock on the back of my thigh was just a single, massive hematoma. Swollen, black and purple. It didn’t even look like my body. Hell, it didn’t even look like anyone’s body and I felt sickened by it. I could see the bleeding under the skin, turning the bruising a dark, almost brownish red at the edges. It looked a lot like my arm and leg had before, like liver or like someone had gone at me with paint. On my right buttock was a large, thick patch of gauze, stained dark red. I knew I should change it, but I was scared to know what the wound looked like and I didn’t think I could withstand staying upright and peeling the bandage off at the same time, so I just left it for the time being.

The back of my thigh was like a red-purple grapefruit and even the fainter bruises on my back were swollen horribly. It made me want to vomit and my mind just could not cope with the knowledge that my dad had done this, that anyone that I loved could do that to me. I started to doubt my insistence to not go to the hospital, but even looking at that damage, I knew there wasn’t much a doctor could do for me. Drain the hematomas, give me some ointment. There wasn’t much to be done beyond wait for the swelling to go down. Draining would speed up the process, but it wouldn’t make the pain go away. It wouldn’t make walking on that mangled leg any easier. I should do a more thorough examination, I realized. Really see if anything was broken because my mother was right. Just because I could walk, it didn’t mean there wasn’t damage there that I couldn’t see, but I just couldn’t. The slightest pressure on any of those wounds was going to be a nightmare.

I dropped my shirt down and fought with the urge to vomit, unable to take anymore. I tried to put it out of my mind, but I could still see it, behind my eyes, how ugly and broken my lower body was. I washed my hands, took the time to fix my hair back into a clean braid, splashed some water on my haggard-looking face, and limped my way out of the bathroom, pretty much dragging my left leg and keep a firm grip on every wall and surface I could find until I was back in the kitchen, stubbornly not giving what I had just seen any more thought than I had to. My mother had a steaming bowl of chicken soup waiting for me and a couple rolls and was in the middle of putting some pillows on the chair. She smiled in utter relief when she saw that I was walking on my own, although not with a whole lot of grace.

“You’re looking better,” she noted.

“I think I might live,” I croaked and she watched me fretfully as I made my way over to the table.

She must have cleaned while I had been asleep. The table was back to where it should be and the chair leg, splinters and all, was long gone. The floor had obviously been washed and there wasn’t any evidence of what had happened the previous evening. If there was anything for my father to complain about, I didn’t see it.

“Mom, can you do me a huge favor?” I asked her as I gripped the table, stretching out my left leg as much as it would allow to see what my limits were. They were pretty big.

“Of course,” she jumped right on it like I knew she would.

“Can you get me a pair of sweatpants from my room? My legs are getting kind of cold,” I told her.

“Of course,” she hurried up the stairs, and I breathed in relief.

Now that she wasn’t around, I could try to sit in the chair and not have to worry about her freaking out watching me struggle with it. Because, pillow or not, I knew this was going to hurt. Sure enough, even as I lowered myself slowly into the chair, the second anything came into contact with my rear, that horrible pain came roaring back. I doubled over, my forehead pressed to the cool wood of the table and choked back a cry, my whole body shaking. Sitting was definitely going to be a challenge for a while, especially on hard surfaces. I didn’t even want to think about trying to sit in a school desk. It was definitely a good thing that I wasn’t going the next day. As it was, I didn’t think I could last a single class.

When my mom came back with my pants, my shaking had lessened enough that I could pick up the spoon and get some broth on it without spilling any. If she saw my hands trembling or the sweat on my face, she didn’t say, just put the pants folded up on the table for us to get to later. I ate slowly and mechanically, not really tasting anything, just putting fuel in me and ignoring how much I didn’t want to eat anything. My mother started to put her dishes away and I realized for the first time that she was still in her night clothes.

“You’re not skipping work again, are you?” I asked, keeping any accusation out of my tone so she wouldn’t misunderstand me.

She shrugged.

“You need me here more than I need to work,” she said a bit stubbornly and defensively.

I sighed, fearing that would be her answer.

“Mom, we need the money,” I started to protest and she cut me off.

“You’re hurt!” she shot back, turning to face me and the tears in her eyes made me flinch, “You can barely get up on your own, I’m not leaving you here all by yourself!”

“I can manage on my own,” I insisted, “Not as well as if I had help, but as long as I keep from going stiff and take things slowly, I do ok. You don’t need to worry about me. I’ve already gone to the bathroom and I’m eating, there isn’t much else I’m going to do until you come home besides lie around watching television. Besides,” I added, not wanting to play this card, but it was the real reason why I was pushing in the first place, “if Dad finds out you skipped two shifts, he’ll be furious.”

She covered her face with her hands in pure frustration and stress, but I knew I had won the argument. The last thing either of us could afford was him going into full rage mode again.

“I’ll be fine, Mom, I promise. I can take care of myself. I’m good at that,” I reminded her.

She lowered her hands and her expression went fierce again.

“You have my work number,” she said in more of a statement than a question.

“Yes,” I confirmed.

“You will call me if anything happens. _Anything,_ Duo,” she demanded and I confirmed again.

She deflated with a sigh.

“I suppose you’re right,” she conceded, but it was like pulling teeth out of her.

I felt a little bit better about myself after that and hoped that I wasn’t making a mistake and hadn’t let a successful trip to the bathroom give me too much confidence. I finished up my soup, even dunking the bread in the broth until they were nearly liquified and slurping them down, still scared of having anything too solid. My mother worked around me, getting dressed for work, putting a lunch together for herself.

“There’s tomato soup in the fridge,” she told me, “Please heat it up and have it for lunch, ok?”

Lunch felt like centuries away, but I nodded in agreement. She smiled at me and kissed the top of my head. I know it’s a shitty thing to say, but she had been more affectionate to me in the last few days than I can remember her being in one stretch in one lifetime. I won’t say that it made it all worth it, but it was a pretty big balm on the worst of my memories and hurts. Or maybe I was just that starved for affection at that point in my week.

I finished my soup, relinquishing the dishes to my mother grudgingly. I knew I was injured and she wouldn’t have let me wash them anyway, but I felt like a lazy asshole having her clean up after me the last couple days and vowed to do something nice for her as soon as I could bloody move again. The kitchen spotlessly clean, she helped me into my pants, which took a good three times longer than normal. It was hard enough standing and holding on to the table, having to lift each leg had been… a process, especially when it came to standing on my left, even if it had only been for a few seconds. But I didn’t fall, so that’s kind of a victory, right?

          My mother had been thoughtful enough to bring me down a clean shirt and I changed into that a lot faster, my mother wincing in sympathy when she saw the healing bruise on my stomach and the smatterings on my arms. She even took the time to help change the bandage on my shoulder and pronounced the gash ‘ugly, but not infected’ although she had to be cutting it close to the time she needed to leave. Her last act of charity was spotting me as I limped like a cripple back over to the couch.

          “Are you sure you don’t want the chair?” she asked as she started to help me back down.

          I chewed on my lower lip. The chair would be a better idea than the couch. It would get my back used to being more upright for long periods of time and despite being older than God, it was still softer and more comfortable than the kitchen chair. But then I thought about my father coming home in that pissy mood he had had last night, still angry with me, and finding him in his chair. Somehow, I didn’t think he would be as helpful as my mother. Sure, he would still help me off of it, but probably by throwing me out of it and letting me lie there on the floor. I shook my head, just not wanting to deal with him. We got me down onto the couch with less trouble than we had the first time, so that was something. I was still breathing hard from the effort, but I wasn’t on the verge of blacking out and I think my body was starting to get used to sitting up thanks to the pillows. I still needed to make the effort to get up every few hours or I was going to get stiff again and after the relief of being able to walk on my own, I didn’t want to backslide.

          “Are you sure you don’t want me to stay?” my mom pressed, an almost desperate note to her voice, “What if you need something from upstairs or something happens?”

          I picked up my cellphone from where it had been charging on the table, showing it to her.

          “I know where to reach you and if I can’t, I’m sure I can reach a neighbor, or even Heero,” I reminded her, although I had zero intention of bothering ‘Ro even if I really did need the help, “Nothing’s going to happen, Mom, really. I’m not a complete invalid, I can get to anything so long as stairs aren’t involved and there’s nothing I need from my room anymore. It’ll be ok.”

          “What if your father comes home?” she blurted out and that she was so full of doubt and grasping at straws told me just how terrified she was to leave me alone.

          I grabbed her hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze.

          “He won’t,” I insisted even though I wasn’t so sure of that myself, “You know he won’t. It’s Sunday, he’s probably sleeping off a hangover if he isn’t still up drinking. He’ll waltz in for dinner just like he said, probably after you come home. And so what if he does come back when you aren’t here? He probably got the worst of it out of his system and if not, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

          I almost said ‘we’, but it felt like such a shitty thing to say. I knew she was thinking it regardless from the pinched, guilty look on her face. She conceded my point finally, but not before brushing my bangs from my face and fussily tucking the blankets up around me. She refilled my water glass again, leaving me some more pain pills to take, and finally left. I felt relieved. Relieved to be by myself and not have anyone around that I needed to act tough for or put on an act. I could be myself and if I had to fall apart, I could do that, and not have to deal with someone else’s worry and guilt. I could be in pain and not have someone rush to my side or give me that agonizing look of concern and pity or demand that I see a doctor. I could go five full minutes without feeling guilty or anxious and maybe, just maybe, I could finally get some real sleep.

          I think I enjoyed it for about twenty-five minutes. I just sat on the couch and listened to the rain. It was still coming down hard and the sound was soothing unlike how it had been the previous night, less like something was beating up against the house and rousing me from sleep and more like a calming blanket of sound. I listened and, like a bad cramp finally letting go, I relaxed. For a while, that’s all I needed and for that short period of time, while I can’t say that I was necessarily happy, things were peaceful. I felt like, after all the chaos and yelling and crying and hitting, I had reached the eye of the storm, this place where nothing could touch me. But, like everything around me, it was short lived. I forgot what always happens when I’m alone and there isn’t anything to distract me: I think. Or brood, whatever you want to call it.

          My mind did what it always does when I don’t have a shiny toy for it to focus on, wandering around and jumping tracks. Without me asking it to, it conjured up the image of Heero’s own home, blanketed by that rain. Raindrops dripping off the flowers that clung to the lattice arch on the walkway, flowers I have no name for but have always wanted to look up. I wondered what they were all doing. Heero would be asleep still and would no doubt spend the day doing homework or playing games or watching television. Justin would read or find something around the house to keep him busy. Mariela would probably take the day to work on that quilt. Kanuck would patrol the house, cagey and wanting to go outside to roll around in the mud. Dogs are weird like that. Pepper hates rain. She always hides under the bed or in my arms when she hears it. I wondered if the treehouse was ok and the tarp was still in place. It was awfully windy.

I wondered when I was ever going to see them again, not just Heero, but his parents, too. And my mood quickly turned from amused and affectionate to maudlin. I should have known that thinking of the Yuy’s at all was a bad idea and should have stuck it firmly in the ‘do not touch with a ten-foot pole’ pile of my head, but it had snuck up on me anyway and once I got that started, I couldn’t get it shut off again.

I didn’t even know. I think that was what killed me the most, not knowing what was going to happen now. What my father had done… not even the beating, but going to Heero’s home to get me… how furious he had been had been terrifying. It might have even been enough to keep me from going to Heero’s from now on, to finally listen to my father if not completely, then enough that he would think I was. As scared as I am, as much as I know that I’m fucked, I still can’t surrender entirely to him. I still can’t stay away from Heero, even if we can only be with each other at school and between my work shifts from now on. Like any good addict, I can’t give him up completely, even when I know I should. Even when I know it’s in everyone’s best interests if I did, my mother’s, mine, Heero’s…

          Call it what you want. My addiction, my need, my love for him is so strong that it can override something so much older, something freaking ancient: my fear. My need to survive. For him, I might have been able to ignore that terror and keep on. Let my father tear me to shreds, I don’t care anymore. I could think like that, even if I can’t get past my shame that I had brought this on Heero and his family’s heads. But it isn’t even that that made my hope die, made me realize that this… this blissful dream is over and done with. If I didn’t let it die, if I didn’t bury it, he was going to hurt my mother. Hurt her like he had me and I could not accept that. No way in hell. I would not cause her anymore pain than I already had, even for the boy that I loved. I had help ruin her life and hurt her, made her cry and fear and made her feel guilty over things that were not her fault, but I could this one thing for her. She had sacrificed everything for me, one way or another. Her body, her family, her entire future just to have me. It was time I sacrificed something to help her for once.

          And it was barely a sacrifice, really. Ok, it still was. My weekends with ‘Ro, sleeping with him… I would never have another morning with him like I had yearned for. I would never wake up next to him again and see him smiling at me sleepily, I would never feel that content again. But it wasn’t like I would never see him or his parents again. It would just be a long time. I should wait a few weeks, at the very least, until I stepped foot on that side of town. Until my father’s temper died down and he stopped questioning every step I took. Yeah, like that was going to happen any time this century. But I couldn’t stay away forever. Fuck… I was going to need to ask Heero to take care of Pepper, yet another goddamned debt. I didn’t even know when I was going to be able to see her again, either.

          Stupidly, it was that thought and not all the shit I had put my mother and Heero through that broke me. Not even being able to see my cat, to sleep with her body pressed against my cheek or hear her meow and trot excitedly over to me when she realized I was there. I felt… I felt homeless. The only sanctuary I had ever really had had just been torn away from me and so much more had gone with it. The really messed up thing is that my father didn’t even know what he had really done to me, didn’t know the victory he had just won. I guess that’s something. If he knew who Heero really was to me and what Heero’s family was to me, he’d be insufferably smug about this, wouldn’t he? Actually, scratch that. If he ever found out who Heero really is, he wouldn’t be smug. He would just kill me, or beat me into mush and then kick me out of the house. The fucked-up thing about that is, if he did, if he just kicked me to the curb, I could see Heero whenever I wanted, more than I ever could when I had been keeping this a secret.

          That bitter little fact almost made me laugh. Instead, I felt tears well up in my eyes. Lying there on the couch, my body broken and hurting almost as much as my heart, I just felt completely miserable and I couldn’t take any of the things that I was thinking. It was too soon. I kept telling myself to just not think about anything, to push it down deep and deal with it later, but my head did not want to listen, apparently. I went to wipe my face, angry at myself for always being so pathetically weak and losing my shit so easily, but stupidly did it with my left hand, hissing in pain the second I raised it.

          “Goddamit!” I yelled at no one, so fucking frustrated at being in pain and not being able to do anything.

          I should be cleaning the house or getting ready for work or thinking up a plan or an apology to Heero and his family, not laying around feeling sorry for myself and being such a stupid invalid, but my body just kept reminding me that there were very good reasons why I was laying there and just because I hated it, it didn’t mean that any of my injuries were going to magically disappear. I had only done this to myself, I reminded myself, so I really had no right to feel bitter, did I? Irritated, I searched around for the ice pack, only to find that it had obviously melted and was currently room temperature and useless. I bit back another curse. Both my mother and I had forgotten about it. I should really get up and repack it with fresh ice, but that would require actually getting off the couch and I wasn’t so sure I should be doing that so soon after my first, tentative foray. It was going to have to wait a few hours.

          So, I just sat there and studied my arm. Like my face and my rear, it didn’t look like _my_ arm in the slightest. From my wrist to my forearm, it was as black and swollen as the places he had hit with the chair leg and there were obvious, finger-shaped bruises that were eerily perfect on my white skin. Looking at it, it was a damned miracle he hadn’t broken it, it had really been a close thing. Not that it mattered, it was just as useless as if he had. Trying to catalog all my injuries, from my still bruised face, black eye, split lip, possibly cracked ribs, and now all the new damage to my ass, back, leg, and arm only made me feel more depressed. I wondered just how much more abuse my body can take. What was the breaking point? That line where the whole thing would just give up and give me and my father the collective middle finger and just stop healing, stop bouncing back from all this? When would he cross it and what would happen to me when he did? It’s not like it hasn’t already started to happen. I get concussions and broken bones a lot more easily now than I did years ago. Would I even heal from all this or was my body already done with me? Would the bruises and swelling fade and I would find that the pain was still there, something unseen broken?

          Testily, I decided that I was done thinking and if my brain refused to cooperate, then I was just going to make it focus on something else and grabbed the television remote, turning the set on again. With my mother gone, I could finally turn to the cooking channel, something that would interest me while not remind me of anything that I didn’t want to think about. I passed the morning doing pretty much nothing at all, which, on a better day, might have actually been nice. But there’s a big difference between not needing to do anything and not being physically capable of doing anything and what could have been a relaxing day just left me feeling useless and melancholy and empty. I watched the cooking program for an hour, learned a new recipe for clam chowder and a few pie making techniques, but got sick of it after that. Sitting around staring at a television screen was somehow a lot less appealing by myself. Being by myself at all that day felt unappealing, the silence and emptiness of the house felt like it had multiplied when I hadn’t been paying attention to it. Which is really bizarre because, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m a bit of a loner.

Sure, a lot of that is not by my choice, but I’m used to being by myself and being social exhausts me, if not outright frustrates me. Hell, I had spent several days that week craving exactly what I had that Sunday: solitude, peace, quiet, and somewhere to lick my wounds. I had that in droves, but now that I did, all I wanted was something to fill that void. The voice or touch of another person or at the very least, an animal. I craved just having someone there with me, knowing I wasn’t alone and had to come up with ways to keep myself busy, fill that silence, to keep from reflecting on it. I almost wondered if I was just punishing myself or if nothing I did, nowhere I was, would ever make me happy.

          I turned the television off, telling myself it was because our electric bill was high enough without my help and not because of how restless I felt. And if I turned my cd player on high so I could listen to my music without needing headphones that would block out important sounds I needed to keep an ear out for, like a certain car engine, it wasn’t because I needed to fill the silence with something, it was because I hardly have the time to listen to my music like that and I was just entertaining myself. I found my book where I had left it and picked up the story again. That kept me for a couple of hours at least before that gnawing restlessness came over me again. I can’t even really explain what it was, only that I felt miserable and useless, trying so hard not to think about any of the things I could feel gnawing away at me in the back of my mind and I was quickly running out of distractions. What is it about that anyway? You can go through days running around with a billion things to do and think of a thousand other things you _want_ to be doing, but as soon as you have spare time, there’s just nothing? You just feel bored or listless? It’s the stupidest thing, wanting something and then not wanting it as soon as you actually get it.

          I sighed and put my book back on the table. I glanced at the clock and winced. It was only freaking eleven in the morning. Heero would either just be getting up or eating breakfast or showering and I already wanted the day to _end._ And for what? It wasn’t like Monday was going to be any better, it was just going to be a thousand times worse by then. I wasn’t stupid enough to really believe I was going to be all better by then, although I would be a lot more mobile. But my mother was dead set on taking me out of school and I would still be stuck in the house all day. If I could walk around more by then, I supposed I could clean the house or find something that needed attention, oil the hinges on the basement door or, I don’t know, see if I could do anything to fix the damage my father had done to the bathroom the previous morning. Anything to make myself useful since my mother was going out of her way to take care of me. I really wished she would let me go to school at the same time that I didn’t want to deal with it. About the only good thing about what my father had done was that Heero wouldn’t really notice beyond my limp, but he would still ask me questions that I didn’t want to answer and I knew my body wasn’t up to going from class to class. But I still desperately wanted something like schoolwork to bury myself into.

          I knew what my problem was. Well, I knew what _some_ of my problem was. I was exhausted and worn down. I couldn’t even recall how many hours I had slept in the last few days, which was a sure sign of that, and I knew that I was only capable of throwing a few intellectual thoughts together because of the sleep I had gotten Saturday morning. But it hadn’t been enough then and the last twenty-four hours had seemed to not only negate the good that sleep had done me, but put me back in the far negatives. I needed to take a nap, mentally and physically and I was just putting that off because I was sick of struggling to do so. I was sick of being tired and tossing and turning and the nightmares, only for something to wake me up before I was ready to anyway. I didn’t even want to try because I was sure I wouldn’t be able to, just like last night.

          I sighed at myself. If nothing else, sleeping would pass the time and I wouldn’t have to censor and guide my thoughts anymore. Of course, after everything that had happened, I was probably going to have some fucked up nightmares, but the alternative wasn’t really all that much better, was it? I stared up at the ceiling, which had once been an eggshell white, but after several years and water damage and a few mold attacks had begun to yellow in this really disturbing shade in a few places.

          “Enough,” I muttered to myself and my voice sounded strange and alien in the otherwise quiet room.

          I closed my eyes, but I knew right away that I was not going to be able to sleep sitting upright on my back. Not only do I not sleep on my back, it just hurt too much and I ached to take pressure off of my wounds. I wasn’t going to sleep a wink otherwise. I wasn’t even sure if I was going to be able to sleep sitting up the way I was, but I didn’t think rearranging the pillows would be a good idea. I didn’t want my muscles to get stiff and used to lying down flat like that, so I would just have to work with what I had. I put my CD player back in my backpack after some debate about just keeping it on and using the music to get me to sleep. It wasn’t worth the wasted batteries and I was too scared that my father might find it and break it like the last one.

          I gritted my teeth in trepidation and slowly and as careful as moving a hard-shelled egg, I began to roll over onto my right side. I felt this incredible relief when I actually managed to get all the way over until I was able to lay my arm on the other pillow again. Don’t get me wrong, it fucking hurt and there were tears in my eyes when I was done, but I actually, physically managed it and more easily than I had the last time. Baby steps, right? At least I wasn’t a complete invalid. I squirmed a little to find a comfortable spot on the pillows, although I still couldn’t do much, tugged the blankets up to my chin and closed my eyes. It was far from comfortable, but it beat trying to sleep on my aching back.

          Sleep stubbornly didn’t want to come. Just like the last time I had tried, my mind kept picking at things, making scraps of memories, spoken words, blows, and hurts rise to the surface, all of them demanding my attention. I just as stubbornly tried to tune them out, just focusing on the sound of the rain and the eerie silence in the house. I played soothing songs in my head. I imagined that ‘Ro was with me, that the couch I was laying on wasn’t the old, beat up one with tears and missing stuffing that smelled vaguely of my mother’s shampoo and something wet and unpleasant, but the Yuys’ couch. Soft, still fairly new, and smelling faintly fresh cut flowers and the dog. I imagined my boyfriend resting behind me, the two of us dozing together as it poured outside. I imagined his arm around my waist, his head resting against my shoulder and his soft breath ghosting over my skin. When the tears dripped free of the tight control I had put them under when I had been moving around, I imagined him whispering things to me, things that didn’t really mean anything but were comforting anyway and actually felt his hand caressing my hair.

          I don’t know what worked, my fantasies, the exhaustion, or the rain, but after about forty minutes, I finally dozed off into a light, fretful sleep. Just like I knew there would be, there were nightmares. Thankfully, I don’t remember much of them. One of them involved my father locking ‘Ro and I in a closet that might have been the laundry room or it might have been a thousand other closets in any other home, and made me watch as he beat my friend into something that resembled strawberry jello. There was another that had something to do with me being chased by dogs, but one of them was my father and the other was Zechs, which didn’t make much sense. I think they caught me in the end and ate me because I remember falling and screaming and sharp, wet pain and something getting ripped out of my stomach.

          But despite the dreams, I still slept, just not very heavily or very well. For all of thirty minutes. A sharp and god-awful loud sound came from… somewhere. I had already been sleeping on a hair-trigger and the noise, like a thunderclap, didn’t so much drag me from my sleep as flung me from it. I was awake in less than a second, my head and body scrambling trying to figure out what the _fuck_ that was and if it was a threat. My first thought, part of my mind still stuck in whatever nightmare I had been having, was that it sounded like a gunshot. If I hadn’t already been tense on the verge of snapping from the sound, that thought would have done the trick. I thought my heart was going to crawl right up my throat. It’s so stupid now, but the image of my father from the previous evening with that damned gun of his was what came to me as my scattered brain tried to put things together to figure out where I was, when I was, and what the hell was going on.

I twisted and writhed on the couch, reflexively trying to sit up and only collapsed in a shuddering ball as my body reminded me why I was on that couch and that moving was not such a hot idea. I’m actually amazed that I didn’t hurt myself even more as badly as I had freaked out, or that I hadn’t fallen off the couch. He had come back home, I thought and he was…

I blinked stupidly in the dark, my own thoughts not making any sense as I ran into a mental brick wall. My paranoia and nightmares aside, my father had no reason to randomly fire his gun, although I guess it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility if he was really drunk. I never would have thought so because he’s never done anything as nuts as that, but he’s been doing a lot of things lately that I would have once said he would never do. But when I tried to picture it and figure out what had just happened, I realized that the noise had only sounded like a gunshot from the movies, not reality, and my father’s handgun would not make that kind of noise. Then what had it been? The front door slamming open? No, it hadn’t sounded like that either and the house hadn’t shook. I hadn’t heard anyone come in.

‘Car backfiring,’ I reasoned.

That felt right. The noise, I realized, had not come from inside the house, but outside it, it was just the pounding rain that had made it so confused. But that knowledge did nothing to lessen my fear, it only worsened it, made the threat more real. Ok, fine, a car backfiring, but whose? Had my dad come home and the car had crapped out? That seemed like the most likely scenario, but exactly the one I didn’t want to accept. I stayed there in my huddle for a moment as I heard someone shouting outside, absolutely terrified that at any moment, my father was going to come flying in through the door and beat me some more when I couldn’t do a thing to defend myself.

Even knowing I couldn’t do much of anything, I couldn’t just lie there paralyzed, either, my survival instincts kicking my ass to do something. I ignored my frantically beating heart and the throbbing pain in various parts of my body and grabbed the edge of the couch with my good hand, only remembering at the last moment not to use my left at all. It took every ounce of strength I had and I was sweating, shaking, and ready to collapse by the time I managed it, but I hauled my body up and twisted as much as I was physically able until I could look out the window. I hooked my arm around the arm rest and parted the shades just a little, enough so I could see outside and hopefully no one would see me.

When I saw our empty driveway, I could have cried with relief. A quick perusal of our street found my next-door neighbor swearing at his car and angrily kicking one wheel, smoke billowing from the hood. I fell limp back on to the couch, groaning in pain and exhausted just from that one, tiny maneuver. Gods, I was so fucked if I couldn’t even manage to lift myself up to look out a window. I focused on getting my heart to settle the hell down and wanted to laugh bitterly at my freak out, but I was still too scared. It might have been a false alarm, but I still felt vaguely confused from being roused from a deep sleep, and the threat was far from gone. He might not have been home then, but my dad could still show up at any moment, if he really was coming home that day. It was that not knowing that was scaring me so much, knowing it was going to happen, but not knowing when. It was no wonder why my sleep had been so fitful, I had been expecting my father to return and start this nightmare all over again ever since he had walked out the door.

I finally started to settle and get over my fright, but only really succeeded in feeling like a moron, a worn out one to boot. A glance at the clock made me groan again as I saw just how little time had passed since I had last looked at it. I think I felt even more tired than before I had dozed off. The rest of me seemed to have fared just as well, too. I don’t know if I had moved around in my sleep or it was just the thrashing I had done from being startled awake, but it seemed like every inch of me hurt, even parts that my father hadn’t hit. My head and face were pounding again and it felt like my eye was starting to swell. I had probably been lying on it, but I could still see through it and I was a lot more concerned with the pain in my ass and leg at that point. The entire bottom half of me just felt… wrong. Swollen and mangled and entirely not like a part of me. I felt _off,_ sickened and feverish without actually having a fever. I wasn’t nauseous, thank god because I didn’t even think I could roll over to puke on the floor. Moving at all was trying to move a wooden mannequin and all I and my body wanted to do was escape back into sleep to escape the pain for a little while.

          I settled back into the position I had been in before I had had the crap scared out of me and closed my eyes, willing myself to sink back into oblivion. I could feel my heart slowing a little, but it was still pounding fast, every inch of me on edge. Frustration started to grow in me. I had to sleep, I told myself in irritation, because there was no way in hell I was going to manage it as soon as my father came home. I didn’t even know what _was_ going to happen when he came home. Would he act like nothing had ever happened? Would he be wasted again? Be pissed and having a hangover? Or worse, would he still be looking to take chunks out of my hide, having not gotten it all out of his system yet, or even worse than that, horny and looking for an easy target? Well, couldn’t get much easier than me, sequestered on the couch and barely able to move.

          I almost growled at myself and my own thoughts. This was _not_ helping. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to focus on anything else, the rain, the weird clash of smells in that room, the continued sound of my neighbor swearing like a heavily inebriated sailor, but it was hopeless. The seed had been sewn and now all I could think about was not how much I needed sleep, but my father and the fact that he could come back at any second and how much I didn’t want him to. How hurt I was. Not physically, although the pain was certainly enough to stave off any kind of rest, but emotionally. It was so stupid. Not like this was the first time he had frightened me and harmed me, shattered what little trust I had left in him, but that’s how I felt anyway. I didn’t even have any trust left for him to break, so why did it feel like I did? Why did I feel so blown over every time I remembered him whaling on me with that chair leg, for pinning me down like a bug and trying to break me? Why did just the memory of that, of him embarrassing me in front of Justin and dragging me off, for trying to take my only friend, the only good thing I had left away from me bring tears to my eyes?

          I laid there in the dark on that musty, uncomfortable couch for another forty minutes, my heart pounding along with the agony in my skull, depression wrapped around me like a fist, and every nerve in me shuddering and buzzing with anxious electricity. I didn’t open my eyes and just give up on trying to get any kind of sleep, not because I knew it wasn’t going to happen, but because I literally had nothing else to do anyway. I was too drained to try to sit up and read or write or turn on the television and I was too depressed to care about music or anything else that might have mattered. I didn’t care that I was thirsty as hell or that I needed to pee. I didn’t care that I should probably take more pain medication. I just didn’t care about anything anymore. I probably would have stayed like that, stewing in my own juices and mood, for the rest of the day if my stomach hadn’t suddenly woken up like a starving dog, growling and complaining that I had barely fed it at all since the lunch Mariela had made me the day before.

I groaned into my pillow. I really didn’t want to move, let alone try to get off the couch. I knew that I needed to, for more reasons than just putting something in my stomach, and that if I wasn’t going to rest, I might as well be moving around at least a little. But I was so tired of being in pain and struggling just to take a step. I didn’t want to do anything, even breathe. Not that doing nothing and brooding sounded all that enticing, either. My groan turned into a heavy sigh. If nothing else, I wanted water. I braced myself for the difficult journey ahead, and slowly and methodically, rolled my aching body over until I was facing the other side of the couch. Just that one, first step almost made me give up. Step two, going from laying down to sitting up on the edge of the couch, left me sweating and breathing hard and cursing colorfully. I wondered just what in the hell my father had done to me. I’ve had some pretty terrible injuries before, but considering he hadn’t broken anything and had only barely made me bleed, this was some of the worst, debilitating pain I had had, especially over twelve hours after the beating had happened.

My only consolation was that, despite how difficult it had been, it hadn’t been as bad as earlier that morning. There had been some improvement, though I didn’t know if it was from time or not having been laying flat. I was still dizzy and felt ill, but I hadn’t blacked out yet, so it couldn’t be _that_ bad, right?

“I can do this,” I muttered at myself and wondered just who I was trying to fool.

I wrapped my good arm around my stomach, my body trembling a little. I just needed to get to my feet, after that it wouldn’t be so awful, I hoped. But I didn’t have a human crutch to help me anymore and there was really nothing I could use for a substitute. Nothing that was within arm’s reach, at any rate. There was a standing lamp by my father’s chair, but even if I could hook it with my foot, I would need to bend down to unplug it and that wasn’t happening any time soon. All the mops and brooms were in the kitchen or laundry room. Umbrellas were by the door. Vacuum was in the hallway closet. I was pretty much shit out of luck. But if I could just get something that would help me get some leverage up… I eyed the window, but the cord was on my bad side. I didn’t trust the thing anyway. However, it was one of those windows that you can push up instead of out and the top of the bottom part of the window was a pretty convenient height…

“This is going to royally suck,” I blurted out.

And boy, did it. It would have sucked even if I had had both arms to use and I was down to one. But I managed to scoot myself as close to the window as possible and got my right hand curled around that top edge. Then it was just a matter of pulling myself up, which sounds a hell of a lot easier than it sounds. I really didn’t so much as pull myself up from the couch, which had been my plan, as I did just kind of… fall forward. Thankfully, from where I was, ‘forward’ was the wall and not the floor. With a hoarse cry and an almost screamed “fuck”, I wrenched myself up, ass and leg shrieking at me, and grabbed at the wall, just kind of leaning against it so I didn’t fall sideways. I’m sure it would have looked extremely stupid if anyone had seen it, but I was too busy shaking and panting and trying to stay on one leg to really care how dumb it had been.

“Oh god,” I gasped as my vision wavered a little, so sure that I was going to faint anyway.

But somehow, I didn’t. I felt like I was going to vomit, but I kept a firm grip on the wall as I waited for my left leg to stop trembling. It took a long time for me to move and when I did, I already felt hollowed out. I can’t really tell you how I managed to get to the kitchen, it’s kind of a grey blur. I can’t say that I walked. I just kind of… inched along the wall at a lurching pace until, just like earlier that morning, things started to loosen up. Even when they did and I could limp heavily forward, I kept leaning and grasping at the wall, sure that something was going to give and that flat surface was going to be the only thing to save me from planting face first onto the hard floor.

I was finally able to let go of the wall by the time I got to the kitchen, but I was far from steady. The kitchen chairs looked like an oasis in the desert, but I didn’t dare to plop down in one of them, remembering how much they had hurt the last time I had tried sitting in them. Also, I wasn’t so sure that, if I went down as stiff as I currently was, I was going to be able to get back up. I forced myself to keep going towards the bathroom. Pee first, I told myself, crash later. I limped into the bathroom and did my business as quickly as possible, propping myself up with my left elbow against the sink, which was awkward as hell, but it got the job done. The entire time, I was thanking the universe that I wasn’t a girl and didn’t need to sit to piss, or pull my pants down that far. Then, I stumbled over to the sink and washed my hands. The reflection that greeted me in the mirror looked haggard and pale and mangled. Like week old, rotting shit, essentially. Splashing water on my bruised face did little to make me feel any more alert.

Ok, bladder empty. Next, I supposed I should put something in my stomach. I limped back out into the kitchen, but I didn’t bother trying to find any food yet. I was walking a bit better and as much as my body craved a soft, flat surface, I knew I should take the chance to stretch and get myself used to the pain. I slowly walked around the kitchen a few times in circle, making sure to stay at arm’s length from something to grab onto if my leg failed me. By some miracle, it didn’t, but I was completely spent after just a few laps around the table and down the front hall, everything throbbing and shaking, but the act of actually walking was slowly getting a bit easier.

When I was about as loosened up as I could be and walking around the house was more of a chore than a nightmare, I went hunting through the kitchen for something to eat. My stomach ached for something filling, but I was still too nervous about feeling sick and trips to the bathroom for anything but, if not liquids, something very soft. I opened the fridge and found that my mother had left me a bowl of tomato soup with a fussy note saying to eat it slowly along with a small bag of cheese that she had shredded. I heated it up in the microwave, not wanting to bother with the stove or having to clean a pot, and sprinkled the cheese on the hot soup to melt. I was even feeling well enough by then to mix in a few spices, nothing wild or too spicy for my fragile stomach, not that I had a lot to work with in the first place, but just enough that it would make the soup less bland and lie to my stomach that it was getting a better meal than fifty-cent, canned soup.

I didn’t dare give anything for my left hand to hold, so I put the soup on the table and made a couple more trips back to the kitchen to refill my water glass and ice pack with fresh ice. Then I rearranged the pillows onto the back of the couch so I could sit up to eat and have some back support, adding a few to the seat so when I slowly and cautiously lowered myself back down on it, I would have just a bit more padding for my abused rear. I still bit down on a cry, my body protesting me for sitting now that it was used to being upright, but I was gratified that the pain was getting more bearable. I turned on the TV, shoved the ice pack under my swollen thigh, found a nice documentary on the renaissance that was soothing and completely lacking of any drama, ate my lunch and took some lovely pain pills. I ate slowly, just as ordered, and as my stomach filled with hot soup and with the still pounding rain outside plus the low lighting in the room, I started to feel drowsy again. I decided to think of it more that I was relaxing than how pathetic it was that a mere walk to the kitchen had completely tired me out.

I finished my lunch and put the bowl on the table, but I was too drained again to get up and clean it and just hoped that my father wouldn’t come home before I got my energy back and throw a fit. Like he’s one to fucking talk about doing the dishes in a timely manner. A spark of anger went through me and I smothered it, knowing full well that it had nothing to do with my dad being a hypocrite, that memories from the previous day were fueling my temper. I took another sip of the blissfully cold water and almost missed seeing my cellphone blinking at me. I had put it on the table to charge, which was probably not the smartest idea, but I was glad that I had or who even knew when I would have noticed that I had a new message.

I hesitated, my stomach clenching in anxiety as I thought about all the things that message could say. I felt so stupid, but I was scared to look at it at the same time I felt happy that it might be a message from Heero. I was just a sappy, pathetic loser, clinging to him like a leech while I just kept hurting him and sucking him dry. But even if he was upset, even if he was demanding to know that I was ok or was angry with me, or if it was either of his parents telling me how _disappointed_ they were with me, I couldn’t stop myself from opening my messages. When I saw that it really was from Heero, I didn’t know how to feel, endeared or frustrated. It was in me to just ignore the message, but there was another very large part of myself that ached for anything that he might say to me. That ached for _anyone_ to just talk to me. I opened the message.

‘I miss you,’ it said simply. And yet, those three little words were the world to me. That he actually missed me, let alone was telling me that, reaching out to me like that, warmed me, but it also made me realize just how alone I was, just how cold and empty my house was and how much I wanted him there with me. And it made me feel so horribly guilty. I should have been at work after spending a nice, quiet morning with him. The both of us should have been looking forward to me going back there that night, not sitting around our respective homes, lonely and missing each other. Heero should never have been put through this. Because of me, I was the only friend he had, the only one he could talk to and hang out with and look what had just happened because of that! I could barely give him the time of day and now it was even worse. He didn’t deserve this shit.

          Thinking of him in his house, bored and wasting his day off moping around over me, alone and lonely made me ache wishing that I had a normal life. That I could do all the things that kids like Heero could. That I didn’t have to hold down two jobs. That I could just have a friend without all this shit involved. That I could get something right for once. It only drove home to me what little Heero and I have in common and I felt this intense incredulousness come over me. What the hell was someone like me doing with someone like him? What the fuck was I even doing with him? This perfect, wonderful person? We weren’t even from opposite sides of the tracks, we were from completely different worlds. He didn’t deserve a friend like me, a friend who constantly made him worry, could barely spend any time with him, and whose brute of a father would show up on his door step and scare the shit out of him just because his so-called ‘friend’ couldn’t keep his crap together. That we weren’t just friends, but in a relationship was enough to make me laugh. What the fuck did he see in me? Why did he even want to be friends with me, let alone find me attractive either physically or emotionally? There was nothing there, why couldn’t he see that? How mismatched we were, how he could have anyone and he had just picked the broken toy? That our entire relationship was going to be like this and I was never going to be who he wanted?

          With tears streaming down my face, although who even knows when that had started up again, I texted him back, ‘I miss you, too.’ And god, wasn’t that the truth? I missed him so much even though it hadn’t even been a full twenty-four hours since I had last seen him. I missed him down to my bones, his shimmering blue eyes, the feel of his arms around me, the sound of his voice, the comforting smell of him… I missed his easy companionship and even his fussing. I missed his warmth and the feel of his chocolate hair through my fingers. And as I remembered that it might be quite a while before I had another moment alone with him, I hated my father so much, I felt sick with it.

          ‘Are you alright?’ Heero texted and I nearly laughed with bitterness.

          Still so worried over me. And he probably would be until he saw me again. Nothing I could say would assure him that I was fine. I almost told him that I wouldn’t be in school Monday, because I was sure that he was going to freak when he figured that out. But I’ve always been a coward and I couldn’t tell him that because then I’d also have to tell him that it was because I was in so much pain, I could barely move. I really needed to come up with a believable excuse, but if I was just a little better on Tuesday, he would still see me limping around and would know that it was from something my dad had done to me.

          ‘Fine,’ I typed after thinking over my response, ‘Just eating lunch and watching some television.’

          It was the best that I could come up with. Telling him that I had eaten would help make him feel less worried and if I was watching TV, it meant that my dad wasn’t home and I was relaxing. As close to actually saying ‘don’t worry about me’ as I could without coming off as frustrated.

          ‘Get some rest,’ he sent back, ‘I love you.’

          My heart clenched and I ached to type ‘I love you’ back to him, but I didn’t dare. I just pulled up the memory of my rejection of him from Saturday morning and his look of terror as he watched my father drag me off as a reminder of what I needed to do, without actually thinking about what that thing was because I still couldn’t face it. Not yet. Not when I was so close to breaking already. I curled my good hand around my phone and collapsed into a ball of misery in the corner of the couch. My body screamed at me, but I just didn’t care. I wasn’t even crying anymore, I just felt… empty. There was this deep ache in my chest that wouldn’t go away and right then, as I listened to the rain and the painful absence of another living thing in that house, I felt so lonely that I could die. So lonely that I was so close to calling my boyfriend and begging him to talk to me. He could say anything, read from the dictionary, read a weather report, anything, I just needed to hear someone talk to me. I wanted to reach out to someone so badly… but I couldn’t. I felt so ashamed and humiliated after everything that had happened, I didn’t want to talk to anyone about it at the same time that I needed to. The only people that I really had to talk to were the ones that I had hurt anyway, I couldn’t reach out to any of them about this. I’d only make things worse.

          A part of it was my injuries, not being able to move and trying not to remember _why_ I was in such pain, which was just plain impossible. I always feel this same, lonely and a bit depressed after I’ve been hurt. Apparently, that’s normal, a stupid thing your body does after an injury, but it’s never felt normal to me and it’s certainly never felt like just a bodily reaction, maybe because of that _why_ of most of my injuries. But this time, it felt so much worse. I just kept thinking ‘I need to get used to this’ and ‘this is how things are going to be from now on’ and that feeling of being low and hurt and all alone kept surging and surging.

What was I going to do? I didn’t know. I didn’t have a single plan in my head. I just kept seeing that edge, that _finality_ to all this. Everything I had just lost. And it shut me down. I didn’t think I could face it, let alone figure out what I was supposed to, how I was supposed to move on. Every second that passed that I felt lost or bored or hurting or loneliness, all I could think was that this was what my life was going to be like for a good, long while. It really drove home to me how much my life has changed because of Heero, and how much I didn’t want it to change back, even just the tiny bit that it would now that I couldn’t stay over at his place anymore. And of course, _that_ thought just brought me back to the inevitable one that I had desperately tried to keep away by occupying myself: this is what things are going to be like when I break up with ‘Ro, just endless days like this, only worse because I won’t have any nice text messages to shore me up or some shred of hope that I would see him again soon. Just more of this ache in my chest. Just more grey and nothing.

Christ, I needed to stop that or I was going to completely lose it. I just needed to stop thinking entirely, it was only wearing me down, supplying me with what ifs and my worst nightmares and worries and fears. It wasn’t like it was doing anything for me but driving me more and more into a corner, so with a small growl of frustration at myself, I dragged my nest of pillows into the corner of the couch and struggled to sit back up, ignoring how much my lower body was throbbing from that small effort. I pulled a notebook out of my backpack and flipped it open to one of my stories that I hadn’t finished yet, deciding that if I couldn’t sleep and I needed to block out the voices in my head, writing was a pretty efficient way to do that, and it would make me stop feeling like a useless lump. It was one of my darker, angrier stories and it helped a little to pour out a bit of the poisonous bitterness, longing, and anger that was in my heart. Not enough to make much of a difference in my mood, but enough to take a bit of the bite out of my depression.

When I had vented as much as I could without turning the entire story into something I didn’t want it to and warping the tone I had been going for when I had started the thing, I just started fussing around, editing and moving things around, busy work that wouldn’t take me from exorcising the oily, black hole in my chest to wallowing in it. It must have helped more than I thought it would, because I didn’t fall back into a dark brood and actually managed to doze off for a few hours, the most I had managed all day and a good chunk of the night, my exhaustion catching up with me again. One moment I was working on sentence structure for my opening paragraph, the next, it was much darker in the room than it had been before and my mother was gently shaking me awake.

          I had been so deeply asleep that I didn’t even startle at her presence, just blinked open half-lidded, tired eyes to see her crouched by my side, still dressed in her work uniform, smiling affectionately at me.

          “Hey,” she greeted softly and brushed my bangs from my eyes, “How are you feeling?”

          “A little better,” I croaked, my throat dry and sore.

          I could have felt annoyed that she had woke me up, but even though I had gotten a couple hours of sleep, it hadn’t felt very restful and I wondered if I had been having nightmares again and just hadn’t remembered. I was too relieved to see her anyway. She frowned, either at the sound of my voice or something she saw on my face.

          “You look tired,” she commented guiltily, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have woken you, I was just worried…”

          “’s ok, Mom,” I mumbled, my head still fuzzy rom sleep, “I was just napping, I probably would have woken up soon anyway.”

          But that only made her frown deepen for some reason.

          “Didn’t you get any real sleep today?” she asked in concern.

          I shrugged.

          “A little,” I tried to assure her, although I didn’t think you could really call the on and off dozing I had done as real sleep, “The pain just kept waking me up.”

          She rested the back of her hand against my forehead and her face got this pinched look.

          “You feel a little warm,” she said, “Why don’t you take one of my sleeping pills? It’ll help you sleep through the pain.”

          I realized that she was speaking from personal experience and wondered just how many times she had self-medicated herself to sleep after one of my father’s beatings or a migraine. I shook my head, ignoring how it made me feel a little dizzy.

“I’m ok,” I insisted, which was such a blatant lie that even she looked dubious.

          “Duo, you need rest,” she admonished, “You still look so pale…”

I rubbed my hand against my weary face and could feel how cool and clammy my cheeks were. I knew she was right, and I knew I probably should take a pill, but I didn’t want to get that started and I was so sick of just lying there, trying to sleep and failing.

“I did sleep a little,” I repeated, “I need to get up and use the bathroom anyway.”

          “Do you need help?” she fussed and when her grey eyes darted to the soup bowl sitting on the table by me, she got that pinched look back in a second, no doubt thinking about how I had gotten it by myself that afternoon.

          “I think I’ll be ok,” I told her.

          She took a step back, but that was all she took, hovering by me worriedly as I struggled to sit up, even groan and gasp of pain making her go a little bit paler, her hands fidgeting, wanting to go to me, but letting me do this on my own anyway. It wasn’t any easier than the last time I had tried to sit up, but when I finally got seated on the edge of the couch, actually getting to my feet wasn’t quite the trial that it had been. It still hurt like hell and my mother looked so scared and so eager to give me some support that I thought she was going to break something keeping her hands at her sides and repressing her need to try to make this better. I did accept putting a hand on her shoulder to keep me upright while the room spun and I tried to stay upright. But it took less time this time for me to take that first step forward and I just kept one hand at the wall, limping heavily out of the living room.

          My mother followed me to the bathroom and seemed relieved to see me actually walking around under my own power. It wasn’t a pretty sight, but it was a far cry better than that morning.

          “I want to check your bandage while you’re up,” she said a bit guiltily, probably thinking that she should have done it that morning.

I really didn’t want her probing around in that area between my embarrassment and the pain, but put my hands on the counter and let her lift up my shirt and pull my pants down a little to get at the gauze. She hissed as she looked at the damage.

“Is it any better?” I asked nervously, praying that I was just bruised and that cut, puncture, whatever it was hadn’t gotten infected.

“No,” she said with a tight, agitated voice, “The bleeding under your skin spread. I don’t think it actually got worse, though, it just looks like it. You’re sure it doesn’t feel worse than it did this morning?”

“It feels about the same,” I confessed, “but I’m getting used to it. It’s normal for hematomas to spread, especially since I’ve been lying down for so long.”

From her reflection in the mirror, I saw her biting her lip, worrying over something. She was probably on the verge of insisting I go to the hospital again.

“The gauze is soaked through,” she murmured and I wondered if she had meant to say that out loud.

I gritted my teeth as she worked the gauze and bandage off my bruised flesh as gently as she could manage. When she tossed it into the trash, I got a glimpse at how dark red it was. I had bled a fair amount. Not enough that I thought it was anything to worry about it, but it sure wasn’t a paper cut.

“How does it look?” I asked her while she cleaned the area and spread more disinfectant on it.

“It’s inflamed,” she said unhappily, digging through the drawers for some clean gauze and tape, “but there isn’t any pus.”

I breathed with relief. Thank god for small favors, I guess. She finished up, taking the chance to put more ointment on my rear and swollen thigh while she had my pants off, then helped me back into them. My ass was throbbing from her attention, but it felt better just having a clean bandage on.

“I guess I should start dinner for his highness,” she said with a sharp note of bitterness as she watched me splash water on my face to hide my grimace of pain.

          “Do you need any help?” I asked, feeling bad that she had to rush to get dinner made before her next shift instead of relaxing thanks to my fuck up, but she just gave me an irritated look.

          “Don’t be ridiculous,” she scolded, “I want you back on that couch as soon as you’re done in here.”

          Then she bustled out into the kitchen, making sure I couldn’t protest and I had to smile a little, thinking of all the times that Heero had used that tactic on me. While I was in there, I decided I should change the bandage on the back of my shoulder as well. I should have asked my mother to do it, but I didn’t want her to know about it. She had enough on her plate already. I was quick about it, tossing the bloody bandage into the trash with the other one and inspecting the damage. It still looked ugly, but it didn’t seem to be infected. I put some stinging disinfectant on it and slapped a new bandage over it, as good as new.

I did my business, beyond happy that peeing was all that I had to worry about, brushed my teeth to get the rank taste out of my mouth and limped out of the bathroom. My mother had been busy in the amount of time that we had been apart. There was a tall glass of water and a couple of pain pills waiting for me on the kitchen table and she had replenished my ice pack as well. I drained the water greedily, happy to soothe my throat, swallowed the pills, and pressed the ice pack to my aching wrist. My mother was dumping what looked like minced hamburger meat with macaroni into a skillet, one of those pre-cooked meals that wouldn’t take much to get ready. At the smell of the frying meat, my stomach woke with an angry growl. My mother caught it and smiled at me while I blushed.

          “You must be hungry,” she commented, “What did you want for dinner?”

          “You don’t need to go through the trouble. I’ll have whatever you’re making for you and Dad,” I told her, even as I eyed the hamburger and pasta mix warily, pretty sure that it was not going to make my digestive system happy one way or another.

          “Ok. It shouldn’t take too long. Why don’t you watch some television,” she more or less shooed me out of the kitchen before I could offer to help her again.

          I limped back to what I was starting to consider as my nest or ‘home base’, rearranging the pillows so I could sit up again, and gingerly sat back down, managing to do it a bit more gracefully than I had the last few times. Or, at least, I didn’t gasp or groan in pain for once. It gave me hope that maybe, just maybe, I would be healed enough by Tuesday to tolerate going to school. I was going to either way, but it would be nice if my limp was less pronounced and I could sit in one of those hard chairs without fainting. Thankfully, I wouldn’t have work to worry about until Wednesday because I was positive that, no matter how much better I was doing by Tuesday, work would just not be possible.

          I flipped on the television and moved the ice pack from my arm to under my leg, but was barely paying any attention to what was on the TV. I just tried to relax, finally enjoying what seemed like eons of spare time. With my mother there, hearing her puttering around the kitchen, things were better. Comforting. The quiet that had been smothering before was now soothing. The sound of rain wasn’t moody but melodic. Funny all the difference that just one, familiar person can make. But even though some of my loneliness was starting to ease, I couldn’t relax because I knew that I was truly in the eye of the storm now. The knowledge that, if my mother was home making dinner, my father was going to come home soon, too, was setting my nerves to high voltage, my skin almost itching with tension. My mother’s presence had, for a time, stilled the voices and errant thoughts. The possibility of my father’s had brought them back, screaming.

          If I believed in ‘Ro’s God, I would have sent up a prayer that something would happen. A car accident or a bar fight, something that would keep him away for a long while. But I guess you’re not supposed to ask God for stuff like that and I guess it makes me a pretty shitty person to wish for my father to end up in the hospital for a couple days just because I didn’t want to have to face him. But couldn’t he just stay with Pat for a little while or something? Just because he had ordered my mother to have dinner ready for him, it didn’t mean that he _had_ to come home, right? He had been acting more and more erratic lately, it was entirely possible that he wouldn’t show up, right? Only I knew that it wasn’t. My father doesn’t always do what he says he’s going to, but he often does, especially if it means making us miserable. He wouldn’t want to pass that opportunity up, not when he’s so pissed at us.

          In mere minutes, I was nothing more than a bundle of fear and anxieties as thoughts of my father, things that I had been trying to stave off all day, overcame everything else. Was he still furious with me? Would he beat me again? Rape me? Take something else away from me? Would he hurt my mother? Could I even look at him, stand to be in the same room with him after what he had just done to me? I knew there was really nothing I could about any of it. I could barely walk, let alone get away from him, and I didn’t have any sort of sanctuary anymore even if I could, but that didn’t stop me from worrying about it.

          When I heard the familiar, clunking sound of my father’s car, even before it completely stopped in front of our house, I cowered in my corner of the couch, my heart going a mile a minute. I reverted to the scared, animalistic thing that always rears up when I know my father is angry with me, just listening and reacting to things around me. If I could have curled into a ball, I would have. If I could have gotten up and hid, I would have. But all I could really do was sit there and wait, wondering if I was being stupid. Wondering if I should be calling Heero or Justin or the cops. Memories of the previous night filled me with stark terror. I felt my father’s hand, like a band of iron, twisting my wrist like I was nothing more than a baby bird. I felt that chair leg strike me again and again. And I felt the fear and thought the things that I had thought in that moment but hadn’t given any attention to because just dealing with the pain and betrayal had been all my scattered brain could have dealt with at the time, fearing that my father was going to beat me to death. Confused and scared and baffled at what was happening, why he would do this to me and wondering if he would stop, if it would happen again, or he would think of something much worse the next time. Wondering if this was another thing that I would survive, ignore, and learn to live with. Wondering if I wanted to survive it. Wondering if I was finally at the end of my rope and maybe it would be better for myself, for everyone in my life if he just killed me with that damned chair leg.

          The engine cut out and I felt like the entire world had just frozen to a stop. Or maybe I was the one that was frozen. I wondered if my mother was terrified as I was, but I couldn’t see her through the doorway. Then the front door swung open and my father strode in and I really couldn’t think much of anything besides how scared I was. I listened to him kick off his shoes and wished I could judge how drunk he was from sound alone. I expected him to come storming right into the living room and lay me out again, but as he walked through the front hallway and past the kitchen, he didn’t come into the living room. He didn’t even say a word to my mother, just made a beeline to the bathroom.

          The sound of the bathroom door closing hard made me flinch, but he hadn’t actually slammed it. That was good, right? But I refused to hope that he was sober and the worst of his temper was gone. Hope seemed a pretty useless, elusive thing that day. I suddenly realized that I was shaking. When had that started? I refused to move or even breathe it seemed like as I listened to the faint sounds of my father using the bathroom: the toilet flushing, the water being turned on and off, then he was moving to the bedroom. Drawers opened and closed, things were shifted, but he still didn’t slam anything. I don’t think he was in there for more than five minutes before I heard him walking out again.

          Suddenly, he was there in the living room doorway and it felt like my heart had crawled right up into my throat. I waited for the moment when he would make a go for me or would start screaming at me, but he just stood there, a dark form silhouetted by the kitchen light in my peripheral vision as I stared intensely at the television, pretending that I was too busy watching the show to notice him. Like he couldn’t already tell with how I was slightly trembling and how freaking loud my heart beat was. Or maybe that was just in my head. My skin crawled with every second that those cold eyes were on me and the seconds seemed to multiply into hours. It was also probably just in my head, but I could feel this tension in the air and I just knew that my mother was noticing where my father was, too. I wondered if she was holding her breath like I was, waiting for him to move, ready to come to my defense.

          Then, he turned and walked back into the kitchen and I could breathe again. What the hell that had been about, I had no clue. He hadn’t even said anything and I almost wished that I had taken the chance to look at him, to see what his expression had been so I might have figured out what he had been thinking. I knew that he knew I wasn’t really watching television, that I had fooled no one, but he hadn’t called me on it or how much I just did not want to have to acknowledge him or talk to him. I was amazed that alone, my ignoring him like that, hadn’t made him snap. Someone making him feel unimportant or giving him the cold shoulder is sometimes worse than disobeying him.

          I heard him open the fridge and then the hiss of a can being opened, as familiar and regular as the ticks of a clock. Then, there was the scrape of a chair across the floor and I imagined him sitting down at the table that he had beat me black and blue on twenty-four hours ago. I heard my mother click the burner of the stove off and there were clinking noises of plates being gathered and food being scraped out of the pan. There was the small noise of my mother dropping a bowl on the table in what I thought was with maybe a little bit more force than normal. I could imagine the tight, vaguely unhappy look on her face to be forced to serve the man she would have happily gutted and bashed his head in the night before. I heard an icy silence and tensed even more, wondering if my father had noticed her attitude and soon there would be a sharp cry of pain. I didn’t even know what I would do if there was. I had to protect her, but by the time I actually could get off the couch, it wouldn’t matter.

          “ _This_ is all you could manage?” he sneered instead, pure contempt and mocking in his tone.

          “It’s what we had,” my mother responded icily, her voice tight with suppressed anger and, I thought, a bit of incredulousness.

          I could hear the words in her voice that she wouldn’t dare say out loud, that he was the one who had ordered her to cook, that if he didn’t like what she had picked, he should do it for once, and that if there wasn’t better food in the house, it was his own fault. I squeezed my good hand into a fist, terrified that she was going to say something, lose control over her temper and they would fight. She would bring up their finances or say something stupid like ‘after what you did, you’re lucky you didn’t get dog food from me.’ Not that I didn’t agree with her. What did he expect? A steak dinner?

          “Yeah, and what has his royal highness been doing all day?” he accused, still in that infuriating and mocking tone.

          If I could see my mother, I’m sure I would have seen her do the human equivalent of bristling at that comment. I have to hand it to the man, he’s a master of choosing his words to perfectly insult the both of us, both my mother’s cooking, insinuating he would have much rather I had cooked than her, and mocking me for lying on the couch all day and not helping with dinner when he knew perfectly well _why_ I was lying there. Like this was entirely my fault and he was the victim in all this and I’m sure that’s exactly how he was thinking.

          “ _Resting_ ,” she spat out angrily, finally losing her cool.

          My breath hitched, stuck in my throat as I imagined her glaring him down, furious that he was even making a comment about me after what he had done. I waited for that terrible sound of flesh hitting flesh. Instead, after a paralyzing moment, my father snorted, telling her exactly what he thought about me and ‘resting’ with that one exhale of breath through his nose, not a single word spoken. Still, I couldn’t breathe, waiting for either of them to make the next move, for my mother to snap at him again or for him to say something about me being lazy that would _make_ her snap. If he was itching for a fight, he would. He knew how to push her buttons like a master pianist. But I guess he didn’t, because I only heard the familiar noises of eating continue.

          My mother didn’t seem to join him, not that I blamed her. I heard her still puttering around the kitchen, washing the pot and, to my confusion, turning the stove back on. She had made enough for the both of them, so I had no idea what else she was cooking. Whatever it was smelled vaguely familiar, but was difficult to place with the smell of hamburger still in the air. Whatever it was, it smelled delicious and my stomach angrily complained again. I should really get up and get some food before my father ate it all or, if he was feeling especially petty, just tossed it so I wouldn’t get any. But I was terrified to go in there, like an animal returning to the same spot where it had almost gotten eaten. I’d wait until my father finished and did whatever the hell he was planning on doing after coming home so early. Maybe he would just leave again and leave us in peace, having seen that I was where I was supposed to be. And if he didn’t leave and stayed in the kitchen all bloody night, then I guessed I just wouldn’t have dinner. I didn’t care, I just didn’t want to be around him as much as I could.

          “What the hell are you doing with that?” my father suddenly snapped and I flinched.

          The walls in this place are so thin that if someone is sitting at the kitchen table, when they speak, they sound like they’re right there in the living room and I was so on edge and paranoid that every time my father said anything, I twitched, so sure that I would find him standing in the doorway again even if I hadn’t heard him get up from the table.

          “Duo hasn’t had dinner yet,” she shot back stiffly, her voice closer to me than it had been before.

          A warmth seeped through the cold strangling my heart as I realized that she had made something for me despite my saying that I would just have what they were having. It was tinged with guilt that she had felt the need to go out of the way for me and my father was obviously pissed about it, but mostly I felt amazed and loved that she had bothered.

          “If he wants food,” my father said icily, “he can get it himself.”

          I could practically _feel_ the hot glare that she was probably leveling at him, her anger like a living thing that I could sense radiating from her that he was getting testy just over her bringing me some food. I bit off a sigh. If she had gone through the trouble of making me something, I could go through the trouble of getting off that couch and braving the kitchen. I wasn’t sure what he would do if she ignored him and I wasn’t going to take the chance that he might be so damned… moody and petty that he would hit her over her just doing something nice for me.

          I rolled off the couch as quickly as I could physically manage, grateful that I had been getting up once in a while so it wasn’t the trial that it would have been hours ago. I still limped heavily and moved slowly, but it was progress. My mother was, thankfully, just a few feet from the doorway so I didn’t have to take more than a few steps outside of the living room. Just as I had known, she was glaring hatefully at my father, but it was impossible to tell how close he had been to getting up and doing something about it. As soon as I stepped into the kitchen, his eyes were on me, his stare hard and cold. I resolutely didn’t look at him, even as every inch of me tensed, waiting for him to do something. My mother realized where he was looking and she turned to me, steaming bowl of something in one hand and a glass of water in the other, her eyes wide as she instantly lost her glare for a look of surprise and pain.

           “Oh, Duo, you didn’t need to get up,” she said kindly, but there was this edge to her tone and I knew that she was mostly saying it as an accusation to my father, one that was only thinly veiled.

          “It’s alright,” I rushed to assure her before she could say something else that might cause an… incident, “You didn’t need to make anything special for me.”

          She smiled, finally losing that edge although there was some sadness to it, reaching out to brush my bangs out of my eyes.

          “It was no trouble,” she insisted, “I didn’t want you eating anything that might upset your stomach.”

          I finally dared to look at what was in the bowl and saw that it was clam chowder. I knew for a fact that we hadn’t had any in the house and the smell of the stuff only confirmed that it was not from a can.

          “Hornell’s?” I asked in surprise.

          It was this little combination bistro and fish market a few blocks from one of the places my mom works. Not very upscale, but not exactly cheap, either. It’s where we used to get our fish, shrimp, and chowder from, when fish used to be something that we could afford on a weekly basis.

          “I know how much you like their chowder,” my mom said, probably guessing the argument I was going to have, “and I was in the area.”

          “The cost-,” I began to protest.

          “It was on sale,” she cut me off, still not losing that tenderness to her voice, “and I got a nice tip tonight. It’s a drop in the ocean, Duo, and you need to have something better to eat than fifty-cent tomato soup. It fits in our grocery budget and there’s enough for a few meals if we stretch it a bit.”

          I sighed, still not liking the thought of her spending some of our limited resources just because I had been stupid enough to get myself beaten, but she was right, it was a drop in the ocean and it wasn’t that much money. Not enough to make a difference one way or another and I just hoped she would get to eat some. I just felt guilty that I had told her not to worry about buying food for me, that I would just eat at the Yuy’s to save us some money, and now look at where we were. It was just another thing that I had fucked up, wasn’t it? I suddenly remembered that we were not the only ones in the room and worried that my father was going to throw a fit over this. Because it was perfectly fine if he spent hundreds of dollars on that stupid car, but god forbid my mother buy me something for dinner.

          I glanced over at him warily, but strangely, he wasn’t even looking at us, but looking fixedly down at his dinner. I won’t say he was necessarily glaring at it, but there was this hard, irritated set to his eyes and he was chewing with a lot more effort than was needed, like he was pissed at his own food and needed to decimate it. If he had been twenty-three years younger, I would have said he was glowering or pouting, but that wasn’t quite right, either. I wondered exactly what had pissed him off; that I was getting dinner that he would have preferred, that my mother was catering to me and not him, or simply that she had felt the need to do something nice to me because of what he had done. If he felt at all bad about his actions, I would have said the latter, but I just reminded myself that when he had looked at me walking into the kitchen, there hadn’t been a shred of guilt in those eyes. I couldn’t figure out what he was thinking or feeling about any of it, whether it was superiority or pissyness, so I just tried to ignore him since it didn’t seem like he was gearing up to start a fight with either of us.

          I made a go for the bowl that my mother was holding, but she kept it easily out of my reach with my limited mobility and put a hand on my upper back, gently steering me back into the living room.

          “Come on,” she urged and although I didn’t need her help, I just surrendered, telling myself that the more space between her and my father was a good thing.

          I situated myself back onto the couch and let her fuss over me. She draped some blankets over my legs because it was getting seriously cold in the house as the temperature dropped outside. The subject of turning the heat on would not be broached by either of us. With winter over, my father would refuse anyway and while it was getting uncomfortable, the cold would probably pass in a few days. She pulled the side table in front of me so I wouldn’t have to twist my body painfully to eat like I had with lunch. With my left wrist the way that it was, I just couldn’t hold a bowl and eat out of it at the same time without dropping something.

          Once she saw that I was as comfortable as I could be and was eating my dinner, I thought that she would leave to go to work. I felt bad about it, she had spent all the time that she could have been eating dinner herself looking after my father and myself and she had to be getting close to running late, plus she would need to change into her other uniform. But while she did disappear into her bedroom with the phone for a little while, she came back out dressed in more comfortable clothing, returned the phone to its cradle, and sat next to me on the couch with a bowl of her own dinner. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that she had decided to skip work again. I worried that she might get into trouble for it and the dent in our budget, but I didn’t say anything. I knew she was only doing it because she didn’t want to leave me alone with my dad and I didn’t think I would be able to convince her to go in. If being here eased her mind even a little, I wasn’t going to be a jerk about it, and she looked exhausted. And, yeah, ok, I have to admit that her being there made _me_ feel a little better, too.

          We ate in companionable quiet, her watching the show that I had been pretending to be watching earlier and me so relieved to have someone there that I could have cried. Which of course just made me feel disgustingly pathetic. What the hell was wrong with me? Why was I so… raw and clingy? Eventually, we heard my father get up from the table, drop his dishes in the sink and go back into the bathroom to take a shower. I felt filthy and it seemed like every muscle I had possessed ached, but I didn’t feel any resentment towards him. I didn’t want to take a shower in that smelly, tiny bathroom. I didn’t want to struggle with a tap that would only give me luke-warm water as the biggest reward. I wanted a steaming hot shower to wash away the sweat and ease my sore muscles and since I couldn’t get that in my own house, I just didn’t care. Or maybe that was just the depression talking, but either way, I just felt relieved that he had left the room and I didn’t have to be on guard.

          My mother took our plates, beaming at me when she saw I had eaten all my dinner and I settled onto the couch, rearranging things so I could lie back down, for what I was sure was going to be another long and miserable night of sleepless pain and nightmares. When my mother came back, I tucked up my legs so she could sit back on the other end of the couch. She wouldn’t sleep in the chair again, not with my dad home, and I just hoped that he didn’t take forever to go to bed so she could get some sleep herself. From the worn lines under her eyes, I think she had slept only slightly better than I had. She fussed over me a little, turning the volume on the television down and pulling the blanket up over my shoulders.

          “Are you warm enough?” she asked me.

          “Yeah,” I lied, not wanting to bother her and have her hunt down some more blankets for me.

          As she flipped through the limited channels we had to find something to watch, I closed my eyes. It seemed like a futile effort now that my father was actually there and my anxiety had gone through the roof, but I was just going to worry my mom if I didn’t get some sleep, and I knew how dangerous it was to give up on it entirely. Tuesday loomed over me like a bad dream or some insidious omen. I had exactly one day to get my shit together, somehow find the ability to get through school without Heero finding out just how badly I was hurt, and come up with a passable excuse for my arm and leg. Not to even mention all the groveling I had to do over what had happened Saturday. I wasn’t going to be able to put him at ease if I couldn’t string two sentences together. The fear that I might be so exhausted that I would let something slip or say the wrong thing was almost enough to ask my mother for those sleeping pills after all.

But I could make due on my own. I just had to keep telling myself that it would be better tomorrow. My father would go to work and I would know exactly when he would be coming and going, so maybe I would be able to sleep longer. My body was slowly healing, at least I hoped that it was, and I was getting used to the pain. If I could make it up and down the stairs a little by afternoon time, that was the best sign that I had that I could get through Tuesday. Maybe sleeping on my mattress Monday night would help, too. I was starting to get a crick in my neck and back from the couch.

I guess my level of pure exhaustion was finally starting to overwhelm my fear and caution, because I was starting to doze off when my father left the bathroom. Of course, the second he opened their bedroom door, I was wide awake again, but I hoped that it was a sign that, as soon as he left us alone, I would be able to sleep. We got about another five minutes of peace before he finally strode into the living room, hair wet from his shower and dressed in clean sweatpants and an old sweater, just as cold as the rest of us although he would never admit to it.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he snapped at my mother.

My mother glared at him icily and I honestly wondered how I had thought that I would have a nice night with her. I had forgotten about the other variable in this equation.

“Duo isn’t feeling well,” she snapped back at him cattily, “and I can’t trust you to look after him, so I’m taking the night off.”

“Bullshit,” he sneered, “He looks fine to me. Get your ass to work and stop using him as an excuse for being lazy. He can take care of his damned self, he doesn’t need you babying him.”

She gritted her teeth, though I don’t know what pissed her off more, that he couldn’t see how much I was hurting, that he clearly didn’t care, or that he thought she was just being lazy when she was worried sick about me.

“He can barely fucking _walk_ because of what you did to him!” she hissed at him, the reminder of that making bitter, angry tears gather in her eyes, “I am _not_ leaving him alone with you! What are you going to do next, Nathan? Break his arm for disturbing you? Bash his head in for not being able to wait on you hand and foot?! And you call _me_ indulgent for taking care of _him_?! I can’t even trust you to be in the same room alone with our _son!_ If you think I’m going to just toddle off to work and leave the two of you-,”

I sat up abruptly and grabbed my mother’s arm, seeing that warning light come on in my father’s eyes, this hard glint he sometimes gets, right before lashing out. If he decided to hit her for unloading on him, there was literally nothing I could do about it and I was desperate to see that it wouldn’t get to that point. It was more my gasp of pain as I sat up way too quickly than my grabbing her that cut off my mom’s tirade. She put her hand on my own arm, worry dissipating her rage.

          “It’s ok, Mom,” I tried to assure her as soon as I could speak past the pain, “Dad’s right, I can take care of myself.”

          “Duo-,” she began to protest.

          “I’ll be alright,” I cut her off, “I’m just going to try to sleep, there’s no reason for you to miss work again because of me. I’m doing better now.”

          She chewed on her lip and when it looked like her stubbornness was starting to waver, I pressed my advantage.

          “ _Please_ ,” I whispered, giving her my most desperate look and wishing that I could point out to her that she was not going to win this battle and the more she antagonized him, the angrier my father was going to be and how readily he would take that out on me as soon as she left.

I didn’t dare to say those things in front of him and to say them would be disgustingly manipulative, but it was all true and she knew that. I saw it in the surrendered expression all over her face and in the pained, unhappy smile she gave me.

“Alright,” she whispered and kissed me on the forehead, “but I want you to call me if you need anything, ok?”

I nodded. She fussed with the blankets a little more and then stood, glaring angrily at my dad. She stormed past him, only narrowly avoiding bumping into him pissily, and went into her bedroom to change. He glowered after her, looking pissy and irritated with her. I almost thought that it was just because of her yelling at him, but there was something in his expression and his eyes that told me that his anger wasn’t just that, but that something she had said had rubbed him the wrong way. Her accusing him of making her wait on him like he was a helpless child? Or was it simply that she didn’t trust him to be alone with me? A reminder that he was out of control, that she had every reason to not trust her own husband with her child. With her out of his sight, those stony grey eyes glared at me like he blamed _me_ for all this and knowing him, he probably did. I wasn’t so sure that he was entirely wrong.

I thought he would make a go for me then, his favorite outlet for his rage as he tried to stare me down, but I refused to meet his eyes. It’s like they say to do when an aggressive dog is snarling at you, never look it in the eye or it might take it as a challenge or threat. I sunk down under the blanket and pretended that I was trying to get comfortable, neither dismissing him or antagonizing him further. Still, when he suddenly strode towards me, I cringed, waiting for that blow, but he only snagged the remote from the table and cattily changed the channel to the local news, jacking up the volume even higher than he usually liked. It was such a childish, petty thing, and I’m sure he expected me to do something stupid like protesting, having thought that I had been watching the program, or reminding him that I needed to sleep, but I didn’t make a peep or so much as give him a dirty look. I just didn’t care.

My mother re-emerged from her bedroom dressed for her last shift of the night and gave me a bitter smile and a wave before she left. I waved back, but the second she was gone, I seriously regretted having made her leave. I nearly had the childish reaction to call after her and beg her not to go, but I wasn’t that pathetic yet. Then, I heard the front door close and the cold truth hit me like a gust of icy wind, that it was just my father and myself in that house. I wasn’t quite sure if it was better or worse than being entirely alone.

As he sat down heavily in his chair and draped the blanket that my mother had been using before over his legs, apathy filled me. This deep, aching emptiness. Maybe I was short circuiting, having been wafting back and forth between depression, guilt, terror, and who even knows what else for too long, but I just didn’t care about anything anymore. I just wanted everything to go away. Lying there with my father’s back to me, that whirlpool of dark thoughts came swirling back, all those reminders of why I was in such pain, all the things he had done to me in the last few days, trying to work me up to hating him and being furious at him. I didn’t want to be close to him. I didn’t want to see him, even if he wasn’t talking to me or hitting me. I couldn’t bear the smell of him or even the sound of his breathing, making all those rotten, stinking memories rise to the surface of my mind. Making me feel sick with them.

I thought about going upstairs to my room, but with him there, I really didn’t want to corner myself like that. Not that it made any difference. If he wanted to hurt me or rape me, he could just as easily do it in the living room and I didn’t have the strength to even try to run from him. But the attic has so many awful memories for me now. Escaping to it seemed like tempting fate and I really didn’t think my body could handle a rape right then. I didn’t want to try to dare the stairs just yet anyway. I thought about lying down in the kitchen or maybe the basement, but they held the same problems: close proximity to him, trapping myself, and the possibility that I wouldn’t be able to get up without help. Then I thought about just running away. Just turning my back on everything and leaving and never coming back. That that thought seemed the most enticing told me just how low I had been brought, that being a run away and living on the streets was suddenly preferable to facing my problems, dealing with my father, and having to see Heero again after all this bullshit.

Between the sound of the television, my own gibbering thoughts, and my father’s presence, sleep was practically impossible. I didn’t even like closing my eyes. Every time I did, that animalistic part of my brain screamed at me that I needed to keep an eye on him, despite knowing that I was going to hear him if he got up as alert and on edge as I was. It only got worse when lying on my side facing him started to make my arm and swollen eye hurt worse and I had to roll over facing the couch to prop my bad arm back up on a pillow. By the time the temperature really started to drop around nine, I was completely miserable, my head pounding and feeling sick from my emotions and injuries and the permanent chill in the room. I curled up into as small of a ball as my body would let me and huddled under the blanket, but it didn’t seem to help much and I couldn’t stop shivering.

Sleep was becoming a laughable idea and my mind kept torturing me with memories from that long bout of insomnia, not just the stupid shit I had done and said, but the sweeter memories, too. Heero holding me. Reading to him. Him caring for me and lulling me to sleep. Which of course just made me miss him even more and I had to fight against tears a few times. It was getting more and more difficult to accept the fact that I wasn’t going to be with him for quite some time. That I would need to get used to sleeping alone again. That I wouldn’t get to feel his warm body pressed against me, his arm around me, or his breath against the back of my neck… maybe not never again, but it would be a very rare thing. I did cry a little then at that reminder, but only a little and quietly, not wanting my father to know, not just because my crying always annoys him and I was just too fragile to deal with his mocking contempt, but he was the cause of this and it felt too much like handing him a victory. He didn’t deserve to see me like that and I didn’t want to let him know just how much he had hurt me.

My father finally turned off the television and stood up from his chair around eleven. I wondered if the hockey game he had been watching had really been the interesting, he always went to bed this late on a work night, or he had just lingered because he had realized just how much I didn’t want him to be there with me. I immediately was wide awake and alert again, not that I had really dozed off to begin with, waiting to see what he was going to do. He hadn’t even said a word directly to me since he had gotten home, just stared and glared and made his little comments. Instead of putting me at ease, it made me more paranoid, so sure that he was going to do something, it was just a matter of time. And since he needed to be going to bed soon, that something had to be now. I just didn’t know what form it was going to take: acidic words, heavy fists, or his dick.

          I listened to him pause and could feel those eyes on me, a chill that had little to do with my shivering from the cold going up my spine, but instead of starting something with me, taking a chunk out of me when my mother wasn’t around to try to defend me, he went into the laundry room and I heard him rummaging around for something. I felt something somewhere between perplexed and resigned, depending on what he was looking for. Clean clothes for his shift tomorrow. Zip ties to restrain me. Maybe another blunt object to hit me with. Or maybe just a trash bag if he was emptying the one in the kitchen. Whatever it was, it didn’t take him long to find it, and then he was striding back out towards me.

          My heart raced with every step he took closer to me, my guts clenching painfully with anxiety and I could actually hear the blood rushing in my head as adrenaline pumped through me. Why couldn’t he just go away and leave me alone? I felt so ridiculous, being terrified of my own father even though that’s been my reaction to him for years, at the same time that it felt completely natural to be frightened by him after everything he had done. He stopped by the couch and I could feel him staring at me again. I knew that he knew that I was awake. He had to. I just hoped that he didn’t realize that my trembling was partially from fear. Still, I kept my eyes closed, both not wanting to look at him and praying that if he thought I didn’t realize he was there, he would just leave me the hell alone.

          When something heavy settled on me, I had to bite down on a startled and scared cry, positive that it was him and he would be ripping the blanket off of me as well as my pants, uncaring for my current condition so long as he got what he wanted. I squeezed my eyes shut, even my heart screaming in my chest with pure terror, only to hear my father’s heavy footsteps as he walked out of the living room and to his bedroom. I blinked my eyes open in bewilderment. What the hell? I reached for whatever was still weighing down on me and found the blankets that my father had draped over me with a strange mix of care and nonchalance.

          Now completely confused, I looked over my shoulder, hoping to see his face so I could figure out why he had just done that, but he was long gone. I don’t even think he had looked back. Why? He had obviously figured out that I was cold, fine, but why had he cared enough to do anything about it? Unwanted, a shard of doubt wormed its way through me, cutting and making me bleed as it went. The two sharpest images I had of my father that night, the twisted, scowling face of rage as he had dragged me home the other night, and the soft, worn smile from the memories of my childhood that I had dreamed about warred with each other. Was this because of what my mother had said, about not trusting him and he was putting in the effort just to prove her wrong? Not entirely out of character for him, but I didn’t think so.

I remembered him telling me that he hadn’t meant to hit me when I had been little, feeling guilty without actually apologizing. Was that what this was? Did he feel guilty about what he had done to me and this was the only way he could show his concern? Not with words or apologies or hugs, but making sure I wasn’t cold? I didn’t know. It felt too strange a thing to accept, that the man that beaten me bloody and black was the same one that had worried about me being chilled. I felt both warmed and resentful of him, my childish desire to be loved by him challenged by my fear of him and my hatred for every one of those blows and painful words. I didn’t understand the man. I couldn’t even _try._

I burrowed under the blankets. They didn’t completely ease the cold, but I could already feel myself start to warm up from them. One of the blankets had been the one that he had been using and it was still pleasantly warm from his body heat. I wanted to thank him for giving a shit, and I wanted to hit him for making me feel this way. For giving me hope and making me, even if it was a small part of me, not hate him so much. For confusing me. ‘If you hate me, then hate me,’ I thought accusingly and felt my eyes go wet again, ‘And if you don’t… then why can’t you act like it? Why does it have to be like pulling out splinters with you?’

Why did it? That was a damned good question. If I had been younger, even just by a couple of years, I would have basked in that tiny display of affection, whether that was what it was or not. I would have desperately clung to it as a sign that he cared for me, denying on purpose that it could be anything but that because I wanted it to be. Those moments are so rare and growing rarer by the day, but it couldn’t come from nowhere, right? My father isn’t the sort of man to do something like that for no reason. But things are different now. _I’m_ different and I know better. My father showing me any kind of care or love or warmth is like a pulling out a splinter. Painful. Grueling. Grudging. Something to be worked at and when it’s over, it’s this little thing that shouldn’t have taken that much effort to begin with. For a long time, that was all that I had, those splinters. But not anymore.

If my father’s affection is like pulling out splinters, my mother is like a cracked dam. For years, it was all blocked up and so distant from me. And at first, when the crack had finally started to form, it had been tiny and hesitant, a trickle. Then, the crack had spread out and deepened and more and more of it was pouring out. One day, I hoped that the dam would shatter completely and I would never have to live in fear that it would get mended and shored up and I would have to learn to live with it again. But then… then there was ‘Ro’s love for me. It was like a river in the spring. Flowing as natural as rain, crisp and clean and easy, like there was absolutely no other way it could think of being. It’s just so… simple for him. He does things for me because he cares about me. He shows me that every time his eyes light up just to see me walk into the room or how he touches me or those silly text messages he sends when he’s worried. How sometimes he’ll tell me that he loves me out of the blue, for no reason other than he wanted to say it. Compared to love like that, the shards my father gives me feel so small and trivial, murky and… irrelevant.

I closed my eyes then and tried to sleep. Now that my father was in his room, it was safer, I reasoned. If he had been in the mood, he would have taken his chance then before going to bed and even if he did come back, him opening the door would rouse me. But even with that assurance, I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t stop puzzling over things, a thousand different confusing thoughts buzzing around in my skull until I thought I was going nuts. When I heard my mother come in around midnight, I was heavy headed, but not really dozing. Still, when she went into the living room to check on me, I feigned sleep, not wanting her to know how much trouble I was having. After making a brief trip to the bathroom and hunting up another blanket, she settled back into my father’s chair and quickly fell asleep.

I was envious, but just having her there made me feel better, enough that I finally started to sink into a light doze. All my ducks in a row, I guess is what it was, knowing that she was safe and resting and we could have each other’s backs. Well, not _all_ my ducks in a row, was it? If Heero were there, not just lying with me, but knowing he was in the same house I was and he was safe, too, and within my reach might have had me sleeping like a baby. Maybe. A stray thought suddenly came to me. One of those strange, midnight thoughts you get when your mind isn’t preoccupied with anything else and jumps tracks for no real reason. Maybe that’s why I’ve had so much trouble sleeping since Quatre died. Maybe it’s not because of the nightmares or the guilt or how, for months after, all I could see as soon as I closed my eyes was him falling off the platform with that smile on his face. Maybe it was because, for the rest of my life, I would never have all my ducks in a row again, not really.

That singular thought threatened to open a wellspring of things that I could not afford to think about in my already maudlin, depressed state in the small hours of the morning. I pressed my face hard into my pillow until the pain was enough to make all the chittering voices stop. It seemed to work because after another half an hour, I finally fell asleep into something more than a nap or doze. That early morning would turn out to be a frustrating repeat of the previous. I slept fitfully and lightly, waking up half a dozen times from pain or a sudden noise from either outside or inside the house, or some nightmare that I could barely remember beyond that it had roused me with a pounding heart. While I had been more successful at falling back to sleep, it was never for long and never as deeply as I needed or wanted.

I was half asleep, kind of in and out of it when my mother rose to get ready for the day. I felt a kind of pointless guilt as I listened to her rush around while I just laid there, knowing that I should be getting ready for school myself, but didn’t have to. I didn’t even want to move, which just made me feel like a lazy prick. Sure, I was fairly handicapped, but I could help her make breakfast or something, but I just couldn’t force my body to move, stiff from having been in the same position for hours. And I could feel the cold of the house threatening to seep through my nest of blankets if they weren’t warmed from my body heat.

          I started to drift again listening to the familiar sounds of the house starting to wake for the day, my mother puttering around in the kitchen with my father still snoring in the bedroom. He would wake just as she was leaving, like ships passing in the night, which is probably exactly how my mother plans it. I blinked my eyes open as I felt my mother put her hand on my shoulder, testing to see how awake I was.

          “Mmm?” I mumbled groggily, hoping she would take it as my having just woken up from a deep sleep and not from pure exhaustion.

          “Morning,” she smiled at me, “How are you feeling?”

          I suddenly had this intense feeling of déjà vu, one that would follow me for most of the day.

          “Better,” I murmured and slowly rolled onto my back to test that theory and found that it was more or less true, if only by a slim margin, “I can move around more.”

          She beamed, obviously thinking that that meant that I was in less pain. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that while I was getting used to the pain and it was less overwhelming as it had been Saturday night, it really didn’t feel that much better. The swelling wasn’t going down a whole lot, I was just getting better at figuring out how to move around and working around the pain. She didn’t need to know that.

          “I called you out of school,” she told me, sweeping my hair out of my face, “They said you can make up your homework when you come back.”

          “Thanks, Mom,” I rasped.

          “I made some oatmeal for breakfast,” she said a bit more timidly, “Are you hungry at all?”

          I hesitated, still a bit leery about eating solid food. But really, it had been a few days and I needed to eat something other than liquid and stop being scared of a little bit of pain. Besides, I knew she had only made it for me since both she and my father aren’t big fans of oatmeal. I nodded and her relieved smile was worth any discomfort the food would give to my touchy stomach. At least it was soft. While she was getting my breakfast ready, I struggled to sit up and was gratified to find that it was getting easier and easier. I still wasn’t looking forward to my plan to try to tackle the stairs later, but I felt that I might actually be able to do it without breaking my neck. I rearranged the pillows for what felt like the hundredth time, but kept the pile of blankets on my legs and lap. It was warming up a bit with the morning sun but was still a bit cold.

          My mother sat down with me on the couch and we ate together, her with her own bowl of oatmeal to not waste any. It’s one of the few foods we have that doesn’t fair well at all as a leftover. She had dumped cinnamon and raisins in it and it reminded me so much of ‘Ro, of him making me oatmeal to cheer me up, that any warmth I could have felt from my mother making me one of my comfort foods dissipated completely into a deep melancholy and aching longing for my best friend. My mood seemed to be radiating out into the air, because after her food was just halfway gone, my mother put her spoon down, looking at nothing with this air of pensiveness, her expression somber.

          “Was everything… alright… last night?” she asked warily, probably not really wanting to know the answer.

          She glanced over at me and studied my face, looking for any new bruises or some shadow in my eyes that would tell her if he had hurt me again, or done… anything else. She really didn’t need to worry about the latter. Ever since she had found out about the rapes, my father had stopped giving a shit about cleaning up after himself and I wasn’t in much shape to do it, either, so if anything like that had happened, she probably could have figured it out from the smell alone, or my inability to look her in the eye.

          “It was fine, Mom,” I was happy to reassure her honestly for once, “Nothing happened.”

          She looked dubious, but with no real evidence, she let it drop and finished her breakfast. I didn’t tell her about the blankets. It was too personal of a thing, even between me and my mom, and I didn’t want her to know how it had made me feel. It would only make her feel worse.

          “I can stay home today… if you want,” she offered weakly although she already knew what my answer was going to be.

          “There’s really no need to. I was ok by myself yesterday, I’m sure I’ll be fine today. I’m just going to sleep and try to give my leg some exercise, see if it loosens up at all before tomorrow. Besides,” I lowered my voice considerably out of nervousness, wishing that my house wasn’t so damned small that you could hear every tiny noise no matter where you were, “he’s working today, so you don’t need to worry about me, alright?”

          She quirked a small, bitter smile at that. I knew that my father was not the only thing that she was worried about, that that night, watching me struggle just to stand and tell her that I couldn’t even get off the couch to go to the hospital, seeing the damage he had done to me haunted her. I couldn’t begrudge her that, not after she had taken care of my wounds and had sobbed against my shoulder. Not after she had helped me get up the next morning and had seen just how weak and pained I was. But her resolve to stay had been frail to begin with and my assurances were enough for her to clean up the kitchen and disappear into the bathroom to finish getting ready for her day. She was well aware that we couldn’t really afford her to be skipping full days’ worth of shifts. It wasn’t even just the money. My mother doesn’t exactly have a lot of job security, even less than I do at the factory, really. As a waitress, one that isn’t as young or friendly as her coworkers, she could be easily replaced. Like a car that was just slightly out of date when a new, shinier model came out, I thought bitterly. If she started making trouble for her boss by not showing up to work, it would be all the fuel he needed to can her.

          She came out of the bathroom, puttered around making sure I had fresh water and pills and everything was neat and straightened so my father would have absolutely nothing to bitch about before making me promise to call her at work if I needed anything. There was a small part of me that regretted talking her into leaving. It remembered the terrible loneliness that I had felt the previous day, but I choked it quiet. I was seventeen-years-old for fuck’s sake, not a child, and I could handle a little solitude. I’d only been living in it for as long as I can remember.

          “I’ll be ok,” I assured her one last time.

          She smiled again, but still hesitated. We both tensed when the bedroom door opened and my father, having just woken up himself, came out. My mother gave him this little glare, not the smartest move on her part as my father is far from a morning person, but he didn’t even acknowledge either of us, just shuffled into the bathroom and firmly shut the door. My mother nervously looked at the clock. She knew that she couldn’t linger around, but she was hesitating, not wanting to leave me alone again with him. I touched her arm, squeezing a little, and tried to smile reassuringly at her. She got the message and smiled back slightly, leaning down to kiss the top of my head.

          “Have a nice day, Duo,” she said softly.

          Then she was gone and I already felt… bereft, only to mentally kick myself for being so damned needy and wondering what the hell was so wrong with me lately. Trying to sleep with my father still there would be impossible, so I opened my book and passed the time that he was getting ready for work with reading. I thought that if I had to spend another morning watching early morning television, I might scream with boredom. I swear to god that I’m not getting spoiled, but those few days laid up on that couch, I missed Heero’s expansive cable package, complete with movie channels and cooking networks and those premium channels that didn’t have any motherfucking commercials. I can’t stand those things. And I was getting sick of flipping through the dozen or so channels we had with all the mindless dribble they put out. News and sports and infomercials and talk shows. I knew that I shouldn’t complain, but it just wasn’t making those long hours of tiredness and pain and anxiety go by any quicker. And I was almost through reading my book. I made a mental note that if I actually succeeded in getting up the stairs, I needed to snag another one for the rest of the day.

          I was surprised when my father went into the kitchen to finally make himself breakfast and didn’t just order me to make something for him like he usually does. I didn’t know if there was any oatmeal left, but even if there was, he wouldn’t touch it. No matter what was added to it, he always claimed it was too bland, barely a step up from gruel. Sure enough, I smelled eggs and sausage being fried in a skillet. It just reminded me of breakfasts on the weekends at ‘Ro’s place. Waffles and eggs and bacon and fresh fruit. Nothing out of a can or heated up in a microwave. I was really going to miss that…

          I glared at the words I had been half-reading, trying to make myself focus on them and not the miserable depression that thought had brought with it, just trying not to get the whole ‘everything I’m going to miss’ shit going again. It would never end and if it went on for long enough, I’d never shake that funk (not that I’d been all that successful so far) or worse, I’d end up crying like a spoiled baby again. My father didn’t say a word to me as he walked out the door. Not ‘I’m sorry’. Not ‘why the fuck are you skipping school’. Not even a threat to stay put or a gloat or a glower. If it weren’t for their continued existence over my legs, I would have thought that I had just dreamed him giving me those extra blankets. Again, I felt puzzled, not sure how to react to him, constantly off-balance. Did you know that’s a form of torture? That hot to cold to hot wavering, the total lack of consistency. I could believe it. After seventeen years of this, it made my head hurt and made me question my own damned sanity.

          I heard him close and lock the door and my stupid, vulnerable heart wondered which that was. Ritual, a reflexive action because it’s what he always did when he left for work. An act of protection. Or did he simply not trust me with the unlocked house? I ignored it, just incapable of dealing with any of it, especially my tendency to overthink everything, looking for the meaning, the injury or the hidden gesture. It didn’t matter anyway. I was too tired.

          I fussed with my pillows again until I could lie down flat and rolled onto my side facing the back of the couch. With my father gone and unlikely to come back for at least several hours, if he even went home for his breaks that day, the position didn’t make my skin crawl this time and I felt a sliver of hope that I might be able to get some real sleep. That hope wasn’t misplaced for once and I actually did fall asleep pretty quickly. You can only stay in a state of fear and anxiety for so long before your body kind of crashes and I was way beyond that point. I didn’t care about the nightmares or the pain or some stray noise anymore, I just desperately wanted to escape and get some rest.

          What I got was a solid forty minutes of blissful, deep, dreamless sleep before I was rudely woken up by the ringing of my cellphone. At first I thought it was our house phone and nearly fell back to sleep, thinking of bill collectors or that it might be Lorathe for some reason, but no, the ringing was right next to my ear and impossible to ignore. I glared at my cellphone prissily, but picked it up anyway. If it was my mom, it was something important. If it was Heero, he would just keep calling anyway. And if it was him, it also might be something important if he was calling at… I looked at the digital display. 8:37 am. Which meant that he was calling from school.

          I have to admit that the first thing that popped into my head with that knowledge was that something had happened and not that he was calling to check up on me, his welfare and the sickening knowledge that I had left him at school alone only made me think about what Zechs might have done to him. Was he hurt? Was he in trouble? If he was, there wasn’t anything I could do so far from him. There wasn’t much I could have done if I was there. Oh, god, this was all my fault, just like everything else. If I hadn’t gotten myself so hurt that my mother had to call me out, I could have been there with him! It was my fault anyway. Zechs was only messing with Heero because of me in the first place. That reminder sent guilt to tear apart my guts with razor-sharp fangs. When I flipped open the phone to answer the call and saw that it really was from him, the panic made me sick to my stomach.

          “Hello?” I croaked in trepidation, still partially asleep and not really thinking beyond my emotions, my heart thumping painfully in my chest.

          “…Duo?” Heero spoke after a pause. His tone confused the hell out of me with the image I had in my head of him getting attacked by Zechs or one of his thugs. He sounded nervous and worried as hell, but not frightened, “Is everything alright?”

          I swear, I’m not stupid. I was just tired, ok? It hadn’t actually crossed my mind in any concrete way that my boyfriend might be a little bit freaked out to go to school that day and not have me show up after my father had dragged me home that weekend. I hadn’t realized the sort of terrible leaps in logic his mind might go through to not hear a word from me, that he might think that something horrible had happened and I had hid it from him. It kind of just clicked then as I heard that little hitch in his voice, how he was frantic and trying to hide it from me how stupid I had been to not think of it. I should have sent him a text message as soon as I had known I wouldn’t be at school to warn him about it and I cursed myself for being so oblivious and thoughtless. He must have been absolutely beside himself with worry when homeroom had started and I hadn’t even bothered to text him. That he had obviously excused himself from class to make that call to me was proof of that.

          “Everything’s fine,” I rushed to explain, “I just… I’m not feeling great. My mom called me out of school. My stomach’s all messed up and she worried I might be getting a fever.”

          Neither things were lies, exactly. My stomach had been touchy lately between the pain of my injuries and my nerves. And I did probably have a slight fever. It’s happened before with injuries like these, some weird thing the body does when parts are inflamed. Usually things just feel hot or swollen for a few days and then I’m fine, which I hoped was the case here. But sometimes I got a bad fever from the trauma or inflammation or whatever the hell goes on with my body. I don’t really see the point in it. I mean, if you’re already in pain and dealing with injuries, adding a fever on top of it just seems like one more straw to break the camel’s back. But the way I had said it, like my mother was worried about the flu or a cold and not something more insidious like an infection had been a tad manipulative.

          “Sorry,” Heero apologized, which only made me feel like an asshole, “I woke you didn’t I?”

          “It’s ok,” I said softly, any irritation I had felt about being woken up had vanished the second I had heard his lovely voice and, even though every common sense told me to just shut up, I couldn’t help blurting that out, “I… it’s nice to hear your voice. I miss you.”

          “It’s nice to hear yours, too,” his own tone softened and my heart burned when I heard the longing in his voice that I had been feeling for days. Yet another thing to rack up on my head, another thing that was all my fault. He was all alone and hurt and it was all because of me, “I’m sorry you aren’t feeling well. Your mother is there with you, right?”

          “No,” I told him, “Both my parents had to work.”

          I thought that might comfort him to know that at least my father was gone, so he wouldn’t have to worry about me, but it only seemed to bother him further.

          “You shouldn’t be by yourself if you’re sick,” he fussed, “Why don’t you go to my house? We have soup and medication if you need anything, I can call my dad-,”

          “No!” I yelled, almost screaming into the phone, “Heero, I can’t go there!”

          I almost said ‘my dad would kill me’, but I wasn’t sure if that was even hyperbole anymore and worried that Heero might read that in my tone and freak out.

          “Duo…” his voice came out so pained and miserable.

I knew he was smart enough to know why my father had been so furious Saturday, that I was not supposed to be at his place and he had only suggested I come over out of concern. His desire to keep me safe was split in two between my being sick and my father. He sounded as lost as I felt.

“I…” I struggled for the right thing to say to reassure him, but there really wasn’t anything to say. I couldn’t lie and tell him that things were going to be fine. I couldn’t tell him not to worry about what my father had done and that things were just like how they always had been. In reality, we needed to have a long talk about this. I needed to explain myself and apologize and try to make him understand, but I did not want to have that conversation over the phone so impersonally and especially not when he should have been in class, “I… I’ll talk to you about this tomorrow, ok? I just can’t right now, ‘Ro.”

“Alright,” he said easily, shocking me. I had expected him to call me on my bull. I must have really sounded like shit if he believed I really was sick, “Feel better, ok? Drink lots of water and rest.”

I chuckled and the sound surprised me. I knew it wasn’t true, but I felt like I hadn’t laughed in weeks. I guess there hasn’t been a whole lot to laugh about lately.

“Yes, Mom,” I teased him, “Get back to class before you get into trouble.”

He chuckled back at me and acquiesced. When I heard him hang up, the happiness that I had felt getting to talk to him vanished, leaving a gaping hole in my chest. I closed my phone, put it back on the table, and wrapped my right arm around a pillow, pressing the unbruised side of my face against it. That feeling of loneliness and emptiness and abandonment from the previous day stole over me again. I almost wished that I had taken Heero up on his offer to call his father, to go to his place. It would have been nice to see Justin, or even just to have Kanuck and Pepper around. But any comfort that house would have given me was tainted by my guilt and fear that Heero’s parents were angry with me and the impending conversation I had to have with them.

I had freaked when Heero had mentioned going to his place and I knew that he was under the impression that I was frightened at being punished by my father for it. And I was, though most of my fear wasn’t from what my father would do to me, but to my mother to punish me. What exactly had he meant when he had said he would do the same to her? Beat her black and blue the way he had me? Or something even worse? I didn’t dare do anything that would make that happen, no matter how lonely and isolated I was feeling. Those feelings were nothing compared to being responsible for her getting hurt.

But that wasn’t why I had protested so vehemently, although it was much easier having Heero think that’s what was going on. I didn’t want to go to his place, not out of fear, but exhaustion. This is probably going to sound stupid after what my father had done to me, the terror I had felt when I had seen him carrying his gun, but what stands out in my mind when I remember that evening isn’t even the beating. It’s the shame. I love Heero. I love his parents. I love his home. But I could not face any of them. They had taken me in, given me so much, made me a part of their lives, and I just kept making more and more problems for them. I was tearing their lives apart with my issues because I couldn’t handle it on my own.

Things never should have gotten this bad. They never should have seen this part of my life. I don’t even really know which makes me feel more ashamed, that they saw what my father is really like, or they saw how useless and weak I really am. Did they understand now that I didn’t deserve any of the good things that they had given me? Did they understand that I didn’t deserve their sympathy or protection? Heero sure didn’t seem to, but I didn’t know about his parents. Was his father ashamed of me for calling him off? For not fighting? Was he thinking that maybe I had been right all along and I really was this pathetic and he had been wasting his time caring for me and trying to help me?

I was just so tired of all of it. I was tired of worrying them and being such a leech. That’s exactly what I would be if I went back there. A beaten puppy, unable to care for himself, needing to cling to other people just to make it through the day. How could I do that to them again? How could I rub their faces in what had just happened, how they couldn’t help me and how I had been hiding things from them all this time?

It was better this way. For everyone. Staying away from them was the best decision I have made in a long time. Mariela and Justin wouldn’t have to feel guilty that they couldn’t help me. They wouldn’t have to worry and think they were responsible for me just because I was too weak to do the right thing about my father. Heero wouldn’t be frantic and scared every time I got hurt or when he saw how much I was struggling with everything. But mostly, this was for the best because the more I stayed away from him, the less I would hurt him. There wouldn’t be any more moments like the other morning. I wouldn’t disappoint him and push him away. I wouldn’t have to risk him finding out how broken I am. The more distance I put between us, the better. It’ll make things easier in the long run. Maybe not now when we were both so miserable apart from each other, but it would get us both used to not seeing each other, so when the end finally comes, maybe it won’t hurt so much. Yeah, right. Even I’m not that delusional. But what else do I have? What else can I even do anymore?

This wasn’t working. Nothing was working. I had nothing and it felt like the harder that I tried to cling to this relationship, the more everything else tried to tear it to shreds. What was even the point of this anymore? What was I clinging so strongly to? Stolen moments? The rare times we would be able to see each other? The even rarer times that we could be together that wouldn’t lead to my hurting him or him holding himself back from what he really wanted? Wasn’t that what I was doing? Keeping him from being happy? Every day that I stalled and kept this dying relationship on life support was another day that I was keeping him from finding someone else. Someone better. Someone right for him. But even knowing all that… I still couldn’t do it. I don’t know what’s there, what it is that gives me such hope. Kisses, holding hands, those quiet, beautiful moments when we can just enjoy each other’s company… They’re like the splinters of memories I have of my father’s love and kindness and affection. So small, but they held such power over me, made me so desperate for more, so I just kept clinging to them, not caring who I hurt.

They didn’t deserve this. They were a nice, normal family, kinder than someone like me deserved, and they sure didn’t deserve to be dragged through all this. The question of what exactly I was going to do came to me again, but I just couldn’t even think about it, let alone answer it. I knew that I was going to have to talk to ‘Ro tomorrow and I knew that his parents were going to want to talk to me eventually, but whenever I tried to think about what I was going to say to any of them, the only thing I could think of was ‘I’m so fucking sorry,’ which wouldn’t even be the difficult part.

I burrowed back down under the blankets and closed my eyes, positive that it would be a futile effort. There were too many things bouncing around in my head, and if I hadn’t been depressed before, I sure as shit was then. But surprisingly, it didn’t take me long to fall back to sleep. Just too tired to deal with anything anymore, I guess. My sleep was even deep and almost peaceful. I’m vaguely aware of dreaming unsettling things, but I can’t recall any details and my dreams weren’t enough to bother me. I slept a full three, glorious hours, less than I needed, but more than I had expected to. Enough that I felt a little less like a zombie when I woke around noon, but not enough to feel truly rested. I’m pretty sure I could have slept for longer if not for the deeper pains that were starting to come back and how much I needed to pee.

I sighed as I wanted nothing more than to drift back to sleep, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to unless I took care of things. I needed to try the steps anyway and my muscles needed a bit of exercise. Before I did anything else, I checked my phone to make sure Heero hadn’t texted me, but there was nothing. I wasn’t sure if that was a relief or if seeing something from him would have made me happy. Resigned, I struggled out from under my nest of blankets and pillows and made the slow journey to my feet. The only victory I had is that, while it was about as painful as it had been Sunday morning, it took me significantly less time to accomplish. I didn’t even need to use the window for leverage or cling to the wall this time, which felt like a massive achievement. I got to the bathroom, did my business, and even took the chance to brush my teeth and hair. That I was able to stand in front of the sink without holding on to it and only swayed slightly gave me hope that going up the stairs wasn’t going to kill me.

In the kitchen, I popped some more pain pills and helped myself to a tall glass of water. I should probably eat something, but I was leery to do it before my trek. I took a few laps around the kitchen table, the muscles in my legs loosening, but I was still limping heavily from my left leg. There really wasn’t much I could do to make it any better, but it made me doubt that I should be doing this.

‘Better here than when I go to school tomorrow,’ I pointed out to myself as I stood in front of the attic steps.

The stairs seemed to have grown in size and depth since I had last used them and I swallowed heavily, suddenly feeling very nervous.

“This is a really stupid, fucking idea,” I grumbled at myself.

I thought about bringing my phone with me, just in case I did take a tumble down the steps and needed to call someone, but I was scared of breaking it. I took a deep breath, grabbing the railing with my one good hand, and questioned my sanity trying this with half of my limbs as dead weight. But if I wanted some of my mobility back, I needed to try this sooner than later, so I ignored my panicked, racing heart, and took my first step up. Things went ok at first. I didn’t feel all that dizzy going up, which was a start, and my right leg was holding my weight just fine. But the second that I put any weight at all on my left, I had to cling to the railing to keep from falling backwards. And the pain was… well, the pain in my leg alone was horrible. The pain in my rear at moving differently than I had since I had gotten the injuries was legendary, almost enough to make me immediately stop and just go back to the couch. But I can be a stubborn bastard and I figured that I was pretty committed to the climb. I hadn’t even fallen yet.

The trip up the stairs was agonizing and slow and I was sweating and panting by the end of it. But then I saw my bedroom door and could have punched the air in triumph. It was kind of sad what I was considering to be a victory these days. I mean, really, a single flight of stairs? Then again, considering just the other day, I couldn’t have even made it from the kitchen to the living room without help…

I opened the door and found my room to be exactly how I had left it. It seemed like a month since I had been up there. I stumbled forward, my limp ten times worse than it had been at the bottom of the stairs and, without having realized what I was doing, like my body was acting on autopilot, I promptly found myself lowering myself down on my mattress and passed out for another thirty minutes. Which is probably just as well because, in the exhausted, strained state that my body was in from the climb, I don’t think I would have been able to make it back down the stairs. The nap was brief and light, just an attempt for my body to get a little bit of energy back, I think. Or maybe the pain had just been too much.

“This is so pathetic,” I muttered to myself when I was awake enough to remember where I was and why I was on my mattress instead of the couch.

Yeah, pathetic. That summed up the last few days rather nicely, don’t you think? I hadn’t even moved from my sprawl on my right side and the nap hadn’t felt like it had done much for me, but at least my heart wasn’t beating like a frantic bird anymore. I used my right hand to get to my knees, then my right leg to get back up, relieved as hell that I had managed it. It would really suck if I got trapped up there, but that had been one of the many possibilities I had considered before doing this and I still thought I had made the right choice. Sure, I had needed to take a little ‘break’ afterwards, but I had actually made it up the stairs without blacking out during it or breaking anything. Now if I could just get back down them and back to the sanctuary of my nest…

I hobbled across my bedroom, snagging a book that I hadn’t read yet from my bookcase like I had promised myself that I would, a kind of reward for doing this, and tucked it into the waistband of my pants. No way in hell could I hold it and use the stairs at the same time. I stood at the top of the stairs, just the act of looking down making something heavy settle in my guts and giving me a tiny bit of vertigo, though it was mostly from my wariness. Yeah, this was definitely a bad idea. I thought about just waiting for my mother to come home. I mean, I had books to read and a mattress to lie down on, I could last the five hours, right? But that just made me feel even more useless. If I couldn’t make it down one flight of steps, I had no business going to school the next day. I wouldn’t make it to my second-floor classes and Heero would definitely realize that there was something wrong. If I could manage just this one, little thing, it would take a lot off my mind. Experimentally, I bent my left leg and put all the weight that I could on it. It was even more swollen from using it and I couldn’t even manage my full weight before the pain brought tears to my eyes and I bit back on a whimper. The steady throbbing in my rear was a warming, too, but the biggest obstacle was my fucking leg. Out of all the places that my father could have hit me, couldn’t he have found a place less debilitating?

          “I can do this,” I muttered and didn’t believe myself for a single second, “Just take it one step at a time.”

          I took another deep breath and the saner part of me questioned just why I was doing this. I held the railing in a death grip and took the first step down. For a terrible second, as I had to shift my left leg down on the next step after my right, I seriously thought that I was going to fall the full distance down those stairs. I knew it was mostly from my fear and lack of confidence, but when my left leg trembled a little, that was my thought, that this was it. I was going to plummet down the steps and break my neck. If not that, I was definitely going to finish the job of breaking my left wrist.

          But I didn’t fall, by some divine miracle. My left leg wavered, but didn’t crumble under the weight and exercise. It made me feel a little bolder and, after a minute or two, I took the next step and continued down in that fashion, always one step at a time, right before left, wait a couple minutes to give myself the time to adjust and the courage before taking the next step. I have no clue how long it took me to make the descent. It should have taken thirty seconds. It felt like hours. It was probably only about twenty minutes, which sucked, but I felt so fucking relieved when both my feet hit the bottom of the stairs that I just didn’t care anymore. I would take what I could get.

          It’s embarrassing to admit this, but that trek down the stairs took everything out of me and the first thing I did when I got back down was make a beeline to the couch and threw myself down on it. Well, gingerly laid down, but that’s what it felt like. A glance at my cell phone told me that it was about two in the afternoon. I hadn’t had any lunch and frankly, the thought of getting off the couch and heating up something or even slapping a sandwich together was not very appealing. My lower body was throbbing and in pure agony and while I had just proved to myself that my mobility really was improving, I was too exhausted to care about food or moving. I pulled the blankets back up over me and already felt myself drifting down the rabbit hole. My last real thought was that maybe it was a good thing I had tried the stairs after all. At least I had worn myself out enough that I could get some more sleep.

          I slept easily for another two hours. I was so wiped, I might have slept right through the remainder of the day if a familiar, yelling voice hadn’t shot me right out of sleep.

          “Get the fuck up!” my father was bellowing at me, “ ** _Now!_** ”

          I turned on my back, caught between hyper awareness from the adrenaline coursing through me and utter confusion from still being partially asleep. He was looming over me, his face twisted in rage and bright red. I thought he was drunk at first, but no, it was only from being enraged. I thought hard, trying to remember if I had done something to warrant him being so angry with me, or if this was just some random occurrence

          “Do you have any idea what time it is?!” he snarled at me, getting angrier and angrier at… something, probably my obvious confusion at what his deal was.

          ‘How the hell would I know that, you just woke me up,’ was on the tip of my tongue, but even in my fuddled state, I knew better than to voice that and just shook my head honestly.

          He jabbed his finger at the clock on the wall. 4:45 in the afternoon. Ok, that explained why he was there, he had obviously come home during his break. It did not, however, explain his fit. What did the time have to do with anything? He couldn’t be pissed about my not going to school, it was too late for that, and he had probably figured that one out that morning when he had left with me still lounging on the couch.

          “Why the fuck aren’t you at work?!” he snapped at me, reminding me of a snarling, snapping dog.

          Oh. Work. _Fuck._ I had completely forgotten about it. I hadn’t even remembered to call either of my bosses to tell them that I wouldn’t be in. Leneski was probably pissed.

          “I said get up now!” my father roared at me, reminding me that my boss was not the one that I should be concerned about pissing off, “Like hell are you skipping another goddamned shift, you lazy prick! School is bad enough, but you are not going to embarrass me by not showing up to work! Not all of us can afford to laze around all day when we have responsibilities!”

          Yeah, because you’re real responsible, I thought bitterly, my head aching more and more with him screaming right in my face. Maybe if you weren’t so irresponsible with money, Mom and I could afford to take a few days off. And it’s not like I’m enjoying this! If you could control your fucking temper, I could have gone to work yesterday and you’d have nothing to complain about! Of course, I was smart enough to keep my trap shut and just climb off the couch before he could do something like hit me or yank me off of it. I was moving before I could even think about what I was doing, struggling onto my feet and limping heavily into the kitchen, my father glaring a hole into my back the entire time. I’m actually amazed that he didn’t beat me a little, but he had to figure that if he did much more damage, I wasn’t going anywhere. I didn’t even know how the hell I was going to do what he was demanding me to do.

          Work. Just… fuck. How was I going to do this? Never mind having to explain to my bosses that I couldn’t do any physical labor, never mind the thought of even having to do paperwork in the state that I was in, how was I even going to get there? I puzzled over that as my father watched me drag myself up the stairs, incredibly relieved that I had already tried and succeeded in doing this earlier or I’m not so sure I wouldn’t have hurt myself hurrying up them then to get away from him. Walking was out. I didn’t think I could manage more than a block or two. Which just left the bus. Did I even have enough to take it? What if I didn’t? Call Heero to take me? Wouldn’t that be hysterical, having to explain to my father that one, if he really wanted me to go to work, he would have to give me money for the bus, drive me himself, or rely on the one person he had ordered me not to see again, which was the whole reason why this was an issue in the first damned place.

          I found a clean work uniform and managed to dress myself, wincing as my jeans dug into my horribly swollen thigh. And I had thought that the stairs had been a dumb idea? This was downright idiotic. There was no way I was going to be able to make it through even one shift. Gods, if I blacked out right in Leneski’s office or on the bus… the embarrassment of just that thought was almost enough for me to beg my father not to make me do this. If I thought that I had a chance in hell of winning that argument, I might have tried, but I was too scared to brave his anger. I didn’t have much strength left to deal with him or his fists. I thought about calling my mother, but what was I even going to say? I didn’t want her to know about this, she would only freak out. I really didn’t have much of a choice but keep going on like I always do, put the pain out of my mind and just do what needed to be done, no matter the cost. I was just so tired of it, of never catching a break. I was already folding under the strain; how much more could I take? I guess I was about to find that out.

          My father was in the kitchen when I slowly made my way down the stairs, almost wishing for a tumble so I wouldn’t have to go anywhere. He was frying up a grilled cheese sandwich and only spared me enough time to keep glaring at me, challenging me to say a word to him about this. The joke was on him, I didn’t even want to look at him, let alone speak to him. I’d say that I couldn’t believe he was making me do this, seeing the pain that I was in, but I easily could. It wouldn’t be the first or even the first dozen of times he had. I refused to look at him and just limped back into the living room, not even trying to hide how messed up my body was from him. He clearly didn’t give a shit, but I wanted him to know how difficult this was for me anyway, hell if I know why. It didn’t make any difference.

          I collected my stuff together, packing away cell phone and charger and books into my backpack. I was relieved to find that I had enough money for a couple bus trips and hoped that I was feeling better enough by Tuesday morning that I could survive a walk to school without it. I didn’t bother packing a lunch or even grabbing some water before I left. That would require being near my father for more than I wanted to. I couldn’t handle him anymore than the brief, scant minutes that I had.

          Despite the ludicrousness of this situation and how wary I was of my ability to do this, I felt relieved when I was finally outside and the door closed firmly behind me. Relieved to be away from _him,_ but it was more than that. Being in that house had been stifling. But being alone in it with little to do, in pain and with no one to talk to was too much like before I had become friends with Heero. Like when I was a kid before I had gone to school and met Quatre. All alone while my parents had been working with little to occupy my time beyond reading and the few toys I had. And then after Quatre had died… that suffocating loneliness, the surety that I would never find another friend like him, that I was destined to always be alone that had led me to trying to take my life. I couldn’t handle those memories. They just made me realize that I had been right. I might have found Heero, but like everything else, that would end. The only constant I had was that greyness, that emptiness. Heero was a sweet and wonderful reprieve, but I would always eventually go back to it.

          Being outside made me realize just how much being stuck in that house had been wearing on me, how even the air had felt stale and thin. How much I had been yearning to be away from it, even if I couldn’t see Heero, how trapped I had begun to feel. Just being outside and breathing in fresh air and seeing the cloudy sky above my head was enough to make those feelings recede quite a bit. I decided that, even if it was going to hurt like hell, maybe going to work was better than recuperating on that couch, if for nothing but my mental state. My depression had only been making me think terrible things, fearing things that I’m not sure were real or paranoia. Being outside hadn’t eased it much, but even a little bit was a relief.

          It was still cool outside and everything was still wet from the rain, but it looked like the storms were over for now and it was starting to warm up again. I still huddled in my jacket, cold and a bit miserable as the cool air made my bruises ache, but at least the rain water hadn’t frozen. That would have made an already difficult journey impossible. As it was, it took me a lot longer than I had even thought it would to make it to the bus stop. I moved slowly and carefully, trying to find a way to move that wasn’t going to aggravate my aching ribs, ass, or leg, which just wasn’t possible, so I settled on just finding the pace that caused the least amount of pain overall. That I made it to the bus stop at all was something of a triumph, but I didn’t dare sit down on the hard bench to wait, I wasn’t that stupid.

          It turned out to be a good decision when the bus finally arrived and I hobbled up the couple of stairs into the bus and sat down in the first available seat, using my right hand on the back of the seat in front of me to slowly leverage myself down and nearly cried out at the pain of pressure returning to the lower half of my body. I bit it down, but trembled as I sat there and waited to get used to the feeling. I really, really didn’t think I could do this. If I couldn’t even survive the bus trip, how was I going to get through work? I already felt drained and eager to find a flat surface to crash on. But I had little choice but to bear it and just sat there, sweating and clenching my fists to hide the shaking.

I felt both relieved and resigned when the bus pulled up to the stop closest to Leneski’s and I could finally get off. It was around rush hour and the bus had been horribly crowded and I didn’t want to be near anyone right then. And yes, I know what a contradiction that is, me complaining about being lonely and not wanting to be around people. Welcome to my fucking life. But it wasn’t the same. I wanted friends, people that loved me and gave a shit about me, not total strangers surrounding me and being so close to me, making me feel trapped and defensive. It wasn’t quite as bad as that weird state I had been in during the middle of the week, but I was weak and hurting and I didn’t want to be out like that, defenseless, I wanted someplace familiar and welcome to lick my wounds, with people that I trusted not to hurt me. Hell, who the fuck am I kidding? I knew exactly what and who and where I wanted, but I couldn’t have that and I just had to get that through my goddamned head somehow and stop _wanting_ things.

Thankfully, the walk from the bus stop to my work isn’t a long one, just a couple of blocks, because I was wiped at that point. I didn’t even want to think about how difficult it was going to be to walk to school in the morning if just a few blocks to the bus station and another few blocks to work was this fucking draining. I cursed myself for not thinking of to bring some pain medication with me, not that it had been doing a whole lot in the first place.

The vans in the lot were all gone, which meant all the crews were out on jobs. Good. If my boss was going to yell at me for skipping out on work twice and not even calling in, I would rather there not be any witnesses. Leneski’s daughter was manning the front desk and she raised an eyebrow at me in amusement seeing me sneak in a full hour late. I gave her a sheepish, apologetic grin and she just chuckled lightly, returning to her paperwork. There’s something about me that she always finds amusing, I think it’s how young I am compared to the rest of my coworkers. I stopped at my locker to dump off my bookbag when Leneski walked out of his office. I wondered if he had heard me open the front door of the shop or if the man was just psychic. He immediately frowned seeing me and crossed his arms over his chest.

“Duo-,” he began to say, his voice stern, but not angry. I guessed that was a good sign.

“I know,” I tried to placate him as I limped over to my locker, “I’m really, really sorry I’m so late-,”

“What’s wrong with your leg?” he cut me off, his frown deepening.

I had known he and everyone else with eyes would notice my limp, but I still internally flinched as he cut right to the chase. His eyes glanced down at my left wrist and I realized with a start that my shirt sleeve had pulled up just enough that he could see that it was swollen.

“And your wrist?” he added with concern.

I knew he was thinking about our last conversation about my injuries and rushed to diffuse this before his thoughts went in a direction that I didn’t want them to.

“It’s nothing!” I blurted out, “It… it’s just really stupid…”

I floundered for a believable excuse. I really should have come up with something to pull out before I had gone there, but everything I thought of just sounded so lame to me. Then again, this was my boss, not ‘Ro, and maybe he wouldn’t notice.

“Was it those boys again?” he pressed a bit testily and I got that impression again that he was thinking about his youngest son and what he would do if anyone at school did to him what was obviously happening to me.

“No!” I protested, fumbling with the combination on my locker and dumping my bookbag in so I wouldn’t have to look him in the eye and it wouldn’t look like I was outright avoiding doing just that, “It’s just embarrassing…” I quirked a small, depreciating grin, “I had to use the bathroom late last night, but I didn’t turn the light on and tripped on the stairs. It’s nothing serious, it was just really stupid of me.”

God, that made me sound like a total moron. It was almost as embarrassing as the truth, infinitely less dangerous, and I just hoped that the blush I had made it sound more believable. Leneski quirked an eyebrow at me.

“You fell down the stairs?” he echoed and sounded dubious, but not completely disbelieving, so that was something.

I nodded sheepishly and sighed.

“I know how dumb it sounds,” I muttered and fell back on the excuse I’ve clung to since I was a kid, “I’ve always been clumsy and accident prone.”

“ ‘Clumsy’?” Leneski parroted back, looking completely incredulous, “Duo… you are probably the _least_ clumsy individual I have ever employed! You’ve never had any kind of accident, have never fallen off anything, dropped anything, or so much as hit a finger with a hammer the entire time you’ve worked here, something I can’t say for most of the rest of the guys. Pull the other one, Maxwell.”

My blush darkened, though I wasn’t sure if it was from the praise and that he really thought that I wasn’t bumbling like most people did or that he knew that I was full of it.

“Well,” he sighed, “If you’re limping like that and hurt your wrist to boot, I’m not sending you out. I’m expecting an important call from a customer in an hour anyway, so there’s no time to drive you out.”

“I’m sorry,” I apologized, feeling like a total jerk for constantly inconveniencing him. It really was a wonder that I even had a job there anymore.

I was expecting him to point out that very fact or reprimand me for not only showing up late, but showing up unable to work, but he waved me off.

“Not your fault,” he insisted, “If you’re hurt, then you’re hurt. You should have stayed home, I wouldn’t have blamed you, but that’s water under the bridge. I’m sure I can find something for you to work on here so you can get a day’s pay.”

“Thank you so much, sir,” I said in pure gratitude and he just shook his head at me.

“Take your time putting your stuff away,” he said, “I think I have some invoices you can file.”

With that, he returned to his office, but I could tell he had been holding himself back. I don’t even know if he believed my story about falling down the stairs, I sure as hell wouldn’t have. But if he wasn’t going to press me about the truth, I wasn’t going to volunteer anything, just relieved that I wasn’t getting scolded or worse, fired. I took his advice and took the time to use the bathroom, finding some pain pills in the first aid kit and swallowing them down with bitter tap water before going into Leneski’s office. There was a lovely stack of invoices and order forms waiting for me on the top of his desk. My boss was on the phone with a prospective customer, clearly trying to explain to them that no, we cannot rent out our cement truck out, no, we cannot make exceptions, and no, it was not simply a matter of cost. I swear, some people. He saw me and pointed to the paper, mouthing ‘can you file those for me?’ I gave him a thumbs up and he grinned gratefully at me. It almost made it feel like a normal day and I forgot about being wary that he suspected something was up.

He turned his back on me, still arguing in a complacent, all business tone and I eyed his chair. It looked more comfortable than the bus seat had been, but I held no illusions that it wasn’t going to hurt anyway. I glanced at my boss, but he still had his back to me. It was now or never, I really couldn’t keep up the charade that all that was wrong with me was a limp if he saw me do this. I gritted my teeth and slowly and carefully, like an old man, gripped the arm rests on the chair and sat down. My leg gave out at the last second, making me nearly collapse in the chair, but I didn’t fall over at least, and I didn’t make a sound, though I did have to choke it off.

God fucking dammit but that hurt. I would have rather some broken ribs than have to deal with anything involving my rear. I never in a million years would have thought it could feel like that, but this whole not being able to sit without wanting to vomit and cry thing was getting old really, really quickly. I took a shuttering breath, willing myself to focus on my work and not the agony trying to crawl its way up my spine and down my legs. My boss, and everything else really, kind of just faded away to me after that. I remember him coming back and making small talk with me, and that I had responded and carried on a real conversation, but not what was actually said. The work was mindless and not much of a help to distance me from all the things that my body was telling me, mostly that it had been the dumbest, motherfucking idea to go to work that day.

It didn’t fade, either, as the hours ticked by, but got worse. The pain become this solid, hot, aching thing and crawled inside of my guts until there was literally nothing else that I could think of. The urge to get up and walk around and take the weight and pressure off of my hematomas was desperate, but even though I knew that Leneski wouldn’t care if I stretched my legs, I was deteriorating quickly and wasn’t sure if I would be able to even walk much. The chair was putting too much pressure on my swollen thigh and after the first hour, I was shaking like a leaf in the wind. If my boss had been around, he would have seen that I was in no state to be there and I’m positive he would have sent me home, or made me see a doctor or something, but he disappeared when he had to take that phone call.  
          “Oh, so you _are_ here,” Solo’s familiar and very welcome voice roused me from the concentrated haze I had found myself in, buried in work and pained tiredness.

I lifted my head in surprise and found him leaning against the doorway nonchalantly. I quickly schooled myself, trying to look as normal as possible so he wouldn’t notice that anything was wrong. I didn’t want to have another awkward conversation with him after the last time. I was torn between being glad to see him, a friend that would actually talk to me and I could be around without being punished for it, and wary of his presence, so tired of having to pretend that I was ok and everything was fine for someone else.

“I seem to be,” I bantered back, happy for the banal and safe joking around that always came easily to us.

“Fancy that,” he teased, “When you didn’t show up this afternoon, I had hoped that you had finally gotten some healthy brain cells and took a day off.”

“Like that would ever happen,” I shot back, “I was just really late. What about you? What are you doing back so early?”

“Early?” he quirked an eyebrow, “Dude, you need to stop zoning out so much. It’s break time.”

I blinked and looked at the clock for confirmation, amazed that he was right. I had been sitting there for hours, squirming and sweating and hating my entire life. How time flies when you feel like screaming.

“Oh,” I said unintelligently.

My coworker rolled his eyes at me.

“I swear, if someone didn’t remind you, you’d work for days without a break and make the rest of us look bad,” he groused, “Come on, we picked up some fried chicken on our way back and I got extra for you. I remembered those potatoes you like so much, too.”

I widened my eyes at that.

“You didn’t need to do that,” I protested, “You didn’t even know if I was in today…”

He shrugged.

“If you weren’t, I was just going to stick it in the fridge until you did. No big deal. Not like you haven’t shared food with me a hundred times before,” he pointed out, “Now, you coming or not? I don’t want to get stuck sitting at a table with Caleb or something.”

“I was pretty late today,” I said regrettably, “I don’t even think I get a lunch-,”

From the other desk, not even looking up from the paperwork he was signing, my boss waved me off.

“Get out of here and get something to eat,” he told me, “I’m no slave driver and you’ve been sitting there for way too long.”

“Thank you, sir,” I couldn’t help but beam at him. A break was exactly what I needed.

“I’ll go save us a seat and make sure those animals don’t eat everything,” Solo grinned and disappeared from the doorway.

I felt relieved, not wanting him to see this. I planted my right foot firmly on the floor and my shaking right hand grabbed the edge of the desk as I pulled and pushed my way back to my feet. I couldn’t help breathing heavily at the effort and feel a little dizzy as I stood for the first time in hours, but I had enough control over myself not to cry out. Still, I had to stand there for a few minutes as my left leg shook and didn’t want anything to do with me. I was pretty sure my thigh was even more swollen than before and also wished that I had an ice pack. I was aware that Leneski was staring at me, but ignored him, hoping he just thought that it was only my obviously injured leg that was bothering me. He saw me take that first, uneven step, still keeping a grip on the desk, my weak leg absolutely refusing to take any weight at all at first and he winced.

“Kid, you need any help?” he fussed, the boss had been replaced by the worrying father again.

I shook my head.

“I’m fine,” I said and was a bit proud at how even I kept my voice, “I’ve just been sitting for too long, leg hurts a little.”

He kept quiet as I limped heavily towards the door.

“Duo,” he called when I was almost out of the office and I sighed, knowing that we were going to have another little ‘chat’, that he was realizing that I was a lot more hurt than he had originally thought

 I considered just pretending I hadn’t heard him since I was nearly in the hallway and didn’t want to have this conversation with him, but turned to look at him. He had stood from his desk and was looking at me with arms crossed again, that concerned, pinched look on his face like he had eaten something sour just to watch me struggle to get out of the office.

“Hey,” he said in a much softer, kinder, and more personal tone, “is everything alright at home?”

Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe.

‘Is everything alright at home?’ Those words were like getting electrocuted, my heart racing and the sweat on my skin felt icy cold. Oh, god, he knew. Or… or he suspected. Of course he did, who the hell would buy that I had just fallen down the stairs? And of course he knew that this hadn’t happened at school! Or at least he had to be pretty sure. This had to have happened that very day if it had been from school, and I hadn’t shown up Sunday, so any logical person had to have wondered if it had happened then, so how could it have been from one of my bullies unless they had caught me during the weekend? Fuck, this whole time I had been worried about what Heero was going to do when he found out, that Leneski might work it out and be the one to get authorities involved with my home life and family hadn’t really been on the top of my concerns.

For a moment, I floundered, caught between defensiveness and excuses, and pleading for him to ignore this. Thankfully, some spark of common sense or intelligence finally flared in my head and came up with a coherent thought, because anything else that would have come out of my mouth in the panicked state I had been in would have surely fucked me over worse than I already was.

“Everything’s great,” I told him with what I hoped was a genuine and honest looking grin and then challenged, “Why?”

It was Leneski’s turn to flounder as I suddenly put him on the spot. I could see him chewing on his words, taking his attention and accusations off me, which had been exactly my intention. He had no proof of what he was thinking, just a suspicion and he had to know that if he voiced that suspicion out loud so bluntly, I was either going to brush him off completely, or we were going to have a very loud and messy fight about it. If he pressed me, I wasn’t going to fold and admit to anything if something _was_ happening, and if he did accuse either of my parents of hurting me and nothing was happening, anyone would get pissed off by that, he had to realize that.

“No reason, kid,” he said a bit hesitantly as I had taken all the wind out of his sails with a single word, “Just makin’ sure since you never talk about it.”

I shrugged.

“Nothing exciting to talk about, everything’s normal,” I lied.

I could see that he was still a little suspicious of me, but he let me go without any more inconvenient questions and I could finally breathe again. That had been way, way too close. I needed to get better at hiding my pain and quickly. As I hobbled into the hallway, I fought the urge to just collapse against the row of lockers and sink into the floor. God, I had only been there a few hours and I was so exhausted and worn by everything, I was torn between screaming with frustration or just blacking out. How the hell was I going to get through this day? I already wanted everything to stop and leave me be. My stomach growled pissily at me, reminding me that while the pain had taken away most of my appetite, I hadn’t fed it since early that morning. Right, I needed fuel and energy. At least I had more than soup to look forward to.

Despite Solo’s insistence about ending up sitting with someone that he didn’t want to, there weren’t that many people in the break room. They were probably eating in their cars or at the benches around back since it was nice out after the long rain storm. There were plenty places to sit and we got a table to ourselves. Solo watched me like a hawk as I limped over to the water cooler, pouring myself a tall glass of the stuff, but he didn’t mention it, even when I took my time to gingerly sit down on the hard chair. After sitting for hours, there really wasn’t much more pain I could be in, but I still had to bite back a hiss at complete lack of cushioning on the wooden chair. I was really starting to miss my couch. I would have gladly eaten standing up, but that would have drawn attention. The weird moment in Leneski’s office had just shown me how little I wanted any of that.

“Thanks,” I murmured to my friend as he passed me a plate of fried chicken, macaroni salad, and the fried potatoes that I liked.

I felt him staring at me as I slowly chewed on a potato, but ignored him. My stomach couldn’t decide if it was going to be nervous and touchy at the fried food or rejoice at having something solid and delicious again, if greasy.

“Glad to see your dad’s calling card hasn’t changed in all these years,” Solo suddenly said in a rough, almost grumbling tone after I finished my potato and took a long sip of water.

I almost choked and stared at him wide-eyed, not sure exactly what he was talking about. At first, I thought he meant my slowly fading black eye, but he had seen it when it had been much worse, so that didn’t make any sense. With a wry look, he pointed to my left arm. My sleeve had ridden up again and he could see my wrist injury in its full, black, swollen glory. I hastily pulled the sleeve back down, not that it mattered. He had gotten a good enough look at it to see how the bruises perfectly formed a hand print on my pale skin and just how severe the injury was.

“It’s nothing,” I muttered.

“Doesn’t look like nothing,” he countered, “It looks like someone tried to rip your damned arm off by the wrist.”

“It was an accident,” I said defensively, though I don’t know why I was bothering.

He had called it my dad’s ‘calling card’, and he had known that my father had done it from just a glance at it. Unlike Leneski, he knew without a doubt in his head, somehow, and unlike my boss, he wasn’t going to be so easy to brush off. He barked off a harsh, almost bitter laugh, making me flinch.

“Right, an ‘accident’, good one,” he grinned, but there was no humor at all in it for once, “You really need to come up with better lies, Braid-Boy, because that,” he pointed again at my now covered wrist, “is about as deliberate as they come. Even a grade schooler could tell that someone twisted your wrist hard enough to almost break it. And I’m well aware that one of your lovely classmates wasn’t the one that did it, so don’t treat me like I’m an idiot.”

“You don’t know-,” I tried to protest, but the cold, almost angry look he gave me shut me right up.

“Oh, I know plenty,” he said bluntly, “I know how much that must freaking _hurt._ I know that this isn’t the first time you’ve been gifted with an injury like that. And I know that, despite all the excuses you’re trying to come up with right now, your father is the only one that did that to you.”

          I flushed darkly at his accusation because he was absolutely right on all counts, but reflex had me opening my mouth even when I knew that I was beaten.

          “Anyone could have-,” I argued testily.

          “I know you dad did that,” he shot right back at me, “and you know that I know, it’s not like it’s a big secret, so stop being so defensive. I know his handiwork when I see it. And I know because if this was ten plus years ago, I’d have a matching bruise to show you.”

          My eyes went wide with shock.

          “He…” I glanced at his wrist like I really could see something that had happened years ago and Solo smiled dryly at me.

          “Yeah. Second time he arrested me. Feels like the asshole tried to rip your arm off, doesn’t it?” he pressed, those eyes of his suddenly seeming so ancient and wise and I knew without a doubt that he wasn’t messing with me, he knew exactly how it had felt.

          “I deserved it,” I muttered, unable to stop being defensive even knowing that we were a sort of kindred spirits and I didn’t need to put up barriers with him, “He was just punishing me… I didn’t listen to him and I mouthed off to him… I knew it would make him mad and I did it anyway…”

          I knew that it wasn’t entirely my fault, Heero had made me admit to that, but for some reason, I couldn’t stop saying or thinking those things. And maybe it wasn’t my fault, but… I still deserved it. I still believed that so strongly. I spoke lowly, looking around us nervously, but the few men that were in there were talking too loudly amongst themselves to hear what we were talking about.

          “Funny,” Solo smirked and leaned his cheek on his fist, “That’s why he did it to me, too,” he chuckled slightly at my owlish expression, “I mouthed off when he was booking me. I can’t even remember exactly what it was I said, but it got that pig partner of his laughing. I guess that’s what set him off. He doesn’t like being laughed at, does he, your dad?”

          I shook my head wordlessly, still with that stupid look on my face, still shocked to hear this, that my father, even way back then, had lost his temper so easily and had hurt someone that wasn’t me or my mother.

          “He wrenched my arm behind my back and slammed me up against his car,” I was told and I shuddered, remembering how he had done the same thing to me, pinning me against the table like I was nothing more than a rag doll, “He just kept wringing my wrist and jerking it and I just kept talkin’ back… Never said I was the brightest bulb in the pack, and I was even stupider back then when I was a kid. I just kept pissing him off more and more. I wasn’t really surprised when he got fed up and broke my wrist.”

          I felt all the warmth drain out of me and I’m sure I went deadly pale as I took in his words and, somewhere in the back of my head, I heard my mother screaming at my father to stop, that he was going to break my arm. I wondered if he had ever felt guilty about breaking some mouthy teenager’s wrist while on duty or if he had just thought that he had deserved it for not shutting up.

          “He…” my mouth felt dry and I worked around something thick and bitter, “Why didn’t he…”

          “Get reprimanded?” Solo guessed, “Lose his job?”

          I nodded. Not for the first time, I wondered exactly why my dad had lost his job. Had it really been because of his drinking, or something much worse? Had he hurt someone like he had hurt Solo and his chief had gotten sick of it?

          “Eh,” my coworker shrugged, “I was a punk kid and he had been on the force for a few years. He just pulled some story out of his ass that I had gone for his gun and he had just been defending himself. Admitted to being a little too rough, but his partner backed him up and no one but me really cared. I figured I got off light. He could have shot me.”

          I saw my father dragging me to his car, his shirt lifting and me seeing the butt of that gun tucked under his jeans. I shivered, so cold that it felt like ice had formed under my skin.

          “You’re wrong, you know,” Solo’s expression softened to one that I couldn’t really identify, something well-meaning, almost concerned, almost affectionate, “It’s really not your fault. The asshole has a touchy fuse. You shouldn’t have to deal with someone like that, you sure as hell don’t deserve it no matter what he says. You’re a teenager, talking back and breaking rules are what you’re _supposed_ to do, doesn’t mean you should get your wrist fractured for it. And don’t say shit like ‘I made him angry.’ You don’t _make_ him anything. He makes his own damned self,” he scolded, “It’s not your responsibility to manage his moods for him like he’s some exotic animal that needs his food and environment just so. If he says a load of bull like that, it’s just an excuse so he doesn’t have to put the effort into controlling his temper, but it’s not on your head. You ain’t dumb, kid, so don’t fall for that crap.”

          “Is this the part where you offer me to crash at your place again,” I smiled weakly at my mostly untouched plate of food, incredibly uncomfortable with the things he was saying and unable to look him in the eye.

          “It’s the part where I tell you that a nice kid like you doesn’t deserve a piece of shit like that for a dad and he doesn’t deserve you stickin’ up for him or lying for him all the time, but yeah,” he smirked, “it’s an open invitation, you know. You don’t even need a reason, just if you don’t want to go home or somethin’.”

          I nodded to show that I understood, but didn’t take him up on his offer. It was a nice idea, crashing at Solo’s place instead of my house. Maybe I would actually be able to sleep. And technically I wouldn’t be doing anything wrong. My father had said to stay away from Heero and that was exactly what I was doing. But all I could think was what my father would do if I didn’t show up after work. Would he march right back to Heero’s house, knock on the door, and have another fight with Justin because of me at two in the fucking morning? No way in hell was I going to take that chance.

          “Duo,” I turned at the sound of my boss’ voice coming from the doorway of the breakroom, interrupting anything else that Solo might have wanted to say to me, “Someone’s here to see you,” he jerked his thumb in the direction of the front of the shop.

          I got that icy, shocky feeling all over again. God, _now what?_ Could this day possibly get any worse? What the hell next? Would the ceiling cave in on me? Who the fuck would come to my work to see me? My immediate thought was, of course, that it was my dad. In the past, I would have shrugged that off as stupid, but after he had gone to Heero’s house just to get me to come home, I wasn’t writing any possibility off as ridiculous. But even if it was him, why? He should be at work and even if he was pissed at me for some reason, this was a bit much. My mother? She would call before just showing up and she didn’t even know where my work was.

Heero? He was the most likely of the three. I had told him not to go there anymore after Leneski had ordered it and I thought he had more sense than that. Besides, how could he possibly know I was at work after I had told him that I was sick? What if he had shown up at my house and saw that no one was home and had put two and two together? He might be so worried about me that he didn’t care about what I had told him not to do. I wasn’t even sure what I felt at the prospect of it being him. Excitement and relief to see him. Embarrassment that probably everyone in that shop knew what he was to me. Fear of facing him. But if it was him, Leneski didn’t look pissed that he was there. If anything, my boss looked almost as confused as I felt, so it was someone that he either hadn’t met or hadn’t expected to come asking for me. Again, my father came to mind. I almost told Leneski to tell them to go away, that I was busy, but if it _was_ my father, he would be enraged and if it was Heero, he would be hurt. And doesn’t it say something exceptionally stupid about me that it was the thought of hurting ‘Ro again that got me to move with resignation and not fear of my dad?

Leneski and Solo watched, one pained and the other with a hard, sour expression as I struggled to stand up and limped heavily out of the break room to follow my boss back to the front of the store. He walked slowly for my benefit, allowing me to trail just slightly after him. By the time that we got to the front desk, I had run through the possibility of nearly everyone I thought could be asking for me, even going so far as someone impossible like Zechs. But for some reason, the very last person that I had considered it to be was Justin Yuy.

“Hello, Duo,” he greeted with a warm smile as Leneski and I stood behind the desk, my boss looking perplexed while I just did that stupid blinking thing again.

Would things just stop throwing me for a loop that day? What the hell was Justin doing at my work? How did he even know that I worked there? Oh, wait, he dropped me off there before, which also probably explained why Leneski was confused about who he was. But still, _why?_ What did he want? That he had hunted me down because he was angry with me for what had happened at his house the other day occurred to me, but it just wasn’t like him and the easy smile he had said otherwise. He could be a private person and didn’t want anyone to know that he was upset, but he’s also a very honest person and all I could see in his expression were relief, affection, and concern.

That last one pretty much solved the mystery for me. I had no clue how he knew I had been at work, or why he was putting in the effort, but he was obviously checking up on me. But that he wasn’t furious at me did nothing to lessen the embarrassment I felt remembering why he had felt the need to see me, or the cold sweat that came over me as I realized this was really happening and that talk that I hadn’t wanted to have in the first place was going to happen a hell of a lot sooner than I thought it would. But despite all that, I also felt so incredibly happy to see him and something else, something sad and dark and powerful that constricted my heart. I had been trying so hard not to feel it for days, not to acknowledge the fact that not only was I going to have to stay away from Heero for a while, but Justin, too. That this man who had done so much for me was going to have to become a relative stranger to me, at least for the time being.

It was a strange thing to feel, but I had nearly felt as depressed about losing the friendship and trust and respect and ease we had forged as I was about not being able to spend nights with Heero anymore. In that moment, that things were about to get _very_ uncomfortable didn’t matter to me. I was just so relieved he was there, that he still cared for me, that he didn’t hate me for what had happened, to have his comforting presence when I felt like I had been thrown to the high winds of a hurricane for days, that little else seemed to matter. I would do whatever he wanted, I thought. If it meant his forgiveness and understanding, I would have that talk with him, I would explain things… just so long as nothing changed between us, I would answer any of his questions, honestly.

“Mr… Mr. Yuy,” I said hesitantly, still nervous that maybe I was reading things wrong in that smile, that I was just seeing what I _wanted_ to see because I so desperately wanted to be forgiven, “what are you doing here?”

“Oh, I was in the neighborhood,” he said rather cryptically, “And you left so suddenly Saturday, I wanted to see if everything was alright.”

Internally, I cringed that he had actually said that, although he had left it so vague that Leneski didn’t seem to realize there was something strange about that comment. I could feel myself trembling again and wasn’t sure anymore if it was from the pain or what we were talking about.

“I… I just had to go,” I murmured defensively.

“It’s fine,” he assured me, “I understand. But you know that you’re always welcome at our home, anytime, don’t you?”

He had said that very same thing to me so many times before, but this time was like the first time and it sent a dagger through my heart. It took every ounce of my control not to burst into tears as he handed that forgiveness that I so badly craved so simply and easily, like it was nothing at all to him. Such a deceptively simple sentence, but it had such weight to it, said so much to me without anyone else knowing. I wondered if even Justin knew how much it meant to me, how much I wanted it.

“Who are you?” my boss finally spoke.

“Oh, terribly sorry,” Justin chuckled, doing that whole ‘where are my manners’ thing and stepping forward to shake his hand across from the desk, “Justin Yuy, I’m just Duo’s friend’s father. My son told me he wasn’t feeling well today, so I wanted to check on him to see how he was since I know both his parents work long hours during the week.”

“I’m fine,” I insisted in a low voice, not liking how Leneski glanced at me suspiciously, probably wondering what the hell I was doing there if I was ill, “I got better.”

Justin frowned at that and really took the time to study me.

“Are you sure?” he pressed, “You don’t look well, Duo.”

“No, he isn’t,” Leneski interjected in a firm tone before I could say anything and suddenly, with me gaping at him, took full control of the situation, “You have his parents’ numbers?”

“Unfortunately, no,” Justin told him.

“But you know where he lives?” my boss asked and my boyfriend’s father nodded, “Good,” he jerked his thumb at me, “Get him out of here.”

“Mr. Leneski, I’m _fine_ ,” I protested, feeling a bit horrified.

He brought his attention back to me, giving me a stern look with arms crossed over his chest.

“Duo, I’m not an idiot. You’re pale as a sheet and you’ve been shaking since you came in. I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but you’re obviously in pain or have a fever or something. While I admire your commitment and work ethic, you shouldn’t have come in today,” he pointed out.

I flushed a little in embarrassment in guilt, knowing that he was right, but I couldn’t tell him that my dad had made me come in.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized and I was, hating that I had inconvenienced him and made him think that I had brought germs in or he had worried about me. And now he had to make me go home and lose a man.

“You don’t need to apologize,” he sighed, “If you’re sick, you’re sick, you didn’t need to force yourself to work. You have nothing at all to prove, kid, we all know how hard you work. And I know that you _can_ work, but seeing you try to when you obviously need rest is making me feel like an asshole. So, do me a favor, will you? Go home. I’ll pay you for the rest of your shift and it will make me feel a hell of a lot better not to see you limping around the place.”

“T-thank you, sir,” I stammered, shocked by his generosity.

“No need,” he waved me off, “You can take as much time as you need, just don’t come in with a new injury, alright?”

I nodded, although in the back of my mind, I was aware that that was going to end being a broken promise if I went home right now. It came to me then that I should be protesting this. These two men were making decisions for me, treating me like a child, I was perfectly capable of finishing my shift and I didn’t need Justin’s help. Really, I didn’t. Hadn’t I gotten there all under my own power? So, why wasn’t I fighting this? That’s what really told me how messed up I was, that I didn’t even want to fight it. I was just so tired, and so sick of being in this much pain. I barely had the strength to do anything anymore. Justin could drop me off at the dump and I would say ‘thank you, sir’ and go find a pile of garbage to lie down in at this point.

Leneski lifted the table top flap on the desk and herded me out past it like a sheep dog would a lamb and I understood that it really didn’t matter how much I had fought, he wasn’t giving me a choice. Instead of feeling irritated by that or embarrassed that he thought I was so weak, I couldn’t sit at his desk doing paperwork for a few hours, I felt relief. Utter, complete relief. I didn’t care that my father was going to beat the shit out of me for going home when he had told me to work. I would get a few hours of peace at least and I fully planned on collapsing on the couch as soon as I got there. I could almost taste it, the blessed allure of sleep.

“My stuff…” I remembered.

“I got it,” I almost jumped as Solo spoke up from the doorway to the back hallway and stepped out, handing my bookbag to Leneski, who handed it to me.

It spoke to my state of mind that I hadn’t even realized he had followed us out and had heard the entire conversation. And that he had thought to go grab my things while I almost hadn’t.

“Thank you,” I told him meekly, “I’m sorry, the food-,”

“Is in the fridge,” he assured me with amusement at seeing me getting worked up over something so small, “It’ll keep. Now get your ass home, you’re a wreck. And take care of that wrist.”

I nodded again, wanting to thank him again and to say a few other things, but nothing I was comfortable saying in front of Leneski and Justin, so I let Justin take my bag from me without protesting because I was quickly losing my ability to care about anything, and he gently put his hand on my upper back, steering me towards the door.

“Come on,” he said kindly, his warm and welcome voice washing over me like a pleasant bath, “Let’s get you home.”

‘Home,’ a wonderful sentiment. If only it was the home that I wanted him to take me to. But even if it wasn’t exactly what I wanted, it was better than work, so I allowed myself to feel relief anyway.

“You really don’t need to drive me home,” I tried to protest, but even that came out sounding wan, “I can just take the bus.”

“Nonsense,” he chided, opening the door for me and walking us out, “I’m here and I am not sending you off to the bus stop when you’re obviously hurting. No reason to waste your money on the bus, either, so hush.”

But why _are_ you here? I wanted to ask. I didn’t buy that he had just been ‘in the area’ for a second. That had just been a line for Leneski. There was really no reason for him to be this far out of his way unless he had only come here looking for me. Why? Because Heero said that I wasn’t feeling well? All I could think of was that Justin had seen right through that lie, had known that my father had done something to me and that was the real reason why I hadn’t gone to school. But still, why had he come to my work?

“How did you know I was here?” I had to ask.

“I didn’t,” he confessed, “but this place was on the way to your house and I thought that, knowing what I do about your father, he might have made you gone to work even if you were too sick to go to school. I’m glad I checked here first.”

          I wasn’t sure how to take that, glad because it saved him some time or glad because he hadn’t risked running into my father. I flushed darkly at his comment about knowing my father, realizing he could honestly say that now. He had met him. He had seen what my dad was really like…

          “I’m sorry,” I blurted out in shame, “I’m so sorry, about what happened before… I…”

          “Hey,” he scolded, squeezing my shoulder, “None of that. You have nothing to apologize for, Duo.”

          “Yes, I do,” I whispered, tears pricking my eyes, “He could have hurt you… or Heero… All the things he said… Invading your home like that… it was all my fault…”

          “ _Stop_ ,” he insisted and wrapped his arm around my shoulders, drawing me close.

          To anyone that could see it, it would just look like we were having a friendly, intimate conversation, but I recognized it for the attempt to comfort that it was and sunk into his body heat. I hadn’t even realized how cold I was or that my trembling had gotten worse.

          “It was not your fault,” he lectured with conviction, “Not a second of it, so don’t you dare apologize. You are not responsible for your father’s actions. You are not responsible for his ugliness and he did not hurt us. I’m the one that needs to apologize to you,” his tone turned guilty and my guts wrenched to hear it from him, to know that he felt this way, “I’m the adult, I should have stopped him. I should have done something to protect you.”

          “You couldn’t have!” I protested, “No one could have. He’s my father-,”

          “That doesn’t mean that he had any right to do that to you,” Justin shot back snappishly, getting upset as he was most likely remembering that embarrassing scene.

          “But he _was_ right,” I murmured, “There’s nothing you could have done. He had every right to take me home if he wanted to. It wasn’t like he hit me or anything, and if you had tried to stop him, it just would have made things worse.”

          “No, he didn’t hit you in front of us,” he said, pained, and making panic jolt through me as I wondered if he knew what had happened when we had gotten home, if he really suspected that my current state wasn’t from sickness, but from being punished, “but he frightened you and he hurt you anyway. I’m so sorry, Duo. I promised you that you would be safe with us and I couldn’t even do anything.”

          “I don’t blame you,” I tried to assure him, “I know you tried. And you wanted to, that means enough to me. It’s not your fault that he threw a temper tantrum. I’m just… I’m just so embarrassed…”

          “Oh, Duo, there’s no reason for you to be embarrassed,” he said, agonized, and tightened his grip around me slightly, “You aren’t responsible for any of it. You warned us what he was like.”

          “It was my fault that he showed up at all,” I muttered bitterly at myself, but Justin shook his head.

          “None of that, ok? It wasn’t your fault. We’ll talk about this later, right now I want to get you out of here,” he said and continued to lead us to his car.

          I nodded. I really didn’t want to talk about this in a public parking lot and I knew that he didn’t really understand and wouldn’t until I explained this to him. His arm slid from my shoulders, leaving me feeling cold, and I limped after him. He frowned watching me, finally realizing just how bad my limp was.

          “Are you alright?” he asked in concern.

          “It’s just a pulled muscle,” I lied and I could tell he didn’t believe that for a second. The way that I was struggling to move my leg at all told him it was bullshit.

          “And your wrist?” he pressed.

          “A sprain,” another lie and I was sincerely glad that my shirt sleeve was down and he couldn’t see what it looked like, but the stiff way I was holding my arm probably told him enough as well.

          He sighed heavily but he didn’t ask me again. He probably thought I might ditch him if I didn’t want to answer. It was tempting, but only slightly. While having to lie and save face was exhausting me, I didn’t want to be alone. I felt so much better with him than I had for days, even with his questions and concern. I wasn’t looking forward to getting back to my place, to that cold and quiet house and watching him drive away. He watched me like a hawk as I opened the passenger side door of his car and carefully sat down, but I couldn’t stop my leg from shaking or the sharp intake of breath as my lower body screamed in warning pains that it was at the end of its rope. Justin’s frown was severe as I think he realized that either there was something else wrong with me, or my leg was hurting me a lot more than I had let on. I thought for sure he would pry some more, but he opened the driver side and sat down, turning on the engine.

          “Have you eaten much today?” was all he asked as he pulled us out of the parking lot and onto the main street.

          “I had breakfast,” I confessed, “And a little bit of dinner just now, but not much. I haven’t had much of an appetite lately.”

          I didn’t bother to tell him why, let him think what he wanted.

          “You’re awfully pale,” he noted, “As soon as we get you home, I want you to put something in your stomach, alright? You’re too skinny as it is.”

          “Yes, sir,” I said automatically and winced at the somber tone that came out of my mouth as I thought about preparing a meal all by myself, some canned soup or maybe a sandwich, and I wished that I had thought to take the fried chicken home with me.

          Justin heard the depressed note in my voice and glanced over at me worriedly, but just as quickly put his eyes back on the road, always responsible.

          “It’ll be alright, Duo,” he promised without even knowing what was wrong.

          I fell silent, really not feeling like slapping on a smile and agreeing with him. What would be alright, because nothing felt anything like that and hadn’t for a long time now.

          ‘I don’t want to go back, please don’t take me back,’ I wanted to plead and felt those tears prick me again. Christ, what the fuck was wrong with me all of a sudden? Why did the thought of being alone in my own house bother me more than knowing that my father was going to lose his shit when he saw I was home later? My sudden quiet seemed to bother Heero’s father even more and he spared another glance at me, not liking what he saw.

          “You didn’t get much sleep last night again, did you?” he asked, obviously noticing the circles under my eyes or maybe I just looked that tired.

          “Last couple of nights,” I admitted but didn’t tell him that the longest sleep I had gotten for several days now had been in Heero’s bed Saturday morning.

          “In that case, I want you in bed early tonight, ok?” he advised, an order delivered in a much gentler tone than my father had ever managed, “Right after you do your homework.”

          I blinked at him for a moment. He knew that I hadn’t gone to school that day, so I had no idea what he was talking about, but nodded anyway since as soon as I got home, I fully planned on eating dinner and crashing on the couch. Still, the comment about homework niggled at me, my first indication that something was up. Then, as we got to the main residential road that would cut through towards my house, he took a right instead of a left, heading north.

          “Uh, Mr. Yuy? My house is that way,” I pointed behind us in confusion.

          “I know,” he said simply and made no effort at all to turn the car around.

          “Then why-,”

          “I told you, we’re going home,” he replied, the ghost of a smile gracing his lips.

          I gaped at him like a dumb, slow fish. Suddenly, that homework comment made perfect sense, along with his orders to eat and go to bed early. As we got further and further away from my house, I felt something squeeze my heart more and more. Equal parts relief and joy that I was going to the Yuy home, that I was going to see Heero and Mariela and Kanuck and Pepper warred with fear and panic. I wanted to go. Oh, god, how I wanted to go back there, eat a homecooked meal, be with people that loved me, be away from my father and my lonely thoughts and fears, play with my cat, sleep in Heero’s bed… but I couldn’t. My father had made that perfectly clear. I couldn’t. But Justin didn’t know that. He thought he was doing a good thing, a kind thing, not leaving me alone in my house when I was obviously hurt. He didn’t know what my father had done, and what he had threatened to do if he ever caught me over there again. Fuck, what was he going to do when he found out that I had not only ditched both my work shifts, but was back with Heero? What would he do to my mother?

          “But you said-,” I tried to protest, remembering what he had said to Leneski about taking me home and how that hadn’t seemed like a lie at the time.

          “I said I was bringing you home. I didn’t say I was bringing you to _your_ home,” he said, smirking and way too pleased with himself that he had pulled the wool over mine and my boss’ eyes with a statement that reminded me too much of the manipulative things I would often say to deflect from my injuries.

          That panic exploded in me as I saw that he was not going to go back and I snapped.

          “You can’t!” I cried out, startling him.

          “Duo…” he started to say in alarm, but I wouldn’t hear it.

          “No, I can’t go back there! You have to take me home!” I demanded and continued on when he made no action but continued to drive forward, “You don’t understand, my dad-,”

          “I know he doesn’t want you to see Heero,” Justin said, his voice tight with pain, “But he isn’t going to-,”

          “If he even finds out that you picked me up from work, he’ll be furious!” I yelled at him, vaguely realizing that I was breathing too hard and too fast and that was why Heero’s father looked alarmed, not from what I was saying, but I couldn’t get it stopped, “If I go back to your place, he’ll kill me!”

          His expression tightened in almost a wince, probably remembering the fury that my father had been in when he had dragged me to his car by my hair. Justin didn’t realize that what I was saying wasn’t hyperbole. I had my own memories that he didn’t, of that gun flashing in the fading, evening light. Of him pinning me to the kitchen table and wailing on me like I was nothing more than a piece of meat he was tenderizing, all with this eerie calm and nonchalance while my mother screamed at him and I cried and begged for him to stop. Of him whispering in my ear that next time, he would do the same to my mom. Justin reached over and put a hand on my shoulder, still not keeping his eyes off the road for more than a few seconds at a time despite traffic having picked up as we headed towards the center of town.

          “Duo,” he repeated, but this time his voice was soft, full of worry, but also full of strong conviction, “I promise you that if you come home with me, your father won’t hurt you. I won’t let him, ok? I _promise._ Nothing will happen to you, I’ll make sure of it.”

          ‘Can you promise that nothing will happen to my mother?’ I thought as a couple tears finally dripped down my cold cheeks, ‘Can you promise that he won’t just come find me again and make you give me up like before? Can you promise that he won’t hurt you or ‘Ro?’

          Things I wouldn’t say, but I could feel them lingering in the air, burning on my skin. I felt myself shaking again between pain and fear, and shaking hard, and knew that Justin could see it as well. I tried to get it stopped, knowing that there was no way in hell he was going to listen to me looking like that, but my fatigued, damaged muscles wouldn’t obey to me.

          “ _Please,_ ” I begged him as a last resort, “Please, Mr. Yuy, just take me home! You don’t know what he’s like, not really! He’ll find out and… and…”

          I thought about telling him about my father’s ultimatum about my mother. I thought about telling him, in as many gory and terrible details as I could muster, what had really happened Saturday night when my father had gotten me home. But at the same time, I was too embarrassed to say either of those things, even if they might get him to turn the car around. To my exasperation, Justin just sighed wearily.

          “I can’t do that, Duo,” he said as I stared at him with wide, frightened eyes and explained before I could demand _why_ , “Tell me this: How will your father react when he comes home from work tonight and sees that you’re home and not at work?”

          I looked away from him and down at the clean floor of his car. It was always clean, even after a storm when muddy boots were likely to leave dirt and tracks. He always cleaned it right after. I can’t even remember the last time that my father had vacuumed out his car or even just picked up the clutter of receipts and take out bags that seemed to accumulate. I don’t know why or what exactly, but in that moment, that difference between the two of them spoke of something, and it spoke volumes. I wrapped my good arm around my stomach, knowing that all I could do was say the truth.

          “He’ll be furious,” I murmured, “He ordered me to go to work today. If I disobey him…”

          “He’ll beat you,” Justin said so bluntly that I flinched.

He hadn’t pulled the punch a single bit with his words, hadn’t dressed them up as anything but what they were. Not ‘he’ll hurt you’, not ‘he’ll be angry with you’, or even ‘he’ll punish you.’ Nothing but the truth.

“Don’t ask that of me,” he said in that soft but honest tone of his that always seems to reach inside of me, deep down to the child that had always craved someone just like him and leaves me weak every time I hear it. With that tone, he could ask me to do just about anything and I think I would do it, “Don’t ask me to send you off, all by yourself, for your father to hurt you, just because you’re too hurt already to get through a single shift. I won’t cause trouble for him or go to the police like _you_ know I should, but don’t you ask me to turn my back on you while he beats you. Not ever. I’m not so disillusioned to think that I have any control over your father or you or your family, but I have control over this. You’re coming home with me and if your father is mad about that in the morning, then fine. We’ll deal with it then, together. But tonight, you’re going to be safe and far away from him. I can do that much for you and after I failed you the last time, I _will_ do this, understand?”

I sniffed and swallowed a sob that wanted to well up as thick tears tracked down my face. His hand on my shoulder, hearing that solid conviction in his voice, his desperate need to protect me and care for me, a dumb kid that wasn’t even his, I felt a deep and powerful love for the man. I was completely weak and vulnerable against it. With that feeling in my chest, he had won, and I think he knew that. But it didn’t feel like a manipulation. Those words, while they had struck at every crack and hole in my heart, hadn’t felt rehearsed or carefully chosen, but brutally honest and raw with emotion. I nodded and the smile he gave me was bright and relieved and beautiful. It reminded me too much of Heero’s own smile, especially when it reached those eyes that were the same, exact shade of blue.

“Thank you, Duo,” he said softly, like I was the one doing him the huge favor and not the other way around, “Thank you.”

His hand slipped from me and returned to the wheel, but the warm feeling didn’t leave me. It slowly seeped into me, the knowledge that I was going home, and there wasn’t anything that I could do about it. Justin taking the choice away from me had helped with the fear, had helped me surrender to it and I think he knew that as well. I was still scared, still doubting this, still terrified of what the ramifications were going to be, but it was out of my hands. I suddenly knew, in a sort of shocked revelation, that if I pitched myself from that car and ran all the way back to my house, he would just follow me. He really wasn’t going give up. And when I remembered what he had said, how he had begged me not to ask him to turn his back on me, I knew I couldn’t try to get out of this anyway. As much as I loved my mother and as much as I was scared of my father, I couldn’t hurt Justin, either. No matter what I do, it seems, I hurt someone. I can’t hope to escape it. Every choice is the wrong one and all my struggling, all my attempts at being a good person and doing the right thing are utterly pointless.

We hit another knot of traffic as we fought to get past the center of the town and to the northern residential side (a thought that was making my heart flutter with excitement). Where I was going had become a solid fact in my head and I was beginning to think of things like fallout and what exactly was going to happen in the morning when I didn’t come home. I didn’t know how I was going to accomplish it, but I would set things right. I wouldn’t let my father hurt my mother, somehow. I felt so worthless and pitiful thinking about it, how helpless I was to stop it, but I would find a way. With the thought of my mother being trapped in that house, having to deal with the raging bear, I dug through my backpack for my cellphone. There was one thing I could do at least. I dialed my mother’s work number. I got a rather bored sounding employee who gave me the diner’s spiel before allowing me to speak.

“Is Helen Maxwell there?” I asked.

“Hold on,” they drawled.

I was left waiting a full five minutes before I heard my mother’s tired finally answer.

“Hello?” she asked warily and I could only imagine the sort of scenarios that she was thinking of if she was getting a personal call.

“Hi, Mom,” I said and felt so relieved to hear her voice, even though that was stupid. It wasn’t like my father would do anything to her at work and he was clueless about any of this until he got home.

“Duo,” she exclaimed before lowering her voice and the fear in it made me feel guilty, “Is everything alright? Do you need me to come home?”

“No!” I cut her off, not wanting her to think the worst, “I’m fine, everything’s fine. I just… I’m…” I struggled to find the right words to this, because no matter which way I spun it, it felt stupid and selfish and reckless and like I was putting her in harm’s way by being so damned self-centered, “I’m going to Heero’s for the night. I wanted to let you know so you wouldn’t worry, and… and to warn you.”

I winced, glancing over at Justin to see what he made of that. His expression was tight and pained again, but he kept quiet.

“Thank god,” she breathed, “Good, I’m glad. You should be with your friend.”

That left me completely flabbergasted. I had expected her to be angry or incredulous, not relieved.

“How can you say that?!” I snapped, “After he thre-,” I bit down on what I had been about to say, not wanting Justin to overhear, “After what Dad said, how can you be glad about this? He told me to stay put, he’s going to be furious!”

“Oh, fuck your father and his damned threats,” she snapped right back, shocking me. I really hoped she was somewhere that she wouldn’t get in trouble for swearing, “Duo, love… You’ve been so miserable these last few days… I’m just happy to know that you’ll be with your friend and not cooped up in that house all by yourself. If it makes you feel any better at all, I’d never be angry at you for it. I’m glad you’ll be taken care of. They will, won’t they?”

“Yeah,” I said and couldn’t stop the smile thinking about how Mariela was going to fuss over me, “They’ll take care of me.”

Next to me, Justin chuckled a little, probably having the same, exact image of his wife that I did.

“Good,” my mother repeated, “And as long as you’re there, I won’t have to worry about you being alone with your father.”

That was also a point that I hadn’t thought of, how worried she must have been these last few days and how relieved she would be now that I was out of the blast zone.

“But what about you?” I pressed, “I can’t do this to you. What if he-,”

“Never mind about that,” she stopped me before I could get too worked up, “I mean it, sweetheart, don’t you dare worry yourself about that. I can take care of myself. Don’t let him keep you from doing the things you love and being with your friend. He and his stupid threats aren’t worth it.”

“But if he… if he did something because I made him mad, I couldn’t…” I struggled with the words ‘I couldn’t live with myself.’

“Hush,” she soothed, “If he did, it would not be your fault. I’ll stay away from the house for the night, alright? Would that make you feel better?”

“Immensely,” I sighed, and it did, knowing that she would probably be safer from my father that night than I would.

He would know where I had disappeared to and there was still the threat that he would show up to drag me off again, but he didn’t know my mother’s hiding places. That thought almost had me argue with Justin about this again. If my dad came to his house and caused another scene, it would kill me. But I knew that Justin wouldn’t care about that and again, I was struck with the knowledge that there really wasn’t anything I could do, I was going to his place no matter what argument I could come up with. And sure, the thought of my father showing up again had my stomach in knots, but there was still a part of me that was relieved it was an argument me and my anxieties couldn’t win.

“Alright,” my mother agreed, “I have a place I can go. Don’t worry, just get some rest. Remember to ice your leg and eat something, ok?”

Her fussing, something which used to come out so forced, like something she had to make herself remember to do, had me smiling more.

“I will. I love you, Mom,” I blurted out.

“I love you, too,” she echoed and I could hear the smile in her voice.

We hung up and I actually did feel a lot better knowing that if my father was going to have another rage fit at my running off, she wouldn’t be around to be collateral damage. I just wished I had some way to keep him from bothering the Yuys again. Those were my two greatest fears as we pulled into the Yuys’ street, that my father would hurt the people that I cared about because of my mistakes, or that he would embarrass me again.

“Everything alright?” Justin asked a bit hesitantly.

“Yeah, my mom’s going to stay somewhere else tonight,” I answered truthfully.

He chewed on that, clearly wanting to say something and I felt so ridiculous that I needed to ask my mother not to go to her own house because of my father. It only served to remind me how far apart my world was from Heero’s, how stupid and silly my family problems were. How vastly different our parents were. All Heero needed to worry about were grades and occasionally butting heads with his parents, maybe getting grounded for this or that. I had to worry about this shit. I was relieved and grateful when he ended up staying silent, either because of manners since, good intentioned or not, it really wasn’t his business, or because he didn’t want to stress me out any more than he already had.

When I saw Heero’s house, I almost began to cry again. Just an hour ago, I had thought I wouldn’t get to see it for weeks, and there I was again. It felt like I hadn’t been there in such a long time. It was impossible to cope with the fact that it had been a couple of days. What felt like some of the longest days of my life. It really did feel like going home. Sure, the sanctuary was tainted with my father’s presence now, but it was still _there_ , still my safe place, still a comfort. I felt the tears welling up in my eyes as I saw the lights on in the house and heard the faint sound of excited barking as we pulled into the driveway, parking in the garage. Everything, even that barking, was warm and familiar. Suddenly, I didn’t care what my father did to me. I didn’t care about the uncomfortable conversation I needed to have. I didn’t even care if facing ‘Ro was painful. I was just so happy to have this chance to be there.

I scrubbed the tears off my face and eyes with the back of my sleeve so as few people as possible would know that I had been crying, but Justin caught the move and gave me a sympathetic smile.

“Come on,” he urged gently, “Let’s get you inside and get some hot food in you. You look like you could use it. And I want to take a look at your wrist.”

I winced and realized that it had been naïve of me to think he would let the injury go just because he couldn’t see it, but all too happily followed him into the house as at the mention of hot food, some that Mariela had no doubt cooked herself, all my appetite problems seemed to fly out the window. We went through the storage and laundry room and into the kitchen and almost immediately, the warmth of the house seeped into bones that I hadn’t even realized were chilled. I could smell something baking in the oven, something with a sweet smell that I suspected was a pie or crisp, and I thought my neglected stomach was going to crawl out of my throat to get to it. Everyone was in the kitchen, Mariela stirring something rich and wonderful smelling in a large pot and Heero looking like a nervous wreck, pacing the floor while his dog watched him. My guilt hit me like a falling anvil as I saw how tired he looked, his hair wild and his face worn, how his nervous hands tugged at his shirt and he rambled something at his mother. I truly saw how he must have been that weekend, wanting to know what was going on with me, but not able to do anything.

“-don’t even know-,” he was saying, but his mother cut him off.

“You’ll find out in a minute, Heero,” she scolded, not unkindly, “just be _patient.”_

Kanuck immediately perked up as Justin and came in and resumed his happy barking, racing over to us and wagging his tail fiercely. Mariela whirled, starting to say something to her husband when she saw me and her eyes went wide. I guess Justin hadn’t told them that he would be doing more than checking up on me, because Heero looked just as shocked to see me there.

“Oh… oh, Duo,” his mother exclaimed in pure relief and happiness and I felt a distant pang realized that they had all been frantic over me, that their hating me had just been in my head, but when my boyfriend’s blue eyes fell on me and I saw the shining love and intense, cathartic relief there, all his worst worries and fears dissipating like smoke, his parents just kind of faded away in the background.

“Oh, thank god,” he breathed and all but ran over to me, throwing his arms around me and hugging me tightly.

“Dammit, Heero, be careful!” his father snapped at him, not knowing exactly where I was injured.

Neither Heero or I cared. I might have if his arms hadn’t been around my upper back and were putting a lot more pressure on my ribs, but as he held me tighter and tighter, I put my good arm around him and hugged him back just as tightly. It felt so good. _He_ felt so good, warm and solid and smelling of sage deodorant. I buried my face in the crook of his shoulder, never wanting to leave his embrace for anything, even breathing, and just melted into him. The trembling of my leg and the throbbing pain of my face and lower body didn’t matter. They were nothing compared to how good just being held by him made me feel, like I had been locked away in sensory deprivation for days. I suppose, in a way, I had.

“I was so worried,” his voice was so tight, it sounded like something was going to snap any second and I worried that he might start crying, “I thought…”

“I know,” I murmured against his shoulder, curling my fingers into his shirt and he responded by nuzzling my neck, not caring one bit about his parents standing there, “I’m fine. I’m so sorry I worried you, but I’m really alright.”

“That remains to be seen,” Justin muttered to himself, making me blush, then to his son, “Be careful of his arm, I think his wrist is sprained.”

Heero regretfully let go of me and I nearly sighed at the loss. He looked at my arm nervously, worried that he had hurt me. It was pretty obvious that it was hurting me with the way that I was holding it. I mean, the stupid thing was so stiff and painful that I could barely move it at that point, but he hadn’t jostled it in his tackle. Mariela didn’t miss a beat, moving in to take Heero’s place, but was a lot more gentle and careful with me as she hugged me. My right arm went around her reflexively.

“Oh, sweetheart, it’s so good to see that you’re ok,” her voice was soothing and warm and her hand on my head almost had me closing my eyes as certain anxieties melted away, “We were all so worried about you.”

“I’m so sorry,” I apologized, my voice tight with emotion, “I’m so, so sorry… I never wanted-,”

“None of that,” she scolded lightly and let go of me so she could pull back and gently cradle my face in her hand on my good side. The motherly smile on her face made my knees feel weak, “You have nothing to apologize for. We’re the ones that should be apologizing to you. That never should have happened to you,” she looked over at Justin for support, but he just looked miserable and her smile turned melancholy, “If we had known…”

I swallowed roughly. For the very first time, I wondered if I had made the right choices that day. I hadn’t been thinking all that clearly, and running out to meet my father, to not involve anyone but myself had seemed like the right decision. What if it hadn’t been? Obviously watching him drag me off had made them feel terrible. Should I have gotten Justin? Let him deal with my father while I hid like a child? That didn’t seem right, either, but I couldn’t stop thinking about those words, ‘if we had known.’ I had taken the choice out of their hands to help me and I’m still not certain that that had been the wrong thing to do. I guess it hinges on what my father would have done if Justin had lied to him or kept him from getting to me.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized again, “I… I didn’t want to bother anyone… I was just so embarrassed that he showed up here, I didn’t know what to do… I didn’t want anyone to see…”

My face flamed and I couldn’t even finish the sentence, couldn’t explain how fucking ashamed I had felt that they had seen my father so out of control, had seen what little I had done, how easily I had just gone with him, what he was really like… but looking at all their faces, I knew I didn’t need to finish. They all knew, I could tell by the mix of anger and sadness in each of them that they understood my embarrassment. I couldn’t tell if they agreed with it, but they knew.

“Oh, sweetheart…” Mariela said, pained, and hugged me again, “It isn’t your fault. We know you were scared, we just wish you had waited.”

I was starting to get really uncomfortable with all this. Not her affection, but her easy forgiveness for all my mistakes and talking about these things. I knew that I needed to talk about it, to explain things, but that didn’t make it any easier to do. Justin cleared his throat, somehow realizing that I was getting a bit overwhelmed and interjected himself into the situation like he always does with such perfection.

          “Let’s go into the living room,” he said to me, “I want to take a look at your wrist before anything else.”

          His wife let go of me, but both she and Heero followed as Justin took me by my good arm and led us into the living room. He sat me down and the whole lot of them frowned with collective worry as I struggled to sit, trying as hard as I could to hide my pain from them and failing miserably. I was just thankful that their couch was so much more comfortable than my own or any of the chairs that I had been sitting in that evening. Not enough to erase the pain, but it was more manageable.

          “How much does your leg hurt?” Mr. Yuy pried while Heero and Mariela looked lost, only knowing about my wrist, “Would it be easier for you to stand?”

          I shook my head.

          “It just aches a little when I sit down,” I lied, not telling him that no matter what I did, everything hurt. Standing killed my leg. Sitting down made my back and ass a horror to deal with. There was just no helping it.

          “Do I need to look at it?” he asked, “Or anywhere else?”

          I shook my head frantically, another lie. I couldn’t help them knowing about the leg and wrist, but everything else I would keep them in the dark about if I could help it. But thinking about it, if I actually managed to get through the night with no one finding out about the rest of it, it would be a miracle. Heero’s father knelt down in front of me while his son and wife kind of hovered in the background. I tried to put them out of my mind, knowing exactly how much Heero was going to freak when he saw my wrist, but it was difficult with that fretful look on his face.

          “Let me see,” Justin urged gently.

          I wanted to ask him to make Mariela and Heero go away. I had spent the last two days doing whatever I could to hide my injuries and my pain. From my mother. From Leneski. From Solo. Worrying endlessly about how I would do the same to Heero and now here he was and his father was making me show it off. I couldn’t deal with the sudden, intense attention to myself, especially between three people instead of just one. But it would have been rude to ask that, so I just sighed in resignation and pulled my sleeve. The living room was well lit and there was just no hiding any of the details of the injury, from how swollen it was, to how black the bruises were, or even the shape of them, let alone how stiff my arm was from the pain, how I could barely move it.

Mariela covered her mouth in shock, tears in her eyes and her reaction alone cemented my resolve to not let any of them see the rest of my wounds. Heero looked furious, like if my father materialized in front of him, he would take a swing or two. Justin’s reaction was the tamest, just a low, sympathetic hiss.

“This must hurt a lot,” he said with a banality that was entirely welcome to me, “Can I…?”

He gestured to my wrist, wanting to examine it further and I nodded.

“Sorry,” he said in advance as he very gently took my wrist in his hand.

“It’s ok,” I murmured, then gritted my teeth as he carefully turned my arm over to look at it from every angle.

I patiently sat through him poking and prodding me, examining the bruises and swelling with a clinical eye that made me think that I might as well have gone to the hospital after all. I saw him note my almost total lack of mobility in that arm and his frown deepened, seeing with his medical background the kind of force and action needed to cause that kind of injury.

“Duo,” he scolded, almost angrily, “you told me that this was a simple sprain.”

“I… I didn’t know what it was,” I said lamely and defensively, even though we both knew that I had been bullshitting him, “It just hurt a lot, but it’s not broken or anything, so I didn’t think anything of it.”

“Well, I don’t _think_ it’s broken,” he confirmed, “but it’s a lot more than a sprain. The muscles in your wrist _are_ sprained, but you might have a fracture in your lunate and scaphoid bones, I can’t be sure of that without an x-ray.”

I blinked at him, having heard those terms enough from previous breaks and biology classes to only know that they were bones in the wrist, but not which ones specifically. Justin sighed.

“This is the part where I ask you to let me take you to the hospital,” he said and if it weren’t for his stressed tone and expression, I would have thought he was teasing me.

I opened my mouth to protest. After getting there, the last thing I wanted was to spend my night in a hospital getting tests. Besides, they would want to look at my leg and that would just lead to other things being discovered.

“And,” he sighed again, this time tiredly, “this is the part where you tell me that you’re perfectly fine and you don’t want to see a doctor.”

I had the grace to blush at least.

“I _am_ fine,” I argued, “It’s not like I can’t move it, it’s just swollen.”

“That’s a hell of a lot more than just swollen!” Heero snapped at me, but his father glared at him and he fell silent again, his gaze at my wrist smoldering.

“Duo, this could be serious, if your wrist is fractured-,”

“It’s not,” I shot back, “I’ve had enough fractures to know what they feel like.”

That was right. I had had enough fractures to know what one feels like, enough to know that he was right, I might have one in my wrist. But a fracture meant, most likely given the placement, surgery, or my wrist getting immobilized while I had to wait for it to heal. What would be the point? If I just didn’t use the dumb thing, it would probably heal on its own and it was my left wrist. Easy enough, right? Or, I could make everyone panic, rush me to the hospital, and probably get authorities involved when the rest of my injuries were discovered. I was willing to take the risk. If I did have a fracture, it was a small one and obviously not serious enough to keep me from being able to move my wrist.

“Please,” I begged him, feeling like a shit for all the times I had done this to him, but I was desperate, “I don’t want to deal with doctors, not tonight. If it doesn’t feel better in a few days, I’ll go, but I’m just too tired, please.”

Justin scrubbed his hand over his face, his concern for me and medical common-sense warring with his desire to make things easier for me.

“If the pain hasn’t lessened at all by Saturday,” he finally decided, his tone a warning, “I’m taking you right to the hospital, understand?”

“Yes, sir,” I nodded, relieved.

“Dad!” Heero protested, but neither of us paid him much attention.

“You’re only getting your way because you look like you’re about to keel over and I want you to have a decent meal and relax,” Justin cautioned me, “But I’m serious, Duo. You need to stop taking so many risks with your health. I want you to know that I’m making this decision under duress and I’m trusting your opinion of your own body, alright?”

I nodded again, a bit more somberly. My boyfriend looked furious, no doubt at me for twisting his father’s arm again, I thought miserably. The last thing I wanted was for him to be mad at me, but what else could I do? He couldn’t find out about what my father had done. Justin stood and ruffled my hair a little, showing, I think, that while he was annoyed, he wasn’t angry at me.

“I’ll get you some ice for that,” he muttered and walked off, curiously towards the bathroom near their bedroom and not the kitchen.

It was stupid, but I almost panicked watching him abandon me, instantly losing the level-headed buffer between myself and my boyfriend. He was just glowering at everything while his mother looked like she didn’t know how to react, her expression a myriad of sadness, worry, anger, and just a general look of upset.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized to my boyfriend.

“Huh?” he blinked at me in confusion, finally coming out of his pissy glaring, “For what?”

“For making you angry… I didn’t mean to,” I whispered, something in my chest hurting.

“You didn’t make me angry,” he exclaimed in shock and, I hurt to see, a bit guiltily.

He sat down next to me, so close that our knees touched, and carefully cradled my left arm in his like it was something precious and fragile.

“I’m just so worried,” he said softly, “I saw how angry your father was when he came here, I saw what he did to you… and you won’t even tell us what happened after. You keep saying that it isn’t a big deal, just that you’re sorry that it happened to _us,_ not to you. But this,” my eyes went wide and my blush deepened as he leaned down and gently kissed one of the bruises on my wrist, “says otherwise,” his eyes found mine and while he still looked angry, I realized that the anger had never been directed at me, but my dad as he brushed his knuckles against the freshest bruise on the side of my head, “and this.”

I stared at him in total amazement. He had realized that this bruise was new, that it wasn’t one of the dozens of others on my face from my dad beating me over losing his money. He, and no one else, had noticed it. I felt… oddly warmed and loved by that, that he was so attentive to me that he could even see something like that, like he had memorized every hurt, every mark on my face. Like they all mattered.

“He did this to you because he forbade you to hang out with me, didn’t he?” he pressed, “That’s why he came to the house to get you. I heard some of the things he said… You weren’t supposed to be here and he punished you for that.”

“I’m sorry,” I apologized for what felt like the tenth time and it still wasn’t enough to touch on how horrible I felt, “I should have told you…”

“Why didn’t you?” Heero demanded.

I looked down at the couch, away from his beautiful, piercing eyes and picked aimlessly at the soft material. God, how could I possibly make him understand how embarrassed I had been since my father had given me that ultimatum? How I couldn’t have burdened him with it?

“I… I was just so ashamed,” I admitted in a small voice.

“Of what?” he kept at me in a slightly softer tone.

“Of _him!_ ” I blurted out, “Do you have any idea of how embarrassing it is… how difficult it was when he told me that I couldn’t be friends with you? Not for any reason, not because he thought you were a bad influence, or for anything that makes sense like a _normal_ dad would. No, he doesn’t want me to be with you because he’s petty and ugly and just my having a friend, being happy and having someone in my life that likes me and enjoys my fucking company grates on him! He’s miserable so everyone else around him has to be just as miserable, and if they aren’t, he has to _make_ them miserable! That’s my father, that’s who I come from! How could I have told you that?”

“So, you lied to me instead,” he summed up, but there was something strange in his expression as he said it. Some sympathetic pain that made his words feel less like an accusation. Still, his mother glared at him, which I didn’t understand. He had every right to be angry with me over my choices and that he wasn’t baffled me.

“I lied to you,” I swallowed around this hysteric, choking thing in my throat, “I didn’t want to, but… I lied because it was easier than admitting anything that was really going on.”

And still was. Always would be. A disgusting liar, that’s all that I would ever be to him, whether he realized it or not. I think, with that thought in my head, with realizing how much I was dragging him down, what a loathsome person I really was, if I had been in better shape, I might have fled that house, unable to face it. But I could barely move and there was still so much I needed to say to him. To all of them. To my shock, instead of yelling at me for finally admitting to lying to him all that time, he just looked guilty and shook his head.

“This is my fault, isn’t it?” he murmured and when our eyes met again, his were hot and dark and full of anger again, almost making me flinch from him, “All this time… every time you showed up with a new injury… it was because of this, wasn’t it? Because he knew you had been with me and he punished you for it!”

I didn’t bother denying it. I’m sure he could see everything clearly at that point. The bruises. Why I was always rushing off to go home and so hesitant to stay over. My silence only made that dark thing in his eyes deepen.

“And I only made it worse,” he spat out and I realized that his rage wasn’t at me, but himself, which was about a thousand times worse, “Every time I pushed you into staying over… begged and pleaded with you… This was all my fault, I made him hurt you!”

“That isn’t true!” I protested, horrified that he thought that, “I made the choice, _me,_ you never twisted my arm about any of it!”

“Didn’t I?” he snapped bitterly, “I didn’t exactly make things easy for you, did I? Whining at you all the time. If our roles had been reversed, I wouldn’t have been able to say no to you, either. You tried so hard to listen to your father and I drove you into a corner!”

“No!” I grabbed his arm, squeezing until I was sure he was paying full attention to me and not the thoughts in his head, “No, Heero, please, listen to me! This was not your fault, it was mine, all mine. I didn’t get beaten because of you. This,” I lifted my left arm and tried to clench my fingers into a fist, but the pain just made my hand shake violently, “This is _my_ fault! I got beaten because I couldn’t do what I was told. You didn’t even know what was going on. I know that if you did, you wouldn’t have pressured me, and even so, you never pushed me very hard. I wanted to be here… so badly… I just kept putting my dad’s threats out of my head because I didn’t want to follow them. I put myself and you in danger because I was selfish! I never thought he would come here, but that’s no excuse for what I did.

“I lied to you and I lied to him and I just pretended like everything was ok when it wasn’t because I knew that if I told you the truth, you would make me listen to my father so I wouldn’t get hurt, and I knew that if I did listen to him, I would almost never see you. All those weekends together… they would be gone… so I made a shitty decision and look what came of it,” I said bitterly, “I never wanted to make you feel like this. I never wanted you to see… to see how crazy he is, and how helpless I am… I can’t even stand up to him and tell him the way things are. Instead, I just lied about everything and the end result is the same anyway. I’m not even supposed to be here _now_ , nothing has fucking changed!”

I was crying again, I realized, but I just didn’t care anymore, not even when Heero wiped them away with his hand. He wrapped his arm around me and laid my head down on his shoulder, just letting me cry it out. Whoever said that telling the truth could be cathartic was full of shit. This didn’t feel cathartic. It felt worse than lying had. At least then, no one had worried about me and understood how fucked up my relationship with my father was.

“You should have told us, Duo,” Justin’s soft voice coming from the kitchen doorway made me jump and Heero made an annoyed sound as I was suddenly out of his arms. I hadn’t even seen his father when he had gone into the kitchen to get the ice pack, telling me how far gone I was, “We could have helped you.”

“No one can help,” I murmured, avoiding looking at him.

“You don’t know that,” he scolded me, “You don’t know what can happen if you don’t try.”

I chuckled darkly and lifted up my busted wrist.

“Yeah? Well, this is what I get for trying,” I muttered, “If I had just listened in the first place, none of this would have happened.”

“No, kiddo,” Justin said kindly and when I looked over at him, he had that damnable, accepting smile on his face again, “that’s what you get when you have a father who is petty, selfish, and doesn’t care who he hurts. I’m glad that you didn’t listen to him,” he continued, ignoring my surprised gape, “I’m glad you didn’t let him push you around. I wish that you hadn’t gotten hurt for it, and I wish that you had just come to us with this in the first place instead of lied about it, but that doesn’t mean you should have let him do that to you. It wasn’t fair to demand that of you and I don’t see how he could have suspected you would have done as he ordered. You’re best friends and you go to the same school, not hanging out with each other would be unreasonable at least.

“None of us care that he came here or how crazy he acted. You’ve warned us many times what he’s like. What we care about is what he did to you, how he scared you and hurt you and tried to take something so important away from you for petty reasons. It isn’t your fault, and I’ll keep saying that until you believe me, but none of this was your fault, it was your father’s. If there’s any other person here at fault for what happened, it’s me for not being able to protect you. We all know how sorry you are, how you blame yourself and how embarrassed you are, but you don’t need to be. The only person who should be embarrassed and apologizing is your father, but to you, not to us.”

He walked to Mariela before I could say anything and whispered something in her ear. She smiled at him and nodded, then bustled away into the kitchen. His next stop was to me and Heero moved to my right side so his dad could sit on my left and put my injured wrist in his lap. I saw that he hadn’t just brought out an ice pack but a sling as well, probably why he had gone down the hall in the first place.

“If any of that’s true,” I choked out, “then why do I feel like it’s all my fault?”

“Because you have an over-inflated sense of guilt over every little thing,” he responded dryly, “and because you’re a good person. I keep telling you that, but it hasn’t seemed to sunk in yet. I know you care for Heero a lot and I know it hurt you to have him see that scene Saturday, and I know you feel responsible for your father’s actions, but you’re being ridiculous, Duo. We aren’t upset with you and we certainly aren’t ashamed of you. Now here, hold this, I want to get this on you,” he handed me the ice pack so he could fuss with the sling.

“It really doesn’t need a sling,” I said shyly, if only so I didn’t have to address anything he had just said.

I’m not stupid, I knew he made sense. And maybe he was right about the over-inflated guilt thing. Hadn’t Heero said basically the same thing before about my father being responsible for my injuries and not myself? I knew they were right. Maybe I had made things worse by lying to them and my father. Maybe I shouldn’t have ignored it like I had like it would just solve itself if I didn’t look at it. But I hadn’t asked for any of this. All I had wanted was to be with Heero. Such a simple thing. If my father was anyone else, it would have been. I was just having such a difficult time coping with the fact that no one blamed me for this. Because I still felt so guilty? Or simply because I’ve dealt with my father so long and, according to him, everything bad that happened was my fault in one way or the other. Maybe they were wrong and these feelings were right. I didn’t know what to believe anymore, if I was just bringing myself down or if I really was the terrible person I felt that I was.

“Even if it is just a sprain, you need to keep it elevated,” he pointed out, “and if it’s in a sling, you won’t be able to use it and make it worse.”

I let him put the sling around me and move my arm into it, not that I had been planning not to in the first place. I was quickly moving past the ability to protest anything anymore, just wanting to go with the flow because anything else was too exhausting. I winced and gritted my teeth to stop the whimper from escaping when Justin jostled my arm a bit too much, but they noticed anyway and he slowed down, being gentler. Heero looked more and more awful as he saw the pain that I was in, which only confirmed my choice not tell them about the rest of it. My leg alone would probably send him into a full-blown fit. He found my right hand and held it in his the way that he couldn’t do with my other without hurting me.

“Duo…” he began cautiously, knowing, I think, exactly how I was going to react to what he was about to say, “I know you don’t want to talk about it, and I know we’ve asked over a dozen times now, but please, _please,_ you have to speak out against your father. This is crazy and it’s only getting worse!”

I was already shaking my head, but he continued on.

“He scared the shit out of you the other day, don’t bother trying to deny that,” he argued, “He’s unhinged and dangerous and you can’t keep living with someone like that and ignoring it and expect anything to get better! It’s only getting worse, you’ve said so yourself, and you can’t keep going on like this! Just look what he did to you in the last few days. Look at your face and your arm! He tried to break your goddamned arm, all because you didn’t want to listen to his insane orders! And don’t you dare tell me that everything would have been fine if you had just listened to him because first of all, you shouldn’t have to be forced to listen to him because you’re terrified for your life, and second of all, you know full well he would have eventually hurt you again anyway. How many times has he beat you for no reason at all? Or for something you didn’t have any control over? How many times have you told me that an injury was from him being in a mood or taking out something on you? How can you not see how frightening that is? I know you care about him, but we care about you! He doesn’t deserve your protection, but you deserve ours. Let us help you!”

“Heero is right on all counts,” Justin added as he rested the ice pack against my throbbing wrist, the sling helping keep it where he wanted, “We care about you very much and we hate seeing you like this. It’s gone on far enough, Duo. I know you don’t want to get the police involved, but this can’t go on like this. Something needs to break and we don’t want that thing to be you.”

My stomach sinking to my knees at their united front, I looked away from both of them. I knew the truth of everything that they were saying. I knew how irresponsible I had been… for so many years. Looking the other way as my father deteriorated into this monster. Letting him beat on my mother. Ignoring his drinking and his rage when I knew I needed to do something about it. But what that something was terrified me as much as he did. I shook my head again.

“I can’t…” I whispered, my voice full of pain and the fear that I felt in my chest that, at this point, they might go behind my back and make this choice for me anyway, “I love him. I know that’s stupid after everything he’s done, but he’s my dad and I still love him, despite everything. I know he’s an asshole. I know what he does is wrong and I know this needs to stop… but how can I do that to him? He… he wasn’t always this bad and if I send him to jail… I’ll destroy his entire life! How can I do that to him? To someone that I care about? Even if I didn’t love him, financially, my mother and I are barely hanging on by a thread, we depend on him too much, how would we get by without him?” I pulled my hand from Heero’s to wring the bottom of my shirt anxiously, not wanting to risk hurting him with how hard I had been clutching at him, “You’re… you’re asking me to tear my family apart.”

Heero looked like I had just stabbed him in the gut while his father looked grim.

“I’m asking you to protect yourself,” Justin said softly, “and your mother. I know it’s difficult and painful, but I’m asking you to save yourself, even if it means hurting your father. He’s hurt you so many times, maybe it’s time to put your own needs and feelings before him.”

“I can’t…” I repeated and shook my head again, “Please, don’t ask me to do this to him…”

I hated myself so much for saying it, for asking them to turn a blind eye to this again. I remembered what Justin had said to me in the car, about not asking him to do this very thing, to turn his back when I was getting hurt, and there I was, doing it anyway. Hurting not just him, but Heero and even Mariela, making them do things that went against everything they thought was right and just. Making them accessories to the abuse. Could a person get as low as I had? Could anyone be more disgusting than me to do this to the best people I had ever met?

My shame swallowed me whole. Shame for my broken, mangled family that Heero and his family never should have had to see or bother with. Shame for always burdening them with all my problems, simply because I was too weak and fumbling to handle them myself. Shame that Heero saw first hand what my father really thinks of me and how he treats me, like a doll that was his to own simply because he had helped bring me into the world. Shame that I couldn’t even do the right thing like they could, shame for being a bad and pathetic person because I didn’t have the strength to stand up to my father like they were asking me and just hurting the ones that didn’t deserve it to protect the one I didn’t, all for my selfish feelings.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“Now what are you apologizing for?” Justin chuckled.

“Disappointing you,” I managed to get out through a throat lined with razor blades.

He pulled away to look me in the eye, startled.

“Duo… you could never disappoint me. Not ever,” he said, taking me by the shoulders, blue eyes searching my face frantically for something.

Tears filled my eyes. They were the exact words that I had craved to hear from my father since I had been old enough to want anything. Words spoken by a man that wasn’t even family. Words that I would never hear from my dad, not _ever,_ no matter how much I wanted them, because I do disappoint my father. I’ve disappointed him every day for my entire life and he isn’t exactly one to lie to spare my feelings. He’s never been shy with the naked truth. But as wonderful as those words made me feel, there was a hollow quality to them. Hollow, because they weren’t for me, not really.

For a long time now, I’ve felt this… split in myself. Like there are two me’s, one that exists when I’m with Heero. One that belongs in his home and in his life and every time I’m around him, even at school, it’s that person who smiles at him and kisses him and hugs his mother and plays with his dog. But the rest of the time, I’m _me_ , the person I’ve been for as long as I can remember. The wretched, disgusting person who lets his father fuck him, is a veritable punching bag, and feels nothing but loneliness and anger and grief. A person that I try to erase as soon as I’m with Heero, bury as deeply as I can in a locked box. Only that’s a lie, isn’t it? That other person that I created when I became friends with ‘Ro… he isn’t real. I know that. I know he’s just a made-up character in my head, a mask I slip on because I can’t bear the thought of Heero seeing the real me. But I want him to be real. I want to _be_ him, all the time.

That Duo is a better person. That Duo is truly loved and has the life that I’ve coveted for the entirety of mine. He has a family and a boyfriend and something outside of the gray murk I’ve lived in for so long. He’s better than me, stronger, and capable of such more than I ever have been on my own. He told Heero that he loves him. He joined the track team. He gets better grades and was able to finally let Quatre go, as much as something like that is possible. But it’s all an illusion. This person sitting on the Yuy’s couch as his boyfriend and boyfriend’s father hovered and fussed over him like he was someone important wasn’t real. The person they cared about was fiction and soon, I’ll go back to always being the weak coward that I’ve been since I was a child. It’s only inevitable. Masks can hide you from the world, but eventually, they crack and fall away. If there is any kindness in the world, I’ll be far away from Heero when that finally does happen.

I just had to keep reminding myself that all this was temporary, but my father wasn’t. He was the one constant in my life, good or bad, so even if I didn’t love him, even if I didn’t rely on him, and even if I wasn’t a yellow-bellied coward, how could I get him arrested? He and my mother were all that I had in the world, and they would be as soon as I broke up with Heero. I had to hang on to what little I had, because I’m all too aware of how easy it is to lose the things that matter.

“Hey,” Justin soothed, brushing my bangs out of my eyes, exposing my tears in a way that made me feel a little too vulnerable, scared of him judging me for crying even though I knew he never would, “We’ll think of a way to fix this, ok? I promise you, Duo, you aren’t going to lose your weekends here and you won’t lose what little time you can spend with Heero. I’ll find a way to get through to your dad, alright? We’ll get through this.”

I nodded numbly, but I didn’t believe him. Sure, I believed that he would try all that he could, but what could he even do? My father was more stubborn than a mule and an ox put together. Gun to his face, he would still not budge an inch, just for pettiness’ sake, just so he wouldn’t have to surrender to anything. What could Justin’s kindness and good intentions possibly do besides make my father even more pissy and unreasonable? It was hopeless and all this was was a small reprieve, a momentary lapse of my judgement, but I knew that the next day, things would go back to the way that my father wanted it. I didn’t have any other choice.

“Is this comfortable for you?” Justin suddenly asked me, drawing me out of my depressed stupor and with the worried, pinched look on his face, I think it was on purpose and he had seen something on my own face that had bothered him.

I nodded, trying to move my arm, but he had done a good job in mobilizing it.

“It feels better,” I had to admit.

“Good,” he gently patted a spot on my arm that wasn’t bruised, of which there weren’t many, and frowned again, “You feel like ice. Why don’t you take a hot shower before dinner?”

I perked up at ‘shower.’ The possibility of one hadn’t even entered my head with all the other things that I had been thinking about, but it sounded heavenly. I hadn’t had one since Saturday morning and I was nearly salivating at the thought of getting some hot water on my aching muscles.

“That sounds good,” I admitted and he smiled, a bit relieved, I think, at being able to offer me something that would make me feel better.

Heero helped me off the couch, hovering when he saw my grimace of pain and how much I was favoring my left leg, but he didn’t ask. I think he got that I was a bit overwhelmed by everything and I needed a little bit of space to wrap my head around things.

“And you,” his father pointed at him, “can help your mother in the kitchen.”

I expected my boyfriend to protest, his instincts were to stick by me, but he just gave his father a little salute, kissed my cheek, and vanished. I wasn’t so stupid as to believe that he had been sent off just to help Mariela with a dinner that had looked mostly finished when we had come in.

“Do you need any help getting upstairs?” Justin asked me, homing in on how hunched I was and how much weight I was putting solely on my right leg, “If your leg is bothering you too much, you can use our shower.”

“I’m alright,” I assured him, “It’s just a bit stiff.”

“Alright,” he conceded, very hesitantly, but backed off and let me limp to the steps even as he winced watching me.

He discreetly disappeared into the kitchen after Heero, though I could tell that he had the same instincts as my best friend, but he also knew when it would just make me defensive and when I needed to do things for myself. I was pretty sure I didn’t need the help anyway. I was hurting badly, but the stairs were less steep than the ones that led into my attic bedroom, and the handrail was an actual banister, not just nailed clumsily into the wall like ours. If my leg didn’t want to do the work, it would be an easy thing to use the rail to haul me up and I didn’t have to worry about it coming loose.

To my surprise, instead of trailing after Heero into the kitchen like he normally would, Kanuck followed at my side as I limped and struggled and pulled myself up the stairs. I stopped to stare down at him, trying to figure out why he was following _me_ of all people, but he just looked at me patiently, like he was urging me to keep going. Even after knowing him for so many months, I have no clue how his or any other dog’s mind works. Sometimes his thought processes seemed so simple: food, play, pure blinding joy when he saw someone he liked. And then there were times like these that his behavior just baffled me. Was he suddenly attached to my hip because he was just curious? Because he knew that I was hurt and remembered the other night when he had helped lead me up the stairs?

Or was he worried about me after what had happened Saturday evening? I wouldn’t have thought that was in his scope of understanding, but ever since I had come back, he had been glued to my side. I had thought that he had just missed me since he does that sometimes if he hasn’t seen me in a few days, but now that I thought about him sitting by my side as Justin had examined my arm, I realized that he had looked an awful lot like he had been guarding me or something. And I remembered how he had reacted that evening, how Heero had had to grab his collar as he had barked his head off at my father, lunging and trying to get to us. Had the dumb dog realized the threat and had been trying to save me?

It didn’t seem possible, given how overly friendly and socialized he was. In fact, I can’t recall another time that he had barked like that at _anyone_. Hell, he doesn’t even bark when the mail man shows up! He’s always so mellow and laid back, the picture of a dog that’s been spoiled and pampered all his life and has never had anything to worry about but where his owner was going when he left the house and when he would be back. The thought that he had been trying to protect me, and might have even attacked my dad had Heero let him, made me feel both warmed and scared for the dopey animal. I quirked an eyebrow at him, but he just wagged his tail slightly at me.

“Silly thing,” I muttered, but petted his head to show my appreciation, if for no other reason than, if I did fall on the stairs, he was big enough that he could help me back up. I did falter once, my left leg buckling under me a little more than halfway up the steps as it decided that it was sick of my shit and didn’t want to work anymore, but between the death grip I had on the railing and Kanuck somehow sensing what was about to happen and shoving himself against the back of my legs for support, I managed to stay upright. But by the time I got up the stairs, the pain was horrible and I was sweating and panting, my vision wavering.

“Oh, god, I cannot do this,” I muttered to myself as I breathed heavily, trembling hard as I leaned against the wall to get my breath back. Just a single trip up a small flight of stairs and it felt like I had a run a marathon and then had gotten hit by a car.

Kanuck looked up at me quizzically, but patiently sat there as I tried to will my shaking limbs to move before Justin or Heero came to check on me. I didn’t think I could explain this away on a pulled muscle. Pepper ran out of the game room to greet me and twined around my legs, quickly becoming miffed when I didn’t give her my usual greeting of picking her up and nuzzling her or even petting her.

“Sorry, girl,” I rasped when she meowed at me pitifully, “but bending down right now is not happening.”

I was pretty sure that if I tried, I really was going to fall over, so I ignored how much I wanted to hold her and my procession of animals, limping along at a snail’s pace to the guest room to grab a clean set of pajamas because at the rate that I was deteriorating, there was no way in hell I was going to be able to change my clothes twice that night. The loose pants would feel better anyway. I escaped into the bathroom and Kanuck gave further credence to my guard dog theory as he plunked down outside the bathroom instead of going to rejoin Heero. Pepper looked severely put out when I closed the door on her, meowing loudly and it tore at my heart to ignore her, but I didn’t think she would appreciate being cooped up in the bathroom.

I flicked on the light and winced as I caught my reflection. It was no wonder why they were all so worried about me, I looked like completely and total shit. My complexion was paler than normal, almost waxy, and made a thousand times worse by the patchwork of rainbow bruises, each seeming a different shade of black, blue, purple, yellow, and brown. At least most of the swelling had gone down, at least on my face. I slipped off the sling to put on later and peeled off my shirt, the easiest part of the task, and it only got worse from there. The older bruises made me look like a train wreck, the newest ones around my swollen wrist only completing the look, but the fading ones on my arms and shoulders weren’t great, either.

Before I went any further, I peeled off the bandage on my shoulder. The gash there still was still tender and there were some fresh spots of blood on the bandage, but still no pus. I poked carefully at my ribs again, just to be more thorough and make sure they were ok. They were tender and hurt when I put pressure on them, but otherwise weren’t too terrible. Now came the difficult part. With a grimace, I tugged down my pants and underwear, struggling to get them down over my swollen thigh and hissing in pain when I succeeded in aggravating the hematomas in my leg and ass. But I plowed forward, grabbing onto the edge of the counter and lifting my left leg out of my clothes, kicking them away with my right. The whole thing had me shuddering for a moment, but the sharper pains soon dulled into a throb that was more bearable.

I knew what a bad idea it was from the last time that I had done it, but I couldn’t stop myself from turning and looking at my backside in the mirror. It… was decidedly not a pretty sight. The swelling had actually gotten worse, probably from my sitting for a good chunk of the evening, and my skin there was searing hot to the touch. It looked just as much as a piece of raw, beaten liver as it had the last time I looked, with the exception of some of the lighter bruises which were starting to fade a little, but not enough for my liking. The back of my thigh was just as bad and I was intensely glad that Justin hadn’t seen any of it. I pulled off the bandage on my ass and found that it had significantly less blood on it than last time. The wound didn’t look as bad as the one on my shoulder, just slow to heal, but it wasn’t getting infected, either.

I inched to the shower and turned on the hot water, letting the steam build up and relax me before stepping in. At first, I hissed as the hot water hit my wounds, but it didn’t take long for that hiss to turn into a contented groan as the heat began to seep into me. I felt like I hadn’t felt warm at all in days and it was kind of like a really bad cramp letting go. Muscles that had been tensed for far too long relaxed and I unfolded, letting my arms dangle and tilting my head back to let the searing hot water do its job. It’s amazing how such a little thing like a hot shower can erase little aches and pains you hadn’t even realized you had. For a sinfully long time, I just breathed in steam and let the water soak my hair and tired body. By the time I even thought that maybe I should be washing myself and not just standing there, I was so relaxed and happy that I think if I hadn’t been promised a hot meal, I would have just fallen asleep. I didn’t even think about my father’s ultimatum about showering. If I had, I wouldn’t have given a flying fuck.

I washed as much as I could, grateful that neither of my arms was injured enough to impair me even if raising them made them ache a bit. I didn’t see the point in being gentle since I was already drowning in various pains, so I scrubbed days’ worth of sweat and grime and blood off me. Having to wash my ass and thigh nearly did me in, but the soap dish was at a very convenient height to grab in case my leg failed me again and I actually did feel a lot better after, even with the pain. It was probably purely psychological, but after scrubbing myself down and washing my hair, I felt a lot less disgusting and even my injuries felt… I don’t know, lesser somehow.

I cut the shower short by a little bit more than I wanted so I didn’t keep everyone from eating. It was late and I was sure they were all hungry. I was really not looking forward to sitting in a stiff, kitchen chair, but it was better than standing with my wobbly leg and I was too hungry myself to care anymore about being careful or catering to my injuries. I dried and dressed quickly, put my arm back in the sling, and combed my hair, realizing at the last minute that I couldn’t put it back up. My wrist had only gotten worse since the last time I had fussed with my hair. If I put a lot of effort into it, I probably could put it up in a really messy ponytail one handed, but I realized I didn’t care. The only person I minded seeing it down had seen it a bunch of times before anyway. I took some more pain pills, idlily wondering what the constant pill popping might be doing to my liver, and left the bathroom, nearly walking right into Heero as he was leaving his bedroom.

“Hey,” he beamed at me, “Dinner’s ready. You hungry?”

“Starving,” I confessed.

“Good, because we have a ton of food,” he chuckled, “Oh, and I have your assignments for today if you want to get them done after dinner.”

I breathed in relief, touched that he had thought to collect my assignments for me.

“You’re a life saver,” I said and he chuckled.

“I just figured you’d feel better if you got to do them tonight. Now you won’t be clueless tomorrow or feel overwhelmed to have so much work to do when you aren’t feeling well,” he told me.

As he turned to approach the stairs, I snagged his sleeve, giving it a little tug and stopping him.

“Heero…” I swallowed roughly, my love for him and how thoughtful and perfect he was attacked by my guilt for everything that I had put him through, “I’m so sorry about what happened Saturday…”

“You don’t need to apologize,” he cut me off in alarm, “My dad already told you that. You didn’t do anything wrong. Well… lying and keeping all this from us wasn’t the brightest move, but I understand why you did it. I’m not mad at you, I was just scared.”

“But that’s why I’m sorry,” I whispered, “You were scared and it’s all my fault. I never wanted you to see… any of that.”

Didn’t want you to see what my dad is really like. Didn’t want you to see me so scared, so helpless, like an animal. Just like before, when you saved me from Zechs and the rest of them…

“Yeah, I was scared,” he said sadly, “Nothing had even happened to me and I was scared, so I can’t even imagine how you must have felt. How you always feel around him… that’s what really scared me. Not him, not that it was happening here, but that you were the one that had to deal with it. And I couldn’t even do a thing to stop it! All this time, I’ve been begging you to tell on your father and thinking that I could do something to help you, but that’s not true, is it? I can’t do anything.”

He sounded so utterly miserable, making that dagger of guilt sink deeper and deeper. I grabbed his arm, making him look at me and I drowned in his despaired, cerulean eyes.

“It isn’t like that,” I protested, “You do help me. All the time, you help me, Heero. There was nothing you could do this time, none of you. And you _did_ help. You got your father, that was the responsible thing. If you had run out to try to stop my dad, he just would have hurt you and things would have ended the same anyway. I never wanted you to feel badly about that! I never…” I looked away from him this time, trying to hide the tears burning my eyes and wishing that I could talk about these things for once without crying being involved, “I never wanted to burden you with this shit…”

Heero was having none of it, gently sliding his fingers under my chin and lifting my head until I had no choice but to look him in the eye.

“You have never burdened me with _anything_ ,” he said with conviction, making my heart beat a little faster, “You never could, especially not with this. I saw for the first time what you’ve really been living with, how hard things have been for you. I didn’t think any less of you for it, it only made me realize how amazing and strong you are.”

While I was too busy staring at him like he had grown a second head at those words, he leaned in and kissed me. From the desperate way he did it, I realized how much he had been wanting to do it since I had stepped foot in his kitchen, but he had held back in front of his parents. Through that kiss, I felt the truth of his words, that he really did think I was strong and amazing. Even though I knew it was a lie, my heart felt this feverish warmth and desire for him, just knowing that he could feel anything like that for me. He didn’t understand, but… he still loved me. I knew it was irresponsible and selfish, but I needed that too badly and it was too easy to push aside all my doubts in that moment. If I thought for a second that this might be the last night I would have with him there like that… I think it would have broken my heart.

“I love you,” he said when we parted and rested his forehead against mine, “Your father being a crazy, sadistic prick will never change that. My dad will figure out something, just like he said. In the meantime, you must be exhausted. Let’s eat and I’ll help you with your homework so you can go to bed on time for once.”

I smiled at him, a bit astonished that I could after everything, but he just pulled it out of me like he always does.

“Thank you, Heero,” I said softly.

His own smile grew and he gave my a hand a little squeeze of encouragement. I was just glad that I had done something to get rid of that miserable, guilty look in his eyes.

“Want me to put your hair up before we eat?” he asked me as we walked to the stairs.

I nodded gratefully and turned for him to fuss with my hair, hiding a little shiver of pleasure as I felt his fingers comb through the strands lightly, braiding them loosely. His small task done, he took the stairs in front of me, which saved me from having to pretend everything was fine as I did my slow, careful shuffle down. The smells coming from the kitchen were intoxicating. Bread, garlic, cheese, and, I realized with surprise, the same rich smell of the sauce that Mariela had made Saturday. I didn’t know what to make of that, but I felt so utterly happy that I hadn’t missed out on it after all, for whatever reason. I didn’t know which got to me more, that she had saved some for me or that she had made a new batch, no doubt because she had felt bad I hadn’t gotten to eat any of it before.

I wanted to seek her out and tell her how amazing she was and how much I appreciated this, just her cooking anything for me, let alone this gesture, but we were both stopped short as we got to the landing by hushed, raised voices of his parents arguing and trying not to be heard. I thought about sneaking away discretely so we wouldn’t eavesdrop, knowing they were fighting making my gut clench, but then I heard Heero’s mother say my name and, like a magnet was pulling me, I walked numbly towards the kitchen doorway.

“-and I don’t care about what he _thinks_ he wants!” she was hissing at Justin, “I want him away from that… that _man,”_ she snapped out the word like it was the foulest curse, “I don’t care what it takes or how hard we need to fight, we need to do something, Justin!”

“I know how you feel on the subject,” he tried to calm her, “but like I said-,”

“I know what you said!” she snapped, “And it’s bullshit!”

I blinked at the wall, astonished because I think I can count the number of times I’ve heard the woman say any swear on one hand.

“It’s _shit_ ,” she repeated and the tears that I could hear in her voice made it hard to breathe, “How can you stand there and tell me that we can’t do anything because of… because of some stupid _legality_ when that boy is hurting? When he has to go home to that every day and we can do something to help him?! Don’t you care?! Don’t you want to make things better for him?! Don’t you want to make sure that he never comes through our door again with a limp or a black eye or a broken bone?!”

“Don’t you dare accuse me of not caring about him,” Justin said in this low, but frightening tone that completely silenced her, “Don’t you _dare.”_

The raw emotion in his voice was even more shocking than Mariela swearing and yelling. It shook me to the core of my being, hearing the two of them fighting over _me_ , hearing how much they cared, how much I had turned their lives upside down.

“Do you think that I enjoyed letting that bastard haul him off like a piece of property?” he shot back at her, “Do you think it’s fun for me to see him in pain and let him go back home to that? Do you think I let it go on because I think it’s funny and it doesn’t bother me? That I don’t stay up at night because I can’t sleep because I’m scared we might get another phone call one day like last time? Do you really think I’m that cold and detached and uncaring because I won’t raise a stink over it?”

“…No,” Mariela said softly after a moment, her voice full of pain and sadness and guilt, “No, I don’t think that of you at all. I’m so sorry, I just…”

“I know,” Justin replied, his own voice calmer and forgiving, “I know you didn’t mean it like that, but Mari’, this is all I can do. If I go to the cops behind Duo’s back without real proof, he isn’t going to go along with it, and if I put him in that spot, if I force him to choose between me or his father, I’ll lose all his trust. You get that, don’t you? I can’t do that to him. And I would be painting a bullseye on his back. You know full well that if we get his father in trouble, he’ll be the one to suffer for it. Not us, not his father, only Duo. That’s what you’re asking me to do, because all the evidence I have is what I know, not what I’ve seen. All I’ve seen is a father who is a bit strict come to pick up his son. That’s _all._ Unless Duo backed me up and testified against his father, which he won’t, something like that wouldn’t even see the inside of a courtroom. Without an actual witness, we have nothing to go on. And you’re right, it’s a stupid, fucked-up legality, knowing that he’s being abused and we can’t even say anything, but it’s the law. This is how it works and it’s shit and I hate it, but what do you want me to do? Kidnap him? Frame his father? Break his trust or scare him away?”

“I have to do something,” she cried and I felt this sharp pain in my chest, “I have to do something, Justin, because I can’t just stand here and see that poor, sweet boy so miserable and just do nothing!”

“I know,” he repeated, “but what would you have us do? We aren’t responsible for him. We aren’t his parents-,”

“Well, we should be!” she cried out.

Her words rang out like a gunshot. Or maybe they only did in my head. That’s exactly what they felt like. A gun shot like a clap of thunder, then a bullet piercing my heart. Everything else but those words, Heero, where I was, the pleasant smells from the kitchen, anything else Justin and Mariela said after that, faded away around me. Distantly, I felt the tears in my eyes. Distantly, I felt myself trembling. Distantly, I felt the wall against my back as I slid down it onto the floor, and the terrible pain that it caused me, but compared to my shock and whatever emotion had just seized me, I was numb to all these things. Those three little words replayed again and again in my heart, as dangerous and as wonderful and as bitter as ‘I love you’. I suppose, in a way, although that’s not what she had said, that’s exactly what she meant. I love you. I love you and I wish you were ours. I love you and if you had been ours, we would take care of you. We would never hurt you. We would never make you feel like shit or put you in danger or steal away the bits of your soul, piece by piece. We would be better and we could keep you safe, if only the fates had been kinder.

I crumpled into a ball, hiding my face in my hand, but it did nothing to stop the sobs that burst out of me or the hot rush of tears. ‘We should be’ ripped through me again and again, and I couldn’t even decide if it was a good hurt or not. In my head, I saw myself living there. Eating home-cooked meals with them, doing housework and yard work, bickering with Heero over stupid things like paint colors and homework assignments. I saw Justin ruffling my hair with a proud smile when I got a good grade or did well in track. I saw Mariela and I cooking together. I saw them hugging me when I was upset or just because it was something they did to showed that they cared. I saw everything that I had ever wanted as a child, but had been stolen from me.

I saw a family that loved me, that supported each other, that never screamed and hit and swore and threw things at each other just because they were having a bad day. Parents that only drank a couple glasses of wine if the meal called for it. Parents that never thought you were useless or wished that you had never been born. And I realized that all these things I had now, in a way. We did all these things together, but in stolen moments. It was like peeking into a life that you could have had, getting a taste of it, only to be reminded that it wasn’t really yours. It would never be yours. Hearing Mariela say that I should be theirs, it was wonderful and beautiful and it made me feel so… cherished by them. But it only reminded me of the bitter truth. As much as I wished for it, I wasn’t theirs. These people were not my family. And they never would be. I knew where I belonged. I didn’t want to. The knowledge of what my own family was just then almost broke me, but it was the truth. My heart twisted, but my head screamed that bitter fact at it almost sadistically. They wanted to help, but they couldn’t. It wasn’t their place to and the two people whose place it was to help me either only wanted to hurt me, or was too terrified to. They weren’t mine. And I wasn’t theirs.

And simmering under all that longing and bitterness was that Justin had just confirmed for me that all this was on my shoulders. They said they could help, but we both knew the truth that no one could really help me, not without me making the first move, something that I’ve been unable to do my entire life. And even if I did, there were no guarantees. Even if I sacrificed everything, it didn’t mean that this would stop, only that it, as Justin had said, would paint a bullseye on my back. There was no point in doing anything. I always lose and I always fail and I always let everyone down, so what was the point of doing anything at all? It wasn’t like it mattered. It wasn’t like I mattered. I wasn’t strong enough to do the right thing to begin with, and I wasn’t worth all this hassle, all these hurt feelings and worry.

          I felt Heero sink to the floor and gather me into his arms. I didn’t fight him, but just let it happen because I didn’t have the strength and because I needed him too much. I didn’t need to explain to him why I was so upset, with the tight way he was holding me, while still somehow managing not to hurt my arm, being a lot more careful with it than I was, and how his fingers sunk into my hair, I knew he got which part that we had just overheard had gotten to me the most. His embrace kept me whole, kept me from shattering and losing what little control over myself that I still possessed, but at the same time, his arms around me ripped me apart more and more. It just pulled me away from my own hurts and brought the rest of that overheard conversation to light.

          “ _Do you think I let it go on because I think it’s funny and it doesn’t bother me? That I don’t stay up at night because I can’t sleep because I’m scared we might get another phone call one day like last time?”_      Initially when Justin had said that, I had been confused, but it had only lasted for a second before I realized he was talking about finding out that Wufei had been killed, that terrible phone call that had sparked so much of Heero’s pain. That it plagued on his parents’ fears as well had never occurred to me, that they were both terrified that one day, they would get another phone call like that. Only this time, it would be about me. Or maybe even their own son if the bullying got too far. Another mark of guilt on my conscience, that Heero was even in _any_ situation that would bring that nightmare back to them because of me, because he had pissed off the wrong people. Because he had made himself a social outcast, all because I had reached for something that wasn’t mine to take.

          How many nights had Heero himself stayed awake, frightened of that very same phone call? Petrified that he couldn’t protect me any more than he had been able to protect his other best friend? How much heart ache and nightmares have I given him? How much pain had I put him through? And I just kept doing it to him… to his entire family. But there I was, letting him comfort me when he was the one that needed comforting because I’m a disgusting leech. Always taking, never caring about who I hurt. I even buried myself further in his arms, soaking up his heat and his love for me, wanting so much. I claim that I love him, but I still do these things to him. I still treat him as a fucking crutch. I heard the sound of pounding feet rushing out of the kitchen, probably at the sound of my crying, but even though I felt mortified, the tears wouldn’t stop. I rested my face against Heero’s firm, familiar shoulder and tried to calm myself. The last thing I wanted was to upset them even more than I obviously already had.

          “Oh, Duo-,” Mariela started to say miserably, the guilt in her voice that I had overheard all that only made me feel worse.

          Heero gave her a hostile look, either irritated that they were interrupting or somehow sensing that they were upsetting me.

          “Shhh, it’s ok,” he soothed, which only made the tears come harder because he was wrong, it _wasn’t_ ok and it was never going to be ok.

          Justin ignored Mariela as she floundered, sitting down on the floor with us like it was the most natural thing to do, and wrapped his arms around the both of us, hugging a lot tighter than he usually did. Despite all the dark things that I was feeling and thinking, it made me feel better. Protected and loved. Cherished. Like I really was a part of them. Like I could be… but that was dangerous thinking, I knew that. A happy delusion is a still a delusion, and a painful one. Yet, I couldn’t find the strength to pull away from either of them. After those long, lonely days, and after what my father had done to me, not just on Saturday, but the nightmare of that entire week, I needed this so much. I just needed to belong… just for a little while. I could have that, couldn’t I? Was this asking too much? Would I only come to regret it like so many other choices?

          Mariela seemed to get over her embarrassment and kneeled down on the only side I didn’t have someone wrapped around, and gently rubbed at my arm. I couldn’t decide if it made me feel better or worse, having all of them try to comfort me when I was the one who should have been trying to comfort them.

          “I’m sorry,” I rasped, finally getting some control over my tears and so ashamed of them, that I had fallen apart in front of everyone again. Where were those carefully erected walls of mine? Where was all the strength that I had had for so long, keeping all this bottled up? Why was it that, at the one time in my life that I wanted to be that independent, capable person for others, I kept falling apart like this?

          “You have nothing to apologize for,” Justin soothed, “And you have nothing to be embarrassed about. We understand. I’d be a lot more concerned if you weren’t upset right now.”

          “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m sorry I’m so…” I struggled to find the right word.

          Foolish. Stupid. Worthless. Annoying. A burden. Overly emotional…

          “Sad?” Justin interjected, startling me a little at how empathetic and knowing he sounded, how aptly he had hit the truth on the head and he knew it, “Duo, there’s no shame in feeling depressed. You’re going through a lot right now, we all understand that. Crying and feeling the way you do is completely natural and if that’s what you need to do to feel better, no one here is going to judge you for it. We aren’t your father.”

          I swallowed around a lump of pure emotion that had gotten caught in my throat, unable to take his easy acceptance and the knowledge that he was right, no one there was remotely like my father. No one was annoyed with me or angry that I was crying. To them, I was upset and this was a perfectly natural reaction. They didn’t understand my shame or how stupid I felt.

          “I’m so sorry for talking behind your back about this, Duo,” Mariela apologized, a bit unnecessarily I thought since I obviously didn’t _want_ to talk about it and I was sure this was not the first time the two of them had argued about me, “That was completely tactless. But we meant every word of it, I just want you to know that. We want to help you in any way that we can. We love you and we don’t want to push you into anything, but we’re just scared for you. But that doesn’t mean you have to make any decisions that you don’t want to right now.”

          ‘We love you.’

          ‘Well, we should be!’

          I didn’t sob again, but fresh, thick tears joined the drying ones on my cheeks at her words and the utter, raw truth of them. They loved me. They considered me to be a part of their family. Who was I that I deserved that? I was just the stupid kid that their son was unfairly saddled with. They didn’t even know if this relationship was going to last, and they still felt that way about me.

          “But why?” I had to ask, completely baffled by their feelings for me, who had done nothing since we had met but made their lives miserable.

          “Knowing why we care about you isn’t important,” Justin told me, probably understanding that anything they could say, I was probably not going to be able to accept, “so long as you understand that we do.”

And I did. With his and Heero’s arms around me and Mariela’s hand on me… even Heero’s dumb dog sitting by me, watching us with what passes for amusement for canines, I realized that it wasn’t a line. They were nuts, but they really did care for me. Their unconditional love, a concept I had never really known until I had become friends with Heero, made me want to surrender, made me want to give them whatever they needed to ease their minds. Even if it tore the rest of my world apart because they, and they alone, were the only people that had ever loved me no matter what I did, no matter what terrible trial I put them through. Maybe through those years of drinking and neglect, some part of my mother had still loved me, under all the bitterness and alcohol, but she hadn’t exactly showed it. Heero and his parents were the only people that had never abandoned me, had stood by me from the beginning, and that I was going to inevitably lose that one day gutted me. But even in their arms, I couldn’t make that choice. How fucked up am I that I couldn’t even do it then? How spineless am I?

“I’m sorry, I can’t…” I said pained, pulling away from Heero a little so I could watch them. Watch the moment when they became frustrated with me or gave up on me.

To my shock, Justin and Mariela just smiled sadly at me, but with a great deal of understanding.

“I know you can’t,” Justin said, taking this in stride, “and that’s alright. Just like I told Mari’, I don’t want to push you into a corner and make you make these major decisions simply because you feel you have to, not because you want to. You trust us and I wouldn’t lose that trust for the world. But Duo… I’ve said it once and I’ll say it over and over a thousand more times: things can’t go on the way they have been. You need to take care of yourself, but if you need time to think things over, I understand, so long as you don’t bury them and let things go on like this. And when you finally do make a choice, no matter what that choice is, you have our support. Emotionally or financially or if you just need a place to hide and feel normal, you have it from us. All you have to ever do is ask and you have it.”

A fresh wave of tears washed down my face and I tried to wipe them away with my hand, but it was like trying to sweep away rain. Justin cradled my unbruised cheek in his hand, gently wiping them away with his thumb, and kissed my forehead in a gesture that was agonizingly fatherly. It almost did me in completely, that kiss, and when I trembled, I wasn’t sure if it was from whatever damage I had probably done to my abused muscles by stupidly collapsing to the floor like that or the things that I was feeling.

“Come on,” Justin gently urged, just like he always did, “This floor is cold and you’re too tired for this right now. We’ll talk about it later, but right now, I want to get some hot food into you, your homework done, and you into bed immediately.”

I nodded, grateful for the change in topic because I just couldn’t handle anymore or I was going to break. When, one by one, they pulled away from me, I felt a strange mix of cold and lingering warmth, missing their embrace, but just knowing that they really did care about me and it wasn’t just some desperate delusion that lived only in my head made me feel better. The terrible wave of depression started to lessen. It wouldn’t really leave me fully for quite some time, but it dissipated enough to make me feel like a true idiot for crying like that and it was much more bearable. Justin and Mariela left for the kitchen and I heard the comforting, familiar sounds of dinner being transferred to plates and utensils being collected. Heero stood and I suddenly realized that I was stuck there on the floor. Where I had gone down, there was nothing for me to grab on to and I couldn’t get myself up with my bad leg. Fuck. I could have smacked myself for my own stupidity.

Before I could think to just ask ‘Ro for help, even if it made me look like a dumbass, Kanuck filled the spot that the three of them had vacated and sniffed around my face, wagging his tail ferociously before giving me a healthily, exuberant lick on my cheek.

“Ewww!” I groaned and shoved him away, “Gross!”

Far from put out, the dog just wagged his tail harder, lolled his tongue happily at me. Heero chuckled.

“See? Kanuck sees you as one of us, too,” he grinned, but it was a bit of a shock to realize that he wasn’t actually joking. Can a heart really melt if it’s given too many warm fuzzies too quickly, because mine sure felt like it was going to.

“Yeah, well,” I wiped my cheek with my sleeve, giving the dog and put-upon look, “I wish his seal of approval didn’t have to come with dog slobber.”

Heero laughed at that, looking at his dog endearingly.

“Here,” he offered me his hand, but I couldn’t tell if he was just being nice or knew that I was in too much pain to do this on my own.

I grabbed his, the warmth of his skin making mine tingle still, even after he had had me in his arms, and he slowly pulled me to my unsteady feet. He even curled his arm around my back to give me support, which made me feel weird. Love for him that he somehow knew that I needed it, but that he had positioned his arm in what felt like the perfect area to give that support, yet not put pressure on any of my knew bruises made me paranoid. He didn’t know, I knew that for a fact, but I was so desperate that he didn’t find out that it was making me twitchy. It was almost impossible to hide the obvious pain getting back up had put me in and even if I had managed it, the muscle spasm that went through me that had me gasping for breath and squirming would have given me away.

“Are you ok?” my boyfriend asked in concern.

“I’m fine,” I rushed to soothe him through gritted teeth as I rode the wave of pain, not wanting him to call his father back in, who would be able to tell that I was definitely not fine, “It’s just my stupid leg. Getting down on the floor like that had been a really dumb idea.”

He gave me a weak smile, accepting my half lie.

“I don’t think you really had a conscious choice at the time,” he pointed out, “Why don’t you sit down on the couch and rest your leg for a bit.”

“It’s ok,” I assured him, “Dinner’s ready anyway.”

I almost winced at the thought of sitting in one of those kitchen chairs, which were a lot more comfortable than my own, but still. But then I thought about eating as a real family and Mariela’s home cooking and just didn’t care about the pain anymore. Heero started to move away from me and I hastily snagged the sleeve of his shirt, drawing his attention back.

“Heero, I’m so sorry for acting like such an asshole,” I apologized, my heart in my guts and feeling more and more ashamed the more I remembered my crying fit, all over an overheard argument.

“You are not an asshole,” he scolded, “Duo, I’m not blind. I know you’re having a difficult time lately and I have no idea just how you’re getting through it or how you really feel. I don’t think _I_ could. I don’t think you’re weak or pathetic for being emotional, I think you’re amazing. You have every right to be upset, more upset than you are, really, so stop apologizing.”

‘I think you’re amazing.’

I had to look away from him, completely uncomfortable and unable to meet that loving, enthralled look in his eyes. Heero kissed my cheek, but allowed me to save face, just smiling at the stupid blush I had and walked into the kitchen. I tried to follow him, but Mariela steered me right back out towards the living room.

          “Nope!” she chirped cheerfully, back to her old self, “Not in here, we’re eating out here tonight.”

          “The living room?” I questioned, baffled.

          While we do occasionally eat in there, we didn’t make a habit of it unless it was a really laid-back meal, and the pasta dish Mariela had made sure didn’t scream ‘casual’ at me like pizza or Chinese takeout.

          “We thought we’d just have a quick, easy dinner tonight,” she beamed at me, “You and Heero can get a head start on your homework while we eat so you aren’t up all night, and I thought the couch might be a bit easier on your leg.”

          Again, I felt warmed by their thoughtfulness.

          “Go on,” she shooed me away and added before I could even ask to do anything to help, “and I don’t want you doing a thing, just sit and relax!”

          I stared at her retreating back and shook my head. I could have done _something_ , like carry a bowl, I wasn’t completely handicapped. But I know better by now not to raise a fuss with Mariela when she’s worried about me. You can never win against the woman in full mother hen mode. I walked to the couch and eyed it dubiously. I didn’t want to sit, not in the pain that I was in, remembering the horror that had been my spare, couple hours at work, but my leg couldn’t tolerate me standing anymore, either. Stuck between a rock and a hard place and all that. At least it was a nice couch and not falling apart like mine. I glanced back at the kitchen, but they were still puttering around getting things together and if this hurt as much as I worried it was going to, at least no one but the dog was going to see it.

          I grabbed the biggest, softest pillow I could find in the room, put it down on the couch, and gingerly lowered myself to sit on it. My leg protested the bending motion and my ass screamed at me the second I tried to change positions at all, still throbbing from my stupid slide down to the floor. I blinked in surprise when I finally had myself seated on the pillow. It felt… ok. Not great, there was no way for me to sit anywhere without it hurting. But compared to my couch and the chairs I had been in and out of that evening, it felt damned good. The pillow was amazingly soft and gentle against not just my wounded ass, but my swollen thigh. It made me realize just how much I had been hurting that day now that the pressure against various bruises and hematomas was lessened. I shoved some more pillows behind my back to prop me up without needing to use many abused muscles to do it and just sagged into them with a relieved, almost teary sigh. I was comfortable. For the first time since my father had beaten my ass, I was actually _comfortable_. And sure, now that my mind wasn’t trying to wrap itself around dealing with the pain, other things, like my exhaustion and hunger, were becoming more obvious, but I didn’t feel like screaming with frustration or taking a mountain of painkillers to get away from the constant, hot, heavy throbbing for the first time in days.

          Heero finished whatever he had been doing in the kitchen and joined me on the couch with both of our backpacks.

          “There really isn’t that much,” he told me as he pulled out a folder and handed it to me, “Just that history project, some reading in your lit class, and some calculus worksheets mostly. We should be able to get it all done in a couple hours at most.”

          I had opened the folder to leaf through assignments and notes that he had taken for me, again amazed at the effort he had gone through for me, and raised my eyebrow at him when he mentioned the history project.

          “You mean the one we got last week?” I clarified to make sure that he wasn’t talking about some new, stupid project, “The one that’s due tomorrow?”

“That would be the one,” he confirmed, digging through his own bag for the textbooks that he needed.

“Oh, I finished that last week,” I told him, “It’s all set to be turned in. Probably should have done that Friday.”

I had planned to turn it in Monday since there was always the possibility of someone stealing my homework, especially a big project like that, but, well, me and carefully laid plans never seem to go well together. At least I had it in my bag so I could turn it in on time, I would just need to keep a very close eye on my bag. I caught Heero’s sudden sheepish expression as he focused with unnecessary intensity on arranging all the stuff he needed next to him on the couch.

“And you didn’t finish it, did you?” I accused.

The brilliant flush on his face was all the answer that I needed.

“I have it half done,” he muttered defensively.

I shook my head at him. I love Heero. He’s a great friend, reliable, as loyal as a pit bull, amazing at math and sports, and is the kindest person I have ever met, but god can he be a terrible procrastinator. His parents have told me a few times that he’s had issues with his grades and getting homework in on time, especially in the last year for obvious reasons, and that him being friends with me had somehow made him more responsible and a better student. I hadn’t really put much credence in that. Heero had seemed to do fine on assignments without me. Sure, he struggled with literature and English and more creative assignments, but they just didn’t play to his strengths and he had seemed fine in everything else.

But the longer we’ve been together, the more I’ve seen that maybe they’re right. I’m still not sure that I have anything to do with it, but while Heero is far from a delinquent, he often puts things off that he doesn’t want to do until the last minute. When we work on homework together, it isn’t a problem. He might tease me a little for being overprepared and being the sort of person that gets work done the second it’s given to me, but he never complains and just goes along with it. If we had worked on the history project together, I’m sure his would have already been done at that point, but it wasn’t a paired project and we had different topics. Besides, I had started to work on mine immediately and had just assumed he didn’t need any help because he hadn’t asked. I’m sure that what had happened on Saturday had probably added to his lapse in work and I felt horribly guilty about that, but his procrastination up until that day on the project had been all him.

“If your head wasn’t attached,” I commented under my breath.

“I know, I know,” he grumbled, “I’m going to be up for hours to get it finished and I should have started before now, ok, Dad?”

I smirked at him, not even realizing that I was doing it or how easily I had slipped into bantering with him. Into something normal and how much _lighter_ I felt just to be teasing him and enjoying his company. Then, Mariela and Justin came in, carrying trays of food and we put discussions of homework aside to help them set everything up on the coffee table while they rearranged chairs so they could sit around it like it was a dinner table. I felt amazed again looking at the spread, but gods was there a ton of food. Cavatelli pasta with meatballs and sauce. Garlic bread. Salad. Soup. Shredded cheese for all the above. Wine for Heero’s parents. And I knew that there would be a dessert waiting for us as soon as we were done. It was both daunting and wonderful and I didn’t care how my stomach took it or how hard it was going to be going to the bathroom after since this would be the most solid food I had had in days. I was just so hungry, in my stomach and in my heart.

Seeing them fussing setting up dishes and glasses and silverware made me realize that this was what I had been yearning for these last few days without properly realizing it. That empty, lonely, black thing that had kept my heart in a vise all that time rotted away as I watched them. This was family. And home. All that time I had been on my couch, this thing gnawing away at me, feeling so alone and depressed, I hadn’t realized that I had felt like I was in some alien place, away from where I belonged and how much I had wanted to come back there. I had known that I had, but not with this power or intensity, or that it hadn’t been a want at all, but a need. Being there with them, surrounded by Heero and his family and his mother’s homecooked meal, I felt like I was just waking up from some terrible nightmare. I felt like I never wanted to leave that house again. I felt… whole again. Tears gathered in my eyes, but I refused to let them fall, not after I had lost my shit just moments ago.

“This looks amazing, but you really didn’t need to go through all this trouble,” I protested when Mariela finally sat down.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out that this was not what had been on the menu for supper. Weekday dinners there are usually easy, quick affairs, while the big ones, like this clearly was, were saved for the weekends when I was visiting. I could just imagine Justin telling her that he was going to check up on me, and her hoping he would bring me back and making all this like some kind of… I don’t know, a peace offering? Welcome home gift? A gesture of comfort? Mariela and I have the same tendency with food, to treat it as more than just sustenance. Meals like this to the both of us were special things, the same way a hug or a declaration of love was. It spoke to us of caring and warmth and we both tend to go overboard if there’s something we want to say, like I had during Christmas with them and her now when I was teetering on some precarious edge and she felt so guilty she couldn’t do much to help.

“Oh, it was no trouble,” she waved off my concerns even though we both knew that this meal was for my benefit, “The sauce is just leftover from what I made Saturday, I just had to boil some more pasta, and I needed to use up the lettuce soon anyway.”

She didn’t mention the effort to make the garlic bread or the whatever it was she had made for dessert. I stared down at the plate of sauce and pasta she had dished up for me. I had suspected that she had put some of the sauce aside for me since it smelled exactly the same, but actually knowing that made something swell in me, some bittersweet thing that left me choking on it.

“You… you saved it for me?” I managed to get out, almost in a whisper, and looked over at her in shock.

“Of course,” she smiled softly at me, but under it was pain, maybe because it had surprised me so much or maybe because she was remembering exactly _why_ I hadn’t been able to eat it, “You helped make it, it wouldn’t be right if you didn’t get to have some, too, and I certainly had made enough for all of us. I made it for you, too, I wanted you to be able to have it.”

“Th… thank you,” I stammered, struggling against my tears again and I could tell that they could all see it, how much this stupid, little thing was affecting me.

Next to me, I felt Heero put his hand on my knee and press his leg against mine. The pain in Mariela’s smile grew, but I had no idea what I had said to hurt her like that.

“You’re welcome, honey,” she said, “But like I said, it really was no big deal.”

Trying to bury how raw I felt suddenly, I speared some noodles, sauce, and a chunk of meatball and took a bite, closing my eyes to savor the rich flavor. The sauce really had turned out perfectly and even the meatballs were amazing, tender and thick. I can honestly say it was the best meal I had had… well, in a while. I felt stupidly happy that I had gotten to taste it after all, but there was also this bitter, iron ball in my gut as I chewed. This was the meal that I should have had on Saturday, if my father hadn’t ruined everything and turned it all to shit. This is what I should have been doing that night, not feeling terrified and ashamed, but eating a pleasant meal with the people that I loved. If I tried hard enough, I could pretend that that’s what this was. It was Saturday and Heero and I had just come in from painting the treehouse. I had helped Mariela set the table and we were having a nice, quiet dinner. I didn’t have to think about how things were at home or at school because right then, everything was perfect and I was safe in my little pocket where nothing else existed. After dinner, Heero and I would play games or watch television or just sit up in his room and talk.

My father had never broken that feeling of peace I had always had when I was there. He had never come and stolen another piece of my soul and spat on it and stomped it to dust. Heero and his family never would have been so scared and never would have seen how nuts my dad really is. The delusion was pretty, sparkling and bright, but it only made reality all the murkier and painful to accept. Tears tracked down my face as I ate, my heart torn between what should have been and how miraculous it was that I had been given a piece of it back, how much I wished I could just go back and _fix_ things. As if I could. Some of those tears weren’t even for what had happened a couple days ago at all, but from memories of my childhood, how family dinners, year after year, had begun to deteriorate. How long had it been since I had sat down like this with my own family? I honestly couldn’t remember.

No one said anything about my tears and just kept eating, letting me keep the last, remaining shard of my dignity intact, although Heero never moved away from me and his shoulder joined his leg in pressing against me. I was grateful, both for his not making a fuss and his gentle, easy attempts to comfort me.

My tears were brief and I hoped they would be the last that night because I was really sick of feeling this way, depressed and overly emotional, like a little kid. I ate heartily, probably more than I should have, but my stomach was suddenly a gaping pit and everything tasted so good, I couldn’t stop. Mariela and Justin seemed both relieved and worried at how I was eating, and I was glad that they didn’t know how many meals I had skipped and how little I had been eating lately. Heero and I worked on what we could bear to split our attention on. I worked on my reading assignments first because multitasking between eating and reading is an old skill of mine and I was really not looking forward to my calculus homework. For ‘Ro it was the opposite, he could get all his math work done in the same time that it took me to speed read. Dessert turned out to be a peach crisp, which I devoured like I had everything else until I thought I might actually explode.

“Why don’t you two go and finish up your homework? We’ll handle the dishes,” Justin subtly shooed Heero and I away when we were all done, “and I want you,” he pointed at me sternly, “in bed at a decent hour tonight before you keel over on me.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, all too happy to find any place to crash on at that point.

He was satisfied with that, not even making a remark about the ‘sir’ thing, and took a load of dirty dishes into the kitchen. Heero helped me off the couch and took my bag, ignoring all my protests, and led us upstairs. I went a bit better up them than the first time, but it was a still a weary journey and I wondered if I should have just insisted on staying on the couch. But I was so sick of sleeping on the things, I wanted a real bed and some privacy from Heero’s parents. For once, I wasn’t worried about anything happening between us and that was a huge load of stress off my shoulders. Heero was too worried about me and my limp to press the issue and he knew how tired I was, so I was safe. And yes, thinking things like that, like ‘I’m safe from Heero’, tore me up inside. I loved him and I shouldn’t feel that way at all, but I couldn’t help it. I was in no condition to deal with my anxieties over intimacy on top of everything else and knowing what had happened Saturday morning wouldn’t be happening again that night helped me to relax.

“Do you want to just use my bed to finish your homework?” Heero asked me as we loitered outside his bedroom, “I know your desk is all set up, but the bed might be better if your leg is still bothering you.”

I winced, feeling bad that we had gone through all that getting me a desk and while a part of me really wanted to use it, I knew better.

“Bed sounds good,” I admitted and didn’t want to tell him that my decision was only partially because I was worried sitting in a chair for that long might make things worse when the biggest reason was simply that I didn’t want to be alone.

Heero took his desk while I spread out everything that I needed on the bed. When I actually sat down on the thing and rested against the nest of pillows, I thought the waterworks might start up again. It was so soft and familiar and comforting, not just on my injuries, but just that feeling of _right_ and being in Heero’s space again. _Our_ space. I could smell him on the pillows and that side of the bed that I always took when we slept together was calling my body like some kind of magnet.

Heero set to work on his history project while I finished up my reading assignments. I could tell that was what he was working on because of the little furrow in his brow that he gets when he’s concentrating on something that he finds either especially boring or tiresome. We might have different interests in math and literature, but we both agreed that history sucks and is as boring as dirt. I mean, who even uses this stuff unless you want to become a historian or something? I would have helped him with it, but there wasn’t much that he needed me to do, so I just focused on breezing through my assignments so I could finally lie down. Biology, Short Stories, and my literature class were all short reading work, so they got done pretty quickly, leaving me with just calculus. My nemesis and the bane of my existence.

I have no clue what I would do without ‘Ro. The guy had taken some of the most painstaking, detailed notes on what they had gone over in class that day that I have ever seen. Sure, his handwriting wasn’t the best, but I could understand it fine. He had gone over pretty much everything and that he had even thought to bother, knowing how much trouble I have in the subject, was amazing. So, I felt like a royal shit that all of it went completely over my head when it was my fault and not his.

I glanced over at him and saw that he had moved on to his English homework, frowning and almost glaring intensely at the book he had to read. I didn’t want to bother him, he had done enough for me. I could figure this out, couldn’t I? He had given me everything I needed, so this should be a piece of cake. I looked back down at the notes he had taken for me and the problems on the worksheet, trying to force my mind to make some sense out of it. But it was pointless, it didn’t make sense up to a certain point. Was I just too tired or too stupid? A wave of frustration welled up in me and I wanted to ball the damned papers up and throw them out the window. I heard my father’s voice ring out in my head, gleefully calling me useless and stupid and a waste of space, my current failure giving that voice a strength and realness that was difficult to ignore.

“…Heero?” I said shyly, my voice so small and timid that it was almost inaudible, but he still noticed and turned around.

“What is it?” he asked in concern, knowing that something was wrong from my nervous tone.

I faltered, knowing that my hesitation was born from a mix of not wanting to embarrass myself in front of him, feeling guilty about pestering him when he needed to focus on his own homework, feelings of inadequacy, and just to be the fucking, shit-covered cherry on top of it all, life-long lessons my father had taught me about asking stupid questions and bothering people, that if I asked the wrong thing at the wrong time, it would either be met with harsh mockery or a punch to the face. Heero isn’t my dad, I know that very well, but it didn’t make it any easier to ask for help.

“I…” I struggled, hating myself and this stupid assignment and that I even needed to learn this shit in the first place, “Can you help me with this?”

Shame clawed at me, but Heero just gave me a soft, comforting smile.

“Calculus giving you trouble?” he guessed.

I nodded in embarrassment, looking down at the papers on my lap and not at him. He got up and went around to his side of the bed to sit next to me.

“Sorry,” he apologized to me sheepishly, “I tried to write the best notes that I could, but I’m not great at explaining things.”

“No!” I protested, my head shooting up and startling him, “No, it’s not that. Your notes are perfect, it’s my fault I’m just too stupid to follow them…”

“Stop saying stuff like that,” he chided, “You aren’t dumb just because you’re having problems with one subject that you weren’t even around for. You just need to see it being done, a list of instructions isn’t as good as a hands-on approach. It’s like me and trying to follow a recipe. I get it when you show me a technique or talk me through it, but I’m hopeless reading one of mom’s cookbooks. Here.”

He grabbed the notes he had made and scrawled out the first problem on the blank back of it, the fixated look on his face utterly adorable. Just like that, in the blink of an eye, those feelings of inadequacy vanished and I smiled, watching him work. It really was a complicated problem, but he was so patient with me, going over a few of the steps a couple times and explaining things until I understood just what in the hell I was supposed to do and why. I felt a little self-conscious when he told me to try the next problem from scratch, but did as he asked, blushing a little.

“I think you’ve got it,” he complimented, beaming at me.

“Thanks, ‘Ro,” I said earnestly.

“You’re very welcome,” he said softly, affectionately for some reason.

He kissed my temple, making my blush spread, then returned to his desk. The warmth that kiss and Heero’s help made me feel kept my frustration at bay as I re-tackled the worksheet. I had to hand it to him, he had been right. I got it just fine after he had physically shown me how to do it. It still wasn’t exactly easy, but it made me feel both better that I wasn’t a complete moron and a bit silly for having gotten so irritated by a simple math assignment. I worked slowly, so tired that even a simple task like homework was taking me longer and longer as the night wore on and I had to look over my work again and again to make sure I didn’t mess up. I tried to remember just how much sleep I had gotten since Saturday, but couldn’t. I had been running on empty even before then, so I really wasn’t surprised when, halfway through the worksheet, I kept finding my eyes drooping and my head sagging. If I had been working on a reading assignment, I probably could have stayed awake just fine, but math bores the shit out of me.

“Hey,” Heero’s voice roused me from a near dose and I blinked my eyes open as he touched my shoulder.

I raised my head in confusion and realized with embarrassment that I had actually started to nod off as I had sat there doing my homework. I was even still sitting upright, although the work sheet and pencil had both slipped from my hands. Who does that? I felt like a complete dork, but he just smiled at me like I was the cutest thing ever.

“You’re falling asleep,” he chuckled.

“Sorry,” I apologized sheepishly, “I’m almost done with this…”

I glanced at the sheet and saw that I had started to doze off after only getting through about 2/3rds of the problems.

“Here,” he took the sheet from me, “You should go to bed if you’re falling asleep sitting here, you’re not going to get any work done and you must be utterly exhausted.”

“I need to finish,” I complained a bit pathetically, “It’s just a few more problems and I won’t have time tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll do them for you,” he said, “At this rate, your concentration is going to be shot anyway.”

“You…” I stumbled over my words, a little bit shocked at what he was offering, “You really don’t need to do that…”

“It’s not big deal,” he insisted, “You don’t have that many problems left and I’ll get them done quicker and now you can go to sleep a bit earlier.”

“Yeah, but that’s cheating,” I huffed a little, “And you have plenty of homework on your own, I can’t ask you to do mine on top of it just because I’m a little tired!”

“You’re a sight more than a ‘little’ tired, Duo,” he quirked an eyebrow at me in amusement, “And you aren’t _asking_ me to do anything, I’m telling you what I want to do. You obviously understand the process,” he pointed out with another glance at my work, “so it doesn’t make any difference either way.”

He started to clear my stuff from the bed, taking the decision out of my hands.

“Heero…” I began to protest again, but I knew he was right. I had been exhausted before I had even shown up at his house and my body had been yearning to sag into that bed since I had seen it, “…Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he said and shifted everything to his desk, turning back to pull the sheets and covers down for me like he would a little kid he was tucking in, “Is there anything you need?”

I almost told him that I was fine and he really didn’t need to do anything for me, even such a tiny thing as pulling down the covers when I knew he liked doing those things for some reason, but bit my lip.

“Could… could you get some pain medicine from the bathroom?” I asked shyly, hating to ask when I was perfectly capable of getting it myself, but the pain of sitting had only grown as I had done my homework. It wasn’t unbearable yet, but it was starting to get close.

His expression softened in understanding.

“Of course,” he agreed and got the pills for me, returning not just with them, but also a glass of water.

I took them eagerly, hoping it would help me sleep for longer than I had been and just gave in to letting Heero fuss over me, knowing it was just his way. It reminded me of what I had thought before, about the comfort of knowing that all your ducks were in a row, of knowing that the people you loved were safe and cared for. It was easier to accept knowing that one of the reasons why he did stuff like that wasn’t because he thought I was weak and it didn’t inconvenience him, it was comforting to him and probably helped him after he hadn’t been able to do anything to help me before. I slid under the covers on my right side, still the most comfortable position for me, and he carefully slipped off the sling and placed a pillow under my bad arm, warming me even further, and pulled the covers up. My face went almost as warm as that feeling in my chest when he leaned down and kissed my head.

“Good night, Duo,” he said.

“Good night,” I echoed, smiling slightly like the lovesick moron that I am.

I almost closed my eyes and drifted off then, right on the edge of it and feeling incredibly heavy headed, when I noticed him gathering, not just my stuff, but his as well off his desk.

“What are you doing?” I asked in sleepy confusion.

“Moving to the guest room,” he told me, “I don’t want to disturb you, so I’m just going to use your desk.”

He was leaving? Inexplicably, panic gripped me as badly as it would have if he had told me that they were sending me home for the night.

“You don’t have to do that!” I protested vehemently, startling him and struggling up into a half-laying, half-sitting up position that my body could actually manage with one arm.

“I don’t want to keep you up, it’s really no big deal-,” he tried to make me see sense, but his stubbornness only made my heart race with a fear I didn’t fully understand.

“You won’t keep me up,” I promised him, “It’s not like you ever make a lot of noise.”

“Duo,” he began to argue and I saw that he wasn’t going to let this go.

He was so wound up about me getting some rest and not wanting to disturb me, he wasn’t going to listen to me. He was going to leave me alone. Now, I’m not stupid, I know how insane I was acting and feeling. He was going to be one room away from me, for fuck’s sake, but all I remembered was how lonely and miserable I had felt when I had been in my house alone the last couple days, how much I had yearned just to have someone there, just to know I wasn’t in that grey place again, that someone cared, that someone… had my back, and in that moment, the thought of him leaving me alone was completely unbearable.

“Please,” I begged him, my voice barely above a whisper, “Stay.”

Understanding replaced that stubborn look on his face and I felt a bit mortified that he had realized why I didn’t want him to go, but it was distant and fleeting when he put his stuff back on the desk and I saw that he was going to stay.

“Alright,” he conceded and then demanded, “but if I’m making too much noise, you have to tell me. I’m not keeping you up for another hour.”

“I promise,” I agreed, laying back down.

He dimmed the lights to a level tolerable for him to see and me to be able to sleep to. It gave the room a calm, almost dreamy atmosphere that actually made me even drowsier than if he had turned them off completely.

“Thank you, ‘Ro,” I murmured, my eyes already starting to droop closed as soon as he sat back down and I was assured he wasn’t going anywhere.

“No problem,” he said in dry amusement, “you stubborn dummy.”

I closed my eyes and smiled as I heard him resume typing on his laptop. He was consciously typing softer than he normally would, but the pace was the same. Familiar and comforting. That soft clacking sound filled the silence, telling my fading consciousness that it was ok, he was there, this warm, comforting presence. Between that feeling and how damned nice the bed felt compared to the couch at home, how it soothed certain aches that I hadn’t realized where there, I was gone in minutes.

 

End Part 26

 

Author’s Note: Originally, I was aiming for Monday and Tuesday to be in the same part since nothing very exciting happens on Monday, but Monday got way too long (this often happens, if you haven’t noticed by now), so I decided to get this part out sooner and just break them up. As usual, thank you to everyone that took the time to review!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

         

 

 


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